The Black Dahlia
The poster's better than the film.
Let's not beat around the bush: I've taken shits with more artistic merit than Brian De Palma's latest film, The Black Dahlia.
From start to finish, this is an abomination. No one, except the audiences who manage to sit through it, emerges with any credit whatsoever. That, in itself, is a remarkable un-achievement because at least two of De Palma's actors, Hilary Swank and Scarlett Johansson, are capable of very fine work. The fact that even they get co-opted into shitfulness is a measure of just what a car wreck The Black Dahlia is.
The film is adapted from the James Ellroy novel of the same name. The novel is based on the infamous real-life killing of a young woman called Betty Short in Los Angeles, 1947. Ellroy's story plumbs the depths of corruption in the LAPD and plunges deep into the psycho-sexual fever swamp, displaying a fascination with masochism and a compensatory ardour for bloody justice.
Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart play two LAPD detectives, Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard, who become partners and investigate the murder. Blanchard's girl is Kay (Johansson), a former hooker who Blanchard rescued from the clutches of an abusive pimp. Before you can say "predictable sexual triangle", De Palma has engineered a predictable sexual triangle. Blanchard, Bleichert, and Kay exchange smouldering stares. It's clear that Kay wants to ride Bleichert like a little pony. A feeling Bleichert plainly reciprocates. Alas, there's Blanchard and all sorts of noble self-denial to consider. (At length, it's revealed that Blanchard would much rather do Betty Short (Mia Kirshner) anyway. Unfortunately for him, Betty is playing hard to get -- because, you know, she's dead and stuff.)
The development of the Bleichert-Blanchard partnership, their love triangle with Kay, and the murder investigation are, frankly, only minimally interesting. So I awaited the entrance of Hilary Swank into the film with bated breath. Here, I thought, is a dual-Oscar-winning actress who can rise above the shitty script and lame-arse direction. It's my sad duty to report that Hilary couldn't halt, or even slow, the arseward slide of The Black Dahlia.
The Swankster, an indubitably fine actress, is horribly, horribly miscast as a femme fatale. As an actress, Swank is many, many things. But sexy ain't one of 'em. I mean, I don't wanna put too fine a point on it, but in her two Oscar wins the Swankster played a female boxer and a girl who dressed up as a boy and wrassled, dildonically, with other girls.
In The Black Dahlia, Swank plays rich bitch Madeleine Something-or-Other. Mads believes in sexual healing: she'll spread the good stuff far and wide. Women, men, maybe even family members -- she'll fuck 'em all. For this to sink its fangs into the audience, it needs to be delectably decadant and more than a bit titillating. Unfortunately, Swank just can't bring sufficient fuckability to her character to make it hang together. Her repeated grappling with Josh Hartnett is about as sexy as Graeco-Roman wrestling. 
The real Betty Short.
Like any femme fatale worth her salt, Mads is mixed up in the Betty Short murder. I couldn't tell you the exact nature of Mads' entanglement because, to be honest, I'm not sure I followed it all. And that's one of the problems with translating Ellroy to the screen: he packs his novels so full of secondary characters and subplots that you can have a two-hour film that's comprehensive or one that coherent -- but not both. In LA Confidential, another Ellroy adaption, Brian Helgeland prefers coherence, cutting the story back to its essentials and producing a fine film. De Palma tries for comprehensiveness, squeezing everything in, giving all plot points fleeting treatment, only to end up with a heaving, incoherent mess.
In most films with tricky plots, writers and directors foreshadow their bamboozling twists so that when they happen the twists feel, in retrospect, organic and inevitable. In The Black Dahlia, which even in novel form was saddled with a series of ludicrous plot reversals, each twist seems random, undictated by what preceded it.
But even worse than the convoluted plot are the acting and direction. Honestly, Josh Hartnett being an actor makes as much sense as Adolf Hitler being a social worker. Hartnett's constipated face-pulling at the end of the film would be hilarious if he weren't trying so very, very hard. Unbelievably, Scarlett Johansson is almost as bad, and Aaron Eckhart even worse.
To be fair to the actors, they're hopelessly sabotaged by De Palma's unhinged direction. It's difficult to work out what on earth De Palma thought he was doing. He can't seem to settle on one style, continually chopping and changing between several. The film starts out like a fairly standard period policer. Unexpectedly, it morphs into a pastiche, mimicking the conventions of a forties-style noir, like Double Indemnity, or a Hitchcockian thriller, like Vertigo. De Palma and his cast even seem to aim for slapstick comedy in the scene in which Bleichert has dinner with Madeleine's family -- simultaneously the film's best and worst sequence.
Thus, we have Hartnett playing his character straight, yet Johansson swanning about theatrically like Barbara Stanwyck, not to mention Fiona Shaw who plays Madeleine's mother, Ramona, in a performance that takes the cake for batshit insanity. Because the film can't settle on a style and sensibility nor can the audience. It's an unsettling experience watching The Black Dahlia because you're never sure whether you should be straightfaced or sniggering.
De Palma compounds all of his other errors with ostentatious camera work. The discovery of Betty Short's body is one long take with multiple moving parts. It's technically impressive, but unmotivated. There's no reason for it; it's a mismatch between style and content. And then there's the equally unmotivated tic of filming Johansson in soft focus. In a scene with Hartnett, he's filmed normally, but every time the camera switches to her, she's in soft focus. But why, you wonder. For the love of god, WHY?
If you're charitable, you might read the film as an artily self-conscious story not about murder but about Hollywood itself. This might explain the The Black Dahlia's flaunted artificiality. After all, its most interesting scenes are when Bleichert watches film of Betty Short's auditions. She's an aspiring actress and some of her speech direct to camera when she reads for parts is quite affecting. Sadly for Betty, she can't act for shit (the ironies keep multiplying) and winds up on the receiving end of a dildo in a lesbionic "nudie" film. Metaphor anyone?
But De Palma's show-offy style, his homages to Hitchcock, and his arch-insiderism make for an unpalatable mix. It's all too incestuous. A film about film that's conscious of its own filminess and is set in the world's film capital is too relentlessly inbred -- and ends up producing something that's missing several cinematic chromosomes and a shitload of IQ.
It saddens me to say this about a film directed by the maestro responsible for Scarface, but if I were to sum up The Black Dahlia in one word, it'd be...
Fllllluuuusssssssssh!
-Hans Sebastian Fruck
"Hartnett's constipated face-pulling," reminds me of Heath Ledger constantly chewing his cheek in every movie he is in. There are better actors around.
Great review, I heard it sucked. Another that is swiftly added to the new release shelves of Blockbuster, the 'new to weekly' section and then to the 'for sale: $1' pile. Disappointing, I thought it might be good.
The ledger Check Chew. Chuck.... that is gold my friend. Gold! I didn't understand a single word he said in Brokeback Mountain. He sounded like the chicken farmer in Napoleon Dynamite, who shot the cow in front of the school bus. (elevating a trembling finger) Mmruumph a phwar a ninety mile muha ta phhaaww.'
Fuck you Heath Ledger. You rank up there with N. Kidman as Australia's most overrated actor.
Chuck has been caught in the crossfire over at SGS and fallen through the thin ice.
Ledger chews in every fkn movie I have seen the cunt in. Let's make no bones. He is shit.The Lleyton Hewitt of the movie industry. I'd rather drink egg juice.
Next to him and Kidman is Baz Lurman. He calls Kidman "NK".
"Tell NK she is due on set."
What a fuckwit.
check sgs. provocative remarks made.
we all committed suicide over loki.
Fucking fuck of fucks. I have to admire his efficiency. Like the nazi prick who obsessed only with the most efficient way to dispose over the jews, and not the crime itself (was it eichmann? b1b5 could tell us) he has summarily dispatched anybody that would stand between him and the full brunt of ridicule.
I always used to admire Sam because I identified with him for being different. Now he is just like every other fascist regime: agree with me, say harmless things, or get fucked.
Well, watch the tumbleweeds blow through there now. I know the comedy of Charity from Sydney isn't going to keep the hit meter turning over.
The kid needs to get out occasionally, see a movie, go on a holiday overseas, get a girlfriend. He's a fraud... commenting on such broad issues with zero life experience is humourous for a while and sad afterwards. The kid was sweet, he's now a vindictive egotistical opinionated bully whose last resort in a failed argument is a summary execution.
But his biggest fault of all is a complete and total lack of a sense of humour.
Send that to your Friday Funnies.
Tomorrow's Headlines: Samuel Gordon-Stewart's band deny communist tendancies'
Looks like you've taken your last stroll through the nice garden in Reid Chuck!! ahhh the memories......A.J
I have just looked at Colonel Moodus' comments and I put it down to sheer naughtyness.
Well said Baron. Sad but true. Looks like it's back to the old days of just him and John's moronic comments.
If you should go skating
On the thin ice of modern life
Dragging behind you the silent reproach
Of a million tear stained eyes
Don't be surprised when a crack in the ice
Appears under your feet
You slip out of your depth and out of your mind
With your fear flowing out behind you
As you claw the thin ice
One of my favourite Floyd moments. Jesus, Roger Waters was a ripsnortingly cheery bastard.
Alas, the thin ice has cracked all the way out to where I'm standing and I have fallen through after being hit by some crossfire. Humourless little prick. Is Colonel Moodus the last man standing? Surely he is destined for that Nice Garden.
JohnB1B5 is gloating and preening like the sick fuck he is. 'I have a new ladyfriend now' he says in 'blog housekeeping'.
I wonder how much she cost, and whether she was sent by FedEx?
Oh well.
Say, when are The Gordon-Stewarts going to make an announcement, Chuck? Musical differences?
Still in "da house" hehehe
Alas, I have joined the rest of you pushing up petunias in that Nice Garden in Reid.
The mere fact that The Beige Barron thinks that he and his friends are the core readership here and that tumbleweeds will appear now that they are gone shows what sad egotistical individuals they really are. There are plenty of people on this planet other than The Beige Lunatic err Baron.
Oh and guys, thanks for your support .... which had about as much impact as the elite suicide squad in Life of Brian!
But I just had a look to check out what the hell you're all talking about, and I gotta offer up my congratulations. Laughed my arse off. Chuck, Loki, Nige, and company you've got some comedy gold going on over there.
At least you had comedy going, until he banned your asses.
"Beige Lunatic" hahahahahahahahaha!
I thought, all in all, that was fairly justified.
"Beige Buffoon" would have had a certain sense of style!
I'm not generally a fan, but he was good in that. Unfortunately, he's still on probation for that unforgivable piece of shit called The Patriot -- in which Mel Gibson does his best Kevin Costner as Jesus impression.
I haven't seen it. I was glad he died in The Patriot though.
I had Bill Hunter on my tram last night. He was wearing a well-worn brown leather jacket and an Akubra hat (One that looked good. Not like Howards).He was the only dude on. I kept looking in the mirror and he had a gruff expression on his face.
He was at the back then walked up to the front door to get off. I thought he was going to give me some sort of tirade, similar to his character in The Dismissal or Black Angus in Blue Murder. Instead we had a chat, he gave me a wink and wished the rest of my shift well.
Chuck was chuffed and even turned his passenger protection device (ipod) down while Bill was talking.
It's like the weedy accountant who peers owlishly through his spectacles as he drives a '68 Mustang. Or like Prince, all 4' 11" of him, playing the tough guy in Purple Rain.
No doubt John Howard has his own element (maybe having tea and lamingtons after a church service), but despite all the palaver about 'mateship' he's the least 'matey' bloke in Australia. He's a Poindexter. It's about time he resigned himself to that fact.
I was going to email some sort of response to Sam about his stamp-footy tirade (the fact he had to clarify he actually swore in an email I found particularly delicious), but fuck it. He obviously spends a lot of time investigating other websites to see if there is any mention of him, so I'm sure he'll read this anyway.
For a start, I already confessed to being Moodus and Flume on his website. After all, I did plant plutonium all over England, killing a Russian dissenter, so I have to be careful with my identity. Ages ago I was Wonko The Sane. Who cares? We're no so precious about names here. Promotes free discourse.
However, the timbre of his diatribe was implying that I was this Nigel Gohl character, or that I was somehow involved in orchestrating such a scandallous ruse. Wasn't me but I wish it was. It was fucking funny. But I note B1's slinking back as The Cynic was left unmentioned, and with this omission any pretense at fairness when it comes with people using multiple names (if two, in my case, can be deemed 'multiple'). That puss-hating weirdo can rant and rave at anyone and burst out of the room, sulking and storming like a little bitch, and be left undiciplined (not to mention leaving the most bizarre, off-topic remarks I could ever hope to achieve) and then saunter back, having got all his detractors banned, like the gloating smug cat that got the cream.
Anyway, this is all sounding like I care. I genuinely find Sam's self-righteous blustering funny. I mean, it's like the site houses the Sacred Constitution of Australia and he is god-appointed safekeeper, with the seriousness he guards his blog. The more puffed-up and indignant he gets, the more I laugh.
I'll continue to read and enjoy his site just to see what harrumphy, waffling opinion he posts next, about incorrectly tied shoelaces this, the UN wrong on that, premier a fool and so on. It makes it so much better to think the person droning on has (a) never left home, paid rent, done his own washing, or cooked his own meals (b) never has sexual intercourse or a relationship with a girl (although he might be gay. John, there's always hope) (c) held down a job for more than a couple of months (d) never been separated from mummy for more than a few weeks (e) never gone hungry or suffered any medical ailment his mum and dad could not afford to fix (f) never travelled overseas or widely in Australia (d) never had any significant responsibility, replete with all the conflict and stress this causes (g) never experimented with soft drugs, or even become drunk (h) had a normal-sized group of friends with which to socialize with three or four times a week, out of the office (i) never learned to drive a car (j) never lived in a city like Sydney or Canberra where in many suburbs, people of other backgrounds outnumber ol whitey, and never learned to truly accept difference.
I don't mean to hammer the guy. At 19 I wasn't that much more advanced, but I could tick each one of those off and I was still as green as fucking grass. As green as. At 27, in many ways I still am. But I was at least taking the first few steps up the depressing path to adulthood. And I had the humility not to try to tell anyone and everyone listening to radio, reading a newspaper or browsing the web what is good and bad in life.
Geez, getting a bit worked up.
Anyway, SGS.com WAS its contributors, and I'm not including myself here, but tipping the hat to some great laughs and good times at SGS provided by Heatseeker, Chuck, Loki and many many others. People I've never met or have any sort of relationship with beyond frequenting the same websites (BNU and SGS). Good times.
I enjoyed it, and would like to wish SGS all the best, shout outs to b1b5, you creepy fuck, and cheers to some exciting material over at everyone's favourite site, SGS.com. Thanks for the good times.
True! While in Vietnam the other week...
"I still support my decision that we sent troops to Vietnam. Although I was not in a position of authority then. People are judged on their decisions. And I would hope that I would keep it to myself if I changed my mind."
Why didn't you sign up then John?
He is not a very popular man at the tram depot at the moment. Even the Indian drivers were getting stuck into him today.
Post of the week, hans. Hans down!
Fuck I laughed when I read your 'ocular knock' post (Chuck kindly linked to the thread) over at SGS.
I am feeling your angst Baron and thanks for articulating what us "bunch of half wits" are thinking. Cheers.
I am slightly worried by Sam's obsession with older men. John Laws, John Kerr, Mike Frame, Mike Jeffery, Wayne Mac and of course creep and gloater B1 B5. Oh well his business.
Since Wonko and Heatseaker were banned, my posts lacked the sincerity they once had.
adding to that. A lot of good has come out of it all.
Just to venture OT for a moment. But I posted a comment on another thread (can't remember which) saying that you should have come to the Ding Dong Lounge with us on the weekend. Everyone was there, Kinko, Vincent, BBB, Bat, my good self. We should catch up, mang, next time the fellas play a gig somewhere.
Yeah dude I wanted to go. I was going to go to the RRR birthday gig then pop on over. Duty called elsewhere on the home front.
Sounds good, we should do that. I will bring Claudia.
BTW, on the Thursday before I saw Kinko on St Kilda road in a suit. I was driving the tram. I got on the loud speaker to yell out except it was busted.
Hans, you devil! You are in fine form tonight. That's now BNU vernacular, fo' shizzle.
Chuck, thank you for cheering me up with this http://samuelgordonstewart.com/2006/05/samuel-in-dolgnwot-series-2-episode-11#comments
It made the bitter go away.
Cool.
Yeah it was the head that gave him away.
Hope you appreciate, motherfucker.
Kinko has more sexual and charismatic chutzpah in his small toenail than I have my whole being, but boy, he has a shiny white egg. But when he cracks you that cheeky little smile.... awww, I love Kinko.
Damn, it would have made his day to hear the loudspeaker chuck. I can imagine the way he would tell the story now. 'I was walking down the road mindin my own fuckin business and next thing, ...'
I concur with Hans. "Ocular Knock". hahha
Yeah I knew the ramifications. I held the microphone to my mouth pressed talk and said "Hey Kinko. Over here! Kinko P.."
The only people who heard me were the passengers. He stood there 2 metres away waiting for the green man so he could cross the road.
I recoiled in embarrassment as the passengers thought I was a loon yelling odd names to myself.
other gay little pranks we used to play:
* rushing up and stamping as hard as you could on the other person's foot.
* suddenly drawing in texta over the arm of your classmate
* spitballing a person at point blank range with 'the peacekeeper', the tube of a rolling ruler removed and filled with saliva dampened paper
* savagely grasping someone's nipple and twisting
* 'the smadge' -- stuffing your half-eaten sambo into someone's hair
All standard playground fair -- except we had this highly complex and oft-renegotiated reprisal system worked out, ie, a spitball equals three stomps, one texta-swipe given equals three more in return, and a smadge... well you did your best to run away from the other person all day. If you got caught you had to take the reprisal on the chin, arm, leg, foot, face or head.
Pretty lame now I think about it. Life was so much easier then.
Does this extended BNU session mean you've now got an internet connection at home?
Is all go. What connection are you working with? I think mine is 40mg dsl. Slow as fuck.
Pretty late over there huh? huppast one here.
Dunno what the speed of my connection is. It's pretty quick, though.
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