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Bad Lieutenant: Good Cop Gone Nuts

BuzzSugar — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:30:49 -0800

Nicolas Cage has said, "There's a very fine line between Method actor and schizophrenic." In Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, he teeters that line maniacally, with an ever-increasing slur and crooked swagger. Cage plays Terence McDonagh, a detective in post-Katrina New Orleans investigating a drug-related murder and his personal threshold for cocaine and heroin.

The first news of Bad Lieutenant was puzzling: famously extreme director Werner Herzog re-imagining a 1992 cult movie, also called Bad Lieutenant, but shifting the action to New Orleans and casting Nic Cage in the Harvey Keitel role opposite his Ghost Rider costar Eva Mendes. Weird.

But in fact, Bad Lieutenant is Herzog's second surprisingly accessible movie in as many years, following 2007's Rescue Dawn. And Cage is brilliant in a role seemingly made for him, so read more.

The noirish, pulpy, desperate, and often hilarious film opens with a good deed: McDonagh dives into a Katrina-flooded jail cell to save a prisoner's life, in the process injuring his back and subsequently getting hooked on Vicodin and then far harder drugs.

As a degenerate cop in a washed-out city, Cage makes Denzel Washington's Training Day villain look like a Boy Scout. He slithers through the streets, confiscating drugs to snort with his prostitute girlfriend (Mendes), hooking up with a drug kingpin played by Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner, and fending off a rising tide of self-created trouble. "Being courteous is really getting in the way of my progress," he croaks before one of his more disturbing moral lapses.

In post-Katrina New Orleans, Herzog has found the perfect setting. He never lets the city look pretty or even charmingly decayed, and he populates it with iguanas and alligators and snakes and fish. At every turn, McDonagh is confronted by cold-blooded animals, as he careens between the call of duty and the cold-blooded instinct of his addiction. It's impossible to ignore the reptilian symbolism, and the effect is perfectly bizarre. Despite its darkest moments, Bad Lieutenant is a remarkably good trip.

Photos Courtesy First Look Studios

Link Time! 5/28

BuzzSugar — Thu, 28 May 2009 13:30:42 -0700

Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt talk 500 Days of Summer. - Pop Candy
Yo Teach! is a fake sitcom promoting the movie Funny People . . . and yet, I kind of want to watch it. - Vulture
Here's one list of female TV stars who should get more movie roles (including Olivia Wilde and Evangeline Lilly). - Cinematical
And while we're at it - what TV folks could really use a job now that pilots are being recast?. - The TV Addict
And here's a list of other TV shows that should get the big screen treatment (including Friends and Gilmore Girls). - MTV Movies Blog
A pretty thorough rundown of our Summer viewing options. - TV.com
The Bad Lieutenant trailer: Best worst trailer of the year so far? - Popwatch
Cell phone name or '80s TV show? - geeksugar

Photo courtesy of Fox Searchlight

Next Herzog Project to Star Ghost Rider Duo, Mendes and Cage

BuzzSugar — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 10:40:15 -0700

The wildly talented German director Werner Herzog (Rescue Dawn, Grizzly Man, Little Dieter Needs to Fly) has tapped the Ghost Rider leads for his next project, a remake of Bad Lieutenant. The original 1992 film has this description on Netflix:

Winner of an Independent Spirit Award (Harvey Keitel for Best Male Lead), director Abel Ferarra's gritty, visceral crime drama puts an out-of-control police lieutenant (Keitel) on a collision course with disaster. A survivor of the streets, this junkie, thief and killer comes face to face with his own sordid past. Although he's exploited young girls for sex, he's forced to confront his private demons when he investigates the rape of a nun.

Herzog's "reimagined" version will star Eva Mendes and Nicolas Cage with, I'm assuming, Eva Mendes playing the nun. I gotta say, this casting makes me scratch my head a bit. Herzog worked with Christian Bale and Steve Zahn on Rescue Dawn and made an incredible film. It seems like he could have gotten some better talent for this movie, but hey, maybe he sees something in Cage and Mendes that we haven't been able to see yet.

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