Archive for March, 2008
Paul Scofield, 1922-2008
Paul Scofield is probably best known by American audiences for his portrayal of the high-minded 
counselor Sir Thomas More in the 1966 film A Man for All Seasons. But as a classically trained Shakespearean actor, Scofield made his mark on the stage, particularly in London’s legendary West End productions. Scofield died on Wednesday from leukemia at age 86.
Here are some of his most memorable film roles:
1. The Train (1965). Burt Lancaster plays a Resistance fighter in WWII out to stop Scofield’s German colonel, who’s in charge of transporting looted Parisian treasures by way of the titular train. John Frankenheimer directed this outstanding, four-star thriller, a battle of wills and cunning.
2. A Man for All Seasons (1966). And speaking of wills… As More, Scofield is commanding, winning a Best Actor Oscar for his work. More is conflicted but principled, willing to suffer amazing consequences in order to do what he feels is right. Which, in this case, was to not give his assent to his king’s wish to divorce his wife and marry a younger one. (More’s assent wasn’t needed, legally, but King Henry demanded it anyway.)
3. Henry V (1989). In one of his many forays into Shakespearean celluloid, Scofield played the king of France, another commanding role to which the legend was wonderfully suited. Great casting choice by director/star Kenneth Branaugh; this is a must-see for fans of the playwright. The pinnacle of nouveau Shakespeare films, following in the deep footsteps of Olivier.
4. Hamlet (1990). And speaking of Bill, this version of his most debated play stars Mel Gibson as the confused prince. Scofield shows up in a small – but quite pivotal – role as the ghost of Hamlet’s father, and he lends the movie a lot of gravitas.
5. Quiz Show (1994). As the father of Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes, in a star-making performance), Scofield notched his second Oscar nomination, although he lost to Martin Landau (Ed Wood). Again, a smaller role, but very important, as Charles was wholly influenced by his father’s celebrity as a poet, and he wanted very much to live up to that standard while making his own mark.
Tropic Thunder trailer
Tropic Thunder, due out on August 15, is an action movie about actors who usually appear in action movie who wind up on an island thinking they’re going to make an action movie only to find themselves in Real Danger. They they have to gather their courage and their wits, find their center, and bust heads just to survive.
Starring Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey Jr. (as a white man made up to resemble a black man), the movie looks pretty cool – at least from this far-off vantage point. When we actually get to see it in August, we might think it’s pretty lame, but from here, it looks interesting. An attention grabber. In fact, it not so much grabs your attention as abducts it, throws it into a burlap sack, and tosses it into a swift-moving river. A river that happens to be in this movie.
Plus, it’s got Nick Nolte, and surprisingly, he’s grizzled. Oh, and this is the movie Owen Wilson was going to do before he went a little crazy and tried to kill himself. Supposedly.
Anyway, here’s the trailer for it.
384 – Horton Hears a Who!
Posted by frothy in Horton Hears a Who! on March 18, 2008
Oh, thank goodness, the third time IS the charm. Finally, finally, and finally, Hollywood gives us a movie that actually and perfectly embodies the spirit of Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss. Criminey crickets! Horton Hears a Who! is wholly imaginative fun that feels like it’s channeling the good doctor’s playful exuberance and ingenious creativity with every syllable and splotch of animation.
The biggest difference between this movie and the recent adaptations of Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat and How the Grinch Stole Christmas is that Horton Hears a Who! was created using CGI animation, not live action, not adults in goofy costumery. And that permits directors Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino to, well, animate a Dr. Seuss book. Part of the charm of Seuss’s books was their otherworldly atmosphere, with just a touch of reality thrown in so kids could identify with the characters and underlying themes. And it makes such a wonderful difference! When you throw actors into suits, you take away both the personality of the actor and the appeal of the Seussiverse, if you will. What you’re left with is an overproduced, unpleasant mess that tries desperately to be relevant and interesting and fails miserably at both.
Anyway, back to this movie. Horton (voiced by Jim Carrey) is an elephant in a world sort of like ours, but not really (as evidenced by the myriad odd creatures inhabiting Horton’s jungle). Now, if you’ve read the books you know that Horton’s a bit of what we’d call a free spirit. He has a short attention span, and he’s always so hap-hap-happy. The kids in the jungle (er, animal kids) look up to him, sort of as a big plaything (since Horton’s an adult, supposedly), and he in turn tries to teach them about the jungle and its mysteries and dangers.
Well, one day Horton spots a stray clover floating by on a breeze, and he hears what he believes is a cry for help. Oh, but it’s not the clover, it’s a speck ON the clover. And way down within the heart of that speck, there’s a whole ‘nother world, the land of Whoville. Populated by the Whos, of course. And it seems that when the flower became detached from its root, strange things had been afoot in the land of the Whos, like strange cloud formations and odd weather patterns.
The mayor of Whoville (voiced by Steve Carell) is a bit of a screw up, a patsy, a boob (in the words of the town’s head councilman, voiced by Dan Fogler of Knocked Up); he’s in his position to look nice and smile wide. The Mayor has 96 daughters – and one son! – and a lovely wife, and between spending time with them and planning for the Whocentennial, he’s worrying about the signs of impending doom he keeps seeing.
And then Horton says hello, and those signs become reality. And it’s up to Horton to find a safe place for the speck to sit, so that the Whoniverse (see what I did there?) can survive in peace, as it has for centuries. But there’s a problem – the other denizens of the jungle, led by Kangaroo (voiced by Carol Burnett, who’s apparently alive and well), who believes the speck represents imagination, which she doesn’t want the jungle kidlets to have – because then they’ll be questioning authority, and we can’t have that! (Seuss was quite the subversive.) So Horton races to get the speck to shelter while fending off attacks from monkeys and vultures and whatnot.
Carrey is awesome as the childlike Horton, a kind-hearted, if perhaps a bit naive, pachyderm who truly believes in what he cannot see (i.e., the Whos), because he can be wild and spastic and hilarious. I mean, after all, it is a cartoon; characters should be outlandish, not subtlely shaded. Carrey’s riffing (and ad-libbing, I bet) will remind you of Robin Williams or Eddie Murphy in their signature animated roles – untethered joy and comedy. Steve Carrell is aces as the beleagured mayor who does believe in Horton’s existence, even if no one else does; he has sort of an easygoing flustered personality about him that is the counterbalancing adult to Horton’s whimsy.
The movie’s basically a metaphor for love, frankly. Kangaroo says she does not believe in anything she cannot see or touch, and it’s evident that she lives on the fear of the other animals, not on their love. She doesn’t even appear to love her own son; she thinks of herself more of a caregiver than a mother. Kids should always mind their parents, no matter how dumb their requests and actions are. So Kangaroo does not believe in the Whos, because she cannot see them, just as she does not believe in love. But of course, since this is an animated movie, all does turn out okay in the end, with Lessons Learned.
***
A Mighty Wind blows fair
Posted by frothy in Mighty Wind (2003) on March 17, 2008
In A Mighty Wind, Christopher Guest does for folk music that he’s also done for small-town theater, dog shows, and moviemaking, that is, mock the hell out of the subject while also embracing it wholeheartedly. And that’s both the plus and the minus of this movie; it’s so dead on that the parody aspect is almost overwhelmed by the realism and subtle digs at various subsets of the folk-music universe.
It’s the present day, and longtime folkie impresario Irving Steinbloom has just died. To honor his memory, his son Jonathan (Bob Balaban) asks three of his dad’s old acts to reunite one last time for a bravura, pull-out-all-the-stops performance at the (fictional) Town Hall in New York City. True, one of the acts, the New Main Street Singers, plays mostly at amusement parks beneath roller coasters and another, The Folksmen, has been disbanded for years. And then there’s the third act, the legendary duo Mitch and Mickey, which underwent a precipitous breakup of its own when the performers got a little too close to each other for the other’s comfort.
The New Main Street Singers, led by Terry Bohner (John Michael Higgins), are a neuftet that dresses in a blue-and-white uniform, sort of like a high school marching band mated with bakers. Their squeaky-clean harmonies will remind you of the Osmonds, too; like the real Osmonds, the Singers began as an extended family rooted in love for each other and the Good Book. But as the years progressed and folk music wafted away from the public’s consciousness, the Singers took on a more diverse look. So diverse, in fact, that Terry and his wife Laurie (Jane Lynch) reveal a pretty dark secret – they’re witches, and they believe in a god of color, or something. Wacky stuff.
Then we have The Folksmen – Mark Shubb (Harry Shearer), Jerry Palter (Michael McKean), and Alan Barrows (Guest himself), a down-home, folk-rooted combo that eschews the trappings of the Singers for a more streamlined approach. And at one-third the size of the bulky group, they’re also aerodynamic. And great chemistry abounds; on the way to the venue, Jerry asks Alan if he has a map. “Yes, I have a map, but not in the car.” “So you were planning on studying it later, academically or something?”
Finally, there’s Mitch and Mickey. Back in the late sixties, they were THE face of folk rock, but times have changed. Mickey’s settled down; she’s married to Leonard, who’s in the “bladder management industry.” Poor Mitch, on the other hand, has never recovered from the devastating breakup; he went more than a little crazy. Okay, he had a complete nervous breakdown and was remanded to a sanitarium for a while, but he’s okay now! Sort of. Mitch is shaky and wobbly and looks like he’s been hit in the head too often. He’s not even sure he’s up to performing, but Jonathan talks him into it. Mitch and Mickey, who go on last, are really the keystone of the entire night, as they were Steinbloom’s most popular act. And one song they do, called “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow,” was always especially poignant, back when they were in love with each other. At one point near the end of the song, they pause and smooch. Would they do so again, 35 years later?
What makes this movie work is the unerring chracterizations of Guest’s stock company, particularly Levy and O’Hara, who are so incredibly good in this film that they deserve extra-special mention. Levy, who cowrote with Guest, is mesmerizing and endearing as the fragile Mitch, and O’Hara is absolutely unforgettable. Somewhere, someone has compiled a list of the greatest actresses never to have been nominated for an Academy Award, and it would be a grave injustice if O’Hara were not on that list. For some odd reason, she gets better as she ages; those old days of working on SCTV with Levy seem like centuries ago.
What might not make this movie work is the light shadings that delineate where this is satire and where it is realism. If you’re not a folkie and not up on Guest’s comedy, the humor here might elude you, it’s so subtle. But don’t mistake subtlety with invisibility; some scenes are laugh-out-loud funny, and others are touching, very touching.
***
383 – 30 Days of Night
Posted by frothy in 30 Days of Night on March 17, 2008
30 Days of Night is a standard vampires-attacking-a-remote-town movie with the gimmick of the far-northern Alaskan setting that provides the condition of the title. See, because vampires can’t exist in direct sunlight – bet you didn’t know that – so thirty consecutive days without sunlight would be like heaven to them. But that’s about it as far as originality for this by-the-numbers gorefest, although the thick arched eyebrows of Josh Hartnett provide some measure of entertainment.
Barrow, Alaska is the northernmost point in the United States, and as previously noted in Insomnia, that area of the world is plunged into darkness for an entire month of every year. This is useful for the purposes of the story here, because it provides an deadline for the denouement – the vampires have to be out of there before the sun rises again. So our intrepid hero and his motley gang of scruffy, bundled-up citizens have a full month to deal with their vampire infestation.
Sheriff Eben Oleson (Hartnett) is the small-town Johnny Law whom everyone knows and likes, although he keeps his feelings close inside, as most squinty-eyed, jut-jawed heroes do. On the last day of actual sunlight, he’s busy making sure everyone’s doing okay and is prepared for the coming darkness. Then he runs into a weird man known only as The Stranger (Ben Foster) who obliquely warns everyone that “they” are coming that evening, when night falls. Who are they? Superstrong vampires, that’s who, and don’t think they’ll stop until they consume every last drop of your blood, or turn you into one of them. (The last part didn’t make a lot of sense to me – why create someone who’ll just be competition for food?)
No hero is complete without some love interest, so we get Stella (Melissa George), Eben’s ex-wife. They’re attempting a separation, but naturally Stella – through hopelessly contrived events – is unable to depart the town before the last plane leaves. (How come no flights can arrive or depart the airport when it’s dark out? The town has electricity. Maybe they can, but the plot wouldn’t permit it.) So she and Eben are stuck together, arguing over who gets to save the town. Seriously. On more than one occasion, Stella says, “I’m coming with you!” – no way she’s gonna let him do it alone! – and most of the time Eben overrules her, but not always, because he’s a Thoughtful Hero as well.
And to underscore Eben’s emotional ties to the community, we’re also introduced to his kid brother Jake, who looks to be young enough to be Eben’s son. True to the genre, Jake desperately seeks the approval of his successful (to a point) older brother, and he tries to save the town as well. But no, he’s not old enough, and Eben is responsible for him, and darned if some kid’s gonna be the hero instead of him! So there’s that.
The movie leans rather heavily on its setting to move the plot along; the special effects are rather ho-hum, and the acting is weak. And it’s not that Hartnett can’t act – he’s actually developing into quite the fine thesp – but here he’s just sort of drifting along like a windblown snowpile. George is cute and perky and occasionally serious, but she too isn’t quite up to the task. And that’s perfectly okay if your leading man is charismatic or if the special effects wow the audience so much that they don’t notice the wooden performances, but here that’s not the case. You wind up turning your eyes to the gore that you’d expect to see in a vampire movie, but the gore isn’t even especially interesting or vicious. Some scenes are disturbing, though; turns out the only way to kill a vampire is by beheading it, as guns apparently have little effect on them. Which doesn’t stop at least one suicidal maniac from shotgunning several bloodsuckers in order to give his fellow humans some cover.
Bottom line: Good, interesting concept, dreary execution. The movie’s based on a series of graphic novels, and my assumption is that the novels themselves had more character and pizzazz on the page than this movie does on the screen.
**
Hot womenfolk from 80s movies
In this, the month of our bracketizing and whatnot, The Ghosts of Wayne Fontes has a bracket challenge devoted solely to the big-haired women of our favorite (and not-so-favorite) films of the 80s.
Note: This is not exactly a PC blog, so consider yourself forewarned. I mean, it’s not as if the women here are going to be judged on their intelligence or homemaking ability, you see.
Best part? You get to vote yourself. I myself am pulling for Bill’s mom to score an upset over Phoebe Cates!
The best space movies of alla time
According to SPACE.com, of course.
Personally, I wouldn’t put stock in this, since it includes such luminous films as Pluto Nash and Alien 3. Sheesh and crackers!
Harry Potter 7 will be two movies
Posted by frothy in News/Rumors on March 13, 2008
Oh, this is really great news. The final Harry Potter book will be split into two movies.
Now, some may see this as a cynical way to get more money from fans of the ending franchise, but the books have always been so long that key scenes have often needed to be chopped out just to make the movie under three hours long, because no one wants to sit through five hours of Harry Potter in a row. As the books have progressed, too, they’ve gotten longer and more complicated; time was, you could slice out a plot thread here or there and it wouldn’t matter too much to the overarching theme of the movie, but with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows the seventh and final book, all those threads are intricately intertwined with one another, so removing one screws up the rest.
So. Two seventh-book movies, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II will hit theaters in 2010 and 2011, respectively, about six months apart. That’s awesome news for everyone. The studios will get twice as much (or more!) for one book, and they’ll keep fans interested a bit longer than they would have with one movie. Fans will be happy, because the entirety of the seventh book will be on screen, which would be a nice coda to the series. I mean, if you leave something out in the final movie, you might not get the closure you want. Throw it all in there, and you can rest easy; you won’t have that unsatisfied feeling.
Affliction (1997)
Posted by frothy in Affliction (1997) on March 12, 2008
Affliction is a relentlessly dreary study in hopelessness. It’s a bit grueling to watch; there are no chuckles to be had or heart-warming moments of honesty. It’s bleak, unyielding, and bitter, sort of like the winters in the New Hampshire in which it’s set. But even though the tone of the movie is downbeat and despairing, the acting is so excellent that the movie itself is lifted from the doldrums of a cruel nor’easter.
Wade Whitehouse (Nick Nolte) is a crappy small-town sheriff in a podunk New England town. He also plows the ever-snow-covered roads and acts as a crossing guard, so you know he’s not exactly loved and respected by his fellow citizens. Oh, and he’s an alcoholic and smokes weed periodically with his pal Jack (Jim True), who’s about fifteen years his junior. And did I mention he has only partial custody of his young daughter Jill, who regards her dad as a bit of a screw up anyway?
The source of Wade’s current standing in life, aside from his own bad choices and grouchy attitude, is his now-elderly dad Glen (James Coburn), who’s also a drunkard, and not the funny, cuddly kind, either. Glen is a mean, sexist, physically abusive drunk bastard, and that’s being kind. You know how sometimes old drunks in movies are cantankerous, crotchety old farts who come off as sort of endearing in their crustiness? Glen is the polar opposite of them on a scale of drunk disposition. He’s an evil, creepy jerk who used to knock around not only Wade’s mom but also him and his brother Rolfe (Willem Dafoe). You can see why Wade is the way he is, because anyone with a childhood as violent and hateful as Wade’s was isn’t going to turn out to be a gregarious adult.
So Wade has issues. Issues with his daughter. Issues with his boss(es). Issues with his old man. Issues with his girlfriend Margie (Sissy Spacek). Issues with being looked down upon by everyone in town. Then a shooting occurs, a hunting accident; brother Rolfe puts the idea in Wade’s head that perhaps it wasn’t an accident, and for a very brief moment, Wade is Wade the Cop, trying to solve a crime. But just as quickly as it arrives, that moment dissipates into the haze surrounding him – and, even more so, his dad.
But this is not a movie you’d watch for the mystery aspect, as it’s more of a character study than anything else. More specifically, it’s a study on how one man slowly decends into utter madness, beaten down by his inability to rise above his circumstances, struggling to free himself from the surly bonds of his parentage, but ultimately failing to accomplish anything, even daily tasks, without raging at intangible machines.
Nolte, Oscar nominated here, is outstanding. See, this is the Nick Nolte we all like, the guy who lets it all hang out every time he goes before the camera. His Wade is in many ways a shell of a man, nearly destroyed by the abuse (abuse the memory of which is sometimes blocked, now) suffered at the hands of his tyrranical father, desperately trying to cling to something he can call progress but not realizing he’ll never smell anything other than the pungency of failure. Wade thinks that if he gains full custody of his daughter, all will be well; Wade thinks that if he can solve the shooting incident, all will be well; but both of these are foggy dreams.
Coburn (who won Best Supporting Actor) and Spacek are both incredible. Glen isn’t a sympathetic character, of course; he’s just as dangerous when he’s quiet as when he’s screaming or hitting, and Coburn is terrifying but not cartoonish in his portrayal. Spacek is endearing and principled; her Margie is a bit stronger than Wade’s mother ever had been, but she’s still vulnerable – and clearly not entirely sure about where her relationship is going.
As I said, the movie’s very depressing and offers little hope. Still, it’s a fine movie. There is only one scene that does not ring completely true; it’s late in the movie, and it’s a denouement of sorts. That, coupled with the miserable tone, leave this as just a damn good movie, rather than a great one, despite a wonderful, evocative script by Paul Schrader, who also directed.
***
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