The Screengrab

You learn some funny things when researching a column dedicated to filmmakers who have mysteriously vacated the multiplex. As surprised as I was last week to find out that Michael Cimino was originally slated to direct Footloose, I am doubly stunned this week to discover that there are no less than five Beethoven movies. I’m not talking about the deaf composer idolized by Alex in A Clockwork Orange; I’m talking about the freakin’ St. Bernard of that name. And do you know what that fifth Beethoven movie is titled? That’s right, it’s Beethoven’s 5th! And why am I telling you this?

It’s because the first Beethoven movie was co-written by John Hughes, under the nom de garbage Edmond Dantès. Dantès, you may recall, was the Count of Monte Cristo, but it’s also the name Hughes has used on several occasions to disguise his involvement in films such as Maid in Manhattan. Looking over his body of work, you have to wonder if he wishes he’d started using the name earlier.

Read More...

It's almost hard to believe that Raymond Chandler's novel The Big Sleep — which featured the first appearance of quintessential hard-boiled private detective Philip Marlowe — and Howard Hawks' hugely celebrated film adaptation — appeared within a mere six years of one another.  So hugely has the cultural landscape been shaped by the twin conceptions of the private eye, so resonant have both versions of the story proven over the decades, so incredibly influential have both Big Sleeps beein to film and literature that you might almost imagine the book was some sort of ur-text penned around the same time as the epic of Gilgamesh.  But in fact, when Chandler wrote what many consider to be his greatest work, it was very much in the pulp milieu at a time when that carried no hint of respectability.  It was later generations of critics who would rightly elevate Chandler from his pulpy surroundings into his rightful place in the upper eschelons of American writers; in 1939, when it was written, it was a popular entertainment and nothing more.

Read More...

The High Hat, a web-based quarterly journal of arts and cultural criticism with which the Screengrab just so happens to share some personnel, has posted a special supplement featuring its top tens of the year, and of particular interest to readers of this site is the fact that the lists are very film-intensive, with special attention paid to the question of whether or not 2007 actually lives up to the hype that it's one of the best movie years on record.  Absolutely, says CalArts film professor and writer Gary Mairs; sort of, says my Face/Off sparring partner Phil Nugent; not really, says cinephile and freewheeling critic George Wu; no freakin' way, says movie janitor/"Bottom Shelf" auteur Scott von Doviak.  As for me, I was too busy listening to metal to pay attention.

The fall issue of The High Hat, a quarterly online journal of arts and culture, debuted on Wednesday. I'm one of the magazine’s editors, and my fellow Screengrab stalwart Phil Nugent is a regular contributor. Each issue of the Hat is built around a theme, and this time it’s "Places"; some of the current issue’s articles on how geographical space informs film include Erica Jahneke’s piece on the depiction of post-9/11 New York in film and television, film critic and Hick Flicks author Scott Von Doviak on Stephen King’s Maine on screen, and Shauna McKenna on Fellini’s Roma and Wenders’ Tokyo-Ga. Elsewhere, in the High Hat’s regular "Nitrate" film section, Gary Mairs discusses cinema’s 2007 "Summer of Loss"; Hayden Childs looks at Gerry, Grizzly Man and other recent films featuring man at the mercy of nature; Kevin Fullam reviews the treatment of mental illness on screen, and our own Phil Nugent pays tribute to George Segal, the "forgotten actor" of '70s cinema. — Leonard Pierce