The Beatles Invade America All Over Again In New Disney+ Doc

BEATLES ’64 (Dir. David Tedeschi, 2024)

There was a sketch on the IFC show Portlandia in which comedian Fred Armisen decides he wants to make a documentary about the Beatles. Despite his friend/comedy partner Carrie Brownstein skeptically replying “seems like there are so many,” Fred isn’t dissuaded, and declares that he will bring a new spin to the oft told tale, saying it’ll be about “Four mop-topped lads from Liverpool who changed the world…forever!” 

 

The rest of the sketch has Fred telling anyone who’ll listen what he’ll have in his film - the Beatles arrival at JFK, their Ed Sullivan Show appearance, their psychedelic experimentation, etc. – obviously all the expected historical highlights of the band’s career that have been done to death. The joke that Armisen had no new angle, spin, or take on the Fab Four for yet another doc came to my mind when I first heard about BEATLES ’64, which premieres on Disney+ this Friday, November 29.

 

Now, this Portlandia bit was from ten years ago, and there have been lots of Beatles docs since then - even one funnily enough about the band’s 1965 visit to Portland – but I had to wonder what new could be brought to the table about a period that was pretty well covered by Albert and David Maysles’ THE BEATLES: THE FIRST U.S. VISIT or THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY or HOW THE BEATLES CHANGED THE WORLD or…well, you get the idea.

 

So the big selling point of David Tedeschi’s BEATLES ’64 (produced by Martin Scorsese) is that it features 17 minutes of never-before-seen footage that comes from the 11 hours of film the Maysles brothers shot for a program entitled What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A., which was aired on CBS in late 1964 as a special episode of the TV show, The Entertainers.

That show was later re-edited for the 1991 home video release, THE FIRST U.S. VISIT. Now, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen that on VHS in the ‘90s, so I can’t say how much overlap there is here, but as a big fan of John, Paul, George, and Ringo, I am delighted to report that this third take on the material delivers a fresh, insightful exploration of that crazy time when the Beatlemania epidemic swept the country.

BEATLES '64 gives viewers quality time with their prized Pepsi vending machine replica transistor radio.

Tedeschi deftly packages the narrative of the Beatles arrival in America, and the days leading to their legendary appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, with present day commentary from Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr, who we see showing his collection of clothes and gear to Scorsese (so makes me want a mini-series of Marty and Ringo just hanging out). 

There are also fascinating and funny interviews with Ronnie Spector, Smokey Robinson, and most touching, David Lynch, who saw the Beatles in Washington D.C. a few days after their stateside debut on Sullivan. There’s also a sideline story that producer Jack Douglas tells about travelling to Liverpool to tap into that Merseybeat magic, but not being able to perform without a visa and work permits might perplex at first, but pays off amusingly.

 

Another selling point is that the black and white footage pops with sharp crispness, which isn’t surprising as it was restored in 4K by Beatlemaniac Peter Jackson. And, of course, the music all sounds terrific, not just the Beatles, but of their contemporaries like Robinson, the Supremes, and Little Richard. 

 

In moments that play like a real-life A HARD DAY’S NIGHT, we see the guys clowning around in their Plaza Hotel room with highlights being when a cheeky McCartney tells the cameraman to “defy convention!” and shoot them from a lower angle so the mike can be seen, which he does to clapping from the group and entourage, and when Lennon calls a reporter a “wanker.” Meanwhile, the hubbub happening outside the Beatles’ bubble plays like a real-life I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND (Robert Zemeckis’ 1978 comedy about fans trying to get close to the band at the hotel) with groupies praising their beloved in street interviews, and being caught in the hallways by cops and hotel security.

 

All of this comes together now as a highly worthwhile watch even if you feel like you’ve seen and heard it all before. It’s especially recommended if the Beatles are new to you, and you don’t know how it went down, but I doubt many of those people would’ve read this far. Three years ago this week, Jackson’s monumental, and wonderful three part/eight hour GET BACK project was released, so if BEATLES ’64 is supposed to continue the trend for future Thanksgiving weekends, I’ll say what Paul’s father suggested should be the repeated refrain in “She Loves You,” - “yes, yes, yes.”

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GET BACK Takes LET IT BE And Turns It Into A Beatles Extravaganza

Now streaming exclusively on Disney Plus:

The BEATLES: GET BACK 
(Dir. Peter Jackson, 2021)

In the 1978 Beatles parody, All You Need is Lunch, narrator, Monty Python’s Eric Idle announced that “in the midst of all this public bickering, Let it Rot was released as a film, an album, and a lawsuit.”

But while this three-part documentary doesn’t touch on any of the legalities surrounding the project, Idle’s spoof acknowledges that for a long time there’s been a dark cloud hovering above the Beatles’ original swan song. 

 

Now, the reason for this reputation comes down to the oft told narrative that the Beatles went into the GET BACK/LET IT BE production hating each other, suffered dreary sessions with mediocre material, and the film is a sloppy, badly edited rockumentary. 

 

Although the film was released in the early ‘80s on Beta, VHS, and laserdisc, it soon went out of print was never re-issued on DVD, Blu ray, or any home video format. The word is that Paul McCartney has regularly blocked re-issues of LET IT BE, but it should be noted that George Harrison, John Lennon, and Ringo Starr also despised the film.

 

So after 40 years, we’ve got this delicious docu-series that shapes the Michael Lindsay-Hogg shot footage into a trilogy treasure trove of revelatory footage. The story is now an accessible breakdown of the Beatles’ final days that at times makes us feel like we’re in the same room as the Fab Four.

 

Each entry begins with this disclaimer: “The GET BACK project in January 1969 produced over 60 hours of film footage, and more than 150 hours of studio recordings.” 

 

Part 1 kicks off with a 10-minute montage of old Beatles footage to give us their backstory leading up to 1969. This recap will surely be seen as redundant to many as these are tales well told, but nonetheless they get us to speed.

We join the Beatles as they rehearse at Twickenham Film Studios, where the plan is for the group to write, rehearse, and play live 14 new songs in two weeks for a TV special. Their time is short because the studio is due to be used for the shooting of THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN, starring Ringo and Peter Sellers. As they sit in front of Ringo’s drums, the boys appear to be in good spirits as they joke around and jam on such tunes as “I’ve Got a Feeling” and “Don’t Like Me Down.”

One of the most famous bits from the LET IT BE movie is when George and Paul seemingly have a scuffle in which George says “I'll play, you know, whatever you want me to play. Or I won't play at all, if you don't want me to play.” While it played as a harsh moment in Hogg’s film, we get to see it in full context, and understand that it was simply band bickering.

 

After an hour and a half of Beatle babbling (funny that George seems to be the most vocal in this first segment), working out songs, some of which are destined to later solo albums, covers of tunes by Dylan, Chuck Berry, Ben E.King, and even Hank Williams, the film builds up to a cliff hanger. One the members ups and quits (no Spoilers).

 

Part 2 gets even juicier as we hear a private conversation of John and Paul recorded by the filmmakers with a hidden microphone in a flower pot. This is followed by more of the same as the boys flesh the new songs out (expect a lot of “I’ve Got a Feeling,” “Two of Us,” and, of course, the title tune), engage in witty chats, and a pop-in by Peter Sellers, but it’s a bit of a let-down as he barely says anything. The Beatles then take their operations to familiar ground, the studio at Apple Headquarters, but not before Paul lays down a demo of “Oh, Darling” as the lights go out. Also, the TV special concept is abandoned.

 

But despite the change in scenery, the Beatles intend to go forward with their plan of recording songs without edits or overdubs, and now the idea to use the footage for a feature film. So as the lads from Liverpool goof around in the studio, the day that they need to come up with a big finale for the film looms nearer. So after considering several locations, they decide on the rooftop at Apple for their grand conclusion.

 

This brings us to Part 3, which contains the meat of the matter: the Apple rooftop performance – one of the most famous farewells in rock history, first though we’ve got to go through well over an hour of more studio stuff, but since this includes film of the Beatles cutting the version that appears on the album, Let it Be, it’s okay by me.”

Now, having seen LET IT BE numerous times, I don’t think it’s as doom and gloom some folks think, but Jackson’s new fangled remix is a massive improvement. This is apparent in the rooftop climax, which now can be seen as a joyous concert after the Beatles’ fruitful time in the studio. Without the time limitation, Jackson is able to use more songs, and make some amusing drama out of the cops that showed up to try shut down the gig. Also the people on the street get some funny moments answering the interviewer’s questions.

Jackson really pulled it off here. It seems his work on his first doc, the excellent 2018 war documentary THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD, proved to him where he could go in interpreting history. 

 

While neither LET IT BE nor GET BACK contain my favorite batch of Beatles songs, I have a new perspective on the material from seeing the Beatles working on songs, bullshitting with each other, and experiencing those precious moments when inspiration takes hold. Just be prepared for hours and hours of that. A lot of folks who aren’t hardcore Beatles fans, may find GET BACK boring, but since a large percentage of the world’s population are hardcore Beatle fans, that’s alright.

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NON EXCLUSIVE: A Sneak Peek At Peter Jackson’s GET BACK & More

Another NON EXCLUSIVE! Sure, most everyone who has any interest has already seen this, but I still wanted to blog about the first look at Sir Peter Jackson’s upcoming rockumentary THE BEATLES: GET BACK due out sometime in 2021. Plus I want to give some back story to the project, which Jackson assures is a lot more that a reworking of the material that made up LET IT BE, which documented the beginning (or maybe the middle) of the end of Beatles’ career. But first, here’s the nearly 6 minute clip that just dropped today with an intro by the LORD OF THE RINGS filmmaker:

As you can see this lively, fun montage centering around a rehearsal of the classic “Get Back” indeed whets fans appetite for the finished film. But how did we get here? Well, Sherman set the wayback machine for early 1970 when the Beatles got together at a sound stage at Twickenham Film Studios, where they shot scenes for their films A HARD DAY’S NIGHT and HELP!, to rehearse songs for their next record, intended to be a back to their roots record (advertised with the tagline: “The Beatles as nature intended”) with the working title of “Get Back,” after McCartney’s newly written rocker. Director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who had shot a batch of the group’s promotional films, and a crew were hired to shoot John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr as they worked on new songs.

The sessions were frankly kind of boring, and had some cringe-worthy moments when the tired-looking blokes were caught bickering by the cameras. They moved the project to Apple Headquarters and things went a bit better as they laid down the studio tracks for the album that would come to be named Let it Be. The grand finale involved the Beatles performing a set on the rooftop of Apple, which concluded with “Get Back” as police approached.

In Eric Idle’s Beatles parody, The Rutles: All You Need is Cash, Idle’s David Frost-style narrator said, “In the midst of all this public bickering, Let It Rot was released as a film, an album and a lawsuit.” This wasn’t far off, as there were pesky legalities in the dissolution of the band. As the band wasn’t really happy with either the album (Lennon said the “recordings were the shittiest pieces of shit we ever recorded”), they decided to go out on a much higher note with their final album, Abbey Road, though it was released in 1969 before the Let it Be album, and movie dropped in 1970, one month after the Beatles’ break-up.

In the years following its release, the film, LET IT BE, was shown on TV multiple times, but nowhere near as much as the Beatles’ other movies. In the ‘80s it was released on videotape on both VHS and Beta formats, but it went out of print before the end of the decade. Still, I remember seeing copies of it (on VHS, not Beta) at various video stores in the ‘90s, but it was still hard to find, and currently it sells for hundreds of dollars on eBay. 

In 2003, a new remix of the album entitled Let it Be...Naked was overseen by McCartney, who wanted to fix the songs that he felt producer Phil Spector ruined, in particular removing the orchestra from “A Long and Winding Road,” and stripping down other tracks. 

At the same time, it was planned to re-master and re-release the movie on DVD, but both McCartney and Starr felt that it was still too dark to re-visit and blocked the release. In 2016, McCartney spoke in an interview about finally putting it out: “I keep bringing it up, and everyone goes, ‘Yeah, we should do that.’ The objection should be me. I don’t come off well.”

The full film of LET IT BE has shown up on YouTube in fairly decent quality over the years, but has been quickly taken down. The last time I looked it wasn’t there.

Cut to 2019, when it’s announced that Jackson will be tackling the 56 hours of footage the Lindsay-Hogg shot, and putting together a new version of the project which will revert to the original title, GET BACK. Jackson’ intent is to construct a film that utilizes different, unseen footage of the Beatles from the sessions, and give the material a more uplifting spirit. As Sir Jackson said at the time, “Sure, there’s moments of drama - but none of the discord this project has long been associated with.”

The other good news is that the original LET IT BE will finally get a re-release, although only in a digital format. Still, that’s something.

As the above montage shows a lot of promise, this is an exciting time for fans who have waited for the redemption of the reputation of this ill-fated project. With the success of his 2018 doc, THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD, which featured painstakingly restored footage from WWI, Jackson has shown that he can pull off wonders in reviving history. I do wonder how he’s going to deal with the legendary rooftop concert as the original film contained a great deal of the performance. You can’t really have a film about this chapter in the Beatles’ story without it, so he’s got to include it.

I am beyond psyched to see THE BEATLES: GET BACK as soon as I can. The set release date is August 27, 2021 - 51 years, and a few months, after both the album and film, LET IT BE, originally dropped. Here’s hoping that we’ll all still be around next summer to see it.

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Holiday Season Cinema Roundup 2012 Part 1

This hasn’t been the strongest holiday movie season I’ve experienced (how could it be without the Coen brothers or George Clooney?), but it’s a pretty strong one with a few entertaining epics, a couple of decent comedies, and one big overwrought musical competing for movie-goers attention.

So let’s take a look at what’s currently playing as the year is ending:

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK 
(Dir. David O. Russell)

Although it must be stressed that this is ultimately a best-case scenario rom com, this tale of a bio-polar Bradley Cooper getting together with Jennifer Lawrence as a neurotic widower has a punchy screenplay that’s energetically (and very loudly) delivered by the leads, including Robert De Niro, in one of his most invested performance in years, as Cooper’s Philadelphia Eagles superfan father. Chris Tucker, who keeps popping up after repeatedly escaping from Cooper’s former mental institution, adds to the film’s already plentiful laughs. Director and screenwriter Russell's last film, 2010's THE FIGHTER, was a winner as well, so here's hoping he's on a roll.

HITCHCOCK 
(Dir. Sacha Gervasi)   

Sacha Gervasi’s (2008's rock doc ANVIL: THE STORY OF ANVIL) second film as director boasts a stellar cast - Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson, Toni Collett, and Danny Huston – but a not so stellar story. The conceit that every good idea that went into the making of the classic 1960 thriller PSYCHO came not from the Master of Suspense, but from his wife Alma falls flat in the midst of these fine actors being put through T.V. movie-ish motions. Read my full review here.

THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (Dir. Peter Jackson)

Peter Jackson takes us on another sweeping slog through Middle Earth in this prequel set 60 years before THE LORD OF THE RINGS series. Martin Freeman, best known as Tim on the mockumentary sitcom The Office [UK], stars as Bilbo Baggins who reluctantly finds himself on a quest with an unruly band of dwarves to overtake what looks like the Paramount mountain. I saw it in HFR (Higher Frame Rate) 3D, but, although it looked exquisitely sharp, it wasn’t as immersive an experience as I’d heard. Probably would’ve been just as well off with the 2D version.

There are some amazing heavily CGI-ed sequences, including battles and chases inside an elaborate underground city that comes off like THE TEMPLE OF DOOM times 100, but you can really feel its length (169 min.), and the idea that this is just part one of another trilogy seems to come more from greed than pure inspiration. 

But that's too cynical of me. This is really for the legions of Tolkien fans who can’t get enough of this stuff and will love spending more time with Ian McKellen’s Gandalf, and getting cameos from Frodo (Elijah Wood), and Ian Holms as the older incarnation of Bilbo who presents the story as a flashback. What I enjoyed most was Bilbo's cave encounter with the slimy creature Gollum (once again beautifully played by motion-capture specialist Andy Serkis), which is nicely faithful to the original Tolkien text.

 DJANGO UNCHAINED 
(Dir. Quentin Tarantino)

Tarantino’s blaxploitation Western is also a long-ass film (165 min!) that could’ve been served by better editing (sadly his long-time editor Sally Menke died in 2010), but it’s still a hugely entertaining epic that tackles revenge, slavery, and possibly contains the most excessive use of the “N-word” in cinematic history. 

Jamie Fox stars as a slave who gets freed by a former dentist played by Christoph Waltz who offers Fox a new job as a bounty hunter. Together, they set off to rescue Fox’s wife (Kerry Washington) from the plantation of the brutal yet charming Leonardo DiCaprio. The film drags a bit in DiCaprio’s company, which includes Samuel L. Jackson as his cruel conniving house slave, but when its “on” it's a blast. Read my full review here.

Coming soon: Part 2 of Film Babble Blog's Holiday Season 2012 Roundup.

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THE LOVELY BONES: The Film Babble Blog Review

THE LOVELY BONES (Dir. Peter Jackson, 2009)

“I was fourteen years old when I was murdered on December 6th, 1973.” So says Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) at the beginning of this adaptation of Alice Sebold’s 2002 best seller. Ronan’s voice-over comes not from beyond the grave, but from she calls “the blue horizon between heaven and earth.” 

There’s no mystery to how she got there - a creepy neighbor (Stanley Tucci) in her family’s Norristown, Pennsylvanian suburb lured her into an underground bunker he built in a nearby field. 

In the months afterwards her disappearance throws her parents (Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz) into domestic disarray while her sister (Rose McIver) starts to suspect Tucci. Ronan, well cast with her ocean colored eyes, watches her family from the mythic realm, which is not unlike the vivid ultra-colorful heaven of WHAT DREAMS MAY COME, as she walks from one spectacular landscape to the next hoping to reconcile the messy end of her life and move on. 

LORD OF THE RINGS visionary Peter Jackson keeps the camera moving with swooping crane shots and cuts with a good sense of juxtaposition, but the story is too drawn out to create much suspense. It’s an immaculately made movie, but it appears to be missing enough soul to really pull us in and make us care. It also suffers from a strongly misplaced thread involving Susan Sarandon as the Mrs. Robinson-esque alcoholic grandmother with her bouffant hair, mink coats, and always present cigarette dangling from her fingers. A montage in which she attempts to help out and clean house should’ve been edited out – I understand that they felt the film needed some sort of comic relief, but this really feels forced.

Though overwrought at times, Wahlberg puts in a decent performance, at least better than in THE HAPPENING, as the obsessed father who constantly calls upon an investigating detective (Michael Imperioli from The Sopranos) to run checks on every possible suspect. 

It seems that they look into everybody in town before they get to Tucci, which is surprising since he lives across the street from the victim’s family. “These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections - sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent.” Ronan’s concluding musings are apt, for there is magnificence in this film - visually speaking that is. 

Otherwise, the connections are too tenuous and its pace is too plodding. I haven't read the book on which it's based, but I suspect that its most stirring passages were too cerebral to be translated to the big screen. 

At least as far as this film adaptation goes, THE LOVELY BONES is sadly a supremely unsatisfying experience.

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Without A Hitch - 10 Definitive Directors' Cameos In Their Own Movies

As film geeks throughout the blogosphere well know, an appearance by a director in their own film is a tradition established by Alfred Hitchcock. Hitch (or “Cock” as Teri Garr once claimed she called him to Francois Truffaut) had brief but notable appearances in 37 of his 52 films. 

Obviously excluding those who act in sizable roles in their own films (Woody Allen, Sylvester Stallone, Orson Welles, etc.) these are my favorites of the film maker folks that followed in Hitch's footsteps:

1. Martin Scorsese in TAXI DRIVER (1976)

Scorsese has had brief bit cameos in a lot of his movies but it's this appearance credited as "Passenger watching silhouette" that makes the biggest impression. 

As a nervous gun totting cuckolded husband, Scorsese tells his cabbie Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) to pull over and stay parked with the meter running outside the building where his wife is with another man. He talks about his revenge fantasy involving his 44 Magnum in the only scene in the movie in which we are creeped out by somebody other than the title character. 

What puts this at the top of the list is that Scorsese actually shows some acting chops and a persuasive presence. His later performances in other's movies, particularly Akira Kurosawa's DREAMS and Robert Redford's QUIZ SHOW, confirm TAXI DRIVER's hinted at prowess. Incidentally Scorsese can also be seen in a daylight street scene shot earlier in the film.

2. John Huston in THE TREASURE OF SIERRE MADRE (1948) Another American master who appeared in many movies, his own and others', Huston stole a short but sweet scene from star Humphrey Bogart in this undeniable classic. Bogart's down on his luck character Fred C. Dobbs makes the mistake of trying to bum money 3 times from Huston as an "American in Tampico in white suit."

Huston reluctantly complies but warns: "But from now on, you have to make your way through life without my assistance."

Luckily this was nothing but a movie line - Bogart and Huston assisted each other on a couple more classics afterwards (KEY LARGO and THE AFRICAN QUEEN).

3. Roman Polanski in CHINATOWN (1974) Perhaps it's been all the op ed pieces on Polanski lately (Sometimes that have the same screen capture I have here) that helped to inspire this list but whatever the case this is a colossally classic cameo. In less than a minute of screen time, as a thug that Jack Nicholson's Jake Gittes dismisses as a "midget", Polanski convinces us that he actually slices Nicholson's nose with a switchblade. It's a moment that's impossible to forget:

4. George Lucas in STAR WARS: EPISODE III - REVENGE OF THE SITH (2005) This is movie director as extra. For a member of a crowd scene in the last STAR WARS series entry (or the third if you're into the revisionist re-jiggling thing), Lucas got himself decked out in alien garb and gave himself a name: Baron Papanoida. There's an oddly lengthy bio at IMDb. And yes, there's an action figure too.

5. Richard Linklater in SLACKER (1994) Linklater's role as "Should Have Stayed at Bus Station" sets into motion the stream of self consciousness exercise that he geared the movie to be:






It's quite a loose likable persona that Linklater affects - one that kicks off his film career and also appears in animated form in WAKING LIFE (2001) - a sort of sequel (or at least spiritual follow-up) to SLACKER.

6. Hal Ashby in HAROLD AND MAUDE (1971)

Film babble blog favorite Ashby also does the "movie director as extra" thing as a hippy freak at a carnival in his counter culture cult classic. Of course, he was just dressed as usual and it's not really a cameo; more of a brief shot that captures the director as a random passerby watching a mechanical toy train with Harold (Bud Cort) and Maude (Ruth Gordon).

Ashby also shows up doing the extra thing again in a newsroom in BEING THERE (1980) - something I noticed just recently after missing it for years on many repeated viewings.

7. Francis Ford Coppola in APOCALYPSE NOW (1979) So he's the "Director of TV Crew" who barks orders at the soldiers as they run through his shot - is it an exaggeration of Coppola's ego or the real thing? You decide:

 

8. David Lynch in TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (1992) Lynch has done a number of walk on parts in his films but here he gives himself an actual character: FBI Regional Bureau Chief Gordon Cole who Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle Machlachlan) reports to. Lynch's Gordon appeared on the TV series a few blink and miss them times and his bit for the prequel/origin story/whatever movie is pretty meager. So what gets him on this list? I guess it's that a normal office scenario is skewed by the likes of David Bowie and flashes of a white faced pointy nosed circus wack job or whatever dancing around and this time Lynch himself is in the midst of it. Welcome to my nightmare, indeed:







9. Oliver Stone in WALL STREET (1987)

Yet another director that has taken bit or extra roles in multiple movies, Stone does a split screen sound bite appearance as a broker on the phone in one of the film's many frenetic montages. No word whether he'll reprise the role for the sequel.

10. Sam Raimi in THE EVIL DEAD TRILOGY (1981-1992) As documented by AMC Filmsite, Sam Raimi appeared: 1981: as a Hitchhiking Fisherman and the Voice of the Evil Force 1987: as a Medieval Soldier; and 1993: as a Knight in Sweatshirt and Sneakers, who assured Ash (Bruce Campbell): "You can count on my steel."

Peter Jackson pulled the same stunt by appearing in all 3 LORD OF THE RINGS movies.

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DISTRICT 9: The Film Babble Blog Review

DISTRICT 9 (Dir. Neill Blomkamp, 2009)


WARNING: This review contains Spoilers!

The documentary-style opening with faux cable news coverage and staged interviews with various talking heads depicts diseased extra terrestrials quarantined in a section of Johannesburg, South America that quickly becomes a Hellish slum. Because this is presented so soberly with flawlessly faked footage, this sci-fi concept is immediately easy to accept and go with. 

Political red tape and alien racism are all the rage as we are introduced to Sharlto Copley as a field operative for Multi-National United (MNU), a huge conglomerate that, surprise surprise, may not have the aliens best interests in mind. Copley is promoted to the position of relocating a million or so of these slimy creatures that talk with voices that sound like Jabba the Hut with a vocoder (don't worry, subtitles are provided) and who are derisively labeled as "prawns."

Copley's gung ho demeanor - he's acts like he's never been out from behind his desk on the job before - gives the film a comic tone for a brief bit; going from door to door to get grotesque CGI creations to sign eviction notices is more like something out of "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" than it is ALIEN. It goes quickly from sci-fi social satire to an extremely unpleasant yet still gripping sequence in which Copley accidentally sprays himself with icky black fluid from some alien device he happens to pick up and confiscates. After his left arm mutates into a "prawn" claw, MNU officials sequester him for experimentation.

Once they determine that his changing DNA allows him to operate alien weaponry they decide to dismantle him in true Josef Mengele fashion. This seems appropriate as Copley tells one of the "prawns" that the new district 10 they are being moved to is more like a concentration camp than a new housing situation. 

 There is so much invention amid the brutality and visceral impact of this film that it's just a bit of a letdown that it descends into a 3rd act of routine action movie convention bombardment. However Copley's interaction with an alien that goes by the name Christopher Johnson, who may be able to help reverse the effects of Copley's virus, saves the concluding scenes from soullessness. 

As a protégé of Peter Jackson (who produced this film) Neill Blomkamp has for the most part made a sturdy study of alien/human conflict that actually comes off as plausible considering all past human conflicts. DISTRICT 9 isn't a rousing crowd pleaser - the summer season may not be the best time for it - but it's an incredibly strong sci-fi flick as well as a gritty thriller that has a lot of guts.

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An Orson Welles Wannabe Responds

I got some cool comments on my post A Birthday Tribute To Orson Welles With 10 Welles Wannabes (May 5, 2008) but the one that really takes the cake is from one of the Orsons - #10. Jean Guérin to be exact. I had written that I could find very little info about Guérin's 2 performances of Welles in HEAVENLY CREATURES and LA VENGEANCE DE LA FEMME EN NOIR so it is great to get it right from the source. Here’s what he wrote along with a few great photos he sent along as well: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello, Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jean Guérin. I am a film teacher/writer/actor residing in Montreal, Canada. Recently, I was alerted to your blog's posting regarding fake Orsons where I made #10. Thank you for giving me credit. A recently published book states that Peter Jackson used computer technology to bring Orson back to life. Seems I don't exist but am some sort of virtual construct. Coincidentally, this pic was taken on OW's birthday 15 years ago. Creatures was a silent part in a fantasy sequence. Jackson & Walsh recruited me at a film festival in Montreal, where I had volunteered to drive them around. I wasn’t an actor at the time. I got teased a lot in film school about my resemblance to OW but hadn't heard it in a few years until Fran Walsh brought it up. Originally, the plan was to pull OW out of footage of The Third Man but PJ found himself limited in his action choices.Our chance meeting not only saved the scene but enabled Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh to play with it and expand on it. The scene involves notorious teenage lesbian schoolgirl murderers Parker and Hulme, played by Kate Winslet and Melanie Linskey going to see The Third Man and pretending Orson is stalking them outside the theatre. They run home where Mel morphs into Orson and seduces Kate (technically making me the first guy to kiss Kate Winslet in a movie). In order to further the illusion, PJ made OW “monochrome” and shot close-ups of me to substitute for those of OW in the Third Man footage. As a film buff, this was totally cool. Especially when I got to shoot “M” (Bernard Lee). The subterfuge worked. At the 1994 Venice film festival , Robert Zemeckis approached PJ to ask him how he managed to do the reverse of what he had done in Forest Gump. It was an ice breaker which led to RZ producing PJ’s next feature, The Frighteners. The best part of working on the film is that no one believes it. On occasion, I do get a student inquiring if it's me and I tend to brush it off by saying “I get that a lot”. I do get a great kick out of mentioning the movie in a context where people think I'm joking and/or won't believe me. “The director of Lord of the Rings flew me to New-Zealand to play Orson Welles in a lesbian love scene with Kate Winslet”. When you phrase it like that- who would? As a lifelong Orson buff, this remains one of the best experiences of my life. The same cannot be said of my other Orson portrayal. La Vengeance De La Femme En Noir is a 1997 Quebec production directed by Roger Cantin. It is a sequel to his popular L'Assassin Jouait Du Trombone. Again, Orson is used as a figment of the character’s imagination. In the film,the main character Marleau (Germain Houde), imagines his conscience (himself) talking to him. In the climax, his conscience abandons him, leaving “Harry Lime” in his place. It was supposed to explain the character's change of heart in the unfilmed sequel. Only a few people got the reference , and even then, it's because the director explained it to them personally. The film is full of visual references to classic film noirs which are wasted in this broad humour farce. The film is in French. Despite doing a really good Orson voice (deviated septum and all), I was re-dubbed over because Welles’ real voice is not familiar to French speaking audiences. The result is awful, with Orson sounding Haitian. The director has since apologized for the choice but the damage is done and the scene is a cringer- especially to Orson buffs. Fortunately, the film played less than a week theatrically and was never released on DVD. It does show up on late-night cable in Quebec from time to time to haunt me. On the practical side, it allowed me to break into the local actor's union. However, it does give me the distinction of having played OW twice and in two languages. I actually played OW a third time on a segment of a local magazine show where I finally got to do the voice. Hope this was informative or at least entertaining. Regards, Jean Guérin ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wow, that indeed was incredibly informative and extremely entertaining! I emailed Mr. Guérin to thank him for writing and ask for his permission to post it here which he nicely allowed. He also added that in the color photo above he had “prosthetic makeup on this film which made me look more like Karl Malden as the day progressed. The New Zealand make-up artist did way better with stage makeup than all that rubber.” Man, what it takes to recreate Welles! More later...