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Video: The Rat Pack revisited
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published May 9, 2002
Ocean's Eleven (PG-13)
The Rat Pack of the 1960s becomes the Frat-Boy Pack of the 21st century in Steven Soderbergh's updated version of Ocean's 11. George Clooney steps into Frank Sinatra's shoes as ringleader of an elaborate Las Vegas multicasino heist, with Brad Pitt taking over Dean Martin's No. 1 accomplice role. Features an all-star cast including Carl Reiner, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Elliott Gould and Julia Roberts with a tongue-in-cheek introductory billing as "the girl," all nicely posed for maximum cool effect.
First impressions: "A Cheshire cat kind of remake, a giant, sly grin with nothing behind it. Both versions existed only on star power, and they don't make stars like they used to.
"It's just a heist movie, and not a well-defined one at that. Technology in the 1960s made the idea of shutting off all Las Vegas electricity a daring move. Soderbergh and screenwriter Ted Griffin have tougher security systems to crack, and some of the necessary, impossibly convenient gadgets are silly.
"The title gives away the main problem: 11 people (plus an ex-wife and a villain) are simply too many characters to examine in these circumstances. Several actors, including Damon, get one decent scene, then blend into the background."
Second thoughts: Plays better with the smallness of television, and St. Petersburg's Derby Lane looks good in a cameo.
Rental audience: Clooney, Pitt, Garcia and Damon have enough drooling fans to keep rental store shelves empty for a couple of weeks.
Rent it if you enjoy: Out of Sight, the original Ocean's 11.
Waking Life (R) (99 min.)
Director Richard Linklater devised a new approach to animated films, shooting footage of actors delivering their lines in locales, then digitally transferring the images into cartoon form. This isn't the usual Disney 'toon in form or content, but a mature experiment in altered cinematic senses that Fox Searchlight Pictures and audiences didn't know how to handle. The story follows a young man's contemplative dreamscape, not exactly an easy-to-sell theme.
First impressions: "Animators trying to figure out how to make cartoons look like people have the wrong idea. Linklater turns that problem around, making people look like cartoons, and achieves a more fascinating effect than the pseudo-humans of Final Fantasy and Shrek.
"The process and visual results are amazing. What viewers must slog through to appreciate them isn't as easy to appreciate. The plot of Waking Life is no plot at all, just a series of pontifications from experts and fools about the meaning of life and whatever comes later: stimulating conversation that occasionally makes you drowsy. Name an '-ism' and it's represented here, conveyed with little regard for punctuation or attention spans."
Second thoughts: Leaving this out of the recent Academy Awards race among animated films was a crime. Its replacement, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, will be hard to live down.
Rental audience: Art-film aficionados, philosophy and theology students.
Rent it if you enjoy: Breakthroughs in cinema; taking notes in class.
DVD: New and noteworthy for digital players
Filming the 'end of an era'
The Last Waltz
The number of truly great concert movies can be counted on one hand, and The Last Waltz is worth two fingers by itself. Anyone who has seen Martin Scorsese's chronicle of the final concert by the Band cherishes it. Anyone who hasn't doesn't know what they're missing.
In 1978, Scorsese was riding the momentum of Taxi Driver and living down New York, New York when he decided to capture, as he says on an alternate commentary, "the end of an era." Not just for the Band, but an entire generation of rock 'n' roll culture. Disco was shoving aside rock 'n' roll, and some would argue that rock 'n' roll never recovered. The Band's last performance was an unusual combination of influences in the musical form's melting pot, from gospel to country to Tin Pan Alley.
Scorsese, a Brooklyn boy with doo-wop in his veins, seemed an unlikely person to be interested in a concert headlined by a blues-folk-rock-whatever band. But the same renegade mystique that made Travis Bickle and, later, Jake LaMotta, fascinating could be found in the Band, and the self-professed history buff understood the concert's posterity.
"It literally showed an evolution of American rock themes, all the way over to Ireland and back, really a tapestry of music," Scorsese says in his commentary, shared with band front man Robbie Robertson.
Their comments illuminate the already-brilliant performances, noting how Scorsese chose to open the film with the Band's last encore at 2:30 a.m. after a 6-hour show, and how tough it was to convince some artists such as Ronnie Hawkins and Neil Diamond that they belonged there. Another commentary track features several performers, including Hawkins, creating a raggedly episodic history of the Band, underscoring the evening's importance.
The only problem with these bonuses results from having to turn off the concert's volume to hear them. Plan to spend at least thrice the movie's 2-hour running time to enjoy such artists as Van Morrison (Caravan), Muddy Waters (Mannish Boy), Joni Mitchell (Coyote), Dr. John (Such a Night) and, of course, the Band (The Weight, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, The Shape I'm In, etc.), then hear Scorsese, Robertson and the others discussing them.
The disc also contains archival footage of the concert's post-show jam session featuring the Band, Neil Young, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Ronnie Wood, Stephen Stills and Paul Butterfield. The Last Waltz highlights too many great stars to mention, and too many great performances to list without underestimating at least one. A hindsight behind-the-scenes featurette and photo gallery are also worth your time. Pay particular attention to the movie's opening frame, a title card urging: "This film should be played loud!"
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