›› CiNEMARiN Movies in the county that Hollywood couldn’t tame…
›› MADE IN MARiN a l o o k a t t h e m o v i e s M a r i n m a d e f a m o u s
The Turner diaries When it comes to TCM, you can color me impressed... by M at t hew St af for d
I
n the late 1980s Ted Turner outraged York. right-thinking movie lovers everywhere Most of the time the movies are introwhen he purchased the film libraries of duced by film historian Robert Osborne, Warner Bros., RKO and MGM and anan affable grandfatherly sort, or his wiseass nounced plans to colorize some of the stucounterpart Ben Mankiewicz, the grandson dios’ revered masterworks. An uproar greeted of legendary wiseass Herman Mankiewicz, the mogul’s pastel-ization of The Maltese but sometimes TCM brings in guest proFalcon and Casablanca (Herb Caen said the grammers to pick the flicks du nuit, so you process looked like “makeup on a corpse”), might have found Gore Vidal introducing and before long there were anti-colorization Fire Over England, Spike Lee discussing Night congressional hearings with testimony from of the Hunter, Chris Isaak on Touch of Evil or the likes of James Stewart, Milos Forman Rose McGowan chatting up Out of the Past. and Woody Allen. The controversy came to a Now and then there are fascinating househead when Turner tried to sic the colorization produced documentaries on Budd Boetprocess on Citizen Kane. The courts ruled ticher or Johnny Mercer or Michael Powell that late director Orson Welles’ 50-year-old godfathered by the likes of Clint Eastwood contract with RKO, granting him complete or Martin Scorsese, or annual festivals like 31 artistic control over the film’s final form, was Days of Oscar (a month of Oscar-nominated still binding, and colorization hasn’t been the movies past and present), or Turner-subsisame since. dized restorations of silent classics complete A few years later with newly comTurner launched a cable missioned musical TV channel to showscores. case all of those old The chanmovies he’d purchased, nel fills the time and if there’s such a between movies thing as redemption, with a variety of Turner Classic Movies fascinating loose is it. At the time TCM ends—vintage wasn’t available in trailers, 1930s greater Marin County travelogues, terand, as a lifelong movie rifically surreal nut I would gaze with The official launch of TCM in 1994—that tall guy’s Ted Turner, This Month on longing and envy upon surrounded by, from left, director Arthur Hiller, actors Arlene TCM promos and, Jane Powell, Celeste Holm, Van Johnson and TCM host the network’s weekly Dahl, best of all, retro Robert Osborne. schedule, rife with soundies featuring screwball comedies, lustrous noirs and pre- the likes of Duke Ellington and Buddy Rich. Code classics, many of them seldom-seen rar- I also like the often insightful five-minute ities I’d been hankering after for years, and end voice-over essays current stars contribute up settling for the commercial-laden dreck about their favorite old icons—Jennifer Jason served up on pre-Mad Men AMC. Leigh on Barbara Stanwyck, Meryl Streep on Happily, modern-day Marinites can enjoy Bette Davis, Christopher Walken on Gene TCM’s intelligently programmed, beautiKelly, Jane and Peter Fonda on their old man. fully presented lineup of classic films just like Right now TCM is in the middle of its everyone else. It isn’t just about MGM, RKO Summer Under the Stars marathon—each and the Brothers Warner, either. The chanday during the month of August is devoted to nel licenses tasty stuff from the Paramount, a different actor or actress—and the tribute Columbia, Fox and Universal archives on to Katharine Hepburn on the 18th (Bringing a regular basis as well as Disney comedies, Up Baby, Adam’s Rib, The Lion in Winter and Roger Corman cult classics and an amazing nine others), the tribute to Gary Cooper on array of foreign films (what other channel the 26th (Ball of Fire, Man of the West, Love in would devote 24 hours to Toshiro Mifune or the Afternoon, et al.) and especially the tribute a month of Tuesdays to Ingmar Bergman?). to pre-Code sleazoid Warren William on the TCM is especially good about showcasing 30th (Three on a Match, Gold Diggers of 1933, forgotten jewels like Max Ophul’s Reckless Lady for a Day) look especially promising. Moment, a multi-textured noir about the Like all TCM treasures, they’ll be shown in complex relationship between a housewife gorgeous silvery prints uncensored, uninterand her blackmailer; Bitter Victory, a nihilistic rupted, letterboxed when appropriate and study of men in war; and The Half-Naked absolutely free of toxic digital crayons. < Truth, a smart, cynical 1932 comedy about a Colorize Matt at mstafford@pacificsun.com. con man on the loose in Depression-era New
22 PACIFIC SUN AUGUST 17 -AUGUST 23, 2012
Filmed around Nicasio in the early 1980s, Shoot the Moon is perhaps the quintessential “Marin” movie—it’s a critique of upper-middle class suburbia, without the wink-and-a-nod satiric elements that marred The Serial (1980) and The Californians (2005). Director Alan Parker’s study of a crumbling marriage stars Albert Finney as successful West Marin novelist George Dunlap, whose affair with a younger woman (Karen Allen) is discovered by George’s bored, depressive wife, Faith (Diane Keaton). Faith kicks him out, intending to raise their four woefully undisciplined daughters on her own, only to take up with Frank (Peter Weller), the hunky contractor she’s hired to build a tennis court at their gated country estate. In the film’s climactic finale set at a party for the court’s unveiling, George slams the family station wagon through the fences, obliterating the tennis court, in a symbolic gesture to win back his family from Frank—only to be beaten to a simpering pulp by the buff builder. As his daughters rush to his side, George extends a hand toward Faith—and, before we see whether she takes it or not, the film ends in this dramatic freeze frame.—Jason Walsh
ViDEO Abominable ‘Snow’ man Certain filmmakers have a gift for revealing the creepy and lawless subcultures we know exist beyond them hills. Harmony Korine did it in Gummo and Julien DonkeyBoy, as did Winter’s Bone writer/director Debra Granik. And now Justin Kurzel does it in THE SNOWTOWN MURDERS, the story of Aus- If you ask us, people who like ice cream this much can’t be all bad... tralia’s worst band of serial killers. But Kurzel is up to much more. A faithful reconstruction of the 1990s stranglings, hangings and choppings done by a loose-knit group of families and friends against their own circle (known to Aussies as “the bodies in barrels murders”), this film is not for the faint of heart. Two men and their young protege, as empty and guileless as the white metal suburbs they live in, start revenge-targeting pedophiles at first, then gays, junkies and the different, and soon anyone who fogs a mirror. Galvanizing the families into action is newly arrived stepfather John Bunting (now serving 11 life sentences), who, if he’s anything like the man incarnated in this film by Daniel Henshall, scares one right down to one’s socks. There’s gore and nastiness as you would expect, but the real spirit of violence hovering these sun-bleached tract houses, times a whole town, calls to mind Alec Baldwin’s advice for playing a charismatic psychopath: Reach down through your eyes all the way down to the little light bulb of humanity inside you—then turn it off. —Richard Gould