The Screengrab : sense and sensibility

Thursday Poll for New Year's Day 2009

Paul Clark — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:00:00 GMT

The celebration of some obscure holiday caught me completely off guard a week ago, and so shocked was I by its sudden emergence that I completely forgot to run a Thursday poll. Because of this, I neglected to report that fully half of our readers, when given the choice between Kate Winslet’s Oscar-nominated performances, preferred her turn as the mood-haired Clementine in Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Somewhat less expected was the 25% showing for the second-place finisher, 2006’s Little Children, followed by her performances in Sense and Sensibility and Iris. Bringing up the rear was her starmaking role in a little sleeper hit called Titanic, which brought in no votes whatsoever. So that only leaves us with the question of whether she’ll finally take home an Oscar this year, either as Revolutionary Road’s disenchanted housewife or the “illiterate Nazi cougar” (thanks, Uncle Crizzle!) of The Reader.

Over the past week, the writers of The Screengrab have posted their lists of the best movies of 2008. Now it’s your turn. Which of the Screengrab’s top five favorites from the past year do you prefer?

Which is your favorite? | BuzzDash polls

Feel free to post your lists of the best of 2008 in the comments section if you wish. See you next week!

When Good Directors Go Bad: Hulk (2003, Ang Lee)

Paul Clark — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:00:00 GMT

In recent years, as “sequel” and “remake” have become dirty words in the minds of moviegoers, Hollywood studios have scrambled to come up with new, less offensive alternatives. How many blockbusters based on previously-adapted properties have been tagged with descriptions like “re-invention”? Yet even by these standards, the efforts made by Universal and Marvel Studios to distance their new, more “crowd-pleasing” version of The Incredible Hulk (“You’re going to like him when he’s angry!”) from Ang Lee’s 2003 film Hulk have been particularly aggressive. And for good reason, as Lee’s take on the classic comic left most viewers disappointed or even pissed off. Does Hulk deserve its reputation? Not really. But just because it’s not that bad doesn’t mean it’s all that good either.

In the early part of his career, Ang Lee was known primarily for his modestly-budgeted films which deftly mixed domestic drama with light comedy. Titles like Eat Drink Man Woman and The Wedding Banquet helped to make the NYU grad’s reputation in the States even before he began making movies here, and Sense and Sensibility and The Ice Storm only served to further this reputation. But while 1999’s Ride With the Devil was widely considered Lee’s first disappointment, he quickly recovered by returning to the Far East to make Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the critically-acclaimed martial arts epic that brought Lee the best reviews of his career to date and his first Oscar, as well as record-breaking U.S. box-office for an Asian film. It was Crouching Tiger that caught the attention of Universal Studios, who were looking for a fresh voice to bring Hulk to the screen.

But while Lee was an inspired choice for a comic book movie, I really don’t think he was the right one for Hulk. Lee is a gifted filmmaker, but he’s never had a strong, easily recognizable visual style, instead preferring to let his story determine the look of his films. But although other Lee films have benefited from this versatility- the chilly, sterile images of The Ice Storm bear little resemblance to the sweeping vistas of Crouching Tiger, but both are ideal for their respective films- Lee never finds the right look for Hulk. Although it’s not for lack of trying- attempting to accentuate the story’s comic book origins, Lee subjects the audience to a barrage of split-screens and snazzy wipes. Unfortunately, instead of creating any sort of kinetic excitement, the tricked-up style is merely distracting and, in the end, tiresome.

As for the individual shots themselves, Lee’s framing is rarely dynamic enough to make the images pop the way they should. All too often, shots are murky when they should be crisp. This is especially true of the film’s night scenes, which look dank and under-lit. Even worse, Lee insisted on shooting many of the film’s big action sequences at night. But whether this was an artistic decision on Lee’s part or a trick by the effects team to cover for some occasionally dodgy CGI, these sequences are often incomprehensible. This is especially true of the final battle between Hulk and his father- in a scene that serves not only as the action climax of the film but also the resolution of the lifelong conflict between father and son, the last thing you want is for the audience to wonder what the hell is going on.

In addition to the film’s stylistic shortcomings, the storytelling in Hulk leaves something to be desired. Part of the problem is that as far as comic book heroes go, Hulk is a strange case. Rather than being a hero who uses his powers for positive ends, Hulk is unleashed aggression personified- a man who has been cursed by fate and the sins of his father to expand and beat the crap out of anything in his way whenever he gets angry. The premise plays closer to tragedy than traditional comic book action, and to his credit, Lee takes the dramatic stuff seriously, rather than treating it simply as exposition and padding between the action scenes. However, the film’s broad-strokes-only storytelling and one-dimensional characters are less than compelling. Too much time and energy are expended on unlocking the mysteries of Bruce Banner’s past, a torturous bit of “dollar-book Freud” (thank you, Orson Welles) that stops the film dead in its tracks and makes the film less tragic than dour. Not helping matters is Eric Bana’s colorless performance as Banner. Bana came to the attention of Hollywood with his live-wire performance in Chopper, but he displays none of that volatility here. Shouldn’t someone as deeply troubled as Bruce Banner show some evidence of inner life?

Hulk is a strange creature, a film that attempted to be a stylish, kickass summer movie with a solid dramatic foundation but ended up satisfying almost no one. I admire certain aspects of the movie, like the way Lee counterpoints the restrained work by his leads with the unhinged mugshot-era performance by Nick Nolte, or Lee’s occasional use of quietness (a rare quality among most comic-book movies). But at the end of the day, the movie just doesn’t work. Yet I appreciate Lee’s efforts to make an honest-to-goodness art film out of a superhero movie. Hulk isn’t a success, but it’s more thought-provoking than most of the forgettable fare that has characterized the genre for years. It’s no Spider-Man, but I’ll take it over the likes of Fantastic Four- or The Incredible Hulk, for that matter.

Sydney Pollack, 1934--2008

Phil Nugent — Tue, 27 May 2008 01:00:00 GMT

Sydney Pollack has died at the age of 73, ending a recent struggle with cancer. As a young theater buff, Pollack, who grew up in South Bend, Indiana, went to New York after graduating high school and enrolled at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater, where he first studied under and later served as assistant to the legendary acting teacher Sanford Meisner. Early in his career, Pollack appeared on Broadway in A Stone for Danny Fisher and The Dark Is Light Enough as well as on TV, incluyding episodes of Plyahouse 90, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, and Have Gun, Will Travel. After Burt Lancaster, who he would later direct in the late sixties in The Scalphunters and Castle Keep, suggested that Pollack consider directing, he stepped behind the camera for work on several TV series and eventually broke into movies with the 1965 The Slender Thread. He brought a skilled rapport with actors and a taste for old-Hollywood glamour to his feature film work, and he became associated with certain high-caliber performers who placed a lot of trust in him--particularly Robert Redford, who he directed in seven starring roles, beginning with the 1966 Tennessee Williams adaptation This Property Is Condemned and including the winner of the 1985 Academy Award for Best Picture, Out of Africa. They also worked together on The Way We Were with Barbra Streisand, probably the most successful of Redford's old-style romances, Jeremiah Johnson, Three Days of the Condor, Havana, and The Electric Horseman, which paired Redford with Jane Fonda. Pollack was also an important figure in Fonda's career, having directed her in the 1969 They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, which marked her transformation from sex-kitten comedienne to hard-edged dramatic actress. That picture went a long way towards establishing Pollack as a new-style Hollywood pro; it won Academy Award nominations for Fonda, Pollack, and Susannah York, and earned Gig Young a Best Supporting Oscar for his brilliant performance as a dance-marathon emcee.

It was the 1982 Tootsie, though, that really took Pollack's career to a couple of different levels. A massive hit and instant classic, it elevated his profile as a director. And because Pollack earned many of the film's biggest laughs in his on-screen performance as Dustin Hoffman's agent, it unexpectedly revived his acting career. (Pollack took on the role at Hoffman's insistence; the actor apparently thought that the movie could benefit from the brio that Pollack brought to the many legendary screaming fights that the two of them were having off-camera.) After Tootsie and Out of Africa, he directed such big pictures as The Firm, Random Hearts, and The Interpretor; he also contributed memorable performances to Robert Zemeckis's Death Becomes Her, Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives, and Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, where he was brought in an emergency replacement for Harvey Keitel. In the last several years of his career, he also branched out as a producer of others' films, including The Fabulous Baker Boys, Sense and Sensibility, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Quiet American, 40 Shades of Blue, and Michael Clayton, where he also played George Clooney's boss. He also served as executive producer on his own last film as a director, the 2005 documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry.