There are those who think it’s time for a moratorium on Holocaust movies, and there are those who stand by the belief that there won’t be enough until there’s been 6 million produced and released. As of 2003, we were up to at least 442 titles, according to Annette Insdorf’s book Indelible Shadows. And due to last year’s boom of Holocaust-related features, it seems as though Insdorf could easily add another 100 more to the list in her next edition.
But there’s no need to put an end to Holocaust films, anymore than there’s a need to cease making any genre of movie. A good film is a good film, no matter if it’s set in a concentration camp, features Nazis or merely alludes to the Shoah. And a bad movie is a bad movie, an exploitative movie is an exploitative movie and Oscar bait is Oscar bait. Beginning this Tuesday, when The Boy in the Striped Pajamas arrives on DVD, those hungering for more Holocaust movies will get another shot at seeing 2008’s contributions to the genre, but they’ll also start to see why critics were getting tired of these films. It wasn’t the subject matter, though, and it wasn’t necessarily the quantity so much as it was the quality. These days, Holocaust films are more dependent on clichés and are adversely affected by trends than ever before, even when they appear to be intent on breaking with conventions. Here is an excellent bit from a Mr.Cranky review of Defiance:
Here’s the thing: the more bad Holocaust films you make, the more Holocaust clichés you employ, the more the Holocaust itself becomes a cliché. The first few Holocaust films had a message and were probably intended to be meaningful. The last hundred were commercial vehicles designed to play on audience sympathies and line the producers’ pockets with money. Ultimately, Hollywood has done what every Jew on the planet pleas desperately to never happen: made the Holocaust meaningless on a pop culture scale.
As soon as filmmakers can completely abandon all ten of the following problems with the Holocaust genre, the better off we’ll be in getting to those 6 million titles without further protest. …Read more
In 10 out of 14 years, the winner of the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role has gone on to win the Academy Award for Best Actress. If this year marks the 11th such congruence, Meryl Streep will take home the Oscar. Yet there is an odd circumstance with the Academy’s nominations that hurts Streep’s chances. Another one of the Academy’s Best Actress contenders also received a SAG Award Sunday night: Kate Winslet, who won the supporting actress trophy for The Reader. At the Oscars, this role has been recognized as a lead performance, one that is likely a favorite to win.
Yes, it is a strange situation, one that shocked and confused Oscar prognosticators (especially this writer) on Thursday morning. Winslet’s Reader performance was campaigned as a supporting role, and she was recognized as such by the Golden Globes, the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the Chicago Film Critics Association and of course the Screen Actors Guild. A few organizations did nominate her for a lead award for The Reader, though few people take the Satellites seriously, and the BAFTA Awards are different than most in that they permit Winslet to compete against herself in the same category (she is also nominated for Best Leading Actress for Revolutionary Road).
Some now believe the Academy’s deviation will in fact cost Winslet the Oscar she could have won in the supporting field. Either voters will be confused about what film she’s nominated for (unless I’m simply less observant than elderly Academy members, which may indeed be the case), or she will now split the majority vote with Streep and thus allow Anne Hathaway or Melissa Leo to slip ahead (Angelina Jolie is believed to have no shot). Another idea is that voters will dismiss Winslet due to doubts over which category the performance belongs in. But since enough members of the Academy made it a point to nominate her as lead actress in the first place, this is hardly a reasonable theory.
Two halfsie holiday weeks in one Week in Review! From the final days of recession gluttony to the cold dawn of 2009, we learned about charismatic Nazis, twisted nativities,Revolutionary Road, The Spirit, Chernenko-sploitation, and the most misunderstood movies of the past twelve months. Happy Everything!!!
When it comes to lazy film clichés, Nazis are one step above slow-motion gunfights and barely underneath “the hero must get the girl and save the day.” It’s fitting that Nazis manage to encompass everything from being the symbol for the Big, Bad Guy to perversion, occult beliefs and Holocaust Porn. Pop a swastika on someone and it becomes abundantly clear he’s the bad guy, whether it’s Samuel L. Jackson ripping through shoddy green screen in The Spirit or the lit-deviant prison guard Kate Winslet tackles in The Reader.
But sometimes, there are types of films that need to go “Full Nazi.” These select few films embrace the red, black and white because they’d have no other claim to fame otherwise. The eight films below have merit on their own, but it is through their use of the Nazi symbols that they remain on the cultural brain.
The effective start of Bryan Singer’s ode to the Reich involves Arthur Denker (Ian McKellen), a Nazi war criminal masquerading next door to Todd Bowen (Brad Renfro), who discovers his neighbor’s previous life. Being an obsessive sociopath in progress, young Todd demands Arthur (neé Kurt Dussander) regale him with tales of World War II and Nazism in general. He goes so far as taking a uniform from the attic and demands Arthur march for him. Pupil embodies the sadomasochistic nature that the fetish community places on the Nazis along with the concept that only scary, evil people ever want to learn about history. The duo develop a creepy grandparent/child vibe, as Arthur threatens to rat out Todd if his grades don’t improve, and both become encouraged to torture small animals and get some small pleasure out of it.
We’ve known for months that absolutely nothing was wrong with Valkyrie, and now we’re just a few days away from watching this tiny independent feature storm the box office, redeem United Artists as a production entity and make Tom Cruise a respectable household name again.
Of course, there is the slight problem: he’s portraying Nazi Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who may have disagreed with the party politics, but still rocked the swastika and straight salute. How exactly did Cruise, one of the great symbols of the “Blockbuster Film” and American culture, wind up so perfectly suited as a crippled, over-zealous Nazi embroiled in conspiracy? We’ve excavated evidence from his filmography to track the transformation.
Tom Cruise is potentially re-teaming with Valkyrie screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie on up to three projects, including another WWII flick that would put Cruise in the pilot seat again, Flying Tigers. Cruise is likely happy with the initial reception of Valkyrie, though sticking with McQuarrie for so long may keep him from diverse roles. The other two projects include the espionage drama The Tourist and the adaptation of the 60s TV show The Champions, which deals with super-powered spies.
Frank Miller is re-teaming with Odd Lot Entertainment for a dark Buck Rogers movie that he’ll write and direct. The announcement comes just in time, before an onslaught of bad reviews of The Spirit join Variety’s pan.
Stephen Chow will no longer direct but will still co-star in The Green Hornet. Apparently his creative differences don’t extend to his onscreen role of Kato. Maybe this is co-scribe and star Seth Rogen’s chance to try directing?
Gus Van Sant’s Milk, a skillful and impassioned argument for gay rights, may have come out too late. As proponents of equal marriage rights are still reeling from the passage of Prop 8 in California, the film finds itself the subject of bitter irony, rather than the center of a political victory parade that could have been. Milk is saturated with politics, both on screen and off. It’s not too hard to imagine Sean Penn’s speech should he win an Oscar, and Van Sant has done a fair bit of political maneuvering in an effort to give him that opportunity.
Tom Cruise has done some politicking to get audiences to warm up to his Hitler assassination plot thriller, Valkyrie. Can he bury bury the couch-jumping and psychology-bashing hatchets quick enough to enjoy a successful holiday at the box office?
If yesterday’s clip of Muppets disco dancing wasn’t childish enough for you, check out today’s trippy video. I don’t quite understand the inspiration behind the concept, but someone decided to superimpose the heads of the cast from Valkyrieonto little bodies in elf costumes dancing to a disco version of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” (courtesy of JibJab’s Elf Yourself program). Tom Cruise with an eyepatch was odd enough. Tom Cruise with an eyepatch flailing his arms about like a Nazi Tony Manero is just about the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.
Just what are these guys so excited about? The holidays? The death of Hitler (though not thanks to them)? Or could it be they’re celebrating the fact that the reviews of Valkyrie aren’t as dreadful as many expected? Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the actual movie doesn’t feature any scenes as great as this one.
For years Hollywood’s holiday season has been synonymous with Holocaust-themed films –– see this year’s entries The Reader, Defiance, Valkyrie, etc. – or not. But only after reviewing The New Stage Theatre Company’s titillating “Oh, Those Beautiful Weimar Girls!” did it hit me that revisiting the tragedy of WWII every winter makes no sense. For ‘tis the season to be jolly––not watch a Nazi! So I propose to start a new tradition: to stop equating Germany with SS boots and “Seig heil!” salutes every December, and instead go further back in time to when Deutschland was synonymous with sex, drugs, and decadent fun. Yes, this month let’s raise a toast to the high-spirited sleaze of the Weimar years; let’s celebrate the country that, before it gave the world the most notorious psychopath of the 20th century, birthed the first sexy, pro-dyke flick in 1931(!), Leontine Sagan’s Mädchen in Uniform. And you can watch it on YouTube!
If you haven’t already heard the news, I’ll sum it up for you: Ridley Scott is directing a feature film version of Monopoly. It’s probably the single strangest thing I’ve ever heard in the film business. I’m not sure if Scott himself seems to know what this movie will be about, because he keeps waffling on the subject: one moment he says it’ll be a broad family comedy, and the next minute it’s going to be dark like Blade Runner. He seems to have only been wooed by the fact that it’s one of the best-selling board games in the world.
This doesn’t mean that making a movie out of a board game is a bad idea, necessarily. It worked for Clue, after all. But unless Scott’s movie features Rich Uncle Pennybags jumping around with his monocle screwed firmly in place, I’m going to have to call shenanigans on it. Check out our list below of the 10 Board Games We’d Like To See As Movies, complete with fantasy casting.
Paula Wagner, Tom Cruise’s long-time producing partner, is leaving her post at the top of United Artists. Though Wagner will hold on to a share of UA––which has barely made use of their $500 million credit line, due to some friction with parent studio MGM over which movies to greenlight––apparently “it’s possible that the studio will once again go into hibernation and that the UA coin will go to MGM.”
Totally coincidentally, the release date on UA’s next big production, the bad buzz-plagued Tom Cruise-in-an-eye patch vehicle Valkyrie, has been moved to Dec. 26 from Feb. 13, allegedly to capitalize on holiday audiences.
In news that has to do with Cruise but is totally unrelated to Paula Wagner, he might star inThe Tourist, a remake of a 2005 French film called Anthony Zimmer, with an adaptation by Julian Fellowes.
Magnolia is funneling a few of genre-arm Magnet’s recent acquisitions into a theatrical release label called the Six Shooter Film Series. The Series will start with the Tribeca-lauded Swedish vampire flick Let the Right One In, and will also showcase Sundance picks Special and Timecrimes.
A little film called The Dark Knightopens tomorrow tonight, and it’s so highly anticipated and it has received so much positive buzz that one expert is predicting it could gross anywhere between $100-150 million. I’m going to to do him one better and broaden that gap further to $100-900 million. Good thing this isn’t The Price is Right.
And speaking of down-on-their-luck, alcoholics, Jeff Bridges will play one — a country singer, though, not a superhero — in the T Bone Burnett-scored musical Crazy Heart, which will also star Maggie Gyllenhaal and Robert Duvall.
John Woo is known for announcing about 20 new directing gigs a year, so don’t get too upset if he doesn’t actually end up helming the comic book adaptation Caliber.
Can we expect a whole new marketing strategy for Tom Cruise’s Valkyrie? United Artists has just hired a new chief of marketing and publicity, Michael Vollman from Paramount, to replace the resigned Dennis Rice.
Documentary site SnagFilmshas acquired indieWIRE. Congrats and good luck to our SpoutBlog friends at iW, including Eugene Hernandez, who has a new position and will oversee content on both sites.
Of course, like many others I would wish for them to have never existed, because millions of lives are more important than any number of classic movies. But the Nazis did happen, and they continue to populate cinema for better or worse. We all know about the latest product of Hollywood’s Nazi fetish, Valkyrie, and we’ve seen a ridiculous trailer for a new Russian Hitler farce titled Hitler Kaput!, which shouldn’t be confused with Germany’s recently announced Hitler comedy Mein Kampf, based on a play by George Tabori (I Confess). And now, because we still need Nazi sci-fi, there’s Iron Sky, for which a teaser trailer (see above) has just been released.
I know I should be able to pull off some kind of stunning analysis of this morning’s New York Times story, in which Tom Cruise’s producing partner Paula Wagner defends United Artists against the bad buzz swirling around Valkyrie, but I’m not feeling it. The story just adheres to such a tired formula: “The Internet says there’s trouble, but I talked to a studio exec for an hour and a half and she said everything was okay! And Bram Stoker’s Dracula made $83 million! So take that, Internet!” Yawn. Plus, the timing of the piece just seems bizarre. It’s been ages (in internet time, at least) since Valkyrie’s release date was pushed back to February 2009. Cruise is getting good press for his cameo in Tropic Thunder. Why would UA jump to defend themselves now? Why not just let Bryan Singer shoot (or reshoot) whatever he needs to shoot, and project confidence about the film and the release date through non-defensive silence?
Whatever. I’ll just point you towards David Poland’s piece on the piece, which begins as a clarification of the statement “Valkyrie is dead,” which was quoted from Poland’s blog in the second sentence of the NYT piece without much context. Mostly, he’s annoyed at being lumped into a story in which Roger Friedman is heavily quoted. “I just wanted to say, I would never make any of the silly, lazy reaches that The Inhuman Stain would. They are unfair and uninformed. But then again, what do you expect from a gossip columinst who works for a right-wing organization that stands against much of what he stands for and who “reports” what he is told to report?”
But it could be worse. “At least [NYT's Michael] Cieply didn’t call me ‘a blogger,’” Poland writes. On his blog.
Uh-oh! Brian Singer’s Tom Cruise-tries-to-kill-Hitler-with-an-eye patch drama Valkyrie has been pushed from prestige season to dumping season. The already much-mocked film was previously pushed down the pipe from July to October 2008; with re-shoots still looming, it’ll now open in February 2009.
Benderspink, the agency that packaged Juno, has a new gambit for luring teen girls to the multiplex: they’re producing “a hip-hop musical reimagining” of Jane Austen’s Emma.
Cloverfield is a huge hit in Japan. This is the surest sign I can think of that global-political cycle of the 20th century is complete.
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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