Rest in Peace, Peter O'Toole

A shining light went out this weekend.  Peter O'Toole had been sick for some time, so I was not surprised when I heard the news.  Frankly, given the hard life he lived, I am shocked he made it this long!  He should have died numerous times decades ago and he knew it, and continued to live each day to the fullest. 

For me, O'Toole has been in my life for as long as I can remember.  Lawrence of Arabia has been my favorite movie since I was 12.  And a lot of that credit goes to the thrilling performance from O'Toole.  And my love of Lawrence led directly to my first big lesson on how the Oscars aren't fair.  I knew Lawrence had won 7 Oscars, including all the biggies, but when I looked on the list, I did not see O'Toole's name.  Despite my ardent protests, my dad assured me that it was not a typo and that O'Toole had indeed lost the Oscar. 

You see, in my child's mind, it was inconceivable that he could lose that Oscar.  That performance is riveting in every detail. it is sheer electricity on-screen and I had never seen anything like it (nor have I since).  How is it possible that he had lost?!  Because that is the Oscars, folks. 

In fact, O'Toole's career was a checklist of Oscar unluckiness.  He had the misfortune of almost always going up against someone who was guaranteed to win.  For those who are curious, here is the tally:

1. Lawrence of Arabia - lost to Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird.  Look, that is a great performance in a great film, but O'Toole was better.  That said, there was no way Peck was losing that Oscar.

2. Becket - lost to Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady.  There is no way Rex Harrison was losing that Oscar .

3. The Lion in Winter - this the one he should have won.  Cliff Robertson won for Charly, which is was a fine film, but I'm not sure how Robertson won this.  He did embark on a great publicity campaign and there also may have been some voter fatigue from so many European actors winning Oscars in the 1960s.  Either way, this is the one that got away. 

4. Goodbye, Mr. Chips - lost to John Wayne in True Grit.  There was no way John Wayne was losing that Oscar - not after almost a half century in Hollywood without a win. 

5. Ruling Class - lost to Marlon Brando in The Godfather.  Brando is not losing that Oscar.

6. The Stunt Man - lost to Robert DeNiro in Raging Bull.  DeNiro is not losing that Oscar.

7. My Favorite Year - lost to Ben Kingsley in Gandhi.  You really think Kingsley was going to lose that Oscar? 

8. Venus - lost to Forrest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland.  Whitaker is not going to lose that Oscar.

What bad luck!  That is 8 nominations without a win, which is the record for acting.  He was awarded an Honorary Oscar in 2003, which he tried to reject because he said he was still in the game and "wanted to win the bugger outright."  But I think that was Hollywood's way of trying to undo their mistake and award him for a terrific body of work. 

But let's move on. Why dwell on disappointments when we should be applauding his work.  I wanted to make a quick list of the top five O'Toole performances for me.  His body of work includes a lot of class, but also a lot of junk (the late 1980s was not a good decade for him!), but if you could only see him acting in five movies, these are the five.  Please note that I don't think these are his best five films; just his top five performances.  I've also included the scene that I think showcases what he does best in these films.  Counting down!!!

5. Venus - What a great role to have at the end of one's career!  O'Toole plays a dirty old actor named Maurice reduced to playing aged aristocrats or corpses, and who becomes infatuated with a young woman named Jessie (Jodie Whitaker). While moments are hilarious, this really is not a heartwarming film.  But Maurice is a daring and bold role for any actor to take, and O'Toole brought 50 years of hellraising baggage to the part.  The killer scene is when he visits his ex-wife (Vanessa Redgrave) and admits to what a shallow and horrible husband he had been - but still with a touch of class and humor.  Only O'Toole could pull that off!

4. What's New Pussycat?  This is not a great film.  I'm not even sure if this is a good one, but boy, is it fun and absolutely insane!  This was one of those crazy sex farces from the 1960s, and featured a sterling cast that included Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress and Woody Allen in his film debut.  This movie is ridiculous, makes no sense, and I love every second of it.  If Lawrence is the movie that revealed O'Toole the actor to me, then this was the movie that showed me the Hellraiser.  I got a sense that in real life, he was very much like boozy womanizer Michael James.  And that guy would be a lot of fun to hang out with!  I would probably not survive the evening, but it would be a lot of fun!  For a standout O'Toole moment, either check out the drunken spin on Cyrano de Bergerac or his reaction to Paula Prentiss' poetry ("Who Killed Charlie Parker!  You did! You Rat!")

3. The Stunt Man.  Another film that is not everyone's cup of tea. Some people love it, some are appalled by its strangeness.  I am mixed myself.  There is a lot to love about this crazy movie, but there are too many problems for me to fully embrace it.  That said, O'Toole is insanely good as a maniacal film director Eli Cross, who may be trying to kill his new stunt man.  He hovers over the whole movie - literally, since his director's chair is mounted on a giant crane - like some sort of crazed movie god passing judgment on all the mere mortals beneath him.  He is both terrifying and charming.  The highlight scene is when the Assistant Director yells, "cut" on set before Eli Cross I ready to end the scene.  The fast-paced, clipped display of venom that spews out of O'Toole's mouth for the next 30 seconds is the type of performance that should be taught in film school.

2. The Lion in Winter.  As the embattled king Henry II, O'Toole is brilliant. The movie follows Henry as he tries to deal with his remarkably dysfunctional family while arguing politics with his rival, the new king of France.  Sounds a bit boring?  Try again.  Though technically a drama, this movie is actually very funny, with remarkably clever dialogue and memorable characters.  And O'Toole is terrific, stealing the movie from a great cast that also includes Katherine Hepburn, Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton.  He not only went head-to-head with the steely titan Hepburn, he eclipsed her (though she did win a well-deserved Oscar).  The best scene in the movie is when Henry has finally had enough of his rebellious children and muses on how his epitaph will read when he eventually dies, "but Henry had no sons.  He had no sons."  The pain and the rage are palpable and raw.  It's a great moment in a great film.

1. Lawrence of Arabia.  Was there any doubt?  My favorite performance in my favorite film.  David Lean put O'Toole through the ringer in this movie.  It is nearly a four hour movie and O'Toole is in nearly every scene, and has to run an emotional range from idealistic young officer to a man utterly crushed by political backstabbing and his own demons.  The last time I saw Lawrence, I realized there was something remarkable that I had never seen before.  Usually characters with God Complexes are villains, and usually they keep their illusions of grandeur right until the moment the hero kills them.  But in Lawrence, our hero has the God Complex, and his illusions are shattered, he has to live with the fact that he was wrong.  How do you deal with that?  It's an interesting question to ask in the middle of a massive World War I epic.  There was a heroic ideal that Lawrence thought he embodied, and that everyone else still believes him to be, and deep down, he knows he just doesn't cut it.  And by the end of the film, you can see that building pressure just destroying him.  Lawrence is about a lot of things, but it is also about the destruction of a human being, and O'Toole just nails every beat.  I've never seen anything like it before or since.  And I don't know if I can pick a best scene.  In my younger days, I would have chosen the iconic encounter with Sharif Ali at the well.  Now, I lean more towards the film's more complex second half, and the massacre of the Turkish army, specifically.  When he stares down Sharif on the battlefield with that brutal tonic of barbaric insanity and shame in his eyes, it is truly terrifying.

So those are my top five.  There are a lot of moments that could have been in here - his Priam in Troy, his art critic in Ratatouille, his charming thief in How to Steal a Million (my parents first date!), his insane aristocrat in The Ruling Class - heck, even his scientist in the otherwise atrocious Phantoms.  There are a lot of fond memories of watching him on-screen. 

On second thought, I am going to take back that opening sentence on my blog.  A great light has not gone out.  This light will never go out.  Through his performances, O'Toole will always shine.

The Sandpiper

The Sandpiper

The Sandpiper isn't very good.  It's reputation is pretty awful and was seen as a cash grab by the studio to get Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in another movie during the height of their fame and notoriety.  Even Burton and Taylor admited it wasn't very good.  So why did I watch it?  Well, I took one look at the cast and crew and thought, could it really be that bad?  Taylor is hit or miss with me, but I do like Burton.  The cast included Charles Bronson (Death Wish) and Eva Marie Saint (North by Northwest).  The director was Oscar-winning Vincente Minnelli (Gigi) and the script was written by two superb screenwriters, Dalton Trumbo (Spartacus) and Michael Wilson (The Bridge of River Kwai).  Plus, the movie had a small role for Peter O'Toole, who is one of my favorite actors.  With all that talent involved, I wondered could The Sandpiper really be that bad? 

Yep.  It sure is. 

So Elizabeth Taylor is Laura Reynolds, a free spirit, sort of a hippy painter who is broke, but can still afford to live in a sweet pad by the beach.  Her son is a bit of an odd duck and gets in trouble with the law.  Over her objections, the local judge forces him to be enrolled in a Boys School which is run by a Protestant priest, Dr. Edward Hewitt (Burton) and his wife, the patient and understanding Claire (Saint).  Well, despite the fact that they have nothing in common and have almost no chemistry (strange considering the actors' passionate off-screen life), Hewitt and Reynolds start an affair.  And...well, not much happens.  Everyone just talks about stuff, we follow the obvious motions of the affair being discovered and its aftermath and then the movie just kinda ends.  The storyline is a bit odd, without the usual ebb and flow that a standard narrative should have.  The movie doesn't even really have a climax.  It just ambles along in the same meandering pace all the way through and then the credits roll.  I guess that is my way of saying the movie is boring.  If that wasn't clear, allow me to reiterate: THIS MOVIE IS SO BORING!!!

It's not even that there is anything wrong with the movie, per se.  It's just dull. For a wild and free spirit, Laura Reynolds is pretty dull.  Oh, they try to liven her up by giving her some speeches about the women's lib movement, but they are all sleep inducing.  Her love scenes with Burton, when she is forced to say brilliant lines like, 'is this love...is this what married people feel?" aren't any better.  Eek.  Burton does what he can, but he even has trouble.  Minnelli doesn't have a handle on the direction, and I don't know what Trumbo and Wilson were thinking when they put pen to paper.  This is just a bad and dull movie.

And I can't help but think that it must have been uncomfortable to make.  Taylor and Burton were the Brangelina of their day...even bigger, actually.  After all, the Taylor-Burton affair was so notorious that the Vatican condemned them and there was a (unsuccessful) motion in Congress to stop such immoral people from returning to the United States.  So why would Burton make a film about a character who cheats on his patient and awesome wife when that is pretty much what he did in real life to his wife Sybil?  I don't think Elizabeth Taylor would have cared.  She got her man, after all.  But Burton was racked with guilt in real life, at least in the beginning before the divorce proceedings were finalized.  Why would he make this movie?  Was this some sort of penance for him?

Anyway, that leads me to one other thing.  Where the hell was Peter O'Toole!!?  He was supposedly in the beach party scene, which I watched five times and can't find him. And that was enough for IMDB to list him in the cast?  And if you look at most movie books or in the TV Guide, you will see O'Toole gets third billing after Taylor and Burton.  What?!?!?!  Maybe he should get MVP just because he had the good sense to not show his face in this piece of crap.

BEST LINE:

Well, here's an amusing way to take the fun out of graffiti...here's Dr. Hewitt chastising two students...

Dr. Hewitt: Our English tongue has a long history and I am pleased with your interest in its oldest and most...ardent words.  I think it sad, however, that these ancient words should be degraded to a position on lavatory walls.  You will scrub the walls down, of course, and then you will learn the equivalent words in German, French and Latin, after which you will decline each noun and congregate each verb in all tenses, including the subjunctive. 


MVP:
I am going to go with Robert Webber, a former lover of Laura's who just happens to be a member of the school board.  He is a confidant, dapper, egotistical, and the only interesting character in the movie.  He definitely subscribes to "The Guy Code" and doesn't reveal the affair, but isn't above trying to get in on the action himself.  That's just dirty.  But his bravado is way more interesting to watch then everything else going on.  He seems to be an early role model for Don Draper...I wonder if the Mad Men producers watched this movie when they were developing that show...

TRIVIA:
An unknown Raquel Welch doubled for Elizabeth Taylor for some of the beach scenes. 

Club Paradise

Club Paradise

After a life-threatening illness derailed his career in the 1970s, Peter O'Toole (Lawrence of Arabia) seemed poised for a comeback.  He secured well-deserved Oscar nominations for The Stunt Man (1980) and My Favorite Year (1982), and made a lasting impression as the Roman general Silva in the sprawling Masada miniseries (1981).  And then something happened, something horrifying, tragic and terrible.  And that thing is called Club Paradise.

Wow, is this movie bad.  Club Paradise is the unfortunate type of comedy where you don't laugh at all.  You can't laugh.  All you can do is stare and wonder how it even got made.

Robin Williams plays Jack, a retired firefighter living in the tropical paradise of St. Nicholas.  Eventually he decides to refurbish and manage a resort with his buddy Ernest (played by reggae artist Jimmy Cliff).  The problem is that despite their best efforts, their resort is a piece of trash and is literally falling to pieces.  Jack and Ernest spend much of the movie trying to keep the place together so their guests can have a good time.  Another problem is that a ruthless American businessman and the island's prime minister are plotting to force the locals into a tourism sucking cycle of servitude, leaving them destitute forever and unable to climb the economic ladder.  Grr!   Evil foreign capitalism!

...

Yeah, you read that right.  Look, I'm not saying that fancy foreign businessmen and their big fancy resorts haven't played their parts in preventing economic equality on some of these islands, but this theme seems kind of heavy for a movie as crappy as this.

The biggest shame is that the cast and crew is full of talented artists.  We all know what insane joyfulness Robin Williams is capable of bringing to the table, but he is terrible here and constantly changing character.  He is actually acting like he is doing a standup routine, which makes for a pretty bad character performance.  Was he trying to make the crew laugh maybe?  The bad guys are played by Brian Doyle Murray (Bill Murray's brother and a fine comic actor in his own right) and the Oscar-nominated Adolph Caesar (A Soldier's Story).  The hotel guests include fine actors like Rick Moranis (Ghostbusters), Eugene Levy (American Pie), Andrea Martin (SCTV) and Joanna Cassidy (Bladerunner).  The director is the gifted Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day) and the script was co-written by Ramis and Murray, both of whom are really fine writers.

And then there is Peter O'Toole.  I love that man.  His brilliance in film, on stage, and in bars is legendary.  He has risen above terrible material and delivered gold.  And in this movie, he just...isn't any good.  I don't know what is going on, but he is really off.  To me, it's a big disappointment.  Sure, he has the best line in the movie (see below), but it is the line that it clever, not O'Toole's delivery.  And from my perspective, all the good will built from The Stunt Man, My Favorite Year, and Masada vanished.   This was the beginning of the "unfortunate" period, that included such classics as Supergirl, Creator, King Ralph, High Spirits, Phantoms, The Seventh Coin, and Phantoms.  Sure, there was that quality blip on the radar (The Last Emperor), but overall this was not a good time in O'Toole's career.  Of course, who am I to judge?  He probably had a lot of fun and made a lot of money doing these films.  But wow...painful.

Actually, that is a good word for this whole movie: painful.  Please avoid it.  Please.


BEST LINE:
Governor Hayes (referring to his island): "Either the Americans will move in and turn it into Miami Beach, or the Cubans and Russians will come and turn the entire island into bloody Albania.  There really is no hope."

MVP:
I have to go with the non-actor of the bunch, Jimmy Cliff.  I don't think he made that many movies, but he actually has a nice screen presence.  Everyone else seems to be trying too hard, while Cliff just goes with the flow.  He gets my MVP, for sure.

TRIVIA:
The movie was originally supposed to star Bill Murray and John Cleese, both of whom would have been more appropriate in their roles than Williams and O'Toole.  I don't know why they dropped out, but the decision probably ranks among their best career moves.  Easily.

More Musings on Troy

More Musings on Troy

First off - spoiler alert!

So there are a few other items I wanted to discuss from Wolfgang Peterson's Troy from 2004. As I wrote my review earlier, the movie was a disappointment overall. When it worked, it was quite good. Unfortunately, there were just as many moments that did not work, and many of them are major problems.

There have been many criticisms leveled against Troy, some deserved and some not. I would like to defend the movie against some of these unfair criticisms.

1) The Gods are the most important part of The Iliad. Where the heck are the Gods in this movie?

The first misconception is that Troy is even an adaptation of Homer's The Iliad. It isn't. You could never make a movie of The Iliad because it only tells a tiny fraction of the Trojan War, a period of just a few weeks during the vast 10-year long conflict. The war doesn't begin in the Iliad. Troy doesn't fall in the Iliad. There is no Trojan Horse in the Iliad. Achilles is not famously killed with the arrow in the heel in the Iliad. The Iliad is ONLY the story of the events that directly lead to the epic Hector vs. Achilles duel. That's it. So let me clear that up right away.

People argue that without the gods, the whole story of the Trojan War is meaningless. To which I have to ask - why? The gods are important to the myth of the Trojan War, but that is not the story that Troy is trying to tell. Troy is trying to tell a plausible story that over thousands of years could have become the myth. I do agree that the involvement of the gods is important to the myth itself and does provide some wonderful thought-provoking themes about the nature of free will and what it means to be a human being. All very interesting material, but hardly necessary. What is essential to this tale is love - Achilles and Patrocles, Hector and Andromache, and especially that of Helen and Paris, who choose love over politics and bring about the destruction of a civilization because of it. Pride is also an essential theme. Hubris, the blind and haughty pride that has brought down many a hero and villain is on full display in both the myth and the movie. It is Agamemnon's hubris that insults and isolates Achilles so he refuses to fight, it is Troy's hubris that they can never lose a battle that leads to their downfall. That is much more important to the core story.

So why are the gods needed? Someday someone will adapt the myth into a film, and realize its impossible because the scenes in Olympus don't work in a film medium. It would be an hour of debating free will. Interesting to read. Boring to watch. I'd rather watch the war itself, thank you very much.

2) The acting stinks!

Overall, I have to disagree again. Critics singled out Eric Bana, Peter O'Toole, and Sean Bean as giving good performances, but every one else was a target. There are some weaker performances in the movie, I will admit that (for example, Saffron Burrows, whose acting in this movie consists of various combinations of weeping and shaking). But I want to defend the rest of the cast. Brendan Gleeson and Brian Cox are overacting as villainous brothers Menelaus and Agamemnon, but who cares? These are larger than life characters and they need to be played large. Personally, I enjoyed watching the two of them trying to chew apart every scene they were in. Orlando Bloom caught a lot of heat for a moony, whiny and annoying performance, but wait a minute - is that fair? Paris is moony, whiny and annoying. The fact that you hate Paris in this movie just means Orlando Bloom was doing his job effectively. And how about Brad Pitt as Achilles? Critics called his performance the epitome of Hollywood pretty boy miscasting. But I actually think that is what you need in this role. Achilles doesn't need to be a good actor; he needs old school Hollywood charisma. I don't care if he's one dimensional. I just want him to be charismatic chiseled weapon of destruction. Brad Pitt brings that to the movie. If his dialogue delivery is a little flat in a few scenes, he looks and moves every inch like Achilles. And in every scene with Brad Pitt, your eyes are naturally drawn to him. That is what you need in Achilles. He is the greatest warrior in all of literature.

I've been hearing these two criticisms unfairly leveled against Troy for years, so I just wanted to speak up in the film's defense. But I don't want to defend the film too much as it has some very big problems. Like below:

1) There is only so much you should change the legend!

If you are adapting an old tale, re-envisioning or updating it, there are certain things that can and cannot be changed. If you want to kill certain characters who are supposed to live, or visa versa, that's okay. I'm not a stickler for the details. But Troy goes too far. The city of Troy falls. Paris dies. Helen goes back to Greece. That's the whole point. The story of Paris and Helen cannot end well  They are responsible for the destruction of their city and the deaths of thousands of their people. They simply can not live happily ever after. So when Paris and Helen escape to the mountains, are we supposed to be happy for them while the city is burned and pillaged? What the hell?

The confusing thing is that they even set up Paris' death nicely. Before running into the city to save his cousin, Paris hands a young boy named Aeneas the Sword of Troy, saying so long as a Trojan holds this sword, her people will have a future. Since in the legend, Aeneas went on to lead the Trojan survivors to Italy and that his descendants founded Rome, I thought this was a cool little bit. But when Paris survives and escapes with everyone else, I had to wonder what was the point of the whole Aeneas scene? Now its just random and pointless.

2) Helen

She is partially responsible for starting the war, after all. But after the first half of the film, where all she does is mope, she largely vanishes. Nobody liked Helen in this movie, and a lot of people blamed Diane Kruger's acting. I think she is just badly written and not given anything to do. Playing the most beautiful woman in history is an impossible task in of itself. But add that to filmmakers who don't really know what to do with you after the opening act...poor Kruger was being set up as a target from the very beginning! What a wasted opportunity to play up the guilt, the horror that this conflict is her fault. They could and should have done something with that. They only hint at it once, in a beautifully done moment before Hector goes off to fight Achilles. Helen waits for him by the gate, weeping, because she knows that the best man in the city was about to be killed protecting her. It's a good moment, and the movie needed more of that.

3) Death of Patroclus

This is such a stupid moment! When Hector kills Patroclus, both armies stop fighting (as if all 10,000 men could have known this duel was happening) and get all depressed because the young man was killed. "That's enough killing for one day" and they all go home. What?? First of all, Patroclus isn't that young and was certainly not any younger than half the other people getting slaughtered in the movie. We didn't stop fighting for any of those guys. I think the writers just didn't know how to end the scene. They wrote themselves into a corner and had to think of a way to end the fight before the Trojans won the battle. Maybe I'm nitpicking, but this scene is STUPID!

4) Patroclus and Achilles

Speaking of Patroclus, I think they missed a big opportunity. Patroclus was Achilles' friend, not his cousin. There is even some subtext that he is Achilles' lover. I think the studios got afraid because they didn't want their sexy leading man to be gay. What safer way to do that than turn his best friend/lover into his cousin? But how much more interesting would the scenes in Achilles' camp have been if they had kept that part of the story intact? What an interesting love triangle. Achilles falls in love with the Trojan priestess, Briseis, and rejects the war and prepares to return home. In doing this, he is not just rejecting his old life as a warrior but is rejecting the loved one who represents that life: Patroclus. In the movie, Patroclus is just some whiny kid who is bummed out because he never gets to fight. Wouldn't it be better if he sees Briseis as what she is, as a rival and a threat? Suddenly, Patroclus being killed by Hector takes on more meaning. It ignites Achilles, who unleashes his vengeance on the battlefield. Such fury makes more sense if it is the love of your life who has just been killed. I'm not saying that the filmmakers needed to go Brokeback Mountain in ancient Greece. If the studios were worried, they could have kept this subtle. But I think this decision to make Patroclus a cousin just smacks of marketing fears. Pity. I think they missed an opportunity for good drama!

Okay, my ramblings are over. Thanks for indulging! New review next time - the terrific Chinese film, Ip Man!

Troy: Director's Cut

Troy: Director's Cut

As a child, my mind was lost in myths, legends and history. I spent hours devouring the stories of Alexander the Great, King Arthur, and the Trojan War, my imagination completely captured. Unfortunately, in 2004, Hollywood managed to take all three of my childhood dreams and send them crashing back down to Earth. (I speak of Alexander, King Arthur, and Troy). Of the three, Troy was probably the best. When it worked, it truly did work. There are moments that really are grand epic fun. But when it was bad...oh, boy, was it bad. The worst part was that it just seemed sloppy. Strange shots, bad editing, and questionable plot decisions ruined what could have been a solid film.

But has the new Troy: Director's Cut solved these problems? Yes and no. Make no mistake - this is not Kingdom of Heaven, where the director's cut turned the film from an interesting failure to one of the best films of the year. The major problems with Troy remain. Some of the acting is goofy, characterizations are often lazy and one-dimensional, and all the major plotting problems are still there.

But make no mistake, those problems are not as noticeable because the film has gone through quite an upgrade. This film is longer than the theatrical version, but it actually feels shorter! That is because of subtle changes that director Wolfgang Peterson made, shifting the pacing of the film, fixing any sloppiness and providing a full color adjustment that makes the film much more vibrant and beautiful to look at. The theatrical cut dragged in a lot of places and its problems were glaring. The Director's Cut moves along so smoothly that the problems don't bother me quite so much. The added scenes add some necessary and welcome character development, especially for Sean Bean's wonderful Odysseus.

In almost every way, the Director's Cut is better. My one complaint is about the music, which most people won't notice. But since I love film scores, I have to complain! The score for Troy was a last minute replacement by James Horner (Braveheart) and he wrote, recorded and mixed the entire score in 13 days. Which is pretty impressive, even if the score isn't great. But it at least got the job done efficiently. But Peterson has stripped Horner's score almost entirely from the film. The one piece he did like, he re-uses about seventeen thousand times. Then he sprinkles in music from other movies like Planet of the Apes and Starship Troopers. The rest of the music, playing wall-to-wall during dialogue scenes that don't even need music sound like a chimp farting out notes on a Yamaha synthesizer. It is TERRIBLE! And horribly distracting to me. But hey, I admit it, I might be psycho about this kind of thing. So take this with a grain of salt...

Other than that, the Director's Cut is a definite improvement over the theatrical version. If you liked the movie before, you will probably love it now. If you thought it was okay, you might like it just a little bit more. But if you hated it, this version won't do anything to change your mind. To me, it is an improved, but still not great movie. It still doesn't live up to my childhood dreams, but at least it isn't destroying them. So that's my sum-up.

P.S. I have also written a review of James Horner's score to Troy. Check it out by going to SoundtrackDB!

MVP: Gotta give it to Sean Bean. I just really enjoyed the heck out of his performance as Odysseus. And he succeeds in giving life to this iconic character with not a lot to work with. I actually want them to make a sequel because I would love to see Sean Bean in The Odyssey, tackling sirens and sea monsters!

TRIVIA: Brad Pitt (who played Achilles) injured himself during the production of the film. Ironically, he injured his achilles tendon.

BEST LINE: (minor spoiler?) Priam: I loved my boy from the moment he opened his eyes until the moment you closed them."  On paper, this doesn't sound like much of a line, but you need to see its moving delivery!

OSCAR NOMINATIONS: Best Costume Design

Review: What's New Pussycat?

What's New Pussycat

What a joyful chaotic disaster of a brilliant movie! A film that is probably best watched with a group of friends after you've had a few too many to drink - because the cast and crew were probably plastered while making it, What's New Pussycat makes no sense, is horribly misogynistic, and has just as many horrible jokes as it has winners.

Michael James (Peter O'Toole) has a problem. All women love him, and he simply cannot resist their advances. Ordinarily this would be a dream come true, except he wants to marry Carol (the adorable Romy Schneider) so he visits a shrink named Dr. Fritz Sigismund Fassbender (Peter Sellers with a bad haircut - please see the picture above) to cure him of his 'problems.' Of course, Dr. Fassbender, like most Peter Sellers characters, is bat crazy. The movie climaxes in a small little French hotel involving Michael James, Carol, Dr. Fassbender, Woody Allen, a nymphomaniac, an American dancer visiting France on a bongo scholarship, a Viking warrioress, a parachutest who knows James Bond, a jealous husband, police, a Frenchmen with a cherry bomb, and go-karts. If you think that sounds confusing, wait until you see it all in action, because then it is even more confusing!

The movie was pretty divisive when it came out. A lot people (mostly teenage boys) loved it and propelled it to box office glory. The Oscar nominated song by Tom Jones probably helped (most people today know the song, but not the movie that spawned it). Everybody else either found it either offensive or utterly confusing, or both. To me, that's part of the charm. There is such chaos in this movie. The cast clearly had a ball filming it, and that joy is contagious. The performances are uniformly terrific. Sellers is at his best as the Viennese therapist and Peter O'Toole shows he is as good at comedy as he is at drama. I have to be honest - even though Lawrence of Arabia is O'Toole's best performance, his greatest achievement, and my favorite movie, it is What's New Pussycat that totally turned me into an O'Toole fanatic. I have a feeling that in real life, he is just as much of a lovable rascal as he is in this film. And that guy would be a lot of fun to hang out with!

I can't recommend this movie to everyone. I love it, and many of my friends do, as well. If you don't take it too seriously, don't mind a plot that makes no sense, and love these actors, then I say check it out. 

BEST LINE: Too many to choose, but here's one amusing back and forth between O'Toole and his best friend, Victor, played by Woody Allen:

Michael: Did you find work?
Victor: I got a job at the strip joint. I help the models dress and undress.
Michael: Nice job?
Victor: 40 francs a week.
Michael: Not very much.
Victor: It's all I could afford.

TRIVIA: Like it or not, this movie is one of the most important in comedy history. The movie was originally supposed to star Warren Beatty. The script was by newcomer Woody Allen, who had never acted in or written a movie before. As the script progressed, Beatty got annoyed because he felt his character was getting overshadowed by all the other absurd characters. Whether he left the project or was forced out is unclear. But what is clear is that the studio chose Allen over Hollywood's golden boy Beatty. It doesn't end there. The filming of the movie was so crazy, scenes being rewritten the night before by the director or Sellers, actors ab-libbing right and left, that it is no wonder that the film makes no sense. Allen had no say in any of the changes and watched as his first script was mutilated beyond repair. Horrified, Allen swore never to write anything again unless he was able to direct it. And there you go - thanks to What's New Pussycat, Woody Allen began his long and often brilliant directorial career.

MVP AWARD: I think I have to award it to booze. I don't want to condone alcoholism, but I just have a feeling that everyone on set was drunk. I like to imagine that the night before filming a scene, O'Toole, Sellers and director Clive Donner stayed up all night, binging on hooch and rewriting the script. I have never seen such a chaotic, gin-soaked atmosphere captured so well on screen. Sober, the movie would have made more sense. If they had stuck with Allen's script, it would have probably been a better movie. But would it have been as memorable? I highly doubt it...