Monologue: "Lone Biker of the Apocalypse"

Michael C. here to drop off your regularly scheduled Monday Monologue

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the Coen brothers' screwball, baby-knapping comedy Raising Arizona. Rewatching the film it is striking just how distant the rowdy hayseed comedy feels from cool control of the brothers' recent output. This isn't meant as an accusation that they have gone soft in their middle age. Quite the contrary. But even as they have produced a handful of unequivocal masterpieces I still harbor a soft spot for their wild younger days, much the way a Woody Allen fan can't help but pine for the anarchic spirit of Bananas no matter how much he appreciates the cinematic mastery of Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Take the scene where a premonition of doom visits Cage's H.I. soon after swiping one of the "Arizona Quints" to complete his family unit with Holly Hunter's Ed:

That night, I had a dream. I drifted off thinking about happiness, birth and new life, But now I was haunted by a vision of... He was horrible. The lone biker of apocalypse. A man with all the powers of Hell at his command. He could turn turn the day into night and lay to waste everything in his path.

He was especially hard on little things-the helpless and the gentle creatures. He left a scorched earth in his wake befouling even the sweet desert breeze that whipped across his brow. I didn't know where he came from or why. I didn't know if he was dream or vision. But I feared that I myself had unleashed him. For he was the fury that would be as soon as Florence Arizona found her little Nathan gone. 

The characters are both beloved Coen brother templates. The Biker (memorably embodied by former pro boxer Randall "Tex" Cobb) is one in a long line of remorseless heavies that reached their apex in Anton Chirgurh, while Cage's H.I is in the grand tradition of Coen brothers morons that continued through the escaped bumpkins of O Brother right up to the glorious idiocy of Brad Pitt's Chad Feldheimer.

Likewise giving even their most dimwitted characters memorable turns of phrase like "befouling the sweet desert breeze" is an unmistakable Coens trademark. See: Lebowski, Big.

What stands apart is the wild, improvised feel of the sequence. The series of gags that introduce the Biker - including the grenading of a cute, fluffy bunny - would be right at home in a Road Runner cartoon. The capper on the whole sequence is a doozy of a shot where the camera, which we had assumed to be the Biker's POV, goes unexpectedly airborne and flies right through a window landing in the open mouth of Mrs. Arizona as she screams. The moment can't help but bring to mind the fluid insanity of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead series.

When Joel and Ethan have returned to screwball material in flicks like Burn After Reading the execution more closely resembles the deliberate style of Arizona's follow-up, Miller's Crossing. And while I repeat this is neither good nor bad, and that all great artists evolve, I can't deny I would kill to see what some meticulously controlled later day title like, say, A Serious Man would look like if it was made with the same unhinged, shoot from the hip style the Coens brought to Raising Arizona a quarter century ago.

Recent Monologues:
"My name is Charlene" -Missi Pyle in Spring Break
Megan and the Dolphins - Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids

Happy 50th Jim Carrey!

A very happy ½ century mark to Jim Carrey! He seems to have given up on chasing Oscar and returned to the generally more lucrative world of high concept multiplex comedy. We kind of miss his dramedic self.

Favorite Carrey performances off the top of my head.

1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
2. The Truman Show (1998)
   ...and yes, I'd have nominated him for both of those. 
3. Man on the Moon (1999)
   ...one of those rare cases where Oscar got really stingy about loving biopic mimicry. 
4. Doing Time on Maple Drive (1992)
5. Batman Forever (1995)
6. I Love You Phillip Morris (2010)
7. The Mask (1994)
8. Bruce Almighty (2003)
9. Liar Liar (1997)
10. Lemony Snicket A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)

 It's true. I never saw the comedic blockbusters involving his talking ass or doubled idiocy.

Yours?

The first time I ever saw him was on the shortlived sitcom "The Duck Factory" which I watched as a kid because I wanted to be an animator when I grew up. The peak of my interest was The Truman Show. Strange that that movie isn't talked about more. 

The Duck Factory, The Truman Show, Burt Wonderstone

He's currently filming Burt Wonderstone with Steve Carell. Carell plays the title role but they're playing rival magicians in Las Vegas... Carrey being threatened by the newer magician Carell. Could certainly be fun but was no one worried about some sort of Evan Almighty curse? That last time Carrey passed the baton to Carell it didn't work out so well. Not that critical favor matters to Hollywood when you can break $100 million just by showing up.

25th Anniversary: George Clooney's Big Screen Debut

Twenty five years ago one of the world's few bonafide movie stars and one of this year's Best Actor frontrunners made his silver screen debut. Internet sources disagree on the exact date -- probably due to the film being a no-budget indie with an erratic release schedule -- but the earliest is January 9th. The point is this: We've now reached a quarter century of Clooney on the big screen!

If you investigate a trail of blood in a horror movie, you deserve to die.

Like many stars before and after him, George Clooney's first movie role was in a cheapo horror flick. His was named Return to Horror High (1987). Though Clooney is dispatched in the first fifteen minutes (first victim is an honor in horror casts, yes?) he was a big enough "name" in a field of (mostly) nobodies to get second billing.

He'd already had two short-lived series regular gigs on television, most famously a recurring role on The Facts of Life. In 1984 he starred in a sitcom called E/R which is hilarious in retrospect (the gig not the show) since it was about emergency room doctors in Chicago. Ten years later with ER, a very different show about the exact same thing, he'd become a major star. It'd be nice to state something triumphant like 'Return to Horror High was the first and last time he'd ever have to accept second billing!' but it wouldn't be true. In between there was lots of flailing around... in roles and screens big and small.

A prophetic moment after the jump.

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Happy 50th Birthday, Meg Ryan

She rose to fame just before Julia Roberts who rose to fame just before Sandra Bullock. Together the three of them inarguably ruled the Romantic Comedy genre for a full decade back when, and this is an important note, the genre was producing regular classics. (Look at any modern RomCom Queen's filmography and try to find films half as good; the qualitative dropoff is more like a horror movie!) 

Cut to 2011 and the other two members of America's Sweetheart Trinity: 1990s Division are still headliners and now Oscar Winners. So what happened to Meg Ryan and why did goodwill not follow her or rescue her as it did her royal sisters in big screen love and laughter? For a good long while people wondered when her Erin Brockovich would arrive. Eventually they stopped wondering but why couldn't she even stumble onto her own The Blind Side? 

It isn't a simple matter of talent. While Meg is mostly remembered for romantic comedy blockbusters like When Harry Met Sally, You've Got Mail (recently revisited at Stale Popcorn) and Sleepless in Seattle she was always alternating those films with dramatic work, sometimes chasing Oscar nominations which never materialized and sometimes, one assumes, merely to stretch herself or work with great actors (When a Man Loved a Woman, Flesh and Bone, Courage Under Fire, Hurlyburly, etcetera).

Gwyneth Paltrow and Meg Ryan in "Flesh and Bone" (1993), the year of Sleepless in Seattle

In fact, if you lay their 90s filmographies down side by side, without the benefit of knowing what came after, Ryan was demonstrating far far more range than Bullock.  

Was she simply too good at romantic comedy, making her dramatic work feel unexciting in comparison? Did she push herself too far past her natural talents in films like In The Cut (2003) that may have been better suited to miraculous dramatic thespians like, say, a Moore or a Kidman? Or did her own career stumbles tie in too chronologically well with the decline of her signature genre? Or was it just that her volatile personal life (the Dennis Quaid divorce and the Russell Crowe affair) rubbed too abrasively against her "cute" screen image? That's a problem that Julia never seemed to have despite an even more volatile love life -- maybe because her image wasn't as "cute" but leaned a little spikier and more narcissistic.

I'm just theorizing now... Join me. I'd love to hear your (non hateful) theories and your take on her best work. It's her 50th birthday so we wish her well. Her next feature is an ensemble drama called Lives of the Saints with an eclectic cast featuring Kat Dennings, Kevin Zegers, 50 Cent, and John Lithgow. 

What do you make of her more dramatic work in In the Cut, When A Man Loves a Woman, Hurlyburly, Flesh and Bone, Top Gun, Prelude to a Kiss? Which of her romcoms do it for you: ...Sally? ...Mail? French Kiss? Addicted to Love? ...Seattle? Kate & Leopold?

10th Anniversary Top Ten: "Once More With Feeling"

One of the all time best episodes of anything ever turned ten just a week(ish) ago... but I wanted to celebrate on a Tuesday.

Dawn's in trouble? Must be Tuesday."

That means for the past week and for many weeks after circa 2001 I had the songs from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's "Once More With Feeling" in heavy rotation in my head and or ipod. 

One of my favorite moments of any awards season, obscure though it be, is the moment during the AFI's one and only televised award ceremony in January 2002 (anyone remember that? They combined TV and film like the Globes do) when Buffy the Vampire Slayer was nominated for best drama series. When they announced the category a clip from this very episode played proudly alongside clips from its three fellow nominees, all traditional awards heavyweights: The West Wing, The Sopranos and Six Feet Under. This is the sort of company Buffy should have been keeping during its run though Emmy voters just couldn't see it*.

For today's top ten, because I can never find a good excuse to talk about my #1 favorite TV series of all time, here's a top ten of that historic episode, in chronological order because the episode is so beautifully constructed.

TEN BEST MOMENTS IN "ONCE MORE WITH FEELING"

• Intro Once More With Feeling proclaims itself 'a very special episode' immediately, dispatching the usual credits for an overture style opening credits with each cast member smiling inside the (spot)light of the moon. It then surprises by 'going through the motions' of a typical day without dialogue before getting to its first number "Going Through the Motions", instantly recalling the gold standardepisode Hush. It's a ballsy confident move and, as it turns out, telling: Aren't those two episodes essentially fraternal twin classics, each riffing imaginatively on the difficulty of truly communicating with the people we love most?

• "Going Through The Motions" manages to answer all the complaints about Season 6's Sad Sloggy Buffy Summers and respond with a knowing and compelling cry for help. And it performs this dramatic spell with hilarious little sung asides (Demon Just Realizing He's Been Killed: "She's not even half the girl she --owwww!" | Hot Guy Rescued: "How can I repay... " Buffy: "Whatever...")

♫ I don't want to be... going through the motions
Losing all my drive
I can't even see, if this is really me
And I just want to be
Aliiiiiiiiivvve ♪" 

The best part is the ending which reworks a now excessively familiar sight, a vampire being dusted, into something newly magical; Buffy emerges from the cloud singing beautifully, like it's fairy dust not ashes. 

8 other 'best' moments & grudge-holding Emmy bitching

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