This Week in Cinema (10.10.06)

The Departed and Al Franken: God Spoke

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Published: October 10th, 2006 | 3:07pm

Hollywood pros like Martin Scorcese usually leave rendering acclaimed works of Asian cinema into American remakes to hacks like Gore Verbinski (The Ring). In fact, the only remake in Scorcese’s extensive cinematic resume is 1991’s Cape Fear, a film, which, although not superior to the original, was at least comparable to it.

This week, however, sees the national U.S. release of The Departed, Scorcese and writer William Monahan’s adaptation of Wai Kueng Lau and Siu Fai Mak’s cop thriller Infernal Affairs. Transposing the action from the backstreets of Hong Kong to the gritty inner-city limits of modern-day Boston, and supplicating a Triad gang for the Mafia, The Departed is a return to form for the lapsed Scorcese.

The narrative basics still resemble the original: Matt Damon plays Colin Sullivan, a blue-collar kid primed from a young age by Irish mafia boss Frank Costello [Jack Nicholson] to infiltrate the Boston State Police Department, while Leonardo DiCaprio is William Costigan, a cadet plucked from his training by good cop–bad cop police chiefs Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) to work as an inside mole in a Mafia gang headed up by Costello and his right-hand man French (Ray Winstone). Time passes with each man becoming increasingly conflicted as to where his allegiances lie — Sullivan begins to enjoy the perks of his situation, including his white-collar psychotherapist girlfriend, while Costigan becomes accustomed to the violence and horror that is a part of his daily life in the mafia. As the action culminates, the tension mounts, terminating in an inevitable showdown between Sullivan and Costigan that is unmissable.

The Departed may be the film that finally bags Scorcese his long-overdue Oscar.

If anyone is going to give credibility to your cause when making a documentary feature, it’s husband-and-wife filmmaking team Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker(The War Room). Often working together, with their own film production company and 50 years of documentary journalism on their side, Pennebaker and Hegedus are today’s equivalent of the Maysles Brothers(Gimme Shelter, Grey Gardens)

It is in this regard, then, that political comic Al Franken is a lucky man. Not only did Pennebaker-Hegedus enterprises put out — a documentary following Franken’s attempts to get his left-wing radio show on Air America up and running — but Hegedus, along with Nick Doob, also directed it. Franken started out life as a writer for Saturday Night Live, and achieved much notoriety in the ’80s for his scathing attacks on prominent Republicans. Al Franken: God Spoke combines archival footage from this period of his comic career with modern-day skits and excerpts from Fox News all intertwined with Hegedus’ expert non-intrusive camera-work.

We see Franken at a Democrat and then at a Republican conference, and at a Newsweek party (often dubbed Newspeak by its more radical opponents). We see him argue with everyone from conservative talk-radio host Sean Hannity to Republican columnist Ann Coulter to Fox News reporter Bill O’Reilly. Starting from just prior to the last presidential election (the one in which John Kerry won) and taking us through to the present day where Franken plans to run for senate in Minnesota, Al Franken: God Spoke is a hilarious documentary that refrains from utilising the same emotive tactics that Michael Moore often relies upon. However, like Moore, Franken’s democrat friendly politics are perhaps erring on the weak side in a country as doomed as this one.

PREVIEW
Halloween is fast approaching, and while people across America are gearing up for this punk-rock holiday by stocking their cupboards with trick-or-treat candy bars and covering their houses in fake white cobwebs and carved out pumpkins, Chicago’s oldest Movie Theater, The Music Box, has its own agenda. Every year, this cinema celebrates Halloween with The Music Box Massacre — a 24-hour horror movie marathon starting at noon on Saturday, October 14, 2006, and continuing until noon on Sunday, October 15, 2006. This year the following films are showing: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Bride of Frankenstein, It Came From Outer Space, Masque of the Red Death, Joe Dante’s Homecoming, Piranha, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, The Thing, Night of the Creeps, Friday 13th Part Two, Deep Red and An American Werewolf in London. For information about tickets go here.