“Actually our work depends on how much we can appropriate from other people’s work! Painting, music, films, literature … it’s all grist for the mill. We think of our work not as individual creativity but like a lifelong baton relay. Your work passes through your body and your life; you transform it into something, and then you pass it on to the next generation.” Hiyao Miyazaki interviewed by Roger Ebert for The Chicago Sun Times, October 1999

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
Written by Hayao Miyazaki
Produced by Toru Hara
86 minutes

Picking a film produced by Studio Ghibli is like tasting sushi when you’ve been raised on a diet of meat and potatoes animation from Walt Disney or Hanna-Barbera your whole life. The world of Hayao Miyazaki is one without heroes to cheer, villains to hiss at or talking animals to cue laughter. There are families and houses. Children learn to deal with change and to assume greater responsibility. In addition, the unseen surrounds them. As the story begins, there’s a slight feeling of unease, as well as fascination as the invisible world reveals itself. No film from Miyazaki exemplifies these sublime characteristics like the first to bring him an international audience, My Neighbor Totoro. 10-year-old Satsuki Kusakabe and her bratty 4-year-old sister Mei settle into life in the countryside, where their professor father has moved them to be closer to their mother, who recuperates from a long illness at a local hospital.

The Kusakabes are both excited and disquieted to discover their new house is inhabited by soot sprites, harmless creatures which scatter from light and whisper in the rafters. While Satsuki attends school, Mei explores the yard. There, Mei encounters two forest spirits, overstuffed rabbits which lead her into a magnificent camphor tree where the girl finds an even bigger forest spirit snoozing. Offering the name “Totoro”, the spirit vanishes before Satsuzki can meet him. She gets her chance while waiting for her father’s bus in a downpour and makes an impression on Totoro by introducing him to an umbrella. The spirits return the generosity of the Kusakabes by sprouting their garden to enormous heights. The spirits are unable to heal the girls’ mother and after losing her temper with her sister, Satsuki blames herself when Mei disappears. When search efforts by the townspeople falter, Totoro and his friends step in.

For his fourth feature film, animator Hayao Miyazaki sought a return to his childhood in Sayama Hills, which was farmland in the 1950s before it became suburban Tokyo. Miyazaki’s mother spent many years under bed rest with spinal tuberculosis, a detail that worked its way into the story. Executives at Tokuma Shoten Publishing Co. didn’t feel that sketches of Miyazaki’s nature spirits looked promising, so producer Toshio Suzuki proposed that Totoro be made in tandem with an adaptation of the novel Grave of the Fireflies and released as a double feature. A modest box office success in Japan, Miyazaki’s output began attracting comparisons to Walt Disney. Reaching an agreement with Tokuma for worldwide video distribution of Miyazaki’s films, The Walt Disney Company produced an English language dub of My Neighbor Totoro in 2005 featuring the voices of Dakota Fanning, Elle Fanning and Tim Daly as the Kusakabes.

Miyazaki’s compositions have fantastic depth of field, basking light on the old farmhouses, lush forests and rice fields the characters move past. To those who grew up on Josie and the Pussycats, the novelty of My Neighbor Totoro isn’t just the animation, but its spiritual depth. Respect for the natural world and an open mind toward the unseen course through the story, not as teaching points, but as an alternative to the lifestyle the Kusakabes are retreating from. My Neighbor Totoro is a bounty of both joy and imagination, as if Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are had been adapted for an Eastern audience. The girls are stricken early on with a giddiness that doesn’t cross over very well, something Miyazaki would change with his Oscar winning Spirited Away in 2001, but the pure enjoyment of the film is how different it is. Instead of catering to what the we expect, this magic carpet takes us somewhere different.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 75,711 users: 94% for My Neighbor Totoro

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

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This month’s theme was hatched after yet another person with better taste than me recommended that I add the 2005 romantic drama Shopgirl to my queue. Looking for nine more films with similar themes, “Chopsticks”, “Slacker” and “Fitting Room” were all considered and rejected before I settled on “May December Romance”. So in the month of December, I’ll take a look at love separated by much more than just six months on the calendar.

Shopgirl (2005)
Directed by Anand Tucker
Screenplay by Steve Martin, based on his novella
Produced by Ashok Amritraj, Jon Jashni, Steve Martin
106 minutes

As dazzling as Christmas pageant and equally bloated, Shopgirl is blessed and dogged by its formality. Not exactly an autobiographical account, Steve Martin drew on 25 years of relationships for a novella, published in 2000. A film version was set up at Lakeshore Entertainment, with director Anand Tucker and actress Claire Danes attached. Thrown into turnaround, film rights were picked up by Ashok Amritraj, who was sold on the property while working with Martin on Bringing Down the House in 2002. The former tennis pro’s production company Hyde Park Entertainment had a deal with Touchstone Pictures and once Jason Schwartzman took a role vacated by Jimmy Fallon at the last minute, they had a movie. A 45-day schedule commenced October 2003 in Beverly Hills and Silverlake. Several of the interiors were filmed at Delfino Studios in Sylmar.

Steve Martin had gambled on Englishman Mick Jackson to direct his script L.A. Story and 14 years later, the Thailand born, U.K. bred Anand Tucker certainly brings a European depth to Martin’s material. Deliberately paced and nearly devoid of chuckles, the approach is eye popping, a poor man’s David Fincher for better or for worse. Claire Danes & Jason Schwartzman are superbly cast as L.A. lovers who meet a year too soon, but Martin’s subdued older gentleman intrudes like an afterthought from a previous draft. Shopgirl is worth watching for Danes, whose gifts of refinement seem rarely in demand for high concept Hollywood these days. David Cronenberg’s frequent DP Peter Suschitzky provided the carnivale lighting scheme, though the musical score by Barrington Pheloung suggests something heartbreaking is set to occur at any moment.

In Beverly Hills, Mirabelle Buttersfield (Claire Danes) is relegated to working the lonely 3rd floor of Saks Fifth Avenue, where she sells the antiquated women’s garment of hand gloves. Returning to her plain apartment building in Silverlake, Mirabelle dedicates herself to etchings, which she sells here or there to local art galleries. The Vermont native otherwise toils in obscurity, hoping someone important heralds her unique talent. At the Launder Land coin-op laundry, Mirabelle instead meets the slovenly Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), a fellow artist who stencils fonts of his own design onto amplifiers. After an awkward first date totally devoid of chemistry, she throws Jeremy’s phone number in the trash. Succumbing to loneliness, Mirabelle initiates a sexual tryst that ends up being cut short by her reclusive house cat.

Back at Saks, Mirabelle receives a customer in the silver haired Ray Porter (Steve Martin), whose reserved approach and taste in shoes catch her eye. The mystery man sends Mirabelle a gift of gloves attached to a dinner invitation, which she accepts after he pays her work station another visit. A Seattle logistician who rents a home in Los Angeles so he won’t have to spend time packing when visits, Ray plays it proper with the emotionally maturing Mirabelle, making a speech the morning after they consummate their affair that his job doesn’t permit a long-term relationship. Mirabelle translates this as Ray planning on being with her long term as soon as work permits it. While Ray continues to keep Mirabelle at arm’s length, Jeremy follows her advice, showing some initiative in his field. Finding great success, he returns to Mirabelle a man.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 17,747 users: 51% for Shopgirl

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 62 for Shopgirl

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Logging in to Netflix Instant for a movie to watch is like being hungry and shown to a food replicator. It doesn’t solve my problem — it introduces one thousand new ones. Luckily, I can see which genres are rated higher in nutritional content, in this case, 4 or 4 ½ star ratings out of 5 stars. “Documentary” had a lot of those. So did “Anime & Animation”. In the month of November, I take another trip around the globe to sample recent animated feature films. Next stop: Paris, France.

Persépolis (2007)
Directed by Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud
Screenplay by Vincent Paronnaud, based on the graphic novels by Marjane Satrapi
Produced by Marc-Antoine Robert, Xavier Rigault
96 minutes

Instead of racing on the cutting edge of technology, Persépolis looks backwards for its inspiration and proves as potent as anything requiring 3-D goggles to enjoy. Chronicling her coming of age during the Islamic Revolution, Paris based cartoonist Marjane Satrapi saw her graphic novel Persépolis published to critical acclaim in 2000. Marc-Antoine Robert of upstart French production company 2.4.7. Films convinced Satrapi that her story should be adapted into an animated feature film. To co-write a script and co-direct, Satrapi contacted her friend Vincent Paronnaud, a comic book artist and filmmaker. So uncomfortable with tech that Satrapi & Paronnaud wrote their script in pencil, financiers in France, Germany and the U.K. responded to the project and co-financed a budget of roughly $8 million. An animation unit of one hundred went to work at a studio in the Tenth District of Paris.

Persépolis would share the Grand Jury Prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Film. Pulling back a curtain to reveal to Western audiences the darkness of 20^th century Iran, the strength of the film is its hand drawn charm, which pokes and prods the imagination in ways a live action melodrama of this material never could. Instead of feeling familiar, this story of innocence and uncertainty, family ties and loss, is never at a loss to enthrall. The simplicity Satrapi & Paronnaud bring to a story that is anything but black & white is remarkable, while the wit and visual panache of the cartoonists proves a perfect compliment to film. Once Catherine Deneuve was cast as the mother, the actress’s then 33-year-old daughter Chiara Mastroianni lobbied to play the voice of Marjane.

Arriving at Paris-Orly Airport, 22-year-old Marjane Satrapi (Chiara Mastroianni) handles a severe case of culture shock by lighting a cigarette and reminiscing on her childhood in Tehran. As a child in 1978, “Marji” (Gabrielle Lopes Benites) obsesses over French fries with ketchup, Bruce Lee and Adidas sneakers. Her educated parents (Catherine Deneuve, Simon Abkarian) embrace the revolution that sweeps away the brutal regime of the Shah. Her beloved uncle Abouche (François Jerosme) — a Marxist-Leninist who spent nine years in prison — gains his freedom and predicts that justice will flourish in their country at long last. But when the new Islamic order begins to purge the country of dissidents, Abouche is taken into custody and executed. By 1982, Marji is matching his defiance, mocking the nationalistic rhetoric of her teachers and buying a contraband Iron Maiden tape on the black market.

Through air raids inflicted by Saddam Hussein and domestic crackdowns by the Guard Corps, Marji remains close to her grandmother (Danielle Darrieux), who tries to instill integrity in her granddaughter through uncertain times. Marji’s parents make the decision to send her to school in Vienna. She is accepted by a small group of punk teenagers fascinated by her tales of revolution, but Marji rebels against her Catholic benefactors as instinctively as she did her Islamic teachers. Longing for Iran, Marji returns home, where the streets have been renamed after war martyrs and her father admits times are more brutal than ever. Nearly succumbing to depression, Marji rededicates herself to school and even falls in love. Agreeing to a marriage of convenience at the age of 21, Marji believes she has life almost figured out.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 23,619 users: 92% for Persépolis

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 90 for Persépolis

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As days get shorter, nights get longer and All Hallow’s Eve beckons, I can say that I won’t be wandering the streets dressed as Chewbacca begging for candy. What I can’t say is whether or not at my age, horror movies still have any surprises left in them. In the search for originality, it’d be a good idea to start anywhere but Hollywood. For the month of October, I take a trip around the globe to see what’s scaring some of my favorite countries these days.

Requiem (2006)
Directed by Hans-Christian Schmid
Written by Bernd Lange
Produced by Hans-Christian Schmid
93 minutes

Grounded with strong performances and anchored in restraint worthy of a parish priest, Requiem is a horror film on a spiritual fast. Hans-Christian Schmid grew up in a small town in Bavaria and had heard of Anneliese Michel, a college student who died in 1976 after the Catholic Church resorted to exorcism rites to treat her demonic visions. Schmid began sketching treatments in 1997 and partnering with screenwriter Bernd Lange, they finished a script in 2004. Their project secured financing from German public television companies BR (Bavarian Broadcasting), SWR (Southwest Broadcasting), WDR (West German Broadcasting) as well as the Franco-German TV network Arte. In her film debut, Sandra Hüller won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival, while critics awarded Requiem the FIPRESCI Prize.

A U.S. production titled The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) starring Laura Linney and Tom Wilkinson was loosely based on the court case surrounding the Anneliese Michel story. While that version beat Requiem into theaters, the German production rejects special effects and the supernatural, focusing on mental illness and religious dogma and what would lead a normal college girl to an exorcism. Whether this approach was taken for prestige or for lack of money — most of the film is shot handheld by Polish cinematographer Bogumil Godfrejow — the tension in this “horror movie without any horror” is palpable. In her film debut, Sandra Hüller won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival for conveying something as raw and intense as any team of makeup effects technicians could.

In a small West German town in the 1970s, a 21-year-old devout Catholic named Michaela Klingler (Sandra Hüller) is elated by news that she’s been accepted into university at Tübingen. Her strict mother (Imogen Kogge) uses Michaela’s epilepsy to argue against her leaving home, but appealing to her sympathetic father (Burghart Klaußner) that the pills she’s been prescribed have enabled her to go six months without a spell, Michaela is moved in to her dorm by her father himself. In pedagogy class, she makes friends with a high school acquaintance, Hanna (Anna Blomeier). Michaela takes a parish pilgrimage with her family to the Italian shrine of St. Katherine, where her mother gives her a rosary. Sitting alone in a cafeteria, Michaela’s rosary falls to the floor. Trying to pick it up, she becomes paralyzed with fright and goes into a seizure.

With Michaela’s father covering for his daughter by keeping the spell a secret, Michaela begins to blossom at school, sporting a new hairstyle, new fashions and even finding a boyfriend in a chemistry major (Nicholas Reinke). But when Hanna finds Michaela collapsed on the floor of her dorm room one morning, she insists that her friend visit a doctor. When X-rays prove inconclusive, Michaela visits her parish priest (Walter Schmidinger) and reveals that whenever she tries to pray, hideous faces and voices torment her. The priest refuses to accept this, but is concerned enough to visit Michaela at school with Father Borchert (Jens Harzer), a young vicar who is more open minded to Michaela’s story. As Michaela’s spells grow more intense, Borchert contends that the best way to rid the girl of her demons is through an exorcism.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 1,578 users: 64% for Requiem

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 82 for Requiem

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The Bechdel Test was named for Allison Bechdel, whose comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For in 1985 measured the female presence in movies by employing three criteria: Are there two or more women in it, with names? Do the women talk to each other? About something other than a man? Far too many mainstream movies flunk this test, but in the month of September, I take a look at ten movies that pass.

The Burning Plain (2008)
Directed by Guillermo Arriaga
Written by Guillermo Arriaga
Produced by Walter F. Parkes, Laurie MacDonald
107 minutes

Pouring on the melancholy and infinite sadness, The Burning Plain has major credibility problems as well as a title problem, but nearly erases both with a cast and a visual sheen that would be the envy of just about any first-time director. After writing Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel, screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga ended his collaboration with director Alejandro González Iñárritu after Iñárritu let it be known that Arriaga had taken too much credit for the success of those films. Arriaga submitted his script The Burning Plain to Walter F. Parkes & Laurie MacDonald, the husband-wife team who once presided over film production at DreamWorks Pictures. Proposing that he be the one sitting in the director’s chair this time, Arriaga won financing from Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban, whose 2929 Productions, in association with Costa Films, put up the budget.

Shot over eight weeks in Chihuahuan Desert of New Mexico and in Portland for a budget of under $20 million, The Burning Plain screened September 2008 at the Venice Film Festival. It opened in Italy weeks later and was available in the United States via On-Demand cable in August 2009. In a few years, this film might become known as the screen debut of Jennifer Lawrence, who broke out in Winter’s Bone and gives a haunted performance years beyond her age. The stoic Charlize Theron is equally possessed, while directors of photography Robert Elswit (There Will Be Blood) and John Toll (Vanilla Sky, who Elswit recommended shoot the Portland sequences) bend light and shadow with technique that is nothing short of majestic. When it comes to the script, Arriaga has squeezed all the juice out of these solemn, multi-arc, multi-lingual melodramas and leaves fruit pulp.

A trailer parked on a deserted plain is consumed by fire. Sylvia (Charlize Theron) manages a seafood restaurant perched along the Pacific Coast, where she marks time in an emotionless affair with a cook (John Corbett). Shuttled to work by a friend (Robin Tunney), Sylvia notices a stranger watching her. Back in the southwest, teenager Santiago (J.D. Pardo) inspects the remains of the trailer, where his father and mistress were burned alive. Santiago’s mother (Rachel Ticotin) sits out the funeral while the husband (Brett Cullen) of his late father’s mistress shows up to vent at the “wetbacks”. Santiago is much more interested in Mariana (Jennifer Lawrence), the teenage daughter in that family. Meanwhile, crop duster Santiago (Danny Pino), his 10-year-old daughter Maria (Tessa Ia) and partner Carlos (José María Yazpik) fly to a job.

Moving back in time, Nick (Joaquim de Almeida) reconnects with his mistress Gina (Kim Basinger). Sneaking away to a trailer Nick’s cousin has loaned them, Gina is still sensitive about her body following the loss of a breast to cancer. Back in what we believe to be the present, teenaged Santiago and Mariana overcome resistance by their families and get to know one another. Meanwhile, the crop duster suffers a crash. Moving back in time again, Mariana follows her mother to the trailer where she rendezvous with her lover. Recovering in the hospital, the crop duster dispatches Carlos to reunite Maria with her mother. In Portland, Carlos locates the woman, who has changed her name from Mariana to Sylvia and wants nothing to do with Maria. Moving back in time again, Mariana attempts to end her mother’s affair by setting fire to the trailer.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 6,129 users: 57% for The Burning Plain

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 45 for The Burning Plain

What do you say?

The Bechdel Test was named for Allison Bechdel, whose comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For in 1985 measured the female presence in movies by employing three criteria: Are there two or more women in it, with names? Do the women talk to each other? About something other than a man? Far too many mainstream movies flunk this test, but in the month of September, I take a look at ten recent movies that pass.

An Education (2009)
Directed by Lone Scherfig
Screenplay by Nick Hornby, based on the memoir by Lynn Barber
Produced by Finola Dwyer, Amanda Posey
100 minutes

Recalling the entrance that an ingénue named Natalie Portman made with The Professional in 1994, Carey Mulligan radiates such ingenuity in An Education that it’s easy to overlook how terrific the coming-of-age tale that forms around her is. Author Nick Hornby discovered the material in the spring of 2003 in the British literary journal Granta. Sensing that the 10-page autobiographical essay by journalist Lynn Barber had the elements of a movie, Hornby mentioned it to his then girlfriend (later wife), producer Amanda Posey, who optioned film rights with her partner Finola Dwyer. Hornby wrote the first draft of An Education on spec in 2004. Rejected by several financiers due to its limited commercial appeal and the difficulty casting the lead role, two executives at BBC Films named David Thompson and Tracey Scoffield gambled on the project.

Preferring a woman behind the camera, Hornby lucked out when Danish director Lone Scherfig expressed interest in An Education. BBC raised a budget of roughly £4.5 million ($7 million USD) and shooting finally commenced in and around Twickenham Film Studios in March 2008. Lynn Barber’s memoir has the intimacy of a finely honed short story; it’s not so much what happens but who it happens to which is so captivating. In addition to its star making performance by Carey Mulligan, Hornby and Scherfig bring whimsy to material that could have easily gone too dark, too nostalgic or too pretentious. Impeccably well cast by Lucy Bevan and drenched in shades of a jazz LP cover by John de Borman, An Education was nominated for three Academy Awards — Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay — but won none.

In the London suburb of Twickenham in 1961, 16-year-old Jenny (Carey Mulligan) blazes an academic trail for Oxford, writing A+ papers in the English class of Miss Stubbs (Olivia Williams) and playing cello in youth orchestra. Waiting in the rain for a bus, Jenny is offered a ride by David (Peter Sarsgaard), a witty, considerate man. While the ambitions of Jenny’s classmate Graham (Matthew Beard) fail to pass the muster of Jenny’s father (Alfred Molina), David runs into Jenny again and invites her to a performance of Ravel. Introducing himself to Jenny’s father and mother (Cara Seymour), David charms them into allowing their daughter to go on the date. After the concert, David works in supper at a nightclub with his cosmopolitan friends Danny (Dominic Cooper) and Helen (Rosamund Pike).

Having the time of her life, Jenny ditches school to attend an auction with David. His exact line of work remains mysterious — “property, a bit of art dealing” — but with a winning personality and a bit of cleverness, he convinces Jenny’s parents to allow her to spend the weekend in Oxford with him and his friends. Jenny makes clear to David she intends to keep her virginity until she turns 17. David respects this wish but during the weekend, it becomes clear to Jenny that her boyfriend’s occupation involves swindling and stealing. When David promises Jenny a birthday getaway to Paris, news of their adventures begins disrupting classes. Miss Stubbs warns her pupil not to throw away her education on David, but the life of an English teacher holds little appeal to the teenager, who wants to live it up while she can.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 14,719 users: 77% for An Education

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 85 for An Education

What do you say?

Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

Chinatown (1974)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Written by Robert Towne
Produced by Robert Evans
130 minutes

The only thing really left to debate about Chinatown is whether it belongs among the 25 best films ever made, 10 best or whether it vaults over titles like Citizen Kane or Casablanca as The Best Film Ever Made. According to the legend as repeated by screenwriter Robert Towne, its genesis was a 1969 photo essay in a Los Angeles Times about Raymond Chandler’s L.A. Conceived as a love letter to the vanishing city of his youth and using something as vague as land and water as catalysts, Towne would sell Paramount Pictures production head Robert Evans on his concept for a ‘30s detective mystery and writing with Jack Nicholson in mind, deliver a 178 page script that both intrigued and bewildered director Roman Polanski. Pruning the epic script with Polanski, a point of contention was the ending. The screenwriter wanted good to win the day. The director preferred tragedy.

The power of Chinatown is the care the film takes to recreate Depression Era Los Angeles — which Gittes refers to only half jokingly as “a small town” at one point — and fill it with a complex story that remains mesmerizing no matter how many times it’s replayed. Through stunning production design by Richard Sylbert, a desaturated color scheme that evokes black & white photography and a sensual musical score by Jerry Goldsmith, Chinatown achieves the illusion it was produced in 1947 instead of 1974. Where most whodunits focus on little more than heists or serial killers, Towne weaves an ambitious tale of natural resources, corruption and family scandal that stretches clear into the horizon, much as the city of Los Angeles does. In addition to the sucker punch ending, Polanski contributes a rhythm that enables locations like a city morgue or a retirement home to leap off the screen and feel real.

In Los Angeles of the late 1930s, private detective J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is hired by “Evelyn Mulwray” (Diane Ladd) to verify that her husband Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling) — chief of the Department of Water and Power — is having an affair. Gittes shadows Mulwray at City Hall, where the engineer cites safety concerns for his refusal to build a dam that would ease the burden on agriculture, which gripped in a drought are sharing the water supply with the public. Gittes completes his job by snapping photos of Mulwray with a blonde in Echo Park. The photos are mysteriously reprinted in the newspaper and the real Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) reveals herself to serve Gittes with a lawsuit. Eager to uncover who set him up, Gittes seeks help from Mrs. Mulwray, who now prefers to drop the matter entirely. Before Gittes can question her husband, Mulwray’s body is pulled out of a reservoir.

Pressed for information by Lt. Lou Escobar (Perry Lopez) — Gittes’ partner when they patrolled the morally ambiguous streets of Chinatown — Gittes is hired by Mrs. Mulwray to solve her husband’s death. Snooping around the reservoir where Mulwray died, Gittes is cornered by two goons (Roy Jenson, Roman Polanski) and has a nostril cut open. Sensing that Mrs. Mulwray is hiding something, Gittes visits her estranged father Noah Cross (John Huston), a power broker who once owned the city’s water supply with Mulwray. His interest lies in finding the girl the private eye photographed with Mulwray and he hires Gittes to do so. A key to the mystery lies in the San Fernando Valley, where farmers are being pressured to sell by an anonymous landowner who stands to make a fortune if the dam project that Mulwray blocked is now approved.

Alex Simon of The Hollywood Interview sat down with Robert Towne on the 35^th anniversary of Chinatown for an exhaustive interview on the development of the script.

Richard Ballad caught up with Roman Polanski 35 years previous for an interview in the August 1974 issue of Penthouse Magazine.

What do you say?

Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Polanski.

Tess (1979)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Gérard Brach & Roman Polanski and John Brownjohn, based on the novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Produced by Claude Berri
172 minutes

As a sum of its dialogue, casting, photography, editing and music, Roman Polanski’s screen version of the 1891 novel by Thomas Hardy tantalizes with how thrift of imperfection it seems. Once a passion of producer David O. Selznick — who wanted wife Jennifer Jones to play Tess — actress Sharon Tate handed the book to her husband two decades later. Dedicating the finished film to his slain wife, Polanski adapted the novel with Gérard Brach and tasked John Brownjohn to translate their script from French to English, tuning an ear to the Dorset dialect. In this expensive co-production between France’s Renn Productions and England’s Burrill Productions, Polanski cast in the title role 17-year-old Nastassia Kinski, the West German ingénue who Francis Coppola would call “the most beautiful woman in films today” when he cast her in One From the Heart a few years later.

Tess is worth viewing as a visual feast alone. Shot extensively during the “magic hour” of dusk by Geoffrey Unsworth (who died during production to be relieved by Ghislain Cloquet), the splendor of the landscape and the way sunlight reveals character is present in every frame. Much of the film’s success lies in the casting of Nastassia Kinski, who is on-screen much of the running time and exhibits an unusual power mostly foreign to actresses her age. What’s striking about Tess is the tender loving care Polanski takes to let scenes breathe, neither overwhelming the audience in period detail or racing through the events of the book. A whole world materializes in which an outsider struggles to find her place. Nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director, the playful yet majestic musical score by Philippe Sarde is a standout.

In rural Dorset of the late 19^th century, local girls assemble for their May dance. John Durbeyfield (John Collin) crosses paths with a new parson, who notifies the peasant that his research into local genealogy indicates the Durbeyfields descend from an old family, the d’Urbervilles. Though his ancestors have died off without any wealth, Durbeyfield and his wife (Rosemary Martin) dispatch their teenage daughter Tess (Nastassia Kinski) to call on a wealthy widow in the town of Trantridge who goes by the name d’Urberville. The farm girl encounters the widow’s playboy son Alec (Leigh Lawson) who takes a shine to Tess. Accepting a job on the property, she discovers the “d’Ubervilles” are not blood relatives at all but merely bought the name. Ultimately giving in to Alec’s salacious advances, she returns home bearing his illegitimate child.

When her child succumbs to illness and dies, Tess leaves home to take a job as a milkmaid. Just as her co-workers Izz (Suzanna Hamilton), Marian (Carolyn Pickles) and Retty (Caroline Embling) have, Tess falls in love with a young apprentice farmer named Angel Clare (Peter Firth). The son of a reverend, Angel is attracted to Tess’ earthy wisdom and announces to his family that he plans to marry the penniless girl. On their honeymoon, Tess reveals that she surrendered her maidenhood to a cousin and bore his child. Ruining her husband’s image of her, Tess is sent back to her destitute family while Angel leaves for Brazil to seek his fortune. Tess reunites with Izz to work on a farm owned by Alec d’Urberville. He offers to provide for Tess if she returns to him, but clinging to her pride, she chooses poverty instead. For a while.

Jeremy Richey’s ardor for Nastassja Kinski inspired him to name his blog Moon In the Gutter and in June 2009, he turned his attention to Tess.

This terrific behind the scenes article by Harlan Kennedy on the making of Tess appeared in the October 1979 issue of American Film.

What do you say?

Tightrope (1984)
Directed by Richard Tuggle*
Written by Richard Tuggle
Produced by Clint Eastwood, Fritz Manes
114 minutes

Like a quarter shining in the gutter, Tightrope could stand a polish, but if you catch it on a rainy afternoon or late at night, this unabashed B-movie offers spills and thrills aplenty. Escape From Alcatraz scribe Richard Tuggle took his cue from a series of unsolved rapes in the Bay Area. His research resulted in a cop thriller sold to Clint Eastwood under the condition the screenwriter be allowed to make his directorial debut. Tuggle’s struggles on the set threatened his job security on day 1, but DGA guidelines — amended after Eastwood replaced Philip Kaufman as director of The Outlaw Josey Wales with himself — mandated that Tuggle remain on and receive a credit for directing. Whether you believe Eastwood collaborated with Tuggle from there or it was more likely the other way around, whoever directed Tightrope managed a good film that occasionally flirts with being a very good one.

Tightrope could either be considered a Cannon Films styled cop thriller like Cobra or Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects made with a real script and much better actors, or it could be considered just another Cannon Films styled cop thriller. The business of a serial killing rapist on the loose in a Red Light District is routine, repetitive and almost completely indistinguishable for a hundred other bad movies and TV shows. Where the picture shows life are its domestic scenes — where Eastwood’s chemistry with his 11-year-old daughter Alison glows — and the cop’s relationship with a rape counselor played by Geneviève Bujold. Eastwood relocated the script from San Francisco to New Orleans, and the offbeat French Canadian actress proves as alluring as the city itself. The killer is given no substance, but since the family he menaces is something we care about, at the very least, Tightrope provides a riveting ride to the finish.

In New Orleans, divorced police captain Wes Block (Clint Eastwood) cancels plans to watch the Saints game with his two young daughters (Alison Eastwood, Jennifer Beck) when a prostitute is found strangled to death in her home. When another working girl turns up drowned in a bathhouse, rape counselor Beryl Thibodeaux (Geneviève Bujold) presses Block to involve her office in the investigation. Prowling the brothels of The Big Easy to interview prostitutes, Block finds the time to indulge his dark side with a popsicle sucking tart (Rebecca Perle) and a nurse (Margaret Howell) among others moonlighting in the sex trade. Personal items Block leaves at his nocturnal activities — handcuffs, a necktie — begin to turn up alongside the bodies of the prostitutes he’s frequented.

Once she complains to City Hall about his lack of cooperation, Beryl Thibodeaux receives a visit from Block at the non-profit rape center she runs. The cop later seeks Beryl out at her gym and over an oyster lunch on the Mississippi, bluntly shares his attraction for her. She accepts his invitation to go trick or treating with his girls in the French Quarter and receives their approval to continue dating their dad. Meanwhile, Block and his partner (Dan Hedaya) trace glass fragments at the murder scenes to a local beer bottling plant. The killer responds by visiting Block’s daughters, killing their nanny and almost strangling Block. The cop narrows his manhunt onto one suspect in particular, but while he’s staking out the man’s apartment, the killer goes hunting for Beryl.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 11 users: 82% for Tightrope

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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Mystic River (2003)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Screenplay by Brian Helgeland, based on the novel by Dennis Lehane
Produced by Robert Lorenz, Judie G. Hoyt, Clint Eastwood
138 minutes

The most commercially successful movie Clint Eastwood has directed without also appearing in as an actor is a well-intentioned piece of hackwork. Neither assured filmmaking nor the presence of some of the best actors of their generation are capable to breathing more than a puff or two of emotional honesty into this overworked stock material, adapted by Brian Helgeland from an airport paperback mystery by Dennis Lehane. It’s preferable to the lifeless 1996 melodrama Sleepers, in which childhood sexual abuse formed cloudy skies over adult survivors played by Jason Patric, Billy Cudrup and Brad Pitt. This is because Eastwood and Lehane are more dedicated to their craft than Barry Levinson or Lorenzo Carcaterra, but any way you cut it, Mystic River suffers from an extreme rigor mortis of plot.

Though nothing in Mystic River feels unforced, there are bright spots. 17-year-old Emmy Rossum lights up the screen in her brief appearance as the murder victim, while Eastwood’s old bandit buddy Tuco (Eli Wallach) from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly has a terrific cameo as a liquor store proprietor. Most everything else occurs in capital letters. Sean Penn gives an Award Winning Performance, baring a Boston accent and tattoos and allowed to launch into one of the greatest fits of ham in film history. The movie has nowhere left to go after Penn’s hysterics over the murdered body of his character’s daughter and it isn’t helped by a tired story about Dark Secrets lurking in The Old Neighborhood revealed through a Brutal Murder. This material deserves to be Abandoned and Left For Dead.

On the banks of the Mystic River in suburban Boston, young Jimmy Markum (Jason Kelly), Sean Devine (Connor Paolo) and Dave Boyle (Cameron Bowen) are caught scrawling their names in cement by two men posing as police officers. Dave is taken away in their car and manages to escape his tormentors after four days of captivity. Years later, Jimmy (Sean Penn) is a reformed thief who operates a small market with his strong willed 19-year-old daughter Katie (Emmy Rossum) working behind the counter. Jimmy’s daughter with his second wife Annabeth (Laura Linney) is celebrating her first communion. Sean (Kevin Bacon) is a Massachusetts State Police detective estranged from his wife, who took off with another man while carrying Sean’s child. Dave (Tim Robbins) is a husband and father and is still haunted by the tragedy of his childhood.

A 911 call alerts police to Katie’s abandoned, blood soaked car not far from the church where she fails to appear for the communion. Sean and his partner Whitey Powers (Laurence Fishburne) lead the search for Katie’s body and find her shot twice, beaten and left in the old bear cages in Franklin Park. Emotionally devastated, Jimmy engages his former criminal associates the Savage Brothers (Kevin Chapman, Adam Nelson) to hit the neighborhood for information. Dave saw Katie at a bar the night she was murdered and when he returns home to his wife Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden) injured and covered in blood — not to mention mentally unstable — the detectives take notice. Celeste begins to wonder if he had a part in Katie’s murder and makes the mistake of sharing her fears with Jimmy.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 192 users: 88% for Mystic River

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 84 for Mystic River

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