Not That Critical

2012-01-23T20:20:00.001-08:00

Spyglasses

2012-01-17T21:02:00.000-08:00

There isn't much about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy that I can say which hasn't already been said. Although I loved the movie to pieces, there is one thing that I think I love the most about it.

Traditionally, or at least often, spy characters in film are given dark glasses to wear, to make them as inscrutable as possible. Gary Oldman wore glasses while portraying spymaster George Smiley which greatly increased the size of his eyes - and yet due to his fantastic performance he managed to appear even more inscrutable than the Men in Black and their ilk. That's what I find so tremendously impressive about Gary Oldman's performance; well, that along with everything else.

Also, anyone who leaves the theater without Julio Iglesias' version of "La Mer" stuck in their head has not a soul. That song Tinker Tailor Soldier Lingered.

Without Love (Cecily's review)

2012-01-16T12:18:00.000-08:00

I thought it was kind of funny. Because two parts:
One was this lady put on this thing, and it had glass all around it. Or was it plastic? It was glass. Okay so. And then when the man went out of the room, she sneezed, and then she tried to wipe her nose, but she was like, "uhh...." And then she remembered that she had on that thing. Okay. Then, she got inside this space ship thing once the man came back. Um. Oh my gosh. Are you writing all this down? They will not know what I'm talking about. So when she got in, she was like, "Oh, I feel so upside-outside-inside!" I think that's it. You are actually writing down everything that I say. Oh my gosh. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm! uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh.

So the man sleep walked, right into the girl's room, when she was getting some water. Then when she came back she like got in bed, and when she saw the man, she fell RIGHT OFF THE BED!

I like it.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

2012-01-06T22:36:00.001-08:00

As evidenced below, I was overjoyed to finally see the cinematic version of TTSS. Most of my love for this film was initially placed in loving Gary Oldman and roughly anything he does, but in order to show my fealty, I decided to read the book and get a sense of this new chapter in my relationship with Gary Oldman.* Now, it should be mentioned that I still love Gary Oldman, but there was something iconoclastic for me in the book that I just had not anticipated and my love was reshaped.

My new love is for the uncanny narrative tension that can only be created by the sheer, unadulterated boredom of the life of great spies. Before I go on, I fear I may give some minor details of the film/book away so I say unto you: here there may be spoiler alerts. The success of the book is its almost epistolary nature. Smiley gathers all of his intelligence through the most mundane and boring means, and what we learn about Smiley and espionage in general is that you just have to listen and connect plot points of people's stories. I've given some serious thought to telling people that this book has no plot beyond George Smiley listening to people and arresting some guy at the end. All of the action happens in exposition, and after six or seven of Smiley's chit chats, you just stop caring about the Cold War and the battle for ideological dominance. What really matters is that Smiley is a sad and sort of pathetic man, but a brilliant spy.

When I finished the book, I started storyboarding the movie in my mind, and I was glad that the film listened to my imagination. The colors are almost completely washed out, Smiley rarely ever talks, and most of the film is just a study of people's faces as they tell stories that are seemingly unrelated. I was bored to sheer joy.

Actually, I don't think the film is remotely boring, but the slow pace of the film and the completely anticlimactic and brilliantly executed end will make people scratch their heads in wonder. After all, aren't spies more like James Bond or Ethan Hunt? Aren't they the peak of physical performance and aren't they the world's greatest lovers? Can't they overcome the most difficult odds through sheer will power and brute force? According to LeCarre, no, spies pay attention when people talk and talk and talk, drink and get drunk, and have trouble swimming anything more than a few laps. To borrow from another movie, these are spies like me.

*The first chapter was Oldman's portrayal of the crooked Stansfield. Then I watched True Romance, Dracula, Sid and Nancy, Immortal Beloved, The Fifth Element (about 100 times just to hear him pronounce, "Jean-Baptiste Immanuel Zorg."), and Romeo Is Bleeding. I like to think of the Harry Potter films and the Christopher Nolan Batmans as the relationship of people who argue over the price of sandwiches.

2012-01-06T19:02:00.001-08:00

tinker tailor soldier success!

Young Adult (Lydia's review)

2012-01-03T17:42:00.000-08:00

There is not a lot to like in Young Adult. Especially unlikeable is the main character, which is a difficult (but not impossible) problem to overcome. I liked some details--the loving, almost fetishistic attention to the inner workings of a memorex mix tape in the opening credits went too far and then kept going until it circled back around to greatness. The many close shots of manicures and pedicures; an expanse of a pale and freckled back in the foreground; the frank, underexplained images of hair pulling. These were the things I liked.

There is a standard thing that happens to characters like Mavis,* the ghostwriter in Young Adult. People as shallow and self-destructive as Mavis almost never get through a whole movie without undergoing some major transformation. Maybe it’s refreshing that instead of sticking to formula, Mavis experiences no epiphany, no change, and no catharsis. She simply decides in the end that her raging prom-queen shallowness is her best option--no, not just her best option, but actually correct.

To be fair to Young Adult, I am tired of the movies it is not. The movies that tell me how great and wholesome it is to be fulfilled by ordinary lives which are not actually ordinary at all. The it’s-a-wonderful-life syndrome, where a small-town guy thinks his life is meaningless, then discovers that actually he has a lot to live for, in the form of a beautiful and devoted wife, many adoring and/or adorable children, millions of friends, and quite meaningful work. But most of us aren’t George Bailey. If Frank Capra has convinced me of anything, it is that I probably should throw myself off a bridge, because I don’t have a lovely wife and four children, and I have never saved my hometown from the evil machinations of Lionel Barrymore. I’m bored with hollywood falsely endorsing ordinary lives.

So I should be pleased with Young Adult, which bravely refuses to embrace the lie of Capra’s small town America, an America that not only doesn’t exist now in the era of strip malls, but also never existed in the first place. Young Adult thumbs its nose (is there a more juvenile expression of disdain? flips the bird?) at the idea of values that are not utterly shallow. In the end, Mavis is faced with what might be understood as one single moment of authenticity, in the form of bad, ugly sex. Not mean sex, just bland and sad and based on a deeply felt, totally mutual pity.

I came away from this movie feeling like I’m supposed to believe you have the following choice in life: be “stupid and fat” like everyone in Mercury, or be slightly less stupid and have trichotillomania instead of fat, and live in a slightly less hick town, and sneer out loud at anyone who is centimers less than you as measured on the cultural cache tape measure.***

It’s surely true that anyone, at any level of success, can feel like a failure compared to one person and like a success compared to someone else. Being a superhot divorced lady and a ghost writer for a terminated series of young adult novels, for instance, might be someone’s idea of success and someone else’s idea of abject failure. That this movie accepts and illustrates that is fine. But the movie ends with music rising and cheerful, blatantly false voice-over as Mavis embraces her obviously destructive and terrible choices and the miserable life they have brought her. This makes it at best very dismal, with a message of supreme hopelessness. I guess you could call that brave.

* Is her name really Mavis? I feel like I must be getting that wrong.

** I really wish i could construct a pun here about a cultural mix tape measure, but for once I am not up to the challenge...

Young Adult (Kristin's review)

2012-01-02T21:55:00.000-08:00

I didn’t have much in the way of expectations for YoungAdult. I thought “quirky,” cause, you know, Diablo Cody. And sure, I suppose itwas. Mostly, though, it left me feeling a lot uncomfortable and a littledisappointed.

It's surprising to be disappointed when I started with noexpectations, but here I am. It happened somehow after the first quarter of themovie. In the first few scenes I felt surprisingly enthusiastic about the aboutthe subject. I’m not one for mid-life crisis movies, but because male charactersare so frequently afforded unlimited screen time to indulge in aimless30s-onset existential angsting I was glad to see a movie wherein a female character gets to do the same thing. The opening launch of the protagonist homeward,mix-tape in hand, felt very High Fidelity. Halfway through the movie, though,the boyfriend fixation was a bit too much, and when Mavis revealed that theseemingly sole core of her widespread and indiscriminant social and geographic loathing wererooted in her inability to have children this lost me. Itjust lost me. This movie,essentially, is about hysteria. So that’s unfortunate.
Forbes ran an article inwhich the author, Victoria Pynchon, responds to internet outcries against Young Adult’s maincharacter. It's not surprising that people are hating on Mavis. She's pretty much hateful. And while I get Pynchon's desire to distinguish between immoral behavior in a movie and an immoral movie, I can't get on board with her analysis. She has the poor judgement to say that Mavis is primarily guilty of things like simply saying “aloud what the rest of us keep to ourselves.” What, exactly, is Pynchonthinking to herself? And what on earth could compel her to call Beth compassionate?In what world is condescending pity to be confused with kindness?
Pynchon’s article links toanother text at Baltimore Magazine that points out how consistently Diablo Cody’smovies put the most redeeming characters in incredibly homey, traditional roles.The author, Max Weiss, seems to praise Cody for unexpected choices here. I don’tfeel the same way. Motherhood isn’t the most redemptive quality women can have, and middle-American values aren’t the only ways to be a decent human being in acrowd of irredeemable criminals. Dial it down, Cody. People are cruel for a lot of reasons; you can lay off the Single Victim of Infertility for a while and try on any of the more likely causes for Mavis's behavior: laziness, vanity, boredom. Girls can be jerks too, without men or babies framing the picture.
I sound super disgruntled, but I'm not actually because seeing this movie led me to read the wikipedia articles on hysteria and female hysteria, both of which are pretty swell.

What comes after Christmas? TRUE CRIME

2011-12-28T22:00:00.000-08:00

It's time to start thinking about true crime movies to go along with my true crime reading. I bring this up in honor of Devil in the White City, which as of now has two potential film adaptations, one with Tom Cruise in a production role and one with Leonardo DiCaprio in a starring role. Wikipedia only notes one of these as pending, but I read somewhere this week about the second.

Here's my potential list:

The Atlanta Child Murders - I'm reading Evidence of Things Not Seen, and feel obsessed with the case, so the miniseries seems like a difficult to find must have.
Bonnie and Clyde (also banjo numbers!)
In Cold Blood and Capote
The Green River Killer - I read Green River Killer, the graphic novel adaptation, so I'm feeling excited about this one too.

What else should I include? This is an open call for anyone to edit this post, adding their own suggestions. Or you could put suggestions in the comments, but that's way less fun.

Holiday movies partial recap

2011-12-28T21:50:00.000-08:00

Holiday movie theater time: MIIV and Sherlock Holmes 2. Mostly these made me want to climb the Burj Khalifa and watch episodes of Sherlock until the end of time. In dvd rentals we've finally seen Hanna, which wasn't bad. Saoirse Ronan is pretty great, plus it was fun to watch Thad swear up and down we'd find the director does music videos when it turned out he does british dramas. Good times! We watched the final installment of Harry Potter, which sucked big time in exactly the way you'd expect. I re-watched episodes of Drunk History.

I still haven't seen The Girl With... and Tinker Tailor, though I did buy the book for the latter.

Now we're rewatching Paul, and I'm mentally remapping Simon Pegg's career, including high and low lights.

1997 I'm Alan Partridge - awesome!

1999-2001 Spaced - Indeed!

2002 24 Hour Party People - sounds good

2004 Shaun of the Dead - Yes!

2006 - MIIII - well...

2007 Hot Fuzz - YES

2007 Diary of the Dead - really? I had no idea. Or maybe Lydia and I keep talking about this?

2007 Run Fatboy Run - Nope, I can't support him here.

2008 How to Lose Friends... - This is where I began to suspect a slope down hill

2009 Star Trek - not terrible

2009 Robot Chicken - Dunno, but I hear good things.

2010 The Chronicles of Narnia - how did I not know this?

2011 Paul - liked it

2011 The Adventures of TinTin - again I had no idea

2011 MIIV - not bad actually

2012 "untitled Star Trek sequel" - woot!

I thought the above would be a much clearer downward plummet. Here's to what it actually is: a bit confusing but overall not bad.

It's probably time to come home and do some work.

Tinker Tailor Etc.

2011-12-28T18:11:00.000-08:00

I can finally see this movie on January 6th! My quest to see this movie Tinker Tailor Soldier Sucked.

FWD:

2011-12-25T08:55:00.001-08:00

Newsweek asked Martin Scorsese for a list of "kids' movies" for their holiday viewing list. His excellent list includes Night of the Hunter, The 400 Blows, and The Curse of the Cat People.

(testing mobile posting...)

Christmas Injustice

2011-12-23T20:52:00.000-08:00

I am watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the stop motion animation featuring a number of finely needle-felted animals and Burl Ives singing with a banjo. WHAT could be better I ask you?

I'll tell you what would be better. It would be better if the song Ives sings while strumming a banjo actually had a banjo in it.

I submit, for your consideration, exhibit A:

A snowman, clearly strumming a banjo.

Now I submit to you exhibit B: A recording of Ives singing the song, the same recording that appears in the film.

You will note, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that while a banjo appears visually, no banjo can be heard in the song.

Where is the banjo, Ives?!? BANJO PLAYERS OF THE INTERNET WANT TO KNOW. WE DEMAND THE LOST TABS.

This just got good.

2011-12-22T19:33:00.000-08:00

It's hard to say why TMC's Thin Man marathon is the perfect Christmas warm up, but It absolutely is. I'm making cookies, so I'm missing a lot, but I can tell you this:

There's totally a Christmas scene in The Thin Man, so that's legit.

There's totally Jimmy Stewart in After the Thin Man, so get your Christmas on.

All I'm saying is it's finally Christmas.

And it doesn't hurt that Comedy Central played Christmas episodes of Futurama all afternoon.

"Your mistletoe is no match for my T.O.W. missile."

"Watch out! His belly is shaking like a bowl full of nitroglycerin!"

"Ho ho ho! It's time to get jolly on your naughty asses!"

Amy:He knows when you are sleeping.
Farnsworth:He knows when you're on the can.
Leela:He'll hunt you down and blast your ass, from here to Pakistan.
Dr. Zoidberg:Oh...
Hermes:You better not breathe, you better not move
Bender:You're better off dead, I'm tellin' you, dude.
Fry:Santa Claus is gunning you down!

Fry: I'm Santa Claus!

Hermes: No, I'm Santa Claus!

Amy: We're also Santa Claus!

Dr. Zoidberg: And I'm his friend Jesus.

Mayor: You guys aren't Santa! You're not even robots. How dare you lie in front of Jesus?

Has anyone else had simmer height uncertaintly all these years?

2011-12-22T12:10:00.000-08:00

THANK YOU.

Plus, great evidence for our ongoing debate about Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, and their weird mutual obsession.

support your local

2011-12-22T06:37:00.000-08:00

By now, I guess everyone has read Farhad Manjoo's [controversial, incendiary, blasphemous...] article on Amazon vs Independent Bookstores. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/12/independent_bookstores_vs_amazon_buying_books_online_is_better_for_authors_better_for_the_economy_and_better_for_you_.html
The response has been...um...strong, I guess you could say.

What strikes me about this debate, and the Independent Bookstore whose demise everyone is urging me to mourn, is the utter foreignness of it from my experience. I have never been turned on to a great book/author because of a recommendation made to me by an employee of a independent bookstore. Not once. In part this is because I am not a very social person (that is why I like books, because reading can be so solitary), and I do not seek out conversations with store clerks. It is also probably in part because I am not big on attending readings. I don't enjoy meeting famous people any more than I enjoy meeting non-famous people. Maybe less. I have also always lived in college towns, so inasmuch as I am interested in things like Seeing a Famous Author Read Her Poems, I have always done that at a university.

Two kinds of people have given me in-person recommendations that have changed my life/habits/knowledge: librarians and video store clerks. Librarians, as opposed to people who work in bookstores (or video rental stores), are generally required to have a masters degree in what they do. And while they might not get paid enough, they usually earn a living wage.

But video store clerks. They are the cultural heroes. These are the guys (and they were mostly guys, in my own personal experience) who could tell you when the next season of The Sopranos would be out, and who might just keep a copy behind the desk, knowing you would probably be looking for it. They could answer a question like "What is the new movie from the guy who directed that movie with the girl who was the friend in the princess diaries?" They were just as passionate and serious and informed discussing who was the best Doctor, which was the most important Kurosawa film, or what country produced the greatest amateur porn. They could explain what the deal was with the subtitles on Let the Right One In, and they had an opinion about whose fault it was.

These guys did not have lofty ideas about "educating the masses" or "creating spaces of cultural literacy" or whatever: they just really loved movies. They were geeks of the highest order. And I will miss them.

p.s. I just heard that Amazon is planning on opening a facility in Chesterfield, and hiring some 1300 Virginians. So does that mean that when I buy from Amazon now, I am supporting my local economy?

Ho ho hum.

2011-12-21T19:57:00.000-08:00

Today is December 21st, and I am watching Elf. This is the beginning of my Christmas viewing. For me, Christmas is entirely about a few movies and a lot of cookies. Tomorrow I start making cookies.

Elf is an unexpected movie. It's exactly the sort of thing I think I'll hate, but I don't. I like Elf. I like it just fine. It's the first thing I saw a Deschanel in. She's blond, but it's Zooey. It's weird, I can't stand the girl now, but I liked her in Elf. She sings a small enough amount to be tolerable, and she doesn't do much cloying cuteness. Plus, I feel sort of sorry for her in the scene where she is supposed to be eating with chopsticks and she appears never to have seen such a thing before. In the shot below she does pretty well almost getting a scoop of noodles to her mouth. Good work!

The blond hair is weird, right?

I'm not sure why I watch Elf. In part I can't bear another viewing of It's a Wonderful Life, and no one is ever showing the movies I think are actually perfect for Christmas, namely Harvey and You Can't Take it With You. Why aren't those Christmas movies? I think they should be.

Lacking those, and lacking a video store, I'm watching Elf, and it's not too bad.

I'll be posting intermittently on the theme of The Christmas Movies I am Watching and the Christmas Movies I Wish I Were Watching. Join in if you wish.

James Franco in the news again

2011-12-20T06:15:00.000-08:00

"Overhyped Hollywood hunk"? Come on, NY Post. No way.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/the_franco_cut_kIRVk4WuVdydz59WZ4I5tL

The Key to Reserva, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Commercials

2011-12-19T23:42:00.000-08:00

I am not sure if I'm required to write 500 words for a film that runs only nine minutes. A two hour film gets about 600 words, which averages out to about five words per minute or 45 words for The Key to Reserva.

It seems that this short was an advertisement for Freixenet Wines, and it may be the only film I review that you can watch in its entirety online. Before going any further, you should consider watching the film as it will prevent the disappointment of spoilers.
I'm not quite sure if I should feel upset or amazed by this film. It's not uncommon for big name directors to do commercial work, and prove that they are able to create amazing pieces of art (Terrry Gilliam has a brilliant Nike soccer commercial).

Let me explain why I'm amazed. The film brilliantly captures the aesthetic style of a number of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest films. Though I watched the film only once before writing this post, I'm certain I saw refernces to Vertigo, Rear Window, The Birds, and Notorious.

But it's not just the references that makes this so enjoyable. Scorsese is extremely funny, and funny in a way that I don't think would be accessable to the general viewing public. But perhaps Freixenet only wants to cultivate the most intellectual of wine drinkers.

However, I feel an overwhelming sense of disappointment because I realize the film is just a commercial for Spanish sparkling wine, and perhaps this means art can be just a byproduct of a commercial investment. I have no idea why this depresses me so much.

Of course, I might not find this practice so depressing if commercials were only directed by talented people who wanted to make an interesting short film instead of try and push product based on what market research tells them will compel people to buy it.

I haven't mentioned that this film features Simon Baker and Michael Stuhlbarg, and only Simon Baker is listed on the commercial's web page. The only reason I bring this up, is that Stuhlbarg goes on to work with Scorsese on both Boardwalk Empire and Hugo.

On a side note, I tried to keep every paragraph to 45 words as a challenge for this short film. Though I'm well under 600 words, I do believe I've worked nine times harder than I have for any blog post I've written to date.

This Entry Should Be Read Loud!

2011-12-17T13:26:00.000-08:00

In the previous two entries I had emphasized the desire in Scorsese's films to create their own realities, and I thought that what I would very cleverly do was use a documentary to discuss the ways Scorsese captures reality. Even having seen The Last Waltz twice in the past month, I failed to remember how "unreal" it is, and thus I'm going to spend yet another entry discussing how Scorsese creates reality in place of capturing it.

I fucking love The Last Waltz. I never want to write that again in a blog post, but there is something about the music in this film that makes me want to ignore my pretenses and just make bold and unrestrained comments. If you'll permit me one more, Van Morrison is the greatest human being ever.

Okay, now that's out of my system I want to say that this documentary goes out of its way to try and prove to you that this was a real event and the camera is only capturing the last performance of The Band. During interviews with the various members of The Band, Scorsese is featured prominently and they even discuss restarting scenes to make sure they get the right take. Even the short tracking shot with both Rich Danko and Scorsese walking through the studio feels like it wasn't intended to be part of the film, but was simply them setting up the next shot. The desire to be transparent is just too transparent.

So how does the The Last Waltz create its own reality? First, this concert features Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Eric Clapton, The Staple Singers, Dr. John, Emmy Lou Harris, Ringo Starr, Ron Wood, Neil Young, Neil Diamond, Muddy Waters, and yet it's about The Band. You might see a line up like this at a festival with each performer on stage for his/her own set with The Band as the featured guest. No concert like this could ever exist in this format. That's a fact.

Then there are the moments when the film cuts from the concerts and interviews to "live" performances on a sound stage. The Staple Singers perform, "The Weight," and Emmy Lou Harris performs "Evangeline." It's during the performance with Emmy Lou that again the camera work reveals just how much of a movie this is by showing the crew and the stage all working during the performance. What's even more bizarre is that there is absolutely no audience in attendance to watch either of these performances. Oh, and Robbie Robertson is clearly playing a fictional instrument during the performance of "The Theme of the Last Waltz."

I think the inclusion of the sound stage performances is part of what undoes the "reality" of this documentary. This and the fact that the film begins with the encore, all make us uncertain as to what it is we're watching and how we can orient ourselves in this film. This should be fairly easy as it's a live concert, but then again it isn't. Maybe it's like Robbie Robertson says in the film, this isn't a concert it's a celebration of sixteen years of touring and performing by The Band.

What I really want is for someone to write about having watched the concert to get a sense of what really happened because the film, though brilliant, is in no way an accurate portrayal of the concert. Again, this isn't a critique nor is my desire to have just a straight concert film, but I find it brilliant and at times frustrating to see someone use live events to create a completely different reality.

For the next film, I'm thinking I might watch the Age of Innocence as I have absolutely no desire to watch it, and think it's time to come down from my Last Waltz high. Oh, and though I didn't get a chance to comment on it, no one has done more cocaine than the cast of this film. Just ask Neil Young.

Martin Scorsese Day Two

2011-12-17T13:12:00.000-08:00

In order to prepare for the Scorsese marathon, I took a quick look at the films he's directed and decided to start with films I had not seen. I also felt it was prudent to look at the IMDB top 250 to see what films made it to the list. It's not surprising that an overwhelming number of the films that appear on the list were released after the invention of IMDB, and the rest of the list reads like a introduction to cinema class. This is no less true for Scorsese as The Departed (55) and Hugo (201) have made it to the list along with Goodfellas (15), Taxi Driver (43), Raging Bull (79), and Casino (165). The only reason I bring this list up is because The King of Comedy is definitely deserving of the same recognition as any one of these films.

It's perhaps trite to bring up that this film predicts the American future where people are unnaturally obsessed with celebrity and fame. Because of this, I will refrain from any further discussion about it even though the entire movie centers around one man's obsession with a late night talk show host. In many ways, I think it's unfortunate that this film isn't mentioned in the same breath as films 15, 43, and 79 as it is as good as anyone of them. I think it could be easily the greatest performance of De Niro in a Scorsese film, and I'd be hard pressed to find a film where Jerry Lewis is as impressive.

What's most impressive about this film is the way in which Scorsese is able to create a clear predator in Rupert Pupkin, but one that lacks any of the immediate intimidation of De Niro's more violent and aggressive characters. At times it's heartbreaking to watch Pupkin try to mold the reality in his head onto the world around him, yet it's also terrifying to watch a man so removed from reality ignore the clear markers of what is real. And did I mention that somehow all of this is funny?

And on top of all this, the film is absolutely beautiful and compelling from a cinematographic stand point. There are a number of moments in the film (Pupkin performing for his "studio audience," Sandra Bernhard having dinner with Jerry Lewis) that are striking when the film in no way needs to be visually compelling. Moreover, these moments of aesthetic achievement don't feel out of place because the film wonderfully complicates things by showing the reality of 1980s America with the reality that Rupert Pupkin is trying to create for himself. Without sure footing in either reality, the audience can just accept the film not just as either/or but as both/and. This film is both the world of 1980s America, and the world in which Rupert Pupkin is a star and a celebrity, and the audience does not have to make a choice.

What I loved most about this movie was the simple fact that at no point did I know what I was supposed to feel. It wasn't like the scenes in Raging Bull or Goodfellas when I knew I was supposed to feel horror or disgust. When Robert De Niro has taken Jerry Lewis hostage, I couldn't stop laughing and I couldn't stop feeling the overwhelming sense of anxiety that Rupert would always be a danger to himself.

Twelve Days of Scorsese

2011-12-17T13:05:00.000-08:00

Lydia pointed out last week that this year marks the blog's second most prolific output since its inception. In honor of this, I've decided to adapt a philosophy of quantity over quality and try to make 2011 the most prolific year in the blog's history. In order to achieve what I hope will be enough to put us over the mark, I've decided to watch and review the bulk of Martin Scorses's canon starting with Hugo, and then working my way through the highlights as I am able to get a hold of them.

Now, instead of using this post as a freebie and just reporting what I plan to do, this will be the first post of the series.

I should begin by saying I hate 3D movies, and I feel that 3D is a marketing ploy to make unwatchable films interesting. In reality, my hatred stems from the release of Avatar and the style of the 3D glasses. At the time I was wearing Ray-Ban Wayfarers as my normal prescription glasses, and somehow I was well ahead of the fashion curve. Sadly this would not last as the new world of 3D glasses would not be red and blue paper frames, but plastic frames modeled on the frames made famous by Jake and Elwood Blues. As I walked into the theater to see Avatar, some young pup proudly announced that my glasses were just like hers. I have yet to recover.

And as an aside, as someone who has to wear glasses regularly, the thought of wearing another pair of glasses over my glasses to watch a film is just awful.

All of this aside, Hugo is an absolutely brilliant film and a better argument for the transition from 2D to 3D than any film before it. As egregious a director as James Cameron can be, Avatar was a fine film and a great argument for 3D film making. However, the success of Hugo as a film stems from contextualizing the argument for 3D by showing the history of film making as one that constantly benefits from advances in technology.

In a flashback, Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley) is on the set of a film choreographing a fight between four men and four skeletons. In order to show the defeat of the skeletons, Méliès stops the camera from rolling any further, has the actors pause and hold their position to allow for them to disappear from the frame. Now only a few moments before, there is a scene where Méliès watches the Lumiere Brothers' film of the train pulling into the station, and we begin to understand that technology in the right hands makes "dreams come true." The step from filming reality to creating it through technological means is the same thing that is happening now with the transition from 2D to 3D. We could continue to make films in one way, but if there is potential to use the medium to create then we should embrace it.

Side note: It should be said that in many ways the argument could also be made that with absolutely no digital support, Georges Méliès made more stylistically innovative and brilliant films than most of the people working in movies today. If I had seen the 2D version of this film, I might have had a different impression of the film.

With my pride firmly past my larynx and on the way to my stomach, I do want to point out that the film makes a few bizarre choices. Primarily, the film is set in Paris a city which appears to be wholly devoid of French speaking people. Sadly, the film for all of its innovation falls back on the cliched American device of casting British people to represent any group of foreigners (think Dr. Zhivago, etc.). At times it was extremely grating, even when the acting was amazing. As the French say, "That's Life."

summer movie double dactyls

2011-12-13T14:29:00.001-08:00

Because I think everyone should be writing more double dactyls (aka higgledy piggledies), I'm sharing mine, left over from the summer. (It's harder to write silly poetry about the kind of movies I've seen lately.)

Captain America:
Higgledy-piggledy
Captain America
took on some nazis with
photoshop pecs.
After some cryo this
octogenarian
looks a lot better than
you might expect.

Xmen:
Higgledy-piggledy,
MacAvoy, Fassbender,
mind control, cameo,
decolletage.
Cameo, submarine,
psychoanalysis,
Fassbender, MacAvoy,
training montage.

That's the best I can do. Someone else's turn now.

(Note: with this post, 2011 is tied with 2008 as our second-postingest year! Total posts, not posts-per-month, which would be a ridiculous way to compare.)

About that

2011-12-11T17:19:00.001-08:00

From an email from Lydia, dated 6/1/10:

“maybe it was about the essential sameness ofSullivan's Travels and hipster fashion? About playing at poverty? I can'tremember. I think there were four things you put together into one thought, intwo pairs. But I cannot remember what they were.”

Yeah, aboutthat. First of all, I don't remember either. Second, apparently, we’ve all been talking about poverty chic foryears, and it's gone way past hipster. Now it's hobo weddings and super-cool looking homeless guys. Arrested Development had us pegged with this one.

Last summer, Quirk Books released a new title, Home Economics: Vintage Advice and Practical Science for the 21stCentury Household. It is ananthology designed to repurpose the traditional wisdom of a variety of women’smagazines and Home Ec guides for the modern woman, most especially women who,in a recession, see clearly the value of thrift. In her review of the book,Victoria Dutchman-Smith attacked the text as part of what she sees as a trendin modern media: “In the social context of the 21st century household, thisbook is not about saving money; it is all about thrift chic, how to be a goodlittle recessionista, a middle-class poverty tourist who, to misquote JarvisCocker, doesn’t just think but knows that poor is cool.”

Burn.

I'm interested in all of this, especially with regard to movies. As is already obvious I go to Design*Sponge for my information on how people are buying their way into looking like a movie. Don’t get me wrong. I love these movies, I love looking at them, and I love Design Sponge. That's precisely why it sits so ill with me that a site I usually like tells me to look better by imitating something really unsettling.

A year and a half after the above email, we're irked bythe aesthetic of Breaking Bad. They’re too folksie, in a super cultivated way.If we’re the Target class, why don’t we want to look that way? Why don’twe want our movies to look that way? And why at the expense of others? Make no mistake, it's frequently about this kind of expense. I submit the following for consideration:

Living in The Fantastic Mr. Fox (The cost of furniture featured in the post alone--carved out of a tree by thrifty foxes!--is $15,672.00)

Living in East of Eden (featuring a VintageFactory Cart, $795; and an antiqued bread board: 5. Bread Board,$55)

Living in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou (featuring Vintage 1940s Overalls, $125; and amazing commentary "The film oozes Southern charm of the Dust Bowl variety — suspenders and rocking chairs; front porches and mint juleps; escaped convicts and well-pomaded hair. Bluegrass sets the whole story on its feet, and wow, I was born in the wrong time.")

Living in Cider House Rules (amazing commentary: "Not many movies portray a New England fall better than The Cider House Rules. Setin Maine among apple orchards, rambling old buildings, seaside towns andlobster docks, it’s obvious why we crave the 1999 adaptation of John Irving’snovel when fall rolls around. Toby Maguire plays an orphan trained as a doctorwho struggles with the morality of providing health services to pregnantmothers who arrive at the orphanage. Moral dilemmas aside, we’d jump for joy tobe adopted into the scene.")

Living in Driving Miss Daisy (probably enough said, but check out this: "Driving Miss Daisy, where have you been all my life? Crotchety, sophisticated old ladies, sprawling southern mansions, classic cars, Morgan Freeman in suspenders, mahjong circles, driving gloves, the piggly wiggly. Seriously, a girl could base her life off stuff like this.")

Living in The Last of the Mohicans (enough said without items or commentary)

A lot of commentators say these trends are harmless, but when I look at the colonial Africa-themed wedding, I don't believe that. This post, by the way, is a lot more serious than I intended it to be, but I started googling and just got...distressed. That said, I love Sullivan's Travels. I just really love it. It says a lot of what's been said, but less directly and more effectively. You'd do better to watch it than to read this.

Spoiler Alert

2011-12-11T09:54:00.001-08:00

I generally think spoiler alerts are funny. I don't really know why. I also at times find anarchy enthusiasts funny. This stems from many things, most particularly my tendency INTENSELY IDENTIFY WITH ANARCHY ENTHUSIASTS.

So generally, I think this post by the local anarchist collective to be the singularly most humorous thing I've seen in days. Nothing ruins a good Die Hard movie night like a stiff dose of politics and an eager desire warn the public about any unexpected fun they might not have.

Speaking of movies and wearable items...

2011-12-09T05:04:00.001-08:00

Design*Sponge has done a "Living In" for Fargo. I'm really loving it, as I want snow so badly this week.

awards season: handmade edition, 2011

2011-12-05T07:29:00.001-08:00

For those of us who love to make things with our hands, there can be no better model of precision, piecework, and attention to detail than Antonio Banderas's Robert Ledgard, the mad scientist at the center of the newest Almodovar film, The Skin I Live In (La Qiel Que Habito). I am a quilter, and while my medium is usually calico and his is mostly human skin, I feel a certain kinship with him, as he struggles to match a corner.

my next quilt may be entirely taupe

previously on NTC, handmade movies: 2010 2008

2011-11-16T05:50:00.001-08:00

"The two most important things that can happen to you in a mainstream movie are being killed and having an orgasm."

Ebert gets down to business.

Drive

2011-11-02T06:09:00.000-07:00

Other people in the theater did not like Drive as much as I did. I think I understand why--it's very slow and when it is not slow it is very brutal. If you went there to see Ryan Gosling looking pretty, and driving fast, you could reasonably feel disappointed. If your objection to the movie is that it lacks a moral center though, I think you have missed the point. I think the joke is on you, for thinking you could get your morals from the movies in the first place. Drive is an examination not just of violence,but of violence in the movies. It is a movie about movies.

Drive is all dressedup as an eighties movie. The music, the scribbly pinktext of the credits, the costumes (especially ChristinaHendricks in one particularly rad acid-washed tight gray hoodie), the way the romantic relationship develops mostly in eye contact and awkward silences--every scene that is notdrenched in blood feels like it would be right at home in Some Kindof Wonderful or Pretty in Pink.

The main character, who does not have a name, is a stunt driver. When he puts on a mask and gets in a police car he will drive for the scene, then we see the car crash and flip over, it is impossible not to think about the other stunt driver, the guy who is really actually driving that car in that scene. I am not saying it is staggeringly original, but it is layered--there is Ryan Gosling, then there is the character he is playing ("driver"), who is wearing the face of another actor, but inside that costume is actually another actor, a real-life stunt driver. Albert Brooks (scary Albert Brooks!) plays a film producer/investor/criminal--he talks about the european action movies he used toproduce—he thought they were shitty, in case you were wondering. Incase you were wondering whether the movies are terrible and corrupt? Oh yes,they are.

There is a scene in an elevator. A bad guy, and Carey Mulligan, and Goslingis there to keep her safe, and she doesn't really know. Like the restof the movie, this scene is mostly silent. Then in slow motion,Gosling moves the girl into the corner, in slow motion he kisses her,and the lights of the elevator obligingly dim to match the action ofthe scene. This is the sort of thing that happens in movies. The lights come back and the kiss ends, and Gosling beatsthe bad guy to death with his hands and feet, literally crushing hisskull under his heel. The violence in this moment is astonishing, and as Carey Mulligan backs slowly out of the elevator, she seems to hold a lot of different emotions in balance on her face: shock, fear, disappointment, confusion, bewilderment. And maybe I'm overreaching here, but I think the reaction is sadness and regret, and also betrayal: he is thinking, What did you expect?

That's what the movie was saying, to those ladies behind me who groaned when Albert Brooks deocculated a guy with a fork, and giggled when Ron Perlman said "fuck" for the five-hundredth time. You came to the movies--you aren't here for a nonviolent resolution, or for complicated depthy characters. You came here for some cowboy violence and some fast driving. Careful what you wish for.

Jane Eyre

2011-11-01T13:37:00.000-07:00

The first time I read Jane Eyre, I was just the right age to swoon over the romance of the whole thing. I liked Jane because she was just like me—she too had felt isolated! She had suffered injustice—adults had misunderstood and judged her. Like me, she read books. She was chock full of faith and morality, but she saw that there is hypocrisy in religion. We had everything in common. When Jane started crushing on the boss, I was right there with her.

Jane has intellectual reasons to like Rochester; unlike everyone else she has ever met, he treats her with a certain kind of respect, as a conversational sparring partner. He recognizes her intelligence. But she also likes him because he is a perfect bad boy. He is mean and unforgiving of people in general. He treats her differently, and it is very pleasant to be friends with a bully—to be one of the few people liked by a mean snob.

Rochester has a mysterious dark side. And he likes Jane not in spite of her nerdiness, but because of it. He likes her because she is bookish and smart and above all good. He thinks she can save him, and he warns her not to. Who could resist?

I read Jane Eyre again in college, and I hated it in the way you only hate things you are very interested in. Thatsummer, I told Cindy I was so angry about the story, I wanted to rewrite it from the perspective of Bertha, the crazy wife in the attic. She said, “Um, have you heard of The Wide Sargasso Sea?” I had wanted the book before I knew it existed, which shows hownecessary the book is; it is impossible to read Jane Eyre now without wanting to know more about the mad first wife.

To me in college, it seemed obvious that Rochester was a run-of-the-mill abusive spouse, first to Bertha and then to Jane. I thought Jane's only desire was to conform to a very conventional idea of heterosexual love. I had no time for Jane's “master” this and“sir” that. In this reading, she rejected St. John not because he was too pragmatic or too conventional, but because he was not brutalenough, and love—in all heterosexual relationships, in my world view, in 1996—is synonymous with masculine cruelty. Iguess I thought Jane chose Rochester as the best of limited bad options. Now I see that I was wrong about that.

The thing is, Jane did not return to Rochester until she had better options on every front. She was financially independent. More important than the money, she had found in the Rivers siblings the one thing she had never had outside of Thornfield—a family of intelligent, good people who liked and respected her. Returning to Rochester was not a compromise—I'll take a little bullying in exchange for intellectual stimulation. No, she went back to him because he dominated her, not in spite of it. She chose to be mastered, freely and on her own terms. That's why Jane is a radical and difficult kind of feminist hero. There is this scene in Jane Eyre, when Rochester confesses that he loves Jane, and asks her to marry him. He insists that she call him by his Christian name, and she does, just once. She immediately reverts to “master” and “sir,” because she likes it that way.

None of this is about the latest Jane Eyre movie, or any of the other Jane Eyre movies. I have seen a lot of film versions of the story, and they never really get it right. Almost always they soften the relationship between Jane and Rochester. He is more likeable and younger than he should be, and Jane is older. Every film version I have seen simplifies (or completely erases—which makes for some very strange and confusing voiceover from Joan Fontaine in that version) the story of the Rivers family. I think the best Jane and Rochester are Charlotte Gainsbourg and William Hurt, because she is odd-looking and he is over twenty years older than she is. But I think that is the worst movie, because it removes all the coincidences and the supernatural.

I do not know if it is possible to make a great movie version of this story, in part because it is long, and in part because it issubjective—for instance, Jane and Rochester both talk a lot about how unattractive they both are, and I like leaving the reliability oftheir judgment somewhat up to the imagination. I would like a movie version of Jane Eyre that is appropriately dark. It does not need to be six hours long, but it should be long enough to dedicate the necessary time to the story of the Rivers family, which is long andslow and, yes, ultimately, a little absurd. It should be totally sincere when it turns out that Jane and the Rivers siblings are long-lost cousins, and it should be equally sincere when Jane hears Rochester's voice from miles away, by magic. And in my version Janeloves Rochester in the end less because his transformation makes him humble than because it makes him into a sideshow freak.

Law and Order Sightings

2011-10-09T15:54:00.000-07:00

Law & Order is now streaming on Netflix! Not the smutty SVU kind. NO. Original kind. It's awesome, and very very very dated. There are scenes where the cameras are positively out of focus. It's the Dark Shadows of early 90s courtroom dramas.

This may be the inaugural post of a series I Law & Order sightings: big name stars before they were big, playing all kinds of riff raff. Behold below: Is that Phillip Seymore Hoffman? As a drug-addled defendant? But wait, who is his attorney? Could it be Samuel L. Jackson?

Yes. Yes it is. Enjoy.

Clarification on mothers and adult children of mothers in movies

2011-10-06T09:48:00.000-07:00

Angela Lansbury was born in October of 1925, which means she was about 37 when The Manchurian Candidate came out in 1962, and Laurence Harvey, who played her son, was three years younger.

North by Northwest came out in 1959, which would make Cary Grant 55. Jessie Royce Landis, who played his mother, was eight years older than he was.

Amy Poehler talked (in some video I can't find) about the age difference between her and Rachel McAdams who played her daughter in Mean Girls. Poehler was 33 in 2004 and McAdams was 26.

Speaking of North by Northwest, the second half of this episode of Selected Shorts is a pretty great story called Cary Grant's Suit.

Buried

2011-09-29T10:17:00.000-07:00

All I have to say about this movie--and it is high praise--is this: I watched it all the way to the end. I really didn't think that would happen. I expected one of two things: 1. there would be some parts that were not just me and Ryan Reynolds, trapped in a tiny box. You know, a flashback or something. Or 2. I would fall asleep before the end. I didn't fall asleep. And (spoiler alert) he is never not in that box.

mystery movie chat

2011-09-29T10:04:00.000-07:00

I just came across this chat from April of 2009.

Why does Kristin think Simon Pegg is in love with Tom Cruise? I also believe that now, but only since hearing him on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me recently.

More important: WHAT MOVIE WERE WE TALKING ABOUT?
11:11 AM Kristin: SERIOUSLY? he's dateable because his dad wrote a book of philosophy

me: plus, Einstein - live for other people or whatever?

11:12 AM Kristin: yeah, cause there's no one else to quote if you study philosophy

11:13 AM also, do novelists only come from small towns in the midwest??

11:14 AM because that makes me a sweet girl and brilliant writer who's simply the victim of big city circumstance!

me: I don't know.

She didn't like publish her novel though, right?

Kristin: i don't know i'm still mid movie

well, towards the end

11:15 AM me: I love how in the movies people are always like "I'm working for a little literary magazine." like it's not glamorous but it pays the bills. Like jobs at little literary magazines are basically the same as jobs at McDonald's.

Kristin: i know.

what a crapfest.

11:17 AM me: he's not even cute or funny

there was exactly one place in the whole movie where I smiled in response to something that happened

Kristin: mostly i gape at how horrible

11:18 AM me: yeah I was just slightly angry most of the time I was watching

11:19 AM Kristin: oh. she's so michigan.

me: but I'm usually slightly angry

did she point to her hand?

Kristin: ?

me: you know, to say where she was from

wait, is she from port huron?

that's where Kelly is from

or is she from another port

11:20 AM Kristin: oh! no not yet

me: no, I don't think she does that

Kristin: yes huron

me: that was just the only thing I could think of that michigan people do

Kristin: they're also sort of quiet. understanted. kind.

me: oh,

Kristin: you know. it comes from being so rural.

me: like eminim

11:21 AM Kristin: yes! or people from detroit.

me: kid rock

ted nugent

I get it

good people

Kristin: bruce...campbell...

shit i know no one from michigan.

famous i mean.

11:22 AM me: madonna

Kristin: really???

me: just think of wholesome people

Kristin: do we really believe stars behave this way?

Kristin: naked all the time?

who is the actress we're told is his mother?

me: no idea

is she a real actress?

Kristin: no i assume made up.

i mean, an actress in life, but i assume the movies are fake?

11:26 AM

11:31 AM and seriously, does this girl only love one movie?

ah nice, the scene where he rides the woman. appropriate.

11:32 AM wow in all of new york there's about 20 people at this screening

11:33 AM oh! in order to kiss her he flippantly tosses her novel aside!

immediate engagement ring!

11:34 AM wait. the comedic ending is that he burned her novel?

me: hilarious

Kristin: well she doesn't need it. now she has a man who certainly she can find at the bars.

me: and she's like "oops!"

doesn't she look like she's worried about him getting hurt?

not shocked that her life's work is destroyed?

Kristin: yes. yes she does.

me: although, she's probably spent a lot of time preparing herself emotionally for that eventuality

11:35 AM Kristin: true

me: since she's writing her novel longhand in a tiny book she carries around in her purse

Kristin: it's a short story really

just enough to bide the time till she meets someone

me: I love her writing process

11:36 AM "Well, my boyfriend isn't here yet, I guess I'll write my novel for a while while I'm waiting for him at the bar."

11:37 AM Kristin: "sigh. hes not going to make it. that's enough writing tonight."

me: I mean, we're not supposed to believe that she uses that notebook to jot down thoughts about her novel

we're to believe that that IS her novel

Kristin: right

it's the unrevised original full length novel

11:38 AM several pages of which are gone from wine

maybe the alcohol explains why it went up in flames so quickly. why didn't her friends intervene?

11:39 AM me: maybe they were too shocked

by the blocking the view

Kristin: ugh that bothered me.

me: the fact that she was just like "oh this shithead is here, I guess I'll kiss him on the mouth"

Kristin: "yes! he's datable now that he's a total loser again."

11:40 AM i mean honestly, are we supposed to believe assholes are great guys because the only other option is sell out?

me: I hate it when epiphanies have no evidence to support them in movies

Kristin: how OLD are we/

me: I feel like you should always include in the formula a period of weeks or months in which he actually redeems himself

between the moment of realization and the culminating kiss/engagement/burning of novel

11:41 AM I feel like we could write a better script, even though we are so boring

Kristin: i will make a movie where a total asshole wants to get the girl and is thwarted by her successful dickish boyfriend. in the end both men will be left with only the other, and the realization that they are two sides to the exact same personality.

me: I don't object to formula

Kristin: i don't either!

11:42 AM formula is fun! hence magnetic fields!

me: can the two men then realize that they hate women so much they can only have sex with each other

Kristin: y.e.s.

can the successful man be played by tom cruise? i now believe that simon peg is in fact desperately in love with tom cruise.

11:43 AM me: i want you to also watch ghost town now

Kristin: i rented hound dog and just buried

michael and i will watch one at 6:30 if you care ot join us.

me: a movie in which the woman chooses the putzy twit instead of very good looking human rights lawyer

like he's good in every way

but she picks Ricky Gervais because...

11:44 AM I think it's because he made a funny semi-racist joke

Kristin: of course! he's irreverent.

fucking sellouts.

me: the premise of the joke was the chinese names often sound like slang english terms for penises

oh ho ho ho

Kristin: with their cultural understanding.

me: long wang dong!

11:45 AM ha ha ha !!!!

I don't want to see Hound Dog

I didn't know I didn't want to see it until I saw how many copies they have at Top Ten

11:46 AM Kristin: i have rented one of those copies

me: that's the dakota fanning rape movie, right?

Kristin: yes

me: you're not wrong to do so

I'm the irrational one

Kristin: it appears to be a movie in which a white girl teaches a black man about the blues.

should be great.

2011-09-19T08:42:00.000-07:00

Is it possible James Franco has competition?

Also: Go Hoosiers.

On Netflix, and on not being the person you wish you were when you created your queue

2011-09-04T11:24:00.000-07:00

Almost two years ago I blogged about first setting up my Netflix account. I was so thrilled to have access to movies I couldn't find at any local video store. At 10:15 Sept 17, 2009 my Netflix queue was:

Rudo i Cursi
~~An American Werewolf in London~~
Chandni Chowk to China
O'Horten
The Class
~~Good Dick~~
~~Departures~~
Guest of Cindy Sherman
~~Herb and Dorothy~~
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
Soul Power
Tokyo Sonata
~~The Garden~~
Eden Log
Frontrunners
Shiver
Splinter
a *lot* of Doctor Who

I have struck out the movies I have actually watched in the ensuing two years. You know what I did with the rest of my time?

Law and Order: SVU.

The trashiest of all Law and Orders.

2011-09-04T10:30:00.000-07:00

An old friend recently posted something online about watching a movie called Broken, which he identified as one of the most disturbing things he's seen in a long time. I spent the next few minutes searching around for information about it, and discovered that it has some pretty spectacular reviews on Amazon. Below are some of my favorites excerpts:

Some annoying whimpering that we could've done without. The kidnapper was a cross between Crocodile Dundee and Indiana Jones dress wise. Personality wise, he was just dull dull dull. I dunno, man.

The only thing that made this movie upsetting was finding out it's based on truth.*

We basically know nothing at all. Including who he is, why he tortures people, why he chose Hope, how he captured her, what the point of sewing a razor into her stomach was, and why the hell he insists on wearing this ugly hat. It really isn't menacing at all. [see photo.]

i really like the sustained undercurrent of evil tension and fear throughout the entire movie. perhaps it is the fact that the bad guy has moments of "could you call it" appreciation for his victims...

A woman wakes up trapped in a wooden box. Not sure how she got there, she's just there. Man, talk about freaky!

Yes, it makes SAW look like HEEHAW. The harsh bloody events grate on your mind and turn your soul into shredded cheese. Brooootal.

BROKEN STARTS OFF LIKE IT WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MOVIE. THIS MOVIE IS STRANGE.

I've watched a depressing number of movies today that have scenes which can only be called unapologetic filler.

Okay, so maybe the guy wasn't all snips and snails and puppy dog tails...**

Lots of screaming in some parts, which may be seen as irritating.

The best part of the movie was the haunting music from Mortiis. It added the only element of emotion.

Extreme and Demented! Just the Way I Like Them. By now you must believe that I'm demented or something. Good assumption. I work at it...by watching such horrific films as "BROKEN".

A hackneyed attempt to duplicate the gore in saw without any of the plot line.***

*I could find no confirmation of this anywhere, and based on the plot outlines I don't see how any of it could be confirmed.

**Isn't he? Isn't that poem all about how little girls are edible and little boys are dismembering cannibals? Let's check: "sugar and spice and everything nice" vs. "snips and snails and puppy dog tails." You decide.

***This viewer longs for the intricate plot development of the saw movies. LOOK ON YOUR WORKS, HOLLYWOOD, AND DESPAIR.

[photo: I agree the hat is not menacing. It is possible the hat is more prominently featured in the film than in the grainy trailer I found, from which this screenshot is taken.]

2011-08-24T06:19:00.000-07:00

Lydia: please write a spec script for Law & Order in which someone says, "As a professional psychologist, I endorse their views. You are crazy. Or mentally retarded. Actually, as a computer scientist, I can endorse the "robot" hypothesis as well."

Psychologist: Patient:

My Son, My Son, What Have You Done?

2011-08-17T18:34:00.001-07:00

Curious after my last post I watched My Son, My Son, What Have You Done?, which is streaming on Netflix. By "I watched" I supposes I mean "I am Watching." It's pretty much what you expect--a study of someone with a serious problems, loosely based on reality, and existential at great length. It has some weird acting and some even weirder dialog. I wasn't surprised to find that there was not a lot of time invested in writing the film: "Herzog became convinced that they could make a film and that they could write it quickly. They went to a house in the Austrian countryside: Herzog set a week's deadline and within 4½ days they had their screenplay."

You can really feel the extra half a day's effort--especially in the scenes where Herzog has the actors freeze the scene for a long still shot. Sevigny does a fairly good job of staying still.

There aren't any albino crocodiles, but there is a too-long conversation about ostriches.

I can't guarantee I will finish this.

[photo: I didn't]

Big Love

2011-08-11T11:48:00.000-07:00

In keeping with my attempts to wrap up everything I said I'd do this summer, today I finished watching Big Love. The series sort of finished behind my back, and even though it looks like a lot of people were debating the series finale online, I somehow missed the discussion, and had to catch up. So, to add to the rabble just a bit too late, here are my thoughts:

First, lot of people complained about the show's climax. I will not be one of them. If I learned one thing from Jurassic Park, it's that the enemy you have most to fear is not the one before you, but the one that lies in wait hidden. So it is with dinosaurs and so it shall ever be with politics.

Though I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call Big Love "thought provoking," I have to admit to feeling the final season left me with a lot to think about. I'm not one to object to plural marriage. I tend to think marriage should be left entirely to churches, and that definitions about who can constitute a single marital unit should be defined by those particular groups, leaving the government out of it except in investigating abuses. So I didn't expect that I would be one to feel judgmental about the relationships bridging Bill, Barb, Nicki, and Margene. I realized as I watched the series conclude that I'm totally wrong about this. I've been consistently waiting for this marriage to fail. I've seen Nicki as the Villain, Margene as the Victim, and Barb as the Real Wife. I saw Barb as trapped in a house of crazy people because of a bad decision made on her death bed; I saw Margene abused by a motley crew of people who couldn't possibly love her; I hated Nicki without much thought.

The final two seasons and the final episode really changed my perspective. This show was never about Bill and his bed-hopping; it was always about a very delicate, if sometimes dreadful, relationship between the three principle women. Barb sacrifices monogamy, but she doesn't lose Bill. Nicki is hateful, yes, but Barb loves her anyway. Margene sacrifices absolutely everything, but she gains a family in return. These three sister wives are less sisters and more one another's wives, and I think beyond all of the drama on the compound, this show actually did a great job of showing what a successful marriage might look like between three people. I say three and not four because Bill, in my estimation, fails where his wives succeed. He makes no compromises, lives only for his own vision, and thus cheats himself and those around him of the rich relationship that results from continual mutual grown and accomodation. I suspect from the series finale that the writers felt this too and saw a real need to turn the focus to Barb, Nicki, and Margene.

I also feel a weird disconnect between where the show left off--with polygamy newly highlighted as a debate in American politics--and where we actually live, in a nation happy to praise the characters on this show (as they do--in countless comments sections of episode reviews, and on message boards about the show), but not to rethink our legal ban of the practice. So, Big Love has finished, as has the Warren Jeffs trial. It's the end of an era. I have absolutely no idea what I'll pay attention to now when I want plural marriage scandals, or gratuitous compound footage. Cheers to you, Big Love. Thanks for keeping Chloe Sevigne away from upsetting movies like Gummo, at least part time.*

*But, did it? Apparently she made a Herzog movie** at the same time.

**I might have to see that.

NOOOOOOOooooooo!

2011-08-10T10:39:00.000-07:00

This unsubstantiated rumor might not be true, but that won't stop me whining.
http://nearwestendnews.net/2011/08/09/westhampton-theater-to-become-upscale-restaurant

Note: the Westhampton theater, especially upstairs, is very small and very cramped. Even I feel like the seats are too close together, and I am very short-legged. I don't care.I still don't want it to be converted into another restaurant I will never go to.

I would actually sort of like to see our NTC participants post about their own pivotal movies or movie decades.

2011-07-31T14:46:00.000-07:00

I tried recently to come up with a big list of "the movies that made me love movies" or something like that. I was thinking of making a movie-themed redwork quilt. (I'm probably not ever going to do that.)

The first movie I saw in a theater was Annie. My grandmother took me to see it, and I was pretty scandalized by all Carol Burnett's bad behavior. Confession: I still think of Tim Curry as Rooster before Frank-N-Furter, or Wadsworth or whatever else you think of him as. This guy probably:

Labyrinth. The first movie I bought myself on video. Followed closely by And Now For Something Completely Different. It is a very reassuring feeling, owning a movie, knowing that you can see it whenever you want to, and pause it, or start over when it's done. It seems so obvious now, but it was a revelation in 1990 or so.

It's a Wonderful Life and Harvey. I had a record of Jimmy Stewart reading Winnie the Pooh stories when I was a kid. He was the first movie star I felt a personal attachment to. Celebrity culture is one of the weirdest aspects of being a movie lover/watcher/fan. You come to feel as if you know these people, and it's rare (and sort of a relief) to see the occasional movie without familiar faces in it. On the other hand, sometimes you like a movie just because of who is in it...

Dead Poets Society. The first time I remember loving and hating a movie at the same time, which is a really important part of my experience of movies. I fought with people about what was left out (e.g. any women, any poet born after 1900), but I also toted around my mother's copy of The Viking Book of Poetry of the English Speaking World all that summer while I worked at my first job, selling dried flowers to tourists in an alley in Kennebunkport. Parts of Leaves of Grass still remind me of the aggressive scent of lemon verbena and rose potpourri.

Heathers. The first movie that I watched so many times I could recite most of it from memory. It is hard to watch now, because..well, because it's kind of bad. I don't remember why it was so great then. Speaking of things I no longer understand my adolescent fondness for (I'm talking about Winona Ryder), I saw Edward Scissorhands at The Movies on Exchange in Portland, and I was sad for days afterwards, thinking about...you know, mortality and stuff.

The Fisher King. Oh how I loved The Fisher King. I saw other Terry Gilliam movies earlier, and others are better, but The Fisher King is the one that got inside my head, made me incredibly sad, and made me keep thinking about it. I was fifteen when that movie came out. Amanda Plummer's mean, novel-reading character was named Lydia. That alone would probably have won me over.

There were a whole series of sort of smarty-pants movies that I rented and watched by myself, in the back room of the dance studio where my mother was working, or in my room on a tiny black and white TV. These are movies that made me think, made me feel smart and stupid in turn. The Seventh Seal, Mindwalk, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Jesus of Montreal. I am not sure I understood all of the issues raised in these movies. They made me realize that watching a movie can be hard work, and that it can be worth it.

Finally, I remember going to the Nickelodeon theater in Portland, where they showed second run movies for $2. It was a hot day, and I watched Scent of a Woman then immediately went back and watched Benny & Joon. That was the first time I went to see a movie alone, and I loved it so much I did it twice in the same day.

The funny thing about my list of movies that mattered to me is how many of them are not movies I ever need to see again. Even Harvey, which I would have named as my favorite movie for many years, seems a little trite these days, if I'm honest. Does everyone feel this way? The stuff that made you who you are, do you still love that stuff? Are you embarrassed by it? Do you cling defensively--or proudly--to nostalgia for terrible things you loved when you were thirteen?

Sherlock

2011-07-29T16:17:00.000-07:00

So...um, yes. Like all of you, I watched series I of Sherlock with total glee, and have been fantasizing about the second series since. Like so many of the BBC Masterpiece anthologies, it was too short for something so delightful, and I find myself wishing it would wear out its welcome with about 20 more episodes this season. Alas.

So, as you can imagine, when I saw that Tor was doing a quick review of various imaginings of Holmes (emphasis on quick--I wouldn't mind something a little more pedantically comprehensive) I followed the jump to read the whole article. I read through without much surprise until I came to this:

"Benedict Cumberbatch"

I am trying to keep my squeals to a mature minimum, but is this, for truth, his name? PLEASE tell me my thus far favorite Holmes adaptation stars Dickensian gentry?

Thad has been insisting we name our first dog "Beric Dondarrion the Lightning Lord," but I'm going to have to vote "Benedict Cumberbatch" for any animal fond of radishes, or exhibiting signs of gout.

Higgledy piggledy,
Benedict Cumberbatch
breaks the Shakespearean
rule with his name.

In TV history
certainly others have
played Sherlock Holmes, but it
isn't the same.

[Photo: Benedict Cumberbatch demands more Higgledy Piggledies!]

Horror isn't just...

2011-07-15T07:10:00.000-07:00

Horror isn't just for perverts and lowbrows anymore. Whether the undead pose a threat to serious art is unclear. What I'm more concerned about is the danger serious art poses to the undead.

Jason Zinoman in Slate

Metablogging: The new impulse of NTC

2011-07-15T07:00:00.000-07:00

Diabolique is the "Critic's Pick" today over at the New York Times film reviews. The review itself is short and consists mostly of plot summary, but I thought it still warranted mention here as an old favorite. For the truly committed some of the comments are more substantial than the review itself.

Also, The Casual Optimist has an interview with David Kehr, author of When Movies Mattered. I feel weirdly about the title, and about the premise, that there is something special about movies made from 1974-1986.* The numbers seem so arbitrary to me, like when people claim music really happened in 1969. I suppose Kehr's project is much more autobiographical then actually historic, and I would actually sort of like to see our NTC participants post about their own pivotal movies or movie decades. I have no idea what would be mine, except that it would probably be movie posters and VHS covers rather than the movies themselves.

*I also feel weird about Kehr's claim that he "stumbled into film journalism because [he] didn't want to go to grad school." WAS THAT AN OPTION FOR ME?

TEAM CARDIGAN FTW

2011-07-15T05:17:00.000-07:00

Honestly, this picture, from this i09 article, made me want to see the movie (and the last one, which I haven't gotten around to either) more than anything else has. I'll have to dig out my "Team Neville" Tshirt...

Whoooooaaaa..

2011-07-12T16:21:00.001-07:00

I love the new look of NTC. I was thinking of making a banner, but this site is now way too classy for banners.

I will be reviewing only equally lovely films: French new wave, Hitchcock, Tarkovsky. It's a new day.

P.S. I bought more Rex Stout novels today. Summer Victory!

Quick thoughts on Inception...

2011-06-26T08:06:00.000-07:00

So I just watched Inception nearly thirty years after its release (or so it would seem in some circles). The plot was predictable and kind of uninspired, but I do know that I want all future films to star Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (and Lukas Haas), Tom Hardy, and Cillian Murphy. Or James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender and the aforementioned 4-5 actors.

Tree of Life, Thor, and Gustav Klimt

2011-06-22T06:09:00.000-07:00

As a welcomed break from all films blockbuster and lackluster, Lydia and I went to see The Tree of Life. Bizarrely, this is the second mention of yggdrasil in theaters as Thor deftly renders physics unnecessary with some folksy, religious descriptions about how all things are literally connected by the branches of the tree of life. Little did we know that Kenneth Branagh and Terrence Malick were making the same film using different source materials.

I'll only make one more reference to Thor before moving on to spend what could be possibly days talking about The Tree of Life and my desire to make a top ten list of Malick's films (he only has six to his credit if you don't count his student work). The stuff that Thor is made of is really quite simple. It's the comic book and Doris Day and Rock Hudson films. Everyone smiles, everything works out in the end, and it's all because of their plucky outlook on life.

For Malick I think there are two primary sources that feed into the creation of his film. The first one is Gustav Klimt's Tree of Life, which I think speaks to the film's sense of all things being connected. What is a joke in Adaptation about where to begin a story, for Malick is the big revelation about the interconnectedness of all things. Klimt's painting is perhaps the film zoomed out to capture everything in a single frame. As we zoom forward we perceive individual moments part of the larger whole. Malick conversely focuses on the branches (no, there will be no puns about forest for trees, etc.), and rarely gives us any clue that what we are seeing (until the end) is all part of something much larger. The sun, water, grass, dinosaurs, bb guns, and death are all connected and are all a part of some thing. In some reviews I think this is being misconstrued as an argument for religion and the existence of God, but Malick is more complex than that. This leads me to my second source.

The search for God is here more a search for the narrative of existence and our desire to put some order on all of the things that have happened. After all this isn't a story about the development from nothingness to man, but from nothingness to the death of a man. In this way I think Malick is borrowing heavily from the ideas and aesthetics (less heavily) of Andrei Tarkovsky, specifically Solaris (not Solaris or Sunshine). The camera pauses for long periods to study the movement of water, nebulas, and snakes which leaves you awestruck with the beauty of it all. For both directors, the point seems to be not to focus on the why and how, but on the is. Life is full of wonder, beauty, chaos and pain, but this is enough. We don't need to find out what lies beneath because the majesty of it all is on the surface. I think this also speaks to the voice-overs which are at times redundant, obvious, or incoherent. Ultimately, the attempts by the characters to provide some sort of insight don't actually provide anything. And with that, I will stop my insight and leave you be.

I just realized something

2011-06-14T13:02:00.000-07:00

as part of my marathon community/packing session:

Abed's "My Dinner With Andre" outfit is a modified shirt/cardigan combo for adults:

______________

Edited by LN: I just discovered that I can edit your posts. I had no idea! I feel drunk with power. Think of all the terrible things I can attribute to you! And vice versa...

I'd like to think that the wardrobe inspired the episode. Dan Harmon was watching MDwA, and was like, "That guy is wearing a fine cardigan. Abed would look awesome in that cardigan."

Okay, that's all. I won't edit anyone else's posts again.
-L

Wacky, all around.

2011-06-11T17:51:00.001-07:00

Since Jessie found and Lydia forwarded that awesome clip from Cougar Town I thought I'd share this:

A Cougar Town - Community Metaverse

Also: are you people aware that people in Canada can't watch Hulu? THAT IS THE PRICE YOU PAY FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE.

I knew it couldn't be perfect up here.

Though honestly? I predict Hulu will soon be replaced by something better with only one commercial per break because, you know, two commercials is on the way to being exactly like regular tv.

And that's bullshit you guys.

Wedding Movies 1: Something Borrowed

2011-06-04T11:03:00.000-07:00

Jessie and I have resumed our semi-regular movie nights, and we have seen a series of weddings. I'm going to try to think of something brief to say about each of them.

Something Borrowed is a dull movie, senseless and unconvincing, with almost nothing to recommend it. The best thing I can say about it is that it reminded me a little of a feeling I had when I watched The Switch, that this movie was the fraternal twin of a sadder, quieter movie I would have liked more (which is to say, at all). There were moments when I could imagine this was supposed to be a sort of bitter-sweet, sentimental, romantic movie that might have starred Barbra Streisand in the 70s. But then right away it gets back to g-rated wiener jokes and physical comedy.

It is in the first ten minutes of the movie that Rachel, played by Ginnifer Goodwin, has an impulsive, one-night affair with her best friend's fiance. What follows is a series of bad decisions, and there is no possible redemption for the unpleasant people who populate the film. John Krasinksi's Ethan is a fugitive from that better movie I was talking about, in which there are characters with human feelings, like compassion and humor. Apart from him, everyone is secretive and dishonest and heartless. As I watched, I could not envision a happy ending for the movie, but I was comforted to realize that I didn't particularly want a happy ending for any of the characters. I walked away asking a series of questions: Why do the country club parents prefer the party girl over the sensible lawyer? Why doesn't Rachel ever say to Darcy (Kate Hudson), "I was into this guy, and you knew I was into him, and you got engaged to him, and that's a kind of a betrayal."? Why does she like the pretty boy and not the much more interesting, funny, and decent Ethan? Why did the pretty boy get engaged to Darcy in the first place, when they clearly have no chemistry and no affection for each other? When in fact the only thing they really have in common is that they both enjoy betraying and ignoring Rachel? Finally, why, why, why does anyone expect me to believe that Ginnifer Goodwin is so unpretty that strangers would stare in judgment and disbelief at the sight of her with a handsome soap actor?

try not to throw up when you look at this hideous monster

p.s. I just remembered that Something Borrowed is a very famous and popular book I know nothing about. That's something it has in common with The Switch, although I have a feeling that the book Something Borrowed is not as much less cheerful than the movie as Jeffrey Eugenides' story is less cheerful than The Switch. I can't be sure, having not read either of them.

Bones vs Castle

2011-06-03T22:03:00.000-07:00

Most people I know who watch Castle also watch Bones. In a way, this makes sense; both are hour-long murder mystery shows, available online. Both have smart strong leading women, and lots of gore. But I gave up on Bones a long time ago. Erica asked me, very reasonably, to explain the difference between them--I mean, the difference that makes me love the one and hate the other. Exactly what she said is this: "Remind me about the differences between Castle and Bones... cuz they usually have exactly the same murder scenarios." She's right, of course. And not only do they have the same plots, they are each other's top recommendations on Hulu--an indication that the list of people who watch both shows is not limited to Erica, Dave, and my mother.

Becket vs Bones: creepy smiling contest

Both shows have sort of freaky-looking, excessively angular female leads who give oddly flat performances. I prefer looking at Stana Katic over Emily Deschanel. It is purely subjective, and you are allowed to disagree.

The male leads (both Joss Whedon alums, for whatever that's worth) are similarly...nope, there's just no contest here. Both are sort of rugged masculine dorks, but come on. No question, Nathan Fillion is as much better in every way than David Boreanaz as...well, as Firefly is better than Angel.

In many ways, Bones is more of a science fiction show than a detective/police show. It is full of implausible futuristic scientific devices, and most of the characters are scientists, not detectives. This does not automatically make Bones a worse show, but it sets the bar higher for certain things. Because Bones is so willing to toss around fancy imaginary technology, and break all the rules of the natural world, it should be much MORE creative, and instead it is, as E pointed out, pretty much the exact same murder mysteries.

Both shows have flat secondary characters, but Bones makes me scratch my head and make horrible, horrified faces at the TV much more often, with its bizarro notions of How Smart People Behave--Temperance Brennan often doesn't understand things about human behavior for comic effect then understands them perfectly in the next scene. Each of the minor characters has exactly two traits (smart and socially awkward; artistic and bisexual; honorable and sporty; young and psychoanalytical), and they rarely make it through a scene without mentioning each at least once.

Castle is not perfect either. The daughter character, who at first seemed more like a person than most teen girls on TV, has gotten more sappy and child-like in every episode. If the show lasts, in two more seasons, she will be Richie from The Dick Van Dyke Show.

this is what that would look like

Also, I don't particularly want the will-they-won't-they-sexual/romantic-tension to drag on for twenty seasons. Those relationships (and there are dozens of examples, in every genre of TV show) inevitably begin to feel insincere and manipulative.

Those are the two things I hate about Castle.These are things I hate about Bones:
1. Toyota advertizing is weirdly and unwinkingly integrated into the show
2. Bad science
3. Bisexual who marries a dude. (Note: I don't feel like tracking down the facts, but I think this plot took place on Bones during the same season when queer women chose to be with men on both House and Nip/Tuck. There should be a term for this, making characters temporarily gay for ratings. Like maybe, "Nielson-gay.")
4.Totally unbelievable gimmicky unresolved sexual tension.
5. Weird imaginary science, when the show never seems to think of itself as SF

I put Castle in the same broad category as Psych--it's a perfectly good show that is occasionally very witty. Bones tries too hard, takes itself too seriously. And while it might occasionally be interesting or even surprising, it's never witty.

GoAnimate.com: Bones by lydia.nichols

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Franco is back

2011-05-31T07:56:00.000-07:00

and now he's promoting other people's work:

Coco Before Chanel

2011-05-23T09:20:00.001-07:00

I watched Coco Before Chanel last night largely because I watched Amelie a few weeks ago and wanted more French eye candy, which seems like a long-standing a genre of movie in need of a proper name. I would like to propose something like "glaçage d'oeil," which I believe could translate loosely to "eye frosting," but there's definitely no way I can remember that exact phrase, or how to spell it. But honestly, FEAST:

Green and red. I love these colors.

Coco Before Chanel is a radically different palette, but if anything is more lovely than Audrey Tautou, it is Audrey Tautou in slightly mannish clothing. You should see her in men's pajamas, which effective next paycheck will be my exclusive sleeping attire. Behold:

I know right? Almost as perfect as this:

So, to bring us back to the movie, it was lovely to watch but less lovely to think much about. The movie is too wrapped up in Chanel's love life to give much consideration to her fashion, and I ended up feeling the whole thing was a little disappointing. Several moments were like Mad Men, in that they test my ability to sit and watch historically-approximate sexism. But again, like Mad Men oh how pretty it is to watch. Watching a movie and wishing to own or make the wardrobe prompted me to wander over to Design*Sponge to see if they have any new posts in the "Living In" category. Indeed they do, one of which is Coco Before Chanel. Here are the highlights:

Bonnie and Clyde
The Big Lebowski
An Education (my favorite style movie this last year)
Breathless (Oh summer haircut!)
Paper Moon
Oh Brother Where Art Thou?**

In honor of movies and pretty things, I bought a bunch of tomato-red fabric this morning and hope to make a dress out of it. I realize this flies in the face of the heart of the movie, and of timeless evidence that the best thing I could do for my wardrobe would be to remake all of my clothing out of men's business attire, but it's summer, and it's Virginia, and there is no way on earth I'm wearing pants or a tie.

**If you think it's tacky to do a fashion summary of a movie in which the aesthetic is largely that of poverty, you should see The Last of the Mohicans post. I know. I know.

Also: I still plan to blog on movies and poverty-chic. Maybe it's also a nice time for an old-fashioned Indians post to go along with our Westerns/genres posts? We could use Umbert Eco's equivalent of the Bechdel test for Native Americans in cinema.

[photos, 1: SUBMIT to the awesome power of red and green, without looking like a Christmas card. The key, I believe, is to wear read in a green environment. 2: oh my god, 3: ohmygod, 4: OHMYGOD! 5: If I make this dress and wear it with doc martins maybe, just maybe, I will look awesome]

The Joneses. And also some other stuff.

2011-04-27T19:56:00.000-07:00

Recently I wasn’t feeling well, and I stayed home while Thad went out. While he was gone I did something I’ve been meaning to do: I watched The Joneses.

You read that correctly. I had been meaning to watch The Joneses. Somewhere, months back, I saw a preview for it, and I thought to myself “I will watch that.” And I did. And yes, the movie is exactly what you’re thinking, so there’s no point in writing a full review. There is a beautiful moment in the conclusion that I will relate, perfect in its superficiality, in which Mr. Jones realizes that he does not need a life mired in material possessions, that he has bought the American dream at the cost of the happiness and lives of the people around him, that there can be dignity and joy in living in reality instead of a glossy catalog fantasy. In this moment he manifests this decision by nobly giving away the keys to his limited release Audi to drive away in a humble Toyota Sequoia, pristine, black, and (shame) this year’s standard model.

The movie is petty amazing. I initially wanted to see it because I just can’t help but believe that any movie in which David Duchovny goes to live in an idyllic gated community full of picture perfect people must, just absolutely must, be a reference to my favorite X Files episode,"Arcadia." This extreme and probably irrational certainty was only confirmed by a particularly strange scene in which Mr. Jones sees Mrs. in a face mask and immediately initiates a makeout session. This:

Simply has to be a reference to this:

I just can’t live in a world where it isn’t, because in that world I have wasted two hours of my life. Utterly.

So, this brings me to the other thing about this movie, which is that it’s about a world in which branding is almost gloriously inescapable. I say “gloriously” because, though the movie dutifully frowns on the pursuit of a name brand persona, it is completely, totally, wholly and unabashedly, branded. Without a doubt, the brands are the stars of this film, and they shine. Everyone looks wonderful. Everything looks desirable. It made me, during a week I had been denouncing cell phones as dated and unnecessary junk, certain android was certainly the way to go. This movie made me want sweaters and hair extensions. It made me want to golf.

So that’s the thing about this movie. It’s a film about how we all would be best served by purchasing name brands, and by recognizing that we are not truly brand people. The brands, in fact, confirm that about us. I think this is not only the thing about this movie, but this is just the thing these days. We love to participate in branding that affirms we are not branded people.

No doubt you’re saying this is nothing new. It isn’t. It might be more accurate to say “this is just the thing…still.” But we are newly excited about it somehow. Mad Men is an incredible example of how branding is a very trendy part of our history, and "historical" is its own brand. Or take Morgan Spurlock. This guy has made a career of consuming what he criticizes, and The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is no exception. Spurlock’s TED talk does a great job of illustrating some ways in which he’s better at branding than the ad agents he tries to woo for his film. Spurlock plays it off as satire, but that’s disingenuous. Or, perhaps that is the satire. He’s just good at this, frankly because he’s one of the best ad agents in the “documentary” media business. He’s not an author, he’s not a filmmaker, he’s not a journalist; he’s Realty brand, and he’s saturating our media. He’s getting the name out. In fact, the more I think about marketing, buy ins, brand names and brand exclusivity, I can’t think of a better sale then 18 minutes on TED. TED itself is one of the most successful brands in the academic business, and it’s a pricey one. TED is fame for fortune, no different from any marketing ploy in the clothing, food, media, or automobile industries.

Like I said, none of this is really new, it's just newly interesting to me. It is late, it feels later, so I’m off to bed. But I’ve finally posted something (woot!), and this particular post may have inspired me to finally write that hipster/tramp chic post Lydia and I talked about several years back. I’m also, still, working up to an X Files post.

Gore Verbinski's life has been leading up to Rango

2011-04-12T19:10:00.000-07:00

Gore Verbinski has had kind of a weird career.

best worst movies about terrible families

2011-04-12T18:26:00.000-07:00

Thirst

Chan-Wook Park's vampire movie is based on a novel by Emile Zola. It's streaming on Netflix, so you can go watch it right now. There are a lot of movies about the plight of vampires, and this is one of my favorites. It's at the bottom of this list because it's only partially about a bad family--it's mostly about a sort of love triangle, but the mother-in-law character really makes the movie.
In good news, speaking of Chan-Wook Park, that old rumor about a Smith/Spielberg version of the Old Boy story? That's not happening.
Note: Old Boy is also only partially about a bad family.

Dogtooth

Why haven't you watched Dogtooth yet?
Lanthimos's next movie, by the way, is supposed to be darker and funnier than Dogtooth. Which is good, because Dogtooth really needed to be a little more extreme.

Box

I thought about putting Audition on this list, because really that movie is all about a dad trying to find a mom for his children, and what could be sweeter? It's like The Brady Bunch, heartwarming. Box, Miike's contribution to the Three...Extremes trilogy is more in line with the theme of weird families. It's about sisters. And it's weird and cool and pretty. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, all three of the movies in that collection should be on the Bad Families list, each in its own way.

Arsenic and Old Lace

Do the Brewster sisters really qualify as a bad family? I mean, they are good as a family. But they are also serial killers, so let's count them as bad.

Animal Kingdom

Animal Kingdom is not a terribly original story, and I suspect I would not have liked it--or actually, I would have liked it fine, and forgotten it immediately--if it weren't for Jacki Weaver and James Frecheville. She's terrifying and convincing and intense: half Tony Soprano and half Baby Jane. His performance is so quiet and bleak and passive in contrast, that when he does take action, it's surprising...and surprisingly satisfying. At the end of the movie I felt relieved more than anything.

Bunny Lake Is Missin

I saw this movie when I was very young, late at night on TV, and I remembered bits of it--a creepy doll, a man smoking a cigarette in a bathtub. For years, I could not figure out what movie it was. Then I rented Bunny Lake Is Missing, because it was directed by Otto Preminger and it has Lawrence Olivier and Noel Coward in it. It sounded interesting, like "If you liked Laura, you'll like Bunny Lake Is Missing." I was about thirty minutes into the DVD before I started to suspect it was that movie. It's a little less haunting and maybe even a little corny on rewatching, but it's still scary.

Speaking of Baby Jane: Whatever Happened to Baby Jane

Grey Gardens

Two roads diverged in yellow wood.
And pondering one, I took the other.

And of course, the very best worst movie about a really unpleasant family:

Chinatown

Floating Fringe titles

2011-04-07T11:54:00.000-07:00

Lionel Shriver on pregnancy in the movies

2011-03-01T13:53:00.000-08:00

"Ever notice how many films portray pregnancy as infestation, as colonization by stealth? Rosemary's Baby was just the beginning. In Alien, a foul extraterrestrial claws its way out of John Hurt's belly. In Mimic, a woman gives birth to a two-foot maggot. Later, the X-files turned bug-eyed aliens bursting gorily from human mid-sections into a running theme. In horror and sci-fi, the host is consumed or rent, reduced to husk or residue so that some nightmare creature may survive its shell."

from We Have to Talk About Kevin

Dogtooth

2011-02-22T11:26:00.000-08:00

It seems like people are talking a lot about Dogtooth, and the talk is largely along the lines of, "I'm not saying you should see it, and I definitely never need to see it again, but it's a good movie." It's one of these movies that I liked,but I have not been recommending it because I don't really want people to watch it thinking, "So this is the sort of thing Lydia is into." It's kind of like when I found out a colleague had never seen Blue Velvet, and I told him to go watch it immediately, then followed up with a thousand caveats: it's weird, it's upsetting, etc. So when I say that Dogtooth is a good movie, what I mean is that it is a COMPLETELY ACCURATE PORTRAYAL OF WHAT HOMESCHOOLING IS LIKE. It could be a documentary of my childhood: incest, felicide (felinocide? catricide?), misleading vocabulary lessons. All true.

I can't help thinking about similarities between Dogtooth and my favorite new movie I saw this year: Never Let Me Go. Both are about children who are not really children, who are fenced in and deliberately misinformed about themselves and the world outside the fences. They are young people constructing their own reality, out of false and partial information. They are terrified of the outside world, and they are obsessed by ordinary shabby objects and bits of popular culture they don't really understand. Both movies use very unusual circumstances to talk about things that are more or less universal to human experience: power, trust, autonomy, mortality, family.

Of course, there are differences. Never Let Me Go made me feel like a human life is very short, unfairly short. It made me think it's very lucky to be allowed to spend any time at all in this maddening, beautiful, incomplete, imperfect world. Dogtooth made me wish I still believed in a cruel and arbitrary God, so I could stop now. That might be comforting.

The thing I liked and hated about Dogtooth, what made it hard to watch, was not really the way the children were mistreated, or the frank depiction of various unromantic (maybe that's an understatement) sexual encounters, or the moments of sudden violence. The thing that made it hard to watch was the way I as a viewer was deliberately underinformed, like the children. In one scene I found particularly troubling, the father and mother discuss a problem late at night, and the father silently and dramatically mouths his words, while we watch over the mother's shoulder. Throughout the movie, people have conversations while we are looking at odd fragments of their bodies. Watching, I felt claustrophobic and bewildered. I guess that makes it a good movie, because I'm pretty sure that's what it was trying to do. But I'm not saying you should go watch it or anything.

Alien Cubed

2011-02-13T10:07:00.000-08:00

In light of our recent fascination with genre, I’m going to do my best to avoid all reference to genre in this post. I was unfortunately born far too late to enter into the Alien franchise at a respectable point. Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) had been on laserdisc for years by the time I was allowed to watch them, but Alien³ (1992) was in theaters at a time when I could spend my allowance and drag my dad to the theater for my occasional terrible choice in movies (this list includes The Faculty and From Dusk ‘til Dawn).

This period also marks the time when I would spend my allowance on various sets of cards purchased at the Trader’s World flea market. Because I identified this as an “adult” film, and part of my entrance into adulthood, I bought the entire set of Alien³ movie cards to only ensure that everyone would be aware of my maturation.

For a long period of time the third film in the franchise occupied the much-coveted third spot in the hier

archy of alien films. I don’t think many would argue that the Ridley Scot

t Alien isn’t the best film in the franchise, with Cameron’s taking second place. It seems the central argument to the Alien movies is where do three and four end up after one and two. After years of carrying this film close to my heart, it’s time to let the chest-burster go and move this film down a peg.

Part of this film suffers from wanting to be a Terry Gilliam movie, but a weirdly sentimental and serious Terry Gilliam movie. Most of the characters are British, and the set design is less futuristic and more industrial in a Brazil sort of way. Just look at Jonathan Pryce on the set of Alie...I mean Brazil.

The film also failed to develop any really sense of character, or at least if it did I failed to realize which relatively unknown, bald, British actor was which relatively underdeveloped psychopath. Poor Pete Postlethwaite. At one point I was certain they had just killed the same guy 17 times. And I only recently found out that William Gibson was the original choice for screenplay writer. I’ll allow him to add his two cents: “It became the first of some thirty drafts, by a great many screenwriters, and none of mine was used (except for the idea, perhaps, of a bar-code tattoo).”

Ultimately, what this film did not do that makes Alien great and Aliens meh is point out that it’s the metaphor that’s scary. We should be afraid of a world where people are treated as itemized inventory, and we should be afraid of the dark. In Alien³ it seems we should be afraid of the alien itself, but in its new dog form.

By the way, I think you could identify which films are the best according to taglines.

Alien: Resurrection: It's been more than 200 years ... The beginning has just started.

Alien: In space no one can hear you scream

Alien³: In 1979, we discovered in space no one can hear you scream. In 1992, we will discover, on Earth, EVERYONE can hear you scream. (The film did not take place on Earth, in case you were wondering)

Aliens: This time there's more

Some thoughts on the titles of the Alien movies

2011-02-12T21:03:00.000-08:00

So, the first three Alien movies in order are:

Alien
Aliens
Alien³

I have always loved the progression of the first to the second, and hated the hokey superscript of the third. Even the Wikipedia article seems to do away with it entirely and simply call the movie Alien 3. I wish to retract my annoyance, at least a little bit. Here's why:

if Alien = singular = 1 and
Aliens = plural = >1
then
Alien³ = (singular)³ = 1³ = 1

So, it works. In the first movie they fight one alien, in the second they fight more than one, and in the third they fight only one, but with the ominous suspicion that exponentiation might be a problem (Ripley's concern that she is hosting a potential queen). I still think it looks silly, in a Cube 2: Hypercube kind of way, but it works for me now. It's too bad every other aspect of the movie doesn't.

Side note: thinking about the movie titles in this way also makes AVP more palatable as it can be read as simple logic notation: A v P. You may end up with just one, both might survive, but we can guarantee you won't leave with neither.

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons

2011-02-12T08:55:00.000-08:00

I'm wondering if the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons episode of Community counts as genre parody. Is it fantasy parody? Or is D&D parody almost its own genre? I've been thinking about this since Thad shared the Dragonstrike D&D tutorial they posted on io9.

But really, this question has been lurking in the back of my mind since we discovered the heresy that is AFI's top ten fantasy films. What really constitutes fantasy as a genre? Does fantasy mean something loose and undefined? Am I the only one who thinks that fantasy must have the essential elements of a D&D campaign?

This list is just as inscrutable as AFI's list. Ghostbusters and Superman? Is it just me or are these something else entirely? Is this another case of me overspecifying genres for the sake of especially satisfying classification? You should see my mp3 and e-reader libraries. I have a separate category for unnecessarily sad contemporary British pop.

D&D has a surprisingly developed television history. It ran as a cartoon in the early 1980s, and its role in the finale of Freaks and Geeks was then (and continues to be I think) really popular.
I think the Freaks and Geeks episode, in fact, has a lot in common with D&D on Community. The premise evolves around getting an otherwise cool person to play, and even love, a campaign. In F/G there's one popular guy--James Franco. In Community it seems like there are two regular players and everyone else is the odd man out. Both episodes actually play a bit of the campaign, I'd go so far as to say Community gives you a whole campaign, albeit abbreviated. I want to say it's a bold move, but I guess when the entire premise of your show is that it follows a band of lovable outcasts, well, I guess you're already playing for the D&D crowd.

Freaks and Geeks used D&D to give the series a sense of closure, and it worked. It was a believable way to tell viewers that people who are really different in life can adopt commonalities through fantasy. Community seems to be writing fantasy into its structure more explicitly. As Michael pointed out, genre parody is its best running gimmick, and as io9 blogged, the genres Community most often uses are Sci fi and fantasy. In a way, I wonder if watching Community satirize fantasy can give me some clues as to its genre. Parody is actually a great way to identify the traits of a genre. Terry Pratchett has taught me easily as much as George R.R. Martin. So, I might start posting a bit more about fantasy, and what constitutes fantasy as a genre. I'm still working up to that X Files post, don't worry.*

* You didn't.

Community, tee shirts, cardigans

2011-02-11T17:40:00.000-08:00

Tor.com ran a blog post a while ago called Community is the Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Show You're Not Watching. That, along with a deep longing for a Dungeons and Dragons campaign in our new home, led us to watch the D&D episode, which led us to watch every other episode in quick succession. I'm sick today, so I'm watching a LOT of Community.

I really like community. It has some pretty great moments. It's like 30 Rock, and while its highs are not as high as in 30 Rock, the lows are also not as low and it's a little more consistent. And while I'd like to write a full review of the show, I'm not able to as I need to write a mini fashion review of the show. Here's what I'm now obsessed with:

Abed's clothes. Abed is the real SciFi/Fantasy fan, and so I love him just for that, but I also feel a deep and abiding love for his clothes. Abed's fashion concept revolves entirely around two things: tee shirts and cardigans. It's not unusual to own a huge tee shirt collection, but most people (myself included) own only one or two cardigans. Abed appears to own hundreds. Good for him.

I haven't seen such a committed costuming decision since Willow and her sweaters (which makes me want to go back to our age old statement that we'd make all of them for a Christmas tree).

Anyway, here are some tee shirt cardigan combinations I really like:
Stripes. Nice. Lots of these cardigans are stripes, which is pretty great. Wide stripes like the ones on the left are hard to pull off, but since the colors are so close together, and since the gray stripes match the dark gray in his tee shirt, I think it's ok. The varied width of the stripes on the right is my favorite.

Here on the left and center the stripes are on the tee shirt, which is also great, especially because they're different colors. I love the rainbow stripes of the image I uploaded at the top of the page. On the left I love the eggplant and grays. The soft grays and purples would be winners under any circumstances, but the yellow there at the top of the shirt makes it. In the middle the blue totally changes the shirt. Color is also what I like about the combination on the right. Eggplant again, this time on the tee shirt, paired with really bold colors: blues, yellows, reds. I would never wear this. I suspect if I saw someone in this I'd question their decision. Here, I love it. Also, why does he always sit with his hands folded like that? I might start doing that.

The above combinations are mostly blocks of color, except for the RVCA tee shirt on the top right. I love big swatches of color. The below tee shirt is pretty great because it says "Nashville," and I like Nashville. It's a pretty nice city.

So, to summarize: I have a cold, I took some screen shots and then did some research about "T-shirt" versus "tee shirt" in the OED and then searched the internet for pictures of Abed from community in some of his best tee shirt and cardigan combinations, because I think the tv-nerd dungeon master from a show about social rejects is the epitome of fashion.
I am the saddest person you know.

Young Lincoln

2011-02-04T11:43:00.000-08:00

Party Down: Young Lincoln
Uploaded by kdlmd243. - See more comedy videos.

1. It is impossible to satirize the crap hollywood produces, because no matter how terrible and ridiculous your idea is, someone will make that movie, or has made that movie, or is making that movie:

http://www.imdb.com/news/ni7354948/

2. Who wants to see Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter on opening night with me!? Yes!

On Education.

2011-01-29T20:01:00.001-08:00

In the past week I've watched An Education, The King's Speech, and read Never Let Me Go. Anglophilia, or education obsession? It's hard to separate the two. In fact, in reading Never Let Me Go, I came to realize how deeply I believe in the Myth of the English Boarding School, with no head for the fact of it. I absolutely believe that every English person is bundled from babyhood straight into a towering hall of learning, all tea, kneesocks, Latin, and tweed. I believe they are veritable cradles where the infants quote shakespeare (the proper parts, not the bawdy stuff), and that at any graduation a wandering citizen might find there twenty or thirty graduates (for no class would ever be larger), all wide eyed and ready to embrace the world. I've been to England; I know well enough that it's grown to the twenty-first century with the rest of us, but forget that. My way is so much better.

Both of these movies and this novel are about education, and I've thought a lot about the subject lately, in part because I've returned to work, and in part because there seems to be no stopping The Internet and Media from fear-mongering the generally dismal state of the American educational system. Where you have education panic, laments about The Uselessness of the Humanities never follows far behind. Normally I try not to say much when it comes up, largely because someone always implicitly points out that my own station in life is proof of the failure of my field, and no one likes much to be proof of failure, especially when they're generally quite satisfied. But these three texts all brought up a different sort of question: why educate us at all, when so much of adulthood is just terminal misery? This is less explicitly the topic of The King's Speech, but I tell you: it's there.

It's a good question. Why education? Like the humanities, there's no defending it without either insulting it or sounding like its pitiful orphaned offspring. So, I think I'll just say this: though the movie moralizes against it quite a bit, I'd like to side with Jenny in An Education, the Jenny who behaves badly and sleeps with older criminals. "Why not?" I think we'd both say. We're all to die soon anyway, and we must spend our time doing something. Why not jazz, why not smoking, and why not the arts? I'd like to take her philosophy farther, and give similar support to all the things she hates: studying, being bored, feeling generally miserable. Maybe it's all the Kierkegaard I've been reading this last week but I say "why not?" to all of it: drinking and working, dancing and shuffling about miserably, reading, eating, quitting, over working, staring uselessly at art and thinking "yes. that's exactly it," donating all our organs and be done with it. Let's pit extreme highs against extreme lows and in the end we can call it a zero sum game.

I might start blogging again regularly, but I won't make any promises. I might also watch a few good movies now and then, mixed in with all the trash for a little color. I'm still thinking about a post about tramp movies and hipsters, as well as a post about what happened, exactly, in the last two seasons of The X Files. So, if anyone still actually reads this blog (unlikely), you might want to sign off before that second post. If you don't want to sign off, maybe you'll post something you've been thinking, but not writing, about. It's fun, posting, though I'm not sure why.

As I reread this, I can see that all this British media has made me sound way too British, but it will be better once Thad comes home and I have someone normal to talk to.

It's been a while

2010-10-29T12:52:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of red faces around here. I may just start posting again. Tonight, though, I'm just posting quick and dirty, something I found today and love. Design*Sponge has a category called "living in," which functions as a purchasing guide for movies with a great aesthetic. Here are the movies I'd like to live in:

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Annie Hall

The Fantastic Mr. Fox

Amelie

Grey Gardens

Rear Window

Two for the Road

And here's one for Thad.

my ignorance of certain genres is a real problem

2010-09-08T10:53:00.000-07:00

My recent suggestion that you all start a regular screening of westerns for my education was not met with the unmixed enthusiasm I anticipated. But I'm trying again. People, I need to see westerns. I cannot understand other movies. Once when I was very young I saw Bronco Billy on TV when my mom thought I was asleep. I saw Drums Along the Mohawk in a course on Images of American Indians in Film. And while I would still argue that The Big Lebowski is a western, I don't think it really counts as, you know, canon. I'm pretty sure I've never seen a John Wayne movie all the way through. I mean, except this one.

I saw The American last weekend, and I think it was a Western, but I can't be sure. George Clooney is a crafty gun maker--a definite contender for the handmade Oscars this year, if anyone is keeping track--and maybe he's also an assassin, and he's hiding out in a tiny town in Italy. He is in a restaurant and a movie is on the TV, and someone explains (to us? to Clooney?) that Sergio Leone was Italian. Who knew!?

People love this movie, and I understand why; it's very beautiful to look at, whether you prefer looking at crooked Italian cities or implausibly beautiful Italian prostitutes or George Clooney's lean torso. I loved how silent it was (or...I would have loved it, had I not been trying to eat some nachos in a very crowded theater, but I can hardly blame Anton Corbijn's for the fact that the Bow Tie ran out of soft pretzels).George Clooney does this grave, understated, crafty thing, and he does it very well. There is a lot to like in the construction and the performances.

But it is also kind of a movie about cartoon butterflies. It is about redemption, and I'm not very interested in the character's redemption. There is a love story, but I don't understand why anyone loves anyone in this movie. There is a priest who has lots of aphorisms ("You cannot deny the existence of hell. You live in it.") and shadowy moral failings (I know, shocking). And, seriously, there are a lot of cartoon butterflies.

James Franco Dream

2010-09-03T05:45:00.000-07:00

We're moving to Virginia and our house is all messy and full of boxes so you and I go to a bar to hang out and drink and talk, you know, like we do.* We have been having a James Franco Retrospective conversation, so we bring his old movies and paraphernalia (I think we own posters?) and we talk through the good times and the bad. A while later who walks into the bar, but James Franco himself. He sees his dvds at our table, assumes we're fangirls, and joins us. We have a long conversation that evolves sort of like his career--first dopy, then serious, then funny, then weird, then sort of offensive. Somewhere in the middle I'm sort of in love with him, but by the end he's talking exclusively about himself, except for an unfortunate period where he assumes we're college sophomores and boasts he can certainly guess our majors. He guesses poorly. Right about the time when we think we've had enough James Franco for life, and the novelty of actually meeting him is gone, the bar door swings open (Western style) and Jake Gyllenhall enters with a gang of (cow/frat)boys, all in cargo pants and baseball caps. They swagger up to our table and exclaim YOU'RE OUT OF CONTROL JAMES FRANCO, which is sort of true but melodramatic all the same. We take the opportunity to leave, though in retrospect this intervention would probably have been the most interesting part of the evening. We go home to this red brick house we've bought and are unpacking for a while when James Franco drives up looking for us, yelling to the house things like "Hey ladies! We were just starting to have fun!" We ignore him, in part because he's driving a really tiny volvo with a white bengal tiger in the back. James Franco just doesn't know when to stop. He's drunk and mad, and as he drives away he crashes into a fire hydrant. The crash site looks like a cartoon--water shooting up in the air, and both Franco and the volvo are humorously compressed into an accordion shape. "Crap," we think, "Now there's a tiger loose in the neighborhood." We bolt the doors and windows, and turn off the lights, because basically this new house is like our tiger fortress. I believe I used that exact phrase to describe it. It is not, however, a movie star fortress, because along comes Jake Gyllenhall and his band of goons, all of whom have mistakenly assumed we're Franco's oldest friends. They bang on our door, walk in (didn't we lock it? no, because tigers can't use doorknobs) and demand we do something about Franco's antics. "He needs his friends right now" they yell. We are definitely not his friends, and anyway they're going to let that tiger in, but they aren't listening, and the tiger gets in before they go. Now there's a tiger in the house, and it's sort of like a cricket: we can hear it, but we can't ever find where it's hiding.

I think this dream might actually be about Joaquin Phoenix's documentary, which comes out next week.

*we don't.

James Franco: Renaissance Man

2010-08-04T15:36:00.000-07:00

"I often think about driving off the side of freeway overpasses, just plunge Grandpa's old blue boat through the cement guardrail: The sculpted barrier crumbling about me and Grandpa's blue machine; a great moment of metallic explosion and heavy ripping and jerking and then release; a soft, slow dive of arcing color through the windshield, into a hard second of impact, just before the black. What an adventure lies behind one quick turn of the steering wheel. A great screaming, and then, slip away."

from his short story in Esquire

Why Lydia Didn't Totally Hate Fireproof

2010-06-23T20:55:00.000-07:00

Dear Lydia,

This is the least necessary review I will ever write on NTC. If there's one movie you won't ever watch because you have no expectation of liking it, it's Fireproof. But here we are.

Except, wait. Unless I'm mistaken, there's one thing you liked. If you're like me, and I suspect in your unwillingness to pay money to see this movie you are, you watched it on Youtube. So you probably noticed at some point that the videos average about 120,000 views. Most of the feedback is positive and deeply religious.

As far as I can tell, that means about 120,000 Christians stole this movie.

Sincerely,

Kristin

I have lost predictions.

2010-06-22T15:43:00.000-07:00

Because I'm watching it months after everyone has moved on. At the close of season 2, these are my predictions:

The island is more densely populated than their original destination of LA. Sun establishes a community garden, designs well protected green space, and a new school district is proposed to accommodate the island’s growing child population.

Jack continues to Deliver Lines With Intensity, often to the point of being a raving jackass (apologies), after which he cries to remind us he is sensitive, and has been hurt.

More survivors admit that they, too, have killed a man. Kate and Sawyer feel threatened, and he begins to sacrifice a baby polar bear hourly to maintain his current rep as bad boy. Kate disapproves as sexily as is humanly possible.

Locke continues to be the best character, for which the writers heap and unbelievable amount of misfortune on him via flashbacks.

Among these misfortunes are 5 car accidents, 2 freak hanggliding mishaps, a one night stand who steals his other kidney, and a bullet to the spinal cord, none of which explains his paralysis.

Hurley continues to be overweight, which means everything that happens to him is funny, even when it’s tragic.

10 percent of the survivors continue to make the decisions for the other 90. The death toll of the other 90% is remarkably high, but they remain incredibly grateful.

In a shocking revelation of interconnectedness among seeming strangers, every living soul on the island has a photo of the same aunt Clara in his or her pocket. Flashback: family reunion, 1982.

I link everyone to the Gashlycrumb Losties via every possible social networking forum I can find.

[photo: Locke hears my pleas and kills almost everyone on the island. The next 3 seasons are his and Hurley's voice overs as they live out their days in peace. This is a fantasy, not a prediction.]

Sex in the City II

2010-06-02T04:35:00.001-07:00

I often vow to pretend a movie doesn't happen and then post a link here to a snarky review of it. Turns out I value cattiness over stoic maturity anyday. With that in mind, visit Miss Maggie Mayhem for a real hit and run of Sex in the City II. A preview:

I’m positively fascinated by this film because somehow a group of people got together and created something that everyone can be sincerely self-righteous about from the comfort of their home...If you screened this film for an audience composed entirely of sex-positive radicals and neo-conservatives they would all have something to talk about over drinks together. On the day this film was released, America was somehow truly united.

And a side note: with some exceptions I like how Sex in the City fetishized fasion. I really do--weird I know. But it made me think about fashion, which I value (even if it often was to shriek in shock that anyone would ever wear such a thing). When I saw SitCI I went for the clothes, but was so horrified by the content I had to swear off. So, I'm feeling vicariously superior via other blogs.

Second side note: MMM's blog is not workplace appropriate. Not even a little.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

2010-05-05T10:21:00.000-07:00

And what better way to celebrate it than with the final shootout from The Wild Bunch!

Justified

2010-05-05T09:54:00.000-07:00

I love Westerns. Old Westerns (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance), new Westerns (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), Sci-fi Westerns (Outland), Australian Westerns (The Proposition written by Nick Cave?!), Czech Westerns (Lemonade Joe) and even Russian Westerns (The Elusive Avengers), which are called Easterns because they’re all about Siberia. I love Clint Eastwood, John Ford, Sergio Leone, Yul Brenner, and Cleavon Little. I pretty much love everything about Westerns with one major exception: Marion Mitchell Morrison. But at least Bruce Dern shoots him in The Cowboys.

I guess what I find to be most appealing about the genre is really something that isn’t expressly revolutionary or exciting. In my mind, Westerns are all about our desire for justice and going beyond the reasonable and moral limits to enact it. If nothing else, Westerns show us that deep down inside even good people are murderers, and we fully support even the most despicable acts if they are “on the side of the law.” In Westerns, democracy, the law, and morality are all proven to be nothing more than a facade and humans are just atavistic beasts who haven’t evolved. Or, as Ike Clanton puts it in Tombstone, “Having that badge don’t make you right.” Just like Timothy Olyphant’s character in Justified.

Everything about Olyphant’s character conjures up the vigilante of old (yes he wears a cowboy hat and everyone talks about it, yes he wears a hip holster and is a quickdraw artist), but at work in a world that has no use for such barbarism. Of course the plot is cliched, but Elmore Leonard is just the writer to turn the cliched into the interesting and entertaining show that Justified is. Did I mention the show take place in Kentucky and makes Kentucky seem like an interesting place?

Ignoring the hat and boots, Olyphant has all the necessary traits to be a great Western sheriff. He’s a roguish gentleman, he believes in traditions, he’s honest and a natural leader. Allow me to translate. He’s a chauvinist, conservative technophobe who doesn’t mind sacrificing anything and everything to get an arrest. Oh, and as far as honest goes, in a recent episode he states that he’d rather, “stick [his] dick in a blender,” than go to a gallery of paintings by Adolf Hitler. All in all, I think Justified is going to be a solid show because, unlike Westerns where vigilante justice tries to right the lawless society, Justified is all about the vigilante in a hyper-legal society. There is no better expression of this change in tone than the way everyone talks about the way Olyphant gunned down the hitman in the first episode. In Justified, shock has replaced awe, but it’s still all about terror.

Titles IV

2010-03-29T19:11:00.001-07:00

How have I not posted this yet? I found it on my hard drive today, left over from when I was collecting my favorite movie title shots.

Note to all who watch 30 Rock obsessively

2010-03-28T18:59:00.000-07:00

and think to themselves "Was that funny commentary on racism, or was that racism?":

Behold. They're having the argument for us over at Tiger Beat Down.

The Crazies (2010)

2010-03-22T07:24:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of reasons to remake a movie, none of them very good. Sometimes there have been so many sequels already that the only way to continue the franchise is to restart it. We have seen a rash of these in recent years, Nightmare on Elm Street being the newest (note: I don't approve of rebooting the franchise, but I sure do like the idea of Jackie Earle Haley as the new face of Freddy). Sometimes a movie has a small but loyal following and the filmmakers hope to gain a wider audience for something they consider great by releasing a new version of it. Or technology has changed since the time of the original, and the filmmaker feels he can make a better-looking version of the same story. I suppose this is what justified remaking King Kong. Perhaps the hardest remake rational to argue with is when the original director himself remakes his own film, as Michael Haneke did with Funny Games last year. If anyone has the right to tamper with the legacy of a film, surely the director does. But if you go down the road of creator ownership, eventually you will run into George Lukas, and you will have to admit that just because a person created something, that does not mean he understands it.

The Crazies was not remade for any of these reasons. Director Breck Eisner approached the project with the question, "What would George Romero have done with this if he had had more money?" So far so good. First, he hired real actors. Fine. He added big explosions. Fine again. Then he edited out all the really terrifying parts. You know, the horror.

It's been a long time since I saw The Crazies. I saw it only once, and I remember it for one reason: because it was horrifying.

The Crazies was very much in the Romero mold: mysterious illness infects a population, no one knows who to trust, a small group of unconnected people are thrown together in rural Pennsylvania, where they all turn on each other. Ugly things happen. Some not-very-subtle points are made about human nature and/or politics and/or society. Very ugly things happen. Roll credits.

The remake of The Crazies is a perfectly adequate epidemic movie. Timothy Olyphant is a likable small-town sheriff, Radha Mitchell is a likable extremely hot small-town doctor. Joe Anderson (who I did not remember from the three movies imdb tells me I've seen him in) was very convincingly not British. There are jumpy moments, and big fires, and one pretty cool scene in a carwash. But I will forget all those things pretty quickly. I will never forget a certain scene from the 1973 movie. If you've seen the old one, I bet you know exactly what I'm talking about.

p.s. Was it the music or the hand-held camera or the hot teenagers that made me think more than once that I was watching an episode of Friday Night Lights? Am I the only person who had this experience? The Internet says I am.

The Wolfman (2010)

2010-02-26T14:53:00.000-08:00

Guest reviewer, Ben: "I understand the silver bullets, but why waste the silver on shell casings?"

Food Documentaries

2010-02-25T05:47:00.000-08:00

The Botany of Desire

Now a PBS piece done as a companion to Pollen’s book. On the surface, Pollen’s work is about helping humans realize they are not managing the natural world with the control they believe they have. In reality Pollen’s work is another way of making the natural world seem more manageable. It casts simple characters like potatos and apples as sweetly manipuatlive friends, who coax us into a hidden and happy partnership. I suspect this is the over-simplification of science that so angers almost everyone I know, but there’s something I like about it. First, it’s all about narrating the natural world, which is (finally!) my own interest--not the nature, but the narrative. Second, it recognizes animal activities like the import and export of agriculture as “natural,” which it is, in a culture that often see species transplantation as an unnatural crime committed by humans alone (no one here is defending cane toads, but certainly many of our mistakes are often very natural indicators of how commonly species break the balance of their ecosystem). Finally, even when I find some of Pollen’s analysis a bit dumbly uninteresting, I also find it sweet to see grown adults doing what children do: telling stories that are only a fraction of the apparent truth in an attempt to more easily live in the world.

I Like Killing Flies

I Like Killing Flies was recommended to me by a family member who loves both documentaries and oddball behavior. This movie must have been an easy win. It follows the move of Shopsin’s, a diner/grocery in New York from its long standing location in Greenwich Village to a new space in the Essex Street Market. The diner is notable for two reasons: its wholly unusual fare and its erratic chef and owner, Kenny Shopsin. Shopsin barks his way through the documentary, berating customers and family alike while pausing to debate at length his many personal philosophies with the filmmaker. Shopsin is amusing and contradictory, but after a while he seems hardly worth the film stock. For a personality project, Shopsin strikes me as another egomaniac, encouraged far past what might be amusing by a community a little too eager to boast of local color. The documentary was fun to watch, but it sadly neglected the real star of Shopsin’s: the food. The cooks at this diner have developed a 6-page menu almost as crowded as the kitchen—around 900 recipes total. The recipes are bizarre and funny and look delicious. I suppose the fascination with Shopsin stems from the public’s amazement that such beautiful and unlikely dishes come from so course a cook, but that narrative seems far less interesting than the story of the food itself. So, I’ll close this post by saying if I were in New York right now and in a group of fewer than 5 people I’d be ordering an avocado cheese tortilla soup, or a tofu pea peanut rice, or some lemon ricotta pancakes, or possible one of the brunch combination platters, either C, F, or N.

Titles III

2010-02-12T18:20:00.000-08:00

For the sexiness.

Italy, how far you have fallen.

2010-02-10T14:57:00.000-08:00

In today's BBC:

Italians shocked as horror film sparks panic attacks.

Parents and politicians in Italy are up in arms over US horror movie Paranormal Activity after several cinema-goers have panic attacks.

Did we watch the same movie? Pray Italy never meets with the likes of Takashi Miike.

Another snowday: nerdy documentaries

2010-02-06T12:13:00.000-08:00

Frontrunners

I thought I’d love this because I enjoyed Spellbound. I am starting to sound like Netflix, or Pandora. The fact is, subject matter isn’t always a great predictor. I did love looking into the lives of Stuyvesant, perhaps New York City’s most prestigious high school, students. But the documentary, which follows 2 candidate’s run for Student Union President, fails to create the driving anticipation I hoped to feel. It clearly thinks it’s suspenseful—it invests a lot of time in dragging out the results with emotional and contemplative shots of the candidates. In the end, however, the race is at every point a total landslide. There’s no question who will win, and the movie fails to make me feel like a high school presidential campaign is important. Isn’t that what these movies are supposed to do? Help us see, for two hours, why something so inconsequential is of such great consequence to a small and loveable motley crew of Very Human characters? It was nice enough, but it didn’t.

Helvetica

The movie about typeface! I loved it. I loved having a whole two hours dedicated to how typeface changed advertising, and to how advertising followed the advent of high modernism and facilitated the establishment of one unified voice for the commercial language of countless corporations and at least two nations. It’s a great introduction to modern design trends and a wonderful survey of some of the contemporary artists who work primarily with commercial media—products we all use every day.

The true success of the film is its ability to make wholly compelling arguments both for and against Helvetica. As much as I love design I have always considered it the art of aesthetic choice, of selection and revision, not (because design and content can be isolated from one another) of social, political, or personal consequence. This film convinced me, at least to some degree, that the question is not so simple.

My favorite moment in the movie, without a doubt, occurs when a design artist is tasked with choosing the font for a book on his work and, because he finds the text boring and badly written, selects zap dingbats.

Titles II

2010-02-03T20:10:00.000-08:00

These are my next title favorites because darling illustrations have been dreadfully overused in title shots since 2000ish, and neither of shots are precious. For They Live the graffiti points toward lawless humans as the "they" - an economic other more frightening probably than the aliens. For A Scanner Darkly I like translating the biblical glass to a sink drain.

Title screens

2010-02-02T09:09:00.000-08:00

I've shared this already on Google reader, but I'm on an NTC posting binge, so why not? The movie titles collection that this graphic designer has posted is a wonderful way to lose hours of your life. The real beauty of this site is that many of these titles, on mouse over, give you the end screen of the movie. It's fantastic. Point A to point B in one mouse shift. I can't get enough of it. I now find titles so *meaningful*. I never realized how overdone white text on black screen is. I have finally confirmed my sense that font is so important.

So, because I don't want to work today, I'm going to post some of my favorite title shots from this afternoon's browsing. I tried to group them thematically below, but had tons of trouble with formatting. So I'll post them throughout the next day or so, as I feel like it.

First:

Billy Elliot and Elephant because they are beautiful.

Star Trek TNG season 4

2010-02-01T17:28:00.001-08:00

CRAAAAAAAAAAP!

Lost, you pale in comparison.

Post-Birthday, Post-Apocalypse....

2010-01-25T12:16:00.000-08:00

If I learned anything from the Hughes Brothers' The Book of Eli, I learned that three things will survive the apocalypse. First and foremost, the violence, hatred and ignorance brought about by religion will survive us all well into the sun-scorched deserts of post-apocalyptic America. Wait, that's already three things. Let me start again, the five things that will survive the apocalypse are those three aforementioned principles of religious thought and advertising. Appearances by Dr. Dre's headphones, iPod, J. Crew (skinny jeans fit better when you're on a steady diet of cat meat), the Coffee Beanery, GMC, and Puma remind us of the sins of materialism and as Eli tells Solara, "Then, people threw away what people today kill each other for." But there is hope. For in the future with the voice of God ringing in our ears and advertising clouding our vision, there will be a prophet to lead us. No, it's not Denzel Washington or Mila Kunis who will murder anyone who might stand in the path of God's doing. And it's not Gary Oldman who rightly believes that the Bible is "a weapon." No, we humble sinners have found a voice, a gravely voice, the voice of Tom Waits.

THE BOOK OF ELI: Ohhh Sweet - The best video clips are right here

To be serious for a moment, I'm a fan of the Hughes Brothers and I thought Dead Presidents and From Hell were impressive films. If nothing else, the Hughes Brothers tried to defy the notion that directors should work within a genre or specific style. When the trailers of The Book of Eli hit Apple's website, I felt justified in maintaining this stance and I don't think I'm wrong, yet. Because as much as this film is about the hope and resolve given to Eli in his quest to protect the Bible, there is no question as to the moral hypocrisy that comes with it. Eli is violent and unforgiving arbiter of God's will and he kills upwards of forty people on his quest. At times he's called on to protect the defenseless but this isn't always the case. Early in the film Eli watches the murder and rape of two travelers muttering to himself, "Stick to the path, stick to the path," only to deviate from this "path" and save Mila Kunis from a similar fate. Why Eli chooses to save one over the other is perhaps only explained by the fact that Kunis's character is a believer and the others did not yet know the Word. Ultimately, this film is an Old Testament parable about the might and power of God, and it doesn't leave out the hatred and intolerance that comes with it. I guess you could say it renewed my 'faith' or complete lack thereof.

Post-Soviet Russian Film

2010-01-25T07:22:00.001-08:00

I realize that the BBC is deeply invested in giving Russia as much dramatically bad press as possible. Life in Russia is difficult, and no one here wants to claim that our coverage of Russia's political/artistic/social/criminal/etc. climate should be of the 99% POSITIVE REVIEW FOR FATHERLAND variety. I lived there, I'm a realist, and normally I relish my daily BBC feed--their reportage is usually delightfully terrible in the Fox News Melodrama kind of way. But today's article on post-Soviet Russian film really irks me for some reason. Perhaps it's the wistful nod to Lenin's love of film-as-propaganda in the beginning?

The government saw the medium as an ideal propaganda tool and promoted it from the outset, building thousands of cinemas in urban and rural areas. Consequently, Russian film-making flourished.

Yes, film as an art flourished in the Soviet period, but the decades when film had to agree with party politics at the risk of the director's life hardly seems a period when we can simply state things were great for film.

Or maybe it's the assertion that Russia's new cultural low can be seen in 1. lower earnings for local movies when contrasted with American film sales and 2. The prevalence of popcorn and cell phones in theaters.

Seriously? Do I need to invest the effort in Googling the international profits of Avatar versus the latest British blockbuster, or can I save my finger strength? Are we really going to pretend that American theater floors aren't sticky with popcorn bits and soda, or that theateres don't glow with the pale blue shimmer of a million texting cell phones?

This is not to say the article doesn't bring up some good points about distribution, funding, bureaucracy, and a lack of local interest for local films, all of which hamper the production of new films in Russia. These are certainly problems, as they are almost everywhere in the world. But the article entirely neglects a tremendously powerful film tradition that continues in Russia today. It's a tradition that could have benefited greatly from BBC coverage, had the BBC been worried about increasing awareness of talented filmmakers and not churning out yet another article dedicated to depicting Russia as a barren criminal hell-scape.

Ok, rant aside, here are some films that have come out of Russia after the fall of the Soviet Empire, all of which I believe are of note. They're not the best movies Russia has produced in the last 25 years, not by a long shot. But they are some of my favorites, and they demonstrate just how active and versatile Russia's film community still is:

* Peter FM - A simple romantic comedy, and fun.

* Burnt By the Sun - Beautiful cinematography and incredibly well acted. A family drama about a Soviet general.

* 12 - A modern adaptation of 12 Angry Men done by the same man who directed and starred in Burnt By the Sun. So well adapted I'd swear it was from a Russian original, but possibly a little too optimistic for a piece on Chechnya.

* Kakooshka - Another romantic comedy, but not at all simple. It's set during the war and follows two soldiers - one Russian and one Finnish - who are stranded with a young Lap woman on her farm. I find this movie hysterical, but that could just be me.

I'm stopping at those four because Thad knows better than I do, and can post here also. But note there are a lot more modern films that I'm looking forward to. Here are five:

* Hipsters - this movie looks weird.
* We're From the Future - this movie looks funny.
* Taras Bulba - this movie looks beautiful.
* Mermaid - this movie looks fantastic.
* Morphine - this movie is based on texts by Bulgakov.

See? There's so much modern Russian cinema I was able to get through this whole post without mentioning Night Watch.

Send Me No Flowers

2010-01-24T14:30:00.000-08:00

A hypocondriac who mistakes indigestion for an impending heart failure sets out to find his wife a new husband, lest she fall into the hands of a man who can't be trusted.

"Hindus have the right idea George, when the husband dies the wife goes with him. She throws herself right onto the funeral pyre; that way the husband doesn’t have to worry about her."

Yeesh. But, like all Doris Day and Rock Hudson films it's fairly sweet and sexless. I really like the opening, in which Hudson's character wakes to several medical commercials. It implies that the movie will have more fun with the hypochondria than it does. That feels like sort of a loss, but even without I find Hudson so very likable. Together I think he and Day have all the makings of a good pajama party.

Amber Tamblyn and W.B. Yeats

2009-12-17T10:10:00.000-08:00

"Book Inscription for 1/2 of the Coen Brothers"

Dear Mr. Ethan Coen,

In the interest of time and saving paper
here's something to read while you're on the crapper--

You're the shit.

Up yours truly,
Amber Tamblyn

From "Sailing to Byzantium"

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

The Singles Ward

2009-12-14T15:59:00.001-08:00

Because "Mormon" is already a tag, I figured I might as well review The Singles Ward, which I watched with no small amount of fascination. The Singles Ward is one in a series of Mormon comedies made by two members of the Church of Latter Day Saints. The plot follows Johnathan Jordon, idealistic young Mormon who come home one day to find his wife with beer in the fridge, rock on the radio, and a cigarette in her mouth. She leaves him that day, and Jordon is reassigned to his local singles ward (as opposed to the family ward), a humiliation he can't take. He leaves the church and becomes a stand up comedian, which he pursues until he meets another young Mormon woman who brings him back to faith and good behavior.

The movie charts Johnathan's plunge into sin as only a movie made by the devote could. It starts perilously with his purchase of soda, follows him to a blockbuster where he rents all the Die Hard movies, and ends with him flirting at a bar with a woman who is definitely interested in having sex with him (they don't, but...the offer was there). Requiem for a Dream this is not. The filmmakers are sort of like my Amish family. They definitely know sin is out there, but they've definitely never seen it. They describe it with innocence and in hushed tones.

The movie makes a bizarre attempt to emulate the colorful youth / college films of the 80s. We have all the stereotypes: the great looking stars, the crazed goofball who can't stop mentioning how he dropped his car off a cliff, the inseparable band of lovable geeks, etc. etc. etc., all the way down to the final text snippets revealing what shocking/touching/humorous futures await our characters beyond the movie's plot. It takes a truly kind heart to tell oneself that there can be any jokes or surprises here. Everyone marries. Everyone has children. Everyone serves with honor at whatever mission site the church designates.

There is one sort of sad scene in the movie, where Johnathan realizes that his new squeaky clean act won't serve him on the college stand-up circuit. In fact, faith renders his professional life pretty much impossible. I'm not sure the filmmakers ever really took this moment to heart, as the movie ends somewhat optimistically "John and Cammie moved to California, where she became a mother, and he became a screenwriter." I assume John is the author of this very film, and it's hard to imagine that the Mormon movie market can support a family. In a way, it explains why there is a need for distinctly Mormon cinema when we already have a G rating system. If Mormons don't support Mormon screenwriters, who will? Even G movie stars drink Mr. Pibb, a much maligned figure in the singles ward. [Photo: Oh how zany! Has ever such a motley crew been so pious?]

The Fantastic Mr. Fox

2009-12-13T19:09:00.000-08:00

It's a Wes Anderson movie all the way: quirky, mid-life-crisis-y, a fable. It doesn't really feel like a movie, and it has some charming moments. The adaptation is not terribly faithful, but if you can get past that and the emphasis on Man Malaise I think it's pretty fun. Plus, it's not computer animation.

I know we said Bright Star was the clear craft Oscar for this year, but I need a nod to The Fantastic Mr. Fox. There are some cute little knits on those animals:

Yup. Pretty cute. Also, don't you want to pet their small heads? I do. And also, there's a pretty funny bit with a wolf.*

I have a theory that a midlife crisis movie, plus a book adaptation, plus the unexpected use of George Clooney can only mean one thing: Wes Anderson wants to be a Coen. What could this mean for hipster film? We'll have to wait and see.

*A lot of bloggers have been calling the wolf gag racist. I'm normally the first to shriek "racism!" at movies, but I didn't get that at all here. I vote not racist, but if it is, then it only further supports my Coen theory.

A Serious Man

2009-12-12T21:30:00.000-08:00

Kristin and I just watched A Serious Man with some degree of enjoyment. I equivocate because I still haven't really thought the film through (I'm somewhere about the first time Larry Gopnick calls Columbia Records Album of the Month Club). However, most of the film is what I've come to expect from the Coen Brothers, but it did get Kristin and I thinking about putting together a film retrospective. Here's my tentative line-up. If you notice something clever about a combination, of course it was my first thought.

Burn After Reading and A Serious Man
Intolerable Cruelty and Raising Arizona
Big Lebowski and No Country for Old Men
Barton Fink and O Brother, Where Art Thou?
The Hudsucker Proxy and The Man Who Wasn't There
Blood Simple and Fargo
Miller's Crossing

I hope Kristin will not be upset that I broke up the big night featuring our favorite films back to back (Fargo, Miller's Crossing). I thought it was important to remember that the Coens are relevant (and still making movies) in large part because of Frances McDormand. Forgive me.

On to the list. The first night consists of the latest films, which I think are the same film or at least the same ending. The second night will be a date night, third night - westerns, the fourth night - a battle of Johns (Turturro and Goodman), and the fifth night on the dangers of industry. The sixth night will be all about Frances and the final night will be my favorite of bunch.

Submit your restrospective and let the 'dualing' begin...

Oh, and in honor of having finished teaching Russian film for the quarter, I will include a review for A Serious Man: Many movies deal with problems of society and families and this is interesting in A Serious Man.

Zombieland

2009-12-05T16:21:00.000-08:00

The walking dead should walk slowly. They should not run. Think of these corpses, raised from slumber by some unknown and incomprehensible force. They are new to this form of locomotion, and their muscles do not respond as expected. Wanton disregard for their own well-being has, in many if not most cases, caused them to sustain multiple injuries. Even if they feel no pain (and “zombies” do not feel pain in the way we do, although they may feel something), they cannot run on a broken ankle, or a torn achilles. Poor zombies.

But it seems zombies have been working out. More and more, the undead are portrayed as faster and stronger than the living humans they subsist on. These fast-moving flesh eaters can be scary in their own way, but they are more like the old monsters: werewolves, or yetis, or lions and tigers and bears. They are predators, and we can escape them through our superior wits and technology, but we cannot outrun them, because they are essentially the same beasts we have feared since we first stood up on two legs. Zombieland’s undead are decidedly in this latter category, the athletic undead.

What makes the living dead of the classic Night of the Living Dead scary is not simply the fact that have been reanimated. Nor is it their modified cannibalism (Question: is it technically cannibalism when they eat only the flesh of living humans and never each other?), although the images of vacant-eyed undead masticating arm muscle certainly produce some visceral reaction. The truly frightening—and new—thing about Romero’s undead comes from their weakness, the fact that individual zombies are so easily eluded or defeated. It does not matter that you can outrun the shambling corpse in the graveyard—and you certainly can—because there will be another near the car, or behind a tree, or looming up out of the darkness in your front yard. There will always be another.

That Zombieland features zombies who run is a failure not of Zombieland itself, but of the entire zombie genre to which it is a response. Zombieland is a movie about zombie movies, and in the cultural contest between high-speed, Danny-Boyle—style undead flesh-eaters and the lumbering living dead of Night etc, it is pretty clear that the scarier and more interesting slow zombies have already lost. Zombieland is the proof, because Zombieland exists in a cultural setting where an explanation of the plague—what caused it, how it spread, where it started—is almost irrelevant, and certainly unnecessary. Everyone knows what a zombie is.

Zombieland is not a bad movie. Every aspect of the film does what it means to do; it is funny, romantic, gory, smart. The performances are strong, especially one awesome (and often spoiled, but far be it from me…) cameo. Here is Jesse Eisenberg, still playing the same thoughtful, neurotic descendant of some hybrid of Woody Allen and Holden Caulfield that he has been playing since he was tiny (and here I am again, sort of liking him in spite of the fact that I was sure I had heard enough stories about how hard it is to be a smart, introspective, adolescent white boy growing up in middle America). And here is Abigail Breslin, who no longer looks like a little girl, trading one-liners with Woody Harrelson.

Like in the superior Shaun of the Dead, the zombies in Zombieland are mere background, in this case for a family road-trip action comedy (sort of like a National Lampoon’s Summer Vacation, with automatic weapons). Unlike Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland has no rough edges. It is slick and fast and full of self-confidence. Maybe that is the difference between the zombie movies Zombieland is responding to and the Romero family of zombie movies (which SotD is about); Romero gleefully explores a crazy idea, while the fast-zombie movies are sardonic and a little smug, and their underlying idea is ultimately safe.

For lovers of Night of the Living Dead, there is something sad about Zombieland. It feels like a nail in the coffin of the thing Romero invented, which was maybe the first new thing in horror in a century. The shambling, slack-jawed, vacant-eyed animated corpse that feeds on the flesh of the living, that can be killed with a shotgun blast or a good solid blow to the head, that can be outrun by any child, but can never be defeated because the one thing this threat requires to keep coming is the one thing we will never stop providing: more corpses.

Double Feature: Cache and Big Bang Love Juvenile A

2009-12-04T08:51:00.000-08:00

We paired these two coincidentally, but the pairing really worked for me (it worked even more so for BBLJA, the far superior film).

Cache

Cache follows an upper class French couple and their son as some unnamed person sends them hours of video tape of their house and then menacing drawings of a child vomiting blood and a decapitated chicken. The movie’s main gimmick happens immediately: it’s never clear whether you watching the movie, or the taped footage the couple receives in the mail. This narrative trick has two fatal flaws:

1. This is a surprising and unsettling device, drawing attention to the voyeuristic nature of both fictional and documentary film footage, exactly once. Not repeatedly.

2. In order to achieve this ambiguity the director was forced to fill the film with endless boring street scenes.

After the first unexpected rewind, the director did nothing interesting with the device. There was no moment where this drastically affected the plot, my sense of time, or my urgent desire to see an event unfold in real time, as opposed to second hand footage. This might be a great approach to a horror film, where revealing a scene to be previously shot and in the process of replay might mean something devastating for my ability to observe something horrifying as it unfolds (or thwart my hope for a better ending). Here it’s boring. Endless hours of film of a man’s home and life are mind numbing, no matter how dysfunctional you write his family. And the unsettling sin in the man’s past that the footage finally points to? It incriminates his parents more than it does him. Who gives up an adopted child because another kid accuses him of killing a chicken? Seriously? Also, the drawings so clearly implicate Majid, why bother with the ambiguity of not confirming this? There is one excellent visual shot, in an elevator. It was worth the 2 hours. [Photo: Even the Laurent family often jumps at the chance to fast forward through this tedious documentation of their entirely uninteresting lives]

Big Bang Love Juvenile A

Another movie about movies, but this time from Miike. I don’t know how to explain this, except to say:

It's like the title: a jumble of unrelated bits that add up to something compelling. Or, it’s what you would get if Sarah Kane directed a prison sexploitation film set physically between a rocket to the moon and an ancient pyramid, the three of which exist in a remote field (of dirt? Concrete?) so far removed from the world that there appears to be no real reason to lock up the prisoners. Inside the prison life transitions inexplicably between a gritty noir detective movie, an action film, a tender coming of age romance, and a desolate Beckett play. The physical environment of the prison shifts to epitomize the genre of the moment. Butterflies fly throughout.

It’s…great? The cinematography is beautiful, the love story is touching, the noir is fun, the kung fu is exciting, the sexploitation is unsettling, and Beckett is the only thing that could possibly tie all this together. I say it’s also a movie about movies first because it’s such a motley crew of genres, settings, characters, and aesthetics, but mostly because structurally it’s all about revealing narrative through repetition and slight revision. I think it’s an excellent non-musical example of a fugue. Miike filmed maybe 35 minutes worth of plot, but replays it from various perspectives and angles until the viewer finally has the whole story. [photo: Don't be fooled by the existential despair evoked in the theatrical space. 20 police ninjas are about to jump that guy.]

I almost forgot, but for the the deafening internet hysteria

2009-11-21T07:43:00.001-08:00

New Moon is out. I was going to see it and be sarcastic, but Peter Bradshaw at the Guardian has done it for me: "There will be no end to the parade of neo-horror archetypes who are not getting anywhere near Bella's silver ring of abstinence." Consider Mr. Bradshaw officially invited to this blog.

A Raisin in the Sun

2009-11-11T18:26:00.000-08:00

I first read Lorraine Hansbury’s play in high school, and still today I think it’s a powerful response to Langston Hughes’s poem. This play is a true Greek tragedy, but with an extra act. It’s…the saddest movie ever to have a happy ending (and ending which I think, despite the film’s misguided final music, is ominous at best). Hansbury does a beautiful job imaging a single family’s myriad disappointments in the face of a deeply tragic history, and woeful economic hardship. Though I haven’t read this play since, I remember very clearly the piteous and hateful Karl Linder, who so obsequiously tries to tell the Youngers they aren’t wanted in their new neighborhood. But there are many details I had forgotten—most of all Beneatha, whose chaotic interests (that made her seem so flighty to me as an adolescent) now look like a surprisingly lighthearted examination of many perspectives on the question of evolving African American identity. Hughes experimented with all of these extremes, whereas Hansbury herself seems to settle in a modest version of the American dream:

“We have decided to move into our house because my father—my father—he earned it for us brick by brick. We don’t want to make no trouble for nobody or fight no causes, and we will try to be good neighbors.”

The Youngers are decent people, and just want some time and space to live as such. The rich debates about black identity, the agenda of the NAACP, though all valuable, aren’t practical for them. They want little more than a little peace. The other aspect of this that escaped me till tonight is the somewhat sad turn around gender at the end. The strength of this play has always seemed to me to be its three strong central female characters, though tonight I noticed how clearly the play is really about one boy becoming a man. I feel a little cheated by that, but certainly it’s a good opportunity for Poitier to make speeches. Oh right. Poitier. Did I mention I’m reviewing the movie and not the play? Yeah. I am. As hard as it is to watch and as disappointing as I find the end, I do still love this movie. [photo: This movie is so much sadder than it looks.]

Sauna

2009-11-08T21:09:00.000-08:00

Finland is creepy. Beautifully creepy. Sauna is the story of two brothers, Eerik and Knut, who are mapping the borders between Finland and Russia after the Russo-Swedish War (1590-95). Eerik has served Sweden since he was sixteen and now bears the weight of the 73 souls taken during his time as a soldier. Knut is the aspiring professor mapping the borders for the empire in hopes of receiving work at the university back in the capital. Their small party of Russians and Finns encounters a village in the middle of a swamp (home to 73 souls, no less) not yet found on any map. The town is shrouded in mystery (no history, no children, no monks to fill the cowls that have been left lying around), at the center of which is a sauna.

For those of you not used to life in the Great White North of Europe, this isn't your typical gymnasium steam room. In medieval Finland, the sauna is the place where the recently born and the recently deceased are taken to have the past and their old sins washed away. A long bath for a man with 73 (or is it 74?) dead muddying his soul.

I don't know why I found Sauna so appealing. Most likely my nostalgia for the swamps off the Gulf of Finland, permanently overcast, steel-colored skies, and humid sub-zero temperatures were the cause. However, the novelty of the film's plot and setting impressed the neophyte horror fan in me. The time and place are long ago, but this isn't the gothic horror of Dracula and the Catholic Church. Finland is barren and empty. There aren't any churches or beasts to fill your nightmares, just the remnants of pagan belief and a porous border between the natural and supernatural. The film shows how terrifying it would be to live in an isolated, frozen wasteland even without the gore-dripping dead bodies that haunt Eerik and Knut and I think that that's why the film works. There is little in the way to make the audience jump or squirm, but you feel a little colder and a little lonelier with each passing minute.

Part of me hopes that there is more to come from Scandinavian horror as both Sauna and Sweden's Let the Right One In have been enjoyable alternatives to the stale horror films I know.

Yeah...

2009-11-07T18:08:00.000-08:00

so, remember when we were having all those debates about blackface?

Cactus Flower

2009-11-02T08:41:00.000-08:00

The plot: a dentist who is defensive of his freedom has fallen in love with a young girl who works at a local record store. The movie opens on her failed suicide attempt, a response to the dentist's claim that he cannot leave his wife and three children. The dentist, in truth, is unmarried. His story is simply to keep all of his lovers at bay. The suicide attempt convinces the dentist to marry the young girl, and then the plot unfolds as he asks his stodgy nurse to play stand in for his wife. Cactus Flower has a Breakfast At Tiffany's backdrop: a young girl about town lives next door to a young playwright who comes in and out of her window. The young man, however, is mostly a wry backdrop to Toni's machinations as she tries to be sure her fiance does right by his current wife. From the beginning it's pretty clear the four characters will eventually pair off by age--the two young neighbors together and the dentist with his nurse and assistant.

[photo: meh]

If I were to have one movie wish for this movie it would be to see this remade in the style of The Proposal, with all the roles switched. The problem is that Walter Matthau and Goldie Hawn are no where near as charming Ingrid Bergman and Rick Lenz (so fabulously named Igor!). Matthau especially is more a grumpy grandpa than a womanizing bachelor. Bergman, on the other hand, would make a wonderful independent dentist and Lenz an oh-so-charming record store clerk. Matthau is perfect for the judgmental desk attendant and Hawn was made to play the occasional jokester. In my movie dentist Bergman would, after much slap-stick hilarity, come clean to her young lover and they could run off together, leaving Matthau and Hawn to eye one another in the waiting room.

[photo: yeah!]

I am hoping this movie can kick off a new theme for me for November: women in comedy. I wanted to start by getting a sense of what Hawn did before the 80s. Cactus Flower is her first big movie. Also: Bergman in comedy--what?! That's like a grilled cheese with mayonnaise on it. Note to self: rent Indiscreet.