The Screengrab : rock hudson

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…

Clippy Strikes Back: The Scariest Technology In Cinema History (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:30:00 GMT

THE MATRIX (1999)

Spoiler alert! The Matrix is people! Just kidding...but really, if you haven’t seen it by now, allow me to ruin the surprise for you: according to Laurence Fishburne’s Morpheus, the Matrix is a computer-generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change human beings into the copper-top batteries fueling our cybernetic overlords. And yet, when Keanu “Whoa!” Reeves’ messianic Neo finally “wakes up” in his real world goo pod prison, the all-knowing cybernetic overlords just...uh...flush him down a drain so he can be enlisted by Morpheus and his band of human rebels in their fight to overthrow the Matrix. Huh? Wha? That logical inconsistency blew a gaping hole in my willing suspension of disbelief the first time I saw the Wachowski Brothers' cyberpunk classic, yet later I realized I’d worried my pretty little head over nothing...NOT because the disappointing sequels kinda sorta explained away the seeming plot contrivance (since Neo was really the sixth integral anomaly and thus was supposed to find his way to the Architect and blah, blah, blah...), but rather because the original Matrix was so fresh and visually exciting, with a paranoid, unified-field conspiracy theory of a plot that captured the unease (and exhilaration) of life in the digital age better than any movie since...well...Tron. (AO)

THE TERMINATOR (1984) & T2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991)

A perfect killing machine sent from the future to slay the mother of mankind’s eventual savior, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator was, from 1984 to 1991, the baddest assassin around. But James Cameron’s wildly popular sequel to The Terminator, T2: Judgment Day, further upped the ante, introducing a shape-shifting liquid-metal version of the techno-phobic series’ cyborg destroyers, the T-1000 (Robert Patrick), that stands as one of action cinema’s most daunting evildoers. If both the original and T-1000 Terminators are preeminent examples of malevolent machinery, however, it’s Skynet – the government-sanctioned computer program that goes sentient, instigates a nuclear holocaust, and manufactures an army of robots – that proves the franchise’s true villain. Shrewdly foreshadowing our increasing global inter-connectivity, and postulating that condition as ripe for tragedy, Cameron’s series offers us an apocalypse created by the very devices we rely on for our protection, and then – as further evidenced by T3, TV’s Sarah Connor Chronicles, and presumably the forthcoming Terminator: Salvation – also posits those machines as our sole means of achieving post-doomsday deliverance. (NS)

PULSE (2001)

Many J-horror imports exploit fears of technology, but none do so as effectively – and as thoughtfully – as Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2001 masterpiece Pulse. From online computers to cell phones, technology is ubiquitous throughout Kurosawa’s film, and slowly reveals itself to be the cause of a strange, growing phenomenon whereby Tokyo’s citizens begin to mysteriously disappear, often leaving behind only a residual black stain on the wall (shades of the marks found throughout post-atom-bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki). It soon becomes clear that ghosts are attempting to enter the physical world through our gadgets, and Kurosawa’s portrait of a technology-fostered apocalypse is chilling not simply for its raft of indelibly unsettling imagery (a plane hurtling to the ground, shuffling specters spied on a computer monitor), but from its story’s underlying commentary about the alienation and loneliness fostered by our mounting reliance on machines. Modernity’s technological progress leads to communication breakdown, which in turn results in societal disintegration, a set of circumstances Kurosawa chillingly depicts as both unavoidable and irreversible. (NS)

VIDEODROME (1983)

The purifying/corrupting relationship between technology and the human body has long fascinated (and been fetishized by) David Cronenberg, a topic which he superbly addressed in 1983’s Videodrome. In this mind-bending story, the president of a low-rent television station, Max Renn (James Woods), stumbles upon transmissions of the titular S&M horror show – in which rape, torture and mutilation occur in a single orange room – and subsequently begins suffering from horrific hallucinations. From there, the line between real and unreal blurs, though regardless of whether or not the ensuing madness is all in Max’s head, the sight of him inserting organic videotapes into a stomach gash, which in turn produces a gun that melds with his hand, affords a twisted, terrifying view of man’s increasingly fundamental bond with his inanimate creations. “Long Live the New Flesh!” serves as both a rallying cry for the film’s “villains” and the mournful final words of Renn, with Cronenberg ambiguously treating our connection to television as something at once liberating and destructive. (NS)

SECONDS (1966)

John Frankenheimer's nightmare movie, shot by cinematographer James Wong Howe, begins with the chubby, perpetually middle-aged character actor John Randolph (Jack Nicholson's father in Prizzi's Honor) as a married banker who barely recognizes that his life has gone stale until someone is kind enough to point it out. He is recruited as a client by a mysterious, secret organization that arranges for people to be given second chances at life: first their bodies are remade through plastic surgery and an exercise regimen, then they are dropped into a new routine that has been planned for them by a computer program. Of course, they're still the same old dissatisfied dullards they were before they went under the knife, especially if, like Randolph, they're being played by Rock Hudson after the bandages come off. Most techno-phobic sci-fi films are about the dangers of technology that we don't yet have; this one is about what people could have been doing with technology that they already had when the movie came out, if only they were stupid and shameless enough. Which may be why it feels more accurately prophetic now than 2001. (PN)

Click Here For Part One, Two & Three

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Phil Nugent

The Gay Pride Top Twenty (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:00:00 GMT

MALA NOCHE (1985)

"You drive like you fuck!" Walt (Tim Streeter) yells at Pepper (Ray Monge), the Mexican boy toy who has accepted Walt's offer of driving lessons, with the result that Walt's car is resting in a ditch. Walt is actually in love -- painfully, head over heels in love -- with the pretty boy Johnny (Doug Cooyeate), who doesn't mind putting up with his adulation so long as it gets him handouts, but has no intention of letting Walt touch him, so Walt, in a spirit of compromise that is familiar to inhabitants of the independent filmmaking scene, makes do with Johnny's friend, the scruffier Ray, and takes what satisfaction he can in being one degree of separation away from his obscure object of desire. This grungy erotic fever dream of a first feature by Gus Van Sant was made for $2500.00; hard to see for most of the years before it came out on DVD as part of the Criterion Collection last fall, it was one of the most exciting directorial debuts of the 1980s and announced Portland's placement on the indie film map.

ROCK HUDSON'S HOME MOVIES (1992)

When Hudson died of AIDS in 1985 while still trying to remain in the closet, a number of people felt that he had missed his last chance to make his stand against the homophobes. This hilarious illustrated lecture by the experimental filmmaker Mark Rappaport argues that Rock was trying to tell us something all along; you just had to know how to listen. Rock, represented by actor Eric Farr, walks us through a series of clips from Hudson's career, pointing up the suddenly obvious messages conveyed by his skittish relationships with Doris Day and his other virginal leading ladies, his verbal pas de deux with Tony Randall, the mysterious nudge-nudge wink-wink underworld inhabited by the remade men of Seconds, and the shift into horror movies as Rock's youthful beauty began to fade. Like certain films of Todd Haynes, the movie is a satirical commentary on certain strains of pop criticism and a cunning work of criticism itself.

SCORPIO RISING (1964) & UN CHANT D'AMOUR (1950)

Between the two of them, these two short films, made by directors (Kenneth Anger, who made Scorpio Rising five years after the best-selling success of his book Hollywood Babylon, and the legendary playwright, novelist and poet Jean Genet) famous in the literary world, established a whole visual language of gay eroticism, based on fetishistic totems of power on the one hand and a defiant romantic tenderness in the face of imprisonment and institutional mistreatment on the other, that other artists have fed off for generations since. And not just gay artists: Anger's cutting to rock music paved the way for everything from Scorsese to MTV, and Oliver Stone, a director not noted for his sensitivity to homosexuals (see JFK) did his own butch version of the shared-cigarette scene from Genet's film in Platoon, with Willem Dafoe putting a rifle to Charlie Sheen's pliant lips and giving him a little something-something.

VELVET GOLDMINE (1998)

In his later Far from Heaven (after honoring Genet in his 1991 Poison), Todd Haynes paid tribute to the 1950s Technicolor melodramas of Douglas Sirk and the closeted gay subculture that many see being given a shout-out in those movies. In his salute to the glitter rock scene of the 1970s, Haynes sets out to recreate a very different era in pop culture, one that celebrated letting it all hang out -- and he also administers a bitch slap to those who would write off the music as an opportunistic sham. Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), Haynes' David Bowie stand-in, may ultimately sell out to arena rock and heterosexuality, but the fire he lit in the hearts and minds of young adepts such as the rock writer played by Christian Bale continues to burn even as all the color and spark has bled out of the conventional show business world he's joined. Keep watching the skies!

PINK FLAMINGOS (1972) & HAIRSPRAY (1988, 2007)

Back in 1972, when underground filmmaker John Waters had his starlet and muse, the 300-pound drag superstar Divine (neé Harris Glenn Milstead) eat dog shit as a glorified publicity stunt in the final moments of Pink Flamingos (a.k.a. the Citizen Kane of bad taste cinema), the wise-ass, openly gay, proto-punk director probably thought he was being pretty damn subversive in his blatant attempt to shock the bejesus out of the hopelessly square “straight” world he never had any particular interest in joining. Little did he know at the time that the most subversive act of pop culture would come sixteen years later, when he achieved crossover indie success with the (mostly) family friendly Hairspray, starring Ricki Lake as an indomitable plus-size, racially politicized Mashed Potato enthusiast and Divine as haggard Baltimore housewife Edna Turnblad. Tragically, Divine passed on to the great Hefty Hideway in the sky just as Hairspray made Waters and his Baltimore crew of “Hillbilly Rip-offs” shockingly respectable (and at least as famous as Pia Zadora)...but “the Filthiest Woman Alive” lived on (in a beautifully ironic twist Flamingos’ Babs Johnson would have adored) as a beloved family-friendly icon, first as the inspiration for the under-the-sea witch Ursula in The Little Mermaid and later in the gender-bender casting of Harvey Fierstein, Bruce Villanch (and, recently, George Wendt??!?!?) as Edna Turnblad in the smash hit Broadway musical version of Hairspray and (egad!) John Travolta in the super-smash hit re-movie-fied 2007 version of the musical that introduced Waters’ racially and sexually egalitarian Baltimore fantasia to the High School Musical crowd (thanks to that dreamy Zac Efron). Waters’ never bought into the peace & love banalities of the Flower Children he mocked so mercilessly in his earliest films, yet the musical Hairspray’s triumphant showstopper “You Can’t Stop The Beat” rivals “The Age of Aquarius” in its joyous, unabashedly hopeful vision of a world where literally everyone is welcome and accepted at the dance...even assholes like the vain, villainous Van Tussels (as long as they’re willing to chill out, play nice and, of course, shake those fanny muscles).

Click here for Part One, Part Two & Part Three

Contributors: Phil Nugent, Andrew Osborne

The Rep Report (June 5 --11)

Phil Nugent — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:06:00 GMT

NEW YORK: Anthology Film Archives honors the late work of the consummate entertainer of twentieth-century Hollywood movies, Howard Hawks, with a series devoted to the movies Hawks directed from his 1948 classic Western Red River, with John Wayne and Montgomery Clift, through his later masterpiece with Wayne, Rio Bravo, down to their final collaborations (1967's El Dorado, featuring Robert Mitchum and a young James Caan, and the 1970 Rio Lobo, where you get to see Wayne beat up George Plimpton; the cast also includes Jack Elam and later Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox studios chief Sherry Lansing in her starlet days), which were assembled from parts scavenged from their predecessors. For Hawks fans, the series offers a chance to re-evaluate some works not usually ranked among his finest efforts, notably Land of the Pharoahs with Joan Collins, which proved that Hawks was no more a natural at getting English actors to look unembarrassed while pretending to be ancient Egyptians than any other mortal (even, or maybe especially, when he had William Faulkner working on the script) and Man's Favorite Sport?, starring Rock Hudson as an "expert" author of fishing book who thinks fish are disgusting. (The movie receives an extensive subtextual reading in Mark Rappaport's 1992 Rock Hudson's Home Movies.) In fact, the only Hawks feature from 1953's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to the director's death in 1977 that's not included is his ambitious, personal, and disastrous 1965 race-car movie Red Line 7000. Maybe the programmers were afraid to screen it for fear that it still wouldn't look a lot better than Speed Racer.

"Open Roads: New Italian Cinema" (June 6-12) at the Film Society of Lincoln Center showcases the work of what the programmers see as "a new generation of Italian filmmakers .. defined by neither a political position nor an aesthetic approach but unified through a spirit of independence that has allowed them to break away from old models and genres." It includes Biùtiful Cauntri, an eco-minded drama that is being shown in conjunction with the Film Society's "Green Screens" program, and The Waltz, which tells its multi-character story in a single, continuous ninety-minute shot.

Opening today and running through June 15th: "NewFest 2008: The 20th Anniversary NY LGBT Film Festival". On tap and buzzed about: Affinity, Meadowlark, and the documentary SqueezeBox!, a movie whose accompanying party at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival took no prisoners.

BERKELEY: Through June, Pacific Film Archives presents a quartet of punk concert clips and documentaries just in time for anyone looking to get nostalgic over the fortieth anniversary of the summer when London punk in particular was in full, frothing snarl mode. The schedule begins tonight with The Blank Generation, which captures such New York bands as the Ramones, Talking Heads, and Television when they were young, loud, and snotty. Still to come: D.O.A., in which Johnny Rotten does not spend the Sex Pistols' "terminal" American tour desperately looking for the man who's fatally poisoned him, and Penelope Spheeris's first and finest document of noisy West Coast alientation, 1981's The Decline... of Western Civilization.

Ten Movies for a Snow Day

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:00:00 GMT

It’s that time of the year when Screengrab readers in certain parts of the country can pretty much count on an unexpected day off or two thanks to Mother Nature’s fury. In my part of the country (Austin, TX), said fury usually comes in the form of about a half-inch of freezing drizzle, but having grown up in the Northeast, I am certainly well acquainted with the concept of the Snow Day. And what could be better on a day when you can’t leave the house than a pile of movies featuring a veritable blizzard’s worth of snow?

Herewith, then, the Screengrab’s list of the ten snowiest movies. Please note that we have not included the Chevy Chase/Chris Elliott movie Snow Day. We wouldn’t do that to you.

Ice Station Zebra

Sure, for much of its running time, this much-maligned Rock Hudson vehicle is a submarine movie, but the climactic scenes are set at the Arctic Circle, where the crew has been sent to track down some important Cold War whatsis. In his 1969 review, Roger Ebert describes the action thusly: “Hudson and his men start out with parkas, mufflers, goggles and the whole works. But by the time of the confrontation with the Russian commander, all the leading actors are shown bareheaded and barefaced. At Arctic temperatures, their noses would freeze, crack and fall off before they got their argument well launched. Another funny thing: When the actors talk, their breath doesn't freeze.”

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

There are several Bond movies that explore the action-packed possibilities of snow, notably For Your Eyes Only, but when in doubt we always opt for the golden age of Lazenby. Here 007 puts his skis to work both on the slopes (dig that nighttime rear-screen projection) and as weapons of strangulation and defenestration. Always a multi-tasker, our man Bond.

Quintet

I’ve written about Robert Altman’s frostbitten foray into post-apocalyptic sci-fi before, so to quote myself: “Set in a future Ice Age, Quintet is so white with snow and glare, you will notice streaks of dust on your television screen that were hitherto imperceptible. To give it that extra ‘futuristic’ edge, Altman has smeared his camera lens with enough lube to fuel a three-day orgy at Elliott Gould’s place.” Stare at it long enough and you will go blind, one way or another.

The Shining

Sure, a snow day sounds like all fun and games. But then you realize you’re trapped in the house with your family for who knows how long, and it’s only a matter of time before someone gets a bad case of cabin fever and starts chasing you around with an axe. Our advice? Lead them outside into the hedge maze. This works best if they’re drunk and/or completely insane.

Fargo

Forget the compelling argument about whether or not the Coens have contempt for their heroine Marge Gunderson. What we really want to know is – what do they think of this guy?

Alive

This is an especially good one to watch from the safety of your couch on your unplanned day off. See what leaving the house gets you? Before you know it, you’ve crash-landed in the snow-capped Andes and the seatmate you bummed a magazine from early in the flight is now gnawing on your elbow. Better take an extra day off tomorrow just to be on the safe side.

A Simple Plan

From the golden age of snow noir (approx. Feburary 1996 to December 1998) comes Sam Raimi’s adaptation of the Scott Smith novel about earflapped yokels squabbling over a sack o’ cash rescued from another crashed plane. If you’re only familiar with the recent work of Billy Bob Thornton, it might surprise you to learn he once played characters who weren’t hard-assed authority figures. To wit:

Dreamcatcher

It shouldn’t be a surprise that this list contains two movies based on Stephen King books, since the horrormeister is a native of Maine and therefore no stranger to the perils of wintry weather. Of course, in Dreamcatcher those perils include ass-weasels from outer space and Morgan Freeman’s equally extraterrestrial eyebrows, so this one doesn’t qualify as the most naturalistic look at snowbound life on this list.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller

Honestly, you can skip Quintet if you want. McCabe is the Altman masterpiece you must move to the head of your Netflix queue immediately. And if you’ve never seen it, do not – repeat DO NOT – watch the clip below.

Smilla’s Sense of Snow

It’s been a while, but as best we can recall, this movie did not make a lick of sense. Julia Ormond is a scientist investigating a conspiracy using her unique, uh, sense of snow. Save this one for last, when you’re really tired.