Sgt. Angle Reporting for Duty!

As I was re-watching some Coen Bros. movies, I came across Blood Simple and was astounded at the fact that I have no idea where Dan Hedaya is these days.

Thus comes forth this edition of the High Low Country:

DAN HEDAYA

After only bit parts and secondary roles throughout the 1970s, Dan Hedaya finally shot to the High Country because of the Coen Brothers’ violent feature, Blood Simple, in which he played the obsessive and unfortunate husband to Frances McDormand. His ability to look haggard and sweaty and meek and yet still with an air of death coming to get you is unmatched.

Later in the ‘80s, Hedaya hovered in the high country on television with a few guest appearances as Carla Tortelli’s ex-husband Nick in Cheers. (video quality aside…)

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The only other peaks in Hedaya’s career were a few supporting roles and one major comedic turn — Alicia Silverstone’s loving father in Clueless, Chazz Palminteri’s friend/partner in The Usual Suspects, and even a rare leading star turn as President Nixon in Dick.

Hedaya was a cliched racist villain in The Hurricane, embodying a number of people from the true story and doing a fine job of remaining a presence. The whole benefit of casting Hedaya in this part is that he’s recognizable. He’s made dozens of films, he’s got a relatively recognizable face and his mannerisms remain creepy while mysterious. In his films, he’s played a blue-collar everyman, a caring father, and here, an unsympathetic villain.

Lately, Dan Hedaya has unfortunately hit the Low Country with only a few guest spots on television in a meager few years of the decline of his career. He’s due for a Tarantino-esque comeback, and he’d be right for one. Perhaps the Coens have ideas for their first bloody victim, or perhaps Hedaya will rise and finally direct his own piece. He has plenty of experience in theater aside from his numerous villainous film roles, taking part in a lot of Shakespearean festivals, so perhaps Richard III could suffice for a comeback of sorts?

Hedaya is a man’s man, recognizable almost to a fault, yet when you remember his work, you don’t think of him as Dan Hedaya — you think of him as Nick Tortelli, or Julian Marty. He’s gurgling blood or cursing out his wife over an orangutan act. Either way, Hedaya has hit the High Country and the Low Country, and don’t you forget him!

Send in your favorite Hedaya moment, or supply your own blood curdling favorite Coen Bros. film.

You are dismissed!

Sgt. Angle

Sgt. Angle Reporting for Duty!

Well, the boys at Semantink have left me lonely and alone here at our home base. They sidelined me instead of sending me to the front lines for APE 2010 in San Francisco. I can’t say why they didn’t invite me. Ben claims there was no room in the car, while James Ninness and Joe Pezzula stared at me with smirks on their faces and daggers in their fists. Daniel Touchet seemed like he was going to apologize, but then he stepped away without a word.

I gave them no fanfare upon leaving, and can now only look back and think, “What if I had gone to APE?”

Since they left, I’ve been slouching and couching, watching movies I’ve seen before and further pondering, what if Joss Whedon made Batman? Or what if R. Lee Ermey actually sounded like Donald Duck?

Now I can take the what-if for one situation on the shelf: It looks as though Darren Aronofsky is heading into the lion’s den of Fox to direct Wolverine 2. That’s right. Aronofsky. Wolverine. Sequel. Fox. I give his decision to do this Three out of Five Rifles.

This all spells interesting disaster to me, both to the series of X-Men films as well as the Aronofsky’s career. He’ll probably take a few years to recuperate any ego he loses at the roar of Tom Rothman and then come back with a soft bang for a “jump-start” in his mid-years.

That’s all probable, but not likely, knowing that Aronofsky can always skip down to his roots and go totally indie with a good character piece (a la The Wrestler) whenever he feels the urge. And I hope the urge returns soon.

I would have more for you, but I’m currently plotting my invasion of another comic/pop-culture con relatively soon. I’d tell you when, but that would ruin the sneak attack.

What if Robocop was an amazing rap song?

Stay vicious.

You are dismissed!

Sgt. Angle

Sgt. Angle reporting for duty!

As I watched Matt Reeves’ unnecessary yet oddly appealing remake Let Me In (go see the original Let the Right One In before you see anything else), one aspect of the film stood out as a major misstep and became, over the course of the two hour film, a major distraction and, by the end, a turn-off.

The music.

The film’s score, by Oscar winner and JJ Abrams’ go-to composer Michael Giacchino, is not by any means bad — it’s actually quite subtle when it’s used correctly, and accents the soft mood that Reeves was aiming for. But it’s overbearing. There’s not a scene in the film that is left without music. That was what made the original Swedish film that much more atmospheric and dark, was the fact that it was just us and Oscar, alone with ambient noise and feeling without a musical guide telling us how to feel or what to expect.

Check this out: Power of music. Or this write-up of a scientific study on how different mood music can change the overall feeling of an otherwise neutral scene. Basically, the study in the second link, at the Cognitive Daily website, suggests that music played before and after a particular scene in a film will effect how the audience interprets that scene, but also tells us how the character is meant to be feeling, and what we’re meant to expect.

This is similar to the Kuleshov Experiment, an early example of the manipulative nature of film storytelling created by Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov in the early 20th Century to prove that an audience could feel what you wanted them to feel by juxtaposing the same footage of an actor with three different images: a plate of soup, a girl in a coffin, and an attractive woman, evoking hunger, grief, and desire, respectively.

Essentially, when the music is right in a horror film, you will feel scared moments before the scare comes. In a drama, you will have a tears pouring down your face just when the characters do. In a comedy, any joke that would normally fall flat due to silence is suddenly given an extra atmospheric element because of the music, and you’re laughter is escorted by a tune.

In Let Me In, we’re told when a scare is coming — okay, good, that’s what you’re supposed to do — but then quiet scenes are mixed with haunting music, hinting that not all is O.K. with the events taking place on screen — meh, I guess so. Then you step back and realize that, just when you’re about to fall into a scene emotionally, music is added and any subtle silence to allow you to think is given up in favor of mood music.

The Town, a character piece — heist movie, is another film this year with invasive music such that we’re taken out of an intense scene because of the tune. Maybe it’s because the music was melodramatic, but when the car chase occurred during the second heist scene, music tried to quicken the pace and make the chase more “action-ey”, something out of a Bourne movie, rather than allow the sound of motors and spinning tires be our soundtrack.

I prefer the sounds of silence.

Refer to the original Let the Right One In for a moody horror tale (more romance than horror, but I digress) with limited music, allowing for the images and direction to guide your goosebumps rather than a few notes.

In Dog Day Afternoon, [minor spoiler if you haven’t seen it] one of the best bank heist/ hostage movies ever made, there is literally no musical score. The end credits roll over the image of a few cars and an airplane at an airport, the occasional sound of a jet engine landing or taking off are the only noises to come to our ears. The utter horror of the hostages in the bank is heightened because we hear and see what they hear and see, not an ounce more. The crowd outside, near rioting in the extreme heat and long hours; the first onslaught of cop cars; the thieves moving furniture that scratches over the floor to prevent the SWAT team from entering. The noises of the environment fill our ears as being real, not invented, sources for suspense.

Sometimes, I prefer the sounds of silence.

You could point to great uses of music that are barely there — Full Metal Jacket, perhaps, or even A Clockwork Orange, where variations on a Beethoven classic became a source of inspiration, concern, then downright horror for the main character as well as the audience. But at the end of the day, filmmakers must not rely on music to tell their story. Films are told in images and atmosphere. They manipulate the audience any way they see fit, but they must try to avoid downright tricking the audience.

For a few examples of how music can truly change a film, check out the below mash-ups of some movie footage with new music — including Jaws and The Shining.

Sgt. Angle Reporting for Duty!

Today we’re going to double down and talk a bit about a particular type camera trickery that was excelled by the savvy David Fincher in this weekend’s box office topper The Social Network. What I’d like to point out here are filmmakers who go on to claim that they do not think of trying to master a certain visual effect, but they start with what works best for the storytelling — how a scene or character is motivated, what’s the driving force of the scene and arc of the film itself, rather than trying to wow an audience.

(**Beware!! Ahead there be spoilers!!**)

I’m talking, of course, about the special effects wizardry that enables two Lindsay Lohans in The Parent Trap, or two Nicolas Cage’s in Adaptation, the Winklevoss brothers in The Social Network, and two Sam Rockwells in Moon. Below are a few processes to make this happen, which will also show you how technology has been able to advance techniques and add more freedom in storytelling.

First is the Matte Process, or Matting. This was used in films from the silent era through the 70s (and still today, though much less so thanks to digital compositing). Matting at its’ most basic level involves filming a scene from a static camera position twice and combining both takes onto another, separate, undeveloped roll of film while blocking (matting) out the other half of the frame shot.

Hayley Mills (the original girl in The Parent Trap) would act out a scene standing at camera left, pretending she was talking to her twin sister. Then, she would act out the very same scene at camera right, interacting with the help of a recording of her first round of dialogue. Then, each role would be projected onto a new role of film, which was rewound between projections, with half of the frame covered up. The new role would become the master matted role. This is an oversimplification, obviously, but a helpful breakdown of an early creative process.

Of course, if you moved the camera or tried a tracking shot, your level of success with creating a flawless shot of the same actor twice would rarely be successful, so most often you would be stuck with a static shot.

In 2001, Spike Jonze directed Nicolas Cage in an Oscar nominated performance playing twin brothers Charlie and Donald Kaufman in Adaptation. It was meta. Using the skills of Gray Marshall, the director was able to avoid green screen technology for 80% of the “twins” shots in the film, thanks to the dedication of a talented actor and the creation of motion control cameras and rotoscoping.

Motion Control allows a camera movement to be recorded and run again and again, precisely and exactly the same over and over again. This leaves no room for user error if a particular movement needs the exact same timing each take, and especially if you’re using trick photography. Rotoscoping, or tracing over live action footage, was used to cover up any errors or overlapping of footage. The result is a seamless world in which Nicolas Cage has doubled, and Big Daddy is even more of a presence than he probably needs to be.

Having Charlie and Donald interact verbally is key to the story being told, highlighting the differences of each character which is also visualized in what they wear, how they stand, etc.

Advancing the techniques of split-screen and CG work in order to double the fun of your favorite actor, Sam Rockwell, Moon director certainly takes the cake for taking initiative on the set and bringing two Rockwell’s to life using split screen and body doubles. Perhaps most exciting are the scenes involving a game of ping pong and one where Sam 2 zips the pants of Sam 1, from a moving shot profiling both Sams. It’s really quite amazing to watch, and Rockwell was up to the challenge of memorizing not only dialogue but the camera’s movements and his own movements from previous takes and days in order to match shots.

This dedication shows up on screen, you can feel the presence of the work involved, but you can also see why the film needed to be made this way. As an audience, we really needed the point hammered home that there was more than one Sam in existence, and the shock that two Sams have become, essentially, self-aware is a key point in the story.

The Real Winklevi Twins.

In The Social Network, Army Hammer plays both the Winklevoss brothers, Tyler and Cameron, however, as you’ll note in the credits, Josh Pence is credited as one of the brothers. That’s because, much like Fincher’s process of overlapping Brad Pitt’s face on an old man and young baby in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Hammer’s face and voice were overlapped onto Pence’s performance after the fact.

Armie Hammer and Josh Pence, with Hammer’s face painted on.

This allowed for more seamless interaction and actual presence in scenes featuring the brothers, and shots that required the back of the head to be shown only were easier with the stand-in (as they would’ve been even 50 years ago). But moving cameras, shifting angles, etc., required the necessity to reveal both brothers simultaneously. As one of the Winklevie says during the film, “I’m 6’5″ 220 and there are two of me.” There’s no better way to show that than actually show it, and it’s worth the technological difficulties as long as you can hire the proper actor for the role.

You are dismissed!

Sgt. Angle

Sgt. Angle Reporting for Duty!

Some of you out there might have a similar mantra to mine when it comes to burial: Please don’t do it while I’m alive. The rest of you who get off on suffocating…join a chat room.

This past weekend, a new movie entered limited release as an ultra-low budget Sundance 2010 darling with only one actor on screen for 99% of the movie. That movie is Buried, starring Ryan Reynolds. He plays Paul Conroy, a civilian truck driver contracted to work in Iraq who wakes up, from frame one, in a coffin buried under many feet of dirt.

(**WARNING: THERE ARE SOME POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD. MINOR, BUT SPOILERS NONETHELESS. THIS IS YOUR WARNING.**)

One of the true thrills in this movie, aside from the obvious real-time ticking clock of as breathable air disappears and a cell phone battery fades away, is watching Reynolds perform. The dude could spend an hour painting his living room walls, and I’m sure the resulting movie would be a hit.

Screenwriter Chris Sparling originally wrote the script as a feature he would make himself. He’d planned on pulling together $5,000, would film digitally in a friend’s place over 7 days, and hoped it would play in a few festivals. Then, he sent the script to a friend in Hollywood who also happened to be a literary manager. Producer Peter Safran soon picked it up, intending to tell it “as is,” without asking Sparling to add flashbacks or other hokey plot devices that would otherwise make an original story told in an original way into something cliched and ordinary.

Writer Chris Sparling.

Sparling’s script, on the surface, is a suspenseful thriller with somewhat contrived plot points and great manipulation factors to push us to the limits of our own moviegoing experience (specifically a well-timed phone call during an invasion from a slithery friend). But underneath the top layer of basic story, there’s another set of ideas floating just underneath that can open our eyes to the type of story Sparling is trying to tell. However you interpret this tale is up to you.

For me, Sparling’s script is the story of himself, as a writer, trying to get his own scripts made the way he wants them to be made. For a writer in Hollywood, you are often forced to work within strict confines (walls) of the producers and the business executives who run the show. You can’t deviate or climb out from these walls, and your whole time within them is constricting, limiting, forcing you to find your own lights within these constraints. The phone constantly rings with annoying producers wasting your valuable time, (your air) with bad ideas, friends and loved ones are always distracting you from the central problem of your story. The agent you think is helping you and working on your side is only lying to you to keep you happy, so he gets paid. It’s only when the movie is done and in the can when he finally admits that he’s been lying to you the entire time.

In Buried, Ryan Reynolds is clearly playing the role of writer, a heavy weight on his shoulders, an enormous amount of pressure on top of him that will come crumbling down unless he delivers what he’s been paid to do. When the dirt starts to slowly trickle in, it’s because he’s made some decisions he shouldn’t have — he films himself and sends a video that’s picked up and watched on Youtube. He’s tried to make his own movie, and it’s failed, bringing him only another pile (literally) of bad luck.

When our writer then tries to call the FBI, he is left only with an answering machine and has to hope someone hears his message. And honestly, how many times have you tried to call one of the people in charge only to be left waiting for their call? How often does something become urgent for you, and not so for anyone else?

He is left with a lighter, which eats his oxygen but serves as a source of light. His inspiration. He flicks it on when an idea strikes him, and leaves it on all the time because the matter is that pressing. When he finds the note to read for the ransom video, Conroy has trouble deciphering it and doesn’t want to read it — fights against it — and then winds up giving in, recording himself reading it. This is much akin to lousy notes given by the studio to an inexperienced writer who doesn’t have the heart or the guile, under immense pressure, to follow through until he thinks he has no other option.

Then, there is the hostage specialist, Brenner, who is basically the director of your movie. He reassures you, tells you to be calm, that he’s doing everything in his power to rescue you (to make your film the way you intended). In the end, he fails to come through in a big way, but he’s lead you on the entire time, so why not trust him while the world is crashing down on you? Dirt pours into your mouth and you’ve promised your wife, your personal life, your dignity, that you’re coming home (making your movie the way you intended) but you don’t know it’s a lie because you can’t see beyond the confines you’ve been set in until it’s too late. Your dignity has buried you, just like the lies and the pressures have buried you, all because you were taken by surprise when your convoy was attacked (when you sold your first spec script).

This interpretation is a little muddy in parts (what does the snake represent? The green light sticks?), but the point of this piece you’re reading is that I’ve interpreted Buried to mean something to me based on my personality and what I’ve been through. What does Buried mean to you?

This all stems from an original interpretation of Inception I read a while back by Devin Faraci, formerly of chud.com, and it’s a good one so check it out if you can here. Devin’s thesis is much more layered and goes into more depth than your faithful Sergeant, and he also points to specific interviews that DiCaprio and Nolan made prior to Inception’s release. But, I will still contend that it’s possible and healthy to interpret films however you can, to think deeper about a film and take something away from it that is on a layer separate from the plot by itself. In the case of Buried, I placed it in the context of a screenwriter trying to get a movie made in his own vision.

Have you ever felt pressure that you would associate with burial under mounds of dirt with seemingly no escape? How would you then interpret Buried?

Report in below!

You are dismissed!

Sgt. Angle

Sgt. Angle Reporting For Duty!

The box office has spoken and Ben “the flea flicker” Affleck’s sophomore directorial effort has come away with the win. The Town rocketed to number one, beating analysts’ estimates and squashing Emma Stone’s Easy A like she was, well, a fragile young woman. That’s because Flick’s Flick is charged with testosterone and gripping gunfights, and is a great, well-made, well-placed end of Summer movie that satisfies the visual and aural senses.

‘Twas not always the case for young Ben Flicka’s status in Hollywoodland, as this issue of The High Low Country will recount for you below.

Ben Affelch hit his big break in the PBS series “Voyage of the Mimi”, a family show that involved a boat traversing the world, and served as a substitute for many geography lessons for substitute history teachers in elementary school during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.

Grandmaster Flick then hit an early ‘90s low playing a porn star cool prep kid in School Ties alongside his best bud and future writing partner Matt “I’m Matt Damon” Damon.

After a string of supporting roles in Dazed and Confused and Mallrats, the Flickster 10,000 found a lead role to sink his straight-man lips into with Kevin Smith at the helm, Chasing Amy.

This was followed soon after by Good Will Hunting, the ultimate HIGH in Affleck’s career. Sick of getting lean roles or succeeding only on the festival circuit, Flick and Damon wrote their own piece with their own characters they could control, and won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay.

Oddly, having written a great script doesn’t mean you can read great scripts, as revealed by False-Flicka’s eventual LOW choices of film roles: Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, Reindeer Games, Bounce. The Sum of All Fears could’ve given Flickster a chance at his own franchise (the Jack Ryan series), but the movie was flawed more than successful, and the studio wasn’t happy with the results. Daredevil was just…you know.

Gigli easily became the ultimate LOW for the actor, after critics and audiences panned the film and its’ poor plot, and it also suffered the backlash of Hollywood’s brief “Bennifer” era (Lopez, not Garner). After this, there seemed like there would be no turning point for Mr. Aff — Leck.

Then, two interesting things happened. 1) Affleck took a smaller, stylized roll in Smokin’ Aces, and 2) he directed his first feature, Gone Baby Gone.

GBG starred his younger brother Casey Affleck, and was based on a Dennis Lehane novel. Ben also co-wrote the script, in my opinion the weakest part of the movie. As a debut it was considered nearly flawless, and the acting is first-rate. Affleck seemed to find for himself a new niche in Hollywood’s system: Take a bit part for some cash, then go off and spend a few years to make your pet project.

And that’s exactly what he is doing. He co-starred in one of nine supporting players in the ensemble He’s Just Not That Into You, and stole the show in Extract as the stoner best friend to Jason Bateman’s frustrated lead. Only in State of Play did Affleck play anything resembling a lead role — and even there he’d been overshadowed by the mammoth Russell Crowe.

Then he made The Town, played the lead, wrote the script, directed the thing. Affleck knows how to make a role strong in a script, and in this one he was unselfish, giving the juiciest bits to Jim, played by Jeremy Renner.

The best moments in Affleck’s acting career are the bit parts, the small roles, the supporting characters: Dazed and Confused, Mallrats. As Chuckie who almost fights Will in Good WIll Hunting to convince him he’s better than where they come from; as scene stealing actor Ned Alleyn in Shakespeare in Love; the exiled angel Bartleby in Dogma; or even reprising his Chasing Amy character Holden McNeil, and parodying himself, in Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

Ben Affleck has proven to be more than a half of a Hollywood couple, and he’s done it best when taking a back seat to the spotlight. Do yourself a favor and check out The Town now that it’s out in theaters. Heist scenes abound, but so does a bit of romance and a hell of a lot of gunfire.

His next part is the lead role in The Company Men, which focuses on corporate downsizing, alongside Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper, and Kevin Costner. Then he’s part of the ensemble that will make up the next Terrence Malick flick.

You are dismissed!

Sgt. Angle

Sgt. Angle Reporting for Duty!

Imagine a black Spider-Man brought to the silver screen in the reboot of the franchise. Or a red-headed Marty McFly instead of hip young Michael J. Fox. Or how about the Mustache Menace Tom Selleck dodging a rolling boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark?

These are just a few of the no-doubt hundreds of “almost-but-never-were” casting choices in movies past.

Casting can make or break a film’s believability, it’s entertainment factor, and its’ awards chances. Imagine the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air cracking jokes as Neo in The Matrix — or even defending the U.S. as Captain America. Or one of the raunchiest comedians of the 80s, Eddie Murphy, aboard the Starship Enterprise.

Or Abed as Shaft:

He IS the man.

You’re likely these days to read more about actors cast against-type than replacing someone they admire. Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx were originally cast in each others’ eventual roles in Law Abiding Citizen — a viewer might say this hurt the movie as a whole, that Foxx can’t play straight, and Butler is not psychotic enough (then this person would watch 300 and say.…“oh”). Sissy Spacek and Carrie Fisher swapped roles in completely different movies (Carrie and Star Wars, respectively) after Fisher refused to go nude for Brian De Palma’s horror flick.

I could go on and on about how The Godfather was almost played by crooning Frank Sinatra instead of the pitch-perfect Marlon Brando, but you would get lost in a sea of useless trivia. Instead, I wanted to pose a question to the filmmakers and enthusiasts out there, and perhaps spark a discussion: Why don’t you take more chances on casting?

After all, Darren Aronofsky lifted Mickey Rourke out from under a rock to put him at the center of The Wrestler, and when no one wanted to utter her name, Lindsay Lohan was plunked into the middle of Robert Altman’s final feature film A Prairie Home Companion — and played her part very well indeed.

When casting rumors swirled around the roles of The Joker and Two-Face in The Dark Knight, everyone went nuts. You all remember them: Sean Penn, Michael Keaton(?), Crispin Glover [JOKER], Ryan Phillippe, Liev Shreiber, Josh Lucas [TWO-FACE]. Even when Heath Ledger was officially announced, some chose not to believe while others stood firm that Crispin Glover would’ve been the last person to play the role.

And then the movie came out, and you know the rest.

Recently, there was a swirl of guesses, some known, others unknown, over who would play Spider-Man in the unnecessary yet inevitable reboot of that franchise. Andrew Garfield won the part, stifling all the noise, but in an interesting twist on the rumor mill, two actors tried to throw themselves into the role.

The first, Josh Hutcherson, went with the old audition tape technique:

As you can see, the dude hired some stunt guys and tried really hard to show he can fight. The problem with an audition tape such as this is: it doesn’t show that you can act. Barely says two words, and the clunkers he hired to act around him only serve to distract the watcher from whatever point Hutcherson was trying to make. Not only that, but he’s not an inspired choice, he’s too similar to the previous web-head Tobey Maguire to make much of an impression.

The other fierce fighter for the role of Peter Parker was the hilarious Donald Glover, of “Community” fame. Glover has charm, wit, a great physique, and appears to maintain a steady hold on his character work. He issued a stream of tweets in a campaign to get himself hired for the role, but it never really got as far as Betty White’s Facebook campaign to host SNL. The other factor that probably played against Glover, on multiple levels: He’s Black.

Unfortunately, studios fail to see the draw of having a black man step into the shoes of a traditionally white role. Black men have starred in comic book adaptations before –Blade being the most popular among them — but we’ve never scene a black star take on the role of a comic book hero that is usually seen as white. Would this work? I think it would, and that it’s past due for it to happen.

Recently, Will Smith’s son Jaden starred in the remake of The Karate Kid, updating the story for a new generation and casting the character in a new light (I don’t know if that’s a pun of some kind, but if it is, it’s totally unintended). The result was a successful film both at the box office and in its’ storyline.Why not take another already established character, from the comic book world, and recast with a black lead? Spider-Man would’ve been the top choice.

Would a black Superman or Batman do anything for you? There were rumors of Eddie Murphy playing the Riddler in the next Batman film (totally false, by the way). If that were true in any sense, would it change the way you look at Batman, or would it open the door to a different angle on a classic tale?

Would it change anything at all…?

Thoughts below. Type them. Brief me…

Dismissed!

Sgt. Angle

Sgt. Angle Reporting for Duty!

In just a few days, you maggots will be slugging yourselves down in front of your fancy television sets for a few hours to watch the NFL Kickoff. After that, your weekends the next few months will no doubt, like mine, be taken up with several hour spells in front of the same television, elbow deep in barbecue flavored potato skins, the frothy head of beer coating our already frazzled mustaches while the ol’ pigskin gets tossed and run around over 100 yards of pure green grass-tro-turf.

She wants you to play, too.

With the oncoming season already embedded in your calendars, I’d hope you have some time here and there to remember what makes football so great to watch, whether in reality, or in the fictional world blown big on the silver screen (silver screen would be an awesome name for a crazy good offensive play, wouldn’t it?). Below I give you some of the best of the best in Football Films.

There’s two kinds of football films, really, just as every cinematic genre can play two sides to the same tonal coin: the TEAM stories, (speaking of teams, how about the team of James Ninness and Jed Soriano? You can get to know them and their work better when you purchase Mythoi Book One: Birth here) and the REDEMPTIVE or INDIVIDUAL stories. Sometimes these types overlap, but most of the time you can pinpoint what kind of sports film you’re watching. For me, TEAM stories tend to evoke more participation on my part, as an INDIVIDUAL tale is more often than not a sort of biopic.

RUDY, for instance, is a REDEMPTIVE story — our main character carries the weight of the plot, against all odds as the weakling with a single dream. We’re not following a football tossed to and fro, characters weaving in and out of focus, and because it’s Notre-Freakin’-Dame, we don’t have to worry about the W-L percentage. What we’re more interested in is seeing an underdog simply get on the field, to go against all odds and just play, simply to fulfill his dream. Four out of Five Rifles.

THE EXPRESS is another REDEMPTION football story. The lead character, Ernie Davis, was the first black footballer to win the coveted Heisman Trophy. He also died before he could play in the NFL, and his success and good nature helped pave the way for integrating college football teams in the 1960s. The movie version of his life is labored most of the time, a cliche tale of “we know he’ll succeed and we’re watching what we expect to see.” The “conflicts” are based solely on race and little else — we’re watching Syracuse make a run for a championship, so the TEAM doesn’t matter as much. The story is all about Ernie changing the lives of the people around him, yes, including his teammates. But the success we want is not for the victory, but for the change to happen. Halftime speech here. Three out of Five Rifles.

For this, she will always be my hero.

VARSITY BLUES. Another ME over TEAM film, this time about a high school quarterback who unexpectedly takes the reins of leading his team away from the coach, played by a brilliant Jon Voight. We get a lot of the QB’s life outside of school, outside of the sport, and want him to stand up to his father, want him to take that leadership role that’s so important. Off the field, the other players don’t make too much of a dent. Their personalities don’t shine, and we’re again shown a movie about a dude, not about the team. Four out of Five Rifles.

This is a team you can get behind.

Now this is not meant to imply that these “individual” football stories don’t work — they do, and usually quite well. But it’s important to know what kind of movie you like, what kind of movie you’re going to be viewing, and then what kind of movies you would recommend. Inspiration comes in all sizes, mostly from “individual” tales, but more often, from the stories about entire teams who learn to care more about each other than the victory that tends to always be out of reach.

THE REPLACEMENTS. A bit corny, and blessed cursed by the presence of Keanu Reeves, this late 90’s entry into the genre focused mainly on the team, the camaraderie of a band of kooky gents taking over during a pro-NFL strike. While we focus mainly on Keanu’s redemption, there is more screen time spent with the team than without. We are also handed plenty of scenes with head coach Gene Hackman, again emphasizing the team, the effects of decisions “on the guys.” Four out of Five Rifles.

Sinbad makes it unnecessary.

NECESSARY ROUGHNESS. Oddly, this TEAM-focused movie also spends most of its’ screen time on its quarterback, an aging Scott Bakula, who has one year of eligibility left in college ball. But, like The Replacements, Roughness gives us a heavy dose of the coaches behind the scenes, and almost every scene plays around the team as a whole rather than just Bakula’s past mistakes. Three out of Five Rifles.

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS. I’ve shined on this film in prior posts (mainly the TV show), but it’s worth mentioning again and again. It’s a TEAM movie in the largest sense of the word — not a single player becomes the “focus” of the story, and even the coach is more of a presence than a focal point, so that by the end of it all, when the championship game is played and the players move on, we come to realize we’re watching more than a movie about a team, and much more than a movie about any one individual. We’re watching an American past time embodied and infused with life, a cultural moment in the history of sports and people. Five out of Five Rifles.

(You’ll notice that the clips above all contain speeches from the respective films. I’ve heard tell that the speech in Any Given Sunday is one of the best inspirational speeches in recent film history. Judge for yourself:

Got a favorite sports movie? A favorite football film? Give me your own briefing in the comments below.

You are dismissed!

Sgt. Angle

Sgt. Angle reporting for duty!

At ease, henchmen. Today I’m happy to bring you the highlights of the historical career of one of the best film editors of all time. This Spotlight seems to fall at an entirely appropriate time here at Semantink — just last week, Ben studied the glory days of comics, and Akatzen wound a 10,000 year clock with a superb recollection of Anathem. What better way to study the effects of time in film than by focusing on the skills and assets of the visual trickery of the film editor. I present to you our subject of this week’s film creator spotlight: Thelma Schoonmaker.

Schoonmaker is best known as “Scorsese’s gal,” having edited all of Martin Scorsese’s pictures since 1980’s Raging Bull (with the exception of his Rock-Docs No Direction Home: Bob Dylan and Shine a Light). Known for her versatility and editing against type (dissolves, simple angle/reverse angle as opposed to MTV style fast cutting, as well as the techniques of split screen and dissolves for the documentary Woodstock, Thelma has made quite the name for herself in the world of movies, and has three Oscars and countless other awards to show for it.

Originally, Thelma tested for state department exams and sought a position to work internationally for the state department. Having been born in Algeria and living in Aruba, she didn’t move to the states until her teen years. Because of the limitations on what she could say or do in mingling situations (for instance, not able to criticize Apartheid in the presence of South African dignitaries), Thelma exited her desire for a State Department position. She placed herself in line for a job she found in the classified ads for an assistant editor, and then took a six week course at NYU to learn the basic skills of cutting on film. It was here that she was pulled by a professor to help a young filmmaker struggling with his student project. That filmmaker was Martin Scorsese.

She then cut Scorsese’s first feature, Who’s That Knocking at My Door which starred a young Harvey Keitel. As you can see from the clip above, the filmmaking team already formed styles to compliment each others’ abilities.

After this, Thelma worked on several documentaries, most notable of which is the iconic Woodstock. For this film, she was able to bring musical performances out of a simple cinematic experience and make them more dynamic. Schoonmaker earned her first Oscar nomination for this film, but, oddly, was still not allowed to be a member of the editors’ union.

At the time, there was a catch-22 with the editors’ guild. You couldn’t edit a feature film unless you were in the union, but you couldn’t become a member of the union unless you cut a feature film. Thus, it wasn’t until TEN YEARS LATER (1980) that Thelma was able to cut a feature film and become a member of the union… mysteriously. She says, to this day, that she doesn’t know who pulled their weight to get her into the guild (she guesses it was Pacino).

Her first feature as a member of the union was Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, which also earned Thelma her first Oscar. Filled with gritty black and white sparring, boxing matches choreographed like dance routines, and improvised scenes filmed with multiple cameras led to a completely refreshing film dynamic that translated perfectly from life to script to screen, Raging Bull is not only one of the greatest films of all time, it’s an amazing foray into the blessed relationship between Scorsese and Schoonmaker that continues to this day.

With Goodfellas, we were treated to freeze-frames and long tracking shots to create a rocky road from the top of the world to the fall from grace. Notice how, in the scene below, we don’t cut away from Henry’s attack of this dude. It’s all in one take, such that we are not given the chance to look away. We’re this deep in Henry’s world, we’re not allowed to break away.

In The Color of Money, each and every game of pool was suddenly granted a personality and tone of its’ own, some with long lingering dissolves, and others chopped into jump cuts and overhead fly-on-the-wall shots. Here’s one clip of Tom Cruise ruling the school, with only a brief cutaway that serves us a wordless moment of introduction between Cruise and Paul Newman.

In the late ‘90s, Schoonmaker and Scorsese brought to us a classic, sprawling epic in the life story of the Dalai Lama.  Kundun allowed the filmmakers to take their time in a personal recollection of the spiritual and political leader, and the result is a colorful, true spectacle. That attention to detail was combined with character-based cross-cutting in Gangs of New York, another historical epic focused on cultural and moral diversity in 19th Century New York City.

Schoonmaker won her second Oscar for snipping The Aviator, the biography of eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes. Like most of Scorsese’s films, The Aviator is devoted to detail — from the costumes, music, and design to the carefully chosen shots and editing. Simple transitions to show the passage of time and also reveal Hughes’ devotion to his creations as much as his lovers. Notice the quick cutaway to DiCaprio’s foot in this scene, which hints at his OCD taking effect.

For  The Departed, Schoonmaker won her third Oscar, and Scorsese his first — for the kinetic and erratic chopping in a film that combined extended takes, simple match-cutting dialogue scenes, quick-slick jump cuts that made cell phones cool for once, and a flowing nature between scenes that helped us understand a fairly complex plot.

Most recently, both filmmakers combined their knowledge of the history of film styles in the elaborate and swell-paced thriller Shutter Island.

Up next for the acclaimed editor is Scorsese’s 3D adaptation Hugo Cabret. Let’s see what she can do with the exploration of 3D in the period piece adaptation — I’m sure it’ll be something great.

Thelma Schoonmaker is a true treasure in the history of film, now more than ever, as she, like Scorsese, respects and pays homage to (and builds upon) films and techniques of the past to improve upon the movies of today. This quote from her applies to forays from young filmmakers: “From MTV on, the speed of editing has increased, and that is now entering into narrative editing. People are not relying on good shots to tell the story, and I don’t think you can sustain that kind of cutting for the full length of a film.”

You are dismissed.

Sgt. Angle

Sgt. Angle Reporting for Duty!

At ease, fresh fish!

First, let me say that I was appalled by last weekend’s weak show of solidarity and support for Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World! You’re spending  your time and money on what, Vampire’s Suck ?! Really??! You’ve made some bad decisions, maggot…real bad. Get with the program, mount up, and sit your butts down in the theater!

Now, onto business. This past weekend, we were given a hearty dose of blood, gore, and frightful waters in Alexandre Aja’s Piranha 3D, a semi-reboot, semi-sequel to the popular Joe Dante Cult film Piranha, from 1978. The original story (scripted by indie-darling John Sayles) told of a school of piranha’s let loose on a small town lake, and was meant as a B-style parody of JAWS. Roger Corman produced it — as only Corman would — and that film involved dozens of practical effects, from rubber fish tied to fishing lines to a simple hotel waitress standing in as a “boob double” for actress Heather Menzies.

Aja’s remake is brutal in many ways — overuse of CGI, terrible 3D conversion, gratuitous and plentiful nudity, hundreds of gallons of fake blood. And it’s also glorious — Christopher Lloyd doing a moderately watered down Doc Brown reincarnation, Richard Dreyfus in a classic and referential cameo, and Ving Rhames going medieval on killer fish. But even the water ballet by two naked women is hilarious only for a few seconds, then it just becomes a tedious distraction from, you know, the gore.

At the end of the day, after seeing Piranha 3D, I still could’ve walked right along the shores of the ocean and taken a dip, had I been off duty. The problem with this Piranha is that not enough is done to scare me. The script doesn’t have an underlying agenda, nor are any of the deaths filled with spine-tingling suspense. They’re all gruesome, the sort of way that the bloody kills of a Friday the 13th movie are gruesome — that is, without tension. With no tension comes no fear the minute you walk out of the theater.

There are a few “make-you-jump” moments — a bloody hand darting out of the water, a penis-less dude spurting his last bloody breath — but director Aja really needs to work out the meaning of “suspense” — odd, considering his breakout film was titled High Tension. Piranhas dash through dark waters and towards kicking feet at casual speeds. Most of the chomping that occurs in the first half of the film is of one person at a time. When the body count truly starts to climb, we’re left with mangled gore — body parts that become Spaghetti-o’s rather than recognizeable as humans. This effect was put to much better use in Peter Jackson’s early film Dead Alive. But Jackson had the foresight to frontload his movie’s setting in a bizarro-small town setting, and new how to play to the comedy. The actors in Piranha try to under or oversell their parts, and it’s sad that they weren’t given specific quirks that could’ve helped set the tone (something done to better effect in a movie like Scream).

Granted, we’re not talking high art here. We’re talking B-Movie schlock — get to the scares, character be damned! Then show me the schlock! Guts and gore and chomping CG fish will only take us to the edge of what your movie “wants to be”. You have to hand me the cheese on a silver platter. I don’t care about the teen kid’s high school crush, and I’m kind of sick of the whole sheriff’s department being full of tough folks who never made it out of the small town. Overkill is too narrow a concept to describe the level of gratuitous breasts in Piranha 3D — and this is coming from a man with more guts than Gianna Michaels’ breasts have surface area.

There’s been a lot of chatter that Piranha 3D is a movie that “knows what it is”, but it doesn’t. This isn’t a grindhouse flick, nor is it even an exploitation film, in the truest sense of the word. It’s a cheap imitation of B-grade horror, that fails to scare. However, I will admit that the amount of creative kills is quite remarkable in the scheme of things. As is the underwater lesbian ballet provided by Kelly Brooke and Riley Steele.

Perhaps the one missing element from JAWS…

The unbalanced ratio of scares to gratuitousness displayed in Piranha got me thinking of another great scare picture, told with incredible skill and depth, yet still able to scare the bejeezus out of the audience — JAWS (The original mama piranha, if you will).

Now, before you sound off about the differences in these two movies’ intentions, and the (attempted) exploitation aspect of Piranha vs. the serious artistic merits of Jaws, let me remind you that I’m not saying one film is better than the other. Piranha 3D obviously offers up a large dose of gore and blood, along with sex and c-grade jokes — all aspects of a movie to enjoy with a dozen loaded partygoers on a Friday night.

JAWS, on the other hand, will make you think twice about going in the water, and yet also tosses us a bone — literally — or two in the gore department.

My main point here is that you cannot compare apples to kumquats without at least acknowledging the context of where you pick the fruit. I’ve seen people get angry — angryyyyy — when talking about which Dawn of the Dead is better, Romero’s brilliant original or Zach Snyder’s career-making remake five years ago. One was labored and offered up strong social commentary as well as gruesome scares, while the other was fast-paced, unrelenting in jump-scares, and just as disgusting — but also included inside jokes and throwbacks to the original. Piranha 3D does the same, in its’ cameo offerings and the mocking of Girls Gone Wild’s Joe Francis via Jerry O’Connell.

I guess what it comes down to is that, however you play within the genre, know your part and play it to the fullest extreme. Piranha 3D is fun and brutally gruesome, but you’ve got to at least try the practical effects and utilize suspense. How hard is it to create suspense — real tension, I’m talking — when thousands of deadly piranha are swimming towards a whole lake full of drunk Spring Breakers?

Now get your asses back in the field and go see SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD!!!

You are dismissed!

Sgt. Angle