ERIC WHEELER: Hello! And welcome to the first installment of what we hope will become a long-lasting and beloved niche in the bowels of The Film Talk website: Contributor Crosstalk. The obvious idea here is that we ‘below the line’ talent (to use an industry phrase) clang our heads together and see what movies have been giving us pleasure, pain or ‘other.’ Ever the deadline daredevils, we hatched a plan many weeks ago to do a Quarterly Review of the first three months of this film-going year. Needless to say, we blew it. But perhaps waiting until mid-May* to reflect on the diamonds and detritus of January, February and March 2011 will pay unexpected dividends. We’ll be dividing the films we’ve seen into the Good, the Bad and the Weird**. And since the bulk of the year lies before us like a cruel, shimmering mirage we’ll also tackle our Most Anticipated and Most Dreaded of Two Oceans Eleven (to quote noted movie lover, Doug Benson). So let me throw it over to you, Brandon. What’s been good, bad or weird for you so far?

BRANDON NOWALK: I’m not sure we’re on the same page: There were good films in the first quarter of 2011? I kid—sort of. But the best films of 2011 for me are the 2010 releases I’m finally getting to see here in muggy, surprisingly out-of-the-way Houston (fourth biggest city in America, seventy-second quickest to get new releases). By far the highlight is Abbas Kiarostami’s CERTIFIED COPY, for me the best film of 2010 and the season’s saving grace. It helps that in preparation I spent a fair amount of January catching up with Kiarostami’s work since 1987’s WHERE IS THE FRIEND’S HOME and spent at least as much time kicking myself for not getting to him sooner as his particular way with postmodernism eerily coincides with my interests. The other great film was by another international auteur I studied up on for the first time this year, Manoel de Oliveira’s ECCENTRICITIES OF A BLONDE-HAIRED GIRL. Because apparently I can’t be satisfied without homework.

But I’ve reviewed those already. What I haven’t mentioned is Kyle Smith’s TURKEY BOWL, an OLD JOY-style reunion between friends drifting apart post-college, pre-marriage that’s currently playing the festival circuit, and is the best film of 2011 proper (so far). It’s only 64 minutes long, and I had no idea how its hooks had stuck in me with its effortless feel and sidestepping of indie cliche until the credits rolled. Beyond that, there’s Mike Leigh’s ANOTHER YEAR, most of RANGO, the last three-quarters of Aaron Katz’s COLD WEATHER, and the final scene of I AM LOVE, but now the well’s dry. Have you seen CERTIFIED COPY yet, Eric? What are your favorites from the first quarter?

ERIC: You raise an interesting ontological question, Brandon. If I see a film for the first time in 2011, does the film belong to the year in which I see it in an American theater or the year in which in was made? There are tremendous films that either sit on the shelf or struggle to find distribution for years – such as the absolutely extraordinary LOVE EXPOSURE, but that’s for another discussion. There are also films that we hear about and read about for months as they play the festival circuit, but only catch up to many months, or possibly years, later. Living in Los Angeles, I’m fortunate enough to catch a number of works at either the height of the hype machine (such as the heinously underrated I’M STILL HERE) or, somewhat bizarrely, months before their proper release, in a tiny independent theater like the Laemmle 5 (such as CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS).

BRANDON: First off, I’m dying to see NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT! Glad to hear you hold it in such esteem. Personally I consider a film’s year to be when it opens to the public anywhere. So neither my 2010 foreign films nor my 2011 festival flick technically qualify, but otherwise my cinematic pleasures of early 2011 were limited to hacked off pieces of films, like the surrealism of RANGO or the pecs of THE EAGLE.

As for The Bad, I’ve got a doozy: I’m convinced BATTLE: LOS ANGELES is the worst film I’ve ever seen, since most of its competitors for that crown have the unfair advantage of nostalgic childhood viewing. Like Jett and Gareth I see why this threadbare quilt of cliches is such a touchstone: America attacked, unified in a time of petty divisions. Unlike them, I don’t see how that absolves its breathtaking boredom and weepy nationalism of sin. I’d rather watch a friend play Call of Duty for several days or workshop my one-man play DOG TAGS AND CAMO: THE STAR-SPANGLED FETISH than revisit that anti-spectacle.

Early 2011 has seen a lot of bad films, most of which (COUNTRY STRONG, THE MECHANIC, and especially THE EAGLE) have something to recommend them, and some of which (ANIMAL KINGDOM) have gotten strong reviews anyway, presumably by virtue of intoxicating accents. It’s a nice reminder that even bad films have some good in them, and some good doesn’t mean a film’s not bad.

ERIC: While I am professionally obligated to take offense at some of your ‘worst’ selections (THE MECHANIC?! How could you???), I can empathize. I was spared COUNTRY STRONG, though it’s interesting to see you slagging off ANIMAL KINGDOM. I haven’t seen it yet. Maybe I shouldn’t bother?

BRANDON: ANIMAL KINGDOM was a cheap shot, but suffice it to say it’s another of these deathly serious crime flicks that pretends to profundity through sheer force of gravitas. I firmly believe self-seriousness is the greatest threat to cinema today; lifeless pretension is killing our B-movies. THE MECHANIC might not have made my list if it were a bit less brooding and a bit more fun.

As for what I’m looking forward to, you can count out all the comic movies except X-MEN, and even that I’ll be watching through my fingers. What I’m really dying for are last year’s Cannes superstar UNCLE BOONMEE, this year’s Cannes superstar THE TREE OF LIFE, and Kelly Reichardt’s MEEK’S CUTOFF. I’m seeing MEEK’S next week, and TREE the week after, but Thor only knows when BOONMEE will get a DVD release.

I don’t know that I’m actively dreading anything because I don’t have to see anything I don’t want to over summer, but I can say I’m decidedly not on the JJ Abrams bandwagon. I’m sure SUPER 8 will be fine, but the Internet is so in the bag my mildness might as well be dread. After all, you either think a film is the greatest thing ever or you hate it. There is no such thing as middle ground.

Now before we go, you’ve got to tell me your pick for The Weird! I’m on tenterhooks over here.

ERIC: Well, I can’t imagine I’ll see a more compellingly weird movie in theaters this year than DRIVE ANGRY SHOT IN 3D. It’s not a great, or even a particularly well-made, film but it’s something I won’t be forgetting anytime soon. Brandon, what freaked you out in the best way possible?

BRANDON: By far my weirdest filmgoing experience of early 2011 was being the only person in a pitch-black theater (no house-lights, no slideshow, nothing) until the trailers started for JUSTIN BIEBER: NEVER SAY NEVER. When those finally ended, we got a bizarre, inexplicable short film climaxing with the notice (warning?) that our 3-D glasses have now been Bieberized. And then I spent two hours with more provocative material, accidental or not, than any other mainstream flick all year. But maybe that’s just because I never saw DRIVE ANGRY 3-D.

It was never my favorite season for cinephilia, but it was certainly an interesting few months, and all those terrible films taught me a valuable lesson: No amount of rote studio pictures or indulgence indies can kill The Movies. Not as long as genuine visionaries are hard at work on their next exhibition, the strangest films are being harvested from the organs of Little Red Riding Hood and Justin Bieber, and Nicolas Cage is making his fortune back with whatever straight-faced lunacy will have him. Come what may, I believe in Nicolas Cage.

ERIC: I, too, believe in Nicolas Cage.

*Although published in mid-June, this conversation took place (through the miracle of Google-Mail) in the dead heat of May.

** This is of course referencing the recent, Sergio Leone-inspired Korean western-action-comedy, THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE WEIRD.

At the height of his mid-1970s cinematic celebrity, Charles Bronson was known in movie-mad France as “Le Sacre Monstre,” or “The Sacred Monster.” It’s a strange sentiment, but an appealing one. Bronson was the archetypal action hero of the 70s, but he couldn’t seem more atypical by 21^st century standards. He had a face and a physique that could be charitably described as “cinematic.” With the floppy hair of an insouciant teenager and the bombed-out face of a dustbowl survivor, he looked like Roman Polanski raised by wolves. And although he seemed to be relatively athletic and trim, he strikes you as someone who could more easily murder you than, say, beat you up.

Jason Statham, on the other, more muscular hand, is perhaps the finest physical specimen working in movies – ANY movies – today. His ripped, streamlined physique – first developed as an Olympic diver and now resembling a bullet with abs – can provoke panic in the most fearsome of screen villains and gay-panic in the most politically progressive of alt-comedians. Perhaps most remarkably, Statham is the first action-cinema cueball since Bruce Willis’ late-1980s debut. As Matt Singer of IFC recently pointed out, this is the antithesis of the average aging, 21^st-century Hercules (for example, Nic Cage’s miraculous, ever-changing hairline which rises and falls with the tides).

As might be expected from such a drastic dichotomy, Bronson and Statham approach the title role of “the Mechanic” from different angles. Bronson, living in a home that is equal parts atrium and 70s-bad-taste-time-capsule, plays Arthur Bishop as quietly campy. After the film’s opening, ruthlessly efficient assassination he wraps himself in a velvet robe and sips from a giant wine snifter. In fact, both films begin with tense, dialogue-free, Hitchcockian murder constructs that display our (anti) heroes’ considerable skills at making meticulous murder look like tragic, albeit well-timed, accidents.

Unlike Bronson’s suave crime scene exit and kitschy R&R (in all honesty, Bronson plays Arthur as a more laconic version of Adam West’s Batman), Statham makes a dramatic escape from his initial victim’s estate by leaping off a bridge and stealthily hitching a ride on a passing motorboat. He then unwinds by driving a gigantic pick-up truck a seemingly enormous distance through the picturesque American bayou before arriving at a house that is as sleek as it is sparse. Of course, he does spring for a turntable that looks like something out of the Apple Inc. development labs. His gorgeous object d’art is used to play Schubert’s Trio in E-flat, Op. 100. This piece of classical music is one of the few interests shared by the two title Mechanics (in addition to, you know, being paid to murder human beings).

And, as hinted at above, location photography is as important as interior design in both films. Italy, in the case of Michael Winner’s version and recent cinematic tax-haven Louisiana in Simon West’s (in fact, the new iteration could conceivably be called The Mechanic: Port of Call – New Orleans Tax Credit). But despite their shared interests in Schubert and geographical eye-candy, the directorial differences between Winner and West are as distinct and as illuminating of their cinematic milieu as the contrast between Bronson’s burly mustache and Statham’s lethal stubble.

Neither Michael Winner nor Simon West can be considered a great filmmaker, and I’m not sure either has much of an auteurist signature, either. However, both are solid craftsmen of a particular kind of entertainment and both have at least one ridiculous quasi-classic in their back catalogue -1997’s Con Air for West and 1974’s Death Wish for Winner (speaking of which, Winner earned a mini-retrospective at the American Cinematheque last month, presumably on the back of this one film)… As befitting the aesthetic of genre journeymen, the strengths and weaknesses of the directors’ oeuvre can be primarily attributed to casting and copycatting. The casting: Bronson brings a detached, workmanlike quality to whatever scummy assignment he takes on, while Statham channels the spirit of 1980s/90s Hong Kong filmmaking as the world’ greatest living Asian* film star. The copycatting: Winner’s glacially slow pace (by modern standards) and one-take wonders (like bulldozing a sports car off a cliff or blowing up a boat in the Mediterranean) come out of a film culture that was both more patient and more fond of amoral anti-heroes (The Godfather, The French Connection and Dirty Harry to name a few contemperanous hits). Similarly, West’s impossibly slick, anamorphic cinematography and internally conflicted protagonist fit into lock-step with the current cinematic landscape (and mimics box-office titans such as The Dark Knight, Avatar and the abysmal Terminator Salvation).

Each helmer offers moments of repugnance and gracefulness. Winner presents an agonizingly long scene of a woman attempting suicide with no moral framework whatsoever, but he also provides Bronson with a death scene without false empathy. West confounds himself by constructing an assassination sequence wherein Ben Foster’s Mechanic-in-training attempts to outwit a rival, homosexual assassin who is clearly meant to come across as a sexual predator and overall degenerate. Where West trips over his own feet is in casting an extremely affable actor and directing him with great sensitivity. Once the inevitable bloodbath erupts between himself and Foster, you’re not rooting for Foster.

And while Ben Foster and Jan-Michael Vincent (playing Foster’s character from the original film) both inject a sense of warm humor and righteous vengeance into their stock characters, it is really the performances (that is to say, the direction of) Bronson and Statham that define both films. Winner and West equally replicate and subtly expand on the personas of their leading men. Winner directs Bronson as a cryptic loner with a bruised heart who’s very good at his job (like his characters in Once Upon a Time in the West or the aforementioned Death Wish franchise). He expresses himself primarily through his equipment, as any good mechanic should. Statham, a consistently underrated actor, is something of a revelation here. In a performance not dissimilar to the one that recently landed Jesse Eisenberg an Oscar nomination for his sophisticated work in The Social Network, Statham conveys great swells of emotion and deep reservoirs of thought with a split-second sideways glance or the slightest twitch of an eyebrow. Although his character performs more cartoonishly outlandish feats than his predecessor, Statham’s Arthur ultimately comes across as more of a real, complete person. Maybe it’s just because he gets all the glorious, 2011-esque shallow-focus close-ups while Bronson must regard the audience from afar in very-1972 medium shots. And in films such as these, the style IS the substance.

*Although Statham, obviously, is not of Asian descent, he does embody the stylistic physicality of Jet Li, the slapstick tenacity of Jackie Chan and the ability to look really fucking cool while firing automatic weapons at nameless adversaries of Chow Yun Fat. Thanks to the Slate article “How Jason Statham became the world’s biggest B-movie star” for this insight.

Part 1: Sacred Spaces

Through the magic of Netflix Watch Instantly – which seems to be delivering much better quality image than it used to – tonight I saw one of the films I had been eager to catch last year but missed due to unhelpful film distribution patterns/other commitments/laziness.  ‘Elegy’, a film based on a Philip Roth story, with Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz as lovers, Dennis Hopper as Kingsley’s best friend, Deborah Harry as Hopper’s wife, Patricia Clarkson as Kingsley’s long term girlfriend, and Peter Sarsgaard as Kingsley’s son proclaims itself a desirable prospect from its casting alone.  Its director, Isabel Coixet, made two of the best interior dramas of the past few years in ‘The Secret Life of Words’ and ‘My Life Without Me’.

It’s a gorgeous film, thoughtful and ruminative about life and love, ageing and death; a film in which the New York of Woody Allen’s serious side is a character (even though the movie was shot mostly in Vancouver).  It’s about what happens when a person prefers their career over being with other people; when one allows even a little celebrity to take over the priorities of human relationships; when a person believes their own propaganda.

It’s also about cities and how they can affect people – in this movie they look at each other through windows, across courtyards, in nightclubs and taxis, and they’re scared to say what they think or even to really know what they want.  But maybe not always.

Of course, Philip Roth is known for being a serious man – too serious, according to his ex-wife Claire Bloom’s extremely sad memoir – and this is a film based on a novel called ‘The Dying Animal’, so don’t expect an adrenaline-fuelled thrill ride.   Actually, maybe that’s not a bad description, for ‘Elegy’ is an exhilirating piece of work, utterly gripping, full of life despite, being its emotional context, which is in the shade, to say the least.  And, to explain the title of this post, all the performances are excellent – these people feel real.  Penelope Cruz in particular re-asserts the vulnerability she showed in ‘Abre los Ojos’ and its remake ‘Vanilla Sky’.  My genial co-host and I were mightily disappointed by ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’, for which Cruz won an Oscar.  Not that I begrudge people winning prizes, but she stole that one from herself.

The Great Buck Howard / Featuring John Malkovich – Colin Hanks – Emily Blunt / Written and Directed by Sean McGinly

Look at John Malkovich. You can’t take your eyes off him.  He’s got it.

Malkovich is a compelling, magnetic performer.  He’s the reason to see ‘The Great Buck Howard’.  Unfortunately he’s not the focus of the story – the young man below is.

And that’s the right choice for this movie.

It wasn’t the story I wanted to see – I wanted to see the story of washed up, down and out mentalist Buck Howard as he toured the back water venues of forgotten fly-over America.

But ‘The Great Buck Howard’ is about something different – the journey of the young man, played appropriately by the son of a movie star, who’s really not that special, and spends some formative time, (we don’t know how long – the film is kinda wishy-washy that way), learning who he is and what he wants.

‘The Great Buck Howard’ Synopsis

It’s not a great movie, perhaps not even a good one in the traditional sense, (the story is tired and without real bite – imagine what Altman would have done with it!), but I think it’s the film the makers wanted to do – and in that sense it succeeds.  It’s light, a trifle and forgettable – an amiable way to pass the time.

And if you’re in the mood for Malkovich – it’s just the ticket for you.

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‘The Great Buck Howard’ will be at the Belcourt Cinema in Nashville from Friday, March 27th

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If you want something in a similar vein, but with more vim and vigor, I recommend ‘My Favorite Year’ – another story of a young man tasked with looking over a prickly, tart male prima donna, (memorable played by Peter O’Toole who recieved an Acadamy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his efforts).  It’s available right now on Netflix’s Watch Instantly.

Two Lovers / Featuring Joaquin Phoenix – Vinessa Shaw – Gwyenth Paltrow –
Isabella Rossellini – Moni Moshonov / Directed by James Gray (warning: possible spoilers)

What a wonderful movie.

Computerised recommendation systems, (such as those employed by Netflix), encounter difficulty with using people’s ‘star ratings’ as accurate data due to humans tendency to reward something good with higher praise after experiencing something bad – so after seeing a stinker like Pearl Harbor you’d lean towards giving that Woody Allen film you saw right afterward an extra star, (even if it’s ‘The Curse of the Jade Scorpion’).

I tried to keep that in mind while watching ‘Two Lovers’.  After being inundated on The Tubes by ‘Watchmen’ News I was craving something adult – you know, grounded in the real.  So I was in the right mood for this film.

It’s brilliant.

The story of a lost, desperate young man, ‘Two Lovers’, like ‘Taken’, tells one of our oldest narratives.  Should one be part of society, of a community, or an outcast?  One can imagine this story arising out of our pre-agricultural past – as humans began to settle down in settlements, there would be those that preferred the nomadic life; and social-cohesion dynamics being what they are it’s easy enough to be ‘selected’/pushed towards being the outsider.

‘Two Lovers’ tells this old story not only as drama, but as thriller.  The hero is confronted by the choice – suddenly it seems – between two women.  One, amply thesped by Gwyneth Paltrow, seemingly like him a walking disaster, holds the promise of someone to care for, and a life away from the constraints of community and social obligations.  The other, sketched beautifully by Vinessa Shaw, wants to care for him.  I watched the film on the edge of my seat – which way will our hero go?  ‘Two Lovers’ is an essay in suspense, far more thrilling than contemporary action films that use fast cuts and violence in place of the genuine anxiety that comes with our life of choices.

So the film works.

More than that, it works well.  Has their been a recent film with such pitch-perfect performances?  Not only is Joaquin Phoenix’s portrayal of a troubled young man beyond reproach, (and no talk of recent sightings on talk shows please – vultures begone), in ‘Two Lovers’ everyone is good.

See the film and observe Gwyneth Paltrow on the train – look at how she frowns, wrinkles her forehead when talking to our hero – this is beautifully observed naturalism.

Vinessa Shaw – never for a moment do you doubt her feelings for Phoenix’s character – the excitement in her eyes; her whole body carries a secret.  She’s in love.

Elias Koteas does more in one scene than most actors do with a franchise, (in my alternative world o’movies Elias would be Star).

I could go on – but am gushing enough – it’s worth seeing if only for Isabella Rossellini and Moni Moshonov as our hero’s parents – how rare it seems to see genuine parental love on film.

So which way does our hero jump?  I won’t say here.  The film does offer the possibility that one can be within an community, and an artist, (a wonderful thematic thread in the film is our hero’s photography – he’s encouraged by society around him to take photographs of people, not just buildings in decay), to find love and still be free.

In the end the choice is made for him.  Will he be happy in his life?  I don’t know.  But I suspect that, like the woman in white on the ferry, not a month will go by without my wondering if this hero, Leonard Kraditor, has settled, contentedly, into his life.

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‘Two Lovers’ will be the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville till the 5th of March – You should go see it.

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(Photos in this post adapted from ‘Two Lovers’ promotional material)

So, there’s the movie called ‘Crossing Over’ that, according to the imdb is being released this Friday.  It’s directed by Wayne Kramer, the came-out-of-nowhere director of the wonderful smart, sexy and funny Vegas drama ‘The Cooler’; it stars Sean Penn and Harrison Ford and Ashley Judd and Ray Liotta.  Its pedigree would lead you to believe that there’s at least something to celebrate about this movie.

So why, then, have I heard nothing about it, seen no trailer, and do I have the creeping suspicion that it won’t make it to a theatre anywhere near me?  If a film with this cast (popular and good in most of what they do), director (known for a film that was widely loved), and theme (serious enough to evoke the possibility of being thoughtful, accessible enough to be seen by a decent-sized audience, timely enough to spark a public debate), has to be sneaked into cinemas, while the 3-D Jonas Brothers film competes for multiplex space with ‘He’s Just not that Into the Pink Panther Shopaholic Lycan Mall Cop’, are we really seeing, as Jett often prophesies, the end of cinema as we know it?

There are about three hundred screens within 30 minutes of where I live – and I have no confidence that there will be anything on this weekend that I want to see.  Do I have to look forward to only being able to see a film I want on the big screen when it has the advertising budget of ‘Watchmen’ or a 3-D trick to ‘justify’ charging an extra five bucks for the ticket?  Is this the end, or are we just going through a phase?

Films Reviewed This Week: Jett and Gareth’s Live Commentary from the Belcourt Theatre Oscar Night America Benefit

Plus we continue our DVD Commentary Competition

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(Photo above from Gareth Higgins blogging at the Belcourt before the start of the Oscar Benefit)

Taken / Featuring Liam Neeson / Directed by Pierre Morel / Produced By Luc Besson (warning, this review contains spoilers for ‘Taken’ and ‘Atanarjuat’)

Look at the man above.  He is alone and miserable.

Look at him below.  Two Chinese take-out cartons.  You only see this in movies.  This film does not waste time straining for realism.  It’s doing something else.

‘Taken’ is a story.  Maybe the first one.  Watching it you realise that the characters involved aren’t two-dimensional or cardboard, they are without dimension, or more accurately, without psychology.

For this film tells a story that seems to originate from prehistory, from a time before psychology, when there was only action.

In the film, Liam Neeson’s daughter has been taken by swarthy Easterners to be sold to dusky Arabs as a sexual plaything.  He is told he has 96 hours to find her or else the trail will run cold.  That’s what the script says, but it’s not what’s really going on.  It’s established early on that she is a virgin – Neeson has 96 hours before her virginity is taken – it’s the virginity ticking clock.

For he fights not just to save her from harm but to protect an investment – if this story is from prehistory then the virgin daughter is property – her value would drop dramatically if she were no longer pure.

See the daughter above in a scene at the beginning of the pic, before she is taken.  The script says she is seventeen years old.  But in the mind of Liam Neeson his daughter is already lost to him, (she is living with her mother and a new daddy, a wealthy man, a billionaire), hence she’s played by an adult actress – possibly someone in her late twenties.

See the man below.  The wealthy man.  The King.  He has stolen our hero’s mate, and now his offspring.  The king is played by Xander Berkeley, playing the Xander Berkley role.  No more needs to be said.

Our hero, betrayed by his mate, with his King against him and his offspring stolen travels to a far-off land.  There he uses a magic machine to find who has taken his blood.*

He finds an old friend who helps him, but in the end the friend betrays him as well.**

Now I apologise for the portentous path this review has taken so far.  But portentousness is what ‘Taken’ stirs in me.  Watching it I couldn’t stop thinking of that magnificent film Atanarjuat.

A re-telling of an ancient tribal myth of the Inuit, Atanarjuat is also from prehistory and has the same feel as ‘Taken’, though with one important difference.

Ancient stories seem to be not just bloodthirsty but feature heroes that are, by virtue of being ancient, without Christian charity.  There’s not much forgiveness going ’round.  In the ‘spoken tale Atanarjuat’ our Hero kills the villains. But when it was rendered as a film the people involved in the production made a startling choice – they brought the story closer to our time, with its expanding circle of empathy, and the hero lets the villains go, to live in exile.

Not in ‘Taken’.  In fact, not only does the hero kill everyone in site who may tangentially have any relationship to the kidnappers, he tortures them.

He engages in behavior that historically, Hollywood reserved for it’s worst psychopathic killers.  This is our good guy.

And this is what the film tells us at the end.  That U.S. civilisation has declined to such an extent that it has collapsed into a state of prehistory – of savagery.  As Liam Neeson’s character Bryan Miller says to someone he is torturing, and will ultimately kill, “We used to outsource these things”.

Not anymore.

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Ok, that ends the heavy part of my review.  On to some other aspects.  Should you see it?  Yes, if you love proper B-Movies, with fast moving action and an underdog hero.  Poor Liam Neeson is surround by horrible people in this pic, (was there ever a more bitchy wife in cinema then Famke Janssen here?), he’s a put-upon man – the Melon Farmer.  So there’s catharsis, (if you’re into violence as catharsis), to be found here.  This is why Neeson is perfect – he’s playing the small man, the put-upon man – yet we see the ideal – the fantasy projection of the small man, the powerless man – the wishful fantasy of the small man who dreams of being 6-foot-huge as Neeson is.

If you’re looking for a similar pic – where a put upon man, wracked by personal tragedy seeks revenge, but, like me, are disturbed by seeing torture on screen, then I’d highly recommend this Fritz Lang pic:

The Big Heat

Our hero doesn’t need to be a psychopath in The Big Heat.  Instead of being one, he dispatches them, and not to exile.

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* The scene where Neeson examines in close-up an image from an SD card in some sort of ‘Photoshop kiosk’ is fascinating because we don’t really see it as anything special, or ‘sci-fi’, yet what we’re seeing here of course is the famous scene in Bladerunner, (pan right…center and stop, etc.), shown as part of every day life in 2008.  We’re in the world of the future now.

** The French Kevin Spacey?

]]> http://thefilmtalk.com/blog/taken-review-liam-neeson/feed/ 19 http://thefilmtalk.com/blog/oscars-academy-awards-changed-different-2009-gary-cooper-audrey-hepbur/ http://thefilmtalk.com/blog/oscars-academy-awards-changed-different-2009-gary-cooper-audrey-hepbur/#comments Wed, 18 Feb 2009 04:18:23 +0000 Jett Loe http://www.thefilmtalk.com/?p=465
Via dana comes this lovely bit of Academy Award history:

Audrey Hepburn winning an Oscar® for “Roman Holiday”

While I appreciate the youthful elegance of Audrey Hepburn in the clip, what interests me more is the ‘remote’ segment with Gary Cooper somewhere in ‘old-time-hollwoody-mehico’. As talked about in this post:

What the Oscars are Planning – Make it Like the Superbowl

the Academy is planning something different this year in an attempt to regain commercial and cultural relevance. I think they should take a page out of Cooper’s book and whisk us via the magic of Satellite to Stars on various locations – adds some glamour and makes us, the rubes at home here in the ‘Depression with Wi-fi’, feel like we’ve genuinely gone behind the scenes of an upcoming production.

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More Oscar posts on ‘TFT’

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P.S. I love the ® that the AMPAS slaps on everything = gotta guard that IP, plus, how nice to see Donald O’Connor in the above clip as well. Make ‘em laugh Donald.

Nate Silver, the sports and politics statistics genius behind FiveThirtyEight has gone all Oscar on us:

Oscar Predictions You Can Bet On!

I think he’s spot on, except for the Best Supporting Actress Award.  I just can’t believe that the Academy is going to award that little man to Benjamin Button’s Taraji P. Henson, (who was far better in that far better film Hustle and Flow), instead of the magnificent Viola Davis.

We shall see.

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More Oscar posts on ‘TFT’

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(Photo of Angelina Jolie behind father Jon Voight adapted from an original by Alan Light)