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Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Long ago, I knew a record-store manager who believed he could sum up someone's musical taste by their answer to just one question: "Do you like Queen?" (Hint: He didn't.) I'll bet there are video store managers all over the country who pull the same snooty trick on their customers by substituting the name "Oliver Stone."

Last week's quiz movie, U Turn (1997), is a weird one, even for Stone, but it's also a rare message-free film from the director that Quentin Tarantino rightly dubbed "the Stanley Kramer of his generation." Sean Penn (great once again, in another of his best performances) plays one of the world's biggest losers, a fact made obvious by his plight at the movie's beginning: on the run from a gambling debt (he's so far behind on it, he's already lost two fingers in interest), his car blows a gasket (actually, a radiator hose) in the middle of the Arizona desert. The only nearby town-- a little dump laughingly named "Superior"-- proves to be the worst place he could go, and everyone he meets is something out of Kraft-Ebbing. And the harder he tries to leave, the more trapped he becomes.

The supporting cast was packed with A-list actors, and all of them seemed to love their roles, especially Powers Boothe, Billy Bob Thornton, and Nick Nolte (Stone focuses on Nick's teeth, and they've never looked scarier). There's also nice (relatively) early work from Joaquin Phoenix and Claire Danes (see picture clue #3). And of course, the story's femme fatale couldn't be better-- "Jennifer Lopez hasn't looked that hot since she was a 'Fly Girl.'"

Oh, yeah-- it also featured a practically unrecognizable Jon Voight as a blind Indian shaman. Here's what Angelina Jolie might look like in thirty years.

For those who don't think Oliver Stone could pull off a black comedy like U Turn, here's all the proof you need-- the trailer from Stone's very first feature film, the 1974 horror masterpiece, Seizure. The thirty seconds will fly by so fast, you may not believe your eyes-- but yes, that is a pre-Fantasy Island Hervé Villechaize, and yes, that is a post-Dark Shadows Jonathan Frid.

That's right-- Tattoo and Barnabas Collins together in an Oliver Stone movie!

Congratulations and a free car repair from Billy Bob Thornton to the following quiz winners: Bob Redwing, Vince Tuss, Song-Un Lee, Thomas Miller, Wayne Palmer, Joe Rosenberg, John Middleton, Mojo Marshall, Christina O'Sullivan, Dave Mallow, Bill Hearne, TMiss, Nancy Louise Rutherford, Denny Lynch, Fred Lorence, E. Yarber, Michael Mattson, letra minuscula, Kevin Musolino, and Paul Rignell.

(Send Steve an email at couchpundit@yahoo.com.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 11, 2008 12:28 AM

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