To Live and Die in L.A.

Every week, I've decided, this blog will recognize an "oldie, but goodie." I hope that I can choose some more obscure titles, titles that may not be obscure to cinephiles, like myself, but could be new discoveries for the everyday, normal filmgoer.

There's no real criteria for a flick that qualifies it as an oldie, but goodie - it just has to be old in some sense of the word, say, at least 10-15 years - and I will offer my humble commentary on it in hope that it will convince someone revisit it or see it for the very first time. I realize that some people might just hate the flicks I choose and I don't really care. See the flick, hate it, and write me to tell me about it. Maybe I will be swayed.

Before I start, I would like to consider the word "old" as it relates to movies. Personally, my cutoff age for a flick to be considered old is around 40 years. When talking to my friends or co-workers, old becomes 10, 15, maybe 20 years. I've discovered that some people simply will not watch movies that are much older than those ages. Except, perhaps, movies that they coveted when they were children. Movies like LABYRINTH, THE GOONIES, and INDIANA JONES. Sometimes people will reference GREMLINS or ET, but generally, I never hear people go much further back, even when I talk about JAWS, RAGING BULL, and ORDINARY PEOPLE. I don't know why people may feel this way, but movies of the seventies are amazing. I mean, I can't even begin to start a list, as there are just too damn many to consider. I urge people to check out flicks remastered on DVD. It is worth it.

Anyway, on to this minor classic from 1985 - TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A.. I think this is the coolest fucking title in all of moviedom. I really do. I mean, you just cannot plug in any other name and achieve the same effect. To Live and Die in Chicago. Blah. Fuck that. To Live and Die in New York. are you serious? And I live in New York. Its not the same. Life and death just can't seem to coexist in the same breath with a city like they can with LA.

People who have heard of TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA have probably heard about it because of the car chase that the flick is built around - and it is a damn fine car chase - but the movie works for other reasons too. It has a super creepo villain played by Willem Dafoe, who likes to bang androgynous chicks all decked-out in leather. He plays a counterfeiter who only seems to work while listening to Tangerine Dream. He is cold-blooded as hell. The flick also has a HERO who is potentially more nasty than the villain and he is played with cocky, almost abrasive confidence by William Petersen. I mean, the guy calls everybody "amigo." How mid-eighties, badass cop is that?

The movie is dark, but filmed with an eye for "Miami Vice" neon-lit settings, and it has a very stark, Michael Mann vibe to it. In fact, Mann, who is friends with William Friedkin (director of LA and The French Connection, and The Exorcist) accused Friedkin of stealing story concepts for LA. The flick play a little like an extended Miami Vice episode, but much dirtier and much more violent. The film has almost no redeeming characters. There's something fascinating about watching a film populated only by the ultra-sleazy. Its like walking on the wild side because you eventually have to root for someone and everyone here is nasty, so, in essence, you become an advocate to the sleaze-fest.

Anyway, the flick has a cool plot. Petersen plays a CIA agent trying to bust Dafoe for counterfeiting and for killing his partner, who was (shocker) days away from retirement. He doesn't have the backing of the CIA, so Peterson goes rogue with his new, young, awe-struck partner, and decides to rip off a drug smuggler of some cash in order to set up a deal with Dafoe. Little does he realize that the smuggler is an undercover FBI agent - who dies in the robbery, which leads to the AMAZING car chase - and Petersen is basically on the run. Cool stuff.

So, check out the movie. Some people absolutely hate it. I love it. Hated it at first, but love it now.

1-18-08

Alright. I know this date, which has been doubling as a title, is being talked to death. I know that every blogger who keeps tabs on film development sites (ie Aintitcool and darkhorizons) has been addressing JJ Abrams new film, especially its viral marketing campaign that launched famously with a preview ahead of Transformers, for quite some time. Similarly, The Dark Knight has been identified as a user of the viral design as well. I want to take moment to heap some praise on Abrams' grand scheme.

I LOVE this campaign. Is it possible that I love this campaign because I have an infatuation with Abrams' show LOST? Yes, one, more than likely, influences the other. Is it possible to love 1-18-08's campaign, but feel something close to indifference for The Dark Knight's efforts? I've been trying to differentiate between my love for Abrams as an entertainer and my love for the Viral Marketing schematic. But, again, one influences the other.

Abrams is an entertainer. A showman. His campaign leans more towards the showmanship that a magician displays during the course of an act. There is buildup, sustained tension, red herrings, and a final revelatory release. Abrams uses all of those, illusions, and a sense of the sublime to create a world that involves his audiences, a pliable reality that they can interact with. 1-18-08's website is a perfect example.

Initially, it just contained pictures, which prompted hours of study, as people looked for visual clues, hoping that something lined up or inverted. Then, some lucky Joe figured out that the pictures flipped over and contained messages written on the back. Today, I found out that if you listen to the site for 6 minutes, you will hear the roar of the creature. All of these little discoveries make the audience feel like they're making these discoveries themselves, as if they're in on the whole Magic trick with Abrams. He utilizes web, movie theatres, print, and word-of-mouth. It truly is immersing and ingenious.

Yes, I LOVE it.

It reminds me of the way that Spielberg slowly builds to the reveal of the shark in JAWS. He hints at the Sharks capacity for wicked damage, at its monstrous size throughout the film's entirety. And in a small, subliminal way, the audience's fear creeps up on them as their imaginations fire-up images of just how big the beast could be.

Nobody knows exactly what is going on with 1-18-08, but they can't say that Abrams hasn't been working overtime to fire their imaginations and drop hints of the film's secrets.

Brilliant As They Are Ruthless

Taken from the trailer of the original "Die Hard" in 1988, "they're as Brilliant as they are ruthless," is a line used to describe the film's villains, lead by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman). I remembered the line as I was watching the most recent Die Hard -yes, I'm talking about Die Hard 4 again - and observing how fucking lame the villain was. Now, this is nothing against Timothy Olyphant, who was twice as menacing in "The Girl Next Door," as a porn magnet, but I suspect my true beef is with the writers and director of Die Hard 4. For whatever reason, the studio chose to saddle the flick with a PG-13 rating and, I think, as a consequence, Olyphant was commanded to rope in his performance. He couldn't have been less formidable. I don't know that he wouldn't have been more appropriate in a Cody Banks flick. I suppose he was trying to smolder under his icy exterior, but all I got was a bored Timothy Olyphant deeply pissed he couldn't let loose with more verve and hate. It takes a considerable amount of hate to plan and execute his diabolical design. Jon McClane, in any normal Die Hard flick, would Windex the fucking windows with this guy's ass.

With that said, let us consider the original Die Hard. You have John McClane, hero extraordinaire, taking on Hans Gruber, the standard of hissable villains. Make no mistake about it; the original Die Hard works well for many reasons, but its biggest assets is Hans Gruber. Gruber was smart, savvy, and capable of sudden, explosive action. He shot and killed at least two people in cold blood. He rarely got rattled and could produce a nice quip with fantastic timing. He was a mean bastard and secretly, deep down, you kind of wanted him to succeed. That is the secret to a great villain - the audience has to secretly, almost subconsciously, root for the villain, or, in other words, thoroughly love to hate him.

Think of Hannibal Lecter. Disgusting cannibal? Maybe? Also, a brilliant doctor and manipulator with an intellect far superior to those around him. You love him. When he walks away at the end of "Silence of the Lambs," you think, "damn, he got away. That's fucking cool. Creepy, but cool." Everyone thought that, which is why the character was brought back in many more movies. That is why Hopkins took home the Oscar for 10 minutes of screen time.

Darth Vader, you ask? Nowhere near as witty or realistic, but every bit as cool visually. His costume, his deep, speaker-filtered breathing, his father-stature. He was like God.

The greatest villain of all time? Well, many people have different preferences. There are almost too many great villains to count. Henry Fonda in "Once Upon a Time in the West," Dennis Hopper in "Blue Velvet," Jack Nicholson in every other movie he was doing for a while. And yet, for my money, I would not hesitate to list Tim Roth in "Rob Roy," at the top of my list. I have no doubt that this performance is the nastiest piece of work to ever oppose a protagonist. To look at him, you'd see a man of tiny stature, a fop, with an acidic tongue that you might think compensates for his lack of physical prowess. Bullshit. The man is more deadly with his sword than anything else he might have in his arsenal. He murders, steals, rapes, and lies his way throughout the movie. I don't think that I have ever wanted a villain to suffer through a nasty comeuppance more than I did with Roth in this movie. Just go to IMDB and look at the memorable quotes uttered by this vile sonofabitch. To see him uttering them on screen is all the more amazing.

Again, I'm certain that everyone has a favorite villain. I'm partial to Hans Gruber and John Malkovich in "In the Line of Fire," too. I also think that Gene Hackman in "Unforgiven" is a real fucker, albeit a fucker in a land of fuckers. Still, I don't know that any of them hold a candle to Roth in "Rob Roy." Just rent it and see.

I felt compelled to write this all down because I have seen a real lack of memorable villains in recent times. Even in the new "Casino Royale." The Bourne movies seem to survive without a great antagonist through the sheer physicality of the productions, but I think you will see more attention paid to villains in the near future. I hear that "3:10 to Yuma" features a great psycho in Ben Foster. He was creepy in Hostage too. So, I await that.

There is an old rule of thumb: Bond flicks are only as good as their villains. I believe this is true. I also believe it should be the standard that all thrillers should be held at. Compelling villains more often than not equate to a compelling struggle.

Anyone remember Edward Norton in "Primal Fear?" I rest my case.

For ONCE

It has just dawned on me that the audiences of America (small as they may be, in this case) have already seen next year's Academy Award winner for Best Picture. Now, I know that most people who read this couldn't care less about the Oscars, and in some cases, consider them to be the kiss-of-death for small films that attract a cult following, only to become overexposed and lose their flave of the month status. I've seen it happen many times, most recently with "Crash" and "Little Miss Sunshine." The latter, I believe, is extremely overrated. The former? Well, I saw it on opening night, with almost nobody in the theatre, and walked out, moved. I know many people who felt exactly the same way until months later, when cynical critics started crying "preachy," and "syrupy."

Anyway, I digress, but its my blog, so I'm allotted a few digressions, rants, and in-your-faces.

The film, which is smaller than either of the two I mentioned - in budget and cast - is "Once." Here, I am saying it now, that this film will definitely be in the mix come next February when it is time to nominate the finalists for the big prize. This film is truly special. I mean that. I hate musicals. Hate them! I find them awkward on the screen, awkward and almost unpleasant in the way that everything is designed around the musical set-pieces and not the storyline or the characters. Its like watching a bad action flick, where it is just a series of sequences strung together by a flimsy story. All success depends on style or strength of direction. Mostly, though, I think they're damn boring.

Then, I discovered Once, which isn't a musical per se, but a love story fueled organically by a mutual love of music. And the music, well, the music is pretty fucking good. Good enough that I picked out a few favorites from the soundtrack on iTunes.

I don't really know why I find the film to be so fantastic. Maybe its the fact that it seems to do so much with so little. Maybe its the fact that I discovered it on a small, one-screen theatre amidst a summer of bombastic, Hollywood blockbusters. Maybe, just maybe, its because the film is about two normally fucked-up individuals who come into one another's orbit, realize that they have a mutual love of music, and through that, they come to love each other. Its here that the film becomes a small miracle because these two people, they don't fall into eachother's arms or wait till it rains to share a moment, no, instead, these two people are the walking-wounded and choose not cloud something so pure with the banality of casual sex or he said, she said bullshit. The way the film ends is really quite perfect, which is sort of contrary to the beauty of the movie, but who cares? Really?

Bottom line: see this movie. Steven Spielberg himself has called it an inspiration. Are you serious? Spielberg? Get out there, look past the marketing campaigns of the behemoths of the box office and see this one before everyone turns against it.

Thank you, Paul Greengrass!

I am deeply saddened and a little embarrassed. I saw an action film this summer, took a biased point-of-view, and came out loving it, knowing deep down that it wasn't nearly as good as it could of been. Not by half. Of course, it wasn't as bad as it should have been. That film was Live Free or Die Hard. I cannot tell you how much I was looking forward to that film - the original has and always will be my favorite film of all time. It absolutely set the Action standard in 1988 and it has yet to be surpassed.

I had waited 12 years for the return of John McClane and what I got for my troubles was a watered-down shell of the character saddled with a completely inane plot and the least formidable villain of the series. It was entertaining and even cool (the car/helicopter scene was extremely well done down the line), but it was nothing compared to the previous films in the series. Nowhere close. Sorry Bruce and Co.

You have to want to root for John McClane in a Die Hard movie. He attracts you to his side because he is the everyman; the guy who loves pizza, the guy who drinks too much, the guy who can't understand his wife, the guy who would much rather be home, smoking cigarettes and bitching about the officiating in the game on TV. In Live Free or Die Hard, we get none of that.

I didn't realize any of this until last week, when I was shocked out of my bullshit, biased daze by a badass chase film - The Bourne Ultimatum. Now here is a flick that knows how to put you on your ass, stand you back up, and lay you down again because it just don't quit. I have to tell you - I think this is the best action film in forever, save, of course, for The Bourne Supremacy, which I actually preferred to Ultimatum, but for some reason don't remember appreciating as much. I have recently revisited it and decided that it was incredible, with the nastiest, twitchiest car chase that I have ever seen.

Supremacy is a minor classic and that makes Ultimatum all the more impressive because it matches Supremacy's energy with the ballsy decision to not slow down for anything. I have never seen a film interweave its story with a 2-hour long chase so seamlessly. The scenes of "downtime" are as explosively filmed as the chases.

This director, Greengrass, is for real. This son of a bitch knows how to make an action film. He knows how to film his hero, how to have him engage in hand-to-hand combat with other badasses. Most importantly, he knows how to make the audience feel like a participant. You are there, dodging every punch and kick, ducking and diving through all manner of traffic. I love his style. I cannot get enough of it. He doesn't want it to end for his hero. He wants Bourne to endure as much as is possible in order for him to win the audience over. This, in essence, is what made Die Hard so great. John McClane had to earn our respect and McTiernan put him through the Action Olympics to make sure that McClane got our attention. Greengrass, in these past two films, has done the same for Jason Bourne.

I would also like to point out, that without Greengrass and his kickass, realistic style, we never would have been graced with the ultra-cool Casino Royale, which was just filthy good. James Bond would never have recieved such a reboot had Greengrass not shown up with that car chase in Supremacy.

So, Thank You, Paul Greengrass for opening my eyes and showing me and the rest of the world what Die Hard 4 could have been. A Greengrass shot, anyone?