Raising Cain
When this movie came out, it seemed pretty silly. Now it seems pretty great. Funny, weird, effective, creepy, weird.
Incredible first-act curtain, a dream within a dream within a dream. Or is it? And which parts?
Visual motif: Time. And by time I mean clocks. And by clocks I mean clock hands. And by clock hands I mean long pointy things.
With Snake Eyes, shares a fear of drowning, head-butting and impalement. Lots of impalement.
Tiny knives.
Wonderful long take where Frances Sternhagen explains things as she and two detectives walk through some offices, down a hall, into an elevator, out into another hall, down some stairs, through a lobby and into a morgue. That’s how you do exposition.
Lithgow, who is varying degrees of silly thought most of the movie, is actually pretty convincing as the old Norweigian guy.
“Jesus, stop, you’re going to kill somebody with that sundial!”
I must confess, I have a definite weakness for De Palma (as my fondness for Femme Fatale has already attested), and this is one of his guiltiest pleasures, second only to Body Double in my book.
It also has a great Pino Donaggio score, but De Palma’s always been good about getting good scores out of his composers. (Ryuichi Sakamoto’s score for Femme Fatale is one of my absolute favorites and I went to great deal of trouble to get my hands on it.)
Mmm, Ryuichi Sakamoto. Have you seen/heard Wings of Honnemaise? I showed that to my Japanese girlfriend at the time, and of all the names in the credits, she got all excited about Sakamoto’s. The soundtrack for Honnemaise is one that I was particularly happy to track down a copy of.
I have done both. I borrowed the DVD from a friend and then was able to track down the soundtrack for myself. Wish it had contained more of the themes from the movie, though.
They always like to leave one or two out for the Best Of album.
I love Lithgow. I think he has such great comic timing. I will also confess to liking “Orange County”, no matter how immature it may be. “A writer?! What do you have to write about, you’re not oppressed, you’re not gay!”
You know what would make a great movie, on an unconnected topic? Gaiman’s 1602… oh man…
Hey~ I just read in an old comments thread that you were once attatched to the Samurai Jack character. Qu’est que c’est?
I worked on a Samurai Jack script for Brett Ratner a few years ago. The fellow from New Line said “This is a great script, but it will cost $300 million.” Brett went on to other things and I went back to obscurity.