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Go Huskies. Thank you, college basketball season, for ending and letting me have my life back.
CRONOS (1991) - d. Guillermo del Toro
First off, his name is my name, too; I like the guy more than I should.
I talk about this movie all the time, even though I've only seen it twice. The last time I managed to properly watch it, I was still in my first tour of duty in college.
What a great movie. What a great movie 'Mimic' could have been if they'd let him go where he wanted to go with it. What a better movie 'Mimic' would've been if they'd made it without Mira Sorvino. What a great director del Toro was, even at this early age.
I've been meaning to watch Cronos again since the DVD came out in October. I'd rented it on tape last spring and realized that there was no way I was going to sit through such a muddy, shitty pan & scan. So, yeah, the first thing you notice is that this transfer is absolutely amazing. Guillermo Navarro, the film's DP, is part of the bumper crop of Mexican cinematographers who are only recently getting their due stateside (Rodrigo Prieto, Emmanuel Lubezki, Gabriel Beristain, etc.) and, even at this early stage in his career, you can tell that Navarro is the man.
The other guy who's the man is Federico Luppi. The plot of this movie involves Luppi, as antique shop owner Jesus Gris, finding a statuette of an angel with a hollow bottom. Inside that hollow bottom is a weird little gold device (made by an alchemist seeking eternal life, of course) that ends up acting a whole lot like an insect when you turn the dial (watch your hands). Anyhow, Luppi gets bitten in front of his loving granddaughter, behaves a whole lot like a vampire, and becomes way fricking addicted to the 'cronos device' - which starts making him younger and able to shave. Originally, del Toro had Max Von Sydow in mind for the part of Señor Gris, but Luppi, who's one of Argentina's biggest stars, brings a warmth and gentility to the role which ends up defining the film.
This is a kooky horror film. A young Ron Perlman hams it up in English, the body count is more of a trickle than a trip to a matadero (though the gore count is reasonably high), and, ultimately, it's more about the love between Jesus and his grand-daughter than any horrible, evil-demon-seed-to-rule-the-world contrivances. Really clever, and a clear sign that there's more pistons firing in del Toro's brain than there are at any Fangoria convention.
Also, there are a tiny handful of directors who give really good commentary track. Steven Soderbergh comes to mind. Del Toro is another one, and his interview and the sparse extras really make the rest of the DVD stand up. I wish more directors could talk about their craft like SS and Guillermo do, because they're just as useful as film school at a billionth the cost.
HELLBOY (2004) - d. Guillermo del Toro
I just read David Edelstein's Slate review of this movie, and this, to me, is the crux of the pro-Guillermo argument: "he's in a class with Peter Jackson as a fan-boy who gets it."
Totally, Mr. Ed, totally. Guillermo's as big a geek as Harry Knowles, except, unlike Harry, he actually has something to say, and the aesthetic taste to pull off all different kinds of genre material.
I got a copy of the screenplay to this movie well before they started shooting because my friend was working for a publisher who would potentially be releasing the script. I'd already become a fan of the comics right around the same time that 'Devil's Backbone' (also starring a Sr Federico Luppi) came out and I realized how much of a del Toro fan I was. At that point, all sense of objectivity was lost. This was supposed to be his labor of love, and he'd even brought Mike Mignola - he who created Hellboy - on to help with production design on 'Blade II' (which is a bad movie only if you can't take a joke). The script I read then was great, pitch-perfect, and one thing that shocked me watching this in the theater was how little changed from script to screen in the 18 or so months in between.
Back when, I read an interview with GDT where he said that 'Hellboy' was going to fulfill his dream of doing a movie where monsters kick the crap out of each other. Ooh, boy, did he succeed. There's a comic book texture and feel to this movie that I haven't really seen before. Though the first Batman and Superman movies and X-Men 2 are great at balancing comic booky-ness with smarts, this is the purest synthesis yet of comics and film. Which basically means that it's just a shitload of fun, and that fun is a primary point of emphasis. You had to know that making a movie starring Ron Perlman painted red was a brilliant f'ing idea, and, yeah, turns out that it pretty much is. If I'd been 14 and sitting in that theater, would've lost my mind.
Again with the Peter Jackson comparison, but he and del Toro have a great eye for special effects. Just like as he did in 'Blade II,' del Toro combines practical and digital effects seamlessly, and creates visuals which wouldn't work if they weren't hybrids and had to stand on one technology or the other. He's still a little bit over-reliant on creating figures digitally, but they've made big strides in that department since 'Blade II.' More often than not, those digital figures work well (Hellboy vs. the bad thing at the end), but sometimes, in the case of Abe Sapien, it leaves something to be desired. Abe Sapien as a whole leaves something to be desired. They did a good job designing him, but then they made the egregious boo-boo of having David Hyde Pierce do the voice work, and they may have also motion-captured him for Abe's scenes.
I do have one other problem, though it's a biggish one. Sure, as a big-budget, mainstream film, 'Hellboy' needs a sense of lightness and simplicity that the often-dark source comics don't offer, but, at the end of the day, I wish there was more Mike Mignola going on. Many of the sets are straight out of his brain, but the angularity and 'half the frame is just a big splotch of black ink' style of his work isn't here on screen. Still, it would be nigh impossible to do a better version of Hellboy in the studio, or any other, setting. The point of this movie is that it's fun and kicks ass, and it mostly succeeds.
And, man, is 'At The Mountains Of Madness' gonna kick.
PRETTY AS A PICTURE : THE ART OF DAVID LYNCH (1997) - d. Toby Keeler
Um, I should start off by saying that I do not believe David Lynch and/or Terry Gilliam and/or anyone else cosmically weird to have invented cinema. I went to school with a lot of you types, and there are stakes in my back yard and a couple bags of Diamond-brand with your name on 'em. One could make an excellent case that Lynch is of the highest order among directors, but I won't give Stanley Kubrick the full credit he's due, so why should I start with these guys?
And, anyone who's going to mention Tim Burton in a sentence with any of the above three names - unless the sentence sounds something like 'Tim Burton was influenced by....' - you need to get out right now. Get out. Now. Seriously. Out.
Not to say that Burton isn't a very good filmmaker who's made great movies, just trying to clarify the pecking order for those who name 'The Matrix,' 'Amelie,' or 'Fight Club' among their favorite films. Go listen to Staind and leave us alone.
Ahhh, the rarified air of the film snob.
I love David Lynch. I want to be his friend. I do not like 'Lost Highway.'
I guess I should talk about the documentary now...
I don't really get it. You have access to David Lynch. You have access to him on a film set. You have access to him in sound mixes and post-production. You have access to him while he's painting. You have access to his earliest work. He's a legendarily affable guy. So, um, what's the fricking deal?
'Pretty as a Picture' isn't a bad movie. The subject is way too interesting to lead to a 'bad' movie. There's interesting stuff in here, especially the excerpts of his earliest films and some moderately revealing interviews. Watching Lynch shellac an oil-painting covered in rotten, maggot-laden meat is a sight to behold. One does get an overwhelming sense of how much 'art' and 'idea' have to do with one another, so it's not a total misstep. Still, I just can't help but feeling like someone got it all remarkably wrong. It's like it's pulling punches - not in the sense that no one asks the tough questions, just in the sense that no one's asking any questions. Again, with the level of access and the talent of the subject, I don't get why it's all so damned bland and devoid of craft. It's like watching 'Italian For Beginners' except this is a documentary, making it even duller. One thing that was confirmed for me was the fact that I don't like 'Lost Highway.' Now I'm inclined to rent it one last time to be sure.
You're not going to do yourself any harm in watching this. You'll definitely know more about Lynch by the time you're done. But, once the credits roll, give me a shout and let me know what you think of that Prague montage, and whether or not the Prague montage doesn't just about say it all.
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