I covered the last game at the old Yankee Stadium for SI. Spent almost the entire time trailing Ray Negron, who at one point, gave a two-hour private tour of the place to a party of four headlined by Richard Gere. The filmmaker Barbara Kopple was part of the media swarm and she followed Ray and his group with her camera crew, hoping to get some footage of Gere. For his part, Gere was gracious and allowed her to film him some.
Anyone who watches movies knows that high school can be hell, especially on the teachers. Ask Michelle Pfieffer or Jim Belushi. One high school melodrama that I remember from my childhood is a Nick Nolte-Ralph Macchio movie called Teachers. It wasn’t very good but it featured Laura Dern who I had a crush on for years—loved all that pent up neurosis. It also co-starred Joebeth Williams who I also had a more private crush on at the time. She was never at the top of my list, she wasn’t like Pfieffer, my major 80’s crush, but she always turned me on. In the Big Chill, in this one. Anything she did.
Pat Jordan is 69 years old and still writing. He jokingly refers to himself as the “Last Knight of the Freelance,” and it’s true, he’s the last guy of his generation to still make a living as a freelance magazine writer. He writes for the dough but he also writes because that’s what he does, that’s who he is–he wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he wasn’t working.
Shatner was interviewed once by a snarky British talk-show host, who showed scenes from Shatner’s TV cop show, “T. J. Hooker,” and asked, “What do you think about your acting?” Shatner replied: “Oh, I was terrible. How could I have played it that way?” Outside Starbucks, Shatner said to me: “If someone criticizes my acting, they may be right. Sometimes you shouldn’t work so hard” to entertain. Then, softly, he said: “I never thought of myself as a great actor, like Olivier. I was a working actor. I entertained people and always tried to be terrific at whatever it was.” His problem and his salvation. He played so many different roles that “people couldn’t define me like they could De Niro. I took whatever work came my way to pay the bills, even if it wasn’t a decent role.” His motto was “Work equals work,” which destroyed any hope he had of being taken seriously as an actor but also brought him longevity, wealth and fame. “I was always grubbing,” he said. “But I was saying the words somewhere.” He leaned toward me and said, with mock import, “I love to evoke the bones and meat and thoughts of characters.” He put his hand on my knee, squeezed gently, then said with breathless intimacy: “I said this one line for Priceline 20 times. I struggled to get the nuance. My silence reverberated in the ether.” His face was close to mine, as if imparting a great secret. “If you add a car and a hotel room, you will get an even better price from Priceline.com.” I nodded. “See! You got it!” Then, matter-of-factly, he straightened up and emphasized how much satisfaction that one line gave him. “A pro takes the job knowing it’s not a great role, just a paying job. But every word has music in it. My satisfaction is trying to reach that music.”
Earlier this season, at about the moment Gardner got hurt, I asked if his performance had rendered the Yankees’ presumed pursuit of soon-to-be free agent Carl Crawford unnecessary. At that time, Gardner had outperformed the veteran; Crawford was hitting .310/.373/.488 when Gardner got hurt. His superior extra-base abilities didn’t quite close the gap created by Gardner’s greater patience, while his four-steal advantage came at the cost of three additional caught stealing.
Since Gardner’s wrist was damaged, Crawford has had the advantage on Gardner, though not quite as decisively as you might think. In 50 games from July 1 to present, he has hit .276/.310/.458 with 13 steals and one caught stealing. Crawford still hits with more authority than Gardner—almost everyone does—but his aggression has, at least in this phase of his career, made him below-average at getting on base. You might think that this urge to swing might be a consequence of his recent move to the third spot in the order, down from his traditional number two, but Crawford’s career OBP is only .336, which is about league-average for 2002-2010, the years of his career (the league OBP is .329 this season).
By most measures, Crawford is having his best season this year, but only by a little bit. With the exception of his 2008 injury season, he’s been very consistent since coming into his full powers in 2005. His overall rates for that span are .301/.345/.459, and this year’s total performance is virtually indistinguishable from those other seasons. That is one huge advantage that he has over Gardner: a buyer knows what he’s going to get. All we know of Gardner is that he had a nice three months, a bad two months, and currently has a nice little five-game hitting streak going (7-for-16) that may or may not augur a return to his earlier form.
I don’t know if Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, the Clint Eastwood vehicle featuring a young Jeff Bridges, is a sleeper but if you have never seen it, do yourself a favor and put it to the top of your Netflix queue. It was Michael Cimino’s directorial debut. George Kennedy is terrific, as usual, in a supporting role.
I come from a bookish family but I didn’t much like reading as a kid. Then, in middle school, like so many other kids, I tore through S.E. Hinton’s four novels. Later, I saw all of the movie adaptations, but the one I like most was the first one, Tex.
It is an unaffected movie that features the easy, natural gifts of its star, Matt Dillion. Meg Tilly and Emilio Estevez are winning too, and yup, that’s old Ben Johnson who plays their father. Jim Metzler is also strong as Tex’s put-upon older brother. There is nothing loud about this movie, but the yearning and discomfort of a parentless home is evoked in such a way that seems authentic and true. I feel sad and anxious just thinking about it.
You guys know that I’m a Pauline Kael junkie, but if I had to choose just one book of film criticism I just might go with this:
Agee has two great long pieces in this collection–“Undirectable Director,” on John Huston, and another one, written for Life, on the golden age of silent comedy. But what I really love, are the brief reviews Agee did for The Nation and Time. Doesn’t matter that I haven’t seen most of the movies or even if I agree with his take. Agee is just a pleasure to read.
George: Let’s face it. I f***ed them all. That’s what I do. That’s why I went to beauty school. They’re always there, and l…I don’t know why I’m apologizing. So sometimes I f*** them. I go into that shop and they’re so great-looking. I do their hair. They feel and smell great. I’d be on the street…at a stoplight, or go into an elevator. There’s…a beautiful girl. I don’t know. That’s it. It makes my day. It makes me feel like I’m gonna live forever. As far as I’m concerned with what I’d liked to have done in my life…I know I should’ve accomplished more but I have no regrets. I mean…Maybe that means I don’t love them. Maybe it means I don’t love you. Nobody’s gonna tell me I don’t like them very much.
I went to the movies for the first time this summer a few days ago. Saw Dinner for Schmucks. I didn’t expect much and wasn’t disappointed. I smiled a lot and thought this limp, bland movie was a fine diversion. I wouldn’t see it again, though on second thought I’ll probably sit through pieces of it many times once it reaches heavy-rotation on cable.
I didn’t get a good belly laugh out of it and when the end credits rolled I didn’t remember a thing that had just happened.
I think that most of the recent comedies by the Will Ferrell-Judd Apatow Mafia are lacking but there also usually have that one crack-up scene that makes it worth it.
Like this foul-mouthed gem from The 40-Year-Old-Virgin (warning–if you offend easily, skip this):
No, you don’t have to be a Gay man to love Mildred Pierce. This film noir is one of my wife’s favorites–a Lifetime movie as high pop art. Based on the novel by James M. Cain, good, old-fashioned Hollywood melodrama–featuring the most ungrateful daughter in screen history–has rarely looked this sharp:
I might be the wrong guy for this assignment because I don’t harbor any guilt over any of the movies I enjoy. Movies are made for entertainment, and pleasure is pleasure. Sure, a thought-provoking film might hold my attention after the credits stop rolling — entertaining me over a longer period of time — but a good blockbuster full of high-speed chases and tremendous explosions can provide a thorough and enrapturing aesthetic experience like few others.
I know a lot of European cinema supposedly developed in reaction to the escapism of Hollywood, but I don’t really understand the beef with escapism. I’ve seen a bunch of Italian Neorealist films, and nearly all of them bored me to sleep and not one featured a giant ape wrestling dinosaurs. Sure, Peter Jackson’s King Kong was a bit heavy-handed and hardly provoked introspection, but it held me in a vice grip throughout because, well, apes wrestling dinosaurs. And yeah, it might have lacked the subtleties of L’Avventura, but subtlety is for suckers. Give me movies that fully exploit the medium.
xXx opens with a suave dude in a tuxedo doing some spy stuff at an obvious bad-guy party featuring a Rammstein performance. His presence is too obvious and inexplicable in a mosh pit full off tattooed and pierced fire-breathers, and the leader-guy bad guys spot him swiftly and kill him handily. Then they light some drinks on fire to celebrate.
It was the 1970s, and the bewildered youth of America needed a hero. Instead, we got Evel Knievel. Knievel, the self-proclaimed world’s greatest daredevil, roared out of Butte, Montana sometime in the 1960s with a unique flair for self-promotion, a collection of red, white and blue capes and a willingness to put himself in harm’s way by jumping over things on a motorcycle. Cars, Greyhound buses, a shark tank – Knievel revved up his motorcycle and flew over them. Sometimes he landed safely, sometimes he’d crash or careen out of control, his body thrown across the tarmac like an unwanted rag doll, leaving Wide World Of Sports announcers to ask each other “Will this be Evel’s final jump?”
In any era, a self-made celebrity like Knievel is bound to wind up on the silver screen. Knievel’s story was told in an eponymously titled 1971 film starring George Hamilton as Knievel, who famously described himself as “the last gladiator.” However, after his infamous Snake River Canyon jump, his line of toy cycles and dolls and another 5 years of jumps and crashes, the time was right to try to make a movie star out of Evel himself.
Thus, in 1977, movie audiences around the world were treated to Viva Knievel!, starring Evel Knievel as…Evel Knievel. Could he act? Would it matter? Not to kids like me, who could barely put down our Stunt Cycles or put away our Tour Vans long enough to sit through one of the greatest bad movies of all time.
As a film, Viva Knievel! is much like watching one of Knievel’s crashes. It’s an unholy mess, and yet we can’t look away, and it contains one of the strangest casts in movie history. Gordon Douglas directed the film, and one wonders if he got the job due to his rapport with Frank Sinatra. Douglas directed Sinatra in five films in the 1960s and was known as one of the few directors who could control Sinatra or at least get along with him. Warner Brothers may have felt he’d be the man to ride rein on Knievel. The problem with that thinking is that Frank Sinatra may have been difficult, but he could actually act and pretty damned well when he wanted to.
The film opens with Knievel sneaking into an orphanage at night to bring children the uplifting gift of Evel Knievel action figures. One child is so moved by Knievel’s presence, he throws away his crutches and tells Knievel he’s the reason he can walk again. That’s right folks – Knievel might have inspired your children to shatter their own bones emulating his crazy stunts, but don’t worry – his inspiration will have them out of their hospital beds in no time at all.
Soon enough, Knievel’s setting up his next jump with his alcoholic mechanic sidekick Will, played by Gene Kelly. GENE KELLY? Yes, that Gene Kelly. The cinematic icon, beloved the world over, now inexplicably reduced to playing Evel Knievel’s second banana. (What’s worse is that Kelly is genuinely bad in the role.) We also meet Evel’s unscrupulous promoter, played by Red Buttons. Apparently Warner Brothers was under the impression that the best way to make Knievel a movie star was to surround him with people who were really current and hip in 1977, you know, like Red Buttons and Gene Kelly. We’re treated to a great scene of Kelly threatening Buttons because he feels Evel’s last jump hadn’t been safe enough.
“What’s the matter with you? Evel is my pal too!” is Buttons’ meek response.
Come on, what else could I write about during Shark Week?
Deep Blue Sea opens with an homage to and ripoff of Jaws, as do roughly 90% of all movies about dangerous aquatic creatures. Which is fitting, since Jaws impressed and traumatized me at a very young age and gave me a so far life-long fascination with sharks. I used to check over my shoulder in the deep end of swimming pools, looking for fins; I still to this day scan the horizon only semi-ironically if I’m in the ocean above my thighs. The idea of huge monsters in the murk coming at your vulnerable body from below… it still gets to me more than just about any other horror trope.
That’s one reason I started watching Deep Blue Sea when I came across it on TV for the first but certainly not last time, a decade ago. Another reason, I’m only slightly embarrassed to admit, is the early scene featuring Thomas Jane is a bathing suit:
Hello, ladies.
Deep Blue Sea’s set-up is pretty simple: rich and famous executive Samuel L. Jackson is threatening to shut down the research of driven scientist Dr. Susan McCallister (Saffron Burrows… what? Her hair’s pulled back and everything!), so she flies him out to her floating lab to demonstrate how close she is to curing Alzheimer’s using protein from shark brains. (Indeed, the film’s conceit that a drop of shark brain fluid applied to dead human brain cells will cause them to completely regenerate and spark to life in 6.5 seconds is perhaps its most ridiculous moment of all, which is really saying something in a movie where LL Cool J kills a genius shark with an oven to avenge his dead pet parrot.)
At the lab, far out at sea, we meet the weekend skeleton crew: neurotic engineer Michael Rappaport, dour researcher Stellan Skarsgård, pixie-ish researcher Jacquelyn McKenzie, comic-relief cook LL Cool J, spunky control tower operator Aida “Janice Soprano” Turturro, and macho shark-wranger and ex-con Thomas Jane. Naturally, a huge storm arrives, just as Dr. Saffron Burrows’ rushed research is coming to a head – and as the experimented-upon sharks are acting less and less like fish, and more and more like evil masterminds.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, the sharks’ brains have been genetically engineered to many times their natural size, which made them smarter, “as a side effect.” When the storm hits, they turn the tables on the lab staff in a hurry. Their first assault gruesomely takes out Stellan Skarsgård and causes a huge helicopter crash (take that, Megashark!) that severely damages and floods the lab, kills Janice Soprano, and sets the brilliant demon-fish free to stalk the significantly less brilliant human characters.
The following scene (SPOILER ALEEEEEEEEEERT!) is by far the best in the movie, and almost single-handedly elevates it from so-bad-it’s-good empty calories to something a bit more. This Samuel L. Jackson speech, and its abrupt end, genuinely startled me more than a movie had in a very long time, and in a fun, wry, knowing way.
Obviously Deep Blue Sea is hardly the first movie to kill off what the audience thought was the main character much earlier than expected – see Psycho for the most dramatic example, decades earlier. But Deep Blue Sea gives you no previous hints that it’s going to be that kind of movie. Everything has gone according to the rulebook, and suddenly the rulebook is set on fire. And to do it in the middle of a big, dramatic speech about togetherness and cooperation – that’s just awesome. Sure, working together to overcome obstacles is great and all, but massive, vicious genetically engineered predators with rows of razor-sharp teeth will trump any amount of community spirit.
Dr. Saffron Burrows takes most of the movie’s blame for causing all the trouble by pushing nature (and pissed-off mutant sharks) way too far in her single-minded pursuit of an Alzheimer’s cure. “What in God’s creation…” wonders Samuel L. Jackson. “Not His,” says Stellan Skarsgård, “Ours.” He is, naturally, the first to die, though really it’s as much because he’s a smoker as because of his blasphemy.
This is what happens when you smoke, kids.
So the movie (like so many before it) posits that the Doc brought this misery on herself and her friends because she played God, but I tend to disagree. I think if you can really find a cure for degenerative brain illness, and the price of that is a few terrifying evil mutant sharks, you damn well go for it; the unforgivable mistake of the Deep Blue Sea crew was, rather, surrounding huge unnatural killing machines with freaking mesh wire fences. (Jurassic Park teaches the same flawed lesson about human hubris. I mean, go ahead and mess with nature – just don’t keep your only backup generator on the other side of the goddamn Velociraptor habitat! Common sense, people).
Deep Blue Sea was directed by Renny Harlin, whose spotty record includes the mega-flop Cutthroat Island as well as the minorly entertaining hits Die Hard 2 and the Long Kiss Goodnight. No one would really confuse him with an auteur, but he knows how to direct action and he keeps things taut. Meanwhile, the screenwriters are no one of any distinction. But somehow the movie has a spark of life and ingenuity and just sheer joy in its own stupid premise that elevates it above most similar summer junk.
For example, I have to give the film full credit for its handling of the obligatory leading-lady-in-her-underwear sequence, which often, in these movies, comes with only the flimsiest of pretexts. Here Saffron Burrows, having gone back to her quarters in a staggeringly stupid fit of determination to save her research, is attacked by a shark in neck-high water, stands on a desk, and takes off her wet suit to reveal her bra and panties… then stands on said wetsuit for insulation and fries the shark with a loose electric cable. I just can’t argue with that reasoning.
Fair play.
In the end, this movie is both saved and cursed by its self-consciousness. That’s what allows the writers to play with the rules of the genre so effectively at times, but it also stops the film from ever being particularly affecting – it never really lets you forget that you’re watching a movie, and a silly one. And so as entertaining as it is, Deep Blue Sea is never all that scary, or sad, or uplifting. It will not distract you from your popcorn.
Just as the movie opened in Jaws’ shadow, it closes there too – with a huge shark exploding in a fountain of blood and flesh, and two exhausted survivors (though not, I have to admit, the two I initially expected). Deep Blue Sea isn’t one fourth of the movie that Jaws is. But it connects to that same primal fear… and then adds hot people in wetsuits, and all manner of explosions, and ludicrous scientific jargon, and an original LL Cool J track. And I have now watched it at least four times.
Happy birthday to one of the true heavyweights of stage and screen – Peter O’Toole turns 78 today. O’Toole is not only an exceptional actor, he’s also a true “star” in a way we rarely see anymore. He may have been riffing on Errol Flynn in his brilliant performance in My Favorite Year, but it was clear there was more than a little of himself in Alan Swann too.
O’Toole’s sometimes boozy, seemingly always cheerful, outsized personality and his talk show appearances are as legendary as his performances (remember him riding a camel onto the stage for David Letterman?). Nominated 8 times for the Best Actor Oscar, he’s never won, but did accept an honorary Academy Award for his body of work (which he initially refused). Here’s a snippet from one of those nominated performances, as movie director Eli Cross in Richard Rush’s 1980 film The Stunt Man:
Take one cast full of megastars with numerous memorable roles already in their respective portfolios, add in a few great character actors, embellish with the adrenalin, in-your-face, highly-stylized mayhem of producer Jerry Bruckheimer, mix liberally with the talents of a first-time movie director whose resume had most recently included Budweiser commercials with dancing ants, and what do you get? Only one of the biggest hits of 1997, the critically-panned but commercially-successful “Con Air“.
Con Air tells the story of Cameron Poe* (Nicolas Cage, working with Bruckheimer for the second straight movie after the similarly-styled “The Rock“). Poe is a former U.S. Army Ranger, so you know he has all sorts of combat training (and, it turns out, one poorly executed supposedly Southern accent by Cage). He arrives home after fighting in Desert Storm and being honorably discharged from the military. However, on the night he returns, he is assaulted by three drunkards while escorting his pregnant wife (Monica Potter) home from the bar where she was waiting for him (Note to wife: second-hand smoke isn’t good for you or your unborn child, and if your hubby is coming home from the war, is the bar really the nicest place you can think to meet him?).
* "Cameron Poe" anagrams to such phrases as "poor menace",
"peace moron" and "No rape! Come!". Strangely, all of these
seem to fit the character at various stages of the movie.
Poe defends her by using his special ops skills, and subsequently kills one of his attackers. On advice from his attorney, he pleads guilty to first-degree manslaughter, expecting leniency from the court due to his military service. However, the judge sentences Poe to 7–10 years in a maximum-security Federal penitentiary, because his special ops training makes him a deadly weapon. Uh yeah, OK . . . but no way would that have happened had that character been played by Steven Seagal. Anyway, I would have paid to see Poe inflict his training on his lawyer afterwards.
Poe keeps his nose clean in jail and ends up getting paroled eight years later. He is to be flown back on the “Jailbird,” a C-123 airplane, along with several other prisoners that are being transferred to a new super-duper-maximum security prison.
Now here I must admit a bit of a bias in my choice for a guilty pleasure movie, as my current employer at one time did in fact fly inmates upstate. And I can tell you beyond a reasonable doubt that no parolee would EVER get released this way. But let’s not let that detract from the story, shall we?
Meanwhile, DEA agent Duncan Malloy (Colm Meaney, playing against his usual mild-mannered type from the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” TV series) approaches U.S. Marshal in charge of the transfer, Vince Larkin (the always enjoyable John Cusack), and requests he slip an undercover agent on board to coax information out of a drug lord during the flight. Larkin reluctantly agrees on the condition the agent doesn’t carry a weapon, but Malloy manages to slip a gun to the agent before boarding. (Silly DEA agent! Don’t you know guns, mean convicts and pressurized aircraft don’t mix?)
Wouldn’t you know it . . . shortly after takeoff, the prisoners launch what turns out to have been a carefully-planned and scripted coup led by Cyrus “The Virus” Grissom (John Malkovich, in a restrained, cool, and understatedly convincing role) and overpower the guards, taking control of the plane; when the DEA agent tries to take control of the situation by brandishing his now-not-sneaked-on-anymore gun, he is quickly killed by Grissom. Poe opts to keep his “secretly a good guy just trying to get home to his ‘hummingbird'” identity quiet (yes, that’s Poe’s pet name for his wife . . . hummingbird) and cooperates with Grissom, who promises all prisoners that they will be flown to a non-extradition country thanks to the drug overlord, if they help out.
The plane lands as scheduled to make prisoner transfers; Grissom and his crew pose as guards and take advantage of a dust storm to make sure the transfer appears to go smoothly, acquiring reinforcements such as a pilot known as Swamp Thing (veteran character actor M.C. Gainey) and Garland Greene (a droll Hannibal Lecter-like psychopath with a keen sense of humor, played by a scene-stealing Steve Buscemi).
Meanwhile, Joe “Pinball” Parker (played by a then-unknown David (not Dave) Chappelle) sneaks the Jailbird’s original transponder onto a private tour plane, leading the authorities astray. Although Poe secretly manages to get word out on the hijacking, it is too late to stop the plane from taking off.
Next week’s theme is a good one: Guilty Pleasure Movies. We had some internal discussion about the definition of a guilty pleasure movie, and as usual in such cases, Emma hit the nail on the head:
“To me, they are movies that you enjoy but CAN’T really defend. A guilty pleasure is a movie that you would NOT have in your DVD collection. I don’t own Deep Blue Sea and wouldn’t buy it. But whenever it’s on TV, I watch-even though I must’ve seen it about four times by now, which is three and a half more viewings than it deserves.”
The general consensus was that the movie has to be bad in order to qualify, but that doesn’t really matter to me. A movie can be well-made and still be a guilty pleasure for me. Like Boogie Nights or Rushmore or True Romance, Sleepless in Seattle, even, those are guilty pleasures for me because overall I really don’t like the filmmakers and enjoy not liking them. So to admit that I can actually watch something by them and even enjoy it, that’s guilt, Dog.
Or self-loathing, or something warped like that. And has nothing to do with the artistic quality of the filmmaking, because like them or not, PT Anderson, Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, are skilled and talented guys.
But if I had to pick a scrubby movie as a guilty pleasure–resisting like all hell not to choose something starring Chris Makepeace–I think this one will do just fine.
Should be a fun week. Let’s all have a laugh, shall we?
