Writer/director David Mamet and co-star William H. Macy have a good time reminiscing on the commentary track that accompanies the Criterion Collection edition of Homicide (1991). This “cop movie that didn’t want to be a straight-up cop movie,” and started as an adaptation of a novel that was soon abandoned, is the third of the playwright’s films, following 1987’s hard-edged House of Games (also on DVD from Criterion) and the gentler Things Change (1988). Whatever it is—“I’m paid to write it, not read it,” Mamet growls—the movie is one of his more compelling, and makes a timely reentrance on the scene, given its relation to the “Jewish vengeance” pictures Defiance and Inglourious Basterds.
Those are set during World War II, or, rather, the fact-based Defiance is; Tarantino’s unspools in the multiplex in his head. Filmed in Baltimore (before the like-named TV show got there), Homicide unfolds in Mamet-land, that semi-realistic place where everyone has a “thing,” and if your thing collides with someone else’s thing you better look out. It centers on police detective Bobby Gold (Joe Mantegna, the star of Mamet’s prior films, here with a wounded face and manner like slightly bruised fruit), whose “thing” is being a stalwart first-through-the-door cop. But the overt racism of black FBI agents trying to take down an elusive drug dealer (Ving Rhames) and the institutional prejudice of the force (Macy is his best friend, a member of the Irish old guard) get him more personally involved in the routine murder of an elderly Jewish candy store owner—whose past includes running guns for Zionist causes. Gold’s assimilation offends the proprietor’s family and colleagues, who close ranks around him. But he wants to know more about their “thing,” which draws him into a noir-ish hive of archaic symbols and anti-neo-Nazi activity. (more…)
So Bowie sold out. Really, what else could he do? Selling out was the thing to do in the ’80s, and Bowie was always one to stay on top of current trends. Of course, he had to have it his own way, drafting Nile Rodgers as producer, enlisting Stevie Ray Vaughan as the lead guitarist, and making a hit out of an old Iggy Pop collaboration (that would be the only slightly cringe-inducing “China Girl”). And of course, some of the songs had to kick ass. “Modern Love” is as exciting an opener as any in Bowie’s catalog, and the title track was a deservedly huge hit, an addictive slice of disco-funk that sounds like it was recorded in an exceptionally trebly cathedral. The rest of the album is carried along by the momentum of the three singles, not just in terms of quality but stylistically as well, which means that this is essentially a party album through and through. It may be the one case where all the “style over substance” claims lobbed at Bowie ring true, but it’s still one hell of a style. Fuck art — let’s dance.
Apparently running out of ways to surprise his audience, Bowie decided to try failing miserably. This isn’t terrible as far as mainstream ’80s pop goes, but by Bowie’s usually high standards, it’s a complete misfire. Supposedly he didn’t even want to record this album, and it shows: more than half of the album’s songs are attempts to get Iggy Pop more royalty money, leaving two genuinely good singles (“Loving the Alien” and “Blue Jean”) and two lame-ass covers that make a valid case for manually removing and eating one’s own eardrums. I suppose there’s some decent stuff among the Iggy numbers, provided you’re comfortable with a barely-audible Tina Turner, an overzealous horn section, and a full-time marimba player. Welcome to the ’80s, Bowie fans. Welcome to hell. (more…)
Clips of some of the finest television to be aired in the last 12 months, a room full of beautiful people, and Neil Patrick Harris — what more could a TV fan ask for, right? It’s time for the 2009 Primetime Emmy Awards!
To celebrate this momentous occasion, we’re bringing out our trusty live chatroom, where we’ll be waiting to take in all the red carpet splendor — and dish about who won, who didn’t, and where Kanye might or might not be lurking at any given moment. Just choose a nickname and hit “Connect” to join us. See you there!
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“Filler” is a term often used by music fans to describe songs that sound like they were quickly put together to take up space on an album in order to “fill out” the running time. Though filler can often be quite good, snobbier music fans sometimes use it as an excuse to turn their noses up at others. Ironically, this attitude can be just as annoying as the people the snobs want to put down.
I make my living as a Photoshop retoucher. Much of the work I do is celebrity related, and often involves those showy magazine spreads where a B-list celebrity shows off his or her home. It’s MTV Cribs for older generations (in other words, those who still read). What I often find in the photos are startling similarities in artistic taste.
Seemingly every one of these celebrities has the same coffee-table book collection, including books on Picasso, jazz, and Man Ray. It’s as if the photographer carries a satchel of the same books to each celebrity’s house simply for the automatic class boost they provide.
It seems impossible to me that so many people actually have those books because they enjoy the artists’ work. A friend of mine brought up the cynical idea that this is what you get when you allow the masses access to art — great works often become, in effect, filler. The coffee-table book industry is, in many ways, a seller of white noise, used by individuals who hope to give their home an aesthetic boost.
Add to your list of national crises the death of the American movie star. The obituary was written as soon as the summer grosses were in. Digital effects, franchising, and cartoons are the engines of boxoffice success this year, a familiar story. You have to go down to the current No. 10 slot to find a truly star-driven movie in a CGI-free context, and that is The Proposal, with a long-in-the-tooth Sandra Bullock wringing a few last dollars from romantic comedy.
Sandra, I loved you once, peaking somewhere around 1995, but girlfriend, you’re not growing. And I know you know it. And you know your audience knows it, too. You fooled them once this summer. But having to discover All About Steve, at your age, is as much a chore for them as it is for you. (“This finding-out-about-love shit again,” I imagine you muttering as you report for duty.)
How you, and all the other gals—and all the other guys, for that matter—must envy Meryl Streep. At age 60, with an astonishingly flab-free 32-year career in film, TV and theater behind her, and Katharine Hepburn-type longevity clearly ahead of her, Streep is at the top of her game, as an actor and as a genuine movie star, that rare performer who can get butts into seats without gimmicks. How does she do it? It’s simple—she plays real people uncannily well, and we respond to that knowingness.
I caught up with Julie and Julia, her latest hit, the other night. Writer-director Nora Ephron was correct to split the movie’s structure between her Julia Child and the blogger (rising sort-of star Amy Adams, her co-star in Doubt) who’s emulating her. Child was pretty much a happy, unconflicted personality, and happy, unconflicted personalities don’t make for good biopics. The critics were wrong—while I wish the movie weren’t as shapeless as it is in places, and that Adams’ scenes didn’t smack of manufactured crisis, I didn’t want more of Child. I got what I wanted, and that was Streep busting through Dan Aykroyd’s infamous parody (which Child loved, and which is shown in its entirety in the film) and the subject’s peculiar mannerisms to get at the marrow of the matter. The way Child responds to later-in-life husband Stanley Tucci’s declaration of love on Valentine’s Day, the way she masks her pain when sister Jane Lynch writes that she’s having a baby, the unstated heartache of her life (“I’m so…happy,” she exhales), her quiet whoops at finally having her cookbook published…that’s what I wanted to see, and I saw it so clearly through her acting. Wisely, Ephron doesn’t make a big deal of Child’s prowess in the kitchen and indulge in food porn—the point is that if you apply yourself, like Julia and Julie, you, too, can master the art of French cooking. It’s not Iron Chef. It’s a discipline, and Ephron knows we’ve come to see her star practice her craft. (more…)
It’s been Beatles week here at Popdose, but I’m not going to write about any of the Beatles’ movies. Nor am I going to write about any of the movies that are soundtracked using all Beatles songs or Beatles covers (I did really want to write about 1976’s cover-filled All This and World War II, but I’ve never actually seen the movie, and it’s not available anywhere). Instead, I’m writing about a movie that contains one Beatles cover by one of my favorite artists, whose untimely death was one of the tragedies of my music-loving life.
American Beauty (1999), Sam Mendes’s directorial debut, turns ten this year. It also happens to be the first film I’ve written about for this column that won the Academy Award for Best Picture. I saw it in the theater twice — once with a friend and once with my mom — and I was truly blown away by it at the time. I don’t think the plot was necessarily what did it for me, though Alan Ball did write a fantastic script, for which he won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar.
The best part about the movie for me was the performances. I think every actor playing a major role in American Beauty was amazing (though I was less impressed with Mena Suvari, I have to admit). And while I was rooting for Richard Farnsworth to win Best Actor in 2000 for his beautiful performance in The Straight Story, I do think Kevin Spacey deserved the award. I’ve seen American Beauty on a lot of “most overrated films” lists, and while it no longer has the same impact as it did ten years ago, I still love it.
Few genres are as absorbent as film noir. Science fiction (Blade Runner), horror (Seven), and high school movies (Brick) have soaked up the world-weary, hard-boiled attitudes and atmospherics of Double Indemnity, The Big Heat, Kiss Me Deadly and all the rest. Steeped in French and German influences, American noir was this gun for hire further abroad as well. An excellent new set from Criterion, “Nikkatsu Noir,” shows how the darkness permeated the land of the Rising Sun.
Founded in 1912, Nikkatsu is the oldest of the country’s film studios, most noted by cinephiles for giving the great Shohei Imamura (Vengeance is Mine, The Ballad of Narayama) his start. By the mid-’50s, however, its output needed new blood, and with the success of 1956’s Crazed Fruit found it in ripped-from-the-headlines movies about the country’s causeless rebels. Nikkatsu’s answer to James Dean, Yujiro Ishihara, stars in the set’s first film, 1957’s I Am Waiting, playing a promising boxer who hung up his gloves after killing a man in a bar fight. A club owner who’s put a cabaret singer under his thumb forces Yujiro to put up his dukes as the movie reaches its punchy climax. (The content of these movies encourages you to write like this.) Mie Kitahara, Ishihara’s Crazed Fruit co-star, plays the singer. Atmospherically helmed by Koreyoshi Kurahara, the movie conveys postwar despondency with the country that extends far beyond its low-life waterfront setting; all Ishihara wants to do is leave for Brazil. (more…)
As you might have heard, the Beatles albums have been remastered, in a format called “CD.” (“Compact disc,” right? I owned some of those back when I had hair.) Not that you would know from this site—Popdose has done a lousy job covering this.
Actually, as you well know, Popdose has been on the leading edge of the new Beatlemania. I’m just bitter: When I misidentified Mae West’s version of “Twist and Shout” as a “Beatles cover” I was thrown under the bus as our magical mystery tour meandered through all the hoopla. But no Blue Meanie can stop me here.
This week we look at Beatles movies. No, not A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, or Yellow Submarine, which by Popdose law you have to watch at least once per year. Nor Let It Be, which I haven’t seen in its entirety. Has anyone since before those DCs, I mean CDs, were introduced? The boys won Oscars for their song score, beating out the fearsome competition of The Baby Maker, A Boy Named Charlie Brown, Darling Lili, and Scrooge. Did recipient Quincy Jones hand-deliver the statuettes, or simply put them in the mail to the fractured four? Whatever—speaking words of wisdom, this is the time to free Let It Be.
I really wanted to include a clip from the 1976 curiosity All This and World War II, which sets Fox-owned footage of the conflict to Beatles covers in a desperate bid to win over the kids and the “nostalgia” audience that was hungry for the next That’s Entertainment! Only in the 70s, folks. But the movie is presumably such a seething mess of rights issues that not even the copyright banditos want to touch it. With a little help from my friends at YouTube, then, my focus is the non-Beatles movies JPGR worked on. (more…)
I’m not sure if you’re aware, but this weekend marks my first anniversary writing for Popdose. I can’t believe it’s been a year already! I also can’t believe I haven’t run out of movies to write about yet. Pretty soon I’m going to have to remake some of my earlier posts with younger, more modern (you know, shittier) words.
I want to thank everyone who reads this column whether you comment on the posts or not. I truly do appreciate the fact that you guys seem to get my sense of humor and enjoy most of the movies I’ve chosen to write about. I also want to thank the rest of the Popdose staff for welcoming me into the fold. You guys are the best.
So, since this is my anniversary, and since this is Labor Day weekend, I’ve decided I want to take it easy. Instead of devoting a post to one movie and spending hours rewatching the film, researching trivia about it, and finding songs from its soundtrack, I decided to do something a little different — I’ve made a mix of songs from a bunch of different movies. How do you like them apples, huh?
Now, I know you’re probably thinking, “That lazy bitch!” But the thing is, I’ve wanted to do this for some time. I don’t know if you realize how tough it is sometimes for me to figure out what each post is going to be about. It’s not as simple as just choosing a movie I like; I also want to make sure I’m not writing about a soundtrack that’s super easy to find. I mean, where’s the fun in that?
My colleague John Hughes has graciously let me take the wheel today for this edition of Lost in the ’80s.
Fields of the Nephilim were the gothedelic deathrock cowboys of the apocalypse – dressed in cobwebby dusters, cowboy hats, and spurs – they delivered a string of singles and three solid albums before riding off into the sunset. (Sorry!)
To achieve their trail-worn appearance, the Nephs famously rolled around in piles of flour. To dust their dusters, as it were. According to legend, they were late for a gig when a local constable raised an eyebrow at their suspicious sack of King Arthur all-purpose. (more…)
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“Filler” is a term often used by music fans to describe songs that sound like they were quickly put together to take up space on an album in order to “fill out” the running time. Though filler can often be quite good, snobbier music fans sometimes use it as an excuse to turn their noses up at others. Ironically, this attitude can be just as annoying as the people the snobs want to put down.
As you might have heard, the Beatles albums have been remastered, in a format called “CD.” (“Compact disc,” right? I owned some of those back when I had hair.) Not that you would know from this site—Popdose has done a lousy job covering this.
I’m not sure if you’re aware, but this weekend marks my first anniversary writing for Popdose. I can’t believe it’s been a year already! I also can’t believe I haven’t run out of movies to write about yet. Pretty soon I’m going to have to remake some of my earlier posts with younger, more modern (you know, shittier) words.
