I would have liked to be more excited about this weekend…

You have two quality studio directors.  One is working out of his area of strength… perhaps a little too far out.  The other working right in his wheelhouse… perhaps a little too much in his wheelhouse.  There is craftsmanship in both films.  There is a degree of self-indulgence in both films.  Both films will, amazingly to me, end up on a number of critics’ Top Ten lists at the end of the year.  And both films are sure to make a profit.

Yawn.

I saw Full Frontal twice, looking for answers.  I didn’t really find any.  I didn’t find any great questions either. 

You’ve probably read it all before… between the mammoth production of Ocean’s Eleven and the mammoth production of Solaris, Steven Soderbergh made a digital film for around $2 million in 18 production days with many of his famous friends.  He worked with a novice screenwriter, Coleman Hough, who Soderbergh felt had a knack for capturing natural language. 

He got a moment here.  And he got a moment there.  And if this were a festival entry with a no name director, the press would be lapping it up like dehydrated puppies at a desert mirage.  But it’s Steven Soderbergh and it’s Julia Roberts instead of Catherine Keener and Catherine Keener instead of some French actress attempting an America accent and David Duchovny circa 2002 instead of David Duchovny circa 1993 and Nicky Katt. 

Is there anything that I took away from Full Frontal that really mattered to me?  No.  Marital discord in the midst of show business was done better in The Anniversary Party.  So was digital production that is intended to feel intimate.  Mel Brooks’ theatrical Hitler jokes would be funnier than these even if they weren’t just 34 years old and not part of a current Broadway smash. 

Nothing in this film seems to have any deeper meaning or insight.  I think young Anderson Jones of E! Online missed the point completely about race and sex on screen.  One of the few things I did take away from a second viewing of the film was the irony that the black star in the film and in the film-within-the-film complains about never getting to kiss the girl on screen.  While Soderbergh manages to keep him from getting a kiss on screen as well, resorting to a cheap gag in the closing shot of the movie-within-the-movie, this black man is also the only character who gets sex on-screen in the entire film.  During the course of the film, he seduces four different women and sleeps with three of them. The only other sex in Full Frontal is the paid-for manual manipulation of one erection to a “happy ending.” 

That said, is there any real meaning behind the sex or lack thereof?  I didn’t see any.  Is there any insight in the story of a selfish actor and a self-delusional playwright/screenwriter?  Beats me!  Is there anything about the film-with-a-film or the actors in that film worth watching?  Well, if you find petulant actresses who just can’t eat their lunch or wisecracking stars who blow takes with jokes about their penis size or “movie cops” who don’t do a whole lot insightful, you will get some insight. 

I’m going off on a coincidental tangent here… as I write this, there is a TV show playing in the background that is premiering as a summer fill-in on NBC.  It’s called “The Rerun Show.”  I haven’t read a word about it, but I would bet every dollar I have that it was a live stage show somewhere here in L.A. or New York or Chicago that some exec saw and loved.  And they were right.  On stage, it would probably be great fun.  But on TV, there is a different energy.  And it just doesn’t work. 

If Full Frontal was a live, mostly improvised performance, I bet it would be a great night of theater.  Julia Roberts and the others would really be on the tightrope.  On a movie, the moments of inspiration, for the most part, add spice to the dialogue and an already well-structured story.  We don’t sit there and think about it, any more than we do at the theater, but our suspension of disbelief is different in a movie.  A few great lines in a scene is enough when you go see the Groundlings or Second City.  And the truth is, you rarely get more than that.  Yet, you leave the theater feeling satisfied.  But in a film, characters whose stories go nowhere and funny moments that don’t end up meaning anything are not acceptable.

I enjoyed Full Frontal.  I enjoyed it twice.  I didn’t have any urge to get up and leave.  I liked watching the actors work.  I liked the in-jokes… especially ones so obscure – like David Fincher directing the movie-within-the-movie-within-the-movie – that they will never be anything more for most people than impossible trivia questions.  Soderbergh’s interest in the line between real and fake and really fake is an interest of mine.  But this is no Eyes Wide Shut, where I figured out the subtext and found a work of genius. 

I’m glad that Soderbergh made this movie.  I don’t know how it is informing his work on Solaris, but I’m sure that it is.  I’m sure that he will take lessons from this film into all of his future work.  And I will always support the growth process of quality directors.  Period.  Now, I’m happier that Barry Levinson made his “quickie” movie, Wag The Dog, which he did during a delay before shooting Sphere.  Let’s hope that Solaris is as good as Sphere was bad.  I’m also happier that Bob Zemeckis made What Lies Beneath in his down period between the start of Cast Away and the second shooting period, after Hanks lost the weight.  For me, both of those films are testaments to quality filmmakers – from the director down to the caterers – left free to work because there wasn’t enough time to screw around doing really good work.  Soderbergh played it faster and looser.  And he got a curiosity for his effort. 

You know, it wasn’t long ago that I was writing about how I admired that Soderbergh had made a real effort to be a guy who just made movies.  No two years between each films, waiting for the “right” moment.  Soderbergh re-created the studio system for his own mode of working.  He didn’t just make anything.  But he made films that are precious to me by not being precious. 

You know, I really like Orson Welles’ F Is For Fake… but if you really wanted to compare it to James Conway’s In Search of Noah’s Ark, you wouldn’t find much proof that one was made by a legendary filmmaker and that the other was made by a guy who has spent his entire career in television.  (No offense to Mr. Conway… he directed a bunch of MacGuyvers, some Shannon Doherty Charmeds and episodes of every Star Trek series except for the original.  But that quality work doesn’t make him an Orson Welles.) 

And Signs doesn’t make M. Night Shyamalan into Steven Spielberg. 

What Signs does is to confirm that Shyamalan knows how to direct a movie.  He knows how to take an audience where he wants to take him.  And he is able to hold a movie in a vibrato at the highest note for longer than any director currently working. 

But what do I think of Signs? 

I wish it were 20 minutes shorter.

I wish that it made more sense if you really think about it afterwards.

I wish it well.

I have come to believe that Shyamalan is the most predictable quality director since… well, you know, he has a lot in common with Sam Mendes.  They both work on grand themes and reduce them to very simple, personal stories.  Most people admit that The Sixth Sense was a long set-up for a punchline… very well made, but still…  Unbreakable felt like the first two acts of a movie drawn out to the length of a full feature.  And now Signs arrives and … well, I don’t want to spoil it by writing what I think.  It wouldn’t ruin it for you now, but it would ruin it for you somewhere in the second act of the film. 

The thing is, Shyamalan is a skilled craftsman.  He can take almost all of the action out of a suspense film and still scare the crap out of people.  The comparison I forgot to write about yesterday in shredding the Newsweek comparison to Spielberg is Polanski.  Shyamalan makes movies that Polanski might make if Polanski was willing to make every ending happy. 

And perhaps that’s the rub for Shyamalan and me.  And Mendes and me too.  I don’t mind a happy ending.  I don’t mind a candy-coated shell.  But I don’t like too much sugar in my tea.  If it turned out that the baby in Rosemary’s Baby was Jesus’ son and not Satan’s and that the whole thing was a test of Rosemary’s faith, I would have been disappointed.  If Fight Club had turned out to all be a dream, I wouldn’t have been happy.  And I would have been much more impressed with Lester Burnham had he lived to deal with the havoc that his newfound humanity had wrought. 

Have I said that Shyamalan is an expert craftsman?  Lovely Len Klady, a veteran movie journalist for the few of you too young to remember reading him daily in Variety, pointed out that the farm in the movie is, oddly and inexplicably, a non-working farm.  There is a full crop of corn and no one is interested in harvesting it… maybe they didn’t plant it either.  (???)  Nonetheless, I honor Night’s ability to take us on the ride he wants to take us on.  And in the end, I wish it meant something as powerful as the ride suggests.  If you forced me to sum up the Shyamalan trilogy so far… sound and fury signifying very little. 

P.S.:  I got a few e-mails about the 1950s/1960s/1970s TV show that did dramatic stories with guest stars that ended up having religious undertones.  There was a show in the 50s called “This Is The Life.”  But that’s not the show I was thinking of… thanks for playing.  The show was Insight.  I know because their list of guest stars includes Ed Asner, John Astin, Ed Begley, Bill Bixby, Carol Burnett, Celeste Holmes, Brian Keith, Greg Mullavy, William Windom and many others.  Dan The Razor Man tells me that there was some controversy when the show stopped production a few years back.  It was an odd show for a nice jewish boy to watch every week, but I always say that all organized religion is organized on pretty much the same foundations. 

FALL PREVIEW:  I got through most of November and realized that I was up over 1500 words already.  So, the preview will run as a weekend special tomorrow.  (And yes, if you are reading at the office, it will be available come Monday.)   Of course, in preparing the preview, one of the great places to check out what is coming is Greg Dean Schmitz’s upcoming movies page at Yahoo! Movies. 

When I checked out his site, I was surprised by his list of the Top Ten most visited previews of upcoming movies.  Batman vs. Superman wasn’t surprising.  Nor was Signs or X-Men 2 or TF&TF2 or XXX or T3 or LOTR2.  Even The Whole Nine Yards 2 topping the list wasn’t a surprise, since there was new news today.  But Julie Davis’ indie film Amy’s Orgasm at Number Four… that was a shock.  A pleasant shock.  I haven’t seen the film yet, but it was delightful to see an indie amongst the superheroes.

REMEMBER THE BUDGET:  The word came down on The Alamo earlier this week… John Lee Hancock… $60 million… be cheap or be square. 

BOX OFFICE EXTRA:  It’s not much of a race this weekend… Signs wins.  Goldmember comes in second.  Everyone else comes in way, way, way behind. 

The sleeper this weekend, seems to me, is Martin Lawrence’s Runteldat.  If you look back at 2000, The Original Kings of Comedy opened to over $13,000 a screen.  Paramount obviously looked at their own books and picked a release date.  Even at “just” $10,000 a screen, Runteldat will take Number Three on the charts, passing a Road to Perdition challenged for its adult audience by Signs.  .

WEEKEND GUESSTIMATES

1. Signs - 3264 venues – new - $47 million
2. Austin Powers in Goldmember – 3613 venues – off 57 percent - $31.4 million
3. Martin Lawrence Runteldat – 752 venues – new - $7.5 million
4. Stuart Little 2 - 3095 venues – off 30 percent - $7.4 million
5.  Road to Perdition – 2332 venues – off 38 percent - $6.9 million
6. Master of Disguise - 2565 venues – new - $5.8 million
7. Men in Black II – 2902 venues – off 45 percent - $4.7 million
8. K-19: The Widowmaker – 2634 venues – off 53 percent - $3.4 million
9. The Country Bears – 2553 venues – off 51 percent - $2.6 million
10. Mr. Deeds - 2309 venues – off 48 percent - $2.2 million

READER OF THE DAY:  MK NO LUTHER wrote about table scenes:  “I'm amazed that no one's mentioned this (or at least that you didn't post it): The final scene of THE GODFATHER PART II.   Just heartbreaking.

THE CUTTING MAN writes:  “first time writer, etc...but reading today's column of great dining scenes makes me realize that everyone's missed perhaps the ultimate table scene in a movie, one that includes the entire movie: that masterpiece of Louis Malle: My Dinner with Andre.”

From THE BUS:  “Was surprised to see that nobody mentioned the incredible dinner table (albeit a really big table) bomb shell dropped in Festen (Celebration). It may not be the best directed dinner table scene but it’s certainly the most memorable.”

ON DA HOOK writes:  “I know everyone keeps mentioning the table scene towards the end of "Jaws" when Shaw gives his legendary speech, but there's another great table scene in the film. It's the one where Scheider is finishing his dinner with his son, and the son starts mimicking all his actions. The scene manages to be enormously touching without being too cute, and it gives us yet another reason to root for Scheider at the end of the film. It's called "character development," and it's something Spielberg apparently forgot when he made Jurassic Park 17 years later.”

NOT THE AUSSIE DIRECTOR writes:  “If you want the best table scene of 2002 (so far), it has to be the one in Changing Lanes. Ben Affleck is reconsidering his course in life, and Amanda Peet's reaction to this is classic "girlfriend from hell". This one scene made an otherwise mediocre morality film into one of the years best films.”

And THE IRISHMAN closes with:  “Okay, I'm a day late, but one of the all-time greats was in Tom Jones, where Albert Finney and a wenchy mutually seduce each other by devouring a table full of food. It's one of the most sexually charged scenes ever filmed and all that's involved are two great actors and an endless assortment of food.”

BAD CHAD answers the question of what will get him to Signs this weekend:  “Pure and simple. Shymalan. I like Mel, and it's nice to see him get paid to possibly act again, rather than whip out his usual shtick, and unlike your boy Jeff, I don't care that he's going thin on top or thick in the middle (has Jeff checked out his own crown lately? Just asking.).

Shymalan has the most assured hand of any young director in years. I don't feel false notes in his work, and while he's not a flashy visualist, he is such a strong storyteller, he doesn't have to resort to the Michael Bay-watch sensory overload. Like directors such as Ford and Sturges and Welles, he uses strong framing and solid direction to his actors to carry things along. He doesn't feel like a one-trick pony as we wait for YEARS for his next movie (yes, Tarantino, your name is being called). He keeps working, keeps maturing, in his storytelling ability. "Unbreakable," with stronger themes of family and consequence, was a growing up experience for him, and while I'm in a minority, I felt it worked brilliantly. If confidence is a woman is sexy, then confidence by a director works the same way. (That's not really a Wells-ian critique on if Shymalan's good looking, balding or chunky in his success ...)

It's easy to fault him on things such as pacing or structure (there are similiar issues with both "The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable), but he's also the guy determined to make you work a little for your entertainment dollar. That's not such a bad thing. I know I'll be there with my seven bucks this weekend.”

CLEARING THROAT adds:  “Mel’s made stionkers, but M ...hasn't yet.  While I love Mel Gibson as much as any red-blooded American is required to, he's responsible for The Patriot.  Also, The Patriot.  And let's not forget The Patriot.  So I can't trust him fully.  Meanwhile, I love all M Night's movies, including the shorts he puts on his DVDs.

I realize it's unfair to compare them, since this is only M's third, and Mel's been in like a zillion - two zillion if you count the Lethal Weapon series.  But then, half the fun of rushing out to see movies by young, brilliant filmmakers is that you never know when it's going to be The First One That Sucks.

By the way, I think more people would like Unbreakable if they'd just keep in mind that it's supposed to be funny.

And my entry for table scene is in Parents, where they're sitting there EATING HUMAN FLESH!  Man, that movie rocks.  Any movie that you can describe by typing EATING HUMAN FLESH! rocks.”

E ME:  Let’s table that discussion for now… write me with your spoiler-laden comments on Signs or any other movie you see this weekend.  We’ll go there on Monday.  And look for the Fall Preview over the weekend.  And thanks to those of you who have already bought books through the book club.  A new highlighted selection is coming… promise… next week.