Syndication

Early in the day on Thanksgiving I was listening to Morning Becomes Eclectic on KCRW. At one point a track began, very lounge, very sixties, very Hugo Montenegro, with wordless male vocals moving things along. After a few seconds I thought, “What are they playing, the theme to LADY IN CEMENT?” Then I thought, “How could I possibly pick out the theme to LADY IN CEMENT so quickly? And why would they be playing that? It can’t be LADY IN CEMENT. It’s not even a good movie.” Then, a moment later, the DJ came on, telling us we were listening to Hugo Montenegro’s theme to LADY IN CEMENT. Oy.

So on the occasion of that reminder of the person that I am and all of the things swimming around up in my brain, I have reached my One-Hundredth post. When I first started this blog, I wasn’t sure if it would last a month. Instead, I have found it to be an enjoyable and fulfilling way to express my continuing love for film. My thanks to anyone and everyone who is reading this and has sent supportive comments my way.

Now, for no other reason except to help celebrate the occasion, here's a photo of Mrs. Peel herself, Diana Rigg. Cheers.

A Kind of a Gorilla

This may only be for people who lived in New York during a certain period.

There’s a period in my childhood that was marked by WOR Channel 9 in New York showing the same triple bill every Thanksgiving: KING KONG, SONG OF KONG and MIGHTY JOE YOUNG. To this day, when I think of Thanksgiving I think of KONG. These days I may not be able to view the same old commercials for Crazy Eddie and Toy World like I did then but the DVDs help to at least partly recreate this feeling.

Why these movies became programmed during Thanksgiving is something probably lost to history, but maybe the KONG connection to New York had something to do with it. Now, I love KING KONG but for reasons I cannot fully explain I have stronger memories or watching SON OF KONG in its entirety more than any other part of that afternoon of programming--the timing of when we ate must have had something to do with it. SON OF is pretty obviously assembled in haste and isn’t much of a movie but I still like the ‘Continuing Adventures of Denham and Englehorn’ feel of the first half and the second half has enough moments that have stuck with me since childhood so I can sit here right now and enjoy it pretty easily. And while female lead Helen Mack may be no Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong’s Carl Denham is absolutely right when he says, “She’s got something…she’s got personality.” Every time I see the movie I wind up looking forward to her first appearance.

A page at the DVD Drive In web site details the chronology of WOR offering this selection and it’s genuinely surprising to learn that the lineup I remember didn’t exist for as many years as I would have thought. But I suppose that everything about childhood seems to last longer than it really did. The 1933 KING KONG was already a film of the distant past when I first saw it and it’s much more in the past now. But the association I have with it, one that its creators never had in mind, remains strong. I hope someone else out there makes that KONG-Thanksgiving connection and as long as that happens I have to think that there is something right out there in the world. Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Lucky To Be Alive

I still think that there’s a Saturday Night Live sketch somewhere in that pool table scene between Tom Cruise and Sydney Pollack in EYES WIDE SHUT. The way Pollack lays out all that exposition, the way Tom Cruise seems to respond to every statement by repeating it—heck, he does that the whole movie, even to the point of repeating what his own daughter says to him. I don’t quite know what the sketch would be but there’s just something so damn hypnotic about the scene and it was the first thing I wanted to see when I popped the new DVD into my player. Of course, it can easily be said that there’s something hypnotic about the whole movie.


The thing is, we have to look at EYES WIDE SHUT as a film which will remain unfinished. Stanley Kubrick planned for many things in his career but he didn’t plan for his own death in March of 1999. You’ll never convince me that, four months before its release, the man who continued editing 2001 and THE SHINING several days after they opened in theaters wasn’t going to continue tinkering with his film, if not make substantial changes. But if this is the EYES WIDE SHUT we will always know, I’ll take it. I’ve seen the movie numerous times over the years, but unfortunately only once in a theater. My opinion of it doesn’t change, but my perceptions of certain things always seem to, like how the use of the color blue seems stronger each time. This new disc is the unrated version, with all the debauchery that we’re meant to see and yes, it is an improvement. I’ll never believe that Kubrick wouldn’t have had opinions about that change and it’s fortunate that we in the states are finally getting to see what is as close to the real EYES WIDE SHUT as we’ll ever know for the first time.


Set in present day New York, it’s a world I am able to be more familiar with than any other Kubrick film. The Central Park West address the Hartfords live on seems to place it in Woody Allen territory and it’s an interesting alternate version of the film to imagine. The apartment has just as many books on the shelves as people do in Woody’s films but the feel of the place is more opulent. Dr. Bill seems a little too well-off for what I imagine his position is, but I suppose if he has people like Victor Ziegler in his life he’s doing pretty well.

I love party scenes in films and as far as I’m concerned the one at the beginning of EYES WIDE SHUT is one of the great party scenes. It drifts along, it takes detours, there’s flirting, people are met, people drop away, the characters get drunker as it goes along. It’s a shame that we don’t get a few more seconds of Gayle and Nuala (“N-U-A-L-A”) as they try to take him “where the rainbow ends” and it’s impossible not to read volumes into that look they give each other when he is led away.


As Dr. Bill is engaged in his own flirting, Alice is quickly getting buzzed as she continues her dance with Sandor Szavost (“I’m Hungarian.”). Admittedly, I’ve never been the biggest Nicole Kidman fan. I guess I lost interest around the time she lost the frizzy hair but by a certain point she just began to seem plastic and artificial to me. At least in TO DIE FOR this made sense but there’s always been something very distancing about her to me. So it was my surprise that it was on this viewing of EYES WIDE SHUT where I found myself drawn to her more than ever before. From the moment she picks up that glass of champagne on the way to the bathroom and downs it in a few seconds, all the way to the point when Tom Cruise gets called out of their late-night pot session, she owns the movie. With this sudden revelation, I found myself wishing we would stay there with Alice instead of following Dr. Bill out to cavort with Marie Richardson’s grieving daughter and Vinessa Shaw’s nicest-prostitute-in-the-world. It wasn’t until we move below street level into the Sonata Café that I found myself drawn back into the film (though it always bugs me that Dr. Bill enters just as Nick Nightingale’s set is wrapping up).


Dr. Bill has to depart from Alice out of necessity for a long stretch of screentime and when he finally returns to her it’s to a long monologue just as she is woken up in the early morning hours and it’s always my least favorite scene in the film. I know it shouldn’t be. I know it’s thematically important. But from now until doomsday, I think that whenever I watch the film I’m just going to zone right out during that scene. After following Dr. Bill through his night, listening what Alice was dreaming about at the exact same time just isn’t something I can bring myself to be interested in. From that point on, the character of Alice has lost me.


It’s hard to avoid mentioning how good Todd Field is as Nick Nightingale and what a vivid, unspoken characterization he brings to what are really just a handful of scenes, a few of which he’s really just an extra. Random Todd Field bookends—way back in 1999 he appeared in a movie called GROSS ANATOMY as a med student who gets kicked out of school, prefiguring the character he plays here. And just after the release of EYES WIDE SHUT he appeared in Jan De Bont’s lousy remake of THE HAUNTING as someone else who we think will stick around in the film longer than they do. De Bont was placing Kubrick references in each of his films at this point and it was hard not to think of Todd Field as a sort of walking Kubrick reference when he turned up in the film. That’s just about the only thing I remember about THE HAUNTING.


Noticing the obvious backlot use throughout—do we see the same block over and over? The same two blocks?—is unavoidable. Saying it gives the film a dreamlike quality offers a good reason for this—some may say excuse, but not me—but this doesn’t fly as much with the daytime scenes when it’s hard not to feel like some more realism is needed. And yet, when we’re back out at night later on with that street seeming just too deserted even for late night New York, everything about the frisson of that dreamlike feel seems to take hold, from the anonymous cab driver who shouts “Off duty!” to that New York Post headline provocatively reading “LUCKY TO BE ALIVE” a touch I remember noticing on my first viewing and something that jumps out at me each time I see it. I can’t believe that such an element was unintended.


And yet, why does the headline inside the Post which actually pertains to the plot read in a strange use of language “Ex-beauty queen in hotel drugs overdose”. Why does such a sloppily written heading get several big close-ups? Why do I always find myself looking forward to the smiling waitress who says, “I’ll bring it over to you,” when Dr. Bill orders a cappuccino. Is there really such a place in Greenwich Village or did Kubrick go there at some point in the 50s? And why is this film set during Christmastime, anyway? Did Shane Black do a pass on the script?


And once again, whenever we get to that scene with the pool table I find myself noticing the exhaustion noticeable in Tom Cruise, wondering how much of that is the character and how much is really him. I watch Sydney Pollack telling him everything—or is he?—and revealing things that should make him villainous and yet in his way of tossing out phrases like “he’s back with his family, you know, banging Mrs. Nick,” I find myself liking him more than any other character Pollack has ever played. And I wonder what it would be like to play pool at that table. And as he tells Dr. Bill, who may or may not be lucky to be alive at that point, “Someone died, it happens all the time. But life goes on, it always does. Until it doesn’t. But you know that, don’t you,” it’s hard not to look at it as being the correct ending for both the movie and the career of Kubrick in general. Just leaving us hanging on a tightrope after that line would be audacious to say the least. But then, we wouldn’t have the great last line that Nicole Kidman has. It’s just one of the many conundrums of EYES WIDE SHUT.

For More Than Just Your Money

A moment of silence, please, for Michael Blodgett, who died last week at the age of 67. Blodgett appeared in such films as Roger Corman’s THE TRIP and Blake Edwards’s THE CAREY TREATMENT. He was also a novelist as well as a screenwriter, with credits that included THE HERO AND THE TERROR and TURNER & HOOCH. But it was his role in Russ Meyer’s BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS as gigolo Lance Rocke, “Greek God and part-time actor” which earned him his place in cinema history. A hateful character, yes, but like everyone in the movie I think of him with fondness. And he got Kelly McNamara into bed with relatively little effort. Maybe he didn’t deserve what he got in the end but, hey, he accepted that invitation to Z-Man’s house. And, as the narration tells us, “Those who only take must be prepared to pay the highest price of all.” Blodgett was by all accounts involved with co-star Cynthia Myers at the time and, though they don’t interact much at all in the film, the couple can be seen full-on making out in the legendary “photo shoot” trailer which can be found on the DVD.

I crossed paths very briefly with Blodgett about a decade ago when he was married to Meredith Baxter, but we never actually met (one of several extremely uninteresting stories I have of encounters with BVD personnel). Even in that tiny encounter it was hard not to look at him and think that this was what Lance Rocke would look like many years down the line. Even when I met his daughter Heather at a party back in 2001 I kept on thinking, “It’s Lance Rocke’s daughter…”

Naming my favorite line for the “blue-eyed soul brother” in the screenplay written by Roger Ebert would be a pretty tough competition, but “Since the last time I saw you, you won the Heavyweight Championship. Congratulations!” definitely ranks way up there. A guy I knew used to say that the reason you keep on going out to parties in L.A. is the hope that one day you’ll wind up at Z-Man’s. Blodgett’s performance as Lance Rocke is one of the things that makes BVD so unforgettable and one of the reasons we want to find our way to one of those parties at Z-Man’s. Done deal, Lance. Please raise a glass of “sauce” tonight in memory of Michael Blodgett.

“And how’s she getting home?”

“It’s her car.”

Until the Mess Gets Here

Several times over the past week I’ve run into other people who have seen NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and we just found ourselves nodding over some unspoken agreement about the film. We obviously felt the same way about it and maybe weren’t saying much because we still wanted to let it percolate in our heads a little.

It’s clear that people are going to have opinions about things that occur late in the film—none of which I’m going to talk about here. During a key scene in the final section, with my mind still reeling over the directions it was going in, it started to sink in to me what the film was about. The thing is, it was such a personal connection that I was drawing—no way I’m talking about that either—that of course the movie isn’t really about those things and days after seeing it the connection doesn’t really hold up. An icily dark thriller with patches of black comedy shot mostly in the deserts of New Mexico, NO COUNTRY stars Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Woody Harrelson and Kelly Macdonald—each role expertly played. And of course there’s Tommy Lee Jones, basically the protagonist though some people will have differing opinions about that, in a role seemingly designed to feed off audience expectation of what we expect his Sheriff character to do in the course of the film. There’s no reason for me to discuss the plot in detail right now, though it would be all too easy to talk about the best things on display here. Just go see it, marvel in how good it is and we’ll discuss the details later.

After the broadly comic double bill of INTOLERABLE CRUELTY and THE LADYKILLERS—neither is their best work, but that’s for another time—I strongly suspected that the two would retreat for a little while before they reemerged with something surprising and that’s exactly what they have done. Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN dispenses with their expected stock company (with the exception of the great Stephen Root) and while the mastery of the suspense sequences can be traced all the way back to BLOOD SIMPLE there’s a feel to it unlike anything they have presented in recent years.


In his excellent piece at The House Next Door, Matt Zoller Seitz briefly mentions Kubrick in relation to the Coens and it was my own personal thoughts about the film that made me think of an oft-quoted opinion attributed to the late director: “The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.” I’m undecided how much the Coens subscribe to this theory and since this film originates from another source maybe it’s a moot point. The question of whether previous Coen characters such as Barton Fink, Tom Reagan or H.I. McDunnough encounter indifference further complicates matters—it’s possible that they do, but maybe not in a Kubrickian way. It’s this presumed indifference in the world that is what gave me a sinking feeling during the final scenes in NO COUNTRY, thinking that maybe some things in life do just happen, no matter what importance we try to assign to them. The emotions that NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN brought up in me have next to nothing to do with the film, but I have to believe that that’s ok. If a film causes you to sit there during the end credits and ponder stuff in your life that you weren’t expecting to think about when you walked into the theater, there has to be an element of success in that.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN isn’t just the best film from the Coen Brothers in years, it’s their first film since BARTON FINK that left me both dazzled and floored. I can't get it out of my mind, but the greatest reasons for that will have to remain my own.

The Monsters Now

In his directorial debut I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND Robert Zemeckis presents the Beatles in their appearance on Ed Sullivan even though no Beatles were actually in the film. This is accomplished by very clever staging, blocking and the actual footage of the legendary program. Not only does this anticipate roles that famous people will play in films he would make such as BACK TO THE FUTURE and FORREST GUMP, but it looks forward to how he would use the alchemy of film to convince us of the impossible. I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND also has a bit where the late Wendie Jo Sperber, desperate to get out of a moving car, simply opens the door and crashes onto the sidewalk. The go-for-broke feel of that moment is one of the things that I love in his early films and it’s hard not to miss it when looking at the direction he’s gone in.

I’ll always have a fondness for the early films that Robert Zemeckis created with his partner Bob Gale all those years ago. I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND, USED CARS, the BACK TO THE FUTURE films and Spielberg’s 1941, which they co-wrote, all seem to exist together as a piece and they go together as well as the films of Preston Sturges did. If only there were two or three more Zemeckis-Gale collaborations. But instead, Robert Zemeckis went down a road which favored technology over people. I would say that this is puzzling since this is the man whose first film presented a budding romance between the amazing team of Eddie Deezen and Wendie Jo Sperber. After giving the world such a miracle, how could anyone possibly have an interest in computer generated characters?


I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND is about a group of teenagers who try to go see the Beatles appearance on Ed Sullivan in 1964 and is a terrifically funny movie. Several years ago Zemeckis and Gale contributed a very good commentary for the DVD. Zemeckis sounds distracted at first, almost as if his mind is still on a sound mixing session for THE POLAR EXPRESS, but he becomes more engaged as the track goes on, laughing heartily as he remembers this film he directed long ago. But that film was a long time ago and on his commentary for USED CARS, the director frankly states that he loves the film but could never make it now, saying that it needs a “young man’s energy”. It’s a surprisingly frank admission that a director, or any kind of artist, naturally changes through the years. It’s not necessarily about growth as much as it is that you’d expect a person and their interests to change over the years. For better of for worse Zemeckis has clearly become more interested in providing us with images which no one has been able to present before. Maybe it’s that new kind of electric train set he can play with more than anything else. It’s just the way I am that this sort of thing is never going to interest me as much as watching actual people so to me a degree of soul has been lost from his films, but the skill that he brings to it is undeniable.


After BACK TO THE FUTURE, the director’s interest seemed to gradually change from an interest in the people in front of the camera to the visions in front of the camera. The somewhat invisible effects shots throughout CAST AWAY are an interesting melding of the two, but now he seems to have left those people behind in favor of how he can manipulate the images of those people—BEOWULF lead Ray Winstone looking decidedly different in the film from how he appears in real life, for example. But there’s a genuine awareness of the craft which Zemeckis brings to it that separates his film from a piece of junk like 300. The random style of cutting that is seen in most action sequences these days is totally absent here. Instead we get his awareness of how to block these scenes, how to stage them so that one shot moves into another. It’s like a combination of what the director has always known about the language of film and the direction he insists that film is going.

What I’m trying to say is that if this new version of BEOWULF has to exist then it’s a very fortunate thing that it’s being brought to us by someone who clearly understands film grammar as well as he does. It’s a form of technology that I guess I’ll never be that interested in, but watching it in the new Digital 3D format I have to acknowledge that this is something I’ve never seen before. The leap from how it appeared in THE POLAR EXPRESS to now is palpable and even if this makes it clear how transitory the state of this technology currently is, that doesn’t diminish the technical accomplishment on display here. Is that display of technology enough? Maybe for the two hours the film runs it is.


I never read the epic poem of which Alvy Singer said to Annie Hall, "Just don’t take any course where they make you read Beowulf," so I’m unqualified to comment on any liberties the adaptation by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary takes. It’s a very good script, though it doesn’t hold together the whole way for me. Some of the plotting that could be expected from a Robert Zemeckis film doesn’t really feel like it’s there but in place are some of those breaking-the-laws-of-physics-type setups that he’s been toying with for the past several years. At one point a character thrusts a giant sword right at our POV (nice in 3D) then the “camera” swings around and moves into a medium shot so we see how the blade is mere inches from someone’s eye, a shot that would be impossible if shot “normally” but extremely well-executed. So the question would be, is this film really about telling a story or is it about astounding us with the visuals we are witnessing? Maybe that’s what’s keeping the story from really taking hold for me.


I’m not going to go on about every single impressive aspect about the film, though I could mention the uniqueness of Winstone’s lead performance, how Brendan Gleeson still manages a genuine human presence within this, the perfection of Angelina Jolie’s casting, how truly astounding the Digital 3D is. One element which stands out more than anything is Crispin Glover as Grendel. Obviously it’s not just Glover, but also many effects artists creating the character. But once he speaks and I realized who it was, Glover’s personality does genuinely come through. And the character of Grendel, not burdened with having to resemble human beings like other characters in the film, is a truly amazing accomplishment and performance by all involved. More than anything, he looks photo-realistic to my eyes. Seriously, Gollum is a Hanna-Barbera cartoon in comparison. Despite any lack of interest I may have in this technology, when I’m confronted by something like this I have to acknowledge that the possibilities of what we could see in front of our eyes in the future and actually believe could be limitless.

If I sound conflicted about this, maybe that’s because I’m wrestling with the thoughts of what I want to see, what I miss in a director I always liked and the awareness that there are new ways of doing things that I have to acknowledge. Go see BEOWULF in the best Digital 3D theater possible. Then check out the DVD of one of his early films and wonder what the happy medium between the two could possibly be. If it even exists.

Live For The Question

It could be said that the best year for films in the 90s was 1994 and the best month for films during that year was October. Among the films released included PULP FICTION, ED WOOD, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION…and the sadly little-seen Michael Tolkin satire THE NEW AGE. I was lucky enough to see it during its brief run and all these years later it remains one of my favorite films about Los Angeles, as well as one of the scariest. The characters in the film aren’t really people I know but the sense of living in this town and fearing that you’re just inches away from it all slipping away from you is certainly something I can understand. There are plenty of people moving to Los Angeles who should be given a DVD of THE NEW AGE when they arrive in town. Unfortunately, it’s not available on DVD and I’m guessing those people have long since gotten rid of their VCRs.

Married couple Peter and Katherine Witner (Peter Weller and Judy Davis, teaming up again after NAKED LUNCH) are high-maintenance Los Angeles residents whose high-paying jobs both slip away from them on the same day. Uncertain what to do next, they decide to throw a party. This results in several unforeseen collisions of different parts of their lives and their marriage becomes shaky as a result. Even as they contemplate separating, they decide on their next step with the help of their spiritual advisors: choosing to go into business for themselves, they settle on a high-end clothing boutique named Hipocracy. In spite of a lavish opening and a tiny spurt of business at the start, the store almost immediately begins to fail as their lives spiral fully out of control.


One thing that writer-director Michael Tolkin does is to never take a stance on the focus on the spirituality the characters are exploring. Are they fools to do so, are the “new age” methods they employ shams? I was surprised how some of the language used by their advisors resembles stuff that has gone out more into the mainstream in the guise of things like feng shui and The Secret. My personal experience with such things is that I can see the value in it as long as you don’t let them overwhelm you. As the immortal Egg Shen in BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA says, “We take what we like, and leave the rest, just like your salad bar.” The problem with Peter and Katherine isn’t that they listen to these beliefs too much but as human beings they really are empty shells, with no inner lives to figure out how to correctly implement what enters their heads. They’re smart, but not particularly bright. They’re witty but not particularly clever. They love each other, but cheat on each other. They want to split up, but can’t bear to be apart. They spit out pithy dialogue like “Let’s cut to the chase” with self-loathing but don’t know what actual words they should say instead. If either person ever took up a hobby as dull as stamp collecting, it would automatically become the most interesting thing about them. They don’t know what they want and they don’t even know how to describe what they’re thinking and feeling. Things which are genuine are alien concepts to them. And yet, they remain fascinating to watch in their downfall…if, indeed, it is a downfall.

“No one ever taught you to be a man,” Peter Witner is told early on. It’s true and after meeting his father (played, in a very funny piece of casting, by Adam West) we can see why. Both men use the same pick-up line, “How are your morals?” to different women, which is very telling. The Los Angeles that THE NEW AGE is set in seems very genuine in the sense that much of it seems phony. While watching TV at one point, Peter muses how laser discs (remember, it’s 1994) look better than cassettes, but albums sound better than CDs, concluding, “Digital is weird.” It’s all one big mélange of unreality to him, even down to his seduction technique on his wife that includes describing the fictional place they are making love, even if it’s the exact place they currently are. His soul seems empty just as what he sells is empty. Even when he takes something he has learned which may be of value, it's in the service of a goal which is ultimately empty. At various points, character call out to him, saying “Peter!” As someone who shares this name, it always gets my attention and makes me jump a little. I can’t think of another film with a character named Peter where this is the case. Which just unnerves me…did anyone ever teach me to be a man?


Peter Weller, who has appeared in several favorites of mine, never had a better part than he has here and he truly delivers. Judy Davis, brilliant, was possibly never more vampirically sexy than she is in this film. There are also very good supporting performances throughout from familiar faces such as my one-time crush Paula Marshall as the William Morris agent that Weller is having an affair with and, surprisingly, a pre-RAYMOND Patricia Heaton as one of Davis’s friends who has a few of the most memorable scenes to play—one, involving the price of a belt, is one of the best examples I’ve ever seen of how money and friendship should never be mixed. Another, where Heaton’s character delivers a brutal social blow to Davis, is possibly the nastiest moment in a film filled with them. There are also lesser-known faces throughout and I find myself continually fascinated by many of them. Embarrassing confession: character actor Patrick Bauchau plays one of the Witner’s spiritual advisors and some key moments are centered around him. He’s appeared in many other things but I have to admit that several years ago when I happened to flip past a TV show and noticed that he was appearing on it, I felt a small tinge of disappointment that he wasn’t really the person he portrays here. Not my best moment, but a good indication of how this film has stayed with me through the years. And the eleventh-hour appearance by Samuel L. Jackson truly drives the movie home and makes it clear why he was becoming a superstar in PULP FICTION at the very same time.


Michael Tolkin’s name has appeared on the screenwriting credits of several films since this film was released but except for an episode of MASTER OF SCIENCE FICTION earlier this year, he hasn’t directed anything else. It’s our loss. The issues of reality, unreality and just how we’re supposed to exist in our time feel like they could use a comment from him, now that the world he presents here has graduated past dot-com, iPhones and blackberries. The themes of THE NEW AGE remain relevant and are like a mystery that I’m still trying to unravel. Just as I feel like I’m still trying to figure out what I’m doing in this town. I don’t always know the answer but as THE NEW AGE reminds me, I should always live for the question.

Breaking My Concentration

After watching the new DVD of THE SHINING, I have a few questions and/or observations. This is a film that I have a greater appreciation for now than when I was younger, partly because I read everything by Stephen King back then. I think my take on the film was somewhat colored by both the changes made to the material and by King’s own well-documented lukewarm response. But all these years later the fact is that I’ve spent a great deal of time pacing in front of a typewriter (or, more recently, computer) so there are certain elements I feel I can relate to a little better. I may feel a little more like Barton Fink than Jack Torrance, but it still applies. Anyway, these are just a few thoughts.


It’s often erroneously stated that the opening shot of the film is a helicopter shot of Jack Torrance’s Volkswagen Beetle driving up through the mountains. Of course, the first shot of the is actually of a tiny little nub of an island located on a large body of water in Glacier National Park. Why is this shot here? Is it some sort of play on “No man is an island” while telling us in advance that Jack Torrance is, in fact, an island? Is it just there to creep me out?

For that matter, all of that helicopter footage haunts me. I even like getting to see more of it like what appears at the end of the theatrical cut of BLADE RUNNER. I wish we could see even more of what was shot.

That reverse angle of Jack Nicholson listening to Barry Nelson tell the story of Charles Grady, the previous caretaker who killed his family. Has there ever been a better reaction shot of a character simply listening in the history of cinema?

Jack Torrance says of wife Wendy, “She’s a confirmed ghost and horror film addict.” I just have to ask, really? Is there anything in the character of Wendy Torrance that seems remotely like she would have any interest in scary movies?


This leads to thoughts on Shelley Duvall’s performance: I remember not being very crazy about her in the film when I saw it years ago which, again, my have had to do with how I pictured the character in the book. Viewing it now, she seems to be the most fully realized character in the piece. She’s not the most relatable person here, but she seems perfectly believable as a woman so totally devoted to her husband and son, even if certain bad things have happened in the past. Remembering that brilliant SHINING trailer parody that was all the rage some time back, I kept thinking on this viewing that the fake trailer is how Wendy sees her life with Jack and Danny, or at least how she hopes it is. She has no idea she’s going to stumble into a horror movie—as far as she knows, everything is peachy keen. I did occasionally wonder about certain things, though. She ambles innocently into the room when her husband the writer is no doubt deep in thought and asks, “Hi hon. How’s it goin’?...Get a lot written today?”, no doubt thinking that what he’s trying to do must be the most breezily enjoyable thing in the world. The whole time they’ve been married they never talked about how she shouldn’t be disturbing him when he’s working? I’m not saying Jack should go after her with an axe or anything, but I can relate. Duvall comes off as so genuinely petrified through the entire second half of the film that it’s hard not to associate that with whatever she must have been going through with Kubrick during production. So it’s surprising to see her bickering right back in the making-of featured on the disc. Even if he was really pounding down on her with his direction, her response makes it clear that there’s not an ounce of Wendy Torrance in her at all.

When we see the aerial shots of the actual hotel used for exteriors, where is the hedge maze supposed to be?

Speaking of the hedge maze, the diagrams of it that we see look far simpler than it does in the famous overhead shot. I would ask how that overhead shot was done but even after hearing explanations, I still don’t fully understand so maybe it’s best if it remains a mystery for me.

If anything ever really did happen in room 237 then what, if anything, does Dick Halloran (Scatman Crothers) know about it? Does he know anything about it?


Thoughts of the supernatural: arguments can be made that ROSEMARY’S BABY and THE OMEN contain no supernatural material in them. It’s one of the interesting things about both movies that every single thing which happens in them is somehow possible, even if not probable. THE EXORCIST doesn’t fall into this category—right from the get-go we get clocks stopping, drawers opening, and that’s before anything really happens. With THE SHINING, does Kubrick invent a third option? It seems to accept the gift of the “shine” that Scatman Crothers and Danny Lloyd share, since we know there is an actual connection between the two. But how much of what Jack Torrance sees is truly supernatural? What about what Wendy sees? The implication is that the spirit of Delbert Grady unlocks the door of the storage room that Jack is locked in. But we never actually see this happening. So does it?

On the DVD of DEATH PROOF, Tarantino talks about the long scene where Earl McGraw (Michael Parks) gives his theory about what just happened, referring to it as the “Simon Oakland scene”. Trying to get the running time down, he thought about cutting it, but then realized the scene was needed. THE SHINING had its own Simon Oakland scene, but it was cut after the first few days in theaters, never to be seen again. Watching it this time, I had the strongest feeling that something more was needed at the end, maybe a full completion of some of the characters, maybe just a chance to catch my breath before I returned to the world. I felt like, whether the analogy is totally correct, that THE SHINING needed its Simon Oakland scene. Why did Kubrick cut it? Why did I come away from the film this time feeling like it was needed?

Maybe everything in THE SHINING doesn’t work, but right now it seems more fascinating to me than it ever did when I was younger. And more terrifying, too.

Parts That Add Up

If you go down the lengthy list of films that Sidney Lumet has directed, yeah, you’ll find a few unfortunate titles. Of course, you’ll also find FAIL-SAFE, SERPICO, DOG DAY AFTERNOON, NETWORK, RUNNING ON EMPTY…I could go on, but you know what? That would be enough. Hell, NETWORK would probably be enough. Back in 1999 I was in a nearly empty Cinerama Dome to see his remake of GLORIA and I ran into somebody I knew a little. “I should have known I’d see you here,” he said. Hey, it was a new Lumet film and how many more of those were we going to get? Of course, GLORIA is nowhere near one of his better titles, but what I’m saying is that Sidney Lumet has earned enough of my respect for me to go see anything he’s ever going to make.

After directing GLORIA at the age of seventy-four Lumet dropped off the map for a few years. At his age, it was understandable to assume that maybe that was going to be it. He quietly reemerged last year with the underrated, badly marketed Vin Diesel courtroom drama FIND ME GUILTY. Not great, but good enough and it was a pleasure to see one more film by him.

There, see what I just said? ‘One more film’. No point in talking around the issue, because when anybody makes a new film at the age of eighty-three it’s hard not to wonder about it possibly being that ‘one more film’. And you could say that making any film at that age is a sort of triumph.


But even more important is that BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD is a triumph all on its own. Directed by Lumet from a script credited to Kelly Masterson, it’s a harsh, bitter crime drama centering around a botched heist planned by two brothers (Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke). Both men are badly in need of money, each for different reasons. Both are totally incapable of being prepared for what is going to happen to them. The characters are vividly drawn, excellently played by the two actors and each are both weak and strong in believable ways. As good as both actors are it's Hoffman who takes posession of the frame whenever he turns up, making his character the center of the movie more than it would have been with someone else in the role.


Marisa Tomei as Hofman’s wife continues her streak of quietly doing the occasional terrific job in certain films. For the record, Tomei also gets surprisingly nude in several scenes. She’s nearly forty-three? Holy cow. Albert Finney, whose association with the director goes all the way back to MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS in 1974, is the father of the two brothers. It’s tough to imagine any other actor doing what he does here. His character grows in stature and importance as the film goes on and it’s thrilling to watch. Also very good in smaller roles are Amy Ryan, see recently in GONE BABY GONE and Michael Shannon from Friedkin's BUG.


Details of the plot should be avoided, but the outcome of the badly-planned heist affects their family a great deal. We know right away how bad the robbery goes. What we don’t know right away is the how and why and the film takes on a dovetail narrative to tell us as it focuses on one character then goes back a few days to deal with another. This is a story method that we’ve seen many times from THE KILLING to RESERVOIR DOGS but of course it’s what’s done with the story that matters and BEFORE THE DEVIL’s method of telling its story never feels less than totally fresh and as a result becomes truly emotionally harrowing.


Fitting for a film with such a fractured narrative, Hoffman’s character at one point muses about how he himself isn’t the sum of his own parts, that he doesn’t feel that he really adds up. The character, obviously feeling bitterness towards his family and where he comes from, genuinely believes this. Family has a way of doing that to you. Fortunately, the movie does add up, in a way that it totally unexpected. Was this a case of a really good script well directed, was Lumet connecting with the basic material more than he has recently? Did he, dare I ask, look at this as maybe one final grand statement? All of the above? Adding to this is my own personal conection, coming from how some of this takes place up in Westchester County, my old stomping grounds. A nice place to grow up, but I’m glad I’m not there right now. Either way, it’s a pleasure to once again go back to New York with Sidney Lumet. It almost seems to frivolous to say “His best film since…” or “One of the best films of the year” in relation to BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD. The movie exists. That’s what matters. It’s a work by a master filmmaker who has taken a simple genre piece and made its parts add up beyond what we would expect. It cuts deep.

Look On Me and Remember

The concept of the guilty pleasure is always one that I have a problem with. Why should I feel guilty, after all, for liking something? I’m not looking to like something because it’s bad. That’s not my style. The things I like are, generally, things that I like. But every now and then a film comes up which defies this way of thinking. One such film is DRACULA A.D. 1972.Seriously, there’s no reason I should enjoy this film as much as I do. It’s got a ridiculous plot. It’s not as good as certain Hammer films that were made several years before, let alone those that were made during the studio’s classic age. And I certainly wouldn’t show it to somebody as an example of what Hammer had to offer. And yet, I sit down to watch five minutes and an hour later I realize I’m still sitting there. I can’t help myself.


In the year 1872 (way too early, but never mind) Count Dracula and Van Helsing(Christopher Lee and Peter Cusing) destroy each other in their final battle. While Van Helsing dies, a man who is presumably one of Dracula’s minions (Christopher Neame) comes to collect the vampire’s ashes. One hundred years later in London, we join a group of hippies that are in the midst of terrorizing a party populated by stuffy British upper-crust types. As the group Stoneground plays two songs in full in a party scene which goes on forever (it wishes it were a party in BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS) we meet some of the group, including a girl named Jessica Van Helsing (Stephanie Beacham). She is the granddaughter of Professor Van Helsing (Cushing again, of course) whose own grandfather is the one who died fighting Dracula exactly a century before (Grandfather? Really? Shouldn’t that be great-grandfather? How old were these people when they had their kids?). Another member of the group is a kid named Johnny Alucard (ha ha, also played by Neame) a descendant of the disciple who collected Dracula’s ashes. He makes a plan with his friends to meet in the remains of an old church where, he says, they will summon up the devil himself. Except they don’t know how serious he is as it turns out the ceremony will revive the one and only Count Dracula.


The plot doesn’t make much sense and certain elements are just frustrating. Dracula doesn’t appear deep into the narrative—this was totally par for the course with the Hammer Dracula films by now but it’s more surprising that the film keeps him on the grounds of this church the whole time, never once wandering off to explore London in the year A.D. 1972. Maybe Hammer wanted to keep the character consistent with the tone that had been established in previous films or maybe it was an attempt to keep the budget down. Still, films made around this time such as BLACULA and COUNT YORGA, VAMPIRE at least took advantage of the idea of a vampire in modern times. Surely he could have gone out to explore the world without unnecessarily camping things up. Christopher Lee was notoriously grumpy about making these films, so maybe there was just no possibility of doing much new with the character.


The kids all look too old for their parts (they wish they were the gang members in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE) and several of them wind up disappearing around the halfway mark anyway. Stephanie Beacham is very cute, yes, but even better is the amazing Caroline Munro who, dressed all in black, never looked more beautiful—she screams great, too. Unfortunately, she gets dispatched fairly early and it seems a waste that someone so striking wasn’t made a vampire to work alongside Dracula. She certainly looks the part, so it’s a missed opportunity.


Peter Cushing as the descendant of Van Helsing (as a character, no different from the earlier Van Helsing) is a huge asset to the film, as he was to most of the Hammer films anyway. While Lee may rather have done without Hammer by this point, Cushing clearly is invested in his character every step of the way. He very clearly believes what he is saying and you believe him, even as the plot requires him to do some ridiculous things, like figuring out the “Alucard” thing. He makes the back half of the film a blast to watch and even the long exposition scenes he has with the Police Inspector (Michael Coles) investigating the case are made riveting. You just want to hear everything he has to say about fighting vampires. And by the time of the climax, he’s the one element of the film that you can really depend on. It’s a reminder of how much he was missed in the Hammer Dracula films that he didn’t appear in.

Even though a bit of James Bernard’s famous Dracula theme is heard at the very beginning, the score for this film is composed by Mike Vickers. Done in a very seventies style, it’s another part of this film that I guess I like better than I should. Hey, you try not dancing during the main title theme.


Something like 1969’s FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED represents Hammer at its very best. But as the 70s kicked in the studio found itself flailing to keep up with the times. They tried to reinvigorate several of their franchises with unfortunate results and other films featured elements like nudity, lesbian vampires and youth oriented contemporary plots. A number of these films didn’t work at all (LUST FOR A VAMPIRE, STRAIGHT ON TILL MORNING) but DRACULA A.D. 1972 manages to be a fun movie in spite of its misguided existence. I should stop feeling so guilty about how much I enjoy it.