Odds & Ends
Monday, March 28, 2005
Stallonezenegger
Is this it? Is this the sign that in America at least, every single thing that can possibly be released on DVD is already out? I refer to the news that Rambo: The Animated Series is to be released on DVD. I had no idea that such a show ever existed, and it truly boggles the mind. But then, having been about nine or ten when Rambo: First Blood Part II was released, I do recall that the film series had a lot of appeal for small boys. (Who knows what it did to their fragile little minds - although it could do a lot to explain the current political environment). The picture on the front of volume 2, in which Rambo punches out an indeterminate ethnic stereotype, is particularly disturbing. (And have Bruce Lee's estate signed off on the use of the title "Enter the Dragon?") It makes for a double-barreled attack of Stallone news, as Ain't It Cool is reporting that Tarantino wants to cast Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger alongside each other in his Inglorious Bastards. Of course, this isn't really news until he gets them to sign on the dotted line, but it's an intriguing prospect nonetheless. Tarantino does have the necessary reputation and respect to potentially get something like this up, and both actors would be silly not to take it. Both are in the twilight of their film careers, but still big enough names that their appearance together would be a huge drawcard. Who could resist the opportunity to see these guys struggling together through Tarantino's dialogue? It is also an excuse to trot out a theory I've had for a while: there can be only one Stallone. What I mean is that there can only be one star at a time who is really filling the niche as Hollywood's enormous, musclebound guy with limited dialogue skills. Throughout the careers of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, there was always one of them who was dominant and one who was on the wane at any given time. It's a fairly tenuous theory, I'll admit, but I do think both men's careers are interesting and that each has had ebbs and flows that often mirrored the success or failure of the other. Indeed, their whole careers can be broken down into Schwarzenegger's Years and Stallone's Years, roughly as follows: 1976 - 1982: Stallone's Years Stallone broke big and started earlier, and therefore undoubtedly owns these early years. Rocky was one of those triumphs few Hollywood figures can point to: coming from nowhere to write and star in a film that won an Oscar for Best Picture (he got nominations for his screenplay and his performance, too). Roger Ebert compared his acting to Marlon Brando's, which seems silly in retrospect, but if you actually go back and watch Rocky he's pretty good. (Another reason to dislike the Razzies - in 2000 they gave him an award for "Worst Actor of the Century," which is just stupid. His range is limited - very limited - but he can act. Certainly more than Schwarzenegger). This triumph was followed with Rocky II in 1979 - not one for the pantheon, but a decent sequel and a big success, and he also directed it. First Blood gave him another hit in 1982, and established Rambo, his other defining character. There were already signs of a struggle to maintain a career outside Rocky and Rambo, with forgotten films such as F.I.S.T., Paradise Alley (writing and directing again), and Victory. Rocky III (1982) was also another sign of trouble on the horizon: it was the first suggestion that the Rocky series would descend into a running joke. But it did have "Eye of the Tiger" in it, and was also a success. Schwarzenegger is not even on the horizon for most of this period, making films such as the execrable Road Runner cartoon / western hybrid Cactus Jack (aka Villain). In 1982 he had his first big hit with Conan the Barbarian, but that isn't enough to knock off Stallone in the year of First Blood and Rocky III. 1983 - 1984: Schwarzenegger's Years Schwarzenegger doesn't have to show up to win 1983 - the only credit either man has is Stallone's credit as writer / director of the famous flop Staying Alive, the sequel to Saturday Night Fever. Sometimes success is knowing when not to make a movie. Schwarzenegger undoubtedly owns 1984, with his breakout role in The Terminator, the one real undisputed classic on his resume, and a second Conan film (Conan the Destroyer). Stallone's only appearance in this year is Rhinestone, starring opposite Dolly Parton and being directed by the guy who made Porky's. Clearly he needs to regroup. 1985: Stallone's Year After a few uncertain years, Stallone reverted back to his two big franchise in 1985, releasing Rocky IV and Rambo: First Blood Part II. Both were big hits, and both are classic Reagan-era comic-strip propaganda movies. Rocky IV is the cold-war Rocky entry, with Rocky versus the Russian; but it's also the film in which he seems to be fighting a effigy of Schwarzenegger, in Dolph Lundgren. Lundgren would make a few films of his own, but he never made much headway: the field was too crowded, and Stallone and Schwarzenegger had too much of a head start. Also interesting is that the co-screenwriter (with Stallone) on Rambo was James Cameron, who had given Schwarzenegger his stand-out film to this date. In 1985 the writing was on the wall and Stallone was playing defence. Schwarzenegger had nothing to answer Stallone's Rocky/Rambo double bill in 1985, with two minor action projects (Commando and Red Sonja). They were amongst a number of Schwarzenegger's action films of the 1980s that had little prospect of elevating him to star status: films like these would do respectable business, particularly on video, but would never lift him above a scrum of mid-range action stars like Jean-Claude van Damme and Steven Seagal. 1986 - 1992 - Schwarzenegger's Years This was the period in which Schwarzenegger came into his own and Stallone fell away. Stallone's fate in this period is particularly instructive, yielding a clear lesson: don't abuse your franchises. The 1985 Rocky IV and Rambo extravaganza was a quick-fix career wise, but it left Stallone in a hole. By making two such bad films he was effectively killing off each of his two main characters: while both films did well, he would pay a price later, because people would be reluctant to see further entries in the series. Schwarzenegger, meanwhile, would achieve a reverse effect: The Terminator would do good business on video throughout the 80s, building its critical and audience reputation and laying the groundwork for a monster hit with the sequel in 1991. Schwarzenegger was still doing middle rung action work (Raw Deal in 1986, The Running Man in 1987, and Red Heat in 1988), but he was gaining momentum. Probably his standout film in the latter half of the 80s is John McTiernan's Predator in 1987, a pretty good science-fiction / action hybrid. Stallone, meanwhile, was in disarray, with Cobra in 1986 and his turn as a professional arm-wrestler in 1987's Over the Top. He had another shot with the Rambo series in 1988, with Rambo III (since the previous film was Rambo: First Blood Part II, this surely should have been Rambo II: First Blood Part III, but that's just my pedantry flaring up). However, it was dramatically outgunned at the box-office by Schwarzenegger's Twins, a film that cost much less to make. Twins, as the first outright comedy on either man's resume, would turn out to be something of a red herring for both of them. What both seemed to miss was that Schwarzenegger wasn't a comedy performer in Twins: he was a joke. His accent, his huge bulk, and his unwieldy manner were all punch lines to the stunt of casting of him as Danny De Vito's twin brother. While Schwarzenegger came off as a good sport in Twins, there was nothing to suggest that he should be pursuing a career in comedy. The whole joke in Twins was established on the poster, and Schwarzenegger should have considered himself lucky that the joke was sustained for the length of the film. Instead, he embarked on the extremely ill-advised Kindergarten Cop (1990), a disastrous hybrid of kiddie film and cop movie. The film is a complete mess. Not only does it seem to take seriously the idea that Schwarzenegger can be the star of a family comedy, but it seems to believe he can do it in the same film that he blows away bad guys in bloody gunfights. That such a misconceived film could be greenlit was, however, indicative of the way Schwarzenegger's career was going into overdrive at this point. In the same year he also starred in Total Recall, a mega-budget action film that did pretty well, and 1991 would see his reappearance as a kinder, gentler Terminator in Terminator 2. James Cameron's film was an enormous hit and really marked the appearance of Schwarzenegger as a huge star. Stallone simply couldn't compete during this period. Lock-Up and Tango & Cash, both in 1989, were the kind of routine action films Schwarzenegger had been growing out of in the preceding years. Rocky V, in 1990, just served to underline how far Stallone had fallen: nobody was interested. There was the poorly received Oscar in 1991, and in 1992 he fell for the comedy trap and tried his luck opposite Estelle Getty in Stop! Or my Mom Will Shoot! That Stallone has starred alongside both Dolly Parton and Estelle Getty says much about the self-destructive career decisions he made over the years. 1993 - Stallone's Year One thing about stardom is that it's self-correcting. When somebody hits really stratospheric heights of stardom, the hype becomes so overblown that it will usually help to bring about a fall. Schwarzenegger discovered the perils of overheating a career in 1993 with the release of The Last Action Hero. This is, in fact, not that bad a movie (though it's not that good either) but the hype surrounding it led to a massive backlash and it was a famous flop almost before it was released. This, incidentally, also pretty much derailed the career of John McTiernan, who at the time had directed Predator, Die Hard and The Hunt for Red October, and looked like he might be one of the top few action directors of the 90s. He's still around, but he never really got his momentum back. At the same time, to restore balance, Stallone had a pretty good year in 1993. Cliffhanger and Demolition Man were both solid, high-profile action films. Both are actually also pretty decent, particularly if you are willing to enjoy their more excessive moments at a self-conscious, self-mocking level. Demolition Man also includes a rare in-film acknowledgement of one man by the other with some dialogue that is even more disturbing in light of Schwarzenegger's subsequent political career. (I've taken the exact wording from the Imdb, so it might be slightly off, but the gist is certainly right):
A chilling vision of the future. 1994 - Schwarzenegger's Year True Lies was a big enough success that 1994 has to be given to Schwarzenegger (against Stallone's The Specialist). However, the film is another really good example of Schwarzenegger's weak points. Firstly, he simply isn't that good with the comedy aspects of the film. Secondly, he is completely out of place in what is written as a take on the Bond films. Directors had previously gotten around Schwarzenegger's ridiculous physical appearance by a number of methods: casting him as a member of a super elite squad (Predator); a robot (The Terminator); or as a joke (Twins). In True Lies he is supposed to be a James Bond-style spy, with his wife believing that he is a meek computer salesman: this premise might work if you had the kind of actor you'd cast as Bond in the role. Schwarzenegger, with biceps as thick as tree trunks, simply makes the whole premise ridiculous. There was also Junior, pushing the Schwarzenegger-as-comedian idea well past its use-by date. 1995 - 1998 - Stallone's Years My theory starts to break down in the mid 1990s: as both men enter the twilight of their careers, it is harder to point to strong wins for either of them. What I find interesting about this is the way their film careers tailed off without anyone noticing. Schwarzenegger, in particular, was such a big name that he still seemed like a big star for a decade following True Lies, despite a fairly quiet film output. Stallone was the only one of the two to make a film in 1995, with Assassins and Judge Dredd. While the former is an unremarkable action film and the latter an embarrassment, they form part of a post-Cliffhanger revival in Stallone's fortunes in these years. Cliffhanger and Demolition Man had at last given him a successful film outside of the Rocky and Rambo series, and Stallone got a string of okay action vehicles up in these years: The Specialist, Assassins, and Daylight. Cop Land, in 1997, didn't set the world on fire, but it was a reminder that Stallone did once have some credibility as a dramatic actor, something Schwarzenegger never had. Stallone also contributed enjoyable voicework for Antz in 1998, and in the absence of a 1998 entry for Schwarzenegger that's enough to give him the year. As I said, looking at Schwarzenegger's resume in this period it's interesting to note how quiet he went. Eraser, in 1996, just didn't feel like an appropriate vehicle for an A-list star, and the same year's Jingle all the Way - his last outright comedy - slipped by largely unnoticed. He also cropped up as a villain in Batman and Robinin 1997. This, theoretically, should have been a big part, since the villain roles in the Batman films had been the choice roles, filled by top stars (Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Danny De Vito, and Jim Carrey). But Schwarzenegger came on board just when the series was winding down. 1999 - 2004: Schwarzenegger's Years It's becoming hard to give any credit to either man here. Schwarzenegger reappears to a certain extent with End of Days and The Sixth Day in 1999 and 2000, then limps on to Collateral Damage (delayed until 2002 following September 11). Terminator 3, in 2003, was an easy career move, but it had the whiff of Rocky IV about it - will anyone want to see Terminator 4? And in 2004 he won the governership of California, effectively leading to a semi-retirement from the movies. It's not a strong record, but it's better than Stallone's resume in this period, which is full of movies hardly anyone saw (and a couple I hadn't even heard of): Get Carter, Driven, Avenging Angelo, D-Tox, and Shade. Neither Stallone nor Schwarzenegger really has a highly lucrative film career anymore: in the absence of really strong film projects, both have been coasting on residual star power. Now would be the perfect time for them to appear in a film together to cap off both careers. If Tarantino can get them together, it will be a rare example of synchronicity for two men who have battled over essentially the same market for more than two decades. (I look forward, incidentally, to writing a version of this post in 2025 that compares the film careers of Vin Diesel and The Rock). Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 28.3.05 - 0 comments  
Saturday, March 26, 2005
When Franchises Attack
Have you ever had one of those geek moments where you say: "Yeah, Star Trek is pretty cool. And Lord of the Rings is pretty cool. But imagine if somehow those two franchises could come together in glorious union?" For you I present: Leonard Nimoy singing "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins." This is what broadband internet was made for, my friends. Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 26.3.05 - 0 comments
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Top Ten Silly Movie Lists
Lists that attempt to categorise the Top Ten, Top Fifty or Top One Hundred of a particular thing (Films, American Films, Horror Films, Action Scenes, Stars, etc) are a staple of arguments between internet nerds, but they also pop up in a wider context. The classic example is when magazines or media outlets run one as a stunt: they choose the Top Fifty of something-or-other, and then hope that news services will pick the story up, thus getting whatever outlet came up with the list some free publicity. At their best, these can be a lot of fun, and a few, such as the lists by the American Film Institutue, arguably serve some legitimate role in raising awareness of classic films. However, every so often you get a real doozy: when Turner Classic Movies in Britain surveyed their readers to come up with the best director, actor and actress that had never won an Oscar, they came up with Demi Moore as the most deserving actress. TCM, of course, still came out a winner - the poll was reported as if it was serious news worldwide. Another recent example is Premiere magazine's list of the 50 Greatest Movie Stars, which went as follows:
The story that was carried by news services, and thus appeared in media outlets all over, played up the outrage of Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts finishing so high: while I don't necessarily agree with Cruise's placement, any modern star who was listed above James Stewart, John Wayne, Henry Fonda, and other such "classic" stars was going to be singled out in this way. (Cruise has at least been around and anchoring hit movies for twenty years, which gies him a decent claim to be amongst the top of the current stars). What I liked most about those stories was the reference to the editors "painstakingly" assembling the list over two years. It's fifty names in pretrty much random order - how painstaking can the process be? What the list reminded me of, though, was a book called Anatomy of the Movies, edited by David Pirie, published in 1981. If you can track it down, it's worth reading - it includes contributions from various big name insiders (including Donald Sutherland, Martin Scorsese, Robert Towne, and others). My favourite section is its list of the Most Profitable Stars, which is done much more systematically than the Premiere list (or at least so I will assume, until provided with details of their painstaking research). Starting from the thirties, and using actual box-office data, it lists the most profitable stars for five year blocks until 1970, and then anually throughout the 70s. (Top star of 1978: Burt Reynolds. Those were the days). These lists are then the basis for a overall list for the period 1932-1980 which goes as follows: 1. John Wayne Because of the way this list is done, it rewards consistency, which seems a reasonable principle. What is most interesting about this list, however, is Clint Eastwood's stellar perfomance: he is listed as the top star of 1972, 1973, and 1979-1980, and never dropped below 6th during the seventies. This prompted the following comment in the book: ... John Wayne emerges far ahead of all other contenders, reflecting the sheer longevity of his popularity and therefore earning power. His only possible rival is Clint Eastwood, who may soon transcend Gable, Crosby and Cooper, but he will need many more years of major screen success to threaten Wayne.Subsequent to this declaration Eastwood has starred in twenty movies, including Sudden Impact, Pale Rider, Unforgiven, In the Line of Fire, The Bridges of Madison County, Absolute Power, and Million Dollar Baby, not to mention having two years where he was Oscar nominated for acting and won both the Best Director and Best Picture Oscar. So how did he end up 40 spots below Tom Cruise? One last and particularly brain-busting example. A friend of mine in the UK, knowing of my interest in animation, alerted me to a particularly strange list: the 100 Greatest Cartoons. Run by Channel 4, the survey came up with the following 100 cartoons. The nominations, incidentally, were supplied by Channel 4, who only nominated 105 cartoons, meaning that The Wacky Races, at 100, only beat out five other candidates. The final list chosen from the nominees by viewers was as follows: 1. The Simpsons In sending it to me, he assumed I'd be outraged by the low placing for Bugs Bunny, and the high positioning of Tom & Jerry. While Tom & Jerry's strong finish was a surprise, the placements didn't worry me so much (and it was good to see The Iron Giant up at number 12) What really gave me a headache was the way that they had used a very wide definition of "cartoon" and thus ended up comparing totally different things with each other. So a cartoon TV show "The Simpsons" competes against feature films ("The Lion King"); series of feature films ("Toy Story / Toy Story 2" mysteriously being merged into a single entity); TV shows that have also been feature films ("South Park"); characters ("Bugs Bunny"); series of theatrical short cartoons ("Looney Tunes / Merrie Melodies"); one-off TV specials ("How the Grinch Stole Christmas"); and series of TV specials ("Charlie Brown"). It's kind of like having a list of Favourite Movies that includes Citizen Kane, "Cheers", Scarlett O'Hara, the Bond Series, and the Grand Final Telecast. Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 23.3.05 - 0 comments
M*A*S*H is Hell
Life's small irritations: it always annoys me that the TV show M*A*S*H, starring Alan Alda, is so much better known and more widely seen than Robert Altman's original 1970 film MASH (with Donald Sutherland as Hawkeye, and without asterisks in the title). Altman's movie is a classic, really brutal and anarchic in a way that the TV show could never be. And who could really prefer Alan Alda to Sutherland, or Larry Linville to Robert Duvall, or Loretta Swit to Sally Kellerman, or William Christopher to Rene Auberjonois, or Wayne Rogers to Elliot Gould? There shouldn't be any competition. The film was also a landmark in terms of technology and style. Altman, at this point, was experimenting with the use of radio mikes and multiple-channel mixing to get away from the need for a single microphone to record on-set sound. This change made it much more possible to record free-flowing, overlapping dialogue that approximated the rhythms of real speech. When taken to to the extremes that it is in MASH it can get kind of wearying to listen to, but it was an important development in allowing both sound design and acting to explore a more naturalistic style. In MASH it also contributes to the chaotic atmosphere, and helped MASH usurp the claim of Mike Nichols' Catch-22 (released the same year) to be the definitive depiction of the madness of life in the military. What prompted all this was reading the slightly tongue in cheek arguments put here and here by Jaime J. Weinman about how M*A*S*H wasn't as good a TV show as Hogan's Heroes. I won't comment on Hogan's Heroes, but it seems to me that the knee-jerk idea that M*A*S*H represented some high-watermark of the TV sitcom is an idea very much limited to one particular generation. Those over about thirty (or maybe forty) often cite it almost reflexively as being one of the great sitcoms, as if it is obvious and demands no more thought. (Ross Warneke, who writes in the Green Guide supplement of The Age, has done this fairly regularly over the years). Unlike a lot of other shows regularly mentioned in this way (such as, say, All in the Family), M*A*S*H is regularly repeated on Australian TV. Because of my interest in the movie, I've dipped in and out of the TV show over the years. And it really sucks. It's heavy-handed and not terribly funny, with one-note characters and a really intrusive, annoying laugh track. The often-praised complexity of tone, with "war-is-hell" messages mixed with the comedy, doesn't strike me as much more sophisticated than the ham-fisted way 80s family sitcoms like Family Ties would shoe-horn moral lessons into each show. What interests me is that I've never met anybody my age (I'm 29) or younger who likes it either. With most of these old sitcoms that have been endlessly replayed during our youth, you can find people with some liking or passing interest in them. Yet anecdotally, I think most people under about thirty react to M*A*S*H much the same way I do: they just can't see what the fuss is about. Hopefully, over time, this emerging anti-M*A*S*H generation will see the TV show reevaluated. In the meantime, it's a shame that the reputation of Altman's much more interesting movie (which I think many of the more complacent of the TV show's fans would find too confronting) suffers by association with such a dull show. Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 23.3.05 - 3 comments
Friday, March 18, 2005
War of the Trailers
Since I've been talking about trailers, another to check out is the latest for Spielberg's War of the Worlds. I'm looking forward to the film, just to see Spielberg show up Roland Emmerich's awful and derivative Independence Day, but it has to be said that the trailer uses every cliche of trailer editing other than the super-deep voice. It's very hard to take seriously so soon after the Hitchhiker's trailer. Ah, I love the lead-in to the American summer. Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 18.3.05 - 0 comments
Do What Must be Done...
There have been a couple of good trailers floating around the net in the last few weeks. The first is the latest for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is worth a look even if you're not that interested in the movie. It's kind of a meta-trailer, commenting on the conventions of movie trailers, and is fun purely on that level. And it should also leave you wanting to see the movie which is, after all, the point. I particularly enjoyed hearing Stephen Fry's version of the Guide, which is spot on. But the behemoth of trailers is the new trailer for Revenge of the Sith. We Star Wars nerds bring trailer-watching to a new height, which is not surprising given that the trailers for The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones were generally considered to be considerably superior to the movies themselves. It's old news by now that geeks go to see movies they otherwise wouldn't simply to see the latest Star Wars trailer. That was happening back in the 90s: things have gotten much more bizarre since then. The Revenge of the Sith trailer debuted on American television during The O.C., so of course the network which carries that show ran ads to let people know that they should watch. Since this ad for The O.C. included a couple of seconds of footage form the movie, it itself ended up on the net. So at this point, fans were actually downloading a trailer for a trailer. This is the kind of madness broadband internet has created. (Did I download it myself? You bet). But we don't have to worry about the trailer-for-a-trailer anymore: the full trailer is now up for everyone to enjoy at the official Star Wars site, and in YoTube form directly below (although it may be worth the hunt for a mirror that lets you download it and enlarge the picture, rather than watching it in a teeny window, as it looks much better full screen). Unlike the first teaser trailer, which I didn't find terribly exciting, this one is pretty spectacular. My main gripe is that it gives away pretty much the whole trajectory of the movie. In particular, it leads front-and-centre with the fact that Palpatine is the villain. While any Star Wars fan is aware of this, I suspect many casual viewers hadn't necessarily linked Palpatine and Sidious / The Emperor in their minds. While it's hardly a big secret, neither The Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones had been terribly overt about it, and you'd think they'd preserve at least a little bit of a "reveal" for this moment in the final film. Having said that, as someone who already knows who Palpatine is, his dominance of the trailer is probably what I personally like most about it. Ian McDiarmid is just about the best thing in the prequel films, and it has been enjoyable watching him gradually skew Palpatine more towards his portrayal of the Emperor in Return of the Jedi. His off-kilter, over-enunciated delivery is one of the few examples where the much-maligned, deliberately theatrical acting Lucas encourages has really worked. Palpatine is a great master villain, and his speech in the trailer - "Do what must be done. Do not hesitate. Show no mercy" - gives me chills each time I hear it. The other thing that's interesting in this trailer is the darkness of the tone. While this was always to be expected, given this film charts the downfall of both Anakin and the Republic, it's great to actually see it there on the screen. This involves more than just the fire-and-brimstone scenes on the lava planet, with more quietly menacing shots such as this: The obviously 9/11 inspired imagery of such a shot would normally make me cringe, but it is interesting in the context of the thematics of the prequel trilogy. For all the disappointments of the prequels, I have always thought the basic plot thrust was really interesting: they show the way a government can rot from the inside, and the way citizens can voluntarily surrender their rights to a dictator. While both The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones were written before September 11, their message has proven to be very timely, given the constant pressure upon civil rights since those events. Particularly prescient are the scenes in Attack of the Clones where the Galactic Senate willingly grant expanded military powers to Palpatine in response to an immediate security threat. I think the basic message that these scenes impart - that rights are surrendered at our peril, and that politicians may use crises to achieve their own ends - is a really vital one. Given that Revenge of the Sith is the first of the films to be fully written and shot after September 11, it is interesting to see those events flavouring this plot arc. What is really creepy about this whole parallel between real life and the prequel trilogy is that every time I see Phillip Ruddock, the Australian Attorney General, on TV I feel like I'm looking at Palpatine. Judge for yourself: One of these people is being eaten away inside after surrendering to the dark side in order to secure greater political power... and the other is the principal villain of the new Star Wars movies. I wish I could find this funny. Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 18.3.05 - 0 comments
Saturday, March 12, 2005
Buggered Bunny Returns
I really thought I was going to leave poor old Buzz alone: but this parody - well spotted by Cartoon Brew - is too funny not to mention. Please note that an extreme language warning applies. Labels: buzz bunny Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 12.3.05 - 0 comments
Saturday, March 05, 2005
Best Director vs. Best Picture
This isn't a full post, but rather a follow-up to my comments on the Best Director Oscar: I stumbled across this article at efilmcritic.com that catalogues and critiques all the years where the Picture and Director winners differed. It's an interesting list: what's fascinating in is how often the film that won the Director Oscar is better than the one that won Best Picture. That's all. Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 5.3.05 - 0 comments
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Best Director?
I just wanted to comment briefly, following the Oscars, on Martin Scorsese and the Best Director Oscar. As many have noted, the poor guy keeps losing out on Best Director to actors-turned-director (Robert Redford, Kevin Costner, and Clint Eastwood), despite pretty much everyone believing Scorsese is amongst the top handful of living directors. I'm amongst those who don't necessarily feel that he should have won for The Aviator: it's a good movie, and he did an impeccable job, but it's certainly not so strong that his loss this year seems some kind of injustice. And Eastwood clearly now deserves recognition as a major director in his own right, so the actor-turned-director thing wasn't an indignity this time either. (It was when Costner won). But I was reminded of this post by Jaime J. Weinman about the Best Director Oscar. Weinman's point is that if the director is in charge of bringing together all the other contributions to a film, why do we have a separate Oscar for the Best Director and the Best Picture? Shouldn't they be the same? Here's how Weinman argues it (in part):
Weinman is of course right that the director's job is not just about flashy visual flourishes: I don't think The Aviator is a well directed movie simply because of the showy scenes such as the great aerial scene near the start, during the filming of Hell's Angels. But The Aviator is a classic example of a big budget movie (ie, not the B movie scenario Weinman cites) with script problems that prevent it from achieving real greatness. Its shortcomings are pretty much all script related: its simplistic explanation for Hughes' neuroses; its inability to really bring the film to a proper conclusion; the poorly sketched relationships with the women in has life after he left Hepburn; and so on. However, I think Scorsese did an excellent job on pretty much everything that I'd consider the director's job, including the non-visual components Weinman cites, such as getting good performances out of the actors. I guess my difference with Weinman is that while I'll include a lot of the intangible, non-visual things within the director's purview, as well as a certain degree of supervisory stuff (ie guiding composers, and art directors, and s on to fulfill the director's vision) I don't think this necessarily extends to it being their job to get a good script. Getting a good script is often simply a matter of taking time to do rewrites, and unless we are talking about a writer-director, all the director can do in this situation is to try to convince the studio to hold of production until the script is done. But Hollywood is studio-driven and obsessed with release-dates, and it is a very short list of directors who can halt the juggernaut if the deal is done and the production is due to begin. Even Scorsese (who is universally respected, but far from box-office gold) is not on that list. Which means I think there is still a case for looking at something like The Aviator and saying that Scorsese's direction is better than the movie itself. Obviously its hard to separate the many-faceted contribution of the director from the overall quality of the film. But if we don't attempt to, and see the directors' job as just to get good results in all the other aspects of the production, then our notion of quality in direction becomes synonymous with high production values. I know scungy but well directed movies don't end up competing for the Oscars, but at least theoretically, the best director Oscar should be able to recognise a director who did a good job of overcoming a poor script, or lack of good actors, or whatever else. It might be hard to define what exactly a director does, but I still think it is a craft, capable of independent assessment. (Incidentally, I should be reviewing The Aviator on Cinephobia this weekend.) Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 1.3.05 - 0 comments
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