Attack of the B Movies!

Several SW contributors, both past and current, are included in the new anthology The B List: The National Society of Film Critics on the Low-Budget Beauties, Genre-Bending Mavericks, and Cult Classics We Love (Da Capo, $15.95). The NSFC is a kind of invitation-only critics' organization that annually produces a 10 best list. Among its members whose work you can regularly read in these pages is J. Hoberman (who writes about his love for Ed Ulmer's 1945 cheapie noir Detour).

Among past contributors in the volume are Amy Taubin, Dennis Lim, and Rob Nelson.

Among Seattle-based writers, our digital archives don't go far back enough to link to Richard T. Jameson (who will defend the Westerns of Budd Boetticher until the day he hangs up his spurs). But the paper is surely a worse place without the byline of Sheila Benson, who here sings the praises of Carl Franklin's latter-day noir One False Move (1992). Of it, she writes,

"Even if Franklin has opened his first film with his deeply held feelings about cinema violence, he's not one to let violence be its lasting aftertaste. Not this director, who—after an onscreen death—momentarily stills the sound track's noises of birds and crickets, choosing silence to honor 'the passing of a soul.'"

So look for that one at Scarecrow, or add it to your Netflix queue.

Topics: Film and books

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Respectful Dissent at the Cinema

You can read Scott Foundas' positive review here for the new Leo DiCaprio-Russell Crowe thriller Body of Lies, which opens today. You can also read J. Hoberman's pan of the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading, which has proven to be the biggest comedy so far this fall, despite an R rating, with a gross north of $50 million in four weeks of release.

Both our critics are fine writers and smart scholars of cinema. And yet I disagree with both their takes on movies that have a surprising amount in common...

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The Corporal's Diary at SPL and GI

Image: Typecast Releasing

A paperclipping error on my part caused this worthwhile local documentary to be omitted from this week's printed film calendar. Note in details at bottom that it also plays the Grand Illusion next week.

The Corporal’s Diary
The name of Jonathan Santos has been mostly forgotten to Northwest readers, though he briefly made news in the fall of 2004. As Rick Anderson wrote in this paper of the 22-year-old from Bellingham, he was the 1,096th casualty of the Iraq War, killed by a suicide bomber along with two others in his vehicle. Now, something like the soldier-shot videos of The War Tapes, Santos is back with us as subject, cameraman, and co-director of sorts. (Keep it PG-13, he tells his fellow soldiers while they’re horsing around in the barracks; “That’ll be in the director’s cut,” he says.) Local directors Patricia Boiko and Laurel Spellman-Smith have culled his video and handwritten account of his 38 days in Iraq, added some new footage and interviews, but the soldier is allowed to speak for himself. There’s no need to editorialize for or against the war; Santos was born into a military family, and he enlisted straight out of high school. He’s proud to serve, sure of his mission (having just been a peacekeeper in Haiti that spring, we learn), yet looking forward to life beyond the Army. A reader as well as filmmaker, he confides, “I just want to see Phantom of the Opera before I die,” and keeps a lucky Shrek head as a talisman against danger. Though the directors interpolate interviews and a postscript with Santos’ mother, Doris Kent, there’s a dreadful, inexorable countdown with each advancing day in his candid journal entries. We know from the start that the page will turn blank on October 14. Santos left behind two younger brothers, mere kids in his pre-deployment videos. Four years later, the middle brother reads Jonathan’s diary in his place to provide the film’s poignant voiceover. He’s thoughtful, poised, confident—just like his brother. Old enough to shave, old enough to enlist.

Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., 386-4636. Free. 7 p.m. Tues. Sept. 23. Filmmakers and family members will attend. Also: Grand Illusion, 1403 N.E. 50th St., 523-3935. $5-$8. Runs Fri., Sept. 26-Thurs., Oct. 2 (closed Tues.) at 7 and 9 p.m. Directors will attend selected screenings. Not rated. 60 minutes.

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Telluride Film Festival Report

Editor's Note: Our distinguished former colleague Tim Appelo, now an editor at City Arts magazine, attended the small, elite, high-altitude gathering of cineastes in Telluride, Colorado over the Labor Day weekend. We envy his travels, and relay his report...

The Telluride Film Festival is like a blasting cap that detonates the bigger explosion that follows the next week, the Toronto Film Festival. Last year, Juno set off Telluride’s biggest blast of buzz, propelling it to Toronto and on to Oscar glory, and a sneak preview of part of There Will Be Blood got everybody’s blood up.

This year, the big noise was supposed to be David Fincher’s forthcoming $150 million-or-more period epic The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, in which a baby born the last day of World War I starts out looking 80 years old and then gets younger, turning into Brad Pitt.

But the 20-minute preview of Benjamin Button did not go over as big as Blood did. Blogger Jeff Wells gleefully dissed it; Variety defended it. I found it a gorgeously glossy and shocking departure for two-fisted Fincher, who said at the preview, “I don’t think of myself as the guy who has to make the movies for perverts. I just get lucky enough to do it. I haven’t been offered a lot of romantic comedies.”

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Don LaFontaine Dies

at 68. Voiceovers will just never be the same.

Topics: Film and News

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If Colin Firth Can Sing, So Can You

Mamma Mia! has been a huge and not unforeseen hit since opening July 18. It's a chick flick based on a Broadway show based on the music of ABBA. And now, or tomorrow at least, it's to be a sing-along event.

The 7 p.m. show at the Meridian on Tues., Aug. 26 will introduce this new edition of the film to Seattle, with lyrics onscreen for you to follow. A press release states:

"Imagine going to a musical film with all of your favorite songs and being able to actually sing the words instead of mumbling what you think are the words. Filmgoers in Seattle will be able to do just that with this first, historic, public showing of Mamma Mia! The Sing-Along Edition. This print of the film has been specially crafted to include the words to the songs actually on screen while the characters are singing."

The sing-along version will open Fri., Aug. 29 in cities including Seattle (we'll try to confirm), with local theaters including the Meridian, Lincoln Square, and Alderwood 16. We can imagine an audience full of women lending their voices to the movie. But how many men will be on hand to augment the warbling pipes of Stellan Skarsgård, Colin Firth, and Pierce Brosnan (pictured above from left to right)?

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Tom Cruise Makes Good

Was it mean to reference Tom Cruise, and run his photo, in a news story last week about local Scientology real estate purchases and Seattle demonstrators against the church? Maybe. But then we saw Tropic Thunder and are feeling slightly remorseful. Sure, Scientology can be wacky with its sci-fi theology and all. Maybe there are some legitimate complaints about how it treats (and profits from) its members, how it attacks its critics. It may be less of a church than a self-help business (like those are so uncommon). But other religions with longer histories have surely caused more grief and suffering in the world, affected far more people adversely. And we don't hold that against actors who are, say, Catholic or Muslim.

Which brings us to Ben Stiller's moviemaking spoof Tropic Thunder. Cruise is, simply, the best thing about the film. As Robert Wilonsky wrote for us (link above), it's "a career-resurrecting role as a bald-headed, big-gutted, foul-mouthed studio boss."

His character, Les Grossman, is the strongest work Cruise has done since Frank T.J. Mackey in Magnolia. Why? One reason is the seething anger that informs both creations. Mackey hates women, hates his father for having abandoned him, hates the media, hates divulging anything personal, hates the loss of control. That character is treated more for our ridicule, at first, then tragedy, as we see the cost of all that repression and anger. By contrast, Grossman is a rabid clown, spewing F-bombs and berating his employees like the twisted DNA amalgam of Joel Silver, Harvey Weinstein, and every other foul-mouthed rageaholic in Hollywood. (He's not, I should note, an anti-Semitic stereotype at all—there are no Yiddish or Hebrew tokens; Grossman simply worships money, power, and (again) control.) He hates actors and budgets that seek to escape his decree; he hates underlings who aren't sufficiently frightened of him; and he hates his lackeys precisely for being so frightened of him. And yet, like Mackey, there's something peeking out from those eyes, some secret vulnerability or self-knowledge that he's holding back, the sense that no one truly understands him. And that something comes out, for Grossman at least, when he dances. (And sit through the Tropic end credits for still more dancing.) I don't think a movie has benefited from this much mad dance energy since Do the Right Thing and Rosie Perez.

The only Grossman photo we could find (below) is an off-set candid. Paramount hasn't yet released any official images of the star in makeup, beard, and fat costume. (Anyone gotten a pic at multiplex with a cell-phone camera? Send it in!) But if they were smart, the studio would be building a new movie around Les Grossman, branding him, putting him on T-shirts, making him into a video game or Wii dance-ercize workout module. And Stiller, if he were smarter than the film (which he co-wrote), would be collaborating with Cruise on a YouTube comedy series featuring the character. It would help both their careers, if not Scientology.

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Seattleites, and Seattle, on Screen

This week brings two movies with Seattle-groomed talent in them. Opening Wednesday (review tomorrow) is The Rocker, which represents the first starring role for Rainn Wilson, now the cult star of The Office. He was born here in town, moved away for some of his school years, then returned to attend the UW.

Then there's House Bunny, starring UW grad Anna Faris, which is screening late for the press, but we'll have a review online later this week—on or before its Friday opening.

And more news about Battle in Seattle, whose producers opted for the risky strategy of self-distributing. (In Hollywood, this is sometimes derided as pouring good money after bad.) No word yet on other markets, but it's scheduled to open here on September 19.

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There Will Be (Half-)Blood!

But it's gonna be LATE!!!!

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has been bumped from November to July.

Doh!

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Still More Outdoor Movies

Again, we love to list all the fine outdoor movie series in our film calendar, but some are a bit outside our normal region. So for you proud southenders, take note of the following two free screenings in Burien.

This Friday, Aug. 15, The Princess Bride screens at dusk (about 8:30 p.m.) at Lake Burien School Park (S.W. 148th St. & 16th Ave. S.W.) Rob Reiner's 1987 PG-rated adaptation of the William Goldman children's story is sweet and well played down the line for both parents and kids. Cary Elwes and Robin Wright Penn are the lovers; Wallace Shawn, Mandy Patinkin, and the late André the Giant help get them together after many amusing adventures.

Next Friday, Aug. 22, at the same time and location, you can enjoy Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The 1982 smash used none of today's fancy-schmancy computer effects, and the title role is memorably played by a rubber puppet (alongside Henry Thomas and Drew Barrymore).

Both are family friendly and perfect for late dinner picnics. See here for more info. Or call 206-988-3700.

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Tonight: Master Vengeancer Premiere at Market Theater

Darren Lund, the videographer who worked SW videos like Fleet Foxes at Neumo's, and Meet the Barber, is one of the guys behind Master Vengeancer, directed by Adam Dow. The 10-minute short film, which Lund says is in homage to kung fu films of the '70s, premiere's tonight at Market Theater.

Way to go, gentlemen!

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Patch Adams in Post Alley

Robin Williams continues his reign of terror here in Seattle. He's been filming all over town, of course, for The World's Greatest Dad, directed by fellow funnyman Bob Goldthwait. Williams has done a surprise appearance at a local comedy club, and been spotted all over the city. This week, his film trucks were parked in back of our offices, while the crew apparently did post-production work at a facility located inside our same downtown building. Alas, it seems no exterior shots of our lovely old brick warehouse were filmed.

We'll have to see, perhaps early in 2009 (assuming the black comedy makes it to Sundance and beyond), how much of our cityscape is captured in Dad. Director Goldthwait, who recently played a visit to Northwest Film Forum to profess his love for Hal Ashby, got his 2006 film Sleeping Dogs Lie into Sundance. It dealt with a young woman's embarrassing past sexual misadventure in bestiality. Clearly, Goldthwait is interested in finding laughs in shame, starting with Shakes the Clown (his 1991 debut), and extending through Dogs. This new Williams vehicle looks to be an examination of a different sort of secret: the fake memoir. (Yes, just like James Frey and "J.T. LeRoy.")

From IMDb, here's the film's synopsis:

"Lance [Williams' character] is a high school teacher who protects his family from shame following the embarrassing accidental death of his son. Lance writes a fake suicide note to cover up the death, but without permission the note is published and becomes an unexpected hit. Keen to be a successful author, Lance produces an entire journal which he passes off as his son's."

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From the UW to Hef's House

(Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon/SMPSP/Columbia Pictures)

Okay, we are officially excited about The House Bunny, a comedy opening Aug. 22 and starring UW grad Anna Faris (pictured above). She made her bones in Hollywood playing a ditzy dumb blonde in the Scary Movie series, and she was awfully enjoyable in the stoner epic Smiley Face, which never got a Seattle release. (Check it out at Scarecrow, seriously, dude.)

In Bunny, she plays a Playboy Bunny (duh) who gets kicked out of the mansion. Homeless, she somehow talks her way into a sorority house—where she teaches the girls all about empowerment and stuff. (Or at least that's what we're guessing.) The movie's rated PG-13, so there's no way her character is going to be teaching sex trips. But pole dancing maybe. Faris is what you might call a comedienne, to use a somewhat outdated term, an actress in the tradition of Lucille Ball who's cute but willing to do pratfalls and make herself look stupid. Usually—think back to talent like Judy Holliday and Carole Lombard—it takes a smart woman to play dumb, or at least to make the dumb act effective and funny.

Faris grew up in Edmonds and may also be familiar to some from an arc on Friends, a small part in Brokeback Mountain, and a hilarious turn in Lost in Translation as a glamorous starlet who's dumber than plywood (a part many thought was based on Cameron Diaz).

And now she's anchoring her own bunny-out-of-water comedy.

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Vincent Canby's Middle Class

Apropos of nothing, I saw Woody Allen's Interiors for the first time last night, and have been in a melancholy mood all day because of it. As I often do with great films of the Seventies, I went to Rotten Tomatoes to see if the NYT's Vincent Canby once reviewed it, and lo and behold he had — right here. But how Canby, in his review, can describe the family at the center of the film as "middle class" is absolutely ludicrous. Rich corporate lawyer dad who subsidizes his poet daughter, house in the Hamptons — just whose version of "middle class" is that, Brook Astor's?

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X-Files Sequel: We Want to Believe, Too

Anderson is back as Scully. (Photo: Diyah Pera/Twentieth Century Fox)

The X-Files: I Want to Believe
104 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Opens at Metro and other theaters, Fri., July 25.
Reviewed by Scott Foundas

The truth is still out there, like an unsold lawn chair at a garage sale, in this just plain lousy second big-screen outing for erstwhile FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). Since we last saw them, she’s become a doctor in a Catholic hospital, he a bearded recluse. (But rest assured, fans, they’re still each other’s main squeeze.) Considerably more meager in its ambitions than 1998’s epic-scaled, junkily entertaining Fight the Future, I Want to Believe sees our dynamic duo re-enlisted by their former employer to aid with . . . alien life forms? Some strange, inexplicable phenomenon? No, just an abducted agent and the convicted pedophile turned self-proclaimed psychic (Billy Connolly) who says he has visions of her whereabouts. But what series creator Chris Carter (who directed I Want to Believe) and longtime show-runner Frank Spotnitz (who co-wrote and produced) lack in plot-churning gusto, they try to make up for in ill-advised stabs at social relevancy, cramming in references to gay marriage, stem-cell research, and (of course) our reigning commander in chief that are more laughable than provocative. It remains a pleasure just to see Anderson, one of the best and most chronically underemployed American actresses, doing anything on-screen. But long before I Want to Believe reaches its anticlimax, you too may be having visions—of the exit sign.

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