6 ‘n 90!  Da Man reviews six films in ninety seconds.

The Adventures of Tintin.  Andy Serkis not only brought Gollum to life on the movie screen, but also King Kong and Caesar the super-intelligent ape.  What seems to be beyond Mr. Serkis and an army of CGI technicians is a believable human being.

Contraband.  Forget about drugs and counterfeit money.  Can we start smuggling good screenplays into the country?

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  As Da Man points out, a better title might be The Man Who Hired the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Mission Impossible:  Ghost Protocol.  Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to… well,  have a good time at this movie.

The Academy Award Nominations.  ‘Nuff said.  But don’t worry, everyone is just going to keep right on talking about them–even the Misfits.

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6 ‘n 90!  Da Man reviews six films in ninety seconds.

My Week with Marilyn.  Forget about one week, judging by this movie, two hours would be too long.

Puss in Boots.  This prequel to Shrek definitely lays an egg–but is it a golden egg or a goose egg?

J. Edgar.  Armed with his latest Oscar bait, Eastwood goes fishing for Academy Awards.  But will this turn out to be “the one that got away”?

Hugo.  You go, I go, we all go for Hugo–that is, if you’re a Misfit.

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6 ‘n 90!  Da Man reviews six films in ninety seconds.

Immortals.  A grim, ugly version of  Greek mythology that’s filled with castrations, disfigured women, and Mickey Rourke sucking on chicken bones.  Who’d want to live forever in this world?

Tower Heist.  A bunch of likable guys in a pretty unlikely caper.

The Three Musketeers.  It’s got a sort of Jules Verne, steampunk vibe.  What it hasn’t got, is much to do with the Alexandre Dumas novel.

The Descendants.  Combine skilled acting, excellent direction, an impressive screenplay, plus gorgeous cinematography and what do you get?  The Misfits have an answer for you.

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6 ‘n 90!  Da Man reviews six films in ninety seconds.

The Thing.  Some things are better left in Antarctica buried in the ice.

In Time.  After wasting two hours watching this film, The Time Bandits might seem like a better title.

Real Steel.  The robot action is great!  Unfortunately,  the human action is pretty mechanical and unconvincing.

Martha Marcy May Marlene.  This year’s Winter’s Bone?  Or just another indie flick with a dark, depressing story?

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Fred Koenekamp won the best cinematography Academy Award for his work on The Towering Inferno and received the lifetime achievement award from the ASC.  In this bonus interview, Mr. Koenekamp talks about the big break of getting work on an Esther Williams film, discusses his Emmy nominated years on The Man From Uncle, shares memories of his collaboration with director Franklin Schaffner, and finishes the interview by talking about his TV work in the 80s and the last film he worked on, Flight of the Intruder.

Gorath

Back on earth, high-ranking Japanese officials are peeved at not having been consulted about the decision to reroute JX-1, but after some thought, they magnanimously decide that, yes, maybe the right decision was made without them (useful information about the possible destruction of the earth was obtained, after all).  Once everyone is on the same page regarding the need to do something about Gorath, the bean counters weigh in with their penny-pinching take on the situation:  it’s going to cost a lot of money to save the earth.  It’s decided the job is too big for Japan to take on alone, and before you can say UNICEF, the project is a United Nations operation.

Considering contemporary attitudes about the United Nations, when even a generous assessment might find it ineffectual, at best, and part of a sinister cabal plotting world domination, at worst, Gorath’s vision of a world united is probably the most unlikely piece of speculation in a fairly improbable science fiction film.  The belief that the world’s scientists might come up with a course of action that every nation on earth would follow and get behind, seems a little wide of the mark also–especially given the plan that’s ultimately proposed.                                                                                                                                                                                                       
 Here is what the best and brightest recommend:  giant nuclear jets built at the South Pole that will push the earth out of Gorath’s path.  Seriously.  But before anyone can point out that the earth’s rotation might be a problem, cargo ships are deployed to the South Pole, and an impressive array of miniatures begin to clear land and build the gigantic jets.  After a few minutes of watching tiny flatbeds, cranes, dump trucks, and bulldozers move across frame, Gorath begins to look less like a motion picture and more like a Tonka Toy commercial.

Once the jets are ignited and blasting away, all that stands in the way of earth’s survival is–you probably guessed it–a giant walrus.  Possibly freed from an icy hibernation by the heat of the nuclear reactors, it rampages through the UN’s command center.  Upon learning of the existence of the giant walrus, the annoyed but blase reaction of the chief scientist is, “I didn’t think an animal existed down here that could give us any trouble.”  Perhaps when you belong to a country that has taken on Godzilla, Rodan, Ghidorah and dozens of other giant monsters, it’s a little difficult to get worked up over an oversized walrus.  A hover-jet is dispatched to locate the walrus, and, two laser blasts later, the problem is solved.

Gorath streaks by, missing the earth, causing only enough destruction with its gravitational pull to satisfy the apocalyptic expectations created by fear-mongering scientists.  While certainly not on a Roland Emmerich level of spectacle or even Irwin Allen, for that matter, the flooding of a couple of miniature cities provides the minimum cathartic experience of mayhem promised by the film.

Unfortunately, without massive maneuvering jets in the eastern and western hemispheres, the earth can only continue in one direction.  Amid the world-wide celebration, it’s lucky no one overhears the following exchange between two scientists:

“Now we face our biggest job.  We must put earth back on its original course.”

“We’ll need twice the nuclear power to put it back in its proper orbit.  I’d say it’s a bit like walking on water.”

It’s not exactly clear what the scientist means by this last line, but it doesn’t sound very encouraging.

*                                        *                                          *

I was eleven in 1966 when I first saw Gorath at a theater in downtown Los Angeles.  It was on a triple bill with Dr. Strangelove and another film I’ve since forgotten.  To be honest, at the time, I liked Gorath and Strangelove just about the same.  The great thing about going downtown to watch movies was that anything could turn up on a double or triple bill.  Current releases played with films that had opened five or ten years earlier.  A classic might share marquee space with an exploitation or foreign film, or just about anything for that matter, as long as it was printed on cellulose acetate and could be run through a projector.

Over the years, Dr. Strangelove has slowly moved to the top of my personal list of all time favorite films, and Gorath, admittedly, has dropped a rung or two, but I still enjoy its can-do, single-minded optimism and complete disdain for any fact that might get in the way of its goofy, visually bold premise.  Rotation be damned–we’re moving the earth!

Lonesome

The movie’s tissue-thin story is the most literal take imaginable on the “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl” plot.  Part one:  Jim and Mary (living in adjacent apartments, unaware of one another) go through their morning activities and then put in a day at work:  Mary as a telephone operator and Jim as a punch press operator.  Part two:  After work, Jim and Mary go to the beach, meet each other, and fall in love.  Part three:  Jim and Mary are separated at an amusement park.  They search for one another without success, return alone to their apartments, but ultimately are reunited.

Lonesome shares a number of thematic and visual similarities with both The Crowd and Sunrise (films to which it is invariably compared), but differs in its presentation of the couple at the center of the story.  Refusing to reduce Jim and Mary to symbols in the service of a larger message or to pump up their story with melodramatic action, director Fejos accepts the simple plot and everyday characters, employing a kind of anything-goes visual strategy to bring them to life on the screen.

After opening with an insert of the ringing bell on an alarm clock, the camera starts in close on Mary’s face, pulls back to reveal her in bed, holds as she rises and stretches, then follows her to a window where she raises the shade and lets the sunlight in.  The camera continues to follow Mary through her apartment, occasionally cutting to a different shot, but preferring to stay with her in real time as she moves from task to task.

In many films of the period, the standard way to shoot Mary’s room would have been in a single, stationary shot, either as an economical way to record the perfunctory, everyday actions, or as a way to frame and define Mary by the limits of her tired, shabby apartment.  But this is never a strategy embraced by Fejos.  Instead he films the sequence almost as if he has never seen someone wake up and get ready for work–as if he can’t imagine a more compelling activity.  When the film cuts to Jim’s apartment, the camera also tracks through it, revealing information and following Jim around with the same insistency and curiosity it showed for Mary.

The rough, unplanned look of the photography for Lonesome, along with a camera that pans, dollies, and precedes Jim and Mary with an almost cinema-verite doggedness, combine to give the film a kind of documentary immediacy.  At other times, however, the film, in a schizophrenic shift in style, has a decidedly experimental/expressionistic look.

During an extended montage of Jim and Mary at work, the camera pans back and forth between the two.  The image of a clock is superimposed on the border of the frame and slowly ticks off the hours yet to be worked.  At one point, the camera tracks down a row of telephone operators, stopping on Mary as she works the switchboard, the mounting number of calls coming in represented by the faces of people superimposed around her, piling up in frame as demand increases.  Meanwhile Jim works at a punch press, pounding out the steady, grinding rhythm of the work day.

Later, in a complete departure from any kind of documentary reality, Jim and Mary are seen against a black background, sitting on the beach at night, framed from the waist up.  This sound sequence is in the film for financial reasons (so it could be released as a talkie), rather than any kind of artistic consideration, but there is still something disarmingly artless about the moment.  After the relentless visual movement and invention that has preceded it, the static shot is startling, occurring as it does in a kind of parentheses to the rest of the action.

Still wearing their swimsuits, Jim and Mary express their love for one another.  The dialogue is awkward and unremarkable, but this only heightens an almost uncomfortable feeling of honesty, of naked exposure both visually and emotionally.  The scene ends with Jim and Mary matted into a shot of a fabricated beach, with what is obviously a miniature amusement park looming in the background.  Although the image is in black and white, colors have been stenciled onto the amusement park, giving this moment outside the rest of the film, a crude, childish sincerity.

Putting aside the demands of love-story conventions, it is clear from the way the movie is shot and constructed that Jim and Mary will end up together.  Even before the two meet, it is almost as if they had once been one, were separated, and now the only way for them to be complete is to be reunited with their spiritual reflection.  As Fejos cuts back and forth between the two, Jim and Mary continually mirror each other’s thoughts and actions.  Later, while searching for one another at the amusement park, Jim and Mary are seen in profile, on either side of a canvas wall, and for a moment, they are literally reflected images of each other.

Admittedly, Lonesome is an uneven film, at times oddly stilted and at others, overly frenetic.  Nevertheless, it is also visually exuberant, and Fejos’ everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach, successfully marshals film techniques usually employed by Hitchcock, Gance, or Vertov.  While the film is far from being a stylish thriller, a historical epic, or even a head-scratching experimental film, Lonesome is, in its own way, just as ambitious.  Maybe more importantly, it is a kind of film rarely seen on the big screen–then or now.  It is a celebration of the everyday.

Lonesome.  Directed by Pal Fejos.  Mary:  Barbara Kent.  Jim:  Glen Tryron.

I remember watching The Seven Chances there.  It was my first introduction to Buster Keaton, who would, in time, become my favorite comedian — in either silent or sound films.  That semester, we also watched Storm Over Asia (Potomok Chingis-Khana), a film by V. I. Pudovkin, and definitely in the Eisenstein  mold of early Soviet films.  With its bold, direct images; its at times heavy-handed visual metaphors; and didactic, unapologetic, manipulative editing; this film, in an odd way, spoke to me.  I’d never seen anything like it, and it was a surprise and a thrill to watch.  Other great films that I saw for the first time in that lecture hall were Jesse James and My Darling Clementine.

It was no different in Tom’s documentary class.  It was there that I was first introduced to the documentaries of Frederic Wiseman and the Maysles brothers.  Their films have been favorites of mine ever since.  In the screenwriting course, I learned about the nuts and bolts and whys and why nots of putting a story together in a visual way — but with words and on paper.

In his lectures and discussions, Tom was always intelligent and interesting, never bullying or dogmatic.  He also brough a welcome sense of humor and perspective to all of his exchanges, whether it was with the entire class or one-on-one with an individual student.

If you’re lucky, you can look back, and there are a handful of teachers who made a real difference in your life, who opened doors, surprised, and took some daunting subject and made it exciting and accessible.  An even smaller handful of teachers are terrific, decent people, who are able to maintain their own excitement for a particular subject (in this case, film) and continue to excite others about it.

Tom is definitely one of these all too rare individuals.  I will always be in his debt.

Islander interview with Tom Stempel, part one:

Islander interview with Tom Stempel, part two:

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