Nice Guy Eddie R.I.P.

Actor Chris Penn, the younger brother of fellow thespian Sean and musician Michael, was found dead yesterday due to unknown causes. Like his famous brother, Chris began working in films early and co-starred in Francis Coppola's Rumble Fish, All the Right Moves (along with Tom Cruise), Footloose, Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider, and Robert Altman's Short Cuts, among many others. Some of my favorite Chris Penn roles were from The Wild Life (scripted by Cameron Crowe as a follow-up to Fast Times at Ridgemont High), Made in USA (a rarely seen "road trip" film with Lori Singer and Adrian Pasdar), At Close Range (an excellent crime film by James Foley and starring Sean Penn and Christopher Walken), True Romance, and of course, Reservoir Dogs, in which Penn played the foul-mouthed and very loyal Nice Guy Eddie.

He'll be missed. You can read more about the criminally overlooked character actor here.

Then Why'd You Hire Him in the First Place?

The notorious and ubiquitous Japanese director Takashi Miike’s entry for the Showtime anthology series, Masters of Horror, has been yanked from the schedule and will instead be released on DVD uncut. The prolific filmmaker, who has a penchant for disturbing, bizarre, and outright violent subject matter (Audition, MPD Psycho, Visitor Q, Ichi the Killer, among loads of others)—though his latest feature-film is a kid’s movie based on the splendid Yokai Monsters fantasy-horror series from the 1960s—has been given the boot because . . . his entry was disturbing, bizarre, and violent. Go figure. Creator and executive producer Mick Garris (he’s also the director of the execrable Sleepwalkers, and the television mini-series The Stand and The Shining) was quoted in The New York Times as saying Miike’s film for Showtime, entitled Imprint, was “definitely the most disturbing film” he’d ever seen. Well, I should hope so. I’m not the biggest Miike admirer around (though I . . . eh, loved Audition and I enjoyed his entry for the Three Extremes anthology film) but the man definitely knows how to craft grueling, transgressive horror films. What did the folks over at Showtime think they were going to get?

You can read more about the whole ordeal here.

I Don't Know My Way Home: Straw Dogs (1971)

In the wake of the recently released Sam Peckinpah DVD boxed set, I’ve been prepping myself by watching some of his earlier released discs before I plunge headfirst into the goldmine. That’s not to say that some of Peckinpah’s masterpieces haven’t already been unleashed upon the public. Far from it. The infamous director arguably has a stable full of classic films in his short if uneven oeuvre, including this staggeringly brutal meditation on violence starring Dustin Hoffman. Straw Dogs, based on a novel by Gordon Williams entitled The Siege of Trencher’s Farm, was notorious when it originally hit theater screens in 1971 (the same year that Eastwood appeared as the titular Dirty Harry and Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange pillaged patrons with its dystopian SF parable) and its unbridled power and relentless capacity to provoke and outrage viewers hasn’t abated one bit. I’ve seen it a few times before and its lucid yet bewildering treatise on the violence that swims within even the most “civilized” of individuals still continues to fascinate as well as sicken and horrify me. Although Peckinpah had previously dealt with the theme of man’s predilection toward committing carnage, and the almost ritualistic need to do so, most notably in his sure-fire masterpiece The Wild Bunch (newly re-released with the boxed set), Straw Dogs is probably the most brilliant and methodical examination of what motivates a person to kill that the director ever created. The film’s main question is simple: What will it take for a “civilized” person to destroy another person? But it’s the can of worms that ensues that is even more troubling. In killing someone, what do you surrender within yourself? And is violence the natural state of man? The answers to those conundrums are not proffered in the course of the film’s running time, though if they had been, I’m not so sure we would be too pleased. It’s potent stuff, to say the least, but also greatly entertaining.

Set in the west coast of England, in a quant if dismal little village in Cornwall, American mathematician David Sumner (Hoffman) and his wife Amy (Susan George), who is originally from the village, move into her late father’s ancestral stone cottage with dreams of starting a new life away from the crime and pollution of the States. Of course, this being a Peckinpah film, David’s and Amy’s attempt at domestic bliss is shattered by a horrendous incident and David is forced into finally making a stand against his provokers, as well as coming to grips with the darkness within. The screenplay by David Zelag Goodman and Peckinpah deftly thwarts our expectations at every turn by constantly twisting or changing the plot points leading to the inevitable. The road to perdition may be unavoidable for David, but there’s no clear journey there and the catalysts that we were so positive would ensnare him or push him over the brink wind up being meaningless in the big picture.

Peckinpah’s films (at least the important ones) are like cinematic Rorschach blots, never quite revealing the same thing to everyone. To some, the director is a macho provocateur wallowing in misogynistic representations of women and celebrating the most vile, ugly, and brutish characteristics in men. To others, he’s the last great American director in the tradition of Hawks and Ford before the film school brats (e.g. Coppola, De Palma, Lucas, Scorsese, and Spielberg) usurped the throne of 1970s Hollywood, a maverick larger-than-life personality who challenged the celluloid dream factory and lost. I guess I’m somewhere in the middle of the two camps. There’s no doubt in my mind that Peckinpah’s best films (Ride the High Country, Major Dundee, The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia) are the work of a mature and gifted artist, though many of them (Straw Dogs, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia most notably) also betray a profound misanthropy that borders on the morbid and nihilistic. The characters in the latter two films both transform into their new roles as men of violence so thoroughly that it borders on the psychopathic, though Warren Oates’ Bennie, from Bring Me the Head, at least hasn’t forsaken redemption altogether. He at least still covets the idea of redemption, even though his instincts know better. When David Sumner crosses over in Straw Dogs, there’s not even the slightest glimmer of reason left in him. He fully accepts his new role as killer angel, and as the protector of his bloodied homestead without a trace of self-knowledge or insight. He’s pure animal instinct at that point, and the transformation/rampage against the attackers is horrifyingly funny because of his lack of self-control. There’s also nothing more disturbing than witnessing someone lost within the thickets of his own personal moral oblivion.

Every time I return to the film, I’m reminded just how coherent and troubling its “message” is. I’m also stunned by how thorough Peckinpah’s lust to hurt us truly is. Obviously, he wants to shock us with the overt build-up of tension and the orgasmic violence that eventually overcomes us. But he more importantly wants to incite a riot of thought inside us, as well. Forget David Sumner. What would you do in the same situation? And would you like it?

Straw Dogs has been released onto DVD a few times here in the States, though never better than in the 2-disc Criterion Collection edition (which is now sadly out of print). The print is superb—the best I’ve ever seen it—and the wealth of extras (including two excellent essays, a feature-length documentary on Peckinpah, and some candid interviews with actress Susan George and producer Daniel Melnick) really help to clarify some of the film’s trickier and more unsettling motivations. Though really, I’m not sure any justification or explanation can tame this dark beast of a film, even thirty-some-years on.

A Fistful of Sushi or: Confessions of a Fellow Asian Film Freak

Jonathan Ross is a British radio/television host and confirmed lover of the strange, wild, weird, and bizarre as it relates to film. Back in the late-1980s he hosted a pretty good Cult Film 101 documentary called The Incredibly Strange Film Show which aired on A & E (I think) here in the U.S. Well, Ross is hosting a new show entitled Jonathan Ross's Asian Invasion next week on BBC4. Unfortunately, I don't live in Britain and I only get BBC America on the ol' digital cable, which I'd wager wont be airing this anytime soon if at all. I love Asian film in all its various and complex permutations, so I got a kick out of this article from the Guardian Unlimited, giving us all a little taste of what Mr Ross will offer up:

http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1680108,00.html

Not My Blood: War of the Worlds (2005)

(Contains Spoilers)

In many ways this is the first real post-911 American science fiction film. The horror genre already has 21 Days Later by Danny Boyle (an Englishman) and George Romero’s fourth installment in his “Living Dead” series, Land of the Dead, but Steven Spielberg is the first American director to truly capture the neurosis, dread, and fear of contemporary life in the wake of a cataclysmic event. Spielberg and screenwriters John Friedman and David Koepp echo the events of September 11th with calculated expertise, first igniting our fascination as the strange storms come roiling into view above Jersey, then funneling our horrible interest into outright fear as the first Martian machine uproots from its concrete prison beneath Cruise’s feet and unleashes destruction. Those scenes of mob mayhem are executed skillfully and seem tainted with deja vu. The Calamity of Hurricane Katrina, though obviously unintended due to the fact that it happened long after the film’s production, also came to mind several times as Cruise and family joined the ranks of the refugees. But many of the scenes involving the human exodus fleeing from the towering metal machines fluidly stalking our cities and countryside reminded me of WW2 film footage or snapshots—trees on fire, streets littered with debris and rubble, people disoriented with the soot of death heavy in the air. I kept thinking of Warsaw in flames and of the long dark night cast over Europe as the Third Reich’s own infernal machines pulverized the earth and its soldiers harvested the “other” for slaughter. During the scenes where the refugees attempt to flee on the ferry, images of the Jews were also ever-present in my mind. The film reminded me that much of human history could be viewed as a series of exoduses, escapes, and flights from one calamity to the next.

Spielberg’s take on H. G. Wells’ classic (and brilliant) novel is unarguably flawed, but there are so many fascinating and perverse images and themes here that it is impossible to dismiss. Upon my second viewing (I originally saw it in the theater), the film’s strengths (its visual design, apocalyptic atmosphere, Spielberg’s willingness to disturb) and weaknesses (questionable performances, heavy-handed desire to turn the End of the World into some sort of therapy session for Cruise and his family) become more apparent to me. The most cringe-inducing weakness is no doubt the film’s hackneyed and saccharine ending. Yet, the conclusion—with Cruise and family reunited to begin a brand new day—is an appropriate (albeit clumsy) dénouement of the film’s coherent and focused themes of maintaining the unity of the family at all costs and the belief in the restoration of the social order; a belief in the social order. Bad though it may be, I found the finale far more palatable than the misguided endings to Spielberg’s Artificial Intelligence: A.I. (a film I like very much despite several flaws) and Minority Report (a film I enjoyed up until the last twenty-minutes or so). Perhaps I simply found War of the Worlds’ Dr. Phil influenced finale to be a bit more agreeable considering it only lasted a minute or so, instead of the dreadful, overlong endings I suffered through for both A.I. and Minority Report.

Although I’ve disliked many of his films and have problems with even the ones I do enjoy outside of Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (arguably his best films), I find Spielberg more and more interesting as time goes by. There’s no doubt that he’s in touch with humanity’s shadow and the dreadful things we’ll do when faced with adversity. He’s fascinated with our darker nature. But I never get the sense that he’s in touch with his own shadow self. For all his cinematic wizardry and his sure-footedness in obtaining some great performances from his actors, his films (I’m talking about the “serious” ones like Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan) remain antiseptic and simplistic beneath their blitzkrieg exteriors and relish in documenting unimaginable bloodshed with the utmost “realism” and technical accomplishments. I’ve heard that Spielberg’s latest, Munich, does plunge us into a character’s heart of darkness effectively, so perhaps I’ll have to rethink all of this once I’ve seen it (hopefully next week).

Until then, I’ll stick with Spielberg’s “entertainments.” A few critics routinely dismissed War of the Worlds’ middle section with Cruise and Dakota Fanning (who plays his daughter) hunkering down in the cellar with former ambulance driver Tim Robbins, while the blood harvest rages up top, as a ponderous, murky, and meandering interlude. It dragged down the pace of the popcorn blockbuster too much. I couldn’t disagree more. I found it, upon second viewing, to be the black heart of the film. Cruise’s murder of Robbins as a way to restore order to his fractured family is disturbing, depraved, and fascinating by its implications. It’s a moment of genius when Fanning’s character slowly comprehends what her father has done; that what’s been unleashed down in that dank cellar may be worse than the machines themselves. It may not equal anything in Michael Haneke’s stark apocalyptic film, Time of the Wolf, but it’s rare that an American blockbuster nowadays would even hint at the lengths many would go to keep up appearances.

Ennio Morricone: Crime and Dissonance

Well, the Christmas season is over and I’ve been laying low, trying to maintain my sanity after mingling with some of my more crazy relatives, and just generally keeping it together. One of the ways I maintain equilibrium is through music. This year, Bad Santa was extremely gracious by delivering into my quivering hands the new two-disc Ennio Morricone CD collection, Crime and Dissonance. Yeah, I know, do we really need another Morricone collection? He’s a prolific composer to say the least, and the numerous compilations, remixes, and original soundtracks themselves document whatever style the maestro was mastering at the time. Well, after listening to the first couple of tracks off of disc one, there’s no doubt in my mind that this is one of the finest, most thematically consistent compilations of Morricone’s late-1960s, early-1970s period. It’s a strong addition to any Morricone aficionado’s collection. This is bold, experimental, psychedelic, sexy, scary, and sometimes transcendent music, charting Morricone’s work outside of the Spaghetti Western work he’s rightfully renowned for. Compiled by Alan Bishop and with liner notes from avant-garde composer John Zorn (who recorded his own tribute to Morricone with his brilliant CD The Big Gundown), the tracks tend to favor the glimmering darkness that Morricone was exploring at the time; though plenty of the tracks are not dark by any means, strangeness and exoticism are ever-present. It’s a relatively perfect mix-tape of aural shades and shifting sonic textures, failing to be the holy grail of Morricone compilations simply because such a collection would have to be twice as long to attain such an honor. I think I’ll always favor the epic, playful, emotional majesty Morricone attained in his work for Sergio Leone’s westerns, but for my ears this is nevertheless pure acid-drenched bliss.

Crime and Dissonance is available on CD from the fantastic Ipecac Recordings label, which puts out loads of other strange sounds from strange people. Check ‘em out.