July 2005

So I went to pick up my copy of Million Dollar Baby on DVD and just sitting there was the Special Edition DVD of Rocky.  What’s a guy to do?  So I ended up spending a night with two boxing films that took home the Oscar for Best Picture.  So let’s get ready for some boxin’!  In this corner we have the champion of boxing movies, the eternal underdog who makes good on his one shot, the Italian Stallion, Rocky Balboa.  And in the other corner we have the challenger, a woman from humble trailer park beginnings, trained by Dirty Harry, Mo Cuishle, Maggie Fitzgerald.  So which is the better DVD, it’s a close call, and sure to go the distance.  Read on dear viewer, read on.

Rocky and Million Dollar Baby
4 & 1/2 Stars

So I went to pick up my copy of Million Dollar Baby on DVD and just sitting there was the Special Edition DVD of Rocky.  What’s a guy to do?  So I ended up spending a night with two boxing films that took home the Oscar for Best Picture.  So let’s get ready for some boxin’!  In this corner we have the champion of boxing movies, the eternal underdog who makes good on his one shot, the Italian Stallion, Rocky Balboa.  And in the other corner we have the challenger, a woman from humble trailer park beginnings, trained by Dirty Harry, Mo Cuishle, Maggie Fitzgerald.  So which is the better DVD, it’s a close call, and sure to go the distance.  Read on dear viewer, read on.

Always protect yourself

Million Dollar Baby
Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood) was one of the best cut men in the boxing game.  Now he owns a gym with the help of his old-time friend Scrap (Morgan Freeman).  Frankie’s life is not a happy one.  He has an estranged daughter who he writes every week, but whose letters are always returned unopened.  He attends Catholic mass every day without fail as he is haunted by some past sin.  And he has lost his boxer to another manager who can guarantee him a title shot.  Into his life walks a thirty-one year old woman named Maggie Fitzgerald (Hillary Swank) who wants Frankie to train her and won’t take no for an answer.  Frankie isn’t interested in training a girl, but Maggie slowly starts to wear down his resolve.  Finally Frankie agrees and Maggie starts to live her dream in the ring. 

The movie is never about what you think its about.  It travels a winding road of subtle and abrupt turns, much like life.  This was by far the best of theatrical releases of 2004.  Besides Best Picture it won Eastwood a Best Director Oscar, Swank a Best Actress Oscar, and Freeman a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.  The films performances are just unbelievable, and Eastwood’s direction shows a style that doesn’t mind not showing or telling the audience everything, something I wish other current directors would learn from.  The world of Frankie and Maggie is filled with many odd and interesting stories that would be cut out of a lesser film.  The best of these are Danger (Jay Baruchel), a young man with absolutely no boxing talent who punches air around the gym and is constantly yelling out a challenge to fight Thomas “Hitman” Hearns, and Father Horvak (Brian F. O’Byrne) a preacher who Frankie torments on a daily basis with questions like “So is Jesus a Demigod?”  The films many plot turns and multiple stories are held together by Freeman’s low key narration which tells us as much about our characters as the sport of boxing.  Freeman effortlessly finds just the right notes for each scene and brings us fully into this world.

The two disc collection ($29.95) has some nice extras.  We are given two different documentaries, one on the producers and the production aspect of the film and a second documentary on the making of the film.  Both are well done.  The other extra is a short interview with Eastwood, Swank, and Freeman talking with James Lipton.  I have to admit being disappointed with this extra.  Lipton spends most of the interview plugging his own show and shamelessly kissing up to the actors; not much new stuff here especially if you have already seen Lipton interview these actors separately.  The movie’s trailer is also included.  The glaring oversight here is the lack of even a single commentary track, especially for a movie of this caliber in terms of acting, action sequences, and how the film is lit and shot.

Yo, Adrian!

Rocky
Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) is a man with few positives in his life.  His boxing career is going nowhere, he’s got a dead-end job as a leg breaker for a small time mobster, his best friend Paulie (Burt Young) is a loudmouthed drunk whose sister Adrian (Talia Shire) won’t give him the time of day, and he’s just lost his locker at the local gym run by Mickey (Burgess Meredith).  Rocky is given his one shot at greatness when the opponent for the heavyweight champion Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) backs out only five weeks before the fight leaving an opening for a no-name contender.  Rocky accepts Mickey as his manager, tries to win Adrian’s heart,  and trains for what will be his one chance to prove himself that he is more than just a bum.

The movie is less a story about a man’s chance at greatness than about a man proving his worth to himself.  Rocky never really considers he has a chance to win.  For him the victory is the chance to finish the fight still standing, to do what no one has been able to do and take Creed the distance.  Although there are several wonderful pieces here (directing, acting, cinema photography, score, fight sequences) this is Stallone’s shining moment.  The fact that he wrote this screenplay and held onto it until a studio was willing to let him play the lead role is a great Hollywood story.  The supporting cast is just terrific, and the fight sequences are as well filmed as anything you would see today.  You also get a strong feel for the town of Philadelphia which would be played on further in the sequels.

The Special Edition ($14.95) is chocked full of goodies.  First, we get a commentary track that includes director John G Avildsen, producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff, and actors Talia Shire, Burt Young, and Carl Weathers.  The only one missing here is Stallone himself.  There is also a short “video commentary” with Stallone that is really more of an interview with intercut scenes, but is still very good.  Aside from the commentary we get a short documentary from the director which goes into detail of how the fight scenes were shot and actually takes a look at some of the original 8mm footage that was used, trailers and television spots, a short tribute to Burgess Meredith, and a short tribute to the cinema photographer James Crabe.  Really stocked full of great stuff here for just a one disc DVD.

No knockout here folks, so we have to go to the ref’s scorecards for the decision.  I think both of these are worthy DVDs to add to any collection, but if you had to pick one only….well that’s a tough one.  For half the cost and more extras including commentary I’m inclined to go with Rocky rather than Million Dollar Baby, although I honestly don’t think you could go wrong either way.  Both are boxing movies, but neither is solely about boxing.  The main characters in each are searching for their place in the world and in the ring, and they both are given a shot late in the life of their careers to succeed when no one thinks they can.  These are stories about people whose lives have threatened to pass them by and are given one chance to prove that they can succeed and prove their worth.

Performance artist Miranda July writes and directs her first feature film
Christine (Miranda July), part-time video artist, part-time elder care driver takes one of her clients shopping for shoes and spies the love of her life, the wide-eyed, newly separated, shoe salesman, Richard (John Hawkes, Deadwood). She knows nothing about his life, but, she is in love and determined in her quest of him, almost to the point of seeming like a stalker, a benign stalker.

Richard, still healing from many wounds, one self-inflicted (he purposely pours lighter fluid on his hand, lights it on fire and seems surprised that he is burning) and his emotional wounds. He is trying to start a new life without his wife, in a cramped apartment, with two sons, preteen Peter (Miles Thompson) and grade school age, Bobby (Brandon Radcliffe), both of whom are like strangers to him. They are silent in their anger and have shut him out of their lives. They prefer to connect and communicate with strangers in online chat rooms, playing the game of not being themselves, online, just like adults.
Young neighbor and school mate of Peter, Slyvie (the excellent Carlie Westerman) is obsessed with order and buying household items for her dowry. Her happiness comes from connecting with neatly ironed towel sets and the latest kitchen gadget, dreaming of her perfect future. She has connected with her soul mate and doesn’t know it.
Two, much too adult, fourteen year old neighbor girls, Heather (Natasha Slayton) and Rebecca (Najarra Townsend) find their connections by teasing Richard’s co-worker, Andrew (busy character actor Brad William Henke) to the point of where he leaves them explicit messages, taped to his living room window. In their quest to find out which one on them is better at fellatio, they capture and use a strangely detached Peter for their own version of a double-blind study. No doubt this scene will make some uncomfortable in its frank look at the activities of today’s sexually aware, but still naïve, youth.
All of these different narratives and more mix, match and intersect to tell an off-beat love story.

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Rock and Roll! Drugs! Furry Animal Costumes! Ladies and gentlemen, The Flaming Lips!

The Flaming Lips SMASH!

One of current rock’s most creative forces, The Flaming Lips, have had a rather unusual success story. Hailing from Oklahoma City in the early 80’s, they created a noisy and anarchic brand of psychedelic punk rock that found a cult audience of true freaks but bewildered most. As time went on the band somehow secured a major record label contract in the early 90’s, had a novelty alternative hit with a song called “She Don’t Use Jelly”, and was poised to be the next one-hit-wonder band of the mid 90’s to never be heard from again.
Then, a curious thing happened. They came out with two stellar albums in a row, 1999’s The Soft Bulletin and 2002’s Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, which gave them both critical raves and commercial success. A newly released documentary DVD, The Fearless Freaks, takes a look inside the band members’ personal lives while giving a slight history of how they got to be where they are today.

In The Fearless Freaks, filmmaker Bradley Beesley tries to give us two things: a history of the band and an intimate look at what makes them tick. The history is very disorganized and doesn’t give the viewer a very good idea of how the band progressed from scrappy, noisy punks to adventurous purveyors of orchestrated pop. None of the band’s five albums before their breakthrough Transmissions from the Satellite Heart are really discussed and there are few insights given into how they actually create any of their music.

While Freaks fails on the historical front, it wholly succeeds in providing a very personal document of the band’s origins, home lives, families, and even some of their troubles. The bulk of the movie is made up of current interviews with singer/guitarist Wayne Coyne and drummer/keyboardist/guitarist/all-around musical whiz Steven Drozd. Wayne’s childhood is discussed extensively, with a good portion of the film’s running time devoted to interviews with his family members (one of which was the band’s original singer). While watching these scenes it quickly becomes apparent that growing up in a culturally isolated place like Oklahoma City in the 70’s created the foundation of the band’s weirdness. The gang mentality that Wayne and his siblings had combined with the strange white-trash nature of the people involved make Oklahoma in the 70’s almost seem like a different planet (and this is coming from someone who grew up in Oklahoma about three hours away from the Coyne’s). All of this actually makes the band seem more mythical and strange.

A real turning point in the band came in 1991 with the addition of Steven Drozd. His musicality and ability to play multiple instruments gave the band a sharper focus and eventually steered them towards the kind of music they are making today. Of course, being a talented artist has its price, and Steven’s problems with substance abuse nearly ended the band on a few occasions. This is discussed with such openness that parts of the last third of the movie are a bit shocking, but it makes for very compelling viewing.

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