Bryce Zabel's MOVIE SMACKDOWN!

Australia (2008) -vs- Moulin Rouge! (2001)

Baz at Work

Posted from South Australia

The Smackdown.  Australia is a continent, my country, a state of mind and now, finally, a movie.  To get the silver-screen version made, they gave one of the most visually stylish directors working today more money than he'd ever had for a film before and let him make an epic film about love, war and imperial indifference.  A few years ago, that same director was given license to pilfer some of the worlds' great songwriting talent and shoehorn it into a Aussie-made Bollywood musical.  The view from Australia (the country) is that the duo of "Moulin Rouge!" and "Australia" represents the finest of our country's local talent, both in front of, and behind, the cameras.  Our Smackdown pits director Baz Luhrmann against himself to see which of his passion projects is superior.  The mythical, intimate-while-still-epic "Moulin Rouge!", or the historical, epic-while-still-intimate widescreen adventure of the Outback, "Australia"?

The Challenger.  Dogged by production problems (From Russell Crowe bowing out of the lead role several months into planning, to a major set flooding in a once-in-50-years flood!) "Australia" as a film is the newest contender for a nations pride. It tells of a young British woman's discovery of our great country, of a passion she never thought she'd feel again, and a sense of belonging that, while certainly expected, is still revelatory in the execution. Baz Luhrmann's epic, widescreen drama/adventure film, which, with an estimated budget of around $AU130m, is among our more expensive cinematic efforts, and tells of a burgeoning country beset by impending war, imperialist ethics and a raw, pulsating heartbeat that tantalizes the soul: this, dear reader, is "Australia" the movie. In a move destined to be critiqued until the cows come home, Luhrmann has taken our national brand name and somehow injected it into a film that's as broad and sweeping as the country it's named after. With Nicole Kidman (Kiss Of Death Kidman she's often referred to around these parts...) and a buffed (and bronzed) Hugh Jackman, as well as a veritable smorgasbord of Australian local talent, "Australia" is, apparently, "Baz Luhrmann's Aussie version of Gone With The Wind". I paraphrase the man himself in saying that.

Frost/Nixon (2008) -vs- W. (2008)

Disgraced Republican Presidents Edition

The Smackdown. As the nation holds its collective breath, waiting for Inauguration Day and the end of the long national nightmare that was the Bush administration, Richard Nixon arrives at the multiplex to remind us all of another horrible yet riveting chapter of American history. The timing couldn't be better. As we carve our Thanksgiving turkeys, we are truly thankful for term limits and investigative journalism and award season films. While we make a wish for the rapid and full restoration of criminally bent (if not irrevocably broken) International and Constitutional law, we ponder this little holiday season headscratcher: Nixon or W? The lesser (or greater) of two evildoers?

The Challenger. Ron Howard's “Frost/Nixon” (2008) beautifully captures Michael Sheehan's and Frank Langella's much-lauded portrayals of the title characters as played previously on Broadway and London's West End. The film started shooting only a week after the play closed; its screenplay is a worthy adaptation by its playwright Peter Morgan. Few plays make it to screen so fully intact, and the audience owes a huge debt of gratitude for whatever behind-the-scenes dealmaking resulted in such a rare gift. Langella has already earned a Tony and a Drama Desk award and an Outer Critics Circle award, and he seems a sure bet to add an Academy Award nomination to his collection. Sheehan more than holds his own as Frost; it's not for nothing that Frost's name appears first in the title. The subject of the film is Frost's groundbreaking series of televised interviews that ended with Tricky Dick's game-changingly cathartic admission of guilt regarding his role in the Watergate scandal. Even though we know exactly how this one ends, the dramatic tension sustains.

Revolutionary Road (2008) -vs- American Beauty (1999)

Lives of Not-So-Quiet Desperation

The Smackdown.  The hype around "Revolutionary Road," of course, will center around the fact that it re-unites Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose (Kate Winslet) for the first time since the mega-super blockbuster "Titanic."  But smacking "Revolutionary Road" against "Titanic" would be like comparing apples and sailboats.  The real competition is between the family dysfunction of the 1999 Oscar winning "American Beauty" and the latest "Revolutionary Road" portrayal, both filmed by British director Sam Mendes.  If Jack had survived and he and Rose had gone on to settle into the suburbs, they might have ended up like Frank and April Wheeler.  Whether that couple would be as compelling to view as Lester and Carolyn Burnam, there's the battle ahead.

Primary Colors (1998) -vs- The Candidate (1972)

The Smackdown.  What does Barack Obama have in common with Robert Redford?  Besides being a liberal Democrat?  Maybe, by the end of the evening, Obama will have the chance to utter Redford's famous line to Peter Boyle in "The Candidate" to his own campaign manager, David Plouffe.

You remember.  "What do we do now?"

Redford's character was politically naive where Obama has already been toughened by a career in politics.  He probably knows damn well what's next.

In any case, now that the 2008 election is nearly history, it seems right to take a glance in the rear-view mirror of our campaign bus and check out two classic election films. "The Candidate" really established the genre 36 years ago, giving us Robert Redford at the height of his charismatic on-screen presence as a JFK-like California senatorial candidate who wants to run on issues but ends up running on great hair and piercing eyes.  It's a good study of the quest for charisma in our candidates that has lead us to the success of Obama. By the way, the New York Time's A.O. Scott has a wonderful retrospective look at this film posted today with lots of clips.  Check it out.

Then, just over a quarter of a century later, we got "Primary Colors" with John Travolta standing in for that horny guy who couldn't keep it zipped on the campaign trail or in the Oval Office and his wife who was the discipline behind the team. So those are the two nominees on our ballot. Let's see who's got the goods to win this cinematic election -- Redford/Obama or Travolta/Clinton.

The Challenger. The film comes from quite a pedigree: political writer Joe Klein wrote the book (originally as "Anonymous"), and the film was written by Elaine May and directed by Mike Nichols. Everything inside is paper-thin disguised as being about the 1992 Clinton campaign for the White House. John Travolta's Jack Stanton loves politics just like the real character he's based on and really cares about people, some of them so much he can't resist having sex with them. The reason to watch the film today, of course, is for insight into the Hillary character, Susan Stanton, as played by Emma Thompson (if you can get past how her repression of her British accent seems to give her Susan a sort of non-American blandness).

Travolta's impression of our former president is a little too slow and scratchy and never quite nails down this character as someone who could win the presidency despite some huge errors in personal judgment. There's a great moment when Susan Stanton up and slaps the hell out of her husband's face after his latest infidelity: it's surprising and it's what you would hope Hill actually did to Bill at some point. However, this is a film that doesn't actually pick sides: Clinton haters will see it as proof that Bill was barely a moral level above pond scum, and Clinton lovers will see it as proof of his humanity, however flawed and imperfect.  I would love to see what this team could do with the 2008 Hillary campaign, though, because I bet it provided just as much material as Bill's 1998 one did.

The Godfather (1972) -vs- The Godfather, Part II (1974)

Vote Now: An Offer You Can't Refuse...

The Smackdown.  By now it's all become a part of our collective cultural memory -- the horse's head showing up in the bed, making an "offer he can't refuse" and that haunting score by Nino Rota.  Imagine being in the theaters though, almost four decades ago when the original "The Godfather" was in release back in 1972. For years new viewers of the Godfather Trilogy were exposed to either increasingly degraded theatrical prints or VHS or DVD copies that were, in many cases, even worse.  For the past two years, though, Francis Ford Coppola and a small army of digital restoration experts have been at work reclaiming the golden glory for high-definition Blu-ray, standard DVD and even a few more theatrical prints out in some major cities.  It's not the purpose of this Smackdown to lay out that process but if you want to know more about "The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration," there have been some excellent articles including The New York Times and Slate Magazine.

What is most astonishing about "The Godfather" which won the 1972 Oscar for "Best Picture" is that two years later "The Godfather, Part II" also won the Oscar for "Best Picture."  This pretty much qualifies the second film as the unquestioned best sequel of all-time (although there are supporters now for "The Dark Knight").  And, of course, it triggers a Smackdown to find out which of these two extraordinary films is the best.  We'll give the competition our usual treatment with an added bonus.  Five of our critics weigh in at the end with their individual essays.  Joe Rassulo, Scott Baradell, Sherry Coben, Mark Sanchez and Jay Amicarella all come at the material with damned unique POVs, and it's a fun read.  Finally, at the end of this review, you can put in your own two cents by voting in our Smack-Poll.

The Defending Champion.  If you think about it now, the "Godfather" films are the modern world's version of those Shakespeare plays about kings and princes.  This is the film where Vito Corleone, the aging Don of a powerful Mafia family hands off the power, reluctantly, to his youngest son Michael, delivering one of the saddest lines in cinema, "Michael, I never wanted this for you."  Al Pacino's Michael Corleone is one of the greatest acting performances on screen ever and his transformation from shy son to ruthless criminal makes you forgive any of the actor's excesses over the years.  The film opens on a wedding where Michael has returned from World War II just in time to see his sister Connie get married. All of the men in Michael's family are involved with the Mafia and it's assumed that the older brothers will handle the criminal duties while Michael lives a legit and decent life. It's truly the story of the family but the engine that drives the action is about a drug dealer Virgil Sollozzo who wants Don Corleone (Marlon Brandon) to go into the drug trade with him.  Corleone refuses, gets shot by hit men, barely survives.  This opens the door for his son to begin a violent mob war against Sollozzo that changes him and his family forever.  It's the story of the old ways surrendering, violently, to the new ways.  You probably know all this.  Beautifully photographed, scored, directed, written.  Most people have it on their Top Ten lists and more than a few place it as #1.