There’s a rumor that Blockbuster may stop offering online rentals. The folks at Netflix must be beside themselves with glee.
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kottke.org posts about movies
Microsoft is sponsoring a short film contest called Thought Thieves about intellectual property theft. And the entry form states: “I will formally license on terms acceptable to Microsoft, all intellectual property rights in my film and agree to waive all moral rights in relation to my film if requested to do so”. Heh.
Free movies in NYC’s Bryant Park all summer; here’s the schedule. Ooh, Touch of Evil.
Pixar’s profits tripled since last year. And it sounds like a Disney reconciliation might happen as well.
Great rant about George Lucas and Star Wars. Warning, some spoilers for Revenge of the Sith in the last few paragraphs.
Inside Deep Throat
I don’t know a whole lot about the history of pornography, but I’m guessing Inside Deep Throat overstates the importance of Deep Throat in the eventual acceptance of pornography into mainstream American culture. This is the Michael Moore school of documentary filmmaking: take a position and defend it with facts that support that position, conveniently ignoring those which do not. Which is fine I guess, as long as the audience is aware of the bias. And while I realize it can be difficult to explore all the factors of a given situation in a 90 minute period, the lack of perspective is eventually just annoying.
Even so, after the film was over I was curious about Deep Throat, which I’d never seen before. So I located a copy and watched it. Ho boy, was it ever bad…the worst acting you’ve ever seen (even taking into account that it’s a porno) and the sex wasn’t much better. Mostly it was just really boring and it took all my willpower to watch until the end. The things I endure for you folks.
For a similar (but better written) take on Inside Deep Throat, read Anthony Lane’s review in The New Yorker.
Michael Moore made himself and Disney lots of money by stirring up controversy for Fahrenheit 9/11. I’m confused though…where’s the link between Disney and Fellowship Adventure Group? Surely the Weinstein’s didn’t purchase the film from Disney for the $78 million? How did Disney get that money back?
100 people who are qualified to carry the “
100 people who are qualified to carry the “Bad Mothafucka” wallet besides Pulp Fiction’s Jules Winfield. The list includes Cartman, Hemingway, Bruce Lee, Lt. Uhura, Mercutio, and Emma Peel.
Super Size Me
Finally got around to seeing this documentary and loved it…but wanted to love it even more. There’s so much going these days in relation to America’s relationship with food: the growing obesity problem (especially among children), corporate exploitation of food for profit, governmental agencies like the FDA and USDA supporting corporations rather than educating consumers, corporate sponsored school meals, the never-ending diet mania, etc. and SSM only touched on these things tantalizingly briefly. I’m not sure how much of this stuff could have been explored more without disrupting the main narrative of Morgan Spurlock slowly killing himself with McDonald’s food, but a bit more substance would have been nice. Maybe co-writing the film with Eric Schlosser would have done the trick.
But still, for all the attention that Fahrenheit 9/11 received, the better documentary to open in the summer of 2004 was Super Size Me.
Ridiculously comprehensive movie genre primers from GreenCine. If you’ve ever wanted to know what French New Wave films to watch or what “Hammer Horror” movies are, this is the resource for you.
Sin City
When I telephoned to see if he wanted to go, a friend warned me off Sin City. But since both Metacritic and Ebert (who has tastes similar to mine) gave it good marks, I decided to ignore his advice; I’m glad I did. Although it was violent and misogynistic as hell (as many comics and graphic novels tend to be), Sin City was a lot of fun and as beautifully shot as recent cinematographic favorites House of Flying Daggers, Hero, and Kill Bills I & II. Rodriguez and Miller (whose comics the movie is based upon) translated the style, framing, and abstractness of a comic to film better than I’ve ever seen…you can see that they really understand how both genres work and how to move between one and the other without forcing it. If you can stomach the violence (it’s one of the most violent films I’ve ever seen), I’d recommend checking it out.
Terry Gross interviews The Incredibles director Brad Bird on NPR. “So, what does the director of an animated film actually do?”
Henry Blodget goes DVD shopping in Shanghai at a fake restaurant. That reminds me, I should write up my Beijing CD-ROM shopping experience sometime.
Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back
I know it’s kind of pointless to review some of the most re/viewed movies in history, but I’m working my way through the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD and I haven’t seen them in awhile, so I’m putting down some thoughts anyway.
Something that struck me while watching Empire is that every time I see a Star Wars film, I catch something I missed the previous 50 times. I generally chalk this up to my not paying close enough attention or forgetting that I actually caught it the last time around**. But I also think, begrudgingly, that Lucas is a little smarter than I give him credit for and the first three movies are more complex than they seem.
The novel thing this time around for me occurred during Luke and Vader’s first meeting in Cloud City. I never noticed that Vader isn’t trying to turn Luke to the Dark Side to join him and the Emperor. He wants Luke to help him overthrow the Emperor and they’ll rule as father and son. And then that sets up all sorts of weird shifting alliances and intrigue between the three of them…the Emperor is trying to play Vader and Luke off of each other, Vader is trying to keep his true goal a secret from the Emperor and might have to kill Luke to do so, and Luke’s trying to fend off both of them and keep his own secrets (Yoda, his sister). I mean, it’s not The Godfather, but it’s not bad.
** This happens to me all the time, especially with shows like Law & Order. I can’t remember a single episode from start to finish, which means I can watch them over and over again and always be surprised about what happens at the end.
Star Wars, A New Hope
I didn’t realize how much the recent two Star Wars movies had sullied my once-fond memories of the first three films until I sat down to watch the original Star Wars. The acting is marginal at best and the story is a little clunky in places, but that’s really beside the point, isn’t it? The special effects have been digitally retouched and remastered on the DVD, but even without all that, I can see why SW was such a huge deal when it appeared in theatres in the late 70s. Space opera indeed. And the last scene with the X-Wing fighters and the Death Star — don’t worry, I won’t give the ending away if you haven’t seen it — I’ve seen that scene about 30 times and it never fails to entertain; I know every line by heart almost and I was still on the edge of my seat.
Be Cool
Anything but cool, I wanted my money back at the end of this one. Catching a John Travolta film is always a gamble and he was alright in this, playing his typical Vincent Vega character, but the rest of it was just crap. I expected to like Vince Vaughn’s character more, but it took about two seconds for you to get his whole schtick and then it just became really really tiresome. I did laugh out loud once — Cedric the Entertainer as a reformed gangbanger-turned-rapper/producer/millionaire rolls up with his posse and they’re all wearing tshirts with basketball jerseys over them and Cedric has a **button-down** shirt with a jersey over it — but that was the only highlight. Metacritic, I will never doubt you again.
Gunner Palace
People, myself included, like to lament the lack of media choices in a production environment dominated by large multinational corporations, but the truth is that with a little access and a DV camera, filmmakers are out in the field making revealing and unprecedented movies like Gunners Palace (trailer). GP follows the activities of a US Field Artillery unit (the “Gunners”) in Iraq for two months in 2003-2004. No politics. No real point-of-view on the part of the filmmakers. Just a glimpse into what it was like soldiering in Iraq after “major combat operations” had ceased and “minor combat operations” had begun.
This soldiers’ perspective is a rare one in popular media and is a valuable contribution to anyone who’s interested in a more comprehensive view of the war in Iraq. But the main takeaway from the film for me was not the completing of a puzzle, but of the near impossibility of any sort of comprehensive perspective. From the soldiers’ POV, they’re just trying to do their jobs, stay alive, and keep some level of sanity in their lives, not too much different than anyone else except, you know, it’s literally life and death for them. Their comprehension of the whys and hows of their place in the grand scheme of things is necessarily somewhat limited.
At the same time, you’ve got people in the US reading the newspaper or watching stuff on TV about the war. Maybe they’re even reading soldiers’ diaries, exchanging letters with soldiers in Iraq, or watching films like Gunners Palace, but their perspective is still a largely outside one. And then you’ve got the higher ups in the military and government whose jobs entail keeping the big picture in mind and the realities of troop life sometimes isn’t on their radar. The human mind is a wonderfully flexible tool, but it wasn’t meant to deal with such a vast array of information on so many different scales. It’s a wonder the situation over there isn’t more screwed up than it currently is.
Gunner Palace opens in limited release in the US on March 4th.
The Boondock Saints
This may be the worst movie I’ve ever watched all the way through. Highly stylized garbage. Not even Willem Dafoe as an openly gay FBI agent in drag could save it (I’m not one of those people that thinks that bad movies are good because they’re so bad). The only reason I gave it any points at all is because I watched it with friends and we heckled and it was a bit fun to do so (but only a bit).
Sideways
In a recent NY Times article, A.O. Scott calls Sideways the most overrated film of the year. He allows it’s “well written and flawlessly acted, funny and observant” but feels it doesn’t quite live up to all the critical hype (i.e. having been named film of the year by critics’ groups in LA, NY, SF, Chicago, Toronto, etc.). Even worse, says Scott, is that critics love the film (and other films like it) because the main character is a critic himself:
Still, the reaction to “Sideways” is worth noting, less because it isn’t quite as good as everyone seems to be saying it is than because the near-unanimous praise of it reveals something about the psychology of critics, as distinct from our taste. Miles, the movie’s hero, has been variously described as a drunk, a wine snob, a sad sack and a loser, but it has seldom been mentioned that he is also, by temperament if not by profession, a critic.
And furthermore that the film defends Miles’ critical approach to life:
This makes him, among other things, an embodiment of the critical disposition, and one of the unusual things about “Sideways” is that, in the end, it defends this attitude rather than dismissing it. Yes, the film pokes fun at Miles’s flights of oenophile rhetoric - all that business about asparagus and “nutty Edam cheese” - but it defies the usual Hollywood anti-intellectualism in acknowledging that, rather than diminishing the fun of drinking, approaching wine with a measure of knowledge and sophistication can enhance its pleasures. There is more to true appreciation than just knowing what you like.
I don’t think Sideways defends the critical attitude at all…not any more than than it does Jack’s hedonistic lifestyle. Neither character’s life seemed any more fullfilling than the other’s. You could argue that Miles seemed to grow as a person over the course of the film, indicating the triumph of the critic, but Jack didn’t seem to want to grow that much. Jack knows he’s got some issues, but being as self-aware as Miles, he’s not only content to live within his boundries, but almost revels in it. And in the end, both characters find what they’re looking for in a relationship. If the critical character wins in this movie, I didn’t see it.
The Aviator
When I first saw the trailer for this movie several months ago, I thought it would suck for sure. Surprisingly, it did not. Not at all actually. DiCaprio continues to refuse to let his career be defined by Titanic, Scorsese is almost entirely transparent** as the director, and Cate Blanchett does a pretty convincing (and fun) Katherine Hepburn. When Hughes straps himself into his sleek experimental plane and breaks the speed record, the scene was shot so well that it made me want to go flying after I left the theatre.
** This is a compliment…as architect Yoshio Taniguchi said of the new MoMA: “Raise a lot of money for me, I’ll give you good architecture. Raise even more money, I’ll make the architecture disappear.” Scorsese made the director and the directing disappear.
Good Bye, Lenin
Like many movies I enjoy, Good Bye, Lenin doesn’t fit neatly into any particular genre. It’s billed as a comedy, but could easily be considered a drama or even a romance. I loved the dual Kubrick homages…the overt 2001 reference and the later less obvious Clockwork Orange reference. (Of course, I may have missed a nod to Full Metal Jacket…I’m not sure how “Private Snowball” translates into German.)
Shrek 2
For all the corny potshots that Dreamworks takes at Disney in Shrek 2, they’re hard at work exploiting their own set of rapidly tiring cliches, an approach that eventually steered Disney’s reputation for creativity straight into the ground. I know it made lots of money and that the kids love green ogres (and green ogre Happy Meals), but the movie just wasn’t very good (apart from some Puss in Boots moments). Animation aside (are we done judging CG-heavy films largely by how cool they look yet?), Shrek 2 was just another lame romantic comedy with big name stars and barely funny pop culture references; it couldn’t have taken any more than 15-20 minutes to write the screenplay. Anthony Lane noted something similar in his review of The Incredibles and was spot on:
[Brad Bird] has bothered to think through the impact of his outlandish designs, whereas one of the depressing things about a big summer hit like “Shrek 2” was that it nodded at other recent movies, and commercial fads, purely on the ground that they were recent and would thus grab a temporary laugh. The “Shrek” pictures, like “Shark Tale,” will date fast, eaten by the rust of their own cynicism, while “The Incredibles,” silly as it is, retains just enough innocence to suggest that it might hang around.
Touching the Void
This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time and I recommend it unequivocally. One of the most amazing things about Touching the Void (among many amazing things) was how engaging, gripping, and suspenseful it was (much more so than any fictional drama or horror film) even though you know from the very start how it all turns out. No M. Night Shyamalan Law & Order twist needed…just a great story and solid storytelling.
Jersey Girl
Like Gigli, Jersey Girl suffered unfairly at the box office because of the whole Bennifer thing. I liked a couple of Kevin Smith’s previous films but the poor acting always bothered the heck out of me (I think he and George Lucas have a similar tendency to treat actors as props (but in different ways)), but the acting in Jersey Girl was surprisingly good. And the kid in the movie was great. Like most movie children, she was a bit precocious and interacted with the rest of the characters as if she were an adult, but it worked because she was essentially standing in for her mother in the eyes of Affleck’s character. Affleck has his moments as well…he can be a surprisingly good actor when he wants to be.
Tarnation
The main character and narrator initially spent $218 making this film on his Mac and ended up with something that is remarkably sharp and almost professional, considering he used iMovie to edit it. Caouette pieced the film together — according to Ebert’s review — from “old home movies, answering machine tapes, letters and telegrams, photographs, [and] clippings” so effectively that it seems like the 30 years of media was recorded with the movie in mind. The feel with which Caouette crafted Tarnation reminded me of Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream and Pi…same twitchy editing and musical style combining to make a powerful and affecting film.
Tarnation is currently playing at Film Forum here in NYC…check the film’s web site for dates in other cities.
The Incredibles
The Incredibles is just a flat-out fun movie. Tons of laughs, some nice family moments, and lots of explosions and cool stunts (although the latter were somewhat subdued because of the crappy sound in our theatre). Elastigirl is my new favorite superhero…great superpowers, a wonderful mom, and she vacuums too. Edna Mole, voiced by Brad Bird, who also wrote and directed the film, was the funniest character, but the uber-quick Dash provided the best laugh of the movie for me. The film was also packed with references to other movies. I only caught the Star Wars ones, but I’m sure that some industrious movie nerds are even now compiling an extensive list of references which will be available on the web soon.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Sky Captain reminded me of the first Star Wars movie, which ordinarily wouldn’t be such a bad thing. However, the problem here is that Star Wars is almost thirty years old and very much belongs to that time. Sky Captain feels like a movie made in the late 70s that recalls the Flash Gordon space westerns of the 30s but using today’s special effects technology. That fits in well with the feeling of the movie itself, where we see the telegraph side-by-side with circa-2070 killer robots in late-30s NYC, but doesn’t help our enjoyment of the movie because we’ve seen all that before. To be sure, the visual effects in the film are great — but not moreso than those in Finding Nemo, Lord of the Rings, Spider-Man 2, or any other recent film using extensive CGI — but in another parallel with Star Wars, Kerry Conran reminds me too much of George Lucas as a director…too much focus on the visual and not enough on the actors or emotional flow of the film.
Hero
An absolutely beautiful film by the director of Raise the Red Lantern; I felt as though I were watching a lavishly produced ballet instead of a movie. If you’re heading to the theatre to see this film, do your fellow patrons a favor: if you’re just there to see Jet Li kick ass and chat on your cell phone for half an hour, don’t bother. Just stay home and watch the Matrix on cable again, ok?
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