Here's a movie that just came out on DVD. How do you keep up with a flick like this if you haven't seen it in the theater? You pay attention to the recent films that Dan has written about. There are only two movies with an A.R. of 2.35:1 that are even remotely close to this one, from a thematic viewpoint. The other is Dogma. You have to pay attention to the quizmaster's predilections, with regard to what he will choose as a screen shot. The top shot shows a blindfolded Al Pacino discussing arrangments for a future interview with a Hezbollah representative. It has the look and feel of a shot Dan did from a Chris Marker movie, La Jetee. Who was that masked man, anyway? (Davos Hanich, in case you wanted to know). The other two candidate shots he might have chosen are the scenes where a computer e-mail message is read (remember My Best Friend's Wedding), and the one where Crowe opens his mailbox to find an unpleasant surprise. If you rent or borrow this DVD, you will find Dan's shot on the chapter preview menu section of the disc, so you don't even have to watch the movie, if you're lazy.

But that would be a great loss. Russell Crowe gives a fine, understated performance as the scientist who was dismissed from Brown & Williamson for questioning the safety of a chemical used in the manufacture of cigarettes. He eventually blows the whistle on an industry whose main product is plainly and simply a nicotine delivery device. Michael Mann directs the film in a quasi-documentary style, similar to The Manhunter.  Al Pacino is his usual self, occasionally adopting an acting style reminiscent of Scent of a Woman. As he grows older, he seems to be adopting a stage actor's traits, loudly and bombastically uttering words like, "MY WORD IS MY BOND", as if his audience were hard of hearing. Christopher Plummer is perfect as Mike Wallace, an egotistical old-school journalist, with ethics only a tad deeper than the fat cats he works for. Gina Gershon is brilliantly stereotyped as a female lawyer in a Donna Karin business suit, chic, New York, and without an ounce of morality.

The third most difficult movie to guess is a 1950's B science fiction film (a good one, at that). I don't remember ever seeing this movie, and didn't spend much time trying to guess it. From the top picture, the genre is ambiguous. The cinematography looks uninteresting and too flat. It stars James Whitmore and James Arness. As far as Arness is concerned, the appeal is not there, and speaking of his acting abilities, "He runs the whole gamut of emotions from A to B", a remark someone once made (Martin Landau or Peter Graves?) that applies to numerous actors. Dorothy Parker is the original source of this quote (she was referring, believe it or not, to Katharine Hepburn in The Lake). Anyway, you either know this movie or you don't, because the girl's picture is not in any book I own. The ants in the film are the most pathetic looking creatures I have ever seen. They must have spent all of $5 on the special effects. Even worse than Plan 9 from Outer Space. This detracts from an otherwise good screenplay, with interesting pacing. Ray Harryhausen could have turned Them! from a 3-star movie into a 4-star movie.
 

The movie with the highest point value is actually one of the easiest to guess. You have a full frontal shot of two actors, so all you have to do is figure out what era the movie was shot in, and you're in business. The man (Valentino) looks jaded, and the woman (Nita Naldi) looks like a decadent vamp. A few weeks back, I mentioned a book by Jeanine Basinger, titled Silent Stars. After a mere five minutes of perusing this book, you will have the names of the two performers. The only other film the two were in together was Cobra. He also wears a tuxedo in that movie, but his hair is slightly different and his sideburns are shorter. This is how you eliminate Cobra, and zero in on Blood and Sand.

 In terms of cinematography, Valentino's best film is The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, directed by Rex Ingram. Go to the library to read O'Leary's book on Ingram. The photos in that book are absolutely stunning. It puts to shame 98% of the B&W films ever made.

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