In Contention

Tag: The Last of the Mohicans

  • Zen pulp

    I should really let Matt Zoller Seitz’s words speak for themselves in his ongoing five-part series of video essays concerning director Michael Mann at the Museum of the Moving Image, (“Zen Pulp: The World of Michael Mann”), but I’m a sucker for this stuff.

    Part one (posted July 1), which you can check out below, concerns Mann’s early years, moving from TV’s “Miami Vice” backwards five years to his first directorial effort, TV movie “The Jericho Mile” (a movie I REALLY need to see, already). Then it’s back to “Vice” for some aesthetic analysis.

    “The advertising part of Mann’s sensibility is encoded in the show’s brooding slickness,” Seitz says, “its fascination with clothes, cars, boats, buildings, and bodies as objects worth contemplating apart from their narrative function.” There’s plenty of talk about Mann’s penchant for authenticating the world on screen and the heavy body count and aesthetic violence in the ground-breaking series.  Then it’s a fast-forward 22 years to talk about the 2006 feature film starring Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx.  Check it out:

    (Keep reading to check out parts two and three.)

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  • THE LISTS: Top 10 performances from Michael Mann films

    Russell Crowe in The InsiderWith the forthcoming release of Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies” (review) dominating — quite impressively, I might add — the publicity circuit this week, all eyes are on Johnny Depp.  An Ulmer Scale X factor for this character study posing as a summer blockbuster, Depp’s performance is sure to draw champions and detractors alike for its delicate, internalized particulars.  But of one thing we can be certain: the work is of a piece with Mann’s typically detailed approach to character.

    Mann’s collaborative process with his actors typically involves something called “character acquisition,” a tightly-conceived regimen, of sorts, that gives his films’ characters the authentic touch that makes his work so novel.  Many times these details won’t even be discussed in the overall narrative, but their background impact on the performer is unmistakable.  Take, for instance, the photos of the childhood home of Tom Cruise’s hitman Vincent in “Collateral” that Mann brought to the actor’s attention, merely by way of more fully developing the character’s clearly complicated formidable years.

    The result of this hard work has been a slew of captivating, at times career-best performances from some of the most accomplished actors working today.  A Michael Mann production represents the opportunity to go deeper with a performance and perhaps even learn more about the craft.  Will Smith has frequently discussed his collaboration with Mann as the most rewarding experience of his professional life.  And, as Javier Bardem once told me, “When Michael Mann invites you to his party, you don’t turn him down.”

    So with that, a collective representing the best performances to come from Mann’s 10 feature films to date seemed the best way into this week’s installment of The Lists.  It’s a very personal list, of course, as yours would be.  There are three performances from one film, none from two, and a pair of unconventional supporting turns to shake things up.  After going back through the director’s work last week in preparation for the list, even I was surprised my #1 choice was left standing, but regardless of order, see this as a way to compliment a true actor’s director.

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  • Respectfully disagree

    Marion Cotillard in Public EnemiesF.X. Feeney, whose Taschen study on the films of Michael Mann is must reading for fans of the director, has gone on the record with Jeffrey Wells as believing the female characters from Mann’s films to be “deeply observed, self-reliant and fully dimensional.”

    The comment follows an earlier Wells posting concerning Marion Cotillard’s strong performance in “Public Enemies,” opening Wednesday.  And while I have all the respect in the world for Feeney and his opinions, I have to respectfully disagree with his take here.

    In writing about Cotillard’s performance in my review of the film, I praised the actress for finding “the right combination of frailty and strength that has defined the few well-developed female characters from Mann’s films,” and I stand by the passing commentary at the end there.  Most of the females in Mann’s work, to my eye, serve as transitional devices more often than not.  Cora Munroe in “The Last of the Mohicans,” Charlene Shiherlis in “Heat” and now, Cotillard in “Enemies,” represent the few examples of the director tapping into women with a compelling trajectory.

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  • Those underrated gems of the 1990s

    Miller's CrossingSo here we go again.  The 1990s were an odd decade cinematically, ripe with excellent films, ground-breaking work, innovations as well as a large number of duds. There were also films released to rave reviews that never found an audience.

    I combed through the decade and came up with 15 films worthy of discussion as the more under-appreciated of the 1990s, though I am positive you will all add immeasurably to the list, as you did with my take on the 1980s.

    The independent movement gave us many great films through this span, as well as some formidable new talent, but I must confess I grew tired of the studio slagging through the decade.  Among the critical community it became almost a rite of passage. There was some wonderful studio product here and there, of course: “Goodfellas,” “JFK,” “Unforgiven,” “Schindler’s List,” “Apollo 13,” “Saving Private Ryan” and “LA Confidential” are just a few.

    My list, in no particular order…

    In “Miller’s Crossing,” the Coen brothers do a masterful job of creating a funny and dark gangster film with superb performances from the great Albert Finney, Marcia Gay Harden, and the sleazy John Turturro in a film that gently pulls the audience into its story. Made on the cheap, the art direction and costume designs are great, and that story…man those Coens get so much out of, “What’s the rumpus?”

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  • Mann and music

    Michael MannI interviewed Michael Mann on Halloween night back in 2006.  Tons of traffic.  And there was a Lakers game, so getting back from the West side was a pain.  The sit-down was part of a larger piece I was writing for The New York Times on Mann’s friend and colleague, screenwriter Eric Roth.  It was a solid hour-long chat and one of the few moments in this business where I really had to buckle down and keep the geekgasm out of sight because not only is Mann my favorite working director, but he’s also a hell of an intimidating cat.

    I pulled out my recorder, set it on the desk for the interview.  He proceeded to do the same thing with his own recorder.  Serious guy.

    Anyway, all of this is a long way of getting around to the point that I was floored by Mann’s music collection.  It may have become exaggerated in my head by now, but I seem to recall a wall of CDs behind his desk — TONS of music.  It made total sense, of course, seeing as Mann has a knack for tossing wonderful, moody, sometimes refreshingly fringe music into his films.

    In the 1980s he had a big crush on Tangerine Dream, for better or worse.  Moving into the 1990s, the Randy Edelman/Trevor Jones score for “The Last of the Mohicans” was beautiful stand alone work (mostly Jones’s contribution), but Mann also made great use of a couple of Moby tracks in “Heat” (the famous closing credits finale and “God Moving Over the Face of the Waters” being a key moment in my own discovery of cinema as something more than I thought it was.

    “The Insider” made fine dramatic use of Lisa Gerrard a year before Hans Zimmer and “Gladiator” made it “cool,” while the opening montage of “Ali” under a live version of Sam Cooke’s “Bring It On Home To Me” is the best part of the film.  “Collateral” and “Miami Vice” allowed for Mann to hold on to an obvious interest in Audioslave for a one-two punch (with some nice Roots and Groove Armada mixed in to the former), and now, the trailers for “Public Enemies.”

    Both have utilized Otis Taylor “Ten Million Slaves,” perhaps the first trailer doing a better job of showcasing it.  The latest example, which debuted today, opens with an eerie tune that I couldn’t place at first.  After doing some digging, I discovered the track is “Black Heart” by Calexico.

    Of course, a number of our musically savvy readers probably knew that already, but it’s new to me.  And further evidence that Mann knows how to use music to drive home his already striking imagery.  Here’s a weird YouTube video with the song played over an old burlesque routine by Amalia Aguilar.  It’s totally twisted and worth a link here at the end of this somewhat newsless day:

    (By the way, there’s also a double CD out there called Director’s Cut: Music from the Films of Michael Mann if you’re REALLY into it.)