Famous Last Words- Round 1, Week 4

Back in 2001, Christopher Nolan's Memento (the source of last week's quiz) was all the rage among arthouse moviegoers. We couldn't get enough of Nolan's backwards chronology and the clever tricks he and his brother/co-screenwriter Jonathan played on the audience. Buzz about the film spread even to non-movie buffs (my dad, for example) and it ended up playing at my local arthouse for nearly six consecutive months. But nobody really seems to talk about it anymore. Is it that the gimmick has worn off, or that the heyday of the "Twist Movie" has passed altogether? Either way, it was eventually supplanted as the favorite of hip moviegoers by such titles as Donnie Darko and Mulholland Dr. Still, it's nice to remember a time when the idea of a word-of-mouth independent film didn't automatically imply the words "big", "fat" and "Greek." I'll have to check it out again sometime, see if it holds up.

Now, let's take a trip in the Wayback Machine, back to a time when Hollywood could still unashamedly root for the military. Here's the quote:

“I knew the Marines could do almost anything, but I never knew they could do anything like this.”
“You’ve got no idea.”

What's the flag-waving golden oldie? Send your answers to this address by 11:59 pm Saturday. See you next week!

They ain't kidding when they say Limited.

In the opening scene of Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited, we see an American businessman (Anderson regular Bill Murray) in a taxi, racing through traffic in an unnamed Indian city on his way to the train station. He runs into the station, buys his ticket, and tries to chase down the titular train. As he races down the platform, he's overtaken by Peter Whitman (Adrien Brody), also running for the train. The film slips into one of Anderson's trademark slow motion shots, set to the Kinks' "This Time Tomorrow." Peter catches the train, the businessman does not, and when Peter finally climbs the back of the caboose, he turns to see the other man, still on the platform. It's a lovely bit of filmmaking, and an inspired beginning for the film. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie doesn't live up to it.

The story involves three grown rich-kid brothers- Peter, Francis (Owen Wilson), and Jack (Jason Schwartzman)- taking a so-called "spiritual journey" through India. As Anderson's films are pretty much always about failure, it's no surprise that the boys don't even come close to enlightenment. The most shocking failure of the film is how little weight any of it has. Part of the problem is that none of the characters makes much of an impression. Fully-realized characters have never been one of Anderson's strong points, and that's never been so glaringly apparent as in Darjeeling.

In his previous films, Anderson has always found room within the story for small, indelible bits of character business that really cements them in our minds- Dignan's 150 year plan, Blume's relationship to his sons, Margot's secret smoking habit, Hennessey's reaction when Steve comes to rescue him. Here there are plenty of character quirks, but none of them feel especially illuminating. They just feel quirky for quirky's sake. Also, I didn't simply make the above list of characters from Anderson's previous films to be a completist- I remembered each and every one off the top of my head. I doubt I'll be able to make the same claim about anyone in Darjeeling a week from now, with the possible exception of the lovely Rita (aka Sweet Lime), played by Amara Karan.

For years I've defended Anderson's tendency towards whimsy in his films, but I fear that he's lost me this time around. Darjeeling is a marvel of design, but there's no soul underneath. Everything feels calculated rather than felt. I think the difference between this movie and Anderson's earlier, better films is that this one lacks a grounding character, a principal figure in the story who is somewhat detached from the whimsy. In both Rushmore and The Life Aquatic this character was played by Bill Murray, a master of wry melancholy whose very presence provided a rueful commentary on his surroundings. Similarly, The Royal Tenenbaums had Gene Hackman's Royal, a salty old coot who was literally on the outside looking in, a contrast to the Salingeresque Tenenbaum family proper. I was hoping that the skeptical Peter might turn out to be that character in Darjeeling, but no dice- despite some initial resistance, even he gets swept up (by rapids, to be precise) into the spirit of the journey. That Adrien Brody gives easily the best performance of the three principals only makes it more unfortunate when the character proves to be something of a non-starter. In the end, it all got to be a little much to bear. (Happy now, Steve?)

Also, the baggage at the end? Probably not a good idea.

Despite this misstep, I believe Wes Anderson remains a major artist. Unlike some people, I don't hate The Darjeeling Limited, but- not to put too fine a point on it- if he wants to truly progress as a filmmaker, he'll need to extract his head from his ass. In the mid-90s, both Wes and another Anderson (Paul Thomas) emerged as important new voices on the cinematic horizon. But while Wes quickly honed a trademark style to the brink of becoming a schtick, P.T. continued to challenge himself in new genres and styles. Wes Anderson has already been anointed the next Scorsese by Scorsese himself, but if he really wants to become twenty years from now what Scorsese is today, he's going to need to step outside his comfort zone sooner rather than later.

Rating: 4 out of 10.

Face Time #24 (Is she supposed to be Haut or Bas? Because she sure ain't Fragile.)

Marianne Denicourt

When Good Directors Go Bad #13

"Scooby Dooby Doo, we got some work to do now!"

Also this week:

Trailer Roundup- Sweeney Todd. There Will Be Blood And It Will Be So Red and Awesome and Bloody and Awesome in My Opinion. August Rush.

Top 10 Instances of Religious Propaganda Where We Least Expected It, Part 1 and Part 2- I wrote up The Incredible Shrinking Man and Signs. Guess which one I liked?

Good Directors Gone Bad!

Back in the spring, my then-Screengrab editor Bilge approached the staff with the idea for a regular feature called When Good Directors Go Bad. Intrigued by the idea, I latched onto it and somewhat unwittingly claimed it as my own (sorry fellow 'Grabbers). What I liked most about the idea was the way it caused me to re-examine the careers of some extremely talented filmmakers. Most directors' fans would like us to think of their heroes' careers as a nonstop string of classics, but in reality these filmmakers, while often brilliant, were capable of subpar or even terrible movies. Even Ingmar Bergman has a Serpent's Egg leaving an unpleasant smudge on his filmography.

Soon after I started writing the pieces, I had to decide not only what they were going to be, but also what they weren't. Since the first of the year, I've been enjoying Nathan Rabin's regular My Year of Flops posts over at the AV Club Blog, which are always hilarious and often perceptive as well. But it quickly became apparent that When Good Directors Go Bad had to be something different. For one thing, we're not always drawing from the same pool of movies. He's chosen some works by talented filmmakers, but just as often he's tackled junk like Battlefield: Earth and Catwoman, whose semi-forgotten directors stand little risk of being selected for a WGDGB piece. In addition, the MYoF pieces have an occasional tendency to sacrifice critical insight for pop-culture-savvy humor. Now, I don't begrudge Mr. Rabin this- how would YOU write about The Island of Dr. Moreau? But that sort of thing just isn't my bag. He does it well, and I wouldn't want to step on his toes. Besides, I wanted to help Screengrab carve out its own identity, rather than looking like an AV Club wannabe.

In the end, I believe in the philosophy of hoping everything I see will be good. Despite the When Good Directors Go Bad name, I don't approach the films with knives drawn. The movies I've chosen so far have been critically savaged, but I hope for the occasional misunderstood gem, something I finally found when I wrote up Woody Allen's Stardust Memories last month. By extension, it gives me no pleasure to witness a filmmaker I admire or even love make a movie that doesn't work, which is probably why I have yet to write up The Bonfire of the Vanities. But it does give me a certain amount of insight into that filmmaker's style and his obsessions, the kind of insight that can only be gained by seeing them applied in a way that ultimately defeats him. And with a few exceptions, the films are fascinating even when they don't work. I guess I'm just a big softy, something that should serve me well on my next two pieces, in which I intend to tackle a couple of the most notorious Hollywood genre movies of recent years. Wish me luck!

Famous Last Words- Round 1, Week 3

While some would debate the quality of my first week selection, The Big Lebowski, there's no getting around the fact that the source of last week's quote, Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion, is a classic. It's certainly one of the first in the genre to transcend the traditional good vs. evil formula, with Renoir's much-remarked-upon humanism making even the German officer a complicated, vulnerable person. And that cast! Jean Gabin, Marcel Dalio, Pierre Fresnay, the great Erich von Stroheim, and even a small role for L'Atalante star/Madonna muse Dita Parlo at the end of the film.

As luck would have it, Grand Illusion was DVD #1 for the Criterion Collection, and consequently the lucky winner of this round will be able to apply his or her shiny new $20 gift certificate from the Criterion Store towards the purchase of the Grand Illusion DVD if he or she so desires. However, there are also nearly 400 other available titles to choose from, as well as assorted Criterion and Janus gear. Perhaps you could purchase a Criterion baseball cap:

It's certain to impress movie lovers of a certain stripe, and confuse the non-initiated into wondering what the hell team you're rooting for. If nothing else, you'll certainly feel more sophisticated than the non-South Carolina fans who think it's funny to wear this hat:

But then, who wouldn't?

Anyway, here's your quote for this week:

"Now... where was I?"

Common enough, but at the end of the film? Remember, e-mail your answers to this address by 11:59 pm Saturday. See you next week!

Face Time #23 (guess who Paul's seeing tonight)

Not Cate Blanchett

"You think I'm over the hill/
You think I'm past my prime/
Well let me see what you got/
We can have a whoppin' good time"
~ from "Spirit on the Water"

Movie Moment #28

Also this week:

Conglomerated Baddies: The 22 Most Evil Corporations in Movie History, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4- I wrote up the Weyland-Yutani Corporation from the Alien saga

Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007, Shekhar Kapur) [3]

If there was an Oscar for Most Direction, Kapur would be running neck and neck with Across the Universe's Julie Taymor for this year's award. Clearly, the dude has never met a snazzy angle or completely gratuitous attention-grabbing camera movements he didn't enjoy enough to use it a dozen times. After all, why shoot characters straight on when you can shoot them from around pillars, from ultra-high angles or rotating the camera around them? The ironic thing is that the stylistic overload is practically the only thing worth mentioning in regards to this film. The screenplay is a sketchy distillation of history at best, an outright fabrication at worst, with Elizabeth portrayed as a bulwark of enlightened, forward-thinking humanism in the face of the devious attacking forces of Catholic Spain. I was a little troubled by the film's portrayal of Catholicism until I realized that pretty much the only knowledge the film displayed about the Inquisition could be learned here:



No less troubling is how The Golden Age flaunts the hoary cliché of the successful woman who is troubled by the lack of love in her life. The film's screenwriters paint Elizabeth as a woman so smitten with the rougish charms of Sir Walter Raleigh that she takes private audiences with him, knights him to prevent him from embarking on another voyage, and flies off the handle when she discovers that he has fallen for her favorite lady-in-waiting. Now, I don't begrudge powerful women their romantic whims. But I find it pretty patronizing that the filmmakers feel the need to turn Elizabeth- a paragon of strong, powerful women- into a lovesick girl who despairs of never being able to find a man. Could a film get away with doing the same thing for a male protagonist? Doubt it.

Some people have singled out Blanchett's performance here for its regal star power. But while she certainly holds the screen, I thought she looked visibly bored with the film she was starring in. At one point, she's being berated by a visiting emissary from the dreaded Spain, but instead of reacting to what he was saying, Blanchett was sort of smirking and swaying her arms back and forth as though she was listening to her iPod. The Golden Age is a film that seeks to make its heroine appear not quite of her time- the better to portray her as forward-thinking. But to have her act as though she's practically in another film altogether isn't really the way to go about it.

Knowledge is power... for REAL.

After I saw the remake of The Heartbreak Kid over the weekend (verdict? Meh.) I got to thinking about Ben Stiller's career. It's been a while since he really did anything noteworthy. Put it another way- when was the last time he made a movie I would've gone out of my way to see? Far as I can tell it was 2001, the year of The Royal Tenenbaums and Zoolander. Since then, a whole bunch of junk, with a few good cameos sprinkled in for flavor. What does it say about Stiller's recent filmography that the most I've laughed at the guy in the last six years has been in his cameo in Anchorman and his guest appearance on Arrested Development?

What happened to the guy who was for a while one of the best comic minds around? A guy who gave us the hilarious, doomed sketch comedy series The Ben Stiller Show, with wonderfully bizarre sketches including some of the greatest showbiz parodies ever shown on TV? Or even the guy who gave us this:



Yes folks, that's the entire pilot for the Stiller-directed Heat Vision and Jack, a parody of 80s cheese TV that Fox failed to pick up. It's hard to tell whether it would have worked as a series, but standing alone it's pretty damn funny. And isn't it nice to remember Ben Stiller as the king of hip, knowing comedy on TV? Or to remember Owen Wilson as the mellow, spaced-out dude we grew to love? Or to remember Jack Black as... actually, Jack's pretty much the same as he ever was here, only he hadn't yet made Envy. Which co-starred- well, wouldja look at this- Ben Stiller. *sigh*

Famous Last Words- Round 1, Week 2

Plenty of you were able to pick out the first week's quote, which of course was taken from the Coen brothers' cult classic The Big Lebowski. As one participant submitted, who else would have a character talking about sarsaparilla? To be precise, Sam Elliott's (not Sam Shepard, as one of you thought) enigmatic, formidably-mustachioed Stranger was often seen swigging Sioux City Sarsaparilla out of the bottle, and it must be said that the man has fine taste in beverages. As another folksy philosopher might say, gosh it's tasty.

Lebowski has amassed quite a following over the years, with its off-kilter humor, hazy plotting, and gallery of strange characters. One of things I love most about the movie is how it imagines Los Angeles- or "Loss Ang-uh-less"- as a kind of real-world Island of Misfit Toys. In the Coens' all-embracing L.A., there's always room for an unreformed hippie, a hawkish Vietnam vet, a purple-jumpsuited pederast, or even a schlubby landlord with a yen for interpretive dance. Why not a cowboy who might have just stepped off the prairie?

But look at me... I'm rambling again. Moving on- this week's Famous Last Words is actually an exchange:

“Don’t shoot- they’re in Switzerland.”
“All the better for them.”

This one should still be fairly easy for you. I hope to make them progressively more difficult as the round continues, although who knows if I'll succeed? Send your guesses to this address by 11:59 pm (Eastern Daylight Time) next Saturday night. Good luck.

When Good Directors Go Bad #12

Also this week:

The Top 11 Worst Scenes in Great Movies, Part 1 and Part 2- I wrote up that dumbass cot scene in Lolita, and suggested another scene that will be featured as a point/counterpoint next week

Trailer Roundup- Juno. Youth Without Youth. The Bucket List.

Face Time #22 (You've taken my calendar)

Emily Watson (more on her to come)

Reminder...

Guesses for this week's Famous Last Words are due in no later than 11:59 PM this Saturday night, a little less than 2 days from now. Don't forget- send your answers to lastwordsquiz@yahoo.com. Check back Sunday for the answer and a new quiz.

Famous Last Words- Round 1, Week 1

Welcome all to the inaugural week of competition in my Famous Last Words contest. I hope you've all had a chance to survey the rules I posted previously. Here's the short version- every Sunday, I post the final line (or dialogue exchange) from a feature film, and you guess the film from which I've taken them. Please submit all guesses- educated or otherwise- to lastwordsquiz@yahoo.com before 11:59 PM next Saturday night.

Before I move on to the quote, I want to announce that I've come up with a prize for the winner of this round- a $20 gift certificate from The Criterion Store. Not extravagant I know, but I figure it's something that the people who would play this game could use. Although if the winner of the round lives outside North America, I'm sure we could come to an agreement as to a region-appropriate alternate prize.

Moving on... For this first week, I'm going with the final line of a movie I'm pretty sure most of you have seen, many more than once. Maybe it's my way of testing to see how many of you are out there, or simply a semi-gimme for the people who will be playing from the beginning. Anyway, here it is:

"Say, friend- you got any more of that good sarsaparilla?"

E-Mail your guesses to me at this address. See you next Sunday!

Famous Last Words: The Rules

For my first competitive quiz, I've decided to keep things fairly simple. Here are the ground rules.

1. Every Sunday, I post a line or a short dialogue exchange from a movie. You, in turn, will e-Mail me your guesses as to what movie I took the dialogue from. Guesses must be submitted to me in e-Mail form, to the following e-Mail address: lastwordsquiz@yahoo.com.

2. All quotes will be the final spoken lines of the film, delivered by an onscreen character or narrator. Likewise, the words must be audible. In other words, no silent films, and no onscreen text that isn't read aloud.

3. All quotes will be the final lines of the film proper. Any lines spoken in "credit cookies" or post-credits scenes won't be used. For example, the final lines of Ferris Bueller's Day Off would be "Life goes by pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it," rather than "You're still here? It's over. Go home."

4. All of the quizzes will be taken from feature-length films of more than an hour in duration. As much as I'd love to slip a Don Hertzfeldt quote in there, it's just not happening.

5. The films selected may be in any language, but I will post the quotations translated into English whenever applicable.

6. Participants may only submit one guess per quiz. If more than one guess is submitted, no points will be given for the week whether the guess is correct or incorrect.

7. Submissions must be made to the e-Mail address lastwordsquiz@yahoo.com. I will be turning off comments to each week's quiz until the answer has been posted with the next week's quiz to avoid confusion.

8. Each correct submission will be worth one point, each incorrect submission worth zero points. At the end of ten weeks, the competitor with the most points will win a prize that will be announced at a later date. If there is a tie for first place, I will run tie-breaker rounds until there is a single winner.

9. Have fun!

Face Time #21 (Cookies sure were good)

Takeshi Kitano

Famous Last Words: For Real This Time

I know that at least a few of you out there have been enjoying my weekly Famous Last Words quiz for the last month or so. Some have even tried- some successfully, some not- to guess the quotations I've posted. It's been fun, in my opinion, but thusfar nothing has been at stake. Until now, that is.

Every Sunday, I will continue to post a Famous Last Words quiz, but beginning this upcoming weekend I'll be keeping score. Over the next ten weeks, whoever correctly identifies the most quotations will win a prize. It won't be something extravagant or anything, like the 50 Years of Janus Films box set or a year's supply of Braunschweiger, but it'll definitely be something you can use. I'll announce what the prize will be on Sunday, when I post the first official quiz.

Why am I doing this, you ask? Part of it is to increase traffic around here. Nothing brings people out of the woodwork like free stuff. But I also thought it would be fun to do, and hopefully it'll be fun for you all to play.

I've created a special e-Mail address specifically for the game, so if you have any questions or thoughts about the Famous Last Words game prior to the first round, feel free to e-Mail them to me at lastwordsquiz@yahoo.com. I'll post the official rules of the game later this week.

In the meantime, let's get the word out. More people means more competition, which should mean more fun for all. See you Sunday!

From a Polish Movie House #18

The Nights of Cabiria (1957, Federico Fellini)

Famous Last Words- Answer to Practice Round #5

Wow, that's two straight weeks with no takers on the Famous Last Words quotes. Either I'm picking harder ones than I thought, or my fans have abandoned me. Or both, who knows?

Anyway, last week's quote was the first I've pulled from a foreign-language film, this one being none other than Robert Bresson's Pickpocket. I have a hard time believing that some of you haven't seen this one, perhaps Bresson's most famous film and the object of Paul Schrader's very public obsession in the early-to-mid 60s, back in his critic days. Perhaps it would have been easier had I not elided the character's name (Jeanne) spoken in the line.

Edited 9/27 to add: I've removed this week's posted Famous Last Words game because no one had taken a crack at it yet. I'll hold on to it until the game starts in earnest.