The Screengrab : teeth

In Other Blogs: 2008 Halftime Reports

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Your favorite Screengrab writers have chimed in with their favorites (or least favorites, as the case may be) from the first half of 2008, but it may not completely shock you to learn that we are not the only bloggers to do so. Over at Cinematical, Jeffrey M. Anderson explains why. “Here's one of my dirty little secrets: I love lists and I keep track of my year's ten best movies all year long. Most other critics hastily assemble their lists at the last second, which is partly why so many December movies dominate; critics can't remember what they've seen earlier in the year. My list shows that 2008 has had a pretty poor first half, but I do have some contenders for listhood. Two movies are currently competing for the top spot, though I need to see them both again to be sure. Hou Hsiao-hsien's Flight of the Red Balloon (6 screens) is one; it has a lovely, laid-back, observant quality and feels less severe than some of Hou's other recent films. But I haven't yet decided if the film is a comedy or a tragedy.”

Also at Cinematical, Scott Weinberg presents a month-by-month breakdown of his year at the movies. As always, January is the cruelest month. “Not many choices, really, but I'm an enthusiastic supporter of both Cloverfield and Teeth. I also enjoyed Cassandra's Dream a bit more than most folks seem to, but it's hardly among Woody Allen's best movies. Beyond that, January was as lame as ever. (Thanks for nothing: One Missed Call, First Sunday, Mad Money, Rambo, Untraceable, and the execrable Meet the Spartans.)”

A site that’s new to us, Gone Elsewhere, weighs in with an overlooked choice. “The best new release I’ve seen thus far is Jeff Nichols’ Shotgun Stories. The film stars Michael Shannon as the oldest of three adult brothers whose father abandoned them years ago and began a new family, with four sons. The two sets of half-brothers grew up as bitter rivals, and emotions come to a head after the father dies. Shannon may be the most creepily intense actor in movies today; see William Friedkin’s Bug if you don’t believe me. Among the more interesting insights the film has to offer is that most of the characters seem to know full well that their actions are irrational and unproductive, but their hatred is self-sustaining and out of their control.”

At Scanners, Jim Emerson writes about the ever-changing crimson shades of cinematic blood. “Before the late '70s, blood was generally (and, remember, these are generalizations -- there are certainly exceptions) bright red and opaque, like nail polish or latex paint. It was often compared to ketchup, which in many cases it was. Since then, our taste for blood runs darker, anywhere from ruby red to almost black…My favorite movie-blood story belongs to Martin Scorsese. The way he tells it, the MPAA freaked when they saw the bloodbath in Taxi Driver (1976) and was ready to slap it with an X rating for violence. They suggested he tone it down -- as in, tone down the red -- in order to get an R. So, Scorsese put the scene through some kind of chem wash or something that made the blood more brownish. In his view, it made the scene more sickening and disturbing, but he got his R rating.”

And finally, our List-o-Mania selection this week comes from Spoutblog, which brings us 5 Actors Who Shouldn’t Be Famous. I’m not entirely certain Josh Hartnett even qualifies as famous, but the most controversial choice is Jon Voight. Granted, the included clip of Karate Dog is a powerful indictment.

Related:
2008: Second Quarter Wrap-Up
Half Measures: Leonard Pierce's Favorites of the First Half of '08
Half Measures: Paul Clark's Favorites of the First Half of '08

DVD Digest for May 6, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week: One of the most acclaimed films of 2007 arrives to do battle with some of the most reviled releases so far in 2008. Who will prevail? Read on…

DVD of the Week: No one does musical biography like Todd Haynes. This should have been clear from his previous films Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story and Velvet Goldmine, and his latest film, I’m Not There, lays any remaining doubts to rest. But then, when one is making a movie about Bob Dylan, how could it possibly fit into a neat little package? The Weinstein Company’s two-disc DVD of the film contains a wide variety of features, including a commentary track with Haynes, two deleted scenes, some audition tapes, a handful of documentaries, and a tribute to Heath Ledger. But most of all, there’s the film itself- I’m Not There is sometimes wondrous, sometimes frustrating, but always worthy of its subject, and this DVD should find a place in the collections of cinephiles and Dylan fans alike.

Alas, the other new arrivals on DVD aren’t nearly that noteworthy, sometimes aggressively counteracting the awesomeness of I’m Not There with their wholesale suckitude. More typical of this week’s crop is the universally detested The Hottie and the Nottie (Genius Products- how’s that for irony?), the latest attempt by its star- who I refuse to name here- to achieve total media domination. Also this week: Ice Cube and Tracy Jordan Morgan in First Sunday (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Hilary Swank in P.S. I Love You (Warner, also Blu-Ray); the long-awaited Eva Longoria Parker vehicle Over Her Dead Body (New Line); and 2006 TIFF Audience Award Winner Bella (Lions Gate). Also, this week brings the release of the heartwarming family-themed vagina dentata comedy Teeth, as well as Sony’s first step into the Bollywood market, Saawariya (also Blu-Ray). But while a few of these are worth seeing, I’d have to say this was probably the easiest week to pick a DVD of the Week in quite a while.

A few new editions of some already-on-DVD titles will be hitting stores this week as well, including: The Bridges of Madison County Deluxe Edition (Warner); Serial Mom Collector’s Edition (Focus); and a two-disc special edition of Twister (Warner, also Blu-Ray). Finally, this week’s sole Blu-Ray only release is the 2004 remake of Shall We Dance?

Sorry folks, that’s all I’ve got. Next week promises to bring more DVD goodness. Not a moment too soon, I say.

Take Five: Taxi!

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 22:00:00 GMT

We were looking forward to, in light of the Friday premiere of Teeth, bringing you a Take Five featuring nothing but movies featuring a vagina dentata. Unfortunately, the search for five such films proved rather, well, unsettling. So instead, you get this list, about taxicabs. Why taxicabs? Because this Friday also brings us the debut, in New York and L.A., of Taxi to the Dark Side, a new film from Alex Gibney, the prolific documentarian who also brought us Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, No End in Sight, and Who Killed the Electric Car?. His new effort focuses on the dismaying tale of an Afghani hack who was caught up — in error — in the U.S. anti-terrorist net, shedding yet another angle on the seemingly infinite human stories that can be found inside the confines of a taxi. Taxicabs and Hollywood films came into their own at about the same time, and ever since then, some of the most memorable scenes in cinema have involved having someone drive someone else around and urban area for cash. Taxi to the Dark Side, like most things involving the terror war, is likely to be a bummer, so here's some further taxicab confessions to get you from point A to point B.

TAXI DRIVER (1976)

Well, you knew we were going here, didn't you? There's no more indelible vision of life behind the wheel of a cab than in Martin Scorsese's masterwork, one of the greatest screen treatments of alienation and unfocused rage ever captured. From the scenes of Travis Bickle's yellow cab emerging from New York steam-clouds to the look on his face as a murderous passenger (played by Scorsese in full mile-a-minute mode) spells out the grim fate that awaits his cheating wife to the final, anticlimactically calm chit-chat he shares with his fellow hacks after he's somehow emerged a hero from a maniacal bloodbath, Taxi Driver perfectly captures the banality of brutality that lurks on the mean streets of New York and only emerges in the scary moments of privacy that we think we share with cabbies. For an excellent companion piece to this essential American film, track down American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince, a documentary biography Scorsese filmed at the same time of the unstable, hilarious, deranged young man who plays the gun dealer in Taxi Driver.

HEAVY METAL (1981)

Much as with the rest of the film, there are many levels at which you can appreciate the "Harry Canyon" segment of this legendary (or, rather, notorious) Canadian animated production based on a number of strips from the French-language fantasy comic anthology of the same name. You can enjoy the low-grade stunt casting of TV hack Richard Romano as futuristic New York City hack Harry Canyon. You can enjoy the attempt at animating the striking, ultra-detailed visual style of outstanding Spanish underground cartoonist Juan Giménez, and think of how much more enjoyable it would have been if the producers had more than $200 to spend on the segment. You can give yourself over to the goofball interpretation of 1940s noir dialogue set in the far future and written by a 1970s pseudo-hippie. And, believe it or not, you can actually appreciate one of the more interesting revisions of the cynical-cabbie-and-his-fare-on-the-lam. But honestly, we'd advise you to do what millions of other people have done when watching this movie: light up a fattie and wait for Harry to get it on with the hot alien chick.

D.C. CAB (1983)

Crap-movie auteur Joel Schumacher didn't just come out of nowhere. No, the man behind such memorably rotten movies as The Number 23, Batman & Robin and Dying Young has, in fact, been making unwatchable movies for three decades, and this was one of the first. Schumacher actually wrote this stinker as well, which delivers on the promise of its title by being set in Washington, D.C. and featuring taxicabs, but is somewhat of a letdown in other areas, such as its claim of being a 'comedy' despite having no jokes and its claim of featuring a 'cast' even though no one in it can act. Still, it's instructive to watch in order to see why Barney Miller's Max Gail didn't become a big movie star (answer: because he's a terrible actor), how many bad movies Bill Maher was in before he hit it big with his talk show (answer: fifty billion kazillion), why anyone ever thought that Adam Baldwin might have potential (answer: his brother Stephen made him look good by comparison), and what the eternal appeal of Mr. T is (answer: it's fun to watch him yell at people). A must-see, if your only other option is Batman & Robin.

NIGHT ON EARTH (1991)

One of Jim Jarmusch's most inconsistent films, but that's the nature of the beast: it's an episodic tale of five people in five different cities taking five different taxis to five different places for five different purposes, and the movie stands or falls by the strength of the performances and how deeply the viewer identifies with the characters in each segment. One of the problems with the film, and one reason why it enjoys a generally low critical opinion, is the 'lead' story, a cutesy and uncompelling bit of stunt casting with Winona Ryder (then Hollywood's It Girl) and a bored-looking Gena Rowlands. But the Helsinki segment is deeply affecting, one of the most moving stories the often ice-cool Jarmusch has ever delivered; the Rome segment features one of the last performances by Roberto Begnini that can't be described as insufferable; and the Paris segment is downright charming. All told, it's not a complete success, but it's a small and sometimes effective movie, one that perfectly captures the often-surreal interactions between driver and passenger familiar to anyone who spends a lot of time in taxis.

THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998)

Okay, okay, we're cheating. There are a million other movies about taxicabs, and almost any of them would be a better fit on this list than The Big Lebowski. But dammit, it's one of our favorite movies all the same, and even though only about three of its 117-minute running time is spent in a taxicab (understandable, since it's set in modern-day Los Angeles, where everyone has their own car), for our money, it's the funniest three minutes in a cab ever captured on film. The miserable cab ride home from Malibu after mistreatment at the hands of the sheriff — and exacerbated by a cabbie (played by a furious Ajgie Kirkland) who insists on exposing him to the Eagles — is one of the most memorable scenes in a movie full of great, funny moments. And it's not just stuck in there, either; like many scenes in the Coen's delightfully flipped noir, it's an echo of The Big Sleep. In that unforgettable adaptation of Raymond Chandler's impenetrable detective yarn, Bogie (as Philip Marlowe) seduces a friendly cab driver while on his way to chasing down a lead; here, the Dude has no such luck, ending up by the side of the road with Don Henley ringing in his ears.

Vanishing Act: Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Filmmakers disappear for all sorts of reasons. Eccentric geniuses like Kubrick and Malick are known for taking many years between projects and working in complete secrecy. Actors (Charles Laughton, Marlon Brando) and writers (Dalton Trumbo, Stephen King) may dabble with one-and-done efforts and never return to the director’s chair. An Ed Burns may make a big splash with his debut, churn out a series of increasingly lame follow-ups, and eventually find himself releasing his films directly to iTunes.

For this inaugural edition of Vanishing Act, we set the wayback machine for the summer of 1999, when Blair Witch mania swept the nation. Unknown filmmakers Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez hit upon an ingenious plan for making the most of their microscopic budget, using the mockumentary format to not only justify their jittery digital images but to amp up the "you are there" horror of three amateur filmmakers encountering evil in the woods. The Blair Witch Project was also a pioneer in the realm of viral marketing, using the web to generate underground buzz over whether or not the film was "real." Its influence can be seen in two movies releasing this week: Teeth explicitly mentions Blair Witch in its TV ads, while Cloverfield appropriates both the shakycam immediacy and the viral approach.

When Blair Witch grossed an astonishing $140 million at the box office, it seemed that Myrick and Sanchez were sitting pretty. They had the good sense to steer clear of the stinkeroo sequel Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, except as nominal executive producers. Their next announced collaboration, Heart of Love, was to be a complete change of pace, a screwball comedy described by Myrick in several interviews as "the most politically incorrect movie imaginable." Several web sites (now long defunct) were launched in hopes of recapturing the viral magic of their first collaboration, but the movie’s production was delayed over and over while the directors squabbled with distributor Artisan over Blair Witch profits and the project died quietly.

Despite their tiff with Artisan and mutual antipathy toward the failed Book of Shadows, Myrick and Sanchez toyed with making a Blair Witch prequel before finally going their separate ways. So what have they been up to lately?

This 2005 profile of Sanchez from the Baltimore City Paper finds him in pre-production on Probed, an “alien sci-fi horror monster movie” that was released straight to DVD as Altered in 2006. In a three-skull review (I think that’s a good thing), Fangoria.com notes that the effects-based set pieces are “a far cry from the psychological terrors of Blair Witch,” but that “Sanchez’s work on Altered shares with that previous film a keen sense of downward-spiral pacing.”

Myrick directed The Strand, which originally appeared as a series of webisodes about oddball characters on Venice Beach, CA, and Believers, a straight-to-video thriller about a dangerous cult. In this recent interview, Myrick discusses his new project The Objective, as well as the possibility of working with Sanchez again and maybe even reviving that Blair Witch prequel.

The Screengrab Q&A: TEETH's Jess Weixler Talks Vagina Dentata

John Constantine — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 20:48:00 GMT

Teeth is a confounding movie, as the Screengrab learned for itself when it caught a late fall screening. The movie is notable for its premise alone. As Ken Mondschein puts it in his History of Single Life essay “A Legend With Teeth” up on Nerve today, it’s no wonder that vagina dentata is a universal motif. It handily embodies sexual anxiety, and that subject is always a crowd pleaser on screen. Part Sam Raimi inspired schlock horror and part feminist-hero fantasy, Mitchell Lichtenstein’s filmic debut doesn’t wholly succeed thanks to some wonky pacing and an even wonkier script. Newcomer Jess Weixler’s star turn as Dawn is easily the best part of the film.

How’d you get involved with Teeth?

I auditioned for the best friend but they wanted me to read for Dawn. I got the part but said, no, I’m not going to do it. I was initially freaked out because there were a lot of sex scenes, and I’d never done sex scenes. I had to really have a good conversation with myself about whether I was ready for it. Mitchell met with me and talked to me about it. I realized he wasn’t trying to make a bad B-horror movie. He was trying to make a good dark comedy. I took it because it’s an awesome part that’s never been played before. It’s kind of a superhero role. She has an anatomical uniqueness. She has to discover it and learn how to use it for good.

How did you get yourself prepped for the role? How did you get into Dawn?

I was fortunate enough to have a month to prepare. I don’t know how people are given a script and are supposed to shoot in a few days. I had a month to think about where she starts and where she ends. She changes so much through the course of the movie. She goes from being a shut down, innocent little girl to being a sexual beast and a woman. I think she thinks she’s sexy by the end of the movie. Whereas before she didn’t want anything to do with her body.

What did you pull from your own life experience as a teenager and your first experiences with sex when approaching Dawn?

I think that it’s overwhelming for a young girl to think of herself as a sexual body. I think guys come into it much faster. Guys are quicker to make the most of it. So I saw myself through a male’s eyes to find myself pretty. Like ‘do they think I’m pretty?’ instead of finding myself pretty. Something important for anybody, not just a woman, is to think they are beautiful, sexy, and strong. Then you give that to somebody instead of just trying to please them. I relate to learning how to be sexual in a way that I enjoy, you know, not just trying to make someone else happy.

Outside of Dawn’s father in the movie, you have four, arguably five different males in the story and all of them are predatory.

This isn’t a realistic movie on any level. Mitchell created a world filled with archetypes for this situation and he put Dawn in circumstances that would help her on the journey of discovering what she and how to use it. I think he set it up to aid Dawn’s story, not because he thinks all guys are bad.

All guys are bad. You should know that.

Everybody’s a little rotten, I guess, right? Not everybody deserves to be dismembered.

They don’t deserve to be eaten?

Much better term.

What do you make of Dawn’s sexual empowerment coming out of her having a drug experience?

Well she wakes up enough while drugged to realize she likes the guy. She doesn’t, I think, know how drugged she is. She likes the guy at the time, has a good time, likes having sex. She’s enjoying it. When it comes out he was being predatory though, he gets it.

That’s what you would call it, getting it?

He gets it. He gets it taken. He gets eaten, you said it right. And spit back out.

When you hear the premise of Teeth, you have to think going in, ‘Well, that’s bound to happen.’

Yeah, you can imagine what may be going on. I know a lot of people, when they saw it at Sundance, didn’t know that she could even have sex. When she did have sex and nothing bad happened, everybody clapped. It’s an important moment.

What do you think Dawn is going off to do at the end of the movie? Is she going to become a superhero, a vigilante? Where is she headed?

I think she’s just going to get away from it all. I don’t think she’s going to go hunt down guys. I think she’s going to try to live her life and if she needs to protect herself she will.

What do you think Teeth is? What would you classify it as?

I would classify it as a dark comedy. It’s being marketed a little as a horror film. It has horror aspects to it but I wouldn’t say it’s a horror movie. I understand it’s going to be complicated for people to understand what it is they’re about to see because we send it up. It’s definitely larger than life.

That’s an understatement.