Yearly Archives: 2005

51 posts

Seduced

Film

The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967)

There are few films that are so associated with a particular moment in time as The Graduate. It’s the definitive Hollywood inter-generational sex comedy, but it’s also one of the most important youth pictures of an era defined by the actions of its university-age population. The Graduate was a defining film for the emerging late-sixties youth movement, and the virtues of the film remain clearly apparent nearly forty years later: while it might be dated, its palpable sense of period is also one of its great virtues. (Its wall-to-wall use of Simon & Garfunkel songs as score, for example, is extremely evocative). Yet it remains an intriguing movie precisely because of its association with the political turmoil of the late sixties. It is, ultimately, a deeply cynical film that was adopted by an idealistic generation. Why a film that sees youthful rebellion as futile was so heartily adopted by the late-sixties college crowd remains deeply puzzling.

Continue reading →

Disney Saves Those Who Save Themselves

Film

I haven’t written in detail about the Disney corporation for a long time now, for a very simple reason: it’s just kind of depressing. That last time I touched on it was briefly when Joe Grant died (see here), but the only detailed post I wrote was way back in 2003, when Roy E. Disney had just resigned from his post with the company. As I wrote then:

I have no inside knowledge of the studio, so have no idea how effective Roy E. was as a board member. But even if his role was purely ceremonial, the symbolism of what’s occurred is bad enough. Roy E. Disney is Walt Disney’s nephew, and the son of studio co-founder Roy Disney. Given the elder Roy’s much larger then generally understood role in the studio’s operation (he ran the business end until after Walt’s death, and the studio was initially the “Disney Brothers” studio), Roy E. represented a direct, tangible link to the heritage of the company, which has always been its greatest asset. It’s long been easy – and largely accurate – to disparage Disney as just another soulless media conglomerate, but Roy E. was still there as a human link to the glory days of the thirties when Walt blazed his trails. (Sure Roy E. was just a kid at the time, but we’re talking symbolism here).

Continue reading →

Sixteen Years and Counting

Film

Ain’t It Cool News are carrying a small item that links over to The Indy Experience, which in turn links to an interview with Kathleen Kennedy at Now Playing Magazine. Kennedy, for those who don’t recall, has been one of Steven Spielberg’s chief lieutenants (usually as producer) since as long ago as E.T., and she provides the latest, most reliable update on Indiana Jones IV, which is now to be set in the late 1940s:

“We’re working on a screenplay,” says Kennedy, long-time producing partner of Steven Spielberg. “I know this sounds like something that we’ve been saying for 15 years, but I’m hoping that we’re going to see something in a couple of months. Jeff Nathanson is working on the script right now… I will say this: If it comes in and we’re all happy with it, it will be more than likely the next thing we do.”

Kennedy acknowledges that previous reports of Nathanson’s script being “approved” by Indy producer George Lucas and director Spielberg were true, but that doesn’t quite mean what it sounds like it does.

“It’s one thing to approve something, it’s another thing to say it’s greenlit and we’re shooting it. So we’re just in that sort of phase of finessing,” she says, before responding to a question about whether or not star Harrison Ford is too old for the part these days. “No, I don’t think so. Certainly we’re not writing the script as though he’s 20 years old. You know, Sean Connery spent a lot of time in the Bond role and whatnot. I think it’s great that we can go make another Indiana Jones movie and Indy can be a little older. I think playing with that is a good thing.”

Continue reading →

War Weary

Film Film Reviews

War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg, 2005)

It’s sort of amazing, really, that Steven Spielberg is still top of the Hollywood tree. Given the constant upping of the ante since his Jaws (along with Star Wars) basically invented the modern Hollywood blockbuster, you would think he might have fallen by the wayside. Yet with War of the Worlds he once again steps up to the plate and shows just why he continues to lead the pack of A-list directors. War of the Worlds is his take on familiar material: not only has H.G. Wells’ novel been filmed before (in a George Pal-produced 1953 version), but it was the source material for Orson Welles’ infamous radio broadcast that spooked America in 1938. And, of course, it was the unofficial jumping off point for Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day in 1996. It is a perfect choice of project for Spielberg, forming as it does a companion piece with his classic tale of benevolent aliens, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. If that film was kind of a sixties hangover, with its stirring finale of intergalactic peace, love, and harmony, then War of the Worlds is the grim, bitter and bleak counterpoint. It’s an extremely well made and effective film, but a feel-good thrill ride it certainly is not.

Continue reading →

Better than Ever

Film

Jim Schembri, the film critic for the EG section in The Age, published an interesting piece in that paper on Friday about Hollywood films. After apparently having an exceptionally unpleasant time with Mr & Mrs Smith – a movie I chose not to inflict on myself – he was moved to write a long piece on how Hollywood films really suck these days. (For the next few days it will be available here, although registration may be required.) The basic argument is that big “event” movies like Mr & Mrs Smith don’t actually need to be good: they open to enormous business based upon saturation marketing, and turn a profit before word gets out that they suck. The marketing media machine is, essentially, making quality irrelevant and thus making both Hollywood movies and their audiences dumber:

The intent is to blitz the eyes, rattle the ears and provide plenty of close-ups of those big, expensive stars. Pummel the audience with the package. Overwhelm them with starpower and firepower.

That’s what audiences are being sold now – not films, but deals.

This dumbing down of movies – it’s still very hard to believe that Miss Congeniality 2 actually does exist – has been accompanied by a dumbing down of audiences.

Top and Bottom

Film

I’ve written before about the trick of producing an “all time top” list to generate publicity for a media outlet or organisation, and keeping track of both the silly and sensible examples of this phenomenon will be an ongoing pursuit of mine on this page. I therefore regret that in my month-long Star Wars hysteria the Richard Shickel / Richard Corliss Time list slipped through without comment. If you doubted my theory about these lists being done to boost circulation, consider the number of hits that the list produced for the Time web site: there were 7.8 million hits to the list in a week, including 3.5 million hits on a single day. Little wonder that Time have tried to keep the interest going: those stats are from a follow-up article by Corliss about how they produced the list that remains on the front page of the Time website as I write, some 20 days after the top 100 debuted. The sites’ coverage is a movie list-geeks paradise, bristling with little offshoot categories: guilty pleasures (including the underrated Joe Versus the Volcano, which I assumed everyone else in the world had forgotten); scores (which snobbishly fails to list a single John Williams score); performances; shorts; and the films that Schickel and Corliss had to cut from their lists.

Continue reading →

Only a Conservative Deals in Absolutes

Film

One of the effects of the generally positive reaction to Revenge of the Sith is that suddenly critics are looking again at the new Star Wars films and noticing things other than the bad acting and CGI effects. Unable to miss Anakin’s paraphrasing of George W. Bush in the newest film, critics have finally noticed that the Star Wars prequels carry a political subtext. “For decades [George Lucas] has been blamed (unjustly) for helping to lead American movies away from their early-70’s engagement with political matters,” wrote A.O.Scott in The New York Times, “and he deserves credit for trying to bring them back.” While fans of the films might appreciate that there is finally some recognition of what Lucas is up to, it’s hard to award any points for journalistic timeliness when these themes have been evident since The Phantom Menace in 1999.

Continue reading →

Now You Know

Film Film Reviews

Nobody Knows (Hirokazu Kore-eda), 2004

Original Japanese Title: Dare mo shiranai

Nobody Knows is the most frustrating kind of filmgoing experience: halfway to being a wonderful film, it is unfortunately let down by a few critical flaws.

Based on real events, it follows the lives of four Japanese children who, as the film starts, are being smuggled into their new apartment by their flighty, irresponsible mother. The landlord thinks only one child is in the house, and the children have been raised to evade detection. The eldest son, twelve-year-old Akira (played by Yuya Yagira), is the most responsible in the household, cooking meals and caring for his siblings during his mother’s increasingly long absences. But one day she simply fails to come home, and the children must fend for themselves.

Continue reading →

Hot Sith

Film Film Reviews

Revenge of the Sith (George Lucas, 2005)

You could hate Revenge of the Sith, if you wanted to.

 The night before seeing it, I re-watched much of the original Star Wars, and was captured once again – as always – by its magic. There is a strange alchemy at work in Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back (and sporadically in Return of the Jedi) that the prequels haven’t recaptured. For all sorts of reasons, the prequels are not the return to that universe we all hoped for when the prequels were originally announced: they look different and feel different. If you measure the prequels against the originals, and dwell on what’s missing, you can’t help but mourn for what the prequels could have been. Revenge of the Sith is still not the journey back to that feeling of glorious fantasy that Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back achieved. As such, it isn’t everything that either Star Wars fans or casual moviegoers might have hoped, and there will be those who hate it for that.

Continue reading →

Truth in Obituaries

Film

Trust Michael Barrier to step in and complicate the Joe Grant story by bringing up the question of whether what is being written about him in the current round of obituaries is actually true. Barrier was prompted by the following over-the-top passage in the obituary by LaughingPlace:

Joe Grant will forever haunt animation, move audiences to tears, and swirl about our hearts like bright autumn leaves, reminding us that those who have come before us are not to be discarded and forgotten, but to be used as a source of courage and inspiration. True inspiration. Never has anyone so unassuming, so gracious and so gentle walked the halls of Disney Animation. Never has any one person – outside of Walt himself – inspired so much creative magic at Disney.

Websters would do well to slip his portrait neatly beside the definition of ‘gentleman.’ It would have to be a lively caricature that emphasized the snowy wave of hair and apple blush cheeks that framed those jewel-brilliant eyes. Joe Grant’s face shined with a Father Christmas sort of secret knowledge of exactly what you were wishing in your heart, and for decades he granted those wishes.

Continue reading →