Chain Chain Chain
TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE
The creators of all the great '60s and '70s horror films no longer own them. DAWN OF THE DEAD and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE are now in the hands of others, or the producing partners who helped the directors make original sequels. Thus the essential premise of horror that those early films evinced has been diluted by numerous retellings by hands less interested in honoring that essence. Many descendants, some by Romero, one by Savini, and several by others, followed NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, to varying degrees of faithfulness. And Hooper's original TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE has enjoyed three sequels and now a remake, directed by Marcus Nispel, and produced by Michael Bay.
When TEXAS appeared on the screens reviewers (including me) massacred it, bemoaning its desecration of Hooper's original vision, and the vulgarization found in recent tributes to '70s horror films.
It bears reminding that the reviewers of the mid '70s didn't exactly welcome Hooper's original CHAINSAW. In fact, were it not for the fact that true film buffs were starting to infiltrate the movie reviewing posts of major papers and magazines, the original consensus would have been worse. In part, the esteem of the film rose thanks to the work of critics such as Robin Wood who took the American horror genre seriously.
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Late last year I wrote that "I doubt if any other review in the country will pair these two films, but here's another set of lousy films: WINGED MIGRATION and the remake of THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. Both are examples of cunning manipulation of a target audience, in the one case caring, liberal environmentalists, and on the other potato chip munching slackers. And both are in their way cruelly and equally violent, imposing cinematic clichés on the way the world — of nature and of man — works. MASSACRE is in its way a bizarre, cruel, and ignorant betrayal of the way '70s slasher films worked. Yet both are beautifully and cleverly photographed (and in MASSACRE Jessica Biel is spectacularly, lushly rendered on screen)."
Unfortunately, now New Line has issued one of its characteristically fantastic DVDs of the film, making it harder to hate TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. New Line's two disc Platinum Series set of the film comes with a solid widescreen (1.85:1) enhanced for widescreen TVs, and with a choice of Dolby Digital EX 5.1 and DTS. There are three audio tracks and a whole other disc of feature length supplements.
There are insights and confusions to be had from the three yak tracks (the first with producer Bay, director Nispel, and executive producers Andrew Form and Brad Fuller; the second with Nispel and the technical crew; the third again with of Nispel, Bay, Form, Fuller, screenwriter Scott Kosar, Biel and other cast members.) but the overlap of speakers from track to track gives the set the feel of a vanity production. These people can't seem to shut up about the film, and are unaware of how bad it is beneath its surface.
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The supplements on disc number two are lavish. Deleted scenes are presented singly and as part of a narrated deleted scenes documentary called "Severed Parts," which expands the film with an additional opening and ending that bring the Biel character into the present. There's a typically good and surprisingly frank New Line feature-length "making-of" doc called CHAINSAW REDUX: MAKING A MASSACRE, and a made-for-disc half-hour profile of the indirect progenitor of both CHAINSAW and PSYCHO, Ed Gein (ED GEIN: THE GHOUL OF PLAINFIELD). The supplements are rounded out with screen tests for Biel and two other actors, an image gallery, the theatrical trailer and TV spots, and the Motograter music video for "Suffocate."
TEXAS CHAINSAW comes on two single-sided, single-layered discs and contains both English and Spanish subtitles. The elaborate packaging includes an "evidence file" with "crime scene photos" in a fold-out digipak with cardboard box and the inclusion of a tin faceplate that adds avoirdupois to the package and little else.
House of Fog of War
HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG
The creators of HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG seem to think that it is a film about the war-like conflict between an alcoholic woman and the new owners of the house she has forfeited, a former Iranian general (Sir Ben Kingsley) and his wife (the Oscar nominated Shohreh Aghdashloo). They seem to think that this is a prestige production, made by high rep filmmakers from a classy source (a novel by Andre Dubus III, his second adaptation in as many years). They don't seem to realize that the film is really about the beauty of Jennifer Connolly.
The camera loves Jenny. The viewer falls in love with her, too. The viewer falls in love with her to the distraction of the story, which seems boring and contrived anyway, and to the seemingly fine acting of the others around her in an insipid and depressing tale with no point.
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HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG is arty in all the ways pretentious socially conscious films can be bad. The only real "art" in the thing is Connolly herself. She has fashion model looks, a PLAYBOY physique, and a serious actor's attraction to roles that undermine, deny, or ignore her attributes. Her physical beauty actually denies the film's striving for importance through tragedy, the way Naomi Watts's loveliness undercuts the somber texture of 21 GRAMS. Connelly is probably a very funny person and should start appearing in comedies. Comedies might "humanize" her for viewers warding her off because she is "too" beautiful, as opposed to the way they embrace talented but flawed performers such as Barbra Streisand or Julia Roberts, whose looks can be appealing but who are not classically beautiful. That Connelly managed to win an Oscar a few years back is testimony to her dedication in a business that doesn't reward beauty as much as punish it while desiring it. (Curious that the last several big actress Oscars have been won by the world's most beautiful women, a shift from decades past.)
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DreamWorks has put out a modest disc, with a lovely widescreen transfer (1.85:1) enhanced for widescreen televisions, and DD 5.1 in English and French, with English, French, and Spanish subtitles. Supplements include a virtually nonexistent "making of," some deleted scenes that are really more like deleted shots, Aghdashloo's audition video, and an audio track (that is also subtitled) among director Vadim Perelman, Kingsley, and novelist Dubus. In their chat, the trio at least tries to explain the meaning of various scenes and transitions, and spend a lot of time praising Roger Deakins for his pretty pictures (much of it second unit stuff). They are right about that, at least. Deakins has photographed one of the most beautiful women in the woman and made her even lovelier.
Something Naked This Way Comes
SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE
And it appears to be Diane Keaton. Or at least her body double. Keaton, nominated for an Oscar, sheds all, or seems to shed all, in a "comic" moment in this doddering romantic comedy.
The film starts out seeming as if it is about music entrepreneur Harry Sanborn (Nicholson), who is sneaking away for the weekend with his new girlfriend Marin (Amanda Peet) to her mother's house in the Hamptons. Sanborn is a Nicholson-Beatty style sexual swordsman with a wide reputation who has never settled down. But soon the couple (who haven't have sex yet) run into Marin's mother, a neurotic divorced playwright named Erica Barry (Keaton) — what awful names there are in this film (Marin Barry?). When Harry has a heart attack he becomes the Man Who Came to Dinner, and over the course of time the two unlikely wrinklies forge an unlikely, indeed unholy alliance.
So it turns out to be really Keaton's movie. The sensibility of the film is skewed entirely toward her. At the beginning, Casanovas are mocked; at the end, when Harry tries to get back together with Barry everything he says is wrong in a way probably only the traditionalist women in the audience will understand.
But in fact it's the movie as a whole that is wrong. Everything it advocates is wrong or boring or deeply conservative. The movie says that marriage is better than having fun with scads of different women. The movie says that old people are more attractive morally than young people, as well as physically (that inner beauty thing). The movie is designed commercially to flatter its audience. That audience is vaguely defined — but they know who they are. Writer-director Nancy Meyers (BABY BOOM) has acquired a good, big cast (that also includes Keanu Reeves and STARSKY AND HUTCH'S Paul Michael Glaser), but done so cunningly.
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Columbia TriStar's disc of the hit film offers SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE in a clean and crisp widescreen transfer (2.35:1) enhanced for widescreen televisions, with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. Supplements are modest yet newsworthy. Besides a commentary with Meyers, Keaton, and producer Bruce A. Block, there is a second audio commentary with Meyers and Nicholson. Like George W. Bush, Nicholson is nickname happy, and calls Meyers Chief, even while he is jovially criticizing her for not holding long enough for laughs. But still, the track is a master-class in screen acting from a master at it. The rest of the supplements include a deleted scene in which Nicholson sings karaoke (his first singing moment since ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER?), a tour of the Hamptons house set conducted by a charming Peet, skimpy filmographies, the theatrical trailer and additional trailers for 13 GOING ON 30, SPIDER-MAN 2, BIG FISH, ANGER MANAGEMENT, AMERICA'S SWEETHEARTS, SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, AS GOOD AS IT GETS, THE COMPANY, and SECRET WINDOW.
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Who Can It Be Now?
CSI: THE COMPLETE THIRD SEASON
CSI continues to be one of the best shows on network television, and still remaining faithful to its notions of intelligence, intellect, and science, with only occasionally forays into soap opera to "humanize" it's team of forensic investigators. It's well-acted (I love the way William Petersen walks), well-photographed, and almost always clever, even when it is deriving tales from events in the news.
In terms of photography, the frequent shots of the insides of things — heads, wounds, vessels, organs, pipes, and so on — get better and better. These FIGHT CLUB-THREE KINGS shots are fascinating, not at all distracting from the main line, frequently technically inaccurate, and have a beauty that in isolation is almost abstract in its play of light and form. These exercises in abstract expressionism are probably the least important part of the show (but what the series was at first famous for), but their very irrelevance to the advancement of the plot is part of their beauty.
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But there is another thing I've noticed while watching Season Three. One of the biggest influences on the series appears to be DRAGNET. The staff of the criminal investigation unit is segregated from the hoi polloi whom they are in the business of "protecting and serving." In episode after episode both the villains and the victims break down and show abject weakness before the implacable braininess of the CSI squad. It's like the run of witnesses who continually embarrassed themselves before the suffering patience of Friday and Gannon. The series takes the stance that inevitably the CSI team is morally superior to those they serve, even when the team members themselves occasionally have problems (an irascible ex-husband, a cheating boyfriend). In this regard only is CSI in line with traditional network television, which always elevates the function of social guardians over those they guard, forcing the viewer to identify with their protectors (and oppressors?) over the emblems in shows of the common man.
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CSI season three comes in an easily accessible plastic book style DVD six-pack, covered in a slick cardboard sheath. The transfers are all widescreen (1.85:1) enhanced for widescreen television, with DD 5.1 and Spanish DD stereo surround. The absence of subtitles is lamentable, since much of the dialogue is technical (and "ironic" given that one of the series subplots is Grissom's encroaching deafness). There are six audio commentary tracks, enunciated in CSI tracks characteristic hushed breathiness. Plus on the sixth disc, there are five making ofs: "The CSI Tour: Police Station "The CSI Shot: Making it Real," about the making of those abstract masterpieces, "The Writer's Room," which takes the viewing into a writers meeting, and concentrates on the Lady Heather character, "CSI Moves into Season Three," a making of, and "Crime Scene Field Kit," which is what it sounds like, a breakdown of the contexts of a CSI tool box.
Ring Under the Eye
THE EYE
Our roving DVD correspondent Damon Houx writes in with this report:
What was the last truly original horror film? A friend suggested THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, but it has roots in films like CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. Only the recent Japanese efforts UZUMAKI, and the works of David Cronenberg, with his venereal horror, seem to bring anything new to the table, while the "modern masters" (Romero, Carpenter, Argento, or Raimi) all owe something to their predecessors. And recent horror films? Forget it. They're so obviously plagiaristic that to recount where a film like 2004's DAWN OF THE DEAD, or 2003's WRONG TURN and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE come from is redundant. Perhaps it's the nature of horror that certain ideas are probably always terrifying, or perhaps it's just the idea to take something someone else did and say "Hey, I can one-up that." So saying that the Pang Brother's 2002 film THE EYE (a.k.a. JIAN GUI) is derivative of THE SIXTH SENSE is only fair. It's not like M. Night Shyamalan was exactly original with his vision either.
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THE EYE follows a pretty blind girl named Mun (Angelica Lee), who is about to get back her sight after growing up blind. Like characters in BODY PARTS and THE HANDS OF DR. ORLAC, something from the past donor has stuck around, and now Mun sees ghosts that wish to talk with her and bug her, because they have some emotional baggage that hasn't been dealt with.
At first scared out of her wits, and kept up at night by visions of her room changing into someone else's, she gets help from the more-than-just-her Doctor Wah (Lawrence Chou) about the donor's condition, and learns that the previous owner was considered a witch because she both saw dead people and could occasionally predict the future, which leads Mun to a situation similar to the one that drove the donor mad.
Like most horror films, THE EYE IS premise-based, so at some point the film doesn't seem to know where to go anymore (the last third isn't as satisfying as the first hour). Still, the Pang brothers deliver some solid, creepy boos in that first hour; it's where the film's strengths lie. But because of that the film feels like an audition piece, and the Pangs may show that they can do more and better (though word is their follow up is less than).
They also have the tenacity to include a little girl named Yingying who is dying but who shows up to talk to Mun and comfort her. Though it received quite a bit of hype before its release, and looks to be remade (one can almost picture Sandra Bullock as the plucky young blind girl), THE EYE so runs out of steam that some of its problems may need a remake to get fixed. Unfortunately, films like THE EYE prove that the Weinstein brothers know what they're doing by not releasing films like this. Already a widely sold bootleg before it played theatrically, THE EYE was generally well reviewed but ended up grossing less than half a million dollars. Though purists would love to see films like RINGU, SHAOLIN SOCCER or this one projected on the big screen, it seems that the target audience may also already own these films, while American audience would rather see Naomi Watts than Nanako Matsushima. (As a region-free player owner, I owned THE EYE before it arrived stateside.)
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Palm picture's DVD is fine; the film is presented anamorphically and in 5.1, while the main extra is a fifteen minute making of that is rather forgettable, along with trailers and TV spots for this and other Palm DVD's. It retails for 24.95, and is out now.
NEXT TIME:Numerous Mel Gibson films, THE GRAPES OF WRATH, CHARADE, and more!
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