Mikey Movie Madness!

Why Was I Remade?

2010-02-16T11:22:00.000-08:00

I saw the new Stepfather on DVD. I'm sure anyone who is reading this will ask me the most important question -- "Why?"

Because it's a pretty foolproof idea. A charming, wonderfully handsome and suave man (who also happens to be a serial killer) infiltrates the home of recently widowed women, befriends her and the family, marries her and then kills off the entire family, one after the other. After killing the families, he changes his appearance and goes out and kills again over and over and over.

I wanted to see what they would do with the remake. I groaned when I first heard someone was remaking it, not because the 1987 original was so good but because it was so unexpectedly not bad.

I'm a big, big fan of evil, charming figures infiltrating middle-America. I love Joseph Cotton in Shadow Of A Doubt and any good Hitchcock small town movie where the villain is horrifically kind and sweet. Evil with a smile is the best kind of evil there is. And the original Stepfather had a pretty great central performance in Terry O'Quinn. He was by turns charming, sweet and horribly evil.

Take a look at the original trailer. You can see how interesting O'Quinn is to watch:

And here is Joseph Cotton on "Shadow Of A Doubt":

Both actors had a great time in the parts. Tortured but kind. Sweet but conflicted. Lovers but murderers. Complex men, complex characters.

And the 1987 version had Shelley Hack getting the shit knocked out of here. How can you not love that?! In the new version Sela Ward gets the honors of being the seduced wife. I'm not saying Shelley Hack is a better actor than Sela Ward, but at least Hack has a wonderful kitch quality to her. She was a beautiful blond who was both awkward but fun to watch. Sela Ward barely cracks a smile. She's had so much plastic surgery and is shot through so much gauze, it's hard to see her face.

But we don't want The Stepfather for the wife. We watch the Stepfather for...

In the DVD commentary, director Nelson McCormick says he and the casting agent spent months auditioning men for the part of David Harris (isn't that a great, generic name?). He says they took a long time to find someone with the likability and depth to play the part.

I suppose it would be catty to write Nelson McCormick, a director of 'hard-hitting' TV shows looks like a middle-aged Southern California surfer boy who got lucky and is now rich directing TV shows and his first movie and I suppose it would be really catty to write how it's never a good sign when a director of a major movie remake peppers his language with 'totally' and 'awesome' so I won't write that, lest I come across as catty...

And I suppose it would be, like, totally catty to write the writer who wrote the remake is the author such classics as Sniper 3, Alien Hunter, Prom Night remake, Crash and Burn, Thunder Alley and many more (hey - at least the guy is working, that's for damn sure)...and it's probably not a good idea if the writer of the remake needs 3 other credited people to come up with the 'story' when the remake is a nearly literal location-for-location remake...

And I would be bitchy if wrote it's a good thing the original script author, Donald E. Westlake (yes, the same writer who wrote the nearly flawless The Grifters) , died in 2008 and wasn't around to see this remake hit the theaters. Donald E. Westlake who wrote nearly 45 mystery novels, many of them I've read and many of which are very fine indeed...

So I'll be nice and not write any of that.

Rest In Peace, Mr. Westlake, Rest In Peace...

Nelson and his crew looked high and low and they found their main character in the form of Dylan Walsh. While I have a sneaking suspicion Dylan Walsh is up for the challenge of the lead, we'll never know. Why?

Because he ain't the lead.

This guy is:

The actors 'name' is Penn Badgley. Don't you love that? Penn. Badgley. Like anyone is born with that name. Try to say the last name out loud. You can't. If I were his agent, I'd make him change his name. Why? Because the guy has something to him. Apparently he's done some bad TV, like Gossip Girl and such.

Sure, he's cute and scraggly and very heterosexual and clearly the 'bad boy' girls love to love, but if he wants to be taken seriously, the guy has GOT to change that name.

He is the lead in the Stepfather. He is often seen without his shirt, making out with his nearly nude 17 year old girlfriend. He is brooding and confused and more layered than the Stepfather.

Isn't it curious when writers make the wrong character the lead? When they give the main arc and thrust of the movie to the wrong character? This isn't a smart switch, like where the lead of Ordinary People is actually the Donald Sutherland character...no, this is just a big old mistake which, hopefully, pissed off this guy:

Oops! I was trying to get Dylan Walsh in the frame, but see how Penn snuck right back in?

Let's try to get Dylan in again.

Here we go:

Ugh! Sorry...just when I thought I could get Dylan Walsh in a picture alone, in comes Penn again!

Damn!

Such is the problem with the new Stepfather. Poor Dylan Walsh is never given a chance to show his ability to play depth and complexity because Penn's character is the only one who can feel or show any emotion in the movie.

Oh, and Penn's character shows emotion once but only when there is rock music blaring in his ears, lets we think he is less than masculine or heterosexual.

The complexity and conflict of the main character has been entirely stripped away and all we get is either sweetness or evil. No grey area. It's not accident the famous tag line from this movie is "Who Am I Here?". It's terrifying and fascinating to watch this character lose all sense of WHO HE IS and his GRASP ON REALITY. That layered person is why the original film was so good.

Oh, and the fact it does turn pretty nasty pretty fast.

If the writers and the filmmakers had used that extremely revealing moment in the movie as the anchor for the rest of the movie, it would have been at least interesting to watch, but as it is now, it's dull and lifeless and one more pretty, unimpressive glossy remake from the increasingly desperate young Hollywood Dream Factory. It's all about money, money, money.

The scares are dull and oddly strangulation based. There was one famous murder at the center of the original Stepfather that was shocking and horribly funny. Nothing of the sort exists here. It's all illogical and frustrating.

The murders in the original were shot very realistically and, despite the fact they weren't extremely bloody, you felt true revulsion and horror when they happened...and you felt BAD for the main guy because you both liked him and hated him for what he was doing.

The problem here is Westlake relished the grey areas of watching the main character squirm and slowly lose his mind. He was a writer who liked suspense and humor. Not these guys. The director comes from TV and I'm very surprised he didn't stick more to the original main character.

Sad days continue in La-La Land...

Mikey Movie

Over and out...

A Pare/Red fan...

2010-02-14T08:23:00.000-08:00

I got this email yesterday:

What I wrote on this blog (they were quoting me):

“Poor now-deceased Eric Red did the best job he could with "Bad Moon" in the 90's. But when you have Mariel Hemingway and Michael "I Should Be Doing Gay Porn Not Acting" Pare in the leads, there is only so much you can do”

What they wrote in response:

"Maybe you should stick to acting, Eric is alive and well. I met with Michael Pare’ and Eric Red in August 09 regarding their recent project 100 Feet. Your gay porn comment is tacky and unnecessary!"

Signed, Pare’/Red fan!

Well!

I'm being nice so I won't reveal the writers name on my blog unless they ask me to, by here is my reply (which I told her as well):

Blunder on my part Eric Red died. I really thought he did. So yes, apologies in that camp.

Despite Eric's wobbly track record with movies, he did write the amazing Near Dark (see my previous post where I waxed poetically about it) and the 'great-idea-but-not-a-great-movie' Body Parts and the extremely underrated Blue Steel, and the SUBLIME original The Hitcher and Cohen and Tate (which I've never seen - Roy Scheider is in that one and he IS dead, of that I'm certain, which is very sad).

Eric has done some great stuff, but he really needs to offer sexual favors to Katheryn Bigelow right now before she wins the Oscar for Best Picture so he can write her next movie. They are a fine pair.

I'm joking about the sexual favors. Again, this is a comedic blog.

As for Pare - I'm sorry, but I haven't seen Michael P. show much range in the movies he's been in. Could it be he hasn't had a great part? Sure. Could it be I am not seeing the true, real Michael P.? Sure, of course.

The Michael Pare we all see is a part -- the actor who is Michael Kevin Pare is not the Michael Pare many think they know and love on the screen. He's a personality. True, he's an interesting personality. He wanted to cook professionally, he studied with Uta Hagen (probably at HB Studios in the Village in Manhattan), he's from Brooklyn...but on the screen? He's extremely one-note.

Or perhaps I haven't seen the following films form his oeuvre, so I'm not qualified to judge...

Space Rage
Sunset Heat
Point of Impact
Deadly Heroes
Raging Angels
BloodRayne 2
Serpent

And so on...

I first saw him in Streets of Fire, that weird, jarring, jumbled and oddly fun mess of a rock musical in the 80's. I didn't see him in Warriors (no, not the Walter Hill The Warriors) - this one starred Gary Busey.

See a trend here?

At the time I thought he was sexy, a guy's-guy, a effortlessly 'easy on the eyes' actor. Later I read he had started modeling and it all made sense. I am not trying to be catty here, I'm not, I like to be thought of as sassy and not bitchy BUT I don't see a huge no inner life when he's on the screen. I see a very handsome man working to pay the mortgage.

Now, I have worked on movies. I know a lot of people in entertainment. I know, first hand, the unseen years of work people put into a getting a movie or play made. I know people spend their entire LIVES working on one project. I will never know how much sweat and tears Pare or his team have put into putting together his many projects.

But here is the cold truth of how most people think:

They don't care.

They only know they like what they like.

And despite my clear understanding of what is logistically involved and my deep compassion for the artistic process, I can see their point. At the end of the day, why should they have to concern themselves with what goes on 'behind the scenes'? All they care about is what's in front of them and if they are being educated, entertained or both.

For me, I don't gravitate to titles like those I wrote above. I read those and I think of all the comedy acts I've seen over the years and how those kinds of movies are the butt of all movie jokes because they are, well, most often fairly bad. I mean, Bloodrayne 2? Really? Part TWO? Who goes to these movies? Old people in Thailand?

I have to admit I was curious and did see Bloodrayne 1. I heard it was amazingly awful. I had to see it. The first 20 minutes were fun because you realized how bad/boring the movie was going to be, but then, as it progressed, you deeply realized how short your life was and how truly sad it was to watch Ghandi (Sir Ben Kingsley, yes, Sir Ben Kingsley in Bloodrayne) act as if here were on five doses of Percocet and desperately in need of a colonic.

I wrote he'd be be great in gay porn because he's hot. Like, Daddy hot. And with that voice? Please. Very sexy.

This is him now:

I'm sure Mr. Michael Kevin Pare is doing very well financially and doesn't need to do gay porn. Of course I was being silly and funny. I'm an actor and comedian. And I know a lot about movies. So this is part of what I do in this life.

But on this I'm not being silly: I would love to be proven wrong. I would love, more than anything, to see Michael Kevin Pare in the kind of role that makes us all sit up and take real notice. I'd love to see him pull a shocking 'Kim Basinger LA Confidential'. I'd love for him to find a part that is extremely close to home for him and I'd love, more than anything, to see him exposed (emotionally - get your mind out of the gutter).

He could do a film like Jean Claude Van Damme did a few years back, JCVD. Great surprise. It was Jean Claude being Jean Claude but pushing past what people expected him to do. Just as Kim Basinger showed she was more than a Veronica Lake lookalike (see the metaphorical image above). Michael Kevin Pare needs to play an actor who keeps playing roles Michael Kevin Pare plays but wants to show the world he's capable of more. But to do that, he has to really want to do that and I wonder if he does.

We celebrate mediocrity in the movies. We love movies that are 'just okay'. We've been given uninspired trash for so long, we don't often know a good movie when we've seen one. And acting? Great film acting is not stage acting. It's it's own beast. And it's getting very rare to see great screen acting.

So while I applaud Mr. Pare for being employed and still working to pay his bills, I want him to prove me wrong and show me a movie where he is truly present and aware.

The person who wrote to me told me Michael Kevin Pare has fans all over the world and he works very hard. I greatly appreciate and respect that. They also said the same of Eric Red. I agree he has amazing talent. But what hit home with me is this that they wrote:

"I usually try to not say something at all if I can't say something nice."

Okay, the sweet, small town guy in me LOVES that. They are right. You can be sassy and not bitchy. And working in entertainment is like working in World War 3. People lie, cheat and are very ego-driven. It's awful.

But I do think that it's okay to say when some people in an art form are not living up to their potential, and while I appreciate all Pare does, I think he is not living up to his potential.

I can't say nice things all the time about everyone in the movies because some of the movies they make are crap. BUT I can challenge them to rise to the challenge to make BETTER movies. How is that?

Thank you to the reader to remind me to stay kind. I greatly appreciate your note.

MikeyMovie

Over and out...

.

A Seriously Depressed Man Indeed

2010-02-13T15:20:00.001-08:00

I finally saw A Serious Man by the Coen Brothers today on DVD. I was excited to see the film. Despite how it flopped at the box office, I knew that didn't mean anything. I've seen the Coen Brothers films for years. I've been in many heated discussions about their virtues over many a glass of wine. I've defended their films, I go to the theater to pay my Mighty Dollar so they will continue to make movies.

What is that saying? Oh, yea.

The honeymoon is over.

I told myself I wasn't going to do it, but I did. I read A.O. Scott's review of A Serious Man online a moment ago. I wanted to see what he thought. I skimmed through it, but as I suspected, he gushed. Of course he gushed. To not gush about a Coen Brothers film and work for the NY Times is a sin punishable in a synagogue and/or Catholic church.

To describe the plot is to enter murky waters for there is no plot. A sweet man and his abusive wife, cranky kids, mean spirited neighbors and assorted cranky people live together in a suburb in an undefined part of America. The man in Jewish and is an outcast. Much of the film is told form the perspective of a Jew in middle America in the 60's.

That's it. There is no more.

For the 1 hour and 40 minute running time of the movie, we watch the sweet tempered and wonderful main character never live up to everyone's ideal of what makes a 'A Serious Man', aka, an interesting man, a driven man, a fascinating man, or (and this is possible since the Coen brothers are NY Jews and as such seem to be getting very very very cranky) a very boring man which is a mortal sin.

I have no idea what the movie is about. And neither do the Coen Brothers, which I find extremely annoying. In the DVD commentary describing what the movie is about and why they chose to tell this story and what the ultimate meaning of the film is, the two famous film making brothers casually sit back, simultaneously scratch their own heads and say, "Well, we're not sure what that means but we went ahead and put it in there. Seemed like a good place for it."

Bullshit.

This kind of thinking is infuriating. And they know it. This is smart-aleck movie making. They don't know why they do what they do, they just put it in there, it doesn't make sense to them, so they then put the responsibility on us to make sense out of something they don't even understand and if we don't get it then we don't get their film.

Double bullshit.

Look, I was willing to go with the vague Barton Fink references because the movie is oddly compelling. The ending is bupkis, no one knows what it means, the brothers refuse to say what it means (at least, in what I've seen and read they refuse to say) and again, the onus is on us to figure it out despite the fact they don't know what it means.

I realize A Serious Man is the kind of movie Serious Moviegoers will say they love and that I am too film illiterate or unevolved or uncreative to understand, to which I compassionately reply:

Triple bullshit.

This movie is navel gazing and the only reason they can get away with making a movie that is this dull, unstructured and vague is because they are the all-mighty Coen Brothers. It kills me to type this, but the majority of the movies the Coen Brothers have been making for the past 8 or so years are becoming more and more obscure and more and more difficult to watch.

Again, this is not easy to type, but this is not a good movie. Sure, they have an uncanny knack for long, quiet spaces in movies which is wonderful. Yes, their way with actors is sublime. They get actors, they love actors. They love chewy words.

Some of the earlier scenes in the film are wonderful and hard to turn away from. Their love of the art of making movies is abundantly clear, so I have to ask - why defeat the entire work by making a movie with such a narcissistic, defeatist and plain dark ass boring story?

I am now of the opinion the Coen Brothers are so enclosed in their rarefied NYC/LA film making world they have no idea their movies are becoming less and less accessible.

I, for one, must now wait to get a sense of what their next movie will be before I go to theater.

I can't believe I'm writing this. This about the men who made Fargo and Miller's Crossing and Raising Arizona and Blood Simple and The Man Who Wasn't There and, yes, the half-baked movie The Big Lebowski.

Well, okay - Burn After Reading was a pretty damn good time. Okay. They did do that recently, but STILL...

You think I'm wrong about A Serious Man? A Serious Man made $10 million in America. $10 million. That's a great number but not a number that shows anyone went to it. I think that is saying something. I do. Not all box office numbers reflect the level of true interest in a movie, but in this instance, I feel this does.

What a sad day indeed. But the truth of the matter is the Coen Brothers are now making some very dull movies that everyone is telling them are good and they are not.

I'm pretty sure they don't want to hear this, but their true voice sings when they ride the tone of Millers and Arizona and Blood Simple and Intolerable Cruelty. That is the gold. Can I tell you how many people didn't like the end result of No Country For Old Men? Three sequences in that film were sterling. But in the end? Dark, dismal, evil and, well, navel gazing. Why did it do well in America? Pressure to see it and like it. But very few people I know 'liked' it. I am so sad.

I'm going to go cry now.

Wolfman...strikes again?

2010-02-12T08:56:00.000-08:00

Let's see...

A remake of The Wolfman. Okay. Let's see -

Mike Nichols directed "Wolf". Great performance by James Spader, ridiculous performance from Jack Nicholson, adequate performance by Michelle Pfeiffer, very interesting metaphor of the ravenous and evil world of publishing in NYC but, in the end, not very thrilling or exciting -- too cerebral.

The series of "Underworld" movies staring Kate Beckinsale. Dark, moody, ultra violent. The first one was a brooding affair which was somehow entertaining. The second held it's ground and had a lovely and tortured Scott Speedman to drool over. The ending was prophetic, violent and oddly thrilling. The third one was tepid and overwrought.

Joe Dante directed "The Howling". Scary, dirty, nasty and pretty damn fun. A nice sense of humor to the whole affair with a darling werewolf at the end.

Poor now-deceased Eric Red did the best job he could with "Bad Moon" in the 90's. But when you have Mariel Hemingway and Michael "I Should Be Doing Gay Porn Not Acting" Pare in the leads, there is only so much you can do.

Stephen "Hack" Sommers did a pretty good job with the frantic "Van Helsing". It was so busy and noisy and over-the-top it was hard to tell if if was good or bad. Best enjoyed on a few glasses of wine. Starred Kate Beckinsale again. The woman clearly likes hairy men. Wonderful demonic female vampires in this one.

John Landis directed the indisputable champ of funny/horror werewolf movies with "An American Werewolf In London". The sequel, "An American Werewolf in Paris" was pretty awful despite being directed by the VERY talented and underrated Anthony Waller (who hit a bulls eye with the terrifying and thrilling "Mute Witness").

The new remake stars Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins and Hugo Weaving. Okay, good.

One of the writers is the writer of "Seven", Andrew Kevin Walker. Okay, he is dark, likes dark, isn't always a great writer, but a solid choice for this genre.

And the director is Joe Johnson. Hm. This is a tough one. Joe Johnson is a premier special effects guy in Hollyweird, which means he's very smart and very good at making fantasy come alive on the big screen.

Special effects guys or cinematographers moving into directing do not have a good track record in the movies. We all know why - they are craftspeople trained in the art of cinematography and images but not in the most important aspect of telling stories on the screen, which is, of course, screenwriting.

There are a million different ways you go with a new Wolfman. The filmmakers of the new Wolfman chose to do what many do when they are told by movie executives they want a hit, only a hit and nothing but a hit - they remake the original down to the very_last_frame.

But add lots of blood and guts and special effects.

You can see where this is going.

The story is extremely simple, which, as I always say, is very refreshing. It's 1871. A man travels from American to his isolated childhood home in the English countryside after his brother is brutally murdered. He wants to find out how his brother was killed. In the process, he tries to mend bridges with his evasive and emotionally absent father, make a peace with the violent death of his mother and find the love he never had in the widowed wife of his now dead bro.

Oh, and there are gypsies involved. In the form of a very haggard looking Geraldine Chaplin. Yes, Charlie Chaplin's daughter. Even she has to pay the mortgage somehow.

At the midway point, a curious thing happens in the narrative. You realize the filmmakers (and the writers) lost their way. They throw in a scene that so pulls us out of the story and plunges us into such dark, tragic terrain three things happen: 1) You realize the movie wants to be a poetic tragedy, but instead, has turned out to be a macabre blood bath; 2) You realize how the movie COULD have been a great tragic tale of 'beauty and the beast' but the filmmakers were not up for the challenge; 3) You start to giggle.

Del Toro does the best job he can to look sinister and glare into the camera, but half the time he sounds like he's on Valium and seems to be straining and not actually inhabiting this tortured man. I see the potential in him as an actor, but to believe he is a famous actor in the movie who has played Hamlet and King Lear is fairly absurd. He seems to ooze anguish and I'm not sure he and the director saw eye to eye. I'm fairly certain Joe Johnson didn't know what to do with him.

Anthony Hopkins is slumming here. He is paying his mortgage as well. There are even moments where he seems to play a version of Hannibal Lecter, down to the cadence and movement of his sentences and physical gestures. It's all very insulting.

Emily Blunt is a fairly enjoyable actress to look at, but the poor wench is given nothing to truly do in the movie. She looks lost and in one truly unbearable scene, falls head over heels for Del Toro's character DESPITE the fact he just told her he's a werewolf DESPITE the fact her husband was just mauled days before DESPITE the fact the police are busting down her door DESPITE the fact we have no true idea why this woman would be so attracted to such clear danger and violence.

But I digress...

It is so frustrating when watching a movie like this and you see fleeting images of what it could have been.

Such as:

The night after Del Toro first changes and wakes up in a bloody shirt, his eyes wide with fear, a demonic Hopkins leaning over him (all of this in full daylight, mind you) -- it's a horrific vision. A terrible image that tells us all we need to know about this poor, tortured man.

A mutated and changed Del Toro howling on the roof of a nighttime London building, the Thames in the background, the moon overhead - it's an iconic and sublime image and it's the image the filmmakers clearly were trying to achieve.

Del Toro walking through an old house, the sounds of the creaking floor boards, the deep moaning of a beast somewhere all around him...good, classic scare moments and great atmosphere.

But alas, these single images do not add up to a film and instead, bring about it's glaring imperfections.

Which brings me to Hugo Weaving.

Half way through the movie, I kept thinking, "Well, I"m sorry to say this, but Hugo Weaving should have played the Wolfman and Del Toro should have played the Inspector, clearly." And sure enough...at one point, this is hinted at and I realized that was truly the way the film should have gone.

When Hugo Weaving is on screen, the movie comes alive. Sure, he's still channeling his Matrix role, but he's so deliciously good at it it makes his scenes sing. Watching the movie, all one can wonder is how delightfully funny and tortured Hugo would have made the lead character. As it is now, it's all doll, dark, and dreary. No humor, not human feeling and in the end, a big bore.

And the gore. Dear, Lord. Severed arms, entrails, heads flying through the air, blood spouting out of mouth, eyes gouged out, arms shoved through mouths and stomachs - the film overflows with blood. Too much blood. Blood for the sake of blood is dull and the easy, visceral way out. Blood with HUMOR...now you're talking. But the only humor in this film are the unintentional laughs at the sadness and absurdity of the entire affair.

In the opening, there is lettering on the screen which says something to the effect that no matter how morally solid or stable a man is, he is impervious to the effects of The Wolfman. Such dismal foreboding is the sort of justification horror writers give when they simply show horror with no apparent repercussions of deeper meaning. Surely the original movie on which this is based had much more on it's mind than that. But sadly, this does not. Dismal to the end.

Howling to the moon indeed.

...and we're back!

2010-02-11T14:16:00.000-08:00

Wow. Four months since I've posted here.

Can you say - Fell off the edge of the world?

I had a mini-breakdown over Christmas but now I'm back. Better than ever. I realized I wanted to get back to posting about movie. It's been too long.

What a better way than to start with Quentin Tarantino's new flick just released on DVD, "Inglourious Basterds." Did I mention it's directed by Quentin Tarantino? Not sure if you are aware it's by Quentin Tarantino. Let me make sure I'm very clear - this movie is by Quentin Tarantino.

Because in the end, the only thing you will remember about this movie is that it's by Quentin Tarantino, which is exactly what he wants.

I have no interest in detailing why he misspelled the title or what arcane movie this is based on from the 70's. Except for the worlds film geeks and those obsessed with all things Quentin and those in Hollywood, no one in America cares why he misspelled the title or what this is based on.

All anyone cares about at the end of the day is the movie itself and for this movie, I can say this:

At 2 hours and 23 minutes long, there is roughly 40 minutes that are an absolute gas. The opening 20 minute sequence is riveting. The final image at the end of the opening sequence of a girl running in a field, covered in blood, is spectacular. The finale is pretty fun and one half of a 20 minute scene in a basement bar is delightfully tense and disturbing.

The problem with the rest of the movie is that it's okay, but not very interesting. And despite Quentin's efforts to make his chatty, chatty, chatty movie hold together via a jarring mix of genres and editing and color saturation and bizarre title sequences and truly mind-boggling 80's musical choices, I don't care what anyone says, the movie isn't very good.

What is it about?

It's about 4 different teams of people coming together with one common goal: end the war, kill Hitler and a few select men who are associated with the resistance.

That's it. Which is great. Very little story is the key to a good movie. Very little story told very deeply.

But it all feels so...contrived and forced, despite Quentin's clear love of the form, despite everyone's best efforts to find a way to hook into this odd tone of the movie, despite the great ambition to end the most horrific crime against man inflicted by one man...

The truth of the matter is there are long stretches where it's boring and could have easily been cut, cut, cut.

Because it was not and because Quentin loves to make loonnggg movies, the only thing as a viewer I can deduce is Quentin's ego is so lost in the process of editing this film that he loses sight of what is truly interesting, cannot be diligent to cut, is deteremined to be artful and no one around him will say, "Quentin - you really need to cut out a half hour. Please."

I know a good movie when I see one and this is 1/3 of a great movie. The photography is eloquent, the colors fantastic, the love bestowed upon the process of making the movie staggeringly clear. The details in the movie are mind-boggling BUT I'd rather see less emphasis put on being tricky and cute and have it replaced with genuine intent and more solid drama.

Brad Pitt and his team of Bastards are a bit embarrassing in the movie. I love who the actor Brad Pitt is in life. He's a truly compassionate and sweet man, but in this - it's like straight boy joke acting. It feels like a frat party.

It's painful.

And the rest are just - smug. That's it. The movie is smug.

And as such, in the end, despite the confident of those fantastic 40 minutes, it's off-putting and feels all about Quentin and his ego.

Eli Roth is awful. He is a director of absurd horror films and was only put in here because Quentin and he are 'buds'. He's not an actor. It reeks of such 'old boys school' Hollywood as to make you ill. Is it because Roth is a Jew he's in here?

The really great one in here is Diane Kruger. She's fascinating to watch. Christoph Waltz is good in the part but near the end he wobbles in a scene that is so jarring and full of actor ticks I was wondering if he was having a spasm or was struggling with the English language.

I should be fair - except for Pulp Fiction I'm not a movie watcher who feels Quentin Tarantino is that great of a director. I'm not a man who would say, "He's fucking amazing, man! Amazing! Dude, he gets movies, you know? Like really gets them, man! They fucking rock!"

Kill Bill was ultra-violent, pretty, over the top and lonngggg...same with his bloated Death Proof. People in Hollywood love this guy. I am not one of them.

With that in mind, if you are ravenous for 40 minutes of great footage and wish to wade through the rest, have it darling, have at it.

xo
Mikey Bryan

Your Movie Man

Halloween Movies #25 and #24 - When Bad Remakes Happen To Great Horror

2009-10-08T06:53:00.000-07:00

I used to do this weird thing as a kid.

Immediately after my mother and father would leave the house, I'd pretend I was a camera in a scary movie. I'd roam the hallways and slow down when I got to a turn (which wasn't very long; we lived in White Trash Heaven so our hallway was 50 feet)...I'd extend my hand in front of me so it looked like I was the killer and the hand was coming from my point of view, searching for my next victim.

It was pretty cool. I felt like I was always in a movie.

It got sorta pathetic when I'd make heavy breathing sounds as I opened the refrigerator door for the gallon of milk inside, and grab it, pretending I was a killer who just happened to be really thirsty and needed some milk.

Whenever I did this, my mother would inevitably be right behind me, her hand on her bulging hip, her right eyebrow raised and her lip in a downward spiral. "You're a very creepy kid," she'd say. "You know that?"

I wasn't a creepy kid. I was imaginative and highly visual, thank you very much.

Which brings me to Halloween Movie #25, a forgotten classic from a great suspense writer.

Ladies and Gentlemen, whores and perverts and all those in between, the most disturbing image in all of horror cinema:

Run! It's a housewife from Connecticut! Agh!!!

When was the last time you saw The Stepford Wives? I'm not talking about that steaming pile of horseshit Frank Oz shat out awhile back...except for Glenn Close (who, let's face it, scares all of us silly - her cunt has teeth and we all know it) and some very funny lines from the always funny Paul Rudnick, the movie was a very weird collision of humor and horror...it was like Jewish Catskill Horror Humor minus the horror or the humor (and this is from the guy who directed one of the greatest screen comedies in years, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) --

No, the original is a very fucked up story and a great movie with a fantastic, chilling ending that pulls no punches.

Add to the mix how it's a great social commentary and you've got a great movie.

You know your in trouble in a horror movie when the opening shot is a beautiful house with birds chirping amidst the backdrop or green, overflowing trees; terrifying.

I have to tell you - sure, it was the fact they based the book on the twisted imagination of Ira Levin of Rosemary's Baby fame...sure, the producers made a genius move by hiring really smart guys to make it (really old and classy veteran British director Bryan Forbes and the God of screenwriting, William Goldman), but I have to tell you, it was in casting Katharine Ross in the lead they ensured they were at least halfway sure of making a good movie.

Check out the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zUWOeNfa6Y

The fact it turned out great is purely an act of the Movie Gods coming together and everyone agreeing they were making a full-out horror movie that would stick to the original text and not falter. Some think it's campy; I fully disagree. Read the book if you don't believe me. It's super short, very fun to read and the ending is the same as in the movie.

But Katharine Ross - I swear, she reminds me of that story about Brooke Shields when they were filming that delightfully absurd 1981 trash heap, Endless Love. Remember that?

Apparently, during one of the notorious sex scenes, 14 year old Brooke had to pretend she was having an orgasm. Director Franco Zeffirelli tried everything. Yelling at her, screaming at her, giving her a shot of scotch - nothing worked. In a fit of rage, he grabbed Brooke by the foot and shook her, screaming she was ruining his movie. Brooke screamed at him and cried. She said the way he held her foot caused her so much pain it made her cry.

Being the sadist motherfucker he was, Zeffirelli knew he had to seiz the moment. He crouched down by the edge of the bed, called 'action' and then filmed the scene of Brooke orgasming - all the while grabbing her foot and twisting it so she'd cry out in pain, and thus, 'orgasm'.

The point is - Brooke, like Katharine Ross, was a breathtakingly beautiful actress who couldn't act for shit. The only way they could show emotion was to have physical pain inflicted upon them.

Sick, but true.

So when the arc of the movie takes place (and I'm not giving anything away, well all know the finale but the cumulative effect is still shattering) and Katharine Ross goes through her 'transformation' to the perfectly shot and timed final image, it makes absolutely perfect sense and it's entirely believable, because in real life, Katharine Ross WAS a Stepford Wife.

They got one of the great, all time DP's to shoot this fucker. The great Owen Roizman. Christ, before he shot The Stepford Wives this guy shot The Taking Of Pelham One, Two, Three (the original, not the remake which wasn't bad but it's no original), The French Connection and a little movie you may have heard of - The Exorcist. So, um, he sorta knew what he was doing.

The art of movie cinematography has never been rivaled since the 1940's and the 1970's. Ever. There was a visual texture to these movies that you could feel and taste. It's amazing.

If you look at the way shots are held in this movie and the composition between them, you'll see classic, minimal suspense. It's just great how it builds and builds and builds to this great finale. It all works. The sparse dialogue, the minimal photography, the fuzzy, perfect 'Hallmark' card look of the movie, the whispered dialogue, the side glances, the clothes - it's really great and creepy as hell.

The reason the 2004 version is so dreadful is because they were trying so hard to be something new. They wanted their cake and they wanted to eat it too. Humor in a horror film is extremely tricky. You have to respect and honor the genre and not mock it. In the 2004 The Stepford Wives they mocked the very genre they were making. Weird, bizarre and extremely insulting.

Plus, Nicole Kidman is only 43 and I'm very depressed at how many Botox injections she's getting; she's hard to look at and this woman can act. It's fucked up. Did you see her in The Invasion (so-so movie - do we really need another reinvention of Body Snatchers...let it go, people). Nicole is starting to look like those weird blow-up dolls you see in sex shops off of the highway (not that I've ever been in one - I'm a good Catholic boy).

In 1975, these guys were absolutely serious about making a creepy movie with a social commentary at the center (but first and foremost, a creepy movie) and they were not fucking around. Expertly directed and acted, with a tone and style that gets under your skin, the 1975 The Stepford Wives is one of the all time super Halloween movies.

Speaking of great originals and horrible sequels, I hope anyone who reads this blog has seen this tripped out little gem:

I'm always amazed when people tell me they won't watch movies in black and white. I get the usual reaction: "Oh my God. Black and white? How boring. I mean, how old is that? Seriously, they are so slow and boring. I mean, boring."

I get it. I do. I was raised in the 80's. I'm the same way. Old movies are old movies. They are slower, they don't move as fast as today's movies do and most of the stories we've seen before or the movie is (here comes that word again) boring.

This is an exception. This movie, The Haunting, based on the unnerving book The Haunting of Hill House by the unparalleled author Shirley Jackson, shared the living shit out of me one late afternoon in 1988.

Check out the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq74oz6mf3w

I was working in a video store in Seattle at the time. For a span of 9 years, I worked in 7 video stores which is why I know as much as I do about movies. For 9 years straight, I watched more movies than you can possibly imagine. But black and white horror seemed...dumb.

There was this girl I used to with with in Seattle...her name was Becky - (she was a true Becky - a hot, White Trash Becky - freckles, a big, round ass with looming tits which had the perkiest nipples I'd ever seen - you could have hung a coat on those nipples - straight boys were hypnotized by those tits while gay men just wondered what it would be like to have them)...she invited me over to her apartment for a night of scary movies.

10PM.

We smoked a bowl, er, ATE A BOWL OF POPCORN and were about to turn in when she held up the box for The Haunting.

"Craig told us to watch this," she said, referring to Craig, the owner of the video store where we worked. Craig was the coolest boss ever. Even to this day Craig is still the coolest boss I've ever had and he still runs Video Isle in Seattle where Big Nipple Becky and I worked.

"He said it was scary," she said, shrugging her shoulders.

I sighed and agreed to give it a shot. But it was in black and white. Ew. How scary could it be?

Flashforward to 11:59PM.

Becky and I are crouched down in the couch. She's calling Craig a 'motherfucker' and 'asshole' and 'dickhead'.

She's so paralyzed with fear she can't eat. She can't drink. I haven't left the couch once and feel like I need to take a crap to release my tension.

The credits rolled and we stared at each other. A moment passed, and then we gave each a high-five and rolled on the couch in laughter.

The movie scared the shit out of us.

To this day, I can't tell you exactly why, but I will say this: I have never been so scared in a movie where I never saw what it was I was meant to be scared by.

As an added Halloween treat and an ode to the amazing sound design in the movie, here is the scene that scared the shit out of us in all it's old time glory (please, try to watch this in the dark and with your sound turned WAY UP)...

INFAMOUS HAUNTED ROOM SCENE FROM THE HAUNTING:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_khsyKDXdg&feature=player_embedded#:

The director, Robert Wise, was a pretty cool guy. And busy. The Haunting was made in-between his gigs directing a few movies you may have heard of: West Side Story and Sound of Music.

Sure, the guy made two of the most famous musicals of all time, but he loved the dark stuff. He directed the so-so 80's horror reincarnation flick, Audrey Rose and original The Day The Earth Stood Still. His work after the late 80's was pretty much nill, but his work in the 40's, 50's and 60's is fairly staggering.

This guy knew what he was doing and it shows.

The story of The Haunting is fun (and it's been ripped off countless times) - a well-meaning but wacko doctor wants to investigate the theory Hill House is actually haunted. Rumor has it is and no one has yet been able to prove it. He brings along a group of people with certain abilities (some supernatural; some not) and the entire movie is a set up to see if the house is haunted or if it's simply legend.

The star of the movie is the house itself*. Filmed in black and white, you never quite know if the shadows are simply shadows or filled with demons. Every angle of the house is off. Faces blend and open and close. And in the one spectacular, terrifying scene (see above), the two lead actresses fight off an invisible force which is fantastic scene of great photography, sounds and acting. These kinds of scenes proved to me, once and for all, money never, ever makes a good movie - ever. Artistry and imagination always does.

*Truly, the real star of the movie was Julie Harris. She won 5 Tony's in her time and let me tell you, she deserved every single one. She may not have made a ton of movies, but in each and everyone she was in she was spectacular, and The Haunting is no exception. She is perfect, absolutely perfect in the lead role. As they say, casting is everything...

Returning to my last note above where I wrote money never makes a good movie...perfect case in point was the remake of The Haunting by Jan De Bont in 1999...

If I were to teach a screenwriting class again on what NOT to do, I'd force my students to read Shirley Jackson's original novel, then I'd screen The Haunting from 1963 and The Haunting from 1999 back to back.

It would be clear, after the screening, what a mound of egocentric, desperate, studio-driven dreck the remake is. It's so bad as to defy description. It's what a group of 20-something, male studio executives would make.

I can hear snippets of the development meetings for the remake so clearly it sorta scares me:

"No one seen the original. You kidding me? Who the fuck watches TCM? Old women and welfare babies. Please."

"I just got off the phone with Spielberg. He said we can use the Universal backlot for the interiors. Here is what I think - big. I mean big. Big house, huge, mammoth. It's great. And he said we can coordinate with the Director or New Theme Ride Development at Universal Corporate to develop The Haunting, The Ride. Gotta call Zeta-Jone's agent to see if we can use her likeness."

"Lili Taylor? Really? See, I won't fuck her. I'd fuck Catherine Zeta-Jones --"

"You know she's, like, 50."

"Lili Taylor?"

"No, man. Zeta-Jones."

"No way."

"Please. You think she'd be with Michael Douglas if she was 30?"

"Damn. She looks good."

"Dr. Adams on Wilshire. Amazing guy."

"And that's why we got Liam. He'll keep it in place. He's our anchor. But he's gonna shoot Jan."

"He can't direct actors."

"He hates actors."

"Okay, let's talk demographic. We got Lili Taylor. She'll bring in the independent crowd and the lesbians. Check. We got Jan directing. All the guys who loved Speed will line up around the block. Check. Liam will make us look like we give a shit and are serious. The old guy and old women like Catherine. She's hot but not really hot. Like sorta Mom hot, but not really. Owen Wilson is great. Funny guy. I love that guy. But keep him away from that PA, okay? I heard he's a major coke head. Not good. So got the dudes and the young professionals with Owen. Check. And it looks like 90% of the budget is all on the FX. We're good. Oh...has anyone hired the writer yet? Oh, shit. We forgot to hire a writer. Oh, well. Let's just wing it."

Showbusiness. Gateway to Hell.

Until next time...

Stylin' Vampires and Exploding Bad Guys (or, Brian DePalma part 1)

2009-10-05T07:55:00.000-07:00

Blood is our life...

Darkness, our feeding ground

And sunlight, our eternal damnation

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Welcome to Halloween Movie # 28 and #27.

Horror and suspense movies used to have style. I know I'm sounding really old writing that, but it's true.

Great directors knew the genre allowed them to play with outrageous and truly visual storytelling. In a fantasy or horror world, limits are far and few.

I've had countless screenwriting teachers tell me you have to hit certain points in a drama or a comedy; you must have rising action, you must have a reversal in the middle which is the exact opposite from the end of the second act reversal...on and on they'd go, but when it came to horror and suspense structure, they would always say, "But on these films, all bets are off."

Director Katheryn Bigelow knew this. It's why she chose to direct the dreamy, violent and stylized Near Dark in 1987. She knew she could do whatever she wanted visually and get away with it. As as result, she made a fantastic horror movie with a ballsy visual style that is both intoxicating and terrifying.

CHECK OUT THE TRAILER: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5K-wosw0i4

She made a movie about vampires and she did it out of her love for making a movie about vampires.

It's one hell of a great action movie. Everyone knows she can direct a killer action sequence (Point Break anyone? Hurt Locker? The underrated Blue Steel?), but in Near Dark she also expertly handled the metaphors of blood and sexuality inherent in all vampire tales with a visual ease.

Today's horror and supernatural films have no visual style. Take a look the current spat of vampire movies, TV and books. Sure, True Blood has a great pace and the sexual energy is great; sure the Twilight series is romantic and angst ridden and is keeping gay men and women up at night wondering if the story's heroine will reject or love the Hot, Bad Vampire for, like, totally all time; sure The Vampire Diaries has another young, forbidden love story at the center with a bloody, ancient feud between two brothers...but what all of these works don't have is visual audacity.

I wish someone would have the balls to make a vampire movie with visual audacity.

Kathryn Bigelow took a tired genre which never, ever dies and infused it with a violent, bloody and downright frightening visual style right out of a horror dream AND she made it with a very down-to-earth, almost masculine love story in the center, all set to the fluid music of Tangerine Dream.

As with all of the movies on my Halloween countdown I refuse to give you the plot. It ruins a movie (like most trailers - why bother to see the movie? The producers nowadays are so desperate to get you to go they tell the entire story in the preview!)...

All you need to know is a guy who wasn't a vampire turns into a vampire and falls in love with a girl who may or may not be a vampire and they kill people. What do you want? It's a VAMPIRE MOVIE.

Before anyone knew him from Heroes, Adrian Pasdar was the lead in Near Dark and was very good. He carries the movie nicely and makes you believe he's a quiet guy from the Midwest who wants more out of life. Jenny Wright is pensive and porn hot as his love interest and does a good job playing the good girl gone very, very bad but with a heart of gold.

Katheryn Bigelow was either married to or dating James Cameron when she made Near Dark so she had access to his amazing set of actors. All of them are perfect for their parts which is part of the reason the movie works as well as it does. It was right around the mid to late 80's Cameron was doing his best work (sorry, but Titanic is not his best work) and it shows. All of the actors in Near Dark were in Cameron directed or produced movies.

Lance Henriksen is great as the leader of the vampire, as is his wife, the incredibly undervalued Jenette Goldestein. They had great chemistry and were both BADASS.

And for ONCE a vampire movie dealt with the carnal sexual desires of a young vampire who was changed into vampire when he was young but has grown up as a man on the inside...it's disgusting, unnerving and very, very good.

But the real star of the show is Bill Paxton. Oh My God. I'm not sure what the hell Paxton was snorting and/or drinking during the making of Near Dark but he is the truly horrific vision of a cackling demon let loose on the world. This is the Bill Paxton of the 80's that made everyone take notice. He doesn't just play the part of a bloodthirsty vampire, he BITES into it and bathes in it's pulsing blood.And look at some of these characters names:

Caleb Colton
Jesse Hooker
Diamondback
Homer
Severen

Good, good stuff folks. Which is odd since screenwriter Eric Red, outside of Blue Steel and Near Dark, hasn't really written a lot of great, produced movies (Body Parts anyone?). He did make a werewolf movie called Bad Moon which was, well, bad.

The story takes some surprising twists and very violent turns while always keeping one eye on the human aspect of the story. It's got all you'd want in a vampire movie and God the visual style...beautiful.

I refuse to give it away, but how the vampires die in this movie has yet to be matched in any American made vampire movie. There is a texture and style to the special effects I haven't seen (well, maybe with Peter Jackson). It's as good as good gets.

You want a violent, thrilling, sad, sexual, rock and roll of a vampire movie? Watch Near Dark. Top notch director at the top of her game making a MOVIE with a visual style like no other vampire MOVIE out there.

We need more MOVIES that love being MOVIES.

And speaking of visual orgasms...
Spring of 1978.

My movie ritual at 14 was as follows: open up the Sunday Seattle Times. Ignore every section except Arts and Entertainment. Uncap the red marker beside me. Hold the red marker in my hand, poised and ready.

Flip through the pages. Circle every movie to see which are opening on Friday. Make note of theaters near the house so I can see them via the bus - but not the R-rated movies. Those require me to shamelessly work over my father, mother or sister.

But it was on one particular Sunday when I opened up the paper that I stopped and gasped.

There on the page, in full-page color and glory, was the ad for the new Brian DePalma film, The Fury. I felt my stomach turn into knots. I had seen the ads on TV. I knew this was the same director as Carrie. I knew it would be very R-rated. I knew it was the ultimate forbidden fruit to see as a teenager. Everyone would be asked for their ID.

I had to see it.

After much convincing, I got my sister, Joy, to take me. Now my sister was my mom. I don't mean that in a weird way, but my mom was a psychological mess and my sister sorta took over the role of my mom a bit. Without her I'd probably be on some sort of anti-depressant.

My sister was everything to me (she still is). We were meant to be related. I'd do anything for her and vice versa. But she and I are different. She's always been the more sensible and conservative one and I'm a tad bit 'louder'. We balance each other out.

I remember holding the ad for the movie up to her and she was like, "No way. I'm not taking you to that. It looks disgusting." I pleaded and cried as only little brothers can do. She finally relented, but I knew she didn't think it was the right thing to do.

Four days before the movie I developed abdominal cramps. Three days before I stopped eating. Two days before I counted the minutes until we were to go. A day before I curtailed all fluids so I wouldn't have to pee during.

The day of I was so excited I had to remind myself to breath.

I told you I was a weird kid.

We entered the theater where The Fury had opened. It was in a parking lot of a strip mall again (if you've read any of my other movie posts you see all the theaters of my youth were in parking lots of malls. I was raised 100% suburban). It was a rinky-dink two screen theater and it was sold out.

We sat down. The lights dimmed. My heart fluttered in my chest and I felt my bowels loosen.

The screen darkened and over a black screen the deep, dark strings of John Williams score soared and these worlds materialized on the screen:

116 minutes later, the big finale came. After it had ended and the final image turned to slamming black credits, my sister turned to me and said in a voice filled with disgust and annoyance, "That was SO not necessary."

Of course, she was referring to the grisly final image I refuse to divulge here, but for me, I was left with a feeling of disappointment when the movie ended. It didn't live up to the hype. I was expecting a major motion picture event and I felt stiffed.

It was how I felt in 1978 seeing it for the first time in the theater, and from the critical reaction and box office dollars, it is how other people felt as well.

Here is the original trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SEFRWjATqM

Since then, I've seen the movie many times. I now love the baroque style of the moviemaking and marvel at the construction of the suspense sequences. It's a brooding, melancholy horror and suspense movie told on a giant, grand scale. It's a sweeping, ridiculous story of mental powers and old time revenge.

The script was adapted from a flimsy novel, The Fury, by horror novelist John Farrar. I read the original book and it's sequel and both are fairly silly. The only reason DePalma agreed to make this was because it allowed him to tell a story purely in visual terms.

John Cassavettes was clearly slumming in the picture. Amy Irving was the perfect strong heroine and Andrew Stevens is hunky scenery. Like Taxi Driver, it was made in the 70's and the racial subtext is fairly blatant.

Look at Taxi Driver and how much of the film is geared towards violence to blacks. Or in The Fury - I won't even bother to mention the Middle Eastern murder scene. It's barbaric.

Janet Maslin was one of the greatest champions of DePalma's work when no one else was. I think the reason she was was because he was different, he was pushing the envelope and making work with was thrilling and odd.

Next week I'm dedicating an entire post to DePalma and the Hitchcock connection no one talks about anymore. DePalma (like Hitchcock) is/was an inspired and infuriating filmmaker. But what he had was a visual signature, a visual style lacking in today's market.

Love it or leave it, The Fury is a super Halloween film with one of the best scores John William's ever did. Much of the film simply does not hang together today, but there are four set pieces in the film which defy description. While set pieces alone do not make a movie, when they are this good they rise above a cohesive whole and become something onto themselves.

The Fury, like all of DePalma's movies, isn't so much about what takes place on the screen but about how we, the viewer, experience the movie. That was the trick to Hitchock and DePalma and it's also, partially, Polanski's as well.

And while my loving sister may not have liked the finale, I still think it is one of the best whoppers of all time...especially the last 5 seconds where 'you know what' thumps on the ground and then rises into the air, all in time to the final chord of William's demonic symphonic beat.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not only have DePalma and Hitchcock gone out of style, but movie scores have all but wasted away. Tangerine Dream, a collection of German composers who formed as a group in the late 60's, recorded some of weirdest and intriguing movie scores of the day. Like DePalma and Bigelow, they had a VOICE, a SOUND. Imagine the opening shot of Risky Business without that layered, rhythmic electronic beat...imagine Legend without the soaring synthesized flute and stands of zinging music (which, ironically, was originally scored by Jerry Goldsmith, another modern master of film music)...imagine Michael Mann and Thief and his 80's style of languid filmmaking without the help of Tangerine Dream. Their music set the tone for films in a way no other music could. They were able to tap into our collective dreams with their moody and spiraling and seductive electronic sounds.

And I know John Williams did Star Wars and Indian Jones - yes, they are great scores, I agree, but they don't hold a candle to Schindler's List or Minority Report or The Fury or Empire of the Sun. The man is a great composer but the moment he dips his toe into the darker parts of the psyche, he comes alive. Take a look at the darker Spielberg work he's worked on or the darker themed music he's scored. It is in there you'll find the beating heart of an artist searching for answers. Williams is a great composer when he creates sweeping, heroic symphonies, but when he dives into the dark human heart he rises to staggering emotional heights.

Halloween Movie # 26: The Reflecting Skin

2009-10-03T09:33:00.000-07:00

Sometimes terrible things happen...

...quite naturally

A black screen.

A sound. Dark, low. Unknown.

The screen explodes into a field of color. Yellow and white.

As far as the eye can see, rows upon rows of amber waving grain.

The deep and low plucking of what sounds like a thousand violins as a small boy with impossibly black hair and translucent skin runs through the middle of the grain.

Something is coming. You can feel it. Something is in the air.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Or such is how I imagine the script for the opening of Philip Ridley's might read.

In 1990, Philp Ridley, a well-known U.K. based novelist and playwright, wrote and directed a film called The Reflecting Skin. It came out the same year as another movie he wrote, The Krays. The Krays was a hit in the U.K. and abroad.

No one saw The Reflecting Skin. They should have. If they would have, they would have seen the work of an artist who likes to dip his toe in a world of fantasy and myth that is both horrifying and beautiful.

Check out the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxlnDRqPUXE

The Reflecting Skin is the story of a young boy named Seth Dove. It is his journey into a fantasy world of dark childhood dreams and desires. The plot is about Seth's brother (played by a very, very young Viggo Mortensen) coming back from the war, his relationship to his disturbed parents and the mystery behind a demonic black car filled with darkly clothed men as it races along the country landscape, searching for something better let unsaid.

Trying to describe the story points of The Reflecting Skin is like trying to describe the story points of Blue Velvet. I could tell you Blue Velvet is a detective story about a man finding out who kidnapped a distraught woman's child and how a severed ear plays a part in the mystery...but as we all know, the point of Blue Velvet is not so much if the bad guy is caught in the end as it is the texture of the path along the way to finding out who the killer is.

The same principal is at play in The Reflecting Skin. Yes, we do want to know who the men in the black car are. Yes, we do want to know what will happen to Seth Dove and the strange woman he meets in her house in middle of a field is all about.

Is she a vampire? Is she simply a lonely woman? Is his imagination overactive? Or do demons live among us and he is simply seeing them when the rest of us are too busy or blind to see?

We get answer to all of these 'story' questions, but more than that, we get a feeling and a sense of how Seth Dove experiences them...this is a movie so rich in texture and sensual detail it's nearly impossible for me to explain why it's so good, except to say you must see it.

The score by composer Nick Bicât is sweeping and terribly haunting. The cinematography by Dick Pope, one of the all time greats (the nearly perfect film Naked, the under appreciated Mountains of the Moon, Dark City, The Secret Garden), feels as if it's in 3D. It's rich and textured and absolutely in sync with the emotion and feeling of each scene. Watch how he frames each shot. Nothing is out of place, nothing is happenstance.

As with all great movies, there is absolutely not visual or narrative fat to this movie. It's as lean and mean as movies get.

I'll bet you dollars to donuts Dick Pope and Philip Ridley spent days looking at the work of Andrew Wyeth before they started to map out the look of the film. The entire feeling of the film can be summed up in this famous image:

And this:Lindsay Duncan is terrifyingly good in the role of Dolphin Blue. Yes, Dolphin Blue. Look at those names - Seth Dove and Dolphin Blue. Her scenes with the boy are spellbinding. You can't turn away from them. She is what a a famous writer once told me actor Cherry Jones is like. She is a 'vessel', meaning, she is so pure in her acting an entire world seems to emerge from her. Her acting is so organic it doesn't ever feel as if she is acting as channelling some unknown force.

Jeremy Cooper, the boy in the lead, did hardly any film after this one. It's no wonder. How do you follow this up? Sheila Moore as Seth's mother scares the shit out of me. Just wait until you see the water scene. Dear God.

But the real star of the movie is the writing. Kill me now. The texture to the words, the dips and falls in the narrative, the metaphors and subtle uses of jargon and language - the monologues are as good as any put on film, particularly the ones from Ms. Duncan.

This is one of those horror movies which is meant to be felt. God bless him, Philp Ridley did write The Krays and it is very, very good but it is nothing compared to the force of The Reflecting Skin.

This is horror and suspense movie making at it's finest.

Watch out for black cars on the road.

You never know who is inside.

Until next time...

Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets...

2009-10-02T10:02:00.000-07:00

1977.

I'm almost 13 years old.

My father came over to me as I sat on the floor of the living room in our tiny house outside of Seattle and asked me," Wanna go to the movies? There's a double feature at the Lynn Twin."

The Lynn Twin was a two screen movie house in a parking lot off of a huge mall in Lynnwood, Washington, a small town a few over from my own. The screens were separated by a massive concession stand which served as a sound buffer between the two screens.

The building was block and simple. Functional. It was meant to get people in and out to watch movies, not to admire the decor or enjoy the rock hard seats.

Over the years, my father had tried to bond with me over various sporting events. First there was baseball. I hated it. I stood in the outfield, clutching a worn, dirty mitt in my hand, terrified a ball might actually come my way and I'd be forced to attempt to catch it. I remember being so afraid to leave my spot I used to pee in my pants instead of going to the bathroom a few fields away.

I was a curious child.

My father tried soccer (hated it, but loved watching boys in their jockstraps), fishing (if there is a more boring 'sport' known to man I have yet to uncover it), hiking (enjoyable, if endless and oddly unsatisfying - climbing and climbing and climbing for more climbing and climbing and climbing), camping (loved the outdoors, hated the lumpy ground), and the infamous Y-Indian Guides of the Pacific Northwest.

Y-Indian Guides was a group dedicated (as the badge says) to making Fathers and Sons 'pals forever.' My father was Chief Bryan and I was Little Michael. It was a whole Indian-Washington naming thing difficult to understand unless you grew up in the Pacific Northwest. I asked to be Sacagawea Michael. That didn't go over very well.

At Y-Indian Guides we boated and sailed and made cars and stood for pictures wearing Indian feathers on our heads and beaded shirts...it was all very bonding but it bored me to tears (except the cars...they were cool).

I was a young boy growing up gay and my father was a farm hand from Idaho and Montana. What did we have in common?

Movies. We had movies in common. So when my father asked me in the late summer of 1977 if I wanted to go to a double feature, I said yes. Movies were my obsession. They were my friends. I didn't have any literal friends, I was that oddly pathetic kid in school who spent time alone reading and watching movies. My Mom and Dad were my best friends.

I know, sickening.

I always went to the movies alone or with my parents. My mom took me to disaster movies and comedies and my dad took me to anything R-rated or with blood. A good time to be had by all.

He told my mother we were going to a double feature. She asked him what the movies were. The conversation went something like this:

Mom: "Lynn."

Dad: "Yes, dear."

Mom: "You didn't tell me what movies you and Mike are seeing."

Dad: "I don't know, dear. Some movie where Dustin Hoffman plays that weird comic who swore all the time in the 60's -"

Mom: "You mean Lenny. The biopic on Lenny Bruce."

Dad: (to me) "Biopic? Where does she learn these things?"

Mom: "I learn these things by reading Mike's Rona Barrett Hollywood magazine. There's a lot of boobs in that Lenny."

Dad: "How do you know this?"

Mom: "I read the review by John Hartl in the Seattle Times. He said that oversexed Val Perrine person shows her boobs through the whole movie."

Dad: "Well, then, good for us, huh?" (at this awkward point he nudged me in a heterosexual father and son moment)

Mom: "What's the other one?"

Dad: "I don't know. That Taxi thing."

Mom: "Taxi Driver?"

Dad: "Yea. We have to go. We're gonna be late."

Mom: "Nice. This is good parenting Lynn. Mike is 12 years old. He turns 13 in two weeks and you're taking him to a foul mouthed movie with all sorts of boobs flying all over the goddamn screen and a psychopath killer cab person with teenage hookers in New York."

Dad: "Yup. That's about right."

And with that, we left the house.

I was elated. Nudity? Violence? New York City? R-rated movies?

Nirvana.

So on that late summer day in August of the summer 1978 my father and I sat down in the air-conditioned Lynn Twin and watched Taxi Driver, starring Robert DeNiro, Jodie Foster, written by Paul Schrader and directed by Martin Scorsese.

I never finished the movie in 1978.

Here is why: I sat watching this movie about this guy driving a cab in dirty, grungy New York City and as the movie progressed, I had a mounting sensation something awful was going to happen. I didn't have any idea at the time what would happen, but I had sense it was going to be awful.

I shrunk down farther and farther in my seat. The pit in my stomach was growing and I felt sweaty.

Then came the scene where Robert DeNiro walks down the street, his hair in a full Mohawk and shoots Harvey Keitel in the stomach. Something about the way in which he shot the guy made me sick to my stomach.

But that isn't what did me in.

What did me in was when DeNiro walked into the apartment building and shot the guy in front of him in the hand, sending four severed fingers flying in the air and blood shooting onto the wall.

I felt as if a cold bucket of water had been splashed on me and I heard myself scream.

That was when my father reached across me, grabbed me by the arm and hauled me out of the theater as fast as he could.

On the drive home we didn't say a word about it. My father giggled about it and said it was probably not smart to have taken me to it. I agreed...but nothing more was said.

But I privately knew Taxi Driver was the very first time I felt horrified in a movie theater which is why it is #29 in the Halloween Movie Countdown.

When I see the movie now I can admire it's artistry. The grainy film stock Scorcese used to give the killing scenes a documentary feel; the lack of any sense of politically correct charged speech; the shots of old, dirty, foul New York City at night; the dour, depressed and insanely angry tone of the movie; the poetry of the writing and the sheer audacity to make a film so insanely bleak and hellish.

Sure Jodie Foster is good in it (let's face it, the woman is not a great actress, she's stiff as shit and we all know it) and Cybill Shepherd is breathtaking and Albert Brooks is so damn young and Peter Boyle is amazing, per usual...but this is all about Scorcese.

The man is a fucking narcissistic ego whore. Raging Bull is great, Goodfella's is great if you're a Guido and hate everyone but your family, but Scorcese is not the God everyone makes him out to be. There is a reason hardly any of movies make any money.

He's too in love with Scorcese and Taxi Driver is still one of his top movies. Well - Mean Streets is pretty spectacular but Taxi Driver is the real jewel.

Plus, I used to be Robert DeNiro's assistant in the early 90's and I can tell you that DeNiro is a prick. 100% certified. I became good friends with his father and some day, some day, I'll tell stories that would make DeNiro fans die with envy. All I'll say is that I used to sit in the living room of DeNiro father's house and watch movies of DeNiro as a child...very surreal.

Taxi Driver is a movie, movie and I see now why it put Scorcese on the map. It's unrelenting in it's bleakness and grime. When I worked in video stores in New York City in the early 90's, myself and the other employees would watch the movie over and over on laserdisc and pause it and analyze the shots and the way they were composed and what they were about.

This is the kind of movie film geeks love because it's so in love with the form it's hard to take your eyes off of it.

It's a narcissistic, dirty horror movie with a rotten, tortured soul. But it's well-made and extremely smart.

Writer Paul Schrader (a man I admire but am afraid to meet) said he wrote Taxi Driver in 6 days in New York City when he was homeless and broke and strung out on dope. All of Hollywood is bullshit, so I find this hard to believe. But that is how the movie feels. It feels like it was made in the midst of a feverish drug dream where there is no escape.

Even the final shot with Travis looking in the rear view mirror and the refracted image he sees of himself to the zing of Herrmann's strings tells you this horror dream is never ending for him.

Travis Bickle is insane and is going to murder again. Thank God there has never been Taxi Driver 2. Can you imagine? "Travis Bickle is pissed off...again!"

And let's just say it - the name "Travis Bickle." One of the greatest names for a character ever.

Taxi Driver is unsettling, horrific, demonic and feverish. It's your worst nightmare come to life and as such, is a fitting part of the Halloween Movie Countdown.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Of note as well:

Paul Schrader is a writer whose work I studied for some time. Besides the too-often praised Raging Bull, the bloated Cat People and the oddly dull American Gigolo, he did write 2 fun Halloween flicks you'll want to check out:

The first was Obsession directed by Brian DePalma in 1975. It was a great, crazy, ridiculous somersault of a movie that is a wonderful brain teaser straight out of the old noir days starring Geneviève Bujold, Cliff Robertson and John Lithgow.

The movie is old-fashioned but the directing by DePalma is great and baroque and the ending is a smash. The score by the late Bernard Herrmann (whose died one day after he finished the score for Taxi Driver) is a dream come true, the cinematography by the late, great and unmatched Vilmos Zsigmond is a widescreen lovers wet dream and the editing by Paul Hirsh (still editing to this day) is breathtaking.
Also, I'm a huge fan of The Comfort of Strangers, a 1989 movie Harold Pinter adapted from the Ian McEwan novel of the same name. Pinter truly understood Ian McEwan's book. He took the tone and the style of the novel and somehow found a visual and aural equivalent no other writer could have.

I only recommend this movie to people who truly love the art of movies. It is slow and methodical. This is a languid, living macabre dream of a mystery movie. If such a movie is not your thing, you will not like it.

But I can't get over the scene of Helen Mirren on the balcony describing the private, hurtful things Christopher Walken does to her in the dark or the way Natasha Richardson puts together the pieces of what is happening to them and why.

McEwan is an extremely tricky writer to adapt. He is all about the word. To find a way to make his work cinematic is hard for any artist, but when Schrader and Pinter got together, it became magic.

Sexually charged, demented and with one of the sickest endings of any movie in the 80's, The Comfort of Strangers is a wonderful Halloween movie to watch in the dark with a glass of wine. The cinematography by the great Dante Spinotti is pitch perfect, the editing by Bill Pankow is great and the score by Angelo Baldamenti is one of the most underrated scores he ever created. I bought the CD back in the 90's and listen to it at least once a month.

Until tomorrow...

Pleasant dreams...

Halloween Movie Countdown: #30 - What the fuck happened to Bette Davis and Ruth Gordon?

2009-10-01T11:08:00.000-07:00

Look at them. I mean look at them. Imagine them looking out the window of their house as you stroll up, an innocent little child, your Halloween basket held in front of you, looking for candy, just a little bit of candy.

#30 on the countdown are two immortal classics of truly horrific cinema - Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? and Whatever Happened To Aunt Alice?

Ah, Baby Jane. What can I possibly write about it which has not already been written?

Bette David and Joan Crawford were down and out on their luck as actresses. They couldn't get a part to save their lives, when along came director Robert Aldrich. He had adapted a popular novel at the time into a script both of the women agreed to star in.

Suckers.

The end results is an exercise in grotesque psychological suspense, rather than all out horror. Although Crawford is quite fun in the movie, it's a Bette Davis picture all the way. She's a horrible character, a thoroughly terrible creature with one thing and one thing only on her mind: destroying anything in her path which takes away from her own narcissistic spotlight (Britney Spears anyone?).

The scenes between the two women is both campy and vile. The movie is surprisingly violent and the music is sublime. Despite the grandiose ridiculousness which runs through most of the film, it was a big hit when it came out and nabbed Davis an Oscar nomination.

She didn't win (Anne Bancroft did for Miracle Worker), but that didn't stop Davis from stealing the spotlight...again. According to popular legend, Crawford was infuriated when Davis was nominated for an Oscar and she was overlooked.

She contacted the Best Actress nominees who were unable to attend the ceremonies and offered to accept the award on their behalf should they win. When Anne Bancroft was declared the winner, Crawford triumphantly pushed her way past Davis saying "Step aside!", and swept onstage to pick up the trophy. Davis later commented, "It would have meant a million more dollars to our film if I had won. Joan was thrilled I hadn't."

Hysterical, old-fashioned and baroque (this is from the same man who made the great noir, Kiss Me Deadly), Whatever happened to Baby Jane is a worthy addition to any Halloween night...

After Baby Jane, Aldrich went on to make another less-known but nonetheless disturbing movie with two actress who had seen much, much better days...

Ruth Gordon and Geraldine Page. It's amazing to me these actresses would do such a simplistic and evil movie.

The poster tells you all. Someone is killing people and burying them in a garden. There. Done. It's really not more complicated than that.

Ruth Gordon - I could write an entire blog about her. Sure, she won an Oscar for Rosemary's Baby, but the woman was a writer, director and star for many, many years in works most people don't even remember.

She was an amazing talent who simply put everyone around her to shame.

She is crazy as usual in this - funny, acerbic, walking around as if she were in her living room...watching her raise a shovel and bring it down on a poor victims head while she sticks out her infamous tongue and bites down on it...

Heaven.

And Geraldine Page - the woman could act. Tennessee Williams' adaptations, Horton Foote's delightful Trip To Bountiful, Woody Allen's masterpiece Interiors - give me a break! She was a goddess of the acting world and then she did...this.

I have a theory...I have a theory Robert Aldrich gave all of these women LSD when he met them for the projects and just kept feeding them LSD...why else would they do these movies?

I'll tell you why -- because they were a gas. Aunt Alice is a surprisingly funny and unsettling movie. There are twists and turns in the plot you simply won't see coming. The dialogue is crisp and ridiculous and believe it or not, there is some pretty great suspense sequences.

Aldrich may have chosen silly subject matter but he executed it well and with style. These are living, breathing, baroque melodramas which are hysterical and disturbing.

These may not 'scare' you but they will freak you out...you'll also never look at the old lady next door in quite the same way ever again.

(And yes, I know I left out Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte - that is getting it's own entry later)...

Until tomorrow...

Halloween Movie Countdown: #31 - A chatty severed head and a spiked ball from hell...

2009-09-30T06:06:00.000-07:00

I used to work in various video stores in Seattle, Boston and New York. For 8 years. Some people go to film school at USC, UCLA or NYU - I was born into white trash so I could never afford such high and mighty schooling. No, I worked in a video store for $7 an hour for years.

And let me tell you, I saw a lot of movies. A LOT of movies. Thousands.

As employees, we would always gleefully put horror movies on the monitors in the stores to freak people out. Over the course of the next month, all of the movies I'll highlight for Halloween were movies which, when played on the TV's, freaked people out every_single_time.

They would gasp and scream and cover their eyes but they would never, ever turn away.

That is my goal in recommending movies to you. I'll only list movies which survived the Video Store Test...

...movies you can't turn away from.

Because life is to fucking short to be wasted on lame ass, boring movies.

On that note...

Stuart Gordon meet Don Coscarelli. Don meet Stuart. What do you two have in common?

You two made four of the sickest, most vile, inventive and truly hysterical horror films of the late 70's and early to mid-80's and...nothing quite as creative since.

You want to scream, cringe, throw popcorn at the TV, gag, hit the pause button and rewind button again and again and again?

Then I dare you to watch these four classic movies back to back. Make it a Halloween weekend marathon. These guys went balls-to-the-wall in a way we simply do not see anymore in movies.

Let's take a look at their minor masterpieces...

When I first saw Re-animator I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The lead actor, the unbelievably peculiar Jeffery Combs, was shockingly funny and horrific at the same time. And the violence! It was stylized, offensive, hysterical and deeply disturbing. My kind of movie!

The movie is very, very, very loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft's story Herbert West, Re-animator. But make no mistake - the movie is entirely Stuart Gordon. In France, there was a style of grotesque and violent theater entitled Theater du Grand Guignol. It was all the rage in Paris at the turn of the century. The violence was operatic and shocking. It was obscene but stylized and beautiful...and funny.

The plot of the movie doesn't need to be explained. It's a simple revenge tale.

I mean, please...the text for the poster is:

Herbert West has a very good head on his shoulders...

And another one in a dish on his desk...

You get the idea.

What Stuart Gordon did so well in Re-animator is take violence to such a level to make it vile and then absurd, and as he stripped it away, made it revoltingly hysterical.

It would ruin the experience if you've never seen it, but with Combs as his thematic muse, the movie goes into places few American horror movies had (and still don't have the balls to do).

I' m a huge fan of horror movies which are genuinely funny and shocking. These kinds of mixes are hard to find. They're normally from filmmakers who take the story and scenes in a direction where you constantly find yourself covering your mouth and saying, "Oh, no. He didn't do that" but yet find the humor in the grotesque.

A great ride of a movie, Stuart Gordon's Re-animator still stands the test of time as one of the all time great 80's horror movies.

Rent it, but please...save the desserts for after. This one is not an 'eating while watching' flick.

WARNING: As with many of these Halloween recommendations, there are edited and unedited versions of the movies. You must always try to find the unedited version if you can.

Trust me, what Herbert West does with the head on this desk and the naked girl on the table...it's edited out of some versions and you really want to see it. Its so shocking as to not be believed.

The other movie Mr. Gordon made which we used to love playing on the TV's (to the horror of little kids - I know, we were awful) is this little known gem:

This movie is a twisted sexual mind fuck.

Again, Mr. Gordon 'adapted' a short story of H.P. Lovecraft's and gave the lead to his muse, Jeffrey Combs. Together, they plunged into a story involving whips, chains, dildos, monsters that look like dildos, monsters that look like pussies, brain munching, pulsating mind bending machines, monsters which ate women from the inside out and one of the most creatively unsettling engorged pituitary gland in all of American cinema.

Again, to tell you the story is moot - a mad scientist tries to find clues to helping people unlock their deepest desires, but things get out of hand and the result is a bloody mess.

Combs must have been sniffing glue during this one. His scenes are simply unreal. He's manic, channeling some inner demented horror god on caffeine. Some are turned off by his weird 'acting'; I love it and find it the perfect Halloween concoction.

If psych-sexual horror with enough unrated gore to make you upchuck your dinner is you thing, then dive into this hearty dish. It is fairy spectacular.

Now, onto Don Coscarelli's mini-masterpieces -

And his fucked-up sequel:
Unlike Mr. Gordon, Mr. Coscarelli didn't want to give you a fun thrill ride so much as scare the living crap out of you and make you squirm.

And he succeeded.

The original Phantasm came out in 1979 and from the moment it hit the theaters, it was an underground hit. Like a lot of people, I heard about the movie from friends who told me about this amazing Tall Man and a flying ball and yellow blood.

Of course, I had to see it.

The movie is a weird mix of sci-fi and old-fashioned horror scares and one hell of a mean ass demonic ball with spikes. It was a heady mix which worked perfectly. The Tall Man scared the shit out of me and the ball fascinated me.

It's a great, scary Halloween movie with just the right amount of blood, guts and satanic plot holes. The entire thing doesn't really hold together, but the central mystery is pretty good and the special effects for the time were great. And, Coscarelli directed, wrote, edited and shot the movie by himself. True independent filmmaking.

Very cool.

Barbaric, scary and inventive, Phantasm is one of the best and most original horror movies to come out of the late 70's (and Variety posted a story saying a remake is in the works this winter.)

It's about the portal to hell and weird demons chasing two brothers across a barren landscape...blah, blah, blah.

It took ten years for him to make Phantasm 2, but it was well worth the wait. The first one was a big enough of a hit for Universal to give him a big budget and he didn't waste a penny. In the 80's and 90's, Universal put up money for some big, glossy thrillers and horror movies which they don't do anymore. Most of them were clunky, thundering money machines with no energy and soul.

Not Phantasm 2. It fucking ROCKED. It's a balls-to-the-wall action movie and a great, big budgeted horror movie in one.

With more money and lots of time between the first and second movie, Coscarelli crafted a great sequel. He directed and wrote it and the producing was left to others so he could concentrated on making a killer sequel.

The movie starts years after the first and continues the brother's quest to find out how to access the portal to hell, the secret behind the Tall Man and what the demonic, spiked ball is REALLY about.

A very young James LeGros starred in the sequel, as well as his white trash brother and the Tall Man. But the real star of the movie was the ball. Or, I should say three balls.

Fuck me. The balls in this movie were so bad-ass. There is one scene where they burrow into a guys back and...no. I can't ruin it. It will destroy the impact.

Suffice to say the scene is inventive and brutal. It's so bloody and sickeningly smart it's more than a bit upsetting Phantasm 3, 4 and 5 sucked. I can't recommend the sequels. You have much better uses of your movie viewing time.

Watching Phantasm and Phantasm 2 back to back would be the perfect Halloween fright fest. Pop these in and watch the evolution of a great horror story.

Until next time...

The Countdown to Halloween Begins...

2009-09-28T11:04:00.000-07:00

The year is 1962.
The place is Willowpoint Falls.

No one knows about what happened
in the school
classroom ten years ago.

Now, in the dead of night,
Frankie Scaroltti, is going to find out why.

For the next 31 days, until the dawn of Halloween, I'm going to countdown each day by paying homage to 31 of the greatest scary movies of all time (with extras thrown in for good measure).

My list comes from having seen countless 'frightful' movies over the years. I have no idea why, but I've always loved suspense movies (which makes no sense - I'm the most anxious guy I know!).

My love of all things scary runs more to the suspense and thriller side then strict blood and guts horror...but I do appreciate a good gut spilling like anyone else (as long as it's done with wit and style).

Each day I'll highlight one movie I feel is superior in style and substance, and list a few others which are obscure and unknown but worth you time.

Go to the video store.

Turn the lights out and pop some popcorn.

Snuggle up on the couch and get ready to get the living crap scared out of you.

Without further ado, let's start off with a nice old-fashioned ghost story.

Frank LaLoggia's 1988 curiosity, Lady In White...

TRAILER:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji73ogmlCQ8&feature=related

For me, this movie is like one of those great, old-fashioned ghost stories, but with a nice social commentary in the center. The filmmaker, LaLoggia, has since disappeared off of the film radar. Not sure where the hell he's gone, but he was a talented filmmaker who also made a nifty little 80's thriller called See No Evil.

Lady In White boasts a fantastic original soundtrack that is both inspired and cheeky. The lead actor, Lukas Haas, was a few years fresh from Witness and was ideal for the part. He didn't possess any of the sarcastic and grating style of so many child actors of the time. He was centered and down to earth.

I am LOATHE to tell you much about the story except it's a fun ghost story that is rather lurid and mean spirited - but that's not what makes the movie. What makes the movie is a subplot concerning an old man in the town who is after the character played by Lukas Hass and a cameo by Katherine Helmond during the over-the-top finale which has to be seen to be believed.

The stairs...beware of the stairs!

Cheesy and great, ridiculous and cinematic, touching and well-made...this is the perfect start to your Halloween movie watching.

Give Lady In White a shot and you won't be sorry.

(Extra credit (if you dare)....

If you can find a copy on VHS or set your TIVO to tape it when it comes on late at night, watch The Haunting of Julia aka Full Circle with Mia Farrow, based on the book Julia by Peter Straub. And excellent thriller from the 70's that unfortunately has yet to appear on DVD...and the ending? Dear God...the ending haunted me for years as a child. Superb ghost story AND book.

Many feel The Changeling from director Peter Medak is a great ghost story. It was made in 1980 and had a wonderfully demented George C. Scott in the lead role. While I don't feel the movie as a whole is that good, the suspense does have a very nice build and dear Lord, what director Medak could do with a bouncing ball and a staircase will make you scream bloody murder.

And one cannot forget The Innocents from 1961. A sublime exercise in suspense with poor Deborah Kerr. Much spooker than you'd expect for 1961. It's playing this month on TCM. Tape it!

If you dare...)

BLU-RAY DVD REVIEW: Disney's EARTH (or, how to enjoy the effects of acid without acting taking the shit)

2009-09-10T14:19:00.001-07:00

This is my uncensored opinion of anyone who watches this on Blu-Ray and is not at least partially stunned into emotional submission - you are heartless.

No, no, no. Of course are you are not heartless. That's cruel. However, you may want to get your empathy checked...

I know most people have absolutely no interest in films about nature. I used to be one of those people. I used to think they were so boring. My sister has always been into the glories of nature and how wonderful this planet can be. I was like, How very lesbian of you. Haven't you got a real film to watch?

Then I grew up. And started watching nature shows. I did like some of them, but most were the same shit. Nature is pretty but nature is shit. We are born, we get eaten, we love, we frolic, we die. End of story.

Like I need to pay to see this? I live it every day in NYC.

So it was with great reluctance I rented Earth from the new line of Disneynature films. I really had no great expectations of it. I thought it might be good in Blu-Ray but I didn't hold my breath.

Well, fuck me with a chainsaw. This movie is brilliant. I mean brilliant.

I won't even tell you how the colors on Blu-Ray are like colors I've never, ever seen, not even on a Blu-Ray Pixar disc; I won't tell you how many times I stared at the TV, my mouth hanging open at some of the footage I was seeing; I won't tell you how many times my husband said to me the graphics and footage was so stunning it had to be a digitally animated movie; I won't tell you the feeling of utter awe and wonder and you've got to be kidding me I felt watching this movie.

Yes, the center of the film does sag as there is no real narrative to speak of. The throughline to the story is the earth. That's it. On the land, under the sea, anywhere life exists this film went. There is a structure to the film, but it's mostly geographical with only a few loose story lines batted around and ones which come full circle, but that isn't the reason to see this.

The reason to see this is to see the splendor of nature's amazing power and grace and inspired beauty and to be humbled and grateful you are lucky enough to live on this planet.

The only quibble is Disney loves their soaring music and Mr. James Earl Jones really MUST chill out with his Darth Vader impersonation during his thundering voice over, but not even his over-acting can hurt the stunning visuals.

See this on Blu-Ray. Don't have a player? Find a friend who does. See it.

It's truly amazing.

Mikey Movie Madness - 4.5 overall - minus a .5 due to the silly music and the lack of any real narrative.

Oh, whatever you do, watch the credits at the end for a fun 'making of' reel.

Yours in movie obsession...

mmm

DVD New Releases: CORALINE and ADVENTURELAND

2009-08-31T13:56:00.000-07:00

I had the great fortune and misfortune to see a whole slew of movies this weekend. I'll say one thing: I should always trust my instincts.

I'm not sure how, but I can almost always tell, via a movie poster or the the DVD cover art or the coverage on a movie if I'll like it or not. It's rare I'm wrong. And it's rare the American public is wrong. Most often, the most successful movies are the best movies.

By 'successful' I mean movies which succeed monetarily in compared to the scope in which they are made. It is rare a movie which does poorly is very good; the fact it did poorly is because none of the critics liked it and most people who saw it in the theater did not as well, so they told their friends and they told their friends...and no one went. I'm not saying critics are right, but when they all hate something, there is something there.

Let's start with Coraline.

The pitch:

A young girl walks through a secret door in her new home and discovers an alternate version of her life. On the surface, this parallel reality is eerily similar to her real life - only much better. But when her adventure turns dangerous, Coraline must count on her resourcefulness, determination, and bravery to get back home - and save her family.
The trailer:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/focus_features/coraline/

This is one fucked up movie. It's strange, surreal, odd and, in the end, dull. It's also the kind of movie snobs will say is great even when they are bored because they feel they have to say it's great by the sheer fact it's so odd.

The film follows the story of a misfit girl named Coraline who discovers an alternative reality where she meets her 'perfect family', replete with buttons for eyes and sweet, caring souls.

There isn't much more to say about the story except for that. The plot is very simple and of the garden variety misfit tale.

There is no denying the artistry which went into making the film. The animation and the feel of the movie is creepy, layered and staggering. The tone is savage and mean; you wait every moment for someone to become plummeted with knives. The team behind this movie clearly took years and years to make this.

The filmmaker is Henry Selick, the man behind The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach and Monkeybone. His style is very much that of an artist with an an individual vision. It is a vision which is bleak, nihilistic and in love with the grotesque. There is a reason his name is often confused with Tim Burton. Their visual style is very much in sync, but their storytelling style is not.

Whereas as Burton can become lost in his dark aesthetic at the expense of emotion and story, he has made a body of work which has been, at times, very emotional and accessible. Selick's work is so otherwordly and dark, it's difficult to find something to identify with or latch onto...instead, his movies are technical marvels to watch and study, but not movies, sadly, to enjoy.

The reason the movie made $75 million can be attributed more to the effective 3-D than to the story or the film itself. It deserves all the kudos out there for it's amazing technology and it's oddly shaped and disturbing characters, but the film isn't engrossing and rather off-putting. I found myself fading in and out halfway through and only enjoyed it for it's lush colors and magnificent animation, but if most viewers were honest (and most critics) the movie is beautiful in the darkest of ways, and also one of the most boring animated films I've seen in a long time, and I see lots and lots of animated movies.

From a writing perspective, this is from the novelist, Neil Gaiman, the very accomplished and prolific author from Britain Mr. Gaiman is a man who takes his work and storytelling very seriously. I've only read one of his novels and the subject matter was not to my liking, but he does know how to weave a tale. Many are fans of his comic book (oh, sorry, graphic novel) Sandman...I've read that as well and while I liked it I didn't love it.

I've found the rules and structure of fantasy and horror writing to be unruly and difficult to deconstruct. It's as if the rule book is thrown out of the window with such work. Maybe it's my own unwillingness to live in those worlds long enough to understand them...they are much too dark and violent for me.

Mr. Gaiman has a delightful website where he posts often.

Here he is: http://www.neilgaiman.com/

Mikey Movie Madness score:

7 for technical achievements; 4 for storytelling. Unfortunately, even in 3-D, not worth your time.

Next up: Adventureland

The pitch:

In 1987, James dreams of a summer European tour before studying at an Ivy League school in New York City are ruined after his parents have a severe career setback. As a result, James must get a summer job to cover his upcoming expenses at the decrepit local amusement park, Adventureland, where he falls in love with a witty co-worker. The young carnies have unforgettable and painful learning experiences about life, love and trust.

The trailer:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/miramax/adventureland/

I know the kind of people who say they love this movie. They are the kind who are in Graduate Writing or Sociology Programs at Columbia university and are working on their dissertation about the use of irony and fate in society and/or late 20's century drama. Or, better yet, they live in the East Village and attend rally's in Washington Square Park and smoke pot and run poetry slams to empty halls.

It's difficult to tell you what is good and what is bad about this movie, because I found the tone so annoying and frustrating, it was difficult to sit back and let it wash over me. If there is one thing this movie is, it's smug. Smug in it's attitude for well-structured movies, smug in it's anti-societal views, smug in how grating the lead actor is (sorry, but I find Jesse Eisenberg very, very grating, even though he always plays the downtrodden Jewish guy), smug in how it finds the format and movement of good movies so passe, smug in how it views the world and it's quirky sense of irony...

It reminds me of the worst works of Wes Anderson. I simply do not like them but I feel like I should like them and that if I don't like them then there is something wrong with me. I used to feel it was simply that I didn't 'get' these kinds of movies and there was some illiterate and defective part of my obsessive movie gene which resulted in my making a knee-jerk reaction to these movies, but now I know better. Most people know better (which is why they make no money and hardly anyone goes to see them, except those noted above). They are dull and worse, smug, about their own perceived intellectual superiority at the loss of story or forward dramatic momentum.

Smug: marked by excessive complacency or self-satisfaction; "a smug glow of self-congratulation" (according to the Princeton online dictionary).

Mikey Movie Madness score: 4 for trying to make a drama about people in their 20's that has serious, literary ambitions; 2 for execution and, well, smugness.

More soon...

MMM

Keep The Fires Burning

2009-08-24T07:54:00.000-07:00

Definition of the word 'inspiration':

Use inspiration in a Sentence
–noun
1. an inspiring or animating action or influence: I cannot write poetry without inspiration.
2. something inspired, as an idea.
3. a result of inspired activity.
4. a thing or person that inspires.
5. Theology.
a. a divine influence directly and immediately exerted upon the mind or soul.
b. the divine quality of the writings or words of a person so influenced.
6. the drawing of air into the lungs; inhalation.
7. the act of inspiring; quality or state of being inspired.

I was reading Princess Bride's writing blog early today (see it here - if you ask me, she's the shit: http://princessscribe.blogspot.com/).

Princes had a posting entitled "Married to It", as in, how does a writer finish scripts?

I am a 45 year old, unproduced writer who has written many, many scripts over the years. Two of them were very, very close to being made. I met with Jill Clayburgh for a role I had written, I had met with Jessica Lange, I had famous producers involved, Robert DeNiro expressed interest, money was on the table, casting sessions were in place, but alas, they were not made.

Eight years ago, I stopped writing. I didn't see the point. Why write when no one was going to see my work? Works by artists are meant to be seen and I felt invisible. What did my work or my thoughts or feelings matter if only my close circle of artist family members read my work?

Fiction writers told me screenwriting is not writing, it's constructing. Playwrights told me they loved the medium of screenwriting but movies are run by mean entertainment suits who wouldn't know art if it bit them in the ass, so why bother? Plus, no one ever really sold a script and made a living writing screenplays, they said. Such thinking is a pipedream.

I can't remember a time when I wasn't obsessed with movies. My most vivid memories as a child are of opening the entertainment section of the Seattle Times and circling, in red, all of the movies I was going to see on opening weekend. I would get so excited I would get gas. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep until I saw the movies I wanted to see.

Therapists have told me why I was obsessed with movies. They said it was my way of coping with a terrible and abusive childhood. They're not wrong, but their analysis is a bit narrow. I went to the movies to gain insight into life. And I did.

Like most writers who must write movies, I have a handful of films I saw as a child which have defined me. I rewatch them ever few years and I taken back to the moment when I first saw them and they made me feel. This is why I went to the movies. It was a place for me to safely feel. I felt the world was unsafe and cruel and in the movies, I could cry or laugh or shudder in the company to total strangers and not feel so alone.

When I stopped writing, I took to drinking lots of wine and filling up my time with nothingness. Then, one day, I popped in one of the handful of films I saw over and over again when I was younger. I sat on my couch and watched it, uninterrupted, from beginning to end, alone.

I started writing again the next morning. I have continued to do so to this day. I realized to give up on writing was to give up on me. I couldn't allow that and neither should you.

But how do you keep toiling away on a script when you have the following things to deal with:

1. Mortgage
2. An outside job to pay the mortgage
3. Kids
4. Sex life
5. Absence of a sex life
6. Anxiety
7. Depression
8. Marriage issues which never seem to go away
9. In-laws
10. Needy friends, lovers, co-workers
11. Annoying friends, lovers, co-workers
12. A lawn to mow
13. A gutter to clean
14. A dinner to make
15. A lack of friends who feel screenwriting is writing or who don't understand why you won't get a 'real career'

No need to go on. But you get the picture. How do we all stay inspired to keep writing every day and find our inspiration?

Here is what I think - I think all of us had one thing happen to us which made us want to write the script we are now writing. An image, a word, a feeling, a song, a person, a loss, a reward, an act of generosity or hate, a trip, a work of art, the way the old woman on the corner touched our elbow and looked in our eyes before crossing the street and reminding us of our mother and Oh My God, what if she was psychic and Oh My God what if she read my mind and then and then and then...

That moment is the moment writers must keep returning to day after day when they are writing and toiling away on an art form as noble and deeply felt as screenwriting. Otherwise, how on earth do you keep writing?

I've had countless professors tell me, "Well, there is no magic bullet! You sit your ass in the chair and you work. There. There is the secret to finishing the work!"

Such thinking has never worked for me. I am too sensitive. I'll put up my guard in pitch meetings and I'll let the callous and cold-hearted comments of frightened development executives roll off of me like warm, summer water off a plump duck's ass, but in a writing class or group or program, I find yelling and 'tough love' accomplishes absolutely nothing except feed the ego of the instructor.

The place of creativity is a mystery. We will never, ever be able to define it and that is how it should be. But what is not a mystery is what first sparked us to write the first word of the outline or the draft.

I have seen, time and time again, when the writer is stuck and cannot finish a draft and revisits the reason they first started writing this specific piece...they can write again.

When they look at the initial image which sparked them, or listen to the piece of music which moved them so deeply, or feel again the insight they felt on that day they realized, "Yes, this is what I want to teach people, this is the insight into the human condition I want to find a story to wrap around..."...they start writing.

It's like the novelist Ian McEwan once said: "I want to write a narrative with ideas that is as addictive as a drug." Perfect.

We write because we have a conscious emotional insight into this life we want to share with people. Selfish, true, but valid and important. Our job is to wrap that emotional insight (read: theme) inside of a narrative as addictive as a drug (and yes, that is where the years and years and years of work comes in).

But we can only do that if we know what we have and we can only know what we have if we finish the work.

Princess Scribe detailed how it took years and years for some written work to become realized. She's absolutely right. The fact any movie actually gets made is amazing. But that cannot be our concern.

Our concern must be for the act of expression and the act of putting that down on the page. If it is good and from the heart, it will get noticed. Let's be honest - why would any choose the profession of writing if they didn't felt they must express themselves and their insights about life?

Movies are shifting, changing emotion art pieces. Our goal in writing movies is to create art which makes sense of ourselves and our place in this world (even if some of those movies have exploding cars and gratuitous sex and are supporting by silly and unrelenting marketing campaigns).

Never give up. Never surrender. Never stop expressing yourself. And always remember what made you first want to write the script you are now writing and visit that each and every day. In the morning. In the afternoon. Before bed.

Know what you want to say. Articulate it. Feel it. Find your genre, find your story, wrap it around what you must say and write.

Don't let anyone stop you.

If you do, you aren't letting down the one person who matters most.

MMM

I love you, man OR How far buddy movies have come...

2009-08-16T14:59:00.000-07:00

This blog will be two fold.

The first half of each posting will be what I honestly thinks of a movie. It will be the kind of 'real review' anyone who isn't in the business would tell their friends over dinner.

The second half of the posting be tailored to the writer who is crazy enough to write screenplays. I've taught screenwriting at New York University, at New York Film Academy, have had work optioned, I work in entertainment and run many writing groups.

Hopefully, this will foster a healthy and helpful discussion on writing movie scripts.

So...let's cut to the chase!

I saw I Love You, Man on DVD and was shocked.

THE PITCH:

Friendless Peter Klaven goes on a series of man-dates to find a Best Man for his wedding. But when his insta-bond with his new B.F.F. puts a strain on his relationship with his fiancee, can the trio learn to live happily ever after?

THE TRAILER:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/dreamworks/iloveyouman/

The verdict? It's a good movie. Like, pretty damn good.

Why is it a good movie? Well, for one, Paul Rudd is in it. The man can do no wrong. Yes, Jason Segel is good as well, but he's willing to let Paul Rudd walk away with the movie. What a nice guy.

My hubby knows nothing about movies, except that I force him to watch them all the time. He even said to me, "Isn't this what they call a 'bromance'"? I was tickled. He actually knew the term. I said, I guess it is. And if there is such a thing as a progressive 'bromance', then this is it.

The pitch is so thin it made me not want to see the movie. It's lukewarm. Also, the pitch, via IMDB, is not the real story. It's about how does Peter become the man he wants to be AND find a B.F.F., which he's never done before.

One of the most helpful things any teacher told me about writing movie stories was this (he was a cranky NYU professor, but I digress): "There is the plot of the movie and then there is what the movie is about."

Figure that out and you're halfway to writing a movie.

What is surprising about the movie is how surface it appears, but when it gets it's groove after the first ten minutes, it asks some fairly deep questions I haven't seen asked with this kind of courage in a commercial studio film in a long, long time. It's nothing new to the independent world or to European cinema, but for American cinema, it's pretty damn fearless.

Which is, I feel, why it didn't do very well at the box office. It's pretty bare. I can see the faces of guys going into this not knowing what to do with the subject matter or the bigger questions is asks, such as "What defines being a man in today's culture" or "How intimate are men with each other" or "Does Paul Rudd really fart that loud in public?"

Sorry. Couldn't resist. It's still that kind of movie.

If you are looking for a Road Trip style movie or Superbad movie, this isn't it. But if you are looking for a new kind of cross pollenation genre between a kinda chick flick and a man's feeling comedy, then give this a shot and you'll be very, very surprised.

And whatever you do, make sure you view the *gag* real in the special edition DVD as well as the *making of* feature with the director, John Hamburg. He is one cool and enlightened dude.

Now, for the writers out there...

Despite the fact this is a soft-pitch movie, what I found startling about this was that it plays with the very clear conventions of a romantic comedy but one with two decidedly heterosexual men and their blossoming love together.

Because I've been reading more of the work of recently deceased Blake Snyder (RIP, fine sir), I took at look at his very basic view of what he calls "Rom-com Buddy Love" and despite his very general views, this pretty much hits on all the points of the genre he details which, according to Mr. Synder, are:

1. -- The main character is a person who is incomplete and missing something (a physical thing, emotional or spiritual insight) which he needs the help of another to 'fix'.

2. --A 'mirror' person who gives the hero what she or he needs to be complete.

3. -- A complication to the whole things.

As writers of movie scripts, we are always looking for a new angle on an existing genre. While I Love You, Man is a love story and hits all of the above beats, what separates it from the pack is the twist of a very candid and liberated heterosexual point of view on the nature of platonic love between two men and the depth of the comedic and dramatic writing.

The main character, Peter, is a super guy who has always been the guy who has girlfriends his entire life, both romantically and platonically. He's never, ever had a male BFF. He and his finance both remark how 'incomplete' Peter feels and that the only way for him to become the man he wants to be (at his job by combating a snarky co-worker and being a more confident self in the relationship) is to find a BFF.

After the enjoyable and obligatory scene of him trying to find his platonic male soul-mate, he stumbles upon the complicated yet entirely fuzzy enjoyable Sydney Fife (I know the writers chose that name of a reason - bet is an anagram). Of course, Sydney is everything Peter needs to become whole. He's carefully reckless, terribly honest, blatantly confident and, perhaps, not everything he appears to be. More than that, he's a guy who, in the best light, knows how to be a guys' best friend.

Complications ensue when Sydney pushes a bit harder than he should for Peter to live an honest life and when Peter's fiance becomes jealous of her future husbands 'bromance'. Personally, this is the weakest part of the movie, but I can see why the writers felt they had to insert this in.

I find romantic comedies difficult to write. Just as you have to come up with a smart and fresh idea, the guts of the story has to contain deeper insights about the human condition most people are aware of but cannot articulate. It is, as Blake Synder once told me, the 'art of writing scripts.' It's important you hit the points in the story you must, but the real art is the stuff in center.

It's illogical for any of us to watch a movie without taking into account our own personal filter. I'm a gay man. My filter came into play before the movie. Whenever I hear about a new 'bromance' I cringe. Gays are always the brunt of the jokes with these movies, but the writers and creative behind I Love You, Man are so confident in who they are and their ability to question their relationships, there was not one moment my partner and I cringed.

The rising action in the second act sounds soft but plays well. We want so to badly to see Rudd acclimate and find his other 'bro-half' we are rooting for him the entire time as spends time with Sydney in many various activities, trying to find his inner 'bro'. Very clean and typical second act set pieces, leading up the the reversal in the center.

You can deconstruct this by the book in terms of act breaks and 'all is lost' moments...I don't think, for writers, such an analysis will help. What will help with this is a bigger picture view of how the writers took a genre and made it their own by making it very current, topical and very, very real.

One note: I'm fairly sure many of hysterical 'goodbye lines' (you'll know what I mean when you see it) are improvised. Normally, improvised movies are ultimately rather dull as they have no formal structure, but in this movie, it all works and it's very funny.

I Love You, Man is a gentle, sweet bromantic comedy with more on it's mind than the average flick. It's worth it for all writers who want to write a romantic comedy and are looking for a new way to tell one of the oldest tales in movies.

See you at the cinema!!

MMM

DISTRICT 9 TOTALLY BIASED AND UNEDITED REVIEW

2009-08-16T07:14:00.000-07:00

There will be many who read what I'm about to write and will feel I missed the point of the new movie District 9. Trust me when I write this - I didn't.

I get the metaphor to the events in Johannesberg. I understand the parallels to genocide and how the filmmakers turned the genre on it's head by swivelling around story conventions so the exact opposite of what we will assume will happen, happens. I appreciate the clear work, effort and thought which went into the style of the movie, it's tone, the much-adored 'documentary' feel for horror movies today - a very effective technique to break down the 'fourth wall' in drama so there is no separation between the events being shown and our involvement in them.

I see all of the work and talent and sheer audacity which went into the film, but this is my personal bottom line - it made me sick to my stomach. And to make matters worse, I walked out after 1 hour.

So I can't fully review what may have transpired in the final third act. It could have turned into a rock 'em, sock 'em action flick (which, from what I've heard, is partially the case), there could have been a great redemption in the end to counter the nihilist streak I endured the first hour of the film. I'll only know when I see this on DVD (perhaps).

But for me, this is what I saw in the first hour and it made me want to leave:

Aliens peeing on garbage
Aliens eating garbage
Aliens being hacked to pieces and devoured
A man mutilated by an alien
Said man tortured and cause grievous pain in a laboratory under harsh lights so all can be seen, screaming and begging for his life
Men vomiting and vomiting and vomiting
Fingers pulled from fingers; blood gushing following

This was all portrayed without a bit of irony or humor. I know why the filmmakers chose this, they were making a point about genocide, about war, about human cruelty, the same way Spielberg made a statement about war in Saving Private Ryan, but the simple truth is parts of these two films I found very painful to endure and I don't feel I want to spend my time enduring a movie without any base level of redemption or enjoyment (SPR did have redemption, it's true, but the first act is, quite possibly, so difficult to sit through it ranks in the top 10 movies I will never, ever see again).

I seem to be alone in this opinion. District 9 made $17 million on it's first day. Fairly astounding for August. And for a cheap movie. America is eating it up and I'm not entirely sure why. Entertainment Weekly calls it the best movie of the summer. They have spent millions pushing and pushing the movie. Except for a few gasps in the theater where I saw the first hour, everyone seems rather...placid. How they can remain placid during such graphic and unrelenting violence confuses me.

This is a matter of critics in the country praising this because of it's metaphorical content, thus absolving the filmmakers and not challenging them to find a more interesting way of showing graphic violence then close-up's on bloody arms and gushing heads blown apart. It's okay as long as the movie has a message, right?

The film reminds me of a film I personally loathe. Cloverfield. Cloverfield wasn't violent like District 9, but they both have the same feeling of a very elaborate and expensive hat trick pulled on the American public. Cloverfield relished in promising us something very interesting and visceral via online web ads and Internet campaigns and blogger postings. Fiscally, it worked. The movie made $171 million world wide and had a reported budget of $10 million. J.J. Abrams laughed all the way to the bank on that one. But the movie was, in the end, garbage both stylistically and in terms of narrative and cock teasing. All teasing; no showing.

District 9 isn't garbage; it simply isn't for me. While I truly don't understand why America is flocking to such violence, I respect it is tapping into something, yet I find what that 'something' is a bit disturbing. Makes me wonder why Peter Jackson chose to invest so much of his life into this. Must be some madness and rage behind those eyes we aren't privy to.

Despite what is, I'm sure, to all men under the age of 30, an instant 'classic' and 'totally cool', I'm going to have to say this:

Mikey Movie Madness scale - 5 for sheer technical and professional execution but a solid 3 in terms of gut-wrenching and painful viewing unenjoyment.

See you at the cinema!!

MMM

PONYO!

2009-08-14T08:54:00.000-07:00

I got a splattering of emails lambasting me for forgetting to mention Ponyo opening today!

THE PITCH: An animated adventure centered on a 5-year-old boy and his relationship with a goldfish princess who longs to become human.

THE TRAILER: http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/ponyo/

It's hard after seeing the preview NOT to go. And look at that tagline! Good, good stuff. The director is the infamous Hayao Miyazaki who is mostly known to American audiences for The Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, which is a shame. The man has a body of work that would make Scorsese blush.

His use of imagery and fable is fantastic. I'm not sold on how well the new English voice overs will hold...I tend to agree with this blog posting note on the New York Times from one viewer:

"Watch it in Japanese with subtitles if you can
I love these movies but prefer to watch in Japanese with subtitles. The voice overs usually rots the spirit and charm of the original."
— Ian, New York

"Rots the spirit and charm...". Ah, New Yorkers.

This needs to go on your list of movies to see this weekend as well

Mikey Movie Madness review - I give this a solid 7; if the voice overs work with the animation, this may go as far as 8.5...

SEE YOU AT THE MOVIES!!

Studio Weekend Movie ROUND UP

2009-08-14T06:37:00.000-07:00

Loads of studio movies opening up this weekend.

Let's take a gander at what I suspect will be the top 4 Hollywoodish slicks coming out, shall we?

At weekend end, I'll give thoughts on those I've seen and discuss Independent flicks as well.

HOLLYWOOD IS ROLLING OUT THE FOLLOWING...

District 9THE PITCH:

An extraterrestrial race forced to live in slum-like conditions on Earth suddenly find a kindred spirit in a government agent that is exposed to their biotechnology.

THE TRAILER:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/district9/

Cool. Very cool. Fun. Violent. Scary.

This is the one all the pimply-faced 13 year old boys in Long Island will try to sneak into this weekend. I'm sure I'll see this as well. Why? Because Peter Jackson is involved. And despite what you may think of him, deny the Lord of the Rings trilogy is brilliant and I will brand you an idiot when it comes to movies.

The guy also made one of the most horrific and terrifyingly funny horror films of all time, Dead Alive (originally titled Braindead in New Zealand).

Rent it at your own risk. Just don't eat dinner during.

Trailer for Dead-Alive (aka "Braindead"):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIsLSj-z4UM

I'm excited for District 9 film because I think it will be a sci-fi movie of ideas. But I also know it will very bloody. You can count on it. I am not a fan of gore, particularly when it involves explicit human suffering. I used to be a HUGE horror fan when horror was fun and funny in the 80's and 90's. Now it's plain sick.

Why filmmakers want to show graphic violence with people suffering during is beyond me. Like we need this in the world right now? Sure, show me suffering, life is equal suffering and joy, but I don't need to see the knife going into the skull slowly while the person screams, okay? Sadistic motherfuckers.

I do think, however, this is a film to see in the theaters.

So on a Mikey Movie Madness scale of 1-10, (1 being 'see if on your couch if your sick and can't leave the house' and 10 being 'you need to be flayed and set out to pasture if you don't see it in the theater'), I give this a tentative 7.

The director, Neil Blomkamp, is a New Zealand based visual effects guy. We all know the tract record for visual effects guys being able to tell a story is pretty awful, but I am optimistic. Again, when Peter Jackson is nearby, it's really hard to fuck up.

Speaking of Peter Jackson, have you seen the new Lovely Bones trailer? Sweet Jesus. I want to buy a ticket NOW. The book was pretty damn good, but the movie? Gonna blow us away, I do believe.

Lovely Bones trailer:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/thelovelybones/

----------------------------------------

Time Travelers WifePITCH:

A romantic drama about a Chicago librarian with a gene that causes him to involuntarily time travel, and the complications it creates for his marriage.

TRAILER:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/newline/thetimetravelerswife/

Another flick opening today is The Time Travelers Wife. I read the book and let me tell you - if you like sappy love stories which make NO logistical sense, then this may be your cup of tea. Everyone told me, "Oh the book is SO good you HAVE to read it." I did and it's...okay. The point of view of the main characters is pretty fantastic and she's very dry and funny. I hope they kept the same tone in the movie.

Look, I know movies are hard as shit to make so the fact they actually made it and it's in the theater is pretty amazing, so yes, PROPS FOR GETTING THE MOVIE MADE. But I'm not sure on this one.

For one, Eric Bana is in it. Now, I like the guy. I do. He was an amazing badass in Star Trek and is good when he plays a fucker. When he plays the nice guy...not so interesting. This may be a case of Boring Nice Lead Characters (see yesterday's post on Nurse Jackie), but hey, I could be wrong.

Bana was pretty great in Munich, but then, it's a Spielberg film so no one is the star but Spielberg. He was also good in Black Hawk Down, another war movie we had to endure and I'll never endure again, thank you very much. He survived the lumbering bore which was and somehow made it out of the Ang Lee fascinating wreck of a movie, Troy Hulk, so the guy is a fighter I'll give him that.

Rachel McAdams is the 'wife'. She is an interesting actor. I'm not sure what kind of true acting chops she has, but it's hard to fault her after seeing her in Mean Girls (what a cunt) and in the slam-bang, super-duper, nifty action thriller Red Eye...she's done some crap, like The Family Stone (someone make Sarah Jessica Parker quit acting, please) and the kinda-funny Wedding Crashers, but she may surprise us. I hope so.

The real reason I think this has a chance is the delightful Bruce Joel Rubin did the adaptation. This guy can do hardly any wrong. I don't care what anyone says, Ghost and and Deep ImpactJacbo's Ladder and even Stuart Little 2 are great movies. Great, great movies. Sure, he wrote Brainstorm (poor Natalie) and The Last Mimzy (what happened there?), but no career is perfect. Can't be. And we'll never, ever, ever know the true story behind the fights between Mr. Rubin and the studios and the directors. It's all a hellish business and the fact the movies got mad at all is fucking brilliant.

Mikey Movie Madness score: 5 - maybe in theaters if District 9 is sold out, but probably a good DVD

--------------------------------

Also coming out is The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard starring the ever sexy actor the NYC theater community hates, Jeremy Piven. Jeremy Piven is like Stanley Tucci. They will be 70 and I'll still find them sexy. Why is that?

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

THE PITCH:

Used-car liquidator Don Ready is hired by a flailing auto dealership to turn their Fourth of July sale into a majorly profitable event.
THE TRAILER:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount_vantage/thegoods/

Eh. Not sure why, but doesn't make me want to see it. Hard sell on the trailer, tho.

Anyway, the movie looks like something you'd watch on a plane from LA to NYC. I don't know...maybe it's better than it looks, but it looks like Judd Aptow meets desperate Will Ferrell meets Paul Rudd slumming to pay for his new house in Montauk.

I'm not excited. I'm sure guys who smoke pot on a Saturday afternoon and think Bevis and Butthead is subversive comedy (which, yes, it was, sometimes) will LOVE this, and those who truly feel Talladega Nights is a smart, genuinly funny comedy, but I...I...I'm worried.

The director, Neal Brennan, has done a tone of TV, big with the sorta-funny but very smart Chappelle Show which lots of people adore, but he has yet to do a big screen flick. I hope he pulls it off but my hopes are not high.

The writers wrote Balls Out (yikes) starring weirdly hot Seann William Scott and (get ready) Randy Quaid. It was direct to DVD. Not a good sign...ever. I've seen countless direct to DVD and most are plain dull and deserve their unfortunate fate. Maybe the writers are solid and they have yet to show how solid they are because rabid and mean William Morris agents keep fucking up their studio deals, who knows...but I hope, for them, the script shot was the one they sorta wrote.

Mikey Movie Madness Score - I give this a 4, but may go up to a 6 if I hear it's any good.

--------------------------------

The other flick teenage girls and gay guys might see, is Spread with the immensely diverse and Tycoon-driven Ashton Kutcher.

THE PITCH:

A sex comedy centered on a serial womanizer and his jilted lover.

THE TRAILER:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/spread/

I saw the trailer and I thought there was something there with Mr. Kutcher's performance. I don't know what it was, but he was playing with his voice, his mannerisms, his body language...I saw, maybe, some acting there. I hope I'm right.

Mr. Kutcher is one diverse motherfucker. He produces TV, he produces movies, he's married to a woman addicted to plastic surgery, he's smart, driven and very, very handsome (to some...I still think he's kinda 'dude' hot; hot but not really hot but fun to hang with and drink).

While I don't think this movie will rock anyone's world, I do think, down the road, a lot of people will consider this one of the better films Mr. Kutcher was in. Why? Because the director is David Mackenzie who made the truly disturbing and well-grounded sexual thriller Young Adam with a fearless Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton, as well as the very underrated Asylum based on the mind-boggling Patrick McGrath novel of the same name.

He's a daring, talented Brit who knows his way around the darker parts of us humans and is not afraid of exploring them all for our glee. I think he is going to bring out a part of Mr. Kutcher we don't often see...and, Anne Heche is in it (very, very good in the current HBO series Hung), and we all know how good she is at playing a fucking psycho.

This woman has some major psychological demons. Good for her for getting control of her life. I mean that. Still can't believe this was her years ago:

http://movies.msn.com/celebs/article.aspx?news=154685&mpc=2&silentchk=1&

Mikey Movie Madness score - I give this a 6, but I am hoping, after seeing it, it will rise to an 8.

That's it for now, kids.

MAKE IT A DOUBLE-FEATURE WEEKEND!

See you at the cinema!!!

Mikey Bryan - Your Movie Madness Guru...

The Wonderfully Fucked Up and Brilliant NURSE JACKIE

2009-08-13T07:59:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest surprises this summer on TV has been Nurse Jackie. It's a tough, caring, complex, involving bullet of 24 minutes each week. It proves, again, why Showtime, in many ways, is more daring than HBO in terms of taking pay programming chances and delivering more honest and watch-worthy shows.

I write screenplays. Never sold or optioned anything, but I have studied with ALL of the masters. You name a 'screenwriting guru' and I've read their book, been to their seminar, paid for their DVD's or enrolled in their classes, always on the hunt for the answer.

This is the answer - there is no answer. There are good guides out there, but there is no answer. Story is the answer and character is the answer. And structure (screenwriters love to go on and on about structure at the sacrifice of art - but that's my bone to pick).

I once asked the now-deceased Blake Snyder (of 'Save The Cat' fame, a system of deconstructing movie story structure many writers rabidly follow at the cost of their own individuality) how he came up with all of the stuff in between the many, many points in a story a writer must hit in order for a story to be 'successful'. He said, 'That's where the art comes in."

One of the biggest fallacies in movies and TV is the main character has to be 'likable'. I've lived in NYC for years and only know writers in NYC and most of them are cranky and balk at the idea of Hollywoodish screenwriters needing their main characters to be 'likable'. They think it means selling out and writing characters to make cranky studio executives happy and soccer moms in Idaho gush. I've read reams of books on how to make a character like Travis Bickle (from "Taxi Driver", a thoroughly disturbing and unrelenting work of questionable 'art'), and most of them miss the point.

Nurse Jackie is a good example. This woman is the head nurse at a fictitious hospital in Manhattan ("All Saints" - how great is that?). She is a loving mother to her two daughters, one of which has anxiety disorder. She is loving and supportive of her hot, cute husband. He is loving and adoring to her. She is always cutting corners at her job at the expense of the system but never at the expense of the patient. She is truly an 'all saint' in how she is always looking out for everyone else.

Except she has a drug addiction, lies about being married at work, fucks the local pharmacist to feed her addiction, lies to her boss, her best friend, steals money to pay for illegal medical expenses and lives such a complete double life everyone watching knows soon, she will crash and burn in a spectacular way.

But we love her and respect her the entire time and turn away knowing she'll have to pay the price soon. Or will she?

It's true, one of the reasons we love her is because Edie Falco is in it. The woman can do no wrong. She's so good it's breathtaking. She is real, she is a woman, not a character. Also, the tone of the show is wonderfully 'non-TV'. It's glossy and pretty but realistic. It's got guts. As Blake Snyder might have said, 'it's art'.

Although the writing is spot-on and the acting is pretty amazing, the reason the show really takes off is the directors they've been able to nab. Scott Ellis, Steve Buschemi and Craig Zisk? Are you kidding? These guys are directors at the top of their game. NYC talent making a NYC-worthy show. The producers are smart - hire a great lead actor, give her a fucked up main character who is very human and surround her with directors who don't direct TV and understand nuance...art.

Also, Merritt Wever (a NYC theater actress turned TV star - she can act because she came from the theater NOT Beverly Hills High) is fairly breathtaking as Zoey Barkow. Ms. Wever teeters just on the bring of being ridiculous but pulls it back and makes her character so very human. She is the moral center of the show, the stable force, the 'fool' as so many screenwriting books like to call her. The one no one takes seriously but shows everyone in the end the true lessons in life.

Haaz Sleiman is in it as well. His character's name is Mohammed "Mo-Mo" De La Cruz. I have a hard time concentrating when Mr. Sleiman is on the screen. He's so handsome it's a bit unnerving. I am praying the writers will put in an ER-like moment of complete unbelievabile and have a helicopter crash into the ER or perhaps a secret arsonist so Mr. Sleiman will be forced to run around for an episode with his shirt off.

Seriously, Mr. Sleiman is wasted on the show. He's the funny, acerbic and hot gay character who does nothing but make witty remarks. I wonder why the writers waste him as they do? He was so very, very good in the sublime movie, "The Visitor." Great movie, great acting, great, great story.

Jackie is entirely fucked up but she's entirely human. Some people think her character is taken to the extreme, but I think she's the kind of model we need for movies and TV now. So many characters are so damn baseline sweet and nice, it's impossible to associate with them. Rather than pour over books on how to make characters complex and 'likable', writers and viewers need to watch fictional characters like this...ones who are LIVING.

The show has 2 more episodes before it ends and I, for one, am glued to the TV. Everyone should be. Writers and viewers alike.

Are you obsessed?

2009-08-11T16:11:00.000-07:00

Love movies?

Watch TV more than you should?

Wish someone out there would tell you the truth about movies with no objective? Someone who can tell you weather something stinks or is worth your ever dwindling time in life?

We are all dying, after all...

Love to discuss stars who think their actors?

Do you write screenplays and want to bash your head against the wall if you hear ONE MORE TIME you have no 'rising conflict' or your ending is 'weak'?

Does Jessica Lange's face lift depress you because once, just once, for a beautiful 7 years she was our best American screen actress?

Think DeNiro is overrated? (Hint: he is. I know. I used to work for him and I was very good friends with his father. Oh, child, the things I could tell you about THAT family...).

Wish Val Kilmer would lose weight? Do you have any idea who Val Kilmer is?

Did you know movies can change your life in under 2 hours. Cheaper and more effective than 25 years of therapy.

Do you want to know more?

Do you?

Come with me...join in the discussion.

This is only the beginning.

Mikey
Your Movie God