Month: September 2011

Whither Comedy?

By David Ross. I offered a little paean to the independent film here, but what would such a paean to the contemporary Hollywood comedy look like? The Hollywood comedy is, if not dead, at least writhing on the floor and gasping for breath and rapidly turning blue. Netflix’s selection of new comedies is a flotilla of cliché-ridden, two-starred dreck, of which a film like You Again (2010) is representative. Kristen Bell, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Sigourney Weaver head a mildly promising cast, but the film is a mire of clichés. Here’s the plot in Netflix-speak:

History – make that high school – may repeat itself when Marni (Kristen Bell) learns that Joanna (Odette Yustman), the mean girl from her past, is set to be her sister-in-law. Before the wedding bells toll, Marni must show her brother that a tiger doesn’t change its stripes. On Marni’s side is her mother (Jamie Lee Curtis), while Joanna’s backed by her wealthy aunt (Sigourney Weaver).

Every character is a deliberate incarnation of cliché: the nerd-turned-LA-public relations-whiz-who’s-still-a-nerd-at-heart, the head cheerleader who sadistically delights in tormenting her social inferiors, the salacious granny who says things like “If you don’t go for him I will” (this an attempt to reverse the eighteenth-century cliché of Mrs. Grundy, never mind that this cliché was killed off decades ago, possibly by Auntie Mame), the eye-rolling, wise-ass younger brother whose sarcastic sallies are affectionately disregarded. And of course the film ends with psychotherapeutic reconciliations and teary hugs. Comedy depends on surprise and sudden anarchic subversion. Cliché is anathema to surprise and the reverse of subversive. Thus a film like You Again is, by definition, dead on arrival.

I’m interested in You Again only as an example of the countless comedies that go quietly to the doom of bored trans-Atlanticists who watch thirty minutes and decide to snooze or fiddle with their iPhones. Movies like this don’t even bother to resist their fate; they may even seek it on the principle that formulaic death-in-life is less culpable than risk.

Genuinely funny films like David O. Russell’s Flirting with Disaster (1996), the Coen brothers’ Intolerable Cruelty (2003), Borat (2006), and Greg Mottola’s Superbad (2007) are exceptions that prove the rule. Ben Stiller in Flirting with Disaster reminds us of Ben Stiller in Zoolander, Dodgeball, Envy (don’t even remember this stinker, do you?), Starsky and Hutch, Night at the Museum (1 & 2!), The Marc Pease Experience, and so forth. Jonah Hill in Superbad reminds us of Jonah Hill in calibrated conventionalities like Knocked Up, Saving Sarah Marshall, and Get him to the Greek. Rowan Atkinson in Black Adder – perhaps the funniest turn in all of contemporary comedy – reminds us of Rowan Atkinson in The Lion King, Johnny English, and Mr. Bean’s Holiday.

In the last twenty or thirty years, Hollywood has spent billions of dollars on comedies that have produced a few sniggers among thirteen-year-olds, but left this rest of us with a sense of having been gypped and maybe even insulted. It has also serially wasted the talents of generations of not untalented comedians. To those mentioned above, we can add countless others, beginning with Eddie Murphy, a legitimate comic genius (v. Delirious) reduced to whooping it up with barnyard animals. How does this happen?

A comprehensive explanation probably has a few components. There is of course the quest to hedge one’s bets and play it safe, which is part of the innate economics of the modern film industry, in which star vehicles begin $10 or $20 million in the salary hole. There is also the coarsening of the film audience along with the rest of the culture. Verbal high-wire acts like Ball of Fire and His Girl Friday assume audiences conditioned by the mordant witticisms of Mencken and the bright sophistication of Broadway show tunes and the lively bloodsport of cities with numerous daily newspapers. Audiences reared on video games and public school political correctness tend to go glassy-eyed while trying to follow a baseline rally of ironic badinage. Here’s a test: show a young person “Duck Amuck,” the most manic and zanily postmodern of the Loony Tunes. I bet they don’t laugh. Continue reading Whither Comedy?

Cold War Update: Tinker, Tailor, Playboy Bunnies & Spies + Top Gun Returns in 3D!

By Jason Apuzzo. • If you needed any more evidence that the 80s are back in a big way, word comes this week that Top Gun is being retrofit into 3D and should hit theaters in 2012. This is big news because so far as I’m aware it represents the first time a ‘library’ film title not made by James Cameron (Titanic) or George Lucas (the Star Wars saga) is being converted into 3D for theatrical release. If Top Gun 3D performs well, expect more such conversions down the line and a lot of classic film titles coming back to your local theaters – a very welcome development, in my opinion. It’s certainly better than paying $15 to watch a stereoscopic version of Green Lantern.

But lets talk Maverick. Regular LFM readers know how highly I think of Top Gun, a signature film from my youth – not to mention a watershed moment in my relationship with aviator sunglasses. Why did people of my generation love that film so much? Was it the appeal of being a hot-shot jet pilot? Was it the beach volleyball? The Kawasakis? The girls? Sunsets in San Diego? Maybe it was Iceman’s sweet flat-top haircut. Or Tom Skerritt chewing out Tom Cruise, slyly motiving him by implying he wasn’t as committed as his father. Maybe it was Cruise’s great line about flying “inverted,” or the angry bald guy in the flight-ops center barking, “Damnit, Maverick!” every five minutes.

Whatever it was, Top Gun was the movie from the 80s that romanticized American military life – and did so without having to demonize any particular enemy nation. It was a film that hit the sweet spot, made a dull teenage summer exciting, and incidentally launched Tom Cruise’s career. How good was Top Gun? I personally have a friend whom I strongly suspect was pulled into a career in Naval aviation – not to mention beach volleyball – at least in part due to this film. And who could blame him? Top Gun paints an appealing, glamorous picture of serving your country. I’ll definitely be first in line when Top Gun 3D arrives next year. [Btw, whatever happened to Berlin?]

• A slew of Cold War-related films are suddenly in development right now. One of the ones I’m most excited about is something called Hunter Killer, which may end up starring Gerard Butler and was originally supposed be directed by Phillip Noyce (Salt). Here’s how JoBlo describes it:

HUNTER KILLER, based on the book “Firing Point,” follows an untested submarine captain who must work with a Navy SEAL team to rescue the Russian president, who has been taken prisoner during a military coup, in an effort to stop a rogue Russian General from igniting World War III.

There seem to be a lot of ‘rogue Russian generals’ in the movies these days, all trying to re-ignite the Cold War. Wasn’t there one in X-Men: First Class? And Salt? If Putin’s the Alpha Dog he pretends to be, he really should put the kabosh on these people. In any case, even without a director or star, Hunter Killer is apparently hot enough to have a release date of Dec. 21st, 2012.

• Even though it doesn’t open until Dec. 9th, a major marketing push is being made for the new adaptation of John Le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I’m not a Le Carré fan (as for espionage novels, I’m more of an Eric Ambler man), but a dark, cerebral little Cold War spy thriller? With a superb British cast? After a summer of idiotic, deafening comic book movies, that’s sounding quite appealing. Besides, now that Gary Oldman is more or less done taking checks for Harry Potter and the Batman films, perhaps he can return to actual acting. Read about Tinker here, see new posters for the film (here and here) and a new featurette; John Le Carré will be making a cameo in the film; the film also has three new trailers (here, here and here), and here’s a clip from the film.

• Another project I’m excited about is something called Red Star that was picked up this summer by Warner Brothers for producer Neil Moritz (Battle: Los Angeles). The project is based on a comic series by Christian Gossett, and according to THR the story is “set in an alternate USSR where futuristic technology and magical elements co-exist. The main character is a soldier in the Red Fleet and his wife, who become keys to defeating a former brutal ruler and his minions.”

This would certainly have to be an alternate USSR, if ‘futuristic technology’ is involved. I still remember driving in a Russian Lada sedan on a trip to Moscow as a teenager, and my spine still hasn’t recovered. In any case, Timur Bekmambetov was previously attached to this project when it was at Universal – we’ll see if he stays with it at Warners …

• Some other promising new projects on the horizon include a $100 million Korean war-era epic called 1950, to be directed by Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious). The story follows a journalist who travels across the Korean peninsula with a platoon of Marines in the midst of a mass, Christmas Eve evacuation of 200,000 South Koreans escaping the oncoming Chinese communist and North Korean armies. Also: a new anti-communist drama called Closer to the Moon is being made starring Game of Thrones’ Harry Lloyd; the Cold War sci-fi classic Colossus: The Forbin Project is getting a remake … but the best news by far is that we may get a Danger Girl movie starring Milla Jovovich, Sofia Vergara and Kate Beckinsale! Do I believe these rumors? I’m not sure I do, but I can’t begin to describe what a great idea this would be. If you’re not familiar with Danger Girl, it’s a comic book series about a trio of impossibly curvaceous female spies sent on missions to retrieve mystic relics also sought after by a powerful international crime syndicate. Think Charlie’s Angels by way of Indiana Jones and James Bond. The stories are a lot of fun, inventive, playfully sexy, and it’s easy to imagine something like this working much better than even Angelina Jolie’s Tomb Raider films did. And since Sofia Vergara’s name is being thrown around, here’s hoping they do it in 3D.

Publicity still for the original "The Man From U.N.C.L.E."

• Some fabulous news of late is that Steven Soderbergh’s Man from U.N.C.L.E. movie will be set in the 1960s, and won’t feature George Clooney! Hooray! Is Michael Fassbender available?

• Die Hard 5 has a new director, and the film may take place in Russia. Does anybody still care about Die Hard? Please tell me if you do below, along with why.

• Speaking of Tom Cruise, Mission-Impossible: Ghost Protocol is rattling its way down the tracks. The film is now set to debut on Dec. 21st, there is a new poster out, along with new promo images (see here and here), and producer J.J. Abrams has been talking up the film’s stunts and the scale of the film in IMAX. I think MI4 actually had the best trailer of the summer, and the film opens with no less than the destruction of Red Square – not a bad way to grab your attention. I’m looking forward to this one, although this series  hasn’t always worked before …

Continue reading Cold War Update: Tinker, Tailor, Playboy Bunnies & Spies + Top Gun Returns in 3D!

Justice, Grindhouse-Style: LFM Reviews The Unrated Director’s Cut of The Exterminator on Blu-Ray

By Joe Bendel. For a so-called grindhouse film, it had killer ad copy. It also featured contributions from two very talented but very different Stans. Eventually it spawned an inferior sequel not involving its original creator that hardly helped its reputation. And decades later, James Glickenhaus’s The Exterminator (trailer here) is ripe for a critical reappraisal with today’s release of the unrated director’s cut in special Blu-Ray combo pack from Synapse Films.

John Eastland will become the Exterminator, the man the ad campaign told us “they pushed too far.” New York’s Ché Guevara loving Ghetto Ghouls gang (as evidenced by the décor of their hideout; see below) did that when they attacked and paralyzed Eastland’s best friend, Michael Jefferson (Steve James). During the Viet Nam prologue (featuring a beheading rendered by special effects artist Stan Winston, Stan #1), Jefferson saves Eastland from the sadistic Viet Cong, a depiction most definitely not approved by Jane Fonda. Close friends and co-workers, Jefferson was always the outgoing man of action, while Eastland was the more reserved one.

Unlike Paul Kersey in the original Death Wish, Eastland tracks down the specific thugs responsible for the crime (with the brief help of the flame-thrower featured prominently on the posters), extracting some frontier justice. Concerned for the future of Jefferson’s family, Eastland then abducts a mobster from the Old Homestead steak house to extort their financial security. This episode gets a little bloody. Eastland also starts to understand that New York needs his extermination services.

Of course, the most (and only) talented cop on the force makes it his business to track down the man calling himself the Exterminator. Still, Det. Dalton finds time to put the moves on the smart and attractive ER Dr. Megan Stewart (played by Samantha Eggar, perhaps the cast’s biggest name), even taking her to an outdoor Stan Getz concert (yep, Stan #2, at a time when he was pretty deep into the electric bag). And he’s not the only government employee interested in stopping the Exterminator. With the election fast approaching, Eastland’s efforts are embarrassing the administration, who promised but failed to deliver law and order (since The Exterminator was originally released in September 1980, this must be the Carter White House). As a result, even the CIA is dispatched to eliminate the Exterminator.

Epic fireballs.

Continue reading Justice, Grindhouse-Style: LFM Reviews The Unrated Director’s Cut of The Exterminator on Blu-Ray

Feininger

"Green Bridge II" (1916).

By David Ross. Lyonel Feininger has suddenly and splendidly swung into view, like some rare astral event. The Whitney Museum is holding, through October 16, an exhibition called “Lyonel Feininger: At the Edge of the World,” which should go far toward confirming the obvious: Feininger was for half a century one of the world’s chief painters. The exhibition is a major contention on his behalf, as the magnificent exhibition catalogue – available here – makes clear.

Feininger (1871-1956) is less celebrated than he should be principally because he confuses the national categories that structure so much art history. He was born in New York to German parents. So far so good. At age sixteen, he shifted his studies to Germany and wound up becoming the proverbial American abroad. During his fifty-year German sojourn, he fell in with the expressionists and later joined the faculty of the Bauhaus as an instructor in printmaking. During the 1920s, he became one of the “Blue Four,” an eminent coterie that included Kandinsky, Klee, and Alexej von Jawlensky (see here for an excellent survey). Feininger returned to the U.S. in 1937, after the Nazis sent a not so subtle signal by including his work in their infamous “Degenerate Art Exhibit.”

Neither quite American nor quite German, Feininger figures in nobody’s national tale. Had he remained in the U.S. or expatriated himself in England or France – countries entwined in our own modernist myth – I suspect he would now be considered one of the Titans of twentieth-century American art. Certainly he was a greater painter than Marsden Hartley (born 1877), Georgia O’Keeffe (born 1887), and Thomas Hart Benton (born 1889), who may be his closest American counterparts. As it is, the Wikipedia entry on American art does not even mention Feininger.

Complicating matters further, Feininger passed through three distinct and not easily reconciled phases. He was first a German expressionist, an oil cartoonist of spooky elongations and lurid Halloween scenery; he was second an impeccably elegant cubist of the school of Cezanne in its Weimar manifestation; he was third – especially during his later American years – a sketch artist whose modest drawings of sailboats, waterfront scenes, and New York buildings translated nature into a kind of wiry architecture, a taut cross-hatching whose inspiration, it’s not incredible to think, may have been the rigging of ships. These latter drawings, sometimes overlaid with watercolor, have a wonderful simplicity, a relaxed confidence in the soundness of their own geometry. Which is the primary Feininger? What explains the strange, disjunctive pattern of his career? There are no clear answers and thus few critics inclined to take up the questions. Continue reading Feininger

For The 10 Year Anniversary of 9/11 LFM Presents a New Series: Terror Watch

From "Strike Back" on Cinemax.

By Jason Apuzzo. With the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 approaching, I thought today would be a good time to launch a new series here at Libertas that I’ve been intending to do for a while, called Terror Watch. Terror Watch will join our other ongoing Libertas series (Invasion Alerts, Cold War Updates, Sword & Sandal Reports) and will cover the new wave of films, TV series, video games and even graphic novels dealing with the War on Terror.

The very fact that we’re able to do such a series is representative of a gradual and welcome change that’s taken place in Hollywood and popular culture over the past several years, a change whereby positive depictions of the War on Terror as a just and necessary cause are no longer considered taboo in entertainment circles. This change has been building for several years now (and has already been rippling through science fiction for quite a while), although it was accelerated considerably this past May by Navy SEAL Team 6’s successful mission against Osama bin Laden – an event that appears to have semi-officially opened a new chapter in Hollywood’s willingness to depict the struggle against terrorism as a vital activity.

And although one might be tempted to treat this development as coming too late to affect the public’s morale regarding the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, my sense is that how history perceives those conflicts is still very much up for grabs, especially for younger Americans – and so this new trend is one that I very much welcome. This does not mean, of course, that all of the projects we’ll be discussing will be very good – I suspect quite a few may be dreadful – but I advise people to keep an open mind. Certainly several recent projects – The Devil’s Double and Four Lions, most notably – have really been superb, and overall I think there is reason for optimism.

Why optimism, you might ask? Because Hollywood isn’t as dominated as it used to be by the Baby Boomers.

For his Washington Times article today entitled, “Hollywood AWOL in War on Terrorism,” my colleague Christian Toto kindly asked me to comment on Hollywood’s overall reaction, ten years on, to 9/11 and the War on Terror. Here is what I said:

Jason Apuzzo, conservative filmmaker and editor of Libertas Film Magazine, says politics clearly played a role in Hollywood’s initial reaction to 9/11.  “Their primary response [to 9/11] was to ignore it,” Mr. Apuzzo says. But that appears to be changing, witness the upcoming film on Osama bin Laden’s death at the hands of Navy SEALs due for release next year, as well as director Peter Berg’s adaptation of “Lone Survivor,” a film detailing the hunt for a Taliban leader.  “As the baby boomers start to retire off the scene in Hollywood, it’s becoming less of a factor,” Mr. Apuzzo says of the industry’s politically charged greenlighting process. “Younger people are not as hesitant about dealing with this issue.”

Diane Kruger is a journalist captured by The Taliban in "Special Forces."

Many people nowadays believe that the Obama Presidency is the primary reason behind whatever change of heart there’s been in Hollywood of late regarding the War on Terror, and there is no doubt some truth in this. Yet while I’m sure that Obama’s Presidency – and specifically his successful management of the bin Laden raid – plays some role here, my sense is that this change was likely coming regardless, due to the gradual changeover of the industry to a younger (i.e., non-Baby Boomer) generation. By my experience, the younger Hollywood generation – and this includes the independent filmmaking world – is much less ideologically driven than the Boomers were, and are far less conflicted about the current war than was the Vietnam generation.

So this is ultimately why I’m optimistic: the people dominating Hollywood today are not the same people who were running the industry 10 years ago right after the 9/11 attacks. They are, instead, a generation driven by a desire to simply make careers for themselves – rather than to fight proxy culture-wars through the cinema, as their parents’ generation so often did.

So without further ado, let’s take a look at some of the War on Terror projects that are heading our way down the tracks …

Continue reading For The 10 Year Anniversary of 9/11 LFM Presents a New Series: Terror Watch

Veronica Lake, by George Hurrell

By David Ross. My preferred form of Internet time-wasting is “Google Images.” I collect photos of great writers, Georgian architecture, Michelin-starred food (the kind I may never get a chance to eat), nineteenth and early twentieth-century art (Samuel Palmer, Lyonel Feininger, Wyndham Lewis, etc.), and, yes, glamour shots of classic actresses, including, but not limited to, Anouk Aimee, Lauren Bacall, Capucine, Audrey Hepburn, Katherine Hepburn, Anna Karina, and Grace Kelly, preferably in Givenchy or Chanel, always in glorious black and white. In short, I’m a minor connoisseur, on which basis I would like to make the reckless assertion that the above photo of Veronica Lake, circa 1941, is the greatest still photo – the most elegant, seductive, multivalent – ever taken of an actress. The photographer was George Hurrell (1904–1992), whom Virginia Postrel calls the “master of Hollywood glamour.” You can read about his revival here and buy his work here.

The photo seems at first glance your standard come-hither boilerplate, elevated, obviously, by Veronica’s preternatural bone structure and hallmark tresses. I find, though, that Veronica’s expression has a kind of Gioconda irreducibility. At once sexy, weary, predatory, and demure, her expression seems to say something like, “I have no interest in you – no interest in the mere world – but if you insist, I will rouse myself to the matter of your destruction – and you will relish every wound.” Notice the faint sneer that registers at the right corner of the mouth; notice the shadowed right eye that carries dual connotations of the harlequin and the gun moll with a shiner; notice the coffin-forming play of light and shadow. This is a disconcerting silhouette indeed: a dark little study of sex and death, a forked image of the sleeping beauty and the stirred succubus, the thirst-awakened vampiress.

In comparison, Rita Hayworth kneeling on her satin-sheeted bed and Marilyn Monroe struggling with her billowing skirt are images of mere adolescent wish fulfillment, of sweaty pubescence. If buxom vistas are your thing — well, enjoy. Hurrell’s version of Veronica Lake belongs to an entirely different category. Its glamour recalls Beardsley, Weimar, what have you; it’s not kid’s stuff.

Posted on September 9th, 2011 at 2:07pm.