His Whole Life Was a Million To One Shot

For a lot of people, like myself, who were born in the early seventies Rocky will always be a special moment. Notice I said moment for it goes beyond just a film for many of us. It was the first truly transformative movie that a lot of us ever experienced, we might not have understood at such an early age that the ring was a metaphor for life but we inherently understood that inside those ropes was something special.
I remember seeing each Rocky film growing up vividly, each one like it was yesterday. The first two at a drive in, the third at a packed small theatre in Henderson, Ky with seemingly everyone in the audience including my father cheering around me. By the time the forth one came around something was different, suddenly this character that we had loved and cared about so much had changed, for all of the excitement that film might have created their was something unfortunate and cartoon about it. Perhaps the clearest memory of all because of the disappointment was seeing the fifth with my high school girlfriend. She was a bit younger and couldn't really understand my fascination because at that point we had ten years of Sylvester Stallone pissing away his incredible talents and breaking the hearts of the people who had loved him so much originally. The fifth should have returned the series and Stallone to where he belonged but it failed and I'll never forget the look on some of the people's faces walking out of that theatre, this wasn't just a film that had lost but a special moment in our lives that had been taken away.
A year or so ago when I first heard that Stallone was returning to Rocky one last time I could think of nothing worse. Hadn't enough been done to this character that had meant so much to me? I knew the jokes would start and all of the brilliance contained in that first film would slip further away.
Earlier this year around the time that I was making some major life changes a teaser appeared for Rocky Balboa. A friend told me to watch it online and I nervously clicked on the link dreading what I might see. What greeted me was one of the most effective minutes I had ever seen, just a simple black and white close up of a pair of battered eyes and an astonishing moving monologue playing over it talking about life not being about hard you can hit, 'but it's about hard you can get hit.'
After that I began to build myself up into hoping that this might actually work and for the last few months I have wanted nothing more than to believe again.
If this sounds dramatic, good it is. There isn't anything funny about wasting the talents that God has granted, and I'm talking about myself here as much as Stallone just as a lot of people going to this film will remember the dreams they had in their youth that never came true. Sylvester Stallone is a great actor, writer and director who like a lot of us lost his way and he knows it. Watch or read any recent interview with the man and he knows he blew it and it's regret and the hope that there might be something left inside that fuels the new Rocky Balboa.
Rocky Balboa is everything that I hoped and needed it to be. It's the work of a man who has gotten back what he lost a long time ago, it's a pure emotional film that not only fulfills the promise of Stallone's early career but buries the mistakes he spent two decades making.
Stallone has delivered in 2006 a old school 70's style character study, it's the kind of film that his peers spent the decade making but that he never did. Stallone and his DP Clark Mathis hit on the essence of the original film's wintry desaturated look and the opening montage of Philadelphia sets the perfect tone the film keeps throughout. Everyone delivers, seasoned character actors Burt Young and Tony Burton really shine here as two guys who have also lived with a life that never gave them what they hoped. Real life boxer Antonio Tarver gives a splendid performance that makes the cartoon opponents of the later sequels seem embarrassing. Geraldine Hughes playing Marie from the first film is equalling strong but the film ultimately belongs to Stallone who gives one of the richest performances I've seen in a long time. It's a major piece of directing, acting and especially writing by a guy who's been holding back for a long time.
I realized watching this film that there are two different kinds of Rocky fans, people like me who grew up loving and understanding the characters of the first two films and perhaps people who are a little younger who like the more over the top aspects of the later ones. They will be disappointed, this is a subtle and at times extremely mournful piece of filmmaking. The fight, one of the most brutal and realistic ever captured on film, takes up a very small part of the film and a lot of people will probably consider that a weakness.
We all have moments in our lives that are special to us, moments that have slipped away that we wish we could go back to. I felt like for 102 minutes I got to do the impossible and relive one of those moments that I lost a long time ago. It really doesn't matter what Sylvester Stallone does from this point on, for the guy that Gene Siskel once called the best American screenwriter of his generation, he is pure again.....eternally.

What Becomes A Legend Most?

Probably the most important DVD release of the year is the complete first season of Saturday Night Live. Culturally this is the show that changed television as we know it and the original cast have all become legendary. In the years since SNL first aired we have only been given glimpses of the work of the original 'not so ready for prime time players' and this set gives us the chance to view all of their groundbreaking work, warts and all.
Early reviews of the set expressed some disappointment that the actual episodes didn't stand up to the iconic status that's been given to them. Some seemed unable to accept that not every skit would be genius, that even the originals might have an off night. In a way I suppose this release does damage their reputations as super comedians but it does remind us of their humanity which is what drew people to them in the first place.
The first two disc are the most problematic. The show is still trying to get grounded into what exactly it's going to be. The second episode is essentially The Paul Simon show which is great, especially the reunion with Art Garfunkel, but the players get lost behind the scenes. This happens several times early in the show but things start to change around the Candice Bergen episodes. Bergen was finally getting to prove her comedic chops that she would perfect in the next decade and the cast, especially Gilda Radner, seem to come alive around her. Bergen was so good at hosting that she actually does two shows the first season.
Things really take off, big time, on the Richard Pryor episode. If anyone needs any proof of how possessed by genius everyone on this show was they should watch this episode. Everyone is firing on all cylinders and the season is stronger after this. Pryor himself is demonically funny and is one of their great all time hosts. The famous job interview word association test with him and Chevy Chase is still one of the funniest and most biting things I have ever seen.
The music was always a big part of it and the complete performances are here from (on the great side) the likes of Abba, Gil Scott-Heron, Bill Withers, Patti Smith, John Sebastian, Carly Simon and Kris Kristofferson to (the not so great side) Anne Murray, Desi Arnaz and Loudon Wainwright 111.
The Muppet segments sucked then and they still suck and are the only thing on here that might be skipped over. I love the Albert Brooks short films, even the unfunny ones.
The cast themselves all have shining moments. It's easy to see why Chevy Chase became so popular so quickly and left so soon. The talented and gifted Chase dominates many of the shows and his weekend updates are always a highlight. Garrett Morris and Laraine Newman are always considered the most underused but they are both given many shining moments here, Newman, able to slip into whatever persona handed to her, is particularly sharp. The proper,with a secret, Jane Curtain seems to be the calm in the midst of a major storm and her talk show interviews are hilarious. Dan Aykroyd is Dan Aykroyd and he's always great but seems to be the only one to me slightly underused. Along with Chase the two that shine through completely are the two that are no longer with us. Gilda Radner is lovely and she radiates such a warmth that it's hard to take your eyes off her in a skit, simply one of the most moving comedians who ever lived. John Belushi, like Pryor, is an absolute powerhouse; the singing, the impersonations, his sheer intensity adds an importance to the show that no comedian before or since could have given.
I hope that they continue to release these complete seasons for their cultural importance as well as the fact that at their funniest no one could touch them.

Lamenting The Printed Fanzine

Much like the lp after the cd revolution, the printed Fanzine has virtually disappeared since the Internet explosion. Some of my favorite things in my collection are these wonderful small paper collectibles, some printed up by smaller publishing companies while others started out in fan's basements. The Internet has made everything so readily available and easy that I rarely come across these labor of loves anymore. It seems the people who were once working so hard to get these printed can now just post their collections online and be done with it.
The Internet is an addictive thing. I can find a rare live recording to download in a matter of minutes whereas before it might have taken years to locate. Photographs of everyone from the biggest stars to obscure cult figures are just a few clicks of the keyboard away. Something seems lost though, that loss of surprise that Tennessee Williams once spoke of so eloquently. The easiness has taken a lot of the magic out of it. I still feel a sense of excitement flipping through the brief 40 pages of rare photographs of Barbara Steele in the 1991 collection An Angel For Satan that I just don't get online.
The printed page, like the grooves on an lp, will never lose it's power for me. The paper is real, it's something I can touch and keep. I can carry to a friends house or put it on display in my apartment. It has something that the Internet, for all of its draw and power, will never be able to posses. It has a soul.
I, of course, am a part of this soulless creation and take great,if at times guilty, pleasure in it. I salute the dedicated collectors of yesterday who had the fore site to print their rare thoughts and images. I hope that somewhere a generation comes along who will take their obsessions offline and put it back in our hands, that's the only place they will really survive.

I Want You (You Don't Get Well No More)

Sundance is showing Michael Winterbottom's, increasingly most difficult film to see, I Want You this month. Winterbottom is a hard director to nail down, since his twisted 1995 road film Butterfly Kiss he has worked in several genres and released everything from the period film Jude to the improvised digitally shot 9 Songs.
His films, regardless of their stylistic differences, almost always feature characters engaged in an obsessive and dangerous love. Winterbottom's films share this obsessive nature with one of his idols, Fassbinder, and while his films might seem as different as night and day it's this obsessive interest in people relating to each other that sparks all of his work.
I Want You was released in 1998 to mixed reviews and apparently had distribution problems from the get go. It's history in the States has been very problematic, after being granted a surprising R Rating (more on that later) it had a brief theatrical run followed by a VHS release that quickly slipped out of print. It has become available in Europe on DVD but has never found it's way to that format here.
Used video copies fetch high prices on ebay, so Sundance is doing a service to people who have been hoping to see it.
The version currently running on Sundance is apparently uncut, with it's graphic sexuality intact. It is unfortunately full screen and Winterbottom's 2.35 compositions' suffer from this. The opening credits play widescreen before switching to the full-screen ratio, a frustrating occurrence that took me back in time to old VHS releases.
Winterbottom, and screenwriter Eoin McNamee, apparently got the idea for his film from Elvis Costello's classic obsessive track I Want You off his album with the Attractions Blood and Chocolate. The song is played throughout the film and plays an important role at one point to the plot. The song is rightly considered one of Costello's finest as well as darkest. It matches the film's dark worldview and increasingly oppressive nature perfectly. The film's bright opening expansive outdoor shots viewed from a train soon begin to sink into more foreboding and darker interiors as it progresses.
I Want You features the talented Rachel Weisz in one of her first starring roles. Her character Helen is the object of three obsessive characters. Helen is also hiding something which gives the film a final act twist that isn't entirely satisfying but work's due to Weisz's greatly nuanced performance.
The film also features a young Alessandro Nivola as the mysterious Martin whose character is revealed more fully as the film progresses. Much like the song it's based on, the film reveals more and more clues as it progresses. It short running time of 87 minutes is as deceptive as the main characters as this an exhausting, but rewarding, film to watch.
The strongest aspect of the film, along with Weisz, is the cinematography by Slawomir Idziak. Winterbottom was obviously inspired by Idziak's great work for Kieslowski and I Want You is visually a feast of color. This is especially evident in the earlier brighter scenes of yellow and gold that play such a crucial contrast with the later dark blues and greys of Martins and Helen's homes. Weisz's underwater swimming scenes throughout the film also clearly invoke Binoche swimming in Blue. Both films use the pool and Idziak's color scene to reflect internally what is happening with the characters. The pool, as in Blue, also becomes an invaded sanctuary. Kieslowskis extraordinary shot of Binoche surrounded by diving children as she is attempting to deal and escape from the death of her own family is mirrored here stylistically by the nude Helen attempting to sink to the bottom to forget her dangerous relationship to Martin.
Winterbottom, as evidenced by the controversial 9 Songs, has never been a director to shy away from sexuality. It's surprising that I Want You was granted an R Rating considering that it has two things the rating boards typically can't tolerate; explicit sexuality and explicitly adult ideas. The actors might all, at one point or another, be nude but it is ultimately a film of thought and the character's fulfillment of separate cycles of abuse that give it its strength.
Winterbottom has made better films than I Want You, Jude, Wonderland and 24 Hour Party People spring immediately to mind, but it's a very much a film worth seeking out. It's the last film that features this type of look by Idzaik, which isn't to take away from his great more mainstream subsequent work, and one of the first great performances by the now Oscar winning Weisz. Most importantly it's an authentically good adult film, one that exposes as much of the heart and mind as the flesh.

Cinzia Monreale and the Art of the Euro DVD Extra

We have become so used to extras on dvds that it is easy to forget just how special, and actually how important to film history, the idea of them really is. The ability to see deleted scenes or behind the scenes footage from your favorite film might seem commonplace now but it has really just been since the arrival of the dvd format that this kind of thing has been readily available to anyone outside of the people making the films. There have always been promotional featurettes and on the set documentaries but only a handful of these were available to the home market. Laserdiscs and then DVDs changed the way a lot of us view films, at their best they give us an inside view to the filmmakers intentions and journey. Unfortunately as we have gotten more and more expectant of these extras, they seem to have gotten more and more superficial. Many of the current discs being produced use the special features sections just as back slapping promotion or as a teaser to a future double dip release, it seems to be getting rarer to see quality extras.
Thankfully many smaller companies have, since the dawn of the format, continued to attempt to give us something that speaks about the quality and importance of the film we have purchased. Criterion has, since the days of laserdisc, been at the top of the line in regards to their extra features. The first audio commentary I ever heard was on the laserdisc of Silence Of The Lambs. I still recall the excitement and mystery of it, I just couldn't believe that I was going to be able to listen to the filmmakers discussing their craft and memories for the whole film. We take this so much for granted now that we forget just how revolutionary the idea for an audio commentary was.
Audio Commentaries are a good place to start, in listing some of my favorite extras, and since I am mostly focusing on Euro genre films I won't go into American favorites like the cast commentary on Boogie Nights, Jodie Foster's talks or Abel Ferrara's strange but spellbinding talks on Driller Killer and King Of New York.
The best commentaries can, and should, be fun and insightful. Some can be made up just of special memories and stories. What Italian horror fan didn't rejoice to hear Catriona MacColl and David Warbeck recalling Fulci's The Beyond, or John Phillip Law talking about Bava's Diabolik with Tim Lucas? Many of the best commentaries just have the feel of a pleasant afternoon spent remembering, this can often be as eye opening as an in depth critical commentary and can be as moving as the feature itself.
Commentaries can also be combative, think of Umberto Lenzi and John Morghen's piece for Cannibal Ferox. It's as though the two men are watching separate features and we can hear years of bitter thoughts coming through our speakers. Asia Argento's at times acidic commentary for her Scarlet Diva perfectly compliments the film and places us in the position of an armchair psychologist.
Criterion remains the king of critical commentaries but Tim Lucas has delivered some splendid ones for Mario Bava's work. The upcoming Bava collections promise more Lucas talks and one can hope that future Argento discs continue to have the great work of Alan Jones helming them.
Documentary work has become more and more in-substantial on mainstream dvds, often short promotional featurette's take the place of an actual in depth look at the work. Many companies specializing in Euro obscurities, such as No-Shame, Blue Underground, Grindhouse, Shriek Show and Anchor Bay, have delivered splendid documentary work for their films. Shriek Show as been barraged with complaints about some, admittedly, shoddy work they have done on some of their discs and this has overshadowed that early on they delivered some incredible extras. Their Fulci releases for Zombie and Lizard In A Woman's Skin each contained in depth looks at the films containing dozens of interviews with surviving cast and crew members, they stand as fine examples of how much depth hands on studies of these films can provide.
Edwige Fenech had been absent not only from early dvd extras but her films took awhile to finally start appearing on the format. You would think that her early Gialo work with Sergio Martino would have been prime candidates for early release but it's just within the past few years that her films have started to make a big push into the market. No-Shame dvd has put out the majority of them and it was with them that she sat down and did a series of filmed interviews. Every fan-boy's, including myself, heart jumped into their throat when they saw that she was as beautiful as ever. All of these interviews show a charming, intelligent woman more than ready to talk about her work in everything from giallos to the sex-comedys she filmed in the seventies. No-Shame did a real service to the Euro fan community in conducting these interviews and I don't think it was a coincidence that shortly after they began to appear that Eli Roth cast her in his upcoming Hostel sequel.
A very different, but no less captivating, kind of interview appears on Grindhouse's amazing double disc set of Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust. One of the most interesting extras on the disc is an half hour plus talk with Robert Kerman. It's an incredibly open interview with a talented, seemingly disappointed man who never completely fulfilled his potential. Kerman comes across as arrogant, oddly touching and always brutally honest. The thing I like most about the interview is that it appears unedited, at one point Kerman asks the interviewer to keep something he says in and Grindhouse, to their credit, does just that. The whole disc has an outlawish anarchic feel to it, just like the film it is celebrating.
Finally the best dvd extras are the ones that hit you on a more personal level. Perhaps they point out something small you never noticed before, perhaps a simple small memory of an actor or director can give you more insight into the art of film than you ever imagined you could have. The best extras are inevitably produced by people who love film, which is why more mainstream dvd releases are becoming more and more shallow, they are viewed as promotion and nothing else and are being manufactured by businessmen not artists.
My favorite dvd extra is just about 11 minutes long and doesn't contain any great insight. It's cheaply shot on video and takes place just outside a college in Italy. The pretty casually dressed woman being interviewed outside, under a tree, would go unnoticed by most film fans but lovers of Italian horror know her, and this short interview with Cinzia Monreale on Shriek Show's dvd of Joe D'Amato's Buio Omega is one that I keep coming back to.
I can't really put my finger on what it is that draws me to this interview, at first it was the sheer novelty of seeing the woman who played the blind Emily in Fulci's The Beyond being interviewed. The talk is casual, the interview seems a bit unsure of his questions, and she seems a bit amused at the attention but also honored. She remembers Fulci and especially D'Amato fondly. At one point it seems like she wants to say something negative about a Buio Omega co-star but then just smiles and compliments them. I think the thing that gets me about this short clip is that I just know this woman really from those two films, she is forever locked in time for me in them. There is just something really special about watching this still incredibly beautiful woman who is in between classes recalling, what is for her, also a moment locked in time. I love the clip and I can forgive Shriek Show for their sometimes very careless work just for this short supplement.

This piece, scattershot as it is, was in part inspired by a recent Mobius board talk on why someone should buy two copies of Mario Bava's Kill Baby Kill just because one has an audio commentary. Speaking just for myself, a film like Kill Baby Kill is symbolic for the essence of my love for European films. It'll be a pleasure to add two copies of it to my collection and if I have to sell a couple of discs of commercial modern Hollywood films that really have no meaning for me to get it, I gladly will. Ten or fifteen years ago an audio commentary on a film like this would have been unheard of and the day that I don't support an important release in this genre that I love so much is the day that I stop loving film.....and that day is no where in sight.

Big White Cloud On Me

I did not plan on writing about Joe Carnahan's Smokin' Aces. Typically I only write about films that I love on this blog and I did not love Smokin' Aces. I'm actually not even sure I liked it, and yet since I saw it just over a week ago it has stuck with me.
This is Carnahan's third feature after Blood Guts and Octane (which I didn't like) and Narc(which I did but thought it was overrated). Smokin' Aces is majorly flawed, overly complex and incredibly violent film that feels like a very pesky candle that either burns too bright or not at all. Almost every review I have read of the film calls it 'Tarantinoesque' and I know what they are trying to say but it seems to be one of those cop out terms that critics use everytime a new crime film comes out.
Tarantino is a master scriptwriter who is able to pull many disparate elements in and make them cohesive. It is Tarantino's control as a director that makes his films so memorable. They might seem chaotic and frenzied but underneath each one is a really assured craftsman. There is nothing cohesive or controlled about guys like Carnahan or Guy Ritchie. These guys are just about the chaos and Smokin' Aces takes this to the extreme. It is an ultimate 'kitchen sink' film made by a talented director who appears to be extremely frustrated and angry.
A key to the brutality that Carnahan injects in his Smokin' Aces is the fact that he was thrown off Mission Impossible 3 a couple of years back. Suddenly an up and comer got the rug swept from under him and the frustration and fear that Carnahan must have felt is poured into everything frame of this film.
A major problem with Smokin' Aces is its cast of 'I know that face'. Everyone from Ben Affleck to Alicia Keys(who is actually very good) shows up and the film would have greatly benefited from a cast of unknowns. Some of the casting works (Jason Bateman is great in his two very odd scenes) while some doesn't (Andy Garcia gives possibly his worst performance).
I was also never completely sure what kind of film Carnahan wanted to make. It works best during its most serious and over the top moments, but the attempts at humor continually undercut it. One painfully unfunny sequence involves a Grandmother and overly hyper karate kid that has cutting room floor written all over it.
This is also one of the most gleefully sadistic American films I have seen in a long time. The ratings board is obviously getting more and more relaxed or jaded, I'm not sure which. It works in the films favor, Carnahan's force as a filmmaker comes through in the film's most violent moments. Even at it's most overblown and ridiculous the violence in this film is absolutely hypnotic.
Smokin' Aces is a major train wreck of a film, so why I am writing about it? I think that this very well might become one of the major cult films of this decade. Last years horrendous Running Scared, which I could barely get through, was a predicted cult film by many but it already seems to have been forgotten and I think time will not be kind to that film. I have a feeling, that I can't totally put my finger on, that time will treat Smokin' Aces well. It takes years to give a film a legitimate cult following but I think this, as well last year's equally over the top but a lot more fun Crank, will find an audience that will embrace it eventually.
The film's biggest asset is without a doubt Jeremy Piven, an actor who continually delivers impressive performances in less than stellar films. Here, as the title character, Piven really shines. This is one of the great melt-down performances of the last few years and Piven injects this character with a sad, tortured humanity that saves the film in every scene he is in.
Smokin' Aces achieves true brilliance just once and it is a scene that keeps coming back to me. Aces has just sold out the last friends he had and he is bordering on overdosing on all the coke he has been snorting. His life as just caught up with him and he stands staring into a mirror. An extended version of John Cale's extraordinary Big White Cloud, from his first solo album 1971's Vintage Violence, begins to play and for several minutes Cale's song plays and we watch Piven fall apart. It's a beautiful, tortured few moments that silenced the rather large audience I saw this with. Suddenly everything works and director, actor and musician are totally together. It is a perfect moment in a very imperfect film and the most exhilarating moment I have had a theater in this young year.
Smokin' Aces might disappear when it is released on DVD but I doubt it. Carnahan is talented and he might have a great film in him somewhere, until then his 'disasters' will probably be more interesting than a lot of 'good' films that will fill up our theaters.

Karen Sisco and The James Evans Syndrome.

While I can’t prove it I suspect that classic television has done more to shape my life than say 20 plus years of education. The classic shows of my youth have given me so many ideals that I still carry with me. My ideal walk is an odd hybrid of George Jefferson and Juan Epstein. A good fashion sense to me comes directly from Greg Brady’s wardrobe. Want my ideal woman, mix Mary AND Rhoda with some Samantha and Jamie Buchman thrown in. I still think of role models as Mr. Kotter and Lou Grant and I still deep down expect all of the problem’s life continually throws at me to finally wrap up with a valuable moral lesson like in Andy Griffith.
This all of course would make me completely insane if so many people from my generation didn’t suffer from it. Intellectuals and the snobbish can deny it but television shows played as important a role in the 20th century as any major political event. My generation of broken home kids needed a James Evans or Mike Brady in their homes and a lot of us wouldn’t be the same without them.
I have come to realize that things have changed for me this decade; the last few years have been the first time in my life that I don’t watch TV anymore. It’s on all the time but inevitably I am using it just to watch DVDs. It’s been almost ten years since I religiously followed certain shows; the last group consisted of Mad About You, Seinfeld, E.R. and The X-Files. Tv on DVD has changed a lot, Arrested Development is my favorite recent show but I caught it on disc. No longer is there a moment to mark each week for me to sit down and watch a favorite show. That’s an odd phenomenon not to have in my life anymore, and it represents a real breaking point from my past.
Being born in the year of Watergate I had to catch up with a lot of shows in re-runs after school and some of my best memories are rushing home to watch The Brady Bunch, Welcome Back Kotter and Good Times. The summer’s were even better, I would get my chores done in the morning to have the afternoon’s free to tune into Chicago’s WGN which would run episodes of Kotter and Good Times after the Cub’s baseball games.
Television handed me one of my earliest traumatic events with the death of James Evans on Good Times. After a particularly long Cubs game that ran over WGN broadcast a rerun of the episode where it was announced that James died. I couldn’t believe my surrogate father was gone; it was bad enough I had to accept the absence of my real father but this was too much.
After the James Evans incident television would continue to hand me disappointments. The cold harsh reality of getting to Junior High and realizing that kids no longer dressed and looked like Greg and Marcia Brady, or realizing that I was never going to look like Vinnie Barbarino or have a girlfriend like Nancy Drew. I continued to love and watch it though and each year would bring new shows and characters to get involved with.
The late 90’s handed me and my shows a series of knockout punches. Mulder left the X-Files to Scully, Dr. Delamico left E.R’s unit, Seinfeld fell apart and the Buchman’s had that damn baby. Hadn’t Johnny Carson retiring and Gene Siskel dying been enough? By the turn of the decade I was left without any new shows and suddenly television as I knew it belonged strictly to my memories.
The fall of 2003 brought my last love affair with a television series. I began to see ads that summer for a spin-off of one of my favorite films and book, Out Of Sight, that would feature one of my favorite actresses, Carla Gugino. Karen Sisco was made for me, the idea of getting to watch one of Elmore Leonard’s best characters come to life each week got me excited about television again. I eagerly awaited the premiere and wasn’t disappointed. The show felt like it was from another planet in comparison to all of the horrendous reality programs that had overtaken us after 9/11. The show was cool personified from the great opening credits featuring The Isley Bros. always smoking It’s Your Thing, to the brilliant stroke of casting Robert Forster as Marshall Sisco to just the sheer privilege of getting to watch Carla Gugino each week.
So for several weeks in the fall of 2003 I felt good again, I had something to look forward to each week again. Work didn’t seem quite so draining and while Karen Sisco wasn’t perfect it got better with each episode. My rekindled romance with television was short lived though. After just 7 episodes Karen Sisco was put on ‘temporary hiatus’, have two words ever put more fear into the heart of a television viewer? The week that hiatus was announced I was involved in a horrendous car accident that would mentally scar me as much as any event in my life. As I was attempting to recover from my accident Karen Sisco was cancelled and my love affair with television came to an end. The final three episodes would run on USA and then it was over.
It was James Evans dying all over again and for months I couldn’t accept that the show was gone. My friend Casey told me I really couldn’t let go of anything and she was right, and I blame it all on that episode of Good Times.
Television is like a much-missed girlfriend to me now. Watching the dvds of Good Times and Mad About You, or old tapes of Welcome Back Kotter and Karen Sisco are like pulling out a box of old love letters and photographs. It’s all memory now, and with the recent onslaught of Tivo and DVR technology that makes it possible to watch any show whenever you want to, I wonder if anyone in a few years will have that important once a week extended family that so many from my generation needed and got. I would have been a lot more lost in my childhood without the stability that television and my favorite shows offered, I would hate to think about a generation that wouldn’t have that sort of weekly re-assurance. I hope the new broken home kids find their own extended families, and for me I hope my memories and dreams are still that ‘ticket out’.

The Forgotten Arm Of Bernardo Bertolucci

Looking at Bernardo Bertolucci’s career has always reminded me a bit of The Rolling Stones. Starting off strong and quickly progressing into a period of awe inspiring brilliance that no-one, especially himself, could top; and then finally the aftermath of continually attempting to live up to the standard he had set so high for himself.
From his first feature, 1962’s The Grim Reaper through his third, 1968’s Partner, Bertolucci would show himself as an amazingly assured and inventive director who had obviously taken a lot from Pasolini, whom he had assisted, and Godard, whom he idolized.
1970’s Spider Stratagem would prove the major turning point, his Beggar’s Banquet if you like, marking a turning away from the overtly Godardian Partner. It would begin an five year-three film run that would perfect and alter the cinematic landscape in a way that few films, and filmmakers, ever had.
The Conformist is one of the great films, viewing the recent Paramount DVD release it is hard for me to think of a more perfectly structured and layered film. Everything from the lovely Vittorio Storaro cinematography to George Delerue’s haunting score to the iconic casting is as good as cinema can possibly get. The film has moments like the first close up of Dominique Sanda and the chilling last shot of Trintignant that cause an almost physical reaction in me everytime I watch the film. I’m jolted by it, in the way that I wish more horror films would. I appreciate the film and how unique it is more and more as we get further away from it. It is one of those films, like Citizen Kane or Three Colors Red, that while watching it I have hard time convincing myself that it’s not the greatest film ever made.
Bertolucci would follow this impossible to top film with a second masterpiece that would immortalize and crush Bertolucci at the same time. Much has been written about Last Tango In Paris and I think that the film’s notoriety has taken away from just how powerful an experience it actually is. I will write more on this film that I revisit at least once a year at a later date. Watching it today is, to continue my Stones comparison, at bit like listening to Sticky Fingers, It is the work of someone in complete and total control of his craft, a virtual greatest hits film marriage of direction, cinematography, music, editing and of course acting. Much liked The Conformist where Bertolucci symbolically killed off Godard this film would do the same to Truffaut, and Bertolucci would no longer be compared to anyone else. So much has been written about Brando’s monumental performance that the work of Maria Schneider has long been overlooked. The recent re-releasing of Antonioni’s The Passenger restores her as one of the great figures of seventies cinema. Her Jeanne, form Tango, is a performance that has long been unfairly ignored but it is impossible to think of a more luminous and troubling presence in cinema.
Something happened to Bertolucci after Last Tango In Paris, something changed in him and his films. Certainly the storm that greeted Tango, getting arrested for obscenity and realizing that he had made not one but two of the greatest films ever in a row all had to weigh on him.
It would take him nearly five years to get another film in theaters but 1900 would turn out to be his Exile On Main Street, a sprawling five hour epic that veers on the edge of disaster but somehow works. In scene after scene Bertolucci delivers a film as large and bold as it’s subject. Nothing about it worked as well as The Conformist and Last Tango In Paris though. The stitches were really coming apart through it and it’s noticeable. Everything from the look of the film to the casting choices would fall just short of the standards he had set earlier. Still, at it’s most hypnotic and audacious, it is one of the great films of the seventies and one that most directors wouldn’t have even attempted.
The film would immediately be subjected to cuts and censorship problems. Much like Sergio Leone’s equally epic Once Upon A Time In America it would be a film many would see first in a compromised and raped version.
Bertolucci’s next two films, Luna and Tragedy Of A Ridiculous Man, were both much smaller scaled and had more in common with his early films rather than his seventies masterworks.
He would again enter epic territory and sweep the Oscars with The Last Emperor but I don’t feel that this film has the power of his greatest work. It is a film made of great parts but it is Bertolucci himself that seems missing. Suddenly a wild visionary revolutionizing cinema was just a great craftsman. The Last Emperor is a fine film that deserved the acclaim it received but I don’t think of it as a great Bernardo Bertolucci film.
The Sheltering Sky seemed to be an attempt to return to the more personal feel of his early seventies work but poor casting and studio interference hurt the film.
The critics would turn on Bertolucci after The Sheltering Sky and suddenly one of cinema’s great masters would be treated with disdain. I found this particularly distasteful. Little Buddha and Stealing Beauty might have been flawed works by an aging master but they both have moments that are sublime and powerful. Stealing Beauty especially, with it’s subversive take on class warfare and repressed sexuality, is worth another look. Still one has to wonder if working with a leading actress, talented Liv Tyler, who was unaware of his past work made Bertolucci feel a little out of time.
Besieged would find him continuing trying to channel his early groundbreaking work on sexuality but it would prove to be possibly his weakest and least ambitious film since Luna.
It felt like the work of a man who was at the end of his creative rope and after seeing it I had a doubt Bertolucci would return.

I remember very clearly the first trailer I saw for 2003’s The Dreamers. To say I was excited about the film is a bit of an understatement. The idea of Bertolucci making a film about the French Student riots of 1968 and paying tribute to the original New Wave heroes of his youth got me more excited about a film than I had been in a long time.
I had bad timing with The Dreamers, it was released the same week I had a bad car accident and it took me several weeks to see it. My mental state really affected how I felt about the film and I came out incredibly disappointed. I wanted to see something that would kick start a revolution, if not in cinema at least in me, but all I could think about in the theater was how worried I was about driving home. The beauty and power of The Dreamers alluded me on that first viewing. Even something as obvious like Bertolucci finding someone as mesmerizing and interesting as Maria Schneider, in young Eva Green, went past me.
I would wait well over a year to revisit The Dreamers, it would be an eye opening and exhilarating experience the second time though. In repeated viewings it becomes a more and more powerful film about what it is to be young and alive. It is a film about ideas, sex and ultimately a passionate love of cinema. It might not be one of Bertolucci's greatest works but certain scenes, from the kids running through the museum intercut with Godard's Bande A Part to Eva Green channeling Garbo, have a magnificently redemptive quality about them. The Dreamers isn't the work of an old man trying to just relive old glories, but one of our last masters regaining his power.
Watching The Dreamers is a bit like watching that last Ali fight where he suddenly starts dancing in that 8th round. Just in that moment when you think everything is just a shadow and a memory, something remarkable suddenly happens and that forgotten arm comes out of nowhere and delivers a near knock out blow.
Bertolucci is planning his follow up to The Dreamers with Bel Canto, an adaptation of Ann Patchett's novel about a South American gorilla group. I believe Bertolucci has at least one more great masterpiece left in him. The Dreamers seemed to remind people and critics of his power and the last 2 years have been filled with incredible special edition DVDS of some of his finest work. There may never be another film made as perfect as The Conformist, but isn't it great to realize the one person who might be able to deliver it is still trying?

Factory Girl

It was with much trepidation that I went and saw George Hickenlooper's Factory Girl last night. When I first heard about this film, which seems like years ago, I was extremely excited mostly because of the casting of Sienna Miller. My initial thought I had the first time I saw Sienna Miller was that she beared an uncanny resemblance to Edie, so at least the casting was right.
The most positive things I can say about Factory Girl all concern Sienna Miller. She gives a rich and fascinating performance that makes Edie Sedgwick human and very real. She was born to play this part, unfortunately George Hickenlooper was not born to direct it.
Factory Girl, at only 90 minutes, covers a very small portion of Edie's life. With the exception of some flashbacks it ignores the childhood which emotionally scarred her and the monster of a father who molested her. This is mentioned in passing but Hickenlooper fails to give the importance to her early years that they deserved. Also nearly totally left out is the fascinating last few years of Edie's life, which in many ways is more interesting than her years with Warhol. We are shown throughout the film Sienna as Edie talking to a psychiatrist about her time in New York but her marriage is only mentioned briefly at the end and her final film Ciao Manhattan is never mentioned.
I realize this film is obviously centered on Edie's years with Warhol but leaving Ciao Manhattan out of the mix is an incredible mistake. The film remains one of the major legacies of Edie Sedgwick's career and life and the absence of even a mention is suspect.
The first half of the film is the strongest, for awhile it seems like Hickenlooper is going to allow Andy Warhol to be human and the early scenes between Andy and Edie are at times touching. Guy Pierce gives a wonderful performance as Warhol but as the film progresses the screenplay and direction lets Pierce and Warhol down. Warhol is presented as a total blank shell at the end and the audience is never told of the assignation attempt that would shatter his psyche and close him off from the sixties.
Warhol was well known as a prodigious worker but mostly in Factory Girl we just see him lying around and we are never given the idea of just how much work this man put out in the sixties. The factory itself is also done very poorly, we just see the same six or seven people lying around over and over again. Hickenlooper as managed to do the near impossible, he has made the factory and the sixties seem pretty boring.
Hickenlooper plays fast and loose with the facts, even going so far as to blatantly change things that we have footage of like interviews and Warhol's films. I realize, of course, that dramatic license has its place but Hickenlooper's disregard for the facts, or even something resembling them, is disturbing.
The Velvet Underground is shown coming in after Edie leaves the factory(one of the film's many WTF moments) and outside of a couple of brief performance clips they are not mentioned. The film's soundtrack is also a bizarre mix of mostly questionable songs but the inclusion of Tim Hardin's haunting Red Balloon is a welcome one.
The film's biggest flaw is the bizarre 'musician' character who is clearly Bob Dylan. Hayden Christensen gives one of the worst performances I have seen in a long time, portraying Dylan as a egotistical shallow bore. It is probably more of Hickenlooper and the screenwriters fault rather than Christensen but all of his scenes are wince inducing. I have no doubt that the relationship between Bob Dylan and Edie Sedgwick was a complex one but this film's portrayal of it is laughable and damaging to all of those involved. Hickenlooper can say what he will but it all comes down to the fact that Dylan (or his image) has a bigger marquee value than say Bob Neuwirth or anybody else who had a bigger impact on Edie Sedgwick. The whole Dylan segment feels like a board room discussion, 'hey let's let Bob Dylan break her heart and everything will make sense'.
Well life doesn't make sense, not yours, mine or Edie Sedgwicks. Hickenlooper would like to convince us that we should blame Bob Dylan or Andy Warhol for Edie Sedgwick's disintegration but the truth is a lot deeper than this film is willing to go.
As I was watching this film I wondered what people who didn't know anything about Edie, Warhol, The Factory, the sixties or even Bob Dylan would take from it. Perhaps that bothered me more than anything else, I have immersed myself with this stuff for almost twenty years but I feel for newcomers who will be sucked into Hickenlooper's limited view.

Someone else should make a film about Edie Sedgwick and Sienna Miller should play her again. Sienna gives a brilliantly moving performance that makes a very flawed and at times corrupt film watchable. It's a performance that is filled with love for Edie Sedgwick and the period that she helped shape, unfortunately she is being filmed by a man who apparently detests both.
Watch Factory Girl for an incredible lead performance and then go and buy the books Girl on Fire and Edie, search down Warhol's incredible films, listen to The Velvet Underground and watch Ciao Manhattan for the real Edie Sedgwick.

"I read that script, it's one of the most disgusting, foul things I've ever seen...by any illiterate retard...in a long time. There's no limit to how low some people will go to write something to make money". -Lou Reed-

Cinema And The Great What If (Part 1) Mickey Rourke in The Godfather Part Three.

Shortly after completing the underrated Homeboy, which he had also scripted, Mickey Rourke received word that his old friend and mentor Francis Ford Coppola was casting roles for his finale to The Godfather series. The two hadn't worked together since the incredible Rumble Fish which had given Rourke one of his greatest roles in the doomed character of Motorcycle Boy.
Rourke flew out to the Coppola estate to read for the part of gangster Joey Zasa and was expected by nearly everyone to get the role. Something odd happened and when shooting began Rourke was left out in the cold and Joe Mantegna had the role of the flashy villain.
Godfather Part Three would open in 1990 to mostly positive reviews, solid box-office and received 7 Academy Award nominations including best picture. Rourke would appear lost for almost the next decade appearing in some of his worst films and subjecting his once beautiful face to his renewed stab at a boxing career.
Mantegna is certainly a talented actor and he is fine as Zasa but Rourke would have brought something to the role that no one else could have. I feel that the fine, if undervalued, Godfather Three would have felt a little more balanced with Rourke's presence and perhaps the role would have given Mickey back some of the confidence that he had obviously lost.
Coppola would be rumored to regret the decision in not casting Rourke and would gallantly give him a role in 1997's The Rainmaker when no other major studio filmmaker would touch him. Rourke would later be visibly moved, during an interview on the Angel Heart dvd, when re-counting Coppola's casting of him in The Rainmaker. That film and part marked Rourke's slow but substantial return to the great acting he has always been capable of.
Fans often point to Sofia Coppola as the casting mistake in the final Godfather film but to me her presence, despite her inexperience, gave the film an even more substantial claim as the greatest 'family' saga ever. Spiritually Rourke was a part of that family and his absence from Coppola's bravest film has always struck me as a notable omission.

My Silent Sigh is 36 Today.

I must admit to having had the biggest crush on Rachel Weisz since I first saw her in Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty 11 years ago. I often wonder if the sigh I let out, when she first came on the screen, was audible to the people around me. One of the most beautiful women I have ever seen has developed into one of my all time favorite actresses in the past decade.
Rachel is a combination of the greatest attributes the best actresses have carried throughout the years. She possesses the grace of our most classic actresses from Audrey Hepburn to Grace Kelly but also the intensity of a Liv Ullmann or Jessica Lange.
Armed with the most disarming smile since Romy Schneider, the London born Weisz has for the past decade excelled in everything from light comedy to heavy drama, Hollywood blockbusters to low budget indies, period pieces to futuristic science fiction. This most diverse of all of our modern actresses more than deserved the academy award she received for 2005's The Constant Gardener and with six films on the horizon in the next two years she doesn't show any signs of slowing down.
Arguably Weisz's first great role came in 1998's I Want You but she really began to hit her stride at the beginning of the decade with scene stealing roles in the underrated war film Enemy at The Gates and the justly acclaimed About A Boy.
Her finest performance, for me, remains her vicious turn in Neil Labute's The Shape Of Things. Along with Fight Club this film's surprising twist caught me off guard and affected me for days after viewing it. Weisz is magnificent in the film and gives a performance that makes Labute's film more terrifying than most great horror films. Rarely has an actor been able to tap into cruelty like Weisz does in this role. It's still a performance that catches me off guard and Elvis Costello's bitter acidic songs that Labute scored the film with have become inseparable, for me, from Rachel's demonic turn in this film.
She has often been underused but films like Runaway Jury and Confidence are notable in her filmography just for the opportunity they gave her to work with legends like Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman.
The Constant Gardener gave her one of her finest roles and, even with the stiff competition of Junebug's great Amy Adams and Brokeback Mountain's Michelle Williams, she more than earned the Oscar.
Last years The Fountain was her best work since The Shape Of Things and it marked her first collaboration with her husband Darron Aronofsky. I will write more on this film when the dvd arrives and I can re-view it. I will say that it is rare for a modern film backed by a major studio to have so much to say about life, love and death. The Fountain is an ambitiously personal vision made by someone obviously in love, people can complain about the film all they want but they can't say it isn't among one of the most sincere films of the decade.
Most notable of her upcoming projects are two new Wong Kar Wai films, My Blueberry Nights and the already controversial remake of The Lady From Shanghai.

I'm very drawn to this woman and her unique screen presence. Some of it has to do with finding out that I wasn't the worlds biggest Elvis fan (check the necklace in the picture) but a lot of it, I think, resides in the sincerity and dignity that she brings to her work. These are two qualities I find greatly lacking from most of our modern actors. I hope modern cinema doesn't let her down, to quote Paul Simon she reminds me of why God made the movies.

Joe Dallesandro on Film: The Climber

Since the advent of DVD my days of obsessively collecting grey market dubs of unreleased films has calmed down considerable. It has been hard enough to keep with the number of European films released legitimately on DVD in the past decade but occasionally though I will come across an unreleased film that I have wanted to see and order it from any number of genre loving vendors.
I must admit there was a certain excitement in waiting for my copy of Pasquale Squitieri's 1975 film L'AMBIZIOSO otherwise known as AMBITIOUS or THE CLIMBER. This prime slice of seventies Eurotrash stars two of my favorites Joe Dallesandro and Stefania Casini so I couldn't pass up a copy when it appeared on ebay. Receiving my package reminded me of the old days when getting boxes of unseen delights from the likes of European Trash Cinema, Midnight Video or Video Search Of Miami would make my week.
It is no surprise that the best thing about THE CLIMBER is its cast. Dallesandro and Casini are two of the most beautiful people I have ever seen and they are in their prime here. They were also a couple at the time and that lends their scenes together something a little special. Dallesandro is exceptional in this film, it's rumored to be one of his favorites and he turns in a fine performance as a young thug on the rise in the Italian underworld. Little Joe was on a roll in this period as he was preparing to shoot two absolutely astonishing films, Louis Malle's BLACK MOON and Walerian Borowczyk's LA MARGE. Casini is good in everything she appears in and this film is no exception. She is completely believable as the woman who falls in love with and is ultimately destroyed by the criminal lifestyle.
Squitieri made a series of these Italian crime films in the early to mid seventies and his direction is pretty sharp here. This is by no means a great film but it's an entertaining one. Squitieri also turns in a few surprising moments including a brutal and prolonged stabbing scene and a very odd, and surprisingly moving, final five minutes.
The film doesn't skimp on the violence with lots of gunplay and squibs. Franco Campanino turns in a varied and solid score that swings between hard rock and more lyrical orchestrated pieces. Cinematographer Eugenio Bentivoglio gives the film a suitably grimy palate and would work with Squitieri on several films before and after this.
The version I watched is the full uncut 102 minute print with all of the violence and nudity intact. It comes from a rare Greek full frame VHS and is dubbed in English. The print is faded and very dark in spots but as of right now it is the best and most complete version out there.
THE CLIMBER isn't among the best Italian crime films of the seventies but it is a solid entry and would make a fine selection for a DVD release from a company like No Shame or Severin.

Scott Frank's The Lookout

I typically don't like to write about films right after I see them, because inevitably my initial thoughts will change upon re-viewings so i am always hesitant to throw out a quick definitive opinion.
I will say though that I highly recommend the new film by screenwriter Scott Frank called THE LOOKOUT. It is an uncommonly good film to see this early in the year and is proof positive that actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt is one of the most talented working today.
This is Frank's first film as director after many interesting screenplays, including the legendary OUT OF SIGHT. He's got a real director's eye and even though the film does have a slightly disappointing second half it still plays out as a splendid study of lost identity and missed chances.
The great cast includes Jeff Daniels, Matthew Goode, Isla Fisher and in a small role my beloved Carla Gugino (who is pictured here at the film's premiere).
So take this not as a review but a recommendation to a really interesting new film. I'll look forward to the dvd and re-viewing it. I have a strong feeling that this film will hold up, I hope Frank continues to direct.

A Brief Guide To The Cinematic Exploits of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin

Each year the remarkable recording legacy of both Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin becomes more and more revered and known. I have been grateful to see this happening because when I first began to get into their music about twelve years ago it was virtually impossible to even find a cd by either one in even the best record shops.
While I am excited to see their music becoming more recognized I have been frustrated by the lack of attention the films they made together have garnered. Their best work together on screen for the most part remains hard to see so I thought I would put together a little mini guide to their cinematic legacy. I have been able to collect the majority of their films in the past decade and I highly recommend any of the below to existing fans of their recordings or to European film fans in general. Even when some of these films faltered their extraordinary chemistry always burned bright.
Serge Gainsbourg made his first film with none other than Brigitte Bardot in 1959's COME DANCE WITH ME. He would continue to make films throughout the 1960's before appearing in the film CHEMINS DE KATMANDOU in 1969. I have not seen this very obscure film but it appears to be the first film that Serge and Jane appeared in together. Jane made it immediately after her iconic part in 1968's WONDERWALL opposite Jack MacGowran.
1969 was of course a huge year for Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin as it marked the release of their legendary single JE T'AIME...MOI NON PLUS which caused a worldwide scandal and became an international smash. The song had originally been performed with Bardot who decided she didn't want the single released. The song's success, the release of their first album together and the start of their collaborative film work would all mark the beginning of one of the most legendary couples in popular culture.
Pierre Grimblat's SLOGAN was released in late 1969 to solid business in France and it remains a pop culture curiosity that featured an early screenwriting credit from Melvin Van Peebles and an astonishing score by Gainsbourg himself. It is often said of this film that you can literally watch Jane and Serge falling in love with each other in front of the camera. SLOGAN is an extremely underrated fun film that would greatly benefit from a legitimate dvd release.
1970 would see the release of one of the great films in both Serge and Jane's career, the overwhelmingly intense CANNABIS (FRENCH INTRIGUE). This off the hook Pierre Koralnik film is among the most gritty and violently stylized French crime films of the early 70s. Gainsbourg again contributes a breathtaking soundtrack and also turns in one of his best performances as the exhausted gangster snowballing to inevitable doom. Jane has never been lovelier and does great work here as the girl who mistakenly gets involved in Serge's world. This brutal film features great cinematography by Willy Kurant who would travel with Pink Floyd shortly after to shoot LIVE AT POMPEI and sharp editing by Godard collaborator Francoise Collin. CANNABIS is particularly effective during the very intimate love scenes between Serge and Jane and a screaming (literally) finale that is very hard to shake. Add on some of the coolest and most outlandish Wardrobe choices ever and you've got one of the great lost films of the early seventies.
Another film I have unfortunately not seen is 1971's RAGE OF WAR. I get the impression, from the few things I have read about this Milan Kosovac film, that this is among the more serious of the Birkin-Gainsbourg films. I hope to see a copy someday.
The very odd period piece ROMANCE OF A HORSETHIEF was next and this film featured Jane and Serge working with everyone from Yul Brynner to Eli Wallach. This 1971 international co-production benefits from a good cast but it remains one of their most forgettable films together.
1971 would prove to be the watershed year for the two with the release of Gainsbourg's recorded masterpiece THE BALLAD OF MELODY NELSON. Jean-Christophe Averty would direct a legendary French tv program based on the lp starring Jane that same year. This 30 minuted program, available on the indispensable Serge Gainsbourg D'AUTRES NOUVELLES DES ETOILES box set, is one of the most incredible things I have ever seen; a surreal pop fantasy that manages to compliment and transcend one of the most remarkable of all albums.
1973 would see the release of underrated Italian master Antonio Margheriti's SEVEN DEATHS IN THE CATS EYE. This strange and pretty haunting giallo benefited greatly a couple of years ago with a dvd release highlighting its proper aspect ratio. After years of watching the old full frame pan and scan tape seeing it on disc was a real eye opener. It's a fine film with the beautiful Birkin giving a solid performance and Serge is featured in a small role as a police detective.
A very obscure tv production followed in 1974 before Serge and Jane embarked on what would turn out to be their most controversial production, JE T'AIME MOI NON PLUS.
Named after their legendary single JE T'AIME would be written, scored and directed by Serge and would feature Jane co-starring with Joe Dallesandro and a young Gerard Depardieu. This crude, haunting and frankly brilliant film would cause much controversy upon initial release and was not a critical or popular success. Gainsbourg took the backlash to his opus hard and it can be said that he never again reached the heights of this period again. The limited availability of this important final screen collaboration between Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg is extremely frustrating.
Gainsbourg's film appearances after the failure of JE T'AIME were few and far between. His drinking and personal demons became more and more difficult to himself and the people around him to deal with and he would split from Jane in the late seventies.
Jane Birkin has become of course one of the world's most respected actresses and continues to deliver fine performances each year. Her recording career is also at it's strongest since her time in the seventies with her great RENDEZ VOUS and FICTIONS albums selling well and getting much acclaim.
Serge Gainsbourg would die in 1991 shortly after finishing his film STAN THE FLASHER with Elodie Bouchez. His last notable screen appearance would not be opposite Jane Birkin but instead their lovely and talented daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg in the strange but effective CHARLOTTE FOREVER.
Currently only SEVEN DEATHS IN THE CATS EYE is readily available on American DVD. Grey market copies of some of the above films are available from certain companies and a handful of import discs also pop occasionally.
Cinema has given us a lot of real life couples on the screen but few shown as bright or burned as hard as Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin. Their screen legacy is a sublime and important one.

2007 Continues To Surprise: Vacancy

Late last year I was asked by an online journal to submit my ten favorite films of 2006. It was only after sitting down to do it that I realized that I couldn't come up with even five films that I would deem good enough to put on such a list. 2006 was one of the worst years in America cinema history, in my eyes, with only a handful of films (THE DEPARTED and CASINO ROYALE being among them) achieving great or near great status. I thought it was certainly the worst year for American cinema since the lowest point in the mid eighties.
It has been a great surprise to see the first four months of 2007 already shredding the memory of last year to pieces. In what is usual the worst time of year for film we have had in theaters a variety of quality and interesting films. ZODIAC, BLACK SNAKE MOAN, SMOKIN ACES, GRINDHOUSE and a handful of others have taken more risks and been more satisfying than all but a few of last years films. Add the just opened VACANCY to that list.
Directed by Nimrod Antal from a script by Mark L. Smith, VACANCY is an intense little mixture of PSYCHO, STRAW DOGS and DON'T LOOK NOW. While this film doesn't achieve the greatness of any of those it does play incredibly well, especially in its very intense first hour.
Starring the always great Luke Wilson and great, when she has a good role, Kate Beckinsale, VACANCY achieves a really good claustrophobic feel in its impressive use of sound and tension.
This relatively low budget film centers on a couple who have recently lost their son and are near divorce. After their car breaks down they are forced to stay in a back roads motel with a creepy proprietor. Sounds familiar of course but VACANCY really accomplishes some very confining and creepy moments and made me feel a lot more than most recent thrillers have even come close to.
As they are in nearly every shot of the film, Wilson and Beckinsale have to deliver the goods and they do so very well. Wilson, looking exhausted, is excellent but Beckinsale really shines in this film. A godd actress who has had the misfortune to be cast in some truly terrible films (the UNDERWORLD movies, VAN HELSING) here she does her best work since her underrated work in LAUREL CANYON.
The music is a bit overbearing at times and a much more minimal score would have given the film even more of a jolt. Along with Beckinsale the film's main selling point is the Bill W. Benton sound design. I had forgotten just how creepy a loud knocking at a door could sound but VACANCY uses that simple little technique to great effect continually throughout it's brisk 85 minute running time.
VACANCY does suffer in its last thirty minutes. Some major lapses in logic and a relatively week ending hamper it about but I still enjoyed the first hour enough to recommend this fine little thriller to anyone interested. I am curious if Antal had any studio interference with the ending and will look forward to any supplemental material on its dvd release.

A Spaghetti Western Top Ten

Giallo Fever started a post focusing on ten personal favorite Euro-westerns so I thought I would chime in. Like Giallo Fever I am only including one Sergio Leone picture, otherwise half the list would be made up of his films. Keep in mind that mine isn't a 'best of' list but my own personal favorites.

1. THE GREAT SILENCE: Sergio Corbucci's mystical film is one of the most haunting I have ever seen. Jean-Louis Trintignant delivers one of the great performances and is joined by a stellar cast including Klaus Kinski, Luigi Pistilli, and Vonetta Mcgee among others. Features one of the most powerful Morricone scores ever. A masterpiece.

2. FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE: Not one of Leone's best films but a personal favorite due to the chilling work by Gian Maria Volonte. Again featuring Klaus Kinski, a stirring Morricone score and Eastwood at his best and most beautiful.

3. KEOMA: Enzo Castellari's unforgettable film stars Franco Nero in one of his greatest roles. The shrieking score seems to turn off a lot of viewers but I love it. HOT FUZZ recently had a sly tribute to this fantastic film.

4. CHINA 9 LIBERTY 37: Monte Hellman's striking vision of the Italian western is one of the strangest films I have ever seen. The lovely Jenny Agutter joins Warren Oates, Fabio Testi and Sam Peckinpah for this violent rethinking of the western film.

5. DJANGO: Corbucci's iconic film stars a beautifully savage Franco Nero and features on of Luis Enriquez Bacalov's greatest scores.

6. DJANGO KILL: The always strange Giulio Questi joins up with a crazed Tomas Milian in this violent and at times off the hook film. Ray Lovecock and the beautiful Marilu Tolo are also featured in this, one of the most graphic of all Italain westerns.

7. THE BIG GUNDOWN: A sweeping Morricone score highlights this great Sergio Sollima film that stars Lee Van Cleef and Tomas Milian. Ripped to shreds in it's original American run, the original uncut version was picked by Tarantino as his favorite Spaghetti Western.

8. A BULLET FOR THE GENERAL: The underrated Damiano Damiani's political western is still captivating and challenging stuff. Featuring Volonte and Kinski again along with a scene stealing Martine Beswick. Plus a moving underrated score credited to Bacalov and Morricone.

9. FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE: Fulci's under-valued 1975 film is filled with startling moments and features Fabio Testi in one of his great performances. Fabio Frizzi delivers a fine score in this, one of fulci's most subtle films of the seventies.

10. STRANGER AND THE GUNFIGHTER: The great Antonio Margheriti delivers this genre mixing piece of nonsense that is a whole lot of fun. West and East collide when Lee Van Cleef and Lieh Lo square off. Look for sexy Femi Benussi and Erica Blanc in featured roles and sit back and enjoy one of the funnest Spaghetti Western's ever made, if also one of the most inconsequential.

Just missing my list were DEATH RIDES A HORSE, SHALAKO, TEXAS ADIOS, ANY GUN CAN PLAY and A MAN CALLED BLADE...and about a dozen others that aren't popping into my head right now that I will regret not including later.

Natalie Wood In Sex And The Single Girl (1964)

Natalie Wood has been criminally neglected on dvd since the format came into being, with only a handful of her best films available. Hopefully next year that will began to change as a rumored release is the box set, THE NATALIE WOOD COLLECTION. This box will feature a new special edition of SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS, the new to disc INSIDE DAISY CLOVER and the delightful SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL.
Richard Quine's SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL is another one of those films that I first caught as a teenager on late night tv. Each week I would get out the Tv Guide and go through and circle all the films I wanted to tape. Natalie Wood has been a favorite for as long as I can remember and I was probably around 13 or 14 the first time I saw this film.
Quine was a remarkably underrated director who excelled at making romantic comedies with a style and flair that few could match in the fifties and sixties. He was also a master of of sly black comedies with films like THE NOTORIOUS LANDLADY and especially HOW TO MURDER YOUR WIFE. I think Quine has never quite received the recognition he deserves due to the fact that film buffs often look down upon the type of films he made and the American film period from 58-68 in general.
Quine brings his usual visual and stylistic flair to the zippy SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL. A near two hour film that feels like the breeziest 90 minute comedy you can imagine highlighted by an incredible Neil Hefti score and sharp colorful cinematography by the legendary Charles Lang.
SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL started out life as a Helen Gurley Brown expose on...well...sex and the single girl. No less than five screenwriters worked on not so much as adapting Brown's book but making it a part of the film with Natalie Wood playing Brown herself.
Natalie Wood is joined by an incredible cast including Tony Curtis as the sleazy tabloid journalist Bob Weston who is out to prove she isn't quite the liberated woman she claims to be. Also featured are Hollywood legends Henry Fonda, Lauren Bacall and Mel Ferrer. Two scene stealer's in what could have been just decorative roles are the very funny Fran Jeffries and Leslie Parrish. Fran Jeffries is particularly good and sings two songs on the highly collectible Hefti soundtrack, which is one of the snappiest of the sixties.
The whole cast is at the top of their game here. Tony Curtis was at his absolute comic peak in this film and he is incredibly sharp and funny. One of the film's most hilarious moments has Curtis parodying his role in SOME LIKE IT HOT with a barely maintaining Wood asking him, "Has anyone ever told you that you look like Jack Lemmon?"

Fonda and Bacall have many great scenes together as Curtis' constantly bickering friends, Frank and Sylvia. Fonda is very good here as a man equally obsessed and jaded by his profession, namely designing women's undergarments.
The film ultimately belongs to Natalie Wood. Looking absolutely radiant and as funny as hell. It's especially important to view this role in context, as she had just come off the extremely dramatic LOVE WITH THE PROPER STRANGER. The emotionally trouble Wood hopefully had a good time filming SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL, she certainly appears to. Despite all that she was going through in her personal life Natalie gives a sly, winking performance that is among the best comedic turns of the sixties and it is a perfect reminder of how diverse she could be.

SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL was released in 1964 to okay box office business and mixed reviews. Like many films from the sixties it seems caught between older values and the many changes that the culture was getting ready to go through. It couldn't have been made five years before or five years after, it is a quintessential film of its time.

Richard Quine would unfortunately not be able to deliver too many quality films after SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL. He sadly took his own life at the age of 69 after enduring a series of tragic and traumatic events. His work as a director needs more attention with films like BELL BOOK AND CANDLE and STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET being particularly great reminders of his importance and talent.
Tony Curtis would in the few years after SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL deliver some more comic gems, especially the great DON'T MAKE WAVES, before surprising everyone with his convincing turn in THE BOSTON STRANGLER. I hope he is on hand for the supplemental material on the upcoming SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL dvd.

We lost Natalie Wood in 1981 at the heartbreaking young age of 43. With SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS and LOVE WITH PROPER STRANGER serving as reminders to how great of a dramatic actress she was then SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL can be viewed as a testament to her comedic strengths. Deserving of a posthumous Oscar no one was ever loved more by the camera and her fans than Natalie.

SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL is currently out of print in any format. Used VHS and laserdisc copies sometimes pop up on Amazon and Ebay and a fine widescreen print plays pretty often on TCM. Long undervalued, this very charming, warm and funny comedy will hopefully find a new audience next year.