Monthly Archives: December 2006

L.A. Weekly Film Critics Poll 2006

Ephemera, Interviews, Musings

The first annual L.A. Weekly film critics poll — in which I was asked to participate — has announced its results, based on your typical inverted-point scoring system, and the findings of course offer a fascinating look back at the year of 2006, and plenty of grist for the mill depending on whatever one wishes to argue.

First off, hearty props go out to the erudite Scott Foundas for the marshalling of effort and resources involved. It’s hard to believe it’s the first such undertaking on the part of the 800-pound gorilla that is the L.A. Weekly, but as a former writing, forever hard-charging editor-in-chief myself, I can sympathize with the extra amount of work and time it involves at a time of year that offers precious little breathing room.

Now, some fleeting, on-the-fly analysis: the Top 10 films are an interesting collection, and further proof, in case you needed it, that we film critcs are a wonkish bunch. As far as forward-looking awards prognostication, you can throw out half of the bunch — Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows, as well as Three Times, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, L’Enfant and David Lynch’s Inland Empire, which garnered more than five times as many mentions as Babel. You can unfortunately probably do the same for Paul Greengrass’ brilliant United 93; there’s simply too much old guard resistance to it amongst Academy Award voters, especially those residing in New York City.

Borat was an inspired inclusion at #9, and it was heartening — in its own special way — to see Dreamgirls place… drumroll, please… #66, with only two critical mentions. This reinforces the notion that the movie, its crowd-pleasing elements notwithstanding, is chiefly a collection of performances (Jennifer Hudson’s strident belting, Eddie Murphy’s “James Brown in a hot-tub,” etc.) in search of some believable hurt or love, particularly in its third act.

Best Actor was a tie between Ryan Gosling (Half Nelson) and Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat). Best Actress was Helen Mirren in a runaway, though Laura Dern polled surprisingly strong for Inland Empire, with twice as many tallied points as the next runner-up, Judi Dench (Notes on a Scandal). Best Supporting Actor went to Jackie Earle Haley for Little Children and, in another tie, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu‘s Luminita Gheorghiu and Half Nelson‘s Shareeka Epps placed even in points for Best Supporting Actress, though the former had one more ballot mention. In another great year for non-fiction films, in a vote I could scarcely agree with less, Darwin’s Nightmare took the nod for Best Documentary.

For a list of winners in the category of Best Film, click here, and then toggle around to the listings for the other categories; for my ballot of the moment, click here.

All the King’s Men

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews, Politics

All the King’s Men
holds a special place in the heart for me, foremost because Robert Penn Warren’s
Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 novel was assigned reading in my 11th grade honors English
class. My teacher was a real battleaxe in all the classic, stereotypical
strokes — pretentious accent, imperious stare and a wardrobe consisting wholly of
browns and greys.

She announced with a certain dark relish the first week the
difficulty of securing an “A” in her class, and a nine-point grading scale on
quizzes and essays that made it mathematically impossible to attain a 100%
score on any given assignment bore out this assertion. I think this was
supposed to be a masterful stroke of motivation. My response, though — instead
of busting hump for one of the four quarterly “A”s she doled out the entire
year — was to put myself on announced autopilot. I could pull a “B,” which
would still rate out at a 4.0 for college transcripts, with ease, so why put forth an emotional
investment that would unduly darken my disposition when grades were all too
predictably meted out?

This mindset colored my effort, certainly, as I devoted more
time to both extracurricular activities and endeavors in other classes where I
was perhaps less naturally gifted or suited. (Translation: stupid math!) I
would sometimes lag behind a bit in assigned reading, and when we had in-class,
pop quiz, short-form essays I would dress up my deficiencies in florid style —
an extended Top 10 list, for instance, on the symbolism of green light in F.
Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
My teacher would sometimes cluck disapprovingly, but I always graded out well
enough to hold onto my “B,” and besides, I think she secretly appreciated the
novelty and creativity involved, maybe even begrudgingly respected my adherence
to formula, namely: tackle the big exams, but don’t sweat the small stuff.

All the King’s Men
was assigned reading in the fall, and with other commitments and interests (why hello, ladies…), I read enough to get the gist of it, did the awful but
obligatory perusing of Cliffs Notes,
and consulted with a few friends on the text. Toward the end of the year — the
last week of class, I believe it was — I saw my teacher after school one day,
and bragged/confessed that I hadn’t finished reading All the King’s Men, or even really reached its halfway point. She
ran the traditional smack about me “cheating myself,” but I assured her it
wasn’t laziness that waylaid me, but rather a busy schedule. I would finish it
over the summer, I told her, and tell her what I really thought next fall.

All of this brings us to Academy Award winner Steven
Zaillian’s film adaptation, which I’m certain helped at least a few thousand
kids skip out on a reading assignment this past fall, and will — during its
long life on DVD — help tens of thousands more. A ruminative, well designed
work about the death of innocence and the corrosive nature of power, the film
suffers a bit from a bumpy opening — its main point of entry and flashback into
the story — as well as some marble-mouthed dialogue, but is an otherwise solid
and engaging telling of Warren’s classic tale of political corruption and
personal distortion. It captures with perspicacity altered form — how
character, like a runaway river, bends to pressure and frequently takes the
path of least resistance.

For those who similarly abandoned high school assignments
and never again took up Warren’s swampy text — rooted in the real-life story of
the larger-than-life Huey P. Long — Sean Penn stars as Willie Stark, an
idealistic, small town Louisiana politician who gets drafted into a run for
governor as part of a vote-splitting scheme by Tiny Duffy (James Gandolfini),
but eventually starts connecting with the blue-collar people of the extremely
poor state. Newspaper reporter Jack Burden (Jude Law) is initially assigned to
cover him, but falls under his charismatic sway, and eventually goes to work
for Stark when he wins his gubernatorial bid. In labyrinthine fashion, this
reconnects Jack with childhood friends Adam and Anne Stanton (Mark Ruffalo and
Kate Winslet, respectively) — well-heeled children of a political dynasty — and
also puts him at odds with his former father figure and mentor, the
well-respected Judge Irwin (Anthony Hopkins). The political framework is used
to explore some of the more profound dilemmas of human existence — sin,
forgiveness, guilt, betrayal, romance and redemption.

With his guttural rumble and wild, oratorical
gesticulations, Penn is a scenery-chewing delight, but it’s all in service of
the story, and the rest of the legitimately all-star cast — a phrase frequently
deployed in erroneous fashion — is quite solid as well, particularly Hopkins,
Gandolfini and Patricia Clarkson. Zaillian, meanwhile, nails the pent-up pathos
of Stark, best captured in a scene between the at-odds Penn and Hopkins which
culminates in the line, “I go more in pain than in wrath.” If there’s a knock,
it’s that the movie is dipped in mood and gloom to such a degree that it
prevents modern mainstream audiences without a predisposition for political
cloak-and-dagger tales from quickly picking up on the more basic conflicts in
the movie.

Presented in an Amray case, All the King’s Men comes with a nice, 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen
transfer, buoyed by solid blacks are clear detail. There are no problems with
grain or edge enhancement. Audio comes in a Dolby Digital 5.1 track, with a
French language Dolby surround track also available, as well as optional English
and French subtitles. A smattering of featurettes kicks off the supplemental
fare, including a six-minute making-of clip-fest, comprised of chats with cast
and crew, as well as inimitable executive producer James Carville.

Next up is a 13-minute look at Warren’s
book, entitled “An American Classic,” as well as a 23-minute mini-doc on the
aforementioned Huey P. Long. These are edifying, invaluable inclusions, nicely rooting
the film in the history of the text and its non-fiction roots. A location featurette,
detailing the shooting locale of Louisiana,
rounds things out on this front, along with a 10-minute, more overt look at the
movie’s themes of corruption. Three deleted scenes, including an alternate
ending, clock in at more than 20 minutes, and provide much more shading and
depth for Stark, and the bureaucratic corruption he encounters and to which he eventually
succumbs. For those feeling a bit shortchanged at his diminishment of
character, a few answers lie herein. Oh, and yes, I did finish reading Warren’s book, and tell my teacher about it; I highly recommend it. Maybe I’ll send her a heads up on this film as well. B (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Living Death

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

Kristy Swanson used to be a looker, that’s for sure. But in her latest film, the passably stitched together if somewhat dubiously plotted psychological horror picture Living Death, she’s shot tightly to frame her in the most flattering light. The contours of the face and upper arms don’t frequently lie, though. It’s one of the things your mind occasionally wanders to during the movie, which otherwise trots through obligatory paces in its story of a philandering, vindictive wife and her psychotic, unhinged husband.

The story centers around Victor Harris (Greg Bryk), a twisted, trust-fund millionaire who’s used to getting what he wants — both in matters of finance and kinky sex. When we first meet him, he’s busy cheating on wife Elizabeth (Swanson) by putting the moves on a random skeezer and taking her… to his meticulously gloomy attic torture chamber. Her resultant crippling injury is settled by Victor’s dutiful lawyer Roman Arbogast (Josh Peace), who’s also carrying on an affair with Elizabeth. Together the two hatch a plan to knock Victor off, using an allegedly undetectable drug that paralyzes him. When Victor comes to in the morgue, however, and suffers a bunch of medical students poking at him, he’s understandably pissed off, and sets off on a campaign of brutal revenge.

That all of this leads to a climactic showdown in which Victor and Roman square off against one another, with Elizabeth rushing into the breach to get her piece of the action, is certainly fated, and not necessarily amazingly rendered in Leo Scherman’s story. But director Erin Berry works up a few good effects shots (arms being ripped from a torso, for instance), and smartly keeps his cast all on the same page regarding the tone of the material. (The medical students are especially funny, and nicely given a small bit of some fleshed-out dimensionality.) There’s nothing really too special here — this is your typical calling card-type film for the below-the-line and behind-the-scenes folks, and a quick payday for actors you mostly haven’t heard of — and the gore factor isn’t high enough for genre diehards, but for fans of Raising Cain who are irked that film never spawned a direct-to-video franchise, this one’s for you.

The film is presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, with an accompanying English language 5.1 Dolby digital soundtrack. Nicely, there’s a 21-minute making-of featurette, which includes jokey, good-natured, on-set interviews with the principal cast and a bit of behind-the-scenes material. The first seven minutes, though, consist of director Berry, who talks about the movie’s rootedness in real-life, and how the original script wasn’t as much of a revenge picture, but rather had a more sympathetic version of Victor. Berry then half-jokes that the character was reworked to incorporate more of his own personality traits, and to make him “a complete asswipe.” This segment is compelling in its differentiation from most stuffy interviews with would-be auteurs; Berry comes off as a bit smarmy, and not particularly erudite, but kind of funny and endearing nonetheless. C (Movie) B- (Disc)

The Simple Life 4

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

The Simple Life
launched in 2003, back when Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie were only
demi-celebrities, it was pitched with the tagline of, “They’re rich, they’re sexy
— they’re totally out of control.” The gist of the show, at least at its point
of initial conception and mass marketing, had less to do with celebration of one
(or two, depending on your scorecard) trollop’s obliviousness and excess, and
more with exploring the supposition, however tongue in cheek or slyly, that the
preposterously affluent were still faced with their own sets of problems. In pulling
these two down from the penthouse to the sidewalk, this was to be cast in stark
relief, and everyone could laugh along together and maybe even feel a bit
uplifted.

Distressingly, I’m not sure many people in the series’ target
audience picked up on the joke. Whatever the status — today, this fleeting
moment — of Hilton and Richie’s smile-for-the-cameras! friendship, they’ve
peeled off three small screen re-ups of the show, as well as all manner of
endorsement deals, pop albums, perfume scents, etcetera. They’re also both…
authors. Sigh.

What began as a goof has seemingly fed into if not outright inspired
a whole generation of tweens sporting low-rise sweatpants with “Juicy” emblazoned
on their asses, and women carrying around little frou-frou dogs in custom-made
purses. It needs to stop, as the fourth season DVD release of the series
confirms.

I’m certainly not above some good, old-fashioned, low-class
fun. Newlyweds was a dryly brilliant comedy,
and the recent re-up of VH-1’s Flavor of
Love was similarly inspired. (No, seriously.) Hilton and Richie’s act,
though, has run its course. After the third season’s “interning” bent (sans
berets and Lewinsky reenactments, alas), The
Simple Life 4 finds their “feud” spilling over the carefully groomed plastic
hedges of this thinly sketched concept, already stretched perilously thin.

The first episode opens at a coffee shop, where Hilton and
Richie exchange wan bitchery. Then, over the course of the next nine shows, the
pair whine, kvetch and fumble their way through assigned domestic duties in the
SoCal suburbs, naturally leaving disasters and unfinished tasks in their wake. Whereas
Jessica Simpson’s idiocy on Newlyweds
was at least somewhat endearing insofar as you can tell she’s definitely not in
on the joke, Hilton’s shenanigans too frequently come off as blithely cruel-hearted
— those of someone, well, spoiled and un-thoughtful. If Richie is less grating and deplorable, that’s hardly an accomplishment of the highest order. That the show doesn’t
incorporate cathartic and lasting, consequential comeuppance for in particular
Hilton is to its irredeemable detriment. Can we, as a society, make a collective New Year’s to start ignoring both these lasses?

All 10 episodes of The
Simple Life are presented in 1.33:1 full screen, spread across two discs,
and retailing for around $19.98. An English language Dolby 2.0 surround sound
audio track anchors the release aurally, and there are (unfortunately? blissfully?)
no supplemental special features. D (Series) C- (Disc)