Some of you may have seen Sam Juliano's humbling piece at Wonders in the Dark and wondered whether it is indeed true that Counting Down The Zeroes is at an end.
Well....it isn't. Thanks to some fine kicking of the butt from Mr Juliano, his finely measured piece has inspired me to think again about my odyssey of a project. The years 2000 to 2004 have been a blast, with over 150 posts to date - with still a few to publish, sorry about the delay guys but I had a sort of mini-confidence crisis - from up to 100 different writers! That's nothing short of spectacular given the time constraint. We should all be very proud.
However, my initial self imposed tight deadline seems foolhardy to say the least, this is a trait of mine, for some reason I can't seem to get motivated without a stupefyingly daft and unreasonable goal - if, in future, I start bleating on about what seems to be a ridiculous time schedule, please pull me up on it. So with that in mind I've decided to become far more relaxed about the whole project, starting with a break from the enterprise.
Over the next week or so (see, relaxed) I will post the remaining posts for 2004 which includes Rick Olson of Coosa Creek Cinema with his take on 'The LadyKillers', Chuck Williamson's, of Out 1, piece on 'Tony Takitani ' and Britt Parrott of Perhapses reviews David O'Russell's 'I Heart Huckabees'. After that it's a couple of months rest from the whole thing, until the new year, by which time the project will be housed at Counting Down The Zeroes. On it's resurrection, the project will take on a new form and will run like an interactive blog-a-thon but more on that later.
With that I want to say thank you to all of you that have taken part these past couple of months, it's been an unexpected delight, I've made so many new friends, contacts and been introduced to a whole host of extraordinary blogs and writers. The project is what it is simply because of your involvement.
As for me, I'm just looking forward to getting back to writing - I've done diddly squat since the conception of CDtZ's all those months back - and I can't wait to get started.
7 October 2009
Counting Down The Zeroes: Update
28 August 2009
The Year 2004: Finding Neverland (Marc Forster)
Joseph Belanger of the brilliant Black Sheep Reviews takes on Marc Forster's follow up to the highly successful 'Monster's Ball' with the bio-pic, 'Finding Neverland', about English playwright James Matthew Barrie, otherwise known as the scribe who created Peter Pan with yet another great submission to Counting Down The Zeroes.
I’m a sensitive guy but I don’t cry very often. Usually, the only time I find myself crying is at the movies. For me, crying is a beautiful release and when I’m watching a movie and it comes over me, I always let it out. I figure if the hard parts of my life don’t bring me to tears, then I’d better let them out whenever the opportunity presents itself, even if I’m not completely sure what it is about the image on the screen that is moving me so deeply. When I first saw FINDING NEVERLAND, it was a matinee showing. There weren’t too many people in the theatre and that suited me just fine. This way, I got to sob profusely while still maintaining some sense of privacy. When the film was released to own, I brought it home and, to my surprise, cried just as much as I did the first time I saw it. When I watched it again recently to prepare for this piece, I was concerned, at first, that it wasn’t as good as I remembered it in my mind. But then, before I could get across the room to get my box of tissues, I was weeping once again.
Based on Allan Knee’s play, “The Man Who Was Peter Pan”, FINDING NEVERLAND is something of a tear-jerker that seems deliberately designed for boys. This is Peter Pan after all and what man cannot identify with the age old tale about not wanting to ever grow up? Certainly not this one anyway. That said, I don’t think this is what gets me crying each time; that would be too simple an explanation. No, it is something inherent in the story itself that speaks directly to this boy’s heart. FINDING NEVERLAND is a story about feeling inspiration and fostering your imagination. Without either of these, Neverland could never be found. James Barrie (Johnny Depp) is the author of “Peter Pan” and the film gives us the chance to see the very real components that would become one of the most timeless children’s classics in history. As a writer, especially one who struggles to find the words from time to time, seeing that they can come from everything transpiring right in front of me was truly freeing.
Historically, Barrie met the Llewelyn Davies family in London’s Kensington Gardens in 1897. In the film, it unfolds exactly the same way, only the man of the family, Arthur, has already passed away and, of the family’s five young boys, only four make the film for fear of overcrowding. The mother, Sylvia (Kate Winslet), is simply enjoying her time in the park with her boys when Barrie suddenly becomes a central figure in the boys’ game. From that moment on, he never stops playing with them. It isn’t quite so joyous for all the boys, what with their father recently passed. No, young Peter (played by Freddie Highmore in the role that turned him into a child star) finds himself facing adult realities that are far too harsh for him to process, let alone preserve his innocence. Barrie steps in as a father figure but the healing does not begin so simply. Barrie must remind the boys that their imaginations can take them anywhere they want to go, any time they want to go there. As he unleashes the power of his imagination in hopes of rekindling theirs, he finds something completely unexpected – Peter Pan.
27 August 2009
The Year 2004: Dodgeball : A True Underdog Story (Rawson Marshall Thurber)
Once again the Reel Whore of ''Reel Whore' joins Counting Down The Zeroes, having recently celebrated his two year blog anniversary with a gorgeous makeover, to take aim at one of the year's more outright absurd and comedic films. Doddgeball: A True Underdog Story became the must see comedy of the year gaining mostly favourable reviews from the critics, as well as storming the box office, and resurrecting a sport which has given the Reel Whore a whole new lease of life.
The summer of 2004 was one of those fortuitous moments when the fantasy of the movies and my routine reality crossed paths. Having recently seen Dodgeball in theaters, my girlfriend and I were walking around quoting lines incessantly. One day, a flyer at our apartment announced a dodgeball game convening at the tennis courts. A resident with a handful of those hard rubber balls, inked with stylish Spongebob and Spider-Man artwork, beckoned us to join in the fun. This weekly stress relief evolved into joining our city league, and five years later, we still find ourselves enjoying this 'child's game.' Those who know dodgeball know it's not for the weak of heart...
Peter La Fleur (Vince Vaughn, Starsky & Hutch), owner of Average Joe's Gymnasium, has learned that his gym is near the brink of foreclosure; partly due to his laid-back business tactics, but mostly due to his rival, White Goodman (Ben Stiller, Zoolander). The narcissistic Goodman wants Joe's shutdown so he can add extra parking for the members of his corporate Adonis factory, Globo Gym. With little time, La Fleur and with his rag-tag band of employees and clients do the only thing possible to generate the needed cash: enter the American Dodgeball Association of America International Dodgeball Championship in Las Vegas. The Joes' quest and their pathetic dodgeball skills catch the attention of seven-time all-star dodgeball champion Patches O'Houlihan (Rip Torn, Men in Black) who offers his expertise to help defeat Goodman's Purple Cobras team, win the $50,000 and save their gym.
I hold writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber in high regard mainly because he, like me, believes Ghostbusters to be the best comedy ever made. Prior to Dodgeball, Thurber directed the Terry Tate, Office Linebacker commercials for Reebok. After shopping his script around, Ben Stiller's Red Hour Films picked it up, and with Thurber attached to direct, the fun began. In the commentary, Thurber mentions an old adage that "90% of directing is casting." In this instance, I couldn't agree more.
I've never been a huge fan of Stiller, but I have to give him props for White Goodman. Goodman is a grade-A Ass (with two capital A's) and Stiller makes you want to put a fist right above his handlebar mustache. Vaughn, on the other hand, has always been a personal favorite; I find his dry sarcasm hilarious. Although these fellas are funny, the film meanders along the first twenty minutes while introducing the supporting cast.
Justin Long (Jeepers Creepers) plays Justin, the stumbling teen who's training at Joe's for his school's upcoming cheerleader tryouts. At this point in his career, Long was fairly unknown aside from his role on TV's Ed and the painful Jeepers Creepers franchise. Dodgeball displayed his comedic talent to a larger audience, which has since opened up opportunities galore.
Stephen Root (Office Space) plays the gym-rat, know-it-all. In a part obviously written as an homage to Rick Moranis's Louis Tully of Ghostbusters, Root dutifully stares through thick lenses while spouting factoids pertaining to every conversation's topic. Root's Gordon is the driving force behind the dodgeball competition, thanks to his subscription to Obscure Sports Quarterly. Like most roles he plays, Root is the comedic anchor; so good at what he does that you know if he's starring, you can laugh at at least one character.
Prior to Dodgeball, Alan Tudyk (Wonder Boys) was known primarily as Wash from TV's short-lived series Firefly. Here Tudyk dabbles in comic absurdity as Steve the Pirate. That's right, he's an average joe (pun intended) who dresses, talks and firmly believes he's a pirate. Peter, who lets people be who they are, goes along with his delusion. It's not a huge part for Tudyk, but let's face it, we all secretly wish more movies had pirates.
Another relative unknown at the time, Joel Moore (Grandma's Boy) plays Joe's attendant Owen. Though now he gets to star in Katy Perry videos and under-the-radar B-movies as the cool cat, here he's a uber-geeky nerdmeister with no chance of ever finding love. That is, until Globo Gym's ringer, Fran, enters the scene. Though Missi Pyle (Soul Plane) ranked on Maxim's '100 Sexiest Women' list in 2004, you wouldn't know it seeing her unibrow and crooked teeth. The scene where she's revealed still makes me cringe.
Fran's not the only love interest. Peter and White both have their sights on the bank's lawyer Kate, played by Christine Taylor (The Wedding Singer). Knowing she's Stiller's wife makes the scenes where she seems mortified by White's advances all the more funny. Kate isn't just a sex doll to be tugged to and fro by our main characters; she unleashes a ferocity on the court that makes the rest of the Joes look exactly like the little girly men they are.
Even with all this great and soon-to-be-great talent, Dodgeball leaves you feeling something's missing. Rip Torn's Patches O'Houlihan is that element. His bizarre anecdotes and brutal training tactics raise the hilarity one-hundred fold. I watched nearly doubled-over with laughter as he pelts Justin, Gordon and any slow-moving target with wrenches. He's vulgar, dirty and just plain bizarre even when he's trying to mentor the ambiguous Peter in the five d's of dodgeball; dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge.
Veteran character actor Gary Cole (The Gift) plays lead announcer Cotton McKnight alongside Pepper Brooks (Jason Bateman, The Sweetest Thing). Cole is always a reliable straight man, but Bateman breaks away from his usually stoic delivery for an over-the-top portrayal that he will be called upon to do in many future roles. There are still a few cameos from some legendary television personalities to mention, but I should leave some surprises.
The story doesn't hold too many surprises in terms of execution and resolution. The shock comes mainly from watching grown people get repeatedly smacked in the face by large rubber balls (and the occasional wrench). If you're easy to offend, the vulgar language stings the ears about as bad as a red rubber ball to the temple. The real joy is in watching the characters sell every minute of this ridiculous story. Without this stellar cast, Thurber's hilarious script may have fallen flat on its face. I, like Thurber, have to thank Ben Stiller for taking a chance on a little script no one thought could make it.
26 August 2009
The Year 2004: The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (Stephen Hopkins)
Counting Down The Zeroes welcomes back Joel (MovieMan0283) creator of the quite brilliant and eponymous The Dancing Image, which in the past month has just celebrated it's one year anniversary. For the year 2004, Joel is taking on the HBO produced 'The Life and Death of Peter Sellers', screened in competition at Cannes and winner of the 'Best Motion Picture made for Television' at the Golden Globes. 
The Life & Death of Peter Sellers, or How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Zeroes
(This review discusses spoilers, including the fact that Peter Sellers dies.)
A man stands alone in the lightly falling snow, his eyes wide open, his body immobile. Inside a Swiss chateau, another man looks out the window, sees his friend half-hidden in the flurry. The man in the chateau walks outside, speechless with astonishment, and circles the man in the snow, frozen as an ice sculpture (though he betrays his humanity, and a complicity with us, in one brief moment: shifting his eyes back and forth while the other man walks behind him and is out of view). Finally the circling man (who is dressed in designer ski gear replete with dark shades, the apparel of a rich tourist) just shakes his head in disbelief. The man in the snow – clad in a drab overcoat and fedora – still has not moved an inch or acknowledged the other man’s presence (except for that brief, and unseen eye-shift). So the well-dressed man finally does the only thing he can think to do: he kisses the snow man on the forehead and walks back inside.
The tourist is Hollywood director Blake Edwards (John Lithgow). The man in the snow is Peter Sellers (Geoffrey Rush). This is the closest the film comes to showing us the death which its title promises; as Edwards returns to the chateau the camera swoops up, leaving Sellers stationary in the snow, and over softly poignant music, a tasteful text rolls over the image. It informs us that Sellers died soon after, that he left a fortune to his fourth wife (whom he had intended to divorce and disinherit), and that the only affect in his wallet at the time of death was a photo of his first wife. Then we fade to black and the credits begin to roll. But just after the cast list scrolls out of view, we pull back and the image becomes flattened, as if observed on a monitor.
And indeed, it is on a monitor, watched by a man sitting in a canvas-backed chair, with his name emblazoned across its back. The name, along with the man? “Peter Sellers.” Sellers is not dressed in out-of-this-world-and-
This ending tells us everything we need to know about the movie, namely that perhaps we should not take it too seriously. The film is a mixture of the satirical, the sincere (though we can never be sure how sincere), and the sociopathic. In this it certainly reflects its subject, the notoriously prickly yet brilliant British comedian who could swing from belligerent tirades to goofy pratfalls to inscrutable eccentricity with astonishing ease. I can’t speak for the veracity of all its anecdotes, but the film works on multiple levels, among which the biographical is only one.
Indeed, the movie is best taken as a subversive artifact of the Zeroes, a decade in which styles and surfaces ascended to unforeseen stages of development and self-consciousness, all while suspicions lingered that there wasn’t much “there” there. The Life & Death of Peter Sellers is subversive on several levels: firstly, its hard-to-read protagonist makes hash of the usual biopic conventions (is he selfish, mentally ill, is it all an act, is he suffering inside, or is he just spoiled rotten?). One certainly can’t sympathize with Sellers and yet at times his brash, carefree narcissism can be refreshing; it’s what we secretly look for in our movie heroes, even when we demand they get their moral comeuppance (which, by the way, Sellers does, many times over). It’s hard for the screenplay to rationalize his erratic behavior with the usual biographical contrivances, though a bit too much Freudian credence is given to the overbearing Mum (Miriam Margolyes), whom Sellers calls “Peg” throughout, even as they're cuddling in bed - after his first wife leaves him, natch. (If the theory is a bit pat, it does help matters that mommy dearest is a humorously nasty piece of work herself. As her son suffers a massive heart attack, she solemnly watches the television coverage before flipping to the same news on another station and remarking with a satisfied smirk, “Both channels.”)
More obviously but perhaps also more ambitiously, the film subverts a conventional narrative approach, which is especially entrenched in the hidebound biopic genre. That said, the first phase of Sellers’ career, from lovable Goon Show loon to British Academy Award-winning actor, is presented in standard-issue clichés. There’s the snippet of the radio act (which is not especially funny in rapidly cut and shot glimpses), a bit of background (changing diapers in a London flat) and motivation (Peg tells him to bite the hands that feed him so that those above him will admire the sharpness of his teeth), failure quickly overcome with ingenious success (turned down for an audition, Sellers returns disguised as an old man and gets the part), and of course the montage to quickly inform us of all we’re missing (Sellers plays a ukulele over not-very-convincing black-and-white “home movie” footage). So far, so familiar.
But then, watching Sellers’ award reception on the tube with his parents, we get a surprise. The quiet father, constantly berated by his wife, turns to the camera and begins to address the viewer. What’s more, the actor playing the elder Sellers is no longer Peter Vaughan, but Geoffrey Rush himself, or rather Peter Sellers putting himself into the “old man’s shoes.” What he tells us is not so important – banal bromides about how Peg spoiled the boy - he always had to have the last cookie “even if it was on someone else’s plate” (cue the Sophia Loren plotline, in which Sellers convinces himself that she wants to have an affair with him - she doesn't, and he settles for her stand-in, though he's already broken up his marriage in anticipation). No, what’s most important is that the old man is Peter Sellers in makeup, that he is talking directly to the camera, and that he walks out of his cozy little room onto a movie set, where crewmembers bustle about. In other words, it’s the Brechtian gesture of the thing.
The device will be resumed throughout the film, often when we least expect it. At one point, Sellers shows up as his wife (played normally by Emily Watson, who does bemused wonders with the usually thankless type of role). The character asks to re-record Mrs. Sellers' “dialogue” – in an ADR studio, he/she then dubs a romantic rapprochement over the fed-up breakup that actually occurred. Later, in drag again as his mother, he gets up off the hospital bed and walks through several flats into a funeral home. Celebrating her son’s insensitivity for ignoring her deathbed pleas (“My boy’s a star”), Peter-as-Peg climbs into her coffin and we return to “reality” where a devastated Peter kisses the cold corpse’s lips. Commentary on the DVD informs us that these monologues were intended to show Sellers’ often self-serving conception of how other saw and perhaps justified his actions. However, they also show his immense narcissism, the way he sees other people in his life merely as different versions of himself.
Indeed, the opening credits, to the tune of Tom Jones’ “What’s New, Pussycat?” display a bevy of animated Peters – some old, some young, some male, some female (some even animal), yet all with the subtly hooked nose and thick black glasses. Before that, in a bookending device which will be echoed in the aforementioned conclusion, we see Peter Sellers enter a dark soundstage, bow before offscreen (imaginary?) applause and turn on the monitor, on which the rest of the film unfolds.The movie is full of such winking, fleet-footed gestures: after the fairly conventional “early years” (appropriate for the early Sellers’ self-effacing normality, not to mention pre-Swingin' Britain's postwar blues), the comedian’s life is shown as a Felliniesque carnival, full of fantasies, movie tributes, and virtual non sequitur effects, such as when our hero visits a car dealership and the various vehicles are transformed into purring sex kittens. When Sellers spots future wife (played by a charming if goofy-accented Charlize Theron) Britt Eklund’s name in a newspaper, the letters “B” and “E” pop out in animated throbs. (This is actually payoff to a gag involving Sellers' greedy psychic, played with corrupt impeccability by Stephen Fry). When the couple cavort on their first romantic excursion, they skip through ridiculously soft-focus fields in over-the-top slo-mo and fast-motion, all skillfully executed with sharp editing and expert music selection. The late sixties are presented as a cartoonish haze of pot smoke, animated butterflies, yellow subma - er, spacecrafts, and even a garishly made-up Peg-cum-human light show, doused in psychedelic front-projection. Later, when Sellers grows frustrated with his self-serving and drug-indulging lifestyle, he embraces silence and comes to embody the inner peace of Chance the Gardener from Being There. But this new-found austerity - this too is but a gimmick. Life & Death's loyalty is to style first and foremost, so traditional notions of suspended belief are thrown out the window. Thus freed, the movie projects a funhouse of film pastiches (The Shining, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Being There itself), trendy devices, hip music montages, and clever trickery.
In other words, the film moves; the editing is deft, the transitions effective if a bit trite, and flourishes goose the movie through set piece after set piece. And if it sometimes seems glib, well, that’s largely the point - not only because it echoes Sellers' own short-sighted self-centeredness. Which brings us to the movie’s third, probably unintentional, and yet most intriguing, subversion: Life & Death's narcissistic, shallow, skilled, and self-indulgent hero not only suits the style of the film, but also the dominant aesthetic of our very own decade. No other epoch has ever been as stylistically sophisticated as the Zeroes on all levels– moving light years beyond the cheesy 80s and drab 90s, movies, television, and advertisements shook off all traces of the functional and fused self-consciousness, playfulness, and technological sophistication, bringing design into the twenty-first century with a vengeance. The Life & Death of Peter Sellers represents all these trends: not only did it appear on HBO (the “happening” place to be in this past decade) and not only does it hearken back to the 60s (whose Pop consciousness, shaggy hair, and mid-decade musical and fashion tastes made a comeback in the 00s). The film is also saturated in the style-first, breezy fluidity that characterized Zeroes media. Thus we have a perfect fitting not only of subject and form, but also of zeitgeist.
True, seen from today’s vantage point, the film’s flourishes are no longer quite as effective. The CGI seems overdone, rendering many backgrounds quite cheesy, the bright lighting is too bright and lends the film’s look an unrefined pallor, and as television commercials, TV shows, and films have followed pace and completely consumed the video-age magic tricks which in Life & Death were at least nominally cutting-edge, the movie’s style does not impress the way it did just a few years ago. This is a pity, since the movie's subversive power lies in part on its very fluidity and assuredness. Still, what remains is the film’s unabashed chutzpah in foregrounding its narcissism and shallowness. Latter-day pop culture may have outstripped Life & Death’s surface dazzle, but there is an unacknowledged unease in ever-more-sophisticated media aesthetics. The facility of the technical mastery, coupled with a desire for fantasy and devotion to lifestyles and fashions of the urban rich, breeds a smug vapidity and soullessness in the cultural trendsetters. It becomes harder and harder to recognize the vast possibilities of art and, yes, entertainment, when the surface sheen hardens into a lacquer.
Which is to say, in less cryptic terms, that all ships are sailing towards the idea of how things are presented, rather than what is presented. [On the blog Little Worlds, we have been discussing these trends in relation to Julie & Julia with, I’m afraid, a bit more precision. Let me quote myself to get the point across: “I don't have a problem with escapist fantasies - just wish they could be told with a more realistic texture, instead of this flat ad-aesthetic look (fast cuts, close lens, surface-flashy but bottom-line-generic set design). But of course that would probably subvert the escapist element too much. Still, someone like Spielberg used to be able to situate fantasies in a real world setting - think of all the throwaway domestic details and humorous conversations in E.T. and Close Encounters. I think it could still be done, if mainstream filmmaking wasn't so intellectually lazy (and it's also tiresome how all adults are shown to have the emotional and intellectual maturity of high school students, but that's another point).”]
The triumph of The Life & Death of Peter Sellers is that it recognizes its own dead soul, indeed takes it as its subject, and does not let itself off the hook. One of the most noticeable “indie” trends of the decade (simultaneous with “indie” ceasing to mean actually “independent,” but rather a collection of pre-packaged quirky signifiers) is a move towards earnestness. The dominant tone of the decade has been arch irony, but it’s been guilty irony, as if the ghosts of 9/11 and Iraq were peering out of the rubble to challenge our superficiality. Yet the over-compensating New Sincerity (to borrow one of Erich Kuersten’s favorite terms) so often rings false, because it is coupled with a floridly stylistic preciousness, which Wes Anderson could pull off (at least with Owen Wilson, in his early films) but no one else seems able to nail. Occasionally Life & Death seems to be hitting this false note as well, and these are its weakest moments. It is far stronger when it allows Sellers’ narcissism to seize control of the film and make the viewer complicit in his sociopathic negation of all which interrupts his shallow pursuit of the good life.
Yet when Sellers closes the door on us in the finale, to the tune of the jaunty Kinks, he’s subverting not only the movie’s previous, and seemingly sincere, poignant conclusion (a welcome subversion, despite the Swiss finale’s admitted effectiveness) nor the film’s final attempt at narrative believability. He is also effacing the very conceit of the movie and of biopics in general: that a person can be unveiled for us onscreen (the best biopic ever, unsurprisingly also a work of fiction, both humors and shatters this convention with its elusive “Rosebud”). And with this gesture, Sellers and the filmmakers also, quite subtly, bellow out one last clarion call for humanism: there is an offscreen after all, and all the glib fireworks and magic tricks have not been the substance, but rather the articles of concealment. “Can’t come in here,” Sellers tells us before closing the door.
At least he’s honest about it.
22 August 2009
The Year 2004: Closer (Mike Nichols)
Patrick Marber's acclaimed stage drama about the interactions of four people was given a reverent screen adaptation by Mike Nichols, a director and producer akin to adapting celebrated stage works, in the year 2004. Tommy Salami of the brilliant Pluck You, Too!, in another great submission for Counting Down The Zeroes, takes on this highly successful film, dubbed as a complete success when it stormed the box-office and found favour with critics, and witnesses Mike Nichols best film since The Graduate.
"Have you ever seen a human heart? It's like a fist wrapped in blood!" Love can be a brutal weapon. A fist wrapped in blood. Never has that been more evident than in 2004's Closer, directed by Mike Nichols of The Graduate fame, based on the play by Patrick Marber. It is a four person play of two men and two women, couples which will seduce, toy with, and betray each other and the only true heart will be the one who's never told the truth about themselves.
We begin when a young American woman named Alice, played by Natalie Portman, is hit by a taxi in London; she looks left instead of right. An office worker named Dan- Jude Law- helps get her back on her feet, and when she opens her eyes she says, "Hello stranger," and we note the instant chemistry. He takes her to the hospital; they hit it off. He writes obituaries for a newspaper, but wants to be a novelist. She's an intriguing young beauty, disarming, he tells her; she becomes his muse, and a year later is publishing a book inspired by her life as a stripper. We learn this when he goes to photographer Anna (Julia Roberts) to get his mug shot for the dust jacket.
Alice is a girl, and Anna is a woman, confident, statuesque. Dan is immediately captured by her as she clicks away with her Leica. A fellow artist; an established one, as opposed to aspiring young Dan. He kisses her, but she rebuffs him, once she knows he's in a relationship. He persists, interrupted when Alice comes upstairs to use "the loo"- her affectation of Britishisms is an amusing conceit- and Anna asks to take her picture alone, recognizing her natural beauty. She's heard their flirtations, and Anna takes a photo of her sadness that eventually ends up at her photo exhibition later. Alice decides not to tell Dan what she overheard, but he never forgets Anna. If you have any doubts as to Ms. Portman's acting abilities, I suggest you see this film. She exudes a wisdom belying her age, and we know Alice knows more than her years imply, whether through instinct or experience. Jude Law's Dan is a little less mysterious; he's the artist who idealizes love, and would rather be the one doing the desiring in a relationship. He's also a bit of a prankster. One night he's in an internet chat room (looks like AOL Instant Messenger) pretending to be a woman, teasing a doctor who's up late on his shift, named Larry (Clive Owen). They have a hilarious cybersex exchange, and Dan plays a cruel trick that backfires on him: he masquerades as Anna, and tells him to meet him at the London Aquarium.
Larry is the gruff opposite of neat, pretty Dan; Clive Owen wears a perpetual five o'clock shadow, paired with his bushy eyebrows, knobby knuckles and slightly hunched posture make him seem like he crawled out of a Cro-Magnon cave and into a doctor's white coat. He's a man ruled by animal appetites, but he's sharp enough to know how to turn a prank into Cupid's arrow. His befuddlement and honest apologies after his vulgar come-ons to Anna endear him to her, and they become a couple. We meet them again at Anna's exhibition, where a huge photo of Alice's crying face fills a wall. While Dan and Anna meet to discuss their work, Larry recognizes Alice from her photo and asks her what she thinks. "It's a lie. It's a bunch of sad strangers photographed beautifully, and... all the glittering assholes who appreciate art say it's beautiful 'cause that's what they wanna see. But the people in the photos are sad, and alone... But the pictures make the world seem beautiful, so... the exhibition is reassuring which makes it a lie, and everyone loves a big fat lie."
Oddly enough, you'd think Larry and Alice would hit it off immediately for they're both cynics. At one point he calls himself "a clinical observer of the human carnival," and he's the source of the opening quote about the human heart. He holds no illusions, but is not made of stone. "You don't know the first thing about love, because you don't understand compromise." And the compromise he'll make to get what he wants, and to get revenge, is the bloody heart of this story. For while he and Alice are chatting, Dan and Anna are as well. Once Anna and Dan are together, Alice and Larry are torn apart. Alice disappears into her own past, but Larry refuses to give up on Anna. When she asks him for a divorce, as an observer of the "human carnival," he accuses her of doing this because she doesn't think she deserves to be happy. I'm not a big fan of Julia Roberts, but here she is quite brilliant; Anna is a carefully built façade of strength hiding internalized self-loathing from abuse in previous relationships. "Did you get dressed because you thought I was going to hit you?" "I've been hit before." "Not by me!" Patrick Marber's screenplay based on his own play has such depths written between the lines. She wears weakness as a shield, using her past to deflect judgement for her actions. And Larry admits an infidelity with a prostitute just before her own announcement, because he senses it coming. Does he do it to get the first punch in, or because he knows she's leaving him for another man, and wants to dwarf his own indiscretion alongside hers?
Like the more recent Doubt, Closer is crafted to initiate discussion. Is Larry's infidelity somehow less criminal because he doesn't cheat with his heart? It's the stereotypical male excuse. Larry is a self-described "caveman," and we notice that his weakness is sexual, while Dan "falls in love" when he cheats. After the break-ups, Larry finds Alice working in a strip club, as he tries to clobber the pain away with sex. Wearing a pink wig, little else, and using the name Janie Jones from the Clash song, he tries to reconnect with her. She's steeled herself against her loss better than he has, despite her breakdown to Dan. The movie is perhaps most famous for this scene, not only for Ms. Portman's state of undress, but for the brutally frank dialogue. She prowls around him in the private room like a pink tigress, as he stuffs pound notes into her garter, not asking her to reveal her body, but "something true." Her response: “Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off—but it’s better if you do.”
It's a line from film noir, and the irony is that she's most truthful here with Larry than with anyone else. He begs her to sleep with him, feigning pain and playing into her desire to be desired; but we'll learn, he is also marking his territory, and setting up his cruel revenge on Dan "for deceiving me so exquisitely." Because Anna needs to see him, to finalize their divorce. And as an astute observer of the human carnival, Larry knows how to get her back. He plays to her pity, and to his own caveman image: "You'd be my whore. And in return I will pay you with your liberty." Leaving his mark on her, knowing that she'll tell Dan, who won't be able to accept it. In a line used in the trailer but not the film, he says, "You women don't understand the territory, because you are the territory."
Clive Owen's portrayal of Larry is perfect, and he resembles Paul Newman in the role. A bit of Hud, surely. In the play, he had the role of the younger man Dan, versus Ciarán Hinds as the older, wiser man. Here he claims to understand love because he accepts compromise, but his idea of love is proprietary. Does he want Anna back because he loves her, because he knows he can hold her together when she's weak, or because she was taken from him? Dan says, "You love her like a dog loves its owner," but perhaps he loves her like a dog loves a bone. And while Larry says he's forgiven her, and that "without forgiveness we're savages," we know what he's done to Dan, and get the feeling Anna will be paying for her infidelities for the rest of her life. I'd always sided with Larry in early viewings, but the better I get to know him, the more I see him as a darker shade of gray than I did originally. But he does appeal to even young Dan, who apes some of his words when he goes back to Alice.
In the end, Dan is left with nothing except the revelation of his lover's secret, and Alice is again crossing the street to Damien Rice's "The Blower's Daughter," which tells of infatuation and loathing, only hinting at what went goes on in between; the film is similar, skipping a year between scenes, giving us only the crucial moments that send these relationships spinning off on a new axis. The moments they meet, the moments that set them into crumbling. In the background is always music from Mozart's opera Così fan tutte, which also dealt with couples swapping partners. Here it sets a bittersweet mood, as Nichols works angles and close-ups, and his D.P. Stephen Goldblatt- more famous for action films, but also for the inventive Joe vs. the Volcano- maps the geography of the four human faces with incredible detail. Patrick Marber would also go on to adapt the excellent Notes on a Scandal, and director Mike Nichols easily makes his best movie since Mrs. Robinson flashed some thigh. Clive Owen and Natalie Portman would be nominated for Oscars, and win Golden Globes. It would be shoved aside by Million Dollar Baby of all things, but I think in the years to come, this will be better remembered.
The Year 2004: Hellboy (Guillermo del Toro)
Counting Down The Zeroes welcomes back J.D from the superb Radiator Heaven, and not only for yet another excellent submission but as team member, who will be on hand for the ever expanding project from now on. This time round however, J.D has taken on one of the more critically acclaimed comic adaptations of recent memory with Guillermo del Toro's vivid adaptation of the celebrated comic book series Hellboy. 
The success of X-Men (2000) and Spider-Man (2002) opened the door for a new wave a comic book adaptations. In the past, studios have played it safe and only green-lighted adaptations of mainstream comic books with large followings. However, this changed with adaptations of independent fare like Ghost World (2000), American Splendor (2003) and with Hellboy (2004). Based on Mike Mignola’s comic book of the same name, it has a dedicated cult following at best so it was a pleasant surprise to see a major studio take a big budget gamble with this title.
October 1944. The Nazis have begun mixing science with black magic in a desperate attempt to regain the advantage in World War II. The seemingly invincible Russian, Rasputin (Karel Roden) has teamed up with the Germans and plans to open a portal to another dimension and bring about an apocalypse. However, Allied troops arrive and disrupt the procedure just in time. In the process, something comes through: a red-skinned demon baby that the soldiers adopt and call Hellboy.
Present day. Rasputin has been resurrected and continues his plans to summon destructive supernatural forces that will result in the end of the world. Hellboy (Ron Perlman) has matured and now works for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD) in New Jersey — under the guise of a waste management company (just like Tony Soprano). Along with Abe Sapien (Doug Jones), an amphibious humanoid (“the fish guy” as a guard puts it), firestarter Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), and the token “normal guy,” John Myers (Rupert Evans), Hellboy tracks down Rasputin and tries to prevent him from fulfilling his nefarious goals.
Guillermo Del Toro, a die-hard comic book fan and self-described film geek, shoots the action sequences much like he did in Blade II (2002), with crazy camera angles and fantastically choreographed fights. It’s like Del Toro took panels right out Mignola’s comic book and made them move but with the same kind of explosive energy that made Jack Kirby’s art so exciting. Del Toro also has incredible production design at his disposal to create a fully realized world rich in detail and drenched in atmosphere. He is heavily influenced by Italian horror films and not only references Mario Bava’s Black Sunday (1960) but also the saturated primary color scheme of Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977) to name just a couple of examples.
Del Toro was shooting Mimic (1997) and discovered the Hellboy comic book but never thought that it could be made in Hollywood and if it did they would ruin it. He heard that it was going to be adapted into a film at Universal Pictures and started writing a screenplay in 1997. He met Mignola when they worked together on Blade II which they used as their “rehearsal” for Hellboy. They found out that they read the same comic books and pulp and classic gothic horror novels. With Hellboy, Del Toro wanted to make a self-contained film, “almost a fairy tale, a fable.” His original pitch to executives at Sony-based Revolution Studios was that both The Mask (1994) and Men in Black (1997) were comic books that they were not familiar with and yet went on to become extremely successful films. He told them that the same thing could happen with Hellboy. In April 2002, Del Toro’s film was given the green-light at a budget of $60 million.
Del Toro first saw Ron Perlman in Quest for Fire (1982) and then The Name of the Rose (1986) and was very impressed with his acting, so much so that he ended up casting the actor in his first film Cronos (1994). Del Toro initially wanted him to play Hellboy but Vin Diesel was a rising star at the time and so the director approached him instead for the role. However, with the move from Universal to Revolution, Diesel dropped out of the picture and Perlman was in. Early on, if the actor didn’t work out, Del Toro thought about making Hellboy a mixture of puppet and computer graphics. He talked to James Cameron who warned him that if he went that route he would lose the love story. Del Toro wisely decided to stick with Perlman.
Perlman is perfectly cast as the cigar smoking, two-fisted action hero who eats Baby Ruth candy bars and loves cats. He does a great job of capturing Hellboy’s sarcastic, wise-cracking nature. Perlman gets to utter cool one-liners and looks fantastic in his make-up (thanks to legendary make-up artist Rick Baker). Often, what makes it to the film rarely resembles what was drawn in the comic book. Not the case here — Perlman IS Hellboy. With this role, he firmly established himself as one of the cult film icons of the new millennium (much like Bruce Campbell was in the 1990s). Perlman has got the drop-dead cool action hero shtick down cold. With his hulking, imposing physique, he’s Arnold Schwarzenegger with brains and irony.
Del Toro cast Selma Blair because he always saw a “haunting quality in her eyes and in her look. Sort of a doomed, gothic beauty in her.” He was a fan of The Larry Sanders Show and felt the Jeffrey Tambor had that “smarmy, wannabe bureaucratic presence” that was ideal for Tom Manning. He cast Tambor against type and wanted him to be an “absolute asshole in the beginning, and play it straight.” Del Toro and Mignola created the character of Myers to guide audiences into Hellboy’s world. The director interviewed a lot of young Hollywood actors but many of them were “just too cute and too Calvin Klein beautiful to put in the movie.” He liked Rupert Evans because he had “such an open face, and he had a real innocence about him.” Del Toro saw John Hurt in Love and Death on Long Island (1997) and felt that the actor had “that little air of tragedy about him” that suited Professor Bruttenholm.
Hellboy is one of those rare comic book movies with depth. It takes time to develop its characters and the relationships between them. There is the touching father-son relationship between Hellboy and Bruttenholm and the romantic love triangle between Hellboy, Myers and Liz. While the film has the requisite slam-bang action sequences, it is not dominated by them. The film is not driven by them but rather by the characters and the story. And this is because Del Toro has strong source material to draw from: Mignola’s comic book, in particular “Seed of Destruction,” which chronicles Hellboy’s origins. Both Del Toro and Mignola’s works are steeped in the gothic and horror genres, in particular the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. The author’s influence is all over this movie as Hellboy trades blows with Cthulhu-inspired creatures that would make ol’ Lovecraft proud. While Del Toro’s film didn’t exactly rack up the kind box office numbers the studio was hoping for, it did prove to be quite popular on home video and eventually spawn an even better sequel in 2008.
21 August 2009
The Year 2004: Love Song For Bobby Long (Shainee Gabel)
Andrew Kendall of Encore's World of Film & TV takes on 2004's 'underwhelming' Love Song for Bobby Long, based on the novel Off Magazine Street by Ronald Everett Capps, starring John Travolta as a washed up literature professor. Something of a flop at the box-office, despite co-starring the in favour Scarlet Johansson, a Love Song for Bobby Long fared just as poorly with the critics yet Andrew believes it's not all that bad and it's certainly a movie worth your time.
Love Song for Bobby Long can easily be classified as good trash, and that’s for the most part what it’s been called. It performed underwhelming at the box office, mediocre to fair with the critics but… and this is a big but – it’s not a bad movie.
A Love Song for Bobby Long stars John Travolta and Scarlet Johansson. As an actor John Travolta falls into a specific group of actors including Nicolas Cage and George Clooney. Movie stars with rabid followers that have never impressed me with their acting abilities. To be honest Cage was good in Leaving Las Vegas, but he stole Sean Penn’s Oscar so I can acquiesce. A Love Song for Bobby Long is about a drifter of a man living in a somewhat derelict house somewhere in the south. When a death leaves a brash, young woman – Purslane (Johansson) to inherit a share in the home it leads to some interesting situations. Purslane and Bobby Long do not hit it off, and the latter’s protégé Lawson played by the capable Gabriel Macht must play mediator. As the film gets on his feet it becomes shockingly non sentimental as we try to get the background behind Bobby Long’s strange character. John Travolta does not have half of the charm required to play the role nor does he succeed with his ludicrous concoction of a Southern Accent, but we manage to care about his Bobby despite all these faults. But the highlight of the film is not him.
A Love Song for Bobby Long earned one major award nomination. A Golden Globe Best Actress nomination for Scarlett Johansson. Her name is not in the title but Purslane is the main character of the film. Her Purslane just may be akin to the typical angst ridden teenager girl trying to find her way, with a pot mouth. She does not reinvent the wheel in her acting style but she’s not supposed to. This is not a tour de force role in any way. The writing is not the strong point of the film. The actors particularly Johansson and Macht try their best and their chemistry is undeniably affecting.
There are two surprises in A Love Song for Bobby Long. One concerns the lease of the house the three live in and the other concerns Purslane’s parents. Both do not work as well as they’d like to, but the former comes off better. This is so because of the main actor’s dedication and because of the general believability of the situation, the second is not as lucky. Most of the audience probably saw it coming and it seems a bit cut and dry. And Johansson is not as strong in that pivotal scene as she is in the earlier and brassier parts of the film. Still it could have been worse.
A Love Song for Bobby Long suffers because it does not know what type of film it is. Is it a coming of age drama about a lost girl, a film about forbidden romance, a teacher/student buddy film or a sentimental family drama….and the list goes on. They don’t know, and we don’t know. But for the most part, we do care…and it’s worth your time. Especially if you’re a fan of Macht or Johansson.
