[CinemaRatty] tag: act

LANA WOOD: BOND GIRL FOREVER

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 03:32:00 +0000

BY TOM LISANTI

“Hi, I’m Plenty,” said Lana Wood to Sean Connery’s James Bond at the gaming tables of Las Vegas in Diamonds Are Forever (1971). “Plenty O’Toole.” Glancing at her cleavage, Bond wittily deadpanned, “But of course you are.” With this small exchange audiences were introduced to one of the most popular Bond girls to ever hit the screen. As Plenty, Lana Wood was finally able to step out of the shadow of her sister Natalie Wood. On screen for only a few scenes, she almost steals the movie with her amusing performance and remains forever remembered for this role. “Isn’t that bizarre,” exclaims Wood with a laugh. “I’m only in the movie for three minutes!

Lana Wood was born Svetlana Zacharenko Gurdin in Santa Monica, California. She followed her older sister into the acting profession and made her film debut at eight years old in John Ford’s classic western The Searchers (1956). Wood received good notices and went on to appear in a few television dramas with Jack Lemmon and Charlton Heston, among others. But unlike Natalie, Lana didn’t want to act as a child and she waited until she was eighteen before re-starting her career with an episode of Dr. Kildare. More alluring and voluptuous than Natalie, Lana found herself typed cast in sexpot roles. After playing a coed in The Girls on the Beach (1965), Wood was signed to play sexy Eula Harker in the short-lived soap opera The Long, Hot Summer (1965-66). When the series was cancelled midway through its first season, 20th Century-Fox immediately moved Lana Wood into their hit soap opera Peyton Place. As Sandy Webber, a slinky temptress from the wrong side of the tracks, Wood was an immediate hit with the viewers and played the role for close to two years.

After playing a swinging bachelorette in For Singles Only (1968) and a mini-skirted biker babe in Free Grass (1969), Wood posed semi-nude for Playboy magazine. Her pictorial appeared in the April 1971 issue along accompanied by some of her poetry. These photos indirectly helped Wood land her most famous role of Plenty O’Toole. “I didn’t have to audition per se for this role,” recalls Lana. “My dear friend [writer] Tom Mankiewicz told me that Cubby Broccoli was looking for an actress to play this character named Plenty O’Toole. Tom thought I would be perfect for it. He asked me if I would meet with Cubby. I said, ‘Absolutely!’ I was en route to do a movie called A Place Called Today in New York. Before leaving for that, I went in to chat with Cubby who was adorable! I tried to look as tall as humanly possible because Tom had told me that they were thinking of Plenty O’Toole as this giant of a woman in every way. For me that wasn’t easy—I’m only five feet, four inches—but those were the days of hot pants and really high heels. I didn’t hear anything until I started filming the other picture. I was thrilled to get the part!”

In Diamonds Are Forever (1971), secret agent James Bond (Sean Connery) is assigned to pose as a diamond smuggler, leading him and jewel thief Tiffany Case (Jill St. John), from Amsterdam to Las Vegas, in pursuit of fifty thousand carats of diamonds. Bond meets bar girl Plenty O’Toole and her cleavage at a crap tables in a Vegas casino. After introducing herself to Bond who has been winning he takes her up to his room. Their tryst is interrupted as thugs try to kill Bond and toss Plenty out the fifteen-story window. (“We filmed this at night. I was topless. The crowd got a nice view of me in nothing but a pair of pale blue panties.”) Fortunately, Plenty lands in the hotel’s pool. Unfortunately, a short time later she is discovered murdered and floating face down in Tiffany’s pool.

Lana strikes a cheesecake pose in the 1970s.

Remembering working with Sean Connery, Lana remarks, “He is very charming and attentive. He was very relaxed and was very easy to work with. As long as we did things in a rapid pace so he could get out to golf then he was fine. But I had no problems working with Sean at all. Later on we heard that he was battling with the producers during the shoot. If that was true it wasn’t in front of the cast or crew.” Lana also admits to having a brief “interlude” with her sexy leading man.

With the special edition DVD release, fans got to see a number of Wood’s scenes that were excised from the final print due to “running time.” One shows the sexual attraction growing between Bond and Plenty as they dine before going up to his hotel room and another featured Plenty sneaking back into Bond’s room only to find him in bed with Tiffany. “I was flabbergasted that they cut all this out,” exclaims Lana. “I didn’t even realize it until I had come back from a world tour to promote the film. I went to the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood to watch it with a friend because I was so busy I never had time to see it. I literally bent over to get some popcorn as the thugs threw me out the window and by the time I had straightened up my character was dead. I thought, ‘Wow, all of a sudden I have this little part.’ I actually asked why they cut most of my scenes and I was told that they didn’t have much relevance to the plot.” Not so. These missing scenes finally explain how and why Plenty O’Toole is found murdered in Tiffany Case’s swimming pool wearing her wig. The assassins mistook her for Tiffany and killed her.

It was foolish to cut these scenes and considering how much better Wood was in the movie than Jill St. John who clad in an ill-fitting bikini throughout most of the movie gives a shrill performance (though the overrated redhead incredulously keeps making the Top 10 Bond Girls of all-time polls), the producers probably kicked themselves for shortening Wood’s screen time.

- Read more about Bond girls and other spy chicks in Tom Lisanti’s Film Fatales: Women in Espionage Films and Television, 1962-1973 available at www.sixtiescinema.com. .

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Death Race (2008)

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 03:10:00 +0000

Where's Richard Dawson when you really need him?

I'm not certain precisely how this occurred, but in setting out to remake Paul Bartel's iconic Death Race 2000 (1975), director Paul W.S. Anderson (Soldier [1998], Resident Evil [2002] and AVP [2004]) instead ended up with a film highly derivative of the Governator's 1987 sci-fi actioner, The Running Man.

Unfortunately, it's a second-rate copy. Of both films.

The original Death Race 2000, as you may or may not recall, was a deliberately ironic social commentary about the surfeit of violence in our contemporary society (and media); a kind of bread and circuses/Decay of the Empire-type tale.

The seventies Corman film (which starred David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone) concerned a futuristic cross-country race in which racers would mow down pedestrians, thereby scoring points in a popular driving contest.

Death Race 2000 also concerned - on a larger scale - the undoing of the corrupt regime that fostered such mindless, violent entertainment. The production values were low, but god the entertainment level was high

By point of comparison, Arnie's The Running Man was set in the year 2017, after the U.S. economy had collapsed. Americans distracted themselves from their financial woes with a murderous reality/game show in which convicted criminals would run for their lives from armed, American-Gladiator-style nemeses. These criminals would gain their freedom if they survived a dangerous gauntlet: a murderous and wide-ranging game field. The film's protagonist was Ben Richards (Schwarzenegger), a man wrongly convicted of murder. His dedicated enemy was smarmy Killian (Family Feud host Richard Dawson), the game show ring-master and ratings-hungry celebrity who controlled the corrupt games.

So along comes Death Race (2008), set in 2012 -- the year the U.S. Economy collapses (hey, I thought that happened in 2008...). Crime has spiraled out-of-control and our prisons have been modified to generate a profit. In particular, there's a popular reality show stream on the Internet called "death race." In this competition, convicted criminals drive an obstacle course (in three stages) and kill one another in the fierce quest to arrive at the finish line first. The game is a ratings and money winner for its designer, prison Warden Hennessey (a very puffy, apparently-botoxed Joan Allen).

When her prized racer, the masked Frankenstein, dies, evil Hennessey decides to resurrect the legend and make an invisible substitution. She frames an innocent man and former professional driver, Jensen Ames (Jason Statham) for the murder of his beloved wife. When Ames is conveniently remanded to Hennessey's Terminal Island Prison six months later, he is offered his freedom...if he participates in the death race.

Unlike either The Running Man or the original Death Race 2000, however, this new Death Race lacks wit, intelligence, and meaningful sub-text. Whereas the previous films featured a point-of-view on their corrupt future cultures as well as an opinion about the purpose/presentation of violence in the pop culture, Anderson's entry in these sweepstakes represents nothing beyond the obvious. This isn't a comment on a death race, it's just a violent death race. It is the very thing that The Running Man and Death Race 2000 mocked.

The most grievous missing ingredient, however, is humor. Both Death Race 2000 and The Running Man understood how to capitalize on the premise of an insidious game/race/event with tongue planted firmly-in-cheek, with grace, even with a sense of wicked fun. You could enjoy the action but not feel totally debauched because your mind was also engaged. This Death Race is a lumbering tale told by idiots, signifying nothing.

There are two ways, I reckon, in which this movie could have succeeded under the terms it set for itself. The first way involves style. The film could have been so spectacularly-shot, so tightly-edited, so rigorously-paced that the details of the race (and who survives it) would have proven exhilarating and involving. Unfortunately, the film's style is sledge-hammer stupid to match the tone.

The cinematography is a perfect example. In Death Race, film style is reduced literally to the level of the Hokey-Pokey. You zoom your camera in. You zoom your camera out. You zoom your camera in. And you shake-it-all about. You do the herky jerky and you turn yourself around. That's what it's all about.

By the end of the movie's prologue you've already figured out the movie's big stylistic gun: all the car interior scenes are rendered "exciting" and "kinetic" by the camera man's unceasing and spastic varying of focal length. After two minutes, this hokey-pokey gets old. After ten minutes, it's a joke. After ninety minutes, you want a barf bag.

Visually, the film is unceasingly dull. The race track look exactly like your average, run-of-the-mill warehouse row (only with water matted around the periphery, so the action appears to be set on an island). And all the cars are virtually indistinguishable...pieces of junk that lack the flourish and creativity of the original's vehicles. Their machine gun fire appears optically created with bad CGI.

And don't get me started on the two Michael Bay-style "slow motion" sequences in which gorgeous ladies (meaning Eye Candy) arrive via bus (or car), and we get lingering, lascivious T & A shots, accompanied by aggressive, pounding rap music. These moments are ridiculous and cliched, but Death Race isn't smart enough to realize it.

Much more significantly, there's not a single memorable or distinctive action scene in the entire film. And that's bad for a cinematic contest that prides itself on being "the ultimate auto carnage."

The only aspect of Death Race I can praise with any degree of enthusiasm is Jason Statham. As always, he's engaging, charismatic and a dynamic physical presence. And he deserves a better script.

With a little care, Death Race might have distinguished itself right there: via narrative clarity and an air-tight plot; by making all the characters act in consistent, reasonable, recognizably human fashion. To do that, again, you require a good script. Unfortunately, Paul Anderson mistook the idea of critiquing bread and circuses for simply presenting bread-and-circuses.

An example of narrative confusion: the "Death Race" event occurs in three separate stages. It's a money-making affair (viewers pay 99 dollars per stage; 250 dollars for the whole show...). So the idea, obviously, is to stretch the race out as long as possible -- to all three stages -- so as to pick up new viewers and rake in the bucks. (Indeed, the race's final stage draws 70 million viewers, so you do the math...).

So what does Hennessey do? In Stage 2 -- Stage 2, mind you! -- she unleashes her secret weapon, a colossal and intimidating attack vehicle called the "Dreadnought." It promptly takes out a celebrity racer named 14K, and almost offs both Frankenstein and Machine Gun Joe, the two top racers. In fact, it is such a dangerous "surprise" on the track that it forces these dedicated enemies (Frank and Joe) to team up. Heck of a job, Hennessey.

Now tell me, why introduce a secret weapon like that...one that in all likelihood will end the race...during Stage Two? Now, if you introduced the attack vehicle in Stage Three, say, to prevent any of the survivors from gaining their promised freedom, I'd understand. I might even applaud. But to introduce a doomsday weapon in Stage Two when you want there to be a Stage Three (for the Benjamins...) makes absolutely no sense.

And tell me too: why would Hennessey go to all the trouble of arranging the murder of Ames' wife, bringing Ames to Terminal Island and reviving Frankenstein only to introduce a vehicle that could kill him off before he's made it Stage Three?

I understand it is widely-accepted to trash and bash director Paul W.S. Anderson. I know he's not popular with Fan Boys. Personally, I'm no hater. I'm a staunch defender of his Event Horizon (1997), and -- mea culpa -- I even enjoyed many aspects of his Soldier (1998), primarily Kurt Russell's central performance. I don't believe Anderson is the Anti-Christ or anything like that.

On the other hand, Anderson totally botched AVP (2004) -- a venture that should have been a slam dunk, given the pedigree of the Alien and Predator franchises. And now he brings us this tepid, empty-headed Death Race remake.

To (misquote) Oscar Wilde: To destroy one popular franchise may be regarded as a misfortune; to destroy two looks like carelessness...

Review Catch-Up: Doubt, Slumdog Millionaire, Defiance, The Wrestler, The Reader

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:48:00 +0000

Doubt (John Patrick Shanley, 2008). If the term "lowbrow highbrow" doesn't yet exist within our collective critical vernacular, I'd like to officially coin it as this film's chief descriptor. Praise be to John Patrick Shanley for adapting his own work in a manner that can actually be classified as cinematic, but methinks it is really Meryl Streep that guides this film into the realm of the worthwhile. Script-wise, things are about as unambiguous as they come, and so Streep's turn as a nun convinced of her priest's inappropriate relationship with an alter boy becomes less of a "did he/did he not do it" escapade than a morality play in which evils are accepted in hope of a greater good. There's Oscar prestige gloss here for sure, but the cast seems to approach it as if it were pulp; their eagerly mucking about the film's thematic underbelly almost justifies the relative triteness with which the material is presented. Hoffman's persona finds one of its best outlets yet therein, Amy Adams continues to endear, and though Streep's excellence has been misused much of late, her fascinating facial concentrations are a tour-de-force unto themselves. B-

Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, 2008). I've seen this film twice to date, and both times I've noticed distinct whiffs of The Wizard of Oz amidst the film's superbly romanticized climax; not so much in shared filmic qualities than in how both sidestep customary storytelling pretenses to go for the emotional jugular. As regarding the lifetime of experiences that aid the most unlikely of gameshow candidates -- a young boy (Dev Patel) whose ghetto life has provided him with a most extensive and varied array of skills and ever-so-helpful factoids -- Slumdog is comparable to Uma Thurman's Pulp Fiction adrenaline shot, a kinetic fireball of a movie in which every vibrant image and titillating edit trigger vast networks of emotional response. Boyle's flashback device would appear to be a hindrance to the whole, but Slumdog is nothing if not more than the sum of its parts, its collection of instantly iconic pop experiences effortlessly translating across the boundaries of age and culture into a superbly humanized modern-day fairy tale. B+

Defiance (Edward Zwick, 2008). Normally, I'm all about Jews with guns, but Munich this ain't. For a while, the latest from the reliably boring Zwick would appear to be an act of creative growth of sorts, and though it is certainly an improvement over the career-low that was Blood Diamond, this tale of a Jewish community that survived for three years of WWII in the Belarussian forest remains as emotionally robotic and superficially deliberate in its storytelling as one would expect from such blatant paint-by-numbers filmmaking. C

The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, 2008). The extreme stylistic dissimilarity between this and Aronofsky's previous film (the out-there sci-fi fantasy existentialism of The Fountain) and this is just about surface deep; The Wrestler is a film as particularly embodied by its chosen style as its predecessor, and is just as eager to feel and be felt. Rourke is sensational as the washed-up former celebrity wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson, but for me it's Aronofsky's handheld takes that steal the show: following Randy about his routines, achingly, effortlessly evoking the time that hangs on every choice and missed opportunity, all of it rather bittersweetly framed in the film's anti-romantic view of northwestern America. If certain passages feel more or less calculated, the overwhelming majority thrives on the film's lived-in sense of class consciousness; there may be no more heartbreaking scene of 2008 than the wallop-packing closer. B+

The Reader (Stephen Daldry, 2008). I'd written and editing a full-length review of this thing before Mozilla decided to crash and take with it my foolishly unsaved work; too bad, 'cuz I refuse to donate another hour of my life to reliving the unpleasantries of this unfortunately misguided adaptation. Never anything remotely close to condescending or evil, The Reader nevertheless suffers chiefly from a distasteful thematic overemphasis, though not far behind is the film's rather insistent self-flattery. As in Revolutionary Road, Winslet is good as a former SS agent who, while attempting to live a normal life in 1995 Berlin, has an affair with a 16-year-old literature enthusiast; after he sneaks a peek at her privates while she changes, it's only a matter of time before she's bawling her eyes out as he reads the climax of The Odyssey. Strangely dispassionate, there's never much morality to chew on for a film so purportedly serious. The banality of evil -- the means by which normal, moral people (i.e. the overwhelming majority of the German population) find themselves accepting and aiding something as overwhelmingly horrific as the Nazi holocaust -- goes relatively unexamined amidst all the futzy melodrama and faux-sensationalist sexcapades, the entirely of which enmesh in one of the most confused/confusing thematic wrap-ups I've ever seen in a film. In all ways, it's just about illiterate. C

2009: Resolutions, Plans, Changes, etc.

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:45:52 +0000

As 2008 drew to a close, I spent some time reflecting on the many changes I've gone through -- both personal and professional -- over the past several years. A schizophrenic period (to say the least) that found me bidding a bitter farewell to corporate America and the many years I spent whoring myself in the financial sector -- a series of middle-management positions that were soul-numbing and pointless. Yes, the money was great, but my entire existence was built on a foundation of dishonesty and self-betrayal.

Things began to change when I started the blog, and I soon found myself immersed in a world that was the antithesis of the corporate mindset. I began to meet fellow travelers, both in person and via email, several of whom have gone on to become close friends. Opportunities began to arise -- invitations to speak on panels, or contribute to symposiums, as well as offers to write elsewhere -- all of which I was immensely grateful for. Hell, if it wasn't for the blog there's no way I would have been filmed for the upcoming Synecdoche, New York DVD.

Yet in the past year or so I've felt a gradual souring in the blogosphere -- a sense of aggression and competitiveness that I hadn't felt before. It's as if there's a race to see who can churn out the first words on a particular film. The now infamous live-blogging of the Indiana Jones film from Cannes was just one of the many lowlights of 2008, and at this year's New York Film Festival press screenings I was dumbstruck by the number of people who would race to their laptops before the end credits had finished rolling.

In the world of paid blogging, things are even worse. There is incredible pressure to maximize hit counts, and the fallout of this is that many sites have adapted a quantity over quality model. There's also been a rise of faux-contrarian and/or narcissistic posts geared to generate controversy and oodles of angry comments. The end result being that it's become increasingly difficult for me to find the motivation to go on.

Thoughts of putting the blog to rest filled my head, and for a while it seemed like the wise thing to do. I kept starting posts that I'd never finish -- mostly on awful Hollywood films. I came to realize the futility in those exercises -- other than catharsis, what purpose does it serve to rail against the screenwriting crimes of Eric Roth, or Sam Mendes' homicidal act on Richard Yates masterwork? These films will continue to get made, and seen by millions. Do I really need, or want, to be just another voice amongst the throng -- writing about crap films that hundreds have already weighed in on?

A few things happened in December that changed my outlook. First, there was the debut post from friend and Benten partner Aaron Hillis over at GreenCine.com, which he has been asked to helm now that David Hudson has moved on to IFC. There are some inspiring words contained within, and it served to remind me why I started this site in the first place. The second incident occurred right before the year's end -- a handful of stimulating conversations at an old-timey Brooklyn watering hole with some of New York's finest film-folks. It was during my 3:00AM walk home in sub-zero weather that I decided to persevere, and at the same time to simplify.

Step one is to heavily prune my RSS list. The old faces and places will remain, as will some more recent discoveries, but there's a lot of fat to be trimmed. I'm also going to make a stronger effort to be more participatory, and not shy away from epic threads on other sites as I've done in the past. As for this site, I'm going to return to my roots, as it were, and make an effort to concentrate on films that aren't being done to death everywhere else. I'm going to dig deeper into the 60s and 70s, as well as pay closer attention to Asian cinema, which I've admittedly been lax about for quite some time. (The timing of today's news from the Berlinale seems fortuitous.) I'll use the Tumblr blog to post clips, posters images, and other ephemera. I'm also considering taking a stab at video essays, as I've become very inspired by the work of Kevin Lee.

Oh, and...yes, the quiz will go on.

As Emily Watson said to Adam Sandler at the end of Punch Drunk Love, "Well, here we go."

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Fantastic Voyage (1966)

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 03:20:00 +0000

"Maybe the philosophers were right. Man is the center of the universe. We stand in the middle of infinity; between outer and inner space..."

-Dr. Duval (Arthur Kennedy) ponders the miracle of life in Fantastic Voyage.

This memorable Richard Fleischer effort was the special effects spectacular of 1966; an imaginative, big budget (6.5. million dollar...), award-winning science fiction adventure. If you grew up in the late 1960s or 1970s, Fantastic Voyage was also likely one of your favorite genre movies; one filled with action, danger and special effects spectacle the likes of which you had never conceived.

This well-regarded genre film escorts the audience inside the HQ of the CMDF (Combined Miniature Deterrent Forces), an American military-intelligence agency that has developed the ability to shrink down to microscopic levels everything from people and equipment to large-scale vehicles. The problem with their technique is that the miniaturization process becomes unstable after a mere sixty minutes, and all shrunken persons or objects then return to normal size.

Only one scientist -- a Soviet named Jan Benes -- knows the answer to this riddle. Unfortunately, he's been badly wounded during his defection to the West. An inoperable brain injury threatens his life and all of his advanced knowledge. CMDF doctors quickly realize that the only way to clear a large blood clot from the scientist's brain is to arrange a "little trip." Specifically, a nuclear submarine named Proteus (model U91035) and a team of medical men are to be miniaturized and injected into the dying man's blood-stream. The strategy is to travel by artery to the brain clot, slice open the dangerous occlusion with experimental laser beam, and wait for removal at the base of the neck. All this must occur in just sixty minutes.

The mission doesn't quite turn out that way. Security agent Grant (Stephen Boyd), neuro-surgeon Dr. Duval (Arthur Kennedy), his beautiful assistant Cora Peterson (Raquel Welch), sub Captain Owens (William Redfield) and team leader, Dr. Michaels (Donald Pleasence) encounter an array of unexpected and wild dangers on their fantastic voyage.

A whirlpool at an artery branch shunts the Proteus into the veins, forcing a dangerous journey directly through the human heart (which is stopped for sixty seconds to permit transit). Then, the Proteus's air supply mysteriously fails, requiring a pit-stop in the lungs, where the oxygenation process is observed and then exploited. A trip through the inner ear is equally dangerous, because any vibration inside the operating theatre could rattle the ship and crew into pieces.

Before the mission ends, the surgical laser is damaged (sabotaged?) and jury rigged, and an enemy agent is found amongst the crew. Take a look at the cast members, and then take a good guess at who the saboteur might be. Finally, a swarm of puffy, jelly-fish like white corpuscles attack the Proteus, crushing the marvelous high-tech sub completely. After a successful operation to remove the clot (conducted in four minutes, no less...), the mission survivors evacuate through the Benes' tear ducts...just in the nick of time. Their "full reduction" reverses and they are restored to normal dimensions as the end credits roll.

I've always loved Fantastic Voyage, but watching it again in 2009, it is not difficult for the objective viewer to discern some of the film's more notable shortcomings. All the characters are two-dimensional and deadly dull, their dialogue stiff and uninteresting. The film also wastes an inordinate amount of valuable screen time on military brass arguing amongst itself and barking orders at subordinates, who dutifully carry these technical instructions out in mission-control-style environs. Most troublesome, it takes nearly a full thirty minutes to get to the miniaturization process and the actual impossible mission, so the movie starts out at a snail's pace. The pace does pick up, but some won't have the patience to stick with the film.

Still, I would have to say that all of these drawbacks are pretty damn immaterial, given the movie's strengths. Depending on your perspective, the movie's Hail Mary plot line is either pure genius or simply asinine. I choose the former interpretation, mainly because movies often exist for the express purpose of revealing to us worlds and vistas we've never imagined or seen before. On that criteria alone, the wacky miniaturization plot of Fantastic Voyage succeeds magnificently. It's the doorway to a world of awesome visual delights and some great 1960s-era effects.

Some of the amazing and jaw-dropping sights you'll see in Fantastic Voyage include: a nuclear submarine submerging inside the choppy waters of a hypodermic needle; a roller coaster ride through that needle into human flesh; a passage through a school of globular red blood cells; a flight through a human heart; a close-up view of the oxygenation process, an exchange of gases that is one of the "miracles of the universe;" and even a rendering of a "blazing" single thought, as Benes' sparkling synapses fire all about the rocketing Proteus.

My two favorite images, however, occur late in the film. There's a terrifying moment in which a white corpuscle descends on the dorsal dome of the Proteus, where Captain Michaels (Pleasence) has become trapped following a crash. The corpuscle crushes the glass of the dome, and proceeds to envelope Michaels' (screaming) head before our eyes. That fatal moment -- which Pleasence really sells -- has haunted me since I was a kid..

And secondly, I love the shot that finds the mission survivors swimming wildly in a single tear drop -- to them the size of a lake -- after evacuating the body through the corner of the eyeball. I remember I once owned the Fantastic Voyage comic-book too (long gone, alas...), and this image really resonated with me both in print and on screen. The kid in me has also nurtured a long fondness for that high-tech submarine, the Proteus ("quite a canoe," as one character describes it...). I always wished there had been a model kit of that ship.

As a dazzling visual travelogue into inner space, a journey into a contained universe all its own, Fantastic Voyage remains an involving cinematic experience. I also detect now a thematic leitmotif I missed as a kid: an early debate about intelligent design vs. evolution. Dr. Duval (the good guy...) sees the oxygenation process as a sure sign of a "Creator's" hand, while the godless communist agent, Michaels, views it as nothing more than evolution. As you can guess, the movie falls philosophically on the side of intelligent design. Message: do not tamper in God's domain. Bitches.

So Fantastic Voyage is a nostalgic favorite that features some imaginative sets and more than a handful of grand physical effects. It also generate a fair degree of tension in the final act (especially during the hair-raising "absolute silence" scene involving the journey through the inner ear).

But -- and I can't believe I'm saying this -- it's one of those rare genre movies that might actually benefit from a remake. The acting, the screenplay, the characters...they're all rather shallow here. The film was always designed to be a special effects masterpiece first and foremost, and, well, special effects have improved a great deal since 1966. You could probably excavate the 1966 script, re-shoot it word-for-word (except all the sexist crap involving Raquel Welch...) with modern effects and successfully fashion mind-blowing visual experience for 2009. Again, I'm as surprised as you are that I feel this way, but done with modern spfx a journey through the microverse of the human body could today prove even more "fantastic."

The only problem I can see is that today if we wanted to seem both "futuristic" and accurate, we'd send in microscopic nanobots, not tiny humans, to repair the blood clot. And that little factoid would take away all of the fun of this fantasy voyage.

Starship Troopers

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:59:00 +0000

Starship Troopers is at once a thrilling, ultra-violent, energetically paced sci-fi action flick, and a viciously clever, uncompromising satire of exactly the kind of movie it purports to be, and of the militaristic, proto-fascist attitudes and assumptions underlying such films. It's the story of a war between an intelligent alien species of bugs and a human society of the future, when the world has been united under an international government in which citizenship is not assumed but granted only to those who earn it by serving in the military. The nature of this society is never thoroughly explored in the film, which instead focuses on the military itself, but director Paul Verhoeven makes it very easy to read between the lines and imagine the kind of society he's depicting here. It's a totalitarian world government with an iron grip on the media, which is used as a tool of indoctrination, encouraging military service and vilifying the enemy bugs to the extent that kids on earth senselessly stamp out harmless cockroaches as their mother enthusiastically cheers them on. The military leaders are the only figures of authority shown in the film, suggesting that the military and government are closely related if not interchangeable. And the leaders take no real responsibility for their actions; after a particularly grave military disaster, the "sky marshall" who had been in charge makes a show of calmly stepping aside, ushering in his replacement and then standing behind her on the podium as she delivers the newest commands. It's as much of a blatant mockery as the reasons for the war in the first place: the media continually blames the alien bugs on their distant planets for sending meteors towards Earth, but this never makes much sense even if the film neither explains nor explicitly questions it. The absurdities peddled by the media and the government are simply allowed to stand, their ridiculous contradictions and blatant non-sequiturs obvious to anyone who looks.

The government's enthusiastic propaganda for military service — and the extra rights and privileges granted to those who serve and thereby become "citizens" — makes many youths willing slaves ready to feed themselves into what one army recruiter half-jokingly calls "the meat grinder." He immediately retracts his jest, though, proudly announcing that the army made him into the man he is today: a man missing both legs and one arm, as it turns out. Still, kids join up for a variety of reasons, many of them familiar from our own armies (poverty, lack of options, the desire for a college scholarship), and some predicated on this future government's increasing stranglehold on the lives of its people (one young woman says she enlisted because it's easier for citizens to get permission to have children).

Among these new recruits, a quartet of friends are sent to vastly different fates within the military apparatus: brainy psychic Carl (Neil Patrick Harris) becomes a military intelligence officer; brash, talented, ambitious Carmen (Denise Richards) is sent to pilot training; and the slow-witted but earnest Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien), who enlisted only for his love of Carmen, is sent to be a lowly grunt in the mobile infantry, where he's joined by Dizzy (Dina Meyer), who just wants to be close to Johnny. The film follows these friends through the initial stages of the war against the bugs. Verhoeven deliberately populates the film with mannequin-pretty young actors who go, glassy-eyed and uncomprehending, into the maw of an industrial machine that churns them out like bloody meat. None of them know why they're fighting these bugs, beyond the fact that they're blamed for meteor showers, but they nevertheless charge into action without hesitation.

And there's certainly plenty of action. The film is swarming with fierce, terrifying bug creatures. There's surely a lot of CGI at work here, but these aliens feel real and physically tangible when it counts; the close encounters with the bugs have a messy, sticky, gory emphasis on viscera and bug-goo that is reminiscent of the best of David Cronenberg's body-horror special effects. Verhoeven focuses equally on the casualties of humans and aliens alike; neither is spared horrible, bloody deaths in which limbs are shredded apart and hacked off, and blood sprayed everywhere. The human carnage is often harrowing (though in its aftermath, the dead strewn around frequently look more like discarded crash test dummies than real corpses), but the deaths of the aliens are often felt less intensely, since the obvious impulse is to root for the humans.

Still, Verhoeven keeps subtly reminding his audience that the aliens are not simply expendable cannon fodder: a bombing raid on their planet emphasizes the way huge swaths of the creatures, who are seemingly doing nothing aggressive for once, are simply obliterated by the waves of fire. It's the bug equivalent of a civilian massacre, and Verhoeven's composition deliberately recalls popular representations of the Pearl Harbor attack and of American napalm bombing raids in Vietnam. The bugs also cease being quite so intimidating in the film's increasingly lurid final sequence, in which the troops are tracking what's known as the "brain bug," the central intelligence driving the creatures. This turns out to be a massive, nearly immobile lump with a nakedly vaginal face, a row of curiously soulful black eyes surrounding its labial, muscus-squirting mouth. Once the troops capture this creature, Carl reads its thoughts, triumphantly declaring that "it's scared" to the cheers of the soldiers, who rejoice at the revelation that their enemy can feel emotions, and that they've frightened it. Finally, the scientists who study this captured bug complete the vaginal metaphor by inserting metallic probes into the creature's mouth, accompanied in the media propaganda by censorial black bars, a subtle joke that links top-secret military intelligence and low-grade smut. The victors complete their victory by literally fucking the enemy, a final act that definitively establishes Verhoeven's sympathy for the bugs rather than humans. At the same time, the human specificity of the film's actual protagonists is de-emphasized, not only by the wooden acting but by the way that human life is so casually expended in pointless battles. At one point, the military commanders knowingly send a small group of soldiers onto a planet where they're pretty sure the troops will be slaughtered — "that mission had a very low probability of survival" is the euphemistic explanation — just to prove a theory. The film is all about the low value of life in militaristic and totalitarian society, and the high costs of pointless wars fought by a docile, brainwashed populace.

Ong-Bak 2 is No. 3 in Hong Kong, criticized in Singapore

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:37:00 +0000

While Tony Jaa's Ong-Bak 2 is fading away at the Thai box office, its power is being sustained as it opens in other Asian territories.

It opened over New Year's weekend in Hong Kong, and was at No. 3, according to Box Office Mojo, bested by Lady Cop and Papa Crook and Donnie Yen's Ip Man. According to Variety, Ong-Bak 2 opened on 37 screens and took US$138,000 on its first day.

And reviews are continuing to roll in. Here's one from City on Fire (via TonyJaa.org):

There is no one who can touch Jaa. The actions is SPECTACULAR! Of 90 minutes. There is 30 minutes story, 60 minutes action. He shows the martial arts on film in a way not seen since Chang Cheh and Shaw Brothers film of the '70s. ...

[...]

If there were any debates that Jet or Jackie was the next Bruce Lee. Then you gotta give Jaa his props. He pays an homage to Jackie Chan's drunken master and crushes Chan's performance. One scene that impressed me was his Kung Fu Fist and Muay Thai fist vs 2 opponents. He switches styles back and forth throughout the fight.

Other elements, the music score is really fitting. Head banging right along with the action. Even the [khon] dance, that I thought would be a drag, they scored it just right and was great to see. Cinematography, thankfully, the camera pulls back and doesn't chop up the acting or the fighting.

Proper martial arts film - it's the hard, raw, kick ass ma film we have been waiting for since the days of Bruce Lee.

Ong-Bak 2 will be released in Singapore this coming weekend, and critics in the Merlion City are not near as enthralled.

Stefan at A Nutshell Review offers his reserved view, criticizing the ending and calling Ong-Bak 2 "half a movie":

Ong-Bak 2 picked up very slowly, and spent significant time developing the back story of Jaa's Tien. And unfortunately, I do admit unabashedly that I was waiting for action sequence one after another, and those in the same boat will have to be patient. For action junkies, your appetite will only be satiated in the last act of the film, where it's vintage Jaa as he dishes out punishment, and receives much of the same in return. I detested the ending which wrapped everything up so conveniently (I don't buy the Karma bit), or left subplots such as the romantic angle as something to be dwelled upon later (though I believe romance never really was an issue at all in Jaa's movies), leaving doors wide open for another film.

MovieXclusive's Richard Lim Jr. is more pointed in his criticism of Ong-Bak 2

The story for Ong-Bak 2 felt like it was just an excuse to get from one fighting sequences to another ... in the same manner as video games. Ironically, when the film tried to instill emotions, it became a drag as it’s neither convincing nor given the enough time to create the required sentiment.

The action sequences, which generally are what people pay for in a Tony Jaa movie, were a mixed bag. There are still some splendid trademark flying knee and elbow moments, but other than that, there are a lot to nitpick.

[...]

There’s also the “homage” to the previous kung-fu classics and other fighting methods that didn’t really go well with this Thai action movie. Personally, I would prefer to watch more of Muay Thai style of fighting in this Thai action movie than to see Tony Jaa mimic moments from Drunken Master and Game of Death. It would be interesting to see how Tony Jaa uses Muay Thai style against the various martial arts but instead we get a chunk of Tony Jaa doing a Chinese style of fighting which looked more silly than impressive.

Overall Ong-Bak 2 looked great visually but didn’t provide enough memorable fighting moments to hook viewers into the third part. It also makes one wonder if they are going to do a movie that is not related to the first one, wouldn’t it be better to rename this two-part movie so that the part two wouldn’t have to be named as part three instead?

Related posts:

Ong-Bak 2: A dissenting view

Vicky Cristina Barcelona: #15 for Woody Allen?

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:17:46 +0000

In Sasha’s WGA Preview post a couple of days ago, 9 people named Vicky Cristina Barcelona in their predictions for a nomination. If that comes to pass this afternoon, it would be Woody Allen’s ~~8th~~ 19th WGA nod, and lay the groundwork for his 15th Best Screenplay Oscar nomination.

On Monday, our friend iggy did a very thorough analysis of VCB’s screenplay chances. Using metacritic scores to rank the best of the best Allen films, and box-office to weigh popularity, iggy’s prediction factors in the likelihood of acting nominations — proving the script’s gravity to hold an orbiting performance. It’s a nicely argued theory, and well worth another look as we wait for the WGA announcement in a couple of hours.

A brief and typically blithe spirited exchange from the VCB screenplay, after the cut.

Cristina walks haltingly into the room as Juan Antonio closes the door.

CRISTINA
I am just here to have a quick
drink to say thank you and then I’m
gonna go back to my room.

JUAN ANTONIO
Mm-hm. All right. Did you act in
the small film you made?

CRISTINA
Did I act?

JUAN ANTONIO
Mm-hm.

CRISTINA
Yeah, I acted. Why?

JUAN ANTONIO
Well, I hope you were more
convincing than you are when you
pretend to have come here for one
quick drink.

Cristina chuckles softly.

CRISTINA
I am here to go to bed with you.
You’re right.

JUAN ANTONIO
Mm-hm.

CRISTINA
So you’re pretty much home free.
Unless you blow it.

JUAN ANTONIO
Blow it?

CRISTINA
Yeah.

JUAN ANTONIO
Blow it. You mean ruin the moment.

CRISTINA
Yeah.

JUAN ANTONIO
Huh. And how would I do that?

CRISTINA
Um…I don’t know. It could be
anything from some inane comment
to…wearing the wrong kind of
shorts.

JUAN ANTONIO
Uh-huh.

CRISTINA
Although, somehow, by looking at
you, I think you’re wearing the
right kind of shorts.

Juan Antonio pours another glass of wine.

Lady Vengeance (Chinjeolhan geumjassi, 2005)

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:12:36 +0000

Lady Vengeance (Chinjeolhan geumjassi, 2005) Director/Co-Screenwriter: Park Chan-wook By Marilyn Ferdinand South Korean director began an extended examination of revenge in 2002 with the release of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (Boksuneun naui geot. He followed this up with the much-buzzed-about Oldboy in 2003. He finished the trilogy in 2005 with Lady Vengeance. The first two films deal with men seeking revenge, and I’ll tell you now that I haven’t seen them. Perhaps that will be a weakness in my review of Lady Vengeance, but Park’s decision to focus on female revenge in this final film hits an area of cinema with which I have more than a nodding acquaintance. Park’s approach in this film takes the hot-blooded emotionalism of his first two films and turns it cold. His vengeance-seeking female Lee Geum-ja (Lee Yeong-ae) hides her anger behind a mask of goodness that jibes perfectly with her beautiful face. Like women in all societies, she must use honey to trap her flies.

The story is easy to sum up. Geum-ja was snookered into participating in a kidnapping in which the little boy being ransomed is killed. She takes the rap for the murder because the mastermind, her former English teacher (Choi Min-sik) and the man who took her in so she could have her out-of-wedlock baby, has taken her baby girl. After 13 years in prison, Geum-ja is released. She then sets about seeking her revenge on Mr. Baek using a carefully laid plan devised in prison. While the story is simple and straightforward, the telling of it and the inner conflict Geum-ja experience are anything but. Park shocks us with a disconnect right at the start of the film. A group of religious people follow their leader to the entrance of the prison to await Geum-ja’s release. They see her as an angel of mercy based on her actions while in prison. The minister offers her a white block of tofu as a symbol of purity and says, “Be white.” She knocks the offering to the grounds, glowers at him, and tells him to go fuck himself. She goes to the home of a former inmate, dons high heels, and paints her eyelids red. This reversal plays on the enormous popularity of Park’s leading lady, known as a great beauty who normally plays romantic roles. Western viewers may not get much of a jolt from this opening, but it surely sent shockwaves through Asian theatres. A series of flashbacks to prison during about the first third of the film suspend the viewer between two worlds, helping us experience a bit of the culture shock a longtime inmate might feel on being released to the outside world. There is great craft and ingenuity in this broken narrative that may not give up a lot of information, but still never confuses. Geum-ja’s life in prison is a focus at the beginning of the film to ensure we understand the puzzle pieces that make up her revenge scheme. Foremost among them are other inmates who come to owe Geum-ja debts of gratitude.

Each inmate is introduced with a small title card giving her name, crime, and sentence, and then we get a short, but graphic description of each crime. The most fearsome of them is large woman who killed her husband and his mistress and ate them. She runs the cell block and makes another inmate her bitch in a series of crisp and suggestive scenes. I particularly liked the younger girl’s introduction to the boss’ clitoris. The boss opens her spread legs slightly wider than they already are and urges the girl to crawl forward. She asks the girl to remove her pants, “please.” “Can you see it clearly? Say hello to each other.” The girl says a weak “hello” as this menacing, yet amusing scene comes to an end. This interaction is important because Geum-ja will cause an accident that sends the boss to the infirmary, where Geum-ja poisons her while seeming to wait on her hand and foot as an act of kindness. The girl she rescues from sexual slavery will go on to become Mr. Baek’s girlfriend and give Geum-ja access to him. Picking up where the boss left off, Baek gets up from the dinner table, lays his girlfriend across it, penetrates her from behind, and afterward goes back to eating dinner.

The heart of the story is Geum-ja’s struggle to come to terms with her own guilt. She blames Baek for corrupting her, and it for that crime that she seeks vengeance. She herself feels guilty for not being a mother to her daughter Jenny (Kwon Yea-young), who was adopted by an Australian couple and grown up speaking only English. Geum-ja locates Jenny and brings her back to Korea for a short visit. Jenny wants to stay with Geum-ja, but that was never her birth mother’s plan. “I’m not fit to be your mother. I’m bad,” Geum-ja says to her through Baek, who is now Geum-ja’s prisoner. Before she can kill Baek, however, she discovers that he has killed other children. She steps aside, contacts the police chief who was assigned to the case to which she confessed, and has him gather the parents of the murdered children. They discuss what to do with Baek—kill him themselves a la Murder on the Orient Express or turn him over to the police—while Baek listens to them through a speaker Geum-ja has rigged.

Once events play out and Geum-ja has had a chance to apologize to Jenny, she removes her red eye shadow. She has been working as a baker and on their last night together, she and Jenny walk home with a white-frosted slab cake Geum-ja has made. This cake brings us full circle, but instead of rejecting the symbol for “be white,” Geum-ja buries her face in it and munches furiously, hoping that now she can fill her soul again. Beneath the beating heart of this violence-strewn tale from Asia lurks—guess what—a woman’s film! That’s right. Just look at the poster! Strip away the black comedy, the incredible imagery and disjointed opening scenes, the foreign location, and the cruelty, and you’ve got a film not so different from Madame X. Park uses his own stock company of actors from the previous two films in this one, much as Sirk had his stock players. He plays to the desire of female consumers of women’s films have to be free of their children by having Geum-ja’s removed from her when still an infant, with only a temporary reunion and her undying guilt to reassure audiences of her essential mother love. He even has her seduce a younger man, a 19-year-old coworker at the bakery. Through the inmates, he shows how women can be helpful and hurtful to each other (shades of The Women). And he pins Geum-ja’s initial downfall on a man and her redemption on upholding the primacy of the nuclear family. How did all the critics miss this? Well, not all. Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir and a colleague of his smelled the whiff of genre:

A fine young film critic of my acquaintance left the screening murmuring, ‘I don't trust that guy,’ and I know what he means. It's hard to say whether the autumnal mood and the female-coded moral seriousness of Lady Vengeance are anything more than another genre for Park to inhabit; he's a master manipulator in the Hitchcock vein, whose true intentions are difficult to divine. In a movie this powerful and this lovingly crafted, I may not care whether I'm being had.

Since when did a woman’s film become a vessel of moral seriousness? I hope letting the cat out of the bag won’t make this film less appealing to the film community at large. Certainly, if any film can redeem the woman’s film it should be this one—gorgeous to look at, cleverly cast, and ingeniously plotted, written, and executed by one of South Korea’s most noted filmmakers. l

President of the Jews

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:07:21 +0000

I’ve often said privately that maybe the only way we’ll get anything resembling a fair U.S. policy towards the Middle East would be to elect a Jewish President not named Joe Lieberman. This mythical politician would, free of fears of being considered a secret antisemite or, worse, “no friend of Israel’s,” be given a bit of political leeway in cracking down on the excesses and injustices committed by the Jewish state that, as an American Jew, I’m expected to reflexively support.

The insane thing about the what bloggers now refer to in short as the I/P issue is that you’ve got a fight between two groups who are, in essence, neoconservatives. Both believe that the other side “only understands force” and both believe that, if they can only get violent enough and start just one more war they’ll magically win despite all the evidence of experience which proves that no one in the Middle East ever stops fighting simply because they’ve lost. If the shoe was on the other foot, the Israelis certainly wouldn’t…why do they expect the Palestinians too? Do these people really have the emotional intelligence of protozoa? Apparently, yes.

When Israel continued it’s blockade of Gaza, who said: “What do you think the Palestinians will do? Say, ‘oh, we now see Israel is so wise and electing Hamas was obviously a bad call. We should let Tzipi Livni tell us who to vote for…that would have been much smarter.’”

Then, when Hamas started sending rockets into Israel: “Excuse me, Hamas. How precisely do you expect Israel to react? Do you really think they’ll oppress your people less because of your attempts to kill random civilians? Did you ever hear of this guy Gand….okay, forget I mentioned him, how about Nelson Mand…oh, you want Israel to go apeshit….So, you can do what, exactly? Defeat it with brute force with rockets that can’t kill anything close to a fraction of the number of civilians Israel kills without even particularly trying to (or trying not to), on any given day? And lets say you find your Werner von Braun in fifty years….Do you expect young Israelis to festoon you with candies when you come to kill the rest of them?”

And, of course, when Israel started it’s latest insanity: “You know, at this point, Hamas hasn’t managed to kill a single Jew. Do you really think massive bombing raids and an invasion is going to quiet down the situation? There might be another…oh, so, what’s the upside here? Showing you’re tough? Okay, we admit, you’re very, very tough — now, could you act like a human being, please?”

No one who counts dares to ask these questions, apparently. Certainly, on the Israel/U.S. side of the equation, my dream Feingold administration (or my intriguingly surreal and torturous Rahm Emmanuel presidency) isn’t happening. Our actual new President, while sharper than sharp, will, for reasons that are racial as well as political (since Black American pols are judged antisemitic until proven Jew-friendly) have to tread with extreme caution, I’m afraid.

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