Mark of the Vampire (1935), Tod Browning.

Check us out, likeable leads in jaw-droppingly gorgeous tweeds!

Clever and beautifully crafted, directed by Tod Browning with cinematography by James Wong Howe.  I think I have a crush on the little lady vampire!  Let's just enjoy some screenshots here.

Wonderful staging of a conversation between our heroine and her legal guardian:  dialogue necessary to move the plot along in the background, with butterball maid inspecting delicious vittles in the foreground.

We don't even see vampires until fifteen minutes in.  Their stately, slow walking is creepy enough to set us on edge - brilliant!  

The Player (1992), Robert Altman.

Ugh.  Let's forget what we know about Altman and start from scratch here.  This film is banal, wanders endlessly, beats dead horses and has a very amateur visual aesthetic.  I dunno, when all those voices are talking on top of each other but the story is dragging, I found it hard to convince myself that this was the same guy that made McCabe and Mrs Miller.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's an eight minute opening tracking shot where everyone's talking about films that had tracking shots.  It later shoves your nose in obvious film references, as in:

film poster in the background

 cutting soon after to 

Ooooooh, a sitting for "Mr M."

This is about one hour, forty five minutes after we see Tim Robbins drown a guy in a puddle.  We get it!  Altman does make a decent sketch of what jerks resembled circa 1990.  Tim Robbins, despite his gangly skinny bod and boyish face, manages to pull enough asshole vibe out of the air to fit the part.  Greta Scacchi's character loves to take polaroids and manipulates them.  This is hilarious, because it's so nineties and such a lame pseudo craft practiced by bored middle-class, middle-aged women (one notch up from scrapbooking) so not a bad way of indicating that she's a poser, not an artist.   I.E.,

Brion James ("what's a tortoise"!) looks like he's been swabbed in orange paint (he's a sun loving movie mogul, get it?).  Then there's the sex scene, which is a gut-buster.  Scacchi and Robbins are drenched (in what, sweat?  hot tub fumes?), lit in hellish reds and the sounds of jungle drums beat erratically in the background while Robbins sputters some cornball dialogue.  We had read the running time wrong and had a major debate as to whether this would become a "film he made me turn off" but mercifully it ended at the two hour mark and the remaining minutes were just DVD extras.  There is a God!        

The Lodger (1944), John Brahm.

While creatively photographed, I strongly disliked The Lodger.  I found it unbelievable and adolescent in the approach towards its subject matter.  In the words of David Thompson, lead actor Laird Cregar "had a short hour at the feast."  Dead of a heart attack at 31, he is much lamented as a talented actor whose burgeoning career seemed so promising.  Watching The Lodger, a relatively humourless film, I could see a bit of the young Vincent Price in Cregar - only in that Cregar was also willing to lend nobility to characters that are large and menacing (and more than a bit hammy).   Cregar seems the type who could have later turned his image on its head, played it campy and had a few good laughs.  The Lodger, however, didn't really add up in my books.  Its depiction of women is naive to the point of being insulting.  None of these women could sniff out that there was something not quite right about Mr Slate?  Why is the most beautiful stage actress in London drawn to a loner misfit?  Why does she want to comfort him?  The landlady simply offers him accommodations without references?  The film does depict Whitechapel as poor and riddled with prostitutes and thieves.  But by making the central female character a popular music-hall performer with perfect teeth, the "other" murders just become exotic backdrop rather than part of the story.  George Sanders' small role is delightful -- but how could we expect anything less from the adventuresome womanizer who married two Gabor sisters!  

Best Worst Movie (2009), Michael Stephenson.

Last night I got to meet one of the actors of the Worst Movies of All Time!  George Hardy runs a successful dental practice in eastern Alabama and also played the dad in Troll 2, a film made in 1990 and rated by IMDB as one of the "bottom 100" -- currently it's ranked #59 out of the 100 worst films ever made.  Last night he was invited to our local rep theatre to introduce Best Worst Movie, a kindly look at Troll 2, its cult fanbase and the whereabouts of its cast and makers.   George is used as the documentary's focus.  A personable ham, he wonders whether he could have been more - a true working actor -- heck, maybe a star.  The surprise latent popularity of Troll 2 seems to have given him just enough of a taste of fame to understand the tedium that comes along with it.  Spouting a silly catch phrase, "you don't piss on hospitality!" and spending hours on end at a booth at conventions talking to people he doesn't really "get," George reflects on his blessings.

George Hardy and Michael Stephenson in Troll 2.

Throughout this journey, he and Michael Stephenson, who played his son in Troll 2, track down all the cast members many of whom seem to be personally disillusioned with their own inability to find success in acting (at least George has his dental practice)!  Utah, despite the  majestic mountains,  looks shabby and downcast.   The most fascinating character might be Claudio Fragasso, the film's Italian director.  Unable to admit his movie was a low-budget bundle of confusion, he is completely unable to enjoy the ironic hilarity people get from his work.  He grumbles in the background, calling the actors dogs and the fans idiots!  So why is Troll 2 and not the original Troll a cult favourite?  You'll just have to see for yourself - because I completely agree with all the film's fans that praise its loveable oddness.  Best Worst Movie shows how the public is never just a passive recipient of mass-media products.  We sometimes derive great joy from these products in ways their creators could never have anticipated.

Loveable oddness:  a corn on the cob makeout scene! 

Get your hands off the classics! How modern technology is making my life as a classic movie fan hell.

I'm stuck in the Snake Pit of rights issues & feel like I'm going CRAZY!

OK, I like to think I am a somewhat informed citizen of the world, but I feel like I'm drowning in a world of unnecessarily complicated rights issues.  One huge beef I have as someone living north of 49 who just digs old movies is how difficult it is to see some films.  Without having to hire a 1-800 lawyer, I'd like to know why this is.  Suggestions welcome!

Problem #1:  HDTV without the HD or, Canadians Can Go Screw Themselves.
I'm a cheap bastard but we caved.  We got a lovely Sony flatscreen with HDTV.  OK, I theorized, now I could see the glistening globs of brylcreem in George Raft's hair, what's not to like.  But, wait.

TCM is obviously my channel of choice (though props to CHCH and TVO for filling the gaps with even more well chosen and uncut classics).  Yet I quickly noticed that while I do receive TCM in HD, I often get this on my screen:  Blackout in Effect.  Sure, the movie is on in non-HD, but if you switch to the HD channel - bupkis.  WHAT!  I am paying for HDTV and not even getting it?  I'm not the only one who's noticed this.  There's a few online discussions but none of them have been able to clearly explain who I should get angry with.  http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=117585  Should I be shaking my fist at my HD provider, or with TCM?  Is this not a sad world where we can't even figure out who we need to complain to?  At this point, I don't even understand if I should slowly tear up my Robert Osborne Fan Club card or be writing the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).  What is Radio-television, by the way?  It's 2010, man, do you think maybe Canada needs someone to help sort out digital issues rather than figure out which way to dial the AM/FM knob?

Problem #2:  I Want to Buy Your Product, But You Won't Let Me.
Over the summer I read a great article about services where film archives will create DVD-Rs on-demand-- they'll make you one off pressings of out-of-print films.  WOW!  You can either go directly to the company's site (as in Warner's shop:  http://www.wbshop.com).  Amazon also makes their products available, too (admittedly, Amazon buries these offerings pretty deeply, with extra long URLs like http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=2204702011).  MGM products are also available.   When I tried purchasing one of these items through the Warner shop, I was denied!  DENIED!  Again, they played the "foreigner" card. In their response to me, they wrote:

We are very sorry, but we cannot ship DVD or Blu Ray discs outside of the US due to licensing and distribution regulations. These products are also formatted differently for different regions of the world and the version that we sell would not play on DVD systems built for your region.


We apologize, but we do not have international release information. Please contact your local retailer for this information. Again, we are sorry for the inconvenience, but we hope you will look at the many other items that we have that are able to ship internationally.

OK - I realize I do live in a separate, sovereign nation (even if we put Canadian films in the "foreign" section in rental stores... we're kind of self-loathing).  What I don't really understand is the rights restrictions.  What licensing and distribution regulations?  (Citation?)  OK, so even if there's some truth in that statement, what do they mean "the version we sell would not play on DVD systems built for you region."  Really?  Do I live in North Korea?  Jeesh!

What I don't understand is the larger issue.  Is there an unwillingness to provide these products widely without further compensation?  Is it outdated copyright legislation?  Is it poorly written (industry-friendly) copyright legislation?  At the moment, bill C-32 is going through a second reading in the Canadian House of Commons  http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5439/135.  Balanced copyright advocates such as the author of that attached post (Michael Geist) do see major weaknesses in the proposed legislation, mainly because of the anti-circumvention provision that prohibits the breaking of digital locks.  I think that what this means is that the legislation is attempting to take away your right to alter a product you've fairly bought.  Like when my little sister recorded herself singing on top of her Dr Seuss cassette.  ILLEGAL!

Red (2010), Robert Schwentke.

When I moved out of Toronto it felt like a bit of a relief only because I had always felt adrift, unsettled and unfulfilled while living there.  Recognizing that it was not the city's fault, I made a mental inventory of everything about it that delighted me:  the Hungarian schnitzel, the rep theatres... and the Toronto Reference Library!  If you ask me, the Toronto Reference Library is Canada's unofficial national library: a funky 70s design by architect Raymond Moriyama lined in cozy orange carpeting and draped with spider plants (plants!), it features Logan's Run elevators and an infinite spots to sit and ogle.  The collection is massive and accessible.  For the most part, nobody has to go and get anything for you from behind closed doors (through it's also primarily non-circulating, so you can't take anything home).  It's a living cover spread of Architectural Digest from 1977, complete with anything you'd ever want to read -- and the air is fresh!    

 The Toronto Reference Library.  Photo by Scienceduck, 2007.

Red is a sweet-natured, fun, if slightly predictable adventure movie.  They also went out of their way (scenes were filmed on location in New Orleans, New York and Chicago) to shoot one weenie library scene in the Toronto Reference Library (which they needed to disguise as an American library - why would the CIA agents be looking for Bruce Willis in Canada?).  Clearly, these are location scouts that know their stuff!

Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), Brian De Palma.

Total Corky St Clair brainwave today:  Bonfire of the Vanities, a stage production acted with just three people:  an African American, a Jew and a WASP!  OK, that might be a little too Springtime for Hitler for some people.  (Whatever, I'm so sure my community theatre company can pull this off!)

Bonfire of the Vanities was the first "adult" book I bought, at about age 14.  New York was about 3000 miles away, an imaginary place I knew about only through movies like Ghostbusters and Margaret Bourke White photographs.  I didn't get what fuggedaboutit was supposed to mean, and there were only two black families with kids in my high school so to say that I was culturally naive would be a huge understatement.  But Bonfire had a flashy cover, weighed about 2 pounds and looked pretty impressive to carry around, way cooler than It (for spazzes) or Les Miserables (for snotty rich kids who'd get to go out of town to see the musical and wear that obnoxious sweatshirt for months afterwards).  The Brian De Palma film (the production of which was documented in the brilliant book The Devil's Candy, by Julie Salamon) seemed to have been created with the same level of sophistication as the grade nine me.  It's also a complete hoot to watch now, as an adult.  What the HELL were they thinking!

First, let's talk bad casting and terrible performances.  Kim Cattrall's artificial but indeterminate "socialite" accent is nose wrinklingly bad.  But choosing Tom Hanks as the central character was probably one of the decisions that ensured that even if everything else went right about this movie, it would still be doomed to failure.  Hanks is completely unable to conjure arrogance, privilege or anything other than rubber-faced consternation.  The only exception to his one expression is found in one later scene, when his world collapses around him and he chases a crowd of ass-kissing guests from his apartment with a rifle.

 Tom Hanks expresses mild discomfort at being introduced to an HIV-positive poet.

LATER, Tom Hanks expresses complete shock when he realizes his mistress is talking with his wife!

THEN, Tom Hanks is reflective, as he hears the poet recite lines about Don Juan and realizes how he might actually be talking about him.

EVENTUALLY, Oscar moment! (?),  Tom Hanks goes batshit with a rifle.

Like a very low-budget production whose fake props or cheap sets betray the illusion of the medium, this film is anti-film:  I couldn't for one moment stop thinking that I was watching a film.  I couldn't hear the dialogue, I couldn't follow the story.  The music blared unsubtly.  Every camera shot is obtrusively a worm's eye view (WHY)?  Unrealistic details that you might normally not care about stood out like a sore thumb.  (Why is Kim Cattrall preparing appetizers on the tray in the kitchen, wouldn't her staff do that)? The only convincing scene in the entire film, the only time you forget you're watching a film and start listening to what some guy is talking about -- is when the lovely Alan King has his one brief scene talking about animals crapping on an airplane!  Why?  Because he's playing it like a comedy!

I'll be your trophy wife, Alan.  At least you have a damn personality (if, by the end of this scene, no pulse).

The ultimate act of cowardice is the casting of Morgan Freeman as the judge (it was supposed to be Alan Arkin, but De Palma thought that he would be too... Jewish.  You know, exactly like in the book, and that could have have potentially been offensive to African Americans).

Is this offensive to African Americans?  'S OK, we got Morgan Freeman.

Freeman wraps up everything up neatly by dismissing the case and lecturing everyone in the courtroom:  the sunglasses wearing community activist, the black community, the WASPs, the Jewish lawyers, the journalists, about dignity.

"Dignity is what your grandmother taught you!"  (Seriously, that's what he says).

FIN

Whoa!  I've never re-read Bonfire; as I got older I learned in school about Tom Wolfe and his place in contemporary fiction (and first-person journalism).  I heard the satire in I am Charlotte Simmons wasn't on target, and I gave it a pass.  Now that I'm older, I read a lot of great writing on filmmaking and other topics.  But there's one thing missing from my menu and that's some kind of analysis of failure.  Salamon's book never really answered that question for me -- or, she offered too many little reasons that this particular project failed.  Movies are massive undertakings but reflect what many of us are faced with in our adult lives.  Whether we are bosses, parents, teachers or chefs:  we get some cash together, find some people to help us out, and we execute projects.  How is it that movie missteps are catastrophes that manage to waste the equivalent of a small country's GDP and insult our intelligence?