Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Everyone understands the language of a bully
By Edward Copeland
By the same token, hate, bigotry and intolerance also happen to be among the handful of dialects that don't require translation. Susanne Bier's In a Better World touches upon all those topics and raises the question of whether there comes a time when turning the other cheek ceases to be practical or if vengeance can ever be justified because it simply makes a tormentor's victim no better than the tormentor himself. The Danish film took home the 2010 Oscar for best foreign language film, beating such renowned competition as Biutiful, Dogtooth and Incendies, but only received U.S. release in 2011. I wasn't a fan of Biutiful, haven't seen Incendies and it's difficult to compare Dogtooth to just about anything, but In a Better World proves to be far from an embarrassing winner of the prize (as has been the case so often, coming off quite well and avoiding most of the preachiness that could trip up a film venturing into this subject matter if handled purely as a means to sell a message.
In a Better World marked Bier's second nomination for the Oscar for foreign language film. I haven't seen that movie, 2006's After the Wedding, but it would have to be damn good to best that year's winner, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's exquisite The Lives of Others with its touching performance by Ulrich Mühe, all the more haunting now since he died so soon after gaining his greatest international fame from the film.
I did, however, really like Bier's 2004 work (released in the U.S. in 2005). Brothers, which was remade in 2009 by director Jim Sheridan with Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal and Natalie Portman cast in the roles played so well in Bier's Danish version by Ulrich Thomsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Connie Nielsen. Needless to say, though I usually give more leeway to English language remakes of foreign language remakes, there was no way in hell that I would dare watch the excellent original defiled by the new cast, especially expecting to buy Mr. Bland Gyllenhaal as a believable screwup. Of course, the biggest screwup concerning the original Brothers occurred in 2004 and was committed by the Danish jury picked to select Denmark's entry for the Oscar.
That year, there were two critical (and, coincidentally, box office) successes: Brothers and a film I'm not familiar with titled King's Game. Everyone assumed that one of the two would be chosen as Denmark's entry and would make for a strong contender. Instead, the jury opted for Lars von Trier's The Five Obstructions, really a documentary, which attracted less than 13,000 moviegoers total in Denmark. Critics, scholars and citizens protested to no avail and The Five Obstructions remained Denmark's official entry for the 2004 Oscar foreign language film jury and failed to make the cut. Even if Brothers had made the cut, it wouldn't have been a guaranteed winner, even I were the sole voter because as much as I liked that film, I don't know that I would have voted for it over the winner, the great film The Sea Inside for which Javier Bardem deserved a nomination, and one of the other nominees, Downfall, with Bruno Ganz's overlooked performance as Hitler (and eventually endless source of hilarious YouTube parodies).
Enough digressions. Time to talk In a Better World. The story concerns two 10-year-old boys from families fractured in different ways, transplanted to Copenhagen, Denmark, who gravitate into a friendship spurred by both being bullied. Christian (William Jøhnk Juel Nielsen) moves there with his father Claus (Ulrich Thomsen) after the death of Christian's mother and Claus' wife. The death has shattered Christian, who feels that his father's attempt to be strong for his son really indicates a lack of caring that she died at all.
The other boy, Elias (Markus Rygaard), is the son of a Swedish doctor named Anton (Mikael Persbrandt) and his wife Marianne (Trine Dyrholm), who are separated and considering divorce because Anton divides his time between home and working for Doctors Without Borders at a refugee camp in a wartorn African country. The school assholes have made Elias their favorite punching bag, mainly because he's a "Swede" in their Danish homeland. I found this concept rather shocking since I'd never heard of Danes hating Swedes, so I actually looked it up, but couldn't find any evidence of such a hatred but I did stumble upon an interview Bier gave to Roger Moore of The Orlando Sentinel where she explained this:
"We went to some pains to not deal directly with one clearly defined country or religion. I wanted the movie to be about intolerance in a more general way. We question that lack of desire to understand another person or another culture. Some people are just like that.…
“It’s kind of a joke in the movie, this idea that we don’t like Swedes. OK, maybe a little, but there is not general prejudice against Swedes in Denmark. When we show that in the movie we’re showing how stupid prejudice is, how foolish racism looks. It’s like saying, ‘Come on, we’re all pretty much alike. Swedes and Danes? Exactly alike. Look how stupid in its core racism is.’”
That little joke might be funny, but very little in the movie itself is. While the adults get the top billing (and turn in good and great performances, especially Persbrandt and Dyrholm who both give excellent turns. Thomsen, who was so great in Brothers. almost seems an afterthought at times here.
In a Better World's success rests squarely and superbly on the shoulders of the two young actors, particularly Nielsen as Christian, whose carefully modulated performance begins as a sad young boy, transforms into a heroic kid who wants to help his friend stop being a victim before he turns into someone that scares even Elias and his parents, fearful of what he might be capable of doing.
The parallels established in the screenplay by Anders Thomas Jensen (who has had a hand in most of Bier's major films), from a story devised by him and Bier, nicely matches both visually and otherwise the parallels between suburban bullies and African warlords. It teeters closely at times toward being too obvious in its message, but the script does a good job at making situations gray enough that even the nonviolent advocates begin to question if sometimes the only way to end a bully's reign and make it a "better world" is to follow the Golden Rule literally into a not-so-nice direction.
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Labels: 10s, Bardem, Documentary, Foreign, J. Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, Oscars, Remakes, von Trier
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Wednesday, February 23, 2011
The long and dying road
By Edward Copeland
Javier Bardem carries the weight of Biutiful upon his shoulders as if it's a crucifix — and with its excessive length and the multitude of burdens placed upon his character, it's a heavy cross to bear indeed.
Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Biutiful is not a particularly illuminating or enjoyable ride. My first exposure to the director was the great Amores Perros, but ever since he's seemed compelled to produce sado-masochistic viewing exercises for the moviegoer, usually in a jumbled chronology which worked magnificently in Amores Perros but did nothing in the way of aiding 21 Grams or, especially, that monument to ridiculousness, Babel, whose more than four-year-old review on these virtual pages by Josh R, much like Mary Richards, still can take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile.
González Iñárritu's usual collaborator, screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, didn't work on Biutiful. While Arriaga's touch was crucial to Amores Perros as well to Tommy Lee Jones' neglected directing debut The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (though Arriaga did write 21 Grams and the nonsensical Babel), perhaps his input would have clarified Biutiful.
For Biutiful, González Iñárritu handles writing duties himself along with Armando Bo and Nicolás Giacobone. For the most part, he tells its story chronologically for a change but like Babel (not in the sense of absurdity) it's overburdened with just too much plot. Call it kitchen sink filmmaking, because he includes everything.
Bardem plays Uxbal, a small-time criminal in Barcelona using illegal Chinese immigrants for his bosses to help make counterfeit high-end goods such as fake Gucci purses, but Uxbal cares and tries to find better living arrangements and work for the Chinese in a construction project he and his brother Tito (Eduard Fernández) are involved in. On top of that, they are selling the plot meant to bury the father they never knew, choosing to cremate him so they can take the cash.
Uxbal also has an estranged bipolar wife Marambra (Maricel Álvarez) who can't be depended on to take care of his son and daughter, especially his son who always is being punished as a bedwetter. Besides, she tends to sleep with Tito on the side. There's also some side business where Uxbal claims to read the thoughts of the recently passed and deliver it to their grieving relatives.
When his good intentions toward the Chinese go terribly awry and turn into a national, televised scandal, he has even more guilt on his plate and oh, I almost forgot, that blood Uxbal keeps pissing happens to because he's secretly dying of cancer, undergoing chemo on the sly and not losing a bit of that glorious mane of hair. Despite all these strains, Uxbal's No. 1 priority is securing the future of his children after he's gone.
Are you exhausted just reading a brief summary of the plot (and I left out quite a bit)? Imagine trying to sit through it. Bardem truly is the film's only saving grace, conveying more through his eyes and his face as to what Uxbal is going through than any of the overwrought plot mechanics ever could. We watch him go through the motions of all the other nonsense as we just bide time to his inevitable deathbed scene and it takes nearly two-and-a-half hours to get there, yet Bardem makes all the moments ring true for his character. It's just a chore getting there as good as he is.
When Uxbal breathes his last breaths, it came as a relief because I knew that both his suffering and mine had reached its end.
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Labels: 10s, Bardem, Foreign, Tommy Lee Jones
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Friday, January 28, 2011
There's life, there's death and there's a middle that's the worst of all
By Edward Copeland
Some of the most satisfying films play as if they started as short stories, telling simple, self-contained tales that capture the viewer with acting and visuals the way good prose does with words. That's the feeling evoked by Get Low, Aaron Schneider's impressive feature directing debut that stars Robert Duvall in another superb performance that begins his sixth decade of superb film performances.
Get Low opens with a shot of a large house engulfed in flames while an unindentified figures flees the blaze. Usually, I'm good at remembering prologues such as this so that they stay in the back of my mind until I see (or figure out) how they play out later in the film. In this case, the rest of Get Low, written by Chris Provenzano and C. Gaby Mitchell from a story by Provenzano and Scott Seeke, so captivated me that I forgot about the opening until the incident comes up again.
This may be Schneider's first feature, but he already has an Oscar to his credit, having won the 2003 Academy Award for live action short for Two Soldiers. Prior to that, Schneider worked as a cinematographer on the film Kiss the Girls and many TV shows such as Murder One , which won him two awards from the American Society of Cinematographers and an Emmy nomination. I imagine this background nurtured the 1930s-era Get Low's gorgeous, burnished look by d.p. David Boyd.
Duvall plays Felix Bush, a small town's aging, eccentric recluse with long, unkempt gray hair covering both his head and face, who gets a visit from a minister, Rev. Gus Horton (Gerald McRaney), informing him that an old acquaintance has died. The man's passing puts an idea in Bush's head so he ventures back to Rev. Horton, telling him that it's time for Bush to "get low" and he wants the reverend to plan a funeral for him — a funeral he plans to attend while he's alive.
The minister declines, thinking it an odd idea he wants no part of, but a man named Buddy (Lucas Black, the young boy in Sling Blade) happens to be in the church with his wife and baby. He works at the town's struggling funeral home owned by Frank Quinn (Bill Murray). Frank can't understand how a business that should survive every economic swing could be in trouble. People seem to be dying everywhere else, but they are defiantly living there. That's when Buddy tells him he might be able to bring him some business.
Buddy and Frank drive out to Bush's place, knowing full well he likes to take shots at trespassers, and Frank sends Buddy to the door (promising commission) and Felix soon explains his plans for a funeral party where everyone in the neighboring counties come to speak about him. Since he's generally disliked, he adds the idea of a raffle for his house and land at $5 a ticket. Frank gleefully embraces the plan as the way of putting his business back in the black.
During a visit to town, Felix runs into a woman he used to date, Mattie Darrow (Sissy Spacek), who almost doesn't recognize him with beneath all that hair. Later, after he's gone to a barber and been groomed, Mattie stops by in one of the film's most beautiful scenes. Lit entirely by the flames from a fireplace, the talk between Felix and Mattie in his dark farmhouse not only provides great writing but displays images pleasurable to gaze upon. Unfortunately, the talk gets cut short when Mattie spots a photo of her late sister and surmises that Felix was involved with her while the woman was married and that's why he stopped courting Mattie.
It's the first clue we get that there might be method to Felix's madness. As he says, he's kept himself in a prison of his own making for 40 years and he needs to purge himself of the secret he's held for all those decades and that's what he wants to do at his funeral for himself. When he finally does, Duvall's delivery will break your heart. He may have just turned 80, but Duvall has been one of our finest film actors for a long time and he still controls the powers of his gift and uses them to fine effect, knowing how to modulate them for comic or dramatic effect.
The supporting cast all do well, especially Spacek, but they really appear just to serve Duvall and none fail. Murray gets most of the humorous parts, though he's tossed a serious moment here and there. It's impressive to see how Black has grown physically and as an actor now that he's an adult. There's also a fine turn by Bill Cobbs, who always adds a nice touch to just about anything in which he appears.
With Get Low, you get an almost perfect package: great acting, great direction and great writing all in a technically fantastic film with glowing photography and intricately detailed production design. It really should have been remembered more in year-end awards across the board.
Duvall tops that list of omissions. Sure, he has won one Oscar for Tender Mercies and been nominated five other times (and he should have won a second for The Apostle nomination), but he deserved that seventh nomination this year. I've seen all the nominated actors except for Javier Bardem in Biutiful, but Duvall's performance in Get Low clearly bests the other four nominees for best actor (and I think those four gave great performances as well — that's how good Duvall is).
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Labels: 10s, Awards, Bardem, Duvall, Murray, Oscars, Spacek, Television
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Saturday, April 25, 2009
Rhapsody in Black and White
By Jonathan Pacheco
Many describe Manhattan as more of a love story between a man and his city than a traditional love story between a man and a woman. I disagree with that, as I feel the plot of Isaac and Mary and Tracy really is the story being told. However, I do interpret the film itself, and the way it was made, not as Isaac’s relationship with Manhattan, but the director’s. Even the less-than-stellar Woody Allen films feature beautiful cinematography (I first noticed it in Small Time Crooks), but Manhattan, at 30 years old today, really goes out of its way to spotlight the beauty of this city.
The beginning sequence shows none of the film’s characters, just shot after shot after shot of locations in the city that Woody loves. The film shoves characters to a corner of the frame to make more room for the city in the background, creating memorable, breathtaking moments. With the cinematography, it’s almost like a pornography film that always gives more screen time and space to the most beautiful woman in the room; only, here, the most beautiful “she” around, as far as Woody is concerned, is the city of New York.
The story sounds familiar to anyone who’s ever watched a Woody Allen film or two. Isaac (Woody), a 42-year-old writer in Manhattan, dates a 17-year-old high schooler, Tracy (Mariel Hemingway, in an Oscar-nominated performance) while his married friend, Yale (Michael Murphy), takes on a mistress, Mary (Diane Keaton). Soon, Yale falls out of love with Mary while Isaac falls in love with her, and around and around we go. Isaac is the typical, neurotic, narcissistic “Woody Allen Persona” that was perfected in the '70s and '80s (when accused of thinking he was God, Isaac comes back with, “I gotta model myself after someone!”), while Keaton’s Mary plays as the polar opposite of her title character in Annie Hall, released just two years prior in 1977. Vocal, opinionated, and intelligent, Mary constantly clashes with Isaac (never insult Bergman around that man), and soon enough, the conflicting, “verbal joust”-nature of their relationship leads to attraction.
Something I’ve always loved about Woody Allen’s films from the period is the portrayal of his main characters, specifically the men. Woody just about always plays himself, but surrounds himself with taller, slightly balding 40-something year old academic white men usually wearing big, thick-framed glasses and a tie. They spend their evenings dining with their wives (who they cheat on) and girlfriends (who are either too young for them or are their mistresses), talking openly and casually about art, sex, and philosophy. Oh, and they all have psychoanalysts, of course. Sure, occasionally Woody’s characters will want to watch the Knicks game on TV, but his sports team doesn’t dominate his dinner conversation as I suspect mine or yours does. Things are much more cerebral for these characters (compare that to Woody’s later movies, where most of his characters would rather drink soda or beer than wine). I love it because these characters always surround themselves with vocal, intelligent friends more than willing to debate what it means to be an artist or spout off phrases like, “Gossip is the new pornography,” while I’ve personally found that, at least in my fair burg, those friends are not as easy to come by; maybe that’s what makes Woody’s New York City so great.
Seeing Manhattan’s opening sequence again, it astounded me how much it reminded me of the short-lived series, The Critic (a show that, after a brilliant first season, ruined its second season by trying too hard to make us care about the characters). Either they’re both spot-on in their portrayals of the Big Apple, or The Critic merely took its inspiration from Woody Allen’s films. The Gershwin-style of music that each plays, the shots of the city, they all match up. So many films and TV shows use NYC as merely a backdrop (or a name-drop), and they use it so poorly that the story’s setting could be any other U.S. city and it wouldn’t make a difference. The Critic knew how to use the city, and as we know and have come to expect from Woody Allen films, Manhattan certainly knew as well. For Isaac in Manhattan and Jay in The Critic, this place is their town, and you can just feel it.
As a clever touch, capitalizing on the black and white classical nature of Manhattan’s look, the film features small, soundless interludes that almost serve as mini silent films. Usually as transitions, these sequences show events such as Isaac moving into a new apartment or spending a day with his son. The actions are always a little exaggerated, and just like any silent film worth a lick, it’s brilliantly easy to tell what’s going on. You know what Isaac’s thinking by the way the movers carelessly toss his boxes on the floor. You see him desperately try to convince his son that he doesn’t want the really big sailboat, but rather the smaller, no-doubt cheaper sailboat right next to it. Each scene was a tiny, pleasant, unofficial break in the storytelling.
A favorite, brilliantly shot sequence takes place in a space exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art as Isaac and Mary, not yet a couple, duck in from a rainstorm. They walk through the exhibit, sometimes in total darkness, sometimes as MST3K-style silhouettes, and sometimes looking as if they’re standing on the moon. It was a joy to anticipate how the next shot would play with the shadows and the darkness, as sequences like this just wouldn’t have the same effect in color. The triumph of the sequence, a two-shot of Isaac and Mary face to face, only shows the highlights of their eyes, cheeks, noses, and mouths, the dark, starry backdrop engulfing them.
The critical breakup scene between Isaac and Tracy moves me as much as it does thanks to the wise cinematography. In this scene the shots move to close-ups of each character, particularly Tracy — closer than they’ll be on any character for the rest of the film. We’re allowed to see Isaac’s face as he tries to justify his actions, and we see every expression on the face of his 17-year-old girlfriend as she tries to understand how she’s supposed to be the benefactor in the breakup (according to Isaac). The scene ends with a heartbreaking shot of Tracy crying quietly, Isaac’s hand in frame, massaging her shoulder, trying to comfort her as she asks him to leave her alone. There’s a special little moment at the tail end of that shot as Isaac’s hand, unsure of how to console Tracy, hesitates and wipes one of her tears away. Not a typical, romantic film tear wipe with the thumb, but a tentative, almost accidental touch with the forefinger. Look for it next time you see the film. It blew me away.
It’s a little strange to watch Manhattan now, knowing where Woody is in his career these days. In the mid 2000s, he stopped filming in New York and shot his next four features (Match Point, Scoop, Cassandra’s Dream, Vicky Cristina Barcelona) in Europe — three in London. It was almost universally understood that Woody would never — could never — film anywhere but New York, especially after doing it for so long. Yet, a moment in Manhattan now seems slightly foreboding. Almost a throwaway line, Isaac comments to Mary that the city is really changing. In the moment, you think that Isaac could never leave the town. His friends simply don’t believe he could survive anywhere else. I don’t think Woody has fallen out of love with New York City, but with all the changes he’s seen for the past 30 years, and knowing this man’s nature, is it really that surprising that he’d be willing to try to fall in love with some other cities? As Tracy states at the end of the film, “Everybody gets corrupted.” So now Woody has gone off to Europe, just like Isaac kept telling Tracy to do (until he asks her not to, that is). I see Woody today as an older version of Isaac, finally taking his own advice.
There’s a Seinfeld episode in which George single-handedly ruins the production shoot of a Woody Allen film. One of the punch-lines of the situation was that after this specific incident caused by George, Woody was doing the unthinkable: he was wondering if his days of shooting in New York were over. Over a decade after that episode, the situation came true, but it wasn’t because of George Costanza’s incompetence. With every studio looking for the next $500 million blockbuster, it gets harder and harder to find money for a filmmaker whose movies rarely cash in $20 million domestically. Europe has apparently made things financially easier for Woody, and I think it could be good for him creatively. With new cities and countries to explore and personify, I think Woody’s having a blast in this new location. In a review of Vicky Cristina Barcelona, I wrote that Woody was portraying “the Spain of my dreams: passionate artists, tragic poets, beautiful countryside homes, and couples fighting in the streets.” In a way, you could even say that the characters played by Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz are personifications of Barcelona in the same way that Isaac personifies New York City. Are they entirely accurate portrayals? No, but they’re not meant to be. They are Woody’s romanticized versions of Barcelona, just as Manhattan, as stated in its opening monologue, is a romanticized version of the Big Apple. This is the world through Woody’s infatuated eyes.
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Labels: 70s, Bardem, Diane Keaton, Ingmar Bergman, Movie Tributes, Seinfeld, Woody
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Monday, December 15, 2008
Running with the Bulls…and Getting Nowhere
By Josh R
There are certain pursuits that only a crazy person — or an inveterate thrill seeker — would ever be gutsy and/or stupid enough to engage in. The annual running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, is a custom that engenders shock and outrage in some quarters and a sense of vicarious fear and excitement in others. No matter how much one dreads the potential consequences, the notion of flirting with disaster — if not the prospect of being gored and maimed by a hard-charging beast — will always be a turn-on.
Woody Allen is not the first name that comes to mind when the discussion turns to risk-taking.
For much of the '90s and early aughts, his films were characterized by the kind of cheap, prurient humor that all but screamed creative exhaustion; the approach smacked of desperation, while the attitudes smacked of misanthropy (if there are any two films in the Allen canon which convey more contempt for humanity than Deconstructing Harry and Celebrity, please — discourage from Santa from depositing those DVDs in my Christmas stocking). Critics have hailed his most recent strategy — specifically, making films that seem wildly out-of-character for him — as a return to form. Based on how impersonal in style most of the “new” Woody Allen films have been (and even Match Point, while not without merit, felt dry and academic even when it was trying for heat and danger), I remain unconvinced. Sometimes inspiration has to be borrowed rather than self-generated, which is not only forgivable but inevitable for anyone who can boast nearly half of the cinematic output of a Woody Allen. The writer-director has famously paid homage to other directors whose work he admires — most notably Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini — and the results have occasionally been very good indeed. In Vicky Cristina Barcelona he’s taking on Almodóvar without the freak factor, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that it isn’t an assignment he feels particularly comfortable with or well disposed to handle. Tackling the unfamiliar can represent a risk; it’s only a good risk if it has a chance in hell of working. There are things to like — and at least one thing to love — about this awkwardly conceived and frequently exasperating romantic-quadrangle story set in a sunny Spain where the wine runs as freely as those crazy bulls stampeding through the Pamplona streets. On the balance, however, it ultimately seems like a half-baked attempt at the kind of film Woody Allen doesn’t know how to make — or at least, shouldn’t be trying to make in the absence of a concept that's been clearly thought out from beginning to end.
Fittingly, Vicky Cristina is an ode to the perils of grappling with irresolute feelings, and the emotional gap between doing what feels right and what seems best. Two young American women have come to spend the summer in Barcelona, one to finish her dissertation and the other to soak in the rays, take a few snapshots and generally play tagalong. Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), a confirmed dilettante, is the more intrepid of the two. She has no idea what she wants out of life beyond a vague need for excitement and a departure from the norm. Cautious, pragmatic Vicky (Rebecca Hall), engaged to be married at the end of the summer, is a little too firmly resolved on the future for her own good. Both women become romantically entangled with a seductive Spanish painter, Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), who offers each one very different glimpses of what the future might hold should they be brave and/or impulsive enough to act on their desires. Each of the women wind up running with the bulls, and while no one gets gored, no one escapes completely intact either. Ultimately, both women’s inability to reconcile their own conflicted feelings makes the fulfillment of the fantasy somewhat less than satisfying.
The difficulty in making film about people who don’t know what they want comes in creating clear definition of character, or in finding a sense of purpose in their behavior. This is something that Allen (with one glorious exception) never really figures out how to do, and as a result, Vicky Cristina often feels like a film in search of an author. None of the people we observe, save for one, really ever come into sharp focus, saddled as they are with behaviors and attitudes that are too inconsistent, or just plain hard to make sense of, to be entirely convincing. Bardem is such a marvelously predatory presence in the first half of the film, that the passivity he displays in the second undermines all the goodwill and he’s built up as an enjoyably shady schmoozer of tourists. As the hedonist who’s too flaky to stay fixed on a single sensation long enough to find any lasting gratification in it, Johansson does her usual trick of underplaying every scene that she’s in – the fact that she does it to good effect here doesn’t dispel the lingering sense that, as an actress, she may be a one-trick pony. Rebecca Hall, a newcomer who sometimes manages to make a striking impression, has an intuitive grasp of the nuances of Allen’s dialogue and speech patterns. She has a presence and substance that Johansson lacks, but the character’s hostility toward Bardem in the early scenes is alienating, while her staunch determination not to give over to her feelings exhausts the audience’s patience later on (her powers of forbearance are so commendable she’s like Elizabeth II refusing to break down and give Prince Charles a hug). None are helped by dialogue that often seems as stilted as the bald, perfunctory-seeming narration that flattens out the action like a steamroller. Allen’s dialogue used to flow so naturally, to the point where it often seemed improvised — perhaps because he’s no longer making the kind of films that he feels comfortable making, or that feel distinctively his, the words now come out sounding as if they were translated into English from another language.
Things being what they are, Vicky Cristina Barcelona stumbles along for its first 45 minutes or so like a Cook’s tour without a guide, without conveying much in the way of excitement or energy — stumbling, that is, until the arrival of Juan Antonio’s ex-wife, Maria Elena, the kind of volatile and erratic presence for whom creating chaos comes as naturally as getting out of bed. Maria Elena is played by Penélope Cruz, an actress who’s been easy to dismiss as little more than a pretty face for the bulk of her career. She needn’t have to worry about that from here on out. As a walking cyclone of emotions who is passionate, provocative, paranoid and more than slightly unhinged, Cruz's impact on the film is something akin to a bomb going off in a glass factory; the character may not be any more fully realized by the author than any of the others, but the performance has such an electric intensity that it cuts right through the bullshit and becomes a genuine force of nature — dangerous, unpredictable, and as sexy-scary as it is laugh-out-loud funny. Unfortunately for the actress, and the audience, neither the film nor the filmmaker know exactly what to do with her. We keep waiting for Allen to give Cruz the opportunity to take Vicky Cristina Barcelona to another level — a big juicy scene, a monologue, anything… she gets so much kick and charge out of the material she has that it whets our appetite for more (in short, she's terrific). The bull is waiting at the gates, kicking back the dirt with steam issuing from her nostrils. Sad to say, Mr. Allen can’t quite muster the courage to run with her.
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Labels: 00s, Almodóvar, Bardem, Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Johansson, Penélope Cruz, Woody
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Thursday, March 27, 2008
No cure for Cholera
By Edward Copeland
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of the best books I've ever read. It also had an unusual quality (at least for me) in that as I read it, I could visualize making a film out of it. Usually, my reading seldom conjures images of possible movie versions. The only other example I can think of is A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, and there I didn't imagine how to make a movie of it but thought that I was the only person in the world suitably for playing Ignatius J. Reilly. Needless to say, when I heard a movie was being made of Marquez's masterpiece, I had great trepidation and the lukewarm reviews the Mike Newell's film discouraged me from seeing it in the theater, choosing to wait for the DVD.
The way Newell opens the film almost matches what I visualized in the movie in my mind, with one big exception: Part of the joy of the book is its mixture of romantic longing and dark comedy and in the opening and throughout the entire film, Newell botches the laughs. When he goes for them, the jokes land with a thud.
He has a bit more success with the other elements, but overall the entire film seems tone deaf. Of course, the whole effort could have been worse.
I remember when the news of a film adaptation was first floated with the ugly rumor that they were going to cast Jude Law and Nicole Kidman. Thankfully, they went with Javier Bardem as the lead (my own choice) and an actress I wasn't familiar with (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) as the object of his romantic obsession.
The film also pulls off the difficult trick of aging actors without making the makeup look silly. They also did a great job casting the young version of Bardem's character with Unax Ugalde, who bears a startling resemblance to Bardem.
Most of the other performances are good as well, particularly Hector Elizondo as Bardem's uncle and the great Fernanda Montenegro in the first film I've seen her in since Central Station.
If I could have made the film though, one other thing I would have done was actually film it in Spanish, to get another sense of its language since I read the book in its English translation. Nice try overall, but read the book.
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Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of the best books I've ever read. It also had an unusual quality (at least for me) in that as I read it, I could visualize making a film out of it. Usually, my reading seldom conjures images of possible movie versions. The only other example I can think of is A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, and there I didn't imagine how to make a movie of it but thought that I was the only person in the world suitably for playing Ignatius J. Reilly. Needless to say, when I heard a movie was being made of Marquez's masterpiece, I had great trepidation and the lukewarm reviews the Mike Newell's film discouraged me from seeing it in the theater, choosing to wait for the DVD.
The way Newell opens the film almost matches what I visualized in the movie in my mind, with one big exception: Part of the joy of the book is its mixture of romantic longing and dark comedy and in the opening and throughout the entire film, Newell botches the laughs. When he goes for them, the jokes land with a thud.
He has a bit more success with the other elements, but overall the entire film seems tone deaf. Of course, the whole effort could have been worse.
I remember when the news of a film adaptation was first floated with the ugly rumor that they were going to cast Jude Law and Nicole Kidman. Thankfully, they went with Javier Bardem as the lead (my own choice) and an actress I wasn't familiar with (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) as the object of his romantic obsession.
The film also pulls off the difficult trick of aging actors without making the makeup look silly. They also did a great job casting the young version of Bardem's character with Unax Ugalde, who bears a startling resemblance to Bardem.
Most of the other performances are good as well, particularly Hector Elizondo as Bardem's uncle and the great Fernanda Montenegro in the first film I've seen her in since Central Station.
If I could have made the film though, one other thing I would have done was actually film it in Spanish, to get another sense of its language since I read the book in its English translation. Nice try overall, but read the book.
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Labels: 00s, Bardem, Books, Fiction, Nicole Kidman
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Monday, November 26, 2007
Welcome back boys
By Edward Copeland
For more than a decade now, I've lived in a critical wilderness when it comes to the Coen brothers. I was a huge fan of the siblings from the moment I saw Blood Simple back in 1985, through the great fun of Raising Arizona and the exquisite Miller's Crossing. I liked Barton Fink a lot, though something of their style was starting to strike me as repetitive.
When Fargo came and seemingly the entire critical world ravished it with hosannas, I felt as if I stood alone thinking the movie was overrated and the Coens were stuck in a rut, a feeling that only grew over the course of their next films, so much so that I skipped offerings such as the ill-advised remake of The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty. When No Country for Old Men started garnering raves, I was skeptical as I had been post-Hudsucker Proxy, partly as self-defense so as not to be disappointed. Now I've seen No Country for Old Men and no one is more delighted than I am to say that Joel, Ethan and I have met up again on the same path.
This isn't to say that some of the praise for No Country for Old Men isn't overselling the film's worth, but I think it's understandable since it plays like such a radical departure from the usual Coen outing. As Tommy Lee Jones' sheriff says at one point, "it's hard to take measure of something when you don't understand." Still, this film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel isn't really hard to grasp, it's just removed from most of the brothers' recent output in its coldness, straight-forward nature and relative lack of snark.
In a way, the Coen brothers film that No Country most closely resembles is their very first effort, Blood Simple, with its Western noir feel and Texas setting. Unlike Simple's great showiness, No Country resists all impulses to call attention to itself. It's as if the Coens, tired of two decades as the high school class clowns of American filmmaking, have finally matured to middle age.
The other Coen film that No Country parallels, albeit slightly, is Fargo since it really has no lead but instead three characters whose paths intersect at times. In addition to Jones' sheriff, who seems like a more reticent version of the character he played in his underrated directing debut, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, there is Josh Brolin's trailer park denizen who stumbles upon the scene of a drug deal gone bad and makes off with a briefcase full of cash.
The third, and most vivid, member of this trio is Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a stoic killing machine with pasty skin and a Prince Valiant haircut, out to retrieve the money as well as slaughter anyone whose death meets his peculiar fancy.
What's most remarkable about the film to me is its pacing, which seems very deliberate yet delivers much momentum without ever feeling rushed. I also liked how it's a period piece, but one so subtle that unless you pay close attention, you might not realize it is set in 1980.
In fact, what No Country bubbles over with more than anything else is subtlety, not something I've come to expect from the Coens. The themes of what a tough country America can be and the futility of chasing things that have fallen far from your reach are there, but delivered with a velvet touch instead of a sledgehammer. The other thing that impressed me most is that really none of the characters are particularly dumb.
Sure, they make mistakes, sometime fatal ones, but the movie never mocks them and some of their ingenuity seems out of a script from MacGyver. Also, while this is a violent film, much of the bloodshed is only seen either in the aftermath or not at all.
The performances are great across the board, from Jones and Brolin to Kelly Macdonald as Brolin's wife and Garret Dillahunt (late of HBO's Deadwood and John from Cincinnati) as Jones' deputy as well as brief appearances from Woody Harrelson and Barry Corbin.
Still, No Country for Old Men belongs to Bardem, who has created a monster for the ages.
One criticism I heard from people leaving the theater when I left was frustration with the somewhat vague ending that denies the audience clear-cut payoffs. That didn't bother me, because it's all there if you pay attention and the Coens aren't rubbing anything in the audience's face as they've done in the past.
In a way, it somewhat resembles the reaction to the finale of The Sopranos, emphasizing what many of that HBO series' fans hit upon: the recurrence of the idea that some things you never see coming. I have to admit I didn't see this good a film coming from the Coens again, but I'm most grateful that it did.
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Labels: 00s, Bardem, Coens, Deadwood, Harrelson, HBO, Josh Brolin, The Sopranos, Tommy Lee Jones
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Monday, November 19, 2007
Oscar's rules for GLBT characters
By Edward Copeland
This post was for the Queer Blog-a-Thon hosted at Queering the Apprentice, which apparently no longer exists. Be warned: the words below will contain spoilers for a lot of films, too many to mention, so don't read it and whine later.
The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has been fairly generous in the past 20 or so years in nominating (and sometimes rewarding) actors and actresses who play gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered characters on screen. However, this does come with a price. Not to their careers, but in deciding whether or not the role gets nominated in the first place.
There seems to be only two types of gay roles that get deemed worthy of Oscar recognition: ones that are comicly broad or one where the gay character in question either ends up dead or alone. Look at just a couple of highly praised roles that got snubbed come Oscar time. Everyone thought Dennis Quaid was a lock for a nomination with his tortured married gay man in the 1950s in Far From Heaven, but he didn't make the cut. In the end of the film, his character has accepted his sexuality and found a boyfriend: no nomination for him.
Rupert Everett was a lot of fun as Julia Roberts' best gay friend in My Best Friend's Wedding, but his character was out, proud and presumably in a relationship. Strike him from your nominating ballot.
Now, here come the spoilers, as I look at all the performers who did get nominated or won an Oscar for playing a gay character. I'm only counting characters that are explicitly gay, not implied ones such as Clifton Webb in Laura For sake of simplicity, I'm going chronologically.
Peter Finch in Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)
The first openly gay character that I can find with a nomination set one of the patterns: He's alone at the end.
Al Pacino and Chris Sarandon in Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
Sarandon's character of Leon is already institutionalized (and wants nothing to do with Sonny) when we meet him. Sonny (Pacino) ends up alone and in prison.
James Coco in Only When I Laugh (1981)
The first instance (post Dog Day Afternoon) of Oscar nominating an openly gay character was for Coco's broad comic turn in this lesser Neil Simon outing.
John Lithgow in The World According to Garp
Robert Preston in Victor, Victoria (both 1982)
Preston's great turn definitely belongs more in the broad comic category, though he might also be an exception since he is allowed to have a boyfriend by film's end. Lithgow, as the NFL player turned transsexual in Garp, might be an exception. He's alive at the end, but his role is mostly played for laughs and the film never provides him with a significant other.
Cher in Silkwood (1983)
Another possible exception, though the film makes it unclear if she's alone at the end, though she certainly looks guilt-stricken over possible involvement in her friend Karen's death.
William Hurt in Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)
Ding ding ding. We have a winner. While the movie was certainly a drama, Hurt does a lot of histrionic flouncing AND he ends up dead in the end, even after his straight cellmate (Raul Julia) gives him a mercy fuck.
Bruce Davison in Longtime Companion (1990)
It was five years before another gay character earned a nomination and Davison's character got the double whammy. First, he has to watch his lover die of AIDS, leaving him alone, and then he dies as well (and not even on screen).
Tommy Lee Jones in JFK (1991)
Here's another example of a broad performance in a drama and while Jones' character lives in the end, it is complicated by the fact that he is portrayed as a villain (and with some over-the-top gay orgy scenes that only Oliver Stone could dream up). In contrast, Joe Pesci playing the less showy gay character who does get killed, didn't earn Academy notice.
Jaye Davidson in The Crying Game (1992)
First, Dil's lover gets killed during an IRA kidnapping and then when he/she falls for his captor, Fergus (Stephen Rea) gets sent to prison and Dil waits patiently, even though Fergus shows no intention of abandoning his heterosexuality.
Tom Hanks in Philadelphia (1993)
Gay and dead takes home the prize again, though at least Hanks' portrayal wasn't a broad one, even if Denzel Washington gave the better lead role in the film.
Greg Kinnear in As Good As It Gets (1997)
I don't think Kinnear's character had a significant other by film's end, but I do remember he took a bad beating.
Ian McKellen in Gods and Monsters (1998)
Here is an openly gay actor nominated for portraying a true-life openly gay director. Alas, James Whale dies in the end (as he did in real life) but the real travesty was that McKellen (and Nick Nolte and Edward Norton) lost to Roberto Benigni (Life Is Beautiful).
Kathy Bates in Primary Colors (1998)
Bates was great as a take-no-prisoners political operative working on the campaign of a Bill Clinton-like candidate. Alas, her lesbian character had principles and ended up firing a gun into her head.
Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry (1999)
Swank won the first of her two Oscars for lead actress by playing the gender-confused Brandon Teena. It also was the first of two times that Swank made it to the winner's circle by getting beaten to death.
Javier Bardem in Before Night Falls (2000)
Based on a real person, Bardem's character has to fight problems in Cuba before getting to N.Y. for one of the longest death scenes (from AIDS) I've ever seen.
Ed Harris in The Hours (2002)
The same year that the Academy snubbed Dennis Quaid for his fine work in Far From Heaven, they nominated this awful performance by the usually fine Harris as an artist dying of AIDS.
Nicole Kidman in The Hours (2002)
If Virginia Woolf hadn't walked herself into the river, this nomination and win probably would have never happened.
Julianne Moore in The Hours (2002)
In a way, her character here is similar to the one Quaid plays in Moore's other 2002 film. She's married, but unable to accept her sexuality. By the film's end, she appears to be alone, so she gets a pass while Quaid got snubbed. It may also explain one of the rare occasions where Meryl Streep didn't get an Oscar nomination since her lesbian character in The Hours had a lover in the end and doesn't die.
Charlize Theron in Monster (2003)
Another win based on a true story. Theron took the executed lesbian serial killer right up to the winner's circle.
Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote (2005)
This may be the true exception to the rule. Based on a real life character, the story didn't follow Truman Capote to his death and he did have a longtime companion. The closest this comes is denying him his crush on the executed killer.
Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Two nominated performances of gay character, so the Academy got to take one of each: Gyllenhaal's character ends up dead, Ledger's ends up alone.
Felicity Huffman in Transamerica (2005)
I'm not sure where to place this performance of an in-process transsexual. She doesn't die in the end.
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This post was for the Queer Blog-a-Thon hosted at Queering the Apprentice, which apparently no longer exists. Be warned: the words below will contain spoilers for a lot of films, too many to mention, so don't read it and whine later.
The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has been fairly generous in the past 20 or so years in nominating (and sometimes rewarding) actors and actresses who play gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered characters on screen. However, this does come with a price. Not to their careers, but in deciding whether or not the role gets nominated in the first place.
There seems to be only two types of gay roles that get deemed worthy of Oscar recognition: ones that are comicly broad or one where the gay character in question either ends up dead or alone. Look at just a couple of highly praised roles that got snubbed come Oscar time. Everyone thought Dennis Quaid was a lock for a nomination with his tortured married gay man in the 1950s in Far From Heaven, but he didn't make the cut. In the end of the film, his character has accepted his sexuality and found a boyfriend: no nomination for him.
Rupert Everett was a lot of fun as Julia Roberts' best gay friend in My Best Friend's Wedding, but his character was out, proud and presumably in a relationship. Strike him from your nominating ballot.
Now, here come the spoilers, as I look at all the performers who did get nominated or won an Oscar for playing a gay character. I'm only counting characters that are explicitly gay, not implied ones such as Clifton Webb in Laura For sake of simplicity, I'm going chronologically.
The first openly gay character that I can find with a nomination set one of the patterns: He's alone at the end.
Sarandon's character of Leon is already institutionalized (and wants nothing to do with Sonny) when we meet him. Sonny (Pacino) ends up alone and in prison.
The first instance (post Dog Day Afternoon) of Oscar nominating an openly gay character was for Coco's broad comic turn in this lesser Neil Simon outing.
Robert Preston in Victor, Victoria (both 1982)
Preston's great turn definitely belongs more in the broad comic category, though he might also be an exception since he is allowed to have a boyfriend by film's end. Lithgow, as the NFL player turned transsexual in Garp, might be an exception. He's alive at the end, but his role is mostly played for laughs and the film never provides him with a significant other.
Another possible exception, though the film makes it unclear if she's alone at the end, though she certainly looks guilt-stricken over possible involvement in her friend Karen's death.
Ding ding ding. We have a winner. While the movie was certainly a drama, Hurt does a lot of histrionic flouncing AND he ends up dead in the end, even after his straight cellmate (Raul Julia) gives him a mercy fuck.
It was five years before another gay character earned a nomination and Davison's character got the double whammy. First, he has to watch his lover die of AIDS, leaving him alone, and then he dies as well (and not even on screen).
Here's another example of a broad performance in a drama and while Jones' character lives in the end, it is complicated by the fact that he is portrayed as a villain (and with some over-the-top gay orgy scenes that only Oliver Stone could dream up). In contrast, Joe Pesci playing the less showy gay character who does get killed, didn't earn Academy notice.
First, Dil's lover gets killed during an IRA kidnapping and then when he/she falls for his captor, Fergus (Stephen Rea) gets sent to prison and Dil waits patiently, even though Fergus shows no intention of abandoning his heterosexuality.
Gay and dead takes home the prize again, though at least Hanks' portrayal wasn't a broad one, even if Denzel Washington gave the better lead role in the film.
I don't think Kinnear's character had a significant other by film's end, but I do remember he took a bad beating.
Here is an openly gay actor nominated for portraying a true-life openly gay director. Alas, James Whale dies in the end (as he did in real life) but the real travesty was that McKellen (and Nick Nolte and Edward Norton) lost to Roberto Benigni (Life Is Beautiful).
Bates was great as a take-no-prisoners political operative working on the campaign of a Bill Clinton-like candidate. Alas, her lesbian character had principles and ended up firing a gun into her head.
Swank won the first of her two Oscars for lead actress by playing the gender-confused Brandon Teena. It also was the first of two times that Swank made it to the winner's circle by getting beaten to death.
Based on a real person, Bardem's character has to fight problems in Cuba before getting to N.Y. for one of the longest death scenes (from AIDS) I've ever seen.
The same year that the Academy snubbed Dennis Quaid for his fine work in Far From Heaven, they nominated this awful performance by the usually fine Harris as an artist dying of AIDS.
If Virginia Woolf hadn't walked herself into the river, this nomination and win probably would have never happened.
In a way, her character here is similar to the one Quaid plays in Moore's other 2002 film. She's married, but unable to accept her sexuality. By the film's end, she appears to be alone, so she gets a pass while Quaid got snubbed. It may also explain one of the rare occasions where Meryl Streep didn't get an Oscar nomination since her lesbian character in The Hours had a lover in the end and doesn't die.
Another win based on a true story. Theron took the executed lesbian serial killer right up to the winner's circle.
This may be the true exception to the rule. Based on a real life character, the story didn't follow Truman Capote to his death and he did have a longtime companion. The closest this comes is denying him his crush on the executed killer.
Two nominated performances of gay character, so the Academy got to take one of each: Gyllenhaal's character ends up dead, Ledger's ends up alone.
I'm not sure where to place this performance of an in-process transsexual. She doesn't die in the end.
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Labels: Bardem, Capote, D. Quaid, Denzel, Hanks, J. Gyllenhaal, Julia Roberts, Julianne Moore, K. Bates, Lithgow, Neil Simon, Nicole Kidman, Oliver Stone, P.S. Hoffman, Pacino, Pesci, R. Preston, Tommy Lee Jones, Whale, William Hurt
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Friday, April 06, 2007
SMOOP II: Electric Boogaloo
By Odienator
After the success of last year's Shameful Movies of Odie's Past Film Festival (henceforth known as SMOOP), I decided to make it an annual tradition. The rules can be found at the above link, but to recap, every showing at SMOOP is a double feature of films that I should be ashamed for liking, but am not. Each double feature has a title and a theme, though the movies may not be related thematically.
Last year, however, several people took me to task for selecting movies that were not shameful enough. This presented a wonderful yet expected challenge for me. Sequels are bigger, noisier, and worse than their predecessors, so I expected nothing less than to go back and revisit some tackier fare. We got it all: pimps, hos, car crashes, chicks in chains, and very strange foreign movies with sex scenes I hope someone will be able to explain to me.
Quentin and Robert aren't the only guys who spent time at grindhouses. I grew up with the 42nd Street theaters, which smelled like pee and had posters in their windows that advertised the kind of sin and degradation that earned you a one way ticket to the home of Linda Blair's possessor. Some of the films below I actually saw on 42nd Street; others fill that crazy desire of SMOOP's programmer, a guy with a love for gory horror movies, gratuitous nudity and musicals. In honor of the Trashy Movie Blog-a-thon and the release of Grindhouse, I give you SMOOP II: Electric Boogaloo. Bigger, badder, and with even more shame!
Chicks in Chains, Literally and Figuratively
Shameful movies: Willie Dynamite and Black Mama, White Mama
When Three-6 Mafia wrote the Oscar-winning “It’s Hard Out Here For a Pimp,” they must have been thinking about 1975’s Willie Dynamite. The titular pimp has plenty of problems. His theme song sounds like a commercial for a Blaxploitation soft drink (“Will-ayyyyy! Oh-ohhh Willl-eee Deeee! Will-ay D!”). His bitches keep getting arrested and/or sliced up by razors. His pimpmobile can’t stay away from tow-away zones. Rival pimps keep pressuring him to join their punany-pushers union; and his stable is repeatedly threatened by the self-proclaimed “Ralph Nader for hookers,” a former prostitute who tries to talk the girls out of walking for Willie or, at the very least, becoming their own bosses. Worst of all, by day Willie D. has to deal with an “8-foot yellow turkey” and the trash can-living grouch who hates him. That’s right, Willie Dynamite’s alter ego is Gordon (Roscoe Orman) on Sesame Street! When he wasn’t also bitchslapping Donna all over Locust Street on All My Children, Orman was teaching kids like us our ABC’s. “A is for ass, B is for bottom bitches…”
Despite my seeing this on a 42nd Street double bill in 1977, Willie Dynamite isn’t as trashy as most grindhouse fare. The actors, especially the late Diana Sands as Ho Ralph Nader, give fairly decent performances. There is very little nudity and, apart from a rather vicious throat-slashing, very little violence. What elevates this to trash-status is the sheer audacity of the screenplay. It thinks it’s a respectable expose on pimpdom, yet it absurdly demands you feel sorry for its hero — and not just because he’s wearing dead animals disguised as fur hats on his head. Willie D is compulsively watchable and fun because its big studio producers, Richard Zanuck and David Brown, are terrified to plumb the depths Roger Corman would have gone to had he made this film. It’s an ABC Afterschool Special on pimping. Toss in bad '70s fashion, a family dinner where Willie’s Mom thinks he’s an Amway salesperson (or something like that) and scenes that remind us what 42nd Street was like before Disney destroyed it, and you have the makings of an unintentionally hilarious cautionary tale/trash classic. This is the original Hustle and Flow.
Special mention goes to the “villain” of the piece, Diana Sands, who sadly died way too early from cancer. She manages to infuse with gravity the lousy dialogue and situations she’s given, which is no easy task. She’s even “conflicted” when she realizes how ruined Willie D’s career winds up being. Her last scene with Willie has a poignant quality that had me scratching my head, yet I couldn’t stop watching her.
Far more appropriate for SMOOP is the movie that filled the aforementioned double bill with Willie D, Black Mama, White Mama. Whaddaya get when you cross a chicks-in-chains movie with The Defiant Ones? You get a Black chick and a White chick chained together, on the run from a Philippine prison, “learnin’ ‘bout each other while they do their thing.” Unlike Willie D., however, there’s no pretense behind the message of Ebony and Ivory female empowerment; the filmmakers just want to show you some tits.
Co-written by Jonathan Demme, who cut his teeth on prison movies such as this and Caged Heat, Black Mama, White Mama chains Pam Grier to her three-time co-star Margaret Markov, and welds a women’s prison movie to the equally popular jungle revolutionary movie. Poitier and Curtis, I mean Grier and Markov, escape from one of those women’s jungle penitentiaries so popular in the early '70s, and while on the run have more catfights than Joan Collins while successfully falling out of their tops. Markov and Grier are both tough chicks, and neither is hard on the eyes nor are they shy about giving you what you paid to see.
All the requisites of both film genres are in abundance: there are grungy guys with guns shooting people for their cause AND a multi-culti shower scene, complete with a masturbating female guard peering through a hole in the shower wall. “Did you enjoy yourself?” asks another guard after busting her overheated colleague. “Hell yes!” said a voice that sounded like me.
The Black and White Nookie Of Death
Shameful Movies: Species and Def By Temptation
Guys, ever have one of those nights when, smack dab in the middle of some super-hot first date sex, your date turns into an alien or the Devil? Stuff like that really crushes one’s ego. “Did you hear?” the gossipmongers would whisper, “he was so bad in bed, the girl turned into Satan and killed his ass.”
Both Species and Def By Temptation use gore, nudity and violence to remind you that Jesus doesn’t like it if you bump uglies before marriage. They played together here at SMOOP to illustrate that old Eddie Murphy comedy routine about the difference between Black people and White people in horror movies. No matter the color, the dudes put their dongs where they don’t belong and die; it’s what happens when they deduce they are doomed that’s different.
Species tells the heartwarming story of an alien named Sil whose race sends instructions on how to create a human/alien mutation. The scientists create a female named Sil, unaware that the alien DNA comes with a case of that disease Christina Ricci has in Black Snake Moan. Sil escapes, heading into the night to breed a race of superaliens the old fashioned way. It’s easy for Sil to find volunteers for her sex-o-rama—she looks like model Natasha Henstridge. Men mistake her immediate demands for sex as a stroke of good luck, and pay dearly for it. Nothing’s free in this world, ESPECIALLY not hot sex with models.
Chasing Sil amongst the broken bodies of her victims (she pulls one female rival’s spine out) are Oscar winners Ben Kingsley and Forest Whitaker, Virginia Madsen’s bro, Doctor Octopus and that chick from CSI. One of those people satisfies the hottie the way most men wish they could, and gets killed anyway, proving that there’s just no pleasing women in bed. Showing that he was an equal opportunity offender, screenwriter Dennis Feldman wrote a sequel where the primary alien looking for love in all the wrong places is male. Avoid that one.
Ernest Dickerson’s cin-tog livens up Def by Temptation, a Troma release that features writer-director James Bond the Third as a divinity student in the big city. Temptation appears in the guise of Cynthia Bond, a demon/vampire/succubus who crawls the bars in Black neighborhoods looking for guys out for an easy score. She takes them home and gives the gossipmongers grist for the mill when she turns into the kind of nasty girl Vanity wasn’t singing about in that song. Blood and gore ensues as she gives the guys an AIDS metaphor.
Chasing Ms. Bond is the unrelated Bond the Third, Dwayne Wayne from A Different World, Radio Raheem, and Samuel L. Jackson who, if memory serves me, isn’t even allowed to say his favorite 12-letter word. Dickerson’s camerawork adds atmosphere and a few surprises, including the scene that proves Murphy’s point that Black people DO act differently in horror movies. When bartender John Canada Terrell realizes the woman he’s banging in the shower is Old Scratch, the next shot is a skewed camera perspective of him running, full frontal nude, directly at the audience. No towel, no drawers, nothing. He was willing to run down the street like that to escape the date from Hell. Ms. Bond gets him anyway (the shot of that is creepily effective), but still. He ran without asking why. Nobody in Species even thinks to run away before Sil kills them. "Push that bitch offa you and run!" one patron yelled at the screening I attended. Men. They never listen.
Hell on Wheels, and Under Them Too
Shameful Movies: Death Race 2000 and Psychomania
It’s fun when we get to the year depicted in futuristic movies and books, because we get to see if they were eerily prescient. Unless you lived near Queens Boulevard, Death Race 2000 was thankfully erroneous in its depiction of Y2K. In DR2K, people compete in a sporting event that involves running people over with your car. Different types of hit people earn different types of points. Manning the wheels are David Carradine (who also starred in the pseudo sequel Deathsport, which I saw on the Forty-Deuce) and Rocky Balboa, Mr. Sylvester Stallone.
QT certainly saw Death Race 2000 before he made Death Proof, his section of Grindhouse. This Roger Corman quickie, directed by Paul Bartel and featuring his Eating Raoul cohort Mary Woronov, has car crashes and pedestrian pummeling galore. Years before I saw this film, my uncle Chris told me this film was “very nasty” and he was right. With a low budget, filmmakers have to be a little less subtle and a lot more offensive with their satirical points, so Bartel and company resort to such scenes as rolling old people in wheelchairs out into the middle of the road so that cars may forcibly remove them from it (this doesn’t go as you may expect). Roger Corman knows how to stroke our baser instincts, which explains why the legend is he has never lost money on a production.
All About Eve is my favorite movie, and I should have been brutally distressed to see George Sanders in a Satanic biker movie. But I found it easy to believe Addison DeWitt would engage in a ritual that turns a woman into a frog in exchange for sending the bikers back to Hell. Psychomania is a confused biker movie that scared the ever-loving shit out of me as a kid, but is tame enough for a PG. A biker gang called The Living Dead make a deal with the Devil to become just that — the living dead. After a ludicrously funny mass suicide and return, they wreak “havoc” on a California town. Havoc includes knocking over a baby carriage and making loads and loads of donuts in the dust. They hook up with a girl hot for trouble, and eventually return to Hell via the aforementioned reverse Frog Prince deal. The movie does not make one lick of sense, but it’s fun to watch and would make a damn fine drinking game. Every time these hell’s angels rev their engines, take a drink. You’ll be dead.
Spanish Fly, or Grabbing the Bull by the Horns With Your Johnson
Shameful Movies: Jamon, Jamon and Matador
SMOOP goes international, and la fiesta está caliente! You may think I’m cheating by selecting a film by Oscar winner Pedro Almodóvar, but back then, he wasn’t known as the guy who directed Todo Sobre Mi Madre. He was the sick bastard who made candy-colored Spanish movies that gave the MPAA fits when they came to this country. Matador is old-fashioned Almodóvar, full of what made grindhouse movies famous: envelope pushing sex and violence. A gored bullfighter (Nacho Martinez) gets off while watching people get murdered and/or murdering people while a criminal lawyer gets off on killing people while getting off on them. Still with me? Antonio Banderas plays a student who starts confessing to the murders committed by both the matador and the lawyer, despite the latter’s penchant for stabbing huge hairpins into the necks of her male lovers. Is she a distant relative of the aforementioned killer sex women from Species or Def? Or did Almodóvar see that horrible Tom Selleck vehicle, Lassiter, made two years earlier and featuring a similar scene between Lauren Hutton and an unlucky guy?
No matter. Those Spanish directors sure are freaky. Eventually the two killers find each other and you can just imagine what transpires. Meanwhile, in our other feature, Jamon, Jamon, director Bigas Luna gives us two Oscar nominees (Almodóvar favorite Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem) in an overheated melodrama about an underwear factory, a well-endowed underwear model, class warfare, naked bullfighting, brutal death by ham, a sign shaped like a bull with big testicles, and a sexy parrot. More on the sexy parrot and the naked matadors in a second; you don’t wanna know what happens to that bull sign.
Unlike most people, I think Penelope Cruz can be a fine actress provided she doesn’t speak English. Jamon gives us the uber-hot Cruz at 17, gladly offering up her ample naked bosom to hungry men lucky enough to bury their face in it. In fact, everybody seems to be having sex with somebody in this film; it got so complicated I actually had to stop the video and draw a chart so I could keep track. Cruz plays the daughter of the local prostitute (or la hija de puta as the credits on IMDB tell us) who’s impregnated by Manuel, the son of underwear factory owner Carmen (Stefina Sandrelli). Carmen is outraged that Manuel is going to marry below his station, so she hires her underwear model (Bardem) to seduce la hija de puta away from Manuel. Bardem’s character isn’t known for his brain; in Spain you need, um, qualifications to be an underwear model, especially if the underwear company is called Samson.
The MPAA shit on itself when it got a look at Bardem and his equally naked pal using unconventional means to incite the bulls during a late night bullfight. That’s self explanatory; the Spaniards aren’t afraid of full frontal male nudity. This is the most penis-obsessed movie I have ever seen. What confuses me to no end is the “sex scene” in the brothel between the guy, Cruz’s mom (la madre puta, according to that profane IMDB), and a parrot. If someone can explain to me what this scene is supposed to mean, I’ll be a better man for it.
Closing Night: Mad Musicals
Shameful Movies: The First Nudie Musical and Cottonpickin’ Chickenpickers
Just like last year, SMOOP closes with musicals. Where last year’s festival ended with the best film in the series, this year ends with the worst. I freely admit to cheating a tad regarding the latter title up there — I didn’t like the movie that much; I liked making fun of it. I watched it twice, but I couldn’t commit to liking the whole as much as the parts.
It’s great when movies live up to their titles. The First Nudie Musical is the movie Rodgers and Hammerstein would have made if they were perverted cheap musical hacks. A film studio is on the verge of going under, so a director and his assistant (played by Shirley herself, Cindy Williams!!!) decide to put on a show, as Rooney and Garland used to do in those old movies, to save their jobs. Except this show has naked tap dancing, '70s nudity, and a scene where the male actors dress as giant vibrators with buttons across their crotches — buttons the actresses eagerly push. How can any trash lover dislike a movie with a truly inspired rendition of the piano “Scales” and with lyrics like “I’m not blind, and I’m not cripple, won’t you let me do your nipple?” Shockingly, this was released by Paramount Pictures and was promoted by the studio in 1977.
Last, but certainly not least, is Cottonpickin’ Chickenpickers, a movie that must have been made to cash in on the Hee-Haw craze. Of all the films on this list, this one comes closest to the true grindhouse experience. The video I saw was made from a horribly dated print full of scratches and fading colors. The continuity errors were enormous, the boom mike made cameo appearances, and the car chases went past the same scenery about 800 times, like on The Flintstones.
What makes this a classic bad movie and a worthy addition to SMOOP’s festival roster are the musical numbers. The plot is simple: it’s about cottonpickin’ chickenpickers, or chicken thieves. Imagine the country and western songs you can get from that plot, then include a theme song with the titular words. As a whole, the movie didn’t make me like it enough to recommend on shame factor, but I did love several scenes. My favorite three are a musical number where the singer is playing a guitar with no musical accompaniment, but seven instruments are playing on the soundtrack, the car chase, and the “You Dirty Ol’ Egg Sucking Dog” number. You will not be able to get this song out of your head, except by force. “Stop stealin’ mah chickens, You Dirty Ol’ Egg Suckin’ Dog! Egggggg Suuuu-Ken Dawg!” sings the guy with such earnestness that you want to join hands with him and sing along. Now that’s how a trashy movie should make you feel.
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After the success of last year's Shameful Movies of Odie's Past Film Festival (henceforth known as SMOOP), I decided to make it an annual tradition. The rules can be found at the above link, but to recap, every showing at SMOOP is a double feature of films that I should be ashamed for liking, but am not. Each double feature has a title and a theme, though the movies may not be related thematically.
Last year, however, several people took me to task for selecting movies that were not shameful enough. This presented a wonderful yet expected challenge for me. Sequels are bigger, noisier, and worse than their predecessors, so I expected nothing less than to go back and revisit some tackier fare. We got it all: pimps, hos, car crashes, chicks in chains, and very strange foreign movies with sex scenes I hope someone will be able to explain to me.
Quentin and Robert aren't the only guys who spent time at grindhouses. I grew up with the 42nd Street theaters, which smelled like pee and had posters in their windows that advertised the kind of sin and degradation that earned you a one way ticket to the home of Linda Blair's possessor. Some of the films below I actually saw on 42nd Street; others fill that crazy desire of SMOOP's programmer, a guy with a love for gory horror movies, gratuitous nudity and musicals. In honor of the Trashy Movie Blog-a-thon and the release of Grindhouse, I give you SMOOP II: Electric Boogaloo. Bigger, badder, and with even more shame!
Shameful movies: Willie Dynamite and Black Mama, White Mama
When Three-6 Mafia wrote the Oscar-winning “It’s Hard Out Here For a Pimp,” they must have been thinking about 1975’s Willie Dynamite. The titular pimp has plenty of problems. His theme song sounds like a commercial for a Blaxploitation soft drink (“Will-ayyyyy! Oh-ohhh Willl-eee Deeee! Will-ay D!”). His bitches keep getting arrested and/or sliced up by razors. His pimpmobile can’t stay away from tow-away zones. Rival pimps keep pressuring him to join their punany-pushers union; and his stable is repeatedly threatened by the self-proclaimed “Ralph Nader for hookers,” a former prostitute who tries to talk the girls out of walking for Willie or, at the very least, becoming their own bosses. Worst of all, by day Willie D. has to deal with an “8-foot yellow turkey” and the trash can-living grouch who hates him. That’s right, Willie Dynamite’s alter ego is Gordon (Roscoe Orman) on Sesame Street! When he wasn’t also bitchslapping Donna all over Locust Street on All My Children, Orman was teaching kids like us our ABC’s. “A is for ass, B is for bottom bitches…”
Despite my seeing this on a 42nd Street double bill in 1977, Willie Dynamite isn’t as trashy as most grindhouse fare. The actors, especially the late Diana Sands as Ho Ralph Nader, give fairly decent performances. There is very little nudity and, apart from a rather vicious throat-slashing, very little violence. What elevates this to trash-status is the sheer audacity of the screenplay. It thinks it’s a respectable expose on pimpdom, yet it absurdly demands you feel sorry for its hero — and not just because he’s wearing dead animals disguised as fur hats on his head. Willie D is compulsively watchable and fun because its big studio producers, Richard Zanuck and David Brown, are terrified to plumb the depths Roger Corman would have gone to had he made this film. It’s an ABC Afterschool Special on pimping. Toss in bad '70s fashion, a family dinner where Willie’s Mom thinks he’s an Amway salesperson (or something like that) and scenes that remind us what 42nd Street was like before Disney destroyed it, and you have the makings of an unintentionally hilarious cautionary tale/trash classic. This is the original Hustle and Flow.
Special mention goes to the “villain” of the piece, Diana Sands, who sadly died way too early from cancer. She manages to infuse with gravity the lousy dialogue and situations she’s given, which is no easy task. She’s even “conflicted” when she realizes how ruined Willie D’s career winds up being. Her last scene with Willie has a poignant quality that had me scratching my head, yet I couldn’t stop watching her.
Far more appropriate for SMOOP is the movie that filled the aforementioned double bill with Willie D, Black Mama, White Mama. Whaddaya get when you cross a chicks-in-chains movie with The Defiant Ones? You get a Black chick and a White chick chained together, on the run from a Philippine prison, “learnin’ ‘bout each other while they do their thing.” Unlike Willie D., however, there’s no pretense behind the message of Ebony and Ivory female empowerment; the filmmakers just want to show you some tits.
Co-written by Jonathan Demme, who cut his teeth on prison movies such as this and Caged Heat, Black Mama, White Mama chains Pam Grier to her three-time co-star Margaret Markov, and welds a women’s prison movie to the equally popular jungle revolutionary movie. Poitier and Curtis, I mean Grier and Markov, escape from one of those women’s jungle penitentiaries so popular in the early '70s, and while on the run have more catfights than Joan Collins while successfully falling out of their tops. Markov and Grier are both tough chicks, and neither is hard on the eyes nor are they shy about giving you what you paid to see.
All the requisites of both film genres are in abundance: there are grungy guys with guns shooting people for their cause AND a multi-culti shower scene, complete with a masturbating female guard peering through a hole in the shower wall. “Did you enjoy yourself?” asks another guard after busting her overheated colleague. “Hell yes!” said a voice that sounded like me.
Shameful Movies: Species and Def By Temptation
Guys, ever have one of those nights when, smack dab in the middle of some super-hot first date sex, your date turns into an alien or the Devil? Stuff like that really crushes one’s ego. “Did you hear?” the gossipmongers would whisper, “he was so bad in bed, the girl turned into Satan and killed his ass.”
Both Species and Def By Temptation use gore, nudity and violence to remind you that Jesus doesn’t like it if you bump uglies before marriage. They played together here at SMOOP to illustrate that old Eddie Murphy comedy routine about the difference between Black people and White people in horror movies. No matter the color, the dudes put their dongs where they don’t belong and die; it’s what happens when they deduce they are doomed that’s different.
Species tells the heartwarming story of an alien named Sil whose race sends instructions on how to create a human/alien mutation. The scientists create a female named Sil, unaware that the alien DNA comes with a case of that disease Christina Ricci has in Black Snake Moan. Sil escapes, heading into the night to breed a race of superaliens the old fashioned way. It’s easy for Sil to find volunteers for her sex-o-rama—she looks like model Natasha Henstridge. Men mistake her immediate demands for sex as a stroke of good luck, and pay dearly for it. Nothing’s free in this world, ESPECIALLY not hot sex with models.
Chasing Sil amongst the broken bodies of her victims (she pulls one female rival’s spine out) are Oscar winners Ben Kingsley and Forest Whitaker, Virginia Madsen’s bro, Doctor Octopus and that chick from CSI. One of those people satisfies the hottie the way most men wish they could, and gets killed anyway, proving that there’s just no pleasing women in bed. Showing that he was an equal opportunity offender, screenwriter Dennis Feldman wrote a sequel where the primary alien looking for love in all the wrong places is male. Avoid that one.
Ernest Dickerson’s cin-tog livens up Def by Temptation, a Troma release that features writer-director James Bond the Third as a divinity student in the big city. Temptation appears in the guise of Cynthia Bond, a demon/vampire/succubus who crawls the bars in Black neighborhoods looking for guys out for an easy score. She takes them home and gives the gossipmongers grist for the mill when she turns into the kind of nasty girl Vanity wasn’t singing about in that song. Blood and gore ensues as she gives the guys an AIDS metaphor.
Chasing Ms. Bond is the unrelated Bond the Third, Dwayne Wayne from A Different World, Radio Raheem, and Samuel L. Jackson who, if memory serves me, isn’t even allowed to say his favorite 12-letter word. Dickerson’s camerawork adds atmosphere and a few surprises, including the scene that proves Murphy’s point that Black people DO act differently in horror movies. When bartender John Canada Terrell realizes the woman he’s banging in the shower is Old Scratch, the next shot is a skewed camera perspective of him running, full frontal nude, directly at the audience. No towel, no drawers, nothing. He was willing to run down the street like that to escape the date from Hell. Ms. Bond gets him anyway (the shot of that is creepily effective), but still. He ran without asking why. Nobody in Species even thinks to run away before Sil kills them. "Push that bitch offa you and run!" one patron yelled at the screening I attended. Men. They never listen.
Shameful Movies: Death Race 2000 and Psychomania
It’s fun when we get to the year depicted in futuristic movies and books, because we get to see if they were eerily prescient. Unless you lived near Queens Boulevard, Death Race 2000 was thankfully erroneous in its depiction of Y2K. In DR2K, people compete in a sporting event that involves running people over with your car. Different types of hit people earn different types of points. Manning the wheels are David Carradine (who also starred in the pseudo sequel Deathsport, which I saw on the Forty-Deuce) and Rocky Balboa, Mr. Sylvester Stallone.
QT certainly saw Death Race 2000 before he made Death Proof, his section of Grindhouse. This Roger Corman quickie, directed by Paul Bartel and featuring his Eating Raoul cohort Mary Woronov, has car crashes and pedestrian pummeling galore. Years before I saw this film, my uncle Chris told me this film was “very nasty” and he was right. With a low budget, filmmakers have to be a little less subtle and a lot more offensive with their satirical points, so Bartel and company resort to such scenes as rolling old people in wheelchairs out into the middle of the road so that cars may forcibly remove them from it (this doesn’t go as you may expect). Roger Corman knows how to stroke our baser instincts, which explains why the legend is he has never lost money on a production.
All About Eve is my favorite movie, and I should have been brutally distressed to see George Sanders in a Satanic biker movie. But I found it easy to believe Addison DeWitt would engage in a ritual that turns a woman into a frog in exchange for sending the bikers back to Hell. Psychomania is a confused biker movie that scared the ever-loving shit out of me as a kid, but is tame enough for a PG. A biker gang called The Living Dead make a deal with the Devil to become just that — the living dead. After a ludicrously funny mass suicide and return, they wreak “havoc” on a California town. Havoc includes knocking over a baby carriage and making loads and loads of donuts in the dust. They hook up with a girl hot for trouble, and eventually return to Hell via the aforementioned reverse Frog Prince deal. The movie does not make one lick of sense, but it’s fun to watch and would make a damn fine drinking game. Every time these hell’s angels rev their engines, take a drink. You’ll be dead.
Shameful Movies: Jamon, Jamon and Matador
SMOOP goes international, and la fiesta está caliente! You may think I’m cheating by selecting a film by Oscar winner Pedro Almodóvar, but back then, he wasn’t known as the guy who directed Todo Sobre Mi Madre. He was the sick bastard who made candy-colored Spanish movies that gave the MPAA fits when they came to this country. Matador is old-fashioned Almodóvar, full of what made grindhouse movies famous: envelope pushing sex and violence. A gored bullfighter (Nacho Martinez) gets off while watching people get murdered and/or murdering people while a criminal lawyer gets off on killing people while getting off on them. Still with me? Antonio Banderas plays a student who starts confessing to the murders committed by both the matador and the lawyer, despite the latter’s penchant for stabbing huge hairpins into the necks of her male lovers. Is she a distant relative of the aforementioned killer sex women from Species or Def? Or did Almodóvar see that horrible Tom Selleck vehicle, Lassiter, made two years earlier and featuring a similar scene between Lauren Hutton and an unlucky guy?
No matter. Those Spanish directors sure are freaky. Eventually the two killers find each other and you can just imagine what transpires. Meanwhile, in our other feature, Jamon, Jamon, director Bigas Luna gives us two Oscar nominees (Almodóvar favorite Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem) in an overheated melodrama about an underwear factory, a well-endowed underwear model, class warfare, naked bullfighting, brutal death by ham, a sign shaped like a bull with big testicles, and a sexy parrot. More on the sexy parrot and the naked matadors in a second; you don’t wanna know what happens to that bull sign.
Unlike most people, I think Penelope Cruz can be a fine actress provided she doesn’t speak English. Jamon gives us the uber-hot Cruz at 17, gladly offering up her ample naked bosom to hungry men lucky enough to bury their face in it. In fact, everybody seems to be having sex with somebody in this film; it got so complicated I actually had to stop the video and draw a chart so I could keep track. Cruz plays the daughter of the local prostitute (or la hija de puta as the credits on IMDB tell us) who’s impregnated by Manuel, the son of underwear factory owner Carmen (Stefina Sandrelli). Carmen is outraged that Manuel is going to marry below his station, so she hires her underwear model (Bardem) to seduce la hija de puta away from Manuel. Bardem’s character isn’t known for his brain; in Spain you need, um, qualifications to be an underwear model, especially if the underwear company is called Samson.
The MPAA shit on itself when it got a look at Bardem and his equally naked pal using unconventional means to incite the bulls during a late night bullfight. That’s self explanatory; the Spaniards aren’t afraid of full frontal male nudity. This is the most penis-obsessed movie I have ever seen. What confuses me to no end is the “sex scene” in the brothel between the guy, Cruz’s mom (la madre puta, according to that profane IMDB), and a parrot. If someone can explain to me what this scene is supposed to mean, I’ll be a better man for it.
Shameful Movies: The First Nudie Musical and Cottonpickin’ Chickenpickers
Just like last year, SMOOP closes with musicals. Where last year’s festival ended with the best film in the series, this year ends with the worst. I freely admit to cheating a tad regarding the latter title up there — I didn’t like the movie that much; I liked making fun of it. I watched it twice, but I couldn’t commit to liking the whole as much as the parts.
It’s great when movies live up to their titles. The First Nudie Musical is the movie Rodgers and Hammerstein would have made if they were perverted cheap musical hacks. A film studio is on the verge of going under, so a director and his assistant (played by Shirley herself, Cindy Williams!!!) decide to put on a show, as Rooney and Garland used to do in those old movies, to save their jobs. Except this show has naked tap dancing, '70s nudity, and a scene where the male actors dress as giant vibrators with buttons across their crotches — buttons the actresses eagerly push. How can any trash lover dislike a movie with a truly inspired rendition of the piano “Scales” and with lyrics like “I’m not blind, and I’m not cripple, won’t you let me do your nipple?” Shockingly, this was released by Paramount Pictures and was promoted by the studio in 1977.
Last, but certainly not least, is Cottonpickin’ Chickenpickers, a movie that must have been made to cash in on the Hee-Haw craze. Of all the films on this list, this one comes closest to the true grindhouse experience. The video I saw was made from a horribly dated print full of scratches and fading colors. The continuity errors were enormous, the boom mike made cameo appearances, and the car chases went past the same scenery about 800 times, like on The Flintstones.
What makes this a classic bad movie and a worthy addition to SMOOP’s festival roster are the musical numbers. The plot is simple: it’s about cottonpickin’ chickenpickers, or chicken thieves. Imagine the country and western songs you can get from that plot, then include a theme song with the titular words. As a whole, the movie didn’t make me like it enough to recommend on shame factor, but I did love several scenes. My favorite three are a musical number where the singer is playing a guitar with no musical accompaniment, but seven instruments are playing on the soundtrack, the car chase, and the “You Dirty Ol’ Egg Sucking Dog” number. You will not be able to get this song out of your head, except by force. “Stop stealin’ mah chickens, You Dirty Ol’ Egg Suckin’ Dog! Egggggg Suuuu-Ken Dawg!” sings the guy with such earnestness that you want to join hands with him and sing along. Now that’s how a trashy movie should make you feel.
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Labels: Almodóvar, Banderas, Bardem, Blog-a-thons, Corman, Demme, Eddie Murphy, Garland, Hammerstein, Kingsley, Penélope Cruz, Rodgers, Samuel L. Jackson, Stallone, Tarantino
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Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Un meños Almodóvar
By Edward Copeland
The run that Pedro Almodóvar has been on of late has been astounding. He's been one of those rare filmmakers who seemed to be on an upward slope, growing deeper and better as his career progressed, steering away from his campier earlier works to more thoughtful films such as All About My Mother, Bad Education and the incomparable Talk to Her. So it was probably inevitable that at some point, he'd have to slide backward a bit.
That is the case with Volver which, while good, doesn't hold a candle to his recent body of work.
One thing that Volver does offer though is a chance for Penélope Cruz to give her best performance ever, one that has deservedly earned her an Oscar nomination. Time and time again, seeing performers get to act in their native languages has proved eye-opening.
In addition to Cruz, this year has given Ken Watanabe a chance to shine in Letters From Iwo Jima while recent years have caused me to re-evaluate Javier Bardem after seeing The Sea Inside and Connie Nielsen after viewing Brothers.
Volver paints perceptions of Cruz in bright, brash new colors as she plays a Spanish mom with a 14-year-old child and a good-for-nothing husband as well as a late mother (Carmen Maura), whose ghost has been appearing to her sister.
To give much more away, would spoil the unfolding of the plot. While Volver is entertaining and Cruz is great as is Maura (reunited at last with Almodóvar nearly 20 years after Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown), something about it doesn't quite jell.
Eventually, the pieces come together, but instead of intriguing me, at times it just made me impatient as the film appeared to be running on separate tracks. However, Volver is worth a look because even a lesser Almodóvar is better than no Almodóvar at all.
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The run that Pedro Almodóvar has been on of late has been astounding. He's been one of those rare filmmakers who seemed to be on an upward slope, growing deeper and better as his career progressed, steering away from his campier earlier works to more thoughtful films such as All About My Mother, Bad Education and the incomparable Talk to Her. So it was probably inevitable that at some point, he'd have to slide backward a bit.
That is the case with Volver which, while good, doesn't hold a candle to his recent body of work.
One thing that Volver does offer though is a chance for Penélope Cruz to give her best performance ever, one that has deservedly earned her an Oscar nomination. Time and time again, seeing performers get to act in their native languages has proved eye-opening.
In addition to Cruz, this year has given Ken Watanabe a chance to shine in Letters From Iwo Jima while recent years have caused me to re-evaluate Javier Bardem after seeing The Sea Inside and Connie Nielsen after viewing Brothers.
Volver paints perceptions of Cruz in bright, brash new colors as she plays a Spanish mom with a 14-year-old child and a good-for-nothing husband as well as a late mother (Carmen Maura), whose ghost has been appearing to her sister.
To give much more away, would spoil the unfolding of the plot. While Volver is entertaining and Cruz is great as is Maura (reunited at last with Almodóvar nearly 20 years after Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown), something about it doesn't quite jell.
Eventually, the pieces come together, but instead of intriguing me, at times it just made me impatient as the film appeared to be running on separate tracks. However, Volver is worth a look because even a lesser Almodóvar is better than no Almodóvar at all.
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Labels: 00s, Almodóvar, Bardem, Foreign, Penélope Cruz
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Friday, February 10, 2006
It's not the size of the role...
By Edward Copeland
With William Hurt's much-deserved (in my opinion) nomination for A History of Violence this year, my thoughts have turned to some of the great single-scene or particularly small roles that were able to grab the viewer's attention in unprecedented ways.
Hurt's brief bit is by no means the Oscar's only instance of short scene-stealers — Beatrice Straight won for basically one monologue in Network and Judi Dench won with very limited screen time in Shakespeare in Love.
Geraldine Page also snagged a nomination for essentially one scene in The Pope of Greenwich Village. Network also produced a great monologue for Ned Beatty that earned him an Oscar nomination. All those nominees were fine by me except for Dench, who was really just getting makeup Oscar love for losing for Mrs. Brown the year before to the wandering accent of Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets. Then there were also some brief nominations that were a complete puzzlement like Ethel Barrymore's nomination for The Paradine Case, one of Alfred Hitchcock's worst films.
So, as they come to me, some of my favorite brief roles.
Alfred Molina in Boogie Nights. When you get right down to it, the scene is completely extraneous to the movie — the climax of a film about the evolution of the porn industry well into the 1980s should have involved AIDS, not a standard drug deal. Still, Molina is masterful with his drug-addled dialogue set to the tune of Night Ranger's "Sister Christian."
One of my favorite single sequence tour-de-forces is Bill Murray in Little Shop of Horrors. His masochist wouldn't come off as great without Steve Martin's sadistic dentist to play off, but he's great.
Christopher Walken is a master of the monologue, but his one scene telling a child-size version of Bruce Willis about the journey of a gold watch in Pulp Fiction is priceless.
Another role that is essentially a single monologue, Jack Lemmon in Short Cuts. A brief but great role that few besides me remember is Swoosie Kurtz in Against All Odds where she is delightfully flaky as the secretary of a crooked lawyer who decides to help Jeff Bridges.
The year Frances McDormand won lead actress (for what in my opinion was a supporting role, but that's an argument for another time) for Fargo, she also gave a great single scene performance in Lone Star. Throughout the film, Chris Cooper's character's unstable ex-wife is referred to and when the situation requires Cooper to visit her late in the film, McDormand nails the character in a way that brings earlier references to vivid life.
Michael Mann's Collateral offered two great one scene performances: Barry Shabaka Henley as a jazz musician targeted for elimination and Javier Bardem as a crime lord. In another Tom Cruise vehicle, Lois Smith had a memorable one-scene turn in a greenhouse in Minority Report.
For a while last year, there was buzz that Lynn Redgrave might get nominated for her great single-scene at the climax of Kinsey as a woman whose life was profoundly affected by the sex researcher, but when that film folded, only Laura Linney was left standing.
It's more than one scene, but Tony Shalhoub's cab driver of indeterminate origin in Quick Change is a riot. Another short one that cracked me up was Maximilian Schell in The Freshman. "Carmine said one boy, here are two."
The original version of Love Affair and its remake by Warren Beatty produced two great short turns by Maria Ouspenskaya and Katharine Hepburn, respectively. Ouspenskaya even managed an Oscar nomination for her performance. Another one scene wonder that earned an Oscar nomination was Sylvia Miles in Midnight Cowboy, though it's been a long time since I've seen that one.
Most of the ones that are springing to my mind right now are more recent ones, but I'm sure brief turns in older films will come to my mind once the conversation gets going. The ones that immediately occur to me are Leslie Howard, Anton Walbrook and Raymond Massey's brief bits in the Powell/Pressburger masterpiece 49th Parallel aka The Invaders.
I'll leave you with this one: while certainly not a nomination-worthy performance, Garry Marshall's turn as the manager of the Desert Inn in Lost in America always cracks me up. "We're through talking now."
He may be through, but I hope you aren't.
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With William Hurt's much-deserved (in my opinion) nomination for A History of Violence this year, my thoughts have turned to some of the great single-scene or particularly small roles that were able to grab the viewer's attention in unprecedented ways.
Hurt's brief bit is by no means the Oscar's only instance of short scene-stealers — Beatrice Straight won for basically one monologue in Network and Judi Dench won with very limited screen time in Shakespeare in Love.
Geraldine Page also snagged a nomination for essentially one scene in The Pope of Greenwich Village. Network also produced a great monologue for Ned Beatty that earned him an Oscar nomination. All those nominees were fine by me except for Dench, who was really just getting makeup Oscar love for losing for Mrs. Brown the year before to the wandering accent of Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets. Then there were also some brief nominations that were a complete puzzlement like Ethel Barrymore's nomination for The Paradine Case, one of Alfred Hitchcock's worst films.
So, as they come to me, some of my favorite brief roles.
Alfred Molina in Boogie Nights. When you get right down to it, the scene is completely extraneous to the movie — the climax of a film about the evolution of the porn industry well into the 1980s should have involved AIDS, not a standard drug deal. Still, Molina is masterful with his drug-addled dialogue set to the tune of Night Ranger's "Sister Christian."
One of my favorite single sequence tour-de-forces is Bill Murray in Little Shop of Horrors. His masochist wouldn't come off as great without Steve Martin's sadistic dentist to play off, but he's great.
Christopher Walken is a master of the monologue, but his one scene telling a child-size version of Bruce Willis about the journey of a gold watch in Pulp Fiction is priceless.
Another role that is essentially a single monologue, Jack Lemmon in Short Cuts. A brief but great role that few besides me remember is Swoosie Kurtz in Against All Odds where she is delightfully flaky as the secretary of a crooked lawyer who decides to help Jeff Bridges.
The year Frances McDormand won lead actress (for what in my opinion was a supporting role, but that's an argument for another time) for Fargo, she also gave a great single scene performance in Lone Star. Throughout the film, Chris Cooper's character's unstable ex-wife is referred to and when the situation requires Cooper to visit her late in the film, McDormand nails the character in a way that brings earlier references to vivid life.
Michael Mann's Collateral offered two great one scene performances: Barry Shabaka Henley as a jazz musician targeted for elimination and Javier Bardem as a crime lord. In another Tom Cruise vehicle, Lois Smith had a memorable one-scene turn in a greenhouse in Minority Report.
For a while last year, there was buzz that Lynn Redgrave might get nominated for her great single-scene at the climax of Kinsey as a woman whose life was profoundly affected by the sex researcher, but when that film folded, only Laura Linney was left standing.
It's more than one scene, but Tony Shalhoub's cab driver of indeterminate origin in Quick Change is a riot. Another short one that cracked me up was Maximilian Schell in The Freshman. "Carmine said one boy, here are two."
The original version of Love Affair and its remake by Warren Beatty produced two great short turns by Maria Ouspenskaya and Katharine Hepburn, respectively. Ouspenskaya even managed an Oscar nomination for her performance. Another one scene wonder that earned an Oscar nomination was Sylvia Miles in Midnight Cowboy, though it's been a long time since I've seen that one.
Most of the ones that are springing to my mind right now are more recent ones, but I'm sure brief turns in older films will come to my mind once the conversation gets going. The ones that immediately occur to me are Leslie Howard, Anton Walbrook and Raymond Massey's brief bits in the Powell/Pressburger masterpiece 49th Parallel aka The Invaders.
I'll leave you with this one: while certainly not a nomination-worthy performance, Garry Marshall's turn as the manager of the Desert Inn in Lost in America always cracks me up. "We're through talking now."
He may be through, but I hope you aren't.
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Labels: Archers, Bardem, Chris Cooper, Cruise, Dench, Geraldine Page, Hitchcock, Jeff Bridges, K. Hepburn, Laura Linney, Lemmon, McDormand, Michael Mann, Murray, N. Beatty, Steve Martin, W. Beatty, Walken, William Hurt, Willis
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