Gateway Cinephiles

3-Minute Intro: The Cannonball Run

September 2, 2008 Andrew 3-Minute Intros, Comedies, Action No Comments

Screened: September 1, 2008
Format: DVD - HBO (2001)
Selected By: Grant

When Korean War veteran Hal Needham came to Hollywood in the 1950s to work as a stuntman, he had no intention of transforming action filmmaking. Needham quickly developed a strong reputation for his stunt work in television Westerns, parlaying his success into film. Eventually progressing to stunt coordination and second unit direction, Needham was regarded as one of the industry’s chief innovators by 1976, when he approached friend Burt Reynolds with a script called Smokey and the Bandit. The film was an enormous hit for both the director and star, a feat they replicated in 1981 with The Cannonball Run, a camp ensemble comedy celebration of auto racing and Hollywood excess.

Back in 1976, there had been two films—the action feature Cannonball! and the comedy The Gumball Rally—based on a real-life outlaw cross-country auto race, the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash. Run five times between 1971 and 1979, the Dash was legendary in Needham’s racing and stunt circles for having no rules save the specified starting and end point. With The Cannonball Run, the director undeniably created the race’s most widespread cultural legacy, going so far as to integrate notorious events from past Dashes into the film’s plot.

Cannonball was a part of Reynolds’ unparalleled 1978-1982 domination of the American box office, although his collaborations with Needham and other B-movie fare had by 1981 somewhat diminished his reputation in the eyes of audiences and directors. However, dismissing Cannonball, or any Needham film, as shallow misses the point. The director always intended his films to be joyful tributes to his heroes and the things he loved, particularly fast cars. Despite its broad, engaging cast of comedy fixtures, rising stars, and Hollywood has-beens—including Roger Moore parodying his contemporary James Bond role—Needham’s focus is on the vehicles, which he films with the devoted attention that only an enthusiast can bring. Ultimately, the film’s frisky character ensures The Cannonball Run’s status, not merely as a 1981 cultural artifact, but also one of the great Hollywood chase films. It’s a character embodied in its roguish disdain for law enforcement and its enthusiasm for a competition where nothing is at stake but bragging rights.

3-Minute Intro: Deliverance

September 2, 2008 Andrew 3-Minute Intros, Dramas No Comments

Screened: September 1, 2008
Format: DVD - Warner Brothers (2004)
Selected By: Grant

Burt Reynolds began his acting career on the stage and in television, but in the 1960s he transitioned to film, where he would eventually establish his role as a leading man sex symbol and Hollywood institution. Reynolds’ early renown as a reliable and popular performer, often in Spaghetti Westerns, gradually grew until he was offered his breakout starring role in John Boorman’s landmark 1972 drama, Deliverance. The film was also a pivotal success for its three other principals: John Voight, following his acclaimed debut in 1969’s Midnight Cowboy; relatively unknown actor and guitarist Ronny Cox; and newcomer Ned Beatty in his own acting debut.

Based on the lauded 1970 work by American poet and novelist James Dickey, whose popularity exploded following the film, Deliverance is arguably the most revered work from Boorman. The English director began his career as a documentary filmmaker for the BBC, before breaking out in 1967 with the brutal Lee Marvin crime drama Point Blank, now regarded as a neo-noir classic. Boorman’s modest success with feature films eventually paved the way for Deliverance, his first box-office triumph and most enduring feature, alongside his 1981 fantasy epic, Excalibur. Despite his British background, the director brought an unexpected sensitivity to the film’s disturbing, notorious depiction of American folly and endurance.

Dickey’s novel and the film address these themes with a relatively simple story: four Atlanta businessmen set off into the Georgian wilderness for a weekend canoe adventure that becomes a terrifying nightmare. The film’s renowned, eerie banjo sequence and the actors’ grueling stunt work provide a visceral edge to its commentary. Unremittingly dark in tone, the film features a now archetypal depiction of Appalachian hillbillies as monstrous, violent deviants. The protagonists, however, are also shown to be ultimately foolish, arrogant, and morally bankrupt. The film is ambiguous as to whether the brutality of the wilderness and their ordeal bestows the four suburbanites with these qualities, or merely brings them to the surface. In crafting this harrowing depiction of middle class hubris and the fragility of decency, Boorman and the performers created what might be regarded as one of the great American horror films of the late twentieth century.

3-Minute Intro: It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

August 25, 2008 Andrew 3-Minute Intros, Comedies No Comments

Screened: August 22, 2008
Format: Laserdisc (Special Edition)
Selected By: Stephanie

It would be difficult to imagine a more unlikely director of the archetype madcap ensemble comedy than Stanley Kramer. Coming out of Hell’s Kitchen with family roots deep in the film industry trenches, Kramer became a respected and award-showered producer capable of working within the studio system and on his own. Beginning in 1955, he moved on to directing his own features. He made a spate of acclaimed social issue dramas that reflected his own political sensibilities, including The Defiant Ones, Inherit the Wind, and Judgment at Nuremberg. Then, in 1963 Kramer set out to create a sprawling, zany comedy epic, the 70 mm, three-hour behemoth It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Fulfilling Hollywood’s contemporary taste for spectacle (the better to lure away television viewers), Mad World was assembled with a More Is More philosophy. This is evident in its enormous cast, its stunts, its plot, and its wild comedy blend of slapstick, puns, gentle satire, and outrageous sight gags. The film’s story is relatively simple—a dying confession leads to a greed-fueled race for buried treasure—but Mad World is really about grandiose wackiness, a vehicle to cram every recognizable 1960s comedic celebrity into the frame. Who cares that some of the cameos amount to Where’s Waldo reaction shots? The fact that the whole ridiculous enterprise still manages to be infectiously funny testifies to Kramer’s previously concealed talent for the genre.

Mad World’s marathon running time is a tale unto itself. The fabled 210-minute Cinerama premiere, complete with overture, intermission, and exit music and fictional police radio chatter to be piped into the theater restrooms, has unfortunately been lost. The film was such a hit that United Artists sliced it for the roadshow release to increase the number of times it could be screened in a day, then sliced it again for the general release, all without Kramer’s involvement. Decades later, the director was able to assist with the reconstruction of a 182-minute version for the Special Edition Laserdisc. Although some of the restored scenes are of poor quality, this remains the most complete version of the film ever produced, and is regarded as a cinematic treasure among film fans.

3-Minute Intro: Ocean’s Eleven

August 12, 2008 Andrew 3-Minute Intros, Comedies No Comments

Screened: August 10, 2008
Format: DVD - Warner Brothers (2008)
Selected By: Curt

While there are caper films that surpass Ocean’s Eleven, few films so perfectly embody the all-or-nothing spirit of Las Vegas, that oasis of wild-eyed opportunism and frank fatalism. Moreover, few films can claim with both justification and pride—and a bit of hindsight—to sit at the center of an American pop culture phenomenon. So it is with Lewis Milestone’s 1960 Eleven, which brought together for their first feature the most renowned version of the Rat Pack, a loose affiliation of entertainers who took Sin City by storm. And while Eleven featured a swath of famous faces from the era—Angie Dickinson, Cesar Romero, Henry Silva, even a cameo from Shirley MacLaine—the Rat Pack is at the glittering center of the film.

The 1960s Pack that inhabits Ocean’s Eleven—Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Joey Bishop, and Peter Lawford—was but the most recent iteration of a social gathering that once orbited around Humphrey Bogart and a younger Sinatra. There were other luminaries in this earlier version, and more women as well: Judy Garland, Lauren Bacall, David Niven, and other Classical Hollywood veterans. The later 1960’s incarnation of the Pack might have been a Hollywood institution, but members played Las Vegas frequently, and their appearances there became so legendary and popular that the gathering became a part of the city’s entertainment identity. The group was also a force in first Democratic and then Republican politics, owing to Sinatra’s mafia allies and Lawford’s ties as John F. Kennedy’s brother-in-law.

Russian by birth, Ocean’s Eleven director Lewis Milestone served in the U.S. Army’s Signal Corps before heading out to Hollywood. A Howard Hughes protégé, Milestone eventually became known as a studio workhorse with a flair for war features. He would arguably attain his career triumph in 1930 with All Quiet of the Western Front, but Milestone continued to direct for another three decades. Ocean’s Eleven allegedly had its origin when writer Jack Golden Russell, then a gas station attendant, handed the script to Sinatra. Script aside, however, the pleasure of Eleven rests on the Rat Pack ad-libbing their way through a two hour on-location romp in the Sin City they worked and loved tirelessly.

3-Minute Intro: The Wizard of Oz

July 21, 2008 Andrew 3-Minute Intros, Kid Stuff, Fantasy, Musicals No Comments

Screened: July 18, 2008
Format: DVD - Warner Broethers (2005)
Selected By: Beth

What more can be said of Victor Fleming’s 1939 musical fantasy triumph, The Wizard of Oz, that hasn’t already been said before? It is the kind of film that proudly embodies the best features of cinema. It plucks out the affirming fable in L. Frank Baum’s original turn-of-the-century fantasy, wraps it in Broadway melody, and then adds movie-making opulence at its most wondrous. It is a glorious, shameless kind of film, one that succeeds and endures because of its fierce ambition to be a unprecedented work of imagination. What film before Oz contained such human warmth, such otherworldly delight, such grotesque terror, all in one package, and then had the audacity to add catchy show tunes?

At this point, perhaps we should just journey down the list of rumors and legends that swirl around the film. Most notoriously, no, the film does not capture an on-set Munchkin or stagehand suicide. Yes, actor Buddy Epson was slated to play the Tin Man, but was replaced by Jack Haley after the aluminum dust in his role’s makeup severely poisoned him. Yes, a second-hand coat purchased for Professor Marvel’s costume turned out to have been owned by Oz author L. Frank Baum. Yes, MGM originally wanted W.C. Fields to play the Wizard, and yes, the studio originally intended for the Cowardly Lion to be a live lion with a dubbed voice. Yes, many of Margaret Hamilton’s scenes as the Wicked Witch of the West were cut from the final film because they were deemed to frightening.

Yes, Terry the Dog, who plays Toto, was paid more than twice the rate received by the actors who portrayed the Munchkins. Yes, the original silver slippers of Baum’s novel were changed to ruby slippers to better show off the Technicolor film process. And, of course, yes, there are eerie synchronicities between this 1939 film and Pink Floyd’s 1973 concept album, Dark Side of the Moon. Since awareness of the phenomenon first surfaced on Usenet in the 1990s, it has been dismissed by the band and album engineer Alan Parsons, but this has not dissuaded film and Floyd devotees from exploring this odd coincidence.

3-Minute Intro: Bound

July 12, 2008 Andrew 3-Minute Intros, Dramas No Comments

Screened: July 11, 2008
Format: DVD - Republic Pictures (2001)
Selected By: Erin G.

After Andy and Larry Wachowski had parlayed work in comics into a screenwriting gig with 1995’s Assassins, the brothers wrote Bound, a controversial noir feature that would ultimately springboard them to bigger things. However, at the time the brothers couldn’t convince a Hollywood studio to finance their film as they had conceived it: a violent, subversive thriller about a pair of female lovers. They turned to legendary Italian producer Dino DeLaurentis, who offered them $6 million and free reign to make the film they wanted. Never mind that Bound floundered at the box office in 1996. The film ignited film festival audiences, divided critics, and established a lasting cult reputation.

Partly due to the film’s lesbian content, the Wachowskis had some difficulty with casting. For the film’s leading roles of Violet and Corky, they eventually settled on Jennifer Tilly, then primarily known for an appearance in The Fabulous Baker Boys, and Gina Gershon, fresh from the success-cum-shame of a schlockfest called Showgirls. They also tapped Joe Pantoliano for what would become his first starring role. Bound’s crew worked within a tight budget, but demonstrated creative flexibility in delivering a distinctive neo-noir styling to the film’s look and sound. For assistance in writing and choreographing the sex scenes, the Wachowskis enlisted renowned feminist sex educator Susie Bright. Bright’s insight helped craft what is regarded as some of the finest lesbian eroticism ever portrayed in a mainstream film.

Which raises the question: Is Bound a queer film, or merely a titillating thriller with some queer trappings? The brothers contend that the film’s themes reflect homosexual concerns, but that their ambitions were broader, while Bright has argued that Bound is definitively lesbian in its character. To be sure, the film endures as a touchstone in gay cult cinema, as does Gershon’s reputation as a gay idol. Yet in some ways, the film’s graphic violence remains more shocking than its homosexual content. The Wachowskis have cited Billy Wilder and Frank Miller as primary influences, but some critics could only perceive a sadistic imitation of the Coen brothers or Quentin Tarantino. And yet it is Bound’s notoriety that has cemented its reputation as one of the most powerful debut films of the 1990s.

3-Minute Intro: [•Rec]

June 25, 2008 Andrew 3-Minute Intros, Foreign, Horror Comments Off

Screened: June 24, 2008
Format: DVD - Filmax (Spanish Import)
Selected By: Chris

Since 1999, when The Blair Witch Project shattered expectations to become both a cultural sensation and the most profitable film of all time, “point-of-view” filmmaking has repeatedly reared its head in horror cinema. Granted, the conceit of placing a camera directly into the story itself owes a debt to decades-old documentary cinéma-vérité traditions, as well as to the Danish Dogme95 film movement. And its appearance in the horror genre dates at least to the 1980 Italian cult classic Cannibal Apocalypse. Yet it was Blair Witch that truly spawned a crop of divergent horror POV progeny, among them this year’s Cloverfield and Diary of the Dead. While sheer audience familiarity ensures that no subsequent POV horror fiction will likely acquire the urban legend qualities of Blair Witch, the subgenre does have its terrifying little gems, such as 2007’s Spanish hit, [•REC].

Directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza are rising stars in the burgeoning world of Spain’s horror cinema. Natives of Catalonia and València respectively, Balagueró and Plaza transitioned from festival-favorite short films to feature productions as their profiles grew, and both contributed to the film revival of Narciso Ibañez Serrador’s horror television series, Tales to Keep You Awake. Balagueró garnered some degree of cult fame from features such as The Nameless, Darkness, and Fragile. However, [•REC] is the first high-profile international success for either director, helped along by positive word-of-mouth in the alt-horror fan community in Spain, Britain, and beyond.

Balagueró and Plaza eschew Blair Witch’s less-is-more methods in favor of mainstream scares and gores, but [•REC] achieves an uncommon realism and simplicity in its presentation. Shot entirely on location, the film tells the story of a shoestring Barcelona television news crew comprising one reporter and one cameraman. In the course of taping a humdrum human interest feature, the pair find themselves trapped in an unthinkably nightmarish situation. In keeping with journalistic standards and the rules of the subgenre, naturally they keep right on filming. Consistent with the best traditions of horror, the film deftly delves into modern fears about paranoia, community, isolation, and biological terror. Running a lean 75 minutes, [•REC] shuns indulgent digressions in favor of the classic pairing of slowly mounting tension and gruesome shocks.

3-Minute Intro: Hustle & Flow

June 15, 2008 Andrew 3-Minute Intros, Dramas, Musicals 2 Comments

Screened: June 14, 2008
Format: DVD - Paramount (2006)
Selected By: Teresa

The verdict may still be out as to whether American writer-director Craig Brewer is a crass peddler of stereotypes or a fearless filmmaker who delves deep into crannies of the American soul that have too often been neglected and caricatured. Brewer was blessed with a middle class youth characterized by generous artistic encouragement from his parents. Initially, his interests lay in the theater, but after moving to Memphis in 1994, he began penning screenplays. His father’s sudden death left him with a small inheritance which he spent on his first feature film, The Poor and The Hungry, shot on digital video. The film was never distributed, but it proved to be a foot in the door for Brewer. Boyz n the Hood producer Stephanie Allain and director John Singleton became champions of Brewer’s next project, a hip-hop rags-to-not-quite-riches tale. Singleton’s enthusiasm was such that he actually mortgaged his house to help bring Hustle & Flow to the screen.

The film became a smash at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, where Brewer won the Audience Award for Drama. Significant buzz swirled around the lead performance by Terrence Howard, fresh from a breakout role in the ensemble drama Crash. Howard and the film’s signature song, Three 6 Mafia’s “It’s Hard Out There for a Pimp” were both nominated for Academy Awards, with Three 6 claiming a coup as the first hip hop artists to perform at the Oscars.

Hustle & Flow reflects Brewer’s enduring interest in capturing textured, affecting portraits of people in the meanest corners of society. His backdrop is often the dusty, sticky Tennessee that he grew to love in the 1990s. Yet Brewer has faced criticism for his lack of Southern credibility, and Hustle & Flow in particular engendered controversy with its arguable misogyny and glorification of the criminal life. Nonetheless, Brewer and his slate of remarkable performers discover a striking vision of human striving, ugly survival, and artistic ecstasy from a deceptively simple premise. Howard in particular offers a potent, nuanced portrayal. He convinces us that a lowlife pimp and drug dealer could posses dreams and talents that can make him into perhaps not a good man, but a better man.

3-Minute Intro: Rear Window

June 5, 2008 Andrew 3-Minute Intros, Dramas Comments Off

Screened: June 4, 2008
Format: DVD - Universal (2001)
Selected By: Stephanie

With the release of his suspense masterpiece Rear Window in 1954, British-American director Alfred Hitchcock was arguably near the pinnacle of his film career. During his early work in Britain—first in silent features and then talkies—Hitchcock settled comfortably into the thriller genre, where he used familiar conventions to innovate as a storyteller. After his move to Hollywood in 1940, his international recognition swelled, and by end of the 1950s he was one of the world’s most well-known and esteemed directors. That decade was arguably Hitchcock’s finest period, boasting a laundry list of essential thrillers: Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, culminating with Psycho in 1960. Rear Window stands as one of the director’s most exhilarating achievements–intricate, thoughtful, and stunningly written and shot.

The film was James Stewart’s second collaboration with Hitchcock, following Rope. In 1954, Stewart was already an acclaimed actor with an imposing filmography and an envied independence from the studio system. However, Rear Window not only revealed unexpected dimensions to his talent, it made him the most popular movie star in America. Opposite Stewart is a luminous Grace Kelly, who had parleyed her success in the theater to a discriminating film career. Her previous work with Hitchcock, Dial M for Murder, garnered her significant attention, but Kelly is at the peak of her power here, in one of her juiciest and most demanding roles. Not to be overlooked is a pre-Perry Mason Raymond Burr, who delivers a menacing performance as the suspected sad-sack murderer, Thorwald.

The cunning of Rear Window’s story is easy to recognize: Stewart, as photojournalist L.B. Jeffries, is laid up in his sweltering New York apartment with a broken leg. While spying on his neighbors across the courtyard out of boredom, he sees strange events that he believes to be evidence of a murder. What Hitchcock does with this simple premise is breathtaking, crafting not only a brilliantly constructed and shot thriller, but a dense inquiry into sex, relationships, marriage, voyeurism, art, and filmmaking itself. This is Hitchock’s genius: Rear Window transcends its significant technical virtues and emerges as one of the most potent films ever made about the act of watching.

3-Minute Intro: Radio Days

May 17, 2008 Andrew 3-Minute Intros, Comedies No Comments

Screened: May 16, 2008
Format: DVD - MGM (2001)
Selected By: Libby

Woody Allen’s 1987 comedy Radio Days may be the filmmaker’s most ambitious and sentimental work in a substantial and wide-ranging filmography. Describing what happens in the film is futile, as there is no overarching plot to speak of. Rather, Radio Days features a parade of amusing and touching vignettes, some spun from Allen’s own recollections of a 1940s New York City childhood, some plucked from the legends of radio’s Golden Age. The film serves as an homage to a vanished America and a wistful examination of nostalgia itself. Allen is occupied with recreating not the reality of a particular time and place, but a time and place as it is remembered.

Although he is now New York’s most recognizable auteur, Allen’s began his career as a wunderkind comedy writer for the likes of Ed Sullivan, Sid Caesar, and The Tonight Show. He eventually parlayed his success into standup, acting, and filmmaking, where he perfected an enduring persona as a nebbish New Yorker. His early films were broad comedies, but beginning with 1977’s Annie Hall, the director’s output took a more sophisticated turn. The 1980s remain Allen’s most well-regarded period, encompassing significant works such Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, The Purple Rose of Cairo, and Radio Days itself.

The number of characters and storylines in the film is dizzying, but it never feels directionless. It spins one witty anecdote after another, all set to a brash, romantic Big Band soundtrack. The cast is enormous. There is Mia Farrow, then Allen’s partner and frequent collaborator, as aspiring radio star and gossip columnist Sally White. Then there’s a young Seth Green as Allen’s childhood alter ego, Joe, running through the streets of a gloriously grubby 1940s Rockaway Beach. Julie Kavner and Michael Tucker claim memorable roles as Joe’s harried parents. The cast brings together a host of recognizable faces—Dianne Wiest, Danny Aiello, Wallace Shawn, Jeff Daniels, Diane Keaton—with the voices of the Golden Age itself, such as Kitty Carlisle and Don Pardo. Together, the cast and filmmakers craft a mash note to an era that is fast fading from living memory, acknowledging that its magic was fictitious and fleeting, but still to be cherished.

3-Minute Intro: The Cannonball Run

3-Minute Intro: Deliverance

3-Minute Intro: It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

3-Minute Intro: Ocean’s Eleven

3-Minute Intro: The Wizard of Oz

3-Minute Intro: Bound

3-Minute Intro: [•Rec]

3-Minute Intro: Hustle & Flow

3-Minute Intro: Rear Window

3-Minute Intro: Radio Days

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