Take Three: Melissa George

Craig here with Take Three. Today: Melissa George

Take One: This is the Girl

She was indeed the girl. But which girl? Camilla Rhodes? Just another nameless blond wannabe actress lip-syncing for her life? A slinky id to further lead Betty down Hollywood’s hellish rabbit hole - or take Diane for a five-dollar fool? She embodied what Betty/Diane always wanted; she represented what killed Betty/Diane. Of course she was Melissa George making the fake fifties pretty by miming her way through Linda Scott’s ‘I’ve Told Every Little Star’. The camera catches her pouts, puckers and pretend act up close and personal. She's the girl in a glossy 10x8; a haunting headshot in your face. One thing’s for sure: we’ll never know what, why or indeed who Camilla was. That’s the big unanswered anomaly of David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. (2001). 

But it was that kiss that did it. A while back I briefly mentioned the screen bitchery of it all, but the nails dug in further than that. However amazing Laura Haring (the recipient of the kiss) and Naomi Watts (the recipient of the tease) were as co-leads, George defined Mulholland Dr.’s raunchy raison d'être. You can lead a girl to Hollywood, but you can’t make her a star, the film painfully posited. Someone like Camilla always gets there first. She embodied the poisonous allure of envy in one lipstick smear; that scorching make-up mark was the hurtful hot spot out of which revenge was born. George’s Camilla was the key player in Betty’s downfall. We should hate her for this, but something about her face, her pouty glance a split second after that kiss, inspires fascination. She’s pure wickedness. She was definitely the girl.

It ended with a kiss: Melissa George kills with a kiss in Mulholland Dr.

Take Two: George of the genre jungle

There’s much to be said for a stint of hard work. I’d never bemoan an actor their adulation just for being an overnight sensation, but the hard grafters, those willing to take ongoing employment to remain on the radar, often deserve extra kudos in my book. George has never been one to sniff at a hearty genre role. After the mini Mulholland break she took on a spate of roles, mostly horrors and thrillers, which many an actress in her shoes may have dispatched to their out tray with much haste. But the following quintet of genre titles from the '00s mid-section contained some of George's best work: The Amityville Horror (2005), Derailed (2005), Turistas/Paradise Lost (2006), wΔz and 30 Days of Night (both 2007).

George does genre: ambushing Amityville (left); 30 days of fright (right)

One could say the above flicks are as derivative as they come, and maybe they'd be right, but isn’t that partly the name of the genre game? Many of today’s established acting favourites started with a trek down generic lane. George is paying her dues and adding much characterful determination to these work-a-day projects (and has often been the best thing about them). She was good as the worrisome wife with a demonically-possessed husband in Amityville; and as Clive Owen’s cuckolded Mrs. in Derailed. Admittedly the dreadlocked hair she sported in Turistas was a mistake, but her spirited turn wasn’t. In wΔz she was the only cast member who looked like she knew what she was doing, and walked off with her own, and indeed everyone else’s, acting honours. And her forthright, no-nonsense approach to all things vampiric in 30 Days of Night impressed me greatly. These "guilty" pleasures, added to her sterling turn in Take Three’s film below, make her the number one genre gal of choice.

Take Three: Three-point turn

Arguably George gave her best performance to date as the mysterious, bedraggled and refreshingly unlikely main protagonist trapped aboard an abandoned phantom ship with six other bewildered souls in 2009’s time-warping mystery-thriller Triangle. (Imagine Donnie Darko committing a few Timecrimes whilst adrift on Hitchcock’s Lifeboat.) George's character, young single mum Jess, is desperate to get back on dry land - and within a stable time zone - to take care of her son – or to maybe clear up a few secret matters that she, and writer-director Christopher Smith, have been carefully withholding from us. George was better in this solid scary offering than many of her direct contemporaries have been in their last few higher-profile "legit" films. But there's little awards buzz around George as yet, though there should be. She's that good - and in wonderfully unexpected ways.

Jess' fear and exhaustion, which gradually and convincingly turns to forceful resourcefulness, is vividly conveyed by George through some highly tricky, elaborate scenes. Like the narrative, she never falters for a moment; her performance keeps the film afloat, and makes its often daft yet exciting twisty turns work well. In the film's final stretch she’s better than ever, and displays immense skill and depth during several rug-pull moments. It's these scenes that should convince anyone just how good she truly is. It’s a committed, bolshy turn from an exciting actress. I'd gladly watch George navigate her way through Triangle on a loop. Over and over and over...

Mel G shoots first, asks questions later (literally) in Triangle

TV @ The Movies: "Glee" and "The Walking Dead"

What is the ideal format for talking about tv? I'm beginning to think it's Twitter since even in the days of next day recaps and the 'watch it on your own time' DVR reality, people often watch it in great masses, round about the same time -- only staggered with everyone in their own slightly skewed time zones. I'm on NESST (Nathaniel's Eastern Stop & Start Time). TV has never been the all immersive experience that the movies can be... so it makes sense that people are now tweeting as they're watching. TV is jerry-rigged to withstand distractions: housework, phone calls, commercials. Twitter and Facebook only amplify this and now everyone has become their own tv critic, ringleader, announcer, omniscient narrator, diarist. I always wish that the movies were this accessible to people to enjoy en masse but... sigh.

With deeper immersion comes less accessibility I suppose.

If she's growling and decomposing, shoot her! 

Anyway, Sunday night I opted not to tweet through AMC's much ballyhooed THE WALKING DEAD. I was curious before the series even began how they would work around television restrictions, only to realize that there are no restrictions. You can apparently show anything on non-premium cable during prime-time hours including little girls and grown men getting their brains blown out (in slo-mo!) and men getting their heads smashed to bits with baseball bats as long as nobody says the naughty "F" word or shows the naughty boobies, butts or dangly man-bits.

[Lots on GLEE & more WALKING DEAD after the jump]

Read more »

Take Three: David Warner

Craig here with Take Three.

Today: David Warner

Heads, brains and faces, skewed or distorted, are the prominent concerns with today’s Take Three supporting actor David Warner: the lopping off, the removal of, and the obsessively creepy staring, respectively, are what it's all about. In The Omen, From Beyond the Grave and The Man with Two Brains Warner thrilled us in a delightful and devious manner. He's an ideal actor for Halloween season.


Take One: I'm starting with the Man in the Mirror

Double-dealing, in particular, was the name of the game in ‘The Gate Crasher’, the first segment of Kevin Connor’s 1973 Amicus portmanteau film From Beyond the Grave. Warner was Edward Charlton, who surely lived to regret the snagging of an ancient, dubiously prescient mirror from shopkeeper Peter Cushing at a cut-price cost. Warner plays Charlton as cocky and belligerent one minute, and fearfully seized up the next. He germanely conveys the icky terror of Charlton’s unique-antique situation. His slight and consistent facial twitches betraying his discomfort. You can practically feel the (assumed) beads of sweat snaking down his back whenever the séance-induced, Ripper-like spirit appears on "the other side". He’s the best filmic embodiment of why séances can be bad luck for all concerned.

Warner ensures that Charlton’s inherent nature is suspect; he takes duplicity and makes it his bitch. But really he was ultimately an unlucky chancer who simply picked the wrong shopkeep to fleece. All that’s left dangling at the end – the question suspiciously hanging over the film’s cycle of reflection-based entrapment – is: who did Charlton con next? Reproductions, replacements...ah, they can cost dearly.

The moral of the story: don’t be a selfish git. Or, to put it another way: never, ever mess with a Yorkshire-accented Peter Cushing.

Take Two:  Dial 666 for Warner

Read more »

Halloween Top Ten: I ♥ Zombies; or, Up with Dead People

Craig here. It's Halloween and the new horror tv series The Walking Dead is nearly upon us. This is what I've been thinking about day-to-day for the last few weeks. So here's a Tuesday Top Ten Special (i.e. it's on the weekend instead... and it's Halloween themed) to get you thinking about all things zombified. Perfect for a day made for the dead. Alive or recently embalmed, all enter here. But shuffle in s-l-o-w-l-y now...

A Top Ten Undernourished and Underloved Zombie Characters (in no order) are all getting some love this Halloween. Who's first out of the grave...?

1. Colin in Colin (2008)

Colin: the most exotically-named zombie character ever

Poor old Colin. He should rank alongside Day of the Dead’s Bub as one of the most sympathetic cinematic zombies ever. Apparently it only cost director Marc Price £45 to bring Colin to the screen; not a penny was wasted on achieving pleasingly affecting acting from the man himself, Alastair Kirton. If, like me, you wonder just what went on in the pre-zombified lives of the unnamed undead – folk like, say, Second Zombie on the Left or Gunshot-Wound to the Head Zombie or Uncle Zombie Who Can Recall His Past Lives, those who dwell at the foot of the end credits – then watching Colin may come as a refreshing treat. It's about one of those very bit players. And very bit he was. The film takes a superfluous character and gives him a movie of his own to walk amok. Although Colin's the shy and retiring type, just looking to escape mad, apocalyptic London and reconnect with his girlfriend. He's a zombie with heart. The heart may have been in his hands, but he had love to give all the same. The guy deserved a break: even he ran from the undead hordes. So, Colin, mate, here’s to you: First Zombie on This List.

2. Dr Freudstein in The House by the Cemetery (1981)

Dr Freudstein waving for the camera. Bless him.

With a name like that I'll bet you had an insurmountable array of problems in your life as you did in your afterlife, eh, Dr. Freudstein (Giovanni De Nava)? Kept in the basement by the cemetery by director by the cemetery Lucio Fulci for the entirety of The House by the Cemetery, you didn't half moan about your lot. But then, you did look like a brown paper bag glued to an over-sized peanut. But piss and moan you did. Not before getting your hand lopped off and being outfoxed on a ladder by a girlish-sounding 10-year-old misery moppet by the name of... Bob. Still, you had Mrs. Freudstein to keep you company all those decades spent beyond one of Fulci's Seven Gates of Hell. (Why not click here for more Fulci-on-Zombie action.)

3. Tarman in The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

What is it with directors keeping their zombie charges trapped in basements. Subterranean dude Tarman (Allan Trautman), birthed from, yup, some kind of dubiously nuclear tar-like goo, dwells "below" just like Dr. Freudstein. Well, at least it's below a medical supply warehouse right next to a handy morgue-slash-cemetery. This brain botherer spends the film awaiting the split skulls of a band of '80s hooligan punks to sink his rotten teeth into. Looking more like some kind of lavatory skeleton, Tarman's a bona fide zombie in name, rank and number – all of which were printed on the septic tank he arrived in. Lovely.

Gay zombies, musical zombies, and celebrity zombies after the jump...

Read more »

Unsung Heroes: The Production Design of The Descent

Michael C. here from Serious Film for another episode of Unsung Heroes. With Halloween fast approaching I thought now would be a great time to shine the spotlight on my pick for the best horror movie of the last decade.

I was researching Neil Marshall's The Descent for a post I was writing about horror movies when I was surprised to stumble upon this trivia item:

No real caves appear anywhere in the film.

Goes to show that it's easy to be guilty of the same behavior we so often criticize awards groups for displaying, namely, having a narrow idea of what greatness in a particular field looks like. Despite being a huge fan of the movie, until that moment the brilliance of Simon Bowles' production design for The Descent had not occurred to me.

Of course, if you think about it for two seconds you realize they're sets. Real caves wouldn't be safe, would be impossible to light, would not match the needs of the plot, and would most likely look boring on camera. But Bowles' work is so convincing you don't pause to think about it. All you can focus on is the horrible trouble these women have gotten themselves into.

Horror films live or die on atmosphere. Studios can produce successful comedies that are indifferently filmed, but not horror movies. If The Descent ever gave the impression, even subliminally, that the actresses were actually filming safely on a soundstage somewhere, the suspense would vanish instantly. As it stands the feel of the film is so strong that it's easy to forget it's a horror movie at all. The cave-diving sequences are already nerve-wracking enough. When the horror elements do kick in it is so well grounded in reality that the terror increases exponentially. It's like 127 Hours if James Franco were attacked by monsters halfway through.

Like Buffalo Bill's basement in The Silence of the Lambs or the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, The Descent's caves are destined to be one of those touchstones of the horror genre. One wouldn't think something as dull as caves could be made so interesting, but I can vividly recall the various twists and forms the tunnels took as the women descended deeper and deeper into the Earth. From the putrid nest of the creatures to the chasm the women attempt to cross via the cave ceiling; from the huge, yawing entrance to the claustrophobia-inducing tunnel where poor Alex Reid gets stuck, every stage of the journey has its own distinct personality. Not bad considering roughly half the screen is pitch black most of the time.

The theme of this series is shaping up to be the showy versus the subtle. It's already come up with costume design and special effects. The design of this movie is another example of work that does the job without calling attention to itself and has therefore gone overlooked. So here's to the production design of Simon Bowles along with the art direction of Jason Knox-Johnson. Considering how much junk horror clogs the multiplexes, their contributions to one of the few truly effective horror films of the last decade should not go unrecognized.

Lunk. Subgenius. Monster.

awwww, poor Frankenstein Monster. Always so pathetically lonely. Hit refresh ya big lug! I'm sure someone will cozy up. If you're lucky she'll have a huge skunk inspired beehive. [Note: This illustration is brought to you from the wonderful imagination of Mr Hipp.... click over and see other illustrated wonders.]

Para Normal Activity.

What did you see over the weekend? Care to share?

The only movie I managed to catch, on a total whim, was the original Paranormal Activity on Instant Watch just as the new one was packing them in at the box office. Hey, I've never claimed to be current with horror. I am totally not that guy. So here I am talking about a year after its sell-by date! I'm not in the now. I am beyond time.

See, even when I do catch horror movies in the theater (rarely) I tend to wait until I feel like I have to see it (due to overwhelming acclaim or whatnot) and thus I get there at the tail end of the run when it's already "over."... like The Descent. I had the theater to myself for that one which is C-R-E-E-P-Y.

I am easily scared but despite a few really good jolts, a pleasingly low-fi approach and that super creepy repeat scene of the girlfriend standing by the bed for hours on end in the middle of the night, Paranormal didn't really get to me. I had no trouble sleeping afterwards. Maybe it was the now ancient and probably nostalgia-boosted memories of The Blair Witch Project (which I saw in a huge cavernous freezing cold theater late at night) that spoiled the experience by comparison or maybe it was the lack of a theatrical crowd to heighten the fear by proximity. But I also think I just had trouble suspending disbelief. People being scared and making stupid decisions in the middle of the woods feels plausible to me. I too would lose my mind. But in the suburbs? I would totally always be having people over or I would just not be hanging out around my house and I sure as hell wouldn't stay in the house when there are so many other options of places to be.

Were you part of the huge box office haul for Paranormal Activity 2? I was reading the box office reports and thinking oh here we go again. When is this genre going to slow down? Most genres are cyclical but horror has been going strong for an awful lot of years now. This bit in the report is annoying

The sequel to last year's ultra-low budget viral blockbuster opened to a surprisingly strong $41.5 million at theaters in the U.S. and Canada this weekend, demonstrating that fans are willing to come to a studio-produced quickie follow-up to an indie hit if it's done well.

Correct me if I'm wrong but when people actually pay tickets for a franchise movie on opening weekend -- totally normal behavior -- it has nothing to with "if it's done well." No one knows that it is. Opening weekend purchases are an act of faith, not a reward for quality.

Pet peeve. Had to get that out.

I understand that Paranormal Activity 2 takes place concurrently with this one? So it's neither a prequel nor a traditional sequel... so what's the word for that? We need a new word. "Equel"?
*

Get Away Fom Ripley You Bitches

JA from MNPP here. If you consider Ridley Scott's 1979 masterpiece Alien a horror film (and you really should consider Ridley Scott's 1979 masterpiece Alien a horror film) (and even more specifically it should be considered it a slasher film, just a slasher set in outer space) then it becomes immediately clear that Ellen Ripley, the character immortalized by Sigourney Weaver in this and its subsequent three sequels, started out as a fairly straightforward Final Girl. She fits in right beside Jamie Lee Curtis in John Carpenter's Halloween and Heather Langencamp in A Nightmare in Elm Street - the smart girl who sees the encroaching horror and manages to outwit outplay and outlast the danger.


Ripley's not really the Action Hero we think of until Jim Cameron's sequel - make that Action heroine, THE Action Heroine; she made and broke and burned the mold up with a flamethrower. And even there Cameron does all sorts of interesting things with the idea of an Action Heroine that so many films today don't bother to even contemplate - Ripley, even when she's kicking ass, is a character that is always painted with as much femininity as possible, on top of her butchness.

When I say "femininity" I don't mean objectifying her as a sexualized, desirable woman (although those moments where Sigourney strips down to those tiny underpants are important, I'd argue, in that they stick that obvious physical facet of her womanhood front and center). Adding in the character of the uber-tough Vasquez in Aliens is a clear attempt to slide Ripley's character to the center of the femme-to-butch scale - she seems so demure and ladylike standing next to Jenette Goldstein in her red bandanna! - but great pains are made over and over again to code Ripley as a mother figure. Her protection of Newt and the introduction of the Alien Queen with her pulsing egg sac as the big villain - it's all a way of designating a space for a specifically feminine sort of rage within a heretofore male dominated film space.

Read more »

Link Robot ♥ Actresses (Especially the Intimidating Leggy Kind)

Shock Till You Drop Sigourney Weaver interview involving all four Aliens movies and her other genre successes. She's a bit cagey in her answers -- see how she dodges the tough question. But it's Sigourney so we read. And...
Collider ...Robert DeNiro has signed on to play the object of her investigation in the psychological thriller Red Lights. He'll be playing a psychic, she's a paranormal activity expert. The role of Weaver's partner is yet to be cast. We hope it's a good chemistry fit.

In Contention Are Macy Gray and Kimberly Elise the standouts from For Colored Girls? We'll need more than just one anonymous source's opinion to find out. Stay tuned.
The Film Doctor 9 notes on I Am Love. I'm not going to read this now (I'm working on an I Am Love piece and want to be free of all influence) but I like these # notes pieces.
Birth of a Notion RIP Barbara Billingsley. She spoke jive.

Pussy Goes Grrr on cinema's love of combining the feminine with the monstrous.

Chuck & Beans "How To Break Bad News To A Movie Geek."
popbytes on the movie-turned-stage-musical Leap of Faith with music by Oscar winner Alan Menken. The musical stars one of our Broadway favorites Raúl Esparza. We hope they recast the female lead. Enough with the stunt casting, producers. Musicals deserve GREAT voices (like Esparzas).

Movie|Line Info regarding Oz: The Great and Powerful from Sam Raimi starring Robert Downey Jr. Boy did the producers of the Wicked musical biff their chance to be first. By the time that musical hits the screen people will be so sick of Oz with all these multiple movies greenlit; if you arrive AFTER the things you've influenced it's kind of problematic and potentially stale. They should have started on the movie the very moment they realized they had a mammoth hit on their hands. Like way the hell back in 2004 they should have been doing the first draft screenplay and searching for the movie cast. It takes years to get a movie on the screen and we could have been enjoying it for Christmas this very year.

 Just Jared Halle Berry presented Chris Nolan with an award at the Scream Awards. (It's a horror awards show.) I can't figure out why Nolan would have been honored but when people love you they will find any excuse. P.S. Berry looks sensational. But you knew that already. Beautiful woman.
I Need My Fix Anne Hathaway on the cover of the new Vogue. But excuse me, why does she look like Eva Mendes instead of Anne Hathaway? I hate it when magazine photo shoot tinkering does that.
Pullquote this is a month-old post on notes taken during a screening of Angelina Jolie's Salt. But it's new to me and it totally amused me. Trust that I can never understand my own notes after a screening.
Comedy Central Gay Robot ♥ Ryan Phillipe. teehee

Should Case 39 be open or shut? Half and half for a laugh, perhaps?

Craig here, taking a look at Renée Zellweger's new cinema release. (There are a few mild spoilers contained)

Case 39 stars Zeéeeee as Emily Jenkins, a concerned social worker in a headband. She’s worried about the well being of a child. We’re more worried about her personal hair-care regime: when her hair is up, fixed in place with said headband, she’s out of danger; hair down means terror is likely afoot. Her life depends on the precarious positioning of her follicles. Make a note of the subtle differentiation as it will help guide you through the many twisty plot derivations of Christian Alvart’s new (though actually old*) horror-thriller.

Headbanded Emily Jenkins gets the titular case plopped on her desk, so she duly investigates a couple who she suspects have been mistreating their 10-year-old daughter Lillith (Jodelle Ferland). She scrambles to the couple's creepy house along with boss Ian McShane (growling an otherworldly accent as yet unidentified by literature or science), just as the parents are about to roast li’l Lill in the oven -- seriously, this scene is hilarious. Zellweger and McShane lay waste to moody-mom and bad-dad’s furniture and faces whilst rescuing the half-baked moppet. (McShane, trying out too-late for a role in The Expendables, literally dropkicks the mother into a table and indents a fridge with the father’s head - and McShane’s about 110 years-old! The Oscar for Best Supporting Sexagenarian Shit-Fit is his for the taking).

Be honest, does my hair look good like this?

Soppy ol' Emily, ditching the headband, gets to adopt Lillith and live happily... never after? ‘Cause, ah, you see, maybe there’s more to case 39 than our Zeéeeee bargained on (as we’ve only sat through half of the film's 109 minutes). Is Lillith actually as sweet and innocent as everybody initially thought? Could she be the devil with a dollhouse? If you haven’t guessed what’s happening by this point then you haven’t been paying attention to the headband theory. (Hair up = phew, safe; hair down = argh, get that spawn of Beelzebub off my property, post haste!)

Renée keeps the family dinner warm in Case 39

Emily soon forgets about cases 1 through 38 (all other kids in peril can obviously go take a jump) to do everything in her power to Get To The Bottom Of All This. There are a handful of amusing scenes along the way, and more than a few howlers peppering the plot; a fun so-bad-it's-good time’s almost to be had. If you're willing, try a few pre-movie drinks. One scene where Lillith asks a headbanded Zeéeeee if she could brush her hair had me shouting, 'Yes! For the love of God, yes! Take that headband away and brush her hair!'

Bradley Copper responds to Renée putting the Chicago soundtrack on.
and other captions.

There’s a naked Bradley Cooper as Zeéeeee's beefcake beau, who has his bath time royally ruined by a particularly pressing wasp problem; he then buzzes off halfway into the film (the script for The Hangover must have arrived.)  Although the scene where Ferland is interviewed by Cooper, and acts him and anyone else (in this scene and others) right off the screen, is genuinely creepy. Renée just puts on a tight face and stands by looking awkward. In a headband.

Renée is driven to dispair by her missing headband.

The editing may have been carried out by a drunken Edward Scissorhands, and the pace is defined by accident rather than design. Case 39 is more eventful than Joshua, but doesn’t have the daft-but-nifty twist or fun factor of Orphan - two other recent Is My Kid Satan's Spawn? genre entries. It’s so close to being a new trash gem, but, despite a grab-bag of chucklesome moments early on, it wimps out at the last minute with a wet whimper. Near the end Renée says, “You know, none of this should ever have happened!” Oh Zells Bells - you took the words right out of my mouth.

*The film was completed in 2006 but has only now seen the light of day, after an ever-shifting release date pattern that took in fifteen date changes over three countries.

Case 39 is in theaters now. 

Beware Take Care Bela Beware

.
JA from MNPP here with this week's Monday Monologue.

The original Hungarian fang-banger Bela Lugosi died 54 years ago today. His entire career was haunted, one might say, by his role as Dracula in Tod Browning's 1931 film. He played the role on the stage in 1927 and he would be buried just twenty-nine years later in one of his costumes from that same stage production.

But as with the famed Count himself, one life wasn't enough for Bela - he'd reappear posthumously three years later in Ed Wood's crap-classic Plan 9 From Outer Space donning a familiar cape in footage shot for another project that Wood edited into the film as a nonsensical, though loving, tribute to his friend.


Or at least that's the way Tim Burton's 1994 masterpiece Ed Wood romanticizes the story. Resurrecting Bela anew, Martin Landau turned in a brilliant performance therein that finally brought Landau a much-deserved Oscar after earlier nominations for Tucker and Crimes and Misdemeanors and served as a reminder of the sad final few years of Bela's life.

.

.

CONRAD: (Brent Hinkley): Mr. Lugosi, I know you're very busy, but could I have your autograph?

BELA: Of course.

CONRAD: You know which movie of yours I love, Mr. Lugosi? "The Invisible Ray." You were great as Karloff's sidekick.

The Invisible Ray came out in 1936 and was the third of five films the two horror icons would make together (not counting 1934's Gift of Gab, which was just an excuse for the studio to keep a slew of their stars working between pictures and is kind of like a Golden Age episode of The Love Boat). By all accounts their roles in The Invisible Ray - wherein they play scientists who've discovered a toxic meteorite in Africa - are of equal standing and they received equal billing for it. The only time Lugosi got second-billing to Karloff in all the times they acted together was in 1935's The Raven, and it doesn't make much sense there - Lugosi actually has the much bigger part! (It's also one of his finest performances, you should check it out.)

BELA: "Sidekick"??? "KARLOFF"??? Fuck you!! Karloff doesn't deserve to smell my shit! That limey cocksucker can rot in hell, for all I care!

ED: What happened?! Jesus, Connie, what did you do?

CONRAD: Nothing! I told him he was great.

BELA: How dare that asshole bring up Karloff?!! You think it takes talent to play Frankenstein?! NO! It's just make-up and grunting! GRRR! GRRR! GRRR!

Lugosi always claimed that he turned down the part of Frankenstein because it was a non-speaking part and then he himself recommended Karloff for the role. Others claim that Frankenstein director James Whale spotted Karloff in the studio commissary and asked him to test for the part and liked what he saw. Knowing the way Bela was prone to let's say amplify his accomplishments, I don't think we'd be straying in the wrong direction if we leaned towards the latter explanation, but time's erased the facts and replaced it with a much more entertaining miasma of bickering and speculation. As time and fictionalizations are wont to do. By all accounts Bela never cursed either, but where would this performances be without all the colorful expletives?

ED: You're right, Bela. Now Dracula, that's a part that takes acting.

BELA: Of course! Dracula requires presence. It's all in the voice, and the eyes, and the hand…

ED: Look, you seem a little agitated. Do you maybe wanna take a little break, go for a nice walk... and then we'll come back and shoot the scene?

BELA: BULLSHIT! I am ready now! Roll the camera!!

.

.

ED: Um, okay... roll camera… And... action?

BELA: "Beware. Beware! Beware, of the big green dragon that sits on your doorstep. He eats little boys! Puppy dog tails! Big fat snails! Beware. Take care. Beware!"

Wait! Pull the string! Pull the string!

.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Christina?

Christina Ricci plays a dead girl in the horror flick After.Life (new on DVD). I'm not trying to be cheeky when I say that I wish her performance were more lively.

It's justifiable, as a characterization decision, to play this role like a corpse even before the death (for reasons you'll have to watch the movie to understand) but it doesn't exactly make for an exciting star turn.. Perhaps she was counting on her body -- she's quite naked -- to do the heavy lifting. Maybe Justin Long just wasn't the right scene partner? But even so. When will this girl get her mojo back? I feel like we almost got there with Black Snake Moan... but then. No. As child and teen stars go, there were few that felt more regularly inspired. She's adult-sized funny and showstopping in Addams Family Values, my choice for 'best in show' in the pretty formidable ensemble found in The Ice Storm and amazing (duh!) in The Opposite of Sex. But that's a long time ago now. Where'd that (cold) fire go?

Any suggestions for her career? Maybe she needs a fresh young auteur to find her a-MUSE-ing

She Who Must Be Obeyed!

Have you ever seen SHE (1935)? The brief title is appropriate even though the film is ostensibly a voyage film about a youngish man Leo Vincey (Randolph Scott) who sets out to find the Fountain of Youth. That fabled myth switches elements here to become the Flame of Life. Stepping into it will grant you immortality, see. But what SHE is really about is what men want and fear in women.

The film is available on Instant Watch at Netflix and today being its 75th anniversary, why not give it a look? It's an interesting snapshot of both cinema's male gaze (more on that later) and the 1930s. Genre films, even ones that take place in realms of the fantastical are often great snapshots of the time they sprang from. Luke Skywalker screams 1970s does he not? They only made faces and hair like that in the 1970s. And I think they only made square jawed men like Randolph Scott and his "roommate" Cary Grant back in the 1930s.

Mmmm. Randoph & Cary...

Scott ♥ Grant at their '30s beach home. (They lived together for 12 years.)
Every photo they took together -- and there are quite a few --amazes.

Sorry to distract!

Try not to think about Randolph & Cary while watching SHE. The film isn't about whether or not Randolph loved Cary but what kind of woman his character Vincey will choose to love. But we're jumping too far ahead.

First comes exposition.

And quite a lot of it at that. I'm working on a theory that older films feel slow to modern viewers because they put all their exposition and backstory in at the very beginning instead of bogging the narrative down with it intermittently as modern movies do. It takes SHE forever to get going.

The unfortunate side effect of too much exposition and that still regularly employed device of the protagonist as audience proxy, the character that needs everything explained to them, is that the protagonist often comes across as quite dimwitted. In the first thirteen minute scene (all exposition) we hear the story of Vincey's great great great great grandfather or some such -- they look exactly alike --and the legend of the Flame of Life. Vincey is shown an artifact with the inscription "Here burns the flame of life". He actually thinks they mean that that object is the immortality device. "But this is gold, a known element!" Dumb-dee-dumb-dumb... DUMB.

Apparently Vincey is unfamiliar with the concept of symbols.

The Flame of Life | Tanya the Young & Beautiful

Scientist: Don't you understand?
Vincey: I'm afraid I don't.

Once Vincey is on his journey, he travels in the blink of a title card to the utmost part of the world where he meets Tanya (Helen Mack), the young beautiful daughter of his guide through the treacherous arctic. Somehow the arctic guide is the only character who doesn't understand the basic principles of snow and avalanches but let's not nitpick. (It's not real snow anyway. The tracks suggest they poured sand on the studio floor.) Tanya tells him Vincey more about this legend. It involves a woman.

"What kind of woman?" he asks. It's the smartest question he'll ask in the entire movie, since the movie is about just that. Which kind of woman will a good man choose?

The adventurers discover a secret tropical world inside the snowy mountains they've been climbing. Beset upon by savages, Vincey is injured whilst performing heroics. Just when things look incredibly dire, they're suddenly rescued by the command of SHE (Helen Galaghan in her only film appearance) who rules this hidden world inside the mountains.

Her kingdom is a Lost Horizon/Brigadoon/Shangri-La sort of deal. Her interior decorator has a fondness for mixing up German expressionism, Roman and Greek influences and then tossing it all in an Art Deco blender. In other words, it's very 1930s... on steroids to make it seem otherworldly. The queen's full name is actually "She Who Must Be Obeyed" and/or "She Who Must Immediately Serve As Character Design For Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves".

SHE seems quite benevolent but for the troubling dictatorial implications of her full name. Soon it becomes apparent that Vincey's dead relative was her lover 500 years ago. She'd like to repeat that carnal experience with Randolph Scott if she can pry him away from Tanya and Cary Grant.

Who can blame her?

Her plan to do so is mucho theatrical and involves a huge human sacrifice ceremony, expensive costume parade and elaborate modern dance that won the movie its sole Oscar nomination for Best Dance Direction (in the first of only three years that AMPAS had such a category). Benjamin Zemach is the choreographer but I hope he dedicated the honor to Martha Graham because that legendary dance icon's influence is ALL over the number. It's rather as bald a steal as Beyoncé's "Single Ladies" was with Bob Fosse's work.

The most fascinating thing about SHE is how baldly it reveals all the screwy dichotomies of both cinema's male gaze and Hollywood's youth worship. Movies always want to eroticize women and then punish them for being erotic. And the movies are also always reinforcing America's youth worship while simultaneously reinforcing heteronormative ideals "Let's grow old together!"

In two consecutive scenes Tanya works both sides of this schizo view. She offers up her love to Vincey and talks about what she has to offer. Her words are flowery but they amount to 'Let's grow old together.' He rejects her. "You're not tempted as I am." In the next scene (catfight!) Tanya, having been rejected, storms into SHE's royal suite and wields "old" like an insult.

Tanya believes that this evil queen's magical age is a weakness.

Tanya: Why are you afraid of me?
SHE: (Incredulous) Afraid?
Tanya: You are afraid of me and now I see why. Because I'm young and you know love belongs to the young. Your magic makes you seem young but in your heart you're old, OLD. You were young once like me but now you're old and it's too late for love ever.

Oh, Tanya. If being old means you can't love then you'll lose Vincey anyway. You can't grow old together and stay young. Duh!

<-- evil spooky unnatural youth ritual

Aren't both women making the same argument?

SHE: 'I'm better because I'm young... forever.'
TANYA: 'I'm better because I'm younger... at the moment.'
BOTH LADIES: 'Being old is gross!'

It's no spoiler to tell you that Vincey is going to choose Tanya's helplessness and her home cooking. Literally. He's continually rescuing her and she cooks for him throughout the movie! The hero is never going to choose the alpha female because that's how movies do. But the Quest for Youth story blankets this traditional fear of powerful women with a hypocritical ageism. Randolph Scott was 37 and Helen Galaghan 35 when the film was released but Helen Mack, playing Tanya, was 21. In the scene where Vincey and Tanya first meet, the romantic kindling for her fire is when this older man tells her how he'd treat her if she were his... daughter. Ewww.

Vincey will reject that Flame of Life but isn't he still chasing that fountain of youth by choosing a young bride?

Note the positioning: Scott, submissive, in the traditional "slave girl"
pose. Can't have that! Later, the reverse corrective: Scott throned in
his own home. The woman dethroned and in submissive position.

Maybe not that much has changed at the movies in the past 75 years. We've still got big special effects extravaganzas (which this is... and fairly impressive for its time, too) praised for their sheer spectacle and imagination, their other flaws (stilted acting, massive plotholes) ignored. And we've still got plentiful storylines wherein powerful women are vilified and damsels in distress are placed on pedestals. Now, today's damsels do have a little more fire in them than quivery crying Tanya... but if they get too fiery, watch out! They'll end up as terrifying as emasculating as dangerous as SHE!
*

"i know that we are young and i know that you may link me..."

Stale Popcorn Glenn is a crazy person. Glenn is a crazy person that I love. He's decided to review the Scream trilogy. Every scene of it. Starting with Drew Barrymore's fateful phone call of course. You do know that Michelle Pfeiffer loves this performance don't you? Well she does. So does everyone, right?
Hollywood News Scott Feinberg believes the Academy should have two Best Picture voting rounds
/Film Daniel Radcliffe to star in remake of All Quiet on the Western Front. Uh, good luck measuring up, people. Why?
Coming Soon Matt Damon making a zookeeper movie. I always thought someone should make a cable series about a zoo. One of the many unexplored work places of the world.
Cinema Styles "I Hate All of You" a post for those caught daily in the movie buff blog loop

In Contention sings Mark Ruffalo's praises for The Kids Are All Right. I can't wait for all of you to see it. He's marvelous in the movie.
My New Plaid Pants JA reviews Jonah Hex with its Fox waist, Brolin scars, and three thousand Fassbender teeth.
Cinematical cries uncle about Hollywood's 1984 obsession and offers up a few more remake options. Micki & Maude anyone?
A Socialite's Life Cyndi Lauper is getting her own reality series.
Birth of a Notion look back at the opening sequence of Jaws.
Pixar Blog You can now buy the wonderful new short Day & Night at iTunes

Broadway.com informs that NY theater comic star Jackie Hoffman who you may have seen in the Broadway runs of Hairspray or Xanadu (she's currently playing "Grandma" in The Addams Family) is "OLD LADY GAGA"...lol

Seventeen Years, Several Inches

.

JA from MNPP here, with a fun factoid for y'all: Seventeen years ago on this day Lorena Bobbitt took matters into her own hands... and by "matters" I mean "her husband's penis" and by "her own hands" I mean "her own hands holding a carving knife." The rest is infamous tabloid history - the throwing of the severed member out a car window, the trial, the adult film Frankenpenis... sordid, so very sordid.

But an anniversary is a time to celebrate, not to judge, so here in its dubious honor are my five favorite castration scenes - favorite is such a relative term here, by the way - from films since the Bobbitt incident happened in 1993. (Actually strangely enough all these films are from the past 5 years.) Enjoy, with or without your hands protecting your nethers (I recommend with).


Sin City - Hartigan (Bruce Willis) literally rips The Yellow Bastard (Nick Stahl)'s yellow bastard-stick off with his bare hands. Manliness!


Hard Candy - Pretty people like Ellen Page and Patrick Wilson should not partake in antics as confoundedly cruel as this exercise proves. Just be pretty, people! A peck of pickled peckers Ellen Page has picked.


Hostel: Part II - The sequel that everybody loves to hate to the original film that everybody loves to hate basically ends its female-sided saga with an explicit castration gag. You know what they say - make 'em leave the theater with a laugh! Ha ha ugh.


Teeth - It's true! Vagina dentata! Vagina dentata! Vagina dentata! (Sidenote: the wonderful character actor Josh Pais, seen there above about to utter those memorable lines, just had a birthday on Monday! Everybody wish him a long healthy manhood.)


Antichrist - A little something for the ladies! Lars Von Trier's always got a little something for the ladies. If by "something" I mean "everything awful ever thought, captured so prettily," and obviously I mean just that. Heady times...
.