When I go off on one of my rants about modern western cinema and how it all sucks because it's all about money and nothing at all about art, what Crispin Glover calls Commercial Funded and Distributed Film like a mantra, this would be appear to be the exceptions to the rule that I search for. I hadn't heard of the film: its name didn't bleed into my subconscious from passing some critical mass of signs outside multiplexes. I'm seeing it on the Sundance Channel, not as the movie of the week on NBC. It's rated R for sexual content. The original soundtrack is not by the flavour of the month rap artist, it's by Argentinian classical composer Osvaldo Golijov.
It's also an international production, for sure: French financed (through Canal+), shot in England and France, with American stars and authentic ethnic character actors for each of the nationalities needed (except for the stars, of course). While it's primarily in English, it doesn't shy from using subtitles: there's use of Yiddish, Russian, French, Italian, Romany and Romanian, as appropriate. I don't know the director: she's Sally Potter, English born and a versatile talent, it would seem: writer, director, composer, even actress on occasion. For her first film, a 45 minute short from 1979 called Thriller, she also covered production, cinematography, editing and sound.
The names I do recognise are ones that I have a habit of seeking out: in order of credits, Ricci, Blanchett, Turturro, Depp, Stanton. The lead is Christina Ricci, playing a Russian Jew called Suzie, brought up in England as a refugee after escaping from the Russian Revolution as a young child. The film follows her quest to find her father, who had left Russia a short while earlier to go to the States, where everything is possible. England was Suzie's first step in following him, using one of three gold coins her mother had sewed into her clothes.
Her second step was Paris, where she becomes a dancer. Cate Blanchett is a fellow dancer called Lola who rooms with her and forms her introduction to the others. Lola is also Russian, so Blanchett's accent was practiced before the new Indiana Jones film. They meet rich and egotistical Italian opera singer Dante Dominio, played by John Turturro, who Lola pursues, for her own reasons, the first being to get the pair of them into small roles in his opera, which is being staged by Felix Perlman, in the worthy and very subtle hands of Harry Dean Stanton. Also in the opera is a gypsy horseman called Cesar, who Suzie falls for. He's Johnny Depp and he rarely speaks, playing the part mostly silently.
Cesar is the epitome of what all the other characters have in common: they're all displaced in some form or other, living in countries other than their own, in a time of great displacement and there's a great power and meaning in realising this is true for every one of the main characters. The scenes in Paris come around the time that Nazi Germany invades Poland, triggering the Second World War, so nationality and religion are hot subjects. Suzie's origins are generally hidden: most people think she's an English girl in France, but some know she's a Russian Jew.
Perlman is another Jew, of course. We're not sure of his nationality, but he's obviously not French, and being a Jew is all that matters, with the Nazis coming. Lola's another Russian and Dominio is an Italian. With Italy allying itself with Germany, being an Italian makes his position a good one, but the same can't be said for the people he acquainted with. Suddenly just knowing someone or having talked to them carries more than knowledge and memory. These people are all subhuman in the eyes of his new friends and taints on him. He is enemy to them, in more ways than one. The interplay between them is what really makes our film.
There's a lot of magic here and while some of that certainly comes from the actors (Turturro and Depp, especially though outside of a couple of small scenes that Ricci obviously felt uncomfortable doing, I'm not going to fault any of the others), most of it's in what the film means and how it's given to us, often very subtle indeed: the use of eagle imagery shot from above on a stage, of windows as mirrors, of lighting on water, of the way that Potter uses the streets of Paris at night. Much of it is simply in the fact that parts of it done very right indeed, such as the scene with the gypsy dancer in the Parisian bar. Well beyond the fact that he is spectacular, the scene adds interplay between him, Suzie and Cesar in every combination, physically, mentally and in our imagination. That's a stunning scene and while it may be the most stunning, it's not the only one.
Saturday, 11 October 2008
Wednesday, 8 October 2008
Of Human Bondage (1934)
You know a film's about as early in the code era as can be when it carries certificate number 53. Then again to avoid any issues with the new morality judges, this one wasn't a new story. It was based on a 1915 novel by Somerset Maugham, fictional but substantially rooted in autobiography, and presumably literary enough to get past certain subject matter that I'm guessing would have been more taboo under other circumstances (and much was glossed over, for sure). The book is highly regarded but this film version brought its own importance: it's the film in which Bette Davis finally broke out of the gang moll stereotype that Warner Brothers had lumped her into. She fought hard for the top supporting slot here and she shone in it, dominating over the real lead, Leslie Howard, who has one of those rare roles he could get his teeth into.
He's Philip Carey, a sensitive young man who has an inferiority complex because of his club foot. He's a talented artist, though not quite enough to become one as a living, so he comes back to London to become a medical student. He struggles through his studies, though it's an open question whether his hardships come more from a lack of talent or from his obsession with a trashy waitress called Mildred Rogers. She certainly runs him through the wringer. Never the most enthusiastic date (she has habit of saying 'I don't mind' instead of 'yes'), she eventually dumps him for another man, waiting until the night he proposes marriage to point out that she's accepted a similar proposal from his rival.
As befits such a manipulative character, she manages to play havoc with his life. After she leaves, Carey finds happiness with Norah, a writer of pulp romance novels, but just as everything starts to look up in his life, back comes Mildred, unmarried and pregnant, and he takes her back because she's everything to him, even though he knows she shouldn't be: this is the human bondage of the title. And just as Norah is drawn to Philip and Philip is drawn to Mildred, Mildred is drawn to whoever happens to come along. It doesn't take long for her to be gone again, this time with one of his friends in a stunningly blatant fashion. And on and on it goes, in an endless cycle of self destruction. There are always opportunities to break out of it but do we take them? That's the question.
Every now and again Leslie Howard surprises me by playing a part with substance. Most of what I've seen him play fits in the Ashley Wilkes mould, that being merely the epitome of the wishy washy wastes of space he tended to end up characterising. Yet occasionally he finds something that he can get his teeth into: he's often wishy washy here too but he keeps finding his way out of it, and the points where he comes to life are special and well worth waiting for. If only he had some of those when he played Ashley Wilkes.
The other women in his life don't get anywhere near the screen time that Bette Davis gets, but they both do a believable job of pulling him out of the ruts he climbs into: Kay Johnson as Norah and Frances Dee as Sally Athelny. They're rays of sunshine in his life, and good solid ones too, but as stealers of scenes they can't hold a candle to Bette Davis, who runs the gamut from tawdry to blistering. She has many scenes of power, and the longer the film runs the more powerful they get, but there's ones that's textbook Bette and it strips the walls with its cruelty.
She was denied an official Oscar nomination for her role, which she fully expected to get, presumably because she was on loan. She had a knack of upsetting the people she worked for, being a rather wilful sort, so this sort of treatment is hardly surprising. However this is the role that undoubtedly showed the word what she could do and elevated her from being actress to full blown star, so she got a write-in candidacy anyway. Apparently Claudette Colbert, who won for It Happened One Night, was so convinced that she'd lose to Bette Davis that she didn't even turn up for the ceremony. She had to be summoned from a train station in order to pick up her Oscar.
The next year would begin a startling run of official nominations and wins. She won in 1936 for Dangerous, which may or may not have been worthy anyway, but which surely was given in part for her treatment in 1935 for this performance. She won again in 1939 for Jezebel, in Hollywood's greatest year, and followed it up with nominations the next four years making a five year consecutive streak. It's pretty difficult to appreciate this film properly today knowing who Bette Davis was and what she meant to the history of film, because this is the point that everyone else found that out. Back in 1934 I wonder how many people went to see people like Reginald Denny, Alan Hale or Reginald Owen. I'm sure most went to see Leslie Howard. I doubt there's anyone today who watches it for anyone other than Bette Davis.
He's Philip Carey, a sensitive young man who has an inferiority complex because of his club foot. He's a talented artist, though not quite enough to become one as a living, so he comes back to London to become a medical student. He struggles through his studies, though it's an open question whether his hardships come more from a lack of talent or from his obsession with a trashy waitress called Mildred Rogers. She certainly runs him through the wringer. Never the most enthusiastic date (she has habit of saying 'I don't mind' instead of 'yes'), she eventually dumps him for another man, waiting until the night he proposes marriage to point out that she's accepted a similar proposal from his rival.
As befits such a manipulative character, she manages to play havoc with his life. After she leaves, Carey finds happiness with Norah, a writer of pulp romance novels, but just as everything starts to look up in his life, back comes Mildred, unmarried and pregnant, and he takes her back because she's everything to him, even though he knows she shouldn't be: this is the human bondage of the title. And just as Norah is drawn to Philip and Philip is drawn to Mildred, Mildred is drawn to whoever happens to come along. It doesn't take long for her to be gone again, this time with one of his friends in a stunningly blatant fashion. And on and on it goes, in an endless cycle of self destruction. There are always opportunities to break out of it but do we take them? That's the question.
Every now and again Leslie Howard surprises me by playing a part with substance. Most of what I've seen him play fits in the Ashley Wilkes mould, that being merely the epitome of the wishy washy wastes of space he tended to end up characterising. Yet occasionally he finds something that he can get his teeth into: he's often wishy washy here too but he keeps finding his way out of it, and the points where he comes to life are special and well worth waiting for. If only he had some of those when he played Ashley Wilkes.
The other women in his life don't get anywhere near the screen time that Bette Davis gets, but they both do a believable job of pulling him out of the ruts he climbs into: Kay Johnson as Norah and Frances Dee as Sally Athelny. They're rays of sunshine in his life, and good solid ones too, but as stealers of scenes they can't hold a candle to Bette Davis, who runs the gamut from tawdry to blistering. She has many scenes of power, and the longer the film runs the more powerful they get, but there's ones that's textbook Bette and it strips the walls with its cruelty.
She was denied an official Oscar nomination for her role, which she fully expected to get, presumably because she was on loan. She had a knack of upsetting the people she worked for, being a rather wilful sort, so this sort of treatment is hardly surprising. However this is the role that undoubtedly showed the word what she could do and elevated her from being actress to full blown star, so she got a write-in candidacy anyway. Apparently Claudette Colbert, who won for It Happened One Night, was so convinced that she'd lose to Bette Davis that she didn't even turn up for the ceremony. She had to be summoned from a train station in order to pick up her Oscar.
The next year would begin a startling run of official nominations and wins. She won in 1936 for Dangerous, which may or may not have been worthy anyway, but which surely was given in part for her treatment in 1935 for this performance. She won again in 1939 for Jezebel, in Hollywood's greatest year, and followed it up with nominations the next four years making a five year consecutive streak. It's pretty difficult to appreciate this film properly today knowing who Bette Davis was and what she meant to the history of film, because this is the point that everyone else found that out. Back in 1934 I wonder how many people went to see people like Reginald Denny, Alan Hale or Reginald Owen. I'm sure most went to see Leslie Howard. I doubt there's anyone today who watches it for anyone other than Bette Davis.
Tuesday, 7 October 2008
Cruel Story of Youth (1960)
One thing you find in classic Japanese cinema is that it's almost entirely about men. Women have very little place and when they do have a role to ply, it's generally one of a very small number of almost predefined roles: concubine, prostitute, wife. It took a new wave of Japanese filmmakers to find stories for them, like Nagisa Oshima who directed this film in 1960. He's mostly known, in the west at least, for Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence and his 1976 film Ai No Corrida or In the Realm of the Senses, which won notoriety for its use of hardcore sex in a decidedly non-pornographic film. This one comes very early in his career though, being only his third film and in its way it's just as revolutionary.
This is a period of Japanese cinema I know little about but there seem to have been a group of filmmakers who constituted something similar to the French New Wave and around the same time. It isn't just about how they treated women, it's in the way they used the camera and how they lit their scenes, even where they set their films. This is something very different from the Japanese cinema I'm used to from the black and white or even early colour eras: the city at night, hand held camerawork, a jazzy film score, student protests, petty juvenile crime, even abortion. It's easy to see how this sort of thing could lead to the hip films of the later sixties, to the yakuza films, even on to the pinky violence movies of the early seventies. There's a line that says, 'the world wasn't as open-minded back then' and it really applies to a lot more than what it intends.
We follow Makoto Shinjo, a schoolgirl who gets into trouble hitchhiking from the wrong man. She's rescued by Kiyoshi, who's a university student and, believing that she's really curious about men and sex, introduces them to her through himself. It's basically rape but it's a strange sort of rape as the two are becoming a couple. As with many young relationships though, it's one with its ups and its downs. Mako moves in with Kiyoshi and they seem to really care about each other, but the usual problems kick in, not least money. They end up reenacting how they met as a money making scam: Mako hitchhikes and makes sure the drivers try something even if they weren't going to anyway, then Kiyoshi beats them up and takes their money, 'to pay for a taxi home for the girl'.
Cruel Story of Youth is an exploration of a new generation whose motivations are very different from the old: to live for today, to take what you can get, to change the world. Mako's father offers a little commentary when he refuses to chastise her for doing things he doesn't like, but this comes across as a lack of understanding: the world has changed but he doesn't understand it any more and has given up trying. Mako and Kiyoshi hardly have the perfect relationship but they have a relationship; Mako's elder sister, Yuki, was once in her situation but her own passionate relationship, which was observed with such proper discipline that they didn't touch, shattered under the strain. Whatever else they have, at least Mako and Kiyoshi have hope, which seems to be the point. What they do with that hope is up to them and the ending can be read many ways.
Nagisa Oshima wrote and directed and he's the only name I know here. Mako is played by Miyuke Kuwano, who made quite a few films over a decade or so. Ironically, the only other film I've seen her in was Three Outlaw Samurai, an excellent samurai film that was made four years after this but was more traditional. In telling a story about the past, in its own way it looked towards the future, playing more like a spaghetti western than even those samurai films that were directly remade. Her biggest role seems to have been in Kurosawa's Red Beard.
Yusuke Kawazu plays Kiyoshi and he seems to have had a much longer career. I'm not sure I've actually seen him in anything, even though he ended up in a bunch of kaiju movies and the last couple were recent Tadanobu Asano films. I guess I'll catch up with him again soon enough. The third name on the title credits is Yoshiko Kuga, who was by far the most experienced name of the bunch. She'd been making films since 1947 and was still doing so as recently as 2000, and had worked for many of the greats: Mizoguchi, Ozu, Kurosawa and Inagaki leap out, just sampling through her filmography.
This is a period of Japanese cinema I know little about but there seem to have been a group of filmmakers who constituted something similar to the French New Wave and around the same time. It isn't just about how they treated women, it's in the way they used the camera and how they lit their scenes, even where they set their films. This is something very different from the Japanese cinema I'm used to from the black and white or even early colour eras: the city at night, hand held camerawork, a jazzy film score, student protests, petty juvenile crime, even abortion. It's easy to see how this sort of thing could lead to the hip films of the later sixties, to the yakuza films, even on to the pinky violence movies of the early seventies. There's a line that says, 'the world wasn't as open-minded back then' and it really applies to a lot more than what it intends.
We follow Makoto Shinjo, a schoolgirl who gets into trouble hitchhiking from the wrong man. She's rescued by Kiyoshi, who's a university student and, believing that she's really curious about men and sex, introduces them to her through himself. It's basically rape but it's a strange sort of rape as the two are becoming a couple. As with many young relationships though, it's one with its ups and its downs. Mako moves in with Kiyoshi and they seem to really care about each other, but the usual problems kick in, not least money. They end up reenacting how they met as a money making scam: Mako hitchhikes and makes sure the drivers try something even if they weren't going to anyway, then Kiyoshi beats them up and takes their money, 'to pay for a taxi home for the girl'.
Cruel Story of Youth is an exploration of a new generation whose motivations are very different from the old: to live for today, to take what you can get, to change the world. Mako's father offers a little commentary when he refuses to chastise her for doing things he doesn't like, but this comes across as a lack of understanding: the world has changed but he doesn't understand it any more and has given up trying. Mako and Kiyoshi hardly have the perfect relationship but they have a relationship; Mako's elder sister, Yuki, was once in her situation but her own passionate relationship, which was observed with such proper discipline that they didn't touch, shattered under the strain. Whatever else they have, at least Mako and Kiyoshi have hope, which seems to be the point. What they do with that hope is up to them and the ending can be read many ways.
Nagisa Oshima wrote and directed and he's the only name I know here. Mako is played by Miyuke Kuwano, who made quite a few films over a decade or so. Ironically, the only other film I've seen her in was Three Outlaw Samurai, an excellent samurai film that was made four years after this but was more traditional. In telling a story about the past, in its own way it looked towards the future, playing more like a spaghetti western than even those samurai films that were directly remade. Her biggest role seems to have been in Kurosawa's Red Beard.
Yusuke Kawazu plays Kiyoshi and he seems to have had a much longer career. I'm not sure I've actually seen him in anything, even though he ended up in a bunch of kaiju movies and the last couple were recent Tadanobu Asano films. I guess I'll catch up with him again soon enough. The third name on the title credits is Yoshiko Kuga, who was by far the most experienced name of the bunch. She'd been making films since 1947 and was still doing so as recently as 2000, and had worked for many of the greats: Mizoguchi, Ozu, Kurosawa and Inagaki leap out, just sampling through her filmography.
Monday, 6 October 2008
The Sci-Fi Boys (2006)
Documentaries are often hit and miss affairs, especially when they don't have a particular focus. Usually they fail and there are a few reasons for it. The chief one is because the viewer, who's watching because he's interested in the subject matter and knows something about it, either gets bored because it's all too basic or upset because the filmmaker gets something wrong: a fact here, a fact there, or an emphasis in the wrong place. Here's one where I know plenty because this is my thing: I'm a fan of classic horror, science fiction and fantasy, whether in books, films or anything else.
I was honestly expecting to not be surprised at all, to see nothing that I hadn't seen before and to be able to nitpick all over the place. I'm very happy to say that I was wrong: this one is done very right and it contains tons of stuff that I'd never seen. Most of it is what in a different era would have been called rare footage: clips from the amateur movies of many people who went on to become something far more than just a amateur: people like Peter Jackson, Donald F Glut, Rick Baker, John Landis, even Paul Davids, who made this documentary. In fact that's probably the key: the man making the documentary is one of the people he's making the film about.
And what people! The real focus here is on enthusiasm and the people who populate the story are as enthusiastic today as 40, 60 or 80 year old professionals as they were as 10 year olds making their own amateur movies. The people here are major people: directors who have made some of the highest rated films of all time (such as The Shawshank Redemption or The Lord of the Rings), people who have won multiple Oscars (effects maestro Rick Baker with six or director Steven Spielberg with a measly three), some of the greatest names of all time in their respective fields (writer Ray Bradbury, producer Roger Corman, animator Ray Harryhausen, reviewer Leonard Maltin, collector Bob Burns) and they all have one thing in common: the light in their eyes. These folks are having the time of their lives remembering Famous Monsters of Filmland, showing off a fully restored Robby the Robot or showing their 50 year old amateur footage.
Davids begins with the first and biggest fan of them all, Forrest J Ackerman, who takes up a decent amount of the film, in archive footage, modern day interviews or being talked about by other people. He also spends serious time on Ray Harryhausen, again in archive footage, in current interviews and in conversation. We get some amazing footage from the event to place Harryhausen's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The fans are in evidence an they're serious fans, but they're people like Forry Ackerman, Frank Darabont, Ray Bradbury. You know you're someone when you have people like that as fans.
I'm a fan too, in my own insignificant way and the success of this film can be demonstrated by the light in my eyes. There's some serious magic here, not least the amazing footage of Paul Davids and 86 year old Forry Ackerman visiting George Pal's grave on the anniversary of his death. They take along one of the original Martian war machines and reread Forry's original eulogy given a few decades earlier at his funeral. And I'm not going to nitpick. Definitely a winner: something that would work for people who know nothing about this stuff and for the geeks among us too.
I was honestly expecting to not be surprised at all, to see nothing that I hadn't seen before and to be able to nitpick all over the place. I'm very happy to say that I was wrong: this one is done very right and it contains tons of stuff that I'd never seen. Most of it is what in a different era would have been called rare footage: clips from the amateur movies of many people who went on to become something far more than just a amateur: people like Peter Jackson, Donald F Glut, Rick Baker, John Landis, even Paul Davids, who made this documentary. In fact that's probably the key: the man making the documentary is one of the people he's making the film about.
And what people! The real focus here is on enthusiasm and the people who populate the story are as enthusiastic today as 40, 60 or 80 year old professionals as they were as 10 year olds making their own amateur movies. The people here are major people: directors who have made some of the highest rated films of all time (such as The Shawshank Redemption or The Lord of the Rings), people who have won multiple Oscars (effects maestro Rick Baker with six or director Steven Spielberg with a measly three), some of the greatest names of all time in their respective fields (writer Ray Bradbury, producer Roger Corman, animator Ray Harryhausen, reviewer Leonard Maltin, collector Bob Burns) and they all have one thing in common: the light in their eyes. These folks are having the time of their lives remembering Famous Monsters of Filmland, showing off a fully restored Robby the Robot or showing their 50 year old amateur footage.
Davids begins with the first and biggest fan of them all, Forrest J Ackerman, who takes up a decent amount of the film, in archive footage, modern day interviews or being talked about by other people. He also spends serious time on Ray Harryhausen, again in archive footage, in current interviews and in conversation. We get some amazing footage from the event to place Harryhausen's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The fans are in evidence an they're serious fans, but they're people like Forry Ackerman, Frank Darabont, Ray Bradbury. You know you're someone when you have people like that as fans.
I'm a fan too, in my own insignificant way and the success of this film can be demonstrated by the light in my eyes. There's some serious magic here, not least the amazing footage of Paul Davids and 86 year old Forry Ackerman visiting George Pal's grave on the anniversary of his death. They take along one of the original Martian war machines and reread Forry's original eulogy given a few decades earlier at his funeral. And I'm not going to nitpick. Definitely a winner: something that would work for people who know nothing about this stuff and for the geeks among us too.
Sunday, 5 October 2008
Cheaper By the Dozen (1950)
Six years before directing the grand and bloated CinemaScope production of The King and I, Walter Lang made this more restrained little picture about the comedic trials and tribulations of a family with twelve children. It makes a strange selection of his pictures for me: beyond these two I've also seen his first film, a 1925 silent romance called The Red Kimona, and a Carole Lombard comedy called Love Before Breakfast from 1937. This one is from 1950 and it doesn't bear a lot of resemblance to the recent Steve Martin remake. It's based on the same source novel, but it actually follows it. That means it's about the Galbreth family, where dad is an efficiency expert and mum is a psychiatrist, and their story was written by two of the twelve kids.
The parents are well cast. Frank Galbreth is Clifton Webb, three times Oscar nominated (not for this one) and believably strict and sympathetic all at once, with a streak of OCD. Lillian Galbreth is America's favourite mother, Myrna Loy, very much into her 'mother' era. In 1950, she had all six Thin Man movies behind her and the William Powell/Clark Gable comedies were all in the past. She'd also already made The Best Years of Our Lives, plus Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House and The Red Pony. How much the rest of her career stayed in the 'mother' mode, I really can't say because while this makes 49 Myrna Loys for me, I've only seen three later than this.
The other name with theirs on the title credits is Jeanne Crain, who plays Ann, the eldest daughter. She's a little out of place, given that she's 25 and supposed to be 16. She looks great though, as she did nearly two decades later in Hot Rods to Hell, opposite Dana Andrews, her co-star from anther Water Lang movie, State Fair. As you'd expect she doesn't get a huge amount of screen time, given that this is less than an hour and a half long and she's but one of twelve kids. She does her best though, and steals a few scenes, doing such daring things as cutting her hair or showing her knees on the beach.
This is but one of the various episodes in a very episodic film that moves from one memorable incident in a family's history to another. We begin with their move from Providence to Montclair, NJ, presumably halving the population of Rhode Island in the process. Then the family get introduced to the teachers at their new school, ignoring the fact that dad explains to the new headteacher his new efficient way to take a bath; they fight the whooping cough and have their tonsils out; find a way to get Anne to enjoy her senior prom, with her dad in attendance as a chaperone. They even have fun with a lady who's been sent their way from a foundation for birth control with a rather misguided view to having Mrs Galbreth as a spokeswoman for their cause.
It's a restrained but effective comedy, certainly not something that would do well if Steve Martin had made a straight remake without updating the humour. The morals are decidedly from a different era, especially as the film was set in a time already in the past when it was released in 1950, and it wouldn't translate too well to today. As a slice of time it's a fascinating glimpse though, and it's done very well indeed. I just can't help but wonder what Ernestine and Frank Jr would have thought about the remake, which credits their book but really only has one similarity: a family with a dozen kids. I'd take this one over The King and I any day, but then again I'd take something like Four Daughters over this one any day too.
The parents are well cast. Frank Galbreth is Clifton Webb, three times Oscar nominated (not for this one) and believably strict and sympathetic all at once, with a streak of OCD. Lillian Galbreth is America's favourite mother, Myrna Loy, very much into her 'mother' era. In 1950, she had all six Thin Man movies behind her and the William Powell/Clark Gable comedies were all in the past. She'd also already made The Best Years of Our Lives, plus Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House and The Red Pony. How much the rest of her career stayed in the 'mother' mode, I really can't say because while this makes 49 Myrna Loys for me, I've only seen three later than this.
The other name with theirs on the title credits is Jeanne Crain, who plays Ann, the eldest daughter. She's a little out of place, given that she's 25 and supposed to be 16. She looks great though, as she did nearly two decades later in Hot Rods to Hell, opposite Dana Andrews, her co-star from anther Water Lang movie, State Fair. As you'd expect she doesn't get a huge amount of screen time, given that this is less than an hour and a half long and she's but one of twelve kids. She does her best though, and steals a few scenes, doing such daring things as cutting her hair or showing her knees on the beach.
This is but one of the various episodes in a very episodic film that moves from one memorable incident in a family's history to another. We begin with their move from Providence to Montclair, NJ, presumably halving the population of Rhode Island in the process. Then the family get introduced to the teachers at their new school, ignoring the fact that dad explains to the new headteacher his new efficient way to take a bath; they fight the whooping cough and have their tonsils out; find a way to get Anne to enjoy her senior prom, with her dad in attendance as a chaperone. They even have fun with a lady who's been sent their way from a foundation for birth control with a rather misguided view to having Mrs Galbreth as a spokeswoman for their cause.
It's a restrained but effective comedy, certainly not something that would do well if Steve Martin had made a straight remake without updating the humour. The morals are decidedly from a different era, especially as the film was set in a time already in the past when it was released in 1950, and it wouldn't translate too well to today. As a slice of time it's a fascinating glimpse though, and it's done very well indeed. I just can't help but wonder what Ernestine and Frank Jr would have thought about the remake, which credits their book but really only has one similarity: a family with a dozen kids. I'd take this one over The King and I any day, but then again I'd take something like Four Daughters over this one any day too.
The King and I (1956)
Some really big ships are dropping anchor on some really big sets, big enough to take advantage of the CinemaScope 55 process. Just as big, it seems, is the hoop skirt belonging to one of the passengers: she's Anna Leonowens, the English governess who is the I in the title. She's in the Bangkok of 1862 to become governess to the children of King Mongkut of Siam, now Thailand, where apparently it is illegal to own a copy of this film because of its rampant historical inaccuracies. Then again, this is a Hollywood musical so anyone who expects historical truth must be naive, insane or both. Naturally she is as completely convinced of the superiority of her own culture as any of the travelling English of the colonialist era.
Anna is played by Deborah Kerr, who was Scots not English and whose singing voice is dubbed. However she has about the most realistic ethnicity and presence of anyone in the film. She arrives with her son Louis, in the form of a 14 year old New Yorker called Rex Thompson, who had previously played another young Englishman: King Edward VI in Young Bess. The first Thai they meet is Kralahome, a sort of prime minister and right hand man to the king who meets their boat. He's Martin Benson, an Englishman, and like anyone official in this film he prances around with his hands defiantly postured on his hips or crossed over his bare chest.
The King is Oscar winning Yul Brynner, who postures and prances even more outrageously than anyone else, presumably as befits a king, and he has all the intensity required for the role. He certainly had exotic looks, but he and his bald head came from Russia not Thailand, and there's more than a little difference between them. Even his broken English is broken in a distinctly Russian way rather than an southeast Asian way. At least many of his many wives and children appear to be of at least something close to authentic ethnicity, though naturally not the ones we pay much attention to. The rest are there as window dressing.
The most prominent wife is Lady Thiang, played by Terry Saunders, presumably another American. The most obvious (and most emphatic) son is Prince Chulalongkorn, Patrick Adiarte, another New Yorker who apparently made a career out of playing ethnic easterners even though he's about as Thai as I am. Tuptim, the newest wife is a gift from the neighbouring King of Burma (now Myanmar) and she's played by Puerto Rican actress Rita Moreno, who my wife knows best from The Electric Company, which is a sort of Sesame Street type show that featured Mel Brooks and many of his regulars.
So I've managed to bias myself against this movie without getting very far in. It's a musical, so I should be paying more attention to things like singing and dancing than authenticity, right? Well, to my eyes and ears, those are just as bad. I'm admittedly not a fan of musicals, mostly because I get annoyed by everyone breaking off every five minutes for a song and dance number, though I've found some that I've thoroughly enjoyed. I enjoy the old Busby Berkeley movies because they stretch sanity in a uniquely surreal way, watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers is far from a hardship and there are some true gems out there that I can't resist like Singin' in the Rain.
Yet this one seems pretty pedestrian. The song and dance numbers contain little dancing and very unmemorable songs. Then again, I'm apparently a heathen when it comes to this stuff. I grew up listening to Andrew Lloyd Webber tapes in the car and he seems to be regarded as somehow lesser than classic American musical composers like Rodgers and Hammerstein, who are responsible for the music here. Yet, with some exceptions, he writes catchy tunes with clever lyrics. Richard Rodgers wrote some pleasant music here and Oscar Hammerstein's words are certainly clever but very little of it is particularly memorable. Shall We Dance may be the exception that proves the rule: both the tune and the words are memorable and both Kerr and Brynner both actually move.
The most memorable dance performance here is something quite bizarre and hardly orthodox in any situation: it's a Thai version of Uncle Tom's Cabin created by Tuptim as a surprise for her king and husband as the entertainment during a dinner given for a visiting English ambassador. It's inspired lunacy with delightful choreography with minimalist props. In comparison, the sets in the film proper are vast and amazing but they generally look like really amazing sets. The Thai Uncle Tom's Cabin trumps them on every front.
So there are delights here. This is chief among them but there are others: they're just not in the places I thought they'd be. They're in the often polite bickering between Anna and the king, and the transparent jealousy. They're in the constant use of 'et cetera, et cetera, et cetera' at the end of so many of the king's pronouncements. They're in the blatant gameplaying tied to the rule that has her forced to keep her head below his at all times. Mostly they're in Yul Brynner's reactions, which are priceless. Perhaps those priceless reactions really are enough to warrant his Oscar.
Anna is played by Deborah Kerr, who was Scots not English and whose singing voice is dubbed. However she has about the most realistic ethnicity and presence of anyone in the film. She arrives with her son Louis, in the form of a 14 year old New Yorker called Rex Thompson, who had previously played another young Englishman: King Edward VI in Young Bess. The first Thai they meet is Kralahome, a sort of prime minister and right hand man to the king who meets their boat. He's Martin Benson, an Englishman, and like anyone official in this film he prances around with his hands defiantly postured on his hips or crossed over his bare chest.
The King is Oscar winning Yul Brynner, who postures and prances even more outrageously than anyone else, presumably as befits a king, and he has all the intensity required for the role. He certainly had exotic looks, but he and his bald head came from Russia not Thailand, and there's more than a little difference between them. Even his broken English is broken in a distinctly Russian way rather than an southeast Asian way. At least many of his many wives and children appear to be of at least something close to authentic ethnicity, though naturally not the ones we pay much attention to. The rest are there as window dressing.
The most prominent wife is Lady Thiang, played by Terry Saunders, presumably another American. The most obvious (and most emphatic) son is Prince Chulalongkorn, Patrick Adiarte, another New Yorker who apparently made a career out of playing ethnic easterners even though he's about as Thai as I am. Tuptim, the newest wife is a gift from the neighbouring King of Burma (now Myanmar) and she's played by Puerto Rican actress Rita Moreno, who my wife knows best from The Electric Company, which is a sort of Sesame Street type show that featured Mel Brooks and many of his regulars.
So I've managed to bias myself against this movie without getting very far in. It's a musical, so I should be paying more attention to things like singing and dancing than authenticity, right? Well, to my eyes and ears, those are just as bad. I'm admittedly not a fan of musicals, mostly because I get annoyed by everyone breaking off every five minutes for a song and dance number, though I've found some that I've thoroughly enjoyed. I enjoy the old Busby Berkeley movies because they stretch sanity in a uniquely surreal way, watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers is far from a hardship and there are some true gems out there that I can't resist like Singin' in the Rain.
Yet this one seems pretty pedestrian. The song and dance numbers contain little dancing and very unmemorable songs. Then again, I'm apparently a heathen when it comes to this stuff. I grew up listening to Andrew Lloyd Webber tapes in the car and he seems to be regarded as somehow lesser than classic American musical composers like Rodgers and Hammerstein, who are responsible for the music here. Yet, with some exceptions, he writes catchy tunes with clever lyrics. Richard Rodgers wrote some pleasant music here and Oscar Hammerstein's words are certainly clever but very little of it is particularly memorable. Shall We Dance may be the exception that proves the rule: both the tune and the words are memorable and both Kerr and Brynner both actually move.
The most memorable dance performance here is something quite bizarre and hardly orthodox in any situation: it's a Thai version of Uncle Tom's Cabin created by Tuptim as a surprise for her king and husband as the entertainment during a dinner given for a visiting English ambassador. It's inspired lunacy with delightful choreography with minimalist props. In comparison, the sets in the film proper are vast and amazing but they generally look like really amazing sets. The Thai Uncle Tom's Cabin trumps them on every front.
So there are delights here. This is chief among them but there are others: they're just not in the places I thought they'd be. They're in the often polite bickering between Anna and the king, and the transparent jealousy. They're in the constant use of 'et cetera, et cetera, et cetera' at the end of so many of the king's pronouncements. They're in the blatant gameplaying tied to the rule that has her forced to keep her head below his at all times. Mostly they're in Yul Brynner's reactions, which are priceless. Perhaps those priceless reactions really are enough to warrant his Oscar.
Beach Party (1963)
In the mid sixties, American International introduced a new exploitation genre that did far better than they could ever have expected: the beach party movie, of which this was the first. I've seen a growing number of them and while they're all terrible films, they do have endearing qualities and I'm sure count as guilty pleasures to many. This is my fourth out of the seven entries in the classic AIP series but it only took two to see how there's no real difference between any of them. They all have the same plot, or lack of plot, and that rarely varied throughout. This one certainly defined the formula and losing ten minutes in the middle due to bad cable signal really made no difference.
They're all about cute kids hanging out on the beach where the guys surf and the girls chill. There's lots of sun, sand and surf and the ever present suggestion of sex: none of the kids wear much, naturally. The main characters were usually Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, though they weren't top credited here and officially serve as a subplot. The official plot here has anthropology professor Robert Orwell Sutwell writing a book about the primitive subculture of post-adolescent surfers and doing hands on research. Usually the subplot is the whole plot: that Frankie and Annette spend almost the entire film making each other jealous.
I never did understand how they could be so hot for each other given that neither of them seemed to be a good catch, but that's especially obvious here with Annette mostly dressed and spouting family values and Frankie making her jealous by 'cheating' on her with Hungarian vixen Eva Six. Even in a bikini, which didn't happen often, Annette Funicello wasn't much to look at and Eva Six is dynamite in whatever she's wearing or not wearing. She was aptly described as 'Monroe's face, Mansfield's body and Zsa-Zsa's accent', and I'm stunned that she only made three films. The lack of Annette Funicello flesh on show was due to her still being under contract to Disney, who only allowed her to appear if serious conditions were met.
The other standard plot elements are all here too. There's the current surf band to do some shameless promotion: this time around it's Dick Dale & His Del-Tones. There's the Rats & Mice, a moronic biker gang led by Harvey Lembeck as Erich von Zipper, a bad but annoying accurate take on Marlon Brando in The Wild One. There's a running gag through the series that has him continually paralyse himself with a magic finger, and the origins of that move begin here with Sutwell's esoteric anthropological knowledge. There's also a tiny guest appearance from an older more established star who would somehow remain cool to the youth audience, usually a horror icon borrowed from the studio's seriously awesome roster. Here it's Vincent Price as Big Daddy, who sits unmoving in the background in a couple of scenes with his head down, only to wake up once to deliver a campy line and go back to sleep. The credits shamelessly promote his next film, Edgar Allan Poe's Haunted Palace.
Given how bad these things generally are, this one was surprisingly good but then again it was the first and things do tend to go downhill in series. Certainly it seemed pretty fresh here, with people like Harvey Lembeck and Jody McCrea being less annoying than usual. I never got anything out of Frankie and Annette, but enjoyed some of what else went on: the parts that went to people like Buster Keaton, Timothy Carey, Peter Lorre, Paul Lynde, Boris Karloff or Keenan Wynn. Here my interest went mosty to Bob Cummings (with a little help from Oscar winner Dorothy Malone) and Eva Six.
Cummings is Prof Sutwell and while his storyline is completely inane, he has huge fun with the part, appearing comfortable in no end of insane outfits. He was getting back into movies after a gap of over half a decade to host The Bob Cummings Show on TV but the few parts he managed to land were not a patch on what he had previously been used to. Think Dial M for Murder and an Emmy for the original TV version of 12 Angry Men. I'm still stunned at how little Eva Six has to her name. She made three movies in quick succession, all in 1963, this being the middle one between Operation Bikini and 4 for Texas. She was also voted Miss Golden Globe in 1963, but then she seems to have vanished. I wonder why.
They're all about cute kids hanging out on the beach where the guys surf and the girls chill. There's lots of sun, sand and surf and the ever present suggestion of sex: none of the kids wear much, naturally. The main characters were usually Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, though they weren't top credited here and officially serve as a subplot. The official plot here has anthropology professor Robert Orwell Sutwell writing a book about the primitive subculture of post-adolescent surfers and doing hands on research. Usually the subplot is the whole plot: that Frankie and Annette spend almost the entire film making each other jealous.
I never did understand how they could be so hot for each other given that neither of them seemed to be a good catch, but that's especially obvious here with Annette mostly dressed and spouting family values and Frankie making her jealous by 'cheating' on her with Hungarian vixen Eva Six. Even in a bikini, which didn't happen often, Annette Funicello wasn't much to look at and Eva Six is dynamite in whatever she's wearing or not wearing. She was aptly described as 'Monroe's face, Mansfield's body and Zsa-Zsa's accent', and I'm stunned that she only made three films. The lack of Annette Funicello flesh on show was due to her still being under contract to Disney, who only allowed her to appear if serious conditions were met.
The other standard plot elements are all here too. There's the current surf band to do some shameless promotion: this time around it's Dick Dale & His Del-Tones. There's the Rats & Mice, a moronic biker gang led by Harvey Lembeck as Erich von Zipper, a bad but annoying accurate take on Marlon Brando in The Wild One. There's a running gag through the series that has him continually paralyse himself with a magic finger, and the origins of that move begin here with Sutwell's esoteric anthropological knowledge. There's also a tiny guest appearance from an older more established star who would somehow remain cool to the youth audience, usually a horror icon borrowed from the studio's seriously awesome roster. Here it's Vincent Price as Big Daddy, who sits unmoving in the background in a couple of scenes with his head down, only to wake up once to deliver a campy line and go back to sleep. The credits shamelessly promote his next film, Edgar Allan Poe's Haunted Palace.
Given how bad these things generally are, this one was surprisingly good but then again it was the first and things do tend to go downhill in series. Certainly it seemed pretty fresh here, with people like Harvey Lembeck and Jody McCrea being less annoying than usual. I never got anything out of Frankie and Annette, but enjoyed some of what else went on: the parts that went to people like Buster Keaton, Timothy Carey, Peter Lorre, Paul Lynde, Boris Karloff or Keenan Wynn. Here my interest went mosty to Bob Cummings (with a little help from Oscar winner Dorothy Malone) and Eva Six.
Cummings is Prof Sutwell and while his storyline is completely inane, he has huge fun with the part, appearing comfortable in no end of insane outfits. He was getting back into movies after a gap of over half a decade to host The Bob Cummings Show on TV but the few parts he managed to land were not a patch on what he had previously been used to. Think Dial M for Murder and an Emmy for the original TV version of 12 Angry Men. I'm still stunned at how little Eva Six has to her name. She made three movies in quick succession, all in 1963, this being the middle one between Operation Bikini and 4 for Texas. She was also voted Miss Golden Globe in 1963, but then she seems to have vanished. I wonder why.
Breezy (1973)
Breezy is a young lady who certainly lives up to her name as a free spirit. She starts the film by getting out of the bed of someone who doesn't even know her name, then she hitches a lift from someone who makes no secret out of the fact that he's planning to rape her. She escapes and runs away, but because he took her up into the hills instead of down into the valley, she ends up jumping in someone else's car to get back down again. He's Frank Harmon, whose house she's ended up outside, and she doesn't know him from Adam, but it only takes about five minutes for to ask something like, 'Do you think God is dead?'
He fully intends to drop her off as a good deed and to get her out of his hair (and his front yard), but nothing ever seems to turn out as you'd expect with Breezy. Sure enough, after running away because they pass a dog in the gutter and she doesn't think he wants to help it, she ends up back again. There's always a reason, beginning with the fact that when she ran away she left her guitar in his car, but soon the reasons don't come down to needing somewhere to sleep for the night. While they're wildly different in character and age, they find that they have something that the other needs, even if they didn't realise it.
The leads are excellently cast. Breezy is Kay Lenz, who manages to be completely believable as a free spirit without ever succumbing to hippy stereotype, finding good in everything and seeing life with fresh eager eyes. This was her first lead, after a bit part in American Graffiti, and she'd go on to a to more films, even more TV shows and a marriage to David Cassidy. Frank is William Holden, who is equally believable both as someone who is contented being alone as an old divorced man in the hills and someone who can be brought back to life by a young free spirit. He had a knack of looking older than he actually was yet appear younger than he looked. Here he was 55 to her 20, and the film's biggest success to me is the fact that the two of them are believable together even with such an age difference.
This film came out in 1973, a pretty unique point in time for American film: the Production Code was dead and gone and the golden era studio execs had finally admitted that they didn't have a clue any more. Filmmakers had an awesome opportunity to reinvent what could be seen on the screen, at least for a few short years until Jaws introduced the world to the modern blockbuster and the execs found a new understanding. This isn't a revolutionary film in the way that so many other films of 1973 were, but I remember so many earlier films that cast an old male star and a new young face in a romantic story (how many of them featured Fred Astaire?) and they all felt wrong. They felt disturbing and wrong, like some sort of child porn, even if the girls were in their twenties and there was no sex. This doesn't: Breezy and Frank give rather than take and Holden doesn't feel like a child molester.
There are people here beyond Holden and Lenz to recognise (such as Roger C Carmel, better known as Harry Mudd from the original Star Trek), but the other major name is the director: Clint Eastwood. He was well established as an actor in 1973, with Dirty Harry and the Man with No Name already on his credits, but he was new as a director. He debuted with Play Misty for Me in 1971 and followed it up with High Plains Drifter and this film in 1973, this one being the first one he didn't also star in. He wouldn't do that again until Bird in 1988.
It's an interesting film, subtle and subdued even when not compared to the many excesses of early seventies cinema, but it feels very Eastwood. He's always walked that line between establishment and free spirit himself. He also throws in a few self references: at one point Breezy and Frank go to see High Plains Drifter and Eastwood does a Hitchcock-type cameo as a man on a pier leaning on the fence as the leads walk past him. He's very recognisable but he turns his head away as if in a distinct and deliberate attempt to say, 'hey, I'm here, but don't watch me'. I don't think people got that in 1973. It took another couple of decades for that concept to really take hold. Now, of course, we see those four Oscars he has to his name and realise that none of them are for acting.
He fully intends to drop her off as a good deed and to get her out of his hair (and his front yard), but nothing ever seems to turn out as you'd expect with Breezy. Sure enough, after running away because they pass a dog in the gutter and she doesn't think he wants to help it, she ends up back again. There's always a reason, beginning with the fact that when she ran away she left her guitar in his car, but soon the reasons don't come down to needing somewhere to sleep for the night. While they're wildly different in character and age, they find that they have something that the other needs, even if they didn't realise it.
The leads are excellently cast. Breezy is Kay Lenz, who manages to be completely believable as a free spirit without ever succumbing to hippy stereotype, finding good in everything and seeing life with fresh eager eyes. This was her first lead, after a bit part in American Graffiti, and she'd go on to a to more films, even more TV shows and a marriage to David Cassidy. Frank is William Holden, who is equally believable both as someone who is contented being alone as an old divorced man in the hills and someone who can be brought back to life by a young free spirit. He had a knack of looking older than he actually was yet appear younger than he looked. Here he was 55 to her 20, and the film's biggest success to me is the fact that the two of them are believable together even with such an age difference.
This film came out in 1973, a pretty unique point in time for American film: the Production Code was dead and gone and the golden era studio execs had finally admitted that they didn't have a clue any more. Filmmakers had an awesome opportunity to reinvent what could be seen on the screen, at least for a few short years until Jaws introduced the world to the modern blockbuster and the execs found a new understanding. This isn't a revolutionary film in the way that so many other films of 1973 were, but I remember so many earlier films that cast an old male star and a new young face in a romantic story (how many of them featured Fred Astaire?) and they all felt wrong. They felt disturbing and wrong, like some sort of child porn, even if the girls were in their twenties and there was no sex. This doesn't: Breezy and Frank give rather than take and Holden doesn't feel like a child molester.
There are people here beyond Holden and Lenz to recognise (such as Roger C Carmel, better known as Harry Mudd from the original Star Trek), but the other major name is the director: Clint Eastwood. He was well established as an actor in 1973, with Dirty Harry and the Man with No Name already on his credits, but he was new as a director. He debuted with Play Misty for Me in 1971 and followed it up with High Plains Drifter and this film in 1973, this one being the first one he didn't also star in. He wouldn't do that again until Bird in 1988.
It's an interesting film, subtle and subdued even when not compared to the many excesses of early seventies cinema, but it feels very Eastwood. He's always walked that line between establishment and free spirit himself. He also throws in a few self references: at one point Breezy and Frank go to see High Plains Drifter and Eastwood does a Hitchcock-type cameo as a man on a pier leaning on the fence as the leads walk past him. He's very recognisable but he turns his head away as if in a distinct and deliberate attempt to say, 'hey, I'm here, but don't watch me'. I don't think people got that in 1973. It took another couple of decades for that concept to really take hold. Now, of course, we see those four Oscars he has to his name and realise that none of them are for acting.
Thursday, 2 October 2008
The Burning (1981)
Generally early eighties teen horror films set in summer camp are completely forgettable. I don't think there's a single one with decent acting or a decent story (unless you count the template, A Bay of Blood), but they can be memorable for a couple of reasons: when they have such over the top effects that they become video nasties and when they're great opportunities to see future stars early in their careers. This early example of the genre is lucky to have both. The effects come courtesy of maestro Tom Savini and the future stars are numerous, both on and off the screen.
At Camp Blackfoot a bunch of dumb kids play a prank on Cropsy the caretaker and with a title like The Burning, you won't be too surprised to find out what the prank turns into. They place a worm laden skull in his hut with candles in the eye sockets, then wake him up by howling and rattling on the window. He knocks the burning skull onto his bedclothes and finds his way out of the hut to tumble down a ravine, a raging ball of flame. He's finally released from the burns unit five years later, after every attempt at skin grafting has failed, and needless to say he's bent on gory revenge with his pair of garden shears.
Camp Blackfoot isn't used any more but on the other side of the lake is Camp Stonewater, with a new crop of young sex-mad teens ripe for the killing. As you'd expect they're all a bunch of morons, with stellar examples of all the expected stereotypes: the doofus that everyone picks on, the dumb muscled jock that thinks he's God's gift to everyone, the bright girl who survives longer than anyone else, you know them all. They get up to all the usual hijinx too: there are the expected flickering lights, the scary face at the window, the gratuitous shower scene. And of course to separate the teens from the younger kids, we get a three day canoeing trip down Devil's Creek.
And yes, you'll know half the actors, quite a few appearing in their debut movie: Jovial Dave is Jason Alexander from Seinfeld; Woodstock the prankster is Fisher Stevens, probably best known for the TV show Early Edition but I know him instead as the lead in another TV show called Key West; Sophie is no less a name than Holly Hunter. Alfred the wimp is Brian Backer from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, who at least had one previous credit to his name: Meatballs. The biggest name debuting here though isn't on screen: the producer (and co-writer) of the film is Harvey Weinstein, founder and head of Miramax studios, which had made quite a name for itself distributing arthouse films but now found its way into direct production. This was his first production credit in a filmography currently numbering 218, counting films currently in production.
I don't think there's any doubt that Weinstein and Miramax put out better films than this over their long and ilustrious careers, but this must still hold a special place in his heart. It's also surprisingly solid as a slasher film, though it offers precisely nothing new and doesn't live up to its video nasty reputation. The gore effects, courtesy of Tom Savini, are decent and theres even a surprising keyboard soundtrack from Rick Wakeman that is obviously inspired by the Italian originals. The one thing it has over all its competitors though is the fact that it has no sequel.
At Camp Blackfoot a bunch of dumb kids play a prank on Cropsy the caretaker and with a title like The Burning, you won't be too surprised to find out what the prank turns into. They place a worm laden skull in his hut with candles in the eye sockets, then wake him up by howling and rattling on the window. He knocks the burning skull onto his bedclothes and finds his way out of the hut to tumble down a ravine, a raging ball of flame. He's finally released from the burns unit five years later, after every attempt at skin grafting has failed, and needless to say he's bent on gory revenge with his pair of garden shears.
Camp Blackfoot isn't used any more but on the other side of the lake is Camp Stonewater, with a new crop of young sex-mad teens ripe for the killing. As you'd expect they're all a bunch of morons, with stellar examples of all the expected stereotypes: the doofus that everyone picks on, the dumb muscled jock that thinks he's God's gift to everyone, the bright girl who survives longer than anyone else, you know them all. They get up to all the usual hijinx too: there are the expected flickering lights, the scary face at the window, the gratuitous shower scene. And of course to separate the teens from the younger kids, we get a three day canoeing trip down Devil's Creek.
And yes, you'll know half the actors, quite a few appearing in their debut movie: Jovial Dave is Jason Alexander from Seinfeld; Woodstock the prankster is Fisher Stevens, probably best known for the TV show Early Edition but I know him instead as the lead in another TV show called Key West; Sophie is no less a name than Holly Hunter. Alfred the wimp is Brian Backer from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, who at least had one previous credit to his name: Meatballs. The biggest name debuting here though isn't on screen: the producer (and co-writer) of the film is Harvey Weinstein, founder and head of Miramax studios, which had made quite a name for itself distributing arthouse films but now found its way into direct production. This was his first production credit in a filmography currently numbering 218, counting films currently in production.
I don't think there's any doubt that Weinstein and Miramax put out better films than this over their long and ilustrious careers, but this must still hold a special place in his heart. It's also surprisingly solid as a slasher film, though it offers precisely nothing new and doesn't live up to its video nasty reputation. The gore effects, courtesy of Tom Savini, are decent and theres even a surprising keyboard soundtrack from Rick Wakeman that is obviously inspired by the Italian originals. The one thing it has over all its competitors though is the fact that it has no sequel.
Wednesday, 1 October 2008
Transylvania (2006)
Far more than just a location for vampire stories, Transylvania is a mecca for folk music and I'm certainly a fan of what I've heard. There's plenty more here in this film by French Algerian director Tony Gatlif. It follows a young French woman called Zingarina who was left pregnant by her Transylvanian musician lover, Milan Agustin when he was deported from France. With a friend and translator she finds her way to Transylvania to track him down, only to find that he wasn't deported after all. He left by choice because he didn't want to be with her any more. He rejects her emphatically and she's left to find direction in a foreign country.
This film works obviously on two fronts: to listen to Transylvanian music and to watch Asia Argento. She has presence in the way that few people nowadays have. She's always watchable, whether she's examining her pregnant belly, breaking plates in some strange drunken dance or getting baptised (or exorcised) in milk. I don't know what the ceremony is realy for. She's even watchable when sleeping rough at the side of Transylvanian roads, or when making love on a car bonnet while a bear rummages through trash mere feet away. The music is everywhere, so much so that you could almost switch off the visuals and just listen to this film. However that would miss some interesting shots and Asia Argento, who is too much to miss on her own.
Apparently the director's attempt to depict ethnic gypsies in a characterful light didn't work to the satisfaction of those who know what they're talking about. I can't tell the difference between a Hungarian gypsy and a Romanian gypsy, but people who live in Transylania can and apparently this film is all mixed up. Thre's no real plot to speak of, so that's hardly a plus point. After her rejection Zingarina chooses to leave her friends without any direction to speak of, and just exists. She befriends a young homeless girl who's too independent to stay with her and ends up with a travelling trader called Tchangalo.
I was surprised to find that Alexandra Beaujard, who plays the interpreter, hasn't done anything else, but Birol Ünel has done plenty. He's Tchangalo the trader and he has both a rough edged charm and a dangerous streak that would serve him well in many a part. Apparently he's Turkish but has gone way beyond the Turkish boundaries to appear in films, his credits being highly international. His only English language film looks like Jean-Jacques Annaud's Enemy at the Gates. Mostly though, watch this for Asia Argento and listen for the folk music by bands like Csavas and Nadara, unless those are the communities who aided the production. I'm not particularly sure.
This film works obviously on two fronts: to listen to Transylvanian music and to watch Asia Argento. She has presence in the way that few people nowadays have. She's always watchable, whether she's examining her pregnant belly, breaking plates in some strange drunken dance or getting baptised (or exorcised) in milk. I don't know what the ceremony is realy for. She's even watchable when sleeping rough at the side of Transylvanian roads, or when making love on a car bonnet while a bear rummages through trash mere feet away. The music is everywhere, so much so that you could almost switch off the visuals and just listen to this film. However that would miss some interesting shots and Asia Argento, who is too much to miss on her own.
Apparently the director's attempt to depict ethnic gypsies in a characterful light didn't work to the satisfaction of those who know what they're talking about. I can't tell the difference between a Hungarian gypsy and a Romanian gypsy, but people who live in Transylania can and apparently this film is all mixed up. Thre's no real plot to speak of, so that's hardly a plus point. After her rejection Zingarina chooses to leave her friends without any direction to speak of, and just exists. She befriends a young homeless girl who's too independent to stay with her and ends up with a travelling trader called Tchangalo.
I was surprised to find that Alexandra Beaujard, who plays the interpreter, hasn't done anything else, but Birol Ünel has done plenty. He's Tchangalo the trader and he has both a rough edged charm and a dangerous streak that would serve him well in many a part. Apparently he's Turkish but has gone way beyond the Turkish boundaries to appear in films, his credits being highly international. His only English language film looks like Jean-Jacques Annaud's Enemy at the Gates. Mostly though, watch this for Asia Argento and listen for the folk music by bands like Csavas and Nadara, unless those are the communities who aided the production. I'm not particularly sure.
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