pondelok 11. augusta 2008



Tuesday Top Ten: For the listmaker in me JA and the listlover in you you

JA from MNPP here, guest-blogging the Top 10 for this week.

The way I reckon it, I don't want to step on any toes while guesting here, so I want to choose a topic that Nathaniel would never do on his lonesome. But I also want to choose a subject that'll tickle y'all's fancy at the same time. And it's gotta be something I know something about (which narrows the field down considerably). So taking into account The Film Experience's general love for the actresses (hence Nat's delightful term "actressexuality"), and my own love for horror movies, and (bless his scaredy-cat lil' heart) Nat's aversion to the same... well, a list was born unto us this day!

To the Year One, y'all. Tis a list of what I have deemed The Top 10 Leading Ladies of Horror. Basically... these are my 10 favorite female horror movie performances. I went for just leading ladies here, which kept stellar supporting characters (Hiya, Minnie Castavet!) from stealing the spotlight (again). I tried to cover all the bases - we've got the victimized types of course - where would horror be without 'em? - but also our tough chicks, and then there's those loveable crazies too. So without further...

10) Heather Donahue in The Blair Witch Project - “I am so sorry! Because it was my fault.“ – It’s easy to hate on Heather… she brings it on herself, really. Like so many of the characters in this most recent wave of first-person horror (think Cloverfield) that picked up from Blair’s 10-year old success, Heather was labeled annoying and self-centered and well won’t you just put the camera down, lady?


But horror would be nothing without its determination to show us the lesser sides of ourselves – people making terrible decisions and being punished so we the viewers don’t have to is par for the course. Hell, sometimes it's the whole course. And Heather, in her justifiably famous snot-faced soliloquy, turns the camera in on that side of ourselves that we’d like to think we wouldn’t be in that situation but 9 times out of 10 will, most assuredly, be. And if one of the most vital parts of what I consider to be a great horror performance is the ability to truthfully convey real fear – an uncensored, wide-eyed terror – Donahue earns her spot on this list for that alone.

9) Linda Blair (and Mercedes McCambridge... and Ellen Burstyn) in The Exorcist - "Keep away. The sow is mine."It just doesn’t feel right leaving off credit to McCambridge, the woman who gave voice to little Regan McNeil’s demonic possession. So I had to include her name. That said, as horrific as the second-half of this film is (where credit must be paid not only to McCambridge but the make-up and effects people as well) I find the medical examination scenes of the first half nearly as terrifying as the later blasphemies, and all we have there is tiny Regan thrown into the midst of a bunch of loud machinery, so obviously Blair is doing some heavy lifting on her own. And then I find I must add on Ellen Burstyn’s fine performance as Regan’s helpless mother who can only look on… all said, it’s difficult for me to choose just one aspect to praise here; they’re all inextricably linked. The mother, the daughter, and the unholy spirit, as it were.

8) Kathy Bates in Misery - “God I love you.” – Yes, the film spins Annie Wilkes off into a bit of a hysterical caricature in those final ten minutes or so. But before she becomes an unkillable madwoman, Bates' performance is one of the simultaneously funniest and saddest portrayals of deranged loneliness ever put on-screen. Because I’ll be damned if she doesn’t just know that the writer named Paul Sheldon’s literal fall into her lap wasn’t a gift sent from cockadoodied wherever, and she’s gonna make it bitchin' worthwhile. Why shouldn’t the fans have their say, anyway? I’m not going to be the one to argue that point and make her feel all oogy.

7) Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween - “It was the boogeyman, wasn't it?”She set the archetype in stone. The Final Girl. Sally may’ve screamed louder (and longer... and earlier), and Nancy might’ve built exploding light-bulb booby-traps, but nobody personified exactly what the Slasher genre needed better - the female yin to the male killer's wang - than JLC's Laurie Strode. Almost too smart for her own good – she felt it coming, annoyed everybody, but still couldn’t stop it all the same – there’s myriad reasons Curtis is, to my mind, still the greatest straightforward Final Girl, but none moreso than the first half-an-hour or so as we watch Laurie spot the boogeyman behind the bushes or in the backyard, and see her preparedness despite herself click defiantly into place.


6) Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs - “Some kind of screaming, like a child's voice.” - Sweet Clarice Starling, just trying to bury the sounds of those lambs to the slaughter. Little girls, they go next, off to the dressmakers... somewhere in America there is a pit in a basement with a Senator's daughter all holed up. Loose skin. Come and get it, Precious.

5) Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley - “Get away from her, you bitch!“ Of the first two Alien flicks, I only really consider Ridley Scott’s original film to be a horror film. But Weaver’s Ripley doesn’t emerge as the main player until the very end. She’s most obviously the main character of James Cameron’s Aliens, but that’s an action movie with monsters. So how do I justify placing her on a list? By just mushing the entire quadrilogy’s worth of her performances together. Yes, I’m cheating. But this list just seemed wrong without her. Where maybe too many of the women on this list are of the victimized sort - immediately previous company excluded, of course - I needed to include a woman who rocks off an acid-spewing alien’s face with a gun larger than my entire torso to even things out. And then, like a full half of this list, she's Mother, too. And if there's one thing this list proves - and this list, too! - nothing is scarier than mommy-hood.

4) Shelley Duvall in The Shining - “We're all going to have a real good time.” Always overshadowed by Jack Nicholson’s Jack Nicholson-sized performance, Duvall’s Wendy Torrence is and always will be my favorite part of Kubrick’s coolly malignant flick. Duvall was always channeling her gawky physiognomy to great effect with her characters, whether it was her hysterical Olive Oyl stroll or just the way she held a cigarette in 3 Women… but nowhere to my mind was she more brilliant than here. Has anyone ever held a knife or an axe more awkwardly? And watch the way her occasional outbursts of positive energy – always so sadly forced - quickly slide back into a slumped-over shell of a woman, beaten down both literally and figuratively, and then the eventual, probably Kubrick-inflicted real-seeming terror that courses across her bug-eyed face… it’s a vanity-free, often humiliating role, which Duvall upends and owns with her every silent scream.

3) Ellen Burstyn in Requiem For a Dream - “I like thinking about the red dress…” Like the invisible arm of Death itself that kills so many teenagers – and so imaginatively! - in the Final Destination flicks, the horror of Requiem is of a different breed - it’s the mental demons inside these characters that tear them to shreds. But make no mistake – this is a horror film, and one of the most horrifying ever made. And nowhere does that horror manifest itself more cruelly than in the guise of a lonely Coney Island widow that can’t let go of a dream long dead. Burstyn’s physical deterioration as she’s swallowed whole by her addictions is haunting enough – the final shots of the film rend my heart every time – but Burstyn makes it clear from the start that Sarah Goldfarb has one foot over the precipice just looking for anything that might offer her even the briefest of smiles.


2) Sissy Spacek in Carrie - “It was bad, Mama. They laughed at me.” The most spellbinding moments in DePalma’s 1976 classic for me are the ones where we see Carrie White begin to come out of her shell – the way her inherent good-nature peeks around that shy smile… a flurry of compliments from Billy the cute boy asking her to the prom and from her teacher who means so well… all of which lead to that spinning-out-of-control on the dance-floor moment. And then falls the crown. And we all know what horror lay beneath that heavy load. Carrie White is horribly human… until she’s not human at all anymore. And then she’s back again… but it is too late. After all, sin never dies... and Spacek makes us understand every step of the way, with a most terrible accuracy, what has gone so very wrong.


1) Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby - “This is no dream! This is really happening!” Is it simply the paranoia of a young lady with too much time on her hands, or is there something sinister going on with that too-friendly old couple next door? Is her husband distracted with work, turned off by her constant sickness, or has he perhaps made a Faustian trade-off with the soul of little Andy-or-Jenny? In the book, Rosemary Woodhouse is described as a large-hipped Midwestern girl, built for breeding, but in one of the very few deviations from page to screen, Polanski cast Farrow (once Tuesday Weld backed out) and the character clicked into perfection. Because the story is about watching the span of pregnancy as if in the nightmarish reflection of a fun-house mirror, it’s vital that Rosemary look like someone devoured by that giant belly, and tiny little Mia in her yellow sun-dresses with the face of a ghoul poking out fit the bill, and then some. But even beyond the physical perfection of the casting, Farrow nails every note of paranoia, and as we watch her flail about under the arms of all those she’s trusted as they drug her into unconsciousness, we truly know what helplessness is.


Well that was fun/painful. And if you want to see who just missed the cut, you can head over to MNPP where I spit out Ten More Lovely Ladies (Wah-ah-ah!) that are also worth their weight in carnage.
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Musicals always raise the spirits, don't they?

I mean musicals that don’t dramatize the slow creep of the Nazi party across Weimar era Germany. Or musicals that don't involve bloody racial conflicts on Manhattan’s West Side. Or musicals that don't torment blind single mothers on death row… Let's restate: Musicals are sometimes cheerful. I need a cheerful one right now.

See, it's been a tough week. Things haven’t been going well for me technologically speaking –this DVD player I use keeps freezing on me and refusing to play DVDs. What gives? It did this when I tried to review The Car, too -- and don't even mention "time management" to me. I’m apologizin’ straight away that this post is very short and open-ended (make sure to check out my musical pard'ners at other blogs below). Deadlines surround me. I had but three hours of sleep last night and back to the office I went.

Doris Day kicks off this month's featured movie singing with her fellow travellers on a horse driven carriage way back in the 1870-something. Flash forward 138 years and it's corporate America that's singing "whip crack away" to me. They ain't as cheerful about it as Ms. Doris Day.

Beautiful sky! A wonderful day!
Whip crack-away!, Whip crack-away!, Whip crack-away!


So thank god for musicals and their bright colors, catchy songs and high spirited dancing. I need them. From its first frames Calamity Jane conspires to put a smile on my face. It’s not content to just throw up a huge colorful title. This 1953 musical adds a chorus of swelling voices to sing that very title to me --just in case I'm illiterate like those Deadwood settlers. They sing her name like they're speeding over a hill in their own carriage. It's got a big rise and fall. Yes, phantom chorus, sing to me! Drug me up with that musical cheer. I'll join in as soon as we get to a number I recognize.

Alas, my DVD player isn't playing and I'm denied again. [Editor's note: This is the last scheduled posting that shall be ruined by said problem. I just need a free day to find a solution and I haven't had one in a couple of weeks.] The real reason I wanted to kick off this series with Calamity Jane was that I was dying to see it again. How foregrounded are the fascinating homo undercurrents I remember thinking about once I saw The Celluloid Closet in 1995. I'll have to read the other posts in this mini-celebration to find out. Doris Day was never a Judy Garland but Calamity Jane's most famous song "Secret Love" was understandably a major gay anthem back in its day, descriptive of and embraced by the GLBT community before there was really such a thing as being "out".

Now I shout it from the highest hills
I even told the golden daffodil.
At last my heart's an open door.
And my secret love's no secret anymore
Imagine how thrilling, how moving this fantasy wish fulfillment in a song must have been in the 1950s when the reality was almost always the closet?

Just a brief cursory "scene selection" tour through this Technicolor Deadwood has convinced me that what the world really needs is a gay remake or perhaps a meta drag version for the new millenium. The latter would be vaguely Victor/Victoria-esque only in this case it'd be a thinkier spin "a man pretending to be a woman who everyone thinks of as a man" rather than the fully comedic 82 version
"A woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman?!? Preposterous! No one will believe it."
"Exactly. That's why it will work!"
And whether this imaginary "Jane" is a 50s tomboy or an effeminate man playing a tomboy "she's" got an interesting thing for "Wild Bill", don'cha know. When we first see Bill Hickok, Calamity veritably shimmies at him despite her objections to immodest ladies of entertainment and sings enthusiastically about "his gun with 27 notches"

Jane after checking out Bill's gun: "I'm glad to say he's a
very good friend of mine." (hee)


I love their relationship. I never watched HBO's Deadwood but catching glimpses of Howard Keel and Doris Day's mostly platonic (brotherly?) romance in this musical makes me curious to see how other artists have treated this mythic pairing. Like Bonnie & Clyde, Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane have been mythologized for a long time. No one who can separate the fact from the fiction is still alive. What was going on there? It's ripe for multiple interpretations. Did they really have a child together as Jane later claimed? It's a complicated affair. The true details of this love (reciprocal or otherwise) are secret.

The golden daffodils aren't talking.


For more on Calamity Jane, say...

"Howdy Pardners!"
Movies Kick Ass gender roles & revisionist westerns in Calamity Jane & Johnny Guitar
Spartickes "That ain't all she ain't!"
StinkyLulu delivers a cheeky funny audiovisual meditation
Criticlasm "You make no sense at all, but you’re a rollicking good old time."
Stinky Bits unedited ramblings on the butch/femme lesbian romance within the film


Next time... Those few brave souls who participated in the first installment will be voting on the movie to be featured on September 6th. The options are: Fred & Ginger in Swing Time (1936), the non-stop dancing of The Red Shoes (1948), Gene Kelly's On the Town (1949), Bollywood classic Mother India (1957), Off Broadway transfer Little Shop of Horrors (1986) or Christian Bale hoofin' it through Newsies (1992). We'll announce the winner in a few days.




I read a fine novel some months ago called Don't Make a Scene. It was all about a single 39 year-old cinephile running a repertory moviehouse in NYC. In one chapter she's featuring a film series on "Age, Hollywood and the Worship of Youth". She has three acquaintances who were all actresses in the early years of cinema. The two Americans quit acting when they started aging. The French woman continued...
Was it the essence of the star -as diplayed on the face of the star -that the audience fell in love with? Or was it the face itself? And if the face itself was succumbing to the forces of nature, did you still want to watch it? According to Catherine Merveille, the answer was oui: the audience wanted to watch her real face as a conduit of her authentic self. Of course this was not the ruling aesthetic...

Estelle had stopped working at the age of twenty-eight; thus she was immortalized in celluloid at what Paul Veyne once called "the canonical age," the age at which one has achieved full maturity, but before time has altered the facial features.
My own tastes for a "canonical age" skew older than 28. I think the mid 30s are the most beautiful age for Hollywood stars ...and probably people in general for that matter. Faces might have started that shift but they are finally wholly representing the person underneath them.

I've found that the most fulfilling times in the careers of actresses (for the audience I mean) is the mid 30s. Charlize Theron, who keeps on impressing (note: I didn't see Hancock) turns 33 today and I find myself anxious to see what the next few years hold. What does this South African superstar have in store for us?

I know a lot of people think she'll never top Monster but for me --and I'm a complete Oscar contrarian in this particular way -- career peaks only very rarely involve roles in which the actor or actress is plainer than usual or made to look unlike themselves (i.e. biopics). To my way of thinking, career peaks for movie stars --both men and women -- generally happen when the thespian's big beauty and big talent fuse together in the service of a role that either a) fits them like a glove or b) reveals them anew in a startling and fresh way.

Consider the following actresses / performances (ages are approximate to when the film debuted): Michelle Pfeiffer (@31) Fabulous Baker Boys (the beauty!), Kathleen Turner (@32) Peggy Sue Got Married, Judy Garland (@32) A Star is Born, Audrey Hepburn (@32) Breakfast at Tiffany's, Penelope Cruz (@32) Volver, Faye Dunaway (@33) Chinatown, Meryl Streep (@33) Sophie's Choice, Elizabeth Taylor (@33) Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf --the exception to the rule in that the greatest work and greatest role is actually within a deglam situation, Marilyn Monroe (@ 34) Some Like it Hot (previous post), Nicole Kidman (@34) Moulin Rouge! (retro bliss), Michelle Pfeiffer again (@34) Batman Returns, Cate Blanchett (@35) The Aviator, Julianne Moore (@37) Boogie Nights, Greer Garson (@38) Mrs Miniver.

This isn't to say that there aren't other triumphs both earlier and later. Actresses can and do deliver great work at every age (if they have the talent and Hollywood gives them the chance). It's just that the 30s are the common time frame for these magic roles that end up truly defining (at least the women --with men I'm guessing it's more early 40s). Some of this has to do with Hollywood's casting biases but some of it is also, I believe, this moment in life when fully adult beauty meets the explosion of confidence that comes when talent has matured, too. Talent and beauty both in full bloom? Be still my beating movie-loving heart.


What does Charlize's future hold? Take a guess in the comments.
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... of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
is when Kate Winslet says:
"My crotch is still here, just as you remembered it."
Wait! No, it's any scene between these two:


No no that's not it. It's when Mark Ruffalo
dances around in his underwear, duh...


Then again, I do get a fun freak-out thrill
every time I see Elijah Wood's upside-down eyes...


Not that anything compares to the goofy grin
of complete dumb satisfaction that Jim Carrey wears
when he's a baby being washed in the sink:


No, you know what my favorite part is?
It starts here:


And ends here:


Every single second = total, utter bliss.
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Lately I've been nibbling at a few junkets. I don't mean nibbling as in food (though food is present) but nibbling at the idea of actually being there. I'm sort of in denial. I don't really dig the roundtables. I much prefer the awesome one-on-ones I've had with folks like Marisa Tomei, Max von Sydow and Jennifer Jason Leigh. But work is work and there's always Oscar season for a return to the one on ones. I've written up another piece (on Elegy this time) for Tribeca Film --they've been good to me lately. Yay them.

The odd thing is that one on one interviews feel remarkably less schmoozy and more honest. You'd think being alone with a star would be more schmoozy. But it's not. It levels things off. You're somehow equals, even if your accomplishments are rather obviously not. But in a room full of other writers, journos and whomevers it can get really blurb whore & slobbery. The most frustrating thing for me is that I'm a conversational interviewer by nature and you can't do follow up questions @ press conferences or junkets. The talent needs to answer and move on.

I'll share an example and if you love Patricia Clarkson as much as I do you'll be interested. I'm stammering my way through a complicated question [note to self: save those for the 'one on ones' dummy!] summing up my theory about her career (see previous article) and how she moved from wiseacre supporting gal to best friend/betrayer (Dogville / Far From Heaven). I'm thrilled that she's now entered a third phase: a womanly sexual phase [editors note: If Married Life or Elegy were men rather than celluloid, they'd be boinking her]. What I'm trying to get at is this: Is it a conscious choice to steer her career into and out of these "types" or is she just grabbing parts she likes? Patty, smiling, nods her head at the connection I'm making between Married Life (review) and Elegy and jumps in...
Yes, the Dogville days are over. THANK GOD the Dogville days are over...
...I swear there's a quick look between her and her director Isabel Coixet and then Patty segueways into why she said yes to Elegy so swiftly. Meanwhile I'm left to ponder the infinite meanings this sentence, her voice raising and the glance to the side may have meant.
  • Does she not know how gobsmackingly brilliant she is in Dogville?
  • Perhaps she secretly cherishes Hummel figurines?
  • Did she have a miserable stay in Denmark?
  • Is she merely relieved to finally be using her sexuality onscreen? (Dogville's Vera was quite a pissy frump and Patty in person is hot stuff)
  • Does Coixet know Von Trier ...or maybe they've talked about him?
  • Is Patty just annoyed that I've momentarily steered away from Elegy even if my point is about Elegy? She's there to promote Elegy.
I'll never know. It will haunt my dreams. But at least I got to stare at Patty for 20 minutes. There are far worse fates.

(sing with me now) might as well face it,
you're addicted to Patty


Elegy
opens today in major markets. If you've been itching for some genuinely adult drama after this summer of capes, tights, toons and explosions, you'll be relieved watching it. Fine performances all around I must say.
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Sorry I've been mostly absent this weekend. The Film Experience (i.e. Nathaniel) is relocating to DC for a month starting tomorrow. This hopefully won't affect you as readers much but you never know. Between packing, shopping for trip and watching the Olympics I haven't had any time to think let alone write or see movies. The summer has been busy: I still haven't even seen Mamma Mia! and that opened weeks ago. Can you believe it? All that buildup to a new Streep Sings moment and no payoff for Natty.

But let's talk about the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics for a second.


I'm feeling eternally grateful to political activists and the inimitable Mia Farrow who succeeded in pressuring Steven Spielberg into backing out as the "artistic advisor". I know that people think Spielberg is the greatest film director on earth and [insert hyperbolic statement here] but to me Zhang Yimou, who did directing duties, is better at two things and they happen to be two things the Olympics can't do without: pageantry and spectacle. Plus, he's Chinese. Shouldn't Olympic Ceremonies always run to homegrown talent first? I doubt he needed advice from Spielberg.

Zhang Yimou's filmography includes Raise the Red Lantern, House of Flying Daggers, Curse of the Golden Flower, and Ju Dou so when it comes to a skilled way with eye candy, well, I rest my case. Yimou was pleased with the big night and why not. It was the best opening ceremony I've personally ever seen: that absurdly precise choreography of thousands, those vibrant storytelling colors, the elaborate but still human special effects and costumes, the incongruously calm brush strokes in the midst of chaos; It was just like Hero only less violent.

I'm sure it cost more to produce than three over budget Hollywood blockbusters put together.

Just about the only thing that wasn't perfect was the absence of Chinese movie stars. Did we really need what I presume was China's Liberace? Did we really need ...Sarah Brightman? (a useful question in many situations). I know the torch finale is an athletes-only kind of gig but couldn't they have let Gong Li or Tony Leung Chiu Wai do a lap with it or something before the big scrim-running finale?

Did you watch? Did you love?
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Had Norma Shearer, the First Lady of MGM, had Methusaleh style genes she would have turned 106 years old today. She did have good genes --she was 81 before pneumonia stole her from us --but she wasn't immortal. The same unfortunately goes for her legacy as a superstar.

I've been a devotee for a number of years. She's a pet largely because she's not as remembered as other 30s titans... and for the more standard reason one loves an actor: I get a kick watching her --especially in The Divorcée and Marie Antoinette. Six years ago when Norma's centennial rolled around there weren't a billion movie blogs celebrating everybody's centennials. Norma missed out. She deserves better.

True story: I was out for drinks with an editor from a publishing house a few months back and he was playing sounding board (I've been trying to get a book deal). I had become briefly obsessed with doing a book on Shearer and the editor, a great guy but a pragmatist, shot me down:
I'm sure it'd be great but you want to sell more than 3,000 copies right?
Ouch. See... Norma gets no respect. Not even from people who genuinely love movies.

Perhaps her ghost is just not fierce enough? What her legacy needs is a bit more of that Mrs. Stephen Haines character arc in The Women (1939). Norma's phantom-self needs to stop playing nice and start fighting for her man reputation. She needs to flash vapory nails and throw scenery (chewed) around like an angry poltergeist...

Instead of "boo" she could hiss "Jungle Red!"