WHAT WOULD TOTO WATCH? » Bill Pullman

‘Nobel Son’ – Loud, ugly and mean, but you can’t look away

cftoto — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 17:49:56 +0000

Quentin Tarantino had a profound impact on his fellow filmmakers during the 1990s – a profoundly bad one.

Every other director tried to mimic Tarantino’s style, and most did it poorly.

Could today’s directors do the same with Guy Ritchie?

If so, the first official example is Randall Miller’s “Nobel Son,” a dark indie comedy that looks, sounds … and smells like something out of Ritchie’s Lock-Stock-RocknRolla imagination.

Alan Rickman stars as Professor Eli Michaelson, an arrogant science professor who just found out he’s won the Nobel Prize. But before he can accept the award, he learns his ne’er do well son, Barkley (Bryan Greenberg), has been kidnapped and the family must pony up $2 million to get him back alive.

Professor Michaelson seems more put off by his celebration being short-lived than the chance he may never see his son again.

The kidnapping is just part of a much bigger plot which includes multiple perfect crimes, some nasty business involving severed thumbs and a few unresolved daddy issues.

“Nobel Son” defies being taken at face value. Little of the story makes sense on the surface, and the bleakly comic aspects only intensify the film’s surreal side.

And boy, is it loud. Punishing music kicks in every other scene, as the camera bobs and weaves around its colorful cast.

It’s boorish and illogical, but never call it dull. The gifted cast, including Mary Steenburgen, Bill Pullman, Danny De Vito and Ted Danson, keeps the action at the highest professional level. A story so full of holes needs all hands on deck to keep this sinking ship afloat.

“Nobel Son” is the polar opposite to Miller’s recent film, “Bottle Shock.” That indie told a sweet little story about a tiny winery that bested the big boys. There’s nothing remotely sweet about “Nobel Son.”

(Photo: Alan Rickman takes a fateful phone call in the cinematic mess known as “Nobel Son.”)

WWTW Interview: Bill Pullman

cftoto — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:13:48 +0000

Is Bill Pullman a versatile leading man or a handsome character actor? It all depends on what the next role demands.

It’s that flexibility, and a consistency of craft, that led the Starz Denver Film Festival to give him the John Cassavetes award.

The actor has played the president (“Independence Day”), a Han Solo clone (“Spaceballs”) and the guy who got the girl (“While You Were Sleeping”) and lost the girl (“Sleepless in Seattle”).

Pullman’s latest film, “Surveillance,” casts him as a “just the facts, ma’am” FBI agent tracking down the killer behind a gruesome murder spree. He’s joined by fellow agent (Julia Ormond), and the two must interrogate a trio of witnesses who all have their own version of the crime.

In person, Pullman sure looks like a leading man, with his brown hair flopping just right over his all-American features. But Pullman started his career teaching others the fine art of acting. He left his role as a drama professor at Montana State University to try his luck in New York City.

“It wasn’t like I was recruited by anybody,” he says of his tentative first steps toward life as an actor. His boss was dumbstruck and asked what it would take to change his mind and stay on staff. The young professor was pulling down $15,000 a year, he recalls, and he figured he might squeeze another two thousand dollars a year if he stayed put.

“It was an insane move. It didn’t fit,” he says.

It did pay off, though. Today, there’s a good chances a Pullman movie is playing in a theater near you right now. And if not this weekend, then very soon.

“It’s a strange fluke having a number of movies that were held back, and then they’re all coming into this bottleneck,” Pullman says.

He recently starred in the warm-hearted drama “Bottle Shock,” and his thriller “Nobel Son” will be released Dec. 5.

And then there’s “Surveillance,” which recently played at the Starz Denver Film Festival, as well as “Phoebe in Wonderland” and “Your Name Here,” all indies with pending release dates. But the quirk does fill him with a sense of pride.

After all, the flood of films shows his impressive range, if not his box office clout. He seems a bit torn about having the kind of chops to pull off such a wide array of characters.

“Some actors are really good at doing a certain range,” he says. “I felt that in order to survive I needed to be as diversified as possible. It’s not really a winning scenario for an actor. If you do one thing really good and get cast over and over again, maybe that’s what longevity is based on.”

When this interviewer objects, pointing to Pullman’s own career as Exhibit A, he dismisses the retort gently. “They haven’t said that to Tom Cruise,” he says. “I push it more because I don’t mind doing small parts.”

Some actors, even ones like Pullman with a steady list of film credits, sweat it out if they don’t have their next film lined up. Pullman has learned how to deal with those dead spots.

It’s a lesson he’s trying to teach his daughter, an aspiring singer/songwriter.

“She‘s going through that period where she’s dry. She can’t write. She can’t concentrate,“ he says. “Those things are part of what it is to be an artist The real learning curve is what you do while you’re waiting for the next song. How do you live inside your skin without going crazy or have a plummeting self worth?”

Pullman wisely has enough of a nest egg where he can relax a bit if the next role doesn’t appear on his doorstep.

“I can do a play that doesn’t pay anything,” he adds.

But the actor admits to missing that gnawing feeling that comes with those down times.

“Maybe it’s a terrible thing, but I always like that hungry period, especially when I was auditioning a lot and your radar is right … on,” he says with authority.

SDFF Review: ‘Surveillance’

cftoto — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:42:02 +0000

Jennifer Lynch hasn’t directed a movie since 1993’s “Boxing Helena,” in which an obsessed doctor amputates the limbs off his main squeeze. “Surveillance” shows David Lynch’s daughter hasn’t lost her ability to throw a cinematic sucker punch.

The film, part of the just-wrapped Starz Denver Film Festival, takes us down another dark path, one bloodier and more visually unnerving than before.

But like “Funny Games” before it, “Surveillance” ultimately feels like a manipulation, an exercise in button pushing rather than an organic story that demands to be told.

The film opens with a grisly double murder, shot in bewildering cuts that don’t deny an ounce of the moment’s agony.

We jump ahead to the local police station, where the officers are bristling at the thought of a criminal intervention by the FBI. The two agents brought to the scene (Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond) are by-the-numbers efficient, but it doesn’t stop the local law from openly protesting their inclusion.

That tension, which sounds awfully familiar on the surface, is given a great deal of humor and pain by Lynch and co-screenwriter/star Kent Harper’s dialogue.

What follows is a “Rashomon” style mid-section recalling the officers’ run in with the outlaws from the previous day. One cop (French Stewart, the film’s best surprise) got killed the melee. But no one can seem to tell the same story, even as video cameras capture every second of the investigation.

“Surveillance” delivers plenty of gallows humor, and every awkward laugh helps the disturbing series of events go down that much easier. Still, it’s hard to watch at times, and especially so when the Big Surprise takes over.

It’s nasty and unexpected, but it still doesn’t quite feel right. But little about the movie’s final moments will satisfy as intended.

Pullman and Ormond make a credible crime working team, but it’s the seedy locals who steal the show. Pell James deserves bonus points for making her strung-out character a human component.

“Surveillance” might make the cult movie circuit in years to come, but for now Lynch’s latest is alternately clever and confounding film experience.

(Photo: Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond play FBI agents tracking a killer in “Surveillance.”)