d i z t o p i a

David Mamet's Rejected Dialogue Work for "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith"

CBC Canada: "[Hayden] Christensen also confirmed recently that Lucas got a helping hand with the script for Revenge of the Sith. In an interview with Playboy, he said the rumours about playwright Tom Stoppard working on the dialogue for the film are true. Stoppard, known for stage works like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, gave the Lucas-penned screenplay a more 'human' dimension, Christensen said."

New York Times: Review of revival of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross

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PALPATINE: You think you’re queer? I’m going to tell you something. We’re all queer. You think that you’re a thief? So what? You get befuddled by Jedi morality? Get shut of it. Shut it out. There’s an absolute morality? May be. If you think there is, then be that thing. Bad people go to hell? I don’t think so. You ever take a dump make you feel you’d just slept for twelve hours?

ANAKIN: I don’t think ...

PALPATINE: The Jedi Council want control of the Republic ... they’re planning to betray me.

ANAKIN: I have to admit my trust in them has been shaken.

PALPATINE: Why? They asked you to do something that made you feel dishonest, didn’t they? The great fucks that you may have had. What do you remember about them?

ANAKIN: What do I ...?

PALPATINE: Yes.

ANAKIN: Mmm ...

PALPATINE: They asked you to spy on me, didn’t they?

ANAKIN: I don’t know ... I don’t know what to say.

PALPATINE: For me, I’m saying, what it is, it’s probably not the orgasm. Some broads, forearms on your neck, something her eyes did. There was a sound she made ... or, me, lying in bed. She gives me a cigarette, my balls feel like concrete. Eh?

ANAKIN: The Jedi use their power for good.

PALPATINE: Good is a point of view, Anakin. And the Jedi point of view is not the only valid one. The Dark Lords of the Sith believe in security and justice also, yet they are considered by the Jedi to be. . .

ANAKIN: ... evil.

PALPATINE: Through amassing power beyond all measure? No. And what’s beyond all measure? That’s a sickness. That’s a trap. There is no measure. Only greed. How can we act?

ANAKIN: The Sith rely on their passion for their strength. They think inward, only about themselves.

PALPATINE: I say this is how we must act. I do those things which seem correct to me today. I trust myself. And if security concerns me, I do that which today I think will make me secure. And every day I do that, when that day arrives that I need a reserve, (a) odds are that I have it, and (b) the true reserve that I have is the strength that I have of acting each day without fear. According to the dictates of my mind.

ANAKIN: The Jedi are selfless ... they only care about others.

PALPATINE: Or so you’ve been trained to believe. Why is it, then, that they have asked you to do something you feel is wrong?

ANAKIN: I’m not sure it’s wrong.

PALPATINE: A guy comes up to you, you make a call, you send in a brochure, it doesn’t matter. An opportunity. To what? Join the Sith? Perhaps. “There are certain powers of the Dark Side I’d like you to learn.” What does it mean? What you want it to mean.

ANAKIN: Is it possible to learn this power?

PALPATINE: Not from a Jedi. I want to show you something. It might mean nothing to you ... and it might not. I don’t know. I don’t know anymore. (takes out a schematic and spreads it on a table) What is it? The Death Star. “Death Star. Bullshit.” And maybe that’s true; and that’s what I said: but look here: what is this? This is a plan to destroy the Jedi. Listen to what I’m going to tell you now.

Is Sin City the Right Movie to Watch with Your Toddler?

I happened to see an ad for the Sin City review by the "Yahoo! Movie Mom." Expecting some amused outrage, I clicked, and lo and behold she's actually kind of a cool mom. I mean, right below the "Violence/Scariness" heading, which reads "Extreme, intense, constant, and graphic violence, torture, suicide, dismemberment, references to cannibalism, child molestation, and rape," you have the much more chipper "Diversity Issues," which allows "Diverse characters; women are strong and capable," then laments, "but also mostly hookers and/or nude." So much turns on that and/or ...

Anyway, saw the movie last night, and predictably enjoyment of same split along gender lines. The men were filled with joy, the woman ... well, she smiled politely and allowed us to run around and hurl feces and engage in dominance rituals. Still, I was disappointed that the Movie Mom hadn't been more repulsed, so I went looking at other movie-ratings-for-parents sites. Most who bothered to rate Sin City at all were also surprisingly even-handed. My favorite is probably the Kids-in-Mind review, which helpfully describes, counts, and rates sex, violence, and profanity. The incident reports are oddly clinical, such as "Many armed men walk toward a man holding a severed head, the head is thrown into the crowd, and it explodes knocking many people down; other people with guns fire on the crowd, many people flail and jerk from the bullet hits, and bodies fall to the ground, and the incident is referred to as a slaughter." Not a slaughter! Say it ain't so. And yet, even with "1 profane hand gesture, 10 sexual references, 5 scatological terms, 19 anatomical terms, 65 mild obscenities, 2 derogatory terms for homosexuals, name-calling (freak, fat, ugly cow), 7 religious profanities, 2 religious exclamations," Sin City only rates a 4 on the profanity scale (it got 7 for sex/nudity, 10 for violence/gore). Apparently the "worst" movies that Kids-in-Mind rates -- both with naughtiness ratings of 9 in sex/nudity, 10 in violence/gore, and 10 in profanity -- are The Forsaken and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Pulp Fiction. No good faith credit given, apparently, for the courtly love betwixt Pumpkin and Honey Bunny.

Call for Jumping Cat Submissions

Whether you know it by name or not, you are certainly familiar with the "cat scare," the moment in horror or suspense movies where a cat hurls itself out of a small, dark space at the protagonist. Usually it's quite apparent that the cat has been tossed from off-camera, and there's a loud, dubbed screeching hiss to make everyone in the audience yelp. Then the protagonist says, "Whew! Just a cat!" or "Damn cat!" or "Mr. Puddles! What are you doing in --- AUUGGGH!" as Jason jabs them in the eye with a potato peeler. That's what movie cats are: serial killer enablers.

This is such an absurdly cliched startle tactic that you wonder how even the most desperate Hollywood hack can bear to use it, but no: the cat scare is alive and well, currently raking in boffo BO in low-intensity broodfest Hide and Seek. Just over the recent holidays, I made the unfortunate choice of watching I, Robot, which has Will Smith creeping around in a deserted mansion. Merely joking, I told fellow viewer SH that this would be the obvious place for a cat to jump out, and lo, it became so mere seconds later.

So here's my proposed project, and for this, my dear friends seeking Olsen porn and super dollfies and beheading photos, I need your help. In the comments below, name every movie you can think of where a cat jumps out purely to startle someone. No cats that actually attack. (Though this is still funny, as is this.) No supernatural or cyborg cats of any kind. It must be a plain, simple, by-the-numbers cat scare, by a regular cat. What happens before the cat scare or after the cat scare doesn't matter. Here are the ones I came up with off the top of my head, plus a few from a very cursory googling:

A View to a Kill
Alien
Darkness Falls
End of Days
Friday the 13th Part 2
Friday the 13th Part 5
Ghost
Hide and Seek
I, Robot
Night of the Creeps
Pet Semetary
Pet Semetary 2
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Scream

I'm going to take it upon myself (soon, very soon, in geologic time) to make a video compilation of these cat scares. To be posted here of course. Perhaps there will even be voting and reviews of the individual cat scares. This is what the Internet was made for, citizens. Get cracking.

Photochop

Yes, it's a dumb joke, and poorly executed. But at least it killed an hour at the office. And now, time to go downstairs and raid the candy jar. It's supposed to be just for the interns, but what's theirs is mine I say.

Next up for Depp?

Primer Facie

When the redoubtable s.h. visited NYC this past weekend, we (as well as comment lurkers LB and wander woman, plus compatriot FPP) took the opportunity to catch indie-movie sensation Primer at the Angelika. I'd wanted to see the flick since it started generating all the geek-buzz, but waited for the visitor since it's not likely this movie would ever make it back to his home metropolis of Birmingham. Though s.h. tells me that the 'Ham did find the space to show Celsius 41.11: The Temperature at Which the Brain Begins to Die (best title EVAR), the idiotic anti-Fahrenheit 9/11 movie -- and at least one theater there is still showing Celsius as of this writing. Rockin'.

But on to Primer:  Good movie! I felt compelled to see it not just because of the sci-fi nerd factor and not only because of its indie-cred legend ($7,000 budget leads to two Sundance prizes blah blah blah). More than anything, I felt I must rise to the challenge that reviews offered by saying that most people were confused by the intricate concept and plot, and it really requires multiple viewings, etc. That's the kind of thing often said about movies like The Usual Suspects or Memento or Being John Malkovich, all of which I found quite easily digestible, understandable, and enjoyable after one viewing, though of course additional viewings are their own pleasure. So you gonna try an' confuse me, Primer? Less see watchoo got, eh?

To sum up the plot, if you ain't aware: A couple of engineers accidentally invent a time machine. They use it to travel backward a few hours to pick winning stocks and make fortunes. They are very careful about avoiding contact with their past selves or affecting the time-stream adversely. At least, they are at first. Soon they can't resist the temptation to meddle just a little bit. Then it comes to light that each may be hiding something, going back on "unauthorized" trips, creating extra time-travel doubles, faking their way through repeated events, and well, let's just say that things get real wacky, real quick.

Good movie! And yes, I was and remain a bit confused. But in a good way. (If you've seen the movie, be sure to check the forums to have your mind blown just a wee bit more, though beware of plentiful spoilers.) The movie is minimalist but extremely deliberate, and it's assembled with such care and precision that even if you don't understand every nuance, you know that the filmmakers do. Even though I may not know exactly which time-travel double was from which time-frame, or who was really deceiving who, it ultimately doesn't detract. The overall effect is one of escalating desperation and extremity, twinned with the physical and psychological costs as the time-travelers resist or give in to the temptations of their near-limitless power to alter time. That focus, rather than whiz-bang special-effects crap, makes it work like a charm. Highly recommended, and creator Shane Carruth is a dude to watch.

Putting the Word "Discipline" Back into Interior Decorating

Just a short bit today. Last Friday, journeyed to Brooklyn to see a screening of FPP's roommate's short-short films. Quite a bit of entertaining, skewed antics, much of it inscrutably funny. Somewhere in the realm of Andy Kaufman and David Lynch, and the auteur himself, Fritz Donnelly, appears to be a cross between Vince Gallo, Crispin Glover, and Spike Jonez. On Donnelly's website, I recommend the clips from "Agent Delgado" and "How to Drive the Car," and you could do worse than drop a few bucks on Donnelly's compilation DVD.

Dead Air?

Just examined a trailer for an Australian zombie movie called "Undead," which has been picked up by LionsGate for upcoming US release (I'm guessing fall, Halloween-ish). Aside to Enrique, local Aussie lurker in the diztopia comments: First the Thorpedo steals that gold medal, and now you're pillaging our culture of its beloved monster-movie icons? What is this, "Zombie-Proof Fence"?

Never mind; as previously noted, I'm down with mah zombie brothas. "Undead" looks silly and extremely gory, making it no different from any other straight-to-video horror flick ... though it does seem to be a labor of love crafted by its creator-brothers, Michael and Peter Spierig. Still, the zombie infection comes from outer space ("Night of the Comet"), zombies lust after human flesh (pretty much all zombie movies), survivors are trapped by zombie hordes (ditto), yadda yadda yadda. And according to the trailer, the main badass zombie killer does the hang-upside-down-from-doorway-while-shooting thing ("The Professional") and welds a few shotguns together for multi-barrel mayhem ("Phantasm II").

But what really caught my eye was the framegrab from the trailer shown above: it's a little tough to make out, but it shows FLYIN' ZOMBIES! Now that is innovation, and I will retract all my previous nationalistic disdain if the zombies do indeed fly.

The Manchukuoan Candidate

Jonathan Demme's remake of The Manchurian Candidate opens this weekend. Haven't seen the original since short-pants days, which is something I should rectify (seeing the movie, not the short pants, which were and shall always be awesome). Regardless, I usually like Demme, often like Denzel Washington, and expect great things from Liev Schreiber, who just has such a fine Aryan-sounding name that I love to shout it like an angry commandant, probably pronouncing it incorrectly and offensively. Anyway, Low Culture notes some rather unsettling, recurring themes shared by the 1962 original and current convention doings. One word: Ketchup. A comment in the Low Culture post also helpfully cleared up that nagging question of why this movie is still called The Manchurian Candidate, if the villainous brainwashers are big-business types rather than damned Red Chinamen: The brainwashing corporation (called a stand-in for Halliburton in the same comment) is named Manchurian Global. And of course, this is all merely an excuse to point out my post about Henry P'u Yi, who I like to think of as the original Manchurian candidate.

The South Will Rise from the Grave, Again

It's Zombie Week here at Diztopia! Adding to the earlier fun, I must recommend you keep (or poke) an eye out for Hide and Creep. A feature-length production lovingly assembled by an incestuous cauldron of filmmakers from my hometown, it looks to combine the best elements of redneckery and hot undead action. Two of the actors (John Walker and Chris Garrison) are perverse stars in their own right. Myself and Hide and Creep's director, Chance Shirley, were once extras in a Walker-Garrison production; we played convention-going doctors, sitting at a banquet table and forking the same meatballs for about seven hours. It must give Shirley much satisfaction to have ascended from extra to director, turning the tables on his former masters. Now they will be the ones to dance! Dance! And fork! Fork the meatablls! Again! Again!

Zombies: Unsafe at Any Speed

I've always liked zombie movies, and this weekend I saw the Dawn of the Dead remake. It's enjoyable, given that the threshold for a "good" zombie movie is about as low as it gets. Much has been made of the new "fast" zombie trope in this movie and last year's 28 Days Later (also fun). See this excellent Josh Levin piece from Slate for analysis of the trend.

Anyway, I don't mind the new-school hyper zombies because it doesn't change the basic zombie dynamic. There are really only two requirements for successful zombie action: there must be lots of zombies, and the zombies must want to eat the people. Why must the zombies eat the people? Even the Levin piece linked above doesn't get into that. Cannibalism wasn't part of the original zombie bio, as far as its origin in voodoo folklore. But it's integral to the zombie movie, both to give the zombies impetus to track down the human protagonists (to eat on 'em), and also to provide the zombies with a reproduction vector (via biting, also not part of voodoo, but indisputable now). It's really just a circle of life thing, beautiful in its way.

Since individual zombies are easy to kill once you know what you're dealing with, the typical zombie plot turns into a logistical problem ... i.e. how to get away from the zombie hordes. Most movies go the claustrophobic route, with the living characters holed up in some fortress situation as waves of zombies assemble outside. I've always felt this is to be a mistake. As long as the zombies don't re-learn how to drive, mobility remains the best defense. The great zombie road movie has yet to be made.