Dirty Old Town

The following column is reprinted from the September issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
by Scott Duhamel



Making the rounds promoting his new movie, The Town, actor-director-co-writer Ben Affleck has repeatedly said that he might not be quite comfortable forging a reputation as a “Boston” filmmaker. Of course, the Massachusetts born and bred Affleck first established his rep by co-writing (with fellow Mass native and acting buddy Matt Damon) the well-received Boston-based Good Will Hunting, and bagging a screenwriting Oscar in the process. As recently as 2007 Affleck, following a string of mostly bad movies and poor acting choices, won across the board kudos for his directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, a movie adaptation of author Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Shutter Island), the contempo bard of Beantown badness. The Town, set in insular Boston neighborhood known as Charlestown, is a more than solid (and extremely assured) follow-up, and might suggest, contrary to director’s own publicly uttered uncertainties, that Affleck just might be yet another filmmaker whose most resonant work takes place in their native settings, ala Marty Scorsese or Spike Lee or Sidney Lumet’s respective cinematic New Yorks, all in all a particularly ascendant filmmaking level to aspire to.

In Gone Baby Gone, a tight, no-nonsense, gritty thriller, Affleck directed baby brother Casey, but with The Town he’s upped the ante and stepped back in front of the camera too. He plays Doug Macray, a savvy Irish-American tough guy, a supposedly typical townie with a few toes in the straight world, but largely caught up with his crew of professional thugs, all thieves with a heightened sense of code and a pride in their own viscious professionalism. Of course Doug is mirrored by childhood friend, a dyed-in the-wool native and overtly fervent brother-in arms Jimmy Coughlin (Jeremy Remmer), a hard case who has shed himself of any emotional or moral nuances. Doug’s father (Chris Cooper) is doing a lifetime stretch in the penitentiary and his occasional girl (Blake Lively) is both Jim’s sister and a hard living and round heeled fellow townie.

Doug is sharp but conflicted, torn up with both dislike and curiosity for the so-called “toonies” who are slowly gentrifying his stomping grounds, and all shook up about his dueling senses of long held propriety and increasing distaste for his very roots and his hallowed native ground. As the movie progresses Doug’s growing unrest makes him resolve to pull off the proverbial last job with hopes of getting out of Dodge. After being forced to take a bank employee (Rebecca Hall) hostage during a gone- wrong robbery, Doug ups the ante by falling for that same woman (who is simultaneously also a feminine representative of the ever elusive upper middle class), tipping his own sense of moral ambivalence into the danger zone, and imperiling him and his potentially good intentions.

Obviously, Affleck the director makes excellent use of his locations and evokes a solid and affecting sense of local geography, as well as moving the film along with a terse yet implosive pace. His action scenes play out well, lean and mean and subtlety tactile, none of them over amped or wrenched up like most Hollywood actioneers. The Town largely sustains its purposefully tough and neo-realistic mood, although it never attains the grimy melancholy of Gone Baby Gone. Affleck also sharply injects the standard neighborhood crime story tenants with some flavorful verisimilitude, continually punctuated with a lively chorus of barking, yapping, yowling Boston-based verbal gymnastics.

As with so many actors-turned-directors (Eastwood, Redford, Chaplin), Affleck authoritatively guides his fellow actors through some convincing paces, and the overall performance level just about makes up for some of The Town’s weaker edges. Both Chris Cooper and Pete Postlewhite (as one of the local crime lords) straight out walk away with their scenes, and Rebecca Hall managed to do a lot with a little, while Jeremy Remmer (an actor whose recently scorched the screen in The Hurt Locker, and one that moviegoers ought to really set their eyes on) veers into pure white hot Jimmy Cagney territory, as one of those wrong-side-of-town fireplugs whose palatable on screen volatility makes them audience magnets, despite their obvious (and deadly) wrongheadedness. (Only Jon Hamm as the local FBI man hunter seems unable to bring something extra to his archetypical role.)

The Town has obvious echoes to my own favorite modern American film, Marty Scorsese 1972 Mean Streets, but it never scorches the soul or soars into artfulness the way the latter film does. Still, The Town is well played and better executed, and it exhibits an overall directorial keenness, while easily surpassing the often lowered expectations of its particular genre. It’s both credible and watchable, and it hints that Affleck might go back to the mean streets of his beloved state or its capital city, and etch out another tale from the naked city, pure East Coast style.

Here's the Beef

The following column is reprinted from the September issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):

Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel

Smack dab, three quarters of the way through the 2010 summer movie season, and the current weekend film openings pose the ongoing quandary of the contempo filmgoer. On one side of the movie-movie box, a little high and towards the center is Eat Pray Love, a boutique chick flick based on the Elisabeth Gilbert memoir and cultural phenomenon, featuring the ever radiant Julia Roberts, a must-see post-30 date movie. Over to the left and just above the center is the much buzzed about Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, an off center comic book movie, translated from a series of spiffy comics created by Bryan Lee O’Malley, starring the anti-macho post-teen bundle of nerdiness Michael Cera, an under-20 date movie-must and potential geek fest. Holding down the foggy bottom, poised a few inches from the odoriferous lower regions is the Sylvester Stallone written and directed actioneer The Expendables, spotlighting ol’ Sly himself, plus a bunch of redoubtable manly men. Alas dear readers, despite your continued faith, this nitcrit took the low road, the one less traveled and more trampled upon.

The Expendables offers not Julia Roberts, but older brother Eric, doing one of his patented lip-licking villainous turns, and that should be enough to convey to any wizened film buff what the texture and content of this big screen vehicle will be. Director Stallone has carved himself up a true Meat Movie, of the band-of-outsiders on a mission variety, one that is not concerned with incisive plotting, political messaging, overall meaningfulness, or potentially furthering the iconography of the action film. By the same token don’t expect cutting edge visuals, computer generated imagery, or dizzying editing technique. The Expendables is about body count, bulbous biceps, bashing fists, sharpened knifes, phallic guns, and more body count, all of them in the service of a stolid flow of lumbering mayhem, all of it peppered further by a full corral of on screen meaty men tossing out meaty asides, meaty grimaces, meaty glances, topped off by meaty battle whoops and war cry’s, and a whole lot (unintended?) homoerotic subtext.

Despite the above reference, Stallone the Meat King’s directorial style does not seem particularly influenced by French visionary Jean-Luc Godard, nor action masters like Robert Aldrich (whose The Dirty Dozen remains a men-on-a-mission film template) or Sam Peckinpah (whose The Wild Bunch remains a men-on-a-mission film classic). Instead, this stubbornly old school specimen seems to follow the lead of a journeyman talent like former Stallone main man George Cosmatos , the traffic director behind Cobra or First Blood: Rambo II. The movie also liberally borrows from the not-so-storied playbook of the Cannon films of the 80’s, those grainy, bone-crackling, mug-fests like Missing in Action, Bloodsport, Death Wish II, or Enter the Ninja. Like those fondly recalled destroy-everything-that-moves beef fests, Stallone erects his potboiler with the purposefully throwback tools of hammer, nails, and glue, so much so that the movie ought to contain a warning that none of the legion of stunt men employed were injured in the making, and the explosives budget was somewhere below the cost of those utilized at the Battle of the Bulge.

Sly the Meat King deserves some credit, since his recent efforts, which included a revisited Rocky movie in 2006 and another run at a Rambo romp in 2008, seem to acknowledge that, ala Clint Eastwood, he’s at least contemplating his the inherent ridiculousness of continuing to make a mark as a meaty action guy, and maybe (possibly) sticking a popcult fork into action star ageism. The Expendables meta-nudge (who would have thought one could evoke both Godard and meta-anything when it comes not-always-sly Sly) comes directly from its casting. Glazed ham Eric Roberts gets wrestling kingpin Steve Austen as a fellow baddie, while Stallone’s on-screen dream team consists of his own coadjutant, named Christmas ( Brit beefster Jason Statham), plus other beef patties like Ying Yang (chop- sockey NNW superstar Jet Li), Hale Ceasar (NFL bruiser Terry Crews), Toll Road(UFC brawler Randy Couture) and Gunner (double-wink now, ex-enemy of all things Balboa, Dolph Lundgren). (C’mon, what kinda indie or mumblecore outing is gonna give you character names like that?) Adding a further element of braised beef are the brief appearances of Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger), in a meeting-of-the-meaty-minds between those two action lions and the Meat King himself. (Remember, when dealing with this particular style and model of actioneer, women---in this case Charisma Carpenter and Giselle Itie—never get to register much beyond the bloody blades or the explosion around the next corner, and filmmaker Stallone makes sure to stick to those unwritten guidelines.)

If the vapors emanating from that steamy meat pie aren’t intoxicating enough there is the added sprinkling of wild but spicy game that is Mickey Rourke, weirdly over the top as always. Mickey’s hair (and Mickey’s sartorial choices must always been rolled into his performance choices) is striped boldly black-and-white, plus he smokes a long stemmed pipe, and while never allowed to participate in the action two-step, he gets to portentously muse on, basically expounding a whole cracked meat-cutting philosophy, while director Sly cuts to actor Sly looking on ever-so-sagely. (When’s the last time the newest European art house buzz movie offered anything like that?)

Sly the actor is more leaden than ever, and my lower lip hurt by the end of the movie, as I was sympathetically moving it, somehow hoping that maybe his would move occasionally too. You have to figure that maybe that’s all part of Sly the Meat King’s bigger plan, allowing all of the other meat team member’s group acting to rise at least to his lowered levels. The Expendables is one of those infrequent good bad movies, reaching its own limited expectations, and carving out a notch in the testosterone Hall of Shame. Although the burning question remains—were Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal and (especially) Jean-Claude Van Damme all too busy fondling their royalties to participate?

In Dreams

The following column is reprinted from the February issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):

While Inception ought to easily lay claim as the smartest, sharpest, most scintillating blockbuster entry of Popcorn Summer 2010, and further burnish director/writer Christopher Nolan’s growing reputation as the thinking cinephile’s Stevie “Wonder” Spielberg, it doesn’t quite generate the impact that would mark the film as an all-timer, although it is a crackling, mind-bending, whole-lotta-fun mainstream effort.

Inception is essentially a caper film, yet, the unfolding and depiction of the heist itself is something altogether different---the movie largely takes place in a series of dreamscapes, the elusive theft that the plot swirls around being a dream itself, sort of. Nolan, the rare director that actually melds his visual route into his thematic map proves himself an exemplary amusement park designer, and the movie’s pacing and bravura editing make it go by in a flash, despite its length.

Nolan’s methods and directorial preoccupations are easily evident in his praiseworthy catalogue, with all of his films, despite setting or time period, revolving around a morally compromised and obsessive male protagonist awash in a chaotic and often brutal society, pushing ever onward while wrapping himself deeper into his odyssey, plagued by doubt and a heightened past, forced to think quick and act quicker, with the end result—consistently reached through a Herculean utilization of instinct, memory, and improvisatory skills—a weirdly ambiguous goal-reaching. Nolan is a truly cerebral director of movie action, as the acute exposition and vividly memorable landscapes of Memento (‘00), Insomnia (‘02), Batman Begins (’05), The Prestige (’06), and The Dark Knight (’08) have already proven.

Caper films always depict a team of types brought together for the high risk job, and although Inception’s centers around breaking into an individual’s unconscious rather than the usual high security MacGuffin, a specialized squad still lines up. Brought together by Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio),an edgy, psychological tight-rope walker who needs to the job in order to be reunited with his kids, this dream team consists of a newbie architectural student (Ellen Page), a stiff-lipped right hand man (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a chemist (Dileep Rao), and all-around warrior with special skills as a “forger” (Thomas Hardy). Of course, there is also a mark, the son of a dying energy czar (Cillian Murphy), and a businessman client (Ken Watanabe) who insists on going along for the ride. Hovering in and above it all is the great love and late wife (Marion Cotillard) of Cobb, still hauntingly real in the world of dreams. The cast is first rate, and Nolan never allows them to get lost in the pure wallop of his ongoing visual and narrative joy ride, while DiCaprio manages to get some well-earned mileage out of a part that is weirdly close to his last bit of role-playing, as the emotionally tortured cop in last year’s Shutter Island.

Although the movie abounds in the type of pseudo-scientific speak that was the bellwether of multiple cheesy sci-fi movies, the players chomp into the expositional dialogue like actors knifing through the shards of pulp fiction interaction. Page, who gets saddled with the familiar position of the character put there to anchor the potentially bewildered audience, should be acknowledged for her ironic aplomb. No matter what grade Z line reading she has to deliver, she somehow remains above the obviousness, and her thankless role gains in stature as the movie burrows further down its own wormhole.

Nolan plays it all with a technical fluidity that refrains from the typical in-yer-face make-up of the vast majority of big budget genre pictures. He also wears his potent influences on his conjurer’s sleeve: weaving together elements of 2001, Blade Runner, Bond movies, maybe even (gulp) The Matrix, also marking his big screen territory with the various master scents of MC Escher, Freud and Sir Alfred Hitchcock. Inception is a visceral experience, with Nolan attempting and pulling off some thrilling circus tricks with his loopy dream-within-dreams narrative, and hair-raising editing, ultimately generating some uncanny and wondrous imagery while neatly poking away at the audiences’ sensory perceptions.

Give Nolan credit, he does try to add some psychological heft to his film with DiCaprio’s haunted past bleeding into every corner of the plot, but the movie just doesn’t quite succeed as a full-bellied emotional churner. Despite his obvious throwback talents, Nolan is not a terribly self-conscious filmmaker, so the partial disconnect doesn’t ever drag the movie down, although its overall impact is diminished by the lack of truly resounding inner plot. In the long run, Inception, despite it’s rumblings of emotional character depth, is essentially a impeccably plotted tumble through a movie funhouse, with perhaps a bit too much of juiced-up bang-bang shoot-em-ups.

Sure Inception might be ultimately disappointing, as it hints towards greatness but finally falls short, yet it’s a barnburner of a big budget summer fare, and it spins and tilts with splendid acuity. While it may lack a truly beating heart, the movie is a delightful head trip, a brainy thrill ride, and a technical tour de force. That’s hard to complain about, and much than a large portion of Hollywood fare usually has to offer.

Frank Booth Was Kurt Cobain's Real Grandpappy

(Reprinted from PopKrazy)

RIP Dennis Hopper, 1936-2010
(This piece originally appeared in Providence Monthly’s July edition, albeit in an altered, shortened form.)

In the long, ever strange history of Hollywood, Dennis Hopper shall stand fast as one of the most vivid flesh-and-blood parameters of an American industry turned inside out and eventually splintered and rendered all too soporific. Born in Dodge City, Kansas he was a pure-bred farm boy whose family eventually moved to San Diego in the late 1940s. He apprenticed at that city’s well-known Old Globe Theatre and became a very young contract player at Warner Brothers, building a budding career until a now apocryphal 1958 showdown with one of the then movie industry’s most macho despots, director Henry Hathaway, wherein the rebellious and cocksure young actor refused to give into Hathaway’s direction and faced him off in a widely viewed and reported public showdown that supposedly went on for some 80 takes, which resulted in a newfound status as a Tinseltown pariah.

Hopper quickly skipped off to New York City and became yet another charismatic Lee Strasberg acting apostle and an Actor’s Studio warrior and jumped from the stage into the burgeoning television dramatic scene, making over a 100 TV appearances. Reputation newly enhanced, he went west coast again, tilting sideways into the disintegrating studio system (even reworking with Hathaway) before inexplicably elbowing his way to the top of the pops by writing, directing and starring in the game changer that was Easy Rider in 1969. Drugs and bloated egomania dropped him to his hippie knees again after the colossal failure of his personal freak flag project The Last Movie in 1971, only to go further drug crazy and wander off into other artistic pursuits before coming back again under the wide shoulders of movie brat generalissimo Francis Coppola in 1979’s Apocalypse Now. A final phase, the ultra-professional actor-for-hire, crowned his grandly strange career trip.

Hopper was always something more than just big screen player, he was and shall remain a dual headed symbol of the both new Hollywood and an in-the-flesh poltergeist of the lost glamour of Hollywood Studio system, bridging the gap from florid and burnished 50’s melodrama (co-starring and rubbing in the glowing-but-mutated pixie dust of James Dean in both 1955’s Rebel Without a Cause and 1956’s Giant), through the emerging American new wave (the sensational mix of drive-in flick and socio-political parable with Easy Rider) to Dream Factory paradise lost (his directorial and personal shenanigans on The Last Movie would become a part of gonzo Hollywood lore), , through the unexpected emergence of the second wave of American independent/commercial filmmaking (David Lynch’s modern day classic, 1986’s Blue Velvet).

Hopper was a writer, photographer, actor, producer, director, performance artist, demi-monde celebrity, and an unending and totally willful repository of personal and professional chaos, plus one of the more memorable post-beat poets of self-immolation. Somehow he endured it all as an indestructible man with an equally indestructible career. Hopper easily stood out in his early films, with his deep boned Midwestern hipster looks belying the fact that even in his roles as hoods, misunderstood youth, or uneasily turbulent cowpokes, he seemed to dig deeper than the better looking hunks of meat surrounding him, his eyes flashing with intensity while he alternated a jaundiced sneer and a dreamy giggle. He transitioned into an alternative culture superstar while simultaneously drowning himself in irony and riches, recreated himself as one of the ultimate pop cultural guilty pleasures as the sharpest and most nuanced exemplars of movie-movie sociopaths (his lanky forehead head and sloped nose just about gleaming with the remnants of his own real life back-story), and lassoed it all into being gracefully acknowledged as one of most consistently solid character actors of all, and maybe even the truest pop cult granddaddy to such lost soul savants as Kurt Cobain. Bad movie, weird movie, great movie, I could never take my eyes off Hopper, and I always watched him both as explorative actor and living, breathing cultural zeitgeist.

A Hopper Baker’s Dozen

1.Blue Velvet. (1986) Frank Booth salivating with gusto for Pabst Blue Ribbon has to be among the most electrifying visual and aural surreal moments in mainstream Hollywood history, and that’s just a toe in the wondrously murky waters.

2.Easy Rider. (1969) Youthful wannabes and tripping hippies all wished they looked and acted like Peter Fonda’s Wyatt/ Captain America, but the truth of the matter was that, in most neighborhoods, there was a whole lot more of Hopper’s stringy-haired, fast-talking stoner Billy present and accounted for.

3.Hoosiers. (1986) As about an honest and thoroughly ingrained (and emotionally palatable) portrait of alcoholism and redemption, Hopper’s hunched-over character, Shooter, never trots down hokey lane, even if the movie points there.

4.Out of the Blue. (1980) Incendiary and harrowing, a neglected cult classic, a movie propelled by Hopper’s own fierce and unrelenting directorial vision.

5.True Romance. (1993) The stop-the-movie tête-à-tête, scripted by Quentin Tarantino, between Christopher Walken and Hopper is a cinephile’s parlor game wet dream, and it alone probably puts the pair in such stellar company as Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, Elisha Cook, Jr., Robert Ryan, Warren Oates and any other stellar character mug you might wanna bring to the table.

6.Rebel Without a Cause (1955)/Giant (1956) Lurking around the periphery as Goon in the former, hitting lead off between the way-out line-up of Liz Taylor, Rock Hudson and skyrocketing Jimmy Dean in Giant, Hopper’s eyes alone signify as pure 1950’s burnished Technicolor firmament.

7.Rumble Fish. (1983) As the whiskey-soaked Dad at crispy center of the mumbling triumvirate of Mickey Rourke, Matt Dillon and himself, everything about this vastly under praised Coppola toss-off tour de force is simply too cool to be true, particularly the interaction between the three aforementioned lost soul mumblers.

8.Apocalypse Now.(1979)There simply couldn’t be anyone else but Hopper as the mixed-up, jumbled-up, jangled-around, imperiously incoherent photojournalist/ interpreter of both Brando’s Kurtz and the cinematic version of our country’s descent into Vietnam and the ever pulsing heart of darkness that accompanied it.

9.Kid Blue. (1973) An off center, rambling minimalist western ode that teams Hopper’s barely-in-gear magnetism with Warren Oates’s wounded eyes, resulting in a filmic slow burn that shoots right past the movie’s limitations.

10.River’s Edge. (1986) As Feck, the pied-piper of Nowheresville in post mall suburbia, Hopper is chilling and precise, and he singlehandedly lifts the younger and inexperienced cast into a level that most never reached again.

11. An American Friend (1977). A cinematic treat, combining the talents of an on-his-game Wim Wenders, a perfectly cast Bruno Ganz, the blueprint of Patricia Highsmith’s novel, and Hopper as Tom Ripley, the ultimate mercurial, two-sided ugly American.

Press Release: Announcing the first annual shaking like a mountain 2010 Fiction Open
Judge: Janice Eidus

Janice Eidus is an award-winning novelist and short story writer. Her short fiction has won two O.Henry Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and a Redbook Prize. Her latest novel, The War of the Rosens, won a 2008, Independent Publishers Award in Religion, and was nominated for the prestigious Sophie Brody Award. Her new novel, The Last Jewish Virgin, will be published in October, 2010.

First prize: $350 Second prize: $100 Third prize: $50

The three prizewinners will be published in shaking like a mountain and have their work submitted by shaking editors to the Best of the Web and Best of Net anthologies
Deadline: September 15, 2010. Results will be announced at the website October 15, 2010, and the winners will be published before the end of 2010

Complete Contest Guidelines:
-We accept all genres of literary fiction as long as stories are related to the theme of music.
-Please be sure to include your name, address and phone number in a cover letter with your submission. Do not put your name, address, or phone number on the story itself.
-Entries must be: unpublished; 4000 words or less; and accompanied by a $10 entry fee per story.
-We welcome multiple entries ($10/story) and entries from outside the U.S. Entrants retain all rights to their stories.
-Once a story is submitted, we cannot accept an updated draft. (However, an entrant is welcome to submit an updated draft as a new entry.)
-Entry fees will not be returned or adjusted.
-Entries must be complete by 11:59 P.M. PDT on September 15, 2010.

Lost In the (new) Hood

(Reprinted from PopKrazy)

It’s easy to see why the legend of Robin Hood lives on and on as an essential big screen vehicle, as it allows for pungent flourishes of pageantry, romance, violence, and the eternally appealing defense of the common man, and it’s rebel-with-a-cause (plus a bow and arrow) central figure must be as appealing to a big name actor as it might be intoxicating to his director to provide said actor with the aforementioned ornamentations.

It’s equally easy to understand why long time collaborators Russell Crowe and director Ridley Scott (American Gangster, A Good Year, Body of Lies, and, most pertinent to this outing, Gladiator) would leap at the undertaking of revisiting the Robin Hood mythology. Crowe has the unarguable presence for such a spotlight role, and Scott has both the pedigree and the mentality to deliver his star to some greater cinematic glories. Their new film, Robin Hood, is muscular and sinewy, impeccably burnished and floridly filmed, totally flowing with populist ideology. Crowe stands erect throughout, emanating his particular brawny brand of minimalism, yet the movie seems devoid of passion or warmth and absolutely lacks any sense of the dashing tomfoolery that usually part and parcel of the landscape. It’s a ponderously gloomy origins tale, and after two and a half bombastic hours you’ll be zapped of both interest and energy.

Scott, a certified Hack Auteur, has an undeniably dexterous touch with action set pieces, and he delivers those goods as only he can, orchestrating half-dozen show-and-tells of 12th century warfare brutality, with intermittent valorous speeches from the far too taciturn Crowe. The film’s busy canvas also follows the travails of a moat full of pointed characters, including a fiery Cate Blanchett as a Marian with no trace of romantic chemistry with Crowe’s Robin, the ever felicitous Mark Strong as a conniving French villain, and solid types like Mark Addy, William Hurt, and Max von Sydow and the always interesting Danny Huston doing their bits ably.

Through the years the basic Robin Hood socio-political terrain has remained an audience-pleaser, although this Robin Hood doesn’t steal from the rich and give to the pour, instead preferring to penetrate multiple chain mail armaments in the name of fighting the holy battle against taxation without representation, bold flirting with Tea Party version of egalitarianism.

In the long run, every film Robin Hood, whether it be Douglas Fairbanks, Bugs Bunny, Frank Sinatra, Sean Connery, Kevin Costner or Russell Crowe, has be unjust compared to the indomitable Errol Flynn from Michael Curtiz’s 1938 Technicolor wonder The Adventures of Robin Hood. Yet another man -of -the- people, thoroughly illuminated by the Hollywood dream factory in its prime, Flynn’s Robin set unbeatable standards for heroic magnetism, rollicking manliness, eye-winking plumery, all the while providing he and the audience with resolute fun and deep-boned cinematic gratification that the well meaning but oh-so-ponderous team of Crowe and Scott simply can’t touch, however austerely they borough into the (new) Hood.

The Curtiz (old) Hood movie is eye candy of the highest order, a glistening helping of Hollywood classicism is unadulterated pleasure viewing. The movie won three deserved Oscars (Art Direction, Editing, Score) and it is ably burnished by the always capable Michael Curtiz, a perfectly paced and sumptuously filmed adventure tale, with the perfect coupling of Errol Flynn (effortlessly dashing) and Olivia de Havilland (rapturously beautiful), sprinkled with a typically first class supporting cast (Alan Hale, Claude Rains, Ian Hunter) and a devilishly villainous Basil Rathbone. The (new) Hood is passionless and resolutely uninspiring, a costumed dirge for contempo audiences largely unwilling or unready to be truly transported into a blissful state of artful imagination. The (old) Hood is absolute dream machine opium, once embraced by a viewing public unfettered by anything other than resolute professionalism and into-the-vein entertainment values.

How To Say Little, But Remain Convincing

If you search hard enough and do your pop cult due diligence, you will discover one sharp, early AM, talking head film nitcrit, appearing in a semi-regular basis on Fox's The Rhode Show. I kid you not, I think this guy could be a comer...