The Screengrab : the endless summer

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: August 2-8, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 21:30:00 GMT

First of all, I should mention that we here at the Screengrab are sensitive to your complaints that the place has become something of a boy’s club, strewn with boxer shorts, empty beer cans, baseball cards and “adult reading material.” To that end, we’ve tidied up a bit, sprayed some lilac-scented Febreeze around, and are now prepared to welcome the newest member of the Screengrab team, Sarah Clyne Sundberg. Sarah made her debut earlier today with Olympic Games Past, so please extend your warmest greetings. As for the betesticled among us, we’ve been busy this week:

You ever think “Hey, that movie could have been directed by that other guy!” Well, so have we! Here are 15 Movies That (Almost) Could’ve Been Directed by Someone Else (Parts One, Two, Three and Four).

The Midnight Meat Train probably won’t be coming anywhere near you, but maybe you can catch Elegy or In Search of a Midnight Kiss.

How about a triple feature from the Summer of ’78: Revenge of the Pink Panther, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Hooper were all clogging the drive-ins 30 years ago. None of them really summed up the season like The Endless Summer, though.

Best wishes to Morgan Freeman for a speedy recovery and a painless divorce!

Scarlett Johnasson and Penelope Cruz did their best to lower our expectations of their lesbian makeout session in Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

While cleaning out Screengrab headquarters, we found these Boxes of Kubrick.

Jason Statham as Daredevil? Britney Spears in Faster, Pussycat…Kill! Kill!? Maybe in the Parallel Universe Film Guide.

Rejoice in my misery as I resume my Unwatchable quest to view every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list, including College Road Trip and Kickboxer 3: The Art of War.

That’s it. Get your motor running, head out on the highway!

Summerfest '08: "The Endless Summer"

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:30:00 GMT

We've featured a lot of different types of movies here at the Screengrab during our excting Summerfest '08 feature, in which we endeavour to review a movie a week with the word "summer" in the title that you can watch while you're putting off trying on your new bikini. We've featured Summer School, a movie that has made people inappropriately nostalgic for the 1980s; we've featured Summer of Sam, a movie in which it is revealed that Satan speaks through us in the voice of dogs, and sounds an amazing amount like John Tuturro; and we've featured Suddenly Last Summer, a movie in which a homosexual predator and his pimp sister wreak havoc on a small European town before he is eaten by the townsfolk. No, really. We've featured not one, but two movies starring Freddie Prinze, Jr., which, believe me, was just as painful for me as it was for you. But while many of these films have inspired us to do a wide variety of things -- become nostalgic for the sight of Kirstie Alley in a bathing suit; go back in time and put Tennessee Williams on anti-depressants; avoid watching any future films starring Freddie Prinze, Jr. -- none of them have actually inspired us to get up off our duffs, get out of the house, and do something other than watch movies all summer. But that changes today as we take a look at the greatest surfing documentary ever made.

So grab your board, hop in your woodie, and join us on a search for the perfect wave as we enjoy The Endless Summer!

THE ACTION: Mike Hynson and Robert August are surfers. That's what they do: surf. Bruce Brown, who wrote and directed the movie, is a filmmaker, but he's a surfer too. Surfers are an uncomplicated lot, and they really want nothing more than to bum around all day waiting for the best wave they can possibly get, and then they want to get out there and shoot that son of a bitch for all it's worth. That's essentially all that happens in this movie: Hynson and August trek from one end of Africa to another, then to Australia, the South Pacific, and anywhere else they can possibly get to, just looking for a really good curl. Brown follows them, training his 16mm camera at them for some blurry nature shots and some absolutely gorgeous filmwork out on the water. The two engage in wacky hijinks, doing very little to dispel the notion that surfers are overgrown, doofy man-children, and Brown provides amiable frat-boy narration, often meandering and nonsensical, to cover the silence of the action scenes (most of the shots had no soundman and hence, no sound). Then they trudge off in search of another wave, and when they find one, they ride it until they just can't ride it no more. That's it, in its entirety: 90 minute of three goofy guys bumming around the globe looking for waves to ride. It's exactly that bad -- and that great.

THE PLAYERS: Hynson and August -- both real surfers who play themselves in this engaging mash-up of sports documentary and home movie travelogue -- are nearly indistiguishable: loopy fellas interested in their sport, soaking up some local color, and not much else. There's probably two of them for no better reason than that it takes some of the pressure off of Brown's narration. Brown himself -- a protege of Bud Browne (no relation), the legendary founder of the surf film genre, who died earlier this summer -- comes across as a strong advocate of the kind of pseudo-mystical dudesmanship that would spring up around surfing following the success of this 1966 film and the simultaneous monster success of the Beach Boys. The novelty of the interaction between the three men comes from a sort of primitive jus'-folks exoticism: the coasts of Africa and beaches of Australia where they spend most of their time in the film were, at the time, largely unknown and unvisited by Americans, and held a hint of the mysterious. By today's standards, Brown would offend by saying he wasn't sure if African tribesmen wanted to surf with them or eat them, but the observation is delivered in such a guileless way you can't hold it against him. The movie also features a cameo appearance by a ex-pro wrestler/surfer named Lord "Tally-Ho" Blears, and you know there ain't nothin' wrong with that.

SUMMER FUN: Are you kidding? In case you missed it earlier, this movie is a documentary about three goofball surfers who wander around creation, riding the waves, scoping out the native honeys, and sipping rum-based cocktails with former professional wrestlers. No matter what you're doing this summer, you wish you were doing this instead. There's rarely been a summer movie -- let alone a documentary -- that makes you want to sell your car, quit your job and change your lifestyle as much as The Endless Summer does. Hell, I don't even like surfing, and I was on the internet pricing boards by the time it ended.

HAWAIIAN SHIRTS: Generally speaking, there is more Hawaiian shirtlessness in The Endless Summer than there is Hawaiian shirtiness, but don't despair: there's plenty of luau loungewear in evidence, including a good bit of it on display during an actual stopover in Hawaii. If you've ever wondered exactly what mood the typical fat party guy is trying to conjure when he dons his favorite Hawaiian shirt, this movie is it.

BIKINI PARTY TIME: While there's some bikini action in The Endless Summer, there's not nearly as much as you might expect. Frankly, as loath as I am to admit it, this represents a certain integrity on the part of the filmmakers; Hynson, August and Brown are dedicated to the art and craft of surfing, and the incidental opportunity it offers to take a gander at beach bunnies is strictly an element of chance. You have to respect that sort of demented focus. So, despite a saddening lack of bikini party time in a film set almost entirely on the beach, I highly recommend The Endless Summer as a palliative to however you've been wasting your life since Memorial Day.

Summerfest '08: Summer School

Take Five: Days of the Week

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Opening wide this Friday is David E. Talbert's First Sunday, which should represent the final nail in a coffin which contains the mouldering remains of Ice Cube's reputation as an American nightmare. Younger Screengrab readers may not realize this, but Cube was once a rapper who so terrified white America that they put him on the cover of national news magazines, where he sneered and scowled his way right into your scaredy-bones. Now he just makes comedies that Steve Martin is too busy to bother with. Anyway, Talbert is being claimed as the new Tyler Perry, which, depending on your inclinations, is either a refreshing change or a dire threat. We were sort of hoping that First Sunday would function as a pseudo-sequel to the Friday films and would, at the very least, treat us to the spectacle of Cube and Katt Williams having to sit through a really long, dull sermon while stoned out of their gourds, which is an experience we've all had at one time or another. Unfortunately, it's no such thing, so here's some other movies you can look forward to after this endless Sunday is over.

STORMY MONDAY (1988)

Back before Mike Figgis hit it big, he directed this quirky little neo-noir thriller. It hasn't proven to be one of his lasting legacies as a filmmaker; for everything it does right, it goofs up in some profound way that nearly sinks it — its plot is pretty thin even by the standards of such potboilers, and two fine lead performances by British actors (Sting and a young Sean Bean) are clumsily countered by two dopey ones by American actors (an ultra-hammy Tommy Lee Jones and Melanie Griffith, clearly letting the clock run down on her fifteen minutes of fame). That said, it's worth watching for two reasons: first, it gives you an important stepping point in the development of Figgis' career, should you be interested in pursuing such a thing; and second, it's crazily gorgeous to look at. It features some nearly perfect cinematography by the estimable Roger Deakins, all rain-slicked streets and cheap neon and hazes of cigarette smoke and shadows that people fall into and never emerge. It's all surface; you'll find no depth here no matter how hard you look. But if surface is all you're looking for, you could do a lot worse than Stormy Monday.

IF IT'S TUESDAY THIS MUST BE BELGIUM (1969)

Movies like this must have seemed like such a good idea in the Sixties. Get an all-star cast, or at least as much of an all-star cast as you can afford. Have them rampage around a picturesque collection of back-lot set pieces mixed with stock footage. Stick Norman Fell in there looking pasty and irritated, then stick an unwieldy, ridiculous title on the thing and watch the money roll in. It's not quite clear exactly when Americans lost their patience for this particular brand of witless comedy, but I think it was right around the time this movie came out, which just so happened to coincide with the time at which it became acceptable to talk about smoking marijuana. Still, it's not entirely without its charm; Suzanne Pleshette makes a vivacious lead, Sandy Baron has some amusing scenes, Murray Hamilton reminds us that he once existed, and you get a fun look at what Hollywood thought of Ian McShane before it discovered how good he was at cussing like a sailor who's just had an anchor drop on his foot. It plays even better if you pretend that it was made in 1959 instead of 1969.

BIG WEDNESDAY (1978)

Highly influenced by The Endless Summer and a rash of other surfing documentaries that had hit the screens in the 1960s, Big Wednesday takes a similar visual approach and a comparable 'surfing as metaphor for nascent mystics communing with nature ' storyline, but wraps it all up in a big mushy box of coming-of-age drama by writer/director John Milius, who had not yet discovered that the one thing he loved even more than surfing was killing communists. Based loosely on his own southern California teenhood, Big Wednesday is actually a pretty accomplished film for what it is, but it really soars on the strength of what today seems like an incredibly goofball cast: shirtless, bronzed, toned young beachcombers portrayed by...future acid casualty Gary Busey, future heroin junkie Jan-Michael Vincent, and future Greatest American Hero William Katt. Patti D'Arbanville wanders through there as well, as does a woefully out-of-place Joe Spinnell as Busey's shrink. All in all, not a bad little movie, but one that's highly improved if you're in a Gary Busey state of mind when you watch it.

THURSDAY AFTERNOON (1984)

Right around the time that MTV was robbing us all of our ability to process visual information that didn't come with cuts every fifteen seconds, avant-garde composer, musician, and filmmaker Brian Eno offered a refreshing, if highly unusual, tonic in the form of Thursday Afternoon. Essentially a series of eight nearly motionless "video paintings", Thursday Afternoon was meant to be viewed in a vertical format; the video packaging actually instructed viewers to upend their television sets. Whether anyone actually did that or not, the video was an interesting exercise in changing the video shorthand that accompanies music on screen. Accompanied by music that is highly suggestive of his 'ambient' period circa Music for Airports, the videos bring us nearly static images (of nature scenes, shifting electronic displays, and fashion model Christine Alicino, also the film's cinematographer), and manage to accomplish visually precisely the effect that Eno was going after musically with that ambient work. It may not be the most compelling thing ever set to video, but it's a lot better conversation-starter than your iTunes Visualizer at a party.

SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER (1977)

So iconic is John Badham's 1977 disco document that it's easy to overlook what a colossal impact it made at the time it was released. John Travolta became such a huge star following its box-office-busting run that his fall from grace seemed inevitable and his comeback seemed incredible; with the benefit of hindsight, one might be forgiven for thinking he was the only person in the movie as none of the other actors went on to even remotely the same level of fame. Badham, likewise, never made a film as good as this, or as successful. Endlessly parodied, riffed on and exploited, it's the kind of movie that even if you've never seen it, you feel like you've seen it. It really went off the rails early on; it's impossible to guess from the final product, but it was actually based on an edgy, almost scholarly piece of cultural studies by the brilliant English polymath Nik Cohn called "Tribal Rituals of the New Saturday Night". Still, a few of its dance scenes, its relentless energy, and Tony Manero's slow, arrogant strut through Brooklyn have lost none of their power, and make it clear why this movie meant to its time and place what it did.