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Lupe (1966)
Edie Sedgwick's Factory Girl Swan Song
I saw this film a few years ago at the Egyptian in Hollywood. Although it wasn't actually the very last film she would do with Warhol -- she would sadly return to film both "The Andy Warhol Story" and "Ondine & Edie" a year or so later -- "Lupe" is generally noted by Warhol's biographers as he and Edie's last joint effort together in a collection of about 11 films (and the only one, I believe, shot in color). ... Edie is supposed to be Lupe Velez -- the '40s film equivalent of Jennifer Lopez or Salma Hayek -- who committed suicide in 1944 from a lethal overdose of Seconal. With yellow-bleached, bobbed hair and her trademark heavy eyeliner and bat-wing lashes, Edie -- being Edie, of course -- makes no attempt whatsoever to convey the essence of Lupe Velez. This may have been intended by Warhol to be a film about Lupe's lurid past, but it is actually a preview of Edie's tragic demise. Shown on two screens, side by side, we see Edie wake up in a filthy, cluttered room -- becoming increasingly animated, I would venture to guess, as her AM amphetamine dose kicks in. She is joined by Facotry regular Billy Name -- who gives her a trim and chats her up as she applies the first of many layers of make-up. On the opposite screen, we find Edie all made up and dressed in a baby blue, Empire-waist dress or nightgown in a stylishly-appointed apartment (reportedly located in the infamous Dakota -- where "Rosemary's Baby" would later be filmed and John Lennon, of course, would be slain). In this setting, she is clearly out of it: nodding off repeatedly as she has difficulty eating her "last supper" and then later opting to dance with the still full plate of food held aloft in a stuporous kind of barbiturate ballet ... If you know the back-story about Edie at this point in her life, in December of '65, you know the drugs are rapidly overtaking her, the split with Warhol is imminent and her 15 minutes of fame have begun to sputter out. The last shot hits the viewer like a sledgehammer: it is Edie, unconscious, with her head resting gently on the edge of a toilet bowl. Again, nothing like the messy scene described by Kenneth Anger in "Hollywood Babylon" (or even the later degrading scenes littered throughout that mad death rattle of an opus, "Ciao! Manhattan"). Because this is pure Edie, the proverbial angel with a broken wing, showing us in her slow-motion pantomime way that she is indeed doomed -- even if the lights of flash-in-the-pan fame haven't quite yet been extinguished ...
King Kong (2005)
King Kong -- Spectacular!
As a longtime fan of both the '33 original and -- sorry Kong purists -- the oft-bashed '76 remake, I was thrilled to be invited to an early screening here in Los Angeles on December 7th. What I saw from the 10th row of the gigantic Gibson Amphitheatre at Universal Citywalk can only be described as a mind-blowing spectacle on an almost too-massive scale. By the end of the third hour -- which, by the way, whizzes by very much like 1998's "Titanic" -- I was as limp as our vaudevillian hoofer-heroine Ann Darrow had to be. In my opinion, the film is so big it's almost three rolled into one. The first hour, leading up to Kong's exciting entrance, is all drive and desperation as a near-manic Jack Black leads one and all out of the despair of the Depression and into one of the most deadly location shoots since John Wayne in "The Conqueror". The second hour is an amazing showcase of prehistoric CGI acrobatics that makes "Jurassic Park" feel like a mere kiddie ride. The third hour is all build-up to a stunning, sometimes vertigo-inducing showdown atop the Empire State Building that brutally winds up the film's melancholy through-line that "good things never last" -- in this case, Naomi Watts single-handed attempt to protect and preserve the ultimate fish out of water.
There is no questioning that filmmaker Jackson has a deep and abiding love for the original "King Kong" (and, to a lesser degree, the DiLaurentiis remake). In fact, the film is peppered with uniquely outstanding salutes to both versions -- the best being early on when Jack Black as director Denham shoots a scene aboard ship that cleverly lifts dialog and the mannered acting style of the post-silent era from the original. He also pays brilliant homage to the 1933 "Kong" by using the lush Max Steiner score in Denham's garish stage show -- complete with native dancers dressed exactly like those in the RKO original. Tribute to the '76 remake comes chiefly in the form of beauty's shrinking fear and growing love for the beast -- the much needed character development lacking in Fay Wray's convention-shackled heroine. Instead of the nervous, flighty Marilyn Monroe-like banter Jessica Lange engages her ape in, Watts juggles, does backflips and uses an abbreviated sign language to win over this Kong. The "giant gorilla/captive gal" relationship manages to bring out some genuine tenderness and side-step any campy aspects or sexual innuendo -- something the '76 remake unwisely basks in (in contrast to its moving scenes). Watts' fatalistic and compassionate Ann Darrow may not be as complex as Lange's selfish, conflicted Dwan -- who loves Kong, but ultimately falls victim to her own flash-in-the-pan celebrity -- but she is the epitome of loyalty: after a particularly vicious capture from Skull Island, we are led to believe Ann has agreed to Kong's exploitation -- only to find out later she has abandoned Denham's three-ring travesty to return to the chorus line.
The best things about this version are, in my opinion, the atmosphere, tone and enormous attention given to detail, including Kong's character. Unlike the more mythic isle of the RKO backlot -- or even the non-prehistoric paradise of the first remake -- this Skull Island is perhaps the most fearsome and unnerving place on the planet. Jackson's Gothic-grotesque sensibility is in full flower here as he creates a world so dangerous, alien and brutal it will have you squirming in your seat (in some ways the natives are even more disturbing than the dinosaurs). His Depression-era Manhattan is also a colorful, but jaundiced look back at an urban jungle teaming with chaos. As mentioned above, it's actually a very melancholy film for the big blockbuster-type and this owes much to the believability of Kong as a misunderstood, suffering creature. Praise should be heaped on the special effects, but Andy Serkis deserves more for adding so much depth to Kong as a genuine being we can relate to. In fact, identification with Kong is so strong, many audiences members in the screening I attended were in tears at the tragic climax (one man near me was furious that Jack Black wasn't given his karmic due and killed by Kong at some point, like Charles Grodin in the Jessica Lange version -- a sentiment I whole-heartedly agreed with).
The worst thing about "King Kong" are the stupid, logic-defying moments all too common-place in today's action genre: a character named Jimmy, who has never picked up a firearm before, shoots over-sized insects off a frantic, struggling Adrien Brody with a machine gun, failing to injure him. Or worse, Kong and Watts fall down a ravine with two savage T-Rexes, getting caught on vines as Watts lands smack on one's scaly snout -- somehow managing to hold on despite a violent thrashing (some old vaudeville trick?). Over-the-top stuff like this took me right out of the moment and should have been cut -- being reserved, maybe, for the deleted scenes on the eventual DVD.
Minor complaints notwithstanding, Peter Jackson has done an incredible job revising and reworking "King Kong" for a whole new generation. Undoubtedly, it will vindicate fans of the classic original -- who felt cheated by Paramount's radical update for far too long now. Perhaps maybe it might even unite them finally with those "disloyal" fans who secretly savor Kong scaling the now lost World Trade Center. In any case, this new version takes the superior elements of both to a level never seen before. As a result, it's definitely the must-see event that should not be missed.
Son of Fury: The Story of Benjamin Blake (1942)
Frances Farmer's Farewell
Some may remember Kenneth Anger taking this lush film's title and gender-bending it a bit to give his Frances Farmer chapter in "Hollywood Babylon" its tabloid tone, but this is truly a great movie (outside of the fact that it features not one, but two Tinseltown beauties who, in Anger's salacious words "drank at the well of madness") ... Farmer, after a string of uneven pictures, is relegated to a supporting role here, but actually fares better than leading lady Gene Tierney because 1) her role is far more complex and 2) her on-screen chemistry with star Tyrone Power is much more palpable. Perhaps the saddest thing about "Son of Fury" is the knowledge that despite the now recurrent difficulties being reported from the set, Farmer had caught herself a break and maybe a chance to finally ride out Paramount's punishment -- starting in 1938, of course, with the aptly-named (and perfectly awful) "Ride A Crooked Mile". But as we all know, the road got bumpier, the turns sharper and the potholes unavoidable ... To see Farmer surrounded not only by the likes of such A-list talent as Power and Tierney, but a stellar George Sanders and very young Roddy McDowell is to get a glimpse of what might have been. To read accounts of Farmer being tricked into watching this film years later while incarcerated in an insane asylum, if indeed true, is unforgivable ... Watch "Son of Fury" for everything the Golden Age of Hollywood purported to be -- solid, if not overly- spectacular, entertainment. It may not be the last film of Farmer's short-lived career, but it is our last look at this fine young actress at her peak -- as stunning and mythic as she was years earlier in "Come And Get It" -- but now with an undeniable sadness melting from within.