"Let's Not Talk About Movies"

Don't Make a Scene: Edge of Darkness (1985)

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:17:00 +0000

The Story: Opposites attract, they say, on the sub-atomic level. They don't come more opposite than Ronnie Craven and Darius Jedburgh. Where Craven is thin and angular and still, Jedburgh is large and in constant motion (it was hard for me to find clear pictures of him in the screen-captures). Craven is contained and Jedburgh expansive. Craven is British and Jedburgh....

Well, Jedburgh is a Texan.

They're also attacking the same problem from opposite sides. Craven is investigating the murder of his daughter, Emma. Jedburgh is collaborating with British Intelligence on investigating the Island's burgeoning nuclear industry. Craven doesn't yet know that the two investigations are related. The two are poles apart. Put together, though, they'll be dangerous. And they'll cause some damage.

But here, at their first meeting, they're sizing each other up, and in this episode called "Into the Shadows" of the British mini-series "Edge of Darkness," Craven is just beginning to see that there's more to Emma's murder than official channels can tell. And Jedburgh will provide the first details. The title "In the Shadows" refers to Craven first foray into the dark unseen corners of the investigation, but it could also be called "Through the Looking Glass" for it introduces him to "the new CIA" under Reagan, and the outlandish Jedburgh is a large white rabbit leading him along, a fat and sassy Cheshire cat, grinning. But he could also be Joseph Campbell's boon-giver by the road.

It was the roll of a lifetime for Baker, as Craven was for Bob Peck. Peck would go on to do features (like the dinosaur hunter in "Jurassic Park"), but for Baker, it was a resurgence of his back-burner career—nobody who's seen "Edge of Darkness" forgets Darius Jedburgh.

Now, the singing. The detective and the spy are sizing each other up: Jedburgh's mostly made up his mind, but Craven is unsure and suspicious. It is their common interest in country music that provides the first tenuous bond. And anyone who's sat through a Howard Hawks movie knows that once two people start harmonizing, they've put aside their differences and have started working together as a team, a combo.* They'll sing together again, farther towards the end of the road. But for now, they're seeing how they work together, how much the other knows. They're seeing how things play.

"Edge of Darkness" was filmed for British television, so scenes were shot economically and ususally in a couple of "takes." You'll notice repeated shots, especially the later one of "Caisson" Kelley, which still shows Craven standing next to him, even though the character is no longer there—he has since seated. Don't let it distract you. "Edge of Darkness" is quality work.

The Set-Up: Inspector Ronnie Craven (Bob Peck) is investigating the death of his daughter Emma (Joanne Whalley), which was initially thought to be an intercepted attempt on himself. But, things are becoming more complicated. Craven's digging leads him to suspect that it was Emma who was the target, plus he's getting inquiries from MI-5, Scotland Yard and there is an interesting government file on his daughter about her ties to an environmental group called "Gaea," and her break-in at a nuclear waste plant. He gets a phone-call from the man who has the file: a CIA operative named Darius Jedburgh (Joe Don Baker).

Action!

CRAVEN: Mr. Jedburgh?

JEDBURGH: Mr. Craven!

JEDBURGH: Darius Jedburgh at your service, sir. Come, join us!

JEDBURGH: Here, pull up a chair! Join the party.

CRAVEN: No Harcourt?

JEDBURGH: No Harcourt, hell. You'll find him over at Fulham, with his leg over some law student.

JEDBURGH:(shouts to the kitchen) Silvio?
CRAVEN: What about Pendleton?

JEDBURGH: Ah, it's past Pendleton's bed-time. You know he returns every night to the Abbey, where they lock him up in one of those tombs? They only let him out when the kingdom's threatened.

JEDBURGH: Now, Craven, I want you to meet a couple friends of mine. This here's...

JEDBURGH: Col. Robert G. Kelley...

JEDBURGH: ...known in the service as "Caisson."

JEDBURGH: An' over here...

JEDBURGH: ...you have Col. Mike Merriwether, also known as "Mad Mike."

JEDBURGH: They's just got back from South America, havin' a little celebration dinner here. Silvio! Drink for our guest.

JEDBURGH: C'mon, Craven. C'mon have a seat. Take a load off. Enjoy yourself.

Craven sits.
JEDBURGH: There ya go.

Merriwether wakes up.
MERRIWETHER: Who's this?
JEDBURGH: Craven, Mike.
MERRIWETHER: He showed up at last!
JEDBURGH: That's right, Mike.

Merriwether scrutinizes Craven. He is very drunk.

MERRIWETHER: I jes' wanna say this, Craven. I was damned sorry to hear about your daughter.

JEDBURGH: A Macallen.

JEDBURGH: Hope it's to your liking.

Craven drinks.

CRAVEN: Your friends are stationed in London?

JEDBURGH: No, sir.

JEDBURGH: Col. Kelley here's from Dallas.

JEDBURGH: You even been to Dallas, Craven?

CRAVEN: No, sir.

JEDBURGH: It's where we shoot our Presidents. The Jews got their Calvary, but we got Dealey Plaza. Mad Mike here's from Austin.

JEDBURGH: It's the home of country music.
CRAVEN: According to Waylon Jennings.

Merriwether perks up.
MERRIWETHER: Jennings. Who the hell's Jennings?

JEDBURGH: The country singer, Mike. Mr. Craven, here...

JEDBURGH: ...is a connosiuer of our country music. That is, according to Harcourt.

JEDBURGH: You know, Waylon and Willie. Willie Nelson.

JEDBURGH: Huh. Regular outlaw, huh? If his friends...

JEDBURGH: ...are to be believed.

CRAVEN: He just made a new record.

JEDBURGH: Nah, he "cut a disc," Craven. They may "make records" in London, but we "cut discs" in Texas. Cheers.

Craven drinks.

JEDBURGH: What was that song Willie put out about...uh..a year? "Time of the Preacher." Somethin' about the year of '01.

JEDBURGH: You familiar with the words at all?

CRAVEN: (recites) "It was the time of the preacher in the year of oh-one and just when you think it's all over it has only begun."

JEDBURGH: No, no Craven. "Now the lesson's all over and the killing's begun."

CRAVEN: Comes later.
JEDBURGH: Alrighty.

JEDBURGH: What comes in between? What, wait. Here it goes...uh...(sings) "But he cannot forgive her."

JEDBURGH: (sings) "Though he tried and he tried"
CRAVEN: (speaks)"And he tried."

JEDBURGH: That's right. "an he tried."
CRAVEN: (sings) "And the halls of his memory/still echo her eyes..."

JEDBURGH: Yeah.
CRAVEN:(sings) "And he cried like a baby..."

CRAVEN: (sings) "An he screamed like a panther/ in the middle of the night/ Then he saddled his pony..."

CRAVEN: (sings) "And he went for a ride."

CRAVEN: (sings) "It was the (Jedburgh joins in) time of the preacher in the year of oh-one."

CRAVEN/JEDBURGH: (sings) "Now the lesson is over..."

CRAVEN/JEDBURGH: (sings)..."And the killin's begun."

Jedburgh chuckles

JEDBURGH: You know what the term "preacher" signifies, don't ya Craven?

CRAVEN: "gun."
JEDBURGH: Yeah, a gun.

JEDBURGH: The "time of the preacher" is the time of the gun.

JEDBURGH: In the year of oh-one.

JEDBURGH: And when you think it's all over, it has only begun.

Craven looks at him.

JEDBURGH: Quite a thought. Something we ought to reflect upon.

Merriwether collapses on the table with a bang.

JEDBURGH: I think we oughta get these boys to bed, Craven. I guess they're all tuckered out.

JEDBURGH: We used to have this gun-sight in Viet Nam with an image intensifier.

JEDBURGH: Ya with me, Craven?
CRAVEN: (watching Jedburgh's driving) M-hm.

JEDBURGH: That's how I saw you on that little screen tonight. Like a sittin' duck. (chuckles) Harcourt asked me to give you sight of a file. Well, I wasn't too keen on it..''til I saw ya on TV.

CRAVEN: You work for the CIA?

JEDBURGH: Yes, sir!

Craven shakes his head.

CRAVEN: I find that hard to believe.
JEDBURGH: (chuckles) Oh. Time was when the station was full of joggers in Brooks Brothers suits. With Reagan in the White House, we get to keep a higher profile.

CRAVEN: White Rolls and Stetsons?

JEDBURGH: We're just blendin' in with the surroundings, son, look around. Like Uncle Ho says, "Blend in with the surroundings." You play golf, Craven?

CRAVEN: Mm-mm.
JEDBURGH: It's a great game. Closest thing I got to a religion. I really believe that God's a golfer.

JEDBURGH: That offend you, Craven?

"Edge of Darkness"

Words by Troy Kennedy-Martin

Pictures by Andrew Dunn and Martin Campbell

I'm pleased to be able to say "Edge of Darkness" is available (finally in the States!) on DVD from BBC Home Video.

* The videos below are of the scene from the series, but also another musical collaboration—between the heretofore bickering gunfighters played by Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson in Howard Hawks' "Rio Bravo." For now, differences have been put aside—there is harmony and teamwork. Finally, I've provided the trailer for the upcoming "Edge of Darkness" feature, directed by the series director Martin Campbell, but starring Mel Gibson as Craven and Ray Winstone as Jedburgh. It doesn't look hopeful.

Best Defense

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 14:31:00 +0000

"Best Defense" (Willard Huyck, 1984) Time to pull the pin of this grenade, light the fuse on this bomb, pull the switch, and send it down the ol' chute. Actually it doesn't need my help at all. "Best Defense," a comedy about incompetence in military contractors, * does its own job for it by self-destructing. Spear-headed by the husband-wife team of Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz (they wrote "American Graffiti," but are also responsible for the nasty screenplays for "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" and "Lucky Lady" and, disastrously, writing-directing "Howard the Duck."), this clunking, clanking film tells the story of Wylie Cooper (Dudley Moore), an engineer for a defense contractor going out of business. By complications of circumstance, he acquires the plans for a missile system, which his company then proceeds to nickle and dime into inoperability—yes, this is a movie supporting inflating defense contracts and profits to the expense of the soldiers who use the armaments. Hilarious. So funny, it kills. Sadly, it doesn't stray too far from the truth. The best comedic aspect to the sorry show is that Paramount Pictures evidently operates under the same philosophy.

Not sure what the storyline is, but, according to legend, audience previews for this cluster-bomb were so bad that Paramount—which must be blamed for shelling out the 18 mil' it cost to produce this—brought in then-as-hot-as-could-be Eddie Murphy as "Strategic Guest Star" to film comedic sequences (that was the intent, anyway) of him coping with the system in a conflict in Kuwait,** in an effort to salvage their investment.

Didn't work. It cost 18 million to produce, and got back 19 million in revenue, not counting publicity and promotion costs. One wishes one could say it was funny, but I didn't laugh once during the amount of time I watched it.

Confession time: This is the only time I have ever walked out of a movie (It was a free preview, so I had nothing to lose but time) before it was over. I couldn't endure one more second of it, and losing any more of my life...or my love of movies...to it.***

"Best Defense" was the worst offence.

* Potentially, a good source for black comedy, but might have been funnier if just done as a documentary about "The Bradley."

** The only interesting thing about this film is that it shows sequences taking place during a fictional invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, seven years before the Gulf War took place. Defenders of this film—both of them—insist that this makes the movie special in that it "predicted" The Gulf War. In reality, it didn't predict anything. It just made a safe guess where a conflict could occur. It might not occur to those defenders that it is conceivable that Saddam Hussein might have gotten the idea from watching this movie; "Patton" inspired Nixon to invade Cambodia. Hell, Saddam Hussein might have LIKED this movie.

*** There was one other movie I walked out on, truth be told—"Hollywoodland," starring Adrien Brody, supposedly about the death of George Reeves, but was so full of falsehoods that I didn't stay for the very end of the film, which would have depicted Reeves' suicide after several sequences that suggested it was murder.

Alamo Drafthouse and the Rollicking Adventure

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:44:00 +0000

More distinctive designs from Austin's Alamo Drafthouse for people who love movies and the art of the movie poster:

The Road

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 14:08:00 +0000

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways,
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

"Lost in a Haunted Wood"

A boy and his father are walking through the valley of the shadow of death. A cataclysm has happened, whether by the hand of Man or God it is uncertain and does not matter. The sky shows no sunlight, only the gray of dust clouds and smoke. The animals are dead. The forests are dying, crisping into fire or crumbling from dead roots. There is no food. No gas. No electricity. Buildings are crumbling or have been turned into abbatoirs for cannibalism. The boy and the father fear for there is evil anywhere for in the fight to survive, there is no moral contingent in the death-struggle to survive.

For the father (Viggo Mortensen), the worries are "food, the cold and our shoes." The fears are the roving packs of humans who'll survive by any means necessary, theft, killing, consumption. Some have taken to hacking off their own limbs to stave off starvation. His wife (Charlize Theron) is long dead, having walked out into the night, which is tantamount to committing suicide. Now the father and boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee, who looks eerily like Theron) are heading South to the ocean because to stay in one place means eventual attack. They have miraculously survived so far, and they must repeat the miracle day after day until the miracles give out. Among the effects the father carries are a gun with two bullets, one for each of them. And one of the life lessons taught is how to shoot oneself in the most efficient manner. "The child is my warrant," says the father in narration. "If he is not the Word of God, then God never spoke."

Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" was a best-seller and eventually won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Literature. John Hillcoat's film of it doesn't shirk from the doomsday scenario or amoral atrocities and has managed to find bleak blast areas of Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Oregon and Washington* to depict the nightmare world, post-disaster. It's somewhat ironic to see this film of people trying to pick up the pieces when booming next door at the multi-plex is "2012" showing a scenario that might have created the situation as a fun-ride. "The Road" is anything but rollicking, but is a great work of film that cuts right to the bone of what it means to be a human being, a father, and responsible. We've seen such scenarios before in movies, but they've all been kinetic desert chases or the threats are vampires, mutants and zombies—"others"—and not beings who've only been tipped by circumstance to preying on their own kind. This is no "pop"-nihilism for the sake of entertainment, with its "safe" zones, and goals of legended peace. It's a dog-eat-dog world and all the dogs are gone. Instead of pyrotechnics and thrill rides, we're left with survival—plodding, exhausting, fearful...on the edge of life and humanity.

It's tough stuff—"fight or flight" stuff with an edge of "Deliverance" maliciousness, but treated with an unsentimental "It is what it is" approach. So, be warned that its an ordeal (not as much of one as I was prepared for, but know that it is unpleasant), but is bursting with excellent work on all fronts. Viggo Mortenson's film-length performance is epic—a good man tossed into impossible situations, weakening bit by bit in the struggle, the panic in his eyes rarely allowed to escape to the rest of his face. Smit-McPhee gives one of the most clear-eyed kid performances put to screen, and their work is punctuated by tough, unsentimental cameos by Theron (one steel-edged performance, this), Guy Pearce, and Robert Duvall (in a short but masterful, almost lyrical performance).

It is not too much to say that "The Road" does its extraordinary source proud, while making its own path to greatness.

"The Road" is a Full-Price Ticket.

Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',
But I'll know my song well before I start singin',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
Bob Dylan

* Early on, I recognized paths that I'd walked on in Gifford Pinchot National Forest in the shadow of Mount St. Helens, and as soon as the hairs on the back of my neck relaxed, a shot of the timber-clogged Spirit Lake appeared. From what I've read, the FX crew used shots of the NW skies at the time of the Mt. St. Helens eruption to loom over the horizons—the whole movie has the looming density of a lousy NW winter day.

The Great McGinty

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:23:00 +0000

"The Great McGinty" (Preston Sturges, 1940) Guy walks into a bar in a "banana republic" and tries to ventilate his own head. Turns out he's an embezzler on the lam who's made one mistake and wants to end it all. The bartender manages to stop him, but doesn't give him any sympathy. He thinks he has problems? He used to be Governor of the State.

The rest of the movie is Sturges' tall tale told in flashback that turns around the bar's doubters and the rolling eyes. Dan McGinty (Brian Donlevy) is a bum. He finds out that if he votes for a candidate for Mayor at a polling place, the candidates' "political advisers" will pay him two bucks. Sounds good to McGinty. But if he votes for the guy at 37 different polling places. he'll get 74 bucks! The politico's can't believe it. They're petty criminals. They don't think "big" like McGinty. So, after a brief turner as a mob "collector," he goes to the next logical career step—politics!

Once Mayor, McGinty starts shaking down city fathers and handing out favored construction contracts, his "tough guy" tactics backed up by mayoral power. And nobody can argue with him, save the mob boss (Akim Tamiroff) that McGinty regularly has knock-down-drag-outs with. Oh, and his "married-to-look-good-for-the-lady-voters" wife/former secretary (Muriel Angelus), she gives him a kick in the pants every so often. But, when McGinty becomes governor, she talks him into doing some good for a change, and...well, you know that "no good deed goes unpunished."

The characters are Dickensian, the fable is Aesop turned on his toga. And drama turned on its head. A tragedy is a good man who does something wrong. And in Sturges' street-wise script, tragedy befalls a bad man who does the right thing. No moral codes are being broken—McGinty is taken down. But Sturges' view is a cock-eyed, if soberly cock-eyed, story of moral growth and the trouble it can cause, especially if you're working for the people. Told with brass and a smart alecky humor, it's a criss-crossed morality play told from the other side—an anti-Capra film, told with that director's straight-forwardness, but with more of a knockabout flavor.

This was the first film Sturges directed, and it has sophisticated ideas (which seem quite contemprary) told in a scruffy manner. If there's pretentiousness, it's all in the background and the sub-text, buried where no one can nod sagely at it. One gets the impression Sturges would look at a movie aiming for the handkerchiefs and blow it a raspberry. Before the year fades away, we're going to be looking at a lot more Preston Sturges, a director who doesn't get near enough acknowledgement in the movie history books. There's not enough Sturges in my head, and we're going to rectify that.

An Education/The Twilight Saga: New Moon

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:21:00 +0000

"Women Who Run with the (Were)Wolves"

What is it about the "bad boys" that attracts good women? Is it that "girls just wanna have fun" and the wild ones are more capable of showing them a good time? Is it something deep in our alligator brains that says the more aggressive ones are the better mates for procreating, even if they're not the better mates for consistent fatherhood? Is it the female imperative to "tame" the wild stallion—"I can change him" is the common refrain. Is that inclination an argument against monogamy in the human instinct, that women gravitate towards undependable, albeit aggressively undependable men?

All good questions, but I doubt there's a definitive answer (and even if there was, would it do any good?) But it's a thought to bring up, in light of these two releases.

Poor Bella Swan. When last we left her she was stuck in Forks, Washington in a terrible movie.* "Twilight" even without the vampire trappings sucked—it bit and bit hard. The script was overwrought and silly and the direction murky and slip-shod with some of the lousiest special effects since cartoon bats. With the second movie based on the "Twilight" series, "New Moon" things improve a bit—the effects work while sometimes dodgy practically, in other places hits a fine note of creepiness. The murk problem has been solved and a good director, Chris Weitz (who started out co-directing "American Pie"—which pays off here with better school scenes—upgraded to "About a Boy," and helmed "The Golden Compass," where he seemed a bit out of his depth, despite overseeing a massive production), who makes this installment look like a "film," where the first looked like a dashed-off tele-movie.**

Bella's (Kristen Stewart) life is spinning out of control. Well, she's pretty much running in place, but Weitz's camera is constantly circling, circling, circling as she reaches her 18th birthday and worrying that she's getting older while the two men in her life, vampy Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and young pup Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner, who buffed up for the role—you should have heard the ladies in the audience gasp when he whisked off his shirt, which he does a lot in this film) are frustratingly youthful. Edward, despite being 109 years old, still acts like a moony 17 year old, and decides that in order to protect Bella from a blood-feud with a vicious vampire tribe, he's going to withdraw his protection and mope in some other part of the world. That illogical motivation is the desperate act of plot contrivance that sets the film in motion; blame must go to returning scripter Melissa Rosenberg (who does much finer, more devious work on "Dexter") and book-author Stephenie Meyer). It creates a Swan-dive into depression for the heroine, who in moments of danger is warned off by apparitions of her love-at-first-bite, as if he's a wispy Obi Wan (emphasis on the wan!) Kenobi (there is one nifty sequence where a risky motorcycle ride makes her see periodic visions of Edward pass by like "Burma-Shave" signs). She turns to Jacob for friendship and support and motorcycle repair skills and finds herself having feelings for him, which he reciprocates.

She should have got a dog, and in a way she does—Jacob becomes part of a gang (or should I say "pack?") of werewolves, who are secretly sniffing out vampires in the night. She sure knows how to pick 'em, or as one of the Forks folks says "(she's) good with weird." Edward's a vampire, Jacob's a wolf, and, at one point, Bella jokes she's afraid of becoming "a cougar." Love brings out the primal in all of us.

Based even more deeply around a "Romeo and Juliet" motif, things get more complicated in—Osilo lo dicono?—Italy with a possible judgement by the Vampire papacy—the Volturi—led by Aro (Michael Sheen) who has the power to make judgements on the life and death of vampires. The better production values of "New Moon" speaks to the casting of Sheen and Dakota Fanning as two of the Volturi, although one suspects that Fanning's part was more important in the book, as she's under-utilized here. It's interesting to see Sheen in a role that doesn't have much at stake, prestige-wise; he draws his considerable precision into a florid, vaguely threatening performance that induces cackles and dread. For the rest, Pattinson maintains the James Dean persona, they still photograph his pimp-roll in lethargic slo-mo—one suspects it will be a constant in the series—and he's an interesting kisser. Kristen Stewart has the tough role, carrying the movie throughout (one wants to say boldly as she's in almost every scene, but the performance is of flickering and quavering) although she still has the annoying habit of not looking her fellow actors in the eyes—their neck, their chest, their ass, anywhere but their eyes.

It's a big improvement overall, solidly presented with a minimum of squish and a slightly harder edge, the main weakness coming from Meyer's plotting.

"The Twilight Saga: New Moon" is a Rental.

"Wilhelm Alert" here.

David (Peter Sarsgaard) is not carnivorous, but he's no less predatory—a wolf in expensive clothing. Seeing Jenny (Carey Mulligan), 16 year old schoolgirl, soaked with rain and burdened with cello, he offers her a ride and finds a smart, pretty girl studying for Oxford, studiously sophisticated but inexperienced. She sees in him all the things she's learned in books lived day-to-day and she is soon besotted with him and his life. He treats her as a woman, takes her to Paris and Oxford, concerts, jazz-clubs, and art auctions and she's in a rush to live life, rather than read about it. And David is her entrée.

Jenny is his dessert.

Based on Lynn Barber's memoir with a screenplay by Nick Hornby, "An Education," like the character of David, impresses you with its pedigree. Directed elegantly but simply by Lone Scherfig ("Italian for Beginners"), it manages to rise above the smarm of the concept, and turn into a cautionary tale pursuing success and "the good life" at all costs. Jenny's parents, particularly her father (Alfred Molina, really good here) want her to crack her books so she can make something of herself, or at least something better than him. He's as swayed by David—by his success—as Jenny is, granting weekend travel privileges so that she can have the experience of the places he's never gone and aspired to. Oxford falls in priorities. Superficial concerns over-take a fall-back position. And for both father and daughter, the older beau is a means to both their ends.

But it's a short-cut, a diversion, and has the potential of switching back and landing you exactly where you started.

One walks out of the film impressed with its look, its sophistication, its cast (Sarsgaard is always dependable to appear in cut-above material, and Molina has his disappointments but is frequently fun to watch), which also includes Olivia Williams, Dominic Cooper, Rosamund Pike and Emma Thompson—Thompson delivers an anvil-thumping line with such flippancy, it's more devastating than if she'd belabored it, and Mulligan is a real find, sometimes suggesting a young Audrey Hepburn. But in the cold light of day the morning after, one's opinion drops precipitously. Ultimately, it's a million dollar budgeted Afterschool Special with fine English (and one American) actors, and more precisely, it's the B-story of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" without the tragedy or irony of the rest of it. And one feels slightly hood-winked, reflective of the movie. Sure, it's getting great reviews and talked up for year-end awards, but it feels like a passing thing.

"An Education" it may be, but if feels like being held back, the lessons already learned.

Better stay in school, kids.

"An Education" is a Rental.

* To be completely factual, she was in Oregon substituting for the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. Now, they're in Vancouver, B.C. substituting for Oregon substituting for the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. The Oregon film board must be using Washington's play-book.

** To be fair, although nobody's talking about it, the budget for this sequel must be considerably higher than the first.

Don't Make a Scene: Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Scene 34)

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:48:00 +0000

The Story: How do you get "out" of a sketch? On vaudeville, you delivered your "killer" punch-line and sauntered off-stage as the band wacka-wacka'd you off. On film or video it's more formal; You could link sketches, throw interstitials, bumpers, segues...really, anything that could provide a shortest straight path from one to the other. So simple a "guest host" could do it.

On "Monty Python's Flying Circus" this was always a problem. The shows were such a grab-bag of material that transitions were always messy, even with the always-at-the-ready "And Now For Something Completely Different..." Pretty soon, there were the naked organist, complaints to preceding skits, Terry Gilliam's odd animations, and the random filmed piece that could serve as an intro. That is, if the sketches ended properly. If they didn't—if there wasn't a good enough punch-line, or it seemed too on-the-nose—the Pythons would simply put an end to it (punch-line or no) by going 90° from the direction they were heading, without pausing, or even acknowledging the preceding sketch. They broke rules, cheated and lied about it and that grew out of the comedy and became a part of it.

As in this sequence. Arthur and the Knights are attacked in a cave with nothing but torches and a limited budget (You couldn't argue with their tag-line: "Makes 'Ben-Hur' look like an epic!") to defend themselves against one of Gilliam's bizarre monsters. But how to end it? The knights are clearly out-matched and it would be nearly impossible to create a sequence that combined live action and animation without the budget. Somebody has to die. So, how do your resolve it? A unique way is found with a cameo by Terry Gilliam himself in the sequence. It's his monster. Let him solve it.

And so...he does.

Problem solved. On to the next set-up.

The Set-Up: When last we left King Arthur (Graham Chapman) and his Knights of the Round Table, they had successfully blown up the vicious rabbit guarding the Cave of Caerrbannorg. Now, they make their way through the cave, searching for the carved Last Words of Joseph of Aramathea, which may give them clues to the resting place of The Holy Grail.

Action! (shhh!)

Scene 34

KNIGHT: There! Look!

LAUNCELOT: What does it say?
GALAHAD: What language is that?

ARTHUR: Brother Maynard, you're our scholar!
MAYNARD: It's Aramaic!

GALAHAD: Of course! Joseph of Aramathea!
LAUNCELOT: 'Course!
KNIGHT: What does it say?
MAYNARD: It reads,...

MAYNARD: ...'Here may be found...

MAYNARD:'...the last words of Joseph of Aramathea. He who is valiant...'

MAYNARD: '...and pure of spirit...'

MAYNARD: '...may find the Holy Grail in the Castle of uuggggggh'.

ARTHUR: What?

MAYNARD: '... the Castle of uuggggggh'.
BEDEMIR: What is that?

MAYNARD: He must have died while carving it.
LAUNCELOT: Oh, come on!
MAYNARD: Well, that's what it says.

ARTHUR: Look, if he was dying, he wouldn't bother to carve 'aaggggh'. He'd just say it!
MAYNARD: Well, that's what's carved in the rock!

GALAHAD: Perhaps he was dictating.
ARTHUR: Oh, shut up. Well, does it say anything else?
MAYNARD: No.

MAYNARD: Just, 'uuggggggh'.
LAUNCELOT: Aauuggghhh.
KNIGHT: Aaauggh.
BEDEMIR: You don't suppose he meant the Camauuuugh?
KNIGHT: Where's that?
BEDEMIR: France, I think.
LAUNCELOT: Isn't there a Saint Aauuuves in Cornwall?

ARTHUR: No, that's Saint Ives.
LAUNCELOT: Oh, yes. Saint Iiiives.
SEVERAL: Iiiiives.

BEDEMIR: Oooohoohohooo!

LAUNCELOT: No, no, aauuuuugh, at the back of the throat. Aauuugh.

BEDEMIR: No, no, no, oooooooh, in surprise and alarm.
LAUNCELOT: Oh, you mean sort of a aaaagh!
BEDEMIR: Yes, but I-- Aaaaagh!
KNIGHT: Oooh!

KNIGHT: Oh, no!

[roar]

MAYNARD: It's the legendary Black Beast of...

MAYNARD: ...aaauuugh!

ARTHUR: Run away!

ALL: Run away! Run away!

KNIGHTS: Shhh! I think we've lost him.

[roar]
NARRATOR: As the horrendous Black Beast lunged forward...

NARRATOR: ...escape for Arthur and his knights...

NARRATOR: ...seemed hopeless.

NARRATOR: When, suddenly...

NARRATOR: ...the animator suffered...

NARRATOR: ...a fatal heart attack.

[ulk]

NARRATOR: The cartoon peril was no more.

NARRATOR: The Quest for the Holy Grail could continue.

"Monty Python and the Holy Grail"

Words by Graham Chapman, John Cleese , Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin

Pictures by Terry Bedford and Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam

"Monty Python and the Holy Grail" is available on DVD from Columbia-Tri-Star Home Video.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon/An Education

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:41:00 +0000

Juggernaut

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:00:00 +0000

"Juggernaut" (Richard Lester, 1974) With the letting loose of the whirlwind that is "2012" this week, I thought I'd pay homage to a neglected, but sterling example of the "Disaster Movie"—the modestly budgeted, very smart "Juggernaut." Made in the shock-wave of such star-culling epics as "Airport," "The Poseidon Adventure," "Earthquake," and "The Towering Inferno" that had the gall to ask: "Who Will Survive?" in its posters, "Juggernaut" played the same game. See? All the stars are lined up like ducks in a gallery reading to be pinged, just like those other all-star slaughter fests.

"Juggernaut" plays the game differently, though, while maintaining the conventions. This film is as soapish as the others in terms of interpersonal relationships. But in other disaster movies, people are collateral damage to the epic depiction of crumbling masonry. Lester's film is all about character—the "disaster" is man-made, the people at-risk are portrayed intimately, if not by stars, by strong character actors (Clifton James, Shirley Knight, Michael Hordern, Cyril Cusack, Julian Glover, Roy Kinnear—Lester's favorite buffoon is given a part to shine in this film—Ian Holm, a pre-fame Anthony Hopkins) you begin to care about. The cast is filled with faces who would become more familiar in later roles, but the two leads are Omar Sharif at his dyspeptic best as the Captain of the threatened ship and Richard Harris, who was never better than he is in this movie.

The cruise ship SS Britannic is half-way across the Atlantic Ocean when the line's president (Holm) receives a phone call from "Juggernaut" saying there are seven barrels of high explosive rigged to go off the next day at a predetermined time. Unless a ransom is paid, the bombs will go off and the ship will sink. With the ransom, instructions to defuse the bombs will be sent. Any attempt to defuse the bombs will casue them to explode. Holm's president wants to pay the ransom quickly, but the British government threatens to pull his operating subsidy if he negotiates with terrorists. While Hopkins' Scotland Yard detective attempts to find "Juggernaut," bomb expert Tony Fallon (Harris) and his crew are sent out to the Britannic, dropped in the ocean, and clamber onto the boat.

The focus shifts to Fallon, who sees all defusing jobs as a form of psychology—he's not trying to figure out the bomb, he's trying to figure out the man who made the bomb, and the tense scenes of Fallon examining one bomb to relay instructions to his crew are a whispered monologue of a man on the edge of death attempting to read the mind of the puzzle-maker in a battle of wills.

For director Lester, who is fond of games and puzzle solving, the film is one of his obsessions brought to life with the bomb design being particularly devious. Given its nature, one is put immediately into the Fallon mind-set that he is battling a man and not a bomb. And it is this interplay, where one man must rely on his skills and his knowledge, rather than the tides of Fate, that make "Juggernaut" sail past the other films in the sub-genre.

The Damned United

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:10:00 +0000

"I wouldn't say I was the best manager in the business. But I was in the top one." — Brian Clough

There are two major industries in Britain that have created rabid fans: football and Peter Morgan-Michael Sheen movies. Football we know all about. What we colonists call "soccer" is an obsession carried in the hearts and minds and livers throughout the entire rest of the world (as a matter of fact, you could probably make a connection between loving this injury-inducing sport and embracing universal health-care!).

The team of Morgan and Sheen, which started with "The Deal" and "The Queen," continued with the play and film "Frost/Nixon" (and will continue with Sheen again playing Tony Blair in Clint Eastwood's forthcoming "Hereafter"), here takes on the insular world of FC football and the storied career of Brian Clough, who took the second division Derby County Club into the first division and then the championship, and in a fit of hubris, took on the management of Leeds Utd, the club of his arch-rival Coach Don Rievie and was fired after 44 days. Here, though, the focus is not on the playing field, but the kicking and gouging going on in the mind of Clough.

The feats Clough accomplished were done with aplomb, ego, a big mouth and a vindictive drive to show up the other teams in the leagues, especially Leeds. But, that drive also gave him a tunnel vision when it came time to manage Leeds, which was done with a "new broom" approach, angering the players, the club's board and the fans who saw the team fall to its worst season in ten years after only six games. Consequently, he got the sack. As fast as his success was acquired, he fell ten times faster.

Morgan as screenwriter lets the mighty fall gently, depending on the grace that is shown, and whether the eyes are open during the trip. Idi Amin and Nixon, locked in their delusions, get no sympathy. Queen Elizabeth and Tony Blair are allowed insight as they're falling. Clough gets that insight after he hits rock-bottom, and Morgan's frequent collaborator Sheen registers every triumph in flashing teeth and every hurt in darkening bags under his eyes. Sheen, as a performer who's made a living playing performers, knows the degrees to which the face can display a false-front and genuine pain. During an introductory press interview before taking over for Rievey, it's a cocky Clough who, with no prior knowledge, already thinks he has the team licked, with secret winks, flashing tongue and a smarmy way of laughing at his own jokes. After a dressing down from the Leeds captain, he'll maintain the same confident smirk on his face, but his eyes will dull with fear as soon as the player turns his back. If Sheen felt any disappointment in not playing the "Nixon" part of "Frost/Nixon," he's compensated here for playing a personality of similar insecurities, but with an antic theatricality that the former President was never capable of. It's Sheen's show, but he's given ample opposition and support from Timothy Spall, Jim Broadbent, and Colm Meaney, who plays Coach Rievie with an irascible sense of entitlement.

Director Tom Hooper keeps things low-key in a BBC vid kind of way (thankfully dropping the peculiar framing that marked "John Adams"), but it isn't too long before one notices that, more and more, he's placing his Clough in ever tightening offices, hotel rooms, and locker-room corridors—an outsider trapped in his own prison of obsession and focus. One sequence is brilliantly twisted in its scope, or lack of it: as a much-needed match goes on outside, Clough stews and twitches inside his dennish office behind the stands, listening to the crowd reactions, not daring to emerge into the light to watch. Perversely, whenever a Derby goal is scored, the crowd leaps to its feet blocking out the only outside light to his office, casting him in darkness. You know that whatever Clough wins, he's lost.

"The Damned United" is Matinee.

2012

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:20:00 +0000

"...And I Feel Fine"

Earth to Roland Emmerich: "Cut it out!"

Between "Independence Day," "The Day After Tomorrow," and, now, "2012," the German director has now destroyed the world three times.

Well, enough is enough. Gaea's getting pissed.

And so am I.

Seventeen special effects companies, including Sony and Digital Domain (two heavy-weights and they're not even the first ones listed) were employed to create the global carnage on display in this flick, and there's still a recession going on. The attention to detail and dedication to photo-realism is the only evidence of professionalism in the enterprise. That's entirely appropriate as the only reason to see this monstrosity is to witness things blow up "real good." That they do. Los Angeles develops wrinkles and cracks that even Joan Rivers' supply of Retin-A can't erase and falls into the Pacific. Yellowstone faithfully incinerates in a verrry slow pyroclastic flow that the hero can out-run. Las Vegas becomes the new Grander Canyon (they were going to knock those buildings down anyway!). Hawaii's a volcano (but the surfing's great!). Washington D.C. becomes more chaotic than it already is.

I'll admit it. There is a giddy, monstrous 2-year old's glee in seeing the White House (which Emmerich imploded with a shiny blue destructa-beam in "Independence Day") being destroyed again—this time by the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy, propelled on a Potomac tidal wave (That's about as "high concept" as this film gets). And St. Peter's. Tibet.* All the hots spots become much hotter. The fly-over-and-through of Los Angeles over the splintering clover-leafs and under collapsing buildings is a thrilling roller-coaster ride through Hell with digi-people clinging to collapsing floors, all manner of auto-mayhem and even violence by Rolling Donut sign. But if you were to take out all the countdowns to disaster in "2012" ("We've got five minutes before everything blows!!") and just include the disasters, you'd have a 20 minute highlights reel, rather than a 158 minute poorly written series of contrivances and coincidences.

And everything blows, anyway.

You'd almost think the thing was worthwhile with Chiwetel Ejiofor, Oliver Platt, John Cusack, Danny Glover, George Segal and Thandie Newton in the cast. But they're only mouth-pieces for exclamatory dialog and furrowed brows. Seems the whole thing starts with a planet alignment, which triggers solar flares which sends out neutrino's that miraculously microwave the Earth's core and destabilize the Earth's tectonic plates, reverse the Earth's magnetic field and create monster tsunami's. Now, in this world-wide scenario, everybody in the cast has only one degree of separation to everybody else, so that they can look with surprise at their monitors and intone "Wait! I know that man/woman/dog!" Coincidences are the order of the doomsday, and little dialog goes unmatched without the appropriate chunk of irony whistling through the air and squishing the speakers with a thud. It's the kind of movie where hubby says to wife "I feel like there's something pulling us apart" right before a fissure opens up between them. When St. Peter's Basilica starts to collapse, the cracks split down the Sistine Chapel right between Man and God's fingers. Roland Emmerich is not a subtle director. No man whose ambition is to make a better "Godzilla" movie can be.

And what Emmerich is re-making here is "When Worlds Collide,"** a 1950's sci-fi flick that imagined Earth hit by another planet, and its treasures, two-by-two's of animals and a lottery-chosen clutch of humans are rocketed off to the convenient companion planet that precedes it. Here, the art is rounded up, libraries accumulated, animals airlifted, and although a lottery is mentioned, the folks who go in the arks are world leaders (naturally), the folks who can afford to pay 1 billion euros per seat, and anyone conniving enough to smuggle themselves on-board. The Best and the Brightest. Everybody else becomes part of the new petroleum deposits the survivors will profit from in the future.

It was at this point, I would have been happy to see everybody die, but no such luck. The last few minutes of the film are disaster heaped upon disaster, with survival dependent on the actions of one man—guess who? But, my concern was what exercises I could find to relieve the pain in my eyes from rolling them so much. They don't sell aspirins in the lobby. Not even chocolate-covered ones.

Truth be told I don't enjoy writing reviews for bad movies, as there's more inspiration in good ones. But I'll leave it with this quote from the director (in a New York Times profile by Tyler Gray) complaining about people's reactions to his making a film like "2012" in a "post-9/11 environment."

"If I cannot destroy a big high-rise anymore, because terrorists blew up two of the most famous ones, the twin towers, what does this say about our world?”

Our world is fine, Rollie, no thanks to you. But it says your priorities are really shitty.

And the only way to make it good to us is to make all your digital models of people caught in wholesale slaughter based on your likeness.

Verstehen sie?

Verstehen sie nicht.

"2012" is a Cable-Watcher.**

* But not Mecca. Fatwa's need not apply. Kinda lily-livered of Emmerich to not risk personal destruction when destroying the world for his art. Don't they have "sins of omission" in Islam?

** And just our luck, that master of the cinematic form Stephen Sommers ("The Mummy," "Van Helsing," "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra") is making his own direct re-make of "When Worlds Collide" to be released in 2010. Oh, the joy.

*** Part of the mission of these reviews is to promote the theatrical experience when it is deemed important to the presentation of the story. It is tempting to say that "The Big Screen" is the only way to watch "2012," because there are so many little demons in the details. But, no. The story is so lunk-headed and gleefully clap-happy nihilistic that the best presentation is merely putting a bow on a cess-pool.

Pirate Radio

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:41:00 +0000

"Rockin' the Boat"

The legend of "Radio Caroline" (and similar ships of the line) is one of the great stories of broadcast rebellion...and opportunism; during "The British Invasion" of Rock n' Roll the government-run radio stations (the BBC) limited the amount of "pop" to a minimum of hours. Seeing a demand among the populace for more, a small band of entrepreneurial renegades hired a ship, built a powerful transmitter on it and began defiantly broadcasting over the Island with rock n' roll—advertising-supported rock n' roll. Other ships did the same. At one point, another pirate operation, Radio City, commandeered one of Britain's off-shore defense forts from World War II and began rocking out.

"Pirate Radio" (released April in Britain as "The Boat That Rocked") is the latest in a string of 2009 releases that take the premise of a true story and make an easily digested, formula film out of it. The movie and its producers would have you believe the British ministry felt a moral imperative to stamp out pop music, the very thing that was filling the government coffers with tax dollars, and the radio-pirates were acting in a fit of rebellion and righteous indignation at their musical muses being silenced. They were on a Mission to bring the Music to the People.

Nah.

They wanted to make money. It was a bunch of guys who saw an opportunity to make it in a market that wasn't having its needs met. So, they created illegal, unlicensed operations that played 24 hour rock in international waters. Nothing succeeds like excess. And "The Beeb," run by the country's Post Office, didn't like the pirates because they were competitors, siphoning funds that they believed to be rightfully theirs. The word "pirate" isn't used lightly. But money is not sexy enough subject matter when dealing with rock music, despite that you can't have one without the other, positively or negatively.* And movies about turf wars work best where there's actual turf.

I'll beg forgiveness on this for the writer-director is Richard Curtis, who has managed to fill his movies with sharp utterances that we find ourselves wishing we were smart enough to make as comebacks. He says things better than we mortals do, and luckily he chooses to caper in the comic realm, having started as a writer on ""The Black Adder"," and ""Mr. Bean"," and graduated with such rom-com's as "Four Weddings and a Funeral," "Notting Hill," and "Love Actually"—his directing debut.**

Stylistically, the thing is a mess. A fast multi-screened 60's-styled opening that operates like some flipping PowerPoint nightmare explains the back story fast and loose, and from there pin-points a fictional ship, "Radio Rock," operated by Oliver (Bill Nighy, who does a fine balancing act of appearing totally stoned while being exceedingly "British"), and a crew of good-for-nothing-but-jamming disk jockeys, led by a token American "The Count" (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his nemesis, the beloved rake Gavin (Rhys Ifans), other jocks divided between "characters" and burn-outs and a just-arrived newbie named Carl (Tom Sturridge) who serves as the audience's surrogate for reams of exposition. This ship of fools maintains a fixed position in the North Atlantic, frustrating the efforts of one particular minister, Dormandy (Kenneth Branagh, just as twittish as he can be) and his assistant...er...Twatt (Jack Davenport) to bring them down by any means necessary. It sets up a neat heroes and villains scenario that completely messes up the history, but tries to gin up some advocacy towards the wackos broadcasting without a license to shrill.

The main story is the government versus pirates scenario where the government is a tidy, repressed bunch of stick-uppers and the disc jockeys are slobby loose cannons on deck. Carl's story of being sent to the ship, for reasons unknown, by his Mum (Emma Thompson***) after he's been expelled, and his subsequent attempts to de-virginize himself is second in priority (Gemma Arterton and Talulah Riley are the "bits of crumpet"—if I can use the period vernacular—employed in the attempt), and its filled out with petty bickering on-board ship and various personal crises among the disc jockeys. Hi-jinks on the high seas.

That all sounds perfectly dreadful in summation, but Curtis is deft in the details, providing a lot of genuinely earned laughs, and pulling off some nice little moments—one example being a post-heart-crushing of Carl, where he sits dejected in the ship's meeting room, where he's soon joined by fellow crew who try to boost his spirits with chocolate and crisps. When he has none of it, they begin to eat the cookies and drink the drink until he finally pulls his head out and nibbles with them. The unspoken lesson: you have to shoot while the geese are flying, chappie. That it's done without words and with "Bean-ish" comic timing makes it good writing and good film.

But, if Curtis and crew deigned not to complicate the story particulars, it's assured that they wouldn't take the film into uncharted dramatic waters, so they turn it into a "crisis" where "the people" triumph, conflicts are washed away, everybody gets paired up and Rock n' Roll will never die.

And artists get a penny per disc sold, if they're lucky.

The film did poorly in its Anglicized form, where it was shown at a length of 140 minutes, which is excessive for any comedy. For the titularly changed "States" version, twenty minutes were cut, but it doesn't solve a basic problem. Today's audiences may not have the same flavor of love of rock music as director Curtis does. The market is super-saturated with it on all levels, and a people's version of piracy, through peer to peer networks, has exposed what was thought of as devotion as merely acquisitiveness. How much love can you have for an artist's work if you're perfectly happy to rip him off? **** This is the market-place the film is preaching to and trying to reach.

So enough talk of saving rock music to sell the movie. It's a sham. What is there is genuine laugh out-loud moments, a persistent air of tart larkiness several cuts above your standard "Carry On" movie and a killer soundtrack of innocent-sounding 60's standards. It's fun.

"Pirate Radio" is a very cheap bargain-price Matinee.

* Unless you download your favorite artists' music illegally, of course. Then they get screwed. Ain't devotion grand?

** He also co-wrote the two "Bridget Jones' Diary" movies and for "The Vicar of Dibney"

*** Thompson does a lovingly vapid 60's hipster, with cigarette holder, moonish sun-glasses, and Mary Quant checkered coat, reminding one of Vanessa Redgrave in her "spacey" days. And I guess you can't do a 60's movie without putting January Jones in it, so she's there, too. Here's a thought: Most of the women in the film, save the on-board lesbian who takes care of "the boys," are duplicitous. What's up with that?

**** And, not to belabor the point (BUT!) radio stations have a blanket agreement with music publishers (BMI and ASCAP, say) to pay the artists for the music played. The Pirate stations were under no obligation to do so, and probably didn't. So much for promoting rock.

Don't Make a Scene: Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Scene 33)

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 14:02:00 +0000

The Story: This is one of those scenes in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" where, in the Python series, a British Officer like, for instance, "Brigadier Arthur Gormanstrop (Mrs.)" would interrupt protesting the sketch was merely "silly" and be halted forthwith immediately.*

Silly, yes.

And an exercise in extremes. Build-up/Dissipate/Surprise/Build-up/Drag-Out/Dissipate. The threat of a creature "so foul, so cruel that no man has fought it and lived" turns out to be a rabbit. That's one turn-around. But a rabbit that leaps impossibly, screeching and tearing out the very sinews and gristle of its opponents. That's another turn-around. We're given an over-the-top (and under-budgeted) cheap-jack Peckinpavian action sequence with puppetry and spurting blood as the berserker-bunny tears through the ranks of the Knights (and "Brave" Sir Robin at this point is very rank), leading to one of the best battle commands in movies ("Run away!"), and my favorite line of the sequence: "That rabbit is dynamite!" The only solution, as it usually is in Arthurian legends and movie epics, is a combination of religion and warfare which, in theory, should be exclusive, but has had so much practice, the two are seemingly inseparable. "Brother Maynard, fetch the Holy Hand Grenade!"

Oh! And love the shot of the Knights seemingly emerging from a skull's nose-holes. Can't decide who might have planned that shot: Gilliam or Jones?

The Set-Up: When last we left Arthur (Graham Chapman) and his Knights of the Round Table, they had encountered Tim the Enchanter (John Cleese), who offered to help them find the Holy Grail by leading them to the carved last words of Olfin Bedwere of Rheged in the cave of Caerbannog, guarded by a creature most foul, most cruel "with great big nasty teeth."

Well, they're there.

Action!

Scene 33

[clop clop whinny]

KNIGHT: They're nervous, sire.

ARTHUR: Then we'd best leave them here and carry on on foot. Dis-mount!

TIM: Behold the cave of Caerbannog!

ARTHUR: Right! Keep me covered.
KNIGHT: What with?
ARTHUR: Just keep me covered.
TIM: Too late!
[chord]

ARTHUR: What?
TIM: There he is!

ARTHUR: Where?
TIM: There!

ARTHUR: What, behind the rabbit?

TIM: It is the rabbit!

ARTHUR: You silly sod! You got us all worked up!

TIM: Well, that's no ordinary rabbit. That's the most...

TIM:...foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent...

TIM: ...you ever set eyes on.
ROBIN: You tit! I soiled my armor I was so scared!
TIM: Look, that rabbit's got a vicious streak a mile wide, it's a
killer!

KNIGHT: Get stuffed!
TIM: It'll do you a trick, mate!
KNIGHT: Oh, yeah?
ROBIN: You mangy Scot git!

TIM: I'm warning you!
ROBIN: What's he do, nibble your bum?
TIM: He's got huge, sharp-- he can leap about-- look at the bones!

ARTHUR: Go on, Boris. Chop his head off!

BORIS: Right! Silly little bleeder. One rabbit stew comin' right up!

TIM: Look!

[squeak] The rabbit leaps in the air and attacks Boris, biting off his head.

BORIS: Aaaugh!
[chord]

ARTHUR: Jesus Christ!
TIM: I warned you!

ROBIN: I done it again!

TIM: I warned you! But did you listen to me? Oh, no, you knew it all, didn't you? Oh, it's just a harmless little bunny, isn't it? Well, it's always the same, I always--

ARTHUR: Oh, shut up!
TIM: --But do they listen to me?--
ARTHUR: Right!
TIM: -Oh, no--

KNIGHTS: Charge!

[squeak squeak]

KNIGHTS: Aaaaugh!

[squeak squeak]

KNIGHTS: Aaaaugh!

[squeak squeak]

KNIGHTS: Aaaaugh!

[squeak squeak]

[squeak squeak]

ARTHUR: Run away! Run away!!

KNIGHTS: Run away! Run away!

TIM (exits laughing): Haw haw haw. Haw haw haw. Haw haw.

ARTHUR: Right. How many did we lose?
KNIGHT: Gawain.
KNIGHT: Hector.
ARTHUR: And Boris. That's five.
GALAHAD: Three, sir.

ARTHUR: Three. Three. And we'd better not risk another frontal assault, that rabbit's dynamite.

ROBIN: Would it help to confuse it if we run away more?
ARTHUR: Oh, shut up and go and change your armor.

GALAHAD: Let us taunt it! It may become so cross that it will make
a mistake.
ARTHUR: Like what?

GALAHAD: Well,....

ARTHUR: Have we got bows?
KNIGHT: No.
LAUNCELOT: We have the Holy Hand Grenade.
ARTHUR: Yes, of course! The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch! 'Tis one
of the sacred relics Brother Maynard carries with him!

ARTHUR: Brother Maynard!

ARTHUR: Bring up the Holy Hand Grenade!
[chanting]

ARTHUR: How does it, uh... how does it work?
KNIGHT: I know not, my liege.
ARTHUR: Consult the Book of Armaments!

MAYNARD: Armaments, Chapter Two, Verses Nine to Twenty-One.

BROTHER: "And Saint Atila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'Oh, Lord, bless this thy hand grenade that with it thou mayest blow thy enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.'

BROTHER: "And the Lord did grin, and people did feast upon the lambs, and sloths, and carp, and anchovies, and orangutans, and breakfast cereals, and fruit bats, and large --"

MAYNARD: Skip a bit, Brother.

BROTHER: "And the Lord spake, saying, 'First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then, shalt thou count to three, no more, no less.'

BROTHER: 'Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shalt be three.'

BROTHER: 'Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three.'

BROTHER: 'Five is right out.'

BROTHER: 'Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thou foe, who being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.'"

MAYNARD: Amen.

ALL: Amen.
ARTHUR: Right!

ARTHUR: One... two... five!

KNIGHT: Three, sir!
ARTHUR: Three!

[boom] The hand grenade explodes, blowing the deadly bunny up.

Some distance away, the police investigating the previous deaths (and now at the shrubberies of "The Knights who say 'Ni!'") hear the distant explosion and rush forward to investigate.

"Monty Python and the Holy Grail"

Words by Graham Chapman, John Cleese , Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin

Pictures by Terry Bedford and Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam

"Monty Python and the Holy Grail" is available on DVD from Columbia-Tri-Star Home Video.

* My mother-in-law would merely call it "far-fetched."

1776

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:50:00 +0000

"1776" (Peter H. Hunt, 1972) Reasons To Hate Musicals #1776 (Collect them all!) To hear this tell the story, the 2nd Continental Congress was split on breaking off from England, so, in a series of half-step measures, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson endeavor to draft a document stating their goals and intentions, having the Congress vote on it and sign it, and it happens on July 4th, 1776.

Okay. They actually voted on independence on July 2nd, not July 4th. They signed the Dec. of I. in August. They did NOT vote on the document FIRST and THEN declare their independence. The Southern senators did NOT walk out over a slavery clause in the Declaration (they didn't walk out at all), and Martha Jefferson did NOT make a conjugal visit to her husband Thomas (Ken Howard) in Philadelphia, while he writing it for the simple fact that she was stricken with complications from a miscarriage. Congressman Dickinson was the one with the unpopular opinion—that being not to revolt against England—not John Adams. Congressman James Wilson did not cast the deciding vote, nor was he yet a judge (nor was he non-committal about independence). Jefferson did not release his slaves, nor did Benjamin Franklin belong to an abolitionist society (until after the war).

Other than that, it's "perfectly" accurate.

But as Franklin (Howard Da Silva) says to Adams (William Daniels) at one point, "Don't worry, John. The history books will sort it all out."

They damned well better. If a Broadway musical can't hold true to George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion," it's self-evident they wouldn't to the events of the Philadelphia Congress' vote for independence from England. But if a musical's purpose is to show us the process of sausage being made, it would be nice if it hewed to the actual facts of the manufacturing of sausage.

One shudders to think there might be someone who believes that this presentation reflects how the matters were actually resolved because nothing could be further from the truth, and as if getting the facts wrong weren't enough, there is an air of needlessly cute lasciviousness throughout the whole thing. Blame that on Peter Stone's book. Yeah, the Founding Fathers had their quirks (or they wouldn't be fathers), but I doubt they were as coy in their coylessness, as they are here.

Some of the songs are powerful: the anti-war "Mama, Look Sharp;" the sarcastic rebuke of high minded Northern hypocrisy, "Molasses to Rum," (which, frankly makes you uncomfortable and want to leave the room—and you're merely watching the thing, rather than, say actually transporting slaves). But, some of them are just excuses to romp and show the statues and paintings in the rotunda as silly high-steppers. Drinkers, sure. Slave-owners, damned right. Petty men, sure. But not small-minded, thank you very much. And not egregiously single-minded and goofy as Richard Henry Lee (Ron Holgate) is portrayed in "The Lee's of Old Virginia." The low point may be "He Plays the Violin" sung by Martha Jefferson (a dubbed Blythe Danner), which, after a night of connubial bliss, sounds like a dirty metaphor for forming "a more perfect Union" (nudge, nudge). Even without the consideration of the emotional and physical pain the real Mrs. Jefferson was enduring at the actual time, being confronted with such a display, I think Jefferson would have viewed it a salacious affront, tightened his jaw-muscles accordingly, and, lost for words for the first time in his life, merely handed over—at full arm's stretch, not having a ten-foot pole—a copy of his "Jefferson Bible,"* after being strongly tempted to thrash you with it.

I guess finally what I object to in the whole flummery is a musical phoniness that pervades the whole thing, right down to the clapboard sets and the processional set-pieces, to the peacock finery of the costumes and the strutting of the performers. And the music and lyrics tend to dumb them down to types—uni-dimensional men with one categorizable "opinion," that informs their entire purpose. It may have been the goal of the creators to not treat the Congress as cardboard figures, but they hardly expanded them to recognizable humans beings but merely to dramatic conveniences. There's nothing like a revolution now and then, but not everything needs to be choreographed, set to music, or photographed with falsley festive swooping cranes.

"1776" enjoys the distinction of being the first musical to benefit from a sitting president's line-item veto. Producer Jack L. Warner (whose last production this was) showed it to then-President Richard Nixon, who objected to one of the numbers and coerced Warner to have it cut. Here is that number (showing ample evidence of the clunkiness and smugness of this film); "Cool, Considerate Men."

* Jefferson's personal editing of the Bible, which he did as an exercise, takes out the stories, the improbable and the scientifically unprovable—leaving, basically, the teachings of Jesus Christ. No miracles. No flood. No rising from the dead. A practical, moral and irrefutable Bible.

Alamo Drafthouse...in the 21st Cen-tury!!

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:32:00 +0000

More of those non-traditional, graphics intensive movie posters created for The Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas. The theme, this week, is Science Fiction/Fantasy. Atomic Battery to "Power," Punch in the Navi-computer, Go to Warp, and Don't Forget to Open the Pod-Bay Doors, Gort.

And Watch the Skies. Make it So.

601

A Christmal Carol (2009)

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:09:00 +0000

"God Bless Us, Every Mega-Pixel"

Everyone has a favorite "Christmas Carol" (or I should say, "version" of "A Christmas Carol").* A novella, it is the perfect length for adaptation to movie (with some padding) or television special (with some commercials). And being as it's in the Public Domain, anybody can adapt it without paying any money to Mr. Dickens (who probably haunts the producers, every one!). Hence the title: "Disney's 'A Christmas Carol.'"tm **

Disney may own it, but it's Robert Zemeckis and Jim Carrey's "A Christmas Carol," and it stands up against even beloved ghosts of "Christmas Carols" past. Face it. There are so many, that presentation is the main criterion to base a judgement, like "Hamlet." And format has a lot to do with what drives Zemeckis' version. Skip the 3-D aspect for a moment. This motion capture-CG "take" does some very interesting things with the story (adapted within a farthing of Dickens' original by Zemeckis himself) that are only possible with animation—the ghosts being integral to the story.

"A Christmas Carol" is a ghost story. The ghosts and their tours of Scrooge's life past, present and future must be enough to slap Scrooge giddy, make him "scared straight," turn his perspective from "profit" to "a common good."

In other words, it must turn him from a "cool, conservative man" to a "bleeding heart liberal."***

You have to have really scary ghosts to do that. Really scary ghosts. Any half-steps and Scrooge would be a "champagne liberal," and what good are they?

In this version, Carrey not only plays "Scrooge" (through Zemeckis' ever-improving "motion-capture" technique) but also the three Ghosts: a cooing Irish flame for the past, a roaring Scottish present, and a funereally silent Future. Each has their own presentation of their visions, Past whisking Scrooge to his old haunts, Present turning Scrooge's sitting room into a camera obscura to spy the current Christmas, flinging Scrooge to a stage street to present Want and Ignorance, two feral spirits—the one growing up violent behind prison bars, the other morphing into a hooker and into a straight-jacketed mad-woman. And Future, in a neat touch, forms itself from Scrooge's own shadow.

There emerges during the sequence a chase as Scrooge is pursued by his own nightmarish funeral cortege pulled by two red-eyed horses, a bit that old Walt would have been proud of. It soon deteriorates into a demonstration of 3-D (which Zemeckis and Pixar are already masters of—the previews of James Cameron's "Avatar" shows a few problems) as bedlam as a mouse-sized Scrooge must scramble through the sewers to escape a terrible fate. One could live without it, as well as the "snuffing" episode of Christmas Past were the sequence not a vivid demonstration of just how well Zemeckis uses the technology to bring a life-like edge to the movie. And that's where this "Christmas Carol" truly makes its mark.

Where this version of "A Christmas Carol" is unique is that this marks the occasion when "motion capture" CG "got the faces right." Zemeckis' previous experiment in this realm, "Beowulf," had an odd, plasticene feel to it, mouths didn't crinkle correctly in speech, faces wobbled in perspective. Not here. Carrey is a broad actor, to be sure. But he's also an actor of simultaneous quicksilver subtleties, and this film captures it all. It's one thing to flit the camera perspective through snow-storms and sail through the chains of a scale, falling chestnuts, and the "eye" of a wreath (all done in the film's credits), but it's quite another artistic thing to capture the look of pleased instant love on young Ebeneezer's face when he first meets his beloved Belle (Robin Wright Penn), or to show the pleading terror and remorse when a ghostly Scrooge comes "face-to-face" with a mourning Bob Cratchit (a perfect Gary Oldman). Keep your dizzying flights of fancy 3-D. It's in those moments of intricate expression when "Disney's 'A Christmas Carol'" truly soars.

"Disney's 'A Christmas Carol'" is a Full-Price Ticket.****

* Well, since you asked, I have my own favorites—usually the ones that are a bit scarier in their psychic psychological warfare on Scrooge. I like the "Alastair Sim" version often sighted as a favorite, and love the "George C. Scott" version for television from 1984 (he's scarier at the end than at the beginning!), but my favorite—and this is probably a case of "Mom's Apple Pie Syndrome"—is "Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol," which, even though it is a musical, even though it is a cartoon and even though Scrooge is Jim Backus, still manages to pack an emotional wallop, more than any "live" version I've seen, including this version.

** They've already done a version with Mickey Mouse: "Mickey's Christmas Carol" (1983). Scrooge McDuck played Scrooge. Natch.

*** I have to bring this up: a couple years ago one of the Zucker bros. directed a conservative version of "A Christmas Carol," but it took the Christmas out of it—I guess it's "An X-mas Carol," then,...talk about your "Wars on the Holidays"(sic)—called "An American Carol" in which a Michael Moore type (played by Chris Farley's brother—more popularly known as "Chris Farley's brother") is shown the Ghosts of America Past, Present, and Future in order to "scare" him into being more conservative—frankly the Bush II Administration had the opposite effect on me. Not to paint with too large a brush, but conservative political humor tends to be so ham-fisted and structurally unsound that it can't even see its own hypocritical ironies.

**** And a spendy one at that. Ticket prices are higher for 3-D presentations. I have some trepidations about saying it—this site being all about "value" and all—but I thought it was worth it. My opinion, merely.

The Men Who Stare at Goats

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:35:00 +0000

"If Looks Could Kill"

An odd choice for Veteran's Day, but timing is... everything.

Despite an opening graphic that cautions "More of this is true than you might believe" "The Men Who Stare at Goats" is more of a fantasia based on the reporting of Jon Ronson than an actual true story. Yes, the truth is in the details; during the 1980's there was an army troop training as psychic warriors tasked with perfecting ways of defeating the enemy beyond fighting. These included perfectly legitimate examples of psychological disciplines, like moving past one's fears and one's predilections (it's pointed out that 15 to 20% of "fresh" soldiers usually shot above the heads of enemy combatants—not wanting to kill anybody), heightening one's powers of observation, gaining a psychological advantage over one's adversary by one's actions and thoughts, and moved beyond that into training that was anything but basic.

Ultimately the goal of the so-called "First Earth Battalion" was to make "super-soldiers," "psychic warriors," or "Jedi knights"* who could intuit answers from prisoners, psychically deflect attacks, become invisible, "phase" through objects, and, most diabolically, stop the hearts of their opponents by staring at them.

In the movie, McGregor's Ronson stand-in, Bob Wilton, gets wind of a "New Earth Army" doing some feature work for his local newspaper, but it isn't until he's in Iraq—trying to impress his estranged wife—that "the circle becomes complete" and he meets the closest thing to an adept among the psy-warriors, Lyn Cassidy (George Clooney, looking remarkably like Dennis Farina) who's "been re-activated" on a secret mission to find his former commanding officer and creator of the First Earth Army, Bill Django (Jeff Bridges, who perfects his Leibowskish "bubble-off-plumb" hippie personification and manages to make it poignant). Cassidy appears to be legit, capable of cloud bursting and the one Earher who could drop a goat with a look. He's less than expert in the "sparkley eyes" technique, despite being played by George Clooney (who manages to play it completely straight while pulling off some of the strangest actions of his career).

Director Grant Heslov, Clooney's production partner and script-writer for "Good Night, and Good Luck," keeps things moving at a good clip, moving fast enough to avoid analysis or deep thinking. The story is slight, owing much to, of all things, "Ishtar" (two clueless guys, out of their depth in a Middle East war-zone) while waving an anti-establishment freak-flag that reeks of "M*A*S*H" (with Kevin Spacey as Frank Burns). The story, of remnants of the original NEA operating in Iraq and Afghanistan, seems plausible (given the way those wars have been run), but the story merely exploits true concepts to spin the gauziest of screenplays from, while poking fun at the "Be All That You Can Be" gozo-ness of an Army that's trying "to be wonderful."

Semi-satirical movies are rarely more than semi-amusing. "The Men Who Stare at Goats," however, delivers quite a few belly-laughs.

"The Men Who Stare at Goats" is a Matinee.

* The movie earns many—too many—knowing audience laughs by casting Ewan McGregor (the post/pre-Guiness Obi-Wan Kenobi) as the Ronson-surrogate reporter who is more of a "Doubting Thomas" than a "Padewan Apprentice." It's a little too "on the nose" and is, frankly, done to death, like some of the more winkingly obvious in-jokes in the "Ocean's Eleven" series.

Dodsworth

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:41:00 +0000

"Dodsworth" (William Wyler, 1936) "Why are Americans always such snobs?" asks David Niven's snobbish Capt. Clyde Lockert.

Well, the answer is that there are two kinds of people in this world: people who lump people together with presumptive generalizations and those who don't. And the best place to lump people together is a cruise ship. Just ask the captain of "The Love Boat."

Sinclair Lewis's 1929 novel about "us" and "them," maturity of age or the lack of it, and the pull and drag of greener pastures was adapted for the stage, and then film, by Sidney Howard and directed both times by William Wyler.

The tale of two small-town empty-nesters—he's a retired auto manufacturer looking for a new challenge, and she's looking for a long-desired European vacation among the sophisticates—is a long, slow sunset of ships passing in the night and the attraction of what has been missed. For Dodsworth (Walter Huston), the trip is an adventure, eye-opening in the possibilities of what the world has to offer. For his wife Fran (Ruth Chatterton), it is an opportunity to move among the elite, whose charm and manners are nothing like her folksy husband's. Eight years her elder, she resents him for making her appear older than she is to the new crowd with whom she seeks attention and company. Attempting to catch a youth-enhancing lightning in a bottle, she begins to have affairs behind his back, risking their marriage and future. The difference between the two after a long marriage with children is the difference between living a life and living a lie—embracing life or avoiding it.

It's a tough movie, even tougher coming as it does from the "speak your piece" 1930's, and it still hearkens to values and the lure of the new and glitzy—of those who jump into life with both feet, and those who choose to remain in the shallow end of the pool. And it's interesting to see a movie that not only focuses on "Can this marriage be saved", but "Should it?" It's amazing how contemporary and timeless "old" movies can be. Their wisdom is always showing up the less mature output of its antecedents.

Wyler's direction is unfussy, placing the camera where it can do the most good, and with a large cast roaming about that usually means some deep-focus shots of the entire "stage." The cast alternates between good actors that you like and you want to slap (although given Huston's robust characterization, what woman wouldn't want a bit of her own limelight?) and the performances, though never vocally subtle—gotta pick up that dialogue!—are helped by the director's intricate lighting and camera placement.

And it's always worth checking out a movie with Walter Huston or Mary Astor.

"Dodsworth" became a part of the National Film Registry in 1990—among the second 25 films chosen—and Time Magazine voted it one of its 100 Greatest Movies of the 20th Century.

Don't Make a Scene: Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Scene 32)

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:44:00 +0000

The Story: It's all funny, really...even the skewed credits in Nørsk. But my favorite part of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" comes deep in that very episodic and brutally low budget film (partially financed by the bands Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd) with a three episode strip that exemplifies what is best in the comedy troupe's methods of madness; we'll be exploring these over the next three weeks.*

The first, as exemplified by this scene—which pyrotechnically blasted whole columns of the film's budget—is their use of archetypal figures...even historical figures...and use them as grist for comedy. Here, we have Merlin. But it's not Merlin. It's "Tim, the Enchanter." And Tim is only too happy to enchant by punctuating his spit-flying Scottish presentation with gasoline-fueled demonstrations of legerdemain. Because an Enchanter is only as good as his enchantments, and Hollywood and Historical Epics always needed to fit those in to "sell" their magicians.

Not that John Cleese needs any help. Cleese ran the extremes of Python performing—he could be the self-contained announcer of "And Now for Something Completely Different..." or he could be a screaming loon in danger of hemorrhaging, and both territories are heard from with Tim the Enchanter, which makes the tag-line especially funny because 1) it's what we're all thinking, but 2) it's breaking the wall between art and artifice, acknowledging that a) it's only a movie and b) it's just a performance. No respect. No respect at all.

The Set-Up: It has been a hard and cruel journey for King Arthur (Graham Chapman) and his knights of the Round Table in their quest for the Holy Grail. Taunted by Frenchmen, disappointed by Camelot (it's just a model), mocked by God, delayed by the Knights who say "Ni!" and the hapless Black Knight, they have recently been forced to eat their minstrels (yay!), when they come across a being who might speed things up a bit.

Action! (shhh!)

Scene 32
[The scene is a rocky countryside. A thunderous boom is heard.]

ARTHUR: Knights! Forward!

[Cut to TIM atop an outcropping, throwing pyrotechnic spells at various rocky crags. The KNIGHTS halt.]

[Suddenly, TIM summons a ball of fire on the very spot he is standing. But he is gone! Just as suddenly, TIM reappears in a cloud of smoke just a few feet away from ARTHUR. He continues to toss a couple more fiery spells.]

ARTHUR: What manner of man are you that can summon up fire without flint or tinder?

TIM: I... am an enchanter.

ARTHUR: By what name are you known?

TIM: There are some who call me... Tim?

ARTHUR: Greetings, Tim the Enchanter.
TIM: Greetings, King Arthur!

ARTHUR: You know my name?

TIM: I do.

[Blows flames from his staff]

TIM: You seek the Holy Grrrail!

ARTHUR: That is our quest. You know much that is hidden, Oh Tim.

TIM: Quite.

[Shoots a rocket from his staff at a tree, which explodes]

[KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE applaud politely.]

ARTHUR: Yes, we're, we're looking for the Grail. Our quest is to find the Holy Grail.

KNIGHTS: It is, yes, yup, yes, yeah.

ARTHUR: And so we're, we're, we're, we're looking for it.
KNIGHTS: Yes we are we are.
BEDEMIR: We have been for some time.
ROBIN: Ages.

ARTHUR: Uh, so, uh, anything you can do to, uh, to help...

ARTHUR: ... would be... very...

ARTHUR: ...helpful...
GALAHAD[Stepping forward impatiently]: Look, can you tell us wh-

[TIM throws a fireball in front of him. He stumbles back, holding his leg.]

ARTHUR: Fine, um, I don't want to waste any more of your time, but, uh I don't suppose you could, uh, tell us where we might find a, um, find a, uh, a, um, a uh--

TIM: A what...?

ARTHUR: A g--, a g--

TIM: A Grrrrrail?!

ARTHUR: Yes, I think so.

KNIGHTS: Yes, that's it. Yes.

TIM: Yes!

KNIGHTS: Oh, thank you, splendid, fine.

[TIM shoots fire from fingers at rocky slope.]

ARTHUR: Look, you're a busy man, uh--

TIM: Yes, I can help you find the Holy Grrrrail.
KNIGHTS: Oh, thank you.

TIM: To the north there lies a cave -- the cave of Caerbannog -- wherein, carved in mystic runes upon the very living rock, the last words of Olfin Bedwere of Rheged

[creates thunder]

TIM: ...make plain the last resting place of the most Holy Grail.

ARTHUR: Where could we find this cave, Oh Tim?

TIM: Follow!

TIM: [he turns back] But!! Follow only if ye be men of valor...

TIM: ...for the entrance to this cave is guarded by a creature...

TIM: ...so foul, so cruel that no man yet has fought with it and lived!

TIM: Bones of full fifty men lie strewn about its lair! So, brave knights, if you do doubt your courage or your strength, come no further...

TIM: ...for death awaits you all with nasty big pointy teeth!

ARTHUR: What an eccentric performance.

"Monty Python and the Holy Grail"

Words by Graham Chapman, John Cleese , Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin

Pictures by Terry Bedford and Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam

"Monty Python and the Holy Grail" is available on DVD from Columbia-Tr-Star Home Video.

* Those three being their ability to take historical concepts and toy with them, their extremely comical use of violence, their satirical use of language, and their hap-hazard way of getting out of skits.

(That's four)

Right! Those FOUR being their ability...

Amelia

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:15:00 +0000

"Well...See Ya"

There have been enough bio-pics on Amelia Earhart that the only interest this one could hold would be in Mira Nair's presentation, or in any clarification of "The Mystery"—Earhart's disappearance during the last leg of her round-the-world flight. "Amelia" provides neither. It's is Nair's most conventional film, focussed on nailing the period details and the pictorial splendor of airborne sight-seeing. And as the particulars of the disappearance are so sketchy, the best the film can be do is merely suggestion (with a little obfuscation, but we'll get to that)*, "Amelia" comes off as a grandiose Lifetime movie—an "Aviatrix Flick"—that, while it occassionally gets off the ground, never really soars.

The problem is Amelia, herself. After many records and accomplishments (which the movie ticks off studiously), her story ends in silence and perceived failure, which unfairly casts a pall over the woman's storied existence. And Amelia was a taciturn presence, not unlike Lindbergh, projecting confidence by competence, her super-ego revealed only in her goals. Hilary Swank is a perfect choice to play her—thin as a rail but seeming corn-fed, horse-toothed with a helmet of straw—and she obviously did her research on Amelia's voice. But Earhart's newsreel performances are merely performances and Swank's Amelia has the same air of phoniness that Cate Blanchett's Katherine Hepburn had in that other aviator movie. Richard Gere as publisher George Putnam (and "Mr. Earhart") has the same vocal problem, affecting an accent that wavers up and down the East Coast. Faring better is Ewan McGregor as Gene Vidal (father of Gore), with whom Earhart worked with the government to establish air-routes and create the first commercial airlines; that the movie makes more hay of a speculated affair between Vidal and Earhart than that accomplishment is part of the film's weakness.

The buffeting lift and drag on this film may be attributable to two strong scriptwriters building on each other's work: Ronald Bass, who, if anything, tends to making his characters too likable, and Anna Hamilton Phelan, who doesn't (particularly in "Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey"). The two seem to clash on who Earhart "is," a symbol or human being, devoted to flying or feminism, faithful or philandering. Such "takes" on her character fly afoul of the issue that the film should have focussed on and never strayed from: the "true path" of seeking freedom. It's the one through-line of Earhart's life, from childhood (which the movie skimps in detailing) on. It is only in Earhart's narration (taken from her writings, no doubt heavily influenced by publisher husband Putnam) that emphasize a still clean sky with borderless landscapes below, a world without limits on the ground or in the sky, whichever your sex. That her life on the ground is forever hemmed in, trying to secure funds for that freedom, could have made a dramatic metaphor if the film-makers had bothered to notice.

But some of it's there. Enough to inspire if one wants to look beyond the ghost of the most celebrated "Missing Person" of the last century, and see what she accomplished while she still walked the Earth and conquered the sky.

"Amelia" is a Rental.

* Quibble section: Beyond her standing in front of a Patton-esque American flag backdrop that if one were to calculate beyond the frame would indicate fifty stars, and the montage of filmed endorsements that would be created for a medium yet to be invented—and they don't explain why she came in third in the 1929 "Women's Air Derby"—the details of the disappearance are fudged a bit. Her navigator for the round-the-world flight, Fred Noonan, is depicted as drinking before the fateful flight, which, though it might have happened earlier in the trip did not re-occur preceding that most precarious of hops to the tiny Howland Island landing strip. A recent PBS documentary on a re-creation of the fateful trip (right down to the aircraft used) seemed to hint that Earhart might have ignored Noonan's inclinations to fly south of Howland, where the pilot could have sighted one of two islands that might have accomodated a touch-down, and instead flew north, decreasing their chances with a dwindling fuel supply. But that is just one more theory in the dozens that have been posited in the years to explain the failure to accomplish what was, essentially, a risky maneuver even under the best of conditions.

Gunfight at The Alamo Drafthouse

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:00:00 +0000

The state of the contemporary movie-poster is dire; it seems like more posters are being produced for films (for an example, check out all the posters for "Where the Wild Things Are"), but the art direction that goes into them is less than inspired. The fall-back position, the least common denominator for the studios, are a photo-shopped cluster of movie-star heads that say little about the movie, its content or its style (check out the galaxy of posters for this Summer's "Star Trek"). For someone like me that reveled in the work of Bob Peak, Tom Jung, Saul Bass, Frank McCarthy, Bob McGuiness, Howard Terpning, Frank Frazetta, and Richard Amsel, the flood of dismal posters littering movie theaters is too many courses of a bland meal.

But deep in the heart of Texas (the college town/artists' enclave/state capitol of Austin) there is a place where movie poster makers are artists first and press agents second, and that is in the funky movie palaces owned by The Alamo Drafthouse, that still display a showman's glee in presentation.

Including posters. Good 'un's.

Herewith, some unfamiliar posters for some familiar westerns:

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:27:00 +0000

"Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" (Brad Silberling, 2004) Oh, sure. For Hallowe'en on this site we featured flesh-eating zombies and vengeful demons and dead souls that wouldn't stay dead. But in the warm comfort of the domicile, many flights of stairs from the garret in which this is written, the Hallowe'en movie of choice was this (to be heretofore crunched to "Unfortunate Events" to avoid a cramp). It might be the best movie Barry Sonnenfeld never made. It has his insensibility, his florid camera moves,* snappy editing, austere framing and live-action cartoonish gambits (lots of shots of peoples' faces gaping into the camera).

But, it didn't have enough budget and so Brad Silberling took over the project.

Silberling is a chameleonic director; he tends to take on the characteristics of whatever project falls into his lap—handy for his long tenure as a television director of such idiosyncratic shows as "NYPD Blue," but making him hard to pin down as a feature director. How do you explain the disparity between "Unfortunate Events" and his unfortunate "City of Angels?" Before you attempt that, let me trump it by adding the even more unfortunate Will Ferrell vehicle, "Land of the Lost ."

So, it's perhaps fortunate for Silberling that so much of "Unfortunate Events" depends on others. The Lemony Snicket-styled writing—a bit like "Miss Manners" without her morning pick-me-up—of dark, despairing fore-shadowing** inspires a switch-back Rankin-Bass-styled opening that comes crashing to a halt. ("This would be an excellent time to walk out of the theater, living room, or airplane where this film is being shown." says the Lemony Narrator, as read by Jude Law)

"Fade to Black" is the more appropriate phrase. Fade to monochromatic gothic steam-punk macabre, (which permeates the film, like a lighter version of "The Addams Family") as the film takes up the sad misfortunes of the Baudelaire orphans: Violet, a voracious inventor (Emily Browning); Klaus, a voracious reader (Liam Aiken); and Sunny, a voracious biter (Kara Hoffman and Shelby Hoffman). When their parents are killed in a mysterious fire, the Estate (executed by a piggish Timothy Spall), the kids are shipped off to the cunning clutches of Count Olaf (Jim Carrey), a dispicable actor who only cares for the Beaudelaire fortune. Treated as servants by the fiend, he decides to kill them off when it's determined that he'll only get the money when they're adults. And so he leaves them, locked in a car on a rail-road track with the 11:15 barrelling down on them.

What to do, what to do?

Based on the first three "Unfortunate Events" books ("The Bad Beginning," "The Reptile Room," and "The Wide Window,"), the film is as episodic as could be with the child-endangering machinations of the Count the single unsavory thread running through it. Upon Carrey's every entrance, Silberling takes the wise course of just hanging back, giving Carrey a wide shot (with distorting anamorphic lens) and keeping any other actor out of giggling range. So much of his performance is ad-libbed, you could make the case that it's Carrey who's driving the bus; things calm down considerably when Billy Connolly and Meryl Streep take possession of the children (and the movie), but gears up again when Carrey dervishes his way into the scene (Connolly stays out of his way, but Streep engages him, going eye-to-eye).

It's a good thing, too. "Unfortunate Events" could have turned excessively mordant to the point of leeching all the fun out of it, production-designed into stasis if Carrey wasn't there to break windows (and characters) in the proceedings. In that spirit, the cast is rounded out by such anarchic spirits as Catherine O'Hara, Jennifer Coolidge, Cedric the Entertainer, Dustin Hoffman, Jane Lynch, and Craig Ferguson that flit around the corners to keep things from getting too predictable, and deservedly more than a little off-kilter.

* He started out as the Coen Brothers' cinematographer.

** It's fun when doled out in tea-spoons of dread and low dudgeon, but if you want to hear it overdone, listen to the director and author Daniel Handler's commentary track on the DVD. Handler (as "Lemony Snicket") acts like your staid Aunt Petunia, who goes all-fluttery and horrified at the movie, which is funny for ten minutes, then overstays its welcome...by two hours.

Post-"Graduate" Studies

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:00:00 +0000

"The Graduate" (Mike Nichols, 1967) During the summer of 2009, the small rom/com "(500) Days of Summer" contained a line that hit home on many fronts. The romantic hero (says the police blotter-like narrator) formed his romantic ideas at an impressionable age due to "a mis-reading of 'The Graduate.'"

An easy thing to do.

Lots of young romantic kids grooving on the surface-tension of the movie, missed Mike Nichols' (and scenarist Calder Willingham and Buck Henry's) wise, dispassionate warning of a life led for instant gratification, something that went right over the heads of a clan preparing for "The Summer of Love." When we first find Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) he's going nowhere mighty fast: first, stuck in a plane seat, then on an airport's "moving sidewalk"—life going by, him standing still. He'll spend his first summer out of college in much the same way. His first night home, he'll be hiding in his room (to avoid his parents' celebratory welcome home party) "worried about (his) future."

But the world will have none of it. Along with the free advice ("plastics...") and the pinched cheeks that will continue through his adulthood, Ben is coerced into driving the wife of Ben's father's partner home from the party. Once there, "things get a little weird." Dressed in her leopard-print coat,* Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) reveals herself to be quite the predator, as well as revealing that she's neurotic, alcoholic and...oh, by the way, Mr. Robinson (Murray Hamilton) won't be home for hours. Yes, as a matter of fact, she is trying to seduce him,** and Ben barely makes it home uncompromised by Mrs. and Mr. Robinson, who gets home sooner than expected.

But Ben is feeling pressure at home. Dad wants him to think about graduate school and is trying to hook him up the Robinson's daughter, Elaine (Katharine Ross). To an extent he does a little bit of both by spending time in post-graduate studies with Mrs. Robinson, who becomes fiercely adamant against Ben dating her daughter. He also finds out that the Robinsons have a marriage of convenience as she became pregnant with Elaine and that was the thing to do.

It's pretty apparent that after four years of schooling, Benjamin doesn't listen very well. Forced into a date with Elaine, he's determined to screw it up, succeeds all too well, then, having reduced her to tears, decides that he can't be that much of a heel and makes it good to her. A romance begins to take shape, but is quashed when Ben reveals to Elaine that he had an affair with her mother.

Against all odds (or reason) Benjamin begins pursuing Elaine, culminating in a rescue at the church of her wedding, where they famously escape on a bus, having defied convention, their parents, and get things their way.

Orson Welles has said any story can have a happy ending...depending where you end it. If Nichols had ended with Ben and Elaine flush with revolution bussing away to their future, it would have been a happy ending.

But he doesn't. He stays on his shot of the two rebels as their expressions change from elation to confusion to...what? Ben has been so focussed on the prize and Elaine, confused and pressured into marriage, that they don't have a plan...they don't even know where the bus is going. The story will go on, and Nichols doesn't cut away until the last moment—he lets us see their expressions change, her looking at Ben unsure, Ben just looking forward still in an adrenaline daze of what he's done.

And what he's done is risk something the whole movie has been warning against—becoming like his parents. Mrs. Robinson has aspirations and dreams that were exploded when she became pregnant with Elaine and she became dependent on a man for her well-being. Elaine, with no degree, is now dependent on the adrift Ben and the only thing on his mind is domestic bliss, although how he'll get there, he probably doesn't have a clue. Their impulsive act of rebellion is a trap to becoming their parents. A lot of people missed that message in the 60's, but it's always been there for anybody not blinded by the comedy and the attraction of its stars.

It occurred to me (after loving the movie for 30 years) when my wife professed to not liking it much because the character of Elaine is so ill-defined and confused. It's not a strong woman's part, despite its screen-time. And Ben is simply a mess—single-minded, shallow, without much motive other than selfish ones. He's very much his parents' son.

So, when "(500) Days of Summer" came out, with its shallow male pursuing a female through friendship and assuming forever is part of the bargain, and its female character who enjoys the friendship but doesn't see it "safe" enough to be permanent,*** the connection to "The Graduate" clicked, all too finally. It is a comedy (in the classical sense), as its protagonists don't even know that by pursuing their course of what they see as rebellion, they've condemned themselves to living the quietly desperate lives of their parents.

On the occesion of its 30th Anniversary, a lot of critics who could do so, re-evaluated "The Graduate," and down-graded it accordingly. Given the new "reading between the frames," I'd actually up-graded as being far more subtle and wise than the comedy aspects of the film would suggest. Perhaps it's time to pay a visit to Sam Mendes' "Revolutionary Road," as well.

What did "The Bard" say? "You say you want a revolution, well, you know/we'd all love to see the plan..."

"Everybody puts Benjy in the corner:" Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft "Graduating"

* This was the 1960's—the term "cougar" would show up forty years later. Bancroft was only six years older than Hoffman at the time.

** We dissected this scene in "Don't Make a Scene: The Graduate.

*** "(500) Days of Summer" has a telling scene, he takes her to see "The Graduate" and she ends up sobbing; what he sees as romantic, she sees as frightening, terrifying...and her situation.

Enchanted April

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:20:00 +0000

"Enchanted April" (Mike Newell, 1992) Peering is what the folks of "Enchanted April" do: myopic George Briggs (Michael Kitchen) peers at Rose Arbuthnot (Miranda Richardson) when he finds that she's musical; Mrs. Fisher (Joan Plowright) peers at Lottie Wilkins (Josie Lawrence) to determine if she's daft or just stupid; socialite Carolyn Dester (Polly Walker) does the same; and Lottie peers at the Mediterranean and wonders if she is in Heaven. Those peerages are taking a second look, a re-appraisal—the sloughing off of first impressions for the new, reflected in the eyes of the re-appraisers, and reflect the entire film of four women who revive themselves at a Portofino castle one April.

Two church-women, Rose and Lottie are tired of the dreary English rain and their dreary English husbands (Alfred Molina, Jim Broadbent) and take a Spring holiday at an Italian villa offering "Wisteria and Silence," an extravagance that is shared with two ladies who answer their own advertisement: an aristocratic fuss-budget steeped in the Romatic poets (Plowright), and a flapper, desperate to escape the fawning attentions of shallow men (Walker). Things do not start off well. The trip from boat via carriage is a bit like the trip to Dracula's castle. Once there, territories are staked, habits dig in and clash—but Lottie experiences an epiphany the moment she opens her windows in the morning. It might be Heaven, which clashes with Rose's religious convictions. It might be a cessation of struggle, from which one can suddenly find oneself. Or it just might be a course-correction for life-journeys that have lost their way.

Whichever it is, it is a respite, a way out of many fogs, and a chance to realize that, so far away, there is no place like home. A jolly-good life-affirming flick with a pitch-perfect cast.

Don't Make a Scene: The Bride of Frankenstein

noreply@blogger.com (Yojimbo_5) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:23:00 +0000

The Story: This is either the best sex scene in horror movie history, or simply the worst first date in horror films. Depends on how deep you want to read it—as allegory or as reality.

For the reality, we have this: the child-bride of Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) and Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) is awakened from her lightning birth and immediately rejects her intended, the monster Henry created in the first film (Boris Karloff). The Monster can now talk, albeit with a limited vocabulary, though he gets by. Like most men, he communicates by grunts and groans, usually. But when he sees The Bride, he immediately becomes a simpering wreck, forlorn and love-sick, a parody of the romantic male, offering tender caresses initially, but eventually, when he can't get what he wants, violence. The Bride can't stand to look at him, emitting first a strangled shriek and then when it's obvious what his intentions are, a blood-curdling full-throated scream.

Director James Whale shoots her the way he introduced Frankenstein—full-length, then a series of jumping close-up's until we're right in her goggle-eyed face. Whale spends a good deal more time on film examining her than he did Karloff's Monster (who got only three shots), giving her more than a once-over, lingering over her, showing her from many angles. Karloff made an appearance on "The Entertainers" once (with Carol Burnett) where he comically lamented the new horror movies: "In the old days, they lovingly applied every stitch." Whale provides more than a chance to examine Jack Pierce's subtle (the dainty jaw-line stitches) and not-subtle touches (do we dare call it a "shock" of hair?)

Elsa Lanchester who played "The Bride" based her characterizations on swans--graceful, lovely, but spitting-mean. That's why the quick, unnerving head-pivots she makes, as she takes in her new surroundings. If she looks unstable on her feet (and Whale choreographs an unnatural wobble that nearly plummets her into Dr. Frankenstein's arms), it's because the 5' 4'' Lanchester is standing on stilts strapped to her legs to appear 7' tall.

Messages in horror films burble up subterraneously from approximately six feet under and take root in our subconscious. You may think there's something very disturbing, even radical about "Bride of Frankenstein" without being able to rationalize what it is about it.* It's certainly different in sensibility than Whale's first "Frankenstein" film—this one abounds with camp humor, and plays with religion at the same time it sees compassion and companionship as a Holy Thing. It mocks matters sexual between men and women with its foppish poets and a boyish Mary Shelley in the prologue, the over-sexed miniature people of Thesiger's experiments and the rejection of "The Bride" to "The Monster." Given carte-blanche on his "Frankenstein" sequel, James Whale, gay and ostracized, made a continuation of The Outsider shunned by society, and subjected it to more rejection of a humiliating variety. That the story is of two men, Pretorius and Frankenstein, who conspire against God and Nature to create children is right there on the surface, a homosexual sub-text.

So, when it comes to this scene of "Bride" and "Monster" squaring off between a phallic "lever" that he "mustn't touch," and choosing "death" that produces an orgasmic reaction from the "Bride" and the collapse of a tower...well, you see where I'm going with this—this sexual act leads to "Death" and not just "the little death" of French culture. That the Monster allows the "breeder" couple to flee, tears running down his face in sorrow, while he blows everybody to atoms (to use Pretorius' phrase), puts the tragedy into perspective**

In looking for an on-line script for "Bride of Frankenstein," I noticed one of the writers calling it a "straight sequel." "Denial's not a river in Egypt, honey."

Camp, over-the-top, melancholy, but stylish to a fault, "The Bride of Frankenstein" is one of the greatest of Horror filmsas well as the sub-category of Gay Cinema.

The Set-Up: After coercion, blackmail and the threat of his own Monster (Boris Karloff) being set loose upon him, Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) agrees to co-operate in another experiment in regenerating dead tissue with the insane Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger). Their co-creation: a mate (Elsa Lanchester) for Frankenstein's original Monster.

Action!

Note: I've tried to approximate the dialogue between The Monster and The Bride to the best of my ability, but the vocal subtleties of such lines as "Aa..!" and "N-gah!" get a little lost.

Frankenstein and Pretorius remove the Bride's bandages, allowing her to stand on her feet.

Dr. Pretorius: The Bride of Frankenstein!

The stunned "Bride" takes a tentative couple of steps forward, her gaze darting about the room in quick "takes."

Unstable on her feet, the now-living woman wobbles and sways back and forth.

The Monster returns from the Tower, and is aware of another presence in the laboratory.

As if by instinct, the Bride reacts to the Monster's presence, but he approaches warily and tentatively asks:

The Monster: Friend?

At the sound of his voice, The Bride turns to look at the Monster and a strangled shriek escapes her throat...

The Bride: ....Aa...!

The Monster: Friend?

The creature extends his burned, melted hands to The Bride, who acts repelled by him, and then...

...when he reaches out to touch her arm.

...She emits a full-throated terrified shriek.

The Bride pulls away, and turns to Frankenstein, who takes the Bride and sits her down. Pretorius, meanwhile, tries to calm the Monster, who insists on following The Bride.

Pretorius: Stand Back! Stand back!!

The Monster: Gnah!

The Monster brushes Pretorius aside and sits next to The Bride.

He takes her hand and caresses it,

...The Bride reacts in horror and emits another more intense scream.

Frankenstein pulls her away. The Monster is hurt, then angry, realizing:

The Monster: She hate me. Like others.

Broken-hearted, the Monster goes beserk, determined to destroy everything around him in a rage.

He stops at a control panel, one that contains a handy (and very large) "Destroy Everything" Switch:

Henry: (yelling) Look out! The lever!

Pretorius: (warning) Get away from that lever.

Pretorius: You'll blow us all to atoms.

Dr. Frankenstein's betrothed, Elizabeth, manages to escape from her bonds and runs to the tower door which she pleads for Henry to open the laboratory door.

Elizabeth: Henry!

Elizabeth: Undo the door! Henry!

Henry: Get back! Get back!

Elizabeth: I won't, unless you come! Henry!

(Henry opens the door and embraces Elizabeth.)

Henry: I can't leave them, I can't.

Frankenstein must choose: his work or his life. The Monster, however, makes the most compelling argument, giving Frankenstein and his bride a chance to escape.

The Monster: Yes, go!

The Monster: You live!

The Monster: Go!

The Monster: (To Pretorius) You stay!

The Monster: We belong dead!

The Bride throws a passionate hiss at him.

A final tear rolls down the Monster's sorrowful face.

The Monster grasps the lever and pulls it down, starting a series of explosions that destroys the lab and everything in it.

***

"The Bride of Frankenstein"

Words by William Hurlbut and John L. Balderston

Pictures by John J. Mescall and James Whale

"The Bride of Frankenstein" is available on DVD from Universal Home Video.

* The gay aspects of "Bride of Frankenstein" have become a part of the culture, due mostly to Bill Condon's "Gods and Monsters"—his bio-pic of Whale—but I'll always remember the film-class where this theory was first laid out. The Rosetta Stone for the discovery was the peculiar Una O'Connor's line describing Pretorious: "And a very queer-looking fellow he is..." The instructor went through his dissertation and when he was through, he found himself no longer in the usual room of unforthcoming students "with attitude," but a bunch of open-mouthed geeks, stunned, like "The Bride" at her unveiling. "I've shocked you into silence," he said. "Well," one of the students meekly offered, "It's kind of a mind-blowing theory." And with exquisite comic timing and a professor's active restraint said, under his breath: "...I'm glad you said mind-blowing

** Presumably, after the tower collapses, everyone smokes (sorry).

*** Notice in this shot of the collapsing lab, Dr. Frankenstein is the fellow cringing against the wall. "Saved by a re-write..."