BEST NUDE SCENES of 2006:

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LITTLE CHILDREN

I suppose that nobody will accuse director Todd Fields of being a workaholic. After considerable critical acclaim and many post-season awards for In the Bedroom in 2001, it took him five years to develop his follow-up project. The eponymous source novel for Little Children is a complex story about suburban angst, an ambitious literary effort which walks a fine line between condescending toward its characters and compelling us to get involved with their lives. As one Amazon reviewer noted, "Most of the individuals in this novel are hypocritical, selfish, and immature. Nevertheless, Perrotta is such a gifted writer that he humanizes the characters and makes us care deeply about them. The author implies that even when we grow up and become parents ourselves, in some ways we all remain ''little children' inside." The novel is filled with intricate references and allusions to other works of literature. Sarah's book club is discussing Madame Bovary, and the parallels between Emma Bovary's life and Sarah's own are readily apparent. The work also uses some of the relationships between characters to reflect upon others. For example, the interactions of the suburban adults are pictured as grotesque mirrors of the interactions of their children.

Sarah (Kate Winslet) is an unfulfilled suburban housewife who is married to a dipstick of a marketing consultant and internet porn addict. She still seems to define herself in terms of her failed Ph.D. in English Literature, but is condemned to an everyday life of drudgery and motherhood to a three year old. Todd (Patrick Wilson) is an unfulfilled househusband who depends on his wife to support them because he can't seem to pass the bar exam. He still seems to define himself in terms of the star quarterback he once was, but is condemned to a life of everyday drudgery as sole caregiver to a three year old. It isn't long before Todd and Sarah realize that they are basically the same person with different genital organs, and not much longer before they start rubbing aforesaid genitals together, using their fleeting moments of passion to recapture the adolescence they miss. A major sub-plot involves their neighborhood's local child molester, who has recently been released from prison, and the disgraced former cop who harasses and bullies the pervert and his mother. The two stories intersect at various times, but the moments of intersection are not outrageous stretches of our credibility, and are not even particularly critical to the development of either story, so the film is basically structured as two stories which unfold in parallel in the same neighborhood.

In order to keep the story as faithful as possible to its literary roots, the film uses a PBS announcer to recite some eloquent prose from the novel. I'm sure you realize that such a device rarely works. Words which seem eloquent and stirring on paper often seem pompous, and insincerely rhetorical when spoken aloud in a conversational context. I cringed when I heard the announcer speechifying at the film's outset, and there were other moments when I thought the technique seemed artificial, but on balance I give the authors credit for keeping the narrator's presence low-key and unobtrusive enough that it accentuated the tone they were trying to maintain.

The script had to make some hard choices about how to treat the novel's tone shifts between romantic drama and black comedy. Fields and the novelist worked together to tell the stories as seriously as possible, trying to prevent the main characters from being comic devices by making them real. It would be possible to make both the child molester and the disgraced cop into cartoon characters, for example, but the film wisely avoids this. 

The decisions that they made worked in the sense that the film does bring the viewer into the lives of its characters, and develops all the major ones in multiple dimensions. The humor is there, but it is basically buried deep inside the absurdity of the situations, and the script concentrates the scathing condescension on a few minor characters, like Sarah's husband.  Unfortunately, all the decisions which maintained the integrity of the project also made the film much too aloof and high-falutin' to have any significant box office appeal, and the film's financial path walked along the same rickety bridge as similarly worthy literary adaptations like The Door in the Floor. The market for this type of film is not a large one. Little Children maxed out at two million dollars in 30-40 theaters. If it is any consolation to the co-authors, the general critical consensus was that the film was a significant artistic triumph.

 

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National Lampoon's Pledge This

In case you missed it: Angela Dodson, Camilla Langfeld, Sharon Moore, Brooke Newton

 

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American Pie 5: The Naked Mile

In case you missed it:  Alyssa Nicole Pallett, Candace Kroslak, Jaclyn A Smith, Michelle Cormier, Angel Lewis.

 

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Agnes and his Brothers

Agnes & his Brothers: Susan Anbeh. (Two .avis zipped together.)

 

 

OTHER CRAP:

Catch the deluxe version of Other Crap in real time, with all the bells and whistles, here.

 

MOVIE REVIEWS:

Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format. Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks (even harder than the others.).

Vamp (1986)

Vamp (1986) is a stylish, humorous vampire film partially inspired by another film, After Hours.

Three college men take a road trip to attempt to hire a stripper for a fraternity party, and end up in a club owned and staffed entirely by vampires, with the exception of one waitress, Dedee Pfeiffer, who knew two of the boys as kids. Robert Russler as the slickest of the three boys decides Grace Jones, the head vampire, is their woman, so he heads backstage to meet and hire her. Big mistake. She takes a bite out of his neck, and is about to have him discarded when she is told he had friends with him. At this point, it becomes a chase movie, with all the vampires out to get Dedee Pfeiffer, and the other two guys, one of whom is Long Duck Dong from 16 Candles, who was brought along only because he owned the car. As payment for the use of the car, the cool guys agreed to take him along and pretend to be his friend.

The script was written over a weekend, shot in 25 days (much of it at USC), edited quickly, and fully assembled for only $1.9 million. It does not look at all like a low-budget production. Grace Jones brought in her friend Andy Warhol to help decorate the set, and the entire film was shot in green and orange lighting, giving it a very unusual look. In addition to the distinctive appearance of the film, it is populated with good character actors.  I am sick to death of vampire films and was entertained by this one

C+.

IMDb readers have this a little low at 4.9.

It earned only $4.9 million at the box office, but that was just fine relative to the budget.

Scoop's note: Tuna and I seem to be the only fans of this film. I also thought it was a decent little flick. Review here. In addition to the low IMDb score, Ebert assigned two stars, and Maltin could offer no more than 1.5.

Michelle Burke in The Last Word (She was Connie Conehead.)

Chulpan Khamatova in The Whore's Son (She was in the terrific German film Good-bye, Lenin.)