Lindsay Lohan made her stage debut in a London revival of David Mamet’s ‘Speed The Plow.’ Here’s what the critics are saying of her performance as Karen.
Dazed and Confused often gets lumped in with pot comedies and is celebrated on 4/20, but Richard Linklater’s first studio film transcends mere pot comedy and is still one of the most realistic teen movies ever made. It arrived at a time (1993) when teen movies were out of vogue, and it dared to take a trip down memory lane to a time remembered more with cringes than smiles. It’s arguably the most anti-nostalgia period movie ever, as acknowledged by Linklater himself. Digging in to the Criterion Collection extras (a Blu-ray Criterion release came out in October ), here are some bits of evidence of that, tied to some of the movie’s most memorable lines. “It’s the like every-other-decade theory, you know? The ’50s were boring. The ’60s rocked. The ’70s, oh my God, they obviously suck.” Linklater admits that teenage years are tough no matter what decade you’re in: “I can’t look back too nostalgically at this,” he says. “It’s the only years you have. You’ve got no choice.” But the filmmaker looked around at teen movies that’d been done before and still wanted to tell his teenage rock ’n’ roll movie. Strangely, when asked about the ’70s in behind-the-scenes footage and cast interviews, many of the teenage actors came out of the film shoot having a favorable opinion of the decade. The core group of girls, who bonded offscreen — Parker Posey, Joey Lauren Adams, Christine Harnos and Michelle Burke — actually appreciated the wardrobe of bellbottoms and pants that jokingly required pliers to zip up. For a painful look back at what people wore in the ’70s, see also an audio-free, fairly eerie feature in which the costume supervisor dons many of the characters’ costumes. “Wipe that face off your head, bitch.” The off-the-cuff line is spoken by fascist hazing ringleader Darla, played by Posey, after she tortures the new group of freshman girls on the last day of school. In one of the cast interviews, the actress says that the line was from a play she’d done and was a bad translation from German. She suggested the line to Linklater, and he was all for it. In the DVD commentary and making-of feature, Linklater likened working on his studio debut — for the mini-major Gramercy Pictures — to the initiation rituals that kick the film into gear. (A gleefully vicious Ben Affleck is Posey’s male counterpart.) The director references the bits he had to fight to include, like a simple “good game” hand-slap lineup after Mitch’s baseball game, that didn’t move the film forward but instead captured the dull essence of what life is like for a teenager. Of the pressure from studio executives, Linklater says: “At the end of the day, it was sort of my boxing match that makes or breaks you as a fighter, and I sort of survived it. I don’t know if I won or if there was a draw. I think I won.” That’s what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age. The role of Wooderson, the skeezy older member of the pack, was a breakthrough for Matthew McConaughey, and the story of how he stumbled into the role is recounted in a couple of the film’s special features. Basically, McConaughey happened to be at the same Austin, Texas, hotel bar as casting director Don Phillips. They did some serious male bonding over a four-hour conversation, talking about everything but movies. When they got kicked out of the bar for talking too loudly, the wannabe actor proved himself so awesome — by calling the hotel to stand up for Phillips — that the casting director suggested he would be good for what was then a small part in the film. Of the “high school girls” line, one of Wooderson’s best, Linklater says in the director commentary, “It concerns me I could write such a line.” Of the character himself, the director admits that having the older but not necessarily wiser member of the group of friends was an essential teen memory for him. He cites the years before driving age when kids are at the mercy of anyone willing to chauffeur them around, and how peer pressure came into play in those cases. All I’m saying is that if I ever start referring to these as the best years of my life, remind me to kill myself. Perhaps the reason many critics complain that Dazed and Confused has no plot is that Linklater strove to capture the boredom of being a teenager: driving around, meeting up late at night back at the place you hate, your high school, because there’s nowhere else to go. In several of the extra features, the director recalls that viewers have told him the movie is just like their high school experience. He seems taken aback by it, though, because it does show a specific small-town Texas life that he survived, with characters that were composites of old friends. Those composites are the only cause for nostalgia in the movie. The friends who were a lifeline to sanity during high school are worth remembering. Similarly, in a bittersweet interview, local Austin actress Christin Hinojosa, who played freshman Sabrina, gives a teary interview toward the end of filming in which she talks about the friends she made the summer of the shoot, and how just like at the end of camp, they probably won’t stay in touch.
Having had the chance to work with one of his heroes, Paul Newman (in 1989’s Fat Man and Little Boy ), John Cusack turned to a Newman classic for a round of Movieline’s My Favorite Scene . “There’s a scene of Paul Newman in The Verdict that I would use as the best example of economy and what a close-up is supposed to mean,” Cusack explained during our chat for The Raven . “It’s the example where the film does what no other art form can do – a book can’t do it, and theater can’t do it, it’s only for film, and it’s the best example of it.” Pay attention, kids – Professor Cusack’s Film Language 101 is in session. Really, a Cusack class in film history wouldn’t be so farfetched; In addition to acting, writing, producing, and Tweeting , Cusack’s also a keen student of cinema – so much so, he jokes, he could teach a class (“On other people’s films,” he adds). When put to the Movieline challenge, he didn’t hesitate to draw upon one of the best scenes in Sidney Lumet ’s 1982 courtroom classic. “It’s Sidney Lumet and Paul Newman and David Mamet at their finest,” he began. “Paul Newman plays this ambulance-chasing lawyer whose client has been turned into a vegetable, and the hospital is trying to settle out of court because they’re protecting the doctors from a malpractice suit. It’s a big ethical dilemma. He goes to take a picture of his client, this woman who he hasn’t seen, and she’s on a life support machine – she’s been turned into a vegetable.” “You hear the breathing and breathing, and he takes the pictures,” he continued, “and then, as they develop, he has a moment of conscience. He sits down and he looks at the pictures and he looks at her, and you can see his entire life – all the compromises he’s made, all the short-cuts, all the lies – come crashing down on him.” “It’s still a wide shot, and from the back a nurse comes in and says, ‘Sir, you can’t be in here.’ And then you cut in close on Paul Newman and Paul Newman says three words: He says ‘I’m her attorney.’ And in those three words, what washes over his face tells the entire story, and it tells as much as a novel could ever tell.” Watch the scene below at the 6:40 mark. “If I was to teach what film can be, and what a close-up is supposed to be, and what great acting, directing, and writing is supposed to be, I would use that scene,” Cusack said. “It all comes together and it’s probably the best close-up that I’ve ever seen. I think it’s Newman’s finest hour – one of his many masterful pieces of acting.” Couldn’t agree more. Flashback: The Verdict was indeed nominated for five Oscars, including Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor (James Mason), and Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture, but was eclipsed that year by a Gandhi near-sweep. The Raven , meanwhile, hits theaters next Friday, April 27 — stay tuned for Movieline’s full interview with Cusack. Read more My Favorite Scenes. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
If you enjoyed watching Liam Neeson battle territorial wolves in Joe Carnahan’s The Grey — and plenty of moviegoers have — then you’d be well-advised to look into Lee Tamahori’s 1997 thriller The Edge . Starring Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin and perhaps best characterized by screenwriter David Mamet’s trademark clipped dialogue, the film is an unusually strong entry in the survival-story tradition — and one to which The Grey owes at least a spiritual debt (if not more). This genre is certainly well-trod territory, and perhaps for good reason: Dramatically speaking, it’s pretty hard to get it wrong. You strand characters in the harsh wilderness. They experience hardship. Eventually they learn to face mortality with some measure of grace. They make it out, or they don’t. The Grey is the more genre-typical of the two films and draws more readily from those aspects that are common to all stories of its type, with the added attraction of some great camera work and a strong performance from Liam Neeson. The Edge , however, transcends those trappings to offer a more philosophical, character-centered naturalist meditation. Don’t let the overcranked trailer fool you: The difference between the two films is all the more striking if only because their plot points are so remarkably similar, even for a genre that necessarily has to hit a few key points. In both, a plane crashes in a forest, and the survivors are forced to fend for themselves against the elements and wild beasts. While in The Grey , we see a marauding pack of arctic wolves randomly picking off crash survivors one by one, The Edge features an equally bloodthirsty grizzly bear. Both films have leaders emerge in the forms of Neeson’s Ottway and Hopkins’s Charles Morse, who each tries to save his respective group from starvation and creeping despair. And in each film there is a character who vocalizes the direness of the situation at every turn, a stock role that should probably be known as the “Game over!” guy, after Bill Paxton’s panicky emergency-narrator from Aliens . Thematically, both films juxtapose the behavior of modern men with the untamed wild, showing that the safety of civilization can be blinding to what is essentially human. The Grey is a lot harder-nosed, preoccupied with the endurance of man as an animal; The Edge , meanwhile, focuses on the ingenuity of man as a thinking being. And while the latter film’s emphasis on reason ultimately makes it the stronger of the two, that isn’t to say that The Edge is all profound rumination. There is still a ravenous bear to be faced, a lot of great action and one of the greatest motivational speeches in film history: The idea that being stranded in the wild eventually amounts to a spiritual boon for those stranded — even as they are exposed to all sorts of peril and privation — is present in almost every survival story. But this theme comes off especially well in The Edge , because as a survivalist, Morse understands that mere survival is not enough. He’s more than just a Robinson Crusoe-figure, whose main goal is to persevere by taming the wilderness. Instead, Morse allows himself to be changed. He doesn’t feel the loneliness of, say, Tom Hanks’s character in Cast Away , or the alienation of the protagonist of Into the Wild — both of whom experience a character arc that could have happened in a different setting. With Morse, Nature itself, and his right relationship with it, is the point. His communion with Nature doesn’t have an ulterior motive, which achieves a strong personalization of a universal idea: Getting right with the material world and, in the process, regaining his own humanity. Nathan Pensky is an associate editor at PopMatters and a contributor at Forbes , among various other outlets. He can be found on Tumblr and Twitter as well.
Breaking Sports Video
