Daily Archives: May 24, 2008

Uwe Boll Talks Future Projects

Amusements, Interviews

Uwe Boll is a filmmaking machine. In the shadow of the turbulent theatrical release of his latest flick, the videogame adaptation Postal, he has a couple more flicks on the horizon for this year — maybe two, maybe three, maybe four. The tally should definitely include, however, the horror movie Seed (which Boll previously lectured me on here, saying that under U.S. law if one survives three executions they have to be set free) and Boll’s Vietnam war flick, 1968 Tunnel Rats (yes, that’s the actual name of the movie). I interviewed him recently, and these are some more of the odds and ends:

Brent Simon: Running over a list of your future projects, what’s set to see release next, after Postal?

Uwe Boll: Yeah, Seed and 1968 Tunnel Rats, the Vietnam war movie, are both done. Seed will be a direct-to-DVD movie only, coming out unrated. We didn’t get an R rating so I dropped the idea for a theatrical release, because I don’t want to cut it. I think it only works if it’s so hard, how it is. It will be out later this year. And 1968 Tunnel Rats, we tried to get a theatrical release going — it’s a very intense, bitter war movie. And I think it turned out very good because all the young actors went to South African boot camp before we shot, and it wasn’t a boot camp like a film boot camp or something, it was real mercenaries who had just fought in Congo. And they took our actors into the jungle for 10 days and they were all, like, completely freaked out.

BS: Err, wait — are you sure this wasn’t Tropic Thunder?

UB: No, it was not fake. This paid off, because in a way the guys were really mentally trashed, and then we started shooting. The movie is very horrific, and for the actors it was hard, because when you go around the corner there’s a booby-trap with a grenade or there are snakes and spiders and trap-doors where you can fall down, and tunnels you can get drawn (into) and get flooded with water and gas and everything. So it was very hard for these actors to do this movie, and the boot camp was unbelievably important to bring everyone into character. I think it’s a very intense war movie that shows you never win in a war — even if you survive, you lose. I think this comes across.

The Promotion

Film Reviews

Based on a simple plot description, it sounds, of course, like another “down-market,” slapstick-laden comedy — a movie perhaps destined to play as part of a late-night, cable TV double feature with 2006’s drab Employee of the Month, which starred Jessica Simpson as the mutual object of affection for a pair of feuding retail warehouse workers played by Dane Cook and Dax Shepard. But The Promotion, in which two assistant managers of a supermarket chain vie for the position of manager at a newly constructed store in a hip area of Chicago, is — pleasantly, if to its own potential commercial detriment — the exact opposite of the overly demonstrative goofball comedy that it easily could have been, especially if handed over to the likes of a director like Fred Wolf (Strange Wilderness) or Steven Brill (Drillbit Taylor).

Previously titled Quebec, it ignores farcical broadsides, shots to the groin and contrived dashes through aisles of precariously balanced glass bottles in favor of swallowed awkwardness and lingering customer service issues, and the result is probably one of the most low-fi movies about masculine competitiveness and existential crisis ever put to film. The feature directorial debut of Steve Conrad, the writer of The Weather Man and The Pursuit of Happyness, The Promotion is about both the momentary awakening and eventual, shrugging receding of an alpha impulse in two otherwise beta males.

The story centers on Doug (Seann William Scott) and his young wife Jen (Jenna Fischer), a nurse, who share an apartment with paper-thin walls, and all the frustration that brings. Doug is the ranking assistant manager at a nearby grocery store, and his boss (Fred Armisen) seems to agree that he’s a shoe-in for the head spot at a new location. But when the slightly older Richard (John C. Reilly) arrives, new to the area with his family, from Canada, those odds take a hit. Subtle jockeying and gamesmanship ensue, with each man trying to impress the company’s board while not seeming to totally denigrate his competition.

As his previous writing credits suggest, Conrad has a certain way with masculine malaise. Here, Doug and Richard are each in their own way felled by pride, yet the movie as a whole takes just about every inwardly held expectation one might have about the concept and subverts it. This means no elaborate, unrealistic schemes of sabotage, no over-the-top physical comedy. Conrad instead parcels out a number of outlying character details which at first seem to be bluffs designed to give Doug and Richard some measure of false insight and confidence over the other. There’s also a shrewd sense of detail; Doug bemoans being a “short-sleever” for life, so Jen’s gift of long-sleeve dress shirts favored by more senior management triggers a quiet tidal wave of guilt over his lie to her that he’s already received the promotion. Everything here is perfectly to scale, and the fibs and actions both guys make and take have realistic consequences.

The Promotion isn’t necessarily for all tastes, but it deepens as it keeps unfolding, and never stops finding small and meaningful ways to surprise its audience. In a summer of explosions and desultory set pieces, its quiet grappling is a welcome, witty diversion. (The Weinstein Company/Dimension, R, 86 minutes)

Pre-Code Cinema Wows, in Multiple Senses

Film Reviews, Musings

I took in some pre-code cinema at the Egyptian Theatre last night, and it was amazing, in the multiple senses of the word. The very unfocused, less-than-thrilling documentary Why Be Good? Sexuality and Censorship in Early Cinema, executive produced by Hugh Hefner and directed by Elaina Archer, kicked off the triple-feature. Though it has the advantage of brevity, its problem (well, one of them, at any rate) is that it never can figure out its point of entry to the era. Is it about the trailblazing leading ladies of the time (Mary Pickford, Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich, Louise Brooks, Mae West, Greta Garbo), and their rise, or plight? Is it about the formation of United Artists? Is it about the Hays Production code, and the years leading up to it? Archer is never quite sure, and the result is manic and messy, though inclusive of some incidentally fascinating interview clips, particularly from the outspoken Brooks. There’s a truly great documentary waiting to be made about this era; this isn’t it, though.

Thankfully the pre-code films themselves were much more rewarding. Frank Capra’s Forbidden, from 1932, is a crisply plotted, beautifully acted melodrama starring Barbara Stanwyck as Lulu Smith, a small town librarian who vacations to Havana, meets cute with a mysterious man named Bob Grover (Adolphe Menjou), continues their affair once they return Stateside, moves to the big city and then discovers that he’s a married man. Years pass, during which she has a secret love child. All the while, hard-charging newspaperman Al Holland (Ralph Bellamy) keeps wooing Lulu, even as he rises the editorial ranks and tries to expose what he suspects, but can’t yet prove, is Grover’s hypocrisy.

If there’s a slight failing here, it’s perhaps that the film never explicitly deals with the lead duo’s age difference (Stanwyck is 17 years Menjou’s junior), which seems a bit weird, or something that would at least inform and color Lulu’s stand-by-your-man mentality. There are a few slight tonal swings here, but the dialogue — by Jo Swerling, from a script co-written with Capra — is whipsmart and the performances top-shelf engaging. It’s a credit to the movie that you see the light, vibrancy and substantiveness this secret relationship brings to both parties, even as you see how it degrades them. Streamlined and never for a moment less than entertaining, Forbidden is a little pre-code gem.

Cecil B. DeMille’s Madam Satan, meanwhile, is a topsy-turvy affair — part unhappy domestic dramedy, part musical, part bizarro disaster epic. Only DeMille’s second talkie, the 1930 flick is an unchecked mash-up in the manner of more than a few films of its era, when competing interests led to a shrugging, toss-everything-in philosophy. The first half of the film is a too-long bedroom farce focusing on wealthy Angela Brooks (Kay Johnson), as she patiently deals with her playboy husband Bob (Reginald Denny) and his rebrobate pal Jimmy Wade (Roland Young). Before long, Angela has had enough and decides to become a sexy siren to try to counteract Bob’s all-too-frequent extramarital flings.

This leads to the second half of Madam Satan, or the film within the film — a masked costume ball (Eyes Wide Shut, anyone?), set on a zeppelin, that eventually culminates in a huge air
disaster. Powered by art deco affectation, date auctions for the costumed ladies and strange, surreal musical numbers (an ode to electricity and oil, starring Mr. Electro?), DeMille goes balls-out. As men go ga-ga over her, Angela sort of wins Bob back over. The supporting performances here are the best; Young’s dithering comic timing is sparkling, and Lillian Roth, as Bob’s flame Trixie, gives a fun little spitfire turn. Madam Satan sags early, and often, truth be told, but it’s a weird, nutty and eminently discussable artifact. Neither Forbidden (Columbia, unrated, 83 minutes), to which I believe Sony owns the rights, nor Madam Satan (Warner Bros., unrated, 116 minutes) is yet available on DVD, so if interested keep one’s eyes peeled for future repertory screenings.