Category: Uncategorized

You just can’t beat 70’s soft-core porn for elegance, am I right?

But seriously, folks…  I love the simplicity and elegance of this image.  With bare (no pun intended) black-and-white and the use of “negative space” to imply the rest of this, uhm…obedient woman, it creates a much more indelible and, yes, sexier image than if it were rendered in color and with more skin.

It tricks you into thinking you are seeing more than you are.

Check out the one small line that gives us the shape of her hips and bottom.  The swell of her breast.  Her collarbone and elongated neck – which, like her arm and feet tucked under her, tell us she is at full attention and looking up at somebody. And is it my imagination or can we actually see goosebumps on her upper thigh? It could just be my dirty mind, but I don’t think so.  You can almost feel her breathing.

It’s beautifully done.

The movie, by the way, although dated and deliberately ridiculous, is actually the best erotica from that Golden Era or arty raincoat films.  It’s much better (read: hotter) than the better-known Emmanuelle. Which also has a classic poster…but I’ll save that for another time.  This is a fucking family blog.

Here’s the “B”-style poster I didn’t know about until Google showed it to me…

Yeah, a little more on show there…

And see, not quite as effective, right?  Good, but a little obvious.

Not to mention, it introduces a possible new Sherlock Holmes case: “The Mystery Of The Missing Nipples”.

Ahhh, but that chin.  That saves it.

Uhm…where was I?  Oh yeah, Elmore Leonard died.

 

At the start of Skyfall, after a perfunctory chase scene and a cliche fight atop a train, James Bond is “killed” by friendly fire and falls hundreds of feet to his “death” in the water below.

Later, of course, we find him using his false demise to take a vacation from the spy grind, living in a beach bungalow, drinking, and making love to a beautiful woman – but unlike every Bond we’ve ever known before, this Bond looks utterly miserable.  Leave it to Daniel Craig to find a way to grit his teeth while getting laid.  But see, it’s only cuz he’s really deep.  He’s got a lot on his mind.  He’s full of psychological pain.

Oooooh.  

That one short sequence sums up everything wrong with the Craig era of 007.

The “Old Bond”, the one who became a cinematic legend – who enjoyed his dangerous work and its life or death excitement, who grabbed pleasure in heaping doses whenever he could, and truly loved the company of women…   He’s dead, evidently.  At least while Craig, the scowling robot, is here.

The fact he was shot by one of his allies is a perfect metaphor as well; because it is the completely inept and clueless Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, who have spent most of their tenure as producers of the franchise flailing hopelessly from one bad decision to another, who are his worst enemy.

Right about now you’re probably asking…  Uhm, Frank?  Isn’t it 2013?  Didn’t this film come out, like, a year ago?  And wasn’t it, like, the most ginormous success ever in the history of the series?

Yes, yes, and yes.

The sad thing is I’ve been meaning to write this for a year.  I just dreaded it.

I posted my suspicions before Skyfall opened (here – I was wrong about some specifics, but unfortunately right in the main), but I planned on writing a full review after I actually saw it.  I figured my dire predictions would most likely seem overblown in hindsight and I would end up enjoying it despite myself, probably eat some crow.  At the very least, I would find some elements of the movie I really liked and revel in those parts.  That’s what I had done with both Casino Royale and Quantum Of Solace. That’s what lifelong fans do.  But this time, the truth is, I was so depressed and disgusted I couldn’t write a single word. It was sort of a final straw for me.  And maybe, a good thing.  I clearly needed to forget about it for a while and move on.  The fact that it got almost universal acclaim from critics and audiences and went on to break a billion dollars at the box office just drilled the point home even further.  It was so inexplicable to me, I was forced to realize how out of step I was with what people seem to want now.

But this time, the truth is, I was so depressed and disgusted I couldn’t write a single word.  It was sort of a final straw for me.  And maybe, a good thing.  I clearly needed to forget about it for a while and move on.  The fact that it got almost universal acclaim from critics and audiences and went on to break a billion dollars at the box office just drilled the point home even further.  It was so inexplicable to me, I was forced to realize how out of step I was with what people seem to want now.

The fact that it got almost universal acclaim from critics and audiences and went on to break a billion dollars at the box office just drilled the point home even further.  It was so inexplicable to me that I was forced to realize how out of step I was with what people seem to want now.

Which one of these is not like the others?

I realize how melodramatic this sounds.  It’s only a damn movie franchise, after all.

It’s only a damn movie franchise, after all.

But like a fan of a baseball team that never wins, it was actually stressing me out and I needed to let it go, to just cool off and get some perspective.  I stopped going to the Bond fan sites online for the same reason.  What was the point in constantly pissing on the parade?  Shouting into the wind?  Or pissing into the wind and shouting at a parade, whichever one is the most pointless.

So, I just kept putting it off.  I’ll review it when the movie is released on DVD and Blu-ray, I thought.  That came and went.  I’ll do it when I force myself to sit down and watch it again all the way through. Never happened.  And then, finally, a couple weeks ago, it was announced Sam Mendes will be returning as director, along with writer John Logan, to bring us Bond 24 in 2015.  The winning

The winning Skyfall team was back together and promising more of the same! Yay!  John Logan says we’ll get to see even more “layers” to Bond.  Woo-hoo!  And here I was just hoping for a half-decent action set-piece!

Okay.  Here’s my review.  Ready?

Skyfall is derivative, pretentious, boring, unpleasant, contrived, nonsensical, claustrophobic, repetitive, witless, mean-spirited, lazy, bloated, cheap in feel, mind-numbingly stupid and pathetically maudlin.

Annnnnnd I think that pretty much covers it.

More?  You want more?

It’s not a Bond movie.  It’s the anti-Bond.  Woody Allen was a better Bond than Craig.  It makes Timothy Dalton’s movies look like On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.  It makes On Her Majesty’s Secret Service look like Citizen Kane.  It makes ME look like Sean Connery.  Uhm…

Did I mention it is mind-numbingly stupid?  Oh I did.  Okay.

I’m not going to go into detail, for the sake of my sanity and yours, and if I did, once I started I’m afraid I’d never be able to stop.  There are so many lapses in logic and wrongheaded choices made…  This YouTube video is a funny intro, but barely scratches the surface…

 

I hate Skyfall with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns.

Thank you, The End.

 

 

Fugly Bond does a lot of staring pensively into the middle distance – like a catalog model with a traumatic brain injury.   Notice the wide variety of expressions.

Oh, c’mon, Frank, lighten up.  It was a hit!  That’s good, right?  Aren’t you glad that 007 has been refreshed in people’s imagination and is back at the forefront of modern pop culture?

I would be if it was a 007 I vaguely recognized.  If he hadn’t been systematically stripped of his defining qualities and turned into just another B-movie muscle-monkey with a chip on his shoulder.

I have no idea what movie the rest of the world saw, but I have to call it as I see it on this one lonely page and speak truth to crazy, as it were.  To call this the BEST BOND FILM EVER, as so many have, can only be explained by some kind of mass hypnosis on a global scale.  (Blofeld, is that you??)

Speaking of OHMSS…  It just so happens it was the first Bond film I ever saw, at age 7, and I loved it long before it became the fashionable fanboy thing. Even in the face of the jokes that were made for years at its expense.

Then, slowly but surely, the geek world came around to realizing that, even with the somewhat limited but underrated George Lazenby as Bond, it was probably the single greatest balance of story, action and Bondian cool in the whole franchise.

So, it may be someday I’m not a minority of one and people see Skyfall for the shined-up turd it really is.

One can hope.

I find it hard to believe that people will rewatch this plodding, dry, downbeat and loooong 2 1/2 hour “Story Of M” the same way they did earlier Bonds, which were, you know, actually exhilarating and fun.

But what do I know?

For me, Bond has died for a while.  I’m at peace with that.  These films, this actor, this director…they’re not for me.  They are obviously for a different set of younger newer fans.  Which is fine.

I  have no doubt the Bond I know “will return” at some point.  The pendulum always swings back.

There, all done.

I think I handled that with great restraint and maturity, don’t you?

 

RICHARD AMSEL.  Do you know the name?

If you’re a true movie lover, you should.  Amsel was one of the great commercial artists of the 70’s and 80’s and he created legendary posters for movies like Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Flash Gordon, Murder On The Orient Express, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, My Fair Lady, and yes, The Sting.  

This is his “B”-Art or alternative campaign for the classic 1973 film.  It was used in foreign countries, but not the US, so obviously this American one-sheet is very rare and worth a lot of money.  I haven’t been able to get my hands on one.  But more importantly, it’s just awesome.  I like it even better than the iconic but much more simplistic poster that became so ubiquitous.  Check out the attention to detail.  Zoom in.  The poker chips, the Aces, the die at the top.  The geometric framing of the stars.  The way he captures Newman and Redford’s personalities.  The movement in their poses, the humor in their faces.  How their shoes match the poker chips!  The Robert Shaw inset.  The car.  The way it all seems to spill out, almost 3D-like, from the surrounding sea of white.  The period typeset, the simplicity, the elegance…

He was meticulous about every aspect of his designs – they often feel nothing short of perfect.  

(The only tiny “flaw” would be the killer’s gun in the upper left.  Amsel’s one weakness was he could not for the life of him draw a realistic looking gun – it happens again in his artwork for The Late Show and The Big Sleep – a strange but somehow endearing Achilles Heel)

Before his premature death from AIDS in 1985, he sold a lotta’ movies.  I believe his last was Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.  He also did dozens of TV Guide covers that were far too good for TV Guide.  I could show you example after example of his genius, do a whole column on him – and I will, later.

But this is definitely one poster I would love to grab and frame for my wall someday.

Let me join the overwhelming and justified chorus of admiration for Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Director Richard Linklater, whose neo-romantic (anti-romantic?) trilogy of films about Jesse and Celine reaches it’s angst-ridden peak in the new installment, Before Midnight.

They really did achieve something like a small miracle…

They made a sequel of integrity.  They resisted giving us the lazy “happy ending” we may have wanted, or thought we wanted, and stayed true to their characters and to the real world.  They told a brand new story …only with people we already know and have invested in.  Which makes this voyeuristic glimpse into the difficulty of maintaining a marriage (or common-law union) that much more bracing.  

It’s a difficult film, but one that rings true, and feels as if it will get richer with each viewing.

It’s also very very funny.

I had mixed feelings when I walked out of the theatre.  I was in awe, exhilarated, exhausted, disappointed and disturbed all at once.  It took me a while to process what I had seen.  But as I did, I began to see the subtle brilliance of what this talented trio had done.  They used the baggage we carried from the first two films to genuinely surprise us.  They created a Rorschach Test, turned an unforgiving mirror on us.  And yet, we shouldn’t be surprised at all.  The first two movies, though romantic, were also peppered with sadness and a world-weary cynicism (even when the couple were young kids), and they were unstintingly naturalistic in their approach.  In the second movie, we don’t even get to see them kiss.  They refuse to give us that Hollywood moment. We have to make do with a song, a sexy little dance, and sure knowledge that Jesse is definitely going to miss his plane.  And let’s not forget the messy detail that he is already unhappily married with child. All of this has to have ramifications and we get a heavy dose of that in Midnight.

The film deftly drops details one by one, filling us in on the intervening years.  They don’t dump a ton of forced exposition, but let us suss it out as the evening grows more and more tense.  At one point, Jesse recalls that day in Paris and how it “ruined” his life.  And Celine, who was always a little prickly and self-righteous under that adorable exterior, has grown restless and resentful of feeling like a mere apendage, The Famous Writer’s Muse.  As in all fights, at first it comes out in random snipes – a kind of generalized bitchiness – but gradually we begin to see the pattern of her frustration.

Julie Delpy emerges as the most valuable player here and the bravest, allowing herself to be unsympathetic and raw and exposed both emotionally and physically.  There is not a trace of vanity in her performance. Make no mistake, this is an Oscar-worthy turn.  I just hope the Academy can see that.  She is fine with being the “villain”, or at least the “fucking mayor of crazytown” as Jesse calls her, because she knows this is all an organic hardening of a character she first essayed at the tender age of 23.  It’s sort of genius.

Not to say Ethan Hawke doesn’t hold his own.  He does, in spades.  He gives a wonderfully confident and relaxed performance.  Jesse’s artistic dreams have, to a great extent, been fulfilled – and he sincerely loves his wife – but there is a complacency there and we can see that he is not without blame in Celine’s frustration. His smug responses only make her more crazy.  There is a classic moment when she almost offhandedly confronts him about a past infidelity and we see him masterfully avoid admitting guilt while seeming to answer firmly.  It says a lot.  As does the fact that when he throws back a counter-accusation she quickly drops the subject. These are people who may have briefly strayed, but neither really care…their problem is more complex.  Just the fact the film so deftly steps around this cliche is a major triumph.  

At the end, when Jesse finally gets angry himself and gives up on fighting her, we see that Celine is no more ready to throw away this relationship than he is.  She just wanted to test him.  She wanted to push him to see what he would do, how much he cares.  Then and only then is she ready to move on.

This is the way couples fight.  They step to the brink once in a while and then they step back.

“This is true love.  This is it right now”, Jesse says in exasperation.

And true moviemaking too.

Hey losers…  Don’t feel sorry for me.  What iconic movies have you written?  Have you been on the cover of Newsweek?  F–k you, motherf–kers!

The man has a point.

Many years ago, I was doing research for a script assignment in Philadelphia and was being given a tour of the city by the lady that ran the city’s film bureau. At one point, while we were eating cheesesteaks (what else?), her eyes suddenly lit up for the first time and she told me she had just read the best script she ever read in her life.  It was called The Sixth Sense and it had just sold for a huge amount and already had Bruce Willis attached. I said I’d read about the big sale in Variety and what was so special about it?  For a couple minutes, she stammered in vain, trying to give me a full rundown on the plot… 

Finally, she gave up and asked, “Can I just tell you the secret?”.

“Sure”

“He’s dead. He’s dead the whole time and doesn’t know it”.

I admitted that sounded like a pretty cool twist.  (I had no idea)

Through the rest of lunch she could not stop gushing about the script and the extremely talented young Phillie-native writer/director who had hit the Hollywood jackpot.

I won’t try to pretend I wasn’t incredibly jealous in that moment, and again when I finally saw the finished movie. I was at a disadvantage in a way.  I wish I had been able to experience it fresh like most people and really feel that dizzying reveal at the end. But I could clearly see how well it worked.  The climax delivered an emotional wallop that made it a genuine pop culture sensation.  And honestly, as a struggling writer, I was actually inspired by the exciting breakthrough of this unknown “guy with the strange name”.  Especially since he seemed to bring back into vogue a slower, more suspenseful style of storytelling.

Oh, PS> The Philadelphia movie I was working on?  Never happened.  Surprise, surprise.

Cut to almost fifteen years later and, ironically, I find myself feeling sorry for M. Night Shyamalan.

How does that happen?

The commercially and critically excoriated After Earth makes FOUR high-profile bombs in a row, and if tragedy is a fall from a great height, then his is probably the most dizzying Shakespearean skyscraper-dive in modern film history.  He went from being the hottest Wunderkind in the business, getting a couple million per script and being called the “next Spielberg”, to somehow becoming a snarky  punchline and punching bag.  There has always been a “movie jail”, of course – and lots of directors have been banished for one single bomb (Elaine May/Ishtar, Martin Brest/Gigli) but even by those standards, Shyamalan’s bad run is cringeworthy in it’s high profile.

When I Googled his name to see if I was spelling it correctly for this piece, one of the first phrases that pops up is “M. Night Shyamalan sucks”.  Think about that for a moment.  It is such a commonly used phrase it pops up when his name is only half-written.  And this isn’t the opinion of critics or movie insiders, this is now the conventional wisdom/bias of civilian moviegoers who know little to nothing about the business.

I was flipping channels the other night and Jay Leno used Shyamalan as the butt of one of his lame jokes.  The audience at least had the decency to groan and let him know they thought it was a low blow – but the bottom line was they GOT the joke, they knew the crashing & burning he was referencing.

Let’s face it.  We love nothing more than building people up to knock them down.  

In an earlier era, when, say, Peter Bogdonavich or William Friedkin suffered a series of flops, the general public wasn’t so attentive to it – they had only one eye on the people behind the camera anyway, and there wasn’t the same entertainment coverage at the time or a bloodthirsty internet.  These guys could slink away for a while and rest assured their classic movies were going to be what was remembered over time.  I’m afraid Shyamalan is not getting a similar opportunity for a graceful temporary exit.  It’s like people everywhere are wishing for and reveling in his every humiliation.

It’s true in some ways he invited this public flogging.  If you go back and read his old interviews, the hubris flows pretty thick.  He talks about himself in the third person.  His name was now a “brand”, a Hitchcockian seal of approval.  His premature production company was managing dozens of projects.  He demanded his scripts be delivered by messenger and studio execs had only a brief window in which to read them on the spot before bidding.  It was his rules or nothing.  He was a phenom and he knew it.

(“The Man Who Heard Voices” by Michael Bamberger is an excellent book that documents his falling out with Disney over the script of Lady In The Water.  It’s a blistering critique of an ego run amok, but the writer also clearly likes Shyamalan – and Shyamalan deserves credit for never cutting Bamberger off or scuttling the book as things went from bad to worse)

And, sure, I bristled when they made that ridiculous comparison with Spielberg…

But who would have guessed he would end up paying so heavily for a little bit of hype?

If his genius was exaggerated at the beginning, his “awfulness” now is also blown out of proportion.

So we have the indisputable triumph of The Sixth Sense on one side, and a run of bad films on the other. (Only The Happening is jaw-droppingly awful)  In between those two poles, Unbreakable has a brilliant concept at it’s heart and falls just short of greatness in my opinion.  Revisiting the film now, his signature slow pacing is so drawn-out that it approaches self-parody, but there’s some great stuff there.  Signs is a terrible mess, but it did provide enough well-executed shocks to be a big popcorn hit.  And The Village is, I think,  his most misunderstood film and much better than it’s reputation.  The twist may be a cheat, but he creates a wonderfully creepy world and makes a sly commentary on where America was post 9/11.

All this sounds suspiciously like any director’s up-and-down career.

He’s in a rut.  And like all ruts, when you overcorrect one way or the other it can become a self-perpetuating nightmare.  But is his career really over?  Of course not.  Not unless he wants it to be.  Obviously he connected with the audience before and he can do it again.

It was ever thus – every artist stumbles and every artist has the potential for a comeback.

In any case, he doesn’t need us to teach him humility anymore.  As many have noted, After Earth was the first of his post-fame films to not feature his name prominently on the movie poster.  That had to be a very sober moment for him.  And the fact that Will Smith’s stardom could not deliver him at least a big box-office windfall means he will have to “start over” to some degree – making a much smaller film, that will hopefully surprise his critics and return a tidy profit.  Maybe TV.  Maybe buying the rights to a hot property or working with someone else’s script.  But he certainly has the time and money to regroup.

Meanwhile, people need to let it go. 

Even a jealous screenwriter can see the schadenfreude has gotten out of control.

Since one of my loves is “movie art” and I have a collection of over 500 vintage posters (mostly 1970’s), I thought it would be fun to spotlight a great poster every week.  Some will be ones I own, some will be ones that “got away” or are too expensive for my modest budget, but others, like this very first entry, will just be a bit of retro cool that I stumble onto online and get a kick out of.

They don’t make ’em like this anymore…

Gotta’ love that tag line.

It would make a great personal ad, wouldn’t it?  I know I would respond.

I haven’t actually seen the movie yet – it’s an American remake of the French Jean Gabin classic, La Bete Humaine, which I love – but I’m afraid that when I do, there is almost no way it can possibly live up to this poster.

Like the climate, things change… 

I find myself in the strange position of wanting to defend Baz Luhrman’s adaptation of THE GREAT GATSBY, which I feel was lambasted with an unfair amount of vitriol by critics and bloggers alike.  Not sure I understand what happened there.  I am not a fan of Luhrman’s work.  His movies are usually great eye candy, but also very stupid.  The editing often resembles the work of a 10 year-old with ADD on his third line of cocaine.  At the same time, he seems to be an unapologetic romantic – which I identify with – and he seems to always want to bring back a kind of Old Hollywood grandeur that I appreciate as well.  And you have to give him credit for having the balls to take on such a classic novel – especially since everyone who has tried it before flopped.  Or forget that.  How about the fact that he actually wanted to make an ADULT film that wasn’t about a comic-book superhero?  Sadly, that’s become such a rarity that it’s commendable in itself.  He may have tarted it up in his usual way with lots of glossy CGI, a ridiculous music soundtrack, and overcaffeinated cutting, but he does in point of fact translate the novel fairly faithfully.

I agree he has bad habits as a filmmaker.  I guess that is exactly why I entered the theatre with lowered expectations and found myself pleasantly surprised.

For the first fifteen or so minutes of the film, the tone was so clunky (the framing device of Nick writing the novel is a good idea, the sanitarium he’s confined to not so much) and the pace so hectic that I honestly didn’t think I would make it through the whole two hours.  But then something changed.  The movie slowed down considerably, settled into it’s story and told it pretty well.  DiCaprio did a great job making Gatsby both enviable and tragic, with just enough insanity thrown in.  Mulligan was at her most radiant and had to walk a thin line herself, showing how confused and shallow Daisy has ultimately become.  I thought the whole cast did an excellent job.  And certain scenes played perfectly – the climax in the hotel room where Gatsby finally confronts Daisy’s husband was gut-wrenchingly raw and riveting.  I cannot imagine that scene being done any better.  And it is a long, static scene that was a real act of bravery on Luhrman’s part.  Or at least, a huge break from his normal hyperactivity.  So what do critics do?  They compliment the energy of the first half, but complain it gets boring after that.  First, they attack him for his crazy amped-up style and then for being too slow and ponderous.  The guy can’t win! 

The bottom line is it worked for me.  I was genuinely moved by it.  The book was always too dry for my taste, a cold intellectual parable of the American Dream…but the movie made me FEEL the central ideas in a way I never felt them before.  I respect it more now.  I GET IT.  

I should be embarrassed to say all this, because it makes me sound like an illiterate.  

I seem to be the only person who liked the film.
 
Yes, the imagery was obvious and repetitive (green light, billboard eyes – we got it!), and some dialogue too (a good drinking game is to do a shot every time Leo says “Old Boy”…then call an ambulance), and yes, it is flawed, over the top, gaudy – but I still walked out emotionally satisfied and impressed.

I think the critics came to it with knives already sharpened, and I guess what bothers me is that I wish they would use those knives on the endless stream of juvenile pablum clogging up theatres and not a film that at the very least tried to adapt and ‘freshen’ a literary classic for young audiences.

Anyway, that’s just my take…

Luhrman will never be a favorite of mine, but I’m standing by him on this one.

Who knew?  Strange times.

(SIGH) Where to start?

First of all, full disclosure – I hate remakes. I hate the fact all my favorite films from the 1970’s are being given crappy unnecessary updates that do nothing but besmirch the memory of a classic.

The filmmakers always try and justify it by saying they are giving the material a “modern take” or “going back to the source material” and being more “faithful”. It’s all bullshit. It’s just a bunch of PR gobbledygook meant to disguise the studio’s lazy liquidation of yet another catlogue title that pre-sells opening weekend. They have to deflect the charge they’re just being greedy (ding-ding-ding!), so they come up with all these reasons why there should be a new version of a story that was told perfectly the first time.

In this case, the director Kimberly Pearce (Boys Don’t Cry) and her star, Chloe Grace Moretz, talked about how it was going to be a “grittier”, “more realistic” version of the story.

Nevermind whether that is even desirable for a deliberately gothic tale like Carrie, when I read their passion for the project I decided to keep an open mind. Maybe this would be the exception to the trend. Maybe they would create something so genuinely fresh that it could stand alongside the Brian DePalma masterpiece, each complementing the other. After all, it can be done. Howard Hawks’ and John Carpenter’s versions of The Thing being the most commonly used example.

So, I ask you…

Does that trailer look “fresh” to you?

Of course not.

It looks like every other bland American-made horror movie of the last ten years – replacing the creepy atmosphere and emotional power, even the morbid sense of humor, of the 1976 film with a ton of shiny new CGI effects. However spectacular, they will no doubt be as weightless and unaffecting as most effects are to our jaded eyes these days. Moretz, a good actress, looks badly miscast and unconvincing. She is too young, too pretty and too “normal” to be playing a social misfit like Carrie White. She could easily be playing one of the girls torturing her. That is, if those girls didn’t look a good three years older than her.

This isn’t so much a bad trailer, as it is a trailer that reveals a bad movie.

(If I turn out to be wrong, expect a sincere mea culpa.  Just don’t hold your breath.)

The sad thing is that the studio will get their big opening weekend and the film could end up being a big hit – simply, as they calculated, based on the familiarity of a well-known story.

So the studio was right again…

And the general quality of movies gets a little more pig blood poured over it.

My favorite part of the Academy Awards are these Oscar-clinking pictures of the beaming winners…

They always capture a moment of pure unadulterated joy. 

Here’s another one I kept from a few years back.  Different year, same Day Lewis.

See what I mean?

Don’t you want to know what the shared joke was?  Or just be part of that group?

I sure do.

Despite all the cynicism thrown at the Oscars, they are still the highest honor and absolute pinnacle of accomplishment for people who make movies all over the world.  The winners are in a very exclusive club.  They did a scientific study and found it’s a thrill that can literally extend your lifespan.

Call me a sentimentalist, but that’s the part of the Oscars that I like. 

I don’t have much to say about the ceremony itself.  As a show, it was far from the best I’ve seen, but it wasn’t the worst either.  (That would be the one where they handed out trophies in the AISLES – remember that shit?)  But if the Oscars have become an honored annual tradition, so has the inevitable Tearing-Apart-Of-The-Oscars the day after, and unfortunately the 2013 edition was more apehshit than ever.

Granted, there was a lot for critics to feed on.  Seth MacFarlane only hit about 40% of his jokes at best and some of them were needlessly “edgy”, even harsh.  His opening bit with Shatner felt interminable.  The banter between all the presenters was the lamest it’s been in years.  Shirley Bassey delivered diva-style, but Adele and Streisand put in listless performances.  The Bond montage was boring.  And WTF moments abounded: A tribute to CHICAGO and DREAMGIRLS??  The playing-off of a Visual Effects winner with the JAWS theme?  Michelle Obama presenting Best Picture from the White House??

But every Oscars has weird moments and jokes that flop…

What seemed to ignite the twitterverse this year and felt new to me was this exaggerated outrage at the un-PCness of MacFarlane’s jokes.  They accused him of sexism, racism, anti-semitism and any other -ism they could think of.  Like I say, his jokes were more cringeworthy than funny, but I don’t think they were truly hateful or offensive.  People’s ability to make a fuss out of nothing is reaching epidemic proportions with social media these days.  It never occurred to me the silly dance number “We Saw Your Boobs” would be a big deal.  But humorless prudes popped up everywhere acting as if MacFarlane had crossed a red line of misogyny – even though three of the actresses spoofed played a part in the joke.

I’m genuinely worried we are losing our ability to laugh at ourselves.

That’s why Jennifer Lawrence is so refreshing…

Whether she’s falling down and not giving a damn…

Or flipping off a bank of international photographers, and…not giving a damn.

She knows not to take any of this too seriously.  Least of all herself.

Her win was the highlight for me.  She’s adorable and sexy and enthusiastic and grounded, and she has a talent way beyond her 22 years.  I get excited about the Oscars – even in a mediocre year of film like this – because of winners like her.  You want them to win for all the right reasons.  And the promise she represents is there will always fresh blood coming up in Hollywood making the movies vibrant again.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have the veteran Daniel Day Lewis – an absolute genius at his craft who continues to amaze us time after time, year after year, and earns every bit of acclaim he gets.  And who, by the way, also seems to stay humble and keep it all in proper perspective as well.

As for the hosting job…  On to the next martyr who wants to throw him/herself on a grenade.

Good luck finding someone who wants that thankless fucking job.

Loosen your sphincters, people.

–RR

 

007 Gets “Emotional” And “Groundbreaking”

As a lifelong James Bond fan, I have never felt so ambivalent about the imminent release of a new Bond film.  I’m torn.  Part of me is happy and part of me is almost dreading it.

Normally I would be so excited I would be eating/drinking/sleeping Bond in anticipation.  But this time is different.  Of course I want the film to be good and to be a hit – the latter of which is pretty much a fait accompli – but at the same time, everything I have seen about Skyfall seems to feed my worst fears.

I’ll explain.

I’m what might be called an “old-school” fan.  I like my James Bond sophisticated, stylish, clever, witty, suave and a smooth operator with women.  That’s why as a kid I chose him over Clint Eastwood’s The Man With No Name, or Charles Bronson, or any other typically miserable and monosyllabic American action hero.  I didn’t want to grow up to be the scowling loner guy roaming from town to town getting into fights.  I wanted to be that smooth motherfucker in the tuxedo who has all the women and seems to be enjoying all the finest things in life.  The guy who has a slight grin playing on his lips at all times because he is just that cool – knows whatever musclebound thug he’s up against, he’s going to turn the odds around and beat him.  That, in my mind, was true confidence and true masculinity.  The other guys may act “tougher”, but Bond was the one who would always come out on top.  Then  he would brush off his tux, order another vodka martini and kiss the sexy Ukrainian girl…who was also sent to kill him, but is now hopelessly in his thrall.

That’s Bond to me.  That’s what makes the character so special.

There have been a load of pretenders and parodies, but no one has ever beaten that Bondian recipe – a very particular mix of action and comedy, sex and violence, glamor and gadgets.

Brosnan was perfectly suited to the role and did a great job, but was unlucky enough to have gotten the role, not under Cubby Broccoli’s reign, but that of his children, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, filmmakers only by nepotism.  They seemed more interested in picking up their huge producer fees and slowly but surely selling Bond on the cheap – making each film less and less ambitious, less cutting edge, less grand in scale.  And like all bosses who have no idea what they are doing, they ended up blaming the resulting failure on their employee (Brosnan) and unceremoniously dumping him.  Thereby getting rid of the one thing RIGHT about the films and robbing him of the great Bond film he deserved.

When Daniel Craig won the role, I couldn’t believe my eyes.  I won’t belabor the point because it’s become such a stale topic of contention, but in no way did he resemble the five Bonds who came before him…that is just a fact.  Listen, I’m told by his defenders that women go crazy over him.  Whether this is because he’s playing James Bond and isn’t their plumber, I guess we’ll never know.  But my problem is not with his blonde hair (in the new film he practically has a shaved head), nor his short stature – it’s the craggy face of stone and his monotone acting.  He would be a perfect character actor for playing flawed and stoic blue-collar heroes, diamonds in the rough, or even villains, but his looks and whole manner directly subvert the role of 007.

He has stripped Bond of the cool ease that made him special and turned him into just another thug who has to prove to us with every frame of film how tough – and tormented – he really is. 

That’s just my opinion.

I have nothing against him as a person, I just think he is bizarrely overrated as an actor.  He seems utterly expressionless and drains every line of dialogue of any color or life.  He has failed to make good on his supposed “star power” in non-Bond films with flop after flop after flop and still his defenders talk about him like he’s the greatest actor to ever walk the earth.  It’s surreal.

Anyway, when he got the role in Casino Royale, I was nervous but ready to give him a chance.  When I read the leaked script for CR, my hopes doubled.  Here was a smart script that turned the Bond formula temporarily upside-down and played brilliantly against expectations.  I thought it was brave and exciting.  It still felt like Bond to me on the page.  But when I saw the finished product and Craig’s dour take on the character, I just couldn’t go with it.  Martin Campbell, also strangely overrated in my view, had turned that smart script into a lumbering, stilted film.  And just not that exciting.  It felt like a Bond film for people who don’t like Bond films.  Which, I guess, some people would say was the whole point.

Maybe because I now had such low expectations, I enjoyed Quantum Of Solace more.  It’s a terribly edited film, mind you, but the pacing and tone feels much more like Bond to me.  It’s an ACTION FILM.  It moves!  And Craig allowed for some nuance, a few moments of actual humor.  Was he becoming Bond?  Was he getting the idea there should be an ease not angst to the world famous British spy?

So I hoped again. 

Especially when Craig spoke of making the next movie a “Bond, with a capital B”.

 
Then, as more and more details leaked about Skyfall…including some storyboards, call sheets and pages from the script…everything I saw seemed to contradict what Craig had said.  This would be Part III in the ‘gritty, realistic’ – but mostly melodramatic – reboot of the series.  It has that same goal of demythologizing the great James Bond.  He “dies”, he hides out for a while in Istanbul, he mopes, he grows a beard that makes him even fuglier, etc, etc.  He’s really a tortured soul underneath it all.  Could it be he even has some unresolved issues about Mommy and Daddy who died when he was very young?

Oh, steel yourself – because that’s where we’re going..

But first, after following a villain to Shanghai (not really, Craig never set foot in China – just the Second Unit people…another cop-out by the Broccolis), he returns to London – where the bulk of the rest of the film takes place.  That’s right, a Bond film that takes place largely in London.  It’s like a Star Trek film that takes place in the Enterprise’s docking station in San Francisco.  He returns to find the MI6 offices have been attacked and moved underground, just to make things even more dreary and “down-to-earth”.  He doesn’t return right to duty though.  Oh no.  He fails his shooting test and has to take a psych exam where he is given a word-association quiz.  Raise your hand if you ever thought you’d see this in a fucking Bond movie. 

The last word meant to provoke a reaction is “Skyfall” – the name of his family’s ancestral home in Scotland.  It’s no coincidence this is the title of the film and the location of the ‘climactic battle’, or that Judi Dench is there for that battle, along with a mysterious elderly man played by the great Albert Finney who is described as an “important figure from Bond’s past”.  Rumor has it that this is Dench’s last film and that she may meet her ultimate fate in Bond’s arms.  Meanwhile, Javiar Bardem’s villain Silva seems to hold a very personal grudge against M and his identity is being protected as the film’s biggest secret.

Are you putting all this together?

The director Sam Mendes, known for drama not action, says it will be “groundbreaking”, and Craig promises it will be “emotional” and “moving”.

I don’t know how much Bond’s parents figure into the story or whether Silva is literally related to M or Bond – hopefully it’s only a thematic parallel, not a clumsy Darth Vader-like twist – but there is no doubt that the producers are going somewhere Freudian where no Bond film has gone before.

And I hate it. 

It smacks of heavy-handed soap opera and the antithesis of a light popcorn adventure.

If I’m even half right, I think a good portion of the audience will be tired of this “personal” take on Bond.  Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol was much more Bondian than Bond these days and it was a huge hit.  People want to be awed and exhilarated like they were when Cruise scaled that skyscraper.  I don’t think they go to a Bond movie to be moved or cry, I really don’t.

And the old rustic Skyfall lodge, in the middle of nowhere, strikes me as a boring location for a big finish.  In fact, all the action in the film looks/feels retro to the point of deja vu.  The big opening sequence caps off with yet another old-fashioned fight atop a train.  After that, it seems to be only conventional shoot-outs and a foot chase through a London underground station.  There doesn’t seem to be any innovative or spectacular action in the entire film.  Another element of the Bond formula to get stripped away.

And yet the film is 2 hours and 25 minutes long – a long sit.

I’m extrapolating here, of course, I haven’t seen the film yet.  Maybe I will end up absolutely loving it.  That’s my struggle – despite my gut instinct, I’m trying to keep an open mind and go on the journey.

It doesn’t help that the PR campaign for Skyfall has been one of the worst in the history of the franchise.

We’re a month off from the premiere and this is their idea of a final one-sheet:

In any case, it will be a big hit.  All Bond films are and I’m grateful for that.  I’m just very curious what the critical reaction and general consensus will be.  Am I completely alone in wanting Bond to return to being an aspirational hero, a wonderful excuse for escapism – the ubercool superspy who lives the high life and takes on dangerous glamorous missions that are, you know, unrelated to his personal life??

Oh well.  There’s always the next one…

For now, though, I have never had such mixed feelings about the return of Bond.

–RR