Tag Archives: New York City

Gritty, Grimy, and Graffitied: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

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The Taking of Pelham One Two Three movie poster

 

Plenty of genre movies have been set in New York City, such as Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (dev­ilry on the Upper West Side), Wal­ter Salles’ Dark Water (ghosts on Roo­sevelt Island), Guillermo Del Toro’s Mimic (ver­min in the sub­way), and Spike Lee’s Inside Man (thiev­ery on Wall Street). The Tak­ing of Pel­ham One Two Three, directed by Joseph Sar­gent from the novel by John Godey, is one of the few New York movies seem­ingly made for New York­ers. Plenty of the world’s cities have under­ground tran­sit sys­tems, but this par­tic­u­lar story could be set nowhere else. It’s a potent premise that has been remade twice, first as a TV movie in 1998 and again in 2009 as a big-budget star vehi­cle for John Tra­volta and Den­zel Wash­ing­ton, directed by Tony Scott. It was even an indi­rect inspi­ra­tion for the famous color-coded crim­i­nal aliases used in Quentin Tarantino’s Reser­voir Dogs.

The Tak­ing of Pel­ham One Two Three is a time cap­sule, full of curiosi­ties about how the New York City sub­way looked and func­tioned in the 1970s. It also reveals a great deal about how the city itself was per­ceived and por­trayed in pop­u­lar cin­ema at the time. The cityscape is gritty, grimy, and graf­fi­tied. Women are just now begrudg­ingly being let into the M.T.A. work­force. A cyn­i­cal City Hall is will­ing to nego­ti­ate with ter­ror­ists if it means more votes in the next elec­tion. Hook­ers and pimps share the sub­way with drunks and robust eth­nic stereo­types. The unhealthy filth of mil­lions of peo­ple liv­ing in close quar­ters is evi­denced by a cold going around (which becomes a key plot point).

Walter Matthau in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three“Some­body down there knows how to drive a train. You don’t pick that up watch­ing Sesame Street.”

The movie’s racial pol­i­tics are dated, but per­haps more hon­est towards flawed human nature. Lt. Gar­ber (Wal­ter Matthau) is openly con­de­scend­ing towards vis­it­ing Japan­ese offi­cials study­ing the M.T.A. He’s flatly racist in a way no hero in a mod­ern film would ever allowed to be (he calls them “mon­keys”). But in fact, he actu­ally does get his come­up­pance. Matthau is, to say the least, an odd cast­ing choice for the hero of a thriller. But he was prob­a­bly about the cor­rect age for a Tran­sit Author­ity detec­tive, and had the right air of sar­donic dis­il­lu­sion­ment for a believ­able lower-level civic employee of the bleak New York City of the 1970s.

Speak­ing of roles that would never be con­ceived the same way in today’s Hol­ly­wood, the bad guys remain very effec­tively dis­guised through­out. Char­ac­ter actors Robert Shaw and Mar­tin Bal­sam were never exactly super­stars, but how many actors today would will­ingly dis­guise them­selves for most of a movie? I can really only think of Clive Owen in Inside Man and almost any­thing Gary Old­man does. Unsur­pris­ingly, no attempt is made to obscure the very expen­sive face of John Tra­volta for one frame of the 2009 remake. Note that Shaw unmask­ing is spoiled by his promi­nent appear­ance on the DVD sleeve.

Robert Shaw in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three“Excuse me, do you peo­ple still exe­cute in this state?”

Made decades before 9/11, The Tak­ing of Pel­ham One Two Three is nev­er­the­less a minia­ture night­mare sce­nario of one of the Manhattan’s myr­iad vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties to ter­ror­ism. In the 1970s, the famil­iar form of ter­ror­ism was to hold hostages for remu­ner­a­tion or to espouse a cause. Scott’s 2009 remake had to face 21st cen­tury audi­ences (many sit­ting in New York City movie the­aters) for whom ter­ror­ism means mass mur­der. But Scott takes the con­ven­tional route and boils down the plot into a con­flict between two men, on a per­sonal level. Scott’s choices high­light how much the orig­i­nal actu­ally bucks cliché.

In the orig­i­nal, we know prac­ti­cally noth­ing about the per­sonal lives of Gar­ber or the vil­lain­ous Mr. Blue (we may guess he’s some sort of ex-mercenary or sol­dier of for­tune, but he gives no hint of his ide­ol­ogy or moti­va­tions). In con­trast to the ice-cool Mr. Blue, Travolta’s char­ac­ter is manic and unhinged, and rants in a bar­rage of f-bombs. Just as Sargent’s old school run­away train sequence is more thrilling than Scott’s rapid-fire edit­ing and CGI flair, the orig­i­nal also outscores on pure cynicism.

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Where not to go for coffee in Manhattan: M. Rohrs’ House of Fine Teas & Coffees

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M. Rohrs' House of Fine Teas & Coffees

 

M. Rohrs’ House of Fine Teas & Cof­fees has a com­plete and utter con­tempt of their pay­ing cus­tomers, and has lost my busi­ness, for­ever. Yes­ter­day after­noon, they kicked out myself and every other sin­gle cus­tomer, cit­ing a new pol­icy that accused us all of “loi­ter­ing.” I am not mak­ing this up.

M. Rohrs is one of the last remain­ing cof­fee houses on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. As oth­ers have noted on Yelp, they rou­tinely invent new poli­cies, such as chang­ing the terms of cus­tomer loy­alty cards (in fact, I think they sim­ply rescinded them alto­gether at one point). Until the very recent past, any cus­tomers that wished to sit down after 7PM must have ordered at least $10 from the menu. That pol­icy was not entirely unrea­son­able, but it was unfea­si­ble. M. Rohrs is not a restau­rant, and it is actu­ally dif­fi­cult to spend more than $10 at a cof­fee house. But as of yes­ter­day at least, that require­ment has now expanded to all hours, every day. It’s also worth not­ing that the new pol­icy did not seem to spec­ify a dol­lar amount, so I sup­pose they can arbi­trar­ily eject any­body they deem to have spent too little.

Here’s what hap­pened yes­ter­day after­noon at about 4-5PM: I bought a cof­fee and muf­fin, tipped, and sat down. About 10 min­utes later, the vol­ume of the music sud­denly got VERY LOUD (painfully, dis­tract­ingly so) for no appar­ent rea­son. Then one of their employ­ees vis­ited every cus­tomer in turn and pre­sented us with a long-worded sign explain­ing their new seat­ing pol­icy, which used the word “loi­ter” sev­eral times. I don’t think this employee speaks Eng­lish as a first lan­guage, so there was no oppor­tu­nity to dis­cuss it with him, even if the music had not been deaf­en­ing. He was not apolo­getic. Every sin­gle cus­tomer in the store at that time had only pur­chased cof­fee and pas­tries, so we all had to leave. There were only about a half-dozen cus­tomers at the time, so the man­age­ment can’t claim that we were hog­ging seats from hypo­thet­i­cal meal-eating cus­tomers (of which there were none). If the new pol­icy had been posted up front when I placed my order, I did not see it.

I used to like to go to M. Rohrs occa­sion­ally, some­times for a sand­wich or some­times just cof­fee. I would usu­ally sit and work or just read for about an hour or two, which I don’t think is unrea­son­able at any cof­fee shop, Star­bucks not excluded. All the other neg­a­tive com­ments on Yelp are true; the ser­vice is often rude and neglect­ful (I once had them com­pletely for­get to make my sand­wich — but at least they apol­o­gized), and they charge for wire­less access and for elec­tric­ity. Worse is their atti­tude; it would be one thing to sim­ply charge peo­ple to plug in their lap­tops, but the signs plas­tered about the place couch it in terms of “theft of util­i­ties,” essen­tially accus­ing cus­tomers of crim­i­nal behav­ior. After the clos­ing of the vastly supe­rior cof­fee shop DTUT a few years ago, M. Rohrs is pretty much the only place of its type in the neigh­bor­hood, so I used to patron­ize it any­way. No more.

The word “loi­ter­ing,” as any lit­er­ate per­son should know, has crim­i­nal con­no­ta­tions, and I sus­pect the man­age­ment of M. Rohrs knows this. I deeply, deeply resent being called a “loi­terer” despite hav­ing paid (and tipped!) for cof­fee and a pas­try. Upon leav­ing for the last time, I only regret­ted not demand­ing my tip back.

Per­haps they intend to tran­si­tion away from being a cof­fee house into a restau­rant with a take-out cof­fee bar. If so, they will have to hire more staff, improve the speed and accu­racy of their ser­vice, toss out the couches, and stop accus­ing their pay­ing cus­tomers of crim­i­nal behav­ior. Good luck with that. If any­one asso­ci­ated with the estab­lish­ment hap­pens to read this, I invite you to please com­ment below. I would love to hear your jus­ti­fi­ca­tions. I signed up for Yelp for the sole pur­pose of post­ing a copy of this review, and I sin­cerely hope lots of poten­tial cus­tomers read it.

So that you know where not to go get your cof­fee, M. Rohrs’ House of Fine Teas & Cof­fees is located in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, at 310 East 86th Street, between 1st and 2nd Avenues.

The Spirit

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The Spirit movie poster

 

At last, finally another entry to The Dork Report’s hal­lowed pan­theon of zero-star unholy cin­ema atroc­i­ties. Frank Miller’s The Spirit is far more than just merely bad. Like the most infa­mous movie dis­as­ter of all, Ed Wood’s Plan Nine From Outer Space (read The Dork Report appre­ci­a­tion), it veers wildly from stun­ning weird­ness to unin­ten­tional hilar­ity, inter­spersed with fre­quent stretches of insuf­fer­able bore­dom. But what truly lands The Spirit among the rar­i­fied com­pany of true cin­e­matic crimes against human­ity is that it is the insane and unhinged prod­uct of a uniquely obsessed auteur mind. The only dif­fer­ence is, Miller was handed a great deal more money and resources than Wood ever man­aged to wrangle.

Not that he didn’t have to work for it. Miller is one of the best-known (and most ripped-off) rock stars to grad­u­ate from the sweat­shop that is the comic book indus­try. He has writ­ten and/or illus­trated some of the best-selling and most influ­en­tial series of comics’ mod­ern age, includ­ing Wolver­ine, Dare­devil, Ronin, Elek­tra: Assas­sin, Sin City, and 300. Much of this work has long been ruth­lessly pil­laged for raw mate­r­ial for Hollywood’s lever­ag­ing of comic book intel­lec­tual prop­er­ties. The unmatched one-two punch of his 1980s Bat­man graphic nov­els Year One (with David Maz­zuc­chelli) and The Dark Knight, together with Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s The Killing Joke, became the basis for Tim Burton’s Bat­man (1989). That first major comics-to-movie block­buster not only bor­rowed Miller’s par­tic­u­lar inter­pre­ta­tion of the char­ac­ter (itself a highly dis­tilled ver­sion of its sur­pris­ingly dark his­tory), but also his over­all visual style (going to far as to visu­ally quote indi­vid­ual panels).

Gabriel Macht in The Spirit“I’m gonna kill you all kinds of dead.”

Over a decade later, Mark Steven Johnson’s Dare­devil (2003) unfor­tu­nately fum­bled Miller’s most famous orig­i­nal char­ac­ter, the Greek ninja assas­sin Elek­tra. But Miller was soon to cease being merely some­one from whom Hol­ly­wood stole paid homage. In 2005, Miller jumped media bar­ri­ers to co-direct a fea­ture film adap­ta­tion of his orig­i­nal graphic novel Sin City with Robert Rodriguez. The two crafted an exact­ingly faith­ful recre­ation of the book, essen­tially treat­ing the orig­i­nal comics as sto­ry­boards. Miller’s pro­file only rose as Zack Sny­der pulled a sim­i­lar stunt with Miller’s 1998 graphic novel 300, pro­duc­ing an even big­ger (and slightly con­tro­ver­sial) smash hit.

Credit to Miller for absorb­ing count­less lessons from the sea­soned indie mav­er­ick Rodriguez, enough to helm an entire fea­ture on his own. The Spirit’s visu­als are often extra­or­di­nar­ily beau­ti­ful, exploit­ing the thin bar­rier between ani­ma­tion and live action blurred ever since the largely green-screened Star Wars: The Phan­tom Men­ace (George Lucas, 1999) and Sky Cap­tain and the World of Tomor­row (Kerry Con­ran, 2004). Like Sin City, nearly every shot is highly processed to effect a styl­ized evo­ca­tion of noir lit­er­a­ture and movies.

But together with Miller’s sig­na­ture brand of stark, chiaroscuro images and pur­ple, pulpy noir dia­logue, it doesn’t look or sound any­thing like the real osten­si­ble real source mate­r­ial, Will Eisner’s orig­i­nal Spirit comics. The leg­endary Eis­ner is con­sid­ered the inven­tor of the graphic novel. The DVD edi­tion includes a must-see bonus fea­ture: “Miller on Miller,” in which Miller talks of him as a teacher, and took many of his apho­risms as lessons, includ­ing the essen­tial sen­su­al­ity of ink­ing (which Miller took rather lit­er­ally). Eis­ner (and oth­ers such as Neal Adams) may have inspired Miller in the first place, but Miller’s ver­sion of The Spirit in Chucks and cape-like trench­coat more closely resem­bles his own cre­ations, espe­cially Dwight from Sin City (Clive Owen in the film) or Dare­devil as he appears in the 1990 graphic novel Elek­tra Lives Again.

This Dork Reporter read Miller’s comics as a kid, and cer­tainly never expected the guy would one day be a bank­able force in Hol­ly­wood. Look­ing back­wards, it’s plain he hasn’t changed much. His obses­sions and pre­oc­cu­pa­tions are now only ampli­fied and enhanced: his mod­ern comics (and now movies) are mostly com­prised of homo­erotic bone-crunching acro­batic fights (if the entirety of 300 isn’t proof enough, might I refer you to Daredevil’s bat­tle with the naked, big-dicked Bulls­eye in Elek­tra Lives Again), volup­tuous femmes fatale (no skinny waifs for him), and pulp fic­tion and film noir-inspired odes to his beloved New York City. Also on the DVD, Miller expounds on all his favorite talk­ing points, from his detailed knowl­edge of comics his­tory, his love for New York City, and his hatred of cen­sor­ship (he’s famously prone to cas­ti­gate the comics indus­try for weakly cen­sor­ing itself instead of fight­ing back against — or even ignor­ing — Con­gres­sional pres­sure in the 1950s).

Scarlett Johansson in The Spirit“I’ve known some pretty strange women in my time but this one, she’s got the final word on strange.”

I’m not famil­iar with Eisner’s orig­i­nal Spirit comics, which appeared as inserts in 1940s Sun­day news­pa­pers. But from what I under­stand, Miller took a great deal of lib­er­ties beyond jet­ti­son­ing Eisner’s col­or­ful visual style in favor of his own Sin City look. Miller adds a meta­phys­i­cal aspect miss­ing in the orig­i­nal, mak­ing The Spirit and his neme­sis The Octo­pus both inde­struc­tible and quick-healing (per­haps inspired by the char­ac­ter Wolver­ine, to which Miller had a hand in pop­u­lar­iz­ing in the early 1980s). The pres­ence of Samuel L. Jack­son can’t help but rec­ol­lect M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreak­able, an infi­nitely more sub­tle exam­i­na­tion of the super­hero archetype.

The action is set in an unnamed fan­tasy urban land­scape like that of Alex Proyas’ Dark City (1998) and David Fincher’s Se7en (1995): filthy, sur­rounded by water, soaked by con­stant pre­cip­i­ta­tion and fog, and in per­pet­ual night until the sun finally rises at the end. Miller’s script con­spic­u­ously avoids men­tion­ing the year, but the auto­mo­biles and fash­ions are clearly of the 1940s while the char­ac­ters employ the cell phones and inter­net of the 2000s. This is Miller’s home.

The Spirit sports an unusu­ally eclec­tic cast, with the unknown Gabriel Macht in the epony­mous role with much better-known stars Jack­son and Scar­lett Johans­son in sup­port­ing roles. The per­for­mances range from the dis­tracted (Sarah Paul­son as a good girl besot­ted with The Spirit) to the bor­der­line lunatic (hi, Sam!). One can hardly blame the actors, for surely they were at the mercy of the screen­play and Miller’s rookie coach­ing. Stana Katic is enter­tain­ing as Mor­gen­stern, a gosh-golly gee-whiz rookie cop that goose-steps from scene to scene like a sexy robot. ScarJo rocks horn­rimmed glasses like no bad girl before her, but it’s just plain uncom­fort­able to see her in Nazi fetish­wear and jackboots.

The Octo­pus is a mad sci­en­tist con­duct­ing all sorts of med­ical atroc­i­ties in the name of mutat­ing him­self to god­like pow­ers. He deems one of his mis­fired exper­i­ments as “just plain damn weird,” a phrase apro­pos of the movie itself. It’s oddly slap­stick, and often out­right silly. Unex­pect­edly, it’s much less vio­lent, or rather, gory, than 300 or Sin City. It’s also slightly more play­ful in nar­ra­tive terms; the Spirit’s noirish voiceover often brazenly breaks the fourth wall by speak­ing directly to the camera.

And finally, some trivia gleaned from the credits:

  • This comic geek thought I rec­og­nized a con­tri­bu­tion by fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor Geof Dar­row (Hard Boiled and Big Guy & Rusty the Boy Robot), and I was proved cor­rect in the end credits.
  • The end cred­its them­selves, designed by Miller, are stunning.
  • Miller is also cred­ited for the sto­ry­boards, which must be some­thing to see.
  • Miller cameos as a decapi­ti­ated cop, the head of whom The Octo­pus wields as a weapon. He also appears in Sin City, Dare­devil and Robo­Cop 2, for which he wrote the screenplay.

Offi­cial movie site: www.mycityscreams.com

Buy the DVD and the book The Spirit: The Movie Visual Com­pan­ion from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Pride and Glory

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Pride and Glory movie poster

 

Pride and Glory was one of the last New Line Cin­ema pro­duc­tions made while still a semi-autonomous com­pany, before being evis­cer­ated by par­ent com­pany Warner Bros. in 2008. For the mor­bidly curi­ous, Van­ity Fair recently related the sad tale in its lat­est Hol­ly­wood issue. Dis­claimer: I worked for New Line Cin­ema through its end times, but had absolutely noth­ing to do with actu­ally mak­ing or mar­ket­ing its movies, and nobody there cared what rank-and-file employ­ees thought about the artis­tic merit of their prod­uct anyway.

For still undis­closed rea­sons, Pride and Glory was com­pleted in 2006, but sat on the shelf for almost two years. Direc­tor Gavin O’Connor (Tum­ble­weeds) pub­licly blamed New Line (and co-head Bob Shaye in par­tic­u­lar) for bury­ing his movie. Stars Edward Nor­ton and Colin Far­rel also spoke out about it in the press, clearly dis­ap­pointed but yet more under­stand­ing (per­haps these sea­soned actors were more jaded, and unsur­prised by stu­dio machi­na­tions). New Line coun­tered that the slid­ing release date was intended to avoid the lead actors’ com­pet­ing projects from dif­fer­ent stu­dios. It was even­tu­ally sched­uled for March 2008, but not actu­ally released until late 2008.

Colin Farrel and Ed Norton in Pride and GloryColin’s a bent copper

This atten­tion helped it become a minor cause célèbre among online movie afi­ciona­dos that couldn’t resist the bait: a scan­dalous tale of a sup­pressed mas­ter­piece. But the sad truth is that Pride and Glory is a god-awful, depress­ing, point­less mess of a movie. Actu­ally, that’s not fair; it’s not poorly made from a tech­ni­cal stand­point. Not to go out of my way to defend the stu­dio, but it now seems likely there was no actual con­spir­acy to bury a mis­un­der­stood mas­ter­piece. Per­haps New Line sim­ply couldn’t slot the film into its slate, fig­ure out how to mar­ket it, or was forced to shunt some projects aside dur­ing the stress of the immi­nent destruc­tion of the entire com­pany. Or maybe even, most unlikely of all, New Line had the sense to real­ize Pride and Glory just wasn’t a very good movie.

Also con­tribut­ing to the aura of con­tro­versy was the bun­gled film­ing of a police funeral scene at the actual cer­e­mony for New York City offi­cer Eric Her­nan­dez, acci­den­tally killed by friendly fire in 2006. The pro­duc­tion report­edly promised the fam­ily they would be respect­ful and stay out of their way, but reneged and clum­sily intruded on the sen­si­tive affair. Hav­ing seen the com­pleted scene, I don’t see any rea­son why it couldn’t have been effec­tively staged with a com­ple­ment of extras in full dress uniform.

Pride and Glory was writ­ten by broth­ers Gavin and Gre­gory O’Connor. As the sons of a police offi­cer, they had unusual access to the New York Police Depart­ment. If their film is sup­posed to be a trib­ute to hon­est cops, its cor­rup­tion plot must feel like a slap in the face. The movie’s fic­tional cor­rupt cops are wholly, utterly evil, with no gra­da­tions of char­ac­ter or moti­va­tion. Jimmy Egan (Far­rel) and a clutch of fel­low cops have been skim­ming money off drug busts for years, and have grad­u­ated to mur­der and sell­ing drugs them­selves. Egan’s brother-in-law Ray Tier­ney (Nor­ton) finds him­self in a posi­tion where he could turn Egan in. Com­pli­cat­ing mat­ters, Tierney’s pop Fran­cis Sr. (John Voight) and brother Fran­cis Jr. (Noah Emmerich, brother to New Line exec­u­tive Toby Emmerich, and type­cast as a cop after his role in Lit­tle Chil­dren) are also in the force. Fran­cis Jr. also knows about the cor­rup­tion, but doesn’t have the courage to man up. If Ray does the right thing, it will not only tear up his fam­ily but the New York Police Depart­ment itself. But events con­spire such that the good guys don’t have to act; three crooked cops self-destruct of their own accord, and the story reveals itself to the press. Jimmy and Ray are freed to set­tle their per­sonal griev­ances as two stereo­typ­i­cal movie Irish cops ought: fisticuffs in a pub.

John Voight in Pride and GloryCheese it, it’s the fuzz!

I sus­pect O’Connor had pre­ten­sions to mak­ing another L.A. Con­fi­den­tial, but his result doesn’t mea­sure up to the stan­dards of such a supe­rior film noir. Note the super­fi­cial resem­blances: police cor­rup­tion, drugs, fam­ily pride. Pride and Glory’s plot only seems com­plex, but is actu­ally stupid-simple. Expo­si­tion scenes basi­cally lay out the plot quite early, drain­ing any sense of mys­tery or sus­pense. The dia­logue is pep­pered with a tor­rent of names that are chal­leng­ing for the audi­ence to con­nect with faces, a tech­nique that pro­vides only a super­fi­cial com­plex­ity to a sim­ple plot.

The tone is absurdly grim and totally humor­less, and devoid of any human emo­tion beyond Ray’s grim sense of duty. The clas­sic film noir ele­ment most notably lack­ing in this boy’s club pro­duc­tion is any hint of women or sex. What few women there are in the cast barely fig­ure into the plot. The most sig­nif­i­cant female char­ac­ter is cancer-stricken Abby (Jen­nifer Ehle), whose sole pur­pose in the plot seems to be to human­ize hus­band Fran­cis Jr. Pride and Glory utterly lacks the sense of verisimil­i­tude of the tele­vi­sion series The Wire, sim­i­larly set in the worlds of inner city drug and police cul­tures. Now is as good a time as any to state that The Dork Report does not apol­o­gize for tak­ing advan­tage of any oppor­tu­nity what­so­ever to evan­ge­lize The Wire.

The set­ting is a ver­sion of New York City that may or may not actu­ally exist. In fact, there’s an unusual dis­claimer before the end cred­its stat­ing its char­ac­ters and events are totally fic­tional. Obvi­ously, if there was an actual case of such mas­sive cor­rup­tion in the NYPD, we’d have heard about it. After the cred­its, there’s yet another dis­claimer I’ve never seen before, stat­ing that no one con­nected with the pro­duc­tion took any money to pro­mote the use of tobacco prod­ucts. This Dork Reporter don’t smoke, and never has, but is offended by the notion that movies are influ­en­tial in this way. Granted, movies are a pow­er­ful art­form, and can affect people’s hearts and minds. The ills of soci­ety are real prob­lems that require com­plex solu­tions, but cen­sor­ing movies is not one of them. It’s a cheap and easy way for right­eous fools to believe they are com­bat­ing a prob­lem. Where’s the cor­re­spond­ing worry that lit­tle kids will watch this movie and be inspired to grow up to be cor­rupt cops?

Offi­cial movie site: www.prideandglorymovie.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

David Byrne, Live at Radio City Music Hall, February 28, 2009

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David Byrne On Tour Poster

 

David Byrne and Brian Eno, both Dork Report favorites, col­lab­o­rated exten­sively between 1978–1980. Many of these clas­sic albums have passed into the musi­cal canon, most espe­cially Talk­ing Heads’ Remain in Light (1980) and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981). I believe there are some lin­ger­ing rumors of inter­per­sonal fric­tion, cer­tainly within the four Talk­ing Heads, but Byrne and Eno appear to have remained in light, as it were. As Byrne relates the story in the liner notes to their new album Every­thing That Hap­pens Will Hap­pen Today, the pos­si­bil­ity of his com­plet­ing sev­eral of Eno’s stock­piled instru­men­tal demos arose over din­ner. The even­tual result is a bril­liant new album that is unmis­tak­ably the prod­uct of these two unique musi­cians, but is cer­tainly no sequel or retread of past glories.

David Byrne Live at Radio City Music HallSquint and you might see more than some blotches of color

Tour­ing to sup­port the new mate­r­ial, Byrne chal­lenged him­self with the self-imposed restric­tion to draw from only the five albums on which he worked with Eno: More Songs about Build­ings and Food, Fear of Music, Remain in Light, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, and Every­thing That Hap­pens Will Hap­pen Today. Even with this self-imposed lim­i­ta­tion of albums that are all, frankly, kind of weird, it’s amaz­ing how many toe-tapping pop songs they contain.

The excel­lently sequenced set list, mostly alter­nat­ing between the weird and (rel­a­tively) nor­mal, kept the mas­sive Radio City Music Hall audi­ence singing along. Strange Over­tones, my favorite song from the new album, came first. Talk­ing Heads’ Crosseyed and Pain­less proved an early cli­max, bring­ing the entire audi­ence to their feet for most of the rest of the show. The only dis­ap­point­ment was that Byrne selected only one sin­gle track from the leg­endary My Life in the Bush of Ghosts: Help Me Some­body. It was imag­i­na­tively rearranged with live voices replac­ing the original’s found vocals (or as Byrne noted that we would call them today, sam­ples). Why not try the same with some of the other great tracks on that album?

David Byrne Live at Radio City Music HallThe long white splotch in the mid­dle is David Byrne and the Rockettes!

The stage design was per­fectly aus­tere, and decep­tively sim­ple. I espe­cially liked the stark, mono­chro­matic light­ing design. The entire band was clad in white, and three mod­ern dancers accom­pa­nied sev­eral songs with wit­tily chore­o­graphed rou­tines. The show cli­maxed with a truly barn­storm­ing ver­sion of Burn­ing Down the House, with the entire band dressed in frilly tutus. It could only be com­pleted by the star­tling appear­ance by… wait for it… the bloody Rock­ettes! OMGWTF!? Need­less to say, the crowd went bananas.

In short, I had a grand time. Here at The Dork Report, I have fewer qualms about rat­ing movies on a five-star scale than I do con­certs. Movies are cheap enough to rent in con­sume in large gulps. I end up see­ing many bad or mediocre movies, but few con­cerst that sucks. The likely expla­na­tion is the expense involved, which often lim­its the con­certs I go to to artists that I already very much like. The only rea­son I didn’t rate this par­tic­u­lar show higher is that I could imag­ine that if I could time-travel back to the 1980s and see the orig­i­nal Talk­ing Heads (prefer­ably dur­ing the period Adrian Belew was in their live band), that would eas­ily by five stars.

Offi­cial album site: EverythingThatHappens.com

Buy David Byrne and Brian Eno’s album Every­thing That Hap­pens Will Hap­pen Today from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Ridley Scott’s Black Rain

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Ridley Scott

Black Rain movie poster

 

Rid­ley Scott’s police thriller Black Rain (1989) opens in New York City at a time when The Meat­pack­ing Dis­trict actu­ally was a meat­pack­ing dis­trict. Tough cop Nick (Michael Dou­glas) is a ridicu­lously aggres­sive, foul-mouthed tough guy who tools around the city astride his crotch rocket. The despised Inter­nal Affairs depart­ment sus­pects him of being a bent cop­per (spoiler alert: rightly, it turns out!), and pres­sures him to name names. By sheer acci­dent, he and rookie part­ner Char­lie (Andy Gar­cia) wit­ness a Yakuza assas­si­na­tion in a Meat­pack­ing Dis­trict bar. After a thrilling chase through some vin­tage Man­hat­tan loca­tions since replaced by night­clubs, lux­ury con­dos, and The Apple Store, they man­age to appre­hend the per­pe­tra­tor. The Yakuza assas­sin Sato (Yasaku Mat­suda), being Asian in a Hol­ly­wood movie, is of course a mar­tial arts expert. Con­trived plot machi­na­tions result in Nick and Char­lie escort­ing Sato back to Japan, where­upon they imme­di­ately and embar­rass­ingly lose him. By this point, the plot has been con­structed in such a way as to raise Nick’s stakes to the high­est level pos­si­ble: the only two things that mat­ter to him, his honor and job secu­rity, depend on one task: catch­ing or killing the bad guy. If he returns to the States empty-handed, he’s almost cer­tainly to be disgraced.

Andy Garcia and Michael Douglas in Black RainAndy Gar­cia refuses to pass the edamame

In his Tokyo down­time, Nick enter­tains an uncon­sum­mated romance with gai­jin Joyce (Kate Cap­shaw). The sub­plot is a bor­ing dis­trac­tion. Joyce is a mere love inter­est in the worst sto­ry­telling sense: her char­ac­ter is not inte­grated into the main thriller plot as is the female lead in Scott’s Some­one to Watch Over Me. It strikes this Dork Reporter as some­thing of a copout on the part of Scott and screen­writ­ers Craig Bolotin and War­ren Lewis that their pro­tag­o­nist Nick goes all the way to Japan but doesn’t do as the Japan­ese men do (which is to say, Japan­ese women).

Nick and Char­lie part­ner with upright Japan­ese cop Masahiro (Ken Takakura). Cul­tures clash, and the suave Char­lie teaches the uptight Masahiro to party hearty, beat­ing the Japan­ese at their own game (that being karaōke). When Nick’s moral ambi­gu­ity becomes known, the right­eous Masahiro seems to con­vince Nick that theft of any sort is shame­ful. But in the end, it is Nick that teaches Masahiro that it’s OK to steal from crim­i­nals (in the moral uni­verse of this film, at least). I’d never say that any work of fic­tion has an oblig­a­tion to present morally-correct behav­ior (the kind of cen­sor­ship that Hol­ly­wood the­o­ret­i­cally left behind with the demise of the Pro­duc­tion Code). But Black Rain seems to present Nick’s amoral behav­ior as The Right Thing, instead of the com­pli­cated actions of an inter­est­ing com­plex character.

Michael Douglas in Black RainA back­lit Michael Dou­glas con­tem­plates a new hairdo

Scott stages a huge shootout sequence at a refin­ery, seem­ingly cho­sen for max­i­mum visual appeal (pic­ture the clouds of steam, show­ers of sparks, bursts of flame, etc.). In a kind of self-referencial closed cir­cuit, Scott’s aer­ial shots of Japan look just like Blade Runner’s futur­is­tic dystopian Los Ange­les, which was itself inspired by Tokyo. Another direct lift from Blade Run­ner: Nick dis­cov­ers sequins from Joyce’s dress at a crime scene, recall­ing the sequence in Blade Run­ner in which Deckard tracks down the ori­gin of syn­thetic snake scales — belong­ing, of course, to one of cinema’s most famous femmes fatale.

The open­ing cred­its state “In asso­ci­a­tion with Michael Dou­glas.” Dou­glas is of course a suc­cess­ful pro­ducer (for instance, One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest), but Black Rain has the feel of an ego trip. More trivia: the direc­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy Jan de Bont was later to direct Speed.

One final cheap shot before I go. I don’t know what has dated more: the cheesy music or Michael Dou­glas’ big hair.

Buy any of these fine prod­ucts from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report:

 

Ridley Scott’s Someone to Watch Over Me

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Ridley Scott

Someone to Watch Over Me movie poster

 

Rid­ley Scott’s Some­one to Watch Over Me (1987) is more of a drama than a police thriller, refresh­ingly focussed on its char­ac­ters over sus­pense and action alone. Mike Kee­gan (Tom Berenger) is a salt-of-the-earth Queens detec­tive assigned to pro­tect mate­r­ial wit­ness Claire (Mimi Rogers) from assas­si­na­tion. Kee­gan is a mod­est fam­ily man, recently pro­moted to the sec­ond rung of the police hier­ar­chy. It’s no glam­orous job; he spends most of his work­ing hours just sit­ting around not fin­ish­ing cross­words. He’s utterly unlike the over-the-top testosterone-laden cop char­ac­ter played by Michael Dou­glas in Scott’s other police thriller, Black Rain.

Tom Berenger in Someone to Watch Over MeAny dame what lives in a spread like this is outta yer league, pal.

Kee­gan is more-or-less hap­pily mar­ried (to Lor­raine Bracco as Ellie), but a man like him would never oth­er­wise come into con­tact with a beau­ti­ful uptown girl like Claire. Cooped up in close prox­im­ity to each other every night, they inevitably lapse into an affair. Her effem­i­nate but wealthy and pow­er­ful hus­band senses that Kee­gan is a roman­tic rival, but he is an effec­tively impo­tent char­ac­ter and fre­quently dis­ap­pears from the film alto­gether. Also notable is song-and-dance man Jerry Orbach already type­cast as a detec­tive in a small role as Keegan’s tough Lieutenant.

Mimi Rogers in Someone to Watch Over MeWhen Mimi Rogers heard Direc­tor Rid­ley Scott was big on visual spec­ta­cles, this isn’t what she had in mind

One of the guar­an­teed plea­sures of any Rid­ley Scott film is the visu­als. Some­one to Watch Over Me’s open­ing cred­its fea­ture the name­sake song by George Gersh­win sung by Sting over beau­ti­fully sleek aer­ial shots of New York City at night. The final shootout is per­fectly staged in a claus­tro­pho­bi­cally enclosed space, with huge mir­rors placed for max­i­mum dra­matic impact. The prin­ci­pals stalk each other in near silence, punc­tu­ated by the wide dynam­ics of sound design. Per­haps Scott was com­pet­ing with that other upstart mas­ter of cin­e­matic shootouts, Michael Mann (in par­tic­u­lar, the sim­i­larly explo­sive con­clu­sion to the con­tem­po­rary thriller Manhunter).

Buy any of these fine prod­ucts from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report:

 

Synecdoche, New York

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Synecdoche, New York movie poster

 

Whether it actu­ally is or not, Synec­doche, New York has the feel of a very, very per­sonal work of art. I know next to noth­ing about writer/director Char­lie Kauf­man, and don’t even nec­es­sar­ily feel like I do now. Then again, few peo­ple do know Kauf­man, as he has famously man­aged to side­step much pub­lic­ity despite per­pe­trat­ing a suc­cess­ful screen­writ­ing career in an indus­try in which the cult of per­son­al­ity applies to everyone.

Synec­doche, New York is Kaufman’s first film as direc­tor, after a string of play­ful yet brainy screen­plays. The best antecedents I can name would be the sur­real satires of Lind­say Ander­son (like O Lucky Man! — read The Dork Report Review) and the Post­mod­ern decon­struc­tion of Tom Stop­pard (espe­cially Rosen­crantz and Guilden­stern are Dead, which wreaks hilar­i­ous havok with no less a holy relic than Ham­let). Kaufman’s hit parade so far includes Being John Malkovich, Human Nature (under­rated! see it!), Con­fes­sions of a Dan­ger­ous Mind, Adap­ta­tion, and Dork Report favorite The Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind. Being John Malkovich and Eter­nal Sun­shine are both pure plea­sures to watch, but Adap­ta­tion showed the darker side of Kaufman’s bril­liance. As I under­stood the film, the very life itself of screen­writer “Char­lie Kauf­man” (Nico­las Cage) slowly becomes the vio­lent, sexed-up Hol­ly­wood melo­drama he loathes to write. To describe Synec­doche, New York in short­hand, it’s as if the cyn­i­cal, chal­leng­ing nar­ra­tive nature of Adap­ta­tion were crossed with the deep emo­tional impact of Eter­nal Sunshine.

Samantha Morton and Philip Seymour Hoffman in Synecdoche, New YorkHere’s The Dork Report’s the­ory to explain Hazel’s enig­matic burn­ing house: could it be an allu­sion to the Talk­ing Heads song “Love -> Build­ing on Fire”? I’m being seri­ous here…

But what it’s actu­ally “about” would take a lot of analy­sis to fig­ure out, and my sin­gle view­ing is not enough to unpack it (assum­ing my IQ would be up to the task any­way). Like Adap­ta­tion, it’s actu­ally a lit­tle frus­trat­ing to watch, but in a good sense, in that the audi­ence is con­stantly being chal­lenged. I have to admit that I don’t fully “get” it, but I also think it’s clear there’s no sin­gle key to unlock­ing any one mean­ing of the film. I’m giv­ing it the full five-star Dork Report rat­ing because I have enor­mous respect for any such uncom­pro­mis­ing, chal­leng­ing, affect­ing, and frus­trat­ing work of art in cin­ema. That it was pro­duced as a major motion pic­ture star­ring numer­ous famous faces and released in mul­ti­plexes nation­ally along­side the more typ­i­cal fare Saw V and High School Musi­cal 3 is noth­ing less than a mir­a­cle, and gives one hope for the future of the film indus­try. At least four peo­ple walked out of the screen­ing I attended, some dur­ing an uncom­fort­able nude scene fea­tur­ing Emily Wat­son (not uncom­fort­able in that she isn’t beau­ti­ful, because she is, but because the sex scene is so utterly frank). It’s a pity they did, for they missed one of the most weirdly mov­ing last moments of a film I’ve ever seen (although it did have prece­dent in Peter Weir’s The Tru­man Show, which also sug­gested the voice of God towards his sup­pli­cant is akin to that of a film/theater/television director’s towards his actor).

The clos­est thing I’ve seen to Synec­doche, New York is Spike Jonze’s Michel Gondry’s bril­liant music video for Björk’s Bach­e­lorette (Jonze Gondry is a long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor of Kaufman’s, and co-produced Synec­doche, New York). (UPDATE: cor­rec­tions thanks to com­menter Greg. I can’t believe I mixed up two of my favorite direc­tors!) Less a pop music promo than a short film that stands on its own mer­its, Bach­e­lorette recounts the tale of a young coun­try girl who writes her auto­bi­og­ra­phy and moves to the big city, where she falls in love with her pub­lisher. A hit, her book spawns a the­atri­cal adap­ta­tion, in which a young coun­try girl writes her auto­bi­og­ra­phy, moves to the big city, and falls in love with her pub­lisher. A hit, it too spawns a the­atri­cal play. You get the idea: the tale is infi­nitely recur­sive. But each copy is a copy within a copy, each more dis­torted, flimsy, and sad than its source mate­r­ial. Entropy and decay set in, and the world(s) col­lapse in upon them­selves. Her life basi­cally ends at the point she fin­ishes her auto­bi­og­ra­phy and looks only back­wards instead of liv­ing for the future. Watch the video here:

Synec­doche, New York is a pun on the New York city Sch­enec­tady (the loca­tion of Caden’s orig­i­nal the­ater com­pany) and the lit­er­ary term for a fig­ure of speech in which a part stands in for the whole (for exam­ple, “The White House said today…” as used by news­cast­ers rather than spec­i­fy­ing the admin­is­tra­tion, or even more specif­i­cally, the Press Sec­re­tary). The­ater direc­tor Caden Cotard’s (Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man) artist wife Adele (Cather­ine Keener) divorces him and moves to Ger­many with their daugh­ter and Maria (Jen­nifer Jason Leigh), who may be her lover (guest Dork Reporter Snark­bait points out that this is Keener’s sec­ond sex­u­ally ambigu­ous role in a Kauf­man film, here and in Being John Malkovich). Caden wor­ries for the rest of his life that Maria is a bet­ter replace­ment for him­self as hus­band and father.

Caden wins a MacArthur Foun­da­tion Genius Grant, and uses the funds to move to Man­hat­tan and craft an epic play housed in a dis­used the­ater illog­i­cally large enough to hold a scale model of New York City as his set. Out­side, the real Man­hat­tan descends into chaos and war­fare. At one point, the char­ac­ters leave the the­ater and walk past mys­te­ri­ous civil rights atroc­i­ties such as clown-costume-clad sol­diers herd­ing cit­i­zens onto armored busses at gunpoint.

Philip Seymour Hoffman and Hope Davis in Synecdoche, New YorkHope Davis, as the shrink­est with the mostest, offers to shrink Philip Sey­mour Hoffman’s head

Caden’s can­vas is infi­nite, there is no script, and he hopes to find his story as he goes along. The play is in per­pet­ual rehearsal for decades, and remains for­ever unti­tled. I hate to use this kind of cop-out phrase pop­u­lar in col­lege lit­er­a­ture classes, but it truly is “a metaphor for life.” As Caden tries to find mean­ing for the trau­matic events in his life, and to ratio­nal­ize his deci­sions, he casts actors to play him­self and the sig­nif­i­cant peo­ple in his life. Like mem­o­ries being processed by the human brain, he is now able to replay recent painful events in his life over and over, giv­ing direc­tion to his actors on how to express their (his) pain, all with the emo­tional safety of know­ing that it’s all just playacting.

Soon, he takes even another step back, and casts another set of actors to play the first. Real­ity itself begins to break down as in Björk’s Bach­e­lorette, also fea­tur­ing a play within a play within a play, cast with sev­eral pairs of other actors play­ing her­self and her lover as their affair, and entire world, dis­in­te­grates. A sim­i­lar theme of copies and dou­bles also fig­ures into Adap­ta­tion: writer “Char­lie” may or may not have an iden­ti­cal twin brother, shame­lessly able to make the kinds of com­pro­mises nec­es­sary for suc­cess in the movie biz and life itself that he is too weak or too ashamed to do him­self. Is it sig­nif­i­cant, as Kauf­man moves from writer to writer/director, that the cen­tral char­ac­ter of Adap­ta­tion is a writer, and that of Synec­doche, New York is a director?

Samantha Morton, Emily Watson, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Tom Noonan in Synecdoche, New YorkA scene from Synec­doche, New York, star­ring Saman­tha Mor­ton as Hazel, Emily Wat­son as Tammy as Hazel, Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man as Caden, and Tom Noo­nan as Sammy as Caden. Got that?

Caden is beset through­out with a host of mys­tery ill­nesses that for­ever threaten to kill him but never carry through their promise. I caught at least two hints that he may in fact already be dead: his shrink Madeleine Gravis (Hope Davis) makes a seem­ing slip of the tongue and asks why he killed him­self, and later, one of his dop­pel­gängers (Tom Noo­nan) com­mits suicide.

The walls between Caden’s life and his play blur; which is real and which is the play? The dis­pas­sion­ate direc­tor watches from a dis­tance as oth­ers do the dirty work of liv­ing his life for him, such as con­duct his love affairs and breakups with Claire (Michele Williams), Hazel (Saman­tha Mor­ton), and Tammy (Emily Wat­son), that he may not have the emo­tional strength or sex­ual potency to do him­self. Caden even­tu­ally replaces him­self and takes the sim­pler, less demand­ing role of one of the most fleet­ingly minor back­ground fig­ures in his life. Is he an actor in his own play, fol­low­ing the script and direc­tion from some­one else, an invis­i­ble exter­nal force… God? He essen­tially abdi­cates respon­si­bil­ity for his own life, and dies on cue.

Must read: exhaus­tive fan site BeingCharlieKaufman.com

Offi­cial movie site: www.sonyclassics.com/synecdocheny

Buy the DVD and Schoot­ing Script from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Sex and the City

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Sex and the City

 

Yep, I saw it. I work for the movie com­pany that pro­duced it, so I got to go for free. The stan­dard line with Michael Patrick King’s now decade-old Sex and the City fran­chise is that it has always appealed mostly to gay men and the women that love them. Even though this Dork Reporter is more or less a white­bread straight dude (while I like naked lady bot­toms and affirm Sean Con­nery is the best James Bond, auto­mo­biles and pro­fes­sional sports don’t move me), I don’t mean that as a dis­claimer. While I’d never seen more than por­tions of the orig­i­nal tele­vi­sion show, and I’d not vol­un­tar­ily pay see the movie in the the­ater or rent the DVD, I’m not ashamed to say I’ve seen it.

Sex and the CityAfter shop­ping, let’s go shopping

I had recently seen an advance screen­ing of a yet-to-be released film (that will have to remain name­less here) that had more than a lit­tle in com­mon with the plot and char­ac­ters of Sex and the City. Let me just say that in com­par­i­son, Sex and the City is a mas­ter­piece, and at least, watch­able by straight men. The male char­ac­ters in the film are endowed with more char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and com­plex­ity than I would have expected. When Mr. Big (Chris Noth) does some­thing “bad,” it’s because he’s con­fused and con­flicted, not because he’s a douchebag (which is the expla­na­tion of any and all bad behav­ior by male char­ac­ters in the afore­men­tioned movie-that-cannot-be-named-for-professional-reasons).

Sex and the CityHey there, Mr. Big Stuff

To get into the nitty gritty of the plot, there was one aspect that I just couldn’t wrap my head around: Miranda (Cyn­thia Nixon) makes an under­stand­ably bit­ter com­ment about mar­riage in gen­eral to Mr. Big that becomes one of many influ­ences upon his spon­ta­neous deci­sion to leave Car­rie (Sarah Jes­sica Parker) at the altar. Miranda neglects to tell Car­rie about her com­ment, and the event and its cover-up is weighted by the film as A) the worst thing one friend can do to another and B) the sin­gle rea­son why Mr. Big stood Car­rie up. When Miranda even­tu­ally comes clean, Car­rie reacts as if she sees Mr. Big and his actions in a wholly new light, and the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion begins. I just don’t get it; it seems to me, based on the fic­tional char­ac­ters’ actions and moti­va­tions in the world of the film, that Miranda’s minor indis­cre­tion is exactly that, and the true prob­lem is in fact Mr. Big’s ambiva­lence about Carrie’s desire for a dis­gust­ingly overblown princess wed­ding. But I sup­pose the answer to my con­fu­sion may sim­ply be that I don’t get it because I’m a dude.

And finally, a Dork Report Pub­lic Ser­vice Announce­ment for any other blog­gers search­ing the inter­webs for movie stills with which to illus­trate their reviews of Sex and the City: depend­ing on your incli­na­tions, exer­cise cau­tion when Googling “Mr. Big.”

Offi­cial movie site: www.sexandthecitymovie.com

Cloverfield

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Cloverfield movie poster

 

First of all, let me just say I get it.

I get that Clover­field is meant to be a mod­ern day ana­logue of Godzilla. I get that post­war Japan­ese movie­go­ers wit­nessed an enraged giant lizard borne of nuclear tech­nol­ogy stomp Tokyo flat in an unstop­pable piqué, and I get that the (actu­ally pretty crappy) Godzilla became a clas­sic for that rea­son. I get that we West­ern­ers were long due to be attacked on film by own very own alle­gor­i­cal crea­ture as pop ther­apy for our ter­ror­ism anxieties.

Per­haps we need that movie some time. But while less crappy than Godzilla in terms of visual style and spe­cial effects, I don’t think Clover­field is that movie.

As a long­time fan of J.J. Abrams from Alias and Lost, and made a help­less sucker by the film’s clever mar­ket­ing, I very much wanted to love Clover­field. How­ever, I found it extremely dif­fi­cult to watch and to like, for two basic rea­sons both related to my being a New Yorker for a decade & change: I. unlike­able and unre­al­is­tic char­ac­ters, and II. what can only be described as 9/11-ploitation.

I. THE CHARACTERS

We know the back­grounds of only two char­ac­ters, Rob and Beth. Rob has recently been pro­moted to Vice Pres­i­dent of an unspec­i­fied type of com­pany at an improb­a­bly young age, and is about to leave for a long busi­ness trip to Japan. In my under­stand­ing of lifestyles of the rich & beau­ti­ful in New York City, such young execs were more com­monly found in the dot-com 90s econ­omy, but even now still do exist in scrappy new media com­pa­nies like CollegeHumor.com. But let’s assume Rob helped invent the next Face­book and move on.

random hot girl in CloverfieldYowza howza! I go to par­ties like this all the time.

We don’t know what Beth, his one true love, does for a liv­ing, if any­thing. She lives with her fam­ily high up the north­ern tower of the Time Warner Cen­ter (more on that later). Her stun­ning looks and wardrobe might peg her as model, but she appears to be a socialite born of priv­i­lege. But far from the slow train­wrecks that are Paris and Nicky, Beth appears to be a sweet, sober girl. In fact, she leaves a party not uncon­scious in the back of a limo, but out of pro­pri­ety, to go home to bed, alone.

Us reg­u­lar joes are sup­posed to iden­tify with and care about these peo­ple? For all its faults, Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (another monster-attack film touch­ing uncom­fort­ably upon dis­as­ter in a post 9/11 world) fea­tured a “reg­u­lar joe” type char­ac­ter in auto repair­man Tom Cruise. To be fair, Godzilla was full of white-coated sci­en­tists and teeth-gritted soldier-types, so the genre doesn’t exactly call for com­par­a­tively bor­ing lower wage-earners that don’t live in lux­ury con­dos and party in down­town lofts.

II. 9/11-SPLOITATION

Godzilla is utterly frank in link­ing the mon­ster with the hor­rors of the nuclear age. So if Clover­field’s beast is a per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of ter­ror­ism, how does the metaphor fit? Did US mil­i­tary adven­tur­ism in Afghanistan and Iraq unearth the mon­ster? Is the beast a hereto­fore undis­cov­ered sub­ter­ranean oil-feeder, angered by our drain­ing the earth’s sup­ply of fos­sil fuel? With­out a clear metaphor, Clover­field just seems to enjoy allud­ing to the super­fi­cial events and imagery of 9/11 with­out any depth: sky­scrap­ers “pan­cak­ing” them­selves flat, streets fill­ing with clouds of debris, ash-coated sur­vivors struck numb. I’m not against pop­u­lar fic­tion using metaphor to touch upon raw nerves that maybe need to be tweaked now and then… but is Clover­field it?

New York City burns in CloverfieldIt’s only a movie.

One of the film’s key set pieces is set atop the twin tow­ers of the Time Warner Cen­ter. The allu­sion is clear, but it’s a stretch fac­tu­ally. Are there res­i­den­tial apart­ments in the TW Cen­ter? As both a New Yorker and Time Warner employee, this is news to me. I should also add that the geog­ra­phy of Man­hat­tan as seen in the film is just this side of real­is­tic. In a space of about 6 hours, it’s plau­si­ble the char­ac­ters could make it from lower Man­hat­tan to the roof of the Time Warner Cen­ter at the south­ern foot of Cen­tral Park (assum­ing, that is, that their young thighs are capa­ble of the trek).

Inva­sion of the Bodys­natch­ers is one exam­ple of a sci-fi thriller that has worked well enough to illu­mi­nate con­cerns of the times to war­rant mul­ti­ple remakes. Just to name three: the orig­i­nal took on McCarthy­ism, the Abel Fer­rara 90’s ver­sion looked at obe­di­ence and con­for­mity in the mil­i­tary, and Robert Rodriguez’s The Fac­ulty found the story use­ful as a satir­i­cal cri­tique of high school peer pres­sure. But Bodys­natch­ers didn’t present us with recre­ations of cities pressed flat; were con­tem­po­rary Japan­ese made sick by the sight of their hor­rors anthro­po­mor­phized in a giant lizard? See­ing my home city’s sky­line smok­ing and col­laps­ing was not some­thing I would call cathartic.

I saw the film early evening on open­ing day, with an audi­ence full of kids just out of school. The movie went over like a lead bal­loon; the con­clu­sion was loudly heck­led and booed. I sus­pect the kids mostly objected to the uncon­ven­tional struc­ture and end­ing. Which is, for what it’s worth, what I found best about the film: it pro­vides a very mov­ingly unex­pected happy ending.

Offi­cial movie site: www.cloverfieldmovie.com