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June 29, 2013

LILO AND STITCH

Your Unrandom Movie Club Results Are In!

Tagline: There's one in every family.

Pizza: L.A. Valley Pizzaland

Preshow Entertainment: None

A STITCH IN TIME
SAVES LILO

For the past three and a half years, I've been watching one Disney animated feature per month, in chronological order, beginning with SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS. This month, my 42nd, I was up to LILO & STITCH (2002). I figured, why not make this one a public event, an Unrandom Movie Club selection, and see if we can get some kids in here to watch along. So we did. We had our first kid-friendly Club meeting. Yup, in attendance - a batch of primitive humanoid lifeforms, and some kids came too.

Born out of a (failed) book idea Chris Sanders had back in 1985, L & S was repitched when Disney was looking for smaller stories that can triumph ("This generation's DUMBO") rather than a big concept movie. Sanders had done story work on such notables as THE LION KING, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and ALADDIN; but this time out, along with Dean DeBlois, he sat in the director's swivel. He also did the voice of:

Stitch - A diminutive, lovable yet impetuous alien, illegally genetically engineered...mostly to destroy stuff. (By wacky coincidence, Stitch also happens to make a cute Disney plush.) A childlike mix of obnoxious/precocious, Stitch is soon banished from his planet, only to escape the prison transport and land on Earth, in Hawaii. At first Hawaii seems like the perfect place to land. A paradise. But we soon learn that Stitch isn't good with water.

Lilo - A diminutive, lovable yet impetuous girl prone to hitting people and messing things up. She's been relegated to orphandom due to her parents' grisly death in a car that plunged over a cliff and landed in a fireball of twisted metal and anguished death cries (I may have made that part up).

Stitch and Lilo are two of a kind - smart, but bratty and rebellious. The truth is, they're acting out (by, for example, biting the people who torment them) to cover their pain. They are orphaned ugly ducklings trying to figure out where they fit in. Bummed, Lilo immures herself in her house, listening to Elvis 45s (I'm not sure a 6 year old would be such an Elvis freak, nor play 45s, but okay).

At first, Stitch wants no part of Lilo's world, but it soon becomes a marriage of convenience. You see, Stitch's maker, the four-eyed jumbo Jumba (David Ogden Stiers), along with sidekick Pleakley (Kevin McDonald) are recruited to retrieve him. And Jumba and Pleakley can't capture Stitch as long as he's with Lilo, posing as her pet (Stitch morphs himself, sort of, into a dog, sort of). Meanwhile, Lilo and her sister/guardian Nani are being harassed by Mr. Bubbles (the deep-voiced Ving Rhames), a menacing child protective services guy. Sure, there's a lot going on, even a love story between Nani and surfer David (Tia Carrere and Jason Scott Lee, both actually from Hawaii), but the story is nice and clean. And the subtext of the oddball fitting in is clear.

Moving along at a brisk clip, there are wonderful moments in L & S, some big (when asked why not make something instead of destroying things, Stitch fashions the entire city of San Francisco using books, only to destroy it playing Godzilla) and others small (In their alien language, Stitch tells the people on his planet something so awful that a robot pukes metal gears). There are also the requisite Disney moments, like when Nani is about to give the animal adoption woman Susan Hegarty (played by dialect coach to the stars Susan Hegarty) the $2 fee, and Lilo says, "I wanna buy him!," only to ask Nani to borrow $2. That was warm and fuzzy, but there's also funny - Lilo to the menacing Mr. Bubbles: "Did you ever kill anyone?" Mr. Bubbles, after a beat: "We're getting off the subject."

I loved the animation; not just the rendering, but the movement. The way Stitch scampers, then pauses (for comedy) before he does things like close the refrigerator door with his foot. I've learned, post-viewing, that the animators went back to using watercolors for their backgrounds, a la DUMBO and SNOW WHITE (which as you've learned, I watched 42 months ago). And while we're talking animators, make sure you spot the running Cal Arts gag of their animation classroom number "A113," found in every Pixar and many Disney films, showing up here on the truck's license plate.

The 2-disc "Big Wave" edition has a 2 hour documentary which is exhaustingly fantastic (and 25% longer than the movie). From the germ of the idea (Stitch was a character 15 years before Lilo) through storyboards, character design, story, you name it. For you animation fans out there, I urge you to check this out. A word of caution, though; a lot of what we see occurs during production, when they're in the creative high, so it gets a bit too energetic and important at times, which is so good for them but often tiring for us. But we do learn things like them cutting a 747 airplane sequence immediately after 9/11. The plane was quickly replaced by a spaceship, done so by changing the actual plane's model on the computer. Fascinating and cool. Less fascinating and cool, we get to witness Sanders taking up skateboarding.

Other extras include a ten minute interview with Joe Grant a year before he died. Grant co-wrote DUMBO and designed both the witch and the queen in SNOW WHITE. At 96 years old, he still worked at Disney. Grant died at the storyboard table in his studio 7 days before his 97th birthday. Also on the 2-disc set, the way they marketed the movie by putting Stitch into famous Disney films like MERMAID, BEAST, and LION KING. Pretty crafty and really funny. If you don't want to rent/buy it, you can grab the spots off YouTube. Here's one for you to start with: http://goo.gl/sqngX

With all these extras, I sure found it funny how no one interviewed mentioned the similarities to E.T.; alien and kid, both outcast and lost, find each other and help each other. As mentioned earlier, the story's early incarnation was thought up by writer Sanders in 1985, three year's after E.T.'s release, when it was still very much in people's veins (and the year E.T. was re-released in theaters). Other similarities include E.T. and Stitch raiding their host's fridges and E.T. and Stitch using record players. I found a few other Spielberg nods, like Stitch crushing a can against his head like Quint in JAWS, and that Gremlins thing of getting them wet. Come to think of it, Stitch is a bit Gremliny.

So the kids enjoyed it and so did the grown-ups. And now, if I may be excused, I'm off to TREASURE PLANET. Aloha.

Posted by Rich at 11:45 AM | Permalink |

June 15, 2013

THE PROJECTIONIST

Your Random Movie Club Results Are In!

Tagline: None

Pizza: Lenzini's

Preshow Entertainment: THERE'S A MESSAGE IN EVERY BOTTLE

THE PROJECTIONIST
FEELS LIKE A SURREAL VERSION
OF A HIGH CONCEPT ADAM SANDLER MOVIE

At an hour and twenty-five minutes, THE PROJECTIONIST (1971) is an hour too long. Perhaps if this were a five minute short, or even ten. Because this is a one trick pony that can wear out its welcome. However - never in my life have I been so fascinated by a movie that bored me this much. So why is it so captivating? So interesting? It's not the story, or the acting, or the cinematogra...errr, I mean, the less-than-student-film way it's shot. Nope. It's just that...that...that it's such an oddity. No - a curiosity. And lead Chuck McCann gives a beautiful and honest performance playing an existential version of his real self.

THE PROJECTIONIST opens with a mislead - a GERALD MCBOING BOING cartoon. PULL BACK TO REVEAL: The cartoon's being run in a movie theater, and when the film breaks, the audience gets angry, and it's up to the projectionist (Chuck McCann) to be the hero and come to the rescue, which is also the theme of this movie. Sure, I wish they explained why the people in the theater look less like ones you'd find watching a cartoon and more like porn theater clientele (lots of single men), but I'll chalk that up to this movie being so very low budget that they just grabbed strangers and tossed them in some seats. But out of the projector's gate, THE PROJECTIONIST, a film that is preserved by The Museum of Modern Art Department of Film and Video, is telling us we're going to see snippets from other sources. And that it's going to get nutty.

The projectionist is an avuncular nerd with a paunch. His whole life is the movies, relating to stars' pictures on the projection booth's wall more than relating to real people. He doesn't even have a name in the movie. That is until later, when he's called "Chuck" by the candy counter guy. Moments later, Chuck exits the theater, where the marquee displays "Now Playing Chuck McCann as The Projectionist." Surreal. Toldya.

When Chuck hears a news story of an elderly man getting mugged, he plays the scenario out in his head. It's a B & W silent movie version (smart move, considering the budget), where he becomes Captain Flash (more like Flash Gordon than The Flash), a disheveled superhero, but a superhero nonetheless. With no real powers, even changing his clothes in a phone booth becomes a formidable task due to the confines and his girth. You'd think if you were fantasizing about yourself being a hero, you'd give yourself some powers. That's telling right there.

Captain Flash meets a girl (filmed all over NYC, using seemingly stolen shots, this segment was shot at Audubon Terrace), but it's all in Chuck's head. For this is just the projectionist's projection. With a love song featuring sweeping strings and a melody close to the original STAR TREK theme (already canceled by this time), our hero is swept away. But first, he must save her father, a scientist (he's the candy counter guy in the movie's real life segments) from those muggers, who suddenly turn out to be henchmen of a megalomaniacal villain called The Bat, played by Rodney Dangerfield (his first movie). In the non-fantasy parts, Dangerfield plays Chuck's dictator theater owner Renaldi. (Are you getting all this?) Renaldi treats his ushers with an iron hand. They're his troops (employees at this theater are older, unlike the teen ushers of today) lined up for inspection. This fascism parallels nicely with the candy counter guy (Jara Kohout), who was forced out of films in his native Czechoslovakia in this story as well as in real life. To hear him tell his backstory, well, that may be my favorite part of THE PROJECTIONIST. A quick internet check (Czech check?) proves that Kohout did make movies in Czechoslovakia, and that his story is true.

Chuck's Captain Flash finds himself in many situations, some using footage not only from actual movies, but huge movies, like CASABLANCA, CITIZEN KANE and EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS. Sometimes Chuck interacts with Bogie and others, like Steve Martin did in DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID. The difference is, I don't see how THE PROJECTIONIST did it legally. I'm pretty sure they didn't have any money to pay for the rights to those clips. And it's certainly not Fair Use. Maybe they had a billion dollar budget and used it all to acquire rights, which left them with fourteen cents for the film's actual production. I did read somewhere that the studios gave permission for the usage of these clips in exchange for some of the movie's revenue, but even that seems like a stretch to me. Some of these scenes integrate Chuck into things like an actual Flash Gordon movie, with mole men and monsters and people writhing in torment on a gigantic idol, while others are more passive; while strolling by the premiere for the movie STAR! starring Julie Andrews, Chuck imagines himself interviewed for, get this, the movie he just made called THE PROJECTIONIST (Chuck to reporter: "We had a lot of fun making it."). This is followed by him telling the reporter, "I've got to get up to the booth, get this one started."

And it's not just the usage of films. Posters and glossies line both the projection booth and his sad apartment, giving THE PROJECTIONIST license to talk to dead movie stars' images, (McCann's a pretty good impressionist, so this conceit was also to the film's advantage) like Bogart, Stewart, the Duke, Gable, Laurel and Hardy and Taylor Lautner....okay not Taylor Lautner. In his apartment, saturated with memorabilia, he reaches for his ashtray without looking, unable to unglue his eyes from his TV set. He goes from the isolation of his projection booth to the isolation of his apartment (which in a way is is a bit of a projection booth itself). He stays till the end of the TV day, past the minister's sermon and station sign-off of THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER over images of lynchings, protests, and assassinations.

Often, there's little rhyme or reason why Chuck goes into fantasy moments, and why they are triggered. They just happen. He can look at a highway and bam! He's in a fantasy. And they don't always have to do with him being a hero. In a porn store, sad sack Chuck thumbs through some girlie magazines which intercuts with a naked girl on a bear skin rug talking to him. I'm pretty sure this was a parody of a commercial or print ad from the time.

Chuck's great at being Chuck. Like Gleason, he's hammy when need be or can exude a pathos that can break you in pieces. He had already appeared in 1968's THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER, but this was his first lead role, and possibly his only. (He's also an Aristocrat!) But I, like boatloads of others, knew Chuck from his kids shows. Many have a soft spot for Chuck, and they should. He was our babysitter on Sunday mornings. I spotted him once on the set of SABRINA, THE TEENAGE WITCH, walking around between takes with his tail between his legs. I mean it. He had a tail. I guess the story line had him turn into a raccoon or something. Or maybe he's a furry who's now been outed. I'm not sure. But I thought, how sad that this great man, so much of so many kids' lives, is now sporting a humiliating tail. And within a nanosecond, I corrected myself. No! This is exactly what he should be doing. Entertaining the next generation of kids. What was I thinking? Shame on me. Chuck, you rock. And you just keep on rocking. Even though THE PROJECTIONIST baffles me. SIDENOTE: Two years after this movie, Chuck would appear in a great episode of COLUMBO playing...a projectionist. I suspect that was on purpose.

Having grown up in the New York area, I sure did love the city's grittiness coming through here. Nothing like 1970's Times Square. Certainly nothing like it is today. And the movie palace they shot in? Just beautiful. It was called the Midtown Theater, and it's on Broadway between 99th and 100th. Coincidentally, sometime next year (2014), it's opening as part of the Alamo Drafthouse movie theater chain. When I was in NYC a few weeks ago, I coincidentally walked by there on my way to meet a friend and snapped this picture (left).

You should know that projectionist Chuck has a second fantasy life. It turns out the girl from his Captain Flash fantasy is a girl he spotted in real life. And when co-worker/usher Harry (director Harry Hurwitz) asks him about her, Chuck tells his tale. Again, we see it in B & W, so that's what it is - a tale. Or is it? As the final reel winds down, Chuck's real life and fantasy life collide. And though he is having the time of his life, we're a bit confused, yet happy for him. After all, he is a hero, and heroes, by definition, need to win.

Preshow Entertainment: THERE'S A MESSAGE IN EVERY BOTTLE

Another cautionary ephemeral film about underage drinking. You gotta love these things, with their grandiloquent narration - "Some doctors believe alcohol beverages are the safest tranquilizers readily available to man" and "Most adults respect alcohol the same way they do a sharp knife or a loaded rifle" and "One out of five adults don't touch it at all. And they're happy and successful."

Here's the story of four teens who do a lot of waterskiing (this could have been a ten minute short instead of 20). They also snap their fingers as they dance on the beach to a record on the record player that's not plugged in. I guess the adults making this movie were also not plugged in to youth culture. They did manage to put some gray tape over the record's title, so they knew about copyright laws. Anyway, they go out for cocktails...and when I say cocktails, I mean they order a Tom Collins and an Old Fashioned. And if this isn't wacky enough, suddenly this little tale takes a turn, as the four tipsy teens are transported into fantasies (seems to be a theme of this evening's fare); one's an astronaut, another a movie star, another a lion tamer, and the fourth runs a corporate board meeting. Why? Because the teens think that the positives of alcohol (in order of these aforementioned fantasies) are the experience of visiting an unreality, or being the life of the party, or being courageous, and the fourth, well I wasn't clear on that board room one. Something about how teens should be able to make their own decisions.

Then, it veers into that ephemeral fave - winning through intimidation. "When you drink illegally, you are merely showing your instability, your immaturity. That your character is weak. You lack self control. You are showing the world you can't shoulder the responsibilities of youth. Making it obvious that you'll certainly not be able to bear the much heavier responsibilities of adulthood."

Yeah, that must have worked.

Posted by Rich at 9:00 AM | Permalink |

June 01, 2013

FEMME FETALE

Your Unrandom Movie Club Results Are In!

Tagline: Nothing is more desirable or more deadly than a woman with a secret

Pizza: L.A. Valley Pizzaland

Preshow Entertainment: None

IN FEMME FATALE, REBECCA ROMIJN HAS
ANTONIO BANDERAS IN DE PALMA HER HAND

With the exception of HOME MOVIES (1980), I like or love every film Brian De Palma has made. Sure, he's been rightfully accused of lifting from Hitchcock, but so what? He's not simply great at that, he's also great at understanding film, and in turn, making them. So make no mistake, this movie is not about Rebecca Romijn (then Romijn-Stamos) and Antonio Banderas, nor is it about the fun yet ludicrous plot teeming with buys and coincidences. FEMME FATALE (2002) is all about the craft of Brian De Palma, and for that alone, it's worth it.

FEMME FATALE opens with a hot naked girl smoking in bed while watching maybe the best noir film, DOUBLE INDEMNITY...with French subtitles. I suppose it's plausible, but it also tells us the absurdities are only going to get bigger. Much of the upcoming ridiculousness comes after this preamble in the opening heist sequence. Suspense is De Palma's strong suit, and this is one of the most fun scenes in the movie. That said, it's silly. No criminal in their right mind would hatch a plan with this many ways to go wrong. That bothered me. For as fun as FEMME FATALE is, it trips itself up with its over-the-top-ness, not to mention perhaps the corniest last line in film history. Oops. I mentioned it.

FEMME FATALE is the hypnopompic story of Laure (Romijn), a heartless, double-crossing sizzler who, at the Cannes Film Festival, steals 10 million dollars in diamonds by removing them from a model's body while making out with her in the restroom. (Coincidentally, real thieves made off with over a million dollars of jewelry at Cannes just a few weeks ago - http://goo.gl/gSkni). Then, instead of sharing the diamonds with her heist crew, she takes them all for herself. Later, the bad guys catch her, but because of a series of absurd and impossibly lucky events (one or two would have been okay...forty or so's a bit much), she's able to escape, change her identity, and live happily ever after. No, that's not entirely true. Seven years later, the bad guys find her. But Laure, who is now Lily, is whip smart with feline survival impulses. To save her hotass ass, she uses anyone she can, like Puss In Boots Banderas, who plays paparazzo Nicolas Bardo.

De Palma saturates the film with invisible details as well as clues that, when displayed for us, we don't know are clues. Even the bad guy known as Black Tie winks at us in the very first scene, a wink we can only figure out retrospectively, once we have more information later. And because we don't yet know what the heist is all about (De Palma is amazing at this...remember all that great MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE stuff going on simultaneously?), and who's who, we don't know that he's giving away a major plot twist right before our eyes. Of course, having two hot girls deep tongue kissing may have distracted a few of us.

But because things in FEMME FATALE often get silly, we don't take these details seriously, and because we don't take them seriously, we don't watch for them with the keen eye that we should. That's why FEMME FATALE is both so good and so frustrating. Had we been more deeply invested, we'd wonder why it's 3:33 on the clock when Laure's taking a bath and 3:33 on the clock when Bardo is being interrogated by the police. Coincidence? And why is that fish tank overflowing?? So, if you haven't seen the movie, I would urge you to take it seriously...if you can, because there's so much fun in the details. Everything means something, so pay attention. And it's okay to be confused. It's intentional. It'll all start to make sense as things unfold. Yet - not everything will be explained. I'll never know why Laure gives a soliloquy in English to Lily, who is French. And just how did Nicolas get to the street so fast after witnessing the accident from his apartment at the end? Also, as a photog, why does he choose not to bring his camera with him when he runs to the accident? This is not to say De Palma doesn't know what he's doing. Au contraire. There's great stuff here besides the aforementioned opening Cannes sequence, like when (the real) Lily returns to her house to kill herself. Not only is it a suspenseful and even intense full five minutes - with no dialogue - but it holds the movie's wonderful morality moment; Laure, who is hiding and watching Lily, knows she will be able to get Lily's identity if Lily kills herself. But...Laure has to stand there and...watch Lily kill herself. I love that. This eventually leads to the movie's theme - if you had a chance to do something over again, something that you did that was bad...would you?

Other things I love, a scene where two characters each pretend to be someone else, without the other one knowing. And oh, that final scene (De Palma bookended the movie with his two best scenes), featuring so many things working as a coalition (the photographer waiting for the sunlight, the same sunlight that will change the course of the story by shining its light on something once owned by the real Lily). It's a sequence worthy to be in the same De Palma's Greatest Hits reel as THE UNTOUCHABLES staircase. Speaking of which, FEMME FATALE harkens back to some of his most playful films like BODY DOUBLE and DRESSED TO KILL, and finds De Palma once again utilizing split screens, slow motion, isolated sound effects, and lengthy, balletic, dialogue-free VERTIGO-y scenes. And I, for one, welcome them all.

Here's another love/hate thing I have for this movie. LOVE: There are moments sprinkled throughout where characters like Lily's husband Watts (Peter Coyote), Watts's security guy Shiff (the always fun De Palma stable actor Gregg Henry, who is Gregg Lee Henry when he performs his music), maids and bartenders simply walk by in scenes they don't belong in. HATE: But why? Well, I won't give that away here in writing. But here's my clue - it's Cliche 101. Even De Palma himself was aware he was probably "splitting your audience down the center," but he went for it anyway. Good for him. Good for half of us.

Here's something really cool I uncovered while digging around about FEMME FATALE. The screening they go to in the opening Cannes scene is for a real movie, made a few years earlier, called EST-OUEST, and the real director (Regis Wargnier) and star (Sandrine Bonnaire) play prominently in the scene (the model wearing the diamonds is their companion).

Unfortunately, despite having shadows of blinds on the wall, FEMME FATALE never really felt like noir to me, though noir is clearly its intent (the name of Laure is close to Gene Tierney's classic femme fatale Laura in the Otto Preminger film called - LAURA). And just because you dress Romijn like a Hitch woman doesn't mean she is one. So the question remains, is Rebecca Romijn a match for the steeliness of say N X NW's Eva Marie Saint or INDEMNITY'S Barbara Stanwyck? The answer is no and no. Her reads on her lines feel like that of a friend at your dinner table putting on a gangster's voice while trying for a laugh. She seemed anti-sexy here, like she was trying to be alluring and sexy instead of being alluring and sexy. She even failed at trying to look tough smoking a cigarette. And how about Banderas? Does he have the gravitas of Fred McMurray? Again, no. He seems dreadfully miscast, feeling to me as if he were acting in a comedy instead of a thriller. This doesn't mean that FEMME FATALE is a failure. For on its own water-seeking level (that's a pun, as this movie overflows with water - fish tanks, baths, drinking glasses, shadows on ceilings, and even the opening shot of movie-within-a-movie EST-OUEST), it manages to walk the line between Hitchcock and cheese. Fortunately, I'm okay with both.

Posted by Rich at 9:00 AM | Permalink |