Posters in the Lobby: Army of Darkness

Some pop art-inspired Japanese poster artwork for Army of Darkness. Dig the "Bruce Campbell" soup cans. Click for larger image.

In Memoriam: Sidney Lumet

Sidney Lumet was one of the great American filmmakers, responsible for over 40 films both classic and celebrated (12 Angry Men, Network, Dog Day Afternoon, and Murder on the Orient Express) to the unjustly overlooked (Fail-Safe, Family Business, and Find Me Guilty.) His 1962 film The Pawnbroker was one of the first U.S. pictures to openly deal with the Holocaust, and was instrumental in ending Hollywood's censorship laws regarding sexuality in cinema. He remained active in filmmaking well into his twilight years, ending his career with 2007's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, which is perhaps the greatest film ever made by an octogenarian. He passed on today, in his Manhattan residence, from lymphoma.

Sidney Lumet's book, the aptly titled Making Movies, is one that, along with Frank Capra's The Name Above the Title and Walter Murch's In the Blink of an Eye, should be required reading for all young, aspiring filmmakers. It chronicles the creation of a motion picture from script to finished product, with all the technical details explained. (Chapter headings are titled like "Style: The Most Misused Word Since Love" and "The Mix: The Only Dull Part of Moviemaking.") The paradoxical role of the director is explained as both a world-is-your-oyster creative artist as well as a business-minded solver of a million little problems and a defeater of a thousand obstacles and stumbling blocks. As a quote from Steven Spielberg says on the back, "The craft of film would be a better place if every director were required to share with other romancers of film his process." I'd go further and say that if every working director in the world read Making Movies, there would be a whole lot of better movies being made.

Herschell and Henenlotter: Together at last.

Frank Henenlotter is an exploitation director with a passionate desire to share his love of the genre with others. His feature films, such as Basket Case, Frankenhooker, Brain Damage and the recent Bad Biology pay homage to grindhouse cinema while slyly subverting its traditions, and his work with Something Weird Video, much of which could be considered cinematic archeology, has brought forgotten oddities like Night of the Bloody Apes and The Curious Dr. Humpp to home video release. (He was also nice enough to agree to be interviewed for my documentary about Reefer Madness producer Dwain Esper.) It’s this same generosity of spirit that informs his latest picture, the documentary Herschell Gordon Lewis: The Godfather of Gore. Almost every horror fan knows the name of H.G. Lewis, even if they haven’t seen one of his deliciously terrible, ketchup shortage-causing movies.

Lewis’s films are as known and loved for their Ed Woodian lack of technical craft as they are for their outlandish plots. Blood Feast concerns a mad Egyptian caterer who serves up dismembered women as sacrifices to his dark gods, whereas Color Me Blood Red features a tortured artist who paints with women’s blood, and Two Thousand Maniacs is about a Southern town that appears, Brigadoon-style, once a year, to seek revenge on any Yankees unfortunate enough to come their way. Frank and co-director Jimmy Maslon (producer of the Wizard of Gore remake as well as Lewis’s late-career return to filmmaking, Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat) bring the man’s story to the screen in obsessive detail, telling the curious history of the off-the-beaten-path exploitation film in the process. Lewis and sadly now departed producing partner David F. Friedman recount how in the mid-fifties, the Supreme Court ruled that films featuring nudity alone were not considered obscene. This led the duo to create a string of “nudie-cutie” films either taking place at nudist camps or featuring protagonists with x-ray glasses capable of seeing beneath women’s clothes. As they were barred from showing sex in their films, they turned instead to violence as their main, exploitable element; first in grainy, bruised black and white, then in glorious, bloody color.

Blood Feast, the first of the cycle, was nothing if not "giving the people what they want." John Waters, the token "famous fan" interviewee, describes how the rhythm of the picture is like that of a porn film, citing the scene in which Fuad Ramses rips out a woman's tongue as its proverbial climax shot. Lewis, who narrates his life story seated before a green-screened slideshow presentation of promotional materials and film clips, recalls in his dry-witted Midwestern drawl how bottom dollar-driven he was in the creation of his films, going so far as to negotiate for fried chicken dinners for the crew in exchange for featuring shots of the restaurant's logo within the film. It's a fascinating testament to how motion pictures can be frontrunners and trend-setters (Lewis's films were some of the first to show violence of that level, predating Bonnie and Clyde and The Wild Bunch by several years) but also cash-minded commercial products.

Henenlotter and Maslon have searched far and wide for both footage and interview subjects for the film, which is a feast of snippets and outtakes from even Lewis's rarest movies. Almost everyone who ever worked on one of his productions was tracked down and interviewed, including the child actor who played the cat-strangling kid from Two Thousand Maniacs, now well into his 40's. David Friedman, still retaining that easygoing Southern carnival pitchman charm well into his eighties, almost threatens to steal the show in the picture's first half. (Of one of Lewis's early, early nudie pictures, the The Living Venus, he attests "Well, it wasn't the greatest film in the world, but it had holes up either side of the print and could run through the machine!") There are also remarks from from self-tutored Lewis experts such as the aforementioned Waters (who proudly shows off his collection of first-edition paperback novelizations of Lewis's movies,) Joe Bob Briggs, and Frank himself.

The film's celebratory tone makes it a real delight for cinephiles, and although it is not as star-studded, it is a little more focused and in-depth than last year's American Grindhouse documentary. It is well worth checking out when it arrives on DVD. I also highly reccomend the film Mau Mau Sex Sex for more background on David Friedman, less of a cult figure than Lewis but an equally amazing man

"Don't Trust the Trailer" is leaving the nest.

Don't Trust the Trailer is now its own website! We will be posting all our joint trailer analyses along with some interactive content over there, while continuing to post our reviews and miscellaneous musings here. Enjoy!

In Memoriam: Elizabeth Taylor

Yesterday saw the sad passing of one of Hollywood's greatest icons. Liz Taylor was perhaps the first modern super-celebrity, whose personal life arguably captured the imagination of the world more than any of any of the films she was in. This article from the archives of Vanity Fair perfectly captures this sea change and Liz's role in bringing it on. Fare thee well to a true legend who will never be forgotten.

When Liz Met Dick.

Happy St. Patty's Day!

Courtesty of the Brothers Coen. Enjoy!

Raconteur Reptile: Rango

Do people really mean it when they complain about the lack of originality in movies? After all, the very meaning of the word "genre" refers to the ability to categorize films based upon the traits that they share. The traditions and cliches of the shoot-'em-up actionier, the romantic comedy, the slasher film and the period costume drama each provide different factions of viewers with a warm blanket-like sense of comfort. Filmmaking is an art form, but it is also a business, and something of a gamble at that. A film based off of a concept or another piece of media that there is already some idea that audiences will like seems like a more lucrative prospect than a wholly original concept. What worked before will be milked and milked into working again until audiences appear to be sick of it, then possibly dusted off some couple of decades later and re-animated for the purposes of nostalgia.

Furthermore, almost all filmmakers are film buffs - otherwise, why would they want to be filmmakers? - and all of them seem to bring their influences to the table. But there is a difference between a director who lovingly fashions a patchwork quilt out of films and other media he reveres, and one who shallowly regurgitates the past six months' most recognizable pop culture references, YouTube clips, supermarket tabloid headlines and Pussycat Dolls songs. This type of cheap pandering to the lowest common denominator is what I believe people are really talking about when they complain about films' lack of originality. But I am happy to report that, with Rango, Gore Verbinski has created a beautiful example of the former.

Johnny Depp voices the titular lizard, who spends his days merrily acting out Shakespearean scenes with a wind-up toy fish and a headless Barbie, until he ends up separated from his human owners and stranded in the Mohave desert. After an encounter with a mysterious armadillo, and a Dali-esque hallucination set to songs from a Greek chorus of mariachi owls, he winds up in the desolate town of Dirt, populated by a ragged assortment of varmints standing in for numerous Western film archetypes. The denizens of Dirt treat water as currency, but due to its scarcity, their economy is in shambles and many of them have lost hope. The town's mayor seeks out Rango, who has already attempted to use his acting skills to pretend to be a tough cowboy gunslinger, and appoints him sheriff - although his motives may not be as pure as it seems.

Rango feels like the film that Verbinski - whom, based upon The Ring and the Pirates of the Carribbean films, I had previously thought of as merely a well-behaved studio journeyman - had been waiting his whole career to make. The picture is a love letter to the cinema from its most broad and obvious aspects (it looks and feels like a spaghetti western version of Wind in the Willows, and the plot points dealing with the shady corruption of water rights is cribbed directly from Chinatown) to its tiniest in-jokes (blink and you'll miss a cameo from animated versions of Hunter S. Thomspson and Dr. Gonzo). The ragged and even endearingly disgusting critters that make up its principal cast - many of whom look like something Beatrix Potter would dream up if she was wandering around the American desert whacked out on peyote - have a tactile, three-dimensional quality that is rare in computer animation. Coen Brothers DP Roger Deakins is listed as a visual consultant in the credits, and I mean it as no backhanded compliment when I say that the breathtaking vistas in this film rival the scenery in No Country for Old Men and True Grit.

Despite its numerous cinematic and cultural allusions - from The Big Sleep, Apocalypse Now, Dead Man and El Topo to Chuck Jones, Carlos Castaneda and the Muppets - I would have to say I disagree with the consensus of critics that Rango is a treat for adults that fails at its job of being a children's film. True, it's not likely its target audience will have seen many of the films that directly inspired it, but ideally, this film will serve as a gateway drug for budding cinephiles, much like the way that Star Wars inspired me, when I was knee-high to a grasshopper, to go out and rent Metropolis, 2001, and the movies of John Ford. Additionally, like a kid-friendly Inglourious Basterds, Rango is a film that alludes to classic film genres to stress its message about what storytelling can mean to both an individual and a society. While its particular brand of subtle quirk, lived-in scruffiness and offbeat surrealism may not appeal to all, I guarantee that a sizable faction of young moviegoers will someday credit it as the picture that planted the unkillable seed of cinephillia inside their wee hearts.

Don't Trust the Trailer: Splice

Here we continue our ongoing series in which we assess a film's trailer to see how honestly it depicts the film in question.

How intrigued are you about the film, based upon seed the trailer?

Anne: Curious
Jack: Enthusiastic

Impressions based on the trailer:

Looks a little Alien-ish - a pulse-pounding, science fiction horror flick. Young attractive scientists break the boundaries of science in controversial and somewhat gory ways.

Comments after seeing the film:

Anne: As scary, gory and terrifying as the trailer makes the film look, this is a brilliant example of how deceiving a trailer can be! This science fiction movie has more to do with taking care of a new baby and questions of ethics and sexuality. I am not a fan of horror movies and I loved it. There are intriguing elements of psychological introspection and dysfunction that are eyebrow-raising and definitely worth checking out.

Jack: Re-viewing the trailer after watching the film elicited chuckles from both of us. Once again we have a very conventional trailer for a very unconventional film. Warner Brothers tried to promote this movie as a spine-tingling monster-on-the-loose picture with a topical science theme. In actuality, this is a deeply and unsettlingly human film about the emotional horror of new parenthood, using the science fiction genre as a vessel to shake viewers out of their comfort zones and consider philosophical questions. It has more in common with Eraserhead and David Cronenberg’s early films than with something like Alien.

Final Grade for Film: B+

In Memoriam: Tura Satana

Tura Satana, the fastest of all the pussycats, was one hell of a woman. In the world of grindhouse cinema, she stands on a pedestal above Meiko Kaji, Christina Lindberg, Mamie Van Doren and even Pam Grier as the genre's reigning queen. Born in 1938, she spent a portion of her childhood in one of California's interment camps for Japanese Americans, and relocated with her family after WWII to the rough streets of the West Side of Chicago. She was the subject of frequent racial and sexual harassment due to her Asian heritage and early-blossoming figure, and while walking home from school one day at the age of nine, she was attacked and gang-raped by five men. Over the next fifteen years, she trained in aikido and karate in her time off from working as an exotic dancer, and subsequently tracked down and exacted revenge on all five of her assailants.

It sounds like the plot of a classical exploitation feature along the lines of I Spit On Your Grave, but it's her true life story. And there are even more incredible chapters - she turned down a marriage proposal from Elvis Presley (it seems that between her and the still-going-strong Wanda Jackson, the King had a thing for take-no-crap women) and photographed by former silent star Harold Lloyd, who encouraged her to try acting.

After various bit parts in Irma La Douce, Our Man Flint, "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.," "Burke's Law," and various other films and shows, she won the role of Varla, the leader of a gang of thrill-and-kill-crazed go-go dancers in Russ Meyer's seminal Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Meyer, who specialized in sensational yet oddly progressive sexploitation programmers featuring big-bosomed Amazonians, found his ideal female personified in Satana. Varla is a leather-catsuited thundercloud who delights in humiliating men in drag races and then snapping them in half like twigs. It's largely down to her characterization (if one can call it that; Meyer and numerous others from the set have attested that Satana was merely being herself) that Faster, Pussycat! has achieved its universal cult status and is held up as one of the greatest "trash" films of all time.

She took on two more acting roles in The Astro-Zombies and The Doll Squad, both of which were directed by Ted V. Mikels, and subsequently went to work at a hospital while her legend steadily grew among cult film fans the world over. She came out of retirement in the early 2000s, making cameo appearances in many homages to drive-in cinema, and was said to have been gracious and kind to her numerous fans. On February 4th, 2011, at the age of 72, she was summoned to that great racing drag strip in the sky. They don't make movies like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! anymore, nor do they make women like Tura Satana. She will be fondly remembered.

Posted by Jack

2010: The Year in Film

2010 was a fine year for young actors and actresses, brainy blockbusters, and some of our favorite filmmakers trying different things and exploring new themes. Without further ado, here are our respective top 10 lists of 2010.

ANNE'S TOP 10

10. The Ghost Writer
Controversial director Roman Polanski was under house arrest while finishing this political mystery. The film’s sense of paranoia as it pertains to the government is palpatable. Although the movie is slightly slow going at times, it has a sense of dread at every piece of the puzzle. A very interesting film.

9. The Kids Are All Right
Annette Bening and Julianne Moore are a lesbian couple who have used the same sperm donor, (Mark Ruffalo) to conceive their two children, and now find him uncomfortably ingratiated into their lives. Other critics' amazement at how natural or how much like a “real family” they seem is only evidence of how few films there are that portray homosexuals as three-dimensional human beings and don’t fall prey to stereotypes.

8. Toy Story 3
Of course any film Pixar releases deserves to be on the top ten, although compared with their earlier efforts I wouldn’t rank it as highly as Up, Ratatouille or The Incredibles. The first two installments of this trilogy focused more on the toys' relationship to their human owners, and that connection to the audience’s own experience is why it’s so easy to tug at our heartstrings. Having the toys engaged in their own Great Escape-esque action flick was slightly less engaging for me, but it’s still a wonderful conclusion to a beloved saga.

7. The King's Speech
The look of this film is beautiful. Many of the shots look like a spread in Vanity Fair or Vogue. I thought that the relationship between Colin Firth as the troubled, stuttering King George and Geoffrey Rush as his speech therapist was immersive. There is a push and pull of letting your guard down to someone and accepting help that’s brilliantly expressed. This is one of this years many stand-out films with biopic elements.

6. Black Swan
This might be the most talked about movie this year, but I hope it’s for Natalie Portman’s wonderful performance and not just for the 2 minute lesbian sex-scene. I felt that the story was more of an interesting character study than a thriller with a good twist.

5. Inception
I spent three days after watching this movie checking on message boards to see what bits of information I may have missed and new attempts at deconstructing the plot. I haven’t been that wrapped up in a movie since Donnie Darko.

4. Splice
That’s right, a horror film has made my top 10. Even the horror-phobic viewer will appreciate this film. It questions morals, ethics, science and relationships. If you’re looking for a movie to take you out of your comfort zone, this is the best choice in 2010.

3. Scott Pilgrim vs the World
I saw this movie twice in the theater this year and I would have dragged more people to see it if it had stayed longer. The whole movie is chock full of catchphrases that I wish I could remember and use regularly to be as cool as these kids. I guess I have to watch it again.

2. The Social Network
Who could have guessed the Facebook movie would be a contender for this year's Best Picture. David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin have made a compelling biopic with teeth.

1. I Love You Phillip Morris
This movie was amazing. I went to see it on my birthday because I knew I could see Ewan McGregor and Jim Carrey make out, but the film was so much more than I expected. Quick, clever, a bit raunchy and got me laughing and crying. I think that Jim Carrey delivers the year's best performance for his challenging portrayal of a real-life gay con man who is currently serving a life sentence and may never see this film. The real crime, however, is that this was shelved for two years and only released in two theaters in New York. I hope it catches on through rentals
.

JACK'S TOP 10.

10. Kick-Ass
Gleefully violent and misanthropic like a bowl of blood-drenched Fruity Pebbles, this film version of Mark Millar's comic book series brilliantly undercuts the superhero myth by showing just how ridiculous the idea of a masked vigilante actually is. The action sequences are simultaneously thrilling and satirical, and although all the cast does fine work, the standout role goes to Chloe Moretz as a samurai sword-wielding, curse word-spouting pre-teen warrior named Hit Girl.

9. Toy Story 3
I was eight years old when the original Toy Story was released, and for many years it was my favorite film of all time. It gave me great pleasure to re-visit the universe that I had grown up with and felt almost like reuniting with a group of very old friends. Whereas Pixar's Incredibles, Wall-E, Ratatouille and Up are envelope-pushing masterpieces of animation, this film is comforting and sentimental like, well, a favorite toy. The cinematic landscape would be a much brighter place if all threequels could be this creative, intelligent, and emotionally affecting.

8. Shutter Island
Curious that Leonardo DiCaprio should appear in two films this year about how illusions, dreams, (and by extention, movies) provide a safe haven for the unstable mind, but can also be the beguiling sirens that lead to one's undoing. Shutter Island an Inception are both equally good films, and my favoring of the messier, more disturbing and idiosyncratic one is merely a matter of personal preference. With thankfully no pretensions in regards to genre, Scorsese fuses high and low art into a beautiful and terrifying Technicolor nightmare.

7. Splice
Here's b-movie creature feature that is as unsettling and uncomfortable to watch as anything directed by Todd Solondz. Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley are a hipster scientist couple who adopt one of their genetic creations and raise it as their own child. The picture addresses some incredibly dark and heavy subject matter that even most straight dramas don't touch upon, and is perhaps the best film about the fear of new parenthood since Eraserhead.

6. The King's Speech
It's no mystery as to why The King's Speech was both of my parents' favorite film of 2010. (In my dad's own words; "Thank god they made a film not based off of a bloody Marvel Comic!") As with True Grit, it's a film that feels older than it is, and I mean that as a compliment. The themes of leadership, personal courage and responsibility are ones that are rarely seen as often as they once were. Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter are all uniformly wonderful in their roles.

5. Black Swan
Although it tips its hat to Powell and Pressburger, Polanski, Argento and Verhoeven, for the most part this film is a continuation of the theme of performance as a means of self-sacrifice that Aronofsky explored in The Wrestler. Natalie Portman owns the screen as a tightly-wound ballerina who gradually becomes more unhinged as she reaches for long-repressed emotions in order to portray the titular creature in Swan Lake. I have high hopes for a victory for her come Oscar night, which, if it happens, will be more than deserved.

4. The Social Network
I will admit to pooh-poohing this film's premise when I first heard about it - who on earth would want to see a movie about Facebook, and why would Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher even be interested in making one? It's a testament to each of these artist's strengths that the film is so good - a classic lonely-at-the-top story, akin to There Will Be Blood with website programming instead of oil drilling, featuring Eisenberg's Zuckerberg as its quiet, shut-in Daniel Plainview. As anyone who's seen it can tell you, the film's title doesn't just refer to the website, but the entire American class system.

3. I Love You Phillip Morris
It's refreshing to see audiences and critics embracing The Kids Are Alright, as it's maybe the first "gay" film to be accepted by mainstream culture that doesn't deal heavily with outcast themes or end in tragedy. However, it still pales in comparison to this subversive firecracker of a comedy, which features the single best performance of Jim Carrey's career. This true story of a con man's determination to escape prison to be reunited with his lover is rude, lewd, foul-mouthed and politically incorrect, and it also happens to be one of the finest films about relationships I've ever seen.

2. True Grit
Although peppered throughout with trademark Coenesque quirky humor, the Brothers new film version of Charles Portis' novel, made once before in 1971 with John Wayne, finds them at their most big-hearted and romantic. Young Hailee Steinfeld's brilliant performance recalls Tatum O'Neal in Paper Moon, and Bridges and Damon are at the top of their powers. Despite being a recent release, this is exactly the kind of movie they refer to when they say "they don't make 'em like that anymore."

1. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
With his third feature, Edgar Wright joins the ranks of Frank Tashlin, Brian De Palma and Joe Dante as one of the world's most playfully cinema-literate directors. This adaptation of a Bryan Lee O'Malley comic book series draws upon 8-bit video game logic, anime-styled action setpieces, indie rock rebelliousness and heartfelt sweetness to depict a smitten young man's imagination run wild. The fact that it didn't do better business is disappointing to be sure - it's possible that audiences are suffering from Michael Cera fatigue, even though he plays a distinctly different character here from the sweet-natured softies he's known for. One thing's for sure, however, and that's that Scott Pilgrim is destined to become a cult film in the near future.

Don't Trust The Trailer: True Grit

The following is part of an ongoing series in which we will assess a film's trailer to see how honestly it depicts the film. The first installment is for True Grit, (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2010)

True Grit (2010)

How intrigued are you, based upon seeing the trailer?

Anne: Curious but skeptical

Jack: YEEAH!

Comments after seeing the film.

Anne: I am a fan of the Coen Brothers, and I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, even when it comes to film genres that I’m not usually interested in. The trailer shows just as much of Hailee Steinfeld’s character as Bridges, Damon, and Brolin, which is accurate, as she’s who the film is centered around. It’s the revenge story of a plucky and stubborn young girl, which interests me more than the traditional western elements (horses, guns, and men being men.)

Jack: I’m a western nerd and the Coen Brothers are my favorite filmmakers, so I don’t really need to see a trailer to know that I am going to see this film. However, this trailer presents a fairly accurate picture of a great movie: a sparse and wintry revenge story, peppered with moments of the Coens’ quirky humor. The whole cast is fantastic, particularly the young newcomer Hailee Steinfeld. Bonus points for the trailer’s use of Johnny Cash’s haunting “God’s Gonna Cut You Down.”

Final Grade for Film: B

Greetings all!

Welcome to our little corner of the internet. In the months to come we will be posting a number of film reviews, musings, lists, and other assorted goodies. We hope you enjoy your stay.