Blogstar Galinktica

Anne Thompson has issues with a new list of Top 100 Westerns
Rob Scheer thinks Hollywood should study Hancock for the mistakes it makes and what they represent
Glenn Kenny on the new and unpleasant cinematic character trend: contempt for the audience! (Wanted fits nicely in you know)
<--- Sheila O'Malley on William Holden: A Different Kind of Hero
JA (and the rest of the blogosphere actually) freaks over the new Dark Knight poster. It is spectacularly creepy.
Seth @ Defamer warns of a possible Friends film now that Sex & the City has tested the off-the-air-onto-the-screen waters
Ray Pride on the new David Cronenberg opera The Fly
J.D. believes in the bohemian revolution. So does WALL•E apparently...

And one more note on the EMMYs... (nominations announced on the 17th). I'm hearing from Low Resolution (who heard it from Gold Derby) that Mary McDonnell's towering work on Battlestar Galactica is in the finalist Best Actress list. I'd almost rather not know that. It's like a carrot dangling in front of me. The EMMY voters are a cruel undiscerning lot and they'll let my desperate bunny-self starve. I just know it. Her competitition: Patricia Arquette, "Medium", Glenn Close, "Damages", Minnie Driver, "The Riches", Sally Field, "Brothers and Sisters", Mariska Hargitay, "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit", Holly Hunter, "Saving Grace", Elisabeth Moss, "Mad Men", Kyra Sedgwick, "The Closer" and Jeanne Tripplehorn, "Big Love". The ideal roster would surely read: Field, Moss, McDonnell and Tripplehorn... and either Hunter or Driver. But I don't suspect that the nominees will come close to matching those womanly riches.

Network (1976)

A reader request (long time in coming --my apologies Chris!)

One thing I suspect about director Sidney Lumet: He likes his drama super sized. I'm talking Empire State Building big. No 800 lbs gorillas in the room please, make it King Kong. Give them 16 tons of drama. Lumet wants grunting, sweating, lunging, screaming, gargantuan desperate drama like the kind you get in Dog Day Afternoon, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead and Serpico. Never mind 12 Angry Men. How about 1 Angry Man, Sidney Lumet himself, and in the case of Network -- arguably his best film -- one angry fictional man named Howard Beale" (Peter Finch). Network eventually gets around to naming Beale the “mad prophet of the airwaves” but it’s also a self descriptive tag. This movie is mad as hell and prophetic, too. Network is Howard Beale and Howard Beale is Network. This impressively large but also miniature film --it's not hard to imagine it as a stage play --swings wildly from mood to mood just like its bipolar madman.

Peter Finch is 'mad as hell' in his Oscar winning role

A lot of movies steal from Network but I love the borrowing that it does right out of the gate, in ominiscient detached voiceover.

In his time Howard Beale had been a mandarin of television. The grand old man of news with a hot rating of 16 and a 28 audience share. In 1969 however his fortunes began to decline. He fell to a 22 share. The following year his wife died and he was left a childless widower with an 8 rating and a 12 share.

That calm voiceover, giving numbers as much if not more weight as the man's personal life, has already begun the chilling process of reduction. It's overtly reminiscent of both All About Eve's arch view of the theater world and Sunset Boulevard's ghost-eye view of Hollywood. Network’s target is television. Is it boldly proclaiming itself the final third of the Holy Trinity of Self-Loathing Showbiz Pictures? Whatever the intent, it moves with utter confidence, thereby forcing itself into the godhead.

Read the rest...

Return and report. Have you tuned into Network recently?
(click here for fresh posts)
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Celebrate Earth Day The Right Way

Yes, tomorrow is Earth Day, but much more importantly it's a Saturday (yay, weekend!)... and it's supposed to rain here in NYC.

Which is a big fat reminder that Mother Nature is a bitch.

So here are five movies to celebrate that realization with while you're trapped inside because of whatever crappy weather this delightful Earth is spitting down, ruining your weekend with:

Armageddon - Eww, Michael Bay, I know. But if you watch it in fast-forward, it's like a whirlwind of Ben Affleck (during that brief period when he was attractive) and Josh Hartnett (yup, still attractive) in tank tops. A bronzed, glistening tanktop whirlwind. Of epic destruction!!! (ETA it has wisely been brought to my attention that I somehow mashed together Armageddon and Pearl Harbor with the above nonsense... how I could mistake two completely different Michael Bay pictures I'll never know... still, as with everything I say, don't listen, that path leads to madness.)

The Rapture - Fulfills the religious quota for our "End O' The World, I Feel Fine" World Tour. Mimi Rogers and David Duchovny battle for their immortal souls against the backdrop of the Book of Revelations, which apparently featured swank orgies and incredibly detailed tattoos somewhere in there with the multi- headed multi- crowned beasts.... who knew?




The Day The Earth Stood Still - Klaatu barada nikto! Unfortunately, Ash never shows up and slices Klaatu's metal head in half, thereby ridding us of his smug sense of superiority. Blah blah, humanity's killing everything, blah, get back to me when you stop peeing motor oil.



When Time Ran Out... - Simultaneously the greatest and the worst of the All-Star Disaster flicks of the 70s. Paul Newman, Jacqueline Bissett, William Holden... Red Buttons blinded by flying lava-balls! Pat Morita dangling off a rickety bridge... over a river of lava! Earthquakes, tidal waves, and volcanic explosions! It has everything you could ever want, and nothing you could ever, ever need.




The Day After Tomorrow - Um. Just because? And because? And because? And because? And because? And because? And because? And because?

tags: Earth Day, Jake Gyllenhaal, mother nature, movies, disaster, Rapture, Revelations

Sabrina

Believe it or not I had never seen Billy Wilder's Sabrina until last night. I don't know why but I had this vague perception that it was a dated clunker. Maybe my fear of the remake (Remember that Julia Ormond vehicle in the 90s? Remember when they were trying to make Ormond into a big star?) which I never saw somehow bled into the original and, knowing that some classics are unworthy of their reputation, I somehow assumed Sabrina was one of those. Also this film is brought up in every article about Hollywood's sexism/ageism collision so I naturally thought "ew" about Bogie and Audrey as a couple.

But as per usual with Billy Wilder, it has the just-right combo of laughs, drama, and overall cleverness. If Wilder made beds, the princess would never feel a pea under the mattress. If Wilder made porridge Goldilocks would never feel it was too hot or too cold. Sabrinais "just right." It's lovely to look at (not just for Audrey Hepburn) and a couple of images/scenes will stick with me for their sheer perfection; I'm thinking of two shots of otherwise prim and proper people smooshed up against one another hopping up and down on a sheet of plastic. Once as a plot point joke, the next as a beautiful refrain and comic aside. It's all just so graceful. Wilder is such a confident smooth filmmaker. And my favorite scene is a climactic one in which Sabrina (Hepburn) finally understands out what Linus (Bogart) is up to with their frequent dating. Watching it I'm marvelling at how Hepburn geniusly underplays it. It's the type of scene that I think most lesser actors and directors would have really pushed -and thereby lost it's quiet wounding force. As she leaves the scene in beautiful longshot b&w cinematography -(haven't seen it but I bet the remake used a closeup) I just said to myself 'Doo-Wah!*'

* 'Doo Wah' being a term once overused as personal shorthand amongst friends in the 90s whilst in the collective fan throes of dance group Deee-Lite's shortlived 'World Clique'dominance. 'Doo Wah' being pulled from the song "Good Beat" as in 'I just wanna hear a...' Doo Wah being a term of respect/endearment/drop-jawed awe usually provoked by some diva-esque action. In the vernacular family of the finger/vocal 'Snap' and "you go girl!" -- i.e. unneccessary verbal/physical punctuations to dramatic/showstopping moments. This lesson in personal 90s pophistory is brought to you by Nathaniel's early morning coffee.