The 47th Minute Project #5: The Dream Child (Xmas Martian Invasion Edition)

Gosh, it’s been so long since the last 47th Minute Project that you’d think I’d been to Mars or something….

First. Let’s start the next contest:
Starting for a triple play (three-way tie for last?):

Here are three (!!!) chances to win—three opportunities to identify the 47th Minute of three different films.

The first (below) : this is the 47th minute of undoubtedly one of the greatest movies ever made. Toestubber should know this one. It’s one of his faves, and maybe—please?!?—he’ll leave a comment…?
TRY & NAME IT!

The second: this is the 47th minute of one of one of the favorite films of The National Film Board of Ivanlandia.
TRY & NAME IT!




The third: this is a gift from Darius Whiteplume. (And it's actually a flick I haven’t seen yet—but want to!)
TRY & NAME IT!

Please leave your answers in the comments section, or if you’re connected with me via Il Fache-Book, leave a note there.
Seeing as it takes me forever to create each entry into the 47th Minute Project, so expect #6 in November….


As for the last entry into The 47th Minute Project…


All green of skin...
800 centuries ago, their bodily fluids include the birth of half-breeds.
For the fundamental truth self-determination of the cosmos,
for dark is the suede
that mows like a harvest.


The last entry into the 47th Minute Project was this frame of Jack Nicholson under bad makeup as Art Land, doomed corrupt land developer (one of two roles Jack played in the movie) from Tim Burton’s 1996 cult fave (and financial flopperoo) Mars Attacks!

The big winner with the first guess was the fab Mark H., rocking things from the Pacific Rim!

Otto Mannix made enough sarcastic hints to register as a correct guesser as well.

Darius Whiteplume tried manfully, though, with a wild swing:
“I have no idea. Looks like Owen Wilson dressed up (badly) as Charles Napier.”
(And what a flick that might be! And makes me think Mars Attacks! may have been very interesting in the hands of a Russ Meyer: What he would have done with the Martian Madame—Va va va voom!)


Mars Attacks!’ lack of success, I think, helped push Burton onto his current (and disappointing if not hateful) path of remakes and reimaginings (another version of Alice in Wonderland? Ay-yi-yi! Snooze City, here we come!).
(And why isn’t the excellent “elderly Alice” tale Dreamchild not on DVD yet, eh?)

SYNOPSIS: The Martians invade and have a grand old time destroying everything.

Humans are on the verge of complete annihilation when a kid
(wearing that awesome Alien Sex Fiend T-shirt with the close-up of Warren Oates as the mutant from that episode of The Outer Limits)
figures out that Slim Whitman’s song “Indian Love Song” makes the Martians’ heads explode.

World saved, although completely wrecked.



Released by Warner Bros., “Mars Attacks! [was]… scheduled for a Christmas release which explains Burton's color preference for scenes in which victims vaporized by the Martians became glowing green or red skeletons,” says TCM.

In Mars Attacks!, however,
several dumb plots involving screeching or jabbering humans in goofball/manic situations a la It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World or 1941 interfere what we’re all here for:
Scenes of total destruction.

Now, I enjoy some of the human-related so-called comedy (especially Nicholson’s unctuous President Dale or Sylvia Sidney’s addled grandma), but other scenes are painful to watch (Annette Bening channeling her sister-in-law; Jack Black’s typical jerk shtick; a painfully miscast Michael J. Fox, and so on).
And Burton’s idea of comedy never seems to vary from shrill and heavy-handed (which works sometimes, primarily with animated alien skeleton-face brainheads).



And because some characters come and go so quickly (like Danny DeVito or Christina Applegate—who looks good in hiphuggers in this movie, though), it becomes obvious that several subplots were radically cut (which is not to say that it’s a bad thing—in fact, most of the subplots should have been cut immediately after the first Martian attack—we’ve seen these people in their lives, now they only exist to be seen getting killed by a Martian: it’s a comedy so poignant moments are unnecessary).

If I can’t have more Martians (I understand the budgetary limitations: those critters cost boo-coo bread, man),
I wanted fewer humans.

But what makes me love Mars Attacks!, though, is its sick sense of humor.
The Martians are mean and spiteful and completely uninhibited in their tastes. They perform ghastly, inhuman experiments because they can.
And for a while, they blow up plenty of stuff real good!

Who doesn't love an alien invasion film? Who doesn’t love seeing all our untouchable stuff smashed?
There’s a thrill of seeing American soil violated—and after all, an alien invasion flick is only a variation on the disaster movie!

It would be great to see a director’s cut DVD, with supplemental features including the stop-motion animation sequences that were never used. But I doubt that’ll see the light of day. There is a petition, though….


Mars Attacks! was very much a spoof/reference to
Ray Harryhausen’s excellent Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers (1956; collapsing Washington Monument, the design of the saucers) and
George Pal’s even better The War of the Worlds (1953; superdestructive, the very exquisite Technicolor palette).
Needless to say, both of these films are highly recommended—and in fact are required viewing by all citizens of The United Provinces of Ivanlandia.


But Mars Attacks! is actually based on a series of bubblegum cards from Topps—and it’s not the first movie like this: The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (also based on a series of Topps cards), a stupefyingly bad movie—a movie so utterly useless it doesn’t even deserve a viewing just for weirdness’ sake, honestly—gets that “honor.”

But returning to Mars….
According to
Alex Cox, the director famous/notorious for Repo Man and Sid & Nancy:

“I was the person who brought Mars Attacks! to the attention of the
studio. They were bubblegum cards I had as a kid. I developed Mars
Attacks! with Jon Davidson, the producer of Robocop, for quite a
while, but at some point my project got shut down and it was given to Tim Burton.
“It was a bit of a shame,
but I think both the script
that
I wrote and the Tim Burton one suffered from not being enough like the
bubblegum cards.”
[He’s right.]

From TCM:
In 1962, Topps had issued a series of cards called Mars Attacks!, but they contained some scenes that were deemed too "intense" for younger children, and they were quickly removed from the marketplace.

The most infamous Mars Attacks card was “Destroying a Dog,” I think. Whiny citizens groups were bugged or something. They thought kids shouldn’t see examples of canine incineration. Idiots.
I remember reading about the Mars Attacks bubblegum cards in The Monster Times, and while I didn’t get my paws on any actual cards until I was a teenager, I knew what the cards were like due to the diligent work of mags like The Monster Times.
BTW: As a kid, “Horror in Paris” was my favorite card—I used to draw that bug on all my textbooks!

You MUST check out the awesome collection of Mars Attacks cards at the Hairy Green Eyeball blog: Seeing them all in a row is brilliant!

Somebody I used to work with always used to gripe that the ending of Mars Attacks! was a rip-off of the ending of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, where some bad song (called “Puberty Love") is used to make the mutant tomatoes shrink back to normal and the townspeople rush out and squash ’em.

Mars Attacks! needed an ending, and dumb luck was the best they could come up with. Nor would I be surprised if the similarities to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes weren’t unintentional.

I would’ve preferred that they ripped off one of those Star Trek episodes or Marvel Comics, where it turns out the all-powerful alien is actually an immature child.

Meaning, the
Martians were children and their parents (about 100 feet tall each) come and pick them up in some gigantoriffic star cruiser flying saucer.

In ponderous but terrifying and weird, slow-motion “Ack! Ack!” monolog, the “Dad Martian” chastises the kids for being late for dinner.

Of course, once the Martians are gone, because there is no longer any sort of “law and order” (governments are gone, every figure of authority is dead), the humans immediately revert to caveman thinking and start fighting amongst themselves to see who's boss.

In their parent’s departing super-saucer the Martian "children" watch on the viewscope as the hairless apes finish the job they started. My version of Mars Attacks! ends with them laughing and laughing.

Because FOR ONCE, don’t you think the Martians should win?!?!

(And to be really overly high-brow (and therefore actually lowbrow), I’d start my version of Mars Attacks! with that Shakespeare quote,
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;
They kill us for their sport



Technically, the flick is almost perfect, but Danny Elfman’s score needs to be singled out for praise. It’s absolutely the best Bernard Herrmann soundtrack that the great Herr H. never got around to composing.
It’s essential listening to all fans of soundtrack music.
The score borrows equal parts from The Day the Earth Stood Still and Brian De Palma’s Sisters (itself an absurdly over-the-top score), with a dash of The Devil and Daniel Webster, creating
whimsy, satanic mayhem and theremin-infused interstellar weirdness.



Probably one of the few positive reviews from the mainstream press of Mars Attacks! in its initial release came from Entertainment Weekly:
“Burton stages the destruction of the world as lyrically surreal spectacle. Even when the special effects are a parody of '50s cheesiness, they have a funky, ramshackle beauty — the wonder of a puppet show that almost looks real.”

From Bryant Frazer’s good review at Deep Focus, most of which I tend to agree with:
Mars Attacks! …takes its cues from the same sources as… Independence Day -- old alien invasion flicks, disaster movies, and big-budget special effects extravaganzas. But unlike Independence Day, which was a painfully middle-of-the-road appeal to the hearts, minds and wallets of America… celebrat[ing] the resilience of human beings, Mars Attacks! portrays us as the greedy and hapless schmucks that we are.

Therefore,
“While Burton’s satiric skewering is scattershot at best,” says Nick Schager at the (now unfortunately defunct) Screengrab, “the uninhibited madcap energy of his tribute-cum-big-budget-blockbuster nonetheless frequently makes it more amusing and inspired than that of the cheesy '50s B-movies (and bloated '90s summertime action-sagas) on which it deliriously riffs.”

If you have not yet seen Mars Attacks!, by order of the National Film Board of Ivanlandia, you MUST.
Over & out! Ack-Ack!


Mars Attacks! (1996)
Director: Tim Burton
Producers: Larry J. Franco, Tim Burton
Screenplay and screen story by Jonathan Gems

Rewrites by Gems, Burton, Martin Amis (!), Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski
Based on the Topps cards
According to IMDB, the cards were created by
Len Brown, Woody Gelman, Wally Wood (see some of his rough sketches for the cards below), Bob Powell and Norm Saunders



Cinematography: Peter Suschitzky
Music: Danny Elfman
Editor: Chris Lebenzon
Production Design: Wynn Thomas
Art Direction: John Dexter
Set Design: Richard G. Berger, Nancy Haigh, Randy Thom
Costume Design: Colleen Atwood
Sound/Sound Design: Dennis Maitland, Sr.
Special visual effects by Industrial Light & Magic and Warner Digital Studio
Visual effects supervisors: James Mitchell, Michael Fink, David Andrews

Cast: Jack Nicholson (Art Land/President Dale), Glenn Close (Marsha Dale), Annette Bening (Barbara Land), Pierce Brosnan (Donald Kessler), Danny DeVito (Rude Gambler), Jim Brown (Byron Williams), Martin Short (Jerry Ross), Michael J. Fox (Jason Stone), Pam Grier (Louise Williams), Tom Jones (Himself), Sarah Jessica Parker (Nathalie Lake), Natalie Portman (Taffy Dale), Sylvia Sidney (Grandma Norris), Rod Steiger (Gen. Decker), Paul Winfield (Gen. Casey), Lisa Marie (Martian Madame), Frank Welker (Ack-Ack sounds)

The 47th Minute Project 3: The Rise of the Machines

Here’s the entry for the Third 47th Minute Project:



No hints, other than to say it’s one of my faves, and I think this is a really easy one.
Submit your guesses (or weird factoids about this week’s entry) in the comments section; thanks!

As For Last Week’s The 47th Minute Project…

There I was thinking NOBODY was going to guess the previous entry into the 47th Minute Project, when old pal Otto Mannix came through: The United Provinces of Ivanlandia have no problem with nepotism.



Mannix corrected surmised minute 47:00 of the 1981 (or 1980, depending on whom you ask) mercenary movie The Dogs of War, starring Christopher Walken (who is sometimes accused of taking work just for the money—and while that might be the case, that’s totally fine with me—like that living god Ernest Borgnine, I’ve never seen Walken be bad in ANYTHING).

Several folks tried to ID the last 47th Minute Project, but goshes, people: I think most of you gave up too soon! Some of you were really thisclose, if you ask me.
Darius Whiteplume’s guess of McBain at first confused me—Rainer Wolfcastle? But then I remembered McBain was the title of another of Walken’s mercenary movies. [Insert your favorite “Walken works for money joke” here.]

The Dogs of War was both Walken’s first “name above the title” and headlining role, as I seem to recall.

He’d been doing lots of excellent supporting actor work from his first film, the fab The Anderson Tapes (Tonya’s very good guess; and subject of a future Ivanlandia essay), to his delicious bit-part/cameo as Diane Keaton’s brother in Annie Hall (“driving into the headlights”) to his Oscar-winning role in 1978’s The Deer Hunter. After taking home the little gold statue, Walken ramped up, with this interesting and unique action film.

A lot of people, including myself, really like The Dogs of War even though we’ll admit it’s not perfect. But there’s SOMETHING about this humorless, bitter and cynical action/suspense flick.
More of a bleak spy or caper flick than a wham-bam gung-ho action blockbuster, The Dogs of War starts and finishes, though, with a couple a incredible set pieces, especially the opening—one of the best ever—when the audience is dropped into the middle of Walken and his mercenaries’ noisy and confusing retreat from an unnamed country in Central America.


And that could be part of the problem—the audience is given an extremely high-level dose of adrenaline, and then the pace changes drastically. Not to say that this tonal shift hasn’t grown on me (The Dogs of War is the gift that keeps on giving), but it probably was what helped relegate this movie to cult status initially—that, and some severe cuts that took 15 minutes out of the original American release (those cuts have since been restored to the last DVD release) and which may have left some viewers scratching their heads.

After the initial combat, the movie slows and grows moody, feeling more like a bleak Cold War spy thriller (with NYC’s Morningside Heights shot to look like Prague) than your average war flick—even Walken’s reconnaissance mission in Africa is grim.

And despite superficial similarities (hired guns overthrowing an African despot), The Dogs of War couldn’t be less like the Frederick Forsythe novel it is based on. The book is too sentimental and contrived for my tastes, despite its similarity to real life.


The US poster for The Dogs of War emphasized the customized multi-round M-79—which frankly looks completely out of place there: a Buck Rogers-looking device for a flick that’s otherwise very realistic and gritty. The producers should’ve made the weapon a color like military green or gun-metal black. Thankfully, the weapon isn’t made to look too bright and shiny during the combat sequences.

But best of all: The Dogs of War taught me how to kill cockroaches.
At one point in the film, Walken returns to his run-down apartment: he turns on the light, and there’s a close-up of a cockroach skittering on the wall, then—SPLAT.
Walken’s hand has splattered the bug.
CUT TO: Walken sitting down in his easy chair to read his mail. We never see him even wash his hands!

It was a lightning flash of revelation for me. For years I’d always have to run for a newspaper or magazine or something to kill an invading roach, and this showed me something. You could use your hands and worry about it later. That’s all.

Since then, many a roach has died by my hand. Ha-ha!

But unlike Walken’s character, I do wash my hands afterward.



BTW, Walken’s Twitter page is INCREDIBLE. It’s now one of my fave time-wasters.

I certainly hope it’s Walken and not some hack or a gag. Because if it is Walken, I feel blessed, like I’m being granted a look at the thought-processes of the greatest Zen master who walked the face of the Earth. And so, like with many religions, I will ignore the facts (it’s probably not the Great Chris W.) and go with my faith (It is Him!).

Some of my fave Walken Twitters (so far):
“The Pope is in Africa "reaffirming the ban on condom use." His old stuff was funnier. I don't get this new material. Too edgy for my taste.”

Or:
“A man ate from a trash can while tourists clicked snapshots. I gave the guy 15 dollars & told the tourists to get the Hell out of my city.”

And there’s this one, which seems to be the favorite of many:
"There's a kid on a Pogo stick in front of my house. It's nearly midnight so let's assume he's been drinking. This should end well for him.”

Walken rules. ’Nuff said.





I like mercenary movies. They’re always fun because from the get-go because the heroes are not: They’re killers for money, and we know this won’t end well.

Mercenaries are useless, disunited, unfaithful
They have nothing more to keep them in a battle
Other than a meager wage
Which is just about enough to make them wanna kill for you
But never enough to make them wanna die for ya—John Cale, “Mercenaries (Ready For War)” (1979)
One day I’d really like to write up a “Kompare & Kontrazt” with what I consider the Big 5 of mercenary movies: Peckinpah’s classic The Wild Bunch (which I’ve stopped considering a Western, really), Andre de Toth’s excellent and absolutely cynical Play Dirty, with Michael Caine (like The Wild Bunch isn’t a western, Play Dirty isn’t a WWII movie—it’s also one of Martin Scorsese’s “guilty pleasures”), The Dogs of War, The Wild Geese (a very violent action flick with a jaunty, very British attitude, but also a damn good movie in its own right and very recommended), and Dark of the Sun (another of Scorsese’s “guilty pleasures”).

I remember seeing Dark of the Sun as a kid when it was on WOR-TV channel 9—my memories are vague, but I remember some crazy slaughtering going on. I’ve come to believe I need to see this flick again:

Because here’s what Scorsese says about Dark of the Sun—and what he describes sounds awesome, right? (Best of all, if you’ve ever heard Scorsese speak—that staccato, machine-gun patter, very intelligent, but still NYC Italian voice—imagine him reading the description below:)

Dark of the Sun (1968). This movie -- Rod Taylor vs. the Mau Maus -- was the most violent I'd seen up to that time. There's a scene where Taylor fights an ex-Nazi with chainsaws. In another scene, a train full of refugees has finally escaped the Mau Maus in the valley below -- and just as it's about to reach the top of a hill, the power fails, the train goes all the way back down, and the refugees are slaughtered. It's a truly sadistic movie, but it should be seen. I'd guess that because of its utter racism, a lot of people would have found it embarrassing, so they just ignored it. The sense of the film is overwhelmingly violent; there's no consideration for anything else. The answer to everything is "kill."
But before I can do my “Kompare & Kontrazt,” though, I need to see this movie again!
So what I want to know: WHEN is Dark of the Sun coming to DVD?

And even more important, Mr. Scorsese, why not make a war/mercenary movie? You’ve yet to do that. Give it a try!

P.S. Did you know that Jack Cardiff, who directed Dark of the Sun, was the cinematographer for The Dogs of War?
Cardiff also directed The Girl on the Motorcycle, with the lovely Marianne Faithful.





If anyone has any suggestions or recommendations for other mercenary movies, please leave them in the comments; thanks!

Introducing the 47th Minute Project! Huzzah!

In the spirit of fun and games, the National Film Board of Ivanlandia begins the 47th Minute Project.

In other words, a “guess the movie” contest.

We’ll present the 47th minute of a film, and you try and guess the movie. Simple as duck soup!

Please leave your answer in the comments section.


Before we get started, some background:


Why the “47th Minute?”

The High Command of the United Provinces of Ivanlandia are all graduates of Pomona College of Claremont, California, United States of America, that’s why.

The “47” Phenomenon and Pomona are like some Burroughsian language virus: People leave Pomona with an unholy fascination with the number 47, and wind up spending the rest of their lives seeing it everywhere. (And sometimes they continue to spread the virus….)

“Forty-seven. You can’t escape it,” another Pomona grad once told me.

And neither will you. Heh, heh, heh…

Interestingly enough, today’s entry into the 47th Minute Project (photo below) was very popular at Pomona College, being shown quite regularly, I seem to remember. Getting baked and watching today’s entry in the 47th Minute Project was always a great way to start an evening of carousing. Have fun! (Answers will be revealed in the next 47th Minute Project.)




(BTW: This week’s featured film was actually borrowed from the personal DVD library of Otto Mannix…not that that clue is going to help you—but who’d a’thunk a right-winger like him would dig a flick like this!—Although personally, I feel this week’s entry into the 47th Minute Project is pretty easy…But it’s always nice to start these things off simple…)


[Mufti is not a mysterious democratic organization that welcomes all but a secretive fraternal subset inbreeding snobbery. New? Alpha? Fie! Boycott! Boycott! OK!]