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A Communal Life in Film, Examined

Daily Archives: June 28, 2006

Superman: The Ultimate Max Fleischer Cartoon Collection

What’s
the measure of a blockbuster-in-waiting? Well, these days it means not
just a movie itself, but a flooded market of ancillary and catalogue
product, in addition to all the more obvious promotional tie-ins. Ergo,
on the eve of Bryan Singer’s big-screen re-imagining, witness Superman: The Ultimate Max Fleischer Cartoon Collection.

Fleischer
Studios — later called Famous Studios after being acquired by Paramount
— produced 17 Superman cartoons from 1941 to ’43, and these ran in
front of a variety of feature film engagements during that time. In
these days, Superman was still a relatively new character, having been
created in a 1938 Action Comics tome from Jerry Siegel and Joe
Shuster. Max and Dave Fleischer were contracted for the work, and many
of the iconic phrases associated with the Man of Steel (including,
“Look, up in the sky!” and “Faster than a speeding bullet…”) were
birthed from these shorts. Superman: The Ultimate Max Fleischer Cartoon Collection brings together this entire canon, certainly groundbreaking for its time, and still a treat for fans of animation history.

With titles like “The Bulleteers,” “The Mechanical Monsters” and
“The Japoteurs,” these shorts ran six to seven minutes apiece, and
featured Clayton “Bud” Collyer as the voice of Clark Kent and Superman,
Joan Alexander as the voice of Lois Lane and Jackson Beck as the
strips’ narrator. Each is braced with matted background paintings, and
brimming with colorful, often fiery action sequences in which Superman
consistently rescues Lois and/or the citizenry of Metropolis or
Manhattan (the setting had yet to be fully finalized). “The Magnetic
Telescope” finds Superman coping with the fallout from a collision of
comets that results from an overeager scientist, while “Terror on the
Midway” finds him doing battle with a couple of panthers and a gigantic
ape — a definite, winking stand-in for King Kong. Other shorts take
maniacal human villains as their antagonists, including “Electric
Earthquake,” in which a Native American scientist with an underwater
laboratory threatens to destroy Manhattan unless it’s returned to his
people. The plots are straightforward, and there’s not much in the way
of nuance, but completists will appreciate some of the gaps this fills
in.

DVD special features for the program, which is presented on a single
disc in 1.33:1 full screen in a regular Amray case, include a nice
array of retrospective material. First off, though, is the transfer;
though imported from original 35mm prints and negatives, and thus a
vast improvement over any VHS bootlegs floating around out there, the
picture is tinted and beset with fairly consistent grain. Additionally,
the audio is frequently tinny, sounding like it’s coming through a wet
cardboard box. Ultimately, this won’t be enough to dissuade
super-minded collectors from adding Superman: The Ultimate Max Fleischer Cartoon Collection to their haul, nor necessarily should it be, but for the casual fan it is worth mentioning.

What helps mitigate these shortcomings is the care put into the
supplemental features. A foldout insert booklet provides plenty of
contextual background on the series, while the DVD itself includes a
synopsis of each cartoon with facts and trivia from author Ross May and
Super-fan Steve Younis. There are also bios of the voice talent, a
two-minute trailer for the Superman live-action serials from later in
the 1940s, a four-and-a-half-minute wartime parody of the series from
Warner Bros. entitled Snafuperman, employing their Private
Snafu character, and a phone interview with Joan Alexander in which she
reveals that she had to slyly re-audition for the part of Lois Lane
after capricious underwriters gave her the boot the first time around.
Why, Superman himself would appreciate that initiative! C+ (Movies) B- (Disc)

LAFF: Islander and Swedish Auto

Forget
the parties, desperate schmoozing and contrived photo opps — one of the
greatest things about film festivals is the sympathetic audience.
Whereas flash, vim and high concept ideas frequently overwhelm general
audience moviegoers, those devoted film fans attending festivals around
the United States often get to experience more recognizably down-tempo
and innately relatable fare. This is certainly true of much of the fare
at the ongoing 2006 Los Angeles Film Festival, including several
narrative films in competition for the Target Filmmaker Award, which
carries a cash prize of a cool $50,000.

First up is Islander,
directed and co-written by rising talent Ian McCrudden and starring
fellow co-writer Thomas Hildreth, Amy Jo Johnson, Ron Canada and Boogie Nights’ Philip Baker Hall in a
key supporting role. Set in a tight-knit Maine coastal community whose
lobster industry is drying up and causing all sorts of tensions, the
movie centers on irascible family man Eben Cole, whose aggressive
protection of territorial fishing boundaries against mainland
interlopers yields unfortunately life-changing results. Returning to
the island after an absence of several years, Eben finds himself a
pariah, as well as a virtual stranger to his daughter Sara, whom
ex-wife Cheryl (Johnson) has cut off all contact with. What we see,
though, is a changed and much more pensive man, even though Cheryl has
moved in with Jimmy (Mark Kiely), a former colleague of Eben’s.
Reluctant to lose his family and start anew elsewhere, Eben must fight
to reestablish a claim to the only life he has ever known, even if the
mooring of that life appears to be hopelessly eroding.

Islander is just a bit obviously plotted and overcooked early
on — in its eagerness to set the scene, every interaction is
emotionally charged — but you can veritably taste the salt
water air of the setting, courtesy of cinematographer Dan Coplan’s
beautiful blue-grey palette and composer Billy Mallery’s gentle,
evocative score. Fed by McCrudden and Coplan’s melancholic close-ups
and some quite fine ensemble acting, the movie only deepens as it
progresses. Hildreth in particular — a dead ringer for a more mature
Skeet Ulrich, if ever there’s a need for a Chill Factor sequel
— is a revelation, proof that there’s leading man talent in many an
actor resigned to supporting character roles. In charting Eben’s
struggle to reclaim what he has lost, Islander indulges a
quietude not frequently seen in much modern studio product, and
consequently blossoms into a stirringly nostalgic tale of small town
Americana.

Also playing in narrative competition is writer-director Derek Sieg’s Swedish Auto, starring erstwhile Winona Ryder boy-toy Lukas Haas and January Jones (The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada).
A muted mood piece full of busted, quiet detail, the film tells the
story of shy, rural Virginia mechanic Carter (Haas), who spends his
days fixing Saabs and Volvos and his nights shadowing beautiful college
student violinist Ann (Brianne Davis), so entranced by her music is he.
Before the movie can fully explore this intriguing blue collar/white
collar dichotomy, though, we find out that someone’s also following Carter, as it turns out: Darla (Jones), the pretty waitress from the local burger joint.

These cosmically matched voyeurs enter into a delicate courtship
dance, exchanging shy smiles whose deeper meaning we’re left to read
into by ourselves. Jones, a real looker who caught her big break in American Wedding, shows promise here in a restrained role that’s underwritten seemingly as an act of artistic artifice, but Swedish Auto
is still a bit too reticent for its own good, despite its genuinely
rooted sense of place. It’s the backhanded definition of a festival
film, which is to say imbued with beautifully reserved visuals and
thoughtful performances, but not necessarily enough native, realistic
drama.

The 2006 Los Angeles Film Festival is spread out at 11 different
Westwood venues, all within walking distance of each other, and spans a
vast spectrum of moviemaking in its selections, from intimate indies
and “dark wave” guilty pleasures to a variety of special events. For
more information on the films above, as well as others in the festival, visit the LA Film Festival’s semi-eponymous web site by clicking here. More to follow throughout the week…

Superman Returns

Bryan Singer, who
brought deep and enriching allegorical underpinnings to the X-Men franchise, abandoned that series
to rescue Warner Bros.’ foundering attempts to rejuvenate the character of
Superman. His long-awaited efforts finally take to the screen in the form of Superman Returns, a movie that swings
heartily for the epochal fences.

Set after a five-year absence from Earth during which he’s
traveled to the destroyed remains of his home planet, the film finds Superman
(newcomer Brandon Routh) returning to Metropolis and comfortable margins of his
meek alter ego, newspaperman Clark Kent, where it seems only cub photographer
Jimmy Olsen (Sam Huntington) has really noticed Clark’s absence. Superman’s
one-time love, hard-charging reporter Lois Lane
(Kate Bosworth), has taken up with Richard White (James Marsden), the nephew of
Daily Planet editor Perry White
(Frank Langella). She’s also won a Pulitzer Prize for an editorial entitled
“Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman,” but the biggest rub for Superman is that
she has a son, Jason (Tristan Lake Leabu).

After Superman boldly announces his return with the
theatrical rescue of a compromised shuttle launch, he sets about zipping to and
fro and taking care of some of the little stuff — pettier crimes like bank
heists, and averted natural disasters and the like. Unfortunately, former
nemesis Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey, playing the less-is-more card until he’s
truly required to chew scenery) was paroled since Superman failed to show up to
testify at his trial (!), and his discovery of Superman’s “Fortress of
Solitude” and its intergalactic crystals has given him the idea of drowning
existent coastlines and creating a super-continent, all to drive up property
value. Naturally Superman, unlike The Big
Lebowski’s Dude, will not abide.

Routh acquits himself nicely in the title role, even if his
characterization is for the most part an earnestly square, more finely groomed
imitation of Christopher Reeve’s work. As Lex Luthor, Spacey is granted one
deliciously maniacal scene, but otherwise works in tones of (relatively) muted
archness, leaving most of the best lines to cohort Kitty Kowalski (Parker
Posey), who begins to entertain doubts about her complicity in the plot after
meeting Superman in a contrived rescue. The work of Bosworth, however, is much
more problematic. A serviceable actress in the right parts, she comes across
here as too far young and over her head, and has none of the edge or convincing
aplomb of Margot Kidder’s iteration of the character.

One of the things that made last summer’s Batman Begins so interesting — even if
its action-fueled finale was a case of sludgy backsliding — was the manner in
which it answered origin questions big and small, but also used these details
to drive the story forward in a fresh and organic way. Superman Returns, by contrast, has little of this type of
innovation going for it. Even for audiences who haven’t fetishistically
revisited Richard Donner’s 1978 original, significant portions of this movie
may feel like a fevered reset of the character’s mythology, and not just
because swatches of the late Marlon Brando’s narration as Superman’s father
Jor-El are used herein.

X-Men 2 — have at the center of their movie a suitably thorny
interpersonal hurdle in the form of Lois’ romantic entanglement and son, but
the eventuality of this strand is fairly obvious from its introduction, and not
just because Richard, apropos of nothing, awkwardly intones to Clark upon first
meeting him, “No matter how close I get to her, that woman is always a mystery to me.” Trading in the
same sort of elegance and high-stakes emotionalism that made his work on the X-Men franchise so enthralling,
everything here seems stretched like taffy. When a big interpersonal reveal
comes, we’re still more than an hour away from the finish line; when disaster
for Metropolis is averted, 50 minutes; when Superman plummets to the ground in
a moment of sacrificial grace and glory, 20 minutes.

The film, too, is hamstrung by a few nagging incongruities,
whether it’s Clark seeing Lois off in a cab, immediately donning his Superman
get-up and arriving at her home after
her commute, or Lois taking Jason with her when she decides to snoop around
Lex’s hideout, a massive boat. Brass tacks: the film feels less essential than
either of the first two Spider-Man
and X-Men films, and even Batman Begins. For all its flash, Superman Returns is a great deal too
long — particularly its first hour, which could stand to be thoroughly
collapsed — and it feels all the more so because it comes off “merely” as a
state-of-the-art re-up for a new generation rather than a vital
contextualization or rebirth of the character.

What somewhat saves Superman
Returns, of course, is its often dazzling technical proficiency. When you
see a movie of this ilk you want to see some great action scenes and feats of
derring-do, and those promises are for the most part delivered upon. From Guy
Hendrix Dyas’ superlative production design and the smoothly integrated
airborne sequences to John Williams’ stirringly iconic theme and composer John
Ottman’s fine work as well, the film never for a moment comes across as less
than a top-notch affair. Singer, meanwhile, can craft quiet scenes as well as
energetic action bits, but it’s only the movie’s highly touted
bullet-to-the-eye sequence — probably the finest and most instantly classic
single CGI shot since the original bullet-time work of The Matrix — that really sticks with you.

In the end, Superman
Returns’ success relates somewhat to one’s level of expectation. Measured
against the relatively high bars of other recent superhero fare, it feels
uncomfortably familiar. For those looking for a slice of high-flying
entertainment, however, it certainly suffices. (Warner
Bros., PG-13, 156 mins.)

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