GregoryPeck Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Clockwise from top left: Get Smart, Transsiberian, Kung Fu Panda, Budd Boetticher Box Set, Planet of the Apes 40th Anniversary Collection.

Welcome to this week's edition of Spin-ematical, chock full of alternatives to election coverage!

Kung Fu Panda
Though some of the celebrity voices were useless, Jack Black is great, and the film itself is pleasant, good-natured, and respectful of Asian culture. Available in at least seven editions, including widescreen, full-screen, Spanish, a Christmas gift set, with and without Secrets of the Furious Five (a 20-minute short), and on Blu-ray; oddly, this doesn't release until Sunday. Buy it.

Transsiberian
Traveling by train in the dead of winter from Beijing to Moscow should be much more restful than what happens to Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer in this adventure / suspense / thriller; Ben Kingsley plays a menacing Russian detective. I'm recommending this one sight unseen because Brad Anderson (Session 9, The Machinist) directed. Includes a 34-minute "making of"; also available on Blu-ray. Replays are inevitable. Buy it.

Get Smart
The bumbling Maxwell Smart as a generic action hero? (*sigh*) Steve Carell makes the character his own by repeating the old catchphrases without enthusiasm and proving to be far too adept for his own -- or the movie's -- good. Anne Hathaway is a very sexy spy, but Dwayne Johnson is miscast and even Alan Arkin struggles. The TV series never took itself too seriously; if only the movie had done the same. Available in widescreen and full-screen editions, as well as a two-disk version and on Blu-ray; a plethora of bonus scenes are included, notably a 5-minute "vomit reel." Ugh. Skip it.

After the jump ... Indies on DVD, more Blu-ray debuts, and Collector's Corner.

My dad died four years ago, so Father's Day is bittersweet for me. Yet it's also an occasion to remember all the good times we had in connection with the movies.

Rather than recount the most uncomfortable experiences (fuming about the profanity in a movie I'd recommended the whole family see, while I cowered; listening to him awkwardly define "rape" after my pre-teen sister heard it in a movie I wanted to see), let me tell you about the time my brother and I convinced my parents to see The Sting.

We'd seen it early in 1974 and loved it; after it won several Academy Awards, we urged them to go and they finally agreed. (They'd reduced their moviegoing to once every few years by that point.) We were nervous, because The Sting had a little profanity and even a brief, risque dancing scene with Sally Kirkland (OK, my eyes popped out).

Since I am a single gal, the very thought of having my own kids is enough to send me into a terror spiral. But, the little darlings on this list aren't your every day kids; nope, these are the kids that nightmares are made of (Like Richard said, "children are almost essential to a real horror film"). But this list just isn't about children in horror movies; it's about when the children are the source of the horror. Now I'm not saying all kids are evil, but if you take this list as an example of just how bad children can get, you will never look at those trick-or-treaters on your doorstep the same way again.

1. The Bad Seed (1956)

If you are going to talk evil children, then you have to give props to one of the baddest in the bunch: Patty McCormack as little Rhoda Penmark. Directed by Hollywood vet Mervyn LeRoy (who was more famous for his sophisticated comedies than suspense thrillers), the film was based on William March's novel of the same name and focused on a little pig-tailed demon who gets away with murder (despite a tacked-on ending that gives Deus ex Machinas a bad name). Rhoda terrorizes her nice suburban mom and tortures the staff while draped in a pinafore and knee-socks. It might not be the scariest flick in the bunch, but you can't deny that she was a nasty piece of work.

2. The Omen (1976)

Sure Rhoda Penmark might have been one of the first, but when most people think of evil kids in horror flicks they're usually thinking of Damien Thorn. Besides, you can't get much worse than being the Anti-Christ. Richard Donner directed the story of an upwardly mobile couple who bring home their bouncing baby boy, and the last thing they were expecting was to have to avert an apocalypse. Throw in some serious overacting on the part of Gregory Peck and the unforgettable scene at Damien's birthday party (if you haven't seen The Omen, I won't ruin it for you), and you get a preschooler that no one in their right mind would want to mess with.

For some reason, everyone wants to remake The Boys from Brazil -- Variety reported this morning that the rights to the film were sold at an auction in which New Line ultimately outbid Universal. And, get this: The presence of Brett Ratner on New Line's side was the thing that actually sealed the deal (well, that and the million-plus dollars the studio had on the table). Yes, that's right, rights-owners Granada Films actually thought Ratner's influence would make the remake good. Clearly they've not seen much of his work.

The original was released in 1978 and starred Gregory Peck (the obvious choice) as Josef Mengele, hatching an evil plan involving (spoiler coming, but since it's apparently ON THE BACK OF THE DVD BOX, the secret isn't very well-kept) cloning Hitler and killing a bunch of old men. He's foiled by Laurence Olivier, a Nazi-hunter who, because it's what happens in movies, figures out Mengele's plan and arrives just in time to kick his evil, Nazi ass. Oh, and James Mason, Uta Hagen, Bruno Ganz and Steve Guttenberg are all in it, too. Granted, the movie is generally considered sort of a campy mess, but why mess with that sort of bizarre casting magic? Well, if you're New Line, you mess with it because you're all fired up about modernizing (of course) the story, and making the movie in a world full of knowledge about cloning. Hooray.

The remake will be written by Richard Potter and Matthew Stravitz, and it's hoped production will begin as soon as Ratner finishes Rush Hour 3.

Today is Gregory Peck's birthday -- he would have been 90 years old, had he not died in 2003. He had more than 50 film credits, but the one most people remember best is the role for which he won an Oscar: Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. I figured everyone's seen stills from that movie many times, so I picked a promo photo from 15 years earlier: The Paradine Case, an Alfred Hitchcock film in which Peck plays a lawyer who becomes smitten with his client (Alida Valli). Many reviewers seem to feel that Peck was miscast; Hitchcock may have been forced into the casting by producer David O. Selznick. The film was Hitchcock's last (and least) collaborative effort with Selznick, who is also credited with the screenplay. I've never seen The Paradine Case myself, and in fact the DVD is currently out of print in the U.S. right now.

Peck's filmography is not only impressive, it's downright amusing when you notice that among his many roles, he played Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Josef Mengele, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and author Ambrose Bierce. And I haven't even mentioned Roman Holiday, Cape Fear (both versions), The Yearling, Spellbound, and The Omen. If you want to celebrate Peck's birthday by watching one of his movies, you've got any number of excellent choices.

During my thirty years as a movie watcher, my relationship with the Oscars has been through three distinct phases. The first, love and respect, involved passionate interest and rooting - in those days, when my picks didn't win I was befuddled, and would spend days talking to friends, sincerely trying to sort out the reasoning behind each disputed decision. When Dances with Wolves wiped the floor with Goodfellas, for example, I figured I must have missed something. What angle was I not getting that those wise members of the Academy had seen?

Eventually, though, I wised up and entered phased two: desperate hatred. The passion remained, but the respect was completely gone. During this period, I was actually thrilled when Forrest Gump won best picture, because it confirmed how stupid all of the voters were, and allowed me to triumphantly unload whatever projectiles were nearby at the television (eventually I armed myself with a hamper full of balled up socks - too many things were getting broken).

Suddenly, it's a To Kill a Mockingbird month: last week, it was Harper Lee who resurfaced, and now it's Mary Badham, who starred as Scout in the film. Back in the public eye because of Our Very Own, her first film since 1966, Badham gave an interview to the AP recently that gives child actors all over the world hope for sanity. She works at a community college, raised a kid, and does art restoration - no arrests, no coke deals, no nothing. Scout grew up to be a well-adjusted, totally normal woman. Hooray!

The most wonderful part of the interview comes when Badham discusses her relationship with Gregory Peck, who played her father Atticus Finch in Mockingbird. She and Peck (whom she called "Atticus" for the duration of their relationship) stayed in close contact until his death in 2003. Because Badham lost both of her parents before she turned 22, she says she relied heavily on both Peck and his wife for stability and support. I must be feeling emotional this morning, because this quote from her almost made me cry:  "When you're going through tough times, just hearing his voice on the other end of the line was very calming for me. I knew that he was there and everything was OK." Oh my goodness. Honestly, I think I might love this woman even more now than I did when I was a kid.