[CinemaRatty] tag: cold

LES NEUF RÉSOLUTIONS DU CINÉMA 2009 (with no apologies to Jean-Luc Godard)

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:04:00 +0000

The following is a response to another tag from Bill over at The Kind of Face You Hate; this time Bill instructs us, via Adam Ross of DVD Panache, to come up with nine cinema-related resolutions for the new year, ones that we could conceivably have a chance at keeping. Here, with one to grow on, is the dark cloud of obligation I have concocted for myself.

1) In the interest of broadening my cinematic horizons (and giving less and less attention to whatever new superhero franchises come wiggling down the Hollywood pipe), I will make better progress on paring down that list of unseen foreign films than I did in 2008. There are some movies on the list now that no longer belong there, but those that remain a mystery to me far outnumber the ones with which I have since become familiar. That really must change.

2) In that same spirit, I will see every movie on this list before the ball drops on 2009 a mere 12 months from now. (I have it within my power to scratch three of them this January alone! Hey, Andrew, are we still on for God’s Angry Man?)

3) I will see more movies in revival theaters and repertory cinemas than I do first-run features in multiplexes.

4) I will relearn to be a more disciplined reader. Right now there are probably 20 books on various shelves in my house that have my bookmarks in them—novels, nonfiction, film criticism, collections of dirty jokes, you name it. Ever since my children were born my ability to find time to sit down for an extended period of time with a good book has significantly dissipated. (Yes, girls, I’m blaming it on you so, when you’re 20-ish and I’m even more broken-down and beaten up than I already am, maybe we can have our own phony-baloney Evan Rachel Wood/Mickey Rourke-style moment of reconciliation. But I will not get an Oscar nomination for it.) However, school will be over soon and the distractions from literature will be again minimized, at least for a while. It will again become possible for me to read a book that doesn’t rely on phrases like “California content standards” or “zone of proximal development” to ground its subject matter. And the first thing I’m going to do is resume, or perhaps even restart, Flicker, the best, most entertaining and entrancing novel I’ve ever stopped reading cold..

5) In the spirit of Bill’s Tarr/Syberberg double-header, I will not only seek out Satantango (which will be my first Bela Tarr movie), I will trade Our Hitler for Berlin Alexanderplatz and then, just to prove that I’m no slice of Eastern Eurotrash, I’ll throw in an all-day marathon of the extended versions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy too. After all that, nothing over 92 minutes in 2009! (I’m probably kidding about this last part.)

6) Once again, I will see no movie starring Kate Hudson in 2009, especially if she’s costarring with Matthew McConnaughey and/or wearing bridal gear. I reserve the right to change my mind if she should unexpectedly appear in another bayou-set horror opus opposite the likes of John Hurt and Gena Rowlands

7) I don’t care how goddamn hungry I get-- no more movie theater popcorn! I vow that the only kernels to pass my lips during feature films projected in any public auditorium will be the Orville Redenbacher 94% Fate-Free Smart Pop variety smuggled in courtesy of my none-too-conspicuous backpack (unless I’m at the New Beverly, where the popcorn is not only good, but it supports something other than the corporate coffers of Mssrs. AMC, Mann and Pacific). However, I cannot make the same vow as regards the bubbly soda pop. The carbonated allure of a freshly fountain-poured Diet Pepsi is just too much for this weak, thirsty man to resist. (Besides, they get all room-temperaturey when I put ‘em in the backpack.)

8) I will try not to devote every spare moment before April 1st to The MLB Network (but I won’t try very hard…)

9) I will try to remember that writing this blog is a pleasure and a privilege, not a duty, and that the world will not end if I make less than four posts a week. I’ve been getting better about this, but the adrenaline generated by being productive and connecting with a readership, however modest, is addictive and, dismaying as it may be at times, I have to realize that I don’t have as much time as I’d like to devote to SLIFR, I’m likely to have even less in the future, and that I must learn to be okay with that.

10) That said, the next thing I post on this blog will be my somewhat delayed year-end blow-out. (I’ll just have to come to terms with not having yet seen Synedoche, New York, or A Christmas Tale, or…)

Happy New Year, everyone!

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FIVE FOR HELL (1969)

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 04:05:00 +0000

William Tecumseh Sherman once said “War is hell”. Apparently, he never trained under the watchful eye of Lt. Hoffman (Gianni Garko billed here as John Garko), a gum-chewing, softball “throwing” GI charged with assembling a team of crack soldiers for a deadly suicide mission… as if there’s any other kind.

In the flick’s goofy pre-credit sequence, Hoffman rides through the training fields, watching soldiers prep for what must be an upcoming war against Cirque du Soleil. They swing past trenches on parallel bars, acrobatically dispatch enemy combatants, and even spring over treacherous barbed wire thanks to handy trampolines.

Hoffman hand picks his suicide squad and ends up with the acrobatic Nick (Aldo Canti), musclebound McCarthy (Luciano Rossi), safecracking Siracusa (Sal Borgese), and Johnny White (Sam Burke), an explosives expert whose glasses and mousy nature make him a natural for the nickname “Chicken”.

Their mission? Break into the Nazi stronghold at Villa Verde and get a look at the documents for Hitler’s devious “Plan K”. With the Allies blocked “at the foot of the Gustav line” details of the plan could save the lives of 50,000 soldiers.

After a dry run that tests all of their trampoline-bouncing, softball-throwing, safe-cracking acumen, the team assembles in their barracks and dances around far more than I suspect was really going on during WWII.

But that’s about as far as the lightheartedness of this action-comedy goes and FIVE FOR HELL – directed by Gianfranco Parolini (billed as Frank Kramer) – quickly shifts gears and turns into a surprisingly gritty, tense mission flick.

Helping the squad in their mission is curvy double agent Helga Richter (Eurotrash icon Margaret Lee, VENUS IN FURS), a cold and conniving member of the Villa Verde staff who isn’t above covering her own ass or exposing it, depending upon the situation.

As if this wasn’t enough, FIVE FOR HELL (aka FIVE INTO HELL) features the great Klaus Kinski in a meaty supporting role as the sinister SS Colonel Hans Muller. Kinski, who was born to star as a sinister Nazi, lights up the screen as the evil and suspicious colonel who butts heads with General Gerbordstadt (Irio Fantini), the Villa’s commandant, and desperately wants to get into Helga’s pants, even though he suspects her of being a spy who framed her lover for murder. Kinski infuses Muller with an almost giddy charm as he pursues Lee, finally tightening the noose around her neck until she has no options left.

Though it’s a bit of a stretch to buy the obviously Italian stars traipsing around in German uniforms – a fact the script actually addresses in one standoff with SS guards – the screenplay by Parolini and Renato Izzo (from a story by Sergio Garrone) keeps the action moving with enough gun battles, chases and explosions that you’re more than willing to suspend your disbelief. By the time the 42% Dirty Dozen begins their assault on the villa you won’t care that only two of the members of the squad speak Deutsch (which makes the others wonder if they’re spies) or that Garko throws like he’s having an epileptic fit.

Thanks to a nerve-wracking villa assault, a willingness to kill any member of the cast, an action-packed finale and great performances from the always reliable pair of Garko and Kinski (who starred together in two SARTANA flicks and the excellent THE PRICE OF DEATH) FIVE FOR HELL totally delivers.

FIVE FOR HELL can be found in many cheapo WWII DVD packages. An anamorphic widescreen version is available from the fine folks at Xploited Cinema.

FIVE FOR HELL (1969)

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 03:58:00 +0000

TV Network projects reflect economic woes

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:15:32 +0000

During the economic crisis of 1970s, television was ruled by procedural dramas, variety shows and socially relevant comedies.

Now, as the country is suffering the steepest economic downturn since then, primetime is still ruled by crime procedurals and the descendants of the old-fashioned variety shows, music and dance-themed reality series. What is missing is socially relevant comedies, something that the networks are seriously looking at for next season.

There is a promising entry in the arena: an untitled comedy starring Kelsey Grammer and written by “Everybody Loves Raymond” exec producer Tucker Cawley.

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ASC Nominees and Perspective

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:14:34 +0000

I know that Ryan announced them already but I just wanted to add a few things about the Oscar cinematography versus the Society.

Here are the nominees once again:
Roger Deakins, Revolutionary Road and The Reader
Anthony Dod Mantle, Slumdog Millionaire (PGA, SAG, ASC)
Chris Menges, The Reader
Claudio Miranda,The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (PGA, SAG, ASC)
Wally Pfister, The Dark Knight (PGA, ASC)

And then the films still in the mix:
Frost/Nixon (PGA, SAG)
Milk (PGA, SAG)
Doubt (SAG)

Our ASC comparison charts after the cut.

So far, the two films that have managed to land both ASC and SAG ensemble nods have been The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire. This is a year where there is going to be a gap between the films the actors liked and the films the guilds, or the techs, are going to vote for. Button and Slumdog are crossing over into both territories. We’ll find out more when the writers guild announces later today, and the DGA tomorrow.
*nominated for Best Pic
+Won Best Pic

2006

There Will Be Blood	There Will Be Blood*
Atonement	Atonement*
Jesse James	Jesse James
No Country for Old Men	No Country for Old Men+
Diving Bell and the Butterfly	Diving Bell and the Butterfly

2006

Children of Men	Children of Men
The Illusionist	The Illusionist
The Good Shepherd	The Prestige
Apocalypto	Pan’s Labyrinth
The Black Dahlia	The Black Dahlia

2005

Batman Begins	Batman Begins
Brokeback Mountain	Brokeback Mountain*
Good Night, and Good Luck	Good Night and Good Luck*
King Kong	New World
Memoirs of a Geisha	Memoirs of a Geisha

2004

The Aviator	The Aviator*
Collateral	House of Flying Daggers
The Passion of the Christ	The Passion of the Christ
Ray*	Phantom of the Opera
A Very Long Engagement	A Very Long Engagement

2003

Russell Boyd, Master and Commander*	Master and Commander
Andrew Lesnie, ROTK*	City of God
John Schwartzman, Seabiscuit*	Seabiscuit*
John Seale, Cold Mountain	Cold Mountain
John Toll, The Last Samurai	Girl with the Pearl Earring

2002

Michael Ballhaus, Gangs of New York*	Michael Ballhaus, Gangs of New York*
Pawel Edelman, The Pianist*	Pawel Edelman, The Pianist*
Conrad Hall, Road to Perdition	Conrad Hall, Road to Perdition
Ed Lachman, ASC (”Far From Heaven”)	Ed Lachman, ASC Far From Heaven
Rodrigo Prieto, ASC (”Frida”)	Dione Beebe, ASC Chicago+

2001

Man Who Wasn’t There Roger Deakins*	Man Who Wasn’t There, Roger Deakins
Bruno Delbonnel (”Amélie”)	Bruno Delbonnel (”Amélie”)
Don McAlpine, ASC, ACS (”Moulin Rouge”)*	Don McAlpine, ASC, ACS (”Moulin Rouge”*
Andrew Lesnie, ACS (”The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring”)*	Andrew Lesnie, ACS (”The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring”*
John Schwartzman, ASC (”Pearl Harbor”)	Slawomir Idziak - Black Hawk Down

2000

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon*	Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon*
Gladiator+	Gladiator+
O Brother, Where Art Thou?	O Brother, Where Art Thou?
The Patriot*	The Patriot
The Perfect Storm	Malèna

1999

American Beauty+	American Beauty+
The Sixth Sense	Snow Falling On Cedars
Sleepy Hollow	Sleepy Hollow
The Insider	The Insider
Snow Falling on Cedars	The End Of the Affair

1998

The Thin Red Line*	The Thin Red Line
Shakespeare In Love+	Shakespeare In Love+
Saving Private Ryan*	Saving Private Ryan*
Elizabeth*	Elizabeth*
The Horse Whisperer	A Civil Action

1997

Titanic+	Titanic+
Amistad	Amistad
Kundun	Kundun
L. A. Confidential*	L. A. Confidential*
The Boxer	The Wings Of the Dove

1996

The English Patient+	The English Patient+
Evita	Evita
Fargo*	Fargo*
Fly Away Home	Fly Away Home
Michael Collins	Michael Collins
The Ghost and The Darkness

1995

Braveheart+	Braveheart+
Apollo 13*	A Little Princess
The Bridges of Madison County	Sense and Sensibility*
Batman Forever	Batman Forever
Crimson Tide	Shanghai Triad
Se7en

1994

Shawshank Redemption*	Shawshank Redemption*
Legends of the Fall	Legends of the Fall
Love Affair	Red
Forrest Gump	Forrest Gump+
Wyatt Earp	Wyatt Earp

1993

Searching for Bobby Fischer	Searching for Bobby Fischer
The Piano*	The Piano*
Heaven & Earth	Farwell My Concubine
Schindler’s List	Schindler’s List +
The Fugitive*	The Fugitive*

1992

Hoffa	Hoffa
A Few Good Men*	The Lover
Howards End*	Howards End
The Last of the Mohicans	Unforgiven+
A River Runs Through It	A River Runs Through It

1991

Bugsy*	Bugsy
JFK*	JFK
Prince of Tides *	Prince of Tides
Hook	Thelma and Louise
Terminator 2	Terminator 2

1990

Dances with Wolves+	Dances with Wolves+
Dick Tracy	Dick Tracy
Avalon	Avalon
Godfather III*	Godfather III*
Ghost*	Henry and June

1989

The Abyss	The Abyss
The Bear	The Fabulous Baker Boys
Blaze	Blaze
Born on the Fourth of July*	Born on the Fourth of July*
The War of the Roses	Glory

1988

Mississippi Burning*	Mississippi Burning*
Tequila Sunrise	Tequila Sunrise
Rain Man*	Rain Man+
Unbearable Lightness of Being	The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Dangerous Liaisons*	Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

1987

Empire of the Sun	Empire of the Sun
The Last Emperor+	The Last Emperor+
Matewan	Matewan
Someone to Watch Over Me	Hope and Glory*
The Untouchables	Broadcast News*

1986

Peggy Sue Got Married	The Color Purple*
The Mission*	The Mission*
A Room with a View	Murphy’s Romance
Star Trek IV	Out of Africa+
The Karate Kid Part II	Witness*

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

Film Junk Poll: What is Your Most Anticipated Blockbuster of 2009?

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 11:22:17 +0000

Now that we’re into the cold and drab month of January, and we’re being given very little reason to take a trip down to the local multiplex, it seems like a good time to start looking ahead to more exciting things in 2009. Although this year’s line-up of major theatrical releases does not seem quite as packed as the last couple of years have been, there are still a handful of blockbusters that are likely to make a whole lot of money. A few comic book movies, yes, and a few sequels to popular franchises, but also some new and original stories as well. Let’s take a look at some of the movies that lie ahead in 2009. Which ones are you most looking forward to? The poll below includes most of the year’s biggest releases, but feel free to list in the comments any of the other films you want to see as well.

Online Surveys & Market Research

Zodiac: Directors Cut Blu-ray (David Fincher, 2007)

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 23:27:00 +0000

Paramount (USA)
2.35:1 1080p
162 minutes
Audio: Dolby TrueHD 5.1 English
Subtitles: Optional English, English SDH, French, Spanish
Extras: audio commentary by David Fincher; audio commentary by Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., Brad Fischer, James Vanderbilt, and James Ellroy; Zodiac Deciphered (HD); The Visual Effects of Zodiac (HD); Previsualization; theatrical trailer (HD); This Is the Zodiac Speaking (HD); Prime Suspect: His Name Was Arthur Leigh Allen (HD)

Released: 27 January 2009
slim double Blu-ray case

Note: Zodiac: Director’s Cut is only about four to five minutes longer than the theatrical version. Therefore, it is not a substantially different experience. The most-noticeable change is the addition of a minute-long black screen with music cues that indicate the passage of four years. While I admire the artistic reasoning for this decision, I think that it hurts the movie as only people who are really into music will understand what’s happening. The other changes involve minor scene extensions and a minor dialogue deletion. Fans will want this edition for the numerous extras, but if you’ve seen the theatrical version, then you’ve basically seen this one.

Director David Fincher made his mark on Hollywood with 1995’s Se7en, a grim thriller about a serial killer. Fincher used a very dark, muted palette for Se7en (and Alien3), and he continued to hone black-on-black cinematography with The Game, Fight Club, and Panic Room to the point where, while everything looked stylish, I sometimes couldn’t see what was happening. Mercifully, Fincher reined in his predilection for the “no lighting at all” scheme with 2007’s Zodiac.

Zodiac returns to the serial-killer territory mined by Se7en, though this one is based on a real-life murderer who terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1960s and 1970s. The movie’s first half follows at least seven policemen and newspaper employees as they attempt to track down the Zodiac, whose killings are not necessarily bizarre but whose letters to area newspapers create an appreciable sense of panic among the public. As the leads grow cold, fewer and fewer people continue to track the Zodiac until only one--cartoonist Robert Graysmith (played by Jake Gyllenhaal)--begins writing a book about the entire ordeal. Graysmith gets closer to discovering the Zodiac’s real identity than anyone else, but since he’s not a law-enforcement officer, his options are limited.

The biggest surprise for me was the way that Fincher shot and edited Zodiac as if it had been made during the 1960s/1970s, beginning with the use of vintage studio logos from Paramount and Warner. Most shots last for several seconds (approaching 10) rather than less than 2, thereby distinguishing the movie from the jackhammer experiences that you get with most studio productions today. Colors are muted the way that film stock from 30-40 years ago would be (much like how Munich emulated the feel of a 1970s’ thriller).

Some set pieces demonstrate Fincher’s genuine skill as a moviemaker. In one sequence, Graysmith visits the home of a man who plays the organ in a movie theatre that plays silent films. This sequence becomes genuinely terrifying as Graysmith slowly concludes that the organist may actually be the Zodiac. I watched most of the movie reclined comfortably on sitting pillows, but as this sequence unfolded, I sat up straight prepared to jump with a startle.

I really enjoyed the leisurely pacing, which allows viewers to become familiar with the interior psychology of the many lead characters. In fact, this is the first American movie in a long time that made me feel as if I inhabited the mise-en-scene along with the people on the screen. I felt the same frustrations and tensions on display.

Unfortunately, the movie is also very, very long. A lot of scenes are meant to show us how futile the investigative work was. However, we don’t need to be reminded every five minutes that the policemen and the journalists only have dead ends on their hands. In this instance, the pacing and the length are two separate matters. The leisurely pacing is welcome, but the length is not. Its length is Zodiac’s greatest weakness, and the running time really hurts the movie. What could’ve been a return to form for David Fincher feels like a rough cut.

Video:
While muted, the 2.35:1 1080p image is not as oppressively dark as Fight Club or Panic Room. This is a very clean transfer, though it’s a bit soft in some places. The warm amber lighting in some of the settings probably contributed to the softness. Also, Fincher shot the movie to resemble a 1960s/1970s picture, so the sharpness is probably intentional.

Nevertheless, I want to point out that a flyover of the Port of San Francisco at the beginning of the movie looks like a CGI creation. It looks fake and terrible. Even if the moviemakers actually flew over the Port of San Francisco, the shot still looks like fake, terrible, plastic CGI nonsense.

Audio:
This Blu-ray release sports a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 English track upgrade over the HD DVD’s DD+ 5.1 English track, though due to the dialogue-heavy nature of mix, the differences (if any) are minimal. This is mostly a quiet audio experience, though the few gunshots in the movie are loudly effective. The movie features several jaunty music cues, though these are spread across the front rather than to the rears. Indeed, for the most part, the rears are rather quiet.

The creative team must’ve paid a great deal of attention the sound design (par for the course with Fincher). The opening studio logos are accompanied by snaps, cracks, and pops, mirroring the condition of the footage.

Extras:
Disc 1 offers two audio commentaries, one with David Fincher flying solo and one with various people who worked on the movie as well as novelist James Ellroy, the author of The Black Dahlia and L.A. Confidential.

The extras on Disc 2 are split into two categories: “The Film” and “The Facts”.

“The Film”:
“Zodiac Deciphered” is an hour-long, eight-part examination of the production, including numerous behind-the-scenes footage of rehearsals and actual shooting.

“The Visual Effects of Zodiac” reveal how even a quiet, low-key drama like this one can require the use of complicated CGI.

“Previsualization” is a collection of three before-and-after clips showing how computer animatics were used to plan shooting and editing.

Finally, you get the theatrical trailer.

“The Facts”:
“This is the Zodiac Speaking” is a four-part feature-length documentary about the real-life events that inspired the movie.

“Prime Suspect: His Name Was Arthur Leigh Allen” is a forty-two minute featurette comprised of interviews with people who knew the case and Arthur Leigh Allen well enough to consider him to be the Zodiac.

--Miscellaneous--
The theatrical cut is available only on DVD in the United States.

Daughter of Dr. Jekyll

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:37:00 +0000

Daughter of Dr. Jekyll is a bizarre little slice of horror schlock, as rough and ragged as one would expect, by turns maddeningly dull and curiously compelling. The film signals pretty much right away what's in store, with an unabashedly cheesy opening in which a narrator summarizes the familiar legend of Dr. Jekyll and his monstrous alter-ego Mr. Hyde, while a haze-shrouded silhouette of Hyde himself slowly turns towards the camera, his hairy, warped visage grinning as a disembodied voice threatens the audience. It aims for creepy, but just about reaches hilarious instead. The rest of the film follows through on its horror premise with raw, low-budget enthusiasm. When Janet (Gloria Talbott) and her fiance George (John Agar) arrive at the country manor of her guardian Dr. Lomas (Arthur Shields), they find that the locals are overwhelmed by superstition and terrified of going out during the full moon. Soon enough, as bodies start to pile up in the surrounding woods, Janet learns that she is, of course, the titular daughter of Dr. Jekyll, and she begins to fear that her father's condition — he's inexplicably referred to as a werewolf here — has been passed on to her. Her fears only intensify, naturally enough, when she is plagued by horrible, violent nightmares and wakes up with her clothes torn and streaked with blood. As anyone familiar with horror conventions knows, anything so obvious must of course be dismissed as silly by George and the good doctor, who deny that there's anything wrong with Janet beyond simple (female) hysteria.

Director Edgar G. Ulmer has been acclaimed as a king of B-movies for his ability to inject a certain roughshod aesthetic sensibility into even the lamest of sub-B plots, and to the extent that he infuses this unbelievably weak scenario with some frisson of atmosphere, suspense, and even strange beauty, his reputation proves to be well-earned. There are long stretches of the film, particularly early on, that are really rough going, like everything involving the supposed romance between Janet and George; Agar seems positively bored and can't manage to suppress a smirk when delivering some of his generically reassuring dialogue. Talbott, at least, is competent, and what she lacks in acting chops she makes up for in sheer intensity and charisma. Her glaring black eyes give a certain credibility to the idea that she really is a "werewolf" or Hyde-like creature, even if one knows instinctively that she isn't. She especially shines in a series of dream sequences where Ulmer superimposes her sleeping face over scenes of moonlit stalking in the woods around the mansion. Janet dreams that she has transformed into a cold-eyed monster who hunts and kills young women before drinking their blood (because apparently the film's script also had to blend elements of vampire lore into its already confused monster). Ulmer finds blunt, bloody poetry in images like this, as he does in the rhythmic recurrence of shots of clouds passing across the moon, or in the soulful terror with which Janet stares into her mirror, caressing her cheeks as though expecting hair to sprout at any moment.

For the most part, Ulmer does a fine job of populating the film with enough memorable images like this that the otherwise shaky aesthetics (like the jittery, uncertain editing and laughably fake miniatures of the house and grounds) seem less important. Ulmer has no patience for the niceties of smooth plotting or transitions; he's only got a little over an hour to tell this story, and he seems determined to milk it for all the potent imagery it can yield, even if it means giving in to incoherence and silliness from time to time. The film's finest scene comes towards the end, during the monster's last nighttime raid, as it pauses to peer into a window at a sexy young woman changing into raunchy black lingerie. It's an unashamedly exploitative moment, one that's completely out of tune with the rest of the movie: in the midst of these desolate country back roads where all the locals have jagged teeth, dirty faces, and hard edges, suddenly the monster stumbles across this incongruous pin-up model who seems to be posing for a Playboy shoot. It's played for laughs with a knowing wink, but it just as quickly transitions into the film's most stunningly executed sequence, and in fact its only genuinely frightening one. As the monster advances on this young woman, Ulmer focuses only on her face in close-up, capturing her dawning recognition and a terror that finally erupts as a series of screams. As the attack commences, Ulmer maintains his fixed perspective, as the woman's face leans into the frame, her screams intensifying and the blurred motion of her face in close-up substituting for the unseen violence done against her body. The scene ends with a pan downward to see her limp hand sticking out from underneath a table, the rest of her body obscured from view. Ulmer pans right then, to catch a glimpse of her other hand and her stockinged leg sticking out from under the table on the other side; the scene's resolution is a dark mirror of the way the woman had earlier stuck out her leg alluringly to pull her stockings on.

Daughter of Dr. Jekyll is ultimately as silly and uneven as its title would suggest, punctuated by long stretches of utter boredom, but also possessing a sporadic sense of visual imagination and playfulness that is wholly unexpected in such an unpromising bottom-of-the-barrel genre piece. This is Ulmer's trademark, and while it may sound like faint praise to say that he spruces up such otherwise ratty material — like embedding tiny nuggets of gold in shit — his talents are far from insignificant. Rather, he manages to locate and magnify the virtues of whatever he makes, crafting moments of strange, unsettling genius in the midst of the most disposable films.

Sorry, Wrong Number

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:44:00 +0000

Sorry, Wrong Number is an over-the-top chamber melodrama in noir drag, an adaptation of a popular radio play that frequently betrays its origins with its talky exposition and woefully overwritten dialogue. It's a potentially interesting story, with the germs of some great ideas (and great images) scattered throughout, but on the whole it only disappoints. The film centers around Leona Stevenson (Barbara Stanwyck), the wealthy but nearly invalid daughter of a pharmaceutical company owner. She's home alone one night, waiting for her husband Henry (Burt Lancaster) to get home, when she accidentally hears a phone conversation that she shouldn't have: the wires get crossed and for a few tense minutes she listens in as two men plan to kill an unnamed woman and make it look like a robbery. In the aftermath of this call, Leona's paranoia and angst begin intensifying, as she tries in vain to get the police or anyone else to do anything about the horrifying snippet of conversation she's heard. And as the night progresses and she receives more and more distressing news from voices on the phone, she begins to suspect that her now chronically late husband is somehow involved in a sinister plot of some kind, and that he may even be plotting to kill her. She begins to suspect that she overheard a premonition of her own murder.

The raw story has the makings of a fantastic chamber piece, centering on the growing fear and desperation of this woman who can barely walk a few paces from her bed, and who is increasingly overcome with terror. Instead, the film's structure sabotages the story's inherent tension and drama by frequently diverting from its naturally claustrophobic setting. It's obvious that no one involved had any faith in the commercial possibilities of a film set entirely in a single room and focused on the horror of an isolated woman as she talks on the phone. But in opening up the mise en scène, the script sacrifices its tense momentum for a self-devouring circularity that keeps pulling away from the forward drive of the present tense. This is a film overwhelmed by flashbacks, propelled by them, but propelled only backwards. There are flashbacks within flashbacks, including multiple ones from different perspectives, where someone will start telling a story only to switch over to someone else telling a story within the story. Because Leona is isolated, the script is forced to come up with some pretty outrageous contrivances to give her (and the audience) some information about what's happening in the outside world. So she speaks, for example, to her old college rival Sally (Ann Richards), who just so happens to be married to the D.A. (Leif Erickson) who's investigating Leona's husband.

The conversations between Sally and Leona, improbably spread out across several phone calls, unleash a string of complex interlocking flashbacks, some of them so long and involved that the supposed real story is almost entirely forgotten for the duration. Remembrances of the early days of Leona and Henry's romance reveal Leona as manipulative, casually cruel, and demanding. She steals Henry away from Sally and then takes charge of his life completely. One of the film's most interesting aspects is the tension between the Leona depicted in flashbacks — nasty, arrogant, controlling, and cold — and the terrified, ailing, sweating, desperate woman at the center of the film's present-day narrative. Leona is clearly meant to earn the audience's sympathy for her anguish, and yet the flashbacks to the rest of her life often reveal her as the villainess of the story, suppressing her husband's earnest attempts to make a life for them free of her father's influence. Sally also relates to Leona a strange tale about how she trailed her husband the D.A. in order to find out why he was investigating Henry. This flashback reveals little in terms of concrete information, but it does yield a wonderfully staged set piece on a foggy, hazy beach, where shadowy men in trenchcoats meet in secret, exchanging suitcases and passing codes back and forth. This quietly thrilling sequence, staged in near-silence with only occasional voiceover comments from Sally, translates the noir sensibility to an unlikely locale in the abandoned wharfs of Staten Island.

Director Anatole Litvak shows a flair for memorable images like this, even in the midst of this cramped, ungainly scenario. A scene where Leona speaks to the shadowy, mysterious Waldo Evans (Harold Vermilyea) provides a hint of what the film might've been like if it had resisted the impulse to expand its milieu with its clunky flashback device. While Leona grows frazzled, her voice cracking as she cries into the phone for answers, Evans (who has some undisclosed relationship to her husband) remains eerily composed, shown in silhouette as his clipped, businesslike tone relates a precise series of messages to the distraught woman on the other end. Of course, even Evans soon enough can't resist puncturing the mystery, letting the whole sordid story spill out in the most rambling flashback of all. The film is sabotaged by its talkiness and compulsive need to explain, and by its melodrama. Stanwyck is excellent at capturing the terror her character feels, the claustrophobic sensation of being trapped and alone, but in some of the more melodramatic flashback sequences, she explodes over the top, saddled with material too lurid even for her naturally expressive talents.

The film is nearly redeemed, however, in its final sequence, an admirable suspense showcase that finally fulfills the promise of the scenario. As Litvak's camera wheels around Leona's room, turning slow spirals that move progressively further and further away from the bed where she's trapped, she is increasingly isolated in the center of the room, looking profoundly alone in the middle of all that empty space. Meanwhile, downstairs, a man's shadow falls against the outside wall, and a man's gloved hand opens the window, allowing him to step inside. The finale is a masterpiece of tension and building terror; if only it had been attached to a more worthwhile movie.