Timelessness: A Face in the Crowd

Welp, another election is upon us, so why not get a little political? Any of you who have read me at all may have gathered that I tend to lean to the left, so it may come as no shock to some of you that I like A Face in the Crowd. For my fellow left-leaning types, it may come as a shock that I do like this movie because, yes, Elia Kazan was a rat and named names to the House Un-American Activities Committee way back when. Still, he was a hell of a director in his time, and ranks right up there with the greats: Billy Wilder, Frank Capra, William Castle. And A Face in the Crowd is as good as Network, and in some ways is even better, I dare say! The screenplay is similarly excellent, insightful, satirical, and all those great qualities a good movie embodies. This is what Keith Olbermann is referring to when he calls Glenn Beck "Lonesome Rhodes."
So, what does make a movie timeless? Well, with a performance like Andy Griffith gives, it's a big plus. Ironically, this was the only time he played a 'heavy', so to speak, and spent the rest of his career playing the thing he satirizes here... if that makes sense. It's an epic journey for Larry Rhodes, from a local jail to New York City when he reaches the pinnacle of his "craft." When a film is good like this, it often gets called a 'meditation,' but it was a little ahead of Network in noticing that television is a powerful force in the universe, and it tends to bend people to its will. Even senators! I'll try not to spoil too much of the plot details, but as with All The King's Men, both involve exploiting hillbilly culture for personal gain. And for all you nice guys looking for witty banter with the ladies, ... oh good! They have it: "All mild men are vicious. They hate themselves for being mild, and they hate the windy extroverts whose violence seems to have a strange attraction for nice girls. You should know better," Walter Matthau tells Patricia Neal. Apparently, he plays the Budd Schulberg part. Surely this was part autobiographical, part based on the life of ... whoever. Gotta go to Wikipedia for this one: Andy Griffith's character is based in part on someone named Arthur Godfrey. And for anti-fans of Viagra and Cialis like me, the Vitajex ads are pretty riotous; also gotta like the scene where the nerd in the board meeting says "it's basically sugar tablets!!" Lamentably, today's aristocracy is better about holding back the truth, so we may have to settle for the little victories, like Matthau's at the end, and I'm talking about when he gives his big final speech, then goes "Beanie!!" I probably should've said Spoilers, but I don't think that will spoil the whole ride for you.

good double bill with: either Network or All The King's Men... the original!

****
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Jennifer Jason Leigh

You go, girlfriend! JJL's IMDb biography can probably tell it better than I can, but it should say something to the effect of that she is a star. She's a brand name, an institution and a quintessential star in the Hollywood galaxy. Plus, she's a bit of a product of nepotism and yes, she has forgiven John Landis in her own way. She's one of those actresses that probably will never get an Oscar, or even a nomination, but damn it, she's one of us. Georgia! The Big Picture, even! Her big break was of course Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle... my God! She was on The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn? What was she thinking? She must've confused the hell out of poor Kilborn.
Anyway, back to the raison d'etre at hand. JJL only dabbled once in directing, but apparently it's quite good. Her ode to Cassavetes, perhaps, and it's called The Anniversary Party. Apparently she learned nothing from it because she's now married to Noah Baumbach? Okay! Hope you know what you're doing. Obviously you haven't seen Love Stinks, either. Just don't act too surprised if one day Noah blurts out that Laura Linney's character in The Squid and The Whale was based on you. Which, by the way, WASN'T!

Stay Greedy, My Friends

And we're still knee deep in the 80's Rebirth hoopla, my peeps. Everything old is new again, but Oliver Stone's a hella lot older now and clearly not as prolific as he was in the 80s and 90s, rewriting American history and all. That's right: first Mary Lambert, now this! When will the pain I inflict on others end? And so, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps manages to avoid a pesky direct-to-DVD release, unlike OTHERS I could mention but probably shouldn't. Movie making is becoming more and more a family-based business, n'est-ce pas? This one, oh puh-leeze. And I fear that all this will go to Shia's head even harder. We're talking hotel room trashing time, or graduating from drunk driving to cocaine and ecstasy. The sky's the limit now! And just in time for Transformers 3, no less.
At #2, if all that wasn't enough, it's a little something for the kids, probably in 3D. It's a mouthful, so I'll just refer to it as Awesome Owls. And I've beaten it into the ground, but I just can't get over the fact that director Zack Snyder, only the most awesome director this side of Michael Bay, decided to go Hollywood and compromise his artistic integrity. I mean, he was on his way to awesomeness before the turbo-manly historical epic 300, but 300 is clearly when he found his voice and came into his own. And Watchmen clearly sealed the deal. So why this detour now to Wussy Lane? Surely, there's an NC-17 version of this owl pic awaiting us 3 months from now on Blu-Ray featuring the owls tearing into a nice juicy mouse in an anatomically correct CGI gore-fest? You OWE us, Snyder! Thankfully, more awesomeness awaits us out there on the horizon: something called Suckerpunch, (thanks a lot, Kill Bill!) and a renamed 301.
The last debut this week is yet another 80s flashback of sorts. 80s icons in their own right Jamie Lee Curtis and Sigourney Weaver team up for something called You Again. Though they could just as easily have called it Why Bother? Or perhaps as the IMDb must've titled it at some point, Untitled Betty White Cinematic Comeback Delivery Device. You know, it's not too late to build the Lake Placid trilogy! Yes, the Steel Magnolias template never fails to remake itself and ... oh! My oatmeal's done!

Don't have a cow, zombies!

So where does Zombieland fit into the burgeoning subgenre of zombie comedy/horror? Is it more than just the latest and the greatest? After all, 28 Days Later... wasn't strictly a comedy! And one IMDb user said this was better than Shaun of the Dead. Or at least, a lot less British. Then of course, there was the Simpsons' Don't Have a Cow, Mankind. I don't know which struck first; about the same time if I had to guess. Perhaps it's a little of both: it is the latest and greatest, and yet symptomatic of the age we live in. Woody Harrelson does fine as the tough-as-nails aphoristic zombie killer who meets up with Jesse Eisenberg's nerd character who's almost adapted to this new way of life these films always try to project. The film apparently cost all of about 24 million dollars, but the computer effects looked pretty great. However, it looked like crappy digital video instead of film. I hope it's more environmentally friendly, because I hate the blurring it all causes to any type of movement now. Camera movement, actor movement, all blurry. Also symptomatic of our modern age of eyestrain from all corners. According to the IMDb tech specs, there was HD involved. To be fair, it looked better than 2012 which is also playing on cable now. 2012 is a far greater offender in this regard. Awful. Except for the big action sequences. Those look flawless, but the small in-between moments with the actors look like they were filmed with a VHS camcorder.
But back to Zombieland. A fairly enjoyable flick, although I tried to resist its initial release and its hailing as an instant classic. It no longer seems to be in the top 250! Oh well. And SPOILER ALERT: Bill Murray's cameo was better than I expected, but like the writing on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Woody's lust for Twinkies gets taken up that extra metaphorical notch. Well enough just can't be left alone anymore. And we'll know we're in trouble as a culture when we take the teachings of an Eisenberg type too seriously. Are we not men? I mean, human beings? Have we already forgotten how to live?

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Mimi Leder

I just realized that, at the rate I'm going, I'll never get to Ztephanye Zzyzzwych by the end of the year! Extreme measures must be taken, as does our next chick auteur, Mimi Leder. She kinda looks like if you were morphing between Hillary Clinton and Penny Marshall. A TV maven, she came into her own with the TV show ER and successfully lobbied to direct The Peacemaker, Clooney's ... first big action pic? It's somebody's big first, anyway. DreamWorks, maybe. This is when they first realized they need to scale back and do more cheap pics like American Beauty... and I mean inexpensive! But nobody likes A. Beaut anymore, right? Of course, The Onion NEVER liked it, I'm sure. And then it was Deep Impact, or Spielberg's Comet-geddon. Oh, will the Spielberg/Bruckheimer War ever end? Will Michael Bay ever return to do Bad Boys 3?
So surely the 1990s were Leder's decade, and she set herself up perfectly as the next Kathryn Bigelow. And what does she do? Throw it all away with her next pic: Pay It Forward, which seems to have put a crimp in her future silver screen plans, so it's back to the boob tube with you, guhl-fruend! She did something called Thick as Thieves (2009)... there's only ONE Thick as Thieves to me! (1998) ...on the other hand, his eyes are kinda scary in that poster / DVD cover. The point being, Leder musta behaved a little better than Bronwen Hughes, go figure. I guess both are happy, who knows. Okay, on to the next.

Ben Affleck's Baked Beans

Lotta debuts this week! One of which I never even heard of. Probably because I don't watch NickToons enough. But Legendary Pictures' latest, The Town, takes the cake, so to speak, and so much more! Oh, it's the movie equivalent of a killer app, no doubt about it. And I'm probably not the first to suggest it, but I'll go ahead anyway: Oscar nom time? Director, actor, what have you, Rebecca Hall gets to give out the nerd Oscars, that kind of thing? Jeremy Renner will win the Oscar he should've gotten for The Hurt Locker, you know the drill. At second, Gluck! goes the box office with Easy A. There was some flap about Amanda Bynes retiring from show biz, then abruptly coming back. Apparently, the Twitterverse was holding her feet to the fire. Oh, the common man can be so cruel sometimes. I saw The Fountainhead not too long ago! I learned all about it! Of course, the upper crust seems pretty messed up themselves. The point being, Amanda! You're not in retirement mode. Just ask Keisha!
Meanwhile, poor Amanda Seyfried thought she was the lead in Easy A, showing up to the wrong looping session again. Crazy business, this business of show! Meanwhile, at #3... is there a more exciting, inticing phrase in this English language than "M. Night Shyamalan Presents..."? Must be, since this debuts at #3. It's Devil with a red upside down triangle for the V. That's either out of respect, or a copyright infringement thing. They wanted to call it De7il but that would just be coat-tail-riding. And finally, the last debut this week is the latest sub-Pixar pic, Alpha and Omega. These damn Glucks are everywhere now! This Crest Animation is definitely not a Pixar-esque Alpha, but they're no Big Idea Omega either. Take that, 1-2-3 Penguins!!!!

Flop Sweat, thy name is 3 Amigos

Some comedies seem to come with their own marketing within it. For some reason, Ghost Busters comes to mind. And of course, the John Belushi-John Landis collaborations Animal House and The Blues Brothers arrived amidst a bit of a whirlwind themselves. Three Amigos doesn't quite hold its own amongst those giants, but it's not without its charms. Or to put it another way, even Chevy Chase couldn't totally screw this one up. The real stars of the movie are the costume design and the sets. With this and Pennies From Heaven, Steve Martin was way ahead of his time with the period piece stuff.
It's an odd mix, this film. You might say it's a hard PG. Lots of shooting for a PG movie. Even the Amigos' silent feature at the beginning was rather brutal for a silent pic. A knife in the chest? The Amigos' salute seems a little PG-13 as well, but who am I to question? Even though we cringe at times, aren't these also the things we're supposed to cherish? Will no one make the case for that? Take, for example, the subplot with the Invisible Swordsman. Sure, they needed something to fill out that pesky 5th reel, but is it still not inspired? And based on something, some obscure literary reference? I'll let someone else do the due diligence on that one. I did like the big phony backdrop they used for the Blue Shadows number, and My Little Buttercup seemed an awful lot like a song of the period
The DVD of Three Amigos is a tad threadbare. And shame on the film restorers as well! In several shots of the pic, as you can see from the image I chose, there's some kind of obstruction on the left side of the frame. That's a flaw of the camerawork and not of the DVD itself, like that stripe on the left side of the screen in Spaceballs. And during the scene where the Amigos decide to become the real deal, the picture was swaying back and forth a bit... just like in certain DVDs of Blade Runner! I can't vouch for the new one.
What else? Apparently, Alfonso Arau was actually 53 when they shot this, the lucky bastid. Chevy does an homage to the guitar work he did in that one SNL bit that takes place in a hip 50s bar. All you cats and chicks? Anyone? Landis probably wanted to name Short's character Neidermeyer... Nederlander's close enough, I guess.

***1/2
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

An American Airlines Production; with Sam Elliott as 'The Stranger'

Well, the pacification of the American moviegoing public continues unabated. The old joke in one of those Woody Allen movies where a news man said some group declared death "a good thing"... it's supposed to be here! Anyway, you know the drill: time is limited, we have to live like we're dying, be with your loved ones, get married, have kids. Some movies seem to think that people don't know how to live anymore.
And then, of course, there's employment. Movies generally try to avoid dealing with specific prices and wages now, lest they be made obsolete by inflation somewhere down the road. Not like the old movies when ice cream cost fifteen cents. Lost in this handful of memes shoved down our throats all the time is our relationships with our respective employers. Up in the Air does pretty good showing the modern relationship between employer and employee, using actual fire-ees in the midst of their emotional crises. All those years of service, and what do they get for it? Don't go away mad, just go away.
Perhaps because of Nebraska being the film's home base, and with Rolfe Kent on music duties, I was reminded of About Schmidt. Both films are about older gentlemen finding their worlds turned upside down; Clooney's not quite as traumatically. Spoiler alert! Clooney's the one who's supposed to be doing the downsizing! As with Michael Clayton, Clooney brings authority to the role, but alas, even the best of us are approaching 50. Your clock's ticking too, buddy! Unfortunately, 2009 wasn't as good to George Clooney as 2005 was in terms of Oscars, and damn! This thing got, what? Nine nominations? ...nah, just six. Don't worry, Reitman, just keep cranking out a movie every two years, and the Academy's bound to catch up with you. You're still a young man eager to win and they sense that. Pretend like you don't want it... better and harder than now. Most of the usual rolling stock of The Jason Reitman Players are on hand: Jason Bateman, Garth Pancake, and Sam Elliott... I guess that's it.
Oh, I should add that Clooney's relationship in the movie did turn out unexpectedly, so I must've been enjoying myself. Usually when I don't, I try and outguess the movie. Sorry, but I can't always live in the now, or say goodbye to yesterday, or donate every dime I have. But if airplanes were stars to wish on... I mean, it's good knowing Ryan Bingham's out there over our heads, taking it easy for all us sinners, and helping to distribute jet fuel more evenly in the world's soil... I just realized! The poor bastard never left the U.S.! Must be bedtime for Bonzo. I gotta go.

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Mary Lambert

Ah, Mary had a little Lambert. You know, I think the IMDb is dissing her a little bit. They're new and revamped, but her homepage is the same old same ol'? A child of the Greatest Generation, Lambert cut her teeth in the exciting cable outlet known to us as the MTV. Madonna's Like A Virgin? She directed that? I thought we could pin that crime of objectifying women on a dude! Then again, it is Madonna we're talking about here. So all those years of setting up the camera, dealing with fancy lighting and fancier rock stars... Godley & Creme didn't get a movie out of it, but Lambert did! One of Stephen King's lesser works, Pet Sematary. Okay, first of all, he should know better. It's spelled... hmm! How do you spell cemetery? Well, seeing as how he's the king of horror and 1940's era prisons, we'll let him get away with that one. Unfortunately for Lambert, she was available to do the sequel. But she did do some other original productions during the 90s. I don't think I need to tell you that the 80s are clearly her favorite decade, and she was right there in the crucible of it all! MTV, baby! She was young, in her prime, wearing a big purple mohawk, going to work every day and loving it. Novels will surely be written about this period in history, and not just by Bret Easton Ellis. The 90s saw Lambert moving into her emeritus years, right after Pet Sematary II. You know the kind of things that happen then: the reading glasses appear, speaking to eager college students about film, going to premieres and not getting photographed. The 2000s saw her briefly re-emerge with The In Crowd; in the final analysis, I think she needed a movie star or two to round out the cast... with all due respect to Tess Harper. And ol' Miss Lambert spent the Dubya years like all film directors did: in a drunken stupor. But she tried to sneak in as much liberal bias into Urban Legends 3 as she could. But if speaking to an actual film director has taught me anything, it's that the current decade is always the director's favourite. And Mary Lambert's still going strong at 59! She's got two upcoming projects: a movie about late 19th century / early 20th century vampires, and an Ivory-Merchant-esque piece called ... Mega Python vs. Gatoroid??? Oh, why do you make my job so hard!!??????!! As long as either of the creatures don't drink Gatorade, I think we'll be okay. Hey! Does the winner go on to face Mega-Shark in the semifinals?

Oh, you and your old guns, you craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy!

Oh, I was just reading about celebrities getting fed up with Twitter. Have those Twitter bastards become billionaires yet? I guess celebrities can't wait that long. Familiarity breeds contempt, the article said. Personally, I prefer "Suspicion Breeds Confidence," don't you folks? Personally, I don't use Twitter. Or professionally, for that matter. But I'll get on the bandwagon as soon as I get one for Christmas... a Blackberry, right? Oh, I'm so old and square. Anyway, on to this week's box office. And shame on me! I didn't even fill out my weekly Excel spreadsheet! There's only one debut this week: Resident Evil 4 in 3-D. I tried finding a photo from the movie where a character isn't holding a gun, but had some trouble as you can see. I guess this means we can expect Underworld 4 to respond in kind by 2012... 2011? Better be careful. Remember what happened when Batman 4 came out only 2 years after Batman Forever!!
As for the rest, well, Takers holds constant at #2 for the 3rd week in a row, while Going the Distance holds constand at #5 for 2 weeks in a row. Oh, I hope the Mac guy never grows up. Dang! Vampires Suck and The Switch are already gone? That was fast! Nanny McPhee Returns is gone as well. Inception is at #10... oh, will that inception never end?

Crazy white gangsters

Man, The Onion doesn't like anything! Just cuz a guy's getting old. Cagney apparently was 50 when he made this, portraying an alpha gangster who's good to his mother. A bit like the mother in The Sopranos, but a little more directly involved in the criminal enterprise. And even though technology's getting more sophisticated on the cops' end of things, the criminals are still gettin 'er done. But then... well, I'll try not to give too much away, but there's plenty of plot to go around in this one, to be sure. Anyway, Cagney ends up going to prison for a couple years, and the cops arrange for one of their own to pose as a career criminal and be a cellmate with Cagney! There's just gotta be an easier way. This leads to complications that pay off later in the movie. Then there's some more 'new' technology, another job, a double-cross, and of course the big finalé, the climax of which apparently explains the white heat of the title.
This must've been incendiary at the time, no pun intended, but dated now, especially the lack of the swears. Easy to see how this could've influenced today's gangster films, particularly Michael Mann's various works, prominently featuring criminal and gangster 'managers' supplying all the good crimes with big payoffs. The opening robbery is reminiscent of Butch Cassidy. There were a few details that didn't pay off later which was kind of nice. Why should everything have a future payoff? In a movie, anyway? Okay, I'll tell you what one of them was. The lip-reader cellmate is sitting next to Edmond O'Brien's stoolie during their respective prison visits. The stoolie covers his mouth so the lip-reader can't tell he's telling his "wife" that they're planning a phony prison break... I know, I know, but I won't even get into the plot holes you can drive a gas truck through. You know why? It's out of respect. Sometimes you gotta respect a film's plot holes. Not always, like with that LAST film I reviewed! Sheesh. I still can't get over that trial.

***1/2
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Elektra Complex in Blue, or Leave it on the video shelf...

Well, this must've been a nightmare to film. The outdoor scenes have a certain, uh, unreality to them. There were either lots of hot lights, or many white sheet reflectors behind the camera. Or both. Anyway, greetings, my seven followers! You know, I almost plum forgot how to review a movie. And all the time I spent away from the ol' blog, why, it might as well be this time last year. But maybe I can get back into the swing of things. Well, the loftiest thought that comes to mind about Leave Her To Heaven is that this must be one of those films that's a gay icon... or am I thinking of the Douglas Sirk movies? I mean, all those pastels! I also couldn't help but think of The Shining, as both involve writers and the fate of a boy named Danny, but without giving too much away, LH2H goes further than that. Its plot is similar to Descending Angel, but with a twist. Actually, I guess the young-man-marrying-into-well-to-do-family genre is a long, rich one at that. But Cornel Wilde's not some gold-digging buffoon like Montgomery Clift in The Heiress! No, he's more like that dude who married Elton John and already has a career in his own right. Anyway, not to give too much more away, but when you pick up on one of the main character's motivations, the rest of the movie pretty much falls into place. Much like in the domestic scenes of All The King's Men... the original, not the remake which I hear wasn't too good. Gandolfini NOT in the Broderick Crawford role? For shame.
Anyway, for me, from an acting standpoint, it was worth it for Cornel's big scene when he finally decides if he should leave his wife or not. But everyone was good, of course. There was some story on TCM about the kid and his big swimming scene and how great it turned out... I may have to watch that again, if only on YouTube.
So for its first seven reels we have on our hands and screens a fine drama about a writer caught on that hamster wheel with art on one end, and life on the opposite. But then, there's that big final courtroom scene, and I and my viewing companions couldn't help but wonder a few things. First of all, the prosecuting attorney was the former fiancé of the victim. Shouldn't he be recused? We thought so, but as with Funny Farm, it's a small town, and there are shortages of everything, especially prosecuting attorneys. And 1a), you waste Vincent Price by having him play a normal, if somewhat creepy, person? (Oh, if you think that's bad, it's nothing compared to what Variety said. Rowr! That kitten's got claws!!) Secondly, what was up with the defense? Why, they were worse than James Woods in the big Dream On finale! Or Buck Henry in Defending Your Life! Almost makes you pine for the days of Johnnie Cochran. Even the judge looked like he wanted to object at a few especially critical points in the questioning. More liberties are taken than on L.A. Law, I swear. Actually, the jury does end up making the right call... half the right call. Time to call Dersh, I say. For one last movie reference, I know most people be hatin' on Intolerable Cruelty, but if you want a legal drama... comedy in which love plays an essential part in a courtroom, at least I.Cru does it right.

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

Auteur Watch - Karyn Kusama

Oh, I HATE the new IMDb format! I'm not used to it yet. Take Karyn Kusama's entry, for example. It was better when it was the plain vanilla page and you could just go right to all her credits. Now, everything has to have a link to amazon.com or some damn thing. Consume! Consume! Consume!!! Anyway, a refugee from the John Sayles camp, Kusama came into her own more or less with the critically-acclaimed Girlfight. Quickly learning the directing ropes, it was on to more commercial fare like Aeon Flux, based on that damn MTV animated series. MTV must've not invested a lot in it, 'cuz that thing BOMBED! But as you can see from her main IMDb page, she won't work on a film where she doesn't get final cut. That might be a little tougher after Jennifer's Body, but we'll hope for the best for you, girlfriend! Keep fighting the good fight... or should I say, girlfight?

Still the One

He's still the one they want to talk to in their bed, still the one that turns people's heads. George is still having fun, and he's still the one. Silly me, I thought there were no debuts this week! They were just a tad late on delivering the latest totals. George's thing is #1, Rodriguez's latest Mexploitation fare Machete at #3, and generic fall rom-com at #5. Jeniston's latest is clinging on to the wrong end of the box office! What up w/that, girl?