Author: john

Gugly filmmaking

I watched Gigli the other night. I remember liking Beverly Hills Cop and was only mildly annoyed with Scent of a Woman. I still think Midnight Run is a terrific film, mostly because Charles Grodin is absolute @%!*ing godhead. But what the hell went wrong with Martin Brent when he made this piece of shit? I can understand the lousy script, the dumb conceit of using a handicapped boy to help make believable the lead’s transformation from lout to likeable, the lame performances. But the thing that made me scream was the fact that everything had to be in close-up or medium close-up. Everything. I say this because I knew, from the outset, that I would not like this film. But I didn’t expect to be infuriated by something like shot-selection.

I can’t imagine many or any of you have seen this film, but maybe you can answer the larger question: have there been films (recent or no) that have bothered you not because of lousy acting or a bad script, but because of the direction? Specifically the type of shots the director has chosen, or the camera set-ups?

Jerry Lewis

Maybe we should create a Jerry Lewis thread. The Day the Clown Cried came up on Bedazzled.com recently. Is there something in the air? It’s basically a link to a link to the same site to which I posted a link days ago.

While I’m on the subject, here are my top ten favorite Jerry Lewis films (solo–as in without Dean).

1. The Bellboy
2. The Ladies Man
3. The Nutty Professor
4. The King of Comedy
4. Cinderfella
5. Cracking Up
6. The Errand Boy
7. Rock-A-Bye Baby
8. The Delicate Delinquent
9. Arizona Dream
10. Which Way to the Front?

The Wild Bunch

Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch is being remade. This angers me not because I’m against remakes, but because I have always claimed that I am not against remakes. I may say that there’s nothing wrong with Soderbergh recasting Ocean’s 11, or Van Sant re-shooting Psycho. I’m amused by the idea that someone feels that it is worth the money and effort to remake The Fog and The Pink Panther.

But now there’s a part of me that is bristling–not just because I don’t want anyone to dare even to think of redoing Peckinpah’s masterpiece, but also because I’ve flattered myself into thinking that I’d never write somthing like this (which I’ve taken from Victoria Lindrea’s review of the remake of The Italian Job): “A homage, rather than a remake, it moved the action to Los Angeles and gave the traffic jam a hi-tech spin. But in aping a classic, it could not help but disappoint fans of the original.” Is there anything more predictable than “it could not help but disappoint the fans of the original”? Hollywood must know that “fans of the original” do not, by rule, constitute the majority of ticket sales of remakes. Of course “fans of the original” will be disappointed. Why? Because (I’ve always told myself) they’re idiots. Continue reading The Wild Bunch

In Search of…

In light of recent events in Afghanastan in particular and throughout the Muslim world in general, I thought we might revisit a post from several weeks back regarding Albert Brooks’s In Search of Comedy in the Muslim World. I’m worried that against the background of protests over cartoons published in the Danish press, the natural response to Brooks’s film will be “see? there is no sense of humor in the Muslim world.”

My fear is that recent events will be used to either misconstrue and misunderstand Islam (even more), or to misconstrue and misunderstand comedy (as always hostile, antagonistic) and define it strictly from a sociological point of view (the social function of humor is to indentify, differentiate, control). Continue reading In Search of…

Inspired opening sequences

I’ve been thinking about this lately: the opening sequence of a film. It’s typical for a filmmaker to go the narrative exposition route–that is, he/she front-loads all the essential information about what has happened prior to when the film begins so that audiences can feel comfortable, informed, aware, and be absorbed into the diagesis. There are exceptions. Some of the James Bond films give us “pre-credit sequences” that are more like sideshows, and these sequences do not, in any way, prepare audiences for the film as such (I’m thinking of Goldfinger, Thunderball, The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, Octopussy, and so on). What I’m interested in, however, are opening shots, or sequences of shots, that do not provide anything in the way of narrative info, but do, in some way, capture the overall theme or tone of the film. The thing is that, upon first viewing, these shots or sequences of shots, may slip by us. We may not recall them, we may not process them, they may, in some cases, even hinder our efforts to “get into” the film. But upon subsequent viewings, they seem to resonate. Continue reading Inspired opening sequences

The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse

I watched The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse tonight. The plot isn’t terribly original, but it is cleverly handled: the characters of Royston Vasey invade the “real” world in search of their creators who have grown bored with them. The film essentially begins when Reverend Bernice reveals that she has discovered, underneath her church, a series of catacombs whose walls depict the apocalypse—specifically, the end of Royston Vasey. Scenes from the first ten minutes of the film have “already been written,” as it were (such as the scene in which Dr. Matthew Chinnery inserts a rectal probe into a giraffe). The only way to save Royston Vasey is to unlock a secret door (this provides occasion for a nice prop gag) and pass through into the real world, find Gatis, Pemberton, and Shearsmith, and force them to write more episodes. Naturally, the writers don’t want to. They’re working on an entirely new project: a film entitled The King’s Evil, which takes place in England, 1690. Continue reading The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse

Michael Caine, moralist.

Nothing important: just saw a wonderful snippet of an interview with Michael Caine from 1967: Peter Whitehead’s Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London. Michael: “You see, we don’t want to get drunk, or go out–what is properly known as–womanizing until 2:00 in the morning, what we want is the freedom to do so should we wish. We don’t want a lot of rules and regulations. To me, the pubs closing at 11:00 pm and more expensive clubs keeping open later is the most condescending piece of class consciousness I’ve ever heard. It’s to keep the workers out of the pub so they’re not drunk and up late for work in the morning–this was the original idea of it for the munitions factories of the first World War.” He then objects to mini skirts and such, while Whitehead gives us footage of him primping for the cameras. Great stuff.

F**k Netflix

Arnab has expressed his anger over Netflix, but Arnab isn’t the only one. The recent settlement of a class action suit, Frank Chavez v. Netflix, Inc. (ahh…only in San Francisco!), has made most of us eligible for benefits. But it appears it’s the same old crap with Netflix. Karl Rove: The Architect had been in my queue for weeks, and I had hoped to get the thing sent before it gained “Very Long Wait” status because the Fitzgerald investigation was coming to a conclusion. I had room “At Home,” Karl Rove: The Architect was ready NOW. But what was sent? Kolchak, the Nightstalker which was priority 4. Now, of course, Karl Rove: The Architect is a “Very Long Wait.”