Caine hits out against today's 'banal' films

Times Online ^

[skr]

Citizen Kane was a box office flop in 1941. Why should today be any different?

[Patrick1]

Caine is correct but it would have more impact from someone who didn't star in 'Bewitched'.

[JohnnyZ]

They're coming out with an inferior (obviously) remake of The Seven Samurai.

Audiences are starved for something halfway decent to see, and that desperation is the only thing keeping box office figures decent.

[txzman]

Caine forgot being asked once on Carson about why he made so many less-than-stellar films. His simple reply "Its my job".

Memory does strange things once you get older.

[uglybiker]

Somebody made him sit through Gigli.

[rlmorel]

And let us not forget "Goldmember"...:)

[skr]

At Caine's age, he's unlikely to find stellar parts, so he does his job, probably with the best that is offered to him. I remember Charlton Heston saying he would act even if he wasn't paid to do so. Perhaps those who live to act will do so without pay and without a good script.

I don't like all of Caine's movies and he's apparently been in some that must've been C or D flicks, but I don't remember ever seeing him give a bad performance.

[SuziQ]

How about that appearance in Miss Congeniality as the beauty pageant consultant?

LOL! That is actually one of my favorite parts of his. He was just hilarious!

[George W. Bush]

LOL! That is actually one of my favorite parts of his. He was just hilarious!

True, he was funny. And he was scary in that cross-dressing serial killer role.

But neither one was exactly Casablanca, was it? That's my point. Caine himself took some roles that degraded the epic quality of Sacred Film. It's like some media whore decrying the decline of pristine American journalism from some mythical Golden Age.

It's a little like B. J. Clinton decrying the low moral standards of the twenty-first century as though he had absolutely no involvement himself. And Bogart made some trashy turkeys too for that matter.

[gilor]

This from the guy who was in "alfie".

[Caesar Soze]

"The Worm Eaters, a horror-drama about boys who eat worms..."

?! I assume that's the UK release title of How to Eat Fried Worms, an adaptation of a children's book that many here are probably familiar with. If that's a "horror drama," I'd hate to see what the Brits make of The Plant that Ate Dirty Socks, Hello My Name is Scrambled Eggs, and My Teacher's an Alien.

[I. M. Trenchant]

Caine would likely be the first to admit that he has been in some turkeys, but his choice of his screen name (his birth name is Maurice Micklewhite) shows that he is not just another veteran actor grousing about the limited material available to him at his present age. As a young and aspiring actor he felt very deeply about the same aspects of film-making.

Caine chose the screen surname Caine because he felt so strongly about the excellence of the film The Caine Mutiny, which was based on Herman Wouk's novel of the same name. The Caine Mutiny is one of the best-ever screen adaptations of a novel, and its featured players, in addition to Bogie, who may have demonstrated his abilities as an actor better in this film than in any other he ever made (he was the anti-Bogie in this one), were never, in my opinion, better in any of their other films: Fred MacMurray, Van Johnson and Jose Ferrer -- probably because the script and characterization they were given in The Caine Mutiny were of surpassing excellence.

Made in the mid-1950s, the screenplay of The Caine Mutiny departed from Wouk's novel in one very significant particular: the novel placed heavy emphasis on antiSemitism. As good as it was, the film might bear a remake in which the theme about antiSemitism is retained. It would have a choice part for Michael Caine, playing either Queeg, or the Caine's captain who is relaced by Queeg as skipper of the good ship Caine at the beginning of the film and who replaces Queeg as the skipper of the Caine at the end of the film. As with the other featured players in the original film, Tom Tully, who played this latter part, was probably never better in any other film that he made.

It would be an oversight to fail to mention that the producer of the film (Stanley Kramer) and the director (Edward Dmytryk, who, like Elia Kazan, co-operated with HUAC) have few if any equals in to-day's Hollywood.

[ByDesign]

The Caine Mutiny is a fantastic movie, it's been on the cable channels recently, and it's worth watching again and again. Bogie was incredible in that part. Some parts of the film are flawed, like Robert Francis' flat acting, and the treacley love scenes, but that movie made me aware of Jose Ferrer, who is excellent.

It's like Mr. Roberts, one of my all time favorite movies. They just don't write them like that anymore. Sure, there's more freedom to have more realistic language and behavior (the rowdy shore leave scenes alone would be a nirvanah for today's directors), but they have things modern movies rarely have: a morality.

[Moonmad27]

In Goldmember, no matter what else can be said, Caine did a great job (and so did the makeup artist) of recreating his early Ipcress File-era look.

[pepsionice]

Second Hand Lions probably could have been a great classic...it needed three or four things done to it (the clips relating back to North Africa just didn't work)...but the characters were so rich in nature. I thought it was perfect for TV and could have easily done a five-year stretch.

But the scene which is a classic out of the movie...was when the salesman drove up to the porch the first time and got shots fired at him.

[JLAGRAYFOX]

"Zulu" and "The Man Who Would Be King" are two great films which I can watch over and over again. After I watch these movies I puke thinking about the scum and vermin like Brad Pitt and Angelin Jolie, etc. that represent "Hollywood".

[rightwingcrazy]

Having seen the first one, the remake made me scream in horror at the injustice done to it.

[JLAGRAYFOX]

One of my favorites of all time, along with "Zulu"!!! Sean Connery and Michael Caine were fantastic in the Rudyard Kipling masterpiece "The Man Who Would Be King".

[I. M. Trenchant]

I agree with you in every particular that you mentioned, but I'd be a bit worried that rowdy shore-leave sequences might be allowed to dominate over the more serious parts of the narrative in a modern re-make. Although there was a short lag-phase before the screen caught up with the White House tapes, I think Nixon (more than Lenny Bruce) can take a bow for having brought a measure of realism to 'big screen' dialogue. The lag-phase was occasioned by the need for Nixon's enemies to express their horror at such language. There were times when I wondered if Woodward, Bernstein, and their fellow newspaper men had to engage in more 'investigative journalism' to determine the meanings of those 'expletive deleteds'. Interestingly, I think W&B did not use the term Deep Throat in any of their original Washington Post articles to describe the 2IC at the FBI (Mark Felt) who was the source of most/all of their reliable information. That description, better suited to Slick Willy's presidency, may not have been used until the book and/or film of All The President's Men as best I can recall. What timid times those were in respect to public acknowledgement of the character of private language!

[bmwcyle]

He is so right.