Posted by Felix Vasquez Jr. in Writer's Corner at 3:02 PM
PST
I ranted and raved in my review of “Meet the Spartans” about the sheer unfunny and truly horrid legacy that Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg are leaving in their wake with a slew of horrible “spoof” movies that watch like Mel Brooks if he had a mental disorder, and was medically brain dead, but in order to really get a sense of how unfunny Friedberg and Seltzer are, you need to watch their Youtube Video where they spoof themselves.
Because, if there’s solid proof that they’re unfunny, it’s a display of two idiots who spend ten minutes trying desperately to poke fun at themselves while insisting “See?! We’re funny! We’re funny guys! We’re spoofing ourselves now!” Yeah, what a couple of characters.
About as flat as the average Nickelodeon viewer, no?
Actress Sean Young was escorted from the Directors Guild Of America Awards show on Saturday for heckling filmmaker Julian Schnabel, nominated for his film The Diving Bell And The Butterfly. Schnabel was the last of the five Best Director nominees to take the stage to make a speech at the Los Angeles ceremony - but, after a few moments, he was forced to stop when Young shouted, “Come on - get to it!” A shocked Schnabel stopped to find out the identity of his heckler, and asked Young to finish his speech for him. Schnabel then returned to his speech after receiving encouragement from the star-studded audience, while Young was escorted out of the venue by two security guards, falling over as she left.
Now THAT is how a pro does it. Right there is the perfect example of why a news story like the above makes me think of Sean as an amusing, quirky personality while exactly the same behavior from say… Britney Spears would annoy the shit out of me. It’s because Sean Young bothers to space out her innapropriate outbursts so that they don’t become tiresome, while with a dumbass like Britney it’s almost guaranteed that she’s going to do something stupid. The chick can’t walk over to her fucking car without looking like the biggest retard in Retardfest 2008. It’s embarrassing, not to mention that Britney has a personality about as charming as a rabid Mongoose which doesn’t exactly endear her to anyone. Young, isn’t always a classy dame, but she’s mostly a classy dame; and that my friends makes for a world of difference.
So Sean, you just keep being yourself. You crack me up. I can’t wait to see what you do in another 8 or 10 years.
Sitting at the Sundance HQ, waiting for the shuttle to SLC airport to arrive to take Zack and I away from Sundance 2008 once and for all. Got myself the nice, comfy couch spot outside of the press office, and Zack is next to me passed out, I know he’s asleep because occassionally he twitches, snores and he didn’t notice when I started stacking Heath Ledger “Entertainment Weekly” copies on his head. Only one remains, and it is placed in such a way as to appear as if Zack’s head has been replaced with Heath Ledger’s. It’s both fascinating and creepy.
Speaking of which, the news of Heath Ledger’s death arrived on Monday (I think… was it Tuesday?) Anyway, the current issue of “Entertainment Weekly” has a big article on him as well as a cover photo and… we’ve had that issue since Thursday meaning that, best case, EW turned around the issue in 3 days!?! Worst case, more like 1-2 days. How the Hell is that possible?
I was going to ask Owen Gleiberman about that during the panel we were both on, but I never got around to it. The panel was entitled “Critics Cornered” and it was all about the relevance of film criticism today. I was on the panel with Scott Foundas of “LA Weekly” (Scott moderated the panel), IndieWire.com’s Eugene Hernandez, “Entertainment Weekly” writer Owen Gleiberman and local Salt Lake City film critic Sean Means.
I think the panel went over in a positive way, folks seemed to be very receptive and kind after we wrapped our conversation, and that made me feel good because… you just can’t tell sometimes. One of my biggest pet peeves is a boring film festival panel, Lord knows I’ve attended my fair share, and the last thing I ever want to do is participate in one. Still, sometimes you just can’t tell.
Owen definitely dominated the panel, as his answers were quite (break in thought, some folks just came out of the press office, saw Zack sleeping with the EW Heath Ledger on his head, and they proceeded to take camera pics. did i wake my friend? no, funny is funny) lengthy. I got in my thoughts when I needed to, though I would’ve liked to hear more from Scott on the topics. Though, as moderator, it’s not necessarily his place. Eugene didn’t get to speak much either, but when he did he had some wonderfully insightful things to say and I was impressed (not that I thought he wouldn’t be a good panelist; the exact opposite, I’ve seen Eugene on a number of panels and the man knows his shit, it’s just I’ve never seen someone make such efficient points on a panel). All told, again, I think things went well.
I’m already trying to formulate plans for next year’s Sundance, ways in which I would do it differently, better. I think my team did a great job, again, and I’m the weak link of the batch. I’ve got 8 reviews I need to write, and video interviews with Morgan Spurlock, Ari Gold, Michael Madsen, Larry Bishop, Eric Balfour, Jaycee Chan, Kenneth Bi, Brian Cox and the rest of the cast and filmmakers of “The Escapist.”
I was a big fan of the webcam, but I don’t think it was on quite enough. This had to do, predominantly, with poor internet at the condo and poor server status on the Stickam side (I blame that damn Eric the Midget show… little bastard has been dominating the Stickam frontpage all week and, as a Howard Stern regular, is bringing in quite the audience). Still, the wheels are turning on how I can improve the webcam experience for the upcoming SXSW Film Festival, and I may have a plan or four.
Random Bag Check and I still have about ten hours left in Utah, but we’re out of the condo in one so I figured I’d drop one final condo blog entry (this is not the final Sundance entry, just the final condo entry). I will miss this condo, in the sense that the beds were too comfortable for me to ever want to leave (though I did) and the layout was unique (I think this thing had 8 floors that went right into the soul of the Earth). We never tried out the jacuzzi, but we ate a lot. Perhaps that is why we never tried out the jacuzzi.
Sundance coverage will be continuing all next week, with more blog entries (looks back, stories I meant to tell but didn’t), more reviews (they keep coming in, and I need to finish my batch), video interviews (got some great ones that time didn’t allow me to post online) and other gibberish. The webcam will be retired Sunday night, but it did a fine job. That’ll do, cam.
Posted by Felix Vasquez Jr. in Writer's Corner at 9:42 PM
PST
I’m repeatedly enamored with the Slamdance film festival every year since I started writing for Film Threat. While I respect and enjoy the Sundance tradition, I always seem to levitate more toward Slamdance these days for the fact that their short films, and feature length films always seem more original, and hip, unusual.
Reviewing the online shorts for Sundance, I’m a bit glad we only had ten because the five I reviewed (Phil Hall reviewed the other five) were rather great, as opposed to last year when there were more misses than hits.
One of my favorites of the year in Sundance was “I Love Sarah Jane,” a short film about a boy trying to find the girl of his dreams in the midst of a zombie apocalypse in Australia. In spite of his family dying, flesh eating monsters roaming the streets, and bullies running the neighborhoods, he intends on winning her heart.
An interview with director Spencer Susser is in the works.
As for Slamdance, I’ve reviewed more films from it, and so far I’m enjoying everything I’ve seen. They’re not all slam dunks, but damn, they’re entertaining. Who knew a short film about crane workers would be so engrossing?
One of the best films that has come to Slamdance this year, that many horror fans are hearing about and clamoring to watch is “Paranormal Activity.”
If you think you’ve had your fill of “found footage” films, then director Oren Peli will change your mind. If you hated “Cloverfield,” then by all means seek this out and give it a chance, because a ghost movie hasn’t scared me this much in literal years. And that’s fact.
Acting on the pretense of being found footage as a dedication to the victims, Peli’s movie revolves around a young couple who have decided to document wife Katie’s magnetic attraction to a demonic spirit that has stalked her since she was a baby, and no matter where she goes the demon follows her and makes her suffer. Her husband Micah has decided to play sensationalist and wants to document the findings of hauntings and mysterious nightly visits, and in spite of Katie’s anger, they get more than they bargained for.
“Paranormal Activity” is a traditional genre offering of its kind and I was hooked from minute one. The first of the chaos begins with the slight movement of a door, to which I wondered if this was all we’d get, and surely enough the film’s horror factor grows minute by minute with horrific midnight visits, hauntings that bring about incredulous entities, and an incident with a Ouija board.
At first lethargic and pessimistic, by the first half hour I was sitting at full attention and muting the television afraid of the jumps and jolts. At the end, I was just in sheer awe and sought out my mom (the biggest horror geek I know) and made her watch it. Suffice it to say, she left it shaken and stirred, and had trouble sleeping for a week. My sister, one who hates horror movies, has seen it five times and still has trouble sleeping. Obviously, this is a movie you have to see in a crowd and one that will get passed around like a bag of chips.
Peli refuses to let the cat out of the bag if the film is or isn’t fictional, but surely enough the word of the film is spreading like wildfire across internet boards, and fans want in on what Peli has to offer.
I was lucky enough to view the film months before it was accepted into Slamdance, and it became an instant favorite and hit my top 10 of 2007. Before I knew it, everyone in my family was borrowing it from me and every single reaction after watching was “Holy shit, that scared the hell out of me!” And on raged the discussion.
Peli is a wonderful director, and a great guy, and I hope, with every inch of this horror geek’s being, that it gets picked up for a limited theatrical release or decent DVD release, because it’s a strictly word of mouth movie destined to be a classic. And the word of mouth is spreading fast.
All the correspondence with the man shows someone beaming with pride that his film is spreading, and he’s more than happy to oblige open minded critics.
I hope the desperation for the film from the fans doesn’t trigger an online torrent rush, because I’d really like to see horror fans buying the DVD and supporting Peli and all of independent horror, for that matter. I have a copy already, and mark my word, when it’s picked up, I’m buying another.
That’s the buzz right now with the film. Fans keep asking: Is it being picked up?
I hope so. I really hope so.
I have an interview with the man in the works, but surely enough, the fact his film is playing at Slamdance is one of the main reasons I tend to hover to that festival more.
If you didn’t like “Cloverfield,” or “The Blair Witch Project,” give this one a chance. I’ll be seeing this movie through and hope for all of its success. Peli really deserves it.
I’m not sure how I feel about Cloverfield. I just went to see it as a spur of the moment thing. To be honest, I was going wait until it came out on DVD. But my cousin and I were heading to Montreal, it was early in the day before the crowds, and we decided that a little detour to the local Cineplex wouldn’t be a bad idea. Besides, it was a nice day and we had a few bucks burning a hole in out pockets.
So did I like it?
Short answer: Yes I did. On a primal level the film works. I’ve always liked the literary technique of keeping the action entirely at the eye level of the man on the street. It solves a lot of plot issues and keeps a lot of clichés at bay. Yeah, it also keeps the audience in the dark about what the monster is, but does it matter? Name one horror movie that was ever improved by going into long in-depth detail about its monster. Can’t think of one? Neither can anyone else. So it’s best if it’s just some indeterminate “thing” which will never be explained. I also liked the juxtaposition of the “found” tape showing both the best day of Rob’s life and his worst. It’s a clever bit of writing that adds depth and should rightfully be applauded.
Oh sure, some of dialogue is a little silly and shallow, but dammit… it’s a bunch of drunken people at a party. What did you expect? Shakespearian orations? I will say that the opening setup is the weakest part of the script and that the screenwriter made the mistake of writing this as a monster movie with a love story at the heart of it rather than a love story where a monster somehow appears. It’s a subtle, but important, difference. However, it’s not bad, just not as good as it could be. Works fine for me, and apparently for everyone else because it’s number one at the box office.
So did I like it?
Long answer: I can only like it so much. The film is hampered by its first person happening-in-real-time narrative, as ALL first person narrative films are similarly hampered. Editing in particular suffers because all you can really do is fast forward a little bit further ahead when things wind down too much or try to write the action to be quick paced, but not unrealistically so. However, that still leaves a lot of stuff that would never make it in any other type of film. For example, if you take out all the dialogue that consists of people yelling “RUN!” or remove all the shots of running feet and people looking around scared, you’ve just cut the film down by half an hour or more, at least. However, Cloverfield does the best it can with these limitations and I honestly think that its unavoidable flaws give it character, rather than simply make it annoying.
“We’ve got a Bite!”
Viral marketing started years ago, but it’s been gaining momentum with new films as regular marketing avenues are more and more cluttered It’s also a clever solution to standard advertising because it forces potential viewers to become involved under the guise of a game, rather than just watch commercials passively. However, I can already see how viral marketing will be become very very tiresome very very quickly. It’ll be like the presidential elections where you become so fucking sick of hearing about so-and-so that by the time someone let’s you near a polling station you just want to vote against the asshole fucker whose face you’ve seen plastered on every square inch of flat surface for the last 10 million miles. Or think of it like this, what if you were in front of a hot girl who just kept teasing you for MONTHS before she let you get your dick anywhere near her? After a few experiences like that you’d never get another hard on for the rest of your life. A movie is no different, if it just keeps tantalizing you with footage you start to become tired of hearing about it and sort of tune out, just like you do all other forms of advertising. Kudos for originality in marketing, but I dunno how sustainable this is in the long run.
The Godzilla Miracle Project
Oh, and on the subject of Cloverfield being “Blair Witch” meets “Godzilla”, I’d like to throw in another name in the pot: “Miracle Mile” the 1988 movie starring Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham. Field’s overall plot about having to escape a doomed city while finding a loved one, and its subsequent gut wrenching ending is damn close to Mile. Don’t get me wrong though, this is nothing except a total coincidence, Miracle Mile is one of those movies that lonnnnnnng ago fell off the radar and I doubt that anyone involved in Clover even knew of it’s existence, but it’s a cool bit of trivia nonetheless.
Credit to Vonder Haar for the subject’s play on Why So Serious. If today was notable for anything, it was probably that moment during the final minutes of the press screening of Morgan Spurlock’s “Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?” when text messages hit journalists throughout the screening informing all of us of Heath Ledger’s demise. I personally had 6 text messages letting me know all about it, though others in attendance got more (I think Erik Childress got 9?). To this Ledger news, I can only say that it is sad, as sad as it is when anyone dies but I couldn’t get quite as choked up about it as I saw other people get. Why? Don’t know the guy, he’s not family… just because he’s a celebrity, doesn’t mean his death was more important than any other death the world over.
Focusing back on the festival, today I saw the new Peralta doc about the Bloods and Crips, “Made in America,” saw the Spurlock doc and saw the Pahlniuk (sp?) adaptation “Choke.” Out of those three, the Spurlock doc was by far the best, definitely the most entertaining. Morgan continues his knack for amazing openings, as the first ten minutes of WitWiObL is some of the most-fun film I’ve seen in a while. “Choke”? It was a fine adaptation, probably the best that could be done of that book, but it was visually flat and nothing too amazing to write home about. Sam Rockwell and the rest of the cast did a fine job but… eh. I liked it, but middle-ground appreciation.
Tomorrow I get to check out “Adventures of Power” and “Hell Ride,” and get to interview the respective filmmakers and casts. Really looking forward to both films. Air drumming and motorcycles!?! I’m there…
I’m not a really big Star Trek fan. I think some of the more rabid fans are socially retarded freaks who are borderline mentally ill, and that a lot of the later shows are soft sci-fi on the level of Knight Rider masquerading as intellectual discussion. Don’t get me wrong, I like Star Trek, but for every really good show like “Guardian on the Edge of Forever”, “Family” and “Darmok”, you have to dredge through ten episodes of absolute bullshit like “Justice”, “The Loss” and “The Way to Eden”. Okay, so I’m exagerating… The Original Series was thankfully devoid of the worst clunkers and even though The Next Generation had enough of them to be embarrassing, it was also fairly decent as a whole. However, I seriously stopped caring with Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise when it became apparent that every episode was going to be little more than fan fiction about Star Trek “stuff” involving time travel, Borgs, Klingons, Q or whatever other alien race of the week, where the focus was not on drawing parrallels to today’s world, highlighting current problems and how they could have been solved in the future and/or the silliness of them existing today, but simply on fleshing out the frankly uninteresting world of Star Trek so the geeks could have a reason to come online and whine about the writers making goofs to the holy continuity of Trek.
In fact, I actually saw a little bit of that just about the friggin’ teaser. Some fans were complaining that it showed the Enterprise being built on Earth using “primitive” techniques such as arc welding which “didn’t exist” in this fictional fucking future.
One minute, fourteen seconds of footage and already it’s begun… Jesus.
Anyway, for the people with lives and girlfriends, it’s cool trailer and it’s given me a little stiffy for Trek again. Thanks you Herr Abrams.
Click the link to be taken to Paramount’s website.
I do not understand Hollywood’s love of remakes. Not in the slightest.
Americanizing Japanese horror aside, where the theory is that Americans hate and loathe and fear subtitles and therefore will not sit through foreign films no matter how many long-haired scary little girls there are, so we must add white faces and subtract every ounce of tension and creepiness. I’m talking about Tinseltown’s penchant for taking movies that were (usually) made perfectly fine the first time, “updating” them for modern filmgoers and alienating the built-in audience the film already had by leeching away any feeling or subtlety the original offered.
The latest affront, at least to my eyes, was the “greatest Western since Unforgiven”—or so says all the paid-off reviewers. I’m speaking of the bloated and empty remake of 3:10 to Yuma. And I’m in a very, very small minority of detractors here.
In the original film, Van Heflin played an honest rancher Dan Evans whose land is plagued by drought. He needs $200 to buy some water rights from a neighbor to save his crops and animals. Meanwhile, a dastardly villain named Ben Wade, played by Glen Ford going against his type, just robbed a stagecoach with his equally-hard-assed gang. But he dallies just a little too long with a barmaid and gets caught by the authorities. The marshal offers Evans $200 to make sure that Wade gets on the titular train where he will wind up in Yuma prison for his crimes. For the next hour or so, Wade gets to see the world through Evans’ eyes, even as he conspires to break free from his captor and even kill him if necessary. And yet, he sees, in Evans, the life he could have had, had he made different decisions along the way.
It’s a simple story, adapted from an even simpler, 10-page Elmore Leonard (Get Shorty) short story about a lawman doing his job by delivering Wade to the train. The original film is economical and yet pretty damned full for a movie that barely comes in with a 90-minute running time. But it’s one of those movies you have to pay attention to, so you can catch the nuance of performance and theme. Not a lot happens in the Heflin/Ford version, and yet, it’s taut and satisfying and exciting when it needs to be.
Now, before I go further, let me say that I like the original 3:10 to Yuma. It’s not my favorite movie of all time, but I appreciate its simplicity and economy. And thematically, it’s a terrific morality play.
The remake, however, was made by folks who weren’t satisfied, apparently. Instead of a story about a man doing the right thing at first, and another doing the right thing at last, the big, splashy expensive remakes gives us Christian Bale vs. Russell Crowe taking a road trip across harsh terrain while both do the stupidest things imaginable.
Bale, as Dan Evans, is a rancher whose land is plagued by drought. And two kids who have no regard for him—and an oldest son with outright hostility that should have gotten his teeth kicked in by the elder Evans, were this a real look at the West of the railroad age. He also lost a leg during the war—not that the prosthetic slows him down at any point in the film. In short, we get an Evans who is “Little Christ on the Prairie”. And for the next two-plus hours, Wade and the screenwriters lead Jesus Evans to Golgotha to crucify him for all of our sins. (Our sins being paying for this nonsense.)
On the flip side, the dark side, we get a Ben Wade who shoots his own man to make a point, and would kill anyone who got in his way or didn’t laugh at one of his sardonic jokes. But the way Crowe plays him, you wouldn’t fear Wade for a second. He’s too amiable, too likable. He doesn’t come off as vicious. He comes off like a guy who just wants to drink a beer with you, maybe borrow your hedge clippers.
And while in the custody of Dan (and a local deputized veterinarian, a foul-mouthed Pinkerton agent—who is occasionally sporting a gut-shot wound—a representative of the railroad that Wade’s gang keeps thieving from, not to mention the eldest Evans asshole kid) Wade has ample opportunities to escape, does occasionally, but keeps winding up back in Evans company, while the rest of the posse plays Saving Private Ryan the Western Version by getting themselves killed one-by-one throughout.
Wade is also a superhero in this version. He’s a quick-draw artist, a dead-eye shot, can take out three Apaches with only a knife while his hands are still cuffed, can overcome Pinkerton agents and inconsequential idiot characters played by Luke Wilson—never batting an eye. While Bale’s Evans mopes, fears, yearns and strives, but never really does much more than run and whine.
There are scenes lifted wholesale from the original, including a sequence where Wade and the barmaid realize they knew each other back East, in a different life, where he worked an honest job and she sang in a city saloon. Now they’re reunited for a brief time and worse for the wear of their lives. In the remake, this reunion seems like little more than a cheap come-on from Wade. And their dialogue—the way it’s delivered, they could be talking about anything. It isn’t a scene about ‘what could have been’ but ‘what can we do to fill up some time and let the law catch up to Wade’?
The point of the original completely lost in the remake is that Evans and Wade are not men cut from the same cloth. Evans is a man who constantly looks towards the future—if I do this, my family will survive another year. Wade always looks to the past—if I had only done this, if I hadn’t done that. Wade sees the life he could have had in Evans: a wife, a family, people who love him.
The director, James Mangold, says two things on the disc’s documentary that make utterly no sense. The first is that he didn’t want to repeat a bunch of Western clichés. He succeeded, in that he repeated all of them. The second, and the most unforgivable, is that he said: “What I thought the original lacked was the journey.” In his mind, he overcame this lacking element by running Evans, Wade and the posse all over Arizona. Sure, but… the original was all about a journey. The only difference is that the original’s journey was an internal journey. And internal journeys, I suppose, don’t translate to box office draw any more.
Again, I had no great love for the original until I saw the remake and what was done to the story. Where once there was a story about a man doing the right thing for the sake of his family, and a man doing the right thing in spite of his own nature, we get a man doing the right thing because of some divine mandate and a second man doing… everything else for motivations completely lost in the morass of running, shooting, exploding and musical crescendos.
For ultimate proof that the creators of this remake were in service of themselves and not the story, let’s take a look at the line oft-repeated in the trailers. “Just remember, your father is the man who took Ben Wade to that train when nobody else would.” This line is told to Evans oldest son, who is only at the end coming to respect his father. Any number of characters could have said this line to the boy and it would have felt appropriate and right. It is, after all, a great line, summing up the film.
It’s delivered, however, by Evans himself. His quiet dignity and moral foundation undercut by misappropriated dialogue. As much thought was given to the rest of the script. And that’s the tragedy of “the greatest western since Unforgiven.”
