Miscellaneous Debris, April 2010 Edition

Commentary and analysis of interesting stuff that didn’t get a full post.  

April’s over, and the summer movie season is chomping at the box office bit. There’s not much going on in movies right now, but like most Aprils that dearth of films – leftovers, misfires and films little-loved by their studios – pretty much represent the lull before the storm. (An exception being The Losers, a film we liked more than we thought we would.) The sequel to Iron Man, which most fans of the original have been looking forward to since its closing credits, opens next weekend; meanwhile the heavily-hyped remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street finally opens tomorrow. In the coming weeks – May alone – we’ll see the premieres of Robin Hood, Sex and The City 2, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and Shrek Forever After. June promises a similar metric ton of movies with budgets in the eight- and nine-digit range.  

In the meantime, here’s our favorite news items and topics we thought were worthy of discussion and/or coverage, even if we never got around to blogging about them all on their own. They’re in no particular order of importance.  

1. A couple of years or so ago we called Ang Lee’s Ride With the Devil to task for its choppy narrative structure and uneven performances. A just-released Criterion Edition premieres the director’s cut of Lee’s (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Ice Storm) Civil War saga, along with a new screen transfer and some pretty straightforward extra features. Though often well-staged and intelligent, the barely released 1999 theatrical version promised more than it ultimately delivered, especially in the way of performance: many of the supporting characters, including roles played by Skeet Ulrich and the suburb Jeffrey Wright, got short shrift despite hints of richer work left on the cutting room floor. Hopefully the ten restored minutes smooth out these problems, letting the film it could have been emerge. It’s available in both DVD and Blu-Ray formats, in keeping with Criterion’s aggressive new high-def release strategy.  

Wow: Blunt

2. There’s no poster image or teaser trailer available yet, but we’re still intrigued as all Hell by the upcoming The Adjustment Bureau, starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt as potential lovers kept apart by mysterious and possibly sinister forces. Damon plays a firebrand congressman fascinated by a beautiful ballerina (Blunt), despite strange circumstances that continuously work to keep them separated. Writer-director George Nolfi (The Bourne Ultimatum) loosely based the script on the Philip K. Dick short story “The Adjustment Team,” in which reality is carefully managed by unseen but powerful orchestrators. The film also stars Anthony Mackie, John Slattery, Terrence Stamp, Daniel Dae Kim and Shohreh Aghdashloo. It’s currently slated for a late September release.  

The film probably won't contain this many characters. (Damn.)

3. In other upcoming movie news, though some sites – including imdb.com – are reporting it as a done deal, Joss Whedon is still not confirmed to direct the upcoming The Avengers. While on press junkets for his own Iron Man 2, executive producer Jon Favreau has told audiences there’s no deal “in stone” for Whedon to handle Marvel’s team of superheroes, which include Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, and The Hulk.  

To throw in our two cents, without ambiguity: Whedon is the wrong choice for The Avengers. Its very concept suggests a scale and scope that do not play to the writer-director’s strengths, and to try and shoehorn the two together wouldn’t benefit either. To be less charitable, we don’t think Whedon’s recent efforts are on a par with his earlier work: 2005′s Serenity was a muddled and solipsistic bit of nastiness, while Dollhouse was a mixed success at best. We’d much rather see him attempt a Marvel franchise closer to his own style, such as Elektra (we’re not forgetting about the Jennifer Garner trainwreck) or possibly Firestar.  

4. Just about matching the retro magnificence of last year’s Watchmen viral videos, the following spot for the Lots-O’-Huggin Bear from Toy Story 3 perfectly replicates children’s commercials from the decade that was pretty much a golden age of toys. Just watching it once got us thinking of similar products from the era, including Teddy Ruxpin and the weird, weird My Buddy doll for boys. The video below perfectly captures the fashions and 10K graphics of the era, while the clogged tapehead static at the bottom of the image is a stroke of authentic genius:  

 

Let's do the time warp again.

5. The May sweeps period begin today, so if you’re hoping your own favorite low-rated television program gets renewed for another season this is the time to watch or to write its network. For weeks now we’ve been following the slow ratings erosion of ABC’s once and presumed hits Flash Forward and V on great sites like tvbythenumbers.com as a kind of loose experiment, tracking the series’ episode quality from week to week and comparing it against the posted ratings the next day. 

Of the two shows, though both are borderline we give V the better chance of renewal. The central cast is smaller (and presumably cheaper), the storylines pick up steam with each passing week, and we suspect its long-range dramatic possibilities are greater (Flash Forward is already flailing somewhat in this regard; the conspiracy behind the time-jumping blackouts remain frustratingly vague in motivation.) On the other hand Flash Forward is a solid hit overseas, especially in Europe, and it’s apparently something of a bargain to produce, as well. The network will announce its fall season May 18. 

6. Sometimes ignoring the ratings is a good thing. Despite its under-performance this spring, TNT has renewed Southland for a third season to begin airing in 2011. The “second” season aired by the network consisted of episodes that original network NBC had ordered but not broadcast, and featured a streamlined structure that focused on self-contained stories with greater emphasis on individual characters. TNT would be wise to allow show creator Ann Biderman and staff to continue that momentum. Southland has the potential to become as  good as show as ER or Biderman’s previous NYPD Blue, but like countless other ensemble cast shows that rose to greatness it needs time and breathing room to develop. 

7. Finally, Serena Bramble’s “valentine” to film noir has been all over the online world for a while now, but we’re so amazed by it we want to include it on our site as a way of saying thank you. Presenting some of the genre’s finest work meticulously and often brilliantly set to Massive Attack’s aural bombing raid “Angel,” the montage is a six-miuntes and change crash course in what makes noir so haunting, and why its fans hold it in such romantic regard. If you’re a noir fan already, the video can act like a brochure to explain its smoky charms to the uninitiated. 

 

We’ll be back next week. Thanks for reading. 

- Michael Kabel

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Review: The Losers

Comics-based action movie is often a win, sometimes a draw. 

The Losers is a popcorn movie for people who enjoy their movie popcorn with beer and jello shots. Gleefully colorful and painstakingly broad in its characters and story, it never wants to do anything but entertain on a level of “dude, look at that.” It’s a summer movie with no apologies about itself and no delusions of grandeur or pathos, free of excess angst and introspection. If strictly seen as a summer indulgence, it’s good fun if you’re willing to go along for its dopey ride, though the constant derivations and sometimes-muddled plot might sometimes distract you if you think about them. Which isn’t necessary , anyway. 

The Losers themselves are a company of special forces operatives sent to reconnaissance a terrorist training camp in the Bolivian jungle. When they spot a group of child hostages led into the camp minutes before an air strike, the group intercedes despite the warnings of an unknown voice on their radio. They succeed in getting the kids out, even foregoing an airlift in their extraction helicopter, only to see the children shot down immediately after takeoff. Realizing the missile was meant to kill them, the soldiers stay in country, taking menial jobs and somewhat wallowing in defeat until a mysterious woman (Zoe Saldana) offers them passage back to America and a chance at revenge. 

gettin' crazy with the cheese whiz: the Losers

The revenge is against Max (Jason Patric), the voice on the radio and the sociopathic manipulator of several U.S. intelligence agencies. Max and his henchmen Wade (Holt McCallany) are developing “next generation” weapons to push the U.S. into another war (two isn’t enough, apparently), all for the sake of restoring the country to Max’s vision of greatness. The two villains criss-cross the world, bullying a group of arab scientists into building a sonic-based weapon that, for lack of a better explanation, causes whole islands to break apart and disappear beneath the ocean. “For the 21st Century ec0-terrorist,” Max explains. Patric and McCallany – whom you’ll likely recognize from any cop show of the last decade – have some of the film’s best dialogue, all snarled fangs and acid-etched wisecracks. Given any more screen time and they’d steal the show. 

Upon returning to the states the Losers stage a series of thefts and hijackings, the better to get closer to Max’s operation. In particular, the set piece involving the helicopter theft of an armored car is particularly thrilling, unfolding with Ocean’s Eleven-like precision that shows the Loser’s tactical abilities. It’s the highlight of the film, each step of the multi-angled scenario playing out with the right speed, tension, and humor. Less compelling is the protracted final sequence in Los Angeles harbor, where plot detail jockey for camera time with none really reaching their potential payoff. 

Under the direction of Sylvain White (Stomp The Yard), the film works best when it doesn’t have to function as a story as much as look good and go bang as loud as possible. The cast is game, especially Chris Evans as a nerdish computer expert and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the grizzled, embittered group leader who’s become “lost” without the military to give him meaning. The script, by Peter Berg and James Vanderbilt and based on writer Andy Diggle’s Vertigo comics series, mentions character traits and personalities but never dwells on them. It’s as if the film knows that it’s derivative, and counts on you to understand as much, providing only thumbnails that point you to the character types you already know. It’s an efficient shorthand, albeit a kind of cheap way to build character. 

Regarding all that style, White goes to the action movie style store quite a lot, but it’s usually hard to fault his taste. He borrows or pays homage – and sometimes steals – images and beats from early John Woo, Robert Rodriguez, John McTiernan, Joe Carnahan, and even Peter Berg. The total, unfortunately, isn’t more than the sum of its parts so much as a kind of collage of styles. To his credit, White usually borrows the right style or image for the story beat or action sequence at hand. He’s not an original voice, but he’s shrewd enough to know what works and to take advantage of it. For their part, the production team was smart to incorporate comic series’ artist Jock’s dynamic, minimalist style into the credits and other graphics. They have enough energy to carry a film all by themselves. 

Luckily for the audience, they don’t have to, even if the final result doesn’t quite become the movie you sometimes get the idea it could be. Besides the aforementioned Ocean’s Eleven, jaded movie fans will  have snarky fun identifying the derivations – a Die Hard nod here, a Firefly swipe there – while taking in Idris Elba’s menacing cool and Saldana’s lithesome body. The only serious problems come towards the end, with two denouements that manage thanks to some flat comedy and broad sentimentality to go opposite the rest of the film’s whole purpose. For the best results, leave as soon as the first ending credits start to roll. Up until then you’ll have a good time. 

- Michael Kabel

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

 

Promising Starts: Great Film and TV Openings

Our favorite opening titles and sequences, in commentary and video

The opening to a film is like finally getting to meet someone you’ve only heard about, someone you know only through hearsay or reputation. You get the suspense of your own first impression and a hint of something to follow, even if you’re not sure what that something means or what it will become. If you’re seeing a film for the first time, one you’ve waited with anticipation – or dread – there’s also sometimes a sense of getting to the top of a roller coaster, the adrenaline rush of getting close to the exhilaration of what’s about to happen.

The best films recognize that their openings, like the openings to great novels, set the tone and lay the groundwork for the stories that follow. Some seek to dazzle us with style and attitude; others beat down our expectations or resistance, compelling us into their worlds. The following films represent some of our favorite movie and television openings, both title sequences and otherwise. Each one achieves something different, but each one puts forward a central idea of its film.

1. Seven Days In May (1964) – John Frankenheimer’s Cold War thriller centered around a rogue Joint Chief of Staff (Burt Lancaster) attempting a military coup of the federal government and the pacifist U.S. President (Fredric March) and breakaway Pentagon official (Kirk Douglas) attempting to stop him. Legendary title sequence designer Saul Bass puts the very U.S. Constitution under siege by the interconnected days, the hands of a clock becoming lightning bolts on the nation’s seal, and the White House shut off by nuclear missiles. It’s the film’s core struggle encased in a symbolic smart bomb, made more effective by Jerry Goldsmith’s martial score:

2. Crime Story (1986) – Michael Mann executive produced this NBC series starring Denis Farina (Law & Order) and Stephen Lang (Avatar) as 1960′s lawmen in perpetual struggle against a rising crimelord (Anthony Denison.) Halfway through the first season the show shifted locales from Chicago to Las Vegas, and the second season opening credits celebrated both the show’s edgy violence and Vegas’ neon-noir allure, all set to a souped-up version of Del Shannon’s classic “Runaway.” The rooftop fistfight image always bowls us over.

3. Taxi Driver (1976) – The beginning to Martin Scorcese’s dissection of mid-1970s alienation and violence drops the audience straight down into anti-protagonist Travis Bickle’s (Robert DeNiro) lonely world, a world of rainy gutters, dirty smoke, and fleeting images of humanity. The city around him shifts to streaking, muddled primary colors and back as the soulful interlude in Bernard Hermann’s otherwise menacing score almost mocks Bickle’s loneliness. Even the credits themselves are fleeting, with the cast’s names rising and falling into the steam clouds swallowing the cab.

4. Bullitt (1968) – the legendary, game-rewriting car chase sequence has overshadowed much of the rest of this sleek thriller by director Peter Yates. Yet the enthralling opening heist, highlighted by Pablo Ferro’s title design, seems to move in a half-dozen directions at once, thanks in part to Lalo Schifrin’s swinging score. For a film about shifting morality and individual sel-reliance, the sequence both cements the viewer’s own perspective while at the same time preparing them for the swirl of events and motivations to come. And – and! – it just looks so damn cool, besides.

5. Repo Man (1984) – Alex Cox’s snarly saga about a Los Angeles teen (Emilio Estevez) who falls into possession of a 1964 Chevy Malibu with extraterrestrial corpses in its trunk is quintessential punk rock cinema from a time before “punk” was merely a marketing brand. The opening credits, with typically belligerent music from Iggy Pop, lights up a series of road maps in radioactive greens, taking the viewer on the road to nuclear Hell.

The credits use (for their time) state of the art wipe edits and pixellated effects to show movement across the Southwestern United States, giving the largely L.A.-centered film a road movie sense of urgency. Still, they seem proudly low-budget and deliberately cool, which is exactly the mood the film wants to strike.

6. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) – An affectionate but undaunted homage and satire of film noir tropes (the script wears its Raymond Chandler influences on its sleeve), Shane Black’s dark comedy thriller was adored mostly by critics who got the knowing references but yet failed to draw much attention or box office among the public. Still, it was the start of Robert Downey, Jr.’s comeback, while also featuring an unfairly overlooked turn by Val Kilmer as a gay private investigator and a winning performance by Michelle Monaghan as an actress shifting between femme fatale and girl next door at whim.

Title designer Danny Yount based the breezy, colorful opening sequence on Saul Bass’ 1960′s work, matching the images to the music and keeping the tone playful and smart. In some ways it’s much lighter in tone than the film that follows, but it’s nevertheless perfectly fun to watch for pure enjoyment all on its own.

7. Trainspotting (1996) – A film that captured counter-cultural disgust with the mainstream in the 1990s much like Repo Man did for the 80s, Danny Boyle’s ensemble story of working class Edinburgh heroin addicts and assorted desperate souls (based on Irvine Welsh’s novel) briefly made the mantra “Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career.” a sardonic catchphrase for anti-commercialism. The film also launched the careers of several of its stars, including Ewan McGregor, Kelly MacDonald, Kevin McKidd, Johnny Lee Miller, and Robert Carlyle.

The short, breathless opening sequence explains the characters’ whole lives, guided by McGregor’s flawless narration (which, by the way, is NSFW for several reasons.)

Some films that would surely have made this list, had their credits been available for embedding, include: We Own The Night, Fight Club, Fahrenheit 451, Where the Sidewalk Ends, and Sherlock Holmes. If this list were longer, it would also include  Spartacus, The Conversation, Cutter’s Way, To Live and Die In L.A., and The Man With The Golden Arm.

- Michael Kabel

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

DVD and Blu-Ray Releases April 13 2010

Three different kinds of classics, including possibly “the greatest movie of all time”

How the library of Blu-Ray titles continues to chug along, every now and then adding films of substance or historical interest among the piles of middling fare or outright crap already on shelves. This week’s releases prove the elasticity of the term “classic,” including a horror film from the 80s, a big-budget spectacle from a director and actor at the top of their games in the 90s, and – but certainly not least – the third release of the likely popular favorite for Greatest Movie of All Time.

Listed below are the features and extra features of the big three releases this week, along with a couple of other DVD offerings that caught our eye.

A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) - If you didn’t see this first installment of the long-running franchise in the 80s, you probably saw one of its legion of inferior sequels, none of which neared the innovation of this spirited original. (Maybe the upcoming remake will recapture its wicked appeal.) Wes Craven’s (Scream) tale of  Freddy Kreuger, the ghostly killer who preys on teenagers in their dreams, is stay-up-all-night creepy but also gleefully innovative, too, with plenty of trickery and ghoulish fun. The low budget production gets a hefty Blu-Ray uprgrade, with the usual technical improvements and behind the scenes featurettes but also alternate takes, three alternate endings, and commentary tracks from Craven, stars Robert Englund and Heather Langenkamp, and several others. Watch for Johnny Depp in his debut role, playing the boyfriend to Langenkamp’s straight arrow honor student.

Apollo 13 Fifteenth Anniversary Edition (1995) – For better or worse, it’s somewhat difficult to think of mainstream American cinema of the 1990′s and not think of Tom Hanks. Though his best and most well-remembered work was created through collaborations with other directors – most notably Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump, Cast Away) and Jonathan Demme (Philadelphia), his teaming with perennial golden boy Ron Howard might offer the purest iteration of his Above Average Everyman screen persona. Playing the true-life commander of a disastrous 1970 NASA lunar mission, he’s at his all-American best, even while the plot goes through some motions that feel routine to disaster-flight suspensers. Hanks gets workmanlike assists by a murderer’s row of period character actors, including Ed Harris, Gary Sinise, Bill Paxton and Kevin Bacon, but it’s unmistakably a Tom Hanks movie all the way. The disc’s extra features includes behind the scenes featurettes and a Dateline special about the events that inspired the film.

Gone With the Wind (The Scarlett Edition) (1939) – Still the highest-grossing film of all time (when adjusting for inflation), producer David O. Selznick’s mammoth epic towers over American film, both for the size and scope of its production but also for the lushness of its production values, which honestly have to be seen to be believed. The film itself, unfortunately, is problematic, with a second half that succumbs to its soap opera elements while never achieving the historical or dramatic momentum of the first. In case you’ve just arrived from Mars: the film is the hyper-emotional saga of Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh), a Georgia debutante whose way of life is destroyed by the Civil War and later by her desire for the rogue (Clark Gable) she can’t truly allow herself to love. Casablanca’s Bogart and Bergman notwithstanding, Leigh and Gable are the screen couple against which all else are measured, and will likely remain so as long as Warner Brothers keeps releasing the film on home video.

This three-disc, third Blu-Ray release contains all the many extra features of last year’s 70th Anniversary Edition, minus the bonus soundtrack CD or collector’s memorabilia.

Also seeing release this week on DVD:

Tenure (2009) - Luke Wilson, on one of his last stops before sinking into those embarrassing cel phone ads, plays a college writing professor competing for the almost impregnable job security of the film’s title in this under-the-radar indie comedy. Gretchen Mol plays his Yale-educated rival, the ubiquitous David Koechner his wacky friend, while the cast also includes Sasha Alexander, Michael Cudlitz, and Rosemary Dewitt in various roles. We know dozens of people who can relate to the film’s subject matter, and Wilson and Mol both have their underrated screen charms, so we’re looking forward to checking it out.

Defendor (2009) - Likely an adult alternative to the upcoming – and far more cynically created and marketed – Kick Ass, this indie stars Woody Harrelson as a slow-witted but idealistic man who dons something resembling a superhero costume to fight urban crime and defeat a local drug kingpin named Captain Industry and a dirty cop (Elias Koteas.) Kat Dennings plays the teen prostitute who, a la Taxi Driver, gets pulled into his bumbling quest, while Sandra Oh is his court-appointed therapist. Though we’re glad to see Harrelson continuing to build his comeback, the film reportedly travels much of the same “what makes a hero” ground that even the major comic book publishers have pretty well exhausted already, right down to the parental issues and unfocused rage.

We’ll be back later this week. Thanks for reading.

- Michael Kabel

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Missing In The Dark

Five film noir classics that need and deserve a DVD release.

For as many great film noirs have received an American DVD release over the last decade – a list that easily runs dozens of titles long – some of the better or more curious examples of the form have yet to see publication. Most of these elusive titles are not famous, and in fact many of them possibly remain obscure even among film noir aficionados. Yet, despite and nevertheless, they’re both eminently entertaining in their own right and dependable – if not superlative – representatives of the genre.

We consider the following five films to be fascinating noir showpieces that have become eclipsed, somewhat, by the fame of their better-known (and, admittedly, better-made) contemporaries. They’re generally less well-known than such genre watersheds such as Double Indemnity and The Maltese Falcon, nor as critically embraced as, say, Night and The City or Pickup On South Street. But they are fascinating works and successful realizations of noir’s haunting potential and ambience all the same, well worth viewing as they make fleeting appearances on the various cable networks. Sooner or later, hopefully, they’ll take their DVD bow.

1. He Ran All The Way (1951) – After accidentally killing a policeman, desperate small time crook Nick Robey (John Garfield) uses the family apartment of lonely spinster Peggy Dobbs (Shelley Winters) to hide out while the ensuing citywide dragnet cools down. Peggy’s father (Wallace Ford) is leery from the first, but Robey’s charisma and intimidation combine to keep him tenuously, marginally safe, thanks in no small part to the dark fascination he has for Peggy.

Terrified and defiant at the same time, Robey is a loser who’s made a shambles of his life, smart enough to realize it but lacking the moral courage to do anything about it – the prototypical noir anti-hero and fertile ground for Garfield’s electric screen presence.

Providing an eerie poignancy to Robey’s desperation, the role turned out to be Garfield’s last. He suffered a fatal heart attack less than a year later.

2. Cry of the City (1948) – An almost archetypal urban gloom fills Robert Siodmak’s downbeat, melancholy thriller. Smooth criminal Martin Rome (Conte) killed a police officer during a getaway but was wounded himself; escaping custody and attempting to secure a flight for himself and his girlfriend (Deborah Paget), he’s pursued by Lt. Candella (Mature), a childhood acquaintance from the same Italian ghetto. Candella works to find Rome while, in scenes contrasting the city’s menace, attends to Rome’s family with an almost tender deference.

At the time of its release the film won praise for its bleak, uncompromising depiction of urban poverty and the wide array of disreputable personalities living in the city’s edges. Though less revered than Siodmak’s other noir entries (The Killers, Criss Cross), its pervading sense of desperation and, as author Colin McArthur points out, the “almost metaphysical hatred” with which Candella pursues Rome make the film completely riveting viewing.

Conte would team with Jules Dassin for the masterful Thieves Highway as his next release, while this film won Mature the critical praise that had eluded him for his previous turn in Kiss of Death.

3. Union Station (1950) – When a secretary (Nancy Olson) believes two fellow passengers aboard a California commuter train are involved in criminal activity, she enlists the help of Los Angeles’ Union Station police lieutenant (William Holden) to locate them. The men have kidnapped the blind daughter of the secretary’s wealthy boss, and with help from a wily city detective (Barry Fitzgerald) the police race to locate the missing girl, using whatever means necessary to secure her safety and punish the kidnappers.

Director Rudolph Mate (D.O.A.) uses the spacious, labyrinthine corridors and atria of the famous train depot to underscore a sense of frenzied movement and steely momentum. The police, far from the guileless upholders of law and order typical of 50s police fare, approach their work with the same ruthless tenacity as the criminals. Critics have suggested the film played an influence on later, more cynical noir artists, including perhaps most notably James Ellroy. It’s not hard to see why, especially in the similarities that Fitzgerald’s outwardly kindly, pragmatically ruthless Inspector Donnelly share with Ellroy’s Captain Dudley Smith.

4. The Blue Dahlia (1946) – Exemplifying noir’s recurrent theme of post-war disillusion with American society and the veterans who were left to fend for themselves, Raymond Chandler’s original screenplay depicts a returning bomber pilot (Alan Ladd) attempting to solver the murder of his philandering wife (Doris Dowling.) Teaming with her boyfriend’s estranged wife (Veronica Lake) and his two crew mates (William Bendix and Hugh Beaumont), he tries to track down the gangster that may be responsible.

Chandler’s trademark blend of weary romanticism and brittle cynicism translate well to the big screen, though George Marshall’s (Destry Rides Again) direction is straightforward almost to a fault. Ladd is perhaps a bit too laconic to really inhabit the complexities of his character, while Lake is gorgeous and fetching as always. The truly weighty performance, however, belongs to character heavyweight Bendix. He gives his brain-damaged attack dog of a veteran equal parts sorrow, rage, and confusion.

Of all the films on this list, we understand this film’s absence from DVD shelves the least. It’s received at least one release overseas, and the far less-satisfying Ladd-Lake collaboration This Gun For Hire has been available in the United States for years.

5. The Naked Alibi (1954) – A B-movie in probably every sense of the term, this lean and gritty suspenser casts Gene Barry as Al Willis, an ostensibly upright (if hard-drinking) citizen hiding a dangerous secret. After the cops who roughed him up are killed, he’s perused to a seamy border town by the police chief (Sterling Hayden) who holds him responsible. Once free of his familiar setting, Willis’ psychotically violent true personality emerges, and he’s reunited with his torch singer girlfriend Marianne, played with almost preternatural sexiness by noir siren Gloria Grahame. The climactic rooftop pursuit is edge of the seat cool and intense at the same time, even if for some its plot details too closely resemble those of fellow Grahame showcase The Big Heat.

For the film’s nightclub performance pieces, director Jerry Hopper (The Atomic City) wisely allows the notoriously self-conscious Grahame to lip synch, evading the same pitfall that so harshly damaged her career after Oklahoma!, released the following year.

If you know of any online petitions to get these or other films published, pass it along and we’ll be sure and post them here on the blog. In the meantime, we’ll be back next week. Thanks for reading.

- Michael Kabel

Join our new Facebook page.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

We Have A New Address

Our third year begins with a new forwarding url and a new layout.

Strange to think, but SBR is two years old now. Not necessarily on purpose, but we’re starting the new year with a new(-ish) layout and a new forwarding url. We’re pretty sure the new address is easier to remember than the old one, and easier to type besides. As the old-style recorded phone messages used to say, please make a note of it. The new url is:

www.bluemoviereviews.com.

As for the new layout, to be honest we think it looks more polished and professional than the previous one, easier to read and with better emphasis on the graphics. Of course, and always, we welcome your feedback. For our part we want to say we think Wordpress is pretty cool in providing a constantly growing selection of templates from which to choose.

The summer movie season is just around the corner, with the blockbusters already arriving in theatres now. We’ll be reviewing those as much as we can.

Thanks for reading. Now, please enjoy our review of the new Clash of the Titans remake, located just below…

Review: Clash of the Titans

Remake of 80s cult film is big, loud, and dumb – and those are its advantages. 

Whatever its many flaws, director Louis Leterrier’s remake of the semi-beloved 1981 adventure Clash of the Titans will at least never be accused of pretension. It’s a big, loud, overly plotted yet aggressively dumb action adventure with more brawn than sense and enough machismo to power a rugby league. Like its predecessor, the film doesn’t mind wearing its derivations of established franchises (Star Wars and Transformers) on its brawny sleeves, bringing state of the art CGI and hammy acting all for the purpose of one-upsmanship. It’s a summer blockbuster through and through, a faithful depiction of Greek Mythology about as much as Star Wars was about family dynamics or space exploration. We’re not oracles, but our advice is simple: don’t ask for much more than spectacle and you won’t be disappointed.

 The setup is at least more complicated, this time around. After centuries of servitude, the human race has taken up arms against the gods who both protect and dominate them, toppling the gods’ images and launching sieges against their aerie on Mount Olympus. The gods can’t live without mankinds’ prayers fueling their immortality, even though their chieftain Zeus (Liam Neeson) favors a wait-and-see approach to his rebellious creation. Others, like his brother Hades (Ralph Fiennes) prefer a kill-’em-all retaliation; small wonder, since as ruler of the underworld he feeds on fear and terror.

Amid this…. clash, an orphaned baby is found by a kindly fisherman (Pete Postlethwaite) and raised as his own child. Nineteen years and one awkward jump in time later, the adult Perseus’ (Sam Worthington) adopted family is killed as the indirect result of anti-Zeus actions committed by soldiers from the nearby city-state of Argus. He’s taken to the Argive court, where an attack by Hades reveals his true heritage – he’s actually the son of Zeus, conceived in retaliation for a rebellious king’s (Jason Flemyng) aggression. Hades threatens to destroy the city in ten days if the Argives don’t sacrifice their noble princess Andromeda (Alexa Davalos), as punishment for their defiance and as part of a larger scheme to weaken Zeus. Encouraged by fellow demi-god Io (Gemma Arterton), Perseus agrees to lead an expedition to the distant lair of the Stygian Witches, to consult their oracular advice. In turn, this sends them to murder the gorgon Medusa, to use her head against the Kraken beast Hades will send to raze Argos.

With so much plot to cover, it’s no wonder the script by Travis Beacham, Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi rarely slows down long enough to catch its breath – or even clearly identify some of its central characters. Of the four principal soldiers who accompany Perseus, only the bitter and intense Draco (Mads Mikkelsen) is given sufficient screen time to emerge as a character in his own right; the others fall into convenient war movie types: the rookie, the older veteran smartass, the carefree guy. Two additional adventurers, irregular hunters who volunteer only until the party reaches the underworld, receive plenty of screen time but almost no characterization at all. The special effects sequences, naturally, get all the time they want under Leterrier’s (The Incredible Hulk) direction, including a belabored and 3-D pandering coin skipping over the river Styx.

To the extent that they’re allowed, the supporting players inhabit their parts with gusto. Mikkelsen is effective as the embittered warrior who will smile “only once I’ve spit in the gods’ eyes.” Arterton, so fetching in her brief screen time in Quantum of Solace, is an alluring figure, while Davalos uses every second to build Andromeda up as both strong and compassionate. Neeson and Fiennes thump and bellow according to their parts; Fiennes seems to enjoy himself more, wallowing in the heavy metal album cover art of costuming. As for the film’s star, lately Worthington has drawn comparisons to Russell Crowe: they’re both Australian, and well-built, with plenty of cocky swagger. But Worthington lacks both Crowe’s intensity and his sense of reserved confidence. He’s a placeholder, but to his advantage the script requires him to do nothing much besides react to the circumstances around him, with little need for dramatic initiative. 

Perhaps the film’s greatest strength lies in its production design. The monsters are terrifying, the costumes layered and textured in such a way as to seem glamorous while lived-in at the same time. The city-state of Argos, ringing a mountainous cove, is a breathtaking bit of CGI imagery, while the gorgon and its lair are chillingly atmospheric. A glaring exception is the underworld ferryman Charon, whose flat and uninspired designs recall any number of comic book monsters and again, heavy metal album art (specifically, Iron Maiden.) It’s also sort of hard to take Zeus’ glittering silver armor with complete seriousness; at times its luster ebbs a bit, and the designs inlaid in the plating – an eagle-shaped shoulder guard – seem ridiculously overwrought. Leterrier keeps the action moving, sometimes faster than necessary, other times slowing down at odd moments that stall the forward momentum that the characters need. It’s the kind of movie that shouldn’t its audience a chance to think too much.

 Online columnist Matthew Belinkie recently wondered in an excellent analysis if, thanks to the proliferation of online video and ecommerce, the time of the cult movie has ended. The original Clash of the Titans has become something of a cult perennial if not exactly a classic, well-liked but possibly not widely adored. Gen X’ers appreciate the already-dated charm of Ray Harryhausen’s stop motion effects (the effects wizard made the film his swan song), and the giddy over the top acting of Laurence Olivier, Burgess Meredith, and Ursula Andress, performers also possibly ready for a career bow. This remake shares with its predecessor the hammy acting and endearing special effects, yet its shortcomings of script and story keep it from developing as a complete work in its own right.

- Michael Kabel

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::