The Screengrab : vin diesel

Screengrab Predicts: The Top 5 Hits of Summer 2009 (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Yes, it’s that magical time of year once more...as my late lamented Grampa Joe would say, quoting his favorite Brooklyn poet: “Spring is sprung, the grass is riz, I wonder where the flowers iz? All the boids is the on the wing...isn’t that absoid? I thought the wing was on the boid!”

All of which is neither here nor there...but the real point is we’re just days away from the start of the Summer Blockbuster Season (which, like the Christmas season, keeps starting earlier and earlier each year, what with the upcoming May 1 release of Wolverine, the May 8 release of Star Trek...heck, even Vin Diesel’s already had a summer blockbuster, and we’re barely into baseball season!

And, since Hollywood now refuses to wait until Memorial Day Weekend to start firing off its big guns, your pals here at the Screengrab have no choice but to launch into the fray with our second annual attempt to prognosticate the Top 5 Biggest Hits & Bombs of 2009!

Now, for those of you playing along at home, the rules are simple: the following “HIT” and “BOMB” predictions aren’t necessarily based on the sheer volume of money we think the following films will amass, but rather how their performance will ultimately be perceived by the Suits in Hollywood and the public at large. So, for example, last year we predicted Prince Caspian would be a hit...but it cost more and took in less than The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe, so it was ultimately considered a disappointment. Meanwhile, Sex & The City, which...ahem...some Screengrabbers thought would bomb took in about the same amount of money as Caspian and was ultimately considered a hit because all the wimmenfolk liked it so much (and also because it didn’t cost a zillion dollars to produce, despite all the CGI required to bring the eerie Kim Cattrall character to life).

And so, without further ado...our picks for THE TOP FIVE HITS OF SUMMER 2009!

5. UP (May 29)

Paul:
There were several strong possibilities for the #5 spot, but in the end I kept coming back to Pixar, who has managed to balance high-quality output with great box office better than just about anyone else in Hollywood. Consider that all but one of their summer releases has finished among that summer’s top five, and that the one that didn’t -- 2007’s Ratatouille, probably the least kid-friendly Pixar production to date -- landed at #6. So yeah, they’re a pretty good bet, and this family-oriented film should continue their hot streak. The opening weekend for Up could be tight, considering that it’s competing with the second weekend of Night at the Museum 2, but it ought to prevail in the long run given the thin June slate and the expected strong reviews.

Andrew:
This one didn’t make my list because it's got a meh title, I can’t figure out what the movie’s supposed to be about, and I don’t sense a lot of Up excitement in the ether...but then again, I thought Wall-E would tank, too, so what the hell do I know?

Scott:
The pundits are fretting that the new Pixar movie will turn off the kiddies because it’s about an old person. (shudder) How are they going to sell Old Guy action figures? Well, I seem to recall these same pundits wringing their hands over the nearly-silent first half of Wall-E, too, so I’m sticking with the assumption that Pixar knows what they’re doing.

4. ANGELS & DEMONS (May 15)

Paul:
Here’s where things get a little more iffy. A big-budget, star-studded adaptation of a Dan Brown bestseller would seem to be a can’t-lose proposition, especially given the blockbuster grosses of The Da Vinci Code in 2006. Yet so far, the buzz on this one has been surprisingly muted, perhaps because it’s hard to imagine too many people getting worked up over a follow-up to its ponderous predecessor. Nonetheless, expect advertising for this to ramp up over the next month, leading to a big opening weekend followed by strong grosses over Memorial Day, as people line up for this almost out of obligation.

Andrew:
Considering people keep going to see those fake Nicolas Cage Da Vinci Code knock-offs, I expect there’s gonna be an audience for the genuine article. Plus, I’m told everyone and their mother (especially their mother) digs Tom Hanks, and devout filmgoers and atheists alike can all get behind a conspiracy thriller about all the creepy, weird stuff going on behind closed doors at the Vatican, right?

Click Here For The Hits (Part Two), The Bombs (Part Three), The Toss-Ups (Part Four) and The Honorable Mentions (Parts Five & Six)

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Paul Clark

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: April 4-10, 2009

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:00:00 GMT

(siiiiigh). What am I doing here? What the hell do I care about Taxing Time: A Screengrab Salute to Beat-the-Clock Cinema (Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five and Six)? Would you ask Tom Petty about some dumbass race-against-time movies? No, because he’s a musician. Like me.

(long, uncomfortable pause)

Are you still here? Shouldn’t you be reading In Defense of Watchmen or "Wolverine" Decapitates Fox News Blogger? I don’t even know what that means. Anna Faris Won’t Apologize? Why should she? Kal Penn Puts Acting Career on Hold to Mind Obama's Front Door? But I bet you’ll still ask him about Henry and Kubal Go to White Castle or some silly shit like that.

Here’s some more mashed potatoes without the gravy:

Reviews: An Unlikely Weapon, Around, Lymelife

Screengrab Q&A: "In A Dream"

Unwatchable #38: “Chairman of the Board”

Many Happy Returns, and a Couple of Not-So-Happy Ones: Vin Diesel and the Movie Brotherhood of Those Who Have Come Crawling Back

2009: First Quarter Wrap-Up

Spring Movie Poster Preview

Many Happy Returns, and a Couple of Not-So-Happy Ones: Vin Diesel and the Movie Brotherhood of Those Who Have Come Crawling Back

Phil Nugent — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:00:00 GMT

It actually wasn't that long ago that Vin Diesel was being touted as a potentially major, breakout star, capable of both carrying a commercial genre movie (Pitch Black, The Fast and the Furious) and lending a hand to more nuanced dramatic roles (Boiler Room). It probably feels like a long enough time ago to Diesel, which presumably accounts for his presence in the new Fast & Furious. In 2003, Diesel explained his absence from the sequel 2 Fast 2 Furious by saying that he had one foot in three movies--Pitch Black, a lively little B movie that led to the far more expensive sequel The Chronicles of Riddick, and the extreme-007 movie XXX, as well as The Fast and the Furious--with serious franchise potential, and rather then spread himself too thin, he had to decide which two were likeliest to be the most successful in the long term. Five years after Riddick belly-flopped and the failure of the XXX sequel, in which Diesel wound up being replaced by Ice Cube, it's no small wonder that he wants a do-over. (In between the two Fast/Furious films co-starring Diesel and Paul Walker, there was a Diesel-free sequel starring Walker and a Walker-free third film, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, to which Diesel contributed a cameo. The new movie basically reconstitutes the cast of the first film--reuniting Diesel with Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, and Jordana Brewster--making it somewhere between a remake, a sequel, and a "reboot.") Given the dismissive, somewhat lordly attitude that the amply franchised Diesel once showed towards the role of hot-car king Dominic Toretto, it would only make sense for him to have mixed feelings about this. On the other hand, given the reception that Diesel has gotten for the movies he's made since XXX and Riddick--The Pacifier, Find Me Guilty, and the disowned-by-its-own-director Babylon A.D.--he might just be happy to be somewhere he's wanted.

He can, at least, take comfort in knowing that he's not the only movie actor ever to take stock of his own career and concluded that his best move might be to hit the "reset" button. In fact, he's practically part of a long tradition:

Peter Sellers/Inspector Clouseau

Sellers was set on the path to living legend status in England by his work on The Goon Show, and his appearances in such British comedies as I'm All Right, Jack, The Smallest Show on Earth, The Wrong Arm of the Law, and Only Two Can Play and the Stanley Kubrick films Lolita (1962) and Dr. Strangelove (1964) made him a favorite in the United States with the art-house audience. But it was his creation of the bumbling French police detective Clouseau in Blake Edwards's 1963 The Pink Panther that put him across with the mass audience. In that movie, Sellers was a supporting player to the top-billed David Niven, and he only landed the role because Peter Ustinov dropped out days before he was to begin filming. But so much of the movie's enormous success was so clearly the result of the slapstick aplomb that Sellers brought to his thinly written part that Edwards brought him back to star as Clouseau in 1964's A Shot in the Dark. Although this was the movie that introduced the actors and characters who would become the standard Clouseau supporting cast--including Herbert Lom as Clouseau's seething, tic-ridden boss Dreyfus (who would here establish a pattern of trying to kill Clouseau after the detective's incompetence had driven him to hysterical madness) and Bert Kwouk as Clouseau's houseboy Kato--the script was actually based on a Broadway play that had in turn been based on a French play by Marcel Archard, called L'Idiot. The screenwriters, Edwards and William Peter Blatty, simply inserted the Clouseau character into the comic-murder mystery set-up, and allowed Sellers to go to town with it. Not the least remarkable thing about the movie is that, by casting the delectable Elke Sommer as a ditsy heroine in need of a savior--she plays a woman who's been falsely accused of murder--Edwards actually managed to turn Clouseau into a romantic hero while intensifying his physical and mental incompetence.

A Shot in the Dark, the only Clouseau film that doesn't have the character's name or a reference to the Pink Panther in the title, was probably the funniest of all the Edwards-Sellers collaborations(including the non-Clouseau The Party), and perhaps they should have folded Clouseau up and filed him away after that. So far as Sellers was concerned at the time, that's just what they were going to do, and when United Artists wanted to bring the character back in 1968, they had to make do with Alan Arkin for the ill-fated Inspector Clouseau. But by 1975, Sellers had suffered through an unrelenting string of flops that he later described as "my bad patch", and Edwards had gone down in flames with the big-budget disaster Darling Lili (1970) and a string of smaller but no more successful films. They paddled back to safe land with the 1975 The Return of the Pink Panther, in which Sellers adopted the costume style that Arkin had used in his one turn as the character and introduced the rubbery, incomprehensible accent that some French critics would never forgive him for. Sellers would dutifuly report for work on The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) and then The Curse of the Pink Panther (1978), only those with calloused eyeballs could fail to see that this accomplished actor wasn't exactly thrilled to be going through the same old paces again and again. The prodigiously imaginative Sellers was trapped in a role that had gotten smaller over time; no longer a layered if farcical character, the Clousesu of the later films is simply a dolt who is consistently wrong about everything and keeps falling over things yet somehow manages to end in triumph. Yet Sellers was also a famously insecure man who seems to have decided that only as Clouseau could he still star in hit movies. When Sellers died in the summer of 1980, just months after racking up an Academy Award nomination and a Time magazine cover story for his starring role in Being There, he was preparing to reprise the role yet again for The Romance of the Pink Panther. Edwards, who seemed ready to sap the tree until the whole forest was gone, managed to squeeze out one last Sellers-as-Clouseau film--Trail of the Pink Panther, released two years after Sellers's death--using old clips and previously unseen footage, before moving on to such dubious replacements as Ted Wass and Robert Benigni.

Anthony Perkins/Norman Bates

The role of Norman Bates, motel manager, taxidermist, and mother's boy, took Perkins's movie career to another level, but it also got him typecast playing villains and loonies, which became more of a problem as the gifted, intelligent actor's style became more mannered and self-consciously neurosthenic over the years. His leading man days seemed to be over for good when Universal Pictures declared its interest in making a sequel to Psycho with Perkins reprising his role. Directed by the late Richard Franklin (Road Games, Cloak & Dagger), the movie had no input from Robert Bloch, who created the character or Norman in his original novel (and who cashed in on the publicity by writing his own Psycho II novel), nor from Joseph Stefano, who adapted it for the screenplay, and Alfred Hitchcock had been dead for two years. Perkins himself turned down the offer when it was first presented to him, but then, after it became clear that the studio intended to go ahead with or without him, but with another actor playing Norman, he began to feel proprietorial about his best-known role. When you consider that the movie was always going to be something of a travesty, the finished product isn't that awful. In the most effective moments, Franklin had the grace to play the violent set pieces--which include a climactic scene involving a woman who identifies herself as Norman's real mother and a well-timed blow to the head with a shovel--as black slapstick comedy, treating what everyone in the audience knows about Norman's past and his proclivities as a shared dirty joke.

The movie was given a handsome promotional campaign that aimed to tap into nostalgic fans of the original while also reaching out to younger moviegoers who were advised that Norman Bates was the granddaddy of such slasher-movie icons as the boogeymen of the Halloween and Friday the 13th series. In the end, Psycho II, the movie whose title suggested a Saturday Night Live spoof, was a big enough hit that the studio wanted more. And once Perkins had played Norman again, he couldn't seem to get him out of his system. He not only agreed to return for Psycho III (1986), but he also signed on to use it as his movie directing debut. Pyscho III, which began with a sequence that almost could have passed as the opening of Vertigo II and ended with Norman once again headed for the nutbin, was in turn followed by Psycho IV: The Beginning, a 1990 cable TV film, written by Joseph Stefano, in which Perkins co-starred with E.T.'s playmate, Henry Thomas, as the young Norman, and Olivia Hussey, twenty-two yeara after she'd starred in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet, as Norman's mother. The film ended with the birth of Norman's son, who may or may not carry the hereditary psycho-killer gene, setting up the potential for a "Norman, Jr." franchise that has yet to be realized. Perkins died in 1992, six years before Gus Van Sant's official (and infamous) "shot-by-shot" remake starring a glassy-eyed and miscast Vince Vaughan as Norman.

Sean Connery/James Bond

Connery renounced and returned to the role that made him a star on two separate occasions. After Connery sat out On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), the sixth film in the official Bond franchise, United artists lured him back for the 1971 Diamonds Are Forever with a deal that included a wheelbarrow full of money and the studio's agreeing to finance The Offense, a movie Connery wanted to make with director Sidney Lumet. Connery's performance in Diamonds is probably the best-acted Bond of his career, but so much of what surrounded him in the movie was tacky and played-out that he must have left the set feeling confirmed in his decision to leave the role of Bond to whoever wanted him. So it was a shock when it as announced, thirteen years later, that the now 53-year-old Connery had agreed to return the role. Hitting the interview circuit, Connery coyly insisted that he'd always said that he'd be happy to do another Bond film if he was presented with a wow of a script, and he also hinted that the new movie would make great, subversive use of his advanced age.

In fact, the new film Never Say Never Again, had its roots not in a brilliant screenplay with a daring new take on the character but in the conclusion of a legal battle between the producer Kevin McClory and the producers of the Bond franchise, which left McClory with the remake rights to Thunderball. The resulting film is mostly a tired action flick that looks as if the director, Irvin Kershner (whose 1966 A Fine Madness boasts one of the best of Connery's early performances), hadn't recharged since his previous job, The Empire Strikes Back. Connery moves through it gamely, despite being subjected to such indignities as an ill-fitting hairpiece and a glaring edit where you can see him disappear from the frame and a stunt double reappear in his place. Under the circumstances, he seems understandably happy to leave the film to be stolen by the actors playing the villains, Klaus Maria Brandaeur and Barbara Carrera. Originally, plans were announced to release the movie in the summer so that it could go head to head against the latest "real" Bond movie starring Roger Moore, Octopussy. In the end, the studio blinked, and Never Say Never Again opened later in the fall. Despite its lack of sparkle, it was a huge hit. At this stage in his career, four years away from his Oscar-winning turn in The Untouchables, Connery was pretty much bulletproof, and his decision to break his vow, and his having so little to show for it, did his reputation no real harm. Presumably he walked away feeling that the project was worth doing so long as it had succeeded in its real mission--i.e., to give the Bond franchise owners who he felt had underpaid him throughout the '60s a little agita.

Not all unexpected reunions in movies are between actors and characters. Some are between actors and directors, such as the infamously difficult relationship between Henry Hathaway and Dennis Hopper. Early in Hopper's career, Hathaway cast him in his 1958 Western From Hell to Texas. Then in 1966, he used him again in the John Wayne picture The Sons of Katie Elder. In a story that became legendary after Hopper repeated it again to interviewers during his post-Blue Velvet comeback, Hopper was reluctant to give a particular line reading that the director was insistent on, so Hathaway had Hopper do take after take until the broken actor finally did just as he was told--after which Hathaway declared his intention to have the already shaky actor driven out of the business. Three years later, Hathaway hired Hopper for a small but memorable part in True Grit, the movie that would win Wayne an Academy Award for Best Actor. Hopper has speculated that Hathaway decided to make this magnanimous gesture because Hopper had married Brooke Hayward, the daughter of Margaret Sullavan and the producer Leland Hayward, and thought that the young man deserved to be given the chance to support his new family. If anything like that did go through Hathaway's mind, the joke was on him: Hopper had been using his time off from banging on casting office doors to get his own directorial debut made. The movie, Easy Rider, which made it clear that there was a wide audience for a "youth cinema" that identified itself as part of the counterculture, was released in the summer of 1969, the same time that True Grit was playing to audiences who saw it as an antidote to new-fangled ideas and strobe-happy trip sequences. Both movies established themselves as zeitgeist hits and cleaned up, but Hopper and Hayward's marriage wouldn't survive to the end of that year.

DVD Digest for March 31, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

This week, the 2008 winner of the Oscar for Best Picture finds its way to DVD and Blu-Ray. But don’t worry- some good movies are coming out too.

For most media outlets, the big DVD news this week is the release of Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winner Slumdog Millionaire (Fox, also Blu-Ray). And considering the amount of expensive PR and hype that has gone into making the movie the year’s “biggest indie success story” (and the Oscar for Best Media Push goes to…), it’s understandable that they’d want to play up the DVD release as much as possible in order to milk its Academy Awards for the most money possible. Meanwhile, those of us who didn’t care much for movie- and I can’t be the only one, can I?- will just have to hold out hope that maybe the folks who catch up with it at home will be as underwhelmed as we were. Maybe it’s that we were just spoiled by the last two years, in which we thought the Academy was turning over a new leaf by honoring honest-to-goodness awesome movies, but while Slumdog isn’t as awful as Crash, it certainly isn’t movie enough to withstand the massive hype that’s surrounded it ever since Toronto audiences wet their pants over it last fall. The Slumdog love’s got to end sometime, right? RIGHT???

Sorry about that, folks. I just get a little… annoyed when I think about Slumdog. Anyway, this week’s other releases coming to DVD include: Owen Wilson, Jennifer Aniston and a troublemaking, lesson-teaching dog in Marley & Me (Fox, also Blu-Ray); Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson in Last Chance Harvey (Anchor Bay); and the Spanish mindbender Timecrimes (Magnolia). Also, this week sees the release of the After Dark Horrorfest III (Lionsgate), which includes The Broken, Slaughter, Perkins 14, The Butterfly Effect: Revelation, From Within, Dying Breed, Voices, and the unrated version of Autopsy, with each film also available separately.

Meanwhile, this week’s lineup of classics is headed up by two new releases from the good folks at Criterion, Roberto Rossellini’s Il Generale della Rovere, and Andrzej Wajda’s Danton. Also this week: the Bollywood Horror Collection vol. 2 (Mondo Macabro), which includes Veerana- Vengeance of the Vampire and Purani Haveli- Mansion of Evil.

This week’s TV on DVD include In Plain Sight Season 1 (Universal) and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea Season 4, Vol. 1 (Fox).

In Blu-Ray only news, this week brings three classic big-screen musicals: An American in Paris (Warner), Gigi (Warner), and South Pacific 50th Anniversary Edition (Fox). Also this week: the Vin Diesel double feature Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick (both Universal), plus Ghosts of Mars (Sony) and The One (Sony).

Finally, we come to the Synopsis of the Week, coming once again from the folks at FUNimation Entertainment. Sorry if it seems like I’m picking on Japanese animation with this feature, but you’ve got to admit that some of their premises are pretty unbelievable, and the folks who write the copy at FUNimation don’t exactly hide this fact. Anyway, this week’s selection comes from the DVD One Piece, Season 1: The Fourth Voyage:

“In one of Japan's most wildly successful manga, movie, and television series, Monkey D. Luffy is a cheery, optimistic young fellow with a grandiose dream of becoming the king of the pirates. Luffy has two other odd qualities: he can stretch his rubbery body, and he cannot swim. After using his Gum Gum Axe to bring down the house on Arlong's reign of terror, Luffy and his crew get some big news. A brawl with the marines has officially landed Monkey and Zoro on the wanted list! News travels fast, and it's not long before Red Haired Shanks is celebrating his old friend's new status as a genuine pirate. But not everyone shares his fondness for the Straw Hats. There is an armada of angry adversaries in hot pursuit as Luffy and his crew set sail for Logue Town - the final resting place of the legendary Gold Roger.”

Sorry, but I’m having trouble getting past the hero’s name- to say nothing of the ominous inclusion of the dubious “quality” involving his inability to swim. That it gets even stranger from there is really saying something, methinks.

Precursors: 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)

Nick Schager — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:30:00 GMT

Apparently only good enough to warrant a pre-summer-season release, Fast and the Furious pulls into theaters this weekend with the reunited cast from 2001’s original. Re-pairing bald baritone Vin Diesel with Ken doll-handsome Paul Walker – as well as throwing Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster back into the mix – is supposed to be this fourth installment’s enticing calling card (ooooh, they’re kickin’ it old school!). Yet if the series was ever worthwhile, it wasn’t during Diesel and Walker’s maiden outing but, rather, during Walker’s turn alongside Diesel replacement Tyrese in John Singleton’s 2 Fast 2 Furious, an adventure whose gleeful inanity was perfectly encapsulated by its title. With a plot too perfunctory to have been remembered by yours truly, Singleton’s sequel amped up its predecessor’s template to ludicrous heights, which made perfect sense given that there’s nothing to these car-thieving, street-racing sagas save for their manic auto-erotic madness, comprised of screeching tires, bodalicious babes, periodic shootouts, and stunts, stunts, stunts. Whereas director Rob Cohen took his dim-witted material at least slightly seriously, Singleton makes no such mistake. While his entry won’t be making the cut for any AFI action-film lists, its consistent willingness to indulge in extremeness – from cars taking turbo-boosting flight, to the raft of groan-worthy one-liners spouted by Walker and Tyrese, to the neon-flashy aesthetic – turns the proceedings into a self-consciously goofy, tongue-in-cheek live-action Grand Theft Auto cartoon.

DVD Digest for January 6, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:00:00 GMT

This week brings a cavalcade of crap from the lean seasons of 2008. But if you’re willing to wade through it, there are treasures to be found.

DVD of the Week: The best news in a relatively slow week is the much-anticipated arrival of two very different films by the great British director Michael Powell. For years, fans of Powell and his longtime collaborator Emeric Pressburger have yearned for a DVD of one of their greatest films, 1946’s Stairway to Heaven, also known as A Matter of Life and Death. Finally, the film has arrived in a new pressing from Sony, complete with an introduction by longtime Powell fan and friend Martin Scorsese and an interview with film scholar Ian Christie. But wait, there’s more! Paired in the set with Stairway is Powell’s late-period film Age of Consent. I have yet to see the film, which by most accounts is fairly minor Powell. Yet how can one possibly resist a movie that stars James Mason and a luscious young (and often-nude) Helen Mirren, set against some lovely Australian settings? Not me, that’s for sure.

This week’s most notable recent releases on DVD are a pair of 2008’s highest-profile pot-themed movies- David Gordon Green’s Pineapple Express (Sony, also Blu-Ray) and Jonathan Levine’s The Wackness (Sony, also Blu-Ray). Also this week is the fiction debut of documentarian Jessica Yu, Ping Pong Playa (Image, also Blu-Ray), plus a quintet of shame: Nicolas Cage in Bangkok Dangerous (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray); Vin Diesel in Babylon A.D. (Fox, also Blu-Ray); Pacino and DeNiro cashing their paychecks in Righteous Kill (Anchor Bay, also Blu-Ray); Disaster Movie (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray), the latest in the seemingly deathless cycle of cut-rate parodies from the Friedberg/Seltzer team; and the right-wing spoof/jeremiad An American Carol (Universal). Whew.

This week’s big TV on DVD is Battlestar Galactica Season 4.0 (Universal). And in Blu-Ray only news, this week sees the release of Peter Jackson’s King Kong (Universal), the pigskin drama Friday Night Lights (Universal), and Season 1 of Showtime’s Dexter (Paramount).

Screengrab's Top Guilty Pleasures (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:30:00 GMT

SCOTT VON DOVIAK'S GUILTY PLEASURES:

BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES (1970)

If your weaknesses include pre-Star Wars sci-fi of the '70s and monkey movies, it really doesn't get any better than the Planet of the Apes series. I would classify the first Apes movie as a genuine classic, no guilt required. The same can't be said about the first sequel – at least, not by me and certainly not with a straight face. For one thing, star Charlton Heston only agreed to a few days of shooting, so he disappears a few minutes into the movie and is essentially replaced by James Franciscus as a newly arrived astronaut from the past. Franciscus appears to have been cast for his resemblance to Heston…that is, until late in the movie when you actually see both actors in the same shot and realize what a freakish-looking human being Charlton Heston really was. His performance may not be fondly remembered, but Franciscus did give us an immortal reading of the line, "My God! It's a city of…apes!" Beneath also offers Barney Miller's James "Inspector Luger" Gregory as a gorilla and Victor Buono as the leader of a race of underground mutants who worship an atomic bomb. Best of all, it has the most abruptly nihilistic ending of all time, as Charlton Heston attempts to put an end to the series by blowing up the planet. Fortunately for us Ape-heads, it didn't work.

O.C. AND STIGGS (1985)

This one is close to indefensible. I know Robert Altman loved all his children equally, but pundits like myself are supposed to be more discerning. Rationally, I know O.C. and Stiggs ranks with bottom tier Altman like Kansas City, HEALTH and the odious Pret-a-Porter, but for some ineffable reason I love it anyway. Goodness knows the leads (Daniel Jenkins as O.C., Neill Barry as Stiggs) are a uniquely uncharismatic pair – at times downright repellent, in fact. The plot is nonexistent even by Altman standards – two teenagers bum around suburban Arizona, torment their hated neighbor and conspire to bring King Sunny Ade to town for a concert. Yet there's something about the lazy summer vibe and tacky-tiki setting that sucks me in, something fundamentally amusing about applying the Altman filter to the John Hughes template, and even something geekily satisfying about the way Altman weaves in references to other movies, whether his own (the continuing campaign of Hal Philip Walker from Nashville) or others (Dennis Hopper reprising his Apocalypse Now role). If the filmography of Robert Altman is a vast palace of wonders, O.C. and Stiggs is the pink flamingo on the lawn. He wouldn't have it any other way.

POINT BREAK (1991)

I know the release date is 1991, but I like to think of Point Break as the last movie of the '80s. It's goofy and way over the top, but it doesn't get bogged down in CGI and fireballs and seizure-iffic editing – it's pre-Michael Bay action filmmaking at its most testosterone-poisoned, so naturally it could only have been directed by Kathryn Bigelow. The role of quarterback-turned-FBI agent Johnny Utah (Johnny Utah! Genius! The perfect genetic splicing of Johnny Unitas and Joe Montana!) fit Keanu Reeves like the wetsuit he often wears in the movie; if you were going to pick one agent to infiltrate a gang of surfers who rob banks while wearing Reagan and Nixon masks, it would be him. Of course, he needs a crazy partner with a fondness for meatball subs, which is where Gary Busey enters the picture. And he needs a worthy adversary to brah-mance, a golden god Zen master of surfing and bank robbery and all that is extreme in life – and who better for that role than the star of that cheesiest of all '80s action-fests, Road House? Point Break is basically a two-hour dick-measuring contest, which Reeves wins by jumping out of a plane without a parachute and using his sheer dudeness to fall faster than Patrick Swayze.

THE FAST & THE FURIOUS (2001)

Let me be clear: I speak only of the first of the fasts and the furiouses, not the 2 stinky 2 believe sequels. The 2001 original is a supercharged street racing thriller straight out of the old Roger Corman playbook. Ideally, it should be viewed not in an air-conditioned cineplex with stadium seating and THX sound, but at a hot, sticky drive-in with a case of cold beer on hand. The opening half hour offers up a bare-knuckle brawl, a drag race down a deserted city street, a high-speed police chase, a surprise attack by an Asian motorcycle gang, and finally a little down time at a house party where two gorgeous young women lock lips. It was at this point, I well recall, that someone in the audience behind me jumped up out of his seat and yelled "I love this movie!" to uproarious laughter and applause. It's that kind of picture. Sure, the lead is limp noodle Paul Walker, and Michelle Rodriguez is at maximum glare-and-pout annoyance, but for once Vin Diesel is the right man in the right place. His name alone qualifies him as an astute casting decision, but his sleek chrome dome and rumbling voice seal the deal.

Click Here For More Guilt From Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Hayden Childs, Vadim Rizov & Sarah Clyne Sundberg

Contributor: Scott Von Doviak

Trailer Review: Fast and Furious

Paul Clark — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:00:00 GMT

2001’s The Fast and the Furious was one of the biggest hits of that summer, but I don’t think anyone could have imagined that it would spawn three sequels so far. Strangely enough, this is the first one to reunite all of the principals from the first film, rather than just throwing Brian (Paul Walker) into a new setting or having Dominic (Vin Diesel) drop in for a cameo appearance. By some strange coincidence, this is the first of the Furious sequels to actually look halfway decent. For one thing, I like seeing old-school muscle cars onscreen more than the new, tricked-out, mostly foreign cars that appeared more and more in the sequels, so this is more up my alley. In addition, the original film was the last time I enjoyed Diesel (and Michelle Rodriguez, for that matter) in a movie, so hopefully he can get his star mojo back this time around. As for the trailer, I’m more a fan of the extended teaser scene the opens it than the booty-shaking, propulsively-scored montage that follows, but I also understand the need to sell the sizzle as far as this movie is concerned. Still not sure about that title, but what the hell- I’m actually sort of interested in a new Fast and Furious movie, which means the trailer folks did their job.

Morning Deal Report: Burning Diesel and Kerosene

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:30:00 GMT

The Coen Brothers have visited some strange places with their movies, but the top of the weekend box office charts may be the most unexpected of all. Yet there’s Burn After Reading, edging out Tyler Perry’s latest grotesquerie for the top spot with $19.4 million. I thought it was minor Coen myself, but that’s a discussion for another day. The Perry faithful turned out for the odious The Family That Preys to the tune of $18 million, and enough folks were curious to see De Niro and Pacino Together Again For The First Time to nudge Righteous Kill into third place with $16.5 million. Women did not turn out for The Women, which barely cracked the $10 million mark.

From the You’ve Gotta Be Shitting Me file comes news that another XXX sequel is in the works. Columbia Pictures is “in discussions with producer Joe Roth for a new version of XXX, one that would bring back Vin Diesel as star and Rob Cohen as director.” As you may recall, the last XXX sequel actually starred Ice Cube, but apparently Diesel’s pricetag has gone down. Then there’s this tidbit from Variety: “Diesel also bowed out of a starring role in the first sequel to The Fast and the Furious — 2 Fast 2 Furious — opting for a cameo in that pic. He skipped the third pic, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, but will reteam with original co-star Paul Walker in the franchise’s fourth go-round, Fast & Furious, which Universal will release June 12.” If there’s a fifth movie, they’ll just call it Fastious.

The Kerosene Cowboys are set to ride for director Mario Van Peebles. “Based on a novel by Randy Arrington, the tale follows the rough-riding and hard-living pilots of an elite Navy attack squadron,” says The Hollywood Reporter. Cam Gigandet, Shane West and Rachael Leigh Cook are set to star. I’ve never heard of two of those people, but I’m just passing the info along to those of you who have.

Related:
Hair Today, Coen Tomorrow
Freddy and the Furious Go to Cloverfield

"Babylon" Tanking: Director Kassovitz Blames His Studio for a Sci-Fi Debacle

Phil Nugent — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:00:00 GMT

If you're among the select group of people who've seen Babylon A.D. --the sci-fi action whatsit that opened last Friday without the benefit of press screenings--its director, Mathieu Kassovitz has a message for both of you: it's not his fault. Kassovitz, who made a splash as a director in 1995 with his international hit La Haine (and who is perhaps best known here for his acting roles, such as the male romantic lead in Amelie and the boyish explosives expert in Munich) feels that 20th Century Fox, the movie's American distributor--it was co-financed by them and the French-based StudioCanal--gutted and mangled his baby, and he's gone public with his complaints via an interview with the website Scifi Scanner. If you only noticed the faint signals of Babylon A.D.'s publicity campaign and were unfamiliar with Kassoviitz's reputation as a filmmaker, you might be startled to learn that the movie, which stars Vin Diesel, Michelle Yeoh, Charlotte Rampling, and Gerard Depardieu ("wearing," according to New York Times reviewer A. O. Scott, "the most superfluous prosthetic nose extension in film history"), and which was originally set to be released back in February, was something that a studio might be able to mishandle. But it turns out that this, once upon a time, was a labor of love. The script, which is credited to Eric Besnard, is based on a novel, Babylon Babies by the French writer Georges Datec, that Kassovitz had wanted to film for years. The director rhapsodizes that "The scope of the original book was quite amazing. The author was very much into geopolitics and how the world is going to evolve. He saw that as wars evolve, it won't be just about territories any more, but money-driven politics. As a director it's something that's very attractive to do." But his efforts to remain true to the material were undercut, he says, by Fox's meddling. "I never had a chance to do one scene the way it was written or the way I wanted it to be. The script wasn't respected. Bad producers, bad partners, it was a terrible experience."

" To whatever degree the movie that Kassovitz made resembled what he had in mind, the finished product was further altered when Fox got out the chop-chop scissors before throwing it into theaters over the Labor Day weekend. The official 93-minute release is said to have lost anywhere between fifteen minutes (Kassovitz's best guess) and seventy minutes of footage from the director's version. (Informed of the changes, Vin Diesel, who has spoken of the movie as a comment on "an age where borders are closing," could only ask sardonically, "Am I even in the movie any more?") What's left, Kassovits says, is "pure violence and stupidity...like a bad episode of 24", like the ones where Jack's wife had amnesia. The way he sees i, he wanted to make a movie where "All the action scenes had a goal: They were supposed to be driven by either a metaphysical point of view or experience for the characters," whereas Fox ""Fox was just trying to get a PG-13 movie." The end result for him has been a sad lesson in just how superfluous the director of a movie can be made to feel. "I'm ready to go to war against them," he says, "but I can't because they don't give a shit."

Take Five: Labor Day

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Usually, the Screengrab's Take Five feature is inspired by some new release coming out the day we go to press. However, sometimes, if the raft of new releases in relatively uninspiring or inappropriate, we go with a different sort of them, and since today is the start of Labor Day weekend, what better time to salute organized labor? After all, some of us are union men ourselves (hey, the National Writer's Union is too a real union! We're part of the United Auto Workers for some reason!); and what with the writer's strike earlier this year that brought the movie business to a near-halt, and the possibility of an actor's strike later in the year coming along to finish what the writer's strike started, America hasn't been this aware of what organized labor is up to in years! Unfortunately, unless Vin Diesel's mercenary Thoorop in Babylon A.D. happens to be a dues-paying member of the International Brotherhood of Hired Killers & Machinegun Operators, there's no new released this holiday weekend that are even remotely about unions or the labor struggle. But that doesn't mean we can't dip back into our video vaults and come up with five fine flicks about working-class struggle for your Labor Day enjoyment. (And, as a special treat before you go back to work on Tuesday, take a few hours to watch Barbara Kopple's masterful Harlan County U.S.A., referenced in last week's Take Five.) Happy Labor Day, readers!

MATEWAN (1987)

Possibly John Sayles' finest film, Matewan depicts -- with the heart of a union man and the eye of an artist -- the brutal struggle to unionize among the West Virginia coal miners of the 1920s, one of the bloodiest periods in the history of organized labor. Based on the Matewan Massacre of 1920 and featuring breathtaking cinematography by Haskell Wexler, Matewan' s powerful story is bouyed by wall-to-wall terrific performances by Chris Cooper, David Strathairn, James Earl Jones, and a young Will Oldham, in his pre-rock star days. Essential.

NORMA RAE (1979)

Martin Ritt's feel-good hit about a scrappy female textile worker who takes on the burden of being the point woman for unionizing the clothing mill in the deep South that employs her hasn't held up particularly well -- it's got a handful of good performances (and won star Sally Field an Oscar), but at times it comes across as a bit hokey. But it still stands as a testament to one of the last flashes of union glory in the U.S. before Ronald Reagan's Republicans started their unrelenting war against organized labor in America. Worth watching as a document of its day.

ROGER & ME (1989)

Sure, nowadays, it's pretty easy even for liberals to make fun of Michael Moore. His insistence on making himself part of his stories has gotten out of hand, and in many ways, he's become the caricature lefty the right has always accused him of being. But in 1989, when he launched his quixotic quest to have just a few words with General Motors CEO Roger Smith and ask him to look at the massive devastation wrought by his moving manufacturing jobs out of Flint, MI to avoid union costs, he seemed like a true breath of fresh air and a voice for the voiceless.

THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940)

It's almost impossible now to overestimate the impact of John Steinbeck's finest novel and the stirring masterpiece of a film that John Ford made of it. With the sting of the Depression fresh in the minds of millions of viewers -- and with labor conflicts so intense that big agricultural interests in California sought to have the movie banned, just as they removed copies of the book from California libraries -- the gorgeous, moving film was no stolid classic then, but an urgent cry for justice and decency at a time when the country was in its direst of straits.

AMERICAN DREAM (1990)

By the time Barbara Kopple finished her disturbing, heartbreaking documentary about a strike by meat packers at the Austin, MN Hormel plant, Reaganism's determination to crush unions wherever they could be found had already made its tragic story about the slow, tangled dismantling and destruction of a labor negotiating unit a familiar one all over the country. A far more ambiguous work than her Harlan County U.S.A., American Dream nonetheless shows the unremitting sadness of the direction our country took when it allowed ideologues to launch an assault on the hard-won gains of the working class.

Trailer Review: Babylon A.D.

Paul Clark — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Watching this trailer got me to wondering where Vin Diesel has been these past few years. But then, if I’d once been anointed Hollywood’s next action superstar and my last big-budget star vehicle was The Pacifier, I’d go into hiding too. Babylon A.D. looks more or less like your standard futuristic thriller, with amoral antihero Diesel discovering his conscience while transporting a beautiful woman who has mysterious powers. As such, it doesn’t look any better- or any worse- than other movies of its type. But what’s disheartening is the continuing slide of director Matthieu Kassovitz, once the promising director of Café Au Lait and La Haine, now the hack behind this and Gothika. Also, is it just me, or has Clint Mansell’s Requiem for a Dream score become the most overused trailer music since the Far and Away began turning up in every other trailer in the mid-90s? Because it sure seems like it to me.

Freddy and the Furious Go to Cloverfield

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Are we really sure we want the writers' strike to end? For now, it's the only thing standing between us and an unending parade of sequels and reboots. Here's the latest from the Hollywood recycle bin:

Despite its second weekend plummet at the box office, Cloverfield is still a massive hit considering its $25 million dollar budget, so it's no surprise that Variety reports a follow-up in the works. Director Matt Reeves may have to delay his "Hitchcock-style thriller" The Invisible Woman, but no doubt Paramount will make it worth his while.

Vin Diesel tells MTV, "I'm a little bit slower than the average actor that just jumps into the sequel, but I think the time has come to revisit Dom Toretto." If that character name rings no bells for you, perhaps its been a while since you've seen the first installment of The Fast and the Furious. After two largely Diesel-free sequels (the chrome-domed lunk did make a cameo appearance in Tokyo Drift), the original star is aboard for the fourth installment, as is his partner in crime. "Gotta have Paul Walker," says Diesel, who is the first person on earth to ever utter that sentence.

And then there's our main man Freddy Krueger, who already survived the seemingly fatal Freddy's Dead and either won or lost the battle of Freddy vs. Jason. (We can never remember.) Now there are reports that none other than Michael Bay is set to revive A Nightmare on Elm Street. (We'd like to suggest the title A Recurring Nightmare.) According to Zap2It, "No writers can be attached to Nightmare on Elm Street until after the strike ends, which is fine. Bay and his Platinum cohorts already have remakes of Near Dark and The Birds in various stages of preproduction for Rogue and Universal respectively."

Strike on, brothers. Strike on.

Afternoon Deal Report: Some White Dudes Make Some Movies

John Constantine — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:35:00 GMT

Marky-Mark Wahlberg is adding yet another meaty role to his busy schedule. He’ll be starring in Peter Berg’s untitled dramatization of the life of infamous drug lord Jon Roberts. Roberts was the subject of 2006’s much acclaimed Cocaine Cowboys. Wahlberg’s other upcoming projects include Peter Jackson’s Lovely Bones adaptation, Darren Aronofsky’s The Fighter, and M. Night Shymalan’s hilariously titled The Happening.

2007’s boytoy du jour Zac Efron will star in Richard Linklater’s adaptation of Me and Orson Welles. I actually penned a script with the same title back in ’98. It was about me and the ghost of Orson Welles watching the animated Transformers movie for twenty-four hours straight. It was mostly just Welles crying.

Speaking of crying, it looks like Timothy Olyphant is going to continue sabotaging his once-promising career by starring in David Twohy’s A Perfect Getaway. Sure, its premise of a honeymooning couple being stalked by two killers in Hawaii sounds reasonably interesting. But Twohy’s last major writing/directing effort was The Chronicles of Riddick. Say it ain’t so, Olyphant!