{"id":8458,"date":"2012-04-17T00:26:23","date_gmt":"2012-04-17T04:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=8458"},"modified":"2012-04-17T00:26:23","modified_gmt":"2012-04-17T04:26:23","slug":"this-world-then-the-fireworks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=8458","title":{"rendered":"This World, Then the Fireworks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When you watch a movie, is there always a giveaway about how intentional a level of incompetence is? What I mean is, at what point does the appearance of satire or parody drift off into the area of just plain old dreadful?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Unless you were in the director\u2019s brain while he was on set, there\u2019s no way to know for sure. Any individual image could either be a worn out clich\u00e9 or a sharp mocking of filmmakers — with no creativity whatsoever. The only way for us to properly hazard a guess is to compare the director\u2019s films to each other. Do they share a style or point of view that signals whether or not they knew what they were doing?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>That conundrum is never more relevant than in Michael Oblowitz\u2019s This World, Then the Fireworks<\/em>, an adaptation of one of noir king Jim Thompson\u2019s final short stories. The story was published 28 years posthumous. And part of that might have to do with its downright sleazy content, over and above the standard sociopathic protagonist in a Thompson story (The Getaway, The Grifters<\/em>). Oblowitz was coming off commercials and music videos. So quick bits of style were already in his repertoire, which accounts for This World<\/em>\u2019s 1990s version of a 1950s small town. It doesn\u2019t explain why so much of the film is scattered and distracted, with plot points showing up far after they\u2019ve been dealt with, nasty bits of macabre violence, and then a sudden shift to a solemn introspective tone.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It\u2019s probably not fair to compare This World, Then the Fireworks<\/em> to Oblowitz\u2019s later films. But if there\u2019s a hint as to the narrative and editing messiness, it\u2019s the two direct-to-video Steven Seagal films he directed in 2003, Out for a Kill<\/em> and The Foreigner.<\/em> Both, even for Seagal\u2019s low standards, are more than slapped together and incoherent, they are frankly unwatchable. The works have none of the unintentional humor that is a staple of Seagal\u2019s DTV phase.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In This World, Then the Fireworks<\/em> you can see inklings of the habits that he went all out on in Oblowitz\u2019s Seagal era, even if a lot of it plays like straight humor (\u201cShe\u2019d been sorely undernourished and frequently raped\u201d). So the dry amusement of the Thompson story that should have crept to the forefront won\u2019t occur to you until later. For instance, the lead actors Billy Zane and Gina Gershon play characters — twins — who are beyond immoral. The twins never turn their noses up at a scheme or a murder, and yet they still live with their ailing mother (Rue McClanahan). Hell, Gershon\u2019s character, a divorced prostitute, still shares a wall with her mother.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>All of this material was basically covered in Norman Mailer\u2019s Tough Guys Don\u2019t Dance<\/em>, which is similarly overheated and ludicrous. But Mailer\u2019s misogyny and self-seriousness is all over his film, and Oblowitz is more than happy to give us Zane floating from moralizing to laughing to crying — often within the same sentence — which, supposedly, makes him irresistible to women. [Is it any wonder that Zane took a producing credit? The whole movie is an ode to his oily good looks and charm.] Gershon vamps and vamps; her curly Joker lips<\/span><\/a> have never seemed more appropriate considering they do all the work that the screenplay does not. Sheryl Lee, as the cop who Zane is scamming and sleeping with gives such a terrible performance that is simultaneously absolutely perfect.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Oblowitz\u2019s hardboiled-noir shortcuts and flashy contrast-heavy photography help out the actors, because they mean a character — such as an overweight private detective following Gershon — already looks like a frog before <\/em>we seem him practically ribbit when he\u2019s flummoxed. The style is almost Coen Brothers in its approach, using noir and standard caricatures for the humor. Except Oblowitz takes the whole thing very seriously; which, in the end, makes no difference because the movie is just as odd and as it is funny.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you watch a movie, is there always a giveaway about how intentional a level of incompetence is? What I mean is, at what point does the appearance of satire or parody drift off into the area of just plain old dreadful? Unless you were in the director\u2019s brain while he was on set, there\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[2516,1018,5188,3376,40,389,153,89,1337,786,527,2545,795,2406,446,905,8318,110,907,8617,4600,8179,309,8620,1206,310,5189,755,8623,8624,5900,4047,1316,3347,8622,8619,528,1865,8621,8319,8321,8616,8178,8618],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8458"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}