Monday, February 28, 2011
I'm a partner in an abusive relationship
By Edward Copeland
It's not easy for me to make this confession, especially to the masses around the world in cyberspace, but it's true. I have been involved in a relationship that has gone on now for more than 30 years. I've taken steps to sever my ties with it, because it's not healthy, but I keep crawling back, no matter how many times my partner abuses me. I can't even call my feelings love anymore. It's just habit, bordering on obsession, and because my partner was there for me during a few years of dark times, I can't sever ties completely, even though each year she treats me worse and worse. Her name is Oscar and after last night's debacle, I felt compelled to issue this plea for help.
I took a big step last year, when the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, under constant pressure from ABC and its parent company Disney kept making idiotic changes to the award to try to boost rating and attract a more youthful demographic. When they doubled the best picture nominees to 10 and, even worse, kicked the presentation of honorary awards, usually the broadcast's highlight, to a nontelevised dinner in November, as they tried to deny that film history began any earlier than the Reagan administration. Similarly stupid moves by the other awards I follow, the Tonys for Broadway and the Emmys for television, prompted me to write the post A pox on all your award shows. I swore I would no longer promote any of these awards. No predictions, surveys, etc. I've been pretty good at keeping my word.
However, that temptress known as Twitter sucked me in and actually created a more bearable way to watch the travesty. Since I'm bedridden anyway, I could watch the show at the same time I snarked to the world about the ceremonies as they went on. Honestly, the Twittering has become more satisfying than the shows themselves, which I had a bad feeling about when they announced that the hosts would be James Franco and Anne Hathaway. Huh? I started to get sucked in though when every critics' group and even the waiter and florists selected my choice for the best film of 2010, The Social Network, as best picture. I thought for the first time in a long time Oscar might actually pick my choice as best film as their best picture. Then that evil man known as Harvey Weinstein reared his head for the first time in a long time as his company released The King's Speech, which suddenly started scoring guild wins. First, it took the Producer's Guild Award, but they are flaky (they picked Little Miss Sunshine), so I wasn't concerned. Then, Tom Hooper (who I imagine most people still can't pick out of a lineup) won the Director's Guild Award for The King's Speech. As my friend Josh R said last night, his mother could have done a better job directing The King's Speech and she doesn't know how to program the VCR. It's worth noting that before this film, Hooper's work was almost entirely on television and TV directors make up a majority of DGA voters now. Weinstein, being the grade-A asshole that
he is, reportedly told Scott Rudin, one of the producers of The Social Network, that he can go ahead and win the critics' awards, he'll take the big one. When the Screen Actors Guild handed out its awards, The King's Speech won ensemble, which people keep mistakenly equating as a picture prize when it's an acting prize and when their history is that their ensemble prize has not gone on to win the Oscar more times than it has. (The count is now 9 to 8.) Since it is an acting prize, it should have lost based on Timothy Spall's awful performance as Churchill and casting Guy Pearce as Colin Firth's older brother when the actor, only seven years younger, looked as if he could be Firth's son in some scenes. Having never sold my soul to Satan, I have no idea how these deals work, but Weinstein has been getting away with it for a long time. Remember when he used his talent to push quality films such as Pulp Fiction and The Crying Game? What happened to that Harvey who now bullies and buys his way to victory with middlebrow mediocrities such as The King's Speech, a Harvey who has so little respect for the art that he is cutting one small scene of profanity where the stuttering royal repeats the "F" word so he can get a PG-13 rating and, presumably, bigger audiences and more money. Come on Satan, when are you coming for him to pay up for his deal with a suitably long sentence in Hell?Then came Oscar night. Resolved that Harvey would get his way, I didn't even put much though into predictions like I used to. I just didn't care anymore. I started to get excited though, despite the fact that the show itself was a bore. Category after category where I predicted The King's Speech, it kept losing. Could this be? The Social Network started winning. No, this was just an elaborate trick. The only solace I could take was that The King's Speech did not win the most Oscars. It tied with Inception with four wins, though all of that film's prizes were technical ones. The King's Speech took best picture, but it will be one of those forgotten winners, and the inexplicable director winner Tom Hooper will follow in the footsteps of winners Delbert Mann, John G. Avildsen and Michael Cimino and never be nominated again. Further, I fear the man who should have won, David Fincher, will now win at some point for a film that he won't deserve to win for. That's the way this abusive wench works.
Now on to the broadcast itself. I do have to give it some kudos. FINALLY, after years of my complaining, they muted the audience microphones during the In Memoriam segment so you didn't hear the audience applauding at different levels as if it were a contest for who was the most popular dead person. The show seemed to
have no structure, rhyme or reason. Anne Hathaway seemed eager to please but James Franco appeared stoned most of the time. I've suggested this before. Why do they need a host? Just have an announcer introduce presenters and hand out the awards. Has anyone interested in the Oscars ever decided to watch or not to watch based on who was hosting? Think how much time you'd save without a host. The Billy Crystal bit resurrecting Bob Hope seemed fairly pointless, as did that bit where they had characters from films appear to be singing songs (I forget the phrase already. I guess this is a common YouTube game. I believe a better name would be Timewaster). Speaking of songs, it's high time that that category go the way of title writing. There aren't that many (if any) original movie musicals being made any more and very few of the songs end up being integral to the films, instead being relegated to playing over the credits as you leave the theater. This category once had a point, just like when they had a reason to divide cinematography into color and black and white divisions. However, that day has long since passed. Kill it. Also, kill the ridiculous pre-show, which they expanded to 90 minutes this year for some reason. How about cutting that and staring the show earlier. Use the extra time to bring back the honorary awards, which have provided most of the best moments in recent years. The worst news was when they announced that ABC renewed their contract to carry the Oscars through 2020. All the changes they've forced on the Academy have been for the worse. They need to realize: NETWORK TELEVISION IS DEAD. They will never regain the ratings they had when there were limited viewing audiences. They need to stop trying to cater to youthful demographics and viewers who won't watch and to the movie geeks like me who will. They have to accept that the Oscars are niche programming. Honestly, I think the best solution is to have people such as me who actually give a damn about movies and film history produce the show and keep the clueless away. After a night like last night, I think I might have to go to a shelter for abused Oscar spouses. Think your ratings drop now? See what happens if you lose us. The Oscars are about movies, but quality? Reflecting the best No. They are a long ad for an industry, a trade show for its worst habits where sometimes, the deserving accidentally win. Film lovers can love film without taking this annual pummelling from this serially abuser.Tweet
Labels: Anne Hathaway, Awards, Colin Firth, Criticism, Disney, Fincher, Franco, H. Weinstein, Oscars, Pearce, Television
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Wednesday, January 19, 2011
While he's trapped, you'll get motion sickness
By Edward Copeland
Is there a reverse auteur theory? If there is, I fear Danny Boyle may have succumbed to it for his films get less interesting the longer he works. The new example is 127 Hours, which does feature a very good performance by James Franco, but Boyle directs it as if, at worst, he was on a cocaine binge during its filming or, at best, he thought it should be made for people who suffered from severe ADHD.
If you live in the United States (I don't know how much worldwide coverage it received) and happened to cross paths with a TV, you probably recall the amazing story of Aron Ralston, an engineer and part-time adventure seeker who found himself literally caught between a rock and a hard place. (He gave his book about the incident that title.)
While mountain climbing in Utah, he slipped in a crevice, trapping his right arm between an immovable boulder and the mountain. Isolated, with no way to get help (any screams went unanswered and, for some reason, he thought his video camera was more vital as equipment than a cell phone) and dwindling supplies of food and water, Ralston managed to free himself after the amount of time in the title by using a tiny knife to sever his arm from his body.
Truly, Ralston's tale makes for an inspiring study in survival, self-preservation and the will to live at any cost. As a film however, I'm not sure that this would really make that gripping a movie, especially as well known as the story is. What is certain is that Boyle's directorial approach makes it worse and borders on being unwatchable.
Given that this is a story about a man trapped in a relatively small space for a long period of time, you would think a director might want to build suspense, especially since he's compensating for a well-known event, by emphasizing the claustrophobia and desperation of Ralston's situation. Boyle goes in the opposite direction: His camera never sits still, constantly zooming and jumping, tilting to angles more often found on the 1960s Batman than in a grim 21st century story of against-the-odds survival.
He also employs lots of split and tri-split screens for no apparent reason, taking every opportunity he can to show Franco from every point of view he can muster. On top of that, this movie, especially in the opening sequence and again later, may be a triumph of product placement unequaled since Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man.
At some point, it becomes clear that Boyle isn't doing this because it's the best way to serve the story and the film at that moment but because he's just bored silly. When there were early reports of people supposedly fainting at showings of this film, I don't think it was because of the scenes where Franco's Ralston gets around to cutting off his arm, I just think they all had sea sickness minus the ocean.
What in the world has happened to Boyle as a filmmaker? He started out so promisingly with films such as Shallow Grave and Trainspotting. Sure, A Life Less Ordinary was a misfire, but I thought The Beach was underrated and he followed that with the great 28 Days Later.
Then, things definitely started their slide. Millions wasn't without its charms, but it was slight. Admittedly, I never saw Sunshine, but nothing I heard from anyone who did convinced me I was missing anything. Then came the overrated Slumdog Millionaire, with its hyperactive subtitles and mostly downbeat story that would, of course, end with a joyous Bollywoodesque dance number. It was so over-the-top at times and overpraised, naturally it was showered with Oscars.
127 Hours doesn't contain subtitles, but it does contain words at the end to tell you what happened later, but he bounces those all over the screen too. What's worse is that they are in white type and they don't take into account what images they place them on so many words can't be read because they bleed into the background.
Two things that save 127 Hours from not making you want to either turn it off, walk out or ingest large doses of Dramamine are that it lasts less than 90 minutes and, most importantly, Franco's performance. He makes up a lot of the ground lost by Boyle's directing hysteria.
In this short a film, Franco creates a charismatic, rather distinct character almost from the moment he appears, thanks mainly to early scenes with others before he gets trapped. He manages to be good once he's confined as well despite Boyle's herky-jerky direction that keeps taking you away from his face. Since once he's caught, you basically have a one-man show, they add lots of flashbacks and hallucinations with other actors for him to interact with. He also gets to do monologues to the video camera, which I suppose serves as a better companion than Tom Hanks' volleyball did in Cast Away, though that was a better movie despite going on past the point where it should have ended.
Boyle co-wrote the script with Simon Beaufoy, who won an Oscar for writing Slumdog Millionaire. Beaufoy also wrote The Full Monty. Was that a fluke? Boyle also brings back composer A.R. Rahman from Slumdog and his music doesn't add anything either, just making the already nutty direction seem more frenzied.
That James Franco manages to deliver such a fine performance in this mess is nearly as miraculous as Aron Ralston's real-life story of survival.
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Labels: 10s, Danny Boyle, Franco, Hanks, Oscars
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Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Freaks & Geeks shall inherit the mirth
By Edward Copeland
Judd Apatow seems to defy just about everything one might hold true about certain forms of comedy. By and large, I subscribe to Jeffrey's 90-minute rule that comedies pushing their luck if they extend much past that running time, but Apatow provided a glowing exception to that rule with The 40-Year-Old-Virgin, the most I've laughed at a recent movie in ages. Then on top of that, he now seems to specialize in extremely vulgar comedies that, at their heart, hide family friendly messages: staying pure until marriage in the case of Virgin and now staying together for the sake of an unexpected baby in Knocked Up. Unfortunately, while Virgin manages to keep its momentum throughout its long running time, Knocked Up doesn't bear its extra frames as well, coming off as a bit flabby. Despite its need for some judicious trimming, it's still ends up as an entertaining way to spend your time.
One thing proving so special about Apatow's films, especially for fans of his great and short-lived TV series Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared, is his penchant for bringing back his extended family time and again, making each enterprise feel as if you've been invited to the reunion as well. Seth Rogen, part of the great ensembles of both Freaks and Undeclared, gets the lead role of Ben Stone in Knocked Up, a stoner/slacker who believes that "weed cures everything" and lives off the dwindling proceeds of a postal truck accident with dreams of an Internet fortune made from a Web site that tracks nude scenes in movies.
Other Apatow alumni along for this ride include Jason Segel (also of both Freaks and Undeclared), Jay Baruchel (Undeclared), Martin Starr (Freaks), Apatow's real-life wife Leslie Mann and two who have joined his creative clan in his films, Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill. Loudon Wainwright III of Undeclared even pops up briefly and provides part of the score and Freaks alum James Franco makes a good-natured cameo as himself. Knocked Up feels as if you're being welcomed home, but that doesn't give it an automatic pass: It still must work as a movie as well and while most of it does, it doesn't quite hit all its marks.
As most should know by now, the premise involves drunken sex between Ben and the in-normal-circumstances unattainable babe Allison (Katherine Heigl), just promoted to on-air talent at E!, that results in an unexpected pregnancy. (The E! setting also provides a priceless Ryan Seacrest cameo, showing that he's got great humor about himself.) In fact, Allison's extreme denial early on prompts her sister (the great Mann) to ask if she's one of those women who won't realize she's pregnant until she's on the toilet and a baby falls out.
So, with great hesitancy, Allison shares the situation with an understandably shocked Ben. However, he then embraces the idea of a pending spawn, even though he's nowhere near ready for any responsibility. Ben seeks advice from his thrice-married dad (Harold Ramis) who tells him that he's the best thing that ever happened to him, which Ben says only makes him feel sad for him.
The rocky relationship of Allison's sister and her husband (Rudd) gives both Ben and Allison reason to pause. Mann and Rudd both deliver great comic performances laced with pain, especially Mann who plays a character similar to Laura Dern's in Year of the Dog but Mann never sinks to caricature at the expense of humor. Rudd finds marriage to be disappointing, commenting that he wishes he liked anything as much as his kids like bubbles and comparing matrimony to a tense, unfunny episode of Everybody Loves Raymond that lasts a lifetime instead of 22 minutes.
Parts of Knocked Up remain hard to swallow. Allison's decision to try to form a lasting relationship with Ben, even if she's decided to keep the baby, seems sudden and unconvincing. You believe that he'd fall in love with her, but it sounds odd when she says the same thing once she's sober.
Despite misgivings, the film does elicit a lot of hearty laughs and even some touching moments. One favorite speech gets delivered by a doorman at an exclusive nightclub.
In the interest of full disclosure, I did not have an ideal viewing experience. For some reason, an idiot couple thought that an R-rated comedy called Knocked Up, which wears its vulgarity proudly on its trailer, looked like an appropriate film to show their 3-year-old. The kid wouldn't shut up and the parents would take him out of the theater, then bring him back. Finally, I yelled in the dark, "Take the damn kid home already." Thankfully, the kid stayed pretty quiet after that. It always helps to put the fear of God – or at least angry audience members – into people.
It's also ironic, given the movie. Sorry folks: If you can't afford a baby sitter, get ready for a few years without moviegoing. You had a child, don't make the rest of the moviegoing public pay for it.
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Judd Apatow seems to defy just about everything one might hold true about certain forms of comedy. By and large, I subscribe to Jeffrey's 90-minute rule that comedies pushing their luck if they extend much past that running time, but Apatow provided a glowing exception to that rule with The 40-Year-Old-Virgin, the most I've laughed at a recent movie in ages. Then on top of that, he now seems to specialize in extremely vulgar comedies that, at their heart, hide family friendly messages: staying pure until marriage in the case of Virgin and now staying together for the sake of an unexpected baby in Knocked Up. Unfortunately, while Virgin manages to keep its momentum throughout its long running time, Knocked Up doesn't bear its extra frames as well, coming off as a bit flabby. Despite its need for some judicious trimming, it's still ends up as an entertaining way to spend your time.
One thing proving so special about Apatow's films, especially for fans of his great and short-lived TV series Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared, is his penchant for bringing back his extended family time and again, making each enterprise feel as if you've been invited to the reunion as well. Seth Rogen, part of the great ensembles of both Freaks and Undeclared, gets the lead role of Ben Stone in Knocked Up, a stoner/slacker who believes that "weed cures everything" and lives off the dwindling proceeds of a postal truck accident with dreams of an Internet fortune made from a Web site that tracks nude scenes in movies.
Other Apatow alumni along for this ride include Jason Segel (also of both Freaks and Undeclared), Jay Baruchel (Undeclared), Martin Starr (Freaks), Apatow's real-life wife Leslie Mann and two who have joined his creative clan in his films, Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill. Loudon Wainwright III of Undeclared even pops up briefly and provides part of the score and Freaks alum James Franco makes a good-natured cameo as himself. Knocked Up feels as if you're being welcomed home, but that doesn't give it an automatic pass: It still must work as a movie as well and while most of it does, it doesn't quite hit all its marks.
As most should know by now, the premise involves drunken sex between Ben and the in-normal-circumstances unattainable babe Allison (Katherine Heigl), just promoted to on-air talent at E!, that results in an unexpected pregnancy. (The E! setting also provides a priceless Ryan Seacrest cameo, showing that he's got great humor about himself.) In fact, Allison's extreme denial early on prompts her sister (the great Mann) to ask if she's one of those women who won't realize she's pregnant until she's on the toilet and a baby falls out.
So, with great hesitancy, Allison shares the situation with an understandably shocked Ben. However, he then embraces the idea of a pending spawn, even though he's nowhere near ready for any responsibility. Ben seeks advice from his thrice-married dad (Harold Ramis) who tells him that he's the best thing that ever happened to him, which Ben says only makes him feel sad for him.
The rocky relationship of Allison's sister and her husband (Rudd) gives both Ben and Allison reason to pause. Mann and Rudd both deliver great comic performances laced with pain, especially Mann who plays a character similar to Laura Dern's in Year of the Dog but Mann never sinks to caricature at the expense of humor. Rudd finds marriage to be disappointing, commenting that he wishes he liked anything as much as his kids like bubbles and comparing matrimony to a tense, unfunny episode of Everybody Loves Raymond that lasts a lifetime instead of 22 minutes.
Parts of Knocked Up remain hard to swallow. Allison's decision to try to form a lasting relationship with Ben, even if she's decided to keep the baby, seems sudden and unconvincing. You believe that he'd fall in love with her, but it sounds odd when she says the same thing once she's sober.
Despite misgivings, the film does elicit a lot of hearty laughs and even some touching moments. One favorite speech gets delivered by a doorman at an exclusive nightclub.
In the interest of full disclosure, I did not have an ideal viewing experience. For some reason, an idiot couple thought that an R-rated comedy called Knocked Up, which wears its vulgarity proudly on its trailer, looked like an appropriate film to show their 3-year-old. The kid wouldn't shut up and the parents would take him out of the theater, then bring him back. Finally, I yelled in the dark, "Take the damn kid home already." Thankfully, the kid stayed pretty quiet after that. It always helps to put the fear of God – or at least angry audience members – into people.
It's also ironic, given the movie. Sorry folks: If you can't afford a baby sitter, get ready for a few years without moviegoing. You had a child, don't make the rest of the moviegoing public pay for it.
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Labels: 00s, Apatow, Franco, Jonah Hill, L. Dern, Paul Rudd, Ramis, Seth Rogen, Television
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Wednesday, May 02, 2007
What a tangled web they wove
By Edward Copeland
The first Spider-Man didn't do much for me. The visual effects seemed particularly fake and I just didn't get into it. Then along came Spider-Man 2 and I enjoyed the hell out of it. However, the third time is not the charm, namely because so many villains are piled on and the running time gets extended to such an unnatural extent, that the end result left me dissatisfied.
Not that there isn't a lot to like in Spider-Man 3, particularly in the comic (as in comedic) scenes involving J.K. Simmons as newspaper editor Jameson, a brief cameo by longtime Sam Raimi cohort Bruce Campbell and some great sequences involving the "bad" Peter Parker, infected by some type of organism from outer space.
Peter's college professor tells him that the organism seems to accentuate the attributes of the host it attaches itself to, and Parker already was beginning to have ego problems before his infection. He's enjoying being the toast of the town as Spider-Man, so much so that he fails to notice the career problems of his faithful girlfriend Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst). (Aside: I know that the New York portrayed in Spider-Man 3 bears only a cursory resemblance to the real city and I shouldn't expect it to follow the rules but Mary Jane's firing from her Broadway show after a slew of bad opening night reviews took me out of the film's reality. There are contracts to consider and surely the show's producers and director would have known there was a problem before opening night and I've never heard of a performer being replaced because of bad reviews while the show kept marching on.)
Peter's self-absorption eventually threatens his relationship with Mary Jane, but he's got plenty of other things to keep him occupied. Harry (James Franco) still blames him for the death of his Green Goblin father (Willem Dafoe) and is trying to repeat his father's experiments.
Meanwhile, a common criminal seeking to help his ailing daughter (a beefed-up Thomas Haden Church) becomes a dangerous adversary thanks to a strange scientific accident. (As Peter asks after his first encounter with the Sandman, "Where do all these guys come from?")
If that weren't enough, the aforementioned outer space goo turns Spidey into a dark-suited megalomaniac, which further alienates him from a rival photographer Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) who has an imaginary relationship with the model daughter (Bryce Dallas Howard) of a city police captain (James Cromwell). Later, once Peter frees himself of the organism, it unfortunately lands on Eddie, turning him into another archvillain named Venom.
As you can imagine from a brief synopsis this complicated, that's exactly how the film plays as well. It's just too much and with so many subplots and subtext (I forgot to mention that Sandman may be the person who killed Peter's uncle in the first film), the film ultimately proves more exhausting than entertaining. It's a shame, because there is a lot to like.
Tobey Maguire actually does some of his best work when Peter transforms from nice guy geek into the epitome of narcissistic self love. Raimi moves some scenes, particularly the funny ones, along well, but the rest get tiresome, especially some of the action sequences.
It's also worth noting that when you see out-of-control cranes bringing down tall New York buildings and clouds of Sandman dust flowing through the streets, the echoes of 9/11 are inescapable and uncomfortable. The script also has some fine ideas lurking beneath the surface involving bad luck versus bad choices and whether it's ever too late to make a new choice, but they get lost in the noise.
By the end, even though the climax telegraphs its payoff, you can see why they may have thought it necessary to include so many characters and elements, but I still think that Spider-Man 3 could have worked much better if the entire Sandman story had been jettisoned.
In the end, I liked Spider-Man 3 better than the first one, but Spider-Man 2 remains the best installment as far as I'm concerned.
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The first Spider-Man didn't do much for me. The visual effects seemed particularly fake and I just didn't get into it. Then along came Spider-Man 2 and I enjoyed the hell out of it. However, the third time is not the charm, namely because so many villains are piled on and the running time gets extended to such an unnatural extent, that the end result left me dissatisfied.
Not that there isn't a lot to like in Spider-Man 3, particularly in the comic (as in comedic) scenes involving J.K. Simmons as newspaper editor Jameson, a brief cameo by longtime Sam Raimi cohort Bruce Campbell and some great sequences involving the "bad" Peter Parker, infected by some type of organism from outer space.
Peter's college professor tells him that the organism seems to accentuate the attributes of the host it attaches itself to, and Parker already was beginning to have ego problems before his infection. He's enjoying being the toast of the town as Spider-Man, so much so that he fails to notice the career problems of his faithful girlfriend Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst). (Aside: I know that the New York portrayed in Spider-Man 3 bears only a cursory resemblance to the real city and I shouldn't expect it to follow the rules but Mary Jane's firing from her Broadway show after a slew of bad opening night reviews took me out of the film's reality. There are contracts to consider and surely the show's producers and director would have known there was a problem before opening night and I've never heard of a performer being replaced because of bad reviews while the show kept marching on.)
Peter's self-absorption eventually threatens his relationship with Mary Jane, but he's got plenty of other things to keep him occupied. Harry (James Franco) still blames him for the death of his Green Goblin father (Willem Dafoe) and is trying to repeat his father's experiments.
Meanwhile, a common criminal seeking to help his ailing daughter (a beefed-up Thomas Haden Church) becomes a dangerous adversary thanks to a strange scientific accident. (As Peter asks after his first encounter with the Sandman, "Where do all these guys come from?")
If that weren't enough, the aforementioned outer space goo turns Spidey into a dark-suited megalomaniac, which further alienates him from a rival photographer Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) who has an imaginary relationship with the model daughter (Bryce Dallas Howard) of a city police captain (James Cromwell). Later, once Peter frees himself of the organism, it unfortunately lands on Eddie, turning him into another archvillain named Venom.
As you can imagine from a brief synopsis this complicated, that's exactly how the film plays as well. It's just too much and with so many subplots and subtext (I forgot to mention that Sandman may be the person who killed Peter's uncle in the first film), the film ultimately proves more exhausting than entertaining. It's a shame, because there is a lot to like.
Tobey Maguire actually does some of his best work when Peter transforms from nice guy geek into the epitome of narcissistic self love. Raimi moves some scenes, particularly the funny ones, along well, but the rest get tiresome, especially some of the action sequences.
It's also worth noting that when you see out-of-control cranes bringing down tall New York buildings and clouds of Sandman dust flowing through the streets, the echoes of 9/11 are inescapable and uncomfortable. The script also has some fine ideas lurking beneath the surface involving bad luck versus bad choices and whether it's ever too late to make a new choice, but they get lost in the noise.
By the end, even though the climax telegraphs its payoff, you can see why they may have thought it necessary to include so many characters and elements, but I still think that Spider-Man 3 could have worked much better if the entire Sandman story had been jettisoned.
In the end, I liked Spider-Man 3 better than the first one, but Spider-Man 2 remains the best installment as far as I'm concerned.
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Labels: 00s, Bruce Campbell, Dafoe, Dunst, Franco, Raimi, Sequels
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Saturday, January 13, 2007
As if seeing for the first time
By Edward Copeland
One of the great joys of habitual moviegoing comes when a performer you've not seen for a long time suddenly reappears in such an attention-grabbing way that you wonder where he or she has been lately. What's so amazing about The Dead Girl is that the film assembles a cast with nary a weak link and contains surprising turns across the board from supporting performers you've grown accustomed to being excellent.
You know that actresses such as Toni Collette, Mary Steenburgen and Marcia Gay Harden will be up to the task, but you probably aren't prepared for such strong turns from Kerry Washington, Brittany Murphy or Rose Byrne or for invigorating work from actors such as James Franco and Josh Brolin in what should be throwaway roles.
Most of all though, for me at least, I was unprepared to see such strong work from a great actress such as Piper Laurie, who hasn't seen a role this good probably since Twin Peaks went off the air, or, especially, the brilliant performance of a nearly unrecognizable Mary Beth Hurt.
The pleasant surprises of The Dead Girl aren't limited to who is in front of the camera either. Writer-director Karen Moncrieff's first feature, Blue Car, truly underwhelmed me, but The Dead Girl shows strength in every area where her previous work proved weak.
Moncrieff also manages to make what essentially is an anthology succeed in a way that most collections of stories don't. Jean-Luc Godard famously said that the best way to express criticism of a film was to make another movie and in its own way, that is what The Dead Girl does. It connects its five stories in a cohesive way that movies such as last year's Nine Lives or, to a lesser extent since the parallel isn't exact, this year's insipid Babel, don't.
What links the tales in The Dead Girl is the title character (Murphy) and how her life and death affect various women, some who knew her and some who didn't. Its theme of abused women never beats you over the head but instead just lurks ominously in the background as the performers and the story go on, letting the audience pick up on the themes instead.
Moncrieff deserves a lot of credit not only for constructing this script but for assembling this disparate a cast and using them so well, especially Hurt. I keep being drawn back to her. It seems appropriate that I review this film the same day as The Night Listener starring Robin Williams, since my first memory of Hurt was opposite Williams in The World According to Garp. If I didn't know going in that she was in The Dead Girl, I doubt I would have recognized her immediately since her role as the dowdy wife of the manager of storage trailers is so far removed from Helen Holm that you think you're seeing her for the very first time.
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One of the great joys of habitual moviegoing comes when a performer you've not seen for a long time suddenly reappears in such an attention-grabbing way that you wonder where he or she has been lately. What's so amazing about The Dead Girl is that the film assembles a cast with nary a weak link and contains surprising turns across the board from supporting performers you've grown accustomed to being excellent.
You know that actresses such as Toni Collette, Mary Steenburgen and Marcia Gay Harden will be up to the task, but you probably aren't prepared for such strong turns from Kerry Washington, Brittany Murphy or Rose Byrne or for invigorating work from actors such as James Franco and Josh Brolin in what should be throwaway roles.
Most of all though, for me at least, I was unprepared to see such strong work from a great actress such as Piper Laurie, who hasn't seen a role this good probably since Twin Peaks went off the air, or, especially, the brilliant performance of a nearly unrecognizable Mary Beth Hurt.
The pleasant surprises of The Dead Girl aren't limited to who is in front of the camera either. Writer-director Karen Moncrieff's first feature, Blue Car, truly underwhelmed me, but The Dead Girl shows strength in every area where her previous work proved weak.
Moncrieff also manages to make what essentially is an anthology succeed in a way that most collections of stories don't. Jean-Luc Godard famously said that the best way to express criticism of a film was to make another movie and in its own way, that is what The Dead Girl does. It connects its five stories in a cohesive way that movies such as last year's Nine Lives or, to a lesser extent since the parallel isn't exact, this year's insipid Babel, don't.
What links the tales in The Dead Girl is the title character (Murphy) and how her life and death affect various women, some who knew her and some who didn't. Its theme of abused women never beats you over the head but instead just lurks ominously in the background as the performers and the story go on, letting the audience pick up on the themes instead.
Moncrieff deserves a lot of credit not only for constructing this script but for assembling this disparate a cast and using them so well, especially Hurt. I keep being drawn back to her. It seems appropriate that I review this film the same day as The Night Listener starring Robin Williams, since my first memory of Hurt was opposite Williams in The World According to Garp. If I didn't know going in that she was in The Dead Girl, I doubt I would have recognized her immediately since her role as the dowdy wife of the manager of storage trailers is so far removed from Helen Holm that you think you're seeing her for the very first time.
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Labels: 00s, Franco, Godard, Josh Brolin, Piper Laurie, Robin, Toni Collette, Twin Peaks
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