The Screengrab

The Library of Congress has announced its annual selections of the twenty-five films chosen to be added to those included in the National Film Registry, on the basis of their "cultural, historic, or aesthetic significance." (They've been doing this for nineteen years now; this year's inductees bring the total up to a neat 500.) As usual, the list features a number of Hollywood classics, including John Huston's caper film The Asphalt Jungle (1950); John Boorman's modern Southern Gothic Deliverance (1972); Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd, one of the earliest indictments of the potential rabble-rousing power of television; Erich Von Stroheim's silent feature Foolish Wives (1922); King Vidor's 1929 Hallelujah, an early sound musical with an all-black cast, and the 1961 Broadway musical adaptation Flower Drum Song, an early break away from the tradition of casting Caucasian performers in Asian roles; James Whale's Universal horror classic The Invisible Man (1933), starring the voice of Claude Rains; Nicholas Ray's febrile Western Johnny Guitar (1954); the 1957 On the Bowery, an attempt to fuse documentary locations and non-professional actors in a story of skid row alcoholics; The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), an adventure film featuring some of the best work of the special effects master Ray Harryhausen; and the obscure sci-fi B-movie,The Terminator (1984). There are also films that document moments in the careers of legendary performers, such as the 1926 W. C. Fields short So's Your Old Man and the early Buster Keaton two-reeler One Week, and such historical curios as Disneyland Dream (1956), a color home movie of a family trip to Disneyland that provides "a fantastic historical snapshot of Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Catalina Island, Knott’s Berry Farm, Universal Studios and Disneyland in mid-1956"; three year's worth of documentary footage that George Stevens shot during World War II; and a film directed by the late James Blue for the United States Information Agency documenting the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington. Also included are experiemental and student films such as Len Lye's "scratch" film Free Radicals (1979), Mitchell Block's 1973 No Lies, and Pat O'Neill's "city symphont", Water and Power, which dates from 1989--the first year that the National Registry began to make its selections.

The full list is as follows:

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PAUL CLARK IS THANKFUL FOR:

BETTY BLUE (1986)



It would be a mistake for me to trace the birth of my love for movies to one film, and if I was foolish enough to do so, a better candidate would be something like Pulp Fiction. But while Tarantino pushed me down the road of cinephilia, I was still a sheltered suburban high schooler for whom subtitled movies were still, well, foreign. So I suppose it makes sense that my first experience with French cinema was motivated by the same factor that has led generations of curious moviegoers to the arthouses and dusty “foreign” shelves at the video store: sex. “Check this one out,” said the pierced twentysomething guy behind the counter to me and my pack of renting buds. “It’s French -- you know what that means.” And in the course of the evening, if anyone didn’t know what that meant, they would soon be educated. It wasn’t just the subtitles or the sexuality though -- Betty Blue introduced me to the sort of woman I’d never seen before in a movie. As played by Beatrice Dalle, Betty was a stark contrast to the teenage girls who mostly snubbed me throughout my high school years -- she was a feral life force, fiercely carnal, both sexy and more than a little scary. But even more than that, Betty Blue was the gateway drug that got me hooked on French cinema, leading me to Truffaut, Renoir, Godard, and all my auteurial pals. Not bad for a movie I watched primarily to see some tits.

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Hi, Screengrab readers!  For my first post, I thought I’d kick off a series in which I suggest various movies worth recording off of cable TV in the upcoming week.  See, I know that since you read the Screengrab, you have a fairly solid grasp on the movies and movie history, but there’s always some that slip through the cracks.  The movies I’ll mention here will give you a chance to catch up on those that you might have overlooked.  If I miss something, please post it in the comments!

Here’s the skinny: I’m assuming, of course, that you’ve gone to the trouble of getting a DVR (or have a VCR you know how to set, at the very least) to go along with the cable you pay for month after month, but you don’t always keep an eye on upcoming movies.  Since you’re reading the Screengrab, I’m not going to recommend movies that everyone recommends, such as Singin’ In The Rain (which, incidentally, I record just about every time it’s on, because I always have time to watch one of the dance numbers).  I’m not going to be too esoteric, either.  I’ll use an in-law test: I’ll stick with movies that I doubt my mother-in-law has seen, and that way will try to catch some of the great movies that are more likely to slip through the cracks.  One more thing: no premium channels, mainly because I can’t afford them.

Mon, Oct. 6:
Nothing here.  Good thing, too, since I’m not posting this until Tuesday Morning

Tues, Oct. 7: 
9:00 am: Ace In The Hole on TCM.  I don’t think this is a very good movie.  But plenty of reviewers disagree with me, so I’m going to mention it. Actually, by the time this goes live, it'll probably be too late.

8:00 pm: Don’t Look Back on VH1CL (repeating at 11:30 pm).  Maybe you’ve seen this, and maybe not.  But it’s one of the great rock documentaries and, if you watch it, you’ll enjoy I’m Not There that much more.

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HONORABLE MENTION

300 (2007)



Even relatively anti-war films like Platoon acknowledge the fierce camaraderie and euphoric adrenalin rush of warriors in combat, but this surrealistic adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel about a legendary phalanx of Spartans taking on a zillion enemy warriors is all bloodlust, all the time. Yet, while historically suspect (since modern researchers are pretty sure the power-mad Persian king Xerxes didn’t really command a legion of trolls, orcs and giants from the darkest reaches of Middle Earth), and hardly on par with more serious evocations of combat (like, say, Apocalypse Now or Full Metal Jacket), 300 is notable, like many of the best war films, as a reflection of its time. Some critics detected jingoistic echoes of George W. Bush’s “bring ‘em on” foreign policy in the refusal of Spartan badass King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) to negotiate with foreign powers, going it alone with his own Coalition of the Willing when other nations (and a cowardly Congress...er, Spartan Council) refuse to authorize war against an imminent Persian threat to democracy and freedom. Just as Nixon reportedly watched Patton over and over again before sending troops into Cambodia, it’s easy to imagine Bush viewing 300 to make himself feel better about sending American troops into combat without sufficient body armor: after all, Leonidas and his 299 BFFs take down half Xerxes’ army bare-chested!  Framed as a tale of indeterminate tallness relayed by a warrior to inspire his fellow troops on the verge of combat, the fetishized fairy tale unreality of 300’s violence, tone and (xenophobic) politics, its conflicted homophobic/homoerotic ideal of manliness, its complete surrender to (and celebration of) CGI fakery and its wild popularity and seductive guilty pleasure craftsmanship all combine into a fascinating time capsule of an age when troops compare combat to video games and the line between fact and fiction, has never seemed quite so blurry.

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Two weeks ago, in the spirit of the season, your overeducated friends at The Screengrab kicked off a two-part Back To School tribute with a list of the 18+ Top High School Films. The second part of our salute to readin’, writin’ and massive student loan debt was postponed so we could honor the memory of fallen voice-over king Don LaFontaine with a celebration of the Greatest Coming Attractions Trailers...mini-masterpieces of marketing that make even the worst movies seem like must-see events.

On further reflection, though, I realized the Coming Attractions list maybe wasn’t such a detour from our Back To School tribute after all. For me, at least, the College Movies I saw growing up were a vivid advertisement for all the wild ‘n crazy fun and (more importantly) SEX I’d be having in the hallowed halls of higher education.

But, like any number of flashy preview trailers, those cinematic depictions of frat party free love turned out to be VERY misleading, and I soon learned a liberal arts degree ain’t nothin’ but a one-way ticket to the Blogosphere of Broken Dreams...

...not that I’m bitter, like so many of the characters in the College Movie’s sister genres of Post-Graduate Malaise and Faculty Feuds...all of which await your approbation (it'll be on the SAT...look it up!) as we count down the Top 15 College Movies Of All Time!

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One of the last living links to the silent film era, and one of that period's brightest stars, passed away in her Los Angeles home earlier this week at the age of 98.  In addition to being one of the silent era's most beautiful and popular stars, Anita Page was also one of its most fascinating stories, both for her meteoric rise to the top and her abrupt -- and self-driven -- decision to quit the business.

Born in Flushing in 1910, she left Queens to make it big in pictures when she was still a high school student, landing her first role (as an extra) at age 15.  Her big break came in 1928, when she co-starred with Joan Crawford in Our Dancing Daughters.  Although her character died at the end of the picture, audiences immediately took to her saucy grin, easy blonde good looks, and petite frame, and the movie -- as well as two sequel-cum-remakes, Our Modern Maidens and Our Blushing Brides (also starring Crawford) -- made her a huge star.  She became one of the biggest stars of the era, daily receiving hundreds of fan letters, including multiple proposals of marriage -- at least according to Page herself -- from Benito Mussolini.

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If there’s one thing Hollywood is sorely lacking nowadays, it’s larger-than-life figures. Nowadays, most moviegoers want their industry types to be down to earth, but in the classical era of Hollywood, it was a different story. Tinseltown was ruled by grandiose, even vulgar men who flaunted their wealth, made bold statements and engaged in dangerous behavior just to fuel their taste for adventure. Today’s peekaboo paparazzi photos and pregnancy gossip pale in comparison to the stories of Errol Flynn’s legendary parties and John Huston deciding to make a movie in Africa with the notion of shooting an elephant while he was there.

Michael Todd was one of these men.

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One of the nice things about living in a big city is that there's always a lot of big corporations with money to throw around.  If you're an aspiring filmmaker, they might just throw some at you!  Such is the case with the Silent Film Festival, which, despite the name, is actually a competition.

Here's how it works:   You make a film (silent, but it can be accompanied by live music) under three minutes long.  It revolves around one of these themes:

-  What is New York?

-  What's your favorite emotion?

-  What emotion is New York?

-  Your favorite ghost story 

No explicity nudity or violence; otherwise, go nuts.  Submit your work on a DVD in .mpeg or QuickTime format by August 11th, along with your full name, phone number, e-mail, mailing address, and a description of your fim, category, and inspiration to:

ATTN:  Silent Film Festival

60 E. 42nd Street Ste. #659; NY, NY  10165 

The ten best films will be displayed in a prominent place in the city by the competition's sponsor, a major Manhattan real estate developer.  In addition to the free publicity, the sponsors will also pay your way into two major film festivals (your choice) you'd like to submit the film to.  You can with any questions.

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Tasha Robinson at the AV Club brings us a brief but very engaging interview with Andrew Stanton, longtime studio pro at Pixar and the director of WALL-E.  In a wide-ranging discussion, he talks about the lunch meeting that produced a decade of the best animated films in history, the development of Pixar from a handful of like-minded creatives to a massive Hollywood studio employing hundreds of people, and his unconventional approach to writing a script in which the main character has no voice.  "I remember reading the script for Alien," he recalls; "It was written by Dan O'Bannon, and he had this amazing format where he didn't use a regular paragraph of description.  He would do little four-by-eight word descriptions and then sort of left-justify it and make it about four lines each, little blocks, so it almost looked like haikus.  It would create this rhythm in the readers where you would appreciate these silent visual moments as much as you would the dialogue on the page.  It really set you into the rhythm and mindset of what it would be like to watch the finished film.  I was really inspired by that, so I used that format for WALL-E."  

One of the fascinating things about the interview is the discussion of how the most high-tech movie studio in history uses some positively primitive methods to actually make their movies.  Starting with the standard lament that computers will always take up all the time you allocate them to solve a problem ("Once you've got more memory, you just want to do more with it.  And you end up feeling it takes just as long to do now the 16 things in five minutes instead of the one thing you used to do in five minutes"), Stanton notes that Pixar always views its films as storytelling challenges, not technical ones (how do you make a cool movie about monsters, as opposed to how do you solve the fur problem in CGI).  He also notes that, with WALL-E, they were attempting to tell a story almost entirely visually, and so looked back -- way back -- for cues:  forsaking Chuck Jones' Warner Brothers cartoons as overly familiar to geeks like themselves, they instead prepared for each day's work by watching a Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd silent short every day at lunch for a year and a half.

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CGI (or “computer-generated imagery,” Grandpa) is like plastic surgery: it works best when you’re least aware of it, adding value without calling attention to its glaring, unnatural fakery. A little and you’re marveling at the natural, age-appropriate sexiness of Susan Sarandon, Helen Mirren or Meryl Streep, wondering “did she or didn’t she?” with regard to nips, tucks and nose jobs.  Too much, and you’re recoiling in horror at that freakish Cat Lady lady, gasping in shock over missing noses and airbag lips, or wondering why Nicole Kidman keeps wearing that creepy Nicole Kidman mask.

Like plastic surgery, Hollywood has developed an unhealthy addiction to CGI, preferring the obviously fake to the convincingly real, whether in the form of grotesquely disproportionate rock-hard breasticles or pixilated atrocities like Speed Racer, the cinematic equivalent of watching other people's birthday brats playing video games at Chuck E. Cheese for an endless 135 minutes.

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SAN FRANCISCO: Anyone who's had the aurally disheartening experience of watching a silent film with one of those canned, rinky-dink organ accompaniments that used to predominate public-television broadcasts should want to tip his hat to the Club Foot Orchestra, the San-Francisco-based ten-piece group that, starting in 1987, has composed and performed a whole string of new scores for various silent classics. On April 12, the Castro Theatre presents three great movies with live music from Club Foot: Buster Keaton's perfect comedy Sherlock Jr. as a special "discount-priced matinee", and an evening double bill of two peerless nightmares from Germany, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and F. W. Murnau's gloriously contaminated vampire film Nosferatu. It's hard to think of a better way to treat your eyes and ears on a Saturday night.

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If you didn’t wake up at 5:00 EST this morning and turn on ESPN2, you may not be aware that baseball season has begun. (The Oakland A’s and Boston Red Sox played their season opener in Japan’s Tokyo Dome, which accounts for the rather unorthodox start time.) This will be the final season for Yankee Stadium (a new version of same is scheduled to open across the street in 2009), so it only seems appropriate to commemorate Opening Day with a look at the cinematic history of the House That Ruth Built.

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