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Shared Darkness

A Communal Life in Film, Examined

Daily Archives: July 16, 2008

GOP Rewards Big Talkers

Public approval of Congress may be at shoestring levels, but the House
Republican Conference has found at least one way to boost morale among
members — give them “spirit awards” for actually speaking on the floor. Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, vice chairwoman of the Republican caucus, organized an
awards ceremony last week to honor members who expelled the most CO2 on
the subject of energy; each of the seven honorees received a commemorative oil can.

“It’s not a quart; it was like collectors’ memorabilia,” said an
impressed Rep. Joe Wilson, of South Carolina, who was not among last week’s winners. Those who
were: Georgia Reps. Phil Gingrey, Lynn A. Westmoreland and Tom Price;
Indiana Rep. Dan Burton; North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx; Ohio Rep.
Bob Latta; and Pennsylvania Rep. John E. Peterson. “I’ve never won an oil can before,” said Westmoreland. “It’s on my desk, absolutely.” Still, the practice has some Republicans scratching their heads. “The idea that people who are in the House of Representatives need to
give each other awards for talking bullshit, and that’s really what it
is,” one Republican member said before he trailed off in disbelief.
“What kind of a party is that?” For the full read, from Politico, click here.

Crap Comes Home After Studio Keep-Away

With increasing frequency, Hollywood studio publicists are asked to oversee convoluted games of keep-away.
These muddied-water campaigns of containment are designed to squeeze as
many dollars as possible from first-weekend moviegoers by nixing
advance screenings for critics and thereby delaying the collateral
damage. This past March, a couple of movies shrouded in mystery were the Weinstein Company’s comedy spoof Superhero Movie and 20th Century Fox’s Asian-flavored horror flick Shutter. Both are new to DVD this month, with respective July 8 and July 15 release dates, and the question that arises (besides perhaps, “Are you
desperate enough to rent either one of these titles?”) is, “Did the end-around on critics work?” The answer, in a word, is yes. Both
films opened in the $10 million range and went on to total domestic
grosses of just under $26 million — not bad for a couple of PG-13 rated
titles that cost next to nothing to make and even less to market. On DVD, Superhero Movie and Shutter are the kinds of
movies with front cover artwork that bypasses the glowing review from a
major (or even minor) critic in favor of big-letter “EXTENDED EDITION”
and “UNRATED” proclamations above the title, and a reminder of the
makers’ previous credits down below. Essentially, it’s all about dangling more
craptastic product in front of hungry genre fans, never mind any nuance or the individual merits of a film. For the full read on this phenomeon as it applies to these flicks, from FilmStew, click here.

Felon

Small business owner Wade Porter (Stephen Dorff) lives a modest life with his fiancée Laura (Marisol Nichols) and their three-year-old son. Everything changes in an instant, though, when he’s convicted of killing a man who breaks into his home. Sentenced to state prison, Wade ends up in a hellish facility overseen by a guard (Harold Perrineau) who encourages gladiatorial fights among the inmates. Though wanting to neither “fight or fornicate” (the two delightful options given by one inmate, in slightly saltier terms), Wade eventually yields to the former activity, in a paradoxical attempt to protect himself. When trouble mounts, his new cell-mate, John Smith, (Val Kilmer), a burly, goateed “lifer” with his own dark devastation, provides important guidance, all while ruminatively stroking his own tattoos.

Shot on location in New Mexico State Penitentiary, in hand-held, super-confessional close-up, and on color-saturated Super16 blown up to 35mm, Felon doesn’t have much of revelatory value to say about the nature of violence — indeed, its closing narration seems to endorse whatever-you-gotta-do means. The flimsy, cardboard-thin set-up is meant to only get Wade into prison (he cops to a murder charge since the fleeing culprit was technically no longer on his property?), and the setting is meant to only serve as an excuse for heavily tatted muscle-heads to use gang slang, prison acronyms and flip each other around in gritty, bare-knuckle fashion. See how that works? Still, in this regard, writer-director Ric Roman Waugh’s heavy background in stuntwork certainly pays off, as Felon, with its many boxers-and-sneakers brawls, rivals Eastern Promises in padding-free fisticuffs.

The chief problem is that, despite invested performances by Dorff and Kilmer, and after going to significant lengths to both establish a sense of claustrophobic realism and depict Wade as being punished by an unjust system, for not wanting to stoop to its calibrated levels of further dehumanization, Waugh chucks all this for a contrived, mad-dash finale that requires his protagonist bash in the brains of an “innocent” (a relative term here, I realize) guy to get the proper attention of higher-ups, and secure his release. Part cop-out, part simply bizarre, seemingly concessional flourish, it’s a weird ending for a film that otherwise decently captures the grimness of prison life, and how it corrodes even those ostensibly in charge. One hopes, at least, the stuntmen were well compensated. To view the film’s trailer, click here. (Stage 6 Films, R, 104 minutes)

Shutter

The remake of a same-named 2004 Thai film, enervated horror flick Shutter
tells the story of a young American couple vacationing in
Japan who cope with a vengeful ghost and try to unravel the mystery of
a woman they may or may not have hit with their car. Listless
performances, overly familiar visual iconography and unimaginative
set-ups render the movie worthy of nothing more than a shrug — even from the less demanding under-15 set for which it was chiefly designed.

Following their wedding, Jane (Rachael Taylor) and Ben Shaw (former Dawson’s Creek star Joshua Jackson, investing wholeheartedly in exactly
one emotion for each scene, and otherwise just letting his stubble shade
the characterization) head straight to Japan, their honeymoon doubling as a work
assignment for Ben, a fashion photographer. En route to Tokyo by car at
night, the pair suffer an accident on a snowy back road; Jane insists
they struck a woman. Plagued by both unnerving visions and spectral
distortions in photographs they’ve taken, Jane and Ben deduce the woman
to be Megumi (Megumi Okina, above right), a translator and former needy girlfriend
of Ben’s from a previous work stint in the country. More havoc ensues,
and Jane, already a bit grabby and needy, begins to wonder if Ben is
telling the full truth about the extent of his relationship with Megumi.

For a fleeting moment or two early on, Japanese director Masayuki
Ochiai (Infection) seems committed to at least crafting a movie with a
definitive sense of style, but a small handful of in-frame effects and
interesting compositions quickly give way to pedestrian framing and
desultory jump-scares. That the film’s signature moments of dread and shock come via another
pale-faced, wet, dark-haired girl — a figure of menace already roundly
skewered by the Scary Movie series, among others — is perhaps
unfortunate, but not an insurmountable impediment to tension. The
sociocultural isolation of the setting could be used to the story’s
advantage, to feed especially Jane’s sense of unease and
discombobulation. Instead, though, Luke Dawson’s script offers up lame set-ups (visits to
a psychic investigator and Megumi’s house) and perfunctory dialogue
that requires Jackson’s character shift back and forth in sympathy to
his new wife. As such, even the nominal twist in the film’s final third
feels tacked on, and silly.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Shutter comes presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, preserving the aspect ratio of its original theatrical presentation, along with Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio tracks in English, Spanish and French, and optional subtitles in English and Spanish. Kicking off a decent slate of supplemental material is an audio commentary track with Taylor, screenwriter Dawson and production executive Alex Sundell. Next up are nearly a dozen deleted and/or alternate scenes, including one in which Jane transforms into Megumi, and an alternate ending set at a mental hospital.

An eight-minute featurette about the Japanese’s beliefs about reikons, or souls, includes interviews with all of the principal cast members, as well as producer Roy Lee and a spirit photography expert who explains that the cultural phenomenon is the “religious expression of a quest to explain something that cannot be explained.” A nine-minute featurette addresses the cultural divide, and challenges and benefits of shooting on location in Japan, with Dawson characterizing Tokyo as a bizarro-world version of New York City, and talking with awe about women in uniform vacuuming the subway. Separate interviews with Dawson (five minutes) and director Ochiai (nine minutes) are also included, as well as a pair of short featurettes on spirit photography — one of which features instruction on how to mock up your own doctored ghostly photo, using PhotoShop or a similar photo editing program. Previews for Pathology and a direct-to-video sequel to Joy Ride are also included. D (Movie) B+ (Disc)

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