Whitney Houston: A Personal Remembrance

1963-2012

We Will Always Love You...

I was at a surprisingly crowded theater, about to watch The Woman In Black, when one of the people behind me finally got off the phone before the trailers were to begin.  What she told her companions, and which I overheard, completely shocked me.

Whitney Houston died.

With moments to spare I popped open my phone and rushed to get Internet to see if this was true or a crazy rumor.

Sadly, it was true.  Whitney Houston, dead at 48.

In certain ways, the news was both surprising and not at the same time.   It's surprising in that she was still remarkably young, and because Houston appeared to be returning to some form of normalcy.  However, it was not surprising because of her various troubles, all self-inflicted. 

I don't think there is any dispute that Whitney Houston had A Voice.  It isn't surprising: her mother is gospel legend Cissy Houston, her cousin is Dionne Warwick, her godmother is Aretha.  She was surrounded from birth with glorious sound, so it was not surprising that Houston would have an amazing voice.

However, the public still was amazed just how powerful and beautiful Whitney Houston's voice.  She had a clear voice whose range was simply spectacular.  Her songs were both light (I Wanna Dance With Somebody) and remarkably dark (Saving All My Love For You, what appears to be a tender love song is really a song from the viewpoint of a mistress waiting for her married lover).  Add to that, she appeared to be a sweet girl who could belt out songs, bringing a power to her rendition without being over-dramatic.

One needs no further proof of her power as a singer than with the rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner at the Super Bowl.   We had just entered the First Gulf War, and the nation was understandably on edge.  Her performance was simply perfect.

At the end of her song, she looked genuinely happy: with a performance that was brilliant, and with the fact that her country at that moment loved her for doing such a great job with our National Anthem.

It isn't a surprise that she transitioned into film.  Her debut in The Bodyguard may not have been liked by most of my fellow critics, and while I recognize it was not great, I find myself entertained by it all, with Houston giving a good though not great performance.

The true greatness of The Bodyguard is in the soundtrack.  Here is where Houston excels.  As much as her version of Dolly Parton's I Will Always Love You became so ubiquitous that it became a cliche to hear at weddings or funerals, her performance of the song is still incredible.  She knew that this was a love song, and that it had to have an incredible push to its crescendo, and Houston delivered. 

As time went, she did improve as an actress, although her screen appearances were remarkably small: Waiting to Exhale, The Preacher's Wife, the television special of Rodger & Hammerstein's Cinderella, and the upcoming remake of Sparkle. 

I figure that if things had turned out better, she would have become a good actress, one particularly adept at musicals or ones with musical numbers.  Granted, I don't recall Houston singing outside the soundtrack to Waiting to Exhale, and I wasn't big on the film, but I think she was finding more confidence in herself as an actual actress. 

Then came this...

This is not how a diva is suppose to look.  However, this is what this great voice was reduced to by her own actions.  A great deal of blame has been put on her marriage to Bobby Brown, formerly of New Edition.  

Sadly, for many years, she was the authoress of her own destruction, both of her health and her reputation.  Her eccentricities were becoming more pronounced, her behavior more erratic.  Somehow, a woman who had this tremendous voice, who was seen as a gold standard of performing, became a sad wreck.  We all watched, and laughed.  It's a sad aspect of human nature to see gifted people crumble under their own foolish decisions and in Houston's case, an almost pathological fixation with her husband who already had fathered children outside of marriage and was her partner in drugs. 

It wasn't that she had lost her talent, but she had lost her way.  Cancelled performances, bad performances: she had been fired from appearing at the Oscars due to her sheer inability to do her perform. 

At that point, she was far too self-indulgent and self-destructive to care.  

We all saw how she had changed both physically and vocally, but the lure of the coke and the booze was simply too strong, with an enabling husband and a court of Yes Men at her side.

I figure that eventually, she did find her way back, but alas, it was if not too late then too little.  She could no longer be relied to deliver the brilliant musical turns that had become her trademark.  Her voice was no longer so pure, so clear, as it had been in her heyday.  Houston was not so much making a comeback as starting to fight to get back to where she was.

Still, Houston's death is shocking.  Despite all her troubles, all her disasters, all her oddball antics, she had A Voice: one that was clear, clean, pure, and remarkable.  The sadness of it all: the loss of that voice, of her reputation, of her notoriety coming from her weird appearances than on her singing. 

A Waste.  A Sheer Waste.  These stories are too familiar to see repeated over and over and once more.

Now, it would be unfair to say that drugs were the direct result of Houston's death.  At the time of this writing the autopsy has yet to be performed.  However, it is not hard to imagine that if anything all the drugs that she did consume didn't affect her health in some way.  Drugs may not have been a direct cause of death, but given her past, it isn't surprising that they would be suspected by the public.  Whatever killed her, it was not worth all the sorrow and destruction of one of the best voices heard in pop music. 

For myself, I will focus on her songs, her beautiful voice, and her youthful joie de vivre as opposed to the wreck she allowed herself to become.  Her songs will still be played, and one hopes that Whitney Houston's legacy will be the music she made, not the disaster she ended up becoming.

In the end, one of her songs best sums up the life of Whitney Houston:

Didn't We Almost Have It All?

IN MEMORIAM

King Kong (1933): A Review

KING KONG (1933)

Above All Other Primates...

There are certain films that despite the silliness of the premise, not only hold up but take on an amazingly real presence.  If one were told the plot of King Kong is "a giant, and I mean, GIANT, gorilla becomes fixated on a beautiful girl", it's understandable people might laugh.  King Kong overcomes that by a combination of brilliant filmmaking, groundbreaking special effects, and strong pacing that always keeps your attention and never lets go.

Film producer Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) is known for his at-times reckless filmmaking style, not shrinking from manning the camera despite whatever danger there is.  Now he's on a time-crunch: determined to get to an unknown destination to shoot his next film before the ship is held from sailing due to explosives on board.  However, despite his reputation, he can't find a leading lady.  With time pressing him, he goes into New York City, determined to find a girl, any girl.  Fortunately for him, he comes across Ann Darrow (Fay Wray), a former film extra down on her luck.  Eager for adventure, she agrees to go with his crew.

The ship sails into uncharted waters, much to the misgiving of Captain Engelhorn (Frank Reicher) and First Mate John Driscoll (Bruce Cabot).  The sweet and somewhat naive Ann is thrilled to be in pictures, and Carl coaches her in film acting, while Ann and Jack quickly fall in love.  Now they arrive at their destination: a mysterious island where Denham has heard of a mythical creature called Kong.  He believes the legend and setting will make a great setting for an adventure film. 

He got more than he bargained for.  On the island, the natives celebrate Kong with presenting the creature a beautiful woman.  Once they see Ann, they abduct her to present her to Kong.  While there's a rescue party for Ann, it is too late: Kong has taken her. 

Kong is a gigantic ape, who takes Ann to his lair, the rescue party in furious pursuit.  Kong appears fascinated by Ann: he doesn't kill her, merely admiring her beauty.  However, Kong is a powerful being, killing any creature, dinosaur or man, who dares get in his way.  Despite this, Jack manages to rescue Ann and while Kong goes after them, the bombs Denham has knock Kong out. 

Denham, always eager for a big hit, takes Kong to New York, where he presents him as King Kong: The Eighth Wonder of the World.  Despite all the precautions taken, the photographers antagonizes Kong so much that he breaks free and continues his mad search for Ann.  He rampages through Manhattan, finds her, and takes her to the top of the Empire State Building.  Eventually, Kong's fascination with Ann brings him down in more ways than one.

Again, on the surface the entire plot of King Kong appears downright bonkers.  However, enormous credit goes the cast and crew, who brought a real power and pacing to King Kong to where one doesn't get caught up in the strangeness of the plot but rather with the thrill and excitement of the adventure.

Main credit goes to Merian C. Cooper, who co-directed King Kong with Ernest B. Schoedsack, and with Edgar Wallace conceived the story.  He tapped into what are now-standard plot points: a damsel in distress, the jungle setting, a romance between two characters who 'don't like' each other in the beginning, and built on them to keep the pace steady, going from the mystery of where the crew was going to the rescue of Ann to the escape of Kong through his rampage of New York City. 

There is also something to be said of the beautiful cinematography by Eddie Linden, J. O. Taylor, and Vernon Walker.  One moment in particular stands out: when the ship is coming close to the mysterious island.  The fog that envelops the ship as they come slowly to the island is beautifully shot, a sequence full of suspense, mystery, adventure, and courtesy of Cabot and Wray, even romance. 

Adding to this is Max Steiner's brilliant score, which builds on the suspense of this scene in particular, but never lets up from the thrill of the natives calling for Kong to Kong's tragic fall. 

On the technical side, the greatest credit goes to Willis O'Brien and his simply spectacular special effects.  Kong appears, even nearly eighty years later, amazingly realistic.  Perhaps if one looks real close we can see that Kong is a stop-motion figure, but when watching the screen, even when Kong is in close-up, his movements are so real we completely accept what we see as real. 

Kong's first appearance on screen is amazing: a spectacular and amazingly realistic creature that appears thoroughly natural.  There's no other word for Kong apart from 'spectacular'.

Even better, the composite shots of the humans interacting with the creatures, such as when the rescue party comes across a dinosaur, are blended so well that we hardly realize that is a rear-screen projection.  O'Brien and his crew blended the shots so well that few films from this era can match how well they work together.

I digress to say that I saw the first few minutes of Judgment At Nuremberg earlier, and it was obvious that the ruined city was a film screened behind the actors.  For 1961, it looks obviously fake.  King Kong, twenty-seven years earlier, conversely, looks so natural that one can easily believe the island and all their creatures are fully alive and real.  King Kong today is one of the standards by which all special-effects films should be measured: the craftsmanship behind it is simply that good.

Granted, perhaps today, they may not be as convincing as they would have been in 1933, but they still hold up amazingly well. 

The performances in the film are also brilliant.  Fay Wray could scream like no one else, and she photographs beautifully, but credit should be given to her as an actress in that the non-screaming, non-Kong scenes are done quite well.  She brings a youthful naivete and sense of adventure to Ann, making her both sweet and eager for something better than trying to steal apples for food.  Her scenes with Cabot as the love interest are played excellently, where the subtext of their 'dislike' is played so clearly we know these two will be in love before the final reel.

Armstrong is also strong as the eager Denham, a man who cares about making a film people will want to see.  He has a great enthusiasm and can even bring a light bit of comic relief in his enthusiasm to bring Kong to the world at large.

King Kong is an amazingly thrilling adventure: I did gasp when during Kong's rampage he throws a woman out the window.  Through all the climatic finale, even realizing that Wray was in front of a rear-projection screen, the pacing, the music, the directing, and the special effects are so well mixed that it creates a sense of tension and danger that never lets up. 

Everything about King Kong is so thrilling that to its enormous credit it still holds up as a great adventure, and truly one of the great films of all time. 

If there are any flaws within King Kong, it is the imagery of the non-Caucasian characters; although it's suppose to be the South Seas, the natives look curiously more stereotypically African than Polynesian, and add to that the character of the cook, Charlie the Chinaman down to his English.  Alas, these are products of their time, but on the whole very minor flaws to a truly great film.

By the end of King Kong, I won't deny I came close to almost shedding a tear for the big beast as he comes to his tragic end.  Perhaps Beauty did kill the Beast, but King Kong is a true beauty of film that will thankfully never die. 

DECISION: A+

Peter Pan (1924): A Review

PETER PAN (1924)

A Silence Falls Throughout Neverland...

There has been a long tradition of casting a female in the lead of Peter Pan.  As such, it's no surprise that the first filmed version of Peter Pan adopts this and other theatrical traditions of the J.M. Barrie story. The 1924 version of Sir James' story is probably as close to what we would have seen when it first appeared on stage, but this is not a flaw.  Rather, Peter Pan is a delightful film that children will thoroughly enjoy for the fantasy aspects and adults will appreciate for the innovative use of special effects.

The story of Peter Pan is one that has become part of the culture in general, but a quick recap.  The Darling family consists of a father (Cyril Chadwick), a mother (Esther Ralston), and their three children: sons John (Jack Murphy), Michael (Phillipe DeLacey), and daughter Wendy (Mary Brian).  They are watched over by their dog Nana (George Ali).

Into the Darling house flies the shadow of the boy who wouldn't grow up: Peter Pan (Betty Bronson).  Peter himself soon enters the house, and Wendy sews his shadow to him.  Now Peter invites Wendy to travel with him to Neverland to be mother to his group, the Lost Boys.  She goes, as do John and Michael, much to the dislike of fairy Tinker Bell (the appropriately-named Virginia Browne Faire).

Once in Neverland, we meet those who live there: the Lost Boys, the Indians, and the pirates.  While Indian maiden Princess Tiger Lily (Anna May Wong) has a slight crush on Peter, neither she or Wendy get his attention.

His mind is on the evil Captain Hook (Ernest Torrence).  Captain Hook is determined to get his hand on Peter, and soon he overruns the Indians and takes the Lost Boys and the Darlings hostage.  Tinker Bell comes close to dying after taking poison meant for Peter, but thanks to the pleas of Peter directly to us, she comes to life.  Now Peter and Captain Hook meet for the last time.  Peter is victorious, and while he isn't happy with it, Peter lets the Darlings go back to their London home.  However, Peter and Mrs. Darling come to an agreement: Wendy can return to Neverland once a year.

What makes Peter Pan so delightful is that it is made with children strictly in mind.  Director Herbert Brenon creates a world that is thoroughly fantastical, whimsical, one where the imagination of children would be what is real.

There are simply beautiful shots in Peter Pan that make one forget that this is a silent film which let us rely on the visuals: the flight from London to Neverland is beautiful, as is when Peter builds a little cabin for Wendy and the shots on Captain Hook's ship. 

A great deal of the credit goes to cinematographer James Wong Howe, among others is one of the great cinematographers in film history. Howe's use of the camera in Peter Pan, in particular in the Neverland scenes, is sharp with beautiful touches such as when Peter 'tests' his shadow.  While we can if we look closely, see the strings that pull our cast to flight, we soon get so wrapped into the story that we either really don't see or care. 

The performances are a sheer delight from beginning to end.  We have to start with Ali's Nana: while having a dog as a nanny is unbelievable, we soon forget that it is a man in a dog suit.  It helps that the dog suit itself is large enough to make Nana appear to be merely a large dog rather than a man inside, but credit should be given to Ali for making the dog movement realistic.

We also soon forget that technically, 'Peter Pan' is really a female.  Bronson has a sweetness in her face that shows the eager youthfulness and braggadocio to Peter.  Admittedly, Bronson is quite balletic in her interpretation to Peter, where her body movements are very graceful.  When Peter pleads with us the audience to help bring Tinker Bell back to life, Bronson's face is so expressive in her hope for Tinker Bell mixed with fear that she will die that one can easily imagine small children getting wrapped up in the film and saving our fairy from death. 

The Darling children are quite good on screen.  Since Wendy is the primary character, Mary Brian communicates both the innocence of childhood and the growing romantic feelings for Peter.  Faire's Tinker Bell doesn't have much screen time but when she is there, the diminutive fairy is mixed so well into the film that one easily accepts the 'reality' of it all. 

The best performance is Torrence's Captain Hook, which curiously, breaks with tradition of having Mr. Darling and Captain Hook played by the same actor.  Torrence keeps the balance between the comic foil to Peter and the dangerous, menacing pirate who won't shrink from killing the children. 

There is an inventiveness in Peter Pan, a sweetness that goes so well with the source material.  Philip C. Carli's new score is sweet and loving and captures the innocence of Peter Pan.  The fact that this version is a silent film doesn't hamper the innocence and delight of the film.

Actually, it enhances it because we don't become distracted.  It is good that this film is no longer lost, but that it survived to delight future generations.

Silence is not a hindrance in Peter Pan.  Instead, the film inspires us to think wonderful thoughts...which is what one has after watching Peter Pan. 

Next Peter Pan Film: Peter Pan (1953)

PETER PAN RETROSPECTIVE:

Peter Pan Retrospective: An Introduction
Peter Pan (1924)
Peter Pan (1953)
Hook
Peter Pan (2003)
Finding Neverland
Pan (2015)

DECISION: A-

Agora: A Review

AGORA

An Ellipse of the Heart...

The Swerve: How The World Became Modern is mostly about how Lucretius' poem On the Nature of Things was saved from being lost to history and how its rescue changed the course of Western thought. However, it does touch on the story featured in Agora.  Stephen Greenblatt briefly covers the tale of Hypatia, a brilliant female philosopher and scientist in ancient Alexandria brought down by a Christian mob convinced her study of the sciences and her championing of reason were signs of witchcraft. 

While the story of Hypatia and the end of the Great Library at Alexandria would serve as a great source for an exciting film, Agora fails to capitalize on it due to a lack of connection with all the characters. 

Hypatia (Rachel Weisz) is a brilliant and beautiful philosopher and scientist, constantly vexed by the Ptolemaic system of planetary motion.  As she works to make sense of how the 'wanderers' (the planets) appear to be different sizes at different times, her students have eyes only for her. 

There are two chief students who are enamored of her: Orestes (Oscar Isaac), a pagan, and Synesius (Rupert Evans), a Christian.  Also in love with her is her slave Davus (Max Minghella). She, however, is devoted only to her studies and her father, Theon (Michael Lonsdale).  Unbeknownst to anyone, Davus has come under the spell of Ammonius (Ashraf Barhom), a Christian fanatic who brings him to the Faith. 

The struggle between the upstart Christians and the pagans comes to a head when the former commit an act of blasphemy against the latter: they threw rotten vegetables at the pagan idols.  A battle ensues: first the pagans attacking the Christians, then the Christians laying siege to the Library and Temple complex attached to it.  Even though Synesius is within the Library and did not participate in the assaults, at first he and his fellow Christian students are ordered to be held as hostages, but Hypatia will not allow this. 

Eventually, the siege is lifted but as a result, the Christians rampage the library, destroying the statues and books contained within.  Davus, who joins the Christians, almost assaults Hypatia but cannot go through with it. 

She frees him, and then we get the second act.  Orestes is now both a Christian and Prefect of Alexandria, Synesius is Bishop of Cyrene.  Unfortunately, the Bishop of Alexandria, Cyril (Sammy Samir) now wants to turn Alexandria into the ancient version of Taliban-run Afghanistan. 

Not satisfied with stamping out paganism, he now sets his sights on the Jewish citizens, ordering pogroms.  Orestes fears that taking on Cyril directly will lead to a weakening of his position and hopes that his old friend Synesius can help.  The negotiations fail due to Cyril's insistence that 'women' should not have power over men.  Davus, now part of the Taliban-like Parabalani, forsakes his desire for wisdom, but not for Hypatia.  When Cyril decides that Hypatia must go, he attempts to warn her but is too late.  Deciding that his brothers will kill her, Davus suffocates her rather than let her be skinned alive.

Somehow, it's hard to believe that with such a tale of wisdom and madness, of love, of fanaticism, Agora could have come out to be so stilted and hollow. 

I think it has to do with how director/co-writer Alejandro Amenabar (with Mateo Gil) decided to treat both the subject and the actors, in particular the latter.  Despite its two-hour running time we never got to really know the characters or their motivations for almost anything they do. 

For example, Davus' conversion to Christianity, if based strictly on how its presented in Agora, is based solely on giving out his master's bread to the poor.  Whatever struggle within his soul there was to bring him to embrace Christ was not presented on-screen. Neither were Synesius' moderate Christianity or Orestes' support for paganism at the beginning, let alone his conversion to Christianity, whether it was sincere or calculated is only hinted as being the latter.

We also don't ever follow why any of these men were so passionately in love with Hypatia apart from her beauty.  She is a bit remote, aloof, apart from the goings-on around her rather than being in the midst of things.  Somehow in Agora, there never seemed to be a firm decision to either be a chronicle of the events leading up to the fall of the Library of Alexandria or a love triangle/quadrangle between Hypathia and her trio of suitors. 

Curiously, whatever romantic thoughts either Orestes or Synesius held for Hypatia appears to have disappeared by the time the Library is first ransacked.  While Davus continues to hold some kind of torch for her, we never see what exactly attracted him to her or why/whether he kept pining for her long after he embraced some form of Christianity. For a film that portrays Christians as unthinking mobs, we don't see why anyone could be moved to join the movement in the first place. 

I don't think this is the fault of the actors in Agora.  Weisz is a good actress, so her portrayal of Hypatia as bright but removed from any emotions is correct: she is more excited about finding how the Earth revolves around the Sun than about people being killed all around her. We never, however, really figure out what drives her as a person.  As a scientist, perhaps, but as a person, a woman, she is treated like one of the statues the Christians want to destroy. 

Isaac is similarly hampered by his Orestes, someone who is remarkably dispassionate about almost everything , even when courting Hypatia by playing reeds.  Evans has the same fate: whatever reason he remains faithful to Christ while pursuing the studies could have played well in the embrace of faith and reason, but he's not given much to do on-screen. 

Minghella suffers the most: while he is suppose to be the heart of Agora, his expressions rarely go past two: either a scowl involving almost everything going on around and to him and a vague like for Hypatia. 

What there is good in Agora is in the technical side: the chaotic siege of the Library and the ensuing battles are well-done, and we do get a sense that Agora is true to what Alexandria would be like in the 4th Century. 

There is a positive in that Agora doesn't appear to rely on massive CGI to create the mobs, though the times we get shots of the Earth from space borders on the farcical, emphasizing how "important" the film is.  Dario Marianelli's score at times hammers the fact that Agora is desperate to be an "important" film. 

When the Library itself falls, we get a shot of people rampaging through it that is on-screen upside down.  While I get the sense that this represents "a world turned upside down", a little less visual symbolism would have been better.

The split between the stories of the fall of the Alexandria Library and the death of Hypatia appear to be two different films with merely the same characters; given we don't know these characters or motivations all that well, it only makes things more muddled.  Somehow, by taking so long to build up to the climatic siege, everything after that appears anti-climatic. 

The biggest flaw in Agora was whenever we see text on the screen filling in information.  It was incredibly difficult to read: I had to zoom in twice to make out what was on the screen, and ultimately the information could have been given in a different manner. 

Agora is not a bad film, but it could have been much better if it didn't take itself so seriously.  It would have been better for it to have had a smaller scope: if we had gotten to know the characters, understood their motivations and how they reacted to the sweep of history rather than being supporting characters to the struggle between pagan and Christian, reason and faith. 

Ultimately, Agora is a bit confused, and given that the subject of the film is Hypatia is the Queen of Rational Thought, that's ironic. 

DECISION: C-

Straw Dogs (2011): A Review (#331)

STRAW DOGS (2011)

It may be a disadvantage that I have yet to see the original 1971 version of Straw Dogs.  Perhaps I won't notice if something, shall we say, was lost in the translation.  What I can say about this version of Straw Dogs is that while watching, one idea kept coming back again and again.

This version of Straw Dogs would make A Great Comedy! 

If the people behind the remake of Straw Dogs had decided to ditch the faux-intellectual vs. redneck feud and focused on the clash of cultures, you could  have had a delightful laugh-filled romp.  Instead, they decided they were going to make a shocking suspense-filled bore, with story threads that don't connect and characterizations that appear to come from fifty years ago.

David Sumner (James Marsden), a screenwriter, and his actress wife, Amy (Kate Bosworth) move from their Los Angeles home to Blackwater, Mississippi to take her father's old house after his death.  David hopes to continue his newest script on the Battle of Stalingrad, while Amy repairs her father's old home and heals from his death. 

Amy's past isn't far behind: her old beau, former football star Charlie (Alexander Skarsgard) is still in Blackwater, and as it so happens, a contractor. As such, Charlie is hired to repair the Sumner home.

Charlie and his crew are boorish: listening to country music and drinking on the job, then cutting things early so they can go hunting.  All of Blackwater lives up to Amy's nickname for her hometown of 'Back-water'; the town has a local drunk, angry former football coach Tom (James Woods), and the village idiot Jeremy (Dominic Purcell) who has a curious relationship with local nymphet Janice (Willa Holland), who happens to be Coach Heddon's daughter.

The ultimate sign of Blackwater's hickville status is that no business in Blackwater takes credit cards!

To these hillbillies, David isn't a real man either: he can't change a tire and types for a living and listens to classical music while doing it, and worse, doesn't like hunting!  Soon, there is an undercurrent of hostility between David and Charlie, more so since Charlie still wants Amy.

Amy seems conflicted: while she loves David and looks down at her redneck neighbors, she also insists that David participate in hick activities like going to picnics, to church, and even high school football games. 

She also does some sort of angry striptease while they work, so we know things aren't going to go well. 

David is taken on his first hunting trip by the boys, and Charlie goes to their house and semi-rapes Amy.  I say semi-rapes because while Amy doesn't want to have sex with Charlie, she doesn't put up much a fight.  However, when Norman (Rhys Coiro), another of Charlie's friends enters the house and forces sex on her, Charlie just stares in shock. Despite this, Amy doesn't tell a clueless David what has happened.

Things come to a head at the football game.  Janice finally gets Jeremy to try to fool around, but when the drunken Coach goes in search of her, we find that the Blackwater Lenny silences the Blackwater Lolita.  Jeremy gets hit by an angry David who left the game with an angry Amy.  Coach, along with Charlie and his work crew, now lay siege to the Sumner home, demanding they hand over Jeremy. 

In the melee, Sheriff and local Iraq veteran John Burke (Laz Alonzo), apparently Blackwater's only black resident, is shot.  Now it becomes total war, with the meek David finally going all Commando on the hillbilly brigade.

Straw Dogs' writer/director Rod Lurie is simply trying too hard to make this film overtly symbolic with his metaphors.  The best, or worse, example is when he juxtaposes David's hunting with the attack on Amy.  We go back and forth between them, and the symbolism of David going hunting for an innocent animal and Charlie going hunting for an innocent woman is laid on way too thick. 

Truth be told, almost everything is laid on way too thick.  We're pounded with the idea that the people in Blackwater are unsophisticated compared to the worldly Sumners.  You even had the requisite Lynyrd Skynyrd song at the local bar, which apparently the whole town, even the black sheriff go to.

As if to force the issue, we're treated to bumper stickers of the Stars and Bars. I confess I was waiting for them, and when I saw the old Confederate flag on the screen, I knew Straw Dogs was going whole-hog in its idea that the American South of 2011 is still a hotbed of yahoos and idiots.

The subplot of Jeremy not only appears to be from a different story altogether but never appears to be part of the story of David vs. Charlie until its forced into it.

Amy's decision to not tell her husband about her rape is perhaps the most puzzling in Straw Dogs. I wrote in large letters TELL HIM THEY RAPED YOU!.  She is very upset about her cat getting strangled, but when she is raped she keeps silent? It seems too outlandish to accept.

It is unintentionally funny when Sheriff Burke is shot down.  It only brings up that old cliche about the black guy being the first one killed.  As it stands, the Sheriff never really takes a prominent role in town, having no problem allowing these hicks to basically do as they please. 

Then again, Blackwater's biggest problem appears to keep Jeremy under control.

In terms of performances, I think Purcell was wildly miscast as the Lenny from Of Mice and Men-like Jeremy.  Not only does he look far too beefy to be seen as this gentle innocent but he's not given much to do other than stare and mumble about being Janice's boyfriend. 

It's laughable that someone as large and physically strong as Purcell would be beaten up so easily by someone as comparatively small as Woods.  Woods, who is among America's better actors, had just one-note to hit: that of the angry drunk, and he went all-out on that front to where it did appear to be farcical how he devoured the screen. 

Marsden did a good job in making David a wimp but not in making him an intellectual.  For most of Straw Dogs, David is less opposed to violence and more unable to stand up for himself.  Whenever anyone challenges him, he never uses his alleged intelligence to deal with them.  Instead, he retreats, and one can't really rally around someone who won't rally in the first place. 

Bosworth has no emotional range to her, even after undergoing a traumatic gang-rape.  Her decisions before and after are just stupid and illogical.  As for Skarsgard, I give him credit for having a strong Southern accent, though I imagine his time in Bon Temps gave the Swede a leg-up on that.  However, Charlie does nothing but smolder and show off his body throughout the film.  Whatever anger there was that his glory days are long gone is never communicated. 

As a sidenote, perhaps it works in the overall story, but I was amazed how Charlie towered over David.  Given that Skarsgard is 6'4" to Marsden's 5'10" it's not a surprise, but when they are put together the half-foot difference between them appears startling and a little distracting.

Again and again while watching Straw Dogs, I thought it would have made a great comedy.  The curious thing is that at times it actually played like one: the village idiot and the crazy drunken coach with the lusty daughter becoming more and more hilarious. 

The idea that Straw Dogs is a story of a man finally standing up to those threatening him and his wife becomes lost in a collection of cliches and stereotypes, story threads that don't connect, bad performances, a heavy-handed effort at symbolism and a fixation on Skarsgard's physique. 

Ultimately, this remake of Straw Dogs is a weird hybrid between The Wicker Man and Deliverance.  Not only is it a bungled effort to redo a film that perhaps shouldn't have been remade, but it rips off better films too. 

Put that up as another crime Straw Dogs committed.   

DECISION: D-

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close: A Review (Review #330)

EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE

In Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, our protagonist tells us helpfully that he was tested for Asperger's but that the tests were inconclusive.  If he doesn't have Asperger's, then this kid is really just an ass. 

The kid at the heart of Extremely Loud &Incredibly Close is self-centered, inconsiderate, vicious at times, prone to eccentricities that would be considered irritating in an old man, and perhaps worst of all, annoying; hopelessly annoying.  The best way to describe what is suppose to be the heart of Extremely Loud &Incredibly Close is Rain Man: The Early Years.

That is, if he doesn't have Asperger's.  If he does indeed have Asperger's, and I'm inclined to believe he does, then it just makes it merely frustrating at times to watch but it doesn't excuse his behavior or make how other people react and behave any more logical. 

The story is told from the voiceover of Oskar (Jeopardy! Kids Week Champion Thomas Horn), who has issues long before "The Worst Day" as he calls it.  "The Worst Day" happens to be September 11th, 2001. 

On that day, his father Thomas (Tom Hanks) died at the World Trade Center.  In flashbacks we see that Thomas is the Best Dad Any Boy could ever have: always getting his son to have adventures, mostly looking for the mythical 6th Borough of New York City.  Thomas is just the greatest: a father without flaws of any kind.

Now with his father gone as a result of "The Worst Day", Oskar is stuck with his mother Linda (Sandra Bullock) whom Oskar doesn't like and says as much; in one particularly ugly scene, he tells her he wishes it was her, not Thomas, who had died on "The Worst Day".  A year later, Oskar is still handling, rather poorly, the emotional aftereffects of "The Worst Day".

If you're getting annoyed at my constant use of the phrase 'The Worst Day', I'm only repeating what Oskar repeats. 

He's hidden the answering machine that has Thomas' six final messages and not letting Linda know her husband had called on "The Worst Day".  However, to move a story along, Oskar finally has the courage to enter Thomas' closet, and while there, he finds a key in an envelope labelled "Black".

Oskar comes to what to him is a logical conclusion: this key is Thomas' final message to his son, one last game between father and son so that his final eight minutes can be extended. 

Oskar, in voiceover, tells us that if the sun were to explode, we on Earth wouldn't know for eight minutes, blissfully aware that we were all going to die, hence the analogy. 

If he doesn't have Asperger's, he's definitely got issues. 

He decides that "Black" is a surname, and that he has to find every person named Black in the five known boroughs of New York City to see what the key opens. 

Being at the very least methodical, Oskar decided to go through the phonebook and find every Black in New York City: all 400-plus of them.  Oskar already has issues before "The Worst Day", but "The Worst Day" only intensifies his fears: one of them is a fear of public transportation.  Since he cannot use the subway or buses, he goes around New York City on foot, walking from Manhattan to Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island.

I figure since he's afraid of public transportation, that rules out the Staten Island Ferry, so he'll either have to row himself there or swim, if he isn't afraid of the water. 

There's no problem skipping school, or having a ten-year-old roaming around NYC on foot with only his damn tambourine to protect him. 

On his journey to find the Black, he has various encounters.  We start with Abby Black (Viola Davis) who is having a very bad day but allows this little chatterbox to come and even to take her picture.  Various short glimpses of other Blacks, but still no one knows nothing about Oskar's key or of Thomas. 

During his hunt, he is joined by a mysterious figure known as The Renter (Max von Sydow).  We know he's The Renter not only because everyone refers to him as "The Renter" but because when Oskar goes to his grandmother's he doesn't find her but finds the man who is 'renting' from her.  The Renter has a mysterious link to Oskar.

To tell you would be to give things away, but here's a hint: The Renter shrugs his shoulders just like Thomas, the Bestest Dad in the World.

In this journey, we get glimpses of exactly why Oskar is so haunted by the answering machine from "The Worst Day", we do get the story of the Black Key, The Renter runs, from the beyond Thomas sends one last final message, and Linda and Oskar come to a peaceful co-existence.

While watching Extremely Loud &Incredibly Close, my mind started wandering from the film and onto the Black.  I started wondering about other people Oskar might encounter, and began making my own list.  During the film, I started to wonder if he would eventually meet the following people:

Clint Black

Jack Black

Michael Ian Black

Lewis Black

Lucas Black

And of course, the Citizen Kane of Black-surnamed personalities...

Rebecca Black

Yes, at one point in Extremely Loud &Incredibly Close, I actually started to make a list of people with the surname Black, because Oskar's fixation was either contagious or simply loony. 

A lot of Extremely Loud &Incredibly Close is hard to believe.  Chief among them is the idea that any sane parent would allow her 10-year-old son to wander around the streets of New York City unguarded, or that, as we learn, she was fully aware of Oskar's adventures, she wouldn't inform Grand-mama that her son was running around the city with someone whom he was to avoid him at all costs. 

Moreover, the idea that The Renter would introduce himself as "The Renter" is something that might work in Jonathan Safran Foer's novel, but when translated into a movie, the device is just far too cutesy to be believed.

I'm going to put the believable factor aside for a moment.  Instead, I'm going to turn my eyes to how Stephen Daltry decided to not direct anyone towards anything that can be called a good performance.  Hanks does another variation of Larry Crowne, that happy-go-lucky character who is just about the sweetest most lovable person ever.   

As portrayed by Hanks, Thomas is without flaws, and I'm willing to cut some slack in terms of how a child would remember a lost father, but somehow Hanks and Horn came off as annoying together: the perfect father, never cross, always patient and eager to do all sorts of things with his son. 

I'm  not asking for conflict in all characters, but I would like at least a moment where Thomas had another type of emotion other than generally cheery.

Bullock doesn't do anything in the film.  There's a scene where we see her talking to Thomas over the phone on "The Worst Day", and everything in that particular scene in terms of her performance just looked wrong. 

She wasn't actually acting; she was acting like she was acting, as if she didn't believe the situation her character was in but was doing her best to pretend to do so. 

We also have to deal with a serious problem of just how inept Linda is in helping Oskar with his grief: as far as we know we don't ever see a moment where either of them sought counseling, which given both the circumstances and his potential mental issues would be highly recommended. 

It is unfair to go after Horn for his robotic interpretation of Oskar.  He's not an actor, and perhaps he may never act again.  However, as intelligent as Horn may be in real life, he doesn't have the skills or abilities to make Oskar anything other than a nightmare to endure. 

Again and again the word "annoying" kept popping up in my notes.  It isn't that Oskar's idiosyncrasies make him hard to spend time with; it's that Horn almost goes out of his way to make Oskar extremely unlikable.  In his incessant directness, in particular how he insults people to their faces, in his playing of the damn tambourine to calm him down, in his selfishness and thoughtlessness, one can't bring themselves to care about him.

One particularly horrifying scene was when Oskar tells The Renter the story of his journey: not only do we have to listen to Horn's robotic recitation of his lines but he does it in a rapid-fire delivery and we're treated to clips from everything we've seen already. 

This scene was an absolute nightmare to watch and I am amazed why Daltry or screenwriter Eric Roth couldn't restructure the book to make this flow easier rather than have us go through information again.  Given that we not only got treated to a scene of Oskar going into Dad's closet but a voiceover confirming this, I figure subtlety is not Extremely Loud &Incredibly Close's strong suit.

In fact, many scenes in Extremely Loud &Incredibly Close are there to call attention to themselves, but the effect is to make things almost grotesque.  Near the end of the film, we see how Thomas' last call ended, and Oskar falls in an amazingly over-dramatic manner to where it is almost farce: this scene of Horn collapsing oh-so-poetically as the second tower collapses is just ugly both in how it looks and what it reflects; worse, it also looks completely fake. 

We are treated to two quick moments of Hanks falling from the World Trade Center, and to my mind, there is something creepy, wrong, even immoral about shooting such horrifying moments in an excessively poetic manner. 

There's something in my mind that makes the whole thing wildly wrong: not only is the story forced in its efforts to paint the horror of September 11th through the eyes of a child but everything in Extremely Loud &Incredibly Close plays far too manipulative to be believed.   

I don't think eleven years is 'too soon' to make a September 11th film, but Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is not that film. 

The big problem is that Oskar is just so unlikable.  It has nothing to do with Asperger's, more with the fact that Horn could not make Oskar someone we could genuinely root for in his quixotic quest to unravel an uninteresting mystery which itself is technically resolved but leaves us without an actual resolution. 

Granted, I've never read the novel, but now I have even less reason to do so if the material is as bad as the cinematic result. 

I now realize why they named their child Oskar...because Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close was thinking Oscar. 

DECISION: F

On To The Second Star To The Right: Peter Pan Retrospective Introduction

I decided to do a brief retrospective on Peter Pan in cinema.  I can't find a particular reason: the play premiered 108 years ago, the book version 101 years ago.  As far as I know there isn't a new version of Peter Pan coming out save for the Neverland miniseries from last year.  So, why do this retrospective?

I think it has to do with the fact that I've become fascinated by how much one work by one man has so entered the popular imagination.  The characters are now so iconic: the boy who wouldn't grow up, the Lost Boys, the villainous Captain Hook, even the world of Neverland/Never-Never Land itself are part of our lexicon.  The story and characters are such a large part of youth that one thinks they've been around forever. 

I think it's amazing that Sir James M. Barrie's story is now virtually part of our everyday world.  Few authors have that power to have their creations become part of everyone's childhood: Lewis Carroll does, perhaps Beatrix Potter, but while Barrie wrote much, what else besides Pan is remembered?  It is a credit to his remarkable talent that his creations are now part of every childhood, perhaps as he intended.

It's just a curiosity thing for me to explore the cinematic versions of the Peter Pan story.  With that, I decided to do a brief retrospective on all the sanctioned Peter Pan films.

Our first film version of Peter Pan is the 1924 silent version.  As with most silent films, it is remarkable that we have it at all, given how quickly silent films were disposed of or just disintegrated. 

One shouldn't give too much thought to the fact that Peter is almost always played by a female. This is a tradition that started with the original theater production and continues: the musical version of Peter Pan is so identified with Mary Martin that any woman is automatically measured against her.  All subsequent stagings of the musical will always have a female as Peter.   Thus, it made sense to cast a woman as 'the boy who never grew up', and in this first film version it was Betty Bronson.

Somehow, I think the idea of Chinese film star Anna May Wong as Native American Princess Tiger Lilly is more shocking than a woman playing a man.  However, Bronson as Peter is something that even now would appear perfectly natural if we consider the theatrical traditions.

On a strictly technical level, the 1953 animated Peter Pan is the first to have a male play the part, albeit in voice.

It's only been twenty-nine years since the silent Peter Pan, but now J. M. Barrie's story gets the Disney treatment.  The animated Peter Pan story had Bobby Driscoll voicing Peter, and I think that makes perfect sense: a person can distinguish between a woman's and a man's voice when that is the only thing they have. 

Curiously, whenever I see this version, I always think of both Peter and Wendy as being teens, which again makes sense: Driscoll was seventeen when he voiced Peter and Kathryn Beaumont was fourteen.  However, I always thought the animated versions looked a bit older than children, but now I digress.

We have our issue with the Indians in the 1953 version, which I will cover later.  For now, I will say that Disney to my mind is hypocritical in keeping Song of the South out of American circulation due to the perception of racism while having no difficulty having Peter Pan available.  Yet again, for another time. 

Now, in 2003, a mere fifty years after the animated Peter Pan, another breakthrough.  In the entire history of Peter Pan stage or screen, this is the first time that Peter was played on-screen by an actual male.  Jeremy Sumpter thus makes history with his interpretation.  While he was 13 when he started, he actually looks a bit younger, thus making the idea that he is a boy forever more believable.

What I find amusing is that while Peter Pan never grew up, Sumpter certainly did.  During production, he grew several inches, to where the sets had to be rebuilt to accomodate his growth spurt. 

In addition to the santioned versions of Peter Pan, for good measure, I decided to throw in a couple of Peter Pan-related features.  The first is what one could call a sequel to Peter Pan: Steven Spielberg's Hook.  Robin Williams as Peter Pan appears to be great casting, but at the moment I can't say whether it is a good film or not.  Still, it is a curious thing to see how the idea of the boy who never grew up actually did grow up a most fascinating one. 

This is the second Peter Pan-related film, this time focusing on its creation and creator.  Finding Neverland is the story of James M. Barrie himself, and while not strictly Peter Pan, this story is as close as we will get to a 'making-of' to Barrie and his immortal work.

In short, I will look over all three versions of Peter Pan (silent, animated, and live-action) as well as two stragglers: the 'sequel' and the 'prequel' if you will.  Perhaps I will go for a ranking, but I think that what I will end up with is just a simple overview to the films.  This retrospective, which at five I think will be the shortest thus far, is simply for mere pleasure of the story. 

I think that my Peter Pan retrospective will be an awfully big adventure. 

June 2018 Update: Since the writing, another Pan-related film was released.  Pan, a prequel to the J.M. Barrie story, was made in 2015. It is now included.  Any more Peter Pan-related films will be added when released.

Peter Pan Films:

Peter Pan (1924)
Peter Pan (1953)
Hook (1991)
Peter Pan (2003)
Finding Neverland (2004)
Pan (2015)