Kinematoscope

So I'm a little too into Oscar predicting. In the last five years, the Pittsburgh Steelers (who I root for because I grew up there), have played in and won two Super Bowls that I watched with only mild enthusiasm.

But during the Academy Awards I groan or fist-pump with every hit or missed call for some reason. So I savor any category with a sure winner.

If only there were such a thing. At the 2007 ceremony, nothing looked safer than Pan's Labyrinth in the Best Foreign Film spot- it even had five 'domestic' nominations, so to speak. It's at number 74 in the top 250, even.

But stealing its thunder (and presently number 56, incidentally) came a German thriller called The Lives Of Others, which walked off with the statue and reviews ranging from "poignant, unsettling thriller" to ""one of the greatest movies ever made!" It was a stunning, awesome debut feature from the awesomely-named Florian Henckel Von Donnersmark.

Hollywood soon came calling, and we all rubbed our hands for his next step.



On paper, The Tourist sounded like a great idea- a thriller based on a little-seen French movie where an unsuspecting average joe is chosen by a Woman of Mystery to be a patsy for her boyfriend, a fugitive millionaire thief.

After a carousel of directors and stars, The Tourist ended up with our man Von Donnersmark and a studio's dream for a leading couple: Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. Surely we could end up with a tense, throwback thriller right in the same ballpark of The Lives Of Others, which mined the former Soviet Union for endless dramatic silences and tense eavesdropping sessions.

The trailer for The Tourist made it clear this wasn't the case, but it just seemed like it was in a different gear- an action-packed romp with two stars that should have breezy chemistry even on an off day.

The problem is, Von Donnersmark tried to make the latter, but only has the skill set for the former. What results is a languid, under-plotted, barely there sketch of a film that's downright boring.



What went so wrong? I'm not sure what passes for glamorous these days, but the decision to have Depp sport a haircut that resembled a dead animal on his head and Jolie to constantly wear so much dark eye makeup that she could be an anime character (she even wore it to bed!) didn't help matters.

Surely two talented, award-winning thespians could manufacture some chemistry even while appearing to be space aliens, but it's not meant to be: every conversation the leads have is hampered by constant awkward pausing, meaningless silence, and pacing straight out of some other film.

It's the same action-packed trailer/dripping-faucet film switcheroo that The American pulled in September, but instead of overwrought somberness The Tourist just has pointless boredom.

Maybe it's the language barrier, but in this film Von Donnersmark displays a Shamylanian talent for getting wooden performances out of talented actors: Paul Bettany, Timothy Dalton, and (briefly) Rufus Sewell all go to waste explaining the ridiculous plot to us.

Oh yeah, the plot: it's not worth getting into, really. It's contived, muddy, and culminates in the London Financial Crimes Division straight up murdering some people. There's one big reveal halfway through the film that's wholly uneccesary, and one at the very end that, even though it's wholly predictable, is still ridiculously insulting.

But the plot shouldn't matter! Duplicity had a similarly ludicrous structure, but Clive Owen and Julia Roberts relegated it to window dressing. It was fun. The Tourist is what I'll use from now on to defend Ocean's Twelve when people dismiss it as a pointless Euro-trifle: at least it was fun to watch.


Ah, well. In an interview, Von Donnersmark said: "I had just finished writing a screenplay for a dark, dramatic thriller, and when I heard about The Tourist, I thought, 'Maybe I'll do this one first.'" So perhaps his next film will be appropriately Lives Of Others-ian and we can leave all this behind.

Meanwhile, maybe whoever edited that trailer can recut The Tourist into a solid, thrilling half hour.

Leftover Thoughts:

-To be clear, I don't think FHVD should make the same film every time, I just get the impression that his skill set is still developing.

-There was some rumor that Sam Worthington and Charlize Theron were up for these parts, and in hindsight that seems like a much better fit- Worthington seems a lot more like a hapless American (Depp is always the villain himself), Theron has a better balance of vulnerability AND allure (Jolie here is all allure with a hint of lizard-eyes).

-You want to know the TWO MAJOR SPOILERS so you never have to see it? Okay: First, Jolie is a London Financial Crimes Unit agent in deep cover! But actually she's gone dark and fallen in love with her target (the rich thief) anyway, so it's really not a twist at all until she decides she's falling for Depp and wants to catch the rich thief after all. Finally, Depp turns out to have BEEN THE RICH THIEF ALL ALONG OMG! Even though he sent her a note telling her to choose a random guy and pretend it was him! And we even saw a dream sequence of Depp's where he kissed her- wouldn't he have his original face in a dream? And he acted all nebbishy and awkward while being chased by random thugs, even though he was actually the dude they thought he was! ugh. It's a good thing I had nothing invested by the end of this film.

Greetings, my friends! Today we take a look into the past, for that is where you and are have spent the entirety of our lives: the past! Tim Burton gives the sympathetic biopic treatement to "worst director of all time" Edward D. Wood, Jr. with 1994's Ed Wood.

And if I take one thing away from this film, it's the idominitable nature of the human spirit, whether you're a closeted transvestite/movie director longing to be accepted, an aging screen legend/drug addict hoping to reclaim the spotlight, or just a film blogger/wannabe entertainment writer not able to keep up with watching three movies a week and writing about them analytically. No matter your dreams, just get them done whatever way you can.

The Key Players:

We once again visit with Tim Burton, director of previous countdown entry Big Fish, wherein I already wrote up his credentials. (sidenote: would you believe me if I told you that Tim Burton has only one Oscar nomination to his credit? Would you further believe if I told that that one nomination was for Corpse Bride in the Animated Film category?)

This is of course his second of approximately eight hundred billion collaborations with Johnny Depp, our nation's favorite pirate.

In support are:

Martin Landau ("Mission Impossible," "Space: 1999," North By Northwest)
Sarah Jessica Parker ("Sex and the City," Sex and the City: The Movie, the upcoming Sex and the City 2: The Quickening)
Patricia Arquette (the aptly-named show "Medium," Bringing Out The Dead, Flirting With Disaster)
Jeffrey Jones (forever known as the principal from Ferris Bueller's Day Off
And the legendary Bill Murrary (who I'm sure we'll get to later on other things*).

*NOTE: further inspection reveals the only other top 250 entrant will be Groundhog Day. WTF? What about Ghostbusters? Caddyshack? Any Wes Anderson movie? Lost in Translation? Sometimes you fail me, internet.



Click for More...

The Story:

We open on a ramshackle 1948 playhouse, where an audience of a half dozen or so watches a play put on by our hero, Edward D. Wood, Jr. (Depp). He and the cast and crew, including his friend Bunny Breckenridge (Murray) and girlfriend Dolores Fuller (Parker), stay up to read the review in the paper- it's a scathing one, but Wood pleasantly notes that the costumes are called "realistic."

We then see that very little daunts Wood as he goes to work delivering plants on a movie studio lot- he stops by the film stock warehouse to view stock footage that will just linger in storage, unused and comments on what a shame that is. Then he overhears that a movie is being made about Christine Jorgensen, one of the first widely known transsexuals.

He talks his way into a meeting with the producer of the proposed film, George Weiss, by claiming that he's "specially qualified" to direct the project- this qualification turns out to be his secret life as a tranvestite, which he has never before revealed (Wood was heterosexual, but had a thing for angora fabric due to some latent "being raised a girl" related mother issues. No biggy.). Weiss shoos him out the door as an underqualified nut.

Wood is dejected, but a chance encounter turns everything around: he runs into the now elderly Bela Lugosi (of Dracula fame) outside of a funeral parlor (where Lugosi was trying out coffins, you know, like ya do). Befriending the aging star by offering him a ride home (and effusively praising his work), he returns to Weiss armed with a real live (if washed up) movie star for the project, and offers to write a script as well.

Weiss gives in, and since rights to Christine Jorgensen's story were never acquired for I Changed My Sex!, delivers an entirely new screenplay which is mostly a delirious mix of tranvestite sympathy with a bit of sex reassignment at the end (bookended by a vague and dramatic monologue from Lugosi) and is now titled Glen or Glenda.

The film is a flop, but Wood is only momentarily disheartened- he secures independent financing for his next film, Bride of the Atom, a horror movie starring a local wrestler of circus-like proportions. During the course of filming, he recasts Dolores's role on a misunderstanding, talks Lugosi into wrestling with a stolen octopus prop in a swamp at three A.M., befriends a cheesy TV psychic (Jones), and is forced to changed the title to Bride of the Monster by a meat packing tycoon who takes over financing (in addition to finding a major role for the tycoon's idiot son).

Dolores, who had tried but failed to take Wood's earlier revelation of his cross dressing in stride, leaves him at the wrap party, fed up with his circle and his lifestyle (Breckenridge, for example, openly talked about plans for a Mexican sex change operation). Lugosi also repeatedly calls Wood late at night in a drugged stupor, until forced to admit his problem and enter rehab.

But things look up as the premiere of Bride of the Monster approaches: Wood attends with a new, cross-dressing-accepting girlfriend on his arm (Arquette), Lugosi, the psychic Criswell, Vampirella (the host of a local horror movie tvcast, and a direct precursor to Elvira), and the hulking star of the movie- it's as if the film had been buliding to this moment, where the purveyor of the odd is flanked at his finest moment by an All-American girl, a vampire and vapiress, a bow-tied psychic and a behemoth.

The film is roundly booed, and the gang are chased out of the theater by an unruly mob. But can the intrepid Edward D. Wood, Jr. dust himself off again for Grave Robbers From Outer Space?

The Artistry:

Burton was excited to make a film that didn't require storyboards and focus on character, and not to be critical, but it mostly shows. Shot in black and white (a decision that caused Paramount to back out of the project), Ed Wood mostly gets out of the way and lets Johnny Depp's performance, all 50's Casey Kasem style enthusiasm, take over the reins.

Which is fun enough, and some pretty great supporting performances buoy the film even higher- Landau's turn as an addled, egotistical Lugosi that bristles at the mere mention of Boris Karloff won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and Murray's quiet turn as well as Parker's shrill part are both fine work.

As a newcomer to Wood's work, I was a little befuddled with the opening homage to Plan 9 From Outer Space: Jeffrey Jones, in character as The Amazing Criswell, sits up out of a coffin and gives a wandering speech introducing the film, much like in Wood's infamous fail-tacular. But by the second Jones' monologue at the end, I was all for it.

It's just- who doesn't want to make movies? It looks like fun, even if it's frustrating. Depp portrays Wood as the kind of film-lover that didn't just move on after one take because he had limited time and budget- to him, each take was perfect, because he was living the dream, man!

I kept expecting a little more of a hammer to fall, given Wood's reputation as a spectacularly bad director, and found myself a little anxiously cautious early in the film, but that feeling ebbed as I realized it was nearly as much a labor of love as the films of its subject.

THE ENDING! SPOILERS!

Lugosi, after filming hardly one scene for Wood's next project, sadly passes away, leaving our hero with no star and no financing for his next project. He manages to convince his landlord's Baptist church to bankroll Grave Robbers From Outer Space telling them the way to make money for their intended film series on the 12 apostles is to first turn a profit on a film in a proven genre.

He gets his girlfriend's rather tall chiropractor to stand in for the majority of Lugosi's role (with his arm over his face), gets the now-unemployed Vampirella to take a part, and proceeds to start filming an over-the-top mashup of space invaders, vampires, and shoddy productions values, with cardboard tombstones and flying saucers with clearly visible strings.

As the Baptist change the title (to Plan 9 From Outer Space, grave robbing being morally uncouth) and insist on casting and plot changes, Wood becomes frustrated and storms to a nearby bar in a huff (and in drag). There he has a chance run-in with none other than his idol, Orson Welles! Welles, over a drink, sympathizes with tales of studio interference, and tells Wood not to compromize his vision for anything. Wood returns to set, demands to have things his way, and end the movie by driving off to marry his girlfriend after a triumphant screening of Plan 9.

END SPOILERS


Overall: Should It Be Higher, Lower?

Oh man, I know it might be because I have a huge soft spot for movies about making movies (I was even thinking about making a list until the Onion A.V. Club freaking posted this on Monday), but I say higher.

The Legacy:

Rick Baker won an Oscar for his makeup, in addition to Landau taking every other Supporting actor award under the sun that year. Commercially Ed Wood was a bomb befitting its subject material, but critical acclaim has preserved it in memory.

The Best Video Of It On YouTube:

"Well...somebody misplaced the octopus motor, so, when you get in there and fight with him: shake his legs around- looks like he's killin' ya! Okay!"



Leftover Thoughts:

-"Really? Worst film you ever saw? Well, my next one will be better!... Hello?"

-Fun fact: Martin Landau's daughter Juliet Landau, who has a minor part in this film, is much like Lugosi most famous for playing a vampire: Drusilla on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

-Actual tagline for this film: Movies were his passion. Women were his inspiration. Angora sweaters were his weakness.

-I was pretty proud that not only did I know it was Vincent D'Onofrio playing Orson Welles, but also that his voice was dubbed over by Maurice LaMarche (The Brain from "Pinky and The Brain").

Coming Up...

Thursday, September 17th: Letters From Iwo Jima

Friday, September 18th: The Lost Weekend Yeah, that's right, three days in a row! Boom!

Surprise! I wasn’t on pace for another one of these at least until Obama’s inauguration. But who am I to turn down inexplicable bursts of productivity? And seeing as everyone in the world has seen today’s entrant in the countdown, there’s no need to recap the plot of Pirates Of The Carribean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl at all. So while we’re here, let’s settle this once and for all: It’s pronounced ca-RIB-bean, not carri-BE-an. You can even listen to a Miriam-Webster robot get it right. (A sidenote: I find I hilarious that the Wikipedia page “List of words of disputed pronunciation” has a note that says “the factual accuracy of this page is disputed.”)

The Key Players:

Director Gore Verbinski’s biggest claim to fame before PotC (as the kids call it) was The Ring, the English remake that kicked off the huge wave of (mostly) forgettable J-Horror remakes. He also put in time taking paychecks for Mousehunt, and doing a pale Soderberg imitation with The Mexican.

Johnny Depp is Johnny Depp.

Orlando Bloom is of course mostly famous for playing Legolas in the LotR trilogy (the kids, they really don’t like to spell things out) and delivering my single favorite line of the trilogy for unintentional comedy purposes (where, in Return Of The King, they discuss the plan to draw out Sauron’s troops and clear the way for Frodo for about ten minutes before good ol’ Legolas is all like “A diversion!” (at the 9:30 mark here)).

Keira Knightley broke out in Bend It Like Beckham (which I’ll see someday when I’m a thirteen-year-old girl) and is now a Serious Actress in Serious films with accents and wigs.

Geoffrey Rush won an Academy Award for Shine, and my personal favorites of his storied career include Intolerable Cruelty, Quills, and Shakespeare In Love (which is inexplicably not on this countdown, by the way. This is a tragedy, people that rate things on imdb! I will literally fight anyone who thinks that Saving Private Ryan (#57 on this countdown) should’ve won Best Picture instead).

The cast is filled out by faces either familiar from other things (hey, it’s Jonathan Pryce from Brazil!, and the Dwight from the British Office!), or familiar from this trilogy. Also, there’s a monkey and a parrot.



The Story:

So there’s these Pirates, in the Carribbean, and they need to get some black pearls from some black oysters, but then some ninjas show up and they have a giant ninja/pirate brawl and uh…. Has anyone really not seen it, but also happens to be reading this obscure page on the internet? I say no.

The Artisticness:

Lesson learned on style: 1) Gore Verbinski really likes blue lighting or orange lighting. 2) Jerry Bruckheimer (producer extraordinaire) really likes action sequences that go on 20% longer than necessary. 3) If Keira Knightley doesn’t have enough cleavage for your purposes, you can always paint some more on.

But the honest strength of this movie, beyond Depp’s Oscar-nominated Keith Richards impression, is Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio’s screenplay. It’s sprightly witty, in a sort of Tom Stoppard (but more accessible) way, and this first installment of the PotC series is actually pretty tightly plotted. In subsequent entires they went a little haywire, but there’s not a spare moment in Black Pearl.

But seriously, this movie is funny like a screwball comedy from the 30’s. Depp and Rush get to ham it up all they want amongst Bloom, Knightley, and a host of other British straight-people. And there are not one but two Useless-Comic-Duos, one of hapless Pirates and one of hapless Redcoats.

The playfulness of the script even pervades to the Rube-Goldberg-machine-like action sequences, which utilize pulleys, catapults and levers (though this may be an influence of it being based on a theme-park attraction, naturally. I’ve never been to Disneyworld, myself.)

Finally, Klaus Badelt's score is one of the few instantly recognizable modern classics, with only Howard Shore's LotR themes quicker to remind me of the film it's from when I hear it (among films from this decade).

THE ENDING! SPOILERS ONLY IF YOU LIVE UNDER ROCKS

This is clearly the first film wherein the writers weren't absolutely sure they would be writing sequels, so it’s definitely the most satisfying conclusion. The hero gets the girl, the Pirate gets the ship, etc.

There’s an annoying trend these days (I call it the Pirates/Matrix Syndrome), in which a pretty awesome blockbuster will do well enough to spawn sequels, and then immediately we’re treated to two (or more) films that don’t tell satisfying tales in and of themselves, and don’t even come close to living up to the original movie.

Some series avoid this by having a plan for future stories already in place (LotR), or focusing on one film at a time (hence Spider-Man 2 improving on the first).

END VAGUE SPOILERS

Overall: Should It Be Higher, Lower?

I’d say this seems appropriately weighted, in the larger scheme of things. It’s not often a large-scale action adventure movie (an original one, no less), goes for such an oddball, crowd-pleasing tone and hits all the right notes.

The Legacy:

Of course, if Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End weren’t over-plotted, overlong, and filled with bizarre stretches of exposition regarding half-crustacean people, voodoo goddesses, and the East India Trading Company, maybe The Curse Of The Black Pearl wouldn’t look as awesome in comparison. (For the record, I own all three, and I’ll probably see the upcoming fourth. They’re still entertaining, just not as awesome. Ah, well).

Otherwise, Johnny Depp now stands as one of the world biggest movie-stars in addition to already being one of the world’s coolest, but the brief making-movies-from-theme-park-rides trend died immediately with The Haunted Mansion.

The Best Video Of It On YouTube:

Well, the whole thing is on YouTube (starting here), but since there's no way that's legal we'll go with the scene after the credits, because monkeys=awesome. Seriously, Owning A Pet Monkey is high on the list of things I dream about but would never actually do (like Robbing A Bank, or Joining The CIA).



Leftover Thoughts (Favorite Quotes Edition):

-“Clearly you’ve never been to Singapore”

-“You cheated!” “Pirate.”

-“Spiritually, ecumenically…grammatically.”

-“Oh, not you. We named the monkey Jack.”

-“That would be the French.”

-“…and then they made me their chief.”

-"A wedding? I love weddings! Drinks all around!"

-“Lovely singing voice, though - eunuch.”