Oh, I Saw Bruno

Reviewed it.

I like it less and less as time goes by. It's a barrel of laughs - a big gay barrel of lime spritzers of laughs. But as a movie it doesn't hold together at all. It really feels like an 83 minute youtube montage, which might sound okay now, but when you're in a theater you have expectations, and some especially poignant moments encourage those expectations. Then the movie end swith a ridiculous and I thought pretty un-funny music video.

Nothing beats the scenario where he auditions babies for a photo shoot and asked parents questions like, "is your baby comfortable around antiquated heavy machinery? What about wild animals?" etc., to all of which the parents unwaveringly answer, "yes, as long as my child gets the part." It's sad and hilarious.

But Borat was a better movie.



Rating: 3 stars
Similar to: Borat, Best In Show, remember Tom Green?

Cute Helmet

(oh yes it is)

I Do Not Know, Sir. I Am Sorry: El Dorado

I love Samuel Beckett, but I won't get into it. One day he was walking down the street and a man stabbed him. A young woman nearby came to help him. They later got married. He confronted the man who stabbed him in court and asked, "Why?" to which the man replied, "Je ne sais pas, Monsieur. Je m'excuse." (I do not know, Sir. I am sorry.)

People often site this as the reason for why Beckett thought the world was meaningless and without order. I just think it's a good story.

I posted this review here, but then copied and pasted the whole thing below. So...I don't know why I'm telling you this...

If Samuel Beckett was alive and breathing, he'd be sitting on a bench somewhere shrugging his shoulders.

El Dorado is a Belgian film about two somatically dissimilar gentlemen and a car. When the skinny, tall one gets caught trying to rob the short, fat one, they end up in a very unexpected kind of stand-off. Each waits for the other to move...for hours. This acts as a metaphor for their whole relationship. We watch as their antagonism turns into indifferent and playful commiseration on their brief spell of a slog through life.

When the real point of your film is to show the meaning in nothingness, you better have some great cinematography, and El Dorado does. It's stunning. Rich. Very thought-out. The camera is again and again positioned to flip the world upside down. A shot of clouds moving over a field will have the field look like clouds and the sky look ripe for the picking. This is done better in the first half than the second, but it's the movie's motor.

The two men, in their classic Chevy, do a bit of Easy Rider, a bit of Lost Highway, a bit of Midnight Cowboy, and a bit of humor. After all, is 2008 Belgium really where you would set the Dennis Hopper biopic? There are darkly comedic moments amid all the absurdity, but they won't crack a smile on a hapless observer, nor will the tragic scenes pull a tear out of anyone's eyes. I'd be willing to bet, in fact, that the vast majority of audiences will neither laugh nor cry, and will leave feeling pleasantly empty.

"That's how it is on this bitch of an earth." [Waiting for Godot]



Rating: 3 stars (I need to get a new rating system)
Similar to: Gerry, The American Friend, Midnight Cowboy

Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts

Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts (2007, directed by Scott Hicks)

This is a biographical documentary about Philip Glass. This is a biographical documentary about Philip Glass. This is a biographical documentary about Philip Glass.

Renowned minimalist composer, Philip Glass, is a mainstay in contemporary music, an admirable soundtrack composer, and kind of a fucking hippie.

The movie is broken up into 12 parts but that's mostly nonsense. It's really about 3 things. 1. His generally positive but like-everyone troubled family life. 2. His simultaneous practicing of every Eastern religion. 3. His making music.

1. His first wife died. Now he has a new, significantly younger wife. You old dog! And a couple of kids. They seem alright. The movie alludes to some marital problems later on but explains nothing. He has a bunch of houses in weird places like Eastern Europe. His family goes there and he works and they lounge around. Riveting stuff.

2. This is self-explanatory. He has a buddhist mentor, a taoist guru, pictures with the dalai lama. I think he does some kind of martial arts. He says there's no "one way" so he does them all. Whatever works.

3. He makes music.

The documentary was okay. I like watching the professional process. He goes back and forth with Errol Morris and Woody Allen while working on soundtracks and that's interesting. There's a brief interview with his then-sequencer (now-great) Nico Muhly and that's interesting. He scores an opera version of Waiting for the Barbarians and has some back and forth with the conductor and that's interesting. But do I really care what kind of yoga he does? Maybe. Sell it to me. Tell me something interesting. At least tell me a story.

These documentaries need to have trajectories. They need to make arguments. Instead they all just film a character ad nauseum and edit it together for the best individual scenes. It's like if you took the best sentences written by a famous author and cut it all together into a short book. Would that book be good?



Rating: 3 stars
Similar to: Bob Dylan: Don't Look Back, Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without a Pause, Shine (I don't know, I'm really struggling with these today)

A Bicycle Thief For The 21st Century: Cyclo

Xich Lo (Cyclo, 1995, directed by Anh Hung Tran) is a movie about a boy who likes to paint who gets his bike stolen. Oh, and also prostitution, gang violence, arson, torture and the gritty city of Saigon.

There is a lot of violence in the film and in Saigon, but the very matter-of-fact shots and the artsy extended shots take the bite out. People won't likely describe this as a violent movie but if you dissect the action, it certainly is. The ambiguity is done very well.

I love watching movies from countries without a long history of filmmaking. It's like adopting the internet. If you don't have reams of cable buried under your cities, do you jump straight to wireless? Or do you play a quick game of catch up? Cyclo is a very 21st century movie (although it came out in 1995). The politics aren't up front. The dialogue is minimal. The lighting is natural. And the antagonist is named The Poet (Tony Leung) and he always looks sad while he's organizing drug deals, prostitution rings and beating rival gang members.

With Cyclo you get what seems like a somewhat realistic and very intimate look at Saigon. I'm not all about exoticizing foreign places. It's not cool just because you haven't been there or just because you have. And it's not cool because it's different than where you are now. The movie just does a great job of using the city streets as a backdrop without feeling touristy.

One of the movie people I follow (sorry), said this was the best use of Radiohead they had seen in a movie. It's up there.



Rating: 4 stars
Similar to: Last Life In The Universe, Summer Palace, Owl and the Sparrow

There Are No Cupcakes In A Foxhole: Three Monkeys

(Not sure why I titled it this. Starving for a cupcake.)

Three Monkeys is the new movie from the Turkish director, Nurie Bilge Ceylan (Climates, Distant).

All the shots look like this, it's ridiculous. All of a suddenly Ceylan decided he was going to be the Bela Tarr of Turkey.

The movie is about a man who's the driver for a politician. When the politician accidentally gets in an accident, he convinces the driver to do his jail time in exchange for money for his family. That's how the action starts and it drives the pieces throughout. The wife and son become the central focus. They weren't exactly good people before but they're certainly becoming worse now. Everybody is morally despicable in some ways and frustratingly heroic in others.

All of the conflict and drive of the movie is done visually. There's very little dialogue, which is amazing considering the amount of plot. Critics are spotlighting the cinematographer Gökhan Tiryaki as one of the best in the industry and with what little I know, I certainly can't argue. Every shot looks like it was painted. The movie is fantastic. While Up was delightful and Moon was awesome, Three Monkeys might be the best thing of the year so far. I'd have to see it again though to be sure. I wrote a full review.

Excerpt:

"In doesn't rain in a prison cell. The walls are surely witnesses to suffering but here they're a shield. While his wife and son, temporarily living alone, quietly transgress, the story of loyalty turns into one of revenge. A simple enough switch, except every character is a criminal in some sense. Who ends up on the receiving end becomes the mystery. And well, I'll leave you to find out for yourself, but suffice it to say, I didn't watch the credits roll with a renewed sense of self-worth."



Rating: 4 stars
Similar to: Damnation, Distant, 21 Grams

Whatever Works: Whatever Works

Sorry for my lack of posting. I did write some shit about movies here and launched my career in sports writing here.

Here's my full review for Whatever Works. I feel like I painted a slightly-too-rosy picture. It's bad by Woody Allen standards but okay by ordinary standards. I thought.

Excerpt:

"To get one thing straight, this movie wouldn't be receiving nearly the criticism it is, had it been directed by someone else. It would be hailed as a quality summer comedy, as entertaining as it is ultimately forgettable. Because it's Allen, critics will somehow turn it into the opposite by painstakingly and repeatedly reminding people of its faults. The movie is flawed, no doubt about it, but never in ways that hinder its ease and enthusiasm. It's still clever, funny, bright, and over a bit too quickly."



rating: 3 stars
Similar to: Mighty Aphrodite, Anything Else, My Fair Lady

too lazy to blog

This is the best cure for other people's incessant arguing in the office:



The music video + personal photo slideshow is the greatest art form of the 21st century.

I'll get to reviewing these three things later:

Cyclo
La Femme Nikita
Philip Glass: A Portrait of Philip in 12 Parts

Sno-Caps And Sour Patch Kids: Katyn

In 1940 the Soviets massacred a bunch of Polish soldiers, upwards of 15,000 actually. This movie is about that. It focuses on the family members and jumps between a number of characters and relationships. It's a WWII movie. A real-life atrocity movie. Aside from the event itself, there's nothing remarkable about it. But it's part history lesson, part Polish drama, which makes it entirely right for most people's grandparents.

Here's my full review of Katyn.

Excerpt:

"The film is as you would expect. There are great period piece details and beautiful, dramatic shots of Krakow, solid acting performances and a snowball pace that sets you up and knocks you down. It's a tragic movie about a tragic event, but it neither relishes dreadfully in the misery nor shoots straight at the eyes. It instead opts to give an objective yet human account of the personal suffering, the cover-up conspiracies, and the national alienation of WWII Poland."



Rating: 3 stars
Similar to: The Lives of Others, Ararat, Schindler's List

I Talk To Myself When I'm Alone Sometimes Too: Moon

I wrote a review/interview with director Duncan Jones here. And here is the full transcript of the interview. This is just the review part:

Duncan Jones took his time bursting onto the motion picture scene. Having directed television commercials for years, he is well versed in visual effects and working with tight time and money constraints. In this sense, he's kind of like the king who dresses in rags to walk unnoticed around town. He's also David Bowie's son, but no one would know it if people like me wouldn't continually slip it into opening paragraphs. In some ways leading man Sam Rockwell is a similar case. He has been acting since the late 80s, mostly playing villains and supporting characters, and has a small cult of followers who recognize him as one of the most underrated actors in Hollywood. He's had plenty of great performances but nothing has made him a consistent top-of-the-bill actor. In Moon, he's impossible not to notice.

Duncan Jones penned a script with one character, knowing full well he wanted Sam for the part. He even used the name "Sam" in case there was any doubt. Moon tells the story of a man who works for a company called Lunar Industries that harvests Helium-3 off the moon. At the end of his three year solo stint on a lunar mining outpost, his psyche turns more than a little schizophrenic. Struggling to keep sane, he battles a personal demon or two and learns that his mission is more than a contract job.

With absolutely stunning visuals, a beautiful theme from Clint Mansell, and seamless effects, Moon takes independent science fiction to new heights. Jones stamps his place into the canon and Sam Rockwell shines as a leading man (in the purest sense of the term). It's a story that's human and entertaining more than anything else, but science fiction fans can delight in its reverence for classics like Outland, Silent Running, and Alien.

This is textbook trailer work here:



Rating: 4 stars
Similar to: oh come on I just said it.

Interview With Duncan Jones About Moon

Me: Movie is awesome.

Duncan Jones: Oh, thank you so much. Glad you liked it.

Me: I'm a big sci-fi fan.

Duncan Jones: Excellent. Let's go to work.

Me: Outland and Silent Running are kind of the obvious points of reference here. They're the other space station movies so there are inevitably a lot of similarities. Why do you think there was such a big gap in time between those and your movie now? Why did people stop making them?

Duncan Jones: I would need to be more of a film junkie like a Tarantino or a Scorsese to really know what the film trajectory was there. All I know is that I feel recently in feature films, science fiction seems to have become a little bit embarrassed about doing anything too serious or doing anything which delved too deeply into important human questions. I don't know what it was exactly that made that happen but it certainly feels like that's the way it has gone - the inquiry into really human questions and how human beings fit in the future as opposed to being fetishistic about the technology itself. The burden seems to have shifted to TV and shows like Battlestar Galactica where they really do seem to be more interested in the human questions. But hopefully there's a new group of science fiction films coming. I mean I'm looking forward to JJ Abrahms' Star Trek, I think that will be great. But it probably belongs to that school of films that's more of the popcorn experience. Avatar will be coming out soon and that's James Cameron, I've got a lot of hope for that. I'm sure Moon is just one of a cluster of independent science fiction films that will maybe take science fiction in a different direction. Maybe some will go slightly retro like I did, maybe others will find some new ways to explore it.

Me: It feels like there's more of a community with science fiction than other genres. Sometimes with other films it feels like a battle against similar works of the past, but with sci-fi there's no shame in really using and commenting on past films. Do you have any ideas on why that might be?

Duncan Jones: I don't really know. I think science fiction films appreciate the fact that they are a community. I think science fiction people appreciate the fact that it almost works as a network. Other scientific films really work as a foundation for new stories. Whereas maybe with horror or westerns, that kind of use of preexisting films might just seem to be purely derivative and that just doesn't happen with science fiction as much.

Me: It's very much about building on ideas. I guess that's what science is.

Duncan Jones: Yeah I think there might be something to that. If you latch onto something that works in science fiction that really makes sense, even if it doesn't work in the real world today. It's okay to re-use that because it's so logical. What a space station looks like or how you would set up a colony on another planet. Once you've got a grasp on it, it's crazy to try to invent a human habitation on the moon in a beehive or just do kind of crazy things just for the hell of it, doesn't seem to make sense.

Me: The thing that surprised me and maybe impressed me most was I found it relatively modest. You were a student of philosophy for a while right?

Duncan Jones: Yeah.

Me: Did you, maybe when you were writing the script, have to curb tendencies to just go really Tarkovsky on the whole thing? Make it too deep, go too into the cloning, too into the technology?

Duncan Jones: It wasn't hard to fight that. To be honest, as much as I appreciate films like Solaris and obviously 2001, those are hard films to watch sometimes. They're not necessarily there to entertain, or entertain alone. I wanted to talk about things which I thought were important and interesting questions, but at the same time, at my level of filmmaking, I wanted to do something that was entertaining first and foremost. And if I was able to shine a little light on what it was like to be face to face with yourself and why it's worth looking at yourself and seeing how other people see you, which I think we kind of touch on in the film, I was glad to do that. But only as a secondary aspect of the film. I wanted to tell a story but I wanted it to be entertaining. People pay their money to be entertained, not to be lectured to. I mean, take a college course. Go to night school.

Me: Why didn't Lunar Industries program Gerty to, at all costs, not let Sam Rockwell leave the base?

Duncan Jones: Although he has sabotaged his own base and there's gas coming out. And from all of his ability to monitor the state of the base. As far as Gerty's concerned, there's no chance that these micro-meteorites have penetrated the base, so what's going on with this leak of nameless gas, although it's highly improbable that it's a micrometeorite. And although it's likely that Sam sabotaged it, he can't guarantee it. He has to at least let him go check the outer shell.

It's a matter of Gerty doing what he can to make sure Sam survives for three years. So there's a bit of a conflict of interest, conflict of programming, but his priority becomes ensuring that Sam survives. New Sam has already woken up, old Sam has no use, but he still has to keep him alive for three years. So his best shot is to let him leave.

Me: He utilizes the three laws of robotics.

Duncan Jones: Certainly, yeah. Hopefully on repeated viewings, people might realize that Gerty is much simpler than you realize and much simpler than even Sam realizes because he is actually following some very simple logical rules and the priority of those rules means that they might sometimes come into conflict. But basically he has a very simple set of programming.

Me: The Gerty character is fascinating. He's such a mix. There's a whole sub-history just of robots like this. Obviously there's a 2001 thing, but he's got the 80s box style.

Duncan Jones: He looks like my old PC. My old 486.

Me: He doesn't have any anthropomorphic thing going on, but then he's got that happy face, which I thought was just hilarious. He's far from an I-Robot kind of guy.

Duncan Jones: There are moments when he starts to feel anthropomorphic. He's got the two arms: big arm and little arm. There are moments like when there's the emergency and the arms come and start fixing it, you get shots where it kind of feels like it's a person because there's just the two arms on screen doing something. And then later on in the film when Sam's feeling kind of heartbroken and the hand comes in and rests on his shoulder you get the feeling it's almost like a person, but only at certain moments. As far as the emoticons go, that came from two things.

First of all, I kind of imagine the company that set up the facility for Sam...they're kind of patronizing. Sam is a blue collar guy. They want to give him a machine that's really simple for him to use. They don't want him trying to figure out what Gerty's thinking. They don't want to create something which falls into the uncanny valley which is a robot so human that it starts to get creepy. So they keep it very simple: emoticons. And secondly I have a terrible habit when I'm texting. Every sentence goes with an emoticon so I'm sure people know: I'm joking, I'm trying to be funny, I'm sad. So that just felt like a natural thing thrown in there.

Me: A lot of people have asked you about how you did everything technically. It's a mix of CG and then a lot of it is obviously live action, can you maybe explain a little bit about the use of the two and which comes where and all of that?

Duncan Jones: Sure. We had two main sound stages where we built things. We had the interior of the moon base and then the exterior lunar landscape. For the landscape we used model miniatures, which were like a foot and a half long and then a hero version of the same thing which was maybe three feet long that we used for the close-ups. Those would be pulled across the landscape with fishing line.

Because of the post production effects we have today, we were able to do a lot of work on top of that. We were of course painting out the fishing lines, we were digitally extending the landscape so it went on for miles instead of 40 feet. And then we'd have dirt kicked up and things like that. All of that was post production. For the interior of the base it was mainly live action. But Gerty was a live action prop. We could stick wheels on it and wheel it around when we wanted to, but we couldn't get away with that too often. Basically if Gerty was static, we'd use the prop. If Gerty was moving around the base like in a big wide shot, we would have a CG replica of Gerty and that would be a computer generated version we'd move around the base. So it was about choosing our moments, choosing moments where the budget would allow it and me constantly negotiating with the post production facility that had a producer and a vfx supervisor with us for the entire shoot. Because they knew my background in commercials and knew that I sort of knew special effects, we were literally able to kind of barter back and forth over the course of the shoot. It was like, "If I don't do this effect here, can I steal that arm animation for later on?" It was really constant negotiations going on.

Me: How did you do the fighting and how did you do the ping pong? ... The ping pong is maybe more interesting.

Duncan Jones: Sure. There's little geeky things that, although we were low budget, we felt there were things we could do that hadn't really been done before or at least that would impress just that little bit extra. Ping pong was very simple. The cheapest, easiest way to do it is to set up the camera in the middle of the table. Don't move the camera. You have your actor play on one side and he plays against a soundtrack of a ping pong ball being hit, with no actual ball. Then he goes to the other side and does the same thing on every other beat. Then you put in a CG ball and you're ready to go. That's the simple thing to do. But what we did though is we had physical interaction with the table. For people who work in effects, all of a sudden they realize, oooh that's really hard. We'd have Sam jump on the table, go beyond the net, go back. Then the other Sam comes across and starts fiddling with the net. As an audience, it doesn't mean anything. You just accept it. But for anyone in special effects it's like oh wow that's really interesting.

Another one that's like that is in a two shot, having physical interaction with the character. In a two shot you see one put his hand on the other's shoulder and things like that. We came up with a fairly unique way to do that effect, which is difficult to explain in audio, I'd have to show you. Basically we had Sam perform, hiding his left arm behind his back. He would do the vocal performance and lean when he needed to and gesticulate with the one arm. Then he would play the other part and switch sides. And we would have our stand in as the arm doing all the physical interaction. Then in post production we were able to attach that arm to Sam's body so it looks like it's one guy.

Me: Sounds intense.

Duncan Jones: Especially for Sam. Incredibly difficult for him to keep serious and in the moment as an actor with his hand tied behind his back. It's really awkward. That's where effects-heavy work really fights against the natural instincts of an actor.

Me: I saw in another interview you said for the scenes where he's talking to himself, you would tape the lead in the scene doing the audio, then Sam would go into makeup and watch a video ipod of the performance and listen to the audio, get the timing down. Then come back out and play the other character. Was that the easiest way to do it?

Duncan Jones: For us it was. It was something we were able to do as a step forward. Cronenberg didn't have that available. [Dead Ringers]. They had loads more time but they didn't have that. Where they would take a week to do a sequence, we could do it in a day. We could get that timing and Sam could rehearse to it.

Me: I would ask questions like "why Sam Rockwell?" but it's pretty obvious, the guy's awesome.

Duncan Jones: Yeah. Absolutely. All the responsibility was on him. There was a very very small handful of guys I could have done it with. It was written for Sam, but if for some reason he hadn't been able to do it, I would have been really stuck trying to find someone.

Me: I don't know much about the film industry, but I figure, you make a cool movie on a low budget, you get a lot of money the next time.

Duncan Jones: I hope so.

Me: Sometimes when you don't have the money, you have all these constraints. Time constraints, financial constraints, and sometimes that forces creativity, forces you to do it better. Are you worried about having a lot of money and not having those constraints at all.

Duncan Jones: I think the ambition of what we want to do in the next film is so high. In the same way that what we wanted to do for the budget we had was really high. The next film...it's still not going to be a huge budget. It's still very much within the independent film world territory for budget, but it's a big budget for me because it's a step up. We want to create something that has the same feeling and fullness of the world that Blade Runner had, but do it for this thriller in Berlin. To do it we're going to have to pull a lot of tricks out of the bag. I'm really excited about the things we're playing around with for it. I think visually it could be really cool.

Me: I think it was Syd Mead I heard say, Ridley Scott's a good director, not the best director, but he's an absolute genius at making you feel like you're seeing one small part of a very large world.

Duncan Jones: Absolutely. Check out this piece of concept artwork for the next film. [Pulls out his iphone and hands it to me.]

Me: Oh that is badass. I wish that came up in audio. I'll put it in brackets or something.

Duncan Jones: [Cool looking thing]. But yeah I think Ridley Scott is a master at that. What he's really good at is allowing the audience to see it without forcing it on you. I don't want to give specific names, but there are films where it's like they're forcing you to see where the money is spent. Look at this amazing stuff we built. And Ridley doesn't do that. He's very subtle about it and it's there and you kind of feel like if you were to pan the camera away, the world would still exist. Whereas with a lot of films, you feel like if you move the camera an inch, you're going to see light stands.

Me: Pretty much kills the illusion.

Duncan Jones: Exactly.

Me: What about Clint Mansell? The theme is great.

Duncan: It's beautiful. With any luck, he'll be releasing the score right about the time the film comes out. That should be really cool. I knew Clint before I made the film. I'm pretty sure his agent would never have allowed him to do the film if I hadn't known him, but I was kind of able to talk to him directly, show him the script, talk about what we wanted to do. So yeah, we were really lucky. We never could have afforded him going through the regular channels. His music was absolutely what I wanted. We were using little snippets of Requiem for a Dream offline when we were editing.

Me: You mentioned how ambitious Moon was and how your next movie might be even more ambitious and I thought about The Fountain, which is maybe the most ambitious movie I've ever seen.

Duncan Jones: Mmm. I don't know how you feel about this but for me with The Fountain, it's very difficult to summarize what the film is trying to be. What I hope I'm doing right with Moon is that you know what kind of film it is you're going to be seeing and I hope with the next film that that comes across as well. You won't have to work out whether it's the kind of film you'll want to see. You'll know immediately.

Me: I think we're getting cut off here. Well thanks so much for talking to me.

Duncan Jones: Absolutely. Would you like a poster? We have signed and not signed.

Me: Signed would be awesome.

Love Me Love Me Love Me: A Face In The Crowd

No way this could happen today. Imagine Jerry Seinfeld starring in a new Sam Mendes movie. Impossible. But times were different back in '57. Andy Griffith will tell you that.

A Face In The Crowd (1957, Elia Kazan) shows what happens when a media gimmick turns a bum into a public icon. It turns out, not a lot of good comes out of it. As a small town radio personality in Arkansas, Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal) is gunning for the big time.

For her "A Face In The Crowd" feature, she spotlights random townspeople. In a local jail, she finds a straight talking country boy named Larry Rhodes (played by Andy Griffith...yes, it's amazing) who packs more personality than a case of aged scotch whiskey. He also packs a case of aged scotch whiskey. His quick wit, big mouth, and small town appeal turn him into a grassroots hero that attracts the likes of big money advertisers and presidential candidates.

Besides being a classic rags to riches campaign, the movie is about power, fame and television.

It's an early version of Network. Andy Griffith, known as Lonesome Rhodes, quickly learns that people listen to what's on TV. They're hungry for people to tell them what to think and how to feel. He fills that void for them and becomes about as popular as American Idol. The whole premise of the film is that TV isn't reality but damned if people aren't easily fooled. I don't know how clear that message was in 1957, but it's pretty clear today.

Walter Matthau plays a behind the scenes television writer who is both condemning and jealous of Lonesome Rhodes. He does his best Humphrey Bogart impression the whole time but his presence is weak until the late scenes. His concerned and saggy look is a nice complement for Andy Griffith's wide-eyed and husky one. They're everyday stars, not yet larger than life.

No matter how much Andy Griffith yells, and it's a lot, it's hard to shake the shadow of the old Mayberry sherriff. The movie was so sharp, by the end I didn't care that I wasn't 100% sold on the characters. In a way, their weaknesses made the whole thing feel more genuine. Like this guy:
A Face In The Crowd is a great film. A forgotten classic. A portentous feat. Smart, gripping, tragic, and one that watches (I have to assume) just as easily 50 years later.

Rating: 5 stars
Similar to: A Streetcar Named Desire, Network, The Last Picture Show

P.S. I'm back to the screen shots. How do we feel about it, yay/nay?

Idle Films Are Annoying's Workshop

The more movies I have, the less I watch. Kind of like how the more time I have, the less I get done.

I try pretty hard to limit how often this happens. Ideally, I have a selection of 3 new-to-me movies at all times. I'm ashamed to say I've thought about this for months, but this is how I go about picking them so they don't sit for weeks and weeks like some roommate's casserole or the bleu cheese my grandmother always manages to wrap and hand me as I'm leaving Easter.

1. Something easy to watch. Can be legitimate or a guilty pleasure so long as it's quick and entertaining. For this I often go with a Woody Allen, something fast-paced and violent (Ong-bak, Equilibrium, The Transporter) or a glossy new release that's not being talked about anymore like Pineapple Express or The Spirit. Something you won't be tempted to pause after 40 minutes and go to sleep. I try to pick ones that aren't really dumb but everyone has their vices.

2. Something that makes you go conspicuously silent at dinner parties. In other words, something you're ashamed to say you haven't seen. A classic. Sure, you've probably seen Gone With the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, Casablanca, Some Like it Hot, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Citizen Kane, Bridge on the River Kwai, The Searchers, Strangers on a Train, The Third Man, The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, and of course, 8 1/2, The Seventh Seal, Metropolis, Seven Samurai, Breathless, The Battle of Algiers, The Bicycle Thief, Wings of Desire, Battleship Potemkin, City Lights. You've seen all those right? Or it could be a modern classic you've shamefully skipped over for years. In The Mood For Love, Requiem for a Dream, Raising Arizona, Blue Velvet, Swingers, Battle Royale, Do the Right Thing, Army of Darkness, The Usual Suspects, Dark City, Being John Malkovich, etc. This is the "eliminate shame" pick and it's my favorite because it's always the one that sits the longest no matter how obligated you feel.

3. Something that no one you know has seen. There are usually two ways to pick these. One is to spot something in the press that seems interesting like Summer Palace, The Edge of Heaven or Gomorrah. Another is to think of movies you like, then pick a more obscure movie from that director. That's how I settle on picks like The Hit (Stephen Frears), Cypher (Vincenzo Natali), Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (Martin Scorsese), Redbelt (David Mamet), Time of the Wolf (Michael Haneke), Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick), Fallen Angels (Wong Kar Wai). Or you can pick countries on the map until you get to one (a real one, Moldova) where you can't name a movie that came out of there. (awful sentence). Try with Austria, Vietnam, Chile, Iran, South Africa, Iceland.

The three I have now are:

1. La Femme Nikita
2. A Face In The Crowd
3. Blind Chance

But none of this really helps you do the most important thing, which is to find what blows your hair back and say fuck it I'm just gonna read a book.

Takashi Miike Does Whatever He Wants: Detective Story

Detective Story is a Takashi Miike movie that partly lives up to its title. It's a bit of a play - starts out normal enough but gets progressively weirder and more genre-fucked as time goes on. Pretty good though. Liked it. Getting a little tired of these independent horror movies. I've got A Face In The Crowd and Blind Chance at home, plus the upcoming Downloading Nancy. Might have to switch gears tonight.

Full review.

Excerpt:

"Takashi Miike is probably not a household name. If you like your house to be a comfortable place, you'll be gald that's the case. But for Asian movie geeks, horror worshipers, Tarantino junkies, and anyone who likes their entertainment doused in blood and madness, Miike is a must-know. His filmography is pages long and I don't think any one list I've seen even covers it all. With everything from a straight-to-video sex perversions reality show (Visitor Q) to a romantic torture film (Audition) to an 80s horror/musical (The Happiness of the Katakuris), Miike is a film veteran like other people are Vietnam veterans."

Rating: 3 stars
Similar to: Gozu, The Chaser, The Machinist

The Horse Whisperer 2: The Horseman

This has nothing to do with horses. Pretty badass revenge movie though. A guy goes on a torture spree in a white van with a tank of pesticide and a toolbox. Many people suffer. I put it on at 11pm, dead tired, and was completely wired at 1am, 30 minutes after it ended.

My review.

Excerpt:

"Imagine if in the first 10 minutes of The Wrestler, someone murdered Evan Rachel Wood's character and Mickey Rourke went nuts."



Rating: 3 stars
Similar to: Dead Man's Shoes, Sympathy for Mr. Revenge, Saw