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‘Clerks II’: Picking at scabrous

Jim Emerson

Sure, it’s scabrous, but is it funny?

Those scabrously funny folks over at Rottentomatoes.com are having fun with the reviews of “Clerks II.” Here are some of the quotes that appear on the main page right now:

“If ‘Clerks II’ doesn’t have quite the scabrous kick of its predecessor, the chance to revisit a classic premise must have renewed the writer in Smith, whose banter here often achieves a sharpness and quality.” — Justin Chang, Variety

“What was scabrously funny and charmingly amateurish in the 1994 black-and-white ‘Clerks’ is now less so on every level in the color bigger-budgeted sequel…” — Emanuel Levy, EmanualLevy.com

“A tender, scabrous and very, very funny comedy that picks up 12 years after the original.” — Damon Wise, Empire Magazine (UK)

For the record, as of 10 p.m. PST, July 18, 2006, a Google search for “scabrous” + “Clerks II” yields 117 results. What will it be after Friday???

Me & Mr. Colbert

Jim Emerson

Mr. C & me.

Hooray, for America! On Monday’s “The Colbert Report,” M. Night Shyamalan made #2 on the “ThreatDown,” thanks to my diligent review of “Lady in the Water.” I wrote:

The key to deciphering M. Night Shyamalan’s fractured fairy tale, “Lady in the Water,” is to remember that it is rooted in the mythology of Stephen Colbert and “The Colbert Report.” It is a warning to Mankind about the dire threat posed by ferocious topiary bears in America today, and a salute to the gigantic, soaring eagle who swoops in to rescue Wet Ladies from pitiless ursine jaws and claws. Colbert oughtta sue.Colbert had the perfect topper: “Well, I am suing… Spoiler alert: I was fatally shot in 1995 and I’m a ghost.” Thank you, Mr. Colbert — you will never be Dead to Me. As a proud citizen of Colbert Nation for years (going back to “The Daily Show”), I could not be more honored if I’d received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Wait a minute, let me think: George Tenet, Paul Bremer, Tommy Franks… To get that medal these days you have to commit fraud, perjury and/or war crimes. No, I’m more honored to be cited by Stephen Colbert!

VIDEO CLIP: Go to the official site for “The Colbert Report.” Open the Comedy Central media player and click on the video link for “ThreatDown: Kix Cereal.”

TIFF 2007: What did I know and when did I know it?

Jim Emerson

View image There are movies being shown in six or eight theaters in the building on the left. That’s all I know. (photo by Jim Emerson)

Film festivals allow you the opportunity to see movies without knowing much of anything about them in advance. If you don’t want to, that is. The problem with this is that, unless you have a festival catolog (the hefty TIFF 2007 one is 480 pages and sells for $37), you also have no idea of what you don’t know about. Today, I arrived more than a half-hour early for a screening of Todd Haynes’ “I’m Not There,” only to discover that the previous film (something about “Cassandra”) was running about 45 minutes late. The Toronto festival is quite punctual, so this was a most unusual occurrence. The staff person allowed some of us into the theater to sit through the end of the previous movie, in which case we would be able to retain our seats for the one we’d actually come to see.

Now, normally I’m like Woody Allen in “Annie Hall” and I don’t go into movies late. I rarely leave early, either, even if I think the movie’s terrible. In this case, I thought I’d just go in and rest my eyes, since I knew nothing about the film I was about walk into the middle of. It soon became apparent that it had Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell in it, as two brothers who were involved in some kind of murder scheme. It was thoroughly mediocre, and I wondered how some first-time commercial filmmaker had lured such a cast, especially with this lackluster script. (Tom Wilkinson showed up, too.) But, I was also seeing it from the middle, sometimes with eyes wide shut, because I was only there to have a seat for the next movie.

When it ended (badly), the credits appeared and I immediately recognized the typeface. It was Woody Allen’s latest movie. Surprise.

I write this not to report on a movie I only saw the last half of, but because as I was sitting there I was thinking about how little I have known — quite deliberately — about the films I have seen before I have gone to see them. (Of course, I hadn’t intended to see even part of this one. That was just an accident.) For the most part I’m trying to maintain blissful ignorance, going into these films with no preconceptions except that I may know who the director is, or who one or two of the cast members are. Or somebody I trust has recommended it. That’s as much as I want to know.

Some people at the press and industry screenings seem to know everything about them before the lights go down, but I don’t listen to them. So here, in the interest of full disclosure, is how much I knew about some of this year’s TIFF movies going in (including a few I haven’t yet seen):

“Eastern Promises”: David Cronenberg movie with Viggo Mortensen. Not a clue as to what it was about, who else was in it, what it was based on (if anything), or what the title meant.

“Michael Clayton”: George Clooney wearing a suit and tie. Nothing else.

“4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days”: Romanian film about an abortion that won at Cannes.

“Chop Shop”: Second film by Ramin Bahrani (“Man Push Cart”). Unaware of where it was set or what it was about, except I thought there was a kid in it.

“Redacted”: Brian De Palma. Something about Iraq.

“Secret Sunshine”: Asian film (I don’t even know what country) that won an award for something somewhere (I think it was Cannes). A friend said I should see it.

“The Orphanage”: Mexican. Produced by Guillermo Del Toro. Appeared to be kinda creepy, and somebody had compared it to “Pan’s Labyrinth.”

“Margot at the Wedding”: Written and directed by Noah Baumbach (“The Squid and the Whale”). Nicole Kidman, Jack Black, and Jennifer Jason-Leigh. That’s all.

“Persepolis”: Black and white. Animated. No idea of language or subject.

“Atonement”: Based on Ian McEwan novel I haven’t finished (but have at home). Don’t know who directed it or who’s in the cast.

“The Man From London”: Directed by Bela Tarr.

“I’m Not There”: Todd Haynes’ movie in which several people play Bob Dylan. I knew Cate Blanchett was one of them.

“No Country for Old Men”: A Coen brothers movie, based on Cormac McCarthy’s book (which I’d read). Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem were in it. Roger really liked it.

“Into the Wild”: Sean Penn-directed adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s biography of Christopher McCandless, which I read about ten years ago and really liked. I knew Emile Hirsch was the main character, but I couldn’t recall any movies I’d seen Emile Hirsch in before.

(Once again, my brain is so full of movies I want to write about that I can’t concentrate on any one long enough to finish writing about it. I’ve got about four posts partly written. Hope I’ll get a chance to within the next 24 hours. In the meantime, there are more movies to see…)

“I get it!”: A hallucinogenic experience and the movies

Jim Emerson

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This is about a hallucinogenic experience I had years ago… and how it relates to the way I look at movies. I can’t say this psychedelic “revelation” altered my perception of cinema in any way; it just gave the perception a form, a metaphor. And I wasn’t under the influence of an illegal synthetic drug, but an ancient (legal) herb: Salvia divinorum (“The Divine Sage”), which grows wild in Oaxaca, Mexico. Unlike LSD, which can induce an altered state of perception that lasts for hours, a hit of Salvia divinorum (smoked) provides a disorienting, headlong visual rush that may last for only a few seconds or minutes. Problem is, you could pass out for an instant before you hit the floor. (Salvia divinorum, although it’s related to the common sage plant, has since been classified as a controlled substance in a few states — and will become one in Illinois in January, 2008.)

But, talk about your theory of relativity: those seconds can last a long time. Here, as near as I can describe it, is what happened: I was “falling sideways,” as some have described it, hurtling forward through what felt like a blurred tunnel of orange and yellow leaves (this was in the fall, of course). And near the end was the shape of an overstuffed chair, not unlike the one I was sitting in at the time. Only the texture of the chair, instead of being leather or some other kind of upholstery, was the leaves, and they were moving, too, fluttering in the breeze. It’s not that the chair was made of leaves. It was that the idea of “leaves” and “chair” became inseparable, and they were intertwined fractal shapes, holding space and gently defining each other. You know how that is. The color and the texture of the leaves became one distinguishable thing, and that thing was a beautiful overstuffed chair. And then the chair was water. It wasn’t wet, it wasn’t made of H2O, it was still just a chair with the visual properties of water. It was transparent and currents or ripples slightly distorted the substance of it, as if you were peering into a soft, chair-shaped aquarium without any glass walls holding it together. (I guess you could say it was something like the “water tentacle” in “The Abyss,” but it was more stable and not so in-your-face.)

Bordwell & Thompson: Declaration of Principles

Jim Emerson

View image Or, maybe, a Notice of Recurrent Themes. Or The Bordwell Manifesto?

No, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson don’t really call it a “Declaration of Principles.” But, in recognition of their first blogiversary at on their invaluable blog, Observations on film art and Film Art, David looks back over what they’ve done in the last year, and notices some “recurrent themes”:

*In keeping with the blog’s title, we emphasize film as an art form. More specifically, we’re especially interested in how structure and technique work together, which few blogs outside the industry do…. [We] incline toward somewhat finer-grained analysis of cinematic storytelling, even if that means going shot by shot. If we want as well to make an evaluation of the film, as we sometimes do, we then have some concrete evidence to back it up.

*We also treat film art as tied to film commerce—both the mainstream industry and the less-acknowledged form of commerce known as film festivals. We’ve always believed that there isn’t necessarily a battle between film as an art form and “the business.”…

*We’re happy to find that a lot of filmmakers read and link us. One of the purposes of “Film Art” was to show how artistic expression in cinema is tied to practical decisions made by filmmakers; that’s why we begin the book with an overview of the process of film production….

*We’ve tried to deflate some clichés of mainstream film journalism. Writers of feature articles are pressed to hit deadlines and fill column inches, so they sometimes reiterate ideas that don’t rest on much evidence. Again and again we hear that sequels are crowding out quality films, action movies are terrible, people are no longer going to the movies, the industry is falling on hard times, audiences want escape, New Media are killing traditional media, indie films are worthwhile because they’re edgy, some day all movies will be available on the Internet, and so on. Too many writers fall back on received wisdom. If the coverage of film in the popular press is ever to be as solid as, say, science journalism or even the best arts journalism, writers have to be pushed to think more originally and skeptically.

*There’s the theme we might call the continuing presence of the past. I notice that many of our entries comment on a current event or topic by showing that it has parallels and precedents in earlier periods of film history…. Rather than celebrating apparent innovation, it’s more exciting to see how filmmakers connect to tradition, shaping it in ways that even they might not be aware of doing. We tend to see the present through a narrow window, but historical awareness widens and deepens the view….

Bravo, and nobody does it better. Congratulations David and Kristin on a stellar first year.

Hollywood joins Batman, Iron Man to promote Truth, Justice, American Way

Jim Emerson

From the famous Wall Street Journal Opinion section comes good news for modern Hollywood:

Once again, family-friendly, uplifting and inspiring movies drew far more viewers in 2008 than films with themes of despair, or leftist political agendas. Sex, drugs and antireligious themes were not automatic sellers, either.

According to authors Ted Baehr and Tom Snyder of Movieguide (described as “a ministry dedicated to redeeming the values of the mass media according to biblical principles, by influencing entertainment industry executives and helping families make wise media choices”), 2008’s most successful Hollywood movies continued to affirm the values of their organization, such as “coping with Nazi tyranny” (“Valkyrie”) and “loyalty, sacrifice and doing the right thing” (“Bolt”). (Films with themes of languishment, or flautist political agendas, are widely considered to have been been less popular at the 2008 box office as well, but they were not tracked as closely in Movieguide’s studies.) Baehr and Snyder continue:

Overlooked Photos and Audio

Jim Emerson

University of Illinois President B. Joseph White (center), his wife Mary (left) and volunteer host Judy Tolliver (right) outside the Virginia Theatre.

So many movies and filmmakers and conversations, so little sleep. Well, that’s a film festival for you. I was especially impressed with Ramid Bahrani’s “Man Push Cart” — a film of extraordinary attention to detail in every aspect. Not only does it closely observe the behavior of its central character Ahmad (Ahmad Razvi), a Pakistani pushcart vendor at 54th and Madison in New York City, but every image and sound and gesture accumulate to create a Sisyphean portrait of a life slowly rolling out of control. More about it and other Overlooked events later. Meanwhile, check out the photo album(s) and MP3 audio of selected Ebert on-stage interviews.

2009: Best of movie years… or not so much?

Jim Emerson

Roger Ebert on Twitter: “2009 is one of those magic movie years like 1939 or 1976.”

Leonard Maltin on his iPhone Movie Guide app: “‘Up in the Air’ is the best film I’ve seen all year. Frankly, that isn’t much of a compliment…”

Jim Emerson, right here and now: “For my money, 2005 and 2007 were the best movie years of the decade.”

Discuss.

De Palmania!

Jim Emerson

View image Look back in Angora: An Ed Wood moment between Josh Hartnett and Scarlett Johansson in Brian De Palma’s “The Black Dahlia.”

In anticipation of Brian DePalma’s “The Black Dahlia,” which premiered at the Venice Film Festival to bi-polar reviews and opens in the US September 15, a number of sites are celebrating the modern master of the rapturous moving camera. (See De Palma a la Mod for all the latest on De Palma and the Dahlia.) Dennis Cozzalio has an excellent round-up of who’s doing what at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, and adds his own illuminating thoughts to the heady mix. (And don’t forget to check out his Opening Shots submission for De Palma’s “Femme Fatale” here at Scanners.)

Peet Gelderblom also has some good stuff about the “unofficial De Palma blogathon” at Lost in Negative Space. And I finally took the advice of That Little Round Headed Boy and caught up with De Palma’s much-maligned “Mission to Mars,” which has moments of astonishing beauty and suspense, despite being hobbled by a terrible script (original screenwriters joined by an ampersand; re-writer Graham “Speed” Yost tacked on with an “and”) and one of the most lifeless performances I have ever seen from Connie Nielsen. (How could she not have been fired after the first day? She’s heavier-than-leaden in almost every single moment she has on screen — except the marvelous weightless dance sequence to [and you have to appreciate the humor] Van Halen. Other than that, like a Martian tornado she sucks.) De Palma is a terrific director of women (Margo Kidder, Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, Betty Buckley, Amy Irving, Carrie Snodgress, Nancy Allen, Angie Dickinson…) but Nielsen is really Not of This Earth. (TLRHB also features some informative comments about “Mission to Mars,” including a link to Matt Zoller Seitz’s round-up of reviews, from pans to raves.)

I’ve said this many times before about De Palma, but give this guy a decent screenplay and he can work wonders. Look what he can do even when he doesn’t have one. So, give the guy a good script, already!

Underdogs: The dogs below the title (Part 1)

Jim Emerson

I love me some doggies.

In advance of a story I’ve written about some of my favorite movie dogs whose proper names (if they have them) do not appear in or above the titles of the films in which they are featured, I present a wee quiz. No, these dogs are not marquee names (except, maybe, for the brilliant wire-haired fox terrier at right who co-starred with Nick and Nora and Archie Leach). Some are bit players, but all make indelible marks on the screen. You know what they say: There are no small dogs, just… something like that.

Several of the following dogs I was unable to mention in the story, which I will link to when it goes live. In the meantime, can you identify the pooches pictured after the jump?

Ready. Set. Go.

Scorsese at his best: “The Man Who Set Film Free”

Jim Emerson

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While I was gone, the New York Times printed a magnificent appreciation of Michelangelo Antonioni written by Martin Scorsese, called “The Man Who Set Film Free.” This piece, which begins with Scorsese recalling the profound effect of seeing “L’Avventura” for the first time in 1961, is so moving, and so perceptive, that I think it ranks with the best work Scorsese has ever done in any medium. Reading it brings tears to my eyes — like a great film does.

Scorsese traces how the film keeps redirecting, reshaping, and dissolving the narrative before our eyes. Is it an “adventure” or an intrigue, as the title suggests? Or a missing-person mystery? Or a detective story? Or a love story? Or a betrayal/revenge story?

But right away our attention was drawn away from the mechanics of the search, by the camera and the way it moved. You never knew where it was going to go, who or what it was going to follow. In the same way the attentions of the characters drifted: toward the light, the heat, the sense of place. And then toward one another.

So it became a love story. But that dissolved too. Antonioni made us aware of something quite strange and uncomfortable, something that had never been seen in movies. His characters floated through life, from impulse to impulse, and everything was eventually revealed as a pretext: the search was a pretext for being together, and being together was another kind of pretext, something that shaped their lives and gave them a kind of meaning.

The more I saw “L’Avventura” — and I went back many times — the more I realized…

Rescued, restored: My best of 2008

Jim Emerson

(Finding and reposting many video essays lost when iKlipz went under. This one was originally published ,here.)

“In history we’ll all be dead.” — W.

Jim Emerson

“W.” is the third in what could turn out to be Oliver Stone’s five-part trilogy of movies containing pronounceable capital letters in the titles (after “JFK” and “U-Turn”), if you don’t count “Natural Born Killers” and “World Trade Center,” sometimes known as “NBK” and “WTC,” respectively, in which case it may already be the fifth film in a proposed diptych about the tetralogy of power.

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but the timing seems inopportune. Few public figures have faded into irrelevance more quickly in recent months than George W. Bush, whose popularity and name-recognition numbers are now running slightly behind Sanjaya, and I’m not sure I remember who that was.

Opening Shots: ‘His Girl Friday’

Jim Emerson

Enlarge image: Newsroom hustle…

Enlarge image: … and bustle. Notice the emphasis on women at work in the very first moments.

From That Little Round-Headed Boy:

“His Girl Friday”: Anybody who ever worked in the journalism business, or wished they had been around for newspapering’s madcap era, must feel a quickening at the opening tracking shot of Howard Hawks’ classic comedy. As the camera tracks from right to left across the city room of the Chicago Morning Post, a smoky, hustling, chatty ambience hangs over the enterprise, as an editor yells out for a “Copy boy!”, reporters are decked out in rolled-up shirts and green eye-shades, the women wear fashionable hats and the blue-collar switchboard gals are yammering in overdrive. The scene sets the fast-paced theme, and it never lets up.

JE: Good grief, TLRHB, that’s a great one! (This should give readers an idea why they should check out TLRHB regularly.) As someone born with ink in his veins (red ink, I’m afraid), I know well the quickening of which you speak!

Debate Based on Total Lack of Logic

Jim Emerson

“We have now sunk to a depth at which re-statement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”

— George Orwell

The above headline excerpt is from an article at LiveScience, but this post (like my earlier one, “Maybe Bill Maher was right…”) is not about health care or Obama or Nazis. It is about logic — critical thinking — and why our brains just aren’t terribly good at it. All of our brains. Not just those inside the skulls of people who “disagree” with us. Because how often are we even able to locate the precise nature of the “disagreement”? Writer Jeanna Bryner reports that sociologists and psychologists are studying why humans are such irrational creatures:

The problem: People on both sides of the political aisle often work backward from a firm conclusion to find supporting facts, rather than letting evidence inform their views.

That’s why they call it ‘acting’

Jim Emerson

The big news is that TLRHB (That Little Round-Headed Boy) is back! And here he is, asking some pertinent questions about the art and craft of acting in response to Hilary Swank’s comment in the Los Angeles Times: “You can’t play Amelia Earhart and not learn how to fly. That would be a huge flaw. I’d be fired immediately.”

I always get a chuckle every time I read about a group of pretty-boy actors going to a three-week “boot camp” to learn how to play a soldier. Imagine asking Spencer Tracy or Gable to go to a boot camp. Did John Wayne go to Western Camp to learn how to ride horseback? Did Bogie go to detective school? Did Cary Grant study paleontology before filming “Bringing Up Baby”? Did Errol Flynn go to pirate camp? (I bet Johnny Depp didn’t, either. He created his Jack Sparrow persona out of the pure creativity in his mind, and a little bit of vampishness and Keith Richards.) […]