Post 100: The One I Might Have Saved.

If anyone's keeping track, yes, this is the hundredth post here on The House of Sparrows. That the House is open at all can be blamed, if you wish, on the inspiration of two leading lights in the horror blogosphere: Stacie Ponder (proprietor of Final Girl) and Arbogast (of Arbogast on Film).

Indeed, the latter has an ongoing blogathon called The One You Might Have Saved, inviting any and all to describe a horror film victim whose plight stirred unusual empathy. I've been meaning to post my own entry in this (this blog was started in large part out of a desire to do so), and believe that this is an ideal occasion for it.

Though the movie that contains this person does not, at the outset, seem auspicious...


...it was smarter than I'd hoped, offering an engaging whodunnit mystery alongside its old school slasher thrills. There's an interesting subtext throughout the film as we're made to wonder what our future will be like as these uniformly horrible young women, our best and brightest, take the reins of government and business in the ensuing years. The film's cynicism in depicting the sisters' ongoing betrayal of the social values the sorority was ostensibly established to uphold is deliberate, and often bracing. (I also noted that Claire, an Asian-American character played by Jamie Chung, had a number of character details that fleshed her out more believably than non-white characters in many, many other genre films.)

In any event, it begins with a rather lovely, though one doubts seamless, single take crawling through Theta House, taking in all manner of debauchery during a party. The camera ducks into a quiet, dark kitchen, the music is muted, and we see her for the first time.


This is Mrs. Crenshaw, the house mother of Theta Pi, played by Carrie Fisher. She's beautifully captured here, holding it down in the (moral?) center of Theta Pi, quietly mixing a drink even as her charges are indulging far lustier vices throughout the house. It's a good hook for older viewers of this teen-oriented (if R-rated) slasher, and those of us who came of age when this actress was in her prime share, perhaps, her isolation from (but presence within) the youth-heavy antics surrounding her.

Which include the murder that drives the film, and the secret forged by the film's numerous heroines (all Theta Pi sisters, all seniors). We catch up with Mrs. Crenshaw at the end of senior year, sternly but lovingly giving her end-of-year address to the sisters...


..along with some bracelets to the graduates, bearing one link for each of the 22 graduates. Clearly unaware that it's the spirit of generosity, and not the gift that counts, the girls junk the bracelets as soon as Mrs. C splits:


But Mrs. Crenshaw's feeling more wistful, and generous, and is captured (alone, again) taking a final look at the house as she's known it.


And she's off. A huge and insane party, with DJs, bubble machines, and lots of sex begins at Theta House.

And before night falls, the killer strikes. And again. And again.





Back at the house the sisters realize that their past is coming back for them. And the aforementioned Claire suffers the film's most visually weird death.




Amid all the carnage two of the girls have time for a catfight over a boyfriend, but the return of Mrs. Crenshaw is clearly a signal to Cut The Shit:


"Wow, who knew Mrs. Crenshaw was such a bad-ass?" Some belated and unheard respect from the girls, as Mrs. C goes downstairs to save the fucking day.

She enters the kitchen, finds the killer, and starts blazing away:



For the first time in the film, the killer retreats.



And Fisher gives us the best lines in the film:


No, she is not. Why?


Damn right.

The killer throws his pimped-up tire iron at her and misses, wedging it in the wall behind her. She's about to kill him and give the movie an awesome fucking ending. Until her gun jams:


She's trying to fix the damn thing, and her desperate grunts in the next few seconds tear a gasp from me. Faster than 7capture can grab it, the killer runs over, shoves the table against Mrs. Crenshaw, thus impaling her with the weapon wedged in the wall behind her.



There's a weird, sad silence here:


Is the killer gloating? Quietly paying respect to the awesome, otherwise unrespected woman who simply deserved better than she's getting here? Taking a moment to acknowledge the genuine sacrifice of the sole decent person on his/her long slate of victims, past and future?

God love her, she rallies for one last, desperate shot against the departing killer, but we feel how empty her threats are now, and mourn how widely her last shot misses its mark.


And finally Mrs. Crenshaw dies as we found her: in the kitchen. Alone.


I'm not completely sure why she resonates with me. Though it's a three-scene role, Fisher plays it more than solidly. Mrs. Crenshaw's the most clearly (if not the only) sympathetic character in the whole film (an intentional ploy of the film's design), and, as suggested earlier, perhaps she was the only character in this film that I, in my ever-increasing dotage, could really latch onto. Maybe it's her resemblance to my mom.

All I know is that as I grabbed images for this piece I could easily speed through the film, but found myself gripped anew by her scenes. Too involved to really break down Fisher's performance, or Stewart Hendler's direction of her scenes. Instead I was simply struck by her gentle but tough humanity. And, particularly, saddened by her death.

So here's to you, Mrs. Crenshaw.

You, dear, are The One I Might Have Saved.

Raimifest: FOR LOVE OF THE GAME

(For Raimifest, run by Bryce Wilson over at the witty and wonderful Things That Don't Suck.)

"...you get the feeling that Billy Chapel isn't pitching against left handers, he isn't pitching against pinch hitters, he isn't pitching against the Yankees. He's pitching against time. He's pitching against the future, against age, and even when you think about his career, against ending. And tonight I think he might be able to use that aching old arm one more time to push the sun back up in the sky and give us one more day of summer."



Forty-year-old Detroit Tigers pitcher Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner) is at the very end of his career. Pretty much everything has collapsed around him - his tumultuous baseball career is ending with a losing season, and his long-term but difficult relationship with New York career woman Jane Aubrey (Kelly Preston) seems to have similarly, and permanently, hit the skids. To make matters worse, the poor bastard is throwing his last game in Yankee Stadium, where thousands of fans have gathered to jeer at him. Though focused on the game at hand, Chapel recalls key moments in both his career and his relationship with Jane, and becomes so involved in his memories that he doesn't immediately realize that he's pitching the best game of his life.

The last of Costner's baseball movies grows a little schmaltzier with each viewing. The romantic stuff gets longer and more irritating every time I see it - Costner and Preston do their best with the often leaden dialogue, but the hideous MOR pop tunes on the soundtrack oversell the emotions at too many moments.

That said, it's a thoroughly adult romance - we're not asked to believe in a younger woman's attraction to an insanely older man, and Costner and Preston are totally credible through the ups and downs of their believably difficult relationship. The then-15-year-old Jena Malone offers a nicely realized performance as Jane's daughter Heather, a sweetly human foil for both characters.



And, AND, the baseball scenes remain some of the best ever made. The acting really sells the in-game action, with Costner totally believable as a pitcher facing his final game, as is John C. Reilly as his catcher - their relationship feels like one that has been built over years (and JK Simmons, in his first of many appearances in Raimi films, is a joy as their coach). These scenes gain authenticity and dramatic heft with the longtime voice of the Yankees Bob Sheppard and veteran announcer Vin Scully thrillingly calling the game.



You're basically on the mound with Chapel, and his ongoing monologue offers as vivid a sense of the game's mechanics as you'll get anywhere else. The film captures the odd sensation of being completely alone in front of 50,000 people.



Basil Poledouris' theme is a great piece of film music, the perfect accompaniment to the end of an era, and to a tired man's last desperate fight. The brass that ascends beneath the strings is the perfect musical reflection of the conflict within Billy, mirroring the rise of his spirit against his exhaustion and the considerable odds against him. The script from Michael Shaara's novel is generous with character moments, and Costner savors each one. And there's some gorgeous photography as well (from veteran DP John Bailey), as here where Chapel makes a rare plea for divine intervention, and the lights of Yankee Stadium come alive as if in response:



And Reilly's "Just throw" speech before the 8th inning is an impassioned and beautiful monologue, surely one of the cinema's great declarations of heterosexual male-male love.



It's directed by Sam Raimi, and it's challenging to place it comfortably in his oeuvre. It falls in the middle of what one might call a "realist" period in his work, bookended by the modern noir A Simple Plan and the effective character piece The Gift. But though it lacks the gonzoid energy and freneticism of his best known work (from the Evil Dead films through the Spider-Man trilogy), it's no less effects-driven: much CGI was used to fill the seats of Yankee Stadium during the film's off-season shoot (along with actual Yankee fans who showed up to heckle Costner and Reilly for local colour). Most impressive is the sequence in which Chapel "clears the mechanism", a mental means of shutting out the stadium's noise section by section. And one wonders if a more realistically-inclined filmmaker would have brought as much viscera to the film's most harrowing scene in which Chapel receives a career-threatening injury at the wrong end of a table saw.



The scene brings out the best in Jane as she fights to save Billy's hand, tapping into a heroic desperation we've seen in Raimi's films before:



In the end I keep thinking back on Zhang Yimou, who was called upon to defend his retreat into martial arts territory with Hero and House of Flying Daggers. He explained that every Chinese filmmaker has at least one wuxia film in him. Perhaps every American filmmaker has at least one baseball film in them. Given that Raimi himself is a fan of the national pastime, who're we to begrudge him this film?



I first caught For Love of the Game theatrically in October 1999, at the end of the first baseball season I'd followed with any interest. Pretty much every year I watch it shortly after the baseball season winds down, a perfect film for the twilight of the season. And though its flaws become more evident with each viewing, I still get caught up in it, and the 9th inning still makes me cry. I dislike The Natural for the way it deifies its hero, and I find the climactic home run overdone and bland. The characters in For Love of the Game are more recognizably human to me, frail, vulnerable, prone to bouts of total assholishness, capable of greatness, and truly at their best in the company of kindred spirits.

Evil Dead 2 was a staple of my high school years, but For Love of the Game is the Raimi film I've spent the most time with. In some ways, as I draw perilously near to Chapel's age (and I note that Raimi himself turned 40 the year the film was released), I find more real resonance in his conflicts than the cartoonish battles of Ash against the undead. It thrills me to see someone with whom I find more and more familiarity with each passing year finding (and proving) that he's not yet done. It's a solid story, beautifully told, informed by a maturity and gravitas one doesn't often see in Raimi's work. And yet Chapel possesses a likable charm, an often self-defeating capacity for error, and a movingly human strength, all of which he shares with the most memorable of Raimi's heroes. And his goal is no less heroic: to use that aching old arm one more time to push the sun back up in the sky. And give us one more day of summer.

THE ANIMATRIX: A DETECTIVE STORY

(What you are about to read is a contribution to For the Love of Film (Noir): The Film Preservation Blogathon, the details of which can be found at post's end. I have made a donation to the Film Noir Foundation, and hope you will do the same - link's at the end.)



When the brothers Wachowski commissioned some of Japan's finest animators to add short films to their ever-expanding Matrix franchise, director Shinichiro Watanabe was an ideal collaborator. Watanabe's landmark anime series Cowboy Bebop quickly found a devout cult audience for its story of planet-hopping bounty hunters, leavening its stylized anime action with a strident musical score and a generous dose of film noir style and fatalism. Watanabe's noir influences move front and center for his tight, nine-minute Matrix prequel, A Detective Story...


A Detective Story's protagonist is Ash, a put-upon private eye to whom we are introduced near the end of "the case to end all cases..."


But first things first: we go to the beginning of the case as Ash fields a client's call in a P.I.'s office straight out of Noir City:



Though fearing another domestic case, Ash finds that his generous client wants him to track down a mysterious computer hacker known as Trinity. Familiar as we are with Matrix lore, we know immediately that Ash is being set up as a pawn to pursue an agent of freedom by a conspiracy larger than he could possibly imagine. But like so many noir heroes before him, Ash takes the money and goes to work, unaware of the bad, bad hand fate has dealt him.

Ash's tools of the trade are both classic...


...and downright avant-garde, including a weirdly high-tech rig with multiple flatscreens and phone tech from some alternate universe's 1930s...


Ash soon finds out that other investigators seeking Trinity have wound up either dead or, in the case of one poor bastard, insane. A visit to the latter man's home does yield a disturbing, if visually striking, clue:


Several online, Lewis Carroll-coded communications later, Ash finds himself on a train to nowhere and, finally, face to face with Trinity:


Ash quickly realizes that there's much, much more to Trinity than he could have imagined. Just as, in The Matrix, Keanu Reeves' Neo was awakened to the world underneath his perceived reality, Ash finds the world he knew slipping from his grasp, and having made the trip through the looking glass finds himself in the grip of a reality that is simply beyond his comprehension. Ash is forced to make a crucial decision when several of their fellow passengers turn into Agents that move to eliminate them both.



As the agents draw nearer, Ash feels himself being physically transformed into one of them. Trinity must defend herself, and thus executes the function of femmes fatale from across the years.


Like other noir heroes before him, Ash seems to find a kind of comfort in the shadow of death's oncoming embrace, though he remains bewildered by his too-short life beyond the looking glass.


And Watanabe again engages our familiarity with the Matrix's overall story to give Ash what many noir creators refused their heroes, a simple moment of grace as Trinity confides in him her highest compliment: "For what it's worth, I think you could have handled the truth."


And so Trinity leaves, and even as the agents encroach on Ash, Watanabe's streak of generosity leaves him a final burst of energy to buy Trinity some time, to look death in the eye, and to enjoy one last cigarette.



Lights out.

Watanabe's most distinctive gift is his talent for combining disparate genres and cultures into bizarre but effective hybrids. That he would reach across decades to bring the high-tech, colorful, and action packed world of The Matrix into the lower tech, black-and-white, and somber world of film noir in A Detective Story only seems perverse in retrospect. In fully embracing the noir aesthetic Watanabe has crafted a lovely Matrix miniature, both a fine self-contained prelude to that sprawling (some would argue over-extended) franchise and a dark little gem in its own right. Pleasingly mind-bending, and simply noir as hell.


For the Love of Film (Noir): The Film Preservation Blogathon is hosted by Marilyn Ferdinand of Ferdy on Films and the Self-Styled Siren. You can go here to read more about the Film Noir Foundation, here to read a cogent interview with FNF head Eddie Muller about its preservation projects and why they matter, and you can go here to make a donation.)