Saturday, March 22, 2003
TRAILER OF THE WEEK
Spider - The looks like a creepy, mind-bender in league with Dark City and Memento with Ralph Fiennes as our mentally disturbed hero. It opened in Seattle last week to a 4-star review.
http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony/spider.html
And a last Nolan comment: David Julyan is my new favorite movie composer. He's provided the music to all three of Nolan's film. I especially liked the score of Following. It had this Myst-like, ethereal, atmospheric quality to it. Never distracting, but also moody.
On to this weeks viewing pleasures...
THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971)
Winner of 5 Academy Awards for best picture, director, actor, screenplay and editing, #70 of AFI's list of greatest American films and currently #244 on IMDb's top 250 list, The French Connection requires the right mindset for maximum enjoyment. In the new millenium of cliche buddy-cop drug bust movies and documentary-style hand-held cinematography, The French Connection can look a tad stale. But it was pretty radical filmmaking for its time. It's based on the true story of the largest drug bust in US history, and the real Popeye and Cloudy make cameos in the film. The style of realism that director William Friedkin achieves with his documentary-style cinematography, grungy portrait of New York City, and open ending resembles more closely European films of the same era rather than Hollywood. A relative unknown veteran of documentaries, this put Friedkin on the Hollywood map and he would later garner an Oscar nomination for The Exorcist. Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider star as the two narcotics officer. Hackman, especially, plays Popeye Doyle as one bad mamma-jamma. He's a flawed hero who teeters on the edge of taking his power as a law enforcer too far. Then there's the car chase. Nobody talks about The French Connection without mentioning the car chase, which I was a bit disappointed by. But then, when you think about it, a car chasing an "El" train, even by today's standards, is pretty original. The only problem is, it doesn't move the story along. You just have this 20 minute segment where you just know the producers were saying, "We gotta have a car chase!" so they just stuck in there. Well, it's still intense. So yeah, I'd say it's pretty worth of its accolades. It's influence on the modern independent film movement, i.e., Steven Soderbergh, is obvious. If you like stripped down, no frills, indie flicks, you should enjoy The French Connection.
WALLACE AND GROMIT: THE WRONG TROUSERS (1993)
This won Nick Park his second of three Academy Awards for his claymation shorts. He would later make Chicken Run, but I love his Wallace and Gromit shorts. Wallace is Roald Dahl-esque absent-minded inventor and Gromit is his trusty canine. In this episode, Wallace takes a boarder in the form a penguin with a dark side, who forces Gromit out of the house and manipulates Wallace and his mechanical trousers for a diamond heist. There's a great miniature train chase at the climax that makes you think "Wow!" when you remember its claymation. A great present for me someday would be the Wallace and Gromit series on DVD. All three episodes are on one disc.
BARBERSHOP (2002)
It makes a serviceable feature-length sitcom. It's entertaining, with some funny scenes and likable characters, but I couldn't remember anybody's names when it was over. The story's a bit trite and cliche. Calvin, desiring for something more in his life, decides to sell the neighborhood barbershop that's been in his family three generations, only to discover what the barbershop represents to the neighborhood and that people are more important than money. If you're in the mood for something light, I'd recommend it. It's probably funnier if you're black, though.
A couple of addendums to my Top Five characters in a movie, though these may just have to be honorable mentions:
Lawrence from Office Space - "Hey, Peter-man!" "Naw. Naw! No man. I believe you'd get your ass kicked saying something like that, man"
Doug from Ghost World - "It's America, dude. Learn the rules!" "Rock 'n Roll. Freedom of speech."