The Screengrab : robert rodriguez

DVD Digest for April 21, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

As the summer movie season approaches, the studios unleash their first wave of DVDs that tie in with the upcoming blockbusters. However, this week also sees the release of one of the most intriguing DVDs so far this year.

Heading this week’s slate of recent releases is Darren Aronofsky’s working-class sports saga The Wrestler (Fox, also Blu-Ray), featuring the towering performance of Oscar-nominated comeback kid Mickey Rourke, as well as the Best Picture nominee Frost/Nixon (Universal, also Blu-Ray), with its televised tête-à-tête between Michael Sheen’s celebrity reporter and Frank Langella’s Tricky Dick. Also this week: the Biggie Smalls biopic Notorious (Fox, also Blu-Ray), and the acclaimed documentary A Jihad for Love (First Run).

As far as I can see there’s only one major classics release this week, but it’s a doozy- Criterion’s Science Is Fiction: 23 Films by Jean Painlevé. Featuring nearly two dozen works from the famed French scientist/filmmaker, this box set also features an original score by Yo La Tengo that accompanies eight of the films, as well as extensive interview footage with Painlevé from the French TV series Jean Painlevé Through His Films. Much has been made in the past of Criterion’s ongoing efforts to release the canonical classics of world cinema in worthy DVD editions, but no less noble is their commitment to honoring more esoteric fare like this, which might not otherwise have gotten released on DVD. I only hope that enough people will pick up this DVD that Criterion will be encouraged to release more like it in the future.

In TV on DVD news, this week sees the release of Caprica (Universal), the prequel to the acclaimed Sci-Fi Network series Battlestar Galactica, and the pilot episode for an upcoming series of the same name.

This week’s most in-demand Blu-Ray only release is the X-Men Trilogy (Fox), which is hitting shelves in advance of the big-screen spinoff entry X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Each of the films is also available separately, if you’d prefer. A comic book movie of a somewhat different stripe is also arriving on Blu-Ray today- Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City (Disney), which includes both theatrical and “extended” versions, along with plenty of special features. Other Blu-Ray only releases include Charlie Sheen in The Arrival (Lionsgate), and, just in time for Earth Day, the nature doc Arctic Tale (Disney).

Finally, our Synopsis of the Week- a feature which, by rights, ought to be re-titled Anime Synopsis of the Week- is actually a twofer this week, coming as it does from the ADV Films two-pack of Puni Puni Poemi and Kekko Kamen. Here’s the synopsis:

”Aliens annihilate Poemi Watanabe's parents in PUNI PUNI POEMI, so she goes on a revenge program that includes S&M, humongous robots, and the mysterious properties of dead fish. Poemi becomes a superhero in the process, but all she wanted was to be a professional voice actress!”

OK, I guess I get the ways S&M and humongous robots must be related to a plot like this, but the whole “dead fish” plot point sounds so bizarre that it’s one of those things that can only seems to turn up in Japanese animation. Also, I sure do hope that Poemi becomes the superhero voice actress she’s always dreamed of being! Moving on:

”In KEKKO KAMEN, a busty supervixen puts up a losing battle against stripping down to her bare essentials as a parade of creeps-- ranging from a principal to a camera-wielding samurai-- successfully remove her wardrobe.”

Compared to its companion in the DVD set, it doesn’t sound like this one has much of a plot. In fact, if not for the synopsis revealing that the creeps “successfully remove” the heroine’s wardrobe, there would be almost no story to speak of. I do, however, like that the protagonist is a “busty supervixen”, since as any Russ Meyer fan can tell you, that’s the best kind of supervixen.

Screengrab Salutes The Best & Worst Comic Book Movies Of All Time (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:00:00 GMT

The Best:

THE SPECIALS (2000)

Okay, I’ll admit, this one might be cheating since there’s never really been a Specials comic book...but there’s no question Craig Mazin’s criminally underseen comedy is, indeed, a comic book classic. The film (starring national treasure Thomas Haden Church as The Strobe, Judy Greer as best-Goth-girlfriend-ever Deadly Girl and Rob Lowe’s finest hour and a half as The Weevil) hit theaters for about five minutes in L.A. before sinking into undeserved obscurity, and I only saw it because The New Times and the L.A. Weekly raved about it. They were both right for once, and so now I'm spreading the love in case you ever spot this in a video store (or trust me enough to add it to your Netflix queue). The premise is similar to Mystery Men (if, as one IMDb commenter quipped, Mystery Men had been directed by Eric Rohmer) -- i.e., an ensemble comedy about a team of low-rent superheroes -- but The Specials is less a genre parody than a look at the group dynamics of co-workers who only HAPPEN to be superheroes (although for most of the movie, they could just as easily be doctors, musicians or real estate salesmen). Kitchen-sink indie filmmaking at its best, the movie features sharp, funny dialogue, about 90 seconds of special effects and a terrible coming attractions trailer that makes it look like a “wacky” Hollywood yuk-fest instead of the endearingly goofy gem that it really is...which is why I included the (admittedly censored) scene above instead.

SIN CITY (2005)

All green screens and no sets make Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City a deliriously hyper-stylized cinematic interpretation of Frank Miller's celebrated graphic novel series. Generating virtually every non-human element of his film noir with a computer, Rodriguez creates an adaptation nearly identical, in visual terms, to its source material. Fidelity, however, only gets one so far. And what makes the sumptuously black-and-white Sin City truly thrum with grungy, brutal life is not only its all-star cast’s fittingly outrageous, archetypes-on-mescaline performances (notably those by Rosario Dawson and Benicio Del Toro) and Rodriguez’s expert reproduction of Miller’s hand-drawn comic panels, but the director’s approximation of the brisk movement implied by those illustrations. Rodriguez brings Miller’s images to life with dynamic verve, a feat almost as thrilling as the performance of Mickey Rourke as battle-scarred tough guy Marv, a granite bulldozer whom the actor – even under pounds of facial prosthetics – embodies with a burning-red heart and soul.

BLADE 2 (2002)

After several stuttering attempts to follow DC in leasing its characters to the big screen, Marvel Comics had its first real success with the 1998 Blade, a horror-action hybrid based on one of the lesser supporting characters from its back pages: Blade, the African-American vampire hunter who himself possesses the advantages of vampirism (super strength, extended lifespan) and none of the disadvantages (can withstand sunlight, is not Eurotrashy), was born in the pages of Tomb of Dracula during the blaxploitation movie era. (Artist Gene Colan based his look partly on that of Jim Brown.) The first Blade movie, directed by Stephen Norrington (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and written by David S. Goyer, was unapologetic cheeseball fun, with a choice selection of bits from the comic and energetic, unhinged performances by Wesley Snipes in the title role and Stephen Dorff at his man-you-love-to-hate best as the villainous Deacon Frost. The sequel, though, is real gourmet trash, with the sensationally gifted director Guillermo del Toro brought in to take Goyer's nonsense about warring vampire tribes, give it a high polish, and set it all to a thumping hip-hop-meets-electronica score. The result is one of the most improbably gorgeous mindless thrill rides of the last several years, though the franchise keepers erred badly in permitting Goyer to not only write but direct the subsequent Blade Trinity, which plowed into a wall with all hands lost.

HELLBOY (2004)

Coming off Blade 2, Guillermo del Toro turned down the chance to get himself an annuity by taking over the Harry Potter franchise in favor of hatching a movie around writer-artist Mike Mignola's unlikely hero -- a gargoyle-shaped paranormal investigator with a back story related to World War II who operates in an environment that calls up memories of H. P. Lovecraft's squishy horror fantasies. Del Toro captures the look and feel of Hellboy's world to a degree that marks the film as clearly a labor of love, and Ron Perlman, who plays the title character, reaches through the layers of makeup to give the enterprise some soul. He's more skittishly adolescent than the gruff loner of the comics, which pays off major comic dividends in the scenes involving the poor red bastard's crush on a moody firestarter played by Selma Blair: she'd make King Kong look down and shuffle his feet awkwardly.

CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982)

Though often dismissed as merely an early, cheesy vehicle for then-fledgling actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Milius’ swords-and-sandals saga Conan the Barbarian is pure mythic pulp, its epic action and fantasy proving faithful to the spirit of Robert E. Howard’s violent legends. Milius’ macho persona forcefully informs this testosterone-laced Conan tale, in which an orphaned child becomes a slave, then becomes a warrior, and then finally a king, a path paved with equal measures of bloodshed, sly humor and pseudo-profound pronouncements about honor and glory. Still something of an amateurish actor, the muscle-bound Schwarzenegger is nonetheless an ideal Conan, and despite the proceedings’ one-dimensionality, the director’s majestic widescreen compositions lend the film a striking classicism. It’s the opening centerpiece, however, that’s truly unforgettable, in which Milius’ camera lingers, for what seems like an eternity, on the cold, motionless face of Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones) just before the evil warlord beheads Conan’s mother in front of the lad’s eyes.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Four, Five & Six

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Phil Nugent

Morning Deal Report: Ang Lee’s Slice of “Pi”

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:30:00 GMT

Ang Lee is in talks to direct an adaptation of Yann Martel's novel Life of Pi. That should be interesting, since the story “revolves around a youth who is the lone survivor of a sunken freighter and winds up sharing a lifeboat with a hyena, an injured zebra, an orangutan and a hungry Bengal tiger,” per Variety.

James L. Brooks returns to the director’s chair with a romantic comedy tentatively titled How Do You Know? Owen Wilson and Paul Rudd are two potential points in a love triangle that also includes Reese Witherspoon. “Rudd would play a white-collar executive vying for Witherspoon's affections, while Wilson would portray a professional baseball pitcher who is also a love interest.”

Robert Rodriguez is going back to the future with Nerverackers. “Set in 2085, the story centers on a character named Joe Tezca who is part of an elite unit dispatched to quell a crime wave in a theoretically perfect future society.”

Related:
Ang Lee Takes Woodstock
Rose McGowan in Chains!

Mickey Rourke Gets Up Off the Canvas

Phil Nugent — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:00:00 GMT

As the opening of the New York Film Festival draws near and with it, the American premiere of Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, Scott Foundas checks in with the movie's star, Mickey Rourke. Given the reception to Aronofsky's last movie, The Fountain, his new one (which won the Best Film prize at the recent Venice Film Festival) would qualify as a back-from-the-dead comeback even if it starred Michael Phelps, but the fact that it's a Mickey Rourke movie--the first time that Rourke has claimed the starring role in a full-length, non-multiple-story movie in many a moon--makes it even bigger news. Looking back to his early days, when he moved from Miami to New York with an itch to act, Rourke recalls, ""I wanted to be like Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Chris Walken, and Harvey Keitel. I wanted to be a really great actor. And if I worked really, really fucking hard, maybe one day I could do that. And I worked really, really hard. I had no social life. I lived like a monk. For weeks on end, I slept on the couch at the Actors Studio, working on scenes nonstop." And when he followed up his scene-stealing small role as an arsonist named Teddy in Body Heat with his performance as the overgrown tomcat Boogie in the ensemble picture Diner, a lot of people were very impressed with his charisma, his seductiveness, his "look into my eyes" audience rapport, and his ability to overcome playing characters with really dopey names. Thinking back on what happened next, Rourke says, "I look at these guys like Matt Damon, George Clooney, Sean Penn—they're all very bright, educated guys who understand that it's a business and there's politics involved. I wasn't educated or aware enough. I thought I was so good I didn't have to play the game. And I was terribly wrong."

Here, as in his other post-crash interviews, Rourke is admirable in his insistence on blaming himself for screwing up his career. Still, talk of office politics can scarcely convey how weirdly Rourke began to handle himself, and to style himself, as soon as he began to get a little control over his movie roles. In such horndog entertainments as 9 1/2 Weeks and Wild Orchid, he seemed to be trying to prove that, given the right wardrobe, leading ladies, and exotic locales, even a Miami boy could qualify as Eurotrash. In Angel Heart and Barfly, he continued to bang away at his female co-stars like a screen door during a typhoon, while also demonstrating his "authenticity" as a manly Method actor by reporting to work looking as if he'd been tied to the back bumper of a jeep and dragged through a swamp. All this time, he was living far beyond his means and turning down roles in movies that might have made his status in Hollywood a lot sturdier. Meanwhile, stories about his unmanageable behavior on the set and the storm surrounding his on-again, off-again marriage to his Wild Orchid co-star Carre' Otis (who accused, and then non-accused him, of spousal abuse) were helping to turn him into a joke. Rourke dates the point of no return to his decision to co-star with Don Johnson in the 1991 Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man. The movie was a critically derided bomb, and for once Rourke, who had done it because he desperately needed the money, couldn't claim to have had any grand artistic hopes for the finished product. "They paid me a lot of money, and I went fuckin' bonkers because I sold out and I hated myself for it. Some kind of anger kicked off, about the fact that I'd put myself in a position to have to do that movie. The demons took over." Rourke's sense of shame over having done the kind of movie that most stars routinely laugh off drove him to abandon acting for several years and take up professional boxing, a sport he had practiced as an amateur back in the early seventies. (Although Rourke remains vague about his age, he must have been around forty when he climbed back into the ring.) Eventually he started shopping around for movie roles again, having concluded a physical testing that one hopes did more good for his soul than it did for his face. He was very funny as a self-pampering, sleazeball lawyer in Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of the John Grisham thriller The Rainmaker. He worked a long time filming a good-sized role in Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, but sadly, his whole performance was edited out of the movie. He played the villain in the Tsui Hark film Double Team, which co-starred Jean Claude Van Damme and Dennis Rodman, but sadly, his performance stayed in the movie.

Rourke's real salvation came from fellow actors who, when they took their own turns directing movies, reached out to him as a worthy brother in need. In small roles as a bookie in Vincent Gallo's Buffalo 66, as a prison drag queen in Steve Buscemi's Animal Factory, and as a man who can't get past his daughter's murder in Sean Penn's The Pledge, Rourke was given the chance to demonstrate both his range and, especially in the Penn film, his daring willingness to go very deep emotionally while remaining handsomely in control of his effects as an actor. In 1994, Rourke had been too occupied with boxing to say yes when Quentin Tarantino invited him to play the Bruce Willis part in Pulp Fiction. Now, Tarntino's sidekick Robert Rodriguez cast him in a small role in Once Upon a Time in Mexico and then in a biggerm, showier (and CGI-augmented) one in Sin City, a movie whose most awesome special effect was Rourke's ability to make his presence felt through all that latex and computer trickery. But in the eyes of the suits, he was still unbankable and probably insurable.

But Aronofsky and his screenwriter, Robert D. Siegel, had planned The Wrestler with Rourke in mind, and when Rourke agreed to meet the director, Aronofsky gave him what sounds like one hell of a pep talk. As Rourke describes it, "He sits down, and for the first five minutes, he tells me how I fucked up my whole career for 15 years behaving like this, and I'm agreeing with everything. Yes, I did. That's why I haven't worked for 15 years, and I've been working real hard not to make those mistakes... He goes: 'You have to listen to everything I say. You have to do everything I tell you. You can never disrespect me. And you can't be hanging out at the clubs all night long. And I can't pay you.' And I'm thinking: 'This fucker must be talented, because he's got a lot of nerve to say that.' " But Aronofsky discovered that he couldn't get the movie funded without a big star, and when Rourke was told that he was going to be out of the picture, part of him was relieved, ""because I knew that Darren wanted me to revisit these dark places, these painful places." Then suddenly, he was back in again. If Rourke had any complaints about the resulting collaboration, he's keeping them to himself. "He knew how to push my buttons," he says of Aronofsky. "I do a take, and I nail it. I look over at Darren and I think: 'OK, we're moving on.' And he walks over to me and says: 'Do it better.' And you know what surprised me? I did it again, and I did it better. He knew that if he challenged me, that's what I wanted. A lot of people don't like that; me, I need it."

Coming Soon: A Screengrab Salute To Movie Trailers (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:00:00 GMT

The fake trailers from TROPIC THUNDER (2008), GRINDHOUSE (2007) & KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE (1977)

Of course, no tribute to the art of coming attraction trailers would be complete without a nod to the art of FAKE coming attraction trailers. Tropic Thunder recently delighted many and outraged some with its fake preview for Simple Jack, a dead-on parody of the odious, manipulative genre of faux-inspirational retar...I mean, “mentally challenged”-sploitation potboilers like I Am Sam. And last year, the interstitial glimpses of fictional schlock classics like Machete, Thanksgiving, Werewolf Women of the SS and Don’t (by Robert Rodriguez and cameo directors Eli Roth, Rob Zombie and Edgar Wright, respectively) were the best reasons to sit through the entire 191-minute cut of Grindhouse in one sitting. But perhaps the granddaddy (or granddaughter?) of all fake trailers is the "teaser" for Catholic High School Girls In Trouble, one of the definite hits in John Landis’ hit-or-miss cult classic, Kentucky Fried Movie (but, uh, you might not wanna watch this one at work).

The trailer for BUFFALO ’66 (1998)

Whether you love him or hate him, you have to agree that Vincent Gallo doesn’t make ordinary movies. Gallo’s taste for the strange extended to his trailer for his first directorial effort, Buffalo ’66. Cut by Gallo himself, the trailer is a montage of still images from the film, set to the opening passages of Yes’ “Heart of the Sunrise.” As a montage it’s pretty irresistible, with the percussive cutting matching the rhythm of the song, down to the way Gallo animates the stills of Anjelica Huston gesticulating at the dinner table. But what makes this trailer even cooler is that it’s one of the few that show more or less everything in the movie without giving it away. We see the characters, the style, the grey and dingy setting, but we’re wondering how it all fits together. And thanks to how well Gallo sells it, we can’t wait to find out.

The trailer for MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975)

The Python boys never met a phenomenon they couldn’t satirize, so it was only natural that with the trailer for their first feature, they’d hold the art of movie advertising up to scorn. This epic three-minute spot begins with a panoramic shot that’s meant to underline the majesty of the film that’s ostensibly being advertised, accompanied by properly stentorian narration. Naturally, the boys soon pull the rug out from under this seriousness, revealing it to be merely auditions for a voiceover artist. Eventually, we end up with narration in subtitled Chinese (this at a time when studios were avoiding non-English dialogue in trailers), after which the trailer goes to work on the self-important rhetoric of studio marketing. The narrator calls the movie “run-of-the-mill” and says, “compared to something like Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, it’s all rather silly.” In addition, the editing of the trailer is reminiscent of the work of fly-by-night distributors who more or less assembled highlights from the film with little regard for coherence. But here, that’s all part of the magic, although it may be difficult to notice while you’re laughing at the trailer’s version of a rave review or the abrupt segue to an advertisement for a nearby Chinese restaurant. So few classic movies have the trailers they deserve, but Monty Python and the Holy Grail definitely does.

The trailer for COMEDIAN (2002)

When it was announced that Don “The Voice” LaFontaine had passed away, many movie lovers flashed back to this trailer, only to discover that its featured talent wasn’t LaFontaine at all, but fellow voiceover titan Hal Douglas. No matter: we’d like to think that LaFontaine would have approved of this “anti-trailer”, still the most succinct and priceless distillation of the deathless voiceover clichés that he spouted so many times over the years. But while on the surface this teaser has nothing but contempt for the inane catchphrases that get recycled by the studios, there’s also a real affection for the men whose job it is to give them authority. By giving a face to the usually faceless voiceover artist, we gain respect for him, and for the way he forges on even when he realizes that the things he’s made to say are completely absurd. As much as lines like “in a world…” have become a joke to trailer watchers, they’re also a kind of comfort, and when Douglas responds to his being fired with, “No, I like it in here,” we can’t help but think that, yes, we like you in there too.

The trailer for SLEEPER (1973)

This trailer for Woody Allen's futuristic "love story about two people who hate each other" parodies the convention by which the great filmmaker is caught by the camera crew and an unseen interviewer while busily working on his next masterpiece. The trailer itself benefits from clips drawn from one of Allen's few films to include both vivid cartoon imagery and an elegant production design. And the scenes in which Allen promises a movie "with very little overt comedy" and scenes "of a cerebral, almost didactic nature" look even funnier now, considering that they could pass as an accurate description of any of a dozen stink bombs he's made since this slapstick classic came out.

The trailer for ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004)

Instead of emphasizing popular stars Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey, early promotions for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind featured supporting player Tom Wilkinson – if you knew to look for him. This teaser trailer mimicks the low-budget aesthetic of commercials for the local dentist’s office, but the service they’re offering – a selective memory erasure – is purely the stuff of Charlie Kaufman’s imagination. The poker-faced buzz campaign for Eternal Sunshine was entirely based around Lacuna, Inc., including a website with coupons.

The trailer for LITTLE CHILDREN (2006)

You can keep your big explosions and breathtaking panoramas. This trailer for Todd Field’s Little Children holds everything in, and the mounting tension – symbolized by a child’s toy train chugging through a dozen ordinary suburban moments – is almost unbearable.

The trailer for THE SHINING (1980)

Often the most memorable and effective trailers aren't those that sweat to cram in the movie's every high point and plot point but those that boil a picture down to an especially striking image and sell it in a way that sutures it to the viewer's imagination. Stanley Kubrick provided an especially choice example with this early and mysterious look at his 1980 horror movie. It consists of a single shot that turned up late in the film, tricked up here with electronic music and mechanical-sounding voices chanting "Redrum." (Did Kubrick bring in HAL 9000 to work on the soundtrack?) It appeared several months before the movie itself was released, and played briefly before being pulled in favor of a more conventional and far less disturbing trailer.

Click Here for Part One!

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Phil Nugent, Gwynne Watkins

Madonna On Film: Screengrab Celebrates Her Top Ten "Best" and Worst Performances (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:00:00 GMT

And now...the stinkers.

6. Marie in Shadows and Fog (1992), Elspeth in Four Rooms (1995)

As noted in Part One, Madonna works best in movies when used as spice in a cameo...except, of course, when the cameo is lousy. Yet, though these two performances are, in fact, terrible, it’s hard to judge Ms. Ciccone too harshly for either of them, given the fact that Lily Tomlin, Jodie Foster and Kathy Bates hardly fare much better in Woody Allen’s limp, pretentious Shadows and Fog, and nobody but the lucky actors in Robert Rodriguez’s section of the misbegotten omnibus film Four Rooms bothered to give a coherent performance, either.

7. Abbie Reynolds, The Next Best Thing (2000)

The only movie in Madonna’s filmography where she attempts to play a completely “normal,” contemporary human being (as opposed to a 1940s ballplayer, an S&M obsessed murder suspect, a tightrope walker, an elfin princess, a witch, an Argentine dictator, a kooky East Village free spirit, etc.), Ms. Ciccone earns low points here if only for somehow finding a way to make the song “American Pie” even more annoying than it already was. To be fair, I never saw this movie either, but my lovely Polish bride informs me that Madonna's performance here as a straight woman in a custody battle with her gay baby daddy features exactly one funny sight gag involving the Material Boobs, but otherwise earns its #7 spot fair and square, given Madge's complete lack of chemistry with friend and co-star Rupert Everett and the fact that she seems "like an automaton” throughout “like she always is.”

8. Eva Peron in Evita (1996)

While Ms. Ciccone may have worked harder on this role than any other in her cinematic career (even finally learning to sing after more than a decade as a successful recording artist) it is, in many ways, her most annoying performance, partly because she’s clearly so impressed with herself, partly because so many critics played along with the charade (even going so far as to award her efforts with a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical), but mostly because she transformed an ironic cautionary tale of the rise and fall of a dictator’s wife into a triumphant love story about the rise and rise of a plucky, ambitious gal (not unlike – hey! – Madonna herself!), all the while downplaying the nastier side of Peron’s (and her own) egomaniacal megalomania and its often toxic effect on the peasants who love her...thus deliberately undercutting the plot and theme of her own movie (not to mention Antonio Banderas’ role as spokesman for the downtrodden and future t-shirt model Che Guevara who, with no antagonist to play against, merely comes across like a whiny little bitch).

9. Rebecca Carlson in Body of Evidence (1993)

For all her onstage masturbation, conical Gauliter bras and nude photo shoots, Madonna has never really had a handle on sex. For her, the beast with two backs has nothing to do with joy, love, pleasure or fun, which makes this so-called “erotic” thriller such a complete slog as she fucks Willem Dafoe on shards of broken glass (hot!!!), spits out Razzie-winning lines like “Have you ever seen animals make love, Frank?” and reminds us that, apparently, being Sharon Stone isn’t quite as easy as it looks.

10. Gloria Tatlock, Shanghai Surprise (1986), Amber Leighton, Swept Away (2002)

For some reason, both of Madonna’s husbands (co-star Sean Penn and director Guy Ritchie) managed to distill all of Ms. Ciccone’s worst cinematic instincts into a pair of monumentally shrill, annoying, wooden performances in two of the worst movies ever made. Penn at least had the excuse of being drunk throughout production of Shanghai Surprise (though, sadly, I wasn’t drunk or stoned or, even better, unconscious while sitting through it), and I’m not sure what Guy Ritchie’s excuse was for making Swept Away, unless (as with his short BMW promotional film “Star”) he simply couldn’t resist the opportunity to publicly humiliate his beloved spouse. Given her total lack of chemistry with nearly every co-star in her career (except Rosie O'Donnell and, of course, her own reflection), it’s no surprise Ms. Ciccone fares no better with Penn in Shanghai or Adriano Giannini in Swept Away, which my wife summed up with a quote that could apply to any number of Madonna’s past and future cinematic blunders: “Painfully unfunny...another joyless performance.”

Click here for Part One

Frank Miller Gets Into the Spirit at Comic-Con

Phil Nugent — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:04:00 GMT

Frank Miller, writes Kevin Scanlon in The New York Times, "exudes comics cred." This week, Miller will be at the opening of the San Diego Comic-Con International, where comics professionals will be honored with the presentation of the annual Eisner Awards, named for the legendary writer-artist Will Eisner. According to Scanlan, "few outside fandom have any idea" who Eisner-- who died three years ago at the age of 87, though he seemed to have been around for much longer than that and to have been active in his field for most of that time--was, and I will take his word for it, since I've spent most of my life in the company of people, myself not excepted, who were more likely to be able to recite Eisner's bibliography chapter and verse than to know how to add fractions. As the creator of the urban detective strip The Spirit (and, later, one of the first producers of a "graphic novel"), Eisner was always hailed for his "cinematic" style, his way of bringing the mood and feel of an action-packed film noir to the four-color page. So was Miller, when he first made a splash with his own take on the crime comic disguised as a superhero comic, Daredevil. (It was to humor those publishers who thought that a comics hero had to be a costumed crimefighter that Eisner drew two horizontal lines across the Spirit's face and called that a mask.) However, Eisner, who spent the last thirty years of his life trying to make a case, through his own work, for the artistic validity of comics, never made the leap to actual filmmaking. Miller did, when he collaborated with Robert Rodriguez on the 2005 big-screen version of Miller' Sin City. At that time, Rodriguez would up resigning from the Directors' Guild after they refused to let him share full credit with this uncredentialed, pen-wielding upstart. Several million dollars at the box office later--both from Sin City and the movie version of Miller's 300, a movie that is its look, and whose look was transferred complete and intact from the paper version-- Miller had little difficulty getting the go-ahead for his first solo directing project, and that project is The Spirit.

Another connection between Eisner and Miller is that, having made their names telling stories in a medium over which they had more or less complete control, neither readily took to Hollywood's free-and-easy approach to intellectual property, or its dismissive attitude towards whoever does the writing. Miller, whose Daredevil comics and origin reboot Batman: Year One are drenched in the spare imagery and dark, tilted shadows of basement-budget noir, and whose Dark Knight miniseries gave the world an older, crustier Batman recast in the mold of a Clint Eastwood hero, first dallied with Hollywood in the late 1980s, when he worked as a screenwriter on some RoboCop sequels. That experience sent him screaming back to his drawing board unti Robert Rodriguez showed up at his door, on bended knee. Now Miller is in the driver's seat, and out there selling his baby. (Also at Comic-Con this year are the movie's star, Gabriel Macht, and co-star Samuel L. Jackson. (Those who know the comic will be either relieved or sorely disappointed to learn that Mr. Jackson does not play the classic strip's most prominent African-American character, Ebony White, the Spirit's biggest male fan, and a constant source of embarrassment to contemporary readers: in keeping with the standards of the time, Ebony looked like a blob of ink with big rubber lips. He is not featured in the movie, having been cast into P.C. oblivion to keep the cast of Bob Clampett's Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs company.) As for Eisner, he fought to maintain control of his characters rather than score a payday by selling them off to the movies, and reportedly had to be talked in off the ledge after seeing a 1980s TV movie allegedly based on The Spirit. Producer Michael Uslan pitched the idea of a Spirit movie to Miller, and recalls that at the suggestion, "Frank looked at me like I was out of my mind. He said: ‘Touch the work of the master? How could I do that?’ About 10 minutes later he tapped me on my shoulder and said, ‘I can’t let anyone else touch it.’ ” Early trailers for the movie have done their best to make it look like Sin Cty 2--which is coming, and which Miller hopes will ultimately be the second film in a trilogy--but Eisner's world was very different than the bleak, monochrome vision reflected in the recent Miller comics that have made it to the movies, and Miller knows that. “The only ways [Sin City and The Spirit] resemble each other," Miller says, "are the ways that I learned from Will Eisner: the use of black and white, certainly the rapturous approach to women.” Visually, Sin City, with its hyperbolic black and white design, certainly represented some kind of apotheosis of such performers as Rosario Dawson, Carla Gugino, Jessica Alba, and Jaime King, and the cast of The Spirit includes King, Eva Mendes, Paz Vega, upcoming Bond girl Stana Vatic, Sarah Paulsen (as the daughter of Police Commissioner Dolan, which means that in this company, she's the closest thing to the girl next door), and the future Mrs. Ryan Reynolds. So, you know, let the rapture begin.

Rose McGowan in Chains!

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 28 May 2008 19:30:00 GMT

As a certified member of the film blogosphere living in Austin, Texas, I get a text alert every time Robert Rodriguez sneezes or Richard Linklater stubs his toe. It could be worse – if I wrote for the Austin Chronicle I’d be obliged to give those sneezes and toe-stubs four stars each. I am, however, required by law to pass on the following tidbits concerning Austin’s favorite sons.

Next week the Paramount Theater in connection with the Austin Film Society will present the world premiere of Linklater’s latest, the documentary Inning by Inning: A Portrait of a Coach. It’s “an intimate look inside the world of University of Texas baseball coach Augie Garrido, the winningest coach in NCAA Division I history in any sport… The film profiles this remarkable coach's career and unique approach to teaching the game with unprecedented access to his team meetings, practices, and conversations with players during games.” Surely only the director of the Bad News Bears remake would attempt to interview players while they’re trying to complete a double-play. The premiere is June 3rd (details are here), but if you miss it, don’t fret; the doc was commissioned by ESPN and will no doubt air on the network sooner than later.

Now onto somewhat sexier news. It’s not every man who leaves his wife of 16 years for a woman who has seen Marilyn Manson naked, but when that woman is Rose McGowan, well, you can understand how that would mess with Robert Rodriguez’s mind. So confused was Rodriguez that he at first planned a remake of Barbarella starring his new love. But that’s on the back burner now, supplanted by Women in Chains!, the pilot for a proposed women-in-prison series. “McGowan is set play one of five chained women at the center of the show, which Rodriguez is expected to direct,” according to the Hollywood Reporter. Citing Ain’t It Cool News as its source, the Reporter notes that the “new show also is rumored to be fashioned with a 1970s exploitation sensibility, with such staples like mud wrestling.” We can’t think of anyone more qualified to keep such a grand tradition alive.

Separated at Birth? "Sin City" and "Love Me, Gangster!"

Phil Nugent — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Sin City 2, with a promised cast list that includes many of the participants in Sin City, including some who were dead at the end of it, plus Danny Trej, whose failure to appear in the first film was probably due to some clerical error, is due to arrive in 2010. Once again, it is based on Frank Miller's moody black-and-white comics stories. But when we saw Sin City back in 2005, we knew that its stylized look and post-pulp feel reminded us of something, and that something has just turned up on YouTube: Love Me Gangster!, a short video movie made back in the 1980s for the British anthology arts show Alter Image. God knows if either Miller of Robert Rodriguez ever saw it. But we'd like to imagine that some part of them would still be able to appreciate how much shorter and less inexpensive this thing is while managing to appear a not-so-distant cousin to their magnum opus, even if both Miller and Rodriguez are long past the point of seeing "short" and "inexpensive" as something to shoot for in their own work.

Vanishing Act: Allison Anders & Alexandre Rockwell

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 01 May 2008 19:30:00 GMT

It was a four-car pile-up with only two survivors. It was Four Rooms, an omnibus film by the hottest Sundance kids in town, the self-proclaimed “Class of ‘92” consisting of Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Allison Anders and Alexandre Rockwell. The directors of Reservoir Dogs, El Mariachi, Gas, Food, Lodging and In the Soup decided to join forces before Pulp Fiction went through the stratosphere, but the project didn’t materialize until afterwards. The premise was simplicity itself: each segment of the film took place in a different room in the same hotel, with Tim Roth’s befuddled bellhop as the only common link.

Tarantino’s runaway ego was on full display in his room, “The Man from Hollywood,” yet he would emerge from the wreckage virtually unscathed, along with Rodriguez, whose slapstick contribution “The Misbehavers” was generally regarded as the movie’s highlight. Despite revolving around a coven of topless witches played by Alicia Witt, Ione Skye, Valeria Golino and Madonna, Anders’ “The Missing Ingredient” managed to be both silly and dull – a description that equally applies to Rockwell’s “The Wrong Man,” featuring his then-wife Jennifer Beals gagged and tied to a chair.

Despite its critical and commercial failure, it’s probably unfair to blame Four Rooms for derailing the careers of Anders and Rockwell; both continued to work, at least for a while. Anders made a pair of rock and roll movies, Grace of My Heart and Sugar Town, both of which have their defenders but neither of which made much impact. Most of her work over the past decade has been in episodic TV, from Sex and the City to Cold Case. The exception is Things Behind the Sun, a dark drama about rape that played the 2001 Sundance Film Festival and earned some of the best reviews of Anders’ career, but never secured a theatrical release, premiering instead on Showtime. “I absolutely loved the experience with the distribution on this movie,” Anders said in a recent interview with Moviemaker. “It was a very tough decision to make to go to cable instead of going theatrical. I had a theatrical offer from some great people who really loved the movie, but I tell you I had such a much better experience. I loved that millions of people saw my movie! There's no downside, as far as I can tell.”

Rockwell made a quasi-sequel to In the Soup, spinning off two characters for 1998’s Louis and Frank, a movie that has left very little evidence of its existence. It played a few festivals and apparently had a run in France, but that’s about it. The offbeat 13 Moons, starring Steve Buscemi as Bananas the Clown, fared little better in 2002, securing a limited release but not much critical support.

These careers can be revived, however, and another anthology movie may be the answer. We suggest Anders and Rockwell team up to make an old-fashioned drive-in double feature, complete with fake trailers and plenty of gratuitous sex and violence. How could it miss?

Austin Goes for "Blood"

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 18:30:00 GMT

Did you know there’s an Austin Film Critics Association? I live in Austin and this is news to me. Nonetheless, the AFCA has weighed in on the year in movies and handed its major awards to a film that won’t reach area screens until 2008. According to Variety, There Will Be Blood takes the honors for Best Film, Director (Paul Thomas Anderson), Actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), Cinematography (Robert Elswit) and Original Score (Johnny Greenwood). Ellen Page and Allison Janney collect acting kudos for their work in Juno, while Javier Bardem continues his rampage through the awards season with yet another Best Supporting Actor nod. It’s good to see The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters get some richly deserved recognition in the Documentary category, but couldn’t the Austin Film Award bestowed upon Grindhouse be put to better use? Sure, that carpetbagger Tarantino made effective use of local landmarks like Guero’s Taco Bar and the Texas Chili Parlor, but Robert Rodriguez has been coasting on his favorite son status for too long. Consider this a belated vote for the homegrown Hell on Wheels, Bob Ray’s surprisingly compelling documentary on the contentious Austin roller derby scene. It’s wheeling its way through the film festival circuit, so keep your eyes peeled.