The Screengrab : swept away

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: Oct. 11-17, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Hey there, Screengrab readers. Joe the Plumber here. You don’t want to know the details, believe me, but there’s been an unusual toilet incident here at Screengrab headquarters and I’ve been called in to take care of the situation. It’s cool, I don’t mind helping these guys out because they pay cash under the table. No taxes! But they did ask if I wouldn’t mind handling the Highlight Reel while I’m here. I’ll admit, I don’t usually read the Screengrab – I’m more of a Modern Materialist guy – but they slipped me a few extra bucks, so what the hell. Here’s the best stuff I saw this week:

They did a decent job with the Top 25 Leading Ladies of All Time (Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven and Eight), although I personally would have included Raquel Welch. Always had a thing for her. And this list of the Top 007 James Bond Theme Songs (Parts One and Two) is all right, but where’s For Your Eyes Only? That Sheena Easton had some pipes – and I know from pipes!

I don’t get out to the pictures much, so I probably won’t see W. and What Just Happened, but I am looking forward to that new Star Trek. Does anyone know if it has tribbles in it? I never saw Cockfighter, My Neighbor Totoro, Swept Away or Boiler Room – but I’ve seen my share of boiler rooms, let me tell you!

Aw, jeez, this toilet is bad news. What is that green stuff? Anyway, I gotta wrap this up, but if you’re interested in Tony Curtis’s book, Oliver Stone movies, the Saw amusement park ride or Jabba the portly Irish gent, go read about ‘em.

Oh, and this isn’t funny. These are tools, not weapons.

Trailer Review: RocknRolla

Paul Clark — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Last week I declared Guy Ritchie’s latest film to be one of my most-dreaded titles for this upcoming fall, and this trailer is a big reason why. Normally, with such an insistently-cut trailer, I’d wonder if it might just be trying to punch up a somewhat less aggressive movie. However, seeing as how every movie Ritchie has made that wasn’t Swept Away looks exactly like this- convoluted gangland proceedings, gonzo violence, a laddish sense of humor, in-your-face onscreen text, show-offy camera tricks out the wazoo- I don’t think that’s the case here. One would think that the disastrous reception to Ritchie’s Revolver would relegate this to a direct-to-DVD release. But since it stars 300’s newly-anointed star Gerard Butler, this is practically guaranteed to receive a nationwide booking. And I suppose that’s fine- far be it from me to begrudge a filmmaker the chance to get his work seen. But that doesn’t mean I have to buy a ticket.

Embattled Guy Ritchie “Caught Up in the Zeitgeist of Slaggery”

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Sure, it seems like it would be easy enough to be Guy Ritchie, making your London gangster movies, naming your characters after Dick Tracy villains and generally building a career out of fast-paced, violent Tarantino knockoffs. But Ritchie has hit a rough patch of late. Warner Bros. is said to be down on the American box office prospects of his latest effort, RocknRolla, and the sordid details of his wife Madonna’s alleged dalliance with Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez were splashed across the New York tabloids for weeks.

Ritchie recently talked to Craig McLean of The Guardian about the former matter, even as he did his best to evade the latter. About Warner Bros. president Alan Horn’s concerns about RocknRolla, Ritchie is diplomatic. “'Well, first of all I like Warner Brothers very much. They've been very good to me,' he replies. He's about to begin shooting his next film, a Sherlock Holmes story with Robert Downey Jr. in the title role, and that's a Warner Brothers project. 'And I like and respect Alan very much. I mean, they're still talking about an 800-screen release [in the US]. If it's on 800 screens that's bigger than what I would do anyway - I would go smaller. So there's not much I can say.'”

Ritchie gets a little more prickly when the subject of Revolver, his underperforming and critically panned previous film, arises. “'I was disappointed in the respect that...I'm not sure if the film was being slagged off as much as...We got caught up in the zeitgeist of slaggery, so it was clearly at some point not about the film. And I just don't accept it's a bad film. I know how to make a film. So to say it's a bad film, to say it's constructed badly or anything - it's just not.”

Ritchie turns politic again when the topic of his wife’s acting in his remake of Swept Away is raised. For that and more, check out the full interview here.

Related:
Madonna on Film: Screengrab Celebrates Her Top Ten "Best" and Worst Performances
No Shit, Sherlock: Guy Ritchie Reimagines Holmes

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

Unwatchable: The All-Time Bottom 100 Movies

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Forget Ishtar, Heaven’s Gate, Howard the Duck and all the other renowned turkeys of cinema history. The Guardian delves into the depths of the IMDb’s 100 lowest ranked movies to find the truly toxic, the absolute worst of the worst. As Sam Richards writes, the IMDb list “differs from most critic-voted ‘worst movie of all-time’ lists, in that any film that's memorably bad - say, Swept Away - tends to get just enough positive responses to save it from total ignominy. The Bottom 100 exists to catalogue films that have been viewed out of error, obligation or last-turkey-in-the-shop desperation.”

Richards sampled a handful of the lowest-ranked entries “in a Ludovico technique-style experiment.” Number three on the list is Zombie Nation, “a staggeringly idiotic 2004 film by German director Ulli Lommel, regarded as a modern day Ed Wood…Expecting a gore-fest, you're confronted by the world's worst 'zombies': they wear aviators and lipstick, drive cars and devour their prey to the sound of perky Europop.” He also checks out Mystery Science Theater 3000 favorite Manos: The Hands of Fate, “shabby piece of teensploitation” Invisible Maniac, and the number one entry on the Bottom 100, none other than The Hottie and the Nottie. “It's not the worst film ever though, just a predictable, insulting vanity project that asks you to accept that an emu-faced posho with only one available facial expression is the most beautiful woman in America.”

You can check out the complete list here. As you can see, it skews toward more recent fare like Witless Protection and the critically reviled oeuvre of spoofmeisters Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer (Meet the Spartans). Somebody must like those movies since they keep making money, but apparently the fans prefer to remain incognito. Our biggest disappointment is that Richards did not subject himself to #82 on the list, Anus Magillicutty. An IMDb user comment reveals one of the pitfalls of the Bottom 100: “I watched this movie because it was rated to be so bad it might have been good.” If there’s one thing we’ve learned here at the Screengrab, it’s that this is almost never true.

Madonna Ruins Casablanca

John Constantine — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:44:00 GMT

It’s just a rumor right now but, according to the Daily Mail, Madonna is trying to get together a remake of Casablanca. A remake of Casablanca set in Iraq in which she plays Ilsa Lund. Go ahead, find something disposable to vomit in. You back? Now think of all her scenes in Dick Tracy. Bet you don’t remember eating those carrots. Now think of Guy Ritchie’s Swept Away remake. Alright, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry.

Thankfully, there’s no script or anything remotely tangible to confirm this horror yet but if anyone can get funding to make something terrible, it’s Madonna.

I apologize for earlier. Click on this. It’ll make you feel better.

Props to Buzz Sugar for warning us.