Name Chucky
Blrthdate and birthplace Lakeshore. Illinois. Chicago 1988.
Background Chucky really came into existence when serial killer Charles Lee Ray was mortally wounded in a police shoot-out and used a voodoo spell to transfer his soul into a Chucky Good GuysTM doll. However. Ray did not want to be trapped in the body of the doll forever and realised that his only escape would be to transfer into the first human he revealed his true identity to. which could be any of us. What he up to now? The Child's Play film franchise has proved itself to be one of the funniest and most enjoyable of the last 15 years. He is now on his fifth incarnation after a couple of resurrections and has even had a chance to take a bride.
What Chucky has to say about himself and his career “I’m really just an ordinary Joe. It's the simple things in life I treasure — a cold beer, a quick stabbing and, once in a while. maybe a good wank. People call the films I star in horror but I'll tell you what is a real horror movie: Brigid Jones: The Edge of Fieason — that fat chick scares the shit out of me. I've actually been asked to replace Brosnan as James Bond. I'm currently working with a voice coach to get the accent right. I think my chances are pretty good . . . but if anything should happen to Clive Owen or Daniel Craig in the next few months, don't blame me.’ Interesting fact Having killed off Britney Spears in his new movie, Simon Cowell is next on Chucky's list: ‘l'd like to wipe that smirk off his smug face,‘ he says.
I Seed of Chucky is on general release from Fri 13 May. See review, page 51.
so THE 1.15? 12—26 May 2005
‘ prove their eternal love for each other. she insists they must each kill another human being.
Locating his story in a recognisably everyday world. Chabrol maintains a quietly menacing atmOSphere in which dark undercurrents such as the disappearance of a young girl lurk beneath a facade of normality respectability. The repeated shots of Philippe sleeping and waking add a dream-like dimension to the protagonists experiences. and there’s also a supernatural quality to the way Senta. who hides out in the basement of a rambling house. suddenly appears in scenes. Opposite a convincing Magimel. newcomer Smet delivers an impresswe performance. suggesting her character's sensuality and also her uncanny stillness. That Philippe is erotically and emotionally attached to a female Greek statue. which resembles his lover.
DRAMA MYSTERIOUS SKIN (18) 105mm oooo
indicates that the septuagenarian Chabrol's perverse humour is still very much intact. lTom Dawson)
I Fi/iii/iouse, Edinburgh from Fri 13 May. See preview. page 47.
CLASSIC COURTROOM DRAMA ANATOMY OF A MURDER (12A) 160min ooooo
Otto Preminger's 1959 film set a precedent and raised the bar. as it were. for the courtroom drama. Banned in Chicago on its initial release and panned by star James Stewart father for being a ‘dirty picture". Anatomy of a Murder remains an at times shocking indictment of Eisenhower-era America and an all- round terrific thriller. Based on the best selling novel by John D Voelker and adapted by veteran screenwriter Wendell Mayes. the case takes place in a sleepy town where the rape of a beautiful young woman and her decorated war hero husband's Subsequent killing of her attacker causes a state-Wide stir. The facts that the court case goes into a good deal of ugly details (there's much talk about ripped panties) and that the model married couple turn out to be not so perfect made Anatomy of a Murder somewhat unpalatable in 50s America. Those same qualities. of course. are the reason the film is a classic. That and a Superb cast working with one of Hollywood's greatest directors from. a
lllétf‘.’(}il()llf3 script that switcl'ies back and forth between laid back humour and intense drama. Stewart yet again proves that Hollywood's most damn decent leading man had a taste for dark subject matter. His ia/z-IoVing Paul Biegler might be an upstanding citi/en. but this win lawyer's no angel. Nevertheless. he's got a deal on his shoulder in George C Scotts arch prosecuting attorney. And in the middle of their VICIOUS courtroom battle is lovely Lee Reinick as the dit/y but not so pure Laura Manion and Ben Ga/zara as the strangely aristocratic (and possibly guite psychotici Lt Frederick Manion a pair that prefigure the Kennedy dynasty by two years later. Add to that a truly groovy crime ia/z score by Duke Ellington int/lit) makes an uncredited cameoi and you have what's arguably the finest courtroom drama
to say cabalistic) narrative. All of which leads one to believe that sadly Araki has finally come of age (despite the fact that this 46 year old has actually been lying about
‘I caught you knockin’lat my cellar door/l love you, baby/can I have some more/Ooh, ooh, the damage done.’ Neil Young, Needle and the Damage Done.
Hutchinson, Kansas, sometime in early 19905: Bradey Corbet (Brian Lackey) is convinced that he was abducted by aliens when he was a child because of a series of black outs and nosebleeds he cannot explain. Neil McCormick (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a boy in his school who was on the same baseball team. McCormick’s memories of his youth have more to do with being abused by the team’s coach (Bill Sage), McCormick has become an angry promiscuous gay hustler in the intervening years, slowly but surely the two young men’s paths begin to cross but their connection to each other is much deeper than they originally felt.
Writer/director Gregg Araki is hardly the first choice one would choose to bring Scott Heim’s ethereally poetic small fingered fumble of a novel to the screen, but he has, and result is something surprisingly in keeping with Araki’s nihilistic talent and Heim’s dreamlike fairytale (not
his age since he made his dyspeptic first film The Living End in 1992). Comparisons to Araki’s early films are almost null and void here, for as fun and as experimental as Totally F“‘ed Up and in particular The Doom Generation were, Mysterious Skin is as mature a piece of filmmaking from a once chaotic talent.
While inevitably with this kind of American independent film there are echoes of Van Sant’s To Die For, Alison McLean’s Jesus’ Son and Lynch’s Twin Peaks, Mysterious Skin actually plays more like Wolfgang Petersen’s 1977 long forgotten excellently depressing gay exploitation flick The Consequence (search this baby out if you can) crossed with The OC. Boasting compelling performances all round (Third Rock from the Sun’s Gordon-Levitt and 24’s Mary Lynn Rajskub as alien obsessive Avalyn are particularly impressive) and a great soundtrack (by Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie and composer Harold Budd) this is a disturbingly memorable tale of fisting, UFOs, false memory syndrome and the blemish of youth. (Paul Dale)
I Selected release from (ii (’0 iviaz. See interment, page i9.