Heiligabend DVD Triple Header
DVD's were invented so that obsessive movie freaks like the inhabitants of Apartment404 could decipher the most important lines in our favorite films. Lines usually whispered and difficult to hear the first time through.
Three examples --
"Let's go." ("Cuckoo's Nest")
"Time is luck." "This was too good to last." ("Miami Vice")
"I'm not an artist. Let's get married." ("Bullets Over Broadway")
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1) Michael Mann's sprawling "Miami Vice" -
This one is so good they should make a television series out of it. Or something like that.
"Vice" is the most underrated film of the year, maybe in several years. $135 million art films don't come around every day, and this one unsurprisingly lasted about a day and a month in theaters (US box office $63m). Audiences probably weren't willing to:
1) Pay strict attention to complex characters who provide no laugh lines, and stick with a challenging viewing experience lasting over two hours. Should you make the effort, you'll be rewarded, as this is not a film to experience between trips to the refreshment stand. Ya gotta pay attention.
2) Drink in Mann's wonderful infatuation with color, faces, and detail. The "asses in the seats" were probably looking for more "boom boom... bang bang" and straightforward, easily digestable dialogue for their ten bucks. What they got was a different animal altogether.
Director Mann's last two releases, a reverential though slightly timid "Ali", and the Tom Cruise vehicle "Collateral", were not vintage Mann. For that, one has to go back to 1999's "The Insider", with its seven Oscar nominations. "Insider" is a work both larger and smaller than "Vice." Larger because Mann took on both Big Tobacco and Big Media. Smaller due to the lack of large scale action scenes, long a staple for him.
For us, "Miami Vice" is great because Colin Ferrell's Sonny Crockett keeps us guessing. It's great because director Mann was concerned with, for example, (according to the DVD extras) a tired and worn green hotel room shower head, though it didn't appear in the final version. It's great because the British actress Naomie Harris' accent combines New Yawkese with a strange, quirky lisp. And it's great because, with all the attention to detail both big and small, "Vice" looks and feels like a hundred million dollar movie should. Every penny spent shows up onscreen. Unlike, say, "Spiderman", whose cheesy effects left Apt404 staff cold and a bit bored.
Catch "Miami Vice." It's worth a first look.
-----------------------------------------
2) Lessons to be learned from our hundredth (roughly) viewing of "Casablanca" -
100? Or thereabouts? Yes, because we're a bit slow here in the old 'Pent. Takes a few dozen shots to the head for us to unner-stand anything. Must be the asbestos paint in our walk in closet.
Anyway...
-- THERE ARE GAYS IN HOLLYWOOD! AND ALWAYS WERE.
Captain Renault has an obvious sexual attraction to Rick. Though he mentions blondes and other babes once or twice, Renault is never shown with a woman on his arm. He has eyes only for Bogart's laconic, sexy saloonkeeper. How sweet. Their "friendship" is a wonderful example of the back door method Golden Age movies used to insert into film what America was not ready to confront directly. Until the '70's there simply were no mainstream gay characters up on the silver screen. Just didn't happen. But the unforgettable Vichy policeman/scoundrel presents us with a sympathetic, likeable, and strong man. Who happens to be gay. Rick; "(He's) just like any man, only more so." Cool.
-- Don't tell them/him/her/us. Show them/him/her/us. As always.
Most every line coming out of Rick's mouth during the first three quarters of "Casablanca" means the opposite of its literal definition. His actions, such as letting the young couple win enough cash gambling to emigrate, or allowing "le Marseillaise" to be sung in opposition to the grating German drinking song, show us more than words what type of man Rick is.
-- Many of the great Hollywood films from the Golden Age of Moviemaking were the lucky result of the sheer volume of material being produced each month.
Sort of a "monkeys in a room with a typewriter --> Shakespeare, inevitably." thing. The screenwriting Epsteins wrote frequently, as did countless others. There were scores of movies released each weekend for 1930's and 1940's America to consume, then embrace or reject. Back then there were no blockbusters which, if failures at the box office, might wreck a studio. No bloated "Heaven's Gate"s or "Waterworld"s. Budgets and shooting schedules were tight. Sometimes magic happened.
"Casablanca" is living proof six and a half decades after the fact.
-------------------------------------------
3) "Bullets Over Broadway" -
Dianne Wiest was justly rewarded with an Oscar for her portrayal of the Norma Desmond-ish star, Helen Sinclair. But in addition, it's hard to think of a period comedy having a funnier, wittier script that has a better cast, all of whom are here in top form.
Released in 1994, this is the best film Woody Allen made since '85's "The Purple Rose of Cairo." And ranks with his greatest "funny ones", which means that "Bullets" is one of the best comedies ever assembled.
Movies that get better through a second or third viewing are a rarity. This is one. It's quite easy fun to fall into a game of "Six Degrees of Billy Wilder" in trying to spot the dozens and dozens of loving references to prior films, as well as scenes, shots, and lines used by future writers and directors in their own stuff. Is the stairway descending Helen Sinclair the inspiration for Christopher Guest's Corky St. Clair of "Waiting for Guffman" fame? Very likely. Does John Cusack do the best Woody impression in a Woody film? Or do Kenneth Branaugh and Will Ferrell measure up, as well? Was Jim Broadbent's starving Warner Purcell doing a Coppola/Brando/"Apocolype" takeoff? Good questions.
Great stuff.
Three examples --
"Let's go." ("Cuckoo's Nest")
"Time is luck." "This was too good to last." ("Miami Vice")
"I'm not an artist. Let's get married." ("Bullets Over Broadway")
------------------------------------------
1) Michael Mann's sprawling "Miami Vice" -
This one is so good they should make a television series out of it. Or something like that.
"Vice" is the most underrated film of the year, maybe in several years. $135 million art films don't come around every day, and this one unsurprisingly lasted about a day and a month in theaters (US box office $63m). Audiences probably weren't willing to:
1) Pay strict attention to complex characters who provide no laugh lines, and stick with a challenging viewing experience lasting over two hours. Should you make the effort, you'll be rewarded, as this is not a film to experience between trips to the refreshment stand. Ya gotta pay attention.
2) Drink in Mann's wonderful infatuation with color, faces, and detail. The "asses in the seats" were probably looking for more "boom boom... bang bang" and straightforward, easily digestable dialogue for their ten bucks. What they got was a different animal altogether.
Director Mann's last two releases, a reverential though slightly timid "Ali", and the Tom Cruise vehicle "Collateral", were not vintage Mann. For that, one has to go back to 1999's "The Insider", with its seven Oscar nominations. "Insider" is a work both larger and smaller than "Vice." Larger because Mann took on both Big Tobacco and Big Media. Smaller due to the lack of large scale action scenes, long a staple for him.
For us, "Miami Vice" is great because Colin Ferrell's Sonny Crockett keeps us guessing. It's great because director Mann was concerned with, for example, (according to the DVD extras) a tired and worn green hotel room shower head, though it didn't appear in the final version. It's great because the British actress Naomie Harris' accent combines New Yawkese with a strange, quirky lisp. And it's great because, with all the attention to detail both big and small, "Vice" looks and feels like a hundred million dollar movie should. Every penny spent shows up onscreen. Unlike, say, "Spiderman", whose cheesy effects left Apt404 staff cold and a bit bored.
Catch "Miami Vice." It's worth a first look.
-----------------------------------------
2) Lessons to be learned from our hundredth (roughly) viewing of "Casablanca" -
100? Or thereabouts? Yes, because we're a bit slow here in the old 'Pent. Takes a few dozen shots to the head for us to unner-stand anything. Must be the asbestos paint in our walk in closet.
Anyway...
-- THERE ARE GAYS IN HOLLYWOOD! AND ALWAYS WERE.
Captain Renault has an obvious sexual attraction to Rick. Though he mentions blondes and other babes once or twice, Renault is never shown with a woman on his arm. He has eyes only for Bogart's laconic, sexy saloonkeeper. How sweet. Their "friendship" is a wonderful example of the back door method Golden Age movies used to insert into film what America was not ready to confront directly. Until the '70's there simply were no mainstream gay characters up on the silver screen. Just didn't happen. But the unforgettable Vichy policeman/scoundrel presents us with a sympathetic, likeable, and strong man. Who happens to be gay. Rick; "(He's) just like any man, only more so." Cool.
-- Don't tell them/him/her/us. Show them/him/her/us. As always.
Most every line coming out of Rick's mouth during the first three quarters of "Casablanca" means the opposite of its literal definition. His actions, such as letting the young couple win enough cash gambling to emigrate, or allowing "le Marseillaise" to be sung in opposition to the grating German drinking song, show us more than words what type of man Rick is.
-- Many of the great Hollywood films from the Golden Age of Moviemaking were the lucky result of the sheer volume of material being produced each month.
Sort of a "monkeys in a room with a typewriter --> Shakespeare, inevitably." thing. The screenwriting Epsteins wrote frequently, as did countless others. There were scores of movies released each weekend for 1930's and 1940's America to consume, then embrace or reject. Back then there were no blockbusters which, if failures at the box office, might wreck a studio. No bloated "Heaven's Gate"s or "Waterworld"s. Budgets and shooting schedules were tight. Sometimes magic happened.
"Casablanca" is living proof six and a half decades after the fact.
-------------------------------------------
3) "Bullets Over Broadway" -
Dianne Wiest was justly rewarded with an Oscar for her portrayal of the Norma Desmond-ish star, Helen Sinclair. But in addition, it's hard to think of a period comedy having a funnier, wittier script that has a better cast, all of whom are here in top form.
Released in 1994, this is the best film Woody Allen made since '85's "The Purple Rose of Cairo." And ranks with his greatest "funny ones", which means that "Bullets" is one of the best comedies ever assembled.
Movies that get better through a second or third viewing are a rarity. This is one. It's quite easy fun to fall into a game of "Six Degrees of Billy Wilder" in trying to spot the dozens and dozens of loving references to prior films, as well as scenes, shots, and lines used by future writers and directors in their own stuff. Is the stairway descending Helen Sinclair the inspiration for Christopher Guest's Corky St. Clair of "Waiting for Guffman" fame? Very likely. Does John Cusack do the best Woody impression in a Woody film? Or do Kenneth Branaugh and Will Ferrell measure up, as well? Was Jim Broadbent's starving Warner Purcell doing a Coppola/Brando/"Apocolype" takeoff? Good questions.
Great stuff.
posted by joe sweeney at 12:48 AM
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