"Saw VI" at least invokes the health care reform debate

Saw VI, the latest in Lionsgate’s enormously popular horror (and “torture porn”) franchise, at least brings in some social issues apropos the health care debate.

When Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) tries to get experimental gene therapy for his cancer, the bean counter at the Umbrella Insurance company denies him on pre-existing conditions. Earlier there is another scene, where a heart patient is denied a claim because of a trivial dental pre-existing condition (periodontal disease causes inflammation, which causes heart disease, you see).

Jigsaw has another mark to go for with his macabre machineries: loan sharks. These “parasites” become the victims in the opening setup. (Anybody notice how the machines and gears set up Lionsgate’s opening trademark?)

The latest film is directed by Kevin Geutert (DGC), and also features Costas Mandylor (“The Cursed”) as Mark Hoffman. The film was shot entirely in Toronto.

SyFy's "The Cursed" has an enterprising young novelist digging into a small town mystery -- homage to many other horror films

The little horror thriller “The Cursed” on the SyFy Channel, directed by Joel Bender, from TriCoast and Chain Gang Films, pays some homage to “problems” posed by some horror films of the 90s.

A young aspiring novelist Denny White (Brad Thornton) arrives in Warren County, TN, in the Cumberland foothills, to research a long history of murders and cattle mutilations connected back to the Civil War and antebellum south. Sherrif and Deputy Lloyd and Jimmy Mouldoon (played by Aussies Louis and Costas Mandylor) become suspicious of the curious newcomer, not wanting to face the deep secrets in their own family.

It seems that a golem, something ashen like a Supernatural ghost, goes around doing the bad deeds, and it share characteristics of the Jersey Devil (“The Last Broadcast” -- a great and little known flick, 1998) and the Blair Witch. "Whoever kills the demon becomes the demon."

Denny is a likeable journalistic sleuth, and I rather identified with him, having gumshoed on the road myself. There’s some Internet stuff in the script, but the style of the movie is more like that of an 80s B-movie. The Appalachian scenery is interesting, but I suspect it was shot in British Columbia. I suppose Screen Gems or Lionsgate could have picked this up for theaters.

The only major film that I recall dealing with the cattle mutilations mystery, which broke in “Oui” in the 1970s, was an MGM flick called “Endangered Species” in 1982.

The best trailer that I could find is here.

Picture (mine, 2004): Cumberland mountains, north of Chattanooga

"Pete Seeger: The Power of Song" (2007) from TWC and PBS

The Weinstein Company, Genius Films and PBS teamed up to produce the 2007 documentary “Pete Seeger: The Power of Song”, directed by Jim Brown, about the controversial activist folk singer who gave us “Turn, Turn Turn” and “If I Had a Hammer”. The singer, born in 1919, is now 90; much of the film is told through interviews with his kids.

Seeger was attracted to idealism – the labor movement and early calls for non-discrimination, and joined the Young Communist League in 1936. The film shows footage of some of the protest marches from the Depression era. His songs and activism caught the attention of government even before the US entered WWII, although it had theoretically banned discrimination in government contract work in the summer of 1941. Seeger opposed the draft, but eventually served in the Army, first as an airplane mechanic but got to entertain American troops. He also was active in saying that the military should integrate, which would happen under president Truman in 1948 (as in the HBO film “Truman” with Gary Sinese, 1996). That’s worthy to note today as the debate on the military gay ban and DADT heats up.

Seeger would get called before the House Unamerican Activities Committee and even be threatened with prosecution. The film mentions his being served one day by a G-man who just drive up to his home. We’ve covered the purges of McCarthyism already with the story of Dalton Trumbo.

At the end of the film, Seeger is honored for his lifelong activism. (The Wikipedia article on him mentions David Boaz (Cato Institute) criticizing him in the Guardian with a piece called “Stalin’s Songbird.” )



The DVD contains some Seeger family short films:
(1) "How to Play the 5 String Banjo" BW 1955
(2) "Singing Fisherman of Ghana" BW
(3) "Wrapping Paper"
(4) "How to Make a Steel Drum"
(5) "Finger Song"

"Edge of Darkness": a frightening scenario (if believable), especially for a research intern; Mel Gibson is almost superfluous

Well, Warner Brothers touted out its full Casablanca signature for its new film “Edge of Darkness” with Mel Gibson as a macho Boston cop dealing with the violent death of his daughter. GK Films, Icon Films and BBC produced the film, directed by Martin Campbell, with a screenplay adapted from a 1985 miniseries.

The film is somewhat a stereotyped thriller, with clever lines like “Everything is illegal in Massachusetts” (except gay marriage), and Gibson gets to make a like about the nails on the cross.

But the premise of the new film stretches things a bit. It seems that an esteemed Berkshire area defense contractor, and big supporter of a Republican Senator (familiar?) has gone amok, supposedly doing civilian nuclear fusion research but actually making nuclear weapons for rogue regimes. (I suppose that this could qualify this film for my “disaster movies” blog.) It’s hard to believe that the management of a company (Danny Huston is chilling as CEO, with great mountain views from his office; check also Ray Winstone as Jedburgh) like this would go for jihad under our noses and not get caught, drawing politicians to the take. Here, the Boston police are innocent of all knowledge.

But another point concerns the position that the daughter Emma Craven (Bojana Novakovic) is put in as a paid research intern. She feels forced to become an “activist” and surrender her life for the common good. The early scenes of her radiation sickness and then her drive-by hit-style execution are indeed horrific. Generally, when people take jobs like this they sign strict confidentiality agreements, particularly with classified material. In the world of security clearances, the accumulation of information (“connecting the dots”) sometimes conveys more damaging material than isolated items. An individual could find his or her own value systems compromised. Emma's wild boyfriend, Shawn Roberts, also struggles; Craven (Gibson) knows that he is good at heart.

In the later part of 2008 there were a couple of hit-style slayings in suburban Maryland, near Washington, of young workers in classified jobs, the circumstances of which seem recalled by this movie.

It is true that the writing of the film follows the usual technique of putting the "hero" (Gibson's cop character) in dire straits and forcing him to use increasing wits to get out (as when he is tasered and chained down). But his story line is almost superfluous to the "issues" of the film, tracked by background media commentators and even included in posthumous CD's.

The official WB site for the movie is here.

The UK Icon Films trailer is here.

Britain's answer to "Psycho" was "Peeping Tom", also in 1960

The Criterion Collection offers a British film, directed by Michael Powell, also originally released by Janus in 1960, that amounts to a UK counterpart of “Psycho”. The troubled young man (corresponding to Norman Bates) is Mark Lewis, played by Karlheinz Bohm, son of the famous German conductor. The movie is “Peeping Tom”, and the young man takes movies of his snuff victims. But except for a few brief scenes, the movie is mostly psychological drama, in rather glaring Technicolor, with lots of sound stages and miniatures, even the opening scene.

What’s interesting is the 1960 film technology, when today a horror film like this would be based on camcorders, cell phones, or webcams. There’s a lot more hardware to look at, and it’s photogenically interesting, fitting in to the stage-like sets of the film. And the structure of the somewhat cumbersome hardware (by today’s standards) fits into the climax of the film, where daggers are attached to the devices. The police have to get through his make believe world to get at him.

Of course, today’s film industry does use big cameras, like Panavision and Arri, and one wonders if one could write a horror film somehow premised on their use. But the gradual miniaturization of cameras over time, especially in the 1970s when TV cameras became handheld, actually formed the basis of a strike against NBC in 1976 by cameramen; as a computer programmer, I actually worked on strike duty! I also took a projectionist course in the Army, and the equipment was similar to what appears in this film.

Brian Easdale composed the somewhat impressionistic keyboard score (Easdale wrote the music for "The Red Shoes").

The film could be compared to "One Hour Photo" and "Darkroom".

Lionsgate has apparent purchased rights for this film, and offers a video trailer here (no embed offered).


Update: Feb 2, Groundhog Day:

The Oscar nominations are available here. This year, there are ten nominations for Best Picture.

"Lying to Be Perfect" (aka "The Cinderella Pact"): a ruse pulled off by a Dear Abby imitation (Lifetime TV)

Lifetime TV gloats over another socially relevant premiere (Jan. 30), “Lying to be Perfect”, directed by Gary Harvey, based on the novel “The Cinderella Pact” by Sarah Strohmeyer. (Note the irony for Lifetime in the word “Pact” – check last week).

Poppy Montgomery plays the homely copyeditor Nola, who promotes herself and her mag ("Shine") by secretly writing a weight-loss column. Three of her friends form the Cinderella pact, not knowing who “Belinda Apple”, the “Dear Abby” –like columnist is, so then the ruses to hide the scheme set up the operatic comedy. She can’t even go to her own book-signing party (for "Apple Gets to the Core"), it seems.

The movie, while a bit trite, says something about the laggard magazine publishing industry (it’s hardly on the scale of “The September Issue”), as well as a minimalist version of the “Biggest Loser” idea. There is an episode dealing with gastric bypass surgery, and another dealing with discrimination based on appearance in restaurant seating. There’s a line to Nora “You’re not a face; you’re a big girl with a big dream.”

And get this: "There is a little bit of Belinda in all of us." Really? Or, "I'll never work as a journalist again." Interesting. "You are a writer. Believe in that." But she does face legal implosion.

On January 30, CBS re-aired the Hallmark (and Paramount) TV film “The Magic of Ordinary Days”

On January 30, CBS re-aired the Hallmark (and Paramount) TV film “The Magic of Ordinary Days”, made in 2004, directed by Brent Shields, based on the novel by Ann Howard Creel. The opening image of a steam engine train, vintage WWII, rolling across the Colorado high plains (actually, Alberta) evokes a similar image from “Giant” for this much more modest and tender little film. Actually, it argues for the “natural family” especially when that family is artificially constructed and arranged.

Keri Russell plays Levi, an ambitious young woman whose anthropology graduate studies have been interrupted a couple times, first when her pastor father got her to give it up to take care of her sick mom because her sister was already married (remember “One True Thing”?) , and then when she had a life and got pregnant herself. To avoid marriage out of wedlock, the pastor dad arranges a marriage with a shy farmer Ray Singleton (Skeet Ulrich) out on the plains.

I’ll digress here a moment. One dusty Saturday afternoon in August 1994, while eating lunch in a diner in Sterling, CO (near where this film probably purports to take place) I came to a definitive decision to write my first book. I still remember the moment, and this movie brought it back to my mind.

We wonder why Ray would agree to such a thing, to help a woman bear another man’s child and perhaps raise it. In the beginning the two are not in love. Gradually we learn that Ray had lost a brother to Pearl Harbor and felt a similar involuntary obligation to his own natural family. This brings up the whole OPC (“other people’s children”) discussion from Phillip Longman and others. I suppose that agreeing to step in as a substitute “dad” could be an act of forgiveness, or it could conceivably represent exploitation; it’s a very delicate balance. But this happens more often than we realize. Sometimes people have to deal with adaptive requirements by manipulating people into forming new families. As a male who has never had sexual intercourse with a woman, I could not accept being put into this position against my own choice or goals. (In the movie, you wonder if Ray has, but eventually we gain some confidence that he will. But he is so gentle and matter-of-fact, and loyal.)

The film has a rich subplot involving Nisei Japanese conscripted to work in the potato fields from a nearby FDR internment camp. The young women have an interest in butterflies (I remember the acronym “OGAB” based on Tiny Tim from my Army days), and that connects to Levi’s academic worldly curiosity. One of the women reports her family’s losing its California home and cleaning it as “make ready” despite selling it for half its value. Their life was just taken from them. The subplot also shows how, in a more collective society as we had in the 1940s, one's own conduct can affect other family members, and that includes parents and siblings, not just one's own children.

The film says a lot about our claim to control over our own lives, and how easily it can be taken from us by others, and be made to look all right.

CBS site for the film is here.

Wikipedia attribution link for NASA picture of much of Colorado.