In the new movie Eagle Eye, three characters participate in a re-creation of the famous crop duster sequence from Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. Only the plane from NbN has been replaced with an electrical tower and power lines, and it takes Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan and Anthony Azizi to perform Cary Gran’t part (Azizi also substitutes for the pilot and the farmer, I guess).
Such an homage is not surprising coming from director D.J. Caruso, whose last picture, Disturbia, is currently involved in a lawsuit for being an uncredited remake of Hitch’s Rear Window. This time, fortunately, Caruso borrows enough from other films, including Hitch’s second version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, 2001: A Space Odyssey and I, Robot, to keep from being sued by any single party. Eagle Eye will likely also remind audiences of The Dark Knight, if not for the similar cell phone surveillance tactics then for Caruso’s even less capable talent for directing car chases.
While Caruso does a good job at allowing his audience to compare him to better filmmakers (yes, even I, Robot’s Alex Proyas), he doesn’t give us the world’s worst redo of the crop duster bit (that is probably this). But he also doesn’t come anywhere close to giving us the best. And for such a famous scene that is so widely studied and imitated, giving us merely another so-so re-creation is very disappointing. After the jump, you’ll find some of my favorite tributes to North by Northwest, mostly paying homage to that one beloved sequence.
The most notable DVD release of the week* has to be the first season of Mad Men, which hits the street tomorrow just in time for newbies to get caught up on the AMC series before season two premieres in late July (it’s been available on iTunes for quite some time). I went on YouTube looking for clips from my favorite episodes and found the above fan vid, which focuses on Betty Draper (January Jones), the miserable model-turned-housewife of mysterious ad man Don Draper. I love it, if for no other reason than that it really draws out the way the show takes mid-century cinematic archetypes and weds them to real-seeming, endlessly multi-faceted characterizations.
This clip specifically highlights Mad Men’s Hitchcock allusions: the slate-gray, Madeline Elster-esque suit that Betty wears to therapy; Don’s spying, here symbolized by his employment of a home movie camera like something out of a cross between Peeping Tom and Rear Window; and my favorite, Betty’s fateful encounter with a flock of birds.
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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