shea whigham Tagged Articles at Cinematical

It's no secret that Nicolas Cage has been going off the deep end of late. His performances have become increasingly unhinged and harebrained; you never know when the character he's playing will suddenly become apoplectic over something that seems -- no matter what it is, in comparison to the reaction it draws -- relatively minor. This almost singlehandedly ruined this year's Knowing, at heart a decent science-fiction flick rendered nearly unwatchable by Cage's fevered overacting. It's no coincidence that Cage hasn't done a "serious" dramatic performance in more than three years. I shudder to think what that would now look like.

All of which makes me think that Werner Herzog is even smarter than people give him credit for. Having cast Cage in his "remake" of Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant (I put "remake" in scare quotes as Herzog claims to never have seen Ferrara's film, and the new one has nothing to do with it beyond sharing some bare plot elements), he lets the actor go truly all-out. In The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Cage, playing the titular Lieutenant Terence McDonagh, interrupts himself, has roundtable discussions with himself, cheers himself on, punctuates conversations with non sequitur chuckles and handclaps, and gets hugely angry. It's a completely absurd performance -- and, God willing, a way for the actor to let off steam and return to the more nuanced, settled acting he used to do.

For the first time in its four-year history, Austin's Fantastic Fest decided to premiere a handful of its titles on the internet, thereby giving the hardcore genre fans of the world a chance to sample what this festival is all about. One of those titles was South of Heaven, which I decided to watch online, so as to give myself the option of seeing something else once the festival began. Plus I figured, hey, if the movie's are already posted (albeit temporarily) on the net, then how "top-grade" could they be? Surely the FF crew would save the BEST stuff for the actual festival, right?

Wrong.

I finished the film at about 3:30am and I immediately dropped the following email to the Fantastic Fest programmers, and this is a censored-yet-direct quote from yours truly:

"Just finished watching South of Heaven, and I can't remember the last non-horror flick I was this jazzed about. It's the Coens meets Sam Fuller while watching Looney Tunes and making an '80s mix tape full of The Smiths and Depeche Mode. I (freak)ing loved it."

Surprise, surprise! We will be getting to choose what sort of semi-true Philip K. Dick production we want to check out. As I told you earlier this month, Taryn Manning and Bill Pullman have already shot Your Name Here, a part biography/part creative embellishment about the author. Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, we've got another one gearing up -- the adaptation of Dick's semi-autobiographical novel, Radio Free Albernuth, which began filming this month. The pic will be the feature directorial debut for The Getaway producer John Alan Simon, who also wrote the screenplay.

The Ironic lady herself, Alanis Morissette has signed on to co-star with Jonathan Scarfe (The Poet), Shea Whigham (All the Real Girls), Katheryn Winnick (Failure to Launch), and Hanna Hall (Halloween). Alanis is playing Sylvia, "a woman who shows up in the vision of a record label executive named Nick (Scarfe) as a glamorous singer." But there's a twist -- she's actually "an ordinary woman in unexpected remission from lymphoma who, after appearing in Nick's visions, gets a job as his secretary." Through shared visions and spirituality, they become soul mates. Basically, the typical, funky Alanis fare. I mean, she has been the top holy dog, after all. Morissette says: "I am a big fan of Philip K. Dick's poetic and expansively imaginative books. I feel blessed to portray Sylvia, and to be part of this story being told in film."

It'll definitely be an interesting addition to her repertoire. She got famous getting slimed on You Can't Do That on Television, then uber-famous for her music (the second round, not the super pop stuff), from there, Kevin Smith made her God, she smooched Sarah Jessica Parker on Sex and the City, did a few more movie and TV stints, and most recently, appears in Jeff Goldblum's mockumentary, Pittsburgh. Maybe one of these days she'll combine the music and spirituality and play some sort of traveling Christian musician. But for now, she's just going to have visions.

*A guest review today, from Nick Schager, of Slant Magazine

On the evidence of First Snow, it's apparent that Mark Fergus is a devoted student of classic crime cinema. For his directorial debut, the filmmaker (re-teaming with his Children of Men screenwriting partner Hawk Ostby) delivers a streamlined, straightforward slice of "Sunshine Noir," a sub-genre in which noir's pessimistic thematic preoccupations are transplanted from the shadowy night to the blisteringly bright daytime. As in Fergus' film, this shift also often involves a milieu relocation from the seedy, malevolent city to the imposingly empty rural wasteland, with the omnipresent air of gloom and calamity found not beneath towering skyscrapers and in darkened alleys but, rather, just behind scraggly tumbleweed bushes, across the horizon-seeking interstate, and around the corner from the dilapidated gas stations that sit, like ominous oases, in the middle of the vast nowhere.

Such a fill-up station is the starting point for the turbulent journey of Jimmy (Guy Pearce), a cocky, fast-talking flooring salesman who dreams of making it big selling classic Wurlitzer jukeboxes, and who becomes stranded at an out-of-the-way New Mexico rest stop after his car hits a (literal and figurative) bump in the road. While waiting for repairs, Jimmy entertains himself by having his fortune read by a laid-back psychic named Vacaro (J.K. Simmons), though his mockery of the man's supposed supernatural gifts come to a halt when – after offering up some cryptic comments about impending events – the seer is overwhelmed by violent seizures and, consequently, halts the reading and returns Jimmy's money. Simultaneously amused and mildly annoyed, the salesman nonetheless thinks little of the encounter until the prophesies begin coming true, prompting a return visit to Vacaro during which he's told that death shall arrive with the season's first snowfall.