The Screengrab : terminator 2

Final Farewells: The Best & Worst Death Scenes In Cinema (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:30:00 GMT

Arnold Schwarzenegger in TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY (1991)

Why do people keep ruining James Cameron’s perfectly good endings? First, Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley goes through hell to save poor little Newt in Aliens, only to have friggin’ David Fincher whack them both in Alien3 (because, of course, it’s much cooler to kill off beloved, memorable characters than, say, to create interesting new ones). Then, in T2, Cameron finished off the story he began in the original Terminator with a scene of noble, sacrificial self-immolation by the villain-turned-hero/father figure Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 (a.k.a. Arnold Schwarzenegger) that clearly implies the threat of a future evil robot dystopia has been averted...and a decade later, we’re right back where we started with Terminator 3, Terminator Salvation and The Sarah Connor Chronicles. As it turns out, Arnie didn’t have to lower himself into that vat of molten lead after all (a scene I could only illustrate with the clip above, since every other version and parody on YouTube has embedding mysteriously disabled, possibly by Skynet). But the scene nevertheless makes my list of great deaths (even though cyborgs can't technically die) because, even more than the hyper-stylized imagery of 300 or Sin City, the fiery shot of the doomed cyborg descending towards oblivion captures the operatic melodrama at the heart of the modern comic book ethos as well as any Mexican standoff in the days when epic grand finales were Sergio Leone’s stock-in-trade. (AO)

Random Thief in AMERICAN HISTORY X (1998)

There are death scenes, there are gruesome death scenes, there are over-the-top nasty and ridiculous death scenes, and then there’s the unforgettable murder perpetrated by Edward Norton’s white supremacist in Tony Kaye’s American History X. In the ghastly attack, Norton’s skinhead confronts three African-American gentlemen trying to break into his car by shooting at them, killing one and injuring another. While spitting racial epithets, he forces the wounded man to place his open mouth on the street curb, and then stomps on the back of the man’s head, thereby fatally splitting his jaw (and face). Twelve years after first seeing the film, the mere thought of the moment still makes me cringe. (NS)

Jean-Paul Belmondo in BREATHLESS (1960) & PIERROT LE FOU (1965)

If you ever sit down to a compile a list of memorable death scenes from the movies -- an activity that I recommend, by the way -- you may find that they divide neatly into two categories, the quiet and reflective (typified at one end of the scale by the end of McCabe & Mrs. Miller) and the wild and flashy (summed up at the other end by James Cagney in, well, anything). In the films that bookend their period of collaboration, Jean-Luc Godard and his star Belmondo hit both extremes. In their breakthrough hit, Breathless, Belmondo, lying in the street with a bullet in his hide, came to terms with his happily misspent existence and enjoyed telling off his girlfriend one last time. Five years later, in Pierrot le Fou, the older and wiser man bids farewell to this cruel world (and to Godard's universe) by breaking out the boom sticks. (PN)

Godard's love of the purity of cinematic worlds is at its apex here. Pierrot Le Fou is a lusciously colored, beautifully shot film about how films -- along with other pop culture trappings -- steal logic from seemingly intelligent people. His characters vacillate between complex and ridiculous. Emotions are heightened without warning, the highbrow ideas of the film are treated to the most lowbrow signifiers, and suddenly Anna Karina is bursting into lovely song. When Belmondo, as Ferdinand/Pierrot, decides to off himself in the most dadaist way, he suddenly seems to realize that the absurdity that holds him in thrall is about to kill him. Ah, but it's too late. Such is the life of the modern man, I suppose: hypnotized by stories and images until the mere fact of living one's life is the same as starring in a fascinating and bizarre movie. The drama will kill you. (HC)

Janet Leigh in PSYCHO (1960)

Arguably cinema’s most famous death, Janet Leigh’s shower scene in Psycho remains a classic for a variety of reasons: the unexpectedness of the incident; the chutzpah Hitchcock exhibits in killing off his heroine midway through the story; the terrifying notion of being attacked unexpectedly and while defenseless; and the editing of the scene itself, a master class in audio-visual synchronicity that manages to convey a monumental amount of violence and bloodshed while never once showing the murderer’s knife making contact with Leigh’s skin. Plain and simple, it’s the death scene by which all others must be judged. (NS)

King Kong in KING KONG (1933)

For pure iconography, few cinematic sights hold a candle to that of King Kong battling aircrafts while clinging to the Empire State Building. Yet while the gargantuan ape’s subsequent fatal plummet to the NYC streets below is, ostensibly, a “happy” ending, what’s remarkable about the climax is how melancholy it plays. Carl Denham may believe “It wasn’t the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast,” but the truth is that he – and we, as consumers who crave the type of entertainment sold by hucksters like Denham – are truly responsible for the fallen beast’s death, a truth that lingers long after the final fade to black. (NS)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Five, Six, Seven, Eight & Nine

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Phil Nugent, Hayden Childs

Screengrab Review: "Terminator Salvation"

Nick Schager — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Terminator Salvation goes Dark Knight-gloomy to reignite James Cameron’s technophobic sci-fi series, jumping forward to post-Judgment Day 2018 to pick up with rebel “prophet” John Conner (Christian Bale) and the human resistance as they wage war against malevolent sentient Skynet and its army of killer robots. The world is now ash-gray and reverberates with cacophonous explosions and squealing metal, a grim, gritty Road Warrior desert dystopia populated only by Terminators and vagabond humans who huddle around barrel fires listening to the radio broadcasts of Connor, a humorless hero embodied by Bale with such monotonous intensity that one fears the greatest threat to his well-being is a self-produced aneurism. Bale’s vehemence suitably meshes with the apocalyptic landscape in which director McG has situated him. Yet working from a script by John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris that places a far greater premium on land, sea and air skirmishes than on meaningful drama, the actor proves no more compelling than the machines against which his protagonist struggles. If only this were a 2001-style commentary on mankind’s devolution. Terminator Salvation, alas, strives for bleak gravity with misguided fervor, dispatching the very traces of warm, generous humanity that, in Cameron’s first two chapters, served as counterbalancing reminders of the necessity for staving off forthcoming mecha-Armageddon.

Given the dreariness of his tale's military resistance, however, McG makes the exact opposite case, positing a human race barely worth saving. At odds with his resistance leadership – namely Michael Ironside, here drained of nails-tough charisma – Conner is determined to use a special transmission signal to shut down Skynet’s HQ, as well as find Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), the teenager who will someday travel back in time to impregnate his mother and become his father. Conner ceases to exist if Reese dies, a scenario familiar to anyone with passing knowledge of the series. And here, it’s frequently intercut with the saga of Marcus Wright (bland battering ram Sam Worthington), whom we first see on death row in 2003 donating his organs to Helena Bonham Carter’s bald, dying Cyberdyne scientist, and later find emerging from the 2018 primordial muck reborn as…what? One guess is all it takes to deduce the surprise lying in wait. The predictability of this revelation, though, isn’t the bummer it might have been thanks to the more pressing disinterest elicited by the overall story, which is comprised of underlined-meaningful dialogue (“Everybody deserves a second chance”), peripheral hotties with beautiful hair (Moon Bloodgood as the badass female, a preggers Bryce Dallas Howard as the maternal one), and action that’s orchestrated with harsh vigor but – one thrilling semi-truck chase notwithstanding – only mild imagination.

McG nods to his predecessors in ways both strained (managing to shoehorn in, with some difficulty, “I’ll be back”) and amusing (a snippet from Guns N’ Roses’ “You Could Be Mine”), but even less than Jonathan Mostow’s Terminator 3, his franchise entry barely bothers adding something new to the mix, adhering to a strict run-and-gun template at the expense of innovation. That might be pardonable if the film proffered even an ounce of humor, which has always been a secondary but vital series component, whether it was Edward Furlong ordering Ahnold’s emotionless surrogate father figure not to kill in T2, or Kristanna Loken’s red-leather-dominatrix get-up in T3. Terminator Salvation, however, mistakes soberness for seriousness, its gloomy character drama coming off as merely action-figure poses, and its deafening combat, drained of any larger narrative import, registering mainly as impressive CG demo reel material. Where feeling is needed, McG offers only cold steel, such that when Wright finally rebels against his makers with a corny bit of slow-motion window-breaking, and Schwarzenegger shortly thereafter makes a cameo – via face-grafting computer-generated trickery – the sought-after emotional payoff never materializes. In its place, there’s only crashing, crushing indifference.

DVD Digest for May 19, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

This week, the same old stuff you always get from DVD Digest. Also, a new Steven Seagal movie!

For some people reading this column, the news that the recent releases Valkyrie (MGM, also Blu-Ray), Paul Blart: Mall Cop (Sony, also Blu-Ray), and My Bloody Valentine 3D (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray) will be more important than anything else. But we’re looking out for the rest of you as well. And if none of these titles quicken your pulse- and I perfectly understand if they don’t- there’s always the latest from movie-star-turned-musician-turned-energy-drink-magnate (take that, Billy Bob Thornton!) Steven Seagal, Driven to Kill (Fox, also Blu-Ray). On the other side of things, the artsy and fartsy out there should be salivating over the release of John Gianvito’s excellent Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind (E1 Entertainment). In other words, something for everybody!

And what would a DVD Digest be without the classics section, for those of you who aren’t all uptight about black-and-white, subtitles, Academy ratio, and long-dead movie stars. Devotees of the Criterion Collection no doubt already know about the dynamic duo of DVDs hitting streets today. First, Peter Yates' great Boston crime drama The Friends of Eddie Coyle (Criterion) makes its long-awaited DVD debut. Or if you’re in the mood for something more, uh, Eastern, check out Pigs, Pimps & Prostitutes: 3 Films by Shohei Imamura (Criterion)- includes The Insect Woman, Pigs and Battleships, Intentions of Murder. Fans of old Hollywood would be advised to pick up two John Wayne favorites, El Dorado Centennial Edition (Paramount) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance Centennial Edition (Paramount). And by some happy coincidence, today’s release of Fritz Lang’s Nazi-hunting thriller Man Hunt (Fox) is timed perfectly with the release of the aforementioned Valkyrie. Funny how that worked out, dontcha find?

Fans of TV on DVD should find something to enjoy among this week’s releases, which include the ever-popular 24 Season 7 (Fox, also Blu-Ray), Alan Ball’s vampire saga True Blood (HBO, also Blu-Ray), and the no-longer-surprising-in-its-awesomeness Friday Night Lights Season 3 (Universal).

Finally, if you’ve a Blu-Ray player, you’re in luck! Today’s a big one for Blu-Ray only releases, highlighted by the Batman 20th Anniversary Blu-Ray Book (Warner), which includes a Batmobile full of extras, documentaries, and other cool stuff. For the kids, A Bug’s Life (Disney) hits stores to capitalize on the upcoming Pixar release Up, while those who are looking forward to the latest Terminator blockbuster will no doubt pick up Terminator 2 Skynet Edition (Lionsgate). The political drama Lions for Lambs (Fox) is coming out for fans of political speechifying. Finally, Paramount’s got a whole slew of new Blu-Ray only releases hitting stores today, including Three Days of the Condor, Changing Lanes, Enemy at the Gates, Paycheck, and The Machinist.

Precursors: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Nick Schager — Mon, 18 May 2009 14:30:00 GMT

In what is unquestionably the most obvious choice for this week’s recommendation, anyone with even a passing interest in Terminator Salvation - the McG-helmed fourth installment in the venerable sci-fi franchise (which I'll be reviewing later this week) - must first acquaint himself or herself with Terminator 2: Judgment Day, James Cameron’s more-is-more sequel to his 1984 Arnold Schwarzenegger blockbuster. Having defeated the cyborg killing machine sent from the future to kill her unborn son, who is destined to become the leader of a resistance in a war with machines, Sarah Conner (Linda Hamilton, buff beyond reason) now resides in a loony bin because of her prophesy ravings, while hero-to-be John (Edward Furlong) is a trouble-making kid living with foster parents and hanging out with Diff’rent Strokes’ Sam. Their lives are again thrown into disarray by the appearance of Schwarzenegger’s terminator, though he’s now the good guy, programmed to protect them from a shape-shifting liquid-metal robot known as the T-1000 (Robert Patrick). Groundbreaking FX that still (mostly) hold up, an epic scale, and a number of kick-ass action set pieces make T2 the ne plus ultra of ‘80s-‘90s action, proving to be both the pinnacle of old-school slam-bang filmmaking as well as the harbinger of our current era’s CGI-infested spectacle cinema.

Tribeca Film Festival Review: "From Within"

Phil Nugent — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:00:00 GMT

From Within is a good, nasty little horror picture about a mysterious rash of apparent suicides in a small town setting. The ingeniously twisted script, by Brad Keane, involves an occult spell that is used to punish some judgemental fundamentalists for the consequences of their superstitious paranoia, which is just the kind of logical inconsistency that makes for classic nightmares. The direction, by Phedon Papamichael provides some rude jolts but is more heavily paced than it needs to be and could stand some leavening of humor; Elizabeth Rice is very appealing as the rational-minded teenage heroine, but movie's tone is very much in sync with its young male lead, Thomas Dekker, who (as in the Terminator TV series) is so monotonously, grimly intense that you'd almost pay to see him tickled by professionals. Still, the picture holds you, and its vicious streak is played all the way out to the end, which delivers a surprising kick. From Within will be best appreciated by those who like their horror movies without milk, cream, or sugar.

The Top Ten Movies With Alternate Cuts, Part 2

Phil Nugent — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 15:00:00 GMT

MANHUNTER (1985, Michael Mann)

I've got four cuts of Manhunter on my shelf: the original theatrical version, a re-cut for broadcast on TCM, another cut allegedly for a preview, and then Mann's final definitive cut. Anything significantly different about these cuts? It's basically trimming down a few scenes and putting one or two back in, most of them documented on this excellent fan website. Mann has gone back to his movies before, re-cutting Last of the Mohicans (in the process removing a Clannad song that dated the flick), Ali, and even preparing a three-hour cut of Heat for a TV broadcast that never happened. Here, though, was an instance where a director's revisionist tinkering harmed the flick, removing dialogue from William Peterson that actually showed how much he empathised with the serial killer he was hunting. Though it might not be Mann's preferred cut, for me the original theatrical release is the definitive cut of the film so far.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY (2001-2003, Peter Jackson)

Peter Jackson had made it clear during pre-production of his adaptation of Tolkien's trilogy that an extended cut would be coming out, and so it did, and the fans lapped it up, thus putting even more cash into New Line's coffers. But were these cuts any good? It depends on what you're looking for. I always thought the theatrical releases were pretty rushed and the extended versions did have a more relaxed pace about them, but did Tolkien fans really want to see hobbits getting tall from Ent juice or a bit of extended battle butchery? Apparently so. I thought these were a mixed bag. (I mean, do you really want to see an extended ending for Return of the King? Wasn't it long enough anyway?) All credit for Jackson for giving consumers the options, but was it really that much of an improvement?

THE STAR WARS TRILOGY (1977-1982, George Lucas, Irvin Kersher, Richard Marquand)

Han fired first. Among all the extra tidbits that were included in the trilogy, the one that angers the fans most is George Lucas changing the infamous Han vs Greedo confrontation from this:

To this:

And its downhill from there. Yes the special editions made a bundle when re-released. Yes, most people probably have them on their DVD shelf, but if you just give audiences one option, that's what they have to go with. It was only last year that Lucas relented and finally released the original, unaltered films on DVD and even then, they were non-anamorphic transfers. Does the additional material add to the films? Nope.

THE NEW WORLD (2005, Terrence Malick)

Terrence Malick is notorious for taking a long time with the editing of his movies, so it wasn't a surprise to hear that his last film, The New World, wasn't going to make its original November 2005 release date. A month later though, a 150-min cut was screened for critics with hopes that it would qualify for a few Academy Awards. In 2006, the film went into general release with a shortened cut, which Malick considered his best version; a log of the changes can be found here. The only place to get a copy of the first cut is if you have a copy of the Academy screeners or you get the special edition Italian DVD. Never fear though, as according to producer Sarah Greene, Malick has started work on another cut of The New World. Though considerable work had been done on it, its still up in the air when it may come out, though I suspect this may be due to the director mulling over what HD format he should release it on. After this, one hopes he can get back to finally finishing his alternate cut of The Thin Red Line, which is rumored to be a completely new film altogether. But then, even a re-edited Malick film is better than no Malick.

THE LAST EMPEROR (1987, Bernardo Bertolucci)

The Last Emperor is one of those old-style epics that needs to be seen on the big screen. No amount of CGI could have the power to surprise and astonish like this scene:

It was the original 160-minute cut that picked up the Academy Awards, but Bertolucci preferred his director's cut and until recently, you could only get a decent copy of both cuts from the U.K. But when Criterion recently announced its special edition containing both cuts, it quietly noted that the cinematographer, Storraro again, once again applied his Univisium concept by re-formatting the film to now be shown at 2:1 aspect ratio. It's unimaginable to see a film like this in a compromised halfway-house aspect ratio, but in this case, fans of The Last Emperor at least have a choice.

RUNNERS UP:

REVENGE (1989, Tony Scott)

Most alternate cuts have stuff being put into the film, Tony Scott went one better by chucking stuff out of Revenge. He waited eighteen years to remove twenty-four minutes out of Tarantino's favourite flick. Do we get to see more Madeleine Stowe in her prime? Disappointingly, not really, but we do get a much tighter and meaner story of two men who are righteously pissed off with one another because of a bitch in heat.

LEGEND (1984, Ridley Scott)

There are about four cuts of this flick flying around the world. Do any of them improve Scott's flawed fairy tale? They try. Until the 2003 DVD release, U.S. viewers were only familiar with a Tangerine Dream-scored cut of the film. The film's devoted fan base resulted in the release of a director's cut that revealed that even with the director at full control, the film may have had little chance at the box office but now was held together by the late Jerry Goldsmith's more sumptious score. Tim Curry as Darkness steals the show from everyone.

ALIEN 3 (1993, David Fincher)

David Fincher's debut nearly killed off the director's career, and until the release of the special edition, the only other version of the film was a leaked three-hour bootleg. The new cut is a revelation, even though it was done without Fincher's collaboration. A completely new version that makes you re-assess an otherwise neglected and flawed contribution to the Alien franchise. And if you disagree with that, I got two words to say to you: Alien: Resurrection.

TERMINATOR 2 (1992, James Cameron)

Cameron first got alternate cut success with the release of Aliens: Special Edition. T2 got a bunch more footage thrown in, most of it of the type that filmmakers refer to as "character development". To his credit, Cameron's DVD producers were the first ones who used "branching" DVD software, where extended footage would be seamlessly intergrated within the original cut.

SUPERMAN 2 (1992, Richard Lester, Richard Donner)

An alternate ending to Superman 2.:

Watching Donner's cut of Superman II is painful. The additional Marlon Brando footage really adds to the film, as do his conceptions of the scenes, but unfortunately, Richard Donner was kicked off the film after only two-thirds of it had been completed. The rest of it was re-shot by Richard Lester. Donner's insistence on using as little of Lester's footage as possible creates a curious discontinuity, but it's the repeat ending that really lets it down. If Donner had been allowed to finish the sequel, he may have come up with something that didn't rehash the first film, but in this case the Lester film is more complete.

— Faisal A. Qureshi

Click here for Part 1.

The Ten Best Deleted Scenes of All Time, Part 2

Peter Smith — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 18:00:00 GMT

THE CHIP REMOVAL SCENE, TERMINATOR 2

The premise of Terminator 2 is that Arnold Schwarzenegger's character, a cyborg who spent the whole first film trying to assassinate future revolutionary Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), has now been reprogrammed to protect her family. In other words, he's the same soulless killing machine, but on a humane mission instead of a lethal one. So how does he acquire emotions, attachments and embarrassing slang words over the course of the film? That mystery is explained in this deleted scene, in which Sarah removes an inhibitor chip from the Terminator's head. (Fun fact: given the limits of special effects in 1991, the mirror effect was achieved by having Linda Hamilton perform surgery on a dummy head, while Hamilton's twin sister — seriously — stood on the other side of the mirror with actual Arnold.) The scene also includes a confrontation between Connor and her son which fundamentally changes the dynamic of their relationship, allowing him to take over as leader. (In the director's commentary, Cameron says he "agonized" over cutting this scene.)

"THIS BULGING RIVER", WAITING FOR GUFFMAN

We'd kill to spend a day sifting through Christopher Guest's cutting room floor. Guest films hours and hours of documentary-style footage for his improvised comedies, only a fraction of which end up in the final film. The DVD versions of This is Spinal Tap (which he co-wrote but didn't direct), Best in Show and A Mighty Wind are loaded with hilarious (and sometimes shockingly dark) deleted scenes. But our favorite is this giddy extended climax from Waiting for Guffman. Guffman follows a small-town community theater troupe as they cast, rehearse and perform an original musical, all the while increasingly convinced that they're heading to Broadway. This deleted musical number is an ingenious musical theater parody — with production values that are comparable to actual Broadway.

THE HOTEL CONFESSION SCENE, SUPERMAN II

Director Richard Donner had filmed more than half of Superman II when the producers removed him from the project, replacing him with Richard Lester. The theatrical version of the film is a hybrid of Lester and Donner scenes, and for years after its release, rumors swirled that a better film — the Donner cut — was buried in the Warner Brothers vaults. When the Donner cut finally came to DVD in 2006, it was a mixed blessing: on one hand, it's very clearly an unfinished film. On the other hand, it contains some marked improvements over the theatrical release. This scene, in which Lois cleverly forces Clark to reveal his identity as Superman, is one of those improvements. It packs far more of a dramatic wallop than the "oops-i-dropped-my-glasses-in-the-fire" reveal from the Lester version. Perhaps the ultimate deleted scene, this one was never actually filmed; it was edited together from Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder's separate screen tests.

DAVID DUNN AND THE PRIEST, UNBREAKABLE

Unbreakable, M. Night Shyamalan's hushed, atmospheric follow-up to The Sixth Sense, tells the story of David Dunn (Bruce Willis), a stressed-out family man who survives a horrific train crash. When David realizes that he was the only survivor — and no one can offer him an adequate explanation — he begins to explore the possibility that he may be something other than an ordinary human being. It's a clever premise, and Unbreakable is an underrated film, but there are some serious gaps in logic — i.e., how has David passed his fortieth birthday without ever realizing he's invulnerable? This deleted scene offers some much-needed insight. It also toys nicely with the stock character of the cinematic priest; we expect him to talk about fate and God's plan, which he does, but not in the way you're thinking.

THE PUMPKIN CARVING SCENE, DONNIE DARKO

The Donnie Darko DVD contains miles of deleted footage, much of which made it into Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut — and most of which, frankly, makes the film overly complicated and heavy-handed. The original theatrical release has a pervasive sense of mystery, and the film's unanswered questions are part of its appeal. That said, every new scene between Donnie and his family deepens the impact of the film's time-twisting climax. This one is our favorite. It's an ordinary moment between Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his sister Elizabeth (real-life sibling Maggie Gyllenhaal), that reveals the affection in their relationship yet hints of ominous things to come.

— Gwynne Watkins

Long Live the New Flesh!: Top 12 Real Bodily Transformations on Film, Part 1

Peter Smith — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 21:00:00 GMT

There was a bit of brouhaha recently over Ryan Gosling's getting fired from Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones for having packed on too much weight. The story has since been denied, so we don't know whom to believe in that dispute. It may have been apocryphal, but the incident did get us thinking about some of the more notable bodily transformations we've seen on film. And we're talking real transformations here. (Sorry, Nicole Kidman's fake nose in The Hours and John Hurt's fake face in Elephant Man and Eddie Murphy's whole body in like every other movie.) We're talking De Niro eating his way through Italy to plump up for Raging Bull. We're talking Christian Bale starving himself silly for The Machinist. We're talking about actors so devoted to their craft (and, in at least one case, so utterly stupid) as to commit their bodies to real, physical changes for a part. Here are the Top 12 Real Bodily Transformations on Film.

ROBERT DENIRO in RAGING BULL (1980)

When Robert DeNiro won an Academy Award for Best Actor in his role as tortured prizefighter Jake LaMotta in Martin Scorsese's brilliant Raging Bull, he found that after the ceremony, nobody wanted to talk about it. Everybody was far more interested in discussing his role as would-be political assassin Travis Bickle in 1976's Taxi Driver — a role which allegedly inspired the actual assassination attempt of then-President Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley only days before. Now that things have lightened up a bit, and DeNiro isn't distracting everybody by making good movies anymore, his role as LaMotta has become the textbook case for total character immersion. To play the young, lean LaMotta, DeNiro worked his then-slender physique into even better condition, going through the actual workout regimen of a prizefighter (he even entered, and won, a handful of amateur bouts) and honing his body into a whipcord-thin, muscle-rippled wonder. Then, to play the older, decaying LaMotta, he put back all the weight and more, gaining a stunning sixty pounds and utterly transforming himself into a doughy blob of a man whose muscle had all collapsed into fat. There were many more sacrifices, mental and physical, made for Raging Bull: DeNiro really did bash his head into that concrete wall, and Joe Pesci broke a rib during an unsupervised fistfight. But it's the lightning-fast loss and gain of weight that's still remembered today, and which rang out like a challenge to other actors — one that would soon be answered.

VINCENT D'ONOFRIO in FULL METAL JACKET (1987)

Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam-War epic still has a very mixed reputation. While it's no longer widely considered a failure, most critics still maintain that it's a mushy, aimless middle held together by an incredibly strong beginning and end. The anchor of the opening sequence, a brutal story of Marine Corps basic training, is the conflict between the relentless, abusive Sgt. Hartman (R. Lee Ermey) and the slow, heavy recruit Pvt. Pyle (Vincent D'Onofrio). Both actors were appearing in their first major roles, but while Ermey had the distinct advantage of essentially playing himself, D'Onofrio transformed himself both psychologically and physically, from an urbane, gentle Brooklynite to a dull-witted, marginally psychotic southerner who needed only the right stimulus to be pushed over the edge. The fact that D'Onofrio broke Robert DeNiro's Raging Bull record by gaining seventy pounds to play Pyle sounds more impressive than it actually is — seventy pounds on his hulking, six-foot-four-inch frame wears a lot less visibly than does sixty pounds on DeNiro's much smaller 5'9" physique. Indeed, it's a testament to DeNiro's then-superhuman abilities that he managed to go through the entire cycle of transformation in half the time it took D'Onofrio, who needed a year and a half to gain, and then lose, the seventy pounds. But it's still an amazing accomplishment, one that helped yield the perfect body for one of the most memorable characters in the annals of war films.

LINDA HAMILTON in TERMINATOR 2 (1991)

To really appreciate Linda Hamilton's transformation from Sarah Connor in T1 to Sarah Connor in T2, you have to step back and remember the '80s. Sure, these days, when G. Stef has a one year old and a six-pack, muscles are practically de rigeur. But the '80s were the era of the twenty-minute workout: aerobics, jogging and jazzercize were the norm. Jane Fonda was the model of female fitness, and bouncing was a way of life. In T1, Linda Hamilton played a normal looking waitress with nice big eighties hair. Flash forward seven years to T2. To play Sarah Connor, the institutionalized warrior with Cassandra-like prophecies, Hamilton strength-trained till she sculpted her body into peak form. This was a new shape for a female movie star — muscles and sinews and veins, oh my! She was strong, agile, fast and fearless. And hot. She quickly re-set the standard for the female physique; magazine articles told women how to get a Sarah Connor-like body for summer. Did she pave the way for a rash of muscled heroines in leading roles on the big screen? Not quite — but she did her part. And her transformation was iconic enough to give Sarah Connor (the character) her own show in January '08 — sixteen years after Linda Hamilton shocked Hollywood with her abs and buns and everything else of steel.

MARIEL HEMINGWAY in STAR 80 (1983)

After her acclaimed performances in Manhattan and Personal Best, Mariel Hemingway was one of Hollywood's hottest young actresses. But the slender, girlish Hemingway would've been few people's ideal choice for the role of Dorothy Stratten, the ill-fated 1980 Playmate of the Year, in Bob Fosse's final directorial effort. All that changed when she received breast implants, which increased her cup size from an A to a C, the same size as Stratten's all-natural assets. Hemingway has insisted that her enlargement surgery has nothing to do with the role, but whether she did or not, it certainly made her more believable in the role. Hemingway gave one of her best performances as Stratten, but the film was largely reviled by critics and ignored by audiences, and her once-promising career faltered. Oh, Mariel — don't you know that you need to make yourself LESS alluring if you want Hollywood to love you? Star 80 has experienced a small critical resuscitation in recent years, but Hemingway, despite working steadily in the intervening decades, never managed to live up to the potential many had forecast for her. Nowadays, she's arguably as well-known for her yoga and self-help books as she is for her acting. A strange footnote in this story is the fate of her implants themselves. Following FDA warnings about silicone implants, Hemingway had hers replaced by noticeably smaller saline ones in 1993. In 2001, after one of the saline bags ruptured, they were removed altogether.

MICHAEL CAINE in EDUCATING RITA (1983)

Promoting this movie, in which he plays a middle-aged-going-on-elderly literary professor, Caine went on The Tonight Show and lamented that he had been forced to pack on the extra pounds and grow a beard for the role because it demanded that he look "unattractive." It says something about Caine's standing as an authoritative embodiment of manly cool that this remark was enough to inspire a national newspaper columnist to publish a crestfallen demand that he apologize to all bearded males. By De Niro standards, Caine's weight gain may not qualify as a jaw-dropping transformation, but because of the way Caine uses his physical equipment as an actor, it's actually one of the most effective ever caught on film. The professor is a drunk and a burnout who uses his education to keep the world at bay, and Caine uses his own flesh and hair as a metaphor for how emotionally armored he is against letting in anyone who might ultimately cause him pain. You may not realize just how effective a device it is until the final scene, after Rita (Julie Walters), the ambitious Liverpool hairdresser with whom he's bonded and who's now about to disappear from his life, forces him to let her give him a haircut and tame his unruly face fuzz. When she's done, the professor no longer looks the same, but because of the actor's deep immersion inside the character, he doesn't look quite like Michael Caine, either.

— Pazit Cahlon, Paul Clark, Bilge Ebiri, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce, Scott Renshaw

Conglomerated Baddies: The 22 Most Evil Corporations in Movie History, Part 3

Peter Smith — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 17:00:00 GMT

Engulf & Devour, SILENT MOVIE (1976)

Mel Brooks's generically titled comedy stars Brooks as a movie director who plans to save the troubled Big Picture Studio with a star-studded silent picture. This makes him the target of Engulf & Devour, the monstrous corporation (whose motto is "Our Hands Are In Everything") planning to gobble up the studio. Their methods of sabotaging the film's success range from sending Bernadette Peters to vamp the director, a former drunk, and knock him off the wagon, to stealing the picture itself before its grand premiere. Weirdly, all this is said to have been partly inspired by the actual takeover of Paramount Pictures by Gulf & Western, which was probably a lot noisier.

Union Broadcasting System (UBS), NETWORK (1976)

In screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky's attack on television, new anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) is saved from cancellation and becomes a major star — "the mad prophet of the airwaves" — after he reacts to news of his firing by flipping out and promising to kill himself on the air, a spectacle that the mass audience finds entertaining. With Beale's ratings on the rise, the head of the entertainment division (Faye Dunaway) takes over the news department, a speculative joke that some thought came to fruition one year later when the ABC news division was handed to sports-broadcast head Roone Arledge. Unfortunately, Beale's diatribes against the loss of individuality and free will are regarded by Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty), the head of the company that owns the network, as a threat to corporate power, so he summons the prodigal newsman to his office for a lecture on "the primal forces of nature." ("There is no America; there is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.") Beale is so impressed with this wisdom that he agrees to "preach" Jensen's philosophy to the television audience, which finds it so demoralizing that they tune out in droves, which leads to Beale's on-camera assassination. In the years since Network came out it has become customary to salute Chayefesky for having been clairvoyant, though it's hard to think of an easier way of predicting the future accurately than guessing that TV is always going to keep getting worse.

The Phone Company, THE PRESIDENT'S ANALYST (1967)

At one point in this spy spoof, a globe-trotting KGB agent observes that no matter where he goes, everyone he meets there hates the phone company. It turns out they have good reason. In a movie that features assassins of many lands picking each other off while trying to kill or kidnap the title character (James Coburn), the ultimate force of evil revealed at the climax is The Phone Company, whose android spokeman (William Redfield) unveils a diabolical plan to force all Americans to have a call-receiving device implanted in their heads. Of all the evil corporations in movie history, this one is almost certainly the funniest, though it must be conceded that the movie's depiction of the phone company as a sinister, monolithic force is dated in certain ways. For one thing, it turns out that most Americans today would probably be happy to sign up to have a chip put in their heads if it enabled them to download free movie trailers and video clips.

OMNI Consumer Products, ROBOCOP (1987)

Screenwriter Edward Neumeier was reportedly inspired to pen the script to Paul Verhoeven’s classic cyberpunk satire of American capitalism run amok after spending time on the set of Blade Runner. Like the Tyrell Corporation, OCP is a monolithic enterprise that virtually controls the police, and likewise has a run of bad luck with a series of robotic creations that do their jobs a bit too well. (If only Tyrell had the good sense to hire Miguel Ferrer.) Back in 1987, Omni Consumer Products’ stated intention to fully privatize organizations that had previously been thought of as the purview of government — "hospitals, prisons, space exploration. . . we practically are the military," says CEO Ronny Cox — seemed like absurdist comedy at best. Now, in the era of privately-run prisons, for-profit hospitals, billionaires in space, and Blackwater, the joke’s not quite so funny anymore.

Cyberdyne Systems, TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991)

Most of the companies covered in this week’s list are up to no good — a little profiteering here, some inside trading there, maybe even endangering a few people’s health to turn a profit. But only Cyberdyne Systems, a second-tier Silicon Valley B2B manufacturer, brings about the destruction of the entire human race. Through convoluted events of the sort that only take place in movies involving time travel, Cyberdyne is responsible for the development of SkyNet, the nuclear defense computer network that eventually becomes self-aware and decides that we humans are too troublesome for our own good. From then on, it’s nuclear holocausts, killer robots, and grim, inevitable doomsday for everybody. We’re pretty sure that, despite their cunning manipulation of the situation and determination to put profit over safety, this isn’t the way that Cyberdyne’s managers would have wanted things to turn out; a global atomic extinction can’t have done much for their stock value.

The Tyrell Corporation, BLADE RUNNER (1982)

The very model of the 'megacorp' that constituted the primary villains in the cyberpunk fiction Blade Runner helped create, the Tyrell Corporation’s gigantic, pyramid-shaped arcology looms over a ruined polyglot Los Angeles. While the ‘little people’ are sold a steady diet of drugs, sex, cheap food and promises of off-world salvation, Tyrell (and its founder, the oleaginous Eldon Tyrell, brilliantly portrayed by Joe Turkel) controls the police, using them as hired goons to hunt down rogue replicants. These artificial life forms were created by the brilliant and unscrupulous Tyrell to serve as soldiers, sex slaves and workers in highly dangerous conditions, but he designed them too well; some achieved self-awareness and sought to eliminate the built-in expiration date that kept them from becoming too human. Tyrell’s desire to create the perfect being and then destroy them shapes this brilliant film's central conflict.

— Paul Clark, Pazit Cahlon, Bilge Ebiri, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce, Vadim Rizov, Bryan Whitefield

That Guy!: Xander Berkeley

Peter Smith — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 18:00:00 GMT

This week’s That Guy!, the long-awaited Xander Berkeley, is a groundbreaker in many ways. He’s the first character actor we’ve featured in this spot whose name starts with an X; he’s also the first to have designed his own my-skin-is-falling-off makeup while portraying a person suffering from acute radiation poisoning. But he also follows in some well-traveled paths: he’s the second person we’ve featured to have come to prominence as a cast member of 24, a show that seems to specialize in snatching up talented Hollywood character actors, as evidenced by previous That Gal! Mary Lynn Rajskub and future That Guy! Dennis Haysbert. Like a lot of other contemporary character actors, he’s found steady work as a voiceover specialist (appearing, as has almost every other B-lister in the business, on the Justice League cartoon), and he bankrolls artsy projects like his back-to-back appearances in Timecode and The Cherry Orchard with, er, slightly more pedestrian fare like Barb Wire and The Rock. A favorite of maverick director Alex Cox, Berkeley appeared in three of his films in a row early in his career. His first role was as a grown-up Chris Crawford in the infamous Mommie Dearest, and he’s gone on to make almost seventy feature films in twenty years (his most recent was Seraphim Falls), qualifying him as one of the hardest-working men in show business despite being almost completely unknown to most people who don’t watch 24. Berkeley, a New Yorker by way of Jersey, has specialized, in his latter days, in bland, arrogant schmucks who are up to no good. But he's displayed a terrific range in his remarkably prolific career, playing everything from typical romantic male leads to scene-stealing darkly comic turns, as in his cameo role as a cab driver in Leaving Las Vegas. He’s also almost certainly the only actor we’ve ever featured who has portrayed an eight-armed violinist who robs banks alongside a robotic Soviet vending machine.

Where to see Xander Berkeley at his best:

SID AND NANCY (1986): The first and best of Xander Berkeley’s lengthy collaboration with Alex Cox comes in this desperate, moving biopic of Sex Pistols provocateur Sid Vicious and his clinging, doomstruck girlfriend Nancy Spungeon. Berkeley portrays the drug dealer Bowery Snax, a living symbol of the pathetic degradation of the couple’s final days; when he delivers the line “Sid, Nancy, pull up your pants”, it encapsulates everything sadly wrong with their entire lives as well as an ugly reflection of the day-to-day reality of the junkie.

SAFE (1995): Berkeley’s finest hour came in this Todd Haynes masterpiece of the alienation of affluence. Playing the husband of Julianne Moore’s panic-stricken housewife, he must transition from unlikable standoffish breadwinner to bizarrely sympathetic and utterly confused caregiver, as the woman he married undergoes a transformation neither she nor anyone else can explain or even articulate. It’s a tremendous performance, in some ways the moral center of the film, and in a just world, it would have made him a big star.

AIR FORCE ONE (1997): It’s hard to pick a favorite from Berkeley’s mainstream movie appearances; he’s done good work in, among other films, Terminator 2, Apollo 13, A Few Good Men and Shanghai Noon. Our favorite, though, is probably his rogue Secret Service agent in Air Force One, part of a rash of "fightin’ president" movies in the late 1990s. Not only was it a reunion of sorts with Sid and Nancy’s Gary Oldman, but it was perhaps the pinnacle of his understated snotty jerk roles, even if the script requires him, along with everyone else in the movie, to do far too much yelling.

— Leonard Pierce