Diary (144)
JAKE NEWTON
Devil's Advocate (1997)
In director Taylor Hackford's occult horror drama:
*** Milton's perversely-seductive performance as the head of a multi-national law firm
*** the hallucinatory descent into hell for Kevin's troubled wife Mary Ann (Charlize Theron) - especially the scene in the church when in the nude, she confesses that Milton "made me do it"
*** the dipping of Milton's finger into baptismal holy water to make it boil and his hysterical laugh in curtains of flames
*** and his climactic, fiery monologue in which he calls God an "absentee landlord" and reveals himself as the charismatic, evil Satan himself
*** the scene in which Milton tempts Lomax with nude, redheaded co-worker and half-sister Christabella Adrioli (Connie Nielsen) in his office ("It's time to step up and take what's yours")
*** the wall sculpture mural with naked people that comes to life - when Lomax speaks of his own free-will and shoots himself in the head as Milton screams: "NOO!" -- and the wall mural erupts in flames
*** the final curtain-closing line from a morphed press man: "Vanity - definitely my favorite sin" - accompanied by the Stones' "Paint It Black"
The Descendants (2011)
In Alexander Payne's Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar-winning, heart-wrenching drama:
*** Matt's opening disenchanted voice-over narration about Hawaii: "My friends on the mainland think just because I live in Hawaii, I live in paradise. Like a permanent vacation - we're all just out here sipping Mai Tais, shaking our hips and catching waves. Are they insane? Do they think we're immune to life? How can they possibly think our families are less screwed-up, our cancers less fatal, our heartaches less painful? Hell, I haven't been on a surfboard in 15 years. For the last 23 days, I've been living in a paradise of IVs and urine bags and tracheal tubes. Paradise? Paradise can go f--k itself"
*** the scenes with his two daughters while serving as a hands-off "backup parent": sassy, resentful and reckless 17-year-old Alexandra (Shailene Woodley), and forlorn 10-year-old Scotty (Amara Miller) in open rebellion against his parental authority
*** Alexandra's devastating revelation to her clueless, workaholic father that her love-neglected mother was involved in domestic betrayal and planned to divorce him: "You really don't have a clue, do you?...Dad, Dad. Mom was cheating on you!"
*** Matt's comic, sweaty duck-legged dash (in inappropriate plastic flip-flops) to his nearby neighbors' house to hopefully learn the name of his wife's lover
*** Matt's two solo scenes at his wife's bedside, first expressing his anger: "The only thing I know for sure is you're a goddamn liar," and then in the second instance when he kissed her and sobbingly said "Goodbye, my love, my friend, my pain, my joy, Goodbye"
*** the long search, stalking and ultimate confrontation with the cheating real estate agent, Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard), who was married to cheated-upon, unaware wife Julie Speer (Judy Greer), and vacationing in a cottage on Kauai
*** Matt's final decision not to sell out an immense land trust he managed for his extended haole family, 25,000 acres of unspoiled land on the island of Kauai - the last untouched paradisical inheritance of Hawaiian royalty to be developed, to reap an enormous payoff - to spite his avaricious, affable and dissolute cousin Hugh (Beau Bridges), and possibly to deprive Speer of a rich commission
*** the ending scene (under the credits), in silence, as the reconciled family sat together on the sofa, under their mother's quilt, eating ice cream and watching March of the Penguins (2005) (narrated by Morgan Freeman)
Deliverance (1972)
In John Boorman's tense action-adventure film:
*** the rousing "Dueling Banjos" sequence - a banjo challenge between Drew (Ronny Cox) and a demented boy
*** the thrilling whitewater canoe trip down the rapids with numerous point-of-view shots of the river and rapids
*** the grisly and shocking sexual molestation scene as a degenerate, redneck backwoods mountain man rapes a pig-squealing and anguished Bobby (Ned Beatty) in his underwear
*** the intense discussion scene about what to do with the body Ed's (Jon Voight) scaling of a sheer bluff at night to kill the mountain man and then his descent
*** and the final nightmarish view of a hand rising from the river
Deliverance is British director John Boorman's gripping, absorbing action-adventure film about four suburban Atlanta businessmen friends who encounter disaster in a summer weekend's river-canoeing trip. It was one of the first films with the theme of city-dwellers against the powerful forces of nature. The exciting box-office hit, most remembered for its inspired banjo duel and the brutal, violent action (and sodomy scene), was based on James Dickey's adaptation of his own 1970 best-selling novel (his first) of the same name - he contributed the screenplay and acted in a minor part as the town sheriff.
The stark, uncompromising film was nominated for three Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Film Editing), but went away Oscar-less. The beautifully-photographed film, shot entirely on location (in northern Georgia's Rabun County that is bisected by the Chattooga River), was the least-nominated film among the other Best Picture nominees. Ex-stuntman Burt Reynolds took the role of bow-and-arrow expert Lewis after it was turned down by James Stewart, Marlon Brando, and Henry Fonda on account of its on-location hazards.
The increasingly claustrophobic, downbeat film, shot in linear sequence along forty miles of a treacherous river, has been looked upon as a philosophical or mythical allegory of man's psychological and grueling physical journey against adversity. It came during the 70s decade when many other conspiracy or corruption-related films were made with misgivings, paranoia or questioning of various societal institutions or subject areas, such as the media (i.e., Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Network (1976)), politics (i.e., The Parallax View (1974), All the President's Men (1976)), science (i.e., Capricorn One (1977), Coma (1978), The China Syndrome (1979)), and various parts of the US itself (i.e., Race with the Devil (1975), The Hills Have Eyes (1977), and later Southern Comfort (1981)).
A group of urban dwellers test their manhood and courage, totally vulnerable in the alien wild, and pit themselves against the hostile violence of nature. At times, however, they are attracted to nature, and exhilarated and joyful about their experiences in the wild. (Director Boorman pursued the same complex eco-message theme of man vs. nature in other films, including Zardoz (1973) and The Emerald Forest (1985).) As they progress further and further along in uncharted territory down the rapids, the men 'rape' the untouched, virginal wilderness as they are themselves violated by the pristine wilderness and its degenerate, inbred backwoods inhabitants. Survivalist skills come to the forefront when civilized standards of decency and logic fail.
The river is the potent personification of the complex, natural forces that propel men further and further along their paths. It tests their personal values, exhibiting the conflict between country and city, and accentuates what has been hidden or unrealized in civilized society. The adventurers vainly seek to be 'delivered' from the evil in their own hearts, and as in typical horror films, confront other-worldly forces in the deep woods. The flooding of the region after the completion of a dam construction project alludes to the purification and cleansing of the sins of the world by the Great Flood. The film was also interpreted as an allegory of the US' involvement in the Vietnam War - as the men (the US military) intruded into a foreign world (Southeast Asia), and found it was raped or confronted by wild forces it couldn't understand or control.
Delicatessen (1991, Fr.)
In Jean- Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro's black comedy set in a post-apocalyptic 1950s France (of the future):
- above him as newly-hired handyman and circus clown Louison (Dominique Pinon) paints the ceiling with a roller, the cannibalistic butcher/landlord Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) is making love to his mistress Mme. Plusse (Karin Viard) on a squeaky bed
- other tenants: the butcher's bespectacled near-sighted daughter Julie (Marie-Laure Dougnac) is playing a cello with a metronome
- a woman is beating a dusty rug
- a man is pumping a bike tire
- Louison is rolling on paint to the ceiling
- an old woman is knitting
- the toy-making Kube brothers are testing out a noise-making novelty toy that moos, etc.
*** they all keep synchronized in symphonic rhythm ("squeak squeak", "pound pound", "tick tock", "click click") to the squeaking springs in increasingly sped-up tempo until the butcher climaxes (when a cello string breaks, the bike tire explodes, the painter falls to the floor, etc.
*** also the numerous instances of suicidal psychotic Aurore Interligator (Sylvie Laguna) attempting to kill herself with Rube-Goldberg setups, including her climactic bizarre attempt to kill herself with an overdose of pills, a shotgun, a noose hanging, a Molotov cocktail, and gas inhalation -- all unsuccessful
*** and the outrageous scene at film's end in which Louison and Julie purposely flood a bathroom to escape her murderous father - resulting in a torrent of water filling the entire tenement building and cleansing the filth - leading to the butcher's death by a sharp Australian boomerang
*** the final image of Julie and Louison on the roof playing the cello and a musical saw with the sky turning blue
The Defiant Ones (1958)
In Stanley Kramer's social-conscience film:
*** the scene of escaped, shackled-together convicts Johnny Jackson (Tony Curtis) and Noah Cullen (Sidney Poitier) talking together while fugitives, with Poitier bringing poignancy to his strident role: Jackson: "I'm just tellin' you the facts of life" Cullen: "I don't wanna hear it. I've been listenin' to that stuff all my life. From my wife: 'Be nice.' They throwed me in solitary confinement and she said: 'Be nice.' A man shortweight'd me when I turned in my crops. She'd say: 'Be nice, or you get in trouble.' She'd teach my kid that same damn thing"
*** the classic image of the clapsed white and black hands of the two desperately trying to help each other board a speeding train - Cullen reaches back to pull Jackson up, but can't save him and sacrifices his own freedom by jumping off
*** in the conclusion, Noah's singing of the blues song "Long Gone"
The Defiant Ones is a swift and exciting dramatic action film, known for its symbolic and memorable image of two escaped convicts, one white and one black.
White convict Johnny "Joker" Jackson (Tony Curtis), and black convict Noah Cullen (Sidney Poitier), handcuffed together, escape from a southern chain gang. The two Southern fugitives are forced to overcome their racial animosity and rely on each other to survive.
They flee from Sheriff Max Muller (Theodore Bikel) and have to face up to tremendous difficulties, including the 29 inch long shackles that keep them together, hostile townspeople, a lynching mob, bloodhounds, a swamp, and their own mutual hatred, belligerence, and bigotry. As they struggle together, they begin to accept each other.
The final sequence is the most memorable. The two men pursue a freight train to escape. Cullen is able to get onto one of the moving cars, and locks hands with his white companion (a memorable image of black and white hands and arms locked together), but he cannot pull Jackson up onto the moving train. So he sacrifices his own freedom and falls back off the train onto the ground. In their final few moments of freedom, they share a cigarette, and Cullen sings the blues classic "Long Gone" as the sounds of bloodhounds on their trail closing in on them are heard in the distance.
The Deer Hunter (1978)
In Michael Cimino's Best Picture-winning Vietnam-era film:
*** the opening scenes of the bonding friendship between the three major characters in the steel-town of Clairton, Pennsylvania:
- Steven (John Savage),
- Nick (Christopher Walken)
- and deer-hunter Michael (Robert De Niro)
*** their pre-Vietnam deer hunting trip scene with Michael's philosophical discussion about his "one-shot" ideal when shooting deer, and his "This is this" speech toward an unprepared Stan (John Cazale)
*** the controversial and horrifying Russian Roulette sequence when the three captive prisoners of the Vietnam War are forced to provide deadly entertainment for their sadistic captors
*** an additional round of Russian roulette for money in a Saigon gambling den when Michael speaks to his nihilistic buddy Nick about "one shot" and plays again to rescue him
*** the image of a grief-stricken Michael cradling his dying friend's bloodied head after one last fateful game
*** and the final poignant scene at the breakfast wake when the young men sing "God Bless America" after Nick's death when his body is brought home - and they reverentially (freeze-framed) raise their beer mugs to Nick, as Michael toasts "Here's to Nick"
The Deer Hunter is storywriter/producer/director Michael Cimino's epic about war and friendship - and only his second film (following Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)). It is a powerful, disturbing and compelling look at the Vietnam War through the lives of three blue-collar, Russian-American friends in a small steel-mill town before, during, and after their service in the war. Its title recalls the adventure novels and frontier heroes in the works of James Fenimore Cooper - in fact, only one of the characters found peace in hunting (before experiencing the effects of the psychologically-wounding war).
The much-lauded, powerful and haunting 'buddy' war film, from a screenplay by Deric Washburn, was released in the same year as three other Vietnam War films:
Hal Ashby's Coming Home (1978)
Sidney Furie's The Boys in Company C (1978)
Ted Post's Go Tell the Spartans (1978)
There was a flood of films critical of the American involvement in Vietnam following 1975 when the war officially ended - and this film appeared as one of the most controversial. Others that swept across movie screens in the late 70's and 80s to illustrate the 'hellish', futile conditions of bloody Vietnam War combat included:
* the Oscar-winning documentary Hearts and Minds (1974)
* Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979)
* Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986)
* Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987)
* John Irvin's Hamburger Hill (1987)
* Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
* Brian De Palma's Casualties of War (1989)
This film received nine Academy Award nominations (including Best Actor (Robert De Niro), Best Supporting Actress (Meryl Streep), Best Cinematography (by Vilmos Zsigmond - who had just filmed Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)), and Best Original Screenplay), and won five Oscars: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Christopher Walken), Best Director, Best Sound, and Best Film Editing.
The meandering, sometimes shrill, raw film has been extremely controversial on many accounts - political and emotional. The flawed, extravagantly-expensive film is often considered by its critics to be pretentious, ambiguous, overwrought and excessive. It is also loosely edited, with under-developed character portrayals and unsophisticated, careless film techniques. There are few extended sequences of dialogue, although the film is richly detailed with realistic scenes of interaction between the protagonists. The film is structured around the metaphor of 'deer-hunting' - both from the viewpoint of the hunter and from the perspective of the game target.
The most talked about sequence is the contrived, theatrical, and fictional Russian Roulette torture, imposed on the American POW's during wartime and played as a game in a Vietnamese gambling den. [However, there were no documented cases or historical reports of the deadly game in actuality.] Whether it is historically accurate or not, the fabricated scene of a Vietcong atrocity metaphorically depicted the brutal absurdity of the war. Director Cimino was also criticized as distortedly and one-sidedly portraying all the Vietnamese characters in the film as despicable, sadistic racists and killers. He countered by arguing that his film was not political, polemical, literally accurate, or posturing for any particular point of view. Cimino's successful epic led to further films in Hollywood - mostly box-office failures, including the excessive and costly Heaven's Gate (1980) - a film that virtually bankrupted its studio, United Artists.
The overlong film is roughly divided into equal thirds or acts, spanning the time period 1968-1975:
1. the development of characterizations and symbolic rituals of the second-generation Russian-American steelworkers (in the hot, blast-furnaces) in their small Pennsylvania community before war-time. This section includes two 'religious' rituals - (1) an extravagant wedding and a long reception sequence - the first act in life's cyclical passage; and (2) a deer-hunting sequence in the cool Allegheny Mountains.
2. the harrowing, sensational, and violent war-time experiences of the Americans in the steamy jungles of Vietnam - the psychologically-destructive scarring of life.
3. the aftermath of the war and its physical and psychological effects upon the three male participants in the war and those left at home (wives, families, and friends). Only one of the three survives physically intact, but all of them emerge irrevocably changed.
This ambitious drama displays the reasons for the protagonists, all believers in the American dream, to leave home for the conflict overseas: to test and prove their manhood, to show their friendship-solidarity, and to demonstrate their patriotism, etc. But the experience - and everything they know about duty, honor, courage and manhood (expressed in the first act's ritualistic deer-hunting sequence) - is wrenched apart and shattered in the face of the gruesome war.
Björn Andrésen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpZXeCSVMjI&feature=fvwrel
Bjorn Andresen - the beautiful Tadzio from Death in Venice, tells Matt Seaton why he is furious about being on the cover of Germaine Greer's new book:
Bjorn Andresen has only seen the cover of Germaine Greer's new book, but he is not very happy about it. The reason is that Andresen is - or rather, was - the boy whose image adorns the front cover of The Boy, Greer's characteristically feisty combination of art history and coffee-table erotica.
In 1970, the 15-year-old Andresen played Tadzio in Death in Venice, Luchino Visconti's adaptation of a Thomas Mann story. Overnight, Andresen became a celebrity, adored as the ethereally beautiful, blond-locked boy who becomes a fatal object of desire for Gustav von Aschenbach, played by Dirk Bogarde. But not just for him.
"The boy is the missing term in the discussions of the possibility of a female gaze," remarks Greer in her book. But ever since his appearance in Visconti's film Andresen has felt the scrutiny of both male and female gazes. The use of his image on The Boy is just one more unwelcome instance, he says: "I have a feeling of being utilised that is close to distasteful."
His objection is partly moral, he explains, talking from his home in Stockholm. "Adult love for adolescents is something that I am against in principle," he says. "Emotionally perhaps, and intellectually, I am disturbed by it - because I have some insight into what this kind of love is about."
His experience of "this kind of love" began at the Cannes film festival in 1970, where Visconti's film first became a sensation. "I was just 16," Andresen relates, "and Visconti and the team took me to a gay nightclub. Almost all the crew were gay. The waiters at the club made me feel very uncomfortable. They looked at me uncompromisingly as if I was a nice meaty dish.
"I knew I couldn't react," he says. "It would have been social suicide. But it was the first of many such encounters."
Andresen is adamant that he is not in the least homophobic - "I spend too much time with gay people to be" - but the tag of "most beautiful boy in the world" dogged him wherever he went. Not that his admirers were all men, by any means. On the back of his success with Death in Venice, Andresen was persuaded by his grandmother to go to Japan, where the film had been a big hit. It was she who had first applied to an advert in Sweden for film parts for children - "She felt I was so talented and should be world famous, you know how it is," he says drily. She certainly got her wish: in the space of a few weeks, he recorded two pop songs and appeared in several commercials. When Andresen performed in Japan, he found himself mobbed by girls: "You've seen the pictures of the Beatles in America? It was like that. There was a hysteria about it."
Andresen's true love was music. After school, he applied to study at music college, but didn't get in. Instead, he took piano lessons privately with one of Sweden's most highly regarded teachers. His ambition, after his return from Japan, was to start a Duke Ellington-style big band. But he found himself under pressure to take other film parts. He spent a year in Paris waiting for Malcolm Leigh to start shooting a film called How Lovely Are the Messengers, which was then never made. "I can summarise my career in one word," he says. "Chaos."
He moved to Copenhagen for a year, to be with a girlfriend, but also in an attempt to find some anonymity. But his role as Tadzio continued to haunt him. "The worst thing of all," he says, "is that no one pays attention to your ambitions, your dreams or who you really are." He was merely expected to be beautiful, that was all.
"I remember playing the first movement from Liszt's E flat major concerto for a party at a friend's house - a well-known Swedish composer, Karl-Erik Welin," he recalls. "People applauded at the end; it was no big deal. But then this young woman in a suit came forward and said, 'Wow! You can actually do something!'"
Being immortalised as a beautiful boy was not a blessing, but a curse. "I felt like an exotic animal in a cage," he says. And because it happened so early in his life, it distorted all his experience for years afterwards. "Even today," he says, "I don't know how to flirt. When you have only to snap your fingers... there's a lot of social training you miss out on as a celebrity."
Isn't it strange, then, that he should find himself just now appropriated as an object of desire by a famous feminist? Wasn't part of feminism's original protest against precisely such "objectification"?
"It is ironic, yes," Andresen remarks. He has spent most of his adult life seeking to be invisible, just one of the crowd. Has he ever been tempted to alter his appearance?
"Not only my appearance, but my whole identity," he says, with feeling. Finally, now, at the age of 48, he bears sufficiently small resemblance to the 15-year-old version of himself. "Kind, elderly women still seem to recognise me, but I've been working hard to reach anonymity."
Today, he describes himself as being between jobs, but hopes that the band he plays keyboards for, Sven-Erics, which has been around in different line-ups since the 60s, still has life in it. In the early 80s, after his girlfriend became pregnant, Andresen finally went to theatre college, which led to a job running a small theatre in Stockholm, doing everything from directing, to lighting and dishwashing. It was perhaps the most satisfying period of his life: "You can imagine how good it felt to turn down film work."
Since then Andresen has survived the death of one of his children in infancy, and "the inevitable divorce". He has even resumed his acting career recently, though strictly only on the stage (in a Tennessee Williams play). Almost to his surprise, he found he loved it - because it felt like his choice. "I have to fight these days, just like anyone else," he says, "which actually feels quite all right."
Sometimes he still sees his image as Tadzio in a poster or in a cinema flyer; it used to cause him irritation, but not any more. "My career is one of the few that started at the absolute top and then worked its way down," he says. "That was lonely."
But as for Greer's The Boy, the issue still rankles. "She, or the publisher, might have asked me beforehand," he observes.
Yes, but if they had, would he have given his permission?
"Of course not. Not until hell freezes over."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B6rn_Andr%C3%A9sen
http://www.ovguide.com/bj%C3%B6rn-andresen-9202a8c04000641f800000000063d406
Death in Venice (1971) (aka Morte a Venezia)
In director Luchino Visconti's stylistically lavish adaptation of Thomas Mann's novel - a tale of sexual obsession:
** the beautifully shot, quiet and lonely death scene of aging, avant-garde German composer Gustav von Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde) slumped on a deck chair on a Venice beach (accompanied by music from a Gustav Mahler symphony) dying of heart failure with dark hair dye dripping down his sweaty, chalk-white face, while lovingly watching an angelic-looking teenaged boy named Tadzio (Bjorn Andresen) on the beach who points out toward the horizon of the ocean - Gustav's expression mixed contentment, pain, and acceptance
Days of Wine and Roses (1962)
In Blake Edwards' devastating cautioning tragedy:
** the scene of a desperate Joe madly tearing apart his father-in-law's greenhouse to search for a hidden bottle
** Joe's honest assessment of how alcoholism makes his marriage relationship a "threesome" - "Now look at me. I'm a bum. Look at me. Look at you. You're a bum. Look at you. And look at us. Look at us. C'mon, look at us. See? A couple of bums"
** his experiences detoxifying in a hospital ward
** his recitation of poetic words to mutually-boozing wife Kirsten: "They are not long the days of wine and roses...Out of a misty dream our paths emerge for a while, then close within a dream"
** the film's ambiguous ending when his wife wanders off and a huge flashing neon "Bar" sign beckons him
Days of Wine and Roses (1962) is the intense dramatic portrayal of an alcoholic, co-dependent couple. The film's poster describes its intriguing premise: "It is Different. It is Daring. Most of All, in Its Own Terrifying Way, It is a Love Story."
Days of Heaven (1978)
In director/writer Terrence Malick's beautiful love-triangle drama set in the WWI-era:
- the migrant workers' train ride to the fields
- the sight of the train crossing a scaffold bridge
- the wheat field sequence at dawn's light as the priest blesses the harvest before tractors and threshers move in from a hilltop and migrant workers gather the wheat
Days of Heaven (1978) is an exquisite, lyrical film of exceptional visual beauty and only the second film of writer-director Terrence Malick, following his critically-acclaimed success with an equally-haunting and visually-striking Badlands (1973). [Malick wouldn't direct another film for 20 years, until The Thin Red Line (1998).] This moody, elegiac film has universally been acclaimed as a cinematographic masterpiece, from the talents of Cuban-born European Nestor Almendros (and 'additional photography' by Haskell Wexler), with naturally-lit, sweeping, 70mm images of crystal clarity and scope, and artfully composed scenes reminiscent of Andrew Wyeth paintings. The film's tagline proclaimed: "Your eyes... Your ears... Your senses... will be overwhelmed."
However, the surreal, epic-type film counterposes its superlative photography with a slim tale of working class protagonists, told with sparse dialogue and the jarring, quirky, drawling, and dispassionate, colloquial voice-over narration of a streetwise, but unschooled 13 year old girl (Manz). The film is also a social chronicling of the rough-hewn, simple lives of migrant American harvest workers in the Gilded Age during a time of growing industrialization, told with a mix of classical music, contemporary music, and natural sounds.
The film's plot is similar to the story in the Biblical Book of Ruth, and the film's title was derived from Deuteronomy 11:21 ("That your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which the Lord swore unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth.")
Disharmony and tragedy in the poetic film's conclusion arise because of the conflict between the male protagonists in a fatal, fiery love triangle, who both demand the exclusive love of a female. A wealthy, lonely, land-owning, raw-boned farmer (Shepard in his acting debut) of the Great Plains falls in love with the girlfriend (Adams) of a hot-headed wheat-field worker (Gere), who is masquerading as the field hand's sister. The 'heavenly,' golden-hued, contented, and idyllic days of the drifters, who have found salvation on the wheat farm, are shattered with the discovered revelation of the real nature of the relationship between the brother and sister, and an accompanying plague of locusts and fire (typical of Old Testament judgments). Scheming deception, greedy avarice, jealous envy, adultery, and eventually murder result from the conflict.
The simple love story set on a pastoral landscape becomes a profound allegorical tale of harmony and discontinuity, love and hate, hopes and fears, and good and evil. Its emotional impact is shaped by the unique perspective of the narrator - a typical teenager telling the tale out of her own youthful concerns (having fun, her uncertain future), combining her beliefs about the dual contradictory nature of humanity ("you just got half-devil and half-angel in ya"), and imaginative and fearsome fantasies of religious judgment and divine retribution (the flaming end of the world, and the Devil's presence on Earth).
The film trailer's narrator succinctly described the plot of Malick's film:
In 1916, America was changing, expanding, holding a promise of new prosperity. People heard the call and it made them restless. Empires were being built in the wide-open spaces, and so they came. Each one oddly, blindly searching for the days of heaven. Days of Heaven, the story of a man who had nothing, the woman who loved him, and the man who would give her everything for a share of that love. Three people whose destinies joined briefly in a dream - but how long could it last?
Although allegedly located in the wheat-growing area of World War I Texas in the early part of the 20th century, the film was shot on location in Alberta, Canada over a two-year period. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Costume Design (Patricia Norris), Best Original Score (Ennio Morricone), Best Sound, and won one well-deserved Oscar for Best Cinematography.
The Dark Knight (2008)
In director Christopher Nolan's violence and action-packed superhero, comic-book film:
** the opening sequence of the mob-owned bank robbery by clown-faced criminals - with the Joker (Heath Ledger) revealing himself with a painted clown face (with a grinning red scar) when he removed his mask after killing off all of his accomplices
** the scene of Batman (Christian Bale) landing on the Scarecrow's (Dr. Jonathan Crane, Cillian Murphy) van and flattening it
** the sight of a semi-trailer doing a somersault on a NY city street (and the Bat-pod doing its own wall flip) during a frenetic chase scene the scene of
** the Joker's 'magic trick' of making a pencil disappear
** every scene in which the Joker threatened victims with his knife and told them how he acquired his own facial scars from his abusive father -- and after intimidating Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) at Bruce Wayne's penthouse during a fundraiser, 'let her go' from the side of the skyscraper, forcing Batman to swoop down and rescue her
** the scene of the Joker (dressed as a nurse) blowing up Gotham General Hospital by setting off various explosions - remotely
** the Joker's two confrontation scenes with Batman:
- in the police interrogation room when he said laughingly: "I don't want to kill you. What would I do without you?...You complete me"
- and while hanging upside down, he also stated his feelings about the battle for Gotham's soul: "You truly are incorruptible, aren't you?...You won't kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness. And I won't kill you because you're just too much fun. I think you and I are destined to do this forever..."
** the final scene of Batman escaping as a hunted fugitive as Lt. James Gordon (Gary Oldman) explained how district attorney Harvey Dent (aka Two-Face, with a disfigured face) (Aaron Eckhart) had been corrupted and vengeful (and lured to the dark side) by the Joker (although Batman would purposely take the blame and Dent would be lauded as a hero in the finale, as he explained: "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. I can do those things because I'm not a hero, not like Dent...I'm whatever Gotham needs me to be")
** Lt. Gordon's delivery of the final voice-over regarding Batman's fate: ("We have to chase him...Because he's the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we'll hunt him because he can take it. Because he's not our hero. He's a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A dark knight")
A violence and action-packed superhero film based on the decades-old comic-book hero, with Christian Bale reprising his role as Bruce Wayne/Batman (in a sleeker bat-suit), and deceased co-star Heath Ledger as the villainous, ghoulish bank robber named the Joker (who tragically died shortly after the film's shoot, six months before the film's release).
Director Christopher Nolan brought his 'Batman trilogy' to a close with the eighth Batman film: The Dark Knight Rises (2012), following after his own Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008).
It was notoriously snubbed for a Best Picture Academy Award nomination, and some credit its omission with forcing the Academy to expand the number of nominees to 10 in 2009.
With eight Academy Award nominations (and two wins): Best Supporting Actor (Heath Ledger posthumously) and Best Sound Editing.
It made box office records in its first weekend, making it the biggest three-day opening weekend of all time with $158.4 million, beating the previous year's Spider-Man 3 (2007) at $151.1 million. [This record was topped by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 (2011) at $169.1 million.] The movie set a new record for the biggest opening day gross at the box office with $67.1 million. [This record was topped by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 (2011) at $91 million.]
Most impressively, it became only the second movie in history to break the $500 million barrier in domestic box-office, the first being James Cameron's Titanic (1997) with a domestic gross of $601 million. And it hit the $500 million mark in just over 6 weeks -- half the time it took Titanic to reach the same milestone.
Totaled $533.3 million (domestically) and $1,002 million (or over $1 billion) worldwide, with a production budget of $185 million.
Cutter's Way (1981) (aka Cutter and Bone)
Czech filmmaker Ivan Passer's crime thriller
** the amazing opening slow-motion sequence (under the credits, with music by Jack Nitzsche) of a Santa Barbara, CA main street Old Spanish Days Fiesta parade (that slowly changed from b/w to color) - with the camera following a blonde twirling in a white frilly dress
** the sequence then wiped into a day and night-time shot of the exterior of a hotel (labeled El Encanto in neon) - to introduce one of the film's two main characters, with a side close-up of the chin-mustache of laconic yacht-salesman-beach-bum Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges) while he was touching up with a woman's electric shaver following hiring his gigolo services out to a blonde (Nina Van Pallandt)
** afterwards, a silhouetted figure wearing sun-glasses was witnessed dumping 17 year-old sex-crime victim Vickie into a garbage can in a dark alley on a rainy night
** the scene of embittered, self-righteous, drunken, one-eyed, one-armed, one-legged, crazed and angry Vietnam vet Alexander Cutter (John Heard) crashing into his neighbor's car while returning home with an expired license, and later becoming completely obsessed over confronting the girl's killer - believing the real suspect to be elite and menacing oil businessmen J. J. Cord (Stephen Elliott)
** the scene of Maureen "Mo" Cutter (Lisa Eichhorn) telling her disgruntled husband that his plan to blackmail/extort Cord regarding the girl's murder was itself a dumb crime: "You're not some saint avenging the sins of the Earth, you know. Alex. And if you are, what am I doing here? Oh, I know. I'm like your leg. Your leg! Sending messages to your brain when there's nothing there anymore" - before being viciously slapped
** the stunning concluding scene of Cutter riding heroically (and tragically) on a white stallion within Cord's guarded residential mansion during a large garden party - and lethally crashing into Cord's study window where Bone had just learned that Cord was the female's killer - inspiring the usually-uncommitted and reluctant Bone to take up the fight and shoot Cord with the weapon in Cutter's dead hand - to abruptly end the film
American crime films in the seventies and early eighties were littered with the damaged veterans of the Vietnam War.
They appear in most of the key crime sub-genres: the revenge film (Rolling Thunder ), the road movie (Electra Glide in Blue ), the drug sub-culture (Who’ll Stop the Rain , the adaption of Robert Stone’s novel, Dog Soldiers), and Blaxsploitation (the 1973 film, Gordon’s War , to name just one of many).
Film noir’s contribution is the 1981 movie, Cutter’s Way.
As Woody Haut argued in Neon Noir, his book on contemporary American crime fiction, Vietnam not only damaged the body politic it blurred the line between the perpetrators of crimes and the people who investigate them. In Cutter’s Way the quest to avenge a young woman’s murder is left to the rejects and outsiders who populate the underbelly of post-Vietnam American society.
Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges ), a part-time gigolo and boat salesman, is returning from a late night assignation when his beat-up car stalls in an alleyway. Another vehicle pulls up behind him and in the heavy rain and headlight glare we see a man get out and throw something into a nearby rubbish bin. The car speeds off, nearly hitting Bone in the process. As he walks off in disgust, the camera pauses on a stilettoed female foot protruding from the bin.
Bone returns to the Santa Barbara house he shares with Cutter (John Heard ) and his wife, Mo (Lisa Eichhorn ). Mo is a sharp-tongued alcoholic. Cutter has a face full of scar tissue, only one arm and a permanent limp from his tour in Vietnam. He’s a ball of barely contained bitterness and fury.
Next morning garbage men find the young woman’s body. Of course the fact that Bone’s car is parked nearby makes him a suspect and the cops bring him in for questioning.
They attempt to sweat a confession out of him, going into how the victim died (badly), even wheeling in her sister, Valerie, to try and guilt trip him in admitting to the crime. However, in the face Bone’s protestations all he could see through the rain was a dark shape in sunglasses, the cops are forced to kick him loose.
Later, pausing with Mo and Cutter to watch a passing parade in celebration of Santa Barbara’s Spanish heritage, Bone thinks he sees the man who might have been the one dumping the body. He’s shocked when Cutter informs him the person he’s fingered is J.J. Cord, a local business big shot.
Cutter slowly starts to put together pieces of evidence linking Cord to the crime. Cord’s burnt out car was discovered in another location on the same night as the woman was murdered. The last place she was seen was a disco across the road from a hotel function attended by the businessman, “a little reception for some oil people”.
While these are at best circumstantial, to Cutter they are evidence of a much greater conspiracy, or at least an opportunity to make money – we’re not sure which yet – and it’s not long until he’s pressuring Bone to come in on a plan he’s hatched with Valerie to blackmail Cord, then turn him in to the cops regardless of what he does.
Bone tells Cutter the scheme is crazy and he should be careful. Cutter replies it is Bone who should be careful, as he is the only witness to the crime, a fact that’s been conveniently splashed across the front page of the local newspaper.
Cord is one of the those guys who are a staple of hard boiled noir; the tough as nails businessman who has dragged himself up by his bootstraps, an ex-wildcatter who made a fortune in the oil business. His power and liking of casual violence – in this case directed at young female hitchhikers – are matched only by the impunity with which he gets away with things. The kind of man you don’t want to mess with.
Bone eventually agrees to deliver the blackmail letter. We see him walking into Cord’s anonymous Los Angeles corporate office while Cutter and Valerie wait in the car. Only later does he admit he was only bluffing and never intended to deliver anything.
While Bone returns to Santa Barbara, Cutter remains to follow through his plot, ringing Bone to gloat he’s dropped off the blackmail letter. Meanwhile, Bone sleeps with Mo then slinks off into the night, only finding out next morning that their house has been burnt to the ground with Mo inside it.
Standing amid the smoking ruins, an image that strongly evokes Vietnam, Cutter is in no doubt who the culprit is. Putting aside their grief and anger at each other, he and Bone team up to confront Cord at a party at his mansion.
They’re a sight, Bone dressed as a chauffer ferrying a formerly attired Cutter armed with a pistol in the backseat of a limo. The act gets them past the front gate muscle and eventually into Cord’s house for the film’s bleak ending.
With its ambiguous plot, minimal action and lack of (then) name stars, it’s a wonder Cutter’s Way ever got a release. The director, Ivan Passer was a virtual unknown, as was Jeffrey Alan Fiskin, who shaped the screenplay from the 1976 novel Cutter and Bone by cult author Newton Thornburg . The film bombed at release. The studio only persevered with it following a persistent campaign by a number of film critics.
Bridges plays Bone as a dissolute lounge lizard. His character and Lisa Eichhorn’s sultry booze drenched Mo dance around each other for most of the film, repelling and attracting each other in equal parts. “I don’t like you when you’re stoned,” says Bone. “Hey Rich,” she replies without hesitation, “I don’t like you when I’m straight.”
But it’s the underrated John Heard (remember him as the washed cop in the Sopranos?) that steals every scene he is in. Cutter is a tragic figure one moment, a self-pitying bigot who is more than happy to use Vietnam as an excuse for his behaviour, the next. After deliberately trashing the neighbour’s car on a drunken spree, he goes inside his house to put only his military duffle coat so he can play the wounded veteran routine when the cops arrive.
But although he’s prepared to play the Vietnam card when convenient, the injustice of his experience is not lost on him. In response to Bone’s questioning about why he’s so keen to pin the murder on Cord, Cutter replies, “Because he’s responsible”, if not for the death of the girl, then for the war. “Because it’s never his arse on the line. Never. It’s always somebody else’s.”
A key theme in Thornburg’s books is retribution for the young who fall prey to the dangerous and amoral lure of post-Summer of Love California. Another of his books, To Die In California, centres on a cattle farmer from Illinois who sets out to discover how his son died in California, the only witnesses to the boy’s apparent suicide and a fixer for an ambitious political fixer and a rich but idle woman.
Cutter’s Way portrays a corrupt and paranoid world, where government, big corporations and the political elite are responsible for much of society’s wrongs, whether it is dropping napalm on peasant villages or killing a 17-year old girl, and justice is at best pyrrhic.
As he aims a pistol at Cord in the very final scene of the film, Bone says, “It was you.”
Cord just smiles, puts on his sunglasses and says, “What if it were?”
The Crying Game (1992)
In Irish writer/director Neil Jordan's jolting thriller:
** the scene of IRA volunteer soldier Fergus (Stephen Rea) visiting gorgeous-looking London hairdresser/nightclub singer Dil (Oscar-nominated Jaye Davidson) - known as the 'wee black chick' that Jody loved, to fulfill kidnapped/dead British soldier Jody's (Forest Whitaker) dying wish
** after kissing each other, the superbly unexpected moment of revelation when Dil's red kimono robe drops to the floor as the camera pans down to show off 'his' true gender and manhood, followed by his apology to the shocked Fergus: "You did know, didn't you?"
** the tearful "interrogation" scene between a gun-toting Dil and Fergus, whom Dil had tied to his bed after finding out he had been complicit in the death of his ex-lover Jody, as the song "The Crying Game" played on Dil's tape deck. With a gun pointed at him, Fergus told Dil that he loved him ("I love you Dil"), would do anything for him ("I'd do anything for you, Dil") and would never leave him - with Dil responding, as he laid his head on Fergus' chest/shoulder: "I know you're lying, Jimmy, but it's nice to hear it"
** the scene of Dil's vengeful murder of Fergus' accomplice Jude (Miranda Richardson), when he accuses her of being implicated in Jody's death: "You was there, wasn't you? You used those tits and that ass to get him, didn't you?!"
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, HK/US)
In Ang Lee's Best Picture-nominated martial arts/romantic film that won the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award:
* the many exciting, kinetic action sequences revolving around the mystical, legendary 400 year-old Excalibur-like sword Green Destiny that was stolen by the 18 year-old district governor's daughter - the impetuous and headstrong masked thief Jen Yu (Zhang Ziyi) while apprenticing under the harsh tutelage of bitter, heartless and treacherous arch-criminal Jade Fox (Cheng Pei-pei)
* after the theft, the gravity-defying pursuit of Jen up walls, across buildings and over rooftops by security officer and female warrior Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh)
* the poignant, secret and unfulfilled romance between Yu Shu Lien and heroic spiritual master fighter Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-Fat), who takes a fatherly scholar's interest in the petulant Jen, casually imparting advice during one fight: ("Real sharpness comes without effort. No growth, without assistance. No action, without reaction...")
* the visually-stunning sword fight between Jen and Mu Bai on the top of a bamboo forest the "faithful heart makes wishes come true" speech by Jen's kind lover - a barbarian bandit named Lo "Dark Cloud" (Chang Chen)
* the climactic, artistic duel between Jen and Shu Lien in an empty dueling arena - brilliantly shot with overhead cameras
* the scene of Jen's rejection of her master teacher Jade Fox because she had outgrown her instruction, with Jade's response: "Believe me, I've a lesson or two left to teach you!"
* Jade Fox's final words after being executed by Li Mu Bai: "You know what poison is? An 8 year-old girl full of deceit. That's poison!...Jen...my only family...my only enemy..."
* the tearjerking death of Li Mu Bai, poisoned by Jade Fox with the Purple Yin, and his final, long overdue declaration of his secret love for Yu Shu Lien with his dying breath: ("...I would rather be a ghost, drifting by your side as a condemned soul than enter heaven without you. Because of your love, I will never be a lonely spirit")
* the transcendent ending in which Jen jumps off Wudan Mountain, and floats softly downward to disappear into the mist
Crimes of Passion (1984)
In British director Ken Russell's neon-lit, dark, 'guilty pleasure' cult tale and erotic thriller:
* the scenes of part-time private investigator and security expert Bobby Grady's (John Laughlin) escape from a dull 12-year marriage to Amy (Annie Potts), who fakes her orgasms
* his intense, obsessive, erotic relationship with a moonlighting, kinky LA prostitute named China Blue (Kathleen Turner) - who wears a platinum wig and by day works as a prim but workaholic fashion designer named Joanna Crane
* during their first intense sexual encounter (for $50) that she fantasy role-plays as a flight attendant ("We're here to serve you. Please remember that although we may run out of Pan Am coffee, we'll never run out of T-W-A-Tea"), she sucks on his bare toe and then has sexual intercourse with him in multiple positions (viewed as silhouettes behind a gauzy curtain) * later in a dominatrix S & M scene (deleted from some versions to avoid an X-rating), a policeman (Randall Brady) is handcuffed to a bed and then sodomized with his own nightstick
* also notable are the scenes with deranged, stalking psychotic reverend believing he's China Blue's savior - the perverse, ranting, peeping-tom, self-proclaimed Reverend Peter Shayne (Anthony Perkins) with strange erotic fantasies and a razor-tipped, chrome-steel dildo (dubbed "Superman") that is revealed from his doctor's bag of sex toys
* the twist ending in which China Blue is 'saved' by the threatening Reverend involving a role-reversal (and costume-reversal)
Berenger Tom
*born Thomas Michael Moore, May 31, 1949
*he portrays Peter Browning in Inception (2010)
http://www.tomberengeronline.com/
ROMAN POLANSKI
born Rajmund Roman Thierry Polański, 18 August 1933
http://web.archive.org/web/20060206023251/http://www.rp-productions.com/roman2.html
Rowan Atkinson
born 6 January 1955, Consett, County Durham, England
With an estimated wealth of £100 million, Atkinson is able to indulge his passion for cars that began with driving his mother's Morris Minor around the family farm. He has written for the British magazines Car, Octane, Evo, and "SuperClassics", a short-lived UK magazine, in which he reviewed the McLaren F1 in 1995.
Atkinson holds a category C+E (formerly 'Class 1') lorry driving licence, gained in 1981, because lorries held a fascination for him, and to ensure employment as a young actor. He has also used this skill when filming comedy material. A lover of and participant in car racing, he appeared as racing driver Henry Birkin in the television play Full Throttle in 1995. In 1991, he starred in the self-penned The Driven Man, a series of sketches featuring Atkinson driving around London trying to solve his obsession with cars, and discussing it with taxi drivers, policemen, used-car salesmen and psychotherapists.
Atkinson has raced in other cars, including a Renault 5 GT Turbo for two seasons for its one make series. He owns a McLaren F1, which was involved in an accident in Cabus, near Garstang, Lancashire with an Austin Metro in October 1999. It was damaged again in a serious crash in August 2011 when it caught fire after Atkinson reportedly lost control and hit a tree. He also owns a Honda NSX. Other cars he owns include an Audi A8, and a Honda Civic Hybrid.
The Conservative Party politician Alan Clark, himself a devotee of classic motor cars, recorded in his published Diaries this chance meeting with a man he later realised was Atkinson while driving through Oxfordshire in May 1984: "Just after leaving the motorway at Thame I noticed a dark redDBS V8 Aston Martin on the slip road with the bonnet up, a man unhappily bending over it. I told Jane to pull in and walked back. A DV8 in trouble is always good for a gloat." Clark writes that he gave Atkinson a lift in his Rolls-Royce to the nearest telephone box, but was disappointed in his bland reaction to being recognised, noting that: "he didn't sparkle, was rather disappointing and chétif."
One car Atkinson has said he will not own is a Porsche: "I have a problem with Porsches. They're wonderful cars, but I know I could never live with one. Somehow, the typical Porsche people—and I wish them no ill—are not, I feel, my kind of people. I don't go around saying that Porsches are a pile of dung, but I do know that psychologically I couldn't handle owning one."
He appeared in episode 4, series 17 of Top Gear in the "Star in a reasonably priced car" section, where he drove the Kia Cee'd on the test track in 1:42.2, taking first place on the board, but was later beaten by Matt LeBlanc during the second episode of the eighteenth series, with a lap time of 1:42.1.
He attended the inaugural Indian Grand Prix as a guest of McLaren. Atkinson's anguished reaction to the Lap 24 incident between Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa, shown during replays of the collision, was one of the race's more memorable moments.[
DAVID LYNCH
"1990 was Lynch's annus mirabilis: Wild at Heartwon the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and the television series Twin Peaks was proving a smash hit with audiences across the world. The musical/performance piece Industrial Symphony No. 1, which Lynch had staged with Angelo Badalamenti at the Brooklyn Academy of music, had spawned the album Floating into the Nightand launched singer Julee Cruise. Five one-man exhibitions between 1989 and 1991 emphasized Lynch’s roots in fine art and painting, and a rash of ads (including a teaser trailer for Michael Jackson's 'Dangerous' tour) confirmed the demand for the Lynch touch… In an unlikely scenario for the maker of Eraserhead, Lynch had become an influential and fashionable brand name."
