September is often used as a dumping ground for movies, but this year it also appears to be a dumping ground for once-great or once-promising talents who’ve lost their way. I’ve taken note of at least 10 individuals (actors, actresses and a couple filmmakers) who have new films out this month (I’m counting the Labor Day weekend, too) who are due for a visit from the Ghost of Movies Past.
More specifically, these people need to backtrack to the ‘90s, which is when most of them did their last truly great work. Perhaps they need to take a look at that earlier work and remember what it was they used to do. Or perhaps they just need to get advice from the Coen brothers, who similarly hit a slump in the new millennium, but who are now back on track with a few more Oscars in hand and a new comedy, Burn After Reading, which looks to be more in line with their ‘90s classic The Big Lebowski than their 2000s missteps Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers.
It could be argued that Cage made just as many worthless movies in the ‘90s as he has in the ‘00s. Also, considering his box office success with Ghost Rider and the National Treasure movies, plus his excellent Oscar-nominated dual role in Adaptation, it’s debatable that he’s “lost his way.” But it’s clear to me, at least, that he currently lacks any concern for the quality of his work, as evidenced by this month’s Bangkok Dangerous, which makes even Con Air look well crafted by comparison. In the ‘90s, Cage was doing much greater work for Scorsese, Lynch and even Michael Bay, and he won an Oscar for Best Actor, too. Unless he starts caring about the roles he chooses, he’s more likely to one day receive lifetime recognition by the Razzies than a lifetime achievement award from the Academy. Who he needs to work with again to get it back: the Coens; Uncle Francis (Ford Coppola); Scorsese; even Michael Bay would be good.
Are you a supporter of gay marriage?
“I know nothing about it. I don’t follow that.” Why doesn’t it interest you?
“The same reason heterosexual marriage doesn’t seem to interest me.”
Amen, sister. One of the perks of being queer is that you’re not expected to engage in unnatural acts like high school proms and monogamy. So in honor of the hedonistic right to our own guilt-free, queer Mardi Gras, here are some subversive suggestions that will get you in the mood and take you back to that more innocent, less commercial “Over The Rainbow” time. …Read more
I know star power isn’t what it used to be, but doesn’t it seem like we still give Al Pacino more credit than he’s worth? Despite his receiving an Oscar fifteen years ago, the guy hasn’t been a completely dependable actor in more than two decades. And yet a lot of people write about his upcoming movies as if they could maybe, possibly, hopefully be on par with the actor’s ’70s work. I’m not denying that he’s excellent in a few films of even the past ten years (particularly The Insider), but let’s not forget he was also in Gigli, so it isn’t like he’s making the same smart choices he was making as a younger man.
And now here’s 88 Minutes, another movie that attempts to give us a thrilling plot in real time, a la 24. But despite such a gimmick working with old films like High Noon and 12 Angry Men, when it’s presented as a gimmick, and clearly as the only reason a movie is made (as in the cases of Nick of Time, Timecode and Phone Booth), it always comes off as forced and (obviously) gimmicky. But at least Pacino is in it, right? Eh, maybe if American moviegoers still gave a damn about marquee names. Maybe that’s why 88 Minutes was released to many foreign markets six months to a year ago; star power is still marketable in many places outside the U.S. Meanwhile, Sony is finally dropping the thing here on April 18.
I can’t say that I would never see a movie just because Pacino is in it (I can’t wait to see him as Salvador Dali in Dali & I: The Surreal Story, only because the idea is half-genius, half-ludicrous), but even my nostalgia for a seemingly real time movie like Dog Day Afternoon(it’s not in real time, but it feels like it) can’t get me to see 88 Minutes just for him. And there doesn’t appear to be much else that’s appealing about the generic frame-job film either.
In late 2005, Jon Avnet (who, it should be noted, is a very successful producer who hasn’t directed a film you might have seen since Fried Green Tomatoes) directed Al Pacino in a “real-time thriller” called 88 Minutes. A trailer for that film seems to have shown up on the web around this time last summer. According to IMDb, 88 Minutes was released on DVD in Brazil this past February and in a handful of other countries theatrically over the course of the spring; the pic’s US release date has been bumped several times, and is now listed as sometime in 2008.
Perhaps now we know why. In an interview with Pitchfork, indie rock guitar virtuoso Marnie Stern admitted to having recently downloaded “40 or 50 movies” while touring with Hella drummer Zach Hill. “But,” she says, “Every movie is a pile of garbage!” Stern elaborates on one recent download:
Another movie I saw last night was Al Pacino in 88 Minutes, I don’t even know if it went to the goddamn theatres. He looks unbelievably terrible. Like, in the Rolling Stones category. Dyed hair, he’s over-tanned, he’s really is not looking good at all. And in the movie he’s having sex with 25 year-olds.
So what do we learn from this little anecdote, beyond the fact that Al Pacino is no longer a credible love match for Alicia Witt or Leelee Sobieski? That studios might as well release dust-collecting duds, because the piracy chain is now so massive that an up-and-coming American rock star is easily able to illegally gain access to a film before any American film critic, and then ultimately tell the Wall Street Journal of hipster websites all about how ridiculous it is? Yeah, I guess that’s all kind of a big deal, but mostly, I’m just really hoping Marnie Stern starts a film blog. In the meantime, you can watch the video for her song “Every Single Line Means Something” above.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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