Cynical Girls on Film

The truly excellent song is by Marshall Crenshaw, and it's from his self-titled debut album (which is a listen-straight-through must for anyone who doesn't already own it). The video was smartly compiled by Rick Thomas (and I would only make a few slight cutting changes). I just felt the immediate need to post this on FILMICABILITY, because it's so ultra-cool.

Happy Birthday, Alfred Hitchcock!

Yes, he was the Master of Suspense. But on 113th anniversary of his birth today, I prefer to focus not on his films, but on the man himself--particularly, his intelligence and indubitably dry wit. These aspects of his personality--coupled with his love of the macabre and the unending power of his films, of course--were what made him into a superstar. I believe that when informed people think of the word or the profession "director," they think of Alfred Hitchcock. As an explanation to why this is so, here are ten clips that I also offer as tribute to this unique artist who truly changed how we see the world:

Here he is, in 1954, as the mystery guest on the TV game show What's My Line? As he signs in, we get to see Hitchcock compose the famous, impossibly elegant 9-line caricature this one-time storyboard artist wryly concocted for himself (here, it's an 8-line drawing--he omits that slight hairline on the show's blackboard). I love his references to Grace Kelly at the end of the clip--"What did you do about it?" This tells us so much about the man.


I imagine TV execs really got a hungry sense of Alfred Hitchcock's surprising on-screen dynamism while watching him on What's My Line. The following year, in 1955, he began hosting his own anthology series, suitably called Alfred Hitchcock Presents. His appearances on the show--in which this devotee of cinema often derided the necessary trappings of TV (particularly its need for commercials)--are what I think made him an even more stellar household name than he already laid claim to being. This intro, from 1955's episode titled "The Other Sister," is a fine example of his unforgettable hosting style.


Mr. Hitchcock was a pioneer, too, in the construction of film trailers, even though no director--even Steven Spielberg--has ever attempted to do what he did with them. This development in his on-screen personality become more intense after his TV show became a long-running hit. As a result, his home studio Universal allowed him to indulge in unusually long trailers for his films. The Psycho preview is justifiably famous. But so should be this advanced look at his 1963 effort The Birds, in which not even one actual shot from the film is shown (even the glimpse of lead actress Tippi Hedren was filmed specifically for the trailer).


Hitchcock wisely dissects what frightens people here in 1964, on the BBC interview show Monitor. I love how Hitch's handsome facial profile is captured here.


The film-specific crafts of editing and scoring are smartly used in this 1965 segment shot for French television, in which Hitchcock pointedly discusses the dynamics of arguably his most famous film Psycho and then deftly practices his impeccable French on the interviewer.


On the director's 1970 appearance on The Dick Cavett Show (in one of the best episodes of that series, available on Cavett's Hollywood Greats DVD collection), Hitchcock comments correctly on the effects of sex on the Hollywood elite, and then defiantly admits to one of his favorite forms of repartee, in a statement with which I wholeheartedly agree.


Another Hitchcock trailer, this time for his 1972 tale of murder called Frenzy (his late-career return to British filmmaking and still his most personal film, if you ask me). The initial sight of Hitch floating on the Thames is highly amusing. "How do you like my tie?"


Part one of Tom Snyder's very revealing 1973 interview with Hitch on the Tomorrow show; Snyder starts by asking Hitch what scares him. The other five parts are on You Tube.


One year before his death in 1980, Alfred Hitchcock was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. Surrounded by a truly astounding collection of moviemaking royalty, he is, as usual, hilarious and articulate. But here he is also unexpectedly touching, as he pays tribute to his wife and collaborator of 53 years, Alma Reville Hitchcock who, dutifully sitting by his side, is visably moved throughout.


And, finally, no tribute would be complete without noting the director's famed cameos in his own films. This You Tube post from royvanderzwann collects all but eight of them, and deftly points out each of Hitchcock's sometimes imperceptible on-screen appearances, backed with French composer Charles-François Gounod's "Funeral March for a Marionette," which of course forever became Hitch's instantly recognizable theme song.


Happy birthday, Mr. Hitchcock, wherever you are. And thank you, for everything.

(John Candy as Hitchcock on SCTV--to fully view the segment, click here.)

Review: RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

Okay. RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. The review is simple. The shots in which there were apes--and ONLY apes--were brilliantly directed (by someone named Rupert Wyatt, who hasn't done a film you or I are likely to see were it not for this movie). The shots in which ANY humans appeared were day-old-bread bland. Andy Serkis, playing the lead ape in its adulthood, was superb--so much so that I think he was underused (he doesn't contribute to two-thirds of the film). Nevertheless, you can feel a palpable rise in attention whenever his input is evident. Many filmgoers will at least subliminally recognize the change in the film's quality when his fully-grown Caesar arrives on-screen. I believe there's an entirely great performance here that deserves recognition (particularly given Serkis' insanely superb past experience with this kind of role, as with his Gollum in the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy and with his title character in KING KONG). Though I neither want to posit the addition of a special "motion capture" category at the Oscars, nor do I want to include Serkis in with the regular actors' categories, I do think there should be some consideration given to Serkis as the recipient of a Special Achievement Oscar for his body of motion-capture work, in which he is an absolute pioneer. The New Zealand FX team WETA deserve much credit for what wispy power the film possesses; however, things are still not perfect. Digital characters remain looking as if they're moving about underwater. They have a slight slowness to them that takes me out of the illusion. I know this is an ongoing problem with digital figures in film--it's a glitch in the program that apparently cannot be brooked now. But I mention this because...let's not fool ourselves, okay? These FX do not look TOTALLY real. Many genre fans might want to say that they do, but they don't. Face it. More work needs to be done before we get to where we really wanna be. So let's not go landing on the moon just yet. And, still, Andrew Lesnie's cinematography in RISE is sterling, the film's in-house editing veteran Conrad Buff does well and, above all, Serkis' leavings are absolutely notable.

Back to the movie: the script was resolutely lazy. The film was boring for its first 40 minutes. No one cares about James Franco or his father (John Lithgow), whom scientist Franco is trying to save from a slide into Alzheimer's by developing a serum that, when tested on the apes, makes their IQs go way up. One thing: why do all summer movies have to come down to the love of a son for a father, or the love of a father for a son, or the love of a father for a daughter, or the love of a daughter for a father, or the love of a wife for a husband or...on and on it goes. What the fuck is going on here? Is every screenwriter in Hollywood feeling some sort of crippling guilt for how shittily they've treated their nearest family members? Jesus Christ, this is such a tired plot trope. To boot, RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES' pointless dialogue was uber-filled with those "motivational" words "I need"--these words come about in almost all genre movies or TV shows (the TV show LOST was replete with these two words)--"I need" you to do this, "I need" this chance, etc. (This phenomenon in movie writing has a lot to do with gaming culture, which is built on having a "need" that "needs" to be fulfilled. I would recommend film writers find a thesaurus.) On the positive side, the film had a refreshingly restrained use of scoring--many scenes that, in a less well-directed movie, would have been scored wall-to-wall, were actually only augmented by the sounds of the apes. Lest we forget: we came to the movie to see the apes. Let them take it.

The picture's miniscule "villains" (David Oyelowo's pharma-business-prick Steven Jacobs, Tom Jacobs' goony teen cagemaster, and even the usually reliable Brian Cox's lackadaisical ape boss) were unfulfilling. I was so bored by them all, I spent the whole movie trying to determine whether Jacobs was actually Aaron Paul from BREAKING BAD, and wondering if they approached Chiwetel Ejiofor for the Steven Jacobs role--mind you, this is a negative that's not the movie's fault, however I would like to take this opportunity to IMPLORE summer movie filmmakers to add credits to the BEGINNINGS of their movies, if only for us fanboys...uh, er, film geeks.

My 2nd biggest complaint with the film--after the limpness of its human participants (including the dull Frieda Pinto, the googly-eyed Lithgow, and the sleepy, strangely Adam-Sandler-haired Franco) has to do with the numerous, and I assume fanboy-inspired references to the original PLANET OF THE APES. Jacob's "damn dirty ape" line, in particular, was absolutely embarrassing and unnecessary; so was the televised cameo from Charlton Heston as Moses (geez, no TV station is playing THE TEN COMMANDMENTS these days, unless maybe it happens to be Easter), and the "it's a madhouse" reference; also the cops on horses in the climax was an unrealistic element. Cops on horses? I mean, though it can be defended on purely technical terms--how else could they make their way through the stranded cars--still, cops on horses is a now-ancient concept in USA terms; why not use motorcycles? And so the inclusion of cops on horses was obviously a PLANET OF THE APES reference (as was the weaponed use of the water hose, though fans will breathlessly tell you, as if they've solved a theorem, "They're setting up the world of the apes!"). And, though the shots of the apes high above the city impress us, the film disappoints by setting the final entire conflict on the Golden Gate bridge. You get no sense that the entire city of San Francisco has been taken over; hell, there are only four sets in the movie (the house, the ape prison, the lab, and the bridge). One more minute with that helicopter machine gun (which should have been BLACK HAWK DOWN powerful) in the climax would have erased the entire damn dirty ape problem. And, by the way, those spears that the apes had? How did they wrest even one, not to mention so many, of these spears from that one zoo cage? This element was totally goofy. I kept wondering, if the apes were so smart, why didn't they just grab the guns? (The whole "let's not kill humans" thing was bizarrely disingenuous; as such, one of the only humans that dies in the movie is, of course, the sweet fat guy at the beginning who catches the disease and ends up sneezing blood; as usual, the fat guy always dies in movies because, really, who gives a fuck if a fatty bites it?)

Still, in the sea of generally stinky swill that is most of summertime moviegoing, RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is a not entirely failed effort. It is hobbled, yes--but not failed (I rank it a C+). But may I remind you: with that "summertime" caviat, we're grading on a curve. This is NOT one of the best films of the year, as it is being deemed by so many online nerds (of which I am one, though I am one with unpopular tastes). However, I hope for a better film to follow. When the sequel does go into production, I would recommend it contain only only ONE human in it. After all, the humans have ALWAYS been the downfall of the series. With this recent overpraised effort, I hope the filmmakers have learned this lesson.