Butt-Numb-a-Thon 12 – The Dirty Dozenth
We extract pleasure from horror.
What is wrong with us? We sit in a darkened room for over 24 hours watching other people have lives that are FAR more exciting than ours. And then some of us spend MORE time writing about those far more exciting lives. Why do we do it to ourselves?!
Because we’re awesome. That’s why.
Harry Knowles birthday, while a normal day for most folks, is a special day for around 200 of us in Austin (and, actually, some from around the world). Even if we don’t know Harry all that well, we still get to bask in the warm glow of films that he and his closest friends have chosen to show on the Alamo screens.
This year, the festivities started with the usual ridiculing of Jeff Mahler. This time, though, they had fucked up the only known print of Teen Wolf so often that it was no longer usable. Instead, they had a stuttering insult comic come out and do about 20 minutes about how lame Jeff is. Then he started on Harry’s dad. Maybe he crossed the line. Not sure. Harry was certainly enjoying it. Jay was a bit more stoic.
But after that, it was off to the races.
TRUE GRIT (2010)
Directed by: Joel Coen/Ethan Coen
Written by: Joel Coen/Ethan Coen
Based on book by: Charles Portis
How could they remake True Grit, that classic John Wayne western of the late 60s?
Well, first they got two of the greatest directors of our time. Then they got one of the best actors around to replace The Duke. Then they surrounded him with other great actors.
And that, my friends, is how they may have possibly bettered a classic.
Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) is a worn out old US Marshal whose only real goal lately is to find his next bottle of bourbon. Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld in a star-making performance) is trying to find the man who killed her father. His name is Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) and he is on the run with Ned Pepper’s gang (Barry Pepper).
Once Mattie gets Rooster to actually disembark from his tiny apartment behind the Chinese grocery, they meet up with a Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf (Matt Damon). LaBoeuf is kind of a goofball who takes himself far too seriously and is much greener than he wants to let on.
These characters have already been ingrained into our brains when they were played by John Wayne, Glen Campbell and Robert Duvall. How do the younguns stack up?
Not too badly, actually. Jeff Bridges is an amazing actor and chooses to not just do a Duke impression. He makes the character his own and actually makes him quite a bit darker than Wayne ever could have. Better than Wayne’s Oscar-winning role? Meh. Just different. Matt Damon plays LaBoeuf completely differently from Glen Campbell’s performance. Matt’s version is a lot more of a fuck-up. He’s from Texas and wants everyone to know it. When he gets made fun of…well, he just doesn’t really get it. He knows he’s being made fun of, but not exactly how or why. Barry Pepper and Josh Brolin are really barely in the movie, but they do well with what they have.
The real revelation is Hailee Steinfeld. She handles Portis’ Runyonesque dialogue like a champ and is so much better than Kim Darby was that it’s easy to forget that anyone else ever played the role. While that’s not difficult, Hailee did a great job.
As much as a lot of people think that it’s sacrilege to even think of remaking a John Wayne film, especially one as iconic as True Grit, I think it’s ok…as long as the people involved actually care. If this had been made by Michael Bay, I would have scoffed and been on my way. But the Coens really do care about film. They have taken a film that is beloved by all and made it even better than it was before, as impossible as that may seem. There really isn’t a bad note in the film. I kinda can’t wait to stick a copy right next to my copy of the original.
Directed by: Jean-Pierre Melville
Written by: Jean-Pierre Melville/Georges Pellegrin
Based on book by: Joan McLeod (uncredited)
I’ve never actually seen any of Melville’s films…I know. Film geek sacrilege! But, whatever. You’ve never seen the glory of a Fulci film, so shut up.
My initiation into the world of Melville (sans whales) was a pretty amazing one.
Le Samourai is the story of Jef Costello (French bad-ass, Alain Delon), a hitman whose latest job went a little awry. He was caught and put in a line-up. After getting out of that (just barely) the guy who hired him tried to kill him.
Before Leon, The Professional. Before any of the other films that show us how lonely a hitman can really be, Le Samourai took us into that world and made it come to mundane life. (Just like Leon, Jef has something that he cares for more than anything else in this dark and dirty world. Here, though, it’s a bird.)
Much better than I thought it would be after all of they hype, this is a French film that I could probably watch over and over again. It was absolutely the classic that it’s cracked up to be.
Directed by: Stanley Donen/Gene Kelly
Written by: Adolph Green/Betty Comden
Based on stage play and idea by: Adolph Green/Betty Comden/Jerome Robbins
Speaking of not living up to the hype. On The Town is one of those musicals that changed everything. It’s kind of a go-to movie for musical lovers everywhere. How do you go wrong with Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly wooing girls in New York City?
Well, you give them second rate songs that are only nearly fun to listen to. With songs like “Come Up To My Place and “Prehistoric Man,” it’s a wonder that anyone remembers this movie. There are a few good songs (“New York, New York” and “You’re Awful” are absolute classics that Frank sang on more than one occasion), but I didn’t like a lot of the songs very much at all. It’s hard to believe that these are Leonard Bernstein tunes!
The story follows three Navy boys (Sinatra, Kelly and Jules Munshin) on shore leave for one day in New York City. They run around, see the sites and, of course, chase girls. Kelly, in particular, is after one specific girl: Miss Turnstiles (Vera-Ellen). The other two end up chasing after Ann Miller and Betty Garrett.
It’s good to see Frank and Gene together, of course. Those two guys could make any lump of coal into a diamond. And they do make this a very fun movie. I just wish that it had lived up to its reputation. The only thing that I can really recommend it for is the location shooting in NYC. It was the first film shot in NYC since the studios moved to California about two or three decades before. Donen had to beg MGM to let him shoot it there. And beautifully shot, it is. If you’re into NYC, this is a movie for you.
If only the music hadn’t been so bad in places.
This is where things get a little bit dicey for BNAT12. Not that it got bad. No, no, no. Not at all. But there were a couple of things that we saw that we aren’t allowed to talk about in full. Here’s the first one:
COWBOYS & ALIENS CLIP (2011)
Directed by: Jon Favreau
Written by: Roberto Orci/Alex Kurtzman/Damon Lindelof
Based on comic by: Scott Mitchell Rosenberg
Jon Favreau, producer Ron Howard (!) and writer/producer Roberto Orci joined us for a few minutes to show us 40 minutes of the unfinished Cowboys & Aliens. It was so unfinished that there was still rigging equipment in the background and attached to actors.
Unfortunately, what this means is that I’m not allowed to do a full review of what I saw. All I can say is that it looked like a LOT of fun and maybe a bit darker than I thought it was going to be. This is definitely more Firefly territory than some kind of cartoony “Golly! Look in the sky!” kinda thing.
Anyway, at some point there will be a full review…probably when I see the actual movie. Until then, this review will go unmarked in Movieola. There will be a couple more like that for the day.
RANGO CLIP (2011)
Directed by: Gore Verbinski
Written by: James Ward Byrkit/Gore Verbinski/John Logan
Between making movies about pirates, Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp decided to make a quick foray into animation. (It seems that a lot of name directors are doing that lately: see Zack Snyder and Legend Of The Guardians.)
Rango is a chameleon with delusions of grandeur…at least, after people press him for a story. Suddenly, this meek little guy becomes the guy who killed seven brothers with one bullet!
The 8-minute clip that we saw was basically the origin story for Rango and it reeled me right in. I was ready to see the whole thing. The world that Verbinski and his CGI crew created was intricate and pretty amazing. (The Pepto bottle used as an outhouse was a special piece of set design.) The writing and the voice acting made the whole thing really come together. Johnny sort of sounded like he was channeling Hunter for a moment.
This is the first CGI feature for ILM and it looks like, while they aren’t on the level of Pixar, they could get there if they play their cards right.
Directed by: Michael Curtiz
Written by: Robert Buckner
As you probably remember from my review of Gone With The Wind, I thought that movie was very well made, but a bit morally not quite on the up and up. It sort of treated slavery as “the way things are” and not as bad as it really was. (Not to mention that Scarlett was a complete bitch.)
Well, take those feelings and amp ‘em up a couple of notches for Santa Fe Trail, made just a year later with one of the earlier film’s stars.
Here’s the story of George Custer (Ronald Reagan, who was a much better actor than president…but that’s not sayin’ much) and his friendship with Jeb Stuart (Errol Flynn). Jeb and George are after the same girl, Kit Carson Holliday (Olivia de Havilland), but Jeb is easily beating George to that punch. (Of course, he is. He’s fucking Errol Flynn!)
Meanwhile, in another stretch of history, John Brown (Raymond Massey actin’ up a storm) is going quietly insane while trying to single handedly end slavery in the South. According to this movie (and most history books) Brown was a madman who, while having good intentions, did all the wrong things. He slaughters men, women and children, cleaving heads in twain with a broadsword and has a super crazy beard. He started the Civil War!
Wait…what? Let’s take a step back.
John Brown has been vilified long enough. The man SHOULD be a hero. The violence that he rained down on Pottawatomie Creek was in retaliation for a raid of Lawrence, Kansas by pro-slavery folks. That started a legacy of violence for the Brown family that has never abated. With no mention of the Lawrence killings and paintings of “crazy John Brown,” history books have painted him as a terrorist and a bad, bad man.
Not only did they portray John Brown as a horrible man (albeit with good intentions) in the film, but there is a scene where a black couple talk about how all they want to do is go back to Texas and be slaves because freedom wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
WHAT THE FUCK?!?! This was 1940!!! Not 1840. 1940.
All of this makes me want to see Seven Angry Men, the 1955 film where Massey played Brown as a much more sympathetic character. You got that one, Harry?
The movie itself was alright, although Kit Carson was written as being alternately tomboyish and just dumb as a sack of hammers. It was fun to see Flynn and Reagan verbally sparing to win her attention and I guess there was some good action, although I’ve never been one for the “Cavalry Western.” That’s why I dig on Clint Eastwood more than John Wayne.
Not really a bad film, but certainly not up to Curtiz’s standards that he set with Flynn in The Adventures Of Robin Hood or would shoot past with Casablanca two years later. The man is one of the under appreciated classic Hollywood directors. I wouldn’t start with Santa Fe Trail, though. This was probably the least of the movies that we saw at BNAT this year.
Directed by: David O Russell
Written by: Scott Silver/Paul Tamasy/Eric Johnson/Keith Dorrington
In South Boston (Lowell, to be exact) there aren’t really many chances to get out. You pretty much have to fight your way out. And that’s just what Mickey Ward (Mark Wahlberg) and Dicky Ecklund (Christian Bale) tried to do. Unfortunately for Dicky, after he knocked out Sugar Ray his life went to shit and he got hooked on crack. Unfortunately for Mickey, Dicky is his older brother and trainer. Their mom (Melissa Leo) is his manager. Dicky, you can tell, wants the best for his little brother. He just doesn’t really know how to get him there. Mom, on the other hand, I was never so sure about.
Family means different things to different people and to these two brothers it means a lot. Mickey has plenty of opportunities to dump Dicky and his mom and actually move on with his boxing career, but he doesn’t do it. Why, even though they can be pretty selfish and a bit abusive at times? Because family is all he’s got. If you turn your back on the family, then you’re no good.
Enter Charlene (Amy Adams). She tries to turn Mickey’s life around, much to the chagrin of his family.
All of this is caught on film by a camera crew filming Dicky’s life as it goes further into the toilet. Are they really doing a documentary about his “comeback”? Or is it something darker that they’re after?
Based on a true story, The Fighter could be one of the best films of the year. It certainly has one of the best performances (possibly even one of the best of the decade) in Christian Bale. His portrayal of Dicky is heartbreaking and manic, often in the same shot. This guy is amazing.
By the end of the movie, I kind of got a sense of where the anger comes from in South Boston. Southies have it pretty hard and their families can really fuck them up. Even with the best intentions, the worst can come out.
THOR TRAILER
Even after seeing this expanded trailer I’m not really sure what to think of this movie. It looks like it could be alright, but then it looks like it could be the dumbest super hero movie ever…and there have been some DUMB super hero movies. Ever see Daredevil? Or Ghost Rider? Yeah. This could be THAT bad.
Good cast, though, and the poster that the guys from Marvel gave to Harry was pretty badass. Only members of the cast and crew and Harry have them. It was the Hammer made out of shots from the comic books. I forget who they said designed it, but I want him designing my posters. Not that I’m making movies. Just posters of my life.
THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1939)
Directed by: William Dieterie
Written by: Sonya Levien/Bruno Frank
Based on book by: Victor Hugo
When the great monsters are discussed, Charles Laughton’s portrayal of the Notre Dame bell ringer, Quasimodo, is always brought up. Here’s the deal, though: Quasimodo is not a monster. He’s just a disfigured and deaf dude who actually only has good intentions at heart.
This adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel centers on the relationship between Gypsy girl Esmeralda (Maureen O’Hara) and four men. One is a young soldier named Phoebus (Alan Marshal). She falls for him hook, line and sinker, but there really doesn’t seem to be much there in the way of character.
Then there’s Gringoire (Edmond O’Brien). He’s a poet, so he’s considered part of the lower class. He falls in with the thieves, but never loses his love for the dancing Esmeralda. She marries him at one point only to save him from the knives of the thieves, never expecting love to enter into this rather quick and probably unofficial marriage.
The third is the most powerful man in Notre Dame, Frollo (Cedric Hardwicke). He has hate in his heart for everything that gets in the way of him and Esmeralda. He kills Phoebus and, when Esmeralda doesn’t return his love, he allows her to be blamed for it. He’s a high member of the church and intensely believes that “the people” should not be allowed to read the Bible. In the first scene, the King of France (Harry Davenport) sees the Guttenburg Press as an amazing piece of machinery that will take the world into its next phase. Frollo sees it as the Devil’s work and wants it destroyed.
Of course, the fourth man is Quasimodo, who has nothing but love in his heart for all things, unless they want to harm someone else…or his beloved bells.
I was surprised at how political this movie was! I’ve never read the novel, but I’m sure it’s even more political. Dieterie and his writers managed to pile a lot of it in, though, along with a healthy mistrust of the church. (Although the King was the coolest character in the entire movie. That was kinda strange to me.)
I can also imagine that the makeup on Laughton (which was amazing) was pretty shocking at the time. RKO kept it under wraps until the movie premiered. No one saw it who was off the set. No pictures were taken (at least none that were released at the time) and none of the posters showed him in full makeup, only in shadows. There’s no WAY we could do that now. Too many internet creeps out there.
The Hunchback Of Notre Dame was an amazing and beautiful film. I can’t believe it took me this long to see it, but I’m glad that I got to see it on the big screen.
Directed by: Orson Welles
Written by: Raphael Holinshed/Orson Welles
Based on plays by: William Shakespeare
It’s almost unfair for me to review this film because I really couldn’t stay awake for a lot of it. I’ll try, though.
Falstaff (Welles) is often considered Shakespeare’s greatest creation. He was certainly his most used, appearing in both Henry IV plays and The Merry Wives Of Windsor. (Welles added bits of Henry V, Richard II and The Merry Wives.) While I don’t know a lot about those plays, I do know that Orson Welles was probably born to play the role of the fat knight.
The film follows Falstaff from his mentoring of Prince Hal (Keith Baxter) and becoming his drinking buddy, much to the chagrin of Hal’s father, King Henry IV (John Gielgud). Falstaff is a particularly boisterous knight who really doesn’t have much use for war. He’s pretty much a coward and a braggart.
Welles is, of course, amazing, as is the rest of the cast. The movie itself is very good (I think) and was Welles’ favorite of all of his work. Strangely, it’s completely unavailable in the US on DVD. This print was barely found by Lars of the Alamo after a long search. It’s a very difficult film to see…which makes it all the more sad that I couldn’t stay awake. I may never get the chance to see it again unless I get a region free Blu-Ray player and buy the UK edition…or unless Criterion can get the Welles estate to give up the rights for a little while.
I do remember the film having a very strange and surreal feel to it. There were a LOT of close-ups of Welles’ puffy, bloated face and a lot of Citizen Kanian shots from very low. It was obviously very low budget (Welles was pretty broke at the time) and it sounded like all of the dialogue was recorded in post. The scenery, though, was very realistic and looked like it may have been filmed in an actual medieval village. It was very interesting to look at…just not at 2am. I really want to give it another chance, so…are you listening, Criterion! Get someone on that right away!
RICHARD PRYOR LIVE IN CONCERT(1979)
Directed by: Jeff Margolis
Written by: Richard Pryor/Paul Mooney (uncredited)
This one I’m REALLY unqualified to review. I slept through just about the entire last half of it.
I will say this, though: I really feel like I didn’t miss very much. I know that everyone I’ve seen do this material basically got it from him, but, as I’ve seen Eddie Murphy and Dave Chappelle, I’ve seen all of this material. And, as I’ve seen a LOT of Bill Cosby, anytime Richard mentioned his family, I felt like I had already heard that stuff, too.
Richard Pryor was an amazing talent and I have the utmost respect for what he did. I just feel like his stuff is archival footage at this point. I almost hate to make this correlation, but it’s the only one I can think of. It was kind of like watching Al Jolson. He was amazing in his day. But watching him now is just kind of…quaint. He’s no longer shocking and, honestly, not nearly as funny as he once was. I was not electrified and my brain did not melt. I fell asleep instead. Maybe I’ll give this one another chance when I’m more awake, too.
THE GREEN HORNET (2011)
Directed by: Michel Gondry
Written by: Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg
Based on radio show created by: George W Trendle
This is another one that I’m not really allowed to talk too much about. All I can really say is that it was a LOT of fun. FAR more fun (and violent) than I thought it would be from the trailers. I’ll write a full review of it and post it when the movie is closer to release in January. For now, though, that’s all I’ve got.
Moving on.
Speaking of stuff I can’t review, the next one I can’t even say that I saw. I’ll just say that it was a pretty good replicant of a bygone, much beloved/loathed genre.
Moving on.
Directed by: Patrick Lussier
Written by: Todd Farmer/Patrick Lussier
Speaking of genres of a bygone era that are coming back, Drive Angry is a grindhouse film through and through…although seen through modern eyes.
Milton (Nicolas Cage) is a man on a mission. He’s trying to find his baby granddaughter before she is sacrificed by a Satanic cult. Meanwhile, The Accountant (William Fichtner in a role that could finally make him a huge star…if only this movie had a real audience) is hot on his tail.
Piper (Amber Heard), on the other hand, is just trying to get away from a suddenly abusive boyfriend. She picks up Milton and they end up going on a long ride to Hell together.
The movie, brought to us by the folks who brought us My Bloody Valentine 3D, is a lot of fun, if a bit fluffy. It’s not nearly as violent as it could be, although it is pretty damn violent. There’s not a lot that sticks out (hahaha) as being anything really special, but it didn’t matter too terribly much. It was a fun ride and better than MBV by a long shot. Not only does it have a lot of great and strange characters, but the action (car chases abound) is great.
What DOES stick out, though, is Fichtner. The man is A-FUCKING-MAZING! I don’t want to give too much about his character away, but he is smooth, cool and fucking deadly. I never thought that he could be this cool, although I’ve always known that he was a great actor. Sure, this doesn’t call for huge acting chops…just a lot of charm and magnetism. Strangely enough, he’s got those things in spades.
Go to the movie for some fun, stay for Fichtner. Nic Cage is pretty cool in it (although the fuckin’ and killin’ scene is a bit creepy), but Fichtner steals the whole movie.
Just after the closing credits started, Harry got on the mic and told us all to get our butts out of our seats and get on the buses waiting outside…we were going on a field trip. The buses took us to the Bob Bullock Museum’s IMAX theatre so that we could see…
Directed by: Joseph Kosinski
Written by: Edward Kitsis/Adam Horowitz/Brian Klugman/Lee Sternthal
Based on characters created by: Steven Lisberger/Bonnie MacBird
Almost 30 years ago, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) created a world inside a computer. He fought the Master Control Program and beat it. He made it out of the computer…but he just couldn’t leave well enough alone. He had a life on the outside, including a young son named Sam (Garrett Hedlund). For some reason, though, he left it all behind and disappeared.
Jump ahead to 2010. Kevin’s old partner, Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner) gets a text from the old arcade…where no one has been since the day Kevin disappeared. He sends Sam there to investigate. Sam gets pulled into the digital world and meets…his dad?
But it’s actually Clu, the program that Kevin created in his own image. What’s his design on the world of The Grid? How will Sam get back home? And why is Kevin protecting Quorra (Olivia Wilde, who makes her second BNAT appearance after the Cowboys & Aliens clip)?
Besides the graphics being worlds better than the original, the whole damn movie is worlds better than the original. I don’t know if you’ve seen the 1982 film lately, but it’s kind of slow and, well…dull. Not a whole lot happens besides the light cycle games. Everything else was just a lot of posturing and talk. If it hadn’t been for those cycles and the “digital” effects, TRON would have been completely forgotten…much like its predecessor, The Black Hole. (Watch for a quick reference to that film…which will be remade by the same director in 2012. I kinda can’t wait. Maybe he can make that one good, too.)
This sequel has action, comedy, romance and even…dare I say it…resonance! I actually kind of remembered it after I left the theatre!
Ok, it’s not a GREAT film, certainly. How could it be? It’s a movie about people getting sucked into a computer and fighting in gladiator games, for Hitchcock’s sake! BUT, it’s a lot of fun and beautiful to look at on the giant screen in 3D. (Not all of it is in 3D. Only the big CGI scenes, really…which is most of the film.)
The only thing that really came anywhere near disappointing me was Clu. He was ALL CGI. There wasn’t a dude playing him with Jeff Bridges’ young face superimposed on his. It was a completely CGI character and you could tell. He moved unrealistically, which may not have been so jarring in the Grid scenes. But they did the same things with the opening scenes that take place when Kevin is younger and Sam is a little boy. At first I thought that they had actually made the whole film in CGI like The Polar Express or something! But it was just him. Not sure how cool that was.
Other than that, though, it was really cool and a great way to end the day.
I really want to get the Daft Punk soundtrack to the film. (Watch for them quickly in the club scene…or people in helmets like they wear. No real way to tell.) It’s reminiscent enough of Wendy Carlos’ original score, but different enough to be its own amazing being. It’s a damn sight better than Journey…who also make a quick appearance early on.
Thus endeth BNAT 12, also known as CineMandom! It was an awesome day and one of the best BNATs that I’ve been to…even if I knew that True Grit and TRON were going to play. (The original TRON played the very first BNAT 12 years ago as a vintage film.)
I saw a lot of movies that I can’t wait to see again and, of course, I can’t wait until BNAT Friday The 13th! (Will Harry be that obvious? Most likely. But it’s really the best way to go.)
