Category Archives: Musings

Mission: Promotional Overkill

Musings

Ethan
Hunt could successfully pull off, trying to negotiate a full summer weekend
absent any knowledge of an impending $100 million-plus action flick. It used to
be that if you didn’t care much for movies, you could, with a little luck,
peaceably go about your business in happy obliviousness — basically avoid the
late night talk show dragnet and a couple nights of primetime television — and
not have to suffer the encroachment of Hollywood into your life. Tom Cruise,
however, is not the biggest movie star in the world for nothing. He has a little
film called Mission: Impossible III coming out. And by Jesus,
you’re going to know about it.

In 2006, this means all the usual blitz of television and radio advertising,
those aforementioned talk show appearances, countless print interviews,
entertainment newsmagazine footage and cross-promotional commercials (“DHL… the
official carrier of Mission: Impossible III”), but also the type of
ridiculous filler shows that litter our overpopulated cable television channels.
If you haven’t stumbled across two gems of this latter genus this past weekend —
Diary, on MTV, and Catering Impossible: M:i:III, on the Food
Channel — you really owe it to yourself to track them down and check them out,
for amusement’s sake.

MTV’s special episode of Diary (in which, yes, Cruise does intone the
series’ trademark line: “You think you know, but you have no idea…”)
finds the Top Gun star arriving at Van Nuys airport by private airplane
(one of the original aircraft from the historic Tuskegee fleet, he claims) and
then taking dreadlocked veejay Sway up for a spin by himself. Before that,
though, Cruise points out the plane’s name, “Kiss Me Kate,” and fetishistically
strokes its emblazoned moniker. Once back on solid ground, the duo ride
motorcycles at the Willow Springs International Raceway in nearby Rosamond,
California, where Sway eventually wipes out and eats asphalt.

The show includes plenty of Cruise’s trademark manic laughter and a sort of
weirdly frenzied masculine bon homie that’s entertaining in its utter
sincerity. But the runoff election for the apex of hilarity is a two-candidate
race between the highest-paid and most sustained, successful movie star of the
past quarter decade saying, in direct address confessional, “I’ve had a great
day with Sway, it’s been very memorable for me,” and, “Hey, Sway, I will fly and ride with you any day, man!” So…
might you say, Tom, he could be your wingman?

Really, it’s not for me to encourage, but there’s an absolutely great
mash-up of wicked double entendres waiting to be made and posted to YouTube.com
from this footage. Get cracking, wiseacres.

Catering Impossible: M:i:III, meanwhile, lets us in on the fact that
there were 7,140 pounds of meat served (to only 5,283 pounds of chicken) during
the film’s production, which spanned the globe from Los Angeles to Italy,
Shanghai and back again. And in case you were wondering how many cappuccinos a
tired movie crew might consume to help stave off Scientology “information
officers,” that number would be 22,312. That’s right, more money really
was spent on cappuccinos on M:i:III than you make in a year. Feel better?

Metropolitan

Film Reviews, Musings, Old Made New

I reviewed Criterion’s superb DVD release of this film earlier this year elsewhere, but I love it so that I want to touch upon it again here. A delightfully barbed comedy of manners, Whit Stillman’s witty, literate Metropolitan
is an undeniable high point of independent ‘90s cinema, one of those
movies I made a note — both mental and literal — to track down on DVD
when it finally saw release on the format. A pleasure, then, that
Criterion spearheaded the release with such a fine eye and attention to
detail, resulting in a fitting and long overdue celebration of this
1990 Oscar nominee for Best Original Screenplay.

A talky and
purposefully ostentatious vivisection of the particular ennui of
well-to-do youth, the film is set in New York City during a
Christmastime break of “not too long ago,” a hectic time that for our
young ensemble occasions all sorts of gala soirees at which they must
make appearances. With a “severe escort shortage,” scene newbie Tom
Townsend (Edward Clements) is drafted into action, joining, among
others, sharp-as-a-tack Nick Smith (Christopher Eigeman),
politico-in-training Charlie Black (Taylor Nichols), sensual Cynthia
McLean (Isabel Gillies) and the ostensible Molly Ringwald of the group
— a bit pretty, a bit dowdy — Audrey Rouget (Carolyn Farina). All sorts
of various crushes and cross-crushes exist, but the potentially jejune
is heavily counterbalanced with banter-filled talk of art, politics,
social criticism, activism and literature. Psychological perspicacity,
meanwhile, is achieved through the manner in which almost all the
characters put on small fronts over the course of the movie, and then
betray those in various, telling ways.

Stillman has described the script as “finishing started arguments that I lost,” and that truth lends Metropolitan
the weighted plausibility of to-scale conflict. The audience feels
invested in the silly problems of its subjects because Stillman
captures the particular fashion in which adolescents and
twentysomethings invest considerable psychological energy in group
mores and rules, and the highly punishable cost of breaking them. The
result is a highbrow film of, still, exceeding pleasure; you
literally bask in the all the glories and inanities of its oratorical
circle-eights, with Eigeman and Will Kempe — as the smarmy Rick Von
Sloneker, a young baron — in particular stealing the show. If the latter day films of director Wes Anderson
mean anything to you, check out their roots in Metropolitan, a gem of contemplation trumping limited means.

The Cinema of Hostility

Musings, Old Made New

Reviewing Hostel on DVD recently had me thinking further about cinema of hostility, actually, and not just within the horror genre. No, my mind later wandered to all things underworld (though this time, not of Kate Beckinsale in leather). For all the refashioned pop flair of Guy Ritchie and Matthew Vaughn’s recent films, no one captured underclass British antagonism, resentment and its criminal acting out better than Alan Clarke.

In his day, working with the late Clarke was a sort of rite of passage for intense, up-and-coming British actors. A singular talent, the filmmaker delved into psychological torture and bellicose narratives long before they were in vogue, and his raw, unsettling visions often felt like found screeds from under a dirty, upturned rock. Clarke’s television work for the anthology series Play for Today included Psy-Warriors and Beloved Enemy, but his three best known works all delved into the psyche of violent young males.

In the late 1970s, Clarke was hired by the BBC to make a television drama about life inside a juvenile detention center. Its evocative, one-word title: Scum. A grim and graphic indictment of the British borstal system, the program was so relentlessly brutal that the horrified BBC banned its broadcast indefinitely. In defiance, Clark and his producer, Clive Parsons, refashioned the film as a feature, and loosed it upon an unsuspecting public in 1979. In it, a young Ray Winstone (Sexy Beast, The Proposition) stars as Carlin, a juvenile thug rising to the top of an inhuman prison hierarchy amidst violence and sexual assault.

The ferocious Made in Britain, released in 1982, serves as an English forerunner to both Romper Stomper and American History X. For those who think Russell Crowe and Edward Norton have the market cornered on charismatic racists, Tim Roth debuts here as Trevor, an eloquent teenage skinhead whose random acts of sadism send him on a snarling spiral through the English justice system. Scripted by David Leland, the film is an unsparing portrait of youth fueled by hate and rage, and ruled by a swallowed depression and despair.

1988’s The Firm, meanwhile, serves as a showcase for Gary Oldman, who gives a blistering performance as Bex Bissell, a middle-class family man who also leads a violent gang of soccer hooligans. While the real roots of Oldman’s nihilistic rage run deep to 1986’s Sid and Nancy, it was this telepic that first and best harnessed his quiet temper, and served as the underpinning for future brash turns in The Professional, The Fifth Element and even Air Force One.

Though Clarke was taken too soon, dying of cancer at 55 in 1990, his stirring work lives on, and is well worth a look for anyone who fancies uncompromising portraits of youth run amok — rampaging id hardwired to nervy ambivalence. All the above titles are available separately on DVD or via a great eponymous collection from Blue Underground released earlier this year, with still galleries and cast interviews from The Firm, both versions of the incendiary Scum and another bonus — the streamlined, 39-minute Elephant, part of the inspiration for Gus Van Sant’s film of the same name. In the latter, Clarke and producer Danny Boyle (28 Days Later) explore the political violence of Northern Ireland via the stark depiction of 18 separatist murders; Boyle also sits for an audio commentary. All the films are distinctly British, but still universal in their basic enmity.

Welcome to “Shared Darkness”

Ephemera, Musings

Why another blog? Why now? And why about film? It’s simple. There’s so much to talk about. As traditional media continue to search out new manners of content delivery and interactivity on the Internet while still preserving their old business models, low-fi web sites and blogs are filling in where there’s been a certain collapse of reader dependence and trust. Direct, peer-to-peer communication is a sort of “idea Darwinism,” with bandied-about thoughts, opinion and feelings that rise to a certain critical mass helping shape public opinion and action moving forward.

And as far as pop culture, film is the nexus of this. The straightforward fact is that the enormity of movie screens and the communal nature of filmgoing — the simple act of watching with other people as the larger-than-life unfolds — reinforces our collective dreams and makes them seem attainable, if only for a fleeting afternoon or evening. After settling the latest preposterous squabble, driving the babysitter home or picking up take-out for one, we may reenter the slipstream of our seemingly pedestrian lives, but we carry with us trace elements of the belief that things can be different. It’s no pure coincidence, the degree to which film took off here as a form of popular entertainment; movies are America’s chief cultural export because their vastness, in both material and emotional scope, aligns with our sociopolitical views of freedom and opportunity.

Besides, if blogging is good enough for Dwight Schrute, it’s good enough for me.

I come from a print journalism background, and for five years served as editor-in-chief and chief film critic for Entertainment Today, Los Angeles’ oldest entertainment-exclusive free weekly publication. Hopefully, here you’ll appreciate some advance word and arguably somewhat discerning critical opinion — after all, it’s my belief that studio popcorn films can transcend the nature of their formula and touch brilliance, while deeply original and idiosyncratic works (The Ballad of Jack and Rose, let’s say) can just as easily be indulgent and masturbatory. I may, like everyone, have certain screen predilections, but I’m not a genre snob by any stretch of the imagination.

“Shared Darkness” will ideally be a repository for brief opinion on the best (and worst) of independent film, as well as tangential observations about big-budget studio fare and all the latest Hollywood trends. This doesn’t mean inflammatory gossip, alas, but there will occasionally be some off-the-record chats with well-placed industry sources (the better to preserve their candor), as well as informal interviews with writers, directors, cinematographers and the like — all in an effort to further shine a light on the often violent collision of creative process and fiscal reality that is modern filmmaking.

There will also be film set visits, DVD dissections, all manner of random explications and theories (just wait until you hear my thoughts on Cannonball Run…) and definitely plenty of recommendations on off-the-beaten-path movies both new and classic. Basically, it’s a place to further indulge my points-of-view, and hopefully enter into a bit of a discourse about both them and where you see and want to see film to go in the future. I hope you enjoy.