addlepated

A Coupla White Guys Sitting Around Talking. And Talking. And Talking: Mark Duplass, left, and Joshua Leonard in Lynn Shelton's "Humpday"

I wish I could muster up the same enthusiasm for Lynn Shelton's "Humpday" that other cinéphiles have demonstrated.

I certainly looked forward to it even though, these days, indie films have become the bane of my moviegoing existence. Too many of them are as depressingly formulaic and predictable as your average assembly-line studio product. And "Humpday" is yet another indie that made something of a flashy impression in the rarified atmosphere of film festivals.

It's played quit a few and it's effectively beguiled its supporters.

But, frankly, it left me cold, despite its compelling subject: Two buddies - one a rather straight married man (Mark Duplass), a dull suburbanite who enjoys conventional sex with his wife, and the other an unapologetic slacker and Woody Harrelson lookalike (Joshua Leonard) - get drunk one night and decide to shoot a man-on-man sex film for HumpFest, the annual porno film festival of The Stranger, the Seattle alternative.

Then they sober up and their male insecurities get in the way.

Much like Paul Mazursky's "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice" from 40 years ago, Shelton's film tickles and teases and then politely excuses itself and cops out. The guys agree, the deal's off. Way off.

"Humpday" is more annoying than most indies in the way that it tries to make its subject palatable for even the art-house crowd. Shelton has seemingly encouraged her drug-and-booze-addled characters to nervously laugh or giggle with each line of dialogue - you know, to illustrate how hip they are to the idea or how embarrassed by it they are.

Everyone seems to be in a slaphappy daze here (including Shelton herself who, in a small role, laughs the most), and Duplass exacerbates matters by reading most of his lines while rubbing the sleep out of his corners of his eyes ad infinitum. After a while, he had me doing the same thing.

Leonard, not to be outdone in the area of annoying tics, essentially plays the bongo drums on his naked chest once the coitus is interrupted.

About an hour into the film, Alycia Delmore (as Duplass's wife) redeems the affair with bit of knock-out acting with her character's jaw-dropping reaction to her husband's decision to bang his buddy. It's like five minutes of reality surrounded by 90 minutes of male fantasy, bi-curious-style.

All in all, a missed opportunity.

cinema obscura: Anthony Page's "The Lady Vanishes" (1980)

It's a fool's errand to remake a classic, particularly a classic by a master. But that hasn't stopped some brave - deluded? - filmmakers from taking on even Alfred Hitchcock's increible library of films.

When such follies are attempted, the director in question ususally tosses around the word "hommage." but I also sense a hint of "All About Eve" resentment some place in there: the protégé wants to show up, outdo, the mentor, rather than honor or celebrate him/her, see?

There's a sense of divine justice in that the remakes rarely work or elicit much enthusiasm from critics or moviegoers. Case in point: Gus Van Sant's scene-by-scene remake of Hitch's "Psycho" (1998), a clever conceit that, in retrospect, probably deserved more serious analysis than it received. (Still, Van Sant messed up: He couldn't quite copy Hitch's pacing - so in an effort to have his film's running time match the original's, he had to eliminate one minor sequence - the Sunday morning scene with the sheriff and his wife, set outside a church. So Van Sant's "Psycho" isn't exactly identical to Hitchcock's.)

All of this is in preamble to introduce you to a Hitchcock remake of which you are probably unaware: Anthony Page's version of "The Lady Vanishes," made and released in England in 1979 and released ever so briefly in the States in 1980. Hitchcock's, also made in Great Britain in 1938, is an undisputed classic in the great British tradition starring Michael Redgrave, Margaret Lockwood and Dame May Witty. Pauline Kael praised the filmmaker, saying it was "directed with such skill and velocity that it has come to represent the quintessence of screen suspence."

So, how does one top that?

Well, Page ("I Never Promised You a Rose Garden" and "Absolution"), working from a screenplay by no less than George Axelrod, didn't really try. His version is unassuming, unself-conscious and quite companionable. He played around with the casting, offering up Elliott Gould, Cybill Shepherd and Angela Lansbury in the Redgrave, Lockwood and Witty roles, respectively. As a bonus, he found roles for such British stalwards as Herbert Lom, Ian Carmichael and Arthur Lowe.

On the other side of the camera, Douglas Slocombe photographed the piece for Page and Richard Hartley penned the music score.

So far, so good.

The plot, from Ethel Lina White's novel, remains intact: On an express train travelling through pre-World War II Germany, a flighty American heiress, Amanda Kelly (Shepherd), meets Miss Froy (Lansbury), a fussy, entertaining au pair who promptly goes missing. Other than Amanda, no one else seems to recall or have seen Miss Froy. Hmmm...

Amanda manages to finesses another American, a photographer named Robert Condon (Gould), into service. And as they search the train for her, Amanda realizes Miss Froy was much more than she appeared to be.

Page's offbeat casting seems inexplicably right, his pacing is crisp and he and Axelrod get the details and dialogue right. All in all, an honorable effort that transcends its reputation as an unnecessary remake and deserves to be seen. Or maybe it's just that I'm a sucker for train films.

charming: The Guard Brothers' SPDR Spot

Little Fideux in the delightful SPDR TV spot

The Guard Brothers - Thomas and Charles - the British-born duo who made their tandem feature debut earlier this year with the Elizabeth Banks-David Strathairn starrer, "The Univited," a remake of Ji-woon Kim's 2003 South Korean thriller, "Janghwa, Hongryeon," started out about 10 years ago as teens, dabbling in shorts. Their talent was clear - clear enough to attract such estimable names to their short projects as actors Jason Flemyng, Jodhi May, Martin Freeman and Lena Headey.

And they worked alongside such heavyweights as Mike Lee, Peter Greenaway, Stephen Daldry, Ridley Scott and Christopher Nolan on the omnibus film, "Cinema16: British Short Films" (2003).

I liked "The Uninvited." It was pretty fastideous for a genre film and the Guards invested some credible psychology and enormous tension, taking the viewer on a flight of exultant nightmare lyricism, along the lines of Brian DePalma's "Carrie" (1976) and M. Night Shyamalan's "The Sixth Sense" (1999). The guys also coaxed a performance of delicious, juicy villainy out of the always game Banks.

But apparently, the brothers really excel at shorts, as evidenced by their charming, disarming - and delightfully odd - dog commercial for The State Street Corporation, , a company that specializes in investment, insurance and property development. Now you may wonder what a little dog has to do with investments - in this case, State's SPDR Exchange Traded Funds.



Not much. The idea is esoteric: A little dog, clearly a street stray in Paris, works hard to deliver "desirables" to an aloof pooch living in comfort. A baseball, an old catchers' mit, a teddy bear and a used bone are among the items that the little bandy-legged dog manages to dig up, while rival street dogs are in pursuit of him. But they can't catch up. He has the goods. He delivers. Just like the SPDR Exchange Traded Funds, see?

Shot in glorious black-and-white, all of this is played out, a la Albert Lamorisse's "Le ballon rouge"/"The Red Balloon" - in the simplest of ways, with a French chanteuse warbling in the background for further ambience.

Once seen, this spot is not easily forgotten, although I have no idea how successful it's been selling funds. (Alas, the original commerical, which had a voiceover - in English - only at the end, was subsequently replaced by an edited version with the pesky voiceover now heard throughout.)

The Gate Worldwide is the agency that was in charge. Gustav Geldenhuys served as producer for the Guards; the excellent cinematograhy was by Joost Van Gelder, and Chuck Willis, of The Cutting Room, edited.

As the French would say, Formidable!

cinema obscura: Harold Prince's "Something for Everyone" (1970)/James Lapine's "Impromptu" (1991)

Theater directors rarely get any credit when they venture into film. Case in point: I loved what Morton DaCosta did with the film versions of plays that he originally directed on stage, "Auntie Mame" (1958) and "The Music Man" (1962). Both are noteworthy for their fidelity to their stage predecessors and yet are impressively cinematic.

DaCosta would direct only one other film - 1963's now-forgotten "Island of Love," starring Robert Preston, Tony Randall and Walter Matthau.

You could say, "That was then, this is now." But matters haven't changed.

Harold Prince made what I thought was an auspicious film directing debut with the delicious 1970 Angela Lansbury-Michael York black comedy, "Something for Everyone," one of those sophisticated sex comedies in which the randy young hero (York) sleeps his way through every member of a family (shades of Pasolini's "Teorema" with Terence Stamp).

The film is just about impossible to see nowadays, although Prince's second (and last) film, a truncated version of the Sondheim musical, "A Little Night Music," sas been available on DVD.

The estimable James Lapine, meanwhile, made one of the best films of 1991 - now also forgotton, of course - with "Impromptu," a randy farce about the affair between Frederic Chopin (Hugh Grant) and George Sand (Judy Davis, alas, in oneof her last great film roles). Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Emma Thompson and Julian Sand round out the cast.

I can't think of anything wrong with this film.

Lapine subsequently filmed the Michael J. Fox-Nathan Lane show-biz comedy, "Life with Mikey" and the Anne Tyler adaptation for HBO, "Earthly Possessions," sarring Susan Sarandon and Stephen Dorf.

If rep houses still existed and had resourceful bookers, "Something for Everyone" and "Impromptu" would make a great double-bill.

1961 Twins - Wilder's "One, Two, Three"/Capra's "Pocketful of Miracles"

Pamela & Horst, wildly attractive in "One, Two, Three"

In 1961, two veteran directors - Billy Wilder and Frank Capra - each helmed an antic comedy that involved a lot of door-slamming and a fast-talking hero, his penchant for deception and his crafty knack for bending the truth and, ultimately, getting his own way. Of course, by the end of film, the exhusted hero finds some redemption.

It's never been noted but Capra's "Pocketful of Miracles" and Wilder's "One, Two, Three" are essentially the same film, even though Wilder's is an adaptation of a Ferenc Molnár play that Wilder wrote with his partner, I.A.L. Diamond, and Capra's was a remake of his earlier film, "Lady for a Day," by way of Damon Runyon.

In "One, Two, Three," set during the Cold War, James Cagney is in rare form as C.R. MacNamara - "Mac" - who heads the Coca-Cola division in West Berlin and whose life becomes unraveled when his boss's daughter (Pamela Tiffin) comes for a visit and ups and elopes with a card-carrying Communist (Horst Buchholz). With the girl's parents - and Mac's boss - also coming for a visit, Mac has to scramble and transform the young Commie into an acceptable American Conservative.

In the Depression-era "Pocketful of Miracles," Glenn Ford is in his prime as Dave the Dude, a player who depends on the apples of Chicago vagerant Apple Annie (Bette Davis) for good luck. It turns out that Annie has used every cent she ever made to have her daughter (Ann-Margret) educated abroad where the girl fell in with a royal family. Now they're all coming for a visit and Dave has to scramble and transform the old street person into a genuine lady and socialite.

Bette Davis' Apple Annie Explains It All For You

Oddly enough, both titles, TMC staples, were released within months of each other in 1961 - and by the same studio, United Artists.

Note in Passing: The ingenués in the films - Pamela Tiffin and Ann-Margret - teamed up a year later in 1962 for José Ferrer's remake of "State Fair" and also again in 1964's "The Pleasure Seekers," Jean Negulesco's remake of his 1954 romance, "Three Coins in the Fountain."

when brüno met dieter

Teutonic Twins: Baron Cohen’s “Brüno” (above) owes its life to Myers' "Sprockets" (below)

Simply put, “Brüno” is "Borat" by way of "Sprockets."

Stylistically and in terms of its narrative drive, the new collaboration of star-auteur Sasha Baron Cohen and director Larry Charles is nearly indistinguishable from their "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" (2006), only not as special, given that, well, this schtick has already been done. And done better.

But the character of Brüno himself is a near replica of Mike Myers' Dieter creation, the West German television talk show host that Myers whipped up with Dana Anderson for the Second City sketch troupe and which became a recurring character during Myers' run on "Saturday Night Live." Surely, you remember, the aloof miminalist "Sprockets" host demanding that his reluctant guests pet his monkey, Klaus. "Touch him! Love him! Liebe meine abschmenkee!"

Deiter was marginally funny then and Brüno is marginally funny now.

The bottom line is, Brüno is essentially a sexed-up Dieter - no more, no less. But, wait, back to "Brüno" and "Borat"...

Both are episodic, although "Brüno" is noticeably more scattered with comic sequences that come to no natural conclusion - i.e., most end without a punchline. They just ... stop. Abruptly. But what really sets these two apart is that Baron Cohen's shallow, celebrity-fixated opportunitist isn't nearly as likable as his crazed journalist from Kazakhstan. But then rampaging narcissists are rarely amusing.

As Dieter often said: "Your story has become tiresome. Please leave."

Note in Passing: Oddly enough, Myers once planned to bring his Dieter/"Sprockets" character to the big screen for Universal Pictures and Image Entertainment (the Ron Howard/Brian Glazer company). There was a contentious lawsuit when he decided to pass on the film. Universal is also the production company that produced and released "Brüno."

The New Woody

Woody's latest isn't what it seems. That's the point.

Like most of Woody Allen's other late-career releases, his newest "Whatever Works" has been casually dismissed by movie opinion-makers, starting with the shrugs it generated at The Tribeca Film Festival.

And, frankly, for the first ten minutes or so, as star Larry David (standing in for Woody) talks directly to the camera and seemingly refuses to stop, the film had me squirming and cringing. "I already hate it," I whispered to my wife, ready to bolt.

But wait!

Its disasterous opening notwithstanding, "Whatever Works" quickly evolves into a highly companionable morality fable about a solitary, opinionated apathist/pessimist (the David/Allen character) who speaks authoritatively and negatively about life and people, threatening to poison everyone around him. The glory of the film is that it cleverly upends his dire theories, shrewdly pulling him into an extended family of free thinkers who have all taken his opinions and rehabilitated them - and him.

His life turns out to be a happy accident.

David plays Allen without resorting to the kind of mugging that other actors have adopted in Allen films and he's encircled by a deft ensemble - most notably, Evan Rachel Wood, Ed Begley, Jr. and Patricia Clarkson.

façade: Anthony Mackie

The auspiciously talented Anthony Mackie, with Kerry Washington, in the red-hot role that should have made him a hot star - as the Red Bull-gulping stud/babymaker in Spike Lee's "She Hate Me."

Anthony Mackie is one of those actors who seems to operate on the periphery - someone who you catch out of the corner of your eye.

But once you catch him, you can't take your eyes off him.

In a word, he's riveting. He's impossible to shake.

Case in point: Ryan Fleck's "Half-Nelson" (2006) is Ryan Gosling's film - except when Mackie is on screen giving him a hard time. Crowding Ryan Gosling off the screen is no easy task, but Mackie did it. And not in any underhanded, scene-stealing way. He simply inhabited his character.

Completely.

More recently, he did the same thing in Tim Disney's affecting
"American Violet" (2008). Mackie has one scene (albeit a major one) and no screen credit (inexplicably). Yet, the movie is his.

Mackie in "Half-Nelson": Another easy theft

By my count, this charismatic, talented actor should have become a major star five years ago - in Spike Lee's compelling "She Hate Me" (2004) - but the film itself is (how shall I put this?) slightly audience-alienating. Before there was "Hung," there was "She Hate Me," in which Mackie plays a game guy who goes into the business of impregnating women - with the help of erectile-inducing drugs and steady shots of Red Bull. You either loved or hated the film; you either loved or hated Mackie. No matter how one feels about "She Hate Me," it's a singular film and Mackie's is a singular performance - both still waiting to be discovered.

And let's not forget the fire Mackie brought to Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby" (2004) and McG's "We Are Marshall" (2006).

Anthony Mackie is now back, ready to give us one more chance, in Kathryn Bigelow's powerful and provocative modern war drama, "The Hurt Locker" - again, a film that ostensibly belongs to its top-billed star, the talented Jeremy Renner, who plays a sergeant who is a gung-ho war enthusiast ready to play a form of Russian roulette with himself, but which Anthony Mackie quietly, handily, steals as another sergeant who is more grounded and who is tested by his buddy's dangerous sense of bravura.

Another great performance. One that should make Anthony Mackie a star.

Note in Passing: Mackie will be in New York this summer, as a member of the cast of the Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park production of “The Bacchae.” He will portray the role of Pentheus in the play; the previously announced cast for “The Bacchae” includes Jonathan Groff and André De Shields. “The Bacchae” is to be directed by JoAnne Akalaitis with original music by Philip Glass and translation by Nicholas Rudall. It begins previews at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park on August 11, opens August 24 and concludes its run on August 30.

Sarah Palin and The Star System

Sarah Palin, ten months ago.

What a year. Was it only ten months ago that John McCain tapped the then-unknown Sarah Palin as his running mate? Yes, Saturday, August 30th, 2008.

Flashforward to today - Friday, July 3rd, 2009 - and Palin's bizarre press conference to announce she doesn't want to be governor of Alaska anymore. She's received "a high calling," see, and has to go. Bye.

OK, you're asking, what does this have to do with movies?

Plenty.

Within the studio system, the likes of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis were held by the iron grip of Jack Warner - and flourished. Much like the actors forced to become freelancers immediately following the demise of the old studio system, Palin is a star who's somewhat adrift - rudderless - trying to control her own career and proving that she's not really up to the task.

I can't think of any major star or politician who doesn't have handlers, but Palin demonstrated throughout last fall's primary that she can't be - won't be - handled.

Sarah Palin, yesterday

Over the past 10 months, I've heard people respond to Palin's cringe-producing behavior and run-on sentences by speculating that either she is being poorly handled by her advisers or that she simply isn't taking their advice.

My hunch is that she has no advisors. She and Todd have been quite successful running their mom-and-pop operation up there in Alaska, and don't need any advice from fancy-talking, big-city strategists, thank you very much. (Take that, Steve Schmidt and Nicole Wallace.) But anyone who wants to make it in the Big Time, whether in movies or in politics, needs some kind of guidance, a perspective from a third party and the willingness to listen. Palin can learn from the movie's greatest survivors. If she wants to.

I don't think she wants to.

"I'll be seeing ya, Herbie!"

Karl Malden (1912-2009) between scenes during LeRoy's "Gypsy" with Natalie Wood (1938-1981)

The divine Karl Malden made 70 movies in 97 years.

Is it odd to call Malden "divine"? Well, he was. To me, at least. He elevated whatever movie in which he appeared, seemingly effortlessly.

Seventy movies - too many to recount here, but his wrenching performance as Archie Lee Meighan in Elia Kazan's "Baby Doll" (1956) serves as a textbook example of what it takes to be a great, seamless character actor. Then there's John Frankenheimer's "Birdman of Alcatraz," made the same year (1962) as Frankenheimer's "All Fall Down" and Mervyn LeRoy's "Gypsy," in which Rosalind Russell flirted with him in a way that suited Malden: "I'll be seeing ya, Herbie!"

Eli Wallach taunts Malden in Kazan's "Baby Doll"

Film historian David Thomson perhaps put it best with his clever take on Malden in LeRoy's musical: "A standout as the agent/hustler in 'Gypsy' ('62, Mervyn LeRoy), cannily absorbing all Rosalind's Russell."

Then there's Robert Mulligan's "Fear Strikes Out" (1957), in which Malden - presciently? - plays a male variation on "Gypsy's" Momma Rose as John Piersall, a stage father who hounds his son Jimmy (poor Anthony Perkins) to be a star, baseball-division.

But my own idiosyncratic favorite is perhaps his least heralded performance - opposite Claudette Colbert in Delmer Daves' "Parrish" (1961), in which he tried to "man up" Colbert's pampered son, Troy Donahue.

Malden died Wednesday. Goodbye to a great actor, a truly decent man...

Note in Passing: The ever-reliable Turner Movie Classics, always on the ball, will pay tribute to Malden with a mini-festival on Friday, 10 July, with screenings of "A Streetcar Named Desire" (Malden's Oscar winner), "On the Waterfront" and the aforementioned "Birdman of Alcatraz." Savor him.

The Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre

In the immediate previous post on Farrah Fawcett, I refer to The Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre, a venue that deserves a bit of elaboration.

Located in Reynolds' hometown of Jupiter, Florida, the theatre was something of an unsung gem that opened in 1979, attracting high-profile performers in productions both new and tested duering most of the '80s.

Reynolds himself starred in several productions there - with Carol Burnett in Bernard Slade's "Same Time, Next Year" and with his then-love Sally Field in N. Richard Nash's "The Rainmaker."

Reynolds also acted with Stockard Channing in an Ernest Thompson one-act piece called "Twinkle, Twinkle" that was one-third of a trilogy known under the umbrella title "Answers." The other two titles by Thompson ("On Golden Pond") were "The Constituent," with Charles Durning and Ned Beatty, two frequent Reynolds co-stars on screen, and "A Good Time," featuring the then-married Kirstie Alley and Parker Stevenson.

Also: Neil Simon’s "The Odd Couple" featured Charles Nelson Reilly and Darryl Hickman; Julie Harris and Vincent Gardenia played in Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," and James Farentino and Diana Scarwid paired for Herb Gardner's "A Thousand Clowns."

The theatre closed its doors in 1997 after Reynolds declared bankruptcy in 1996 - a nice idea that deserved a longer run.

Note in Passing: I don't know about you, but writing about Burt and Farrah brings Rona Barrett to mind for some reason.

façade: Farrah

A missive from Farrah ... Sleep well, sweet girl

Farrah Fawcett was laid to rest yesterday, ending an enchanting life and career. Much has been written about her during the past week, but four fascinating career points managed to elude all of the appreciations.

1. Farrah had her first major film role in 1970 as Mary Ann Pringle in Michael Sarne's controversial "Myra Breckinridge," based on the book by Gore Vidal. Most of her scenes were with Calvin Lockhart and Rex Reed.

2. Urged by her friend Burt Reynolds, Farrah tested herself on stage for the first time in July of 1980 at Reynolds' theater in Jupiter, Florida, playing Jill Tanner in Leonard Gershe's "Butterflies Are Free," opposite Dennis Christopher. Dom DeLuise, another Reynolds friend, directed. She would make her New York stage debut a few years later in 1983 in William Mastrosimone's "Extremities," following Susan Sarandon and Karen Allen in the lead role. She would subsequently appear in the Robert M. Young film in 1986.

A scheduled stage appearance as an insecure former beauty queen in Nancy Hasty's off-Broadway comedy hit, "Bobbi Boland," directed by David Esbjornson and scheduled to reopen on Broadway at the Cort Theatre on November 24, 2003, closed November 9 during its previews. The play was set in Florida in the late 1960s and demonstrated how far a former beauty queen will go to protect her realm. The character Bobbi was made for Farrah, but it was not to be. The show's sole producer, Joyce Johnson, said at the time that the that the play, a success off-Broadway, "simply does not work in a large Broadway house."

3. In 1990, Farrah appeared in a Gene Wilder comedy called "Funny About Love," playing one of Wilder's three leading ladies, the other two being Christine Lahti and Mary Stuart Masterson. But all of her scenes were cut by director Leonard Nimoy after alleged poor test screenings. Farrah played a woman who Wilder, cast as a professional cartoonist, meets while speaking at a convention of the Delta Gamma sorority - the kind of woman who always eluded him. Sounds like perfect casting. It was an important role and, without it, the film is lopsided - and the Delta Gamma scenes in particular have the scars of hasty editing. Hopefully, Paramount will now see fit to restore her missing scenes in some future DVD - that's if they still exist.

4. Like every Hollywood blonde, Farrah also had her personal immitator - Susan Anton, who had the same white smile and big hair. Anton, who was pleasing and had talent, seems to have had a fleeting career, her most memorable part being the title role in Joseph Sargent's "Goldengirl" (1979), which played in aborted form in theaters but was shown in its original extended version on television. Jessica Walter, unseen in the theatrical release, is prominent in the long version.

Finally, anyone planning an at-home Farrah Fawcett Film Festival, these are the essential titles:

Lamont Johnson's "Somebody Killed Her Husband" (1978)
Richard C. Sarafian's "Sunburn" (1979)
Robert Greenwald's "The Burning Bed" (1984)
Robert M. Young's "Extremities" (1986)
Charles Jarrott's "Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story" (1987)
Alan J. Pakula's "See You in the Morning" (1989)
Lawrence Schiller's "Margaret Bourke-White" (1989)
Robert Duvall's "The Apostle" (1997)
Robert Altman's "Dr. T and the Women" (2000).