Miscellaneous Debris, June 2010 Edition

Our monthly roundup of news, reviews and speculation that didn’t wind up with a full post.  

It's hot outside.

 The problem with movies is that they’re too often interrupted by the more meager demands and rewards of real life. We meant to go to the movies this weekend but never got around to it, busy instead with one dreary thing after another, and anyway there’s nothing playing at the local theatres that seems exciting (We’re not twelve years old, and as aging Whedonites we don’t care for Twilight).  

Actually, we’re taking the rest of this week off for the Fourth of July holiday weekend, returning Tuesday, July 6. In the meantime, here’s all the stuff we thought mostly worth discussing over the month of June, items that didn’t rate an entire blog post of their own but nevertheless seem noteworthy for one reason or another.  

1. Besides the ignominy of so many thuds, maybe the nastiest thing about this summer of woe for the box office isn’t the quantity of flops but rather the media’s glee in pronouncing several films as failures. We haven’t crunched the numbers, but we don’t imagine 2010 necessarily has more or bigger turkeys than most other summers; without a giant tentpole movie – like the kind Toy Story 3 is shaping up to become – the desperation at the box office has just seemed worse.  

If The A-Team, Prince of Persia, and a few others have underwhelmed, it’s not necessarily a comment on their quality or on the public’s shifting tastes. It means audiences ignored them for whatever reasons normally affect such things, not a little of which inevitably seems to have something to do with marketing. Actually, The A-Team has good word of mouth, as did Prince of Persia. Some of the bombs, admittedly, were odious: both Jonah Hex and Sex and The City 2 were answers to questions nobody asked, efforts apparently massaged into oblivion by studio meetings and conferences. Elsewhere the sharks have circled the Tom Cruise – Cameron Diaz vehicle Knight and Day for weeks; our guess is that the film will quietly make a modest profit.  

2. The idea that such older-skewing films as Knight and Day and Sex and The City 2 should fail echoes a topic that’s gone around for a couple of years now: the idea that the time of the movie for grownups is in its twilight. This summer the two biggest successes so far, The Karate Kid and now Toy Story 3 – are both distinctly kid-friendly. Not to over-simplify, but this is partly because children don’t go to school in the summertime and these two products – both reminders of beloved films from other eras – are likely irresistable to thirty-something parents who remember the one film from their teens and the other from their 20′s.  The films aren’t kids’ movies so much as entertainment that’s palatable all the way around the SUV.  

3. Steve Carrell says he’s leaving The Office at the end of the series’ upcoming seventh season in order to spend more time with his family. We lost interest in The Office a while back – the “Dwight always wins” story policy froze us out – but nevertheless we’re curious to see how they handle Carrell’s exodus. Meanwhile his animated feature Despicable Me opens next week, with his adult feature Dinner For Schmucks (in which he seems to combine his Michael Scott schtick with George Clooney’s haircut circa 1994) opening at the end of the month.  

4. Speaking of that film (and its vaguely amusing trailer below), it’s another project to co-star Zack Galifianakis, his fourth released since The Hangover last year. Nothing against him getting rich, but we’re thinking he might start to worry about over-exposure. The industry has made similar mistakes before: taking a promising character actor and throwing him into every project available at the time seldom turns out well, either for the audience or for the performer. For lack of a better term, we call this accelerated career half-life the Zahn Effect.  

  

Yelchin in Terminator Salvation

 5. With rumors that an announcement regarding the next actor to play Spider-Man just around the corner, we want to officially endorse Anton Yelchin for the role. The young Russian actor did great work in both Terminator Salvation and Star Trek, giving better performances than anyone expected. With the upcoming fourth film reportedly a reboot (goodbye, disco-dancing hipster Spidey), Yelchin is exactly the rising talent that a fresh take on the franchise needs. Now, who to play Mary Jane Watson? Hopefully, Easy A’s Emma Stone.  

6. Mad Men, the best show on TV, makes it season four debut in just under four weeks, on July 25. The sleek new preview poster started showing up online a couple of weeks or so ago, apparently hinting at the wide-open future that Don Draper and his fellow Sterling-Cooper refugees face now that they’ve struck out on their own. We’re also glad to learn, somewhat belatedly, that Jared Harris, who plays sensitive British executive Lane Pryce, has been promoted to regular cast member as of the upcoming season. Plot and story details still remain maddeningly elusive – series mastermind Matt Weiner could/should run the CIA – which makes the wait that much harder. Our own small wish is to see the return of schoolteacher/Barbara Hershey lookalike Suzanne Farrell (Abigail Spencer). 

7. A week later, AMC premieres (or re-premieres, following a June 13 sneak peek) its brainy new thriller Rubicon, starring James Badge Dale as a government intelligence analyst who realizes his bosses take part in a vast conspiracy pulling the strings of world events. Ostensibly a complex, cooly intelligent mind-bender of a serial – think The X-Files without the geeky weirdness – it’s as different from the network’s other two shows as Mad Men and Breaking Bad are from each other. Miranda Richardson, Arliss Howard, and Jessica Collins co-star, with the great Peter Gerety (Homicide: Life On The Street) in a crucial guest-starring role in the pilot. Expect something adrenalin-fueled, like 24 or Alias, and you’ll be disappointed. The show has moodier, slower-burning intentions in mind. 

8. Finally, we can’t think of a better way to celebrate America than with this clip from The Candidate, director Michael Ritchie’s still-topical skewering of politics and the otherwise good people who get drawn into its seductive vortex. Robert Redford plays Bill McKay, the activist running for a Senate seat against a folksy conservative incumbent with the awesome name Crocker Jarmon. Released in 1972, McKay’s exhausted meltdown into a gibberish of buzz words remains hilarious – and relevant – almost forty years later. 

Happy July 4, everybody. God bless America.

- Michael Kabel

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Night Flights, June 2010 Edition

Films we watched instead of getting the sleep we need.   

Remember this one?

 Why do older movies – films from previous decades – seem to have a fascination that new releases cannot match? They aren’t wine, growing better and more refined as their ingredients merge and shift. They aren’t like people, either, learning from their mistakes or changing to fit the world around them. A film is exactly the way it was when it was new. But older films take on a life of their own as they recede into history, becoming something more than an object of nostalgia.   

We think staying up all night watching old movies is one of life’s great unsung pleasures. It’s an intimate, concentrated experience that sometimes allows a greater understanding of the film viewed, more even than seeing something in a theatre or among the company of friends. Over the last month of so we watched the following seven films, mostly older but a couple of more recent vintage. We were more impressed with some than others, but they were all worth staying up too late – and the consequences that that guarantees the next day – to enjoy. 

Brute Force (1947) - Noble criminal Joe Collins (Burt Lancaster) schemes to break out of a fortress-like prison, both to comfort his dying wife (Ann Blyth) and to escape the machinations of a sadistic guard captain (Hume Cronyn.) Enlisting the aid of a veteran con (Charles Bickford) and his bookish sidekick (Sam Levine), the two devise a risky plan to capture the bridge leading from the prison gates to freedom.   

Though not as celebrated as his subsequent noirs Night and The City or The Naked City, Jules Dassin’s wrenching suspenser featured shocking depictions of violence intermixed with the director’s willfully – and sometimes self-consciously – artistic style. Though Richard Brooks’ (The Blackboard Jungle) script occasionally lapses into stock Hollywood melodrama, particularly in the cutaway vignettes about the convicts’ loves outside the prison walls, the climactic riot scene (based on real-life events at Alcatraz) is about as taut and riveting a set piece as can be imagined.   

   

The Last Voyage (1960) - We’d first heard of this film over fifteen years ago but didn’t see it until a recent TCM showing finally gave us the chance. It didn’t disappoint. When the boilers of the overworked ocean liner SS Claridon explode, the crew and its clay-footed captain (George Sanders) and resentful chief engineer (Edmond O’Brien) scramble to contain the damage and prevent a panic among the passengers. Meanwhile an American businessman (Robert Stack) struggles to free his wife (Dorothy Malone) from the steel wreckage pinning her from the neck down.   

Writer-director Andrew L. Stone (The Secret of My Success) understands how to build suspense by letting events speak from themselves: you’ll never feel so enthralled by men trying to fortify a bulkhead or loosen a pipe fitting, or feel terrified by the sound of rushing water. Stack and Sanders give solid if unspectacular performances, while the true pleasure of the film is seeing the under-appreciated Woody Strode stretching out in a heroic, substantial role as one of the ship’s hands. A clear and unmistakable influence on every ocean liner-disaster film to follow, including most notably The Poseidon Adventure and its sequels and remakes. By the way, the film is 91 minutes long.   

   

Slow Burn (2005) – District attorney and mayoral candidate Ford Cole (Ray Liotta) finds his lover/assistant (Jolene Blalock) may have been conspiring with a powerful, unseen drug lord to undermine his campaign.  Adding to the confusion are a suspect (LL Cool J) who may be either a thug  or a federal agent and rumors of a shadowy disaster scheduled for the coming morning. Cole has the rest of the night to get to the truth of his assistant’s rape and self-defense murder story and, in turn, prevent the disaster.   

Revelations about the assistant’s duplicity play out through a series of flashbacks that, under screenwriter Wayne Beach’s (The Art of War) journeyman direction, don’t come together as tightly as they could to elevate the film past its genre thresholds. Still, the script raises intriguing ideas about racial identity and the role of race in big city politics and law enforcement, ideas for which it shrewdly doesn’t offer explanations. As usual, Blalock brings more to the part than it probably deserves playing the chameleon-like, duplicitous femme fatale, and Liotta is solid (if sometimes unexciting) as always.   

   

Rancho Deluxe (1975) – A good example of a film whose time has passed, this too laid-back for its own good comedy-Western features Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston as dim-witted, affable Montana cattle rustlers and Slim Pickens as the detective hired to catch them. Along the way the rustlers steal a prize bull, romance two local cowgirls, and deal with their own family issues while the detective and his wily assistant (Charlene Dallas) manipulate their employer (Clifton James) and his two dopey ranch hands (Harry Dean Stanton and Richard Bright.)   

Frank Perry’s (Mommie Dearest) direction of Thomas McGuane’s script is loose and carefree to the point that tone and suspense suffer, and he includes too many diversions and scenes that don’t amount to much. There’s gratuitious sex and nudity, and extended gag scenes and set pieces, and ultimately the slack pacing and tone don’t matter. Like many would-be cult films of the 70s and early 80s, it’s a film to watch while you’re (to quote Bill Murray in a much better film) stoned to the bejeezus belt. To that end it also features Jimmy Buffet, schlocking it up in a live performance:   

   

Night of the Hunter (1955) – The diametric opposite of Rancho Deluxe in probably every way, this genuinely disturbing psychological thriller casts Robert Mitchum as Harry Powell, a serial-killing preacher who roams the Depression-era South looking for women to rob and murder. Sent to jail for car theft, he learns of a hidden store of money from the farmer (Peter Graves) who stole and murdered for it, hiding it upon his farm before his capture. Upon his release Powell woos and marries the farmer’s lonely and sexually frustrated widow (Shelley Winters), then kills her when she realizes his intentions. Her son and daughter, who alone know the money’s location, flee down the Ohio River with Harry close on their trail.  

Director Charles Laughton’s blending of Southern Gothic story tropes with German Expressionism imagery is probably a stroke of genius, as one disturbingly unforgettable image flows into the next. Audacious and brazenly unconventional, it’s a film that has to be seen to be believed. Mitchum played a lot of roles in his legendary career, but there’s a case to be made that he’s at his best here.  

  

The Man From Elysian Fields (2001) – Struggling novelist Byron Tiller (Andy Garcia) is recruited by the debonair head of a male escort service (Mick Jagger) to provide company for the trophy wife (Olivia Williams) of a legendary but terminally ill author (James Coburn.) Tiller needs the money and agrees to the indecent proposal, even going so far as to sleep with the woman with the author’s bemused approval. The two writers become friends, and Tiller gets the once-in-a-lifetime chance to collaborate with his literary idol even while hiding his new “job” from his own wife (Julianna Margulies) and child.  

A film that under George Hickenlooper’s (Factory Girl) direction assumes its audience is intelligent enough to connect dots without a map and verbal instructions, for much of its runtime it’s a low key and elegant big of filmmaking that’s lovely to look at and intriguing to think about in the days that follow; only towards the end does it sweat a little to reach its conclusion. All the principal cast members are subdued and modulated in their parts, getting powerful support from smaller turns by the always-welcome Xander Berkeley, Anjelica Houston, and Richard Bradford. Jagger, playing a man giving all his well-learned politesse, is a scene-stealing delight.  

  

There are cooler movie posters, but not many.

 No Way Out (1950) - Some films you have to respect for their nerve, as they tackle subjects America wasn’t necessarily ready to face at the time of their release. So with this thriller from co-writer and director Joseph L. Mankiewicz (Somewhere In The Night), about a black medical resident (Sidney Poitier, in his debut role) assigned to treat two wounded thugs. When one of them dies from a previously undiagnosed brain tumor, his racist brother (Richard Widmark) swears revenge, going so far as to organize a race riot from his prison cell. The resident’s boss (Stephen McNally) and the dead man’s widow (Linda Darnell) find themselves caught in the middle as the ensuing riot proves disastrous for the white aggressors, and the bleeding, delusional thug escapes in the ensuing commotion. 

Mankiewicz and Lesser Samuels’ script pulls no punches, offers no platitudes, and makes no consideration for audience taste or decorum; the film flaunts racial epithets and the simmering rage of both blacks and whites with equal candor. Poitier is good but not yet the actor he would become, while Widmark’s role is one he would play probably too often in his career, a variation once again of Kiss of Death‘s Tommy Udo. Darnell gets maybe the best part, playing a self-loathing but essentially good person torn between her sense of self and her sense of right and wrong. Twentieth Century Fox knew they were holding dynamite, if the trailer is any indication: 

We’ll be back next week with a review of a new release. Thank you for reading.

- Michael Kabel

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Back To The Future, Meatbags!

Futurama returns – at last – tomorrow night on Comedy Central. We celebrate by recounting our top six episodes (so far.)  

Seven years after its cancellation by Fox and following a quartet of successful straight-to-DVD films, the legendary animated series Futurama returns to regular programming tomorrow night with the first two of twenty-six new episodes.  

Created in 1999 by The Simpsons mastermind Matt Groenig, the often surreal, sometimes brilliant comedy followed the adventures of Philip J. Fry, a dimwitted delivery boy catapulted via cryogenic freezing into the year 3000. Hired by his own aged descendant along with sexy cyclops Leela and drunken robot Bender, Fry crews the spaceship of Planet Express, an interplanetary delivery company whose standards and principles are never too low.

The Planet Express crew

 Sadly never as popular as The Simpsons or as notorious as The Family Guy, the series often made up for in depth and subtext what it lacked in ratings, with ongoing plot threads and subtle, often incisive allegory giving it an intellectual edge not typically seen on network television, let alone in cartoons. Series showrunner David X. Cohen promises lots more of the same with the new episodes, as upcoming plots satirize Twitter and YouTube while offering the show’s unique takes on current controversies including gay marriage.  

Our six favorite episodes are listed below. It was hard to settle on just six, and these by no means necessarily represent the show’s finest moments. They’re our sentimental picks, the ones that we quote the most when we talk about the series. And of course they’re in no particular order.  

“Time Keeps On Slippin’” (Season 3, episode 14) – When dignitaries from the Globetrotter Homeworld (apparently a planet where everyone is a Harlem Globetrotter) challenge Earth to a basketball contest, Planet Express owner Professor Farnsworth builds a team of atomic human-monster hybrids to oppose them. The Professor’s typically reckless disregard for safety causes rifts in the time-space continuum, leading to an edgy truce with the Globetrotter leader (who’s also an astrophysicist.) The two build a “badass gravity pump” to undo the damage, but not before realities contorts and spasms in hilarious ways. Why we love it: for the bittersweet character beats, like Bender’s desperation to join the Globetrotters in a homemade costume, or the fleeting glimpse of Fry and Leela’s eventual wedding. Best quote: “Your face can take a lot of punishment. That’s good to know.”  

“Fry and The Slurm Factory” (Season 1, Episode 13) – In this two-pronged skewering of Willly Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and beer and soft drink marketing campaigns, Fry manipulates himself into a free trip to Wormulon, home of Slurm, the galaxy’s favorite soft drink. The gang gets a tour of the factory from Wilile Wonka-esque manager Glurmo, until Fry uncovers a secret and far more disgusting facility beneath the one they’re shown. Why we love it: Because Willy Wonka is kind of overrated, honestly, and because the script’s undaunted treatment of corporate hokum – for example the character Slurms MacKenzie, the mascot contractually obligated to party all the time – revealed the show’s willingness to bite the hands that feed network television. Best quote: (From Glurmo, regarding his Grunka Lunka helpers) “They think they have a good union, but they don’t! They’re basically slaves.”  

“The Farnsworth Parabox” (Season 4, Episode 15) – After the Professor orders the crew to throw his latest failed experiment into the Sun, Leela can’t resist looking inside its box but falls through instead. The gang follows her to a parallel universe where everything is subtly different: Bender is gold, crustacean staff physician Dr. Zoidberg is blue (though no less destitute) and Fry and Leela are married. Attempts to fix the multiversal structure only create more universes, leading to a dizzying chase through a succession of alternate realities.  Why we love it: Science fiction and comics fans (the show’s natural fan base) know the somewhat-threadbare parallel universe trope like the backs of their hands. Treating the subject comically demonstrated the show’s respect for their sensibilities and turned the whole plot device on its head at the same time. Best quote: “Like Granny said: if you want a box hurled into the sun, you got to do it yourself. God rest her zombie bones.” 

“How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back” (Season 2, Episode 11) – Hermes Conrad, Planet Express’ Rastafarian accountant and bureaucrat, finds his long-awaited promotion foiled by the gang’s trashing of his office, with he and his wife sent instead to vacation at a forced labor camp. When his replacement downloads Bender’s brain into the Central Bureacuracy’s databanks, the gang has to infiltrate the organization’s giant headquarters to regain the robot’s personality. Hermes rejoins them after reorganizing the camp’s workforce, leading to one of the series most inspired musical numbers. Why we love it: For representing the show’s willingness to build otherwise vague supporting characters into personalities in their own right, rather than develop its central trio for better promotional value. The approach wasn’t always successful – company intern Amy Wong never quite earns her keep – but it worked well here. Best quote: “When push comes to shove you gotta do what you love, even if it’s not a good idea.” 

“Where The Buggalo Roam” (Season 3, Episode 10) – The whole Planet Express staff heads to Mars to visit Amy’s family, who raise Buggalo (giant cow and beetle hybrids) on their ranch The Wong Place. When Amy is kidnapped by the American Indian-like Martian natives, her amphibian boyfriend Kif Kroker and his boss Zapp Brannigan (a spoof of Captain Kirk) lead the rescue mission to the Martian reservation. Turns out the Martians have a beef with the Wong family: the Wongs’ ancestors traded the planet’s Western Hemisphere for one large bead, and the present-day Martians want some back pay. Why we love it: The sweetness of Amy and Kif’s romance is impossible to resist, while the satirizing of revisionist history and oversimplified ethnic stereotypes all come to together in a clanging homage to countless B-grade Westerns. Best quote: (Zoidberg greeting his hosts from a distance, as Mr. Wong complains of his goldbricking): “I broke your television!” 

“Parasites Lost” (Season 3, Episode 2) – After Fry eats a moldy egg salad sandwich purchased in a truck stop men’s room, the Professor discovers his body is thoroughly infested with microscopic worms. Building for themselves an advanced and peaceful civilization inside Fry’s body, the worms steadily improve his health, physique, and intelligence, which in turn finally gives the hapless Fry a shot at winning Leela’s heart. Meanwhile the Professor sends virtual reality copies of the crew into his body to destroy the worms, meeting stiff resistance instead. Why we love it: Part Fantastic Voyage and part Flowers For Algernon, the episode got through the inside-the-body segments (mostly) without resorting to infantile humor, while giving the Fry/Leela romance subplot depth and pathos unmatched by its animated contemporaries – or successors. Best quote: “It’s like a party in my mouth and everyone is throwing up.” 

“Bender Should Not Be Allowed On TV” (Season 4, Episode 6) – Bender connives a role on All My Circuits, his favorite robot soap opera, until his outrageous behavior raises the hackles of parents groups including Hermes’ and the Professor’s own Fathers Against Rude Television (F.A.R.T.) Eventually, Bender leads the group on a crusade to get himself kicked off television. Why we love it: Zoidberg raps; the cast performs an homage to Black Flag’s “TV Party”- what’s not to love? Also, it’s easy to imagine Fox telling the show to build up Bender and his numerous catchphrases (“Bite my shiny metal ass!”) and getting this animated middle finger in response. The robot’s All My Circuits debut amounts to all of his schtick executed simultaneously. Best quote (tie): “It’s the parents’ fault! Have you ever tried simply turning off the TV, sitting down with your children, and hitting them?” “That was so terrible I think you gave me cancer!” 

Here’s the first minute and a half of tomorrow night’s season premiere, entitled “Rebirth.” 

 

Comedy Central will run the fourth DVD movie, Into the Wild Green Yonder, beginning at 8/7 Central, followed by the new episodes at 10/9 Central.

- Michael Kabel

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Preview: The American

George Clooney is a hitman hiding out in Anton Corbijn’s dark thriller.

For whatever disappointments undermined the summer of 2010, the season at least looks to end on a bit of class. The American teams George Clooney with legendary photographer-turned-director Anton Corbijn in a stylish adaptation of British novelist Martin Booth’s dark thriller A Very Private Gentleman. That 1990 work won praise for its intense mood and sophisticated psychological suspense, and combined with Clooney’s always-bankable charisma and Corbijn’s flawless compositional eye the film has all the potential for a cerebral treat.

The story tropes sound familiar (and somewhat different than the novel), but we’ll trust Clooney and Corbijn to bring something new to the proceedings. Clooney plays Jack, an American hitman and weapons builder with a reputation for craftsmanlike expertise. When a violent encounter  in Sweden results in a higher body count than he anticipated, Jack retreats to the south of Italy to regroup and perform one last assignment, building a rifle for a mysterious Belgian woman named Mathilde (Thekla Reuten.)

While in a remote mountain village he begins two new relationships, one with a taciturn priest (Paulo Bonacelli) who labors for his repentance and the other with a beautiful prostitute (Violante Placido). Of course, Jack’s past may be catching up with him even as he plans to leave it behind and Mathilde’s assignment draws close at hand.

The film mark’s Corbijn’s second feature effort, following the 2007 Ian Curtis biography Control. And though it seems like a lifetime ago thanks to his prolific work since, Clooney first won critical acclaim playing another weary career criminal named Jack, in 1998′s heist caper Out of Sight. (The actor may be at his best playing honorable rogues in moments of crisis: his most acclaimed work – Syriana, Michael Clayton, Up In The Air - all come from that mold.) His own Smokehouse Pictures produced the film, while British screenwriter Rowan Joffe (28 Weeks Later) wrote the adapted screenplay.

Early word has reportedly been mixed. Some early reviews complain that its slow pace and reserved tone may disappoint audiences looking for more of a traditional Euro-thriller along the lines of Ronin than the Day of the Jackal-esque feel hinted at by the trailer below. This preview, one of a couple now circulating the Internet, has sheer atmosphere  than probably any trailer we’ve seen since last year’s The Limits of Control, itself another hitman thriller steeped in European ambience.

The American opens nationwide September 1.

- Michael Kabel

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Five Cult Favorites Now On Blu-Ray

Some legendary, some underground cult favorites get their Blu-Ray release today.

Call it synchronicity, call it clever planning on the part of the industry, call it the kind of coincidence that only happens in summertime, but June 15 sees the release of no less than five cult favorite films on the Blu-Ray format. In fact their cult status is about the only thing they have in common. There’s one critical darling in the group, and one that was critically lambasted upon its theatrical release, with the others falling somewhere in between – meaning, like any good group of movies, they’re all over the place.

We’ve included, just for fun, the original theatrical trailers in our summaries just below. The films are ranked, as always, in no particular order of importance. They’re all available for purchase online, and we imagine elsewhere as well.

The Stepfather (1987) – Long before Lost, Terry O’Quinn headlined this modestly budgeted thriller that gained its fame, like so many films of the era, thanks to frequent airings on late-night cable movie channels. O’Quinn is flawless as Jerry Blake, a salesman obsessed with having the ideal Reagan Era, traditional-values family. When the women and children he finds don’t measure up to his vision of perfection, he kills them, until his latest marriage to a divorcee (Shelley Hack) and her daughter (Jill Schoelen) exposes his insatiable evil.

Forget the grimy, artless remake released last year; this original version, so popular it spawned two sequels – though only 1989′s The Stepfather II featured O’Quinn reprising his role -  remains the kind of film that gave B-Movies an (almost) good name at the end of the 1980s. The Blu-Ray’s extra features include a retrospective of all three films and a production stills gallery.

 

Enter The Dragon (1973) – The cult movie deemed “culturally significant” by the National Film Registry, Bruce Lee’s final film appearance casts him as a Shaolin martial artist sent to infiltrate a fighting tournament hosted by the mysterious drug lord Han (Shih Kien). Joining him in a loose alliance are an American playboy (John Saxon) running from the mob and a black activist (Jim Kelly) wanted for fighting two racist policeman.

Lee and the others discover that Han’s tournament is only the tip of a much larger scheme, and must fight their way through his bodyguards to expose the truth and save their own lives. Lee’s final showdown with Han, set in the fortress’ hall of mirrors, has become iconic screen imagery. The first martial arts film financed by a major Hollywood studio, the film created a martial arts sensation in 1970s America, helping establish its enduring culture and paving the way for every American-financed martial arts actioner that followed.

A host of extra features accompany the new transfer, including the superb Lee documentary Bruce Lee: A Warrior’s Journey.

Mystery Train (Criterion Collection) (1989) – Jim Jarmusch’s trio of artfully self-conscious short stories electrified 1980s independent cinema, while its aesthetics and sensibilities resonated through the 90s and continue, to a lesser extent, to the present day. Set around a dingy Memphis hotel operated by a mysterious desk clerk (Screamin’ Jay Hawkins), the stories involve a Japanese couple (Youki Kudoh and Masatoshi Nagase) making a pilgrimage to see the city of Elvis; an Italian widow (Nicoletta Braschi0) trapped overnight while returning her husband’s body home; and a trio of small-time hoods (Joe Strummer, Rick Aviles, and Steve Buscemi) hiding out after a botched liquor store holdup. Memphis music legend Rufus Thomas also appears in a small role.

The Criterion Edition (Is it possible Criterion leans too heavily on art-house and festival darlings such as this?) includes a new digital transfer and uncompressed monaural soundtrack, as well as several extra features including a Q&A session where Jarmusch answers fans’ questions.

Flash Gordon (1980) – Thirty years after its release, we’re still hard-pressed not to love this campy, Disco-fueled wallow in excess as Star Wars’ skankier sister. When intergalactic tyrant Ming The Merciless (Max Von Sydow, savoring every bite of the scenery) begins his conquest of an unsuspecting planet Earth, it falls to New York Jets quarterback Flash Gordon (Sam Jones) to thwart his plans and rescue the Earth woman (Melody Anderson) Ming wants for his bride/concubine. Timothy Dalton and Brian Blessed co-star as, respectively, Flash’s allies Prince Barin and Prince Vultan, while no less than Topol appears as Flash’s scientist sidekick Dr. Zarkov. Director Mike Hodges (Get Carter) doesn’t know the meaning of the word “enough,” piling the action, violence, and sex appeal atop every kooky minute and setting it all to Queen’s balls-to-the-wall soundtrack.

Extra features include all of the same bonuses as the earlier DVD “Savior of the Universe” edition, as well as interviews with cover artist Alex Ross (for some reason) and screenwriter Lorenzo, Semple, Jr., and the first chapter of the 1936 Buster Crabbe serial.

Showgirls Fifteenth Anniversary Sinsational Edition (1995)- Speaking of wretched excess, this infamous mid-90s melodrama reteamed the writer and director responsible for Basic Instinct and set them loose on a sleazy story about a drifter’s (former Saved By The Bell star Elizabeth Berkley) ascent through the lurid world of Las Vegas dancing, rising from stripper to showgirl despite the usual sex-and-money potboiler obstacles.

The point of Showgirls isn’t the story so much as the presentation, and director Paul Verhoeven and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas serve up plenty of nudity, overheated theatrics, and soap opera-esque plot twists and turns that really only accompany the neon-lit, sweat and hairspray-soaked spectacle of it all. A kind of feather-soft porno from a time when Hollywood wasn’t afraid to indulge in a little eroticism (really, its last great attempt at such before the advent of the Internet), its release was accompanied by a storm of controversy regarding its explicit and overt sexuality, none of which helped to boost its disappointing box office results. But as proof of the old saying  about “behind closed doors,” the film eventually made more than $100 million dollars in home video rentals.

Extra features include – no kidding – a tutorial on fitness-based pole dancing hosted by health instructor Teri Jaworski and a clinic on lap dancing presented by the girls of Scores. A production diary and pop-up trivia track are also included, as well as audio commentary by film celebrant David Schmader.

We’ll be back later this week.

- Michael Kabel

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TV Party Tonight!

Amid a summer movie season notable for its deafening thud, Generation X remains Hollywood’s favorite audience.

Sooner or later, inevitably, this too will be a movie.

Towards the end of the 1980s there was a popular saying about the 60s that if you could remember that decade then you weren’t really there. It was meant both as a half-subtle reference to the era’s heady drug culture and a wry comment on the insincere nostalgia that became widespread as the Baby Boomers reached middle age. There’s no similar saying about the 80s yet, though two decades since its conclusion Hollywood continually returns to the decade’s nostalgia well again and again. For better or worse, you don’t have to remember the 80s because in many ways they’ve never truly ended.

This weekend two of the summer’s biggest releases arrive in theatres, and both are based on properties not just a part of the Me Decade but inextricably associated with it. The A-Team and The Karate Kid both premiered around the decade’s middle, the point which was arguably the 80s-est segment of the period: certainly the ground zero for the fashions, music, and pop culture that modern media turns to when oversimplifying the era’s zeitgeist. Both properties are fondly remembered, if not critically appreciated, by members of Generation X old enough to remember their airings on, respectively, NBC and later reruns on USA and showings on cable movie channels. (Honestly, “fondly remembered if not critically appreciated” describes the bulk of Gen X’s cultural heritage.)

Probably Hollywood recognizes that the concepts and premises of many of the decade’s most enduring or best-remembered properties then lacked the technology to maximize their potential. Certainly this is true of Transformers, the mid-80s toy line and accompanying cartoon series (which were serialized informercials in all but name) that took on an entirely new second life, for better and worse, once combined with the CGI wizardry and narrative buffoonery of Michael Bay. The inevitable third installment of that franchise is already underway, minus Megan Fox but featuring the fan-favorite Decepticon villain Shockwave in a prominent role. Other decade mainstays, including The A-Team, need only a little updating and tweaking to adjust their premises to modern audiences, but the substantially larger budgets give them the time and money to up their special effects ante as well. Against such practical matters the lure of Gen X nostalgia may seem only a bonus.

Still, some updates and adaptations run into trouble when they stray too far from what the original property’s fanbase recognizes as loyal or true to the original. Last summer’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra made money for Paramount Pictures but won few fans, with a lukewarm reception at best even from the comic- and toy-collecting communities who ought to have represented its profit base. Aside from a few and far between cosmetic similarities in costume design, the film didn’t look true to the 80s toy line and cartoon, taking instead a high-tech, glossy approach that contradicted the original’s somewhat realistic approach. A cursory search of IMDB shows no announced plans for a sequel.

The dog has an eyepatch. Awesome.

Getting past toy lines and comic books, the DVD and Blu-Ray markets have found a steady steam of income by releasing the decade’s television series in reasonably priced collections. With most of the era’s landmark series already at least partially collected, as well as some of its most critically dubious, many of the more obscure or less successful series have begun to emerge. The perfect example may be ABC’s Tales of the Gold Monkey, a 1930s-set adventure series that ran for just a single season following the juggernaut success of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Though calling the series a “cult favorite” may exaggerate, it’s nevertheless fondly remembered for its location photography and colorful characters, and notable for a dearth of syndicated rerun offerings. The DVD box set arrives in stores next Tuesday. Meanwhile a Blu-Ray release of Caddyshack, sort of that era’s equivalent to The Hangover, has just been made available.

Though not Gen X enough for the movies, Dallas still ran for fourteen seasons.

One connecting thread to the more successful Gen X adaptations comes in part from the youthful appeal that each original property enjoyed. The most common remakes and updates come from shows and films that appealed to the 80s’ youth, a demographic now circling 40 but holding significantly more spending power than the era’s grown-ups, who are today retiring. The A-Team, like Knight Rider, the original V and other shows of the Brandon Tartikoff era at NBC, was marketed to adults but in reality enjoyed primarily by older children and younger teens. (I am focusing on Tarktikoff because the lion’s share of shows associated with the decade were developed during his tenure as NBC head of entertainment programming.) The Karate Kid was aimed at teens but also absorbed by their slightly younger siblings who encountered its heavy rotation on cable movie channels. Both properties were modernized and brought to theatres with comparative ease, while the far more successful – and older-skewing – 80s soap Dallas has had its film adaptation languishing in development for years.

There’s also an insulating effect to drawing from Gen X’s collective memory. Adapting its favorite premises shields their updates, to an extent, from the adverse publicity garnered by negative reviews and to a certain extent from adverse word of mouth; people seldom dismiss a fond memory because someone says something unflattering about its inspiration. Audiences may decide to see the film to revisit the happy memory of their youth regardless of reviews or public reception. For that matter, neither of this weekend’s updates held grand artistic ambitions, nor were they warmly received by the critics of their day. And because they were targeted, somewhat half-intentionally, towards younger and less refined audiences the critics’ response didn’t matter as much.

There are plenty of other 80s shows to update first.

Eventually, the cycle of Gen X dotage will probably yield to the next era in pop culture, with the films and television series of the 1990s – a decade itself waterlogged with too much nostalgia – getting the update treatment. If the prospect of a Baywatch movie seems strange, we may as a public not be quite removed enough in time from its heyday to feel ready for their return. Remakes of shows still fresh in the public’s mind tend not to fare so well – witness the underperformance of the Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place reboots - while shows that are fondly if not quite clearly remembered continue to get remade. This fall both The Rockford Files and Hawaii Five-O get modern revisitations, and both benefit from stemming from older source material. Their networks have high hopes for their smash success, at a time when all four broadcast outlets desperately need a Next Big Thing. They may not be disappointed. As viewers, it’s likely best if we can forget a little before we like to remember.

- Michael Kabel

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Review: Splice

Genetic engineering thriller achieves only mixed results.

Until its last fifteen minutes, director and co-writer Vincenzo Natali’s Canadian import Splice is a film that tempts you to think more of it than it deserves. It is believably shot and its concept is patiently and clearly established, with scientific jargon as well as character positioning accomplished deftly and with a minimum of prolonged explanation. Like some of the best science fiction, the concept is plausible enough that only a little suspension of disbelief is necessary, and it’s topically relevant to an area of contemporary ongoing debate. Natali won praise for his Byzantine 1997 thriller Cube, and here he’s equipped with two solid leads, Oscar winner Adrien Brody and the underseen Sarah Polley. With such promise, the disappointment that comes from its ultimate retreat into boilerplate horror movie tropes becomes that much more disappointing. There’s an intelligent idea for a film hidden in here, but like its creature’s humanity that promise remains unrealized, and under-developed.

Elsa (Polley) and Clive (Brody) are lovers and research scientists working for a big pharmaceutical corporation, developing proteins that will help in the creation of new medications. As scientists, they’ve got a pretty cushy life, with the company funding their “Nucleic Exchange Research and Development” laboratory (the lab’s acronym is a pretty good indication of the film’s idea of humor.) As a couple, they’ve hit a snag: he wants kids, she’d rather have a bigger apartment. At work they’ve already created simple new lifeforms, but when the corporation cuts their research funding in favor of more profitable applications, Elsa decides to take gene-splicing to its next level rather than “sift through pig shit” in search of helpful chemicals. She and Clive fuse human DNA to the gene sequences they’ve already perfected, creating the hybrid that in time Elsa names “Dren.”

Unsettlingly childlike, both in its innocence and fickleness, Dren ages at a rapid rate, needing frequent immersions in water to accommodate its amphibious lungs. Elsa and Clive keep it safe in their lab, later converting a storage closet into a nursery and then moving her to Elsa’s derelict family farm. That move triggers Elsa’s own deep psychological scars, received at the hands of a cruel mother, that percolate once her own maternal instincts kick in. As Dren matures Elsa assumes her own mother’s parenting flaws, including caprice and almost casual cruelty, that help to alienate Dren even further from human behavior. Meanwhile Clive, indecisive and confused, wrestles with the reality of their creation, including fighting a growing attraction to the increasingly sexual Dren (played in her adult form by Delphine Chaneac).

Natali’s script, written with Antoinette Terry Bryant and Doug Taylor, tries to address several levels of story but never quite manages to reconcile any of them. It squanders time on the mechanics of Elsa and Clive’s relationship that might be better spent explaining Dren’s reactions to the world around her, and devotes long minutes to a long set piece involving Clive and Elsa’s other creations that serves no purpose except to put gore upon the screen. The screenplay also suffers from the clumsy fault of assuming the audience understands genetic engineering concepts but lacks basic emotional intuition; in at least two instances a character explains the badly obvious with dialogue, as when Clive moans, “I wish things could go back to the way they were” during a rueful argument with Elsa. Meanwhile Dren grows increasingly frustrated and unstable following a botched seduction of Clive that’s as unnecessarily explicit as it is bizarre. To save their relationship and themselves, Clive and Elsa resolve to end Dren’s life early, picking up the plot and carrying it forward.

Which leads to those final fifteen minutes, which include every plot contrivance you’ve seen in most horror genre exercises as well as a rape that serves primarily to establish the film’s pseudo-twist denouement. Dren turns evil, because horror films need a monster or killer in the snowy, eerily-lit woods, and the couple’s boss and Clive’s brother show up, under the thinnest of pretenses, to serve as tension-building cannon fodder. The rationale for Dren’s increased aggression is simplistic and a bit reductive besides. Genre fans might not mind the plot contortions so much, as they move it into position to serve up the meat-and-potatoes climax. Other audiences, intrigued enough by the cast and concept to give the film a chance, might find themselves annoyed and feel too a little had.

There are any number of horror and science-fiction films that deal with the consequences of genetic manipulation and cloning. Splice reminds  you of at least one other, better film when early on the word “gattaca” or something close to it flashes across a display monitor. This film, had it been willing to plunge into its ideas instead of building something ultimately formulaic around them, might have achieved something noteworthy, or least created a successful combination of its two directions. Ultimately, it’s less than the sum of its parts.

- Michael Kabel

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Review: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Think of it as Pirates of the Caribbean without the water.

Big and exuberant, loud and convoluted, the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced, Disney-released Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is about everything you could want from a summer action movie and maybe a hair’s breadth more. It’s a good-looking film, with the studio’s famous production design capabilities brought to bear on a time and place that haven’t been used a million times already. The talented cast is good-looking, almost to a fault, and the great Sir Ben Kingsley plays the heavy. Most action films have to make do with less – Pirates of the Caribbean, for example, had a more cumbersome script and less talented cast (Johnny Depp’s vamping notwithstanding, and anyway his work there is moldering pretty fast) – while not enjoying, if that’s the right word, a highly successful series of video games as its source material. So why isn’t it better than it is?

Despite all the handsome sets and lovely people, there’s sometimes a tired sense of going through the motions to much of the plot and action sequences, as if the story would rather be someplace else or serving another purpose. Director Mike Newell (Donnie Brasco) keeps the scenes moving from one to the other in rigidly linear fashion, even if his narrative rhythms are too choppy and too many scenes feel deeply truncated. At the risk of second-guessing, it’s hard not to imagine the director working with a set runtime in mind and keeping the action sequences in their entirety, at the expense of everything else. When it’s not trying to make up its mind where to go next, however, the film gets very entertaining at the drop of a dime.

The back story really only serves to give context to that exotic setting: fifteen hundred  years ago, young Dastan is a street waif in the empire’s capital city, living on scraps with his wastrel friends. When he defies a group of soldiers in order to rescue a friend, his courage impresses King Sharaman (Ronald Pickup) who adopts the boy into his family. Fifteen years later, the adult Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his brothers Tus (Richard Coyle) and Garsiv (Toby Kebbell) lead an assault on the far-flung but holy city of Alamut, investigating reports that the Alamutians are selling weapons to Persia’s enemies. Dastan and his group of irregular commandos lead a flanking attack against the city, capturing it largely through Dastan’s impressive parkour skills. During the battle Dastan recovers the mystical Dagger of Time from one of the city’s defenders, and local high priestess Tamina (Gemma Arterton) is also captured.

During the army’s celebrations upon their return to the imperial capital King Sharaman is killed by poisoned robes Tus gave Dastan to present as a gift. Blamed for the murder, Dastan flees the city, inadvertently taking Tamina and the dagger along. He soon discovers that the dagger can turn back time, allowing him to step briefly back into the past and change events. The mystical power is drawn from the sands of time itself, Tamina explains, the same sands the gods once almost used to destroy humanity. Enlisting the aid of conniving Sheik Amar (Alfred Molina) and his knife-wielding bodyguard Seso (Steve Toussaint), the two attempt to prevent Dastan’s uncle Nizam (Ben Kingsley) and his death-worshipping Hassansin warriors from stealing the sands for themselves.

The results, as you already know, are predictable, and for big summer entertainment anything else would likely disappoint. Action sequence follows action sequence, with some better than others: the duel between Seso and a Hassansin guard at the top of a glittering tower is particularly well-executed, and the siege of Alamut has a glowing, memorable intensity. Amar’s oasis of free enterprise and luxury, revolving largely around ostrich racing and betting, is gently hilarious thanks to Molina’s boisterous charm. If only the film had more such moments. Near the end of Dastan’s quest the story starts to get winded, and a Mulligan-esque plot twist may very well leave you annoyed instead of entertained.

Regarding the cast, Gyllenhaal is an actor who seems to have never quite found his niche, and as an action star he neither excels nor embarrasses himself. He’s beefed up enough for the part, a far cry from the slender milquetoasts of Zodiac and Donnie Darko, but the script lacks equal fleshing out in his characterization. Arterton gets to do more than she did in Clash of the Titans, her other sand and sandals epic this year, even if that more mostly involves scolding or rebuffing Dastan’s actions and advances. Kingsley is excellent in a stock role, giving the scheming regent Nizam layers of phony warmth and affection that will make you question your (eventually validated) presumptions of his evil. As for Molina, he must derive some kind of satisfaction from stealing scenes from the younger and hunkier leading men of his films. Having already heisted chunks of Boogie Nights and Spider-Man 2, he continues that spree here. Probably no other actor could evince so much charming outrage over the fate of an ostrich.

Bruckheimer and Disney obviously hope the film spawns a series, much like Pirates of the Caribbean did seven years ago. (Unlike Pirates, they should remember not to make the sequels so staggeringly awful.) Look closely and you’ll see resemblances to Pirates in the plot events and locales – the orphan boy, the fight in the grotto, most likely others. Disney and Bruckheimer alike have never been averse to formula, either in concept or in practice, so much of this film will likely seem exotically familiar. Still, this initial outing conjures up enough potential for future installments, introducing a cast that might be worth following and a setting that bears a second look. In the meantime it offers exactly what you probably expect, though sometimes more and sometimes possibly less.

- Michael Kabel

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