The official definition of prequel is: a work that supplements a previously completed one, and has an earlier time setting. The unofficial meaning reads like this: prequels, a way to prolong a failing movie franchise’s life.
On McSweenys.net recently Sarah Garb suggested titles for some lesser known Hollywood prequels. My favorites? Four Bachelorette Parties and a Friend in the Hospital, Borderline-Inappropriate Dancing and There Are Plenty of Mohicans. Of course those movies don’t exist but you get the idea.
OK, I’m being cynical. Not all prequels are money grabs. The Godfather 2 is one of the greatest movies, prequel, sequel or otherwise, ever made and my fingers are crossed for this weekend’s X-Men: First Class, set in 1963 when Charles Xavier starts up a school for humans with superhuman abilities.
Hopefully the new cast, featuring white hot Oscar nominee Jennifer Lawrence and Brit favorite James McAvoy will mutate the movie into something a little more interesting than the dull-as-its-star’s-retracting-bone-claws-after-a-manicure X-Men: Origins: Wolverine.
Of course prequels are nothing new. The 1949 drama Another Part of the Forest supplied the backstory to the 1939 hit The Little Foxes and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was a prequel to A Fistful of Dollars.
More recently George Lucas chose to make Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom a prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark—Raiders is set in South America, 1936, while Temple takes place in Shanghai, 1935—as he did not want to use Nazis as villains once again.
The Silence of the Lambs, the story of creepy cannibal Hannibal Lecter, inspired not one, but two prequels and a sequel. Prequel-wise it had its ups-and-downs.
First the good. Red Dragon featured an all star cast, including Edward Norton, Ralph Fiennes, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Harvey Keitel and, of course, Anthony Hopkins who helps law enforcement track down a mysterious serial killer called The Tooth Fairy.
Five years later they took one more kick at the cannibal can with Hannibal, Lecter’s origin story. Hopkins was lucky enough not to be included. Rhys Ifans and Gong Li weren’t.
Finally, there’s The Hobbit, a two-part film adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s 1937 novel and prequel to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which has internet fanboys all abuzz. One thing is certain, with Peter Jackson at the helm it has to be better than Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd. Right?
Hollywood loves a drunk. Not the self destructive drink-themselves-to-death kind, although Nicholas Cage won an Oscar for playing one of those in Leaving Las Vegas, but the playfully befuddled drinker whose behavior provides the set up for some intoxicating comedy. W.C. Fields, who once said, “I drink therefore I am,” made a career of playing silly souses and this weekend Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis are under the influence again in The Hangover Part II.
From John Belushi as Animal House’s boozy beast Blutarsky, who downs an entire bottle of Jack Daniels in one megagulp to Karen Allen, who drinks her way out of a sticky situation in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the movie’s best boozers have been a varied group.
There’s the happy drunk, a smashed stereotype best personified by Dudley Moore in Arthur. Rarely sober, the character stumbles through life with the aid of his loyal butler and bottles of champagne. When his fiancée Susan (Jill Eikenberry) tells him that “a real woman could stop you from drinking,” he replies, “It’d have to be a real BIG woman.”
If Moore was most loveable, then Billy Bob Thornton’s Bad Santa con man in is the least likeable. As a mall Santa who only takes the job to rob the place on Christmas Eve, he drinks, destroys a holiday display and scars an entire crowd of children. Drunk movie moments abound although the sight of a wobbly Santa Claus in a back alley swigging from a flask is the most indelible. Billy Bob Thornton says he was genuinely loaded during the filming.
Jeff Bridges has played a variety of drunks in his day, most recently in True Grit and Crazy Hearty, but his best known drinker is Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski who singlehandedly re-popularized the White Russian. As laid-back party monster he drinks nine White Russians during the course of the movie.
Of course Hollywood occasionally uncorks a serious look at drinkers. Ray Milland showed the destructive side of boozing in The Lost Weekend, ditto Barfly’s Mickey Rourke but few have brought as much boozy beauty to a role than Elizabeth Taylor as the cantankerous Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
And finally, not all drunks are as dysfunctional as Martha. In Tombstone Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday could still shoot even though he was seeing double. His technique? Use two guns, “one for each of you.”
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides co-star Ian McShane suggests that Johnny Depp is “paid more than the national debt of most countries” to play the tipsy freebooter Captain Jack Sparrow. Depp may be the highest paid movie pirate to ever sail the seven seas, but he’s not the only celluloid sea dog.
Movie pirates were popular on the silent screen —they swashbuckled as early as 1908’s Treasure Island — but it wasn’t until Errol Flynn played the title role in 1935’s Captain Blood that pirates became screen staples.
“No one can beat Erroll Flynn,” says Under The Black Flag: The Romance & Reality Of Life Among The Pirates author David Cordingley. “He has the edge over all the other movie pirates.” Coming close is Robert Newton as Long John Silver in Treasure Island.
One of the best live action Disney films of the 1950s, it is the movie that originated the Cornish accent that has become the accepted pirate speak in dozens of movies to follow. For a sample check out the voice of The Simpsons’ Captain McAllister. It’s based on Newton’s pirate portrayal.
Less conventional is Walter Matthau’s take on Captain Thomas Bartholomew Red in Roman Polanski’s Pirates. The planned followup to the director’s massive hit Chinatown (it actually took 12 years to make it to the screen) was to have starred Jack Nicholson but, like the buccaneer he might have portrayed in the movie, the star was money hungry. According to the director, when he asked Nicholson exactly how much he wanted, the actor simply said, “I want more.” His replacement, Matthau, redefines grizzly in his depiction of Captain Red, but the film didn’t meet with good reviews.
“There hasn’t been a pirate movie in a long time,” wrote Roger Ebert, “and after Roman Polanski’s Pirates, there may not be another one for a very long time.”
What look at movie pirates would be complete without a mention of singing and dancing sea dogs? There are lots of pirate musicals but one of the best, and most overlooked, is The Pirate starring Judy Garland and Gene Kelly.
With direction by Vincente Minnelli (father of Liza) and songs by Cole Porter, the story of a young girl in love with a man pretending to be a pirate earned an Oscar nomination for Original Music Score, but lost out to another Judy Garland musical, Easter Parade.
What role do Paul Bettany, Robert de Niro, Rowan Atkinson and Max von Sydow share? Mr. Jennifer Connelly, the Oscar winner, Mr. Bean and the legendary Swedish superstar all have one kind of part in common. They have all played priests on the big screen.
In this weekend’s post-apocalyptic action horror film Priest Bettany plays the title character, a warrior pastor hunting the vampires who kidnapped his niece. Based on Min-Woo Hyung’s graphic novels the movie also features Christopher Plummer as the Monsignor, described by the legendary Canadian actor as “a horrible priest gone wrong—a lovely, stylish villain.”
In the Barry Levinson film Sleepers De Niro was Father Bobby, a Hell’s Kitchen priest who lies in court to prevent four of his parishioners from going to jail for killing a sadistic prison guard. “Most priests like to preach from the pulpit,” says one character. “Father Bobby liked to talk during the bump and shove of a pick-up game.”
Atkinson played Father Gerald, a new vicar performing his first marriage ceremony in Four Weddings and a Funeral. The tongue-tied priest has some of the film’s funniest lines, including, “In the name of the father, the son and the holy goat. Er… ghost.”
Probably the most famous movie celebrant is Father Lankester Merrin, as portrayed by Max von Sydow in The Exorcist. Von Sydow is one of the few actors to have played both God (in The Greatest Story Ever Told) and the Devil (in Needful Things) but it is as Merrin that he is best remembered (unless you are a Great White North hoser who worships his role as Brewmeister Smith in Bob and Doug MacKenzie’s Strange Brew). The statuesque Swedish actor played Merrin twice—he’s seen in flashbacks in Exorcist II: The Heretic—and Stellan Skarsgård played him in two prequels but it is the first movie and the iconic line “The Power of Christ compels you!” that is most memorable.
Many other actors have played clerics. Carl Maldan was Father Barry in the Best Picture winner On the Waterfront, George Carlin was Cardinal Ignatius Glick, the mastermind of Dogma’s ‘Catholicism Wow!’ campaign but the actor most associated with playing priests is Pat O’Brien. He became an actor only after deciding against entering seminary and his devotion to playing priestly characters was so well known it even inspired the name of band, the blues-rockers Pat O’Brien and the Priests of Love.
On a recent episode of 30 Rock, Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) joked that he made a North Korean propaganda film directed by Kim Jong-Il rather than appear in a Kate Hudson film. It was a funny joke on a show known for its irreverent take on celebrities, but like all good jokes there’s a hint of truth to it.
Of course Hudson is still a popular actress; capable of headlining any Hollywood rom-com, but this is more a question of what might have been.
How did an Oscar nominated actress who once said, “I’m not a big fan of romantic comedies,” end up with a CV littered with toxic titles like Fool’s Gold, My Best Friend’s Girl and Bride Wars?
Sure, she has a sunny smile and girl-next-door appeal, but anyone who saw her sweet and wonderful turn as Penny Lane in Almost Famous rues the day she decided to aim for the MTV Best Kiss Awards rather than Academy Awards. Surely she can do more than stand on a beach while a shirtless Matthew McConaughey runs into her open arms.
It’s not all bad news in Kate’s career, however. This weekend she is firmly rooted in rom-com land with Something Borrowed, the kind of fluffy confection she specializes in, but lately there have been signs that she’s making some effort to stretch her comfort zone.
Cinema Italiano, her exuberantly fluffy all-singing-all-dancing tribute to 1960’s pop music and style, was one of the best things about Nine, the musical version of Federico Fellini’s classic 8 ½, and The Killer Inside Me, a violent, hardboiled crime story are both steps in the right direction, but they’re baby steps.
I want to be a Kate Hudson fan. I really do. But I need convincing that she wants me to be a fan and taking the easy route isn’t going to do that. Even her old co-star Matthew McConaughey has smartened up and realized that rom-coms are a faulty foundation to build a career on. His last film, the drama The Lincoln Lawyer, earned him the best reviews and most notice of his recent career.
I’d like to see Kate stretch in that way. Watch Almost Famous again and see the heartbreaking pathos she brings to every frame of that movie.
That’s the stuff careers and legends are built on and she has the talent and the know-how to give us more of that.
Perhaps you’ve heard there’s a wedding on Friday. But no, your invitation isn’t lost in the mail or caught in a spam folder, you’re just not on the list. When Prince William and Kate Middleton walk down Westminster Abbey’s storied aisle (where William’s uncle Prince Andrew married Sarah Ferguson in 1986) to exchange “I do’s” you’ll be at home in your pyjamas watching it on TV with a cup of tea in your hand and a crumpet at your side. The upside? You don’t have to get them a wedding gift.
To prep for the pomp and circumstance I’ve selected a number of royal wedding movies to get you primed for the big day.
The name Marie Antoinette is synonymous with surplus and when little Ms. “Let Them Eat Cake” wed the Dauphin of France no expense was spared. Married by proxy a month before, she arrived at the site of the ceremonial wedding—at the Palace of Versailles no less—in a procession that included 48 carriages. See a recreation of the exercise in excess in Marie Antoinette, Sophia Coppola’s 2006 film. It may not get the details 100 per cent right, but if you want accuracy, watch the History Channel.
Also torn from the history books is The Duchess, the story of the 17-year-old Georgiana Cavendish (Keira Knightley), great-great-great-great-grandaunt of Diana, Princess of Wales, who weds the much older Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes).
Speaking of relatives, the life, love and marriage of Queen Victoria, (Prince William is her fourth great-grandson), are detailed in The Young Victoria starring Emily Blunt. Despite being shot by soft candlelight for a glowing historical feel, The Young Victoria isn’t Masterpiece Theatre. Accents and petticoats aside, this is a modern movie, with a modern sensibility, that mixes history, politics, romance, castle etiquette and backroom dealing into one frilly, appealing package.
In the realm of the unreal are two final reel royal weddings. Before Anne Hathaway started taking her clothes off in every movie, she was the wholesome star of The Princess Diaries. In PD2: Royal Engagement, her character, Princess Mia, must get married in order to become queen.
The most recent royal wedding to hit screens happens in Your Highness, the medieval stoner comedy starring Natalie Portman and James Franco. Prince Fabious Franco walks Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel) down the aisle but the wedding is interrupted by an evil sorcerer.
The circus is a magical blend of drama, comedy, music and wonderful things you can’t see at home, unless, of course, you live next door to Bozo the Clown.
And that’s why filmmakers look to the Big Top for inspiration. It’s a naturally cinematic place with themes as flexible as sideshow contortionists who can touch their toes with the top of their heads. For instance, Charlie Chaplin mixed comedy and romance in his classic film The Circus, while Trapeze with Burt Lancaster is a three-ring tragedy and Ten Weeks with a Circus is strictly for kids.
This weekend, Water for Elephants, an historical drama starring Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon, takes us backstage at the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth.
The most famous circus movie is probably The Greatest Show on Earth, Cecil B. DeMille’s story of love, crime and clowns under the big top. Today the film—which was named one of the 100 Most Amusingly Bad Movies Ever Made by the Golden Raspberry folks—is most notable for making Charlton Heston a star and as the first movie Steven Spielberg ever saw.
If DeMille’s movie is the most famous circus movie, then Freaks is certainly the most notorious. Set in the world of a funfair sideshow, it features a cast primarily made up of actual carnival performers—like Elizabeth Green the Stork Woman and Prince Randian a.k.a. the Human Torso—to tell the story of a beautiful trapeze artist who agrees to marry a deformed sideshow performer for his money. As a young man, director Tod Browning (who also helmed Dracula) had been a member of a travelling circus and that experience brought such a horrifying realism to the story that one woman threatened to sue MGM, claiming the film had caused her to suffer a miscarriage.
And speaking of sideshow attractions, these days Benicio Del Toro is known as a serious actor, an Academy Award winner who is sometimes jokingly been referred to as the “Spanish Brad Pitt.” That’s a long way from his first role, human oddity Duke the Dog-Faced Boy in Big Top Pee-wee. Despite earning reviews like, “If there’s a lower form of comedy than circus humor I’ve yet to encounter it,” star Paul Reubens once said that “Big Top Pee-wee is “at least as good as Police Academy.”
Tourists flock to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s second largest city, to see the giant statue of Christ the Redeemer, dance the samba and cheer their favorite team at Maracanã Stadium, one of the world’s largest football arenas.
The city has also provided the backdrop for many movies, including this weekend’s animated feature Rio, the story of a domesticated macaw (voiced by The Social Network’s Jesse Eisenberg) from small-town Minnesota who follows the bird of his dreams to the carnival city.
Rio has been a go-to location for filmmakers for years. To paraphrase 70s soft rockers Pablo Cruise, “Whoa oh ohh… When my baby’s budget permits, We go to Rio. De Janeiro.” In The Producers, the crooked wannabe embezzlers plan to fly to Rio once they have bilked Broadway out of a million bucks. The city served as the background to Mickey Rourke’s erotic adventures in Wild Orchid and James Bond was famously attacked by the metal-mandibled Jaws on a cable car at the top of Sugarloaf Mountain in Moonraker.
Although shot completely on location at Paramount Studios on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, Road to Rio, the fifth of the Bob Hope – Bing Crosby “road” pictures, makes good use of stock footage and set decoration to create a suitably exotic setting.
This time out, the guys are vaudevillian stowaways on a Brazilian-bound ocean liner who rescue heiress Dorothy Lamour from an unwanted arranged marriage.
The movie is notable for the music (it contains the last on-screen singing performance by The Andrews Sisters) and Der Bingle’s English lessons to the Portuguese street performers. To help them pass as American he teaches them the hipster phrase, “You’re in the groove, Jackson.”
A grittier look at the Brazillian city is offered in City of God (original title: Cidade de Deus), named after one of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods. Following the stories of two boys—one who becomes a photographer, another who adopts a life of crime—it was shot on location in the violent favela. Director Fernando Meirelles later said if he knew the dangers of filming in the Rio favela in advance he wouldn’t have made the film.
Finally, a sunnier look at Rio life comes in Blame it on Rio, a 1984 Michael Caine film Roger Ebert described as having “the mind of a 1940s bongo comedy and the heart of a porno film.”
It’s a dangerous business trying to recapture movie magic, but Hollywood execs keep trying.
Thirty years ago, Dudley Moore introduced us to Arthur, a lovable but drunken millionaire playboy about to married to a wealthy heiress he did not love. “I race cars, play tennis, and fondle women,” he said, “but I have weekends off, and I am my own boss.”
The movie, Arthur, was a giant hit, coming in fourth in the year’s box office, earning four Oscar nods, winning two and spawning the number one hit Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do). It’s available on DVD and holds up very well, which is why it is a bit baffling that a remake of the same name is hitting theatres this weekend starring Russell Brand.
Remakes, of course, are nothing new. Hollywood has been recycling ideas since the beginning. For example, Cecil B. DeMille remade his own 1915 film The Golden Chance as Forbidden Fruit just six years later. The difference is that back then there was no portable archive of movies available on Blu-ray or streaming video. Take a good story, repackage it and hopefully do well at the box office. Later, in the pre-home video years, remakes were a way to breathe some life into older movies.
But times have changed. Now, via Netflix, On-Demand and Blu-ray, it’s easier and cheaper than ever to seek out and see movies like the original Arthur. So what’s the point of the remake? Well, for one thing, it’s a perfect role for the impish Russell Brand and, for another, it’s always great to see his co-star, Helen Mirren, on screen. And who knows? Maybe it’s better than the original. It wouldn’t be the first time.
With so many remakes — past, present and future — perhaps philosopher Raoul Vaneigem was right when he said, “Our task is not to rediscover nature but to remake it.”
