A Horse Walks into a Trailer

In case you missed it over the last week I thought I'd clue y'all in to these two pieces I wrote for Trespass Magazine recently. On Sunday I looked at the best and worst film posters of June with particularly verbose enthusiasm for Here I Am and Sleeping Beauty. Did June produce the best (Here I Am) and worst (X-Men: First Class) posters of 2011? We'll see soon enough, I guess, but the product is there. On the other side of the film marketing coin are the movie trailers and in the new Trailer Tuesday column I look at two Steven Spielberg projects, The Adventures of Tintin and War Horse. I did not care for either.

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Rubbing the Wrong Way

Quentin Dupieux's telekinetic car tyre movie Rubber was one title I was very eager to see after last year's MIFF. Unfortunately I missed it due to bad scheduling (on behalf of the festival and myself), but having just watched it thanks to Madmen's DVD release I can comfortably say I didn't miss a thing. In fact, after 40 minutes of watching it I went to Twitter and labelled it "unwatchable" before going to bed.

Returning to it today and it was pretty much just as bad as it was last night. It holds no water at all, in one ear out the other, and amounts to noting more than an overly extended Tropfest winner. It probably would have made a very entertaining Tropfest winner, too, but as a feature film it's 80 minutes of blah.


"In the Steven Spielberg movie E.T. why is the alien brown? No reason.
In Love Story why do the two characters fall madly in love with each other? No reason.
In Oliver Stone's JFK why is the President suddenly assassinated by some stranger? No reason.
In The Excellent Chain Saw Massacre [sic] by Tobe Hooper why don't we ever see the characters go to the bathroom? Or wash their hands like people do in real life? Absolutely no reason.
Worse, in The Pianist by Polanski how come this guy has to hide and live like a bum when he plays the piano so well? Once again the answer is no reason.
...
All great films contain some element of no reason."
With this introduction, writer/director Quentin Dupieux waves his magic wand and gives himself carte blanch to do whatever the hell he wants with no rhyme or reason whatsoever. 'It's the point, stupid!' This dialogue sounds like it was written by a 13-year-old who was eager to prove he knew a lot about movies by citing some famous movies and their directors (except, quite tellingly, Arthur Hiller who I guess doesn't have the same arty cache as Roman Polanski or Oliver Stone). Instead, he just comes off looking silly and more than a little childish. It's not like mainstream audiences are going to be watching Rubber anyway, so why not take inspiration from that other directing Quentin and cite some more esoteric titles?

This scene, a prologue of sorts, sets up the film in the wrong manner from the get go, anyway. Without it I may have been able to accept Rubber as just some sort of bizarre, prosaic stoner film, but by deliberately trying to give it a point of not having a point makes the whole thing a rather useless viewing experience. Dupieux is just making a movie with no point, and what's the point of that? There are movies that have free-flowing forms with little to no plot at all that still feel like more vital, energetic and importantly necessary, like they were born out of the directors need to tell that story, than Rubber. There's no need to think "what is he trying to do here?" because he admitted right up front that his movie is about nothing. And not in a humourous "it's a show about nothing" kind of way that is actually about something. It's just... there. A car tyre awakens by itself for some reason, it does some stuff and then the movie ends. Nothing to think about or enjoy here; It's just slow, repetitious and dull


It doesn't even have a deranged edge to it, with Dupieux - acting as cinematographer and editor - choosing to film it in a very chilly, straight-forward manner. It's easy to follow and boring when it should be messy and kinetically insane. It does have great visual effects, make-up and a wonderful pulsating music score by "Mr Oizo" and Gaspard Augé, but they can't save the film from being anything other than a director trying to cynically make a "hip" movie to get himself on the scene - something made all the more obvious by Dupieux's decision to film in English and set it in America, despite being a French filmmaker using French money - without having anything to actually say or anything interesting to show. D-

Scream to Scream, Scene by Scene: SCENE 20 of Scream (0:53:01-0:55:47)

In this project I attempt to review the entire Scream trilogy scene by scene in chronological order. Heavy spoilers and gore throughout!

SCENE 20
Length: 2mins 45secs
Primary Characters: Randy Meeks, Stu Macher and Billy Loomis
Pop Culture References:

• Frankenstein (movie plays in video store)
• Mother's Boys, Smoke, Clerks and Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. (film posters hang in the store)
  
• Prom Night (Randy mentions this as the key to the crimes)
• The Howling and E.T. (a customer inquires about both)
  

I think this scene acts much like the Principal Himbry murder scene in that it merely gives us more time with certain characters (specifically Randy) and gives just a little bit more to mull over for the home stretch. The way it makes it so obvious that they're trying to make viewers think Billy is the killer (I remember it being a big surprise that there were two so at this stage first time viewers wouldn't be thinking of a duo), so much so that I'm sure many thought "nah, that'd be too obvious."


Whatta klutz!


"We've had a run in the mass-murder section!"
This here, ladies and gentlemen, is the very middle of Scream. I think that line of dialogue is quite an apt one considering the success of Scream less to a rush of horror titles. This shot is the 196th screencap that I have taken so far for this series, which sounds like a lot... because it is. Yikes. I was kinda hoping it would be the 200th, but unfortunately that didn't pan out.


"What's that werewolf movie with ET's mom in it?"
Before I discovered IMDb and before I knew who Dee Wallace was (oh, the humanity) I used to think this line was a joke about someone incredibly ugly ("ET's mom" as in his alien mother) and not just an actual bit of movie trivia. The answer? The Howling. I like that Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes had a reference to Steven Spielberg's Jaws and then all these years later he's doing it again!

Just look at this shot for a second though and consider the last time you ever saw a movie rental place that big. In light of Blockbuster going bankrupt I'm sure there will be a few obituaries such as this one, recalling the good ol' days. I even have a blogger tag labelled "VHS Memories" about anytime that I discuss my fondness of visiting the local video store as a child/teenager (first family owned business and then eventually Network Video, Civic Video and Blockbuster) and perusing the isles, looking at all the amazing video sleeve artwork and wanting to watch them all. Sigh. Good times.


Jamie Kennedy looks like such a baby in this movie. I mean, he actually got kinda hot in Scream 2 and these days he's fugly and gross, but he was definitely hot in Scream 2. Just wait and there's be plenty of screencapping for that!


If you squint it almost looks like Randy and Stu are about to kiss. Considering how homo-erotic this movie is I wouldn't put it past 'em.


That is the 200th screencap. Amazing. And to think, we've still got half the movie to go!! I like that Randy pieced (almost) everything together before everyone else though. It's fitting. He correctly guessed Billy as the killer and Stu as his "lapdog" and he was right about Sidney's father being a part of the killer's plot ("his body will come popping up in the last reel somewhere!"), he just didn't predict there'd be two killers. That's where Randy's movie knowledge slipped him up, always expecting a lone murderer when he should've known whoever it was was going to do something different.

I want to bring to light my favourite extra. She clearly didn't listen when told "don't look at the camera!"






Then she just shakes her head and walks away. I love it! Who she is, I'll never know.


That really was in poor taste, Billy.


The best bit about Stu's weird hyper moments is when he comes back down and says stuff with such deadpan sincerity like this moment. "No I don't. At all. No."

"This is standard horror movie stuff. Prom Night revisited, man. ... if they'd watch Prom Night they'd save time. There's a formula to it, a very simple formula. EVERYBODY'S A SUSPECT!"

Oh, Randy!

I'm trying to remember Prom Night and I don't recall how any of that movie relates to the goings on in Woodsboro. I only saw that Canadian horror movie for the first time earlier this year and wasn't the killer in Prom Night Jamie Lee Curtis' BROTHER? In fact, that movie did try to position the final girl's father (played by Leslie Neilson of all people) as the prime suspect, but her boyfriend it was not. Of course, maybe Randy was just getting confused with the amazingness of Prom Night II: Hello Mary Lou?


It's no wonder the video store "fired his ass" ("twice!") if he does stuff like this on a regular basis.



It really is amazing how much Billy appears to be trying to come off looking like the killer. Threatening people in broad daylight and all.


Was there a lot of gay slash fiction written after Scream? I can't imagine a world in which there wouldn't be? Was it so completely obvious to everyone in 1996 how gay this movie was? Like, actually very homoerotic (we've always discussed this, but it bears repeating.)


"What would be your motive?"
"It's the millennium; motives are incidental."
"Millennium. Millennium, I like that. That's good, millennium. Good kid."
Nothing dates a movie quite like millennium references. Why not throw in a "Y2K bug" joke just for fun?


Love that evil look that Billy gives to Stu as if to say "we're total badasses." Also, Probably the only time in the entire movie that Skeet Ulrich is attractive.


My "Movies in Movies" series used the Mother's Boys poster shot up there for this movie, but this scene also features clearly visible posters for other Miramax titles such as Smoke and Clerks. One poster I did not expect to see, and I only just picked it up now as I screencapped the movie, was a poster for Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. Now, I know Weinsteins obviously just filled this video store with posters for their own movies on the off chance that some obsessive weirdo such as myself was paying attention (there are more posters in the background but I cannot make them out), but Just Another Girl wasn't a particularly popular movie in 1992 when it came out, so I'm not sure why this video store in northern California would have a poster for it up in 1996.

Nevertheless, I really like Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.. It's flaws are obvious, but they're forgivable when the lead performance by Ariyan A. Johnson is so strong and the sense of place that director Leslie Harris creates in these districts of New York City is so evocative. I wish they'd release it on DVD.

Okay, that little detour was brought to you by my bizarre ability to recognise a blurry movie poster for a movie almost nobody knows. Next extry will be back to Scream.

Intro, Scene 1 Scene 2, Scene 3, Scene 4, Scene 5, Scene 6, Scene 7, Scene 8, Scene 9, Scene 10, Scene 11, Scene 12, Scene 13, Scene 14, Scene 15, Scene 16, Scene 17, Scene 18, Scene 19

The Man Behind the Poster is Now The Man In Front of the Camera

This is the trailer for a new documentary that is sure to gain plenty of interest on the film festival circuit from film poster nuts and cinephiles alike such as myself. I imagine it will also be of interest to hip people who like to be able to say they know who Drew Struzan is. It's called Drew: The Man Behind the Poster and while it has all sorts of interesting names attached to it it looks like a problematic film. For starters, what do Harrison Ford, Steve Guttenberg and Michael J Fox know about the subject? The trailer makes me suspect "not much".

The second issue is that it is being directed by a first time director by the name of Erik Sharkey. This is his first feature and... there's always something fishy about a first time documentary filmmaker getting all these big names. I mean, he's got Steven Spielberg and George Lucas in there! Makes me worry that he's only interested in the superficial because it sells better. I guess we'll see, but this film reeks of those documentaries that show up ever year because the director had a neat idea, but not much thought put into it other than "people will see it because it's about someone famous".

My third issue is worrying about how Sharkey can make an entire film out of this subject. Let's not mince words here, Struzan's biggest works are almost all the same! How many anecdotes and stories can there be about how he came up with the design for Indiana Jones or Harry Potter or Star Wars or... well, you get the picture. In fact, the only Struzan design that I included on my 100 greatest posters countdown (note: that list is outdated) was The Thing. I'm just not a big fan of cluttered, delicately lit look that he seems to use so often.


Now, if someone wants to make an all-encompassing documentary about Saul Bass then I'll be there with bells on. As for Drew: The Man Behind the Poster? I'm wary, but will be on the lookout for reactions to it.