Posts Tagged ‘Bob Cashill’

  
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Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

DVD Review: Oscar Losses Don’t Deflate “Up in the Air”

by Bob Cashill

One of the few upsets at this year’s tepid Academy Awards was Precious beating Up in the Air for Best Adapted Screenplay. The film had won scripting awards from the Writers Guild of America, the National Board of Review, BAFTA, and the Golden Globes—but there was some backstage turbulence, which director and co-writer Jason Reitman unintentionally draws attention to on the DVD. He begins by saying that the disc’s commentary track was recorded on Dec. 7, two days after the movie’s limited release, and before the Pearl Harbor that had allegedly broken out between him and co-writer Sheldon Turner went public. Reitman, who shares the mike with cinematographer Eric Steelberg and first assistant director Jason Blumenfeld, says that his wife helped him on the script, but Turner’s contribution, perhaps tellingly, goes unmentioned.

Now, it could be that Oscar voters read the novels on which Precious and Up in the Air are based, paid close attention to how the films compared, and made an informed choice. Yeah, right. The likelier scenario is that the rumors hung in the Air, and that Oscar decided that the 32-year-old Reitman, with this film, Thank You for Smoking, and Juno to his credit, and despite a prior directing nomination for the latter, was somehow unworthy of its honor. And so Up in the Air—whose Best Actor nominee already had a trophy, whose two nominated Supporting Actresses cancelled each other out and were powerless anyway in the path of Mo’Nique, and whose shots at Best Director and Best Picture were in a world of Hurt—went home winless. The Photoshoppy cover art of the DVD and Blu-ray adds insult to the injury of its also-ran status.

Don’t believe it. I was happy to see my No. 1 film of last year, The Hurt Locker, win Best Picture and Director, but Up in the Air was, and is, my wingman. Conceived as a satire, then reshaped into something more empathetic and nuanced as the recession dug in, the film makes no great statement on the way we live now, and is all the better for that. Rather, it offers many smaller observations on work, and love, and lifestyle, as seen through the prism of Ryan Bingham—not the one who won an Oscar for Best Song, but the corporate downsizing executive played so wonderfully by George Clooney. Bingham is a master of those in-between moments—faceless flights, overnight stays in featureless hotels—that most of us look at as a chore. That skill equips him for his job, getting rid of employee dead weight as quickly and as reassuringly as possible. (Non-actors, themselves laid off, play some of the newly unemployed.) But recent college grad Natalie (Anna Kendrick), who plans to automate his job function, and a fellow traveler, Alex (Vera Farmiga), who takes his love life off autopilot, ruffle Bingham’s composure on his rounds as he nears his personal goal of racking up 10 million frequent flyer miles. However the writing went down this is a film that truly multitasks, functioning equally well as a surprising romantic comedy, an insightful look at the unemployment crisis, and an incisive portrait of a Teflon man on whom something finally sticks.

The flying-high commentary takes in the difficulties of shooting in airports and hotel lounges (“my next movie will take place entirely in a house,” Reitman says), deciding whether or not dining scenes should incorporate eating and drinking, and song selection. Disc extras are otherwise coach class, and include a look at the filming of the terrific opening credits and a few deleted scenes, including a wisely excised sequence where Bingham imagines himself an astronaut. No matter: Steelberg’s impressive cross-country photography is perfectly preserved on the anamorphic widescreen transfer (1.85.1 aspect ratio), and Up in the Air itself, now free of its Oscar season burden, is the main attraction. Keep it in your backpack.

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Sunday, March 14th, 2010

DVD Review: “Revanche” is a Disc Best Served Cold

by Bob Cashill

Note to self: Sentiment outranks everything else when picking a Best Foreign Language Film winner in the Oscar pool. I’m not-so-secretly pleased that the stone-cold, auteurist-approved White Ribbon didn’t blue-ribbon it, despite critical hosannas. But my favorite, A Prophet (Un prophète), didn’t make it, either. The Academy has no problem nominating tough-minded movies for the category, but the codgers who largely vote are a bunch of old softies when it comes time to decide. When reviews of this year’s winner, Argentina’s The Secret in Their Eyes, noted that it has a sentimental side, I should have known better than to bet against it.

By the same token, last year’s nominee from Austria, Revanche, had no chance against Japan’s tear-jerking Departures. But Revanche has had its revenge, being issued as a typically impressive Criterion Collection DVD (a two-disc set) and Blu-ray. Justice runs hot and cold in the movie, however.

Writer-director Götz Spielmann has been making films since 1984 (his award-winning student short, Foreign Land, is included on the second disc of supplements) but is pretty much an unknown quantity here. His control over his material is formidable, starting with the movie’s opening shot (and the disc’s cover), as the placid surface of a lake is disrupted by something thrown into the water. The ripples radiating outward from the disruption are signs of things to come, storywise. And we also get a sense of Spielmann’s technique. The film will be blunt, but there will also be beauty (two sex scenes are relevant, pointed, and unglamorous.) The take is long, as is the fade out from the scene, and there is no music, nor will there be any for the next two hours. In a disc interview the filmmaker mentions the “terror of silence” that seems to afflict our plugged-in, overcaffeinated society, and Revanche is determined to make silence as uneasy as possible.

Like Shutter Island, Revanche is a plot-heavy movie whose plot, while intricately worked out, is just a series of markers as Spielmann maps the human condition. That said it’s difficult to know how much to reveal. The first ripples are made by an ex-con, Alex (Johannes Krisch), who, while working for the mobsters who run the “Cinderella” brothel in a seedy section of Vienna, falls for one of the hookers, a Ukrainian illegal, Tamara (Irina Potapenko). Smaller eddies, meanwhile, are generated by a rural policeman, Robert (Andreas Lust), whose marriage to Susanne (Ursula Strauss) is at an impasse, due to an earlier miscarriage and continuing fertility problems. (An empty baby’s room in their house is a particularly insinuating set.) While visiting his grandfather in the country, Alex decides to rob a bank—a crime that puts him squarely in Robert’s sights, with disastrous consequences for both men.

But Revanche is no Charles Bronson meat-grinder. (No branch of the Academy ever looked favorably on those.) There is much brooding, as Alex sulks on his grandfather’s farm and Robert collapses from guilt. Pensively shot in the woodlands, the film has a deeply spiritual quality that parallels the collision-course storyline. Alex will meet Robert, and, more unpredictably, Susanne, but none of these searchingly acted encounters are boilerplate. (Strauss excels in the trickiest part.) There is vengeance—and also wisdom, mercy, and clarity.

Spielmann considers himself an “essentially unintellectual” filmmaker, but he is a very smart one, and while drawn to the “borderline of chaos” he never allows Revanche to go over the top or over the edge. It occupies its own verge, and disc supplements including a making-of documentary take you there. (The film is handsomely presented in 1:85 anamorphic widescreen.) On his best behavior in the accompanying booklet, the often-flaky New York Press critic Armond White mentions that “revanche” is also German for “second chance”—and the Criterion disc gives an Oscar also-ran just that.

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Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

DVD Review: Tony Jaa “Ongs” Your Ass with Prequel Fu

by Bob Cashill

The Forbidden Kingdom (2008) paired Jackie Chan and Jet Li in the nick of time. Two years later 55-year-old Chan is playing the Mr. Miyagi part in the Karate Kid remake and 46-year-old Jet Li is mothballing the martial arts to co-star in broader action-adventure flicks. Into the breach has stepped—and kicked, punched, boxed, and throttled—Thai sensation Tony Jaa, who in just three films has established himself as the guy to beat in this arena, and I mean that literally.

The 34-year-old Jaa is a world-class practitioner of the Muay Thai style of martial arts, which I admit means little to me. I’m not a purist about these things, and neither is Jaa; the DVD extras of his latest, Ong Bak 2: The Beginning, show him mixing in Hong Kong-type moves and whatever else makes for exciting action choreography. And that’s what I love about martial arts movies. There are pitifully few new dance musicals to satisfy me, and way too many CGI-built action movies. While the period setting of the new film is digitally enhanced, Jaa and company are the real deal, reveling in the grace and power of the human body. Not for nothing did Gene Kelly inspire Jackie Chan, and the lithe and lethal Jaa kicks it up a few notches. That’s entertainment.

The title needs a little explanation. Jaa burst onto the scene in 2003’s Ong-Bak (“Mean Spirit”), a film set largely in contemporary Bangkok, where he established his persona as a principled kickboxing rustic let loose among the wicked city folk. Retitled and reedited the film, where Jaa is in hot pursuit of a stolen giant Buddha head that guards his village, was a hit here under the title Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior in 2005. That year Jaa returned in Tom-Yum-Goong, which sends a different character off to Sydney to find a kidnapped elephant and its calf. A movie named after soup is a hard sell, so it was renamed The Protector (used prior for a Chan picture) for its U.S. release…and confused me when it turned up in a DVD shop in New York’s Chinatown as Ong-Bak 2.

Under any title, both films did big business worldwide. Like 1985’s Missing in Action 2: The Beginning, starring Chuck Norris (a septuagenarian tomorrow), the real, newly un-hyphenated Ong Bak 2 is a prequel, one that goes back a long time, to the early 15th century. The more involved storyline casts Jaa (who co-directed) as Tien, the son of a slain ruler, who seeks vengeance on the slave traders who abducted him as a boy. The guerrilla fighters who take him in train Tien in various martial arts, and the deed is done. Tien then moves onto avenging his father, a task that consumes the final third of the movie. The film, which endured a lengthy and somewhat messy production, ends confusingly, or perhaps, Buddhistically, with an Ong Bak 3 promised (footage is included as an extra).

The two Collector’s Edition DVDs (the movie is also available as a Blu-ray) contain a version apiece of the film, the first disc the theatrical edition and a second an “altered” version, which is actually ten minutes shorter and more streamlined. Jaa goes into the mystic in this one, and a little crazy with the hues and contrasts, as if the movie had mated with the color-washed South Pacific (1958). The natural splendor of Thailand is all this or any production needs, and Ong Bak 2, a Tarzan-type story with an Apocalypto feel to it, is best when basic.

“Drive-in critic” Joe Bob Briggs rates these movies on how much “fu” they have. You want fu—Ong Bak 2 has fu. Crocodile fu. Elephant fu. Pottery fu. Wok fu. Windpipe fu. Artery fu. Mask fu. Hair fu. Sword fu. Man in black fu. Flashbacks fu. Like I said, a lot of friggin’ fu, R-rated and splayed across the widescreen frame.

Impressed as I was, it wouldn’t hurt Jaa to show some humor, or cultivate a new audience. Jaa grew up in rural Thailand among elephants, and has a rapport with them. I let my little girl watch an early scene where Tien tames one, and she clapped her hands excitedly and was completely glued to the screen. It puts a similar, effects-driven sequence in Avatar in its place. The mean spirit might become a family-friendlier one next time out.

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Saturday, March 6th, 2010

No Concessions: An Open Letter to Sandra Bullock, and Her Reply to Me

by Bob Cashill


Almost three years ago to the day I posted on my blog an open letter to my long-time crush object Sandra Bullock. The news was not good. Read on…

Dear Sandra,

I’m afraid it’s time to have a serious talk about our relationship. Your latest film, Premonition, got off to an OK start at the boxoffice, but you didn’t have to be clairvoyant to foresee the reviews (“sloppy and absent-minded,” raved The New York Times). I must confess to you that I skipped the press screenings, and won’t be a paying customer. I haven’t even dropped it into my Netflix queue, where your last unstuck-in-time whackadoodle, The Lake House, currently languishes near the bottom of the pile.

Sandra, what happened to us?

We started off so well. I remember where it all began, in L.A., fall 1993, where, with a few hours to kill, I went to see Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes slug it out in Demolition Man. There you were, so perky, so delightful, reciting TV commercial jingles, stealing the film—and my heart. I don’t swoon easily, but your girl-next-door persona was captivating.

Better was to come. You hooked me in Speed. Driving that bus, and animating for a couple of hours the human woodcut known as Keanu Reeves–wow. I saw it three times at the movies, owned the laserdisc, own the DVD, and can never tear myself away when it turns up on TV. You were on a roll, Sandra. We were on a roll.

Then, the inevitable turn to romantic comedies, challenging Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan, in 1995’s While You Were Sleeping. Another big score, in a cute, innocuous movie. Not really my bag, Sandra, and I knew what was in store. Maybe you did, too. You now wore the mantle of America’s Sweetheart–but you wore the crown uneasily, as if you knew you could do better but couldn’t bring yourself to rage against the popcorn machine. The wholesome-image thing was tough to overcome, and the bad guys who threatened in The Net and A Time to Kill couldn’t beat it out of you. So you played along, in successful films that went in one eye and out the other–Hope Floats, Forces of Nature, etc. The very title of Miss Congeniality summed up your predicament, and that was the biggest money-spinner of them all.


Once you neared 40, however, you decided, enough was enough. You put on the happy face one last time, with the male you, Hugh Grant, in 2002’s Two Weeks Notice…you had no way of knowing, but the very last scene of the film was shot two blocks from my old place, on First Avenue and 84th Street in Manhattan. I looked for you and Hugh, and saw only your lighting doubles. I was a little disappointed, but, let’s face it, we had grown apart.

While relieved that you had unburdened yourself from movie romance–though your lengthy offscreen fling with Murder By Numbers co-star Ryan Gosling was a cradle-robbing surprise, Sandra, you saucy minx!–your choice in material remained questionable. After a fast start you had underachieved, an A-level star in C-movies like In Love and War and Gun Shy. You have sought to reinvent yourself as a character actress, tucking yourself away in an ensemble picture like Crash (so mean you were to your maid!) while taking the lead in pictures like Premonition–which, I fear, wipes out those gains. I’m avoiding the new film, despite the co-starring presence of the dastardly nip/tucker Julian McMahon, so as not to erase the pleasant memory of your limpid and lovely Harper Lee in last year’s Infamous. It wasn’t your fault that the other Capote picture stole your quiet thunder.


Sandra, I could go on. But it may be best for us to part, if only temporarily, on this more upbeat note. The Internet Movie Database shows no upcoming credits for you. Perhaps you are settling into wedded bliss with your twice-married TV biker husband “Jesse James,” and, yes, you sense my concern as I write that (what is it with you and your Practical Magic co-star Nicole Kidman and your choice of men? I see neither practicality nor magic in these associations). This hasn’t been easy for me to write. But I am cautiously optimistic for you. And for us.

Bob

A pall fell over what we once shared. Maybe it was the dig at her hubby, a union that has survived a child custody suit with Mr. James’ porn star ex. (We’ve all been there.) Maybe it was that I ignored her first, delayed response to me, in the form of last summer’s hit, The Proposal. Sandra, I’m sorry, I could care less as you rolled in the rom-com hay with another barely legal Ryan, Reynolds. I tried to remain positive, yet a certain trust had been broken—so much so that I missed your biggest, age-defying success as you retreated to the salt mines of kissy-face antics.

That is, until the next juggernaut rolled around, at Thanksgiving. Believe me, under normal circumstances, I would have bypassed The Blind Side, too. Sandra, my dear, doing these kinds of pictures isn’t going to get me out of the house (Speed 3, with you in an even stringier bikini, maybe). Then the shock, the awe—a Best Picture nomination for the film, and—they like me, they really like me—a Best Actress nomination for you. Even more of a head-turner was that my in-laws, who never go to the movies, went to see it. That tore it. I had to man up, put aside our differences, and do right by you.

Here’s what I wrote:

“The Blind Side may be the most banal film ever nominated for Best Picture. Even lightweights like Chocolat, and musicals from the 30s, have a little flavor to them. The Blind Side is basically the Glinda to the Elphaba of Precious. Where Precious offers a measure of relief The Blind Side is in a constant ecstasy of mild uplift. But it’s clever about it. The antebellum Taco Bell Republicans are gun-toting Christians, which the movie soft-shoes for audience identification if you relate and an easy, unbiased laugh if you don’t. To reassure blue-staters Sandra Bullock and her family separate themselves from the prejudiced “rednecks” who run amok at the big game (and Kathy Bates, supplying the energy that the usually bubbly Bullock is gingerly repressing, plays an enthusiastic tutor, a card-carrying Democrat). The gentle giant they’re nurturing, meanwhile, seems to materialize from District 9, Memphis projects so terrible they couldn’t possibly exist in the real world (right?).

The movie is a little too lazy to have strategized this, I think. (No one seems to be acquainted with the DVD concept of “deleted scenes,” so every repetitive sequence of Bullock’s family meeting with coaches is included.) It’s the kind of film that passes through you like a case of the sniffles, never turning into anything else—which can win over a huge audience at holiday time and, this year, tug at the heartstrings of voters in Oscar’s new order. If only this popcorn came with a little salt.”

All of this I said with love, Sandra (though I forgive you if you gave me one of those adorable rom-com slaps of yours. I would enjoy it, in fact). You are fine in the film, if, regrettably, you don’t get to show even a quarter of the sass that Roberts brought to her Oscar winner, Erin Brockovich. It’s almost like the Academy was rewarding you for dimming the lights and lowering the wattage, as if your stardom were tied to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Still, color me impressed.

Sandra, where do we go from here? If I were you, and in semi-likely possession of Oscar gold (such a leap from Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous five years ago!), I’d give the Hughs and Ryans a rest and concentrate on Blind Side-type parts, ones with more vim and vigor, though. Oscar need not be a hairshirt. But you are a lady of distinction now. Take the Meryl Streep route, mix it up in different genres, and revisit the girl parts when you’re 60, when they’re a surprise. (Meryl will not be playing them at 75…I don’t think.)


I understand that you’re taking another hiatus, and looking at the titles of your in-development credits on IMDb—The Sprinkler Queen, Kiss & Tango, One of the Guys, and Jingle—I think you won’t be going with my advice. I can’t blame you. I spurned you, I jilted you, I broke faith with you as you ascend to Olympian heights and I grasp at whatever stray bit of stardust falls from your Oscar gown.

There are comforting signs that what I liked best about pre-nom, non-rom-com Sandra is still around, as she reaches a peak plateau in her climb up the glass mountain of success, to quote the 1966 camp classic The Oscar (cheekily counter-programmed by TCM Sunday night, by the way). I do hope you kept your promise and attended the Razzies, where last year’s discredit, All About Steve, was up for honors. As you told Entertainment Weekly, “I do everything 100 percent. I’m more comfortable with criticism than I am with goodwill, because I’m more familiar with it, and I’ve made friends with it. And the Razzies are a great honor.” Sounds like the girl I fell in love with.

Hey, folks, don’t adjust that dial…it’s Sandra speaking German as she picks up a Bambi Award in 2006. (Her mother was a German opera singer.) I’d love it if all the Oscar winners accepted their awards in languages other than English. Ich bin ein Bullock-er!

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Monday, March 1st, 2010

No Concessions: Scorsese, Polanski Still Crazy After All These Years

by Bob Cashill

“Film culture today,” I muttered, as I waded through (and into) an unusually bothersome post on the usually half-annoying (but compulsively readable) Hollywood Elsewhere site. Look: It’s OK not to get, or to enjoy, Douglas Sirk pictures like All That Heaven Allows (1955) or Imitation of Life (1959). I’m not all that crazy about Terrence Malick or Wes Anderson, who have similar followings. But not to acknowledge Sirk’s continuing influence (on, among other things, Mad Men) or to back up what you believe and simply assert that “women’s pictures have cooties” and “melodramas are queer”—and then to attack Powell and Pressburger classics and Mildred Pierce—is a low blow even for a pseudonym-ridden blog.

My mood improved with a thread in the Arthouse, World & Hollywood Cinema section of the superior Mobius Home Video Forum. The subject is directors over 70 still wielding their megaphones, and there are more than I’d imagined, which is encouraging. Participating in both these discussions happened to coincide with me seeing Shutter Island and The Ghost Writer, from two senior, Oscar-winning cornerstones of film culture, Martin Scorsese (67, but, hey, he wouldn’t mind keeping company with Clint, Woody, Bernardo Bertolucci, and the busy 101-year-old Manoel de Oliveira) and Roman Polanski (76, as his attorneys won’t let us forget as he fights extradition).

The beancounters were ecstatic over last weekend’s performance of Shutter Island, a personal best, loot-wise, for Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio, in their fourth collaboration. It held pretty steady this weekend, which represents something of a triumph over its marketing. The trailer and TV spots emphasize its twists and turns and horror film elements, which are present and accounted for—but by the end of its labyrinthine 138 minutes it’s as much a horror picture as Raging Bull is a boxing movie. (Just as 1991’s Cape Fear, a master class in tightening the screws, registers as a meta-movie about gearing up a remake for a contemporary audience.) Not that Scorsese dislikes horror—there are nods here to the psychological unravelings of Val Lewton-produced chillers of the 40s, like The Seventh Victim (1943) and Bedlam (1946), as well as the run of asylum-set movies, particularly Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor (1963), which like the 1954-set Shutter Island trades in on the anxieties of its age.

As for the plot, well, if you don’t figure it out from the trailer, or guess what’s going on in the first half-hour, you will be genuinely surprised. (Not having read Dennis Lehane’s novel I can’t say how it delayed the inevitable.) DiCaprio’s federal marshal is sent to an experimental psychiatric facility off the coast of Massachusetts to investigate the disappearance of a patient, a visit that triggers personal demons, most disturbingly the memory of his wife (Michelle Williams). I don’t think Scorsese really cares that much about the mechanics, which are expertly managed but in the end perfunctory, diversionary tactics enacted by an excellent cast (inmates and physicians include Patricia Clarkson, Jackie Earle Haley, Elias Koteas, Ben Kingsley and Max Von Sydow). The high-dread production, from cinematographer Robert Richardson’s shuddery bounced lighting style (you’re not quite sure where the sources are) to the impeccably gloomy avant-classical score, assembled by Robbie Richardson, is likewise eventful, but not the main event.

Figuring out where this dark and storm-tossed road will lead rests squarely on DiCaprio’s shoulders, and he’s up to the task. I’ve almost always liked him, if I’ve never responded to him quite so strongly as I did in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), a remarkable performance for an 18-year-old to give. He comes close, though, in Shutter Island, as if his underrated portrayal in Revolutionary Road was just a warm-up for emotional punishment, and Scorsese’s faith in him is fully justified. Would Robert De Niro have smacked him around harder in This Boy’s Life if he knew Leo would one day usurp him as Marty’s go-to star?

DiCaprio’s last scenes left me profoundly shaken, and align the film as another of the director’s studies of fallen, fallible men, stretching from Jesus to goodfella Henry Hill, rather than the calculated exercise in suspense it’s been sold as. Pouring his vintage into a new bottle Scorsese has uncorked a film that unites the paying public and all but the most finicky auteurists, not unlike…Douglas Sirk.

The Ghost Writer is more modestly accomplished, yet I can see myself wanting to watch it again in a few months. Polanski wanted to film Robert Harris’ exciting historical thriller Pompeii, which I was eager to see; there’s never been a great volcano movie (Ghost Writer co-star Pierce Brosnan was in one of the more successful, Dante’s Peak) but the combination of a volcano and a Chinatown-like plot got me interested. That failed to erupt, so Polanski has instead made a film of Harris’ modern-day, torn-from-the-headlines-ish The Ghost. There have been several great political thrillers…and The Ghost Writer (a title change that makes it clear that this is not a horror movie) isn’t one of them.


Still, it’s pretty good, with the bitemarks of menace and the rueful humor that Polanski excels at when he’s working in this vein. Like the underrated The Ninth Gate, the film is about the talismanic power of books (which only an old master might still believe in), in this case one that’s only partly written, a tongue-tied memoir by a former British prime minister (Brosnan) living in America. Enlisted to help shape the tome is a ghost writer, known simply as The Ghost (Ewan McGregor)—the second one on the job, after the unfortunate demise of the first. The paranoia-tinged story hinges on The Ghost’s not wanting to end up as one as the PM, sequestered in his oceanfront house (a chilly, modernist place), is implicated in a terrorist rendition scandal, protesters appear on the island, skeletons tumble out of the closet and fault lines appear between the politician, his wife (Olivia Williams), and his personal assistant (Kim Cattrall)—who is also his mistress. McGregor and Brosnan, often a little bland, stir themselves in the company of these feistily secretive women.

The eclectic and spirited supporting cast also includes Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Hutton, 94-year-old Eli Wallach, and a chrome-domed Jim Belushi, not the likeliest CEO of a publishing firm with $10 million to invest in memoirs. But we value Polanski for these eccentric touches—the smudge marks on the canvas are his own, along with the rest of the painting—and a delicacy of craft that excludes hyper-editing and a lot of noise (the ticklish score is by Alexandre Desplat). The post-production of the film was interrupted by his arrest, and it’s tempting to read the film’s commentary on exile as personal. Polanski, however, isn’t interested in making a statement, or pushing the story into excess. The Ghost Writer is a hardback movie for Kindle times.

I can’t say how these two films, and the reputations of the makers, will age over 50 years. Despite their own chill, however, they improved my week on the film front and made February a warmer month here in the Northeast.

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Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

The Popdose Interview: R.J. Cutler Fashions “The September Issue”

by Bob Cashill

The production cycle of what turned out to be the biggest issue of a monthly magazine ever published would seem an unlikely subject for documentarian R.J. Cutler, who co-produced 1993’s The War Room, the Oscar-nominated look at Clinton presidential strategizing, and directed 1996’s A Perfect Candidate, about Oliver North’s failed bid for a Virginia Senate seat two years earlier. But Cutler says he’s less interested in issues than in the opportunity to tell a story populated by “fascinating characters”—and those are the fabric of The September Issue, which walks down the DVD runway this week.

The September issue of Vogue in the last gilded year of 2007 was a true fashion monster, coming in at 840 pages and weighing five pounds. Every mailbox-wrecking page was of course stamped with the imprint of its editor, the feared and revered Anna “Nuclear” Wintour, who was lampooned by a former assistant in the bestselling novel The Devil Wears Prada. Her reputation precedes her. When Cutler asks a current staffer if Wintour is the “high priestess” of fashion, she guardedly replies, “No, the pope.” There’s a walking-on-eggshells feeling as Cutler and his crew roam the hallways, observing the globe-hopping drama that goes into making the issue that will set the tone for the year to come in fashion.

That said, everyone encountered is walking, not hobbling around on crutches. Wintour emerges as more complicated than her legend, less like the praying mantis in the book and more like Meryl Streep’s layered portrayal in the film version (an excellent study of office politics dressed up in chick flick finery). As the classic comedy Ninotchka (1939) was advertised as “Garbo Laughs!” so too might The September Issue be described by the un-Wintour qualities on display, not least of which includes foregoing her famed sunglasses for much of the film: Anna Smiles! Anna Wisecracks! Anna (Almost) Panics (when a lavish Mario Testino cover shoot in Rome veers off course)! Anna Regrets (that her family doesn’t get why when she sneezes the entire fashion industry comes down with a cold)! (more…)

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Friday, February 19th, 2010

No Concessions: Richard Schickel on “The Eastwood Factor”

by Bob Cashill

I have a Clint Eastwood problem. But a new mega-set of his movies, Clint Eastwood: 35 Films 35 Years at Warner Bros., obliges me to take the long view. This is said to be the biggest box set ever devoted to a single filmmaker, dwarfing the hefty Ford at Fox or Criterion’s AK 100: 25 Films of Akira Kurosawa.

The collection’s title is symmetrical but inaccurate if you take it literally. Eastwood has hung his shingle on the Warner lot since filming The Outlaw Josey Wales in the mid-’70s, venturing out only for rare occasions like 1993’s In the Line of Fire. But the set begins with the 42-year-old Where Eagles Dare, a big-budget action-adventure made before the low-key Eastwood “brand” was fully established. (It’s the one where Clint kills dozens of Nazis and lets Richard Burton do the talking.) Next up is the equally explosion-happy Kelly’s Heroes, where the actor aims his famed squint in the direction of cut-up co-stars Don Rickles and Donald Sutherland. Those two films were produced by MGM, whose library is now in Warner Bros.’ possession. As Eastwood fulfilled a contract with Universal (which financed his first films as director, starting with 1971’s Play Misty for Me) he clinched his stardom in the Warner-produced Dirty Harry pictures, then stayed put, turning out the good (Josey Wales is I think the best of his self-directed Westerns), the bad (1997’s Absolute Power and Midnight in the Garden of Evil didn’t make anyone’s day) and the ugly (Warner has done the celebrant no favors by including the likes of 1989’s Pink Cadillac and 1999’s True Crime). (more…)

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Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

DVD Review: Enter “The House of the Devil”

by Bob Cashill

Solid craftsmanship disguises some rickety timber in The House of the Devil. Writer/director/editor Ti West says in one of the DVD’s two commentary tracks that he had Polanski and Kubrick in mind when he conceived the film, which is a more promising place to begin than the usual blood-soaked homage to Halloween or Friday the 13th. Though the movie recalls early 70s knockoffs of Rosemary’s Baby more than Polanski’s original, and could never be as obsessive as The Shining (or any Kubrick credit), I appreciate what West did with the place.

Young filmmakers—West is 29—are fascinated by the 80s, so the film is set then, with The Fixx’s “One Thing Leads to Another” blasting from a “portable” Walkman the size of a toaster oven and clanking big phones hung on the kitchen walls. (How did those of us with longer memories ever survive?) It’s as detailed as a Jane Austen adaptation set 200 years ago. But West’s modus operandi skips Jason and Freddy and the rest of the Reagan horror funhouse to dwell on moody atmosphere for much of its running time, in the vein of Nixon-era shockers that chose to string us along (like 1971’s Let’s Scare Jessica to Death or 1973’s The Wicker Man) or the horror-themed ABC “Movies of the Week” (The House That Would Not Die, Satan’s School for Girls, etc.) that standards and practices restrained from showing too much. The occasional showers of grain that fleck Eliot Rockett’s fine cinematography seem like a deliberate nostalgic touch.

All of the technical credits are outstanding, actually, with kudos especially to production designer Jade Healy and composer Jeff Grace, who really nail down the mise-en-scène in the Connecticut-made production. That’s key for a movie like The House of the Devil, which depends more on a shivery vibe than its fairly simple story to induce shudders. Cash-strapped student Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) takes a lucrative gig babysitting for the Ulmans, a reclusive couple who live in a mansion far from campus (and uncomfortably close to a cemetery). Her best friend, Megan (Greta Gerwig, a veteran of so-called “mumblecore” indies) is skeptical, but Samantha decides that for $400 it’s worth the old college try. That is until things begin to go bump in the night, and one thing leads to another, as a lunar eclipse draws near. Hmmm…could it be…Satan?

The House of the Devil benefits from a smoothly orchestrated pace. A big “whammy” occurs unexpectedly, followed by a lot of sleuthing of low-key disturbances as Samantha begins to suspect that the house is not a home. The waiting for something else to happen camouflages the fact that if Samantha had simply stayed put in the living room, stuck to soft drinks and crackers, and passed the time watching Night of the Living Dead on TV nothing would have happened, or at least nothing that she couldn’t have fought off from the get-go. As it is the third-act hullaballoo—pentagrams, rituals, knives, screaming—is a letdown after the buildup, as the banality of 80s-and-after horror enters the atmosphere.

Still, much of The House of the Devil is a reaction against excess, perhaps that of West’s mangled sequel to Eli Roth’s noxious 2003 hit Cabin Fever (the film was co-produced by Larry Fessenden, maker of some of the more thoughtful chillers of late, including Wendigo and The Last Winter.) Unlike Roth, or Rob Zombie, West makes good use of his iconic castmembers, rather than relegate them to blink-and-you-missed-them cameos. The maternal warmth of Dee Wallace (of The Howling, E.T., and Cujo) as Samantha’s landlady is soon offset by the chill of Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov, as the mysterious Ulmans. The tall, gaunt Noonan, who has established himself as an independent filmmaker and character actor (most recently in Synecdoche, New York), makes a rewarding return to his roots, as the killer in Manhunter (1986) and the Frankenstein monster in The Monster Squad (1987). I love seeing Warhol Factory alum Woronov in anything—her mean principal in 1978’s Rock and Roll High School (“Does your mother know you’re Ramones?”) and the hilarious black comedy Eating Raoul (1982) are gems—but it’s especially gratifying to see her cruel beauty put to good use here. Someone really should cast her and Barbara Steele as sisters.

Available on DVD and Blu-ray and–talk about nostalgia–a VHS/DVD bundle– The House of the Devil (1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen) has a pair of relaxed and informative commentary tracks, with West and the appealing Donahue (reminiscent of Karen Allen) on one and the filmmaker, producers and crewmembers on the other. A making-of, better-off-deleted scenes, interview footage, and the theatrical trailer round out a House that horror fans are advised to visit.

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Thursday, February 11th, 2010

DVD Review: “Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy”

by Bob Cashill

Roberto Rossellini’s status as a father of neorealism is eclipsed by his notoriety as the father of Isabella Rossellini. His adulterous affair with Ingrid Bergman in the 50s touched off a Brangelina-sized scandal that filled the tabloids through their subsequent marriage, the birth of their three children, and divorce in 1957.

But you can’t really be blamed for fuzzier memories of his work. Criterion, which put out a box set of his made-for-television history films of the 70s through its Eclipse line, has now addressed the cornerstone of his reputation with a spectacular collection that is sure to be one of the year’s finest releases. The “War Trilogy”—Rome Open City (1945), Paisan (1946), and Germany Year Zero (1948)—bundles classics that, print-wise, had not stood the test of time, and existed in barely watchable condition. Martin Scorsese’s enthralling survey of his beloved Italian cinema, My Voyage to Italy (1999), devoted much of its four hours to Rossellini, and to these films, but decent presentations remained frustratingly out of reach. There are many splendid extras here—but the thorough restoration that has returned these movies to cinephiles is the main event. (The three-disc set, each film sturdily housed in its own package, is produced by Johanna Schiller.)

That said, the extras are stellar, beginning with the essays included in the accompanying booklet. James Quandt, senior programmer at the Cinematheque Ontario in Toronto, checklists the basics of neorealism (location shooting, natural lighting, nonprofessional actors playing working-class characters, unadorned camerawork and editing, and documentary style) and shows how they don’t necessarily apply to Rome Open City, a film that started a movement but left its director dissatisfied. La republicca critic-at-large Irene Bignardi discusses the production of Rome Open City, set during the grim and suspicious years of the German occupation, which proceeded in fits and starts over several months as film stock and money ran low. The “more real than real” quality of Paisan, an episodic film in which Allied troops and Italians congregate and clash during the liberation of the country in 1943-1944, is the focus of an essay by University of Pittsburgh professor Colin MacCabe. Finally, former Chicago Reader critic Jonathan Rosenbaum ponders the film Rossellini considered “a descent into hell,” the chilling Germany Year Zero, shot in the ruins of Berlin.

The discs themselves contain much, much more; this set is the 500th Criterion has released, and the label has gone all out. Content includes: Video introductions to the films by Rossellini, from 1963; footage from 1970 of Rossellini speaking at Rice University; a 2001 documentary on the director by Germany Year Zero assistant director Carlo Lizzani and a 2006 documentary about Rome Open City, featuring, among many others, Bergman, Scorsese, Francois Truffaut, Isabella Rossellini, and Federico Fellini (who co-wrote Rome Open City’s Oscar-nominated screenplay); Lizzani lecturing on Germany Year Zero at a 1987 conference; film scholar Tag Gallagher’s video essay about the trilogy; and film scholar Peter Bondanella’s commentary track for Rome Open City. My second favorite supplement is an illustrated essay by film scholar Thomas Meder that shows how Germany Year Zero was influenced by a German, the director’s then-mistress, Roswitha Schmidt; Rossellini really got around (Isabella and Guy Maddin’s quirky short film about him, 2005’s My Dad is 100 Years Old, portrays him as an all-consuming big belly) and the result, this time, was a landmark film and not 24/7 coverage.

I most appreciated the video segments with Rossellini scholar Adriano Apra. There’s a knack to doing these things, and Apra has it, as he engagingly mixes facts with opinions. It’s not that the films are “difficult”—you get caught up in them quickly—but once one has concluded you’ll want some perspective on it. Rome Open City is probably the easiest to digest, maybe for the reasons Rossellini was fed up with it. A story of struggle and resistance against the occupation, the film stars a pair of familiar faces, comic Aldo Fabrizi as a priest and the feisty Anna Magnani (an Oscar winner for 1955’s The Rose Tattoo, and another of Rossellini’s mistresses), and builds considerable suspense as the Gestapo closes in. Its moments of violence, including a blowtorch interrogation, are still shattering. Rossellini hit several nerves.

Italian audiences used to more escapist films shrugged but the film was a hit overseas, which may explain why Paisan opens with the logo of MGM, the least neorealistic of Hollywood studios. The director threw away the crutches of stars and a forward-moving storyline in favor of vignettes, which begin with documentary footage of the Italian campaign. The stories range from humorous (a monastery unsettled by the presence of Protestant and Jewish soldiers) to profoundly stark, with an unforgettable finale. Most arresting is the segment focused on an African-American GI trying to communicate with an Italian boy, which in 20 or so minutes says so much more than Spike Lee’s tongue-tied Miracle at St. Anna (2008).

Apra calls Rossellini on his equating Nazism with homosexuality and perversion in his films, which gives Rome Open City a hint of camp when viewed today. But the Germany of Year Zero is so bleak fascism does feel like a communicable illness, one that a young boy trying to provide for his family catches from a rabidly pro-Nazi schoolteacher in scenes that have a queasy pedophiliac edge to them. No one is immune from infection in a powerful (yet sympathetic) film shot without a script, just notes that were apparently typed up and translated into German by Marlene Dietrich (!). Offscreen, this bitter movie did have a sweet side; Apra notes that when the German performers were brought to Rome for soundstage shoots, they immediately got fat on pasta, necessitating downtime for them to slim down for continuity’s sake. (Previously available only in shoddy Italian dubs, the Criterion version restores the film’s original German-language soundtrack.)

Ingrid Bergman so admired Rome Open City and Paisan that she wrote Rossellini a fan letter, suggesting they work together. History shows the two got more than they bargained for, and Criterion might consider a box set of their interesting collaborations. For now it’s more than enough to experience what Bergman fell in love with in the first place.

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Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

The Popdose Interview: Michael Stuhlbarg, “A Serious Man”

by Bob Cashill

Michael Stuhlbarg can be forgiven for feeling like Larry Gopnik these days. Luckless Larry, his character in the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man, does all the right things but can’t catch a break. So it goes with the Academy Awards: Doubling the Best Picture nominations from five to ten gave A Serious Man a shot at the top honor, but the number of performer nominations was unchanged. The Coens get another chance at Oscar glory, for Picture and Screenplay, while Stuhlbarg, everyone’s No. 6 pick, is stuck peddling the DVD and Blu-ray, which are available this week.

But the actor, 41, isn’t complaining. He did a get a Golden Globe nomination for the part, his first starring role in a feature. Last year he added an appearance on Ugly Betty to his expanding TV resume, which includes a guest shot on Damages and three episodes of The American Experience, along with the inevitable Law & Order and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Inevitable, that is, if you’re a stage actor who’s been collared by Dick Wolf’s local casting agents, which is where they, and the Coens, first sighted Stuhlbarg.

The actor is such the quintessential New York thespian that it comes as a surprise to learn that he was born in Long Beach, CA. He’s been treading the boards since the early 90s. Reviewing his resume (which includes an apprenticeship as a mime under the tutelage of Marcel Marceau) it appears I first saw him on Broadway in Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love (2001), spotlighting Tony winners Richard Easton and Robert Sean Leonard, then as Sir Andrew Aguecheek in a 2002 Shakespeare in the Park production of Twelfth Night, where the stardust of Zach Braff and Jimmy Smits got in the way. In 2004’s Belle Epoque, at Lincoln Center, he and the rest of the cast were somewhat upstaged by the salon-type evocation of the title period. (more…)

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