Weekend Box Office

Thanks to BoxOfficeMojo.com for the cool chart I'm using.

Killer's Kiss: Casual Friday Kubrick

God bless Criterion. They only handle movies that impress them (mostly), they really heap on the special features. Plus they had a half-price sale on Valentine's Day. I thought that I picked up four movies that I always wanted to have on Blu-Ray, but it turns out they sent me five! To whit: if you're interested in owning Stanley Kubrick's heist-caper film The Killers let me sweeten the deal by telling you that among the extras is a beautiful transfer of Kubrick's 2nd feature Killer's Kiss.

Killer's Kiss is best described as a kind of minimalist thriller; a story about three characters, shot in black and white, coming in at an economical 67 minutes. Kubrick notwithstanding, it's not a particularly good movie. If anything, it plays like the work of a guy who wanted to make a movie and was willing to use any old story to do it. Boy (washed up prizefighter) meets girl (dance hall "hostess") and falls for her after scaring away her boyfriend and boss (creepy older minor-league mobster). But the mobster won't give the girl up.

Most of the action takes place within a flashback of the prizefighter's previous 48 hours, and during that flashback there is another flashback filling in the girls backstory. Being Kubrick, the whole things is very, very well photographed. More so when you consider that he was director, writer, cinematographer and editor as well. The compositions are sharp, the use of light, shadow and contrast is eye-popping. And the story moves at a quick clip, hampered only by the problem of characters who think like movie characters rather than people. And talk like, well, like nobody who ever lived. It's probably this movie that convinced Kubrick to start paying other people to write his dialog. Weirdly, he mostly chose novelists but I guess it worked out for him.

I think the most fascinating thing about this movie is that it's almost completely Kubrickian except for one major thing: he didn't have the budget or time to do retakes. The thing you look for in Kubrick movies is the eerie gloss he brings to scenes by using the 50th take. This is an off-the-cuff Kubrick. It's casual Friday Kubrick. It's like The Shining directed by William "One Shot" Beaudine. And those actors, frankly, they could have benefited from another 48 takes or so.

Worth seeing, especially either in the context of The Killing or of this, if you can find it. Check it out.

Weekend Box Office

The Year Oscar Begged For Help

The Kodak Theatre, before.

I mentioned earlier that if The Artist won best picture it would be an indication that Hollywood has fallen into terminal narcissism and given up on caring about the outside world. I was wrong: it was an indication of something far more alarming.

Indeed, it's too pat to suggest that the Oscar telecast was more narcissistic than usual. Narcissism is the lifeblood of the awards telecast: it's what kept the lights on in the "'Your Name Here' Theater" (Billy Crystal's reference to Chapter 11 Kodak), suspended the Cirque du Soliel acrobats up in the air, paid for the overstuffed goodie bags in the pre-awards luxury lounge. I misspoke here: goodie bags are over-- not very image-friendly in these class-divided, tough times. Now there are discreet "gift suites" set up in key hotels in Hollywood, full of amazing stuff nominees and celebrities can get their hands on-- no charge, free, gratis, thank you for being you. So if you're gonna be in Zanzibar the next few months, say hi to Adrien Brody, who was given a $35,000 resort vacation there at a gift suite. He was neither a presenter nor nominee. So when they say "it's an honor just to be nominated," this is what they're talking about.

It may have seemed to some like a boring, remarkably short Oscars (shortest in 30 years!) but you didn't have to look very hard to see a complete and articulate subliminal message, repeated over and over the entire evening. No courting kids, no young hosts (were James Franco and Anne Hathaway even there?), no Facebook or Twitter or mention of YouTube or anything like that: just a basic, existential subtext:

Gee, what's been covered up?

"Get off your butt and go see a movie!"

The big winners: The Artist and Hugo celebrated the nascent days of the film industry, the invention of film language and the advent of sound in the glamorous days of the silents. "See how amazing and historical movies are? Impressed? So get off your butt and go see a movie!"

Cirque du Soliel did an entire acrobatic dance dedicated to the experience of getting off one's butt and going to see a movie.

That weird montage of older movies near the beginning-- all of which are much, much better than anything nominated this year: "remember these? Now, get off your butt and go see a movie!"

Tom Sherak, head of the AMPAS, made a short and dull statement. Guess what it was?

Even Angelina Jolie's mile-long leg had a freighted meaning. She wasn't just showing off her gam: Jolie is Hollywood glamor personified, and that winking leg flashed a semaphore to a vast movie-going audience: "Want to see more? Then get off your butt and go see a movie!" (J-Lo's semi-exposed areola may have also had something to say to this area, but not quite as convincingly.)

The motion picture industry is in trouble. box office is down, attention-getting films are more expensive to produce, profit margins and therefore production slates are slimming. It may not be apparent when watching the Oscars, but Hollywood has a lot of experience in image management. There was a shocking column by a screenwriter in the New York Times last week which outlined how dire things are getting for those in the middle and lower rungs of Hollywood-- foreclosures, bankruptcies, careers evaporating as production gets cut back or exported.

Which leads back that unified, existential cry for help, which ran under the proceedings like the recurring audio feedback that plagued the whole show. And it's hard to ignore the fact that everyone was gathered in the Kodak Theatre-- the bankrupt former pillar of The Industry, victim to the digital technology which is gnawing at every level of Hollywood, from mighty L.A. basin studio to tiny Valley adult-film shingle.

Okay, that 's a bit apocalyptic-- It was still a very amusing, glamorous night. I got to watch it at an Oscar pool party thrown in a loft apartment in downtown San Francisco, with big wraparound views of the city and the bay. Amazing. There were about two dozen folks there, all charming and nice. I got to show off a little screenwriter wisdom, such as the difference in "&" and "and" in screenwriting credits. Somebody else won with something like 17 correct picks. I have never, ever won an Oscar pool.

Dan's Oscar Ruminations

Hah! Beat Skot to it!

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I went to an Oscar Pool party at Clyde Porter's West Valley Playhouse, where I'm appearing in Agatha Christie's Black Coffee for one more weekend - tickets are on sale now, Google the theatre for more info. If that seems like an inartful plug inserted into an otherwise pleasant read, well, remember that the first Academy Awards ceremony was around 20 minutes long.

Last night's ceremony, which was a little stripped down compared to previous years, seemed zippier than usual. Perhaps they didn't have time to weigh things down the way they always do - Brett Ratner was going to produce the ceremony and Eddie Murphy was going to host, but the Gay community just didn't like that and Ratner was forced out, while Murphy quit in solidarity. It's interesting that Billy Crystal didn't address that little controversy in his monolog! Normally, it's exactly where he'd go for the big laughs. Probably would have played great to the room, lousy to the flyover cities.

As a result the Academy had to stick to the basics, even eschewing the nominated song presentations that normally thrill/mortify us all. The only big production number was an elaborate Cirque Du Soleil stunner from their show Iris, and it happens that the Kodak theatre has that as a permanent installation the rest of the year. It was probably less trouble to include it than to have no number.

The two big winners of the night were a movie about the early days of moviemaking and a 3D movie about the early days of moviemaking.


Hey! Check me out!

 Angelina Jolie. Oh Angelina Jolie. Within seconds of her appearance, someone opened a twitter account named @AngelinaJoliesLeg. Messages like "hey, look at me!" "check me out!" and "I'm some leg, huh?" were spewing out. The women surrounding me (surprisingly no gay men in the room!) all agreed that Angelina needs a sandwich or something. I think she looks great but she ain't no action hero any more. While I'm at it, I should report that the ladies were not happy with Melissa Leo's dress.

Couldn't put my finger on what didn't work with the Christopher Guest Ensemble's bit about market testing the Wizard of Oz; but I know what I didn't like about Robert Downey and Gwynneth Paltrow's documentary gag. That was just bad chemistry. I bet you anything that Ben Stiller's gag about the Planet of the Apes makeup not being ready in time was true.


Uggie, keeping you off his Golden Globe

 Can we assume that the makers of The Artist were sure enough of themselves that they flew Uggie the dog all the way to Los Angeles and found a way to pen him backstage for the entire show, not bringing him out for any of the other wins? I think we can. I hope Uggie gets more work.

Plastic surgery creeps me out.

I learned from the In Memorium segment that George Kuchar has passed away! A unique underground filmmaker for the better part of 50 years, he was heavily influenced by glossy soap opera films like Imitation of Life and Stella Dallas, the exact kind of movie that the Academy honored to the skies in their day. Of course, in the Kucharverse these movies were insane parodies, characterized by fevered overacting and impossible eyebrows. I think maybe George took some of the dark side of glamor with him. I hope it's not gone for good!

See Logan Run. Run, Logan, Run.

Just re-seen: Logan's Run (1976), a lovely HD transfer. I may not have seen this film since it was in theaters-- Star Wars came out the next year, ya see, and well, it just seemed so irrelevant...

It was a big-budget sci-fi film from MGM, at the time on it's last legs as an independent studio. It posits a post-apocalyptic society where the survivors live in a vast domed city. For reasons that really, really aren't made 100 percent clear, everybody is given nifty little crystals in their hands which mark the days until they turn 30. When they do, their crystals start blinking and they must to submit to “carousel,” where they fly in circles in an amphitheater until they “renew” (i.e explode). Those who choose to opt out of this program are called “runners,” and are chased down the the black-clad Sandmen.

The main plot concerns Sandman Logan 5 (the very pleasant Michael York) who is bamboozled by the computer that runs everything to go and find "Sanctuary," a sort of underground railroad for runners. With friend Jessica 6 (Jenny Agutter) in tow, they manage to escape the dome and discover the world outside the dome is pretty, but full of lizards and ruins and an Old Man (Peter Ustinov) who has a thing for T. S. Eliot cat quotes.

There are no profound insights to be gleaned from a mature evaluation of this film-- like, for instance, seeing The Incredible Mr. Limpet again and discovering it's a sub rosa tribute to singlehood. But it's still a curious little sci-fi franchise (and it IS a franchise: it spawned a short-lived TV series with Gregory Harrison and Donald Moffat):

• Daniel's remake formula gets a workout in this film. To drive this point home I'm gonna •••spoil••• the ending (I don't feel too bad spoiling a 36-year-old film). Logan's Run was a sci-fi film made in the pre-franchise era, when sci-fi films had amazing endings. Soylent Green is made of people. You blew it up, you maniacs. Star Wars had an ending so iconic and exciting people are still trying to imitate it. But Logan's Run had a lousy ending: Logan is recaptured, jammed in a mind-reading chair, and apparently the illogic of him not finding Sanctuary, the existence of which the master computer only suspected in the first place, causes said computer to “renew” (i.e. explode) so hard it cracks open all the domes, letting everyone out. Huh?

This Deus Ex Machina was one of many divergences from the 1968 novel the film was based on. But really, honestly: the ending of the novel (which I read before I saw the movie, a first for young me) is even hokier. “Sanctuary” in the novel is a space station “near Mars;” so in the last pages Logan and Jessica just rocket away from the whole magilla. Again: huh?

• Every film reflects the time it was made in, and Logan's Run reflects it like a gigantic mirror ball. The premise at the core of the novel is based in the late-60s youth movement-- "Never trust anyone over 30" taken to it's logical extreme. The 1976 version tops this premise with a layer with Me Generation hedonism: It's a society of casual sex literally enveloped in a fog of drugs, and there's no such thing as marriage and parenting. As far as I could see, living under the dome swings like a singles-only condo. Caftans, disco-fabric dresses and hideous chrome furniture abound: Add Boone's Farm and diagonal wood paneling and it wouldn't be sci-fi anymore.

• I was amazed by all the nudity. The principals get naked at least three times-- and not sensual, darkly-lit love scenes, but right under the key lights, more like “we'd better take off these wet clothes before we freeze.” Several of the places Logan and Jessica “run” through feature wall-to-wall tits. This film had an MPAA rating of PG. Man, have ratings changed since '76.

• For Farrah Fawcett (Farrah Fawcett-Majors at the time), Logan's Run was her breakout movie, even though her part as Holly 13, a receptionist, was quite small. Still, the attention she got from it landed her a starring role in “Charlie's Angels” a few months after this film came out, and the rest is history. And strangely, it's not for any sort of amazing performance: she was simply so arrestingly beautiful at the time, such a personification of 1970s “it,” that the plot would grind to a complete halt when she was on-screen. Much was said at her passing in 2009 of her unreal looks: Her mother described how, when Farrah was a teen in Corpus Christi, total strangers would peer into their house to catch a glimpse of her. Then again, I may still be under the spell of her poster: to quote Ms. Fawcett herself, “God gave women intuition and femininity. Used properly, the combination easily jumbles the brain of any man I've ever met.” Me too, Farrah.

• And, in what must seem a quite repetitive theme by now, Logan's Run is being remade, slated for a 2014 release. It is supposed to feature Ryan Gosling and Rose Byrne, and it hasn't actually entered production yet. Don't bet the farm on a green light, though: Ryan Gosling is riding high from the acclaim from his role in Drive, and a sci-fi film with a remarkably similar premise just came out a few months ago (In Time). But if it does, that gives Hollywood a second chance to fix that lousy ending.

Weekend Box Office Report

Those charts behind me courtesy BoxOfficeMojo.com.