Movie Moment #6

Also this week:

Brad Pitt's Inspiring Journey Through the Wonderful World of Accents- addendum to last week's Bad Accents list

The Most Important Nude Scenes of All Time, Part 1 and Part 2- I wrote up Harriet Andersson and Sissy Spacek

Movie Moment #5

Also this week:

A Stroll Through Jim Henson's Legacy- possible alternate title: "Good Grief! The Comedian's a Bear!"

The Worst Accents in Movie History, Part 1 and Part 2- I wrote capsules for Mickey Rooney, Dick Van Dyke, and Tommy Lee Jones

Criterion Watch, May/June 07 (Warning: flagrant overuse of the word "awesome" ahead)

Let's face it folks... I might go bankrupt just buying new Criterions. To wit:

Fucking awesome.

Awesome.


You guessed it- awesome.


Awesomeness I somehow managed not to buy the first time. These things have a way of working out...


Yeah, this is awesome, but it would be even more awesome if a DVD release of O LUCKY MAN! was on the way.

And saving the most awesome news of all for last...

Awesome fucking SQUARED. My pants are tightening at the thought of it. That's a total of 8 times I use the word "awesome" in various forms, not including the post title. In other words, a whole lotta awesome- and these are just the ones I've seen. I think I need to lie down...

St. Patrick's Day wishes

Well, I have 41 minutes before the clock strikes midnight, so this is still timely. Anyway, here's an awesome Muppets performance of "O Danny Boy," performed the Swedish Chef, Animal, and Beaker. So when is Season 2 coming out on DVD, guys?

Movie Moment #4

Also this week:

The Kinkiest Films Ever Made, Part 1 and Part 2- I blurbed Crash and In the Realm of the Senses

Angelina the Irritating?- my response to Edward Copeland's "Nails on a Chalkboard" post

Screengrab- Bringing You Up to Speed

Hey folks. I'm guessing there will be some actual original content around the corner, but until then I'll link you to the stuff I've done for Screengrab thusfar. I probably oughtn't to advocate reading just my stuff- there are other writers working there too, most better than I- but for people who (a) just want to check out what I've been up to, or (b) want to avoid some of the more risqué material on the blog, these should suit your purposes, aside from the occasional F-bomb. In the future, I'll include a roundup of the past week's pieces along with Thursday's Movie Moment link-post. I only hope I can maintain my current productivity, not least because the more I write the more they pay me.

In reverse chronological order:

Heaven's Gate: A Reassessment- more or less what it sounds like

The Most Dangerous Films Ever Made, Part 1 and Part 2- I did the blurbs for Heaven's Gate, Fitzcarroldo, and Twilight Zone

Trailers From Hell, Manna From Heaven- appreciation of a fun vintage-trailer site

Boycotting The Departed? Say It Ain't So, J-Ro- because someone had to say it

Controversy of the Week: Great Iranian Director Denied Entry Into U.S.- about the Jafar Panahi fiasco

Best Nude Scenes of 2006, Part 1 and Part 2- I blurbed Gretchen Mol, Anapolia Mushkadiz, Mia Kershner, Paula Patton, Bryce Dallas Howard, and yes, Ken Davitian

Of Genre Pics and Oscar Winners- an appreciation of 1971 Best Picture The French Connection

Live-Blogging (Sorta) The Oscars- complete with shout-outs to foxy starlets and occasional snarky remarks

Oscar predictions- included for the curious, so try not to laugh

Also, now I'm on the same writing staff as the great Vern. I'm officially stoked.

Movie Moment #3

Movie Moment #2

Movie Moment #1

Stuff

- Thanks to all who congratulated me on the Screengrab gig. It's actually my first paying job writing about cinema, so it should be a learning experience at least. The good news is that Bilge Ebiri has been pretty cool to work for thusfar, and unless I start fucking up there should be no reason why that should change. I'm even going to have a weekly column every Thursday, entitled "The Movie Moment" (sort of a last-minute compromise title), about scenes I love. My first Moment was from Frank Tashlin's THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT (1956), which everyone really ought to see. I'm also "live"-blogging the Oscars™- the quotation marks are due to the fact that Screengrab only posts Monday through Friday. All the same, I'll write as I watch and then send in more or less everything I've written afterwards. It's like watching the Oscars™ with me... only, y'know, not.

- And speaking of Oscars™, I also posted a partial list of prediction on Screengrab Wednesday as my introductory post. But in case you missed it, here's the full list:

Picture- Babel (ugh)
Director- Scorsese
Actor- O'Toole
Actress- Mirren
Supporting Actress- Hudson
Supporting Actor- Arkin
Original Screenplay- Babel
Adapted Screenplay- The Departed
Animated Feature- Cars
Art Direction- Pan's Labyrinth
Cinematography- Children of Men
Costume Design- Marie-Antoinette
Documentary Feature- An Inconvenient Truth
Documentary Short Subject- Rehearsing a Dream (I have no idea what this is about, but winners in this category always have titles like this)
Editing- Babel
Foreign-Language Film- Pan's Labyrinth
Makeup- Pan's Labyrinth
Score- The Queen
Song- "Our Town," Cars
Animated Short Subject- Lifted
Live-Action Short Subject- Binta and the Great Idea
Sound Effects Editing- Flags of Our Fathers
Sound Mixing- Dreamgirls
Visual Effects- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

- Aside from the Rivette retrospective in April, the Wexner Film/Video event I'm most looking forward to this spring is the Jim Henson series next month. All the biggies are here, of course- The Muppet Movie, The Dark Crystal, and Labyrinth- but they also have a bunch of rarities and behind the scenes stuff scheduled, plus Henson's one stab at Oscar, TIME PIECE, of which I believe this guy is a big fan. Should be pretty much un-missable.

- Finally, just wanted to announce that all of the individual pages are up at the Muriel Awards web site. So if you want to see how everyone voted, get there now before someone second-guesses his votes and asks for them to be taken down...

Once-Valuable Movie Site Lowers Standards Drastically

Ian Powell, Beacon Journal Arts Columnist
February 21, 2007

In an appalling lapse in judgment, the promising movie-oriented Web site The Screengrab has hired a complete cinematic charlatan as a regular contributor. Screengrab, edited by critic/independent filmmaker Bilge Ebiri and launched in May of 2006, had been looking for new critics in order to increase their number of posts.

The announcement sent shock waves throughout the critical community. Eric Lurio, film critic for the Greenwich Village Gazette, publicly stated, “this is an outrage of the highest order. I had been expecting great things from Screengrab and its capable editor, but this is a step in the wrong direction. Little short of Ebiri resurrecting Pauline Kael and hiring her could convince me to start reading Screengrab again.”

Lurio’s sentiments were echoed universally by the other critics interviewed. “A whiz-bang ride of a scandal!” raved one reviewer, who asked to remain anonymous. Earl Dittman, critic for Wireless Magazine, also expressed his displeasure. Dittman, who has devoted his career to the philosophy that if you can’t say anything nice you shouldn’t say anything at all, opted in lieu of words to simply point to the Screengrab site and snicker.

While he has already posted an article about the upcoming Academy Awards, the newly-hired critic’s name has yet to be revealed to the public for health reasons. Simply hearing or reading his name could lead to severe medical problems, particularly among pregnant or nursing women, the elderly, and people suffering from liver disease.

Neither Ebiri nor the unnamed critic could be reached for comment, but a representative for Screengrab’s parent company Nerve.com was reported to say, “come on bud, hiring this dude wasn’t my call. Seriously this guy put DOMINO in his top 10 that year i mean jesus.”

The Screengrab (Scroll down for the post in question)

Muriel Awards: The Golden Muriel for Best Feature Film

"After a couple attempts at white elephant, Oscar-chasing art, Scorsese retreats with a remake of a (barely noteworthy, in my opinion) Hong Kong crime drama and crams it full of stars for good measure. And whaddya know -- with the help of William Monahan's pungent script, he gets not only some of the best reviews of his life, but the biggest box office as well. See what happens when you stop trying and just do? (I think Kundun said that.) Nicholson's accused of scenery chewing, but, as The Departed's heart and soul, he's really gnawing at the edges of the film, like a rat... or a termite." ~ Kent M. Beeson

"Marty’s comeback? Dude hasn’t gone anywhere; it’s the audience that refused to follow him- to 1870s New York , to Tibet , and so forth. That said, it’s good to see Scorsese jump back into the genre that more or less (ahem) made him, without sacrificing any of his style or verve. But Scorsese has always surrounded himself with able collaborators, and The Departed is no exception- William Monahan wrote the complex and gleefully salty screenplay, and the cast, made up almost entirely of Scorsese newbies, is as good as any from this past year. Some have complained that The Departed is too long, but I can’t imagine it working without the initial 90 minutes of buildup- it’s because Scorsese, Monahan, and the rest have laid the groundwork, establishing the principals and the conflicts, that once the reckonings come down and the bodies begin piling up, it means something rather than being simply a series of killings and plot twists." ~ Paul Clark

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Muriel Awards: Best Direction

"[Children of Men] inspires genuine hope even in the bleakest of possible futures... Cuaron just made a huge leap from a great up-and-coming director to one of the most important voices in cinema today." ~ Andrew Bemis

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Muriel Awards: Best Lead Performance, Male

"One of the pleasant surprises in Borat is the performance of Sacha Baron Cohen, who has added levels previously unseen to the Borat character. This is a Borat terrified of an old Jewish couple, mortified to learn of Pamela Anderson's sexual past, genuinely thrilled to learn of the death of his wife, and, at his most vulnerable point, pushed to the edge of collapse. Cohen handles all of this with aplomb and total dedication to his character. It's rare you even see such devotion to a role in any film, much less a broad comedy. Cohen owns the role, his transformation is complete. It's honestly one of the best performances of the last couple of years." ~ Lucas McNelly

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Muriel Awards: Best Lead Performance, Female

"Perhaps one of the most difficult things to do in acting is to portray a living legend who everyone has seen and heard a thousand times, because quite often the scrutiny of that performance is unbearable. Therefore Helen Mirren's achievement in "The Queen" is certainly no little thing, as nearly all who saw the movie watched with awe as she completely disappeared into the role of Elizabeth II during the uncomfortable week that she lost the mother of her grandchildren. Mirren's is one of the greatest performances of recent memory and the centerpiece of this finely crafted film." ~ R. Presley Stephens

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Muriel Awards: Best Cinematic Moment

"A lot of lip service was given to his cool long, technically difficult shots, but very little lip was given to how well they were integrated into the narrative. During the scenes I was aware of the shot, but like the opening of Touch of Evil, that awareness never broke my suspension of disbelief." ~ Martin McClellan

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Muriel Awards: Best Supporting Performance, Female

"Adriana Barraza's compelling performance in Babel takes the audience on the shattering journey through Amelia's fear and guilt-stricken terror after she is coerced into the unwise decision to take the two young children she nannies for (as an illegal immigrant) in Southern California across the Mexican border to attend her brother's wedding. On the return trip home, we watch in desperation as Barraza is forced to make a gut-wrenching life and death decision when things go terribly awry for she and the children in the unforgiving Mexican desert. Barraza's is the character I empathize with the most as she forges on in the unbearable desert heat like a fierce, yet trapped mother lion, pushed to the brink of madness." ~ Jenny Sekwa

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Muriel Awards: Best Supporting Performance, Male

"Marky Mark lit up the screen in The Departed every time he showed his face. I found myself actively yearning for his scenes as the film went on, to bring the life back to a movie I wasn't all that hot on. Some have called his tough guy performance a one-trick pony (comparing it to co-star Alec Baldwin's turn in Glengarry Glen Ross), but his best scene is the last one, in which he doesn't say a word." - Greg Dunlap

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Muriel Awards: Best DVD Release

"It’s becoming a bit of a DVD reviewer’s cliché to trumpet the latest spectacular Criterion release as the best thing the company’s ever done, or as a candidate for best DVD of the year. How much easier it would be to avoid using this burnished chestnut if the company would just stop creating DVD editions that could honestly be said to be the best of the year. And what Criterion has done with Richard Linklater’s superb evocation of high school life in small-town Texas in 1976, Dazed and Confused, will justify all enthusiastic descriptors, clichéd or not. The elements of a great disc are all there: a de rigueur all-new high-definition transfer (supervised by the director and cinematographer Lee Daniel); a Linklater audio commentary that highlights the director’s unique ability to be laid-back and verbose at the same time; a 50-minute documentary on the making of the film, which began shooting in 1992, that surpasses the standard “making-of” featurette by co-opting the cool, yet energetic observational style of the movie itself (it includes footage from the 10-year anniversary cast reunion); and Criterion’s usual top-drawer optional English subtitles.*

But beyond the digital treats, Criterion’s Dazed is a triumph of packaging—there’s a 72-page book, designed like a high school notebook, featuring essays by Jim DeRogatis on the music, Kent Jones on the movie, profiles of Linklater and the film by Chuck Klosterman and John Spong, and page after page of 'Profiles In Confusion,' yearbook-style portraits of all the film’s characters, major and minor, and even a reproduction of the film’s original one-sheet, all tucked in a psychedelic doodle of a slip box that looks like every PeeChee I ever disfigured in my pre-college days . You can get just as lost in Criterion’s package for the disc of this brilliant picture (not only a great high school movie but perhaps the best movie about small-town life I’ve ever seen) as you can in the movie itself.

* Full disclosure: I created those English subtitles for Criterion—it’s my day job. It may not seem like it, but there’s art as well as craft in rendering readable subtitles for movies that honor both the material and the intended audience. And it’s always more fun doing that kind of work when the movie is as wall-to-wall sharp and smart as Dazed and Confused. And, oh, yeah, I graduated high school in a small town in southern Oregon in 1977. This movie looks like a documentary to me." ~ Dennis Cozzalio

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Muriel Awards: Best Screenplay

Frank Costello: Have a seat, Bill.
[Costigan sits down at Costello's dinner table]
Frank Costello: [while eating crab] Do you know John Lennon?
Billy Costigan: Yeah, sure, he was the president before Lincoln.
Frank Costello: Lennon said, "I'm an artist. You give me a fucking tuba, I'll get you something out of it."
Billy Costigan: [sarcastically] Well I tell you Mr. Costello, I'd like to squeeze some fucking money out of it.
Frank Costello: Smart mouth. Too bad. If you'll indulge me...
[sees Gwen leaving]
Frank Costello: Now what?
Gwen: Choir practice.
Frank Costello: [annoyed] Choir practice.
[Costello pulls out a severed human hand]
Frank Costello: The point I'm making with John Lennon is - a man could look at anything, and make something out of it. For instance, I look at you and I think "what could I use you for?"

"Of course it's sharp and compelling and formally impressive; what surprises is that this film, built around twin life-or-death situations and constructed from slickness and paranoia, is funny. Really funny. (Best exchange, bar none: "How's your mother?" "Good. Still tired from fucking my father.") The premise, imported from the HK action winner Infernal Affairs, turns out to be as close to unfuckupable as most people suspected, and all Monahan and Scorsese really had to do was give the plot wheels a little push and everything would have turned out fine. Instead of that just-add-water approach that would have enticed lesser filmmakers into creating a mere punch-press modest entertainment, they aim big. Infernal Affairs is infused with a marvelous sense of local Boston color and enough close character work to propel the average novel; these inclusions transform the film from a crackerjack thriller into something more satisfying -- a gusting tapestry of human nature under pressure, at turns hilarious and heart-stopping." ~ Steven Carlson

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