Archive for March, 2009
March 31st, 2009
The crowd begins to get ugly in a scene from HEROES FOR SALE.
This week’s DVD column is a review of the third FORBIDDEN HOLLYWOOD collection from Warner Bros. This one collects six films from the Pre-Code era of the early 1930s, all of them directed by the legendary William Wellman. My column, which you can find here, concentrates mostly on two 1933 films — HEROES FOR SALE, a stark drama about a returning World War I veteran, and WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD, which shifts the focus to teens who become homeless during the Great Depression.
Here’s a link to the video review, with plenty of clips from HEROES FOR SALE.
March 31st, 2009
If you want to see how imaginative movie advertising used to be, point your browser in the direction of SCENES FROM THE MORGUE, a great lil’ blog collecting all sorts of old movie ads. This month has been a salute to Alfred Hitchcock (a guy who knew how to promote a movie), but they’re all pretty good. Here, for example, is Hitch himself hyping PSYCHO…
The deal with PSYCHO, in case you don’t know, was that Hitchcock “insisted” that no one could enter the theater after the movie had started. I have no idea if anyone was kept out — I can’t imagine theater owners turning down a paid admission — but the hype worked, PSYCHO was a hit and the rest was history.
March 31st, 2009
Here’s an interesting article by Matt Zoller Seitz that examines the influences and visual style of one of the most interesting directors working today, Wes Anderson. I especially like this section, which discusses a suprising (to me, at least) inspiration for Max Fischer, the lead character in Anderson’s 1998 film, RUSHMORE…
When I interviewed Anderson for a 1998 Star-Ledger article about A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS, directed by the late animator Bill Melendez, Anderson cited Melendez as one of three major influences on his work, so we’ll start there. Anderson told me that he and his screenwriting collaborator, Owen Wilson, conceived RUSHMORE hero Max Fischer as Charlie Brown plus Snoopy. He said that Miss Cross, the teacher Max adores and will draw into a weirdly Freudian love triangle with the industrialist Mr. Blume, is a combination of Charlie Brown’s teacher and his unattainable love object, the little red-haired girl. Anderson and Wilson even made Max a working-class barber’s son, just like Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, and gave Seymour Cassel, the actor playing Bert Fischer, glasses similar to Schulz’s.
I never noticed that before, but it makes perfect sense. A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS can be glimpsed during a scene in Max’s dad’s barber shop, and in his next film, THE ROYAL TENNENBAUMS, Anderson used a snippet of music from that TV special on the soundtrack.
March 30th, 2009
Back in 1938, artist Henry Major provided the caricatures for a book called HOLLYWOOD that featured text by humorist Arthur “Bugs” Baer. There were only 800 copies printed, but thankfully one of them wound up in the hands of Rick Saunders, who shares them on his Henry Major-focused blog, The Gay Philosopher. Here are a few of my favorites…
Fred MacMurray (long before MY THREE SONS)
Mickey Rooney
Spencer Tracy
Do yourself a favor and check out the rest of them here. It’s amazing what a talented caricaturist can do with a few well-placed lines.
Special thanks to my pal (and fellow old movie fan) Wayne Harold for the link to this site.
March 30th, 2009
Got an e-mail this morning from a reader who’s looking for a movie, but isn’t sure which one he’s looking for. I’m still trying to track this one down, but in the meantime, I thought I’d throw the question out to the vast Movie Man readership. Here’s what he says about this elusive film…
“The movie took place in either the 1940’s or 50s (and seemed to have been filmed then; it was in black and white).
It ended dramatically with one of the star actresses (blonde…..could have been Lana Turner, but I’ve been unable to find such a film with her in it) actually going to the gas chamber. The gas chamber scene was unusually graphic, showing a plunger going into some sort of liquid, sphewing out steam as the female star was blindfolded and struggling with last breaths.
Before she went to the gas chamber the woman was in prison. I seem to remember that she was there for allegedly killing her daughter or a little girl, who had a fascination with Lana Turner and Ava Gardner; the girl would sing their names together often.
Before her execution, the woman was treated poorly by fellow prisoners for killing a child.
I believe the woman was actually innocent of the crime.
There was another female co-star.”
Any guesses?
March 27th, 2009
Here’s the good news: Most DVDs come with bonus features.
Here’s the bad news: Most DVD features are nothing but self-serving hype.
Thankfully, “most” doesn’t mean “all,” and over at his blog, David Bordwell alerts movie fans to some DVD supplements that are actually worth your time. Among his favorites: the making-of feature on COLLATERAL, all the stuff on HELLBOY 2 (director Guillermo del Toro always packs his DVDs with great stuff — check out the documentary on BLADE 2, too), and the supplements on THE GOLDEN COMPASS.
Read the whole article here.
And, as long as we’re on the topic, here are a few of my favorite DVD features:
* “The Hamster Factor” making-of doc on 12 MONKEYS, which is one of the only making-of docs I’ve ever seen that covers the good and bad of making a movie. It’s funny and fascinating.
* “Glorious Technicolor,” a short documentary about the Technicolor process including on THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD
* The two promo ads for FIGHT CLUB that were produced to be shown (but never actually shown) before movie trailers. Each one features one of the stars (Brad Pitt and Edward Norton) supposedly delivering important information to the audience, only to end on a wonderfully uncomfortable note. For example, as Brad Pitt fades out, he says “Did you know urine is sterile? You can drink it.” I would’ve paid double to see these in a theater with an unsuspecting crowd.
* “Thou Shalt Not Sin,” a documentary about Pre-Code Hollywood included on the second Warner Bros. FORBIDDEN HOLLYWOOD boxed set. The clip from the Bosko cartoon, which is one of the most unbelievable things I’ve ever seen, is worth the price of the set all by itself.
* And speaking of cartoons, all the Fleischer Studios Superman cartoons of the early 1940s are included on the SUPERMAN and SUPERMAN II sets released a few years ago, along with tons of other stuff. Some of the most beautiful cartoons ever released, these still look great more than 60 years later — especially in these remastered versions.
Any other recommendations?
March 27th, 2009
If you’re a fan of the EVIL DEAD movies but figured you’d never see another one because Sam Raimi was too busy making SPIDER-MAN sequels, I have some good news for you.
From an interview in EMPIRE magazine, as posted over at Cinematical…
So far, he’s seven pages into a script for Evil Dead 4, with brother Ivan, just as he hoped: “Every time I’m with my brother Ivan, we write another page of it. It’s in Detroit and in my garage.” Raimi continued: “There’s some dialogue. Ash being an idiot. Ash taking some abuse. Some character stuff and then some structure of Act Two. Just other possibilities for things that could happen. It’s ideas, jokes, things we’d like to see.”
Ash, of course, will be played by the great Bruce Campbell. No word on a release date — or even a production date — but let’s hope it’s worth the wait. Those EVIL DEAD movies — especially the second, EVIL DEAD 2: DEAD BY DAWN — are a heck of a lot of fun.
March 26th, 2009
Next year, the Oscar ceremony is moving to March. From USA Today…
The 82nd Annual Academy Awards will air live on ABC from the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles on March 7 to avoid coinciding with the Winter Olympics, said Leslie Unger, a spokeswoman for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
From a big picture standpoint, that’s not a big deal. This year’s Oscars were presented on Feb. 22, but until 2004, the statues were usually handed out near the end of March. What this really means is that the studios will have even more time to buy ads proclaiming their nominees the finest films in the land.
The nominations, by the way, will be announced on Feb. 2. Funyy how they’re not moving them to avoid coinciding with Groundhog Day.
March 25th, 2009
Here’s a link to the teaser trailer for WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, director Spike Jonze’s big-screen version of the beloved children’s book by Maurice Sendak. If you want to see it on the big screen, it’s supposed to be attached to MONSTERS VS. ALIENS, which opens Friday.
 I think it looks pretty darned great myself. And do you recognize the voice of James Gandolfini? (Or, upon further review, it might be Forest Whitaker. Anyone?)
March 25th, 2009
If all goes according to plan, that’ll be (from left), Benicio Del Toro, Jim Carrey and Sean Penn.
The Farrelly Brothers have been trying to make a Three Stooges movie for years, and it looks like the cast is finally falling into place. And it’s a bit, shall we say, unexpected.
According a report in Variety, Sean Penn, who just won an Oscar for playing Harvey Milk in MILK, is going to take the role of Larry Fine. Jim Carrey is supposedly going to play Curly Howard, and pack 40 extra pounds onto his frame to convincingly portray the somewhat huskier Howard. And, in the role of Curly’s brother Moe, producers are reportedly trying to nab another Oscar winner, Benicio Del Toro.
Keep in mind this is not a serious biopic. It’s a comedy. And no, I’m not making this up.Â
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