suddenly last summer - The Screengrab

Summerfest '08: "The Endless Summer"

We've featured a lot of different types of movies here at the Screengrab during our excting Summerfest '08 feature, in which we endeavour to review a movie a week with the word "summer" in the title that you can watch while you're putting off trying on your new bikini. We've featured Summer School, a movie that has made people inappropriately nostalgic for the 1980s; we've featured Summer of Sam, a movie in which it is revealed that Satan speaks through us in the voice of dogs, and sounds an amazing amount like John Tuturro; and we've featured Suddenly Last Summer, a movie in which a homosexual predator and his pimp sister wreak havoc on a small European town before he is eaten by the townsfolk. No, really. We've featured not one, but two movies starring Freddie Prinze, Jr., which, believe me, was just as painful for me as it was for you. But while many of these films have inspired us to do a wide variety of things -- become nostalgic for the sight of Kirstie Alley in a bathing suit; go back in time and put Tennessee Williams on anti-depressants; avoid watching any future films starring Freddie Prinze, Jr. -- none of them have actually inspired us to get up off our duffs, get out of the house, and do something other than watch movies all summer. But that changes today as we take a look at the greatest surfing documentary ever made.

So grab your board, hop in your woodie, and join us on a search for the perfect wave as we enjoy The Endless Summer!

THE ACTION: Mike Hynson and Robert August are surfers. That's what they do: surf. Bruce Brown, who wrote and directed the movie, is a filmmaker, but he's a surfer too. Surfers are an uncomplicated lot, and they really want nothing more than to bum around all day waiting for the best wave they can possibly get, and then they want to get out there and shoot that son of a bitch for all it's worth. That's essentially all that happens in this movie: Hynson and August trek from one end of Africa to another, then to Australia, the South Pacific, and anywhere else they can possibly get to, just looking for a really good curl. Brown follows them, training his 16mm camera at them for some blurry nature shots and some absolutely gorgeous filmwork out on the water. The two engage in wacky hijinks, doing very little to dispel the notion that surfers are overgrown, doofy man-children, and Brown provides amiable frat-boy narration, often meandering and nonsensical, to cover the silence of the action scenes (most of the shots had no soundman and hence, no sound). Then they trudge off in search of another wave, and when they find one, they ride it until they just can't ride it no more. That's it, in its entirety: 90 minute of three goofy guys bumming around the globe looking for waves to ride. It's exactly that bad -- and that great.

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: July 5-11, 2008

And so ends another thrilling week at the Screengrab. It’s always hard to say goodbye, but let’s concentrate on the good times we’ve shared.

Paul Clark and Leonard Pierce divulged their favorites from the first half of 2008. Always a ray of sunshine, yours truly brought you the Unwatchables from the year so far.

Speaking of Unwatchables, Anus Magillicutty definitely qualifies. And though it’s not an official entrant, it sounds as if Three on a Meathook gets an honorable mention. But The Quick and the Undead deserved (slightly) better.

We shared two summers in one week: Summer of ’42 and Suddenly Last Summer.

We finished up our trilogy of patriotic lists with America the Dissonant: Seven Movies That Send Mixed Messages About U.S. And we asked for your help in picking the lists of the future.

We looked ahead to Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards, remakes of Red Dawn and The Day the Earth Stood Still, Alex Cox’s proposed Repo Chick, and…Beverly Hills Chihuahua?

Summerfest '08: "Suddenly Last Summer"

Last week on Summerfest '08, we brought you a ripe slice of faux-Tennessee Williams by way of William Faulkner, with the overheated 1958 steamer The Long Hot Summer. This week, we're cutting out the middleman and bringing you actual Tennessee Williams -- or as actual as Tennessee Williams could get given the restrictive studio censorship of the 1950s -- with Suddenly Last Summer. As if reacting to a thrown-down gauntlet, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, a year after The Long Hot Summer debuted, said "Oh yeah? We'll just see about that!", and brought in an even more dysfunctional cast to film an even more flowery tale of sexual repression with an even more transparently, and yet never explicitly, gay subtext than Hollywood was previously willing to put up with. If you think all this sublimated gayness, sweaty sexuality, and boiled-over Freudianism is pretty heavy water for a frivolous feature about movies with the word 'summer' in the title to carry, well, blame Hollywood, not us -- apparently there's something about the months from May to September that gets producers and directors all moist and lascivious. If someone out there has access to a university press, there's probably a good thesis floating around about why, exactly, "summer blockbuster" has transitioned in meaning these last few decades from "steamy romance about forbidden love" to "movie with lots of CGI where stuff gets blown all to shit". It probably says something profound about our culture, unless it doesn't.

Anyway, let's get on with the latest forbidden fruit in our cinematic basket: crack open some cognac, find yourself a nice Mediterranean beach on which to lounge, and join us for a viewing of Suddenly Last Summer!

THE ACTION: Catherine Holley (played by a luscious-looking Liz Taylor) has just returned from Europe, where she has gone all wiggy. Apparently, while she was visiting, her cousin Sebastian, played by nobody because we never see him, was killed under mysterious circumstances, and the whole thing was just too, too unpleasant and caused Catherine to have a nervous breakdown. Once she starts to recover, she makes cryptic but extremely disturbing comments about Sebastian's demise, which rubs his mom (played by Katherine Hepburn as the wonderfully named Mrs. Violet Venable) the wrong way. Violet insists that Sebastian was a very nice young man and a deeply sensitive artist and that's all there is to that, and when Catherine insists that there was something peculiar about the lad, she is instructed to shut her yapper or have it shut for her, in the person of professional psychiatrist and lobotomy practitioner Montgomery Clift. Eventually the truth comes out, or as much of the truth as the producers were allowed to show at the time: Sebastian was murdered by his neighbors for his predatory sexual practices, and Catherine -- like Violet before her -- was being used by the nefarious fellow as his procurer. (In fact, what is only hinted at in the movie is made explicit in the play: Sebastian was a pederast at worst and a seducer of young men at best, who was not only killed by his neighbors, but eaten by them as well. Creepy!)