Woody Harrelson: Zombie Killer, Messenger and Defendor

I never expected to be writing anything praising the acting skills of Woody Harrelson, the bartender from "Cheers." I thought he did a decent job of playing the over-the-top crazy guy (Natural Born Killers, 2012) and the "doofus" (Kingpin, Edtv), and didn't really have too much to offer aside from that.

In the past few months, I have seen Zombieland, The Messenger and Defendor. If not for Christoph Waltz's outstanding performance in Inglourious Basterds, I really think that Harrelson could have been the one sweeping the awards for his genuine performance in The Messenger. (He did manage win the Independent Spirit and National Board of Review awards for Best Supporting Actor.) He provided depth and a range of emotion in that part that I wasn't really aware that he could pull off. He brought the right blend of that depth with the aforementioned archetypes to play Tallahassee in Zombieland and the titular character in Defendor. Sure, Zombieland was a little over-the-top (what zombie movie isn't?), but in the scenes that called for a little more than the guns-blazing action star performance, Harrelson delivered both the comedy and the drama. In Defendor, Harrelson plays Arthur, a man who isn't "all there" mentally and decides to become a real-life superhero. The world of Defendor is not pretty - from the dirty cop's crew that nearly beats Defendor to death to his unlikely female sidekick, who is also a hooker - but Harrelson manages to play Arthur (and Defendor) with a mix of innocence and fortitude that really makes the whole story compelling.

Out of the three films, I have to say that Defendor surprised me the most. I knew going into The Messenger that it was getting a lot of awards buzz, so Harrelson's strong performance wasn't a huge shocker. Zombieland was pretty much a straight-forward horror comedy, it just featured some better-than-normal performances and plot twists. I'm a big fan of comic book/superhero films and I also love revisionist takes on pretty much any genre, so when I first heard about Defendor I was curious to see the revisionist superhero movie. The narrative structure of the film provides the story, more or less, from Arthur's point-of-view. I don't want to give too much away, but through his conversation with Sandra Oh's character, a framework is established that allows Arthur to gradually reveal more about himself by sharing the events of his life over the last few weeks. The setting of the story and a lot of the situations the characters find themselves in might be bleak, but Arthur/Defendor carries a sense of hope if he can help turn things around, and he extends that hope to the people around him. And that, my friends, is what any good superhero should do.

After seeing these three films, I'm feeling hopeful about the future of Harrelson's acting career (which includes Zombieland 2).

Ratings

Defendor: 4 (out of 5)

The Messenger: 4

Zombieland: 4

Happy Birthday to Joseph Gordon-Levitt (and Me)

Over the last few years, with IMDb's "Born Today" feature on its home page and the rise of Wikipedia and its pages with lists of famous birthdays by date, it has become more common for everyone to discover with what famous people they have birthdays in common. My "group" includes some rather disappointing and embarrassing public figures, including director Michael Bay, "socialite" Paris Hilton and comedian Larry the Cable Guy. Perhaps the most notable famous person (to me) that I share a birthday with is the actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is exactly five years older than me. (Actor Hal Holbrook and singer Billie Joe Armstrong are my runners-up.)

Through my own observations and conversations, I have noted that a lot of people find actors around their own age that they love as kids and, in a way, grow up alongside. For me, Gordon-Levitt also fits that bill. From his early parts as "Student #1" in Beethoven, "Young Norman" in A River Runs Through It and smaller roles on TV shows like "Quantum Leap" and "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" through his early leading roles as a child actor in Angels in the Outfield and Holy Matrimony to his series regular role as Tommy Solomon on the TV show "3rd Rock from the Sun," he seemed to pop up in quite a few places throughout my childhood. As "3rd Rock" started to wrap up, Gordon-Levitt took on more film roles, including 10 Things I Hate About You and Manic. Going from 10 Things to Manic marked a transition from lighter, more comedic, supporting roles to darker, more dramatic, leading roles. His strong leading performances in Mysterious Skin, Brick, The Lookout and 500 Days of Summer have helped him slowly make a name for himself as one of the best actors of his generation.

In an arena (somewhat) outside of his acting career, Gordon-Levitt has also taken to the internet to start hitRECord.org, which combines social networking and filmmaking to help create multi-layered and intensely original projects, or records, as they are referred to on the site. I first took notice of hitRECord shortly before 2009's 500 Days of Summer was released in theaters, but it's been around for about five years now, and was featured as an exhibition in the New Frontier section of the Sundance Film Festival a few weeks ago.

Gordon-Levitt will next be seen alongside Natalie Portman in the Sundance film Hesher and in director Christopher Nolan's Inception, which I previously noted as the film I'm most looking forward to in 2010. I hope he does a musical next or sometime in the near future, especially after the dance sequence in 500 Days of Summer, the Bank Dance video that accompanied the film and his enthusiastic performance of "Make 'Em Laugh" on a recent episode of "Saturday Night Live." Here's the dance sequence, set to the tune of Hall & Oates' "You Make My Dreams Come True":

Finding Inspiration in Preservation

"Film is history. With every foot of film lost, we lose a link to our culture, to the world around us, to each other, and to ourselves." -Martin Scorsese

To most filmgoers, Martin Scorsese is known for two things - his incredible body of work as a filmmaker and his trademark bushy eyebrows. To cinephiles, Scorsese is an icon for those things and his work as a film preservationist. The mass audience got a taste of this during his acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes in January.

/Film excerpted part of his speech: "As far as I’m concerned, making films and preserving them are the same thing. In this room, none of us who make films and watch them would be here without the people who came here before us. Whether it’s DeMille, Hitchcock, the Senegalese filmmaker [Ousmane] Sembène, Kurosawa or John Ford, de Sica, Bergman, Satiajit Ray, we’re all walking in their footsteps every day, all of us… [DeMille] made these pictures for us, the audience, so we could live in their wonders. He was there from the beginning, when films were born. He helped create the narrative style and language that we use today, shaped film as an art form, as a business, and as a mythical landscape. He led the way for all of us. When we look at his films, or Hitchcock or Kubrick, we all remember that motion pictures are part of a continuum, a living, ongoing history. And for me to be a part of all that, well… I thank you, and I thank you so much." The full video of his speech can be found here.

Scorsese's sheer knowledge of the history of film is quite outstanding and if you can get your hands on a copy of A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies, it's a good way to spend (nearly) four hours.

That Scorsese's immense passion for cinema has lent himself to become a leading force in the drive to preserve film should be no surprise. In 1990, he founded The Film Foundation, which has assisted with the preservation and restoration of over 500 films that might've otherwise deteriorated and disappeared from the pantheon of cinema. They've worked with organizations such as the Academy Film Archive and the National Film Preservation Foundation, and recent films they've worked to preserve include Paths of Glory and The Red Shoes. The impressive list of filmmakers that make-up the foundation's board of directors include, along with Scorsese, Woody Allen, Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, Clint Eastwood, Peter Jackson, Robert Redford and Steven Spielberg.

With an ensemble like that under the leadership of Scorsese, the flickering light at the end of the cinematic tunnel can only get brighter.

This post is part of "For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon," which is running Feb. 14-21 on various film blogs. More information about the blogathon can be found here, and you can donate to the National Film Preservation Foundation here.