There are now two Abraham Lincoln movies in the pipeline — that serious weighty thing that Steven Spielberg will direct with Liam Neeson in the title role (i.e., the one I’ve been writing about since ’05), and a weird-thoughtful comedy from director Mike Binder about Lincoln being somehow brought back to life by an electric charge of some kind or another, and grappling with life in 2007. I’m not kidding, and I think its an excellent concept. But what would you call it? Remancipator?
My first thought was “cool…Abe’s back” but then I thought about this. A great legend of the 19th Century comes face to face with the mind-blowing and the tragic aspects of what this country has become is….not funny. A man from a world of sabers, horse and buggies, hoop skirts and top hats encountering obese people and SUVs everywhere, McMansions, global warming, George Bush, celebrity meltdowns, junk food, etc.? That’s a kind of horror film.
But the more I thought about it, the funnier it became. A fish-out-of-water piece with all kinds of strange cultural undercurrents. Lincoln driving a car, visiting Banana Republic, taking a Pilates class, dealing with an iPhone, etc. He can’t meet a nice bank teller and fall in love like Malcolm McDowell‘s H.G. Wells did in Time After Time. What would be do with himself? Become a pot dealer? A horse breeder?
In any event, Binder and Spielberg are sort-of bonded now. Binder says that Spielberg told him he’ll start work on the Lincoln film as soon as he finishes work on Indiana Jones 4, which would be next summer or next fall.

Summing up his feelings about Rush Hour 3, Time’s Richard Corliss says that “the first Rush Hour was a pretty good movie, the second one pretty lame [and] the threequel is somewhere in between — nothing special but with a high amiability quotient.” Plus Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker “know they click, [and] it’s no crime for them to extend and exploit that good vibe one more time.” That constitutes a “red” Rotten Tomato review? I’m asking because Corliss is one of the few major critic whose reviews haven’t been rated as “green” (i.e., thumbs down). Variety‘s Robert Koehler and the Philadelpha Inquirer‘s Carrie Rickey also gave it a pass. Brett Ratner‘s actioner has an 18% positive rating overall.

Ridley Scott‘s American Gangster (Universal, 11.2) screened last night at West L.A.’s Landmark, and it’s “really, really good,” a friend says. Denzel Washington is superb in his second big bad-guy role as Frank Lucas, a real-life Harlem drug-dealer who reigned in the early to mid ’70s. The Best Actor Oscar heat is Washington’s to run with, he says, although Russell Crowe‘s performance as Washington’s nemesis, Det. Richie Roberts, is way up there also.

The only thing that pops through in Patrick Goldstein‘s damage-assessment piece about New Line Cinema — what went right and wrong during the Russell Schwartz era, and what will be different now that he’s out the door — is a little morsel of information about Rendition, a Reese Witherspoon-Jake Gyllenhaal thriller due in October that “was so mystifying to preview audiences that its ending has been re-edited to allay audience confusion.” A friend who saw it three weeks ago can’t remember any confusing elements. Maybe the problem had been fixed by the time he saw it.

Back in the creaky old analog days of the ’90s, I used to rant about the “too much lead” syndrome in action movies and the occasional western. Bullets have to matter somewhat. Too many gunshots in a movie leads to a kind of fatigue in the soul, and even a kind of nausea. But nobody cared and the syndrome continued unabated. Too many guys and too many bullets going for the whammies. Except whammies are like jelly babies. Too many and you feel ill. I was in a state of almost permanent indigestion there for a while.

Then along came Unforgiven, a western that took the matter of death from gun shootings very seriously. Killing another human being is a horrible thing under any circumstance, and while we all understand that a certain ironic cinematic distance is necessary to deliver violent thrills in unserious genre films, the number of movies that have tried to absorb what it’s really like to cause or observe death at close range have been very few.
Which is why Clint Eastwood‘s Oscar-winner felt so refreshing. As with Shane, which has a total of ten shots fired (and five of these fired at a white rock on the ground) and the Mike Hodges version of Get Carter, the gunfire in Unforgiven was not only spare and select, but you could feel the hurt. The killings sank in.
This less-is-more aesthetic is pretty much out the window these days, of course. You have to blam-blam it fairly relentlessly or young guys will tell their friends that the other shoot-em-up movie is cooler. (Much in the way that twentysomething Roman guys in 100 A.D. probably compared the gladiator and wild-animal killings they’d seen in the Collisseum.) Caution, regret and thinking twice before you pick up a gun are for pussies.
If a violent film is a brilliant anarchic cartoon like Shoot ‘Em Up, then hundreds of gunshots is the satirical point and therefore not a problem. I can roll with cool gunplay as well as the next guy — “good” being the key term. For me “good” means “done carefully and within limits.” I also know that too much shooting is a turnoff. There are no hard and fast rules, but if there’s too much of it, you can always tell. A little voice says, “This is getting to be too much.” And then you start disengaging.
That said, there’s nothing like a much-desired death happening at the right time. There are a couple of real beauties in this respect from the hand of Russell Crowe in James Mangold‘s 3:10 to Yuma. I disliked the characters he dispatches, and when the moment finally comes…good stuff!
Is that a contradiction or what?

Billy Wilder‘s Ace in the Hole, a very cynical 1951 drama about a hard-bitten reporter (Kirk Douglas) exploiting the life-and-death situation of a trapped miner, came out on a long-awaited Criterion DVD on July 17th, and then 20 days later — last Monday, 8.6 — a cave-in trapped six miners inside a Utah mine, and within hours the media descended and began delivering the same kind of ticking-clock, hand-of-fate reports that Douglas and a horde of newsmen filed in the Wilder film…odd.

Kirk Douglas in Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole, shot taken near mining disaster situation in Huntington, Utah.

One thing reporters have learned since the 1920s (when the original trapped-miner incident that inspired the Wilder film occured) is to show heart and empathy, and there’s certainly been plenty of that coming out of Utah over the last five days.
Sadly, the real-life survival situation is starting to show similarities between the fate of the single trapped miner in Ace in the Hole as well as those radio reports about a little girl trapped in a hole in Woody Allen‘s Radio Days. “A tiny microphone lowered deep into the earth early Friday picked up no evidence that six coal miners are alive four days after they were caught in a cave-in,” a N.Y. Times story reported an hour or so ago. And while “an air sample indicated enough oxygen to breathe was present in the chamber where the miners are believed to be trapped, it also did not pick up carbon dioxide, the gas exhaled when people breathe.”

Paul Greengrass, the director of The Bourne Ultimatum, “told the Times of London that he purposely tapped into the mistrust the world has of the USA. In my opinion, Mr. Greengrass has used his skills as a filmmaker to create a slick propaganda package that will make him millions of dollars. And standing between Mr. Greengrass and real-life terrorists who would slit his throat are, of course, real-life American intelligence people.

Former CIA director Richard Helms (pictured here with Robert Redford) served as technical advisor on Three Days of the Condor

“In the end, the America-haters will love The Bourne Ultimatum and apolitical others may enjoy the action and carnage. The movie is a perfect storm of mis- guided ideology, silly plotting, and absurd conclusions. In other words, it’s a blockbuster.” — from an 8.9.07 Bill O’Reilly column called “The Bourne Buffoonery.”
O’Reilly is irked because his view of CIA operatives — good fellows looking to protect Americans from the Islamic baddies — sharply conflicts with Bourne‘s portrayal of upper-level CIA guys (Scott Glenn, David Strathairn, Albert Finney) as coldly calculating Machiavellian sociopaths. Well…? Has there been much substantial reporting over the last 45 or 50 years to lend credence to this observation or not? Are pharmacies selling denial pills over the counter these days, or do you still need a prescription?
Mistrust and even loathing of CIA operatives been part of the standard American belief system over the last 35 or 40 years, certainly since the gray paranoia days of the Nixon and Ford administrations in the early to mid ’70s. The first significant Hollywood manifestation was Sydney Pollack‘s Three Days of the Condor (’75). Greengrass and Bourne screenwriter Tony Gilroy (plus the others) are simply drawing from the same mindset 32 years evolved.

A lot of early to mid-fall movies are screening but everyone is whispering, everything’s a secret…you didn’t hear it from me. Sleuth (much shorter than the ’72 Laurence Olivier-Michael Caine version) is screening, and I’ve been included. There’s a chance I could see Michael Clayton sometime soon. Noah Baumbach‘s Margot at the Wedding is screening but not for me. Francis Coppola‘s Youth Without Youth is screening “but please don’t tell anyone…we’re just showing it to get reactions.” I saw 3:10 to Yuma yesterday afternoon before Shoot ‘Em Up. Gone Baby Gone has been screening a lot but only for feature writers and editors, or so I’ve been told. Control is screening and I’d love to see it again even though I saw it last May in Cannes. The Darjeeling Limited has screened but not for me. Robin Swicord‘s Jane Austen Book Club is screening, and I’ve been invited. No Country for Old Men…I’ll just get yelled at. The Brave One has been screening forever. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford has been shown so many times that Warner Bros. projectionists are sick of watching it. David Schwimmer‘s Run, Fat Boy, Run (9.28) is screening, but I’ll have to call and plead to get into it. And you didn’t hear it from me.

Slate‘s Jessica Winter on how Al Pacino got typecast as “Al Pacino.” I’m apparently one of the few who’s always enjoyed Pacino’s florid performances — every syllable, every shout, every flying saliva bullet. Scent of a Woman, Devil’s Advocate (I can almost recite Pacino’s big soliloquy word for word), those two scenes in Heat (“”By the time I get to Phoenix she’ll be risin’!”…”‘Cause she has a great ass!”), Tony Montana in Scarface. Pacino’s own words at a Devil’s Advocate press conference: “I don’t mind ham as long as it ain’t spam.”

“Art movies are gone, gone with the wind. In some cases, what once seemed suggestive and profound now feels tortured and pretentious. For example, why should the rivetingly supersophisticated Jeanne Moreau have to drive her car off that damned bridge at the end of Francois Truffaut‘s Jules and Jim? It’s factitious and absurd. All of the major European directors hit the skids in the ’70s. I, for one, had little interest in late Bergman, Antonioni or Fellini, who seemed to decline into pastiche and self-parody. With Bergman in particular, the austere turned sentimental. But why should any artist have to compete with his or her peak period? We should be satisfied with the priceless legacy of genius.” — from Camille Paglia‘s 8.8 Salon column, called “Art Movies: R.I.P.”

Michael Davis‘s Shoot ‘Em Up (New Line, 9.7) is a brilliant, ultra-violent Buster Keaton comedy, but the late-blooming Davis is, I feel, up to a lot more than just giving action fans a good ride. What he’s serving is basically satire, and we all know how that plays with people who just want the straight dope. In fact, I won’t be surprised if I hear about some action fans being irritated by Shoot ‘Em Up when it opens early next month. In a good way, I mean. Anything that pisses off the faithful is up to something right.

Action fans respect quality merchandise — I’m an absolute worshipper of The Bourne Ultimatum — but Shoot ‘Em Up is a movie about movies that peddle second- and third-rate material, and is therefore not very respectful of the action genre as it has existed since the early ’90s and the rise of Hong Kong action directors like John Woo.
The irony, of course, is that Shoot ‘Em Up was largely inspired by Woo’s Hard Boiled, a 1992 classic that was about a lot of crazy stuff, but partly about its fast-moving hero, played by Chow-Yun Fat, protecting an infant from predators filling the air with hot lead. In the current version Clive Owen is the Fat guy (i.e., a taciturn, totally gifted action machine), Paul Giamatti is the manic heavy and Monica Belucci is the hooker/ally/sexual comfort-giver.
Davis provides a good fast ride, but Shoot ‘Em Up is only somewhat interested in making its audience feel the heat. What it’s mainly about, deep down, is Davis saying to the action crowd, “Do you understand what a bunch of lowlife dipshits you guys are? Do you understand that your taste buds are up your rectum? Do you understand what a pestilence guns are, and that they provide the cheapest and dumbest movie thrills imaginable?”

There isn’t a single drop of sincerity in Shoot ‘Em Up, and yet Davis is sincerely saying the following with each and every shot: “It is completely impossible to take you, the young-guy thrill-kill action fans, or the hardcore, aerial-ballet Hong Kong genre that you love seriously any more, but I do feel three things…ready? I am genuinely aroused by the challenge of constructing great action choreography, purely as a technical exercise. But it does nothing more than amuse me, and my basic attitude is one of laughing derision for the whole Woo-aping circus. ”
Most high-octane urban thrillers do the same old double-track — half trying to excite audiences with extremely well-choreographed violence and half winking at them with self-referential goofery. Davis is almost doing this, but at the same time he isn’t. He pushes the action antics and the hard-boiled genre attitudes to such extremes that he’s made the next thing to a Road Runner cartoon.
And I loved it. I loved that Davis is simultaneously good at this crap but at the same time is anything but a devoted churchgoer. He doesn’t give a shit about the genre (not really, not in a true-disciple way), and is unable to invest anything of himself in the story, which is another one of those stories about a lethal lone wolf with a damaged soul trying to do a good deed, which goes all the way back to Shane.

(l. to r.) Owen, Bellucci, director Michael Davis

Shoot ‘Em Up is emphatically not the grindhouse movie that Harvey Weinstein thought he was going to get when he gave free reign to Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. Those guys really love high-kicking action movies and all the pulpy fever that goes with them. Davis, by contrast, is a very clever elitist in a silk smoking jacket who is 40% disgusted and 60% howling with laughter at this type of thing. He’s obviously good natured and energetic and clearly loves to make a film rip all over the place, but he’s not into “explosions.” He’s too excited by dry, low-key wit and the joy of writing awful action-movie puns to do the usual-usual.
Davis, in short (or so I believe), can’t be bothered to aspire to the class of Tarantino, Rodriguez, Michael Bay or Live Free or Die Hard helmer Len Wiseman. He would probably be very depressed to be regarded as “one of those guys.” I honestly feel that he’s above them, and coming from a much more interesting place. The invisible subtitle of Shoot ‘Em Up, after all, is Contempt.
I read the Shoot ‘Em Up script in March 2005, and it felt at the time “like a great New Line genre film in the tradition of The Hidden, the first Rush Hour, Blade and so on. It’s fast, punchy, sardonically funny, and aimed at younger guys and connoisseurs of action choreography-for-its-own-sake.” I was partly right and partly wrong in saying that. It is nothing like Rush Hour or Blade. It’s a little like The Hidden, but only a bit.
“The crusty, cynical noir-flavored tone is familiar, but the big action scenes have a kicky ‘haven’t been here before’ quality,” I wrote. “They take the Hong Kong Woo aesthetic to absurd new heights, but in a way that feels freshly insane, oddly logical and edgy-funny. It’s screwball formula nihilism with a twist.” That’s a little closer to the mark.

Shoot “Em Up isn’t just the work of director-screenwriter Davis. As I’ve heard it, it’s very much a collaboration between himself and king-shit producer Don Murphy along with tadpole producers Susan Montford and Rick Benattar. Editor Peter Amundson was also a major player. They had to go back and shoot extra footage, and so what? It was worth the effort.
The soul of Shoot ‘Em Up is in the constant editorial asides when Owen goes “you know what I hate?” and he goes off on numerous aspects of modern life that greatly piss him off. Belligerent rich guys who drive black Mercedes coupes but can’t be bothered to flip a turn signal, for instance. My favorite comes when he slaps down a fat guy who’s been sipping soup and going “aahhh” after every slurp. (I hate guys like that myself. So much so that I’ve told myself for years whenever I’m eating soup to not slurp and not go “aaahhh.”)
But the biggest “you know what I hate?” in Shoot “Em Up isn’t spoken in so many words. It’s in every scene of the film, and not hard to discern.

To promote a big fat Comic-Con piece by critic Luke Y. Thompson, the Orange County Weekly has put the the rainbow-haired critic on the cover of this week’s issue. A very flattering illustration (i.e., Thompson isn’t exactly a hard-bod superhero type in actuality) but I shouldn’t quibble. I’m presuming that journo-critics everywhere are envious. The article catches the old San Diego “Con” vibe, but I’m still not sorry I skipped it this year.