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the same cowboys that wrote "Face / Off"
Feb. 8th, 2009 05:50 pmJaws (1975), Steven Spielberg. Feb 3, 9pm. View count: six?
Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Alexander Mackendrick. Feb 5, 8:30pm. View count: One.
Darkman III: Die Darkman Die (1996), Bradford May. Feb 8, 1:30pm. View count: Two.
Jaws is so brilliant, and I have no real theories about what could have happened to make it work out as well as it did. Maybe the legendary 'mecha-shark wouldn't work right' timing constraint caused the half-and-half structural pattern, with the whole first half of the movie being nearly sharkless and all about setting up the duty that Roy Scheider would have to carry out (and his reasons for doing so). Roy Scheider is not a divorced dad looking to find himself, he's a perfectly functional family man whose conflict comes from bureaucracy and politics. He already has his shit together, he already likes his children and his wife, so he can skip all the Special Spielberg Character Steps and show us his world and priorities straight away. (Although he does fail to protect a child, but that's under duress.)
Without seeing this on the big screen, though, a lot of the visceral aspects of the suspense are greatly dampened. The yellow barrels, which are such a good stand-in for a menacing agent, are actually scary all by themselves on the big screen, whereas on a television much of the impact is lost. A lot depends on being surrounded by the ocean, and the confinement of the boat, and this does suffer a bit.
There's a lot of hilarious stuff on the IMDB trivia page about who wanted to cast whom for which part, including the amusing "Author Peter Benchley's choices for whom to cast in the film were Robert Redford, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen." This would have been rather a different movie, to say the least. I personally think that an important aspect of Jaws' casting is the second banana-ness of all the main actors. Roy Scheider is a partner, a low-key backup guy, so when you shove him into having to take charge, it's very visible how unusual this is for him. Sort of similarly with Dreyfuss, who's really nebbishy by default, and each of them is set off by Quint chewing the scenery (which also emphasizes the unusualness of the decision to go out after the shark, when put up against the towny Martha's Vineyarders).
There's also this as regards Jaws as an anomalously good (to me) Spielberg film: "After the surprise success of the film, Hollywood insiders ascribed the film's effectiveness mostly to veteran editor Verna Fields rather than the little-known, 28-year-old Steven Spielberg. Although he undoubtedly learned much from Fields, Spielberg wished to prove his worth in following films and never worked with Fields again." I wonder how much merit there was to this.
Sweet Smell of Success is a great canonical noir film, with some seriously terrific dialog. Both the noir patter and the one-liners are gold.
For once the protagonist is a press agent instead of a private dick, so it's the world of ruined reputations and people who want desperately to be famous that the movie is concerned with, but the 'independent operator down on his luck' holds true. It's good, and unsettling in places.
Darkman III: Die Darkman Die is terrible and so 90s it looks like Tekwar's older brother. In fact, the drug guy who gets killed by Main Bad Guy at the beginning also plays Sonny Hokori in the Tekwar movies, and did an episode of Forever Knight. This is remarkable because Bad Guy's right-hand henchman is played by a Forever Knight main cast member. So it's all goofy before we even begin, and the poor movie is trying to retain Raimi's signature camera moves and wacky action, and also the guy who's now playing Darkman is trying pretty hard to do a Liam Neeson voice. Trying to fill Darkman's shoes with all these silly components. Well, sillier. I mean, you don't get a subtitle like this on any old movie.
Anyway, it comes out pretty lame, with a few WHAT moments like Darkman running along the tops of some barrels for no reason (I had remembered this as being a tireyard, but the foot motion is the same. It's stupid.), and the actual, serious replacement of 'Violence, Threat Of' with 'Social Embarrassment, Threat Of'. The hopeful little voiceover that wrapped things up right before the credits, all 'And... Darkman continued to fight crime and live in sewers and whatall' was a little heartbreaking, really. Darkman has not continued to do anything, although he does appear in the odd novelization.
Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Alexander Mackendrick. Feb 5, 8:30pm. View count: One.
Darkman III: Die Darkman Die (1996), Bradford May. Feb 8, 1:30pm. View count: Two.
Jaws is so brilliant, and I have no real theories about what could have happened to make it work out as well as it did. Maybe the legendary 'mecha-shark wouldn't work right' timing constraint caused the half-and-half structural pattern, with the whole first half of the movie being nearly sharkless and all about setting up the duty that Roy Scheider would have to carry out (and his reasons for doing so). Roy Scheider is not a divorced dad looking to find himself, he's a perfectly functional family man whose conflict comes from bureaucracy and politics. He already has his shit together, he already likes his children and his wife, so he can skip all the Special Spielberg Character Steps and show us his world and priorities straight away. (Although he does fail to protect a child, but that's under duress.)
Without seeing this on the big screen, though, a lot of the visceral aspects of the suspense are greatly dampened. The yellow barrels, which are such a good stand-in for a menacing agent, are actually scary all by themselves on the big screen, whereas on a television much of the impact is lost. A lot depends on being surrounded by the ocean, and the confinement of the boat, and this does suffer a bit.
There's a lot of hilarious stuff on the IMDB trivia page about who wanted to cast whom for which part, including the amusing "Author Peter Benchley's choices for whom to cast in the film were Robert Redford, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen." This would have been rather a different movie, to say the least. I personally think that an important aspect of Jaws' casting is the second banana-ness of all the main actors. Roy Scheider is a partner, a low-key backup guy, so when you shove him into having to take charge, it's very visible how unusual this is for him. Sort of similarly with Dreyfuss, who's really nebbishy by default, and each of them is set off by Quint chewing the scenery (which also emphasizes the unusualness of the decision to go out after the shark, when put up against the towny Martha's Vineyarders).
There's also this as regards Jaws as an anomalously good (to me) Spielberg film: "After the surprise success of the film, Hollywood insiders ascribed the film's effectiveness mostly to veteran editor Verna Fields rather than the little-known, 28-year-old Steven Spielberg. Although he undoubtedly learned much from Fields, Spielberg wished to prove his worth in following films and never worked with Fields again." I wonder how much merit there was to this.
Sweet Smell of Success is a great canonical noir film, with some seriously terrific dialog. Both the noir patter and the one-liners are gold.
For once the protagonist is a press agent instead of a private dick, so it's the world of ruined reputations and people who want desperately to be famous that the movie is concerned with, but the 'independent operator down on his luck' holds true. It's good, and unsettling in places.
Darkman III: Die Darkman Die is terrible and so 90s it looks like Tekwar's older brother. In fact, the drug guy who gets killed by Main Bad Guy at the beginning also plays Sonny Hokori in the Tekwar movies, and did an episode of Forever Knight. This is remarkable because Bad Guy's right-hand henchman is played by a Forever Knight main cast member. So it's all goofy before we even begin, and the poor movie is trying to retain Raimi's signature camera moves and wacky action, and also the guy who's now playing Darkman is trying pretty hard to do a Liam Neeson voice. Trying to fill Darkman's shoes with all these silly components. Well, sillier. I mean, you don't get a subtitle like this on any old movie.
Anyway, it comes out pretty lame, with a few WHAT moments like Darkman running along the tops of some barrels for no reason (I had remembered this as being a tireyard, but the foot motion is the same. It's stupid.), and the actual, serious replacement of 'Violence, Threat Of' with 'Social Embarrassment, Threat Of'. The hopeful little voiceover that wrapped things up right before the credits, all 'And... Darkman continued to fight crime and live in sewers and whatall' was a little heartbreaking, really. Darkman has not continued to do anything, although he does appear in the odd novelization.
