Movies

The internet has given voice to many an amateur, and usually, the term “amateur” is appropriate. But in some cases, the quantity and quality of material produced renders the term meaningless. James Berardinelli has been reviewing films on the internet for years, and he does so more consistantly and thouroughly than many professional film critics. In a certain sense, he is anything but an “amateur”. Take this recent review of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. With one line he completely sums up my feelings about the movie:

Watching this movie is like eating cotton candy – there’s a lot of sweetness and not much substance, but it’s a joy to consume while it lasts.

That line is just so dead-on that it’s almost scary. Unlike a lot of web gems, Mr. Berardinelli actually has achieved a certain amount of recognition, from people like me to big name film critics like Roger Ebert, and it is well deserved, too.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Art Film Hidden Inside the Chop-Socky Flick by Mattew Levie : Everyone was willing to heap praise on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon when it came out, but few actually examined the importance of the film. Most people rightly praised the stunning visuals or the expertly choreographed fight sequences, but there was no discussion of what made CTHD an important film. This despite being directed by Ang Lee, a man known for his slowly paced character studies. They’ve been making martial arts films in Hong Kong for quite some time, and as far as that goes, CTHD is pretty much average. But there is something that sets it apart from its mindless action counterparts. Levie contends that CTHD is a commentary on the plight of the modern woman.

Imagine Jade Fox as the strong professional woman who is perceived as too “aggressive” and even “bitchy,” while her equally aggressive male colleagues are spared this criticism; Shu Lien as the woman who works twice as hard as her male colleagues to reach the same stature, sacrificing her personal happiness for professional success; and Jen as a beautiful, capable teenager trying to set her priorities: career or family?

Its an interesting viewpoint, and it fits with the movie. The women in CTHD are desperately trying to succeed in a world that doesn’t overtly oppress them, but is still full of sexual prejudices and challenges. Its watching how the women in CTHD reconcile with this world that gives it an advantage over its competition.

The article is from Bright Lights Film Journal, which has always been a good read for movie fans with more diverse interests. They just released a new issue, with good articles on the distribution of Black Films, The Tarantino Legacy, and the failure of Wag the Dog.

Nova Express is a Hugo Award nominated zine covering the entire spectrum of speculative fiction. Issue 14 is the highlight, containing, among other things, an interesting discussion of Hong Kong cinema, including the superbly titled Old Man, Your Kung-Fu is Useless! (don’t forget to read part 2), and a few top ten lists. Author Walter Jon Williams does a resonable job categorizing and giving examples of the various genres within the Chinese action film (though he excludes the more recent Honk Kong Gangster genre typified by John Woo and Ringo Lam). If for no other reason, its good for finding some good examples of Chinese action movies. I’ll be checking out some of the Wu Xia Pian films… if I can find them…

Also, in the same issue, is an interesting article entitled Why Lovecraft Still Matters: The Magical Power of Transformative Fiction. The author, Don Webb, examines some of the things that make Lovecraft so pervasive, and gives a brief overview of his works. Lovecraft’s Mythos was an ingenius creation, as he was somehow able to slowly evoke a subtle emotional reaction on readers’ minds. The Mythos itself was almost self reinforcing; most of Lovecraft’s stories were published in the pulp magazine Wierd Tales, and Lovecraft was able to secure a secondary source of income by revising manuscripts for other Weird Tales authors, which enabled him to add references to his own imaginative universe in other authors’ works. Further, he encouraged his friends to drop references to them in their own work. For example, one of his best known creations, the Necronomicon (the magical book of the dead), is often thought to be real because sometimes Lovecraft would reference other well known books of the occult alongside his fictional Necronomicon. Other authors also referenced it in a similar manner, thus lending to the illusion. Fascinating stuff.

Time to lighten things up a bit. This Cassandra person is doing a series of stories about Lord of the Rings characters’ secret diaries. Its hilarious. Homosexual overtones abound. Check them out:

• The Very Secret Diary of Aragorn Son of Arathorn (My personal favourite) “Beginning to find Frodo disturbingly attractive. Have a feeling if I make a move, Sam would kill me. Also, hairy feet kind of a turn-off.

  Still not King.”

• The Very Secret Diary of Boromir of Gondor “Aragorn suggested we take baths as well. Only realized in nick of time he did not mean with each other.”
• The Very Secret Diary of Legolas, son of Weenus “Am definitely prettiest member of the Fellowship. Go me!”
• The Very Secret Diary of Frodo Baggins “Have agreed to carry Ring to Mordor. In hindsight, probably a bad move.”
• The Very Secret Diary of Samwise Gamgee “Aragorn just as pervy as Boromir. Obviously fancies Mr. Frodo. Will kill him if he tries anything.”
• The Very Secret Diary of Gandalf the Grey “Do not want to go through Mines of Moria, as suspect Balrog still angry about bad date we went on back in Second Age.”
• The Very Secret Diary of Pippin Took “Have been kidnapped by Uruk-hai. Not very friendly types. Merry says we may have to shag our way out of captivity. Suspect Merry looking forward to it, useless wassock.”

Funny stuff, unless you think the homosexual overtones are heresy or something. Also, check out this Ninja site, its funny too. Mighty fine basassery. [thanks S�m�l]

By the way, I saw Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring on Teusday night (or Wednesday morning, if you prefer), and I was completely blown away. I think I must feel the same way people felt when walking out of the original Star Wars. I would describe the film as a sweeping epic, in the true sense of those words (before they were perverted by the use of critics describing the like of, say, Gladiator) and Peter Jackson should be honored for being able to capture the spirit of Tolkien’s work while, at the same time, not shutting out those who are not familiar with the books. This is perhaps one of the most ambitious efforts in film history, and Jackson actually manages to imbue the film with the depth and texture that it demands. From beginning to end, the film showcases the grand beauty of Middle Earth, with graceful vistas, immense landscapes of forbidding snow or rolling greenery, and sweeping shots of terrifying battles, but don’t let that fool you – Jackson was able to temper the pace and suspence of the film so that its scale does not detract from it. This is grand filmmaking, yes, but Jackson also focuses on the human side, letting his wonderful actors do their thing and also showing the details of Middle Earth’s history and architecture… This is an adventurous effort at its best, and its one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time.

Star Wars Asciimation : Ok, so it turns out that the phrase “Some people have way too much time on their hands” is completely true. This guy has converted Star Wars into an ASCII animation. The whole movie (well, almost, he’s nearing the end) is presented with ASCII art. He also did a short Asciimation portraying the death of Jar-Jar and is working on a home made jet engine.

These haiku movie reviews are brilliant. [via Wisdom]

The Sixth Sense

Macaulay Culkin

eat your heart out. This is what

child acting’s about.

Filmmaker Stanely Kubrick is known for his brilliance, work ethic, genius, thinking outside the box, etc., but his sense of humor is rarely glimpsed. When he died in March of 1999, The New York Times published a collection of reminiscences by friends and enemies alike, compiled by film director and critic/historian Peter Bogdanovich. Its a touching tribute, and a few of the anicdotes that showcase Kubricks sense of humor caught my eye:

Matthew Modine (actor; lead role in “Full Metal Jacket”): One day I said: “I got a joke for you. … You’re dead.” He said, “It’s not funny.” I said: “Let me tell the joke. Steven Spielberg’s dead, too.” He said, “Steven’s dead, oh, that’s funny.” And I said: “You’re dead and you’re up in heaven and Steven Spielberg has just died and he’s being greeted at the gate by Gabriel and Gabriel says: ‘God’s really dug a lot of your movies and he wants to make sure that you’re comfortable. If there’s anything you need, you come to me, I’m your man.’ And Steven says, ‘Well, you know, I always wanted to meet Stanley Kubrick, do you think you could arrange that?’ And Gabriel looks at him and says: ‘You know, Steven, of all the things that you could ask for, why would you ask for that? You know that Stanley doesn’t take meetings.’ He says, ‘Well, you said that if there was anything I wanted.’ Gabriel says: ‘I’m really sorry. I can’t do that.’ So now he’s showing him around heaven and Steven sees this guy wearing an army jacket with a beard riding a bicycle. And Steven says to Gabriel: ‘Oh, my God, look, over there, that’s Stanley Kubrick. Couldn’t we just stop him and say hello?’ And Gabriel pulls Steven to the side and says, ‘That’s not Stanley Kubrick; that’s God — he just thinks he’s Stanley Kubrick.’ “Stanley liked that joke.

That’s a funny one, but this one is my favourite:

Jerry Lewis (actor-director-writer; edited a film at same studio Kubrick was editing “2001”): He’s in the cutting room and I’m watching this man investigate his work, and it was fascinating. He was intrigued with the fact that I did more than one thing. He was a very big fan of “hyphenates.” I think he would have loved to have written “2001” without Arthur Clarke. But he did have a high regard for people who directed their own material.

I was in my cutting room around 1 in the morning, and he strolls in smoking a cigarette and says, “Can I watch?” I said: “Yeah, you can watch. You wanna see a Jew go down? Stand there.” That was the night I coined the expression, “You cannot polish a turd.”

And then Kubrick looked at me and said, “You can if you freeze it.”

He was a genius. And he could kick Stephen Baldwin’s ass in Chess. [special thanks to riverrun of e2 fame for his writeup on the subject]

Some Thoughts on Clint Eastwood and Heidegger by Bruce Jay Friedman : I don’t much know what to make of this. I know I like it, and that it made me laugh a couple of times, but it also has some sort of wierd, deep quality to it. On the surface its a spastic and completely absurd article, but its actually quite complex. In fact, thats the point Friedman makes about Eastwood.

If you must know, I believe Clint Eastwood’s remote, alienated style is a goddammed metaphor for our time. Which is why I salute him�as a man, as an artist, as a professional (and I understand he’s an outrageous stickler for detail on the set, even though the net effect emerges as being casual), and as a complex human being.

The article is an excerpt from Friedman’s book Even the Rhinos Were Nymphos and was originally published in Harpers in 1976. Friedman sounds like an interesting fellow. I shall have to check out some more of his work…

Kubrick’s Lost Doomsday Scenario : A “suitcase nuclear bomb” being detonated by a “potential enemy” in Washington, DC in a sneak attack? Film director Stanley Kubrick suggested just such a scenario in 1994.�What seemed wildly implausible before September 11th�like a subplot from the director’s apocalyptic classic Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb�no longer seems so far-fetched. Kubrick’s politically-charged essay, which The New York Times refused to publish in 1994, warned of the potential of nuclear attack caused by “accident, miscalculation or madness.”

In a nuclear crisis, tens of millions of lives would depend on communications. We’ve been given some information about the “hot-line” but the nuclear powers should be much more open about the details. Like so many other things that are secret and never used, sloppiness, complacency and lack of imagination tend to take over.

At first, it seems counter-intuitive to be open about the details of your nuclear arsenal, but, in the words of Dr. Strangelove, “the whole point of the doomsday machine is lost . . . if you keep it a secret! Why didn’t you tell the world, ay?!”

Another Strangelove quote: “Deterrence is the art of producing, in the mind of the enemy, the fear to attack!” The scary thing about our current war on terrorism is that the conventional wisdom present in these quotes might not really apply. They’ve certainly proved that they have no fear of attacking us, its just a matter of whether or not they’d go nuclear…

The City of Lost Children:

Set in and around an eerie, oddly futuristic yet late 19th-century waterfront (it’s a setting seemingly inspired by Samuel Beckett and Fritz Lang), the film follows a hulking but pea-brained circus strongman (Perlman) known only as “One” who is on a desperate search to find his ward, Little Brother, who was abducted by a freakish, quasi-religious group of cyclopes. Along the way, he joins forces with a group of street urchins who steal for a Fagin-esque Siamese twin. The search ultimately leads to a sea-platform/laboratory where Krank, the genetically created orphan of a mad scientist, lords over his siblings (including six identical twins, a female dwarf and a talking brain in a box) and conducts diabolical dream experiments.

If you can read that and not want to see this movie, my hat is off to you, good sir. The City of Lost Children is actually an intriguing modern fairy tale with a seamless visual style, good acting and some interesting special effects. This description comes from TLA Video’s Film and Video Guide and believe it or not, it does the movie justice. By the way, TLA is a wonderful, wonderful little store (actually 6 stores). If you are ever in the Philadephia area and need to rent something offbeat or hard to find, check them out. They’ve never let me down.