Elvis: The Man, The Legend, The Manager?

Baz Luhrmann’s ELVIS crams the rise and fall of rock ‘n roll legend Elvis Presley into a questionable biopic – because it’s told from the POV of his manager!

Tom Hanks (under obese makeup) plays Colonel Tom Parker, the enigmatic manager who shepherded Elvis into the stratosphere, in an astounding performance only slightly less slimy than Jabba The Hutt. Parker’s constant narration keeps justifying how he “made” Elvis rather than “sponged” off him. Does maverick filmmaker Luhrmann feel that Parker was getting a bad rap in modern society, and his venal methods needed to be humanized? Because, let me assure you, I was of the generation that just missed the Elvis craze, and Elvis’s manager means even less to me, occupying not one iota of brain space, as surely as he doesn’t occupy the thoughts of a whole generation of short attention span asshats who wouldn’t know Peter Grant or Brian Epstein or Troy Carter if their music careers depended on it. So why frame the whole movie around Parker?

Maybe Luhrmann is counting on the populace having forgotten Parker as a real life figure, as he and his co-writers (Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce and Jeremy Doner) turn Parker into the caricature of everything we suspect about leech managers, yet evoke our sympathies when they reveal what a pathetic and rudderless man Parker was, with no background, no country, no friends – hell, he wasn’t even a colonel; we’re manipulated to feel that his exploitation of Elvis Presley is justifiable due to his psychological need to attach himself to something familial. The dramatic license is draped over this movie so hard, it looks like an octopus strangling its prey.

And Parker’s story – like that octopus – overshadows the legend of Elvis that this movie is trying to purvey. For example: see how long I spent talking about Elvis’s fucking MANAGER?

Austin Butler (ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD) is Elvis—I mean… Austin Butler IS Elvis. This 31-year-old hound dog embodies the innocence, the charisma, the pathos, the moves, the swagger, the sex… The movie’s shortcomings are far removed from Austin Butler. Luhrmann FOUND his Elvis… he just couldn’t find the story to drape around The King’s shoulders like a sequined cape, rather than a hungry octopus.

Life events blaze before our eyes: young Elvis attending gospel meetings, spying black folks singing that debbil rock and roll, interactions with dad Vernon (John Roxburgh), the death of mother Gladys (Helen Thomson), marrying Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge), in and out of military service, touring and pills, firing guns and making movies), with Parker and Elvis constantly butting heads over either pleasing the establishment or fooling them into accepting the “white boy with black hips.”

ELVIS is filmed beautifully, directed creatively, but it loses the essence of the era it is trying to convey when it smashes in hip hop songs and filmic techniques that take us out of the times. For example – there is a medley of Elvis songs, interspersed with raw versions of black people singing them (excellent storytelling and filmmaking choice!) – and then there is a scene of a black woman singing Hound Dog integrated with a hip hop beat… FUCK THAT!

Another example of poor judgment is how the movie starts throwing in modern tics (glaring Taratino titles, Dutch angles, smash-pans and stressed filmstock) while its early sequences capture a reminiscence of 50s filmic techniques, with split screens and Kodachrome fuzz. So after hitting us with bombastic filmmaking, when the actual impactful elements of Elvis the performer are unleashed onto an unsuspecting public… they don’t seem so mighty. How can a modern audience grasp the heady sensual outrage when Elvis shook his pelvis, if the movie has already worn out its sensationalism in the movie-MAKING itself? In trying to convey Elvis’s dynamism onstage being so stimulating to the people of the era that it spurred women to unbidden orgasm, the filmmakers ironically left themselves nowhere to go by shooting their load so early with the snazzy filmmaking, having over-stimulated our senses into apathy.

And of course, we can’t watch any biopic these days without WALK HARD entering our thoughts whenever filmic shorthand is used, as when Elvis’s bandmates introduce him to drugs. Or when a person turns into a superstar with time compression, by representing how they got people to dance on the strength of one song at a sock hop. On the other hand, this legendary man DID set panties aflame with his electrifying performances – there must have been one crossover gig where it went from plain excitement to demagogue frenzy. But it’s all Dewey Cox by now…

The five-million-dollar man-spread.

If only the whole movie emulated the Las Vegas International Hotel sequence: not only recreating the iconic performance from 1970’s ELVIS: THAT’S THE WAY IT IS, but adding another dimension, illustrating the relationship between talented-yet-naïve performer and sincere-yet-predatory manager, in a glorious juxtaposition of simultaneous winning/losing. While Elvis is onstage performing Suspicious Minds (“We’re caught in a trap / I can’t walk out / Because I love you too much, baby…”) Parker is inking a deal with the hotel owner – on a napkin, no less! – for 5 years and 5 million. This duplicitous act is literally carried out right under Elvis’s nose, after Parker had promised Elvis that he would send him on a world tour, and NOT tie him up in a residency. (We know this sequence of events never happened in this way, but this is what “dramatic license” should be used for – making things dramatic, not arbitrarily adding wrong facts to a real person’s life.)

And just like Hanks’s manager in THAT THING YOU DO, where we imagined horns growing from nice Mr. White’s big forehead as he demanded the master tapes, we see the horns on Parker’s temples as he evilly jokes about the 5 mil: “That is what my boy would expect… Now… what are you going to pay ME?” (Throughout his career with Elvis, Parker took 50%! Why are we humanizing this black hole scum again?) The Hotel Manager would write on the napkin, “all debts cancelled, plus lifetime credit at the hotel,” adding, “You do whatever you want, Colonel, as long as that boy stays on that stage!”

That day that everyone decided 50% is a damn good deal and ruined it for the rest of us musicians forever.

And under this plotting of his life pathway, there is Austin Butler, singing: “We’re caught in a trap / I can’t walk out,” resplendent in his bellbottom high-collar diamond-studded whites, pulling the greatest Elvis impersonation since Kurt Russell (ELVIS, 1979). Alternately looking exactly like Kurt and Elvis in so many shots we just give up and perceive only Elvis Presley. (Matter of fact, there are montages where footage of the real Presley is mixed in with Butler, and only a keen eye will catch him.)

And as the chorus repeats and repeats, growing in intensity yet going nowhere, like some ominous Shepard-Risset glissando – “We’re caught in a trap / I can’t walk out” – Elvis is oblivious, yet inadvertently singing his future. And with the last line – what are we meant to think? “Because I love you too much…” – that Parker loved Elvis so much (or at least the income he generated) that he was caught in as much of a trap as Elvis was – that he couldn’t walk out either, on threat of ruination.

The ending sequence is tear-jerking. Butler starts the song Unchained Melody on piano, and there is a flashback to him as a young boy (a smart device used throughout the movie – intercutting between the current rendition of the song and its roots on where Elvis heard it/was inspired by it). When the shot cuts back to Elvis… it really IS Elvis!

Elvis Aaron Presley. Under a career montage, we see The King forcing out that song through a drug-addled haze, and yet retaining his distinctive vocal prowess. The star power and the tragedy hit us like a hurricane – knowing this was the end of his life (a few days later he would be dead), it is enough to drive us weeping into home base.

The movie had wound down to the point where Parker was openly threatening and scheming against Elvis and father Vernon (who tried to manage him), and besides revealing what a pathetic husk of a man Parker was, a citizen of no country, a man without a friend, Parker’s machinations had become a bad taste in our mouths, so the final scene of Elvis is a bittersweet uplift, and yet a reminder that all legends must surely… deal with managers who would be forgotten if it weren’t for directors shoving their unkempt stories in our faces— Jesus Christ, Baz! – What were you THINKING?!

END

Top Dumb.

Uninvolving tale of a hi-tech artificial intelligence warplane that threatens to make human pilots redundant. STEALTH stars Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel and Jamie Foxx as the three top gun pilots the robot plane may potentially replace. Ironically, in this movie, they all act like robots.

Part of a secret military project (is there any other kind?), overseen by gruff general Sam Shepard, the stealth plane is an Extreme Deep Invader (therefore called EDI or “Eddy” by the pilots, and “True Love” by Jessica Biel). EDI proves he can outmaneuver all demographics – black guys, white guys and women (well, in her defense, she was having an orgasm at the time…). Then EDI is struck by lightning and becomes evil. Because that happens in movies.

Plane becomes too smart for humankind, as proven by the scene where the geek techie tells Lucas that the plane has downloaded songs from the internet. Lucas asks, “How many songs has he downloaded?” and techie replies fearfully, “ALL of them!” The next sound you hear will be Lars Ulrich banging down your door with a subpoena.

Of course, the EDI goes rogue and fires on innocent civilians in some nondescript country that America has stuck its military presence into uninvited. Because that happens in movies: something becomes “intelligent” – whether it be a programmed machine or a creature from a black lagoon – and all it can seem to do is Kill People.

Lucas tries too hard to be leading man; conversely, Jamie Foxx should be the star of his movies or he looks a little lost, never quite inhabiting the B-role of Black Guy Who Dies First. And Jessica Biel – well, with those pear-hugging cheeks and pole-haunting lips, you’ll keep getting work. (You do realize that’s why they’re hiring you, right? Not for whatever acting chops you’ve spent the last few minutes honing.)

Hey, dumb Academy for Motion Pictures, please create an award for the Most Anti-Climactic Scene in a Movie, as EDI is brought under control and then piloted by Lucas to go save Biel who has crash-landed behind enemy lines. WHAT enemy lines? It’s not like America is actually at war with anyone… Contrived? Yes. Funny? Totally – as every Get-The-Hell-Outa-There cliché is dumped on this last scene to try to create human drama and romance between a vanilla leading man and his pear-buttocked squeeze, with running and shooting and Pretty Orange Explosions, and of course, lots of Get-The-Hell-Outa-There’s, while the stealth plane that was just creating all the drama for the body of the movie stands parked in the background.

And the moral of this tale is that humans will always always always win against machines. Unless it’s a poker machine.

END

It was a Monster Mash!

How does Kate Beckinsale run in those stilettos? She is one of the most beautiful women on this ugly planet – but that Boris-and-Natasha accent is a real turn-off. Her Transylvanian is worse than Don Cheadle’s cockney.

In VAN HELSING, Beckinsale is Anna Valerious, a European village warrior woman with big hair, big sword and tight pants, whose quest is to destroy the monsters terrorizing her village. She is joined by one of the other most beautiful women on the planet, Hugh Jackman; curly cascading locks, magnificent chest, azure piercing eyes, aquiline nose, lips like sugar — waitaminute! Am I talking about him or her again?…

VAN HELSING is an old-fashioned monster tale with new-fashioned sex symbology. This ain’t your daddy’s Van Helsing. Vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing was introduced to the world in Bram Stoker’s lavish 1897 novel Dracula, and in all successive media, we’ve grown used to Van Helsing as a crotchety old curmudgeon with a wooden stake in upraised fist ululating at the lightning. But Jackman is more like Ted Nugent hunting caribou in a loincloth (and without the idiotic Republican ideology); witch’s hat and rock star hair, flouncing floor-length leather and a repeating crossbow, his Playgirl muscles on standby for the final werewolf-vampire battle.

This Van Helsing is a hired assassin for Mother Church, hunting all manner of supernatural and unholy beast. They call him “The Left Hand Of God” (how Christian of them, as if that euphemism absolves them of their mortal crimes). He also gets bitten by a werewolf (shove that in your Van Helsing canon!), so his blood becomes mutated, his body becomes hairier than Paul Stanley’s chest and he grows long steely claws; in other words, he becomes Wolverine.

And he’s hunting… Dracula (Richard Roxburgh), who seems to have a clouded past with Van Helsing, calling him Gabriel in an avuncular tone, rather than Abraham (but in that pseudo-Transylvanian, so it sounds like Gabryelle, with umlauts and stuff).

All the old monsters are here, with in-your-face technological upgrades. Modern CGI animates gigantic werewolves, more powerful and vicious than we’ve ever seen, pale-blooded nude harpies devoid of nipples, vampire bat-babies and Frankenstein’s Monster (Shuler Hensley).

And there’s even Dracula’s craven assistant named Igor (Kevin J. O’Connor), who, whenever Dracula calls his name, must answer in that monster lisp, “Yesh, Mastah!” as he does that body-turn with arms flailing loosely.

David Wenham is Van Helsing’s friar sidekick, who is the voice of plot, outlining tales of intrigue with the convenient device of archaic tomes that always have pictures to illustrate exactly what he describes. This old cinematic technique – even in this fun-filled romp – is wearing on my patience. There are always PICTURES of the horrors that someone describes, like the listeners (audience included) cannot take the storyteller’s word for it unless we see those medieval hand-drawn Bosch-esque devil-drawings in a magnum volume guarded by monks. Even Beckinsale’s high tight corset doesn’t make up for that annoyance.

Dracula is trying to drain Frankenstein’s monster for the juice that will sustain his bat-babies. (Don’t even ask; I guess since Friar David read this plot from a medieval hand-drawn Bosch-esque magnum volume guarded by monks, it must be credible.)

A lot of work was put into this lavish production – most of it done by those computer nerds we take for granted – but Dracula himself is not selling me. Being fey is not a downfall when playing Dracula, but Roxburgh is not even selling the fey – only when he becomes a computer-nerd-created monster to battle Wolverine’s computer-nerd-created werewolf does he approach any level of monster mash.

And then – it was a graveyard smash!

END

Owling at the Moon.

LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA’HOOLE is epic and poignant and majestic and cute in all the right owly ways.

Young forest owl Soren (voice of Jim Sturgess) is a dreamer, infatuated with mythical tales of the Guardians – ancient owls who defend owly honor throughout the land. His older brother Kludd (Ryan Kwanten) poo-poos Soren wearing makeshift leaf helmets and reenacting Guardian legends (equivalent to us kids tying towels around our necks and fantasizing we are Superman), while Soren’s father Noctus (Hugo Weaving) encourages Soren to dream big. (Weaving’s voice is so distinctive as Agent Smith from THE MATRIX that we’re constantly expecting him to drop an accidental, serpentine “Mr. Anderson.”)

Soren and brother Kludd are kidnapped by mountain owls led by the fearsome Metalbeak (Joel Edgerton). Like every great villain, Metalbeak wants to rule all of owldom for no apparent reason. In the grand tradition of being evil and rebranding yourself as something beneficial (Republicans’ rebranding of the rich as “job-creators” comes to mind), Metalbeak’s villainous owls are called The Pure Ones. (This also conjures the Republican-based Tea Party “tests for purity.”)

At the Pure Ones’ wrought-iron mountain aerie, owlets like Soren are brainwashed by being forced to stare at the Moon, being overcome by a blank stare called “moonblink” and subjected to slave labor, collecting mystical blue pellets hoarded by bats for some buzzing energy source cauldron. Soren and a cute dwarf owl, Gylfie (Emily Barclay) escape the clutches of the Pure Ones, ally with a couple of other owl characters (and a snake!), and must fly across a vast ocean to warn the actual Guardians of Ga’Hoole of Metalbeak’s plot.

This Australian CG cartoon (where all the accents are amusingly DownUnda) is lifted from the series of books by Kathryn Lasky, and directed by Zack Snyder, using the same filmic techniques he used in his poetically violent 300: during battle scenes, the shink of steel augmenting talons, the clash of claw on flesh; fearsome slaughter crashed with sudden slomo and balletic arcs. Let’s face it: if it was all in real time, ‘twould be nought but a flurry of feathers.

The animation is startling, with jaw-dropping attention to detail, especially in the avian faces that boldly display the palette of human emotion. (These blips are literally better actors than Rob Schneider, Will Ferrell, Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lopez, Keanu Reeves, and anyone in any given George Romero film). We are so used to seeing smooth people and surroundings (PLANET 51, DESPICABLE ME) that GA’HOOLE is a welcome sensory overload of feathers, forest and flying; wings making shadows through smoke in the sunlight; exhilarating flight, transporting us with every camera swoop to the freedom of the skies; striking battle scenes in three dimensions – by that I mean, air battle like dogfighting feathered Spitfires, not putting on 3D glasses. Diametrically opposite to a CG cartoon like CARS, with its clinical steel and sleek sterility, these animals of GA’HOOLE breathe with an organic, fluttering life force.

Another plus is that the story is not preachy. Besides the passé “follow your dreams” trope, there is avarice (Metalbeak), caution (a legendary hero owl hides within the community in plain sight), betrayal (Kludd – like Edmund in Narnia – betrays his brother Soren), and loyalty (Soren fights for his family and baby sister Eglantine). GA’HOOLE doesn’t send any stupid messages to kids via talking animals.

Sam Neill voices the regal Allomere, David Wenham is a frisky little Digger owl, Anthony LaPaglia voices the artiste Twilight (who plays the lute!), Geoffrey Rush is the Guardian Lyze of Kiel, and Helen Mirren is the Pure One headmistress.

The payoffs are mighty, because – as in all these stories of legendary heroes – the legends are REAL, and Our Young Hero stakes a place for himself among the legends with a final battle that makes the feathers rise on your neck and arms. The Zack Snyder battle slomo helps, backlit by raging inferno and orgiastic orchestra – oh, rapturous raptor!

I am just left to wonder: How did the owls create all these beaten iron structures without opposable thumbs?

END