Friday, 17 December 1999

WEEKEND PREVIEW

And so, the real crunch begins. This weekend, you have seven, count `em, seven new releases that aspire to grandeur of either the economic or the aesthetic sense. I'll show you the money first...

Bicentennial Man is an electronic lump of coal in your Christmas stocking. Disney should be happy that it's too late to be a Chanukah gift, lest Jews all over the planet would be found roasting it over the candles of the menorah. I still believe in Robin Williams, though in a story that I have repeated so many times that I won't bother typing it again here, he clearly saw himself falling into the trap of always being the good guy as far back as 1994. The sad part about Bicentennial Man is that it has the foundations of something that could have worked. The robot make-up is remarkably good and completely believable. And Williams is terrific in his work inside the robot, managing to be both gentle and funny and crude in the best Williams way. Then trouble starts. First, we spend a lot of time with Sam Neill, Wendy Crewson and Embeth Davitz, who are all playing characters so benign that they could be robots. Then, there is a notion that the robot wants to be a man. But unlike the expected route, Williams' Andrew has all the passion for being human of...well...a robot. It takes him 150 years or so to evolve, which may be realistic, but is boring as hell. I would venture to guess that the real issue with being Bicentennial Man and not Super Fast Evolving Robot Guy 2K is that he meets his eventual love interest at the age of 7 or so. And the idea of a Robin Williams robot waiting 30 years to pork the adult Hallie Eisenberg was just too Woody Allen for Disney (or audiences, in all honesty) to ever stomach. And so, we wait. And we wait. And we wait. And in that wait, Oliver Platt gets short-changed of a character worthy of his talent yet again. And Embeth Davitz gets to be a bitch for about 3 minutes before reverting to being Play-Doh. And we get to see a black woman (the great Lynne Thigpen) in charge of the world political organization so that she can give a deep-voiced speech that makes us all ready to leave the theater. One of our Web-headed friends pointed out that Bicentennial Man was proof that Chris Columbus should get the job directing Spider-Man and that he could handle it. I could not disagree more. I do think that Columbus can do a benign, cute Spider-Man is called upon to do so. But it had better be campy because any more sincerity like this could make him, as a dear friend recently said to me on a completely different subject, as irrelevant and old-hat as he is already being unfairly accused of being. Well, not so unfairly this time.

The other cash cow movie attempt opening this weekend is Stuart Little, the movie about the mouse who talks to humans and cats, but where the cats and the humans can't communicate and Jonathan Lipnicki's charm as a l'il actor is beaten to death by technical demands on him. The truth is, this is not a bad movie. The truth is, this is not a great movie. The truth is, anyone over the age of 8 is likely to wish they had just turned on the Cartoon Network (a coincidentally affiliated part of the Turner family) for an episode of "Tom & Jerry". In the end, the truth is that first-time live action director Rob Minkoff doesn't have the magic touch. He doesn't fail completely. But he just didn't have the tools to make this film fly...though I'm not sure that anyone could ever have made a fairy tale about a talking mouse fly. There is no real underdog (so to speak) here. So forget being another Babe. I should give Sony credit, though. They have been willing to risk on the kid's pictures. Matilda, for instance, deserved to do better than it did. But this one was just not special enough and certainly not special enough to warrant a $90 million budget.

Now, as we get to the films searching for aesthetic rewards, things aren't much different. I would say that the holiday/award season is marked this year by a distinct lack of great directing. There is lots of competent directing and to the list of two just above, I add Anna & The King. I've gone down the Anna road in the column before, so I'll just link to those comments. (THB 12/10) But why would we expect Rob Minkoff to be a great live action director just because he made beautiful animation? Chris Columbus has had such commercial power in the past that he makes a nice package. But his directing skills seem to have deteriorated from Nine Months to Stepmom (which was okay, but should have been electric) to B-Man. And as I keep repeating, Andy Tennant is a really nice guy who is just competent to make movies. Some of you think I'm Drew Barrymore obsessed, but the truth is that I understand the power she has. Audiences love her when she is her own quirky self, no matter what the values of the rest of the movie. Tennant says that Bill Mechanic greenlit this movie before Jodie Foster was even signed, aiming at Christmas `99. Well, he should have signed Coppola and taken the risk of going long. Or he should have hired Jon Amiel, assuming that Foster is still willing to work with him (they did Sommersby together). Though I guess Amiel was too busy on Entrapment to do this one. Apted was busy on Bond. I don't know...make a list. There had to be a director out there who had brought real magic to either spectacle or character intimacy who would have been able to fill out this movie to be as much as or more than the sum of its parts. (Joe Johnston could have made something really human and visually loaded out of it.) But no director has made Drew B. magical. She is a real, self-created movie star. Tennant and Gosnell and Dean Parisot are getting credit for her magic when they did little more to create it than point a camera in her direction.

The smaller art film openings include Mike Leigh's delightful (I hate that word, especially when it's appropriate) Gilbert & Sullivan bio-pic, Topsy Turvy, Matthew Warchus' Simpatico, which I gather from all reports that I should feel lucky not to have seen and Martha Fiennes' Onegin, which did its damnedest to put me to sleep in Toronto. (Well, there is one great sequence, but you have to wait for the third act.) Have I written about Magnolia yet? It seems like I kept threatening to do so and I just can't remember whether I ever went full bore (in both its meanings). Well, I'll be researching and if I haven't thoroughly reviewed the film yet, I will on Monday. In the meantime I will say that I think that you should see the movie if you have the opportunity. At the worst, it is an acting clinic of epic proportions. At its best, it is truly inspired, thought-provoking stuff.

THE GOOD: I was happy to find that the New York Film Critics didn't play some of the political games we have come to expect from them this year. On the other hand, Topsy Turvy as Best Picture...interesting. It might make my Top 20 this year, but "Best?" I don't know. That said, the New Yorkers seem to have voted with their hearts and not their minds. Popularity of choice didn't prevent them from choosing Hilary Swank for Best Actress. The mortal locks of All About My Mother as Best Foreign-Language Film and The Buena Vista Social Club as Best Documentary seem to be set. And the New Yorkers aren't alone in giving acting kudos to Richard Farnsworth or John Malkovich. Catherine Keener did get her first award in the city that never sleeps. And such solid, but unheralded choices as Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor for their Election script, Freddie Francis for shooting The Straight Story and a Best Animated Film award to South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut brought me pleasure, even if I wouldn't necessarily put each of those at the very top of my lists.

THE BAD: I feel a bit bad writing about this at all. But my jaw hit the floor when I saw Winona Ryder's interview on "20/20" Wednesday night. Here was an actress who has been fiercely protective of her privacy, whoring her personal pain to sell a movie that's supposed to be about mental illness. The perversity of it was so...so...Jenny Jones. What was she thinking when she agreed to do this? It might have lessened the ugliness for me had the movie been any good, but it isn't anywhere near worthy of a disclosure from Ryder about her thoughts of suicide and mid-career confusion and desperation. It felt a bit like watching a loved one who you already know is sensitive getting involved in a relationship where you know she's going to get hit when he's drunk one night, but you can't get her to stop. I didn't like watching Ms. Ryder get violated. And I wish she hadn't done the interview. It wasn't so much that she admitted her pain as it was that "20/20" made it into just another primetime circus, complete with a GMA tease about her talking about Matt Damon Thursday morning. Blech!

THE UGLY: Merry Christmas...ho ho ho...and you're fired Little Nancy and you too Little Malcolm...meeeeeeery Christmas everyone! That was the scene this week at the office of Dennis Davidson & Associates, one of the industry's leading film publicity firms. Turns out that Mr. Davidson, ensconced in an island hideaway for the holidays, just couldn't keep the profitable but not extremely profitable domestic movie division alive. Not noted in the story in the trades is the fact that the company is laying off the 18 employees, who are probably making less expensive millennial plans now, with no severance whatsoever. Whether you are near the top or on the bottom, a royal screwing was had by all.

In Davidson's mea no culpa letter to his staff, he closes, "I am fully aware that this could not have happened at a worse time of the year but the bank situation has left me with no room for maneuver. (Others) have the horrible task of being the messengers today. If I could have been there myself, I would have been. (DAVID NOTE: I guess those first class seats were non-refundable) My apologies to all but, for the many that remain, our international and UK businesses look to be stronger than ever in 2000 and I have no doubt, that with your continued support and professionalism, we will have reason to celebrate the Festive Season in 12 months time. (DAVID NOTE 2: My guess is, for those who were let go, only if they are celebrating his demise.) For those who will be leaving the company, we will do everything possible to help you find new positions. dad"

Isn't that sign-off lovely. It happens to be his initials, but it has all the warmth and thoughtfulness, under these circumstances, of an abusive parent. Baby, it's cold outside.

P.S. The domestic publicists who helped Topsy Turvy to the Best Picture award? DDA.

RADIO RADIO: As of this writing, it looks like either Michael Caine or Hilary Swank will show up for the KABC radio show. I don't know which because I have been left hanging by my friends at Fox Searchlight. It's funny. I have been a big proponent of Boys Don't Cry and especially Swank from the beginning and Titus could have no greater advocate than I. And yet, here I sit on Thursday afternoon, waiting for my phone to ring like a Class-A idiot. But as I try to always maintain, the artists are more important than the crap you have to go through to get access to them. Miramax, for its part, has done everything possible to make up for Mr. Caine's disappearance last Saturday. So, tune in to 790 in L.A. or click on kabc.com to listen on the Web and see who shows.

BAD AD WATCH: Isn't it interesting how the florid and critically worthless Rex "I have vibrators older than you" Reed starts to show up in ad after ad this time of year? Was there ever a time when he was worth reading? I remember admiring him as a kid, but maybe it was because he was so flamboyant. I mean, I also liked fireworks, but now I enjoy them just once or twice a year.

READER OF THE DAY: Marc writes: "I strongly disagree with your claim that the DGA's decision to remove D.W. Griffith's name from their highest award represents "the nadir of political correctness in Hollywood." I do not begrudge Griffith's right to make the movies he wanted to make. And audiences have the right to go home and watch Birth of a Nation on an endlessly looped videotape for all I care. To me, the issue is why did the award, which apparently was established in 1953, have to be named after Griffith in the first place?

(DAVID NOTE: Because there was no sensitivity to the issue then. The award was named simply based on his contributions as a director.)

In your article you sarcastically claim the removal of Griffith's name from the award as being logically akin to banning films such as Easy Rider and Bridge Over The River Kwai. Now, I may have missed something, but where amid all the brou-ha-ha is anyone advocating banning Birth of A Nation? Frankly, I don't know why you're so riled up.

(DAVID NOTE: Don't assume too much sarcasm. Isn't there real hypocrisy in holding up Easy Rider as a classic while we scream about the war on drugs? Personally, I think the war on drugs is the absurd phenom in this case, but Anna & The King couldn't shoot in Thailand because they felt that the musical The King & I was disrespectful to their real-life king. The power of political correctness is not something to sneeze at in today's Hollywood.)

I know Griffith had a huge and hugely influential body of cinematic work. He deserves, and receives, major respect for that. But the content of Birth of A Nation has an equally significant legacy. It made me, the only black person in my undergraduate literature class, cringe being shown clips from it in the late 1980s. It unsettles me now just thinking of its images of "blacks" kicking back, eating (watermelon) in Congress, rabidly going after white women. And there's its noble portrayal of sheeted horsemen. I can scarcely imagine the feeling of being a struggling filmmaker in 1953 when the DGA established the award in Griffith's name.

I'm sorry, but I lose eloquence when discussing these types of issues--and I've got to get back to work!--so I'll end soon.

Griffith was a brilliant filmmaker. Leni Riefenstahl is a brilliant filmmaker. But to name the DGA's highest award after either of them is simply wrong to me. Each of their careers are inextricably connected to controversy. Honor their work. Study their work. But the DGA doesn't have to sully the recognition of filmmakers by linking their honors to D.W. Griffith. And maybe that's where we'll always disagree."

(DAVID NOTE: I would agree if the DGA was naming an award today. There is, to me, a distinct difference between retro-retribution and actions in today's society. That also speaks to my stance on Elia Kazan.)

And from another perspective, Ben writes: " Well, personally, I don't like that they stripped DW Griffith's name from an award, not one bit. But then I have ceased to be amazed by the personal stances of Hollywood after Saving Private Ryan, perhaps one of the most right wing and pro-war films ever to be produced. (Not to mention scripted like a Predator movie, in which a hero falls in a dramatic, painful battle...one at a time, directed in scenes straight from the Action Film Handbook. Pfff. Doesn't anyone remember Full Metal Jacket, and the almost silent, distanced death that existed in the film? Perhaps, then perhaps not, but I'm getting tired of not hearing people be outraged by the obvious political leanings in the film. And when, oh god when, will someone bring up the anti-German sentiments that run through Speilberg's films? Especially in Saving Private Ryan, in which the only German we meet is a distrustful, evil man who shoots the beloved (character) after his life was spared earlier.

I'm tired of his black and white presentations, especially when Indiana Jones is not there to make the audience realize that it is popcorn.

And yet another p.o.v. from Joey G. : "First, David, lay off Roosevelt already. What, exactly, was FDR supposed to have done in 1940 and 1941 to rescue European Jews? Please tell me. Send in the Marines? Hitler would have loved that in 1940. Isn't it becoming more and more clear that Roosevelt dragged this navel gazing country, through subterfuge, into a war it wanted no part of but had to fight? What else was he supposed to do? Hey, you brought it up.

(DAVID NOTE: It would have been a good start if he simply acknowledged the atrocities he knew were taking place. How much is that to ask of a president?)

Second, I think it's rather clumsy of you to try to compare the "objectification" of Marilyn Monroe in a Billy Wilder farce to the naked hatred of Griffith's Birth of a Nation. Have you ever actually watched this picture David? (DAVID NOTE: Yes. Repeatedly. I'm not a big fan, but I did go to film school.) I'll concede that it's amazing filmmaking, especially the climax, which I'm sure can still get some folks all riled up today. Griffith went to a lot of trouble to create those images and I think it's completely fair that his current reputation reflects them. Maybe the DGA felt that in 1999, when we still have pathetic little f**kers calling themselves "white supremacists" skulking around in the dark and shooting black men in the back, maybe we haven't come as far as we should have in 84 years. Maybe our society has a little more growing up to do before it can dispassionately excuse Griffith for his hate mongering.

Of course we should continue to watch his films, all of them. And Leni Riefenstahl's films for that matter (another big issue. And nobody can accuse Jodie Foster of not sticking her neck out, but jeeze...). "

And R.S. adds: "While I'm not certain that the Academy should rename their honorary award due to Griffith's racist past, I am certain that Griffith was a racist and even a superficial look into his life would stress that point. He was very good friends with the playwright, whose name escapes me at the moment but who wrote the source material for Birth of a Nation which was originally titled, "The Klansman." Can there be any question? A film which heralds the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and depicts African American politicians as barefoot and drunk in the Senate chamber does not just portray racist views it espouses them. I would never deny that Leni Riefenstahl is a brilliant filmmaker and yet I would not name Germany's highest film award honor after her, either."

E ME: Just FYI...the mystery ROTD yesterday was Greg Dean Schmitz, creator and writer of Upcomingmovies.com. And so the battles go on. What side do you take?