in the line of fire Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Rene Russo, Where Have You Gone?
Filed under: Fandom », Fan Rant »
Actors and actresses drop out of the limelight all the time, and such is the nature of Hollywood that no one ever really stops, notices, and thinks to hire them. It's depressing and terrifying, to say the least.
The reason I started worrying about Rene Russo is actually quite bizarre. It was thanks to Jennifer Aniston, who didn't pacify my feelings on Pumas by hiring Michael Sucsy to direct her in Goree Girls. Yes, I'm a hypocrite -- one minute I'm railing against her persistent lonely girl rom-coms, and the next I'm all "Aniston as a singing Texas inmate? That's so ridiculous. Who would I cast, though? I don't know. Probably Rene Russo or something." And then it hit me ... what the heck happened to Ms. Russo? I went to IMDB expecting that she had things in pre-production, or had several films languishing in direct-to-DVD land, only to discover she hasn't appeared in a film since 2005. If IMDB is to be believed, she has nothing on her slate. Her message board is full of "Did she retire?" queries. The most recent story on her newsfeed that's actually about her is from January 2009 when she told some red carpet reporters that Jessica Simpson looked pretty.
My imagination tells me that she's left the big screen because there aren't enough parts for women "of a certain age," and she's dissatisfied with the scripts that are sent her way. I really hope it's a personal choice and not that filmmakers have simply stopped hiring her. The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle didn't stop anyone from hiring Robert De Niro ever again.
Scenes We Love: In the Line of Fire
Filed under: Summer Movies », Scenes We Love »
If a movie is really only as good as its villain, the summer of 1993 proved it with the double-whammy of In the Line of Fire and The Fugitive in July. Everyone else had Jurassic Park fever, but I was swept up by these two excellent, evenly-matched bouts. The latter, The Fugitive, reveled in some gray areas; Tommy Lee Jones's character wasn't all bad, but in In the Line of Fire, John Malkovich was pure bad. (They were both nominated for Oscars, and Jones won.) Malkovich plays Mitch Leary, a former military man who feels the need to assassinate the current U.S. president (Jim Curley -- who looks a bit like John McCain). Clint Eastwood plays aging Secret Service Agent Frank Horrigan, who blames himself for allowing JFK to be shot, and is determined not to let it happen again. Mitch knows all about Frank's history and leaves him clues, taunting him and even talking to him on the phone. Frank, of course, is no slouch and can taunt back, causing Mitch to tip his hand, revealing just a hint of the years and years of anguished buildup that brought him to such a fate.
Note for note, the film itself is little more than a superbly made thriller -- directed by Wolfgang Petersen -- but its relationship between pursuer and quarry is something truly great and altogether rare in films. My definition of a truly great villain is one that can sit down for a cup of coffee with the hero. (It's like that old Warner Bros. cartoon in which the coyote and the sheepdog go to work together and punch the time clock before they get down to business.) Technically opposites, these two actually live in similar worlds and acknowledge each other as co-workers and colleagues. It's a very effective way of measuring the hero's humanity and making him far more interesting. Most movies settle for sneering, cackling villains who are nothing more than pure, distant evil. But the greatest enemies are kept close, closer even than friends.
Check out the clip after the jump: first we get Mitch demonstrating his evil, and then a full-blown phone confrontation with Frank.
Our Favorite Summers: 1993
Filed under: Fandom », Summer Movies »
To this day, I don't know when it first appeared on my radar, or how I saw my first bit of footage. All I remember is that T-Rex foot coming down in the mud with a sinister squish, and knowing this was going to be one hell of a movie. And it was. I'll never forget that first shot of the brachiosaurus. I'm pretty sure I stopped breathing. When the shot expanded to the swamp filled with dinosaurs, my mind knew it was that new thing called CGI, but my heart was half-convinced Spielberg really had cloned dinosaurs. It sounds pretentious, but I knew movies were going to never be the same again. This was the future, and I was going to see it. If you could go back in time and tell young Beth that she'd be employed to write constantly about it well, she wouldn't be surprised. She knew she wasn't going to be a paleontologist, anyway.
So large does Jurassic Park loom in my memory that it's kind of funny to see what else was released that summer -- and how drastically the idea of a "summer blockbuster season" has changed since the 90s. Let's revisit, shall we ...
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