Daily Archives: August 7, 2006

On Creative Individuals in Name Only

Musings

Of
the many thrills that come from interviewing creative people —
variously, unknown, ascendant and at the top of their game — there’s
also the under-discussed flipside: talking with, 1) vapid young
“actors” (line-reciters is more like it) who have neither a sense of
film history nor an appreciation for their occupational good fortune
and, 2) perfectly genial writers and directors who are nonetheless so
relentlessly on script — occasionally reciting entire career-checking
passages verbatim from press notes no doubt spit-polished into
significance by some friendly faction in the dark wings — that you
realize they actually have less summary insight or thoughts about
several months or years of their own work than you do after 90 to 120
minutes with it.

The former are I suppose to be expected in a culture that so readily embraces the subsequent casts of The Real World and other MTV reality
show jetsam as bonafide celebrities. Who needs “craft,” after all, when
you can colorfully carouse and pontificate about your misguided
hook-ups on national television? That latter, though… whew, well those
are just the most depressing interviews. I was reflecting upon this
recently — and in particular an interview with the director of an
American independent film, with major stars, that released last year —
and it struck me doubly disheartening because it’s (generally) not like
these people are complete idiots.

No, they’re just folks who’ve lucked their way (or been born) into
the comfortable middle. And while they may nominally be decision-makers
or creators, they’re not really. They’re just industrious cogs in a
machine, functional advancers of agenda who speak in simple enough
sentences to delight those who are predisposed to automatically agree
with them. Ask them what any of it might mean, however, and you’ll find
an alarming vacuum of original thought or opinion.

I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

Released in 1997, I Know What You Did Last Summer had the heat and cachet of an adaptation of Lois Duncan’s teen-friendly novel by Scream
screenwriter Kevin Williamson, as well as the mushrooming star appeal
of Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jennifer Love Hewitt. (For the ladies,
there was also Ryan Phillippe and some kid named Freddie Prinze, Jr.,
who I’m now convinced was an aberrant, late ’90s collective
hallucination on the part of teenagers and Hollywood casting
directors.) After a $72 million domestic gross, its
rushed-into-production sequel attempted to urbanize things with the
addition of Mekhi Phifer and pop-singer-turned-reciter-of-words Brandy
Norwood, the result being diminished returns across the board.

the decidedly less buxom I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer,
arrives with a cast of unknowns, but definitely less of a creative thud
than one might expect. Still, the point is that the original I Know What You Did Last Summer
(which came out when one of this sequel’s costars, Torrey DeVitto was
13) wasn’t a movie predicated on twist or concept — it was a star
vehicle, albeit a collective and relatively minor one. This film
doesn’t have the dangled promise of any known cleavage — or much
cleavage at all, really — and as such will find a hard time
establishing any sort of commercial beachhead, even in the
straight-to-video market.

Distancing itself from the first two movies, I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer
finds its requisite group of teens pulling a July 4th prank based on
the urban legend of those characters. When things go wrong, though, and
a friend ends up dead, Amber (Brooke Nevin), Colby (David Paetkau), Zoe
(the aforementioned DeVitto), Roger (Seth Packard) and Lance (Ben
Easter) are devastated. Flash forward a year, when someone begins
stalking them and telling them they know about their dark, shared
secret.

Director Sylvain White utilizes a variety of in-camera cuts to up
the movie’s frenetic pacing, and though the angsty panic that this
flash technique induces eventually morphs into overpowering music-video
affectation, it’s at least a bit different than the sort of hopelessly
straightforward rendering one might expect. White is aided in this
regard by veteran cinematographer Stephen Katz (the original The Blues Brothers), who does a great job of evoking mood on a budget; it’s not at all a stretch to say that I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer
has the more mannered look and feel of a European film, and White and
Katz deploy an effective array of practical “trick shots” usually not
indulged in such a movie. At the same time, while I won’t spoil the
final revelatory twist, it does feel like a reach, and would drag the
franchise in the wrong direction if ever followed up upon in the same
vein.

Packaged in a regular Amray case, I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer
is presented in a solid, 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, with an
English language Dolby digital 5.1 audio track and a French language
Dolby surround track. (Optional English and French subtitles are also
available.) Special features include a feature-length audio-commentary
track in which director White details the movie’s cold Park City, Utah
shoot (which substitutes for summer in Colorado) and his attempts at
subtly tweaking genre expectation. There’s also a hearty, quite nice
27-minute making-of featurette which provides an array of on-set
footage and interviews with cast and crew, including veteran stuntman
Don Shanks (Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers), who plays the menacing, hook-wielding fisherman. C (Movie) B- (Disc)