WGA strike / Antonioni edition. (No dialog, no actors except the quick mug shots of Dylan personae from “I’m Not There.”)
(Finding and reposting many video essays lost when iKlipz went under. This one was originally published here.)
Cousin Dupree?
A couple days ago we published an Opening Shot contribution for Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” in which Allen cited an old joke to illustrate a point about his view of life:
Two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of ’em says: “Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.” The other one says, “Yeah, I know, and such small portions.”I couldn’t help but think of that when I saw the open letter Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen and Walter Becker posted on their web site (“Open Letter to the Great Comic Actor, Luke Wilson”). Be sure to check out the groovy Residential Suites at Longworth stationery: “Where Value is King… And So Are You!”
Fagen and Becker address their open letter to Luke to complain about his brother Owen’s movie, “You, Me and Dupree,” which they say is a bad movie that they think Owen should have thanked them for, because they think the story (and title) resemble their song “Cousin Dupree,” off the “Two Against Nature” album. “Cousin Dupree” is about a guy who… well, let them put it in their own words:
Well I’ve kicked around a lot since high school
I’ve worked a lot of nowhere gigs
From keyboard man in a rock’n ska band
To haulin’ boss crude in the big rigs
Now I’ve come back home to plan my next move
From the comfort of my Aunt Faye’s couch
When I see my little cousin Janine walk in
All I could say was ow ow ouch
Honey how you’ve grown
Like a rose
Well we used to play
When we were three
How about a kiss for your cousin Dupree
Write Fagen and Becker:Anyway, they got your little brother on the hook for this summer stinkbomb — I mean, check the reviews — and he’s using all his heaviest Owen C. licks to try to get this pathetic way-unfunny debacle off the ground and, in the end, no matter what he does or what happens at the box office, in the short run, he’s gonna go down hard for trashing the work of some pretty heavy artists like us in the process. … I mean, we’re like totally out in the cold on this one — no ASCAP, no soundtrack, no consultant gig (like we got from the Farrelly Bros. when they used a bunch of songs in their movie, “You, Me and Irene” or whatever). No phone call, no muffin basket, no flowes, nothing….
But, hey, luke, man — there is one petite solid you could do for us at this time — do you think you could persuade your bro to do the right thing and come down to our Concert at Irvine and apologize to our fans for this travesty?
OK, I can see some similarities between one Dupree and the other — especially the ramblin’ nature of the character, the sleeping on the couch, and all that.
But, frankly, I think Owen Wilson’s Dupree is even more like the out-of-place “special friend,” the unwelcome guest who will not leave, who is the title character of the Dan masterpiece “Gaucho”:
Can’t you see they’re laughing at me
Get rid of him
I don’t care what you do at home
Would you care to explain…
Who is the gaucho amigo
Why is he standing
In your spangled leather poncho
And your elevator shoes
Bodacious cowboys
Such as your friend
Will never be welcome here
High in the Custerdome…
No he can’t sleep on the floor
What do you think I’m yelling for
I’ll drop him near the freeway
Doesn’t he have a home…
UPDATE: Discussion of various interpretations of “Gaucho” (any or all of which work) here. Best of all: ” It’s obvious that the singer is berating an acquaintance (a roommate or other such cohabitant?) for his association with some poseur, a lightweight, freeloading hipster fraud who’s long overstayed his welcome. Beyond that, though, we know nothing. Who are these characters? What are the circumstances of their involvement? What is the Custerdome? In the end, of course, it doesn’t matter, because we’re hearing a snippet of a diatribe from one character to another, and that’s all we’re supposed to be hearing.”
Test: Can you find something — a shot or a cut or a line — in this trailer for “Crash” — The Dramatic New Original Series Only On Starz — that isn’t a howler of a cliché? Ready? Let’s see, it begins with someone who sounds suspiciously like the late Don LaFontaine intoning:
“Everyone’s chasing something. And when they find it, they want more.”
(Imagine that prefaced by: “In a world where…”)
And then (just like the movie) characters define themselves in didactic speeches. Maybe it’s Brechtian. Sometimes they actually look into the camera and tell you who they are and what they “want.” Those parts may have been shot just for the trailer, but the effect is very like the Academy Award-winning movie:
“I don’t break the rules. I, uh, bend ’em.”
“I deserve their respect. As a cop. And as a woman.”
“With that much cash you can buy your American Dream.”
“I’m willing to cross a line.”
“I need to bury my past… before it buries me.”
“I have everything I need. And nothing I want.”
A little beyond the first anniversary of the Opening Shots Project, I figured it was past time to compile a handy, one-page index to all the contributions. The Opening Shots category page takes forever to load, so now you can bring up a handy single-page list (just click “continue reading” to get the whole thing). The Opening Shots Index can always be found in the Categories listing at right.
Oh, and the Opening Shots Project itself isn’t over, not by a long shot!
Introductory posts:
(Introduction) Movies 101: The Opening Shots Project
Opening Shots Lexicon
Opening Shots Project: Pop Quiz
Quiz 2: 10 Easy Pieces (+2)
David Bordwell on establishing shots — and Opening Shots
If there’s any doubt in your mind (and I can’t imagine why there would be) that “Pineapple Express” is a head trip movie about stoners imagining themselves the heroes of a movie they’d like to see, the final morning-after breakfast-and-bonding scene (not to mention the Robert Palmer “Woke up laughing” snippet followed by the Huey Lewis song over the end credits) drives it home like Bubby. The “Extended Version” now on DVD and Blu-ray goes even further. The guys re-live their movie, summing up what they’ve shared, and what they’ve learned.
Check out the clip above (WARNING — spoilers and R-rated language), and then continue below for the Huey Lewis plot-synopsis lyrics. Director David Gordon Green reportedly asked just three things: 1) that it sound like his ’80s stuff; 2) that it contain repeated mentions of the movie title; and 3) that it contain something like a plot synopsis. I smell Oscar! (In a good way…)
P.S. Hey, man, have you ever played “Dark Side of the Moon” at the same time as “The Wizard of Oz”… ?
Why don’t more directors do this — congratulate their fellow filmmakers on their favorite achievements? We know that movie-mad Quentin Tarantino loves movie lists as much as anybody. Last week he gave the Hollwywood Reporter’s Heat Vision blog his list of the best films of 2009 (not including “Inglourious Basterds”) — and he seems pretty serious about it. He admits he hasn’t seen some of the possible contenders (“Avatar,” “The Lovely Bones,” “Invictus”) and feels there are a few more he’d like to see again before he firms up the list (“Bright Star,” “District 9”). I know how he feels: I just caught up with “Bright Star,” “Still Walking” and “Anvil! The Story of Anvil” this weekend, got second viewings of a couple others (“Liverpool,” “35 Shots of Rum”)… and I’m still playing catch-up.
Watch the video above for QT’s presentation of his Top 8 (so far), or see the list below…
View image “Squeal like a hog”: The Not-Gay Gang, John Travolta, William H. Macy, Tim Allen and Martin Lawrence.
Two of A.O. Scott’s reviews today in the New York Times had me laughing out loud. From “Wild Hogs”:
The main thing about these guys — the main source of the movie’s fumbling attempts at humor — is that they’re not gay. Really. Seriously. No way. They may worry about people thinking that they’re gay, and they may do things that might make people think that they’re gay — dance, touch one another, take off their clothes, express emotion — but they’re absolutely 100 percent not gay. No no no no no no. No sir, I mean, no ma’am. That’s what makes it funny, see.
After camping out one night, for example, they have a conversation that’s overheard by a highway patrolman (John C. McGinley) who decides, based on his misunderstanding of the perfectly innocent things they’re saying, that they must be gay. But the thing is — get this — he’s the one who’s gay! You think he’s a stereotypical homophobe, but he turns out to be a homophobic stereotype. It’s magic!
It’s also “American Beauty” — the cheapest kind of reversal gimmick.
From Scott’s review of “Black Snake Moan”:
Don’t be fooled though. Underneath the surface of racial and sexual button pushing, behind the brandished guns and bared breasts, is a heart of pure, buttery cornpone. Like “Hustle & Flow,” “Black Snake Moan” joins a dubious stereotype of black manhood to an uplifting, sentimental fable. In the earlier movie the hero was a soulful pimp with dreams of hip-hop glory.
This time he is a retired blues singer with woman troubles and a vegetable farm. Really, though, the character, played with his usual fearsome wit by Samuel L. Jackson, is a tried-and-true Hollywood stock figure: the selfless, spiritually minded African-American who seems to have been put on the earth to help white people work out their self-esteem issues. No doubt “Black Snake Moan” is a provocative title, but a more accurate one might be “Chaining Miss Daisy to the Radiator in Her Underwear.” […]
To their great credit, Mr. Jackson and Ms. Ricci understand that the relationship between Lazarus and his prisoner has its comic side, and some of their scenes together… play out like kinky screwball. Whether Mr. Brewer is in on the joke is less clear.
That’s the way I felt about most of “Hustle & Flow,” which was phony and ludicrous in ways I wasn’t sure the filmmakers were intending — especially when it came to the relationships between the pimp and his sex slaves, and the little white guy giving the pep talk about telling the story of ” The Black Man.”
The big loser in the 2012 Sight & Sound critics poll is… funny. OK, we know there are no losers, only winners! But, still, with the obvious exceptions of “Citizen Kane” and “Rules of the Game,” this decade’s consensus choices for the Greatest Films of All Time are not a whole lotta laughs, even though they’re terrific motion pictures. There’s not much in the way of chuckles or joie de vivre to be found in “Vertigo,” “Tokyo Story,” “Man with a Movie Camera,” “The Searchers,” “The Passion of Joan of Arc”… At least “Sunrise,” “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “8 1/2” have healthy senses of humor, but “Kane” and “Rules of the Game” are the only movies in the top 10 with the propulsive vitality of (screwball) comedy. They are flat-out fun (even if they are regarded as “classics”). And with “Kane” bumped to #2 this time, The List has become, to paraphrase a great comedy from the 1980s, one less funny.
I say this as someone who believes that comedy is everything, and that drama is lifeless (or at least emotionally stunted) without it. Some might argue that comedy without drama is also limited and superficial, but I think comedy is more profound and complex — and more difficult to pull off successfully. I can name plenty of comedies that capture a mature vision of human existence (if you’re into that kind of thing — like all of Buster Keaton), but a drama that (artificially) excludes humor is feels false and inert to me. [No, I’m not saying the other movies in the Top Ten are humorless or lack cinematic exuberance; just that their energy is not primarily comedic, as i feel Welles’ and Renoir’s are. To some extent, I’m talking about the overall tendency to value “seriousness” above “humor” in these sorts of exercises.] As for the 2012 Sight & Sound Top Ten, compare it with 1982 (“Singin’ in the Rain,” “The General”), 1992 (“L’Atlante”) and 2002 (“Singin’ in the Rain”). The lack of comedy on the new list hearkens back to the Somber Ol’ Days of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. As somebody once said: Why so serious?
EbertSwag: Love that Hitchockian coffee mug design, although nobody’s going to mug Lauren Bacall over this stuff… (photo by Jim Emerson)
URBANA, IL — All the guests of Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival stay in the Illini Student Union building on the campus of Ebert’s alma mater, the University of Illinois. That’s right — the third and fourth floors are a hotel — with Wi-Fi access in the rooms, too. Take the elevator to the main floor and — voila! — you’re in college again! And that’s the spirit of the Overlooked — discovering and learning about terrific movies (and movie-makers) you may otherwise have missed. But it’s not just the movies: Ebert interviews the filmmakers after the screenings, the audience gets the chance to ask questions, and panels debate the present and future of independent production and exhibition.
View image “Kite Runner” director Marc Forster on location.
“The Kite Runner,” directed by Marc Forster (“Monster’s Ball,” “Finding Neverland,” “Stranger Than Fiction”) and based on Khaled Housseini’s best-selling 2003 novel, opens the Chicago International Film Festival tonight. But the New York Times reports that Paramount Vantage has delayed the US theatrical release out of concern for the safety of the child actors in the film:
The studio distributing “The Kite Runner,” a tale of childhood betrayal, sexual predation and ethnic tension in Afghanistan, is delaying the film’s release to get its three schoolboy stars out of Kabul — perhaps permanently — in response to fears that they could be attacked for their enactment of a culturally inflammatory rape scene.
Executives at the distributor, Paramount Vantage, are contending with issues stemming from the rising lawlessness in Kabul in the year since the boys were cast.
The boys and their relatives are now accusing the filmmakers of mistreatment, and warnings have been relayed to the studio from Afghan and American officials and aid workers that the movie could aggravate simmering enmities between the politically dominant Pashtun and the long-oppressed Hazara.
In an effort to prevent not only a public-relations disaster but also possible violence, studio lawyers and marketing bosses have employed a stranger-than-fiction team of consultants. In August they sent a retired Central Intelligence Agency counterterrorism operative in the region to Kabul to assess the dangers facing the child actors. And on Sunday a Washington-based political adviser flew to the United Arab Emirates to arrange a safe haven for the boys and their relatives.
“If we’re being overly cautious, that’s O.K.,” Karen Magid, a lawyer for Paramount, said. “We’re in uncharted territory.”
In interviews, more than a dozen people involved in the studio’s response described grappling with vexing questions: testing the limits of corporate responsibility, wondering who was exploiting whom and pondering the price of on-screen authenticity….
Ebert writes of the film itself with great admiration:How long has it been since you saw a movie that succeeds as pure story? That doesn’t depend on stars, effects or genres, but simply fascinates you with how it will turn out? Marc Forster’s “The Kite Runner,” based on a much-loved novel, is a movie like that. It superimposes human faces and a historical context on the tragic images of war from Afghanistan.The Times story reports that Paramount Vantage has delayed the theatrical release “by six weeks, to Dec. 14, when the young stars’ school year will have ended.”Though the book is admired in Afghanistan by many in the elite, its narrative remains unfamiliar to the broader population, for whom oral storytelling and rumor communication carry far greater weight.
The Taliban destroyed nearly all movie theaters in Afghanistan, but pirated DVDs often arrive soon after a major film’s release in the West. […]
In January in Afghanistan, DVDs of “Kabul Express” — an Indian film in which a character hurls insults at Hazara — led to protests, government denunciations and calls for the execution of the offending actor, who fled the country.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the “Kite Runner” [12-year-old] actor who plays Hassan… told reporters at that time that he feared for his life because his fellow Hazara might feel humiliated by his rape scene. His father said he himself was misled by the film’s producers, insisting that they never told him of the scene until it was about to be shot and that they had promised to cut it.
Hangama Anwari, the child-rights commissioner for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, said on Monday that she had urged Paramount’s counterterrorism consultant to get Ahmad Khan out of the country, at least until after the movie is released. “They should not play around with the lives and security of people,” she said of the filmmakers. “The Hazara people will take it as an insult.”
This reminds me about another must-see movie from the 2005 Toronto Film Festival, Christian Frei’s “The Giant Buddhas,” now available on DVD. I never did get a chance to write about it from Toronto, but I want to rewatch it and discuss what it does — looking at the statues of the Giant Buddhas, destroyed by the Taliban in 2001 through stories and perspectives both historical and contemporary.
Trudy: “You certainly helped me out by taking me out tonight!”
Betty Hutton died earlier this week. She was 86. Her most popular movies were probably “Annie Get Your Gun,” the 1950 Irving Berlin musical (directed by George Sidney) in which she played the title role of Annie Oakley; and the lumbering Cecil B. DeMille circus spectacle, “The Greatest Show on Earth” (Best Picture Oscar winner for 1952), in which she played a sexy trapeze artist.
View image Norval: “Except for getting into the Army I can’t think of anything that makes me more happy than helping you out.”
View image Noval: “I almost wish you could be in a lotta trouble sometime so I could prove it to ya.”
But Hutton achieved immortality in 1944, as Trudy Kockenlocker (aka Mrs. Ignatz Ratzkywatzky) in Preston Sturges’ “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek.” The shot sampled at right is, in my opinion, one of the greatest in movie history. Not because it’s a long dolly shot (in 1944!) that takes us all the way from the Kockenlocker’s front door to the town movie theater (although, yes, that’s part of it), but because it allows two splendid comic actors, Hutton as Trudy and Eddie Bracken as Norval Jones, to preserve the comic integrity of their repartee, without any cuts to destroy the rhythms of their performances.
View image Trudy: “We can’t send them off maybe to get killed and — rockets’ red glare, bombs bursting in air — without anyone to say goodbye to them, can we?”
View image Trudy: “How about the orphans? Who says goodbye to them?”
When they leave the house, Norval thinks he’s taking Trudy to a triple-feature at the movies, because her father (William Demerest) has forbidden her to go to a dance for departing soldiers. Between the front porch and the ticket booth, Trudy makes a personal appeal to the smitten, 4-F Norval, combined with a call to his patriotic duty and pity for orphan soldiers who haven’t got any family to say goodbye to them, to talk Norval out of the date, and his car keys. He goes to the pictures, she goes to the dance, and… nothing is ever the same after that.
View image Norval: “What a war!”
Later, when Trudy breaks the news to him that she is indeed in terrible trouble and needs his help again (after all, he did say he almost wished she’d get into awful trouble sometime so he could help her out of it — and now he’s certainly got his wish), their walk takes a different route. They don’t turn at the corner to go past the garage to the theater, but continue walking down the same street, and this time the shot is broken up into several components (including two optical “close ups” that appear to be inserted in order to combine two different takes). But it still feels like one fluid take because it’s three long shots joined with the two close-up inserts and one brief tracking shot where they change direction and start walking toward the camera.
View image “Papa don’t preach to me, preach to me…”
Three years later, in the Technicolor Musical “The Perils of Pauline,” directed by George Marshall (“You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man,” “Destry Rides Again,” “My Friend Irma”), Hutton sang this song, “Papa Don’t Preach to Me,” which could have been sung by Trudy Kockenlocker herself…. Or maybe that was the Madonna version. Anyway, watch the YouTube clip.
Now papa don’t preach to me, preach to me,
Papa don’t preach to me.
Let my heart break while it’s young
Papa don’t preach to me, preach to me,
Papa don’t preach to me.
Let me fling ’till my fling is all flung!
… I strolled through Paris
Today with Maurice.
The Rue De La Paix
Means “The Street of the Peace”!
Mark Newman of the Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan has created some electoral cartograms of the United States that reflect the reality and complexity of our voting patterns much more effectively than those misrepresentative red state/blue state maps to which we have become accustomed. This one, for example, is based on 2008 results by county and population. Note that there’s a lot of purple. You won’t see this balance on Fox News, where the “real America” is supposedly bright screaming red. (In fact, the pure-blue population centers are much larger than the pure-red ones.)
Newman writes of the above: “As this map makes clear, large portions of the country are quite evenly divided, appearing in various shades of purple, although a number of strongly Democratic (blue) areas are visible too, mostly in the larger cities. There are also some strongly Republican areas, but most of them have relatively small populations and hence appear quite small on this map.”
(tip: Andrew Sullivan)
Click below for my own newly redrawn map of Colbert Nation.
There’s nothing I hate more than a review that’s mostly plot description — unless it’s a movie that’s mostly plot. To me, movies are primarily about images, and after that, behavior, emotions, ideas, and so on. If there’s a story in there, swell, but for me, story is the MacGuffin, the excuse that seems important when you’re watching the movie, but which turns out to be just a tiny part of the experience when it’s over.
So, I’ve always tried to avoid anything beyond the most basic statement of a film’s premise, and perhaps a description of its main characters, when writing about movies. Which is why I’m so disappointed that so many of the entries in the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival catalog ($34.17 Canadian — though the US exchange rate is practically even now) give away far too much.
I know it’s tough to write these things (I did it for years in Seattle). You have to describe enough to make the movie sound enticing enough to potential ticket-buyers. But this is a festival, and one of the glories of a festival is getting to see something that hasn’t already been pre-sold and ruined by giveaway trailers and TV spots. So, to cite just one example, if anybody’s intending to see “Day Night Day Night” in Toronto, don’t read the catalog description!
Among my friends and neighbors the most-discussed movie of the summer has been “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.” I’ve heard tell that some other movies have opened, too, and I saw some of them. I saw “Speed Racer,” but only because I was reviewing it. And I saw “Iron Man” and “Pineapple Express” and last week I saw “The Dark Knight.” Just saw “Tropic Thunder,” too. I pretty much liked all of them except “Speed Racer,” which was at least stimulating to write about and discuss. But I’d say only “Pineapple Express” is a work of true genius. Meanwhile, the most ambitious and accomplished movie of the year so far (and I’m only 4/7ths of the way into it) is HBO’s “Generation Kill.” Next on the list of movies I really want to see is “Man On Wire,” the documentary about the guy who walked a tightrope between the World Trade Center towers. And “Wall-E.” I’m excited.
But the way Stephanie Zacharek at Salon.com sees it, millions of moviegoers may be suffering from a malaise. She asks: “Are you suffering from blockbuster fatigue?”
View image Whose films matter today?
Andrew Sarris, quoting himself, reminds us of what a big deal the late Michelangelo Antonioni — and Euro-movie staples Ingmar Bergman, Francois Truffaut, Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard, et al. — were in the late 1950s and ’60s, at least in metropolitan centers like New York:
My own 1961 review in The Village Voice continued in the same vein. “As long as the great foreign films continue to trickle into New York at the present snail’s pace, the enthusiasm of discerning moviegoers will have to be concentrated on one phenomenon at a time. 1959 was the year of ‘Wild Strawberries’ and ‘The Four Hundred Blows,’ 1960 belongs to ‘Hiroshima, Mon Amour’ and ‘Picnic on the Grass’ [Jean Renoir]. So far this year it has been ‘Breathless,’ but now it is time for another blast of trumpets. Beginning April 4 at the Beekman Theater, ‘L’Avventura ‘will become the one first-run film to see in New York. The sixth feature film of Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, ‘L’Avventura’ will probably be even more controversial than its French and Swedish predecessors, which have been conveniently misunderstood as problem tracts of old age, childhood, juvenile delinquency, miscegenation, nuclear warfare, or what have you.
“With ‘L’Avventura’ the issue cannot be muddled, Antonioni’s film is an intellectual adventure, or it is nothing. The plot, such as it is, will infuriate audiences who still demand plotted cinema and potted climaxes. A group of bored Italian socialites disembark from their yacht on a deserted island. After wandering about a while they discover that one of their number, a perverse girl named Anna, is missing. Up to that time, Anna (Lea Massari) has been the protagonist. Not only does she never reappear, the mystery of her disappearance is never solved. Anna’s fiancé (Gabriele Ferzetti) and her best friend (Monica Vitti) continue the search from one town to another, ultimately betraying the object of their search by becoming lovers. The film ends on a note of further betrayal and weary acceptance, with the two lovers facing a blank wall and a distant island, both literally and symbolically.”
So when exactly did I tire of Antonioni to the point of Antonioniennui? I am not sure. It may have been about the time of “The Red Desert” (1964), which I disliked, and well before “Blow-Up” (1966), which I liked enormously, unlike the late Pauline Kael, who dismissed it with a yawn.
It must be noted that at the time I waxed rhapsodic about “L’Avventura,” I had not yet seen any of his five previous films…. “L’Avventura” was received here like a smashing debut film, and from then on it seemed just like more of the same, only less so, with “La Notte” (1961), “L’Eclisse” (1962) and most exasperatingly of all, “The Red Desert.”…
Whose films today spark similar sensations, and love-or-hate debate? Living directors about whom your opinion really seems to matter, whose films are considered “must-sees” by serious moviegoers? The Coens? Quentin Tarantino? Brian DePalma? Steven Soderbergh? I’m asking. I don’t think film festival mega-stars like Lars von Trier or Abbas Kiarostami or Wong Kar-Wai are nearly well-known or influential enough to have this kind of impact, on movie fans in general or on other filmmakers. Are any of the candidates European?
ADDENDUM: Another way of looking at it: Is there a filmmaker whose style is so recognizable that it could be parodied — and mainstream moviegoers, from their 20s to their 40s, would know what was being parodied, as was the case with Bergman, who was lampooned by the likes of “SCTV,” Woody Allen, and “Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey”? (Then again, could a television comedy show as smart and aware of the diversity of culture and pop culture as “SCTV” exist today? Actually, such a thing did exist not all that many years ago on HBO: “Mr. Show with Bob and David.”)
A series of connections:
Director Mary Harron, on working with Christian Bale to develop the character of Patrick Bateman in “American Psycho”:
“We talked about how Martian-like Patrick Bateman was, how he was looking at the world like somebody from another planet, watching what people did and trying to work out the right way to behave. And then one day he called me and he had been watching Tom Cruise on David Letterman, and he just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes, and he was really taken with this energy.”
(Also see: “Dexter” for a similar sociopathic study.)
Miles Fisher as Tom Cruise in “Superhero Movie”:
“Through my films I’m eventually trying to one day tell the truth. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get there, but I’m slowly letting pieces of myself out there and then maybe by the time I’m 85, I’ll look back and say, ‘All right, that about sums it up.'”
— Adam Sandler, interview clip used in the 2012 Oscar broadcast
What if those schlocky Adam Sandler movies that you either think are funny or you don’t really aren’t just schlocky Adam Sandler movies that you either think are funny or you don’t? What if they don’t have much to do with movies at all, but are more like leveraged derivative instruments (I don’t actually know what those are) or synthetic collateralized debt obligation (CDO) transactions, devised by accountants to provide maximum returns with minimum effort — that promise investors profits for next-to-nothing? Ultra-low-budget production values and minor league actors, writers and directors (except for Sandler himself, who gets $25 million-plus up-front plus a heavy chunk of the gross), subsidized by egregious product placements, make for maximum risk minimalization.
As a moviegoer and a critic, all I care about is what’s on the screen — or isn’t. But there’s so little on the screen in Adam Sandler movies, that I confess I’m bewildered at what some claim to see in them. So, if you’re curious about, say, how the production cost of the average Adam Sandler comedy jumped from about $30 million to about $80 million overnight… well, just keep reading.
The so-called ” flop” of “That’s My Boy” this past weekend (Sandler’s second after “Jack and Jill” — almost a trend!) has been greeted with schadenfreude in some quarters, but it disregards the likelihood that financial arrangements have long been in place that ensure a Sandler movie has to really, seriously tank before it winds up actually losing money.* Who knows — there may be the equivalent of credit default swaps that protect Sony and Happy Madison from disappointing returns. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there are investment devices that allow the backing companies to actually make money by placing wagers predicting the underperformance of a given movie, just to hedge their bets. Everybody wins, right?
View image Lesson for the kiddies: Don’t take Turkish Delight from an icy Tilda Swinton and don’t be fooled into thinking this seemingly innocent underground-dwelling creature has your best interests at heart. Got that?
My review of “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” is at RogerEbert.com. Here’s an excerpt:
… Character is not destiny in the “Narnia” pictures. Destiny is. Which creates some moral and dramatic dilemmas for the viewer. With all the dramatis personae Lewis has crammed into his filagreed fantasies, few of the players have the opportunity to leave much of an impression, or acquire significance, beyond what the tale demands of them. (Who’s that badger again?) They do what is asked of them — in the story and by the story. And once we realize that even the leads are predestined to play their parts in fulfilling prophecies, and that all they have to do to meet the requirements is to abide by (or guess) whatever certain mystical authority figures want them to do, the tension deflates a bit.
The moral options, as set forth in the movies so far, are fairly clear-cut: believe the beautiful lion and the friendly beavers; don’t trust the sepulchral ice queen bearing Turkish Delight or the hideous dark demons extolling the forces of hate. What could be simpler? A child could do it. And what kind of lesson does that communicate to the child who can? That it’s easy to tell right from wrong? Not a wise maxim.
What responsibilities do the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve (how does that work?) bear for their own decisions, and the consequences of their actions, if everything can eventually be set right by some deus ex machina — the healing properties of supernatural potions, or the corrective powers of magic lion’s breath? What becomes of free will, of meaning itself?
Somebody named Michael Jones — essentially the same Mr. Jones Bob Dylan wrote about years ago — appeared on HuffPo recently with a piece called “That Steely Dan Moment” — you know, about a discovery of musical taste that makes you wonder if you could ever love the person who possesses it. The twist is that he’s the one who falls short and doesn’t know it. Turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening, Mr. Jones.
Anyway, I wouldn’t have paid attention except that his story (who knows where or when it originally appeared if it was on HuffPo) reminded me of an article my friend Julia Sweeney did for the February, 1993, issue of SPIN magazine that was written and edited by the staff of “Saturday Night Live.” It probably wasn’t an entirely original idea then, either, but it was called “Men, Music & Me,” and in it she discussed her assessments of collegiate and post-collegiate boyfriends — using their cinematic and musical tastes as a guide. (Please also see my entry on Carl Wilson’s book, “Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste.”)
