Posts Tagged ‘Russ Meyer’

Scarlett Johansson joins long line of fatal femmes with Lucy

LucyBy Richard Crouse – Metro Canada

Pam Grier walks into a bar. Sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it’s actually the setup for one of the great fight scenes of the 1970s.

Grier played the title character in 1974’s Foxy Brown, a woman who poses as a high-end escort to get revenge on the gangsters who killed her G-Man boyfriend. When her undercover work brings her to a seedy bar, she confronts Bobbie, a tough-talking patron (played by Jeannie Epper who was also Lynda Carter’s stunt double on Wonder Woman).

“Listen, skinny,” says Bobbie, “before you start talking tough, I better warn you. I got a black belt in karate. So why don’t you get out of here quietly, while you still have some teeth left in that ugly face?”

Before you can say, “You go, girl,” Foxy clobbers Bobbie with a wooden stool, slamming her in the face then shattering it across her back.
“And I got my black belt in bar stools!” says Foxy.

Grier could deliver a line and a punch, attributes that allowed her to cut a swathe in the male-dominated action movie market of the 1970s.

This weekend Scarlett Johansson adds to Grier’s kick- butt legacy on the big screen with Lucy, an all-out actioner about a woman who becomes a superhuman when a drug allows her to use 100 per cent of her brain capacity. “I’m able to do things I’ve never done before,” she says. “I feel everything and can control the elements around me.”

Johansson joins a list of dangerous distaff action stars like Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Jenette Goldstein (Aliens), Angelina Jolie (Wanted, Salt, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) and Uma Thurman (Kill Bill, Parts 1 & 2) who have given Schwarzenegger and Stallone a run for their money.

Perhaps the wildest female action movie of all time is 1965’s “ode to female violence,” Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! starring Tura Satana as the thrill-seeking go-go dancer Varla.

Experienced in martial arts, Satana did her own stunts and brought her unique style — black leather gloves, Germaine Monteil eyeliner and layers of Max Factor pancake makeup — to the film. She even supplied some of the movie’s most memorable lines.

When a gas station attendant ogles her cleavage while extolling the virtues of being on the open road and seeing America, Satana ad libbed, “You won’t find it down there, Columbus!”

Time critic Richard Corliss called Satana’s performance “the most honest, maybe the one honest portrayal in the [director Russ] Meyer canon and certainly the scariest.”

“I took a lot of my anger that had been stored inside of me for many years and let it loose,” Satana said of her most famous role.

“I helped to create the character Varla and helped to make her someone that many women would love to be like.”

LIFE ITSELF: 4 ½ STARS. “never shies away from the difficult parts of the story.”

life-itself-2Can there be any more daunting an assignment for a film critic than to review a documentary about the life of one of the greatest movie reviewers of all time? “Life Itself,” is an affectionate look at the life and death of Roger Ebert, the Pulitzer Prize winning writer and television host whose name has become synonymous with the film criticism.

Ebert lived a public life. Between television appearances—on his own show with Gene Siskel and hundreds of talk show visits—and countless words splayed across the pages of the Chicago Sun-Times, his books and later his website, it seems like there might not be much left that we don’t already know about Ebert.

Director Steve James, who also made “Hoop Dreams,” one of Ebert’s favorite films, digs deep to present something that is beyond a simple biography. We learn about how the critic wrote the screenplay for the Russ Meyer’s opus “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” the legendary ego clashes with his TV partner and that he met his wife at an AA meeting but that’s just trivia. Instead, using a mix of talking head interviews, archive footage, and most importantly, interviews with Roger and wife Chaz, James crafts an intimate, revealing and moving portrait of a complex man.

Ebert passed away on April 4, 2013 during the production of the documentary. Stricken with cancer, he knew he would likely not live to see the finished film, but communicated through his laptop (with voice translation) for as long as he was able. One of his last messages to James said simply and eloquently, “I’m fading.” It’s a heartbreaking and bittersweet moment in the movie that gives life to Ebert’s theory of movies being “a machine to generate empathy.”

“Life Itself” never shies away from the difficult parts of the story. Moments of frustration and pain are included but ultimately the doc is a wake for the late film critic. Stories are shared, secrets are told and a life is celebrated.