Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Late Night wouldn't have been the same without Chris Elliott
By Edward Copeland
The key to the success of Late Night with David Letterman wasn't just Letterman but the crack writing staff he assembled that shared his bent sense of humor. One of those writers in particular proved to be a breakout star of his own by the many characters he would play during appearances on the show. His name was Chris Elliott and he was a mere 31-years-old when Late Night debuted. As far as Late Night fans were concerned, Elliott quite literally was the guy — as in The Panicky Guy, The Conspiracy Guy, The Guy Under the Seats, The Laid-Back Guy, The Fugitive Guy and The Regulator Guy.
I desperately tried to pin down Elliott's first on-camera appearance on Late Night and I think it may have been on the 25th or 26th show that aired either March 15 or March 16, 1982, in the role of "Garbage" in a sketch about "Urban Paranoia," but I can't be positive. Elliott also would appear as himself, usually in the Viewer Mail segments, as the "staff scientist" answering questions such as the one in this example from YouTube.
Eventually, Elliott would have his own career on television and in the movies. On TV, he starred in the short-lived cult sitcom Get a Life on
Fox and later had a recurring role as a brother-in-law on Everybody Loves Raymond, provided the voice for the TV version of Dilbert and served as a cast member on Saturday Night Live for a season. In the 1970s, his father, Bob Elliott, half of the legendary comedy duo Bob & Ray, hosted SNL with Ray and did a Bob & Ray special with the original women of SNL. Now, Chris Elliott's daughter, Abby, is part of SNL's cast, making three Elliott generations involved with the show. On the big screen, Elliott starred in and co-wrote the story with screenwriter and director Adam Resnick (another former Late Night writer) for Cabin Boy, which included a cameo by Letterman (using the name Earl Hofert) as Old Salt in Fishing Village. Letterman turned his single line — "Would you like to buy a monkey?" — into a gag when he hosted the Oscars with stars such as Anthony Hopkins testing for Letterman's role. Elliott's supporting roles in movies such as Groundhog Day and There's Something About Mary came off better. He even did small, noncomic turns in films such as Michael Mann's thriller Manhunter and James Cameron's The Abyss. Before I let the clips tell the story of the "guys," here are some impersonations and other sketches that Elliott performed on Late Night. First, Chris Elliott testifies during the Iran-Contra hearings.
Next up, Chris did his take on two talk show staples. First, Chris Elliott is the director of the Columbus Zoo, not Jack Hanna. Second, it's Marv Albert with the wild and wacky in the world of sports.
After Glenn Beck, Michael Savage and many of the other wackos we've seen and heard recently, Morton Downey Jr. has largely been forgotten, but back in the 1980s the loudmouth was a phenomenon briefly and spawned "The Chris Elliott Jr. Show."
I have to admit that this one was my favorite and it's hard to not pick every clip out there, but in the 1980s when the great actor Marlon Brando was a world-class loon giving rambling interviews to Connie Chung and Larry King (including a big wet kiss on the lips), when Elliott started showing up as Brando, that was funny enough. When he ended every appearance doing the "Bananas" dance to "Alley Cat," it was hysterical.
The joke about The Regulator Guy, a Terminator-like spoof that was supposed to be Elliott's new series, was that it never aired. Every time he showed up to show a clip or premiere an episode, something would interrupt it or pre-empt it.
One of the earliest running characters Elliott came up with was The Conspiracy Guy, usually seated in the audience spinning outlandish theories about all sorts of topics. Today they are knows as Birthers and Truthers but they have no sense of humor.
Picking just one guy under the seats segment was the hardest of all because they were so many and so varied. Go to YouTube and check out the other ones out there.
Finally, I think the only way to conclude a post on Chris Elliott is to end with the final installment of The Fugitive Guy since it is the one they put the most effort into with location shooting, dragging Letterman along, the credit sequence, etc. NBC can suck on my intellectual property rights as I salute Letterman and his cohorts today.
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Labels: 80s, Brando, Cameron, Hopkins, Letterman, Oscars, TV Tribute
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Monday, December 05, 2011
Like seeing your dreams in the middle of the day
By Edward Copeland
Throughout my years of reviewing, when the time came to write about the latest Martin Scorsese picture, I always felt compelled to try to craft the best piece my capabilities allowed. With Hugo marking the first time the director has used the advancements in 3D technology, I not only owed Hugo the best prose I could muster, but it required seeing Hugo the way Scorsese intended. However, because of the physical limitations that have burdened me since 2008, trips to a movie theater have become a daunting task that requires literal heavy lifting by others and a substantial expenditure of energy on my part to accomplish such a journey, even with my good friend Adderall's help. Because of the logistics involved to get me out of my bed and my home, I usually only get out for doctors' appointments and unplanned trips to the emergency room. However, when Martin Scorsese releases a new film to theaters in 3D, I had to do my damnedest to get there physically. I had to wait to see Shine a Light and Shutter Island on DVD. Hugo happens to be the first film I've seen in a movie theater in more than a year (and only my fourth since 2009) as well as my first in "real D" 3D ever. If Marty's name weren't attached, I wouldn't have made the effort, not just for any 3D movie. This creates perhaps the oddest start to a review of a Scorsese movie I've written, but when your life undergoes as massive a change as mine has in the past three years, it feels appropriate to begin my Hugo review by focusing first on what it took to get me to the movie in the first place.
As frequent readers of this blog know, I am bedridden. I won't repeat the details of what put me here, but you can read this if you don't know. To get out of bed requires at least two people setting me up on a sling and attaching it to our electric lift. For a trip that isn't to a doctor, some additional steps have to be taken. For those journeys, I can go in my usual hospital gown attire. To visit a more public place such as a movie theater, I first have to be helped to put on a semblance of clothing, which isn't the easiest task in the world when your legs don't move and you have to work the pants and shirt around a suprapubic catheter and its attached collection bag. When that's out of the way and I'm centered on the sling and its straps are attached to the hooks of the lift, one person uses the lift to raise me off the bed while the other stands behind my wheelchair to guide me in and make sure I'm tight against the back and won't slide out during transport. We strap belts around my chest and legs to help me maneuver the chair from my bedroom through the house, into the garage and up the ramp of our specially equipped van where I perform a 180 degree turn in a limited space. Then four tethered hooks and a seat belt are attached to me. Assuming all of this has gone OK — and sometimes it takes quite a bit of trial and error to make certain that I'm centered on the sling and that I'm firmly against the back of the wheelchair. Then we can ride. For trips to doctors, we receive the help of the local ambulance service that provides free "lift assist" support, sending one of their paramedic units to help my aging father get me up. Unfortunately, this service only applies to medical-related jaunts. So, unless I lied, we couldn't have them come out and help get me up so I could go see Hugo.
Three mornings a week, I have caregivers who help to give me baths, etc., from 8 a.m. to noon. According to the national website for Hugo, the theater closest to me would have its first 3D showing on the Monday after it opened at 10:15 a.m. So I decided to make my first plan be that my caregiver would come an hour later than usual and I'd eat breakfast before he got here. He'd help get me dressed and get me up and into the chair and go see Hugo with us and we'd take the bath afterward. Unfortunately, the website was incorrect and when I checked the actual theater's showtime, they weren't having a 3D showing of Hugo until 2:30 in the afternoon, which wouldn't work because of other commitments the caregiver had in the afternoon not to mention how much that would cost me in overtime. With Monday blown, I started looking at the other theaters showing Hugo in the city. The earliest 3D showtime for Hugo in the city was 11:30 a.m. at a different theater. Wednesday couldn't work for the caregiver because his son had a doctor's appointment during the time the movie would be playing. Finally, I hit upon a plan: Thankfully, the caregiver's Thursday was free so he came just to help me get dressed, out of the bed and into the wheelchair and to accompany us to the theater for Hugo.
I had been to this theater many times, but not since I'd been forced to use a wheelchair (which occurred prior to my bedridden status) so I didn't realize how piss-poor their seating arrangements for wheelchairs were. Because of my nearly constant leg pain, when I did go to the movies in the chair, to make things as comfortable as possible, I tilt-raise the chair and recline the back so the footrests can be folded to extend my legs out straight. At the other two theaters in the city I'd usually frequent, it was never a problem as handicapped seating would have recessed openings adjacent to them allowing plenty of room for this to take place. At this theater, the space between the ground level rows of seating and the start of the stadium seating is very narrow and I barely had enough room to do much of the recline or lifting of legs without smacking into either the railing behind me or the seats in front of me. I arranged myself the best I could and anxiously awaited Hugo's start.
Of course, first I had to endure the trailers, which in the non-3D portion previewed a film set for the January dumping ground co-starring Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton called Joyful Noise. The trailer even includes a joke about Parton's plastic surgery, which they really had to include since her mouth now resembles Jack Nicholson's Joker in Tim Burton's Batman when he puts the flesh makeup over his disfigured visage. They then told us to put on our glasses for the 3D previews. All the animated films designed and made in the process such as The Lorax, The Adventures of Tintin and The Pirates: Band of Misfits looked impressive. However, the previews of re-releases of Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace and James Cameron's Titanic, both retrofitted to appear to be in 3D, looked like shit. Both should carry the tag line: Think They Stunk in Two Dimensions? Wait Until You Catch a Whiff in Three! Finally, it was time for Hugo.
I can't underestimate how excited I get when I'm about to see a new Martin Scorsese picture unfurl in a movie theater. I used to feel that way when I'd see the white-on-black titles of a Woody Allen film before he hit his slump and started repeating himself in the '90s. With the exceptions of Shine a Light and Shutter Island, I've seen every Scorsese feature in a theater starting with The King of Comedy. That includes After Hours, The Color of Money, The Last Temptation of Christ (which required driving to another state and standing in a line in the rain since no Oklahoma theater would show it), "Life Lessons" from New York Stories, Goodfellas, Cape Fear, The Age of Innocence (which I also drove out of state to see, but only because I was impatient), Casino (which I saw on a New York junket where I briefly spoke to Scorsese), Kundun, Bringing Out the Dead, Gangs of New York, The Aviator and The Departed. I even saw A Personal Journey Through American Movies With Martin Scorsese when it was shown in a New York theater and was able to see The Last Waltz in a 20th anniversary theatrical re-release. Now, Hugo joins that list. That's 17 films. I may have seen more films in a theater directed by Scorsese than by any other director if it weren't for Woody Allen's prolific nature and my earlier start with Steven Spielberg (beginning with Jaws), though Hugo puts Scorsese ahead of Spielberg by one. When I worshipped Woody, I stuck with him well into his doldrums. My first Allen in a theater remains my choice for his best, The Purple Rose of Cairo, and I saw them all that way through Curse of the Jade Scorpion. After that, I didn't have to see them and then it required too much work to see them. I've only seen one Allen in a theater since — Whatever Works — and that had as much to do with Larry David as with Woody. Still, that adds up to 20 films in a theater. It's been Spielberg's later years when I've been skipping out on theatrical showings (even when I could have attended).
Hugo starts with an awe-inspiring image that serves well as an introduction to live-action 3D for a skeptic who has felt, based on what he has read and heard, that 3D was little more than a gimmick to pump up movie ticket prices. With the exception of a couple of IMAX shorts in its early days, the last (and only) 3D movie I had ever watched in a theater was 1983's hokey-as-hell Jaws 3-D, back when the glasses were those cheap cardboard spectacle with plastic lenses of red and blue (or cyan if you want to get technical). In Hugo, we open on an FX shot that evokes an overhead shot of the entirety of a snowy Paris in the latter half of the 1920s, gliding past familiar landmarks until we arrive at its central train station and one of its huge clocks, only instead of the Arabic numeral 4, a boy's face peers out at us. The shot reminds me of young Henry Hill looking out his window at the gangsters' arrival at Tuddy's cab stand in Goodfellas. What Hugo shows us only gets more enthralling from there.
We learn that the 12-year-old boy is Hugo Cabret (played by the engaging Asa Butterworth, whose penetrating blue eyes might carry him far), who lives inside the walls of that Paris train station, winding all those clocks to make sure they keep running on time. It is a job that he inherited by default when his father (played by Jude Law in flashbacks) dies and his only living relative, Uncle Claude (Ray Winstone), takes him in. Uncle Claude is a drunken lout whose job is winding the train station's clocks so — at the cost of Hugo's education — the uncle jerks Hugo out of school and makes him his apprentice at the train station, learning his job and living there as well. Soon, Uncle Claude vanishes and Hugo takes it upon himself to perform his uncle's duties. Since he's doing the job unofficially, Hugo must filch whatever he can for sustenance as well as parts to finish repairing the automaton that his father found languishing at the museum where he worked and brought home to restore. Hugo has continued working on the unusual piece, convinced that if he fixes it, he will find a message left behind by his much-missed father. Hugo creates his own universe within the train station, though he must be careful to escape the notice of the Station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), whose main joy in life appears to be apprehending unattended children and shipping them off to orphanages. Separate from the use of 3D, once the movie takes us inside Hugo's world of the train station, the film proves to be a true triumph of production design that I imagine dazzles just as much in the 2D version. Dante Ferretti (Oscar winner for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and The Aviator) serves as production designer, the eighth time he's worked with Scorsese, and the sets for Hugo prove so elaborate that the credits list 10 art directors who assisted Ferretti. Francesca Lo Schiavo performed the role of set decorator, her 18th collaboration with Ferretti (she won her two Oscars for the same two films he did) and her fifth with Scorsese. Together, all the crafts people, their meticulous work filmed through the lens of master cinematographer Robert Richardson (Oscar winner for JFK and The Aviator and whose credits also include Inglourious Basterds, The Doors, City of Hope and Eight Men Out), create a visual feast that's a wonder to behold and would make a remarkable moviegoing experience even if it lacked sound, appropriate given its underlying subject matter.
Hugo has been adapted by John Logan from the unusual children's book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. The book, which Selznick (a first cousin, twice removed of the famous producer David O. Selznick) wrote and illustrated, is historical fiction that runs more than 500 pages long of which nearly half of those pages contain illustrations. Published in 2007, the book Selznick describes as "not exactly a novel, not quite a picture book, not really a graphic novel, or a flip book or a movie, but a combination of all these things" won the 2008 Caldecott Medal, the first for a "novel" since the prize goes to picture books. No wonder it attracted Scorsese.
In the train station, one of the main places where Hugo finds parts to swipe for his automaton is the toy shop, run by a very grumpy man (Ben Kingsley, always good, but giving another memorable performance in a career full of diverse roles). Believing he's dozing, Hugo reaches up to pinch some parts when the man grabs him and harangues him for being the thief who has been stealing from
him. He demands that the boy empty his pockets and Hugo complies on the right side containing all the pilfered pieces, but avoids his left pocket until the toy shop owner insists. Hugo reluctantly removes his father's notebook, which elicits a strange reaction from the man, who demands to know if Hugo made the drawings in it. A desperate Hugo begs the man to let him have the notebook back since he didn't steal it, but the toy shop's owner refuses, forcing Hugo to run along before he calls the Station Inspector. Later in the day, Hugo makes a new acquaintance — Isabelle (the ever-versatile Chloë Grace Moretz), who turns out to live with the toy shop owner, whom she calls Papa Georges, and his wife, Mama Jeanne (Helen McCrory). Hugo tells her about his notebook and how important it is to him, but refuses to say why. He waits for Isabelle's Papa Georges to close for the day and then starts to follow him, again pleading for the return of the notebook. The bitter man tells Hugo he plans to go home and burn it. Isabelle, who is listening nearby, promises Hugo that she'll keep watch over it so nothing happens. The next day, he returns to the toy shop. Georges says he expected to see Hugo again and hands him a cloth full of ashes, sending the boy fleeing in tears. Isabelle overhears the exchange and tells Hugo not to cry, but she again wants to know what's in the notebook because Papa Georges and Mama Jeanne talked and argued about it all night and Papa Georges cried as well, but he didn't burn it. He just did that to try to get Hugo to stop bothering him.Since Hugo opened prior to Thanksgiving and was being discussed in detail long before that, it's doubtful that many readers interested in the film don't already know the basics of the story and this isn't the type of movie where one needs to worry about spoilers. (If there exists in the world a person outraged that a Hugo review ruins the movie's revelation that Papa Georges is actually filmmaking pioneer Georges Méliès, I want to meet that person to find out how they knew who Méliès is but hadn't heard or read about Hugo's plot yet.) Martin Scorsese does have an unfortunate tendency to be pigeonholed as a filmmaker, when he may be the most eclectic great director we have working today — and he's been that way for a long time. In a way, you could say he resembles the Howard Hawks of his generation, working in practically every genre yet leaving his distinctive stamp on all his works. Granted, Scorsese possesses more
sophistication than Hawks — in terms of both visual style and subject matter. Hawks also didn't run back and forth between fiction and documentaries the way Scorsese does. Hugo, while it's perfectly suitable for kids to see, really works best for a special kind of kid — the type of kid Scorsese was or that I was or many of my friends were — budding film buffs. Hugo, at its core, isn't really the story of two kids trying to solve a mystery as they do in many tales that enchant young people, though that's there. It's not merely the story of an orphaned boy living alone inside a place that seems magical to him but who's pursued by a pseudo-villain, though that element exists in Hugo as well, primarily in the form of Sacha Baron Cohen's Station Inspector stalking the corridors with his Doberman. It isn't even the story of how a boy teaches a bitter old man to love life again, but that common children's story not only exists in Hugo, the main strand builds from it to accomplish what Scorsese really aims to do: pen a cinematic love letter to movies. Because of all the great directors working today, it's doubtful that any filmmaker loves movies more than Scorsese does — and it isn't just making movies that he loves. He loves watching them, helping to preserve them and just sitting around enthusiastically talking about them. Hugo, in its own way, allows him to accomplish all those film-related gerunds at once and address them to a new audience. I bet in the back of his mind somewhere, he hopes that someone born in 1999 or so sees Hugo and the experience births a new serious film fan, one who goes home and asks his or her parents about seeing a silent movie, wanting to start at the beginning of film history. If we had a title of filmmaking laureate as we do poet laureate, would there be any other American worth nominating? He's our country's film professor. They often pose the question to people about any career they might have, "Would you still do this if you didn't get paid?" I think we know what Marty's answer would be, but how would someone like a Michael Bay answer?With Hugo, Scorsese begins the film moving at a pace equal to the excitement of a kid on Christmas morning. Hugo starts leisurely with that overhead shot of Paris, but it picks up speed as it enters the train station and takes off like the famous Copacabana tracking shot in Goodfellas on crystal meth, zooming through those wide corridors packed with people, following Hugo through the innards of the station, sending him up and down ladders and traversing halls lined with pipes exhaling steam. Much of Hugo zips along at this pace when in the station, but Scorsese knows when to slow things down as well. In the production design, I'm sure they purposely built
the set's features to evoke silent films such as the many large mechanisms that run the station's clocks that look straight out of Chaplin's Modern Times and the clocks that reminded me of Harold Lloyd's Safety Last from the beginning, long before Hugo takes Isabelle to see Lloyd's movie and Hugo ends up hanging from a minute hand for real when fleeing the Station Inspector. By this time in his directing career (21 feature films since 1967, not counting his short films, documentaries, music videos, commercials and TV work), Scorsese has employed every filmmaking technique there is except for the 3D he's using for the first time here. It also seems to me that he utilizes more shots from high and low angles in Hugo than he usually does for a single movie. The big question comes down to how he handles the 3D, which puts me in an awkward position since I have nothing to compare it against except those coming attraction trailers. For me at least, I thought it was used very well for the first half-hour or so and isolated moments after that. After about 30 minutes though, I found the 3D to be somewhat exhausting and it wore out its novelty with me. When Hugo reaches its emotional climax, with Méliès embracing his legacy and parts of his films and A Trip to the Moon restored in its entirety, I found the 3D to be a distraction. Having seen that Georges Méliès film, I know it wasn't in 3D, so why was the moon coming toward me? I imagine that entire sequence affects the viewer more emotionally in the 2D prints.
Fortunately, the eventual 3D fatigue didn't sour me on the film itself which I enjoyed overall, thanks not only to Scorsese's still-visible mastery and his right-hand woman, film editor Thelma Schoonmaker and all the other behind-the-scenes talent. Most importantly, Hugo succeeds on the strength of its cast (though why everyone in Paris has a British accent I have no idea). Since the movie rests primarily on the shoulders of young Asa Butterfield, if his casting had been off, they'd been sunk, but he does quite well, holding his own with performers of all different levels of experience. His Hugo and Chloë Grace Moretz's Isabelle make a good team of young amateur detectives and friends who each compensate for something the other lacks. Isabelle's book smarts help their research (and con their way out of a run-in with the Station Inspector) while Hugo introduces Isabelle to the wonders of the movies, which Papa Georges refuses to let her see. Until that point, Isabelle has been the adventurer, but Hugo sneaks her into the theater to see the movie free. "We could get in trouble," she warns Hugo. "That's how you know it's an adventure," Hugo tells her. Moretz truly has proved herself an amazing young actress, putting on a British accent here, playing the young vampire last year in Let Me In and as Joseph Gordon-Levitt's wise-beyond-her-years younger sister in (500) Days of Summer.
Also turning in fine, brief appearances are the previously mentioned Jude Law, Ray Winstone and Helen McCrory as well as Richard Griffiths, Frances de la Tour, Emily Mortimer and Christopher Lee playing various inhabitants of the train station. Sacha Baron Cohen provides ample comic relief as the Station Inspector who suffered a wound in World War I that requires a mechanical hinge on one of his legs so that it comes off as sort of an homage to Kenneth Mars' Inspector Kemp in Young Frankenstein. One of Cohen's funniest scenes involves Madame Emilie (De la Tour) trying to get him to show her his best smile so he can talk to Lisette (Mortimer), the girl who sells flowers that he's developed a crush on but is too shy to approach. One other performance worth noting is Michael Stuhlbarg as Rene Tabard, the film professor who wrote a book about Méliès and restores his legacy. I don't know if Scorsese met Stuhlbarg on the set of Boardwalk Empire, which he executive produces and Stuhlbarg gives one of the series' best performances as Arnold Rothstein, or if he saw him first in a completely different role as Larry Gopnik in the Coens' A Serious Man, but Stuhlbarg's chameleon-like ability astonishes.
The credit for what ultimately makes Hugo work as well as it does belongs to Ben Kingsley as Georges Méliès. Kingsley has been excellent for a long time in many roles since he first captured our attention in 1982's Gandhi, showing he's equally adept in all genres and time periods in the years since. His work in Hugo may be his best since his incomparable turn in Sexy Beast, though the two parts couldn't be more different. There is neither flash nor fire in his Méliès, but you see the loss lurking beneath the man's surface as well as the joy in flashbacks to his filmmaking days. Kingsley's acting stands out better in 3D than all the other effects in Hugo combined.
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Labels: 10s, Boardwalk Empire, Books, Cameron, Chaplin, Coens, Fiction, Gordon-Levitt, Hawks, Kingsley, Larry David, Nicholson, Scorsese, Selznick, Spielberg, Star Wars, Tim Burton, Woody
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Monday, July 18, 2011
This Time It's War
By Damian Arlyn
In 1979, Ridley Scott unleashed one of the scariest, goriest and greatest sci-fi/horror films ever made. Alien was a huge box office hit that turned its virtually unknown lead actress Sigourney Weaver into a major motion picture star and its primary antagonist, an intelligent and extremely deadly creature called the xenomorph, into an iconic figure of nightmares. For years 20th Century Fox had wanted to make a sequel to Alien but it took a 30-year-old Canadian by the name of James Cameron to finally make this a reality. Cameron's resume at the time consisted primarily of special effects work on films such as Escape From New York, Battle Beyond the Stars and Android as well as the screenplay to the hit action blockbuster Rambo: First Blood Part II. His directorial debut (Piranha II: The Spawning) had been a bust but his sophomore effort, a sci-fi thriller called The Terminator which he also wrote, was incredibly successful. Nevertheless, Fox was still taking a bit of a risk turning one of its most potentially lucrative franchises over to such a relatively untried filmmaker. The gamble, however, paid off as Aliens was premiered in theaters 25 years ago today and proved to be one of the most exciting summer movies ever released, a benchmark in the area of special affects and a standard by which Hollywood sequels would be measured for decades to come.
Aliens chronicles the ongoing story of Ellen Ripley, the sole surviving crew member of a ship called the Nostromo which was plagued by a nasty alien critter who systematically eliminated every single one of her companions. At the climax of the previous film, Ripley dispatched the unpleasant baddie and entered hyper-sleep (along with the ship's only other survivor: Jones, the cat) hoping to be picked up in a matter of weeks. As the sequel opens, Ripley is indeed found but soon discovers that it is 57 years later. In the interim, the planet where Ripley's ship picked up the alien had been colonized and Earth has recently lost contact with the colonists. Ripley is sent, along with a unit of tough-talking, ass-kicking space Marines, to investigate the cause where they find, no surprise to Ripley, a whole army of those terrible monsters and one lonely little girl named Newt who has managed to stay alive by avoiding them. Before the film ends, Ripley, Newt, a Marine named Hicks and an android named Bishop manage to blow up all the aliens, escape in a ship and go into hyper-sleep just as Ripley did at the conclusion of Alien.
One of the many things that makes Aliens work so well is the fact that, although it does a fine job continuing the story set in motion by Alien, it is a very different kind of movie from its predecessor. Ridley Scott's film was, first and foremost, a horror story in a futuristic setting. It was an outer space version of Halloween where the mindless, soulless killing machine on a rampage was a horrifying extra-terrestrial instead of a
mask-wearing, knife-wielding psycho and the victims were a crew of interstellar truckers rather than a group of doomed horny teenagers. Cameron had the wisdom to understand that while a sequel should provide a similar viewing experience for its audience, it should also be its own wholly distinct product with its own style, vision and set of strengths and weaknesses. Sequels that simply re-hash everything done in the original might make a lot of money, but they rarely become classics. Intent on not just doing a carbon copy of Scott's masterpiece, Cameron decided to go for pure, unadulterated thrills. Thus, by changing the tone, amplifying the action and quickening the pace, Cameron ensured that his film would satisfy moviegoers' expectations for a visceral experience while still establishing his own unique vision. If Alien was the haunted house, Aliens is the roller coaster ride.The cast is uniformly good. The anchor of the film is, of course, Ripley and Sigourney Weaver manages to instill her with the same hardened, no-nonsense tenacity seen in the first film. Though perfectly willing to
show fear, Ripley always was able to act in the face of incredible danger and that quality serves her well once again. This time around, however, she is allowed some emotional vulnerability in her dealings with the young Newt (played decidedly non-precociously by Carrie Henn), to whom she becomes a sort of surrogate mother. In a scene that was cut from the film's theatrical release (though restored for the home video "special edition"), we learn that Ripley actually has a daughter, who had passed away while Ripley was in hyper-sleep. Apparently Ripley had promised her that that she'd be home in time for her 11th birthday. It is unfortunate that this scene was deleted because not only does it add an extra level of dimension to Ripley's character but it helps to explain the psychology behind the relationship Ripley forms with the orphaned girl.A pre-Mad About You (and even pre-My Two Dads) Paul Reiser plays the sneaky company executive who plans to bring a live specimen back to Earth — further pushing the concept established in the first film that greedy, power-hungry corporations are willing to sacrifice their own low-level employees — with just the right amounts of charm, odiousness and evil. Lance Henriksen plays the android Bishop with a pitch-perfect unemotional demeanor and yet seems to have even more warmth and humanity than Reiser's cowardly villain (he also has one of the film's best scenes involving a table, a hand and a knife). The rest of the cast is basically comprised of the Space Marines. It's very easy in a "combat" picture to make all the characters look and sound so alike that they are virtually indistinguishable, but Cameron and his actors avoid that trap here by giving each grunt his/her own distinct look and personality. The ones that stand out most in the memory, however, are probably Hicks, played by The Terminator's Michael Beihn (who was a last-minute replacement), the buff but sexy Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein) and the comically afraid, though at times somewhat annoying, Hudson (Bill Paxton) who spends most of the film complaining and freaking out. If there is one weak spot in the film, he would be it.
Though it still was relatively early in Cameron's career, many of the elements and themes that would characterize much of his later work were already beginning to take shape in 1986 and can be found in Aliens. Firstly, his dependence (and some would say over-dependence) on technology. Not only do all of Cameron's
films push the boundaries of special effects techniques, but all seem to focus to a large degree on hardware, machinery and industrialization (even the period piece Titanic spends an awful lot of its three-hour running time discussing, debating, and exploring the mechanical inner-workings of the ship itself). One of the film's most memorable set pieces is the climactic battle between the queen alien and Ripley. Forgetting for a moment that this particular piece of equipment would make a noticeable re-appearance in Avatar, the image of the all-too human Ripley engulfed in the massive power-loader serves as a perfect symbolic representation for Cameron's ruminations on the progressive fusion of man and machine. It also provides the film with one of its most iconic pieces of dialogue ("Get away from her, you bitch!"). I didn't see Aliens in the theater as I was too young (although it did become the first R-rated film I ever watched on video), but I suspect that line was probably greeted with thunderous applause.Furthermore, his environmental conscience, though not as heavy-handed as it is in films like Avatar and the special edition of The Abyss, is nonetheless present. It's no stretch of the imagination to speculate that had humans never attempted to explore and/or inhabit the alien's planet to begin with, none of the tragedies seen in any of these films would've ever happened. Finally, his simultaneous worship and criticism of the military. There is little doubt that Cameron admires the Marines in the film and yet, despite their excessive boasting, their inability to perform is highlighted even more by Ripley's extreme competence. By the time Cameron gets to Avatar, the military have flat-out become the bad guys.
Aliens went on to gross more than $85 million at the box office and actually earned, among other categories, an Academy Award nomination for best actress (a rarity for that genre of film). Weaver may not have walked away with the statuette, but the film itself won best visual effects and best sound effects editing. Many have even hailed it as one of those rare Hollywood sequels that actually surpasses its original. I personally don't agree with that as I think both films are equally excellent for the kinds of movies that they are trying to be, but whether you prefer Scott's dark, disturbing scarefest or Cameron's raucous, intense thrill ride, Aliens certainly remains endlessly exciting and thoroughly entertaining to this very day. It also, for better or for worse, helped cement James Cameron as a force to be reckoned with in the motion picture industry.
Game over, man.
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Labels: 80s, Cameron, Movie Tributes, R. Scott, Sequels, Sigourney Weaver
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Sunday, July 03, 2011
When the Machines Tried Again
By Damian Arlyn
I remember when my dad took me to see Terminator 2: Judgment Day on the big screen 20 years ago. I was a sophomore in high school and went into the movie with virtual ignorance of what I was about to see. I had no idea who James Cameron was (even though I had already seen and loved two of his movies, Aliens and The Abyss). I also, having never seen the original Terminator, knew nothing about the backstory of John Connor, his mother and the post-apocalyptic future wherein the few remaining humans battled the artificially intelligent machines. I soon discovered, however, that that didn't really matter because the second film basically stands on its own as an exciting, suspenseful and technically innovative piece of cinema. It remains to this day one of the most thrilling experiences I've ever had in a theater.
I remember, after being "blown away" by T2, renting The Terminator and being a bit let down by it. I have, of course, since come to appreciate the film very much but at the time I didn't find it nearly as exciting or technically impressive at its sequel. T2 had numerous action sequences that kept me, as the cliche goes, on the edge of my seat (the ravine chase, the asylum escape, the climax at the steel mill, etc.) and the special effects were, to my relatively young eyes, absolutely breathtaking.
I realize now that T2 (and Spielberg's Jurassic Park, which came out two years later) was made at a very exciting time in the development of cinematic technology. Computer-generated imagery was allowing filmmakers to start putting things in their movies nobody have ever seen before, but they were still being used to enhance stories rather than take the place of them. Also, audiences had yet to become savvy to what digital imagery was fully capable of or how it was produced (frequent exclamations of "How they did do THAT?" could be heard during this time), so moviegoers still "believed" a lot of what they saw. They still perceived the images on screen as being, in a sense, "real" (unlike nowadays where everything is basically treated as if it's animation). The liquid metal transformations of the film's villain were the most impressive visuals to come out of T2, but it was actually Sarah Connor's dream sequence involving a nuclear explosion in an American city that probably had the biggest impact on me personally. I knew what a nuclear bomb was and what it was capable of but I had never seen it dramatized in such a visceral, chilling way. I can't even remember the last time a summer movie had this kind of a lasting effect on me, but even now whenever I hear the phrase "nuclear explosion," I flash back to that scene (and not, thankfully, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull).
For the most part, Cameron did a bang-up job casting the flick. Linda Hamilton returned as Sarah Connor, but no longer the scared waitress hiding behind a big, strong man for safety, she has turned into a hardened, ripped survivor, yet Hamilton still was able to allow twinges of vulnerability creeping in from around her rough edges. As the shape-shifting T-1000 Terminator, Cameron found Robert Patrick, a young actor whose only other recognizable role was one of three dozen terrorists Bruce Willis dispatches in Die Hard 2. Although Patrick would later go on to do several seasons of The X-Files, to me he will always be the cold, ruthless killing-machine who wears a police uniform and can turn his arms into giant blades. The weakest of the group, unfortunately, is Edward Furlong. I feel a little bad saying this since Furlong has had some rough experiences recently, but while his rebellious attitude appealed to my 15-year-old self, as a 35-year-old I not only find him to be an annoying brat but Furlong's acting seems, quite frankly, pretty bad at times. Perhaps in the hands of a better actor, John Connor might have come off as a more believable and sympathetic character, but with Furlong it just doesn't work.
The star of the film though is, was and always will be Mr. Schwarzenegger. While it is nearly impossible to watch Arnold's past film performances without being reminded of the decisions he has since made in his public
and private life (a problem that applies to watching old Mel Gibson movies now as well), one can still see why it wasn't too long ago that Schwarzenegger was nothing more or less than just a super cool, extremely well-built movie star with a hard-to-spell name and a foreign accent. Like some of his other action movie colleagues such as Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal, Schwarzenegger will never be accused of being a great actor (though he had an undeniable screen presence and charisma), but in the Terminator movies Cameron brilliantly exploited his acting limitations and combined them with his obvious super-human qualities. Suddenly Arnold's size, strength and "stiffness" was believable. He was the perfect choice for the Terminator and, for my money, it's Arnold's best as well as most iconic role.As I look back on T2, I am reminded of how far big-budget, effects-laden summer blockbusters have come in the last 20 years. As I write this now, explosion-extraordinaire Michael Bay is making millions of dollars inflicting his latest big screen obscenity on audiences and, from what I can gather from the reviews, things like story and character are being sacrificed in the process. I never thought I would ever say this about T2, but it not only seems positively subtle but infinitely more human by comparison. Maybe the machines don't need to wipe us out after all. Before long, we'll be the machines ourselves.
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Labels: 90s, Cameron, Mel Gibson, Movie Tributes, Schwarzenegger, Spielberg, Willis
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Tuesday, June 08, 2010
When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead
By Edward Copeland
Honest — I hadn't planned to bash more on Avatar, especially this soon after I wrote my review lambasting Cameron's Folly last week, but I really see little way to avoid bringing it up as I discuss Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. Godard famously said that the best way to criticize a film was to make another one and since that option is not available to me, I often find that it's illustrative to compare what one film does well to show how another film fails and that is the case here, even though I can't truly say that Alice in Wonderland itself is a good movie, but it did excel for me at most of the things for which I feel Avatar earned undeserved praise.
Don't get me wrong: Overall, I don't think Burton's film is a particularly good movie, but it held my interest because somehow he found the formula to make his style-over-substance approach mesmerizing in a way that I found Avatar just tedious. Though, as in the case with all 3-D features, I'm unable to see them that way, Alice in Wonderland is the first case where I could visualize what that would have been like even though I didn't have glasses, special equipment and I wasn't in a movie theater.
Part of the reason for this I believe is the vibrancy of Burton's imagery, where he uses a vast array of colors and imaginative characters and sets to bring his fantasy world to vivid life. It seems to leap off my television in a way that the monotonous color schemes of Pandora and the military headquarters did not in Avatar.
Still, despite my praise for that part of Alice in Wonderland, I can't say the film itself really works. The premise of this finds a much older Alice (Mia Wasikowska) escaping a boring matchmaking garden party in London and once again falling down the rabbit hole where she finds herself in Underland with no memory of her previous visit as a little girl. All the same characters are there: The Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), The Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), etc., but she doesn't seem to recall any of them.
The plot seems to be a bit of a muddle, a mixture of the original tale with an expansion of new strands, as Alice must don armor to face off against the Jabberwocky to restore the crown from the evil Red Queen to the White Queen (Anne Hathaway). In fact, the battle may be better staged than any of the by-rote scenes in Avatar only with the added plus of wonderful color schemes beyond the eventually dull blue, green and camouflage. It's also helped by having characters such as the Hatter, the Queens and the others (some voiced by greats such as Alan Rickman and Stephen Fry) usually assorted with the story, even though Lewis Carroll takes the credit. There's a reason those characters have stood the test of time since the 19th century. I doubt people will even know who Jake Sully is next year, let alone decades from now (I had to consult IMDb just to remember the Avatar character's name).
While I can't say I'd want to sit through Alice in Wonderland again, I can't deny it held my interest thanks to its phenomenal look. It gave me wondrous things to gaze upon and a sense of a truly vital imagination at work behind the camera, even if my mind began to wander elsewhere.
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Labels: 10s, Anne Hathaway, Cameron, Depp, Godard, H.B. Carter, Rickman, Tim Burton
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Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Dances with delusions of grandeur
By Edward Copeland
There's a certain freedom that comes with being able to see and write about a film long after it's been dissected to death, especially a blockbuster such as Avatar. I don't have to waste time on the plot, I can just get to the critique and James Cameron, be prepared: both barrels are loaded.
Now, since my physical limitations prevented me from seeing Avatar in the theaters, I didn't get the 3D experience. Not that I think it would have changed my opinion of the lousy movie that I finally saw on DVD. Perhaps
the 3D glasses were laced with a hallucinogen that made people believe they were enjoying themselves. I do understand why Cameron chose 3D, since the story and screenplay for Avatar barely register as one dimensional, he had to do something. I was shocked to see in the end credits that the great actress CCH Pounder also was in the film, but who the hell she played I have no idea. I assume one of the Ewoks — I mean Navi. What does puzzle me is that I read that the film was shot in scope (2:35:1 aspect ratio), but, for some reason, the DVD has been reconfigured to 1:85:1. It wouldn't have made my viewing experience better, but it did make it even less like theatergoers saw and for no good reason that I can discern. It's a puzzling decision by Cameron, supposedly such a stickler for the visual look of his films, to allow, but I don't have enough interest to go searching for the answer since the film would suck in any aspect ratio.Granted, I was no fan of Titanic, but at least it had mostly top-notch actors from top to bottom giving Cameron's insipid dialogue more life than it deserved. In fact, I always said it could have been a truly great film if it had been a silent movie. Cameron also had a true story to help guide him as he tacked his ridiculous fictional one on top of it. (Billy Zane is chasing Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet around with a gun as the ship floods! I hope he doesn't shoot them! They might drown! I guess the sinking of the ship just wasn't suspenseful enough by itself.) Still, if you want the best film telling of the Titanic story, that title still belongs to Roy Ward Baker's 1958 classic A Night to Remember. Avatar only has Sigourney Weaver and the usually reliable Giovanni Ribisi (sadly trapped in a stock role) trying to hold up the acting end for the entire bloated film, which is otherwise populated by uncharismatic lightweights and Stephen Lang as a bad guy Marine colonel who comes fully armed with every cliche a military stereotype will need at his disposal.
Many made the comparison of Avatar's story to Dances With Wolves, but what really came to my mind was Willow, which borrowed heavily from every legend, myth, story and movie it could get its hands on. Just a short list of references I scribbled while watching Avatar: the aforementioned Dances With Wolves, the video game Joust, the
speeder bike chase in Return of the Jedi and the Ewoks in general, This Boy's Life, The Last of the Mohicans, Platoon (minus Oliver Stone's subtlety), RoboCop, Ferngully: The Last Rainforest (though I'd have preferred to hear Tone Loc singing "If I'm Gonna Eat Somebody (It Might As Well Be You)" over James Horner's cloying score) and even Cameron's own Aliens. At one point in the film when one of the Navi says, "No more talk," I knew he meant it was time to fight, but there was part of me that hoped the film was about to become that silent movie I dreamed of for Titanic to spare me from the rotten dialogue and frequent shouts of "Nooooo!" as the good humans witness some new atrocity. You would think that perhaps on some level Cameron's message of protecting natural resources and ecosystems would touch me given my current level of outrage over the disaster BP has inflicted upon the Gulf of Mexico and beyond, but then again, the news does a much better job at getting me worked up over that than this terribly written, overlong movie assembled from bits and pieces of other, better films ever could.Of course, what exactly is this mineral that the corporate bad guys are so eager to harvest anyway why are they allowed to use Marines to obtain it? As far as I know, it could be what Claude Rains kept in his wine bottle in Hitchcock's Notorious. By the way, when is this film set and who and what kind of president gave a corporate shill such free rein over the military for their company's pursuits (not that it's outside the realm of possibility)? When we get to the climactic battle between the Ewoks/Navi and the Marines, aren't the Marines just following orders? Should audiences root for their deaths and injuries?
Enough about Avatar. I really have nothing more to say about this equivalent of a roadside con man's very expensive miracle elixir that was sold to gullible millions. I want to discuss James Cameron himself. It is easy to see how he rose to prominence. His writing-directing projects started out as solid. In fact, he made some of the all-time best action films such as The Terminator, Aliens and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, films where the thrills moved the pictures along so fast that the dialogue hardly mattered. However, within this period there were signs of his supreme suckiness as a screenwriter. He authored Rambo: First Blood Part II and made what, in its own way, could almost be called his underwater Avatar, The Abyss, the first real evidence of him taking himself way too seriously in a movie that I largely forgot about as soon as I left the theater. I think Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio got CPR at some point, though they may have just been trying to wake her up. No one offered to do the same for me.
He also wrote the muddled mish-mash Strange Days for his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow, who continues to grow and garner acclaim as a director without ever stumbling upon a good screenplay. The film he wrote and directed that really showed he should stick with what he was good at was when he tried to mix action with comedy in the dreadful True Lies and ended up with a misogynistic misfire loaded with myriad ethnic stereotypes as well as Tom Arnold.
Then he really became obsessed with special effects and his own self-worth with Titanic, thanks to the Oscars and legions of teenage girls with too much time on their hands. Compare him to another filmmaker who can't write dialogue worth a damn, George Lucas. Lucas can at least tell a story and, as flawed as the Star Wars prequels are, Lucas never tries to pass them off as important or works of art. He's there to play with his expensive toy box and make entertainment. Cameron enjoys playing with his toys just as much, but he suffers from the delusion that the films he makes are IMPORTANT. Lucas' films turn out to be the equivalent of high-tech serials with lousy dialogue. Cameron's last two films, especially Avatar, turn out to be pompous crap with delusions of grandeur AND lousy dialogue without any storytelling sense. Whether his movie turns out for better or worse, George Lucas is a storyteller. James Cameron just wants to show off technology. Lucas has found the proper venue in movie theaters. Perhaps Cameron should be strutting his stuff at one of those preview conventions they hold in Las Vegas to introduce the latest in high-tech gear.
Now, I'm sure Avatar defenders will claim I'm just writing this to be a contrarian for contrarian's sake, but I honestly cannot fathom how anyone who truly loves film can sit through this hokum and think it stands up as a great movie on any level unless standards have been lowered to the point that cool visuals are enough. Perhaps I'm too old-fashioned a movie lover, but I don't care how stunning the images are if it's really only stunning wrapping paper masking a box with no gift inside.
I had neither the time nor the energy to try to find an interview with Cameron to answer a question I've long wondered about: Has he ever mentioned that he had any cinematic influences, important movies or favorite filmmakers? All I can ever find is his obsession with integrating science with filmmaking. (I guess that's why he's found favor with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.) Call me a film snob if you must, but I'm always going to prefer directors who love the medium itself, not the gadgets. It would explain his shitty scripts. He could care less about the story and dialogue — he's too busy concentrating on the technical wizardry. Perhaps Errol Morris can create a documentary on Cameron called Slow, Expensive and Out of Control.
Cameron has predicted that eventually all films will go 3D (it's the new colorization!), but all films don't need 3D. Will they go back and retrofit movies for 3D like they did with the Clash of the Titans remake? Who is up for that 3D Pretty Woman? Hell, let's go further back. I think 3D is what Mrs. Miniver always has needed. (I know the new 3D isn't the same as the old, but I can't help but think of John Candy on SCTV every time I hear about it.) A few years back, hack extraordinaire Michael Bay tried to spread the rumor that he was the illegitimate spawn of the great director John Frankenheimer. I wonder if the truth is that Bay actually was created in a lab by Cameron.
James Cameron, I challenge you. For your next film, let someone else write your screenplay and go small. If you really believe that you have become that important an artist, you must know that you can make a film about a subject you care about on a small scale without a gargantuan budget, 3D or CGI run amok. Remember how simple The Terminator was and how much better it still is when you compare it to Titanic or Avatar? You've broken box office records galore and made yourself a very wealthy man. You can get away with making a small project. Do a movie that has absolutely no need for anything besides a good script, good actors and good direction without gizmos and eye candy to distract the moviegoer. Prove me wrong about you. I dare you. Show your bona fides as an artist not just overpaid tech support.
BONUS: I couldn't find the specific SCTV clip I wanted, but here is an example that is just as funny, especially when you consider that the 3D trend has more to do with taking more of your money than making quality movies.
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Labels: 00s, Cameron, DiCaprio, Hitchcock, Lucas, Oliver Stone, Oscars, Rains, Sigourney Weaver, Star Wars, Television, Winslet
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Monday, May 10, 2010
La ballo vuoto o Nein! Nein!
By Edward Copeland
Sometimes the announcement of film projects seem so obviously a bad idea (at least to me) that I can't understand why everyone doesn't see it, particularly the people putting up the money. Be it those who thought a modern remake (or any remake) of The Manchurian Candidate made sense or that casting Tom Hanks as Sherman McCoy in a screen version of The Bonfire of the Vanities was a good idea (before that was followed by bad idea after bad idea like an elaborate attempt by Brian De Palma to break the world record for domino toppling).
So, when a resurgence in film adaptations of musicals led to the announcement that the next Broadway tuner to hit the big screen would be Nine, I greeted the news with a big, "Why?" I've never seen Nine staged, but I know the score and, for the unfamiliar, what it is is a musicalized version of Fellini's masterpiece 8½. Maury Yeston's score is hardly memorable and as much as I love Fellini's film, if they remastered prints and did a large scale re-release of the original film, would great numbers go? Of course, I'm not in the business of reviewing films as financial decisions (even though I was right and they made a bad one), but now that I've seen it, I can review it as a film and can say that it fails as a movie as well.
Daniel Day-Lewis stars as Guido, the director with artistic block and the actor seems to sleepwalk through the entire film as if he's wondering how in the hell he got into this mess. Day-Lewis tends to enjoy disappearing into a role, but Guido is so translucent to begin with that there's no body to inhabit and certainly no scenery to chew. His chance to sing a couple of lackluster songs doesn't offer much in the way of something new either as he basically talk-sings through those, presumably to keep that Italian accent going. I'd much rather have been watching a Gangs of New York musical. Hell, as much as I despised it, a crooning Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood the Musical would have offered more entertainment. Just imagine the Act II showstopper "I Drink Your Milkshake!"
Coming from The Weinstein Company, most of Harvey's usual girls are there (apparently Gwyneth Paltrow was unavailable) and the cast boasts more acting Oscar winners than a 1970s disaster movie. Shit, excuse me a second. Sorry, had to stop and clean the vomit off my keyboard when I once again realized those award winners include Marion Cotillard. One of the few non-Academy Award winners or nominees in the cast is Fergie and she sure does look different than she did when she was married to Prince Andrew. Oh, I'm sorry. Different Fergie. Not really sure who she is, but actually she does do one of the best numbers performing "Be Italian," made famous on stage by the late Anita Morris (I remember that from a Tony broadcast).
As I guessed when I saw Penélope Cruz in Pedro Almodóvar's Broken Embraces, she got the Oscar nomination for the wrong movie when she received it for Nine. Cruz does what she can in Nine, but characterization is not a strong suit for any of the film's characters.
When Nine premiered on Broadway, it inexplicably won Tonys for best musical and best score, defeating Dreamgirls, which turned out to be a mixed bag as a movie but at least made sense to be turned into a movie. (Though the show was a flop, Maury Yeston's dull score for Nine defeated Stephen Sondheim's brilliant score for Merrily We Roll Along as well.) The Tony love at the time could mostly be attributed to the involvement of Tommy Tune, whom was worshipped by the Tonys in that era winning in multiple categories, year after year.
Making a musical out of Fellini's 8½ just seemed an odd idea to begin with. R.E.M.'s video for "Everybody Hurts" and its sequence paying homage to the film probably comes closer to the mark than the entire film of Nine does.
Now, I don't want to merely bash Maury Yeston, because years later he won another Tony for score for another best musical, Titanic, which had no connection to James Cameron's behemoth but came out the same year and was much better than the movie with the same name, and had a score infinitely better and more memorable than Nine.
Rob Marshall, who successfully directed the screen adaptation of Chicago, helmed the film Nine and honestly, I have no idea what his strategy for the film was. Some numbers seem to spring as fantasies out of conversations Guido has with the many women in his life while others seem to appear on a theater stage (or is that a movie set? Hard to tell). The dialogue scenes hardly improve the situation. You can't decide which you dread more: Characters breaking out into boring song or into boring conversation.
Though the film had its problems, his nonmusical direction of Memoirs of a Geisha showed much more promise for him as a film director. However, next up for him is yet another Pirates of the Caribbean sequel which one can only hope they subtitle We Really Are Devoid of New Ideas. It's a shame, because had many great choreography credits on Broadway and a co-directing credit with Sam Mendes on the marvelous revival of Cabaret that starred the late Natasha Richardson. Mendes seems to have made the switch in mediums much easier than Marshall.
With the exception of some clearly defined roles (Sophia Loren is the dead mother; Cotillard is the wife; Fergie is the prostitute Guido knew as a child) many of the women sort of exist in a blur without clear delineation. Judi Dench obviously is his agent and I guess Nicole Kidman is his frequent movie star, but I'm still working on Cruz and Kate Hudson, though Cruz obviously is at least a mistress.
The screenplay is credited to Michael Tolkin, author of both the novel and screenplay for The Player, and Anthony Minghella who, despite the fact he died in March 2008, must still be under contract to Harvey Weinstein, even in the afterlife. (IMDb still lists two films in development for him. Take a rest Anthony, you're dead.) In the movie, Guido hasn't written a word for the film he's supposed to start filming and Nine itself is similarly plotless. It's telling that at the Tonys the year Nine premiered on Broadway the book category is one category it did lose to Dreamgirls.
The best I can find myself saying about Nine is that the technical credits are fine from Dion Beebe's cinematography and Colleen Atwood's costumes to John Myhre's production design, but in the end it's just putting lovely wrapping paper on an empty box.
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Labels: 00s, Almodóvar, Awards, Cameron, Cotillard, Day-Lewis, De Palma, Dench, Fellini, Gwyneth Paltrow, H. Weinstein, Hanks, Musicals, Nicole Kidman, Oscars, Penélope Cruz, Remakes, Sondheim, Theater
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Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Not just a Bigelow
By Edward Copeland
Kathryn Bigelow has had many fans as a director for a long time, something that always has been inexplicable to me since most of her previous film work has been sadly lacking. I didn't care for the vampire tale Near Dark. Blue Steel was laugh-out-loud bad, thanks mainly to a beyond-over-the-top performance by Ron Silver. Point Break's creativity ended with bank robbers wearing masks of former presidents as Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze and Lori Petty raced to see who could drive an audience member to suicide first. Strange Days certainly had its moments, but in the end was mostly a sci-fi muddle. Then again, it was written by her ex-husband James Cameron, and as we all know, writing has never been his strong suit.
Poor Bigelow even got the chance to direct some episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street, though they were unfortunately later season episodes after NBC meddling and Tom Fontana acquiescence had made the once-great show a shadow of what it once was.
That's why it is so great to report that all the acclaim that Kathryn Bigelow has received for The Hurt Locker is not just fanbase hype: She deserves the kudos because it's by far the best movie she's ever made without any qualifications.
Actually, I do have at least one qualification about The Hurt Locker. The movie opens with a quote that just too neatly underlines the film's point in BIG BOLD LETTERS. It's unnecessary and, in a way, undermines what could be a more powerful ending. That aside though, The Hurt Locker is very good, thanks mainly to the lead performance of Jeremy Renner and the nonstop, visceral direction by Bigelow.
Renner plays Staff Sgt. William James, who leads an explosive detonation unit in Iraq. If you've ever seen a film with a suspenseful sequence that involves disarming an explosive, imagine a two-hour-plus film made up almost entirely of those scenes. Renner's James is an adrenaline junkie, who finds each new device a challenge to disarm, no matter if it puts his life or others at risk.
Bigelow employs a myriad of techniques to keep the movie moving at a kinetic pace through sudden zooms, fascinating closeups and interesting vantage points of explosions. Truly, Bigelow's direction proves to be the star of the film, aided immensely by her editors Bob Innis and Bob Murawski and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd. The screenplay by Mark Boal may be the weak link. It's fine, but it's really just a template for Bigelow to work her magic and Renner really is the only character aside from Anthony Mackie that stands out. This isn't a writer's movie: It's a director's film.
For as long as The Hurt Locker has been circulating (it was nominated at last year's Independent Spirit Awards), I was surprised to see some well-known actors pop up in small roles who I didn't even know were in the film.
Iraq war movies have not done well at the box office or critically, but The Hurt Locker succeeds because this could be any war and the politics aren't even brushed upon. The film just focuses on men doing a very dangerous job and Kathryn Bigelow brings it vibrantly alive and Jeremy Renner creates a character to remember.
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Labels: 00s, Cameron, Homicide
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Saturday, May 06, 2006
THE UNLOVED
Before we finally embark on the survey's results, I'd like to send out a universal note of thanks to everyone, not only for their participation but for their kind thoughts and their patience with the understandable delay in finishing this. I don't know even a small percentage of you in the real world, but you have been a great comfort over the past week.
Another note, since I went to the trouble to solicit quotes, I've decided to include at least one for every film, even the ones below which didn't appear on any ballots. When we get to the films that placed No. 21 or lower, it was harder, since many of them had multiple quotes, so I tried to share the wealth among those who sent comments as much as possible, a difficult task since the higher we got, the more great quotes there were to choose from. Of course, when we get to the top 20, pretty much everyone is getting in.
First, the list of the six films that failed to garner a single vote on any of the best best picture ballots, in chronological order:
Cimarron
Cimarron won best picture in '31, but is far from the best picture of that year. There's a good dozen, at least, that have weathered much better over the years. Still, this picture is worth seeing for a few big land run shots and to glimpse its bizarro world of 1931 progressive politics.
Jeffrey
Cavalcade
Was Cavalcade the best picture of 1932-33? Hardly. I haven't seen Smilin' Through or State Fair, but I imagine that I would have voted for any of the other nominees before Cavalcade (though it's a close call with Lady for a Day). Still, this adaptation of Noel Coward's play is not a worthless picture and I did enjoy it for its kaleidoscopic look at a British family through the years. Its one throwaway shot of a life preserver bearing the words Titanic foreshadowing some characters' fates for me was far more effective than all the technical know-how and bombast of James Cameron's version — and was accomplished in a matter of seconds.
Edward Copeland
The Great Ziegfeld
Historically interesting because of the appearances of original Ziegfeld stars — among them a Fanny Brice which doesn't look at all like Miss Streisand — it is a rather conventional, sugary biopic. The work by the players is competent, charming, but hardly awesome. Yet I can't help being fascinated by its elephantine musical numbers, which I suspect the film took to heights of excess that the original stage numbers lacked. I'm particularly haunted by "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody," with its gargantuan cake-like revolve, increasing its speed as it rotates its way through the "story of music" (as seen by Broadway), with the camera spiraling upwards to a close-up, then traveling majestically backwards as the curtain goes down. A tremendous, and yet wonderful pinnacle of kitsch. Just like the strain of a haunting refrain.
Gloria Porta
The Life of Emile Zola
The Greatest Show on Earth
OK, not a great movie; it apparently won the Best Picture award because of behind-the-scenes shenanigans to keep out the politically suspect High Noon. But it does have its moments, especially from the two of the female leads, who do what they always do (Betty Hutton, feisty and plucky; Gloria Grahame, bad girl) very well. Jimmy Stewart is pretty good with his
tragic clown, until mawkishness sets in in his last scene. The big circus set pieces are well done, including the train crash. The backstage dramas lack a certain authenticity — where's the elephant poop, for Christ's sake? All in all, not the Greatest Show, but not the worst by a long way.
Tim Footman
Around the World in 80 Days
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Labels: Cameron, J. Stewart, Lists, Oscars
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