Category: (random lists)

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

This post falls under the category of “the state of things.” I was thinking of posting a wise and lengthy denunciation of this trend in Hollywood of remaking horror films from the 70s (and importing more recent ones from Japan). But I’ve run dry of wisdom, and in order to make this post lengthy, I’ve decided to add a little twist to the plot. That is, rather than howl and fuss over a rash of (mostly subpar) remakes over the past several years (“Amityville Horror,” being the most recent), I wonder if it’d be more interesting for us to consider that Hollywood was in the business of recycling from the get-go. Even before there WAS a Hollywood, there was the remake. How many Frankensteins were there before Boris Karloff climbed into his elevator shoes? Okay one. But you get the point. Better: think of all the Hunchbacks, the Jekylls & Hydes and Phantoms of the Opera. In 1926, D.W. Griffith remade “The Sorrows of Satan”–just nine years after the original. There were three versions of “The Cat and the Canary” in fifteen years! But it’s not just horror films that get the rehash treatment. Edwin Porter’s smash hit “The Great Train Robbery” (1903) was remade the following year by some hack producer named Siegmund Leiben. “Stella Dallas,” directed by Henry King, was released in 1925. Twelve years later King Vidor gave us another one, this time with Babs Stanwyck and John Bowles (what a talent, that Bowles). Fast forward 50 years or so and yet another version, starring Bette Midler. Hitchcock remade one of his own films. It’s only a matter of time before another Star is Born. And who can forget Marty Feldman’s “The Last Remake of Beau Geste”? Strange that he was right. It WAS the last remake…

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After All These Years, To Believe in Jesus/Narrative-rhea

Did somebody take this blog off its feeding tube? In what is perhaps a misguided attempt to revive it, let me ask a question or a series of interrelated questions:

When not sculpting an exact scale model of Notre Dame from a bar of Zest I spend a great deal of time watching TV—I follow regularly the dramas The Shield, Third Watch (in reruns on A&E), NYPD Blue (until it lamely went off the air a couple of weeks ago), West Wing and 24, as well as The Simpsons, King of the Hill, Malcolm in the Middle; occasionally I also catch various versions of CSI and Law and Order and Raymond. And I am leaving out the various movies—what I see in theaters, what I rent and what I catch glimpses of on TV (god help me, I am so weak I will sit through the whole showing of “Home Dangerous Home” starring Karen Valentine and Richard Crenna on Court TV, only to discover what I already suspected—it wasn’t her husband (Steven Weber) at all but the envious business partner (Morgan Fairchild)).
Continue reading After All These Years, To Believe in Jesus/Narrative-rhea

mira nair–vanity fair etc.

we didn’t get to “sin city” last night–instead we watched “vanity fair” on dvd. as some of you know i have a strong antipathy to mira nair. when asked to explain this i sometimes, in the interests of economy, say only that someone who makes a film like “kamasutra” should and can never be taken seriously again. she is an interesting figure, however: the minority/third world director trying to make it in mainstream hollywood. and it may be interesting to compare her career, and choices, with those of directors like ang lee and wayne wang (to name only two). i’m not going to do that here. i’ll note only that unlike those two nair hasn’t (or hadn’t until “vanity fair”) succeeded in crossing over into the hollywood mainstream–which for such directors may be marked by the making of a marquee film that has nothing to do with their culture of origin (nair’s “the perez family” flopped and i don’t know that it was a marquee film anyway).

i would argue that nair’s career is essentially all about the search for this mainstream crossover and that what differentiates her from someone like lee or wang is her continued deployment of her culture of origin whether it is wholesale in exoticizing trash like “kamasutra” or cynical ethnic-chic like “my big fat monsoon wedding”, or in what may finally have been her ticket to the big time, a big-budget costume extravaganza with a big hollywood star: “vanity fair”.

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speaking of boys’ clubs

did you lot read this article in the ny times about the new hollywood comedy power brokers?

Mr. Ferrell, Mr. Apatow and Ben Stiller are among the club’s kingpins. Mr. McKay, Owen Wilson, Jim Carrey, Vince Vaughn and Jack Black belong, as do Nick Stevens, a United Talent agent who represents Mr. Carrey and Mr. Stiller, and Mr. Gold and Mr. Miller, who have much of the group in their stable.

The funnymen appear in one another’s movies, from “Dodgeball” to “Anchorman” to “Elf” to “Zoolander,” creating a wheel-of-comedy effect that can leave viewers wondering just whose movie they’re watching. What’s more, the stars and their representatives live, work and play in a continuum that has virtually shut the studios out of the development process. By coming up with their own concepts, finding screenwriters and then offering the whole package for production – script, director and cast, take it or leave it – this group is reshaping screen humor to their liking.

whatever happened to janeane garofalo and sarah silverman?

Scripts

Under the Scorsese post, I was going to bring up Richard Price (who wrote the “NY Stories” segment directed by Marty, whom I call Marty). Price is a helluva novelist and an equally strong screenwriter, although the stuff he’s done tends toward the better B-movie genres and thus gets too little acclaim. (“Ransom,” for instance, despite workaday direction by little Ronnie Howard, gives Delroy Lindo and Gary Sinise and even Mel Gibson some great gristly chatter.)

There are a couple screenwriters or scripts which get the nod–they get bandied about in the trades, ballyhooed on awards show; it’s conceivable that they, too, are for better or worse celebrities in the star machine. Kaufman, the delightfully execrable Joe Eszterhas, etc.

But who are the unsung heroes of film writing? One of the reasons I love “After Hours” is its astonishingly precise and pitch-perfect script, by Joseph Minion. (I actually do searches trying to see what he’s done since–and it’s pretty hit or miss. Although the most recent flick he wrote, “On the Run,” has two great performances by Michael Imperioli and, especially, John Ventimiglia, who plays Artie Bucco on “The Sopranos.”) UNSUNG, now–don’t say John Sayles or Preston Sturges.

And speaking of unsung, I should add Delroy Lindo to my post on presences, or just give him his own heading. He is particularly astonishing in “Crooklyn,” “Clockers,” and even salvages some of “A Life Less Ordinary.”

Manohla Dargis

She writes: “The fact that “Oldboy” is embraced by some cinephiles is symptomatic of a bankrupt, reductive postmodernism: one that promotes a spurious aesthetic relativism (it’s all good) and finds its crudest expression in the hermetically sealed world of fan boys.” If there are no women on this site willing to speak, I’ll let Ms. Dargis do the talking. Boys what do you think?

Action and Violence

Maybe these are two genres. Maybe they’re 50. But let’s lump ’em together.

I am curious about two things from Arnab’s recent posts:
–Name 2, 3 good action films that people here won’t know. Then try to say why.
[I was glad to see Michael clarify why “Wolf” wasn’t good, since I’d forgotten. (And I’d note: Arnab, I did see it in the theaters. It was good to watch for about ten minutes, then…. see what Michael said. And THAT said, watch the thing again and come back and tell us why we’re wrong.)]

–I can think of any number of films that, like “Funny Games,” ostensibly show how the audience’s pleasures in violence should be challenged. I can’t think of one that works, that doesn’t arouse the wrong passions, that doesn’t thrill. Are there any successful anti-violence films? (I recall, vaguely, that Truffaut said you can’t make an anti-war film; the medium sensationalizes, is about arousing sensations in the viewer…)

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Cartoons

3 quick points and/or questions:
1. I have the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, which on occasion I pull down and relish. Today I got it out for Max. My god I forgot how blisfully violent they are; we watched “Scaredy Cat,” and there’s a fine little scene where Sylvester, terrified of some angry mice, wants to stay upstairs with Porky, but Porky kicks him out. So Sylvester goes to a drawer and grabs a gun, which he holds up to his head, threatening suicide. Now that is comedy my friends. Max loved it. (Porky then opens the gun and drops the bullets all over the floor.)

2. We also got him “Bambi.” I’m leery of most Disney stuff, but this one sticks in my head from childhood. I recall a drive-in, pajamas, it starting to rain toward the end of the film. (So, as fire erupts in the forest, it’s pouring outside my window…) God the animation is amazing. And every time the stag made his regal entrance, up above the action, it recalled very precisely shots from Miyazaki’s “Princess Mononoke.”

3. Has anyone seen “Steamboy”? I was convinced by a friend here to seeing Miyazaki, and he was right; this friend also bought me “Akira,” which I admire but I don’t love. So… should I bother with “Steamboy?”