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Spout #7: Sun Dogs

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Sun Dogs (2007)

When I first saw Sun Dogs on the list of movies available for review to Spout Mavens members, I skipped past it after reading only a few sentences. A movie about a Jamaican sled dog team? Cool Runnings gave me enough wacky Jamaican fish-out-of-water sports hijinks for one lifetime. Then I saw it was a documentary, and I put in a request. Then I started watching it and my interest waned. Then 10 minutes passed and I was hooked. Then I was bored. Then I was hooked again! It was a constant roller coaster of varying interest levels.

It's impossible to view Sun Dogs without thinking of Cool Runnings-the John Candy vehicle that had him training the first Jamaican bobsled team(based on a true story)- and in fact that's the intention of just about everyone involved in this film. The Jamaican sled dog idea was nothing more or less than a calculated ploy to bring money, tourism and attention to a country mired in widespread poverty and crime. This isn't an ignoble goal by any means; the main purpose of everyone involved is to show the world that Jamaicans are hardworking, strongwilled people, able to succeed at whatever they try. My problem, specifically in the beginning of the film, is that the documentary looks too much like a video postcard you might see on the travel channel, and I was worried that Sun Dogs would completely ignore the less attractive aspects of Jamaica. But, about 10-15 minutes in, the film begins to go down those more dangerous streets, and features a few talking head interviews that cover the crime rate in Kingston, the state of education, and the state of poverty. This seems to add a few new dimensions to the film, but in the end it isn't focused enough. The filmmakers try to cover so many topics, and then cram it into a few scant minutes during a documentary about sled dogs, that the documentary has no real depth.

For the most part the film follows the handful of people trying to pull together a sled dog team, train the dogs from scratch, and introduce this new sport in a country where most people don't even know what 'sledding' is. This is, literally, a ragtag team of dogs and people, which fits right in with the uplifting sports film these people are so desperate to make. All of the dogs are rescued from the J.S.P.C.A. and the filmmakers(and dogsled promoters) are eager to paint this as an allegory for Jamaica itself. These dogs are rescued from hard and brutal lives and given a shot to improve themselves and live happily ever after. And there lies my main complaint with this film; everyone is so eager to make this a brand, to market both the film and the country, that this documentary rarely feels real. I'm not saying that the events in this film never happened, or that it was all scripted, I'm just saying that for a documentary there's an awful lot of manipulation going on.

The previous documentary I reviewed here, Let The Church Say Amen, featured a group of people I would normally not enjoy spending time with, and despite the fact that I didn't enjoy spending time with the people in that film, I came away pleased with the movie overall. Mainly that was because every single thing in that film felt real, like the cameras just happened to capture these people and these events. In Sled Dogs it's obvious, painfully so, that some scenes and events have been staged because the filmmakers just needed the footage. A lot of these are minor, like characters meeting or having introductory conversations when it's clear they'd known each other previously.

It's hard for me to hate- or even dislike- this film, when the goal is so noble and the efforts of everyone involved are so heartfelt, but too much of this feels like a bad infomercial. Like the introductions of all the dogs where they do something wacky, the shot freezes as their name comes up and someone dubs in a cheesy 'woof woof' sound, to give them all personality. Something happens on the island near the end of the film that is a complete reversal of everything you would expect. The documentary seems eager to skip past this event, which I will not divulge here, but if anything more time should have been spent on it. It introduces the idea that perhaps the entire ills of a nation can't be solved by a winning sled dog team and a heart of gold attitude. It's also the one moment in the film that feels heartbreakingly real and unstaged. As it stands it's too little too late.

Posted Wednesday, October 24, 2007 11:48 AM by TheWorkingDead | with 1 comments

Across The Universe

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Titus (1999)

Across the Universe (2007)

I love the Beatles, but it took me awhile to accept that fact. Like Elvis, or Sinatra, the Beatles always seemed more an institution than anything else. By now, you HAVE to like the Beatles, everyone agrees. But over the course of my early twenties, as I slowly let go of all that 'too cool for school' hipster bullshit that every young man in his late teens goes through, I began to see just how seriously awesome the Beatles were. Hell, how awesome the Beatles ARE. It was a combination of two songs, Help and Eleanor Rigby. Those two proved the Rosetta stone to my apprecation of one of the best bands in the history of ever. Eleanor Rigby is just too sad to ignore, and that bass line in Help satisfies me in an odd way. (and yes, in the end, I came around to an appreciation of Elvis and Sinatra as well, although to a much lighter degree)

So as a Beatles fan, last night I went to see Across the Universe, a musical where the entire cast sings a long list of Beatles songs throughout the film. The movie was directed by Julie Taymor, a director I have a pretty good amount of faith in despite having only seen one of her previous films, Titus. Her other film, Frida, is one of those movies I never seem to find myself in a position to watch. The trailer for Across the Universe led me to expect a pretty generic love story set against the backdrop of New York in the turbulent Vietnam era. However, the visually stunning Titus, along with her visually stunning version of the Lion King for Broadway(which I haven't seen, but have seen pictures of) left me pretty confident that Across the Universe would feature awesome music set to stunning visuals. And guess what? I was completely, 100 percent correct. Across the Universe was more or less exactly what I was expecting. So why am I so let down?

It turns out the parts of this movie I loved and the parts I disliked were exactly the opposite of what I expected. I expected I would enjoy the trippy visuals, and be bored by the cliche love story, when in the end I disliked most of the surreal moments and enjoyed the parts that just let the music tell the story. Some of the musical moments are sublime, like the mournful takes on Let It Be and I Want To Hold Your Hand, or the freewheeling With A Little Help From My Friends and I've Just Seen A Face. But then others drag the movie to a halt with their garishly over the top costumes, lighting and visual effects, like the Bono sung I Am The Walrus or Eddie Izzard's rendition of Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite. Normally I like Eddie Izzard, and that song is one of my favorites(in that almost all songs by the Beatles are one of my favorites), and even though I'd heard bad things about his scene, I had convinced myself that these were from reviewers just not cool enough to get it. But no, his scene is absolutely wretched, and obnoxiously bad. In comparison Bono is only slightly goofy, with his Timothy Leary by way of Robin Williams drug guru.

Still, some of the movie suffers from obviousness. Take the scene where Prudence(every named character is taken from a Beatles song), lovelorn and broken hearted, locks herself in a closet, so the characters serenade her with 'Dear Prudence, won't you come out and play.' It makes me wish they had found a way to include Maxwell's Silver Hammer. And yes, a lot of the symbolism is pretty on-the-nose, as in 'She's So Heavy' being sung by soldiers carrying the statue of liberty on their backs across Vietnam. But when this musical lets loose, it's absolute joy. At varying times I was looking at the audience around me to see if anyone else had a great big grin on their face, or shrinking into my seat and forcing back a single, solitary(and very manly) tear.

I'm not saying all of Julie Taymor's visual tricks were bad, but many of them seemed poorly thought out. And when this musical gets going, it soars. My disappointment may not be there on a second viewing, but as for now it's dropped this rating down from 'I Loved It!' to 'I Liked It.'

Posted Sunday, October 14, 2007 10:12 PM by TheWorkingDead | with 0 comments

Filling In The Blanks: Blackmail

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Blackmail (1929)

I've mentioned in earlier posts my lack of conventional film education. There are plenty of films out there, many in the 'film aficionado canon' that I have never seen. I don't really feel bad about this, it's impossible to see every film out there, even the great ones. If I were to try and watch all the 'classics' I would never again be able to watch a new movie in the theatre. But these are still(mostly) important films, and I do feel as if my background is a bit lacking for not having seen them before(Casablanca is the largest omission I can think of right now). So I've decided to try and round out my movie viewing a little bit, to try and fill in those gaps in my knowledge(hence the title of this post). These won't all be on the AFI top 100 list, and maybe some of them wont be very well known, but these will be films that I think I should see to get a better grasp on the medium, or even just the artist responsible.

Hitchcock is one of those directors I've always wanted to watch more of. I'm not ignorant of his works, and have seen a fair amount of them, but they tend to be the bigger name films(Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window), meaning that his earlier British films are almost completely unknown to me. Awhile back I was given one of those 9-disc movie sets that consist of public domain movies with questionable prints, and consisting entirely of Hitchcock films. I should have watched these earlier, but for some reason I felt bad watching such poor quality versions of films from a director who's entire filmography deserves the Criterion treatment. The other night I decided to move past my hangups and just sit down to watch them. Not all at once, of course, but I've decided to make this a regular thing, where at least once a week I sit down to a movie from one of those 'classic' lists, or from a filmmaker who I've remained woefully ignorant of(coming up; Robert Altman!).

Blackmail, released in 1929, isn't the earliest Hitchcock film in this set, but it is the first movie on the first disc. Also it's Hitch's first 'talkie', so that definitely makes it an important film, right? I can't say that I was worried about the quality of this film, because Hitchcock has never disappointed me yet, but I was still unsure about how entertained I would be, and wondered how well his later-period style would compare to this earlier attempt. It turns out that early Hitchcock is very similar to the Hitchcock more familiar to casual moviegoers. Most of what you'd expect from a Hitchcock film are in here; the drastic reversal of expectations, the suspense centered around the person who committed a crime rather than the victim, and a climactic chase through a national landmark. Perhaps this all doesn't work, and it isn't as polished as it would become, but I think I enjoyed it more because of that. I liked seeing an artist already confident in his abilities, testing out new technologies and style. I also really enjoyed the silent film touches that permeate this film.

The film opens with an 8 minute scene where Scotland Yard chases down, catches, and locks up a criminal. This scene is also completely silent, save for some music and sound effects. It turns out this was because Hitch had already filmed most of the movie by the time the decision was made to use sound, so some scenes were reshot and others just had dubbing put on top of them. But it also seems like it could be an example of Hitch's sense of humor(imagine the first part of Psycho as a very elaborate joke pulled on the audience). Here we have the first British talkie, which it was widely advertised as, and the film opens with 8 minutes of no talking(although we see people moving their mouths).

The rest of the movie has the feel of a silent film, despite having dialogue. Many scenes play out with little being said, but instead with meaningful looks between characters and some fairly easy to follow action. Hitchcock is of course an impressive visual director, with many scenes in here foreshadowing events or visuals in later movies. I really enjoyed some of the visual trickery. The standouts would be a scene in the beginning where two characters climb a long staircase while the camera floats upwards beside them, and a nifty use of shadow where the killer decides to turn themselves into the police. As they stand up, a shadow is cast across their face, making the unmistakable impression of a hangman's noose around their head. This may not be the most subtle of tricks, but I've always enjoyed Hitchcock's overtly theatrical tricks, like the scene in Vertigo where James Stewart first sees Kim Novak, and the lights dim as she passes by.

The film is a bit darker than I expected it to be, but this may be due to the fact that the DVD case describes this film in unbelievably innocuous terms, with the coda 'Suitable for children!' I'm not exactly a prude, but I probably wouldn't show this to my daughter for a few years. This isn't to say the film is bleak, or without humor, in the end it's quite entertaining. But it seems to me that Hitchcock has always had a distinctly pessimistic, misanthropic tone to his work. In Hitchcock's world, even the victims are flawed and slightly unlikable. Marion Crane in Psycho had just embezzled a large sum of money, L.B. Jefferies in Rear Window is, in the end, a voyeur, and John Ferguson in Vertigo had some pretty disturbing sexual issues playing themselves out. Nobody is innocent in a Hitchcock film, and we're usually rooting for the villain instead of the 'good guys'.

I may be making too much of this film, or grading it more highly than I would if I'd seen more Hitchcock films. Perhaps this movie isn't that great, comparatively, but I certainly enjoyed it.

Posted Friday, October 12, 2007 10:42 PM by TheWorkingDead | with 2 comments

Spout #6: Great World Of Sound

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Great World of Sound (2007)

Fame is an enticing drug, and it's attainment figures into the daydream of billions. In fact, anyone saying they don't want fame is either lying, or up to no good. Oh, I don't mean to say everyone wants to be Britney Spears or Leonardo Dicaprio, I mean that everyone wants to be noticed for their talents. To paraphrase Tyler Durden in Fight Club(I know, it's been done to death, but it fits here); we've all been raised to believe we'll be rock stars, or astronauts, or president of the United States, but for most of us, that stuff ain't gonna happen. That doesn't stop our dreaming, although it may stop our actually working for it. There are plenty of people out there playing on these dreams, shows like American Idol and America's Got Talent, and even Big Brother or Survivor style reality shows, all play on humanity's desire to be famous without too much exertion or talent. In fact, lack of talent is prized almost as much as actual talent in some cases, with all of the really hideously untalented American Idol contestants getting more airplay than some actual winners(how many CDs does William Hung have now? AND an Arrested Development cameo?!). This desire for fame, and the willingness to prey on that desire, informs almost every character you meet in Great World Of Sound, the excellent feature debut from writer/director Craig Zobel.

Martin(Pat Healy) answers an ad looking for people to join the Great World of Sound production company as talent scouts, travelling the country to find new talent. Martin is a man with no real goals in life, forever latching onto whatever his girlfriend at the time is into, and basing his life around that. Eager to find something to define himself within his new marriage, he leaps headfirst into this job. Perhaps that explains why he is so blind to the fact that Great World of Sound Productions is a scam, an old school grift that dates back to at least the early 20th century. Now, I'm not giving anything away by saying GWS is a scam, I knew it right from the opening scene at Martin's interview, and you'll know it, too. In fact, the big question is; Why doesn't anyone else seem to know it? For a seemingly with it, intelligent guy, Martin is pretty slow on the uptake. Or maybe that's another jab at American fame-seeking, that our quest for glory will blind us to all of the moral compromises we make along the way.

At the training seminar for GWS, Martin meets up with Clarence, a middle aged black man who is looking for a way out of manual labor so he can provide for his six(unseen) children. They bond quickly, and the early half of this movie plays like a particularly dry episode of The Office, with quiet, awkwardly hilarious moments and longer than normal camera takes. Sent on the road to scout talent in another state, Martin and Clarence use their hotel room to audition local 'talent' in scenes that are painfully realistic because, well, they are real. Most of the performances we witness were captured Dateline Hidden Camera style, with the artists being briefed about the film only after their audition. Some of these are played for uncomfortable laughs, but occasionally a true artist emerges. Not that it matters. To Great World Of Sound, EVERYONE is a potential celebrity, and they'll sign anyone who can give them enough money. Ideally they want 10% of the costs of printing a CD, which comes out to $3,000, but they'll take a 'good faith' down payment to get the ball rolling. Again, it's hard to see how the main characters don't realize this is a scam.

Eventually things begin to slide from comedy to tragedy, somewhere around the time Martin and Clarence audition a young girl who has written a 'new national anthem'. For the first time Martin sees talent that moves him, and when her grandfather can't come up with the 'good faith payment' Martin helps with money out of his own pocket. This may not be when Martin and Clarence get wise to the scam, but it is when things begin to turn tragic, and the young girl is what begins to clue Martin in to the shady nature of his job. A visit to the recording studio to watch her record her song finds a technologically behind-the-times operation, inept/uncaring technicians, and a very angry grandfather. Suddenly the auditions are no longer funny, and they begin to become sad and tinged with slight dread that these people actually WILL sign up. These aren't talentless and deluded slackers, these are daughters and husbands and grandmothers that are being conned.

The performances are pretty stellar all around, whether in the 'caught on tape' musical performances, the weasely-but-not-slimy vibe from those running the GWS scam, and the interplay between Clarence and Martin. Pat Healy plays Martin with a deadpan sincerity, quiet, reserved and awkward, but truly desiring to help guide these people to stardom. Kene Holliday-good enough in this role that I wonder where the hell he's been since Matlock- plays Clarence almost diametrically opposed; gregarious, loud and crude, wanting nothing more than to make an easy buck and a better life. He isn't a bad man, but he does hold a bit of contempt for these people, looking to make it in life on 'talent' when most people have to make it with sweat and tears. It doesn't sound like the basis for a very good friendship, but the two connect, and the friendship feels real.

As I said, it's a bit of a curiousity that no one notices this is a scam. It's odd that in this day of the information highway, no one even thinks of checking into the history of GWS, but it's a minor flaw. Specifically because these people are so blinded by their own dreams that they would grasp at any way out of their ordinary lives. If I have one complaint with this movie, it's that it offers no real conclusion. Oh, sure, Clarence and Martin see the error of their ways, but it's too late; GWS has pulled stakes and moved on to greener pastures and more gullible marks. But what next? Does anyone seek out and hold GWS liable? Do any of the swindled artists seek out Clarence or Martin? The finale of this movie never lets it's characters off the hook for their duplicity in swindling people out of their savings, but neither does it offer the catharsis of confrontation. These are sad things happening to sad, desperate people, and in the end we're not given any sense of what to expect as they go their separate ways. I suppose this isn't necessarily a bad thing, and on a future viewing I'll probably change my mind about that, but I did eject the disc wanting... more. Which is the goal of any entertainer, after all.

Posted Monday, October 08, 2007 12:38 PM by TheWorkingDead | with 0 comments

Death Wish 1&2

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Death Wish (1974)

Death Wish 2 (1982)

[This is actually part of a series that's been going on over at Working Dead Productions, my normal blogsite. The other two posts are about the novels Death Wish and Death Sentence, the basis of this Charles Bronson series. You can find them over there, by clicking the site name above, or by clicking the links I've embedded in this post, if you are so inclined.]

The novel Death Wish was, as I stated in my review, spare and generally neutral about whether liberal turned vigilante Paul Benjamin was a good upstanding citizen pushed too far or a psychopath indulging his inner fascist. The movie, starring Charles Bronson, continues this neutrality, and in fact the film turned out to be one of the most faithful page-to-screen adaptations I've ever seen. There are a few changes here and there, but with a few exceptions they're all minor. Things like Paul's surname being changed from Benjamin to Kersey, and his job changing from an accountant to an architectural engineer(or something like that). I'm not really sure why the job changed, but perhaps it's because watching a montage of someone surveying property is (only) slightly more interesting than a montage of someone using a calculator.

The plot is still the same; Paul Bejamin's wife and daughter are attacked in the exact same manner described in the book, although the rape of Paul's daughter was new to the film. After his wife dies, Paul begins to see criminals everywhere, and eventually begins taking to the streets every night to stalk and kill muggers. The movie plays out more like an urban western than the book did, with Paul's trip to Arizona adding more than a dash of cowboy flavor(wild west shows and bull horns mounted on cars). The finale of the movie-with the cop who had been on the vigilante case telling him to move out of New York- carried with it the association with every western ever made where the sheriff told the outlaws to get out of town by sundown. Even a few of the scenes of Paul stalking muggers are played out as old fashioned duels at high noon. This idea was brought up in the book, but the movie takes it and runs with it. You could see this as the filmmakers condoning Paul's actions, but it would be more accurate to say this was an outward exhibition of how Paul sees himself. Paul never sees himself as a criminal, or as a man with maybe a few loose screws, he sees himself as Gary Cooper in High Noon. In a town full of frightened citizens, he's the only man willing to stand up and make an example of himself(and the criminals).

The movie is a pretty solid affair, and I enjoyed it well enough, but it still feels a little superficial. The novel was also light on discussion of ethics, but the movie removes almost all of those elements, creating a pretty standard revenge film. Much of the moral of this film, the feeling that we get that Paul's actions are repellent, is due to our own social programming, not anything the film itself brings up. Most of us assume violence is bad, and despite what we enjoy in movies, we recognize that such behavior in real life would be horrible, but the film doesn't make any such assumption. It doesn't go quite so far as to glamorize what Paul does, but it doesn't seem to think it's such a bad thing either.

Now, Death Wish was pretty neutral, and so was the film. Death Sentence, the sequel to the original novel, was very clear about which side of the argument the author was on, and Death Wish 2, while not based on the book, clarifies it's stance as well, albeit in the opposite direction. Death Wish 2 is plainly on Paul's side, and glorifies every single act of violence he perpetrates, inviting the audience to cheer along as he guns down gang member after gang member. The more I think about it, the more disgusting the movie seems, although I have to admit I enjoyed it when I watched it. This was probably due to the people I saw it with, and the fact that we were eating cheese steaks and laughing at the ridiculous elements of this film, and not actually due to any skill actually on the screen.

Five years after the events in the first film, Paul Kersey is living in Los Angeles with a new girlfriend, and his daughter is finally being released from the psychiatric institute she was sent to at the end of Death Wish. Apparently he found it very easy to stop roaming the streets and killing people, because Paul is no longer the vigilante he once was. But this is a sequel, and not only do we need violence, it needs to be bigger, bloodier, more disgusting than the last entry. And so on her first day out of the hospital, after a day of sailing and shopping with her father, Paul's daughter is kidnapped and raped by a gang led by a pre-Cowboy Curtis Laurence Fishburne. This is the second gang rape in the first 20 minutes of the film, and when viewed alongside the rape in the first film, sets up a pretty disgusting trend that I foresee continuing through the rest of the series. The rape in the first film was brief(yet no less hard to watch), and although unnecessary I could understand the filmmakers desire to make the attacks more horrific, to give Paul and his daughter more motivation for their individual reactions. In this film the violence against women is taken to extremely uncomfortable levels, and the rapes(there are a couple more to come) give this film an upsetting level of misogyny. It doesn't feel like the criminals are punishing women, it feels like the director is punishing women. And us.

Posted Tuesday, October 02, 2007 9:49 AM by TheWorkingDead | with 0 comments