The Ten Best Films of 2007
December 31st, 2007 by Scott Marks
My two main houses of worship: Landmark’s Hillcrest Cinemas and the AMC Mission Valley 20
Every December I say it and every December it’s true: This is the worst years for movies since Edison kicked it all off with The Kiss.
Normally my top ten consists of 20 films. This year I had to crunch to meet the required ten. What a pile of uninspired, unmitigated junk came wafting across movie theater screens in 2007. My annual intake was down 30 films from last year simply because I could not force myself to step into obvious atrocities like The Last Mimzy, The Mist, Wild Hogs, Norbit, The Game Plan or anything signed by Tyler Perry.
The writers shouldn’t be the only ones on strike. Wouldn’t it be great to see throngs of angry ticket buyers picketing studio gates with placards raised high that read BOYCOTT SEQUELS OR REMAKES or AUDIENCES NIX LOUSY PIX.
2007 was the year of the “Threequel” that spawned new retreads of films that weren’t that good the first two times around. Keep your Pirates and Ocean’s and Shreks and Spidermen. The closest I came to being entertained by a franchise picture was Saw IV.
Hollywood’s sudden acknowledgment that there is a war going on produced predictable results. Paul Haggis was up to his old coincidence driven, credibility-stretching tricks in In the Valley of Elah. The only thing more lethargic than the pace of Lions for Lambs was the director’s acting. Brian DePalma huffed and puffed and Redacted blew. And Reign Over Me, a “serious” Adam Sandler picture about the effects September 11 had on the those who lost loved ones in the attack was a cuddly trivialization of tragedy. Of all the anti-war documentaries, only No End in Sight, with its calm, matter-of-fact presentation of the facts, made an impression.
The one ray of hope was this year’s resurgence of musicals. There were some ponderous miscalculations (Across the Universe, I’m Not There), but for the most part films like Once, Hairspray and Colma: The Musical all proved that there’s plenty of life and originality left and that musicals have survived the MTV generation.
Here’s to better films in 2008. They can’t get much worse.
1. Charles Burnett’s KILLER OF SHEEP
It was made in 1977 and with the rare exception of museum and underground screenings of beat up 16mm prints, Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep never received an official theatrical release. Therefore, I have no qualms over naming this the best new film that I saw in a San Diego theater in 2007. In every way this is light years ahead of 90% of the films I consumed this year. Thirty years from now how many of the films from 2007’s disastrous roster will be remembered as innovative, ground-breaking works of cinematic poetry as well as historical documents? Killer of Sheep was shot over the course of 52 weekends with non-professional actors, at a cost of $10,000, and was released just as America’s blaxploitation craze was grinding to a halt. The film offers simple, calmly understated glimpses into Watts in the mid-70s through the eyes of slaughterhouse worker. The wall-to-wall soundtrack — comprised of preexisting songs.– adds layers of resonant subversion. Make sure to give this film a coveted place on your DVD shelf.
2. David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE
A third of the way into the picture and already I knew that this had to be the best new film of 2007. Shot entirely on equipment that Lynch purchased at his local Best Buy, this is kamikaze filmmaking at its finest. I have seen it three times and I’m still not sure that I can even begin to claim to have a firm grasp on what it’s about. I take that back. You know what it’s about? It’s about cinema. A boy and his camera filming nightmares that would cause Peeping Tom to look away. It’s about mood, atmosphere, texture, subtext and equal doses of Porky’s Wackyland and Alice’s Wonderland…and about a gallon of blood to taint Johnny Green’s sacred Walk of Fame. The supplementary DVD is almost as long and equally as good as the feature. I’d much rather watch David Lynch steam broccoli than Robert Ford shoot Jesse James.
3. Jafar Panahi’s OFFSIDE
The majority of the action in this Iranian comedy/drama takes place in two locations. For the first two-thirds we observe a makeshift military holding center in the upper corner of a bustling soccer arena where women, prohibited from watching the game, are held. Once the match ends, we ride with several of the detainees on the way to the police station. That’s it. 93 minutes and not one special effect. The cast is filled with unfamiliar faces, none of whom are ever called by name. Even though filmed at the Azadi Stadium in the middle of a World Cup match between Iran and Bahrain, we never spend more than five minutes inside of the arena. And unlike We are Marshall, Friday Night Lights or Invincible, the film does not conclude with a sporting event. How could I not love this movie?
4. Paul Verhoeven’s BLACK BOOK
Paul Verhoeven’s first offering in six years, is a horror/sex film of another sort. It vividly details the life of a beautiful Jewish singer (Carice Van Houten) forced to masquerade as a Nazi for the Dutch resistance. Before it’s over, our heroine undergoes a type of defilement the screen has not experienced since Pasolini’s Salo. Beneath the sex and sadism beats the heart of a Hollywood studio film from the late fifties, early sixties. When I interviewed Paul Verhoeven, he balked a bit when I referred to his film as a genre picture. “What genre,” he shot back. “It’s very difficult to know. It’s a love story, a survival story, part adventure, a thriller and detective story…it’s hard to typify it.” I didn’t find it difficult in the least. Black Book is easily the most entertaining film of 2007.
5. Bong Joon-ho’s THE HOST
A mildly retarded narcoleptic must save his family and all of Korea from a genetically engineered monster. Come on! You don’t want to see a movie that tells this story? If Hollywood studios took a lesson from this picture, oh how much happier action film fans would be. For my money, this is not only one of the most compassionate monster movies to come along since Bride of Frankenstein, in its own way The Host is a much sharper commentary on Bush’s folly than any of the supposed anti-war films mentioned in my introduction.
6. Dan Klores’ CRAZY LOVE
The best documentary of 2007 could also double as a riveting suspense story. A well-off Jewish nebbish hires a couple of thugs to blind his ex-girlfriend and the two wind up living happily ever after together. Forget Alien vs. Predator; this year’s biggest shock came about 45 minutes into Crazy Love when we see Burt and Linda Pugach together in the same frame and realize they’re a married couple. They deserve each other! This is also a crackerjack example of how to edit and assemble found footage, making it so much more than your standard assortment of talking heads and news clips.
7. David Cronenberg’s EASTERN PROMISES
Is there a director alive that’s made a smoother, more compromise-free transition from low budget maverick to multiplex megastar than David Cronenberg? For his second commercial hit, Cronenberg explores the inner-workings of a family of Russian Goodfellas living in London. Not unlike Black Book, Eastern Promises also uses a personal diary as a plot motivator. Only a director who truly understands the delicate inner-workings of good and evil can take a vile, racist character and make him the translator. While Cronenberg may have set aside some of his more clinical obsessions, but the film is no less gripping for it. And the much talked about steam room scene is the best of its kind since Anthony Mann’s T-Men.
8. Andrea Arnold’s RED ROAD
Seated before a bank of video monitors, Jackie (Kate Dickie) has a perfect rear window view of a limited section of Glasgow. A small scale Orwellian Big Sister, Jackie works in the City Eye surveillance room, ostensibly hired to spot and report crimes before they happen. Writer, director Andrea Arnold may have missed her calling as a Vegas dealer. It has been a long time since I’ve seen a director play her cards this close to her vest and Ms. Arnold’s hand will not be fully revealed until the last 5 minutes of the film. Hitchcock despised mysteries. How many Charlie Chan films survive repeat viewings? Once the killer is revealed what’s the point of revisiting the film? The real mystery should never be whodunit but why they did it. In that sense, Red Road is a mystery we can all live with.
9. Paul Thomas Anderson’s THERE WILL BE BLOOD
The first few subterranean glimpses of a bearded Daniel Day-Lewis breaking his back while drilling for oil conjured images of a shadowy Abe Lincoln. For the rest of the film we watch as oil baron Daniel Plainview spends a lifetime emancipating himself from civilization. In the spirit of Greed, Giant, Red River and Days of Heaven, Paul Thomas Anderson has fashioned a great American epic. Day-Lewis, channeling equal parts John Huston and Jack Palance, gives the performance of the year as the ruthless tycoon who only sees the worst in people. Plainview is so brazenly independent that he doesn’t even need a mother in order to father a son to raise and exploit. The third act doesn’t stylistically mesh with everything that came before, but maybe I need a second (and third) viewing.
1o. William Friedkin’s BUG
Bug is based on a two-character play and was adapted by its author, Steppenwolf Theater regular Tracy Letts. Not since Roman Polanski’s Death and the Maiden has a one-set affair received such an intelligent cinematic presentation. Friedkin keeps his camera a safe distance from the characters allowing them plenty of space to mentally disintegrate within. With the exception of one scene involving a self-inflicted tooth extraction, the director opts for psychological horror as opposed to pea soup in your face. Entomophobics might have difficulty watching as Ashley Judd’s room quickly transforms into a life-sized roach motel. Creepy and unnerving with superb performances by Ms. Judd and Michael Shannon.
Runners Up: Atonement, Youth Without Youth, The Orphanage, Into Great Silence, Fido, No Country for Old Men (easily this year’s most talked about movie), Control, Colma: The Musical, Away from Her, Paprika, Knocked Up, Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten, Broken English, The Lookout, The Water Horse and Ratatouille.
Favorite Overlooked Performance of the Year: We all know how good Daniel Day- and Cate and Philip Seymour and Tom (Wilkinson) and Keira and Tommy Lee were in 2007, but the one actor that thrilled me beyond description was Harold Ramis in Knocked Up. Forget the blithe imbeciles who pass for parental units in Juno, a film you all seem to love that I personally detest. Ramis responds to the prospects of teen pregnancy with much more honesty and even more laughs than Juno’s unidimensional mom and pop. Charming, natural and bringing a constant ear-to-ear grin for the few minutes that he’s on screen, my old SCTV pal gave mo’ than just a green performance. Also, a tip of the hat to William Hurt for his backseat antics in Mr. Brooks.
THE 2007 DANA AWARD
Nothing like a familial neck rub to ease the terror
This year’s Dana Award, named after Dana Andrews’ intoxicating (and intoxicated) performance in that funnier-than-most-intentional-comedies Hot Rods to Hell, goes to Garry Marshall’s Georgia Rule. This softball attempt to tell the hard-hitting tale of three generations of dysfunctional mothers and daughters is a laugh-a-minute potboiler. More people heard about this film from the nasty “clean up your act” memo issued its young star than any word of mouth hype because no one went and saw it. Lindsay Lohan isn’t terrible, but she’s basically playing what the world thinks she is; a screwed up, narcissistic tramp. Felicity Huffman comes off best as the alcoholic child desperately trying to keep her daughter from turning into a Lost Weekend, Jr. If nothing else, this film proves once and for all that Jane Fonda should have stayed in retirement. One of Georgia’s rules is, “You can’t stop what’s already been done to you. You can only survive it.” This is survival at its flattest and as such, a great ninety-nine cent night video rental.
Filed Under Reviews, Theatrical
Dig A Hole: Insult Comedienne Beverly Wines Cardella aka PUDGY!
December 30th, 2007 by Scott Marks
Kup’s Column How do you do, ladies and gentlemen, Kup’s Column begins tonight with the report of a tragic end to 2007. The entertainment world is mourning the loss of Beverly Wines Cardella, better known to…as, I should say, the great Pudgy! I can hear her now grazing at that giant Vegas buffet in the sky.
Pudgy’s pudgy body was found in her Las Vegas home the day before Christmas. Best known as the female Don Rickles, or as Essie used to call her, “Totie Fields with a vagina,” Pudgy! died of natural causes while watching television in her living room. Hopefully it wasn’t a video tape of one of the many Kup’s Shows that she guested on.
Lone before Roseanne Barrnold hit it big, Pudgy! started out as a wisecracking waitress working the tables in a restaurant near City Hall. Sadly, Essie and I never witnessed her skill as a waitstaff personnel because she worked in low grade Greek truck stops compared to the class joints the Kup’s dined at. Many of her regular patrons suggested that the corpulent cutie belonged on the stage. She agreed, and her first performing job came at Punchinello’s on trendy Rush Street. After years of hard work she became a fixture on the Chicago nite club circuit where she lived up to her nickname, “The Queen of Tease.”
Pudgy! always put her family before her career…something that this reporter was a miserable failure at…and worked her performing gigs round her home life. I can’ tell you how much pleasure her performances at the legendary Pump Room brought Essie and myself, particularly since all the meals were on the arm.
In 1993, with her three children old enough to make the trip, Pudgy! moved her family to Las Vegas where she began a longstanding series of engagements in local hot spots. I tell ya’ nobody knew how to host a tit show revue better than our girl Pudgy! Whenever Essie and I were in Vegas two spots were a constant: Sig Sackowicz’s home and The Riviera Hotel to check out Pudgy! in the Crazy Girls revue. Pudgy! frequently joked about how hard it was to win over an audience who didn’t pay to see a fully-clothed fat broad hurl insults at them.
I’d like to publicly point out that Pudgy! did all of this without once resorting to blue material or uttering smutty four-letter words. Not like those filthy scum-idians Howard Sterns or Sam Kingston. No sir, that Pudgy! was one classy broad, I should say.
Up until last year Pudgy! was working the X-Burlesque show at the Flamingo. Although I was unable to track down Pudgy’s age, I can report that she will be buried in Chicago.
Requiescat In Punchinello’s, dear funny lady!
Tags: Beverly Wines Cardella, Chicago, Comedienne, Irv Kupcinet, Obituary, PudgyFiled Under Obituaries
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