Category: Uncategorized

By Aaron Aradillas
Press Play Contributor

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of two Press Play pieces commemorating the 25th anniversary of Manhunter, which was released August 15, 1986. To view a video essay about the film by Aaron Aradillas and Matt Zoller Seitz, click here.

Most filmmakers who use source music in their movies do so as a way of enhancing a scene — think Martin Scorsese’s use of Donovan’s “Atlantis” in GoodFellas. Or they use music as an ironic counterpoint to the action — think Quentin Tarantino’s use of “Stuck In the Middle with You” in Reservoir Dogs (or practically any use of music in a Tarantino movie). Michael Mann is different. He uses source music (and sometimes original scores) as a way to set a mood for a given scene. (He also doesn’t believe in irony.) Where directors will turn up the volume at a crucial moment in a scene, Mann likes to start the music long before anything has happened. He doesn’t use it to ratchet up the tension. Rather, Mann is interested in using music as a way to set the emotional landscape from scene to scene. Think of the way he has the Brian Eno track “Force Marker” start long before the actual bank robbery begins in Heat.

Or, the Otis Taylor electrified banjo number “Ten Million Slaves” that’s used throughout Public Enemies. (The banjo picking is meant to recall Bonnie and Clyde, except this time the music isn’t meant as comedy.) Or, in what remains one of the great opening sequences in film history, the medley of Sam Cooke songs as a way to encapsulate the Black Power movement of the 1960s in Ali.

But Mann’s greatest use of original and pre-existing music remains the soundtrack to the serial-killer masterpiece Manhunter.

Adapting Thomas Harris’ first (and best) novel to feature Hannibal Lector (inexplicably spelled “Lektor” in this film) Manhunter was a different kind of horror movie. Released in a decade filled with slasher pictures hoping to cash in on the success of Halloween and Friday the 13th, Mann’s film was an intellectual freak-out that used forensic detail to dissect a mass murderer’s heart of darkness; a generation of horror fans that had cheered and laughed while dumb teenagers were slaughtered by masked stalkers was forced to consider what it meant to have sympathy for the devil. Upping the ante of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, which played a nasty black-comic joke by putting you in the shower with doomed Marion Crane, Manhunter placed you inside the mind of a madman from frame one. Also like Psycho, Manhunter used its score to set the tone every scene — only Mann used synth-pop majesty and prog-rock doom instead of a shrieking string section.

Mann’s debut feature, Thief (1981) was a modern-day noir with a Tangerine Dream score that was used in a more traditional, ratchet-up-the-tension way.

(Interestingly, an extended cat-and-mouse stalking sequence at the end of Thief used silence as its score, then brought in a thunderous rock piece — “Confrontation,”” a “Comfortably Numb” sound-alike by Craig Safan — when the scene erupted into violence.)

Following Thief, Mann served as executive producer on Miami Vice and forever changed the way pop music was used on television. The show’s use of both Jan Hammer’s score and popular rock songs laid the groundwork for Manhunter. Here is “In The Air Tonight” as featured on Miami Vice.

The synth-rock temperament of the music creates a constant unease that connects FBI profiler Will Graham (William Petersen) to The Tooth Fairy, Francis Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan), a lunar cycle-obsessed murderer of families. Graham’s gift (curse) is his ability to identify with the psychological torment of serial killers. His ability to at times operate without filters led to his suffering mental breakdown while hunting and capturing Lektor. As Graham tentatively reconnects with his wife and son, the hunt for The Tooth Fairy calls to him. It is the annihilation of the family unit (a crime that we gather Graham nearly committed himself) that must be stopped. The recurring instrumentation, lyrics and songs psychically connect the profiler and the murderer.

The film opens with a sinister synth wall of sound as we see nighttime POV angles. At first, we can’t quite make out what they are. Suddenly we realize we are seeing a home invasion in progress. The scene climaxes (along with the music) with a woman being awakened from sleep and realizing that someone is standing at the entrance of her bedroom. This track, entitled “Leeds House,” is reprised after Graham has accepted the case and visited the Leeds’ residence at the precise time when the murders occurred.

The same POV shots and musical cue are used as Graham enters the mind of The Tooth Fairy. Interestingly, the track is reprised a third time during a parking garage stalk-and-snatch sequence. It’s the only time the movie breaks from using music as a mood setter and uses it as almost a telltale theme for the killer. Performed by the outfit known as The Reds, “Leed’s House” (along with other original compositions “Lector’s Cell” and “Jogger’s Stakeout”), uses a combination of synthesizers, drums, and crunchy guitars not just to create dread, but to connect the two lead characters sonically. When the movie switches perspectives halfway through and follows Dollarhyde through a doomed romance with a blind woman, we are not taken out of the story. The musical cues by The Reds allow for an almost seamless transition.

The major contribution from pre-existing music is provided by Shriekback. Their songs are exclusively the killer’s theme music. “Evaporation,” with its echoed vocals and stuttering drum loops, is played as Graham investigates an older crime scene. As he retraces the events, the music suggests he is receding deeper into the killer’s thought process.

The other Shriekback tracks, “Coelocanth” and “The Big Hush,” are used during the extended romance sequence as Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan) finds temporary reprieve from his twisted nature by going out with the caring Reba (Joan Allen). The flute-heavy “Coelocanth” suggests something otherworldly and erotic. (The flute instrumentation might be seen as a nod to the Eastern origins of the source material: Harris’ novel was titled Red Dragon, a reference to both William Blake and a caricature found on a Mah-Jongg game piece.) Deployed during a startling tender love scene, “The Big Hush” is a full blown trance-out.

Along with The Reds, Michel Rubini also contributes original music to the movie. His slow-build-to-a-cathartic-crescendo track “Graham’s Theme” is broken into two pieces.

The first half is used when Graham finds himself sitting alone in an airport lounge, looking at his reflection, trying to will himself to catch his prey. The scene is a callback to an image of Graham back at the Leeds’ family home as Graham looks at himself in a bathroom mirror, and the Leeds’ answering machine clicks on. At that moment, The Reds’ “Leed’s House” can be heard. “Graham’s Theme” seems to take off from that earlier cue. The second half of the track is heard as Graham pieces together the process by which Dollarhyde selects his victims. While staring at twin TV sets showing transferred home movies of both families, Graham realizes the killer must have seen these same films. As Graham becomes convinced of this fact, he walks over to a window and seems to stare at his own reflection. The track climaxes with a massive wave of guitars and drums. Graham, having almost destroyed himself by identifying with the ugliest killer he’s ever encountered, reclaims his identity—and sanity.

The final movement of the movie is signaled by the opening horn-like notes of The Prime Movers’ “Strong As I Am.” Written as a personal confrontation with parental abuse, this slow-burn industrial rock number is brilliantly re-contextualized by Mann to indicate Dollarhyde’s final break from reality as he misinterprets an innocent gesture as an act of betrayal.

The movie’s most famous use of music is, of course, Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” The ugliest rock song in music history is used as the theme music for the ugliest serial killer in film history. Having kidnapped Reba from her home, Dollarhyde plays the song as he prepares to complete his transformation into the Red Dragon. His preparation is cross-cut with Graham and the FBI coordinating with local law enforcement agencies to take him down. As the song goes through its numerous instrument solos, the action builds and builds. (There is a sly continuity joke as events that are unfolding over the span of several hours are condensed into a few minutes of screen time. The 17-plus minute song seems to play in its entirety, as if everything was happening in real time.) A specially edited version of the song was prepared for this sequence, allowing Mann to match on-screen action with the music. When Graham is wandering outside Dollarhyde’s isolated home, sensing someone is in danger, the extended organ solo accompanies him. There is real poetry in the way Mann extends the tension of the sequence, creating anxiety in the viewer as Graham breaks from his paralyzing fear and leaps into action. Once he crashes through Dollarhyde’s window, the song’s famous drum solo, with its pounding drum rolls and fills, kicks in and the movie takes off into a whole other dimension. This showdown-at-dawn shoot-out is one of the all-time great pure action set-pieces, aided in no small part by its musical accompaniment.

Alas, the Manhunter soundtrack stumbles with its closing credit song. “Heartbeat,” performed by Genesis’ Mike Rutherford’s side project Red 7, is a decent song but feels truly of the moment. (It doesn’t help that the song reminds you of Don Johnson’s same-name hit single from 1986.) No matter. The Manhunter soundtrack is a one-of-a-kind synth-pop journey into one’s dreams. Once you’ve listened to it, it is impossible to get it out of your head.

San Antonio-based film critic Aaron Aradillas is a contributor to The House Next Door, a contributor to Moving Image Source, and the host of “Back at Midnight,” an Internet radio program about film and television.

 

http://www.movingimagesource.us/flash/mediaplayer.swf?id=52/799

By Matt Zoller Seitz and Aaron Aradillas
Press Play contributors

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first of two Press Play pieces commemorating the 25th anniversary of Manhunter, which was released August 15, 1986. It was originally commissioned as part of a series of five video essays published by Moving Image Source in the summer of 2009. This chapter dealt with Mann's analytical use of close-ups, which reveal psychology and power relationships by the placement of characters' heads in the frame, and the patterns that those placements create when the director cuts from one shot to another during a conversation. The climax of the video essay is a detailed analysis of the final sequence in Manhunter, a police raid on serial killer Francis Dollarhyde's house set to Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida". To read the other article in this package of pieces, Aaron Aradillas' epic analysis of the Manhunter soundtrack, click here.

Manhunter (1986), written and directed by Michael Mann, is best known for introducing Hannibal Lecter, author Thomas Harris's most famous creation, to movie audiences, and for its then unusual choice of hero, an FBI profiler who catches killers by imagining his way into their psyches. But it's also notable for how it distills one of Mann's fascinations: the notion of commonality, meaning the ways in which seemingly distinct people can reflect each other, blur into each other, replicate one another's stories or problems and otherwise show themselves to be part of a continuum that they are not even aware of.

The movie's antagonist, Francis Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan), considers himself a freak and nourishes a deep resentment of suburban nuclear families, which appear, through his eyes, to be living the idealized life he fears he can never have. After studying and consulting with the imprisoned butcher Lecter (Brian Cox), he refashions himself as a destroyer, a Grim Reaper figure who will spread fear through the world by murdering the representatives of so-called "normalcy"—husbands, wives, and children—in their own beds. The film's protagonist is FBI agent Will Graham (William L. Petersen), who catches serial killers by constructing a psychological profile of his quarry and then immersing himself in it, Method-actor-style—a technique that led Graham to capture Lecter but cost him his sanity. The film's two-sided-coin approach has many equivalents elsewhere in Mann's filmography. The director's work is rife with doppelgängers, doubles, and reflections, concepts that are established in the film's screenplays and defined by Mann's filmmaking.

To read the full transcript of the video essay's narration, click here.

San Antonio-based film critic Aaron Aradillas is a contributor to The House Next Door, a contributor to Moving Image Source, and the host of “Back at Midnight,” an Internet radio program about film and television. Matt Zoller Seitz is the TV critic for Salon and the founder and publisher of Press Play. You can view his other Moving Image Source video essays — including his many collaborations with Aaron — by clicking here.

By Matt Zoller Seitz
Press Play Contributor

EDITOR’S NOTE: Press Play again features Matt Zoller Seitz’s latest slide show from Salon. These 10 underrated film and TV stars deserve to be household names.

This slide show is the first installment in a two-parter celebrating the most underrated performers in film and TV. Today’s slide show spotlights 10 underrated actors; we’ll follow up next Friday with 10 underrated actresses.

What makes a performer “underrated”? To me it means that a performer is versatile, works a lot, is recognizable, and is thought of by peers and viewers alike as a net gain for any project, somebody who nearly always improves a scene; and yet when you look at his or her biography, you see surprisingly few awards and nominations next to their names — especially from mainstream organizations. They are well-liked, perhaps even loved, but for whatever reason they aren’t household names.

My admittedly arbitrary cutoff point is an Oscar or Emmy win; if a performer has taken home at least one statuette, they didn’t make my list, because they could no longer be considered “underrated.” If I were the emperor of Hollywood, these are 10 actors I’d let have their pick of the most interesting leading man parts, just to see what they would do. The oldest actor on this list is pushing 80; the youngest is a little over 40 and had his breakthrough as a teenage actor in a Martin Scorsese film. They all have been around the proverbial block more times than you can count, and they are very, very good at what they do.

Readers, I hope you’ll submit your own favorite underrated actors in the Letters section of this piece, and get embroiled in geeky conversations about the definition of “underrated” and whether these 10 actors fit the bill.

Matt’s slide show starts here.

PressPlay founder and publisher Matt Zoller Seitz is the staff TV columnist for Salon.com. His video essays about Terrence Malick, Oliver Stone, Kathryn Bigelow, Budd Boetticher, Wes Anderson, Clint Eastwood, Michael Mann and other directors can be viewed at the The Museum of the Moving Image web site.

By Jonathan Pacheco
Press Play Contributor

I’m sure you’ve seen it before: a movie wants to take an easy satirical jab at the state of TV programming and how it’s rotting the brains of our youth, so it shows some wide-eyed drooling kid watching a cartoon so loud, crass and violent that you know it has to be fake. Ren & Stimpy is that gross and twisted fake show, except quite real. It set the mark for what you could get away with in children’s television, and it had me planted in front of the screen, the drooling kid, poisoning my mind more and more with every passing minute. But that was 20 years ago, and now that I can take in the escapades of Stimpson J. Cat and Ren Höek with a more discerning eye, I can fully appreciate the show’s crude charm while also recognizing how it eventually went wrong after the departure of creator and showrunner John Kricfalusi.

For me, the most fascinating thing about Ren & Stimpy is that you simply can’t trust what you’re shown. You don’t expect a kids’ cartoon to have much episode-to-episode carry over, but this show isn’t even consistent from shot to shot. Missing eyeballs, ripped tongues, specific facial expressions, the way a shirt fits, vomit on a character — none are important enough to warrant continuity between cuts. But continuity isn’t simply ignored here, it’s totally flouted, as if the animators saw every new shot as a fresh opportunity to draw something completely different, damning any rules of animation with a dangerously Ed Wood-like enthusiasm. Interspersed among these shots are the famous gruesome close-ups (“gross-ups?”): detailed, mostly static paintings, typically included to accentuate something disgusting, such as crusty boogers, curly butt hairs or skid marks left by a fart. They’re skillfully crafted frames, to the point where it almost feels like the very concept of each episode was conceived just to animate around these central works of art.

Adding to its bizarre appeal is the show’s timing, but not in the traditional comedic sense. Especially during the first few seasons, Ren & Stimpy punctuates its conversations and actions with frequent lingering pauses. I often wondered if the artists were incapable of animating more than one movement at a time because many actions in a shot happen sequentially rather than simultaneously. Ren smacks his palm in emphasis, pauses, speaks his line, pauses, continues smacking. For some reason, the animation couldn’t (or purposefully refused to) walk and chew gum at the same time, and the humor of this style of pacing, intentional or not, perfectly complements the show’s off-kilter characters with a sort of dimwitted vibe.

After Nickelodeon fired Kricfalusi midway through the second season thanks to struggles with censorship and the showrunner’s inability to deliver episodes on schedule, animation duties were passed from John K.’s Spümcø to Nickelodeon’s in-house Games Animation department, and the directing reigns were given to Bob Camp. Fans of the show lamented the loss of its creator’s auteurist touch and noticed a sharp drop in overall quality. As a kid during the time of the switch, I saw no difference; still lots of violence, fart jokes and “gross-ups,” right? So what’s to complain about? These post-Kricfalusi seasons — up until the show’s cancellation after its fifth year — do have their moments and even some great episodes (an all-time favorite will always be “Ren’s Pecs,” in which the fat of Stimpy’s apple bottom is used for Ren’s studly chest implants), but viewing these seasons now, I clearly see reason for disappointment. By Season 4, there really is a noticeable difference in animation quality. Most of the episodes feel cheaply and hastily created, abandoning nuance for less creative facial expressions and easier visual gags. Even the painted close-ups are mostly lifeless, and, in some episodes, used so frequently as to indicate the work of an imitator rather than an originator, as if the animators were following a checklist. Call me crazy, but I saw love and affection in the way Spümcø and Carbunkle Cartoons crafted Stimpy’s buttcrack and Ren’s bugging eyeballs.

The writing similarly follows a lazy pattern. There’s a good amount of thought put into the progression of jokes and violence in the earlier seasons, leading to some brilliant climaxes; if you need proof, just re-watch “Mad Dog Höek.” The later seasons struggle to find this same rhythm. A childhood favorite episode of mine from this era, “Blazing Entrails,” begins promisingly with a more-braindead-than-usual Stimpy hopping out of bed to brush his teeth with a hammer, and the next morning cooking Ren an aromatic breakfast, only his hanging tongue ends up being the crispy bacon and his blinking, bloodshot eyeballs are the eggs. However, watching the episode now, I see how remarkably boring the rest of it is as Ren enters Stimpy’s enlarged body, treating us to a series of lame virus and organs jokes before Ren eventually fights off an Ignorant Gland with a choke hold on Stimpy’s tiny brain. Episodes like that feel like they’re just going through the motions.

A key element missing from “Blazing Entrails” present in the likes of “Son of Stimpy” or even “Ren’s Pecs,” is the true affection between our beloved cat and dog, despite the show’s defiant stance against being a “lessons” program (admittedly, “Son of Stimpy” is one of Kricfalusi’s purposefully “warmer” episodes, meant to appease Nickelodeon, allowing him to keep doing crazier stories). Sure, Stimpy’s love for Ren, really more motherly than homosexual despite what most people like to claim, is clear throughout the show’s entire run, but there’s a sweetness to Ren’s fragility and dependency on his friend, despite his irrepressible violence and verbal abuse. The characters worked because you saw why they were lifemates, and too much of that insight was slowly lost during the Bob Camp/Games Animation era.

Kricfalusi didn’t always have the golden touch. In 2003, he revived his characters in the ill-advised Spike TV spin-off, Ren & Stimpy “Adult Party Cartoon.” To appease the network’s request for a more extreme version of the show, John K. threw out his inhibitions along with every ounce of subtlety and innuendo in favor of incredibly cheap sexual and scatological jokes — and that’s saying something, considering the show’s reputation. (In the opening moments of the first episode, Ren tricks Stimpy into kissing a squirrel’s dirty anus. Welcome back, John Kricfalusi.) In this new rendition, Ren and Stimpy are now blatantly homosexual, or bisexual, since they both still love the ladies, most famously in the unaired episode “Naked Beach Frenzy,” in which the two, working as shower attendants, jump at the chance to soap up some boobs. Not too much of a stretch for these characters, even though we should remind ourselves that we are talking about a dog and a cat here. The problem is how obsessed the show is with this idea in the most unimaginative and unfunny ways. “Altruists” spends a good two minutes on a scene where Ren straps a long handsaw to his hip and begins cutting away at a log propped on Stimpy’s backside by thrusting his hips back and forth. A lot of more thrusting and moaning later, Ren finishes, handsaw limp, leaving a deposit of sawdust on his partner’s back. When you think it couldn’t get any worse, Stimpy, still with the residue on him, asks Ren if he would stay and cuddle, to which Ren responds, “Shame on you! Clean that shit up,” tossing a rag at the tearful cat.

It’s very easy and quite popular to bag on “Adult Party Cartoon,” but it’s mostly for good reason. Even as a college freshman when the show premiered, right in the show’s demographic, I always felt it was way off in its approach. Not too surprisingly, the censorship of Nickelodeon and inherent restrictions of early ’90s kids’ TV pushed Kricfalusi and Spümcø to greater creativity, cleverly redefining the limits of what could be gotten away with. Greater freedom on Spike TV led to lazier conception and writing.

The once untouchable legacy of Ren & Stimpy is now a mixed bag in my eyes. My adoration for its raw, crude, insane take on comedy is as strong now as it was when I was 10 years old and attempting the “Happy Happy, Joy Joy” butt bounce dance with my sister (I know we weren’t the only ones to try it, though we were probably the only ones to try it naked). But even if you somehow discard the “Adult Party Cartoon” fiasco, it’s difficult to ignore that the show’s best days were behind it before it even made it halfway through its run. But what a crazy run it had.

This piece can also be read at Edward Copeland on Film here.

Jonathan Pacheco contributes film and theater criticism to The House Next Door and Edward Copeland on Film while only pretending to write on his own site, Bohemian Cinema. In order to eat, he works in the Dallas area as a darn good web developer. Follow him on Twitter, if you like.

By Kevin B. Lee
Press Play Contributor

EDITOR’S NOTE: As part of Keyframe’s ongoing spotlight on the films of Cinema Guild, Press Play features a double shot of video essays edited by Kevin B. Lee — both discussing the themes of Claire Denis’ acclaimed family drama 35 Shots of Rum. The first essay is based on film critic Roger Ebert’s four star review of 35 Shots of Rum published last year. The second essay cleverly combines video footage of the film with an audio interview of director Claire Denis, recorded at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival. These essays can be viewed on Fandor here.

Essay #1: Roger Ebert on 35 Shots of Rum

Read Roger Ebert’s full review of 35 Shots of Rum. And if you’re missing Ebert’s actual voice from this video, catch several vintage clips of his on-air reviews at Ebert presents At The Movies.

Essay #2: Director Claire Denis on 35 Shots of Rum

Music tracks “Opening” and “Train Montage” featured on the video are by Tindersticks from the 35 Shots of Rum soundtrack, available from Constellation Records.