The Wizard of Oz (1939)

I thought seeing The Wizard of Oz at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater would be a perfect end to the Bloomington chapter of my life. I love seeing movies at the B-C. I love movies from the 30s. I was a card-carrying member of the International Wizard of Oz Club in 1995. I love the fact that the theater has started showing old movies on Sunday afternoons, instead of Tuesday afternoons (I had to skip work to see Rear Window a few months ago). So I was very excited to take a few hours out of my busy stuffing-things-into-boxes schedule last Sunday, buy some tea and chocolate at Farm, find a seat in the familiar back right corner of the house. But I forgot one thing.

I HATE The Wizard of Oz. It's just awful.

To begin with, Judy Garland is way too old to play Dorothy. It's weird to see her stuffed into that little pinafore and bobby socks, pouting through the songs like the grotesque grown-up Baby Jane Hudson.

I don't even like the music that much. I know, "Over the Rainbow" is a classic, one of the greatest songs in the history of the movies, etc. It is impossible for me to evaluate whether I think it's a good song because it is so overplayed. I suspect its resonance is strongly tied to the creepiness of Judy Garland, tragic woman-child.

The main thing I hate is the movie's sense of humor, the way Burt Lahr makes these cringe-inducingly weird faces, the way Frank Morgan is this understated straight man by comparison. It's not like I don't like physical comedy - I do. But I don't think Ray Bolger is particularly good at falling down.(There is exactly one joke in the entire movie, which is when the Tinman repeats "Oil can" and the Scarecrow says "Oil can what?" That's pretty funny.)

But it's not just bad in a vacuum; The Wizard of Oz is hurting my movies. I am almost sure it's the most widely watched movie from the 1930s . So I'm afraid that when people think of Old Movies, nobody remembers the breath-taking glamor of an Astaire/Rogers dance number, nobody thinks of Eric Blore's comic face-making. Instead, they think of this shiny mess. Which is depressing.

Now, if you want to see Frank Morgan overact, please go watch The Shop Around the Corner.

Cue the soft focus, hardcore....

Collars...Baby Face is a story about collars. The Great Depression left most of America in a state of financial ruin with only a person's collar as an effective mark of your station in life. Barbara Stanwyck's role as Lily Powers (aptly interpreted by Lydia in words I won't use here) shows the rise and triumph of a woman who claws her way out of a collarless (think so poor that they can't afford a collar, let alone a choice of blue) factory town to the mink-lined big city life.

Or it's about Nietzsche.

The uberfrau in question learns the hard way that to get ahead means to give...up any sense of moral compass and move beyond good and evil. "Exploit men," becomes Lily's rallying cry as she moves up the corporate ladder through the corporate bedrooms and sleeps her way to the top of the Trenholm banking empire (represented by the long pan up the side of a NYC skyscraper showing the various offices where Lily does her duty). With every new floor comes a new man, new apartment and new collar, which suggests that all in all her actions aren't without benefit. I mean, look at this collar. I'm pretty sure it's platinum.

But let us not forget a cameo by John Wayne, Chico the "fantastic colored girl," and all of the crassness that makes this film disgustingly enjoyable. Every soft focus close-up of Stanwyck with her 'come-hither-into-this-lady's-room' look and every raunchy jazz riff reminds us that the generation of our grandparents was nothing if not obsessed with sex. After all, Lily sleeps with SEVEN (count them in the final montage) men to get what she wants. And what is it that she wants?

The dressless collar...

Guest reviewer: Mogwai

Mogwai covers her eyes in response to "He's Just Not That Into You"

Why we all like Joe Vs The Volcano

Dear Everyone,

Yes. We like Joe Versus the Volcano. We like it, and we need not feel shame.

It's difficult to enumerate why exactly it's so popular--the movie has a lot going against it. Meg Ryan just isn't a character actress, and normally if we want to watch one person play a multitude of roles we can always fall back on Kind Hearts and Coronets. And to be honest, it's not just the acting is it? The writing leaves much to be desired, the direction is confusing, and for some reason all the great actors are buried in less than 3 total minutes of footage. But I think we can love this movie, and these are the reasons why:

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the depiction of the island inhabitants is a fairly funny satire of the tradition that precedes it. After a lot of debate our ruling is: not racist (the wisdom of the African-American chauffeur is a pointed stereotype in a movie where for no clear reason every character, and indeed every passing dog is a source of insight...right?...) .

If for no other reason I will stand by this movie because it reminds me of innocent times, when Tom Hanks stranded and desperate on a unknown island was one a short and funny excuse to make fun of adventure movies. Not, as it was later (in the dark times): a painfully long FedEx commercial masquerading as an insightful character study of man in extreme isolation. For the record: depression era movie renters want their disaster films colorful, and full of gratuitous shopping montages.

Last, and foremost, this movie is an ode to quitting. I *love* that about this movie. Some things, work, bosses, and even living, suck, and if ever anyone wanted to sit back and wish they had an inexplicable brain dysfunction that would allow them a week of bad behavior and unwarranted merriment, followed by a quick and notable death, Joe is just that person. So here's to recognizing that some projects aren't worth continuing. Sometimes being stranded on a raft where the only land for miles has just sunken in a smoldering mound of lava beneath a hostile and probably shark-filled sea is simply better than that miserable job. So here's to resignation letters, and to the *British* version of the office--without the Christmas Special.

-Kristin

What Kristin Thought of The Baxter

Hi Kristin,

You asked me to watch The Baxter, so that you could shamelessly adopt my opinion of it as your own. Okay.

Here is what you thought of The Baxter. You liked a lot of things about it, especially the classic zany comedic performances of both leading actresses. And don't get me started on how much you loved the little 1940's dresses Michelle Williams kept wearing. You sort of hated Michael Showalter, but then you've always sort of hated him, ever since The State. Remember when you used to watch The State on MTV when you were in high school, after all those years with no TV? Michael Ian Black is so cute and funny. He reminds you of Maisie when she's like "Let's be serious." You should be following him on twitter, if you're not already. He's so hilarious. Also, Rob Cordry.

Even though the writing was weirdly uneven (the scene with Peter Dinklage as the wedding planner, for instance, caused you to alternate wildly between rage and mystification), you could appreciate what the film was trying to do. The romantic comedy from the perspective of the guy-not-taken, a sort of Rashomon for the whole romcom genre. But it never really decided whether Showalter was the Perfectly Nice Guy who doesn't get the girl (Ralph Bellamy in, oh let's say, His Girl Friday would be a good classic example) or The Wrong Guy who deserves to lose because he's so mean/stupid/sexist/dorky/etc. In the first scene, voiceover explains that a Baxter is a perfectly nice guy, who never gets the girl. But by the end of the movie it seemed that a Baxter was simply a person who is being rejected at the moment, and this annoyed you slightly.

As always, you thought Paul Rudd was adorable (although of course he'll never top his finest performance).

Now please tell me why I like Joe vs. the Volcano.

Thanks,
Lydia

Star Trek

(Wrote this a long time ago, forgot to post it...)

There is something a little cheap about returning to the beginning of a franchise - remember in Episode One, when R2-D2 showed up, and you knew that there was just so little substance to the movie that they decided to pack it instead with misguided nostalgia? That's a danger of prequels.

Well, Star Trek is all nostalgia. Every fifteen minutes, you meet another character you already know. Lots of lines got big laughs from the opening-night audience I saw it with, and I assumed that the ones I didn't recognize were were also in-jokes for the Trek fans who made up a large portion of the audience.

I'm not saying I didn't enjoy watching the movie. I did. Every actor impressed me. Because I think they are better actors than the original cast (well, the one obvious exception is Leonard Nimoy, who is about the same. No, maybe a little better, although he seems to have a bit of a denture problem? Am I making this up? It seems like he's always afraid his teeth are going to fall out) and they managed to play these characters we all already know, and be true to the original, but take themselves seriously, but not too seriously. Also, Chris Pine is very pretty. And he's in a zombie movie that's coming out this fall.



Note: Nokia = Bazoomercom

Drag Me To Hell

Drag Me To Hell looks back on an era when horror movies worked through creepy moods and shakes, rather than (just) fake blood and prosthetics, and it's largely successful at doing so. Better, it vacillates between scenes that are genuinely suspenseful, if not really ever unsettling, and the kind of slap(st)ick Raimi is so known for, over the years, resulting in the same kind of confused mishmash that made Evil Dead II so wonderfully deranged.

Although Drag successfully captures the innocence-gone-wrong feel of the Seventies horror films (partly because they appear to have actually told the set designer that the movie was set in 1978--the protagonist even has a sunburst clock on her wall!), it fails to match the depth of the best of them. Rosemary's Baby is about the terrible experience of being unexpectedly pregnant the devil's baby, sure, but more than that it is about the terrible experience of being unexpectedly pregnant. Nothing in Drag Me To Hell ever has any resonance with the rest of life.

Unfortunately, although Drag successfully captures the strange mixture of approaches that made EDII insanely great, it fails to update the formula in any meaningful way.

Had it been made in 1978, this would have been a great movie. Drag looks back on a high point of the horror genre...but it says nothing more than "weren't these great?". And they were, but they're already there. It's not clear to me what the need was for a new one. Unfortunately, Drag provides little more. This movie was well worth seeing. It's probably one of the best movies I've seen this year. But in the future, if I want to watch an intelligent, creepy horror, I'll watch The Stepford Wives, or Alien. If I want the perfect mix of goofy and gorey, well, I'll watch The Evil Dead II.