Werth: Oh, Wise...
Wise: Yes, Werth?
Werth:
I was just sitting here with my tri-corder and adhesive Spock ears
thinking about all the re-boots that have been happening of late.
Wise: There are a lot. Along with the hugely successful J.J. Abrams Star Trek franchise, there's Batman, Spider-Man, Superman—
Werth: The Alien quadrilogy got a new "beginning" with Prometheus—
Wise: Arthur got a new look care of Russell Brand—
Werth: And then there's the Psycho prequel on A&E.
Wise: Speaking of Hitchcock there's talk of a re-make of his 1940 classic Rebecca.
Werth: All these re-makes, re-boots and prequels make me wonder what Hollywood classic I would re-imagine if I ran the world.
Wise: The first film that pops into my mind is not a classic, but it is based on a classic fantasy series for teens. Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising series combines Arthurian legend, mysterious villains, compelling (and distinctive) young heroes, and the supernatural to depict the eternal battle between the forces of Light and Dark. In a world where Harry Potter and The Hunger Games are smash hits in both the bookstore and the multiplex, Cooper's beloved series should prove irresistible to filmmakers.
Unfortunately, that allure proved tempting to the wrong people resulting in the cinematic mishmash The Seeker (2007).
Werth: I want to name my first baby Mishmash.
Wise: Based on the second book in the series, the film follows Will Stanton (Alexander Ludwig) an American teenager living in rural England who discovers that he is the latest in a long line of warriors destined to battle the forces of the Dark led by The Rider (Christopher Eccleston).
Helping him in this quest is the mysterious butler from a nearby manor Merryman Lyon (Ian McShane) as well as the lady of the manor Miss Greythorne (Frances Conroy) who teach Will how to use his powers and instruct him in his mission to discover The Six Signs before the Dark forces can use them to destroy humanity.
Werth: Sounds like Downton Abbey meets Harry Potter.
Wise: While film adaptations are necessarily different from the books upon which they are based, director David Cunningham and screenwriter John Hodge overlarded The Seeker with superfluous teen angst, distracting family dysfunction, gory action sequences, and even bastardized major plot points from Cooper's novels.
They changed the hero's age, his nationality, and even shoehorned in a band of vikings when they found themselves unable to capture Cooper's foreboding tone. Fans of the books (and the author) cried foul and audiences not familiar with the series couldn't make sense of what they saw on the screen, and the lack of support from both corners made the film a flop.
Which is a shame because the books still cry out for a more faithful adaption, perhaps directed by M. Night Shyamalan, who has a way with fantastical dread, or Alfonso Cuarón, who recognizes the mystical power of childhood.
Returning to the books' late 1960's setting would also assist the portrayal of world at the cusp of good and evil, as would returning Will to his preteen age in the books instead of making him a moody teenager. Perhaps the best thing about The Seeker is that is provides a useful template for any future filmmaker of exactly what not to do.
Werth: Another template for what-not-to-do is cinematic stinker Barbarella (1968). Jane Fonda went against the light romantic comedy roles she was previously associated with to star as Barbarella, a sexy space agent who is on a mission to save the universe.
Wise: It couldn't be anymore ridiculous than Monster-in-Law.
Werth: Barbarella crash lands on an alien planet while looking for missing weapons developer Durand-Durand whose positronic ray could be used as a dreadful weapon to throw the whole universe back into a war-like state. As she hunts for the elusive scientist she is attacked by toothy dollies; has sex with a man in a fur suit; is saved by a blind, half-naked winged guy; has sex with the blind,
half-naked winged guy; is attacked by a room full of cockatiels; has hand sex with a befuddled revolutuionary named Dildano; is sexually tortured by a musical organ—
Wise: I'm sensing a trend here.
Werth: Jane is very busy in this movie. Filmed by her then husband Roger Vadim, it seems plotted solely to give opportunities for Fonda to be naked and/or have her clothes torn off. Jane looks fantastic. But even her sexy, zero-gravity striptease can't keep this film from being pure spacejunk. The film is based on a French comic book which probably loses something in the translation.
The film takes the obvious road of spoofing the sci-fi genre instead of liberating it by more fully developing its female heroine. The polystyrene sets, the costumes that would make Cirque de Soleil cringe, and the pedantic dialogue are successful only as campy Sixties send-up.
Vadim misses the opportunity to make Barbarella a culture-clashing heroine who can save the universe with guile, sharp-shooting, and style instead of what amounts to a space-age bimbo who screws her way out of every predicament.
Wise: Just like you in the old days.
Werth: I think a smart director who can respect the genre while at the same time re-inventing it (Joss Whedon immediately comes to mind) would be perfect to re-boot Barbarella. Lord knows action/sci-fi flicks that require a lot of CGI are de rigeur these days.
You could get Emma Stone to play Barbarella, Channing Tatum to play winged hottie Pygar, Steve Carell as Dildano, and Jane Fonda could even appear as The Great Tyrant to lend some nostalgia to the proceedings. Trust me. Today's Hollywood couldn't do any worse than the molten canola oil villain Matmos that's in the original.
Wise: Careful, Werth. I think one of your Spock ears is coming unglued.
Werth: I'm getting over-heated. Would you hand me that bottle of spirit gum?
Wise: Tune in next week to see what sticks on Film Gab!
Werth: Twenty-three Skidoo, Wise. Have some bathtub gin and let's toast the opening of Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby by gabbing about literary adaptations from page to screen.
Wise: Um, don't you mean, let's put on old bathrobes and have lumpy pancakes in bed?
Werth: Are you hungover?
Wise: It's Mother's Day on Sunday, and shouldn't we be celebrating the ladies who make it all possible?
Werth: Let's compromise and do literary mothers on the big screen.
Wise: I'm all for that, as long as it doesn't turn into a glam rock disco anthem.
Werth: This means I will have to discuss the biggest mommie book turned into a movie of all time. Yes, that day has come. I will gab about Mommie Dearest (1981).
Wise: I've already fastened my seatbelt.
Werth: I'll be blunt. I think Christina Crawford's hit tell-all 1978 book Mommie Dearest is opportunistic exaggeration. It and the subsequent movie have supplanted an image of Joan Crawford in the public's mind that has eclipsed the talents of this hard-working, dedicated actress.
But let me be clear, Joan Crawford was no saint. She was a control freak, a mean drunk, obsessively strict with her children and so invested in her image that it's likely there was no difference between Joan Crawford movie star and Joan Crawford human being. That's one of the reasons it is so much fun to watch Faye Dunaway "become" Joan Crawford.
Wise: It takes a lot of eyebrow pencil and even more cojones.
Werth: Like the book, Mommie Dearest the movie tells the story of how Golden Age Hollywood movie star Joan Crawford adopted Christina (played as a teen and older adult by Diana Scarwid) and the subsequent wire-hanger-inspired abuse that followed. And as with the book, the scenes without Joan are a snooze.
Dunaway is literally possessed by Crawford and translates Crawford's larger than life screen persona into her portrayal. Crawford doing something as simple as taking a shower or putting on elbow lotion becomes a full-scale MGM production. Almost everything in this movie looks like it's from a movie. There is no sense of reality... with the exception of one scene where Joan confesses to Chrisitna that she's broke. Dunaway tones down the makeup and the gestures to become what might be a glimpse of what Crawford was really like. 
Dunaway's physical resemblance to Crawford is eerie, especially when you add-in that Dunaway was the same age as Crawford at this time, was dealing with the same career issues, and had even just adopted a child—although Dunaway lied to the press for years and claimed to have given birth to her son.
Wise: Art imitating life channeling crazy.
Werth: Dunaway's unearthly connection to Crawford produces a portrayal that is so monstrous you can't take your eyes off it. The eyebrows, the lips, the held-back shoulders and perfectly timed puffs of smoke fill the screen. Unfortunately that over-the-top performance also turned what was supposed to be a dramatic treatment of child abuse into a camp classic that had gay men around the country shouting the lines back at the screen.
In the end, no less than Christina Crawford herself denied that her mother acted like that. I don't like Mommie Dearest for what it did to Crawford's image, but I do have to give props to Dunaway, whose dedication to the part is something Joan Crawford would appreciate.
Wise: Little Children (2006) focuses on another bad mommy in an extreme situation. Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet) is a young suburban mother with a daughter she doesn't understand and an older husband who's become hooked on internet porn. At the park one day she meets former college football star Brad Adamson (Patrick Wilson) who's supposed to be studying for the bar, but wastes his hours daydreaming about former glory.
They begin a flirtation that quickly escalates into an affair, igniting a domestic firestorm when Brad's wife Kathy (Jennifer Connelly) catches on to their dalliance. During all this, Brad's buddy Larry, a former cop, has a begun a campaign to expose and harass recently released sex offender Ronny McGorvey (Jackie Earle Haley).
Werth: Sex offender, dead guy who kills you in your dreams, a super hero with a bag on his head. Jackie Earle Haley better be careful of typecasting.
Wise: Director Todd Field adapted Tom Perrotta's novel with the help of the author, and it's interesting to see how the book and the film diverge. Most of the plot points are the same, but the leap from page to screen erased some of the author's black humor while heightening the interconnectedness of the characters. A scene at the local pool, for example, contrasts Sarah and Brad's growing romance with Ronny's own conflicting desires to become a regular member of society while indulging in his squirmy desires.
The juxtaposition not only points out the risk that Sarah and Brad are taking, it also suggests the longings that all three characters have that can never be fulfilled.
Werth: Seeing Wilson's rear end was fulfillment enough for me.
Wise: Winslet, who has made a career of great performances, is particularly good here, if a bit more subtle than in other films. Her Sarah begins frumpy, shoulders hunched as if she is still poring over the feminist texts she studied in college.
As the affair progresses, she becomes more golden, her body less lumpy and more voluptuous, while her speaking voice becomes less nasal and more direct. This is no typical movie makeover scene, instead it's a carefully calibrated depiction of a woman discovering both what she wants and what she doesn't need.
Wilson has a bit less to do, but manages to cast off his somewhat effete persona and play a believable jock plagued by regret.
But it's Haley who's the real stunner here, transforming himself from a washed-up kid star to a character actor with incredible depth. His Ronny is both poignant and tragic, slyly comic, and well deserving of his Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
Werth: I hope you're satisfied that we covered both literature and motherhood in one fell gab.
Wise: Indeed we have, now let's get to those pancakes.
Werth: Tune in next week for more light and fluffy Film Gab!
Today Film Gab sadly marks the passing of special effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen. Harryhausen's work with stop motion animation in such films as The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and Jason and the Argonauts (1963) not only set the standard for motion picture special effects, but also thrilled a generation of moviegoers who pre-dated the CGI revolution. Whether it was a giant dinosaur, a group of grinning, fighting skeletons, or the terrifying, snake-headed Medusa from Harryhausen's swan song, Clash of the Titans (1981), Harryhausen's creations lept from the screen straight into our imaginations.
BAM is hosting a great William Friedkin Festival this weekend with some of his best movies from the '70's. So whether you go Cruising with Al Pacino, take a spin with Gene Hackman, or have your head turned by Linda Blair, it's a guaranteed twisted time.
Wise: I'm really sorry, Werth.
Werth: Sorry? Why? Did you not send your condolences to the family of Deanna Durbin?
Wise: While it's sad when anyone with a connection to old Hollywood passes on, I never really understood Durbin's appeal. She was all eyebrow and tremolo to me. But I'm apologizing because I forgot to bake a cake to celebrate Mary Astor's birthday.
Werth: Astor is one of my favorite actresses from the Golden Era. Not as well remembered today as some of her contemporaries, Astor was a cinematic workhorse starring in films from the silent era until her final role in 1964 in Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte.
Wise: Obviously collateral damage from the Davis/DeHavilland brawl.
Werth: Astor turned in one of her most memorable performances in the 1941 hard-boiled classic, The Maltese Falcon. Based on Dashiell Hammett's popular detective novel, Falcon stars Humphrey Bogart as iconic gumshoe Sam Spade. Spade receives a visit from the lovely Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Astor) who hires him and his partner, Miles Archer (Jerome Cowen), to tail a man who's done her wrong. When Archer turns up with lead in his guts, Spade becomes embroiled in a crime ring in search of a valuable statue.
Wise: If only he had checked Amazon first.
Werth: The film is full of a who's-who of Forties character actors. Sydney Greenstreet is a delight as The Fat Man, a chortling, criminal Buddha, earning himself a Best Supporting Actor nom in his first film. Elisha Cook, Jr. is appropriately twitchy as a young gunsel who is just itching to plug Spade.
Peter Lorre is creepily sinister as Joel Cairo, a lilting-voiced two-timer whose card smells of gardenias, and who practically fellates a cane in Spade's office. Warner Bros. only hinted at this gay character, Hammett's book outright calls him a "queer."
Wise: I wonder if there's an "It Gets Better" video for people who want to marry their walking stick.
Werth: Bogart had finally gotten a star turn the same year in High Sierra after 27 years of making films, and with the popularity of Falcon, he reached superstar status. Of course, one year later he would become a Hollywood legend in a little film called Casablanca. Bogart's detached and world-weary, good guy persona was a winning combination for the actor, and his gruff and tart delivery of the rat-a-tat dialogue shows the intelligence and charm behind his baggy-eyed exterior.
Astor plays with and against her good-girl screen image as a patrician, elegant woman whose every line is a lie, her delivery correctly sounding like a performance. But rather than just playing the duplicity of the role, Astor's eyes capture a genuine desperation that make this role one of her best.
Falcon was John Huston's directorial debut and he made the most of it, earning Academy noms for Best Picture and Best Screenplay, and helping craft the cinematic look that would come to be called film noir.
Wise: Astor plays a smaller, though no less vital role in A Kiss Before Dying (1956) as the mother who inspires Robert Wagner's murderous desires. Wagner plays Bud Corliss, an Army vet and college student who discovers that his rich girlfriend Dorie (Joanne Woodward) is pregnant, but instead of eloping and risking her father's wrath (and disinheritance), he plots to murder her, disguise it as a suicide, and marry her sister Ellen (Virginia Leith) instead. He nearly succeeds, but Ellen, following a few clues and with the help of the hunky nephew (Jeffrey Hunter) of the chief of police, discovers the shocking truth.
Werth: I've got a few shocking truths to show Jeffrey Hunter.
Wise: In just a few short scenes, Astor creates a portrait of a woman whose own frustrated marriage forced her to focus her attentions on nurturing her son, only to realize that her efforts have bred a killer. Astor, who spent much of the 1940s playing wholesome maternal figures, most notably in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and Little Women (1949), dials up her performance just enough to make her virtuous screen persona turn slightly off-key. It's all very Freudian, and A Kiss Before Dying fits neatly into a continuum of murderous mamma's boys from the post-war period of Hollywood that culminated with Norman Bates in Psycho (1960).
Werth: Did they smell of gardenias?
Wise: Director Gerd Oswald employs an effective strategy in the making of the film: his characters barely speak above a whisper, creating tension by forcing the audience to the edge of their seats. He also stages long takes with little action, but framed at off-kilter angles, telegraphing both his killer's skewed outlook on life as well as the precarious position of his innocents. (It's hard to believe this is the same guy who put Bunny O'Hare on the screen.)
But Robert Wagner is the real revelation here. To those of us who know him from the latter half of his career playing dashing buffoons in TV series like Hart to Hart or the Austin Powers films, it's a shock to see him slender and beautiful and full of malice.
Werth: Some would say enough malice to shove his wife off a boat.
Wise: Let's leave the Hollywood conspiracy theories for next week's Film Gab.
Werth: Howdy, Wise. Whatcha writing?
Wise: Oh, hi, Werth. The new Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson movie Pain and Gain has me thinking about some of my favorite pairs: Fred and Ginger, peanut butter and jelly, vodka and ginger ale. Some things are just better as twosomes.
Werth: As early as 1919's Male and Female, Hollywood has been pairing up great things with just those three little letters.
Wise: Just think of Abbott and Costello, Hope and Crosby, Tracy and Hepburn, Wayne and Garth—the list is endless.
Werth: My favorite "and" flick would have to be Hal Ashby's 1971 cult classic Harold and Maude. Harold (Bud Cort) is a melancholic teen who is obsessed with death. Whether he's faking his own suicide, turning a Jaguar into a hearse, or attending a total stranger's funeral, Harold matter-of-factly rebels against his stuffy upper-class upbringing and his socially rapacious mother (Vivian Pickles and yes, that's a real actress) by making death more interesting than life. When almost eighty-year-old Maude (Ruth Gordon) befriends him at a funeral for someone she doesn't know either, one of Hollywood's strangest couples is born.
Wise: Although her marriage to her screenwriting partner Garson Kanin evidently had plenty of quirks.
Werth: Maude is like Auntie Mame meets Little Edie as she shows Harold the freedom that life offers by stealing cars, rescuing trees, smoking a hookah, posing nude for an ice sculptor and just generally doing whatever she wants. Harold, and we, are enchanted by this vivacious old gal and without even a moment of over-sentimentality, this film is one of the most life-affirming stories put on film.
Ashby was a master of directing these strange comedies where the odd and the different wind-up being exalted in a way that makes them feel charmingly normal. Cort's face moves from dull stupor to impish glee with skillful ease, Gordon is energetically
kooky, and Pickles is hysterical as a mother who is so used to her son pretending to commit suicide that she will swim past his body in the pool as if it's not there at all. But none of these characters feel like they are too much. They are rooted so strongly in the reality of the world writer Colin Higgins has created, that we never doubt their strangeness.
Wise: I've been a fan of bodies in swimming pools since Sunset Boulevard.
Werth: John A. Alonzo's camerawork is ingenious with juxtaposed shots of fields of daisies and a military cemetery visually hinting at an anti-war sentiment and gorgeous horizons that evoke Maude's credo to "L-I-V-E." The Cat Stevens soundtrack is worth a listen as well, perfectly pairing sad undertones with joyous guitar and piano. Harold and Maude proves you can make a funny and touching movie about Life and Death.
Wise: Life and death also figure prominently in another movie, this time based on the most recognizable couple in all of English letters: Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996).
Werth: "+"'s and and's are interchangeable, n'est pas?
Wise: The filmmaker's unusual punctuation signals his desire to do away with heavily sentimentalized versions of Shakespeare's classic and inject a contemporary edge to the drama while still remaining faithful to the original play.
This isn't Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer decked out in lacy Adrian threads; instead, Luhrmann pairs actual teenagers Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, and exchanges Renaissance Italy for a late 20th Century battle scarred metropolis (the film was shot in Miami and Mexico City and enhanced with a lot of dust and wind machines).
The elder Capulets and the Montagues head rival corporations while the younger generations form gangs and battle over turf with their slick firearms cleverly branded "Sword."
Werth: There's a gun control argument to be made here, but I'm too excited by the gunplay to make it.
Wise: The soundtrack is awash with hit acts from the '90s—Garbage, Radiohead, Everclear, Des'ree, The Cardigans—which propels the action and lends rhythm to the scenes. Luhrmann and his cinematographer Donald McAlpine use the camera agressively, zooming into closeups, swirling kaleidoscopically during action sequences or hovering tentatively in quieter moments, compelling the audience to pay close attention to what the actors are saying. Luhrmann also stages the iconic balcony scene in a swimming pool, which sounds preposterous, but turns out to have been a brilliant transformation.
Werth: I like his use of an aquarium in the meeting of the two ill-fated heart-throbs.
Wise: I have kind of mixed feelings about the movie as a whole. A number of Luhrmann's decisions seem hopelessly dated (like DiCaprio's bowling shirts), while others feel just as fresh now as they did almost two decades ago.
The central conceit placing the action amidst gang warfare can feel a bit forced at times, but Luhrmann's real strength is in drawing compelling performances from his actors. John Leguizamo is electric as hot-headed Tybalt, pouring his antic charisma into Juliet's short-tempered cousin. Brian Dennehy and Paul Sorvino make suitable rivals as the heads of the Montegues and the Capulets, respectively.
But it is DiCaprio and Danes who do the most compelling work, revealing both the passion of these young lovers and their childishness, a combination that proves tragic in the end.
Werth: All this talk of "ands" makes me think of my favorite pairing.
Wise: Joan Crawford and Pepsi?
Werth: Yes—and next week's Werth and Wise.
Werth: Another template for what-not-to-do is cinematic stinker Barbarella (1968). Jane Fonda went against the light romantic comedy roles she was previously associated with to star as Barbarella, a sexy space agent who is on a mission to save the universe.
Werth: Barbarella crash lands on an alien planet while looking for missing weapons developer Durand-Durand whose positronic ray could be used as a dreadful weapon to throw the whole universe back into a war-like state. As she hunts for the elusive scientist she is attacked by toothy dollies; has sex with a man in a fur suit; is saved by a blind, half-naked winged guy; has sex with the blind, 
Werth: Jane is very busy in this movie. Filmed by her then husband Roger Vadim, it seems plotted solely to give opportunities for Fonda to be naked and/or have her clothes torn off. Jane looks fantastic. But even her sexy, zero-gravity striptease can't keep this film from being pure spacejunk. The film is based on a French comic book which probably loses something in the translation.
