High concept vs. low concept

Don't confuse Flash of Genius with anything but a small heartfelt effort that pays off, not in bank dividends, but in the kind of feel good fuzzy thoughts that inspirational movies are made to deliver. Director Marc Abraham is known more for the dozens of Hollywood films he's produced over the years and he steers the film steady, surely and slowly. Flash of Genius stars Greg Kinnear as Bob Kearns the guy who invented the intermittent windshield wiper and then spent his adult years until his hair turned grey suing Ford Motors after they took credit for his invention.
Flash of Genius is a low concept film, there's nothing hidden and what you see in the trailer - one person taking on corporate giants - is what you get. Another example of a low concept film is the documentary Chris & Don: A Love Story, a linear account of the relation between British writer Christopher Isherwood and his partner 30 years his junior Don Bachardy. Isherwood died in 1986 and Don's now in his senior years himself. The best reason to see the film, other than if you're a fan of English literature, is the 16mm home movie footage that Isherwood shot, in the 50s and on, in locations like the set of the movie Rose Tattoo (Tennessee Williams, Burt Lancaster, Anna Magnani). Chris & Don is candid and unabashed.
Moving to high concept requires more suspension of belief and often involves mixing genres if not metaphors. Blindness is based on a novel by Nobel prize winner José Saramago, with a screenplay by Canadian director Don McKellar (who also plays the film's most pathetic character), and direction by Fernando Meirelles (whose debut City of God is still one of the great cinematic achievements of this decade). Meirelles either presents a milky white screen or a series of high contrast images. When a viral epidemic sweeps the world making people lose their sight the blind are herded into detention camps. The situation goes from bad to worse as the detainees are shot if they try to leave and left to fend for themselves.
Eventually one ward of the blind goes to war with another ward and the battle involves food and survival as dignity has already been abandoned. After a while the blind notice that the gates are no longer guarded and the third act of Blindness spills out into their Metropolis now empty save for the sightless bumping into each other and immovable objects.
Meirelles makes sure we feel the pain of bruising our knee (The audience seemed disoriented when they were getting up to leave during the end credits.) and the hopelessness of trading sex for food after you haven't eaten for days. The whole movie takes on the semblance of science fiction with the feeling of a future society in the upheaval of abandonment and anarchy.
Another high concept film, and frankly until it introduced the sci-fi element about halfway through I was not into it, is Eagle Eye. The pairing of D. J. Caruso and Shia LaBeouf gave us the Hitchcock inspired (Rear Window) Disturbia and sure enough Eagle Eye starts out in the Hitchcock mode of The 39 Steps or North by Northwest with Shia on the run after being confused with the real bad guy.
Eagle Eye has its share of over the top moments including Billy Bob Thorton playing the kind of federal agent who always gets his man that rings of Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive and endless explosions that would take out a city block yet leave the hero unscathed. But then Caruso plays his trump card. This isn't a retread of Enemy of the State but a re-imagining of Colossus: The Forbin Project a really cool 1970 film about computers taking over the world. It seems a top secret project involving a super computer that can monitor the entire nation has decided that the current administration cannot be trusted and plans to assassinate the President and the next ten officials in succession to the highest office of the land. At this point Eagle Eye had my full attention.
If there's a lesson it's that when going high concept go full steam all the way.

Appaloosa

Maybe I was in the mood for a great western but there's no denying Appaloosa is a great film. Some may compare it to recent westerns like 3:10 to Yuma but Appaloosa doesn't heft violence like that oater. Appaloosa deals with themes explored in Open Range but doesn't share that film's sense of traditional values. Somebody at the screening mentioned Unforgiven but that's recalling another western rather than a film Appaloosa resembles. The title refers to a town, unlike the film The Appaloosa from 1966, which starred Marlon Brando and concerned the pursuit of a horse thief.

Ed Harris (who also directs) and Viggo Mortensen are a couple of peace keepers for hire who ride into Appaloosa at the bequest of the town fathers (including a bumbling Timothy Spall and a restrained James Gammon). A local landowner (Jeremy Irons) killed the previous marshall and his deputies and unless he's brought to justice he'll continue to terrorize the townspeople.

The relation between Harris and Mortensen makes the film come alive. These are great roles and it's likely that many actors would've rode the saddle to play such good guy parts. These are a couple of guys who live by a code of ethics that include not hitting on the other guy's woman. The small town sets and Dean Semler's (this guy has shot everything) expansive photography give the film true grit.

The plot begins to twist when Renee Zellweger arrives penniless in town and Harris sets her up as the saloon's piano player. Harris and Mortensen bring Irons to justice but a daring escape (it's good to see Lance Henriksen in top form) and a Presidential pardon change the landscape.

Much of the dialogue and the situations feel contemporary but the pacing is strictly 19th century. The finale makes you realize the meaning of the phrase "men were men." Appaloosa would be a classic western if it was from the 50s and directed by Budd Boetticher or Anthony Mann, or from the 70s starring Lee Marvin or Stacy Keach. Yet it's here today and worth catching before it's gone tomorrow.

Religulous

A documentary that travels to holy places, hot spots and even a pot den can't be all bad. In fact it's quite good especially when the screen comes alive with well paced clips from classic movies. The talking points are about religion with the emphasis on Christianity, Judaism and Islamic faith. The tone is irreverent which should come as no surprise since the host is Bill Maher and the director, Larry Charles, previously helmed Borat.
At one point Maher tells a joke he used to great effect on The Tonight Show (Johnny Carson era) that emphasizes the fact that his parents were half and half. One was Catholic and one was Jewish. The joke describes bringing a lawyer into confession. “Bless me father for I have sinned - and I think you know Mr. Cohen.” When I saw this part of the movie it reminded me of a Jewish dude I know who used to tell this joke, and the joke was on me because I used to think he made it up himself.
Maher may not be the best person to present some of the illuminating interviews on display but then the snide factor gives Religulous its tasty satiric bite. God sending his son to Earth on a suicide mission might be the perfect plot for a Hollywood action adventure Maher advises. Israeli locations include the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Golgotha, and I never knew there was a preserved footprint of Christ at the Chapel of the Ascensio. Other sites of interest, and you will raise your eyebrows, include Sodom and Gomorrah in the Dead Sea area and Megiddo in the Jezreel Valley.
Hot spots in Amsterdam take us to the the Sensi Coffee and Seed Shop and the place in Zeeburg District where filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was stabbed to death after he made a movie questioning Muslim tradition. We're just getting started: there's the Holy Land Experience in Orlando and you thought Disneyland was the only tourist destination in Florida.
Senator Mark Pryor (D. AR) admits that you don't need to pass an I.Q. test to get into Congress. That's just as well since some politicians seem to believe in creationism. You won't go into the movie a believer and come out a non-believer, it's not that kind of experience. At the conclusion Maher goes into one of his patented monologues and asks why there's so much madness and destruction centered around this crazy thing called religion. The editing is concise, the soundtrack includes foot tapping rockers like "Jesus Is Just Alright" by the Doobies, although true believers know that The Byrds performed that song first.

Ping Pong Playa

Ping Pong Playa got the royal shaft from Hurricane Ike. This unpretentious film was set to open in Houston on September 12 on two screens. One of the theaters the film, in its release from distributor IFC, was set to open, the Edwards Marq*e has yet to re-open as of the end of the month. The other theater Ping Pong Playa was booked into, the AMC First Colony (technically in Sugarland, a community Southwest of Houston) was open by Sunday (9/14) and played the film throughout the week.
Ping Pong Playa follows the fortunes of self-professed basketball freak played with brazen physicality by Jimmy Tsai as C-dub Wang. C-dub has to assume duties at his family’s ping pong training school when his mom’s injured in a minor car accident. It hardly puts a crimp in his lifestyle since he’s jobless, living at home and nursing hoop dreams of playing pro basketball.
Jessica Yu, who picked up an Academy Award for the documentary short subject Breathing Lessons in 1996, directed Ping Pong Playa. Her resume includes helming episodic television shows like West Wing and Grey’s Anatomy. Yu and Tsai wrote the script for Ping Pong Playa with an ear for C-dub’s cultural acclimation to American society at large. Yu cleverly substitutes sound effects (like a pin pong ball) whenever C-dub curses. The movie references everything from Napoleon Dynamite to Free Willy to fast food and C-dub wears a succession of basketball jerseys like 3 Denver (Allen Iverson), 1 Suns (Amare Stoudemire), 20 Spurs (Manu Ginobili), 24 Lakers (Kobe Bryant), 11 and 1 Rockets (Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady). C-dub’s parents remind that Chinese contributions to the world include inventing paper, gunpowder, the compass, the printing press, and of course ping pong (technically the Chinese didn’t event the latter).
Tsai, whose parents live in Houston, talked with Free Press Houston a couple of days before Ike rolled through. The conversation was spirited and Tsai showed a lot of knowledge about being in front of as well as behind the camera. His first film was a mock series of ads for a pretend clothing line called The Venom Sportwear Ad Campaign. “That started as commercials that lampooned the phenomenon of child endorsement deals. These companies are looking for the next Michael Jordan but the kids just keep getting younger and younger to the point where they’re offering endorsements from five-year olds.”
With the assistance of a friend they actually had a brief run of clothes produced. “That’s where the character of C-dub was born,” explains Tsai.
Tsai worked for Cherry Sky Films, which is where he met Yu. It was her idea to make C-dub a protagonist in a ping pong movie. In the course of the film C-dub goes from being a playa to being a real man but Ping Pong Playa also goes for a realistic tone in depicting the character releations. “In the terms of the movie there’s not enough time for the girl to really get to know and like C-dub, but you can see the seeds of romance that indicate they might hook up later,” sums up Tsai.
People may have missed PPP in its brief theatrical run but Tsai assures, “It’s hard to get a theatrical release, but at the end of the day that’s what drives the DVD.”

Towelhead

Towelhead exists in another land of movies. It's a coming of age film about a high school femme but she's also being sexually abused by her neighbor, disrespected by her classmates and treated like dirt by her father. While serious, the film as directed by Alan Ball (whose credits include writing American Beauty and creating the HBO series Six Feet Under) finds a sly layer of humor that belies the tranquil suburban setting of its characters (in this case a clever depiction of Houston).
Summer Bishil plays lead character Jasira Maroun with a vengeance. Her mom (Maria Bello) has sent her to live with her father (Peter Macdissi) in Houston. Though the parents are long divorced mom bears a slight grudge because she put dad through college and now he's making lots of money as an engineer in Space City. Dad has a chip on his shoulder because due to his Middle Eastern ancestry his neighbor (Aaron Eckhart) thinks he's a Saddam lover. The story takes place in the early 90s during the first Gulf war.
Dad has a hot girlfriend but chides his daughter when she tries to express her femininity. Jasira tries to fit in at high school but even a black student calls her a sand nigger. Rightfully, he honestly apologizes and becomes her first real lover. That's after Eckhart, channeling a scary redneck, has molested Jasira. She finds some solace with neighbors (Matt Letscher and Toni Collette) who are the only compassionate and intelligent people in the film.
Towelhead is based on the novel of the same name by Alicia Erian. When the film played at the Toronto Film Festival in 2007 the title was Nothing is Private. Ball mines the pathos of middle class values and the cast is excellent down the line. Towelhead isn't purposely perverse like Choke but it has some strong points to make about equality and discrimination. Points it makes with the gloves removed.

DVD: Rest Stop - Don't Look Back

If must be tempting for actors, especially those on the rise and looking for steady work, to accept parts in gore infested, horror lacquered thrillers. You get to scream bloody murder as screws are drilled into your knee, and you can look sexy all tied up waiting to be tortured by crazy dead people. Do you want to actually play some dramatic role where you cry your eyes out and that nobody will see or reach into the depths of your primordial soul and emote the agony of the damned? That's what the thesps in Rest Stop: Don't Look Back must have thought when they signed onto this direct to DVD sequel to Rest Stop.
The twist, and it isn't necessary to have seen the first one to get the second one, is that the people killed in the first Rest Stop are back as ghosts to wreck havoc on some twentysomethings. There's the dweeb, his friend on leave from the Army and the hot chick. The ghosts include creepy twins, a dwarf, some religious fanatics and the rest stop killer, a kind of wandering truck driver with a penchant for torture.
Director Shawn Papzian pulls the right strings for this kind of genre piece: abandoned road stops, deserted gas stations, lonely motels. The scares are in line with the kind you see in theatrical releases like the Saw franchise. If Rest Stop: Don't Look Back had name actors you'd see it on theater marquees. As a direct to DVD release it will find an audience who take this type of horror experience seriously.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist is a total crash and burn if you were actually looking for a good movie. If you just want to see Michael Cera do his one-note schtick or Kat Dennings look cute then Nick and Nora may be your brew. While the demographic for this film probably wouldn't care, Nick and Nora were the names of William Powell and Myrna Loy in the Thin Man series of movies based on characters created by Dashiell Hammett.
Nick (Cera) is the only straight guy in his high school band The Jerk Offs. He meets cute with Nora (Dennings) during a gig in New York City. There's lot's of teen drinking so evidently kids have no problem not getting carded in Gotham. Nick still hasn't gotten over his previous g.f. a vamp (Alexis Dziena whose most notable role was the nude daughter of Sharon Stone in Broken Flowers) who delights in wrapping him around her finger. Before the evening wraps you know that Nick will see how fresh and unspoiled Nora is and they will hook up, for steady or for keeps.
The best thing about Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist are the use of actual New York City locales, like hip small clubs that actual musicians would recognize and eventually the Electric Ladyland Recording Studios. That and gay friendly characters are the up side. The flip side of the cool settings is the fact that N&N wants to be Superbad with a PG-13 rating. We hear Cera utter "fuck" only once in the film (in the first five minutes) and even though the teens are on a drinking binge, with the exception of the friend of the friend, nobody really seems to get drunk. There's a repeated gag involving chewing gum that goes from a toilet out of Trainspotting into everyone else's mouth. The cool soundtrack works better as a CD than as part of this mixed concoction.

CSI Dinosaur Mummy

With names like Brachylophosaurus canadensis and Bambiraptor you know better than to pet them. Of course you couldn't if you wanted to because they lived 75 million years ago. The only place that living dinosaurs and humans shared common ground was on The Flintstones unless you believe in creationism. Yet you can see Leonardo, not Da Vinci (although they've got him coming too) but a duckbilled dinosaur that died and was preserved in sand and now fossilized at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
The skeleton of a Bambiraptor stands nearly complete on display close to Leonardo, in addition to an Ichthyosaur mummy, other dinosaur bones and a four-ton geode. Actually the rock is a stand alone attraction, its crystalized interior lit up from inside.
Leo was named for an inscription on a rock near where it was found on a ranch in Montana. There's also a cyclorama that depicts several of Leo's contemporaries along a winding hallway that leads to a sandpit where kids (no adults allowed) can play excavate dino bones.
Then we get to Leo, encased in a waist level case so you have to bow to stare at its death gaze. Leo rests in a kind of fetal position and was obviously covered by the elements soon after its demise, preserving its skin and organs, so complete is the mummy. A team of paleontologists supervised moving the case into its museum resting spot as seen in the video below. The Dinosaur Mummy CSI: Cretaceous Science Investigation exhibit remains on display until next January.

The Duchess

Never as melodramatic as The Other Boleyn Girl, not as lyrical as Pride and Prejudice, The Duchess lays out a costume period drama and sticks to its guns. Based on the life of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire the film stars the queen of fancy clothes Keira Knightley. Strong supporting turns by Haley Atwell and Ralph Fiennes make a perfect foil for Georgina and her loveless marriage. There's even a character who becomes Earl Grey, which I always thought was just a tea. Throw in Charlotte Rampling as the mom and it's hard to imagine a better cast.
Georgina marries as a teen and her husband expects her to raise his bastard children as well as produce him a male heir. This is 18th century equal rights, kind of like George Orwell's Animal Farm: All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. Atwell plays Bess Foster who at first seems to have romantic designs on Georgina but then becomes the Duke's mistress and eventually second wife. Atwell has a line describing the "rule of thumb," which is code for a law that allowed men to beat their wives with a stick as long as it was no thicker than their thumb. Something to think about next time you hear that phrase.
As you'd expect in such opulent drama the sets, locations and costumes are beyond reproach. The only part of the film that left me wanting was the actual sex. The film is rated PG-13 but the situations (it's practically a menage a trios although lopsided in the Duke's favor) could easily have embraced a harder stance. There may be parallels to current situations and people but you would need to be well versed in the lives of royals to truly make sense of such comparisons.

Famous Actor Name Changes

Nick Adams (his birth name was Nicholas Aloysius Adamshock)
Alan Alda (his birth name was Alphonso D'Abruzzo)
Fred Allen (his birth name was John Sullivan)
Woody Allen (his birth name was Allen Stewart Konigsberg)
Fred Astaire (his birth name was Frederick Austerlitz)
Jack Benny (his birth name was Benjamin Kubelsky)
Joey Bishop (his birth name was Joseph Abraham Gottlieb)
Robert Blake (his birth name was Mickey Gubitosi)
George Burns (his birth name was Nathan Birnbaum)
Richard Burton (his birth name was Walter Jenkins)
Red Buttons (his birth name was Aaron Chwatt)
Michael Caine (his birth name was Maurice Mickelhite)
Eddie Cantor (his birth name was Edward Israel Iskowitz)
Lee J. Cobb (his birth name was Leo Jacoby)
Mike Connors (his birth name was Krekor Ohanian)
Ricardo Cortez (his birth name was Jacob Krantz)
Tom Cruise (his birth name was Thomas Mapothier IV)
Danny Devito (his birth name was Daniel Michaeli)
Troy Donahue (his birth name was Merle Johnson Jr.)
Kirk Douglas (his birth name was Issur Danielovich)
Stepin Fetchit (his birth name was Lincoln Perry)
John Ford (his birth name was Sean O'Fierna)
Jamie Foxx (his birth name was Eric Marlon Bishop)
John Garfield (his birth name was Juliuis Garfinkle)
Cary Grant (his birth name was Archibald Leach)
Rex Harrison (his birth name was Reginald Carey)
Charlton Heston (his birth name was John Charles Carter)
Bob Hope (his birth name was Leslie Townes Hope)
William Holden (his birth name was William Beedle Jr.)
Harry Houdini (his birth name was Erich Weiss)
Rock Hudson (his birth name was Leroy Scherer Jr.)
Tab Hunter (his birth name was Arthur Andrew Gelien)
Boris Karloff (his birth name was William Henry Pratt)
Ben Kingsley (his birth name was Krishna Banji)
Mario Lanza (his birth name was Alfred Cocozza)
Stan Laurel (his birth name was Arthur Jefferson)
Jerry Lewis (his birth name was Joseph Levich)
Hal Linden (his birth name was Harold Lipshitz)
Dean Martin (his birth name was Dino Crocetti)
Ray Milland (his birth name was Reginald Truscott Jones)
Slim Pickens (his birth name was Louis Lindly)
Tony Randall (his birth name was Leonard Rosenberg)
Edward G. Robinson (his birth name was Emmanuel Goldenberg)
Roy Rogers (his birth name was Leonard Slye)
Mickey Rooney (his birth name was Joe Yule Jr.)
Martin Sheen (his birth name was Ramon Estevez)
Mister T (his birth name was Lawrence Tureaud)
Robert Taylor (his birth name was Spangler Arlington Brugh)
Rudolph Valentino (his birth name was Rodolfo Alfonzo Raffaelo D'Antonguolla)
John Wayne (his birth name was Marion Michael Morrison)
Clifton Webb (his birth name was Webb Parmalee Hollenbeck)
Gig Young (his birth name was Byron Barr)

Alexander Payne on Citizen Ruth

Free Press Houston classic interviews goes back to 1996 and a lunch interview with Alexander Payne and his debut feature Citizen Ruth.
When asked about any socio-political importance concerning his abortion satire Citizen Ruth, director and co-writer Alexander Payne just grins a wide, Cheshire Cat kind of smile. To Payne's mind, any disbelief or discontent, or the joy and happiness of sardonic humor, is best left up to the viewer. When asked towards whose side of the fence he straddles, Payne's smile is as vague and elusive as ever.
"Jim [writing collaborator Jim Taylor] and I just try to look at people how they are, which is neither positive or negative," Payne, as boyish looking a director as has ever come through Houston on a press junket, said. "We just like, in general, really pathetic situations, and the humor derived therein. Nothing should be sacred. I hate to think there's a statement, everything has to be a statement.
"I hate it when they try to make oppressed people look noble, the only time it's been pulled off is in Buñuel's Los Olvidados," says Payne, one of his many movie references during the lunch. Citizen Ruth was positioned by Miramax for Oscar consideration and released for a week in L.A. and Gotham at the end of last year. Now in a platform style release pattern, Citizen Ruth, stars Laura Dern as spray paint-inhaling mom-to-be Ruth Stoops.
Certainly, Dern's perf is in the same league, if not same ballpark, as any of the femme thespians who garnered noms, and positioning a film for Oscar benefits can possibly backfire if the film is overlooked by the Academy and then dumped by its distribber during an already congested weekend. (Of course, every weekend there's, like, four or five films opening anyway.) The flip side of the coin is that the smaller, indie-financed Ruth can open on any weekend (its word of mouth being in the air) rather than, say, The Devil's Own opening on the given day towards which its studio spent $20-million plus on advertising.
All of that hype fails to mention the subject and style of baby Ruth, a take-no-prisoners, org-skewer in the tradition of Paddy Chayefsky's Network or The Hospital, as well as sci-fi related takes on totalitarian lifestyles, like The Handmaiden's Tale. Payne's tale is derisively comic with an edge that reveals right-to-life Christian fanatics and pro-choice snobs to be in the sack together, if that bed is made with the sheets of scheming hypocrisy.
"It's dangerous to say all pro-lifers think like this or that," Payne says. "I've got liberal friends who've seen it and think it's great, and pro-choice liberal friends who're saying it's irresponsible – you can't group anybody."
Payne mentions Ring Lardner and Sinclair Lewis as models of the kind of satire Ruth strives for while also recalling the sloven yet sympathetic characters from early Milos Forman films like The Fireman's Ball and Loves of a Blonde. Like Lardner and Lewis, Payne hails from the Midwest. Citizen Ruth was lensed in Payne's hometown of Omaha, Nebraska.
It appears to be a tight stretch that an audience could meld with Dern after the first few minutes in which we see Ruth go from being a debauched sex freak to sucking paint fumes out of a paper bag. The ring of black paint around her mouth is like a gothic letter of mental unbalance. Her tongue and lips stained by her toxic drug of choice are a truly disgusting sight. "It's a real low-life drug," reminds Payne, "It's cheap and you can get it legally." Yet sympathize you will after watching the pregnant Ruth taken in by a pro-life family (Kurtwood Smith and Mary Kay Place) who mean to use her to politicize her situation. Meanwhile, an undercover pro-choicer (Swoosie Kurtz) kidnaps Ruth back to a liberal safe house. But, with the conniving going on in the pro-choice circles about how to utilize Ruth, is she really safe?
It's not surprising to hear Payne discuss how he'd like to shoot a biopic of the life of St. Paul. Payne explains how Paul was far from sympathetic: "He was a Christian hater, then he fell from his horse and had this epileptic vision; then he became Christ's biggest spokesman. He's just a crazy guy who never met Christ, who became his agent." Payne knows that Paul was formally called Saul and worked as a tent-maker. With the hint of a smile Payne envisions Jean-Claude Van Damme as St. Paul. Hey, Payne cast Burt Reynolds as the pervert preacher for Ruth, and it's a far superior turn than Burt's portrayal of a pervert senator in Striptease.
"Here's one for you," Payne throws out as the entrées are led away. "Name a film that after you saw it you didn't feel like you'd seen it, but felt like you'd dreamt it."