Films: Netflix Roundup - What Have I Been Watching?

With my busy eastern media elite schedule I haven't had the time I'd like to give you, my tens of readers, the movie reviews that I've promised. So here are some capsule reviews of what I've been watched over the last few weeks courtesy of Netflix. I've also helpfully added the stars I gave them in my Netflix rating for easy unhindered digestion.


I Want To Live (1958) (3 Stars)

Susan Hayward plays what was once known as a blowzy broad in this early anti-death penalty flick. The first half hour where she goes from one seedy situation to another is great pulpy fun but her hard boiled overacting takes center stage by the more earnest second half. The inside look on how the process works for death row inmates holds some interest but the increasing desperation of her situation begins to seem more comical than tragic as we await the umpteenth call from the gov.


California Split (1974) (5 Stars)

Robert Altman's incisive and tricky buddy film was unappreciated on release but shines as one of his best movies. Elliot Gould is in full sardonically muttering Elliot Gould mold and George Segal is at his best as two inveterate gambling addicts going after the big score. As I got deeper into the characters- and this is a marvelous character study- the resemblance to John Huston's legendary Treasure of the Sierra Madre struck me. Two guys in thrall to a dream of deliverance through riches that becomes the empty pursuit of specie. Though Gould never goes to the extremes that Bogart does in the Huston film he is just as hooked on the chase. A terrific film.


The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973) (4 Stars)

Ivan Dixon, who died earlier this year, was best known for his supporting role on TV's Hogan's Heroes. As a director though he made this fascinating and tough gem that subverts the blaxploitation genre and asks some tough political questions. In a set-up that clearly plays on the screens inside the minds of the McCain campaign at this very moment, the film takes the premise of the CIA recruiting blacks to divert scrutiny of their actions. The one guy who makes it through is tough and quiet and happily toils away making copies and doing other low level tasks while soaking up all of the counter insurgency methods the agency was honing overseas. Retiring with honor he goes to Chicago to become - you guessed it - a community organizer. Only he ends up passing his training along to black power advocates and gang members - teaching them to lay off drugs and get started making bombs. This section plays like a cross between Fight Club and Shaft before ending abruptly. Well worth seeing.


Hard Eight (1996)  (4 stars)

This early film from Paul Thomas Anderson has the hallmarks of most of his work - beautiful framing and photography, characters that are more flawed than lovable, and a distinct milieu - in this case the gambling underworld of Las Vegas. Philip Baker Hall, one of Anderson's favorites, is terrific as the father figure card sharp to John C. Reilly. Reilly is more of a problem - he finds everything that's whiny and irritating in a dipshit character. It becomes hard to see why Hall would give two squats about him, even after the later plot machinations grind through. Tipping this into an extra star though is a brilliantly jaded turn by Gwyneth Paltrow - it's perhaps her best performance and very different than what she's typecast as now. Then there's the delicious turn by Samuel L. Jackson as a particularly annoying friend of Reilly's.


Smiley Face (2007) (1 Star)

Anna Faris is an attractive and game comic actress in search of a vehicle to really shine. This ain't it. A stoner comedy full of jump-cuts, every cliched "stoned" POV shot in the book, and a mis-judged central performance that hits one spaced-out note interminably, this is one to skip. What's most shocking is that this sub-par take on the far superior Go was directed by the talented Greg Araki, who should know better. Watch Harold and Kumar instead.

Movie News: Paul Newman - Movie Star, Philanthropist, Race Car Driver, Political Activist, Dead at 83

Paul Newman, a movie star who straddled the end years of golden Hollywood and the new Hollywood era of anti-heroes, has died after a battle with cancer. Newman was one of the great iconic actors in film with classic roles in films in every decade through the 1990s. He was an actor who transcended his own great looks to find great depth, humanity and emotion in role after role - never succumbing to the easy Oscar bait or vanity project that could so easily have been a stock in trade. Not every movie was great, but he was great in every movie.

As a philanthropist he set up Newman's Own to sell the salad dressing he used to make for his family to the wider public - with hundreds of millions of dollars of proceeds going to charity. The Hole in The Wall Camps were set up for children with serious medical needs and both are to continue on.

As a race car driver and teamowner of the legendary Newman/Hass Team Newman was greeted with grudging respect at first and then admiration as he proved himself to be a gifted driver. Last month he set out for a lst few laps at Lime Rock race track in Connecticut, fitting for a man who won dozens of races -- most recently the 1995 IMSA GTS Class at the 24 Hours of Daytona when he was 70.

As a political activist he worked on behalf of antiwar Democrat Gene McCarthy in the 1960s and when he found himself on President Richard Nixon's enemies list declared it "...the single highest honor I've ever received..."

Back to his film work anyone loking to start to appreciate the work of the man has many places to start. 1954's Somebody Up There Likes Me showed Newman inheriting a role and a bit of an acting style from James Dean as boxer Rocky Graziano in a very traditional biopic. Newman is hot in every sense of the word in The Long Hot Summer a pulpy Faulkner adaptation that united him for the first time with future wife Joanne Woodward. His troubled brooding was center stage in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as the Palinesquely named Brick, black sheep chafing under the control of Big Daddy in Tenessee Willaims hothouse melodrama.

After a few more smoldering hunk roles and a try at something meatier in Preminger's flawed Exodus Newman raised his art to a new level as poll shark Fast Eddie Felsen in The Hustler in 1961. Newman was always willing to show you the fatal flaw in his charismatic creations and Felsen's pigheaded cockiness was his first great example. With that in mind 1963s Hud was a ballsy bid to scotch his pretty boy image by playing an uregenerate bastard, a swaggering rapist and con man. Audiences loved it. It would be his third Oscar nomination for best actor.

The flawed detective flick Harper was followed by the flawed Hitchcock of Torn Curtain but then came Cool Hand Luke in 1967, a prison drama that cemented Newman's new status as one of the first of a coming wave of antiheros in tune with the anti-establishment 60s. His brilliant performance challenging the prison authorities and by inference society at large is indelible.

In 1969 came his first pairing with Robert Redford in the delightful Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid a new style Western that prefigured both the the buddy movies of the 80s and the blockbusters of the 90s. Another western of sorts, John Huston's 1972 quirky The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean was less succesful in every way but a great central performance by Newman.

By 1973 and a string of mixed films he was ready to reteam with Redford in the terrific period flick The Sting, a romp full of double and triple crosses and cons galore. He worked with Robert Altman in 1976's polemical and fascinating Buffalo Bill and The Indians.

In 1977 Newman did Slap Shot, one of my personal favorites and one of the best sports movies ever as the star of a rustbest hockey team a few games away from total insolvency.

1981 gave two strong performances, Fort Apache, The Bronx as a good cop in a bad precinct in an even worse part of a bad borough of New York and Absence of Malice a somewhat silly prestige production enlivened by Newman and co-star Sally Field. The following year delivered Sidney Lumet's The Verdict with Newman excelling as an alcoholic lawyer ina screenplay by David Mamet.

In 1986 Martin Scorsese was able to entice Newman back to the Felsen character from The Hustler this time as mentor to cocky young Tom Cruise (who doesn't approach Newman's abilities at any point). Newman would win his first Oscar for the film.

In 1989 he was randy and salty as Louisiana governer Earl Long in Blaze.

Two of my favorite late career perfs by Newman were in 1994. The Hudsucker Proxy had Newman as Sidney J. Musberger in the Coen Brothers big business romp and he amply adjusts his acting style to their exaggerated mileu to great affect. He was also the grounded center of Robert Benton's sweet drama Nobody's Fool as a repentant aging ne'er do well.

With the passing of Newman one of the film world's most iconic members is gone. The humanity he brought to every single role was matched by his love of humanity itself. What a loss.

Film: Eddie Murphy Returns To The Well For More 'Cop"

Eddie Murphy, Eddie Murphy, and Eddie Murphy block out a scene for the new Beverly Hills Cop movie somewhere in the digital future...

By Noah Mallin

After revivals of 80s franchises Indiana Jones and Rambo Eddie Murphy has thrown his hat into the idea exhaustion ring and will lead a revival of the moribund Beverly Hills Cops films. The original film was retooled from a Stallone actioner to a Murphy action comedy and was one of the big hits of 1984. It also insured Judge Reinhold and Bronson Pinchot would have decade lasting careers but we can forgive it for that. The sequel featured a Bob Seger's song "Shakedown" and that's all there is to say about that. The law of ever-diminishing returns was in full effect with the third sequel released in 1994.

For the new one we can presumably expect Eddie to play his usual character of Axel Foley as well as taking over Reinhold's role of Billy, the role of the tough as nails police chief, the role of a Rastafarian informant, and the main villain -- a 300 pound black woman bank robber with Lee press-on nails.

Seriously though, Brett Ratner will be adding his own special whiff of eau-du-turd as director. Apparently he got confused and thought the title was Rush Hour 4.

So kids, feel free to play the home game: Gremlins 3? Breakin' 3: Electric Boogalee? No tapped out franchise is too dumb to be revived!

Film: Heston Dies -- Officially OK to Pry Gun From His Hands Now

An Appreciation by Noah Mallin

Actor, Civil Rights activist and former President of the National Rifle Association Charlton Heston has died at the age of 84. Heston's greatest stardom was in the 1960s and 1970s when he starred in films like Planet of The Apes and Earthquake.

Heston's political views, once liberal and pro gun control, morphed as his career cooled in the late 70s and he became a die-hard conservative opposing abortion and gun control.

Heston started in film in a silent production of Peer Gynt at the age of 16 done in 1941 by Northwestern University. His official debut was as Antony is a low-budget Chicago set Julius Caeser in 1950. It was his performance in Cecil B. DeMille's Academy Award winning The Greatest Show on Earth that made him a star.

In DeMille's final film The Ten Commandments (1956) he was a memorable Moses, competing with a bravura red sea parting and a ridiculous performance by Edward G. Robinson.

In 1958 came Orson Welles' brilliant Touch of Evil with Heston playing a Mexican born lawman south of the border with new wife Janet Leigh and stuck in Welles sinister web. Heston brings verve to his role as a paragon of straight-arrow justice in Welles dark depraved world.

He won an Oscar in 1959 for Ben-Hur an epic set at the time of Jesus and featuring the now famous chariot race. Ben-Hur became known later for it's homosexual subtext set forth by co-screenwriter Gore Vidal, and which Heston vehemently denied. Still he gives a riveting performance in a big overstuffed epic, something that would become a specialty for him in films like Antony Mann's El Cid (1962) and as John the Baptist in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).

Planet of the Apes in 1968 took Heston to a new pinnacle of fame in one of his best films as an astronaut who lands on the titular simian world. The film was massively successful and Heston helped sell the inverted racial allegory with a particularly bullheaded performance.

1971 saw him starring in The Omegaman a film based on the same Richard Matheson source as Will Smith's recent film I Am Legend but done in a very different way (think albinos with afros). His last great sci-fi-er was Soylent Green as a detective in a dystopian world uncovering a major conspiracy -- it's now best known for his plaintive wailed discovery of what the ubiquitous food source Soylent Green is actually made of.

Heston benefited from the disaster craze of the 70s in Skyjacked, Airport '75 and Earthquake. Though he would continue to work well into the 90s in films like Wayne's World 2 and True Lies he had become a celebrity first and foremost.

He also had a short run on TV's Dynasty and starred in knockoff soap The Colbys, which had a brief life.

Film: Filmmaker and Blacklist Survivor Jules Dassin Dies at 96

An Appreciation by Noah Mallin

These last few weeks have been something of a deathwatch at Planet of Sound with great masters going left and right. Now, just a week after one of his great leading men died, writer, actor and director Jules Dassin has gone.

That leading man was Richard Widmark, indelibly brilliant in Night and The City, Dassin's bleak London-set noir and the last film he would make before his blacklisted exile in Paris.

His first feature film, Nazi Agent in 1942 was an unusually fast-paced potboiler for staid MGM. Despite the silliness of it's twin switching Nazi tricking plot it's anti-fascist stance was consistent with the views Dassin would espouse for the rest of his life.

In 1947 he made the searing prison drama Brute Force starring Burt Lancaster. Though some of the themes are laid on a bit thick (this must be the most innocent group of prisoners ever) the harsh contrast between the unhinged prison administrators and the desperate prisoners is memorable, as are the stellar performances and Moody cinematography.

The Naked City, made the following year, was a groundbreaking police procedural and a classic of American cinema. Before the postwar period studio films were usually setbound, with a modicum of location shooting added for flavor. Dassin used real New York settings exclusively for Naked City, which effected a documentary like realism that revolutionized the industry. The city itself became a character with the intricate plot allowing a peek into the lives of New Yorkers of every stripe. The exciting climax on the Williamsburg Bridge is justifiably celebrated as a great moment in film.

The follow-up, Thieves Highway, was a gritty drama of gangsters and revenge, with a nasty Lee J. Cobb as a crooked trucker and Richard Conte as the man seeking revenge on him while getting pulled into the muck himself. Prefiguring in some ways the themes of both On The Waterfront and Francis Coppola's Godfather films, its stature has grown over the years.

His last pre-blacklist film, 1950's Night and The City, may also be his best. Richard Widmark gives a tricky morally ambiguous performance as small time hood Harry Fabian -- a man determined to wrest a bigger slice of the pie only to find himself as a main ingredient in it. The extreme bleakness of the film turned off mainstream audiences but stimulated filmmakers like Martin Scorsese who would apply some of that noir bite to 70s classics like Mean Streets and Taxi Driver. A tremendously influential and watchable film.

Dassin was named by fellow director Edward Dmytryk as having joined the Communist party in the 1930s during testimony in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Dassin could see that his career had been torpedoed and he faced the prospect of worse punishment by fleeing to France despite only speaking a smattering of the language.

France was beginning to experience a homegrown crop of directors like Godard that were influenced heavily by the noir staples turned out by Hollywood directors like Dassin, whom they considered to be autuers. Dassin would return to filmmaking before long, making his comeback with Rififi ( Du Rififi Chez les Hommes in its native title ) in 1955. A meaty heist film with a bravura nearly silent robbery as its centerpiece, it echoes many of the notes of hopelessness and dread that appeared in Night and The City. Again, the influence on future filmmakers like Scorsese, Sidney Lumet and Quentin Tarantino is unmistakable in its frank violence and fatalist themes.

He Who Must Die (1957) teamed him with his future wife Melina Mercouri and was cited by Dassin as his favorite of his own works. A complicated tale of power and morality set in Turkish occupied Crete, the story of an authority-defying priest who causes a town to take sides must have hit home for the exiled Dassin.

The audacious Never on Sunday was a massive international hit. Dassin cast himself as an enthusiast of Greek culture who travels there in hopes of pinpointing why the luster of the ancients seems to be lacking in its present-day citizens. Fetching Mercouri plays the no-nonsense prostitute that he fixates on as the object of his educational efforts. The Pygmalion inspired comedy was a tour-de-force for Mercouri.

Dassin and Mercouri

Dassin continued his lighter touch with a wryly subtle parody of his own Rififi in 1964. Topkapi had several touches that were tongue-in-cheek set-ups of the earlier film and starred Mercuri again (as was becoming customary) along with Peter Ustinov who would win an Oscar as one of the heisters.

Dassin and Mercori were exiled from his wife's country of Greece where they both served as thorns in the side of the fascist military junta. His 1974 film The Rehearsal dramatized the uprising of students against the military but the junta lost power at the same time as the film's release. They both returned to Greece for good.

Mercouri died in 1994 but her name lived on not just in film but in the foundation Dassin ran and which became a driving force for the return of Greek antiquities.

Clips:
The closing sequence for The Naked City:



Dassin and Mercouri in Never on Sunday:

Film: Actor Richard Widmark Dies

An appreciation by Noah Mallin

Richard Widmark was the paradoxical nice guy offscreen who played bigots (No Way Out, with Sidney Poitier), right-wing nutjobs (The Bedford Incident as a submarine commander on the brink of starting World War III) and a chilling giggling psychopath (in his breakthrough role in Kiss of Death.)

Kiss of Death was his first film, and for many the impression it left was indelible. Like Javier Bardem this year in No Country For Old Men the depiction of implacable malevolence onscreen led to an Academy award nomination for Supporting Actor. The same role netted him an apt Most Promising Newcomer Golden Globe for 1948.

In 1950 he starred in Jules Dassin's ultra-gritty noir Night and The City, as dark and ambiguous a film as American cinema would create pre- 1970s. Widmark is outstanding as a man trapped by his own relentless scheming -- both grotesque and sympathetic.

The same year also found him starring in Elia Kazan's groundbreaking Panic in The Streets, one of the new breed of postwar Hollywood films shot entirely on location, in this case New Orleans. Widmark slots in to Kazan's vaunted realist style here as the driven scientist rushing to protect a major city from a potential plague.

Widmark joined Director Sam Fuller for the noir classic Pickup on South Street in 1953. Widmark is punchy as an amoral pickpocket who finds himself in possession of government secrets. An apolitical man surrounded by ruthless communist agents and capitalist both ruthless and non, he threads the needle of Fuller's tight suspenseful masterpiece.

In 1966 Widmark helped instigate the theme of John Ford's last western Cheyenne Autumn, an unusual film for Ford that turned the tables on the plight of Native Americans in the 1880s. Widmark starred as the conflicted military man sent to battle peaceful tribes.

Two years later he starred as the title character with Henry Fonda in Madigan, a top notch police procedural that spawned a TV series in the early 70s also starring Widmark.

In 1974 he starred along with a stellar cast in Sidney Lumet's version of Murder on The Orient Express. Widmark played Ratchett, the man whose murder sets the central mystery of the film.

His last film was 1991's True Colors playing a patriarchal Senator alongside James Spader and John Cusack.

Widmark was 93.

Clips (as always hit refresh in your browser if they show as unavailable):

Widmark on 50's guessing-gameshow What's My Line:

The trailer for Night and The City:



Here's a bit of his freaky-deaky nominated perf from Kiss of Death:

Music: New Music Tuesday

Kaki King

Kaki King is kind of the Joe Satriani of indie folkie guitarists. Like guitar wankster Satriani she's at the point in her career where she has to write actual songs and sing and she delivers on the new album Dreaming of Revenge. Here's the light-trail-happy video for "Pull Me Out":


Pioneering indie rapper Del Tha Funkee Homosapien returns with new album 11th Hour. Here's the video for new single "Workin' It":



Weirdo genre-defyers Why? hit us up with new one Alopecia which sports the song "Vowels Part 2", seen here live:

Film: Guest Blogger (faux) Larry King Has His Pick For Next Year's Oscars

By Guest Blogger (faux) Larry King

Wow it's great to be here blogging, as the kids say. In my many years of broadcasting I've been on so many forms of media that it's hard to keep track -- radio, television, film, cuneiform, and now "The Net". Fantastic Sandra Bullock film by the way.

I gotta say that I'm really excited for a new flick that's coming out this summer and I think it has real Oscar potential. It's a story we can all relate to, a story that fascinates, a story for the whole family.

I like to think of myself as a connoisseur of the cinema. I remember watching the Robin Williams picture Man of The Year, hilarious by the way, and turning to my wife Shawn and saying, " This isn't anything like Woman of the Year." That one starred Bacall incidentally.

The movie I have in mind is a little gem, an independent picture called Anna Nicole. What's it about? In a word -- everything! Fame, schtupping, older guys and younger broads, celebrity, death -- all the big stuff. And Willa Ford -- boy can she act! Here's the preview and I gotta tell ya, you're gonna flip.

Film: An Alternate Universe Far Far Away, Where Saul Bass and George Lucas Team Up

Saul Bass is one of the greatest graphic artists of the twentieth century, designing iconic credit sequences for such films as The Man With The Golden Arm. Now some smarty, arty pants has imagined what the Star Wars credit sequence would have looked like a la Bass:



Here's the actual factual Bass' sequence for It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad World:


And his famous Anatomy of a Murder:

Film: New Line Gets the Axe From WB

New Line, the former independent film studio founded 40 years ago by Bob Shaye, is being shuttered by corporate parent Warner Bros. The New Line label will still be used and its current slate of films will be released but it will no longer function as a separate entity.

New Line started off distributing off the shelf films and midnight movie fare by pioneering auteurs like John Waters. The 80s saw them scoring with genre fare like the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. Their biggest triumph came with Peter Jackson's ambitious Lord of The Rings trilogy which grossed billions worldwide. Shaye would subsequently have a very public falling-out with Jackson over profit reporting that grew to entangle the possible Hobbit prequel.

Movie News: Make it An All Apatow Summer -- Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Hey it's those two guys...and they're in Hawaii!

Judd Apatow has about 20 bajillion films coming out including Pineapple Express at the end of the Summer and Forgetting Sarah Marshall at the beginning in May. As you'll see from the trailer, Marshall (which coincidentally stars Apatow's former Freaks and Geek-ster Marshall from How I Met Your Mother) looks pretty darn good. Behold!

Film: OK Yeah, I'm Stoked For The New Indiana Jones Flick

Paramount Pictures has issued a new trailer for Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull and it looks pretty damn good. Best of all is that Harrison Ford looks properly aged, like a good leather jacket. In other words, not juiced up like human growth hormone spokesperson Sly Stallone. View it for yourself:

Film News: Adopting Chinese Babies Is So Totally Hard! Step Off Juno!

Juno: "I had no idea Chinese adoption was so easy -- and so callous! Screw your American baby!"

Because we are fast becoming a nation of oversensitive ninnies (apologies to all the ninnies out there) who can't take a pimp joke, the SFGate online reports that some people are getting bent out of shape by the film Juno . Well, more specifically one bit of dialogue from the lead character:

"You shoulda gone to China. You know, 'cause I hear they give away babies like free iPods. You know, they pretty much just put them in those T-shirt guns and shoot them out at sporting events."

Apparently they don't do that in China and any suggestion to the contrary is misleading, and hurtful maybe. Per the article:

"I know some people will say 'lighten up,' but that's not the point," Seh says. "The trailer is misleading" about the complexities of adopting infants from China.
"It's not only hurtful, but harmful," she says.

Ok gotcha. Also, despite what you saw in King Kong, do not mark down on your history test that Jack Black brought a giant ape back to New York in the 1930s where it commenced to go on a rampage. Because that's wrong. And hurtful.

Film News: John Alvin, Leading Poster Artist, Dead at 59

John Alvin, one of the great latter-day poster artists, has died of a heart attack at age 59. Alvin's big break was the poster for Mel Brooks' 1974 western satire Blazing Saddles. He would continue to do brilliant work for Brooks as well as for Steven Spielberg for whom he did the iconic posters for both E.T. and Empire of The Sun as well as the Star Wars series for George Lucas and the Lord of The Rings films.

Here are some of his best:

Movie News : Coen Brothers Join The Yiddish Policemen's Union -- Writing and Directing Adpatation of Chabon's Novel

The Coen Bothers -- you boys look too thin, have you eaten? Let me fix you something...

In a mitzvah likely to earn them pinched cheeks all around from book lovers, those nice young boys Ethan and Joel Coen are set to adapt Michael Chabon's acclaimed novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union for their next picture. The hard-working mensches will slot it in to follow their current project A Serious Man. Burn Before Reading, which stars George Clooney, is in post-production as well.

The brothers have earned their literary stripes with their faithful (and need I add Oscar nominated) adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men. The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a trickier job as it is a neo-noir set in a present day alternate reality wherein the Jews of Europe are given Alaska as a settlement place rather than Palestine (a scheme that was actually floated after World War II).

Movie News: MRRawwwWWWH! This Kitten Has Claws -- Hairy Thespian Nic Cage Sues Thirsty Temptress Kathleen Turner Over Forthcoming Bitchy Dishy Bio

Kathleen Turner, onetime sex kitten in Body Heat and authoress of squalid romance novels in Romancing The Stone takes some nasty swipes at Peggy Sue Got Married co-star and not-so secret Coppola family member Nicolas Cage in her forthcoming bio Send Yourself Roses. Let the claws come out:

"Everything Francis wanted him (Cage) to do, he went against to show that he wasn't under his uncle's wing. Which was ridiculous. Oh, that stupid voice of his and the fake teeth! Honestly, I cringe to think about it. He caused so many problems. He was arrested twice for drunk driving and, I think, once for stealing a dog. He'd come across a Chihuahua he liked and stuck it in his jacket."

Cage is suing for libel, presumably over the driving and chihuahua but not the teeth. Turner though is veering dangerously into my territory here -- how dare an actress cross over into cinema criticism! Leave that to the pros like Vincent Canby in the New York Times who wrote of Cage:

"As the teen-age Charlie, he's a charmless creep and, as the older man, in gross makeup, he looks like Peter Cushing playing Dr. Frankenstein in a Hammer horror film..."

Ok ok, let's not all pile on to poor old Nic Cage here -- I actually liked his awkwardness as teen-age Charlie, even if I didn't buy him as middle-aged Charlie 100%. Here's Cage in Peggy Sue doing a Dion cover with a little help from Ace Ventura:

Movie News: Actor Roy Scheider Dies at 75

2-time Oscar nominee Roy Scheider died yesterday at the age of 75. He was one of a group of actors who found unlikely stardom in the 1970s, including his French Connection co-star Gene Hackman, Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, and Elliot Gould. Like those peers he parlayed his unconventional looks into a stellar career, opening the decade with his performances in the thriller Klute with Jane Fonda and a Best Supporting Actor nomination in the iconic The French Connection playing Popeye Doyle's partner Buddy Russo and closing it with a Best Actor nomination for Bob Fosse's challengingly indulgent tour-de-force All That Jazz.

His commercial peak came in between with the movie that defined the blockbuster, Jaws, the first movie to make $100 million in theatrical release. His role of Chief Brody was the audience's surrogate, city guy on an island who just knows there is something wrong. His humanity, wit, and timing all come together to make an unforgettable performance in a movie dominated by a chomping shark and scenery chewers Richard Dreyfus and Robert Shaw. Scheider also appeared in the sequel Jaws 2, which he was forced to do contractually rather than a part in The Deer Hunter.

Like Gould and Hackman, Scheider would settle into character roles by the late 80s and 1990s, reliably tough and authoritative. He would star for a time on the television show Seaquest: DSV, as well as doing theatre.

For a taste of the best of Scheider, start with the aforementioned Klute, The French Connection, Jaws, and All That Jazz. Then dig into gritty cop thriller The Seven-Ups from 1973, the odd comedy Sheila Levine is Dead and Living in New York from 1975, the paranoid Nazi dentist thriller Marathon Man from 1976 in which Scheider plays Dustin Hoffman's brother, Sorcerer, a tough remake of Wages of Fear which reunited Scheider with French Connection director Billy Friedkin, The Last Embrace, Jonathan Demme's first Hitchcockian attempt to get away from b-movies in 1982, Blue Thunder, John Badham's still fun 1983 killer choppers over L.A. techno-thriller, and a sly, mincing and funny turn as Dr. Benway in David Cronenberg's odd adaptation of William Burrough's Naked Lunch in 1991.

Here's the "Bye Bye Life" sequence from All That Jazz :


Here's one of the deliciously snarky scenes between Scheider and Malcolm McDowell from Blue Thunder :

Here's part of the classic rope-bridge sequence from The Sorcerer :

Culture: Sexiest Man Dead 2007

People magazine just announced their annual Pavlovian bell ring, serving up fresh beefcake with their Sexist Man Alive issue (it's Matt Damon this year). We here at POSAS decided to up the ante a bit. Even though my statistical experts tell me that there are more people alive on earth now than have ever died, it doesn't feel true. As Stephen Colbert would say, it lacks truthiness. I think the real challenge is to name the Sexiest Man Dead 2007-- and that's just what we intend to do here at POSAS intend to do.

The Sexiest Man Dead for 2007 is Cary Grant.

This years Sexiest Man Dead gave new meaning to the phrase "swings both ways", doing a fair impression of a kitchen door in a busy upscale restaurant. Grant was married five times, including to actress Dyan Cannon and lived with actor Randolph Scott for many years.

His suave sense of style, cool invented mid-Atlantic accent, and facility with both comedy and drama made him a star worldwide. Born Archibald Leach in Bristol England in 1904 he remained a movie star from the mid 1930s until the dawn of the seventies.

Among our favorite films of his Sylvia Scarlett (1935) with Katherine Hepburn, Topper (1937), The Awful Truth (1937), Bringing Up Baby (1938), and Holiday(1938) which both re-teamed him with Hepburn, Gunga Din (1939), His Girl Friday (1939), The Philadelphia Story (1940) with Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart, his first teaming with Hitchcock Suspicion (1941) , Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Notorious (1946) with Ingrid Bergman and Hitchcock again, The Bishop's Wife (1947), To Catch a Thief (1954) directed by Hitch with a radiant Grace Kelly, An Affair to Remember (1957), North by Northwest (1959) his most iconic Hitchcock film, and Charade teaming him with another Hepburn -- Audrey.

Ladies and gentleman, POSAS Sexiest Man Dead 2007 Cary Grant!

Here's future POSAS SMD nominee Michael Caine on Grant:

Film: Stepfather Joins the H-Wood Regurgitation Parade

Dylan Walsh: Not only not my real father...not even my real stepfather!

Just last week I was having dinner with my lovely wife and a few friends at my mother's apartment and talk turned, naturally enough, to the 1987 Joseph Ruben Directed b-thriller The Stepfather. Friend George, like myself, is a big fan of the Terry O' Quinn (Locke from Lost) starrer about a teenage girl (Jill Schoelen) who starts to suspect that the law and order family guy who's swept Mom (Shelley Hack) off her feet may be a serial family killer. George pointed out (quite rightly) the subversive Reagen-era commentary inherent in O'Quinn's ultra-tough love performance.

Well wouldn't you know the green minded folks in Hollywood have finally gotten around to recycling The Stepfather -- This time starring Nip/Tuck's Dylan Walsh as the stepfather and Sela Ward as mom. It's directed by...oh who cares. Really is there such a dearth of ideas in the world that we have to go to second string 80's films for remakes? The thing that really tees me off about this is when I'm cruising through my cable guide and I see Bad News Bears and I'm all psyched for some Walter Matthau and boom! It's Billy Bob Thornton. Oh The Hitcher's on, maybe I'm in time to see Jennifer Jason Leigh tied between a tractor and its trailer and who wouldn't want to torture C. Thomas Howell but...oh crap it's a bunch of actors I could care less about. Seriously Hollywood -- before I have to turn on Cinemax to see The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai starring Sean William Scott and Sophia Bush -- stop the madness!

Here's the trailer for the real Stepfather:

Film: The Lives of Ulrich Mühe

The late Ulrich Mühe listens to Darkside of The Moon the way it was meant to be heard...

EW.com has a great interview with Best Foreign Film Oscar winner The Lives of Others director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck about his star Ulrich Mühe, who died recently of stomach cancer. It's well worth reading about the political power of art.