Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Day 62: My Name Is A Killing Word

DUNE (1984)
Directed by David Lynch
Starring: Kyle MacLachlan, Viriginia Madsen, Francesca Annis, Jurgen Prochnow, Kenneth McMillan, Sting, José Ferrer, Brad Dourif, Freddie Jones, Patrick Stewart, Jack Nance, Everett McGill, Paul Smith

I love David Lynch.  His films are strange, off-putting, visually stunning, beautiful, disturbing, funny, scary, noisy and just plain weird.  And all of these elements are in every film he does.  He is probably the most original director working in movies today. 

But in the early 80's, Lynch was the hottest new director in town.  Coming hot off the heels of his genre-defying student film Eraserhead and the Oscar nominated The Elephant Man, Lynch was in high demand.  He was even on George Lucas' short list of directors he wanted for the conclusion of the Star Wars saga, Return of the Jedi.  Lynch turned it down, however, claiming that the film would be more Lucas' vision than his own. 

A few years earlier, an equally experimental director named Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo, Santa Sangre) was planning a big-screen version of Frank Herbert's epic sci-fi novel Dune.  The film was to be designed by H.R. Geiger, the music was to be by Pink Floyd, and the film would star Salvador Dali, Orson Welles, Gloria Swanson, David Carradine and Mick Jagger, among others.  The idea was scrapped in pre-production.  As years went by, other directors (such as Ridley Scott) were attached and detached from the project.  Producer Dino De Laurentiis sat on the project for a few years, until he heard that David Lynch was interested.

Now, for those of us from the Lord of the Rings generation, we've seen this formula work: Epic Novel + Hot Young Director + Built-In Fanbase = Box Office Gold.  And yet, Dune was one of the biggest flops of the 80's.  What went wrong? 

As a first-time viewer of Dune - and as one who has never read the novel - all I can do is offer my first impression of the film.  The story is long and complicated, and almost Shakespearean in scope.  There is so much to this story about spice mining, warring houses, a Messianic prophecy and political intrigue that it's almost impossible to fit it all into a two-hour film.  As such, the film opens with a lengthy back story, telling the viewer where we are and why this world is the way it is.  Lynch apparently is assuming that 90% of the people in the theater hadn't read the book, so he gives us the Cliffs Notes version up front.  Also, throughout the film, any questions as to what the characters are thinking are cleared up immediately, as we are treated to the inmost thoughts and reflections of nearly all of the "good guys." 

Our hero Paul Atreides (MacLachlan) comes from a long line of clairvoyants, and may be the most clairvoyant-y of them all.  This makes the Spacing Guild very nervous, as he may grow to threaten the production of "Spice," a sort of drug that allows the user to "fold time" and "travel without moving."  Already, most of the audience is confused.  Even I'm probably getting it wrong, and I just watched this thing today. 

Anyway, the Emperor of the Known Universe (Ferrer) is ordered to kill Paul, so he calls on the rival House of Harkonnen, where the Baron (McMillan) plans to ambush the House of Atreides on the spice mining planet of Arrakis, aka DUNE, a desert planet, and the only known place where spice can be found. Two assassins - Rabban (Smith) and Feyd-Rautha (Sting) - accompany him.  But once the House of Atreides falls, Paul and his mother fall in with a nomadic tribe called the Fremen, who share their prophecy about how their Messiah will come.  Together, they decide to take down both the House of Harkonnen and the Empire and the entire spice mining industry.

I probably left some stuff out.  But give me a break; that's a lot to keep up with.  Hamlet doesn't have this many story lines and plot twists.  But as obtuse and impenetrable as the story is, the film is a visual treat; I would expect nothing less from David Lynch.  He does a fantastic job visualizing this Universe, and the concepts that are too strange to actually explain, he shows us, using every cinematic trick in the book.  The effect of the spice on Paul's mind is a pretty trippy thing to watch.  And even though some of the visual effects look pretty dated by today's standards, they're still pretty amazing. 

And as if all this wasn't enough, it turns out that this is the only film on which David Lynch didn't get "final cut" (that is, the final authorization of the print that gets shipped to theaters).  As such, it's hard to tell what parts of this movie were Lynch's and which parts were the studio's.  But having been a fan of Lynch for some years, I think it's a safe bet that the "all knowing" voices we hear weren't his idea.  He really does subscribe to the "Show, don't tell" philosophy.  Besides, if you've ever seen Eraserhead or Mulholland Drive, you know that Lynch doesn't feel he has to explain anything. 

This movie is definitely a mixed bag.  It has some wonderful moments, but there is a ton of stuff to remember and some pretty hammy dialogue.  However, it does make me want to read the novel, so I guess the film isn't a total failure.  Dune purists insist the book is about a thousand times better than the film, but purists are always that way.  It's probably the most mainstream of any film Lynch has ever done, and as such, isn't a very good primer for what he's all about. 

NEXT WEEK: Forbidden Planet

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Day 61: You Are False Data

DARK STAR (1974)
Directed by John Carpenter
Starring: Dan O'Bannon, Brian Narelle, Cal Kuniholm, Dre Pahich

On a decaying spaceship called Dark Star, four astronauts schlep around the galaxy destroying "unstable planets" so as to make way for Earth's colonization of the cosmos.  Of course, if you're stuck in space for that long, that means you have a lot of time to kill.  And the crew does so by telling stories that go nowhere and caring for a beachball-shaped alien that likes to play hide-and-seek.  But after the ship's faulty wiring tells one of the "smart bombs" to detonate itself, the crew must try to convince it not to do so.  As a result, the bomb develops a pretty serious "god-complex."

If all of this sounds like a good idea for a short student film, then you're right on the money.  At first, that's exactly what it was.  Director John Carpenter and writer/co-star Dan O'Bannon made a 45-minute version of this film at USC.  Then, over the next three years, they expanded it to 83 minutes (most of it footage of Sgt. Pinback - played by O'Bannon - chasing the beachball alien around the ship), with the help of producer Jack Harris.  The final completed feature-length version debuted in 1974 to little fanfare. 

So yeah, blah blah blah, history.  Is it any good?  Well, yes and no.

The major problem with developing a short into a feature is pacing.  It can be - and has been - done to great effect in such films as George Lucas' THX 1138 and David Lynch's Eraserhead (which was meant to be a feature all along).  But the problem with Dark Star is that...well, nothing interesting happens until about forty minutes into the film.  Until then, we just sort of "hang out" with the crew.  We even spend 20 excruciating minutes watching Sgt. Pinback chasing the beachball alien.  This sequence could have been it's own short.  In fact, O'Bannon recycled this theme into a little film you may have heard of called Alien a few years later.

Also, this film is purported to be a comedy.  Fine.  Sci-fi comedies are rare, but not unheard of.  But comedies are supposed to be funny.  And, because of the aforementioned pacing problems, there's not much to laugh at until the we near the film's climax.  One of the funniest scenes is when Lt. Doolittle (Narelle) consults the dead-yet-cryogenically-frozen Commander Powell on how to disarm the bomb that threatens to blow them all to bits.  But Powell has been frozen so long, his only question is, "How are the Dodgers doing?"

The DVD version I got has what essentially amounts to an apology written by O'Bannon himself and shown in the style of the open crawl from the Star Wars films.  He tells the story of the film and how it's supposed to be funny and all that.  He also says that you don't have to laugh if you don't want to, "Unless I'm in the room with you."  Well it's a good thing he wasn't, because I really didn't laugh all that much.

Now, as far as student films go, I've seen worse.  But it should have stayed a student film until a few re-writes were done, and they could have raised enough money to make it look halfway decent.  Even as a feature, it still has all the trappings that make people know it's a student film: bad lighting, bad acting and terrible sound design.  But this just goes to show you the power that exposure has in Hollywood.  As we all know, John Carpenter did alright for himself.  Dan O'Bannon went on to become one of the most sought-after screenwriters in town.  So even if your debut is as inauspicious as this one, don't beat yourself up too badly.  If the right people see it, you never know what could happen next.

NEXT WEEK: David Lynch's Dune

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Day 60: Death To The Machines!

METROPOLIS (1927)
Directed by Fritz Lang
Starring: Alfred Abel, Brigitte Helm, Gustav Fröhlich, Rudolph Klein-Rogg, Erwin Biswanger, Theodore Loos, Fritz Rasp, Heinrich George

In the Not-Too-Distant Future, a city known simply as Metropolis stands as the pinnacle of man's achievements.  But beneath all the gleaming glass, metal and neon lies the city of the workers - a sub-race of people who take on the dangerous task of making this ultra-modern city run.  This modern-day Tower of Babel (a reference this film will not let you get away from) is the brainchild of Joh Fredersen (Abel).  He lives in the city's central tower with his son Freder (Fröhlich), a blonde-haired, blue-eyed young man who is the epitome of Aryan manhood (did I mention this is a German film?).

But one day, Freder's idyllic life screeches to a halt when Maria (Helm) - a young teacher in the world below - brings a group of grubby children to the surface as a part of her lesson on the Brotherhood of Man.  As this is a silent film, it's difficult to tell whether Freder is smitten by Maria or feels sorry for the children (maybe both?), but either way, he follows them down to the workers' city.  There, his heart goes out to his fellow men and women who slave away so he and his fellows can live the high life.  He goes to his father, who points out that everyone has their place in the world, and theirs is up above.  However, clues are being dropped about a worker uprising.  To make matters worse, Freder trades his cushy life above with an anonymous worker simply known as 11811 (Biswanger), who promptly goes above to drink and whore it up for a few weeks while Freder slaves away underground.

Meanwhile, Joh Fredersen seeks the counsel of Dr. Rotwang (Klein-Rogge), the inventor who made Fredersen's mad visions a reality.  Rotwang is working on a robot he calls his "Machine-Man" - a misleading name, as he plans to turn it into a woman.  Specifically, into the likeness of Joh Fredersen's late wife Hel, who he had a mad crush on.  But Fredersen has other plans: he wants to make the robot resemble Maria - whom the workers revere as a living saint, preaching tolerance and peace - and make it a villainous she-devil who will incite the workers to riot, thus giving Fredersen a reason to wipe out all the troublemakers.

This was a big movie.  Which is odd, considering that, during the silent era, it was Hollywood who was doing the "big movies."  In Europe, films were usually more expressionistic, introspective works about the duality of human nature and the horrors of war (the silent era happening during and directly after World War I). But the studio who made the film - Universum Film, AG (or UFA) - had just signed a major US distribution deal with American studios Paramount and Metro (not yet Metro Goldwyn-Mayer).  Though still modestly budgeted, Lang's vision grew larger and larger.  In the end, the film - originally budgeted at 1 million Reichsmarks ended up costing more than 5 million.  Adjusted for inflation, we're talking about $200 million in today's money, making Metropolis the most expensive silent film ever made.

So...does it hold up?  Oh, yes.

Silent films are all about the visuals - it's the only way they have to tell the story.  As such, the film is a visual feast, full of strange and wonderful architecture, amazing set pieces and some rather impressive visual effects for the time.  I'm usually intimidated by silent films, as I sometimes wonder whether they can keep my interest for two hours with no dialogue.  But the story of Metropolis has so many layers that I found it impossible to become bored. 

Of course, there are a few negative points as well.  The acting in silent films is, more often than not, very over-the-top, almost to the point of being hokey.  Gustav Fröhlich's acting is particularly tough to watch at times, as his wild gesticulations are unintentionally funny.  Brigitte Helm is much better at being low-key as the peace loving Maria.  But she also plays the robot version of herself, and does an equally good job being evil and seductive.  Everyone else's acting is pretty par for the course.

Also, the copy I got was incomplete.  Being as old as it is, there are bits and pieces of the film that were considered lost when this version was put together.  The parts that were missing were described in intertitles put there by the well-meaning folks at Kino Video.  But I hear they've actually found a good deal of the missing footage in Argentina and are in the process of putting together a more complete version of the film.  I certainly hope so, as those intertitles were describing some pretty key (and undoubtedly entertaining) scenes.

The only other negative point is a big one: the ending.  I always hate it when movies go on longer than they have to in order to tack on a happy ending, which is exactly what happens here.  I won't spoil it for you, but the film should have ended about five minutes earlier.  The point about the unity of mankind was already made, but Lang just decided to hammer it home one more time with a completely unnecessary final scene, followed by a title card that pretty much explained the moral of the story IN BIG BOLD LETTERS.  Apparently, it wasn't enough to mention it roughly twenty times in the previous two hours.  In modern terms, think of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, and how many times you heard Uncle Ben say "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility."  Then imagine it's on a title card IN BIG BOLD LETTERS right before the credits roll.  Then you'll get the idea.

So yes, Metropolis was awesome.  And it's one of the few silent films that still holds up after nearly 100 years. 

NEXT WEEK: John Carpenter's DARKSTAR

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Moving on...

Bah, the one copy I could find of Scorsese's version of Cape Fear was so badly damaged, I couldn't get it to play.  I'll have to come back to that one.

In the meantime, it's Classic Sci-Fi!  Yes, for the next five weeks, I will be watching the genre I think I have most ignored, strange as it seems.  I'm one of those who feels there's nothing in the Sci-Fi world beyond Star Wars and Star Trek.  Let's see if I'm right or wrong, shall we?

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Day 59: You Put The Law In My Hands...And I'm Gonna Break Your Heart With It!

CAPE FEAR (1962)
Directed by J. Lee Thompson
Starring: Gegory Peck, Robert Mitchum, Polly Bergen, Lori Martin, Martin Balsam, Telly Savalas, Barrie Chase

Eight years after being convicted of assault, Max Cady (Mitchum) saunters into Savannah, Georgia and confronts the man who testified against him: attorney Sam Bowden (Peck).  Cady makes no threats, but he certainly wants to make sure Bowden knows he's out.  Thinking little of it, Bowden goes home to his wife Peggy (Bergen) and 14-year old daughter Nancy (Martin).  Their happy little suburban life continues, but Sam starts noticing Cady turning up everywhere he and his family goes.  Sam goes to the police chief (Balsam), who...well, can't do much, seeing as how Cady hasn't done anything worthy of being arrested.  Sure, he (allegedly) poisons their dog, follows them around town and leers lustfully at Bowden's wife and daughter, but I guess there's was no law against that in the early 60's.  These days, you'd get 5 years for that sort of thing. 

Bowdens paranoia grows, and he hires a private detective named Kojak Charlie Sievers (Savalas), who tails Cady.  When they find one of his mistresses roughed up in a hotel room, they finally have something to bring him in on, but the young lady (Chase) refuses to testify.  Bowden finally confronts Cady in a bar and offers to pay him anything he wants.  All Cady wants is to make Bowden suffer by taking that which is most precious to him.  Bowden finally cracks and hires a gang of hoodlums to rough Cady up, but to no avail. 

Thus begins the most convoluted self-defense plot in history, which concludes with Peggy and Nancy on a houseboat and, while Cady thinks Bowden is in Atlanta, Bowden actually goes to Cape Fear (a real place, dontcha know) to be with his wife and daughter while Sievers meets them there with the hope that Cady is following him so Cady can set foot on their property and, thus, Bowden will be within his legal right to shoot him.  What could go wrong?

Cape Fear has a definite Hitchcockian feel to it.  It was released about two years after Psycho and scenes of the film were actually shot in "Mother's House" on the Universal backlot.  Director J. Lee Thompson had worked with Hitchcock on an earlier film back in England, and several members of the crew (Art Director Robert Boyle and editor George Tomasini) had worked with Hitch on North by Northwest.  Even the music was done by Hitchcock mainstay Bernard Hermann.  So basically what we have is a director emulating one of his heroes.  This is usually a problem (remember Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho?), but here, it's an homage done right.  Besides the preposterous ending, everything works.  Heck, even the climax is so chilling that it's pretty easy to forget the fact that Bowden's plan is full of holes. 

This is the second film in which I've seen Robert Mitchum play the villain, and between the Rev. Harry Powell and Max Cady, I'd definitely say that Cady is the stronger of the two.  There's no moral compass on this man, either real or imagined.  His is the worst of the worst - the very kind of person you hope never gets out of jail, and yet is walking the streets right now. 

Also, this is the second film in which I've seen Gregory Peck play a southern lawyer (we all know the other one).  But where Atticus Finch was strong and stoic in the face of evil, Sam Bowers lets his fear and paranoia get the better of him.  He tries to do everything he can within the confines of the "system," but with no success.  Even when he goes outside the law, he fails.  The only way he can deal with Cady is to take him down himself; a task even he doesn't think he's up to.

Now for the most obvious question: "What did you think of Scorsese's 1991 remake?"  Well...I'll have to let you know next time!

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Short answer: working.  Yes, peak season at Universal Hollywood is nearly here and, as such, I've been extremely busy. 

I'm also thinking that, in order to finish this project, I'm going to have to devise a new strategy.  Namely, doing 100 movies in a year.  Yes, I do plan to finish this thing before the year is out.

Also, it has come to my attention that there hasn't been any real rhyme or reason to the films I've been watching.  I'll just come across something and say, "Hey, I've never seen that one," watch it and write about it.  That was all well and good at the beginning, but now I think it's time to step my game up a bit. 

Starting soon, I will have theme months (not weeks, since I can't do this daily anymore).  And I'm leaving the first theme month decision up to you, dear reader(s).  So go ahead.  What should my first theme be?