Video of the Day: Idiocracy: "It's Got What Plants Crave..."
1/16/2007 5:30:00 PM
Now that Idiocracy clips are finally hitting the Web, I figure now's as good a time as any to link to this, one of my favorite scenes from Mike Judge's hilarious film maudit.
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Forgotten Films: GONE TO EARTH (aka The Wild Heart) (dir. Michael Powell, 1950)
1/16/2007 3:00:00 PM
The legendary filmmaking team of director Michael Powell and screenwriter Emeric Pressburger, aka “The Archers,” made Gone to Earth at the height of their popularity – they had just come off iconic films like The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus– but its somewhat catastrophic reception would mark the beginning of their career decline. (Subsequent films, such as Oh, Rosalinda! and Battle of the River Plate would not duplicate their earlier successes.) It didn’t help, of course, that the film never quite worked out production-wise: The project was a collaboration with the even-more-legendary producer David O. Selznick, who would later cut his own version of the film and release it in the US. (More on that later.) Any way you look at it, these troubles are a dispiriting legacy for such a beautiful and heart-wrenching film, featuring the most striking color cinematography since...well, since Powell and Pressburger's own The Red Shoes.
It shouldn't have turned out that way. The idea of the notorious showman Selznick collaborating with one of the great creative partnerships in film history confirmed the producer's keen eye for talent. And the alluring, emotional material -- a tragic period romance set in the English countryside -- was ideal for both parties. As he proved with Gone with the Wind and Duel in the Sun, Selznick had a fondness for stories about fierce, passionate females, and Gone to Earth, adapted from Mary Webb’s novel, may have provided him with the ultimate wild woman. It was a perfect part for his lovely protégé/mistress Jennifer Jones, who had become an overnight star with her Oscar-winning role in The Song of Bernadette.
In Gone to Earth, Jones plays Hazel, a naïve, passionate Welsh country lass living in the Shropshire countryside with her harp-playing father in the late 1800s. Close to the earth and extremely superstitious, Hazel feels at one with the natural world around her: Powell’s camera and his cutting often equates her with the animals that populate the countryside, and she herself has a particular fondness for the foxes regularly hunted by local squire Jack Reddin (David Farrar), a rich and powerful man’s man whom innocent Hazel knows instinctively to distrust. Trouble is, Reddin’s got his heart set on Hazel, in his own slimy way. He doesn’t even bother to woo her; he simply declares her to be his. Also smitten with the gorgeous girl is gentle, meek local parson Edward Marston (Cyril Cusack), who loves her in more spiritual ways.
It’s a classic split between the noble soul and the dashing beast, and the choice would seem clear-cut, but Pressburger’s script (and Webb’s novel) complicates the situation somewhat: There is a definite pull between Hazel and Reddin, even as Hazel recognizes the personal superiority of Marston. She marries the parson, not so much because she loves him, but because of a dare with her father: As so often happens in fairy tales, an idle boast becomes a serious one, when the hotheaded Hazel vows to her father in an argument to marry the first person that asks. Sure enough, the parson is the first person that asks, and our heroine’s fate is sealed, entangling a good man in this complicated, messy web of human desire. The almost mystical, demonic attraction between Hazel and Reddin will, of course, lead to tragic consequences for this love triangle.
 | | Cyril Cusack and Jennifer Jones |
The story is classic melodrama, and, in its broad strokes, not a particularly distinguished one. That Gone to Earth the film works at all is something of a shock. In some senses, Hazel as a character represents what I like to call A Screenwriter’s Best Friend (or, more crassly, The Tard Rule) – that is, a character naïve, “slow,” or otherwise so deprived that he or she can pretty much do anything the plot requires and it will somehow be acceptable to the average viewer. Certain beloved contemporary films peddle in this kind of contrivance to the point of nausea -- Crash and Babel are basically ensemble pieces built entirely around this concept, where everybody is required to act totally irrationally so that their screenplays’ respective contrivances can work. (Apologies for the Armondism; I'm still hung over from the Golden Globes.)
But the presence of such a character is not a problem in and of itself: Such contrivances work in Gone to Earth precisely because Powell and Pressburger have pitched the story at the level of a fairy tale, with its simple heroine, its colorful milieu, its mystical overtones. (This is why Terry Gilliam movies also get away with their often silly plots, by the way.) Gone to Earth is Wuthering Heights reimagined as an Aesop fable. Like so many of Powell and Pressburger’s films, it gives us a world where the magical and the mundane coexist – we can get an earthy depiction of a turn-of-the-century carnival one minute, and then hear the Faerie Music whispering in the trees the next. (This is, after all, the same filmmaking team that took an homage to Chaucer and set it during WWII.)
 | | Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger |
 | | David O. Selznick |
Selznick, unfortunately, was unable to grasp the artful dementia of Powell and Pressburger’s approach. To his eyes, Gone to Earth had too much texture, too many scenes of carnivals, too much earthly context. He actually sued the Archers for breach of contract, claiming that they hadn’t shot the script. This, of course, was nonsense; it was Pressburger’s script, and he and Powell had stuck scrupulously close to their text. Selznick lost his case, but he still exerted his influence. Since he held the North American rights to the film, he hired Rouben Mamoulian to hack away about 30 minutes of the film and shoot some additional dramatic scenes. He also added voiceover narration to glue these fragmentary bits back together into a film.
That abbreviated version, which wasn’t actually too bad (Selznick may have been crass and ruthless, but he had decent cinematic instincts), was released two years later in the US as The Wild Heart. Even that studio-approved variation, however, was hard to see for many years, aside from the errant TV matinee, thanks to its failure at the box office. Indeed, Gone to Earth wound up being another step in Selznick’s slow, painful road to failure. The Archers didn’t fare much better; their next film, The Elusive Pimpernel, also resulted in a post-production dispute with an American company, and aside from the opera-film Tales of Hoffmann, their greatest successes were now behind them.
Gone to Earth has since been restored to its full length, and is slowly becoming more and more available: A UK DVD has been on the shelves for some years, and I hear rumors of an American DVD set to appear soon as well. All this, of course, is great news. Soon, hopefully, this wonderful, gorgeous film from the greatest filmmaking partnership of all time will find its rightful audience.
Previous Forgotten Films Columns:
- December 26, 2006 -- SHOCKPROOF (dir. Douglas Sirk)
- December 11, 2006 -- THE DION BROTHERS (aka The Gravy Train) (dir. Jack Starrett, 1974)
- November 28, 2006 -- RACHEL, RACHEL (dir. Paul Newman, 1968)
- November 15, 2006 -- LEO THE LAST (dir. John Boorman, 1970)
- October 30, 2006 -- 7 WOMEN (dir. John Ford, 1966)
- October 16, 2006 -- REIGN OF TERROR (aka The Black Book) (dir. Anthony Mann, 1949)
- October 3, 2006 -- MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON (dir. Bob Rafelson, 1989)
- August 18, 2006 -- LUNA (dir. Bernardo Bertolucci, 1979)
- August 28, 2006 -- OUR MOTHER’S HOUSE (dir. Jack Clayton, 1967)
- August 14, 2006 -- THE CHOCOLATE WAR (dir. Keith Gordon, 1988)
- July 31, 2006 -- THE STRANGER (dir. Luchino Visconti, 1967)
- July 17, 2006 -- WALKER (dir. Alex Cox, 1987)
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Sequel-itis: News From the World of Unnecessary Followups
1/16/2007 2:00:00 PM
- Dude…new stills from Alien vs. Predator 2. And they look…well, not very different from the stills from Alien vs. Predator 1.
- There is some speculation that Peter Berg and Jason Bateman might be joining Joe Carnahan’s film version of James Ellroy’s LA Confidential follow-up White Jazz.
- Sam Raimi is already considering making Spider-Man 4. Come on, at least pretend it matters whether Number 3 succeeds or not.
- Rejoice. They’re making a sequel to the Steven Seagal flick Half Past Dead. And no, Seagal’s not in it. How bad do you have to be to be denied a role in a straight-to-video sequel to your own third-rate action vehicle?
- They’re making a Lost Boys sequel. Alas, it too will go straight to DVD.
- Sylvester Stallone’s wife cried when she found out he wanted to make another Rocky movie. Didn’t you?
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Video of the Day 1: Peter O’Toole on The View
1/16/2007 1:00:00 PM
Apologies in advance for posting something someone shot off a friggin’ television, but it sort of demands to be seen: At last, after so many clips of celebrities making asses of themselves on The View, here’s Peter O’Toole just being Peter O’Toole. Better, I’d say, than his Letterman appearance. (Part Two will show up in the side menu if you follow the YouTube link.)
And yes, I find it ironic that of all the people in the world Peter O’Toole is the one that’s not showing up drunk for a morning television show.
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John Lennon To Die Over And Over Again, Thanks To Competing Mark David Chapman Biopics
1/16/2007 11:30:00 AM
We’ve had competing Christopher Columbus flicks, competing Truman-Capote-writes-In-Cold-Blood flicks, competing parent-child-trade-bodies flicks…and now it looks like we’re going to have competing Mark David Chapman flicks.
Variety is reporting on Andrew Piddington's The Killing of John Lennon, a “low-budget, privately-financed British movie, starring Jonas Ball as Mark David Chapman,” which premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival last year, and which will screen in Rotterdam later in January. It “follows Chapman's movements in the three years leading up to his murder of Lennon. All Chapman's dialog comes from his own journals and statements, and the film was shot on original locations in Hawaii and Manhattan where the events occurred.”
There is, of course, also the small matter of much-discussed upcoming Sundance title Chapter 27, Jarrett Schafer’s film about the three days in Chapman’s life leading up to Lennon’s murder, starring Jared Leto and Lindsay Lohan.
Gee, I wonder which movie the press will focus all their attentions on. Unless Piddington’s cast starts flashing their pubes in public places, pronto.
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Globular Thoughts…
1/16/2007 10:30:00 AM
 | | Just kill me now... |
Hey, remember last week when I said Babel was the real enemy? I wasn’t kidding. Anyway, here are some thoughts on the Golden Globes this morning after:
- Love the idea of Borat’s Sacha Baron Cohen winning an award from a bunch of somewhat shady foreign journalists for playing a shady foreign journalist.
- It’s been no small irritation to me that people keep citing Crash’s Oscar win as an example of why Little Miss Sunshine could win Best Picture, when clearly it’s Babel this year which has assumed the we're-all-oh-so-connected mantle of Crash. Last night’s win confirms that, to some extent. I still don’t think it will happen at the Oscars, but who the hell knows now.
- Jamie Foxx complaining about the fact that his film Dreamgirls was only on 800 theater screens got hefty amounts of “Stick it to the man” applause. Except that Paramount has released it on nearly 2000 screens. Also, um, are there actually people out there complaining that Paramount isn’t selling this film hard enough? I mean jesus.
- Is it just me, or did nobody actually say that Helen Mirren won her Best Actress in a Mini-Series or TV Movie award for Elizabeth I? (She was also nominated in the same category for Prime Suspect.) I was waiting to hear which show she had won it for, when she got up and started reading her acceptance speech for Elizabeth…
- Seriously, with all due respect to Forest Whitaker, who really is one of our finest actors, how many of the people voting for his performance do you think actually saw The Last King of Scotland?
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Morning Deal Report: Jenna Wants Scarlett, Burger Hatches Terror Plot, Aishwarya To Get Hitched
1/16/2007 10:00:00 AM
- Jenna Jameson wants Scarlett Johansson to play her in an adaptation of her book How to Make Love Like a Porn Star. Yeah, like that’ll happen.
- Universal Pictures has bought an untitled pitch from Illusionist director Neil Burger for a “New York-set story [about] an imminent terror threat that's caused a law-enforcement crackdown, bringing all crime to a standstill. The criminals get organized, pooling their resources to search for the terrorists. While their motivation is to get back to their nefarious business, the exercise forces them to re-examine their morality and place in society.” It’s like M meets The Siege…
- Paul Schrader’s The Walker, “starring Woody Harrelson as an aging male escort” will be playing at the Berlin Film Festival. Coincidentally, Schrader will also be the President of the Jury. Needless to say, his film will be screen out of competition.
- Alec Baldwin’s directorial debut The Devil and Daniel Webster, starring Jennifer Love Hewitt and Anthony Hopkins, which has been gathering dust on the shelf for four years, will finally be released on Starz, with a new title -- Shortcut to Happiness -- and all-purpose pseudonym Allen Smithee credited as director.
- Mischa Barton will star in the coming-of-age drama Don't Fade Away, “about an engaged Manhattan couple forced to deal with a father's unexpected illness.” It will co-star Beau Bridges, Ja Rule and Ryan Kwanten, and will be written and directed by Luke Kasdan, nephew of Raiders of the Lost Ark writer and director Lawrence Kasdan.
- Rob Zombie is spilling the beans about his original trailer for the imaginary film Werewolf Women of the SS, which will be one of several fake trailers appearing halfway through Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s Grind House.
- Male Bollywood fans, prepare to order a stiff drink: Aishwarya Rai is engaged to be married.
- More in a bit on the Golden Globes. But if you somehow still haven't seen the list of winners, they can be found here. Right now I'm too angry/bored/troubled to summarize.
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Video of the Day 2: Factory Girl's Nude Scenes
1/12/2007 3:30:00 PM
We-eell, it was gonna happen sooner or later. Given the Weinsteins' tardiness in getting their beloved Factory Girl out to the rest of the country, Sienna Miller's sex scenes have finally hit the web.
Enjoy them here. They are most decidedly Not Safe For Work. (And yes, we know that will just whet your appetites even further.)
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Biting Into Sundance
1/12/2007 2:30:00 PM
 | | Teeth |
"Across cultures, these myths are always about a male animal having to conquer the woman possessing this, um, dentata. I wanted to make it a good thing, so that the dentata was her protector. She’s like a superhero, and it’s her power.”
Concerned? That's director Mitchell Lichtenstein, speaking to New York magazine's Logan Hill about his Sundance movie Teeth, for a wrap-up of the more sexually adventurous fare at this year's festival.
Another money quote from this piece: Zoo director Robinson Devor, on his film about a man who died during a rather odd attempt at bestiality: "If anyone goes to our movie hoping to see horse sex, they will be greatly disappointed.”
This is all part of NY Mag's big-ass Sundance preview package. Full disclosure: I wrote one of the pieces.
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“Of course there are nude scenes…I’m Dutch!”
1/12/2007 1:30:00 PM
Facts I learned from this awesome, awesome Guardian interview with Paul Verhoeven, even though it contains one major factual error.
- He believes RoboCop was a “Christ-like” figure.
- People come up to him and say things like, “You are one of the few people in Holland I’m proud of.”
- He believes the Hubble Telescope is proof that the universe is full of violence.
- He is worried his book about Jesus will get him shot.
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