Tinker Tailor Etc.

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

FWD:

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...)

support your local

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?

James Franco in the news again

"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

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!

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

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

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

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.)

awards season: handmade edition, 2011

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

Drive

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 dressed up as an eighties movie. The music, the scribbly pink text of the credits, the costumes (especially Christina Hendricks 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 not drenched in blood feels like it would be right at home in Some Kind of 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 to produce—he thought they were shitty, in case you were wondering. In case 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 Gosling is there to keep her safe, and she doesn't really know. Like the rest of 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 of the scene. This is the sort of thing that happens in movies. The lights come back and the kiss ends, and Gosling beats the bad guy to death with his hands and feet, literally crushing his skull 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

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. That summer, 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 how necessary 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 brutal enough, and love—in all heterosexual relationships, in my world view, in 1996—is synonymous with masculine cruelty. I guess 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 is subjective—for instance, Jane and Rochester both talk a lot about how unattractive they both are, and I like leaving the reliability of their 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 and slow 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 Jane loves Rochester in the end less because his transformation makes him humble than because it makes him into a sideshow freak.

Clarification on mothers and adult children of mothers in movies

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

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

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.  

NOOOOOOOooooooo!

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.

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?

Horror isn't just...

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

TEAM CARDIGAN FTW

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...

Quick thoughts on Inception...

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

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.

Wedding Movies 1: Something Borrowed

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

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!

Gore Verbinski's life has been leading up to Rango

 Gore Verbinski has had kind of a weird career.

best worst movies about terrible families

9

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.

8

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.

7

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.

6

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.

5

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.

4

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.

3

Speaking of Baby Jane: Whatever Happened to Baby Jane

2

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:

1

Chinatown