"Stuff that dreams are made of"

No more tumblr :(

2010-04-13T12:43:00.003-04:00

Yeah, so I deleted my "stuff that dreams are made of" tumblr blog.

I'm starting a new tumblr for my (relatively) new blog, Dereliction Row.

Dereliction Row

Derelict's Retro Revolution

Tumblr!!!!!

2008-08-27T11:50:00.003-04:00

This blog is getting a revival. It's going into its second run. It's making a comeback. It's turning into a tumblr blog where I'll basically just post youtube clips of old and foreign movies. That either sounds like paradise or a trip to the dentist, depending on your point of view. Anyway, here 'tis: "The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of"

Never go with a hippie to a second location

2007-12-10T19:50:00.000-05:00

But I'm not a hippie anymore, so you can make the trip:

12 Grand In Checking

I'm doing this mostly 'cause I lost my mind while student teaching for three months and I just want to get all crazy and shite. Who knows what I'm gonna write about at the new 'spot, but there will be plenty (plenty! I say) movie stuff. Please follow. Or not. But do. Please. It's like this blog only more low-rent and less bad.

Fantasia Image of the Day

2007-09-10T17:42:00.001-04:00

Black Peter

2007-08-25T16:51:00.000-04:00

[N.B.: I will be discussing certain events in the film, including the end; the film doesn't have a very strong "narrative" however, so I hesitate to write that this post contains "spoilers" because there's really not much to spoil]

Right in the middle of Milos Forman's Black Peter (1963) there's an extended sequence at a dance where we spend the majority of our time observing two losers as they try to pick up dates. Our main character, Peter, pops up occasionally, but in this particular sequence he seems like a cameo in his own film. There's a lot of awkward humor, and rock & roll, and it's all shot cinema verite-style, so it's perfect early Forman. What I especially loved about the sequence was the way Forman focuses (almost) exclusively on these two nerds (who were introduced in an earlier scene as dimwitted antagonists in a side plot) and slowly reveals their humanity. It's a long digression in a film that doesn't have much of a narrative to begin with, but it's got everything I love about Forman's Czech films: it's hilarious, true, unpredictable, and ultimately, humanizing. Forman shows us his characters' weaknesses, not just to ridicule them, but to humanize them. He enjoys making fun of the characters but he's never cruel about it.

It's not that Forman drops his dark humor -- he continues to ridicule the characters for their sad-sackhood and social awkwardness. But he doesn't let the audience get away with easy laughs either; he forces us to recognize ourselves in these characters, to see that we could be the butt of the joke just as easily if a camera were around to document all the embarrassing and painful moments of our own youth. Forman makes fun of his characters (and he can be brutal and black in his humor), but he always manages to give a moment -- a fleeting look, a line of dialogue, a small action -- that complicates things and makes the ridiculous character suddenly the saddest and most vulnerable. Fans of shows like The Office would find a lot to love in Forman's Czech films.

The dance sequence in Black Peter -- long and rambling, focused primarily on secondary characters, utilizing documentary-style techniques, diagetic use of popular music, etc. -- is a premiere example of Forman's early style. It's shot like a documentary, with the camera acting as observer, weaving in and out of the crowd as various characters try to find dates, get drinks, make jokes, and dance. We watch the drama unfold as if unscripted, as young people struggle (and often fail) to navigate their confusing social lives.

Black Peter is a youth film, a film for and about people moving from adolescence to adulthood that captures all the quiet rebellion, awkwardness, mischief, confusion, and ambivalence that accompanies that age. Since I'm just coming out of (or still stuck in, depending on which day of the week it is...) that period of my life, Black Peter resonated deeply. I was Peter in so many ways -- ambivalent toward work and family, anxious about sexual and romantic relationships, lacking a "proper" direction in life. Peter can be shy and bumbling, or he can be mischievous and sarcastic, and he certainly can't behave with adults in the way adults expect him to behave. He's too individualistic, too bemused, too awkward and yet too rebellious to fit in with the world his father inhabits, or the world of his job, or the social world of his peers.

There's a hilarious scene at the beginning where Peter follows a man he suspects of shoplifting. Peter works at a grocery store where it's his job to spy on the customers and look for possible thieves (obvious parallels to Communism and the police state of course). The scene -- with Peter following the man for blocks, past shops and passersby, trying to confront him over the shoplifting, but like an inept Inspector Clouseau, unable to bring himself to even make eye contact with the man, all while the man casually ignores Peter -- is a cinematic metaphor for those uncomfortable, unsure attempts of young people to navigate an indifferent and seemingly more powerful adult world. Throughout the sequence the man has complete control despite the fact that he's the one being tailed; he's the adult and Peter is reduced to a boy who's merely playing at being a spy.

I have to admit, the scene could be a metaphor for my own bumbling experiences with older people. I know that in a lot of my interactions with people several years older than myself, I'm still a "kid" and they're the "adults," and the power in these cases is firmly in the hands of the adults.

Black Peter explores this theme a lot, not just in work situations but also at home with Peter's parents, and even in the scenes with Peter and other young people. There's an unmistakable sense that Peter is different -- not necessarily smarter or better but certainly a square peg, unable or unwilling to fit himself into the roles people have assigned to him. An alternate title for the film is, in fact, Black Sheep. Peter's cynical humor, lackadaisical ambivalence, and the annoyed frustration that springs from his social awkwardness are all traits with which I identified (and I expect others my age or younger would respond to as well; I'm curious what the middle-aged or older response to the film might be...). And of course, the theme of individualism that runs throughout the film is a response to the conformity and restrictiveness (thanks to Soviet Communism) of Czech life in the '40s and '50s that was only beginning to thaw in the 1960s.

A small victory for Peter, and the individualism and youth he symbolizes, comes in the last scene as Peter must endure yet another lecture from his conformist father. As Peter sits and grows increasingly annoyed by his father's exhortations, suddenly the movie shifts into the absurd and the camera freeze frames on the father, freezing him in mid rant.
But this is not like the freeze frame in something like Truffaut's 400 Blows, where the frame stops and the film ends. Instead, it's only Peter's father who has been frozen; Peter himself continues to move in his own frame and sits dumbfounded as he witnesses his father's cinematic paralysis. In a bit of self-reflexivity, Forman freezes the film on the father but allows Peter to continue to move and "live" within his own frame, with Peter being fully aware that his father's frame has stopped. Whether by an act of God, or simply the joking act of some unseen director, Peter is left to shake his head, do a double take, and wonder. The viewer is left with a delightful, if often times dark, comedy about the trials of not quite fitting in.

As far as I know the film is only available in the U.S. from Facets Video in a lousy transfer with terrible subtitles; the subtitles are barely matched up with whoever is speaking and several lines of dialogue are simply not translated. As unfortunate as this is (especially since Forman's other two films from this period -- Loves of a Blonde and Fireman's Ball -- are both available from Criterion) Black Peter is still worth seeing; the awkward humor comes through despite the poor subtitling.

Late Night

2007-08-25T15:12:00.000-04:00

Yeah, I stayed up to watch the whole thing. It was surreal, hearing a home run call at 3:30 in the morning. Apparently there's a major league rule that you can't start an inning after 12:59 am, and that the game must then be continued the next day. BUT -- if it's the last time the two teams will meet for the season then that rule is suspended. Such was the case here in Detroit last night/this morning. Heh.

Wake up Carlos, you just won the game

Czech New Wave crib sheet

2007-08-24T16:31:00.000-04:00

I'm really not into getting all academic or informational on this blog; it's just not my thing. My writing is more in the mode of personal reflections, opinions, occasional rants, and random stuff. I've done enough academic writing in my life that I don't want to spend my leisure hours doing it too.

So, before I start posting about some Czech New Wave films I enjoy I thought I'd link to a couple of brief but informative overviews of the period that will help set the stage for my future posts on films like Black Peter, Loves of a Blonde, Daisies, Closely Watched Trains, Capricious Summer, etc.

Criterion goes In Focus on Czech New Wave

Andrew James Horton at GreenCine on Czech and Slovak Cinema

(Both essays have links at the end that are well-worth checking out as well)

The List Post

2007-08-21T01:00:00.000-04:00

So, I participated in the initial round of Edward Copeland's Foreign Film list thing, and first, can I just say: Who the hell let the bum (me) in?! Seriously, the names of the participants are like a who's who of awesome film writers and then there's me. Yeah. "One of these things is not like the others" and all that. So a great big "thanks" to Mr. Copeland for his hard work on a very fun enterprise (I've been having a blast all week, watching films and analyzing them, and thinking about my tastes, and looking at my list and seeing how it reflects on my personality, etc.), and thanks also for being open to the opinions of bums like me!

One thing I've noticed in all this list-making craze (AFI, Online Top 100, Eddie's awesomeness) is how a lot of us are embarrassed about the films we haven't seen, or the guilty-pleasure films we've included on our personal lists, or the final product itself as having missed too many old movies or obscure masterpieces, or included too many mainstream popcorn flicks or predictable "classics". I feel like sometimes people (myself included) approach list making as an exercise in trying to look good. There's that thought process where we want to include something but we're afraid of "what people might think", so we leave it off and throw something with a little more cache on there to make ourselves seem cooler and smarter, more "with it", etc.

I know I almost succumbed to this desire. But with this new list we weren't being asked specifically for THE BEST, but a combination of criteria, sort of a "really good films that you totally love, but don't worry this isn't a canon" kinda thing. So when I feared what people might say if I put Cinema Paradiso on my list (hey, I cried okay? That movie really moved me, man!) I decided, frak it, I'm going with it and I'm proud of it. (And it made the uber-ballot, so, yay!)

Random Thought: Yeah, so snobs cling to certain things -- knowledge of wines, indie rock, for example -- and feel superior to other people because they know all about and like these specific “cool” things. The elitist doesn’t even have to like the thing in question, she must merely recognize that SOMEONE should like the thing, claim it as objectively good, and champion it as worth preserving. I’m a sometime-elitist. I’m not a snob (I hope). I think the films of great foreign directors are worth celebrating and preserving and that love of these films should be cultivated, as far as it’s possible, with a wider audience. Just don’t get down on me ’cause I’m not all that interested personally in Hsiao-hsien Hou or Pather Panchali.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I just don't see the value in trying to impress with something like a list. The Online Film Community's Top 100 is not a reflection of my tastes (and I didn't participate in it, so that makes sense), but it is a reflection of something, it says something about what the participants are into (even if on an individual basis people's votes looked different), and in that way it's interesting and has started some really fantastic discussions. Does it bum me out that a lot of older (pre-1960) movies haven't been seen or enjoyed by a portion (though, who can say how large?) of internet film bloggers? Yeah, fo' sho', since old movies are my thing. But the great thing about Cine-blog world is that we can just get another list going if we want, and in this case, we have.

So, let out your inner sentimentalist! Don't be afraid to be thought an inexperienced whelp! Philistines unite! Share your list, embarrassing movies and all, for the world to see! You know, whatever.

So, yeah, don't be embarrassed if you think some mainstream hit movie is better than the Three Colors trilogy. You might be wrong, of course, but the debate and discussion that follows is where it's at anyway. (And the "you" here is me kinda talking to myself, just so you know.)

Random Thought: Gosh, now I sound like those young punks who snivel and snark on pre-1970s (or, as my generation seems to say: “when movies were slow, boring, and black and white, but for some reason everybody talked unnaturally fast“) and foreign pictures (which are not only slow, boring, and black and white, but also subtitled -- more work!). That is not me. Please believe me.

Another Random Thought: I think the foreign films I love, so far, skew young because I am young (relatively. 26.) (and I had that particular thought as I watched for the first time and added to my favorites A bout de souffle). Tokyo Drifter, Port of Shadows, Black Peter. Not exactly Cries and Whispers or Tokyo Story, but it’s some of what I’ve seen and loved. I’ve only had about eight years of serious, deliberate cinema study under my belt, and much of it has been devoted to pre-1960s American cinema, so I’ve got a ways to go.

Anyway, here's my (totally embarrassment free) (well, maybe there's a little (teeny, tiny) bit of embarrassment for Farewell, My Concubine, but it's just a smidge, a tiny, tiny smidge):

LIST
Grand Illusion
Only Yesterday (Japanese title: Omohide poro poro)
Day of Wrath
Farewell, My Concubine
Nights of Cabiria
Daisies
M
Gospel According to St. Matthew
The Conformist
Black Peter
Tokyo Drifter
Exterminating Angel
Cinema Paradiso
Eyes Without a Face
Loves of a Blonde
Breathless
Quai des Brumes (Port of Shadows)
Shoot the Piano Player
La Belle et la bete
Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Viridiana
Ordet

Also (movies I should have included and I don't know why I didn't, I'm stupid):

Rashomon
Rules of the Game
Man Is Not a Bird
Battle of Algiers

Will I write more about these films? Possibly. Very, very possibly. I am a lazy bum though, so, you know...

If Movie Lists Were Mixed Tapes...

2007-08-20T13:13:00.000-04:00

The mixed tape is a thing of the past, especially for the children of ipod (and my parents’ generation was stuck with LPs and 8-tracks) so this concept might be kinda limited to the twenty-four to thirty-four set. But: What if you could make a mixed tape of movies instead of songs? I’ve always loved making lists but I have a hard time ranking things. One day Gigi is ahead of The Bandwagon on my all-time musicals list, the next day Bandwagon jumps over Gigi, and then sixty hours later both have fallen two spots and Gold Diggers of 1933 has taken over. I love lists but I’m so wishy-washy I can never settle on the ordering of things. I hate saying: “This is my number one,” because I know two weeks later I’ll have found another number one depending on the weather and my changing moods.

So, to satiate my list-making desires I thought it might be fun to order things as if I were making a huge celluloid-spun mixed tape; a kind of double feature on steroids. The movies aren’t listed in order of preference; they’re listed so that each movie builds on and reacts to and flows from the ones preceding it, just like the experienced mixed tape maker who orders the songs in just the right way to maximize the sonic experience.

You know (an example): First, a fun, catchy radio hit to start things off, then a couple of happy but slightly more obscure tunes (peppy but suitably hip so as to show off your alt-rock credentials), then a slow, lilting piece, maybe about lost love, then a raucous, heavy rocker, then something ironically 80s, then a trip down memory lane with a mid-90s band like Gin Blossoms or the Lemonheads, then a party song, something hip-hop but not too radio-overplayed, then another slow song, etc. etc.

If movie lists were mixed tapes, what would be on side one? On side two? Would you start side two with something energetic or something somber? Would you end side one with something happy or sad? How would you fill the nebulous middle, that place where everything seems to run together and yet cohesion seems to fall apart, how do you keep it interesting, how do you keep it fresh? Consider this a trial run. If movie lists were mixed tapes…

Title: Procrastination Station

Side One:
Mansfield Park (1999)
Gidget
Light in the Piazza
Paradise Road
Dark Victory
Rebecca
The Thin Man
Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows

Side Two:
Father of the Bride (1950)
Overboard
The Parent Trap (1998)
Roman Holiday
Splendor in the Grass
Dinner at Eight
The Exterminating Angel
Gypsy

Dick Tracy Goes to the Diner

2007-08-02T19:41:00.001-04:00

Quote of the Week

2007-07-26T16:21:00.000-04:00

"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Forgive me while I disapparate

2007-07-17T10:42:00.000-04:00

But there are already Harry Potter book 7 spoilers lurking out there on the 'net and I don't want to be spoiled. I was spoiled for both books 5 and 6, and though it wasn't the end of the world or the defeat of my enjoyment of those books, I still don't want to be spoiled for book 7. I will not be blogging again until after I've read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I will not even be going on the internet again (except to check email) until after I've read the book. Heck, at this point, I probably won't be watching TV, listening to the radio, reading the newspaper, or leaving my house for the next five days. I'll be in my cone of silence until after the 21st of July. Goodbye till then!

These Dreams Are Dark

2007-07-16T21:25:00.000-04:00

But in a good way.

More Harry stuff, this time an awesome bit of criticism from Matt Zoller Seitz at House:

The film's alternately doubting and exultant mood -- encapsulated by Radcliffe's nuanced performance -- at times reminded me of George Harrison's great solo debut, All Things Must Pass, arguably flower-power-rock's most moving contemplation of love, cruelty, spiritual yearning and the quest for self-knowledge. One of its finest songs, "Beware of Darkness," could double as the viewer's admonition to Harry:

Watch out now, take care
Beware of the thoughts that linger
Winding up inside your head
The hopelessness around you
In the dead of night

Beware of sadness
It can hit you
It can hurt you
Make you sore and what is more
That is not what you are here for.

snip

... Another, more moving example occurs in a scene in the forest outside Hogwarts where Harry talks to Luna Lovegood (why the James Bond films didn't already use this name is a mystery) while feeding thestrals, spooky creatures that look like skinless winged horses. Luna explains to Harry that thestrals "can only be seen by people who've seen death." As she tells Harry of her mother's demise in a spell-casting accident, she feeds a baby thestral, first by tossing it an apple (which it ignores), then a slab of red meat (which it devours). When the foal's snout dips toward the meat, Yates cuts to a scene in Hogwarts' mess hall, starting with a closeup of Ron Weasley tearing into a sausage. This, too, initially reads as a mere sight gag, but it plugs into the story's core as surely as the paper airplane business. Harry, Luna, Ron and the series' other significant young characters are baby thestrals -- unsettling but deep-down-beautiful creatures whose specialness is associated with trauma.

snip

...and most delightful of all, Alan Rickman as Snape. Rickman's line readings, like Ian McDiarmid's in the Star Wars films, have a self-awareness which suggests the character realized long ago that he was a character in a drama and can't believe no one else has figured it out. (He's the Thomas Crown of acting: there's no scene he can't steal.) The film's admixture of unease and joy holds together, and it's consistent with Sirius Black's assurance to Harry that darkness and light coexist in every human soul, and that "what matters is what we choose to act on. That's who we really are."

Read it all, including the comments.

The Patented Rickmanian Pause

2007-07-14T12:51:00.000-04:00

If you want to find out what that is, and what my thoughts on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (David Yates, 2007) are, just read Cacciaguida. He and I are pretty much on the same wave length (scroll down to find it).

Kids love crap

2007-07-08T01:08:00.000-04:00

First, a rather lengthy quote, though one that I hope is as intriguing to the reader as it is to me (from C.S. Lewis's essay "Different Tastes in Literature," reprinted in On Stories and Other Essays On Literature):

I was suggesting last week that bad art is never really enjoyed in the same sense in which good art is enjoyed. It is only 'liked'; it never startles, prostrates, and takes captive. Now if I say that, I come up against a difficulty. It has never been better put than by that fine and neglected artist, Mr. Forrest Reid. In the little autobiography called Apostate he describes his delight, as a boy, in Miss Marie Corelli's Ardath. Even at that age the last part seemed to him 'so bad that it weakened the impression of what had gone before.' But that earlier impression remained. Perhaps wisely Mr. Reid has not risked an adult re-reading. He has feared that 'its gorgeousness would all too likely strike me as vulgarity, its passionate adventure as melodrama, its poetry as a crude straining after effect.' But none the less, adds Mr. Reid (who is as little likely as any man alive to be deceived in such a matter), there is no use in 'pretending that the old pleasure was not an aesthetic pleasure at all. It was. That is the whole point,' and he contributes the important suggestion: 'What I got then probably was the Ardath of Miss Corelli's imagination; what I should get now would be the very much less splendid Ardath of her actual achievement.'

This diagnosis may not be correct. Mr. Reid may have got the Ardath of the author's imagination, or he may have got the Ardath of his own; that is, he may really have been enjoying an embryonic composition of his own stimulated by mere hints in the book. But it is not necessary to decide between these two possibilities. The point is that, on either view, he was enjoying the book not for what it really was but for what it was not. And this sort of thing very often happens when the reader is imaginatively superior to the author, and is also young and uncritical. Thus for a boy in the first bloom of his imagination the crudest picture of a galleon under sail may do all that is necessary. Indeed he hardly sees the picture at all. At the first hint he is a thousand miles away, the brine is on his lips, her head rising and falling, and gulls have come to show that undiscovered country is near.

So far in my childhood movie series I've been pleasantly surprised by half-remembered movies like Fantasia, Pinocchio, and Dumbo; or I've been haunted and re-enchanted by perennial favorites like The Wizard of Oz; or I've been delighted to discover that my childhood tastes were actually quite good, with the rediscovery of the low-key and charming The Sword in the Stone. But now I've hit that disappointment which Forrest Reid was so fortunate to avoid by not re-reading his childhood favorite: The New Adventures of Pippi-Longstocking -- a movie that I loved as a child and wished were real (if only so Pippi and I could scrub clean our treehouse with broom-skates) -- is a bad movie. It is crap. It's tedious, episodic (in the worst way), badly acted, badly scripted, insipidly directed, and blemished by hideously 80s musical numbers (though I have to say, that title song is still as catchy as ever... Pippi Longstocking is coming into your world! That freckle-faced red-head girl you ought a know!). Tami Erin, as Pippi, is almost completely without charm, and her character, instead of being whimsical and carefree, is downright snotty and spoiled. I'm sure as a child I was on the side of Pippi. Today, I'm decidedly on the side of Miss Banister. Pippi is a brat.

It's not a mystery why I liked the movie so much as a kid: there are elements of a good movie here, but as is so often the case with bad movies, no one involved in the filmmaking process knew what to do with the real elements of entertainment that peeked through the dreck. As Lewis and Reid in the quote above point out, I was seeing the movie of my imagination, not the movie that was actually up on the screen. I was seeing broom-skates; flying on motorcycles and in "gyro-planes" with broken propellers; walking on walls and ceilings; living alone and eating pancakes in the middle of the night; having a talking horse and a monkey for companions; not having to go to school; ice cream fights and parades down main street; sticking your entire face into a cake for no reason; saving children from burning buildings by walking across a tightrope (Also: Did this movie contribute to my fear of fire? I would say yes, since that scene with the man throwing his cigarette into the pile of old mattresses and junk is less of a movie scene and more of a recurring nightmare that I've had for years -- Did it really all start with Pippi Longstocking?! The power of cinema, my friends...); being a pirate and having a cannibal king for a father. All these things and more, in my own imagination, were fashioned into a movie that was as carefree and adventurous as I wished my own life to be at seven years old. Through the cold, hard eyes of adulthood, I can now see that those things (the magic and wonderment) weren't really in the movie itself, at least not fully, or in any successful way was a work of art. They were only hinted at by the movie, hints and glimpses and unsuccessful attempts at whimsy that only became memorable because my own imagination absorbed them and made them into something with the power of a real work of art.

That cleaning scene where the kids skate around on brooms fashioned like roller skates is a perfect example. When I was a kid, that scene was the inspiration for many a dream of having a huge treehouse, a club house for my friend Andy and me, and we'd clean it by making broom-skates just like Pippi had used. It was my dream, for quite a few years after seeing the movie, to be crazy and wild like Pippi, to live in our club house and skate around with brooms on our feet. That it never came true only increased in my mind the fantasy and enchantment of that movie scene. And then I watched it the other day, and saw indeed those elements that had enthralled me as a child. But I also saw, couldn't help but see, how in the hands of a better director, a better script, and better actors, that scene could have truly been the scene of my imagination, instead of the weak, competent-but-completely-inartistic typical '80s kids movie crap-fest. Nearly every scene worth remembering was like that: a good idea ruined by poor filmmaking.

This whole experience seems to me to prove (in the way anecdotal evidence so definitively proves our pet theories) that kids, because they lack the critical eye, can very often fall in love with crap. They can dream and fantasize about and fashion great art from the most insipid hack work because they let their own imaginations fill in the bad spots. How many children a few years younger than I look back with longing on junk like Power Rangers and Pokemon, and how many of my own generation still cling to memories of things like, yes, Transformers. And that's just it: This junk is remembered not as it is, but as we wished it to be. The stories a child creates in his head of giant robots, of red-headed freckle-faced girls, of ninjas, are more thrilling than the swill that swill-makers peddle out every day for children to consume, but children consume it because children have the capacity to see beyond it to the stories of their imaginations, the stories that junk art is only able to hint at, but which provide the child's imagination with a thousand adventures and thrills.

I've decided to dump a few titles from my list of childhood movies I was going to rediscover, because I don't want to have my pleasant memories of these films dimmed by the reality that comes with viewing them with a more critical, adult eye. For some reason, call me crazy, I have a sinking feeling that if I watched it today, I wouldn't like Howard the Duck nearly as much as I did as a kid. Maybe I'll just let the memory of the movie endure, instead of crushing it with the weight of reality. Alas, for Pippi -- her movie, and my memory of it, were not so fortunate.

Snick, snack, snorum!

2007-06-25T22:43:00.000-04:00

One of the joys of watching movies as a child? Funny hair!

A pretty relaxed movie (there's not much tension, even during the inventive wizards duel), with a plot consisting mostly of charming little episodes and the bare minimum of story (Wart learns brains over brawn, pulls the sword from the stone, becomes king of England, and... FIN). But I'm still charmed by Disney's The Sword in the Stone (Wolfgang Reitherman, 1962) (with story and character design by Bill Peet), even after watching it dozens of times as a child. I think the characters are the strength of the movie, from the curmudgeonly Merlin, to the really, really curmudgeonly Archimedes, to the perfectly revolting (Why, thank you dearie!) marvelous mad Madam Mim. From the swishy-ness of Pellinore's mustache, to the walrus stomach of Sir Ector, to the cro-magnon face of Kay, to the skin and bones (literally!) of Wart -- character design, voice acting, and the script all come together to create vivid, memorable characters, so that even though the story is slight, the characters are for real. Plus: Hokety, pockety, wickety, wack! Zim zaba, rim BIM! and Prestidigitonium! are just too entirely awesome to comprehend. Also: BLOW ME TO BERMUDA! never gets old. Heh.

It's Summer, La La La!

2007-06-22T20:41:00.000-04:00

I was outraged and excited and appalled and heartened and disappointed and confused and encouraged (oh how it will inspire the masses to watch more silent movies!) and annoyed and interested about the new AFI's 100 Best American Films for about 20 minutes, and then I suddenly got extremely tired of the whole thing. I mean, just utterly exhausted with the thought of thinking about it anymore.

It's not that I'm anti-list or anything, I usually love to pour over "best of" lists of all kinds (and I mean all kinds, even of things I have absolutely no real knowledge about, such as best architectural structures of the 20th century or something) and fume silently over all the TOTALLY WRONG CHOICES! OMG I CANT BELIEVE THEY LEFT THAT OFF THOSE BASTARDS!!1@ etc. (Do go here, though, for some intelligent and awesome commentary on the AFI list.)

But, well, it's f-ing summer and I just can't be bothered with Establishment lists and the "movie draft" that follows, where cine-types argue for who should get picked over whom (this year Raging Bull went fourth in the draft while The Graduate fell a few spots more than expected, but eccentric-blogger-guy would have taken a risk and gone with The Wind and more Sam Fuller, etc. etc.). Seriously, I thought about doing my own counter-list for about five minutes and then I realized I was just underwhelmed and bored by the mere five minute thought of it. It's summertime, la la la! and I guess I'm just feeling less inclined to think about big think-pieces or canon-making.

Basically I'm watching all these old movies from my childhood and reminiscing, rediscovering, relaxing -- the Three Rs of Summer! -- and it's much more fun to just write frivolous posts about 80s movies. That, in fact, is what I love so much about this whole movie-blogging thing. I don't have to have an official position on the AFI's 100 Greatest American Movies list!!!! Yay! I'll just watch and post about The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking and just forget about everything else. Which is what I intend to do. La la la.

Quick Grades

2007-06-22T00:03:00.000-04:00

Spiderman 3 (Sam Raimi, 2007, B) (I like crazy, overstuffed messes, okay?)
Knocked Up (Judd Apatow, 2007, B+)
Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini, 1957, A)
Ratatouille (Brad Bird, 2007, A)
Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938, A+) (Yes, I've seen this one before, but it's been awhile and I had forgotten how completely hilarious this movie is -- let's just say, I don't give out A+s very often.)

If I Were a TCM Guest Programmer...

2007-06-19T23:53:00.000-04:00

Since I am both forgetful and lazy, I didn't enter the Turner Classic Movies Guest Programmer contest. In a way, it's for the best, since I'm kinda camera shy and would hate to be on television, even if it meant getting my movie choices shown on my favorite channel. But.... if I were going to be the TCM Guest Programmer, these are the movies I'd pick (and please note, these are not necessarily my all-time favorites -- though one is -- just four movies that I think deserve a wider audience and would make for a night of entertaining TV):

1.) The Strawberry Blonde (Raoul Walsh, 1941): This is one of the reasons I love the Golden Age of Hollywood. A movie that's simply entertaining, with Cagney, DeHavilland, Carson, and Hayworth all at the top of their game. Funny, romantic, wistful, true to the small and great ironies of life, insightful about human faults and vanities -- simply a well-made and well-told story. It's not an ambitious film like Citizen Kane or Gone with the Wind; it's not one of those accidental miracles that resulted in cultural immortality like Casablanca or The Wizard of Oz; it's not an iconic film for any of its four stars. And yet at the end of the day, I never get tired of this movie. Every time -- and I mean every time -- this movie is on television (it's not on DVD... grrrr) I sit and watch it. I think I've seen it close to seven or eight times, and I could watch it a dozen more. It's the epitome of classic studio era movie-making: Nothing spectacular or groundbreaking, simply a really, really good and entertaining movie. Utterly enjoyable.

2.) Waterloo Bridge (Mervyn LeRoy, 1940): I've never seen the pre-Code original of this one, though I've read many times that that 1931 film is superior. I can only guess it's because the earlier film doesn't refuse to mention the heroine's profession (the oldest one, in this case), and doesn't waste time on any of that dreamy 1940s romanticism. Apparently the older film is better because it's "modern," "grittier," more "sexually frank," more "open" in its subject matter and unwilling to sugarcoat the harsh realities of life. Okay, whatever. Give me lush romance, tragic heroines, candlelit dances, "Auld Lang Syne," and characters who can't bear to utter the scandalous word "prostitute," over some dreary early '30s social drama about a hooker with a heart of brass (and yes, I realize I'm being unfair to a movie I've never seen). I much prefer Vivien Leigh's tragic dancer Myra, whose heartbreak and fatalism lead her to a life of prostitution, than a pre-Code Myra who has always been a prostitute, but who falls in love with a naive boy and wants to change for his sake but knows it's too late, the set-up of so many "a prostitute makes nice" stories. Leigh's Myra is a strange bird, a young girl with no family and ambitions to dance, a beautiful girl who at the same time has a morose quality, an inkling of the possible futility of life, that gives her a deep, complex sadness. Robert Taylor, a man of action, a child of privilege who bounds through life with reckless abandon, and yet he's drawn to the sad, strangely mature, delicately beautiful girl. And of course, it's all heartbreak and ill-fate. I could write pages about this movie, and maybe someday I will. But at least I can share my love with the Chinese, who apparently love this movie, since it was one of the first American films they were able to see after the war ended. I'll just end by saying, there's a scene in this movie (at a candlelit restaurant) that is perhaps one of the most romantic ever put to screen. And yes, I'll stand by that overstatement!

3.) Libeled Lady (Jack Conway, 1936): I just really love William Powell and Myrna Loy together, and this is one of their best non-Thin Man movies. Jean Harlow gets to let fly some pretty good zingers. Spencer Tracy is playing one of my favorite 1930s movie types, the hard-boiled reporter who seems to only care about the paper and not his girl, but in the end we know he's just a big softy who's deep in love with his long-suffering lady. But it's Powell and Loy I watch for, and it's Powell and Loy I love. Their on-screen chemistry is so natural, so electric, so sexy and yet still so beguilingly normal, you feel like you're just watching two ordinary people in love, and who are so interesting you just can't take your eyes off them. This movie is more a comedy of errors than it is a true screwball comedy, but it often gets compared unfavorably to the classic screwballs of the era like My Man Godfrey or Bringing Up Baby as being a lightweight of the genre. That's too bad, because Libeled Lady has a pretty witty script, and is able to be funny without being zany (though Powell's battle with a walleye is slapstick at its best). The characters are more realistic than your average screwball denizen (though Harlow's brassy Gladys and Tracy's hard-nosed Haggerty are still somewhat ridiculous, this being, after all, a comedy). Having more down-to-earth characters means the film has some great quiet moments, especially between Loy and Powell, that are tender and touching.

4.) Gypsy (Mervyn LeRoy, 1962): I know we're supposed to complain about Rosalind Russell getting the part over Merman; I know we're supposed to think Mervyn LeRoy is an average director and the film doesn't have much visual flair, especially in comparison to the great Freed Unit MGM musicals; I know we're supposed to condemn the singing, since Roz couldn't do her own, and the dubbed voice by Lisa Kirk is only "okay" (and too deep), and Natalie Wood had a pretty enough voice but it was just too thin -- I know all this, and how Gypsy was the beginning of the end of the era of successful musicals in Hollywood. But, well, sometimes we watch a movie in our youth and it's a transcendent experience, and even if we know we should know better, we can't help loving it unreservedly, because it's a part of us, a singular artistic experience with transformative power. I was in my early teens, with a secret dream of going into show business, of "making it big," and Gypsy, an almost forbidden pleasure, watching it past midnight on a school night, spoke directly to my inner Rose. If there's one movie on this list that's a "movie that's important to me," Gypsy is it. I wish I could say my important-to-me movie was a great classic, something impressive, like The Rules of the Game, but it's not, it's a second-rate musical from a non-auteur, with a star -- Russell -- who many claim was wrong for the part. But movies that shape us, that grab hold of us and change us, are often not the movies we expect. At thirteen years old, in those dangerous hours past midnight, I had Gypsy.

So that's my night of movies in fantasy TCM-land. Anyone else willing to pick their four? Believe me, it's hard to limit yourself to just a quartet.

Quote of the Week

2007-06-18T22:56:00.000-04:00

"I think acting should look as if we're working a little. Which is a very old-fashioned theory today. See, we mustn't have any idea that anybody knows the camera's on them at all. You see, it's just 'life.' Well, we all have life, twenty-four... twelve hours a day. Sometimes we want to forget life. I think it should be a little larger than life. A little bit theatrical."

Bette Davis

VERLANDER!!!

2007-06-13T10:21:00.000-04:00

First Tigers No-hitter since 1984. 6th no-hitter in Tigers history. Pitches were faster in the 9th than in the previous 8 innings (102 MPH on the second-to-last pitch). 12 strikeouts. As they say: That's Nasty!

Film and Sports

2007-06-11T10:49:00.000-04:00

Interleague play meets Hitchcock! Birds descended on Comerica Park yesterday and it was kinda hilarious. This is the ESPN recap of the game, and make sure to watch the video highlights to see the full effect of the birds. It's been reported that when Tiger's reliever Tim BYRDak came into the game, the gulls were somewhat pacified. At any rate, go Tigers!

Beware of birds!

Fantasia Will Amazia!

2007-05-31T23:45:00.000-04:00

I fell asleep during Fantasia. It was re-released in 1990 for a 50th anniversary, I was nine and the daughter of a classical music buff (my mom), and so we saw it. Most lasting memory of the film? This image:

Yes, practically the first image of the film, I know. But at nine years old Fantasia is a little tough to take in a movie theater setting: you can't stop the movie for a lunch break or to run around outside for a few hours, you just have to sit there in the darkened cavern and try not to fall asleep. That silhouetted image of Stokowski was pretty powerful though; it stayed with me and not just because it was the first scene of the movie. There's something elemental about that shot, something basic. Who is he conducting? Who is he? The silhouette, the glowing blue background, it's almost like he's a phantom, a shade, calling forth images from some netherworld. I don't think it's an accident that the film includes sequences like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, or the Rite of Spring in which the conductor seems to be bringing the very world into existence, from a blue nothingness to a world teeming with life and dinosaurs. Watching the movie today, I still get a little thrill from seeing the conductor raise his shadowed arms. This is one of the reasons I wanted to do a childhood movie series, to re-experience those thrills, to remember what it was like to watch movies as a child and to see if the movies might still work their same magic, even now, some ten or fifteen years later.

I've seen Fantasia since that day seventeen years ago. In fact, I remember getting the VHS tape out on many a lazy summer vacation day just to watch the Night On Bald Mountain sequence over and over again. And I do remember watching the Sorcerer's Apprentice section of the film in the theater, as well as the funny hippos and alligators do their Dance of the Hours ballet, and of course, A Night On Bald Mountain. I think the part that put me to sleep in the theater was the Rite of Spring section; Stravinsky's Rite of Spring is not exactly a kid-friendly piece of music (I think it's tough even for adults to get through). And I'm sure I slept straight on through the Pastoral Symphony and was only awakened by the peppiness of Ponchielli. At least, that's how I remember it. Funny, even as a kid, the most kid-friendly section -- The Sorcerer's Apprentice -- was probably my least favorite part. For some reason, it seemed so contained, so ordinary compared to the wild worlds of stuff like the nature ballet of the Nutcracker Suite or the phantasms of A Night On Bald Mountain. Mickey Mouse and inanimate objects coming to life? That seemed as ordinary to me as a Saturday morning cartoon.

Watching the movie again now, I can't say my opinion has changed about The Sorcerer's Apprentice -- still my least favorite section. Which is funny, since apparently, that section always seems to get the most praise from both critics and casual viewers alike. Though I do love this shot:

That's pretty frightening: an army of brooms, marching in lock-step, uncontrollable, single-minded in their mission of aquatic destruction. I feel like I'm watching a Leni Riefenstahl film by way of Fleischer Studios. Also somewhat scary? This guy:

According to the animators interviewed on the DVD re-release documentary, this cocked-eyebrow face was modeled after a face Walt Disney himself often made. I once dreamed of being a Disney animator, but I wouldn't have wanted to see that creepy eyebrow pop up whenever Uncle Walt was displeased with my work.

Even though the Sorcerer's Apprentice wasn't and isn't my favorite part of the movie, I did spend a lot of time copying Mickey's image from it. Like I said, I wanted to be to be a Disney animator when I was between the ages of seven and eleven. I spent hours copying this image:

I think I remember it so clearly because it was one of the first things I drew free-hand that people thought I had traced. Nope! All done free-hand, no tracing for me! At nine years old, I was so proud.

Watching the film again a few weeks ago, I was, frankly, kinda blown away by it. As a child, certain sections were powerful and made an indelible mark (see: Night On Bald Mountain), but the film as a whole wasn't something I remember wanting to watch, the way one would want to pop in Lady and the Tramp or Back to the Future or Goonies. Watching the film now, I'm struck by, yes, certain sections (see: Night On Bald Mountain), but also by the film as a complete film. Each section could be watched individually, each separate short film existing independently of the others. But I think the sum of the film is actually greater than the parts. Or, to put it another way, I think each individual part comments on and enhances the enjoyment and understanding of all the other parts. The film starts out with Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, the "abstract" piece of music ("music for its own sake" as the film describes it) that is accompanied by meshes of color and squiggly lines and generally abstract animation, but notice this image towards the end of the piece:

In this piece, "pure" music with no story or dominant idea contained within the music itself, and the Disney animators happen to stick a sunrise/sunset into the thing. Later on the sun will show up as a destroyer of the dinosaurs in the Rite of Spring section:

After Zeus's thunderstorm in the Pastoral Symphony:

And then finally, the last shot of the film, after the nightmares and spectres of Bald Mountain have gone back to their shadows, the pilgrims make their journey through the forest with lighted lamps (metaphors for the sun?) as Schubert's Ave Maria weaves its way into the soundtrack, and they walk into a cathedral made of trees, which open up to reveal the rising sun in all its glory. The music builds, the light grows stronger, and at last, a sunrise, an eternal symbol of hope and the film ends:

And gosh, don't those hills look a little bit like those weird rolling hills from the first section, the Bach Toccata and Fugue?:

The sun imagery is just one repeating theme throughout the film, and I think nature imagery as a whole is the dominant visual theme of the movie. Nature as living thing, maybe even magical (Nutcracker Suite); nature as volatile force, creator and destroyer (Rite of Spring); nature as divine (Pastoral Symphony); nature as healer, giver of hope (Ave Maria). There is also the theme of creative forces, which I mentioned earlier, of creating new life, as represented in the Rite of Spring section and the Sorcerer's Apprentice section. Even in the Toccata and Fugue abstract section, there's a sense that the music itself is somehow willing these images into existence. And the section least thematically tied to the others -- the Dance of the Hours comedy -- still has in the background the changing times of the day: the brightness of midday, the pallor of dusk, the haunted dark of night (which, of course, happens right before the Night On Bald Mountain sequence -- again, each section builds on and comments on the others).

I watched the movie twice in two days when I rented it recently -- a response I was not expecting, frankly. And then I watched it in pieces again for a third time, and each time I watched it I noticed something new, or I caught a new connection, or a new theme. I even noticed things that I've seen echoed elsewhere in other films. This image, for instance:

looks almost identical to the last image of Peter Jackson's The Two Towers (minus the nazgul and fell beasts, of course), where the camera pans up and reveals a hellish shot of Mordor, looking like something out of Dante's Inferno (or now, as I see, out of Disney's Fantasia).

I mentioned the word "elemental" earlier, in reference to the silhouetted conductor's image, and I think that word sums up the experience pretty well. It's animation and cinema on that pure level, on the level of just moving images, as if one is seeing color and line and form all explode for the first time. The emotions and themes of the piece are basic as well:

Fear:

Life:

Death:

Beauty:

Joy:

Evil:

I have to say, I was exhilarated after watching the film recently. I know Pauline Kael called it kitsch, but, if it is, it's the most dazzling, ambitious, and thrilling kitsch I've seen in a long time. There's a sense, after watching it, that one's just witnessed the birth of some new kind of life.

Fantasia Image of the Day

2007-05-29T14:15:00.000-04:00

Whenever I Go Blog Rolling, I Always (BLANK) Victor Morton

2007-05-28T23:21:00.000-04:00

Victor over at Rightwing Film Geek returns to blogging with a nice tribute to Charles Nelson Reilly and the awesomeness of Match Game:

Wikipedia claims that MATCH GAME "pushed the boundaries of 1970s television standards." That may be the case, but it misses the point that the boundaries remained and were, in fact, key to what made their bickering so funny and so enduring. Charles and Brett and Richard and Gene were brilliant comedians because they knew how to deliver a dirty joke in a clean way, in the classic double entendre, which has become a lost art as content standards have waned. But this pre-pubescent MATCH GAME fan remembers all the innuendo (which the adult fan well catches) going over his head. In fact, what is very much part of the fun (watching it now at 40) is appreciating the tension in how the MATCH GAME team were so deft as to get away with so much while keeping the surface G-rated. Sex and sexuality are legitimate subjects for humor, and I have no per se moral problem with locker-room jokes. But the double entendre is not only funny, but respects the innocence of some in the audience through its "double meaning" (in a slightly different context, Ernst Lubitsch noted that if you tell the audience "2 and 2," they don't need to be told "4"). But when comedians can say whatever they want, you don't need a Bocaccio to write in "The Decameron" of a randy groundskeeper at a convent that "he tended all their gardens."

I was a teenager when I experienced the genius of Match Game, watching reruns on the Game Show Network with my mom. At first I thought it was hilariously tacky in the way so much of mainstream 70s culture seems to those of us who had our childhoods in the now ironically hip 80s. But the more I've watched it, and the older I've gotten, the more I'm convinced that my grandparents' generation was a lot cooler, a lot funnier, and a lot smarter and more sophisticated than anything my generation could hope to achieve.

Michael Gerardi also gets back in the game with a review of The Freshman and reminds me I should go watch the DVD of that movie I recorded a few weeks ago.

I'm sure everyone's already seen this, but it's new to me: Classic movies and others get the Grindhouse treatment! Example:

That Little Round-Headed Boy discovers Howard Hawks's Scarface, David Bordwell and Co. discuss movie sequels and RightWingTrash celebrates the Addams Family's contribution toward winning the Cold War:

Of course, Lurch turns out to be the opposite of what Haan imagines as a “poor weak victim of exploitation.” The butler carries around a cigar-store Indian to see who cares for a smoke. This is the same Indian that Klarpe was examining closely before with much distaste. The Addams family would get a similar reaction if Sheryl Crow came by for a visit.

The Russians decide that Lurch is a robot. Harris tries to explain the truth, but can’t convince them. At least Haan and Klarpe can calm down enough to enjoy a nice lunch. They’re impressed to get caviar, but Morticia explains that they’re eating eye of tadpole. (Blue-eyed tadpole is better, Gomez adds, but it’s out of season.) Klarpe adds that American beef is fine, but not as good as in his country. Wrong again, since he’s dining on alligator.

Terry Teachout's Entries from an unkept diary:

Though the metaphor embodied in its nickname is long dead, everyone in the world understands that a "movie" consists of "moving pictures," and it is in the nature of a picture--a photograph--that we take for granted its unfaked reality. A century ago, our great-grandparents were scared out of their wits when one of the villains in The Great Train Robbery pointed his gun at the audience and fired it. Nowadays we're more sophisticated than that, but most of us still cling to the belief that a film is in some attenuated but still meaningful sense a record of something that actually happened, if only on a soundstage.

Will our children feel this way about film? I doubt it.

And Jon Hastings at The Forager Blog has started his movie club.

I Wake Up Screaming!

2007-05-26T12:43:00.000-04:00

A 1941 movie with murder, obsession, ambiguous characters with hidden motives, Elisha Cook Jr., a flashback narrative structure, and shots like these:

And it was made at practically the same time as The Maltese Falcon. Was this Betty Grable/Victor Mature vehicle from Fox more "noir" than the so-called "First Film Noir"??? Well, the happy love story stuck in the middle of the all the creepy dark stuff seems to say "no" (and who knew that "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" could get more play in this movie than in Wizard of Oz!). But wait for the end (sorry, no spoilers here) and tell me that doesn't seem as twisted as anything from the traditional Noir catalogue. Also, stylistically, it looks way more Noir than Falcon.

Fantasia Image of the Day

2007-05-24T21:37:00.001-04:00

LAME

2007-05-24T20:43:00.000-04:00

I have a couple of questions for you LOST: Why did Charlie lock the door and basically commit suicide? Couldn't he have gotten out of the room before the bomb went off? There seemed like a lot of time between the moment Patch Guy showed up with the grenade and the time it took Charlie to lock the door, look meaningfully at Desmond, and wait an eternity for the bomb to go off. Couldn't Charlie have just gotten out of the room and let the grenade go off without locking the door? It would've taken twelve years for that cavernous hatch to fill up with water and by that time Charlie and Des could've been half-way to the island. Charlie's death, meant to be so meaningful and self-sacrificing (which it was, only needlessly so), ended up making no sense. Charlie just basically committed suicide for no reason, and it could have been remedied so easily if the writers had just decided to have the door lock behind Charlie so that he couldn't escape. Instead, they went for the extra-special-self-sacrificing version, even though Charlie's sacrifice was already heroic without this added-on really, really "heroic" (lame) stuff. It just makes Charlie look like an idiot (also, when did Charlie convert to Eastern Orthodoxy? Nice backwards sign of the cross, Chuck).

It's funny because I've always liked the Charlie character but I was actually hoping they would kill him because it would be heroic and give the character a real, meaningful death. I was actually looking forward to Charlie's death scene, one because it would be a nice way for the character to go out, and two because I like Dom Monaghan and I want him to move on from this train wreck show. Oh well (which is so often my reaction to a missed opportunity by LOST).

The problem with this scene, and with so many other moments on the show, is that the characters don't act like real people. A real person, when faced with the cryptic bullshit of the Others, would get angry, demand answers, maybe even get a little violent (which Jack finally did, thank God). Usually, the Losties just shrug their shoulders and drop it, which is just not a normal reaction. Charlie has the opportunity to save everybody and still live, and instead he basically kills himself. For what? Because Desmond said he had to die? The implication was always that Charlie had to die to save the Losties because there was no other way. But in the finale, it turns out there was another way. Several, in fact.

I'll probably still watch next season, though. I'm weak. But good for Dom that he can move on to other things. He deserves better than playing sixth banana on a sloppily written TV show.

Sometimes Cinematic Perfection is Boring: Pinocchio vs. Dumbo

2007-05-23T17:57:00.000-04:00

Pinocchio: I remember nearly everything about the film -- as I was rewatching it for the first time in probably thirteen years, as each scene began, as each song started up, as each character arrived, it all came rushing back to me in an instant, and I remembered everything completely. It was like thirteen years had never happened, that's how clearly I remembered the film as I rewatched it. I'm convinced now that I must have watched Pinocchio A LOT as a child (though I don't remember watching it that much...) because the experience was so familiar. If nothing else, Pinocchio as a whole made a much stronger impression on me as a kid than Dumbo did. And yet, watching it now as an adult, I have to say, it's lost some of its impact. The Pleasure Island sequence in particular, a sequence that scared the pants off me as a child, doesn't seem to pack the same punch. I can certainly understand, watching the film as an adult, why and what it was about that sequence that so disturbed me as a child (I hated when people transformed into things), but now I find it doesn't even really give me a slight chill, not even in remembrance of past frights:

Dumbo, on the other hand, a film I remember finding immensely sad, almost unbearably sad, but not really remembering too much else about, is, upon rewatching, a kind of delightful discovery. I know Pinocchio was painstakingly crafted and Dumbo a slapdash product; I know Pinocchio has better songs, better animation, and a better narrative; I know Dumbo plays too easily and too readily on our heartstrings, while Pinocchio has sentimentality without being cloying. But, gosh darn it, I like Dumbo better. And this isn't a "when I was a child" reaction. I'm not sure which film I liked better as a child; in fact, I think I disliked both in a way, Pinocchio for being too scary, and Dumbo for being too sad (and also a little scary -- hello clowns and pink elephants -- for some reason, this image in particular used to scare me; I'm sure this is what prompted Dumbo's mind to invent the pink elephants):

But today, Pinocchio, though I still like it very much, comes off as a little too didactic and overly cute, while Dumbo seems almost experimental, like Merrie Melodies meets Expressionism meets Charlie Chaplin meets LSD. There's a part where Timothy the mouse tells Dumbo that there are plenty of famous guys with big ears, and he doesn't mention who, but it's obvious we're meant to think of Mickey. This kind of self-referential humor is something I'd expect more from a Warner Bros. cartoon than a Disney feature film. Coming after Snow White and Pinocchio, two features that practically define the detailed, pretty, and naturalistic style of Disney animation, Dumbo really feels like the animators were trying any new thing they could think of. Take a look at this shot:

Is this Disney or an impressionist?

And before that we got an anthropomorphic, cartoony train:

And the use of silhouette for shots of human characters, especially the clowns, somehow made them scarier and more menacing, at least when I was seven. It was also a nice device for separating the human world and the animal world, turning the human world into a strange, unwelcome, mysterious place, and giving the viewer a real sense of the animal point of view:

It's like the animators just stuck in a bunch of crazy art things that they wanted to experiment with. Nothing shows this clearer than the Pink Elephants sequence, which comes out of nowhere, means nothing to the overall story, and yet is totally unforgettable, and for some inexplicable reason, just totally right for this movie. This is some freaky stuff, yet perfectly suitable to a story about the circus, a relatively freaky place, especially for kids:

Fantasy turns back into reality but the line between them is blurred.

Dumbo as a story, as a narrative film certainly doesn't stand up to Pinocchio, which has stronger themes and tells a more interesting story, but Dumbo is so freewheeling, and yet so basic and simple, that it has a freshness that Pinocchio, for all its true strengths as a film, can't seem to match. Pinocchio feels older, much older in fact, than Dumbo [though Dumbo is unfortunately very dated in its racist depiction of the minstrel show crows who help Dumbo learn to fly]. In that sense I'm drawn to Pinocchio because it's nostalgia in two respects: nostalgia for my own childhood, and nostalgia for a bygone era -- Pinocchio feels older than its 1940 date; it feels like something from the turn of the century was finally discovered in 1940:

And Pinocchio does have better songs.

Also, there's some scariness:

But Dumbo, for all its flaws is simply more interesting. I think my reaction to it has a lot to do with my affection for noble failures; I seem to fall in love with movies that have obvious flaws but also flashes of real brilliance. The whole is not as great as some of its parts, and yet those parts are so interesting, engaging, intriguing, whateveradjective, that I can't help but love the movie. Sometimes cinematic perfection is boring; sometimes a movie is so good that there's nothing to think about or muse over afterward. Dumbo is not like that; Dumbo is the kind of film that worms through my brain and I can't get it out. It's not so much the story or the songs but the images and essential emotions like fear, shame, sadness, and joy. Plus, who can resist this level of cuteness?

Who doesn't cry when they see this?

And who doesn't freak out over elephants in mind-bending Technicolor?

My reactions to these scenes are too strong to dismiss simply because the film is weak narratively. Pinnochio is Disney perfection, but Dumbo is Disney intoxication.

Fantasia Image of the Day

2007-05-23T15:22:00.001-04:00

Fantasia Image of the Day

2007-05-22T11:03:00.001-04:00

Fantasia Image of the Day

2007-05-21T13:49:00.001-04:00

Fantasia Image of the Day

2007-05-17T18:39:00.000-04:00

When did I start loving you?

2007-05-15T00:06:00.000-04:00

I'm here to defend Heroes as my favorite show of the year. Does Heroes even need defending? Aren't its fans legion, aren't they proclaiming it the shit and fucking awesome and other such superlatives? Well, I wasn't quite on the kool-aide train, at least as of a few months ago. I was still just watching the show and enjoying it but kinda waiting for the shoe to drop, for Lost-syndrome to set in or something. For the crazy, out-of-control plot and myriad characters to convolute just one too many times. Lost has burned me before; 24 is kinda burning me now. But after just watching the penultimate episode of Heroes, I know it's gonna go nuclear, only this time, thankfully, I won't get burned...

Maybe I'm not here to defend; it's too hard to defend when you're on a television high. I guess this post is more of a declaration. I suppose I should list the shows I actually watch regularly, to give some sense of what I like and where I'm coming from. Okay:

Battlestar Galactica
Rome (over now)
The Tudors (I'm trying to get over the loss of Rome -- it's not helping)
24
Lost
Medium
My Name is Earl
The Office
(N.B.: I used to watch Veronica Mars but I quit earlier this season [heh, it's like I'm talking about my smoking addiction or something; let's just say I don't generally stick with high school shows once they go to college]; I have also seen a couple eps of House, but it didn't really take)

So I'm not a huge television watcher; I'm only mildly obsessed with TV instead of full-blown fanatic (movies are my thing anyway). My "type" of show runs more along the supernatural/sci-fi/suspense/action line, and my comedies are of the "mainstream quirky" sort. I don't generally watch reality shows (though, somehow, without my consent really, I know all about who's on Idol every year and who wins Dancing with the Stars and all the other "cultural" stuff that I guess is unavoidable if you're on the internet at all these days).

And finally, at the start of the season this year I got hooked on two shows:
Dead Like Me and Heroes. Dead Like Me I caught in reruns and loved so much that I ended up netflixing and watching it all in like a week. Heroes I happened to see a commercial for and decided to give it a go. What's kinda weird, and I just noticed this as I'm writing, is that I watched the series finale of Dead Like Me on the same day that I watched the series premiere of Heroes, and both shows on a day of personal sadness for me. I can't pretend I didn't cry my eyes out at the end of Dead Like Me, but then when I watched Heroes I was somehow exhilarated, somehow, and oh my this is gonna sound cheesy, I felt uplifted, inspired. Yeesh. I'm a dork, I know.

But let's just say I really dug that first ep of Heroes. It hit my TV sweet spot; it gave me something I needed that day. And I kept watching it, even when it moved to the same time slot as 24 (Tivo helps). And I enjoyed it. But.... well... it was a good show, I was willing to vouch for it, I'd told all my friends and neighbors to watch, but, well, it just didn't consume me the way my super-favorites did. I'm obsessed with The Office, or, Jim Halpert more specifically, seeing as he's my TV boyfriend. I watched two and a half seasons of BSG in less than two weeks. I played online games for Lost (thankfully THAT phase is over; the bitterness has finally settled into a nice, steady cynicism and I can watch the show, enjoy, and still think it's a steaming pile of crap served up by the two biggest charlatans in television today).

Heroes was just that show I watched on Mondays and enjoyed and then forgot about for six days. I heard it described somewhere as "the best bad show ever" and I thought, yeah, that's about right. The dialogue, characters, acting -- it was all sub-par, and yet the plot was compelling enough, and the powers just cool enough in their X-Men knock-off ways, that the show was still fun and engaging.

And then suddenly, I don't know when, was it Fallout? Was it Company Man? Was it tonight with Landslide? Suddenly, I wasn't just digging the show, I was loving it. I am loving it. It is the real deal, the show that works, the serialized supernatural drama that actually knows what it's doing and knows how it's all going to end, and wants to tell its story and then be done with it, on to the next thing, the next mystery, the next crisis, we're done with you and we're not afraid to kill you, we showed you that rifle on the wall seven months ago and now it's ready to go off. And all that cheesy bad dialogue and cardboard characters and iffy acting -- it's all out the window, 'cause now I love it when it's cheesy bad 'cause it's so sincere, so heart-on-its-sleeve, so sure about heroism and duty and love and family.... Heroes, when did I start loving you?

We're living in May now and television is giving us all the goods it's got. Season finales are bursting out all over with that end-of-the-season flurry that makes it hard to take in all the shocking reveals, character deaths, long-awaited couplings, and generally expected season finale shake-ups. It's all a mid-May burst and then it's gone and summer comes like the numbing sound of nothing on, and suddenly we're expected to actually go outside and do something.

As the finales flurry hits in the next couple of weeks the one show I cannot wait to watch is Heroes. It's the one show that makes me hope I don't die before next Monday, just so I can see how it all ends. Am I crazy for loving this "good bad" show? All I know is that it's going to be a long, long summer that no amount of outside can cure. I guess the only TV that can save me after May 21 is if the Red Wings, Pistons, and Tigers all go nuclear too. Then I won't mind waiting all summer for my new favorite show to come back.

Quote of the Week

2007-05-09T14:53:00.000-04:00

"Those incredible men that we worked for, that seemed to us so inartistic, and so lacking in knowledge of the art part of making a movie. But they had something. And they had something, you don't know what it was, it was a kind of a magic, gambling, intuitive thing. That has gone. We now have oil companies owning the studios; it's all business today. And those men [the old studio heads], they were exasperating, because there was no way of communicating with the way they thought. But they -- boy! -- they gave us our chances. They gambled... Gambling has gone."

Bette Davis on the Dick Cavett Show

Religious Epic, Pre-Code Style

2007-04-30T23:07:00.000-04:00

Watched DeMille's The Sign of the Cross (1932) the other day, and since I haven't seen very many pre-Code talkies I was actually a little surprised by some of the debauchery. So here are some screen grabs, since I don't feel like actually writing much about the film itself (let's just say it was fun in that "I can't believe they showed this stuff back then" kinda way, not so much in the "That was a good movie that I can't wait to write interesting critical insights about" kinda way).

First, things started off well with a ridiculously awesome Charles Laughton as crazy (or crazy-like-a-fox?) Nero:

Nero can't believe how brilliant his plan is to blame the burning of Rome on the Christians. He's kinda awesome.

Next, we have Fredric March in a really short tunic:

March's Marcus is kind of a drip (especially when he's mooning over the Christian girl who was played by Nora Charles's cousin in the first Thin Man sequel), but I think he's cute in his little short shorts (and that silent era mascara is hot as well). According to somewhere, March insisted on going without underwear while making this movie. Surprisingly, Laughton was bothered by this.

I won't bother posting pictures of the Christians, 'cause for the most part they are boring. I'm a Christian myself, so the whole religious aspect should have appealed to me, but it's pretty obvious that DeMille was more interested in the hedonism of ancient Rome than he was in the pious early Christians. Why is goodness so hard to make interesting in these "Christian epics"? Anyhoo...

Here's Claudette Colbert as the Empress Poppaea taking her milk bath and feeling herself up:

In some other shots during this scene, Colbert's breast do manage to peak over the water. I was suitably scandalized.

But wait! There's more:

Lesbian dances? Check! This one is meant to seduce and corrupt the Christian girl (she's so boring I forgot her name). The Christian resists, but Marcus is having fun just watching (typical guy).

Then we enter the arena and the movie hits its high point. Huge crowds, huge sets, huge spectacle.

Elephants crushing heads!

(DeMille's just warming up for The Greatest Show on Earth)

Nearly naked women tied up in chains awaiting the snapping jaws of crocodiles!

And finally: (implied) Gorilla rape!

There were some great shots of Amazon women fighting pygmies, but alas! I neglected to get screen grabs for those scenes. Just something to look forward to if you end up watching the movie. I can't say I recommend it, since so much of the film is taken up by the plight of the Christians and Marcus's love for the Christian girl (snooze). But Laughton and Colbert give wonderful hammy performances, and DeMille really does know how to stage and shoot spectacle. And all of this way back in 1932! I should really know better by now, what with my knowledge of film history, but these pre-Codes still manage to get me. But seriously, I thought they were going a little overboard in that one episode of Rome when they talked about women being raped by baboons as entertainment. Apparently, DeMille wasn't afraid to (almost) go there.

Double Feature of the Week!

2007-04-26T13:07:00.000-04:00

The Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie AND Hot Fuzz

I had a good time last weekend.

Victory is sweet!

2007-04-23T18:31:00.000-04:00

Oh sweet revenge! (For beating us in 2004)

Oh delicious irony! (It was Jamie McLennan's slashing victim Johan Franzen who scored the winning goal)

Oh thank God, Detroit didn't lose in the first round again this year!

Go Wings!

Memories are films about ghosts

2007-04-17T16:22:00.000-04:00

Remember this? Somewhere, long ago, we all saw it, the sepia-colored herald who roared a promise of Kansas farm girls and cyclones and over-the-rainbows, and led the way to the fevered pop of glorious Technicolor. If we want to talk about the experience of cinema during childhood, especially an American childhood, there seems no better place to start than the first frame of The Wizard of Oz. It's hard to know if The Wizard of Oz was the first movie I ever saw -- and in fact I'd wager it probably wasn't (who knows what my parents plopped in front of me when I was a toddler) -- but it was likely the oldest.

The oldness of TWoO impressed itself on me from the first frame, the moment the old MGM logo snarled me to attention. Other movies didn't start like this. And what do those strange words -- Ars Gratia Artis -- mean? And why did the picture look like it was colored with coffee stains, like the yellowed photos Grandma kept in a dilapidated box in the attic? This movie was different, I could feel it even at six years old; this movie was OLD. The old hung off it like it hung off Aunt Carm's mink stole; it wafted from it like the smoke from a cigarette in a cigarette holder; the old crackled out from it like it crackled out from Grandpa's old Eddie Condon records. And that title card with the text!:

That was so strange, so confusing to my young '80s child eyes. What did it even mean? I mean, I could read the words, but what were they doing just sitting there in front of the movie? The very cinematic language of the movie seemed unusual, seemed distant and removed from the world of movies I was familiar with. Roaring lions, sepia colors, title cards filled with a glom of words. It was all very strange.

I must confess, black and white movies have always reminded me of ghosts. Like the home movies of ghosts, or some secret window into the dead past. I suppose it has to do with the idea that pictures and photos steal or preserve some part of the soul, if you want to put an explanation to it. But at six years old, all I knew was that old black and white movies were a little creepy, that they gave off a feeling of forgotten ages and death. Of course, I loved TWoO; I loved the songs and the adventure and the delirious fantasy world. But I also felt just the slightest tinge of unease; a feeling of OLDNESS hung off the thing and it was enough to set a six-year-old slightly on edge. Who knows what these ghosts might do?

And it all started with that roaring lion.

And that music over the title (remember the first time you heard those opening notes as the words "The Wizard of Oz" appeared? It wasn't the bright jaunt of the munchkins' song, it wasn't the lilt of "Over the Rainbow"... what was it? It was something slightly foreboding, something slightly minor, the blaring of those opening horns...).

And that strange, inexplicable title card message about "the Young in Heart."

And the yellowed image of a farm girl and her dog running down the road.

The whole thing seemed to my childhood eyes like a relic from an ancient past (which, of course, in a way it was and is), like a movie of ghosts. Even when the film shifted to color I sensed a paradox -- a vibrant magical world brimming with spark and pop, and yet hanging at the edges was a forgotten era long vanished. Ghosts and flying monkeys.

I'm sure I didn't know how old the film really was, and besides, "1939" would have meant nothing to me at the time except, "really, really old," and I'm sure I had no idea who Judy Garland was in real life, or who any of the actors were, or even what Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer meant. But with just that image of the MGM lion my kid self knew this movie was from another time, another world, of movies. In movies, even the studio logo has power and magic.

But what's curious is that no other MGM lion has ever affected me in quite the same way as the lion at the start of The Wizard of Oz. Even to this day, no other MGM roar, not even from another old movie, excites that same strangeness, that same oldness, like the roar in The Wizard of Oz.

End of Part One... Intermission... End of Intermission -- Part Two

2007-04-16T19:02:00.000-04:00

Where have we been??? Well, two weeks ago my modem died, and then I decided to get a new laptop, and so I waited for the new modem and the new laptop and I didn't blog. And now I have my new modem, and my new laptop, and in the meantime I bought a dvd recorder and I'm in the process of putting every movie I Tivo on Turner Classic Movies onto a dvd. So I've been a little preoccupied connecting wires and hooking up wireless routers and figuring out how my new computer works, etc. etc. So, that's why there's been a little intermission here at STDAMO.

But, hopefully, the intermission is over and we can get back to movies. Amidst all the technological tumult I did have time to catch Reign Over Me (Mike Binder, 2007), and while I didn't love it (felt too long, a little directionless in the second act) I have been thinking about it a lot since seeing it, and a few of the images and sequences have really stuck with me (I'm thinking the whole Mel Brooks marathon, the Fred Astaire/Rita Hayworth scene, the great shots of New York, the soundtrack). The more I reflect on it the more I like it. Anyway, interesting film, and I loved seeing Melinda Dillon, though it made me sad to think about director Bob Clark.

Opening Day!

2007-04-02T16:32:00.000-04:00

And check out these Tigers movies!

Quote of the Week

2007-03-31T13:09:00.000-04:00

"Post-1980 time travel films like The Philadelphia Experiment (1984) and Back to the Future (1985) are obliged to feature the gag in which a disbelieving inhabitant of a naive past discovers that Ronald Reagan is in the White House. 'And who's Secretary of the Treasury,' Christopher Lloyd asks Michael J. Fox, 'Jack Benny?' The joke, persisting well after the Reagan presidency in Late for Dinner (1990), comes from an awareness that a film-goer of the 1940s or 1950s would be unable to conceive of a future in which a second-string movie star is President. Though the New Hollywood is increasingly self-aware, as witness the inside approaches of The Player (1992) or Last Action Hero (1993), no time travel film dares suggest that a 1940s film-goer warped into any year after 1977 would find it ridiculous that Star Wars (1977, derived from Flash Gordon), Superman (1978), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), or Dick Tracy (1990) were big-budget, A-ticket movies. The originals of these properties were despised, marginalized efforts, creeping out of 'poverty row,' playing to children at Saturday matinees. As a new generation of baby-boom executives take control of the product, time-travellers from the 1960s would now face the spectacle of a future in which the throwaway media of their own time has been reincarnated in major studio reruns of Batman (1989), The Addams Family (1991), The Fugitive (1992), and Maverick (1994). . . David O. Selznick and Louis B. Mayer would never have considered making the films which constitute Variety's current box-office top ten, though they would have understood Gandhi (1982) if Paul Muni had been available. Even if Beverly Hills Cop (1984) or Ghostbusters (1983) had been green-lighted in the golden age of Hollywood, they would have been double-bill fillers with Abbott and Costello or the Bowery Boys."

Kim Newman, in Oxford History of World Cinema, p. 509

Incendiary Blonde

2007-03-15T01:19:00.000-04:00

Betty Hutton was a native Michigander. You knew she had grown up in Detroit because she called her mother's 1920s illegal drinking establishment a "blind pig" instead of a "speakeasy."

I liked Betty Hutton before I even knew her as "Betty Hutton." I first saw her years ago in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, and I liked her in it, but I didn't know she had made any other movies, let alone the fact that she was one of Paramount studio's biggest stars in the 1940s. I only knew that she was funny and the movie was funny, but then I pretty much put her out of my mind. Then a few months ago I happened to be flipping through the channels and stopped on TCM for a moment, and Annie Get Your Gun was playing. I hadn't planned on watching a movie that night, but it only took a few minutes of Hutton -- so manically exuberant, and yet so achingly vulnerable -- that I couldn't turn away.

Betty was the type of performer who gave a hundred and ten percent every time, and then added another twenty percent for good measure. Bob Hope called her a walking vitamin pill. In a lot of ways her energy and over-the-top style seemed driven by desperation, by a woman who so wanted to entertain and make people happy that she would do it at any and all costs. There's something endearing about that, though, about a woman so desperate to please that she lays everything on the line, she holds nothing back. I know she endeared herself to me.

Of course, Betty was more than just an irrepressible ball of energy who belted out novelty songs like "Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief." Watch and listen to her perform a song like "They Say It's Wonderful" from Annie Get Your Gun and get a glimpse into the quieter Betty, the Betty of longing and fear and love and sadness.

I was shocked and saddened to read about her death, but I take heart that she had a conversion to Catholicism several years ago, and I pray for the repose of her soul. Rest in peace, Betty.

Quote of the Week

2007-03-08T12:28:00.000-05:00

"Hey, I like this. Early nothing."

Gloria Grahame, The Big Heat

Gloria Grahame Week

2007-03-08T12:00:00.000-05:00

I cain't seem to say "no" to a Gloria Grahame movie lately. Of course, I think it's because I just discovered who she was, so now I'm catching up with the thrill of movies like The Big Heat, In a Lonely Place, Sudden Fear, Crossfire, and The Bad and the Beautiful all for the first time. I've always known the girl who played Violet Bick, but I never knew she was an actual famous (Oscar-winning) movie star. How I've been so oblivious these many years I'm sure I don't know, but it started when I watched Crossfire and Oklahoma! about a month ago and I realized that the woman who played in both was the same trampy girl-next-door in Beford Falls that made Bert the policeman want to go see what the wife was doing.

I know many criticize Gloria's Oscar win for The Bad and the Beautiful, saying that Jean Hagen in Singing in the Rain should have won, but having now seen both performances (haven't seen Thelma Ritter's Oscar-nominated performance from that year), I think I can't argue with the Academy's choice. Jean Hagen would have definitely been deserving, and if she had won I wouldn't complain about Gloria's losing; I think it was a case of two nominees who were both equally deserving. When Grahame is on the screen in TBatB she is electrifying and when she's gone the movie kinda goes a little flat -- I sorta wished her character could come back and liven things up again. It's the sort of part that, because of its role in the storyline, stands out no matter who would've played it, but Gloria adds so much electricity to Rosemary Bartlow that even though she's only on screen for about ten minutes, she's unforgettable; and she adds so much ambiguity to the character that there's a depth and mystery there that isn't really in the part as it's written but is something Grahame adds by her performance. Of course, she should have been nominated and won for her role in The Big Heat as well, but hey, that's Oscar for you!

Old Movie Endings

2007-03-03T16:14:00.000-05:00

Remember that “semi-regular” feature that was supposed to appear on this blog? The one where LeaJo (an old movie novice) and I (an old hand at old movies) watched some old movies from the 30s and 40s and had a conversation about them and posted it as a dialogue on the blog? First there was the intro dialogue and then the Maltese Falcon dialogue. Remember? Well, I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t, since that last post was about a million years ago. What have we been up to? Have we abandoned the experiment?

Well, the short answer is yes. The long answer is that we gave it another go and pretty much my whole experiment blew up in my face. To explain: We did in fact watch another old movie, this time Hitchcock’s Rebecca, and started to have a conversation about it. But then that nagging feeling in the ol’ gut – the one telling me that this wasn’t working, that LeaJo just wasn’t interested and probably never would be – that nagging feeling got verbal confirmation from LeaJo herself. It kinda exploded its way into our struggling dialogue about Rebecca, and suddenly I realized that my whole experiment as the Dr. Frankenstein of movies, the demented doctor who tried to raise a full-blown cinephile to life out of your typical, average movie-goer, just wasn’t gonna fly.

So, here’s the final Old Movie Dialogue, at least for the foreseeable future.

The Derelict:
Last time, you said you wanted to watch Casablanca, but since then, when we sat down to watch an old movie, you chose Rebecca. Why? What made you choose Rebecca over Casablanca? Was it the name Hitchcock? Were you intrigued by the names of the lead actors (Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier)? Was it the plot description, the genre, the name? I think it might be interesting to discuss how we choose what we want to watch. For instance, how did you choose to watch Rebecca, and how was that process similar or different from how you choose to watch any (modern) movie?

LeaJo:
Well I remember you had a lot of movies to choose from that night. The truth is I didn't really want to watch an old movie that night, but I decided to throw you a bone So I wasn't really too excited for any movie to watch but for some reason as soon as you described Rebecca, that was the movie I knew I wanted to watch. Really, I was just in the mood for a creepy movie. And it was Hitchcock who I know I've liked in the past.

TD:
So it was the Hitchcock name and the genre that attracted you? Would you say that you make similar decisions for watching current movies? Like, you choose a movie based on genre and/or director?

LJ:
Yeah. And it's weird, because I typically hate scary movies because of the scary, but I knew that Hitchcock never really scares me too much, so I don't know, I guess I just wanted to watch a more "serious" movie since most of the movies you brought were comedies. But I would say that most of my decisions today are based on genre and director definitely. Probably genre more so than director. But I did see Children of Men basically just because of Alfonso Cuaron. Otherwise, I don't think I would have ever seen that movie. It's not a genre I typically go for.

TD:
Do you think a Hitchcock movie was attractive because of the past films by him that you've seen, or that his name is generally recognized with quality, or that his name is generally recognized as "important", or some combination thereof?

LJ:
I think it was mostly because I really, really liked Rear Window A LOT and Psycho and The Birds scared the crap out of me as a kid so it was mostly just that I liked his previous movies I had seen. I mean, I know that his name is recognized as "important" and so I kind of assumed this movie would be good anyways. Also, didn't you say it won best picture?

TD:
Yes I did! So when we started watching it, what were your impressions, because it doesn't start out right away as a conventional thriller.

LJ:
Yeah. That’s true. It started off kind of slow, but I still liked it because I felt like as the movie went on the tension was just building and building. So even in the beginning when it was just them meeting each other and driving around, I still thought the whole thing was kind of mysterious. I was just waiting to get to the really creepy stuff.

TD:
Were you at all interested in the romance at the beginning, like, were you totally hoping Joan Fontaine's character would end up with Maxim and stick it to the old bag she was working for? In a lot of ways, I totally love the first section of the film 'cause it's kinda funny and cutely romantic.

LJ:
Ha! Actually, no. I was very distrusting of Maxim the whole movie until he admits the truth about what happened and tells her that he really does love her (aw). And then I was totally all about the romance and I was SO happy that he didn't get arrested and go to jail because then they would be together forever (again...aw). I thought he was kind of creepy in the beginning.

TD:
Wow, we are totally on different wavelengths tonight! I mean, I always felt Maxim had some deep dark secret, but I thought he was kinda awesome in the beginning, Joan Fontaine's knight in shinning armor kinda thing. He only gets creepier when they're finally married and he turns all moody. But, I guess you had a better read on him the first time you saw the movie than I did! Did you think the movie was funny (and not in an unintentional sort of way)?

LJ:
The beginning I remember being kind of funny, but otherwise no, I don't really remember it being funny.

TD:
I mean, did YOU find the stuff at the beginning funny, 'cause it definitely was meant to have a humorous edge, but sometimes with old movies I think comedy doesn't translate as well to a modern audience.

LJ:
Sorry, I really don't remember. I'm thinking I didn't really find it that funny. I do remember thinking the lady she was working for was funny in a 'wow she's ridiculous' kind of way, but otherwise, I'm not really remembering finding it that funny.

TD:
Well, it's not uproariously hilarious or anything, but I've always kinda thought the old lady she worked for was, as you say, ridiculously rude and I enjoyed watching her think she was all awesome, only to be upstaged and humiliated by her employed servant -- I loved the comeuppance.

LJ:
Yeah, that part was good.

TD:
Were you surprised by the lightness of tone at the beginning?

LJ:
I don't know. I guess I was a little bit especially because they started the movie off with the creepy house and the weird dialogue over it. But most movies like this start off kind of light at first and then go into the creepy as it goes on, so it wasn't really that surprising to me.

TD:
You know, as we continue to talk about the movie, it's kinda weird for me 'cause you've only seen it once and are having a hard time remembering stuff, and I feel like I could probably write a fairly accurate script of the film (minus most of the dialogue) right now! It's weird to talk about a film I've seen a million times with someone who's only seen it once. On that score, do you think you'd ever like to watch Rebecca again? I think we might have talked about this regarding Maltese Falcon and you said it's not a movie you were dying to see again, so I wonder if your reaction is different for Rebecca?

LJ:
Yeah. I would like to see Rebecca again. I'm not really jonesin’ for a second viewing or anything. But you're right. It's hard to remember everything on just one viewing (sorry). And I did really like the movie enough to want to experience it again.

TD:
Can you remember any favorite scenes?

LJ:
Yeah...the only scene I can remember as a favorite was that one with the creepy housekeeper lady who I can't remember her name. When she was in Rebecca's old room and talking about all her things like her brush and her pillow and she was getting all up in Mrs. DeWinter's face – oh dude.... that scene was free-kay!

TD:
Mrs. Danvers! She so crazy!

LJ:
That’s really the only scene that has stuck with me. SHE WAS SO SCARY!!!!

TD:
Heh. She was definitely scary. Were there any scenes, or aspects of the film that you felt didn't work, or that you disliked?

LJ:
You know... I can't really answer that question. I'm drowning here! I CAN'T REMEMBER! I'm so sorry, but this just isn't really working. I can barely remember any specific scenes at all so I have no idea about how to answer that question truthfully. I feel really bad because I want to answer these questions but I'm just doing such a horrible job at it and I'm getting kind of frustrated. Sorry...breakdown over.

TD:
Heh, that's okay, maybe we can shift the focus away from Rebecca -- we'll do Old Movie Dialogue – Digression! 'So, you were talking about (in an earlier conversation) why you're willing to watch these movies with me and you mentioned that it was because you felt you had to (since they're part of the larger cinema/media culture). Well... how would you feel about our little project/experiment if I said we could only watch non-canonical movies, do you think you'd still be willing to go along? Like, no Casablanca, and no Hitchcock for you! Only random 30s weepies and dated and forgotten comedies from the 40s!

LJ:
Uh...I guess I wouldn't really mind. Truthfully, if it's an old movie, I'll probably think it's "important" no matter what it is. So whatever old movie you want to show me, I won't be too picky. I would rather watch a more famous movie, just so I can feel like I'm learning the history, but again...not that picky.

TD:
Well, I'm actually being a little deliberately provocative right now, 'cause I'm interested in, as you know, why and how old movies find a new audience, but I'm also really interested in old movies not as being canonical (though I am interested in that as well) but as simply movies like any other kind, with the goods and the bads and the averages and mediocres, etc. Do you think you're interested in old movies beyond their quality of being "important"? I mean, Casablanca is, as you've mentioned, "essential" but Waterloo Bridge (1940 version) is not. I think I'm getting to the point now where old movies have taken on a life of their own in my life; I'm not simply watching the comfortable old standbys, the Bringing Up Babys and the Notoriouses and the Swing Times -- now I'm watching fairly obscure Jean Arthur movies and random Bette Davis stuff, and rather pedestrian films like this average comedy/romance with Olivia De Havilland (My Love Came Back, dir. Curtis Bernhardt, 1940). How far do you think I can take this old movie thing with you? Is it really just a matter or your acquiescing in order to please me, or is there really an interest, any at all, on your part? Would you really not care if I selected a film like Hollywood Canteen, a movie that is nowhere near being a classic, except for in terms of its being old?

LJ:
I wouldn't care that much, but the truth? The real truth? Is that I'm mostly just doing it to please you. I don't really have much of a desire to watch any of these movies. And maybe it's just because I'm in school right now and movies of any kind haven't really been interesting me lately, but while I do feel like I should watch Casablanca, etc in order to be more "cultured" I don't really care much one way or the other if I do or not. It's not that I think I won't like them either. I bet I would like them. I have nothing against them personally. I just don't really have much of a burning desire to go there. It's just not very important to me right now.

TD:
That's it! That's what I’ve been waiting to hear. I had a feeling you felt this way but you were reluctant to tell me. I hope you don't mind, but this is exactly the thing I'm fascinated by: Why me? Why these movies? And why not you? And why not so many others? Obviously, I'm overstating things a little bit (heh, A LOT), but I get the sense that old movies won't mean a hill of beans fifty years from now -- yeah, maybe Casablanca will still have a reputation as being a "classic", and Citizen Kane, and a few others, but who will have actually watched these movies? Who besides the usual film geeks and oldsters? And even when I was studying film in college, I got the distinct impression (and maybe I'm off base and my observations are bunk), but I got the distinct impression that most of my fellow students weren't all that curious or interested in old movies other than the canonical ones being shown in class -- and even then there was a sort of backlash mentality that movies like Citizen Kane, “yeah, yeah it was groundbreaking or whatever, but it's kinda boring, sorta slow,” etc. Same with Casablanca, or Maltese Falcon -- “yeah, they were good, but not THAT good." Why have these films failed to hold on to their large popular audience? Is it media saturation? Is it that movies are just dispensable art anyway and not meant to stand the test of time the way a book or a poem does?

LJ:
I don't know. Why do you think that is?

TD:
Movies as an art form are still popular, sure, but I feel like old movies are going the way of comics -- a niche art where only the cultish few reside. Why? I think it's because maybe these movies really aren't that important, maybe film is just too disposable to be a lasting art form. Old movies aren’t watched in ordinary grade school the way classic literature is read there, and frankly, I think it's a sign of sterility to have these movies placed in a classroom for study. So how do you get people interested? Is studying these films in school the answer? It might make them into chores instead of entertainments (as I think they've become for you, with me forcing you to watch them). See, that's the thing I'm fascinated by, nobody forced me to watch these old movies -- yeah, my mom would watch and encourage me to watch with her, but I made the choice to stay on the couch and keep watching. That's why I'm so encouraged by Danny watching Rebecca with us, and The Heiress with me a few months ago -- I never made him watch, he sat down of his own volition and kept watching!

LJ:
You make some good points here and you are right with the fact that sometimes I get annoyed that you are forcing these movies on me. I still enjoy them anyways, but yeah.... it’s a bit annoying, heh. But anyways, I really just think that movies just aren't really that important. Like, who cares if people forget about Waterloo Bridge or whatever other movie? What's going to happen if they're forgotten? Nothing. Most movies have a short shelf life. I know all of the movies that I like, I'll remember and pass on to future generations, but all of the older movies I've never seen? Who cares?

TD:
Yes! Exactly! That's the question. We pass on the ones we like, but what if nobody wants to have things passed to them? I mean, I could rant and rave till the cows come home about how awesomely funny Ball of Fire is, or how weird and cool films like Murder My Sweet and The Big Sleep are, but the act of experiencing a work of art still requires consent of the will at some point -- at some point you have to take up your friend/relative/coworker/classmate's suggestion and read the book or watch the movie, as the case may be. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1928) is one of my favorites. I think it's a serious, important, beautiful work of art, and yet who will have seen it fifty years from now? Film students? Cinema geeks? Who has even seen it NOW? Not many, I’m sure. So yeah, Waterloo Bridge (1940) is a beautiful, heartbreaking film, but only those of us who have seen it and loved it will know that secret -- the world can hardly miss what it doesn't remember, but I think what irks me is that I'll know it, I'll know that others are missing out (at least they'll remember it in China!). So will the world really lose anything if nobody (or only a very few people) has seen Swing Time? Heck, that's the world we live in now, for the most part, since most people only watch the shows and movies that are current, that are readily and easily available.

LJ:
Well...you kind of just said it. What will the world really lose? Not much if you ask me. And maybe that's a horrible sentiment, but people shouldn't be forced to believe certain things are good or "classics" when they don't believe. And I know you LOVE The Passion of Joan of Arc, but am I really going to be a different person if I do or do not see it? How will it be important to me to see that film? Really, art that I like, movies I like, music I like shape who I am. They are all important to me...I don't feel like I really need to experience "the classics" to like, fulfill my life or anything. I'm perfectly content with exploring things on my own. And if someone comes along and tells me that there's a really great movie I should watch or there's an awesome book I should read, I'll consider it. I just don't like being forced into doing something because it tends to bring out more negative feelings towards whatever it is I'm experiencing. Wow...rant over.

TD:
To answer your question about Passion of Joan of Arc, I guess it depends, but I was a different person after seeing it, just as I was a different, better person after seeing the Sistine Chapel. But of course, we all experience art differently, even if something is canonical it doesn't mean a person HAS to like it -- it's not like an article of faith or something, some thing you have to believe or anything. But... I have a lot of sympathy with your view, especially regarding being "told" what to watch/read/listen to/etc. I think my concern is that older works of art tend to be dismissed simply because they're old -- people don't have time to delve into the past, especially when they have a lot of great stuff staring them in the face right now -- I get that, I really do understand that sentiment. But, don't you think it would be a pretty sad world if the LOTR movies, which you and I both love, didn't exist? Don't you think it would suck if fifty years from now nobody ever watched those films except for a few geeks and fan boys? I dunno, I think that would suck.

LJ:
Yeah, I guess that would suck, but at the same time, I don't think that I will ever forget those movies, and I'll try to pass them down to my kids. But I guess I do see where you're coming from. Most people don't have time to watch movies or television anyways and if they're going to, they're not going to go seek out some obscure movie from the 40s. They’re going to go towards movies nowadays. I think your concern is valid, but I don't really know if there's anything we can do about it. How could you fix it? I don't think you can.

TD:
Yeah, I'm afraid I can't fix anything, and even Turner Classic Movies, which I think is the coolest channel to ever exist in the history of television, which is really trying to preach the old movie gospel and evangelize the masses, can't really do much more than satisfy the yearnings of cinema nerds and old people -- it's like, I don't think you can make someone into a cinephile, even if you expose them to these movies. I'm depressed by that thought, but what can you do? I guess I was delusional to think it would happen in the first place.

LJ:
Well, I understand now why you want me to watch these movies with you, because you want to pass them on to someone. But I just don't think I'll ever be as into them as you. I may watch the 'classics', but I'm not going to start seeking out all of the other movies from those eras. I just don't want you to get your hopes up!

TD:
No, and don't worry, I'm not going to nag you anymore! I think it's a human yearning, though, to want to not just experience art, but to share it -- I mean, it's great and all watching BSG (Battlestar Galactica), but I'd go crazy if I couldn't talk about it. And other than the occasional conversations with my Grandma, I don't really talk about old movies too much. I write about them, and I blog about them, but it's not the same thing as an actual face-to-face conversation.

LJ:
Oh yeah, I totally agree. And don't feel bad about nagging me...it's all good. After all, I nagged at you for a bit about BSG so I've been on the other side as well.

TD:
Well, I just think I don't like the system I've developed, this kind of annoying begging that I feel that I'm doing – “Hey LeaJo, hey! Let’s watch this movie! Or this one! Come on! Please! Pretty please! I promise you’ll love it!” – it’s not how one should engage art, you shouldn't have to feel it's being forced on you, because, as you said, it only creates resentment or hostility or a position of skepticism on the part of the person being forced. Cinema, the whole scope of it, the enjoyment of the whole breadth and history of it, is, I guess, a rather cultish, clubby kinda thing -- it's just not going to be mainstream. Out with the old and in with the new, I suppose. Sigh.

LJ:
Yeah, I guess. Is there anything else you want to ask me?

TD:
No not really. Unless you have another rant waiting for me. ;)

LJ:
Heh. No.

TD:
You did totally unload up there earlier, about Le Passion and old movies and stuff.

LJ:
Ha! Dude, I so totally did and I knew it too, and I was just like, “Screw it. I’m gonna be a bitch!” And I was too.

TD:
But it was awesomely bitchy, I enjoyed it.

LJ:
Thanks!

TD:
Thanks for your honesty. By the way, what grade would you give Rebecca?

LJ:
Well, I thought it was really good, so probably an A- or B+.

TD:
Awesome.

One final note: I’m really, I dunno, disturbed by the fact that movies are so disposable. It was something I’d been thinking about for a long time actually, in relation to old movies, to movies in general, to movies as art vs. movies as cheap, quick entertainment – but to have it articulated by LeaJo in our conversation was what really got me. I’m not really sure where I’m going with this, but I just wanted to highlight this portion of our conversation. Movies are pop art, for the most part, and I guess it’s to be expected that pop art will have a short shelf life, whether it’s a catchy tune on the radio, a TV show, or a movie. I would like to think that certain movies will last in some form two hundred or three hundred years from now, the way great literature of the past has lasted into our own century, but maybe that’s expecting too much. Anyway, this is it for my great experiment in old movie appreciation.

Quote of the Week

2007-02-20T01:07:00.000-05:00

"I'm rather sick of all this kissing at the talk shows. Of course, that's the old Yankee thing in me. I don't use first names immediately; I don't kiss people I don't know. I just don't. I've seen a lot of people I don't know I'd liked to have kissed, but I didn't."

Bette Davis

The Carpet's All Paid For, God Bless the TV

2007-02-20T00:24:00.000-05:00

First off, Favorite TV episode of the week (2/11-2/17) was Medium, "The One Behind the Wheel" (airdate: 2/14) 'cause it was romantic (Valentine's Day, 'natch), and it featured Joe (Jake Weber) who I totally love. But it was tough, as this week had several great episodes of television, starting with Rome and 24, and followed by The Office and Heroes. But Medium is like my television comfort food lately, I love just spending time with the characters, and the stories are always entertaining without being overbearing. It wins again.

Lost, meanwhile, is losing me fast (and yes, I guess I did just throw out a lame pun) -- I was bored to tears by an episode featuring one of my favorite characters (Desmond). That spoof on the Lost writers that's making the rounds on the Internet is getting to be less a spoof with every episode.

I also love TV for the simple reason that channels like TCM and Fox Movie Channel allow me a chance to see films that aren't available on DVD. Last week on FMC I watched an Elia Kazan film I'd never heard of before, Man on a Tightrope (1953, grade: A-), starring Fredric March and Gloria Grahame. I loved it. It was like the dark, disfigured sideshow cousin of The Greatest Show on Earth (DeMille, 1952, B-).

And for record, those promised series on Brit Lit adaptations, films from my childhood, Czech New Wave, and Fantasy cinema (mentioned here and here), will still happen. I kinda just go with the flow on this blog and I've been sidetracked by a lot of other movies and TV shows and whatever, but I am getting around to the stuff I promised. I think starting with my childhood films will be the way I'm gonna go, 'cause I think they reveal a lot about my tastes and development as a movie lover. I think you never really lose those influences on your childhood imagination, so this series is important as a window into how my warped mind got to be the way it is. I was thinking about making it a blog-a-thon, but honestly, I don't have the focus or the ability for something like that (I think I'll just enjoy all the great blog-a-thons run by other more capable bloggers). So the blog-a-thon is out. But, anyway, stay tuned...

Huh

2007-02-12T01:15:00.000-05:00

I've been in a very 1975-1985 kinda mood it seems lately. First Purple Rose of Cairo, then Nashville, then Network, Muppets Take Manhattan, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, and Coal Miner's Daughter.

I have not watched a black and white movie since last Sunday. Did not see that one coming.

Favorite Television Episode of the Week (2/4 - 2/10): Derelict's Pick

2007-02-12T00:54:00.000-05:00

Ummmmm.....

Not my favorite week of television, I'll be honest. Nothing really grabbed me this week. The Office left me in a state of turmoil, and I was deeply unhappy after watching it. Also, for once, I found the humor a little forced. So that also depressed me.

24, Rome, My Name is Earl, Heroes, Lost -- all decent (though no magic turtle, unfortunately).

But, well, nothing really clicked -- until I watched Medium on the Tivo on Saturday. Medium was good TV. It wasn't mind-blowing or anything, just a good, solid hour of television that did everything right. And it had Captain Push, who I love 'cause he kicks ass and makes me smile. So "Apocalypse, Push" wins.

Quick grades

2007-02-07T20:38:00.000-05:00

Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975, A-)
Shane (George Stevens, 1953, B+)
Arizona (Wesley Ruggles, 1940, B+)
The More the Merrier (George Stevens, 1943, A-)
Too Many Husbands (Wesley Ruggles, 1940, B)
Purple Rose of Cairo (Woody Allen, 1985, A)
Hollywood Canteen (Delmer Daves, 1944, B)
The Show (Tod Browning, 1927, B-)
Kapo (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1959, A-)

Favorite Television Episode of the Week (1/28-2/3): Derelict's Pick

2007-02-03T13:27:00.000-05:00

Any episode that has Dame Diana Rigg with a condom on her head and Warwick Davies getting kicked in the face by Ricky Gervais wins hands down. And Stephen Merchant is literally a giant. I know there were a lot of short people in this episode, but I never fully realized just how gargantuan that guy is. It kinda freaks me out.

Winner: Extras, Episode 9 (guest star: Daniel Radcliffe)

Quote of the Week

2007-01-29T14:47:00.000-05:00

"I just shot it the way you see a thing. I shoot straightforward too. I resent camera movements that you become conscious of. I don't use any camera tricks. The camera is usually eye height. The audience sees just what we see."

Howard Hawks

Favorite Television Episode of the Week (1/21-1/27): Derelict's Pick

2007-01-27T12:36:00.000-05:00

24 was its usual frantic, anything-goes self; Medium was a nice mix of pathos and black comedy; Heroes felt like a recap episode, but it was nice to have the show back (is it wrong that I love Bad Glasses Man so much?); and Rome continues to dazzle with its visual excellence (though I can't help feeling that without Caesar, the show's various characters and plots no longer have the same cohesion and interconnectedness that they had in the first season -- hopefully, Octavian will become that character around which all the other characters and storylines meet).

But without The Office to compete with, Battlestar Galactica ("Rapture" airdate: 1/21/07) has emerged the winner this week. The mid-season season premiere was frantic and overstuffed, but it was filled with so many great, memorable moments: Helo holding Sharon's lifeless body, her blood splattered on the wall behind them, her memories and thoughts at that very moment being transferred to the cylon resurrection ship; Caprica Six finally growing a conscience and stopping Boomer from snapping Hera's neck, in a scene that echoed the scene from the miniseries in which Six herself snapped a baby's neck in its stroller; the boxing of the Number Threes (farewell Lucy Lawless, I'll miss your awesomeness); Adama being his usual badass self, calling the cylons' bluff by bringing in the nukes; the supernova and the continuation of this show's amazing special effects. Everything about BSG that I love was here -- mystical weirdness, action, romance, angst, Gaius Baltar -- everything. It's kinda hard to believe that I'd never even watched an episode of this show a month ago and now I'm hooked.

Prediction(totally unspoiled): the member of the final five D'Anna saw in the temple was Tom Zarek

Happy Birthday Joan Leslie!

2007-01-26T23:55:00.000-05:00

We don't usually do birthday shout-outs here, but Joan's a girl from D-Town, and we like to celebrate the hometown stars. Born January 26, 1925, in Detroit, Joan's celebrating her 82nd birthday. She worked opposite Humphrey Bogart and Gary Cooper when she was sixteen, James Cagney when she was seventeen, and Fred Astaire when she was eighteen -- not a bad resume for a teenager! This website devoted to her is a nice resource with some great pictures (including magazine covers from the 40s), as well as several interviews and news items.

Joan's mostly known for her ingenue roles at Warner Bros., but I rather liked her performance in Nicholas Ray's campy Born to Be Bad (RKO, 1950), a film that showed she could have been more than the pretty, spunky girl-next-door.

What's kinda crazy (to me at least) is that Joan Leslie and Paul Newman were born on the exact same day (Jan. 26, 1925), and yet they seem to be from two different movie eras entirely -- Joan, the essence of war-time studio system Hollywood, and Newman, the rebellious modern actor from the new Hollywood of the 50s and 60s. Happy birthday to both!

Quote of the Week

2007-01-23T23:57:00.000-05:00

"They have goaded and jaded their artistic feelings too much to enjoy anything simply beautiful. They are aesthetes; and the definition of an aesthete is a man who is experienced enough to admire a good picture, but not inexperienced enough to see it."

G.K. Chesterton

The Only Oscar Votes That Matter

2007-01-23T22:57:00.000-05:00

I'm totally bored by this year's Oscars, but Edward Copeland's got the results of his fabulous survey of the Best Best Actress winners and Worst Best Actress winners of past years. I participated in both the Best and Worst categories, and a few of my picks made both top tens, and I was quoted a few times in my real-life name (why I didn't sign my ballot with "The Derelict" I'll never know, but anyhoo, "Jenni" is me -- such confusion!).

For the worst (and more) go here. For the best (and more) go here. And I couldn't be happier to see who made the number one spot for Best of the Best. I love when my opinions are validated by the opinions of others!

Favorite Television of Episode of the Week (1/14-1/20): Derelict's Pick

2007-01-20T13:13:00.000-05:00

Rome and 24 had their (outstanding) premieres this week; Medium and My Name is Earl contributed solid, entertaining episodes; and Heroes and Battlestar Galactica are still on hiatus.

But once again The Office was my favorite. "The Return" (air date: 1/18) was funny, and Jammy, and filled with great character moments (Phyllis: "Dwight had a big personality and I have a big personality, and a lot of times, when two people like that get together, it can be explosive"), and it was more understated in its humor, which I like. There weren't a lot of laugh-out-loud moments (though I did love when Andy's phone rang in the ceiling), but there were a lot of little touches, little sight gags and character reactions that were quietly hilarious. It's what the show does best: creating comedy out of the real, and yet at the same time, mixing it with the absurd. Dialogue is key here: When Dwight asks Michael if the office party is for him (when it's clearly for Oscar's return), Michael doesn't simply lie and say "yes," he pauses ever so slightly, tries to appear cool and nonchalant (successfully, I might add) despite being about to lie, and answers in that not-as-funny-as-he-thinks-it-is reply, "Guilty." It's perfect Michael -- the word, the line, the acting by Steve Carell -- a totally absurd and ridiculous character, and yet so totally real -- I've known guys who talk like this. This week's episode was filled with these little moments of reality amidst the silliness. They're funny and painfully familiar at the same time.

Addition by Addition

2007-01-19T23:57:00.000-05:00

Just pointing out that I'm adding a few more links to the sidebar. Enjoy!

RightWingTrash

Bright Lights After Dark

The Bleat

Peter Suderman

Dwight!

2007-01-16T14:10:00.000-05:00

The Office's "Traveling Salesmen" overtakes the only other new episode I watched all week -- My Name is Earl's "Buried Treasure" --to win this week's "Favorite Television Episode of the Week." Randy's "My name is Randy" voice-over was hilariously dim-witted, but the combination of Andy and Dwigt on The Office was the ultimate in stupid-guy silliness, so it wins. And is it wrong that I love the Angela/Dwight 'ship?

Odds and Sod's

2007-01-07T17:12:00.000-05:00

I've got my T.V. Pick of the Week up on the sidebar, and my choice this week was Medium's newest, "Mother's Little Helper." Patricia Arquette is a great and underrated actress and the show usually delivers solid, though sometimes predictable, horror/mystery. What makes each week so interesting, though, is the way the show plays with things like animation, music, sound, color, etc. The first episode of the season had Bridgette (Maria Lark), the middle sister aged somewhere around 10, having dreams like her mother, only in the form of a kid's cartoon. One of the most disturbing murders I've ever seen on network T.V. involved a cartoon monkey. This week's episode opens with what quickly becomes recognizable as a dream as we see Ariel (Sofia Vassilieva), Alison's (Patricia Arquette) oldest daughter, attending a dance with a cute boy and they are being called up as the dance king and queen. Slow-mo kicks at this point, as the kids and teachers cheer Ariel on to her triumph. It's unmistakably an allusion to Carrie (Brian DePalma, 1976). After the bucket of pig's blood drenches Ariel, she begins the anticipated telekinetic freak-out, and Alison wakes up from her nightmare obviously disturbed. Of course, Ariel is having the same dream, only in her dream, it's flower petals and not blood that fall from above. The gimmick of the show is that Alison can see dead people and has dreams that are communications from murder victims about how they died. The other gimmick is that her daughters (at least the two eldest), have the same abilities, only not as pronounced as their mother's. The DePalma/Carrie homage at the beginning was a cute, funny little joke about Alison's fears for her daughters and their (often unwanted) powers. What surprised me about the episode was that the opening wasn't just a minor cinematic joke, but a stylistic foreshadowing. Later, when both Alison and Ariel are having dreams of the double murder of a mother and daughter, Alison dreaming from the mother's perspective, and Ariel from the daughter's, we see the events in split screen -- that very signature style of Brian DePalma. The opening of the episode worked not only as a great character moment for Alison (how perfect that the fears of a Gen-Xer with a "gifted" teenage daughter would manifest themselves as a modified version of the signature scene from Carrie) -- as well as a set-up one of the story lines of the episode, Ariel's anxiety over the spring dance -- but it also foreshadowed the stylistic choice to show the audience the murders through split-screen. Overall, I guess I'm just a sucker for this type of cinematic in-joke. It was fun.
I didn't pick the new episode of the The Office this week (for Pick of the Week) because The Office is so awesome week in and week out that I've just come to expect it and have ceased being "wowed" by its awesomeness. Does that make sense? (Although, being a JaMichael shipper, mon, almost pushed this episode to Best of the Week for me, and I loved Dwigt's tenderness with Pam.)
Can't wait for new seasons of 24 and Rome! January 14, baby!
This month on TCM, Jean Arthur is the featured star. I've loved her since I first saw You Can't Take It With You about ten years ago. But I was shocked, shocked! to find out recently that she was born in 1900! That would have made her 38 when she was in YCTIWY. I always thought she was probably early 20s in that film. Apparently not.
I haven't seen The Good German yet, and I want to, but I remember reading some article online that mentioned Soderbergh's idea that The Good German would be the film Michael Curtiz would have made if he didn't have to worry about the Production Code (ah, here's where I read about that, not a direct quote unfortunately; scroll down to read the comment that mentions Soderbergh's idea re: Curtiz and the Code). But don't we already know what filmmakers of that era would have made without the Code?
And since we're on the subject of the Hays Code, I watched The Miracle of Morgan's Creek this weekend and the dvd had a couple of documentaries, one about the movie and the Production Code. One of the commentators said that the Code was, in a way, a kind of form that directors had to adhere to, like the form of a sonnet, and that this form often made them think creatively and ended up enhancing their work. This is something I've often thought myself -- that rather than being limiting, the Code was a way for filmmakers to find creative answers to things they wanted to put in their movies. We certainly wouldn't have had some of the hilarity of Morgan's Creek without the Hays Code as comedic target. The Good German, from my reading of other critics, sounds like a poem with fourteen lines, just with the rhymes in all the wrong places.

New Year, New Look

2007-01-03T15:52:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the "new look" Stuff that dreams are made of! We've switched to the new blogger and jazzed the place up a bit. Figured it was a little more fun, with the bright colors and pictures and all.

Notice a couple of new features on the sidebar at left: "Television Episode of the Week" and "Derelict's Rolling Top Ten." Hopefully both will be updated frequently. The Television Ep of the Week is just that: the best episode from the shows we watch each week (hopefully we'll have additional posts explaining our choices). The Rolling Top Ten is basically my favorite top ten movies of the moment. They're "rolling" since I'll probably change them frequently. These are not my top ten movies of all-time or anything -- just what I'm digging at the moment.

"Happy Christmas, Harry!" "Happy Christmas, Ron!"

2006-12-26T13:29:00.000-05:00

Well, I had a very nice Christmas, getting more than half a dozen classic movie box sets that I can't wait to break open. I love what Warner Bros. has done with their classic dvds, the whole "Warner's Night at the Movies" feature with classic shorts, cartoons, and trailers. I'm almost more excited about them than I am about the movies themeselves!

I've also seen some great films these past couple of weeks, and I may write about them and I may not, but regardless, I've enjoyed myself. I have a particular weakness for corny and sentimental movies around Christmas, so take that into account when you see some of these grades:

Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (Roy Rowland, 1945, A-)
Holiday Affair (Don Hartman, 1949, B)
The Ladykillers (Alexander Mackendrick, 1955, A-)
The Human Comedy (Clarence Brown, 1943, A-)
Kitty Foyle (Sam Wood, 1940, B-)
L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson, 1997, A-)
Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (Marc Rothemund, 2005, A)
The Secret Garden (Fred M. Wilcox, 1949, C+)
All Mine to Give (Allen Reisner, 1957, B+)
The Holiday (Nancy Meyers, 2006, B-)
We Are Marshall (McG, 2006, B)

Quote of the Week

2006-12-10T21:18:00.000-05:00

"Genres were never rigid. Creative filmmakers kept stretching their boundaries. This was a classical art where personal expression was stimulated rather than inhibited by discipline."

Martin Scorsese (on classic Hollywood)

This has nothing to do with movies

2006-12-06T13:11:00.000-05:00

In order to waste time and avoid studying for finals, I took this quiz (via Barb Nicolosi):

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."
The Midland
The Northeast
Philadelphia
The South
The West
Boston
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

And it's one-hundred percent right! Even about the pop!

Tortilla Flat (Victor Fleming, 1942, B-)

2006-12-04T13:07:00.000-05:00

This is an adaptation of the John Steinbeck book about a group of paisanos in California who work hard at not working hard. Danny (John Garfield) is the "hero" of the piece, trying to change his ways to impress Dolores (Hedy Lamarr), while his best friend Pilon (Spencer Tracy) spends most of the film conning people and trying to keep Danny away from Dolores. Tracy's accent is laughable, and the attempts at humor for the most part fall flat. Hedy Lamarr, who can give a good performance as evidenced by her work in H.M. Pulham, Esq. (King Vidor, 1941), spends most of her time overacting in a poorly written plot. My suspicion is that Lamarr needed a stronger director, someone more adept at handling women's parts, than Victor Fleming, who was often thought of as a "man's director." Myrna Loy and Vivien Leigh have given great performances under Fleming, but they were better actresses than Hedy. Lamarr needed more help than Fleming was able to provide.

The other great surprise was that Tracy could be so annoying. The bad accent had something to do with it, but most was due to the unlikable character he played. Pilon is selfish, sometimes cruel, and even as he tries to help Danny, it still feels like he's only doing it to make himself feel better. I suspect we were supposed to find Pilon's antics somewhat humorous, but instead he comes across as immature and destructive. The only thing funny about the movie is the accents and I doubt that was the intent (also, it's interesting to note that, once again, classic Hollywood hears someone with a foreign accent -- Lamarr -- and thinks they can play anyone with an accent, nevermind that Hedy's accent is German while her character's is Spanish -- kinda ruins whatever illusion of verisimilitude they were going for).

What saves the film is Frank Morgan's (Oscar-nominated) performance as Pirate, the old vagabond with a touching piety and gentle heart. It's no coincidence that Morgan has the best accent of the bunch and gives the best performance: he takes his character seriously, embodying the spirit of a simple man who loves dogs and St. Francis. Tracy, for all of his skill as an actor, never seems to take Pilon seriously as a character; Tracy always seems to be winking at the audience throughout his performance. Morgan's storyline -- a poor man who saves all of his money in order to buy a candle for the church -- is actually more interesting than the main one about Danny, Dolores, and Pilon. The scene where Pirate prays to St. Francis in the woods while his dogs yelp and jump at his feet is one of the truest displays of religious feeling I've seen in a film.

Quote of the Week

2006-11-27T15:15:00.000-05:00

"Today, studios don't exist anymore. Sure, you can go in and shoot there, but you move in like you move into the Ramada Inn. You finish shooting, you finish cutting, and it's 'Goodbye Charlie.' It's no fun anymore. Not the real fun which we had. Paramount made fifty pictures a year, and even if a picture failed, you went on and on, because to the bosses you were as good as the best thing you had ever done."

Billy Wilder

I am a horrible person

2006-11-27T15:03:00.000-05:00

I haven't written about Robert Altman's death and I feel like my cinephile membership card should be taken away or something. But the reason I haven't written anything is because I've never actually seen any of his films. I guess that, in itself, should be enough to get me kicked out of the club, but the truth is that I've never really been interested in anything he's directed. I know I should watch his masterpieces because it's hard to be a part of the larger film conversation when you haven't seen the "big ones" but none of the stories he's chosen to tell sound all that interesting to me. I'm very sorry to hear of his death, of course, because even though I was never a fan, I can certainly recognize his place in film history. That alone is enough to make one sad, that one of the great figures in American cinema is gone. But I haven't written any sort of reflection or commentary because I have nothing to go on, having not seen any of his movies. Hopefully one day I can get past my hesitation and watch an Altman film or two and find out what I've been missing all these years.

You Know What Really Grinds My Gears?

2006-11-27T13:46:00.000-05:00

I've noticed over the past couple of years (I dunno, maybe it's been happening longer and I just never noticed) is that mainstream critics -- newspaper critics, magazine critics, TV critics, many online critics -- all tend to adopt a "script" about certain movies and then proceed to view these movies only through that script. For The Passion of the Christ it was the possible anti-Semitism of the film; for Brokeback Mountain it was the gay romance angle and how the film was breaking down prejudices against Gay and Lesbian people in America; now for Borat it's the angle that the movie is some great social commentary revealing the "hidden prejudices in America." The angle, in such cases, takes over the conversation about the movie to the point that nearly every major review or commentary approaches the film from that angle and the film gets defined as being "about" that before the audience has even seen the film. This, of course, isn't limited to film criticism and movie reviews -- the media has a tendency to approach a story in only one way and that one way is the one that dominates our national conversation about the story. But I'm getting kind of annoyed by this in film criticism since film is what I'm most interested in and I hate how the conversation gets defined before the audience has even had a chance to see the film and decide for itself.

Borat is the latest example of this, where everyone has been told for months that the film is all about exposing the prejudices of "average" Americans so people go into the movie expecting it to be about this, and since the movie does have a few scenes where Americans act like bigoted, disgusting jerks, people think they've seen some ground-breaking work of social satire.

Am I being too condescending toward the audience? Am I giving critics too much credit and the audience not enough? Maybe. I would hope that people are able to see films for what they are and not have their opinions dictated to them by the media or so-called experts. Maybe I'm getting hot and bothered for nothing and most people in the audiences for Borat recognize that they aren't laughing at the frat boys' stupid remarks because, frankly, their gross remarks aren't funny, but that they're laughing at Borat and his silly, over-the-top comments, and his zany slapstick. For the most part, the comedy in Borat doesn't come from the awful remarks made by a few frat boys and rednecks; the comedy comes from Borat himself. But the way the media hype surrounding the movie would have it, you'd think you were watching a two-hour masterpiece of groundbreaking social satire. I hate the way the conversation gets started about a film and everyone just echoes and parrots the same few things that the mainstream critics have all glommed onto.

I am encouraged by the Internet, of course, and the fact that more people have a voice now and can enter the conversation instead of just being suffocated by the conversations of others (i.e.: "professionals"). To take Borat as an example again, there's the commentary by Christopher Hitchens which I think makes some good points (and of course, some points I happen to agree with, see my review below), and then there's Jim Emerson's response, which also makes some excellent points, and analyzes the film in its relation to traditional cinematic comedy (as opposed to its status as social commentary), something I'm afraid I've found very little of in the mainstream reviews that welcomed the movie into theaters. Hitchens and Emerson are, of course, both part of the mainstream themselves, in a way that I, the humble nobody blogger, am not. But they're engaging the film in a way that is based on actually thinking about it as individuals and not just parroting a lot of movie reviewer groupthink. That's what's refreshing, and I hope the more I explore this whole film blogger thing the more I'll encounter this kind of individualism in criticism. At this point, I'm pretty much sick to death of the professional reviewer scene, because it seems like there's always a specific "line" on a movie -- it's this, it's that, it's got this controversy surrounding it, it's got that scandal accompanying it -- and whatever the line is the reviewer can't help but reduce the film to that one thing. I suspect what people like Hitchens and Jonah Goldberg are reacting to (I can't comment on David Brooks, whom Emerson mentions, because I don't subscribe to the New York Times online) is not so much the movie Borat itself, but the national conversation that seems to have arisen around it. The "line" on a film has already been written, and so that's what the movie "is," whether we like it or not.

Sorry for the rant, but I say not.

Quote of the Week

2006-11-20T15:57:00.000-05:00

"I don't think the film has a grammar. I don't think film has but one form. If a good film results, then that film has created its own grammar."

Yasujiro Ozu

Requiescat in pace

2006-11-17T13:06:00.000-05:00

Bo Schembechler has passed away.

This one's for you LeaJo

2006-11-12T16:51:00.000-05:00

What's with all the evil bunny suits?

Quote of the Week

2006-11-12T16:47:00.000-05:00

"I have always felt that visual literacy is just as important as verbal literacy. What the film pioneers were exploring was the medium's specific techniques. In the process, they invented a new language based on images rather than on words, a visual grammar you might say: close-ups, irises, dissolves, masking part of the frame for emphasis, dolly shots, tracking shots. These are the basic tools that directors have at their disposal to create and heighten the illusion of reality."

Martin Scorsese

The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970, B+)

2006-11-12T16:21:00.000-05:00

I didn't really get anything out of this film thematically; all of the stuff about sex and fascism and wanting to conform and appear normal left me cold. Frankly, I'm just not interested in sex as a subject matter unless it's about how sex isn't as crazy-fun and non-committal as modern Western culture would have it. So right there Bertolucci loses me.

But, hoo boy, is this film beautiful! I mean, gorgeous. Probably one of the top five most beautifully photographed films I've ever seen. The use of color for one thing, right off the bat with the contrasting redish-browns of the first scene to the somber blues of the next scene, to the stark, clean whites and blacks of several of the scenes at fascist headquarters. I especially loved the softness of the lighting used on the female leads. Bertolucci was able to make their faces look as luminous and flawless (in color) as the beautiful black and white faces of Hollywood's glamour heydays of the 30s and 40s. For me this film was all about the aesthetic pleasures of gazing at these dream-like images, with narrative reduced to a secondary, or even tertiary position. I really wasn't invested in whether Marcello (Jean-Louis Trintignant) would let his former professor be killed, or whether he'd save Anna (Dominique Sanda) from a similar fate. All I cared about was the haunting image of Professor Quandri surrounded by assasins and trees in the yellow light of the dawn. The whole film was just a pleasure (and a nightmare) to look at. In a way, this movie is an example of how cinema is not as strongly tied to narrative and storytelling as we so often would like to think. Even a movie that doesn't have a strong story or a compelling theme can be a powerful, moving, important experience. Like our experience with dreams, the images from The Conformist will linger indefinitely, while its meaning will most likely be forgotten.

Island of Lost Souls (Erle C. Kenton, 1933, B-)

2006-11-12T15:57:00.000-05:00

Not as scary as I hoped, mostly due to the fact that the male lead, Richard Arlen, hardly seemed bothered by the freakish experiments of Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton). His performance throughout the film was one of mild irritation, as if the men-beasts and panther woman weren't frightening monsters and twisted perversions of nature but unwelcome dinner guests or something. Not good.

But Laughton's performance makes up for it, as he's so deliciously cool, and evil, and crazy, and charming. He's hamming it up, sure, but it's one of those hammy performances that's actually menacing (take note Brando, whose own Dr. Moreau was just ridiculous). Moreau, of course, isn't bothered by such petty things as morality, being one of those Dr. Frankenstein types who believes he can conquer nature, and Laughton is just that right mix of charisma and arrogance and intelligence that can make even the cruelest and sickest of scientific experiments seem "important" and "revolutionary" and "good." Of course, they're not, and Moreau soon finds out what really happens when you turn beasts into men.

The make-up work on the men-beasts is fantastic, and though Lota the panther woman looks human for the most part, the reveal of her beastly claws was creepy as hell. Definitely the scariest stuff in the film comes from the grotesque faces of the men-beasts lurking in the shadows of Moreau's tropical island. When their true deformities are revealed in close-ups at the end, it's pretty cool, and I was definitely disturbed by Moreau's demise.

Watch (or I should say, listen, as it's hard to tell it's him from appearances) for Bela Lugosi's supporting role, and marvel as well at some pretty graphic pre-Code violence.

The Fastest Gun Alive (Russell Rouse, 1956, B-)

2006-11-12T15:19:00.000-05:00

Great black and white cinematography and a solid performance from Glenn Ford. Unfortunately, Jeanne Crain, whom I usually like, overacts. She reads every line with this sort of tragic voice of weariness and disappointment and it gets a little tiresome after awhile. But it was nice to see Glenn Ford in the genre he's most known for, the western. Confession, I've never actually seen any Glenn Ford movies before, this was my first, and I was struck by his naturalistic performance and his almost James Dean-like line delivery, sometimes speaking in an under-the-breath sort of way, sometimes talking too fast or talking over someone else's lines, or just talking in an off-hand sort of way, as if he were just talking and not reading lines from a script. I liked it and I hope to see more Glenn Ford pictures in the future.

I also enjoyed the shoot-out at the end of the movie. For a film called "Fastest Gun Alive" one expects some fast gun work, and the first gun shot of the final duel doesn't disappoint. Using misdirection through dialogue and camera work, the shot really does "feel" fast, as it took me by surprise. At first, Ford and Broderick Crawford's bad guy get the typical shoot-out-at-high-noon treatment, with a sequence of shots showing the two men slowly approaching the middle of the street, overhead shots that emphasize the distance still between them, their figures positioned at the edges of the frame as they gradually close in on one another, etc. But when the first shot is fired, the characters aren't being filmed in that typical "here comes the first shot" kind of way; the camera is just resting easily as if this were another typical dialogue scene before the shooting starts. And then suddenly the shooting starts. It's pretty effective and one of the better shoot-out scenes I've seen (not that I've seen very many, admitedly).

Russ Tamblyn also co-stars and has a high-spirited dance number that seems out-of-place in this otherwise gloomy sort of western. Music is, to my surprise, by Andre Previn.

Ack!

2006-11-07T17:01:00.000-05:00

Regarding upcoming features on the blog, I forgot to mention that one of my areas of interest in film studies is Central and Eastern European cinema, specifically Czech cinema, and that I'll be doing a Czech cinema retrospective over the next few months, focusing especially on the Czech New Wave. All of this is thanks to the wonderful Professor Eagle, whose film course on Central and Eastern European cinema was a highlight of my undergraduate years. I'll keep everyone in suspense as to which films I'll cover, but it should be a good mix.

Quote of the Week

2006-11-07T16:28:00.000-05:00

"He gave us the grammar of filmmaking. He understood the psychic strength of the lens."

Lillian Gish (on D.W. Griffith)

Random stuff

2006-11-06T14:19:00.000-05:00

Jim Emerson has a post up taking Anthony Lane and Armond White to task for their lame reviews of Borat, but I was actually more fascinated by the reader comments, many of which make some great observations about the movie. Check it out.

Also, one of the commentors links to a piece by Noel Murray at the A.V. Club blog which makes almost the exact same point I made in my review of Borat, namely, that it's not really the crackerjack social commentary it's being billed as.

Finally, I'm starting to get into a groove here with my blogging, like, actually posting on a semi-regular basis. Careful readers will have noticed that LeaJo's presence has been slight these past two months, but this is due to the fact that she actually takes her higher education seriously and doesn't goof around on the blog wasting time like I do. Despite its continuing damage to my grades, my blogging will not be abated. The future of the blog (hopefully) will include the following:

* A series of posts analyzing adaptations of British lit classics (these will not be the usual suspects, however, instead I'll be focusing on made-for-tv BBC versions and lesser-known, less-canonical works such as Douglas McGrath's Nicholas Nickleby)

* A series on my favorites from childhood, many of them considered "bad" by mainstream critics (Troop Beverly Hills, Tucker: The Man and His Dream, Howard the Duck, The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking); some I will be watching for the first time since seeing them as a child, so it'll be interesting to see how they hold up

* Detailed analysis of several of my favorites including: Gone with the Wind, Libeled Lady, Gypsy, Ball of Fire, Stage Door, Waterloo Bridge, Dazed and Confused, and t.v. shows Freaks and Geeks, The Adventures of Pete & Pete, The Venture Bros., and Aqua Teen Hunger Force (no links for these, 'cause I'm tired of looking up titles on IMDB)

* A year-long (at least) retrospective of fantasy films (fantasy here being restricted to fairy tale or High fantasy or magical-world fantasy, not It's a Wonderful Life fantasy); I've long been a fan of fantasy as a genre, but fantasy films haven't really gotten the attention other genres of the fantastic like horror and sci-fi have gotten and I'd like to see if I could remedy that; I plan on looking at everything from silents to sword and sorcery stuff from the 80s, from live action to animation, from American to Japanese, from French to German, everything -- it's going to be a huge undertaking, and it'll take a long time, but I'd like to think it will be one of the defining features of this blog

And one last note: I've been totally digging Squish's Hitchcock series, mostly because he doesn't treat Hitch like some untouchable god of filmmaking, never to be criticized -- his views are fresh, unique, and funny. What's great is that Squish doesn't just parrot the accepted views on these films or on Hitchcock, and even while I don't agree with every rating (Suspicion is one of my all-time favorites, Squish gives it a 70%), I appreciate the critical eye he applies to these "canonical" movies.

American Niceness and Borat

2006-11-05T21:42:00.000-05:00

John Derbyshire of NRO has seen Borat (Larry Charles, 2006), and though I generally don't agree with him on ANYTHING, I think he's got a great point about Americans as seen in the movie:

I think native Americans might be more at ease with this movie than I am. Imbedded in it is a critique of American niceness. Coming from the Old World, where people are much less nice, I am a bit of a fan of American niceness, and perhaps can't laugh at it as easily as someone who grew up with it.

Niceness is of course a matter of balance. Niceness can hypertrophy into the horrors of Political Correctness—speech codes, hate crimes, litigation over mild insults or compliments, etc. The opposite danger, the one SBC's style of humor points to, is that too much deconstructing of niceness might lead to a state of affairs where niceness vanishes. What's that Nadezhda Mandelshtam quote? Something like: "Once there were kind people, and even people who weren't kind, pretended to be, because that was the way to be. Then people began to scoff at this hypocrisy, to make fun of it, to expose it. The result we now see: there are no more kind people now." She was writing from the depths of Stalin's USSR. No, SBC isn't going to drag us down into totalitarianism, of course not. I do hope, though, very much, that he won't make Americans ashamed of their niceness.

Full post here

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America etc. (Larry Charles, 2006, B+)

2006-11-05T21:35:00.000-05:00

*minor spoilers ahead*

Laughed hard and had a great time. Probably the funniest movie I’ve seen since Team America: World Police. Not the funniest movie ever (get over the hyperbole Entertainment Weekly, seriously), but definitely one of the funniest movies of the last ten or fifteen years. Baron Cohen’s performance is hysterical, and the Borat character is both revolting and pitiable. My favorite part of the Borat shtick is the over-the-top anti-Semitism that completely sends up the ridiculous, illogical, ignorant, and disgusting views of real anti-Semites. I’m reminded of the great comedic masters like Lubitsch and Chaplin who used their films to send up the Nazis and their hateful ideology. Baron Cohen exposes anti-Semitism for the evil it is, all in the guise of gross-out humor.

I’m less impressed with the film’s so-called expose on America’s dark underbelly. Mostly I learned three (not-very-shocking) things about America: 1.) There are old hicks out there who hate gay people; 2.) Frat boys are idiots; and 3.) Americans are nice to a fault, afraid of confrontation in almost all circumstances (except New Yorkers, who can *shockingly* be angry and rude). Frankly, none of this is surprising or really all that insightful. I’m more surprised by how well Americans in general come off in the film. The driving instructor and the etiquette lady both have a lot of patience with Borat, the politicians don’t say anything even remotely controversial, and the dinner party people put up with a lot of crazy shit that I probably would have been a lot less patient about. Yeah, the one lady was pretty condescending, but she fricking went into the bathroom with Borat and should him how to wipe himself! Talk about being a gracious host. I also noticed that when Borat told the crowd at the rodeo that he hoped George Bush would drink the blood of the Iraqis, most of the people in the crowd behind him were standing there motionless, obviously not cheering, though the soundtrack had the crowd yelping and cheering enthusiastically. Deceptive sound editing on the part of the production? In my opinion, quite possibly, because the crowd grows less and less enthusiastic as Borat’s rant continues. By the end they appear suitably appalled, and I have to say, not at all like the ignorant, bloodthirsty, warmongers that seem to be the typical stereotype of conservative Southerners. From the way the previews showed it, I expected the crowd to cheer all of Borat’s speech, but they eventually caught on to the nature of his comments and were not supportive. I also have a theory that guys like the gun shop owner and the car dealer ignored Borat’s questions about killing Jews and Gypsies probably because Borat was foreign and they chalked up his questions to some form of misunderstanding (many people have difficulty understanding people with accents, and instead of asking for clarification and possibly risking embarrassment, they just ignore the comment as if they understood it). Am I making excuses for these guys? Maybe, but even if they understood Borat completely and had no problem with it, I’m not exactly shocked to find out that one car salesman and one gun dealer aren’t exactly upstanding moral citizens. Maybe if the film had a montage of gun dealers not batting an eye at Borat’s query for a Jew-killin gun I’d be more impressed. As it is, not so much. All this talk about the great social commentary of this movie just seems like a lot of wishful thinking to me.

But, dang, is it funny. This movie is really, really, ridiculously funny. People next to me in the theater almost literally started rolling on the floor with laughter. I’m ashamed to say it (my good taste cred is at this point seriously nil), but I couldn’t stop laughing at the naked wrestling of two ugly, hairy men. It was the most absurd moment in comedy this year, or maybe ever. It was gross. I loved it.

I also loved the simple, old-fashioned jokes, like the moment when Borat, in frustration, throws his bag onto the ground and we hear the annoyed cluck of his chicken, which has been residing in Borat’s bag throughout the trip. Or the little throwaway moment when Borat’s producer, Azamat, dressed as Oliver Hardy, tells Borat: “Well, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten me into.” Unfortunately, I’m not sure how many people in my theater caught this joke. Both are indications that Baron Cohen is a real comedy writer, not just a guy who throws gross stuff up at the screen in the hopes that people will laugh. He’s that too, but he’s smarter than the average gross-out writer, willing to get laughs that are both low-key and clever, as well as disgusting and ridiculous.

Quote of the Week

2006-10-30T10:01:00.000-05:00

"I am often asked by younger filmmakers: Why do I need to look at old movies? The only response I can give them is: I still consider myself a student. Yes, I have made a number of pictures in the past twenty years. But the more pictures I make, the more I realize that I really don't know... Do what painters used to do, and probably still do. Study the old masters. Enrich your palette. Expand the canvas. There's always so much more to learn."

Martin Scorsese

It's hard not to cry...

2006-10-28T01:28:00.000-04:00

...when your team chokes so badly. But congrats to St. Louis, they deserve it. The Tigers will be back to the World Series, though. Only good things ahead for our boys wearing the old English D.

But I gotta say, Sean Casey is my hero. He never gave up. I almost think they should've given him the MVP -- the guy just never quits. He kept the Tigers in it and single-handedly put us in a position to win these last two games. I love The Mayor!

post edited: to clarify why I'm crying; sorry for the confusion

Quote of the Week

2006-10-23T12:54:00.000-04:00

"When taking close-ups in a colour picture, there is too much visual information in the background, which tends to draw attention away from the face. That is why the faces of the actresses in the old black and white pictures are so vividly remembered. Even now, movie fans nostalgically recall Dietrich... Garbo... Lamarr... Why? Filmed in black and white, those figures looked as if they were lit from within. When a face appeared on the screen over-exposed -- the high-key technique, which also erased imperfections -- it was as if a bright object was emerging from the screen."

Nestor Almendros

Old Movie Dialogue – The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941; The Derelict: A, LeaJo: B+)

2006-10-21T16:23:00.000-04:00

Part II

The Derelict:
So what did you think of Maltese Falcon?

LeaJo:
Well, I liked it! I thought it was a good movie and it was entertaining. It wasn't really what I expected it to be though. I thought there was going to be a lot more action and mystery, but the whole thing felt a little bit more subdued compared to the other mystery movies I'm familiar with. I also thought it was a bit boring at times though. There was a ton of exposition that would go on for long periods of time and I kind of just wanted them to SHOW me what was going on, not just tell me everything. I also liked the ending when Sam turned the girl in, but I was sort of expecting there to be a bigger twist in the end. I don't know why, I just thought there would be more to the story with the actual falcon, but I guess it just wasn't that kind of movie.

TD:
Yeah, like were you waiting for a flashback or something to explain the bird's origin?

LJ:
Yeah, maybe. Except that might seem sort of out of place in the movie. So I don't really know how they could have fixed that scene with Gutman telling the history of the falcon because it seemed to go on FOREVER. Although I did like listening to that actor talk. He was kind of awesome!

TD:
Yes! And for me (and I think other fans of this movie) that was the point. The bird is the macguffin, it's just an excuse to hear Sidney Greenstreet say lines. And to have Bogie act like a bad ass. Did you read the Ebert review?

LJ:
Well, I did enjoy watching the actors. Yeah, I read the review. He said everything you said. There was a lot of talk about how it was such a great movie because it was the first noir and it launched the careers of Humphrey Bogart and Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre and I totally understand what he was saying, but I don't really have a particular connection to any of these actors so while I think they're good and they were very enjoyable to watch, that didn't really make me love the movie more. Same thing with it being the first noir. I've seen movies that are sort of similar to this and Sam Spade is a character type I've seen before so it wasn't really all that "fresh" to me. Maybe that's why I wasn't that impressed with it. It was good, but it wasn't anything all that special. At least to me.

TD:
That's interesting about you liking the characters a lot, but not liking the movie as much. I think Maltese Falcon is all about character, as you know, so the characters ARE the movie for me. And I first saw Lorre and Greenstreet in Casablanca where their roles are much smaller, but I thought they were great. But Maltese Falcon really made me fall in love with them as character actors.

LJ:
I had never seen a movie with any of these actors before so it was all new to me. I think my favorite was Cairo. I thought Peter Lorre was really funny and the character was interesting to me. I didn't particularly like Gutman, but I liked the way Greenstreet sort of, I don't know, strutted about. I also loved it when he laughed. As for Sam Spade? You know, the more I think about it, the more I realize that maybe I didn't really like the character that much. He really is an anti-hero in every sense of the word. So even though he was funny and charming and kick-ass, he was also mean and I didn't really respond to that very well. Except at the end. In that one shot I was talking about [n.b.: the shot where Spade is in the frame but Brigid is crying and speaking just outside of the frame; Spade seems to be displaying regret, sadness, etc. about turning her in]. He finally showed his true emotions and I felt really bad for him. That was probably my favorite part of the movie.

TD:
Yeah, and I think that's why this movie is often considered the first film noir, because Spade is kind of a jerk-hole and he's only heroic because he turns the crooks in at the end. Film noir, after all, is characterized, among other things, for having very morally ambiguous characters who are the main protagonists. So do you think that not being able to like the Sam Spade character meant that you were more focused on plot and therefore disappointed because the plot was just an excuse to see Spade out-smart everybody?

LJ:
I think you hit it right on the head. I think that's exactly why I was sort of disappointed with the plot. Because on the one hand, it was fun to watch Spade, but throughout the movie I wasn't really trying to focus on him all that much. I was busy focusing on what was going to happen in the plot (and also trying to figure out how everyone was connected...it was a little confusing). So at the end I was sort of like, "oh, that's it?" I didn't really want Spade to turn in Cairo and Gutman. I wanted them to go on their adventure to Istanbul. You know, I wonder if I saw this movie again, knowing how it ends, if I would enjoy it more. Being able to pay attention to the characters and their interactions instead of the mystery.

TD:
Well, I was reading some comments at the IMDB message boards for this movie (after we had our conversation yesterday) and many people said that it took them a second viewing (or more) before they really fell in love with the movie. Some people even said they hated the movie the first time they saw it but loved it the second time. Actually, this was kind of my experience as well. I first saw this film in an early 100-level film class and I liked it but was very confused by it. But I liked it mostly for its atmosphere (Ebert mentions this point too, I think, about the atmosphere), the whole private eye thing, all 1940s with cigarette smoke everywhere and mysterious Far East adventures just off in the horizon... But in subsequent viewings on tv (thank you TCM) I really came to love the movie because I was able to finally understand all the dialogue and pay attention to little details of character and acting that I couldn't pick up the first time because I WAS paying so much attention to the plot. The Maltese Falcon: How I learned to stop worrying about plot and love the dialogue.

LJ:
Hee! Yeah...I can totally see my opinion being changed the second time I saw it. Just look at my experience with Gone With the Wind. Don't know that I'll ever see the Maltese Falcon again, but I guess it's something to think about. And remember, I did like it, I just didn't love it like a lot of people seem to do.

TD:
Well, I was wondering what your general opinion about dialogue is? Because this film is so dialogue-heavy, and the dialogue is so great, even the expository stuff is fantastic and fun to listen to (at least for me and other big fans of the movie), but do you as a movie viewer find dialogue interesting? Do you pay a lot of attention to dialogue in the movies you watch? What kind of dialogue do you prefer (if any)? I ask these questions because I think a lot of great old movies have a lot of great dialogue, and that's one of their virtues. "High pants, fast talkers" isn't just a Family Guy joke, it's a real comment on films from the 30s and 40s and the fast-paced dialogue is one of the reasons, in my opinion, why the films have such charm. I wonder if not being as receptive to dialogue in general translates into finding it harder to "get into" old movies.

LJ:
Geez. These are hard questions. Hm, well, I guess I've never really thought about dialogue too much in the past. Like, I'm not really sure what your question is. Because every movie has dialogue so how could I not like it? Do you mean, do I prefer talking to action?

TD:
No, not really that. I mean, do you have an ear for dialogue? Are you pleased by an especially witty turn of phrase from a character? Do you love a movie more because it’s got such great lines? For instance, on the cheesy AFI 100 Greatest Movie Lines, nearly eight or nine lines came from Casablanca, and probably five came from Gone with the Wind. These great lines are part of the reason why I love those films. But I wonder if it's hard for younger people today to get into old movies because they're not as tuned into listening for fast paced, witty dialogue. Because of contemporary cinema's reliance on special effects, often the lines of movies can get away with being pedestrian. I wonder... I'm not talking about either/or. Just more of a "taste." Like, I have a taste for musicals and I like really inventive dance numbers. I look for those in my musicals. I also love great dialogue and I listen for it in my movies.

LJ:
You know, I totally agree with that. I like witty dialogue, but you know, when you think about it, most of the awesome movie lines that people quote all the time are from old movies. So I can see that people my age might not really care much at all for the cool lines in Maltese Falcon because a lot of contemporary movies are so visual. But to answer your question specifically, I do like great lines especially if it has great line delivery. If I know a favorite line of mine is coming up in a movie I love, I get really excited! The thing about the Maltese Falcon however is that most of the time they talked so fast, the lines never really struck me at all. Except "the stuff that dreams are made of". That's a good line. Which has nothing to do with the name of our blog of course.

TD:
Now you know all my secrets.

LJ:
I still say to this day that "well, well, well....Lupin...out for a walk....in the moonlight?" is one of the greatest lines of all time. Sorry, that was random... but slightly on topic.

TD:
Yes, definitely on topic. And I think a good illustration of my point. You know how much I love that line, but it does have a lot to do with the delivery and the context of the scene. It’s Alan Rickman’s way of saying the line that makes it so great. Taken out of context it's almost meaningless to those who aren't familiar with Prisoner of Azkaban. But a line like: "I hope they don't hang you, precious, by that sweet neck... The chances are you'll get off with life. That means if you're a good girl, you'll be out in 20 years. I'll be waiting for you. If they hang you, I'll always remember you.” That's a great line even out of context (though of course, in context it's even better). A lot of movie dialogue today doesn't have that same sharpness, it doesn't crackle the way old movie dialogue does. There are still plenty of great lines, but they're of a different sort. Not as witty, I guess. Or as poetic.

LJ:
And you know this brings me back to what we were talking about yesterday...it's because no one actually talks the way people in these old movies do. It's why the lines are so awesome, because they are so obviously scripted to sound awesome.

TD:
Yes!

LJ:
It's not realistic, but it's cool nonetheless.

TD:
But for a lot of people these old movies come off as cheesy for the exact same reason. Because movies today are almost always "realistic" in a stylistic sense people aren't used to seeing and hearing the more artificial, mannered speech and actions of the old movies.

LJ:
Oh yeah totally. I have to admit...I thought the dialogue in Gone With the Wind was really cheesy, but I didn't really let it bother me. As soon as I just let myself go with the flow, I found Scarlet's ravings to be quite entertaining and enjoyable. I mean, who talks like Sam Spade? No one! But I bet people wish they could talk like that.

TD:
Yes. So, what are your impressions about old movies now having seen and discussed Maltese Falcon? Are you curious to watch more old movies? And if so, are there any movies that you feel you'd like to watch, or, perhaps, you feel you have to watch?

LJ:
Ok, you're going to have a heart attack when I say this, but I think I need to watch Casablanca. It sounds even better than Maltese Falcon, and I guess it's one of those "classics" that everyone talks about that I really should just get around to seeing. My impressions? Hm…well, I don't know if my impressions really changed. I never thought that old movies were bad and I still don't. Maltese Falcon was good, and I'm sure there are a lot more movies like it that I would really enjoy if I went looking for them, but....I probably won't go looking for them. I may just continue to rely on you to "expose" me to the good stuff. I liked the movie, but I can't really see myself becoming as interested as you are now. It may take a while for me to get to your level.

TD:
Well, I'm not sure anyone is at my level. You've met me. I'm crazy.

LJ:
True. You're insane. I guess what I meant was that you started watching old movies and you became interested in them so you began to actively seek them out. I'm not there yet.

TD:
Well, let's try for Casablanca next time and we'll see what happens!

The Departed (Martin Scorsese, 2006, B-)

2006-10-20T23:58:00.000-04:00

I love learning about the movies from Alfred Hitchcock. One of his more famous explanations involves the difference between suspense and surprise. Surprise is having two men eating lunch and then suddenly a bomb explodes under their table. Suspense is showing us the bomb under the table before it goes off, so that the audience knows about it but the two men don't. And so we wait in anticipation for the moment when the bomb will go off. The thing about suspense that I love is that, if well done, it stands up to multiple viewings. The thing about surprise is that it's great the first time around, not so much the second and third (though, of course, exceptions abound).

The Departed is all about suspense for a good four-fifths of its running time. We know who the undercover cop is and we know who the informant is, but they don't know each other, and we wait in anticipation to find out when and how they'll discover each other. But Scorsese wastes a lot of time letting Jack Nicholson chew scenery, and drags out the cat and mouse/mouse and cat game between Damon's character and DiCaprio's character to the point where nearly all suspense and anticipation are lost. After awhile it gets tiresome waiting for Damon and DiCaprio to discover each other. The movie is just too darn long. Scorsese tries to make up for this by adding a few surprises into the mix at the end, but they feel cheap -- the suspense is lost, the movie's getting a little long, so let's throw in a couple of out-of-left-field surprises to keep it interesting. Well, the surprises are somewhat surprising, but ultimately unsatisfying. And Nicholson's character turns out to be a dead-end -- he sucks up screen time with an over-the-top performance (which I did find entertaining), but in the end his presence in the film means nothing, except as an excuse for the plot.

The thing that saves The Departed for me is Scorsese's skill as a director and as an artist. His love of cinema, his playfulness with the camera, with sound and music, with little tricks like irises -- the guy is having fun, and that fun is translated to the audience. And the movie is funny too, in a salty, dark sort of way.

J. Hoberman in the Village Voice sums it up pretty well: "Neither a debacle nor a bore, The Departed works but only up to a point, and never emotionally."

Old Movie Dialogue – The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941; The Derelict: A, LeaJo: B+)

2006-10-20T17:28:00.000-04:00

Part I

The Derelict:
So, Leajo, how many "old" movies have you seen? Pre-1970 movies?

LeaJo:
Heh. Well...I'm not really sure about the exact number, but probably about, I don't know...five. That sounds really pathetic, I know.

The Derelict:
No, not pathetic at all. Which movies have you seen (prior to watching the Maltese Falcon)?

LeaJo:
This is a hard question. I might not remember them all. Actually, it's funny, but most of them are Hitchcock movies. The Birds, Rear Window, Psycho. Let's see, I've seen The Wizard of Oz, It's a Wonderful Life, and I know there are more, but I can't remember them off the top of my head...I might be able to come up with some more later.

TD:
You've seen It's a Wonderful Life???!!!! I had no idea! That's actually one of my favorites.

LJ:
Yeah, we had to watch it in school. Maybe that means it doesn't really count. I liked it though. Oh yeah! I've seen Gone with the Wind too!

TD:
You watched It’s a Wonderful Life in school?! Okay, now my mind has been blown. Why?

LJ:
Actually, I don't really remember why. It was in 6th grade and my whole grade watched it so it wasn't like it was for a specific class. Maybe we just watched it for a Christmas thing...except...oh man...you are going to be mad about this. Everyone had to get permission from their parents to watch it because it dealt with religion and they didn't want anyone to get offended.

TD:
Oh my gosh! Really?! I'm not mad, that's just f-ing hilarious. The "religion" is like, what? A silly storyline about a comical angel getting his wings and George Bailey praying in the bar for a few seconds? Seriously, it's only slightly more "religious" than Elf.

LJ:
Yeah...I don't know. I barely remember watching it so I don't really know what my teachers were thinking. Oh, I've seen To Kill A Mockingbird. Does that count? (I also had to watch that movie in school)

TD:
Yes! That definitely counts. Wow, you're a closet old movie watcher, aren't you?

LJ:
You got me! Hee! I bet there are more too; I just can't remember them all right now. Do you remember that one movie that my mom made us watch with Sydney Poitier and the nuns? Does that count?

TD:
Yep, that counts. It's Lillies of the Field, and a good movie, though I've only seen it that once. Okay, so there's The Birds, Rear Window, Psycho, the Wizard of Oz, It's a Wonderful Life, Gone with the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Lillies of the Field. Is that right?

LJ:
Yeah. I think so

TD:
That's a pretty good list, when really, I bet if you asked your friends they've seen maybe two old movies, probably Wizard of Oz and maybe something like Sound of Music or Mary Poppins or another old Disney movie. Maybe It's a Wonderful Life too 'cause it's on every year on NBC, but that’s probably a stretch. So you are maybe a little ahead of the pack, for your age group.

LJ:
You're probably right. I doubt my friends have seen any Hitchcock movies.

TD:
You're probably right. Okay, so before watching Gone with the Wind with me, and then Maltese Falcon last night, what would you say your general impression of "old" movies was? What did you think about old movies (if you thought about them at all)? Did you have any interest in watching these "classic" Hollywood movies or were you content with watching contemporary films?

LJ:
Oh, I was definitely just content in watching contemporary films. I only really watched those movies because I had to at school or someone in my family recommended them to me and made me watch them. I never actively went out and searched for old movies to watch. My impression with them was that in general, I liked them. They were definitely different than newer movies, but that didn't make them bad. The Birds and Rear Window and Psycho scared me just as much as any contemporary horror movie did. I think the main difference I felt between old movies and contemporary movies was that old movies didn't look as good. Like, I thought Rear Window was cool...but it could have been cooler with better special effects. I liked all of the movies though. Wizard of Oz is one of my favorite movies of all time.

TD:
Oh yeah. Wizard of Oz is the best. Interesting about the special effects, because Rear Window didn't really have any special effects, or are you talking about when he's hanging off the window at the end? Yeah, I can see why that would be cheesy looking to a contemporary audience.

LJ:
Yeah...actually that's the only scene I can remember. Was that movie in black and white? Because I sort of meant that too. All of the black and white movies in my mind would have looked better in color. Not that I don't like black and white, it's just a matter of taste.

TD:
No, Rear Window is a color film. As is The Birds. Psycho was shot in black and white because Hitchcock didn't have the budget for color (I think that was the case). Yeah, and I have to be perfectly honest, but I've been thinking about my own "education", if you will, in old movies, and it took me awhile to warm up to b&w movies. In fact, the first time I saw Gone with the Wind (I came in at the end while my parents were watching it) I thought it was kinda cheesy and bad. But something about the film stuck with me and almost kinda haunted me, and a few years later when I watched it with my mom on tv it was the greatest movie I'd ever seen. But black and white movies were not an instant "watch" for me, it took me many almost forced sessions of watching b&w movies to start to "get" them.

LJ:
First time I saw Gone With the Wind, I though it was really boring. I liked it a lot more when we watched it. Things can change depending on when you watch certain things.

TD:
Definitely.

LJ:
Believe me, I have nothing against black and white movies. I just don't really prefer black and white in a movie, probably because I'm used to color. Because of that, I would pick a color movie over one without. You watch a lot of black and white movies so you're probably used to it.

TD:
Right. Which is what I'm saying about familiarity (remember from last night?) -- I made myself watch black and white movies because I wanted to understand them and see what made them good as opposed to color films. I was interested in the lighting, and the way faces looked different in black and white, and the haunting quality of it all.

LJ:
Yeah. I totally understand. It makes sense

TD:
I wanted to experience that thrill and newness that came from black and whites -- I was intellectually curious about them. It was about learning something new, in a way. A new way of looking at and enjoying movies. I wanted to get beyond the familiar movies I was exposed to at the time at the theater and on tv in general.

LJ:
Did most of this come about because you were taking film classes?

TD:
No, it happened before that. It came about because my mom used to watch movies on Saturday afternoons while she folded laundry, and I would sit and fold laundry and watch with her. At first I wouldn't sit down if a black and white movie was on (I'm thinking this is maybe when I was eleven or twelve), but my curiosity and love of the cinema got the better of me. Also, my mom would tell me that the movie was really great and I should watch it. So I would force myself to sit on the couch and watch it. And to my surprise the films held my attention and they were really good. In fact, I made a video for a class in high school and I wanted to shoot parts of it in black and white cause I liked the look. But film classes did help, because I was better able to understand the principles of lighting and how huge a deal lighting is in a good black and white film. Not that lighting isn't important in a color film as well....

LJ:
Right. You know it's funny, I think how your mom was for you, you are for me. You're the one going "you have to watch this movie it's so good!" and making me watch these old films. So good on ya! You're getting me to watch more movies!

To be continued...

Recent Obsession

2006-10-19T22:05:00.000-04:00

Since starting this blog, and getting back into my old cinephile ways, I’ve been kind of obsessed with why and how some people develop a love for old movies (and with old movies being a pretty elastic term, I mean roughly movies made before the late 60s/early 70s). For my own part it had a lot to do with my mom and her love for old movies, but it can’t merely be a question of exposure, since my brother was, arguably, more exposed to old movies than I was (my mom didn’t work when he was younger so she was home more often, watching movies on tv). Why did I fall in love with old black and white studio pictures, while my brother couldn’t be bothered to watch anything except Star Wars?

Obviously, some people are just more predisposed to like old things. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I also like old music of the 30s and 40s, and that I’m generally interested in the history of the earlier half of the century. My attraction to all things WWII-era began fairly early, first with Indiana Jones, then Dick Tracy (movie and comics), Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, A League of Their Own, and The Rocketeer. These movies all came out around the same time, and they were all set in that era of swing jazz, fedora hats, private dicks, and pretty dames and I fell in love with it all. These movies led me on a quest for more; I wanted as much of my grandparents’ era as I could get. So where do you turn if you want to experience the 1930s and 1940s? For me it was jazz and the movies. And what better way to experience that time period than to watch its movies. To watch not only movies set in the 40s but movies made in the 40s.

But this can’t be how every old movie lover came to be. And not every WWII-era buff falls in love with the era’s movies either. And I certainly branched out beyond that late 30s/early 40s time period (into silents, foreign, films of the 50s and 60s, cult, etc.). Obviously, dozens of things factored into my love for old movies, and obviously, the path to “classic movie lover” status is different for everyone. But how is a cinephile born? Why is it that some of us love this old stuff while others could take it or leave it? Since I’m obsessed with these questions of why and how, LeaJo has been kind enough to be a sort of guinea pig for my experiments. She’s agreed to watch some old movies and answer some questions I have, both about her opinions of the movies in particular and old movies in general. It’ll be a semi-regular feature here at the blog, and we’re calling it “Old Movie Dialogue,” since it’ll be formatted as a dialogue between LeaJo and myself. The hope (on my part) is that LeaJo will develop an appreciation, and perhaps even a love, for old movies. But at the very least I think it’ll be interesting to read LeaJo’s thoughts on these “classic” films – a fresh perspective from someone fairly new to the old movie scene.

Quote of the Week

2006-10-16T13:02:00.000-04:00

"I don't like close-ups unless you can get a kick out of them, unless you need them. If you can get away with attitudes and positions that show the feeling of the scene, I think you're better off using the close-up only for absolute punctuation -- that's the reason you do it. And you save it -- not like TV where they do everything in close-up."

Howard Hawks

How the movies helped me love baseball

2006-10-15T11:26:00.000-04:00

I have to admit, I used to hate baseball. I was one of those uninformed, ignorant types who thought baseball was "slow" and "boring." I prefered faster-paced sports like basketball. I remember going to games at Tigers Stadium as a kid, but that was because my dad loved baseball and made us go. And I remember collecting baseball cards when I was younger, but that was because I had an older brother who collected them and I wanted to be a part of anything he did. I even used to go to Tigers Stadium with my friends back in high school and sit in the cheap seats and eat hot dogs and basically goof around, but I didn't really go for the baseball. I just went because it was something to do. Besides, the Tigers were bad back then. They were almost the worst just three years ago.

But I did love A League of Their Own. Make fun of me if you want, but I can recite nearly every line in that movie. And I did get a thrill when I watched Field of Dreams for the first time as a thirteen year old kid and saw Shoeless Joe emerge from the corn field. And I laughed along with my fellow 80s babies at silly kids movies like Rookie of the Year. I might have hated baseball but I loved baseball movies. I only knew who Ty Cobb was because I knew Tommy Lee Jones had played him in a movie. I enjoyed the mediocre Babe with John Goodman, then I went to Baltimore and was excited to see a statue of the real Babe at Camden Yard. I cried when Gary Cooper told Yankee Stadium he was the luckiest man on the face of the earth, and then suddenly I was a Yankees fan.

Suddenly I was watching games. Then came Eight Men Out, the White Sox 2005 season, and I was watching baseball every night during the playoffs. Suddenly I was watching baseball with my dad, only this time I wasn't being forced into it. Suddenly, the Tigers were the best team in baseball. Suddenly, the Tigers' performance in the playoffs was like something out of a movie. First we slayed the mighty Yankees, the old underdog story that's been told a million times. Then we swept Oakland, ending with a Magglio Ordonez three-run walk-off homer that looked and felt like it had been scripted in Hollywood's feel-good sports movie department.

Everything I knew about baseball I learned at the movies. Everthing I loved about baseball I got from the movies. The movies showed me the history, the American-ness of baseball. The deep tradition, the great drama of the national pastime, with its heroes and its heartbreaks.

The movies gave me baseball. And baseball has given me more than I ever dreamed it could. Bless you boys.

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell (Hajime Sato, 1968, B)

2006-10-10T00:45:00.000-04:00

I can't really love this film, mostly because A.) It wasn't really that scary or disturbing once the Goke alien showed up and turned characters into vampires, and B.) Because of the rather lame anti-Vietnam message (man is just killing man, for no reason, just senseless violence, etc. etc.). If the film had just stuck to the characters themselves, their own faults, their envy, pride, and rage, it would have been more profound, more universal, less dated. Instead, the stark, red-soaked montages of war violence (I'm assuming mostly footage from Vietnam), though visually interesting, are really simplistic thematically (yeah, okay, war is bad, thanks for that totally unoriginal, and tiresome point). But, what do you want from a horror/sci-fi B-movie, right?

The less forgiveable point is the lack of scares. The beginning is utterly perfect, from the strange behavior of the birds to the eery red sky. (n.b.: notice Tarantino steals the shot of the airplane flying against a sunset-red sky and puts it into Kill Bill vol. 1)

But once the Goke shows up it becomes pretty predictable and it didn't take long for me to figure out how things would end. Let's just say (possible spoilers ahead), it comes off very Twilight Zone-ish, and echoes a certain famous American sci-fi film of the 1950s. Of course, the American title kinda gives that one away.

Yet despite the fairly ordinary vampire/body snatcher stuff, the film really wins on visual style, use of color, and the straight-up drama stuff between the characters. There's the whole "survivors coping with each other and the natural tensions that arise" thing going on, as well as the tensions between characters that existed before the situation got freaky. I loved the relationship between the politican and the business man. The director does a fantastic job of fitting all of his characters into the frame at the same time, giving the film a very claustrophobic feel:
(contrasted with wide, high shots later in the film of characters running along a barren and empty terrain)

The use of color is extraordinary, with reds, whites, and blues being used to great effect:

On a storytelling level I thought the characters and their relationships with each other were great: the corrupt politican, the sychophantic business man, the emotionally frayed Vietnam war widow, the know-it-all psychologist, the co-pilot whose virtue and basic humanity are the only things the viewer can be sure of in this nightmare. There was a lot of psychological and sociological stuff being addressed in the film that really had nothing to do with the science fiction/horror element and the movie could have worked even without the Goke vampire stuff (don't misunderstand me, I love sci-fi and horror, but it just so happened that in this instance I was more interested in the "normal" stuff than the weird stuff -- and just to be fair, there was one moment in the film that really did scare me and that was when the Goke possessed one of the characters and was "speaking" through that character; the Goke's voice in this scene was frightening, and the way the scene ends was chilling). The drama between the characters was often more compelling than the drama of the vampire scenes. Of course, the vampire stuff (the bloodlust and violence of the Goke) was just a metaphor for the bloodlust and violence of humanity. The film asks us to think about who the real "monsters" are, the Goke or human beings. This universal point about Original Sin, about the danger of hate, envy, greed, and pride was more interesting to me than the rather weak point about Vietnam the film tried to make.

On the level of straight-up character drama, and on visuals, I would give the film a B+/A-, but because it's a relatively predictable horror/sci-fi plot I have to give it a very solid B.

(One more note: The music in this film drove my mom nuts -- there's a very high-pitched pulsing sound that we hear throughout scenes involving the Goke's space craft that just goes on and on. My mom kept going, "What IS that?!" But I loved it! It was annoying in that kind of good way that makes you wish it would stop and yet at the same time you're mesmerized by it. Leajo, think "Show show show, show show show, show show show, the show of shows show")

Quote of the Week

2006-10-09T16:32:00.000-04:00

"All this compulsion to understand everything fills me with horror."
Luis Bunuel, My Last Sigh

Don't tread on the the "D"

2006-10-07T20:07:00.000-04:00

(Oh, and Go Blue!)

This was a good day for sports.

Quote of the Week

2006-10-02T00:04:00.000-04:00

"There is a dreadful story that I hate actors. I can't imagine how such a rumor began. Of course it may possibly be because I was once quoted as saying that actors are cattle. My actor friends know I would never be capable of such a thoughtless, rude and unfeeling remark... What I probably said was that actors should be treated like cattle."
Alfred Hitchcock

Blog rolling

2006-09-23T13:55:00.000-04:00

Miyazaki blog-a-thon... and here, here, and here

PJ and the Hobbit

Knowing your audience

Jim Emerson on film criticism

And a bleat from James Lileks about the "golden age" of television (which in case you were wondering is Right Now)

Hail to the Victors!

2006-09-17T11:49:00.000-04:00

Michigan 47, Notre Dame 21 (sorry Michael)

But Notre Dame does have better football movies.

Superman Retreads

2006-09-05T15:54:00.000-04:00

(N.B.: This is not really a review. It's more like a few idiosyncratic observations.)

I'm not sure how it happened, but my opinion of Superman Returns (Bryan Singer, B-) has steadily decreased from B+ to B to B- as time has passed. I figure I'd better commit myself to a blog entry before things get worse and Superman gets downgraded to just plain old Average C. As it is, he's only slightly above average and that's too bad. Too bad because I'm one of the few (I think) who really likes Superman (better than Batman and Spiderman and Ghost Rider) and doesn't think he's a stodgy old boy scout. Too bad, because a director with a little les nostalgia in his eyes and a little more daring could have made a fresh, sparkling film for 2006, instead of the backward-looking homage to the 1978 film we actually got. Everything about Superman Returns feels unnecessary, in the sense that if we wanted a film like this we could have just turned to the original Richard Donner film. Why make this new one?

Imagine for a moment some possible ideas for a new Superman film, a film meant to jumpstart the franchise for the 21st century (and also note that these are just a few off-the-cuff ideas I came up with, or borrowed from other, better sources):

*It's 1942 and a (Golden Age) Superman must defend the Daily Star, Metropolis, and the Allied forces from a (magical, kryptonite-fortified) Spear of Destiny-weilding Hitler. Imagine Superman fighting scientifically enhanced Nazi supermen and throwing tanks across the fields of France (and as Clark Kent, exposing Lex Luthor as a shameless war profiteer who's getting rich selling arms to the Axis).

*Imagine Superman is dying (one of Lex Luthor's schemes and the idea Grant Morrison has come up with in his All-Star Superman comic), so what else does he do except go to his Fortress of Solitude and develop a serum that gives Lois the same powers as himself for 24 hours. Oh, and he also reveals to her his secret identity as Clark Kent.

*How about Braniac as the big bad? Or maybe a riff on the "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" Alan Moore story? What if Superman returned and found Lex Luthor elected president?!

Any idea that has some gumption or a spark of innovation would have been just the thing to revitalize the Superman movie franchise and make it feel necessary. Instead, Bryan Singer indulged his love for the original Christopher Reeve version and delivered a well-made (boring) semi-remake. I guess I'm just not infatuated enough with Donner's movie to get all starry-eyed with this too-long (154 min.) tribute to it. Don't get me wrong: the performances are generally good (loved Kevin Spacey), the special effects dazzling (loved the bullet glancing off Superman's eye), the story well-told (if ill-chosen). But did we really need another Lex Luthor land scheme? (Lex Luthor O'Hara: "Why Kitty Scarlett Kowalski, you mean to tell me that land doesn't mean anything to you?! Why, land's the only thing that matters, the only thing worth fighting for, worth dying for. Because it's the only thing that lasts." *unless Superman throws it into space of course*)

Was Singer's notion of a fresh idea really just to add a cute kid to the mix? Wow, I can't wait to see the sequel in which Superman agonizes over what to do about his bastard son. That sounds like a great storyline for a superhero movie!

Seriously, I sound a lot harsher about this movie than I really feel. I did like it. It's just a disappointment insofar as it's supposed to be a restart of the franchise and instead it just feels like a retread of a movie from 30 years ago. Superman returned alright. I just wish he could've flown in a different direction.

No Children, No Future, No Hope

2006-09-03T12:21:00.000-04:00

I think the upcoming film, The Children of Men (dir. Alfonso Cuaron), looks fantastic. I'm actually a little surprised a film like this is being made today. I mean, a film about the importance of having children and making sure the world is populated?! What happened to all the doomsday stuff about how there are TOO MANY people on the planet??? I'm sure the leftists at the UN and other population-control liberals aren't too pleased with this little speculative-fiction movie. Anyway, I'm very excited, not least of all because Alfonso Cuaron is directing.

via Jeffrey Overstreet at Looking Closer

Why I can never really hate Ted Turner

2006-09-03T11:32:00.000-04:00

Turner Classic Movies is the greatest channel on television. In the past few months I have watched these films and more (all uncut and commercial free, of course), some of which are not available on dvd:

Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, A)
Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, B)
American Graffiti (George Lucas, A)
To Be or Not to Be (Ernst Lubitsch, B+)
My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava, A-)
Captain Blood (Michael Curtiz, B+)
High Sierra (Raoul Walsh, B+)
The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, A-)
Get Yourself a College Girl (Sidney Miller, C-)
Ecstacy (Gustav Machaty, B-)
H.M. Pulham, Esq. (King Vidor, B)
Charge of the Light Brigade (Michael Curtiz, B-)
Adventures of Robin Hood (Michael Curtiz & William Keighley, A-)
On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, A+)
Born to Be Bad (Nicholas Ray, B-)
Waterloo Bridge (Mervyn LeRoy, A-)
Sergeant York (Howard Hawks, A)
Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, A-)
Key Largo (John Huston, B+)
Nothing Sacred (William A. Wellman, B)
The Devil and Miss Jones (Sam Wood, B+)
Meet John Doe (Frank Capra, B)
Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, A-)
Swing Time (George Stevens, A-)
Flying Down to Rio (Thornton Freeland, C)
Monkey Business (Howard Hawks, B)
Bachelor Mother (Garson Kanin, A-)
Enchantment (Irving Reis, B-)
Crossroads (Jack Conway, C+)
The Strawberry Blonde (Raoul Walsh, A-)
The Petrified Forest (Archie Mayo, B-)
The Man Who Came to Dinner (William Keighley, B+)
Pinky (Elia Kazan, A-)
Gold Diggers 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy, B+)
Dinner at Eight (George Cukor, B)
Stage Door (Gregory La Cava, B+)
A Foreign Affair (Billy Wilder, B+)

And... I'm still waiting to watch:
Hercules, Samson and Ulysses (Pietro Francisci, 1963)
The Invisible Boy (Herman Hoffman, 1957)
Island of Lost Souls (Erle C. Kenton, 1933)
The Exterminating Angel (Luis Bunuel, 1962)
Tortilla Flat (Victor Fleming, 1942)
The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970)
Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks, 1941)

And in addition to all the great movies, I've managed to watch several hours of classic cartoons from MGM, Hanna-Barbera, Warner Bros., etc. on TCM's Cartoon Alley program (on Saturday mornings, appropriately enough).

The 2006 Summer of Movies -- "What's a good movie we can go see?"

2006-08-21T23:28:00.000-04:00

I'm often asked this question by my parents when they're thinking about going out to the movies. My parents are in their 50s, pretty conservative, and not really into action or big-budget type stuff. And they're also like many of the older set who often deplore the increased sex and violence of "today's movies" (where they were during the Godfather/Taxi Driver/Last Tango in Paris 1970s I'm not sure -- Mom: "Having babies.")

In fall, winter, or spring I usually suggest a political thriller or a (non-SNL-alum) comedy. But in the summer, when nearly every movie has either spandex or Will Farrell, it's slim pickins. This summer, when the question finally arrived, I tentatively suggested Superman Returns, hoping my dad would forget his antipathy toward superhero movies 'cause, well, it's Superman, and Superman is, like, actually pretty normal and mainstream and stuff.

Well. . . no. Superman Returns was not going to happen.

Then a brainwave! What was my favorite movie of the summer so far? CARS! Cars was funny but not stupid-funny. Cars was a good story but not a story exclusively for children. Cars was gorgeous to look at. Cars was fun. Cars was like a movie from Golden Age Hollywood, a Boys Town or You Can't Take It With You, that wasn't tailored to fit an age demographic but was just a good movie that any person could enjoy.

So I suggested Cars.

I might as well have suggested X-Men 3. Cars was off the table for my dad (my mom was more receptive, since she had seen The Incredibles and loved it). Why? I asked. No reply, but I knew the answer. Cars was a "no" because Cars was a cartoon. Silly Derelict, cartoons are for kids. He never actually admitted it, but that was the reason.

Thanks to the way many mainstream animated films are marketed (advertised on children's television, tie-in toys sold at McDonald's, characters' images on everything from sleeping bags to sneakers) many adults probably don't take them seriously as legitimate (adult) entertainment. They're movies you take your kids to, not movies you go see with your friends. To the average American adult moviegoer they're like foreign films or art house indies -- movies that don't even fall under the radar when looking through the paper on a Friday night. They've even been ghettoized by the Academy Awards with the Best Animated Feature category.

Why do I bring all this up? It's not a particularly novel insight on my part; many things have been written and said, for instance, on the differences between American and Japanese attitudes toward animation. But the notion struck me in a particular way recently because three of my favorite films this summer have been animated, and yet I find I can't really recommend them to my adult friends and relatives because, in their minds, animated movies aren't *really* movies. They're just cartoons.

Yet Over the Hedge (Tim Johnson & Karey Kirkpatrick, B+) is as zany and hilarious as any screwball comedy. Cars (John Lasseter, B+) is as fun and uplifting as any good sports movie. Monster House (Gil Kenan, B+) is as spooky and atmospheric as any good monster movie. Summer 2006 has been a great season for animated features, a fact I remind myself of whenever I hear the familiar (critics') cry of "disappointing summer for movies." Superman Returns may have fallen short at the box office; Pirates of the Caribbean may have fallen short at Rotten Tomatoes. But talented filmmakers who happen to make cartoons have made 2006 a pleasantly surprising summer.