I Like You! I Really Like You!
WIN A DATE WITH TAD HAMILTON!
As a person who wants to date a movie star, I am, you may well imagine, attracted to that sub-sub-sub genre of the movies-about-movies, in which an ordinary person gets to date an actress. There aren't that many. DAY FOR NIGHT. NURSE BETTY (in a gender reversal). CELEBRITY in its way. THE BODYGUARD in its way. SUNSET BOULEVARD in its way. One scene in LA DOLCE VITA is probably the ultimate shlub-dates-starlet moment. And NOTTING HILL reduced me to poignant tears. The recent THE GIRL NEXT DOOR is a variation on that (while also remaking RISKY BUSINESS). And in the annals of movie criticism only one critic I know of ever actually dated a movie star.
Yet despite those odds, the fantasy holds true. And it is not driven by any competitive urge, of getting to fuck someone millions of other guys fantasize about fucking. It's driven by a need to help. Believing all those other movies about show biz, I want the actress to feel happy, needed, not lonely. And as a professional actress, she'll be more inclined to play dress up sex games.
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WIN A DATE WITH TAD HAMILTON! is only the latest entry in this meager genre, but it is a good one. In fact, it is a fine movie on any level. I'm having a hard time understanding why it seems to have been more or less ignored during its theatrical run. It's one of the best-written movies I have seen in a long time (the credited screenwriter is Victor Levin, of THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW and other series television comedies), is very funny (I laughed out loud, alone, in front of the DVD monitor — television set to everyone else — several times), and amusingly mocks Hollywood without reducing its denizens to gross buffoons as in so many other show biz parodies.
The premise is simple. Rosie Futch (Kate Bosworth) is a small-town girl — Frazier's Bottom, West Virginia — who works in a Piggly Wiggly and who has a crush, along with her kooky girlfriend Cathy (Ginnifer Goodwin), on the prolific seeming movie star Tad Hamilton. More Josh Hartnet in career choices than Tom Cruise, Hamilton (the Peter Krause-looking Josh Duhamel, of ALL MY CHILDREN) is a party animal who finds his image splashed across the tabloids. His agent and his manager (Nathan Lane and Sean Hayes — or is it Sean Hayes and Nathan Lane?) advise their client to offer himself up as a charity date, if for no other reason than to (somehow) then win a part in the next movie by a John Woo-style director. Rosie wins the contest, flies out to Hollywood, has her date, and in the course of the evening, manages to touch the bored and cynical actor.
The next thing she knows he has flown all the way out to Frazier's Bottom to find her at the Piggly Wiggly. They begin to "date" publicly, although he says that he only wants her "goodness" to rub off on him (sort of the way Mel Gibson made THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST in order to redeem himself).
But watching all this unfold from the sidelines is college-bound store manager Pete (Topher Grace). Though he, Rose, and Cathy are all long-time best friends, in reality he has secretly loved Rosie his whole life. Unable to compete with a six-foot-one and well-built international movie star, he watches from afar as Rosie's dream comes true. Will Pete be able to win Rosie from the actor in the face of incredible odds? Hey, it's still a Hollywood movie!
In a sense, Rosie's character is somewhat peripheral to the central story, which is really about the different-yet-similar situations of the actor and the store manager. Both yearn for better things, both "love" Rosie, and both are ambitious. This appears to be part of writer Levin and director Robert Luketic (LEGALLY BLONDE)'s strategy to not do, for the most part, the predictable things with their material. To that end, Pete is very sympathetic, but so is Tad; and Lane and Hayes are hilarious while still appearing human, and "plausible."
DreamWorks' disc of WIN A DATE is packed. The wide-screen transfer (2.33:1, enhanced) is excellent, the sound (DD 5.1 and 2.0, and French 5.1, with English, French, and Spanish subtitles) is good, and the supplements are manageable. There is no audio track, which is sorely missed, as one assumes that both Luketic and Levin are pretty funny. The main extra, then, is a lengthy collection of deleted and extended scenes. The most significant are the different (and inferior) ending and beginning, which "rhyme" the way the finished film's beginning and end do, but in a less fetching manner. Also, there is a longer scene in which Hayes expresses chagrin that he won't get to fly on Hamilton's private jet. There is also a gag reel, a photo gallery, the text of the press kit, and cast and crew filmographies, along with a passel of DreamWorks trailers. The animated, musical menu offers 24-chapter scene selection. WIN A DATE WITH TAD HAMILTON! hit the streets on Tuesday, April 20th (in one of those keep-cases with little snaps) and retails for $26.99.
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Images of Women
3 WOMEN
I'm not the biggest fan of Robert Altman, but his engaging audio commentary track on the new Criterion Collection release of his 1977 film (originally made for Fox, where you would think that the film would qualify as a Fox Classic) almost makes me like him.
My problem with 3 WOMEN, and with Altman's films in general, is that he doesn't seem to like any of his characters or the genres he is working in. He hated Raymond Chandler, so he makes an adaptation of THE LONG GOODBYE that ridicules him and the mystery film. He attacks the western film in MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER. He undermines the road film in THIEVES LIKE US. He mocks the gabling film in CALIFORNIA SPLIT. And so on. After a while I just got tired of it and stopped watching Altman's films — until GOSFORD PARK, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
In 3 WOMEN, Altman's seeming contempt for his characters is show in rather petty ways. Main woman Shelley Duvall is a brainless conformist, an aspiring Stepford Wife, who likes the color yellow and closes the car door on her skirt — not once, but three times. Sissy Spacek is the villainous identity stealer whom the film seems to endorse or support, further victimizing Duvall's character.
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Still, one has to admit that Altman has a distinctive style, as easily identifiable as Hitchcock or Ford. It's just that he rarely puts it to more than trivial use. 3 WOMEN was promoted at the time as one of Altman's "dream films," i.e., a movie he dreamed first and then went on to make. The other was IMAGES, which is probably my favorite Altman movie (and naturally the '70s film of his that is least esteemed by the critical community). 3 WOMEN is also oblique, arty, and based on triads, like IMAGES, which has as its centerpiece a richly nuanced performance by Susannah York. 3 WOMEN is, on the other hand, to my mind obscure for the sake of obscurity. But as my colleague Damon Houx has pointed out, the film appears to have been some kind of influence on David Lynch and MULHOLLAND DR., and so at the very least bears some historical interest.
The Criterion Collection has put together a great package for 3 WOMEN (and one assumes that there will be one or two more Altman films in the future from the company). The prime extra is Altman's commentary track (which sounds like the answers to edited out questions). Therein Altman discusses the origins of the film in his dreamlife, his influences (such as Huston, which makes a lot of sense), and his interesting creative relationship with Duvall, whom he seems to suggest is a lot like the character she plays in the film. In addition to the commentary there is a handful of stills, trailers, and TV teasers for the film. The animated, musical menu offers 19-chapter scene selection. 3 WOMEN hit the street Tuesday, April 20, 2004, for $39.95.
You Make My Thing Swing
WILD THINGS and WILD THINGS 2
In case you were wondering what was cut out of the already licentious WILD THINGS, Columbia Tristar has now released the film in an unrated edition (on April 20th, 2004, for $19.95). But if you love the film, as I do, don't trade in your old version down at the used DVD store, for this version comes sans that marvelous audio track by director John McNaughton, sans deleted scenes, and sans the other extras. The only thing added is a few seconds of thrusting and rubbing, as far as I can tell: the old movie clocked in a 1:48:06, and the unrated version times out at 1:54:41, so there must be a lot more than just the extended sex scenes, which includes the one full deleted scene from the first disc (between Bill Murray and Robert Wagner at a Mexican diner).
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Released simultaneously is the straight-to-video erotic thriller WILD THINGS 2. It has no connection to the first film, either in plot or talent employed, except that it tells almost the exact same story. In this one, a Florida teen volleyball player (erotic thriller specialist Susan Ward) and her rival, a supposed school newspaper journalist (Leila Arcieri) in a dispute over the estate of the volleyball teen's stepfather, who dies in a plane crash. As in the previous film, nothing is what it seems, there is an investigator, in this case an insurance agent (Isaiah Washington), and hot threesome sex (though Ward manages to ward off any sighting of her breasts).
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It's hard to think of WILD THINGS 2 as proof that there is a WILD THINGS school of art; it's more like an opportunistic cashing in on the first one, with slightly less beautiful and "important" people. It's all irrelevant alligators, everglades boats, lucky guys stuck in a lesbo sandwich, and courtroom machinations that are hard to follow.
Fortunately 2 doesn't tarnish the effect of 1. 2 has a modest collection of supplements, including a making-of, and a selection of five similarly themed trailers (CRUEL INTENTIONS, for example). One unusual thing about the disc is its 28-chapter scene section menu, which allows you to select only one chapter at a time, in a gallery style format, unlike conventional menus that offer up either all the chapters at once or groupings of four at a time. WILD THINGS 2 hit the street April 20th for $24.96.
Town Without Pity
LE CORBEAU
French director Henri-Georges Clouzot (who died in 1977) is most famous for DIABOLIQUE and WAGES OF FEAR, and therefore in a way viewed as a poor man's Hitchcock, but the release by the Criterion Collection of its Janus Films entry LE CORBEAU, Clouzot's second film, should lead to a demand for more Clouzot films. It's a wonderful, gripping, adult tale of mass hysteria, made during the German occupation, and thereafter viewed as "collaborationist" when in fact it is searing critique of small town life and of snitching.
It's also an entry in that small but interesting sub-genre, the "crazy town" film. In this genre, a small burg somehow goes mad. Variations on it occur in 2000 MANIACS, THE CHASE, the TWILIGHT ZONE episode about the suspicious neighborhood sure that an alien has infiltrated them, and THE VISIT. It's more of a European style drama though conformism and mass hysteria are a peculiarly American phenomenon.
Based on actual events thinly disguised in Louis Chavance 's screenplay, LE CORBEAU ("The Raven") concerns a poison pen campaign that at first singles out a doctor who is deemed an abortionist but soon nets every other person in town, and pits them all against each other in suspicion. The doctor (Pierre Fresnay, who hated working with Clouzot), has, of course, a compromised past, but so, it seems, does everyone else. The film is a guessing game, and though I thought I knew who was sending the letters, I was disappointed to learn at the end that it was someone else, implausibly so, to my mind.
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LE CORBEAU is an excellent film rendered beautifully by Criterion in a full frame transfer (1.33:1) and with one of the best reconditioned soundtracks I can recall hearing: it is mono, but almost sounds stereo (but I am no expert). Supplements are provocative. There is a helpful video interview with director and critic Bertrand Tavernier (yet another one-eyed movie director, it seems), and an excerpt from a 1975 French television documentary about Occupation cinema that focuses on Clouzot. The disc also features the original trailer, offers 24-chapter scene selection and comes in a keep case. LE CORBEAU hit the street on February 17th and retails for $29.95.
The First Kenneth Branagh
RICHARD III
How can such a great actor make such lousy movies? That's the question that always occurs to me when I watch one of the handful of Shakespeare adaptations directed by Laurence Olivier. Mine is the minority view, of course, especially given that HAMLET one an Oscar.
The problem is that Olivier was and remained a man of the theater. As did many British actors, he seemed to view movies as an intrusive alien art form that existed to provide easy cash and some vanity kicks. When he did turn to helming, it was mainly to mount stagy, fruity, and highly theatrical presentations of Shakespeare plays, esteemed by American audiences with cultural inferiority complexes. Frankly, I much prefer Kenneth Branagh's Shakespearian films. For one thing, they are more "cinematic," and for another they actually achieve the thing that Olivier's are praised for but don't really accomplish, i.e., making Shakespeare's lingo sound real and natural. Olivier's doesn't. It sounds arch and phony, whereas the dialogue in Branagh's HENRY V, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING and HAMLET sounds real. You can actually "get" and laugh at the jokes in MUCH ADO — laughter at Shakespeare jokes usually being the preserve of pretentious theater goers pretending that they actually understand what the actors are saying.
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RICHARD III is, or course, the play about the rise of the deformed Richard to usurping King of England, slaughtering one way or another all the human integers standing in his way — the "kingdom for a horse" play. Olivier plays him as a humpbacked guy in a pageboy or Beatles cut and a hooked nose. His RICHARD III is also of some measure of historical interest because it also features John Guilgud and Ralph Richardson, the two other leading contenders for supremacy as the "finest living British actor."
Given the hotbed of egos attached to this film you'd think that the DVD of the thing would have lots of juicy details of screaming fits and actors' trailer doors getting slammed. But no, it is all sweetness and light. This two disc set from Criterion is basically a reprint of the laser disc version they put out in the early '90s, which is fine, it's nice to have, but with everybody dead and all it would be nice to have a franker discussion of the film's background.
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For example, one of the supplements is a TV interview with Olivier conduced by critic Kenneth Tynan for a short-lived show about actors, aired in 1966. There is a lot of baggage between Olivier and Tynan (who was a big supporter of Olivier, who hired Tynan to work for him as "literary manager" at the National Theater, but who also disliked him and, in some interpretations, betrayed Tynan) and between Olivier and Guilgud, whom Olivier praises on the TV show, but with whom he was intensely competitive with during their lifetimes. An audio track to this feature, by, say, Tynan biographer Dominic Shellard, would have been very informative and juicy.
Criterion offers an excellent transfer of the film, shot in VistaVision, with adequate sound. The main supplement on this two-disc set is the audio track by Russell Lees, a stage director, with some interpolations by Royal Shakespeare governor John Wilders, recorded in 1994. It's an informative track: Lees, for example, offers a fascinating account of why Shakespeare used iambic pentameter when in fact he didn't have to. Other extras include an extended made-for-TV trailer in black and white, the theatrical trailer, and an image gallery. The animated, musical menu offers 40-chapter scene selection. RICHARD III hit the streets on February 24th and goes for $39.95.
Booty Fetish
BOOTY CALL: THE BOOTIEST EDITION
Our colleague Damon Houx writes in:
Like Andy Warhol's proclamation that everyone will be famous for 15 minutes, it now seems the DVD world's goal is to make sure every single film will get double-dipped at least once. Anyway it's hard not to think that way when a film like BOOTY CALL gets its second special edition release.
Called the BOOTIEST EDITION, one wonders if the film's two-membered fan-base was calling and clamoring Columbia Tri-star Home Video for a special edition. Or what sort of marketing tie-in called for this film to get the special treatment? Because none is apparent.
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Actually, with interesting supplements normally the terrain of a good SE, calling what this film got the "special edition" treatment seems a stretch, because even a fan might find this disc underwhelming. It's got a dulled audio commentary by director Jeff Pollack, co-writer Takashi Bufford, and producer John Morrissey, an alternative ending, and the featurette ("Smooth Operator") which features co-star Tommy Davidson and a bunch of young up and coming comedians (who have no connection to the movie proper) who try to crack wise about booty calls. For those unaware, a booty call is a phone missive made in the later hours of a day instructing someone to come over to one's house for consequence — and string-free sex (or, as www.urbandictionary.com tell us, "When somebody gives you a ring in the early morning hours so they can get they fuck on"). Paradoxically, the film BOOTY CALL features no such booty calling.
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BOOTY CALL follows two sets of friends: males (and IN LIVING COLOR vets) Rushon (Davidson) and Bunz (Jamie Foxx) and females Nikki (Tamala Jones) and Lysterine (Vivica A. Fox). Rushon and Nikki have been dating for a while, but have yet to "hit it," so this dubious double date is arranged. At first Lysterine and Bunz rub each other the wrong way, but (as is always the case) these opposites attract, especially with the assistance of a lick-friendly dog (don't ask). This then leads to the main thrust of the film, in which Bunz and Rashon must wander the streets of New York at night trying to buy condoms, with some amusing cameos (as all films of this type must have), from performers such as Ric Young (familiar to TEMPLE OF DOOM fans) and Bernie Mac. But, as noted, there is no real booty calling — the men are set and ready to go for quite some time, while Lysterine informs Nikki that men are really only good for one thing (sex), so why not enjoy it?
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BOOTY CALL exists on a level that I'll call the "worst recommendable film" I know. It's a 51 percenter. If films can be compared to food, and a film like THE GODFATHER is a feast, then this is a last call drink. There are no redeeming social or political points made (though the film is quite pro-condom), the plot is virtually non-existent, but the performers give the material enough juice that the film's scant running time (79 minutes) has enough energy to make it all worth a late night viewing with friends and alcohol. Jamie Foxx doing an impression of Mike Tyson to get some booty is giggle-inducing, while seeing Vivica A. Fox in a push-up bra while he's doing his impressions is also "inducing."
Speaking of her, there's three Fox (Vivica, that is) related trailers also included. THE BOOTIEST EDITION was released on April 13, 2004, and retails for $19.95.
NEXT TIME: PANIC ROOM, Sherlock Holmes, MASTER AND COMMANDER, Ozu, REEFER MADNESS, and more!
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