The Screengrab : stanley kramer

Taxing Time: A Screengrab Salute To Beat The Clock Cinema (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:30:00 GMT

IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD (1963) & RAT RACE (2001)

I can’t say for sure whether I’ve ever watched It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World all the way from beginning to end in one uninterrupted sitting, but I’ve definitely seen every part of the movie numerous times: mostly during lazy Sundays as a kid, when Stanley Kramer’s three-hour, star-studded tale of random strangers racing for treasure played (thanks to endless commercial breaks) like an all-day Laff-Olympics, featuring generations of comedy all-stars ranging from Buster Keaton to Milton Berle, Mickey Rooney, Buddy Hackett, Phil Silvers, Sid Caesar, Ethel Merman and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo by the 1963 edition of the Three Stooges (with Joe DeRita on drums). More than a few strands of Mad, Mad’s chaotic, uneven DNA wound up in the seminal fluids of the far less epic (and epochal) yet funnier than expected Rat Race, featuring another group of random celebrity strangers (including John Cleese, Rowan Atkinson, Seth Green, Jon Lovitz, Kathy Najimy, Whoopi Goldberg, Dave Thomas, Amy Smart, Breckin Meyer and Cuba Gooding, Jr.) involved in another episodic race against time for treasure...but this time, with original songs by the Baha Men! (AO)

BREWSTER'S MILLIONS (1985)

Walter Hill’s Brewster’s Millions was the seventh big-screen adaptation of George Barr McCutcheon’s 1902 novel and, thanks to the participation of headliner Richard Pryor and co-star John Candy, it remains the most well-known and popular. Taking its basic narrative cue from prior versions, Pryor plays a washed-up minor league pitcher who discovers that he’s the sole remaining heir of a long-lost kooky relative who, from beyond the grave, offers him a stunning deal: if he can spend $30 million in 30 days, he’ll inherit $300 million. It’s a too-good-to-be-true offer that, of course, proves more troublesome than it initially seems, as Pryor’s nobody finds it increasingly difficult to successfully relieve himself of so much money, a predicament from which Hill squeezes mild laughs as well as a predictable money’s-not-everything moral. Pryor’s dynamically profane humor is blunted by the proceedings’ safe PG conventionality, and the film is far less funny than Hill’s prior 48 Hours. Yet in Brewster’s Millions’ defense, its time-tested conceit still manages, over a century after its initial birth, to effectively ignite the imagination. (NS)

JUGGERNAUT (1974)

Richard Lester's there's-a-bomb-on-this-ship thriller brings class and wit to the disaster genre. The plot involves a demolitions wizard who secrets a collection of big-ass bombs on Skipper Omar Sharif's cruise ship, which are set to go off unless he's handed a wad of extortion money. While Lester scans the landscape for signs of the throwaway slapstick bits and eccentric, comic character moments that were his stock in trade, Richard Harris brings it on a rocket sled as the dashing, showboating cynic leading the team of bomb defusers who are flown in and dive down to join the ship in the middle of the ocean during a very photogenic storm. After his best mate is killed, Harris takes a break to get roaring drunk and deliver his Oscar-reel speech before getting back to work. You might think that getting roaring drunk when attempting to defuse a bunch of bombs is next on your to-do list would be be ill-advised, but if you do, what part of "Richard Harris" do you not understand? (PN)

DR. STRANGELOVE, OR, HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964)

Dr. Strangelove is beginning to rival Psycho as one of the movies we can find a reason to cram on to pretty much any list, but we couldn’t very well compile the greatest races against time without including it. After all, the stakes couldn’t be higher: if President Muffley and his advisors don’t succeed, the endgame will be the utter annihilation of life on Earth. Stanley Kubrick uses the simplest possible device to remind us of how close the world is coming to Armageddon: the little electric bulbs on the “Big Board” blink ever closer to the interior of a map of Russia. And yet, while everyone in the room knows the importance of what’s going on, no one can seem to focus on the matter at hand: General Turgidson is more concerned with being hoodwinked by the commies, Ambassador DeSadesky wants fresh fish and Cuban cigars, and the President gets into arguments with the Russian premier over who’s more sorry about this turn of events. It’s brilliant because it’s so ridiculously plausible: the end of the world is nigh, and no one can be bothered to pay attention. (LP)

Click Here For Part One, Three, Four, Five & Six...before it's too late!

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

Yesterday's Hits: It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963, Stanley Kramer)

Paul Clark — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:00:00 GMT

There’s an old critical truism that states that comedy isn’t debatable. In other words, funny is funny. However, like any other genre, big-screen comedy has always been subject to popular taste. Silent comedies were (necessarily) full of physical humor and slapstick. In the thirties, screwball comedy added the element of witty dialogue, often delivered in a rapid-fire style. By the time the sixties rolled around, audiences liked their comedies big. And It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World was the biggest comedy of all.

What made It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World a hit?: Beginning in the 1950s, the movie industry was forced to compete with the immensely popular upstart medium of television. The studios’ most dependable solution was to give moviegoing audiences what they couldn’t get at home. It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World had it all- glorious Technicolor! Ultra Panavision! Outrageous gags! And stars? You bet! Sure, you could see Milton Berle, Sid Caesar and Phil Silvers on your television set, but if you wanted to see them all together you had to go to the movies. Add into the mix popular stars like Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, and Buddy Hackett, plus a bona fide acting legend in Spencer Tracy, and, to quote another hit of the period, the movie promised “something for everyone- a comedy tonight!” Audiences turned out in droves, making It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World the #2 box office hit of 1963, trailing only Cleopatra, proving that a raft full of stars wasn’t enough to torpedo the Taylor/Burton juggernaut.

What happened?: As I wrote above, big-screen comedy has always been susceptible to the whims of the audience. Star-studded comedy spectaculars like It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World enjoyed a comfortable run at the box office for years, but by the end of the sixties they’d fallen out of fashion. Part of the problem was the cost of producing these movies- between the stars’ salaries and the price of the effects and stunts, Mad World’s budget was nearly $10 million, an exorbitant cost in 1963 Hollywood. And while Mad World itself was a hit, other movies like it weren’t so lucky.

Another problem was the demise of the Production Code. Once movies could get away with more risqué material, movies like Mad World and its ilk felt quaint and old-fashioned to many moviegoers. In the wake of films like MASH and the work of up-and-comers like Mel Brooks and Woody Allen, Mad World was a relic.

Does It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World still work?: Not really. Maybe you had to have grown up when the film’s comic titans were at their respective peaks, but I just didn’t find It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World all that funny. I’ve always found that the least entertaining movies tend to be failed comedies, since at least in the case of bad dramas, horror movies, etc., you still have something to laugh at. In Mad World the laughs are as sparse as the jokes are obvious. Consider that the opening scene of the movie finds a dying character literally kicking a bucket, and you’ll see the sort of humor you’re dealing with here. And if you think that’s corny, wait until you check out the final gag.

With few laughs to be had, the film becomes little more than a series of loud, overlong stunts and effects sequences, punctuated by liberal amounts of mugging from the stars. Needless to say, unfunny mugging gets old really quickly. After the first fifteen minutes, all I could think of was, “Jesus, I have to spend almost three hours with these people?” I’m guessing that wasn’t the reaction director Stanley Kramer was going for. All of the characters are given one note to play- Merman is domineering, Silvers is a pathological liar, Rooney and Hackett are bumblers, and so on. The film compounds this issue by sometimes pairing off characters with opposing viewpoints. For example, Berle resents the British, while Terry-Thomas hates Americans. Guess who winds up in a car together? Hilarity somehow fails to ensue.

Still, in a cast this stellar, there are bound to be a few bright spots. Tracy, ever the consummate professional, maintains his dignity primarily by underplaying. Among the comedians, the one who fares best is Dick Shawn as Merman’s mama’s-boy son, though more by virtue of his innate Dick Shawn-ness than with anything he actually does onscreen. But the only performer I felt any real affection for was Jimmy Durante as the ill-fated Smiler, who kicks the bucket (literally, let’s not forget) ten minutes into the movie. Not a good sign.

It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World had an extravagant budget, and as publicists are fond of saying, every cent is up there on the screen. But to coin a phrase, money can’t buy funny. Yes, the cast is full of stars, but most of them are wasted in thin roles or trotted out for gratuitous cameos. Why get the Three Stooges when you’re just going to have them stand there? Likewise, the set pieces are big all right, but instead of providing a setup and payoff, they just flail around endlessly. It’s not enough for Jonathan Winters to destroy an entire filling station if there's no comedic logic behind the scene. During the film’s climax, when dozen characters are trapped at the end of a fireman’s ladder, all I could do was to keep asking myself why the scene was supposed to be funny. Which is the last question one should ask when watching a comedy.

Abby Mann, 1927 - 2008

Phil Nugent — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Abby Mann has died at the age of 83. For many years there, Mann symbolized Serious, Hard-Hitting screenwriting on Moral Issues inspired by Contemporary Themes. Like his doppelganger, Paddy Chayefsky, Mann attracted attention for his work on such "golden age of television" shows as and Studio One., where his seriousness of intent and hard-hitting tone made it clear that he would be a natural collaborator for the director-producer Stanley Kramer. Kramer brought Mann into movies, where he won an Academy Award for his first screenplay, for 1961's Judgement at Nuremburg, and followed that up by adapting Katherine Anne Porter's novel Ship of Fools for Kramer. He also wrote A Child Is Waiting, produced by Kramer and directed by John Cassavettes; Vittorio De Sica's The Condemned of Altona; and the Frank Sinatra vehicle The Detective. By the end of the 1970s, his and Kramer's brand of speechifying topical melodrama was actually more in demand in TV than in movies, and Mann gravitated back to the small screen; he inadvertently created the hit cop show Kojak and made Telly Savalas a star by writing The Marcus-Nelson Murders, a 1971 TV-movie based on an actual case of police injustice, with Savalas's "Kojak" as the muckraking hero; in 1978, he had his sole fling as a director by filming his script for the 1978 miniseries King, starring Paul Winfield as the civil rights leader. That program stirred up controversy for speculating on a conspiracy behind King's assassination, much as his 1985 script for The Atlanta Child Murders was criticized for implying that the black man convicted for the crimes, Wayne Williams, was a patsy for a mysterious white killer, or killers. His last filmed scripts were for the HBO films Teamster Boss: The Jackie Presser Story (1992), Indictment: The McMartin Trial (1995), and Whitewash: The Clarence Bradley Story.

DVD Digest for February 12, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:00:00 GMT

This week, one of 2007's best films comes to DVD, and a master's musicals get the box-set treatment.

DVD of the Week: Most of the most beloved films of Ernst Lubitsch's career come from its final years, when the Lubitsch touch had already become well-established. But it's easy to forget that the master had already had a fruitful career long before Ninotchka, The Shop Around the Corner, and To Be or Not to Be. With the films included in this box set, Lubitsch was one of the first filmmakers to integrate song and narrative after the advent of talkies. But this would mean little today if the films themselves didn't hold up, and they do, with all of Lubitsch's trademark charm and Pre-Code sophistication. Eclipse has given their typical treatment (no extras, but lovely transfers) to the films The Love Parade, Monte Carlo, One Hour With You, and The Smiling Lieutenant, which boast some of the era's quintessential stars — Maurice Chevalier, Claudette Colbert, and Jeannette MacDonald. As always, Eclipse and parent company Criterion succeed in filling in another hole in cinema history.

Incidentally, today is my birthday, so if anyone out there is looking for a suitable gift, you could do a whole lot worse than this.

A bumper crop of more recent films being released on DVD this week, including: Ben Affleck's surprisingly great Gone Baby Gone (Buena Vista, also Blu-Ray); James Gray's searing crime drama We Own the Night; Becoming Jane (Buena Vista, also Blu-Ray), the second Austen-themed dramedy in as many weeks; John Cusack in The Martian Child (New Line); No Reservations (Warner, also Blu-Ray), the Catherine Zeta-Jones-starring remake of 2001's Mostly Martha; Tyler Perry's latest hit, Why Did I Get Married? (Lionsgate); the Apollo-mission documentary In the Shadow of the Moon (ThinkFilm); and John Turturro's polarizing star-studded quasi-musical, Romance and Cigarettes (Sony). In addition, this week finally sees the DVD release of Amy Heckerling's long-delayed I Could Never Be Your Woman (Genius Entertainment), starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Paul Rudd, and Atonement Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan. If nothing else, now we can see what all the fuss was about.

Back to classics, this week also brings Sony's The Stanley Kramer Film Collection, a collection of five films Kramer directed and/or produced. The centerpiece of the set is a new 40th Anniversary Edition of Kramer's once-controversial interracial-marriage drama Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Also in the set is the Kramer-directed Ship of Fools, as well as The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, A Member of the Wedding, and The Wild One, all of which he produced.

Other older films coming to DVD include: The Joan Crawford Collection Volume 2 (Warner), which includes Sadie McKee, Strange Cargo, A Woman's Face, Flamingo Road, and Torch Song; Fox's Charlie Chan Collection Volume 4; and Kenneth Branagh's 1991 dramedy Peter's Friends (MGM), boasting an enviable cast, including Branagh, then-wife Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, and Imelda Staunton. For some reason, MGM has seen fit to package the film in a box set alongside the misguided Elmore Leonard/Paul Schrader satire Touch, the 1988 Patrick Dempsey-Jennifer Connelly vehicle Some Girls, and Scott Baio and Willie Aames in Zapped! Strange bedfellows indeed.

Finally, if you're jonesing for TV on DVD, this week sees the release of season 1 of The Equalizer (Universal), as well as the Vern-approved Blade: the Series (New Line). But fear not — only one more week until the release of Walker, Texas Ranger: The Complete Fourth Season, the rare DVD that can be enjoyed by both Chuck Norris fans and Conan O'Brien watchers.