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Screengrab Presents: The 25 Greatest Horror Films of All Time (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 21:30:00 GMT

10. THE FLY (1986)

Horror movies, contrary to the claims of highfalutin critics like us, don’t necessarily have to be about anything. If they’re scary and well-made and don’t insult your intelligence, just being a good horror movie is enough. But when they are about something, especially in the hands of a storyteller of the depth and intelligence of David Cronenberg, they transcend genre and become something truly special. Cronenberg took a popular pulp story by George Langelaan, which had been filmed once before as a pretty straightforward monster movie in the 1950s, and remade it as a terrific modern-day horror flick, complete with terrifically suspenseful moments and plenty of nauseating fluids for the grindhouse crowd – but he also infused it with a powerful undercurrent of extremely personal terror. The Fly, carried on the hair-sprouting, wing-bearing back of Jeff Goldblum’s greatest performance, is one of the finest movies ever made about the betrayal of the body: in the story of a scientist who is transformed into an insect-like creature, Cronenberg manages to isolate not only the horror, but also the loneliness, the helplessness, and the frustration of the sick and the dying. When Brundlefly is finally dispatched at the movie’s end, the pervasive feeling isn’t one of revenge, or relief – it’s one of terrible sadness.

9. CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1962)

Half a dozen years before George A. Romero went to work re-creating the movie zombie for all time, this film, directed on a shoestring budget by Herk Harvey (with members of a filmmaking team that the Lawrence, Kansas-based Harvey used in his principal business making educational and industrial films) just about invented the modern concept of the independent horror movie, as well as doing its bit to fuzz the line between art film and amateur hour. The first and just about the last film to feature its star, Candace Hilligoss, with Harvey as the most notable of the ghouls who begin to haunt her, it has a dreamy, disconnected quality that may not have been entirely planned but that is especially well-suited to a story that may or may not be happening, about a heroine who may or may not have survived the car accident that opens the film. In fact, parts of Carnival of Souls come as close as any pre-'70s film to anticipating the world of David Lynch -- which makes you wonder if it's a coincidence that Hilligoss' character's name, Mary Henry, contains the names of the central male and female characters of Eraserhead.

8. BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935)

The 1931 Frankenstein wasn't the first film inspired by Mary Shelley's novel, and it sure wasn't the last, but its imagery was so perfect and powerful -- the shambling monster with the squared-off head, the boxy flat-top and the jacket with the sleeves too short -- that it imprinted itself on the imaginations of generations of viewers, so much so that no later version of the monster ever really looks quite right. This sequel was put together by the same key personnel who worked on the first film -- the director, James Whale, Boris Karloff as the monster and the high-strung Colin Clive as the mad scientist -- but Whale, a campy, stylish wit who would later be played by Ian McKellan in the 1998 Gods and Monsters, really let his dark sense of humor off the leash in this one, resulting in a film that sympathizes with the monster to such a degree that the creature's rallying cry, "I love dead! Hate living!" and his final kiss-off line, after his rejection at the hands of the title figure (Elsa Lanchester), "We belong dead," take on the quality of anthems. Underneath the film's knowing silliness is a genuine, tender regard for those who cannot find love or acceptance in this world, and what greater horror could there be?

7. THE EXORCIST (1973)

William Friedkin’s adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s best-selling novel isn’t the best movie on this list. The Shining is a greater artistic accomplishment; Psycho is a more important film; The Fly is more meaningful. But for my money, there’s no movie on this list that’s scarier, and isn’t that the whole point of a horror movie? The movie that utterly terrified me as an adolescent still has the potential to give me nightmares as an adult; Friedkin makes judicious use of timing and tone to keep you just interested enough to be alert when the real horror starts, and once it does, he keeps up a mood of sustained menace, ranging from the suggestive to the utterly brutal, that never lets up. In less competent hands, The Exorcist could have degenerated into a boring morass of overblown theatrics and incomprehensible theology – which is exactly what happened in the sequels – but here, with everything firing on all cylinders, the movie instills an almost religious sense of dread even in those who have never sat through a Catholic sermon on the horrors of hell. An extremely formidable cast, anchored by an intense Ellen Burstyn, an ironclad Max Von Sydow, a neurotically brilliant Jason Miller, and a killer one-two punch from Linda Blair and Mercedes McCambridge, helps fix your attention throughout the film, but it’s the handful of truly terrifying moments that keep this a classic. (The restored “Version You’ve Never Seen” only amplifies the constant sense of stress and unease, and if anything, is even more frightening than the original.) Small wonder that Billy Graham claimed that the movie was literally possessed by the Devil.

6. ALIEN (1979)

My parents took my brother and me to see Alien when we were 12 and 10, respectively. To the best of my recollection, my brother bailed for the safety of the lobby sometime around the time the baby “chest-burster” burst from John Hurt’s chest in the film’s iconic and notorious horror film moment, leading to Veronica Cartwright’s stunned and horrified, “Oh, God...” (because, really, what else does one say in such a situation)? I remember feeling very big brother smug about staying bravely in my seat as the ever smaller crew of the freighter Nostromo hunted H.R. Giger’s phallic dentata extraterrestrial through the claustrophobic cabins and corridors of their vessel...until, that is, the moment when sole survivor Ripley (and her cat) abandoned ship...AND THE ALIEN WAS IN THE ESCAPE POD WITH HER! Fuck this, I thought...I wasn’t gonna risk a pre-pubescent heart attack just because my folks thought it would be funny to scare the piss out of their children. Rushing out to join my brother in the lobby, I watched the rest of the movie through a window in the door of the theater, then probably went home and had a few hundred nightmares. In my adult life, I’m more a fan of James Cameron’s 1986 thrill-ride sequel than Ridley Scott’s relatively artsy, slow-moving original...but respect must be paid to any film with the power to induce actual childhood trauma.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Five, Six & Seven

Contributors: Pierced Leonard, Philled With Evil Nugent, Android Osborne

Screengrab Presents: The Top 25 War Films (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:00:00 GMT

15. THE NIGHT OF THE SHOOTING STARS (1982)

This Italian film, directed by the brothers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, is about the people who don't fight in war but who just do their best to keep their lives from being completely overrun when it comes to town. In this case, the people are Tuscan, and it's late in the summer of 1944, with World War II winding down and the local fascists preparing to blow up anything they can before the Americans arrive. The people of the village sneak out under dead of night and prepare to hit the road, hoping to stay alive until they encounter the Yanks; the movie is presented as the memories of a woman who was six years old then, and it's infused with a playful surrealism that colors the many incidents, making them seem touched by magic. Which, at this point, is entirely appropriate for a movie where the people can't wait to embrace the invading Americans.

14. PLATOON (1986)

Drawing on memories from his own experiences in combat, Oliver Stone won Best Director and Best Picture for his grunt’s-eye view of the Vietnam War, where (in the words of star Charlie Sheen, back when he was a serious actor rather than a smirky sitcom star), “We did not fight the enemy; we fought ourselves.” Earlier films (notably Apocalypse Now) had, of course, tackled the Southeast Asian “police action,” but the topic was generally as unpopular on the big screen as Iraq films are today. Platoon, premiering four years after the dedication of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., marked a cathartic cultural shift in America’s perception (and digestion) of the war: without Platoon’s critical and commercial success (and the flood of Vietnam movies, TV shows and video games that followed), a parody like 2008’s Tropic Thunder would have been unthinkable, not to mention sacrilegious. Yet, even though Vietnam era slang (being in “the shit”) and combat details (cigarette packs in helmet bands, etc.) are now war movie clichés, I’ll never forget seeing Platoon for the first time, when the wounds of America’s last great military misadventure were finally starting to heal, then watching shaken veterans around the theater hanging back after the lights came up, grouping together in pain and reminiscence.

13. SHAME (1968)

It’s probably no coincidence that most of Ingmar Bergman’s starkest films were made at the height of the Vietnam War, a time when the horrifying images of battle were being broadcast on television sets all over the world on a nightly basis. Bergman’s most explicit take on the horror and senselessness of war, Shame, begins in quintessential Bergman fashion, focusing on a pair of married musicians (played by Liv Ullmann and Max Von Sydow, of course) who have retreated from their old lives onto a remote Swedish island. Their marriage could hardly be called happy, but it’s comfortable and secure, far removed from the rest of world, including a war that’s been raging in the distance. Suddenly and without warning, the war comes to their doorstep. But despite the handful of battle sequences, Shame has nothing to do with combat, and everything to do with the poisonous effect of war on everyone it touches. Ullmann, who is concerned only with the well-being of herself and her husband, finds herself accused of treason. Their home is destroyed. Ullmann sleeps with a local bureaucrat, perhaps out of self-preservation, but perhaps for other reasons. And Von Sydow reveals himself to be either a coward or a vindictive scumbag, depending on one’s perspective. Bergman refuses to pin the story to a single war -- it’s certainly not Vietnam, in spite of when he made it. Instead, Shame is a condemnation of the very idea of war and the effect it has on humanity -- not merely the literal death and destruction, but also the psychic fallout it leaves in its wake, which can linger long after any memory of why the war was fought in the first place.

12. HENRY V (1944) & (1988)

Shakespeare's play, which came in so handy for pundits looking for a point of comparison for George W. Bush's transformation into a great war leader after 9/11, was a propaganda piece celebrating the great victory of the outnumbered English by the overburdened French at the Battle of Agincourt. But because Shakespeare knew the value of ambiguity and multiple meanings, the work is open to various interpretations and can be staged in different ways to emphasize different possible themes. Laurence Olivier had a personal triumph as both director and star with the 1944 version, which, being made during World War II, not surprisingly treated the material as the occasion for a rousing, jingoistic hard sell for patriotic warfare. Forty-five years later, Kenneth Branagh, making his movie debut as a director and also starring in the title role, had no war to promote and so saw fit to stage the work as a big, baroque spectacle with ironic attitudes towards the expressions of patriotic fervor, film noir lighting, and what Pauline Kael called a "deranged Darth Vader entrance" for himself. As it is, both movies are huge, happy wallows in showy stagecraft and the best acting the British can always offer at the snap of a finger. (Branagh's, in particular, is the kind of movie where Paul Scofield has a walk-on.)

11. BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (1925)

Sergei Eisenstein, master of the montage and one of the greatest pioneers of early cinema, made two classic war films, both very different from one another. His first, Battleship Potemkin, is often cited as one of the greatest movies of all time, and that’s not just hype: aside from the legendary Odessa Steps sequence, it contains some of the earliest uses of montage, and generally establishes itself as a movie using visual language light-years beyond what anyone else was doing at the time. But as a war film, it is unquestionably subversive: it was designed as a piece of pure propaganda in which the oppressed sailors of the battleship rise up in righteous anger against their cruel Czarist overlords. At no point do we have anything but sympathy for the heroic mutineers, and no less a personage than Josef Goebbels declared that anyone might become a Bolshevik after viewing the movie. Alexander Nevsky, on the other hand, is as much a celebration of patriotism and loyalty as Potemkin was of rebellion and revolution. It didn’t reach its peak of popularity until a few years after it was made, when Russia and Germany were at each other’s throats, but its ability to induce a patriotic fervor, as audiences cheered at the Russian peasant army driving out the Teutonic Knights, was unmistakable. And while it wasn’t the artistic success that Battleship Potemkin was, it did feature an unforgettable score and one scene that rivals the Odessa Steps sequence: the famous battle on the ice of Lake Peipus, which stands as one of the most thrilling battle sequences ever staged for film.

Click Here for Part One, Part Two, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six & Part Seven

Contributors: Phil Nugent, Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Leonard Pierce

Summerfest '08: "Smiles of a Summer Night"

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:45:00 GMT

Our goal here at the Screengrab for the Summerfest '08 feature is to give you a dozen or so movies, all of which have "summer" in the title, which you can watch to no great pain while you are waiting for your dog to bring back the tennis ball you threw in the ocean. Unsurprisingly, most movies with the word "summer" in the title – and, indeed, most movies that are about summer, or are set during the summer, or are released during the summer, or in any way have the lemonade-and-sunscreen scent of summer about them, are pretty light, fluffy concoctions, spilling over with good will, gentle humor, and people wearing far less clothing than they normally would. Today, though, is different. Today we'll be featuring a movie by none other than Ingmar freakin' Bergman. Bergman: the man who single-handedly inspired Woody Allen to become a huge bummer. Bergman: the man whose most famous film involves a dying knight playing a desperate game of chess with the personification of Death itself. Bergman: the man whose very name is synonymous with incredibly heavy European art cinema. Could this man possibly direct a breezy summer movie (or, in this case, a breezy sommar movie)? Could this man, whose movies are stuffed with miserable families, emotional trauma, and metaphysical turmoil, give us, of all things, a fun little comedy?

Grab a chilled bottle of Svedka, book your tickets on Scandinavian Airlines, and join us for some Smiles of a Summer Night!

THE ACTION: Meet Frederik Egerman. He's a Swedish attorney and self-involved clothes horse with a gorgeous teenage wife named Anne. There's one problem with their marriage: they haven't consummated it yet. Meet his son (from a previous marriage) Henrik, a recent graduate from divinity school, who faces a serious impediment to entering the priesthood: he's got a big hard-on for his stepmother Anne – and since she's off-limits, he's carrying on an affair with Petra, his father's maid. Meet Desirée Armfeldt, an actress that Frederik used to have a crush on and who is seriously envied by Anne. She lets it be known that she has feelings for Frederik, which pisses Anne off to no end. Desirée is currently seeing another well-off fop named Carl-Magnus Malcolm, whose wife, Charlotte, is a good friend of Anne. Are you following all this? No? Good. We weren't either, to be perfectly honest with you. Just take our word for it that wacky hijinks and hilarity are bound to ensue.

THE PLAYERS: Hard as it is to believe, Smiles of a Summer Night – which plays, alternately, like an Oscar Wilde comedy of manners and a more subdued, highbrow version of Three's Company – was written and directed by none other than Ingmar Bergman, the grand old man of highly cerebral and incredibly depressing Swedish art films. The movie that started out as Sommarnattens Leende isn't exactly the strongest film in his oeuvre, aesthetically speaking, and tonally, it's a bit jarring to think that this is what he produced just prior to making the deep, masterful The Seventh Seal. Still, despite its novelty value as a light, sunny comedy – or perhaps because of it – it's become a favorite of Bergmanophiles the world over, with Woody Allen essentially rewriting it as A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy and Stephen Sondheim launching his own adaptation with A Little Night Music. The 1955 production (set, uncharacteristically for Bergman at the time, in a contemporary milieu) also features an all-star cast of the director's favorite actors, including the legendary Gunnar Björnstrand, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, and Ulla Jacobsson.

SUMMER FUN: Generally speaking, there isn't a lot of summer fun in Ingmar Bergman movies. Sure, characters sometimes go to the beach, but it's usually to have nervous breakdowns, sexually traumatic encounters, or existential crises stemming from their incestuous affairs. They don't got to drink banana daiquiris and snap each other with towels. While Smiles of a Summer Night is, indeed, based during the four days of the calendar year that pass for summer in Scandinavia, it's frightfully low on frat-boy hijinks and authority figures falling into swimming pools. There is a certain element of summer fun, but it's typical Bergmanesque stuff for the overeducated clove-smokers in the back row: going to the opera, falling into mud puddles, and having ever so delightful romantic misunderstandings.

HAWAIIAN SHIRTS: Despite its contemporary (well, contemporary for Sweden in the mid-1950s) setting and alleged comic tone, there is not a Hawaiian shirt anywhere to be found in Smiles of a Summer Night. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that there is not a Hawaiian shirt anywhere in any of the films of Ingmar Bergman. Given that the two main characters are unrepentant fops, it is likely that if they were to even encounter someone wearing a Hawaiian shirt, they would have him arrested and imprisoned. The closest anyone in a Bergman movie comes to wearing a Hawaiian shirt is when Max Von Sydow dresses up in a gaudy Fu-Manchu-from-Mars getup in Flash Gordon. And, just to head this question off at the pass, assume that there are no scenes where people do body shots as Boston plays over a CD jukebox.

BIKINI PARTY TIME: There's no denying that Sommarnattens Leende is stuffed with beautiful women. Although its approach to sexuality is pretty strait-laced (not surprising for the times, but it's a bit mild for Bergman), the ladies are lovely to look at, especially Ulla Jacobsson as Anne and Eva Dahlbeck as Desirée. However – and I do not wish to alarm you here, but it is my duty as a movie reviewer to tell the unvarnished truth, no matter how unpleasant – there is not a single bikini in the entire movie. This would be inexcusable enough in what is essentially a romantic summer comedy, but lest we forget, this movie was made in Sweden – the home of the world-famous Swedish Bikini Team! Despite this inexcusable lapse (what, Bergman couldn't have gotten one lousy off-season Bikini Team member to play the maid or something?), we'd still recommend this uncharacteristic but rewarding film by the master of Swedish cinema; if nothing else, it'll help you feel smarter and classier after a viewing of Summer Catch.

Take Five: Sweet Revenge

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Responding to criticism that a review of his had unfairly given information about the ending of a thriller, the late film critic Gene Siskel is said to have replied: "Here is the ending of every thriller ever made -- the bad guy dies." So when, in this week's Take Five, we talk about revenge thrillers, we're not talking about movies where some power-tool-wielding misogynist more or less accidentally gets it in the neck after two hours of tormenting co-eds and/or mapless vacationers. We're talking about movies like Xavier Gens' Frontiers, opening in limited and highly disgusting release this Friday; movies where evildoers show up at the doorstep of innocents only to have the tables turned upon them fairly early on; movies where, for at least a third of their running time, the bad guys aren't in control, and the thrills come from wondering how far those who have been wronged will go to get even. While the revenge flick has a pretty shoddy history, and while Frontiers doesn't look like it's going to bring much more than grosser-than-usual levels of violence and some hamhanded political commentary to the mix, not every movie in the tables-get-turned genre is an exploitative dud. The concept may have reached its nadir with flicks like I Spit On Your Grave, but that doesn't mean you can't savor a pretty tasty dish served cold from time to time.

KEY LARGO (1948)

One of Hollywood's first, and finest, attempts at subverting the conventions of the innocent-people-beseiged-by-evil chestnut was this powerful, terrifically acted quasi-noir. When exiled gangster Johnny Rocco holes up in a Florida resort to wait out a storm, after which he looks to make a triumphant comeback, he doesn't count on two things: the presence of embittered but hard-as-iron vet Frank McCloud (played with icily ironic contempt by Humphrey Bogart) and his own terror at a coming hurricane. As the movie progresses, Edward G. Robinson turns from utterly unflappable master manipulator (as in his famously cruel scene with alcoholic gun moll Claire Trevor) to cowering paranoiac, and the desperate sense of terror is ratcheted up to unbearable levels by director John Huston, at the peak of his powers.

THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972)

Wes Craven announced his arrival as a forced to be reckoned with in the world of horror with this, his feature film debut. Too cheap, too raw and too frankly disturbing to entirely escape the exploitation-flick label, this direly unnerving story about a gang of hoodlums who opportunistically murder a pair of teenage girls only to find themselves, a short time later, staying at the home of the father of one of their victims, has far more going on emotionally, dramatically and philosophically than you might expect. But even if it were just cheap horror, it would be one of the most effective cheap horror films of its era. Powerful, creepy, and almost unbearably tense. Bizarrely, Last House on the Left is based on Ingmar Bergman's masterful medieval drama of 1960, The Virgin Spring!

THE VIRGIN SPRING (1960)

Tellingly, this would be the last of a fertile period in the legendary Swedish director Ingmar Bergman's career where he explored his characters' relationship with God. He'd never make another movie like it, and though it netted him an Oscar for Best Foreign Film, its shockingly open depiction of rape and revenge caused waves of controversy at the time of his release. Bergman's favorite actor, Max Von Sydow, gives one of the best performances of his career as the father of a young girl who is attacked and killed by bandits who, through empty fate or inexplicable divine intervention, arrive in his home looking for charity. They find only a bloody end. Bizarrely, The Virgin Spring is based on Wes Craven's groundbreaking revenge-horror film of 1972, The Last House on the Left, through reverse time warp technology!

STRAW DOGS (1971)

Perhaps no revenge thriller in the history of cinema has been more controversial than Sam Peckinpah's brutal meditation on masculinity and cowardice. Easily as vicious and manipulative as the worst grindhouse exploitation flick, it dresses up its blackly beating heart in such undeniable artistry that it leaves even people who have seen it and assessed it time and time again not knowing exactly how to react to it. The film features Dustin Hoffman, in an emotionally exhausting performance, as a mild-mannered professor whose good nature is taken for granted once too often by local bullies; it caused incredibly extreme reactions on its release (with Pauline Kael writing one of the most memorable reviews of her long career in startled reaction to it) and continues to do so even now, nearly forty years down the road.

CAPE FEAR (1962/1991)

This effective psychological thriller, based on a terse little novel by John D. MacDonald, has been made twice -- once in a taut quasi-noir version in the early '60s by J. Lee Thompson, and once in a much darker and more provocative way by Martin Scorsese. The particular twist of both versions of Cape Fear is who, exactly, thinks revenge needs to be taken: the protagonist, Sam Bowden, thinks he needs to take revenge against Max Cady, a vicious criminal who's gunning for his family. Cady, on the other hand, thinks he's the hero of the movie -- he's the one looking for revenge against Bowden, who failed to properly defend him in court years before and doomed him to years of harsh imprisonment. The first is too little seen by modern eyes, and the second is wrongly reviled; both are worth a good look for their tense ambiguity.

Max Von Sydow: Bergman's Violin

Phil Nugent — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 18:00:00 GMT

In a brief interview with Lynn Hirschberg in The New York Times Magazine, Max Von Sydow Max von Sydow talks about his long association with Ingmar Bergman, who died last year. “'He had been ill for almost a year, but we had been in close contact over the phone. . . . ' Von Sydow’s wife interrupted him. 'Tell about the last time he spoke about you,' she said. Von Sydow paused again. 'He said, "Max you have been the first and the best Stradivarius that I have ever had in my hands,” ' von Sydow recalled. 'We loved each other, and I know when he stopped working, when he became ill, he missed it. He missed his actors.' Von Sydow says that "working with Bergman was always worthwhile."

Not incidentally, working with Bergman made him a star. “I actually know the moment I became known. It was at the Cannes Film Festival, when they showed The Virgin Spring. I walked into that theater as one person and I walked out as another.” Of course, there's being known and then there's being known. in the early years of his international career, Hollywood thought it knew who Von Sydow was: a tall, stern-looking guy with a sinister accent who seemed impressively foreign. “They sent me Dr. No. They wanted me to play the villain. I said no. And then they offered me the part of Jesus in The Greatest Story Ever Told. I said yes to that. For years, Hollywood only asked me to play a villain or a biblical figure.” This past year, the 78-year-old Sydow had one of his best recent roles as the 92-year-old father of the paralyzed hero of Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. “After Julian sent me the script, we didn’t discuss it very much. He didn’t tell me that, in some ways, I would be playing his father. But movies are like that — I had never met Mathieu Amalric until the day of our first scene, and he had to shave me. It was rather intimate, and he did cut me. But it’s always that way: you’re supposed to be involved with someone in the film and you’ve just met them for the first time and then, 10 minutes later, you say, ‘I love you,’ and you are in bed.”

DVD Digest for January 22, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:00:00 GMT

This week: a triple dose of Criterion, four films by a Hollywood favorite, and some old TV pals do their best to compensate for another slow week for recent releases.

DVD of the Week: Long one of the film history's most undervalued directors, Lindsay Anderson is finally starting to get his due on DVD. Last year saw the DVD releases of his classics If... and O Lucky Man!, and this week sees the deluxe two-disc Criterion treatment of his 1963 breakthrough film This Sporting Life. The film stars the Oscar-nominated Richard Harris in a star-making role as a young man trying to make it as professional rugby player, and is one of the key examples of the British "kitchen-sink" dramas of the 1960s. The DVD also includes commentary by Anderson associate Paul Ryan and screenwriter David Storey, a documentary about Anderson's career, and most notably, several of Anderson's short films, including his autobiographical final work, 1992's Is That All There Is?

This week's Criterion releases are Alf Sjöberg's 1951 adaptation of Strindberg's Miss Julie (featuring a young Max Von Sydow in a small role), and the box set 4 by Agnes Varda, which features her new-to-DVD films Le Bonheur (1965) and Le Pointe Courte (1956), as well as new editions of the previously-released Cléo From 5 to 7 (1962) and Vagabond (1985). Also of note this week is MGM's John Frankenheimer Collection, a rather bare-bones affair that includes the new-to-DVD Burt Lancaster film The Young Savages (1961), plus existing editions of The Manchurian Candidate, The Train, and Ronin.

New TV on DVD includes: Barney Miller: The Complete Second Season (Sony); Hawaii Five-O: The Complete Third Season (Paramount); The Odd Couple: The Complete Third Season (Paramount); Torchwood: The Complete First Series (Warner); and ER: The Complete Eighth Season (Warner).

Finally, we've got the new stuff, which aside from the DVD release of one of my favorite films of 2007, Richard Shepherd's The Hunting Party, is looking pretty dire. How about Jessica Simpson in the straight-to-DVD Working Girl "remake" Blonde Ambition (Sony)? Or the Amanda Bynes "Snow White goes to college" romp Sydney White (Universal)? Of course, there's also Sony's classy period farce Molière. I mean, Molay really pumps my nads, but that hardly makes up for the gruesome twosome of Disney's The Game Plan and (three separate versions of) Lionsgate's Saw IV, both of which are also coming out on Blu-Ray. Seriously folks, if you want us to take this new format seriously, you're going to have to start releasing some good movies instead of the latest pandering crap.

Paul Clark Predicts the Oscar Nominees

Paul Clark — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:00:00 GMT

"Nobody knows anything." Screenwriter William Goldman immortalized that phrase a few decades ago, and it's as true this Oscar season as it's always been. Perhaps even more so — not only are many Oscar races still wide-open, but the status of the ceremony itself is up in the air. But for now the show is still happening, which means the nominations are set to be announced tomorrow morning. Here are my hasty, shot-in-the-dark predictions in the top six categories:

Best Picture:
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Into the Wild
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country for Old Men

I think we can all agree that No Country is in, right? Beyond that, it's something of a crap shoot. Michael Clayton is the kind of classy star vehicle the Academy usually responds to, and audience favorite Juno has become too big a word of mouth phenomenon to ignore. At one point, Atonement was looking like a front-runner for the win, but its Oscar buzz has subsided. On the other side of the coin, There Will Be Blood may be too bleak for the voters to embrace — it would have a better chance were it the year's undisputed critical champ, but with No Country in the mix, PTA's masterpiece could be shut out here. Instead, I'm predicting The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, an acclaimed true-life story that's only gaining momentum, and Into the Wild, the year's most Oscar-baity film directed by a respected actor, which is something that tends to go over well with the actor-filled Academy membership.

Best Actor:
George Clooney, Michael Clayton
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd
Emile Hirsch, Into the Wild
Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises

Even if the Academy decides to overlook There Will Be Blood, they won't be able to deny the awesomeness of Day-Lewis' blazing performance as Plainview. Likewise, Clooney and Depp have recently become Academy favorites, and I dare say that had Sweeney Todd done more business Depp would've been the one to beat here. Hirsch is a bit iffier here given his age, but he carries Into the Wild on his capable shoulders, and if the film gets nominated I'm guessing he will be too. With the recent groundswell for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, I think Matthieu Amalric should be seen as a contender here, although not nearly as much as if he was an American star. Instead, I'm going with Mortensen — Eastern Promises didn't exactly set the world on fire, but his performance was the highlight, and I think voters will take the opportunity to honor him not only for this role but also for his overlooked turns in A History of Violence and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Best Actress:
Amy Adams, Enchanted
Julie Christie, Away From Her
Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose
Angelina Jolie, A Mighty Heart
Ellen Page, Juno

Throughout this awards season, three names kept popping up in this rare — Christie, Cotillard, and Page. So it's pretty safe to assume they'll make it in. That leaves us two spots in a relatively weak year for buzzed-about performances (sadly, Black Book's Carice Van Houten has no traction whatsoever). With very little competition, Jolie should make the cut — the film didn't make much of a dent, but her stardom has kept her in the race. The final spot is anyone's guess. High-profile star turns (Jodie Foster in The Brave One, Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth: The Golden Age) have flopped at the box office, while respected performers in independent films (notably Laura Linney in The Savages) have been lost in the year-end shuffle. That leaves Amy Adams in Enchanted, a star-making performance by a previous nominee in a hit movie that's still fresh in people's minds.

Best Director:
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
Sean Penn, Into the Wild
Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

At this point, Best Director is the Coens' to lose. Even if someone else takes home Best Picture, I think it's still their year in this category. I also think the Directors Branch will be impressed by Sean Penn's metamorphosis into serious filmmaker, as well as Schnabel's unconventional, inspired filmmaking choices in Diving Bell. For this year's semi-obligatory non-Best Picture-nominated director, I'm predicting Anderson, a respected maverick whose filmmaking chops in There Will Be Blood are undeniable even if the film itself is too much for some audiences. Of the two remaining Best Picture nominees, I think Gilroy has the edge over Juno's Jason Reitman for two reasons: (1) crowd-pleasing comedies tend to get shut out of this category, and (2) Gilroy is a veteran screenwriter makes an impressive directorial debut. But don't be surprised if another "lone director" — say, Sidney Lumet for Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, or Tim Burton for Sweeney Todd — gets the nod instead.

Best Supporting Actor:
Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson's War
Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild
Tommy Lee Jones, No Country for Old Men
Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton

In a year without Bardem, this race might have come down to Grand Old Actor Holbrook vs. veteran character actor Wilkinson. But Bardem casts a long shadow over this category, with Chigurh the creepiest villain in an Oscar-feted film since Hannibal Lecter. Charlie Wilson's War wasn't the Oscar juggernaut that it was predicted to be, but I still think Hoffman's scene-stealing turn will make it in. I think this year's biggest surprise will be the absence of Casey Affleck's performance in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Affleck's the only serious competition Bardem has had among the precursor awards, but Jesse James was a box-office flop and Affleck's performance could give voters the willies. Max Von Sydow's affecting turn in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly might have had a chance here — as a means of honoring one of the world's most esteemed actors and, by extension, his recently-departed longtime collaborator Ingmar Bergman — except that he might not have enough screentime to be a contender. Instead, I'm giving the edge to Jones, an Academy favorite who came roaring back this year to give two acclaimed performances after a decade's worth of commercial crap.

Best Supporting Actress:
Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There
Catherine Keener, Into the Wild
Kelly MacDonald, No Country for Old Men
Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone
Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton

Once again, three names keep popping up in this category: Blanchett, Ryan, and Swinton. I think they'll all get nominated, though who will win remains to be seen (early shot-in-the-dark prediction: a Swinton upset). The other two spots are less certain. But consider that, more than any other category, the Best Supporting Actress nominees are largely composed of performers who starred opposite other Oscar nominees. In this respect, I think contenders such as Ruby Dee in American Gangster, Marisa Tomei in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, and especially Saoirse Ronan in Atonement, are at a disadvantage here. Instead, I'm predicting the fourth spot to go to Catherine Keener, getting her third nomination in this category for her moving turn in Into the Wild. The final slot comes down to Jennifer Garner in Juno and Kelly MacDonald in No Country for Old Men. Despite Garner's greater name recognition, I'm giving the edge to MacDonald, both for No Country's frontrunner status and for playing one of Oscar's favorite characters, the supportive, long-suffering wife. But honestly, it could go either way.

Watch for the Oscar nominations tomorrow, January 22. And remember, nobody knows anything.

007: Oscar Bait?

Peter Smith — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:00:00 GMT

The next James Bond film (which is being called Bond 22 until someone comes up with an even more meaningless title to stick on it) certainly doesn’t read like a James Bond film. In fact, it reads like a movie designed to make the Academy sit up and take notice: its director, Marc Forster, helmed two films (Monster’s Ball and Finding Neverland) that won Oscars and just completed a third, The Kite Runner, that may receive similar acclaim. Its screenwriter, Paul Haggis, has been nominated for five Oscars, has won two, and is generating huge amounts of Academy Award talk for In the Valley of Elah. And no less a source than Max von Sydow claims that the role of perennial Bond nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld will be played by Mathieu Amalric, who’s currently wowing the critics in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. With Forster telling the New York Times that his vision of the character is dark and tormented, and pontificating that "the most interesting place for a James Bond movie to go is inward — deeper into Bond himself," will Bond 22 be the first 007 film to court critical respectability? Or is Forster just vaporing to defend the giant paycheck he’s going to get? — Leonard Pierce

Life After Bergman

Peter Smith — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:00:00 GMT

In the Los Angeles Times, Kevin Thomas, in the course of interviewing Max von Sydow about his role in Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, gets the legendary Swedish actor to open up about his special relationship with the late Ingmar Bergman, and to discuss the kinds of scripts (ranging from "boring" to "flat-out bad") he has to pass up to get to the truly choice roles he says he can now afford to take in his sunset years. "Most roles I am offered are fathers or grandfathers who die after twenty-five pages," says Von Sydow. — Leonard Pierce