Hot Damme! Heat

While Manhunter helped spark a Hannibal themed week, it also took me back into the land of writer/director Michael Mann.  Responsible for some absolutely terrific films like Thief, Manhunter, The Last of the Mohicans, Heat, The Insider and Collateral while his continued descent into near docudrama/High Definition filmmaking has yielded star-studded, almost home movie like features Miami Vice and Public Enemies.  While still working on film, Mann gave us a cops and robbers tale of epic proportions in Heat.  Epic in it's casting:  Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Val Kilmer, Jon Voight, Tom Sizemore, Ashley Judd, Mykelti Williamson, Wes Studi, Natalie Portman, William Fichtner with musicians turned thespians Tone Loc and Henry Rollins.  Epic in it's production:  the entire film was shot utilizing 65 locations around Los Angeles without one manufactured set or stage.  And epic in it's detailed depiction of the lives of well trained, seasoned professionals on both sides of the law and the inherent violence that can ensue.  The film is steeped in gritty procedural facts with an air of authenticity that comes from copious research and perfectionist execution.

After 1981's Thief, Mann rewrote his script to Heat and asked Walter Hill (Hard Times, The Warriors) to direct, who declined.  Before lensing 1986's Manhunter, Mann was still trying to produce but not direct Heat.  In 1989, Mann reworked his script and turned it into the TV movie, L.A. Takedown.  After the success of 1992's The Last of the Mohicans, Mann turned his attention back to Heat and with 6 months of prep time, went about creating his arguably most masterful work.

If you've seen Heat, you probably remember the bank heist scene midway into the film.  There, DeNiro's crew have made it out of a bank with millions in cash while Pacino's posse from the Major Crimes Unit finally catches them in the act.  What follows is a harrowing, intense and LOUD showdown between professional thieves and their law abiding pursuers.  Always one for keeping it real, Mann based much of the film on real life cases, criminals and officers of the law he had encountered through his career.  Mann himself spent months going on patrol with seasoned detectives and put his actors through the same rigorous and detailed regimens to prepare for the film with mandatory ridealongs, gun training, etc.  The bank scene was shot in downtown Los Angeles and has inspired future fare from the Michael Biehn/Sammo Hung Hong Kong actioner Dragon Squad to last week's Captain America:  The Winter Soldier.

To Live and Die on the Streets of L.A.:

(Pre) Con-Man: WonderCon 2014

Next Friday, Anaheim hosts WonderCon for the third year.  Originally held in San Francisco's Moscone Center until remodeling sent WonderCon down to the land of Disney.  Even though construction is over, apparently Comic-Con International (CCI) and Moscone couldn't come to terms on dates for the show.  While they'd like to get WonderCon back to San Fran, for now, we get to enjoy two huge comic and media conventions in Southern California.  The difference between something like WonderCon and Emerald City Comicon is that CCI is a non-profit organization celebrating the creative arts.  While celebrities are on hand for signings, panels and greeting the fans, WonderCon isn't based around the business of exploiting them for profit.  Instead, you have a plethora of exhibiters hocking swag and memorabilia while programming runs the gamut of animation, film, comic books, writing, LGBTQ, self-publishing, cosplay, copyright law, advertising, music, editing and much much more.

In 2012, WonderCon played like San Diego Comic-Con light as studios trotted out their early summer pictures such as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Prometheus, Lockout and Battleship.  Of course, none of those films did particularly well so 2013's show saw a marked decrease in studio presence.  NBC's Hannibal was heavily advertised but I don't recall any tent pole flicks making the rounds.  Even without the media hype, WC still brought in a healthy 56,000 attendees over three days.  This year, Batman's anniversary is getting the spotlight with numerous panels on the comic book and it's creators as well as the premiere of a new animated film.  DC superstar artist Jim Lee will be on hand to wow audiences with his quick pencil skills and general nice guy-ness.  Media wise, studios are coming back as Warner Brothers, Twentieth Century Fox, TNT and Sony will all be on hand to show off their latest projects.  I'm thinking we'll see sneak peeks of Godzilla, Edge of Tomorrow, Jupiter Ascending, X-Men: Days of Future Past, How to Train Your Dragon 2 and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes amongst others.

To knock it up another notch, there's usually a few surprise screenings around town, the local theater offers Con goers special prices and WC itself has secured discount tickets to Disneyland and Medieval Times.  We've signed up to take a Walt centric tour because it's not like we won't already be walking around enough but hey, be a Doer!

From WonderCon's sister in San Diego:

Hannibal Week: Manhunter

As I'm all caught up on Hannibal's weekly adventures on television, it was time for a trip back to his cinematic voyages, starting with 1986's Manhunter.  Based on Thomas Harris' novel Red Dragon, the title change came about so audiences wouldn't think it was a karate movie.  Written and directed by Michael Mann, who by this point was known for his work on hit television series Miami Vice and features Thief and The Keep.  Manhunter is the story of Will Graham (William Petersen), a former F.B.I. specialist who had tracked and caught two notorious serial killers and is brought back in when a new menace who seemingly kills at random stumps authorities.  His former boss, Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina), intends to keep Graham as far away from the ugliness as possible but with time running out, Graham must recover the mindset and find the killer dubbed "The Tooth Fairy" (Tom Noonan).  To help Graham find the scent of his past, he visits Dr. Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox), an intelligent former psychiatrist who killed at least 9 people and scarred Graham for life mentally and physically when found out and taken down.  With Lecktor's insight, Graham tracks down the killer before he can plot his next series of murders. 

To start, I love this movie.  Michael Mann is one of my favorite directors and this 80's masterpiece is a prime example of why.  It's very of it's time with the style, fashion, music and attitude which may seem dated to others but makes it all the more memorable for me since I love the 80's.  Like all of his pictures, Mann had his cast do heavy research for the film with Petersen working with real F.B.I. profilers but eventually being told to back off so he wouldn't become desensitized to it.  If you've watched the series, you see that Graham and Hannibal start off as professional associates, maybe even friends, before Hannibal starts pushing Graham to the edge and frames him for several murders.  I'm not sure how the book plays things out but I will soon find out as I started reading Harris' novel just today. 

In the film, there is no mention of Graham and Lecktor having any real prior relationship other than the fact Graham caught him and had to quit after the mental toll of being in the mindset of a serial killer.  Also missing but very prevalent in future Hannibal adaptions is the killers penchant for eating his victims.  I don't think there's one allusion to Hannibal being a cannibal.  Instead, Lecktor pushes Graham, citing the two are the same and if he wants to recover the scent he only need to smell himself.  It's clear that Graham has trouble balancing his work for the law when his mind works the same as the killer behind bars.  Unlike The Silence of the Lambs or Hannibal the series, Manhunter is all about Will Graham.  In fact, Lecktor only has a few scenes in the film and interacts face to face with Graham just once early on.  Brian Cox's performance is solid as he is charming, analytical, intelligent and manipulative all at the same time.  Hannibal seems a tad obsessed with Will Graham since after all, Graham was the one who brought him in.  While he helps Will work the case, he also endangers Graham's family when he provides the FBI agent's home address to The Tooth Fairy.  Like the best kind of villain, Lecktor has no use for physical threats as he's behind bars for the duration of the film.  Instead, all of his power comes from perceived threats and his calculating intelligence.  Both of their conversations in the film revolve around the fact that the two are nearly the same mentally and with the right push, Graham would be the same as Lecktor.

As Graham, William Petersen is the fucking man.  While Hugh Dancy portrays Graham on the show as more of an unstable academic type who gets in too deep, Petersen plays the part like a volcano ready to erupt.  Fully aware of what he's capable of and maybe afraid of it, Petersen's Graham is all quiet intensity with moments of explosion like when he grabs tabloid reporter Freddy Lounds, flips him through the air and down onto the hood of a car.  Or his outburst in an argument with boss Crawford about how far they're going to push catching The Tooth Fairy.  Both Petersen and Farina have a great knack for basically saying "go fuck yourself" with their eyes and silence.  Then there's the scene where he's talking to himself in the reflection of a window with rain pouring down outside.  Or, in maybe the film's greatest scene, when they find The Tooth Fairy's home, Graham eschews waiting for back up, charges the house and jumps through a frigging window.  Mann stages all of the procedural and action bits with facts, force and energy.  Vibrant colors help add to the visual stimulus of the picture as well as help convey it's theme of duality.  Throw in lots of wide shots of Graham brooding, an awesomely ominous 80's synth score, blaring 80's tracks, tons of pastel shirts, lots of square ties and you've got yourself an engaging, stylistic and influential time capsule for the ages.

Upon release, Manhunter was met with mixed reviews and meager box office, taking in just $8.6 million on a reported $15 million budget.  The film has lived on though through it's connection to the hit adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs, the sequel Hannibal, a young Hannibal film and now the television series.  Mann would go on to direct critical and box office hits like The Last of the Mohicans and Heat while solidifying himself as one of America's greatest directors.  Petersen preceded Manhunter with another 80's classic, To Live in Die in L.A. for The Exorcist director William Friedkin as a role model badass, hot dog Secret Service agent.  It too would be met with indifference but go on to become a cult hit and Petersen would then make a huge splash on CBS' series C.S.I.

The following video has been edited to remove a use of a critically placed curse word:

Mads Mikkelsen Week: Cool Guy

Mads Mikkelsen seems like a cool guy.  You know, like Zoolander, Billy Zane cool guy, the type you should listen to.  It must have been his performance in 2004's King Arthur that first caught my attention where he played the quiet, badass knight, Tristan.  In it, he knows how to throw knives, fights like a samurai, shoots people out of trees with a bow and arrow from a mile away and has an eagle as a friend.  While the movie wasn't great, it was an enjoyable sword swinging, men on a mission action pic that warranted two trips to a dollar theater to view.  That performance led to tracking down his Danish work where he had become a top star after breaking in with Pusher and it's sequel, a franchise based around the gritty and bleak yet fascinating lives of low level drug dealers.

Of course, it wasn't always easy finding his movies in the states but Blockbuster came through as I started to seek out more of Mikkelsen's work.  His roles and appearances varied from a nervous, cannibalistic butcher in the dark comedy The Green Butchers to a simple, in denial priest butting heads with a neo-Nazi in Adam's Apples.  2006's Casino Royale put him in the international spotlight as a poker playing, stock market manipulating, civil war funding James Bond villain who weeps blood.  That same year I got a hold of Susanne Bier's fantastic and shattering melodrama, After the Wedding where Mads plays Jacob, a man living in India running an orphanage who goes back to Copenhagen to ask a rich businessman for a donation.  Turns out the rich businessman is marrying Jacob's former lover/mother of a daughter he never knew he had.  Seriously, if you have Netflix, it's on there and is worth checking out.  If there was ever an award bestowed for best use of Sigur Ros music, After the Wedding would win, hands down.  After watching the flick, I sat down for nearly an hour, writing down my thoughts and feelings in an emotional and existential haze, it's that kind of movie.


In addition to all of his film work, Mikkelsen was also a face for H&M clothing in the late 2000's.  Today, rumors are swirling that Mads is in contention for the role of Dr. Stephen Strange, Marvel Comics' arrogant surgeon turned sorcerer supreme.  Mikkelsen had come close to starring Thor:  The Dark World as villain Malekith but his schedule on Hannibal got in the way.  I'm glad though, Malekith's role wasn't exactly a showy or interesting one so The Mads would have been wasted.

Check out this ultimate Cool Guy interview:

Snow Tube: Hannibal

Skimming around Amazon Prime I found they have NBC's Hannibal available and decided to give it a whirl since I've been a big fan of star Mads Mikkelsen since The Pusher series.  Four episodes later and I'm slowly working my way through the violent, moody and nightmarish program that chronicles the work of non-official FBI profiler Will Graham and his relationship with Dr. Hannibal Lector inspired by Thomas Harris' novels.  Lector, the cannibal therapist who of course was played to cinematic villain greatness in 1991's The Silence of the Lambs by Anthony Hopkins but before that was seen on screen in 1986's Manhunter and portrayed by Brian Cox in an effectively threatening yet helpful manner .  Mads Mikkelsen takes over the role in the series and is the best thing about it.  He manages to be creepy and ominous yet charming and stylish with poise for days. 

Hugh Dancy picks up the role of Will Graham after a haunted badass turn by Manhunter's William L. Petersen and an OK one by Red Dragon's Edward Norton.  Dancy's look and voice reminds me of Justin Bartha from The Hangover only instead of a neurotic nice guy we get an uneasy and unstable serial killer expert who is slowly being pulled back into the field regularly to deal with the monsters.  Samuel L. Jackson, I mean Laurence Fishburne shows up as Will's boss, Jack Crawford and shouts a lot.  The show is visually attention grabbing with it's slick f/x and shocking for network TV violence.  Blood spray and posed corpses are in every episode thus far.  There's also some unexpected bits of sick humor throughout that have kept the first four episodes interesting, mostly referring to Lector's unspoken but shown affinity for eating humans and serving it to others.  Oh and Mads is always dressed really well and the ties on every character are really wide with awesome fat knots.  Double Windsor anyone?

Developed by Bryan Fuller, Hannibal is taking a cable model and putting it on network TV with 13 episode seasons and a 7 year arc already mapped out that would consist of original material, the Red Dragon era when Graham and Lector go head to head, then into Silence of the Lambs territory when Lector is in prison, moving into the Hannibal days when Lector has escaped and one of his victims comes looking for revenge then a final season that would resolve Lector's story.  Unfortunately the show hasn't exactly set the world on fire ratings wise in it's Thursday night slot and has been scheduled to return on Fridays which isn't exactly viewer paradise unless you're an established name like Tim Allen or Tom Selleck.  So we'll see how things go when Season 2 starts in a couple weeks and find out if we'll get to Season 7.

Check out the awesomely bad 80's style trailer for Manhunter: