Trigger Man
An earlier post on Ti West's excellent The House of the Devil lead the cryptic emailer mentioned in that post to recommend West's previous film, the ultra-low-budget Trigger Man. It's an interesting little film, mostly because it is essentially a concentrated version of what some people really hated about The House of the Devil.

Like, House of the Devil, the plot of this film is easily summarized: three buddies head out to the woods for a relaxing hunting trip. With a title like Trigger Man and three apparently inexperienced young guys with guns, it played out almost exactly as I expected. But not right away. I suppose there are some who'd say that the first half of the film is a bit dull, and there's probably something to that. The film is certainly slow. But there's also something effective about being lulled into a sense of security that this film exploits. At one point maybe 20 minutes or so into the movie, after our heroes have been quietly walking through the woods for a while, one of the characters hefts his rifle and pans around the area... and spies a doe! Never has a female deer been so menacing.

I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say that the deer does not shoot back at our hero, but there's no way that sequence would have carried the weight it did if we hadn't spent the previous 20 minutes trudging silently through the landscape, building atmosphere with every step. As someone who has been deer hunting myself, this movie actually does capture that sort of excitement that can only come after spending a morning waiting for something (anything!) to cross your path. After a while, even a squirrel can be exciting.

Of course, that's not all this film has to offer, and while I had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen, I did find myself startled when it actually did happen. From that point on, I found myself surprisingly off balance, even when West reverts the film back into quiet nature walk mode (only to jolt me out of my reestablished reverie, I should add). There is even that horror staple of gratuitous gore at one point, but that sort of thing works much better in a movie like this than it does in a lot of other schlock-fests (though I do have a soft spot for slashers, for some unfathomable reason). Later in the film, an eerie abandoned factory makes an appearance, and West takes ample advantage of the strange shadows thrown by overpasses.

This is pretty clearly a low-budget film, and at times I did find myself wondering if the stylistic choices were done for artistic reasons, or because of technical limitations (or, as is sometimes happily the case, both). For instance, the film does have a distinct vérité feel. West never goes all Greengrass on us, but a handheld camera is clearly used for most of the shots. This does sorta put the viewer in the position of voyeur, as if if we're actually there, following the characters with a camera (but without the whole found-footage conceit). Indeed, there are numerous shots from behind, following characters as they move. I would be curious what choices West would have made if he had more of a budget.

The DVD had a Q&A session with West, cast, and crew, and one of the things that really surprised me was that he says almost none of the film is improvised. The film only has about 20 lines of dialogue, and most of it is pretty simple banter between the three leads (I thought for sure that the Predator reference was an improvisation). After finishing the movie, I contemplated whether it would have made for a good silent film (the concept of a modern-day silent film intrigues me) - and I think it would, so long as you could leave the sound of gunshots and maybe the babbling water of the creek.

Ultimately, while I enjoyed the film and found it satisfying, I would have a hard time recommending it to anyone but the most strident fans of West or slow burning horror (i.e. people who think The House of the Devil is for speed junkies). Perhaps being immersed in the hustle and bustle of teh internets primed me for spending some down time following some doomed hunters as they trekked through an eerie environment. I guess it's not a film I see myself popping in all the time... It's a wonderful experiment, and I enjoyed it on that level, but it certainly has its flaws. In any case, I guess this means I should check out The Roost (which, I have to say, seems like it would be very different from the other two West movies I've seen).



Groundhog Day and A/B Testing
Jeff Atwood recently made a fascinating observation about the similarities between the classic film Groundhog Day and A/B Testing.

In case you've only recently emerged from a hermit-like existence, Groundhog Day is a film about Phil (played by Bill Murray). It seems that Phil has been doomed (or is it blessed) to live the same day over and over again. It doesn't seem to matter what he does during this day, he always wakes up at 6 am on Groundhog Day. In the film, we see the same day repeated over and over again, but only in bits and pieces (usually skipping repetitive parts). The director of the film, Harold Ramis, believes that by the end of the film, Phil has spent the equivalent of about 30 or 40 years reliving that same day.

Towards the beginning of the film, Phil does a lot of experimentation, and Atwood's observation is that this often takes the form of an A/B test. This is a concept that is perhaps a little more esoteric, but the principles are easy. Let's take a simple example from the world of retail. You want to sell a new ring on a website. What should the main image look like? For simplification purposes, let's say you narrow it down to two different concepts: one, a closeup of the ring all by itself, and the other a shot of a model wearing the ring. Which image do you use? We could speculate on the subject for hours and even rationalize some pretty convincing arguments one way or the other, but it's ultimately not up to us - in retail, it's all about the customer. You could "test" the concept in a serial fashion, but ultimately the two sets of results would not be comparable. The ring is new, so whichever image is used first would get an unfair advantage, and so on. The solution is to show both images during the same timeframe. You do this by splitting your visitors into two segments (A and B), showing each segment a different version of the image, and then tracking the results. If the two images do, in fact, cause different outcomes, and if you get enough people to look at the images, it should come out in the data.

This is what Phil does in Groundhog Day. For instance, Phil falls in love with Rita (played by Andie MacDowell) and spends what seems like months compiling lists of what she likes and doesn't like, so that he can construct the perfect relationship with her.

Phil doesn't just go on one date with Rita, he goes on thousands of dates. During each date, he makes note of what she likes and responds to, and drops everything she doesn't. At the end he arrives at -- quite literally -- the perfect date. Everything that happens is the most ideal, most desirable version of all possible outcomes on that date on that particular day. Such are the luxuries afforded to a man repeating the same day forever.

This is the purest form of A/B testing imaginable. Given two choices, pick the one that "wins", and keep repeating this ad infinitum until you arrive at the ultimate, most scientifically desirable choice.

As Atwood notes, the interesting thing about this process is that even once Phil has constructed that perfect date, Rita still rejects Phil. From this example and presumably from experience with A/B testing, Atwood concludes that A/B testing is empty and that subjects can often sense a lack of sincerity behind the A/B test.

It's an interesting point, but to be sure, I'm not sure it's entirely applicable in all situations. Of course, Atwood admits that A/B testing is good at smoothing out details, but there's something more at work in Groundhog's Day that Atwood is not mentioning. Namely, that Phil is using A/B testing to misrepresent himself as the ideal mate for Rita. Yes, he's done the experimentation to figure out what "works" and what doesn't, but his initial testing was ultimately shallow. Rita didn't reject him because he had all the right answers, she rejected him because he was attempting to deceive her. His was misrepresenting himself, and that certainly can lead to a feeling of emptiness.

If you look back at my example above about the ring being sold on a retail website, you'll note that there's no deception going on there. Somehow I doubt either image would result in a hollow feeling by the customer. Why is this different than Groundhog Day? Because neither image misrepresents the product, and one would assume that the website is pretty clear about the fact that you can buy things there. Of course, there are a million different variables you could test (especially once you get into text and marketing hooks, etc...) and some of those could be more deceptive than others, but most of the time, deception is not the goal. There is a simple choice to be made, instead of constantly wondering about your product image and second guessing yourself, why not A/B test it and see what customers like better?

There are tons of limitations to this approach, but I don't think it's as inherently flawed as Atwood seems to believe. Still, the data you get out of an A/B test isn't always conclusive and even if it is, whatever learnings you get out of it aren't necessarily applicable in all situations. For instance, what works for our new ring can't necessarily be applied to all new rings (this is a problem for me, as my employer has a high turnover rate for products - as such, the simple example of the ring as described above would not be a good test for my company unless the ring would be available for a very long time). Furthermore, while you can sometimes pick a winner, it's not always clear why it's a winner. This is especially the case when the differences between A and B are significant (for instance, testing an entirely redesigned page might yield results, but you will not know which of the changes to the page actually caused said results - on the other hand, A/B testing is really the only way to accurately calculate ROI on significant changes like that.)

Obviously these limitations should be taken into account when conducting an A/B test, and I think what Phil runs into in Groundhog's Day is a lack of conclusive data. One of the problems with interpreting inconclusive data is that it can be very tempting to rationalize the data. Phils initial attempts to craft the perfect date for Rita fail because he's really only scraping the surface of her needs and desires. In other words, he's testing the wrong thing, misunderstanding the data, and thus getting inconclusive results.

The interesting thing about the Groundhog's Day example is that, in the end, the movie is not a condemnation of A/B testing at all. Phil ultimately does manage to win the affections of Rita. Of course it took him decades to do so, and that's worth taking into account. Perhaps what the film is really saying is that A/B testing is often more complicated than it seems and that the only results you get depend on what you put into it. A/B testing is not the easy answer it's often portrayed as and it should not be the only tool in your toolbox (i.e. forcing employees to prove that using 3, 4 or 5 pixels for a border is ideal is probably going a bit too far ), but neither is it as empty as Atwood seems to be indicating. (And we didn't even talk about multivariate tests! Let's get Christopher Nolan on that. He'd be great at that sort of movie, wouldn't he?)



The House of the Devil
This month's selection for the Final Girl film club is Ti West's 80s throwback horror film, The House of the Devil.

When I was growing up, there was a local legend about a building known as Satan's House (also known as the Cult house, the Devil's house, and probably a dozen other variants). Located in Southeastern PA, not that far from Delaware, the house sits at the top of a hill, and the road that winds around the hill is probably the creepiest part of the whole experience. The windy road is narrow and lined with trees. This alone would not be cause for alarm, but it seems that all of the trees... instead of growing up towards the sky, they grow horizontally, pointing away from the road (as if trying to escape the unspeakable horror of Satan's house). This isn't the best picture of the road, but it gets the point across: Obviously this is proof that the house is home to some sort of satanic cult. Some of the more fanciful conspiracies claim that the house is owned by the Du Pont family and that various members of the family married their cousins in the house (so as to keep their money within the family), and then used the house to hide away the inbred children (or monsters or whatever).

The funny thing about this is that it's probably just a house, and the trees lining the road probably grow like that because of the way the sunlight hits the area, but the conspiracy theories of Satanism persist even to this day. This sort of irrational fear of Satanism was rampant during the 80s, and director Ti West has latched onto that idea and created a remarkably authentic 80s-style horror movie featuring shifty families, satanic rituals and a creepy house. The film even starts with a cheesy text opening informing the audience that in the 1980s, over 70% of Americans believed in abusive Satanic cults and that another 30% rationalized the lack of evidence due to government cover-ups... Plus, it's based on a true story! Not sure if it actually is or if West is pulling a Fargo, but it doesn't really matter, does it?

The basic premise of the story is that a college student in need of some quick cash agrees to take a babysitting job at said creepy house. And that's pretty much it. However, writer/director West manages to wring a lot of tension out of this simple and seemingly overused premise.

I first saw this movie earlier this year, when I was still attempting to fill out my Top 10 of 2009. At the time, I was comparing it to another haunted house movie, Paranormal Activity. There are some superficial similarities here: both movies feature quasi-haunted houses, they both have something of a gimmick at their core (one a "found footage" film, the other imitating 80s conventions), and they're both pretty scary. However, The House of the Devil is made with more artistry and in a more unconventional manner. It's a masterpiece of misdirection and tension building. Unlike the repeated tense and release of Paranormal Activity, The House of the Devil opts to continually build tension while withholding release until the end. This is an interesting approach and the foreboding atmosphere of dread is hard to shake. Of course, from the title of the film alone, you know where it's heading, and aside from one moment early on in the film, it mostly proceeds along an expected path.

The other film this reminds me of is Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof. Both films are an ode to underappreciated grindhouse genre films, albeit films of a different era and genre. Tarantino is going for the great car films of 70s with a little horror mixed in for good measure. West is going for those 80s horror movies where irrational fear of satanism was rampant. I think both films are hugely successful at evoking the feeling of their respective genres, but I think the one major problem with this approach is that these new films suffer from the same major flaws as the films they're imitating. In particular, the pacing is very slow and the characters tend to act pretty stupidly... For film nerds like myself, this isn't really much of a drawback, but it does tend to limit the appeal to more mainstream audiences. It's strange though, because these flaws are so obviously and lovingly reproduced in exquisite detail and with a lot of artistry. Indeed, getting that cheap, grainy filmstock look probably cost way more than doing it "properly" would.

That being said, once things begin to happen, the pace picks up and it's very engrossing stuff. I'm still not sure if it would crack my top 10 of 2009, but I will say that I'll be very interested in what Ti West decides to do next (apparently another haunted house style story). As usual, more screenshots and comments in the extended entry...

Update 7.26.10: Stacie has just posted her review and links to all the other Film Club Coolies (y'all!). I'm also informed via cryptic second-hand email that Ti West has seen my review and that he said the creepy trees in the photo above are just 10 minutes away from where he grew up, which is pretty awesome. I suppose I should mention that the below screenshots do contain some Spoilers, so proceed at your own risk. This is the title screen for the film. Unfortunately, I can't adequately capture the awesomeness of this screen because it happens as a freeze-frame, which is just so 80s. The rest of the opening credits feature these great freeze-frames, but nothing quite so great as this first, surprising one... West does employ a number of long takes and even this fixed shot, which works really well. Basically, our heroine makes a call, then walks away, and then the phone rings again when she's off in the distance. The shot remains the same the whole time, and it's actually somewhat unnerving. Ahhh, a circa 1983 pizza shop. I'll bet that West didn't even have to work that hard to find a pizza shop that looks like this, even today. Still, the look and feel of everything in this movie is authentically 1980s, from the hair to the clothing to the design of the Coke cups. Would you take a job from Tom Noonen? He's obviously not a Satanist, right? She's not a Satanist either. Never mind that she's wearing a fur coat made from the pelts of an undetermined species and that she's got what looks like a decorative chicken scull pinned to it. Those are unimportant details. See that look on his face? It just screams "I'm not a Satanist!", doesn't it? That actor is AJ Bowen, and I actually think he was great in The Signal. He doesn't have as much to do in this movie, but he's still great here (and responsible for one of the best moments in the film). Oh wow, remember the Walkman? Ten times the size of an iPod, approximately 15,000% less storage capacity. This is one of the big set pieces of the movie, where she puts on her headphones and rocks out around the seemingly deserted house. Oh, and those jeans are also pretty awesomely 80s too. Most times, when you're watching a modern throwback movie, they make it seem like all the clothes people wore at the time were awesome and still kinda hip today. Not here. She's got those jeans hiked up in a pretty unflattering (but authentic) way. Ok, maybe at this point I'm willing to concede that Satanism is involved.

And that about wraps it up.



Inception's Sense of Wonder
One of the things that really differentiates science fiction from other genres is the emotional thrill derived from expanding your awareness of what's possible. This doesn't always constitute a complete understanding of the universe around you, just a dawning realization that there's more to the story than you've thought (sometimes this can take the form of contemplating the incomprehensible or even just realizing what you don't know). This feeling is referred to as a "Sense of Wonder" (often abbreviated as sensawunda) and while a large portion of science fiction literature manages to evoke such emotions, SF cinema rarely even approaches the same accomplishments. There are some exceptions, of course, but for the most part, SF movies settle for gigantic spaceships and thunderous explosions and whatnot.

The opening shots of the original Star Wars provides us with a typical cinematic example. The camera pans across a sea of stars. You see a spaceship move across the screen. This imparts a frame of reference for the universe of the movie. Then a much larger spaceship (indeed, it doesn't seem like it will end) move across the screen in pursuit of the original. The frame of reference established by the original spaceship is thus immediately revised in light of this new data. Part of this revision is, no doubt, the expectation that the Star Destroyer will probably be dwarfed by something else (and later in the film it is, by the Death Star). This short sequence actually encapsulates a ton of information: the rebels are small and poorly equipped, the empire is large and powerful. The way the ships are framed on screen also underlines the empire's power over the rebels. And so on.

The realization of the scale and size of the empire is a very small example of sensawunda. And most films don't even contain that much (indeed, the really mind expanding things about Star Wars aren't really SF so much as they are mystical, but that's probably another discussion). There are analogs to this concept in other genres, most notably the horror genre, but the emotions are distinct (the emotion evoked in horror as you realize the scope of the conflict is fear, tension or suspense, rather than the awe or wonder of SF).

Christopher Nolan's new film, Inception, is one of the few films in recent years to actually even attempt to impart a sensawunda, and for that alone, it should be applauded. The interesting thing about Inception is that it manages to impart that sensawunda feeling without relying too heavily on precise explanations of the technology involved. Indeed, I don't think the movie would fare too well if judged solely on the basis of realism.

However, despite this lack of precise technological detail, the film does manage to evoke the sensawunda feeling by devising a set of rules and limitations, then playing around within that box to consistently expand possibilities and sometimes even surprise the viewer. The key catalyst for sensawunda here is that all of the various twists and turns in the story are all internally consistent and logical extensions of what has already been established.

I don't want to go into too much detail right now simply because I don't want to spoil the movie, but things do get pretty complicated and Nolan does manage to ratchet up the stakes considerably more than I had initially expected. There are some concepts or details that I must admit that I'm not entirely clear on, but even in those situations I have a gut feeling that everything does fit.

The critical reception seems to be very positive, though there have been a few high profile dissenters, notably David Edelstein and Jim Emerson. Edelstein writes:

Inception is full of brontosaurean effects, like the city that folds over on top of itself, but the tone is so solemn I felt out of line even cracking a smile. It lacks the nimbleness of Spielberg’s Minority Report or the Jungian-carnival bravado of Joseph Ruben’s Dreamscape or the eerily clean lines and stylized black-suited baddies of The Matrix—or, for that matter, the off-kilter intensity of Nolan’s own Insomnia. The attackers in Inception are anonymous, the tone flat and impersonal. Nolan is too literal-minded, too caught up in ticktock logistics, to make a great, untethered dream movie.

(emphasis mine) I found that last line the most representative of complaints with the movie. Emerson's main complaint, that the dreams in the movie don't seem to be very dreamlike, is instructive, because from what appears on screen, Nolan is clearly not even attempting to make an "untethered dream movie". I think it's funny that Edelstein also throws out a number of other movies, none of which I like better than Inception. I do really enjoy Minority Report, but I don't think it captures that mind expanding sensawunda feeling anywhere near as well as Inception does. If you have a lot of problems with Inception, I really have a hard time believing that you'd think that Dreamscape was a better movie. There is some similarity in basic premise, but I think "Jungian-carnival bravado" is far too much praise for that film (which is an enjoyable enough movie, but also kinda silly and overblown in the way a lot of 80s movies were). The Matrix is the only film on the list that I think gives Inception a run for its money. Both films are derivative in the extreme, though I got a fresher feeling from Inception than The Matrix. On the other hand, The Matrix clearly outclasses Inception when it comes to action. In any case, I don't think any of those films should preclude anyone from seeing Inception.

Emerson also seems to hate Nolan's visual style, but to my mind, Nolan is much more distinctive as a writer than he is as a director. It's not the visual style of movies like Inception or Nolan's true masterpiece, Memento, that strikes audiences - it's the way Nolan plays with narrative and time that really differentiates him. This is more a function of the writing and editing than anything else, and even Edelstein admits that Nolan "thinks like a mechanical engineer" when it comes to his scripting (and this is a good thing). The editing in Inception is certainly worth praising here. Though perhaps not as extensive or bombastic as the eding in Memento, there's a real challenge here and editor Lee Smith deserves a lot of credit for whatever degree of suspense you feel as the film reaches its climax.

Nolan also seems to do a great job combining various genres and then putting a new twist on them. For instance, Inception contains elements of action films, heist and con movies, and of course, science fiction. Elements from each genre are mixed and matched in a way that hasn't really been done before (at least, not with respect to the layered "ticktock logistics" of the plot). This isn't a straightforward version of any of those genres, nor is it a simple combination.

The performances are all pretty good, though I think the real standout is Tom Hardy (of Bronson fame), who just devours the screen. Longtime Kaedrin friend Sovawanea pointed out one of the refreshing aspects of the film: "I found it rather refreshing that they didn't try to contrive a romance in the middle of the mission between Ellen Page and the rest of the guys." There's another element of the characters that I found really refreshing, but I don't want to say it because it might spoil the movie.

This has been a slow year for movies, but between Inception and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, things are at least looking up a bit, and both will most likely find their way onto my top 10 list at the end of the year.



Tasting Notes...
So Nick from CHUD recently revived the idea of a "Tasting Notes..." post that features a bunch of disconnected, scattershot notes on a variety of topics that don't really warrant a full post. It sounds like fun, so here are a few tasting notes...

Television

• The latest season of True Blood seems to be collapsing under the weight of all the new characters and plotlines. It's still good, but the biggest issue with the series is that nothing seems to happen from week to week. That's the problem when you have a series with 15 different subplots, I guess. The motif for this season seems to be to end each episode with Vampire Bill doing something absurdly crazy. I still have hope for the series, but it was much better when I was watching it on DVD/On Demand, when all the episodes are available so you don't have to wait a week between each episode.
• Netflix Watch Instantly Pick of the Week: The Dresden Files. An underappreciated Sci-Fi (er, SyFy) original series based on a series of novels by Jim Butcher, this focuses on that other magician named Harry. This one takes the form of a creature-of-the-week series mixed with a bit of a police procedural, and it's actually pretty good. We're not talking groundbreaking or anything, but it's great disposable entertainment and well worth a watch if you like magic and/or police procedurals. Unfortunately, it only lasted about 12 episodes, so there's still some loose threads and whatnot, but it's still a fun series.

Video Games

• A little late to the party (but not as late as some others), I've started playing Grand Theft Auto IV recently. It's a fine game, I guess, but I've had this problem with the GTA series ever since I played GTA III: There doesn't seem to be anything new or interesting in the game. GTA III was a fantastic game, and it seems like all of the myriad sequels since then have added approximately nothing to its legacy. Vice City and San Andreas added some minor improvements to various gameplay mechanics and whatnot, but they were ultimately the same game with some minor improvements. GTA IV seems basically like the same game, but with HD graphics. Also, is it me, or is it harder to drive around town without constantly spinning out? Maybe Burnout Paradise ruined me on GTA driving, which I used to think of as a lot of fun.
• I have to admit that this year's E3 seems like a bit of a bust for me. Microsoft had Kinect, which looks like it will be a silly failure (not that it really matters for me, as I have a PS3). Sony has finally caught up to where the Wii was a few years ago with Move, and I don't particularly care, as motion control games have consistently disappointed me. Sony also seems to have bet the farm on 3D gaming, but that would require me to purchase a new $5,000 TV and $100 glasses for anyone who wants to watch. Also, there's the fact that I could care less about 3D. Speaking of which, Nintendo announced the 3DS, which is a portable gaming system with 3D that doesn't require glasses. This is neat, I guess, but I could really care less about portable systems. There are a couple of interesting games for the Wii, namely the new Goldeneye and the new Zelda, but in both cases, I'm a little wary. My big problem with Nintendo this generation has been that they didn''t do anything new or interesting after Wii Sports (and possibly Wii Fit). Everything else has been retreads of old games. There is a certain nostalgia value there, and I can enjoy some of those retreads (Mario Kart Wii was fun, but it's not really that different from a game that came out about 20 years ago, ditto for New Super Mario Brothers Wii, and about 10 other games), but at the same time, I'm getting sick of all that.
• One game that was announced at E3 that I am looking forward to is called Journey. It's made by the same team as Flower and will hopefully be just as good.
• Otherwise, I'll probably play a little more of GTA IV, just so I can get far enough to really cause some mayhem in Liberty City (this is another problem with a lot of sequels - you often start the sequel powered-down and have to build up various abilities that you're used to having) and pick up some games from last year, like Uncharted 2 and Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Movies

• I saw Predators last weekend, and despite being a member of this year's illustrious Top 5 Movies I Want To See Even Though I Know They'll Suck list, I actually enjoyed it. Don't get me wrong, it's not fine cinema by any stretch of the imagination, but it knows where its bread is buttered and it hits all the appropriate beats. As MovieBob notes, this movie fills in the expected sequel trajectory of the Alien series. It's Aliens to Predator's Alien, if that makes any sense. In other words, it's Predator but with multiple predators and higher stakes. It's ultimately derivative in the extreme, but I really enjoyed the first movie, so that's not that bad. I mean, you've got the guy with the gatling gun, the tough ethnic girl who recognizes the predators, the tough ethnic guy who pulls off his shirt and faces the predator with a sword in hand to hand combat, and so on. Again, it's a fun movie, and probably the best since the original (although, that's not really saying much). Just don't hope for much in the way of anything new or exciting.
• Netflix Watch Instantly Pick of the Week: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, for reasons expounded upon in Sunday's post.
• Looking forward to Inception this weekend. Early reviews are positive, but I'm not really hoping for that much. Still in a light year for movies, this looks decent.

The Finer Things

• A couple weekends ago, I went out on my deck on a gorgeous night and drank a beer whilst smoking a cigar. I'm pretty good with beer, so I feel confident in telling you that if you get the chance, Affligem Dubbel is an great beer. It has a dark amber color and a great, full bodied taste. It's as smooth as can be, but carbonated enough that it doesn't taste flat. All in all, one of my favorite recent discoveries. I know absolutely nothing about cigars, but I had an Avo Uvezian Notturno XO (it came in an orange tube). It's a bit smaller than most other cigars I've had, but I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. Again, a cigar connoisseur, I am not, so take this with a grain of salt.
• I just got back from my monthly beer club meeting. A decent selection tonight, with the standout and surprise winner being The Woodwork Series - Acasia Barreled. It's a tasty double style beer (perhaps not as good as the aforementioned Affligem, but still quite good) and well worth a try (I'm now interested in trying the other styles, which all seem to be based around the type of barrel the beer is stored in). Other standouts included a homebrewed Triple (nice work Dana!), and, of course, someone brought Ommegang Abby Ale (another Dubbel!) which is a longtime favorite of mine. The beer I brought was a Guldenberg (Belgian tripel), but it must not have liked the car ride as it pretty much exploded when we opened it. I think it tasted a bit flat after that, but it had a great flavor and I think I will certainly have to try this again (preferably not shaking it around so much before I open it).

And I think that just about wraps up this edition of Tasting Notes, which I rather enjoyed writing and will probably try again at some point.



The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Who Also Played With Fire)
Stieg Larsson was a Swedish journalist who wrote novels in his spare time. Shortly before his death in 2004, he began talks with a publisher, and his completed novels were published posthumously. These novels have met with tremendous success, selling more than 27 million copies in over 40 countries. In 2009, three Swedish films based on Larsson's novels were released in Scandinavia. Though American remakes are planned, the original Swedish films are all being released this year... The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was released earlier this year and has just recently come out on DVD (it's also available on Netflix's Watch Instantly service). The Girl Who Played with Fire just came out in theaters this week, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is due to be released in October. Together, the three novels/films are known as the Millennium Trilogy, named after a fictional magazine in the stories. I saw the two currently available films this weekend and was quite impressed.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was originally titled Män som hatar kvinnor, which translates to "Men who hate women", a much more accurate description of the themes of the story. The film opens with a disconnected set of sequences introducing the three main characters. This is probably something that works better in text than it does on screen, though the plot quickly connects the dots and it's not long before you know all the players and what's at stake.

Mikael Blomkvist (played by Michael Nyqvist) is a talented muck-raking journalist (writing for Millennium) who has just lost a libel case in which his sources were found to be fraudulent. He's sentenced to 3 months in jail, but he has 6 months to get his affairs in order. The elderly Henrik Vanger has been getting strange packages in the mail every year, and he believes they're related to a 40 year old missing person case (where his niece disappeared). Finally, there's Lisbeth Salander, an ex-con who works as a security researcher and who has just found out that her current parole officer has had a stroke. His replacement is a sadist pig who uses his position to coerce Lisbeth into providing sexual favors. Vagner hires Blomkvist as a freelance investigator, and Salander eventually joins him in his research.

The way these apparently disconnected threads are pulled together is well done and the film contains a perfect balance between plot and character. Most thrillers lean too far in one direction, but Larsson and those who have adapted his work do an exceptional job here. I suspect lesser writers, when confronted with an engaging character like Lisbeth Salander, would be tempted to make the entire film a character study about her. On the other hand, there's also the temptation to put all the emphasis on the mystery of the girl who disappeared 40 years ago. Again, this film strikes the balance well. We get some excellent character establishment when we find out how Lisbeth handles her new parole officer - a sequence that is not necessary for the thriller plot, but which establishes the character of Lisbeth Salander quite well (there's a thematic parallel between Lisbeth's situation and the mystery though).

Speaking of Lisbeth, her character is probably the most interesting thing about this movie. She's played with an icy intensity by Noomi Rapace in a performance that should probably be up for an Oscar (though I'm doubting it will be). There is something of a paucity of strong female characters in typical Hollywood cinema these days, so this sort of character is a welcome change of pace. Lisbeth is a tortured soul (let's just say that her parole officer wasn't the first man who hated women that she has run accross), but she's battled through it all, though she understandably has some issues with men. For instance, her relationship with the journalist Mikael Blomkvist is an intriguing one and it manages to walk a rather tricky line. Blomkvist is an old school investigator, while Lisbeth relies on modern technology to do her research. This sort of oil-and-water mixture often plays out through bickering clichés, but not in this film. Once the two characters meet, it doesn't take long for their seemingly disparate styles to merge into a comfortable balance. There is a chemistry between the two and while their relationship grows into the sexual realm, it never feels forced or cloying (another commendable avoidance of clichés).

Clocking in at about two and a half hours, the film covers enough ground and paces itself well enough that it doesn't really feel that long. Though we all know there are at least two sequels, the film ends with closure (as opposed to some sort of cliffhanger). In the end, we're left with an exceptional thriller that balances character development and plot in a well-paced fashion. This has been a disappointing year for movies, so to say this film stands out from the pack doesn't really speak to how good it really is. I can almost guarantee it will be at or near the top of my top 10 at the end of the year.

For a sequel, The Girl Who Played with Fire is quite good, though I don't think it approaches the first. I think the biggest issue I had was that it fell into the trap mentioned earlier about focusing too much on Lisbeth. Many of the other characters from the first film make an appearance here, and a passable mystery is solved, though it appears that all of them are working from different angles. For instance, Lisbeth and Blomkvist rarely interact throughout the film, which mutes one of the more interesting facets of the original film. The film ultimately manages to pull it off, but again, it's perhaps not quite as expertly crafted as its predecessor. Part of the issue, perhaps, is that I have not yet seen the third installment. While the second film ends with a bit of closure, there are still some loose threads which are apparently tied up in the third film. James Berardinelli draws an interesting comparison:

In a strange way, the structure of The Millennium Trilogy reminds me of the first Star Wars trio. The first movie establishes the characters while providing a largely self-contained story with a few "hooks" that can be used to further the narrative in additional installments. The second and third movies are inextricably wedded and function best when seen as parts of a whole. Installment #2 is darker than its predecessor and ends in a cliffhanger. Admittedly, it might sound like a stretch to compare a Gen-X touchstone space opera to a Swedish mystery thriller series, but I'm referring only to the rhythms of the stories, not the content.

Berardinelli also seems to be a little more forgiving of the lack of interaction in this second film and sees it as an equal to the first (if not better). Perhaps I'll feel that way after seeing the third film, but as of right now, I think the first is noticeably better than the second.

In any case, I'm very much looking forward to the forthcoming The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. Apparently Larsson was mostly done with a fourth novel and had outlines and story treatments for several others, so there may be even further installments (though with the untimely death of Larsson, one wonders whether proceeding further would be wise).



Animovie Double Feature
A couple more quick reviews of Anime movies I've seen lately.

• The Girl Who Leapt Through Time: This film opens by introducing us to Makoto, a young girl who doesn't seem exceptional in an obvious or traditional way, but during the course of a particularly clumsy day, she accidentally gains the ability to time travel. At first, she uses this extraordinary ability for superficial reasons: she skips back a day so that she can do better on a test, she skips backward to continue singing karaoke with her friends Chiaki and Kousuke, and so on. Naturally, things become more complicated. There's an element of the monkey's paw here, in that one should be careful what they wish for... even superficial uses of her new power can turn out to have wide-ranging consequences.
  
  
  The movie doesn't get carried away with this though, and one of the things I really like about this movie is that it doesn't let the fantastical elements detract from the human element. It's not a science fiction story - the time travel isn't particularly well established (and there are some open questions in the end) - but it uses those elements as more than just window dressing. At times if feels like more of a high-school comedy, albeit one that grows more serious as the story proceeds. Dramatic elements are intersperced as well. The typical high-school subjects of love and confusion about the future are explored a bit. I'm not entirely sure about the ending, but I liked spending time with these characters so much that it worked well enough for me.
  
  
  The pacing, more than anything else, is what keeps this movie on track. The introduction sets the stage well, and just when you're starting to wonder where the story is going, the time travel elements are established. This leads to a wonderfully light-hearted exploration of Makoto and how she copes with her new powers. And just when that starts to get cloying, the story shifts again as Makoto realizes that her new powers have impacted her relationships with friends and family. In particular, her friends Chiaki and Kousuke seem to be affected, and she just wants things to go back to normal. Interestingly, the time-travel is probably superfluous here - this is exactly the sort of thing that teenagers go through all the time. It all leads up to a climax that was much tenser than I would have ever expected at the beginning of the film. But it mixes all of this together rather well. There are still some open questions and potential plot holes in the end, but I have to admit to having a ton of fun with this movie. Recommended! ***
• Whisper of the Heart: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time enjoyed pretty favorable reviews in the otakusphere, but Pete wasn't too impressed. He says "If anyone wants to see a much better movie about the same thing, watch Whisper of the Heart." So I threw that in my Netflix queue and just watched it today.
  
  It's another school movie following a quirky girl and the people around her. Young Shizuku has been reading books at a voracious pace and she notices that every book she gets at the library has been previously checked out by the same boy... Despite Pet'es recommendation, I found it to be very different from The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. While I thought that The Girl Who Leapt Through Time had great pacing and was able to balance between it's various disparate elements well, Whisper of the Heart doesn't really have great pacing... because it doesn't need to. As a story, it's much more seamless and doesn't require any sort of balancing act. Now, I do think it's a bit too long, but in the end, it's a wonderful story. If the elements of the fantastical in The Girl Who Leapt Through Time bother you, then you probably would enjoy this movie much more. It's a much more grounded film, and everything in the movie falls neatly into place by the end.
  
  
  The thing I liked most about this movie was the way it captured the tentative nature of young teens as they try to figure out what they're going to be doing with their life. Even those who know exactly what they want to do have a certain hesitancy and insecurity about their future, and this movie really nails that feeling. I suppose it helps that Hayao Miyazaki was writing the screenplay, and you can certainly see his hand at work here (especially when you find out about the Baron). All in all, it's a very good movie, and one that will probably stick with me (though I suppose only time will tell).

This was an interesting duo to watch in close proximity. Strangely, I probably enjoyed watching The Girl Who Leapt Through Time more, but Whisper of the Heart is probably the better overall movie and it seems like the one that would stick with me longer. I think both are certainly above average features and well worth a watch, even if they're not really in your wheelhouse (I have to admit - the school drama has never been one of my favorite genres, even back when I was a student...)



Sequel Charts
This set of charts plotting the ratings of various film franchises is rather interesting. Some of them are just about exactly what you'd expect. For instance, the original Star Wars trilogy is very highly rated, and then if falls off precipitously when the prequels start. From there the series begins to climb again and surprisingly begins to reach the heights of the original trilogy.


There are a number of series that have even more pronounced and steady declines (Jaws, Planet of the Apes). Other series have a more chaotic progression. The even number rule for the Star Trek series is reasonably pronounced, except for part 10 (the reboot is not included, though I imagine it would be higher than the last two). The Indiana Jones series has a similar progression, except it's the odd number movies that are the best. I'm a little surprised at how low Die Hard 2 is in the series (it's at least as good as the other sequels). It's also a bit strange to see the latest Rocky and Rambo installments being so high. Perhaps that's because the source appears to be IMDB, and ratings there tend to favor newer movies for a while (after time, these movies tend to level out to more reasonable ratings). Interestingly, the Lord of the Rings trilogy features the most consistent ratings. There are a lot of series that have solid first and second installments, but the third movie is almost always a big decline.

Of course, the listed series are not comprehensive, so I took a few stabs at the missing series. Here, for instance, is the Friday the 13th series:


I have to admit that I'm a little surprised that parts IV and VI, which seem to be the fan favorites, are as low as they are. Of course, they're pretty high compared to most of the films around them, but still. I expected them to be a bit higher. Also, part 2 and the recent reboot seem extremely overrated. The reboot will most likely come down as time goes on (again, I think newer movies benefit from IMDB's system), but the love for part 2 confuses me. I suppose part 2 does have probably the best final girl in the series (and maybe of all time), but the story is crap and the ending is nigh incomprehensible. And Jason isn't even close to becoming an iconic character in that movie.

More series in the extended entry, including the likes of Halloween, Evil Dead, Dirty Harry, Bourne and more! And so we might as well continue the 80s slasher series, here's Halloween:


Mostly unsurprising. The one major outlier is part 3, which makes sense because that was the one that didn't feature Michael Myers.


This series is surprisingly stable. However, I think that the second one is a bit underrated, while the fourth through sixth might be a bit inflated. Also notable is the seventh installment, which rockets back up near the original. I'm not a big fan of New Nightmare, but it's definitely more interesting than most of the films in the series and the return of Wes Craven translates pretty well to higher ratings...


Another extremely stable series, though the second installment is clearly the best.


A pretty clear and definite decline in the series. Notable in that it's one series that hasn't really had a reboot (not that I want one - totally unnecessary).


Interestingly, this is the only series in this post to feature a third installment that has better ratings than it's predecessors. I have to admit that I'm a bit surprised by that. I really like Bourne Ultimatum but I wouldn't put it as that much better than the previous two installments.

Well, that's all for now. In other news, Flyers lost the Stanley Cup tonight. I'm glad they put up a good fight, but what a terrible goal to lose on... In any case, congrats to Blackhawks fans.



The Murnau Stare
One of the films I forgot to include in my Greatest Movies I've Never Seen list was Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. It's a 1927 silent film and it features a number of iconic shots - most notably a scene where a woman and man pass through a bustling street (see this clip, about 3:36 in). One of the things I always find interesting about the silent film era is how much of modern cinema is represented, even back then. While technology and budgets have certainly improved, much of the visual language of cinema was coined during the silent era. In particular, Sunrise has a number of impressive tracking shots and the composite special effects are much more effective than expected.

The shot that struck me the most, though, was this one:


In the film, a city girl vacations in the country and tempts a farm man into an affair. She suggests he drown his wife so that he could be free to run away to the city. It's a rather simple premise, but the man is conflicted, and when he takes his wife out for a boat ride, he stops and favors her with the above stare. Does it look familiar?

Maybe it's just me, but it bears a striking resemblance to what's called the Kubrick Stare. Head tilted downward, eyes tilted upward. It was a favorite shot of Kubrick, and he often employed it in his movies, perhaps most famously in the opening shot of A Clockwork Orange:


A Clockwork Orange
It turns out that the phrase "Kubrick Stare" was coined by cinematographer Doug Milsome, a frequent collaborator with Kubrick. It seems that Kubrick liked to use the look himself when he was feeling angry or mischievous, and it's rumored that his stare was more intense than anything in his films. This shot from a Playboy interview in 1969 captures it reasonably well:


Stanley Kubrick
Again, Kubrick is famous for using this shot, and you can see it in most of his films, often multiple times (see the extended entry for more shots from The Shining and Full Metal Jacket) and being a big Kubrick fan, I was kinda surprised to see it, full formed, in Sunrise.

Of course, neither Murnau or Kubrick have trademarked that stare. In fact, it's a rather common human expression (indeed, my nieces frequently make that face whenever their crazy uncle Marky does something silly). Filmmakers of the stature of Kubrick or Murnau just managed to capture well enough that it stands out. Kubrick's consistent use of that image made it iconic enough that he sorta made it his own. Now, whenever someone uses a shot like that, it's considered an homage to Kubrick... but watching Sunrise is interesting in that light (seeing as though that film was made a solid 30 years before Kubrick even started making movies). More screenshots below the fold... Jack Nicholson flashes the expression numerous times throughout The Shining:




The Shining
Vincent D'Onofrio seems to be using the Kubrick Stare by way of the Thousand Yard Stare (or vice versa?) in Full Metal Jacket:




Full Metal Jacket
There are lots of other examples I could use, but I'll leave it at that for now...



Top 5 Most Anticipated Summer Movies
Playing along with Filmspotting's latest podcast, here's a list of my top 5 most anticipated summer movies. Like the Filmspotting hosts, I'm going to avoid the big name blockbusters and try to find some smaller films that I'm interested in... Movies like Inception, Toy Story 3, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and The Last Airbender are all well and good, but we've all heard about them... What are the surprise hits, the genre pics, and the just plain weird movies we can look forward to?

Part of the reason I wanted to write this post is that I stumbled upon news of IFC Films' VOD program and their plans to brand a genre label, IFC Midnight. It turns out that their lineup for the summer is pretty interesting, and unlike a lot of small, independent films, you can view these in the comfort of your own home (assuming you have access to their VOD service through Comcast and the like) right around the time they come out in theaters (theaters which usually aren't near you, etc...). Not all the films below are going to be available this way, but some is better than none! Anyway, without further ado (and in no particular order):

• The Human Centipede: The less said about the plot, the better (I think - though the title pretty much gets at it, I think - a madman connecting a bunch of humans so that they literally become the titular human centipede). This has been garnering a lot of buzz on the horror film fest circuit (i.e. Fantastic Fest, etc...) and has EW wondering if it's “the most disgusting horror movie of all time”... From what I've heard, it sounds like a blast. Apparently, this is in limited release right now, and it's already available on VOD as well...
• Doghouse: At first glance, this didn't interest me much. It seems like a bromance zombie battle-of-the-sexes movie, which sounds kinda lame (for reference, I'm not a huge fan of zombie movies and I think bromances are beginning to become a bit tired). However, it's made by British director Jake West, who also made Kaedrin favorite Evil Aliens (which, to be sure, isn't exactly fine cinema - but it's fantastically fun, it calls to mind the classic Sam Raimi/Peter Jackson splatstick horror films, and features a few... unique... sequences unlike anything I'd ever seen). If Doghouse is half as much fun, it'd be worth seeing. Available on VOD in June.
• Vengeance: Director Johnny To is another Kaedrin favorite, and I've found his movies are always worth checking out. Here, he's making his English language directing debut, though the story takes place in France and features many of the To regulars. The subject matter of vengeance puts it up against some stiff competition in Chan-wook Park's brilliant, layered Vengeance trilogy (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, Lady Vengeance), but I'm betting that To will come up with something great here... This one comes out in theaters and VOD in August.
• Best Worst Movie: This is a documentary about the making of Troll 2 and the subsequent response. Troll 2 is a frequent contender for the honor of being the worst movie of all time (judging from IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes, etc...) I love these types of documentaries, but this one is a bit disappointing in that it doesn't appear to be available anywhere (it's not on VOD, nor does there seem to be any screenings near me).
• Splice: Probably the "biggest" release of the movies on this list, this one is about two scientists who splice together human and animal DNA to create... a monster? Not sure, but it's got a solid cast and some good film festival buzz. It also appears to be getting a semi-wide release, which should make it easy to find in theaters.

And just for the heck of it, 5 movies I want to see even though I know they'll suck (a yearly tradition here at Kaedrin):

• Piranha 3-D: The Pirhana series of movies has a shockingly good pedigree when it comes to the filmmakers involved. The first Piranha was directed by Joe Dante (who would go on to direct Gremlins, among other things) and written by John Sayles (a legend in the inde movie community). Piranha Part Two: The Spawning was directed by none other than James Cameron (he of Terminator, Aliens, and Avatar fame). Now, Alexandre Aja is already an established director, but hey, he's following a pretty good lineage here... I don't expect this movie to be any good, but hopefully Aja will settle down and knock something out of the park next...
• Predators: What can I say, I have a soft spot for this series of movies, and now that they're done ruining AvP, I guess they've set their sights on the Predators themselves (divide and conquer?), but hey, there's some potential for good fun here, so I'll probably go and see it...Still, nothing I've seen about this movie is even remotely comforting. I expect disaster.
• The Expendables: Starring every action star ever to appear in an action movie, I really don't know what to expect from this. Will it be riotous fun in the vein of the traditional 80s action movie? Or will it be a a boring snoozefest in the vein of the traditional 80s action movie? Only time will tell, I guess.
• The A-Team: Yeah, I don't really need to explain this one. Hollywood continues to mine my childhood...
• The Last Exorcism: I have to admit being a bit interested in this one due to the involvement of Eli Roth and controversial director Daniel Stamm. Unfortunately, I have to admit, it's being made by Eli Roth and controversial director Daniel Stamm. Which is to say, this movie could suck, hardcore. Or it could be maniacal genius. I guess we'll find out...

And that about covers it for the summer. Or not. You never know. For instance, last year's August shocked me in how many good movies were coming out (well, not all of them were good, but still)...



The Greatest Movies I've Never Seen, Part 2
One of the questions from the movie quiz I posted about on Sunday had to do with naming a "Movie you feel a certain pressure or obligation to see that you have not yet actually seen". I mentioned there a list of movies I compiled a while ago, The Greatest Movies I've Never Seen. There were 25 movies on that list, and at this point, I've seen 20 of them, so I figured it was time to revisit the list and fill it up with some other classics that I've never seen. So here goes:

• After Hours
• All Quiet on the Western Front
• The Apartment
• The Birds
• The Birth of a Nation
• The Bridge on the River Kwai
• City Lights
• Duck Soup
• The Long Goodbye
• M
• Metropolis
• Nosferatu
• On the Waterfront
• Shadow of a Doubt
• Some Like It Hot
• The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Well, that's 15 movies (including the 5 I never got to from my original list), which should keep me busy for a while. I went a little heavy on the Silent Film era this time, as that's a period I'm not tremendously familiar with. Indeed, most of the new films are from before 1935. Should be interesting.



Professor Fate's Spring-Loaded Great-Racing Spring Break Movie Quiz
Dennis Cozzalio of the Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule blog has posted yet another movie quiz. Previous installments answering questions from Professor Russell Johnson, Dr. Smith, Professor Peabody, and Professor Severus Snape are also available... Now, onwards to Professor Fate's questions:

1) William Demarest or Broderick Crawford?

Not being overly familiar with either filmography (kinda sad when you see 100+ titles in each), I'll have to go with William Demarest because he has more titles and also because of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (even if it was a smaller role, if I remember correctly).

2) What movies improve when seen in a state of altered consciousness? (Patrick Robbins)

I guess you could go with a lot of different things here, but the one that came immediately to mind was 2001: A Space Odyssey (particularly the ending). Other things that came to mind were Altered States and Solyaris. But as someone who rarely alters their consciousness (beyond beer), what do I know?

3) Favorite studio or production company logo?

This was a hard one, because who really cares about logos? I looked around at a few logos and came up with Dark Castle Entertainment, which has a logo that is much better than most of the movies that they produce:


There are tons of variations on the image, and they're all pretty good. After looking at some of the other answers, I have to admit that something like the old Looney Toons logo would probably be more iconic. I also love the Criterion/Janus logos, but do they count as a studio/production company? Focus Features, Icon, and Legendary Pictures also have some well designed logos, but I'll stick with Dark Castle.

4) Celeste Holm or Joan Blondell?

As usual, I'm not especially well versed in either actress's filmography, but I'll go with Celeste Holm because of All About Eve.

5) What is the most overrated "classic" film? (Tony Dayoub)

It's hard to answer this without just falling back on a "classic" that I don't especially like (even though everyone else does). It's also tough because a lot of movies are considered "classic" because of their context rather than their content. All that being said, one classic I've never really got on board with is Easy Rider. Goddamn hippies. In all seriousness, I just don't get the reputation this movie has. I mean, I understand that it was made during the 60s and was this counter-culture phenomenon, but it's just not that well made and it never really resonated with me. I just found it to be an incoherent mess with no real point. This is probably a decent example of a film not working outside it's context.

6) What movie do you know for sure you saw, but have no memory of seeing? (Patricia Yokoe Cozzalio)

I don't really have an answer for this (I mean, how do I know I saw it if I have no memory of seeing it?), but there are probably a bunch of films where I only remember bits and pieces. For instance, I've seen Schindler's List multiple times, but I only remember a few scenes from that movie. I distinctly remember watching it though, both at home and once at school. I haven't seen it in about 15 years, so I remember very little... and it's probably worthy of revisiting.

7) Favorite Hammer Film?

I watched a few Hammer Horror movies as part of last year's 6 Weeks of Halloween and came away unimpressed. I suppose my favorite would be Horror of Dracula, but again, it's not exactly a great movie. I think the big issue I have with the Hammer Horror films is that they call to mind the Universal Horror films, which tend to be better (for instance, The Curse of Frankenstein is ok on its own, but it pales in comparison to Frankenstein or Bride of Frankenstein).

8) Gregory Itzin or Joe Pantoliano?

Joey Pants, hands down. Dude's in everything, and he's always good.

9) Create a double feature with two different movies with the same title. No remakes. (Peter Nellhaus)

This one's hard. The first one I came up with would work, except that I don't especially like either movie all that much: Crash (1996 - Car crashes are sexy) and Crash (2005 - You're a racist). So searching out alternatives, I found The Unforgiven (1960) and Unforgiven (1992), but I haven't seen both of them and there are slight differences in the title. Then there's Jack Frost (1998 - Heartwarming Holiday picture) and Jack Frost (1997 - Serial Killer Snowman), but once again, we've got two bad movies (even though I kinda enjoy both for what they are).

So here's what I'll end with: Black Sunday (1960 - Mario Bava's creepifying tale of a witch's return from the grave) and Black Sunday (1977 - John Frankenheimer's thriller about a terrorist attack at the Super Bowl). I haven't actually seen the Frankenheimer movie, but it seems interesting. And one more answer to this question: The Enforcer (1951 - Bogart, need I say more?) and The Enforcer (1976 - Dirty Harry sequel).

10) Akiko Wakabayashi or Mie Hama? (Ray Young)

Yeah, so I don't remember who did what in You Only Live Twice, but I'll go with Mie Hama because her name in that movie was "Kissy Suzuki". I mean, it's no "Pussy Galore" but it's kinda a double entendre, right?

11) Can you think of a (non-porn) movie that informed you of the existence of a sexual act you had not known of prior? (Bob Westal)

Honestly no, but for some reason, I distinctly remembered to look up this blog entry from Kevin Smith where he explains:

We can learn a lot from those "Omen" flicks. The first time the concept of ass-fucking was introduced to me was via "The Final Conflict" - the under-appreciated third entry in the original "Omen" saga, starring Sam Neill as the now-adult Damien. He hooked up with this reporter lady, and at one point, they're getting down. Suddenly, he flips the chick over and buries it, all evil-like, in her dumper. As an eleven year old without the benefit of an internet connection (or an internet, period), I was confused, to say the least.

So I wish I could regale you with such a story, but I can't think of anything.

12) Can you think of a black & white movie that might actually improve if it was in color? (Patrick Robbins)

It's a tough call, but I'll go with Sanjuro. It's one of my favorite Kurosawa movies, and it has this great sequence where Sanjuro suggests the use of red flowers dropped into a stream as a signal to attack. Kurosawa had wanted to figure out a way to make the flowers red, but couldn't get it to work (he later managed to get something similar working with the pink smoke in High and Low). There's no question in my mind that the movie would be better if the flowers were red... but if Kurosawa was able to film the whole thing in color? I'm not sure about that. It would be interesting though.

13) Favorite Pedro Almodovar Film?

I haven't actually seen an Almodovar movie. I know, I know, something I need to rectify. Filmspotting did a marathon a while back, so I figure that's a good place to start.

14) Kurt Raab or Udo Kier?

I'll go with Udo Kier, seeing as though I've seen a lot of movies that he's in and I always like him.

15) Worst main title song (Peter Nellhaus)

Over the past two years, I've watched a number of terrible 80s slasher movies, most of which have terrible main title songs. The problem is that they're so bad that I must have repressed the memory of them. In looking at the answers on SLIFR, I see that Patrick gave an exceptional answer to this one though, and I have to agree:

No contest - that atrocity "I'm Your Weatherman" during the opening credits of Groundhog Day. The movie's sole flaw.

16) Last movie you saw in a theater? On DVD, Blu-ray or other interesting location/format?

In the theater, I saw Kick-Ass, which I enjoyed muchly. I'm not sure how well it will age for me though. If the novelty of an 11 year old girl swearing like a sailor and eviscerating her enemies doesn't run out, and if the aggresively juvenile over-the-top violence holds up, I think it might be a top 10 candidate. On Blu-Ray, I saw Extract. It was decent, but nothing special. On DVD, I saw A Colt Is My Passport, part of the Criterion/Eclipse collection of Nikkatsu Noir. A solid, entertaining Japanese gangster picture, though I'm not sure "noir" really qualifies.

17) Favorite movie reference within a Woddy Allen movie? (Larry Aydlette)

I don't know, how about the homage to silent era slapstick comedians in Sleeper.

18) Mary Astor or Claudette Colbert?

I guess I'll go with Mary Astor, because I've actually seen The Maltese Falcon.

19) Favorite trailer (provide YouTube link if possible)?

A tough one, but I'll go with this unused trailer from The Exorcist. I imagine it went unused because it's just so damn freaky. That or the studio was afraid of inducing epilepsy in the audience (there's a strobe-like effect going on here, so be warned):


20) Oddest double bill you either saw or saw listed in a theater

Well, I didn't see it, but according to this article, Grave of the Fireflies and My Neighbor Totoro "were produced and screened as a package" in Japan. Talk about your cinematic whiplash. Fireflies is one of the most relentlessly depressing and infuriating movies ever (and I suppose I mean that in a good way, though I never want to watch it again), while Totoro is pure joy and just about the complete opposite of Fireflies. I can't imagine watching them back to back, but I sure hope Totoro followed Fireflies.

21) Favoite Phil Karlson film?

I got nothing.

22) Favorite "social problem" picture?

I tend to dislike this kind of movie, mostly because I feel like I'm being lectured at, which isn't very convincing or, more importantly, entertaining. That being said, someone in the comments mentioned Lone Star, which I've always found to be effective (if pretentious).

23) Your favourite Harryhausen film/monster? (Ali Arikan)

Jason and the Argonauts. Sword fighting skeletons FTW.

24) What was the first movie you saw with your significant other? (Patrick Robbins)

Why do you hate single people?! HMMM! I'm talking to you, Patrick Robbins!

25) John Payne or Ronald Reagan?

Going to have to take (another) mulligan on this one.

26) Movie you feel a certain pressure or obligation to see that you have not yet actually seen

A while ago, I put together a list of the greatest movies I've never seen. Since then, I've seen the grand majority of films on that list, so it's probably worth revisiting in a separate post. The one in my queue for immediate consumption is The Apartment.

27) Favorite “psychedelic” movie (Hey, man, like, define it however you want, man…)

I suppose the answers here are more or less interchangeable with the answers to question #2. I tried to find something different though, and came up with a couple interesting ones: Pink Floyd The Wall (in particular, those damn marching hammers) and Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

28) Thelma Ritter or Eve Arden?

Thelma Ritter. Not because I know either one well, but because I said so.

29) Favorite iconic shot or image from a film?

The way-too-obvious choice is John Wayne in the doorway from The Searchers... but I'll go with something different: The final shot from Sunset Boulevard.


All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up.
30) What is the movie that inspired the most memorable argument you ever had about a movie?

The only thing that comes to mind is Taxi Driver. It wasn't exactly a barn burner and it was probably more the result of two clashing personalities rather than differing opinions on the movie. But it's pretty easy to win an argument where your side says that Taxi Driver is a good movie.

31) Raquel Torres or Lupe Velez?

Man, I'm doing even worse at these than usual. Pass!

32) Favorite adaptation of Shakespeare to a film?

It's funny that I almost immediately thought of Kurosawa and movies like Ran or Throne of Blood rather than direct adaptations. A quick check of the comment thread at SLIFR confirms that I'm not alone on this either.

33) Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein (in 3D)-- yes or no?

Flesh for Frankenstein has been on my list to watch for a while. If I remember correctly, it was on Netflix watch online last year and I planned on watching it for the 6 Weeks of Halloween marathon, but Netflix lost the rights or something and it wasn't available, so I never got to it. So that's a tentative "yes".

34) Favorite movie rating?

I guess I'd say R, but I do want to reference my favorite movie ratings poster, and my favorite there is the NC-17 section:


Click for full poster
Ok, so I guess the couple that's all dressed up gets a certain point across. But the rabbit with the sunglasses? What's that supposed to mean? It's an embarrassed rabbit? And then there's the smiling loner who needs to keep his hands in his pockets. Brilliant.

35) Olivia Barash or Joyce Hyser?

Who are these people!? Seriously! Is this some sort of elaborate practical joke?

36) What was the movie that convinced you your favorite movie genre was your favorite movie genre?

Well, that would imply I have a favorite genre, though I guess Horror would count. And my lifelong fascination with horror movies can be traced back to two films: John Carpenter's Halloween and Don Coscarelli's Phantasm.

37) Favorite Blake Edwards movie?

Well, finally, I have an answer for one of these: The Pink Panther (and some of the sequels as well)

Phew! That about wraps up this edition. I know I complain about some of these questions and all, but I really do enjoy these things. I'm already anticipating the next one!



Red Letter Media Review of Episode II
Hot off the presses, Red Letter Media's review of Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones. If you haven't seen the absolutely brilliant review of Episode I, watch that first because it is better than this one (though I haven't finished it just yet, so far, it's not quite as good). This isn't to say that this one is bad, just that, uh, it's not as good.


I think perhaps one of the things that makes this less funny is that many of the complaints from Episode I are carried over to Episode II. Many of the behind the scenes clips are the same, for instance. Also, in the Episode I review, there were all these strange allusions to the reviewer's ex-wives and how they died "mysteriously" in "unrelated accidents". Some people found them off-putting, but I thought they were fine in the Episode I review. In this review, there's way too much of the serial-killer stuff and it goes on for way too long at times. Still, it's pretty funny stuff and pretty incisive too. I look forward to finishing off this review tonight and also the inevitable Episode III review. I wonder what he'll go into after that?



Shining
In Sunday's post on Remix Culture and Soviet Montage Theory I mentioned in passing that the BSG Sabotage video wasn't an especially great example of "Remix Culture" and that this video would be a much better example:


Like the BSG Sabotage video, all of the audio and visual components of the video come from pre-existing works of art. The "creativity" here is in the way the video is edited together. Unlike the BSG Sabotage video, which is entirely reliant on its source material for its entertainment, the Shining video is much more creative in its appropriation. It's a funny video, but there's more to it than that. It's also insightful and even a little subversive. Don't believe me? Want me to ruin the video by pointing out the obvious in an attempt to explain it? Great! Let's take a look at a few different ways a viewer can decode the meaning of the Shining video.

• The first and most nonsensical way to interpret the video is to see it as meaningless, uninterpretable noise. Not sure why I'm even including this, except to acknowledge that, say, an alien being visiting our planet for the first time would probably not have any understanding of the video.
• The second and most naive way to interpret the video is as an advertisement for an actual movie. This implies a recognition of the conventions and purpose of the format, if not the content of the video. People who would fit into this category simply doesn't have the exformation (apparently my new favorite word) to understand the video as anything more than a movie trailer. Interestingly, the video actually works on this level, though I doubt there are that many people who would actually fall into this category.
• The next level up is to recognize that the video consists of pre-existing works, like the Stanley Kubrick film The Shining and the Peter Gabriel song Solsbury Hill. At this level, there's also a recognition that the video is not actually representative of Kubrick's film.
• At the fourth level, we see recognition that the video is actually a quasi-parody. The Shining is a horror movie, and yet it's been edited to resemble a heartwarming family drama. This is where some of the humor of the video derives, and I'd wager to bet that most people who view the video get at least this far.
• At the fifth level, we realize that it's not just the parody aspect of the video that makes it funny. We've already established that the video uses the conventions of the movie trailer in an attempt to paint a horror movie as a heartwarming family drama. There's also the fact that the song Solsbury Hill is overused to help emphasize the certain movie themes. The question now becomes: Why? The creator of this video wants to do more than just entertain you for a few minutes by showing you clips from a movie you like (which is kinda what the BSG Sabotage video is doing). In reality, this video is less a parody of The Shining than it is a critique of formulaic movie trailers. It's an acknowledgement that the practice of creating a movie trailer can be misleading. This insight requires someone to have seen a lot of movie trailers and to have been duped by at least a few of them. Indeed, it's almost a warning. It's like the creator of the video is saying: Beware what you see in the trailer, for it's probably not what you'll see in the movie. Every time I see a movie that is drastically different than its previews, I think of this Shining video. Fortunately, most people have this sort of experience, so I suspect that most people are able to make it to this category. This is probably why the video became such a popular internet meme.

Now, you could argue that this is hardly the first example of this type of video, and it most certainly was not. One earlier example was this controversial video called Kill Christ, a mashup of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ with the music and format of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Vol. 1 trailer (of course, that video doesn't quite operate on as many levels as Shining, but that's beside the point). Indeed, when you look at the origins of the Shining video, you can see how common this sort of thing has been in the past.

Robert Ryang, 25, a film editor’s assistant in Manhattan, graduated from Columbia three years ago with a double major in film studies and psychology. ... A few weeks back, he said, he entered a contest for editors’ assistants sponsored by the New York chapter of the Association of Independent Creative Editors. The challenge? Take any movie and cut a new trailer for it — but in an entirely different genre. Only the sound and dialogue could be modified, not the visuals, he said.

Ryang won the contest, and posted the video to a "secret" link that he sent only to 3 of his friends. But you can't stop the signal, and even in the days before the broad adoption of internet video sites like YouTube (which had launched only 6 months or so before this video caught on), the meme spread quickly.

Indeed, the video has spawned many imitators, skewering the likes of Mary Poppins (as a horror movie) to Top Gun (as a love story between Maverick and Iceman) to countless Brokeback Mountain parodies. Most of these are cute or funny in their own way, but none seems to quite recapture the brilliance of Shining. But was that only because Shining was the first video of that kind that I'd seen?

The big difference between Shining and its predecessors was technology. I can't imagine that the contest Ryang entered was the first of its kind, but Shining was the first one posted to the internet during a time when high bandwidth connections were becoming more and more common. Personally, I think the video is a valuable addition to pop culture, and it's the sort of thing that wouldn't really have been possible 10 years ago. It's also worth noting that Ryang is a professional editor who created the video in an attempt to hone his talents, so there's value there too. I think that's a good thing, even if it has spawned lots of uninspired imitations. Is it the only thing? Or the most important thing? Probably not, but that doesn't mean it's not valuable. I'd be curious to see what Sonny thinks of the video.



Remix Culture and Soviet Montage Theory
A video mashup of The Beastie Boys' popular and amusing Sabotage video with scenes from Battlestar Galactica has been making the rounds recently. It's well done, but a little on the disposable side of remix culture. The video lead Sunny Bunch to question "remix culture":

It’s quite good. But, ultimately, what’s the point?

Leaving aside the questions of copyright and the rest: Seriously…what’s the point? Does this add anything to the culture? I won’t dispute that there’s some technical prowess in creating this mashup. But so what? What does it add to our understanding of the world, or our grasp of the problems that surround us? Anything? Nothing? Is it just “there” for us to have a chuckle with and move on? Is this the future of our entertainment?

These are good questions, and I'm not surprised that the BSG Sabotage video prompted them. The implication of Sonny's post is that he thinks it is an unoriginal waste of talent (he may be playing a bit of devil's advocate here, but I'm willing to play along because these are interesting questions and because it will give me a chance to pedantically lecture about film history later in this post!) In the comments, Julian Sanchez makes a good point (based on a video he produced earlier that was referenced by someone else in the comment thread), which will be something I'll expand on later in this post:

First, the argument I’m making in that video is precisely that exclusive focus on the originality of the contribution misses the value in the activity itself. The vast majority of individual and collective cultural creation practiced by ordinary people is minimally “original” and unlikely to yield any final product of wide appeal or enduring value. I’m thinking of, e.g., people singing karaoke, playing in a garage band, drawing, building models, making silly YouTube videos, improvising freestyle poetry, whatever. What I’m positing is that there’s an intrinsic value to having a culture where people don’t simply get together to consume professionally produced songs and movies, but also routinely participate in cultural creation. And the value of that kind of cultural practice doesn’t depend on the stuff they create being particularly awe-inspiring.

To which Sonny responds:

I’m actually entirely with you on the skill that it takes to produce a video like the Brooklyn hipsters did — I have no talent for lighting, camera movements, etc. I know how hard it is to edit together something like that, let alone shoot it in an aesthetically pleasing manner. That’s one of the reasons I find the final product so depressing, however: An impressive amount of skill and talent has gone into creating something that is not just unoriginal but, in a way, anti-original. These are people who are so devoid of originality that they define themselves not only by copying a video that they’ve seen before but by copying the very personalities of characters that they’ve seen before.

Another good point, but I think Sonny is missing something here. The talents of the BSG Sabotage editor or the Brooklyn hipsters are certainly admirable, but while we can speculate, we don't necessarily know their motivations. About 10 years ago, a friend and amateur filmmaker showed me a video one of his friends had produced. It took scenes from Star Wars and Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan and recut them so it looked like the Millennium Falcon was fighting the Enterprise. It would show Han Solo shooting, then cut to the Enterprise being hit. Shatner would exclaim "Fire!" and then it would cut to a blast hitting the Millennium Falcon. And so on. Another video from the same guy took the musical number George Lucas had added to Return of the Jedi in the Special Edition, laid Wu-Tang Clan in as the soundtrack, then re-edited the video elements so everything matched up.

These videos sound fun, but not particularly original or even special in this day and age. However, these videos were made ten to fifteen years ago. I was watching them on a VHS(!) and the person making the edits was using analog techniques and equipment. It turns out that these videos were how he honed his craft before he officially got a job as an editor in Hollywood. I'm sure there were tons of other videos, probably much less impressive, that he had created before the ones I'm referencing. Now, I'm not saying that the BSG Sabotage editor or the Brooklyn Hipsters are angling for professional filmmaking jobs, but it's quite possible that they are at least exploring their own possibilities. I would also bet that these people have been making videos like this (though probably much less sophisticated) since they were kids. The only big difference now is that technology has enabled them to make a slicker experience and, more importantly, to distribute it widely.

It's also worth noting that this sort of thing is not without historical precedent. Indeed, the history of editing and montage is filled with this sort of thing. In the 1910s and 1920s, Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov conducted a series of famous experiments that helped express the role of editing in films. In these experiments, he would show a man with an expressionless face, then cut to various other shots. In one example, he showed the expressionless face, then cut to a bowl of soup. When prompted, audiences would claim that they found that the man was hungry. Kuleshov then took the exact same footage of the expressionless face and cut to a pretty girl. This time, audiences reported that the man was in love. Another experiment alternated between the expressionless face and a coffin, a juxtaposition that lead audiences to believe that the man was stricken with grief. This phenomenon has become known as the Kuleshov Effect.

For the current discussion, one notable aspect of these experiments is that Kuleshov was working entirely from pre-existing material. And this sort of thing was not uncommon, either. At the time, there was a shortage of raw film stock in Russia. Filmmakers had to make due with what they had, and often spent their time re-cutting existing material, which lead to what's now called Soviet Montage Theory. When D.W. Griffith's Intolerance, which used advanced editing techniques (it featured a series of cross cut narratives which eventually converged in the last reel), opened in Russia in 1919, it quickly became very popular. The Russian film community saw this as a validation and popularization of their theories and also as an opportunity. Russian critics and filmmakers were impressed by the film's technical qualities, but dismissed the story as "bourgeois", claiming that it failed to resolve issues of class conflict, and so on. So, not having much raw film stock of their own, they took to playing with Griffith's film, re-editing certain sections of the film to make it more "agitational" and revolutionary.

The extent to which this happened is a bit unclear, and certainly public exhibitions were not as dramatically altered as I'm making it out to be. However, there are Soviet versions of the movie that contained small edits and a newly filmed prologue. This was done to "sharpen the class conflict" and "anti-exploitation" aspects of the film, while still attempting to respect the author's original intentions. This was part of a larger trend of adding Soviet propaganda to pre-existing works of art, and given the ideals of socialism, it makes sense. (The preceeding is a simplification of history, of course... see this chapter from Inside the Film Factory for a more detailed discussion of Intolerance and it's impact on Russian cinema.) In the Russian film world, things really began to take off with Sergei Eisenstein and films like Battleship Potemkin. Watch that film today, and you'll be struck by how modern-feeling the editing is, especially during the infamous Odessa Steps sequence (which you'll also recognize if you've ever seen Brian De Palma's "homage" in The Untouchables).

Now, I'm not really suggesting that the woman who produced BSG Sabotage is going to be the next Eisenstein, merely that the act of cutting together pre-existing footage is not necessarily a sad waste of talent. I've drastically simplified the history of Soviet Montage Theory above, but there are parallels between Soviet filmmakers then and YouTube videomakers today. Due to limited resources and knowledge, they began experimenting with pre-existing footage. They learned from the experience and went on to grander modifications of larger works of art (Griffith's Intolerance). This eventually culminated in original works of art, like those produced by Eisenstein.

Now, YouTube videomakers haven't quite made that expressive leap yet, but it's only been a few years. It's going to take time, and obviously editing and montage are already well established features of film, so innovation won't necessarily come from that direction. But that doesn't mean that nothing of value can emerge from this sort of thing, nor does messing around with videos on YouTube limit these young artists to film. While Roger Ebert's valid criticisms are vaid, more and more, I'm seeing interactivity as the unexplored territory of art. Video games like Heavy Rain are an interesting experience and hint at something along these lines, but they are still severely limited in many ways (in other words, Ebert is probably right when it comes to that game). It will take a lot of experimentation to get to a point where maybe Ebert would be wrong (if it's even possible at all). Learning about the visual medium of film by editing together videos of pre-existing material would be an essential step in the process. Improving the technology with which to do so is also an important step. And so on.

To return back to the BSG Sabotage video for a moment, I think that it's worth noting the origins of that video. The video is clearly having fun by juxtaposing different genres and mediums (it is by no means the best or even a great example of this sort of thing, but it's still there. For a better example of something built entirely from pre-existing works, see Shining.). Battlestar Galactica was a popular science fiction series, beloved by many, and this video comments on the series slightly by setting the whole thing to an unconventional music choice (though given the recent Star Trek reboot's use of the same song, I have to wonder what the deal is with SF and Sabotage). Ironically, even the "original" Beastie Boys video was nothing more than a pastiche of 70s cop television shows. While I'm no expert, the music on Ill Communication, in general, has a very 70s feel to it. I suppose you could say that association only exists because of the Sabotage video itself, but even other songs on that album have that feel - for one example, take Sabrosa. Indeed, the Beastie Boys are themselves known for this sort of appropriation of pre-existing work. Their album Paul's Boutique infamously contains literally hundreds of samples and remixes of popular music. I'm not sure how they got away with some of that stuff, but I suppose this happened before getting sued for sampling was common. Nowadays, in order to get away with something like Paul's Boutique, you'll need to have deep pockets, which sorta defeats the purpose of using a sample in the first place. After all, samples are used in the absence of resources, not just because of a lack of originality (though I guess that's part of it). In 2004 Nate Harrison put together this exceptional video explaining how a 6 second drum beat (known as the Amen Break) exploded into its own sub-culture:


There is certainly some repetition here, and maybe some lack of originality, but I don't find this sort of thing "sad". To be honest, I've never been a big fan of hip hop music, but I can't deny the impact it's had on our culture and all of our music. As I write this post, I'm listening to Danger Mouse's The Grey Album:

It uses an a cappella version of rapper Jay-Z's The Black Album and couples it with instrumentals created from a multitude of unauthorized samples from The Beatles' LP The Beatles (more commonly known as The White Album). The Grey Album gained notoriety due to the response by EMI in attempting to halt its distribution.

I'm not familiar with Jay-Z's album and I'm probably less familiar with The White Album than I should be, but I have to admit that this combination and the artistry with which the two seemingly incompatible works are combined into one cohesive whole is impressive. Despite the lack of an official release (that would have made Danger Mouse money), The Grey Album made many best of the year (and best of the decade) lists. I see some parallels between the 1980s and 1990s use of samples, remixes, and mashups, and what was happening in Russian film in the 1910s and 1920s. There is a pattern worth noticing here: New technology enables artists to play with existing art, then apply their learnings to something more original later. Again, I don't think that the BSG Sabotage video is particularly groundbreaking, but that doesn't mean that the entire remix culture is worthless. I'm willing to bet that remix culture will eventually contribute towards something much more original than BSG Sabotage...

Incidentally, the director of the original Beastie Boys Sabotage video? Spike Jonze, who would go on to direct movies like Being John Malkovich, Adaptation., and Where the Wild Things Are. I think we'll see some parallels between the oft-maligned music video directors, who started to emerge in the film world in the 1990s, and YouTube videomakers. At some point in the near future, we're going to see film directors coming from the world of short-form internet videos. Will this be a good thing? I'm sure there are lots of people who hate the music video aesthetic in film, but it's hard to really be that upset that people like David Fincher and Spike Jonze are making movies these days. I doubt YouTubers will have a more popular style, and I don't think they'll be dominant or anything, but I think they will arrive. Or maybe YouTube videomakers will branch out into some other medium or create something entirely new (as I mentioned earlier, there's a lot of room for innovation in the interactive realm). In all honesty, I don't really know where remix culture is going, but maybe that's why I like it. I'm looking forward to seeing where it leads.



Oscar Liveblogging
It's become something of a tradition around here to liveblog the Oscars, and this year will be no different. For an idea of how it will go, check out the previous installments: [2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004] Check back for frequent updates (starting around 8 pm EST), and feel free to hang around and leave comments to play along...

Anyway, here are my predictions for the major awards:

• Best Picture: Avatar. But I could be very wrong. The conventional wisdom is that it's between Avatar and The Hurt Locker, but there are a couple of things to consider here when it comes to my prediction. First is that The Hurt Locker has been racking up the pre-Oscar awards by the boatload, so there's momentum there. There was a story about some rather annoying email campaigning from Hurt Locker producers, but I don't know that that will really hurt their chances... Second is that with the expansion of the category to 10 nominees comes a change in the way that the votes are tabulated. This year, this category will be decided by an instant-runoff voting process rather than a straightforward first-past-the-post vote (like every other category). Voters are ranking all 10 nominees against each other, and movies that aren't ranked high will start to drop off the list (this is, of course, a drastic simplification of IRV). This will tend to favor movies that have more of a consensus. It's not enough for Avatar or Hurt Locker to get the most #1 rankings, it also has to garner #2 and #3 votes (and so on). The implications of this are unclear. I think both Avatar and Hurt Locker will be placed high enough on the lists that they're both still frontrunners, but the prospect of a Dark Horse also emerges here, and in this case, I think that might be Inglourious Basterds (which would be my #1 pick, were I voting). I think part of the reason Avatar will win is that it's just made so much money and the Hollywood insider crowd might want to thank it for opening the gates for 3D and seeing movies theatrically again (wait a year though, as 2010 will be the year where 3D becomes overexposed, and will include some high-profile failures). As a result of all this, I'm actually not that confident about my pick. This is actually a good thing, as it makes the ceremony more interesting when you don't know the results...
• Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker. This one is much less interesting. I suppose there's still a chance for an upset, but even Bigelow's primary competitor (and ex-husband), James Cameron, seems to be campaigning on her behalf (noting in interviews that he thinks it's her year). Regardless of how Best Picture turns out, I'll be very surprised if Bigelow doesn't win this award. Of the nominees, she's certainly the favorite, but if I were voting, I'd be going with Tarantino...
• Best Actress: Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side. I never saw The Blind Side, so I guess I should just keep my mouth shut here, but Bullock certainly has the momentum here. Her main competitor is Meryl Streep, who's been nominated 16 times and won twice. I haven't seen An Education, but my understanding from the film nerd community is that Carey Mulligan should be winning this award. In the end, I think Bullock has enough goodwill that she'll win...
• Best Actor: Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart. This one's pretty well locked up, though I suppose there's an outside chance for someone like Jeremy Renner or Colin Firth to make a run at it... Still, Bridges is a popular guy and this could be seen as a sorta lifetime achievement award (in addition to rewarding this specific performance, which I have not seen, but which seems pretty popular)...
• Best Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique for Precious. Another one I haven't seen, but she seems to have the momentum here.
• Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds. He's the standout here, but there's an off chance that Christopher Plummer will get the nod as a sorta lifetime achievement award. But I think that would be a crime, as Waltz was tremendous...
• Best Original Screenplay: Inglourious Basterds by Quentin Tarantino. I honestly can't see it going to any of the other nominees, not even Hurt Locker (the appeal of that movie is very much the visuals, not the story or dialogue).
• Best Adapted Screenplay: Up in the Air by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner. Another pretty strong bet here. I think the screenplay awards tend to go to movies that are more mainstream and that feature snappy, memorable dialogue, all of which points to Up in the Air. Plus, the Academy seems to love Reitman, and this will give them a chance to award him without upsetting the big guns in the Director or Picture races.
• Editing: Avatar. I expect Avatar to rack up the technical awards (and I think that's really what Cameron is campaigning for, as I think he knows this is where his bread is buttered).
• Cinematography: Avatar. See above re: technical awards.
• Visual Effects: Avatar. See above re: technical awards.
• Musical Score: Up. This is probably my blindest guess.
• Best Song: "The Weary Kind" from Crazy Heart. Yeah, another blind guess.
• Makeup: Star Trek. Why not Avatar? Because they didn't use any makeup (and thus weren't even nominated)! It was all digital.
• Best Animated Film: Up. Though I would probably give it to Fantastic Mr. Fox, that would be a big upset here. It's pretty much a lock for Pixar...
• Best Documentary: The Cove. Documentary is always a bit of a wildcard, but I think The Cove will take this, though I suppose it's possible that Food, Inc. will tickle the right politics in the Academy (i.e. these are the folks that gave Inconvenient Truth and Bowling for Columbine an Oscar)
• Best Foreign Language Film: Un prophéte. Another wildcard category, but the things I'm hearing about this movie are so good that I find it hard to believe that anything else will win. But I've most frequently been wrong with these wildcard categories...

And there you have it! Next task is to go out and buy some good beer so that I can drink my way through the musical numbers during the ceremony. Check back as the Oscars start for frequent commentary.

Update 7:12 pm: I always forget that 8 pm marks the start of the Red Carpet BS, which I don't think I can stomach (even with the drinking), so updating will probably start around 8:30 when the actual ceremony starts. Oh, and Barbara Walters special? Maybe I'll put that on in the background, but I'm so happy she's retiring from that gig. She's a terrible interviewer. Then again, probably better than me (who'd end up producing something like the Chris Farley Show).

Update 8:24 pm: First beer of the night, Westmalle Dubbel. Tasty and kinda dry, makes me want to drink more. Could be dangerous. Anyway, show is about to begin. Let's do this thing.

Update 8:30 pm: Well, that's a different way to open the ceremony - trot out the best actor/actress nominees and... then just announce their names. This is a kinda dull opening, is it not? Oh wait, NPH! Oh fuck, a musical number. Shit! I thought we got this crap out of our system last year. Where's my beer?

Update 8:34 pm: Seriously, what's up with all this musical bullshit? It's not like there are any musicals that were nominated (except Nine, but that one won't be winning or anything), and indeed, it's not exactly a popular genre these days. Why?! Ok, finally, Alec and Steve. Let's hope they're actually funny.

Update 8:39 pm: Ok, I laughed a few times. Not bad, Aleve Martwin. It's a bit scripted and stiff, but still fun.

Update 8:43 pm: The Avatar bit was funny, but not as funny as this would have been. George Clooney doesn't look like he likes this... but there's no real joke there, so I guess he's fine. Basterds jokes are great.

Update 8:48 pm: After a relatively restrained opening act, we've got our first award. They're really stretching out these nominee announcements... Woody Harrelson looks shockingly not high. I was reading a book recently where a young con-girl was stringing along a perverted old man - and the whole time, I was picturing Christopher Plummer (that doesn't mean anything, but still). Best Supporting Actor goes to Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds. And I'm 1 for 1...

Update 8:50 pm: Uber-Bingo! Bearded Waltz threw me for a moment, but it fits. He clearly had his speech prepared.

Update 8:52 pm: Ryan Reynolds is channeling Rod Serling while reciting the plot of The Blind Side. Seriously, I'm expecting Sandra Bullock to sprout a tiny third arm out of her forehead or something. Hey, I just noticed, not a single montage yet. What's the over/under this year? Let's call it 10.

Update 9:00 pm: Aha! Montage #1! Right? Heh, but it's a great use of animation. The best two were even the best two movies (Fantastic Mr. Fox was my favorite though). If crowd clapping was how they judged this, the winner would be Up. And it is, in fact, Up, making me 2 for 2. And a pretty good speech too. Well done.

Update 9:05 pm: Ohhhhh, awesome, does this mean I don't have to suffer through live performances of the best song category? Thank God! And Crazy Heart song wins! I'm 3 for 3 (incidentally, having listened to the snippits of all the nominees, this one probably deserved to win too). Speech is just straightforward Thank Yous... and only one of them talked. Weird. Must have been told to keep it short.

Update 9:05 pm: Best picture nominee District 9, introduced by Chris Pine from Star Trek. It's kinda amazing that District 9 got nominated at all. Check out John Scalzi's notes on how SF will fare tonight. I pretty much agree with his thoughts...

Update 9:16 pm: Tina Fey and Robert Downey Jr are doing well here. Good stuff. And Best Original Screenplay goes to... The Hurt Locker? What the fuck? That's the worst written of the nominees. Tarantino has to be pissed, and deservedly so. This is bullshit. Speech is mildly political, and obviously prepared. I'm 3 for 4. This does not bode well for either Inglourious Basterds or Avatar when it comes to best picture.

Update 9:18 pm: Molly Ringwald and Matthew Broderick are still alive? But this is a nice tribute to John Hughes, and let's see if there's a montage. Yep, Montage #2! Score.

Update 9:20 pm: Interesting that Hughes gets his own montage instead of just getting shuffled into the annual Dead People Montage. Not saying he doesn't deserve it (and it's not like the other dead people can complain), but it's still interesting.

Update 9:24 pm: Jeeze, even the 20 second recap of the first 20 minutes of Up is undeniably effective.

Update 9:27 pm: Devin Faraci is also liveblogging over at CHUD. Regarding Samuel L. Jackson's presentation of best picture nominee Up, "Get these muthafuckin' balloons off mah muthafuckin' house!" Classic.

Update 9:32 pm: Zoe Saldana looks a lot like a human version of a Na'vi! Oh, wait. Nevermind. Ok, so this Montage (#3) is all about Hollywood trying to convince us regular schlubs that the short films categories are important... and pretty much failing. Some of these do look great though. Logorama apparently has 2500 copyright violations in it's short running time... and hey, it wins! Score. Ohhh, he's French. Huh. "3000 non-official sponsors whose logo appeared in the film." Hehe. Funny. I wonder when they'll get sued.

Update 9:43 pm: Awesome, I'm glad someone sacrificed their dignity to make fun of Avatar. Ironically, he's presenting the award for best makeup, which Avatar isn't even nominated (and yep, Ben Stiller just mentioned that fact). And the winner is... Star Trek. Score, I'm 4 for 5. Alas, probably the only award for Trek. Speech is pretty much straight thank yous. Referred to Paramount as "that robot" which will probably get them fired. Hey, it's one of the winners' anniversary. Hope his wife is in the audience.

Update 9:45 pm: I feel like A Serious Man is getting better in my mind. Some movies get worse as you get further away from them. A Serious Mind gets better. Of course, I want to rewatch it, but I have this feeling that it will be even better the second time around. Definitely glad it got nominated (and I don't think it would have made the cut in a 5 nominee field)...

Update 9:52 pm: Best Adapted Screenplay goes to Precious (I refuse to type the subtitle to this film, and will type even more explaining that I won't than I would if I just typed the subtitle). Well, I suck this year! 4 for 6. Guy seems very heartfelt in his speech - I don't think he expected to win. Good on him, though.

Update 9:55 pm: Oh wow, a Bringing Down the House reference. Sweet. And... Montage #4. Hey Roger Corman! Wait, is this some sort of series of lifetime achievement awards? Or are they different. Well, Here comes Roger Corman and Lauren Bacall. Wait, they're not going up to the stage. I don't think anyone understands what's going on. What is going on? Oh shit, Robin Wiliams. Run!

Update 10:01 pm: Best supporting actress goes to... Mo'Nique for the movie I won't type out. And I'm 5 for 7. What is she talking about with the reference to "politics"? Another speech that seemed well prepared. Hrm, never saw An Education, ut I probably should at some point.

Update 10:08 pm: Sigourney Weaver looks la lot like a human version of a Na'vi! Oh, wait. Nevermind. Art Direction goes to Avatar. Shame I didn't pick this award. I think James Cameron might be more excited about these tech awards than he is for director or best picture. Whoa, heavy acceptance speech. Doctors told him he wouldn't survive, and now he has an oscar. And the third guy doesn't get to say anything.

Update 10:12 pm: Now Keanu Reeves. He looks high. And Costumes, another award I don't pick, goes to... some movie I never heard of! Yay! Whoa, "I already have two of these." You stay classy, Sandy Powell.

Update 10:15 pm: I didn't see Precious, but I actually do want to at some point. In other news, I've moved on to Allagash Fluxus and have opened a bag of Gibbles, the official thin pretzel of Kaedrin.com.

Update 10:19 pm: Sweet. Paranormal Activity parody is hysterical. And they're finally acknowledging that horror is underappreciated by the academy... by showing us a montage (#5). Good stuff though...

Update 10:25 pm: Awesome use of Morgan Freeman voiceover. Hehehe. I didn't pick this award though. This intro is surprisingly informative. Again, the Oscars are trying to convince us that the next award is legitimate (but more successfully this time). And the award goes to... The Hurt Locker. It's looking like it will be a sweep for Hurt Locker, which is a shame. I mean, it's a fine film and all, but if it wins all the awards, I'll be a bit disappointed.

Update 10:28 pm: How the fuck did Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen get nominated for anything? Well, the award goes to Hurt Locker. Again. These guys just won the other sound award. Huh. Again, bodes well for Hurt Locker's chances later in the night... and wow, Elizabeth Banks looks gorgeous. And of course, she's presenting the nerd sci-tech awards. Nice.

Update 10:30 pm: If I had my way, Inglourious Basterds would win every award it was nominated for. I'm still ticked off that Tarantino lost in the original screenplay award. Travesty!

Update 10:37 pm: I was a little worried about this Allagash beer I mentioned earlier, but it's great. It says on the label that it's "Ale Brewed with Sweet Potatoes & Black Pepper" which gave me pause. But again, it's awesome. Ahh, Sandra Bullock takes the stage for Cinematography award. And the award goes to... Avatar! Go me, I'm 6 for 8. For a speech that is primarily Thank Yous, it was actually pretty good. I dunno, maybe I'm delirious at this point. Or drunk. These beers are strong, after all.

Update 10:39 pm: Yay Dead People (montage #6)! And crap, a live musical performance.

Update 10:49 pm: What the hell is going on with Sam Worthington's glasses? By the way, he looks la lot like a human version of a N... yeah, that joke's pretty much played it's course, hasn't it? YEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! Interpretive dance! Please hold, whilst I drink my beer.

Update 10:53 pm: The winner for best score is Up, and I'm 7 for 9. Another speech that feels prepared, but actually pretty cool.

Update 10:58 pm: Outstanding visual effects goes to Avatar, and deservedly so. Again, Cameron looks overjoyed. Hey, Jason Bateman! Presenting Up in the Air. Good, solid movie. But not a best picture.

Update 11:05 pm: Best documentary goes to The Cove, and I'm 8 for 10. Is it that Fisher Stevens? Yes, it is that Fisher Stevens. Wow. Anyway, I never saw The Cove, but from what I can tell, this was well deserved.

Update 11:08 pm: Editing award. Again with the explanation of the award, but again it's actually pretty good. And the award goes to The Hurt Locker. And I'm 8 for 11. I drastically underestimated the Hurt Locker, I guess. Does this bode well for Hurt Locker for the big awards, or are these all consolation awards? Hey, these winners gave thanks to Sam Raimi! Cool...

Update 11:10 pm: Keanu Reeves: War is a drug, kinda like the stuff I just did before I came up on stage. Hehehe. Still don't know if Hurt Locker will win the best picture award, but it looks more likely than it did this morning. Ooooh, stay tuned for humorless dick, Sean Penn! I will, Oscars!

Update 11:19 pm: Pedro and Quentin, an interesting pair. And I'm pretty sure Tarantino is high too. This really is shocking. I never would have pegged Tarantino and Reeves as looking more high than Harrelson. And best foreign picture goes to... The Secret in Their Eyes. Well, I'm 8 for 12. Ohhh, he makes a Na'vi joke, that falls completely flat, but I like it. And this guy is funny because he's trying to speak English but he clearly is flustered. I don't think he expected to win.

Update 11:21 pm: Depending on who you talk to, Avatar is the most profitable movie of all time, or the accounting is so twisted that it didn't make anything. Sorry, but the 3D bump, while important, certainly didn't account for all of the money this film made. The truth is, despite how much it's gotten on my nerves, it did make going to the theater a necessity again, which is more than you can say for most movies.

Update 11:34 pm: What the hell is this motley crew of presenters for the best actor award? Really random. Jeff Bridges so knows that he's going to win. Vera Farmiga is awesome. Her dress... not so much. I guess I see where they're going with these presenters. Great anecdote by Tim Robbins (or is it Ted). And a S.W.A.T. reference. Classy. "Good Luck Jeremy" translates to "You're probably not going to Win." Best actor goes to...shit, they'r e announcing the nominees... for the third time. Ok, Jeff Bridges wins, and I'm 9 for 13. Congrats Jeff. And I thin he's high. Yeah, definitely high. The Dude abides.

Update 11:37 pm: Jeff Bridges has been married for 33 years, certainly an oddity in Hollywood. Probably because he and his wife were high the majority of the time.

Update 11:51 pm: Another random accumulation of presenters for best actress, though like best actor, they are all related to the nominees in some way. Humorless dick Sean Penn presents the winner... Sandra Bullock. And I'm 10 for 14. "Did I really earn this, or did I just wear y'all down?" Heh. It's funny because it's kinda true (I shouldn't say that since I haven't seen the movie, but still). But her acceptance speech is quite classy.

Update 11:58 pm: Barbara Streisand has won as many Oscars as Meryl Streep. Just noting that without comment. And best director goes to Kathryn Bigelow. Good on her, well deserved! First female to win best director. She looks sooo appreciative. Don't sell yourself short, the script had nothing to do with your win. And she dedicates the award to the military. Congrats to her, it's a well deserved award.

Update 12:03 am: And Hurt Locker wins best picture. That was quick! Not much of a surprise at this point. And I'm 11 for 16. Or maybe not, I apparently missed an award at some point. . Apparently I'm 12 for 17. Must have been drinking too much. Anyway, that works out to around 70%, which isn't my worst ever, but it was close...

Update 12:09 am: And that about wraps everything up. An interesting year, but overall, an uninspired ceremony. Which is pretty much the usual...nothing especially memorable about this year, except that Hurt Locker won more than it deserved... On the other hand, I certainly liked Hurt Locker better than Avatar, so what am I complaining about...

Update: For those overseas or who haven't seen the ceremony, check out Alex's last-minute overview...



Various and Sundry
I must get back to being an inadvertently incompetent FBI agent in Heavy Rain (in fairness, my private eye is doing a stellar job), so just a few short notes:

• First, an announcement! Yes, the Oscars are this Sunday, and in accordance with tradition, I will be liveblogging the event (as I have for the last several years). Feel free to stop by and stick around. I might even get me one of them event chat thingies.
• The 2009 Muriel Awards: Speaking of movie awards, it's nice to see that some other folks are as tardy as I am with my awards. In any case, it's a good list, and lots of worthy winners.
• I'm probably the only person who cares about this, but I found this announcement that 2K sports won't be putting out a NHL game for the PS3 or 360 (instead focusing on a Wii version) mildly interesting, and probably a victory for PS3 and 360 owners. My own experience with the 2K Hockey game was rather poor, and I found it very strange indeed when the unforgivable bug that was in my 2005 game was still in evidence at least 3 years later. In any case, this move probably makes sense for 2K, as they only sold somewhere on the order of 150 thousand copies of the game last year (on the PS3 and 360) while selling 250 thousand on the Wii. I suppose it also helps that EA isn't putting out their NHL game on the Wii (yet), as EA's games are clearly superior to the 2K versions. That being said, hockey games (and probably sports titles in general, including Madden) have gotten a bit too complicated for their own good these days. Aside from the tacked-on inclusion of the NHL 94 controller scheme in EA's games, these aren't really games you can just pick up and play. Whatever you may think of the Wii, it does represent an opportunity to rethink the way you approach a game. Often, making a game simpler can increase the fun-factor. But then, I'm not exactly confident in 2K games making that sorta leap. Still, it could prove interesting if EA followed 2K to the Wii. In other news, both 2K and EA missed out on another opportunity at an Olympic Hockey themed game, which I think could be a great change of pace for the Hockey gaming crowd.
• Frederik Pohl has been writing a sorta retrospective of his friend Isaac Asimov (part 2, part 3, part 4, and ostensibly more coming). I've read a ton of Asimov and credit him with being one of the first SF authors to really get me into reading, but I've never read any of Pohl's books. Yet another addition to the book queue, I guess. In other news, I've actually been making some progress against the queue of late (3 books in 3 weeks, which is pretty good for me, though probably not a sustainable pace), so perhaps I'll get to a Pohl book sometime in the next decade.
• Holy cow is this post boring... To spice things up, I present this item from the "I'm not scared enough of the Japanese" file (not really NSFW, but worth noting I guess). MGK, as usual, perfectly captures the situation with his captions (note the one underneath the image too).
• Haven't seen many 2009 movies, why not spoil them all?

Alright, I better end here, or this is going to get really boring.



Is Inglourious Basterds Science Fiction?
John Scalzi recently tackled the question of whether or not Quentin Tarantino's WWII epic Inglourious Basterds qualifies for science fiction. Unfortunately, I should mention at this point that the rest of this post contains mild spoilers about the movie. If you haven't seen it, I recommend it (also, it was my favorite movie of 2009).

In any case, the entire argument hinges around the SF sub-genre of alternate history. In such stories, authors will change some aspect of history in order to explore some sort of narrative idea. This type of story takes all sorts of forms, such as Phillp K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, where Dick speculates about what would have happened if the Axis powers won WWII. There are tons of other examples. I've never read one of his books, but I know Harry Turtledove has made something of a career out of similar alternate history stories. Often, the alternate history comes about due to some form of time travel (such as The End of Eternity) or speculation about the many worlds theory of parallel universes (such as Anathem).

A more recent example of the genre is Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union. Set in the present day, that book's alternate timeline starts that during WW II, when a temporary settlement for Jewish refugees was established in Alaska. Chabon uses the premise to explore Jewish social and cultural issues, but never really uses "science" to explain his settings (i.e. there's no time travel or mention of parallel universes, etc...) This is a particularly relevant example because it really does skirt the boundaries of several genres (the book reads more like a noir detective story than a SF tale), yet it's generally considered part of the SF canon. We'll revisit this book later in this post.

Without getting into too much detail, let's just say that at a certain point in the movie, Tarantino diverges significantly from history. As Scalzi points out, the movie is still very much a WWII movie, but by the end, it's just not quite the same WWII as what's in the history books.

In his post, Scalzi outlines 4 arguments against the interpretation that Basterds is SF. However, I don't find them entirely convincing:

1. It wasn't marketed as science fiction
From a practical point of view, neither writer-director Quentin Tarantino nor The Weinstein Company made any attempt to play up its speculative elements, and indeed probably hoped to keep them under wraps until the last possible moment.

While true from a factual standpoint, I don't find this argument at all convincing. It wasn't marketed as SF because the SF elements were meant to be a surprise. Marketing it as an alternate history would be akin to marketing The Sixth Sense as a movie in which Bruce Willis plays a ghost. It's also worth noting that the marketing for a movie isn't always entirely accurate. This is especially true when it comes to cross-genre pieces like Basterds. By necessity, marketing simplifies a given movie to it's basest, most salable features. Indeed, the marketing campaign for Basterds focused almost entirely on Brad Pitt's motley crew of Nazi-hunters and their action packed exploits, yet those characters are not really the focus of the film and indeed, several of the main characters are barely mentioned. So no, it's not surprising that the marketing didn't focus on the SF aspects of the story. That doesn't necessarily make it less of a SF story.

2. The science fictional aspects of the movie are not necessarily essential to it
To be sure, without the alternate history aspect it becomes a somewhat different movie in the end. But the fact is that the majority of the movie's themes, characters and narrative are developed without engaging in or resorting to the alternate historical aspects ...

On this point, I wholeheartedly disagree. Scalzi does admit that changing the SF aspects would make it a different movie, but what he doesn't note is that the movie would be drastically inferior in that case. Without the ending (which is where the SF elements really kick in), the movie might still work, but it wouldn't work nearly as well as it did. That ending is necessary to the success of the movie. It's also worth noting that the movie does start with some premises that could be considered SF. For instance, take the trailer for the movie in which Brad Pitt gives a speech to his men on their upcoming mission. This scene ostensibly takes place before the D-Day invasion of Germany and it assumes a lot of things. For instance, it's revealed that all the members of the squad are Jewish. As present day audiences, we know what this means (and Tarantino is certainly counting on that), but in reality, while the Allies knew of Nazi antisemitism in a general sense, the specifics of the Holocaust were not known until after the invasion when various concentration camps and mass graves were discovered. Now, I'm not going to call this science fiction, but it's clear that Tarantino is counting on audience knowledge of the Holocaust during this scene, and he uses that knowledge to his advantage. This is something that will come up again later in this post.

3. It's kinda more like fantasy than scifi anyway

This is certainly a fair point, but at the same time, a lot of what we consider SF could also be termed "Fantasy". You could probably make a compelling argument that Star Wars is more fantasy than SF. Perhaps this is why SF and fantasy seem to get lumped together in bookstores and whatnot. There is certainly a fantasy element to Basterds though, but I'm just not sure if it outweighs the SF elements.

4. If Inglourious Basterds is science fiction, so are most historical movies
Most historical epics are about as alternate in their history as Inglourious Basterds is. For example, take Gladiator -- the most recent historical epic to win the Best Picture Oscar

Another fair point and probably the most compelling among Scalzi's arguments, though I think some important distinctions need to be made here. Movies like Gladiator and Braveheart just contain bad history. For the most part, the people who made those movies were altering history to make for more entertaining narratives, and they knew they could get away with it because 99.9% of the audience doesn't know or care about the real history involved (and in all fairness, such tactics work - both are very good movies).

With Inglourious Basterds, something different is happening. Scalzi even mentiones that "Tarantino's messing with history we actually still remember." And that's important because Tarantino is attempting something subversive. Unlike Gladiator and Braveheart, Basterds actually relies on the audience's knowledge of history. This is a movie that wouldn't work nearly as well if you didn't know anything about WWII. In terms of information theory, Tarantino is making masterful use of exformation whereas movies like Gladiator change history with the confidence that the audience won't notice or care. In short, changing history is the whole point of Basterds, whereas it's just used to spice up the narrative in Gladiator and Braveheart.

In a very real sense, the primary theme of Basterds is the transformative power of cinema. To achieve this goal, Tarantino employs several techniques. One is the direct role of cinema in the plot. A British film critic and a German actress team up with the Basterds to accomplish a specific goal. At several points, discussions of classic German cinema become integral to the plot. Old nitrate filmstock becomes a key plot element. The final showdown occurs in a movie theater that's run by our heroine. And so on. There's obvious symbolism at work there. But let's return to the idea of exformation, as it's an interesting topic (and one I've mentioned before). In short, exformation refers to communication that is dependent on a shared body of knowledge between the parties involved. Wikipedia has a great anecdotal example:

In 1862 the author Victor Hugo wrote to his publisher asking how his most recent book, Les Misérables, was getting on. Hugo just wrote “?” in his message, to which his publisher replied “!”, to indicate it was selling well. This exchange of messages would have no meaning to a third party because the shared context is unique to those taking part in it. The amount of information (a single character) was extremely small, and yet because of exformation a meaning is clearly conveyed.

In the case of Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino uses exformation masterfully. He knows what the audience knows about WWII and he plays on that. At first, he does so with small things, like the all-Jewish Basterds team (which, at first glance, plays like a Braveheart-style historical inaccuracy, but upon further reflection once the film is over, you can see that Tarnatino is really foreshadowing his subversion of history). A movie like Braveheart diminishes in value when you learn more about the true historical basis for the story. I'm sure there are plenty of historians who get incredibly frustrated when watching a movie like that. But Inglourious Basterds only grows stronger, even as you learn more about the historical basis for that film. For instance, the film does not require you to know all about prewar German cinema, but it certainly could be enhanced by such knowledge.

Take the aforementioned symbolic components, add in Tarantino's use of exformation to manipulate audiences, and then look at how the ending cements the whole film (this is another strike against Scalzi's second point). It's not just that Tarantino doesn't follow history in his movie, it's that he explodes history. He's making an audacious and subversive statement about the power of cinema, and he knows he can go over the top with it because we already know about WWII (not because he thinks he can get away with a few historical inaccuracies).

However, it is interesting to note how history often plays a role in science fiction literature. Indeed, for a while, it seemed like a lot of science fiction authors were leaving behind their SF roots in favor of historical fiction. For example, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, both known for their dystopic cyberpunk work, went out on a limb and published The Difference Engine. Similarly, Kaedrin favorite Neal Stephenson went from his popular futuristic stories in Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, the semi-historical WWII/present day thriller Cryptonomicon. He then dove even further into the past with the massive Baroque Cycle, a series of books that took place in late 17th, early 18th centuries. It did concern itself with the emergence of modern science and featured notable scientists and organizations like the Royal Society. In an interview with Salon, Stephenson speculated about whether or not the Baroque Cycle was SF:

I always make it clear that I consider myself a science fiction writer. Even the "Baroque Cycle" fits under the broader vision of what science fiction is about.

And what's that?

Fiction that's not considered good unless it has interesting ideas in it. You can write a minimalist short story that's set in a trailer park or a Connecticut suburb that might be considered a literary masterpiece or well-regarded by literary types, but science fiction people wouldn't find it very interesting unless it had somewhere in it a cool idea that would make them say, "That's interesting. I never thought of that before." If it's got that, then science fiction people will embrace it and bring it into the big-tent view of science fiction. That's really the role that science fiction has come to play in literature right now. In arty lit, it's become uncool to try to come to grips with ideas per se.

And he also mentions SF's relationship with history:

There was a review of "Cryptonomicon" with a line in it that struck me as interesting. The guy said, "This is a book for geeks and the history buffs that they turn into." I'm turning into one.

Of course, he does note that this fits under a "broader vision" of science fiction, but at the same time, there's more to it than just the subject matter and ideas. Science fiction authors approach the world in a certain way, and that sort of thing tends to come through in their writing, even if what they're writing is not science fiction in the strictest sense. So while The Baroque Cycle is primarily a historical series, it's got some science in it and it reads enough like science fiction that SF fans can appreciate it without any issue.

But the difference between Tarantino and Stephenson is that Stephenson fully acknowledges his SF roots, while Tarantino has not. This is why I previously brought up Michael Chabon's novel, The Yiddish Policeman's Union. Like Tarantino, Chabon is not known primarily for science fiction work. Yet he produced this exceptional alternate history novel that ended up winning the Hugo award for best novel. There are a lot of other similarities between Chabon's book and Tarantino's movie. Both are set in an alternate universe, but neither really explores the speculative aspects of their situations. Chabon's novel probably comes closer to doing so and does not rely on the alternate history as a surprise or shock in the way that Basterds does. Both the novel and the movie are cross-genre stories (the novel using elements of noir and the detective story; the movie using war movie tropes). I don't remember any marketing around The Yiddish Policeman's Union, but I remember being surprised that it won the best novel Hugo (this was before I had read the book and known about its alternate history premise), so I'm guessing that neither movie really calls itself SF.

Then again, the Hugo website does note:

Science Fiction? Fantasy? Horror?
While the World Science Fiction Society sponsors the Hugos, they are not limited to sf. Works of fantasy or horror are eligible if the members of the Worldcon think they are eligible.

And so we finally arrive at the classic classification problem. What is science fiction anyway? It turns out that according to the Hugos, it's whatever they say is SF. Going by Stephenson's broader definition, it makes sense that a book like The Yiddish Policeman's Union could win a Hugo, as it certainly contains its fair share of interesting ideas. Similarly, I think that Inglourious Basterds could easily be considered SF. It contains interesting ideas and is reliant on relatively sophisticated information theory concepts like exformation.

Observant readers may notice that the Kaedrin Movie Awards contains a category for best SF or Horror film, and that Inglourious Basterds was absent from the nominations in that category. So it seemed that back then, I didn't consider it SF enough to nominate. And now? I think it certainly could (and it would have won). But I think what it really comes down to is the Hugo test: Do most people consider it SF? And that's where I think my argument that it is SF falters. I think most people do not think of it as a SF movie. This may stem from the nature of the plot, which makes it hard to market the movie as SF (and to Scalzi's point there, blatant categorizations like SF exist for marketing purposes in the first place). Tarantino isn't generally associated with the SF world and isn't calling the movie SF either, which also tends to diminish my argument. But after thinking about it, I still like to think of it as SF. It may not be like any other alternate history story, but just because it's wholly unique in that respect doesn't make it less of a SF movie.



I want a good DVD/BD version!
I was looking at my DVD and Blu Ray collection the other day and began to ponder a few things. First, there are some DVDs in my collection that I like a lot, but which I'm not sure I really needed to own. For example, I own The Way of the Gun on DVD. It's a good movie, and I really like it a lot, but do I really need to own it? Probably not, but I distinctly remember buying it for less than $10 and the disc features a great commentary track (Christopher McQuarrie is a genuinely interesting and engaging guy - if you're interested, check out the Q&A from Creative Screenwriting Magazine for a taste).

On the other hand, I also realized that I don't own a single Coen brothers movie. Considering that I love the grand majority of their movies (if I were to put together a top 100 of all time list right now, there would be at least 2 of their movies if not more), I wondered why this was so. Well, it turns out that their movies have generally bad DVD releases. Most don't have much in the way of special features, and only a couple have commentary tracks. Furthermore, now that I have a Blu Ray player, it would be nice to upgrade to a BD. Perhaps I'm blowing things a bit out of proportion. The Fargo BD seems to have more special features than I remembered, so maybe it's time to pony up, but still.

I find this happening with a few movies. I'm sure everyone could come up with a big list of movies they'd love to see a good release for, but here are some of the movies or directors I'd like to see better releases of:

• Grindhouse: This one kinda infuriates me. The theatrical cut was around 3 hours long total, and it consisted of a double feature of films, with some fake trailers thrown in between the two movies. But the movie sorta bombed, so when it came time to release on DVD, each movie got their own extended cut and DVD. Basically, the original experience isn't available on DVD or BD (in America, at least), and I'm not going to buy it until it is (even though I truly love the movie).
• Ghost in the Shell: This sort of thing happens a lot with foreign releases, but I always have trouble figuring out which version to get, and there always seems to be some bizarre flaw in all the various releases. Most recently, there was a sorta remake of the movie, called Ghost in the Shell 2.0, where they've redone a lot of the animation and audio. This is all well and good, but the BD that was released seems to be a mess. According to various accounts, the packaging talks about a bunch of special features that aren't actually on the disc. Then there's also the news that the disc includes the original version of the movie, but from everything I've seen, the original version of the movie is also poor quality and features the updated audio. This is kinda frustrating because apparently a really nice special edition set was planned, but I guess it got canceled or something. Anime on BD in general seems to also be a sore spot, but I'll leave it at that.
• Raise the Red Lantern: I love this movie, but it has a really terrible DVD release (and no BD release). The movie appears to be gorgeously photographed, so I'd really like to see an HD version...
• Zack and Miri Make a Porno: I like the movie, but what really bums me out about the DVD/BD is that it doesn't include a commentary. I know a lot of people don't like or care about commentaries, but Kevin Smith commentaries are among the best I've ever heard, so it's really disappointing that there wasn't one for this movie. Heck, I'll even listen to Kevin Smith commentaries on movies that aren't his (he has a great commentary with Richard Kelly on the Donnie Darko Director's Cut DVD and he even did a pretty funny one for Road House(!)) I know Kevin Smith has talked a bit about how disappointed and depressed he was that the movie didn't do better, but that's exactly the kind of movie that's ideal for a commentary track. Perhaps Smith doesn't want to burn any bridges in Hollywood or something, but I'm sure at some point he'll be able to site down with a couple friends and record a great commentary.
• Watchmen: There are so many damn versions of this movie that I'm a little baffled. There's the theatrical cut, the directors cut, and the ultimate cut. Each of with had a separate DVD/BD release, and despite branching technology being available, none of the DVD/BD releases used that.
• Miyazaki on Blu Ray - It would be really nice if this would happen someday. The DVD releases are pretty good though, so there's not a ton to complain about, but still. I want Spirited Away on BD!

Well, I could probably go on and on here, but I feel like I'm getting to whiny, so I'll leave it at that.



Best Films of 2009
As of right now, I've seen 78 movies that were released in 2009. This is probably less than a lot of critics, but more than most folks. Overall, I had a much better feeling about this year than I had in the past couple years. I had a really difficult time with my 2008 list (which I'm actually pretty happy with now, after a year of reflection), but here in 2009, things came together pretty easily. I had 9 movies right away and the 10th movie came when I finally caught up to a movie I knew I would like.

As always, lists like this are inherently subjective and I know that gets on some people's nerves. Both from a you're stupid because you don't like the same movies I do perspective as well as the lists are inherently evil argument. Indeed, due to this year also marking the end of the decade, the multitude of best of the decade lists has also prompted an increase in the typical backlash of anti-list sentiment. This post covers the usual complaints about lists: they're lazy criticism and basically represent filthy linkbait whoring. There's obviously more to it than that (read the full post). He makes some good points and there are certainly a lot of crappy lists out there (hey, here's one!), but on the other hand, who the hell cares what he thinks? I like lists. Apparently Americans Love Lists (and you know who doesn't like lists? Joseph Stalin!) So without further ado:

Top 10 Movies of 2009
* In roughly reverse order

• (500) Days of Summer: This has emerged as something of a polarizing movie for some reason, but count me among the film's admirers. Great performances, genuine emotion, a playful, non-linear narrative structure and a wonderful ending all helped elevate this movie above the usual romantic comedy cliches.
  More Info: [IMDB] [DVD] [BD] [My Cryptic Twitter Review]
• The Brothers Bloom: Rian Johnson's sophomore effort is perhaps not as tight as Brick, but it's still a blast. It hits all the con movie tropes while still managing to carve out an identity of its own, and while the ending isn't quite perfect, it's still better than I was expecting. All of the performances are good, but Rachel Weisz was a revelation and Rinko Kikuchi steals every scene she's in... Overall, it's a big barrel of fun and well worth watching (and judging from the box office results, you haven't seen it).
  More Info: [IMDB] [DVD] [BD]
• Paranormal Activity: This low-budget found-footage horror flick isn't especially innovative and it's not as artistically accomplished as most films on this list, but I'll be damned if it wasn't the creepiest movie of the year. I still get chills thinking about this movie, and I'm very rarely scared by horror movies. The movie employs an effective scheme of tension and release and, thankfully, it also features a tripod (which mitigates many of the issues associated with found-footage movies). It was perhaps hyped too much upon initial release, but I saw it in ideal conditions, which may have something to do with how much I enjoyed it.
  More Info: [IMDB] [DVD] [BD] [Capsule Review]
• Anvil! The Story of Anvil: This documentary follows the trials and tribulations of a once-influential heavy metal rock band that failed to ever find a real audience. It's a tale of perseverance and hope in the face of adversity, and even though their music isn't especially great (at least, not today - apparently their early stuff heavily influenced bands like Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax), you can't help but root for these guys.
  More Info: [IMDB] [DVD]
• A Serious Man: Yet another Coen brothers curveball, I found myself surprisingly riveted to the screen on this one. It has a big smattering of the Coens' trademark humor and at least one exceptionally well executed set piece (not exactly the right term, but I'm trying not to give anything away here). An excellent performance by Michael Stuhlbarg and the usual stable of great side performances (including the scene-stealing Fred Melamed, playing the smarmy Sy Ableman) anchor this film. The ending is abrupt and will undoubtedly infuriate some people, but I found it surprisingly fitting. But then, I'm apparently a sucker for the Coen Brothers.
  More Info: [IMDB] [DVD] [BD]
• Star Trek: The most fun I've had in a movie theater all year. J.J. Abrams took an old, crusty franchise and made it fresh and interesting again. I wish there was a little more science in the fiction, but in the end, it's a highly enjoyable, action packed, crowd-pleasing popcorn film.
  More Info: [IMDB] [DVD] [BD] [Full Review]
• Up: The first 20 minutes of this movie are the most devastating of any movie this year (in a good way). Luckily, the rest of the movie reels it back in, leaving you feeling pretty good by the end (which is no small feat considering the intensity of the prologue). Oh, and did I mention that this is an animated kids movie? Pixar continues it's amazing streak of great films.
  More Info: [IMDB] [DVD] [BD]
• Red Cliff: John Woo's triumphant return to Hong Kong is a wonderful movie and his best since he left. Whether armies are being strategically maneuvered or a woman is pouring tea, Woo manages an elegance that has eluded most of his filmography. He's always choreographed excellent, almost balletic, action sequences, but everything in this film is pulled off with the same precision. So you get wonderful epic battle sequences (a first for Woo, I think) and also some more personal touches. I saw the theatrical cut, but there is apparently a two-part, 5 hour version that I am now quite interested in seeing.
  More Info: [IMDB] [DVD] [BD] [Capsule Review]
• Fantastic Mr. Fox: A near perfect melding of Wes Anderson's quirky aesthetic with a classic children's story. The stop motion animation looks great and Anderson's visual style complements Roald Dahl's story quite well. Great voice performances from George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Jason Schwartzman (ok and Bill Murray and hell, everyone else too) and overall just a wonderfully fun experience. I'm suddenly interested in Wes Anderson again, as I think he'd fallen into a bit of a rut before this film, which shows that he's capable of growing as a filmmaker.
  More Info: [IMDB] [DVD] [BD]
• Inglourious Basterds: The single most audacious movie of the year (if not the decade). Anchored by Quentin Tarantino's best writing since Pulp Fiction and a manic villainous performance from Christoph Waltz, playing Colonel Hans "The Jew Hunter" Landa like a Nazi version of Columbo, this movie pulls no punches and never falters. Mildly controversial when it came out, I think such criticism ignores Tarnatino's expert use of exformation, while at the same time exploding any preconceived notions of his WWII epic. Truly an astounding movie and without a doubt my favorite of the year.
  More Info: [IMDB] [DVD] [BD] [Full Review] [Winner of 3 Kaedrin Movie Awards]

Honorable Mention
* In alphabetical order

• 4bia: This Thai horror anthology, the awful title of which is supposed to be a play on the word "phobia," has a lot going for it. As you might expect from the fact that it's an anthology, there's not a lot holding it together and some of the segments are better than the others. It was an early year favorite of mine, but eventually it yielded to other films. Also, as time went on, it began to feel more derivative than I had originally thought (a few of the segments feel exactly like other movies... interestingly, I think my favorite segment was also the least scary and most referential). Still, there's something to be said for a well executed genre pic, and this one fits that bill well. Definitely worth a watch for horror fans.
  More Info: [IMDB] [DVD] [Capsule Review]
• Bronson: The semi-true story of Michael Peterson (aka Charles Bronson), the UK's most infamous prisoner. Ultimately not a lot of insight into Bronson, but the film is stylish and features one of the most spectacular performances of the year from Tom Hardy. As Bronson, Hardy is a font of volcanic rage and so, despite there not being much here, the film is never boring. I don't normally like this kind of movie, but I couldn't help but respect what this movie has done.
  More Info: [IMDB] [DVD] [BD] [Capsule Review]
• Crank: High Voltage: I can't believe how much I enjoyed this movie. Indeed, I seriously considered it for a top 10 position, but it ultimately got pushed off the list by the Coen Brothers. This is a movie that just seems like it would be terrible, but again, I found myself very enthusiastically embracing the movie for what it is. It's just a huge amount of fun, playful and energetic filmmaking at its best. Probably not for everyone, but I had a lot of fun with it.
  More Info: [IMDB] [DVD] [BD]
• Drag Me to Hell: Sam Raimi's return to his horror roots didn't blow me away the way it did with some other folks, but I did have a lot of fun with it. Really, it was the little things that I enjoyed the most. The handkerchief as villain motif, the anvil in the shed, and so on. It doesn't really approach Raimi's earlier low budget films, but it's still quite entertaining and well worth a watch for fans of the genre.
  More Info: [IMDB] [DVD] [BD]
• Duplicity: Another strong contender for the top 10, I think this is a criminally underrated movie. I think perhaps this tale of corporate espionage and one-upmanship suffered from being released during a global economic depression. Still, it's well written and entertaining. The only bad thing to say about it is that the chemistry between Clive Owen and Julia Roberts wasn't exactly lighting the screen on fire. That's a small complaint though, and this movie would make a great rental. Check it out.
  More Info: [IMDB] [DVD] [BD]
• The Hangover: I think this might have been the most I laughed in a theater this year. Sure it's completely random and overly raunchy, but I do like that sort of thing from time to time, and this movie is a fine example of the genre. In any other year, it might also have the best cameo, but as we'll see below, there's some stiff competition this year.
  More Info: [IMDB] [DVD] [BD]
• The House of the Devil: I finally caught up with this brooding horror film last night, and I have to admit that it gave me pause about including Paranormal Activity in my top 10. Both movies are quasi-haunted house movies, but similarities wind up being mostly superficial. The House of the Devil is made with more artistry and in a more unconventional manner. It's a masterpiece of misdirection and tension building. Unlike the repeated tension and release of Paranormal Activity, The House of the Devil opts to continually build tension while withholding release. This is an interesting approach and the foreboding atmosphere of dread is hard to shake. I wish I was able to catch this a few months ago, as I'd like to see how well it ages. Highly recommended for fans of slow burning horror films.
  More Info: [IMDB] [DVD] [BD]
• The Hurt Locker: Director Kathryn Bigelow's tense tale of a bomb defusing squad in Iraq is getting a lot of Oscar buzz, and Bigelow is certainly deserving of the best director title. Unfortunately, I'm not a huge fan of the movie as a whole. The action scenes are exceptionally well done, but some of the other sequences are a bit lackluster and the film ends without much of a real resolution. It's the best Iraq war movie made yet, but then again, that's not saying much.
  More Info: [IMDB] [DVD] [BD]
• Moon: This little science fiction film features a great double performance by Sam Rockwell and a reasonably good SF story too. Unfortunately, I found myself nitpicking a lot of the plot points, especially towards the end, which makes for a less satisfactory experience. I think a lot of SF fans are so starved for good, hard SF movies (as opposed to huge budget special effects extravaganzas like Avatar or most super hero movies) that they're willing to overlook some of the less rational plot points. So I go back and forth on this. Sometimes I love it, sometimes I'm infuriated by the plot.
  More Info: [IMDB] [DVD] [BD]
• Playing Columbine: What can I say, I'm a sucker for video game documentaries. The film is directed by Danny Ledonne, the creator of a game called Super Columbine Massacre RPG! where you actually play Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and act out the massacre. Unsurprisingly, the game was very controversial and this movie delves into that a bit, but Ledonne wisely uses his game as a mere jumping-off point, preferring instead to explore broader and more interesting concepts such as the demonization of video games in the media, the value of video games as an artistic medium, censorship, responsibility and the nature of violence and school violence. If you like video games, it's well worth a watch, though I guess it's not available on DVD yet.
  More Info: [IMDB] [Full Review]
• Surveillance: Jennifer Lynch (yes, daughter of David) directed this rather twisted tale. The film begins with a modern, dark Rashomon type feel, but it eventually eschews that style for something else. It's perhaps a little too reliant on the big twist, but I thought it was rather well done. It's also worth noting for some unconventional casting choices and surprisingly good performances. I'm apparently somewhat alone in even liking the movie at all, but I thought it was pretty good.
  More Info: [IMDB] [DVD] [BD]
• Trick 'r Treat: This long-awaited horror anthology was worth the wait, but I think perhaps my expectations had become too inflated. Still, it's a worthy movie and one that I think will take its rightful place among Halloween themed movies, if only because of the way it incorporates all sorts of Halloween lore and rituals as plot elements (in a way that no other movie has). Unlike the aforementioned 4bia, the various segments here are all interconnected, and the movie benefits from that structure. Well worth a Halloween night watch next year.
  More Info: [IMDB] [DVD] [BD] [Capsule Review]
• Watchmen: This movie adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' classic graphic novel Watchmen was a long time coming. It's certainly not perfect, but I think it's about as good as an adaptation could ever be. It's a little uneven, but it absolutely nails some areas of the story. Given that the comic book was created specifically to show off the comic book medium, I'm still surprised that the movie turned out as well as it did. Again, not perfect, but well worth it.
  More Info: [IMDB] [Amazon] [Full Review]
• Zombieland: I'm not a big fan of zombie stories and I'm also not a big fan of Woody Harrelson, yet I really had a lot of fun with this movie. Sharply written, well acted and it also features the best cameo of the year. Just a big ball of fun, it hits all the right notes. What more can you ask for?
  More Info: [IMDB] [DVD] [BD] [Capsule Review]

Just Missed the Cut...
But still worthwhile, in their own way. Presented without comment and in no particular order:

• Ponyo
• Taken
• Up in the Air
• State of Play
• District 9
• I Sell the Dead
• In the Loop
• Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!
• The Box

Should Have Seen
Despite the fact that I've seen 78 movies this year (and that this post features 30+ of my favorites), there were a few that got away... mostly due to limited releases, though a few of the flicks listed below didn't interest me as much when they were released as they did when I heard more about them. Unlike last year, I'm not really expecting any of these to break into the top 10, though I guess there's always a chance. Anyway, in no particular order:

• Black Dynamite
• Mystery Team
• The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans
• World's Greatest Dad
• Whip It
• Antichrist
• The Cove
• An Education
• Brothers
• Precious

Well, that wraps up 2009... actually a pretty solid year for movies from my perspective. Not the best ever or anything, but probably better than the past couple years. Hey, perhaps I should put together a best of the decade list? Eh, that would be reallly difficult (not to mention reallly late), but perhaps I'll give it a shot at some point. Indeed, at some point, I want to post a top 100 of all time... but that's even harder! Someday...



Red Letter Media Review of Avatar
Remember that insanely detailed and hysterically funny review of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace I posted a while back? It's quite brilliant, and apparently a review of Attack of the Clones is in the works, but in the mean time, a new review of Avatar has been posted. It's a lot shorter than his Star Wars or Star Trek reviews and it's probably not his best work, but it's well worth a watch. As usual, it's very funny, but the details betray a genuine love of movies.


Good stuff.



2009 Kaedrin Movie Awards: Arbitrary Awards
So we're finished with the formal awards, but there are always some other awards that I don't really bother to come up with other nominees for... and there are some movies that have something so uncommon that it's worth bringing up. Interestingly, some of these awards have actually become a yearly thing, despite never really being conceived as such. In any case, here they are:

• The "You know what happens when a toad gets struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else" Award for Worst Dialogue: Avatar. This is quite an accomplishment, though Cameron is certainly no Shyamalan (last year's "winner" of this award). I wish I had a copy of the shooting script so that I could pick out the exact lines, but a big part of bad dialogue is also bad delivery, which isn't especially in short supply here either.
• The Proximity to Jason Vorhees Award for Heroic Stupidity: Friday the 13th. This seems like a no brainer, but this probably could have been a real category if I really wanted to do that. But in the end, it's hard not to give the award its own namesake, right?
• The Divorced Man's Fantasy Award: Taken. There has to be thousands of divorced guys who list this as their favorite movie, right?
• The Blatant Disregard to History Award: Inglourious Basterds. But in a good way (which is actually a pretty impressive feat all by itself)!
• The Blatant Disregard to Physics Award: Star Trek. Red matter? Really? It's not so much that this was the worst movie in this category as that I'm most disappointed by Trek (a movie I still love and which will make my top 10).
• Best Incongruous Action Sequence: The sniper battle in The Hurt Locker. This is the best sequence in the movie, which is weird because it's ostensibly a movie about a bomb disposal squad (those sequences are good too, but they're not as good as this one).
• The "I Can't Believe They Went There" Award for Dumbest Plot Twist: Knowing. This is one of those movies where you guess the ending long before hand but dismiss it because it's so stupid, only to find that it actually was the ending. Touché.
• The Rod Serling Memorial Award: The Box. The movie plays like a feature length episode of The Twilight Zone. It attempts to explain too much towards the end, but is otherwise a lot better than the abysmal reviews its garnered...
• Best Return To Their Roots: Sam Raimi and Drag Me to Hell. I'm not as in love with this movie as a lot of old-time Raimi fans, but it is very nice to see him back in the genre (and he did produce one of the best horror movies of the year).

As with last year, no real runaway movies taking a lot of awards. Indeed, Inglourious Basterds is the only movie to get more than 1 award (Avatar got 3, but two of those were negative awards... similarly, Star Trek got 1 positive and 1 negative)... guess what's going to be near the top of the top 10? Speaking of which, it might be a couple weeks before that list gets posted. Still want to check out a couple of movies before nailing it down.



2009 Kaedrin Movie Awards: Best High Concept Film and 2009's 2008 Movie of the Year
The nominations for the 2009 Kaedrin Movie Awards were announced last week. This week, I'll be announcing two winners every day, culminating in a post with my top 10 movies of the year and possibly some other wrap-up posts.

Best High Concept Film: Stingray Sam

An obscure pick, to be sure, but I had a lot of fun with this eclectic Musical/Comedy/Sci-Fi/Western film. In an homage to old SF serials, the movie is actually constructed as a series of six ten minute shorts, each with their own opening and closing credits as well as faux sponsors. The storylines are beyond absurd, and the music is actually pretty entertaining (this from a guy who doesn't normally like musicals). The official website actually has the first 20 minutes or so available to watch online (the second episode has the most awesome song in the whole movie too). It's a pretty weird movie, but I had fun with it. Other nominees were pretty good as well, but nothing approached the sheer strangeness of this movie.

2009's 2008 Movie of the Year: Tell No One

There are always movies that I wanted to see but which I couldn't see until later in the year, so this category is for a discovery made the year after a film was released. Tell No One is a French thriller, and it's actually quite good. It most certainly would have made my top 10 of last year, and if I wasn't lazy, I probably would have updated the top 10. But now it's here, along with several other quality nominees. Still, this was an excellent film.

And that about wraps up the formal categories. Stay tuned for more Arbitrary Awards on Sunday. I'm not sure when I'll actually get to the top 10, but it should be within a week or two...



2009 Kaedrin Movie Awards: Best Action Sequences and Best Plot Twist/Surprise
The nominations for the 2009 Kaedrin Movie Awards were announced last week. This week, I'll be announcing two winners every day, culminating in a post with my top 10 movies of the year and possibly some other wrap-up posts.

Best Action Sequences: Chocolate

In terms of traditional action set-pieces, the Thai martial arts film Chocolate takes the cake. The film is certainly not perfect, but you can't fault the action sequences, which are well choreographed and a whole lot of fun. Some of the action recalls early Jackie Chan prop-driven stuff, though it doesn't really approach that level either. None of which is to detract from the other nominees. Red Cliff certainly had some excellent action, though it's more of an epic battle variety and the real strength of the film are the strategic/tactical planning, rather than the individual fights. Avatar certainly puts quick-cutting morons like Michael Bay in their place, and while I have my problems with the movie, the action sequences are superbly executed (if only I cared about the outcome). The Hurt Locker had some of the most suspenseful sequences of the year (especially the sniper sequence - ironic considering the bomb defusing focus of the film), but they're more harrowing than exciting. Watchmen had it's moments, as did Taken. Crank: High Voltage is so crazy insane that its action is more for comedic effect, but still worthwhile. In the end, I guess I was just in the mood for some martial arts rather than big explosions this year.

Best Plot Twist/Surprise: Inglourious Basterds

Naturally, any discussion of this would ruin the whole point. I will say that Inglourious Basterds doesn't feature a traditional twist a la Shyamalan. It's more that the film is just so shockingly audacious in what it's doing. The other nominees had solid twists, but I have to admit that some of them were easy to see coming, and in at least one case, predicting the twist ahead of time nearly sinks the movie. Still, they're all solid films... but I just can't get over Inglourious Basterds.

And coming down the homestretch, tomorrow we've got the final categories: Best High Concept Film and 2009's 2008 Movie of the Year



2009 Kaedrin Movie Awards: Best Sequel & Biggest Disappointment
The nominations for the 2009 Kaedrin Movie Awards were announced last week. This week, I'll be announcing two winners every day, culminating in a post with my top 10 movies of the year and possibly some other wrap-up posts.

Best Sequel: Star Trek. Or maybe Crank: High Voltage!

Dammit. For a category with only 3 nominees, this is hard. Star Trek is definitely the better of the two. It took an old, crusty franchise and made it fresh and interesting again. This isn't a small feat, especially when considering that I never really cared much for the original series/crew. In fact, the only real series I got into was The Next Generation, so the prospect of a prequel wasn't all that exciting to me. But JJ Abrams seems to be building his movie directing career on resurrecting franchises (like he did with Mission Impossible). Anyway, I've already reviewed Star Trek, so I'd like to talk for a minute about Crank: High Voltage, which is one of the biggest surprises of the year for me. When I first saw the previews my reaction was something like: That movie looks soooo bad... I can't wait to see it! As it turns out, my enthusiasm wasn't entirely misplaced. This really is a giant ball of outlandish fun. Sure, it makes no sense, but I'll be damned if it isn't playful and energetic filmmaking at its best. Of course, it wasn't much of a hit with critics... or audiences, for that matter, but I really enjoyed it. Sue me.

Biggest Disappointment: Avatar

Earlier this year, I posted a list of 5 Upcoming Movies I Want To See Even Though I Know They'll Suck (at the bottom of that post). At the bottom of the list was Avatar, with the note that "I'm pretty sure this movie won't suck." My expectations were drastically lowered by the previews for the movie, and even then, the film was disappointing. True, the first time I saw it, I was a bit taken by it. Indeed, I've already established that Avatar is a jaw-droppingly gorgeous movie to look at, but for me, the story is the most important part of a movie. Now, Avatar doesn't necessarily have a bad story, after all, it's the same story we've all seen a thousand times. There isn't anything inherently wrong with that, and I think there's something to be said for a really well executed cliched film. Unfortunately, aside from special effects, Avatar was terribly executed. The dialog is among the worst of the year (I think we'll talk more about this when we get to the arbitrary awards). The character development is nonexistent (I've read a lot of reviews that claim otherwise, but after seeing the movie twice, I think what's happening is that people have seen the same story so many times that they can just fill in the blanks with character development from other, better, movies). The Na'vi, while animated through technological brilliance, aren't a particularly interesting race. As portrayed in the movie, they're homogeneous and bland. Their monolithic nature could perhaps be explained away by the genuinely interesting idea that Pandora is basically a giant, living computer or distributed brain... but the entirety of that concept lives in a throwaway line in the middle of the movie. Sigourney says it, then the Burke character ignores it and that’s pretty much that. Incidentally, Sigourney argued that whole thing wrong. She should have said something like “This entire planet is a gigantic biological computer. That’s got to be worth billions to the biological weapons division!” There’s a lot to explore in that concept, but it was mostly wasted in favor of stupid mechas with proportionally sized Bowie knives (seriously? I mean...really?) Speaking of the mechas, I have to wonder how differently that last battle would have played out if the humans were using real tanks (or other mechanized armor).

I don't think I'll ever get around to a full review of Avatar, but while I'm ranting, I might as well bring up a few other things. A lot of critics seem to dismiss the bad story stuff by saying something like "yes, it’s James Cameron. You’re not there for stellar dialogue, intricate storytelling, or nuance. And you’re not going to get it." As MGK notes:

But this is exactly why Avatar disappoints so on this score: because James Cameron movies traditionally have all of those things.

The really depressing thing about Avatar is that it fails so spectacularly at things that Cameron has always been great at. Remember in Aliens, after the Colonial Marines get their ass whooped by the aliens and everyone's arguing about what to do? Ripley immediately cuts through the crap and says "I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure." This makes so much sense! It's so rare that a character in a movie says something that rational that it's become a modern geek aphorism. Again, Cameron used to be great at this sort of thing. But in Avatar, there are a million questionable plot points. Why use mechas when tanks will do just fine? Why not use jet fighters to deliver the bomb to the tree of souls (No! No! We have to use slow moving helicopters so that the Na'vi will have a chance to fight back!)? Hell, as a race, the humans have mastered interplanetary travel. You mean to tell me the can't figure out orbital bombardment (even just kinetic weapons would do the trick)? And why wouldn't the humans just come back in a few years and obliterate the planet? The list goes on and on and on and on.

This award has traditionally been difficult because I have to account for expectations. Often a disappointing film is not truly bad... it just doesn't meet lofty expectations. This was the case with most of the other nominees (except for Terminator: Salvation, which I knew would be bad). But Avatar still wins. There's a lot of potential there, most of which is wasted.

On deck: Best Action Sequences and Best Plot Twist/Surprise



2009 Kaedrin Movie Awards: Most Visually Stunning & Best Sci-Fi or Horror Film
The nominations for the 2009 Kaedrin Movie Awards were announced last week. This week, I'll be announcing two winners every day, culminating in a post with my top 10 movies of the year and possibly some other wrap-up posts.

Most Visually Stunning: Avatar

For all its faults, you have to admit that Avatar is a gorgeous movie to look at. Amazingly, the Na'vi seem real. James Cameron has somehow vaulted across the uncanny valley and emerged unscathed on the other side. While I don't know that his use of 3D is really all that revolutionary, I appreciate the fact that Cameron doesn't take the opportunity to poke me with stuff (like every other 3D movie). Pandora (though a ham-fisted name for a planet) is a fully realized planet. Well, actually it's not, but visually, it is. The rest of the nominees are pretty good, but none can really match the spectacle of Avatar.

Best Sci-Fi or Horror Film: Paranormal Activity

This is always a difficult category, probably because I mix two of my favorite genres. Usually there's not enough SF to warrant a full category, but this year there were 3 pretty solid SF films. Of course, only Moon even comes close to a true hard SF story, with the other two (Star Trek and District 9) lacking a little science in their fiction, but even Moon had me nitpicking over plot details. It's definitely worth watching, if only for Sam Rockwell's performance(s), but it didn't quite hit me the way horror films did this year. I had a blast with Drag Me to Hell and 4bia (a lame play on the word phobia) was an early favorite, but no horror film stuck with me the way Paranormal Activity did. It got a bit too hyped, which is never good for scary movies, but it still worked well for me. While the "found footage" premise is hardly unique, they did provide one major innovation for the sub-genre: the tripod. There's still some shaky camera footage, but for the most part, it's sitting on a tripod, and it's more effective because of that. Anyway, my favorite horror movie of the year and it will probably find a spot on my top 10.

Coming tomorrow: Best Sequel and Biggest Disappointment



2009 Kaedrin Movie Awards: Best Comedic Performance & Breakthrough Performance
The nominations for the 2009 Kaedrin Movie Awards were announced last week. This week, I'll be announcing two winners every day, culminating in a post with my top 10 movies of the year and possibly some other wrap-up posts.

Best Comedic Performance: Zach Galifianakis in The Hangover

Truth be told, I'm cheating with this one because the award isn't so much because Galifianakis was the funniest part of the movie, just that the movie was probably the funniest of the year. For some reason, there weren't any really standout comedic performances this year. Sacha Baron Cohen was certainly an option, but after Borat, his shock value seems to have waned for me. Bruno was all about shock value, and once you got accustomed to it, it fell a little flat. I also seriously considered giving this to Michael Peña, but I think his role ended up being a little too small, and while he was fantastic, the movie wasn't really that funny (but it was still a solid movie, just not in a straightforward comedic way). In any case, this was a difficult award and I'm not entirely happy picking a winner... I guess being nominated will have to be award enough...

Breakthrough Performance: Tom Hardy in Bronson

Another impossible category, except this time there were too many standouts. I would be happy giving the award to any of the nominees, but in looking at the criteria I had laid out for this award, I had to go with Hardy because I had seen him before and totally dismissed him as an actor. Yes, he played the villain from the absolutely terrible Star Trek: Nemisis, and despite looking almost the same, he's a completely different actor in this movie. He's a total force of nature and his performance is really what holds an otherwise uneven movie together. The real competition for the award comes from Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds, who I've already established as being fantastic (having won the Best Villain award). I also totally fell in love with Rinko Kikuchi in The Brothers Bloom. I was surprised to learn that her previous high-profile role was a rather serious one in Babel... yet her comedic timing in the underrated Bloom was spot-on. In the end, it comes back to the forceful performance of Tom Hardy.

Next up: Most Visually Stunning and Best Sci-Fi or Horror Film



2009 Kaedrin Movie Awards: Best Villain/Hero/Badass
The nominations for the 2009 Kaedrin Movie Awards were announced last week. This week, I'll be announcing two winners every day, culminating in a post with my top 10 movies of the year and possibly some other wrap-up posts.

Best Villain/Badass: Colonel Hans Landa, played by Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds

In a year of lackluster villainy, Christoph Waltz's scenery chewing performance as Colonel Hans "The Jew Hunter" Landa was without a doubt the best selection here. The other nominees don't even come close. As I've commented before, Waltz plays Landa as a Jew hunting, Nazi version of Columbo. Charismatic and disarming, he draws you in and makes you comfortable before pulling the rug out from beneath you. He plays the character with a slightly effeminate panache and you grow to hate him pretty quickly. Best villain of the year.

Best Hero/Badass: Rorschach, played by Jackie Earle Haley in Watchmen

This category was a little more difficult as there were lots of good heroic performances this year, but none quite so effective as Jackie Earle Haley's turn as as a morally uncompromising sociopath/superhero. He's the most memorable character in both the comic and the film, and despite his ruthless tactics, you find yourself rooting for the guy. Honorable mention goes to Liam Neeson for his surprisingly badass performance in Taken and also Yanin Vismitananda for her spectacular martial arts skills in Chocolate. Tom Hardy's titular performance in Bronson is also worth a note, but that will come up later in the week. In the end, this is all about Rorschach. I've had him penciled in to this award since March, and no one managed to knock him off...

Up next: Best Comedic Performance and Breakthrough Performance. Check back Monday for the winners.



2009 Kaedrin Movie Awards
As of today, I've seen 74 movies that would be considered 2009 releases. This is on par with the past few years, if not a little bit more than usual. Believe it or not, this is probably a lot less than your typical movie critic, but it's also a whole lot more than your average moviegoer. In any case, this post constitutes the kickoff of my year end movie recap (only a few weeks late!) The categories for this years movie awards are mostly the same as last year (with one notable addition), and will proceed in a similar manner. Nominations will be announced today, and starting next week, I'll announce the winners (new winners announced every day). After that, there might be some miscellaneous awards, followed by a top 10 list.

2009 seems to have been a decent year for movies... better than 2008 and possibly 2007 too. Perhaps we've finally emerged from the black whole of bad writing caused by the writers strike, though I think we're still seeing some of the effects. In any case, the top 10 has come together relatively quickly, though the last couple of spots are still a bit of a challenge to fill. There are a couple of movies I'm still hoping to catch up with before I release my top 10, but there's no reason to delay the awards for that. Besides, one of the points of these awards is that they allow me to give some love to films that I like, but which aren't necessarily great or are otherwise flawed (as such, the categories may seem a bit eclectic). Some of these movies will end up on my top 10, but the grand majority of them will not.

The rules for this are the same as last year: Nominated movies must have been released in 2009 (in the US) and I have to have seen the movie (and while I have seen a lot of movies, I don't pretend to have seen a comprehensive selection - don't let that stop you from suggesting something though). Also, I suppose I should mention the requisite disclaimer that these sorts of lists are inherently subjective and personal. But that's all part of the fun, right?

Best Villain/Badass
It's been a pretty lackluster year for villainy... Some easy choices, but this was a hard category to populate this year. As with previous years, my picks in this category are for individuals, not groups (i.e. no vampires or zombies as a group).

• Jason Voorhees, played by Derek Mears in Friday the 13th
• Colonel Hans Landa, played by Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds
• George Harvey, played by Stanley Tucci in The Lovely Bones
• Nero, played by Eric Bana in Star Trek

Best Hero/Badass
It's been a pretty damn good year for heroic badassery. Again limited to individuals and not groups.

• Saya, played by Gianna Jun in Blood: The Last Vampire
• Charles Bronson, played by Tom Hardy in Bronson
• Zen, played by Yanin Vismitananda in Chocolate
• Chev Chelios, played by Jason Statham in Crank: High Voltage
• Shosanna Dreyfus, played by Mélanie Laurent in Inglourious Basterds
• Lieutenant Aldo Raine, played by Brad Pitt in Inglourious Basterds
• Bryan Mills, played by Liam Neeson in Taken
• Rorschach, played by Jackie Earle Haley in Watchmen

Best Comedic Performance
Not a particularly strong year when it comes to comedy, but there still seem to be plenty of good performances, even in films I wasn't particularly fond of...

• Zach Galifianakis in The Hangover
• Michael Peña in Observe and Report
• Jason Segel in I Love You, Man
• Sacha Baron Cohen in Brüno
• Matt Damon in The Informant!

Breakthrough Performance
Not a particularly huge year for breakthrough performances either, but definitely several interesting choices. As with previous years, my main criteria for this category was if I watched a movie, then immediately looking up the actor/actress on IMDB to see what else they've done (or where they came from). This sometimes happens for even well established actors/actresses, and this year was no exception.

• Tom Hardy in Bronson
• Zach Galifianakis in The Hangover
• Rinko Kikuchi in The Brothers Bloom
• Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds
• Zoe Saldana in Star Trek and Avatar

Most Visually Stunning
Sometimes even bad movies can look really great...

• Avatar
• Crank: High Voltage
• Fantastic Mr. Fox
• Red Cliff
• Thirst
• Watchmen

Best Sci-Fi or Horror Film
I'm a total genre hound, despite genres generally receiving very little attention from critics. Interestingly, SF makes a pretty good showing this year, even though I wish there was a little more science in the fiction for most of the nominees. As usual, some solid horror films round out the list well enough...

• 4bia
• District 9
• Drag Me to Hell
• Moon
• Paranormal Activity
• Star Trek
• Trick 'r Treat

Best Sequel
Honestly, I only saw a few sequels this year, so this was a difficult category to populate (as it is every year). Still, there were a few decent options (even if I cheated a little with one of them, which is more prequel/reboot than sequel)...

• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
• Crank: High Voltage
• Star Trek

Biggest Disappointment
Always a difficult award to figure out, as there are different ways in which a movie can disappoint. Usually, expectations play just as big a part of this as the actual quality of the film, and it's possible that a decent movie can win the award because of astronomical expectations. This year had several obvious choices though.

• Avatar
• Thirst
• Terminator Salvation
• Public Enemies

Best Action Sequences
This was a decent year for action, though not especially a standout year. This award isn't for individual action sequences, but rather an overall estimation of each film.

• Avatar
• Red Cliff
• Crank: High Voltage
• Watchmen
• The Hurt Locker
• Taken
• Chocolate

Best Plot Twist/Surprise
Not a particularly strong year for the plot twist either, though there are a few standouts.

• Moon
• Surveillance
• Inglourious Basterds
• The Brothers Bloom
• Duplicity

Best High Concept Film
This is always a strange category to populate because the concept is a bit nebulous, but nevertheless, there are a few interesting choices...

• Paranormal Activity
• Surveillance
• Stingray Sam
• The Box

2009's 2008 Movie of the Year
A 2008 movie I didn't get to see until 2009... This is always a problem for the amateur movie lover. Towards the end of the year, 500 movies come out, but they only play in New York or LA for a grand total of like 3 hours (enough for 2 showings at each theater!) Plus, there's always a movie I dismissed and neglected to see which I end up seeing a year later and loving. Last year, I was having so much trouble putting together a top 10 that I even revised the list to include Mad Detective. But there were a couple other interesting 2008 movies that I didn't catch up with until later...

• Changeling
• Choke
• RocknRolla
• Splinter
• Tell No One

Anyone have any suggestions (for either category or nominations)? Comments, complaints and suggestions are welcome, as always.

It looks like Ingourious Basterds is leading the way with 5 solid nominations. Following that with a solid 4 nominations is Star Trek. Surprisingly, Avatar was also nominated for 4 awards, but one of those is "Biggest Disappointment" which I think puts it behind Trek. At 3 nominations, we've got Watchmen and Crank: High Voltage, while a whole slew of other films garnered 2 noms, and an even larger amount earned a single nomination. As I mentioned earlier, I'm going to give myself a week to think about each of these. I might end up adding to the nominations if I end up seeing something new. Winners will be announced starting next Sunday or Monday. As with the last few years, there will be a small set of Arbitrary Awards after the standard awards are given out, followed by the top 10.



Noughtie Preconceptions
So the other day I was perusing other answers to Dennis' quiz (my answers here), and came across Veronique's blog, where she has an interesting list of Least Favorite Preconceptions of the Decade. It's probably not a comprehensive list or anything, and I have to admit that I haven't been as immersed in the decade-end naughtie lists as some other folks, but I did have some thoughts...

1.) There Will Be Blood = greatest movie of the decade and Daniel Day-Lewis = greatest performer. Do you ever feel like you just saw a completely move than everyone else?

Yes, yes I have, and in fact, I've had the same thought with respect to There Will Be Blood. When exiting the theater after watching the movie, I distinctly remember hearing a guy remark to his lady friend that the movie "was like a 2 hour handjob without the happy ending." Well that pretty much sums it up, doesn't it? It's a sumptuously photographed movie and Daniel Day Lewis is a force of nature in that movie, but other than that, there's no real reason to put this movie in the top 10 of the decade. This is perhaps not surprising coming from a guy who didn't even put it in his top 10 of 2007. At the time, I remember liking it a lot, but I simply can't get over the fact that for a movie that is ostensibly a character study, it provides no actual insight into the character, leaving you with a feeling of "Why?" when you get to the end.

2. Kate Winslet can do no wrong. Count me one of Winslet's few detractors -- possibly her only one. Choosing highbrow, award-bait material does not a great actress make.

I don't really have much to say regarding this one, but I will offer up a half-hearted response that good roles for female actresses these days are somewhat few and far between, so I think it's worth cutting some slack. That said, I can assure you that Kate Winslet is capable of doing wrong...

3. The American public doesn't go to see Iraq /Afghanistan war movies because they are overwhelmed with war coverage already/don't care about politics/just want to see context-free car explosions. I've read many an article with some version of this thesis, and I don't buy it. While it is true that movies like Stop-Loss, Home of the Brave, and In the Valley of Elah haven't been hits, I would point to the films' quality to explain why they bombed.

On this one, I think I'm going to have to disagree with Veronique. The reasons why the American public doesn't go see Iraq/Afghanistan war movies are probably more varied than the examples given, but I still don't think that people will go to see one of these movies until there's something genuinely compelling to say about the wars in question, and I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon (not the least of which because we're still mired in the war, and that it's an unusual war in a lot of ways). I agree that the quality of the films released is probably part of the issue, but on the other hand, quality doesn't always translate to poor box office performance (see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen). I think another part of the puzzle is that most movies with a really strong political viewpoint in general aren't very good and almost can't be very good. When an artist takes a really strong political position, they almost always lose the ability to see the world through the eyes of everyone, including people who have varying degrees of beliefs on different issues. I suppose the exception to this sort of thing is when such positions are forwarded through metaphor and symbolism. For instance, you could consider The Dark Knight (one of the most successful movies of the past two years) an Iraq war movie that comments on various current events. Perhaps it's something about removing the story from it's immediate context that allows viewers to better internalize the message better (or not, if they're not inclined to do so). It's also easier to insert your own political viewpoint on something that is mediated by metaphor and symbolism than it is for something baldly presented as true (which most Iraq war movies are).

The Hurt Locker* is a new and recent exception: a critically-acclaimed Iraq movie actually set in Iraq. And it's been a hit commercially.

While The Hurt Locker was a low budget film (supposedly around $11 million) and ultimately eeked out a profit, I don't think this qualifies as a commercial "hit." It made about $12.5 million domestic (a total of $16 million worldwide), but that's not exactly lighting the box office on fire. What's more, its widest release was in 535 theaters - again, hardly a big number. For reference, the aforementioned Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (one of the worst movies of the year) made about $400 million domestic (a total of around $800 million worldwide) and was released in 4,293 theaters. Now, The Hurt Locker is a fine film (and it probably is the best Iraq war movie), but I also don't think it's a very commercially viable film either. It has some great action/suspense sequences, but there's little in the way of a story, and not a whole lot of insight into the whole adrenaline junkie aspect of the story. Add in the fact that we're in the midst of a global economic depression, and movies like this which don't even pretend to offer any sort of escapism aren't going to do so well.

4. Judd Apatow and his merry band of hilarious slacker-imps are the future of Hollywood and romantic comedies made for women are a bunch of treacle and/or slush. I actually think the former opinion has been trumpeted less obnoxiously of late. That's probably due to the fact that Funny People didn't do terribly well at the box office. ... offshoots like I Love You, Man and Role Models, these movies get praised to the high heavens at the same time the reviewer admits they're kind of trashy. However, trashy woman-oriented romantic comedies get the short end of the stick. Yes, some of them are unbearable and sure, the formula could use some loosening up. However, there were plenty of '00s romantic comedies that were both smart and fun to watch

I think the Apatow thing is definitely winding down, but it will still limp on for the next few years until something new comes along. I think part of the reason these movies were so well received was that they really were something new and interesting. The genre of Romantic Comedies was once synonymous with chick-flick, but now it's not. Ultimately, this is a good thing, and I'm betting this sort of male-oriented romantic comedy will continue to do well. You can see something similar happening with animation, and in particular Pixar. Traditional Disney fare was always a sorta female dominated affair. Lots of princesses and love stories and yada, yada, yada. There were the occasional male-dominated stories, of course, but overall, animation was female dominated. One of the big things Pixar did to establish itself as something new and different was to focus on boys (which is why people complaining about Pixar's gender problem are kinda missing the point). Back to romantic comedies, I think the reason woman-oriented movies are getting the short end of the stick is that they've been dominant for the past 20-30 years. The formula is stale and you end up seeing a lot of bizarre gimmicks. None of which is to say that there can't be a well executed woman-oriented romantic comedy anymore, and Veronique points to a few good examples. Indeed, one thing I'd like to see more of is a female equivalent of the so called "bromance" movies. There are tons of stories of male bonding and friendships (heck, even the recent Sherlock Holmes movie is mostly notable due to the bromance between Holmes and Watson), but relatively few about female bonding and friendship. Hey, maybe someday we can reach a sort of Hegelian synthesis and produce some romantic comedies that are equally appealing to both sexes.

5. The House Bunnyis a nuanced comedy about gender relations. Well, I do think Anna Faris is funny and comedically gifted. However, out of all the movies from this decade to pick as a great feminist oeuvre, why not Mean Girls?

Mental note: see both these movies.

Well that about wraps this post up for now. In typical Kaedrin fashion, the 2009 movie recap festivities will begin this weekend (yes, a few weeks after the year ended) with the announcement of the nominees for the 4th annual Kaedrin Movie Awards (previous installments: 2006, 2007, and 2008). The top 10 of 2009 will probably come sometime in February, once I've had the chance to see a few films that have eluded me (notably A Serious Man, Black Dynamite, and The House of the Devil), mostly because of small releases (this is frustrating for me almost every year, and I live in a relatively movie-friendly city). I haven't even really considered best of the decade stuff, but perhaps someday...



More on Visual Literacy
In response to my post on Visual Literacy and Rembrandt's J'accuse, long-time Kaedrin friend Roy made some interesting comments about director Peter Greenaway's insistence that our ability to analyze visual art forms like paintings is ill-informed and impoverished.

It depends on what you mean by visually illiterate, I guess. Because I think that the majority of people are as visually literate as they are textually literate. What you seem to be comparing is the ability to read into a painting with the ability to read words, but that's not just reading, you're talking about analyzing and deconstructing at that point. I mean, most people can watch a movie or look at a picture and do some basic contextualizing. ... It's not for lack of literacy, it's for lack of training. You know how it is... there's reading, and then there's Reading. Most people in the United States know how to read, but that doesn't mean that they know how to Read. Likewise with visual materials--most people know how to view a painting, they just don't know how to View a Painting. I don't think we're visually illiterate morons, I just think we're only superficially trained.

I mostly agree with Roy, and I spent most of my post critiquing Greenaway's film for similar reasons. However, I find the subject of visual literacy interesting. First, as Roy mentions, it depends on how you define the phrase. When we hear the term literacy, we usually mean the ability to read and write, but there's also a more general definition of being educated or having knowledge within a particular subject or field (i.e. computer literacy or in our case, visual literacy). Greenaway is clearly emphasizing the more general definition. It's not that he thinks we can't see a painting, it's that we don't know enough about the context of the paintings we are viewing.

Roy is correct to point out that most people actually do have relatively sophisticated visual skills:

Even when people don't have the vocabulary or training, they still pick up on things, because I think we use symbols and visual language all the time. We read expressions and body language really well, for example. Almost all of our driving rules are encoded first and foremost as symbols, not words--red=stop, green=go, yellow=caution. You don't need "Stop" or "Yield" on the sign to know which it is--the shape of the sign tells you.

Those are great examples of visual encoding and conventions, but do they represent literacy? Why does a stop sign represent what it does? There are three main components to the stop sign:

1. Text - It literally says "Stop" on the sign. However, this is not universal. In Israel, for instance, there is no text. In it's place is an image of a hand in a "stop" gesture.
2. Shape - The octagonal shape of the sign is unique, and so the sign is identifiable even if obscured. The shape also allows drivers facing the back of the sign to identify that oncoming drivers have a stop sign...
3. Color - The sign is red, a "hot" color that stands out more than most colors. Blood and fire are red, and red is associated with sin, guilt, passion, and anger, among many other things. As such, red is often used to represent warnings, hence it's frequent use in traffic signals such as the stop sign.

Interestingly, these different components are overlapping and reinforcing. If one fails (for someone who is color-blind or someone who can't read, for example), another can still communicate the meaning of the sign. There's something similar going on with traffic lights, as the position of the light is just as important (if not more important) than the color of the light.

However, it's worth noting that the clear meaning of a stop sign is also due to the fact that it's a near universal convention used throughout the entire world. Not all traffic signals are as well defined. Case in point, what does a blinking green traffic light represent? Blinking red means to "stop, then proceed with caution" (kinda like a stop sign). Blinking yellow means to "slow down and proceed with caution." So what does a blinking green mean? James Grimmelmann tried to figure it out:

It turns out (courtesy of the ODP and rec.travel), perhaps unsurpsingly, that there is no uniform agreement on the meaning of a blinking green light. In a bunch of Canadian provinces, it has the same general meaning that a regular green light does, with the added modifier that you are the undisputed master of all you survey. All other traffic entering the intersection has a stop sign or a red light, and must bow down before your awesome cosmic powers. On the other hand, if you're in Massachusetts or British Columbia and you try a no-look Ontario-style left turn on a blinking green, you're liable to get into a smackup, since the blinking green means only that cross traffic is seeing red, with no guarantees about oncoming traffic.

Now, maybe it's just because we're starting to get obscure and complicated here, but the reason traffic signals work is because we've established a set of conventions that are similar most everywhere. But when we mess around with them or get too complicated, it could be a problem. Luckly, we don't do that sort of thing very often (even the blinking green example is probably vanishingly obscure - I've never seen or even heard of that happening until reading James' post). These conventions are learned, usually through simple observation, though we also regulate who can drive and require people to study the rules of driving (including signs and lights) before granting a license.

Another example, perhaps surprising because it is something primarily thought of as a textual medium, is newspapers. Take a look at this front page of a newspaper¹ :


Newspapers use numerous techniques (such as prominence, grouping, and nesting) to establish a visual hierarchy, allowing readers to scan the page to find what stories they want to read. In the image above, the size of the headline (Victory!) as well as its placement on the page makes it clear at a glance that this is the most important story. The headline "Miami Police Department Unveils New Pastel Pink and Aqua Uniforms" spans three columns of text, making it obvious that they're all part of the same story. Furthermore, we know the picture of Crockett and Tubbs goes with the same story because both the picture and the text are spanned by the same headline. And so on.

Now I know what my younger readers² are thinking: What the fuck is this "newspaper" thing you're babbling about? Well, it turns out that a lot of the same conventions apply to the web. There are, of course, new conventions on the web (for instance, links are usually represented by different colored text that is also underlined), but many of the same techniques are used to establish a visual hierarchy on the web.

What's more interesting about newspapers and the web is that we aren't really trained how to read them, but we figure it out anyway. In his excellent book on usability, Don't Make Me Think, Steve Krug writes:

At some point in our youth, without ever being taught, we all learned to read a newspaper. Not the words, but the conventions.

We learned, for instance, that a phrase in very large type is usually a headline that summarizes the story underneath it, and that the text underneath a picture is either a caption that tells me what it's a picture of, or - if it's in very small type - a photo credit that tells me who took the picture.

We learned that knowing the various conventions of page layout and formatting made it easier and faster to scan a newspaper and find the stories we were interested in. And when we started traveling to other cities, we learned that all newspapers used the same conventions (with slight variations), so knowing the conventions made it easy to read any newspaper.

The tricky part about this is that the learning seems to happen subconsciously. Large type is pretty obvious, but column spanning? Captions? Nesting? Some of this stuff gets pretty subtle, and for the most part, people don't care. They just scan the page, find what they want, and read the story. It's just intuitive.

But designing a layout is not quite as intuitive. Many of the lessons we have internalized in reading a newspaper (or a website) aren't really available to us in a situation where we're asked to design a layout. If you want a good example of this, look at web pages designed in the mid-90s. By now, we've got blogs and mini-CMS style systems that automate layouts and take design out of most people's hands.

So, does Greenaway have a valid point? Or is Roy right? Obviously, we all process visual information, and visual symbolism is frequently used to encode large amounts of information into a relatively small space. Does that make us visually literate? I guess it all comes down to your definition of literate. Roy seems to take the more specific definition of "able to read or write" while Greenaway seems to be more concerned with "education or knowledge in a specified field." The question then becomes, are we more textually literate than we are visually literate? Greenaway certainly seems to think so. Roy seems to think we're just about equal on both fronts. I think both positions are defensible, especially when you consider that Greenaway is talking specifically about art. Furthermore, his movie is about a classical painting that was created several centuries ago. For most young people today, art is more diffuse. When you think about it, almost anything can be art. I suspect Greenaway would be disgusted by that sort of attitude, which is perhaps another way to view his thoughts on visual literacy.

¹ - Yeah, it's the Onion and not a real newspaper per say, but it's fun and it's representative of common newspaper conventions.

² - Hahaha, as if I have more than 5 readers, let alone any young readers.



12DC - Day 10: Santa Slashers
Last year I checked out some holiday horror films and found myself enjoying them quite a bit. This year's crop turned out alright as well, though I wasn't able to get to Don't Open Till Christmas (very long wait on Netflix - the same fate that befell Silent Night, Deadly Night last year).

• Santa's Slay: It's hard to believe that a film written and directed by a protégé of Brett Ratner could be entertaining at all, but then, here we are. Of course, it's not fine cinema or anything, but it's quite a bit of fun. Former professional wrestler Bill Goldberg plays Santa and does a reasonably menacing job in the role. Interestingly enough, the movie attempts to build in some history to the story of Santa and why he is the way he is... It turns out that Santa lost a bet with an angel around 1000 years ago, and thus he had to act nice and deliver presents to the world. But now that agreement has lapsed and Santa goes on a murderous rampage. The flashback that tells this part of the story in the film is done in a rather awesome stop-motion animation, reminiscent of the old Rankin/Bass stuff - a nice touch.
  
  
  Indeed, there are a lot of little things that I really liked about this movie. Some of the jokes are actually funny and the pop culture references are present without being overbearing. I would have liked to have seen more Santa slayings, but ultimately, this film was a lot better than I expected. Again, it isn't especially brilliant, but it's rather well put together and worth a watch if you go in for this sort of thing. ***
• Christmas Evil (aka You Better Watch Out): I had no idea that this was a Troma film until I saw it during the opening credits. However, despite the Troma reputation, this film is much more deliberate and measured than you might expect (there's not even much in the way of gore). The story follows Harry Stadling, a guy who works at a toy factory and has an unhealthy obsession with Santa Claus. For instance, he observes neighborhood kids and makes naughty and nice lists, tabulating all their deeds into two giant books. Eventually, Harry snaps, dresses up like Santa, paints his van to look like a sleigh, and heads out on Christmas Eve to give presents to the nice kids... and punish the naughty ones. Unlike Santa's Slay, Harry actually makes a distinction between naughty and nice, and does not harm the nice people. The naughty, on the other hand, well, they get what's coming to them. Harry is portrayed in a surprisingly sympathetic light, no doubt a result of a rather good lead performance by Brandon Maggart. The film was quite low budget, and it shows, but it's still a very interesting movie. Also, I rather loved the ending, despite the fact that it kinda comes out of nowhere and makes no sense. It's still fun. ***
  
  
  
• Dead End: Not sure where I heard of this, but it takes a familiar premise and... doesn't really do all that much with it. A family driving to Christmas Eve dinner takes a "shortcut" and find themselves on a mysterious road through a mysterious forest where they pick up a mysterious woman who mysteriously disappears, but then someone sees a mysterious car that looks almost like a hearse driving away with one of the kids and it's all very mysterious. This sort of thing could work if there was some sort of reasonable explanation for all the mystery... or if the dialogue were good or if the plot progressed in a fashion that made sense in some way. Some serious horror movie tropes here. Like people walking off by themselves or other seriously stupid stuff. For a low budget film, it looks pretty good, and they did manage to find some reasonably good actors, but some of the dumber plot points and the ending just left a bad taste in my mouth. *1/2

That's all for now. Coming down the home stretch, we've got the night before Christmas and the big day itself!



12DC - Day 3: Incidental Christmas Movies
I'm a big fan of Christmas movies, but there's another sub-genre that consists of movies that take place during the holidays but aren't about the holidays. I posted a few last year and here's some more:

• Lethal Weapon: I used to always watch this movie during the leadup to the holiday season, primarily because it started with Jingle Bell Rock playing. Plus it's a pretty great movie. One of the stereotypical examples of Hollywood 80s action. There's a lot of ridiculous, cliched moments, but somehow that's part of its charm. In any case, it's not much of a holiday film, but there's the aforementioned songs, the scene where Riggs is contemplating suicide whilst watching an animated Christmas special, and some Christmas trees and lights and whatnot.
• Go: Perhaps even less of a holiday film than anything else, I hadn't seen this movie since it came out. I remember liking the interconnected nature of the three main plotlines - sorta like a teen version of Pulp Fiction. Of course, it's nowhere near as good as Pulp Fiction, but it holds up reasonably well. I always thought of this as an underrated film, and that probably still fits.
• The Ice Harvest: Aside from a scene at a frozen lake, there's very little ice to be seen here, but hey, it takes place on Christmas eve as a couple of Mob employees seek to rip off their boss, who happens to run all the strip joints in Witchita. Of the three films in this post, this might be the darkest. It's a sorta neo-noir setup, but not quite that despairing and probably more fun to watch. There are some twists that you can see coming from a mile away, and it's not quite as wickedly funny or intelligent as it could be, but it's still a good ride.

That's all for now. Next up: fun with exterior illumination.



Visual Literacy and Rembrandt's J'accuse
Perhaps the most fascinating film I saw at the 18½ Philadelphia Film Festival was Rembrandt's J'accuse. It's a documentary where British director Peter Greenaway deconstructs Rembrandt's most famous painting: Night Watch. It's arguably the 4th most celebrated painting in art history (preceded only by the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel...) and Greenaway believes it's also an accusation of murder. The movie plays like a forensic detective story as Greenaway analyzes the painting from top to bottom. It's an interesting topic for a documentary, though I think the film ultimately falters a bit in it's investigation (either that, or Greenaway is trying to do something completely different).

(Note, you can click on the images below for a higher resolution image.)


Night Watch
Greenaway began his career as a painter and he contends that most people are visually illiterate, which is an interesting point. We really do live in a text-based culture. Our education system encourages textual learning over visuals, from the alphabet to vocabulary and reading skills. The proportion of time spent "reading paintings as they do text" is minute (if it happens at all). As such, our ability to analyze visual art forms like paintings is ill-informed and impoverished. Greenaway even takes the opportunity to rag on the state of modern cinema (which is a whole other discussion, as sometimes even bad movies are visually well constructed, but I digress). In any case, I do think Greenaway has a point here. Our culture is awash in visual information - television, movies, photography, etc... - and yet, we spend very little time questioning the veracity of what we're shown. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, which is really just a way of saying that pictures can easily convey massive amounts of information. Pictures are inherently trustworthy and persuasive, but this can, in itself, cause issues. Malcolm Gladwell examined this in his essay, The Picture Problem:

You can build a high-tech camera, capable of taking pictures in the middle of the night, in other words, but the system works only if the camera is pointed in the right place, and even then the pictures are not self-explanatory. They need to be interpreted, and the human task of interpretation is often a bigger obstacle than the technical task of picture-taking. ... pictures promise to clarify but often confuse. ... Is it possible that we place too much faith in pictures?

Gladwell is, of course, casting suspicion on images, but he's actually making many of the same points as Greenaway. What Gladwell is really saying is that human beings are visually illiterate. As Greenaway notes towards the beginning of the film, is what we see really what we see? Or do we only see what we want to see? Both Gladwell and Greenaway seem to agree that interpretation is key (though Gladwell might be a bit more pessimistic about the feasibility of doing so). Though this concept is not explicitly referenced later in the film, I do believe it is essential to understanding the film.

One of the first clues that Greenaway examines is the public nature of Rembrandt's painting. For the most part, public museums didn't start appearing until the mid 19th century. The Night Watch, by contrast, was on public display from day one (1642). In a time where paintings were private luxuries, usually viewed only by the rich and those who commissioned the paintings, the Night Watch was viewed by all. In a lot of ways, the painting is unusual and prompts questions, most of which don't seem to have any sort of satisfactory answers. This leads to all sorts of speculation and theories about the motives behind the painting and what it really depicts. One way to look at it is to view it as an accusation. An indictment of conspiracy. Greenaway starts with this idea and proceeds to examine 34 interconnected mysteries about the painting. The mysteries all server to illuminate one thing: The content of the painting. What is it about? Who are the players? What is the accusation?

I will not go through all 34 mysteries, but as an example, the first mystery is about the Dutch Militia. At the time of the painting, there was a century-long Dutch tradition of the group military portrait. The Dutch had been involved in a long, drawn-out guerrilla war with the Spanish. Local militias were formed all throughout the country to protect their towns from their enemies. These local companies were comprised of regular citizens and volunteers, many of them important local figures, and they liked to have themselves painted, usually in uniform and in a powerful light to inspire solidarity and confidence. As the war wound down, these militias became less about the military and more about politics and power. It was a prestigious thing to be in a militia and they became more of a gentleman's club than a military organization. In the Night Watch, Rembrandt chose to break many of the traditions associated with the common Dutch military portrait. Many of the future mysteries examine these differences in great detail.

After seeing the movie I was struck by numerous things. First, for a filmmaker ostensibly crusading against visual illiteracy, I find it strange that Greenaway has chosen to present his argument as a gigantic wall of text. He narrates the entire film. Occasionally, he'll cut to a "reenactment", which are scenes from his previous film, a fictional retelling of Rembrandt's painting, but even those are comprised primarily of characters spouting dialogue (these scenes rarely provide insight, though it's nice to break up the narration with something a little more theatrical).

Indeed, the grand majority of the mysteries are concerned with context (i.e. the cultural and historical traditions, the timing of the painting, who commissioned the painting, etc...). There is a concept from communication theory called exformation that I think is relevant here.

Effective communication depends on a shared body of knowledge between the persons communicating. In using words, sounds and gestures the speaker has deliberately thrown away a huge body of information, though it remains implied. This shared context is called exformation.

Wikipedia also has an excellent anecdotal example of the concept in action:

In 1862 the author Victor Hugo wrote to his publisher asking how his most recent book, Les Miserables, was getting on. Hugo just wrote “?” in his message, to which his publisher replied “!”, to indicate it was selling well. This exchange of messages would have no meaning to a third party because the shared context is unique to those taking part in it. The amount of information (a single character) was extremely small, and yet because of exformation a meaning is clearly conveyed.

Similarly, when Rembrandt painted the Night Watch and it was put on display, most of the viewers knew the subjects in the painting and the circumstances in which it was painted. As modern viewers, we do not have any of that shared knowledge. In order to understand the visual of The Night Watch, one must first understand the context of the painting, something that is primarily established through text. For example, one of the mysteries of the painting has to do with the lighting. Rembrandt was one of the pioneers of artificial lighting in paintings, and this was the result of improvements to technology of the day. There were apparently big improvements in the use of candles and mirrors, and so Rembrandt enjoyed playing with lighting, making the painting seem almost theatrical. As modern viewers, this sort of playful use of lighting isn't special - it's something we've seen a million times before and in a million other contexts. In Rembrandt's time, it was different. It called attention to itself and caused much speculation. Modern audiences thus need to be informed of this, and again, Greenaway accomplishes this mostly through the use of text.

To be sure, there are some interesting visualization techniques that Greenaway employs when talking about specific aspects of the painting. For example, when discussing the aforementioned use of lighting, Greenaway does his own manipulation, exagerating the lighting in the painting to underline his point:


Unfortunately, these are not used as often as I would have hoped, nor are they always necessary or enlightening, and indeed there are numerous distractions throughout. For instance, the frame is often comprised of several overlapping and moving boxes. Sometimes this is used well, but it often feels visually overwhelming. Indeed, sometimes the audio is sometimes also overwhelming - with Greenaway's narration being overlaid on top of music and sometimes even a woman's voice which is saying the names of famous people who have seen Night Watch (the inclusion of which has always confused me). I'm sure it's challenging to make a movie about a painting without just putting up a static shot of the painting (and that's certainly not desirable), but does the screen need to be so busy? The visual components of the film seem to take a back seat to the textual elements... Interestingly, this is a film that seems to work a lot better on the small screen, as it's not nearly as overwhelming on the small screen as it was in the theater.


Visually Overwhelming
Furthermore, the text presented to us is so dense that it can be hard to follow at times. This at least partially due to the massive amount of exformation, unfamiliar European names, different cultural traditions, etc... There are 34 people depicted in the painting (plus a dog!), and it can be tough to keep track of who is who. I suppose I should not be surprised that someone obsessed with visual literacy is not a master writer, but perhaps there is something else going on here...

Next, I was struck by the inclusion of Greenaway's face, which is often positioned in a box right in the center of the frame. Why do that? Why is he calling so much attention to himself? My first inclination is that it's a breathtakingly arrogant strategy. Also, the sound of his voice (sometimes overly deliberate pronunciation mixed with stereotypical European accent) lends the impression of arrogance and pretentiousness. I think that may still be part of it, but again, there is more going on here.


Look at me!
There are many types of documentary films. The most common form of documentary is referred to as Direct Address (also known as Expositional Mode). In such a documentary, the viewer is directly acknowledged, usually through narration and voice-overs. There is very little ambiguity and it is pretty obvious how you're expected to interpret these types of films. Many television and news programs use this style, to varying degrees of success. Ken Burns' infamous Civil War and Baseball series use this format eloquently, but most traditional propaganda films also fall into this category. The disembodied nature of a voice-over lends an air of authority and even omniscience to a film's subject matter (this type of voice-over is often referred to as "Voice of God" narration). As such, these films are open to abuse through manipulative rhetoric and social propaganda.

By contrast, Reflexive Documentaries use many devices to acknowledge the filmmaker's presence, perspective, and selectivity in constructing the film. It is thought that films like this are much more honest about their subjectivity, and thus provide a much greater service to the audience.

An excellent example of a Reflexive documentary is Errol Morris' brilliant film, The Thin Blue Line. The film examines the "truth" around the murder of a Dallas policeman. The use of colored lighting throughout the film eventually correlates with who is innocent or guilty, and Morris is also quite manipulative through his use of editing - deconstructing and reconstructing the case to demonstrate just how problematic finding the truth can be. His use of framing calls attention to itself, daring the audience to question the intents of the filmmakers. The use of interviews in conjunction with editing is carefully structured to demonstrate the subjectivity of the film and its subjects. As you watch the movie, it becomes quite clear that Morris is toying with you, the viewer, and that he wants you to be critical of the "truth" he is presenting.

Ironically, a documentary becomes more objective when it acknowledges its own biases and agenda. In other words, a documentary becomes more objective when it admits its own subjectivity.

Greenaway could easily have employed a direct address narration with this film, but he does not. Instead, he conspicuously inserts himself right into the middle of the frame. Indeed, later in the film, Greenaway appears dressed in a ridiculous getup more suited to appear within the painting than in the movie. It's almost like he's daring us to question this visual choice. Why?

Perhaps because of the third thing that struck me - Greenaway is the only narrator in the film. Most documentaries feature many talking heads, experts and historians, and even some contrary opinions, among other expositional techniques. This film does not. Why? Could it be that Greenaway's story is complete bullshit? After all, his story is delivered in textual form. With his visuals, Greenaway is emphasizing his own subjectivity. A cursory glance around the internet (hardly a comprehensive search, but still) reveals that Greenaway appears to be the only one who subscribes to this theory of murder and accusation.

So I'm left with something of a dilemma. This movie is an impressive bit of speculation and interpretation, but I have no idea if it's true or not. The visual elements of the film seem to emphasize that it is an emphatically subjective interpretation of the painting, but that this sort of speculation on the visual composition is still important, and that we should do more of this sort of thing (something I would agree with).

Or maybe I'm reading way too much into the movie and he employs so much text simply because he thinks we're visually illiterate morons. At this point, I really don't know how to rate this film. I'm having a lot of trouble gauging how much I enjoyed this film. Upon first viewing it, in the theater, I have to say that I didn't like it very much. And yet, it still fascinated me, to the point where I started writing this post and rewatching the film to make sure my interpretation fit. Indeed, as previously mentioned, I found it much more watchable on the small screen. If this post at all interests you, I suggest checking it out. It's actually available on Netflix's Watch Instantly feature (and thus can be viewed through a computer, a PS3 or XBox or any number of other Netflix streaming ready boxes).

More screenshots and comments in the extended entry...

Update: More on Visual Literacy (in response to comments in this post)

This is the title screen of the film, and it's one example of the sensory overload that Greenaway employs. The building in the background is where the Night Watch now resides (the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam). The shot is taken from far away, with many things in the foreground though, including a police car with flashing lights. Given the murder-mystery nature of the film, that part makes symbolic sense. Making less sense is the additional police car inset on the right of the screen (it's harder to see in a static screenshot, but that box is filmed separatel, and apparently during the day, so the lighting is different. In the movie, that box actually scrolls across the screen.). Inset on the right, is a miniature version of the title screen. I have no idea what purpose that serves. And scrolling from right to left across the bottom of the screen is a list of signatures. These names are the aforementioned famous people who have publicly visited the Night Watch, and they are also being read by a female voice (again, I have no real idea why this is being done, as it only serves to really add to the disorienting sensory experience).


Interwoven within the documentary are scenes from Greenaway's earlier fictional retelling of the same story, Nightwatching. It stars Martin Freeman (who starred in the British Office show and a bunch of other stuff, including The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). I found these scenes really strange at first. They seemed very out of place, at least until I found out that they were from an earlier Greenaway film. Then it made sense.


As previously mentioned, Greenaway does employ some visualization efforts to help call out certain features and structures within the painting. Some of the interesting ones are below. The first is one that silhouettes out the main actors in the drama of the painting. Then there's one that numbers all of the participants (you'll have to click on the image to get a good look at that one). There are a few that attempt to visualize the lines of sight of all the characters (only two are looking directly at the audience - this is one of the mysteries that Greenaway explores).








One of the things that interested me about the film was that many of the "mysteries" are probably things that most people would notice if you asked them to stare at the painting for an hour. They don't have the exformation to read the painting correctly, but they'd easily be able to pick out a lot of the most salient features. For instance, it's easy to question why the girl in the painting is so prominent. It's the brightest part of the painting, and your eyes go there almost immediately upon viewing it. If given some time, you can even see that there's another girl behind the first, and her face is obscured (it turns out that Rembrandt painted it this way because the girl had horrible burns on her face and was thus self-conscious about it). I think the grand majority of the mysteries that Greenaway examines would be found if only someone took the time to really study the painting. Of course, I suspect most people don't actually do that sort of thing, so Greenaway does have a point, but still.


Below is the aforementioned "ridiculous getup" that Greenaway puts on at one point. Again, I think this is how he is stressing his own subjective involvement in what we're seeing.


Well, I think that just about wraps up my thoughts on Rembrandt's J'accuse. In closing, I'll give you one of the final shots of the film, which is a sorta reprise of the title screen. It's still cluttered and busy, but somehow not quite as pointless as the title screen.


It was an intriguing movie, I guess. It would be even more interesting if I could hear what other art historians and experts thought about it...



Professor Russell Johnson's "My ancestors came over on the Minnow" Thanksgiving/Christmas Movie Quiz
Dennis Cozzalio of the Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule blog has posted yet another movie quiz. Previous installments answering questions from Dr. Smith, Professor Peabody, and Professor Severus Snape are also available... Now, onwards to Professor Johnson's questions:

1) Second-favorite Coen Brothers movie.

This is a tough one. It's either Miller's Crossing or Fargo, which are my two favorites. Fargo was a movie that I never really loved... until I watched it again recently, at which point it shot up to near the top of my Coen Brothers rankings. Miller's Crossing has long been at the top of that list, but I have a sneaking suspicion that if I revisit that and Fargo at the same time, that Fargo will come out on top... but for now, it's at #2...

2) Movie seen only on home format that you would pay to see on the biggest movie screen possible? (Question submitted by Peter Nellhaus)

The movie that first comes to mind is Aliens, but after some considered thought, perhaps The Godfather. Or Ben-Hur. Or The Wizard of Oz. Jeeze, this is hard. I'll stick with Aliens though. Given the number of times I've seen that movie, it's a crime that I haven't seen it on a big screen.

3) Japan or France? (Question submitted by Bob Westal)

Without a doubt, Japan. Two words: Akira Kurosawa. Ok, so France has some good stuff too, but I'm generally more into Japanese cinema than French cinema.

4) Favorite moment/line from a western.

The first several things that came to mind were from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, most notably the ending Mexican standoff sequence. Then there's also this line: "When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk." Heh.

5) Of all the arts the movies draw upon to become what they are, which is the most important, or the one you value most?

The most important is obviously photography. As to what I value the most, well, it's probably not the photography, though I certainly love a well photographed movie. Recently, some one asked me what my hobbies were. I started with the typical answers, but then I came to realize that my hobby is consuming stories, whether they be movies, books, history, tv, anime, video games, or even the occasional music album/song. Nothing beats a good storyteller, no matter what medium they're working in... This also explains why some types of movies, the ones that eschew narrative or make no sense (I'm looking at you, David Lynch!), usually fail to grab me. It's not that they can't, just that I find it much harder to swallow a movie without a good story or characters I can relate to...

6) Most misunderstood movie of the 2000s (The Naughties?).

It's hard to consider an answer to this question without distorting the premise to be "Movies I like even though no one else does." Because if I like it and you don't, you clearly don't understand the movie, right? But that's usually not true. So I am having a tough time with this one. Some interesting answers I've seen are Unbreakable and Intolerable Cruelty, both of which examine their respective genres from a unique perspective, adding (or perhaps subtracting) twists to familiar tropes. I suspect that Inglourious Basterds will grow into the misunderstood role (especially given the relatively craptastic rating of 69 on metacritic). Oddly, I had no trouble at all coming up with multiple misunderstood examples from the 90s. Go figure.

7) Name a filmmaker/actor/actress/film you once unashamedly loved who has fallen furthest in your esteem.

I'm not sure if this qualifies, since I still love the movies early in his career, but John Carpenter hasn't made a good movie in like 15 years, and even that movie was kinda alone in the late 80s and 90s (not to mention that it wasn't anywhere near Carpenter's earlier brilliance). I suppose he did a decent episode of Masters of Horror, but then, he also did one of the worst episodes of the series. I suppose there's a chance for a comeback in 2010, as there are some things on his plate, but I'm not terribly optimistic. Still, nothing beats that period in the late 70s and early 80s, when he just kept hitting homeruns, over and over. But some of the 80s stuff started to get a bit hokey and didn't age well, so there's that too.

8) Herbert Lom or Patrick Magee?

I'm not terribly familiar with either, but I'll go with Patrick Magee, due mostly to his involvement in multiple Kubrick productions (Lom was in one, but not one of my favorites).

9) Which is your least favorite David Lynch film (Submitted by Tony Dayoub)

Of the films I've seen, I'd say it would have to be Lost Highway, Eraserhead, or Dune. It's a tough call though, because even the worst Lynch is watcheable. But then, I have to be in the right mood, and I'm less willing to put up with Lynch's crap now than I have been in the past.

10) Gordon Willis or Conrad Hall? (Submitted by Peet Gelderblom)

I'll have to go with Gordon Willis on this one. Not that Hall is bad, but it's hard to go against The Godfather ("...don't ever take sides with anyone against the Family...")

11) Second favorite Don Siegel movie.

Well I've only seen two, and Dirty Harry is one of my favorites of all time, so that leaves Invasion of the Body Snatchers...

12) Last movie you saw on DVD/Blu-ray? In theaters?

In theaters, I saw Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was excellent. Last week, I opined that I was intrigued to see Wes Anderson tackle something outside his usual "quirky" wheelhouse (which has been getting a bit stale of late). Interestingly, I think this was a near perfect melding of Anderson's quirky aesthetic with a classic children's story. This will most likely find its way onto my top 10 of 2009.

On DVD, I saw The Lady Vanishes, which is probably Hitchcock's best British film (of the 7 or 8 that I've seen from his pre-Hollywood days). On BD, I saw Franklyn, which is mostly an interminable bore (and not at all SF).


The Lady Vanishes
13) Which DVD in your private collection screams hardest to be replaced by a Blu-ray? (Submitted by Peet Gelderblom)

Well, I'll go with 2001: A Space Odyssey, because it's an amazing movie and because I don't want to answer The Godfather for every one of these questions (though it would certainly qualify here). Actually, I don't think I've replaced a single existing DVD with a BD yet. Everything I've bought has been new.

14) Eddie Deezen or Christopher Mintz-Plasse?

Christopher Mintz-Plasse. Don't really have anything else to say about it, but Mintz-Plasse seems like he'll be around for a while.

15) Actor/actress who you feel automatically elevates whatever project they are in, or whom you would watch in virtually anything.

I tend to be much more of a director person, meaning that I rarely go to see a movie for acting. That being said, there are some actors that fit the question's description, I guess. Some that come immediately to mind: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cate Blanchett, Liam Neeson, Ellen Page, and probably about a dozen others. Again, it's rare that an actor alone gets me to see a movie, but there are some folks who can do a lot with just a little...

16) Fight Club -- yes or no?

Yes! I haven't watched it in a while, so perhaps it doesn't age that well, but I still think of it as a great movie.

17) Teresa Wright or Olivia De Havilland?

I got nothing.

18) Favorite moment/line from a film noir.

The opening scene from The Killers. Two sketchy men walk down a street and enter a diner. Simple, but quintessentially noir.


The Killers
19) Best (or worst) death scene involving an obvious dummy substituting for a human or any other unsuccessful special effect(s)—see the wonderful blog Destructible Man for inspiration.

I had a surprisingly hard time thinking of a scene involving an obvious dummy. Strange, when you consider how many bad horror movies I've seen. Anyway, while I wouldn't exactly call it unsuccessful, I'd say the exploding head from Dawn of the Dead fits the bill. It happens very quickly, so it works, and in any case it's kinda awesome, but still, slow it down and look at it closely, and yeah, it's an obvious dummy.


Dawn of the Dead
20) What's the least you've spent on a film and still regretted it? (Submitted by Lucas McNelly)

Does free count? I've totally seen lots of bad movies on TV. Also, I used to work at the campus movie theater in college, so I saw free movies all the time. Including some pretty bad ones (Wild Wild West anyone?)

21) Van Johnson or Van Heflin?

I guess Van Heflin, since I've actually seen some of his movies. Then again, Van Johnson was in a movie called Killer Crocodile, which sounds kinda awesome.

22) Favorite Alan Rudolph film.

Well, the only movies I've seen on his IMDB page are actually Robert Altman movies, but I don't think those are what you're looking for.

23) Name a documentary that you believe more people should see.

The first two that came to mind were recent documentaries. First is Playing Columbine, a movie that has only really played on the festival circuit, but which I really enjoyed (anyone who likes video games should watch the movie). Unfortunately, it does not appear to be available on DVD yet. Second was Anvil! The Story of Anvil, which is kinda like a real life Spinal Tap. Finally, for a broader perspective or to show what the medium is capable of, perhaps something like The Thin Blue Line would be appropriate.

24) In deference to this quiz’s professor, name a favorite film which revolves around someone becoming stranded.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "stranded", but I'll go with Planet of the Apes.

25) Is there a moment when your knowledge of film, or lack thereof, caused you an unusual degree of embarrassment and/or humiliation? If so, please share.

The most embarrassed I get is when I'm filling out your quizes and I get to one of the questions where you ask me to choose between two people I've never heard of. I'm not very embarrassed by that though, as evidenced by the fact that I keep filling the damn things out. Speaking of this:

26) Ann Sheridan or Geraldine Fitzgerald? (Submitted by Larry Aydlette)

*sigh*

27) Do you or any of your family members physically resemble movie actors or other notable figures in the film world? If so, who?

Honestly, no. I can't think of anything for this.

28) Is there a movie you have purposely avoided seeing? If so, why?

In general, I tend to avoid bad movies or movies I know I won't like. So there's no specific movie I'm avoiding, and for the most part, I'll watch even a bad movie if someone else wants to...

29) Movie with the most palpable or otherwise effective wintry atmosphere or ambience.

There are a couple of obvious choices here, but I'm using those movies for other answers in this quiz and don't want to repeat myself too much. So I'll go with A Christmas Story, which perfectly captures winter through the eyes of children. Another quick non-obvious choice: Groundhog Day.

30) Gerrit Graham or Jeffrey Jones?

Jeffrey Jones, hands down. I mean, I've seen a lot of his movies and I know who he is, which is something I can't say for Gerrit Graham (though maybe if you pointed him out, I'd know). Even beyond that, I generally like Jeffrey Jones as an actor, so there.

31) The best cinematic antidote to a cultural stereotype (sexual, political, regional, whatever).

This is tough, because movies tend to establish stereotypes more than explode them. That said, any movie that realistically portrays a character as a human being rather than as a label (i.e. their sex, political agenda, regional affiliation, etc...) would be good. Specific examples are difficult, though I find it interesting that the thread at SLIFR featured multiple examples of movies that demonstrated "that not all Christians are arrogant, selfish, sanctimonious hypocrites." However, it's a tough line to hug. How do you do this without establishing a counter-stereotype? Wouldn't that be just as bad? Again, the best you could hope for is to see someone as an individual, rather than a member of a race, political party, sex, etc... and even that would probably be subjective. Ironically, movies that set out to address this kind of thing probably don't succeed often because they're too direct and confrontational.

32) Second favorite John Wayne movie.

I haven't seen a ton of movies from his catalog, but I'll just go with Rio Bravo.

33) Favorite movie car chase.

This is quite difficult to narrow down. I have to admit that the first movie that leapt to mind was Ronin. That's obviously a movie that relies on past car chases (particularly To Live and Die in L.A.) for inspiration, but Ronin has several great car chases, and they are just about perfectly executed. They take place in Europe, so all the cars are revving high and the streets are narrow, which really does make things more interesting. The other recent movie that came to mind was Death Proof, which obviously also owes a lot to older films like Vanishing Point. Honorable mentions go to Mad Max and The Road Warrior (those Aussies really know how to film them a car chase).


Mad Max
Also The Blues Brothers. The Bourne movies all have decent car chases. The freeway sequence in The Matrix Reloaded is actually quite good. A random nostalgic choice from the 80s that I actually kinda like: Running Scared. Ok, fine, since I'm listing them all out, I might as well also mention the obvious Bullitt and The French Connection. So there, I gave you like 20 answers. For car race fans, the Fury Road episode of The Hollywood Saloon is pretty cool.

34) In the spirit of His Girl Friday, propose a gender-switched remake of a classic or not-so-classic film. (Submitted by Patrick Robbins)

This is an excellent question, but one which is probably doomed. The only thing I could think of is a remake of the Evil Dead movies. The reason I say it's doomed is that Bruce Campbell's performance in those movies is so perfect that anyone else, male or female, is bound to pale in comparison. A woman in that sorta role could shine, though. I have no idea who could fill this kinda role, but I feel like it would be an interesting fit. In fact, I can't think of any sorta female physical comedy experts. Hurm. Maybe this would be a good idea.

35) Barbara Rhoades or Barbara Feldon?

I have no idea. Completely unrelated, but damn, this quiz is long. I feel like it's a lot longer than other previous quizes.

36) Favorite Andre De Toth movie.

I guess House of Wax, by default (i.e. I haven't seen any of his other films). Also of note, his IMDB picture qualifies him for a future question, but he won't win...

37) If you could take one filmmaker's entire body of work and erase it from all time and memory, as if it had never happened, whose oeuvre would it be? (Submitted by Tom Sutpen)

This type of question has come up a couple of times before, and I really can't bring myself to destroy films, even horrible films I hate. I guess I'm just not the censoring type.

38) Name a film you actively hated when you first encountered it, only to see it again later in life and fall in love with it.

I can't believe this is what I came up with, but here goes: This is probably the opposite of what you're looking for and, well, a little embarrassing, but I hated Road House when it came out, and even later when it became a sorta so-bad-it's-good movie in the 90s. It wasn't until a few years ago that I came to recognize the genius of that film.

39) Max Ophuls or Marcel Ophuls? (Submitted by Tom Sutpen)

He said who in the what now?

40) In which club would you most want an active membership, the Delta Tau Chi fraternity, the Cutters or the Warriors? And which member would you most resemble, either physically or in personality?

I guess Delta Tau Chi because I hate bicyclists and am not violent enough to make it in a gang. The Deltas seem like a fun-loving bunch, but then, I probably wouldn't cut it there either. I guess I'm just not cut out for groups.

41) Your favorite movie cliche.

There are a million of these, but I love how every time a computer is shown on screen, it has some sort of newfangled GUI that can render 3D simulations within minutes. Even better, whenever our heroes are attempting to "clean up" some photographic evidence, and end up with nearly perfect images. Heh.

42) Vincente Minnelli or Stanley Donen? (Submitted by Bob Westal)

Difficult choice. I've seen more of Donen (and really, how do you beat Singin' in the Rain (and this from a guy who normally hates musicals)), but I want to see more of Minnelli. For now, it's Donen, but it seems like Minnelli has a broader, more well rounded filmography.

43) Favorite Christmas-themed horror movie or sequence.

I never saw this until last year, but Black Christmas is a fantastic movie that any fan of the horror genre (especially slasher fans) absolutely must watch. This movie set the tone for all that came after it (incidentally, the film is directed by Bob Clarke, who also did the polar opposite A Christmas Story, which is probably a better movie, but still.)


Black Christmas
44) Favorite moment of self- or selfless sacrifice in a movie.

The obvious choice is the end of Casablanca, but I have to embrace my nerdy nature and go with Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

45) If you were the cinematic Spanish Inquisition, which movie cult (or cult movie) would you decimate? (Submitted by Bob Westal)

Again with the censorship! Honestly, the world is big enough to contain movies I don't like (even cult movies with annoying followers).

46) Caroline Munro or Veronica Carlson?

Definitely Caroline Munro. I mean, she's a Bond girl, and she's got some nice slashers under her belt too. Apparently she was in the Dr. Phibes movies too, though I can't picture her in those. Veronica Carlson appears to be in a bunch of Hammer horror films, but none that I've seen (and I have to say that I was disappointed by the Hammer horror films I did see...).

47) Favorite eye-patch wearing director. (Submitted by Patty Cozzalio)

Raoul Walsh. He looks like a Bond villain. Interestingly, this makes the third straight quiz where I've talked about Raoul Walsh. Pretty good considering I've only ever seen one of his films.


48) Favorite ambiguous movie ending. (Original somewhat ambiguous submission---“Something about ambiguous movie endings!”-- by Jim Emerson, who may have some inspiration of his own to offer you.)

The Thing (the Carpenter remake) has an awesome ambiguous ending. I'll just leave it at that.

49) In giving thanks for the movies this year, what are you most thankful for?

I won't go into specific movies (that's what January is for, what with the awards and the top 10s, etc...), but I'll just say that I'm thankful for the accessibility of watching movies, whether that be through DVD/BR, Netflix (and their online streaming service which now actually works on my PS3), the theaters (Philadelphia isn't New York or LA or even Chicago or Austin, but as near as I can tell, it's still a pretty good movie town), or cable television. I've never watched so many movies in my life. This is also probably also thanks to great movie podcasts, most of which are now defunct, but still.

50) George Kennedy or Alan North? (Submitted by Peet Gelderblom)

George Kennedy. No contest really, even when comparing the two as Captain Ed Hocken:p



Recent Podcast Listening
Podcasts are strange beasts in that most of my favorites usually end up closing down (often right after I discover them!) This isn't really surprising. By all accounts, putting out a well produced podcast with regularity has got to be very time consuming. When you consider that most podcasters are doing it as a hobby, it's pretty easy to see that it would take a toll. I'm still amazed at Filmspotting's longevity, though they at least have some income and professional output (I believe their show airs on Chicago Public Radio). Anyway, some interesting stuff lately:

• All Movie Talk - I knew I kept this in iTunes for a reason. Imagine my surprise when the long-defunct movie podcast suddenly sprouted a new episode last month. Of course, they're not planning on weekly podcasts like they used to do, but it's good to have them back. I'm hoping for maybe 1 a month. So far, they've recapped what's happened in their absence and also did an episode about accessible old and foreign movies, which turns out to be an interesting topic (and one which added about 10 movies to my Netflix queue).
• A Life Well Wasted - Extremely well produced podcast about video games and the people that play them. It's put out by Robert Ashley, a freelance video game journalist and musician, and everything about the show, from the website design and posters (designed by the awesome Olly Moss), to the music and editing, to the actual interviews and subjects, is very well done. While ostensibly about video games, Ashley takes a broader view, often focusing on a more human element (examples include people who collect old video games and a guy that gave up playing video games for a year). The only real problem here is that the episodes are few and far between. But given the quality of the production, it's always worth the wait. I think he'd like to do one a month, but he has trouble finding subjects to interview and of course, editing the shows has to be a bear. Great stuff though, and well worth a listen.
• My New Best Friend - I'll be honest. I haven't listened to this yet. But it sounds interesting. I won't even try to summarize the concept, but it appears to basically be an interview show (moderated by the hilarious Clown vs. Wolf blogger Greg Rice) where one actor interviews another actor. I'm not really sure what to make of it, but I will most definitely be checking it out.
• 4 Guys, 1 Up - This one isn't technically new, but since the departure of Garnett Lee from 1 Up, David Ellis has taken over the show, renamed it, and retooled the format a bit. What they're going for is to have an industry guest every week, whether the guest be another journalist or an actual video game designer. So far, the shows have been good and I like the more structured format. Along with Filmspotting, this remains my only other "must listen" show every week.

I've actually toyed around with the concept of doing a podcast myself, but I have a feeling that it'll be a while before anything really comes of it. There's some groundwork I'd need to do first, and I'd also have to find a suitable cohost (I hate the way single person podcasts sound, and also, I'm just not articulate enough - I need someone to play off of...) Plus, the whole "time-consuming" thing won't make things very easy... I doubt I'd ever be able to do a weekly podcast, but then, I'm getting ahead of myself. For now, I'll have to be content with listening to podcasts...



The 2009 Holiday Movie Season
I've noticed lately that people are starting to put out best of the decade lists. Me, I have a hard enough time putting out a best of the year lists, and this year is no exception. It's been a decent year; better than last year, but then, that's not saying much. 2009 still suffered from the tail end of the writers' strike, though that should be out of our system by now. And now we're beginning to approach the time of year when Hollywood tones down the explosions and starts putting out their prestige fare in the hopes of garnering an Oscar (with at least one notable exception)... but I have to say, i was much more intrigued by the movies being dumped off in August than most of those being released in December. That being said, there are still a few movies I'm interested in seeing:

• The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (November 20) - I'm a little disappointed that this isn't getting a wide release, as it's something that seems like a big barrel of weird fun. I mean, it stars an apparently unhinged Nicolas Cage and is directed by Werner Herzog. From what I've seen, I have this almost cognitive dissonance in my head that I can't quite reconcile, but that only really makes me want to see this more. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get to it, but it looks like fun.
• Fantastic Mr. Fox (November 25) - So this came out last week and I haven't had a chance to see it yet, but it looks fantastic. I'm really intrigued to see Wes Anderson tackle something outside his usual "quirky" wheelhouse (which has been getting a bit stale of late). It's part of a larger trend this year of young, trendy directors taking on children's stories (the other notable example being Where the Wild Things Are), which I found rather interesting. It's also interesting in that this year really does have a lot of different animation styles going on. This movie's got a very old-school stop-motion style, but this year you've also got the more advanced stop-motion of Coraline, the computer generated art of Up and even more traditional hand animated fare like Disney's The Princess and the Frog and Miyazaki's Ponyo.
• Up in the Air (December 4) - Jason Reitman's third film is garnering a lot of buzz these days. From what I've seen, I don't think it will overtake Thank You for Smoking as his best film, but I have hope. But then, from what I've heard, it's a bit of a downer. I'm hoping for some levity through funny cameos though...
• The Lovely Bones (December 11) - Peter Jackson switches gears to a (relatively) low budget drama about the murder of a 14 year old? I'm there. I haven't read the book and only have a vague idea of what it's about, so I'm excited for this one.
• Avatar (December 18) - I suppose this is the one exception to the traditional December fare, but despite my misgivings (this film is a charter member of the "Films I want to see even though I know they will suck" list (see the bottom of this post)), I am looking forward to the return of James Cameron. I have to admit that I'm not very impressed with what I've seen so far (the dialogue seems especially bad), but you never know and at the very least, it looks to have some breathtaking action sequences...
• Other Stuff: The Boat That Rocked/Pirate Radio, Ninja Assassin, The Road, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and Sherlock Holmes.
• Stuff to Watch on DVD/BD: February 2 looks busy... I may have to delay my top 10 list until I see these two: Black Dynamite and The House of the Devil. I would also really like to see A Serious Man, but that's another film that only had a very limited release and I can't even find a date for the DVD/BD... I know nothing about Franklyn other than that it's apparently SF and already out on DVD, so it's in my queue. I missed Extract when it was in theaters, and it's coming on DVD in December. Perhaps less excited about 9, Pandorum, and Jennifer's Body, but they're also coming out soon...

And that about covers it. Will any of these make my top 10? There is certainly a chance, but I don't see more than 1 or 2 making it on the list (provided I manage to see all these, many of which I predict I won't be able to due to annoying limited releases and lengthy waits for DVD/BD).



6WH: Postscript
So I finished up my yearly horror movie marathon on Halloween last week, and it seems that while most bloggers didn't partake in an entire 6 weeks of horror movie watching, many did fire up their DVD players on Halloween weekend... their posts have been hitting all this week, including people who watched many of my favrorite series. Here's a few links:

• Nightmare on Elm Street thoughts from Ben, who's watched the first several movies in the series. He seems to have cooled considerably on the original movie:

  Not really scary, anymore...a bunch of jump scares is all that's left. Although I can see how this movie could have been really scary when it first came out. I think Freddy may have been the first "Supernatural Monster Demon" slasher. The modern audience is so steeped in the tropes and concepts of slasher movies now that the concept isn't frightening anymore.

  It's an interesting point: Context matters. I have to wonder if audiences today would be as terrified of the movie as I was... I ended up writing rather lengthy comments in response (and, uh, just blabbing about the movie), which I will excerpt a bit here (I suppose it's kinda tacky to post a quote of my own comments, but whatever):

  I was terrified by the first NoES when I was a kid, and I think there is still some residual terror there for me. The thing that really scares me is the inescapable nature of the plot. How do you hide from something that gets you when you sleep? Also: Some of the best and most creative death scenes in all of slasherdom.
  
  One of my favorite things about the series is that it takes a common trope and crutch of the horror genre - the dream sequence - and really explores it in a unique and interesting way. Normally dream sequences are used (and overused) as a sorta false scare. In NoES series, they ARE the scare. Then there's the way that Craven plays around with the perceptions of waking life and dreaming, sometimes implying one when the other is what's really happening. It's a movie that invites more intellectual engagement than most slashers, which again separates it from the pack.
  
  The other notable component about Freddy is that he's got a personality. The other classic slashers like Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers are almost robotic in nature. They are implacable and yet almost predictable. Freddy's personality certainly isn't pleasant. He's a vicious sadist with a wicked sense of humor, but that's something that is missing from the grand majority of slasher films (indeed, most slashers don't even talk, and even when they do, they don't say much).

  Ben also covers part 2 and part 3 in his post (including an interesting bit about dysfunctional families - I'm in Ben's boat when it comes to that discussion)... I had planned to cover more of the series in this year's 6WH series, but got stuck at part 3, as Netflix was stuck on "Very Long Wait" (and it appears to still be there). I've seen bits and pieces of most of the films, but I've only seen a few of them from beginning to end, and one that I really want to catch up with is New Nightmare. That movie is intriguing for a couple of reasons. First, Wes Craven returns to the series he created and puts a new spin on things (and I like Craven's style). Second, it was apparently Craven's first attempt at a sorta post-ironic slasher... an approach he would score with in his later film, Scream. It should be interesting to see what the upcoming Elm Street remake brings to the table as well (at the very least, I bet we can expect a nice new edition of the original on Blu-Ray, right? That's one big benefit of the recent horror remake trend...)
• Friday the 13th: What’s it all about, Jason?: Justin Zyduck watched a few Friday the 13th movies in preparation for Halloween, and he seems to have a very common reaction to the series (at least, among folks my age): "It’s my favorite horror series, and I’m not always sure why." Heh. Indeed, this sort of feeling seems to be common amongst all horror films, leading to similar statements about all sorts of other movies. I suspect it has something to do with the irrational nature of fear. Not that I'm immune or anything. For instance, I have often professed my inexplicable love of Phantasm and earlier this year, I revisited all the Friday the 13th movies even though I have no idea why I enjoy them so much. Anywho, Justin eventually settles on Jason as the reason he likes the series so much:

  He’s not a character, he’s a big scary guy who walks around killing whoever he comes upon. Jason is a gimmick - and I say that as someone who loves Jason. A good gimmick is still a gimmick, and Jason as a horror icon owes everything - everything - to being a fantastic visual; there’s no reason in the story or thematically why he should be wearing a hockey mask, but it works to create a haunting image.

  It's a good post. He also mentions His Name Was Jason, a fluffy little documentary covering the history of the franchise. It's a decent watch, but I found it lacking for some reason. I think it's missing some of the outside perspective of the films, instead focusing in on those who actually made the films. Maybe that's a bit harsh... I just wish Wes Craven and John Carpenter interviews were in every horror documentary.
• On Army of Darkness: Kelson celebrated the holiday by watching the Evil Dead movies, and in a little bit of horror blasphemy, mentions that his favorite of the series is actually Army of Darkness. He also makes an excellent observation about the series:

  I also started thinking about what sets the Evil Dead trilogy apart from other 1980s horror series: instead of focusing on the villains, the later installments are all about the hero.
  
  Friday the 13th? All about Jason. Nightmare on Elm Street? Freddie Kruger. Hellraiser? Pinhead and the Cenobites.
  
  Evil Dead? Ash. Hail to the King.

  Brilliant. To me, the other interesting thing about this series has always been how it encapsulated the trajectory of the horror genre throughout the 80s and into the 90s. The Evil Dead was made in 1981 and was an excellent low-budget horror film. It wasn't perfect, but it was an earnest effort and it's primary purpose was to establish tension. Evil Dead II was made in 1987, and here you see pretty much the same story as part 1, but with more comedic overtones. There were still some scares, but you also saw elements of slapstick and other physical comedy. By 1992, the series had morphed into outright comedy. There were a few horror elements in Army of Darkness, but more than anything else, the purpose of that film was to make you laugh. Horror was not doing so well as a movie genre in the 90s, in large part because it had become laughable. No one was scared anymore. This also went for series like Nightmare on Elm Street, which stopped being scary somewhere around part 4 (though I'm not sure, as I haven't revisited yet:) Freddy's once creepy and sadistic villain became a caricature of himself, relying a little too much on one liners and silly jokes. I don't mean to imply that the Evil Dead movies caused this or that they're bad or anything, I just think they encapsulate the phenomenon rather well (and in just 3 movies made during the 10-11 year span).
• Socialists and Zombies: Not sure if Fledge was watching zombie movies for Halloween, but he has some interesting musings about:

  ...an allegorical film where zombies attack a town in the usual fashion, and are killed off by shotguns by the usual rouugh types, but for some reason everyone in the film never uses the word “zombies”, instead they call them “socialists” - and instead of brains, the zombies go looking for wallets.

  It's perhaps a bit too blatant for my tastes, but then, that's part of the reason I don't care much for zombie movies. The socio-political statements are always too obvious. Of course, as with any metaphor, you can twist it to mean something else if you try hard enough. To me, zombies could almost always be read as representative of socialism. There is no private ownership in zombie society. They allocate resources (i.e. food) as they find it. You don’t see zombies hoarding resources, nor do you usually see zombies eating a body by themselves. The limiting factor seems to be how many zombies can physically surround the food. There is no greed, there is no hierarchy, there is no emotion, hell, there is no money in zombie society. There are no poor or rich - all are equal. Even in George Romero's original Dawn of the Dead, you could read the zombies that way. The film would still be a scathing indictment of consumer culture and capitalism, but those elements are captured very well by the humans in the film. In any case, I still don't care for zombies. They're just too easy to map fears onto.

Completely unrelated, but I got my PS3 Netflix disc on Friday. It's a bit of an awkward experience (you have to put a disc into the PS3 every time you want to watch) and it can be very sloooow... but in the end, I'm still excited. It's probably not as good as the XBox functionality, but it's a lot better than my experiments with PlayOn and other media streaming solutions. Again, it's slow, but the quality seems pretty good (and I haven't even watched one of the available HD movies) and the experience is fine for now. Also, I'm pretty sure the awkward experience is due to some sort of XBox exclusivity deal Netflix is trying to get around by using a disc. It's rumored that the functionality will be made available directly on the XMB next year (and that the whole disc thing will just go away). I'm also assuming some improvements in the application as time goes on. This seems to be the way Sony has been operating with PSN. It seems to be steadily improving as time goes on, and of course, it's free so I don't have to pay to use internet features on my PS3 (XBox users have to pay to use Netflix streaming). In any case, I'm just happy that I can watch my Netflix streaming stuff through my PS3. For those who are interested in what the experience is like, Joystiq has a hands-on video...



18½ Philadelphia Film Festival Recap
On Saturday, October 17 I made the trek into the city to watch four films from the 18½ Philadelphia Film Festival. Alas, that comprised the whole of my viewing experience for this festival, but it was a very good day. Here's a quick recap of three of the films:

• Stingray Sam: This eclectic Musical/Comedy/Sci-Fi/Western film is quite a strange film. Constructed as a series of six ten minute shorts, each with their own opening and closing credits as well as faux sponsors, it's meant to resemble old low-budget SF serials. The story concerns Stingray Sam, a lounge singer on Mars, who teams up with his old cohort, The Quasar Kid, to rescue a kidnapped child. The little girl is being held captive by a spoiled man who is the offspring of two men (one of the highlights of the film is a musical interlude in which the genetic experiments that allowed this union are chronicled - the song consists mostly of the two parents' names and their offspring's name, which is a combination - for example, Fredrick and Edward produced Fredward! It's surprisingly long and hysterically funny with an almost Biblical feel...) The whole film is narrated by David Hyde Pierce, who does an excellent job selling the absurdities and eccentricities of the film's world. The highlights, for me, were the historical digressions and the visual collage work. The actual live action stuff was a bit lacking, though I like some of the stuff there too (I love the recurring handshake, which is this ridiculously long series of gestures that goes from funny, to annoying and back into funny). I usually hate musicals, but for the most part, this film worked well enough for me (I tend to like musicals better when there's a lot more going on besides the music). So this was one of the stranger films I've seen, but it's quite entertaining and well worth a watch. At least the first episode is available on the website too, so check it out... ***
• Bronson: This movie tells the story of Michael Peterson, the U.K.'s most famous (and violent) prisoner. Originally sentenced to seven years in prison, he has now served 34 years, 30 of them in solitary confinement. There is only one interruption in his career as a prisoner, during which time he seeks to make a living by bare-fisted brawling - taking the name Charles Bronson as his "fighting name." But it doesn't take long for him to get back into prison. Once there, he engages in his favorite pastime - taking a hostage, stripping naked, greasing himself up, and then fighting the guards who come to rescue the hostage. Sometimes he doesn't even need a hostage. The film doesn't really offer much in the way of insight into Bronson, but then, I'm not sure there's anything to really know. Sometimes there's no explanation for someone's behavior. As near as I can tell, the most we get to know him is during one of his less violent periods, when he is allowed to pursue art. He seems to enjoy creating art quite a bit... until the warden indicates that art may lead to rehabilitation, at which point Bronson takes the art teacher hostage, strips naked, etc... It becomes somewhat clear that Bronson is an artist, and his preferred medium is violence. It's ultimately a bit pointless, but it's never boring and Bronson is played with volcanic rage by Tom Hardy. It's an impressive and forceful performance, and he pretty much carries the movie on his shoulders (hard to believe it's the same guy who played the villain in Star Trek: Nemisis). I've gone back and forth on this movie, because I don't generally like character studies, especially ones that don't offer much insight or purpose, but I can't help but respect what this movie has done. ***
• Red Cliff: John Woo returns to his native China... and after an extended hiatus, he also returns to good filmmaking. In this movie, Woo has created a historical epic, retelling stories of the warring factions in China near the fall of the Han dynasty. Various warlords were vying for power during this period, but rather than attempting to capture the entire story, Woo focuses in on one of the popular milestones. Unsurprisingly, it's an episode that lends itself to all sorts of epic battle sequences and tactical maneuverings. The battles are pure spectacle, mixing well used CGI with old-school wire-work and kung fu. Some of the characters take on almost mythological personas during these sequences, and they are a joy to watch. However, even during the down times between battles, things are kept interesting by strategic and tactical machinations being played on both sides of the battle. There are several memorable sequences, including one of my favorites in which one side of the fight (the side we are rooting for) realizes that it is low on arrows and someone devises a way to replenish their supplies. It's a little long and sometimes the action approaches fantasy, which doesn't always mix that well with the more realistic historical treatment, but ultimately it works very well. Definitely Woo's best work in well over a decade and one of the better films of this year. This film should be getting a release in November, and if you like historical epics, this is the best one in a while. ***1/2

I also saw Rembrandt's J'accuse, but there's sufficient material there for a separate post. I posted a quick thought on Twitter immediately after seeing it, and after some time, I don't think my opinion has changed much. Still, there's a ton of interesting things about the film that I want to get into...

All in all, it was a very good day and a much better experience than the last few movies I'd seen at the Philly Film Fest... Not sure if that's because it was all in one day or if it was because the films were just better, but whatever the case, I had a lot of fun.

Update: I've written a rather long and involved post about the aforementioned Rembrandt's J'accuse...



Halloween 2009
So this year's Six Weeks of Halloween horror movie marathon concludes with the best Halloween movie of all time. Also, in the extended entry, some of my favorite title screens from recently watched films...


Again, more title screens in the extended entry... Have a great Halloween!

Also, while I realize this isn't especially in the spirit of the marathon, Go Phillies!

















6WH: Week 6.5 - Speed Round!
Only a few days away from Halloween, so I figured it's time to cover some movies that I've seen recently, but that haven't been discussed in the Six Weeks of Halloween marathon so far. Some of them just didn't fit with a given week's theme, and for others I only made it two movies into the theme. So here goes:

• Horror of Dracula: First in a Hammer Horror double feature: Christopher Lee is a good Dracula, Peter Cushing is always good, and the plot is a slight improvement over the original, but I'm kinda let down by all these old Vampire movies. I liked the original better, but even that wasn't so great. **1/2
  
  
  
• The Curse of Frankenstein: Second in a Hammer Horror double feature: Peter Cushing and Robert Urquhart are excellent, but I didn't care for Christopher Lee as the Monster (on the other hand, the reveal of the Monster is great filmmaking). The story is similar, but Frankenstein is more diabolical, with the conscience being stressed by the character of Paul. Ultimately, the original is a lot better. **
• Cannibal Holocaust: Wow, this is a disgusting and irresponsible film. I guess it's effective, but the real animal mutilation is inexcusable. I don't especially want to watch this ever again...
• The House on Sorority Row: A pretty straightforward 80s slasher, I had actually gotten this confused with Slumber Party Massacre (and am a little disappointed that those movies aren't on Netflix). It has a few good Boo! moments, some interesting visuals, and some unexpected plot development too. Interestingly, I watched this around the same time as Slaughter High, and both movies feature quasi-jester costume hat thingys. **1/2
• The Burning: Yet another in the summer camp slasher genre, this one is perhaps most notable for featuring Jason Alexander (with hair!) and being one of the first films produced by the Weinsteins. Maybe a bit above average, but not really rivaling the greats. **1/2
  
  
  
• Prom Night: Another slasher of the high school variety. Aside from the fact that it stars Jamie Lee Curtis and Leslie Nielsen, this is fairly unremarkable. I guess the relatively few kills distinguishes this one, as does the "twist" ending (which is pretty easy to see coming). Perhaps worth watching for the absolutely horrific dance sequence in the middle of the film. Yikes. **
• The Prowler: Yeah, another slasher... but this one is slightly above average. I rather like the backstory and the killer's outfit. **1/2
• The Last House on the Left: Wes Craven's first film and from a technical perspective, one of his weaker films. However, he taps into something raw and dark with the general story, which is why it gets so much praise, even today. ***
• Surveillance: Jennifer Lynch (daughter of David) directed this rather twisted tale. It starts with promise as something of a modern, dark Rashomon type story, but it eventually takes things in a different direction. It's perhaps a little too reliant on a twist in the story, but I thought it was rather well done. Some interesting casting choices as well. ***
• Final Destination 3: Surprisingly good for a third entry in a pretty straightforward series. By this film, the formula was well in place, but they were still having fun executing it. **1/2
• Ginger Snaps: Lycanthropy as a metaphor for puberty, and reasonably well done. ***
• Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust: I always thought vampires would make the best vampire hunters, and a number of stories play on that, but they always seem to be half-vampire, half-human. Why is that? Anyway, I rather enjoyed this film much more than the various Dracula films I saw. Also, it's nice to sneak some anime into the marathon. ***
  
  
  
• Don't Look Now: I've heard a lot of good things about this, so I was a little disappointed when I finally sat down to watch it. The pacing is rather awkward and I think I might just hate Nicolas Roeg's visual style and editing (I didn't like The Man Who Fell To Earth either). The ending of this film almost makes up for it, and there are some good moments throughout. **1/2
• Blue Sunshine: Don't do acid, kids. Because 10 years later your hair might fall out and you'll go crazy and start murdering people. Or something. There are some insanely stupid things in the script (i.e. when he learns how to shoot the gun, then repeats his lesson later in the movie), but I had a lot of fun with this one, and it's reasonably well crafted too. ***
• Masters of Horror: Family: Norm! This was one of John Landis' episodes, and whatever you think of the man, he's a decent filmmaker. This is an above average MoH episode, but clearly not the best. ***
• Masters of Horror: Valerie on the Stairs: Another above average MoH episode, this time directed by Mick Garris and based on a Clive Barker story. It reminded me a lot of other episodes, but it was also pretty good. ***
• Nightbreed: It has its moments, but it is far inferior to the book and I'd rather Barker focused his attention on writing rather than directing. Not that this movie held anything back, but seriously man, when the hell are you going to write the Book of the Art 3 or even The Scarlet Gospels. He's been talking about both novels for like 15 years (no exaggeration). Dammit. Anyway, the movie features David Cronenberg as an actor and a few interesting monsterous characters too. **
• Deep Red: This one is on its way here from Netflix, I plan to view it and write something up for the Italian Horror blog-a-thon...
• The Walking Dead: Based mostly on Karina Longworth's recommendation on the now defect Filmcouch podcast a while ago, this one is also on its way. It stars Boris Karloff and is directed by Michael Curtiz - how could it be bad?
• Blood Feast: Also on its way. I figure I need to see some Herschell Gordon Lewis at some point, and this seems like a good place to start.

That's all for now. I included some films I still need to watch above, but I'll also probably watch some of the old standbys, notably Halloween.



6WH: Week 6
It's hard to believe we're in the last week before Halloween, but here we are, coming down the homestretch. This is another week without a real theme, but they're all films I've wanted to see since last year's 6WH marathon.

• Season's Greetings (short film)
• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror XX
• Somegreybloke: Trick or Treat
• Trick 'r Treat: I've been hearing about this film for about 2 years now. It gets rave reviews everywhere it goes. Festival screenings were packed and viewers were, by all appearances, very enthusiastic about the film. Devin Faraci even ranked it as his #6 movie of 2008 and called it the best Halloween movie of all time (even though it hadn't officially come out yet). Whether it was because of internal politics at Warner Brothers or because they were scared of the Saw franchise, the film never got it's rightful theatrical release... but it has finally appeared on DVD/BR and so I now get to watch it, and it's quite good. I'm not entirely sure it lived up to the hype, but it's still a very good film. The movie consists of several intertwined but mostly unrelated stories, sorta like a horror version of Pulp Fiction (a lot of horror anthologies have more delineation between the various short stories, whereas this movie has a lot of overlap). The thing I like best about the film is that it truly engages the holiday of Halloween like no other movie has. Sure, I love John Carpenter's original Halloween, but that story wasn't really dependent on the holiday... The great thing about Trick 'r Treat is that it incorporates all sorts of Halloween lore and rituals as plot elements. Most of the dangers are things we've heard of: watch out for poisoned candy (or candy with razor blades), never blow out a Jack O'Lantern, and so on. Writer/director Michael Dougherty even attempts to add to the mythology by creating a kind of mischievous mascot in Sam (short for Samhain), the little guy with the orange outfit and sack mask. One of the segments features a modern urban legend, several seem to indicate that things are more dangerous than they seem, and there are some connections between the segments. To be sure, I'd like to see more of Halloween's traditions examined than what appears here, but it's still quite good. I suspect it will become a big cult hit in the years to come, as it is a film that truly celebrates the holiday, but it's hard to tell if it will ever really attain that status as the go-to Halloween movie. Very solid stuff, one of the better horror films of the past few years, and something I definitely want to revisit in the future. ***
  
  
  
• The Others (trailer)
• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror VII: The Thing and I (sorry no vid online)
• Somegreybloke: Halloween 08
• The Other: Last year I watched The Others and Steven noted in a later comment that The Other is also a very creepy film. After a fitful start and a twist I saw coming a mile away, he was indeed correct to note the creepiness factor in this film. It starts slow, following some kids who are playing on a farm (or at least, a very rural area). There's definitely something odd about the main characters, and we later find that their grandmother has taught them how to play a "game" where they essentially practice telepathy. We first see them do it with animals, then later with humans. Of course, mysterious accidents start happening and dead bodies begin appearing, and it's all centered around this little boy Niles and his twin brother Holland. The beginning of the film is unevenly paced, but reasonably effective at setting the stage and hinting at things bubbling beneath the surface of this otherwise ordinary farm. About 2/3 of the way through the movie, there is a twist. Now, it's not a poorly executed twist, to be sure, but it is something that's been done a million times since this film was made in 1972, so I had it pegged from the first scene in the film. But as luck would have it, the film is not completely reliant on the twist to establish the chills. Indeed, from that point on, things get much creepier and much more intense. It all leads up to a rather dark ending that I found quite shocking. There's a real edge to this movie that isn't apparent at first, but which hit like a ton of bricks later in the movie. I don't want to ruin anything, and the movie is certainly not gross, but there are some very disturbing scenes towards the end. If you're a fan of the slower burning 70s psychological horror, this is a pretty good example of the genre. ***
  
  
  
• The Toxic Avenger (trailer)
• Bad Taste (trailer)
• Evil Aliens (trailer)
• Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead: I had originally planned to do a whole week of Troma films, but due to time constraints and quite frankly, not being in the right mood for extreme (and I do mean extreme) gore, I decided to limit it to just this one entry, which has to be a contender for the goriest movie of all time (and even among the other Troma movies, that's saying a lot). There is so much fake blook, feces, and, uh, green chicken zombie goop that is sprayed all over the place in this movie that I couldn't help but wonder where it was all coming from. I mean, there is splatter flicks, and then there's this movie where people gush more blood and pus than could ever conceivably fit in their body. There's even a shot of a camera pointing up from within a toilet (while someone is on the toilet). The film itself takes aim at the fast food industry, and though it gets a few digs in at the typical protester-type, it's pretty steadfast in its desire to gross you out about the food industry. Don't get me wrong, there's no attempt to seriously examine anything in the movie, but those Troma types like to whip a message at you along with all the goop and blood. Also, it has musical numbers. I was certainly not expecting that, though the songs are spread somewhat unevenly throughout the film. In the end, what we're left with is an extremely silly, amazingly gory film. If you're a fan of the Troma aesthetic, you'll love it. If not, you could possibly hate it. It's pretty disgusting after all (of course, that's exactly what it's going for, so it's hard to hold that against them). **1/2
  
  
  

That's all for now. Coming down the homestretch, I've got a couple of additional posts planned for this week, including a speed round of movies I watched but haven't covered (just like last year), and some other stuff too, so stay tuned.



6WH: Week 5.5 - Vincent Price
It has recently come to my attention that I am woefully deficient in my knowledge of Vincent Price and his filmography. So I set about rectifying that, and so I've watched (or rewatched) four of his movies in the past couple of weeks.

• The Muppet Show with special guest Vincent Price
• Sawed by the Bell (Robot Chicken)
• Se7en (trailer)
• The Abominable Dr. Phibes: Doctors are being found dead under mysterious circumstances. As the deaths continue, a pattern begins to emerge. The deaths are following the 9 biblical plagues and the dead doctors were all involved in an unsuccessful operation involving the wife of Dr. Anton Phibes (who is a concert organist, theological scholar, and mechanical genius). 9 plagues, 9 doctors. But Dr. Phibes can't be the one responsible, can he? He died in a car accident after the death of his wife! This isn't the world's greatest movie, but it's campy fun and you can definitely see the influence in modern films like Se7en (biblically inspired kills) and Saw (dig the key out of this body to save your son). The one major crime the movie commits is making it so that Dr. Phibes (played by Price) can't talk without the aid of some device that sorta distorts his voice (I could listen to Price reading the phone book, why cast him in a role without much talking and a distorted voice?). On the other hand, it turns out that Dr. Phibes doesn't actually look like that, he's just wearing a Vincent Price mask. Heh. Anyway, Price is very good (despite the dearth of dialogue), and I also rather liked the bumbling Inspector Trout (played by Peter Jeffrey). The movie was followed by a quick sequel, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, this time focusing on Egyptian mythology for his kills, but that film is really just more of the same. So the sequel is worth a watch if you liked the first one, but nothing special. **1/2 (for both movies)
  
  
  
• Vincent Price Polaroid VHS commercial
• Suspiria (trailer)
• The Blair Witch Project (trailer)
• Witchfinder General: This isn't really so much of a horror film as it is a period costume drama with some horrific elements. Price plays Matthew Hopkins, the titular Witchfinder, and he's the villain. The film is set during the English civil war of the mid-1700s. As such, the authorities are engaged elsewhere, leaving Hopkins and his sadistic sidekick to roam the countryside and make whatever accusations they like. There's nothing pious or righteous about what they do, it's a big power trip for them, and they usually make a tidy profit as well. In one town, they engage a priest and his beautiful niece, accusing them of witchcraft and eventually taking them down, leaving the niece's fiance to hunt down Hopkins in revenge. Price plays Hopkins as a total scumbag, cowardly and cruel, and you're hoping for his comeuppance throughout the film. This ends up being a much darker film than the other two covered in this post. Hopkins is a true scumbag and the film doesn't pull its punches when it comes to his exploits. Visually, the film has some interesting touches. The director, Michael Reeves, was very young when he made this movie, and he showed a lot of promise as a filmmaker... unfortunately, he died of a drug overdose not long after this movie was released. The film moves a little slower than I would have preferred, but it's still an interesting watch. **1/2
  
  
  
• The Raven, read by Vincent Price
• Cooking with Vincent Price (audio)
• House on Haunted Hill (trailer)
• The Tingler: The most notable and interesting thing about this film is that it is truly a gimmick, and I feel bad watching it on my television... this is a movie that demands to be seen on the big screen with a big crowd. Director William Castle pulled out all the stops here, even going so far as to install buzzers beneath certain seats in the theater that would vibrate the seats during especially scary moments, a system he called "Percepto." Indeed, at the start of the film, Castle himself walks on screen and warns you about it. Later in the film, Price kinda sorta directly addresses the audience in a rather clever way. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The film concerns Dr. Warren Chapin (played by Price) and his quest to understand fear. He discovers a mysterious creature that lives in vertebrates and grows when its host experiences fear. He calls this creature, The Tingler! It's a great bit of silly cinema logic, but in the world created by Castle and Price, it's almost believable. It was great fun (if not all that scary), even on the small screen. It must have been a blast to see this in the theater, especially during its heyday... ***

As I mentioned above, I could listen to Price read the phone book. While I couldn't find any clips of him doing just that, I did find the next best thing. Check out the Cooking With Vincent Price link. I'm particularly fond of Foods From the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Well, I didn't listen to the whole thing, but how could you not like that title?

In other news, Kernunrex is still going strong, putting me to shame with almost daily updates. Countdown to Halloween features numerous sites also blogging about horror this month. Dennis Cozzalio has a big post about Halloween reads and L.A. Repertory Cinema. Apparently there's an Italian Horror blog-a-thon getting underway over at Hugo Stiglitz Makes Movies as well. Too many movies, too little time...



6WH: Week 5 - No Discernible Theme Week
I was hoping to have some sort of theme this week, but the Philly Film Fest got in the way and so I didn't watch much this weekend. So here are a few mostly unrelated movies I've seen in the past week or two:

• Jack Chop (short film)
• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror V: Time and Punishment (excerpt)
• It's Alive (trailer)
• Grace: A pregnant woman named Madeline (Jordan Ladd) gets into a car accident. Her husband and unborn child are killed and even though no one thinks it's a good idea, she decides to carry the fetus to term. When the baby is born, Madeline's seemingly insane decision pays off, as the baby mysteriously comes back to life. Or does it!? Baby Grace certainly seems to have some strange appetites... So yeah, this movie is disgusting. On the other hand, that seems to be exactly what writer/director Paul Solet is going for. The movie doesn't take any of the typical horror film avenues that you'd expect, which is a good thing, but unfortunately, it also doesn't entirely work. The pacing is a bit uneven and the film moves awfully slowly at times. There's a little politics thrown in for good measure - Madeline is a vegan and the movie seems to be a bit snarky about that sort of thing (though it doesn't exactly glorify meat eating either). As the film progresses, there are some uncomfortable psychosexual moments concerning Madeline's mother-in-law and a bizarre encounter with a doctor and his antique breast pump. Indeed, this film sustains a pretty high level of discomfort throughout. The ending is a bit predictable (and one imagines that a sequel would take a more obvious horror movie tack), but that's only because there's not really anywhere else to go. This is risky and adventurous filmmaking, but I'm not really sure how to feel about it. It's certainly not enjoyable, but then, that's the point. Incidentally, the Blu-Ray for this movie seems to have a rather poor transfer, which is disappointing because from what I can see, it's a very slick and well photographed movie. **1/2
  
  
  
• Still Life (short film)
• Spiral (trailer)
• King in the Box (short film)
• Hatchet: Director Adam Green's love letter to the slasher film is entertaining and somewhat impressive in the post-Scream, ironic state of horror. A number of films have attempted to recapture the classical 80s slasher feel, but Green is the only one who has really done it well. Despite a decent amount of humor, there's no winking at the audience or irony in the film, which is a welcome strategy. Green obviously appreciates the genre and his enthusiasm shows through in the end product. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that's enough to make it a great film. A group of people visiting New Orleans for Mardi Gras sign up for a haunted swamp boat ride. Of course, the boat crashes near the house of local legend and possible ghost Victor Crowley, who is apparently none-to-pleased at the intrusion. Hijinks ensue. I have to admit that I wasn't that impressed with Crowley's look, but his backstory was ok and his killing methods are awesomely gory and a blast to watch. He doesn't just stab people, he goes the extra mile, literally ripping people's heads off. The characters are a step above the usual slasher fare and for the most part, you actually care when they get offed (but Crowley's creatively gory methods make it fun to watch anyway). All that being said, the film doesn't really have anywhere to go and it ends with something of a whimper. With a better ending and maybe a better villain design, this could have been a modern classic. As it is, it's a solid throwback slasher. This is nothing to sneeze at though, and Green seems to show a lot of promise. I very much enjoyed his follow up Spiral (which is an extremely different type of movie) and am looking forward to his next film, Frozen. **1/2
• The Time of the Great Pumpkin (Robot Chicken)
• Night of the Lepus (trailer)
• Jaws (trailer)
• Black Sheep: It's about goddamned time, isn't it? Those sheep think they're so cute. But no, they're bloodthirsty monsters. Yes, this film from New Zealand features genetically altered sheep that begin attacking and infecting their human masters. This movie is hilarious. Sometimes the transition from gory horror to slapstick or one-liners is a bit incongruous, but on the whole, it works well. With writer/director Jonathan King, we've got another case of someone who seems to have a genuine love for the genre, and you can see evidence of that on screen. For instance, when an infected human turns into a mutated sheep-monster, the transformation is handled almost exactly like various werewolf movies. Again, it's not a perfect mixture of humor and horror, but it works well enough as a B-movie... ***
  
  
  Sheep are evil

I'm a little disappointed that the trailer for Night of the Lepus doesn't even mention that it's a movie about giant, killer rabbits. You'd think that would be a prime selling point. Then again, it's apparently not a very good movie. Anywho, much more to come. Expect more on the coming Wednesdays, including some Hammer Horror, Vincent Price, and maybe even some Troma Studios stuff.



6WH: Slaughter High
We're coming down the homestretch of the Six Weeks of Halloween Horror Movie Marathon, so it's going to be all horror all the time here until we reach the glorious day of costumes and candy. Tonight, I'm playing along with the Final Girl film club and their selection of the cheesetastic 80s slasher, Slaughter High.

Meet Marty Rantzen, the uber-nerd of Doddsville High School. The resident jocks and hot chicks don't seem to like him very much and are always playing jokes on him. Thanks to a horrible April Fool's joke gone wrong, Rantzen is badly burned and scarred in a chemistry lab accident. Cut to 5 years later, when our unsuspecting jocks and hot chicks are invited to a class reunion at the now condemned school building. Someone's gone to a lot of trouble to get them all there and has set up one hell of a party filled with booze, drugs, and DEATH!


Marty the Nerd
I don't want to get carried away with picking apart the unrealities of the plot setup, but there are a lot of things that defy logic. I mean, wouldn't it seem odd when only 10 people showed up for a class reunion? And if you show up for your class reunion and the building is dilapidated and all locked up, would you stick around for like 5 hours before trying to get in (or, you know, leaving)? And walking around the school, the whole thing is in pretty bad shape... except for one room which is pretty lamely decorated... and this setup doesn't set off any alarms for people? Another strange plot point is how the characters deduce that Marty is attempting to kill them all on April Fool's day - the anniversary of his accident. But for some reason, they decide that April Fool's day ends at noon? What? (Update: According to BC at Horror Movie a Day: "IN EUROPE that’s how April Fool’s Day works. Here in the real world of America, we celebrate that shit all day!")

But that's all missing the point, isn't it? It takes a little while to get started, but it's fun once it does. Again, the progression of the plot (such as there is one) doesn't make much sense, but I appreciated the touch of Slasher Marty using chemistry-related means to kill off a few of the guests. I must also admit that the use of the creepy old woman jester mask thingy is pretty damn awesome (gratuitous shadow/silhouette shots of the hat, along with the auditory jingle are reasonably effective). Some of the kills strain credibility (to say the least), and because of the setup, we don't really care about... any of the characters, really. Even Marty isn't particularly likeable. He didn't deserve to be burned up in a chemical fire, of course, but that doesn't really make him a guy I want to spend a lot of time with. But the kills are at least somewhat creative at times, if not as gory as they could have been.


Marty lurks in the shadows!
I've got a mixed mind about the music by Harry Manfredini (of the Friday the 13th movie series fame). There are really two modes in evidence here: First, you've got a so-bad-it's-funny 80s synth-rock song that gets repeated ad nauseam throughout the movie. Second, you've got the typical F13/Psycho rip-off, with the shriek violins and whatnot. It's so obvious and overdone that it actually kinda works. The film is obviously not going for any sort of emotional resonance, it's just hoping to revel in the gory fun of your typical slasher film, and in that respect, the music works.

The ending of the film is rather bizarre, for a couple of reasons. First, it happens during the day, which is odd in itself. Second, well, I don't want to ruin the ending, but it's an amazingly bizarre, almost nonsensical sequence of events (which might, in some ways, answer some of the plot-related questions above - but then, it also opens up a whole new can of crazy worms).

In the end, what you've got here is a thoroughly 80s slasher film. It follows the conventions reasonably well and it has a few interesting touches, but it's not very good in any sort of objective sense. In fact, it's pretty bad, but it's a reasonably fun and entertaining bad that's well worth a watch if you're a fan of 80s culture and slashers. **

More screenshots and comments in the extended entry...

Update: Stacie has posted her review, along with all the other Film Club reviews. She also points out one of my favorite things about the sex scene that I forgot to mention. Check it out.


April Fool's Day!
As previously mentioned, this movie is pretty firmly part of the Slasher Calendar, taking place on April Fool's Day.


This is a teenager?
This is the drop dead gorgeous Caroline Munro. I suppose she's what passes for the heroine of this film, but while she is incredibly hot, there's no way she really passes for a teenager... or for that matter, someone who is 22 years old. She was easily in her mid thirties here, and to be honest, most of the rest of the cast is in the same boat (but the rest of the cast is nowhere near as nice to look at).




I believe this is what's referred to as "foreshadowing."


I love how the movie handles the physics of a bottle of liquid dropping on the table. Apparently it shoots a jet of acid directly at your face. The funny part is that they show the bottle crashing into the table, and the liquid doesn't splash much, then it cuts to his face and you get the above screen. Heh.


So after breaking into the building, they wander around the dilapidated building until they stumble onto this room, which is cleaned up and decorated in a decidedly craptacular manner. Again, no warning bells for these characters here? This is perhaps why it's not so bad watching them die horribly.


In one of the most hilariously typical scenes in the film, this guy takes a long drag on the joint, then while trying not to exhale too much, he says "That's good shit, man..." as he passes it on to the next in line. You really need to see this moment to get how perfect and hilarious it is. Classic.


At one point during the party, this douchebag shotguns a beer. I double-checked, and yes, he's drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon.


The implication is that Marty used his chemistry superpowers to poison the beer so that drinking it will cause your intestines to burst out of your stomach, but those of us familiar with Pabst Blue Ribbon aren't fooled.


Again, I'm pretty sure that Pabst Blue Ribbon does this anyway.


Another in a long line of silhouette shots...


One of the odder kills happens when two characters, who know that they're locked in this building with a homicidal maniac, decide to take a time out and fuck. Oh, and she's actually cheating on her boyfriend (who I believe was attempting to fix up a riding lawnmower in an attempt to escape - don't ask). Marty electrocutes them both.


Again, the conclusion of the film happens in broad daylight, giving you your first really good look at the killer... It's a pretty cool costume for a killer.


Look, it's the hulk! This is from the aforementioned crazy, almost nonsensical ending in which all the people who were killed come back as quasi-zombies or something.

Well, that wraps it up for this movie. I can see why it's become something of a cult hit, but it's not one of my favorites...



6WH: Week 4 - Slasher Part Twos
Continuing the Six Weeks of Halloween Horror Movie Marathon, this week I take a look at sequels to slasher films...

• It's the Gifts That I Hate (Robot Chicken)
• A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (trailer)
• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror VI: Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace (Sorry, can't find online vid)
• A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge: Like most sequels, this film is inferior to its predecessor, but I found it much better than I was expecting. What makes the movie work is that it's playing with variations on the theme instead of repeating the same stuff from the original film. In this movie, Freddy doesn't haunt the dreams of a group of teenagers, he focuses on one specific teen. Instead of murdering the teen in his sleep, Freddy possesses the teen and carries out his kills in the real world. This movie extends and twists Freddy's powers while retaining the brilliant inescapable nature of the original film. In that movie, you were afraid to sleep because Freddy might get you. In the sequel, you're afraid to sleep because Freddy might possess you and make you kill your friends. In some ways, this is an even more horrific idea and the film does its best to pull it off, but ultimately it's not as fresh or fun as the original. It has its moments though. The scene where Freddy climbs through our hero's stomach terrified me as a kid and I have to admit that it's still pretty effective. It's a valiant effort, and better than most sequels. **1/2
  
  
  
• Slumber Party Massacre 2 (NSFW trailer)
• Scream 2 (trailer)
• Friday the 13th, Part 2 (trailer)
• Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers: I was surprisingly taken with the first movie in this series, and in this sequel we find Angela alive and well, and after years of therapy, she returns to camp, this time as a counselor. As usual, the camp is populated with horny, foul-mouthed kids, horny, foul-mouthed counselors, one of the greatest mullets ever captured on film, and, of course, DEATH! This movie ends up being a lot different from its predecessor - it's silly and more self-aware. Most of the character names are taken from members of the Brat Pack and there are even nods to slasher icons Jason, Freddy and Leatherface. Angela is played by Pamela Springsteen (yes, Bruce's sister - no joke), and she plays the role with a campy glee. For a homicidal murderer, she's pretty likeable. In the end, the movie is a lot of fun, but it doesn't really have anywhere to go. The ending pales in comparison with the original film (which has one of the great horror movie endings ever), making this a worthwhile watch, but ultimately not one a great film. **1/2
  
  
  Bruce Springsteen's Sister (seriously)
  
• Halloween II (1981 - Trailer)
• Horror Movie Big Brother (Robot Chicken)
• Grindhouse: Don't (fake trailer)
• Halloween II (2009): (Note, I actually watched this a while ago because for some reason the studios think that the perfect time to release a movie called Halloween is in August (of course!)) I actually liked Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween. The biggest problem I had with it, though, was that it was a remake of Halloween and thus demanded comparison to a film that is nearly perfect. Change a few character names, keep the killer in the mask he had when he left the mental facility, and replace the soundtrack, and you've got a decent throwback slasher movie. Not a classic or anything, but watcheable. Now, Zombie has made a sequel, and he's apparently stopped trying to make any sense at all... and that part of it is actually kinda awesome. This isn't a remake of the 1981 Halloween II (though, ironically, the best scene in Zombie's film takes place in a hospital), so Zombie has freed himself of any necessary structure there (the second half of the first film suffered because it needed to hit all the beats of the original). The iconic Halloween theme is no longer present (though the ending makes use of some other Halloween music). The mask is barely even recognizable anymore. The only thing that remains from the original franchise are the character names, and it's almost easy to pretend that this series isn't even related to the original movies. The problem is with the execution. Zombie seems to have adopted the quick-edit, shaky-cam style... and let's just say that Zombie is no Paul Greengrass. The action in this film is nigh incomprehensible. There's no build up to the kills either - they are all so disconnected and pointless that no tension is ever established. There is some limited success at the beginning of the film at the hospital, but it devolves pretty steadily from there. Storywise, we get a lot of weird shit, and that part I like. Myers is hallucinating a lot, seeing visions of his mother and a white horse (!?) Symbolism is abound. Dr. Loomis makes a few appearances, and boy is he a douchebag. To be honest, I'm not even sure why he's in this movie, as he serves no real purpose (but his scenes, including one that features a funny cameo, are kinda fun to watch). Laurie Strode does find out that she is Myers' sister (this was technically from the original series, but Zombie had sorta established it in his first movie). The town of Haddonfield seems to have changed considerably in that it's a more rural area now, but whatever. So I'm conflicted about this movie. I like some of the ideas (even the kooky ending), but the execution, especially of the action, is way off. It's a hard movie to recommend, but if you like crazy imagery, this movie has a bunch of that. *1/2

Incidentally, why is it so hard to find Simpsons Treehouse of Horror shorts online these days? Get with the program Fox! I have most of them on DVD, but it would be nice to share, right? Anyway, that's all for now. More on Wednesday.



18½ Philadelphia Film Festival
I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Philly is having another festival in the fall. Traditionally, the festival is held in the Spring (and I've attended for the past few years), so I'm not sure if this fall festival will be a permanent change or simply an addendum to the existing festival. Either way, it's an interesting idea and would allow Philadelphia to play films that premiered at other, larger festivals like Cannes, Toronto, and Venice. This year's fall festival is relatively small: 5 days, 37 films. That being said, a number of them caught my eye (alas, only a couple probably qualify as horror movies and are thus suitable for my 6 weeks of Halloween marathon). Amazingly enough, four of my choices fall on one day and are not conflicting, so I'll probably end up seeing more of these fall films than I did in the Spring festival. Here's my schedule:

• Stingray Sam: The PFF site lists genres for each movie, and for this one it lists: Comedy, Feature, Musical, Sci-Fi, Western. That's quite an eclectic combination. The only part that worries me is the musical part, but otherwise, the description reminds me a lot of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, which means that this movie could be awesome or an absolute disaster. Another odd thing: it's only about 60 minutes long, which is pretty unusual in itself. Still, it sounds fascinating.
• Bronson: I remember seeing the trailer for this a while ago and thinking that it looked like a ton of fun and that I probably wouldn't get a chance to see it until DVD... So I'm glad this one is playing. Not really sure it will be one of my favorites or anything, but it looks pretty off-the-wall, which could be fun.
• Rembrandt's J'accuse: The description of this documentary, which focuses on Rembrandt's most famous work, pretty much sold me:

  In what plays out as a detective story of sorts, Greenaway takes the painting apart, line by line, vector by vector, plane by plane, and reads it the way it was read in 1642 after Rembrandt completed it: as an outrageous piece of theater in which the painter bit the aristocratic hand that fed him by embedding within the painting a sensational charge of murder. With The Night Watch, which Greenaway calls the fourth most celebrated painting in the world after the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, and the Sistine Chapel, Rembrandt delivered a work that charged Amsterdam’s leading citizens with a successful plot to eliminate a financial rival.

  This sounds pretty fascinating to me.
• Red Cliff: John Woo used to be such a great director. Then he came to Hollywood and started putting out crap. So it's my hope that this return to Chinese cinema is also a return to form for Woo. In this case, we should not expect any operatic gunfights, but rather a period piece pitting massive armies of soldiers against one another in an epic battle. Maybe some martial arts? I'm going into this film mostly blind, so here's to hoping that Woo does not disappoint.
• The Eclipse: Not sure if I'll end up seeing this, but it looks like an interesting mix of horror, romance and drama. I get a distinct gothic vibe from the description as well, but who really knows?
• We Live in Public: Another documentary, this time examining a guy named Josh Harris, who apparently made a name for himself by designing a series of 24-hour surveillance projects and experiments. Another one I'm not sure I'll be able to make it to, but it does sound interesting.
• Antichrist: This is a controversial film by controversial filmmaker Lars von Trier, and I'm only mildly interested in seeing. Mostly because it's billed as a horror film. The controversy aspect kinda bores me and so does von Trier (who is talented but pretentious and annoying). I probably won't see it, but I'm still considering...

I'm excited, even if I wish there were more horror options available...



6WH: Week 3 - Now Playing
For the last couple of years, I've strangely not seen very many horror movies in the theater. Part of the issue is that most of them don't come out in the Halloween corridor, which makes it somewhat pointless. It seems that the Saw franchise has cornered the market on the Halloween season and studios don't want to risk challenging it for some reason. That being said, I've seen several horror films in the theater lately, and I've really enjoyed a couple of them...

• Shining (fake trailer)
• The Blair Witch Project (trailer)
• The Exorcist (amazing unreleased trailer)
• Paranormal Activity: So I heard about this movie, right? It was supposedly scary, but it was only playing at the occasional festival and certain theaters. Then I heard it was coming to Philadelphia for a limited run of midnight shows. I thought, why not? I knew nothing about the movie, except that it had something to do with ghosts and it seemed like a found footage movie (a la The Blair Witch Project). And I loved it. Walking out of the theater, I couldn't help but notice the copious amounts of people registering their disappointment. In an attempt to avoid my bedroom once I got home (for reasons that will be obvious after you've seen the movie), I started looking into the movie a bit, and man, it's hyped to high heaven. Suddenly, people's negative reactions seemed more reasonable. Hype is a difficult thing. Stacie Ponder summarized it well:

  Sure, we've all experienced movies that turn out to be not quite as good as we'd hoped, but what I'm talking about goes beyond that. I'm talking about people who buy into the hype and walk into a theater with their arms crossed and a "Scariest ever? Then prove it." attitude. How could a movie ever please an audience like that?

  Unfortunately, if you're reading this, it's probably too late. The limited release strategy combined with the hype leads to all sorts of "This wasn't worth it" feelings from audiences that drove 50 miles just to see the movie (though that wouldn't have changed my feelings for it at all). Fortunately, it's the sort of thing that would probably work just as well on video, if not better. If you can, avoid everything about this (no trailers, stop reading this review after this sentence, etc...) before seeing it, and don't expect anything action packed or super-exciting. That being said, I loved it. Its got an incredibly simple concept and yet it's everything I could hope for in a horror movie. For the first time in a while (6 months is a while, right?), I was actually scared in the theater. That industrial strength, slinking-back-into-my-seat fear is pretty rare for me these days. When I got home, I couldn't get certain images out of my head, and they kept playing over and over again as I eventually made my way up to bed (that's one good result of the midnight-showing-only aspect of the movie's release). This is very much a film that relies on the fact that things that go bump in the night are more scary than gore or special effects, and the use of sound is exceptionally well done. There isn't much of a soundtrack, but what's there does a great job of establishing an atmosphere of dread. It's not really breaking new ground, but it's very well executed. I don't want to hype it up too much though, and it's certainly not perfect. The setting is repetitive, the daytime scenes were a bit bland, and there's not much plot. I can see how some folks would find it annoying, but it all worked for me. The repetitiveness lulls you into a false sense of security, the blandness of the daytime scenes release the tension built at night and give you a chance to start breathing regularly again, and the plot is no less effective for being simple. For me, the film accomplished exactly what it needed to: it scared me... ***
• Shaun of the Dead (trailer)
• Honest Zombie (Robot Chicken)
• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror III: Dial "Z" for Zombies (3rd segment)
• Zombieland: Does this count as horror? Inasmuch as it features zombies, I suppose it does. There are a couple of obligatory "boo!" attempts as well, but the film is much more interested in comedy than anything else. Fortunately, it's quite successful on that count. The film follows "Columbus" (played Jesse Eisenberg) as he attempts to navigate his way throughout a zombie infested America. Along the way, he meets Tallahassee (played by an actor I've never really cared for, Woody Harrelson, in a performance that is actually quite good), who loves to kill zombies and is on a quest to find and consume a twinkie. They also run into Wichita (played by Emma Stone) and Little Rock (played by Abigail Breslin), who are trickier than they seem. The film essentially turns into a road trip movie where an unlikely group of people manage to bond and become friends (there is a romantic subplot, of course, but the film also spends time developing other friendships and paternal feelings...) Also notable is the quasi-secret cameo that caps off the second act. It's a brilliant sequence, and it was great to see this particular actor in this type of role again. The film isn't perfect, but it's a whole lot of fun. ***
  
  
  
• Final Destination 2 (trailer)
• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror XIV: Reaper Madness
• The Life of Death by Clive Barker (short story from Cabal)
• The Final Destination: This has been a relatively weird series. The first film had a somewhat clever idea. The second film took that idea to extremes and might be the best of the series. The formula was well in place for the third film, but it was executed very well there. In this latest installment, the formula is getting stale. There's nothing really new here, unless you consider the gimmick of 3D (which, unfortunately, I didn't get to experience). You know the drill, a kid has a psychic experience, envisioning some sort of huge accident (in this case, a crash at a NASCAR event), freaks out and saves a bunch of people from said accident. But Death doesn't like it when you upset his plan, so he begins to take out all the survivors in the same order they would have died in the accident. In the universe of this series, Death is a huge fan of Rube Goldberg and prefers to murder victims through convoluted, indirect means. Perhaps it was the whole 3D gimmick that ruined it for me, but the deaths in this one seems awfully straightforward (or maybe it's just that the series has run its course). I mean, one of the victims gets run over by a truck. That's it. There wasn't any sequence of absurd actions leading up to the crash, it just happens. I could certainly be wrong, but I don't remember anything like that in previous installments. In the end, you know exactly what you're getting with this movie, which if you've seen the other three movies, is a bad thing. It's not terrible, it's just not especially good and the once original idea has pretty much been beaten into the ground. **

That's all for now. Next up... probably some more slashers.



Shocktober
Now that we've entered October proper, it seems that some other folks are jumping on the Halloween season bandwagon with those of us who started out a few weeks early (which consists of, uh, me and Kernunrex). Here's a few other folks celebrating the season:

• Stacie Ponder over at Final Girl has dubbed the month SHOCKTOBER and has vowed to watch and review a movie every day for the duration of the month (that post also contains a bunch of links to other folks celebrating the season).
• Widge & friends over at NeedCoffee have begun their annual 32 days of Halloween, always an entertaining venture.
• Brian eschews the whole seasonal thing and just watches a horror movie a day, all year long. Now that's dedication.

I'm sure there are lots others, but that's all for now. Go forth, and be scared.



6WH: Week 2 - The Slasher Calendar
As part of last year's marathon, I watched a documentary called Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film... As a result, when I drew up my list for this year, a lot of slashers sneaked onto the list (enough for several weeks). I won't get through them all, but there will be at least 6-9 slasher films in this year's marathon.

One of the conventions of slasher films is a holiday themed setting. This trend was arguably started by Bob Clarke's influential 1974 film Black Christmas, but it really kicked into gear (along with Slashers in general) in 1978 with John Carpenter's Halloween. After Halloween's success, slasher films were flooding the market, many of which attempted to copy Halloween by focusing on different holidays. Indeed, at this point, there's a pretty full calendar of slasher films that you can watch, if you're so inclined... and in case you can't tell, I am so inclined. I think this trend overlaps a bit with the convention of having some sort of historical element to the story (i.e. a tragedy of the past revisited in the present), but on the other hand, lots of slashers aren't calendar oriented either. Still, it's a common enough trope that I watched a bunch recently:

• Thursday the 12th (Robot Chicken)
• Uncle Sam (trailer)
• New Year's Evil (trailer)
• My Bloody Valentine (1981) and My Bloody Valentine 3D (2009): One of the better films to arise out of the success of Halloween and Friday the 13th was 1981's My Bloody Valentine. A prime example of both the holiday setting and the historical tragedy revisited, this movie takes place 20 years after a horrible mining accident in which the sole survivor was named Harry Warden. He managed to survive only by eating his friends. Warden blamed the supervisors, who had neglected their post in order to attend the annual Valentines dance, and eventually took his revenge. Harry warned the town that so long as they held the dance, people would die. 20 danceless years later, the town of Valentine Bluffs had finally had enough and started up the old tradition of the Valentines dance again. Suddenly, people start disappearing and it seems that Harry Warden's curse wasn't just the ravings of a madman. Again, this film is generally a cut above most other slasher films of the era. It's more polished and it has more of an interesting story than most, not to mention that the whole miner's outfit thing makes for a great slasher costume (not to mention the trademark pickaxe, which can come in handy for the slasher on the go). It's the little details that make this one work though. I'm no expert, but the production design really seems to capture the mining town aesthetic, the working class characters are actually somewhat empathetic (unlike the throngs of teens in a lot of slashers), and how can you not like the killer's poetic calling cards (a card on the first victim reads: "Roses are Red, Violents are Blue, One is Dead, And So Are You!!!"). There's an inferior remake that was released earlier this year, and despite being slightly elevated by the gimmick of 3D, it ultimately fell flat. It's worth checking out if you're a fan of the original, but if you haven't seen either, check out the original first (like a lot of remakes, this one is perhaps most notable for shining a light on a generally overlooked film). *** for the original, ** for 3D!
  
  
  
• Halloween (1978 - Trailer)
• Grindhouse: Thanksgiving (fake trailer)
• Graduation Day (trailer)
• April Fool's Day: This movie came out during the tail end of the slasher craze and its box office was ruined by word-of-mouth - once people heard about the twist ending (which I will not ruin), they stayed away in droves. Personally, I found it to be a rather unique slasher film and I appreciate the winking and nose-thumbing aspects of the movie. The film opens as a group of teens head to the island vacation home of their friend Muffy St. John for Spring Break. It being April 1st, it doesn't take long for the pranks to start, and things get pretty hairy pretty quickly. As the weekend progresses, guests begin to disappear and Muffy starts acting very strangely. Again, it's one of the higher quality slasher efforts, with a decent look and actors who aren't completely made out of cardboard (indeed, many of the characters are privileged punks, so the fact that you don't seem to mind hanging out with them is actually an accomplishment). Interestingly, the gore is surprisingly minimal here, and the real focus is on the story. The film knows what it is and it has a sense of humor, something that audiences just weren't ready for yet, I guess. The ending does feature a bit of a twist, and I'm sure there are some who don't like it (and don't get me wrong, this is not a tightly written film - there are plenty of near disasterous plot holes), but I thought it was an interesting and new idea. Alas, audiences did not respond and this film seems to signify the waning interest in slashers at the time. The big three slasher series would limp into the nineties, but after this film, the slasher craze was effectively dead. ***
  
  
  Muffy is a bit strange
  
• Black Christmas (1974 - Trailer)
• Joe Vs. The Grinch (Family Guy)
• A Holiday Character So Alluring (Robot Chicken)
• Silent Night, Deadly Night: Slashers in general were controversial in their time, but this film apparently upped the ante to the point where people were protesting and picketing movie theaters. And they were successful - this film was pulled from theaters after a week or so, and it then became very hard to find on video (and apparently even DVD, as I had trouble getting my Netflix copy). In all honesty, this is a pretty mean-spirited movie, so I guess the protesting is understandable. I mean, this is a movie where not one, but two Santas get gunned down in front of a group of orphans (and one of the Santas was a kindly old deaf priest (the other was a homicidal axe murderer, but that's besides the point)). This isn't a very impressive movie. There's no real artistry, the performances are crappy, and even the Santa costumes are pretty lame. There are some high points though, including one of the first scenes in the movie, when an old man warns our young hero that Santa is coming to kill him because he's been naughty. He does this in a weird, grizzled old-timey tone that is just awesome. It's probably the best part of the movie. Also, what can I say, I'm a sucker for the Christmas setting. This film doesn't really come anywhere near the Christmas horror classics, but it's worth a watch if you like slashers and Christmas. **
  
  
  Santa's gonna git ya
  

And that wraps up the slasher calendar for this year, but we've got another installment of slasher sequels coming, as well as some other miscellaneous slashers. In other news, The Devil Rides Out is now unavailable, so the Hammer Horror week needs to be replanned.

As usual, Kernunrex is doing it up at his site, and he's making lots of headway. He's even playing Castlevania (in an experience similar to mine with Metroid, he was able to beat the game using save states) and other horror related video games. It's always funny when we have overlap too. He watched The Deaths of Ian Stone this week - a movie I watched last year (our thoughts are very similar). Other than that, not much overlap... though I can see some convergences coming later.



Six Weeks of Halloween 2009: Week 1 - Universal Horror
It's that time of year again. Halloween is my favorite time of the year, and it provides a convenient excuse to explore one of my favorite genres of film (as I have done for the past couple of years). In preparation for this year's six week celebration of Halloween, I pretty quickly drew up a list that could easily take me through ten weeks... I doubt I'll get through them all, but I'm going to have fun trying. Highlights include this week's look at classic Universal Horror films, a sampling of the later Monster revival with Hammer Horror, perhaps some Vincent Price, and of course, some slashers and miscellaneous horrors to round out the pack (including the much anticipated Trick 'r Treat, amongst others). If you can't get enough Halloween madness here, be sure to visit Kernunrex, who's been doing this whole Six Weeks of Halloween thing a lot longer than I have... (Someday I'll redesign Kaedrin so as to allow for an easy switch to Halloween colors like he does... that day is probably not coming anytime soon, but still.)


Its the nicest weather Earth has ever had!*
As previously mentioned, this year's marathon kicks off with a look at Universal Studios' classic monster films. I've seen two of the following films before, but not since I was very young, so I figured it would be worth revisiting (as a result, I now want to revisit the original novels upon which the following films were based, which if my current queue is any indication, means I'll get to them sometime in the 2020s). Here goes:

• Frankenstein's Fiancee (Robot Chicken)
• Frankenhooker (trailer)
• Frankenstein (1910 - Full Movie)
• Frankenstein (1931): My memories of Frankenstein were fond but not overly enthusiastic. I remember these films being hokey and over-the-top, and to be sure, there are elements of that here, but it is much more effective than I remember it being. Adapted from Mary Shelly's classic novel of the same name, the film is dramatically different from both the novel and the many stage variations of the preceding century. Despite the changes, the movie retains the feel and thematic resonance of the novel. This cautionary tale of technology gone awry is something that strikes a chord throughout most of history, perhaps even more now than when it was written. It certainly helps that James Whale was behind the camera and Boris Karloff was in front of it, and the movie has aged quite well (it is perhaps the best of today's choices). ****
  
  
  Karloff's Frankenstein's Monster
  
• Young Frankenstein (trailer)
• Frankenstein for President
• Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (trailer)
• Bride of Frankenstein (1935): I may have seen bits and pieces of this film before, but never the whole thing. This direct sequel to the 1931 film features mostly the same cast and crew, and as such, the technical aspects of the film are superb. Indeed, they may even surpass the original. Karloff is given more to do in this film, and while he was wonderfully expressive in the first film, he goes above and beyond in this film, infusing the Monster with emotion and even evoking sympathy. Director James Whale had also honed his skills in the intervening years and the Bride's creation scene is particularly well done, especially when it comes to the editing. This film's special effects also stand out, as when Dr. Pretorius displays his miniature experiments for Dr. Frankenstein (the scene holds up remarkably well, which is more than I can say for a lot of special effects from the era... (or even modern effects, for that matter)). Another standout scene is when the Monster encounters an elderly blind man, who teaches the Monster about bread, wine, and rudimentary English. He also introduces the Monster to the concept of friendship, which drives the rest of the story. I must admit that the story does get to be a bit more silly in this installment, but it still works very well. Thematically, the film expands upon the original, and adds some new twists of its own. The ending is actually quite moving, as the Monster realizes what he is and where he belongs. Many consider this sequel to be superior to the first film, and in many ways, it is. However, it is sillier and more over-the-top than the previous film. It is still a wonderful film in its own right, and something I'm glad I caught up with. ****
  
  
  Dr. Pretorius
  
• Vampire 7:00-8:00AM, Vampire 1:00-2:00PM, and Vampire 8:00-9:00PM (Robot Chicken)
• Bart Simpson's Dracula (The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror IV)
• Vampire Chase (Robot Chicken)
• Dracula (1931): I was curious to revisit this film in light of the current pop-culture craze for vampires we're experiencing right now. There are many who believe that vampires have been watered down these days:

  Once upon a time, vampires were monsters. Creatures of the night. Beasts who crawled from their coffins at night; consorted with spiders, bats, and rats; ravaged women and tore out the throats of men. They were demonic; spawns of Satan. The best known image of the vampire is that of Bela Lugosi, whose intonation of the line: "I never drink… wine" has become the standard.

  And indeed, many recent vampire stories take a less monsterous approach, favoring instead a more emotional and empathetic creature (though I must admit that I don't mind that approach either, just that it has become the pervasive approach). So in revisiting this classic film, it was refreshing to see Dracula portrayed as something unnatural and evil. Director Tod Browning is at his creepy best when framing Lugosi's Dracula onscreen. Lugosi's menacing glare is undeniably effective and his Dracula is indeed a creature to fear. Alas, the mechanics of the plot (and, uh, the special effects) leaves something to be desired. This is a little disappointing, though still quite entertaining and better than much of today's vampire stories (I'm looking at you, Twilight!). Someday, perhaps, I'll check out the Spanish language version of this film, which was apparently shot at the same time and using the same sets. Some believe it to be superior to the English language version... ***
  
  
  Lugosi's Dracula
  

One of the surprising things about all three of the above movies is that they are all between 70-75 minutes in length, significantly shorter than even the shortest movies in theaters today. It's worth noting that many of the above films are also restored from cut versions. In particular, the scenes missing from the original Frankenstein are quite important (the missing scenes were restored in 1986 and most DVDs of the film have them), particularly the scene when the Monster plays with the little girl. It's actually quite a disturbing scene, but Karloff was always able to walk that line between evil and misunderstood, creating a monster that was scary and sympathetic at the same time.

It's also interesting to note that the characters of Dracula and Frankenstein are two of the most frequently utilized fictional characters in the history of film. Dracula has 200+ appearances, while Frankenstein has only had a mere 80+ roles. And I think both will continue to rack up the appearances. Interestingly, I think there are several more recent horror icons that could give the classics a run for their money... Jason Vorhees, Mike Myers, and Freddy Kreuger have established themselves pretty firmly in modern film culture, but I'm not sure they will ever be as prolific as the old Universal classic monsters. Why? Devin Faraci has speculated on this:

There is one major obstacle that's stopping Freddy and Jason and Mike Myers and Leatherface from really getting to that position of being among the truly eternal monsters of filmland: copyright. While the versions of the Universal Monsters we love are copyrighted in terms of their appearance (although a zillion manufacturers of Halloween ephemera have skirted the edges of that legality), the characters themselves are in the public domain. This is what has allowed them to become such prominent forces in film, keeping them going in permutation after permutation. If Universal outright owned the characters then Hammer, for instance, would never have been able to reinvent them in the 50s and 60s (my colleague Ryan Rotten very astutely notes that what Platinum Dunes is doing with the characters of Jason, Freddy and Leatherface, and what Rob Zombie is doing with Michael Myers, is very similar to what Hammer did with the Universal Monsters, recasting them and re-presenting them for a new generation with new tastes). In fact, the copyright on the Gill-Man from The Creature from the Black Lagoon may be one of the things keeping him from really ascending and going places as a character. Being tightly controlled by Universal keeps him from escaping into the pop culture world at large.

Perhaps audiences will still be squirming in their seats in fear of Jason, Mike, and Freddy a century from now, but maybe not. One thing is for sure though: Audiences will still be entertained by updates on Frankenstein and Dracula...

* With apologies to the MST3K Movie for that joke, though it works even better on the newer variations on the logo...



Inglourious Basterds
Since 1994's Pulp Fiction, whenever a new Tarantino film is announced, I read about it and find myself thinking about how stupid the film sounds. Usually watching the first trailers does little to assuage that feeling. But every time (every time) I actually see the movie, I end up loving it. Tarantino's latest film, Inglourious Basterds, is no exception to this rule. It sounds lame: "... a group of Jewish-American soldiers known as 'The Basterds' are chosen specifically to spread fear throughout the Third Reich by scalping and brutally killing Nazis." But it is a truly exceptional film, Tarantino's best since Pulp Fiction and the best film of the year so far.

In truth, the short description above is only a small portion of the movie, and it's the one that we've all seen in the trailers for the film. It concerns Lt. Aldo Raine (played with campy glee by Brad Pitt) and his small group of Basterds who hunt down and brutally murder Nazis. The other main plot thread deals with a young Jewish refugee named Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent) who narrowly escapes from the famed "Jew Hunter" Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz, in an award-winning performance). The rest of her family is not so lucky. She now runs a movie theater in Paris, and the premiere of a German propaganda film at her theater has attracted the entire German military leadership, up to and including Hitler. As you might imagine, this premiere interests both the Basterds and Shosanna for obvious reasons...

This is a thouroughly Tarantino film. If you like his style, you will love this film. It features many of his common tropes, including massive chunks of dialogue, the use of violence as a comedic element, and some interesting, offbeat casting. He also fits in his usual foot fetish, as a plot element no less. There is some winking at the audience, especially when it comes to the various asides (narrated by Sam Jackson), and Tarantino's camera moves fluidly and frames the action well. As with all of Tarantino's films, this one is a referential dream. The film is played as an homage to Spaghetti Westerns, 40s Noir and of course the WWII drama/action film, with tons of other filmic references thrown in for good measure (including the Tarantino staples of B-Movie, Grindhouse, and Exploitation). In particular, films like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, and Cinema Paradiso are all practically direct references. All of Tarantino's films have this obsession with movies, but in this case, the obsession becomes a literal plot element. The climax of the film takes place in a movie theater. A British soldier is chosen for his assignment because he was a movie critic as a civilian. And so on. It doesn't take a genius to see the developing theme here.

Like James Berardinelli, I was also reminded of two somewhat recent WWII films: Paul Verhoeven's Black Book and Bryan Singer's Valkyrie, two films which explore similar themes ideas but which pale in comparison to Basterds. Black Book will retain a good reputation and it's heroine shares a certain kinship with the heroine of Basterds. Valkyrie will not fare so well, perhaps playing Fail-Safe to the Basterds' Dr. Strangelove (i.e. a straight movie completely outclassed and overshadowed by a comedic take on the same material)...

I already mentioned the dialogue, but it is worth further examination. There is a lot of dialogue in the movie and those who do not like Tarantino's tendency to rely on such speachifying will probably not like this movie. That said, this is his best work since Pulp Fiction, and it is not nearly as indulgent as his script for Death Proof (which grated on a lot of people, even though I think that was the intended effect). This isn't just Tarantino wanking with words, he uses them to wratchet up the tension to almost unbearable levels before releasing it all with fast, brutal action. There are several notable sequences, but the opening scene and a later scene in a bar stand out. I'm sure Tarantino will get dinged for making such a violent movie, but when you look at it closely, there really isn't that much actual violence. To be sure, what is there is quite graphic and disturbing, but the dialogue-driven buildup to these events seems to increase the suggestive and sometimes even humorous nature of the violence. It reminded me a bit of how I felt watching Kill Bill:

Do you remember the scene in Pulp Fiction where Vincent blows Marvin's head off by accident? Somehow, Tarantino is able to make that scene, and the ensuing events, funny. Not ha-ha funny, it's still black comedy, but funny nonetheless. You don't really know why you are laughing, but you are. And that is what this movie is like. It's like two hours of that one scene in Pulp Fiction.

Basterds isn't quite as heavy on the black comedic violence as Kill Bill, but Tarantino definitely employs that same style for the violence here. Of course, there's plenty of other humor in evidence here as well, to the point where it's tempting to call this movie an action/comedy. The setting of the film doesn't exactly lend itself to humor, but Tarantino does a deft job making the proceedings fun.

The violence and dialogue are not simply an ends unto themselves, they actually serve the story. And it is quite an audactious story at that. It is so unabashedly American (and at times, British) that I have to wonder how it will play in the rest of the world... Indeed, it's not surprising that the film did not screen well at Cannes (I'm interested to see what Alex thinks of it, considering we are honor bound to compare notes - his initial reaction seems positive). In any case, the film's plot and especially its ending are bold and adventurous (I don't want to ruin anything, so I'll leave it at that), and all the characters you meet along the way are fun and well drawn. Brad Pitt is clearly enjoying himself while hamming it up (which is appropriate) as Lt. Aldo Raine. It's easy to forget how good he can be in movies like this, and this is his best role in years. He gets a good portion of the funny lines and stories from the set about Pitt walking around in character indicate that Pitt really liked playing this character. Christoph Waltz's turn as Colonel Hans Landa is brilliant and twisted. The character plays out like a Jew hunting, Nazi version of Columbo. Charismatic and disarming, he draws you in and makes you comfortable before pulling the rug out from beneath you. He plays the character with a slightly effeminate panache and you grow to hate him pretty quickly. Surely one of the best villains of the year. Melanie Laurent has what is probably the lead role in the film, though, and her performance as the strong-willed Shosanna Dreyfus is quite good, though not as showy as Waltz or Pitt. The smaller, supporting roles in the film are equally well casted and performed. I was a bit worried about the casting of Eli Roth as one of the Basterds (he's not known for his acting abilities - Roth is most famous for being the director of the Hostel films), but he turned out fine and the Basterds wind up taking a backseat to the rest of the film, so his presence is somewhat limited. Martin Wuttke plays Hitler as a caricature, an interesting take that will no doubt be the basis for a second wave of Hitler Gets Banned style parodies. I didn't recognize Mike Myers at first, but his 5 minute appearance as a British General is quite funny, and it's a nice bit of quasi-referential casting there (i.e. hearing Mike Myers do a British accent, you can't help but think of Austin Powers, even though the scene he appears in is played straight). Michael Fassbender has a nice supporting role as well, and I could probably keep going on and on about the casting and performances in this movie.

I always hate it when reviewers say this sort of thing, but I honestly didn't realize that the film clocked in at a rather long 153 minutes. It feels exactly as long as it needed to be and it's paced very well. In the end, Tarantino has crafted a great film, the best I've seen in a long time and the first one I'm giving 4 stars to since The Dark Knight (and one of only 3 in the past few years). If you really hate Tarantino, you probably won't like it. If you don't mind some of his typical eccentricities (i.e. dialogue, violence, uh, feet? etc...), you're in for a treat. I'm amazed that after all these years, Tarantino is still able to surprise and thrill me. **** (4 out of 4 stars)



The August Movie Season?
August is typically the dumping ground for movies that the studios know can't compete with the blockbuster fare of early summer. There's usually a movie or two that manage to pick up some good numbers (think The Sixth Sense or Superbad), but movie fare in August is usually pretty thin. So looking ahead at the next few weeks, I'm surprised to see so many movies that I actually want to see, ranging from typical Hollywood fare to obscure foreign films. Here's what I'm looking forward to:

• G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (released 8/7): Well, I've already established this movie as a charter member of the Upcoming Movies I Want To See Even Though I Know They'll Suck list, but I still want to see it. I mean, is it possible that it would be worse than Transformers 2? All I'm hoping for are some nice explosions and maybe some rememberances of the epic toy battles of my youth.
• District 9 (releases 8/14): A SF action film with an interesting premise and reasonable talent, I'm not really sure what to make of this, though early reviews are surprisingly good. So I guess I have middling expectations for this one, but at least it seems interesting.
• Ponyo (releases 8/14): The first new Miyazaki since 2004's diappointing Howl's Moving Castle (which had a great first half, but fell apart in the final act) is still a must see for anyone interested in Anime and Miyazaki is certainly capable of greatness. I have to admit that the trailer doesn't do much for me, but I still want to see this, just on principle.
• The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard (releases 8/14): Yeah, it looks like a trashy comedy with no heart, but what can I say, I'm a sucker for dumb comedies, especially ones that take place in a Used Cars lot.
• Inglourious Basterds (releases 8/21): I've been skeptical of, oh, every Tarantino movie since Pulp Fiction, and they always end up looking dumb but being awesome. No matter what you think of the guy, you have to admit that he always tries interesting stuff.
• Halloween II (releases 8/28): The sequel to Rob Zombie's rather lame remake of John Carpenter's classic original (which earned the infamous rating of "Fuck You out of 10" back in the day). Personally, I thought the film was a perfectly serviceable slasher film marred by the insistance that it was in some way related to Halloween (i.e. remove the iconic music and change some names and you've got a fine movie). However, the initial stuff I've seen looks so batty that the sequel might actually work. It'll either be a train wreck or... I can't think of a way to finish that sentence. Sorry. I still want to see it though.
• Thirst (releases 8/28): Korean director Park Chan Wook's vengeance trillogy is brilliant stuff, so I'm quite interested to see his take on vampires. The film isn't getting much of a release here in the states, but it is apparently being released in Philadelphia on August 28 (it's already been released in a couple of other markets).
• Mystery Team (releases 8/28): Another dumb, raunchy comedy, sure, but it at least looks like and original dumn comedy. What happens when Encyclopedia Brown-style child-detectives grow up? They don't seem quite as effective as they once were. This trailer is hysterically funny. Not sure if it will be playing in Philly when it first comes out, but I'm looking forward to this one.

Not sure how well these movies will do at the box office, but I'm actually pretty excited to see all of them, which is a little odd because August is normally pretty vapid...

Update: Apparently Mystery Team isn't opening wide until October...



Friday the 13th Marathon Awards
I've been somewhat disorganized during this marathon and I realized that I never really finished off with awards the way I have for some previous marathons. The Filmspotting guys like to give their awards fancy names (i.e. for the SF marathon, they called the awards the "damn dirty apes"), so I guess the Golden Machetes would fit for this, right? Anyway, since this marathon technically started a couple of years ago, I figure a quick recap is in order:

• Friday the 13th (technically part of a different Halloween marathon, hence the other movies in that post)
• Friday the 13th: Parts II through IV
• Friday the 13th: Parts V and VI
• Friday the 13th: Parts VII and VIII
• Jason Goes to Hell and Jason X
• Friday the 13th (reboot) and Freddy vs. Jason

With that out of the way, let's get to the awards:

• Best Final Girl: It's funny, but when I thought about it, my choice is the final girl from one of my least favorite installments - Ginny Field (played by Amy Steel) from Part II. While the film is a bit on the incomprehensible side, Amy Steel's Ginny is definitely the standout character and I think the best final girl in the series. She takes initiative and goes on the offensive more than any other woman in the series (save perhaps the final girl from Part VII, who had a neat gimmick that for the most part didn't pay off that much), even going so far as to put on Jason's mother's sweater at one point, just to mess with Jason's head. Perhaps part of this was that this was Jason's first real movie, and he had not yet even donned his legendary hockey mask let alone demonstrated ridiculous supernatural powers that make it hard to put up a great fight (again, Tina from Part VII did pretty good in the later films...)
• Best Douchebag: The series is filled with douchebags that you end up rooting against, but my choice here actually comes from the recent remake: Travis Van Winkle really reaches new depths of Douchebaggery in his performance as Trent. He's the source of one of the best moments in an otherwise middle of the road film - the only thing that was lacking was a truly unique and gory kill (something the film lacks in general). Honorable mentions to the douchebag from Part IV (don't remember his name and IMDB doesn't have pictures) and Doctor Douchebag from Part VII.
• Best Appearance By Legitmate Actors: Given the tremendous amount of no-name actors to appear in these films, I'm surprised at the amount of possible answers here. The most obvious choice would be Kevin Bacon from the original. Another popular choice has to be Crispin Glover's appearance in Part IV. Part IX actually has the most starpower though: Steven Culp, Steven Williams, and Erin Gray all put in appearances in that film. To me, it really comes down to Crispin Glover (especially when you consider that insanely funny dance he does) and Steven Williams's hilarious performance in part IX.
• Best Jason: A popular choice for this would have to be Kane Hodder, the only one to play Jason in multiple films, but while I think he did a fine job, he's also only in the worst films in the series (parts VII-X). For me, I'd go with C.J. Graham, who played Jason in Part VI. He strikes quite a few memorable poses in the film, and manages to do some rather expressive stuff, which can be difficult considering the mask.
• Top 5 Kills: There are a lot to choose from here, but here are a few of the standouts for me...
  • Kevin Bacon in the Original - Laying in the bottom bunk, Bacon feels some blood dripping from the top bunk. Then a hand suddenly reaches up and grabs his head while an arrow is pushed up from under the bed, through his neck. Best kill of the first movie.
  • Sleeping Bag Kill From Part VII and X - In Part VII, Jason happens upon a couple of campers and naturally decides to kill them. He takes care of the guy first, then grabs the girl, who is still in her sleeping bag, and slams her against the tree. Classic kill in an otherwise lackluster installment of the series. There's a great reprise of this kill in Jason X though, when Jason wanders into some Holodeck simulation thingy and our heroes have programmed a nice Crystal Lake simulation. The whole sequence pretty much perfects what happened in part VII and adds a new twist.
  • Face Smash from Part X - One of the more original kills. Jason wakes up after a few hundred years and finds a cute girl doing his autopsy. He grabs her head, dunks it in a vat of liquid nitrogen (freezing her head) and then smashes it into a thousand pieces. Brilliant.
  • Boxing in Part VIII - One of the few bearable moments of this film features one of our heroes boxing Jason on a rooftop. Jason toys with him a bit, lets a few punches land, then throws one punch that knocks the kid's head right off. The head goes bouncing off the roof, down the fire escape and into an open dumpster (which then slams shut).
  • Back Breaker in Part VI and Freddy Vs Jason - In Part VI, the Sheriff attempts to protect his daughter by attacking Jason. He puts up a reasonable fight too... until Jason grabs him and folds him in half (ouch). There's a minor reprise of this in Freddy Vs. Jason when Jason stabs a kid on a bed with his machete like 10 times, then folds the bed up achieving the same back breaking results.
  Some honorable mentions include the wheel chair death from Part II, punching through the heart in part VI, axe to the crotch of a douchebag who is walking on his hands in part III, spear gun to the crotch in part IV, spear gun to the eye in part III, and the eye popping kill in part III (I'm sure these last two are even better in 3D, but I've never seen that version). And there's probably like 5 others that are worth mentioning.
• Best Jason Resurrection: There are two necessary components to a slasher sequel (besides the standard gore and T&A, etc...). First is how the slasher is resurrected. For me, the best resurrection has to be Part VI, where his dead body gets struck by lightning. It's very evocative of a Frankenstein creation scene, and it's pretty funny too.
• Best Jason Death: The other necessary component of a slasher sequel is how the slasher is "killed". For this one, it doesn't get much better than Jason's death at the end of Part IV, thanks especially to Tom Savini's brilliant makeup and gory special effects. I'd give an honorable mention to the opening sequence to Part IX, which is one of the better openings and quite unexpected.
• Best Picture: Well, it's really a toss up. If I have to choose, it would probably be Part VI with Part IV coming in a close second. I know some people don't like Part VI's self-aware and referential nature combined with a more humorous take on the series, but it still works quite well for me! There are not many movie series that make it to six films, but of those that do, there are few that could claim the sixth film to be the best in the series... Part VI must have been difficult to follow up as well, because from there, the series began a long and deadly spiral downwards...

And that just about wraps up the marathon. Why I still enjoy these silly, cheesy movies is still a mystery to me (also a mystery: why I was ever scared of them), but enjoy them I do.



Professor Severus Snape's Sorcerer-tastic, Muggalicious Midsummer Movie Quiz
Every so often, Dennis Cozzalio of the Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule blog posts a long movie quiz filled with tough questions. I've been playing along for a few installments now, and he even included several of my answers for the last quiz in a series of recap posts earlier this week. Amusingly, he often chose to include the answers where I whined about having to choose between two actors/actresses I didn't know. I'm not sure if he did that because he was amused or if I should be embarrassed or something, but whatever. I really enjoy these quizzes, so now that there's a new one up, I'm going to post my answers here:

1) Second-favorite Stanley Kubrick film.

I'm terrible at picking favorites, so it figures that for a filmmaker where I actually do have a clear favorite (2001), you'd ask for a second-favorite. However, I am able to narrow it down to two: Dr. Strangelove and The Shining.


2) Most significant/important/interesting trend in movies over the past decade, for good or evil.

The obvious answer and the thing that came immediately to mind was franchise reboots and remakes (this seems to be happening in the horror genre the most, but it is certainly not limited to that). But when i started thinking about this more, I realized that remakes and franchise reboots aren't all that new... So instead of that, I think one of the biggest changes has been the ascendance of the home theater. The past decade has seen the rather quick adoption of the DVD format, and along with it, steadily increasing quality of home theaters, from surround sound to larger screens, flat screens and HD. Blu-ray has had some setbacks, but it seems to be moving forward well enough these days. With any luck, we'll soon have huge HD on-demand archives available for viewing within the next ten years.

3) Bronco Billy (Clint Eastwood) or Buffalo Bill Cody (Paul Newman)?

For this quiz, it appears that Mr. Snape is not satisfied with simply forcing me to choose between two actors, he'll limit it to two specific movies, further decreasing the chances that I'll be able to answer with any authority. Thanks a lot. As such, while I wouldn't call Bronco Billy one of Eastwood's better films, I will go with Eastwood anyway because I tend to like his films better than Newman (which isn't to bag on Newman at all, as he has plenty of great films to his credit).

4) Best Film of 1949.

The last quiz had a question about choosing a favorite Raoul Walsh movie, and I mentioned that I had not seen any, but that I put White Heat in my Netflix queue. I managed to watch it between then and now and it turns out that movie was made in 1949, so I'll put that as my answer, because I enjoyed it quite a bit (even though I think I might prefer The Third Man, a common answer to this question).


5) Joseph Tura (Jack Benny) or Oscar Jaffe (John Barrymore)?

*sigh* I'll go with Jack Benny on this one, I guess.

6) Has the hand-held shaky-cam directorial style become a visual cliche?

It's hard to say, though I do think it is overused and thus some of its potency has been lost. It's worth noting that there are several directors who are still producing excellent work in this style and I don't think it will ever really go away, but at the same time it's not as impactful today as it was, say, 10 years ago. Also, it seems to be a technique that is easy to screw up or abuse, and many films suffer from the choice to use this style. One frustrating trend I'm seeing is to use such shots along with quick-cuts in order to hide the fact that what happened onscreen isn't really possible or is highly unlikely (I'm looking at you, V for Vendetta).

7) What was the first foreign-language film you ever saw?

Well, it's impossible to pinpoint, but if I had to guess, I'd say it was either La Femme Nikita or The Killer when I was in my early teens.

8) Charlie Chan (Warner Oland) or Mr. Moto (Peter Lorre)?

Peter Lorre's Mr. Moto, though I should really see more of both franchises...

9) Favorite World War II drama (1950-1970).

Most of my real favorites fall outside of that date range, but Patton qualifies and would probably be my favorite. On the other hand, I do have a soft spot for Where Eagles Dare. It's a little unevenly paced and perhaps a bit too long, but I love the convoluted espionage twists and turns.


10) Favorite animal movie star.

Does Chewbacca count? I'm trying to think of other movies I love that feature animals in a prominent role, but I'm drawing a blank. Chewbacca it is.

11) Who or whatever is to blame, name an irresponsible moment in cinema.

I have a hard time condemning actual content in films (or art in general), even films that say things I detest or that trivialize things I find important. I guess I'm just not the censoring type, so the answer to this question would have to do with something irresponsible in the making of a film. The film that immediately comes to mind is Cannibal Holocaust, which is infamous for actual, on-screen killings of animals. Seven animals were killed, apparently only in the name of sensationalism and controversy. I'm sure there are lots of other, similar moments of irresponsible moments in cinema history (another two that come to mind: the helicopter accident that took the life of 3 people in Twilight Zone: The Movie and the untimely death of Brandon Lee on the set of The Crow).

12) Best Film of 1969.

Well, not especially one of my favorite years for movies, but it has both The Wild Bunch and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, each of which is a pretty great film.

13) Name the last movie you saw theatrically, and also on DVD or Blu-ray.

I saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in the theater last night. Enjoyable, but not as good as the book. On Blu-Ray, I saw Push, which had an interesting premise and was for the most part entertaining, though I don't think the ending was very satisfying. And on DVD, I saw Le doulos, a good crime film by director Jean-Pierre Melville.


14) Second-favorite Robert Altman film.

I have not seen a ton of Altman films (I know, I know, something I need to rectify), but the ones I have seen have all be at about the same level. In the interest of convenience, let's just say The Player.

15) What is your favorite independent outlet for reading about movies, either online or in print?

James Berardinelli's Reelviews is a site I visit quite frequently, and he is often the first reviewer I check out after having seen a film (often before even Ebert). Berardinelli has been seeing and reviewing tons of films every year for the past 15-20 years (this despite a day job and a rather lengthy commute to various theaters). The fact is that his archive of movie reviews is probably more complete than most professional film critics, which is an amazing accomplishment. He's a pioneer of online reviewers, and one of my favorite reads.

16) Who wins? Angela Mao or Meiko Kaji? (Thanks, Peter!)

I can't say as though I'm all that familiar with their filmmographies, but I'll say that Angela Mao wins, due to her appearance in Enter the Dragon. The only movies I recognize in Meiko Kaji's filmography are a couple of Kinji Fukasaku Yakuza flicks...

17) Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei) or Olive Neal (Jennifer Tilly)?

I'll go with Mona Lisa Vito. Tilly has been an actress that has always grated on me.

18) Favorite movie that features a carnival setting or sequence.

The obvious (and apparently popular) answer is Strangers on a Train. In particular, the first murder scene at the carnival (which you see reflected in a pair of sunglasses). However, in the interest of variety, I'll go with Tod Browning's cult classic Freaks.

19) Best use of high-definition video on the big screen to date.

I'm not sure if Zodiac counts, as I know he filmed some sequences with film, but the pickings are somewhat slim when it comes to this category - it's also hard to find a good, definitive list of films that used HD Video cameras.

20) Favorite movie that is equal parts genre film and a deconstruction or consideration of that same genre.

The movie that immediately comes to mind is Scream. It's a movie that parodies and comments on the slasher genre, then subverts everything about said films. In an unusual twist, this movie seemed to reignite interest in the slasher film, which had been out of style for several years at that point.

21) Best Film of 1979.

I'll go with Alien, which is one of my all time favorites. Another, more inexpicable favorite of mine from 1979 is the cheesy but still effective and creepy Phantasm.

22) Most realistic and/or sincere depiction of small-town life in the movies.

I don't know about realistic, but both It's a Wonderful Life and To Kill a Mockingbird seem like ideal answers to this one. It's a hard choice, as there are tons of movies that take place in small towns, but aren't necessarily about that. More recent favorites include Groundhog Day and State and Main (both of which show small-town life through the lense of city folk).

23) Best horror movie creature (non-giant division).

So this one wound up being very difficult for me. The question itself throws out giant creatures of the Godzilla variety, but I also didn't want to choose something that was primarily human (i.e. vampires, werewolves, zombies, etc...), but that might have been too limiting. In any case, what I ended up choosing was the creature from John Carpenter's 1982 remake of The Thing. Sure, it takes the form of a human for a portion of the film, but there are several sequences where it transforms into bizarre lovecraftian monstrosities. In particular, the sequence when it is discovered in the dog cage:


24) Second-favorite Francis Ford Coppola film.

I'm surprised at how easy it was to narrow it down to The Godfather: Part II (with the first installment being my favorite). I also quite like The Conversation and Apocalypse Now, but neither really approaches those first two Godfather movies...

25) Name a one-off movie that could have produced a franchise you would have wanted to see.

This is a difficult one because sequels are often so bad that it's hard to want one for a movie I love. For example, Blade Runner seems ripe for a series (prequel, perhaps), but I don't actually want to see that. Does Serenity count? Because I'd totally be up for more of that. Some interesting choices from other commenters include Zero Effect (a great choice), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (which would make sense given that there are a series of books to pull from), and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (of course!)

26) Favorite sequence from a Brian De Palma film.

My first thought was the CIA computer heist sequence from Mission: Impossible, an interesting homage to (if not outright theft of) Jules Dassin's classic heist films Rififi and Topkapi. For the best sequence from a terrible De Palma film, I'd go with the opening long shot from Snake Eyes... alas, it was all downhill (and fast) from there.

27) Favorite moment in three-strip Technicolor.

The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy first opens the door to Oz and the film transitions from black and white to color (and Pink Floyd starts playing Money).

28) Favorite Alan Smithee film. (Thanks, Peter!)

I have a distinct memory of going out of my way to see Hellraiser: Bloodline in the theater when it came out. There were about 4 people in the theater on the opening weekend (including me and a friend of mine). The movie was, of course, horrible, but I have a soft spot for Clive Barker mythology and the Hellraiser series does have some interesting ideas, so I found myself enjoying some of the non-standard horror moments. The film took place in three main time periods - the past, the present and the future - following several generations of puzzle makers and architects. It was an interesting idea, but the film got bogged down in pedestrian horror sequences that were more boring than scary.

29) Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) or Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau)?

Hey, two movies I've seen and two actors I'm familiar with! As far as the characters go, I'll go with Morris Buttermaker, because everyone loves an underdog.

30) Best post-Crimes and Misdemeanors Woody Allen film.

Do I really have to? I'm not a big fan of Woody Allen to start with, and limiting it to this time period is rough. I guess Bullets Over Broadway.

31) Best Film of 1999.

Back in the day, I had The Insider and Fight Club at the top of my list, and while my opinion of some of the other films on the list has changed some, I still like those movies the best. Oh who am I kidding? The best movie of 1999 is unquestionably Varsity Blues. I don't want... your life.

32) Favorite movie tag line.

This is a no brainer: "In space, no one can hear you scream." from Alien.


33) Favorite B-movie western.

I think I'm going to have to take a mulligan on this one, unless spaghetti westerns count (and I'm pretty sure they don't).

34) Overall, the author best served by movie adaptations of her or his work.

This is a really challenging question, as I can't think of any author that has unanimously great movies adapated from their work, but there are several interesting candidates. Elmore Leonard has done well at the cinema (Out of Sight, Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, and 3:10 to Yuma spring to mind, though there have certainly been some misfires). Stephen King has a lot of awful adaptations, but several good to great films too (Shawshank Redemption, The Shining, Stand By Me, Christine, Carrie, The Dead Zone, etc...). Phillip K Dick seems to be one of the more popular SF authors in Hollywood, with several successful adaptations (Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly). Somehow I doubt I'd know the names Mario Puzo or Peter Benchley if it weren't for adaptations of their novels into superior movies, but at the same time, they've only ever really had one or two movies that did so.

35) Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) or Irene Bullock (Carole Lombard)?

Tough one, but I guess I'll go with Susan Vance/Hepburn.

36) Favorite musical cameo in a non-musical movie.

The Dan Band in Old School, a brilliant moment in cinema history. I also thought of Otis Day and the Knights in Animal House, who are great in both scenes.


37) Bruno (the character, if you haven’t seen the movie, or the film, if you have): subversive satire or purveyor of stereotyping?

Neither. Or maybe both. Both satire and stereotyping take a back seat to the need to provide shock value, which Bruno does with reckless abandon and limited success. Alas, once the shock wears off, there is little else to say about it.

38) Five film folks, living or deceased, you would love to meet. (Thanks, Rick!)

I had a hard time with this, as I'm not really sure how much I'd really want to meet these folks. I'd probably be reduced to the Chris Farley show style conversation. Kubrick and Hitchcock come immediately to mind, after that it gets a little hazy. Joel and Ethan Coen seem like they'd be awesome to hang out with. And Rosario Dawson, because she sounds awesome (and for more obvious reasons).



Changes to the Academy Awards
A few weeks ago Ganis announced some changes to the Academy Awards cerimony. The most notable change is the expansion of the Best Picture category from 5 to 10 films. Some other, smaller changes were announced as well, including moving "honorary" awards to a separate ceremony in November. I found the announcement a bit surprising and am tentatively excited to see how it works out.

The change is almost certainly a reaction to last year's batch of Best Picture nominees, which was notable for the absense of two films: The Dark Knight and Wall-E. Both are excellent films and both were amazingly popular with audiences, and their absense from the Best Picture category was probably felt. Ratings for the Oscars have been falling for years... last year had a small bump over the previous year, but it's still relatively low compared to most recent years... including a little over 10 years ago, when the enormously popular Titanic won Best Picture and 57 million people tuned in (compared to last year's 36 million). Even before last year, the disconnect between nominees and what people actually watched was pretty wide. A frequent lament heard during Oscar season is how people haven't even heard of half the nominated movies, let alone seen them.

So will doubling the nominees help? In theory, sure... but I keep wondering about that. This could certainly backfire. Everyone is assuming that the extra slots will be filled with commercially popular films, but that's not a certainty. How annoying would the Oscars be if you haven't seen or heard of any of the 10 nominees? That's probably unlikely, but you never know. On the opposite end of the spectrum, what would happen if the extra 5 nominees contain subpar movies? That could end up devaluing the Oscars even further. The Academy has been mentioning that this increase to 10 nominees is not unprecedented. Apparently the Oscars had 10 nominees regularly in the 1930s and early 40s. Of course, Hollywood's output back then far outstips our current output. During that era, a major studio would put out at least 50 films a year. These days, 20 films in a year would be about as high as it gets. On the other hand, there were about 300 eligible films last year, and picking 10 of those seems reasonable enough. The other issue is that some of the smaller categories like Best Animated Film and Best Foreign film still exist, which means that while such films might get a Best Picture nod, they'll almost certainly lose (because they'll be winning their other award). If the Academy truly wanted to get a diverse set of movies and give then an equal chance to win, they would get rid of these other categories.

All of that nitpicking aside, I think it will be a positive thing. I'm an unabashed fan of genre films (horror, sci-fi, etc...), and the Academy is infamous for avoiding such films, especially in the Best Picture category. The Academy is also infamous for avoiding Comedies. The last Comedy to win Best Picture was Annie Hall. And how did that manage to win? It's main competition was a Science Fiction film. So I'm hoping that this change means we'll get more than your standard drama, historical drama, or drama films that usually get nominated. Maybe a horror movie, SF movie, or even a comedy will make it on the list. So there's a short term benefit here in that more films people like watching might actually be nominated.

Of course, being nominated doesn't guarantee anything about the winner... but if a genre movie has a chance of being nominated, perhaps studios and talented filmmakers will be encouraged to embrace such genres instead of constantly chasing after the Academy's idiosyncratic notion of a "good" film. Removing that stigma would be a good thing overall. Also, as the economy shrinks, major studios have become more risk-averse and are spending less money on independent films (indeed, most stuidos have closed or severely cut their independent divisions). If more independent films could become more successful, we might see an increase in quantity and quality. So the potential for long-term benefit is also there.

The strange thing about this change is that it probably should have been made last year, when the most successful movies at the box office were also among the best movies (i.e. the aforementioned Dark Knight and Wall-E). This year (so far, at least) sees less of a convergence between box office and quality. Can you imagine Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen being nominated? Not that it will, but still. What movies stand to benefit this year? Up will almost certainly garner a nomination thanks to this change. After that, things get less certain. Other children's fare, such as Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are might even benefit. I'm betting The Hurt Locker will be nominated (but that might have made it anyway). Other indie possibilities include Moon and The Brothers Bloom. More mainstream fare like Star Trek might even make it. As for the rest of the year, I'm not sure. This change might bode well for Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, Scorsese's Shutter Island, and James Cameron's Avatar, all of which are genre films that the Academy doesn't typically reward. More traditional Oscar fare like Eastwood's Invictus and Soderbergh's The Informant!, among many others I'm sure I'm forgetting, will certainly garner attention. All of this assumes these movies are good, but one can hope. It will almost certainly make my annual liveblogging less of a chore.



Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror
This month's pick for the Final Girl Film Club is an Italian zombie flick called Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror (aka Zombie 3). Those Italians sure do love their zombies, but I have to admit that it's a subgenre I've never really gotten into... Unfortunately, this film does little to change my mind. It's pretty much your standard zombie fare - a group of people gather at some Professor's mansion in the country (not sure how a professor could afford such a swanky place to live, but hey, it's a zombie movie, why get bogged down in details), only to find that the professor has accidentally awoken the dead, who proceed to shuffle slowly towards our heroes in the typical zombie fashion. This being a bad horror movie, many characters go wandering off on their own so that they can succumb to the undead masses. I suppose I should mention that there are some minor spoilers in the below, but that really doesn't matter that much in a movie like this, does it?


The movie is pretty craptacular, but the filmmakers also knew where their bread was buttered and hit the zombie movie sweet spots well enough. Instead of spending what little money they had on things like actors and story, they appear to have blown everything on their special effects and makeup, to reasonably good effect. Aside from similar clothing, these zombies don't all look the same or have the same makup - each one has a somewhat distinct look, varying in stages of decomposition. Being a zombie flick, there is no