The Screengrab : lindsay lohan

Morning Deal Report: Scorsese Sings Sinatra

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 14 May 2009 13:30:00 GMT

One Martin Scorsese picture that never made it out of development hell was an adaptation of Dino, Nick Tosches’ biography of Dean Martin, which was set to star Tom Hanks in the lead role. This was, of course, a terrible idea, and cooler heads eventually prevailed. Scorsese can’t let the Rat Pack go, however – he’s set to direct Sinatra, written by Field of Dreams screenwriter Phil Alden Robinson. “The deal comes after years of negotiations with Frank Sinatra Enterprises, a joint venture of the crooner's estate and Warner Music Group. Internal politics of the estate, where family members had to form a consensus as to how to tell the story and, more importantly, just how much of the story to tell -- was a hurdle that had to be overcome,” per The Hollywood Reporter. So…not exactly warts and all, then?

Lindsay Lohan is going to The Other Side. “Story centers on a grad student who must spend the summer working at a scientific institute on a remote island. She discovers an eccentric community of characters who are hiding a secret about a tragedy that took place many years before,” Variety reports.

Ozsploitation auteur Russell Mulcahy is back with Bait, a 3-D shark movie. “Upping the ante on peril, the film is set in a coastal town where a freak tsunami floods and traps shoppers in a supermarket with an armed maniac and a pack of hungry tiger sharks that have been washed into the building.” Jaws in a supermarket! I am so there!

Screengrab Death Watch: Day One

Andrew Osborne — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:49:00 GMT

And now, the end is near, and so we face the final curtain...

Yes, it’s true...as it turns out, the shitty economy, global warming, the death of print media and the looming Swine Flu pandemic are only the tips of the iceberg of sadness we’ll all have to deal with this year.

We learned yesterday that Nerve.com will be shuttering some of its culture blogs including...(sniff, sniff)...this one: sad to say, the Screengrab is not long for this dirty old world.

So enjoy our beloved, non-commercially viable coverage of the cinematic universe while you can...and stay tuned for plenty of clip-show nostalgia, maudlin eulogizing, a heart-tugging farewell song from Bette Midler and, in a last-ditch attempt to boost hits, 100% more gratuitous Tits & Ass...like, uh...that chick from The Hills showing her butt!

Lindsay Lohan Declares Her Availability on Funny or Die

Phil Nugent — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:30:00 GMT

According to the cover of Self magazine, funny is the new sexy. After a weekend spent slipping on banana peels outside several Manhattan clubs and squirting supermodels with my plastic carnation, I have my doubts, but now that Linday Lohan is back in the dating pool, she's trying to keep pace with the zeitgeist by posting her eHarmony profile at Funny or Die; to take the direct route to view it, hit the jump. Word is she keeps you jumping, but honestly, she had us interested here until that close-up shock reveal of her taste in nail polish.

Lindsay Lohan's eHarmony Profile from Lindsay Lohan

DVD Digest for April 14, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Well folks, it looks like the studios are waiting until after the tax return deadline to release the good stuff. However, there are a few interesting titles on tap this week.

This week’s selection of recent releases can be more or less boiled down to a face-off between high-toned Oscar-bait and a lowbrow comic book adaptation full of cartoonish violence and scantily clad women. In one corner, wearing the drab grey trunks, Stephen Daldry’s The Reader (Weinstein, also Blu-Ray), which brought Kate Winslet a long-overdue Oscar and garnered its director his third Best Director nomination in three tries. In the opposing corner, wearing black and white trunks and a bright red tie, Frank Miller’s solo filmmaking debut, The Spirit (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray), an adaptation of the classic Will Eisner comic that got some of the most savage reviews of 2008. Of course, if you’re like me you could take or leave either of these movies, and I’d advise you to wait for next week when The Wrestler hits the streets.

Or if you just can’t wait, you might be better off with this week’s most interesting-looking classic, the 50th Anniversary Edition of Pillow Talk (Universal). Perhaps the most popular of Doris Day and Rock Hudson’s romantic comedies, the new DVD includes commentary, a doc about the two stars, and in some sets a bonus Mamma Mia magnetic picture frame. I know, I can’t wait either. And for you fans of poker and distractingly bad Russian accents, this week also brings the release of Rounders 10th Anniversary Edition (Disney, also Blu-Ray).

The big TV on DVD news this week is the release of the HBO miniseries House of Saddam. And in Blu-Ray only releases, this week’s slate includes: Eminem in 8 Mile (Universal); Zach Braff in The Last Kiss (Paramount); Lindsay Lohan and Tina Fey in Mean Girls (Paramount); the Happy Madison production Strange Wilderness (Paramount); and the forgettable sci-fi double feature The Thirteenth Floor (Sony) and Universal Soldier: The Return (Sony). I guess that’s how you know the format is here to stay- when studios are done releasing their recent crap and start releasing crap from the vaults.

Finally, my selection for the Plot Synopsis of the Week is yet again from the Japanese animation circuit- this week choice being ADV Films’ release The Karma Saiyuki. Once again, I hope it doesn’t seem like I’m bagging on anime, but some of these plot summaries- yowza. Take a look:

“In a world where a broken robot is as cherished as month-old milk, sexually abused androids are tossed in the scrap pile and forgotten by all but three beautiful young girls with the power to bring the discarded 'droids back to life through the bedroom arts. But do robots--even super-realistic-looking ones--feel sad when their cruel owners defile and then chuck them in the recycle bin? In this adult-themed anime, the power of loving sex might be the link between a robot’s artificial intelligence and its heart--or maybe it's just another chance for hentai fans to enjoy some kinky robot nookie.”

To these eyes, what really puts it over the top is that final sentence, in which the copy writer teases us with the possible deeper implications of the film, then snatches them away again with a dig at the sexual proclivities of hentai fans. And to think that DVD Planet has this listed in the “Children’s” genre…

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: Feb. 7-13, 2009

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 22:00:00 GMT

Listen, I’m a man of few words and I’ve got skulls to impale with a rusty machete, so I’m gonna make this short and sweet. The Screengrab ran down my entire history this week, with Precursors: Friday the 13th Parts I-III, IV-VI, and VII-X. Frankly, I don’t think they showed me the proper reverence, but I’ll make my displeasure known at the appropriate time. I’m also a little miffed that I was left out of Bloody Valentines: The Worst Relationships in Cinema History (Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Seven). Every one of my relationships has ended with a hunting knife sticking out of someone’s eye socket, which should be your first hint that I belong on the list. But again, I’ll make sure the right people hear about this, and they won’t be happy.

Meanwhile, here are some more Screengrab posts to read. Be sure to leave the light on. Reviews: Two Lovers, Gomorrah and The Rock-afire Explosion

Screengrab Q & A: James Gray and Two Lovers

He's Hot, He's Oscar-Nominated, and He's Dead: The Heath Ledger Stealth Award Campaign

Reviews By Request, Oscar-Nominated Edition: Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942, Michael Curtiz)

Unwatchables: Baby Geniuses and In the Mix

Believe It Or Not: Patrica Highsmith's Ripley, On Screen

Video of the Day: Lindsay Lohan's Screen Test

Video of the Day: Lindsay Lohan's Screen Test

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 19:45:00 GMT

Oh, Lindsay Lohan, you drug-addled alcoholic bisexual nut. Hollywood loves you to pieces! But was there ever a time when you weren't several varieties of cuckoo-bananas? Why...yes!

Captured here in a screen test for her motion picture debut -- the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap, made when she was a tender 11 years old -- Lindsay Lohan shows signs of being the adorable scamp we all fell in love with before the cut-rate Mexican pharmaceuticals got hold of her. She probably watches this late of an evening and cries., poor thing.

Screengrab’s Back-To-School Round-Up: The Top 18+ High School Films (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:30:00 GMT

SAVED! (2004)

In the Red and Blue State era, America often feels more like a pair of hostile side-by-side nations than a single group of United States, but this scrappy little indie by writer/director Brian Dannelly (and producer Michael Stipe...yes, THAT Michael Stipe!) does its part to bridge the divide by showing that maybe, just maybe, liberal elitists and conservative family values/assault weapon enthusiasts aren’t really so very different after all. Saved! tells the remarkably charming story of a bunch of very nice young people at a Christian fundamentalist high school trying to be as moral and decent as possible while grappling with questions of faith and the harsh realities of life. Naturally, many actual Christian fundamentalists hated it, but the cast (featuring undervalued charmers like Jena Malone and Patrick Fugit, a great comedic performance by Mandy Moore and a surprisingly likeable and sardonic turn by Macaulay Culkin) is the most likeable bunch of adolescents this side of Freaks and Geeks. The story is both highly respectful of religious belief and hilariously perceptive about the frequent disconnect between piety and common decency (not to mention the freshly topical disconnect between abstinence education and elevated teen pregnancy rates).

DAZED AND CONFUSED (1993)

I know, I know: this is a back-to-school list, and Dazed and Confused is the quintessential "last day of school" movie. But you poor souls facing down a whole new year of classes, teachers, schoolbooks and locker stuffings need something to dream on, and there's no better light at the end of the tunnel than the Richard Linklater ensemble comedy that launched a thousand careers. One of the all-time great up-all-night party movies, Dazed is like a favorite rock album; it's stuffed with greatest hits and no matter how many times I've seen it, I'm always up for another viewing. Dazed captures the giddiness of those final hours dealing with teachers' dirty looks as well as the anxieties of those on the threshold, either of high school (and hazing by sadistic seniors) or adulthood ("The older you do get, the more rules they're gonna try to get you to follow.") And unlike most high school movies with their rigid caste systems, Linklater's film finds that rare relaxed groove where the stoners overlap with the jocks and the geeks co-exist with the cheerleaders. And then there's Matthew McConaughey's immortal Wooderson, the cautionary tale/stoner sage still trying to ride that endless summer as far as it will take him. I don't ever want to go back to high school…except when I'm watching Dazed and Confused.

BATTLE ROYALE (2000)

The idea behind Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale – one of the highest-grossing films in Japanese motion picture history, and a stunning achievement in blending artistic elements with balls-out action – is so simple that it would have been an instant winner at a high-concept Hollywood pitch meeting: it's basically Beverly Hills 90210 meets Death Race 2000. Luckily, the movie was based on a hugely successful (if incredibly controversial) novel, and the Toei studio needed no convincing to greenlight it. The participation of the legendary Beat Takeshi – not as director, but acting as one of the schoolteachers – cemented the deal. The premise of the movie is simple: in the near future, economic woes and overpopulation combine to leave Japan facing a crisis: teenagers can't get jobs and so are easily drawn to street crime and terrorism. To thin out their ranks, the government forces all high school classes to participate in an annual kill-or-be-killed tournament: each class is dropped on a remote island with a handful of weapons and orders to wipe out anyone who gets in their way. Some choose not to participate at all; some have friendships tested and torn apart; some try to game the system, and others take to the game – which becomes a national sensation as a televised blood sport – all too readily. The appeal of the movie isn't as simple as the terrific, and often incredibly bloody, action sequences: it's also in the surprising performances (including a near-silent turn by Masanobu Ando as Kiriyama, the demonic villain, and a pre-Kill Bill Chiaki Kuriyama in a juicy role), the relationships that develop between the kids (which range from operatic to heartbreakingly realistic), and the way that, despite the outlandish trappings, Fukasaku never lets you forget these are supposed to be real kids, behaving like kids would behave. It's that element of realism amongst all the sci-fi craziness that makes Battle Royale so memorable.

CLUELESS (1995) & MEAN GIRLS (2004)

Amy Heckerling, director of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, returned to her prime territory a dozen years later with Clueless, which for all practical purposes remains that brief, special moment known as Alicia Silverstone's movie career. Here we have the ideal satirical vision of the sunny side of adolescent girl power: Silverstone's Cher may be too socially adept and fashion-conscious not to seem shallow, but she hasn't got a trace of Heather in her, and she's determined to use her skills to help others and do her part for a series of good causes, from helping the environment to greater awareness of global hunger to getting Wallace Shawn laid, all of which ought to be woven into the Democratic Party's national platform. (Okay, maybe not getting Wallace Shawn laid.) Flip to side B and you've got Mean Girls, where the Heather virus has so thoroughly contaminated high school life that Lindsay Lohan, the home-schooled offspring of zoologists who didn't bring her in from the African bush until she was sixteen, is forced to pretend to be both stupid and bitchy in order to get close enough to her genetic peers in the Chicago educational system to study their strange, exotic ways. These two movies also serve as a double feature illustrating Hollywood's seeming ability to turn any source material at all into a commercial teenpic: Clueless is the least official but not the least (emotionally) faithful of the string of Jane Austen adaptations that flooded theaters in the mid-'90s, and Mean Girls was adapted by Tina Fey from Rosalind Wiseman's nonfiction sociological study Queen Bees and Wannabees.

Click Here For Part One, Part Three & Part Four

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Leonard Pierce, Phil Nugent

Screengrab’s Back-To-School Round-Up: The Top 18+ High School Films (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:00:00 GMT

There are two kinds of people in the world: the ones who despised high school and those who actually kinda liked it. Me, I was lucky...I was a geek, but nobody dumped pig’s blood on my head...I had zits but not a pizza face...I didn’t have many girlfriends, but as one of the straight guys in the drama club I did okay...and best of all, I grew up in a town where the rigid caste system of brains, jocks, preps, rebels and burnouts was loose enough for everyone to more or less party together, thanks to the magic of underage drinking and weed.

For some, of course, high school is a harrowing nightmare of alienation and rejection, a crucible that tests the soul (rather than simply a place of tests and The Crucible). But whether you experienced “Glory Days” or a “Teenage Wasteland” (or a little of both), the residue of adolescence is hard to shake: even retirement communities are rife with queen bees and wannabes, and the past three presidential elections (at least) have been structured as showdowns between smartypants teacher’s pets and “bad boys” promising awesome keggers while their parents are out of town.

So join us now as we skip fifth period gym class to bring you a very special tribute to readin’, writin’ and Ritalin: Screengrab + the Greatest High School Movies 4-eva!

REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955)

Almost indisputably the ur-document of teenage cinema, Nicholas Ray's explosive Rebel without a Cause did it all: it made a huge star out of Natalie Wood, and turned James Dean into something even huger than that – an icon. It proved eerily predictive in its on-screen depiction of poor doomed Sal Mineo. It was made at the exact moment in American history when teenagers were making the transformation from an age category to a demographic, and it became the blueprint for a million movies about how parents just don't understand. It became such an essential part of the culture that it falls under that rare category of movies that you know back to front even if you haven’t seen them. Oh, and incidentally, it's a great movie, with electrifying performances by all three leads, and an often-neglected directing job by the masterful Nicholas Ray. Dean's Jim Stark is the archetype of angry, alienated teenagers, and so perfectly does he inhabit the role that it could fairly be said that pretty much every alienated teenager in film history – in fact, every alienated teenager in reality – is just a copy of him. Most of all, Rebel Without a Cause does something quite magical: while never breaking the tensely emotional shell in which it surrounds its characters, while making their emotions as real and weighty as our own, it manages to give the sensation and perspective utterly lacking from their lives, and the lives of every teenager who would ever watch them: that this too would pass, and that the problems that seemed like – and, indeed, were – matters of life and death during high school would seem weightless as a cloud from the perspective of adulthood.

CARRIE (1976)

There are those who think Brian De Palma is a genius and those who find his "operatic" style overwrought and often downright silly, and 99 times out of 100 you can put me in the latter camp. Yet there was at least one occasion when De Palma's hyper-melodramatic emotionalism perfectly matched the source material: Stephen King's seminal "revenge of the nerd" tale Carrie. In high school, after all, every little slight, snub, or misunderstanding feels like a matter of life and death, and our most embarrassing moments seem to go on for hours – at least for those of us who weren't born to be the quarterback or the prom queen. De Palma conveys that hormones-gone-mad sensibility as if he's undergone some kind of regression therapy, particularly in the movie's two most famous set-pieces. The opening, set in the girls' locker room, transitions from woozy wet dreamland to literal bloody terror without missing a beat, while the pigs-blood prom sequence holds every agonizing note of a symphony of mortification before giving way to Carrie's deadly (but undeniably cathartic) retribution. It's the ultimate high-school-as-horror movie – because when you're 16 or so, it's hard to think of six more terrifying words than "They're all gonna laugh at you."

FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH (1982)

This late-summer teen comedy was released into the teeth of critics who regarded it as a mall-filler and promotional device for the soundtrack album, a judgment that was probably shared by the studio that released it. It quickly rode to cult status on the strength of its genuine affection for its young characters and the gentle but incisive touch of director Amy Heckerling and her screenwriter, Cameron Crowe, as well as a sprawling, talented ensemble cast. At the time, it was seen as the movie that made Sean Penn a star, and his Jeff Spicoli -- Shaggy with a surfboard instead of a crime-solving dog and a Volkswagen Microbus with a well-toasted aroma -- remains a classic comic stoner archetype. Now, though, the movie looks like one of those pictures that in one sweep introduced a generation's worth of new faces, including Forest Whitaker (as the token black football player who one kid assumes they just chauffeur in for the games), Jennifer Jason Leigh, Phoebe Cates, Judge Reinhold, Eric Stoltz, Anthony Edwards, and, in a teensy feature debut, an actor with a long face and good family connections who for the first and only time in his career was billed "Nicolas Coppola." Heavy rotation on HBO proceeded to practically burn it into the DNA of '80s kids, who used their new VCRs to make a close study of Reinhold's masturbation fantasy of a topless Phoebe Cates emerging from the swimming pool, a sequence that made budding cineastes of many an appreciative young male.

HEATHERS (1989)

"Dear Diary," writes Ronnie Sawyer in her journal, in the goth-comedy that launched a thousand imitators, "my teen angst has a body count." That's as good a way as any to describe Heathers, the surprisingly subversive – and even more surprisingly successful – teen comedy that made a huge star of Winona Ryder (and threatened to do the same for Christian Slater, until he had the good taste to appear in several more movies so we could all see how ridiculous it was for him to go around claiming to be an actor). Ryder's character just wants to fit in with her high school's elite (the titular Heathers), but she's got a nasty independent streak and a Bud Cortish hobby of faking suicide, so it looks like she might be caught between her own desires and the intractable social demands of high school forever – until the dreamy Jason Dean shows up, determined to cut the Gordian knot of teen angst, no matter how many people he has to kill to do it. Heathers has plenty of problems, from its highly improbable plot to its pat ending to, well, basically everything involving Christian Slater; but the reason it grabbed us then is the reason it holds up now. It's an unsparing look at the ludicrously overblown and arbitrary pressures of high school social life, wrapped up in an extremely funny package courtesy of screenwriter Daniel Waters. It may not be as deep as it thinks it is, but it's got a nasty attitude and it's got tons of great lines, and once you're actually out of high school, and you realize life doesn't really depend on being cool, that's enough.

Click Here for Part Two, Part Three & Part Four

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Scott Von Doviak, Phil Nugent

Unwatchable #72: “Meet the Spartans”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:30:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

Here’s a serendipitous turn of events – not for me, of course, but maybe for somebody out there. On the very day that Disaster Movie, the latest parody from the writing-directing team of Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg, is released in theaters, our Unwatchable selection of the day just happens to be the humor-challenged team’s previous effort, Meet the Spartans. (And when I say effort, I don’t really mean it in any traditional sense of the word.) This is purely coincidental, but if I can do anything to dissuade even one person from spending money on Disaster Movie this weekend, I’ll consider this post a success.

I doubt that’s going to be possible, though, since it seems highly unlikely that any regular Screengrab readers would be seeing Disaster Movie in the first place. For my part, Meet the Spartans was my first experience with the Seltzer-Friedberg team, but I can’t say I was completely unaware of what to expect – basically, that these bozos are Zucker-Abrams-Zucker for people who were often dropped on their heads as children. Spartans is ostensibly a parody of 300, but really just a string of pop culture references linked by scenes of shiny-chested men in leather loinwear. Notice I say pop culture references, not pop culture jokes; Seltzer and Friedberg proved to me that they watch Entertainment Tonight and TMZ, but not that they have any ability to synthesize their crapulent media saturation into something that would make me laugh.

For example: A group of Persians arrive in Sparta to inform King Leonidas (Sean Maguire) that he must submit to the rule of Xerxes. Leonidas proceeds to kick them into the pit of death. He is about to leave when he notices Britney Spears sitting in front of the pit, shaving her head and flashing her pixilized coochie. He then kicks her in the pit of death. Really, it’s not like I’m looking for some explanation for Britney Spears being in ancient Sparta. I realize it’s all part of the free-wheeling zaniness. But you can’t just have her shaving her head and flashing her girl parts. We’ve already seen that. Likewise, when Ryan Seacrest and the American Idol judges appear in front of the pit, it’s not enough that Simon is mean, Paula is loopy and Randy says “dawg” a lot. Maybe that was enough when MAD TV did their very first American Idol send-up 147 years ago, but if you don’t want people to think you’re stupid, untalented assholes, Messrs. Selzer and Friedberg, you really need to step up your game.

Alas, I do think they’re stupid, untalented assholes and I’m just sorry anyone encouraged them as children or even told them they were the “funny guys” in high school. They weren’t, I am almost certain. Here are some things they think are funny: 1) Balls. Now, here they happen to be correct. Balls are funny, particularly when they’re getting punched and they aren’t mine. It’s somewhat less funny when a Happy Feet penguin teabags Leonidas, but again, it’s because there’s no real context. Ball jokes with context – now that’s humor. 2) Homo jokes. Yes, I imagine there is some humor to be mined from the homoeroticism of 300, but the gags here are about as subtle as prison sex. 3) Celebrities and reality TV. In addition to Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan also make appearances to reference their tabloid troubles and flash their digitally obscured vaginas. (All celebrities are impersonated, of course, except for Carmen Electra who seems to be under the impression that she’s acting in the role of Queen Margo.) We not only get the American Idol panel, but the judges from America’s Next Top Model and Dancing with the Stars. There’s even a Deal or No Deal reference, which really shows Selzer and Friedberg are invested in crafting timeless comedies for the ages.

The worst thing about these non-jokes is that Selzer and Friedberg feel the need to explain them as they’re happening. So when the fat guy from Borat shows up as Xerxes, the narrator tells us he looks like the fat guy from Borat. And when a symbiotic black Spider-Man costume slithers over Carmen Electra, the narrator tells us it’s much like what happened to Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man. An appearance by Rocky Balboa is highlighted by the lingering close-up of the ROCKY stitched on his shorts. It goes on and on. Actually, it just seems like it goes on and on, because, as we learned from this Phil Nugent post and as I can confirm, Meet the Spartans runs for a little over an hour before the end credits begin. After a while, the credits stop and some deleted scenes from the movie are played. I’d really love to know how these particular scenes became the outtakes. The only thing in the whole movie that remotely caused my mouth to twitch in the direction of a smile was Leonidas howling “Tonight! We Dine! AT HOOTERS!” Yet somewhere along the line, a decision was made to remove that scene and show it at the end to pad out the running time. I take back what I said earlier. I think it was Selzer and Friedberg who were repeatedly dropped on their heads as children.

Previously on Unwatchable:
73. Fascination
74. You Got Served
75. The Last Sign
76. Kickboxer 3: The Art of War
77. BloodRayne 2: Deliverance

Chick Hits: The Girl Power Top Ten (Part 2)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:15:00 GMT

ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000)

Julia Roberts’ breakthrough film, Pretty Woman (about the magical romantic possibilities of being a whore) was a monster hit, if not exactly a high water mark in the history of feminism (be sure to look for it on our upcoming Girl Dis-Empowering Top Ten). Erin Brockovich, meanwhile, was the flipside of the equation: a realistically desperate woman who succeeds in spite of, rather than because of her prominent cleavage...and in this quasi-true story, the prize at the end of the fairy tale isn’t a rich millionaire, but a million dollars the single-mother-turned-investigative-paralegal earns for herself (as a bonus from Albert Finney's lawyer/mentor Ed Masry) through brains and tenacity during the course a battle royale with an evil...uh, utility company. And talk about empowering: Roberts went on to win an Oscar for Best Actress, she and director Steven Soderbergh got to hang out with George Clooney and screenwriter Susannah Grant went on to write and direct...Catch and Release with Jennifer Garner and Kevin Smith. Which must have been nice for her.

ALIENS (1986)

There were kick-ass female action heroes before Sigourney Weaver in Aliens, of course. Sigourney Weaver in the original Alien comes to mind, for instance, as does Linda Hamilton in the original Terminator, Karen Allen in Raiders of the Lost Ark and so on and so forth, all the way back to real life ass-kickers like Elizabeth I, Joan of Arc and Cleopatra. But the Ripley of James Cameron’s Aliens really redefined the female action star for the modern age. For one thing, she’s the star of the movie, and she’s tough all the way through, taking command of a doomed rescue mission to an alien infested colony when the indecisive (male) space marine commander in charge of the mission literally falls down on the job, then later rescuing her man-sel in distress potential love interest, Michael Biehn’s Corporal Dwayne Hicks. But Weaver’s heroine isn’t just a muscled, monosyllabic Rambo with tits: she’s a deeply human character who draws superhuman strength not from extra testosterone or the bite of a radioactive spider, but from the sweet maternal bond she forms with an orphaned girl in the midst of all the gunplay and explosions of the masculine world...at least, that is, until David Fincher went and fucked everything up in Alien 3...but I’ll save that rant until our Top Ten list of great movies with incredibly aggravating unnecessary sequels.

MEAN GIRLS (2004)

Mean Girls began with a book by Rosalind Wiseman, Queen Bees and Wannabes, about high school social hierarchies and how they shape the lives of those who pass before them. It is a serious journalistic-sociological study, which apparently came as a bit of a surprise to Tina Fey after she agreed to take on the job of adapting it into a movie. Fey, who appears in the movie as the math teacher Ms. Norbury, came up with a story about Cady (Lindsay Lohan), who moves to Chicago and enters her first American public school at 16 after being home-schooled in Africa by parents who emphasize the value of learning, and so has to endure the culture shock of discovering that "education" in the States is all about bureaucratic rules on one side and social anxiety and status on the other. Out of a mixture of anthropological fascination and a half-conscious but real desire to fit in, Cady "infiltrates" the top clique of pretty girls -- a process that involves her pretending to be dumber than she is in order to snare a boy she likes -- and begins to maneuver her way to the lead position by outbitching them in ways that suggest a Machiavellian Heather. The movie's official mouthpiece is Fey's Ms. Norbury, who ultimately gets Cady to embrace her better side by forcibly inducting her into the school's "Mathletes" team. She also has a strange but deeply felt scene where she hustles all the girls together in the gym and lectures them about why they behave the way they do and why it's not good, though the whole point of Cady's character would seem to be that it's possible to know all that and still find the seductive pull of the status sirens impossible to resist. A mere four years since its release, the most poignant thing about Mean Girls now may be that it serves as a reminder of a more innocent time when it was possible to cast Lindsay Lohan as a sensitive brainiac who, after a brief slumming phase, manages to get herself under control.

WAITING TO EXHALE (1995)

This episodic drama about the rocky-but-hopeful romantic lives of four black women in Phoenix (get it, Greek mythology buffs?) shocked the shit out of the industry by becoming one of the major sleeper hits of the '90s. It also surprised movie critics, who tended to notice that it kind of sucks. It's also arguable whether it merits inclusion in any discussion of movies with positive female role models: all of the members of its central quartet come across as a little brain-damaged, and not just because of how eager they are to define themselves as failures or successes depending on whether they've managed to land a man. (The director, Forest Whitaker, managed to wangle some money from HBO after the premiere of Sex and the City, claiming that the network had ripped him off, and it's true that the movie shares most of what's objectionable about the TV show.) But the public embrace of the movie, and the way it cowed professional opinion makers, marks some kind of landmark moment in empowering the audience, especially if you define empowerment as doing the hucksters' jobs for them. Viewers who loved the movie, especially black women, hit back at criticism of it so hard that newspapers and magazines actually started publishing editorials and what amounted to counter-reviews denouncing the people who had been so insensitive to the entertainment needs of those who wanted overplayed, demented soap operas geared to their own demographic group. The movie helped get a number of movies starring black women greenlit, but its real lasting influence can best be seen in the critical reaction to a movie like Dreamgirls, which inspired many mumbly, mealy-mouthed reviews by writers who clearly thought that it stank but also thought that it was going to be another phenomenon and were afraid of being seen as coming down too hard on the wrong side of it. For an example of what this looks like in practice, compare the Dreamgirls review that Slate critic Dana Stevens wrote when the movie was released , and her review of Hairspray, where she led off by revealing what she really thought of Dreamgirls -- six months later, when she thought no one was looking. Waiting to exhale can take many forms.

PERSEPOLIS (2007)

It’s one thing to talk about how women are empowered by watching the adventures of a fictional female space marine, lady cop, or teenage devil-slayer. But it’s quite another to consider the triumph over sexism and oppression represented in the animated big-screen adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s beautiful, powerful graphic novel, Persepolis. Satrapi was born in Iran, not too long before the Islamic revolution against the corrupt and brutal Shah by the fundamentalist Ayatollahs. Her father was a respected civil engineer and her mother was an international journalist – living symbols of the new, modernized Iran that hoped to take its place among the elite nations. This aspiration was crushed with the Islamic revolution and the subsequent war with Iran, both of which Satrapi lived through as she and the women of her family (liberated all, three generations back) struggled to adjust to a new reality where they could be imprisoned for letting too much of their faces show in public. She managed to escape to Europe, but it was never home to her, and she eventually returned, hoping to balance her need to be in the country that was her true home with her need to be respected and taken seriously as a woman. Satrapi has always made it a point to illustrate the fact that there is more to Iran than the caricature of out-of-control religious fundamentalists, and in the scene where Satrapi, as a college art student, stands up to a panel of men who insist that her education take a back seat to their sexist dogma, it gives a stirring picture of a country that bristles at its every restriction.

Click here for Part One!

Related Posts: Girl DisemPowering: Nine Films That Didn't Do Feminism Any Favors (Part One & Part Two)

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

Lindsay Lohan: Too Crazy For Manson

Andrew Osborne — Mon, 19 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

So, less than two months after it was reported here that Tara Reid...I mean Lindsay Lohan...had been cast as one of the titular LSD and murder enthusiasts in Manson Girls (the latest entry in a feel-good trifecta including the murder/torture/stripper-pole-humping I Know Who Killed Me and the scumbag-who-killed-John-Lennon biopic Chapter 27), industry schadenfreude enthusiasts are reporting the erstwhile actress was fired from her latest terrible-sounding project.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Ms. Hilton...I mean, Lohan...claims she wasn’t fired...but blogger Nikki Finke begs to differ.

Quoth Ms. Finke: ““Lohan quickly became more of a deficit than an asset when [producers] discovered that they couldn’t find any name actresses who wanted to co-star with her.”

According to various sources, Ms. Spears...uh, Lohan...later celebrated her continuing status as box office poison by sharing tequila shots with fellow inexplicable celebrity Lauren Conrad of The Hills.

Here’s wishing Ms. Montag or Lohan all the best in her continuing efforts to, y’know, like, whatever.

MTV Movie Awards Continue to Exist

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 07 May 2008 15:00:00 GMT

The ’90s live forever at MTV – in between all the dating and celebreality shows, anyway – so it probably should come as no surprise that the MTV Movie Awards are still in existence, and will be hosted this year by Mike Myers. It sounds like a very 1996 idea to me, but after checking the date on the press release, it appears to be true. Now the nominations have been announced and it’s time for the speculation to begin. Will Shia LaBeouf and Sarah Roemer win Best Kiss for Disturbia, or will those upstarts Briana Evigan and Robert Hoffman from Step Up 2 The Streets pull off an upset? Will McLovin Mania sweep Superbad’s Christopher Mintz-Plasse to the Best Newcomer Prize? And what future classic of cinema will leave with the prestigious Golden Popcorn prize for Best Movie?

In fairness, I dimly recall a time when the MTV Movie Awards were a fun, irreverent alternative to the usual award show pomp. This is a show, after all, that presented both Godzilla and Clint Howard with Lifetime Achievement Awards. A distinguished ceremony during which Will Ferrell once wet his pants. A red carpet extravaganza with a somewhat flexible dress code:

It doesn’t take long for “fun and irreverent” to congeal into “lame and desperate,” however. Last year MTV brought in Survivor producer Mark Burnett to liven things up, but sadly, the nominees were not forced to eat gross food items or vote each other out (which might be a fun twist). Instead, my sources tell me (I was out playing Bingo), the night was basically a repository of cheap rehab jokes about Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan and mind-numbing moments like the awarding of Best Summer Movie You Haven’t Seen Yet to Transformers.

Still, this is a blog for film news, so here is the news. The MTV Movie Awards nominees have been announced. You can find them here if you’re interested. Heck, you can even vote for them if you really care!

Indie Box-Office Roundup: Weekend of March 28-30, 2008

Paul Clark — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:00:00 GMT

One of the realities of box office is that, the more screens your movie is playing on, the harder it gets to maintain a high per-screen average. Exhibit A is this week's Indie Box-Office Roundup, in which the top 9 per-screen averages for the past weekend were for films playing on one or two screens. So if you're rooting for the film that's playing around the corner, I'm afraid you're out of luck.

That is, unless you live around the corner from New York's Angelika Film Center. In which case, good news- the Angelika exclusive Chapter 27 (Peace Arch Entertainment) ruled the indie box office. J.P. Schaefer's drama about Mark David Chapman (better known as the scumbag who murdered John Lennon) weathered a barrage of middling-to-poor reviews to bring in an impressive haul of $13,910 on a single screen. Credit both the historical interest and the hype surrounding the performance (or at least the DeNiro-like weight gain) of star Jared Leto. If nothing else, the upstarts at Peach Arch deserve props for doing what many major studios could not- they actually made money off a movie starring Lindsay Lohan.

The weekend's top holdover was Laura Dunn's documentary The Unforeseen (Cinema Guild), which was filmed in Texas and opened solely in Austin, attracting $12,877 worth of local fans over the weekend.

Other notable new releases included the gay-themed A Four Letter Word (Embrem Entertainment), ThinkFilm's Italian-language My Brother Is An Only Child, and Aleksandr Sokurov's latest film, Alexandra. It's a little strange to see a film by a director like Sokurov embraced by audiences, even if they're big-city arthouse audiences. But hey, I'll take it.

Finally, coming in at #10 was the only film playing on more than two screens to make the list, The Weinstein Company's Under the Same Moon. The film continues to be an arthouse crowdpleaser, with its weekend take of $2,250,081 putting it just below the overall top 10 for the weekend.

Top 10, Weekend of March 28-30:
1. Chapter 27 [Peace Arch Entertainment] ($13,910 per screen)
2. The Unforeseen [Cinema Guild] ($12,877)
3. A Four Letter Word [Embrem Entertainment] ($12,101)
4. Alexandra [Cinema Guild] ($9,401)
5. My Brother Is An Only Child [ThinkFilm] ($9,357)
6. The Singing Revolution [Abramorama Entertainment] ($8,244)
7. Love Songs [IFC Films] ($6,651)
8. Hats Off [Canobie Films] ($6,570)
9. Backseat [Truly Indie] ($5,816)
10. Under The Same Moon [The Weinstein Company] ($5,769)

Source: IndieWire.

Lindsay Lohan is Charlie’s Angel in “Manson Girls”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:00:00 GMT

So you’ve spent the better part of the past year in and out of rehab, becoming a tabloid fixture in the process. Your last starring role in I Know Who Killed Me nabbed you a record number of Razzie awards for a single performance. This may be your last chance to reclaim any sort of respectable movie career. What do you do, Lindsay Lohan? What do you do?

Well, apparently you sign on to play Nancy Pitman in Manson Girls, a new take on the Helter Skelter story, hot on the heels of your appearance in Chapter 27, the latest Mark David Chapman biopic. Pitman isn’t one of your more glamorous members of the Manson family; heck, she doesn’t even have her own wikipedia page. But the good folks at the Manson Girl Info Center came to our rescue with a little biographical information. Known as “Brenda” to the family, “the former Malibu surfer girl quickly became one of the most hardcore members of the Family. She was present when Charles Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian came back to Spahn's Ranch after their night of murder and mayhem at the home of Sharon Tate on August 9, 1969. It is also widely believed that she went back to the actress's house with Manson later that night to survey the crime scene and leave false clues to throw off the police.”

We’re eagerly awaiting additional casting information. How about Paris Hilton as Squeaky Fromme? Britney Spears as Leslie Van Houten? This could be the Valley of the Dolls of our time, people.

Lindsay Lohan in "I Know Who Razzed Me" - With Video

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:00:00 GMT

In all the Oscar excitement, we've neglected to recap a historic night for America's most prestigious motion picture awards — the Razzies. The 28th Annual Golden Raspberry Awards were presented — that is, if you actually present an award that nobody shows up to receive — at the Magicopolis Theater in Santa Monica, California on Saturday. Lindsay Lohan's pre-rehab thriller I Know Who Killed Me set a new Razzies record, winning in eight of the nine categories in which it was nominated. It was an especially proud night for Lohan, who managed to win two Worst Actress awards at once when her performances as twins Aubrey and Dakota received the same number of votes. But that's not all! Lohan also took home — theoretically, had she shown up — the award for Worst Screen Couple "as the yang to her own yin" in said movie.

Even Lohan's achievement paled in comparison to Eddie Murphy's unprecedented triple lutz around the remaining acting categories. Murphy took home not only Worst Actor for his lead role in Norbit, but also Worst Supporting Actor for his offensive turn as Mr. Wong and Worst Supporting Actress for letting his fat suit give the performance as the enormous Rasputina, all in the same movie. Good times! Still, it was I Know Who Killed Me reigning supreme at the end of the night, taking home the Worst Picture Razzie. If you haven't had the pleasure, here is Ms. Lohan's much-ballyhooed sleepwalk around the stripper pole, followed by some first-class hospital bed emoting. Enjoy!

The 37th Annual Razzies Nominations

Phil Nugent — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:00:00 GMT

The nominations for the 2007 Golden Raspberry Awards, or "Razzies" have been announced. The awards, which seek to recognize the worst in filmmaking, were created in 1980 by publicist John Wilson. In the first year of their existence, awards were presented to the Village People-Bruce Jenner-Steve Guttenberg vehicle Can't Stop the Music (Worst Picture and Screenplay), Neil Diamond (Worst Actor for his remake of The Jazz Singer, and Brooke Shields (Worst Actress for The Blue Lagoon); the Worst Director prize that year went to the director of Xanadu, Robert Greenwald, who, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, made no more disco-roller skating musicals but instead resurfaced as a specialist in progressive-minded political documentaries. Thus have the Razzies served as a shaper of culture and careers.

One novelty if this year's event is that two performers are up for playing multiple roles in nominated films. Eddie Murphy scored a record five nominations for the Worst Picture Norbit, including Worst Actor, Worst Supporting Actor, and Worst Supporting Actress. (He's also nominated for having had a hand in the screenplay.) The thriller I Know Who Killed Me garnered nine nominations, including Worst Picture and a pair of Worst Actress nominations for its star, Lindsay Lohan; both Murray and Lohan are also, paradoxically, nominated for Worst Screen Couple for their work with themselves. Other nominees for Worst Picture include Bratz, Daddy Day Camp, and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, a movie whose trailer had repulsed moviegoers stampeding out of theaters as if a wizened prospector had announced that gold had been struck at the concession stand. The awards are traditionally announced the day before the Academy Awards ceremony. Unlike the Oscars, the Razzies are unlikely to affected by the writers' strike.

Live Fast, Die Young, and Leave a Pre-Prepared Obituary

Phil Nugent — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 18:00:00 GMT

The death of Brad Renfro last week threw newspapers into a bit of a tizzy; few, if any, had a prepared obituary on file for the actor, who was only twenty-five years old and was regarded as, in the words of reporter John Rogers, "a relatively minor celebrity." News outlets have traditionally kept obituaries ready and on file, just in case, but one company rep who spoke to Rogers, Adam Bernstein of The Washington Post, said that he "couldn't recall any on a person under thirty." There have always been cases of celebrities dying young, of course. But now there seem to be more people who are very young and very famous — or, at least, who seemed reasonable famous recently enough that their deaths still count as news. In some cases, there's also the question of just how well-prepared one should be in the case of an event that, to put it crassly, not everyone would regard as shocking if it were to happen. (Last summer, Kim Masters of Slate ran a quote from an anonymous staffer at the gossip-heavy E! cable channel saying, "People feel like [Lindsay Lohan] is going to die — and we're not helping.") Lou Ferrara of the Associated Press singles out the death of Anna Nicole Smith as a "wake-up call" to the industry, a judgement that sort of makes you wonder, perhaps with a shudder, how overblown the coverage of that singular event might have been if the media had been fully prepared for it.

The AP has now performed a bit of a wake-up call itself by acknowledging that it has gone ahead and prepared an obituary for Britney Spears — you know, just in case a piece of a malfunctioning satellite should stray into the Earth's orbit and land on her head while she's handing out alms to the poor. Being considered both famous and doomed enough that the AP needs to have your obituary on tap when, like Spears, you've barely just turned twenty-six may be the ultimate back-handed compliment of all time, but there are reasons why many news services may be reluctant to follow suit. Life is unpredictable — if you don't believe me, cut Iggy Pop in half and count his rings — and some spoilsports, such as Robert Downey, Jr., have been known to pretty much get themselves together after a prolonged spell out on the ledge. (For the record, we at the Screengrab love the shit out of both Mr. Downey and Mr. Pop and wish them nothing but the best. Nor do we harbor any but the tenderest of concerns for Ms. Lohan or Ms. Spears.) For Adam Bernstein, it's a time and manpower issue: "It takes a significant chunk of your time to do it," he says of obituary writing and maintenance, "and there are people who are incredibly more accomplished and in their 100s."

Let's Twist Again

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 17:30:00 GMT

At this most retrospective time of the year, let us look back at the thrillers of 2007 and the mind-bending twists that made them so thrilling. By “mind-bending,” of course, I mean ludicrous or predictable or – ever so rarely – actually clever enough to make the attached movie almost worth sitting through. Which twists missed, which got us pissed, and which made the list with The Mist?

It goes without saying that there are spoilers galore after the jump, so tread lightly…

I KNOW WHO KILLED ME

The Plot: Student Aubrey Fleming (Lindsay Lohan) is abducted by a Saw-like fiend who dismembers her and leaves her for dead. When she awakes in the hospital, she insists she is actually a stripper named Dakota Moss.

The Twist: Aubrey Fleming and Dakota Moss are twins, separated at birth!

Verdict: Lohan may have pulled off the twin routine in The Parent Trap, but in her current state it’s asking a bit much for her to pull off one character, let alone two.

THE REAPING

The Plot: Hilary Swank is a former missionary who has lost her faith and now travels the country debunking miracles. She has her hands full when a series of biblical plagues descends on a small Southern town and the townspeople blame a young girl they believe to be possessed by a demon.

The Twist: The young girl is not possessed by a demon. Swank has been impregnated by the local cult leader, and she is carrying the devil spawn.

Verdict: This twist manages to turn a perfectly awful Exorcist knockoff into a genuinely terrible Rosemary’s Baby rip-off in the blink of an eye. No small feat!

THE NUMBER 23

The Plot: Dog catcher Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) finds intriguing parallels to his own life in a strange book written by the mysterious Topsy Kretts. The book, The Number 23, concerns a detective who murders his lover.

The Twist: Sparrow wrote the book himself as a confession to the murder of his college girlfriend. Topsy Kretts = Top Secrets!

Verdict: It takes director Joel Schumacher nearly fifteen minutes to explain the twist, which should have been his first clue that it wasn’t a very good one.

PREMONITION

The Plot: The morning after her husband Jim is killed in a car accident, Linda Hanson (Sandra Bullock) wakes up to find he is still alive. The next day, Jim is dead again, and Linda realizes she is living the week of his death out of order.

The Twist: Linda figures this out in time to prevent the car crash that would have killed Jim. But he is killed almost immediately anyway when a fuel truck skids out of control and slams into him.

Verdict: No explanation is ever given for Linda’s scrambled chronology, and she doesn’t even seem all that curious about it – so why should we?

THE MIST

The Plot: The residents of a small Maine town are trapped in a supermarket when a mist full of fearsome critters rolls in. Bloodshed and insanity ensue before David Drayton (Thomas Jane) and a handful of survivors attempt their escape by car.

The Twist: The survivors run out of gas in the mist. Convinced there is no escaping a lingering, painful death via critter, Drayton mercy kills the others, including his own son. Minutes later, the mist clears as the military arrives to wipe out the critters.

Verdict: So mean, sadistic, and cruelly satisfying, even Stephen King didn’t come up with it – it was Frank Darabont’s idea, and who knew he had it in him?

The Fifty Dumbest People in Hollywood

Peter Smith — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 20:00:00 GMT

In reaction to Entertainment Weekly's cover story listing the "Fifty Smartest People in Hollywood" (including such brainiacs as Will Smith and Brian Grazer), the New York Daily News has now compiled its own list of the fifty dumbest people in Hollywood. Though the Daily News openly mocks the EW list, they did manage to come up with fifty names that did not overlap with it; considering that the EW list of "smartest" people included Ben Affleck, the temptation must have been great. But then it might have been a distraction from what appears to be the real purpose of something like this, which is of course to provide an excuse to run Lindsay Lohan's mug shot again. Face it, kid; until Mel Gibson drunkenly plows a tank into a chorus line of orphans and nuns, you are the new Nick Nolte. — Phil Nugent

Morning Deal Report: In Shatner's Image

Peter Smith — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 15:00:00 GMT

Chris Pine — Lindsay Lohan's foil in Just My Luck — will play Captain Kirk in JJ Abrams' Star Trek. We'll take on faith that he can act, but can he over-act? To be honest, he looks a little bland. In related news, Harold and Kumar's John Cho will play Sulu. This whole thing is starting to look a little hairy.

Will Smith won't be remaking Karate Kid after all. (Whew.) But he will star in the comedy Time Share with Nicolas Cage. (Gulp.)

Dimension is remaking Hellraiser. You'll have to provide your own zinger here; this one's lost on me.

— Peter Smith