Orson Welles himself edited this proposed trailer for his last completed film. The American distributor rejected it because it ran over nine minutes long (among other reasons), but it’s at least as good as the film itself.
THE WILD, WILD WORLD OF JAYNE MANSFIELD
Shortly after ’60s pin-up bombshell Jayne Mansfield was decapitated in a freak road accident, some shifty producers assembled this unbelievable exploitation/nudie film. It’s on DVD from Something Weird Video, and I highly recommend it.
GODZILLA VS. MEGALON
Widely considered the worst of the Godzilla series…which is really saying something.
Notice that the trailer refers to Jet Jaguar as “Robotman.”
MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000: THE MOVIE Rating: *** (out of ****) Cast: Michael J. Nelson, Trace Beaulieu, Kevin Murphy, Jim Mallon Writers: Michael J. Nelson, Trace Beaulieu, Paul Chaplin, Jim Mallon, Kevin Murphy, Mary Jo Pehl, Bridget Jones Director: Jim Mallon
Now on DVD from Rogue Pictures (Universal)
Like all of the best comedy, there’s something gleefully anarchic about Mystery Science Theater 3000. The show, which ran on cable in the United States from 1989 to 1999, had a simple premise that both postmodern deconstructionists and couch potatoes could get behind: a humble working stiff (Mike Nelson, who replaced series creator Joel Hodgeson) is shot into space by a demented mad scientist (Trace Beaulieu) bent on world domination. His evil plot: find the worst movie of all time and use it to melt the minds of the public. (Well, I’m still not sure on the specifics of his plan – it’s pretty vague).
Nelson, aboard the ‘Satellite of Love,’ is a guinea pig, forced to watch dozens and dozens of terrible, Z-grade films, ranging from Japanese monster films to juvenile delinquent melodramas, and films by Ed Wood and Roger Corman, among others. To maintain his sanity, Nelson, along with his robot friends Tom Servo (voice of Kevin Murphy) and Crow (Beaulieu), fire a series of wisecracks at the screen while the moving plays. Seen in silhouette at the bottom right corner of the screen, their sardonic running commentary consisted of something like 700 quips during each 90-minute episode. And far from taking lazy potshots, the script (which was extensively written and re-written by a large writing staff) could contain references to Kierkegaard, Shakespeare, and Aristotle alongside jokes about bodily functions.
Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie was my first exposure to this concept. I saw it for the first time in 2000 when I was 11-years-old and discovering the cheesy wonder of Ed Wood and Godzilla films. MST3K:TM takes as its target the 1955 Universal sci-fi epic This Island Earth, about a race of big-foreheaded aliens looking to conquer Earth since their planet is dying. This Island Earth, a big-budget production in its day and fondly remembered by sci-fi fans with too much time on their hands, was full of all the hallmarks that defined a cheesy sci-fi movie to my 11-year-old self: a wooden he-man lead (Rex Reason), goofy special effects, and some of the most ridiculous make-up in movie history (big foreheads? Really?). As Mike, Tom, and Crow are seen in silhouette filing into the theatre, the ‘50s “Universal International” logo appears. “Doesn’t the fact that it’s universal make it international?” says a member of the peanut gallery. Seconds later, when the opening credits appear against an outer space backdrop, partially obscured by stars, Crow says, “Hey, who sneezed on the credits?” These guys are on the audience’s side, appealing to the part in us that gets outraged when marketing hype lures us into a Hollywood bomb. MST3K serves as a sort of movie police agency, holding lazy and untalented filmmakers accountable for their poor work in an articulate, hilarious way. To me, this was revolutionary.
Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie was released in 1996 shortly after the series was cancelled after seven season on Comedy Central and before it was picked up for another three by the Sci-Fi Channel. By all accounts, it faced a difficult production process, with scenes deleted by the studio and the writers required to produce a broader, more accessible commentary. The movie is not as good as the best of the television show (look for the episodes skewering Mitchell, Space Mutiny, and Manos: The Hands of Fate, all available on DVD from Rhino), and at 73 minutes, it’s shorter than the average episode (and, for that matter, the original, un-edited This Island Earth, which is 87 minutes). Apart from some more elaborate sets it doesn’t really take advantage of the feature film format, and the intermission scenes are startlingly lame…
…but, those 73 minutes contain a lot of laughs. When a geeky scientists says, “You know what my kids would say?”, Tom blurts, “You’re not my real father!” When dramatic music plays after a character announces he’s shifting an ‘interoceter’ to Normal View, the gang sings along, “Nor-mal view! Nor-mal vieeeew! NOR-mal, Vieeeeew! NO-RMAL VIEEEEEW!” When an asteroid falls crashes onto a planet, Tom says, “Oh no, Tinkerbell’s goin’ down! Pull up Tink!” Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie is smart snarkiness.
(The MST3K crew taking on a ’50s educational film)
MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS Rating: *** ½ (out of ****) Cast: Norah Jones, Jude Law, David Strathairn, Rachel Weisz, Natalie Portman Writer: Wong Kar-wai, Lawrence Block Director: Wong Kar-wai
Now playing at the Varsity.
Wong Kar-wai’s My Blueberry Nights is a very good Wong Kar-wai movie. This caught me by surprise. Of all living directors, there is almost nobody I admire more than Wong, whose Hong Kong films, including 2046, In the Mood for Love, and Chungking Express are beautifully photographed, and emotionally rich mood pieces about love, loss, and longing. He has made around a half dozen of the finest films ever made in any language and has won a shelf full of international awards, but when My Blueberry Nights premiered as the opening night film in 2007’s Cannes Film Festival, it met with critical apathy. Now, almost a full year later, it is finally opening in a halfhearted limited release with 20 minutes trimmed off by Wong (the extended version is playing in other territories – hopefully it will be made available on DVD), and with the critical tone having been set at Cannes, few critics have found many nice things to say about it.
I walked into My Blueberry Nights expecting the worst. Apart from the critical jeers, I feared that Wong may have taken his distinctive style as far as it could go with the ambitious 2046, a “summation” of all his previous work, as Wong put it. And how would he survive the trip over the Pacific? Many critics have complained that Wong has a tin ear for English dialogue. But surprise - My Blueberry Nights is a wonderful film, and one that confirms by belief that Wong is one of the contemporary giants of cinema, no matter what language he’s working in.
Norah Jones, in her acting debut, plays Elizabeth, a heartbroken woman (there seem to be no other kind in Wong’s world) who, after a painful break-up, finds herself in a café in Soho, New York, where she strikes up a friendship with the owner, a British expatriate named Jeremy (Jude Law). She makes frequent visits back to the café, always at closing time, to talk to Jeremy and eat a piece of blueberry pie, the only one of Jeremy’s pastries that hasn’t been finished by then. Jeremy, also suffering from a broken heart, begins longing for Elizabeth, but without announcement, she heads on a meandering cross-country journey.
The second act is set in Memphis, where Elizabeth works two jobs: a family restaurant by day, a seamy bar by night. At the bar, she meets Arnie (David Strathairn), a middle-aged drunkard perpetually celebrating “his last day of drinking” and pining for his own separated wife, Sue Lynne (Rachel Weisz). In the third act, Elizabeth befriends professional poker player Leslie (Natalie Portman). Together, they travel to Las Vegas, while Leslie’s complicated relationship with her father becomes increasingly clearer. All throughout, Elizabeth continues writing postcards to Jeremy, who desperately wants to see her again.
Some critics have said that Wong’s English dialogue is stilted. I disagree. It’s certainly not the sort of pseudo-naturalistic talking you’d find in most mainstream movies, but then, I don’t think his Cantonese dialogue was exactly realist either, nor do I think that’s his intention. His dialogue is more poetic and lightly stylized, and I often found it quite beautiful. Others have said that his depiction of New York is out of touch with reality, to which I say, well, duh! Wong’s versions of New York, Connecticut, Las Vegas, and the Arizona desert are heavily romanticized versions of their real-life counterparts, as if he was trying to visualize these places as we’d like to see them. Jeremy’s café and its surrounding streets and subways are particularly beautiful, and made me want to hop on a plane and visit Soho.
A renowned visual stylist, Wong is working for the first time with cinematographer Darius Khondji (Se7en, Funny Games) after years with Christopher Doyle. Khondji’s photography is dominated by neon blues and greens in the Soho scenes and luscious reds in the Memphis section, and his frequent use of close-ups and step-framing (a favourite device of Wong’s) make this one of Wong’s most beautiful films, and one of his most visually intimate. Wong and Khondji’s visual strategy includes long, lingering shots of their attractive cast’s faces. During one such shot of Norah Jones asleep on a café counter, as the camera soaks in her beauty, I realized that Wong wants his audience to feel love for his characters – not lust, but love. Mike Lasalle of the San Francisco Chronicle, on of the film’s supporters, wrote, “He’s committed to replicating, in visual terms, what it’s like to feel passion. Wong invites you to fall in love, not with a particular woman, but with love itself and with a specific moment in time.” Exactly.
Norah Jones, making her acting debut, exists as a catalyst for the action, and as a figure for viewers to insert their own conception of love. She is not the most comfortable of actors, and her role is the least developed of the central characters, but she does fine. The rest of the ensemble – Jude Law, David Strathairn, Rachel Weisz, and Natalie Portman – fit perfectly within the context of a Wong Kar-wai film. Strathairn is particularly excellent: his low-key delivery and slightly nasal voice, combined with the weathered details of his face, hint at a character with a virtual ocean of sadness underneath.
If 2046 was the summation of Wong’s career, maybe he intended My Blueberry Nights to introduce his career to a broader international audience. Devotees of his work will enjoy spotting references to his past films. The theme music from In the Mood for Love plays over one scene, while Portman’s card shark is an American version of Gong Li’s character from 2046, and I think the final scene owes a lot to the conclusion of Chungking Express. (Incidentally, the blueberry pies of this film might be stand-ins for the pineapple cans of Express).
But despite these references, My Blueberry Nights may be Wong’s most accessible film to date for non-fans. What Wong has done is take his signature style and transplanted it to an American setting. And far from repeating himself, Wong’s style has become richer, more sensual, and more satisfying as the years go by. Critics who chastise Wong for not conforming to some unwritten rules of how American films are supposed to be made are missing out by refusing to embrace the beautiful, self-contained, and completely original universe that Wong has created in this film and others. If you’ve enjoyed Wong’s films in the past, I can’t understand why you wouldn’t enjoy this. If you’re unfamiliar with his work, this is a great place to start.
IRON MAN Rating: ** ½ (out of ****) Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Terrence Howard, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges, Stan Lee Writers: Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway Director: Jon Favreau
Now playing at every single movie theatre in the known universe.
Robert Downey Jr. has often been called one of the greatest actors of his generation for his quirky, off-the-wall performances. I’m not sure I agree. He showed astonishing promise by disappearing in the title role of Chaplin, but since then he seems to always play a variation on the same character. My appreciation for him hit rock bottom in Zodiac, a performance I found so distracting and aggressively mannered that it seriously hindered my appreciation for the film.
Now, Downey is back in Iron Man, playing yet another mannered, quirky smart-ass, and yet he’s the film’s biggest asset. His certainly doesn’t break any new ground, but in the middle of a conventional $180 million blockbuster, it’s a breath of fresh air much in the same way that Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow was in the first Pirates of the Caribbean. He has an anarchic spirit, making Groucho-esque wisecracks about the action set pieces and technology around him. I wasn’t surprised to learn that he re-wrote much of his own dialogue.
Iron Man currently holds a 94% approval rating among critics on Rotten Tomatoes. No other comic book character has ever scored higher: not Batman, not Superman, not Spiderman. Some critics have charitably described this as one of the “smarter” summer blockbusters of late. I think this is attributable to the fact that the film’s first act is set in the Middle East. Following nearly a year of high-profile flops, how fascinating that the last two weeks have seen the release of back-to-back commercially viable post-9/11 films. (The fact that the only two commercially viable post-9/11 films to date have been Iron Man and Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay says less about the films and more about filmgoers).
Anyway, in the Middle East, millionaire playboy arms manufacturer Tony Stark is being held captive by evil, evil terrorists. The terrorists want him to build a missile that they can use for their various evil terrorist activities, but when they’re not looking, Tony makes a prototype iron man suit instead. The suit, which is extraordinarily technologically advanced for something that was cobbled together from some spare parts in a cave, is then used to blast dozens of terrorists to their (slightly sadistic) deaths. But while in the Middle East, Tony makes an alarming discovery: his arms company has been making under-the-table deals with terrorist groups. Disgusted, Tony announces plans to cease all weapons production at Stark Industries. Evil terrorists, under-the-table deals, and a noble corporate executive; if this is what passes for intelligence and social consciousness in the summer movie season, the movie industry is in worse shape than I thought.
Tony spends time making and perfecting his Iron Man suit in a story structure not a million miles away from Batman Begins. Meanwhile, his business partner Obadiah (Jeff Bridges) turns out to be really evil, revolting on Tony’s no-weapons policy by researching the secrets of the Iron Man suit, with the intention of creating a new, powerful weapon to profit from. I thought he lost control of his evil plan around that time that he started terrorizing the city in the suit, tossing cars and killing police officers. No plot synopsis would be complete without mention of the unfortunately named ‘Pepper’ Pots (Gwyneth Paltrow), Tony’s butler and love interest; she’s like a younger, more female version of Batman’s Alfred. Terrence Howard gets second billing as Tony’s best friend. Good god, I hope he gets something to do in the sequel.
What Iron Man does, it does with an admirable level of competence. The special effects are uniformly excellent, and the action scenes are well done (although I question the moral justification behind the rather enthusiastic terrorist-slaughter). The script, while not exactly “smart” and containing some fairly gaping holes, moves along at an admirable clip. Perhaps I didn’t respond enthusiastically to Iron Man because of the unreasonable expectations its overwhelming critical praise set. I also suspect the inevitable Iron Man II will be more enjoyable; the problem with origin stories is that before the audience can get what it paid for, they have to sit through a lot of set-up. Yet in the midst of this fairly routine film is Downey, who seems indifferent and at most mildly amused by the action spectacle around him. What an interesting choice.
It’s exam season here at University of Toronto, so do please allow me a brief hiatus from movie reviewing. Will be back soon.
In the meantime, for your edification, some of my favourite YouTube videos:
SONNY CHIBA IN “THE BODYGUARD”
“Sonny Chiba, The Streetfighter, is back as the meanest, bloodiest, most violent ass-kicking lung ripping mother yet!”
JERRY LEWIS IN “HARDLY WORKING”
More fun than a day off?
BRUCE LEE FIGHTS BACK FROM THE GRAVE - TRAILER
Note that Mr. Narrator Voice is the same guy who did the trailer for “The Bodyguard.” The man’s name, unfortunately enough, was Adolph Caeser. He actually had a fairly successful acting career, received an Oscar nomination for A Soldier’s Story and acting in such films as The Color Purple and, of course, the immortal Fist of Fear, Touch of Death.
GARBAGE!: THE REVOLUTION STARTS AT HOME Rating: ** (out of ****) Cast: Andrew Nisker, Glen McDonald Director: Andrew Nisker Screened April 22nd as part of Hot Docs
Andrew Nisker’s Garbage!: The Revolution Starts at Home begins as a gimmicky documentary and ends as a fevered rant. Nisker’s topic is pollution and garbage disposal, and his approach is zippy and commercial, but he aims at too many targets over too little time, and some of what he chooses to attack is downright laughable.
Nisker’s obvious model for Garbage is Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me, which he mimics like a colour-by-numbers picture. Nisker’s experiment is pretty cute: he enlists his friends the McDonald family to save all of their garbage in their garage for three months to see how much an average suburban household throws away. Things quickly get very crowded, smelly, and maggot-infested in the McDonalds’ garage. In between the McDonalds’ story, Nisker travels around North America, making discoveries about the effects of garbage on the earth, communities, and our own bodies.
Nisker is not the born filmmaker that Spurlock is, because he fails to realize that the key to making a first-person documentary work is to convey that he himself has a strong, dynamic personality. Morgan Spurlock presents himself as a good ol’ boy, and Michael Moore positions himself as a shlubby man of the people, but Nisker is a blank. He has more luck with the McDonald family, who come across as funny and charming. Perhaps Nisker should have abandoned the first-person device and given the McDonald family more screen time to develop into fully formed protagonists.
Garbage also fails to motivate its audience to save the environment. The film moves at a breathless pace as Nisker squeezes in virtually every form of pollution he can think of within the film’s slim 76-minute run time. My overwhelming feeling was not one of inspiration, but rather hopelessness. Nisker lists of so many pollutants that I started to wonder if the only way to make the world green was to revert to the Stone Age. Nisker is right to say that we use too much plastic (incidentally, this film marks the first time I’ve ever heard the phrase “plastic lobbyists”), but he also insists on pointing out that we pollute when we flush the toilet and use the dishwasher. He visits the residents of the Michigan suburb where Toronto sends its garbage, who complain that their property values have plummeted since the dump has been constructed. Well, that’s unfortunate, but the reality is that no matter how much we conserve, we’re still going to need garbage dumps, and there will always be unlucky people who have a house next to one. Nisker goes totally off the rails when he says that our decomposing bodies can harm the earth. Is he trying to say that to save the environment, we should try not to die?
ALL TOGETHER NOW Rating: ** (out of ****) Cast: Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Michael, Yoko Ono Director: Adrian Wills
Screened April 19th as part of Hot Docs. Also showing April 20th at 3:45 PM at the Bloor.
Among the more interesting aspects of Adrian Wills’ All Together Now, a documentary about the production of the Cirque du Soleil/Beatles show Love (currently playing at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas), is the sheer idolatry with which it views the Beatles. When Paul McCartney is seen entering the room in behind-the-scenes rehearsal footage, the camera darts around the gathering crowd like a nervous autograph-seeker. Later, during Love’s opening night, the camera catches a few quick glimpses of McCartney and Ringo Starr seated next to each other in the audience, occasionally dancing along and lip-synching the music they wrote over forty years ago. These shots are very quick; it’s tempting to think of the cameraman, after capturing a few seconds of McCartney and Starr, running outside and telling the other crew members, “OMIGOD! I JUST SAW PAUL AND RINGO!”
Well, he does have a point. McCartney and Starr have reached a level of pop culture royalty where they can get a standing ovation for just showing up. “Sometimes I wake up in the morning and say, ‘Wow, I’m a Beatle!,’” says McCartney during All Together Now. “Only four people in the whole world can say that. In the whole universe!” The blind hero-worship of All Together Now is understandable, but it’s a shame that the rest of the film remains at that same superficial level. The film is slick and efficient, and it contains some modest pleasures for Beatles fans, but it’s not very filling. It plays more like an 85-minute commercial than a documentary.
One of the problems is that there is little suspense over whether Love will be a success. With the mighty Beatles, Cirque du Soleil, Mirage, and Apple names all backing it to the tune of an estimated $180 million, the show ain’t exactly an underdog. A few very minor backstage squabbles (most involving Yoko) are very quickly settled, and there is little inherent drama about a show whose production goes by smoothly. A lot of the behind-the-scenes footage is surprisingly mundane. And yes, this movie has a lot of Beatles music, but so does my iPod.
The film might have been more compelling had director Adrian Willis delved into some of the personalities behind the show. Apart from his glowing portraits of the Beatles and their associates, however, few people are given much screen time. (The closest thing to a scene-stealer is a good-natured African dancer, but Willis uses him rather cheaply as a comic relief). Willis might also have made a more interesting film if he really examined why the Beatles have endured. Why do the Beatles continue to resonate with audiences to such an extent that the last two years have brought not only Love, but also two other Beatles revues (Rain and The Cast of Beatlemania) and a big budget Beatles-inspired movie (Across the Universe)? All Together Now is more interested in adoration than analysis.
In between all the puffery, some really nice moments do manage to creep in that suggest how much better this film could have been. Dominic Champagne, the director of Love, plays nervously with a file clip several times. George Martin offhandedly mimes the cellist part in “She’s Leaving Home.” Yoko Ono has a near-hissy fit over the “sleazy” treatment of “Come Together.” McCartney banters with Martin, recalling with some amazement how songs that he scribbled on the back of an envelope have reached iconic status. Ringo Starr air-drums while watching the show. And McCartney, leaving all false modesty behind, reflects, “We were a really fucking good band.”
A CRIME AGAINST ART Rating: * (out of ****) Cast: Anton Vidokle, Tirdad Zolghadr, Jan Verwoert Director: Hila Peleg Screened April 18 as part of the 2008 Hot Docs Film Festival. Also showing on Sunday at 1:15 at the Royal.
Contemporary art does itself a great disservice by referring to itself as art. I mean this not as an insult – actually, contemporary art is the first thing I head to see any time I’m in a gallery. I like its audaciousness, its bold experimentation, and its willingness to tackle taboo subjects. But how can contemporary art, which is less concerned with being aesthetically pleasurable than it is with conveying a sociopolitical message, be included under the same banner as Rembrandt, Van Gough, or even Picasso? When artists are no longer interested in the very fundamentals of art – colour, balance, proportion, etc. – wouldn’t it be wise to peg their work under some other label?
Some would suggest that art without form is a masturbatory exercise. While this is a fairly harsh dismissal (there’s considerable though put behind a lot of those canvases that your kid could’ve painted), I have at times wondered whether certain artists find more enjoyment in creating works that are opaque than works that are meaningful. Hila Peleg’s A Crime Against Art is the cinematic equivalent of contemporary art at its worst: boring, pompous, and proudly impenetrable, completely devoid of any stylistic niceties and satisfying perhaps only to those who made it.
Before going any further, I have a confession to make: a little past the halfway point, I walked out of this film. This is the first time I’ve walked out of a movie in ten years. I have exams to study for, and life’s just too short.
A Crime Against Art has a cute premise. A New York artist named Anton Vidokle, fed up with the state of the art world, has put himself, along with curator Tirdad Zolghadr, on trial for crimes against art – namely, selling out to the new bourgeoisie. (I swear to god, this movie actually uses the word “bourgeoisie” with a straight face.) The trial is filmed in the same bare-bones style you might find on a particularly slow afternoon of C-SPAN, with virtually no frills. It’s embarrassing to admit this, but I could not follow this film; the dialogue is entirely comprised of the kind of pseudo-intellectual jargon that gets used to inflate small ideas. This film is packed with people speaking so much yet saying so little.
What ideas, exactly, does this movie have? I find myself turning helplessly to Christopher McKinnon’s notes in the official Hot Docs festival guide. He reports: “The indictments are piling up. There are suggestions that the whole trial is a waste of time, or worse still a product of the accused’s puffed up vanity. There is railing against the New Bourgeoisie. The accusations continue: the trial expresses a death wish, a desire for martyrdom. The artists are guilty, guilty, guilty of a gloating kind of heroic thinking. They wish to absolved by their peers, revered by there peers, both. They have colluded with the bourgeoisie, they have eroded artistic agency, they have made impossible the creation of new and meaningful art.”
This is all intriguingly anarchic, yes, but I found it quite simply impossible to follow. The film never explains what exactly the “New Bourgeoisie” is, nor does it clearly and effectively illustrate how artists have surrendered to them, nor does it even mention very many artists by name. This movie does not even show a single example of Anton Vidokle’s work. Is it too much to ask that the filmmakers throw me a bone by placing all this nothingness in some kind of context?
I was about to say that A Crime Against Art might work better for its target audience, but what target audience could this film possibly have in mind? It completely baffled this casual patron of the arts, but I suspect even serious art enthusiasts will be bored. It feels like a home movie that Vidokle, Peleg, and the rest of the cast and crew have made for their own private amusement. Contemporary art does itself a disservice by calling itself art. A Crime Against Art does itself a disservice by calling itself a movie.
