Celebration Geek

Is it good? Yes, very much so. Dare I say - the best of the lot? Could be. But I'm biased.

As we stood in line for the Navy Pier IMAX afternoon showing of the new STAR TREK movie, maggie spent an inordinate amount of time, I thought, needling my supposed inner Trek Geek.

Perhaps it was the plethora of middle-aged men sans female companionship in line with us that stimulated this gleeful assault. Or the rotund young woman sporting a chartreuse mu-mu and pointy ears. It could have been the tall, handsome, long-haired fellow in full Starfleet uniform and communicator - I don't know. Regardless, I thought it a rather stinky attitude, frankly, from someone who has never even seen episode one of the original television series - but who does seem to hold in high regard - as most of her misguided generation does - those wretched, overrated, badly-written Buster Crabbe knock-offs that involve Debbie Reynolds' daughter, what must have been at the time an extraordinarily cash-poor Alec Guiness, and a Muppet spouting Coloring-Book Nietzsche.

I think you know which ones I mean. She certainly does.

So, two hours and a Certificate of Deposit later, having seen the new picture, we had dinner and came home - free to surf the net with abandon to read all about the making of the movie, without fear of spoilers. And, much to my horror - and her delight - it seems everyone associated with the damn thing is falling all over themselves to thank and acknowledge the past contributions of William Shatner (well they should) along with - wait for it - George Lucas.

Simon "Scotty" Pegg: huge Lucas fan, so says several interviews. Director J.J. Abrams: hoping it will have the same impact as a Lucas "film" (and there's an oxymoron - accent on the "moron") And lead Chris Pine: admitting openly for all to read that he based his Captain James T. Kirk on what Shatner did - combined with a generous dollop of - wait for it, again - Han Solo.

And just how f**king depressing is that, I ask you? I doubt seriously if I will ever live it down, frankly, as it seems this new bunch will be around for quite some time. And now, of course, it can be claimed that their new success was inspired by STAR WARS, a film series whose value I generally equate with SUPERMAN AND THE MOLE MEN - minus the intellectual content or style.

Anyway, whatever the catalyst, Abrams and company did a fine job here: it's a very exciting picture of its kind, wide-open to be enjoyed by people give a damn about the series or just want to be carried away for a while. He continually tips his hat to the best elements of the tired franchise while shoving in his own Lucasian epic agenda - but with a very light, entertaining touch, I have to say - and solid introductory story elements. Lucas should be so talented.

Best is the cast, top to bottom - even that most boring of actors, Eric Bana, as a baddie, Bruce Greenwood, Tyler Perry (!), Ben Cross, and Wynona Ryder, of all people, as Spock's mother.

Everyone in the new crew, of course - Pegg, Karl Urban, John Cho, Zoe Saldana, and personal fave, Anton Yelchin as Chekov - is given their own scenes to shine, and the actors, obviously driven by the needs of the massive - and massively Geeky - fan base, acquit themselves cleverly as both echoes of the originals, and solid young performers in their own right. Not an easy thing to do.

Pine as Kirk and Zach Quinto as the young Spock play their parts as character roles, as opposed to laid-back leading men, and we care about what happens to them. I'll even confess a certain thrill when they transport in tandem to the heart of the baddies' spaceship late in the game. Not thrilling enough to wear my own set of rubber ears to the movies - but you get the basic idea - and, really, when was the last time you felt anything like that in one of these movies? Uhura, Chekov, and Sulu deserve special mention, I think, as their roles have always been so astonishingly bland in the past. Here, though, I'm sure every writer with ties to the franchise can see the possibilities in having them around as real players - both in new conception and performance.

The effects are flawless - and here I will give the Big Nod to Mr. Lucas - he and his company, Industrial Light and Magic - along with Digital Domain, and several smaller houses, exceed the promise of what they, over the past three decades, actually have contributed to the history of film. If you've had any design experience whatsoever, you can't help but appreciate the new developments in scope, lighting, and design technique on display. You can find a full rundown of the craftspeople involved in all that, here in the Wiki entry. Quite brilliant, all round.

And then there's Mr. Nimoy. Well, what can you say? There were many spontaneous bursts of applause at the screening we saw - a testament to the picture, and seeing it in a big house - but none so large or heartfelt as his first appearance. Forty-three years in the role - he's as welcome a presence here as Father Christmas - and, unless I'm mistaken, has just been involved in launching 10 more years of new adventures aboard the Enterprise. Fine by me.

Live long and prosper, indeed, old friend. And thank God you weren't played by a Muppet.

Website Redux

It's up, gang - the brand new Shanghai Low website. Just click on the link in the left sidebar to visit. And don't forget your lobster bib.

Pick-Up Wednesday 1119

Let it be said publicly: Gary Hustwit's HELVETICA (2007) is the greatest documentary about a ubiquitous Swiss typeface ever made. Period. Perhaps any type style ever, could be - I don't know. I'll have to do a bit more research.

Briefly: in 1957, in an effort to create "a neutral typeface that had great clarity, but no intrinsic meaning in its form," graphic designers for the Haas firm in Switzerland invented a type that has become so entirely omnipresent throughout the world - that if you stood right now in the middle of the room you are in, and scanned 360 degrees, you would see three examples of it. Guaranteed.

I'm sitting at a desk in a hotel room in Milwaukee, and I count six without getting up from this chair.

It's used for signs (the entire New York City subway system), theatres and museums (Goodman), all of your IRS documents, and, most especially, corporate logos (3M, Jeep, Arco, Lufthansa, Panasonic, Crate and Barrel, Edward Jones - uh, Microsoft). It's even the typeface printed on the side of NASA's space shuttles. The Museum of Modern Art just closed a 50-year retrospective of Helvetica.

Having worked in the print industry many times off-and-on over the years, I found the subject fascinating from the get-go - but I don't believe that type of experience is a prerequisite. The film isolates something distinctive - in this case, universal - in our lives, and tells us simply and effectively, in human terms, how and why it got there. It introduces you to the people involved, and the theoretical conflicts raised by its existence. No muss, or fuss.

One would think these easy goals to accomplish, but considering the number of documentaries produced over the past decade that have tried to capture a story like this, and failed - Patrick Creadon's muddled ode to crossword puzzles, WORDPLAY (2006), for one - I would throw out to you that it's a helluva lot harder to pull off than it seems. But Hustwit does so with aplomb, clarity, and care.

I'm not really sure what else to say about it. See it. Enjoy it. Look at the world a little differently.

More like this, please.

The Spy Who Pummeled Me

After the near-universal praise for CASINO ROYALE (2006), critics and online fans, alike, are in a raucous dither over its relentlessly speedy sequel, QUANTUM OF SOLACE (2008), just released in the US this week. Some love it - some take exception. Not to fret, if your concern is the future of the franchise, as the picture debuted at number one here - and, in a fortnight, has already pulled in over 200 million dollars in Europe and Asia. And you just don't see those kinds of fast numbers without good word-of-mouth.

SOLACE is the 22nd entry in the Bond adventure series, and, heavens, what a bone-crunching little free-for-all it is. Multiplex viewers might even be advised to carry along seat belts and a lobster bib.

The lean story picks up minutes from the end of the first film, follows 007's global vendetta against the "real" killer of his expired squeeze, Vesper Lynd, and finds him tripping over an organization called QUANTUM - which, apparently, for the near future will be standing in for the long-defunct (and litigation-tied) SPECTRE as the 21st century's go-to Baddies Club - should you be looking to perpetrate some international evil of your own and need a grant, or someone to talk to about it.

And, like their nuclear bomb-stealing predecessors, these QUANTUM folks are not fooling around. They're cutting-edge evil. Back in '64, when the villains wanted to send James Bond a warning message, they'd spray paint his one-night stand with gold. In '08, they fill 'er up with several quarts of black crude oil. Poetic, nez pas?

Well, the man for the job of eradicating them is, again, Daniel Craig, who, since James Brown passed, can safely be dubbed the Hardest Working Man In Show Business. Checking online, I found that before this picture EON productions had upped his insurance coverage from 3 million pounds to 5 million - and there's very good reason for that. Out of the six or so action set pieces here, I counted three fast green screen/CGI moments, at best - and never once made a stunt man for him. I know stunt men worked on the picture, of course, since set reports detail how many of them were injured, nearly killed, or, in one case, put in a coma. But perhaps these fellows were covering the receiving-end supporting cast. Craig, himself, received 20 stitches, blew out his shoulder - requiring surgery - and sliced off the tip of a finger shooting the picture, so its not like anyone is lying down on the job over at Pinewood. The man's doing his press junkets with his arm in a sling, for god's sake.

Craig is also a fine actor - the best in the part since Sean Connery - and is joined again in that respect by Judi Dench, Jeffrey Wright, Giancarlo Giannini, and the terrific French actor Mathieu Amalric. The Bond "girls," Olga Kurylenko, and the slippery Gemma Arterton, are not provided roles of sufficient depth to know if they have acting chops or not. The producers were on better track in this respect in CASINO, and need to remind themselves of the value of that. Marc Forster (FINDING NEVERLAND, THE KITE RUNNER) is the surprising director, and he acquits himself well - despite his action rookie status - but he, and what must be a squad of second units, rely too much on the BOURNE films' methodology, especially in the editing.

Is the picture good? It is - I thought so, as a place keeper. The shortest in the entire canon, it is not the film its predecessor was, as most agree. It plays out like the gripping final episode of a television mini-series. Which is not altogether bad - this is still miles beyond what EON was serving up in the 80s and 90s. You could plead the case that it's a bright move to tie up loose ends - and the two pictures, seen together, stack up as one full, very satisfying, adventure. But as a stand-alone feature, they'd have needed more time taken with plot clarification and scripted material. It seems, in EON's very successful efforts to put some distance between themselves and their superficial past, they made one or two cuts here of familiar ingredients that did not need to be made, nor would have damaged the picture in the slightest. Let the man say, "Bond. James Bond," and do something clever with the gun barrel logo at the top of the picture, for example. A dash more humor wouldn't hurt, either, as long as you don't lose the real sense of high stakes and actual danger on display now.

Let's face it, the problems lay in the original script by Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis, and Robert Wade - based on an idea by producer Michael Wilson. And its the same recurring flaw that has bedeviled the series since 1977's THE SPY WHO LOVED ME. When they divert away from the Ian Fleming novels, rarely have they been able come up with hard plot and character lines of human interest on which to hang the stock franchise elements. In this case, SOLACE borrows the solid script work on CASINO, so it's not too much of a problem. After this point, though, it will be.

The good news, though, is that they have their own bountiful resource of tested material in the books. My easiest advice would be, with all the elements they've reimagined in the new series, go straight through the novels again in a series of remakes. That way, they're true to their source, they have good plots locked in, and they can either spin off what they did previously in the films, or add action as they go. Many of the books have grand plot elements - like the shocking torture scene in CASINO - that have never been utilized. And they really can be with Craig in the driver's seat.

In the meantime, SOLACE will do, thank you. Just don't make a habit of it.

P.S. Outstanding dogfight. One of the best ever filmed, methinks.

Pick-Up Tuesday 1111

I dearly love stories about Howard Hughes during his Imhotep period. He's just one-stop shopping for American sociological metaphors. A howling, bedsore-ridden Faulkner novel, with shifty Mormon tenders, and several hundred gallons of bottled urine to keep him company. And in Las Vegas, to boot.

You couldn't make him up, this guy. Not that some outside people didn't try to embellish yarns for profit. Well - who was going to complain? Hughes certainly wasn't talkin'. By the early 70s, he hadn't spoken publicly to anyone in 13 years.

I'm not sure people understand these days that, back then, the general public believed - or wanted to believe - that he was living a kind of suped-up Hugh Hefner existence in the tops of those hotels: money, booze, and broads - not the black womb of madness and Kleenex that was revealed later. He was always eccentric, sure - but we had no notion he had ended up the way he did until drawings of him began to appear on magazine covers after he died.

Anyway, if that time period interests you, I discovered a small, very well-made picture last night on Netflix's online service, called THE HOAX (2007). It's a based-on-fact chronicle of how author Clifford Irving came to sell a bogus autobiography of Hughes in 1970-72, and the media firestorm that the announcement unleashed.

And I have to say, the film is thoroughly entertaining and resonant, top to bottom. It features the most accomplished, loose performance by Richard Gere - well, ever - and a script, based on Irving's own retelling of the events, by William Wheeler, that really should be taught in classes. Alfred Molina, Marcia Gay Hardin, and Hope Davis are also in the cast. No surprise with them - they're tops here, as they so often are. And it's directed with tempered style by the fine Lasse Hallstrom.

The downside? None worth talking about, really. It's good story, well-told. A Goldilock's Third Bowl. Just right - for me, anyway.

Irving, himself, apparently had quibbles with the picture. Something about "inaccuracies." An irony that would not have been lost on his subject.

Click on the art for video.

Pick-Up Monday 1110

Rare are the days when I have the steep cash to trundle out to the multiplex. I seem to reserve that for special occasions: big-things-blowing-up kinds of movies, or superhero-fantasy-epic type of fare. Maybe you're the same - or maybe you used to work for Fannie Mae, and can afford 13 bucks for that big-tub popcorn. Not at my house. Put it this way, if Mag and I go out to the movies, it means that root canal money. Get me?

Fortunately, in this Superhighway world of ours, there are many and several ways to watch films, old and new alike - and a couple of them legal: Cable TV, Veoh, Google, NetFlix Online, etc.

True, there is the sacrifice of quality to bear. Certainly, watching, say, Stephen Spielberg's old ABC Movie of the Week, DUEL, on Halloween night in front of the computer - on YouTube, blown up to Full Screen, in 9, 10-minute parts, where Part 4 was actually a dupe of Part 3 - was not exactly what you would call the Blu Ray Experience. But, fortunately, I have good speakers, it was still scary as all get out, and not too far removed from the way I first saw it as a boy in the early 70s. There was a sort of Great Explorer feel to the whole thing that made it fun - like Lewis and Clark, or Budge at the Tombs of the Egyptians: "Gosh, I wonder if a scene has been posted on - no. Darn. But, what if I spell it like th - Eureka! It's the whole thing!"

Anyhoo - this is the way I watch a good many films these days: I "pick them up on the fly." So, in deference to that, we here at maggie sprocket submit for your approval a new feature: Pick-Ups. In honor of those daily movies that drop into our lap unplanned, and often over screens intended for other use. Case in point - from Netflix Online:

There is a great documentary to be forged from Hunter S. Thompson's struts and frets across the American literary stage - but, heartbreakingly, Tom Thurman's 2006 BUY THE TICKET, TAKE THE RIDE ain't it.

The subtitle, "Hunter S. Thompson on Film," led me to believe that maybe there were private home movies or something in the offing - but no, it was just the usual stream of "renegade" movie folk who haven't had to skip a meal of late, and some 60's literary mandarins thrown in to tell us how transcendent things were during the Revolution. Then Harry Dean Stanton sang and cried over the credits - because he didn't get to at Mr. Thompson's Memorial, it was explained. Fair enough. There are several people here who have lost a great friend in the man, and I empathize. But, frankly, for the rest of us interested parties, there is much clearer, more interesting biographical information regarding Thompson in his Wikipedia entry - which I was forced to reference since Thurman's intentions were so muddled.

The film began with a sketchy timeline of his early years - but focused little on his developing writing style, or why it became significant. A fleeting bright spot occurred when artist Ralph Steadman talked of their first job together, but then a full 20 minutes was taken up by appreciations of Bill Murray's and Johnny Depp's impersonations of Thompson in WHERE THE BUFFALO ROAM (1980) and FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS (1998), respectively. Followed by some other stories about his wacky behavior, and how great it was to hang out with him. Then he shot himself. Well, alrighty, then - thanks for the insight, guys.

No - where did he come from? What did he do? What drew him to it in the first place? What was it about his writing that made him unique? What was his career timeline? Did it follow a pattern at first, and then veer off into something else? Was he successful? How did it change? No talk of the Hell's Angels. No Doonesbury, even. Look, the matter of the man lies not in all the legends of him taking drugs and blowing up stuff on his farm. They're fun, but no substitute for the spine of a good thesis - and you end up cheating the subject of his value to us.

And do not ever sit in front of a camera and explain a human being's taking of his own life as a result of his inability to "live up to his own myth." What a crock of fecal matter. He was a unique American voice. Next time, show me why. You might start by having some of the actors read aloud passages from his books.

Click the poster art for a scene.

Scary - I've Had A Few: The 60s Groundbreakers

Meanwhile, Stateside: by the 1960s, most of the really interesting experiments in filmed anxiety were popping up on television - a phenomenon deserving of its own upcoming post. Out in theatres, of course, Hammer ruled the genre - but, as previously stated, Roger Corman's Edgar Allen Poe pictures for the independent American International Pictures were doing very well, indeed.

I must say, though, that there is not one of these I would go out on a limb and recommend to you. American International was doing much more interesting - even definitive - work in other genres. And Corman, himself, was giving practical first experience to a range of young filmmakers who would make their mark in the 70s. The Poe pictures seem, as they've always seemed to me, anemic imitations of what Hammer was doing, so you probably need a more enthusiastic correspondent to cover them for you.

All that said, the 1960s would give birth to three of the most influential American horror films in history - two from the studios, and one independent cheepie. Each, in their way, would influence more films than GONE WITH THE WIND or CASABLANCA, combined.

First: we know Alfred Hitchcock, now, as an auteur, one of the most lauded and respected film directors of the 20th century. You betcha - I can go along with all that. What we tend to forget, though, is that it was only when European film critics like Francois Truffaut began writing of him in such revered terms in the 1960s, that his reputation rose to such lofty heights. But by that point in his career, he'd been pretty much played out.

For audiences in the 50s, he was the Director as Star - a celebrity, who made very fun, suspenseful pictures - not to mention the droll weekly host of his own anthology television series. He was also very much a commercial filmmaker, with a sharp eye toward the box office, and tended to hold his financial flops in very low regard - including his masterpiece: VERTIGO (1958). This, coming after a long string of hits throughout the decade.

His next film, though, in 1959, was much more accessible for a general audience: NORTH BY NORTHWEST had Cary Grant, a very witty Ernest Lehman script, and enormous production value. In turn, it was an enormous success - and put him back in the very bankable position to which he'd grown accustomed. Working through Universal, he could, at that point, truly film whatever he wanted, at enormous cost, as long as he stayed within the suspense genre.

What he chose to do next was a low-budget, black-and-white, horror picture - shot on the Universal backlot by the skeleton crew from his television show. PSYCHO (1960) was based on a poor novel by Robert Bloch - but Hitchcock never filmed books based on their merit. He was more interested in what clever individual situations they brought to the table - what scenes he, his writer and storyboard people, had the potential to own outright. To hear him tell it, PSYCHO was a technical exercise. An opportunity to "play an audience like an organ." And that he did.

The shock clips have been played so often on VH1 countdown shows, by this point, that I find myself watching the bridge drama with much more attentiveness and appreciation. The scene in the parlor - eating a sandwich under the birds, the cleaning-up after the shower, the detective checking the hotel register with Norman, and the lovely little scene in the middle of the night at the Sheriff's house: "I helped Norman pick out the dress she was buried in. Periwinkle blue." They're all very well-written scenes that pick you up like a baby and carry you to the next murder. They simply make you care about the people involved, and, in turn, makes the violence all the more costly and disheartening. How many times, before or since, has this kind of thing been tried - and how many times has it failed? The Film as Textbook.

Next: ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968) is not a particular favorite of mine, although its quality is undeniable. Schlockmeister William Castle brought the Ira Levin book to producer Robert Evans, who, in turn, enticed director Roman Polanski to step on over the pond to make it his first American film.

A sort of GASLIGHT (1944) remake, ROSEMARY was the first film to really profit from a non-religious Child-of-Satan Cache. So well directed: it builds methodically and honestly - with a genuinely disturbing payoff.

Now, I will come right out and tell you that I am not a huge fan of Mia Farrow's (for me, right up there with Sandy Dennis), but she is well cast here - and, being our surrogate, has a great deal to do with the lasting edge of the picture. I never suspect she would not be fooled by what was going on around her, if that means anything to you. And the supporting players are a dream: John Cassavetes, a bearded Ralph Bellamy, Maurice Evans - screenwriter/actress Ruth Gordon won an Oscar for it, and deservedly so.

Last: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania filmmaker George Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD from 1968, is still playing at a Drive-In, somewhere, I'm convinced. It was filmed for about $120,000 - and would come to make 30 million, internationally. Neither well-made, nor well-acted - it does have clever writing, and the relentless energy of people behind the camera who really care about scaring you. The first of the uber-grisly "Well, What Would Zombies Eat, After All?" genre - it surprises as both attempted satire, and a mild civil rights statement. Its amatuerism is the big plus, though: it makes the picture seem like a documentary - and that gives it its power.

Romero described it as "an homage" to Richard Matheson's seminal vampire book, I Am Legend. Which means he cribbed most of the plot elements - as many, many other writer/director's have over the decades. It's interesting to note, that once Hollywood finally got around to making a fairly faithful version of Legend, many scenes and themes had to be altered - since so many pictures had already picked clean the bones of the novel's plot. Nonetheless, for a decade or so, Romero earned and owned this genre, until the kids who grew up with it and its sequels began to kick it around for their own purposes in the early 1980s.

Click on the artwork above for trailers.