Introducing... Armie Hammer

Let's celebrate the Quarter-Century mark of one Armie Hammer... (happy birthday!) also known as Armand Douglas Hammer. 'He's 6'5", 220, and there's two of him.' Well, actually just one. But his twinned Social Network role as Cameron and Tyler, "the Winklevii", sure doubled tripled quadrupled    okay greatly multiplied the size of his acting career. Hammer has the Prince Charming role in Tarsem Singh's upcoming Untitled Snow White picture but we'll next see him in Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar as Clyde Tolson, the alleged longtime lover / official longtime employee of Leonardo DiCaprio's J Edgar Hoover. So there's two of Hammer this time too in a sense.

Just for fun given his newness on the scene, I thought we'd look at how Armie has been introduced in each of the feature films he has made thus far (excluding Billy Graham the Early Years which I couldn't find. Inbetween the first few features andThe Social Network he had recurring guest roles on Gossip Girl and Reaper but we've seen neither television show.) 

Introducing Armie Hammer in...

... Flicka (2006)

In Armie's film debut you can see him walking down the school hallway as "Male Prefect" as the credits are still going. In just seconds he's right near the camera and Alison Lohman is looking up at him. Them's long legs; tall people walk fast.

He says.

Catherine McLaughlin, you need to come see the headmaster.

And that's it! The whole role. Movie line = SAG card. In the credits he's sandwiched between a couple people who actually get names "Mrs Masterson" and "Gracie" just before the rodeo announcers, puppeteers and stuntmen. Auspicious beginnings.

... Blackout (2008)

Just two years later he gets his own title card, third billed, as "Tommy" in an indie thriller about three people trapped in an elevator. He's introduced mysteriously, his back turned away from the camera. Maybe he's killed the girl in the bed behind him? It's unclear but her back has some weird bloody marks on it and he's wrapping his own bloody fist. And then he dresses and loots her apartment (not nice!) before heading out to jump on his motorcycle. Armie abandons his usual preppy film look. It's amazing what a difference a haircut, earring, and tattoos can do for your look. 

... Spring Breakdown (2009)

Amy Poehler to Crowd: We're going to blow your mind with a little thing called Electric Slide."

Armie is back to namelessness in his next film as "Abercrombie Boy". He appears out of focus and all judgey in the background with one of "the Sevens", the mean sorority girls that Amy Poehler's 35 year old dog trainer is hanging with. But he eventually cheers up and starts dancing; no lines.

In the scrolling credits Armie appears between "Teen Dude" and "Hookers" (LOL) but despite the esteemed company he's keeping he does actually gets to share Amy Poehler's actual title card wherein she directly adresses him and then tongues him.

You are a pretty puppy."

Shouldn't he have have been credited as "Poehler's Pretty Puppy" instead of "Abercrombie Boy"?

... The Social Network (2010)

EXT. CHARLES RIVER - DAWN

The Harvard Crew is practicing on two-man sculls. There are three baots that are running roughly even with each other and the two-man crews are rwoing with all they've got. We're gliding along with them in the water --

A CREW MEMBER
Those guys are just freaking fast.

And we PULL BACK TO REVEAL that there's a fourth boat which is already five boat lengths ahead of the other three.

The fourth boat is being crewed by CAMERON and TYLER WINKLEVOSS -- identical twins who stepped out of an ad for Abercrombie & Fitch.

They know that the others aren't in their class and even though they're highly competitive athletes, they don't like showing anyone up, least of all their teammates.

CAMERON
Is there anyway to make this a fair fight?

TYLER
We could  jump out and swim.

CAMERON
I think we'd have to jump out and drown. 

Oh those smug Winklevii... Their Ivy League / Human Specimen superiority established we immediately cut to the news of a real competitor. The rest is movie (and legal) history.

 

When did your eyeballs first meet Armie Hammer? Are you looking forward to further introductions?

What are you, some kind of Astronaut?

Your challenge for the day should you choose to accept it is to use the following in conversation at some point:

"Pappy told me about Poon but he never

said anything about Poonanny, Pippy."

Do it! Because today is the 10th anniversary of Bubble Boy of course, and such an occasion demands reverent observation. Where would we be without Bubble Boy? Would the world have ever learned to love all things Gyllenhaalic without it? Oh sure some might say that Jake Gyllenhaal owes his career to the cult of Donnie Darko, a film that flopped in theaters just two months later (perhaps a movie about planes falling out of the sky didn't stand a whole lot of a chance right after 9/11) but eventually went on to coil its little bunny-shaped permanent place in a distant corner of the cultural imagination all the same, but those in the know... well those in the know still credit Donnie Darko with Jake's career. 

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But Bubble Boy is fun! In the world of guilty pleasures I don't rank this one as all that guilty - it's actually funny! Swoosie Kurtz is a riot! It has a young Marley Shelton as the love interest! John Carroll Lynch for god's sake!

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"...and the prince climbed up Rapunzel's hair to the top of the tower and said, 'Come with me, and we'll live happily ever after.' Then Rapunzel left her plastic bubble and died. The end."

And then of course there's Jake, indulging his goofiest side with wild-eyed aplomb. Why he doesn't make more comedies I really don't understand - anyone that's seen him on a talk show can agree, the boy's an endearing goofball. He was a great host on SNL. Love and Other Drugs was a terrible mess but lit up whenever he got to shine that sexy wicked grin (or, okay, any of his other two-thousand body parts).

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Have you seen Bubble Boy?

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Happy 50th Birthday, Alexandre Desplat

Robert G here from Sketchy Details wishing a Happy Birthday to the most in demand film composer of our time.

Can you believe that Alexandre Desplat has scored 128 separate film and television projects since 1985? How about how a year hasn't gone by since 1991 where he didn't score at least three different TV or film productions? He has had quite the successful career in France and has started to work consistently in America in the past eight or so years.

Desplat has been nominated for Best Original Score four times at the Academy Awards: The Queen, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and The King's Speech. He's clearly doing something right to get the Music Branch's attention. His work is especially noticeable for not being the super flashy film scoring that demands attention. He does what needs to be done to set the right tone and lets the film be the focus.

Indeed, every year he lost the Oscar, he lost to a film with a far flashier or more pronounced score...

Click to read more ...

That Barton Fink Feeling Turns 20

Michael checking in.

My first introduction to the brothers Coen was viewing Fargo on VHS at age 16 and nothing since that memorable night has been able to dislodge it as my favorite of their films, although a college-aged love affair with Milller’s Crossing came closest. But even as Marge and Jerry have remained secure on their pedestal, I have returned to none of the Coen brothers films more often than 1991's Barton Fink. Not even the compulsively rewatchable Big Lebowski has kept me coming back more consistently.

So as Barton Fink turns twenty years old (tomorrow), I wonder what it is about the Coen's Cannes-winning, surreal, showbiz fever dream keeps me so fascinated?

I certainly don’t return compulsively to solve mysteries of the story, that’s for sure. The Coens may plot their stories with a Swiss watch precision that suggests all the answers are there if you look hard enough, but the ambiguity the brothers place in their movies is deliberate, and not meant to be puzzled out to a solution. The Coens often feature unanswerable questions prominently in their stories. What did, after all, happen in the hotel room in No Country for Old Men where Javier Bardem seemed to vanish into thin air? What motivated Gabriel Byrne’s character in Miller’s Crossing? What was the meaning of the prologue in Serious Man? Or the epilogue in True Grit?

Written, the brothers say, as they struggled to untangle the plot of Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink is the story of a lefty playwright in the early forties who has one hit on Broadway and promptly goes to Hollywood to sell out only to find himself facing an epic case of writer’s block. Taken simply Fink would earn a place in the canon as one of the most wicked Hollywood satires ever put to film. But, as most everybody knows, Barton Fink cannot be taken simply. At the three quarters mark Fink takes one of the all time most jawdropping plunges into surreality, and audiences to this day are still trying to make sense of it all, from the contents of Barton's mystery box to the beach painting on his wall.

Barton Fink theories are numerous and fun and I could fill a book debating them all. The most obvious of course is that Barton is in Hell. The clues for supporting this range from obvious like the omnipresent heat to subtle like the repetition of the number six in the elevator. Once you start looking for clues you can find them everywhere. On my most recent viewing I just picked up on the suggestive names of wrestling pictures  - “Hell Ten Feet Squared” and “Devil on a Canvas”.

Do you see what happens Larry?"

Then there are the theories about Barton Fink being about the rise of fascism represented by Charlie Meadows with Barton as the intellectual too feeble to notice or stop it. The most glaring red flag in the movie is Goodman’s pronouncement of “Heil Hitler” before he kills one of the detectives which is certainly no accident. But if Goodman represents evil why does he kill the detectives who, with their noticeably German and Italian names, clearly represent the Axis powers? I for one have always read his delivery of "Heil Hitler" as sarcasm before killing the anti-semitic detective, but what does it matter? We should take a cue from the character in Serious Man and “embrace the mystery” or it will lead you in circles like walking an MC Escher staircase.

Once you give up trying to solve what needn’t be solved you can settle in and get the full Barton Fink experience. The film is genuinely hilarious and every word out of Michael Lerner’s mouth as the vulgar studio boss is solid gold. Fink also contains what I consider to be John Goodman’s all time best performance (I know that is saying a lot). Lerner got the nominatio but Goodman would have been my choice to win the trophy that year. And speaking of Oscars, when everyone was bemoaning that Roger Deakins lost an absurd ninth time this year for the cinematography of True Grit they might just as well added that it should have been his tenth, because he was royally screwed out of nod for Fink.

Or maybe you can just forget all that and just groove on all the endless supply of haunting, weird touches the Coens place in every scene of Fink, my favorite being the endlessly humming bell that Barton rings to summon Buscemi’s Chet from the Underworld. There is also the strange dying bird at the film’s end, which is supposedly  just a moment of happenstance caught on film, or the bizarre fact that it is clearly John Turtorro’s voice as one of the actors in the play that opens the film. What are we to make of that?

Slate magazine recently did a retrospective of the Coen’s body of work complete with a poll ranking the films. I was chagrinned but not surprised to see Barton Fink languishing in the lower half of the poll. This is always the way with the connoisseur’s choice. Barton Fink is the Coen’s in their purest most undiluted form, and film’s like that never win the popularity contest. They do however win the test of time as they draw audiences back over and over again to explore their depths.  

Happy 75th Robert Redford

Just wanted to get this out there before the day is up. It's the 75th birthday of Robert Redford, actor/director/producer/film festival icon. Though his work as an actor and movie star isn't as obsessed over these days as his contemporaries from 60s and 70s cinema like past costars Paul Newman, Barbra Streisand, Faye Dunaway, Natalie Wood or Dustin Hoffman, that doesn't mean his star has faded. Movie stars of yore fall in and out of fashion. Who knows which 60s and 70s giants will be beloved in 2036 for example when Redford turns 100!?

Fact: The movies wouldn't be the same without him.

 Without Robert Redford there's no Sundance Festival, no Sundance Institute and without those, so many young unproven talents would not have been boosted or introduced to us in the way they were... and some probably not at all. And without Robert Redford what would have become of The Way We Were, The Sting, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,  All The President's Men, Out of Africa, A River Runs Through It, Quiz Show, or Ordinary People?  The list goes on. Some of his best films wouldn't even exist without him given how difficult it is to get any film made; pull one string out and things unravel.

So this week in his honor, watch your favorite Redford film, or the one you've always been meaning to get to. At the very least, brush your hand across your significant other's forehead and hair and do your best wistful Barbra Streisand.

Your girl is lovely, Hubbell."