Werth: Hi, Wise.
Wise: Tell me, Werth. Do you have...The Hunger?
Werth: While I do have an extensive video collection, I tend to shy away from vampire lesbian flicks.
Wise: No, I meant The Hunger Games—the new movie based on Suzanne Collins's ballyhooed dystopian teen series where a bunch of pouty-lipped pre-adults are forced to fight each other to the death.
Werth: Sounds like the sales rack at Abercrombie & Fitch. But I do love any good flick that takes place in the bleak near-future where individuals must battle each other for survival.
Wise: I know, The Vow was awesome.
Werth: I was thinking more along the lines of John Carpenter's Escape from New York. Picture it. 1997. America's at war with the Commies and Manhattan's crime rate is so high the whole island is turned into a maximum security prison.
Wise: Wait—1997? I thought this blog was about the future?
Werth: The movie was made in 1981—so back then 1997 was the future. Donald Pleasance is the President and his plane gets shot down by a terrorist worker's group and crash lands in Battery Park where the prisoners take him hostage.
Wise: This is so '97.
Werth: So the only man that Manhattan Prison Warden Hauk (Lee Van Cleef) can turn to is war-hero turned bank robber Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell). Snake only has 24 hours to sneak into the city, find the President and rescue him and get a full pardon before Snake's head explodes.
Wise: What?
Werth: It's complicated, but John Carpenter has always been a writer/director who didn't necessarily rely on plot believability. His knack for creating fast-paced action-horror movies revolved around creating a hero and a cast of characters that stood out from the seemingly pointless point A to point B stories.
Russell was practically a Carpenter muse portraying several studly heroes in classics like The Thing (1982), Big Trouble in Little China (1986) and sequel Escape from L.A. (1996). In Escape from New York Russell unashamedly relishes playing the un-repentant anti-hero. He doesn't so much wink at the audience as wink, sexily snarl and then blow some dirtbag's head off.
Wise: I assume that's how he snagged Goldie.
Werth: Snake is dropped by glider into the hellish landscape of dilapidated, crook-murderer-psycho-infested New York City in the hopes of finding the President. Along the way he runs into a cavalcade of 1980's character actors like Isaac Hayes, Harry Dean Stanton, Ernest Borgnine and Adrienne Barbeau—and her breasts. The whole film is good, dirty fun with shots of the desperate crew running through such cherished NY landmarks as a Chock Full 'o Nuts store.
Considering the whole thing was shot on the lot in L.A. and in St. Louis, Missouri, the "NY feel" is better than it deserves to be. And with a classic, cheap-but-creepy synthesizer soundtrack composed by Carpenter himself, Escape is one of those cult '80's flicks that is a fun place to visit even if you don't want to live there.
Wise: In Children of Men (2006), Clive Owen plays Theo Faron, a civil servant in 2027 Great Britain—the last stable nation amid a worldwide crisis of pollution and infertility. Kidnapped by his ex-wife Julian Taylor (Julianne Moore) who now runs a militant immigrant rights splinter group, Theo makes a deal to smuggle Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey), a young pregnant refugee, out of the country and to a medical community sequestered in the Azores.
Werth: I wish someone would do the same with Snooki.
Wise: Loosely based on P.D. James's novel of the same name and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, the film is a compelling mix of the possible and the improbable, filled with everyday details seamlessly mixed with futuristic contraptions that make the film's grim view of the future seem particularly close at hand. This is the guy who directed the third, and best, Harry Potter movie, and he's made his career finding the perfect balance of conflicting tones.
Werth: Which in cinema usually means really dark lighting.
Wise: Even more vital to communicating Cuarón's vision is Owen's performance: casting off his matinee idol looks, Owen transforms Theo from a man riven by despair into a guardian of a hope he never knew he possessed. This isn't the typical sci-fi action hero bluster—although there's plenty of gun play and chase scenes—instead Owen creates a man who had lost his soul, but now finds his way.
And he's not the only one showing off his acting chops: Michael Caine has a delightfully daffy role as a pot smoking eccentric; and Julianne Moore uses her fragile beauty to portray a woman who's lost everything but her ideals.
Werth: Speaking of losing ideals, are you ready to battle your way through the crush of teens to see The Hunger Games?
Wise: I think I'll save my fighting spirit for next week's Film Gab.
Werth: Hey, Wise!
Wise: Howdy, Werth!
Werth: Wasn't the screening of Breakfast at Tiffany's on Monday at the A.M.P.A.S. screening room a hoot?
Wise: I loved everything about it—except Mickey Rooney.
Werth: Mr. Yunioshi notwithstanding, I was struck by a part of the film that I hadn't thought about before. There's this really sweet moment when Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly sits on her fire escape, strums a guitar and sings a no vocal-frills rendition of "Moon River."
Wise: She exudes melancholy and vulnerability, using the song to communicate the entire tortured history of the character more efficiently and tenderly than any dialogue could.
Werth: It made me think of how other actors who aren't popular singers wind up using song successfully. Take, for instance, Nicole Kidman in Baz Luhrmann's Belle Epoque, Camille-turned musical, Moulin Rouge! (2001). Before appearing as the red-eyed Satine, Kidman was known for her striking beauty in roles ranging from woman in danger (Dead Calm (1989)) to dangerous woman (To Die For (1995)), but she was not known as a singer.
Wise: You wouldn't sing either if you were married to Tom Cruise.
Werth: But Moulin Rouge! was a musical, so once cast, she had to do more than look pretty—and she did. Kidman's singing voice, while far from powerful, was able to convey the disparate aspects of this lost showgirl who wants success and love but will ultimately be denied both. In "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" she is cheeky, coy and sexy, but in more somber songs like "One Day I'll Fly Away" she emotes a tenderness and dread that help us understand this torn creature. Her voice at times tries too hard, much like this doomed courtesan who thinks she can go from "entertaining" rich men in a glorified whorehouse to treading the boards like Bernhardt.
Wise: Tuberculosis makes her do the wackiest things.
Werth: And Kidman isn't alone. Her co-stars Ewan McGregor, John Leguizamo and Jim Broadbent do some actor-ly signing of their own. Broadbent gives us a charming surprise as the portly Harold Zidler who teaches a musical lesson in love to the tune of "Like a Virgin."
McGregor's rock vocals had already been showcased in Velvet Goldmine (1998), so it is no surprise that he hits all the right notes as the lovestruck Christian (his name, not his religious affiliation) in numbers like the pop mash-up "Elephant Love Medley". Luhrmann, by casting actors instead of singers, seems to be saying you don't need a Judy Garland, Julie Andrews or a Barbra Streisand to make an affecting musical. You just need someone who can act through a tune.
Wise: Little Voice (1998) is another example of an actor using her singing to create a fully rounded character. Jane Horrocks plays Laura Hoff, a young woman who retreats into silence after the untimely death of her father. Her mother Mari (Brenda Blethyn) has no patience for Laura's sorrow, spending evenings with an unending string of rough trade lovers and mocking Laura's habit of listening to her father's record collection by calling her "Little Voice." When Mari takes up with local man on the make Ray Say (Michael Caine), he recognizes that Laura's ability to mimic the great torch singers of the past is an opportunity to make some cash. Little do Mari and Ray know that by pushing Little Voice out of her room and onto the stage provides her with the confidence to escape their abuse.
Werth: Much like I sing in the bathtub to escape the abuse of people who think Mommie Dearest is non-fiction.
Wise: Helping Little Voice along with generous good intentions is Billy (Ewan McGregor), a shy assistant TV repairman who sees Laura as a person and not just as a cash machine.
Werth: Ewan McGregor should appear twice in all our Film Gab postings.
Wise: Based on the stage play by Jim Cartwright, Little Voice never really escapes its theatrical origins—the characters are broad, the plot overwrought—but Jane Horrocks' ability to channel the vocal styles of Shirley Bassey, Édith Piaf and Judy Garland makes this film an addictive entertainment. She uses their performances as an escape hatch from the tawdry life her mother has forced upon her.
The rest of the film is a little glum, with Blethyn and Caine camping up their barroom high-jinks and an oily turn from Jim Broadbent as a seedy nightclub owner.
Werth: I wish I could get a fantastic permed mullet like his.
Wise: Despite the occasional misstep, Little Voice provides an excellent showcase for the transformative power of music, elevating what could have been a forgettably droll Brit-com into joyful entertainment.
Werth: All this talk of singing makes me want to take a trip to Marie's Crisis.
Wise: I'll grab a barstool. The rest of you Film Gabbers grab us again next week!
