Of Blu-ray Bronzing, The Getaway, Roger Donaldson, and... Angry Snowmans?

To pick a slightly arbitrary starting point for this weekly update: we were in the mood for a nautical mutiny film, so I tried showing my wife the 1935 Mutiny on the Bounty. She doesn't enjoy classics as much as I do, and the ones she does gravitate towards are the ones that have a naturalistic, contemporary feel to the dialogue. She enjoyed Rebel Without a Cause, enjoyed Sunset Boulevard. But she wasn't really liking Mutiny, which, great as it is, has that "old movie delivery," where the actors are very visibly actors reading lines in front of a camera; she can't lose herself in the illusion of it, just sits there on the outside of it and eventually falls asleep.   

Such was the case the other night. When I noticed her starting to droop, I turned the vid off and suggested that we go to bed, and start over the next night with the more recent version -- the one with Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson, which I hadn't seen in some time. She went for it. 

We loved it. 

This got me on a brief Roger Donaldson kick. I had paid no attention to his cinema, wasn't really aware of him as a filmmaker until The Bounty, which is a surprisingly good-looking, subtle film, with a screenplay by Robert Bolt (best known for A Man for All Seasons but also noteworthy for The Mission and a couple of David Lean films, including a co-write on Lawrence of Arabia; The Bounty began life as a Lean project, we learn). Rather than make a cartoon villain out of Bligh -- great as Laughton is, he's a cartoon character for the first half of the earlier film, only attaining some richness after the mutiny takes place -- the film gives a fairly balanced portrait. It motivates Christian and the men quite amply, but without needing to make a villain of anyone; instead, the villain is a much more complex thing, involving class and work and hierarchy and civilization itself. What warm-blooded man, offered the chance to live in a tropical paradise in a state of natural freedom (very much represented by the Tahitians in the film, who are viewed through rose-coloured glasses), would choose instead to set to sea for a year to bring breadfruit across the world, to feed slaves at a plantation in Jamaica, for what meager wage was on offer? Only someone motivated by the rewards of position -- a ship's captain, maybe wanting to prove himself; or perhaps the truly loyal followers of the man, the stiff-necked social climbers aware of the position they've attained and craving more (Daniel Day Lewis inhabits this role quite nicely in the Donaldson film). The sailors, unmoved by such considerations, though not in themselves dishonorable, taste a different life in Tahiti, and crave it. You can't blame them, but you also can't blame Bligh. It's a nicely nuanced film, worthy of revisiting.

...So who the heck is Roger Donaldson? I had really enjoyed another Laughton update he did, No Way Out, the Kevin Costner/ Gene Hackman/ Sean Young/ Will Patton/ CHRIS DESJARDINS cold war spy thriller. It's very crisp, very entertaining, and pays interesting homage to the film it remakes, The Big Clock, in that it has the basic plot of that movie (a man investigates a murder that his boss was involved in, but has to avoid his own role being uncovered) but differs dramatically on almost all other counts. It's a great little thriller but even moreso if you're a Flesh Eaters fan; Chris D. is really great in it (though the real star of the show is Will Patton, sinking his teeth into a really juicy character part). 

Anyhow, scanning the IMDB for Donaldson, I saw that he had directed a couple of other films I enjoyed (the Bay-of-Pigs-themed Thirteen Days and his New Zealand domestic drama Smash Palace, which I saw as a kid on pay-TV, I think; it was the early indy success that had kickstarted his Hollywood career, his next theatrical feature being The Bounty). But among his films, there were also a couple that I thought were steaming piles of cinematic shit, with the worst probably being Species, an uninspired, kinda misogynist Alien knockoff that tries to situate the alien as a sexually empowered female on the dating scene (she takes human form). I had rolled my eyes at it in the theatre, but had actually snagged it on the cheap on blu-ray not long ago to see if the years had been kind to it. Now I was motivated to see it: how can a filmmaker capable of something as mature, beautiful, and thoughtful as The Bounty churn out a piece of crap like Species? Did it have any redeeming features that I'd failed to notice when I saw it first run?  

The short answer is no, but there are a few moments (the kid with the tongue!) that made me sit up and smile, and it sometimes fun to watch the talented cast struggling with the half-hearted cheese in the screenplay. Forest Whitaker acquits himself well, as does Alfred Molina; there's an early role for Michelle Williams, too (her third film role, age 15). Ben Kingsley knows he's slumming and gives one of his stiffest performances ever, while Michael Madsen -- what can one say? Only Tarantino has used him well, apparently understanding his old-fashioned-tough guy/ Robert Mitchum qualities and knowing how to exploit them by putting the right kinds of lines in his mouth. He's reasonably well-cast in species, in fact, playing a gun-for-hire who cleans up government messes, and he delivers exactly what can be expected from the role, but therein lies the rub: expectations on Species seem to have been low all-round (even HR Giger's creature designs aren't that impressive). Madsen does get the single witty line in the screenplay, about how Kingsley's character doesn't get out much. Otherwise, the most curious aspect of revisiting the film was the extreme contrast between the lush, Lean-like cinematographic splendor of The Bounty -- it's gorgeous to behold -- and the lame b-movie assembly of Species. The same filmmaker, you say?

I blame John Armstrong for what comes next: I re-watched The Getaway remake, also a Roger  Donaldson Hollywood job, because Armstrong had told me that the Al Lettieri role (from the Peckinpah movie) was played by Joe Spinell. Who doesn't love Joe Spinell? And how perfect it would be, to have him subbed in for Al Lettieri?

Spinell

Lettieri

Imagine my disappointment to discover that Joe Spinell was five years in the ground when this movie was made, and that the actual role of Rudy was played by... 

Yep: Michael Madsen in a mullet! He's pretty good in the film -- it's a part that suits him, and he gets to have some fun with being a sleazy but understandable tough. His scenes with Jennifer Tilly (repping Sally Struthers) have some spark to them and his haircut is consistently entertaining to wince at, so it's really quite unfair that I spent every single scene he's in trying to imagine Joe Spinell in his role. Spinell> Madsen, as far as character actors go, but then, Jennifer Tilly>Sally Struthers... you can't but sit there making comparisons, to make the movie more entertaining, because, y'know, it's a story you've seen told better before (The Getaway is probably my favourite Peckinpah film, in fact). Baldwin and Basinger have nothing on McQueen and McGraw, and Donaldson disappointingly ignores the very dark denouement of Jim Thompson's novel to just offer a straight-up imitation of the earlier film, with only a few differences early on. Which is a bad idea; if you're going to remake a film by a master, you want to do something different with it, like the obvious move of filming the (downbeat, bleak, and horrifying) actual ending of the novel, where Doc and Carol escape to a Mexican town that is a pay-to-enter hideaway for bad people, which Tarantino riffs on in From Dusk Til Dawn, even giving it the same name, El Rey. There they fall to mistrust and scheming and seem poised to kill each other at any moment. It's about as grim as Jim Thompson gets -- and he can get pretty grim!

This is a far cry from the romantic happy endings both the film adaptations offer, with Slim Pickens and Richard Farnsworth, respectively, gleefully helping the couple on the run escape the claws of justice. I love the Pickens scene, but Farnsworth is also great, so much so I couldn't fairly say which one I preferred; I wanted to compare the Donaldson ending with the original, so I dug out my copy of the Peckinpah blu-ray, put it into the player and...

It wouldn't load. Examining the disc, which I'd bought new at a HMV on Robson around 2010 or 2011, I could see that it was weirdly discoloured. This is my first discovery of a form of disc rot called bronzing -- a sort of brown halo creeping in from the outer edges of the disc. While environmental factors CAN be an issue -- if your discs are stored in a damp/ humid environment, for instance, which mine are not -- the real issue is that chemicals in the disc can degrade over time. Other than a copy of The Yakuza on DVD, I've been very lucky when it comes to disc rot, but how upsetting to know that this film -- which I probably paid close to $30 for, and only watched once or twice -- had simply degraded over time on the shelf to the point of being completely unplayable. Not even the menu will load! 

I've written Warner Brothers, and somewhat to my surprise, am being told that a replacement disc is possible (I've explained that I have no receipt to show them; why would I, when the disc was purchased ten years ago and worked fine at the time?). It might take a few weeks. I guess Peckinpah can wait awhile... 

Anyhow, I now want to see a few other Roger Donaldson films. I might start with an early New Zealand offering of his, which happens to be on Tubi -- Sleeping Dogs. I'm being told The Bank Job is a decent heist thriller, as well, but I don't have it around. But before I get to any of that...

...I'm going back to bed. I caught some sort of cold at the Dead Bob show, it seems. Which is how I happen to be watching so many movies, of a sudden - I've had three sick days this week, and am pleased to have another one stretching before me today, as my cough turns productive. Who wants to be coughin' up frogs at work?

By the way, I did review the Dead Bob show -- but I donated it to Germany's Ox Fanzine. It will do more good in Germany than it would here. Fantastic band, though. 

Oh, by the way, Night Court (whom I still haven't seen) opens for (the Buzzcocks-meet-the-Jam Ontario band) Tommy and the Commies tonight at the Black Lab, and tomorrow for (festive punk humourists) the Angry Snowmans at the Waldorf. I'd thought of doing both shows, but I feel pretty shitey at the moment, and I wouldn't want to spread my illness to others; I think I might give it one more night, and hopefully be recovered enough for the Snowmans gig. They have the perfect bandname: if you don't get it, you probably won't get them, either!