2000 Overview: Part 2. Straight-to-DVD Horror Movies
The Irrefutable Truth About Demons from New Zealand
The new millennium got off to a disappointing start with the news that George A Romero's Bruiser, his first film since 1993's The Dark Half would bypass a theatrical release. The fact that this followed a trio of less than stellar efforts (the others being Two Evil Eyes/Due occi diabolici from 1990 and 1988's Monkey Shines) dashed hopes that one of the best-loved genre directors could revitalize his career (thankfully Land of the Dead was only four years away). The film starts well, but squanders an interesting premise - in a mirror image of American Psycho, a put-upon corporate lackey (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' Jason Flemyng) wakes up without a face and sets about writing the wrongs done to him - with a lightweight parade of revenge killings and a flat, unsatisfactory denouement.
Several franchises trudged their weary path onward, or gasped their last in the early days of the decade, among them were the better than average Hellraiser: Inferno, the first to premiere on video and the feature debut of Scott Derrickson, that rarity in the Horror genre, an evangelical Christian, who went on to direct The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) and the unfortunate The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) - he co-wrote with regular partner Paul Harris Boardman with whom he wrote Urban Legends: Final Cut the same year. Leprechaun in the Hood, was directed by Rob Spera who created the original Witchcraft movie in 1989 (see below for a sequel), but saved his biggest crime for this, Ice-T's most embarrassing screen appearance. Mirror, Mirror IV: Reflection, the last of the screenwriting Gascone sisters' series and best of the sequels, but not a patch on the 1990 original which was really quite good. Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman, came from writer/director Michael Cooney, son of the successful British screenwriter and playwright Ray Cooney (What a Carve Up!). Cooney Jr redeemed his creation of this franchise by scripting James Mangold's Identity (2003) and the upcoming (but suspiciously delayed) Shelter with Julianne Moore.
At the zero-budget end of the barrel we find Ted V Mikels, who gave us Corpse Grinders 2, the shot-on-video sequel to his 1971 original which is just ho-hum; Zombie Bloodbath 3: Zombie Armageddon, from Todd Sheets, the Kansas King of Gore, who delivered two of his hog-wild video bloodbaths in 2000, this and Catacombs; Addicted to Murder 3: Blood Lust from the prolific Kevin J Lindenmuth; the original Addicted to Love was voted best Underground Horror film by Cinefantastique magazine in 1996; Camp Blood II from Plaguers (2008) and Witchcraft XII: In the Lair of the Serpent director Brad Sykes, which if nothing else proves that there is a film worse than Plaguers; Camp Blood I and II editor/cinematographer, Jeff Leroy (Werewolf in a Women's Prison) directed the 3D Hunting Season (aka Grave Vengeance); and finally Witchcraft XI: Sisters in Blood, which features three Catholic school girls who, rehearsing for a production of Macbeth, open a gateway to Hell (big year for gateways, this), causing their clothes to fall off. A lot.
Outside the sequel arena we have The Convent from Mike Mendez (Gravedancers), which is a lot of fun and stars a foul-mouthed Adrienne Barbeau helping a bunch of college kids battle demon nuns. Chasing Sleep, a Lynchian psychological thriller, stars Jeff Daniels, Emily Bergl (The Rage: Carrie II), Gil Bellows ("Ally McBeal") and Julian McMahon (Fantastic Four). Big Monster on Campus (aka Boltneck) features Ryan Reynolds, two years before Van Wilder made him a star, from a script by Reeker (2005) director, Dave Payne. Horror 101 from James Glenn Dudeson (Day of the Dead 2: Contagium, Creepshow III) stars Bo Derek as a psychology professor (!) in a bland students-trapped-in-an-empty-school potboiler; Horror 102: Endgame followed in 2004. Island of the Dead marked a career nadir for Malcolm McDowell, who stars alongside Taliso Soto and Mos Def in the this Québec-shot killer fly nightmare. Also slumming it were Karen Black and Erik Estrada in Oliver Twisted, the only film as director by make-up effects man Dean Gates (Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead).
From the regional underground, Coven, the independent feature by Mark Borchardt, is virtually unique in that the making-of documentary - Chris Smith's highly recommended American Movie (1999) – is more famous that the film itself. Drainiac! from z-grade auteur Brett Piper (A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell) has little going for it but enthusiasm. Flesh Freaks was the first of Conall Pendergast's loving Canadian tributes to Fulci and Lewis (see also 2003's Kill Them and Eat Them), Pendergast wrote, directed, acted, produced, edited, handled special makeup effects, and operated the camera; his work won him a Merit Award from the 2000 American B-Movie Festival. Another first-time director, Sal Ciavarello, received the seal of approval from Roy Frumkes (Street Trash) and several genre sites for HPE: Hardcore Poisoned Eyes, the story of a girl and two friends searching for the Satanists responsible for her grandfather's death. Head Cheerleader Dead Cheerleader, stars the hardest working woman in show business, Debbie Rochon, but lacks ideas as well as budget, being a braindead Scream rip-off.
In the world of serial killer cash-ins that became so popular this decade, Chuck Parello's Ed Gein (aka In the Light of the Moon), purported to tell the true story behind America's most famous serial killer and the inspiration for Psycho (1960), Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Deranged (1974), and The Silence of the Lambs (1990), but was too sensationalistic for a biopic and too much of a biopic to be an effective horror movie, despite a strong central performance from Steve Railsback (Lifeforce). Producer Hamish McAlpine went on to produce similar pics on Ted Bundy (2002) and The Hillside Strangler (2004). In 2007, Sean Stanek would produce Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield for director Michael Feifer (which kicked off his own series of serial killer biopics on Ted Bundy, the BTK Killer, the Boston Strangler, and Henry Lee Lucas), but in 2000, along with Corbin Timbrook, he co-wrote and co-directed A Crack in the Floor, which despite having a bunch of interesting cameos (Gary Busey, Bo Hopkins, Tracy Scoggins, David Naughton) is a forgettable backwoods movie about a killer (Roger Hewlett) who lives under the floor of the cabin in which his mother was raped and murdered and attacks anyone who dares enter. Stanek works as a motion capture supervisor these days (Beowulf, GI Joe), and briefly made the news as the first witness on the scene of Bonny Bakely's murder in 2001 when Robert Blake knocked on his apartment door asking for help.
The Showtime cable movie, Possessed stars Timothy Dalton as Father William Bowden, the priest who presided over the real-life event that formed the basis for William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist. Based on the book by Thomas B Allen (who's facts have been disputed), the film has some fine actors (Henry Czerny, Christopher Plummer), but unfortunately director Stephen E de Souza confirms the fact, evident from his first feature, Streetfighter (1994), that he would do better sticking to his screenwriting career (The Running Man, Die Hard). Also made for TV, this time for the USA Network, was The Darkling, with F Murray Abraham (Star Trek: Insurrection) and Aiden Gillen ("The Wire"), written by Preston Sturges Jr and directed by Po-Chih Leong, who also delivered Judd Nelson in The Cabin by the Lake the same year. Leong directed The Wisdom of Crocodiles (aka Immortality, 1998), which was a fine variation on the vampire myth, starring Jude Law and it's a shame that his move to the US caused this dip into TV and then a further descent into DTV action movies for Steven Seagal (Out of Reach, 2004) and Wesley Snipes (The Detonator, 2006).
New Zealander Ellory Elkayem's dry run for Eight Legged Freaks, They Nest, produced by The Kushner-Locke Company the year before they filed for Chapter 11, first appeared on the USA Network, is available on DVD as Creepy Crawlers and is worth checking out - there's still hope for Elkayem, even after the two dismal 2005 Return of the Living Dead sequels and Without a Paddle 2. Also from K-L and USA Network, Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula (aka Dracula: The Dark Prince on DVD and Dark Prince: Legend of Dracula in the UK) was directed by Joe Chappelle (Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers) shortly before he high-tailed it to a more successful career in Network and Cable television ("CSI: Miami", "The Wire") and stars Rudolf Martin ("24" Season 1"), Jane March (Tarzan and the Lost City), Peter Weller, and Roger Daltrey in an apologia for the life of Vlad the Impaler. It looks better than most Kushner-Locke productions and benefits from their usual use of Romanian locations and the local Full Moon crew.
Following the success of Anaconda (1997) and Lake Placcid (1999), giant reptiles reared their ugly heads throughout the decade and 2000 saw Tobe Hooper's Crocodile, from a story by producer Boaz Davidson, who spat out a bunch of similar Sci-Fi Channel nonsense like Spiders (2000), Octopus (2000), Mansquito (2005) and Mega Snake (2007) and is just very sad indeed. Another killer croc movie lacking bite was Blood Surf (aka Krocodylus), from director James DR Hickox, who is the son of director Douglas Hickox (Behemoth the Sea Monster, Theatre of Blood) and editor Anne V Coates (The Elephant Man), and brother of director Anthony Hickox (Waxwork, Hellraiser III), and should therefore know better - he followed this with Sabretooth (2002), which had an early appearance by Josh Holloway ("Lost"). Python, directed by Richard Clabaugh (DP on The Prophecy and Phantoms) has the benefit of appearances by Robert Englund, Jenny McCarthy and Casper Van Dien and is at least better than the Hillenbrand's King Cobra (1999), which is not saying much.
Troma Entertainment was undergoing something of a renaissance and Lloyd Kaufman followed the previous year's Terror Firmer with Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV, which was a significant improvement on the two previous self-confessed "rotten sequels", without abandoning any of the appalling taste we've come to expect from the Team - look out for directors, Eli Roth and James Gunn among a host of familiar faces. Also from Troma was the Blair Witch-style Legend of the Chupacabra, directed by special effects man Joe Castro (Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat); Chad Ferrin's first feature Unspeakable, a world away from the crude splatter comedy of the average Troma piece but worth seeking out for lovers of transgressive low budget nihilism; and the equally grim Dumpster Baby, which has its supporters but is deeply depressing.
A few old school schlockmeisters were still at it, thanks to Full Moon, with Fred Olen Ray producing his best film in years in Sideshow, with Phil Fondacaro (Troll) and Jamie Martz (Cloverfield) and make-up design by Gabe Bartalos (Brain Damage, Frankenhooker). A pseudonymous David de Coteau was less successful with Voodoo Academy (as Richard Chasen), a gay theological horror film (which makes it sound more interesting than it is) and Prison of the Dead (as Victoria Sloan) which is just terrible. Ted Nicolaou (Subspecies) turned out The Horrible Dr Bones, aimed at the "urban" market, whose title is it's own review – he was no more successful with The St. Francisville Experiment, for Kushner-Locke, which at least gained some notoriety as one of the first Blair Witch rip-offs.
Full Moon were also nurturing new talent in Dave Parker, their head of promotions, who got his chance to direct The Dead Hate the Living!, a tale of young film makers unleashing a horde of zombies in an abandoned hospital. Those who loved The Hills Run Red (2009) should check this out to see how far Parker has progressed, he spent the interim cutting "Making of" features for Bryan Singer and co-writing the script for Uwe Boll's wretched House of the Dead (2003). Full Moon also distributed the one film as director of former Cleveland Browns running back and actor, James Black (Soldier, Universal Soldier: The Return). The Vault bears a strong resemblance to both Prison of the Dead and The Dead Hate the Living!, and was, along with the utterly dreadful Killjoy, another of Full Moon's attempts to engage the African-American audience.
Roger Corman was as busy as ever, producing eight films in 2000 under the Concorde banner, including one "prestige" project, The Suicide Club (aka Game of Death), an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's story by Lev L Spiro (director of Corman's 1996 Alien Avengers), starring Jonathan Pryce (Pirates of the Caribbean), David Morrissey (Basic Instinct 2), and Paul Bettany (Legion), which was filmed in Ireland along with The Doorway, which is appallingly directed by publicist and author Michael B Druxman and top-lines Roy Scheider, who appears only briefly. Suffice it to say that when they handed Corman his recent lifetime achievement Oscar, the weren't thinking of this shocker.
Nick Palumbo would make his mark in 2004 with Murder-Set-Pieces, but his first feature, Nutbag, is an equally challenging view about a Las Vegas serial killer. Made for $40,000, shot on video and purporting to be a true-life story, it's as sick (but not as slick) as his later work and brings to mind William Lustig's Maniac (1980). Similar discomfort was engendered by Vulgar, an odd and awful outpouring from Kevin Smith's ViewAskew company. Clerks' Brian Christopher O'Halloran stars as Vulgar the Clown, on a killing spree after being gang-raped by a sadistic family (including Ethan Suplee of "My Name is Earl"). Direction, writing and editing is by actor Bryan Johnson (Steve Dave Pulasti in Mallrats and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back), who has yet to helm another film, something for which we should all be grateful.
From the UK, Lighthouse (released on US DVD as Dead of Night) was funded by the UK Arts Council and completed in 1999, but struggled to gain a release, coming out on video and DVD in the US in 2000 before getting a UK cinema airing in 2002. It's an effective, if derivative, slasher from first time helmer Simon Hunter, who would have better luck and a larger budget with The Mutant Chronicles (2008) and stars James Purefoy (Solomon Kane), Rachel Shelley (The Children) and Christopher Adamson (Pirates of the Caribbean); long since deleted, used copies sell for up to $140 on eBay. The 13th Sign was the first film by Adam Mason (co-directing with Jonty Acton), who has turned into something of a one-man horror industry - see also The Devil's Chair and Broken (both 2006). His first US film, Blood River (2009) toured festivals in 2009 but has yet to see a DVD release, which is a shame.
From Sheffield, South Yorkshire, Blood is an interesting low-budget indie from writer/director Charly Cantor, who has sadly released nothing since. Starring Adrian Rawlins (who went on to play Harry Potter's dad), the film is a meditation on lust and addiction, in which a girl (Lee Blakemore) has been genetically engineered to produce narcotic blood. Prosthetic effects are by Stuart Conran (Shaun of the Dead, The Descent) and it won a Jury Award at the Neuchâtel International Fantasy Film Festival. Blood was picked up for US DVD release in 2003 by The Asylum and can be viewed on Amazon-on-Demand.
Brian Yuzna's Faust: Love of the Damned was the first of nine Fantastic Factory films made in Barcelona with Spanish production company Filmax, which included Stuart Gordon's Dagon (2001), Darkness (2002), from a pre-[REC] Jaume Balagueró, and Yuzna's own Beyond Re-Animator (2003), Rottweiler (2004) and Beneath Still Waters (2005). While this was an interesting business prospect, most of the films were dreadful and Faust is no exception, a mess of blood, boobs, and variable Screaming Mad George effects, the adaptation of Tim Vigil and David Quinn's comic book (Vigil claims that Todd McFarlane "borrowed" the die for Spawn) has a certain over-the-top charm, but lead actor Mark Frost is unwatchably bad and not even Jeffrey Combs can redeem proceedings. Also from Spain, Jesus Franco gave us the boring thriller Broken Dolls and softcore deSade adaptation Helter Skelter, which appeared on a Sub Rosa DVD double bill; both can be avoided.
Seven Days to Live is a German/Czech co-production starring Sean Pertwee (Dog Soldiers), and Amanda Plummer (Pulp Fiction), as a couple who move into a mysterious house following the death of their son. Director Sebastien Niemann does a decent enough job from a script by Dirk Ahner, but their efforts sink under the familiarity of the storyline. There is some fun to be had spotting familiar Brit faces among the cast, including Gina Bellman ("Coupling") and Nick Brimble (Frankenstein Unbound), and Sean Chapman (Hellraiser). Also from Germany, The Calling stars Laura Harris (The Faculty, Severance), John Standing (V for Vendetta), and Alice Krige in another Satanic misfire, typical of 2000 (see Lost Souls and Bless the Child in Part 1) that benefits from location work on the coast of Cornwall.
The Irrefutable Truth About Demons (released on US DVD as The Truth About Demons), from New Zealand, features a young Karl Urban as a cult-debunking professor beset by Satanists who frame him for the murder of his girlfriend. Writer/Director Glenn Standring builds a tense, paranoid atmosphere, made more compelling by giving Urban's character some serious addiction problems. He followed this with Perfect Creature (2006), an interesting twist on the vampire myth, that prefigures the Spierig Brothers' Daybreakers (2009)
From Australia, Cut followed the prevailing 2000 trend of setting slasher films within slasher films, with Molly Ringwald as the token American actress and a cameo from Kylie Minogue as the first director of a cursed film production. Meanwhile, in Melbourne, a group of film students got together to make a film called Stygian, about a young couple attempting to find their way out of a netherworld. The film was co-written and directed by James Wan and, in a small role, featured Leigh Whannell who would together go on to create Saw (2004) and its annual sequels, the most profitable franchise in horror film history.
Check out Part One for a look at theatrically released horror movies of the year 2000, Part Three will concentrate on Science Fiction, Super Hero and Fantasy films, and Part Four will look at Foreign Language releases and list those actors and crew we lost that year.
2000 Overview: Part 1. Theatrical Horror Movies
It was the year that global communication networks did not die and Y2K proved to be a false alarm, President Bush was inaugurated, the USS Cole was attacked by Yemeni terrorists, Yugoslavian president Milosevic was overthrown, and a six-year-old boy named Elián González stood at the center of an international media circus. The human genome was deciphered, Mad Cow disease hit Europe, and Concorde crashed killing 113 in France. At the beginning of the year, on a wave of internet hyperbole, America Online purchased Time Warner for $165 Billion, since described as the worst business deal in history. One month later Web stocks plunged and the online gold rush soon ended.
In the world of entertainment, Vertical Horizon's "Everything You Want" and U2's "Beautiful Day" dominated the airwaves, The Marshall Mathers LP was the fastest selling solo album ever, and it was blasphemy not to love Radiohead's Kid A. Nobody watched the Sydney Olympics as they were too busy with the first series of "Survivor" and "Big Brother", James Cameron's "Dark Angel" debuted on Fox with Jessica Alba, while "The West Wing" and "The Sopranos" dominated remaining water cooler conversation. Guy Ritchie married Madonna and Harrison Ford split after 17 years from ET screenwriter, Melissa Mathison. Stephen King sold 50,000 copies of his first ebook Riding the Bullet in just three days, the FTC accused the entertainment industry of marketing R-rated content to teens, Warner Brothers announced that Darren Aronofsky - hot off Requiem for Dream - would helm the next Batman movie, and Robert Downey Jr was freed after a 14 month jail sentence, only to be re-arrested in November for possession of cocaine and diazepam.
The Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy genres were enjoying the success of the previous year's The Matrix, The Blair Witch Project, The Sixth Sense, and Sleepy Hollow, while recovering from the disappointment of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (which everyone went to see anyway, to the tune of $924 Million worldwide) and a series of weak remakes, including The Mummy, Wild Wild West (winner of multiple 2000 Golden Razzies), Jan de Bont's miserable The Haunting, and William Malone's House on Haunted Hill.
2000 Overview: Theatrical Horror Movie Releases
The year 2000 was far from vintage for fright films, as the doldrums of the late 1990s mired the theaters in franchise-ending duds and the success of The Sixth Sense opened Hollywood accountant's eyes to the profit possibilities of the PG-13 horror film. Still, there were some bright spots and emerging talent to be found among the wreckage.
Wes Craven's renaissance and, thankfully the era of the self-aware horror film, drew to a close with the patchy Scream 3 and his "Wes Craven Presents" credit on Scream Editor, Patrick Lussier's Dracula 2000, which introduced Gerard Butler (300) to a wider audience, had an interesting quasi-religious backstory for the Count (Lussier also directed Prophesy 3: the Ascent the same year), but had little else to offer, though that didn't stop the duo and screenwriter Joel Soisson returning with two straight-to-DVD sequels in 2003 and 2005. Incidentally, the actor playing Jesus, David J Francis went on to direct a trilogy of movies in his Canadian homeland, Zombie Night (2003), Awakening (aka Zombie Night 2, 2006), and Reel Zombies (2008), with distinctly mixed success. Lussier, of course, would deliver a remakes of My Bloody Valentine (2009) before taking over the Halloween franchise from Rob Zombie for Halloween III (2011)
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, was a double disappointment, both as a muddled sequel to its ground-breaking forbear and as the directorial debut of documentarian Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost), who deserves kudos for taking the film in a different direction from The Blair Witch Project, but showed little flair for coherent storytelling and character development. As is often the case with famous flops, the film actually did well, if not spectacularly, earning $26.44 Million at the US box-office and another $21.30 Million in the rest of the world from a $15 Million budget which, it has to be said was $14,940,000 more than the first one cost.
Rounding out the negatives – we'll avoid the first of the ludicrously successful Scary Movie films, which made $278M spoofing something that was already a spoof – two high-profile releases from major studios went noticeably off the rails this year. Lost Souls, the interminably dull directorial debut of Spielberg's favorite cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski (Schindler's List, War of the Worlds), with Winona Ryder, Ben Chaplin and John Hurt, was delayed for a year in order to avoid clashing with Peter Hyams' Arnie-vs-Satan flick End of Days, but missed out on all the pre-millennial angst and sank without a trace. The same fate befell Chuck Russell's equally dull Bless the Child, from Omen producer Mace Neufeld and Paramount, which took three writers - one hot off the script for the TV movie "Tuesdays with Morrie", the other two have yet to work again - to adapt Cathy Cash Spellman's potboiler. This plodding bore starred Kim Basinger and Jimmy Smits, as well as Rufus Sewell, Angela Bettis, Christina Ricci, and Ian Holm, wasting all of them.
On the positive side, 2000 saw several decent films across the budgetary spectrum. Robert Zemeckis followed his metaphysical science fiction epic, Contact (1997) with the haunted house movie, What Lies Beneath, which has grown in stature since its initial chilly critical reception (though it was a box office hit, see chart below) and while this $90M production still feels a little episodic, the screenplay by actor, Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson in Iron Man) pays off in a tensely handled, virtually silent final section, thanks to top notch emoting from Michelle Pfeiffer and an out-of-character Harrison Ford.
Made for a lot less, Sam Raimi's The Gift, from a screenplay by Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson (the duo behind the excellent 1992 thriller One False Move), is a prime slice of Southern Gothic, telling the story of a Savannah psychic (Cate Blanchett), who may hold the secret to the presumed murder of a local girl (Katie Holmes) by local bad boy Donnie Barksdale (Keanu Reeves). For my money this is way more effective than Raimi's over-praised return to his roots at the end of the decade and scores in atmosphere and chills where Drag Me to Hell (2009) relied on gross-out and slapstick.
Bret Easton Ellis's novel, American Psycho already felt like a relic of 1980's yuppiedom when it was published in 1991, so it's to director, Mary Harron's credit that after years of spinning through the hands of Oliver Stone and Leonardo DiCaprio, she managed to produce an enduring film which, though by no means a classic, bears repeated viewing today. Thankfully expunging much of Ellis's ultra-violence (and his endless brand name-checking), Harron and co-scripter Guinevere Turner (who, in an eyebrow-raising career move, later wrote Uwe Boll's BloodRayne), create a detailed satire of Me Decade excess: the obsession with the perfect business card, the search for the quintessential exfoliation routine and the godawful taste in music. Cinematographer Andrzej Sekula (Pulp Fiction) who went on to direct Cube 2: Hypercube (2002), provides chilly visuals, perfectly in keeping with the vacuous narcissism of the film's protagonist. And former child actor, Christian Bale proved to the world he was all grown up, paving the way for his dominant profile throughout the rest of the decade.
In a genre that spent the previous four or five years soaked in smirking self-reference, Ginger Snaps came as a breath of Canadian fresh air, particularly as it was part of the then tired werewolf sub-genre. Using the curse of lycanthropy as a metaphor for female adolescence, unleashing an inner power, may owe a little to Brian de Palma's Carrie, but Karen Walton's script, backed by John Fawcett's able direction and excellent lead performances by Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins as the misanthropic Fitzgerald sisters, make for the finest film of its type since An American Werewolf in London (1981). Given a scant cinema release in 2001, this has improved in popularity over the years and was followed by two sequels, the intriguing Ginger Snaps II: Unleashed and the misfire prequel Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (both 2004)
Shadow of the Vampire is one of the biggest delights of 2000, directed by E Elias Merhige (previously creator of the arty, impenetrable Begotten and a couple of Marilyn Manson videos) from a script by Steven Katz (check out his Wind Chill from 2007), the film treads a delicate line between horror and comedy and revels in period detail thanks to production design from Assheton Gorton (Legend) and cinematography by former gaffer, Lou Bogue (A Clockwork Orange, Terror Train). John Malkovich camps it up as FW Murnau, filming the 1920 Nosferatu with Willem Dafoe's Max Schreck, an actor who is perhaps a little too close to the character he's portraying. With Udo Keir as Albin Grau, the head of Prana Film, and Cary Elwes as cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner, as well as Eddie Izzard as actor, Gustav von Wangenheim, this is one of the films of the decade, and it's a shame that Merhige's only feature since has been the disappointing serial killer thriller, Suspect Zero (2004).
Other notable US releases included the first of the Final Destination franchise, directed by former "X Files" and "Millennium" producer, James Wong, which spawned three sequels. The Skulls was as big, glossy and empty as you would expect from a movie directed by Rob Cohen, just prior to his career bump from The Fast and the Furious (2001) and xXx (2002) and not even William Petersen can save this dull tale of an Ivy League secret society. Urban Legends: Final Cut, was directed by John Ottman, who stretched himself too thin and smartly returned to his other eclectic careers as editor (X2, Superman Returns) and composer (Fantastic Four, Orphan). Also failing to make many waves was Robert Lee King's screen version of Charles Busch's camp stage production, Psycho Beach Party which earned just $268,117 in 11 cinemas.
One movie that was also little seen, but deserves a wider audience, is the underrated Cherry Falls, which starred the late Brittany Murphy, Jay Mohr, Michael Biehn, and Candy Clark. Directed by Australian, Geoffrey Wright, who introduced Russell Crowe to the world in Romper Stomper (1992) and boosted Sam Worthington's profile with Macbeth (2006), the film, shot by Anthony B Richmond (The Man Who Fell to Earth, Candyman), tells the story of a serial killer, targeting high school virgins, and has never received the love it deserves despite winning the Best Director award at the 2000 Sitges Fantasy Festival. Wright had a bumpy ride in Hollywood, first being fired from the ill-fated Supernova (2000 - See Part Three) and then seeing Cherry Falls distributor, October, bought out by USA Films who, having little interest in a horror movie where sex saves the day, cut the nudity – Wright describes the edition released as the "airline version" – and dumped it. The film received a cinema release in Europe, but went straight to video in the US, where it's currently only available on a discontinued 2001 DVD in a double bill with the same year's portmanteau movie, Terror Tract. If one half-decent thing comes out of Murphy's tragic death, it would be the rediscovery of this subversive little gem, which features one of her best performances.
2000: Top 20 Box Office, Worldwide
1. Mission: Impossible II ($546,388,105)
2. Gladiator ($457,640,427)
3. Cast Away ($429,632,142)
4. What Women Want ($374,111,707)
5. Dinosaur ($349,822,765)
6. How the Grinch Stole Christmas ($345,141,403)
7. Meet the Parents ($330,444,045)
8. The Perfect Storm ($328,718,434)
9. X-Men ($296,339,527)
10. What Lies Beneath ($291,420,351)
11. Scary Movie ($278,019,771)
12. Charlie's Angels ($264,105,545)
13. Erin Brockovich ($256,271,286)
14. Unbreakable ($248,118,121)
15. Gone in 60 Seconds ($237,202,299)
16. Chicken Run ($224,834,564)
17. Vertical Limit ($215,663,859)
18. The Patriot ($215,294,342)
19. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ($213,525,736)
20. Miss Congeniality ($212,742,720)
In Part Two we'll take a look at straight to DVD/Video movies of the year 2000, Part Three will concentrate on Science Fiction, Super Hero and Fantasy films, and Part Four will look at Foreign Language releases and list those actors and crew we lost that year.
Box Office 2009: Robots, Potter, Pixar Rule
As 2010 dawns, it's clear that (for better or worse) the mega-budget franchise ruled the box office in 2009.
The biggest winner of the year was a film so appalling most viewers could barely comprehend its sheer dreadfulness - which proves that Hollywood producers are geniuses and that PT Barnum's misattributed dictum - "There's a sucker born every minute", not to mention "A constant hammering on one nail will generally drive it home." - still hold true. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen earned $402,111,879 in the US alone, plus another $432,857,937 in the rest of the world, making it to (to date) the 20th most successful film of all time. Good grief.
At #2, a good $100M behind, is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince with $301,959,197. However its worldwide total of $929,359,401 (the eighth largest in history), gives it the #1 spot overall, and makes it the third most successful in the franchise, behind Sorcerer's Stone ($947.7M) and Order of the Phoenix ($938.2M).
Those looking for some hope for humanity and the soul of the American people, can take solace in the fact that Pixar's Up holds the #3 spot with $293,004,164 ($683M worldwide), making it the second most successful Pixar movie after Finding Nemo ($339.71M), the most successful 3D movie of all time, and bringing the Emeryville studio's total take to $2.42 Billion. The Twilight Saga: New Moon is at #4 with $283,897,000, ($665.40M worldwide) making it one of the most profitable films of the year and eclipsing (sorry) the original's $192.76M.
Avatar looks set to break records with $283,811,000 ($760M worldwide) after 13 days on release and the #5 spot for the year (it's currently the eighth most successful science fiction film ever), while #6 is claimed by one of only two non-genre films in the Top 10, The Hangover, with $277,322,503 ($459.42M worldwide), making it the most successful R-rated comedy of all time, ahead of Wedding Crashers ($209.25M) and There's Something About Mary ($176.48M).
The Star Trek reboot sits at #7, with $257,730,019 ($385.46M worldwide), making it the most successful Star Trek film, ahead of 1986's Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home ($109.71M) and the ninth most successful science fiction film. Animated hits Monsters vs Aliens and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs are next, with $198,351,526 ($381.46M worldwide) and $196,573,705 ($887.56M worldwide) respectively, while Sandra Bullock's surprise hit The Blind Side rounds out the Top 10 with $196,403,000 (no worldwide release yet).
Other genre films in the Top 20 include X-Men Origins: Wolverine (#11 with $179.88M US/$373.06M world); Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (#12, $177.24M US/$412.68M world); 2012 (#14, $161.49M US/$734.28 world); and A Christmas Carol (#19, $136.68M US/$254.88M world).
The most profitable film of the year sits at #28, Paranormal Activity earned $107,783,000 (foreign takings unavailable), showing that, contrary to evidence at the top of the table, sometimes all you need is $15,000 and a couple of friends.
Overall, both box office takings and bums on seats are up 9.4% over 2008, on a roster of 516 movies versus 605 the previous year, with average ticket prices holding steady at $7.18.
Happy new year!
Figures courtesy of boxofficemojo.com and boxoffice.com. Worldwide figures are US plus foreign territories.
Silent Santa: Movie Portrayals Up To 1900
The image of Santa Claus was not, as is often believed, the creation of Coca-Cola ad executives and the illustrator Haddon Sundblom, but developed over several decades, beginning with his description as a "jolly old elf" in "A Visit from St Nicholas" (aka "The Night Before Christmas"), a poem published in The Troy Sentinel, New York on December 22nd, 1823, and later claimed by Clement Clark Moore, a professor of Oriental and Greek literature at Columbia College and enthusiastic supporter of slavery (the poem was filmed by Edison Studios in 1905). Recently the poem's authorship has been brought into question and may prove to be the work of Henry Livingston Jr.*
As the 19th Century progressed, he developed into the rotund night visitor we're familiar with today, in John Leech's illustration of the Ghost of Christmas Present for Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, and the work of illustrator Thomas Nast, first seen in an 1863 edition of Harper's Weekly, as well as an editorial in the September 21st, 1897 issue of The New York Sun, wherein a young Miss O'Hanlon was comforted with the fact that "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" by editor Francis Pharcellus Church.
Santa Claus Filling Stockings (1897)
In December that same year, Santa made his first appearance on screen in a 254ft film by the American Mutoscope Company, named Santa Claus Filling Stockings. The film depicts our hero coming down the chimney and distributing his gifts before heading out the way he came in and was the second of a four-part series which also included The Night Before Christmas, in which the children hang up their stockings; Christmas Morning, when they gleefully discover their toys; and The Christmas Tree Party, which sees Santa joining the family and handing out more gifts.
The films were possibly made by WKL Dickson, a French-born Englishman who had founded Mutoscope in 1895 after falling out with his former employer, Thomas Edison (Dickson returned to England in 1897, so his actual involvement is unknown). If one man can claim the title The Father of Film, it's Dickson, who invented the first camera, made one of the first moving pictures, Monkeyshines, in 1890, and built the first studio, the Black Maria, all in the face of Edison's disinterest and objection. He and Edison finally had a disagreement neither could overcome and Dickson formed his own company and created the Mutograph projector. He started almost immediately on another creation, the Biograph – the company would change its name to the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company in 1899 and go on to hire DW Griffith, who shot the first motion picture in the small California village called Hollywood.
Santa Clause (1898)
Sadly Santa Claus Filling Stockings is lost, but September of 1898 saw the release of a British film we can thankfully still see, Santa Clause (known as The Visit of Santa Claus and Santa Claus' Visit in the USA - the latter is often mistakenly credited as a 1900 Edison release) from George Albert Smith's GAS Films shows a familiar-looking Santa in fur-lined cloak and hood. GA Smith was a former magic lantern man and hypnotist, who is know to have corresponded with Georges Méliès around this time and the influence of the French pioneer is apparent. This shouldn't detract from Smith's efforts though as he was equally adept at using available special effects such as double exposure, to create fantasy sequences the equal of those being accomplished across the Channel.
What marks Santa Clause as a landmark of early English cinema is the handling of Santa's visit during which, as the children sleep on the left of the screen, Santa is seen landing on the roof and climbing into the chimney on the right. This is the first time that two incidents, taking place in separate locations had been seen sharing the same frame in an English film. As with Smith's other pioneering efforts like The Haunted Castle (1897) and The X-Ray Fiend (1897), Santa Clause stars Smith's wife, Laura Bayley, as the children's governess and is a great example of the developing language of film, just a few years after its invention.
Santa Claus and the Children (1898)
Two months later in November 1898, one of the earliest fiction films from another great British cinema pioneer, Robert William Paul was released. RW Paul started out as an instrument maker and began manufacturing the Animatograph, a replica of WKL Dickson's Edison Kinetograph, around 1894 with Georges Méliès being one of his earliest customers. Sadly Santa Claus and the Children is another lost film (ironically Paul was an early advocate for archival preservation), but thanks to the British Film Institute, we can still enjoy some of his later classics, like Scrooge, or Marley's Ghost (1901), the earliest surviving version of Dickens' classic, The Magic Sword (1901), and ambitious fantasy epic, and The ? Motorist (1906) an early science fiction film in the spirit of Méliès. It's possible that Paul's film is heavily influenced by either or both of the Mutoscope and GAS films, as originality took second place to commerce in the early days of cinema.
Rêve de Noël/The Christmas Dream (1900)
On the December 1st, 1900, Georges Méliès revealed his big Christmas release to Star Film's eager customers. Rêve de Noël (known as The Christmas Dream in England and the USA, where it debuted at New York's Eden Musee on December 16th, 1901) was one of 34 films he made that year, as well as creating tableaux for the Paris World's Fair, but the prolific auteur was determined to top the success of the previous year's Cendrillon (Cinderella) and spent, he claimed, "…three months concentrated work, packed to produce a projection of 10 minutes' duration, without losing interest for one moment."
Described as both "Father Christmas" and "The King of Toyland" in publicity material, a bad-tempered Santa has more of supporting role here, and it's left to the Angels to distribute the gifts, with the central story being that of a beggar, threatened with ejection, invited to the feast by a wealthy host. The version we can see today last 4 minutes 15 seconds, and appears to be missing one scene, featuring a choir and organist, with some of the others truncated. Nevertheless, it's full of the charm we expect from Méliès, particularly in the distinctive set design and shows the development of his techniques as Star Film's productions became more ambitious.
It's well worth checking out these early examples of Christmas cinema, and reflecting on how well they capture the spirit of the season, in contrast to the mega-budget, syrupy extravaganzas we're forced to endure 110 years later.
Viewing
Santa Claus (1889) can be viewed on the BFI's YouTube channel
Rêve de Noël/The Christmas Dream can be seen on the DVD set Georges Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913), from Flicker Alley.
Also recommended is the DVD, Christmas Past: Vintage Holiday Films, from Kino Video. which includes the 1905 Edison Night Before Christmas, and eight other silent films from 1901 to 1925, including a 1910 version of A Christmas Carol.
Reference
The AFI Catalog: Silent Film
The British Film Catalogue: Volume 1, Fiction Film 1895–1994, 3rd Edition; Denis Gifford. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2001. Pages 7 and 8.
L'oeuvre de Georges Méliès; Jacques Malthête, Laurent Mannoni. Éditions de La Martinière/La Cinématèque Française, 2008. Pages 109–111.
Marvellous Méliès; Paul Hammond. The Gordon Fraser Gallery Ltd, 1974. Page 44.
Coca-cola-art.com, A Coca-Cola Blog by RockAndRoll Agency, Coca-Cola Santa Claus: Coke Christmas Art by Haddon Sundblom.
* The New York Times Web Site, 12.23.09; "Literary Sleuth Casts Doubt on the Authorship of an Iconic Christmas Poem".
Blu-ray Review: Gremlins (25th Anniversary Edition)
Gremlins (1984)
Country: USA
Production Companies: Warner Brothers/Amblin Entertainment
Executive Producers: Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall
Producer: Michael Finnell
Director: Joe Dante
Screenplay: Chris Columbus
Cinematographer: John Hora (Technicolor)
Editor: Tina Hirsch
Music: Jerry Goldsmith
Production Designer: James H. Spencer
Set Designer: William F Matthews
Creature Design: Chris Walas
Stop Motion Effects: Fantasy II Effects
Special Effects: Robert MacDonald, Bob MacDonald Jr
Matte Paintings: Dreamquest Images
Sound Editor: Richard L. Anderson
Special Sound Effects: Alan Howarth
Costume Designers: Norman A Burza, Linda Matthews
Stunt Coordinator: Mike McGaughy
Length: 106 mins.
Budget: $11 Million
Cast: Zach Galligan (Billy Peltzer), Phoebe Cates (Kate Beringer), Hoyt Axton (Randall Peltzer), Polly Holliday (Ruby Deagle), Frances Lee McCain (Lynn Peltzer), Judge Reinhold (Gerald Hopkins), Dick Miller (Murray Futterman), Glynn Turman (Roy Hanson), Keye Luke (Grandfather), Scott Brady (Sheriff Frank), Corey Feldman (Pete Fountaine), Jonathan Banks (Deputy Brent), Edward Andrews (Mr Corben), Harry Carey Jr. (Mr Anderson), Belinda Balaski (Mrs Harris), John Louie (Chinese Boy), Arnie Moore (Alex), Donald Elson (Man on Street),"The Real" Don Steele (Rockin' Ricky Rialto), Susan Burgess (Little Girl), Daniel Llewelyn (Hungry Harris Child), Lois Foraker (Bank teller), Chuck Jones (Mr Jones), Kenny Davis (Dorry), Nicky Katt (Schoolchild), Tracy Wells (Schoolchild), John C Becher (Dr Molinaro), Gwen Willson (Mrs Molinaro), Jackie Joseph (Sheila Futterman), Joe Brooks (Dave Meyers, Santa), Jim McKrell (Lew Landers, WDHB-TV reporter), Howie Mandel (Gizmo voice), Fred Newman (Stripe voice), Frank Welker, Mark Dodson, Michael Winslow, Peter Cullen, Bob Berger, Michael Sheehan, Bob Holt (Gremlin voices), Mushroom (Barney), Jerry Goldsmith (Man in Telephone Booth, uncredited), Steven Spielberg (Man in Electric Wheelchair, uncredited), Kenneth Tobey (Gas Station Attendant, uncredited).
Synopsis: Inept inventor Randall Peltzer brings a Christmas pet home for his son Billy. The Mogwai, named Gizmo, is an appealing creature, but comes with three rules: don't get him wet, avoid bright light, and don't feed him after midnight. After Billy's friend, Pete, spills some water, Gizmo multiplies, but things get much worse after the new Mogwai trick Billy into feeding them in the middle of the night. Soon, Billy and Kate, a work colleague Billy is attracted to, must save the town when the Mogwai transform from delightful to deadly.
Review: Hot off success of The Howling (1981), Joe Dante was approached by Steven Spielberg with a script from a young New York film school student named Chris Columbus. Spielberg envisaged the film as a low budget horror movie and saw it as the perfect vehicle for Dante's major studio debut and the first production from his own fledgling production house, Amblin Entertainment. Little did they realize that the resulting work would not only create a classic of 80s genre film-making, a holiday perennial that appears near the top of most right-thinking people's Christmas movies list, but also cause the invention of a new certificate better suited to cover the hilariously subversive carnage on show.
The beauty of Dante's movie, typical of his generation of film makers, is that it takes the small town traditions of Capra and Hawks, adds the sweetness and hope of the Holiday movie genre, and reinvents them for a more cynical, post-Watergate generation. The difference here is that while Spielberg, Lucas and Coppola tend to look back on the films of the 1940s and 50s with a rosy glow, Dante wants to blow them all to hell.
Filming on the same Universal Studios town center set seen in It Came from Outer Space (1953) and Tarantula (1955), and would soon host Back to the Future (1985), Kingston Falls is an idyllic location that, like its Capra predecessor in It's a Wonderful Life (1946), hides meanness and corruption under a veneer as thin as the fake snow covering its streets. The Mogwai, are so effectively lovable that we question our taste in finding them so appealing, but when the transformation comes, we cheer on their gleeful destruction of everything the town holds dear, including the trashing of a local cinema showing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).
Ever the benevolent dictator, Spielberg negotiated a lengthy production schedule - seven months pre-production for creature designer Chris Walas to create and engineer his little monsters, three months of principal photography, followed after a two week break, by two months spent filming the Gremlins. Indeed the film took so long to produce that Dante directed an episode of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) between his hiring and the actual production.
In the two commentary tracks that accompany this Blu-ray release, Dante proves himself to be a wily operator, willing to fight for his convictions - the fur of lead Mogwai, Gizmo, was designed to be the same color as Spielberg's dog to help along the approval process and he twice tells of problems he had with the studio over one of the best scenes, when Phoebe Cates' character explains why she hates Christmas. As Dante explains, it's the heart of the film, a story that, to the viewer, is ludicrous and funny, but utterly tragic for the person to whom it happened. Yet the powers-that-be at Warner Brothers fought to have it removed, even after the prints had been struck.
To his credit, Spielberg supported Dante in that instance but, as he did recently in the case of Paranormal Activity, made other suggestions that altered the course of events, including toning town some of the violence in Columbus's original – we can thank him for the fact that both Billy's Mom and his dog survive intact. Despite this, the MPAA still ruled some of the action - particularly the classic kitchen sequence, where Mrs Peltzer fights of the lizard-like Gremlins with household appliances - unsuitable for a young audience and this, along with the same year's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, was responsible for the inauguration of the PG-13 certificate. In the UK it went out under the 15 banner which had been introduced in 1982 and while the US Blu-ray has dropped to a straight PG, the UK edition maintains its 15 status.
The Blu-ray features a decent, but not remastered, transfer which starts out a little grainy and soft in the Chinatown sequences, but pays off in Kingston Falls and the detail visible in the Mogwai and Gremlin puppets. The audio, in Dolby TrueHD 5.1, is wonderful, with Jerry Goldsmith's score sounding marvelous, particularly the "Gremlin Rag" theme, and the detailed voice work – including future "Deal Or No Deal" host Howie Mandel – and Sound Design, from John Carpenter collaborator Alan Howarth (Halloween II, Escape from New York), reveal new detail.
Extras are the same as on the 2007 Special Edition, and include commentaries from Dante, producer Michael Finnell, and effects man Chris Walas; and a second from Dante and actors Cates, Galligan, Miller and Mandel. A contemporary "Making Of" featurette is nothing special, but the deleted scenes allow us to see various cuts made to Judge Reinhold's part (he simply disappears from the film in the final edit), as well as one excellent scene showing that Dick Miller's character has just been fired by his Asian employers, as he bemoans: "I guess that's the end of my career in noodles". Photos, storyboards and trailers, including one for Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), round out the set.
As he makes clear in his commentary, Chris Walas had clearly had enough by the end of this production and relinquished control to Rick Baker in the sequel (Baker's $12M effects budget was one million more than the whole of the first film), but we can still enjoy his massively subversive monsters, and dream of a return to form for Joe Dante's new movie The Hole (2009), and hope that it's even half as enjoyable as this bone fide inflammatory classic. Happy Christmas everyone.
Box Office 12/21/09: Cameron King Again
The prevailing critical opinion: clichéd, predictable – and really quite wonderful, either didn't matter, or worked in Avatar's favor and swept it to $77.02M at the weekend box office, beating even its own studio's estimates (see my review here). Heavy snow on the East Coast held it back from breaking too many records, but it stands as the highest grossing original work (not a sequel or a remake) in history, the second highest December release (just beaten by I Am Legend's still bewildering $77.20M), and the highest ever 3D release, earning $55M from 3,129 screens, beating Up's $35.4M by quite some margin. Of those 3D screens, 178 were IMAX, and the film earned $9.5M in those theaters for the second highest IMAX opening, behind Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen's $11.70M.
Overseas, Avatar brought in an additional $164.54M, bringing its worldwide total to $241.57M, the largest ever for an original work, but ninth overall – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince holds the record with $394M, and this year's The Twilight Saga: New Moon, at #6 with $274.9M, means that three of this year's releases are in the all-time Top 10.
At #2, Disney's The Princess and the Frog hopped down a predictable 50%, with $12.18M, for a running total of $44.71M, while The Blind Side continues to hold on with $10.02M for a running total of $164.72M, making it the most successful film of Sandra Bullock's career.
Did You See the Morgans failed to overcome the "Seen it all before, on TV" feeling exuded by its trailer and earned a meagre $6.61M at #4, a disappointment given its $58M budget. The Twilight Saga: New Moon, continues to descend, falling 45% with $4.40M, its US total now standing at $274.59M ($634.69M worldwide).
Invictus is at #6 with $4.20M, while A Christmas Carol fell 50% and 332 screens (including relinquishing all its IMAX locations to Avatar), bringing in $3.44M for a US total of $130.81M ($249.01M worldwide). The Top 10 is rounded out by Up in the Air ($3.21M), Brothers ($2.88M), and Old Dogs ($2.34M), while 2012 sits at #11, with $2.20M for the weekend, a US tally of $159.02M, and an astonishing worldwide total of $714.21M, making it the fourth biggest earner of the year, behind the Harry Potter ($929.40M), Ice Age ($883,70M), and Transformers ($835M) sequels.
Christmas weekend sees the opening of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, It's Complicated, and expansions for Up in the Air and Nine.
Avatar (2009)
Avatar (2009)
Country: USA
Production Company: Twentieth Century-Fox, Dune Entertainment, Giant Studios, Ingenious Film Partners, Lightstorm Entertainment
Producers: James Cameron, Jon Landau
Executive Producer: Colin Wilson, Laeta Kalogridis
Director: James Cameron
Screenplay: James Cameron
Cinematographer: Mauro Fiore
Cinematographer, LA [3D System]: Vince Pace
Editors: Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua, James Cameron
Music: James Horner
Production Designers: Rick Carter, Robert Stromberg
Art Directors: Todd Cherniawsky, Kevin Ishioka, Kim Sinclair
Costume Designers: Mayes C. Rubeo, Deborah Lynn Scott
Special Makeup Effects: Antony McMullen, Keith Marbory, Gary Yee , Kevin McTurk/Stan Winston Studio
Second Unit Director: Steven Quale
Virtual Cinematography System Creator: Robert Legato
Visual Effects: Joe Letteri/Weta Digital
Special Effects: Steve Ingram
Creature Designers: Wayne D. Barlowe, Neville Page
Sound Designer: Christopher Boyes
Sound Editors: Addison Teague, Gwendolyn Yates Whittle
Costume Designers: Mayes C Rubeo, Deborah L Scott
Stunts: Garrett Warren, Allan Poppleton
Length: 163 mins.
Budget: $425 Million*
Cast: Sam Worthington (Jake Sully), Zoe Saldana (Neytiri), Sigourney Weaver (Dr Grace Augustine), Stephen Lang (Col Miles Quaritch), Michelle Rodriguez (Trudy Chacon), Giovanni Ribisi (Parker Selfridge), Joel David Moore (Norm Spellman), CCH Pounder (Moat), Wes Studi (Eytukan), Laz Alonso (Tsu'tey), Dileep Rao (Dr Max Patel), Matt Gerald (Corp Lyle Wainfleet), Sean Anthony Moran (Pr Fike).
Synopsis: In the year 2154 Earth is a dying planet and Human corporations, with military backing, have colonized the distant moon Pandora and are strip mining it for a rare mineral. Disabled Marine, Jake Sully, takes the place of his dead brother in a program that places humans among the indigenous Na'vi, to better learn their ways and persuade them to surrender their forest to the corporation. As Jake finds himself drawn to the arcadian Na'vi and particularly their leader's daughter, Neytiri, the suits and their military cohort, Colonel Quaritch, lose patience and begin enacting a huge operation to destroy the Na'vi's most sacred region.
Review: Fourteen years in the making with 2,000 people employed solidly for the past two years, Avatar is so costly that the effects work had to be amortized across two films (Battle Angel is coming in 2011) and even then it lands in theaters as the most expensive film ever made, from the director of the most successful film in history, Titanic (1997) having pulled in 11 Academy Awards and $1.6 Billion at the box office.
Given this level of anticipation, the film stands or falls on whether producer/director/writer/editor, James Cameron, has managed to create a ground-breaking epic with broad appeal, that demands repeated viewing, and blows away everything we've seen before. Ever. This somewhat audacious goal can only be met if Cameron overcomes our jaded palate for massive summer CGI slaughter-fests like Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, Terminator: Salvation, and 2012, as well as successfully engaging our hearts and brains in his huge endeavor.
In part, he's succeeded. The world of Pandora is absolutely stunning, each leaf shimmers with detail, each spec of dust and flying insect has been meticulously brought to life and, aided by the IMAX 3D experience, you'll find yourself swatting at small creatures and waving away specs of ash, open-mouthed at the sheer beauty and scale of what's on the screen. The motion capture animation is also brilliantly realized, no unconvincing mouth movements or soulless eyes here, the Na'vi and the human Avatars are entirely relatable, we buy fully into their pastoral existence, fall entirely for Zoe Saldana (Star Trek) as the feisty warrior princess Neytiri and, if you thought Sigourney Weaver looked hot in her Alien wife beater, you'll appreciate her even more as a 10-foot-tall, blue cat creature.
Unfortunately this is almost fatally undermined by dreadfully hackneyed storytelling and, while it's laudable that Cameron's basic message is pro-environmental and anti-militaristic, everything from the banal yoga studio font used in the subtitles and logo (a modified version of Chris Costello's shockingly over-used Papyrus, for those who care), through the story – essentially a sci-fi remake of Dances with Wolves – to the dialogue, cardboard cutout villains and appalling dialogue, threatens to topple the film right up to its last half hour. We long for the comparative complexity of Michael Biehn's psychotic Lieutenant Coffey in The Abyss (Biehn was originally considered for the role of Quaritch), or the oily intensity of Paul Reiser's Carter Burke in Aliens (1986). In comparison Stephen Lang (Public Enemies) coasts on physical bulk and shock and awe, while Giovanni Ribisi (Lost in Translation) only occasionally summons enough menace to raise our ire and we greet his eventual comeuppance with a shrug. Even Sigourney Weaver's performance is weak, her line readings lacking the conviction she brought to ass-kicker, Ripley.
And yet, despite the pervading second-hand feel to proceedings (even the Unobtanium mineral McGuffin is borrowed from eyewear designers, Oakley), Cameron still succeeds. Just. His greatest strength as a storyteller has always been to place believable relationships at the heart of massive spectacle. Kyle and Sarah in The Terminator (1984), army grunts Vasquez and Drake in Aliens, and the battling Brigmans in The Abyss, and while Sam Worthington is no Ed Harris, the love story that seemed so dubious in the trailer here proves to be the anchor-point of the entire enterprise. Sully's gradual embracing of the Na'vi way of life, backed by his gleeful appropriation of a functioning pair of legs, may be totally predictable, but it's a testament to Cameron that when the final battle comes, we're emotionally engaged with both the noble warriors and their exquisite arboreal homeland.
Mainstream press have, for reasons best know to themselves, been gauging the success of this film on fanboy festival reaction - but Harry Knowles and his ilk are irrelevant to the success of Avatar. the film wasn't made for 20-something ComicCon attendees, or their middle-aged fathers, but is squarely aimed at the teenagers they were when they first experienced, respectively, The Matrix and Roger Dean LP covers. Avatar's faults are many, but there's no denying the power of the on-screen images, the basic decency of the message, and the level to which he engages his audience in an admittedly predictable tale. For all this, Cameron's film can be judged a success and he may just have invented a whole new mythology for the next generation of awe-struck science fiction fans.
*Source: Financial Times: Man in the News: James Cameron, December 18th, 2009.
DVD Review: A Christmas Carol (1951)
Scrooge (1951), aka A Christmas Carol (US title)
Country: United Kingdom
Production Company: George Minter presents a Renown Film Productions Ltd picture
Producer: Brian Desmond-Hurst
Production Manager: Stanley Couzins
Director: Brian Desmond-Hurst
Screenplay: Noel Langley based on the story by Charles Dickens
Cinematographer: C Pennington-Richards
Editor: Clive Donner
Music: Richard Addinsell, Muir Mathieson (conductor)
Art Director: Ralph Brinton
Makeup: Eric Carter
Costume Design: Doris Lee, Constance Da Finna
Sound: WH Lindop
Filmed at: Nettlefold Studios, Walton-on-Thames; The Royal Exchange, Bank, London EC3; Hay's Wharf, London SE1.
Length: 86 mins.
Cast: Alastair Sim (Ebenezer Scrooge), Kathleen Harrison (Mrs Dilber), Mervyn Johns (Bob Cratchit), Hermione Baddeley (Mrs Cratchit), Michael Hordern (Jacob Marley), George Cole (Young Ebenezer Scrooge), John Charlesworth (Peter Cratchit), Francis de Wolff (Spirit of Christmas Present), Rona Anderson (Alice), Carol Marsh (Fan Scrooge), Brian Worth (Fred), Miles Malleson (Old Joe), Ernest Thesiger (The Undertaker), Glyn Dearman (Tiny Tim), Michael Dolan (Spirit of Christmas Past), Olga Edwardes (Fred's Wife), Roddy Hughes (Fezziwig), Hattie Jacques (Mrs Fezziwig), Eleanor Summerfield (Miss Flora), Louise Hampton (Laundress), C Konarski (Spirit of Christmas Yet To Come), Eliot Makeham (Mr. Snedrig), Peter Bull (First Businessman, and Narrator), Douglas Muir (Second Businessman), Noel Howlett (First Collector), Fred Johnson (Second Collector), Henry Hewitt (Mr. Rosehed), Hugh Dempster (Mr Groper), David Hannaford, Maire O'Neill (Alice's Patient), Richard Pearson (Mr Tupper), Patrick MacNee (Young Jacob Marley), Clifford Mollison (Samuel Wilkins); and by special arrangement, Jack Warner (Mr Jorkin).
Synopsis: On Christmas Eve, Ebenezer Scrooge a miserly businessman, is visited by the ghost of his ex-partner, Jacob Marley, and three spirits who show him the downward path his life has taken, the joys and horrors of Christmas on the streets of London, and the dark future that awaits him if he refuses to mend his ways.
Review: The first film version of Charles Dickens' most loved story, Scrooge, or Marley's Ghost, was made in Brighton, England in 1901 by RW Paul and Walter Booth (a fragment was made available on YouTube by the BFI on November 3rd, see link below) since when the story has been adapted more than 20 times for the big screen and around 50 times for television. In all these different interpretations, the most effective performance by far is that of the great Scottish actor Alastair Sim in George Minter's 1951 version.
Directed with little flair by Brian Desmond-Hurst, whose first film was the 1934 Poe adaption A Tell Tale Heart (aka A Bucket of Blood), the film was a huge hit in Britain but considered too horrific and adult for the US market (future genre stalwart Richard Gordon [Fiend Without a Face, Inseminoid] raised production funds and managed US distribution through United Artists), where it was turned down for a premiere at Radio City Music Hall and failed to find an audience until it was broadcast on PBS in the 1970s.
In spite of the uninspired direction, improved immeasurably by Cyril Pennington-Richards' excellent cinematography and a literate, inventive script by Noel Langley (The Wizard of Oz), this is Sim's show. His Scrooge is utterly believable in the miserly bitterness of the early scenes - there's an underlying anger and disgust to his interactions with people, he disdains them all regardless of class - his terror at the glimpse of his fate and, most importantly, the sheer unbridled joy of his transformation. No one before or since, human or animated, has managed to pull off the transformation so convincingly.
It helps that Sim is supported by cameos and early performances from some of Britain's finest character actors: Ernest Thesiger (The Bride of Frankenstein), Mervyn Johns (Dead of Night, The Day of the Triffids, House of Mortal Sin), Carol Marsh (Terence Fisher's Dracula), George Cole (The Vampire Lovers, Mary Reilly), Miles Malleson (The Thief of Baghdad, Dracula, The Brides of Dracula), and Patrick Macnee (The Avengers), and genre fans will note that the film was edited by Clive Donner, who went on to an undistinguished directorial career, including such delights as Vampira (1974), The Thief of Baghdad (1978) and the George C Scott TV production of A Christmas Carol (1984).
The restoration was undertaken in 2006 by Point.360 and it was the first time that distributors VCI had access to original film elements - previous releases, including their fuzzy colorized version had been created from video masters. Though not without some nagging flaws, the picture looks noticeably brighter and deeper than we're used to and the Blu-ray is without doubt the best this film has ever looked.
Unfortunately there's a compromise in that the Blu-ray features the restored film along with a 2005 Marcus Hearn interview with Alistair Sim's protege George Cole, who plays Young Ebenezer; pop-up trivia; UK and US trailers; and a second, standard disk featuring 4x3 and 16x9 versions (the latter simply increase the size of the image and crops it top and bottom). The 2-Disc Ultimate Collector's Edition DVD, however, features the above mentioned dual formats (with the Hearn/Cole interview) but includes a second disk, with extras not included on the Blu-ray: "Spirit of Christmas Past" is a 15-minute Hearn/Cole video interview, which repeats information from the commentary; "Richard Gordon Remembers George Minter and Renown Pictures" is a valuable 20-minute audio interview (with stills), conducted by Tom Weaver; "Charles Dickens - His Life and Times" is a seven-minute VCI overview; "Before and After Restoration" is a two-minute look at the restoration; and "Photo Gallery" is a montage of stills with an irritating frosted edge effect. As well as this, the second disc includes the 1998 colorized, unrestored version of the film (which Hearn and Cole rightly disparage in the audio commentary), as well as a shortened US edit of the 1935 version of the film starring Sir Seymour Hicks. You pays your money and you takes your choice but, while one can argue the merits of some of the inclusions, it's a real shame the Disc 2 contents weren't included on the Blu-ray.
Sim, Hordern, and Johns revisited their roles for an Academy Award-winning 1971 animated version by the great Richard Williams (The Pink Panther, Who Framed Roger Rabbit), which is also highly recommended (see link below) and has even more gothic overtones than this version but, as the saying goes, if you see just one version of Dickens' 1843 novella this Christmas, do yourself a favor and make it this one.
Availability
A Christmas Carol (Ultimate Collector's Edition), 2 Disc DVD set is available for $9.99 from amazon.com. Note: The keep case has a 2009 copyright date but this is exactly the same as the 2007 release.
A Christmas Carol, Blu-ray with Bonus Standard DVD is available for $16.99 from amazon.com.
Other Notable Versions
Scrooge, or Marley's Ghost (1901) is available on the BFI National Film Archive's YouTube Channel.
Richard Williams' A Christmas Carol (1971) is available on Google Video.
Further Reading
A Christmas Carol and its Adaptations: Dickens's Story on Screen and Television, Fred Guida, McFarland & Company, Inc. 2000.
Box Office 12/15/09: Frog Leaps to #1
Another quiet pre-Avatar weekend at the box office was lead by the wide release of Disney's return to traditional animation The Princess and the Frog, which grossed $24.20M in 3,434 theaters against a budget of $105M. The Blind Side continues to do remarkable business, with $15M for a total of $149.81M after four weeks.
Clint Eastwood's Invictus lands at #3 with a modest $8.61M, but this Yorkshire-man's heart is glad to see a rugby-themed movie by a major director with major stars anywhere in the Top 10. The Twilight Saga: New Moon is down 48% at #4 bringing in another $7.96M for a staggering $267.32M total.
A Christmas Carol dropped just 12% on seasonal sentiment, earning $6.83M for a six week total of $124.42M. The rest of the chart mainly consists of films we've seen before, The Road continues to stumble along, adding seven theaters and $505,878 for a total of $4.01M, which must be a tiny fraction of its undisclosed budget and Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones debuts at #30 in three theaters to mostly negative reviews, with $116,616, winning the week's highest per-theater average with $38,872.
At #52 Transylmania drops 94% (and 889 theaters) earning $16,018, a miserable $136 per screen, for a 10 day total of $390,486, making to officially the least successful horror comedy ever to open in more than 1,000 theaters - earning a mere 10% of its nearest rivals, 1993's My Boyfriend's Back and 1988's Critters 2: The Main Course.
This coming weekend see the opening of James Cameron's Avatar and some other films very few people will see.
