Jan
29
“Edge of Darkness” Review
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More than seven years after M. Night Shyamalan’s ending to “Signs” — ranked by statisticians as the number one cause of facepalm in 2002 — drove Mel Gibson into a religious frenzy, the actor returns to the silver screen as yet another slightly unhinged bereaved man in Martin Campbell’s “Edge of Darkness.”
Gibson plays Det. Thomas Craven, no relation to Wes unfortunately, whose daughter is gunned down by a masked assailant after she becomes violently ill with an acute case of spewing up fake movie vomit. Craven’s fellow cops on the Boston PD believe that he was the intended target, but when he starts to do a little digging, Craven uncovers a conspiracy that his daughter was caught up in, one that involves a shadowy weapons manufacturer, an oily Republican senator and Ray Winstone.
The film is based on a BBC mini-series, also directed by Campbell, and feels a little condensed. The brief flashes of violence liven up lengthy sequences of info dump, as Craven sits down with various exposition-spouting functionary characters who are either promptly killed or severely maimed. One of the major problems movies like this has is that it’s overly complicated. Too many characters round out the cast, and the conspiracy doesn’t make much sense. When radioactive milk sets up the movie’s ticking clock, you have to start wondering what you got yourself into when you bought your ticket to a big-budget revenge flick.
There’s just not much here that feels fresh. The corporate weasel is of course a bad guy. Hell, he has Photoshopped pictures of himself with George W. Bush and Nancy Pelosi; tea-baggers’ heads will no doubt explode at the sight. The jug-eared politician is of course a bad guy. Hell, he’s a Republican and he wears a track suit. The only real surprise in the film is that the Boston PD pretty much lets Craven do whatever he wants while investigating his daughter’s murder. And therein lies one of the film’s biggest problems. The issue doesn’t really seem insurmountable when the hero has the BPD at his beck and call. Rather, the film simply marks time until Craven has enough information to justify in his own mind the shooting spree he goes on at the climax.
I found “Edge of Darkness” to be diverting but not wholly involving. It certainly isn’t “Taken 2,” which I think is how Warner Bros. is trying to sell it; the film’s even dropping in late-January like Liam Neeson’s revenger did last year. This is one of those movies that might do some business but is pretty unremarkable. Will it propel Gibson back to the top of the A-list? Who’s to say? It’s a definitely not a return to form for the actor. He’s too old to comfortably slip into the wild man persona he cultivated with the Mad Max and Lethal Weapon films. It’s good to see him back on the screen, but next time, I hope he selects stronger material.
-Brad Lohan
Jan
26
I originally meant to do one of these each week, but I spent so much time fine-tuning my “Terminator” entry, that schedule went out the window. Maybe I can make this a bi-weekly thing. Maybe. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Hey, they made four Indiana Jones movies. Let’s talk about ‘em. The Indiana Jones films, at least in my opinion, are interesting in that each subsequent installment offers diminishing returns. I’ll hear none of that nonsense about “Last Crusade” being the best sequel. Nuts to that. “Temple of Doom” is the best Indy movie that’s not called “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” As far as franchises go, sometimes you’ll see an uptick in quality between movies two and three. First sequels tend to disappoint because they don’t live up to the original. Second sequels have the onus of sucking less than first sequels, so there’s not as much pressure on them to be good. And frequently they are. But they also struggle with trying to be more like the original film as well as bringing something new to the table, a difficult balancing act.
Full disclosure: I didn’t hate “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” or IJATKOTCS as it’s known among certain circles of people who are fond of unwieldy acronyms. No, it’s not a terrific movie, but it’s still leaps and bounds better than some of the other fourth installments we’re going to cover here. It’s also unique in that the creative team involved with movie four in the Indiana Jones franchise — Steven Spielberg and George Lucas — was actively involved with all the films in the series, for better or worse.
“Raiders of the Lost Ark,” which I refuse to call “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark,” remains one of the greatest popcorn films of all time. I rank it among “Back to the Future” and “Die Hard” when it comes to my absolute favorite Hollywood movies. There’s really not enough hyperbole you can throw at this picture. It’s just that good. Lucas, Spielberg and mega-star Harrison Ford created one of the great, if not the greatest, screen legends of the 20th century, an Americanized James Bond. Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones, Jr. is at once a bespectacled professor of archaeology and a whip-cracking acquirer of rare antiquities. When the U.S. government asks Jones to track down the Ark of the Covenant, he finds himself in over his head, trying to outsmart his rival Belloq, romance his old flame Marion Ravenwood and keep the ultimate WMD from falling into the hands of the Nazis. If this movie doesn’t have it, you don’t need it. Even the weird deus ex machina the climax can’t sink this movie. I love it to pieces.
Movie two in the series, “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” however, is remarkable for completely different reasons. Having to deliver against the wild expectations of audiences who’d eaten up “Raiders” with a spoon, the first sequel simply tries to top everything that came before it. This chapter is more serialized than the previous entry, as the first third is more an assemblage of setpieces than a story. Strangely, in the chronology of the series, it’s technically a prequel to “Raiders” and bakes in a needless character arc for Jones. The film also provides him with a young sidekick, Short Round, as well as the shrill love interest, Willie. Jones finds himself tasked with finding the Sankara stones which have been stolen by Mola Ram, a Kali-worshipping cultist. Doubling-down on his villainy, Mola Ram’s also kidnapped a pile of children. Tonally, the film’s all over the map. It’s culturally insensitive and misogynistic. Children are in danger. Hearts get ripped out. But damn if it isn’t a thrill ride. I still dig it the most as far as the sequels go.
The third film, “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” is lighter and buddies up Jones with his wily old man, Dr. Henry Jones Sr., played by none other than Sir Sean Connery. The film happily coasts on the effortless charisma of its two leads, since its story hardly breaks any new ground. In this installment, Jones is searching for the Holy Grail,and once again trying to remain a step ahead of the Nazis. If anything, this film feels like “Raiders Redux.” I think that was the point. But to keep things interesting, both Lucas and Spielberg address their daddy issues with “Last Crusade.” Where the scenes between father and son in the film are the high points, the rest of the movie is draggy at times and does a disservice to its supporting characters Sallah and Marcus Brody by playing them for laughs. “Last Crusade” tries too hard to atone for the darkness of “Temple of Doom” rather than striking that perfect balance between light and dark that the first film has. It also demonstrates Lucas’ bizarre obsession with prequels (again) by opening the film with a completely unnecessary flashback to Jones as an adolescent. Here, we learn all sorts of stupid trivia about him: how he got a whip, that scar on his chin and of course the fedora he wears on all his adventures. So?
My positive review of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” is here. I think my appreciation for the film has flagged since my initial viewing. It’s easily the weakest entry in the series, but not as devastating awful as, say, “Jaws: The Revenge” or “Batman & Robin.” In a world where “The Phantom Menace” has its apologists, I can’t believe IJATKOTCS doesn’t get a pass from fans. It’s miles better than any Star Wars prequel.
Another key contribution to the series, something that gives it that extra oomph, is John Williams’ triumphant score. The Indiana Jones theme is among the composer’s best work and has filled movie theater lobbies with the perfect pre-show fanfare for almost three decades now.
The series’ shaky continuity and logic gaps are noteworthy. What the hell happens to Short Round after “Temple of Doom?” If the Holy Grail grants immortality to anyone who drinks from it, why’s Henry Jones Sr. dead by the fourth film? What’s more, Indiana Jones destroys virtually every archeological site he ventures into. When he’s not losing whatever it is he finds to competitors or shadowy government types, they’re buried under so much rubble. Wouldn’t he be considered a pariah in his chosen field? To his credit, he does return the Sankara stones to their rightful owners.
Then again we don’t watch the movies for an accurate depictions of archaeology. They’re adventure films first and foremost, and for the most part, damn entertaining ones at that.
-Brad Lohan
Jan
25
This is what happens when my girlfriend goes out of town for the weekend: I put on my jacket and go to Cinefile and rent “Split Second,” starring Rutger Hauer. Why? Well, the pull quote on the DVD cover told me it’s “‘Blade Runner’ meets ‘Alien.’” Now I love “Blade Runner” and I love “Alien.” So it stands to reason that “Split Second” is twice as lovable as either film it’s biting. Amirite?
Well, “Split Second” isn’t terrible. That’s probably the nicest thing I can say about it. I guess it’s like “Blade Runner” because it’s a movie that has Rutger Hauer in it. And it’s like “Alien” because it has a toothy beastie with a predilection for ripping open people’s chests in it. To be honest, it’s more like a rain-soaked “Predator 2″ than anything else.
In the year 2008 (lulz), London is enduring a downpour of biblical proportions due to the voodoo science known as “global warming.” A rogue cop with the unlikely name of Harley Stone (Hauer) is on the trail of a brutal serial killer who tears people’s hearts out. Stone carries a hand-cannon that pales the little popgun RoboCop keeps holstered in his thigh. I thought that bobbies didn’t carry guns in England. I also thought people in England had English accents, but Stone sounds like an American.
Stone essentially embodies every hero cop stereotype there ever was. He generally wears dark clothing and sunglasses even at nighttime; he treats his badge like an all-access pass; he subsists on a diet of unhealthy foods; he prefers to work alone; he speaks condescendingly to his superiors but somehow is never fired; he lives in an apartment that looks like a demilitarized zone; he’s emotionally unavailable in whatever tenuous relationship he enters into, et al.
Stone desperately wants to catch the killer because — wouldn’t you know it — the bastard murdered his partner, yet another hero cop stereotype. Tracking the monster down proves to be difficult, which I found odd, considering that the creature is apparently 10 feet tall and running around a metropolitan area. Stone also has some sort of psychic link to the beast; they’re both Scorpios or something. So Stone’s apparently the shittiest cop in the not-too-distant future. He can’t find a ten-foot monster in a major city that he’s psychically connected to. Elevating the confused storyline to new heights of WTF-ness, the creature not only tears out his victims’ hearts, but fuses their DNA with his. I have no idea why this happens, as it’s never really paid off in any substantive way. But they talk about it a couple of times like it’s important.
Kim Cattrall is in the movie, and because the filmmakers didn’t want me to get bored and turn off the flick, she takes a shower. Funnily enough, she was still growing back her hair from having recently played the Valeris in “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country,” so her temples are stubbly. I found this not to be a dealbreaker in my evaluation of her hotness.
“Split Second” is one of those movies that used to take up space on the shelf at the video store. It doesn’t have a cult, like so much other fodder that died in theaters but found an audience on video. Films of its like just sort of exist, alone and unwanted. They never were sequelized, never remade. They came and went. The film’s apparently so forgettable, even Hauer fails to mention it in his autobiography, “All Those Moments.” I think I should start doing semi-regular reviews of forgotten failures, movies not unlike “Split Second.” I mean, film that apes “Blade Runner” and “Alien” certainly has its heart in the right place…even if that heart’s ultimately ripped out by a monster from outer space.
-Brad Lohan
Jan
22
Jesus Christ in a walking cast, when is this going to blow over? A friend of mine, a gal I talk to seasonally, called me up the other day. Apropos of nothing, she brought up the Jay Leno/Conan O’Brien pissing contest. She had to ruin a perfectly good conversation about crap that I’m genuinely interested in by asking my opinion about a pair of hack comedians and their dopey little interview show. Since it’s apparently so important that I express some emotion in regards to this issue, here’s my take on this whole witless kerfuffle:
The one with the big chin left “The Tonight Show” to do a show that comes on immediately before “The Tonight Show,” which is now hosted by the one with the big hair who did a show that used to come on immediately after “The Tonight Show.” Now the one with the big chin wants to go back to being on “The Tonight Show,” but the one with the big hair doesn’t want to leave “The Tonight Show,” even though he gets lower ratings than the one with the big chin.
People honestly care about this. It isn’t like David Caruso leaving “NYPD Blue.” It’s two mediocre comics telling safe jokes about whatever boring of-the-moment nonsense that’s on everyone’s lips and interviewing stoned, drunk or spaced-out celebrities about their crummy movies. Who cares when they’re on, or what show they’re on, or that they’re even on. You should be in bed anyway. You have work tomorrow.
Folks actually picketed NBC over this. In the rain. My Facebook is clogged with people I thought were my friends, trying to get me to join fan pages devoted to Conan’s ego-fueled plight. The buttwad got a $45 million buyout on his contract. I wish someone would pay me not to be on TV because I can’t even bring in the ratings of a half-talent like Leno.
All this sanctimony I see on the Internet, people lionizing Conan’s comedy and lamenting that fewer people watched because it’s more esoteric than stale old Leno — it’s just absurd. This is a show for overly caffeinated college students and grandparents, anyone whose sleep schedule is screwy and isn’t having sex.
So that’s where I’m at. I hate them both with equal aplomb and find Letterman marginally more interesting only because he got into his staff members’ [worldwide] pants.
-Brad Lohan
Jan
21
The cinematic medium is fluid. Certain conventions, characters and even genres come and go. Movies are very of-the-moment in their desperation to reach as broad an audience as possible. However, there’s some stuff I still see in movies, stuff that seemingly hasn’t been massaged out over the years, stuff that really needs to go. They’re creative crutches that filmmakers use to hold up their stories. These aren’t stylistic tics or narrative tropes that are critical to telling a good story. They’re just overused junk that needs to be kicked to the curb yesterday.
Title cards with quotes from philosophers, political leaders or other nefarious types at the start of the movie
I guess I’m supposed to be impressed that the filmmaker read Nietzsche. Well, I’m not. Dude sounds as boring as all get out. Quoting someone I think is boring is hardly the way to kick off your lunkheaded action picture. I’m also pretty sure that the movie is hardly going to add any new insight to whatever talking point is rattled off in the opening moments. Only “Kill Bill: Volume 1″ and “Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare” use this dopey convention effectively because they do it ironically. Otherwise, it’s lame and pretentious.
Beginning the movie near the end of the story and then flashing back to sometime earlier
Flinging the audience right into the thick of the action because the screenwriter couldn’t think of a more interesting opening has been done to death. Even “Fight Club” falls into this trap. And you know what? I think it’s a stupid choice in that movie, too. This only works in a movie like “Pulp Fiction” because the entire narrative is fractured. Otherwise, there’s a 99% chance of the audience completely forgetting where we came in over the course of the film, thereby defeating the purpose of structuring the story this way.
Superimposed places and/or times over an establishing shot
Movies like “Star Wars” and “Back to the Future,” two films that journey to multiple planets or time periods, incidentally don’t bother telling the audience exactly where we are by slapping places and dates on the screen. We’re able to gather all of this information through the visual treatment and/or dialogue. So why in the hell do a bunch of movies feel the need to tell me exactly where we are, what time it is, whether or not it might rain and so on and so forth? I don’t care. But what if the movie is set in the future? Still don’t care. Movie set in the future should always be set in the future with no exact dates given. It keeps the movie from ultimately becoming — literally — dated.
Someone saying, “We’re not in Kansas anymore!”
Even Jim Cameron fell into this trap in “Avatar.” The 70-year-old meme for being transported to a faraway land needs to up and die. I vote that we throw a bucket of water on it. I honestly think that most modern movie-goers can’t find Kansas on a map to begin with, so as a point-of-reference, it’s meaningless.
Overt references to other movies
I blame the ’90s for this shit. Seemingly every movie released during that aggressively and annoyingly pop-culture saavy decade has characters who reference some arcane detail or bit of business in another movie. This was revolutionary…when Godard did it back in 1959. Now, who gives a dump? It’s lazy filmmaking to devote a portion of your film to someone else’s film. Chances are, the movie that’s doing the referencing isn’t half as good as the one it name-checks. Thanks for reminding me what I should’ve rented instead.
Nano-technology
What’s a nano anyway? I’m pretty sure it’s not another word for someone’s grandmother, although that would be an interesting WMD, a sweet old senior citizen. Anyway, I bet that if you did an informal poll of people in the average movie-going audience, you would get a bunch of blank looks if you asked them to define nano-technology. So…why is it the WMD du jour in action pictures? There’s always some nano-whatsis that threatens to destroy all life on earth. But since nano-technology remains a relatively esoteric science, and many Americans apparently don’t believe in science, it’s hard to find it all that scary. Now, a nuclear bomb is something everyone can be afraid of. Or a doomsday virus. Or universal health care. Nano-technology just sounds kind of stupid.
Eliminating all this flotsam from movies will guarantee that they’re automatically better than the would’ve been otherwise. What are you tired of seeing?
-Brad Lohan
Jan
20
Yesterday kicked off the start of Spring Semester at CSUN. It’s good to be back. I enjoyed having a few weeks off, but I found myself becoming bored and listless. I also discovered that I’d completely lost all sense of reason in my DVD rental habits. Last Friday, I checked out Rob Zombie’s “Halloween II” at 20/20 Video. Dig this: The flick wasn’t available at Cinephile, so I walked to the other video store in my neighborhood to check it out. I went to two video stores to find “Halloween II!” So how was the movie? Sucked.
Watching the film wasn’t a complete waste of my time, though. “Halloween II” is historically significant in that it literally defines the symbolic nature of white horses in movies. I’m serious. At the very beginning, there’s a title card that explains what a white horse represents — purity or some shit. I guess test audiences were left scratching their heads at the film’s more esoteric bits. At any rate, what’s important is that I learned something and then kind of forgot it again.
Equipped with my shaky knowledge of the significance of a white horse in movies, I headed up to Northridge last night after work. The pissing rain we’re having in Los Angeles let up long enough for me to commute to the CSUN campus in a little under an hour. It gave me enough time to head over to the campus library and glance over their DVD collection before class. They have the Tim McGraw version of “Flicka,” but Flicka’s brown, so I didn’t bother checking it out.
My Tuesday night course is about developing a screenplay that we’ll ultimately write in the fall. The workload, at a glance, looks to be insane. There are four books which are required reading. Our assignment this week is to have Aristotle’s “Poetics” read by next Tuesday. Pfft, what’s Aristotle know that Rob Zombie doesn’t? If he doesn’t mention horses at any point in the text, I’ll be very disappointed.
I have a fairly solid idea for a screenplay that I’m looking forward to fleshing out over the course of the semester. I think it’s commercial. I like that the course is geared towards writing a mainstream Hollywood movie. Of course, no film class would be complete without the student who fancies himself the next Jim Jarmusch or some equally insufferable arty-farty filmmaker. I wonder who will reveal himself to be that guy this semester. It sure as hell won’t be me. My shit’s got aliens in it.
I’m still looking for a place to shoehorn in a white horse, too.
-Brad Lohan
Jan
15
Fourth Installments That Aren’t Horrible
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I’ve barely gotten started with my analysis of movie quadrilogies and already come to the conclusion that the fourth film in practically any four-part film cycle is bilge. The lone exception may be “Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV.” That said, does any long-running film series boast a worthwhile movie four? The answer is a resounding yes. In fact, some franchises that extend beyond four installments have rather good fourth chapters. I don’t even need to play with the numbers and say the original “Star Wars” counts because it does not; that film came first in the series. No, these films are legitimately the fourth episodes.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Second only to “The Wrath of Khan” in terms of quality, “The Voyage Home” is a damn fine “Trek” film (read my review here) and was the most successful series installment until the 2009 reboot outgrossed it. I think this film gives the crew of the Original Series the best sendoff and that movies five and six should be discarded from canon. Freshly demoted, Captain Kirk and his loyal crew take the Enterprise-A on her inaugural spaceflight. It’s a denouement that’s so perfect, the next two films borrowed the final moments almost shot-for-shot.
Thunderball
This is the Bond film that virtually every subsequent Bond film — and by extension any big-ticket thrill ride made in the past 45 years — has emulated in terms of formula. The organization known as SPECTRE hijacks two nuclear bombs and holds the world ransom. But they didn’t count on the world’s greatest secret agent buggering up their plans.
Sudden Impact
It wasn’t until the fourth Dirty Harry movie that Det. Callahan growled, “Go ahead, make my day.” The film series was 12 years old by this point and still breaking new ground. “Sudden Impact” pairs Callahan with Eastwood’s real-life girlfriend Sondra Locke, who plays a revenge-seeking femme fatale. One of the better Dirty Harry sequels, I rank it up there with “Magnum Force.”
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
The film that was originally intended to cap off the slasher series turned out to be the best of the lot. Some folks prefer movie three, others movie six. I dig this one the most. It’s star-studded (Crispin Glover and Corey Feldman round out the cast); it’s got someone getting knifed through a projector screen; and it’s got the most WTF diversionary tactic I’ve seen to date. Feldman’s character, a junior makeup effects expert, distracts Jason by shaving his head so that he looks like Jason as a boy. O-kay.
Funnily enough, all of these films are immediately followed by a crappy entry. This would suggest that it may be unlikely for any fifth film to deliver, regardless of the quality of the movie preceding it. But that’s a whole ‘nother blog.
-Brad Lohan
Jan
14
Late to the Party | “Pretty Woman”
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With spring semester kicking off next Tuesday, I’ve been watching a pile of zeitgeist movies that I hadn’t seen before, so I can avoid looking like a complete doofus if they come up in class discussion. It’s one thing to watch a bunch of classic films, movies by Welles and Fellini and Kurosawa and Hitchcock and whoever directed “Stepfather II.” But I think popular movies made within the past couple of decades have more currency. Why? Well, people in my demographic are mildly retarded. They don’t like black-and-white, they don’t like subtitles and they certainly don’t like anything older than they are. And so, contemporary filmmakers cater to imbeciles. To gain insight into how modern day films are made, presuming that someday you would like to make one yourself, you’ve got to man up and sit through some fairly recent mainstream rubbish.
Last night I watched the 15th Anniversary Edition of “Pretty Woman.” I had no idea that the film’s quinceanera justified a double-dip, but there you go. Somehow, I’d managed to go almost 20 years without ever having seen “Pretty Woman.” But being a movie geek, I nonetheless know a bunch of useless trivia about it. JF Lawton’s original script for the film, entitled “$3,000,” was actually much darker than the finished product. Christopher Reeve read for the role of Edward Lewis but threw a bit of a tantrum when the casting assistant who was reading opposite him was unprepared. Jennifer Jason Leigh was up for Vivian. Julia Roberts bowed out of Sam Raimi’s “Darkman” when she landed her star-making role in this.
Surprisingly, I didn’t hate the movie. I was fully prepared for two hours of agony. Instead I found myself pleasantly surprised at how painless the experience was.
For those of you who haven’t seen the film, it stars Richard Gere as Edward Lewis, a wealthy businessman who meets a prostitute named Vivian, played by Roberts, on Hollywood Blvd. I was delighted that right after she gets in his car, he stops at the intersection of Hollywood and Wilcox, which is exactly a half-block from my old apartment building. It’s sort of interesting to see how my neighborhood was apparently crawling with whores in the early-’90s before Craigslist brought prostitution into the digital age. If you want to find a streetwalker in Hollywood nowadays, you need to go south of Sunset Blvd. And none of those tricks is anywhere near as fetching as Julia Roberts.
At any rate, Lewis isn’t a totally skeevy whore-monger. When they get back to his hotel room in Beverly Hills, Vivian’s good to go, but he wants to take it slow and stuff. So they blab for awhile. We learn that he’s a teetotaler and may suffer from a mild form of manorexia. We also learn about his bizarro line of work, buying up companies so that he can sell them off in pieces. Money seems to be his only passion. Lewis is clearly a corporate whore. Whoa, both characters prostitute themselves! JF Lawton’s a screenwriting genius. He also wrote “Under Siege.” So he’s a genius times two!
Because the film needs a second and third act, Lewis hires Vivian to spend the week with him, offering her the princely sum of $3,000. What follows are some lightweight fish-out-of-water shenanigans, as Vivian turns heads on Rodeo Drive in her whorish attire and gets thrown out of some trendy store. My, how times have changed. These days, celebutards like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian dress like whores and get the red carpet treatment. But, this was a different time. Ultimately, Lewis is able to buy Vivian the ugliest, baggiest and frumpiest attire the era had to offer. I swear to God, women dressed like they were wearing curtains in the 1990s.
When your central antagonist is played by Jason Alexander, conflict in your movie-film is going to be at a minimum. Lewis is in town to buy up some shipyards but is having a crisis of conscience. This subplot is almost completely devoid of anything resembling tension. Lewis never really has much to lose if the deal goes south, since he works for Edward Lewis Enterprises. It ain’t like he’s going to fire himself. No, the movie is basically a showcase for Roberts’ infectious charm. The hostile takeover subplot is just to pad out the runtime. That said, from out of nowhere, Alexander’s character gets a little rapey with Vivian near the end, and I thought things were about to take a dark turn. But Lewis literally materializes out of thin air and kicks his ass. I’m not using the word “literally” in a glib manner, either. One moment, he’s not in the hotel room and the next, he’s pulling the guy off her. Edward Lewis is Batman.
This is one of those movies where an adult contemporary song reiterates what the characters are thinking and feeling at any given moment. Yeah, it’s pretty safe. It’s probably the only movie about a hooker the whole family can enjoy. I think the f-bomb is dropped exactly twice to ensure a needless R-rating. But, I still found myself liking “Pretty Woman.” I thought the ending was a little anemic, though. Lewis has a fear of heights that makes him seem like a world-class wuss-bag when he’s paralyzed with fear on the landing of the second floor fire escape. It’s not exactly as romantic as when the same actor, in full Naval Officer’s dress, strides into a factory and sweeps Debra Winger off her feet in “An Officer and a Gentleman.” Wow, I think I’ve completely lost any geek credibility with this blog.
-Brad Lohan
Jan
13
What’s a Best Boy?
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There’s a lot going on behind-the-scenes of any movie. I mean that literally. It takes quite a few people to get off just one shot in a film. All those credits you don’t watch at the end of the film list hundreds of names of people whose jobs you’re probably not familiar with. But they’re just as important as the schmendrick who calls “Action!”
Having worked on a few productions in multiple bottom-feeding roles, I’ve learned what people like the Best Boy actually do all day. I’ve even done some of the things a Best Boy does, making me unofficially a Best Boy myself. I’m certain my mother would be proud of her little [Best] boy. So, here’s a quickie list of different below-the-line job descriptions. Impress your friends while watching the credits of a movie next time.
1st Assistant Camera/Focus Puller: He works in tandem with the Camera Operator, whose gig is fairly self-expanitory. The focus puller is the guy who makes sure the shot remains in focus. He’s typically the guy in the behind-the-scenes featurettes you see who’s always using a tape measure to determine the distance from the camera to the subject(s).
2nd Assistant Camera: He’s the guy who “slates” each take. Well, what the shit’s a slate? A slate is the little whiteboard clapper thingie that you’ve all seen a million times. The 2nd Asst. Camera holds the slate in front of the camera, identifying the shot and take, then he claps the “sticks” together and gets out of the shot. Wait, why do they clap those stick things together? This is to provide a visual cue to sync with the audio, which are often recorded separately.
3rd Assistant Camera/Loader: He loads the film magazines with celluloid. A film magazine typically holds about 10 minutes’ worth of footage. It’s the Loader’s job to make sure a fresh magazine is always available because you can burn through 10 minutes of film pretty quickly. He also has to load the magazines in the dark, so as to not expose the film and thereby make it unuseable.
Stedicam Operator: A Steadicam is a rig that a Camera Operator wears which allows him to shoot complicated tracking shots smoothly and without the camera shake that comes from traditional hand-held cinematography. You know those ginormous machine guns the Marines wear in “Aliens” that are attached to their bodies? Those are based on the same principles of weight distribution as the Stedicam.
Grip: He’s the guy who moves heavy things: C-stands, dolly track, the dolly itself. What’s a C-stand? A C-stand is a rod with three legs that’s kind of like a tripod, but you mount lights on it instead of a camera. A dolly, before you ask, is a wheeled camera mount that you use for tracking shots. Grips are the most fun people on the set from my experience.
Best Boy: He’s the head electrician. He works closely with the Gaffer. What’s a Gaffer? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The Best Boy makes sure that there are available power supplies for the lighting crew. He talks about stingers. And what are stingers? They’re extension cords. Why are there two damn names for everything? That’s just how it is.
Gaffer: He sets up the lights for each shot.
Boom Operator: He points a boom microphone at the actors and tries to keep it out of the shot during a take. Unfortunately, he is not in charge of explosions.
1st Assistant Director: He’s the biggest asshole on the set with probably the most unenviable job. He’s the “Quiet on the set!” guy. It’s his job to do all the micro-managaing that the actual Director shouldn’t be bothered with. This includes corralling the extras. They do the lion’s share of the shouting on the set, making everyone ultimately come to hate them.
2nd Unit Director: Believe it or not, Directors don’t “direct” every shot in a movie most of the time. Chris Nolan and Guillermo del Toro do, but they’re in the minority. A 2nd Unit Director is often utilized to direct action sequences, inserts and pickup shots, whatever doesn’t really involve the actors’ performances, which fall under the Director’s purview. The truck chase in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” doesn’t have a single shot in it directed by Steven Spielberg. Weird, huh?
Script Supervisor: He is often a she, and she has the second most unenviable job. Continuity errors are a fact of life in movies. There are websites devoted to them. At any rate, she tries to keep these to a minimum by making extensive notes about every take so there are no glaring continuity errors in editing. Since films are shot out-of-sequence, it makes life difficult for them. They tend to cry a lot.
Production Assistant: He’s the angry young man who’s fresh out of film school and can probably do everyone’s job better than the dumbass that’s actually doing it, including the director and so-called on-camera “talent.” I’ve been a PA an assload of times, so believe you me, I’m familiar with the impotent rage. But it’s important to have the humbling experience of PA-ing. It prepares you for the rest of your life, where virtually no one will ever bother to recognize your mad genius and instead treat you like an imbecile. Hey, you wanted to work in showbiz, kiddo.
Many of the roles, particularly on smaller productions, can be folded together. On larger shoots, there’s a bunch of additional hands on deck in every department. Part of me misses being on-set. They’re long days, but still, that sense of magic happening is something that’s unique to filmmaking.
-Brad Lohan
Jan
11
Spider-Man Is Dead, Long Live Spider-Man
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Satisfied they can make an underwhelming Spider-Man film without Sam Raimi or Tobey Maguire, Sony Pictures has announced that they’re cancelling “Spider-Man 4″ and moving forward with a reboot of the franchise. The new movie will see Peter Parker back in high school, balancing his non-existent social life with the power and responsibility of being a superhero. Parker graduated from Midtown High at the end of the first act in “Spider-Man 1,” but he was a high schooler for quite awhile in the comics. I’m not saying that more interesting movies could be made about Parker’s high school years. I just don’t have a hell of a lot of confidence in Sony’s ability to tell them. This is the same studio that pressured Raimi to shoehorn Venom into “Spider-Man 3.”
Personally, I think Raimi and Maguire are what make the Spider-Man franchise work. That Sony sees them as disposable after three films that did boffo box office leads me to believe how upside-down they are in their thinking. But, they’re studio suits, not rational human beings. You swap out the principals when they stop delivering. Raimi wanted to make one more Spidey flick to atone for the unevenness of movie three.
It’s a little early for a reboot, too. “Batman Begins” came eight years after “Batman & Robin” torpedoed the franchise. “Star Trek” waited seven years to relaunch. Opening a “Spider-Man” reboot in 2012, five years after “Spider-Man 3,” potentially might do more harm than good. “The Incredible Hulk” reboot came five years after “Hulk” and did approximately the same mediocre business as its predecessor. “Spider-Man 3″ wasn’t universally loved, but it was a blockbuster. The same can’t be said for “B&R” or “Star Trek: Nemesis.” Audiences might not cotton to replacing the things about the franchise they like the most, the director and the star.
If “creative differences” are going to prevent there from being another film with Raimi and Maguire, I’d rather the studio simply move forward with the established mythology but hire new talent. Going back to one is just boring and lazy. It’s chief among the reasons I quit reading comics. They’re constantly rebooting because they have no fresh ideas. It looks like Hollywood’s fallen into the same trap with these characters.
-Brad Lohan