Review: "Snow White and the Huntsman"

This article was originally published in my movie column at Towleroad

"Fairy tale revisionism" has been rapidly climbing the Hollywood idea chart. In the past few years we've seen Alice in Wonderland, Rapunzel in Tangled, Red Riding Hood, and Snow White in Mirror Mirror (reviewed here).  There are several more on the way including Angelina Jolie as Maleficent terrorizing Sleeping Beauty Elle Fanning. This weekend Snow White returned to theaters for the second time in three months. Her timing is apt since the apple-munching princess is celebrating her 75th big screen anniversary (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered in 1937). Why so many fairy tales? Modern Hollywood thrives on branding so the more familiar the movie before it arrives the better. And what's more familiar than fairy tales?

Tale as old as time. 
True as it can be…  ♫

Oops wrong fairy tale. Regret to inform that Snow White and the Huntsman does not have a theme song sung by Angela Lansbury but let's borrow that song anyway as framing device. Snow White and the Hunstman does have a theme song but it's a less catchy dirge-like ballad. One of the seven dwarves coughs it out at a funeral until Florence and the Machine take over on the soundtrack as the heroes rise up against evil Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron) in montage. 

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. If you can suspend your disbelief that Kristen Stewart is "the fairest of all them all" in a beauty contest with Charlize Theron, read on...

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Link to the Future

Past
The New Yorker a memoir about growing up with B Movies
Aint It Cool News looks back at Alien Ressurection. The Alien franchise is on everyone's brain now that Prometheus is (nearly) upon us. 
IndieWire the cooking channel's Baron Ambrosia names his five favorite food movies. Not the usual comfort food answers. The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover? Well done, Baron. 

Present
Coming Soon The Avengers will come to home video as part of a 10 disc set of Marvel Universe movies. (Hey they gotta move those Incredible Hulk discs somehow.) Details forthcoming. One billion dollars at the box office clearly wasn't enough booty! 
World of Wonder Charlize Theron teaches us to walk like queens. "Just think MURDER..."
My New Plaid Pants today is my friend JA's seventh anniversary online. His blog is still great. 
In Contention Michael Mann will chair the Venice Film Festival this year 
Emerging Artist Contest Quentin Tarantino is hosting a contest for upcoming filmmakers although finding your own voice here means remixing and mashing film clips from Django Unchained and others... makes sense that Tarantino would want a new voice adept at mixing old voices (sound familiar?) but if you're a filmmaker this contest is definitely worth checking out. 

Future
TMZ Lindsay Lohan on "preproduction" set testing out her Liz Taylor biopic look.
Awards Daily has the first promotional photos for Only God Forgives the Refn/Gosling follow up to the great Drive. Including this one...

Rope of Silicon seems that the Andy and Lana Wachowski have finally shaken off the Speed Racer blues with Cloud Atlas arriving soon and Jupiter Ascending which will "reinvent action" in preproduction. Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis will star.
The Mary Sue realizes that Charlize Theron is the coolest girl in the movies while she talks Mad Max and, uh, Game of Thrones. It's weird to me that people are still unaware that Charlize Theron is most awesome when playing herself... but welcome to Charlize fandom one and all.
24 Frames Kristen Stewart wants to make a new East of Eden picture, the James Dean movie being one of those pesky adaptations that sacrifices huge swaths of a book in order to make itself into a great movie. How rude of it! 

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: "The Exorcist"

The Hit Me With Your Best Shot series is deceptively simple. Choose a single shot from a pre-selected movie that you think is best, best being in the eye of the beholder. Tonight we're looking at The Exorcist (1973). And for me at least, it's the first time I've looked at it. That's not quite as shocking as your 12 year old daughter's head spinning 'round 180º, but maybe it's close.

Nearly every horror classic I've seen I've resisted in some ridiculous way: I saw Halloween at a sleepover movie marathon but it took my horror-loving friend five holidays to convince me; I first saw Silence of the Lambs because I had five nightmares about it beforehand and wanted them to end; I can't remember what prompted Rosemary's Baby but I'm willing to bet that I rented the video five times before actually watching it. And so on. 

If I was ever going to watch The Exorcist, the power of blogging would have to compel me. And so it did.

And here we are in the haunted upstairs bedrooms of actress Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) and her daughter Regan (Linda Blair). The first thing that impressed me about the  movie was how rooted in character it was. Director William Friedkin and the novelist screenwriter William Peter Blatty spend more than half hour with the four main characters before the devil (The Devil?) crashes the party. The first shot that I truly loved foreshadowed the horrors to come in a wonderfully lived-in nonchalant way. After Chris MacNeil unleashes a stream of profanity on an angry phone call (including, pointedly, several "Jesus Christ!"s) we cut to the middle of the night when she's woken by a phone call. I love that the shot starts in the dark and when Chris flips on the light the only face that's really illuminated, given her bleary banged face, is Regan's in a photo on the bedstand; the young girl looks actively worried for her mother which is a brilliant set decoration move. Chris hangs up the phone and the camera tracks her movements to the right until we and she realize that her daughter has crawled into bed with her. It's the first time Regan is essentially split in the film, surrounding her anxious still oblivious mother.

Chris: What are you doing here?
Regan: My bed was shaking. I can't get to sleep.

Here in a sweet mother/daughter moment, Regan's telling us where all the horror will be found. The next voice we here, overlap edited over the end of this shot but just barely is the devil's if you want to get metaphoric about it is Captain Howdy's (The Devil's) who is banging about in the attic. Oh Chris, soon to be overwhelmed Chris, it's not rats. 

The Exorcist builds beautifully towards its truly grotesque last act but at least half of the reason it's so effective is that it never forgets who is terrified while it's terrifying us. My second favorite shot in the film is a beautifully quiet character beat for the title character(s) in the "intermission" of the exorcism. 

The Exorcist(s): Father Karras and Father Merrin

One of the movie's most disturbing famous images is "Help me" scrawled on Regan's stomach from the inside.  If Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller) were to remove his clothing, wouldn't we see a similar cry for help from his private hell?

It's these quiet glimpses of internal terror that really sell the movie for me, whether it's Ellen Burstyn's increasing impotent understanding (when no one else has accepted it -- not even the priests) or Father Karras's personal doubts. This silence, this vacuum, lets the terror flood in, often courtesy of the Oscar winning sound work. In the shot above we still hear Regan's possessed wheezing from inside the bedroom, less shocking but even more unsettling than her loud profane outbursts.

This push and pull between external and internal terror, room-shaking chaos and sudden absences of sound but for Exorcist chanting to fill the void powers, for me, the most hypnotic shot in the film. The room suddenly goes quiet and we see Regan lift off the bed in crucifix pose until she's nearly touching the ceiling. A simple familiar image, yes, like you'd see in a magic show. But somehow alien and unnatural, too. Only the exorcists can break this unholy spell.

The Power of Blog Compels Them
Movies Kick Ass is Hollywood the devil?
The Tomas Experience "as sure as the sun rises, you can find evil anywhere"
Film Actually the mysteries of faith and science
The Sketchy Details Regan split in two
Antagony & Ecstasy a single mother's personal hell
Cheerful Cynicism the slow burn is the best part 
Cinesnatch has mixed feelings about the movie 
Okinawa Assault colours and threats 
Encore's World is moved by the mother/daughter bond 
Beau McCoy "The Exorcist and Nothingness" 
Stranger than Most find horror in the hospital
Pussy Goes Grrr "body and soul" and Linda Blair's eyes

Next Wednesday: Edward Scissorhands (1990)... will we catch you dancing in it?
Previously: Pariah (2011), Raise the Red Lantern (1991),  Serenity (2005)

"The Exorcist" and Nothingness

[Editor's Note: Beau McCoy is a longtime reader who I met recently. I quite like his writing and have asked him to contribute to the site. I hope you'll encourage him in the comments to return again. He doesn't have a blog so I'm featuring his "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" entry here as a kind of sneak peak to Wednesday night's group activity looking at "The Exorcist". I'm already terrified to follow this entry up. It's quite an opening scene. Are you joining us on Wednesday? -Nathaniel]

by Beau McCoy
There are few horror films whose reputation precedes them quite like The Exorcist (1973). Even if you never see the film, you know it. You know what it's about. You know specific scenes and you know certain images, even if you can't quite remember how you came across them. In much the same way Friedkin intended for certain subliminal imagery to make its way into the film, (using failed makeup tests with a model), the film inserts itself, impermissibly, into the subconscious of those who experience it in one way or another.

When you hear about films, if you're anything like me, there's something that hits you that I've called 'The Wave'. A tsunami of emotion, memory, nostalgia, fear, and regret that gives you opportunity to view yourself viewing that film in a different time. I can't remember much from the early part of my life. There are people who I see after years and I can't recall exactly how it was I knew or met them in the first place. But with a film, it's as though it made its way into me, burrowing itself into my subconscious, or heart, dick, what have you, and when it's called upon, it pops up cheerfully like an old friend to say 'Hey! What have you been up to?' 

The Exorcist, appropriately enough, is not so cheerful. It looms. [Beau's best shot after the jump]

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"Gravity" is Now Test Screening

One of 2012's most anticipated features, Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity, is far enough along now that it's test screening. All we know (and want to know!) of its plot is the synopsis which goes like so "The lone survivor of a space mission to repair the Hubble telescope desperately tries to return to Earth and reunite with her daughter."

Sandra and Child and George Clooney on the set of "Gravity"

I heard from a Film Experience reader in California shortly after he exited a test screening and I thank him for not telling me plot details! (I can't be the only one who wants to be surprised at the movies anymore). He guiltily prefaced things with "I know I'm not supposed to speak about the movie" but he was too excited not to share calling Cuarón "insanely monumental" though he confirmed my suspicions that the film will prove divisive. 

Gravity is Cuaron’s masterpiece. It’s gonna be divided. Half will think it’s a self-indulgent borefest and half will think it’s amazingly brilliant. The movie is 80% just Sandra Bullock!

He went on to say that he thinks its her best work, particular in the final fifteen minutes (from which he assumes they'll draw an Oscar clip should that time come) but that the film is Cuarón's. He called likely nominations for Visual Effects, Picture, Director, Editing ("breathless" action), and Cinematography which he calls "amazing". Regarding the latter, though, did anyone expect less from eternal Oscar bridesmaid Emmanuel Lubezki (The Tree of Life, Children of Men) and Michael Seresin (Midnight Express)? 

Sandra on set. Bruise makeup?

You'll recall that the ambitious project had great difficulty finding its film-carrying female lead (supposedly Angelina Jolie turned it down twice and Natalie Portman once). So as for Best Actress...

If this is a runaway crowd pleaser, then count Bullock in."

Are you counting Sandy and Gravity in?

Related: Oscar Predictions & Oscar discussions