Coolography 33

Oscars edition.

Random Thought

Someone should write a sequel to Zero Effect. Just raid the old Rex Stout plot library or some such, and away you go. Ben Stiller optional.

The Wrassler

Succinctly, Aronofsky's The Wrestler is a route and cliched downer that was well-shot, and has affecting performances by Rourke and Tomei. Critics have been impressed by Rourke's acting, but really, he's only playing himself. Of course the subtext is Hollywood itself, and a lot of the empathy the movie is supposed to evoke is really only the actors and everyone else feeling sorry for themselves. That said, he's rather endearing, and I was rooting him even with the paint-by-numbers plot. Tomei is an equally predictable stripper with a heart of gold, but like Rourke, is charasmatic. Lots of sex and violins, Can't really recommend it. Aronofsky seems like he could really use some Prozac.

SFX

A pretty neat list of the Top 50 movie special effects shots, with video clips and commentary.

A Christmas tradition

They really need to release Fitzwilly on DVD. ($135 for a used VHS tape?) Dick Van Dyke's fake accents are hilariously terrible as always, but Barbara Feldon is an angel.

Deep Thoughts

I watched the post-war noir The Third Man, the film with the famous Orson Wells Cuckoo Clock Speech:

"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed — they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Anyway, I think you could write an essay about how The Third Man is the anti-Casablanca, with Wells as the anti-Bogart, Alida Valli as the anti-Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotton playing the anti-Victor Lazlo, and the Major Calloway character as the anti-Captain Louis Renault. If Casablanca is romantic and idealistic, The Third Man is broken and cynical. Which makes sense since Graham Greene wrote the story. They should shown them back to back. Also, Ebert is quoted in that wikipedia article about how appropriate the Zyther soundtrack sounds. It doesn't, and often jarringly so.

Iron Man

So - why not use a permanent magnet instead of inventing a fusion powered electromagnet? And what's up with Gwyneth's heels? I was surprised to see her rock the stilettos and side-kick roll, but who wouldn't to play opposite Robert Downey Jr? He's dreamy. Also, my sister points out that he has a cool house.

Cloverfield

Even though it's a shaky-cam movie without a whole lot of story, Cloverfield is a pretty intense monster flick.

Read the book

I read "No Country for Old Men" on the plane to visit the folks, and I liked it better than the movie and I still like the movie. That said, although the Coen's followed it the story fairly closely, they left out some things and changed others that made a difference. For one, I think the Sheriff's war story makes a big difference in how you view him. Another is Chigur's speech with Moss's wife (and the ending there is explicit, which also makes a big difference in what his accident later means), etc.

It's a good book, even if the lack of quote makes and apostrophes gives it a James Ellroy affectation.

Movies

I watched three movies, and I liked them. My Mom is angry at me for this one, but I liked No Country for Old Men. She has a point, as this is a very brutal movie based on a brutal book . Quite literally, it's Old Testament. Like the Greek tragedies, it's a meditation on the random and not so random violence of the world, its lack of meaning, or at least its arbitrariness, and our revulsion at this state and need for fairness. To quote the sheriff:

…when you encounter certain things in the world, the evidence for certain things, you realize that you have come upon somethin that you may not very well be equal to… When you've said that it's real and not just in your head, I'm not all that sure what it is you have said.

Anyway, the movie is beautifully written, acted, shot, and edited. The West Texas scenery is lovely. The film is a beautiful monster, but it has a kind of total depravity of man, and hence a New Testament implicit in it. It's not saying that things are hopeless, just that it is hopeless on your own.

If you've watched the movie, I have a question: Did what appeared to happen in the house happen? It would seem so, but what follows suggests that it didn't and that Chigurh is being punished. Which would resonate with the overall story, I think. Pardon the cryptic nature of this; you can check out the wikipedia summary of the story if you just want to cut to the chase.

Second, I crawled out from under my rock and watch Ratatouille. Which was great. It is the anti-Secret of Nihm. It's so great that I don't have much to say about it, except that it was a little distracting to hear Patton Oswalt's voice.

Third, I watched Bella on Thanksgiving with the family, which is an indie film about a chef who is trying to convince a pregnant waitress not to get an abortion. It's a message movie and while it tries not to be preachy, the outcome is somewhat telegraphed by the main character's Jesus beard. To be honest, the direction and script are uneven; the mood radically swings, and there are a bunch of plot points that are implausible (like him being sent to jail for four years for an earlier accident; also, the ending doesn't make much sense.) That said, his family is fun and very well cast, but the Eat Drink Man Women ethnic cooking cliche is threadbare.

Must See Movies

The Must See Movie List: My score = 232. Peter Bogdanovich's Movie of the Week list is another great list. It's clear that my top 20 must see movies and my top 20 best movies aren't the same list, but I'm not sure if that's right.

Online Movies

10 Brilliant Complete Movies Online [via]

Sometimes, the internet is awesome, and I suspect it will only get, um, awesomer.

Shoot 'Em Up Movie Review

Clive Owen has managed to find a stupider (yes, stupider) movie to be in than Sin City. Which, on some level, is impressive.

The reviews probably say that this movie is exactly what it says it is, but if that were true, they would call it, "Stab 'Em wit a Carrot, G'vnor." It is, oddly, a shoot-em-up which is virulently and incongruously anti-gun. Do as I preach, not as I do and which, incidentally, solves all of my problems. I'm not sure this occurred to anyone involved in the movie.

My friend thought it was a quotable movie. I have to disagree and say that, unless you consider Last Action Hero to be Shakespeare, it's just full of terrible one liners. And plot holes. Make that plot-Swiss cheese. And meta-references which the writer/director probably thinks are a lot more clever than they are. I know it's supposed to be a dumb action movie, but this one rubs it in. Also, Monica Bellucci has hit the tipping point. That point happens to be between a 10 and a 9.9, but still.

Basically, it's a low-brow Robert Rodriguez flick, which we now know is possible, and since I've told you that, it's probably not worth your time. Here's my scale:

10. The Platonic ideal (T2)(jk)
9. Watch many times in the theater
8. Watch once in the theater
7. Rent on DVD
6. Wait for it to come out on cable
5. Wait for it to come on TV
4. Turn the TV channel
3. Turn the TV off
2. Burn the TV.
1. Declare war on those involved.

If you like action flicks with a bit of the ultraviolence, it's a 5, otherwise, it's a 4. (Except that it would never appear on TV due to content).

Transformers

I thoroughly enjoyed the big, dumb Michael Bay explodathon, but I am exactly the target demographic.

Hey Louie, the man is dry.

Adam Savage writes a Valentine to his favorite F/X movie, Blade Runner.

For better or worse, Blade Runner was a big influence on me. I knew it the minute I saw it, and in fact, I was bewildered that it had flopped. Certain things, certain bands or songs or cars or girls, you just know, right away. 25 years ago this year.

1982 also featured E. T., The Thing, TRON, Conan the Barbarian, and Star Trek II (Khan!) (also Tootsie, if you're my Mom). What an excellent year for nerds, even if I only saw most of those films much later. Anyway, Mr. Savage is right that the old fashioned composition effects in Blade Runner are better than the CGI that prevails today. Ironically, the ability to render anything has reduced the realism, or at least it is overused to the point where it breaks the spell. E.G, when actors and cameras move unphysically. (The camera work is always jarring to me - it's too showy and it's a fashion I hope dies out. See also oversaturated colors and choppy video-like editing. Also I am old. Harrumph.)

PS, skip the model Blade Runner gun and get the Korean Blade Runner Umbrella.

Knocked Up

Knocked Up: C+. Basically, the trailer has all of the funniest bits. Occasionally raunchy, but mostly unbelievable. The characters are too unlikeable. Harrumph!

By the Power of Greyskull!

So I went and saw Hot Fuzz and liked it a lot, but I suspect I am exactly the target demographic.

It's from the guys who did Shaun of the Dead, and comes off like Reno 911 on a death march through every cop-movie cliche ever in a small backwater where the village preservation society has a hard on for the Illuminati. It is a hilarious parody -- I was reminded more of Thank You For Smoking than Naked Gun or Police Accademy, thankfully -- but it is violent, and in that British action movie sort of way. The violence is less Buster Keaton, or even Terminator 2, and more Sam Peckinpah. So your mileage may vary.

What a great bunch of blogs

And I mean that sincerely. In a moment of weakness, I have let my crusty, ironic-hipster guard down and a single tear has issued forth from my jaundiced eye. Why now? An act of kindness from Duck, no less. No good deed etc., so go read the Daily Duck too and stick your thumb into their 37,200 comment-old Darwin debate.

Via Yahoo!'s picks, here is The Criterion Contraption, in which Mathew Dessem sets out to watch every DVD in the Criterion Collection, the hallmark of film auteurs. I like high-concept blogs (previously, The Hunt for the Best Taco in LA and the guys who went to every bar with a liquor license within Seattle's city limits) and I've always been searching for the perfect conceit to pull off on my own (something where you put # in the title of every post). No such luck yet (although I've tried before), but just like Mrs. Right and the last unicorn, I'm sure it's out there somewhere.

And not only does Mr. Dessem have a great concept, but he delivers the goods. What more would you have to say after reading his review of Rushmore?

Rushmore plays out as most love triangles do, at least when one of the men is a teenager and the other is in the middle of a midlife crisis. Which is to say: unpredictably. I defy even confirmed Wes Anderson haters not to enjoy Max and Herman's revenge montage, which begins with Max letting live bees into Herman's hotel room and ends with prison. At three minutes long, it's a model of economy. Usually, montages elide scenes that would be dull if seen in full (imagine watching one of Rocky's full training sessions). In this case, however, Anderson takes scenes that would be much longer in any normal film and compresses the hell out of them. And it's not just plot that happens here; we learn a lot about Blume from his that sonovabitch smile when he realizes Max is responsible for his bee stings:

Seeing Murray's face slide from the above expression into one that says, roughly, "Max Fischer is gonna pay," is one of the film's great moments. Particularly when it's set to the music of The Who, it seems, revenge can be a terrific amount of fun.

Nothing, that's what.

PS, for what it's worth, A Quick One While He's Away is one of my favorite Who songs, and it is the second best song in Rushmore's excellent soundtrack after The Kinks's Nothing in This World Will Stop Me from Worrying About That Girl. Also, here's my only proof that Anderson doesn't always remake the same movie over again. Oh wait...

Moving along, I've been wading through the wonderful archives of if charlie parker was a gunslinger, there'd be a whole lot of dead copycats, the neplusultra of # in a series blogs. Try out tricky: scenes from a life, the art of jazz, or they were collaborators.

When The Legend Becomes Fact, You Print the Legend

Occasionally I think about canceling my cable; Not because I am such an iconoclast, but just because I am super cheap. But TMC is a very good reason to keep it. They are going through 30 days of Oscar and they just showed The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Starring John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Lee Marvin; Directed by John Ford.

Anyway, besides the scenery chewing, I suspect it's a good movie because the myth versus reality subtext is so close to the hearts of the people who made it. Really, there is no such thing as acting, and I'm not just saying that because John Wayne was in it.

[LMS] Curse of the Golden Flower

First of all, happy 2007 to everyone.

Curse of the Golden Flower, by Zhang Yimou (Hong Kong/Cina 2006)

I came out of the movie satisfied, but with some doubts. In this story the threads of love and hate are intertwined in a rather complicated way, and I did not find it easy to untangle them. I got doubts because this is a movie with the ambition of representing a tragedy, and I know I do not have the critical tools to judge it. I explain myself better: in order to say that a Shakespeare's tragedy is a work of exceptional value I would just need to follow the general opinion, but since no general and well established opinion about Yimou by respected critics exists I need to form my own opinion, and I realize that the time between the moment I saw the movie and now that I'm writing is not enough. A criterion, for example, could to be see whether in the tragedy there is the description of an experience that many people have to go through, and naturally since almost no one is an emperor we need to look for the metaphors in the movie; and already here the obstacles that I meet seem to hard to overcome. Let us add also doubts like will have he copied or will have re-elaborated, and it is better to stop on this tone and focus on aspects that have been more clear to me.

One is the almost unbelievable submission of the servants. I often heard that the relationship between power and people in China is characterized by a much greater distance than the one we are used to in Italy, and this should be still true looking at the past. Just to give an example, some Chinese I am acquainted and whom I got to listen and translated an italian satyrical song told me that such a song would be inconceivable in China (probably they would not cover it, I think). In the movie this kind of distant relationship is evident in many ways; for example one is that the servants keep their eyes low.

Another one is a way in which tragedy develops. In what happens on the screen time has a quite limited function; usually in life time give a "physical" limitation to things that happen: a certain amount of time is always necessary to execute certain tasks or so that some phenomena may occur. In the tragedy, as represented in this movie, time is in my opinion just a device to give an ordering to events, each of which happens in an almost instantaneous fashion. Many things happened before the action started on screen, but the epilogue which we witness is rather complex and the final result would not be the same if the order of actions were changed. It is a very long shot, but I would say that the famous unity of time, place and action (I think I read somewhere that it is a concept that it did not originate with Aristotle) is linked to the fact that a theatrical piece is in part a summry of things already happened, that characters live a second time (a second time intheir character life) in what is shown on stage with some additional random factors that play a decisive (and often negative) influence on the final result.

After these rather confused reflections, I hope you can enjoy this movie as well.

JTS