A Beautiful Fraud

Contrary to popular cliches, a film noir doesn't have to be in set on the mean, rain-slicked backstreets of a cramped, malevolent city, nor does it even have to be in black-and-white ("noir" is really a world-view than a palette). And although purists may argue otherwise, a movie need not have been produced during the tumultuous years of WWII and its immediate aftermath to be considered a true "noir." Case in point: Richard Fleischer's Violent Saturday, a brightly colored, black-hearted look at crime and the American character from 1955 that's just now being re-released in a sparkling new 35mm print. This rarely seen pulp masterpiece was not only shot in blazing DeLuxe Color and ultra-wide CinemaScope, it's set in a seemingly idyllic desert mining town, and most of it unfolds in bright, broad daylight -- the better to see the corruption festering just below the happy surface. Noir? You bet.

The Yale-educated Fleischer -- son of the maverick animator Max Fleischer -- kept busy right through 1989, making stuff like Conan the Destroyer and Red Sonja (he died in 2006), but back in the '40s and '50s he made as string of B-noirs that rank among the best of the genre. The most well-known is probably the drum-tight Narrow Margin, but Fleischer also gave us the underseen Armored Car Robbery and the excellent Rogue Cop, about rampaging policeman (Robert Taylor) who makes Bad Lieutenant look like Officer Friendly. (Fleischer also made a number of good, moody crime films durning the '60s and '70s, like true-crime classics The Boston Strangler and 10 Rillington Place, and the solid Elmore Leonard adaptation Mr. Majestyk, starring Charles Bronson.) Violent Saturday, however, just might be Fleischer's best noir; it's certainly his most expansive. Adapted by Sydney Boehm (The Big Heat, Shock Treatment) from William L. Heath's dime-store classic, the film is ostensibly about a bank heist the small but bustling Arizona mining town of Bradenville, where copper is king. Three "salesmen" -- ringleader Stephen McNally, bespectacled cold fish J. Carrol Naish and an unforgettable Lee Marvin, playing a tweaking, benzedrine-sniffing hood with a bad nose-spray habit and a grudge against the world -- check into the Bradenville Hotel then case the bank, which they plan to rob just before noon on the following day -- a Saturday, natch.

But the real action is in the town itself. The town's copper scion (Richard Egan) is a sloppy, unhappily married drunk; his wife (Margaret Hayes) is the country-club slut who's sleeping with an oily Don Juan (He: "Why do you play golf?" She: "I look good in sweaters"); the prim librarian (played by the wonderful Sylvia Sydney) is a thief and a blackmailer, and the town's milquetoast bank manager (Tommy Noonan) is a sweaty, drooling peeping tom. Even the ostensible hero (Victor Mature), the mine superintendent, is crippled by a sense of his own inadequate masculinity: He served on the home front instead of the beaches of Iwo Jima, and his disillusioned young son knows it. Twin Peaks has nothing on this town. Did I mention Ernest Borgnine as a pitchfork-weilding Amish farmer? Tough stuff, indeed, and in true noir fashion, that happy ending is anything but.

If you're lucky enough to be in New York City over the next week, do yourself a favor and head down to Film Forum, where Violent Saturday will be playing through March 6. Otherwise, keep an eye peeled and say prayer for an upcoming DVD release.

BTW, I'm always on the lookout for a good noir. What are your favorites?

It looks like the end of an era for New Line Cinema, once the little independent studio that could. As reported today by the Los Angeles Times, the 41-year-old, New York-based movie-industry upstart will be downsized and absorbed into parent company Time Warner's other major media outlet, Warner Bros.

Founded in 1967 by Bob Shaye and his lawyer Michael Lynne — New Line's current co-chairmen and co-CEOs — the company was bought by the Turner Broadcasting System in 1994, which merged with Time Warner two years later. The consolidation of New Line into Warner Bros. is widely seen as a cost-cutting move aimed at boosting Time Warner's lagging stock price.

From a little acorn, a mighty oak did grow. New Line began as an independent distributor, unleashing John Waters' notorious Pink Flamingos on an unsuspecting public while bringing the 1936 anti-drug cult classic Reefer Madness to a whole new audience: stoned college kids and habitués of the midnight theater circuit. Under Shaye and Lynn's stewardship, the studio would go on to produce and distribute such phenomenally successful franchises as A Nightmare on Elm Street, Austin Powers, Rush Hour and the Academy Award-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy. The studio's latest release, the Will Ferrell basketball spoof Semi-Pro, opens tomorrow.

According to the Times, Shaye and Lynne will be leaving the company despite their reported attempts to remain onboard, but the company may not disappear completely. In a statement released today, Time Warner's recently appointed chief executive Jeff Bewkes hinted that New Line may continue on as a separate unit within Warner Bros., focusing on the kind of genre fare that made the company its fortune in the first place.

A mob of angry customers storm the counter of their local video store, complaining that the VHS cassettes they've rented aren't the actual movies but cheap homemade reenactments. The plot of the new Jack Black comedy Be Kind Rewind? Not quite: This funny premise was actually the basis for a sketch on the popular Nickelodeon comedy series The Amanda Show, starring Amanda Bynes. Eight years ago.

The skit, which recently surfaced on YouTube, features Bynes and costar Drake Bell as a pair of clerks in a "Blockblister" video store who've replaced tapes of Austin Powers, The Wizard of Oz, Titanic and others with their own crappy, basement quality versions — just what Black and his costar, Mos Def, do in Be Kind Rewind, which was written and directed by video-wunderkind-turned-feature-director Michel Gondry (The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). Each time a customer complains, Amanda and Drake's boss argues in a comically heavy accent, "This movie better!" before the kids chime in with "Much better!" (and in this case, it's true: the skit is much better — and shorter — than Gondry's movie).



Michel, looks like you've got some 'splaining to do. Or does he? The irony here is that Gondry's film imagines a world — Passaic, New Jersey, actually — momentarily freed from the constraints of copyright laws and intellectual property protections, where the plots and dialogue from popular studio movies are free for the taking. And that's seen as a good thing. Is he right? Are certain ideas public property? Or should somebody somewhere be writing The Amanda Show a big fat check?

From Bela Lugosi’s heart attack during Plan 9 from Outer Space and Natalie Wood’s drowning midway through Brainstorm to Brandon Lee’s fatal shooting on the set of The Crow, a number of productions have had to work around the unexpected death of a leading actor. Now it seems Terry Gilliam, the director of Heath Ledger’s last project, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, may have found a most creative way around his own tragic dilemma. According to Ain’t It Cool News, Ledger’s role in the film will now be played by not one but three alternating replacements: Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law.

Not much is known about the plot of the film, but Ledger’s character has been described as a man in love with a young woman whose soul has been sold to the devil by her father, the traveling showman of the title, in exchange for eternal youth. No word yet on how the rather extreme differences in the four actors’ looks will be explained.

If any one could pull this off, it’s the imaginative and daring Gilliam, who also directed Ledger in 2005's The Brothers Grimm, but it sounds to me like a risky gambit. This could be either a touching tribute from a director and trio of fellow actors, or a confusing disaster. What do you think?

Not that we needed anyone but our own Maitland McDonagh to tell us exactly how bad The Hottie and the Nottie -- cultural time- and attention-waster Paris Hilton's latest attempt to star in something that isn't shot in night-vision -- turned out to be (the divine Ms. M's excoriating exegesis is currently topping the "The Bad Review Revue" list over at the hilarious DefectiveYeti.com). It seems IMDb users have also weighed in with their own carefully considered opinions. According to the folks over at SlashFilm.com, Hottie has unseated the 2004 horror-indie Zombie Nation as the absolutely worst rated movie ever on a site that tracks roughly a bazillion titles. How low is the rating? It's #1 in the bottom 100. Out of ten stars, it's currently sporting a 1.5. That's bad, people. To make matters even worse, BoxOfficeMojo.com is reporting Hottie grossed an embarrassing $27,696 on 111 screens during its opening -- and presumably biggest -- weekend (that breaks down to about $249.51 per screen, give or take a penny or two, and believe me, someone somewhere is counting every one). So it seems most people had no interest in seeing Paris at work, and those few who did hated -- hated -- what they saw.

Is there any hope for Paris? Can anything be said in her defense?