THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET (1984)



Like many new arrivals to New York City, Joe Morton’s character in John Sayles’ indie comedy is hoping for a fresh start in the strange, scary but not entirely hostile metropolis. The big difference, of course, is that Morton’s innocent mute is a three-toed extraterrestrial, an escaped slave from "another planet" being pursued by two vaguely feline (and white) Men In Black (who, ironically, are far more concerned with the number of toes on their quarry’s feet than the color of his skin). Sayles’ gentle parable of multicultural integration features a magic trick (in the scene above) that hinges on a still-timely sociological sight gag about urban race relations. Yet it’s interesting to ponder what the eponymous Brother would think if he made a return visit to our planet today: with the Disney-fication of Times Square and the ongoing gentrification of Harlem (not to mention the upcoming Obama inauguration), even the human characters from Sayles’ early ‘80s world might feel a bit disoriented in the strange land of 2008 Manhattan.

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Not to sound morbid, but it occurred to me recently (whilst contemplating my own mortality) that someday – hopefully some far distant day -- I’ll read an Entertainment Weekly Spring/Summer/Fall/Holiday preview issue and/or watch a flock of coming attractions trailers for a whole bunch of movies I won’t, in fact, live long enough to see.

In Zelig, Woody Allen’s chameleon character dies with just one regret: that he never got to finish reading Moby Dick. Imagine Zelig’s disappointment if he’d been a Harry Potter fan in November, forever denied the opportunity to see the cinematic adaptation of Half-Blood Prince (let alone the Deathly Hallows)? And Lord knows at this point whether any of us will live long enough to see Zack Snyder’s much-litigated version of Watchmen. (Ironically, another movie that most of us seem destined never to see is Fanboys, about a cancer-stricken geek in 1998 determined, in yet another layer of sad irony, to see the as-yet-unreleased Phantom Menace before he dies...but I digress.)

Anyhow, with my wife and I both fighting various wintry ailments (and going on a solid week of sleep deprivation thanks to the itchy throats and sinus pressure of the damned), it’s hard to look forward to anything at this point beyond still yet more mucus...but if I should manage somehow to survive this relentlessly cold, snowy New England winter (good Lord...it’s only JANUARY?), then here are the five upcoming 2009 releases I’m most looking forward to:

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We've lost a lot because of the terror attacks of September 11th.  Thousands of lives; our sense of safety and security; odd little bits of the Constitution which seem to have fallen off and are yet to be located.  Some would even argue that in a very profound way, we have lost our soul.  But perhaps no loss is as incalculable, as tragic, as utterly horrifying as...Forrest Gump 2.

Yes, according to screenwriter Eric Roth, who won an Oscar for his script to the feel-mawkish movie of 1994, he turned in a treatment for a sequel to the tale of a Zelig-like dullard -- which was meant to pick up immediately where the first movie left off, with Gump seated on a park bench eating drugstore candy and dispensing chain-restaurant-menu-ready platitudes -- on 09/10/2001.  The events of the next day led to some serious soul-searching by star Tom Hanks and director Robert Zemeckis, who decided that "the world had changed" and "we don't think this is relevant anymore", as if it had been before a handful of maniacs flew planes into some buildings.  Says Roth today, "Maybe some things should just be one thing and left as they are."  You'll never make it in today's Hollywood with that attitude, young man!

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Boy, what's up with all the Woody Allen posts this week?  I mean, sure, he's got a new movie opening today (Vicki Cristina Barcelona), and sure, a lot of critics are claiming it's his best work in a decade.  But someone says that every decade, and have been doing so for approximately four decades.  So who is this jerk who's so obsessed with the Wood-man, that he keeps forcing Screengrab readers to share his mania?  Oh, right -- it's me.  It may surprise you to learn that, given my fascination with the former Mssr. Konigsberg, I am not especially a huge fan of his work, and I'm certainly not one of his more vociferous defenders.  I think he's mistaken about being a Serious Artist, which gets in the way of his being one of the funniest men of his generation; he's got a major Mary Sue complex; he's somewhat technically limited as a director and receives a lot of credit for work that is properly given to his cinematographers; and I agree with Joe Queenan that his work is literally sophomoric -- the intellectual, moral and emotional themes in his movies rarely get past the level of someone who, like Woody himself, dropped out of college his sophomore year.  But in Annie Hall and Manhattan, he made two of the best movies of the 1970s; he's one of the finest comic minds on the planet; and he's managed to make a career for himself so robust that he's made an average of a movie a year for 30 years, which, no matter how similar the themes in said movies, is something like a miracle.  So, after you've watched Penelope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson make out in the Wood-man's latest masterpiece, why not rent five more of my favorites, and make it a festival?

WHAT'S UP, TIGER LILY?  (1966)

The fact that the directorial debut of a man many people consider the greatest moviemaker of his generation was little more than a cheap Chinese action-thriler with jokey dialogue dubbed in over it is shocking to some people.  It's as if someone told you that thumbocentric auteur/Kung Pow!  Enter the Fist director Steve Oedekerk grew up to be Jean-Luc Godard.  But it's true:  for his very first film in 1966, Woody Allen got the rights to a junk chop-socky called Key of Keys from American International Pictures, who had judged its plot too elaborate.  Woody and his cast simply chucked the damn plot out the window and turned the entire thing into a goofball James Bond parody, which the studio padded out with some extraneous nonsense and a couple of pop songs by the Lovin' Spoonful (the biggest brush that Woody would ever again have with modern popular culture), released, and went on to make a fortune off of.  What's even more surprising than the fact that What's Up, Tiger Lily? was Woody Allen's first movie as a 'director' is that it works so well -- it's tightly paced, contains tons of funny gags (many of which seemed a lot fresher than when bad comedians and internet wags recycled them 40 years later on the internet and in movie theatres).  A fun, funny piece of detournment , no matter how you view Allen's later career.     

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In what is surely a preview of much, much more to come as the Wood-man becomes older, crankier, and more obviously lacking in genius, Variety reports that Woody Allen is suing American Apparel for $10 million as a result of their having used an image from Annie Hall without his permission on one of their billboards.

We're no fans of American Apparel or their borderline creepy advertising, and we suspect that a booze-fueled conversation between Woody and AA founder Dov Charney would find that they share a lot of interests that no one else would be particularly interested in hearing about.  What's particularly ludicrous about the suit is how neatly it encapsulates some of Allen's prior, er, indiscretions while seeking monetary damages from a big, successful company which the lawsuit impugns for doing essentially the same thing.

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6. DR. EUDORA NESBITT FLETCHER (MIA FARROW) in ZELIG (1983)



For much of his film career, Woody Allen usually showed his full intensity when he applied himself to two kinds of scenes: those dealing with his search for the perfect woman, and those dealing with his search for the perfect therapist. He reached an apex of some sort in the parody documentary Zelig, where Allen's human-chameleon character finds the perfect woman in his psychiatrist, who helps him deal with his condition, and even rescues him from Nazi Germany. This paragon, who eventually marries her patient and lives happily ever after with him in wedded bliss, is of course played by Mia Farrow, who at the time was auditioning for the role of the director's idea of the perfect woman in real life.

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