Movies: August 2007 Archives

View image Me. And some other people.

One of the best educations in filmmaking that you can ever get is to spend a day on a set -- even (or maybe especially) as an extra, because that puts you right in the middle of the action, as it were. (When I was doing a Seattle Times story on the shooting of Alan Rudolph's "Trouble in Mind," Alan decided to stick me and my pal Eden, who was also working on the film, into the tiki bar scene, where I could observe everything that was going on all around. We appear as blurs behind the heads of Kris Kristofferson and Lori Singer.)

Anyway, back in 1986 (or early 1987?) my friend Nancy Locke, a longtime Seattle movie publicist, and I were invited to be extras on David Mamet's directorial debut feature, "House of Games." We showed up at Bagley Hall at the University of Washington (my alma mater) and I was put in a classroom, where Lilia Skala was our psych professor. In explaining the scene to us, Mamet mentioned we could now say that we had been directed by David Mamet. So, I'm sayin'.

I don't remember where they used Nancy, or if she made the final cut. (I'll have to ask her.) I do remember we did another semi-surreal scene in the hallway between classes, where we students brushed passed Lindsay Crouse while her character walked in a dazed, almost trance-like state. It was an experiment. They didn't use it.

I was reminded of this experience while looking at the new Criterion Collection edition of "House of Games." Roger Ebert gave the movie four stars, and in 1999 selected it as one of his Great Movies. It's pure Mamet -- hypnotic, suspenseful, surprising -- a noirish con game that reminds me of a Fritz Lang thriller, with stylized performances that hint of Bresson, Fassbinder, or Herzog's "Heart of Glass" (in which the director actually hypnotized the cast), but I've never seen anything quite like it. Three of my favorite actors -- Joe Mantegna, J.T. Walsh and Ricky Jay -- also star. Are you in?

View image You can't really like this "Seven Samurai" movie, can you? It's old and Japanese!

Here are questions cinephiles and critics still hear all the time: "Why do you like old movies and foreign movies so much? What about new movies? Aren't you just being elitist to say you like movies that are in black and white or have subtitles? Movies are supposed to be fun!" The implicit assumption is that "old movies" are outmoded movies and that new movies (with the latest technologies, unrestricted by old codes regarding sex, violence, drugs and other content) are inclined to be more liberated or superior. Oh, and that "fun" cannot be inspired by anything made before one was born. Not that there's anything inherently inferior about recent, English-language movies, either, but what's wrong with a kiss, boy? (Yes, I quote ol' Monty Python a lot.)

I like to counter this narcissistic question with another proposition: "Think of the new music you've heard that's been issued over the last year. Is more of it "better" than what's been made over the last 100 years? Would it be "elitist" to say that it's more likely you'll find more favorites from the last 99 years than from the last one? Even in purely statistical terms, it just makes sense.

Let's say I'm an even 50 years old. Well, movies themselves have only been around for about 100 years, so I would not be surprised to find that I had at least as many favorites that were made before I was born (1957) as I do that were made since the advent of my existence. Now let's assume that I am turning 30 in 2007. If I say I'm really interested in movies, then it shouldn't seem the least bit unlikely that I've seen more great movies made between 1900 and 1977 than I have between 1977 and now. Especially since so many of them are so easy to see -- whether on basic cable (Turner Classic Movies) or DVD.

I know, I know -- there are people who don't like musical styles of the past, either. They don't like punk or rockabilly or bebop or big band swing or Western swing or blues or Romanticism or Baroque music. And that's their taste, and they're entitled to it. But, if they haven't been sufficiently exposed to these styles, that doesn't mean those tastes are terribly well-rounded tastes. (This is where we could argue about whether some "opinions" carry more weight than others in a debate.) We don't have to like everything, we just need to have enough knowledge and experience to know what it is we don't like.

The question itself seems understandable, if misguided, at first hearing. Until you consider it for about three seconds. And then you see how insulting it really is, because another underlying assumption is: "You can't really like that stuff, can you?"

As Sammy Davis, Jr., one wrote: Yes, I can. (Whether Frank Sinatra says it's OK or not.)

Is Beyonce a greater singer because she's relatively new and young and recorded with the latest technology? Are Aretha Franklin and Edith Piaf and Dinah Washington and Patsy Cline and Martha Reeves and Susannah McCorkle and Billie Holliday and Astrud Gilberto automatically not as good because they recorded a lot of their best stuff earlier -- and some of it was not in English? It just depends on what you like, not on when it was new.

So, why do cinephiles and critics like old movies, and movies from other lands, so much? Maybe for the same reason oenophiles like vintage wines so much: They've stood up over time, and different regions have different styles and distinctive flavors. And maybe because it's part of the definition: Anybody who doesn't consider movies made more than 10 or 20 or 30 years ago has no business calling him/herself a critic or cinephile any more than somebody who dismisses the traditional cuisines of the world could be considered a gourmet. (I've been watching "Top Chef," you see...)

View image A family meeting: Who is that sixth man (on the far right)? Hint: It's not Kevin Spacey.

Longtime Scanners commenter and Ebert correspondent Ali Arikan, in Istanbul (one of my favorite cities), solves the mystery of The Sixth Man in "The Godfather" (or "One," as they say in the Sopranos family) and "The Godfather, Part II" in Roger Ebert's latest Answer Man column. The unidentified man in question is present during the meeting in which the Corleones plan the killing of a New York police captain. And his name is...

... Rocco Lampone... [whom you may remember from] the earlier scene in the film where Rocco executes Paulie in the car as Clemenza urinates outside (the “leave the gun, take the cannoli” scene).

... He eventually becomes one of Michael’s two caporegimes (Al Neri is the other one). Incidentally, it is Rocco who, in the second film, assassinates Hyman Roth at the airport, only to be shot in the back by a police officer as he tries to flee the scene.

View image Does this movie make you dizzy?

Continuing our discussion about the nauseating properties of hand-held, quick-cut, whip-pan, rack-focus camerawork, David Bordwell sends along this account of an unlucky filmgoer who saw "The Bourne Ultimatum" in IMAX:

We went to see "BU" on the IMAX in San Francisco. Near the end, when Webb is having the flashback to when he is forced to show his commitment to the project, the lady next to me spontaneously unleashes a huge amount of vomit all over my leg and all over the floor in front of her! I have never experienced anything like it in my life!

Now all the action sequences, the nauseating use of moving cameras, and the relentless score were enough to make anyone dizzy, but to throw up?