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Film and the Arts
It's Hammer Time for Neo-Gothic "The Wolfman"
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 12 February 2010 05:00
- Written by Maitland McDonagh / Miss FlickChick
Directed by: Joe Johnston
Written by: Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self, based on the 1941 screenplay by Curt Siodmak
Starring: Benecio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Bunt, Hugo Weaving, Art Malik, Geraldine Chaplin, Anthony Sher, Michael Cronin, Roger Frost
Much delayed and dogged, if you will, by dark rumors of reshoots and escalating speculation that it was shaping up to be greater disaster than Van Helsing (2004), Universal Pictures' last high-profile attempt to leverage its legendary classic-horror library for the modern marketplace, The Wolfman is a pleasant surprise simply by virtue as awful as you might expect. It's a handsomely mounted throwback to Hammer's gothic frightfests — the action is even pushed back to fifty years before that of the iconic Lon Chaney Jr. film The Wolf Man (1941), which was set in the then-present day — that wears its R rating proudly and ignores current fashions in lovestruck monsters trapped in gloomy-doom romances with misunderstood teenagers. Say what you will about Benecio del Toro's Lawrence Talbot: He may be tormented, but he's no dreamy emo boy; when he broods, the sky darkens.
1891, Blackmoor, England: Estranged from his father and haunted by memories of his mother's brutal murder, acclaimed actor Lawrence Talbot hasn't been home since he was a child. But a letter from his younger brother Ben's fiancée, Gwen Conliffe (Emily Blunt), compels his return: Ben is missing and she fears the worst. Lawrence's father, larger-than-life big-game hunter Sir John (Anthony Hopkins), greets him with practiced scorn — "the prodigal son returns," drawls Sir John, leaving no doubt that fatted calf is not on tonight's menu — and bad news: Ben's mutilated corpse has been pulled from a ditch somewhere on the rambling, half-wild Talbot estate.
The locals blame the gypsies, who set up camp with their dogs, ragged children and performing bear shortly before Ben disappeared. The gypsies murmur darkly amongst themselves and Scotland Yard's notorious Inspector Abberline (Hugo Weaving), the man who failed to catch Jack the Ripper, has been dispatched from London to investigate. Lawrence, driven by the inchoate conviction that Ben's death and his own inner demons are connected to dark Talbot-family secret, begins to make his own inquiries, which are met by the locals with a mix of obsequious courtesy and ill-concealed suspicion. He may be Blackmoor-born, but young Lawrence was sent to an insane asylum after his mother's death, then fobbed off on American relatives — he's as good as a stranger, and Backmoor isn't the kind of place that welcomes strangers.
And that's before Lawrence is viciously savaged by some huge animal while poking around the gypsy encampment, sustaining injuries that should by all rights have killed him. His miraculous — some might say unnatural — recovery smacks of devilishness.
Is The Wolfman scary? No. Does it acknowledge and respect classic werewolf-movie traditions? That would be a big yes, right down to special-effects makeup legend Rick Baker's decision to use as his inspiration Jack Pierce's two-legged, modestly-muzzled wolf man make-up as his inspiration — Rick Baker, the guy who almost single-handedly changed the face of cinematic lycanthropy with An American Werewolf in London (1981). It's sweet, in a geeky kind of way, a bow to a genre pioneer by a fanboy big enough to do whatever he damned well pleases. But the look is totally old-fashioned and unlikely to make horror fans under the age of 50 howl with delight… snotty derision, more like it.
Hopkins has his usually high old time playing the imperious Sir John, who sweeps around his gloomy manor house in a tiger-trimmed dressing gown, trailed by a Sikh retainer (Art Malik) and a snarling hound. The swarthy del Toro was born to play a wolfish man (if not Hopkins' son, raven-haired mother notwithstanding), and the supporting cast suitably colorful. The trouble is that there's really no point: Screenwriters Walker and Self are clever, but for all the new trappings — making Lawrence an actor, whom we first glimpse performing Hamlet; some hellish asylum scenes; and adding Abberline to the mix — this Wolfman is ultimately thin beer in a handsome glass.
For more by Maitland McDonagh
: MissFlickChick.com
Kevin's Digital Week 12: From L.A. to Russia with Love (and Death)
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Sunday, 07 February 2010 05:00
- Written by Kevin Filipski
To Live and Die in L.A.
(Fox)
After bombing with Sorcerer, Cruising and Deal of the Century, director William Friedkin made this straight-ahead 1985 cop thriller about a Secret Service agent (William Pedersen) after an artist-turned-counterfeiter (Willem Dafoe). Always a prime action director, Friedkin outdoes his famed French Connection car chase with one on a jammed freeway where the cars go the wrong way. That there’s no CGI involved—just top-notch stunt driving and filmmaking—still makes it exciting to watch 25 years later.
The movie—stuck in a time warp thanks to the inclusion of synth-pop one-hit wonders Wang Chung on the soundtrack—stars then-unknowns Petersen, Dafoe, and John Pankow. And throughout, Friedkin’s rhythmic sense keeps L.A. moving forward until its downer ending. On Blu-ray, the movie is encased in grain, giving it a real filmic look that also makes it look like a flat, 1980s production. Too bad that the solid extras (Friedkin commentary, making-of featurette, deleted scenes, alternate ending) are on the second, standard DVD—so you can’t watch the movie on Blu-ray and listen to the informed, entertaining commentary, which is a real shame.
DVD of the Week
You Cannot Start Without Me
(Bel Air Classiques)
Russian conductor Valery Gergiev’s whirlwind career encompasses three continents, several countries, and dozens of cities. In Allan Miller’s sympathetic portrait, Gergiev is a likable ball of energy who somehow finds the time to rehearse huge operatic and symphonic scores with various orchestras, globe-hop to many concert halls and opera houses to lead thrilling performances, and continue to oversee his beloved Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, which under his direction has grown into one of the world’s greatest musical organizations.
Miller’s low-key approach is the opposite of Gergiev’s: the director manages to slow the Maestro down for occasional moments of insight when discussing his family or upbringing in the South Ossetia region of Russia. The 87-minute film is reinforced by an additional hour’s worth of deleted scenes and extended interviews with Gergiev, including an emotional return to his homeland in 2008 to promote peace after its bombing during the Russia-Georgia war: he and the Mariinsky Orchestra performed Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony.
"Venus in Fur" a Feminist Take on Porn
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Sunday, 31 January 2010 23:17
- Written by Lucy Komisar
Venus in Fur
Directed by Walter Bobbie
Written by David Ives
Starring Nina Arianda, Wes Bentley
In David Ives' ingeniously clever play, a feminist avenger turns the tables on a playwright conducting auditions for a work based on Venus in Furs, a novel of sexual domination and submission by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the 19th-century Austrian writer.
Sacher-Masoch had fantasies about dominant women wearing fur. He signed a contract with one mistress making him her slave for six months; she would have to wear furs whenever possible. He divorced his wife, who did not like the games, and she wrote a tell-all memoir under the pseudonym of Wanda von Sacher-Masoch.
In Ives’ inspired invention at the Classic Stage, which might for the first time be putting on a work referencing classic porn, a fellow who seems to think of himself as a Sacher-Masoch meets a woman who goes "Wanda" one better. And the audience is a clear winner.
An actress curiously named Vanda Jordan (Nina Arianda) arrives in a rush at the studio rented by young playwright Thomas Novachek (Wes Bentley). She’s wearing a black leather skirt and a tight, black lacy underwear top; stiletto-heeled boots; and a silver-studded dog-collar. Her conversation is ditzy. She’s late, the auditions are over, and she’s not on the list. But she persuades Thomas to let her read, and suddenly she is Vanda von Dunayev, charming, articulate, and outrageous in the white flouncy dress she pulls over her grunge-wear.
In this steamy play-within-a-play, it is 1870, and we are learning about the pleasures of degradation. Thomas line-reads Severin von Kushemski. When he is 12, Kushemski's aunt beats him with a switch. It teaches him "that there can be nothing more sensuous than pain or more pleasurable than degradation. The Countess had become my ideal…" Since then, he seeks "a woman of her delicious cruelty."
Vanda, playing the woman to whom he’s transferred his kinky desires, warns him, "I’d be careful if I were you. When you obtain your ideal, she maybe crueler than you care for."
As the play in a play goes on, the truth about Wanda collides with the truth about Vanda. And the truth about Thomas is exposed. In fact, it’s Thomas’s fantasy that is at the heart of the reality of this play that plumbs men’s psychological connections between sex and power and their view of women. And it’s Vanda’s assertiveness that issues the feminist challenge to their notions.
Her character, Dunayev, declares, "In our society, a woman’s only power is through men. Her character is her lack of character. She’s a blank, to be filled in by creatures who at heart despise her. I want to see what Woman will be when she ceases to be men’s slave. When she has the same rights as he, when she’s his equal in education and his partner in work. When she becomes herself. An individual." Vanda comments that she is "really ahead of her time, isn't she."
"Women’s rights, yadda yadda," remarks Thomas. His fiancée, with whom he chats on the phone, seems assertive enough, presently studying for a doctorate. Is there an undercurrent of male resentment here? There turns out to be a back story to the play and the audition. Thomas starts getting suspicious that Vanda seems to know the script by heart, though she says she just thumbed through it on the subway. And she appends a running commentary about the text, switching between herself and the character as the play goes on.
Kushemski declaims that he wants to be dominated by Dunayev, "to be less than nothing, to have no will of my own. To be your property and vanish in your sublime essence." And he explains, "In love as in politics, one partner must rule. One of them must be the hammer, the other the anvil. I willingly accept being the anvil."
Vanda declares, "This ain’t about love. It’s about getting a piece of me."
Then suddenly there’s a switch. Dunayev says, "I could imagine giving myself to one man for life, if he commanded my respect. If he overpowered me with his strength. Overwhelmed me with the force of his being. If he enslaved me. I’m going to tell you a secret, Severin. I would submit to a man like that – and I would be faithful, too. I’d kneel to him and bend my neck to him and be his slave."
"He’s an oddity. She’s a commodity," Vanda comments."Like all women in eighteen-seventy-whatever."
Kushemski shows his true feelings about "the cruelty of women." When Dunayev admits, "Severin, don’t you see? Don’t you understand you’ll never be safe in the hands of a woman? Of any woman?" Vanda declares, “Now this part is so sexist it makes me like scream. She says, 'You’ve corrupted me…..This is like some old Victorian Teutonic tract against Das Female. He forces her into a power play and then he blames her.'"
Thomas is furious, "How can you be so good at playing her, and be so fucking stupid about her? You fucking idiot! You fucking idiot woman. Yes. Idiot woman. Idiot actress."
Nina Arianda is terrific as she shifts on cue between Wanda and Vanda. She is perfect as the slightly scatterbrained young woman who can’t manage to keep her belongings from slipping out of her hands, uses street language and becomes increasingly indignant about the "sexist" aspects of the play. Her voice and carriage are equally perfect as the self-assured aristocrat. Wes Bentley is a fine foil as Thomas Novachek, though Arianda is clearly the center of attention. Director Walter Bobbie styles and guides the past-paced fantasy so skillfully that you forget you are in a bare "studio" with little more than a table and chair.
The conflict escalates on page and on stage. The power and domination paradigms shift several times. I can’t tell more or that would spoil it. Suffice it to say that Ives writes a startling and satisfying feminist end to a famous bit of male pornography.
Venus in Fur
Classic Stage
136 East 13th Street
New York, NY
(212) 352-3101, (866) 811-4111
Opened January 26, 2010; closes February 21, 2010.
For more by Lucy Komisar: TheKomisarScoop.com
Photo credit: Joan Marcus
Kevin's Digital Week 11: MJ and Dali
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Saturday, 30 January 2010 05:00
- Written by Kevin Filipski
This Is It
(Sony)
Though it wasn’t planned as a Michael Jackson memorial, the rehearsal footage from his comeback concerts slated for London that had already been shot in Los Angeles became the focus of this celebratory film after the singer died this past summer.
Directed by choreographer Kenny Ortega, This Is It displays Jackson’s enormous talent while in his element onstage: the moves, the music and the charismatic presence are present in spades. The movie also gives us backstage glimpses, which are especially interesting when Jackson and his cohorts are shown creating new choreographed movements for the stage show. For MJ’s rabid fans, a big draw of this release is definitely the 90 minutes’ worth of extra material, including a lot more behind-the-scenes footage and interviews, along with Blu-Ray exclusives: vignettes for “Billie Jean” and “Smooth Criminal,” and a making-of the “Smooth Criminal” vignette.
DVD of the Week
Little Ashes
(E1)
Director Paul Morrison’s biopic about a trio of Spanish geniuses—surrealist painter Salvador Dali, leftist poet Federico Garcia Lorca and anarchic filmmaker Luis Bunuel—falls square between English-language clarity and Spanish-language authenticity. Although certainly not as good as Carlos Saura’s wonderfully surrealist exploration of these men, 2001’s Bunuel and King Solomon’s Table, Morrison’s film nicely captures the revolutionary era when art was thought to make a difference, even against Franco’s fascism.
There’s superior acting from all involved, even from Robert Pattison of Twilight fame, who convinces as the mercurial Dali. It’s too bad that there’s not more contextual info in the meager extras—short interviews with Morrison and several actors (sans Pattison)—which would definitely help those Twilight fans who might accidentally find these artists fascinating while watching the movie for their favorite vampire.
