The Screengrab : thandie newton

The Great Netflix-"Crash" Mystery

Phil Nugent — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Somebody noticed that Paul Haggis's Crash has been Netflix's "No. 1 rented movie" for more than three and a half years, since it was released on DVD in September 2005. Needless to say, this is not the kind of factoid that speaks for itself and must be dealt with until a satisfactory explanation if forthcoming. God knows that Haggis, who write and directed the Academy-Award-winning message movie, has no earthly idea why anyone would want to rent the thing: "I have no idea why anyone went to the movie in the first place," he told the Chicago Tribune, "let alone rent it. It was a little independent film, and when people started to see it, I was amazed." (Haggis, to his credit, is also bewildered that the fruit of his loins won the Oscar. "I love the Oscars; I just think they are the best thing in the world, but if you asked me if it was the best film of the year, I'd say, 'Of course not.'" He adds, "I happened to like my second film [In the Valley of Elah] better than Crash, but no one went to see it." Incidentally, Elah was technically his third movie as a director, the first having been 1993's Red Hot, but apparently even he didn't see that one.) If it makes him feel better, Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey confirms that, based on his numbers, "More people have now seen Crash on Netflix than in the theater." He added that, because the movie is on so many people's queues, it's always out and people have to wait a long time to get to rent it, which in turn "adds to the demand for people wanting to see it."

A couple of points might be added to the discussion. First, to make any broad assumptions about how many people have "seen" Crash based on how many people have rented Crash might be kind of a broad leap. Lots of people who had been barely cognizant of the movie's existence prior to the 2006 Academy Awards ceremony probably automatically stuck it in their queues as soon as it won the Oscar. And a lot of other people probably did the same thing at some point, not because they could barely contain their excitement at the prospect of having Thandie Newton and Don Cheadle demonstrate to them the folly of racism, but because they picked up some vague signs in the atmosphere that this was a worthy movie that they should see. It may be that one of the major advances in the culture for which Netflix can take a bow is that, rather than actually going to see such films, people can now stick them on their rental queues, and then, when the discs arrive, procrastinate for weeks and even months before returning them unseen. (Let's face it, that has to be what a lot of people are doing. Either that or they're holding onto the disc for extended periods of time so they can watch it again and again, carefully studying it so they can savor all the subtle nuances they missed on the fourth or fifth viewing. The thing is, if there's anything in Crash that wasn't crystal clear to you the first time you saw it, your senses are in such desperate needs of heightening that your only hope may be to get bitten by a radioactive spider.) Then there's all the people who thought they were renting that movie where James Spader can only get it up with the aid of a car accident.

Whatever the case, the idea, at least, that more people are experiencing his best-known feature film on their TV screens is one that Haggis, cutting way against the grain, claims to find pleasing. "It's a small movie," he says. "And I like to see small movies on a small screen. I'm a TV guy, so I'm much more comfortable watching something on a small screen, particularly movies I've made. Other people's movies, I want to see on a big screen." Which reminds us that Haggis's best work was actually the short-lived 1996 TV series EZ Streets starring Ken Olin, Jason Gedrick, Debrah Farentino, and Joey Pants. And the pilot is available on DVD! The next time you rent Crash and don't watch it, why not, as a treat, rent EZ Streets too, and watch it. Live a little.

Screengrab Review: "W."

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:00:00 GMT

It's not for me to offer unsolicited advice to a famous and successful filmmaker like Oliver Stone, especially when it's too late for said advice to be taken anyway – but what the hell, while I'm here I might as well tell you my idea for the movie Stone should have made instead of W. As you may have read here in the Screengrab or elsewhere in the liberal elite media, W. is a biopic of our current president, George W. Bush, who is not up for re-election and is leaving office in January no matter who wins. (Unless he barricades himself inside the Oval Office with a shotgun and a bottle of whiskey, which might have made for a good scene in W…but I'm getting ahead of myself.) As such, W. is unlikely to have a substantial effect on the upcoming election.

What if, instead, Stone had made a movie about the administration of President John McCain? Stone and his screenwriter Stanley Weiser could have cooked up a juicy, paranoid fantasia of a potential McCain Era in American history, supplemented by flashbacks from McCain's actual colorful past. It would be a similar movie in many ways; as Tom Dickinson writes in the fascinating Rolling Stone cover story "Make-Believe Maverick," McCain and Bush were both youthful fuck-ups with daddy issues, the major difference being that "George W. Bush was a much better pilot."

Our 43rd president's career as a pilot isn't covered in W. but Stone's film samples most of the greatest hits from Bush's misspent youth. We see his hazing as a Yale fraternity pledge, his inability to hold down a job for long (whether it be on a Texas oil rig or on Wall Street), his fondness for the demon alcohol, his courtship of librarian and future wife Laura (Elizabeth Banks), his baseball dreams, his sobriety and salvation, and finally his entry into "the family business." And although we don't see much of brother Jeb in the movie, it's clear that (in Stone's view, anyway) patriarch George Herbert Walker Bush (James Cromwell) sees the boy he calls "junior" as the Fredo of the family.

These blasts from the past are scattered throughout W., which primarily concerns itself with the Bush administration’s ramp-up to the war in Iraq. The film opens months after the 9/11 terror attacks, as the president and his cabinet brainstorm a catchphrase that will resonate with the American people. “Axis of hatred” falls short, but…ahhh, “Axis of Evil! I like that!” This scene plays exactly like the moment in Stone’s The Doors when Ray Manzarek dreams up the keyboard intro to “Light My Fire.” Sometimes it seems there is only one biopic in the world.

Stone’s unique brew of absurdity, paranoia and psychobabble is at its most potent in these Strangelovian war room scenes. The cast alone makes for compelling viewing, if only for the wide variety of acting approaches. As Condoleezza Rice, Thandie Newton is such a near-perfect replicant, she doesn’t come close to resembling an actual human being – she’s like something Disney shipped in from the Hall of Presidents. Jeffrey Wright is doing a voice as Colin Powell, but to the best of my recollection, it’s nothing like Powell’s actual voice. Others barely attempt any imitation at all; as the man Bush calls “Vice,” Richard Dreyfuss only once hints at Cheney’s Penguin grin, but he’s got the prince of darkness vibe down pat. When Cheney explains what the real plan is for Iraq – that is, the establishment of a new American Empire in the Middle East and Asia, with delicious black oil flowing from every pipe – W. is at its most giddily satirical and subversive.

It’s a shame the rest of it is so pedestrian. It all flows together and moves along at a brisk pace – it doesn’t feel like a movie that was shot, edited and released within the span of a baseball season – but the script is far too reductive and simple-minded. (Yes, you could argue that’s appropriate to the central character, but then you still have to sit through it.) Stone likes to be able to claim he’s depicting both sides of the story, so he appears to treat key points like W’s religious conversion and romance with Laura seriously. Then he turns around and gives us one of those classic Bushisms (“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”) and jars us right out of the movie.

As Phil Nugent posted earlier this week, Stone had originally planned to include more black comedy and surreal elements, and I do think that might have been the more fruitful approach. To the extent that W. does work, give credit to Josh Brolin – he’s the one member of the cast who gives both a pitch-perfect impression and a genuine performance. It’s hard to play dumb and spoiled and, y’know, carelessly destructive of an entire country, and still maintain a modicum of likeability – but Bush did pull it off for a while and Brolin pulls it off here. Poor Elizabeth Banks is saddled with a conception of Laura Bush that doesn’t extend much beyond “enabling airhead,” and James Cromwell projects too much gruff gravitas to pass for the patrician elder Bush.

It all comes down to “Poppy didn’t love me best, so I’ll show him,” and even if that’s true in reality, it’s a boring cliché on the screen. And since we’re dealing with Oliver Stone, a point worth making once is worth making a hundred times, in 100-point boldface type, until not even the dimmest bulb in the audience can possibly miss it. I’m reminded of a scene in Barcelona, where a character explains that he understands subtext to mean a “hidden message or import of some kind,” but wonders what you call “the message or meaning that's right there on the surface, completely open and obvious?” That is, of course, the text – and Stone’s movies are all text all the time, right there on the surface, completely open and obvious.

Oliver Stone Finds His Dick

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 22 May 2008 19:30:00 GMT

When last we checked in with Oliver Stone’s Bush biopic, W., most of the major players were in place. Josh Brolin was busy practicing his chimplike smirk and hunched shrug of defeat for the title role, with Elizabeth Banks as the missus, and the cabinet filled out by Thandie Newton (Condi Rice), Rob Corddry (Ari Fleischer) and Jeffrey Wright (Colin Powell).

One major hole remained: the man behind the throne, Dick Cheney. Speculation pointed to Robert Duvall (who reportedly turned down the role) and Paul Giamatti (who may have had his fill of White House machinations with John Adams). Now it appears the role has been filled.

The Hollywood Reporter sez: “Richard Dreyfuss could soon make the trip to Oliver Stone's White House, entering final negotiations to play Dick Cheney in the provocateur director's upcoming W.” The Reporter also passes on the following helpful tidbit: “The 60-year-old Dreyfuss has never played a U.S. leader, but has had a few related roles. He starred as an opposition senator to Michael Douglas' commander in chief in 1995's The American President, as Alexander Haig in a television movie about Ronald Reagan and played the president of a banana republic in the 1980s comedy Moon Over Parador.”

How appropriate that it took the addition of a Jaws star for the casting of W. to jump the shark.