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Sunday, June 14, 2009
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 personality to any of them, only to the mob. There's some pretty effective gore here, but by the third or fourth time you see a group of zombies squishing around some unlucky character's entrails, it gets to be a bit boring. The acting is horrible, of course, and we never really get to know most of the characters, but we do get to know the female characters' bodies pretty well (not good actresses, but they look pretty good onscreen). Again, pretty standard fare for a zombie flick. At first, I was a little confused at how this movie had achieved such a high cult-film status. Then this little fella struts onscreen:
The character of "young" Michael is best thing in the movie, and he is definitely why this movie has attained cult status. You see, the character is supposed to be a 12 year old boy with a serious Oedipal complex. Apparently, Italian law prohibited actual children from being in schlock-fests like this, so the filmmakers had to try and find an adult who looked like a child. Somehow, they settled on 26 year old Peter Bark, who is quite small, but looks a lot older than 26 (let alone 12). Strangely, even the voice actor they got to do the dubbing on the English version sounds like a grown man imitating a child. Anyway, this character steals the show. He's actually not onscreen for a good portion of the movie, but when he is, he's awesome. And the climactic payoff of his bizarre Oedipal complex is indeed disgusting and depraved and surely the reason this film has any following at all today. I suppose a groan-inducing "I can't believe they went there" ending is better than many zombie movies manage, but still... Aside from the unintentional comedy such a film offers, it didn't really do much for me. Zombie fanatics will surely love the experience, but I left the film with a resounding "meh." The whole Oedipal subplot certainly sets this movie apart from the shuffling mob of other zombie movies, but I don't find that particularly impressive either... Some nice gore, nudity, and unintentional comedy, but otherwise nothing special. ** Lots more screenshots and comments in the extended entry...
This is the aforementioned professor who invites the group of people to his swanky mansion just before heading over to the burial ground (how convenient that this professor is living in a mansion that is a quick walk away from some gigantic tomb). Here, he is reeling back in shock at seeing a zombie. Strangly, he also drops the little pickaxe, leaving himself defenseless (of course, he's also the one who tries to reason with the zombies, explaining that "I'm your friend!" right before he gets eaten).
Here's another of the film's zombies that showcases the standard green-mumu and neckerchief uniform of the zombies (the neckerchief was presumably used to hide the edges of the zombie masks, which I admit are pretty cool).
One would think that the pitcfork would make a reasonable weapon against the undead, but not the way this guy wields it. I don't think he even gets to use it... the first zombie that (slowly) approaches him manages to (slowly) grab the end of it and (slowly) wrest it from him. Perhaps the zombies posess super strength.
There are only ever about 5-10 zombies onscreen at any given time, but the film does give a pretty good implication that there are tons of zombies with shots like this, where you only see a few zombies, but you get the impression of a giant zombie horde...
One of the other strange things about the zombies in this movie are that they have enough intelligence to use rudimentary tools and set traps for our unwitting protagonists. And they can apparently throw giant spikes with remarkable accuracy, pinning victims to a wall so that they can (slowly) use a scythe to cut off their head.
One of the many times a character wanders off on their own so that they can become victims. It's actually a nice shot.
This is one of my favorite Michael moments. He's exporing the basement with his mother and her friend (boyfriend? Not really sure what the deal is with Michael's father - perhaps he was conceived by midi-chlorians) when Michael finds this patch on the floor and sniffs it. Then he runs over and says "Mother... This cloth smells of death." and his mother just laughs it off, completely ignoring the creepy factor (which is only enhanced by the already creepy look of Michael). Unintentionally hilarious.
These shots are actually our first introduction to Michael. His mother opens the door to check on him and he is sound asleep. Then the camera zooms in on his disembodied head as he opens his eyes wide.
This is actually the closing screen of the film. Things are looking pretty bleak for the final surviving character when suddenly there's a freeze frame and these words appear on the screen. I have no idea what the hell this Black Spider is, or why it's making a "Profecy" or why it can't spell trivial words like "Prophecy" or "nights". Is this supposed to mean something to the audience? Or is it supposed to be lending a sorta faux-creepy credibility to the proceedings (er, preceedings?) Either way, it certainly contributes to the film's unintentional humor quotient, so I actually kinda liked it. Well, there you have it! Near as I can tell, this isn't really at the top of the Italian Zombie sub-subgenre, but I guess it kept my interest long enough... For once, I'm actually ahead of the game and posted this several weeks early - but there will be lots more posted at Stacy's site in early July. Posted by Mark on June 14, 2009 at 08:22 PM .:
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Sunday, May 31, 2009
Friday the 13th Marathon (Crossover and Reboot) So the last couple of installments of the Friday series left nowhere for the series to go. I mean, what do you do after shoot Jason into Space? Theoretically, you could have devised another SF style sequel that takes place on Earth 2 (which was sorta hinted at the end of Jason X), but that's a bit of a stretch (not that the series is beyond stretching). So they were finally able to do the crossover they teased at the end of part 9, and then they went on to reboot the series just a few months ago. Results, as always in this series, are mixed.
Posted by Mark on May 31, 2009 at 08:46 PM .:
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Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Friday the 13th Marathon (parts IX & X) Coming down the homestretch, the next two Fridays feature what could charitably be described as high concept plots.
This comes from the previously mentioned opening sequence of part IX, where Jason is blown up by the FBI. It's a great opening that film never actually recovers from...
Oh irony, thy name is Kane Hodder. He's the one on the right there, and believe it or not, he's the actor who has portrayed Jason since part VII. The irony here is that he's also playing one of the swat team guys who took down Jason... and his swat character ends up being killed by Jason later on. Heh.
The aforementioned Steven Culp, striking the hard hitting journalist pose.
This is pretty damn funny. After Jason is blown up, a local diner has a burger sale to celebrate. The burgers look like hockey masks.
Look familiar? That's right, this is the Necronomicon from the The Evil Dead films. It turns out that Army of Darkness was being filmed in the same area, so they were able to borrow the Necronomicon and use it as decorations at the Voorhees mansion (did I mention the Voorhees mansion? No? You're probably better off not knowing...)
Yes, the ending of this film implies that there will be a Freddy/Jason crossover. It was apparently done as a lark, but then some people thought it would be a good idea. Ten years later, it became reality (it will be covered in my next post).
Yes, one of the all-time great kills in the series. Jason grabs the teenage scientist who is studying his "dead" body, thrusts her head into liquid nitrogen, pulls it out and slams it on the table, smashing her face into itty, bitty pieces.
So it turns out that the spaceship Jason is on features a robot. Who dresses up in Matrix-like gear and blasts the crap out of Jason. Notice in the second screenshot that approximately half of the bullets she's shooting are hitting the walls around Jason, and not Jason himself. Of course, all the damage she deals out means nothing since Jason is rebuilt by nanobots, after which his first order of business is to absent-mindedly knock off the robot's head (her head survives).
The ship Jason is on features a holodeck-like room, so our heroes program a scenario to distract Jason, with hilarious results. In the scenario, two teenage girls appear in a crystal lake setting and tell Jason that they love alcohol, marijuana, and premarital sex before both cliimbing into their sleeping bags. In a reprise of the sleeping bag kill from part VI, Jason beats them to death with each other. So that wraps up this installment. Stay tuned for the last two films in the series and maybe some more posts, because I know you all love these movies as much as I do, right? RIGHT? Posted by Mark on May 20, 2009 at 07:00 PM .:
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Sunday, May 17, 2009
Subterranean Filmsick Blues To celebrate a significant milestone in his life, Alonso Moseley (best fake blogger name evar) of Acrentropy has posted a new filmic compilation and made a contest out of it: On May 17th, between 7pm and 8pm EST, I will post my newest clipshow to YouTube. The first person to email me (alonzomosleyfbi@yahoo.com) the complete and correct list of 88 titles will win a DVD prize pack. There's no fee to enter, but only one entry per person, please.So I figure I'll take a shot. I doubt I'll be able to get all 88 films, but these things are fun anyway (for reference, this is the same guy who did 100 Movies, 100 Quotes, 100 Numbers and 100 Movies, 100 Quotes, 100 Numbers: The Centennial Edition). Here's the video: And here are my guesses (the * denotes when I'm not positive, but still reasonably sure):
So I'm reasonably sure of about 68 out of 88. Of those, there are a few I'm not positive about (again, marked with an *), but I think I did alright considering how hard some of those were... Of the ones I don't know, I made a couple guesses, but I'm pretty sure they're wrong. Can you help fill in any of the gaps? PS - Sorry, the next Friday the 13th Marathon post will have to wait a bit - this was too fun to pass up (and in a rare bit of convergence, it aligns with my posting schedule too)... Update 5/18/09: Several of the unknowns have been provided by friends and a helpful commenter. The new ones have been added above... Update 5/21/09: It appears that the answers were announced yesterday. Looks like we did pretty good, but there were a handful of ones we didn't get (I'm kicking myself on a couple of them, but for the most part I haven't seen the ones that were missing from my answers.) Posted by Mark on May 17, 2009 at 07:05 PM .:
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Sunday, May 10, 2009
Friday the 13th Marathon (parts VII & VIII) The marathon continues with the last two Paramount Fridays, which are both pretty horrible and feature what I shall term "Soggy Jason" since he spends a significant amount of time underwater between and during both films.
The best kill in part VII is when Jason finds a girl in a sleeping bag, drags her along, picks her up by the sleeping bag and slams her against a tree, killing her. This was hard to catch with screenshots (it's very dark), but it's a great moment and it's referenced again later in the series in Jason X (we'll cover that in the next entry).
So in part VII, this psychiatrist pictured above brings the final girl back to a cabin on Crystal Lake where she accidentally used her psychic powers to drown her father. He's hoping that the powerful emotions will trigger her psychic powers because he's a douchebag and wants to get credit for the research or something. Anyway, he's one of the better victims in the series because you're rooting for him to die so horribly... alas, his kill isn't that impressive (though it may be a lot better uncut).
Jason finds his way into a toolshed in this movie and thus becomes a big fan of using gardening and landscaping implements to kill people.
Psychic girl does some psyonic damage to Jason that causes his mask to come flying off and this is what we see. I have to give the makeup guys credit - this is a pretty cool look for Jason.
I forgot about another moment I liked in part VIII. Our heroes escape from the cruise ship on a lifeboat and eventually make it to Manhattan. Jason, of course, was swimming along side them and also makes it to New York. As soon as he gets out of the water, he looks up and sees this hockey sign. It's a funny moment, which brings part VIII's acceptable runtime up to about 1 minute, 10 seconds.
This is the aforementioned waitress who says "Welcome to New York" when told that the final girl is being chased by a homicidal maniac.
I'm pretty sure the guy on the left is Francis Ford Coppola, engaging in an uncredited cameo (from the same coffee shop with the waitress above). Well, that wraps up parts VII and VIII. Next up is the body-hopping part 9 and the spacetacular X. Stay tuned. Posted by Mark on May 10, 2009 at 03:22 PM .:
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Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Cinematography and Art A topic that has been coming up recently is how many video game makers seem to eschew the label of artist when talking about their work. The "are video games art?" discussion has gotten old and tiresome for many people even as the debate continues on in many forms. Part of the reason this is interesting to me is that it was never even really a question in my mind - video games were as legitimate an art form as any other. Perhaps this comes from growing up with games, but whatever the case, I'm interested in the subject, particularly because it seems like many of the most influential video game creators aren't keen on describing themselves as artists. One of the things that is often brought up in these discussions is the similarities and differences between video games and movies. It's often said that movies were considered "artistically legitimate" right off the bat, and that may very well be the case, but I was watching a documentary called Visions of Light this weekend that touched on something relevant to this discussion. The doc follows the history of cinematography in movies and features many prominent cinematographers. I uploaded a short clip to youtube in which Stephen Burum (who worked on The Untouchables, among many other films) talks about how many of the classic DPs characterized their work: Interestingly, it seems that many of the pioneers of cinematography didn't consider themselves much of an artist. I think there's also a similarity between a cinematographer and a video game designer (or coder, or artist, or any of the hundred other jobs it takes to make a modern game) in that they can both describe what they do as craftsmanlike. In the video above, the cinematographers didn't admit to making art, instead referring to stuff as an "interesting effect," which is a phrase I bet a lot of video game makers use. I don't think this really settles anything, but it is perhaps more evidence of the fact that art is in the eye of the beholder. In the comments to my last post on the subject, my friend Dave posed the question "can something still be art if its creators don't consider it art?" I think the answer is yes. Posted by Mark on May 06, 2009 at 08:46 PM .:
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Sunday, May 03, 2009
Professor Peabody's Hysterical Historical Wayback Spring Break Film 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 did one of these a little while ago and now there's a new one, so here are my answers: 1) Favorite Biopic Well, I don't especially care for biopics in general, so it's kinda tough to pick a favorite. There are a lot of biopics that I like, but don't love. Goodfellas (if I were forced to pick one, this might be it), Lawrence of Arabia (excellent filmmaking, but the person at the heart of the story remains a bit impenetrable), and Amadeus (which is great because it gets at Mozart through Salieri, an approach I wish more biopics would take) are pretty darn good. 2) Dyan Cannon or Tuesday Weld? And so we come to the first question where Dennis gives a choice between two people I've never heard of and I pretend to care which one I choose. Well, let's see. Dyan Cannon did some groundbreaking work in Kangaroo Jack, but Tuesday Weld was in Once Upon a Time in America and Thief, so I'll have to go with Tuesday. 3) Best example of science fiction futurism rendered silly by the event of time catching up to the prediction This is tougher than it sounds, because, well, pretty much any SF movie made before 1970 qualifies, and most after that as well. Also, much of SF isn't really about predicting the future. For example, a common answer to this question is Escape from New York... but do you really think that John Carpenter was predicting that New York would become a futuristic prison? I don't think so. Anyways, let's just go with The Day After Tomorrow, because that really set the bar for verisimilitude. 4) Annette Funicello & Frankie Avalon or Troy Donahue & Sandra Dee? Oh man, I really don't care. By the end of this quiz, I'll probably start replacing these choices with my own. You've been warned. 5) Favorite Raoul Walsh movie? Well, I haven't seen any of his movies. However, this quiz has inspired me to put White Heat at the top of my Netflix queue. 6) Sophomore film which represents greatest improvement over the director’s debut A great question. Several answers come immediately to mind, including some of my favorite movies of all time. The Terminator was James Cameron's second film (after Piranha Part Two: The Spawning) and Alien was Ridley Scott's second film (and perhaps his best) coming on the heels of The Duellists (a so-so film). Both had done at least one short film or TV beforehand, but as features go, those are some pretty big leaps. ![]() The Terminator 7) Ice Cube or Mos Def? I'm mildly surprised to be familiar with each actor's oeuvre. I'll go with Mos Def because he seems to be more consistently good (though he has his debacles), while Ice Cube started off with a bang and has been moving steadily downhill ever since. 8) Favorite movie about the music industry The most obvious choice is This Is Spinal Tap which is certainly deserving of the title. For a less obvious choice, let's go with The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, if only for that scene when the band is playing and Robocop stops the music, mid-song, because he hears someone crying in the audience. Brilliant. 9) Favorite Looney Tunes short (provide link if possible) Without a doubt Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century, though I do quite enjoy all the Road Runner cartoons as well... 10) Director most deserving of respect or upwardly mobile critical reassessment This is a tough one because it's hard to gauge how much respect a given director really has these days, especially on the internet. I'm going to go with Johnny To. When it comes to Hong Kong action movies, directors like John Woo, Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam get all the praise, but To has been nothing short of fantastic and is definitely the best director working in Hong Kong today (for example, take a look at Triangle, where To completely outclasses Hark and Lam). He got some critical praise recently with his Triad Election films, but for the most part, his movies don't get much of a release in the US. Last year's Mad Detective had its widest release at 1 theater, but it's a fantastic film (it made my top 10 of 2008 once I finally got my hands on a copy). For a modern director, he's quite prolific too. Anyway, for a more conventional pick, I might go with Michael Curtiz. Casablanca is certainly a classic, but Curtiz doesn't seem to have quite the following that you'd expect.
11) Ruth Gordon or Margaret Hamilton? I guess Ruth Gordon, because of Harold and Maude and Rosemary's Baby. Of course, those are the only two movies I've seen from either Actress, but at least they're good ones... 12) Best filmed adaptation of a play The one that immediately comes to mind is Glengarry Glen Ross. A couple of other interesting choices I found were 12 Angry Men and A Few Good Men (didn't even realize that was a play.) 13) Buddy Ebsen or Edgar Buchanan? *sigh* I guess Buddy Ebsen, because, you know, Jed Clampett. 14) Favorite Jean Renoir movie? Well, I've only seen two of them, but I guess I'll go with La grande illusion. I watched it for a film class in college (one of my two electives). It's not exactly a thrilling film, but it was a good film to watch in an academic setting. 15) Favorite one-word movie title, and why Jaws, because it it describes the movie and evokes tension without really giving anything away (incidentally, Jaws might even qualify as a "Sophomore film which represents greatest improvement over the director's debut" though it depends on how you consider Spielberg's TV work, particularly Duel) 16) Ernest Thesiger or Basil Rathbone? I don't know, Basil Rathbone? It's a cool name and he was apparently Sherlock Holmes or something. 17) Summer movies—your highest and lowest expectations Well, my highest expectations would probably go to Inglourious Basterds. Tarantino movies never seem like they'll be very good, but then I get to the theater and am usually blown away in one way or another. Some of the casting choices give me pause though (in particular, Eli Roth and maybe even Brad Pitt, though I don't mind either as much as some people...) And for low expecations, I'll go with the 80s toy franchise duo of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. For a full list of upcoming movies I want to see even though I know they'll suck, check out the bottom of this post... (incidentally, I was very wrong on at least one of those picks, probably more). 18) Whether or not you’re a parent, what would be your ideal pick as first movie to see with your own child (or niece/nephew)? Why? That's a tough one. It'd probably one of the old classic Disney movies, perhaps a Pixar movie or even some Miyazaki (for a young child, I think My Neighbor Totoro would probably work best). If my child is particularly brilliant, perhaps I'll start them on Star Wars. But I just know it will be something like Dora The Explorer: The Movie. 19) L.Q. Jones or Strother Martin Once again, I've never heard of either of these. However, I'll go with L.Q. Jones, not because he was in The Wild Bunch, but because he was in Lone Wolf McQuade and he steals every scene he's in... ![]() L.Q. Jones in Lone Wolf McQuade 20) Movie most recently seen in theaters? On DVD/Blu-ray? In theaters, I saw a sneak preview of Star Trek (and liked it a lot). On DVD, I watched Freddy vs. Jason, ending my recent Friday the 13th Marathon, even though the movie ended up being more of a Freddy movie than a Jason movie (and yes, it's bad, like all those movies). On Blu-Ray, I saw Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter which was fine, I guess, but lacks context. The disc also had a fake documentary about Behind the Hood which was pretty good. Ultimately, rereading the book was more worthwhile. 21) Do you see more movies theatrically or at home? Why? At home. Mostly because there are more movies available outside of theaters than inside theaters. Thanks to Netflix and Hulu and other stuff, there's just more to see and it's also more convenient and cheaper. 22) Name an award-worthy comic performance that was completely ignored by Oscar and his pals. Weird Science was just on tv and I was reminded of Dylan Kidd's inspired choice for best female comedic performance of all time on an episode of Filmspotting: Kelly LeBrock as the fantasy girl, Lisa. She is indeed brilliant in that film and of course, she was not nominated. It's a choice I probably never would have thought of, but it's spot on. It's a shame that she never went on to do much else. I blame Steven Seagal. 23) Zac Efron & Vanessa Hudgens or Robert Pattinson & Kristen Stewart Is this a joke? I suppose Kristen Stewart shows some promise (I thought she was good in Adventureland) 24) Name a great (or merely very good) movie that is too painful to watch a second time (Thanks to The Onion A.V. Club) Repeating myself: Grave of the Fireflies, for reasons belabored in that post. I still find it odd that most people find this film so sad... I found it infuriating. But then, both of those traits make it difficult to watch. It is an exceptional film though, and it's one of those films that you could pull out to traumatize people who think that you can't tell real stories with animation. Incidentally, it's kinda cruel to point to that AV Club article, as it's a pretty comprehensive list... Most of the stuff I considered shows up there. 25) Beyonce Knowles or Jennifer Hudson? I never saw Dreamgirls... and don't really want to, but Beyonce. 26) Favorite Robert Mitchum movie? Out of the Past, though it's not like I've seen a ton of Mitchum movies and I'm not particularly in love with that one... 27) Favorite movie featuring a ‘60s musical group that is not either the Beatles or the Monkees I got nothing here. 28) Ok, I warned you. I'm overriding Dennis' question and replacing it with my own. The funny thing is that I don't really have a good answer. Kane Hodder, I guess. Though Derek Mears has potential. This is one that needs to be revisited after the next few movies come out. 29) Favorite Vincent Price movie? I am woefully deficient in my Vincent Price knowledge. I've only seen a couple. For now, I'll say The Abominable Dr. Phibes because I saw it recently and was struck by how much some recent films seem to take from it (notably Se7en and Saw). I've already placed a number of Vincent Price movies in my Netflix queue, basing some of my choices on the selections of Dennis' readers. 30) Name a movie currently flying under the radar that is deserving of rabid cult status. Once again, it's sometimes difficult to tell when something is flying under the radar, especially on the internet where there can be a dedicated following to even the most obscure of movies, but I figure my top 10s are a good place to start (incidentally, there's no way to narrow this down to 1 movie). From 2008, we've got Teeth, The Bank Job, Mad Detective, Timecrimes, Ladrón Que Roba a Ladrón, The Promotion, and Spiral. A good pick from 2007 that's making the rounds on cable right now is Stardust and a good pick from 2006 would be James Gunn's excellent Slither. There are some movies I've heard of that still haven't been released but that sound awesome, notably Trick 'r Treat. I could probably list off a dozen others from the past few years, but I'll leave it at that. 31) Irene Ryan or Lucille Benson (or Bea Benaderet)? More people I haven't heard of, though at the risk of making myself out to be more of a fan of The Beverly Hillbillies than I actually am, I'll have to go with Granny. 32) Single line from a movie that never fails to make your laugh or otherwise cheer you up. (This may be obvious, but the line does not have to come from a comedy.) This is one of those questions that is so broad that almost anything could qualify, to the point where I'm having trouble coming up with a single example. 33) Elliot Gould or Donald Sutherland? Finally, a choice between two people where I've seen a couple movies featuring each. I'll have to go with Donald Sutherland for this one, because he did some fine work when he was younger and as a reader at Dennis' site notes, "he's made an excellent transition into elder statesman, whereas Gould is really off my radar." 34) Best performance by a director in an acting role Another tough one because there are a lot to choose from. The obvious choice is Orson Welles in Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil (or even in a movie he didn't direct, like The Third Man), but if Clint Eastwood counts, I'd say he was damn good in Unforgiven. 35) Favorite Barbara Stanwyck movie? Double Indemnity, though that may be the only movie of hers that I've seen... 36) Outside of reading film criticism or other literature about the movies, what subject do you enjoy reading about or studying which you would say best enriches or illuminates your understanding and appreciation of life, a life that includes the movies? I don't know that there's a single answer for this one, but history is an obvious choice, even if I don't read that much of it. I do read a lot about technology and the like, which I find interesting and illuminating. And lately, I've been reading a lot about video games, if that counts. Posted by Mark on May 03, 2009 at 08:38 PM .:
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Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Star Trek (Advance Review) Thanks to the much appreciated kindness of a coworker, I was able to attend an advance screening of the new Star Trek movie tonight. I will try my best to keep my remarks spoiler free. To make a long story short, I liked it. A lot. A couple of years ago I went to see Mission: Impossible III with pretty low expectations. I liked the first movie, but the second movie was rather terrible (and has not held up well at all), so all I really wanted out of the third film was some nice explosions, maybe a pretty girl or two, and some nice explosions (did I mention explosions? Good.) The director of MI:III was one J.J. Abrams, who had at that point only directed television shows (most of which I did not watch), so my expectations were low. These low expectations might have been why I enjoyed MI:III as much as I did. So when I learned of Abrams involvement in the Star Trek reboot, my interest was piqued. If he could resurrect the outlandish MI series, why not Star Trek? I should mention at this juncture that I never particularly cared for the original Star Trek series. I came on board with The Next Generation, which is one of my favorite TV series. I suppose I liked the even numbered movies featuring the original crew, but for the most part I never really connected with them. So I wasn't particularly interested in the reboot itself so much as I was in what Abrams would do with it. Considering that he was working with material that I never particularly cared for, it would be an uphill battle. Furthermore, the story that needs to be told here essentially amounts to an origin story, which is something I'm conflicted about. Origin stories are necessary and interesting in their own right, but they can provide a lot of challenges and are often somewhat anticlimatic. I don't think it's an accident that a lot of superhero movie series really come into their own during the second installment (not that their first installment was bad or anything). Put simply, Abrams succeeded. I'm also pretty sure that my status as someone who never got into the original series worked significantly in Abrams' favor here. Someone who loves the original series may have different feelings about the film. I'm not an expert on the Star Trek cannon and don't know a lot of the history of star fleet, but from what I can gather, there are things here that might not jive well with people who are in love with the original series. There is an explanation built into the story for this and I was fine with it for a number of reasons, but to go into that more would be delving into spoiler territory. I will say that what Abrams did was gutsy and maybe even needed to be done, which I can respect, but I'm sure there are some who will bristle at what he's done. ![]() Mr. Sulu, set a course for White Castle. Engage! In terms of the story, it works well and the origin story aspect of it is well integrated into the larger arc. I will say that the main villain of this film (played by Eric Bana) is not the most memorable in the series, but he is well drawn enough to get the job done (villains are often an issue in origin stories and this isn't really an exception, but it's not bad either). I was, however, much more impressed with the cast than expected. When the names were first announced, there were several choices that worried me due to associated with their other work. For instance, the thought of Sylar (Zachary Quinto) as Spock did not thrill me. I wasn't sure about Harold (John Cho) as Sulu, Shaun (Simon Pegg) as Scotty, nor Eomer (Karl Urban) as Bones. It's not that I don't like any of those actors (I Iike them a lot), it's that I couldn't picture them as the Star Trek characters. However, for the most part, they all work splendidly. I was pleasantly surprised at how well each character was introduced and given something to do - and this includes the ones I haven't mentioned, like Chekov, Uhura, and of course, Captain Kirk himself. Movies with ensemble casts often suffer from a lack of focus, but this movie had a good balance. A lot of people were skeptical of actor Chris Pine when it was announced that he'd be playing Kirk, but I think he did a good job. Again, I'm interested to see how true blue trekkies will receive the film. While there are some things that might not go over so well, there are certainly plenty of in-jokes, catch phrases and references that are made for the enthusiasts. For instances, you get a nice Kobayashi Maru reference and there's a pretty memorable red-shirt moment that you just know was done purposefully. I'd also be interested in how well this movie would play with newcomers. I suspect someone who has no exposure to Star Trek would still enjoy this movie quite a bit. The other thing that surprised me about the movie was just how funny it was. I was laughing out loud quite frequently and often found myself smirking at the screen when a nice bit of snappy dialogue passed by, or when some reference was made and a character spouted off a catchphrase ("Dammit man, I'm a doctor, not a theoretical physicist!"). Even though I never really caught on to the original series, there was an element of nostalgia and familiarity that the movie captured well (though again, I don't think a newcomer would be put off by this). There could have been a little more science in the fiction and there was perhaps more emphasis on action than in other Trek stories, but for the most part, it was quite a fun experience. It's not a perfect movie, but in the end, it's a highly enjoyable, action packed, crowd-pleasing popcorn film. I think this is about as good as I could have hoped for the film and Abrams seems to have successfully revitalized the Star Trek universe. For the first time since TNG ended, I'm intrigued to see where they take this series. Here's to hopeing they don't pull a Quantum of Solace on me in the next outing. *** (out of 4 stars) Posted by Mark on April 29, 2009 at 12:16 AM .:
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Sunday, April 26, 2009
Art vs Entertainment This may be somewhat repetitive considering some of my recent posts, but I have once again run accross a popular video game designer who bristles at the thought of video games as art. At GDC, there was apparently a "Rants" panel where various guests ranted about one aspect of the industry or another. Some of the rants include concerns about the way people write about games, metacritic scores, character diversity in games, and the uselessness of the old "hardcore" and "casual" labels. However, the most controversial and most-discussed rant was made by Heather Chaplin: She argued that games' age is not the correct source of blame for the often insultingly juvenile nature of games, the tiresome prevalence of space marines, bikini girls and typified young male power fantasies. Her point: Games aren't adolescent. It's game developers who are a bunch of, in her words, "fucking adolescents."Obviously, this raised some eyebrows (to put it nicely) in the audience. Game designer David Jaffe (perhaps best known for his work on God of War) wrote a long response on his blog and among many points, he included this (emphasis mine): I think a mistake folks make- in any medium- is assuming we all want to be artistically relevant and important in the eyes of the intelligencia (sp?) of the world. I have to tell you: I think THAT desire is adolescent and spews from a place of need and want and lack of faith in ones own creative powers. And- most important- it gets in the way of creating truly great work (be it film, games, or books).This is the third time I've come on this blog and pointed to a renowned video game designer who has basically said that the games they create are not "art". What's going on here? One of the things each of these guys has mentioned is that their true goal is to make games that entertain people. The struggle seems to be that for whatever reason, art is not equated with entertainment... indeed, it seems like most video game designers are worried about art ruining the entertainment value of their games. This is an interesting conjecture. When it comes to the Are Video Games Art? debate, movies are often brought up as a comparison point (perhaps due to the visual and auditory nature of both mediums). And in the movie business today, there also seems to be something of a schism between "art films" and "popular films". I'm not sure when this happened (perhaps I'm only now coming to this conclusion after a lifetime of watching film and seeking out new and different material, including foreign and so-called art films), but it seems to be very pronounced today, particularly in the independent movie world. A lot of mainsteam Hollywood fare is focus-grouped to death and neutered to a point where no one can be offended by the result (I don't think the degree to which this happens is as large as most though, and think there are plenty of examples to the contrary). You end up with something bland that is made to appeal to everyone, and as such, it appeals to no one in particular. On the other end of the spectrum, you have your typical independent or artistic film which often seems to revel in the freedom to be provocative and controversial (these are often studio pictures too). These are films that revel in self-loathing and "challenge the popular paradigm of dominant culture" or something along those lines. As such, a lot of these films come off as being pretentious, self-indulgent, boring crap. Yes, yes, you're exploring non-traditional narrative structure whilst deconstructing the nature of capitalism and the suburbs, but your film is boring. In other words, I don't think it's an accident that Jaffe used "REVOLUTIONARY ROAD: THE GAME" as his example. What I just described as mainstream and independent or artistic films are basically stereotypes. Most films probably don't fit much into either category, but I think the stereotype does hold a place in current public perception of the film world. I find this interesting, because video games are similar in a lot of ways. There is an indie movement in video games, and they are roughly analogous to the indie film movement. So perhaps it's not surprising that mainstream designers like Jaffe don't want to be called "artists". For whatever reason, "art" has been equated with pretentious, self-indulgent, boring crap. Who wants to be that? The comparison of video games to film also brings the usual questions, most famously, where is the video game equivalent to Citizen Kane? In a recent article, Leigh Alexander wonders if that's really what video games need. There's nothing wrong with craving watershed moments for video games, of course. But problem with the Citizen Kane question, as with other similar demands, is that it's begun to reverberate wildly without any practical follow-through on what the answer might look like.I think Bogost has hit the nail on the head here. Back when movies began appearing, "art" hadn't been deconstructed to death, so it wasn't really a question. But since video games were invented after people started challenging the nature of art (and painting stuff like Campbell's Soup Cans and calling it art, to pick an entirely arbitrary example), they're held up to extra scrutiny. It's also interesting to consider that Citizen Kane is not very entertaining by itself. For film enthusiasts, it's an extremely important and fascinating film because it gathered a bunch of existing techniques, invented some new ones, and mashed it all together to tell a story in a new and exciting way. However, if you're not a film history buff, you'd be bored to tears. What made Citizen Kane great has been appropriated, improved upon and contextualized over the years to a point where most people won't see anything new and exciting in the film. For example, audiences at the time were wowed by Orson Welles' use of flashbacks and deep focus. Today, you won't even notice it because those things are a part of the standard movemaking toolkit. You've seen it a thousand times. So to me, Citizen Kane is an important movie because of the techniques it used, not the story it told. To truly enjoy Citizen Kane, you have to really be invested in the cultural and historical context in which it was produced. Video games have most probably had a series of Kane-like innovations over the years. Perhaps they were spread out over a multitude of games, but when you consider the evolution of games, well, we've come a long way. I'm probably not knowledgeable enough about video games to say for sure, but stuff like Wolfenstein and Doom (popularizing the FPS format) and GTA III (with its open-ended sandbox world) could very well represent Kane-like leaps. Honestly, I still don't understand the people who question the legitimacy of games as art, and I think all that questioning has driven a wedge between art and entertainment. To be sure, those are two different things, but to me, the best art is entertaining too (and vice versa). The problem is that when you equate art with pretentious, self-indulgent, boring crap (as many people apparently do), it drives designers who are interested in entertaining people to eschew art. The question I'm left with is this: If there was no question that games were art, would game designers be producing better games? Posted by Mark on April 26, 2009 at 08:04 PM .:
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Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Friday the 13th Marathon (parts V & VI) For the past couple of years, I've watched a whole lot of horror movies in anticipation of Halloween. It seems that this year, I never really stopped watching horror movies, and one of the things I started a couple years ago was revisiting the Friday the 13th series of films. I realized at some point that if I continued at the same pace, I wouldn't be able to finish revisiting the films in the series until 2011, so I sped things up a bit. I still have a few movies left, but I figured it's time to start talking about the films. For some unfathomable reason, I like these movies. I fully recognize how bad these films are on an objective level and, quite honestly, on a subjective level as well. There's a definite element of nostalgia here - I've seen most of these films when I was younger, but often in bits and pieces and usually covering my eyes during the "scary" parts. At this point, I can't help but wonder what on earth I was so scared of (perhaps the absurdly bad acting? the lack of continuity?), but I still have a fascination with the movies. During the last 6 weeks of Halloween marathon, I covered parts II through IV (ironically titled "The Final Chapter" even though we're really only 1/3 of the way through the series), so we'll pick up right where we left off with part V (followed by some shorts, a quick review of part VI, and lots of screenshots.) Incidentally, Major Spoilers all throughout this post, but why do you really care?
As previously mentioned, the James Bond title sequence is sheer genius. I think Devin Faraci (also a big fan of the series) said it best in his review: The mood is almost perfectly set, and then McLaughlin goes and makes it utterly perfect: we zoom into Jason's eyeball and all of a sudden his iris is taking up the screen, and Jason walks in from stage right - yes, it's a Jason Voorhees version of the famous James Bond gun barrel sequence. Jason turns to the camera, swipes his machete, blood pours from the wound in reality and the titles happen. It's a glorious moment; one part tongue in cheek, one part homage, one part acknowledgment that, like James Bond, Jason Voorhees will keep showing up in movies for decades to come (that confidence was a little premature, I think).
So once Jason is brought back to life, he starts roaming the countryside and eventually stumbles on this car with two camp counselors trying to make their way to Crystal Lake. The woman in the car actually says something to the effect of "I've seen enough horror movies to know when to turn around," but of course, it was not to be, and Jason impales her boyfriend. She tries to get away but falls in a puddle and then actually attempts to bribe Jason with her American Express card (Don't leave home without it!) Jason is not amused.
For some inexpicable reason, a company is conducting a team building exercise in the woods near Crystal Lake by playing games of paintball. Jason neatly dispatches three of the paintballers with one swift stroke of his trusted machete. Another employee shoots Jason with a paintball, so jason grabs him by the arm and throws him at a tree, where his blood stains the happy face. Oh, and by the way, Jason never let go of the arm. The way Jason lifts the arm and cocks his head is hilarious. It's never quite explained why this company apparently only has 4 employees and yet needs to participate in team building exercises, but little inconsistencies like that are endearing in a movie like this.
As previously mentioned, this movie actually features children put in harms way. I found this particular shot amusing. How many 10 year old kids do you know that read Jean Paul Sartre? It's the attention to detail in shots like this that puts this film above others in the series.
So after his initial encounter with Jason, our hero, Tommy Jarvis heads to the book store to figure out what to do. He buys several books, among them 30 Years of the Dead, The Dead are Alive, and A Manual of Occultism. Presumably he did this so he could know how to defeat Jason, which is amusing since the method Tommy eventually uses is pretty stupid.
There's nothing like seeing the results of an offscreen murder to chill your soul. Or at least, cool it off a little. Like air conditioning. Ok, moving on.
This is how Jason is defeated in this movie. It's a breathtakingly stupid ending, for a number of reasons. Oh sure, they show a boat propeller cutting into his face at one point, but still. Jason's taken way more damage than that and lived, so what's the deal? I guess it's that Jason originally died in a drowning accident, so maybe he just goes comotose in the water or something. Yes, this film is reaching for that sort of thematic depth. And realism too. Because if you tie a chain around someone's neck, their body would float like that. Why? Because apparently only Jason's head has buoyancy. Well now that I'm starting to complain about realism in a Friday the 13th movie, I figure that's my signal to stop. Posted by Mark on April 22, 2009 at 08:11 PM .:
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Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Here Comes The Cavalry MGK wants to know: What’s the best “rescue” moment in an action movie? The moment when the hero is absolutely fucked, completely about to get killed/ass-kicked/etc. by the villains in violent manner, and then suddenly his friend/ally shows up, fighting ensues, and the hero is (for the moment) saved?Yeah, I know, that was a little over two weeks ago, but for us here at Kaedrin (and by "us", I mean "me"), this is about as good as it gets. Now MGK's answer is from The Crow, and that's certainly a good pick. It fits his definition well, it's a decent movie, but it's also not an obvious choice. Some of his commenters do a good job pointing out some of the more obvious examples, like Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Return of the King, Jurassic Park, and a television example of Battlestar Galactica, among a lot of other choices. However, the first one the came to mind for me was not suggested by anyone. And when I looked around a bit and found the inevitable TV Tropes entry, I didn't even find it there. So my pick is from The Hunt for Red October. Spoilers to follow! At the end of the movie there's a standoff between three submarines - the Red October (a Soviet sub featuring a nearly silent propulsion system and a Captain who wants to defect), the USS Dallas (a US sub featuring a crazy CIA agent and the world's greatest Sonar man), and the Konovalov (another Soviet sub that has been ordered to sink the Red October). In the film, the Red October makes contact with the Dallas, and they're attempting to proceed with the defection when the Konovalov shows up and attempts to literally torpedo the effort. Due to some fancy maneuvering, the Red October is able to avoid the first torpedo by exploiting the torpedo's safety features. Recognizing this, the captain of the Konovalov removes the safety features from the next torpedo and fires. The Red October is too big and too slow to evade the torpedo! Whatever shall they do? USS Dallas to the rescue! The Dallas passes between the Red October and the torpedo (causing one American officer to memorably exclaim, "Way to go Dallas!"). Sensing a new target, the torpedo acquires the Dallas, which continues its turn, changing the course of the torpedo. The Dallas releases some counter-measures which momentarily blind the torpedo and immediately surfaces, causing the torpedo to search for a new target. Because of the Dallas' fancy maneuvering, the closest target ends up being the Konovalov. Recognizing the situation, a Soviet officer scolds the Konovalov's captain, "You arrogant ass. You've killed us!" It's a fantastic sequence, for several reasons:
Update: Heh, I forgot that Beverly Crusher is Jack Ryan's wife, even though she's only in the movie for about 1 minute. Another Update: It seems that for all my bloviating about the plot, I had neglected a few of the specifics of that final battle... but the general concept was still correct. Incidentally, what the heck happened to John McTiernan? In a period of 3 years or so, he made 3 great action/adventure movies: Predator, Die Hard and the aforementioned The Hunt for Red October. Then about 5-10 mostly bad movies and silence since 2003 (though IMDB reports a few movies currently in production). Posted by Mark on April 15, 2009 at 08:56 PM .:
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Sunday, April 05, 2009
Philadelphia Film Festival: Playing Columbine A few years ago, student filmmaker Danny Ledonne discovered a computer program called RPG Maker (which provides an easy way to create a video game without having to learn programming) and decided to make a game that would explore issues important to him. As a high school student in Colorado at the time of the Columbine shooting, he found that event to be particularly important in his life. He recognized himself in the shooters and wanted to make a game that explored that concept as well as the idea that video games were themselves responsible for the tragedy. So he made a game called Super Columbine Massacre RPG! where you play Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and act out the massacre, following events on the day of the shootings and continuing after their suicide into hell (where they fight creatures from the video game Doom). In 2005 he (anonymously) made the game available for free on the internet. He didn't do much in the way of promotion for the game, but it almost immediately started garnering attention due to its controversial subject matter. Many people condemned the game and its creator, but it eventually started to pick up some supporters who mounted a defense. As a way of explaining his actions, Ledonne made a documentary called Playing Columbine in 2007 that covers why and how he created the game, and then springboards to broader discussions on the role of serious video games and art in our society.The film has been making its way through the festival circuit since then, including a the showing I saw yesterday at the PFF. While I wouldn't say that Ledonne is anywhere close to Errol Morris territory, I do think he has crafted an effective exploration of an intensely personal subject. Without knowing much about the game or the movie going in, I suspected that there might be something of a conflict of interests for Ledonne. Was this going to just be an exercise in self-serving defensiveness and bias, or would it be a legitimate exploration of video games, art, and culture? I'm happy to say that Ledonne has succeeded in making a movie that is more than just a defense of his simple game. Of course, the film starts by detailing the controversy surrounding the game and the response to the game. However, the movie wisely strays from the game at almost every opportunity in order 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. There is a somewhat cyclical structure to the film, as each segment uses the Super Columbine Massacre RPG! game as a springboard to discuss different ideas and controversies surrounding video games in general. For instance, one segment covers an incident where the game was pulled from the Slamdance Film Festival's Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition by festival director Peter Baxter. As a result, half of the other game developers withdrew their games from consideration and USC pulled its sponsorship of the competition. The details of this particular story are interesting by themselves, but the movie uses this as a jumping-off point to discuss broader ideas of censorship and art. The film is comprised primarily of talking head interviews intersperced with video game and movie clips, but Ledonne has done a great job assembling an appropriate and noteworthy cast of game developers, university professors, media experts, school shooting survivors and even game critics. Some notable names include Ian Bogost (video game professor and designer), Hal Halpin (founder of video game trade organization), Jenova Chen and Kellee Santiago (designers of Kaedrin favorite, Flower), Jack Thompson (attorney and anti-video game activist), and Andrew Lanza (NY State Senator and video game critic). There are lots of other worthy contributers as well, and they mostly have interesting and thought provoking things to say. By necessity, Ledonne himself also appears throughout the film (for example, there are excerpts of interviews and lectures he has done), but you see him as one of many video game designers and experts throughout the film, not as the director (unlike, say, Bowling for Columbine). The movie obviously has its own bias, and the amount of time given to critics is dwarved by proponents, but the film does a good overall job of letting you know that fact. Perhaps it's just my current obsession with video games and art, but I did thoroughly enjoy this film. Unfortunately, I it may be difficult to actually see the film, as there doesn't appear to be any DVD release scheduled and I suspect there are a lot of clearance issues that would need to be worked out. Still, if you get a chance to watch it, I would recommend it. Even if you're not interested in a Columbine game, the movie goes much deeper, exploring interesting and broader topics like censorship and violence in the media. Speaking of which, I'm reminded of this exchange from the Acts of Gord: "We would like a quote for the front page of the newspaper talking about videogame violence, and it's possible impact on society."Heh. I'm still not sure I'll ever play the game, but that isn't because I think there's something wrong about its very existance or anything. Anyway, because of the game, we get a good, thought-provoking movie, which is good enough for me. *** Posted by Mark on April 05, 2009 at 02:48 PM .:
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Sunday, March 08, 2009
Link Dump: Who Watched The Watchmen Edition A few links about and reactions to Watchmen.
Posted by Mark on March 08, 2009 at 09:53 PM .:
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Friday, March 06, 2009
Watchmen: Initial Thoughts The long awaited movie adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' classic graphic novel Watchmen has finally arrived. It has certainly been a long time coming - my first post on the subject was over 7 years ago, and at that point, the movie had already been stuck in development hell for 15 years, with no realistic prospects... The project went from director to director (including the likes of Paul Greengrass and Darren Aronofsky) until 2007, shortly after the surprisingly profitable premiere of another graphic novel adaptation, 300, when Warner Brothers tapped director Zack Snyder to direct the forthcoming Watchmen. There was some apprehension to the selection of Snyder for this, and he certainly hadn't demonstrated the sort of heft that Watchmen would require, but I was glad the movie was being made. I just got home from the theater, and to be honest, I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. What follows may turn out to be a rambling mess and I'm sure that my feelings about the film will solidify as time goes on, but for now, I'd like to write my initial impressions. I'll try to be mostly spoiler free, though I'm going to write some stuff in the extended entry that will contain spoilers. The writer of the original comic book is Alan Moore, and he has repeatedly disavowed any of the attempts to adapt his work. I think this quote from an EW interview is the key to how I feel about the Watchmen movie: There are things that we did with Watchmen that could only work in a comic, and were indeed designed to show off things that other media can't.Indeed, many have claimed Watchmen was an unfilmable work, citing the long history of failed productions as evidence. Throughout the years, several strategies were considered. Terry Gilliam wanted to create a monsterous 12 hour epic. Paul Greengrass wanted to update the story to directly address the war on terror (as opposed to the graphic novel's Cold War), a direction I'm convinced would have been disasterous. Ultimately, the man who was chosen to direct had a pretty simple strategy: remain religiously faithful to the original work. I think it's an admirable strategy, but there are some things that just don't work (like when he changed the story). In particular, some of the dialogue in the film isn't so great. Ironically, many of these are direct quotes from the novel... but what works on the page doesn't necessarily translate well to the screen. There is a melodramatic tone that fits the comic perfectly, while it just sorta floats off the screen and hangs there in a film. On the other hand, some of the dialogue works well. For instance, when Rorschach growls his "You're trapped in here with me." line (one of my favorites from the novel - and while I'm talking about him, Jackie Earle Haley's Rorshach is fantastic, better than I expected and perhaps the standout of the film), the theater erupted into something that was a mixture between a cheer and nervous laughter (which was perfect). Most of Dr. Manhattan's dialogue was suitably incongruous, and the Comedian worked well too. But when the Dreiberg Night Owl whines "What happened to the American dream?" or when a news anchor says "The superman exists and he's American," it just doesn't work. In the end, I'm not sure anyone could do much better in adapting this comic book into a movie... Snyder got more right than I thought he was capable of... and I'm not sure a better adaptation would be possible. I reread most of the graphic novel this past week, and one of the things that struck me was how many parallel threads Moore and Gibbons were working with, and the techniques they used to illustrate those parallel tracks. For instance, the Tales of the Black Freighter comic-within-a-comic is a microcosm of the whole story, and Moore and Gibbons cross cut between that and the events of the story to great effect. That almost certainly would not have worked in movie form, so I'm glad that Snyder didn't include it (though apparently he did do something that will be released separately). That was one of two big changes in the adaptation, and I think the movie is better for that change. But Snyder does make effective use of cross cutting in several cases (aligning with the cross cutting used in the novel), and the editing in the Dr. Manhattan origin story was much better than I was expecting. Which brings me to the other major change - the ending. I don't understand why so many adaptations opt to change the ending, especially adaptations that are really attempting to be faithful to the source material. The new ending is basically an attempt to replicate the same outcome of the book without using the same catalyst. The result is the same, but the method is different. I think it just barely works, but I still don't see the need for it (a more spoiler-laden discussion of this will be in the extended entry). I think it was an unnecessary change and while I was willing to accept it and go with it, I'm positive that many fans of the comic will dislike the new ending. So I think the movie is good, maybe even great, but not perfect and not a classic. It gets a lot of things right - more than I would have thought possible... and while that's actually quite impressive, it's perhaps not enough. It's cliche to say that the book is better than the movie, but that's only because it's mostly true, and this adaptation is no different. My initial take on it is that it's a solid *** (three out of 4 stars) movie. I look forward to the extended cut of the film, but ultimately, I don't see that changing my overall feelings. Update: Alex didn't think the ending worked at all and MGK thought the whole thing sucked. And this is everywhere, but Saturday Morning Watchmen is brilliant. Update 3.10.09: Nerdquest comments. We have similar overall views, though we differ on some of the details. He doesn't seem to like the music, which I admit could be a bit much... Here be the spoilers: So, the ending. In the comic, a Giant Squid is dropped on New York, instantly killing millions with some sort of psychic ability. The event is made to look like an alien attack, which results in America and the Soviets uniting against a new enemy. Ozymandias/Veidt orchestrated the whole thing, and has to live with what he did, even if he believes it was for the best. This is a drastic simplification of what happens, but it's the basic idea. Before I move on to the ending of the film, I want to backtrack a bit and talk about one of the scripts not used in this new adaptation. It was one of the first scripts produced. Written by Sam Hamm and dated 1989, the script was pretty faithful right up until the ending. Ozymandias/Veidt figures out time travel and parallel universes, and after examination, he realizes that the only timelines where the human race survives are the ones where Dr. Manhattan never existed. So he attempts to change the past by assassinating Osterman before he becomes Dr. Manhattan. I did not like this ending at all, as it pretty much undermines the rest of the story. Now, the new movie's ending attempts to retain the spirit of the original comic, but it also sorta has elements of the Hamm ending (I doubt anyone was intentionally trying to use the Hamm ending, but there are similarities). In the original comic, there is a subplot about how Dr. Manhattan and Veidt collaborated to create widespread and cheap electric cars. It's not a tremendously important development in the book, but the new movie tries to elevate that portion of the story (perhaps in an effort to make the movie more relevant to our present day situation). Dr. Manhattan and Veidt haven't completed anything - they're working on a general power source. "Free power" that will rid us of our dependance on oil. However, Veidt had an ulterior motive for this new energy source. He creates several generators, and then uses them to detonate nuclear explosions in several American cities. Because the technology is based on Dr. Manhattan, the conclusion that officials come to is that Dr. Manhattan blew up the cities. So America and the Soviets unite against a new enemy, and the Cold War crisis is averted. Manhattan leaves for another galaxy, just like in the comic. Does this work? I guess (barely), but I find it uncessesary and there are probably more plot holes that I'm not thinking of at the moment. It's much better than the Hamm ending, at least, but I don't understand the desire to besmirch Dr. Manhattan's name. I find the irony in the "free energy" angle interesting. All the talk about creating free energy and ridding ourselves of our dependency on fossil fuels was just a way to fool everyone. I suppose the one main argument for not doing the giant squid ending is that, you know, it's a giant freakin squid. It might look stupid. I haven't reread the last couple chapters of Watchmen yet, but I just scanned through it. Most of what you see are mounds of dead, bloody bodies along with a tentacle. The main portion of the squid is shown in one full page panel and I think it's also shown in a painting or a TV monitor at one point. I think it could have worked fine, but that's just me. Posted by Mark on March 06, 2009 at 11:09 PM .:
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Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Danger After Dark The schedule for the Philly Film Festival was announced recently. As with previous years, my favorite part of the festival is sure to be the Danger After Dark series, which is generally filled with all sorts of genre films. However, in flipping through the program guide, it seems that the PFF is significantly reducing the size of the Danger After Dark series. Last year, there were 19 films in the DAD series. This year? 11. I was talking to someone at a screening last year who said that the guy that used to run the series was great, but that he left and the new guy wasn't as good. I guess new guy is still there. Particularly noticeable is a lack of Asian gangster films. Just about everything listed is a horror film. All of that said, looking through the rest of the program, I think I'll be able to find some other films to pick up the slack. Here are the films I'm most looking forward to:
Posted by Mark on March 04, 2009 at 07:59 PM .:
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Sunday, February 22, 2009
Oscar Liveblogging In accordance with tradition, I'll be liveblogging the Oscars tonight. If you're interested, here are previous installments: [2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004] Check back for frequent updates (starting around 8:30 pm EST), and feel free to hang around and leave comments to play along... Anyway, here are my predictions for the major awards:
Update 7:58 pm: I doubt I'll be up to watching the red carpet crap, but in the mean time here are a few pre-Oscar links for your enjoyment:
Update 8:08 pm: In an attempt to avoid this red carpet nonsense, I'm going to do some speculating. There are two supposedly odd things about this year's ceremony. The first is that Hugh Jackman is hosting, which marks the first occasion that a non-comedian is hosting. By all accounts, he's not going to be doing much comedy either. Here's to hoping that he doesn't do a bunch of song-and-dance numbers. It would totally ruin the joy I have that only 3 songs were nominated this year (and thus my suffering at their live performances will be minimized - also, I kinda liked that Slumdog closing song and they'll probably do something fun with that). I suppose I should start drinking now. The other thing that's supposed to be surprising is that the presenters for each award are being kept a secret. OMG! That's so exciting! Seriously, how is that going to be fun? Who the heck cares? Unless they go completely crazy and allow random nutjobs to take the stage and improvise or something. And presenting the award for Best Actor, please welcome Hulk Hogan and Carl Weathers! Do they qualify as nutjobs? Probably not, but they were the most random people that came to mind. Update 8:19 pm: Dammit, the ceremony hasn't even started yet and they're showing montages already. This one is about accountants. ACCOUNTANTS! Update 8:22 pm: I'm usually driven to drink by Oscar music performances, but I might have to start so that I can endure this red carpet junk. By the way, Meryl Streep's daughter is gorgeous. Update 8:26 pm: Beer of the night, Ommegang Rare Vos, drunk ironically out of a Hennepin glass. Update 8:30 pm: Are they ushering Hugh Jackman onstage with Lawrence of Arabia music? Update 8:33 pm: Ah, he's doing comedy. That Australian line was funny. So was the New Zealand one. Crap, despite budgetary limitations, he's doing a musical number. Shit. Update 8:36 pm: So Jackman is talented and the Anne Hathaway thing was cute, but I'm still hoping this is the last musical number. Please. It's almost certainly not though. Update 8:37 pm: I hope Jackman has an uncontrollable giggle-fit. It might happen. He apparently hasn't seen The Reader, just like everyone else. Update 8:39 pm: And he ended with a Wolverine plug. You stay classy, Hugh Jackman. Update 8:45 pm: First official montage! OMG the presenters are such a surprise, I'm so glad I tuned in for this shocking development. Past Supporting Actress winners are giving away the award. Shocking! In other news, someone at CHUD wonders "So will Mickey Rourke's dog be on this year's death montage or the next one?" They apparently aren't showing clips for the nominees, but instead talking about the performances. Much more exciting! Christ, are they trying to ruin the show? Update 8:46 pm: Oh wow is this announcing of the nominees thing boring and stupid. And a half hour later, they announce that the Oscar goes to Penelope Cruz. I'm 1 for 1. Accents are funny. It's sad, but I kinda wish someone would faint on stage. Or at least fall down. She's gorgeous and she's giving us her life story. Great. Is she drunk? She's speaking spanish now, and probably cursing at us. Update 8:58 pm: Steve Marin and Tina Fey are mildly funny. Ok, they're funny. How is Happy Go Lucky nominated - they improvised most of that right? Not that improvisation isn't impressive, it's just not good screenwriting. In Bruges should probably win this... if it weren't for that ending. And Milk wins original screenplay and I'm 2 for 2. Score. Oh good, he's going to tell off Hollywood for prop 8. Wait for it, wait for it, and crap, FAIL. Update 9:00 pm: And adapted screenplay goes to Slumdog Millionaire and I'm 3 for 3. I'm guessing this is the first of many for Slumdog. They don't seem to be ushering people off the stage anymore. Interesting. I guess we'll be here until 3 am or so. Update 9:04 pm: Hehehe, Jack Black made a funny. BTW, Pixar is a pretty good bet for Best Animated Film. Ahhhh, WALL-E is cheating. Did they just show Space Chimps? Was that nominated? What's going on here? Oh, I get it, montage #2. Update 9:07 pm: And WALL-E wins and I'm 4 for 4. Pixar is a "cinematic haven" eh? Why do they give awards for the short films? I mean, I'm sure they're great and it's nice to honor the people who spent a lot of time and effort creating them, but no one has seen them... Update 9:10 pm: Accents are funny. Sank you. Domo oregato, mr roboto! Ha! Nice work, Japanese guy! Update 9:18 pm: Ah production design, one of the awards I "forgot" to pick. Oscar goes to Ben Button, which will clean up on the technical awards and get nothing in the major awards. Ah, and they usher the nerds off the stage with music. Interesting. Update 9:20 pm: I bet these presentations would go quicker if they didn't announce the nominees twice. And The Dutchess wins costume design. Shocking - a period drama wins costume design. That's never happened before, right? Update 9:22 pm: Wouldn't it be great if someone won an award and took the opportunity to scream Bobba Booey, Bobba Booey or something? Update 9:24 pm: Makeup goes to Ben Button and I'm 5 for 5. Score. Jeeze, this guy is talking fast. Brad Pitt looks bemused. Update 9:25 pm: OMG, a vampire, run! Update 9:28 pm: Montage #3. What's the over/under this year? I'll put it at 12. I think Montages are a blatant attempt to make the Oscars somewhat relevant by showing clips from movies people actually saw. Update 9:32 pm: Natalie Portman and Joaquin Phoenix... er, I mean Ben Stiller. Hehehe. Funny. Oh crap, is he going to rap. Please, no. Please. Ok good, looks like we averted that disaster. Heheh, his name is Fister. Well, Cinematography goes to Slumdog Millionaire and I'm 5 for 6. Crap. And he thanked the Academy twice. Nice. Update 9:40 pm: Sci-tech thingymajigs? Jessica Beal is incredibly gorgeous, but her dress stinks. Whoa, that was like a 1 minute segment between commercials. Strange. Update 9:41 pm: Is this the Judd Apatow short film? Aka, a Montage! Number 4. Wait a sec, why wasn't James Franco nominated for best supporting actor? I didn't like the movie much, but he was fantastic. Oh nice, he's watching his own gay kiss. Ok, for a montage, that was pretty cool. Update 9:48 pm: The Janusz Kaminski bit is great. Of course, he's presenting the short film award, so bleh. Update 9:49 pm: A once in a lifetime live performance? I smell musical number. Perhaps the Slumdog one. I'm grabbing my third beer. Update 9:52 pm: CHUDcom: "George Romero is presenting Supporting Actor." Oh man, that's so cruelly funny. Update 9:53 pm: Shit, I was right: musical number. This is a once in a lifetime live performance because no one will ever want to see anything like this ever again. Update 9:55 pm: No Lady Marmalade performance should ever happen without Christina Aguilera's whore costume. Update 9:57 pm: Another CHUD comment: "I never thought I would be nostalgic for interpretive dance:" Update 10.06 pm: Montage #5! Former Best Supporting Actors take the stage (no George Romero though). I didn't think that Josh Brolin was very good in Milk, but what do I know. And the Supporting Actor Oscar goes to Heath Ledger. I'm 6 for 7. The Ledger family takes the stage in Heath's stead and cut to the crowd, where everyone is pretending to cry (moreso than Heath's family, even). Update 10.16 pm: I'd love to see Herzog win just to see what he'd say, but he won't win. Wow, Maher really hates religion, huh? And the documentary Oscar goes to Man on Wire, and I'm 7 for 8. Score. Hey, Felipe! He should be walking on a high wire! And a great speech from him too! Nice. Update 10.18 pm: I'm not even going to comment on the documentary short subject award. Crap, I just commented on it. Anyway, I'm glad that this year's documentaries aren't ALL about Iraq like last year. Update 10.22 pm: Great Jimmy Kimmel commercial with Tom Cruise. Oh boy, Montage #6, featuring movies that people saw. Update 10.26 pm: Will Smith made a funny. And the visual effects oscar goes to Ben Button and I'm 8 for 9. Ironically, for a segment about action movies, the award goes to the non-action-movie. Heh. Update 10.29 pm: Sound editing, an award no one cares about, goes to The Dark Knight. Good, I'm glad TDK is taking home something other than just supporting actor. Oh boy, Sound Mixing award. I'm getting another beer. Update 10.33 pm: Editing goes to Slumdog Millionaire and I'm 9 for 10. Slumdog is unstoppable. Update 10.41 pm: Eddie Murphy is still alive? Update 10.45 pm: Jerry Lewis wins some sort of humanitarian award. Good on him, I guess. Let's hope he does a prat fall or something. The Oscars need something. Update 10.46 pm: I guess they were saving all the good awards for last. Update 10.49 pm: Chud: "Jerry Lewis let everybody down by not being racist, sexist or homophobic. He's not representing his generation well." Update 10.54 pm: Ah, the Musical Score award. Is it me, or do they all sound the same? Must be the way they flow from one nominee to the other. Wait, why are they announcing the nominees again? They keep doing this. Stop it. The winner is Slumdog Millionaire, and I'm 10 for 11. Update 10.57 pm: Oh damn, are they going to do the entire song? For all three nominees? Gah! Chud: "Danny Boyle rebelled against his created. Danny Boyle evolved. And he has a plan." Hehehe. Update 11:02 pm: I'm always hard on the best song nominees, but I have to admit, I miss Antonio Banderas. And the Falling Slowly song from Once last year was great. This year, not so much. Winner goes to Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire, and I'm 11 for 12. I'm doing well... but what that really means is that this year's awards are really boring. And man, this guy is awful. I hate him. Stop it. I now dislike Jai Ho. Update 11:03 pm: Have you ever seen Scanners? I think the best we can hope for in the remainder of the ceremony is that Danny Boyle's head will explode when he wins Best Picture/Director. Update 11:04 pm: Or zombies. This show could use some zombies. Fast ones, like from Boyle's 28 Days Later. And I don't even like zombies that much. Update 11:07 pm: Will Liam Neeson be nominated next year for Taken? Somehow I doubt it, but he will certainly be nominated for Best Hero/Badass in the 2009 Kaedrin Movie Awards. Best foreign picture goes to Departures? Oooooookaaaaaay. It's an upset! Finally! In a category where no one cares. I'm 11 for 13. Oh awesome, Engrish, I love it. This guy has a great delivery. Update 11:11 pm: Yay dead people! Update 11:12 pm: Oh God why is Queen Latifah singing? She's soiling the memory of the dead. Update 11:14 pm: This has been bothering me for the whole show: Why can't they put these montages in full screen? Gah. Update 11:15 pm: Soylent Green is people! Update 11:18 pm: Wow, no speech from the Academy chairman guy. Outstanding! OOooo, Best Director award! Make sure that camera is on Boyle's head so that we can see it explode. From multiple angles. It'll probably happen even if he doesn't win. Update 11:20 pm: Heh, you can so totally tell that Fincher knows he's not going to win. And Boyle wins. And he does a tigger dance. Not quite an exploding head, but good enough. Hmm, he thanked a rival studio. Classy. And he's apologizing for leaving someone off the credits. Also classy. He even thanked people who didn't help him make the film! Update 11:23 pm: Chud: "jesus, Danny's head... i think the Predator has a new trophy to get" Hehehehe. Nice. Update 11:26 pm: Wait, there's only three remaining awards right? This show is somewhat on schedule. Oh, best actress montage (#8, I think). Why isn't Meryl Streep up there? Oh, right, she was nominated. Like every year. I think Anne Hathaway is going to cry, even though she's not going to win. Update 11:28 pm: Hmmm, Kate Winslet looks like she'll cry too. Wow, look at Angelina Jolie's ring. She's going to vaporise the winner with a laser beam eminating from that ring. Oscar goes to Kate Winslet, and I'm 13 for 15. Winslet is hyperventilating. She might very well pass out. She sounds like she just finished running a marathon. A decent speech though, and I'm happy she's finally gotten an Oscar. I suppose I should actually watch that movie. Update 11:41 pm: No Roberto Benigni in the actor montage? Did I miss him? And this is one of the only awards I think is still a bit of a mystery. Hehe, De Niro is great. The Oscar goes to... Bruce Campbell for Evil Dead II! Or not. Of course, of course Mickey Rourke is wearing sunglasses. The real winner is Sean Penn. I guess Hollywood doesn't hate gay people afterall. Update 11:44 pm: Yay gay people. Yay Obama. Yay Rourke. I'm 13 for 16. Update 11:51 pm: Montage #9? Or is it 10? I don't remember. And best picture goes to Slumdog Millionaire. Not a surprise and not entirely undeserved (at least, among the other nominees, it's definitely not). By the way, I'm obligated to mention that The Dark Knight should have at least been nominated here. What the hell. Update 11:55 pm: And a montage to end the show? We ended up just a bit below my over/under of 12. Overall, this show was not great. Probably one of the worst. But I'm biased against song and dance numbers, so take that with a grain of salt, I guess. I can't wait to see Pulic Enemies. 2009 is looking like a pretty good year for movies. At least, better than 2008, which isn't exactly saying much. So I ended up 14 for 17, which is around 82%, my highest percentage evar. Yay me. Update 12:00 am: Why is it that whenever Captain Mal Reynolds shows up in another show, I want to watche it, even if I know it will stink? Anwyay, have a good night folks, I'm packing it in. It's been real. Posted by Mark on February 22, 2009 at 02:45 PM .:
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Saturday, February 21, 2009
Mad Detective When I posted my top 10 movies of 2008 last week, I noted that it wasn't a particularly great year for movies and that I had a really hard time compiling the list. I also noted that some of my "Should Have Seen" movies had the potential to unseat my number 10 movie. Indeed, I even mentioned one I had ordered already: Mad Detective. It was delivered earlier than expected and I watched it last night. I'm now in the awkward position of having to amend my top 10 list. This is something I didn't want to do, which is why I waited so long to post my list in the first place, but what's a guy to do? So I'm updating my top 10. At first glance, Mad Detective seems like your typical police procedural with a Hong Kong twist. But it quickly becomes apparent that there is more going on here, even among typical Hong Kong cinema conventions. The story follows Bun. Once a master profiler who consistently solved impossible mysteries by reenacting the crime from both the perpetrator and the victim's perspective, he has since become something of a nutcase. He's kicked off the police force when he cuts off his ear and presents it to his police commissioner as a retirement present. It seems Bun's talents have taken a toll on his sanity. Five years later, a young cop named Ho enlists the retired Bun's help in solving a series of murders committed with a police gun. As the film proceeds, you learn more about his talents and his madness. Bun claims that he can see people's "inner personalities." Directors Johnny To and Ka-Fai Wai do not explain Bun's powers through a lot of exposition, relying instead on subjective shots from Bun's point of view. They effortlessly mix these subjective shots with objective shots from the young detective Ho's point of view. So when Ho sees a man walking down the street, Bun sees seven people (one for each personality within the man) walking down the street. Once this dynamic is established, things proceed at a fast pace, alternating between objective and subjective views of the investigation. Bun's madness isn't explored deeply, but you can figure it out from the visual cues. For instance, there is an interesting dynamic between Bun and his wife that is explored but not explained except through visual means. This may sound like an annoying gimmick and I'm not usually a fan of movies that play confusion for depth, but I have to say it worked really well here. Perhaps it was the pace of the film or the central mystery, but there is a certain giddy wackiness that strangly grounds the film. The directors are clearly enjoying themselves, and the film ends up being quite entertaining. The film employs all manner of wide angle shots and as you might expect, some excellent editing (which is necessary given the nature of the story being told). There were times when I wasn't sure what was going on, but I was just along for the ride and trusted that To and Wai would end things right. The climactic confrontation is among the best set pieces I've seen all year. It takes place in a warehouse filled with mirrors, allowing the directors to show the inner personalities in reflections. Johnny To is a master of such set pieces and shootouts, and the final standoff is superbly executed and the films closing shots are haunting (I don't want to spoil the ending, but it's chilling and thought provoking). The film was released on Eureka's Masters of Cinema Blu-Ray series (Eureka is supposedly the UK's answer to the Criterion Collection). The picture is fantastic, but the extras are somewhat lacking. Still, you do get an excellent French Q&A session with Johnny To, and he answers questions about several films from his prolific career. You get some interesting info out of this, like the fact that Kaedrin favorite The Mission was shot in just 18 days and was largely improvised (The Mission was on my top 10 for 2000). Johnny To has become one of my favorite directors and he's clearly the best director working in Hong Kong today. Nowhere was this more evident than in the recent film Triangle, in which To shared directing duties with Hong Kong legends Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam. I saw Triangle during the 2008 Philly Film Festival. To's segment at the end of the film is great and completely blows away Hark and Lam's segments... In this movie he's working with frequent collaborator Ka-Fai Wai, who I'm much less familiar with, but who seems to mix well with To. It's certainly not for everyone, but it hit all the right notes for me and it definitely belongs on my Top 10 of 2008. Unfortunately, it's not available on Netflix yet, though it is listed and should be coming at some point. If you get a chance to see it and if the ludicrousness of the premise doesn't bother you, it's well worth a watch. ***1/2 Posted by Mark on February 21, 2009 at 12:30 PM .:
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Sunday, February 15, 2009
Best Films of 2008 I saw somewhere on the order of 70 movies that were released in 2008. Most critics see more than that, but your average moviegoer probably sees far less than that. I have to say, I've been really disappointed with 2008. It's been a rough year for movies and I had a really hard time cobbling together a top 10 (Hence the extreme lateness of this post). The 6-10 of my list is somewhat weak and probably wouldn't have made the list in either 2006 or 2007. On the other hand, the films near the top of the list are great, and would compete with the films of the last two years. Of course, making a top 10 list is an inherently subjective exercise. I've noted before that these lists tend to tell you more about those who are compiling the list rather than the movies on the list. The hosts of the Filmcouch podcast were recently talking about how these sorts of lists are an autobiographical exercise and invited listeners to send in their top 5 lists, at which point they would psychoanalyze the list and try to come up with a picture of who the list's owner was. I submitted my list, and they tried to figure me out by the movies I listed. Before I go through their results, I should probably let you see my full list, so here goes: Top 10 Movies of 2008 * In roughly reverse order
I found their comments interesting, and it did make me wonder about why I really did choose the movies that I did. I think there is some truth in what they say, but I wouldn't say that I am the person they describe. There are some things that I'm fascinated by that aren't things I'd actually do. For instance, I've written before about vigilantes, and despite what the hosts of Filmcouch may think, I'm not a vigilante, and don't really have a desire to do so. What fascinates me about vigilante stories, though, is consequences. This is something that The Dark Knight did in spades, and it also features prominently in a lot of the other movies on the list. I wouldn't say that I particularly like the idea of "two wrongs make a right" but I am fascinated by situations in which the only possible alternatives are wrong. What do you do when no available option is right? How do you counter someone like the Joker? What are the consequences of time travel? What happens if you become a vampire when you're 12 years old? Do you help the Nazis destabilize the Allied economy, or do you protect your fellow concentration camp prisoners? I'm also the type of person who thinks the devil is in the details, and so I like movies that show that sort of thing. Again, Batman is a good example of this sort of thing. Everyone agrees that fighting crime is an honorable thing, but when you get down to the details of such an endeavor, things become a lot more complicated. Sure, Batman could spend all his time taking down the criminals on the streets - but then he's not getting at the root of the problem. But taking on the root of the problem has consequences. And so on. So I supposed their "shades of gray" thing might be somewhat accurate as well. But the point remains, while I may be fascinated by vigilantes in film, that doesn't mean that I want to be a vigilante, nor does it mean that I would tolerate a vigilante in my community. Something similar could be probably be said for other people prominently featured in my list (i.e. vampires, bank robbers, etc...) I'm fascinated by them, but it's not like I want to be them. Perhaps there's a cathartic value in these movies as well. They mentioned that I might be someone who likes to operate outside the system, but in fact, I do no such thing in my life. I'm pretty firmly ensconced within the system. But I suspect that makes people who operate outside the system fascinating... So anyway, that's what Filmcouch thinks. Not a bad job, but perhaps you can't truly read someone's soul through a list of 5 movies:p Honorable Mention * In alphabetical order
Perhaps as evidence of how bad a year this is, I am listing out my 5 least favorite movies. Typically, I'd have a tough time with this list, because I generally try to avoid bad movies and am usually somewhat successful in that. This year, I was not.
There are a couple of these that might even have potential for unseating my number 10 movie, but I couldn't get to them for whatever reason (usually that it wasn't playing near me or otherwise available). For instance, I ordered Mad Detective (co-directed by Kaedrin favorite Johnny To) on blu-ray on January 21, but according to Amazon, the delivery estimate is sometime in early March!?
Update 2.21.09: Well that didn't take long. I saw Mad Detective last night and decided that it needed to be on the top 10. This knocks Spiral off the list and into the Honorable Mentions. Also worth noting are the comments to this post where I have an interesting discussion Adam from Filmcouch. And finally, the Filmcouch podcast mentioned my comments on this week's podcast as well. Thanks guys! Posted by Mark on February 15, 2009 at 09:25 PM .:
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Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Nerdy I've always considered myself something of a nerd, even back when being nerdy wasn't cool. Nowadays, everyone thinks they're a nerd. MGK recently noticed this: Recently, I was surfing the net looking for lols, and came across a personal ad on Craigslist. The ad was not in and of itself hilarious, but one thing struck me. The writer described herself as “nerdy,” and as an example of her nerdiness, explained that she loved to watch Desperate Housewives.To address this situation, he has devised "a handy guide for people to define their own nerdiness, based on a number of nerdistic passions." I'm a little surprised at how poorly I did in some of these categories.
Posted by Mark on February 04, 2009 at 10:45 PM .:
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Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Link Dump: Top 10s and Some Nitpicking Time is short, so here are a few links to end of the year movie lists and the like. Still not sure when I'll get to my top 10, but it probably won't be this week.
Posted by Mark on January 28, 2009 at 08:30 PM .:
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Wednesday, January 14, 2009
The Wrestler When I was in high school, I joined the wrestling team. Now, amateur wrestling of the sort I was participating in is not the same thing you see on TV. That wrestling is usually called "professional" wrestling. Both sports have some things in common, but amateur wrestling is much closer to other martial arts while the professional variety is closer to the theatrical arts. Thus professional wrestling is usually referred to as "fake" wrestling... and no one was more guilty of that than us "real" wrestlers. Of course, in some ways, our griping was justified, but on the other hand, we were also rather ignorant of the realities of professional wrestling. There is still quite a bit of physicality involved in the sport, and over time, it can certainly take quite a toll. Bill Simmons gives an excellent description of this in his review: Pro wrestling chews up and spits out its athletes with grueling schedules, brutal physical punishment and a tacit understanding that performance enhancers are okay—as are greenies, sleeping pills and painkillers. These guys destroy their bodies, then their hearts give out and they die. Google the phrase "dead wrestlers," and your computer will start to smoke like an overtaxed car engine.From the first shots of The Wrestler, you see just how much of a toll it takes. The scene is simple - it just features our main character, Randy "The Ram" Robinson, sitting in a chair preparing for a match. It's instructive that you don't need to see his face or hear him talk about it to know just how broken down and battered The Ram is (even before the match). You can see it in his posture and you can hear it in his breathing. This represents most of what The Wrestler has gotten right, which is Mickey Rourke's performance (which is as excellent as everyone says and yes, the parallels between Randy and Mickey Rourke himself are eerie. I won't belabor the point any more than that becaues it's been covered so extensively by everyone else...) and the inside look at the professional wrestling world that drives everything. In the 1980s heyday of wrestling, Randy the Ram was at the top of his game, performing at venues like Madison Square Garden in front of sold out crowds. 20 years later, he's battered and broken, playing tiny venues, signing autographs at small, local conventions, and working part-time at a grocery store. He dreams of reclaiming past glory, but hits a roadblock when he has the inevitable heart attack after a match that exemplifies the physical nature of "fake" wrestling. The doctor is clear: if he keeps wrestling, he'll die. This forces Randy to take stock of his life, and he attempts to restablish a relationship with his daughter while expanding his existing friendship with a stripper. The stripper, played by Marisa Tomei, parallel's Randy's story. Like Randy, she has chosen a career with a shelf life, and she's nearing the point where she will no longer be able to rely on her body to make money. She seems better prepared to face this fact than Randy though, and has done a reasonable job separating her personal life from her professional life. Randy is not so lucky. How these relationships play out comprise the rest of the story. As previously hinted at, the wrestling bits in the movie are fantastic. Despite my high school activities, I never knew much about professional wrestling, but this movie feels right. It hits all the notes of authenticity, from the aformentioned brutality to the backstage banter and wrestling jargon. Unfortunately, the two main relationships described earlier in this review are less successful. Of course, reuniting with an abandoned daughter and a relationship with a stripper represent a mine field of potential cliche, so it's somewhat impressive that screenwriter Robert Siegel is able to navigate with reasonable success. He doesn't emerge unscathed, particularly with respect to the relationship with the daughter (not that stripper subplot is perfect), but he managed to avoid the most troubling cliches. The movie's themes come through loud and clear. It ends on the perfect note, and I'm hard pressed to think of a better ending shot this year, if not this decade. I loved director Darren Aronofsky's first film, the creepy, paranoid math-based thriller Pi, and was duly impressed by his manic drug addiction tale Requiem for a Dream. I was less impressed by his last effort, 2006's gorgeous looking The Fountain, a movie best described as an "interesting failure." In The Wrestler, Aronofsky has toned down the manic style that impressed so many, but in doing so he has lost none of his visual potency. Instead of the quick cuts and spastic style of his previous efforts, he takes a much simpler, almost verite aproach. The camera follows Randy the Ram in long unbroken takes, often from behind, giving you his view of the world almost as if we're watching a documentary. I can't say it's always fun, but it's usually compelling. In the end, it's not Aronofsky's best movie and it's not perfect, but it's an improvement over The Fountain and one of the better movies of this year. The simple story basically amounts to a small, character based drama, and at a high level, it proceeds mostly as you'd expect, but it's definitely worth a watch (even if it's just for Rourke's performance). I haven't watched profession wrestling in probably over 20 years, but that doesn't matter - the movie is compelling for other reasons, and can be interpreted in several ways. Posted by Mark on January 14, 2009 at 09:02 PM .:
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Sunday, January 11, 2009
2008 Kaedrin Movie Awards As of today, I've seen 62 movies that would be considered 2008 releases. This is on par with my 2007 viewing and perhaps a bit less than 2006. So I'm not your typical movie critic, but I've probably seen more than your average moviegoer. As such, this constitutes the kickoff of my year end movie recap. The categories for this years movie awards are the same as last year, 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. As I've mentioned before, 2008 has been a weak year for movies. Not sure if this was because of the writers strike, some other shift in studio strategy (the independent arms of many studios seem to be closing up shop, for instance), or that my taste has become more discriminating, but whatever the case, I've had trouble compiling my top 10. Indeed, I'm still not sure I've got a good list yet and am still scrambling to catch up with some of the lesser-known films of the year (many of which had minimal releases and are not out on DVD just yet). This is why these awards and my top 10 are a little later than last year. However, one of the things I like about doing 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 2008 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 good year for villainy! At least on par with last year, if not better. As with the past two years, my picks in this category are for individuals, not groups (i.e. no vampires or zombies as a group).
Best Hero/Badass A distinct step down in terms of heroic badassery this year, but it's not a terrible year either. Again limited to individuals and not groups.
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 thought were lackluster...
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.
Most Visually Stunning
Best Sci-Fi or Horror Film I'm a total genre hound, despite genres generally receiving very little attention from critics. As usual, there was a dearth of quality SF this year, especially because I don't consider Iron Man or The Dark Knight SF. However, a strong showing from the horror genre rounds out the nominations well. Plus, disappointed by the poor showing of SF, I cheated by nominating a 2007 SF film... I can't even fudge the release dates the way I can with some independent or foreign flicks - by every measurement I can think of, it's a 2007 film. But it was such a small film that flew under just about everyone's radar (including mine!) that I'm going to include it, just to give it some attention, because I really did enjoy it. Winner Announced! Best Sequel Honestly, I only saw 4 or 5 sequels all year, so this was a difficult category to populate (as it is every year). Still, there were at least two really great sequels this year... Winner Announced! 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. Usually I manage to avoid the real stinkers, but this year I saw two genuinely awful movies... in the theater!
Best Action Sequences This is a kinda by-the-numbers year for action sequences. Nothing particularly groundbreaking or incredible, but there were some well executed, straightforward action movies this year. These aren't really individual action sequences, but rather an overall estimation of each film. Winner Announced! Best Plot Twist/Surprise Not a particularly strong year for the plot twist either. Winner Announced! Best High Concept Film This was a new category last year, and like last year, I had a little difficulty coming up with this list, but overall, not bad. Winner Announced! Anyone have any suggestions (for either category or nominations)? Comments, complaints and suggestions are welcome, as always. It looks like The Dark Knight is leading the way with an impressive 6 nominations (rivaled only by the 8 nominations earned by Grindhouse last year... with the caveat that Grindhouse is technically 2 movies in one). Not far behind is Hellboy II with a respectable 5 nominations. Surprisingly, both Forgetting Sarah Marshall and The Signal earned 3 nominations, 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 two years, there will be a small set of Arbitrary Awards after the standard awards are given out, followed by the top 10. Update: Added a new plot twist nominee (Spiral), because I just watched it and it deserves it! Update 1.25.09: Arbitrary Awards announced! Update 2.15.09: Top 10 of 2008 has finally been posted! Posted by Mark on January 11, 2009 at 11:46 AM .:
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Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Link Dump For obvious reasons, time is a little short these days, so here are a few links I've found interesting lately:
Posted by Mark on January 07, 2009 at 08:56 PM .:
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Sunday, January 04, 2009
The PS3, Revisiting Predictions & Other Odds & Ends The PS3 came yesterday, so I've spent most of the time since then in a Blu-Ray and Video Game induced haze. I was lured out by my brother this afternoon to watch the Eagles playoff game (we won!) and maybe feed myself too. While I'm out, I figure I should at least make some pretense at updating the blog with something...
Posted by Mark on January 04, 2009 at 08:33 PM .:
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Sunday, December 28, 2008
The PS3 is Mine Despite my misgivings and Sony's steady campaign against their own system, I finally broke down and bought a PS3. The clincher was a $150 credit if you apply for their credit card and purchase the PS3 with it (looks like this deal is available until 12/31/08). Of course, it's a credit at the Sony store and I probably won't get it for a gazillion weeks or however long it takes them to process it, but still, that credit puts it in an affordable neighborhood (pretty much the same as what I paid for the Wii). I'm immediately placing an order for The Dark Knight on Blu-Ray (which is a no brainer for me, despite a dearth of special features) and will need to figure out what games to get. If anyone has any advice for good PS3 games, I'm all ears. On the shortlist right now is Fallout 3 (which is getting good reviews and has been endorsed by someone I trust... though I should note that I haven't played either of the first two games), Dead Space, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Resistance 2 (and/or the first Resistance, both of which just look fun to me), and a bunch of games I've already played a bit of and know I like (like Call of Duty 4, Grand Theft Auto 4, and one of them Guitar Hero or Rock Band incarnations). Or maybe I should hit up the bargain basement games like MotorStorm. Too many games, too little time. And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to spend the next couple of days constantly refreshing my order status at Sony... (Order Status: Processing, Damn! *press F5* Damn! What the hell is taking so long!? *press F5* Damn!) Update: Just placed an order for The Dark Knight, Resistance, and Call of Duty 4. Hopefully all will have arrived by next weekend, but that's probably not likely... In other news, order status is still "Processing." Damn! Posted by Mark on December 28, 2008 at 05:08 PM .:
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Wednesday, December 24, 2008
12DC: Day 11 - The Night Before Christmas Today, we kick it old school with The Night Before Christmas, a 1905 silent film (loosely) based on the classic poem by Clement Moore. Only the big day remains! See you tomorrow... Posted by Mark on December 24, 2008 at 08:26 PM .:
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Monday, December 22, 2008
12DC: Day 9 - One of these is not like the other... Seen while Christmas shopping:
Apparently T2 has entered the ranks of Christmas Classic. That endoskeleton skull fits right in on that shelf, doesn't it? Posted by Mark on December 22, 2008 at 04:06 PM .:
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Sunday, December 21, 2008
12DC: Day 8 - Holiday Horror It seems that even after the Six Weeks of Halloween horror movie marathon, I couldn't really stop. It doesn't help that there are plenty of Christmas themed horror films... though I must admit that I wasn't able to get to the infamous Silent Night, Deadly Night (very long wait on Netflix). Oh well, there's always next year. In the mean time, here's a trio of other Christmas horror films...
Posted by Mark on December 21, 2008 at 01:10 PM .:
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Friday, December 19, 2008
12DC: Day 6 - The Spirit of Christmas During my freshman year of college, a friend called me into his room to show me this video he downloaded from the internet (Dude, it was 50 megabytes! That's huge!) The video featured crudely animated kids with hilarious potty mouths chearing on a fight between Jesus and Santa Claus. This was probably among the first internet video memes out there, and it's fully deserving... A few years later, the creators of this short got their own TV show, which became South Park. This original video still holds up though, even after all these years... More tomorrow! Posted by Mark on December 19, 2008 at 10:23 PM .:
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Thursday, December 18, 2008
12DC: Day 5 - It's an MST3k Christmas There are lots of great Christmas movies, but of course, there are lots of really bad ones too. This is why these Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes are so great - they make bad Christmas movies into great experiences. Without further ado, here are the full length episodes of both Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (with Joel Hodgson and including the infamous Patrick Swayze Christmas carol) and Santa Claus (with Mike Nelson). Santa Claus: Over 3 hours of brilliant stuff going on there... enjoy! Posted by Mark on December 18, 2008 at 09:14 PM .:
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Monday, December 15, 2008
12DC: Day 2 - The Lost Ending of It's a Wonderful Life A few years ago, the lost ending to the holiday classic It's a Wonderful Life was found. It's brilliant. Tomorrow, we'll handle christmas trees... sorta. Posted by Mark on December 15, 2008 at 06:40 PM .:
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Sunday, December 14, 2008
12 Days of Christmas: Day 1 - Incidental Christmas Movies In keeping with the tradition of seasonal posts (i.e. 6 Weeks of Halloween), today marks the first of twelve holiday themed posts (not all will be about movies, I promise!) We start off with what I'm calling Incidental Christmas Movies, meaning movies that take place during the holidays but aren't about the holidays.
Posted by Mark on December 14, 2008 at 07:19 PM .:
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Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Movie Podcasts Revisited I recently posted several short reviews of movie podcasts that I listen to... and since then, I've come across a few other good movie podcasts.
Posted by Mark on December 10, 2008 at 09:19 PM .:
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Sunday, November 30, 2008
Screenshots of the Recently Viewed I'm about to head out, so I'm just going to post a few screenshots from recently viewed movies. This isn't a continuation of the screenshot game, but I'll leave the titles off in case you want to guess... The answers are in the extended entry. (Hints in the alt tag and you can click on the images for larger versions...)
Again, answers and quick comments in the extended entry... And the answers are:
Posted by Mark on November 30, 2008 at 10:32 AM .:
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Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Geekout: Alien vs. Predator A while ago, I ran accross this McSweeney's article that pit Alien vs. Predator in a series of unlikely events like Macramé and Lincoln-Douglas Debating. Long time readers will know that I am a fan of the Alien vs. Predator concept, though the recent films have been awful (Alien, Aliens, and Predator are some of my favorites movies though, and the original AvP comic book was fantastic). In any case, I couldn't resist discussing and debating some of the events listed out, and the result was a pretty amusing (and incredibly geeky) conversation. The first event under question was Breakdancing. I had picked the Alien for this and thought it was the obvious choice. My friend Roy disagreed, noting: I think you've failed to take into account the unique physiology of the alien. Those tubes on his back? The tail? Those are going to make dancing very difficult. No backspins for him. I think that the Predator's upper body strength will help him to pull of some awesome moves. And, he doesn't have big pipes or tubes coming up out of his back.I have to admit that he had a point about the tubes on the Alien's back, but I still felt the Alien was the superior breakdancer. My response: Point taken, but I still see the Alien having much more agility, thus giving them the ability to move more gracefully than the Predator while break dancing. While their backspins might be problematic, they do have that giant head which would enable them to perform some rather spectacular headstands and headspins. And while the tail could get in the way of a back-spin, it would also give them a valuable 5th pivot with which they could pull off all sorts of crazy moves. Back spins are an important part of break dancing, but there are no shortages of upper body, frontal, side, or sliding moves, and indeed, there seem to be more of those than back maneuvers. When you add in the Alien's unique physiology, you get something that would allow for all sorts of variations and indeed, even totally new moves. Really, I think the Alien would revolutionize the break dancing scene. The predator's upper-body streght would allow for some amazing handstand style moves, but in almost every other way they are less limber and agile than the alien or even most human break-dance experts. Indeed, the alien does not seem to have an absense of upper body strength, so it's not like that gives the Predator a decisive advantage (the way the alien's tail does). I suppose it's possible that not all Predators are as bulked up as the ones in the films, but there is no real evidence of that.Personally, I still believe I'm right on that one. The next event that came into question was Competitive Hot-Dog Eating. My initial pick was Predator, mostly because of his larger mouth and mandibles (when you look closely, the Alien's mouth is actually quite small). Anyway, Roy had some comments about this pick as well: Totally goes to alien. Aliens are always hungry. They do nothing but eat and kill. We don't even actually know that Predator's eat meat. They're probably a bunch of annoying vegans. ;POnce again, I think Roy makes a fair point here, but it's ultimately unpersuasive. My response: This makes more sense to me, though I do maintain that the Alien's multi-tiered mouth is still significantly smaller and thus represents a bottleneck during any sort of competitive eating contest. Yes, their activities are generally limited to eating, killing, building those crazy hives and reproducing, but I see that as just a further example of why they would not be good at competitive eating. Since that's all they do, they do not have to eat fast. It's hard to tell because the alien and it's motivations are so... alien... and unexplored. The Predators, on the other hand, clearly have some sort of civilization with technological capabilities well beyond our own. It stands to reason that they would have less time dedicated to eating, and thus would need to scarf down more in less time... which means they would be better suited towards competitive eating. Your point about vegan Predators is also taken, but what we know of their culture is that it is based primarily on hunting. While I'm sure there are vegan Predators, I think it's fair to speculate that a race of hunters values and prizes meat.I thought that was pretty good, but someone else stepped in at this point to defend Roy, noting that: We know they hunt, yes, but in the hunts we've seen they take trophies, not food. I have yet to see a predator field-dress an alien. I mean, hell, how much meat could be on something like that anyway? It's all chitin and sinew, not really a meal at all, and that's before we think about the effects upon the stomach lining of that acid blood (ulcers like you wouldn't believe!!). No, it's not fair to speculate on their eating habits by looking at their hunts. Their hunts are trophy kills, rites of passage, not a means for survival. Everything we've seen of their society, we haven't been given clue one about their eating habits.This is certainly an interesting take on the matter. My response: Interesting point, but I think it's reasonable to make some extrapolations based on their hunting culture. It's reasonable to assume that their hunts as portrayed in the movies are indeed trophy hunts and not a matter of survival or food. This makes sense on an additional level because they're hunting alien species and alien physiology may not react well with their digestive systems (as you mention, the alien would be particularly bad in that respect). However, it's also reasonable to assume that the reason for their hunting tradition is that they were required to do so in the evolution of their species. Yes, I'm extrapolating from human experiences here, but there are humans today who hunt purely for trophies. It's reasonable to assume that the reason the Predator race is so focused on hunting is that they were forced to do so on their home planet. Indeed, in such a case, the act of hunting could take on a more meaningful aspect because of symbolic or perhaps even spiritual reasons. The act of hunting clearly goes beyond survival for them, but it's reasonable to assume that it began as a simple survival technique on their home planet, and grew into a more meaningful practice as the race became more advanced.This thread went on for a few more posts and ultimately resulted in a stalemate, as we really don't know enough about either culture to say for sure. I still think it's reasonable to say that the hunting culture of the Predators implies a history of hunting and meat-eating. The next topic under debate was the Wet T-Shirt Contest, which I had originally given a tie. After all, for the most part, we see both the Alien and the Predator without their shirts on, so what's the point of a Wet T-Shirt Contest? However, someone interjected a brilliant point that totally convinced me that I was wrong; the Alien would undoubtedly win this event. Wet T-shirt: Alien. Preddy has been noted on several occasions to be "one ugly motherfucker."There is simply no arguing with that one. Posted by Mark on November 26, 2008 at 11:32 PM .:
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Wednesday, November 19, 2008
SF and Real Life Space Exploration This summer, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin criticized fantastical Science Fiction TV shows and movies, claiming that they are responsible for a lack of interest in real space exploration. "I blame the fantastic and unbelievable shows about space flight and rocket ships that are on today," Aldrin said in an interview during an ice cream party held by the National Geographic Channel at the Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills, Calif., this week. "All the shows where they beam people around and things like that have made young people think that that is what the space program should be doing. It's not realistic."This caused a bit of a stir this summer and just recently, SF Signal posted a series of responses by popular SF authors. Several responses are worthy of note. First, let's get John Scalzi's response out of the way: Absolutely. This also explains why the unrealistic science in CSI has completely killed interest in forensic pathology. And why the upcoming show Buzz, The Cranky Old Astronaut What Shakes His Fist at the Kids These Days will ruin the joy of illicitly playing on Aldrin's lawn for generations to come.Heh. Ok, so most of them take a more serious approach to the material. Ultimately, most of the responses boil down to "He kinda has a point, but not really." But there are some good points made in the process. First, Jack McDevitt actually agrees with Aldrin... but then he also claims that without SF, we'd never have had interest in the first place (and presumably, Aldrin thus wouldn't have had the chance to go gallavanting around the moon). J. Michael Straczynski makes the obvious point: The only thing wrong with Buzz Aldrin's statement is that it's not true.Mike Brotherton makes some excellent points and also has a few good suggestions: Real space exploration has been slow, expensive, and dangerous, a far cry from rugged, unintellectual heroes and their droids popping into hyperspace, or taking a quick excursion to blow up an Earth-destined asteroid the size of Texas.Personally, my first thought was that Aldrin was nuts. Then I realized that he only really mentioned TV and movies... and when I really thought about it, it began to make a little more sense. I don't believe for a second that fantastical TV shows like Star Trek actively discourage people because they feature FTL drives and transporters, but at the same time I can't think of many SF shows or movies that really do focus on the realities of space travel. In general, true hard science fiction is poorly represented in TV and film. In books, it's a different story. They tend to also contain McGuffins like FTL drives, but they try to minimize that in favor of scientific rigor. But books seem to work better at that than visual mediums. As Mike Brotherton noted above, space travel is slow, expensive, and dangerous. The "dangerous" part would probably make for good TV, but the tedious, slow and expensive parts probably don't. The fact is that realistic space travel isn't anywhere near as glamorous as it sounds at first... a fact that is completely antithetical to TV and movies. That doesn't mean that great stories can't be told in a realistic and engaging fashion, and I would gladly watch a show like that if it were aired, but I'm not holding my breath. Would such a show really spark that much interest in the space program? I'm not sure. In general, I tend to believe that art reflects the culture it was created in... and that this hypothetical hard SF show we're talking about would only really become popular in a society that was already interested in space travel. Fortunately, I don't think it's that hard of a sell. It may not be as glamorous as it seems at first, but that's a problem all technological fields face... and technological advances don't seem to be slowing either... Posted by Mark on November 19, 2008 at 06:36 PM .:
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Sunday, November 16, 2008
The Holiday Movie Season I know this tends to be an annual refrain for some people, but this year is not shaping up to be a particularly good year for movies. By this time in 2006 or 2007, I had already seen the grand majority of the films that would show up in my top 10 movies for both years. This year, I've seen two movies that are definites. There are a few other borderline picks as well, but few films that could compete with the past two years (and I thought 2007 was a distinct step down from 2006). We're also coming up on the time of the year when Hollywood eschews the traditional big-budget blockbuster and starts putting out their prestige fare in the hopes of garnering an Oscar... but this year is not looking especially strong in that respect either. I'm not sure what the issue is here. Perhaps we're still seeing the effects of the writers strike earlier this year. Or maybe the independent arms of the big studios are in a bit of a crunch. Whatever the reason, the upcoming holiday movie season seems lacking. Will there be enough to round out my top 10, or will I need to reduce the list to a top 5? Regardless, here are some films I'm looking forward to:
Posted by Mark on November 16, 2008 at 03:34 PM .:
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Sunday, November 02, 2008
Blu-Ray At ZDNet, Robin Harris makes a mildly persuasive argument that Blu-Ray is dying and will end up becoming a videophile niche format like laserdisc. When Toshiba threw in the towel and gave up on HD-DVD about 8 months ago, it looked like a major victory for Sony on multiple fronts. First, they were the uncontested heir to the HD movie market and second, fence sitters in the next-gen gaming console market had a reason to plunk down a little extra for a PS3. But 8 months later, things haven't changed a whole lot. Standalone BR players have come down in price and will be reaching affordable levels shortly. PS3 sales received a bump, overtaking the XBox sporadically during this year, but it looks like Microsoft's price cut has reestablished PS3 as the loser of the next-gen gaming market (of course, both are being clobbered by Nintendo). Sony is betting on the release of several highly anticipated games for the PS3 this holiday season, which should sell consoles and thus increase BR market penetration. There are lots of things to consider here:
Posted by Mark on November 02, 2008 at 01:02 PM .:
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Friday, October 31, 2008
Happy Halloween And the Six Weeks of Halloween horror movie marathon (See Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 6.5) concludes with the best Halloween movie of all time:
Happy Halloween! Posted by Mark on October 31, 2008 at 12:38 AM .:
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Wednesday, October 29, 2008
6WH: Week 6.5: Speed Round! Just a few days away from Halloween and I figured I'd do a bunch of short reviews for movies that I've seen recently, but that haven't been covered in the Six Weeks of Halloween marathon so far (See Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6). Some of them just didn't fit with a given week's theme and some were just awful and I didn't want to spend too much time on them. So here goes:
Posted by Mark on October 29, 2008 at 08:07 PM .:
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Sunday, October 26, 2008
6WH: Week 6: Japanese Horror The final week of the Six Weeks of Halloween horror movie marathon (See Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5) kicks off with a two Japanese horror films, one disc of an Anime series, and the usual smattering of shorts and trailers.
Posted by Mark on October 26, 2008 at 09:32 PM .:
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Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Gabriel Over The White House The latest episode of the FilmCouch podcast features an in-depth look at an astounding movie called Gabriel Over the White House. The film was made in 1933 (in the heart of the Great Depression) and it tells the story of a newly elected President of the US, Judson Hammond. He's not exactly a great leader. It's implied that he's somewhat corrupt, and he doesn't seem to assert himself at all, instead just acting as a figurehead for the party (for example, he signs everything that comes across his desk without question). He seems to spend most of his time messing around with his secretary and giving nicknames to his subordinates. But then he has a sorta religious experience and becomes inspired to institute real change... and this is where things get really nutty. I don't really want to get into too much detail, but the movie is completely and totally absurd from this point on... and it's stunning to watch. President Hammond essentially fires his entire cabinet because they disagree with his decisions, then institutes martial law, effectively making himself a dictator (how he manages this, I don't know, but who the hell cares in a movie like this). He does all this so that he can implement a series of reforms that are eerily prophetic. He talks about stuff like repealing prohibition and nationalizing the business, forcing the nation's unemployed back to work, and subsidizing farmers -- all things that would happen in the following decades if not sooner (much of what he talks about prefigures the New Deal). Indeed, the film is surprisingly relevant even today, as he suggests things like putting a freeze on home foreclosures and injecting money into banks. Because this is a movie, we get some wonderful conflicts with a fictional gangster who, unhappy with the lift of prohibition, orders a drive-by shooting of the white house! The President's response to the attack is equally crazy. And there's lots of even nuttier stuff in the movie that I'm barely touching on... For a film released in 1933, it's surprisingly well made. The acting is great, particularly Walter Huston's turn as the President. The movie rests on his shoulders as he spends most of the movie essentially speechifying and engaging in "straight talk." There are a few unexpected visual effects that were actually convincing (something of a rarity for that era) as well. I'm honestly kinda flabbergasted by this movie. It's this unbelievable liberal authoritarian fantasy, apparently the brainchild of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst who basically took the opportunity to go off on an insane political rant against political corruption and red tape. And as near as I can tell, the film is not a satire... it seems to actually take itself seriously. It's tacky, arrogant, obnoxious and utterly riveting. I suppose I could have spent some time deconstructing the film, but I'm so dumbfounded by it that I don't really know where to start. It clearly resonates with current events, but it just doesn't compute. Really, it has to be seen to be believed. Despite its notoriety, it wasn't very popular at the time of it's release, and it hasn't played much on TV since then. It experienced a brief resurgence on video, but quickly went out of print and isn't even available on DVD. However, some enterprising film nerd has placed the entire film on YouTube, in a series of 9 parts (strangely, it's subtitled in Spanish). If you don't feel like sitting through the whole film, it's definitely worth listening to the FilmCouch episode, as the guys spend a good amount of time humorously discussing the film and how it relates to history and current events (they also talk about W. and in a completely unrelated topic, there's some discussion of the Watchmen movie too). Posted by Mark on October 22, 2008 at 12:53 AM .:
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Sunday, October 19, 2008
6WH: Week 5: The Quasi-French Connection Coming down the homestretch of the Six Weeks of Halloween horror movie marathon (See Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4), we've got yet another trio of films with the usual comedic shorts and spooky trailers. I haven't had much in the way of foreign horror films in the marathon so far, and to be honest, there's only 1 (French) horror film in this entry... but one of the films is directed by a Frenchman and the other is connected to that film. We shall start with the the latter...
Posted by Mark on October 19, 2008 at 06:40 PM .:
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Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Season 7 of Firefly One of the greatest SF television series of recent years was Firefly. Of course, it never made it past 14 episodes (actually, only 11 were aired). This is what makes this mock-review of the first episode of Season 7 of Firefly hilarious. The end is nigh. The last season of Firefly started last night and if the season premiere is any indication, it comes a season too late. ...There's lot's more, but I can't help but think how uninspired the show sounds in its 7th season. The 14 episodes of the show that were produced were great, and so it's natural to lament that we'll never get closure to a lot of the plot threads... but at this point, I'm almost glad it didn't go much beyond those 14 episodes. I enjoyed Serenity a lot, but there was something off about it. It was too rushed, too compressed. Whedon is on record as saying that the events of the movie correspond roughly to his plan for the entire second season. When I saw Serenity, I found some pieces of it lacking... the government conspiracy that drives the plot is cliched, some of the characters don't get much to do, and other characters are given the prize of an arbitrary and unceremonious death. As an movie that is independent of the series, it's great, and it's one I rewatch relatively often. Would it have worked if the story had been spread out across a season? That is the assumption most seem to make, but honestly, I don't know. What I do know is that I don't have to worry about it anymore, and that might actually be a good thing. It's a tragedy that the series was torpedoed by Fox, who did a lot to sabotage the series, but at the same time, I'm a little relieved that it didn't live long enough for Whedon to torpedo it himself. Thanks to Jonathan Last for the link, and he correctly notes that the comments, where people take the gag and run with it, are hilarious as well. For instance, this one: The third season kicked a@@! (They won three Emmys, for frak's sake! And I STILL say Joss was screwed over - Abrams is good, but "Lost" was [and STILL IS] just a 'gimmick' show!) But I thought Mal being on the other size of the law let them explore some "gray zones" of morality - the REAL cause of Bowden's Malady (with the great Gregg Henry reprising his role as Sheriff Bourne) - And Badger revealed as a paid snitch for Blue Sun - Or what about the two-parter where the crew finally gets their (legal!) revenge on Niska? And who didn't shed a tear over Zoe's pregnancy? Okay, Wash going undercover with the carnival was just a rip-off of "The Trouble With Tribbles" -except with baby geese - but it WAS funny! And speaking of funny, what about the episode with Jayne's mother and four sisters get quarantined aboard Serenity for a month? I usually don't care for Melanie Griffith, but I thought she was perfectly cast here...I could go on, but I urge everybody to go back and take another look at Season #3!!Heh. Posted by Mark on October 15, 2008 at 08:35 PM .:
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Sunday, October 12, 2008
6WH: Week 4 - 80s Slasher Week The Six Weeks of Horror continues (See Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3) with some 80s slasher fun (sort of an extension of week 1's Friday the 13th marathon).
Posted by Mark on October 12, 2008 at 02:58 PM .:
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Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Dr. Smith's Lost in the Space at the End of Summer Movie Quiz Well, I'm over a month late to the party here, but here are my answers to Dennis Cozzalio's movie quiz: 1) Your favorite musical moment in a movie So it doesn't take long for me to find a question where I can't pick an answer because there are too many great ones to choose from. So here's a few: The Ride Of The Valkyries in Apocalypse Now, Also sprach Zarathustra in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and on a lighter note Total eclipse of the heart from Old School, the Raw-Hide scene in The Blues Brothers (actually, all the musical sequences in that movie are pretty good), and just about every song from the South Park movie. In more recent movies, the Falling Slowly scene in Once is pretty amazing and I liked the Jackson Five dance sequence in Clerks II too... 2) Ray Milland or Dana Andrews And it also doesn't take long for me to prove just how little I know about older movies. Alas, this will be a recurring theme throughout this quiz. I barely know who these guys are... 3) Favorite Sidney Lumet movie 12 Angry Men. There are a few other notable choices, but I do love this movie. 4) Biggest surprise of the just-past summer movie season Typically this sort of thing is supposed to be movies that you didn't expect to be good that actually were... but I don't watch many movies I think are going to be bad. However, I didn't think The Dark Knight would be as good as it was, and I didn't think The X Files: I Want to Believe would be as bad as it was. Neither was all that surprising, but it was a pretty vanilla summer. 5) Gene Tierney or Rita Hayworth Rita Hayworth, though again, I don't know that era of film as well as I should... 6) What’s the last movie you saw on DVD? In theaters? Last movie on DVD was Sleepaway Camp (part of my ongoing 6 Weeks of Halloween horror movie marathon), which I actually enjoyed a lot more than I expected. Plus, that ending. Amazing. Last movie in the theater was Appaloosa, which was a pretty standard modern western film. But there's something to be said for well executed Genre pieces, and I'm a fan. I enjoyed it quite a bit. ![]() Sleepaway Camp 7) Irwin Allen’s finest hour? The Swarm! Maybe it's just because I'm watching a lot of horror movies, but movies like this are fun. 8) What were the films where you would rather see the movie promised by the poster than the one that was actually made? This sounds like a great question, but I'm totally drawing a blank. To be honest, it's not often that a poster really sways me one way or the other. The only thing I could think of was the poster for Star Wars: Episode I, featuring Jake Lloyd throwing the shadow of Darth Vader on the wall behind him. I don't hate the prequels, but at the time, that poster promised a lot more than we ended up getting...
9) Chow Yun-Fat or Tony Leung Leung is probably the better dramatic actor, but I really have to go with Chow Yun-Fat. Back in college a friend of mine and I would head into the city and cruise around Chinatown looking for imported HK action movies (which were not readily available in mainstream stores like they are today), mostly featuring Chow Yun-Fat. All we needed to see was his name, and we bought it. Of course, directors like John Woo and Ringo Lam were probably more responsible for the overall experience, but Chow Yun-Fat was a huge part of the fun, so I have to pick him for this question... 10) Most pretentious movie ever This is a rough one, because I typically try to avoid these types of movies. The first one that came to mind was Richard Linklater's Waking Life, which is comprised soley of incredibly pretentious dialogue that really goes nowhere. Great animation technique and all, but the movie just squanders it on faux-philosophic banter. Another movie I thought of for this was The Holy Mountain. However, all of Alejandro Jodorowsky's movies are pretentious, and they're also incredibly freaky and weird. In general, you know what you're going to get with a Jodorowsky movie - a lot of pretentious babble mixed with freaky/disgusting visuals. But with Linklater, I was expecting something more, which is why I'd say Waking Life is more pretentious. 11) Favorite Russ Meyer movie I have embarrassingly not seen a Russ Meyer movie. This is a total mystery when you consider that he's got a lot of boobs in his movies and, uh, I like boobs. Seems like a natural fit. Not sure what happened there. I'll have to remedy this at some point in the future. 12) Name the movie that you feel best reflects yourself, a movie you would recommend to an acquaintance that most accurately says, “This is me.” This one is impossible. Perhaps someday I'll put together my top 100 films of all time, at which point you'll probably be able to get a good picture of who I am, but even then, I'm not sure. Plus, I have to actually compile that list, which I haven't done yet. 13) Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo I plead the Fifth. 14) Best movie snack? Most vile movie snack? I could be totally wrong about this, but movie popcorn when I was a kid was spectacular. If I remember correctly, sometime in the 1990s, someone noticed that a small bag of popcorn with butter was the caloric equivalent of like 3 Big Macs or something insane like that. So movie theaters stumbled all over themselves to make their popcorn healthier. It's still good today, but not as good as I remember it. Of course, I'm going completely from memory here, so I could be making this all up. In terms of vile snacks... I can't really think of one, though I suppose I'd be pretty scared of a movie theater hot dog. Sno Caps are pretty disappointing if you like real non-parels, but I wouldn't call them vile. 15) Current movie star who would be most comfortable in the classic Hollywood studio system I really don't know what kind of person would fit, but my intuition says George Clooney, so there. Maybe Tom Hanks. Interestingly, I don't know that current movie stars are really stars in the way the old Hollywood stars were. Do we have movie stars anymore?James Berardinelli recently wrote about this... but I'm not really sure either way. 16) Fitzcarraldo—yes or no? Yes, I would like to watch that movie someday. No, it doesn't seem like it would be a movie I'd really connect with, which is why I haven't seen it yet. But I have seen some other Herzog, and I might be wrong, so I want to watch it. 17) Your assignment is to book the ultimate triple bill to inaugurate your own revival theater. What three movies will we see on opening night? The Godfather (the newly restored print, which is apparently "sensational"), The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. These are three of my favorite movies of all time, they are movies that would do well on the big screen and I've never seen them on the big screen. Also, since I am a business owner, these are three very popular movies as well, and sure to draw in big crowds (the only one that might not work in that respect would be 2001, but I think it'd draw enough people in). 18) What’s the name of your theater? (The all-time greatest answer to this question was once provided by Larry Aydlette, whose repertory cinema, the Demarest, is, I hope, still packing them in...) I have no idea. Probably something uninspired like The Movie House. If I were really opening my own theater, I think I'd really just need to get a lot of suggestions from people before naming it. 19) Favorite Leo McCarey movie I have not seen any of his movies, but I do have Duck Soup in my Netflix queue. Of course, it's in position 92 and hasn't really movied up much in the past year that's been in there... but it is there! 20) Most impressive debut performance by an actor/actress. My First thought was Orson Welles in Citizen Kane, but that's also something of an obvious choice. Unfortunately, I can't seem to think of any others. 21) Biggest disappointment of the just-past summer movie season The aforementioned The X Files: I Want to Believe, was pretty disappointing. The Happening was a trainwreck... but I genuinely liked Shyamalan's last two movies which were also universally panned by critics, so I was actually a little surprised by just how bad this movie was... Pineapple Express was also disappointing. 22) Michelle Yeoh or Maggie Cheung Michelle Yeoh, though I'm not an expert on either of these... 23) 2008 inductee into the Academy of the Overrated Without a doubt, this goes to Iron Man. It's not that it's a bad movie... it's just that some people talk about it like it's one of the best Superhero movies ever, and it's really not even close. 24) 2008 inductee into the Academy of the Underrated To be honest, I'm having trouble with this one. For me, this has been a bit of a lackluster year. It's October and I only really have 2 solid candidates for my annual top 10. One of those is The Dark Knight, which is emphatically not underrated. The other is Timecrimes, a quirky, Spanish time-travel thriller (and my favorite from the 2008 PFF). I don't know that I would call it "underrated" but considering that it's a foreign film that hasn't really had a theatrical release in the US, I'd say this could qualify. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how available this movie will be because Hollywood is apparently going to remake it, and with that comes the asanine practice of suppressing the original film until after the remake comes out. ![]() The mysterious bandaged man from Timecrimes 25) Fritz the Cat—yes or no? I have not seen it, but it sounds like a Yes to me. 26) Trevor Howard or Richard Todd *Sigh* 27) Antonioni once said, “I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules.” What filmmaker working today most fruitfully ignores the rules? What does ignoring the rules of cinema mean in 2008? This question implies that there are actually rules of cinema these days. For the sake of argument, I suppose the obvious answer would be David Lynch, but I don't generally like the results he produces (and thus that's not a "fruitful" ignorance of rules for me). Perhaps the Coen brothers? They consistently seem to defy expectations and almost never take the easy, mainstream path to moviemaking. Even their Oscar winning No Country for Old Men is pretty hostile towards traditional storytelling. And they always seem to follow up their most popular and successful movies with a confounding movie, like The Big Lebowski or even Burn After Reading. 28) Favorite William Castle movie I haven't seen enough to really say, but I did enjoy House on Haunted Hill. If Rosemary's Baby counts, there's that too. 29) Favorite ethnographically oriented movie I'm going to cheat on this one because what immediately comes to mind is The Wire. So it's not technically a movie, but really, watching a season of the wire is like watching a 13 hour movie. Actually, the whole series is like a brilliant 60 hour movie. And while I'm no expert on inner city Baltimore, I don't think I've ever seen a movie portray the ethnographic background of the drug trade the way The Wire has... Update: I thought of two good, non-cheating ethnographically oriented movies: The look at Rio de Janeiro in City of God is compelling and Zhang Yimou's brilliant portrait of the upheavals in China, To Live. 30) What’s the movie coming up in 2008 you’re most looking forward to? Why? The obvious answer is Quantum of Solace, but I'm also a bit wary of that one. A more unconventional pick would be Let the Right One In, a Swedish movie about a 12 year old boy and his Vampire neighbor. I'm mostly going on the mad ravings of Devin from CHUD on this one, but the movie is coming out in limited release near me on November 14, so why not check it out?
31) What deceased director would you want to resurrect in order that she/he might make one more film? Stanley Kubrick (duh). (Update: Spencer notes in the comments another "Duh" selection: Alfred Hitchcock) 32) What director would you like to see, if not literally entombed, then at least go silent creatively? This is a tough one because I don't generally wish ill will upon people who make art I don't like. I seem to have the ability to easily ignore them, so they don't bother me much. Sure, I guess I got a little miffed when Brett Ratner came on for X3, but that's not entirely his fault either. So I don't know. Maybe Uwe Boll? 33) Your first movie star crush This is a very tough one. I can't seem to remember really crushing on any of the big names from when I was younger and it feels dumb to say someone I'm crushing on now:p And so there you have it. That was really, really long, but I had fun. Posted by Mark on October 08, 2008 at 08:33 PM .:
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Sunday, October 05, 2008
6WH: Week 3 - No Discernable Theme Week As we reach the halfway point of the Six Weeks of Halloween horror movie marathon (See Week 1 | Week 2), it seems I've run out of thematically similar movies and have moved into more of a hodgepodge. But nevertheless, this week's lineup is pretty darn good. I seem to have gotten a bit ahead of schedule here, so a couple of these were actually watched a couple weeks ago:
In other news, Kernunrex continues his 6WH, which includes several mentions of Kaedrin favorite Phantasm (including a comic book I've never heard of but now want to read and the DVD commentary track). Kaedrin compatriot Roy posted his tentative schedule as well. NeedCoffee has started their 32 days of Halloween (it's kicked off by none other than Bugs Bunny!). Quint over at AiCN has been doing a movie a day, and for the month of October, he's doing a horror movie a day, starting with The Dunwich Horror (I didn't even know they made a movie out of that excellent H.P. Lovecraft story). Some other folks doing the marathon thing: The Metal Misfit, Random Acts of Geekery, Cal's Media of the Month and I'm sure lots of others. And of course, there's also Horror Movie a Day, who eschews the whole Halloween thing and just does horror all year round. Is anyone else doing a horror marathon? Posted by Mark on October 05, 2008 at 07:56 PM .:
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Wednesday, October 01, 2008
John Dies at the End: The Movie Not sure how I missed this, but the movie rights for David Wong's horror comedy novel John Dies at the End have been purchased by Kaedrin favorite Don Coscarelli (of Phantasm and Bubba Ho-tep fame). Wong used to write at a website called Pointless Waste of Time, but he has since been hired to edit Cracked.com, and all his articles are there now (including the particularly brilliant Ultimate War Simulation Game article). He originally published John Dies at the End online (unfortunately no longer available), but it got picked up by an indie horror publisher (unfortunately, that edition is now sold out) and is now set to be re-released sometime in 2009. IMDB doesn't have it listed yet, but Coscarelli seems excited: The story follows two goofballs who get caught up in a freaky fight against (deep breath...) mutated victims of a strange drug that allows them to drift across time and dimensions and the horrific invasion that may be taking place on Earth because of them. Coscarelli compares JOHN DIES to his previous popular adaptation: “My feelings for JOHN are similar to how they were for Joe R. Lansdale's BUBBA HO-TEP,” he says. “Prior to filming that movie, I’d reread the Lansdale novella and absolutely knew it would make a terrific movie. I feel the same way about JOHN. David Wong is a terrific new talent. He effortlessly blends genres and creates genuine dread. I’m thrilled to be working on a project that’s firmly planted in the genre, yet different and highly original.”AICN has some more info: "I was greatly impressed by David Wong's crazed originality and impressive imagination," revealed Coscarelli. "He's like a mash-up of Douglass Adams and Stephen King, both smart and goofy, scary and funny -- it really spoke to me. JDatE is as addictive as the 'Soy Sauce' street drug that kicks the plot into gear."I have no idea how long this will take to make it to the screen, but I imagine it would be a while (this is what sucks about keeping track of movies in production - you always find out about the movies years before they're made). In any case, I'm really looking forward to this. Coscarelli is a great director and would be a good match for Wong's style. After all, this is the director who made a movie about an aging Elvis (with a black JFK sidekick) battling a mummy in a Texas old folks home. It's a perfect match. Posted by Mark on October 01, 2008 at 09:26 PM .:
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Sunday, September 28, 2008
6WH: Week 2 - The Lycanthropic Edition The Six Weeks of Halloween continues this week with a trio of movies featuring Werewolves, along with the usual spat of movie trailers and comedic shorts. Enjoy:
In an effort to further steal from kernunrex, I picked up a pack of Halloween Jones Soda this week... I chose the not-so-adventurous Blood Orange flavor, which I really liked a lot (though it's a pretty standard orange soda style flavor, it's still tasty). Up next will be the Candy Corn flavor. Posted by Mark on September 28, 2008 at 12:15 PM .:
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Sunday, September 21, 2008
Six Weeks of Halloween: Week 1 - The Friday the 13th Edition I stumbled upon Kernunrex's annual six weeks of Halloween posts a bit late last year, so I only did four weeks myself. This year, I'm prepared. This is my favorite time of the year, and like Kernunrex, I think it's a great excuse to explore one of my favorite genres. When else can you impersonate another person all day and not be arrested? On what other day would it be socially acceptable to decorate your yard with imitation corpses? Only during Halloween do hollow, burning fruit look good on your porch. Most of all, Halloween somehow makes most everyone in the country a fan of my favorite genre. One day just isn't enough for this type of fun; I make it six weeks.Excellent. To start things off, I watched some Friday the 13th movies. I've seen most of them before, but mostly only in pieces. Last year, I revisted the original, this year, I've revisted the next three installments.
Also, since we're pretty early in the season, feel free to leave some recommendations in the comments. I have a bunch of movies in my queue, but nothing I consider very essential, so recommendations are welcome. Posted by Mark on September 21, 2008 at 07:22 PM .:
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Sunday, September 14, 2008
Clone Wars & Context Not too long ago, I mentioned that George Lucas' involvement in a project usually does not bode well for that project. I admit to a certain amount of bandwagon-jumping there, but at the same time, I think it's justified. Jeff Jenson at EW thinks otherwise: But the haters got it wrong — about The Clone Wars, about Lucas (''Sellout''? What does that even mean these days?), and about the current state of Star Wars in general. Missing from much of the overheated bashing of The Clone Wars was the crucial point that it was made for kids, not the grown-ups for whom the original trilogy remains (ridiculously) sacred. Several reviews simply revisited and rehashed the bitter disdain many adult Star Wars fans have for the prequel trilogy. I get that bitterness. But my young Star Wars-loving children don't, nor do the kids who were raised on the prequels and (heresy!) actually liked them.Now, I was one of the few who plunked down their $10 to see the latest Clone Wars movie, and I do think that hyperbolic response of movie critics was unjustified. The movie is nothing special, but it does not deserve to be among the worst movies of the year. For all its failings, it's still well made and it contains a coherent story (albeit, not much of one). So why the disproportionate response? I think the answer is context. First, everyone heard the story behind the release of this film. Namely that Lucasfilm was putting together a TV series for Cartoon Network, and that after producing the Pilot episode, they decided to put it in the theaters to see if they could rake in some more cash from mopes like myself. Jenson wonders in his article what "sellout" even means these days, and it's a fair point I guess, but it's pretty obvious that this is a pure money grab on Lucasfilms' part. I'm reminded once again of David Foster Wallace's1 brilliant essay, F/X Porn, where he discusses some of the business decisions that drove the plot of T2: The studio backing for "T2'''s wildly sophisticated and digital F/X therefore depends on Mr. Arnold Schwarzenegger agreeing to reprise his Terminator role. Now the ironies start to stack, though, because it turns out that Schwarzenegger -- or perhaps more accurately "Schwarzenegger, Inc.," or "Ahnodyne" -- has decided that playing any more malevolent cyborgs would compromise the Leading Man image his elite and bankable record of ROI entails. He will do the film only if "T2"'s script is somehow engineered to make the Terminator the Good Guy. Not only is this vain and stupid and shockingly ungrateful [12], it is also common popular knowledge, duly reported in both the trade and the popular entertainment media before "T2" even goes into production. There's consequently a weird postmodern tension to the way we watch the film; we're aware of what the bankable star's demands were, and we're also aware of how much the movie cost and how important bankable stars are to a big-budget movie; and so one of the few things that keeps us on the edge of our seats during the movie is our suspense about whether James Cameron can possibly weave a plausible, non-cheesy narrative that meets Schwarzenegger's career needs without betraying "T1"'s precedent.(emphasis mine) Like T2, the production and financial situation of The Clone Wars was duly reported and common knowledge among the public before the film's release. We know what we're watching is simply an episode in a TV series, which automatically knocks it down a peg due to the negative connotations of TV. Add on the perceived greed of releasing it in theaters and marketing it to the traditional Star Wars fanbase (while it may certainly be more suitable for children, as Jenson notes, I don't remember it being marketed that way), and it goes down another peg or two. Second, the stakes of the film are rather low. This is most likely the result of its TV heritage, as it would have been fine as a pilot episode for a series that will most likely continue to develop the various strands that were introduced in the movie. But when you put it in the theaters, you're begging to compare it to the other 6 films. While the prequels tend to be a bit muddled in terms of plot, the stakes are clearly high. And the original trilogy has even higher stakes. Furthermore, the movie can't even approach the stakes of the first Clone Wars series (more on this later). Third, the tension is non-existent because the film takes place between Episode II and Episode III. In addition, the grand majority of the characters in the movie are also in Episode III, so, for instance, we know that the duel between Anakin and Count Dooku will result in a draw. Ah, but how can I say that when I also like the original Clone Wars series? It's easy. That series came out before Episode III. Furthermore, while that series featured many of the same characters as the movies, it also featured a whole slew of Jedi who were not main characters in the movies. So when these normally peripheral Jedi are placed in the spotlight and cornered by General Grievous, there is a genuine feeling of suspense (incidentally, Grievous was a great, menacing character in the series - making him a total letdown in Episode III, where he turned out to be an incompetent, cowardly weenie). Yes, many of these complaints have very little to do with the craft or skill that went into the movie, but context matters. Whether it's expectations, innovation or the crowd you saw a film with, it's clear that context makes a big difference. For a movie that takes place in a beloved SF universe with a grand tradition, context matters even more, which is why I think you can see a lot of exaggerated complaints in reviews. To be sure, it's not a great film, but it's not one of the year's worst either. 1 - Surprisingly, it seems that David Foster Wallace was found dead recently. I guess I should dust off my unread copy of Infinite Jest and give it a read sometime. Perhaps after I finish Anathem. Posted by Mark on September 14, 2008 at 08:40 PM .:
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Wednesday, August 27, 2008
The Thing Goes Zombie I generally try to avoid just posting a video, but this is awesome: Amazing stuff. Has stop-motion animation always been this prevalent? From mainstream (Robot Chicken) to amateur (the vid above, and maybe the Marvel vs. DC stuff), it seems like I'm seing more and more stop-motion these days. [Thanks to Roy for posting the vid on 4k] Posted by Mark on August 27, 2008 at 08:55 AM .:
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Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Lucas Wars James Berardinelli's recent blog post is interesting: It's becoming increasingly difficult to defend George Lucas. It's hard to reconcile the greedy corporate fat cat at the top of Lucasfilm's empire with the hungry filmmaker who transformed cinema and enthralled millions in 1977. Fans who once worshipped Lucas now revile his name. Lucas the god has become Lucas the devil. For those willing to defend Lucas, the release of The Clone Wars may be their undoing.While I don't think I've ever gone so far as to say that Lucas "raped" my childhood, I have to admit that Lucas' involvement in a project is not a good thing in my book. The gratuitous double-dipping on Star Wars VHS tapes and DVDs aside (it's not like he's that much different than any other studio there), I can't think of anything Lucas has worked on in the past 15 years that's really been good. The Star Wars Special Editions weren't very special, and indeed some of the changes were mildly annoying (they were also part of the excuse for double-dipping DVD releases). The Star Wars prequels were entertaining, but severely flawed. Lucas can write a fine story, but his scripts (and especially his dialogue) aren't so great. His direction and ability to pull a good performance out of an actor doesn't seem very impressive either. And unlike the original Star Wars trilogy, he kept the prequels to himself (I think a large part of why we love the original trilogy so much is that other, better writers and directors, were allowed to work on them). The recent Indiana Jones movie was a bit of a mess too, and I tend to blame most of that on Lucas. Is that fair? Spielberg surely deserves some of the blame, but it seemed like all I heard about was how Lucas held up the production for this or that reason, including the rejection of Frank Darabont's script, which was apparently loved by everyone involved in the production except Lucas. Instead of Darabont, we got what appears to be a mixture of about 10 different scripts, and it shows. I think there's probably a lot of wild, hyperbolic speculation about Lucas and his motives, but it's hard not to engage in that sort of thing. A cursory glance at everything he's done in the past 15 years shows a man in love with special effects... to the detriment of everything else. This even hurt the recent Indiana Jones movie. How could Lucas get back in people's good graces? Perhaps if he worked on something new instead of constantly revisiting Star Wars and Indy, we might get back on his side. Instead, it seems like he's just run out of ideas. From what Berardinelli says in his post, it seems the new Clone Wars movie is nothing special. This is a shame, because I really loved the original Clone Wars cartoons (I guess that's one recent thing Lucas worked on that was good). Indeed, I think I enjoyed them just as much if not more than the prequels. I'll probably end up seeing The Clone Wars this weekend, but I don't know how much I'll get out of it. Posted by Mark on August 13, 2008 at 09:59 PM .:
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Sunday, August 03, 2008
Movie Podcasts I watch a lot of movies, and so it follows that I also listen to a lot of movie podcasts. It's an interesting "genre" of podcast in that many of them feature similar segments (i.e. top 5, listener feedback, director spotlight, etc...), and most of them have to walk that fine line between art house and mainstream, obscure and popular. So here's a list of my favorite podcasts... alas, some are now defunct, but are still worth checking out anyway.
Update 8.13.08 - Celluloid Geekazoid has taken podcast reviewing to the next level with his multifaceted, weighted ratings. I should try that. He covers a bunch of podcasts I haven't reviewed. I've listened to most of them though and never really cared for them. The only one on his list that's a real discovery for me is the excellent Left Field Cinema. I'm a little different than CG in that I prefer a longer show, but LFC seems to be a good length for what it is. Posted by Mark on August 03, 2008 at 07:07 PM .:
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Sunday, July 20, 2008
The Dark Knight I saw The Dark Knight this weekend, and to be honest, I'm still working my way through it. There's a lot to chew on in the movie, and that alone raises it above most films (not just "Superhero" movies). Rather than do a standard review of the film, which I'm sure anyone reading this blog has already read, I'll be discussing a few topics related to the film and to recent posts on this blog. As such, the following post is about as spoiler free as possible. James Berardinelli gave the film 4 stars, which is notable since this is the first film that has earned that honor in nearly 2 years. He explains his position in his blog: Some reviewers hand out four-star ratings like candy. Such is their right. It's their rating and their system. I have always felt that, for a four-star citation to mean anything, it must be handed out on only the rarest of occasions to the most deserving of films. When I dole out a four-star rating, I'm making a statement about the quality of the movie. I'm saying that, for anyone with similar movie tastes to mine, this is a "must-see." For a production to get four stars, it not only has to impact me as I'm watching it, but it has to stay with me afterward, as I drive home at night, as I do my evening exercises, as I get ready for bed, as I shower the next morning, and as I compose the review in my head while cutting the grass Four-star movies aren't easily forgotten or shrugged off. They demand attention. They are rare. In 2007, there were none.Steven notes the addicting grail-like quest reviewers put themself through in order to find 4 star entertainment. I don't post star ratings for most of the movies I see, but I count myself among the addiction grail-seekers. It has been over two years since I've seen a new film I would consider 4 stars (That film was United 93). That doesn't mean I haven't seen any 4 star movies in that time, just not newly-released ones. Most recently I discovered Zhang Yimou's brilliant Raise the Red Lantern, a movie that instantly shot into 4 star range for me. That is actually even more of a rarity though. It normally takes a while for a movie to sink in, and as Berardinelli notes, a 4 star movie stays with you long after viewing it. My question after seeing The Dark Knight is, how long is long enough? It will unquestionably be on my best of the year list, but is it really worth the 4 stars? Perhaps this is why I don't post star ratings for every movie I see. I've always been a bit stingy with extreme ratings; I rarely rate something 1 star or 4 stars. Again, I'm being necessarily vague here because I really don't keep a list, but my most common rating is probably 2.5 stars. The process of compiling top 10 lists (which I've done for 2006 and 2007) has made me even more stingy with 4 star ratings. Nevertheless, I'm still considering The Dark Knight for the honor. It's that good. Last week, I wrote about the difficulties of discussing genre films, and as if to prove my point, The Dark Knight is an amazing departure from its genre roots. Most superhero movies at least acknowledge their cartoonish nature, but The Dark Knight tries its best to play down those aspects. All that's left are the costumes and the occasional line of action-movie banter. Otherwise, this movie feels like a crime drama that happens to feature a guy who dresses up like a bat and another that dresses up like a (demented) clown. Oh, it still retains a healthy respect for the character and it's clearly a comic book movie, but I couldn't help but think of sweeping, epic, ensemble crime dramas like The Godfather: Part II and especially Heat. Apparently, Alexandra DuPont also noticed those parallels: It's an ensemble crime drama, and the parallels to "Heat" are blatant: A master criminal and a master detective (the latter with a troubled personal life) embark on a collision course. As in "Heat," detective and criminal even sit down at a table and chat midway through the film. And as in "Heat," the characters surrounding and supporting the two leads get more screen time than you'd expect.DuPont also notes just how different this movie is to it's immediate predecessor (which was made by the same creative team). Gone are the ninjas, gone are the ancient secret societies and their dopey conspiracies. What you're left with is unnervingly real, with few moments of comic-book-like fantasy. One other thing you don't see in most comic book movies (or crime dramas for that matter) is the laser-tight focus on consequences. This was something I was getting at in my post on Vigilantes, but was never really able to articulate. Vigilante stories, of which Batman is a prime example, are about a fantasy of justice, but often don't shy away from the consequences. With The Dark Knight, the consequences of a vigilante's actions far outweigh the fantasy of justice. Perhaps this is why the movie, which does feature a few outlandish (but exciting!) set-pieces, still retains a realistic feel. Again, it's still a comic book movie, but it's unlike what has preceded it and it's likely to influence what follows. It seems pretty clear to me that the comic book movie genre has changed and will continue to grow. Interestingly, this trend looks likely to continue... as demonstrated by a preview for Watchmen shown before the Batman movie. I've been following the production of Watchmen for years, and I think part of the reason it's had so much trouble getting made is that it tells a bleak story... one that I think will resonate more deeply now that The Dark Knight has laid the groundwork. To be sure, I'm not talking about realism here, just the willingness to embrace the darker nature of superheroes. The consequences of a world with superheroes. In any case, most of the things you're hearing are true. It's a great film that has lived up to the hype (well, so far - I have a feeling the hype is going to go through the stratosphere after this weekend). Heath Ledger's performance is indeed a brilliant and memorable one that could potentially earn him a posthumous Oscar, putting the tragedy of his death in further relief. Indeed, at this point, I can't imagine anyone ever donning the Joker makeup again and probably the worst thing about this movie is that it will be damn near impossible to follow up. My comic-loving friend tells me the filmmakers were hoping to do a Hannibal Lecter type thing with the Joker in the sequels; having him be in Arkham Asylum, but still pulling strings in Gotham City. Alas, such will not be possible. Going into the movie, I thought I saw the villain for the next film pretty clearly, but that turned out not to be the case (this is actually one of the things that I'm still working through). There are only a handful of films I've seen multiple times in the theater, and the grand majority of those was more for social reasons than because of the film itself. Nevertheless, I think I will be rewatching The Dark Knight in the theater (probably an IMAX theater; apparently portions of the film were optimized for IMAX and I wanted to see it there, but all the IMAX showings for this past weekend sold out a week ago). Update: My site's host was experiencing issues all night Sunday and thus this post isn't showing up until Monday morning. Sorry! Posted by Mark on July 20, 2008 at 03:52 PM .:
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Sunday, June 22, 2008
70s SF Marathon Awards: The Damn Dirty Apes Filmspotting finished up their 70s Sci-Fi Movie Marathon by handing out awards, titled The Damn Dirty Apes (in honor of Charlton Heston's contribution to the marathon). I followed along with their marathon, so I figured I might as well give out the awards as well...
Posted by Mark on June 22, 2008 at 01:39 PM .:
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Wednesday, June 18, 2008
70s SF Marathon: The Man Who Fell To Earth A couple of weeks ago I reviewed most of the movies from Filmspotting's 70s Sci-Fi Movie Marathon. The one movie from their marathon that I had not yet seen at the time was The Man Who Fell to Earth. I had actually caught parts of this movie before, and to be honest I was not particularly impressed. After watching the whole movie, I can say that my thoughts about it have changed very little. There are two things I really like about this movie. Unfortunately, they're overshadowed by the rest of the movie. I love the premise: An alien travels to earth to get water for his dying planet. To fund the return trip to his planet, he patents several pieces of his own technology on Earth. He starts a company that quickly grows into one of the largest technology providers on the planet. However, he doesn't account for things like love, television, alcohol or excessively ruthless business competition. Alas, director Nicholas Roeg doesn't seem too interested in the SF portions of the film, instead attempting to delve deeper into the critique of human excesses by portraying the downward spiral of an alien who eventually succumbs to the various pressures of human life. As such, the plot ends up being razor thin and filled with holes. SF stories almost always boil down to basic human dramas, so I don't blame Roeg for being more interested in telling that part of the story, but the movie is quite sloppy with its science (the film is based on a novel, so I'm actually not sure all the blame lies with Roeg). I think Roger Ebert summed it up best in his review with this line: "...there's nothing more frustrating than asking logical questions about a movie that insists on being visionary."
The other thing that really works well in the film is the casting of David Bowie as the alien visitor. His gaunt, androgynous appearance is an eerily perfect fit. His subdued performance is good as well, though as Ebert notes, he "flirts with the catatonic." Supporting roles are somewhat interesting. Candy Clark plays a naive hotel worker who falls for Bowie. This odd relationship starts out very interesting, but progresses awkwardly and doesn't end well. Rip Torn plays a scientist who works for Bowie and eventually figures out what Bowie really is. Buck Henry has an interesting part as the lawyer who runs Bowie's company. His character also appears to be in a gay relationship, but this is only hinted at. Come to think of it, the entire film is really a series of interesting ideas that are only hinted at - a perfect example of playing obscurity for depth. Some films can get away with this because they require you to piece the story together for yourself, but that didn't work so well for this movie. Roeg tries his best to stylize the movie, and there are indeed a lot of interesting visual shots in the film. He uses cross cutting a lot, though I'd say the editing of the film in general isn't very well done. There is a lot going on in the movie, but none of it seems to fit together very well. In the end, it's an interesting movie with some good ideas, but I found the execution lacking. Most critics seem to love it even though many acknowledge the complaints I mention above. On the other hand, Kaedrin commenters noted that the film was "BORING" and "extremely tedious," so it's nice to know that I'm not alone. Filmspotting will be handing out their marathon awards on Friday, at which point I'll probably post my own... ** (out of 4) Posted by Mark on June 18, 2008 at 10:48 PM .:
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Sunday, June 15, 2008
Rewatching Movies One of the cable channels was playing Ocean's Eleven all weekend, and that's one of those movies I always find myself watching when it comes on (this time, I even went to the shelf and fired up the DVD, so as to avoid commercials). Of course, there are tons of new, never-seen-before things I want to watch. My Netflix queue currently has around 140 movies in it (and this seems to be growing with time, despite the rate at which I go through my rentals). I've got a DVD set of Banner of the Stars that I'm only about 1/3 of the way through. My DVR has a couple episodes of the few TV shows I follow queued up for me. Yet I find myself watching Ocean's Eleven for the umpteenth time. And loving every second of it. In actuality, I've noticed myself doing this sort of thing less and less over the years. When I was younger, I would watch and rewatch certain movies almost daily. There are several movies that have probably moved up into triple digit rewatches (for the curious, the films in this list include The Terminator, Aliens, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi and Phantasm). Others I've only rewatched dozens of times. As time goes on, I find myself less and less likely to rewatch things. I think Netflix has become a big part of that, because I want to get my money's worth from the service, and the only way to do that is to continually watch new movies. In recent years, I've also come to realize that even though I've seen way more movies than the average person, there are still a lot of holes in my film knowledge. I do find myself limited by time these days, so when it comes down to rewatching an old favorite or potentially discovering a new one, I tend to favor the new films these days. But I still relapse (focusing on novelty has its own challenges), and I do find myself rewatching movies on a regular basis.
Why is that? There are some people who never rewatch movies, but even with my declining repeat viewings, I don't count myself among them. Some films almost demand you to watch them again. For instance, I recently watched Andrei Tarkovsky's thoughtful, if difficult, SF film Solaris. This is a film that seems designed to reveal itself only upon multiple viewings. Tarkovsky is somewhat infamous for this sort of thing, and there are a lot of movies out there that are like that. Upon repeated viewings, these films take on added dimensions. You start to notice things. Correlations, strange relationships, and references become more apparent. Other films, however, are just a lot of fun to rewatch. This raises a lot of interesting questions. Why is a movie fun even when we know the ending? Indeed, why do some reviewers even include a rating for rewatchability? In some cases we just like spending time with certain characters or settings and don't mind that we already know the outcome. I've made a distinction between these films and the ones that demand multiple viewings, but many of the same benefits of repeat viewings are mutual between the two types of movies. Rewatching a film can be a richer, deeper experience and you start to notice things you didn't upon first viewing. Indeed, one interesting thing about rewatching movies is that while the movie is the same, you are not. Context matters. Every time we rewatch something, we bring our knowledge and experience (which is always changing) to the table. Sometimes this can be trivial (like noticing a reference or homage you didn't know about), but I've always heard about movies that become more poignant to people after they have children or as they grow older. Similarly, rewatching a movie can transport us back to the context in which we first saw the movie. I still remember the excitement and the spectacle of going to see Batman or Terminator 2 on opening day. Those were fun experiences from my childhood, even if I don't particularly love either movie. Heck, just the thought of how often I used to rewatch some movies is a fun memory that gets brought up whenever I think about those movies today...
There are also a lot of fascinating psychological implications to rewatching movies. As I mentioned before, we sometimes rewatch movies to revisit characters we consider friends or situations we find satisfying. In the case of comedies, we want to laugh. In the case of horror films, we want to scare ourselves or feel suspense. And strangely, even though we know the outcomes of these movies, they still seem to be able to elicit these various emotions as we rewatch them. For movies that depict true stories, they can feature suspense or fear even when we know how the story will turn out. Two recent, high-profile examples of this are United 93 and Zodiac. Both of those films were immersive enough upon first viewing that I felt suspense at various parts of the story, even though I knew on an intellectual level where both films were heading. David Bordwell has explored this concept thoroughly and references several interesting theories as to why rewatching movies remains powerful: Normally we say that suspense demands an uncertainty about how things will turn out. Watching Hitchcock’s Notorious for the first time, you feel suspense at certain points-when the champagne is running out during the cocktail party, or when Devlin escorts the drugged Alicia out of Sebastian’s house. That’s because, we usually say, you don’t know if the spying couple will succeed in their mission.Here's one theory he covers: ...in general, when we reread a novel or rewatch a film, our cognitive system doesn’t apply its prior knowledge of what will happen. Why? Because our minds evolved to deal with the real world, and there you never know exactly what will happen next. Every situation is unique, and no course of events is literally identical to an earlier one. “Our moment-by-moment processes evolved in response to the brute fact of nonrepetition” (Experiencing Narrative Worlds, 171). Somehow, this assumption that every act is unique became our default for understanding events, even fictional ones we’ve encountered before.He goes into a lot more detail about this theory and others in his post. Several of the theories he covers touch on what I find most interesting about the subject, which is that our brain seems to have compartamentalized the processing of various data. I'm going to simplify drastically for effect here, but I think the general idea is right (I'm not a nuerologist though, so take it with a grain of salt). When processing visual and audio data, there is a part of the brain that is, for lack of a better term, stateless. It picks up a stimulus, immediately renders it (into a visual or audio representation) then shuttles it off to another part of the brain which interprets the output. This interpretation seems to be where our brain slows down. The initial processing is involuntary and unconscious and it doesn't take other data (like memories) into account. We don't have to consciously think about it, it just happens. Something similar happens when we first begin to interpret data. Our brain seems to be unconsciously and continually forming different interpretations and then rejecting most of them. The rejected thoughts are displaced by new alternatives which incorporate more of our knowledge and experience (and perhaps this part happens in a more conscious fashion). We've all had the experience of thinking something that almost immediately disturbed us because we wonder where that thought came from. Bordwell gives a common example (I've read about this exact example at least three times from different people): Standing at a viewing station on a mountaintop, safe behind the railing, I can look down and feel fear. I don’t really believe I’ll fall. If I did, I would back away fast. I imagine I’m going to fall; perhaps I even picture myself plunging into the void and, a la Björk, slamming against the rocks at the bottom. Just the thought of it makes my palms clammy on the rail.So perhaps one reason it doesn't matter that we know how a movie will turn out is that there is a part of us that is blindly processing data without incorporating what we already know. Another reason we still feel emotions like suspense during a movie we've seen before is because we can imagine what would happen if it didn't turn out the way we know it will. In both cases, there is a conscious intellectual response which can negate our instinctual thoughts, but such responses seem to happen after the fact (at which point, you've already experienced the emotion in question and can't just take it back). One of the most beautiful things about laughter is that it happens involuntarily. We don't (always) have to think about it, we just do it. Dennis Miller once wrote about this: The truth is the human sense of humor tends to be barbaric and it has been that way all along. I'm sure on the eve of the nativity when the tall Magi smacked his forehead on the crossbeam while entering the stable, Joseph took a second away from pondering who impregnated his wife and laughed his little carpenter ass off. A sense of humor is exactly that: a sense. Not a fact, not etched in stone, not an empirical math equation but just what the word intones: a sense of what you find funny. And obviously, everybody has a different sense of what's funny. If you need confirmation on that I would remind you that Saved by the Bell recently celebrated the taping of their 100th episode. Oh well, one man's Molier is another man's Screech and you know something thats the way it should be.Indeed, humor generally disappates when you try to explain it. You either get it or you don't. I could probably go on and on about this, but Bordwell has done an excellent job in his post (there's an interesting bit about mirror neurons, for instance), and unlike me, he's got lots of references. I do find the subject fascinating though, and I began wondering about the impact of people rewatching movies so often. After all, this is a somewhat recent trend we're talking about (not that people didn't rewatch movies before the advent of the VCR and DVD, but that technology has obviously increased the amount of rewatching). We're living in an on-demand era right now, meaning that we can choose what we want to watch whenever we want (well, we're not quite there yet, but we're moving quickly in that direction). If I want to rewatch Solaris a hundred times and analyze it like the Zapruder film, I'm free to do so (and it might even be a rewarding effort). In the past, things weren't necessarily like that though. James Berardinelli recently wrote about rewatching movies, and he provides some interesting historical context: 30 years ago, if you loved a movie, re-watching it involved patience and hard work. A big Hollywood picture might show up in prime time (ABC regularly aired the James Bond movies on Sunday nights) but smaller/older films were relegated to late night or weekend afternoon showings. Lovers of High Noon (for example) might have to wait a couple of years and religiously check TV listings before being rewarded by its appearance on "The Million Dollar Movie" at 12:30 am some night.Again, this trend has continued, and the degree to which you can program your viewing schedule is ever increasing. Even during the 1980s when I was growing up, I found myself beholden to the broadcast schedules more often than not. Sure I could tape things with a VCR, but I usually found myself browsing the channels looking for something to watch. There was a certain serendipity to discovering movies in those days. I distinctly remember the first time I saw a Spaghetti Western (For a Few Dollars More), getting hooked, and watching a bunch of others (Cinemax was running a series of them that month). The last time I remember something like that happening was about 5-6 years ago when I caught an Italian horror marathon on some cable movie channel. And the only reason I watched that was because I had seen Suspiria before and wanted to watch it again. It was followed by several Mario Bava films that were very interesting. Today, I look back on some of the films I watched in my childhood, even ones I cherished, and I wonder why I ever bothered to watch it in the first place. It was probably becaues nothing else was on. The advent of digital cable has changed things as well because digital cable doesn't encourage blind television surfing. There's a program guide built right in, so you can browse that to find what you want. Unfortunately, that means you could skip right over something you would otherwise like (and that may have caught your eye if you saw a glimpse of it). There's also a lot more to choose from (perhaps leading to a paradox of choice situation). Of course, there are other ways for film lovers to discover new films they wouldn't otherwise have watched. On a personal level, listening to various film podcasts, especially Filmspotting and All Movie Talk (which is sadly now defunct, though still worth listening to if you love movies), has been incredibly helpful in finding and exploring various genres or eras of film that I had not been acquainted with. One effective technique that Filmspotting has employed is the use of marathons, in which they watch 5-6 movies from a genre or filmmaker they are not particularly familiar with. Of course, this, too, is subject to the whims of listeners - many (including myself) will avoid films that don't have an immediate appeal. Still, I've found myself playing along with several of their marathons and watching movies I don't think I would ever watch on my own. One interesting film experiment is currently being conducted by a blogger named Matthew Dessem. He wanted to learn more about foreign films and found that the Criterion Collection was an interesting place to start. It contains a good mix of the old, new, foreign, and independent, and it goes in a somewhat random order. He started writing a review for each movie at his blog, The Criterion Contraption. He's about 80 or so movies into the collection, and his reviews are exceptionally good (apparently the product of about 15 hours of work each). In an interview, Dessem explains his reasoning for watching the collection in order and why he writes reviews for each one: I began writing about the films simply as a way of keeping myself intellectually honest: thinking about how each movie was supposed to work, paying attention to what was effective and what was not. Given the chance to not engage with a difficult film, I'll usually take it, unless I have to come up with something coherent to say about it.Later in the interview, he expands on why he watches the films in the order Criterion put them out: Mostly, it keeps me honest. If I had the choice to watch the films in any order, I would quickly jump to all the films I most want to see, and never get around to the ones that seem less interesting. That means I'd miss out on a lot of discoveries, which was one of my main goals to begin with. But jumping around from country to country and decade to decade has its own rewards: like any good 21st century citizen, I have a pretty good case of apophenia, so I'll often see connections that don't exist between films.I can definitely see where he's coming from. Looking through the catalog of Criterion, I see a lot of movies that I'd probably skip if I didn't require myself to watch them in order (as it is now, I've seen somewhere around 10% of the movies, and there's no particular order I've gone in - I sorta fell into the trap where I "quickly jump to all the films I most want to see, and never get around to the ones that seem less interesting". Except, of course, I haven't decided to watch all the Criterion Collection movies.) Indeed some of the movies I have seen, I probably wouldn't recommend except in certain circumstances (for example, I wouldn't recommend Equinox to anyone but die-hard horror fans). However, while there are ways for us film lovers to seek out and expand our knowledge of film, I do wonder about the casual moviegoers. Is the recent trend of remakes (or reimaginings or whatever they call them these days) partially the result of this phenomenon? I wonder how many of the younger generation saw Rob Zombie's limp remake of Halloween and then sought out the brilliant original? That is perhaps too high-profile of an example. How about the original Ocean's Eleven? As it turns out, I have not seen that movie, despite loving the remake. I've added it to my Netflix queue. It rests at position 116 right now, which means I'll probably get to it sometime within the next five years. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to rewatch The Empire Strikes Back. It is my destiny.
Update: Added some screenshots from movies I've watched a bazillion times. Also just want to note that while I spent most of my time talking about movies here, the same goes for books and music. I don't tend to reread books much (perhaps due to the time commitment reading a book takes), but on the other hand, music gets better with multiple listenings (so much so that no one even questions the practice of listening to music multiple times). Posted by Mark on June 15, 2008 at 08:21 PM .:
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Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Screenshots of the Recently Viewed I'm back from my trip to Vegas, but I'm still a bit out of it, so here are a few screenshots and quick comments from recently viewed movies. I'll leave the titles off if you want to guess, though this isn't really a screenshot game like I've done in the past. The answers are below the fold in the extended entry...
Again, answers and quick comments in the extended entry... Here are the answers:
Posted by Mark on June 11, 2008 at 08:18 PM .:
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Sunday, June 01, 2008
'70s SF Movie Marathon I've been following along with Filmspotting's '70s Science Fiction Marathon. I've followed along with several of their marathons before, and other marathons I've been pretty familiar with before they did their thing, and as marathons go, this one has actually been somewhat disappointing. There's still one movie left in the marathon, but from what I've seen of it, I don't think my opinion will change much. Still, there were some surprises and bright spots here too, and I took the opportunity to check out some other 70s SF movies I'd been wanting to see. Here's the marathon so far:
Posted by Mark on June 01, 2008 at 09:25 PM .:
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Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Science Fiction Movies I've lamented the lack of quality science fiction movies a couple of times last year. There are a lot of quasi-SF movies out there. Something like I Am Legend could be termed science fiction, but when compared to more rigorous examples of the genre, like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Contact, I'm not sure it really qualifies. A lot of big budget SF ends up being like that, so the really good SF movies of today tend to be lower budget. So what does a SF movie need to do and how can it do it on a lower budget? John Scalzi took a crack at it recently and came up with three ways to cut costs. His first one is dead on: 1. Ditch the StarsOr approximately $28 million more than it took to make all of Primer (which cost $7,000). Now, I'll grant that Primer isn't the most visually spectacular movie, nor is its complex plotting very clear upon first inspection, but it is still very interesting and engaging (at least as much if not more than I, Robot). Scalzi's next point is to avoid making it in Hollywood. A pretty good suggestion. It partially amounts to the same thing as his first suggestion (since one of the things a big studio will do is insist on a big name star), but it also means they'll suggest more special effects and cliched plot elements. Why? Because Hollywood has lots of money, and they want to spend it. David Foster Wallace once wrote about this sort of thing in an essay called F/X Porn. In it, he formulates what's call the Inverse Cost and Quality Law: ...it states very simply that the larger a movie's budget is, the shittier that movie is going to be. The case of "T2" shows that much of the ICQL's force derives from simple financial logic. A film that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make is going to get financial backing if and only if its investors can be maximally -- _maximally_ -- sure that at the very least they will get their hundreds of millions of dollars back [11] -- i.e. a megabudget movie must not fail (and "failure" here means anything less than a runaway box-office hit) and must thus adhere to certain reliable formulae that have been shown by precedent to maximally ensure a runaway hit. One of the most reliable of these formulae involves casting a superstar who is "bankable" (i.e. whose recent track record of films shows a high ROI). The studio backing for "T2'''s wildly sophisticated and digital F/X therefore depends on Mr. Arnold Schwarzenegger agreeing to reprise his Terminator role. Now the ironies start to stack, though, because it turns out that Schwarzenegger -- or perhaps more accurately "Schwarzenegger, Inc.," or "Ahnodyne" -- has decided that playing any more malevolent cyborgs would compromise the Leading Man image his elite and bankable record of ROI entails. He will do the film only if "T2"'s script is somehow engineered to make the Terminator the Good Guy. Not only is this vain and stupid and shockingly ungrateful [12], it is also common popular knowledge, duly reported in both the trade and the popular entertainment media before "T2" even goes into production. There's consequently a weird postmodern tension to the way we watch the film; we're aware of what the bankable star's demands were, and we're also aware of how much the movie cost and how important bankable stars are to a big-budget movie; and so one of the few things that keeps us on the edge of our seats during the movie is our suspense about whether James Cameron can possibly weave a plausible, non-cheesy narrative that meets Schwarzenegger's career needs without betraying "T1"'s precedent.So I think Scalzi's second point holds pretty well, even though he didn't quite ram it home by savaging a popular but not so great film like Wallace does with T2 (his essay is worth reading in its entirety) And Scalzi's final point is also probably his most controversial and I'm not sure I buy it: 3. Hire the Screenwriter to DirectI certainly buy his reasoning, but I'm not sure that's going to matter. Being good at putting together a script says nothing of your abilities behind the camera. If you're going to spend your money on something, it might as well be the director. Directors typically make 5-7% of a film's budget, and since we're talking about a low budget movie, that won't account for all that much. Plus, a good director generally has more of a tangible outcome on the success of a film than a popular, A-List actor (note that I didn't say "good" actor, though I think a director probably still wields more influence even in that case). Scalzi doesn't really expand on this one that much, but he does give an interesting caveat and example: Warning, however: This is highly contingent on the two other factors. Case in point: David Twohy. When all Twohy had was $23 million, no big stars and a distribution deal with mini-studio USA Films, he made Pitch Black. When he had $120 million, big stars and Universal Studios backing him, he made The Chronicles of Riddick. Lesson: There's something to be said about keeping your screenwriter/director pinching pennies.Indeed there is, and that's a point Wallace drives home in his essay with a corollary to his Inverse Cost and Quality Law: (ICQL (b)) There is no quicker or more efficient way to kill what is interesting and original about an interesting, original young director than to give that director a huge budget and lavish F/X resources.Of course, despite focusing on T2 (a science fiction movie), Wallace isn't specifically talking about SF movies, and a lot of the advice in this post could probably stand for most movies. I guess the good news is that low budget SF movies are getting made. The previously mentioned Cloverfield is an interesting example of a movie that looks great, but was made for only $25 million dollars. It's not a great film, but it does something interesting and new to the moster movie genre (though I guess it's only marginally SF). Another great example I saw this year was at the Philly Film Festival - a Spanish time-travel thriller called Timecrimes. It's a fantastic example of how a SF movie can look great and entertain, even on a small budget (though I'm sure significantly higher than Primer). A few more like this and we'll be in decent shape. Posted by Mark on May 28, 2008 at 08:08 PM .:
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Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Nazi Parody As a fan of referential humor, I'm surprised I never caught on to this before. Indeed, I've even praised Rob Zombie's fake trailer in Grindhouse (for Werewolf Women of the S.S.) on several occassions without even realizing how closely he was parodying the genre. Then, while perusing some random list (on lists of bests), I found out about Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS. Wow. Talk about your similarities. Of course, Ilsa is not actually a werewolf (the "She Wolf" of the title appears to be metaphorical), but still. I guess I had a vague idea that Nazi exploitation films existed and that that is what Zombie was parodying, I just didn't realize that there were some that were so closely related to Zombie's trailer (which is still great, by the way - all the trailers in Grindhouse owe a great debt to the films they parody). I've added Ilsa to my Netflix queue, but I doubt I'll ever get to it. Some things are perhaps best left unexplored. (In typical Kaedrin fashion, now that I've said I won't, I'll probably run a series of Nazi Exploitation posts next month detailing my descent into grindhouse glory.) Posted by Mark on May 21, 2008 at 10:35 PM .:
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Sunday, May 11, 2008
Link Dump: Space! Time is short, so just a few space themed links for you:
Posted by Mark on May 11, 2008 at 09:57 PM .:
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Sunday, April 27, 2008
Netflix Activity The recent bout with myTV on DVD addiction necessitated an increase in Netflix usage, which made me curious. How well have I really taken advantage of the Netflix service, and is it worth the monthly expense? If I were to rent a movie at a local video store like Blockbuster, each rental would cost somewhere around $4 (this is an extremely charitable estimate, as I'm sure it's probably closer to $5 at this point), plus the expense in time and effort (I mean, come on, I'd have to drive about a mile out of my way to go to one of these places!) Netflix costs me $15.99 a month for the 3-disc-at-a-time plan (this plan was $17.99 when I signed up, but decreased in price two times during around two years of membership), so it takes about 4-5 Netflix rentals to recoup my costs and bring the price of an average rental down below $4. I've been a member for one year and ten months... how did I do (click for a larger version)?
A few notes on the data:
This has been an interesting exercise, because I feel like I'm a little more consistent than the data actually shows. I'm really surprised that there are several months where my rentals went down to 6... I could have sworn I watched at least 2-3 discs a week, with the occasional exception. Still, an average of 9 movies a month is nothing to sneeze about, I guess. I've heard horror stories of where Netflix will start throttling you and take longer to deliver discs if you go above a certain amount of rentals per month (at a certain point, the cost of processing your rentals becomes more than you're paying, which I guess is what prompts Netflix to start throttling you), but I haven't had a problem yet. If I keep up my recent viewing habits though, this could change... Posted by Mark on April 27, 2008 at 11:09 PM .:
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Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Top 5 Anticipated Summer Movies The first few months of 2008 has been a real movie wasteland. A couple of interesting releases, but nothing all that great. As summer approaches, things are looking up a little. The guys at Filmspotting will be doing a top 5 anticipated summer movies on Friday, so in an effort to beat them to the punch, here's my top 5:
Posted by Mark on April 23, 2008 at 09:44 PM .:
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Sunday, April 20, 2008
Episodes I've been watching a lot of TV on DVD (or Netflix Watch Online) lately. It can be quite an addictive experience, as the shows don't have commercials and many episodes end with something interesting (not necessarily a cliffhanger, but enough to make you want to see what happens next). I usually end up watching a bunch of episodes at once. In the past few months I've watched a bunch of shows in this fashion, including Dexter (seasons 1 and 2), Battlestar Galactica (season 3), It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (seasons 1 and 2), Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, and The Wire (seasons 1 and 2). It helps that all of these shows are pretty good, but I began to wonder about the impact of watching shows on DVD versus broadcast television. I also started to wonder what the ideal length of a TV episode should be and why most Anime series, even dramatic ones, tend to be only a half-hour, while the best American drama series tend to be an hour per episode... A few weeks ago, I finished up BSG season three and in my post on the subject, I said: I'll be able to watch season 4 as it happens. This presents an interesting contrast though, as I've watched the first three seasons on DVD. I've been wondering lately what impact this sort of schedule has on the perception of a series. It's certainly fun to watch. Addicting, actually. Will watching only a single episode a week (as opposed to 4 commercial-free episodes at a time) have a positive impact on my perception of the show? It's obviously a highly subjective question, but I guess I'm going to find out.So we're a few episodes into season 4 of BSG, and I have to say that I'm not enjoying it as much as when I was watching it on DVD (though the latest episode was pretty good). It's hard to tell if it's the notion of having to wait a week between episodes, or if it's just that the quality of the episodes is bothering me, and there's no real way to accurately test this, though I suppose if I do it more often (i.e. watch a series on DVD and catch up to the broadcast) I could get a better idea of how this impacts a show. Season 3 of Dexter is supposed to start up sometime this summer, so I guess that's my next chance... I'm particularly interested in this when it comes to Anime episodes, because most of us Westerners pick up DVD sets and watch multiple episodes at a time. Perhaps it's the typical half-hour duration that Anime uses (more on this later), but I wonder if a series would get frustrating if I had to wait a week between episodes. For GitS:SAC, there are some episodes that fit well into the series when watching it all at once, but that I think i'd find frustrating if I had to wait a week to see the next episode. For instance, the entirety of episode 9 takes place in a chat room where a bunch of people talk about the Laughing Man (a cyber-terrrorist whos is being chased throughout the series). I guess some interesting stuff comes to light in that episode, but if I was watching that series as it aired, I might have been a little more underwhelmed. I love Haibane Renmei, but I have to admit that it's probably not something I'd have stuck with if I had to wait a week between each episode (at least, not until DVD). And so on. I think part of that is that the duration for the grand majority of Anime seems to be a half-hour (with commercials, OPs, and EDs, it works out to around 22-23 minutes an episode), and I'm not sure that's the ideal length for some of the stories that are being told through Anime. Of course, lumping all Anime together is foolish, as it's extremely broad and some series work fine. So what is the ideal length of a TV episode? Let's take a look at the typical lengths (emphasis is on American series, as that's what I'm most familiar with, but I'll also go a little into Anime):
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