Today’s Ghost of Christmas Past is a real classic and, like any classic, it’ll probably end up getting yanked off of YouTube in another week or so. So, enjoy 1964’s Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer while you still can!
Monthly Archives: December 2013
Artist Profile: Dan dos Santos
Dan dos Santos is one of the top illustrators in the fantasy and science fiction field. You can see more of his work here.
Trailer: 22 Jump Street (Red Band)
One of the biggest surprises for 2012 was the fact that a remake of an 80’s TV show on the fledgling Fox Network ended up being a major hit for the year. The show was 21 Jump Street and the film that stared Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill was a laugh riot from beginning to end.
So, just like any hit that comes out of Hollywood there’s bound to be a sequel and the producers were quick to make it happen. This is why in the summer of 2014 we will get the sequel to 21 Jump Street which will be called 22 Jump Street. It would seem the Korean Catholic Church being used in the first film was sod so now they move across the street to the abandoned Vietnamese Catholic Church on 22 Jump Street.
Will this sequel catch lightning in a bottle once again? Will Channing Tatum finally realize that his true calling is to be a comedic action star?
22 Jump Street will answer all these questions and more you probably didn’t realize you had on June 13, 2014.
44 Days of Paranoia #26: Compliance (dir by Craig Zobel)
(Minor Spoilers Below)
For our latest entry in the 44 Days of Paranoia, we take a look at one of the most disturbing films of 2012, Compliance.
Compliance opens with the dowdy and middle-aged Sandra (Ann Dowd) arriving at the fast food restaurant that she manages. Sandra, at first glance, seems to be a rather forgettable and conventional, the type of person who we see every day but don’t give much thought to. It’s only when Sandra gets a phone call from a man claiming to be a police officer that we start to see the disturbing reality underneath Sandra’s perfect facade.
The man tells Sandra that one of her employees may have stolen money from a customer’s purse. He asks Sandra to detain the employee until the police arrive. Based on a vague description given by the man, Sandra decides that the employee in question must be Becky (Dreama Walker), a cashier who Sandra earlier had some conflict with.
Sandra calls Becky into her office and confronts her with the man’s accusations. When Becky denies them, the man tells Sandra to strip search Becky. Though she is initially hesitant, Sandra does perform the search and finds nothing.
However, the man isn’t finished humiliating Becky. As the man’s instructions grow more extreme and bizarre, Sandra soon starts to recruit others to help her keep Becky under watch.
Compliance is a portrait of both abusive authority and petty sadism. Dreama Walker is sympathetic as Becky while Ann Dowd turns Sandra into a frighteningly plausible monster. And, make no doubt about it, Sandra is a monster. The prank call simply gives Sandra an excuse to unleash all the resentment that she feels towards the younger and prettier Becky and it leads to a very interesting dynamic in which both the caller and Sandra become allies in a conspiracy to humiliate and, ultimately, dehumanize Becky. Throughout the film, the caller’s claims grow more and more flamboyant and we, as an audience, are forced to decide whether Sandra is genuinely fooled or if she’s just using the call as an excuse to justify acting on her own resentments.
What makes Compliance especially disturbing is that the film itself is based on a true story. Most film usually use the term “based on a true story” quite loosely but Compliance sticks very closely to the facts of something that happened in a McDonald’s in 2004. Just like in the film, a man pretending to be a police officer called the McDonald’s and told the manager that one of the cashiers was suspected of being a thief. Just as in the film, the caller ordered the cashier to be stripped naked and eventually ordered the manager’s fiancée to sexually assault the cashier.
When that incident made national news, I know that a lot of people (like me) reacted by wondering how the manager could have been so stupid and making a few jokes about the type of people who make a career out of fast food. As a society, we tend to assume that incidents like this are somehow not the norm.
However, as Compliance demonstrates, there was more to this incident than just stupidity. We are continually told that we have to automatically respect and obey anybody who presents himself as being an authority figure, whether it’s the uniformed cop who responds to any hint of dissent with either his taser or his gun or just some unseen guy on the phone who claims to be an officer of the law. We’re continually told not to question men in authority, instead we’re simply to assume that anything they say is both important and correct. As Compliance demonstrates, sadists like Sandra are not as unusual as we like to assume. They’re just doing what they’ve been bred to do.
They’re following orders and respecting authority.
They’re maintaining compliance.
Other Entries In The 44 Days of Paranoia
- Clonus
- Executive Action
- Winter Kills
- Interview With The Assassin
- The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald
- JFK
- Beyond The Doors
- Three Days of the Condor
- They Saved Hitler’s Brain
- The Intruder
- Police, Adjective
- Burn After Reading
- Quiz Show
- Flying Blind
- God Told Me To
- Wag the Dog
- Cheaters
- Scream and Scream Again
- Capricorn One
- Seven Days In May
- Broken City
- Suddenly
- Pickup on South Street
- The Informer
- Chinatown
Saying Goodbye To Three Cinematic Legends
We lost three legends this week.
As I’ve mentioned on this site, I love the old Hollywood of the 30s and the 40s. It’s a period of time that I love both for the films that were made and for the unapologetic glamour of the people who made them. To me, the 30s and the 40s will always be the Golden Age of film because that was a time when actors and actresses felt no shame in looking good and living lives that literally seemed to be larger-than-life.
Joan Fontaine was one of the most beautiful actresses of the Golden Age, as well as one of the most talented. She was also one of my personal favorites. Whether she was playing the second Mrs. de Winter in Rebecca or a frightened wife in Suspicion, Joan Fontaine was a vibrant force on-screen. Off-screen, she was best known for a long-running feud with her older sister, Olivia De Havilland.
Joan Fontaine passed away on December 15th, at the age of 96. She was one of the last remaining stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Tom Laughlin was an actor who wasn’t happy with the roles he was getting in mainstream films. He was a filmmaker who wasn’t happy with the way that the Hollywood establishment treated his films. The same can be said about a lot of filmmakers and a lot of actors over the years. The difference between them and Tom Laughlin is that Laughlin actually did something about it.
In 1971, Tom Laughlin produced, wrote, directed, and starred in a film called Billy Jack. Laughlin played Billy Jack, an American Navajo who is also a former Green Beret, a veteran of the Viet Nam War, a master of the martial arts, and the self-appointed defender of the Freedom School. When small town bigots and other assorted fascists try to destroy the Freedom School, Billy responds by kicking ass and reciting platitudes.
When the mainstream studios showed that they had no idea what to do with an anti-establishment film like Billy Jack, Laughlin released (and subsequently) re-released it himself. Billy Jack ended up making more than 40 million dollars and changed the film industry forever.
Laughlin went on to produce, direct, and write two sequels and an unrelated film called The Master Gunfighter. He also ran for President a few times but was never elected. (However, he did get to play a Senator in Billy Jack Goes To Washington.)
He died at the age of 82 on December 12th.
And finally, Peter O’Toole. How does one sum up Peter O’Toole in just a few sentences? As an actor, he appeared in everything from Lawrence of Arabia to Caligula to For Greater Glory. He was great in good films and good in bad films and he had a unique screen presence that no other actor will ever be able to duplicate. While it’s true that O’Toole had retired from acting in 2012 (and he was obviously frail in films like For Greater Glory and Venus), it’s still hard to believe that such a bigger-than-life character has passed away.
While there’s so much that can be written about Peter O’Toole’s life, career, and hell-raising reputation, I’m going to instead suggest that you watch Becket and The Lion In Winter and then wonder how Peter O’Toole could end his career with 8 Oscar nominations but no wins.
Peter O’Toole died on December 14th after a long illness. He was 81 years old.
To Peter, Tom, Joan — rest in peace. And thank you for the movies and the memories.
Ghosts of Christmas Past #15: On the 2nd Day of Christmas (dir by James Frawley)
So, you knew this was going to happen.
With it being the holiday season and me sharing whatever old holiday shows that I can find on YouTube and Hulu, you knew that I was going to eventually end up sharing a Lifetime movie.
But you know what?
I love Lifetime. Lifetime makes me happy and Christmas is all about being happy!
Anyway, today’s Ghost of Christmas Past is On The 2nd Day Of Christmas, a 1997 made-for-tv movie in which a thief played by Mary Stuart Masterson is caught trying to steal at a department store. Because the holidays are so close (oh, just go with it), security guard Bert (Mark Ruffalo) agrees to be responsible for both Masterson and her niece. Romance follows.
Okay, so it’s kind of a silly movie but it’s a Christmas movie so it’s supposed to be kind of silly. Plus, Mark Ruffalo is so cute in this film!
44 Days of Paranoia #25: Chinatown (dir by Roman Polanski)
Our latest entry into the 44 Days of Paranoia is a dark masterpiece. Based on a script by Robert Towne, directed by Roman Polanski, and starring Jack Nicholson, 1974’s Chinatown is one of the greatest films ever made.
Chinatown takes place in 1940s Los Angeles. Private Investigator Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is hired by a woman (Diane Ladd) who claims that her name is Evelyn Mulwray. She wants Gittes to follow her husband, Hollis, and discover whether he’s having an affair. Gittes gets some pictures of Hollis with a young woman (Belinda Palmer) and hands them over to Evelyn.
The next day, the pictures are published on the front page of the newspaper and Gittes is confronted by another woman (Faye Dunaway) who explains that she — and not the woman who hired him — is the actual Evelyn Mulwray. Gittes then learns that Hollis has turned up dead, drowned in a reservoir.
Gittes suspects that Hollis was murdered and launches his own investigation. This eventually leads Jake to Hollis’s former business partner, Noah Cross (John Huston). Noah also happens to be the father of Evelyn and he offers double Gittes’s fee if Gittes will track down Hollis’s younger girlfriend.
As his investigation continues, Gittes discovers that Hollis’s murder was connected to both the continued growth of Los Angeles as a city and a truly unspeakable act that occurred several years in the past. Nobody, it turns out, is what he or she originally appears to be. To say anything else about the plot would be unfair to anyone who hasn’t seen Chinatown before.
Since I first started reviewing films for this site, one of the things that I’ve discovered is that it’s actually easier to review a bad film than a good film. It’s easier to be snarky and cynical about the latest film from Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich than it is to explain why a film works. There’s a famous saying about pornography: “I don’t know what it is but I know it when I see it,” and sometimes that’s the way I feel whenever it comes time to try to review a great film.
Consider Chinatown. At its heart, Chinatown is an homage to the old film noirs of the 40s and 50s. Now, I have to admit that I’ve lost track of how many noir homages I’ve seen. It seems like every director has to make at least one hard-boiled, morally ambiguous detective film. Chinatown has all of the familiar elements — the hero is a private investigator, Evelyn Mulwray initially appears to be a classic femme fatale, the dialogue is appropriately cynical, and the plot is full of twist and turns. Even the film’s theme of political conspiracy serves to remind us that most noirs used their detective stories as a way to explore the hidden underbelly of American society.
And yet, with Chinatown, Polanski, Nicholson, Towne, and producer Robert Evans took all of those familiar elements and used them to create one of the greatest films ever made.
Why is Chinatown such a great film?
Some of the credit has to go to Jack Nicholson who, in the role of Jake Gittes, gives perhaps his best performance. As I mentioned above, Gittes is, in many ways, a stock character but Nicholson brings so much nuance and depth to the role that it doesn’t matter. Nicholson’s trademark cynicism and sarcasm are both to be found here but he also brings a cocky recklessness to the role. Gittes is such a charismatic and likable hero and so confident in himself that it makes the film’s ending all the more shocking.
As good as Nicholson is, he’s matched at every turn by John Huston’s Noah Cross. Noah Cross is one of the most vile characters to ever appear on-screen, which is why Huston’s rather courtly performance is all the more disturbing. When Gittes confronts Noah about the worst of his many crimes, Cross simply responds that a man is never sure what he’s capable of until he does it. Huston delivery of the lines leave us with little doubt that Noah believes every word of what he’s just said.
In the end, though, most of the credit has to go to Roman Polanski’s direction and Robert Towne’s script. Towne’s script provides a genuinely challenging and thought-provoking mystery, while Polanski’s stylish direction keeps the view continually off-balance and unsure of who is telling the truth. Reportedly, Polanski and Towne had a contentious relationship, with Polanski changing the ending of Towne’s script to make the film much more downbeat. In the end, Polanski made the right choice. The film ends the only way that it possibly could.
Or, to quote the famous line: “It’s Chinatown.”
Other Entries In The 44 Days of Paranoia
- Clonus
- Executive Action
- Winter Kills
- Interview With The Assassin
- The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald
- JFK
- Beyond The Doors
- Three Days of the Condor
- They Saved Hitler’s Brain
- The Intruder
- Police, Adjective
- Burn After Reading
- Quiz Show
- Flying Blind
- God Told Me To
- Wag the Dog
- Cheaters
- Scream and Scream Again
- Capricorn One
- Seven Days In May
- Broken City
- Suddenly
- Pickup on South Street
- The Informer
Ghosts of Christmas Past #14: Dave Foley’s The True Meaning of Christmas Specials
I came across tonight’s Ghost of Christmas Past while I was doing a search on Christmas specials that have been posted to YouTube. Apparently, this is a Canadian show that aired way back in 2002.
And, watching it, I could really tell that was the truth. This show is not only very Canadian but it’s very 2002 and as well. Fortunately, while I can pretty much do without 2002, I happen to love Canada.
Movie Teaser: Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar”
Having rescued Batman from the Schumacher age and assisting in the full on destruction of Metropolis, Christopher Nolan has reached an interesting point in his life. He can now walk up on stage, grab a microphone, mutter the words “I’m filming a movie.” and have tons of fans (like myself) lose themselves like swooning chickens.
Christopher and Jonathan Nolan are dreaming about the stars. And with a dash of what I think (what I hope) is Zimmer playing in the background, he tells us absolutely nothing. The gaul! The tease! It’s the movie watcher’s equivalent of seeing a bare expanse of leg exposed on someone walking in a sleek black dress. Or perhaps the equivalent of Beyonce’s album drop, only with a movie? Either way, how dare they leave me drooling like a Pavlovian mutt.
So, what do we know about Interstellar? Well, that his brother is on board, and David Goyer is nowhere to be seen, Nolan could be giving us something just a little different – or rather more along the lines of Inception. I’m one of the fans who feels he actually does much better when working with Jonathan and maybe this is good overall. Now that he’s done with everything Batman, he can focus on telling other stories.
I’m just hoping those stories aren’t like Insomnia.
And I’m hoping they’re better edited than The Dark Knight.
Interstellar, on the surface looks like it has something to do with space travel (stating the more than obvious fact), but this feels more like October Sky to me. We have Matthew McConaughey talking about how we’ve lost our way in being explorers and pioneers and the film suggests some kind of return to that. Of course, this is just a teaser, and we really won’t know the full details until the full trailer appears (which for all we know, could have aliens in it).
The thing that stands out on all of this is what isn’t easily noticed. Interstellar will be the first film that Nolan has done since Following where Cinematographer Wally Pfister wasn’t on board. This is akin to the Coens not using Roger Deakins (which is exactly the case with Inside Llewyn Davis). Visually, this could be a different film as Instellar’s Cinematographer is Hoyte Van Hoytema, who was responsible for Her, Let the Right One In and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Very interesting, indeed.
Interstellar premieres in theatres next year.
Oh, and here are some swooning chickens, for added effect.
Ghosts of Christmas Past #13: Dragnet 2.7 “The Big .22 Rifle For Christmas”
Today’s Ghost of Christmas Past was originally broadcast in 1952 and it’s certainly a lot more serious than anything that The Brady Bunch ever had to deal with.
In this episode of the early police procedural Dragnet, two cops search for two young boys who have disappeared on Christmas. Ominously, one of the boys has received a present — a .22 caliber rifle.
The Big .22 Rifle For Christmas was originally broadcast on December 18th, 1952 and it remains effective even 60 years later.
Through the Shattered Lens 