Innocent Bystander

Seven Days In May (1964)

A couple of weeks ago, TCM ran a short in-between films featurette about Burt Lancaster. This is one of the things I love about Turner Classic Movies, the extra bits. There are no commercials, except promos for upcoming films and special themes during any given month, plus info on what's on sale at TCM.com, which is always movie-oriented stuff. Anyway, the Lancaster thing was narrated by the late director John Frankenheimer (who died in 2002, so you know this must be an older thing they were running). And in it he mentioned directing Lancaster in Seven Days In May.

I had seen SDIM a number of times over the years and admired and enjoyed it each time. It was made in 1963, but didn't come out until 1964, after the assassination of President Kennedy. It was a difficult time for the country, and I can't imagine the effect a film about a military coup had on the nation's psyche. And that exactly what Seven Days In May is about. (I purchased a copy off Amazon, but Netflix also has it, if you want to see it yourself.)

Burt Lancaster is General James Matoon Scott, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and bristling at the fact that President Jordan Lyman (Fredric March) has signed a nuclear arms treaty with the Soviet Union which will mean each country will destroy their respective collections of nuclear bombs and missiles. Kirk Douglas is Marine Colonel Martin "Jiggs" Casey, one of Scott's aides, who starts to realize something is up with a upcoming military drill in which the President will take part. Casey takes steps to bring the plot to the attention of the President and his advisers and the film chronicles the race against the clock to get proof of the treason and sedition being carried out by the Joint Chiefs.

Based on a 1962 novel by authors Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey, SDIM is a wonderful film, made even better by Fredric March in one of his last roles (he made only three more films before his death in 1975). March is one of those natural authority figures, and you don't doubt for a second that he's the President of the United States. He gives an intense, fine performance as a president whose approval rating is 29%, and who is having a tough time trying to sell his peace plan to the American public, not to mention his armed forces. Both Douglas and Lancaster are also great in this taut thriller, with Douglas having to play informer, selling out his friends in an attempt to stop the plot to overthrow the government. He's the catalyst in all this, the one who reveals the plot--based solely on his suspicions, which he has to sell to the president and his chief aide--and puts the race against time in motion. Lancaster is stoic and sinister as the megalomaniacal general who believes he's the country's savior.

Seven Days is one of those films that almost seems to exist in a time capsule, like director John Frankenheimer's previous film, The Manchurian Candidate. Both seem mired in a period of Cold War and constant fear, of bombs ready to fly and fall at a moment's notice. It's actually supposed to take place in the future (and certain contrivances in the film, like video conferencing between the president and various Joint Chiefs reveal that), and the novel took place 12 years ahead, in the 1970s. Maybe Knebel and Bailey--and screenwriter Rod Serling (yes, THAT Rod Serling from TV's The Twilight Zone)--decided the world of their day wasn't ready for a military plot to take over the country. I don't think any of us will ever be ready for that.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007)

I wasn't too fond of the first Nic Cage National Treasure movie, but the ads for the second one piqued my interest a bit--John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Assassination being one of my favorite bits of history--so I gave the first one a second try and lo and behold, I warmed up to it.

I'm happy to say the new sequel, Book of Secrets, is better than the first one. Stars Cage, Jon Voight, the winsome and lovely Diane Kruger, and Justin Bartha--aided and abetted by Harvey Keitel and joined by Ed Harris as the bad guy and Helen Mirren as the mom--have the whole "family dynamic" down to a tee and are all enjoyable. Cage has some hair problems, and I swear there's a moment or two halfway in when he dons black frame glasses and I almost thought he was a younger Woody Allen, but he works in this, even if it sometimes seems like he'd rather be elsewhere (like Next would be a better place to be, Nic?). And with the great box office this sequel is seeing, I think Cage should just take the money and run.

This is a twisty, turny, dense "history lesson" that takes us from Washington to Paris to London, back to Washington to Mt. Rushmore on still another treasure hunt that ends up in a big hidden room where someone lights a trough or two of oil to illuminate the whole secret that everyone has spent two hours to find. And if every movie asks you to suspend belief, the NT ones ask you to smash it into tiny pieces and cast it to the four winds. It's all popcorn, people, so you either sit back and enjoy it or "hrmpf" yourself through the entire two hours and four minutes. Me? I enjoyed every improbable second of it.

Best of 2007: Movies

(Please note: Our "Best of 2007" series contains books, comics, DVDs, movies, and TV shows we read or watched during the year, not necessarily those published or produced during the same year. As with any "Best of" list from anyone--including God--these recommendations should be taken with a grain of salt. Your mileage will vary, but if you're truly interested, click on the links below and buy away. Your humble author will get a small percentage of the proceeds.)

2007 saw a real lack of any great comic book/super-hero movies. Not that that's the main reason I go to the movies. Both Spider-Man 3 and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer sucked, the former surprisingly so, the latter not so much. 2008 holds a lot more promise in that arena, at least, with Iron Man, The Dark Night, and The Incredible Hulk, all looking at least a little promising, the latter based solely on the casting.

Between DVD and the thee-A-ter, I saw 80 films in 2007. I wish I could come up with ten great ones released in the year, but I can't. There are a few out there that I haven't seen yet, which I'm waiting to watch on DVD. (A quick peek at my Netflix queue reveals only one or two--The Namesake and Eastern Promises--that might be candidates for this post.) Suffice it to say, I'm finding myself less and less compelled to go see a movie in a theater these days. I'd rather just wait for the inevitable DVD three months down the road.

So, here's my seven lowly "bests" of 2007...I suppose "7 in '07" is appropriate enough.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
This intense little family drama is one of the best acted movies of the year. (Click here to read my original review.)

The Bourne Ultimatum
I didn't like this one as much as the second installment (sue me...The Empire Strikes Back, Bride of Frankenstein, and Godfather II are all favorites, also), but it's a fitting end to the Bourne saga, and even leaves the door open for future installments. (Click here to read my original review.)

Michael Clayton
I think this is the best written movie of the year, with a two-punch surprise ending. Can't wait to see it again on DVD. (Click here to read my original review.)

Once
I can't rave enough about this little film about two songwriters who skate in and out of each others' paths in Ireland, leaving a lasting impact on both their lives. (Click here to read my original review.)

Ratatouille
Pixar spoils us for anyone else's CG-animated films. I wasn't prepared for how much I loved the story of Remy the rat who cooks. (Click here to read my original review.)

3:10 To Yuma
It's not going to bring back the Western genre, like Russell Crowe in Gladiator did to the sword and sandal epic, but it's a great little character drama with fine performances by both Crowe, as the conniving bad guy, and Christian Bale as the good guy rancher just trying to save his home and family. (Click here to read my original review.)

Waitress
Another lovely little film from Fox Searchlight (the company who also released the above-mentioned Once), Keri Russell becomes a bona fide movie star and bakes her way into our hearts. (Click here to read my original review.)

I Am Legend (2007) and The Omega Man (1971)

Adapted from the same source material--the 1954 novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson--these two films have more separating them than 35 years.

I Am Legend, the new version starring Will Smith and directed by Francis Lawrence, is a big budget, years-in-the-making epic. Various stars and directors had been attached to it. Smith is an effective Robert Neville, the last man on earth after a well-intentioned cure for cancer mutates and kills off most of the population. The ones remaining become overly sensitive to light, only come out at night and kill--and eat--the other survivors who were immune to the virus. So all that's left is Neville, his dog, Sam, and a whole mess of crazy people who want to eat him.

And that makes for a pretty empty film. While the shots of New York City overgrown and dead, with deer cavorting through the streets--along with the occasional escaped zoo lion--are nice to watch, and Smith's performance is particularly intense, there's just something lonely and lacking about this film. Other people eventually show up, but we're not given enough time to relate to them. And this movie breaks a cardinal rule that no film should EVER break. I'll let you figure it out on your own.

Part of the problem, too, lies in the fact that all the bad guys--hulking, flesh-rending, monsters--seem to be CGI and all look it. There's no adversary, save the virus Neville is still laboring to find a cure for. When he kills them, it's just killing. There's no interplay, no clever banter between good and evil. Neville/Smith really is the last man on earth in this film, in more ways than one.

At least the 1971 Charlton Heston version, The Omega Man, has an articulate bad guy in Mathias (Anthony Zerbe), a former news anchor gone crazy when biological warfare between the Russians and Chinese destroys the world in 1975. Like it's 2007 version, the remaining people are light-sensitive, but intelligent people caught up in a Manson Family like group dynamic. Heston's Robert Neville is also a military scientist who survives the virus and spends his days scoping out "Family" hideouts and killing them all. This was a great film for the 16-year-old me in 1971, but boy, is it tough to watch now. It's hard for me to believe at times that the great canned ham himself, Charlton Heston, was ever a star. This is one of his select set of late 60s-early 70s sci-fi films (along with Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and Soylent Green) that marked the beginning of the waning of his career. It was all disaster films, military history, and creaky sci fi and horror from here on. The Omega Man is cringe-worthy by today's standards, totally lacking in special effects, and laughable with Heston's requisite costume changes (great white hunter safari jacket to velvet smoking jacket as he "dresses for dinner" to macho man outfit when he makes love to the "last woman on earth," sassy Rosalind Cash, doing her best to keep up 70s' stereotypes in films written by white people--and don't forget the sky blue flight-suit he dies in, too). Luckily, this new DVD edition of the film served its purpose for me: Providing a free "Movie Money" ticket to see I Am Legend. What goes around, comes around, baby.

Hot Fuzz (2007)

Hot Fuzz manages to take pretty much every action movie convention and make fun of them, all while keeping a relatively straight face, at least on its hero, the stalwart and stuffy Nick Angel (Simon Pegg). With an arrest record 400% higher than anyone else on the London Metropolitan Police, Angel is promoted to sergeant, but also sent packing to a small village, Sanford, outside the city. Seems he's making the other cops look bad. Real bad.

Angel thinks he's going to purgatory, but he ends up in hell. At first, it's a hell of his own making: The other coppers make fun of him. But when he starts to get suspicious about the high accident rate in Sanford and sees murders instead, he's really ostracized. Then a different hell breaks open.

Hot Fuzz skewers all your favorites: Lethal Weapon, Bad Boys--II is the favorite film of Angel's partner, the dim-witted but well-meaning Danny Butterman (Nick Frost)--Point Break; even Chinatown gets into the act. And there's appearances by both Edward Woodward (The Equalizer) and Timothy Dalton (James Bond for two movies), two action stars in their own special ways. Pegg is never more than straight-laced and while the movie is a parody, it never really strays into Naked Gun territory, although the giant gun battle with the whole town at the end is so absurd it's hilarious. (You'll never see a funnier scene anywhere than Pegg kicking an 80+year old woman--firing a double-barreled shotgun at him--in the face.) The movie did amazing business in the UK, but it's tanking over here, with only $5 million in box office so far. It's not a case of us not getting British humor this time. This is accessible enough for even the dullest of dullards. It is violent (there's a couple of gruesome murder scenes and another that really shocked my poor delicate sensibilities). I think it's more that it hasn't found its audience, or rather the audience hasn't found it. Whatever the case, it's a funny, fast-moving film, and a great two hours. I'd say "two thumbs WAY up," but Nick Angel would probably blow them off.

WORLD PREMIERE!

The IB True Hollywood Story: Spooky Spooky Wolf-Boy!

I have to confess that I have a strong case of terminal (I told you it was strong) disdain to the whole YouTube phenomenon. If I come across video embedded in a post on any blog, I pretty much ignore it. Don't get me wrong...I think the technology and the ability to do such is wonderful. But as always in life, just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

A couple of weeks ago I came across a cute video that was made in response to another cute video I saw. They both involved dogs with treats stacked on their noses. In the case of the "rebuttal" video, the person confessed it was the very first time she ever made a movie. I was floored at how professional it looked and it made me realize I'm sitting on an incredible resource for really useless time killing. I've had an iBook since 2002 now, and NEVER even opened iMovie. I also have a brand new digital camera that also takes movies. Combine that with a boring Saturday evening--what is that idle hands and the devil quote?--and you end up with the world premiere movie, Spooky Spooky Wolf-Boy.

I was shopping yesterday and came across this weird little figure (seen above). It was charming in its own little way, but then I noticed the plastic round shape on its back. "What is this? A bank?" I thought, seeing as how the round thing could be a way to get money out. But there was no coin slot anywhere. I pushed the round thing and weird, zither-like music came out. It was too cool to pass up, so I brought it home, and a number of copyright-busting actions later, Spooky Spooky Wolf Boy came to life.

You'll have to watch it yourself. Suffice it to say, iMovie is incredibly easy to operate. I did this in one night, and didn't even bother to read the instructions (I needed help with some audio issues, so I used the help function, but I still haven't read the damn thing.) I may even, sad to say, upload it to YouTube. Don't ask me why. Because it's there? Cecil B. DeMille has nothing to worry about...but this sure was fun.