Roman Polanski, Director

HOOK: Why is this great film even better now than it was thirty-four years ago?

STORY: A man is killed by drowning in the middle of a drought in LA. A guileless detective tries not to drown in an amoral, 1937’s California where he is blinded by sunshine, rather than lost in the Expressionist shadows of traditional noir. Think: Water& Power.

GOSSIP: The trick knife Polanski uses to slit Nicholson’s nose had a swivel tip. The director told the star to remind him to hold the knife the correct way or its double-sided blade would literally rip Nicholson’s nose in two. Not true—but it added certain angst to Nicholson’s performance.

JOHN: The camera keeps at Jake Gittes’ eyelevel as we (along with him) try to untangle present and past scandals. The Nicholson characters’ hunger for understanding leads to depths of depravity only Roman Polanski could understand. Not only is the film a masterpiece, each of its scenes is a masterpiece to be studied and appreciated as much as any great painting in the Louvre. The director, unlike any today, takes time to develop even the smallest aspects of the story. If you want the best example of a great film that keeps getting better and better as you sit there watching it, go to Chinatown.   

GO GO GO GO (4 GOs out of four)

SPANKY: When you begin a story and while you're watching it, it should seem as if you're moving from left to right: alternatives to the character's fate and to the plot's action seem open, possible, available. But when you've finished and look back, the action should seem inevitable, as if you'd moved from right to left. That’s certainly true here. After the incident at the orange grove, Robert Townes’ script pulls all the films’ seemingly disparate pieces together like the workings of some elaborate pocket watch. And when you think of Nicholson, Dunaway, John Huston and Polanski, think of this movie. They are the Mount Rushmore of Hollywood noir greatness (and the jowly Huston who mauls the screen with fake expansiveness is a marvelous metaphor for the seventies imperial Richard Nixon and his secret maze of lies behind closed doors). When Townes wanted a softer ending, Polanski hijacked the film and shot the right one instead. Those days of mad artistic passion are dead.

 “TWO PAWs UP” (4 BARKs out of four)

KEEPER: “But Mrs. Mulwray I goddamned nearly lost my nose and I like it. I like breathing through it, and I still think you’re hiding something.” And of course, the immortal: ”Forget it, Jake—it’s Chinatown!” 

"Wag The Dog" features my favorite Hollywood in-joke ever, as Hoffman is basically impersonating famed producer Robert Evans. IFC.com has put together their list of 10 Most Slanderous Cinematic Slights.

Cinematically Correct note: We love lists here.

Pode ser difícil superar os traumas do segundo grau. Algumas pessoas jamais conseguem sair da escola, e ainda continuam tentando conquistar a amizade dos alunos mais queridos. Com American Teen, que estréia nesta sexta-feira nos Estados Unidos, Nanette Burstein pode alegar certa experiência sobre o tema. O filme lhe valeu um prêmio como documentarista no festival Sundance de cinema este ano, e gerou uma guerra entre exibidores pela aquisição de seus direitos.

Burstein co-dirigiu com Brett Morgen dois documentários muito respeitados - On the Ropes, sobre três jovens boxeadores que sonham escapar da pobreza pelo esporte (o filme recebeu uma nomeação ao Oscar); e The Kid Stays in the Picture, uma biografia do extravagante produtor cinematográfico Robert Evans. Mas o que a inspirou a realizar American Teen foi algo de mais pessoal: a intensidade de suas experiências como secundarista, duas décadas atrás, em Buffalo.

Para produzir o filme de 90 minutos, Burstein se mudou para Warsaw, Indiana, e, usando múltiplas câmeras, registrou mil horas de imagem nas vidas de quatro alunos de 17 anos que estavam concluindo o colegial na moderna escola da cidade.

Leia mais clicando aqui.

The second thing I thought of was who on God's green earth ever thought this movie would make money? Who thought pouring [a reported] $250-300 million into producing and marketing a movie that numbed its audience quite like this? Who thought nearly two and a half hours of hyper color madness like this could appeal to a mass audience? Have the Wachowski's gone so far into madness that they thought their fluke success with the first Matrix movie would parlay into two Matrix sequels and Speed Racer being such stylistic cultural landmarks? Ok thats more than two things I thought, but its all on one center thread.

Let me therefore thank Speed Racer's knuckle-headed producers into torching so much money into making a massively budgeted indie-movie, one that could be appreciated by a smaller audience who appreciate mind-bending style-heaps like this. This is a rare treat to see something made so large for so few.

Incidentally, I had just finished a long awaited rewatching of Gone With the Wind before heading off to the theater. That is, I went from the greatest financial and critical success ever to what may end up being the largest financial disaster of all time. The core principal dividing the two? Gone with the Wind was driven by the Mad Producer (David O'Selznick) while Speed Racer was driven (not to mix puns) by the Mad Director (The Wachowski Brothers).

The Mad Director has a much higher disaster rate by bending the rules and allowing their “great” visions run amok,. Often convinced a previous success has been such an artistic and cultural breakthrough, they insist on being bolder and more wreckless with a new project that it spirals away from any practical sense of what will appeal to a mass audience. They begin to believe they're Stanley Kubrick working on 2001: A Space Odyssey. Not everyone can be Kubrick. Even Kubrick was barely able to be Kubrick. His madness ended up consuming his life and his work until they were only shadows of former greatness. Mad Directors are ones blessed with remarkable talent only to waste them by refusing to play by any rules whatsoever and cannot co-exist with any creative talent outside his own. Terry Gilliam is perhaps the best living example. Orson Welles was the all-time heavyweight champ.

The Mad Producer however has the kind of sense to know what audience's will like and, therefore, make money. Gone With the Wind has all the right pieces in a finely executed, lavish spectacle that's as easy on the eyes as much as it is on the ears. The script is well polished, the characters are rich and interesting, the actors are inspired casting choices with all the right movie star appeal. The sets, costumes, photography, music, all perfectly large and expensive and balanced so nothing overshadows anything else and the result is a movie that continues to enrapture audiences even after nearly 70 years.

That's not to say the Mad Producer can also swan-dive into disaster. Robert Evans burnt himself out after the 70's and continued to put together bloated, overweight period movies or uninteresting “concept movies.” Edward Zwick convinced himself he could also direct and has made dull, sappy movies for 20 years now, his biggest successes coming when he is listed only as producer (Traffic, Shakespeare In love, Dangerous Beauty). Martin and Michael Bregman saw their big league career end when they put together The Adventures of Pluto Nash which lost 95% of its very expensive cost. Nonetheless, any ambitious producer knows that the only way to see tomorrow is to make a picture that makes money. Follow certain rules and you're bound to at least recoup costs.

The Wachowskis have talent, that much can't be argued. They obviously have some sort of vision, but they need a leash. They're not changing the world quite yet and some producer who knows what he's doing should step in and slap them around a little. But then, when more than $200 million goes away and doesn't come back, they're likely not to have a job in the morning. Should the Wachowskis be allowed to make another film ever, it should prove interesting to see what they come up with. Then again, we're still waiting for the triumphant return of Michael Cimino.

Thank you all for your support for Capital Punishment....It was standing room only last Saturday and now this week we return with the aftermath of Capital
Punishment 2008! This Saturday June 7 at the PCW Arena!

Robert Evans takes on Wally Darkmon!

Mace faces Aaron Eagle

plus the return of "SEXY" Steve DeMarco!!!

Also don't forget this Friday June 6 is the UNCUT Reunion show!

Scheduled to appear...

Update on the Uncut show this Friday!

You will see in action:PCW TV Champion "The Beast" Franco D'Angelo"The Essence of Excellence" Robert Evans"The Mind of Wrestling" JT LaMotta"The Freak"
Wally DarkmonSpoiler 2000"The Monster" BashMike PaigeKhris HaidenViktor TadlokJamie Oller"The Angel of Mercy" Claudia"The Goddess of Wrestling" AthenaCommander
CodeRichter 5.0Magnum RLDuke Davis"Schoolboy" Frankie FisherMad Dog"The Angel of Misery" James JohnsonMatt Palmer"The Expert" Brandon Collins"The Living
Success Story" Aaron EagleBurgerCarrion Arcane"The Real Deal" Nobe Bryantand many more!!!!!

Don't Forget Saturday June 21 All MATCHES WILL BE INSIDE A STEEL CAGE!!!visit www.pcwwrestling.com for more info!

Popeye the sailor's first appearance in E.C. Segar's newspaper strip Thimble Theater is fairly well documented. In the space of weeks the character had evolved from a grotesque walk-on part, to lead character and all-purpose superhero, displacing Olive Oyl's beau, Ham Gravy, to boot.

(A note on names: when you're called Elzie Crisler Segar, you probably think nothing of naming your characters Jack Snork, Glint Gore or Battling McGnat.)

The early Popeyes are now reprinted as part of a mammoth project to republish all of Segar's ten-year run from the 1930s, daily and Sunday strips both. I had just started reading the first volume when I was struck down by my recent flu, and I found it an excellent companion in times of illness -- buy it, it could work for you too.

Anybody who enjoys '30s Warner Bros films and Dashiell Hammett novels and the like is going to enjoy the arcane slanguage paraded between these (deluxe, hard) covers. While Popeye's garbled English ("I got personal magnecism an' sex repeal.") is one source of pleasure, the depression-era badinage from the other characters is at least as amusing. "Everything is hotsy-totsy." "

Popeye himself may be one of the most complex comic characters ever. Noble-hearted and fearless, he is also dishonest and opportunistic (like everybody else in the strip). Simple ("I thinks with me fisks.") and superstitious ("I ain't afraid of nuthin' 'cept evil spiriks.") he can still outsmart his "emenies". Introduced into a whodunnit, he socks the butler in the jaw on general principles, only to discover, pages later, that (spoiler alert) the butler did it. When he vows (about once every couple of weeks) to quit fighting for Olive's sake, he is generally sincere, and will maintain that unassailable sincerity even while slugging some yegg in the breadbasket a panel later.

At first, Segar's fondness for repetition is a little disconcerting. But as with Laurel and Hardy, a certain familiarity with the characters, a certain predictability, can add to the comedy. There's generally a variation in the way a gag is delivered, even if it's the same old gag. And Segar's glee at repeating a favourite joke is infectious -- swimming instructions to an enemy, "Lie back and open your mouth, there's nothin' to it!" is even better the second time around, since it has the familiarity of an old friend.

This being the '30s, there's a sense of danger to the constant political incorrectness. Guns are blasted left right and centre in a way that might cause concern to modern editors. Olive is both victim of violence from bad guys (Popeye even slaps her at one point) and perpetrator, shooting thirteen cattle rustlers in the shoulder, one after the other. "I'm too kind-hearted to blow his head off," she remarks of one fallen foe. "I'll drop him into the cellar -- maybe he'll break his neck." Golliwog-like cannibals are seen to menace our heroes, and animals are enthusiastically assassinated.

Throughout it all, Popeye displays the near-invulnerability of the superman, which Segar is able milk for a surprising variety of comic and dramatic situations. When Popeye hits a man so hard he breaks his own arm, it's further proof of his own toughness. The other characters always react as if Popeye was normal, cringing and blanching as he is hit with furniture or plugged with slugs. "Pour lead into him till he sinks to his neck in the desert sands," instructs John Holster, bad man. But Popeye ignores bullets.

With his gambling, drinking and fighting, not to mention a surprising emotional vulnerability, Popeye still has plenty of weaknesses, and part of the strip's interest comes from putting him in the wrong and watching him struggles his way to the right.

The Popeye of the Fleischer bros' animated cartoons is altogether less complicated. It's a strange feature of the movie-comic relationship that when cartoon characters are adapted for the big screen, they're generally simplified. Movie snobs would expect them to require the addition of depth and nuance, but this is more usually subtracted. "I think most comic book movies are made by people who don't read comic books and despise those who do," says Guillermo Del Toro.

Despite the fact that there's really only one plot (Popeye must eat spinach and rescue Olive from Bluto) in the Fleischer toons, they are things of beauty in their own right, due mainly to the sheer artistry of the animation and the pitch-perfect vocal perfs of Jack Mercer and Mae Questel (also Betty Boop). With moving images at his disposal, Popeye could also partake of more strenuous forms of knockabout, with more elaborate consequences. I was always wowed as a kid by the way the hero could punch an offensive building so hard it would breaks into pieces, fly through the air, and reassemble in some new and more innocuous form. It's no accident that the Fleischer studio was also behind the early SUPERMAN cartoons.

Given his violent, profane, anti-social nature, it's an oddity that Popeye should be adopted by the Disney Corporation in 1980. But everything about Disney at that time was rather odd. They would make dark, disturbing films (SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, DRAGONSLAYER, THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS) and then not know what to do with them. Only an essentially headless entity, or a brilliantly mad one, would hire Robert Altman to make a childrens' film.

For some time, I think, POPEYE has been considered a low point in Altman's career, and it did lead more or less directly to his ten years in the wilderness (ten very productive years, it should be stressed) before his mainstream "comeback" with THE PLAYER. These days, POPEYE is regarded with some affection, I think, cemented by PT Anderson's use of the song "He Needs Me," on the soundtrack of PUNCH DRUNK LOVE. At the time, the film was seen as a commercial and artistic disaster.

'To begin with I thought, "This is great, this is going to be my SUPERMAN. By the end I was thinking, "Please God, get me out of here,"' said Robin Williams, right around the time the film was opening. Maybe he just didn't like Malta, where the movie was shot (you can still visit the crumbling hamlet of Sweethaven. I wonder if its wintry opposite number, the town of Presbyterian Church from MCCABE AND MRS MILLER still stands?)

With Williams, Robert Evans and Don Simpson involved, it must have been a pretty coked-up shoot. Evans lost a suitcase full of drugs and claims he called his evil crony Henry Kissinger to rescue the lost luggage and transport it to safety in the diplomatic bag. Simpson proved himself a prize asshole by objecting to Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl -- the best casting decision in human history. "I don't want to fuck her, and if I don't want to fuck her she shouldn't be in this movie," he is supposed to have said. Altman's response to Simpson's early drug-related death on the toilet: "I'm only sorry he didn't live longer and suffer more." (Stories come from Robert Evans and Peter Biskind and therefore may be untrue.)

POPEYE's greatest asset is a script by Jules Feiffer, a playwright, novelist screenwriter (CARNAL KNOWLEDGE) and cartoonist (Tantrum is a great thing) who admired Segar's creation and had no truck with any subsequent incarnations. Added to his respectful evocation of the strip-cartoon universe Segar created, we have unanswerably correct casting -- Williams becomes the character, with the aid of a little prosthetic enhancing of the forearms; Duvall is absurdly perfect; ditto Paul L. Smith as Bluto (whatever happened to Smith?); and Ray Walston as Poopdeck Pappy, a character reportedly invented by Segar in response to calls to make Popeye less abrasive -- Pappy does just that, being even more ornery than his son. "I remembers when I was lickle how he used to throw me in the air," Williams' Popeye  reminisces, "only he was never aroun' when I come down."

Wolf Kroeger's Sweethaven design is worthy of a Terry Gilliam film and then some -- beautifully wonky and dishevelled. The idea of hiring Fellini's cameraman, Guiseppe Rotunno, seems inspired. While nothing in the C.V. of Altman's regular costume designer, Scott Bushnell, would indicate an aptitude for this kind of stylised work, his character designs are crucial in transforming the familiar players into their pen-and-ink counterparts. I would stand that man a pint just for creating Olive's boat-like boots.

Also: Harry Nilsson's music and songs. Pretty remarkable! Here we have the lyrical equivalent of Segar's obsessive repetition. Hmm, maybe they're a bit TOO repetitive? Still, they're beautiful.

Altman said of Nilsson, "Everyone said 'You'll get in trouble with him -- he'll get drunk; he won't do it; he's all washed up.' As a matter of fact I said all of those things about Harry to Robin myself one day. Then I went home and thought about it and said to myself, 'Jesus, that's what some people are saying about me!' So I called Harry Nilsson, because I had never met him in my life, and we got along terrifically."

Altman's biggest handicap as director might be his love of muddle. Slapstick comedy tends to require absolute clarity to work, which translates either into a long-take style that observes the action in a simple long-shot composition of maximum simplicity (Keaton) or a hyperbolic action-movie approach that divides each unit of movement into a brief but legible shot. Altman likes to have everybody talking at once, in a cluttered, busy environment, and his cutting deploys angle-changes almost haphazardly: if the first angle doesn't show the gag to perfection, the second will allow you another view, from which you might be able to figure out what's happening. You feel like a reaction shot of a dog cocking its head at some inexplicable human behaviour.

This has the effect of flattening some of the well-staged slapstick, as far as laughs are concerned, but it's not in itself a displeasing thing. What contemporaneous audiences couldn't appreciate is that POPEYE isn't really a children's film or a comedy or anything normal like that. It's purpose is not laughter so much as wonderment -- it's a Heath Robinson / Rube Goldberg contraption whose pleasure derives from its beauty and fussy complexity, rather than from anything it actually achieves.

Sadly, such films have a history of under-performing at the B.O.

Is Robert Evans bringing out a sequel to The Kid Stays In The Picture? You bet he is. Did he enjoy writing it? Hard to say. Will it sell like hotcakes? You can be sure of it. Would he do it again? Not in a million years.

Listen to Ol' Orange Face rasp his way through a gazillion nonsensical memories here.