Including the upcoming American Gangster, Denzel Washington has played real-life characters in feature films on six occasions. Name the other five films. (For bonus points, name the characters.) Here’s a hint, composite characters do not count. Think of this as one of those World Series of Pop Culture tie-breakers and try to name as many as you can without consulting IMDB.
My favorite quote about the “well, duh” big open for Saw IV, from Media By Numbers President Paul Dergarabedian:
“There’s just something inherently gruesome and compelling about these movies. I don’t know what that says about society in general, but it certainly works at the box office.”
11/2
Wide
WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Denzel vs. Crowe
WILL IT SUCK?
Early buzz is excellent to the tune of #120 in the IMDB Top 250, pre-release. You’d expect no less from Steve Zaillian writing, Ridley Scott directing and the leads I’ve already mentioned. And those of you who thought you saw Common in the trailer, you did.
HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Opening in fairly thick competition, but this will be hard to beat. $65mil.
WILL ANYBODY REMEMBER IT AT OSCAR TIME?
Who won’t get a nod from this movie?
WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Kiddie K-Pax
WILL IT SUCK?
Variety describes it as “sententiously moralizing.” I’m not 100% sure what that means, but it doesn’t sound good. They like the leads, though: John Cusack and newcomer Bobby Coleman as the Martian tyke. From the director of Max, which was, well, okay.
Incidentally, in the book Cusack’s character is a gay, single father. In this version, he’s a hetero widower. Hmm…
HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Feel good dramedy is gonna come more from Dan in Real Life’s second frame than this. $22mil.
WILL ANYBODY REMEMBER IT AT OSCAR TIME?
Cusack has a better shot with his other hetero widower role.
WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Antz with wings. And Jerry Seinfeld.
WILL IT SUCK?
All the hallmarks are there for a good Seinfeld ep, from the setting to the writers. Co-director did Prince of Egypt, which was, well, okay. Haven’t seen anything from it yet that actually looks funny, though. I get the feeling I’d rather watch Seinfeld do stand-up for 90 minutes.
HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Basically has the demo to itself, with just the slightest leeching from Fred Claus the following week. $120mil.
WILL ANYBODY REMEMBER IT AT OSCAR TIME?
Depending upon how reviews pan out, it’s easy game for Best Animated.
Limited
WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Doc about six activists (including Don Cheadle) who try to make a difference in the Sudan.
WILL IT SUCK?
Early buzz is good. It’ll be interesting to see if people can get past their prejudices against celebrities touting causes to get into the film (Clooney’s up in here, too).
HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
If Leo can’t sell global warming, I don’t know if Cheadle can market Darfur. $1mil.
WILL ANYBODY REMEMBER IT AT OSCAR TIME?
Might be in contention with Devil Came on Horseback for doc.
JOE STRUMMER: THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN
WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Doc about Clash icon Joe Strummer.
WILL IT SUCK?
Early buzz is outstanding. From perennial musicphile Julien Temple.
HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Nobody knows about this. $500,000.
WILL ANYBODY REMEMBER IT AT OSCAR TIME?
Music docs rarely make the short list.
Next week: It’s Tom Cruise! And he’s not crazy! Ish.
…that I went to StorySlam. Aaron Krolikowski was there and sketched the entire event. To wit…
Let this put to rest rumors that I trained an orangutan to liveblog and stayed home to watch House.
Welcome to the liveblog for the First Person Arts October StorySlam, live from L’Etage in South Philly. Refresh Early, Refresh Often…
7:41 p.m. - Doors opened at 7:30pm and this place is already full. It’s a chatty crowd, which is probably a good thing since ten of them are going to tell stories tonight.
7:51 p.m. - Relatively dodgy interweb connection means that adding links, like the ones I just added to the top of the page, isn’t going to happen very often tonight.
7:53 p.m. - Audience at-a-glance. 20’s - 30’s. Pretty even split male/female (a little more female). Mostly white. Gregarious. Dan, one of the organizers sez there’s plenty of new faces tonight.
8:00 p.m. - Thirty minutes to go. Just met Susan, who’s been to a bunch of these before but has never told a story but hopes to tonight. She’s the subject of one of the five minute docs that has been submitted for the First Person Festival in November. Will link to that contest, which is pretty cool, when I get a chance. Her friend Linda, sitting next to her, has a workshop in that festival called “Portrait of a Thing” about creating memorials to lost items. Plenty of cool people here. (more…)
A little test post now that I’m on site at L’Etage, home of tonight’s StorySlam. The Interwebs are a little spotty here, but this gives me a chance to see what my city’s (relatively) new municipal wifi is like. More soon…
First Person Arts’ StorySlam is an event that happens every month here in Philly. It’s basically Fray with a few variations like competition and theme. I’ve been invited to liveblog it, so tune in here tomorrow night at 8 p.m. and then hit refresh a lot.
30 Days of Night is going to do far better than my already optimistic forecast. Everything else from last weekend will do far worse.
10/26
Wide
WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Dan (Steve Carell) goes to his family reunion and falls for his brother’s (Dane Cook) girlfriend (Juliette Binoche).
WILL IT SUCK?
Writer/director Peter Hedges lives and breathes this stuff. His Pieces of April covered similar ground. It’s almost enough to make me ignore the unbelievably cheesy trailer. Early buzz is good.
HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Evan Almighty proved that Carell’s not invulnerable. Then gain, even The Family Stone made some bank. $61mil.
WILL ANYBODY REMEMBER IT AT OSCAR TIME?
Hedges directed Patricia Clarkson to a nod in April, so it’s not out of the question.
WHAT’S THE PITCH?
More torture and shit.
WILL IT SUCK?
It’ll be interesting to see what Feast writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan do with the material. (There’s a Feast 2 and 3 on the way for some reason, by the way.) Same director as II and III. Oh, and Jigsaw’s dead, right? Yeah, interesting to see what they do with that, too.
HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
The closest thing you’ll get to a blockbuster this month. $81mil.
WILL ANYBODY REMEMBER IT AT OSCAR TIME?
Most Punctual Franchise? Seriously, every Halloween they’re Johnny-on-the-spot with that shit.
Limited
WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Kevin Bacon forms a bond with the kid who’s mom used his train to commit suicide.
WILL IT SUCK?
Directed by Clint’s daughter, Alison Eastwood. No pressure. Early buzz is mixed.
HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
In a very crowded season, I’m not sure anyone besides Clint knows about this one. $1mil.
WILL ANYBODY REMEMBER IT AT OSCAR TIME?
It took her dad a long time before the Academy started looking at him as a director. Of course Coppola’s daughter got the nod on her second flick.
BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD
WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Two brothers conspire to rob their parents.
WILL IT SUCK?
Sidney Lumet at the helm. As often as not a good thing. Early buzz is good.
HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Need more buzz. $1mil.
WILL ANYBODY REMEMBER IT AT OSCAR TIME?
Looks like a juicy role for Philip Seymour Hoffman, but it’s not like he’s due.
WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Jimmy Carter goes on a book tour. Jonathan Demme watches.
WILL IT SUCK?
Demme is an accomplished documentarian, and the early buzz seems to say that streak continues, with one critic liking the film better than the book Carter was promoting.
HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Political doc Darfur Now will likely trump this political doc next week. $500,000.
WILL ANYBODY REMEMBER IT AT OSCAR TIME?
Most Grammatically Troublesome Title.
WHAT’S THE PITCH?
A deaf guy and a guy with CP go around solving mysteries. Okay, actually they help create the Americans With Disabilities Act, but I like my plot, too.
WILL IT SUCK?
Really not much known about the writers or director. Ron Livingston and Michael Sheen should make a good leads, and the presence of Clint Howard makes any movie better.
HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Even with my brilliant mystery-solving premise, this film would need better marketing. $750,000.
WILL ANYBODY REMEMBER IT AT OSCAR TIME?
Both leads have disabilities? That’s like Oscar gold! But will enough people see it?
Next week: Sort of like The Pursuit of Happyness if Will Smith imported heroin in coffins.
20. Blade Runner - Time to Die
“Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it? That’s what it is to be a slave.”
In our last entry, I talked about how production design contributes to action. Here, forget about it. The production design in Ridley Scott’s 1982 adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? makes the production design in Aliens (or pretty much any other film) look like it was put together by third graders with papier-maché. If kick-ass lighting and a brilliant use of the Bradbury building were all this sequence had going for it, that would be plenty, but that’s only the beginning.
Blade Runner often gets noted for its many levels. It effuses subtext more than just about any film of its ilk. Note the dolls in the room where Deckard finds Pris. Note the way in which Batty taunts Deckard throughout, telling him “That’s the spirit!” when he fights back. He’s teaching him about raging against the dying of the light. He’s saying “Welcome to my world.”
The action sequence as object lesson is fairly rare, but here it works wonders.
It doesn’t hurt that Roy Batty is one of the best villains in movie history. One of the things that makes a great villain is empathy. If you can feel a villain’s plight, relate to the problem they’re trying to solve, they suddenly become much more compelling. You find yourself questioning your own sympathies and judgments.
Here, Roy Batty simply wants to live. That he cannot, in spite of his great strength and intelligence, is the central tragedy and theme of the film. Because, in fact, none of us, regardless of strength or intelligence, can escape his fight. And neither can Deckard, but that’s another kettle of synthetic fish.
The suggestions that Deckard is [spoiler] are scattered throughout the film but appear at least twice here. In an oblique sense as Scott juxtaposes the Deckard and Batty repairing their hands, and in a slightly more direct moment when Lt. Castillo tells him that he’s done “a man’s job.”
But back to Batty and his awesomeness for a moment. After he breaks two of Deckard’s fingers, he gives him back his gun. He’s that kind of motherfucker. Later, out of nowhere, he grabs a dove. Who does that!?! And is there any other character who could end an action sequence with a soliloquy?
Finally, if the action-film-as-art-film motif weren’t apparent enough, you’ve got Vangelis bringing it home (for the second time on this list).
By the way, if you’ve got the good guy trapped between your knees and you’re ready to deliver your killing blow, don’t drop him and run across the room just so you can do a bunch of flips before you hit him again. That’s, like, in the henchwoman faq.
Just the last little bit, but it includes the monologue that Rutger Hauer (partly) improvised.
See also: The rest of Blade Runner, David Lean lenses action-as-art in the attack on the train in Lawrence of Arabia, Kurosawa does it in the attack on the red castle in Ran.
Next: Even unarmed, Charlton Heston is a bad motherfucker.
21. Aliens - The Battle
“Look, I’m telling you, there’s something moving and it ain’t us.”
What sets James Cameron’s 1986 Alien sequel apart as a genre film is its mix of horror and action, fairly new at the time. Cameron said he wasn’t going so much for “horror” as “terror,” which is why he takes almost an hour to get to this scene, the first instance of bang-bang in the whole film. He has to build that terror, step by grimy step, for a full 57 minutes first.
Part of the buildup involves a Hitchcockian effect, where the audience knows more than the characters. We’ve seen the first movie, so we know what it means when they find that empty egg. In addition, Cameron’s script keeps upping the ante, removing the soldiers’ ability to use their weapons just before the encounter.
Cameron enhances the action dynamic by infusing the scene with humanity. There’s something very natural about the way Ripley tells Newt to leave the room when they start finding bodies. Her reaction when they find the chestburster is palpable. A lot of people forget that Sigourney Weaver got a Best Actress nod for this flick.
What’s more, Cameron doesn’t settle for a straightforward presentation of the action. He provides filters to layer the scene. The primary filter is the use videocameras strapped to each helmet. They give us a soldier’s-eye view of the action. The result is terrifying and adds a level of video-footage-as-realism that would come into vogue three years later with shows like Cops. He doesn’t even have to show us Wierzbowski’s murder, just the view from his spinning helmet-cam, his screams and, the other filter, his readings. The flatline that appears onscreen back in the APC adds an extra level of dread to the proceedings.
For all the terror, Cameron doesn’t skimp on the action. One of the techniques he uses very well in this sequence is the notion of connected action. Each event isn’t just spectacular in it’s own right, but is an essential gear in the greater machine. The flame-thrower execution of the chestburster wakes up the aliens. The first one to attack causes its victim to fire a flamethrower that kills another marine who has all the ammunition which then explodes taking out another marine, and so on. Everything is consequential, which becomes particularly important when they get close enough for their kills to spray acid all over them. Few action sequences exploit this potential, relying instead on discrete bits of unconnected eye candy.
Inspired in part by Dallas’ departure in the first one (what with the motion sensor and all), this scene follows suit by taking out the man in charge early on. Not as much of a shock in this one since, unlike Alien, we know he’s not the main character, but still an essential step in breaking down authority and control at the end of a very long first act.
Another key element in this sequence is the incredible set design by Peter Lamont. The terror literally surrounds the characters as the aliens become an organic part of their environment. This helps to retain the creatures’ mystique, which could have so easily been lost by their sheer numbers.
Embed isn’t working, but you can watch most of the sequence here.
See also: The rest of Aliens, the Crawlers’ first attack in The Descent, Vin Diesel literally faces off with a big-ass monster in Pitch Black.
Next: The guy who directed the first one of these doesn’t exactly suck at action sequences, either.
22. Narc - Stray Bullet
“Help!”
Speaking of tracking shots, the first half of the opening sequence to Joe Carnahan’s 2002 noir is a handheld one (with a little creative editing). It was actually shot by a stuntman, who was the only person on set able to keep up with Jason Patric’s frantic pace as his character chases a junkie through a housing project.
The intensity of this sequence is unparalleled. Although shot without sound, Patric’s raspy, desperate panting was recorded later at a track and added in. As the most prominent sound in the sequence (there is no music) it sells the intensity of the moment.
The shakiness of the camera sells it, too. And we’re not just talking Blair Witch shaky. We’re talking Darren Aronofsky in Pi shaky. Not for the motion sickness-prone.
More than just about any sequence on this list, the acting is crucial. You can see the struggle and pain on Patric’s face as he decides whether or not to try to save an innocent bystander stabbed in the neck with God knows what lethal drug dose by the junkie. And that’s merely a prelude to how heartbreaking the scene is about to become.
Carnahan packs all of this into a little over 2 minutes. It might have been longer, had Canadian winter days lasted longer, but the crew ran out of sunlight and had to make do with the footage they shot. With some brillaint editing by John Gilroy (Michael Clayton writer/director Tony Gilroy’s brother, who also edited Clayton), I think that lack of time actually turns into a blessing, making the most of the film’s indie aesthetic.
This is also one of the most visceral sequences on our list. The gurgling cries of the injection victim or the pool of blood from another bystander are gut punches amplified by Patric’s tortured reactions.
Carnahan describes the decision to begin his film with this scene as a decision to “jump on the audience’s throat.” Consider it stomped.
See also: Final car chase in The Bourne Supremacy, Cillian Murphy ambushes some troops in 28 Days Later, all of Run Lola Run