Stephen Schaefer’s Hollywood & Mine
You have to love a guy like Zack Snyder. Last week Zack and his producer wife Deborah did a joint Zoom interview about their zombie epic ‘Army of the Dead,’ which is now in theaters and pops on Netflix Friday. I asked: Zack, you have multiple credits [director, producer, co-screenwriter, cinematographer] on this movie. One of them is ‘Story by’ and I understand it was 2007 that you actually launched this story idea. Did you wake up one morning and say to yourself, What the world needs now is an epic zombie movie, and I’m going to deliver it?
And Zack began to sing (!!) the Burt Bacharach classic, ‘What the world needs now (is love).’
ZACK SNYDER: I won’t continue that … because you know the singing is not awesome but it was in the shower so it sounds better. The truth is I’ve been working on it — and it was probably 2007 where we started to actually hire a writer and get it going. But I had thought about it since right after I finished ‘Dawn’ [his 2004 remake of George A. Romero’s ‘Dawn of the Dead’]. It was literally on my mind. And I was putting all the pieces together for those two years before we before we really said, ‘OK! Let’s try and start to get this made.’ Because I had taken a deep dive on genre and then a deep dive on horror and all in a kind of tone of trying to figure out how to homage it. Because it was a remake, I wanted to make sure I was writing a love letter to the original movie. And now I’m writing a love letter to the actual genre itself. That’s where I find myself.
Q: What was your biggest hurdle Zack in creating this? Having this vision in your mind of the movie you wanted to make, then making it, bringing it to reality?
ZS: When you think about the movie scale-wise, you maintain the size of the movie if you think about it. We have to put the team together. A part of which we shot around Albuquerque. And then we are inside the casinos, which you know we found these abandoned casinos [in Atlantic City]. But the production, kind of where it breaks, is: They’ve got to walk through a devastated Vegas, right? It’s got to be believably Vegas, you have to be able to see the Statue of Liberty and MGM and down the Strip. And palm trees. That’s a production value. Also, there’s going to be times when we have 200 zombies chasing them around. That’s a huge endeavor from a logistics standpoint: To prepare that many makeups and get everyone in and out and ready to act. So those were the big challenges. But my teams were amazing and I had amazing support. My lovely wife here is a genius. So it all happened.
Q: I look at David Bautista and Omari Hardwick. They seem to be sort of living special effects. Supreme Beings with these physiques. And I wonder, What does Bautista bring to this movie? With this role? And similarly for Omari. I mean, outside of taking off their shirts.
DEBORAH SNYDER: Omari’s interaction with Matthias [Schweighöfer who plays the safecracker], I mean it’s really sweet. With Dave it’s the juxtaposition. He is this big action guy, but yet he’s also the heart of the movie with his relationship with his daughter. So you have these two things and it’s a little unexpected that he’s so emotional. We haven’t seen that from him as an actor. That was really exciting for us. Omari and Matthias, their story, they’re like the odd couple. Just watching them is really fun.
ZS: It’s quite a little love story.
Q: Speaking of Matthias, isn’t there a spin-off being planned, a prequel?
DS: It’s already shot. We’re in post-production right now. We actually shot it all last year in the fall. It’s a really fun film. It is a romantic comedy-heist film and although it takes place in our world, a world where zombies exist, it’s not a zombie movie. It really leans into the romantic comedy. He’s so charming as a character, I think it’s going to be fun to see his backstory and how he learned how to crack safes.
ZS: Yeah, it tells the story of him being obsessed with Götterdämmerung and the other Wagner safes, and there’s this fictional character named Hans Wagner — he is the safe builder in Germany. He’s been commissioned to build these incredibly uncrackable — four of them — safes all over the world. The Götterdämmerung , the one we break into in ‘Army,’ is the very last one.
Q: Last question: The idea here is that ‘Army of the Dead’ is this epic. Biggest thing ever. What about the big screen versus watching it on Netflix?
DS: Here’s the thing. We set out to make this movie for Netflix. It was a pleasant surprise to be able to show it in theaters now since a lot of movies are not there. It’s great because it’s a movie that you want to see whether it’s on your TV with a group of friends, or whether in a cinema with many people. It’s a group experience. You can have fun really watching it. Thanks to Netflix — I mean without them this movie wouldn’t have gotten made. They’re making a lot of movies and taking chances on movies that the studios aren’t. So as a producer and as a filmmaker, I think that’s just amazing.
NEW DVDs:
FOREVER FAIR Let’s face it, the great joy and delight with the film adaptation of Lerner & Lowe’s ‘My Fair Lady’ (4K Ultra HD + Digital, CBS-Paramount, G) is that they pretty much left it alone to retain its stage roots. Adapted from George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion’ (the charming 1938 English film starred Leslie Howard of ‘Gone with the Wind’ as Higgins and Wendy Hiller, an Oscar winner for ‘Separate Tables,’ as Eliza) with a superlative score by the team that would go on to ‘Camelot,’ this ‘Fair Lady’ benefits enormously from Rex Harrison reprising his stage triumph. (Famously, Jack Warner pursued Cary Grant for Higgins and Grant admonished him with, ‘Go get Rex!’) Is there still a controversy with Audrey Hepburn’s sensational Eliza being dubbed by Marni Nixon for the high notes? There shouldn’t be. No one, and I mean no one, ever complains that Rita Hayworth didn’t sing ‘Put the Blame on Mame’ in ‘Gilda’ – because they didn’t know about it at the time! But it shouldn’t matter. This 4K UHD is a significant upgrade and there’s a featurette explaining the details. There is also a short film of the production’s 1963 kick-off dinner, its LA premiere, British premiere, production tests and something called ‘George Cukor directs Baroness Bina Rothschild.’
VIOLENT WELSH POLICIER Having not seen the first series, I wasn’t prepared perhaps for ‘Bang Series 2’ (DVD, 6 episodes, 2 discs, AcornTV, Not Rated), a Welsh-English police series that begins somewhat romantically if gruesomely on a Welsh beach. There a handsome blond man tries to retrieve a gorgeous white horse running loose. As the skittish animal refuses to move, a masked figure jumps out of the trailer and kills the lad. Soon it’s apparent there’s a serial killer at work. ‘Bang’ – the title refers to ‘Bang bang, you’re dead’ – is scathing in its depiction of one of the most inept police departments you’re likely to see. The commander of the serial killer team turns out to be almost as loony and scary as the insidious killer. And he’s not the worst! There is also one of the most horrifying executions I’ve seen in a very long time; it haunted me for days. ‘Bang’ certainly breaks the mold, from its less than capable cops to its often contrived endings where you ask, ‘How stupid can these people be who are being targeted? Do they go outside just hoping to be killed?’ It’s also populated by sensitive, hard-working police detectives who somehow make it through this case to presumably return in Series 3.
THE DUKE’S FINAL LEGACY John Wayne is an American icon who became, in the decade before he died, a conservative target of the culture wars still raging today. Wayne – born famously as Marion Morrison – had begun in pictures in the Twenties, was cast as a lead in a 1930 Western that flopped and became a star in John Ford’s 1939 ‘Stagecoach.’ Most visibly, although he was rejected from military service due to his family status, he defined gung-ho can-do American courage on the screen in WWII. The newly packaged ‘John Wayne 14 Movie Collection’ (DVD, 14 discs, Paramount, Various or No Ratings) traces the Duke’s career from his stellar box-office standing in the Fifties to his final, valedictory masterwork, the 1976 ‘The Shootist’ where as a cancer-doomed legend he mirrored his own end. There is a terrific range in this set: from the great heights of Ford’s ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’ (’62), his Oscar-winning performance in ‘True Grit’ (‘69) and ‘The Sons of Katie Elder’ (’65). There are personal favorites, Westerns and dramas that Wayne produced: ‘Hondo’ (’53) which was originally released in 3-D, ‘The High and the Mighty’ (’54), a hugely influential hit about passengers’ terror aboard a troubled flight. And there are essentials like ‘Hatari!’ (’62), ‘Rio Lobo’ (’70), ‘El Dorado’ (66) and ‘Donovan’s Reef’ (’63). Perhaps the most intriguing is to revisit Otto Preminger’s 1965 ‘In Harm’s Way’ where Wayne returns, older and perhaps more introspective, to the battles of WWII.
FRANCE’S LE CARRE-STYLE SPIES Based on actual accounts by former spies and contemporary events, the acclaimed 5-season series ‘The Bureau’ (DVD, 50 episodes, 15 discs, Kino Lorber, Not Rated) is stunning, perceptive suspense no matter what your language. Set in the Paris headquarters of France’s top internal security service, ‘Bureau’ explores the elaborate false identities agents don for years! The Bureau’s relationship with the CIA, its Mideast operations and the love affairs that can develop are just a few aspects of this nether world of international intrigue, an eerie, unforgiving landscape that favorably compares with the great John le Carré. It all begins when Matthieu Kassovitz’ top spy Malotru returns after 6 years undercover. Get ready for quite the ‘ride.’ In French with optional English subtitles.
A CONTEMPORARY CLASSIC ‘The Flowers of Shanghai’ (Blu-ray, Criterion, Not Rated), now in a gorgeous 4K digital restoration, is meant to be a gorgeous experience, an intimate look inside the Shanghai brothels of 1880s China, every shot enhanced with golden illumination from oil lamps. This 1998 hit from auteur Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien (‘The Puppetmaster,’ ‘The Assassin,’ ‘Flight of the Red Balloon’) is not the expected melodrama associated with films about beautiful courtesans. We see no women who are vengeful rivals, who collapse in hysterics and are sex crazy. No, these ‘flower houses’ are where men come, not for sex but to fall in love and give gifts. In that era of arranged marriages, men frequently felt estranged or separate from their wives or children. Here, while everyone smokes opium, they find a soul mate whom they can shower with gifts (the women, the flowers of the house, must pay back a debt before they can exit this gilded prison). Hsiao-hsien uses languid long takes where we see his exotic hothouse world unfold naturally. People sit around a table, having opium, drinking and talking — and there is nothing in the direction, the lighting, the talk that says, ‘This is an important point being made’ or ‘This character is the star.’ His adaptation of a novel few finish centers on 3 different women in 3 different houses. Bonus features: A fascinating, brand new behind the scenes documentary, a 2015 interview with Hsiao-hsien in LA as part of the Motion Picture Academy’s Oral History Project, and, most wonderful, critic Tony Rayns’ expansive 2021 introduction, complete with illustrative clips, to the film, detailing its origins in 2 Chinese books and the censorship problems that prevented filming in Shanghai. Rayns also did the new English subtitles.
CHARLOTTE & FRANCOIS Francois Ozon stands as not only one of France’s most reliably productive filmmakers but one of its most honored. His 2000 ‘Under the Sand’ (Blu-ray, Kino, Not Rated), a meditation on death and relationships, was deservedly an international success, one that gifted the British-born Parisian Charlotte Rampling a deserved comeback. The rebellious daughter of a military officer, Rampling, born in 1946, first won attention as a scene-stealing roommate in the British sleeper hit ‘Georgy’s Girl’ (’66). That led to lead roles in a swirl of 60s-70s films: Visconti’s Nazi epic ‘The Damned,’ the notorious S&M Nazi power couple of ‘The Night Porter,’ opposite Sean Connery in the out-there then and still out-there today ‘Zardoz.’ She was opposite Robert Mitchum in a ‘Farewell, My Lovely’ remake. In ‘The Verdict’ she was climactically slugged by Paul Newman. ‘Under the Sand’ which Ozon wrote specifically for Rampling changed everything. She is perfection as a woman in mourning, devastated by the disappearance of her longtime lover – but frustrated because no one is sure what happened – they were on a beach, she napped and then he was nowhere to be found. Rampling reteamed 3 years later with Ozon for his Hitchcockian thriller ‘The Swimming Pool’ which was even more successful. Since then Rampling has never stopped. Bonus: Ozon’s invaluable audio commentary, another commentary by film critic Kat Ellinger and a Rampling interview. In French with optional English subtitles.
‘40s FUTURISM A WWII Nazi refugee, French director Rene Clair arrived in Hollywood with a distinguished reputation for his early sound films, fanciful musicals like ‘Under the Roofs of Paris.’ But Clair flopped with his American debut, a Marlene Dietrich vehicle ‘The Flame of New Orleans.’ Luckily this 1944 follow-up ‘It Happened Tomorrow’ (Blu-ray, Cohen, Not Rated), now in a new digital restoration, did business which let him proceed to make the biggest hit of his career, the 1946 Agatha Christie thriller ‘And Then There Were None.’ ‘Tomorrow,’ like so many Rene Clair films, is a fantasy set in the 1890s where a reporter (Dick Powell) gets a paper with tomorrow’s news – and uses it to further his professional standing. Complications, including falling in love with half of a clairvoyant act (Linda Darnell, ‘Letter to Three Wives’), follow. When Powell gets another paper with tomorrow’s headlines, a paper that carries his obituary (!), guess who’s on the run to stop the headline?
THRILLING COLD WAR THRILLER Who would have thought there could be so much contemporary drama with a Finnish Cold War series set in 1955? ‘Shadow Lines Season 1’ (DVD, 10 episodes, 3 discs, Sundance Now, Not Rated) begins spectacularly, immediately establishing the life-or-death stakes at issue – the threat of close neighbor Russia, the ever-present ‘undercover’ CIA and Finns whose national interests for independence are continually being subjected to a murderous tug of war. We meet ‘The Fist,’ a clandestine intelligence team dedicated to Finnish independence. These layers of spies, informants and killers is seen through college student Helena, a traumatized survivor of WWII, whose uncle leads The Fist and whose trust in anyone must seriously be questioned. English subtitles for those not conversant in Finnish, Russian, Swedish.
DESERVEDLY CLASSIC Yes, ‘The Yearling’ (Blu-ray, WB Archive, Not Rated), nominated for 7 Academy Awards with a special Oscar going to its 12-year-old star Claude Jarman, Jr., is deservedly a family classic. Filmed in Technicolor and directed by the veteran Clarence Brown — Garbo’s favorite director with ‘Anna Karenina,’ ‘Anna Christie,’ ‘Romance,’ ‘A Free Soul.’ Brown had just made another family classic, ‘National Velvet’ when he came to ‘The Yearling.’ As critics have continually and pointedly emphasized over the last 6 decades, this is not a sentimental, saccharine or gooey movie. It’s tough and realistic, faithful to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ bestselling novel. Gregory Peck with his gravitas and Jane Wyman with her gritty interior, both future Oscar winners – she for ‘Johnny Belinda,’ he for ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ – are ideally cast as the hard-working Florida parents. But this is Jarman’s movie and he carries its sad story of a boy’s love for Flag, an orphaned pet fawn, for the ages. Special Features: Cartoon ‘Cat Concerto,’ the radio broadcast of the Screen Guild Players.
EARLY CHAPPELLE From 1997 comes an early Dave Chappelle vehicle ‘Half Baked’ (Blu-ray, KL Studio Classics, R), directed by Tamra Davis (‘Billy Madison’). A pothead crime comedy that Chappelle co-scripted, ‘Baked’ has him as 2 characters, a pot dealing janitor named Thurgood and Sir Smoke-a-Lot which says it all. Cameos abound alongside supporting players like Clarence Williams III, Tommy Chong, Snoop Dogg, Jon Stewart, Willie Nelson, Tracy Morgan, Stephen Baldwin and Janeane Garofolo. Special Features: Tamra Davis audio commentary, 8 ‘outrageous’ deleted scenes, an alternate ending and shorts ‘Granny’s Guide to Bakin’ ‘Different Types of Smokers’ and ‘Five Minutes with the Guy on the Couch.’
JAUNTY JEAN-PAUL In the Sixties movie stars came from around the world and few were bigger than Jean-Paul Belmondo who’d become internationally famous in Godard’s 1960 New Wave classic, ‘Breathless’ opposite Jean Seberg. Like Errol Flynn and Burt Lancaster, Belmondo was amazingly acrobatic. Like Jackie Chan he was known for always doing his own death-defying stunts. Belmondo achieved enduring success not in art films where he began but in commercial pictures, alternating between laughs and drama, movies that he often produced. The series of jaunty comedies he made with director Philippe de Broca are a vital part of his legacy. They began with the 1962 ‘Cartouche’ (Blu-ray, KL Studio Classics, Not Rated), now in a 4K restoration from the original camera negative. It’s an intentionally silly, over the top 18th century swashbuckler with Belmondo as the title character, a dashing thief, swordsman, rogue. Cartouche falls for a beautiful bandit named Venus (Italy’s Claudia Cardinale). Complications aplenty! Special Features – an audio commentary and a documentary by de Broca’s daughter Alexandra. ‘That Man from Rio’ (‘64) is probably the best known de Broca-Belmondo, a farcically accented espionage comedy. Belmondo’s other new Blu-ray is the 1973 ‘Le Magnifique’ (KL Studio Classics, Not Rated) which only seems to be an elegant 007-style romp with Britain’s Jacqueline Bisset (‘Bullitt’) as his companion in crime and adventure. This boasts exotic locations, a stylish wardrobe and movie stars, a visual film fantasy filled with effortless derring do. The original French version with English subtitles is here, along with an alternate English soundtrack where Belmondo is dubbed. Also with an audio commentary.
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3tUSNmJ
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