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RED: Lesser known films BLUE: Video PURPLE: Lee's comments |
O (2001) A 21st century, hip-hop, basketball version of the Othello story. I love Shakespeare, and I am always interested in adaptations of his works, no matter how far-fetched. One of my favorite versions of King Lear was Ran, by Akira Kurosawa, which obviously didn’t used the original text. I also like Romeo + Juliet, by Baz Luhrman, which did, but set the play in an entirely different, fantastic milieu, and used guns instead of swords. O is one of those that uses only the story, not Shakespeare’s words. Some people have a big problem with that. They find it ridiculous. I don’t. The story has been stolen and re-worked so many times, in so many ways. (Shakespeare himself stole it, for that matter, as he stole most of his story ideas.) Both Verdi and Rossini wrote operas called Otello, which didn’t use Shakespearean dialogue, not even translated into Italian. I find a modern-day interpretation using modern-day language less ridiculous than the 1922 silent movie version—which is included on the special edition DVD. I mean, a silent Shakespeare? What that boils down to is a lot of overdressed guys gesticulating wildly at each other, and the odd title card with a few words from the Bard to keep the plot moving along. But most of the plays have silent versions, and people apparently enjoyed them who wouldn’t have sat through all five acts, nor understood much of Shakespeare’s words.
Don’t get me wrong, I favor the original text, I love the poetry, the iambic pentameter. But that doesn’t make me scorn attempts to bring the story to a larger audience. Al Pacino made a whole, delightful little film called Looking For Richard, which was about how to think about and enjoy Richard III. This film attempts to interest the high school generation in the story. I don’t know how that worked, but I know it worked for me.
See, the thing is, though I am usually deeply moved by Shakespeare’s words, I am moved on a mostly intellectual level. I am moved by the language, and by the acting. I can’t recall ever tearing up at any Shakespearean scene. Not the death of Cordelia, nor the assassination of Caesar, nor the suicide of Ophelia. Nor the deaths of Romeo and Juliet in any version I’ve ever seen, stage or screen. Moved, but not to tears. However, I sob like a child when Tony is killed in West Side Story. I can’t help it. I know these people, and I know the way they speak; I don’t know rich families in Verona, and I don’t know Elizabethan English. I have to listen hard, and think about the lines.
I thought this worked surprisingly well. All the actors are good. Othello becomes Odin, known as O and played by Mekhi Phifer, the only black kid in a lily-white private academy, recruited for his basketball skills. Desdemona becomes Desi, played by Julia Stiles, who was 20 but can easily look 16. And Iago is Hugo, son of the basketball coach, Duke (Martin Sheen), who bitterly resents O for picking Michael Cassio (Cassio, obviously) as his main man on the court, and his father for favoring O. Hugo’s motivations are clear, and his plots diabolic. For the first time, I could really see Othello/O falling for Iago/Hugo’s lies; he tells them so persuasively. Phifer had to be good not only as an actor, but as a B-ball player, there could be no faking his moves or his slam dunks. And Martin Sheen plays an intense basketball coach very well. It’s directed by Tim Blake Nelson, that goofy-looking guy who’s probably better known as an actor than as a director. All in all, I recommend this one. IMDb.com
O’Horten (2007, Norwegian) There is a genre of film that has no real plot, and enchants merely from the small and usually odd details of life. Americans are not usually very good at this sort of thing, they are usually from somewhere else. One of our favorites of this type of movie is Kitchen Stories, by the same man who directed this one. This one isn’t as funny as that one, and frankly, you will not roar with laughter in either of them, but I recommend both of them to people who don’t demand a lot of fireworks in their movies. In this one, a man is retiring after 40 years as a train engineer. He is at loose ends. He bounces from one odd situation to another, and there is no real resolution … and yet it is highly satisfying. Typical image from this movie: A man in a business suit, holding a briefcase, sitting on his butt and sliding down an icy street, solemn as can be. No explanation for it, no reason, just an image that slides by and is gone. You just have to smile. IMDb.com
Obsessed (2009) Second feature At the Drive-In with Angels & Demons. IMDb.com
Ocean’s Eleven (2001) I never saw the original, Rat Pack version of this, from 1960. This is the re-make by Steven Soderbergh, and a bit of a departure for him. It’s fairly smart, with snappy dialogue, even though you don’t believe it for a second. An amusing night at the movies. IMDb.com
Ocean’s Twelve (2004) The first time they stole $160,000,000. This time they have to give it back. Has some of the attractions of Eleven, but tries too hard to top itself, too many times. By the end I didn’t quite know who had done what to who. Whom. I suspect there were gaping plot holes, but wasn’t interested enough to root them out. IMDb.com
Ocean's 13 (2007) First feature at the drive in with Knocked Up. IMDb.com
Ocean’s Thirteen Don’t press your luck, Steve.
Off the Map (2003) This is a special little film made by the actor Campbell Scott, who also made Big Night. He’s definitely an actor’s director. It’s hard to describe the delights of this movie without giving too much away, and a plain description doesn’t actually sound that appealing. It’s told from the viewpoint of a 12-year-old girl living deep in the New Mexico countryside with her mother and father. No electricity, no phone, hardly any money, but they’re doing fine ... except the father is totally crippled by clinical depression. He doesn’t know where it came from, or what to do about it. Sounds awful, doesn’t it? But Joan Allen and Sam Elliott and the girl, Valentina de Angelis, along with great support from J.K. Simmons and Jim True-Frost, make it work. It has a hypnotic quality at times, and a great sense of humor. See it. IMDb.com
The Office (2001) BBC sitcom. DVD. The Office only lasted two seasons, which is something the British do a lot more than Americans, preferring not to prolong a funny idea until it’s all used up, stale. This one is absolutely wonderful. No laugh track, no slapstick, no huge laugh lines that real people would never say. No gags. Just the worst boss you have ever seen, a real nightmare, who only wants to be loved and thinks he is funny. He’s not ... on purpose. A great supporting cast. IMDb.com
Offside (2006, Iran) In Iran women can’t attend men’s sporting events. Some girls who are also soccer fanatics try to get into the stadium for the big game with Bahrain. The acting is poor, the writing is boring. The Iranian regime are barbarians. Militant Islamists are barbarians. I don’t even like peaceful Muslims very much. And soccer is a stupid game. So what’s to like? Nothing. IMDb.com
Oliver and Company (1988) Saturday Night at the Toons! IMDb.com
Oliver Twist (2005) You often wonder why someone chooses to remake a film, even if it is based on a classic book. Oliver Twist has been made no less than 20 times, according to the IMDb. Most critics agree that David Lean's 1948 version is the best, with Alec Guinness's Fagin the definitive one. (Ron Moody in Oliver! is a close second, though you can't really compare the two since one is comic and the other definitely is not.)
You don't have to wonder why this director chose to remake this film, however. Roman Polanski's parents were sent off to concentration camps when he was about Oliver's age, and he had to fend for himself on the brutal streets for a long time. No question this story resonates with him. So, though it wasn't really necessary to make this film, I give him points for making a visually stunning movie, full of vivid Dickensian characters. Unfortunately, it totally laid an egg at the box office.
But I had a few thoughts about the book itself. It is one of Dickens' most popular, and it's easy to see why. The book is more complicated than most of the screen versions (maybe one of the several mini-series included the whole plot, but I haven't seen them), and it turns out to be easy to snip out several subplots without any damage to the larger story. And it's the story that, upon reflection, concerns me.
Polanski has left out the beginning, where a desperate woman dies giving birth, and the ending, where it is revealed that Oliver is the long-lost nephew of Mr. Brownlow. Okay, we expect unlikely coincidences in Dickens and other Victorians, as we expect sentimentality. That aside, what makes a Dickens story so compelling to this day is the realistic portraits of the evils of the age, the sheer grinding indifference of the upper classes and their moralistic lackeys to the plight of the unfortunates who Dickens loves so much.
Oliver bothers me. Just look at him. Raised in an orphanage, then sent to the workhouse, unwanted, unloved, on his own. And yet he is so angelic, so full of goodness. How the hell did he survive ten years? In Oliver! he even speaks like a little upper-class twit (twist?), as if he was on the public school track that leads straight to Oxford, and in this new version his speech is distinctly different from the street urchins. Henry Higgins maintained that an Englishman's speech "absolutely classifies him," but he didn't suggest that accents were hereditary. Then, thrown in with a nest of thieves, Oliver never steals anything. Taken in by Mr. Brownlow, he exhibits all the honor and resolve of the class he was born into. And that's the key, isn't it?
Did Dickens even realize that he was making that ancient, eugenic argument that "blood will tell"? His own youth was moderately well-off until he was 12, when his father was thrown into debtors prison and he had to go to work in awful conditions. I can imagine him slaving away, thinking "I'm better than all this." I'm not putting him down; who wouldn't think like that, in that situation? But it's a major flaw in the story for me.
There is also the Merchant of Venice syndrome, with the "bad guy" being Jewish. I don't have a lot to say about that, except to note that the 1948 version was banned in Israel as being anti-Semitic ... and also in Cairo, as being too sympathetic to Jews! IMDb.com
Once (Ireland, 2006) A short and appealing film about people making music. It plays out over about a week, during which a street musician/guitar player/songwriter meets a piano player from the Czech Republic, in Dublin. They are attracted, but for various good reasons they can’t get together. Sometimes you just meet the right person at the wrong time. We were both reminded of a film we both love, Before Sunrise. … unfortunately, I didn’t love this one as much, or even as much as I wanted to. Both characters are people I liked, played by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová. The writing was good. It’s nice to see something like this made on a very, very low budget. So what was wrong? Here’s why you probably shouldn’t take my review too seriously: It was the music. For one thing, a guy singing with a guitar is not my favorite genre, by a long shot. I thought all of these songs were pretty ordinary, until one toward the end that was in 5/4 time, a bit of complexity you don’t often see in pop music. (Though one of my favorite Linda Ronstadt songs is in 7/4.) I recognize that the sort of songs this man writes appeal to many people, just not to me. I’m a tough sell on lyrics, and I didn’t like any of these. So make of it what you will. You may love it, as huge numbers of people, including Lee, did. It just didn’t quite make it with me. IMDb.com
Once Upon a Time in Mexico (Mexico, 2003) Who needs Montezuma’s Revenge when there are movies as rancid as this? Don’t drink the water, it’ll clean your bowels right out. I’d prefer a severe case of diarrhea to having to see the last hour of this movie. We quit at about 40 minutes. IMDb.com
Once Upon a Time in the Midlands (2002) One of those sweet little British comedies about the working class. I like them, and this is an excellent example. IMDb.com
Once Were Warriors (1994) New Zealand is a fabulously beautiful country. (I've never been there, but everybody I've ever spoken to who has is rapturous about it.) It's so beautiful that, in the opening shot here, Lee said "It looks like a painting!" Well ... what it was, was a billboard advertising "Beautiful New Zealand!" What's behind the billboard as we pull back is sort of like The Road Warrior set in the South Bronx. This is where the social dregs of Auckland live, mostly on the dole, mostly problem drinkers, mostly Maori.
I did a little reading on the Maori. They are not at all related to the aboriginals of Australia. In fact, though they were screwed by the white man, like all indigenous populations were during the Era of Expansion, they got off better than most. And, oddly enough, they had been in New Zealand for no longer than 800 years, so you could call them newcomers. They died of white men's diseases, like all native people did. And there were wars ... but they'd been fighting genocidal wars among themselves for centuries. Bottom line, they got a better deal than most native cultures. Many assimilated. The government has been concerned and sensitive (relatively speaking, of course, there were no atrocities to compare with how the Aussie treated their natives), Maori is an official language in NZ. But the bottom line below that bottom line is that Maoris are nevertheless usually the most culturally and economically disadvantaged New Zealanders.
So I expected this to be about the oppression of the Maori culture, and for the villains to be white. But that's not the story. Though it's pretty much an all-Maori cast, it's about domestic violence and alcoholism, and could have happened in any setting ... though I have to say, if Kiwis are anything like Aussies, they can be epic drinkers, putting away quart-sized bottles of beer like soda pop.
Jake is a self-loathing (though he'd never admit it, even to himself), self-described "son of a long line of slaves." Beth is his punching bag of 18 years, from a good traditional Maori family, who blames herself for getting the crap beaten out of her. They have 5 kids. The oldest joins a gang of Maori youth with tattooed faces, any one of whom look as if he could eat three Hell's Angels for breakfast and not even spit out the bones. We're really talking The Road Warrior here. Another boy is sent into government custody because the family can't control him ... and it's not a terrible injustice, nor is it portrayed that way. If I were the judge, I'd have done the same thing, and it may in fact be his only chance at salvation. The saddest character is Grace, who Beth and Jake both fail in the most basic way.
It's finally a wake-up call for Beth. Maybe things will get better. She seems to be shed of Jake ... but cynical me, I really wonder, if she'd loved a guy for 18 years in spite of all the broken bones and knocked-out teeth and black eyes ... women so often give the fellow just one more chance ... until the guy finally kills her. IMDb.com
One From The Heart (1982) Francis Ford Coppola was said to have directed this entirely from a trailer, watching on TV. Huh? The sets are fabulous; nothing else is. IMDb.com
One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) Saturday Night at the Toons! IMDb.com
One-Hour Photo (2002) Robin Williams stretches himself here, and the plot doesn’t unfold quite as you would expect it to. But not real memorable. IMDb.com
One Week (1920) Buster Keaton two-reeler. This is one of the well-known ones. Buster is a newlywed, and the couple has received a build-it-yourself house in a lot of boxes. But Buster’s rival has switched the numbers on the boxes. When the house is completed, it is all out of whack. This provides endless opportunities for pratfalls, and Buster finds every one of them. When a storm comes, the wind blows the house around like a carousel. The whole damn thing was mounted on a turntable! Then they find out the have to move the house, start towing it, and the rope breaks. The house is on the train tracks. A train is coming down the tracks … and I won’t tell what happens, except to say it is perfect, not what you were expecting … and then the payoff, out of nowhere. Hilarious! IMDb.com
Open Range (2003) Opens okay, but degenerates into stupidity pretty quickly. IMDb.com
Open Water (2003) Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh! Get me out of the water!
This is the best thriller I’ve seen in years. Maybe it’s because I have two strong phobias: being underwater, and being in the water with sharks. The first is because I can’t swim, and I can’t swim because the evil Coach S., during my first swimming lesson when I was about 12, thought holding my head underwater would cure me of my reluctance to do it myself. I coughed up a lot of water, went home, never went back and have spend the last 45 years thinking of ways to kill Coach S. The second phobia ... I’m not sure, but I think it has to do with growing up on the Texas Gulf Coast, going to the beach and standing in water so murky you couldn’t see five inches down into it, and feeling things bumping my legs, then seeing seiners haul in 8-foot hammerheads from water no deeper than I had been standing in. Haven’t been in ocean water more than knee-deep since then.
It’s the most claustrophobic movie since Rear Window. The cameras get you right down into the water with these two stranded divers, and you don’t see a lot more than they see. You’re with them as all the illusions of civilization break down, gradually, and they realize that, in the end, we are all meat, and there’s nothing you can do about it. The only questions are which creature will eat you, and whether you’re still alive when they do. WARNING: THIS IS A BAD DREAM MOVIE!!! IMDb.com
Operation Mad Ball (1957) This is from early in Jack Lemmon’s career. He had made three or four movies, including Mr. Roberts and It Should Happen to You (co-starring with Judy Holliday), but he hadn’t really arrived as a big-time box office draw. The Apartment and Some Like it Hot were in his near future. This is one of those “service comedies” that were so popular in the ‘50s, that tended to make it look like war had been a lot of fun. So many guys had been in the military and knew the language and situations that I guess it was a guaranteed audience. I imagine their wives wanted to see what their men had experienced. These movies tended to take place in the rear areas, or involve an odd SNAFU, like Operation Petticoat or The Wackiest Ship in the Army. (Come to think of it, in any war, at least since WWII, more men serve in the rear areas than in combat zones.) Here Lemmon plays Pvt. Hogan (oddly enough, the same name he had in a movie we just saw: Under the Yum Yum Tree), one of those guys who knows how to get things done, one way or another, in war or peace. It takes place just post-war, and involves a bunch of mostly non-coms setting up a big party under the noses of the officers, and in particular an asshole major played very well by Ernie Kovacs. Hogan spends most of his time bamboozling the officers and ordering sergeants around. It reminded me of Ex-PFC Wintergreen in Catch-22, the man who was really calling the shots in the European Theater, no matter what the generals thought. IMDb.com
Osama (Afghanistan, 2003) Not the Osama I’d like to spend some quality time with; just him, me, and a rusty Swiss Army knife. This is one of the most horrifying movies I’ve ever seen, the first movie made after the Taliban was ousted from power in that miserable country. While they were there, women were not allowed to leave their homes without a male escort, and not allowed to work, so I suppose they were expected to starve to death gloriously, allahu akbar! (God is Great!) A widowed woman cuts her daughter’s hair and dresses her as a boy (calling herself Osama) so she can work. I try to dislike all religions equally, and Da Lawd knows Christianity has much to answer for, both in the past and today ... but I despise Islam. I just hate everything about it. I know these were (and are) fanatical extremists, but still ... You know this story will end badly, and it does. IMDb.com
Othello (1922) This was included on the DVD of O, so I thought I’d give it a look. (The IMDb lists no fewer than 35 versions of Othello for movies and TV!) It stars Emil Jannings as the Moor. Jannings was very good in The Last Laugh, and he starred in The Blue Angel and won the very first Best Actor award for The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh. (It wasn’t necessarily just one role in those very early days.) (That second picture, by the way, is the only Academy Award performance that is lost. The film no longer exists.) I imagine Hollywood wanted to take the Oscar back in the late ‘30s, when he enthusiastically made films for the Nazis. Iago, much the better part, is played by Werner Krauss, who was wonderful as the doctor in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Here he mugs outrageously. Jannings glowers, frowns, and clutches his massive breast in the throes of jealousy and rage. It’s a preposterous idea, really, making a silent movie of a Shakespeare play. You lose all but little quotes from the language, which is the main reason to see Shakespeare. All you can do is dramatize the plot—and most of the Bard’s plots are preposterous, when you think about them—and Othello has always been a hard sell for me. I mean, the guy is so stupid! Dumber than Lear. Dumber than Forrest Gump. I never liked him. Whereas, though I don’t like him, I sort of have to admire Iago for his incredible cunning. He gets his way by having other people do his dirty work. Sort of the Dick Cheney of the 16th Century. IMDb.com
Our Town (2003) Talk about full circle. One of Paul Newman’s early roles, before he’d done any movies, was as George Gibbs in a 1955 television production of Thornton Wilder’s masterpiece, Our Town. (It must have been an ideal property for those early, poverty-stricken TV days, as it requires no sets at all.) And but for Empire Falls and his voice work in Cars, his role as the Stage Manager in this PBS production was his last film appearance. I’d love to see that old B&W version. I’ll bet he was pretty raw. Forty-eight years later, for this one, he is clearly the master of his craft.
You gotta love Our Town if you’re a small-town—or any town—theater person. You can stage it literally anywhere. It takes no money at all for scenery and the props are two tables, two ladders, and a few chairs. (You could even dispense with the tables and chairs in a pinch.) There have been many versions of this play over the years, and the main role, the Stage Manager, has been tackled by Art Carney, Spaulding Gray, Hal Holbrook, and … no kidding … Frank Sinatra. The best-known version was the first, in 1940, with William Holden as George. I’m pretty sure this is the version I saw, many years ago, and it impressed me deeply. I wouldn’t watch it again, though, as they used sets and changed the ending so that young Emily’s death in childbirth is only a dream. She wakes up, and everything is okay. I think this totally ruins it, and even if it’s true that Wilder approved all the script changes, the author is not always right. I can only think that, script approval or not, Wilder’s philosophy toward Hollywood must have been pretty much like Ernest Hemingway’s, which was, basically, take the money and run, as fast as you can. This new, Newman production is vastly superior. IMDb.com
The Out-of-Towners (1970) This is a minor work by Neil Simon, written directly for the screen, but it’s still funny. I don’t think any actor who ever lived could have played the character of George Kellerman and taken me through the whole movie without driving me crazy. George is a whiner, though he never actually whines. He feels he is entitled to a better deal from everybody else, including God. As soon as things go wrong, he rails against fate or anyone who happens to be in the area and might have caused him trouble. Usually these are the little guys; when his luggage goes astray, he takes the name of the agent who had nothing to do with his misfortune. He takes everybody’s name, and intends to sue them all. How he got where he is without being up to his neck in litigation is a mystery. Through the whole picture, as disaster after disaster befalls him and his calm, long-suffering wife (Sandy Dennis), if only he had taken her advice everything would have been fine. But he never listens to her, he always knows best, and he’s always full of shit. He is a pipsqueak blowhard and a buffoon. He managed to develop a terrible ulcer living in small-town Ohio. He is the last person on Earth who should be moving to New York City. Like I said, Only Jack Lemmon could have played this so interestingly that I didn’t want to actually jump into the screen and strangle him … though I kept wishing Sandy Dennis would. IMDb.com
Out of Time (2003) Denzel Washington. Goes along pretty well until the last reel, which is always the toughest. Not totally stupid, but no more than an entertaining time-waster. IMDb.com
Outsourced (2006) Here is a bright and funny little romantic feel-good comedy set mostly in India, maybe an antidote to the horrific early scenes in Slumdog Millionaire. A guy from Seattle is sent to India to train the people who are taking over the phone-ordering jobs of a company that is interested in only the bottom line. He tries to make them work like Americans, but has a lot to learn about India. It’s very funny.
It has no deep political message, but manages to get in a few licks here and there. Some phone customers from the US are angry to be talking to a person in India who is taking American jobs. The assistant manager and love interest (the incredibly beautiful Ayesha Dharker) says they are happy to refer unhappy customers to a firm that sells only MADE IN USA products. They will sell him an identical item ... for $200 more. Uh … er … that is … okay, I’ll buy it from you. A real patriot, that, until it comes time to pay up. Probably shops at Wal-Mart and never gives it a second thought. (Lee and I never shop at Wal-Mart.) And at the end, the Indians find that their jobs are being outsourced to China!
A personal note: My sister and I went to Australia about … my god, is it 20 years ago? How time flies. We continued on around the world, and one stop was Bombay, now Mumbai. The scenes in this movie showed me that, though I know there is a New India, with much prosperity and new construction, a lot of it is still as we saw it, an incredible shambles that somehow functions. (A lot like New York City.) When the couple in the movie must travel to an island because a shipment has gone to the wrong Gharapuri village (the call centre is in another town called Gharapuri) I began to recognize things. They begin at the Gateway to India, a huge monument erected for the visit of Queen Victoria back in the days of the British Raj. The island turns out to be Elephanta Island, where Kerry and I took a ferry to see the ancient cave sculptures there. “Ferry” is a pretty grandiose word for the crappy little boat we boarded, though. Halfway there, with not much of Bombay still visible and nothing of Elephanta Island, the engine conked out. We spent the next half hour alternating between staring into the ugliest, smelliest, most crap-filled waters I had ever seen, wondering how it would be to sink into that shit, and watching three or four crew members standing around the open engine hatch, seeming to think they could fix the freakin’ engine by will power alone. Somewhere down in the hold somebody was hammering at something … it was the boat ride from Hell, believe me. If they hadn’t got the damn engine started when they did, I knew I would have started heaving the crew into the water. IMDb.com
Over the Hedge (2006) How we got this DVD is more interesting than the movie itself. Bruce Willis was finally getting his star on Hollywood Boulevard on October 16th, at 11:30 in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Now, when Vanna White gets a star they close off one lane of the street for a few hours and the one or two hundred people showing up for the ceremony squeeze in there. When Bruce gets his, they close off almost the whole street for the whole morning. (And the other side of the street was getting ready to close for some sort of The Nightmare Before Christmas promotion at the El Capitan Theatre as we were leaving. Hollywood is a thrill a minute!) The street was barricaded into regions for the stars, the paparatizzi, and the hoi polloi. That is to say, us. The place was jammed, probably about a thousand people. We tried to get in and some asshole in the event crew told us the area was closed. Closed? Closed? Then who were those people craning their necks and listening to Johnny Grant, the affable old honorary "Mayor of Hollywood," vamping until the celebs arrived? Another guy told us we had to go into Grauman's parking lot and get green armbands. Why? Who knows, but we went and got them, and were let in with the teeming masses. (There was one level of attendee below us: about 500 people behind the barricades across the street, where a man stood with a sign asking "Bruce Willis, where is my money?")
Once inside we resolved that the next time, we were coming with one of those little folding stepladders. You'd think they'd build a platform, they'd only need to have it about six feet high or so, and people could see better, it'd take them about five minutes to erect it along with the sound system and the barricades. But no, it was the same little dinky two-foot podium they used for Nancy Sinatra's star. Maybe half a dozen people there had brought their ladders. The rest milled around and held their cameras up in the air. Since I'm usually the tallest one there it's not a problem for me, but Lee can't see shit. So I ended up holding the camera as high as I could and hoping for the best.
Eventually all the celebs were assembled in the theater, and Johnny started calling them out. First the man of the hour, then Ben Affleck, Billy Bob Thornton, Jeffrey Katzenberg (the K in SKG, with Spielberg and Geffen, a guy I worked with on an ill-fated project in the '80s), Sly Stallone, Kevin Costner, Demi Moore, Don Johnson (though why a guy whose career is in the toilet would want to be here I don't know), a few others. I managed to get one shot of Costner and a glimpse of Stallone, but of the others I saw not a trace unless they came up to the podium to speak, which was Billy Bob and Ben. Our local city councilmen spoke—briefly, thank god—and a proclamation from Arnold was read. Bruce's mom was there, looking very good, and Scout and Rumer and maybe Tallulah Belle, but I couldn't get any good pictures of them because they were too short.
Johnny Grant had promised us all a free DVD, so when things were winding down us lucky folks with the green armbands were herded back to the Grauman's lot (moo! moo!) and each of us were handed an Over the Hedge DVD and Xtra-Large T-shirt. This was a special edition DVD, with a border around the cover commemorating Bruce getting his star on the Boulevard. Hot damn! Probably be worth a lot of money ... in about 1000 years.
Oh, yeah, I'm supposed to be reviewing the movie here ... Well, what can you say about the 1001st CGI extravaganza featuring warm, cuddly, wise-cracking animals who don't eat each other? The CGI was terrific (yawn). The famous actors who have now completely replaced what used to be voice-over talent in Hollywood are all adequate to the job (snort, snarf). There are some laughs, a few larfs, and even a laff or two (oh, boy, am I sleepy!). The plot is about what you'd expect ... ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz................ IMDb.com
Overnight (2003) See, what happened was, this bartender named Troy Duffy wrote a screenplay called The Boondock Saints and got it to Harvey Weinstein of Miramax Films. Harv loved it. Next thing you know, Troy’s got a $300,000 salary to direct the film, and a $15,000,000 budget, and also a contract for his band. Whoopee! Suddenly Troy is the Hollywood golden boy. He figures he’s the king of the world! All sorts of actors start sucking up to him: Vincent D'Onofrio, John Goodman, Matthew Modine, Billy Zane, Patrick Swayze. Two guys, Tony Montana (really? That’s the name of the Al Pacino character in Scarface) and Mark Brian Smith, start filming what they figure will be a “Making of” documentary.
Well, it could happen. We know from the example of Quentin Tarantino that a stupid-looking, working class, offensive, blowhard vulgarian can actually conceal some real writing and filmmaking talent. Why shouldn’t Troy be the next one?
For about ten minutes I’m with him ... though I can see he’s riding for a fall, naive enough to think that just because names are on dotted lines, something will actually come of it all. I could have told him different, but he wouldn’t have listened. Troy listens to no one but himself, and the advice is usually bad. For fifteen minutes he’s the biggest news in town. And fifteen minutes later, no one will return his phone calls. It’s easy to see why. He is the very definition of an asshole. Every sentence he speaks contains the word “fucking” at least twice. He betrays every friend he has (many of whom are his brothers). He describes himself as “a deep cesspool of creativity,” and truer words were never spoken.
Amazingly, the film actually does get made, on half the budget he had counted on, and in Toronto. Uh-oh! Moving the production of my movie, Millennium, to Toronto turned out to be the final nail in its coffin. He gets Willem Dafoe and Billy Connelly, two fine actors, to star in it. It is finished, taken to Cannes ... and nobody makes an offer. Probably because it sounds like a piece of shit. We never see any actual footage. (Oddly, it’s become something of a cult film on DVD. Maybe I’ll have to take a look at it ... and maybe not.)
At the end of the film Troy is broke and basically on the street ... but believe it or not, the IMDb lists Boondock II: All Saints Day as currently being in production. I guess you can’t keep a persistent asshole down. Oh, by the way, since I haven’t mentioned it yet ... this is a really good film, in spite of its subject matter. Sort of a low-rent Lost in La Mancha. If you want to see how a film can go horribly, completely wrong, see this one. This is a wonderfully gratifying karma-in-action movie. IMDb.com
Owning Mahoney (2003) Philip Seymour Hoffman, Minnie Driver. Excellent work by both, in a based-on-fact story of a compulsive gambler who managed to steal an amazing amount of money from the bank where he worked for an amazingly long time. IMDb.com