Housecleaning.
And that’s the end of BC’s 31 Days of Halloween. The series had some highs and some lows, but ultimately I really enjoyed it and believe that it represented a turning point in both the quantity and quality of the site you currently find yourself reading.
But then again, I’m a little biased.
We will continue to have smaller series on the site to keep you regulars returning, but for the next little while I will be focusing on the year 2007, both in the theatre and on DVD. I’m taking the rest of the week off, but early Monday morning I’m gonna start cracking again, and this is what I hope to have for you next week:
Gone Baby Gone (already seen it), Into the Wild (ditto), The Savages, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.
I’ll try to squeeze in American Gangster and a few recent DVDs too if I’m feeling really squirrlly, but I’m only guaranteeing the above. Hope you guys have a wonderful Halloween and see you Monday.
Your Next Break From Horror…
..will probably be posts of
Michael Clayton, and
We Own the Night, which ideally will appear late this weekend or early next week. I’m confident that Clayton will happen.
We Own the Night is fifty-fifty. Either way I’m giving you plenty of notice, dear readers, so you have absolutely no excuse to do anything else this weekend.
Half Formed Not Quite Posts Of Away From Her and Bug (2007)
To ensure the non-horror enthuasist’s continued loyality to BC, I have, of course, been watching stuff that doesn’t feature monsters or ghosts, or ghastlies of the soul. I’m not doing real reviews (or posts, the word review seems a little delusional for what I do here) of either film yet (or ever) but a few thoughts should be offered.
Bug is an intense little nitty gritty chamber play from Exorcist/French Connection director William Friedkin, and it features a rousing return to form from Ashley Judd. She isn’t playing a smooth cat avenger here, she’s fleshy and surprisingly vulnerable, and her voice cracks and betrays her at the least opportune times. She’s a drunk mourning the loss of a child, and she’s perfectly susceptible to the insanity that Peter (Michael Shannon) is selling.
Your enjoyment of the film will depend largely on whether or not you buy how quickly Judd’s Agnes succumbs to paranoia and insanity. I didn’t buy it, but I respected the typical to Friedkin relentlessness of the film, and Judd’s performance. Michael Shannon looks a little like Anthony Michael Hall at his most hungover, but his presence and surprisingly soft voice throws you off balance, you get why Judd might go for this guy. The ending is abrupt, unforgiving and the perfect capper for a very over the top last third. The film has been referred to as a thriller or a horror story, but its really a perverse romance.
Away From Her is another perverse romance, and its one of the most disciplined, pared to the bone debuts from a young director that I can remember seeing. The film has been directed by actress Sarah Polley (Go, Dawn of the Dead 2004), and its imbued through and through with the thoughtful refusal to sentimentalize that characterizes her best work. Ron Howard, Penny Marshall and all the other people who traffic in tear jerker up lift should be forced to watch what this young lady has done here.
It’s no surprise that Julie Christie is luminous and haunting (flashbacks to her as a young woman hammer home the effect, with little screen time, that Polley is going for) but Gordon Pinsent, whom I’ve never heard of, is heartbreaking here as a husband finding himself odd man out when his wife Christie, suffering from Alzheimers, forgets him and falls in love with another patient at the nursing home.
Pinsent was unfaithful many years before, and he can’t help but think that a certain black joke cosmic justice is coming about. This element steers the picture from schmaltz, though Polley’s approach is so dry and commanding that I imagine it would have been fine either way. I will never think of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon” the same way again. See this one.
In case we’ve misunderstood each other….
…I don’t think Roger Ebert or Anthony Lane are hacks. It’s one of those things that really isn’t even debatable when you think about it. I revere Ebert’s work and read it every Friday when I should be working. Anthony Lane is an exceptional writer, but I kind of support the cliched suspicion that he might not, deep down, actually like movies. I was re-reading that bit earlier this morning and was concerned as to how clearly tongue in cheek that pronouncement of mine was.
Roger and Tony can now breathe easy again.
Your Humble Write Accepts a Challenge
I received the following IM from a friend* a few minutes ago:
“It would be awesome if Bowen’s Cinematic did a 31 days of Halloween.”
It would be wouldn’t it? If you read my site then you know how we usually do things around here: five posts one week, two posts the following two weeks (both of which are usually apologies for not having posted more.) A 31 Days of Halloween would require discipline, consistence and steadfast belief in the over five billion burgers served American way that more is better and well, more.
I accept.
Every day in the month of October there will be a review of a different horror film, past or present, on Bowen’s Cinematic. I have had one person express interest in doing a series of guest reviews on the Zombie genre, and I very much encourage that, but that will not count toward my promise. I will PERSONALLY do a horror review every day of the month, in addition to the other, current reviews (though I reserve the right to skimp on those if need be.)
So BC should be hopping in the Month in the month of October. And, if anyone else is interested in doing any guest contributions please contact me. I know at least two others reading the site who are up to it.
*No, the friend is not actually me.
nicolekidmanalienssatirerepeatasnecessary.
Many critics have been taking the easy swipe at Nicole Kidman having to pretend to be lifeless to survive the aliens in her new, supposedly underwhelming
The Invasion. I’m not above that jab myself, but then it hit me. Screw Iraq.
The Invasion should have been about the celebrity culture. I’m not kidding, this could have been a fresh, relevant way to adapt Jack Finney’s novel
Invasion of the Body Snatchers for the fourth time. Celebrity culture is just as timely as Iraq, and, arguably, as potentially damaging to our country.
Or combine the two, and tackle how the celeb obsession distracts us from issues such as Iraq. Dress it up with some aliens, get some free satire with Kidman’s name, and you’ve, at the very least, got something with some ambition.
I won’t be seeing The Invasion this week, I have to pick my battles, but I do highly recommend the Philip Kauffman/Donald Sutherland Invasion of the Body Snatchers if you are drawn to the subject matter.
Bogdanovich scheduled to Run down a Dream.
I haven’t done much day to day stuff here at BC (I know, need to do more, yeah, yeah) but I was just over at Hollywood Elsewhere and a project was mentioned that I had never even heard of. That its a documentary by Peter Bogdanovich is enough. That its a documentary by Peter Bogdanovich concerning Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, evidently, called
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Runnin’ Down a Dream, is more than enough. Hate that title though.
Tom Petty is under appreciated because he’s so legendary he’s taken for granted, but the dialed down simplicity of his albums age well, and he served as a gateway drug to many other great folk/rock artists for me.
Peter Bogdanovich is one of the great rising stars who flew too close to the flame stories of the 1970s, and has been under appreciated ever since people decided that his last interesting film was Paper Moon. (Seriously, watch the charming The Cat’s Meow, or the pretentious, uneven, but still fascinating Texasville, or the corny, sentimental, but still fully felt Mask, or The Thing Called Love (which is all of the adjectives I just ascribed to Mask.)
Bogdanovich has also written one of THE books about Orson Welles, one of THE books about virtually every classic star of the yesteryears, and probably one of THE books about the legendary Hollywood filmmakers that I can’t get my damn hands on.
The documentary is slated to play at the NY Film Festival (9.29-10.14). Being that’s its four hours long, I would imagine that Dream will very nearly immediately be on DVD as opposed to theaters, but that’s just a guess.
Check out the HE article here:
A Disjointed Ramble about Hitch.
Yesterday was Alfred Hitchcock’s birthday. I caught this toward the end of the day, but was running on fumes, and whatever I would’ve wrote would’ve been, in a best case scenario, unreadable. The pictures of Alfred Hitchcock are, of course, an institution. Most anyone with a serious interest in films has gone through the Master’s filmography, or at least the major high points, by their fifteenth year or so. This sort of thing can lead to taking a major artist for granted simply because he’s been rammed down your throat by cultural osmosis.
Alfred Hitchcock’s work is still undeniably incredible, and he made some of the most personal popular films that I’ve ever seen: think the kink of David Lynch crossed with the audience grabbing savvy of a Spielberg film, and you’re close.
Notorious in terms of lean, mean economy, is possibly Hitchcock’s greatest film. It’s not his most obsessive or personal (I still vote Vertigo) but it does imbue a very conventional war time espionage story with a gripping, breakdown of the house unit paranoia. This film is another Hitch expression of blue balls, of repressed fury at not being able to screw the starlets or legends who did their best work under his supervision. Make no mistake, Nazi or not, Hitch sympathizes with the Claude Rains character here.
Notorious is a great, great movie, (it helps that it actually moves) with a finesse, a sexiness, that is rarely encountered in big movies today. Cary Grant is terrific, and Ingrid Bergman is moving and vulnerable in the way everyone except me found her to be in Casablanca.
I really loved the Friedkin on PCP pyrotechnics employed by Paul Greengrass in The Bourne Ultimatum, but Hitch wrung more excitement out of three people walking down an excruciatingly long flight of stairs.
Vertigo is also as good as the populace would have you believe. The film is perverse in a Lauraish kind of way, but more romantic. Vertigo has long been said to represent Hitch’s fascination with (and perhaps Svengalish manipulation of) his leading ladies, and I can support that, but I think Vertigo may also be the supreme example of the warring artistic temprements of Alfred Hitchcock: the cynic and the romantic. Hitchcock wants to be the romantic, but he can’t ever quite believe in it enough to really commit to it (though Rear Window is pretty close: a lovely, conventional romance that happens to be draped in anonymous urban despair.)
Notorious, Vertigo, Rear Window and the smart, entertaining, iconic North by Northwest are probably my favorite Hitchcock pictures. This week watch something of his that you’ve never seen, or that you haven’t seen in a long time. As good as they are, leave Psycho and Rear Window on the shelf for the time being. I think I’m going to finally catch up to Rebecca or maybe Family Plot (Hitch’s last film) to commemorate the birth of the man who defined many people’s idea of the thriller for four or five decades.
Enough is Enough
Ingmar Bergman died last weekend, or maybe Monday. Michelangelo Antonioni died Monday. I feel unqualified to write an obitiuary for these men because I feel unqualified to write an obituary of anyone and because I am way, way underinformed of their work. As bad as it may sound both Bergman and Antonioni have always sounded more like homework than sitting down and watching a movie, and its that sort of thinking that allows someone to go an entire life loving a field of pursuit without properly informing themselves of said field of pursuit.
Bergman I’m slightly more familiar with. Of his intimidating list of supposed masterpieces I’ve seen four: Wild Strawberries, Persona, Scenes From a Marriage and The Seventh Seal. The Seventh Seal didn’t move me as much as I thought it would, but its a strange, well performed film that is worth seeking out at least once for the experience of it, and for seeing an early Max Von Sydow. Wild Strawberries was my first Bergman film, and its a great Bergman for beginners, wedding Bergman’s obsessions to a more conventional (for him) story of regret. Woody Allen, the most famous Bergman fan, later reworked this story as Deconstructing Harry. Persona and Scenes From a Marriage are intense, pretentious, terrifying, intimate, brilliant, and unforgettable. Yes, these films are draining and demanding, but they have an after effect that is worth it, and I’m not just saying that because the guy is dead.
Of Antonioni, I’ve only seen Blowup, and that is a more approachable masterpiece than any of the Bergman I’ve seen. The film has frustrated many, but the existential thriller trappings lured me in, and while I certainly don’t claim to entirely understand it, I found it memorable and deeply haunting. Though, full disclosure, I return to Coppola’s sort of remake, The Conversation, much more often. I guess it’s easier for me to relate to a man tearing his place apart in the throes of paranoid agony than a guy who appears to be fucking his life away, though I wish the opposite were true.
I’m watching The Passenger and Smiles of a Summer Night over the next few days, and will try to post my reaction next week. These men accomplished more, and were revered more, than anyone can ever hope, and they lived nine decades. Nothing to be sad about here, so let’s just watch the movies.
Thinking Out Loud Here….
but is
Alexander, the Oliver Stone disaster, one of the most hypotically awful movies ever made? I never saw it in the theatre, and I haven’t really seen it now, but I’ve watched two disconnected segments of roughly 30 minutes each recently, and I have to say I’ve never seen anything quite like it. It has Stone’s usual can’t look away coked, peyoted, God knows what else melofire indulgence mixed with the usual pageantry and terrible expostion that comes with the modern (or past) Roman sandal movie. I haven’t seen it all the way through, so this is not a review, and I admit that I’m writing out of partial ignorance, but something this bad (but bizarrely juicy, sort of entertaining) from a director of some esteem would almost have to be satire. Or maybe Stone’s satire of a satire of a satire.
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