Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
I’ve been out of town for the last week, so it’s nice to return and find the mailbox full of all sorts of goodies. Too bad I couldn’t sneak into tonight’s VAN HELSING screening with Beaks, but at least he has a full report for us. Doesn’t sound too optimistic, either...
THIS COLUMN HAS NO NAME, BUT IF IT DID IT WOULDN’T BE “NOTES FROM THE HOLLYWOOD UNDERGROUND” BECAUSE THAT’S PRETENTIOUS AND MISLEADING, VOL. 2
Sorry for missing last week. I’ve been wracked with guilt over letting y’all down. Of course, I received a missive from Yolanda excoriating me for my thoughtless dereliction, which I won’t reprint here as I suspect it might include hidden signals to Al Qaeda sleeper cells. These are dangerous times, and I am a very cautious, if deeply sexy man. I will, however, share with you this email from Producer and Hotelier Merv Griffin:
Dear Mr. Beaks,
When I said Mark Goodson could “suck my dick” the other day at lunch, I didn’t mean it in a faggy way. I think you understood that, but I just want to be sure. See you Wednesday night for poker. I hope my money is still good after last week’s unfortunate debacle. (Seriously, I’ve been gambling for most of my life, and I’ve never *once* come light to the table. Honest.)
Bro’s Before Ho’s,
M.G.
I thought that was sweet of him. Anyway, on with the show.
WHITE ON WHITE
Being a rebel in a small town situated on a barren Icelandic fjord is a lot of wasted energy, a fact that tragically eludes the titular young albino in Dagur Kari’s modestly quirky coming-of-age tale, NOI. But it’s hard to blame the kid for acting out, especially when his father’s a feckless drunk prone to warbling “In the Ghetto”, his grandmother’s idea of an alarm clock is firing off a rifle out of his bedroom window, the landscape has the soul-deadening consistency of his skin pigmentation, and there isn’t an attractive girl in sight.
Fortunately for Noi (played to understated, smartass perfection by Tomas Lemarquis), prospects have suddenly improved in that last regard with the arrival of Iris (Elin Hansdottir), the attractive niece of the village’s curmudgeonly bookseller. Iris is from the city, which, in any rural vernacular, is another way of saying “trouble”, and Noi sees in her a kindred restless spirit. But Noi is still dissatisfied with his icebound lot; he yearns to quit the fjord for the drastically sunnier climes of Hawaii, which he gazes at through the lens of a viewfinder. Getting out, however, is the trick, and it’s highly unlikely that his academic record will afford him a chance to attend university. So Noi rages futilely – shooting out icicles hanging from a nearby mountain, firing rocks at a far-off rainbow (in an unsubtle symbolic _expression of revolt), and generally pissing off everyone around him, friend or foe.
NOI is a pretty nifty deadpan comedy until its jarring, straight-outta-Hawthorne final twist, which is by turns heartbreaking and darkly amusing. Kari, one of a number of emerging Icelandic filmmakers, is a confident visual storyteller with a nice sense of the absurd (I loved the bookseller’s “New York Fucking City” T-shirt), and, even in the cataclysmic finale, he’s careful not to overreach or fall back on the genre’s more cloyingly sappy clichés. Though he’s working against an oppressively bleak canvas (ably shot by Rasmus Videbaek), the tone is consistently light and engaging.
But Kari’s most valuable asset is newcomer Lemarquis, whose sardonic inexpressiveness is a perfect complement to the snowy milieu. He anchors the film with a conspiratorial charm, easily winning over the audience’s affections as he rages against this frozen void. Also excellent is Throstur Leo Gunnarsson as his alcoholic father, who is obviously the sad sack Noi will become if he fails to escape the fjord.
Granted, April 9th is a crowded weekend, but for those with a taste for the offbeat, NOI is well worth seeking out. It’s already playing in New York City, and starts Friday in Los Angeles.
BURYING THE LEAD, AND EXHUMING MONSTERS
It’s possible that Stephen Sommers’s has crafted the biggest, loudest, most action-packed summer spectacle of all time with VAN HELSING, but it’s for absolute certain that he has delivered the most relentlessly assaultive major studio tentpole flick since his own THE MUMMY RETURNS. From reel one to reel one-too-many, the movie piles on one set-piece after another with little regard to pacing or narrative coherency, stranding the viewer in lots of wild situations with poorly developed characters. The result is a film of epic tedium that never quiets down enough to allow for a proper nap.
As we’ve learned from the Warner Brothers BATMAN misfires, a preponderance of villains tends to overwhelm the protagonist, but that hasn’t stopped Sommers from dangling Universal’s horror library upside down and shaking out every last icon. Dracula, Frankenstein, the Werewolf… we’re but a Mummy and a Gill Man short of a Bobby “Boris” Pickett novelty hit. Sadly, Sommers hasn’t really bothered to invent a reason to bring these fellers together. The plot has Hugh Jackman’s Gabriel Van Helsing stomping off to Transylvania so that he can protect Anna Valerious, the last living heir of a family sworn to, um… protecting the world from evil. In other words, he’s protecting the protector because she’s a fucking skirt. Works for me. The last thing you need is evil incarnate protecting you from evil incarnate.
I’m being smug. That’s not really the whole picture. You see, there’s also been an uptick in devilry because Count Dracula (Richard Roxburgh) is hankerin’ to fuck his three voluptuous wives silly (you would, too, if they were Josie Maran, Silvia Colloca and the adorable Elena Anaya) in order to create a whole bunch of Baby Vampires that’ll fly around at night, bite the shit out of people, and probably give him the inside track to ruling the world. Oh, and he needs Frankenstein’s monster to shock these beasties out of their viscous sacs because… well, because.
It’s a shame that VAN HELSING is such a stinker. It actually comes roaring out of the gate rather thrillingly with a black-and-white prologue that revels in the tropes of the classic Universal monster movies, right down to turning the studio’s globe into the head of a flaming torch carried by an angry villager. But if Sommers truly loves these old movies, he doesn’t seem to have much affection for his assembled icons. Though the werewolf ends up figuring into the story rather crucially, the creature’s lore is pretty much tossed off; he’s just there for the marketing campaign. Frankenstein’s monster, while the most sympathetic of the trio, is given a poorly explained obsession with Christianity that winds up being little more than a cudgel-over-noggin symbol for his spiritual struggle. Underutilized actor Shuler Hensley struggles admirably under a ton of makeup to give the character some emotional depth, but he’s stymied by the script at every turn.
Worst of all, however, is Count Dracula, who Sommers has inexplicably imagined as a loudmouthed boob with fuzzily-conceived plans for world domination. Still, no matter how ineptly written the character, there can be no excuse for Roxburgh’s portrayal, which is probably the most heinous crime ever perpetrated on Bram Stoker’s beloved creation. He’s awful throughout, thundering out his lines like some third-rate community theater ham essaying Lear. Drunk. And possibly concussed from a tumble backstage. I mean, I’ve generally enjoyed Roxburgh’s work in the past, but this is an embarrassment, and he’s not helped by Sommers’s predilection for extreme close-ups that summon up the satiric specter of Dr. Evil.
To be fair, VAN HELSING isn’t as bad as THE MUMMY RETURNS; there’s one genuinely exciting action sequence concerning a runaway horse-drawn carriage that briefly jolts the film to life. Also, I found myself getting at least a smidgen involved in the grand finale, though I found myself tiring of the constant swooping and plummeting in which our heroes engage. (Seriously, there’s probably a drinking game to be created around the never-ending swooping and plummeting in this movie.) And while the f/x aren’t seamless, they’re a marked improvement from THE MUMMY RETURNS, with Dracula’s transformation and an ape-like Mr. Hyde standing out. The less said about the werewolf f/x in this movie, the better. (I should also note that the f/x weren’t complete in this print, but the stuff I’m singling out looked locked-in to me.)
It’s telling that Sommers’s most enjoyable film to date is also his least expensive, DEEP RISING. That film had a similar recklessness in its pacing, but it also knew when to pull back and let the audience get to know its characters. For all of my harsh criticisms, I really do think Sommers is a solid pulp filmmaker; he just needs to get back to storytelling basics and lay off the spectacle. Unfortunately, a huge opening weekend for VAN HELSING is inevitable, which, despite a probable sixty percent second week drop, will probably give way to a sequel (according to an LA TIMES article this week, there are also a few spin-offs planned). And, really, who could blame Sommers for proceeding with the same enervating methodology using the box office returns as proof of a job well done?
CLOSING TIME
There’s scads more that I could be writing about tonight, but I’ve got a PINK PANTHER box set that needs reviewin’ for The DVD Journal, along with the recently arrived “Bootiest Edition” of BOOTY CALL that’s just aching for a spin. Keep your eyes peeled for a contest involving signed copies of Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt’s THE ANIMATION SHOW DVD, a review of KILL BILL in full, and interviews with Guy Maddin and Mark McKinney for THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD.
Faithfully submitted,
Mr. Beaks
I was at the same KILL BILL VOL. 2 screening that Beaks was, and I’ll have my review up immediately. In the meantime, good stuff, and thanks for the read, buddy.
"Moriarty" out.
