WARNING! MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD!

Once in a great while, a movie comes along that is so insane, so crazy, so completely out of its mind wild, that you almost can’t believe what you are seeing. BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS (or THE BAD LIEUTENANT PORT OF CALL: NEW ORLEANS as it’s written in the opening title) is that movie! It’s the most delightfully cracked out movie about a crazed drug addict policeman I’ve ever seen in my life. It is not one of those so-bad-it’s-good movies at all. This movie is the result of some very talented artists getting together and having a great deal of fun making a really cool, weird, funny and surreal cop movie.

I don’t know if this is an actual remake of ABEL FERRARA’S brilliant 1992 BAD LIEUTENANT, which is an agonizingly hellish character study of an out of control cop, that is played with amazing intensity by HARVEY KEITEL. There are several similarities in both the plot structure and character details, but this new BAD LIEUTENANT is a much different beast altogether. The original was much more serious and there was very little sympathy for the protagonist, who wasn’t even given a name, but referred to only as The Lieutenant in the end credits.

The new BAD LIEUTENANT is named Terence McDonagh and is played with comic exuberance by NICOLAS CAGE, who hasn’t been this awesome since LEAVING LAS VEGAS. His career of late has been spotty to say the least, with a few great movies like ADAPTATION and LORD OF WAR, mixed in with a lot of big budget action fluff. It’s been awhile since he’s really cut loose in a role and he tears this movie up with his energy. This is the CAGE of VAMPIRE’S KISS and RAISING ARIZONA. The manic, funny and inventive CAGE who makes the most out of each take. His character is a man addicted to crack, coke, heroin, vicodin, gambling and sex, who abuses his power at every opportunity he gets, and yet he’s a very likable guy. Even though his methods are totally crazy and completely unpredictable, he’s a really good detective and he gets results, as he breaks every law imaginable in the process. CAGE’S performance is a tour de force! He should get 10 Oscars!

HARVEY KEITEL as the o.g. BAD LIEUTENANT, whom is quite different from...

NICOLAS CAGE'S BAD LIEUTENANT! Those old ladies deserve it, trust me.

How this movie came together is beyond me. I can’t imagine there’s been a clamoring for a BAD LIEUTENANT revisit over the 17 years since the first. When I first read that WERNER HERZOG was directing a remake, I thought “The legendary German filmmaker responsible for FITZCARRALDO, NOSFERATU, GRIZZLY MAN and RESCUE DAWN wants to do a reboot of BAD LIEUTENANT? Huh?” It’s an odd choice indeed, but HERZOG is an odd director and he has made a very odd film and I’m so glad of that. His BAD LIEUTENANT is given humanity right off the bat, where with the original you really have to search for something to feel sympathetic for.

NICOLAS CAGE and WERNER HERZOG must have had a blast making this movie.

The film starts off in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, with detective Terence McDonagh (CAGE) and his colleague (VAL KILMER) emptying out a fellow officer’s locker. They come across a criminal still locked in a flooding cell and in an act of heroism, McDonagh jumps in to save him, injuring his back in the process. He is prescribed vicodin by a doctor and when we see him a year later, he’s become a full blown addict who’s graduated to crack, coke and heroin. He also has a bad gambling problem that gets his bookie (BRAD DOURIF) a bit testy.

When he’s put in charge of an investigation to find whoever was responsible for a drug related multiple homicide (in the original it was a case involving the rape of a nun), he throws himself fully into the assignment. The movie then swings back and forth between CAGE’S working the case and engaging in his own criminal activities. One scene he’s interviewing a suspect and gathering clues, the next he’s robbing drugs from a young couple of club goers and forcing the guy to watch him fuck his girlfriend.

EVA MENDES is great as the BAD LIEUTENANT’S  hooker girlfriend. Despite the fact that their relationship is based on doing drugs together and ripping off her johns, they actually have a few very tender scenes together. There’s a moment they share concerning a hidden silver spoon that’s downright heartwarming. No shit!

FAIRUZA BALK shows up as a corrupt traffic cop with some really nice boots and BRAD DOURIF is typically terrific as CAGE’S bookie, whom unlike his character’s counterpart in the original, joins the rest of us in falling for the BAD LIEUTENANT’S charm. Also, the rapper XZIBIT turns out a really well executed performance as Big Fate the gangster. He too, is a totally likable scumbag.

EVA MENDES as the BAD LIEUTENANT'S girlfriend.

"Shoot him again, his soul's still dancing!"

There are individual scenes in the new BAD LIEUTENANT that are sheer brilliance. One of my favorites involves a crack hallucination CAGE has involving two iguanas, that’s set to an old blues tune. The scene just keeps playing out,  supremely confident in its own complete absurdity and I couldn’t stop laughing.

Another one involves a group of gangsters being shot down. CAGE, in the midst of another drug delusion, exclaims to the killers, “Shoot him again, his soul is still dancing!” The camera then pans over to someone dressed like the fallen gangster, breakdancing in the middle of the room. It’s fucking AMAZING!

The film was written by WILLIAM FINKELSTEIN and I’m curious if it was his intention to pattern it after the original BAD LIEUTENANT, or if it was an original idea and the marketing department attached it to the FERRARA film. There are a few similarities in the plot, but overall this is a far different film and stands on its own as a great piece of cop noir. FINKELSTEIN’S previous work as a television writer for NYPD BLUE, LAW & ORDER, L.A. LAW and COP ROCK have served him well and he has written a truly unique and funny film.

WERNER HERZOG’S direction is probably what sends this movie sailing over the fence the most. His attachment alone is what takes this film from being a simple cop thriller and turns it into an art-house masterpiece. It’s his genius in taking such care with the little moments, (like CAGE reading a child’s poem about a fish) that make this a much more enjoyable BAD LIEUTENANT than we’ve previously seen. Not that ABEL FERRARA’S film is any less great or powerful, it’s just a different sensibility with the exact same subject.

Which is why I’d like to see a BAD LIEUTENANT franchise develop out of this. My pitch is this: each new film is the exact same formula – drugged up Lieutenant tries to solve a case he’s assigned while on a self destructive gambling and crack binge. It’s a different city, director and lead actor each time. A franchise that continues to remake and take a new spin at the same storyline. I think that would be cool. BAD LIEUTENANT: LOS ANGELES directed by DAVID LYNCH and starring ROBERT DOWNEY JR.; BAD LIEUTENANT: DALLAS directed by the COEN BROTHERS and starring MATT DILLON; BAD LIEUTENANT: PARIS directed by ROMAN POLANSKI and starring GERARD DEPARDIEU; and BAD LIEUTENANT: MIAMI directed by LARS VON TRIER and starring DON JOHNSON (now that would be REALLY crazy!).

See BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS because it is an awesome piece of crazy independent cinema! It’s like smoking a rock out of your lucky crack pipe, without the withdrawls and iguanas. I leave you with trailers for both the original and the new one. Enjoy!

Quentin Tarantino may be many things — perverted, profane, whipsmart, cocky, a little too enamored with his own cleverness — but subtle he is not. He’s not even in the ballpark. Matter of fact, if that ballpark blew up, he wouldn’t hear the sound for another three days. Nah, Tarantino’s a guts-glory-chicks-and-explosions kind of director, and that imagination of his? In the name of Le Royale with Cheese does it dream up some wild-n-twisted trips.

Mark ”Pulp Fiction” down as one of the wildest. Every nanosecond of this humdinger’s 154 minutes contains something warped/crazy/effortlessly cool to behold: philosophical discussions about foot massages, the nature of miracles and a gold watche that has been places no watch should go; murders both coolly calculated and comically accidental; a frightful drug overdose; kinky sex (think S&M with an Alabama drawl and a gimp); and, last but not least, a sinfully delicious $5 milkshake. Random as this catalogue seems, Tarantino’s film is far more scattershot. The action doesn’t adhere to a simple timeline; instead, there are three stories that run parallel, then smash together, then diverge only to reconnect in ways that boggle the mind upon repeat viewings. “Pulp Fiction” is a genius noir/gangster combo that keeps us guessing. Guess long enough, though, and patterns start to emerge from the madness.

Sort of. Since Tarantino makes it nearly impossible to understand how these stories pool into a cohesive ending, let’s tackle one beast at a time. First, there’s “Vincent Vega and Marcellus Wallace’s Wife,” the tale of L.A. hitmen Vince (John Travolta) and Jules (a perfeclty cast Samuel L. Jackson) heading to do a job ordered by their loose-cannon boss Marsellus (Ving Rhames). Since Marsellus recently threw a guy out a high-rise window for giving his wife Mia (Uma Thurman) a foot massage, Vince has the jitters about taking her out on the town. His plan is simple: “Chew my food with my mouth closed, laugh at her fucking jokes, and that’s it.” Of course, trouble has a tendency to follow Vince, so things don’t go that smoothly.

Smoothness doesn’t much like Butch (Bruce Willis) either, which we discover in ”The Gold Watch.” A talented boxer with a sweetly innocent girlfriend (Maria de Medeiros), Butch shovels some dirt on his own grave by winning the fight Marsellus paid him to throw. But his neat double-cross turns messy through a series of freak coincidences, the most interesting involving two pawn shop owners who plumb forgot to pack their manners (not to mention their morality) when they left the Deep South. ”The Gold Watch” leads into “The Bonnie Situation,” a conclusion of sorts where Tarantino himself shows up as Jimmie Dimmick, a pal of Jules who begrudgingly agrees to help him clean up an accidental hit (“my gun went off! I don’t know why!” insists the a brain matter-spattered Vance) with help from Winston Wolf (Harvey Keitel). What’s on Wolfe’s business card we can’t be sure, since the terse mystery man only offers “I solve problems” as his job description.

It’s offhand comments like these that demonstrate one of Tarantino’s greatest strengths: revealing character traits with one or two stray lines of dialogue. He’s a student of human nature, and he knows the ways people fill time by arguing over whether foot massages are sensual or wondering what cheeseburgers are called in France (see above). And yet everything these characters say tells us something about themselves or the story. Christopher Walken, in his lone scene, delivers a howling-good speech that seems like comic relief, but the subject — the gold watch — comes back into play. Jules spouts a nonsensical version of Ezekiel 25:17, but it reveals his own moral code. Thurman, who finds jumpy loneliness in Mia, parlays a terrible joke about tomatoes into a real connection with Vince. Haphazard though they seem, these lines are the threads that knit everything together.

What else dazzles about “Pulp Fiction”? There’s the abundance of lurid violence — much of it comical (including an uncomfortably funny rape scene), some of it truly shocking, none of it gratuitious. Jackson and Travolta are one hell of two-man team, while Willis registers a pulse and Eric Stoltz has wit to burn. Ultimately, though, it’s the manic, fearless force of Tarantino that makes “Pulp Fiction” a sweet, sweet joyride, indeed.

Grade: A

New mixtape from Snoop .. Hosted by Whoo Kid, Skee & Scream .. This will hold you off until “Malice And Wonderland” drops .. Which will be in stores December 8th. Tracklist and Back cover after the jump!

Download

1992: The Bad Lieutenant di Abel Ferrara

I 98 minuti forse più crudi e morbosi del cinema americano in un film giustamente celebre e celebrato.

La discesa agli Inferi di un essere umano, un trovare il Divino che è in ognuno di noi, la colpa e il perdono costituiscono il tema portante di questo intenso lavoro (surreale ed estremamente realistico al contempo): ritratto di un individuo (“abitatore del sottosuolo e scalatore del cielo”, Roberto Escobar) che è metafora del male della società contemporanea, viaggio angoscioso dalla perdizione alla redenzione tra l’indifferenza generale.

La ricerca del significato da dare alla vita in un film che colpisce come un pugno nello stomaco nella sua sgradevolezza e che mostra senza veli un mondo dominato da perversioni sessuali, droga, alcol, bisogno di danaro… Non sappiamo perché il protagonista si è ridotto così: al regista interessa mostrarci il “nulla” in cui è caduto ed Abel Ferrara è più audace del Martin Scorsese (col quale condivide l’amore-odio per la religione cattolica) di Mean Streets e Taxi driver, nell’illustrare una città, un ambiente, un uomo… più animaleschi che umani, disperati e autolesionisti nella loro abiezione.

Gabriele Niola ha giustamente scritto: “Il Cattivo Tenente è uno dei più lucidi viaggi nella redenzione umana, quasi un percorso di santità fatto camminando di spalle”. Un film senza misura, esasperato, “eccessivo”, provocatorio, smodato, disturbante… Un film in cui “il divino e il diabolico stanno l’uno nell’altro: ognuno funziona come uno specchio sulla cui superficie si riflette l’altro” (Il Sole 24 Ore). Un film da vedere e rivedere, che fa riflettere e discutere, che scuote la nostra coscienza e ci pone mille interrogativi.

Un intero cast dalla performance eccezionale. Un indimenticabile Harvey Keitel dalla bravura impressionante, tragicamente grande.

Una fotografia altamente suggestiva (in perfetta armonia col tema del film), una colonna sonora appropriata e mai invadente, un montaggio sapiente e serrato arricchiscono questo lavoro presentato al 45° Festival di Cannes.

Da condividere in pieno quanto scrisse Paolo D’Agostini su Repubblica: “Raramente un film è riuscito ad essere più cupo, mortuario, senza un filo d’aria; a dispetto del suo contenuto abbondantemente blasfemo, dovrebbe interessare chi osserva l’uomo secondo un punto di vista cristiano. Raccomandarne la visione ai deboli di stomaco sarebbe cattiveria, ma anche non segnalarne la forte personalità – non superficialmente appagata di scandalo e morbosità – sarebbe una grave omissione”.

scheda

premi e riconoscimenti

When Werner Herzog’s remake/sequel of Abel Ferrera’s Bad Lieutenant was announced, it gave Internet cynics fodder for an endless stream of articles chuckling over how absurd the whole project was. Was this ridicule triggered by the potential folly of recreating a project as uncompromising as Ferrera’s original? Was it the standard cineaste’s resistance to recycling older movies, or the thought of recycling something made so recently? Or was it that Herzog had cast Nicolas Cage? Without a frame being shot it was already being heralded as a disaster, as if Herzog’s legendary take-no-prisoners attitude had suddenly metamorphosed into some kind of dementia. When the trailer arrived the derisory laughter increased. Cage’s reputation as the bad movie actor du jour has become so entrenched in popular thinking that the obviously intentional humour of the trailer was treated as evidence that Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans was another Wicker-Man-style disaster waiting to happen. The reality is that Herzog’s crime drama will more than likely disappoint those who were hoping for a failure, but thrill everyone else.

Cage portrays Terrence McDonagh, a police detective who inherits the mantle of Bad Lieutenant after injuring himself during a post-Katrina rescue. After this quick origin story we see McDonagh in the grip of an addiction to painkillers and coke, deep in debt and stealing drugs from criminals. The only thing that separates him from the perps he chases is his dedication to the job, especially his determination to bring to justice the drug kingpin Big Fate (Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner) who he suspects is responsible for the murder of an immigrant family. So far, so Keitel. McDonagh, however, is lucky enough to have a girlfriend (Frankie, played by Cage’s Ghost Rider co-star Eva Mendes) who just so happens to be a prostitute on a downward spiral of her own. Though neither of them are particularly admirable people, they seem to care for each other. As they become more absorbed into a depraved world, this connection seems to be the one thing that might save them.

The similarity to Ferrera’s original is obvious, but whereas that movie was harrowing and dark, Herzog brings an unexpected sense of possibility and even joy to this tale. Avoiding the tortured and oppressive air of Catholic guilt that made the original so distinctive, Herzog gives McDonagh a chance at redemption that doesn’t revolve around appeasing an indifferent God, and thus generates a sense of unexpected uplift. Additionally, while Ferrera set his movie in a decaying New York, Herzog takes metaphorical advantage of New Orleans’ recent history and the attempts of the citizens to rebuild their city, efforts that echo McDonagh’s own. Even at its darkest Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is filmed in almost constant brightness, and it helps that Herzog has filled the supporting cast with amusing eccentrics played by terrific character actors like Vondie Curtis Hall, Jennifer Coolidge, Fairuza Balk, Michael Shannon, and Brad Dourif. Also included is a subdued and underused Val Kilmer as a cop lacking even McDonagh’s vanishing moral core.

All act as amusing foils for Cage, but special mention must be made of Shea Whigham as abusive mob goon Justin who appears midway through the film to abuse Frankie. His dopey attitude and woozily delivered threats are sure-fire crowd-pleasers. Perhaps that’s the most surprising thing about Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Even though the trailer featured a number of amusing moments, the refreshingly breezy tone of the movie is a surprise, even though it features murder, sexual abuse, drug-taking, and old-lady-menacing. While Ferrera was determined to send the viewer to hell with Keitel, Herzog takes a cue from William Finkelstein’s script and makes a movie that does all it can to send the audience home with a smile on its face. The lackadaisical approach does come at the cost of narrative momentum: several scenes in the movie meander without purpose, which is something you wouldn’t expect from a seasoned TV writer who has worked on L.A. Law, NYPD Blue and Murder One, though the demented elements of the movie seem to tally with his work on lost TV classic Cop Rock:

It’s possible Finkelstein was partly responsible for the unconventional plotting, but even so, Herzog has little interest in the usual rhythms of crime dramas, happily chasing diversions or playing genre conventions for absurd laughs. He’s smart enough to keep an eye on the needs of the plot — especially the question of how out of control McDonagh actually is, which leads to some satisfying surprises in the final act — and to make sure we see the depressed human behind the outrageous bad behaviour of our protagonist, but he also has a need to drop in random instances of The Weird, often involving animals. A crocodile gets a memorable cameo, but it’s the iguanas that will stay with you when you leave the cinema. Nothing can prepare you for the already legendary Iguana-Cam. Herzog will be pleased to know that this scene brought the house down at the London Film Festival screening we attended. It is a completely deranged moment, a perfectly timed comedic aside, and impossible to forget. (If you wish to experience this scene in its proper context, avoid this clip until you’ve seen the movie.)

Herzog’s unpredictable take on the genre would not work without a strong performance at the core of it, and he is lucky to have Cage on his side. Herzog has found an actor of almost Kinski-esque intensity to guide his movie, someone who understands exactly what he wants and can collaborate as an equal, if this interview is to be believed. It often feels as if each of these imaginative artists has goaded the other on to greater weirdness. Nevertheless, even when the movie threatens to disappear into a cloud of peculiarity, their intelligence brings us back from the brink. Even the most formally or narratively daring moments in the film feel right, as if the movie couldn’t have been made any other way; eccentricity without the desperate quirkiness of a lesser filmmaker like, say, Richard Kelly. Without Herzog the movie would probably have stayed on a familiar genre path, and without Cage Herzog would have been forced to work with someone lacking in the ability to fuse madness with sincerity. Their collaboration is truly fortuitous.

Much has been made of Cage’s manic scenes, which range in tone from darkly funny to troubling, and sometimes both simultaneously. (Again, skip this if you wish to remain unspoiled.)

Less has been said about the humanity of Cage’s performance. While never having a scene as memorable and cathartic as Keitel’s astonishing breakdown in church from the original movie, Cage litters the movie with panicky moments where we get a glimpse of a man who knows he has gone astray. While Harvey Keitel’s lieutenant seems barely aware of his soul’s need for salvation until he collapses in church, McDonagh seems to know things have gone wrong and tries to correct this. Fans of Ferrera’s movie might complain that the remake loses focus by showing a man consciously scrambling to get back to a state of virtue, but what would Herzog gain from replicating Keitel’s downward trajectory? McDonagh’s desire for absolution generates a tension between his goals and his actions that powers what would otherwise be a fragmented and unsatisfying movie.

Cage brilliantly portrays McDonagh’s regression into a state of adolescent impulsiveness. His colleagues and acquaintances seem baffled or annoyed by his delinquent behaviour — both his unintentional outbursts and the rare moments when he harnesses his weird energy to do good –and only Frankie seems to want to help him. Casting Eva Mendes — a naturally charming actress capable of more than she is usually given to do — is another of Herzog’s masterstrokes. Her chemistry with Cage was one of the few truly great things to come out of Mark Steven Johnson’s terrible Ghost Rider.

This is easily the most layered and entertaining work Cage has done since Adaptation — not to mention his most likeable performance — and is enough to trigger hope of a new great Age of Cage. Even some of his more eccentric choices — such as suddenly imitating Ed Sullivan for about twenty minutes and then stopping with no explanation — make a weird kind of sense by the end of the film. His work here runs the risk of being little more than a series of gimmicky outbursts, but it often transcends mere flash to become something more profound, both comedic and tragic. McDonagh has become possessed by something alien and primal — something so destructive it’s almost a form of demonic possession — and it is thrilling to see him battle against it to reclaim his soul. The final, unexpected image will warm even the hardest heart.

But hey, if that’s not enough to convince you to see the movie, just go for the iguanas. You’ll thank me.

Alguém disposto a dizer que Scosese não é um gênio?

QotD: “I have no pity.”

I watched Red Dragon earlier in the day rather than tonight and I did go out with friends. I have some money left but not a lot. Not as much as I’d like. But, I made sure to trade it well, for precious liquids.

So, I’m typing this in Word so that I can fix spelling mistakes, for once. Liquids and spelling do not go together all that well. Tomorrow night promises to be even more damp, but that isn’t costly. It also promises to be smokey, considering the crowd, not my usual conspirators, but friends of friends who I approve of, some of them. Not all.

At the moment it is late into the dark and I am enjoying Lou Reed’s relaxing songs of violence and menace, sitting in the darkness of my room with the light coming from my screen and from the window, which, for once, isn’t creating an “artificial night”, but letting in the real one. Melbourne nights are bright, which I like. I enjoy slow walks home, relaxed by drink, a cool breeze, light enough to see everything but dim enough to not need sunglasses. But you still wear them, of course.

Someone has taken my lovely headphones, so I’m using my speakers. I don’t usually do that at this time of night, as I’d prefer to have it louder, but my housemates aren’t about like me tonight. The moon is away so most of the monsters are away. I can barely hear this, fuck it, it’s going up.

I feel like sitting outside, I might go do that now.

(break)

It’s nice outside tonight; I wish someone else was awake. The sun is around the other side and there’s a breeze. No stars, but the sky is always nice to look at. Cicadas can fuck off elsewhere though. Or I’ll go where they aren’t, I’m not a fan.

I’ll write more on Red Dragon another time.

I met some alright people tonight, some I knew already. Not everyone impressed me, but nobody was too bad, it was a comfortable crowd.

I want another drink, but I don’t know if I need one.

(break)

I got one.

The problem with nights like these, they have the potential for being great, long nights with friends, but there are no friends around. I’m often fine with solitude, but when I’ve been with people and I’m still in a people mood, then they’re not there. I’m just here, by myself, making incomplete sentences in the dark.

Tomorrow will be better, the words that get you through today,

Goodnight cow, goodnight moon, goodnight cow jumping over the moon,

Your damp, smoked song of violence and menace,

TDE

Hung out today by the beach in Santa Monica and Venice Beach.  Gorgeous sunset, great people watching…and that’s all to be expected from this place…although it’s not every day you are sitting in a cool raw food restaurant where Harvey Keitel’s getting takeout!

I only have time for a super fast update since I am staying with a friend and minus my laptop.  But let me say this…the raw food scene is insane here!  When I get back to Palm Springs I will give a full report on the delicious stuff I ate here and the cool people I met.

It’s a crying shame I can’t stay longer and check out some of the other raw eateries…but I have a girlfriend with Midnight movie tickets for New Moon and, oh yeah *&^%$ work!

What I ate today:

• a big juicy pineapple (yup, a whole pineapple)
• tangerines
• carrot/apple/orange juice
• LARA bar
• drank the juice out of a coconut
• watermelon juice (JUICE PLACES EVERYWHERE HERE! COULDN’T RESIST!
• Sampled some raw ice cream
• A big messy raw burger called a “BIG MATT”
• Sun dried durian dipped in chocolate
• tangerines

Start planning your raw vacation to Santa Monica!  You’re gonna wish your bags were already packed after you read about what I found here.  Good thing I only live 2 hrs away! Good night. Details coming soon…

I’ll be honest: Miss November 1995, Holly Witt, mainly bores the crap out of me, and I feel like Playboy did not put their best effort forward with this pictorial’s disjointed themes, nor did they demand enough of the model.

Photography by Arny Freytag and Stephen Wayda
I just feel like this shoot could have been done better. I’m surprised Arny Freytag was involved. Possibly he only did the centerfold and this Wayda character did the rest.

The kiddie pool picture is actually pretty good. And the one below of her in the salon chair with her hand to her head is okay. But the rest come off wooden to me and look like something from a much cheaper magazine. It’s a shame that they let her get away with just doing the kind of arched back, pouty mouth thing, because I think she was capable of more. Some more stringently unusal or less stiff poses could have made the shoot kind of this interesting and erotic, challenging look at the trope of the slutty housewife: the set dressing and pastel but somehow lurid, vivid colors would have worked great with that.

Instead, because she was allowed to go with Porn 101 posing of chipmunk face and out-thrust breasts (not that there is anything wrong with that pose in its appropriate context), the shoot just falls in to pornographic fantasy pictures instead of doing the more dynamic and interesting thing by elevating it a level further and erotically, cleverly referring to that genre, rather than crassly being it. Does this make sense?

Anyway, fuck this shoot. The rest of the text is going to be quotes from an interview that also ran in this issue by contributing editor Lawrence Gobel with none other than superbomb flyass mothafucka Mr. Harvey Keitel.

PLAYBOY: You must be aware of how people react to you. You’ve developed a reputation as a powerful actor willing to dare exposure.
KEITEL: I’m smiling now as you say dare. I mean, that’s what I do. I don’t know what to say, except that it comes naturally to me. You want to call it daring? OK. I look at it as being.

KEITEL: Here’s a man who is doing the job of a pimp and a girl who is working as a prostitute. It’s monstrous, it’s horrible. But that wasn’t my approach to it. My approach was as a working man. Often, pimps are brilliant people caught up in life’s misfortunes. It’s like this whole debate going on about the welfare system: Is it the fault of the poor or of their circumstances? I believe a great deal of it has to do with their circumstances, not just because they are irresponsible.

PLAYBOY: How could Reservoir Dogs have gone further?
KEITEL: Perhaps there was some way to make the universal quest more obvious to an audience.

PLAYBOY: You may have a point—most people saw it as a violent movie, not one of some Arthurian quest.
KEITEL: I never saw it as a violent film. … I see it more as a story about a man who is in need of nourishing a younger man, of being a father figure, of being an example. It’s a quest we’re all on.

You can read the full interview here, which I strongly recommend because Keitel mercilessly fucks with Gobel the entire time; he is enigmatic and a dick and just all-around brooking no publicity machine bullshit. He is the consummate Man. I love him so well.

In closing and to bring it back to the subject of this entry, I will merely add that if you are on a date with the lovely and talented Ms. Witt and are thinking of impressing her with a story about Pythagoras or Fermat, shut your piehole, because she lists among her turn-offs “math and history.” Awesome.

NOTA : 7 RECOMANDAT

Download subtitrare Wrong Turn at Tahoe

Trailer Wrong Turn at Tahoe :

Contratiempo (Bad timing)

Director: Nicolas Roeg

Año: 1980

País: Estados Unidos

122 min.

Fotografía: Anthony B. Richmond

Música: Richard Hartley

Guión: Yale Udoff

Reparto: Art Garfunkel, Theresa Russell, Harvey Keitel, Denholm Elliott

No pocos directores ven sepultada la gran mayoría de su filmografía bajo el peso de una sola obra, este es el caso del muy interesante, excéntrico y altamente pretencioso Nicolas Roeg, gran operador de fotografía (“Farenheit 451” y “Golfus de Roma”, ambas en 1966, por ejemplo) firmante de ese indiscutible clásico de culto que es  ”Amenaza en la sombra“(1973) pero que más allá de esta obra mayor su carrera se mece entre lo justamente olvidable (o evitable) como la inaugural “Performance”(1971) dirigida mano a mano con otro extravagante profesional como Donald Cammell (el hombre tras “Engendro mecánico”, 197) y convertida hoy en pieza de culto en virtud de su estragante caracter “bizarre”  y la presencia de Mick Jagger como trasunto de si mismo o la insufrible “The man who fell to Earth”(1976) a mayor gloria de Bowie y lo penosamente olvidado, como la extraña y pelín demasiado “arty” “Walkabout”(1971), la simpática adaptación de Roald Dahl, “La maldición de las brujas”(1989), “Dos muertes” un título casi invisible pero que cuenta con defensores y al parecer no carece de interés y por supuesto este “Contratiempo” que supone a la vez una película de increíbles posibilidades y un fracaso doloroso perdido en el ensimismamiento.

“Contratiempo” es una historia criminal y melodramática de “amour fou” y obsesión sexual contada/reconstruida a través de un ritmo sincopado, una narrativa elusiva y una estructura fragmentaria que es una auténtica exhibición de montaje puramente musical, al que no es ajeno su potente banda sonora que mece a los Who con Billie Holliday y Tom Waits ni, en especial, su trabajada asincronía que mezcla/altera el espacio físico/fílmico mediante la manipulación del sonido en relación a la imagen y viceversa.

La historia deja oír algunos ecos de “El último tango en Paris”, manierismos visuales y ramalazos de la histeria de Andrej Zulawski (del que también hereda su manera rompedora de tratar estilemas típicos del melodrama), de los trabajos previos del propio director (ese sentido de la narración “alterado” ya funcionaba a toda máquina en “Amenaza en la sombra”) e incluso inopinadas gotas de espionaje (ella procede del Este de Europa y arrastra un extraño matrimonio con un hombre mucho mayor que bien podría ser un espíay al que interpreta el siempre espléndido Denholm Elliott) que añaden delirio y extrañeza al invento, ennoblecido por una fotografía extraordinaria (con algún efecto sorprendente, como esos fondos desenfocados que parecen deshacerse como pintura húmeda) y sobre todo por esa facilidad asombrosa que tenía el mejor Roeg para volver inquietante y amenazante cualquier cosa solo con la planificación visual y la precisión en el movimiento de la cámara.

Theresa Russell fascina como desequilibrada belleza mezcla de frialdad, infantilismo y perversidad a partes iguales, que llevará a la perdición a un psiquiatra americano en una Viena extraña y peligrosamente hermosa a la que Roeg somete al mismo tratamiento que a la Venecia de, si otra vez, “Amenaza en la sombra” pero por desgracia el concurso del lechuguino Art Garfunkel como (incapaz) protagonista lastra toda la película al no poder transmitir la turbulencia y el progresivo desquiciamiento, la necesidad de poseer lo inaprensible de su personaje, con la excepción del cruel final en el que viola a una Theresa Russell agonizante (la única vez que ella se está quieta y el consigue mandar/controlar) y en el que la inexpresividad del actor se vuelve a favor del momento amplificando la parsimoniosa repugnancia y atrocidad minuciosa de un acto perfectamente milimetrado. Un clímax soberbio en el que el pulso de Roeg brilla con fuerza y su personal sentido de la progresión dramática y de la organización espacial, su en ocasiones despegado esteticismo y ese montaje ya referido funcionan a la perfección. Aún así resulta una lástima que el gran Harvey Keitel no se ocupase de este papel en lugar del de bien peculiar policía obsesionado con ese “bad timing” del título original que tiene a su cargo, en ese caso el resultado podría haber sido una obra maestra.

An object of desire you don’t desire to be, I bet the shop window dummies
give in just as easily
I try to top but have to make you drop down to the floor
Moaning in the darkness as we fake some more
Passion is no ordinary word
Not just another sound that you hear at night

The quest for immortality can now take a digital form, with a gadget that takes a photo of the world as you see it every thirty seconds, and so has the ability to create an unbroken log of your life from start to finish. Kurt Kleiner reports for the New Scientist:

A camera you can wear as a pendant to record every moment of your life will soon be launched by a UK-based firm.

Originally invented to help jog the memories of people with Alzheimer’s disease, it might one day be used by consumers to create “lifelogs” that archive their entire lives.

Worn on a cord around the neck, the camera takes pictures automatically as often as once every 30 seconds. It also uses an accelerometer and light sensors to snap an image when a person enters a new environment, and an infrared sensor to take one when it detects the body heat of a person in front of the wearer. It can fit 30,000 images onto its 1-gigabyte memory.

The ViconRevue was originally developed as the SenseCam by Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK, for researchers studying Alzheimer’s and other dementias. Studies showed that reviewing the events of the day using SenseCam photos could help some people improve long-term recall.

It’s just about memory. But the beauty and genius of the human memory is in fact the way it allows us to forget – selectively. We all dream of having a photographic memory, but this would only create information overload. And we’d have to sift through the same stuff all over again in order to see what was significant, what was actually worth remembering in the first place – and worth forgetting. We create the person we are in the present by what we choose (consciously and subconsciously) to remember and what to forget.

This gadget reminds me of the lovely central idea from the 1995 film Smoke. Harvey Keitel plays a tobacconist around whose shop the main characters revolve.

He has an unusual habit: every morning, at the same time of the day, he photographs the same street corner, and puts the pictures together in a series of albums. It’s time-lapse photography on an enormous scale. He can’t explain why he does it. He just needs to do it. And it’s a really marvelous device for delivering the movie’s main theme: everything that matters, all the meaning in the world that can be condensed from holy books and vows and catechisms and poems, is right there before us. We just need to have the eyes to see it. [Imbd]

Yes, there is a longing in the human heart to hold onto the past. But the real question is how we take it into the future. And no amount of digital technology is going to help us answer that.

    Every serious film lover sees a film that once in awhile affects you so deeply that it changes your life. You look at the screen and you say to yourself, yes this is what it is all about, this is why I love movies; this is why I sit through so many crappy films searching for the one that moves me to high levels never reached before. “Mean Streets” is one of those films. It is not perfect. It is not Scorsese’s greatest film, it does not have to be, it is what it is, a personal work by a young filmmaker that reflects a time and a place that connected with me deeply.     

    The first Martin Scorsese film I ever saw was “Who That Knocking at My Door” back in September 1969 at the Carnegie Hall Cinema, a movie theater located beneath the famed Carnegie Hall. At the time, the theatre showed mostly art house, foreign, independent and classic films. I was home on leave from the Army, having just completed Basic Training and AIT, trying to avoid thinking about where I was going to be next month (Vietnam) by losing myself  in as many movies as I could. And if you want to lose yourself in movies, New York City is the best place to be other than maybe Paris.

     I must have read a review of the film in a newspaper and the synopsis of a young Italian-American kid living on the streets of Little Italy struggling with life’s complexities (girls, Catholic guilt) appealed to me on a personal level.  The film was amazingly unlike just about any other I had ever seen. The fact that the filmmaker was this Italian-American guy, like me, and he wrote and directed the film made it even more enticing. My wildest fantasies were coming true, only it was Martin Scorsese who was living it.  I never forgot the film or the name Scorsese as I went off to Vietnam, survived and went on with my life, when in 1972; a Roger Corman produced film called “Boxcar Bertha” came out and I noted the director’s name, Martin Scorsese. Hmm…  The film was typical King of the B’s Corman stuff, maybe somewhat better than most of his films filled with the prerequisite amount of violence and sex, all the good things low-budget filmmaking does best.

    Then came October 1973.

    Scorsese wrote the script for “Mean Streets” along with his friend and fellow NYU student, Mardik Martin with whom he collaborated with previously on some of his short films. In his book, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, author Peter Briskind states the two friends sat in Martin’s Valiant during a cold winter and wrote the script. Much of the story is from Scorsese’s own experiences growing up in Little Italy. During the filming of “Boxcar Bertha” Scorsese tried to interest Corman into financing his next film. However, Corman would agree only if Marty changed all the characters to black. Fortunately, for all he found other financing from Jonathan Taplin, then a road manager for the rock group, “The Band.”   

    Scorsese hired Harvey Keitel to play Charlie Cappa, in time to film the San Gennaro festival, which takes place every October in Little Italy. He then offered Robert DeNiro a choice of any of the other roles in the film. The two originally met when teenagers but did not hang out together, DeNiro the child of two artists, grew up in Greenwich Village though he spent much of his time in the Little Italy neighborhood next door. He had seen Scorsese’s first feature “Who’s That Knocking at my Door” and was impressed with the film’s accurate portrayal of life in Little Italy.  After some discussions and a meeting with Keitel, who suggested he play Johnny Boy, it was settled.

    “Mean Streets” does not have much of a plot; it focuses on Charlie Cappa a small time collector for his Uncle Giovanni (Cesare Danova), the local Don. Charlie also has taken personal responsibility for Johnny Boy, an anarchistic simple-minded hothead who is in debt some two thousands to local loan sharks. Charlie is also having an affair with Johnny Boy’s epileptic cousin Theresa (Amy Robinson).

    Part of what drives “Mean Streets” is the interaction between the two protagonists whose improvised street-wise dialogue has a free form jazz like quality. Just listen to the Joey Clams/Frankie Bones monologue between Charlie and Johnny Boy.  Scorsese encouraged his actors to improvise, much of it worked on during rehearsals, which contributes to the film’s tempo. It helped that along with Scorsese, DeNiro and Keitel, some of the others in the cast grew up in similar New York neighborhoods and were familiar with the type of environment portrayed on screen.

    Little Italy and its inhabitants were an enclave unto themselves, living a mostly separate existence from the rest of the city, insulated from the rest of the world. Outsiders were foreign and not wanted.  Scorsese’s “Mean Streets” shows us a world mixed with the old country and the new, a hybrid that never fully integrated. This is evident even in the superb use of music where the soundtrack combines the old (Opera), the traditional (Italian) and the modern (Rock and Roll).

    Early in the film, Charlie enters a local bar owned by Tony (David Proval), sharply dressed, confident; he is greeted like a king. He dances to the beat of The Rolling Stones “Tell Me”, shaking hands with associates and friends, swaying to the music. Gliding through the room, he makes his way to the stage joining two topless dancers. This is Charlie’s world, he is the center of attention, and he is a man in his element.

    Yet, Charlie is conflicted; he needs to reconcile his Catholic upcoming with his outlaw life. “Taking care” of Johnny Boy is Charlie’s attempt at redemption for his lifestyle. He knows that praying his ten “Hail Mary’s” and ten “Our Fathers” every week after confession is useless. As the voice over (Scorsese) at the beginning of film says, “You don’t pay for your sins in church; you pay for them in the streets.  Charlie is also conflicted with the women in his life. He is attracted to the black topless dancer and arranges a date with her, only when the time comes he stands her up knowing that in his world he can’t get involved with a black woman. He is already involved in a delicate relationship with the epileptic Theresa, who his Uncle disapproves of, telling him she’s crazy. Charlie, like many of Scorsese’s men has a Madonna/Whore complex. He resents Theresa’s independence. He chastises her for her vulgar language, which he and his cronies use all the time. He gladly has sex with her but fears a lasting relationship and his Uncle’s wrath. Theresa is in love with Charlie and she wants out of the neighborhood. She wants Charlie to commit to her and wants them to move uptown away from the neighborhood and into the outside world. Charlie cannot commit and he certainly will not leave the neighborhood. For men like Charlie, the neighborhood is everything.  

    Charlie’s relationship with Johnny Boy will lead to its inevitable violent ending. Johnny Boy’s disrespect to the local loan sharks like Michael (Richard Romanus) cannot be peacefully negotiated forever. While Charlie “protects” Johnny Boy, he will not go the distance, that is talk to his Uncle, who thinks Johnny Boy is a flake and dangerous, and is the only one who can ease the volatile situation with the loan sharks.

    Scorsese shows us a world where violence can erupt at any moment as it does in the now well-known “Mook” scene. Here we see Charlie and his boys go to a local pool hall to make a collection. The owner is happy to pay until one of the guys calls another a “mook.” While no one is sure, what’s a “mook” they are sure it’s an insult and soon a brawl breaks out between the two groups as The Marvelettes “Please Mr. Postman” blast away on the soundtrack. Scorsese’s mobile camera is in the middle of the mix as we watch these guys battle each other, Johnny Boy jumping on a pool table swinging a broken cue stick and kicking wildly. The police break it up but are paid off not to press any charges. As the cops leave, the two sides agree to have a drink together; however before you know it, another fight breaks out.    

    Scorsese poured himself into this film; Charlie is Marty’s on screen surrogate. There are indicators throughout the film most obviously with the lead character’s name. Charlie was Scorsese’s father’s name and Cappa was his mother’s maiden name. Like Scorsese, Charlie likes movies, twice we see him in a movie theater. Also, Charlie’s struggle with religion versus his outside life reflects the young Scorsese’s own internal battle.

    Influenced by the cinema verite documentary movement of the 1960’s, the French New Wave as well as by film noir of the 1940’s (Charlie’s Uncle watches Lang’s “The Big Heat” on TV) film critics greeted the film with warm open arms. Pauline Kael in The New Yorker called “Mean Streets”, “a true original of our period, a triumph of personal filmmaking.” Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times,   “No matter how bleak the milieu, no matter how heartbreaking the narrative, some films are so thoroughly, beautifully realized they have a kind of tonic effect that has no relation to the subject matter. Such a film is Mean Streets…” “Mean Streets” premiered at the New York Film Festival in 1973 and opened two weeks later exclusively at the Cinema 1 theater on the upper East Side of Manhattan. Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, the film did not do well at the box office, it may have been too New York, too isolated to the tribal rituals of Italian-Americans or too blue collar. Finally, the film is not so much a gangster film as a coming of age story.

    Amazingly, most of this New York film was shot in Los Angeles for budgetary reasons. Scorsese only shot about six days of exteriors in New York, including the annual San Gennaro festival in Little Italy. In addition, the tenement building shots were filmed in New York because of their authenticity and atmosphere. In those six days of filming Scorsese crammed in a lot of Little Italy including the old St. Patrick’s Cathedral and even a drive by shot of the Waverly Theater (now the IFC) in Greenwich Village.

    Unlike “The Godfather”, which deals with the upper echelons of the mob world and mythologizes the gangster lifestyle “Mean Streets” give you a view of small time marginal thugs living in Little Italy. As influenced as Scorsese was by those who came before, “Mean Streets” would go on to influence filmmakers of the next generation.

    From the opening pounding beat of Ronnie Spector’s voice singing “Be My Baby” to the final bloody ending “Mean Streets” is one of the great rides in cinema. I love it.

Hagase un buen cartel retro

Acabo de ver una buena peli antigua. Si, es que a veces valen más que las más nuevas… Y este es el caso de Saturno 3.

Ambientada en un futuro donde la humanidad lucha contra el hambre, dos científicos buscan en un laboratorio de la luna de Saturno, Titán, una fuente de alimento renovable. La trama principal llega cuando un investigador al que renegaron de la misión consigue llegar a Titán y montar allí un robot que obedece a todas sus órdenes. Debido a su sed de venganza y de lujuria (si, lo más increible de la peli es que el tío no debe de pensar en nada más que en la investigadora de la peli, aunque yo tampoco se por que esta con el viejales… en fin xD) el robot se rebela a su mandato, sabiendo en lo que acaba eso siempre…

¡Grandes actores! Kirk Douglas lo borda en toda la peli

¡Fantástica, menudos efectos especiales! Esas bolas de corcho sobre fondo negro son de lo mejorcito, pero dejando aparte los fallos en los decorados (que para la época están de muerte), es una gran película.

Hacía ya tiempo de una buena peli…

¡Saludos!

**Neco,the-one**

• Remember way back, when Courtney Love was actually a musician? Well, apparently someone reminded her of that too, and she miraculously got herself to a recording studio. — Rolling Stone

• File this under WHERE GREAT ACTORS GO TO DIE.  Another “Fockers” movie is in development (working title, “Little Fockers”), and will again include De Niro,  and now Harvey Keitel. As you will recall, the last one had Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman. Ben Stiller, what do you have on these people??? — Hollywood Reporter

• In other development news…some guy who moved back in with his parents and twittered “Shit My Dad Says” has landed a TV show deal with CBS.  Listen to me now, CBS, if you do this show, don’t half-ass it, PLEASE keep the title.  — Hollywood Reporter

• Martin Scorsese will receive the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement at the Golden Globes, airing in January. Congrats, Marty, you’ve definitely had a lifetime of achievements, and for the millionth time I’m gonna say it: Goodfellas should have won the damn Oscar. — E! Online

Es impresionante la capacidad que tiene Ben Stiller para conseguir buenos actores para sus películas, ya que para esta trilogía ha contado con nombres como Robert De Niro y Dustin Hoffman, y ahora el ultimo que se une al cast es el gran Harvey Keitel, que interpretara a un contratista empleado de Stiller.

Otras nuevas caras que veremos en “Little Fockers”, a saber como la traducen en esta ocasión, serán las de Laura Dern y Jessica Alba, que se unen a las anteriores y que estarán bajo la dirección de Paul Weitz.

Harvey Keitel and Robert DeNiro are set to re-team in a new movie? Yes! It’s Meet the Little Fockers? Ah crap. That’s right folks Harvey Keitel, Ewan McGregor’s forbearer in the whole nudity for no reason category, has joined the cast for the third instalment of the Meet the… series.

Keitel and Deniro have an excellent screen history together, having starred in the Martin Scorsese classics Mean Streets and Taxi Driver. They also appeared together in James Mangold’s Cop Land, but I choose to forget that. Keital will play a contractor who works for Ben Stiller’s character Greg Focker. No doubt he will some how manage to piss DeNiro’s Jack Byrnes off in some way that will reflect badly on Greg.

There’s no word on plot yet , but kids are sure to be involved. Jessica Alba and Laura Dern have also signed on to appear with regulars Teri Polo, Blythe Danner and Owen Wilson. There’s also no word on the possible return of Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand as Greg’s parents.

Paul Weitz, fresh from a box-office pasting with Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant, is on hand to direct the movie based, on John Hamburg’s script. The star power alone will guarantee bums in seats. Here’s just hoping that it can live up to the billing.

What did we do to deserve David Koepp’s ‘Premium Rush’?

David Koepp, who is responsible for some great movies (Carlito’s Way, Jurassic Park, The Shadow) and some abysmal dreck (The Lost World, Secret Window, Snake Eyes) is going to subject the world to the awful sounding action flick, ‘Premium Rush’.

PR involves a New York City bike messenger who picks up “the wrong package” and is chased all over the city by the crooked cop who wants it back. Unfortunately, even though this sounds like a low budget thriller in the mould of ‘16 Blocks’, something we could easily ignore, it’s apparently a big budget action movie featuring “the kind of elaborate chases associated with a William Friedkin pic”.

I can’t wait to see some kid in a porkpie hat chasing a subway train on his BMX.

Droopy Dogs little bro gets his ‘Source Code’.

Persian prince Jake Gyllenhaal has signed on for the sci-fi thriller ‘Source Code’, to be directed by David Bowie’s kid, Duncan Jones.

Gyllenhaal will play a soldier who wakes up in the body of an unknown commuter and is forced to live and relive a harrowing train bombing until he can determine who is responsible for it.

Sounds a bit like the movie ‘Déjà Vu’ to me. I liked this more when Topher Grace was attached and Billy Ray hadn’t done a rewrite.

Harvey Keitel reunites with Robert De Niro for the first time since ‘Mean Streets’

‘Little Fockers’ is the sequel to the sequel that absolutely no one seems to be asking for. But that doesn’t stop Hollywood from hedging their bets and utilising their best talent to make yet another bland, forgettable “comedy”.

So here you have De Niro, Keitel, Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson and Laura Dern all involved in a soulless cash-in at the expense of the untold number of genuinely good unproduced screenplays.

Anyhoo, Hollywood comedy is pretty much dead so expect more of the same. I’m just surprised Vince Vaughn hasn’t squeezed his giant, melon head into this flick.

Dante Harper follows the breadcrumbs to ‘Hansel and Gretel’.

Harper has been hired to write Tommy Wirkola’s ‘Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters’, which centers on the traumatised siblings, who, 15 years after their experience at the gingerbread house, have become bounty (witch) hunters.

It’s a concept that unfortunately sounds like the abysmal misfire ‘The Brothers Grimm’, but hopefully Wirkola, who made ‘Dead Snow’, can make it work.

Mr. Miller,

I’m writing to you right now from Mr. Harvey Keitel’s luxury hotel suite. More specifically, the hot tub of Mr. Harvey Keitel’s luxury hotel suite, so I apologize for any bubble-bath smudges on this letter. Mr. Keitel was kind enough to invite me and Eddie out for a night on the town to thank us for casting him in trucKING Royalty. Any idea who he’s playing? Go ahead, guess.

Did you guess yourself? GREAT GUESS YOU’RE THE SMARTEST DUDE! You see, I really liked him in Little Nicky (despite it’s status as a non-light-hearted-buddy-flick) and our producer, Mr. Feinberg, said he could “pull some strings” and make it happen. So he pulled said strings and here I am playing Halo 3 with Mark Wahlberg (playing Mr. Feinberg) and Robert Redford (playing my Dad) in hot tub filled with Perrier. Eddie just got his room service consisting of caviar covered bacon and a six-pack of Natty-Light. As you can tell, things are going pretty well.

Mr. Feinberg is apparently such a huge Burt Reynolds fan (he still thinks we’re Burt and Orlando) that he gave us a movie deal despite our script being all of 17 pages long. Apparently that’s about 17 minutes of filming. Eddie seems a bit worried about the length, but I know Mr. Scorsese (he’s directing, by the way) will fill in the rest with lots of dramatic monologues and gun fights. Marty says this will be the Citizen Kane of light-hearted buddy flicks, and I tend to believe him.

The only draw back of pretending to be Orlando Bloom is having to wear this Legolas costume all the time. People keep asking me to show off my archery skills, but I keep telling them I’ve got a wrist injury from punching an Uruk-hai. It’s flawless logic, I’m not worried about getting caught AT ALL.

We’ll send you tickets to the premier, you’re going to LOVE this movie!

-Danny

WARNING: This post contains spoilers. You should only read it if you’ve seen Reservoir Dogs, or if you have no interest in seeing the movie but for some reason want to read a review of it.

I was not a fan of Reservoir Dogs when I first saw it.

The first time I saw it was at summer camp when I was 14 years old. A friend of mine had sprained his ankle in the middle of the summer, which prevented him from doing pretty much anything the rest of us did. It’s hard to play basketball or soccer when you can’t really stand up (unless you’re Willis Reed, I guess). So he basically spent all of his time alone in his bunk watching movies on VHS.

Most of these films were generic comedies of the 1990s, like American Pie, Ace Ventura and Friday, but one day he head tossed in Reservoir Dogs, and I walked in about halfway through.

Now, it’s never ideal to start in the middle of a movie, and this is a perfect example why. I don’t remember exactly when I started watching the film attentively—I had gotten pretty used to tuning the movies out by that point, they were on all the time—but at some point it got my undivided attention. It is incredibly hard to ignore a Quentin Tarantio movie. They are so visually arresting and the dialogue is so sharp that they demand your attention.

But while I was engrossed in the film by it’s ending, I was ultimately disappointed by the conclusion. The final scene seemed abrupt and unsatisfying. It was a flashy, intense, bloody ending with little emotional value. Mr. Sprained Ankle agreed.

As is often the case with Tarantino movies, though, the film stuck in my head for a long time after seeing it. Reservoir Dogs is such a visceral movie that it’s hard to forget for the same reasons that it is impossible to ignore. Eventually, after watching Pulp Fiction and deciding that I hadn’t given Tarantino a fair chance, I rewatched Reservoir Dogs from the beginning and realized it was a truly great film.

My initial feelings about Dogs were not all that different from the complaints a lot of people have with the film, and with Tarantino in general. It’s hard to argue that the film is not stylistically immaculate, but it appears to lack depth.

Let’s start, though, with the immaculate stuff. A few months ago, in discussing Inglourious Basterds, I implied that Tarantino is better at making scenes than he is at making movies. The reason for this impression is that Tarantino is very good at the visual the component of his films. For all the discussion of the strength of the dialogue that he writes, most of the best parts of Tarantino movies have no dialogue at all: Butch’s search for a weapon in Pulp Fiction, The Bride’s battle with the Crazy 88 in Kill Bill Vol. 1, the movie theater shootout in Basterds.

The best examples of this phenomenon, however, come Reservoir Dogs. The initial “hero walk,” for example, is one of the coolest intros in any movie ever—never has eight guys walking down the street been so compelling.

More impressive, though, is the scene the movie is best remembered for, in which Mr. Blonde tortures and cuts the ear off of a police officer:

The way this scene is shot maximizes the power of it. From the beginning, in which we see the cop impotently squirm in his chair as Mr. Blonde points a gun at him with no intention of shooting, we instinctively understand the immense pleasure Blonde is getting from this. Once the music comes on and dancing ensues, the party really starts.

Two decisions Tarantino makes in this scene pay dividends. First, there is his decision to pan away from the action while Blonde cuts off the cop’s ear. Now, the reason a lot of people give for this is that it allows us to “imagine” it, and our imagination can be more gruesome than anything Tarantino could have filmed. But I don’t really think that’s right. What panning away really does is give the viewer hope. We don’t know what exactly Blonde is planning, and panning away maintains that suspense—and allows us to delude ourselves for a brief second that it won’t be that bad. When it is revealed, all we see is the aftermath, and Blonde’s smug sense of satisfaction. The image becomes horrifying and playful, instead of gruesome.

The second decision that works is the decision to follow Blonde out of the warehouse to his car. This brief respite for the torturous domicile interjects a suburban calm into the proceedings. The ease—and pointlessness—with which Blonde is going about his performance is already unsettling. To see it taking place in a larger, tranquil world is even more twisted.

Where, however, is the gravity of this scene? What makes it more than just a instance of sick voyeurism?

Well, the simple answer is the plot twist that comes in the end. Just when Blonde is about to light the cop on fire, Mr. Orange mows him down, revealing himself to be an undercover cop.

Now, when I first saw this movie, that’s all I thought this was: a plot twist. Mr. Orange is a cop and he set the whole robbery up from the beginning. Then the other bad guys find out, and the movie ends in fiery bloodshed…albeit well-written fiery bloodshed with good cinematography.

The true emotional weight of the final scene, however, comes from the bond between Mr. White and Mr. Orange. When I first saw the final scene, I figured that the White/Orange relationship had been developed, but I certainly didn’t think it had been such a trial by fire. The relationship is not one that is borne out of shared jokes and experiences on the job—all eight of the participants have that, but only White ends up attached to Orange. The relationship really begins when Orange gets shot in the gut. The fact that White and Orange have no real relationship prior to the shooting of Orange makes the connection more impressive, not less; it highlights how much of a limb White went out on to vouch for Orange.

It is only all the more sad since we now know that White is wrong, that Orange is, in fact, a cop. White, however, is too moved by the compassion he feels for a wounded comrade to see that. This short-lived bond sustains the movie. Due to the nonlinear storytelling, White and Orange begin the film together—in the first scene after the credits, White is holding Orange’s hand and then cradling him in his arms after his gunshot wound—and end it together, with Orange confessing to White that he is a cop.

I would be lying, of course, if I said that this thread is what makes the movie great. White’s sympathy for Orange, and the ultimate sense of betrayal he feels, is touching, but it doesn’t exactly carry the emotional gravity of the final scene of The Godfather Part II. What it does, though, is add depth to the overall story’s arc, allowing scenes like the one we get with Mr. Blonde and the cop and the initial confrontation between Mr. Pink and Mr. White to function as something beyond a stylistic exercise. It’s these parts of the movie that are hard to get out of your head, and, thanks to the emotional subtext that runs through the whole movie, you don’t really want to.

A debt collector for the mob (Academy Award-winner (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) finds his fate taking a series of treacherous turns after his powerful boss and mentor (Miguel Ferrer) is caught in a dangerous double cross with the most dangerous drug dealer around (Academy Award-nominee Harvey Keitel) in this crime thriller from writer/director Franck Khalfoun.