What can I say? A couple of dudes with Halloween costumes stab people to death for almost no reason. It's one of those movies that enjoys itself, and rollicking and laughing into slaughter about as generically and offensively as it can get away with while reaching that invaluable 13-20 age range. Whenever I watch a movie that injects comedy into gore I usually like it. Scream is one of those movies you can just have going on in the background while you play a video game or surf the internet. It's meant to be talked through and poked at and made fun of. It's not good, but at the very least it has a strong grasp of what it's trying to be. I like that. There's nothing wrong with being fun and stupid.
I always resented that they forced rape into the storyline, but the nature of this movie is to take horrible parts of humanity and casually throw them in your face. It's for desensitized slasher fans, and as a member of that demographic I cannot help but be appeased. I had to laugh to myself when one of the characters said something to the effect of "Anything can happen. It's the Millennium!"
The story makes a demented kind of sense that only a mother could love, and I'm sure if you pay close enough attention to the details it all works itself out, but whatever. It's fine. This movie is fine. I remember sneaking into a theater to see it and getting a kick out of the giddy sense of humor playing out here I could only liken to Evil Dead 2, not that the two could ever be compared.
I will say that this movie was important for its time, but I will also say that it could be safely forgotten. M informs me there's going to be a fourth coming out in April 2011, the first of a new trilogy. I'm sure I'll see them and I'm sure they'll be good enough for homework and a killing an afternoon.
That's good enough.
Watch Scream.
I guess.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
M's Musings on SCREAM
Scream. Dir. Wes Craven. Screenplay by Kevin Williamson. Ft. Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette. Dimenson, 1996.
In celebration of Hallowe'en, we decided it was time to catch up on our reviews, and watch something "scary" for a special Hallowe'en issue of MT Sentiments. Like every other genre of classic film, I wasn't allowed to watch scary movies. So, like 95% of the movies we watch and review on our blog, I had never seen this classic which was an important part of my childhood and young adulthood. I simply never had the experience in the moment. For films like this one, you just can't re-live it once you are past your teenage years. I think I would have thought this film was a lot more clever if I was a 15 year-old virgin. Ah well.
The one thing I kept going back to while watching this movie was how old the actors are who play the teenage roles. When you ARE a teenager, you don't find it strange, because you want so badly to have the maturity of those people. The kids who are actually 16 are playing 12 year olds. There is no way they could handle the range necessary to be an angsty youth. Angsty youth have no idea what life after high school is like, so there is no way they can ever be convincing in these roles. You need the wisdom in order to recreate the experience. Remember, teen movies are always about re-presentation, they are never about the original experience.
This statement is an excellent segue into the most interesting feature of this film. Its self-reflexive discussion of the genre of the teen slasher provides another level of experience onto the conventional story it is telling. Its awareness of its own limitations is parodic and charming at times, even if it is a bit over the top.
I made jokes to T throughout like this is so meta. And the movie is deconstructing itself. It is so pomo. While I was making fun of the convention of being aware of the conventions of a genre, I am sure that as a teenager I would have been really impressed by this. This is the time in our lives when we first really start to see the broader patterns that reappear in various cultural phenomena. We know enough about genre that we can anticipate action and talk about the predictability of a story in a way that is a mix of disdain and superiority which is unique to the high school moment. It is important to feel better than the entertainment you are mindlessly consuming. You have to be too cool for your own life.
Overall, I thought this movie was really fun. It helped get me back into a moment when the "millennium" was an ominous event looming in the horizon. It helped me remember what a horror movie the whole high school experience really is. Perhaps the various hacking and slashing is closer to the truth than we like to imagine. Everything feels like the end of the world or the end of your life, even when nothing is going on that you will remember in six weeks, or even six days.
It was fun to re-live the up-and-coming actors of the mid-90s. Though I really didn't see most of Friends until it had already ended, and only ever saw the last episode of Party of Five, I was immediately presented with these two women who would occupy so many people's tv sets for a good five to ten years. It was a very nostalgic experience for someone who is not very violent and doesn't really enjoy watching violence on tv.
I don't think this movie is supposed to be scary. It is too self-aware of its conventions to be overly outrageous in its portrayal of the various murders. Instead, it is just silly. The killers are in a Hallowe'en costume and talk on cell phones. They get stuck in garage door openers, and string up principals on the football field. It is just supposed to be over-the-top. It doesn't actually need to keep you awake at night.
I'm glad I watched this, but now I am safely ready for bed. Stuffed with mini-chocolate bars and a late night dinner of chicken wings, all in all it has been a pretty good Hallowe'en. We even stuck a carrot in a pumpkin to make a witch nose for our Jack o'lantern. Hope everyone did something fun and didn't get up to too much trouble.
In celebration of Hallowe'en, we decided it was time to catch up on our reviews, and watch something "scary" for a special Hallowe'en issue of MT Sentiments. Like every other genre of classic film, I wasn't allowed to watch scary movies. So, like 95% of the movies we watch and review on our blog, I had never seen this classic which was an important part of my childhood and young adulthood. I simply never had the experience in the moment. For films like this one, you just can't re-live it once you are past your teenage years. I think I would have thought this film was a lot more clever if I was a 15 year-old virgin. Ah well.
The one thing I kept going back to while watching this movie was how old the actors are who play the teenage roles. When you ARE a teenager, you don't find it strange, because you want so badly to have the maturity of those people. The kids who are actually 16 are playing 12 year olds. There is no way they could handle the range necessary to be an angsty youth. Angsty youth have no idea what life after high school is like, so there is no way they can ever be convincing in these roles. You need the wisdom in order to recreate the experience. Remember, teen movies are always about re-presentation, they are never about the original experience.
This statement is an excellent segue into the most interesting feature of this film. Its self-reflexive discussion of the genre of the teen slasher provides another level of experience onto the conventional story it is telling. Its awareness of its own limitations is parodic and charming at times, even if it is a bit over the top.
I made jokes to T throughout like this is so meta. And the movie is deconstructing itself. It is so pomo. While I was making fun of the convention of being aware of the conventions of a genre, I am sure that as a teenager I would have been really impressed by this. This is the time in our lives when we first really start to see the broader patterns that reappear in various cultural phenomena. We know enough about genre that we can anticipate action and talk about the predictability of a story in a way that is a mix of disdain and superiority which is unique to the high school moment. It is important to feel better than the entertainment you are mindlessly consuming. You have to be too cool for your own life.
Overall, I thought this movie was really fun. It helped get me back into a moment when the "millennium" was an ominous event looming in the horizon. It helped me remember what a horror movie the whole high school experience really is. Perhaps the various hacking and slashing is closer to the truth than we like to imagine. Everything feels like the end of the world or the end of your life, even when nothing is going on that you will remember in six weeks, or even six days.
It was fun to re-live the up-and-coming actors of the mid-90s. Though I really didn't see most of Friends until it had already ended, and only ever saw the last episode of Party of Five, I was immediately presented with these two women who would occupy so many people's tv sets for a good five to ten years. It was a very nostalgic experience for someone who is not very violent and doesn't really enjoy watching violence on tv.
I don't think this movie is supposed to be scary. It is too self-aware of its conventions to be overly outrageous in its portrayal of the various murders. Instead, it is just silly. The killers are in a Hallowe'en costume and talk on cell phones. They get stuck in garage door openers, and string up principals on the football field. It is just supposed to be over-the-top. It doesn't actually need to keep you awake at night.
I'm glad I watched this, but now I am safely ready for bed. Stuffed with mini-chocolate bars and a late night dinner of chicken wings, all in all it has been a pretty good Hallowe'en. We even stuck a carrot in a pumpkin to make a witch nose for our Jack o'lantern. Hope everyone did something fun and didn't get up to too much trouble.
T's Take on NEVER LET ME GO
I lied.
It IS okay for a movie to be depressing and unredemptive. There was nothing happy in this movie, nothing was resolved, and every character here starts out with a lot and ends with only a little. It's about people being bred to donate organs to everyone else. Big business has taken to cloning, and these people are trained and forced to submit to the surrendering of their vitals one piece at a time until creeping inevitable death ceases to linger over their heads, much to the hasty delight of the operating teams that hover around them throughout their adult lives like vultures. It's sick, and depraved, and a hideous reflection of humanity and values.
I loved it. It moved me. It was gorgeous and provocative and a multiple of everything I wanted it to be. I'd recommend it to anyone.
So what's the difference between this and Great Expectations? I guess it has something to do with the message. Expectations' message was that everything sucks, and sometimes you just have to loose, because you're a looser. And the everybody hates you. And as difficult as it might be for you to believe, the people you love are secretly out to get you. Here? This movie? This is done for a reason. Here we find human, believable characters living out destitute shadows of lives for a reason. Not to say that the in-movie organ farming is legitimate reason, but the statement that makes about medicine and technology is powerful.
This is a warning. At least, that's how I took it. The author of the book is cautioning us to value life wherever we find it, because if we don't, or can't, the lives we're looking to prolong cease to matter. We, the willing beneficiaries of that death and suffering, are become monsters. That vampiric visage of that alternate humanity must be avoided at all costs. Very important. Very striking. The fact that the movie starts in the seventies and moves into a present that does not exist is important. Instead of moving forward and showing a horrific destiny, it says, 'what if this had happened?', offering the viewer respite from a point of view that is indeed depressing, but not altogether bleak. By assuring us that it is not real now, we know this as a story, and not a depiction of the future, although the intonations are definitely there.
Casting, directing, screenplay, whatever... Tens all around. Gorgeous. Simply gorgeous. Maybe not great for a first date or a lazy Sunday afternoon, but important, and a must-see.
Watch Never Let Me Go.
It IS okay for a movie to be depressing and unredemptive. There was nothing happy in this movie, nothing was resolved, and every character here starts out with a lot and ends with only a little. It's about people being bred to donate organs to everyone else. Big business has taken to cloning, and these people are trained and forced to submit to the surrendering of their vitals one piece at a time until creeping inevitable death ceases to linger over their heads, much to the hasty delight of the operating teams that hover around them throughout their adult lives like vultures. It's sick, and depraved, and a hideous reflection of humanity and values.
I loved it. It moved me. It was gorgeous and provocative and a multiple of everything I wanted it to be. I'd recommend it to anyone.
So what's the difference between this and Great Expectations? I guess it has something to do with the message. Expectations' message was that everything sucks, and sometimes you just have to loose, because you're a looser. And the everybody hates you. And as difficult as it might be for you to believe, the people you love are secretly out to get you. Here? This movie? This is done for a reason. Here we find human, believable characters living out destitute shadows of lives for a reason. Not to say that the in-movie organ farming is legitimate reason, but the statement that makes about medicine and technology is powerful.
This is a warning. At least, that's how I took it. The author of the book is cautioning us to value life wherever we find it, because if we don't, or can't, the lives we're looking to prolong cease to matter. We, the willing beneficiaries of that death and suffering, are become monsters. That vampiric visage of that alternate humanity must be avoided at all costs. Very important. Very striking. The fact that the movie starts in the seventies and moves into a present that does not exist is important. Instead of moving forward and showing a horrific destiny, it says, 'what if this had happened?', offering the viewer respite from a point of view that is indeed depressing, but not altogether bleak. By assuring us that it is not real now, we know this as a story, and not a depiction of the future, although the intonations are definitely there.
Casting, directing, screenplay, whatever... Tens all around. Gorgeous. Simply gorgeous. Maybe not great for a first date or a lazy Sunday afternoon, but important, and a must-see.
Watch Never Let Me Go.
M's Musings on NEVER LET ME GO
Never Let Me Go. Dir. Mark Romanek. Screenplay by Alex Garland. Based on the novel by Kazuo Ishigiro. Ft. Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley. Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2010.
Never Let Me Go was pretty much the only book I read for pleasure in the entire 2009-10 school year. I read it in November during a very difficult and emotional time in my life. I knew it was going to have a large impact on me, and I was looking to gain some much needed perspective to help get me out of a bit of a funk. Contemporary dystopic fiction is my very favourite genre, particularly when it is written by such a fine author. Kazuo Ishigiro is just awesome, and I looked forward to a few hours alone with this book for at least two years before I finally let myself read it.
I loved the slow-paced journey the story took me on. So many pages of knowing and not knowing the fate of this story. So much waiting for it to get better for the characters. So many frustrated expectations, dashed dreams and misguided hopes. Even more slowly knowing, but also coming to grips with the idea that I wasn't going to get the release I deserved in the form of a happy ending. I experienced real catharsis after reading this book. I like dealing with the possibility that you can't escape your fate, and that sometimes there is no going back and saving the past through redemption in the present.
This book made me ache. I half-hated Kathy from the first page. She was never going to be the plucky, independent heroine. She was going to passively let her love fade away from her. She was going to hold onto objects and stories for years after they ended, nostalgically re-living a childhood past without real happiness. Everything just hurt. It was based on false information. It was based in deception and hope that wasn't grounded in reality.
How could they possibly capture all this emotion in a film adaptation, particularly one with a pretty small movie budget?
When I saw that Alex Garland, another excellent author, wrote the screenplay for this movie, my overall hopes were very high. As I sat down in the Oxford in Halifax after a wonderful meal with the love of my life and best friend T, I knew that no matter what this movie threw at me, I was going to have an excellent cinematic experience.
The film really capture the pacing of the book, which, is agonizingly slow. As the various layers are slowly revealed, you constantly are going through a process of reinterpreting the past action in light of the new information. By the time you discover that the characters are clones, that the gallery was to prove the children had souls, that Kathy was looking for her Original in the porn magazines, and that Kathy was going to start her first treatment... it is always too late. These moments constantly frustrate the reader, demanding that we too take on this perspective of grasping at straws and re-writing history in order to deal with all the various knowledge we gain as we go through a process of maturation and growth.
By the time Kathy gets to start her relationship with Tommy, all the passion and emotion from their childhoods is long gone. The sex she has waited so long for is difficult, and often ends in a more domestic cuddling. The love they need to prove is jaded by the years of separation, and the emotional and physical loss of their bodies. The idea that parts of their bodies are physically taken from them to keep other people healthy is fascinating. The fact that morality becomes a non-issue when mortality is on the line make it even more fascinating. When you look deep into the recesses of society and see the darkness you fear... it is a very powerful literary moment.
Keira Knightly was a great choice for Ruth, though her big name kind of took away from the lead actors. Interestingly, I would argue that this was also a good choice, because it makes it harder to connect with Kathy. I thought that Ruth's death scene, and her confession at the boat, were both bang-on. I was really, really happy with how her character came together.
My only complaint was that I felt the ending wasn't hard hitting enough. When Ruth is laid open on the surgeon table in that long, slow scene, the detachment with which the doctors pillage her body and then leave her splayed open and dead was really moving. Watching Tommy's last moments of life was positive, but without that connection to the reality of the death, it really didn't hit the same way.
The fact that Kathy is about to start her first treatment is supposed to shake you to your core. You are supposed to be so caught up in her own reliving of the past that you also are looking for Tommy over the hill. I feel like those last scenes went through the motions of the text, but they just weren't able to bring me back to the emotional space of the book. I think its just because the attachment isn't the same in a two hour movie. You just don't invest as much into the film as you do in a book.
I am interested to see what T says about this one, and what the critical feedback looks like. I am not sure if I would have had the same experience if I couldn't map my experience of the book onto the film.
I am really glad I got to see this film.
I loved the slow-paced journey the story took me on. So many pages of knowing and not knowing the fate of this story. So much waiting for it to get better for the characters. So many frustrated expectations, dashed dreams and misguided hopes. Even more slowly knowing, but also coming to grips with the idea that I wasn't going to get the release I deserved in the form of a happy ending. I experienced real catharsis after reading this book. I like dealing with the possibility that you can't escape your fate, and that sometimes there is no going back and saving the past through redemption in the present.
This book made me ache. I half-hated Kathy from the first page. She was never going to be the plucky, independent heroine. She was going to passively let her love fade away from her. She was going to hold onto objects and stories for years after they ended, nostalgically re-living a childhood past without real happiness. Everything just hurt. It was based on false information. It was based in deception and hope that wasn't grounded in reality.
How could they possibly capture all this emotion in a film adaptation, particularly one with a pretty small movie budget?
When I saw that Alex Garland, another excellent author, wrote the screenplay for this movie, my overall hopes were very high. As I sat down in the Oxford in Halifax after a wonderful meal with the love of my life and best friend T, I knew that no matter what this movie threw at me, I was going to have an excellent cinematic experience.
The film really capture the pacing of the book, which, is agonizingly slow. As the various layers are slowly revealed, you constantly are going through a process of reinterpreting the past action in light of the new information. By the time you discover that the characters are clones, that the gallery was to prove the children had souls, that Kathy was looking for her Original in the porn magazines, and that Kathy was going to start her first treatment... it is always too late. These moments constantly frustrate the reader, demanding that we too take on this perspective of grasping at straws and re-writing history in order to deal with all the various knowledge we gain as we go through a process of maturation and growth.
By the time Kathy gets to start her relationship with Tommy, all the passion and emotion from their childhoods is long gone. The sex she has waited so long for is difficult, and often ends in a more domestic cuddling. The love they need to prove is jaded by the years of separation, and the emotional and physical loss of their bodies. The idea that parts of their bodies are physically taken from them to keep other people healthy is fascinating. The fact that morality becomes a non-issue when mortality is on the line make it even more fascinating. When you look deep into the recesses of society and see the darkness you fear... it is a very powerful literary moment.
Keira Knightly was a great choice for Ruth, though her big name kind of took away from the lead actors. Interestingly, I would argue that this was also a good choice, because it makes it harder to connect with Kathy. I thought that Ruth's death scene, and her confession at the boat, were both bang-on. I was really, really happy with how her character came together.
My only complaint was that I felt the ending wasn't hard hitting enough. When Ruth is laid open on the surgeon table in that long, slow scene, the detachment with which the doctors pillage her body and then leave her splayed open and dead was really moving. Watching Tommy's last moments of life was positive, but without that connection to the reality of the death, it really didn't hit the same way.
The fact that Kathy is about to start her first treatment is supposed to shake you to your core. You are supposed to be so caught up in her own reliving of the past that you also are looking for Tommy over the hill. I feel like those last scenes went through the motions of the text, but they just weren't able to bring me back to the emotional space of the book. I think its just because the attachment isn't the same in a two hour movie. You just don't invest as much into the film as you do in a book.
I am interested to see what T says about this one, and what the critical feedback looks like. I am not sure if I would have had the same experience if I couldn't map my experience of the book onto the film.
I am really glad I got to see this film.
T's Take on GREAT EXPECTATIONS
I'll save you some time: I didn't like this movie.
We didn't even finish it. To be fair, M told me how the book ends, but I wasn't surprised and wouldn't have cared anyway. Why do movies go out of their way to be as depressing as possible? This was one of those flicks that gives you a gut-wrenching feeling of despair and longing the whole way through, and threatens the main character with dashed hopes and foiled dreams to impose an inflated sense of importance on the plotline. I hate that. It's a cheap trick and it makes me resent the film overall.
Having said that:
The cinematography was striking, the actors more than did their part, the pacing made perfect sense for the material and the script, pulled largely from the (apparently) classic novel was compelling and well placed.
And yet, bad movie.
Every individual part was done tastefully and even well, but there was just this overall slimy feel to the thing that made me bored. It was just... Cruel. Cruel for the sake of cruel. Let's watch this poor bastard throw everything he has at someone who doesn't deserve it and loose, over and over. He spends the whole movie obsessing over this girl, and she's a mean-spirited person who doesn't deserve the viewer's sympathy. The movie seems to assume that Pretty should be enough for us, because it's enough for Finn. I hate Finn for loving her, and I hate her for using him, and... it's just another one of those movies where none of the characters come across as likable and in the end nothing that happens matters to me.
This movie is like if at the end of Beauty and the Beast, Gaston killed the beast, and Belle said, "Well, I guess that's that." and just ended, with everything in tatters. This woman was trained to be a vicious man-eater. Whether it's her fault that she was cruel or not, I mean... Do we feel bad for Jason Vorhees because he was the victim of neglectful camp councilors? No! You're judged by your actions, and watching some dude gain the world just to loose it it not my idea of cinema. Fuck you, Great Expectations. Movie dick!
Don't watch Great Expectations.
We didn't even finish it. To be fair, M told me how the book ends, but I wasn't surprised and wouldn't have cared anyway. Why do movies go out of their way to be as depressing as possible? This was one of those flicks that gives you a gut-wrenching feeling of despair and longing the whole way through, and threatens the main character with dashed hopes and foiled dreams to impose an inflated sense of importance on the plotline. I hate that. It's a cheap trick and it makes me resent the film overall.
Having said that:
The cinematography was striking, the actors more than did their part, the pacing made perfect sense for the material and the script, pulled largely from the (apparently) classic novel was compelling and well placed.
And yet, bad movie.
Every individual part was done tastefully and even well, but there was just this overall slimy feel to the thing that made me bored. It was just... Cruel. Cruel for the sake of cruel. Let's watch this poor bastard throw everything he has at someone who doesn't deserve it and loose, over and over. He spends the whole movie obsessing over this girl, and she's a mean-spirited person who doesn't deserve the viewer's sympathy. The movie seems to assume that Pretty should be enough for us, because it's enough for Finn. I hate Finn for loving her, and I hate her for using him, and... it's just another one of those movies where none of the characters come across as likable and in the end nothing that happens matters to me.
This movie is like if at the end of Beauty and the Beast, Gaston killed the beast, and Belle said, "Well, I guess that's that." and just ended, with everything in tatters. This woman was trained to be a vicious man-eater. Whether it's her fault that she was cruel or not, I mean... Do we feel bad for Jason Vorhees because he was the victim of neglectful camp councilors? No! You're judged by your actions, and watching some dude gain the world just to loose it it not my idea of cinema. Fuck you, Great Expectations. Movie dick!
Don't watch Great Expectations.
M's Musings on GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Great Expectations. Dir. Alfonso Cuaron. Screenplay by Mitch Glazer. Based on the novel by Charles Dickens. Ft. Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, Robert DeNiro and Hank Azaria. Twentieth Century Fox, 1998.
Did not meet my expectations. In fact, like Pip in the novel, my expectations were frustrated in the end, and doubted throughout. At every point I was on uneven ground, which just made for a more frustrating movie watching experience. I have no idea why this movie was made. Seriously. It didn't need to be updated.
I don't think Great Expectations was ever conceptualized as a coming of age tale in the 80s and 90s. This is a time that doesn't need to be recorded. The poverty of Finn (Pip) was understated enough that it was unbelievable. I think at one point Joe ate at McDonald's. How very low brow.
Gwenyth Paltrow is a total bitch in this movie. I mean, Estella was supposed to be. But she is just SO unlikeable. This is the thing. It didn't seem like she was acting. Her conscious body displays seems so deceptive and twisted. You just know she is going to be impossible. She is the nastiest sort of tease... I don't know why anyone would like her. That said, she is probably a good match for Ethan Hawke, who is also completely unsympathetic.
I hate the idea that Finn is an artist. I don't buy it. Don't try and make this into a buildungsroman. I don't want to watch an artist grow up, and I really don't want to watch him rely on a muse who is a heinous bitch with no soul. The art in the movie was too interesting to be done by Ethan Hawke. If he drew at all, it would be very realistic, very unoriginal work. I think it would be mostly line drawings in pencil... and no one would ever believe he was the next big thing.
The main couple was so frustrating and unlikeable. Robert DeNiro is wonderful, and so is the guy who plays Joe. Both of those guys should have more screen time. The Miss Havisham character was about 40% of what I was hoping for. Without the wedding dress, it is hard to imagine her desperate sad, story and to feel the necessary sympathy and pity that makes her endearing...
I also hate that this quintessential British story was set in Florida. Florida. The class system isn't stringent in Florida. Nor is it in New York. These are not substitutes for the old world. It has to be in a place where class is very evident, identifiable by key markers that do not operate on a sliding scale. We need to see performance of class in more regards. I know Finn drives a pick-up instead of a luxury sedan... but that just didn't cut it. That said, the moustache is an interesting example of class markings. Only the poor ones have it in the movie. Heh.
Overall, I am not impressed with this adaptation. I think this book would be difficult to adapt, but at the same time, they could have done a better job. This isn't the story as it needs to be told. I look forward to a better adaptation... some day... and I hope that it is made by people with British affiliations.
Did not meet my expectations. In fact, like Pip in the novel, my expectations were frustrated in the end, and doubted throughout. At every point I was on uneven ground, which just made for a more frustrating movie watching experience. I have no idea why this movie was made. Seriously. It didn't need to be updated.
I don't think Great Expectations was ever conceptualized as a coming of age tale in the 80s and 90s. This is a time that doesn't need to be recorded. The poverty of Finn (Pip) was understated enough that it was unbelievable. I think at one point Joe ate at McDonald's. How very low brow.
Gwenyth Paltrow is a total bitch in this movie. I mean, Estella was supposed to be. But she is just SO unlikeable. This is the thing. It didn't seem like she was acting. Her conscious body displays seems so deceptive and twisted. You just know she is going to be impossible. She is the nastiest sort of tease... I don't know why anyone would like her. That said, she is probably a good match for Ethan Hawke, who is also completely unsympathetic.
I hate the idea that Finn is an artist. I don't buy it. Don't try and make this into a buildungsroman. I don't want to watch an artist grow up, and I really don't want to watch him rely on a muse who is a heinous bitch with no soul. The art in the movie was too interesting to be done by Ethan Hawke. If he drew at all, it would be very realistic, very unoriginal work. I think it would be mostly line drawings in pencil... and no one would ever believe he was the next big thing.
The main couple was so frustrating and unlikeable. Robert DeNiro is wonderful, and so is the guy who plays Joe. Both of those guys should have more screen time. The Miss Havisham character was about 40% of what I was hoping for. Without the wedding dress, it is hard to imagine her desperate sad, story and to feel the necessary sympathy and pity that makes her endearing...
I also hate that this quintessential British story was set in Florida. Florida. The class system isn't stringent in Florida. Nor is it in New York. These are not substitutes for the old world. It has to be in a place where class is very evident, identifiable by key markers that do not operate on a sliding scale. We need to see performance of class in more regards. I know Finn drives a pick-up instead of a luxury sedan... but that just didn't cut it. That said, the moustache is an interesting example of class markings. Only the poor ones have it in the movie. Heh.
Overall, I am not impressed with this adaptation. I think this book would be difficult to adapt, but at the same time, they could have done a better job. This isn't the story as it needs to be told. I look forward to a better adaptation... some day... and I hope that it is made by people with British affiliations.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
T's Take on THE GRADUATE
The graduate was awesome. M didn't get it, which I fully understand, because she doesn't get anything that's important, ever.
List of things I get that M is clueless about that are completely important and should never be overlooked:
1) International Politics
2) Mindfreak (you know who I mean)
3) Monty Python
4) Internet Flash Animations
That's basically the top four, but you know there's tons of other stuff. This movie is absolutely hilarious, in that awkward larger-than-life (but still pretty serious) way that so many great movies conduct themselves. It's like Sideways, Little Miss Sunshine, or Smart People, except forty years previous. M and I had this same problem with Youth in Revolt. It's about this little square who hurts and destabilizes an incredible amount of systems and people in pursuit of a girl he loves. I loved it. M hated it, because all she could think about were the victims. She saw a selfish person acting on selfish impulses without regard for all the well-meaning people around him. I saw somebody with wrought-iron guts who absolutely refuses to settle for less or give up on his convictions.
It's never a positive comment to infer that the viewer need search out the comedy, but I'll say it anyway, because the editorially cutty humor we've been trained to look for in cinema is absent here and as such it tends to boggle the modern viewer. The punchline is this dude's life, really, and Ben's stiffer-than-wood attitude is so unflinchingly sincere and unsure that it'll make your heart ache and cringe for him. Watching this movie is like reading a protracted Beatnick retelling of some distorted confluence of events... The main character is rarely remarkable and the deeds he commits are often completely backward on the layperson's moral barometer, but they're pure in a way that is always miraculous and noteworthy. Much of this movie is made up of unsure, jangled interactions between people who feel an overwhelming urge to constrain what they're feeling and modify emotional responses to fit their over-inflated sense of appropriateness.
The beautiful revelation here is that Ben realizes he's not supposed to have sure footing. He learns that being oblivious to the ambiguous nature of what one's career and life should look like is very much okay. He seems to understand that moving compliantly in the direction of what is safe and well known and proper will not make him happy, that achieving his undergrad and then plunging into a career in plastics at twenty-one is just not the way. Indeed, we see through his actions that doing virtually anything but a set course of events has to be better, if only on the basis that it was his choice in the first place.
He charges through the exact center of everything laid out before him and ruins lives and destroys relationships and desecrates religious institutions and publicly humiliates well-meaning family. He does it all because he wants to, because it feels right in the moment, and because he believes in himself above absolutely everything else. I see in Ben a young man in the very moment of True Realization that everyone lucky enough to glimpse through the fog of Education and Propriety eventually must have. He is a person grappling with the idea that everything he's been taught and believes in might actually be ridiculous. In the movie's beginning he is already grasping at this concept, but it takes the illustrious and beguiling Mrs. Robinson to bring him into the Desert of the Real.
I always felt as a young person that drinking and sneaking out and going to parties actually elevated me to a form beyond that of simple adolescence but falling short of pure adulthood. I understand now that what I was tasting then wasn't what I thought it was. The momentary stimulation was the key, the actual notion of power and independent action was so completely intoxicating that I probably would have chased it no matter how it was represented to me. When you do something at any age that you have believed for your entire life was Bad and Crazy and realize that it actually isn't at all, you can't help but question everything else, especially if it's your first time brushing against such an experience. When Ben realizes that family and the institution of marriage might actually exist as a procreative function that developed out of necessity (instead of the Holy and happy-granting secret-to-life he may have believed it to be) he completely snaps and throws away everything else. This is the folly of youth, but also an intensely necessary one.
A generation of human beings that does not seek to bend its limitations and demand answers from the construct around them is not one I'd like to see. Ben has it right: a person must blaze their own path, and when they see something that's important to them, they absolutely must sacrifice everything necessary - even that which they're supposed to need - in exchange. Regret makes for uneasy bedfellows, and I wish I could say I cared as little for convention and peer approval as Dustin Hoffman's character. Growing into a man is about as messy a process as I've encountered and it cannot be done gracefully. The best favor anyone who understands the great hoax can do is dirty your perceptions and force you to act for yourself. Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson.
Watch The Graduate.
List of things I get that M is clueless about that are completely important and should never be overlooked:
1) International Politics
2) Mindfreak (you know who I mean)
3) Monty Python
4) Internet Flash Animations
That's basically the top four, but you know there's tons of other stuff. This movie is absolutely hilarious, in that awkward larger-than-life (but still pretty serious) way that so many great movies conduct themselves. It's like Sideways, Little Miss Sunshine, or Smart People, except forty years previous. M and I had this same problem with Youth in Revolt. It's about this little square who hurts and destabilizes an incredible amount of systems and people in pursuit of a girl he loves. I loved it. M hated it, because all she could think about were the victims. She saw a selfish person acting on selfish impulses without regard for all the well-meaning people around him. I saw somebody with wrought-iron guts who absolutely refuses to settle for less or give up on his convictions.
It's never a positive comment to infer that the viewer need search out the comedy, but I'll say it anyway, because the editorially cutty humor we've been trained to look for in cinema is absent here and as such it tends to boggle the modern viewer. The punchline is this dude's life, really, and Ben's stiffer-than-wood attitude is so unflinchingly sincere and unsure that it'll make your heart ache and cringe for him. Watching this movie is like reading a protracted Beatnick retelling of some distorted confluence of events... The main character is rarely remarkable and the deeds he commits are often completely backward on the layperson's moral barometer, but they're pure in a way that is always miraculous and noteworthy. Much of this movie is made up of unsure, jangled interactions between people who feel an overwhelming urge to constrain what they're feeling and modify emotional responses to fit their over-inflated sense of appropriateness.
The beautiful revelation here is that Ben realizes he's not supposed to have sure footing. He learns that being oblivious to the ambiguous nature of what one's career and life should look like is very much okay. He seems to understand that moving compliantly in the direction of what is safe and well known and proper will not make him happy, that achieving his undergrad and then plunging into a career in plastics at twenty-one is just not the way. Indeed, we see through his actions that doing virtually anything but a set course of events has to be better, if only on the basis that it was his choice in the first place.
He charges through the exact center of everything laid out before him and ruins lives and destroys relationships and desecrates religious institutions and publicly humiliates well-meaning family. He does it all because he wants to, because it feels right in the moment, and because he believes in himself above absolutely everything else. I see in Ben a young man in the very moment of True Realization that everyone lucky enough to glimpse through the fog of Education and Propriety eventually must have. He is a person grappling with the idea that everything he's been taught and believes in might actually be ridiculous. In the movie's beginning he is already grasping at this concept, but it takes the illustrious and beguiling Mrs. Robinson to bring him into the Desert of the Real.
I always felt as a young person that drinking and sneaking out and going to parties actually elevated me to a form beyond that of simple adolescence but falling short of pure adulthood. I understand now that what I was tasting then wasn't what I thought it was. The momentary stimulation was the key, the actual notion of power and independent action was so completely intoxicating that I probably would have chased it no matter how it was represented to me. When you do something at any age that you have believed for your entire life was Bad and Crazy and realize that it actually isn't at all, you can't help but question everything else, especially if it's your first time brushing against such an experience. When Ben realizes that family and the institution of marriage might actually exist as a procreative function that developed out of necessity (instead of the Holy and happy-granting secret-to-life he may have believed it to be) he completely snaps and throws away everything else. This is the folly of youth, but also an intensely necessary one.
A generation of human beings that does not seek to bend its limitations and demand answers from the construct around them is not one I'd like to see. Ben has it right: a person must blaze their own path, and when they see something that's important to them, they absolutely must sacrifice everything necessary - even that which they're supposed to need - in exchange. Regret makes for uneasy bedfellows, and I wish I could say I cared as little for convention and peer approval as Dustin Hoffman's character. Growing into a man is about as messy a process as I've encountered and it cannot be done gracefully. The best favor anyone who understands the great hoax can do is dirty your perceptions and force you to act for yourself. Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson.
Watch The Graduate.
M's Musings on THE GRADUATE
The Graduate. Dir. Mike Nichols. Screenplay by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry. Based on the novel by Charles Webb. Ft. Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft and Katharine Ross. MGM, 1967.
T, this movie isn't funny. In fact, it is nothing short of disturbing. It is uncanny to watch a young Dustin Hoffman pontificating and bemoaning the "next steps" after graduation that parallels a constant struggle in my own life. While I have chosen to keep moving forward instead of stagnating in limbo, graduate school doesn't always feel like as a big a step forward as I would like.
Watching this movie brought up a lot of bad emotions about what happens to people who thrive in school, but have no life skills. How does being a track star translate into becoming a successful, banker, butcher, baker or candlestick maker? It doesn't. The sad reality of this movie is that it reminds viewers that you can be good at some things and still fail at life.
That said, I think that the example of this particular kid is not at all the same as many who struggle with the beginnings of life after college. Self-definition is hard in this new, liminal phase, where you go from the top to the bottom. All bets are off, and there are no more rules and restrictions that limit you. You are free to do as you please, and the worst part is, no one is really judging or, really cares (except your parents and your ex-mistress).
First of all... If I ever found out T., or anyone else I dated... or was friends with... or had some kind of important personal relationship with... had some kind of strange sexual relationship with my mother, I wouldn't try to get with them. That is disturbing and didn't make any sense. Besides, what is the appeal of this guy anyway? He is a depressed lazy but who doesn't rise to the challenge of life at all. Instead of making hard decisions and progressing forward, he just stagnates in la-la land while his family and their friends shake their head in disgust. We thought you were so much better than this.
The girlfriend is perhaps the worst character. With her glassy eyes and her inability to stand up for herself, she lets the world tell her what to do and who to be. If a man shows her attention, even if that man has already slept with her mother, that is enough. And, after she runs away, after being married to another man, her new boyfriend won't even look at her? Why? Because she is a disgrace like him. There is no love or chemistry lost between them.
Benjamin had nothing else to do, so he decided to become a stalker instead of volunteering, looking for a job or picking a graduate school. Get it together, you strange freak show.
This whole film was absurd and frustrating. I hated it. I hated Benjamin, his mother-lover, and his girlfriend. It was all too much. Yucko.
T, this movie isn't funny. In fact, it is nothing short of disturbing. It is uncanny to watch a young Dustin Hoffman pontificating and bemoaning the "next steps" after graduation that parallels a constant struggle in my own life. While I have chosen to keep moving forward instead of stagnating in limbo, graduate school doesn't always feel like as a big a step forward as I would like.
Watching this movie brought up a lot of bad emotions about what happens to people who thrive in school, but have no life skills. How does being a track star translate into becoming a successful, banker, butcher, baker or candlestick maker? It doesn't. The sad reality of this movie is that it reminds viewers that you can be good at some things and still fail at life.
That said, I think that the example of this particular kid is not at all the same as many who struggle with the beginnings of life after college. Self-definition is hard in this new, liminal phase, where you go from the top to the bottom. All bets are off, and there are no more rules and restrictions that limit you. You are free to do as you please, and the worst part is, no one is really judging or, really cares (except your parents and your ex-mistress).
First of all... If I ever found out T., or anyone else I dated... or was friends with... or had some kind of important personal relationship with... had some kind of strange sexual relationship with my mother, I wouldn't try to get with them. That is disturbing and didn't make any sense. Besides, what is the appeal of this guy anyway? He is a depressed lazy but who doesn't rise to the challenge of life at all. Instead of making hard decisions and progressing forward, he just stagnates in la-la land while his family and their friends shake their head in disgust. We thought you were so much better than this.
The girlfriend is perhaps the worst character. With her glassy eyes and her inability to stand up for herself, she lets the world tell her what to do and who to be. If a man shows her attention, even if that man has already slept with her mother, that is enough. And, after she runs away, after being married to another man, her new boyfriend won't even look at her? Why? Because she is a disgrace like him. There is no love or chemistry lost between them.
Benjamin had nothing else to do, so he decided to become a stalker instead of volunteering, looking for a job or picking a graduate school. Get it together, you strange freak show.
This whole film was absurd and frustrating. I hated it. I hated Benjamin, his mother-lover, and his girlfriend. It was all too much. Yucko.
Monday, October 11, 2010
T's Take on THE TOWN
You know what's awesome?
Violence.
There were a bunch of gunfights in this movie, really more than was necessary, but whatever. There were dudes with huge guns shooting at cops. And the cops? They were like, shooting back.
There's really not much to say here. If you saw the trailer, you saw the movie; the plotline is about as formulaic and baseline as it gets. The characters are exactly as deep as they need to be, which is to say that they aren't, and by the time you've met all of them it's not hard to tell who's going to make it out alive.
You mean the underdeveloped nobody third-wheel driver dies? And so does the bad guy? And so does the third-strike "I'm never going back to jail!" hardass with a penchant for unnecesary cruelty? There are no twists, per say, but again, that isn't to say that any were needed. This thing could only have gone one way, and though I was never surprised, I can't say I was ever disappointed either. The odds are good that if you find yourself walking into a theater for The Town you know exactly what you're there for, and you're going to get it, too.
Ben Affleck is what he is. It's like when I first saw Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity and thought to myself, "Wow, this guy can actually carry a serious role." I guess I had that moment with Ben in The Town, but in a different sense. His character is this beaten down ex-drunk fuckup with nothing to live for and a bunch of leftover friends/acquaintences that really do him more harm than good. He's got this really convincing washed-out unable-to-care disconnect that I as the viewer couldn't help but sympathize with. He's got this depressing 'poor-me' attitude as somebody who goes through life totally unloved because he doesn't love himself. Which suits him.
I guess what I'm saying is that Ben Affleck has found his place in my life, finally, and I could watch him go uncared for all day. For the first time he subtracted nothing from the work overall and fit in nicely with his surroundings.
Watch The Town.
M's Musings on THE TOWN
The Town. Dir. Ben Affleck. Screenplay by Peter Craig, Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard. Based on the novel by Chuck Hogan. Ft. Ben Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner and Blake Lively. Warner Bros, 2010.
T. and I thought we'd celebrate Thanksgiving by going to the movies last night. When we arrived at the theatre, we realized we didn't know what any of the movies were. Strangely, there were no posters, and no real advertisements, so we ended up piecing together what each of the movies were about in a haphazard way. We asked a group of stoned teenagers. This was their recommendation.
When chatting with them, we realized we knew exactly what movie this was. In fact, T. mentioned that he had been waiting for this movie for months. Who knew! I came in with no expectations, beyond the fact that this was a "heist film".
I was pleasantly shocked at how much I enjoyed this film. Ben Affleck was bang on, stealing my heart while still making me want to avoid him. I loved how "all in the family" this story was. Each of the crew members were tied to each other by family, sex, money and drugs. As a result, the individual actions or desires of one member are subject to the interpretation and punishment by the group.
For the bank manager, I thought that she was kind of sympathetic, but very quick to fall for Ben. The tatooed dream boat with an honest blue collar job, is a thrill for the "toonie" yuppie who otherwise spends all her free time helping the innocent and gardening for the community. The extremes between the idyllic woman and the criminal with a heart of gold were perhaps a little too extreme. If they developed her character a bit more, gave her something besides her "sunny days", I think she would have been more likeable.
I found the search for the water very moving. I felt completely caught up with her steps as she relived it. I can only imagine how the trauma of such an experience could affect a person longterm.
T. taught me about the "death by cop" suicide attempts of the various crew members, which I thought made sense. If you only have two options, life in a maximum security prison or death, I think I would make a last stand, too.
I found it did really validate the crew's actions and emphasize their humanity. That, mixed with an unsympathetic cop who also went home to "nuke his dinner" really disrupted the binary of good/evil which made the movie more interesting. The bad guys were "punished", but the system itself was put into question. I liked that.
Overall, I did find that the movie was too violent. I found it occasionally shocking, but that probably was mostly to do with the fact that the characters were relatively well developed before they were killed. This wasn't a random massacre, but a carefully executed game of cat and mouse by men on both sides of the law.
It was also interesting that they chose to throw in a sister/lover character to act as a foil to the bank manager. She was disregarded by Ben Affleck, but at the same time, they did make a point of showing the two of them having some kind of weird pity fuck earlier in the film.
I thought this was an interesting, fun and powerful film. Usually heist films have way less heart. Good job, Ben Affleck. I think we may need to consider expanding our repertoire to include more of your films.
T. and I thought we'd celebrate Thanksgiving by going to the movies last night. When we arrived at the theatre, we realized we didn't know what any of the movies were. Strangely, there were no posters, and no real advertisements, so we ended up piecing together what each of the movies were about in a haphazard way. We asked a group of stoned teenagers. This was their recommendation.
When chatting with them, we realized we knew exactly what movie this was. In fact, T. mentioned that he had been waiting for this movie for months. Who knew! I came in with no expectations, beyond the fact that this was a "heist film".
I was pleasantly shocked at how much I enjoyed this film. Ben Affleck was bang on, stealing my heart while still making me want to avoid him. I loved how "all in the family" this story was. Each of the crew members were tied to each other by family, sex, money and drugs. As a result, the individual actions or desires of one member are subject to the interpretation and punishment by the group.
For the bank manager, I thought that she was kind of sympathetic, but very quick to fall for Ben. The tatooed dream boat with an honest blue collar job, is a thrill for the "toonie" yuppie who otherwise spends all her free time helping the innocent and gardening for the community. The extremes between the idyllic woman and the criminal with a heart of gold were perhaps a little too extreme. If they developed her character a bit more, gave her something besides her "sunny days", I think she would have been more likeable.
I found the search for the water very moving. I felt completely caught up with her steps as she relived it. I can only imagine how the trauma of such an experience could affect a person longterm.
T. taught me about the "death by cop" suicide attempts of the various crew members, which I thought made sense. If you only have two options, life in a maximum security prison or death, I think I would make a last stand, too.
I found it did really validate the crew's actions and emphasize their humanity. That, mixed with an unsympathetic cop who also went home to "nuke his dinner" really disrupted the binary of good/evil which made the movie more interesting. The bad guys were "punished", but the system itself was put into question. I liked that.
Overall, I did find that the movie was too violent. I found it occasionally shocking, but that probably was mostly to do with the fact that the characters were relatively well developed before they were killed. This wasn't a random massacre, but a carefully executed game of cat and mouse by men on both sides of the law.
It was also interesting that they chose to throw in a sister/lover character to act as a foil to the bank manager. She was disregarded by Ben Affleck, but at the same time, they did make a point of showing the two of them having some kind of weird pity fuck earlier in the film.
I thought this was an interesting, fun and powerful film. Usually heist films have way less heart. Good job, Ben Affleck. I think we may need to consider expanding our repertoire to include more of your films.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
T's Take on DICK TRACY
What can I say? Total cartoony awesome fun. I like Dick Tracy like I like iced cream. This was one of those movies my childhood best friend had over at his house, one of those trusty standbys like ET or Terminator 2 for the weekends it was too hot to want to do anything.
Knowing what we all know know about Warren Beatty, all I see is oldtimers sex when I look at that man. It makes the movie hard to enjoy. But there's a new joke or twist every fifteen seconds, so every fleeting moment of Beatty-awkward are swiftly washed away with capers and gunfights and wind-blown yellow jackets.
The kid is cute, the love interest is sweet, and the seductive dancing girl is adequately enthralling. Al Pacino gets let off his chain in this movie to completely freak out as an over-embellished mobster. It's wicked. He's exactly as intense as he was in Dogday Afternoon. It's like if they got him to play Donald Duck. Every scene of his basically stands in for a montoge. We see him telling people that he's the boss. He tells people he's taking over this town, and there's not enough room for both of us, and balah-blah-blah... It's all so reasssuringly padded you can't not have fun.
We see here frequent peril and heroism, Dick Tracy always with his ethics on his sleeve navigates the tretcherous undercurrent of crime with a kind of insatiable vigor that I'm thinking about Warren Beatty having sex again. Ugh.
I didn't used to have this problem, but it's still not a deal breaker. The color is fun and the characters are priceless and everything sort of bleeds together into this trance-inspiring picturesque collage of simplified justice and old-school storytelling.
It watches like a comic book, which shouldn't be surprising because it's based on one. I like comic books and I like Dick Tracy.
Watch Dick Tracy.
Knowing what we all know know about Warren Beatty, all I see is oldtimers sex when I look at that man. It makes the movie hard to enjoy. But there's a new joke or twist every fifteen seconds, so every fleeting moment of Beatty-awkward are swiftly washed away with capers and gunfights and wind-blown yellow jackets.
The kid is cute, the love interest is sweet, and the seductive dancing girl is adequately enthralling. Al Pacino gets let off his chain in this movie to completely freak out as an over-embellished mobster. It's wicked. He's exactly as intense as he was in Dogday Afternoon. It's like if they got him to play Donald Duck. Every scene of his basically stands in for a montoge. We see him telling people that he's the boss. He tells people he's taking over this town, and there's not enough room for both of us, and balah-blah-blah... It's all so reasssuringly padded you can't not have fun.
We see here frequent peril and heroism, Dick Tracy always with his ethics on his sleeve navigates the tretcherous undercurrent of crime with a kind of insatiable vigor that I'm thinking about Warren Beatty having sex again. Ugh.
I didn't used to have this problem, but it's still not a deal breaker. The color is fun and the characters are priceless and everything sort of bleeds together into this trance-inspiring picturesque collage of simplified justice and old-school storytelling.
It watches like a comic book, which shouldn't be surprising because it's based on one. I like comic books and I like Dick Tracy.
Watch Dick Tracy.
M's Musings on DICK TRACY
Dick Tracy. Dir. Warren Beatty. Written by Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr. Based on characters by Chester Gould. Ft. Warren Beatty, Charlie Korsmo, Glenne Headly, and Madonna. Disney, 1990.
I liked all the colours. And I liked the faces. They were very bizarre and unbelievable in a very convincing sort of way. This movie IS comical, but at the same time, it tried to really stay grounded in its own universe. I liked the consistent association the characters have with styles and colours in determining their identities. I liked the over-the-top dress, particularly because none of it was questioned.
On some of the exterior shots, I was very much reminded of Halifax with the bright coloured and individuated houses and businesses. I think the world should always be painted in that kind of technicolour. I find it very expressive and inviting. It appeals to my senses to see so much loveliness captured on screen.
My biggest complaint about the film was about Tess Trueheart. Though she did, indeed have a true heart, I hated that she never confronted Dick Tracy about cheating on her. I mean, I know that Warren Beatty liked to screw women, but a sweet girl like Tess shouldn't have to stand for it. It broke my heart to watch her stand by her man... I know he really and truly loves her... But that isn't good enough if he can't keep his tongue in his mouth and his dick in his (yellow) pants.
The kid was the best character. I liked him best as the kid, before he became Dick Tracy Jr.
I like the characterization of the different villians, particularly Al Pacino which looked like a caricatured version of himself. In many ways he is playing a pretty normal role for himself, but because of all the extra makeup and what not, it seems newer and more unique.
I definitely ennjoyed this movie from beginning to end. It is light, easy, and has a fun, full cast.
And, I didn't want to tell T. this, but, I am positive that I've seen it as a child! A happy memory, indeed.
I liked all the colours. And I liked the faces. They were very bizarre and unbelievable in a very convincing sort of way. This movie IS comical, but at the same time, it tried to really stay grounded in its own universe. I liked the consistent association the characters have with styles and colours in determining their identities. I liked the over-the-top dress, particularly because none of it was questioned.
On some of the exterior shots, I was very much reminded of Halifax with the bright coloured and individuated houses and businesses. I think the world should always be painted in that kind of technicolour. I find it very expressive and inviting. It appeals to my senses to see so much loveliness captured on screen.
My biggest complaint about the film was about Tess Trueheart. Though she did, indeed have a true heart, I hated that she never confronted Dick Tracy about cheating on her. I mean, I know that Warren Beatty liked to screw women, but a sweet girl like Tess shouldn't have to stand for it. It broke my heart to watch her stand by her man... I know he really and truly loves her... But that isn't good enough if he can't keep his tongue in his mouth and his dick in his (yellow) pants.
The kid was the best character. I liked him best as the kid, before he became Dick Tracy Jr.
I like the characterization of the different villians, particularly Al Pacino which looked like a caricatured version of himself. In many ways he is playing a pretty normal role for himself, but because of all the extra makeup and what not, it seems newer and more unique.
I definitely ennjoyed this movie from beginning to end. It is light, easy, and has a fun, full cast.
And, I didn't want to tell T. this, but, I am positive that I've seen it as a child! A happy memory, indeed.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
T's Take on SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE
Annie: Why do they call him a widower? Why don't they say he was widowered?
M: We're supposed to believe this woman is a writer?
Annie: Is this crazy?
M: ... Yeah. 'Cause you're a crazy stalker lady.
M: I wonder if Rosie O'Donnel and Meg Ryan boned off stage.
Annie: I don't deserve you.
T: You're right.
Annie suddenly and flippantly hands Walter back his Grandmother's wedding ring.
M: ... so, enjoy your four-hundred dollar bottle of Dom Perion you just ordered for me, which I accepted knowing full well I'd break your heart a minute later. Oh, and your incredibly expensive reserved and pre-paid romantic weekend you planned for me... that you now have to sit through alone. I guess you're just too lame for me.
M: Dear Walter: You suck. Maybe if you were a person anyone might have cared about you.
You know what I want to see?
For every bleeding heart pathetic romance movie I have to endure, I want to see an inverse version directly after wherein every event and line of dialogue takes place exactly as it did in the original, but with the genders of each character reversed. That, to me, would be enthralling. The gender roles and steriotypes emphasized in this movie were sickening beyond explanation. I want a reversal.
I want to see the bizarro Sleepless in Seattle where a woman professes her trouble in coping with the loss of her husband on a radio talk show, and a male reporter is so taken with her monologue that he destroys his life in pursuit of her. He weeps openly while ritualistically re-watching a fifties movie to hone his Ultimate Fantasy while drafting desperate, painfully self-exposing love letters to the fantasy of a woman he mostly invented in his head. I want to see him calling all over a state on the opposite side of the country under professional pretense to determine her name, address and living conditions, commissioning a "AAA" Private Detective agency to anonymously investigate this woman he heard on the radio once for four minutes.
Calling her house and hanging up without leaving a message... Allowing the pursuit of her to overwhelm his thoughts to the almost complete exclusion of every other person and aspect of his life... I want to see the blockbuster romantic instant classic where this man uses work resources to peruse his would-be widowed love's husband's obituary and death certificate. Can you see this playing out? Him lurking at her home, watching them from bridges, lingering to view her playing with her child from afar without ever attempting contact... Could we love a man who stands in the street interrupting traffic with a silent, dumbfounded open-mouthed gawk after tracking her across her city only to leave without comment upon being spotted?
I want to see the male lead who, upon finding a child's backpack he's never seen before picks it up and rifles through the contents on reflex.
Everything I mentioned above actually happened in the movie, but it's all okay, because she stalked him for love. This lady was creepy and pathetic.
Several of her actions throughout the course of the movie raised red flags for me. In my youth I seriously considered a career in law enforcement, and explored the possibility through post-secondary education as well as the perusal of a few textbooks outside the curriculum. Richard N. Kocsis, PhD authored a text often used in criminology classes called Criminal Profiling: Principles and Practice, and the chapters on dissociative disorders and tendency of the modern serial sexual offender to obsess over the recreation of deep-seated fantasies were (in particular) quite reminiscent of our female antagonist. Annie emulated several of these tendencies, enough that I move to suggest her as a high-risk threat as an inverted and brutally aggressive repeat sexual predator.
The good doctor writes: "Fantasy proneness is a personality characteristic entailing a persistent pattern of deep involvement in fantasy and imagination. The fantasyprone individual spends much of his or her waking life in fantasy, and the imaginative involvement is so intense that the experience of fantasy is extremely vivid and realistic."
She and her friend rewatched the same movie enough that she lost touch with the reality of her impending marriage, to her own dismay. She thought she had this fairytale with her current fiance, but over time he cannot live up to her expectations. Upon hearing Tom Hanks over the radio, she sees her chance to re-enact her favorite scene in An Affair to Remember - something she cannot do with her soon-to-be husband, as they are on good terms and no barriers currently exist between them. The fantasy she thought she was living out is overshadowed by a newer potential one.
"Certainly the modus operandi of serial offenses may adapt and change as the offender becomes more experienced, but according to Douglas and Munn, the fantasy scenario that drives these behaviors is static and remains constant in each offense. In effect, the underlying fantasy represents the serial offender’s signature. Stoller and Drukteinis have both speculated that the psychological function of this fantasy is to convert memories of childhood trauma into a sense of control and mastery over life."
Take this near-frantic conversation:
Jessica: Then what?
Annie: I left, obviously.
Jessica: You were in the street?
Annie: It was like walking around naked.
Jessica: I love that dream.
Annie: This was more humiliating.
Jessica: But he saw you. You were face to face. He said hello.
Annie: And all I could say was hello.
Jessica: It's a sign.
Annie: It's a sign that I've watched this movie too many times. From the minute I heard that program I've been a complete jerk.
Jessica: You don't know who she was.
Annie: I have a picture of her. The detective sent it to me. See. that's what she looks like.
Jessica: It's her back.
Annie: It's her and he's crazy about her.
The relationship between Annie and Jessica is worrisome to say the least. This kind of enabling virtually breeds psychosis and repeat offense. It reeks of psycho-dependency and predatorial tendency. Doctor Kocsis has quite a bit to say about offenders in positions similar to Annie...
"Offender characteristics for the predator pattern accord well with the existing literature. Offenders are typically older, mobile, living with a partner... offenders in the predator pattern exhibit a high tendency to operate with an accomplice. Here a significant quandary arises as to how this result may relate to Hickey’s distinction between team offenders, who are described as being driven by different psychological imperatives, influences, and considerations, [than] the subcategory of male solo killers (also known as lust killers)."
Take, for example, this chilling exchange of dialogue:
Annie: I watched them [Sam and his child] play at the beach.
Jessica: Did you talk to him?
Annie: Couldn't do it.
Annie: ... How did I get here?
Jessica: You lied and got on a plane.
Annie: I'm going to talk to him tomorrow.
Jessica: Okay. Good. Goodbye.
Annie: Is this crazy?
Jessica: No, that's the weirdest part
Annie: Thank you. I love you.
Jessica: I love you, too.
It is worth noting that Annie barely exchanges three sentences with Sam throughout the entire movie. She is hesitant to shatter her existing image of him with a potentially mundane real-life encounter.
"The posited role of fantasy in serial crime also helps explain one of the distinctive features of such crime: the choice of strangers as victims. In most conventional murders, rapes, or arsons some form of prior relationship will exist between the victim and offender, and this relationship provides a key motive for the offense. In serial sexual crimes, however, the motive is the underlying fantasy with which the offender is preoccupied. A prior relationship between the victim and the offender therefore need not, and typically does not, exist. What is important is the role that the victim represents in the offender’s fantasy."
Annie cruises along the highway singing along to the radio and jabbering angrily to herself in bouts of agitation and intense, longing interest while Sam's pseudo-interview takes place. She completely disassociates from what she's doing while he speaks, and cries to herself in an entranced, glassy-eyed state of regression.
"The serial offender’s deep absorption in fantasy signals the significance of a personality dimension closely related to fantasy proneness: dissociative tendencies. Dissociation entails a separation between cognitive processes that ordinarily would be linked. In the dissociative state of highway hypnosis, for example, a driver may be deeply engrossed in thought and seemingly oblivious to road conditions, yet the car remains on the road; here, the cognitive processes involved in navigating the road are temporarily separated or dissociated from the conscious involvement in thought. The driver still knows what he or she is doing with the car and still owns the responsibility for the driving behavior."
Filth like Sleepless in Seattle should not be advocated or even produced in the horrifyingly invasive and violent climate of today's society. Encouraging desperate women to engage in this kind of all-encompassing obsession can only lead to the victimization of men everywhere and destabilization of humanity's ultimate goal of equality. It does not do to send the message that fixation on movie-borne impracticalities unnecessarily hurt real-life interactions within a movie that promotes fixation on movie-borne impracticalities unnecessarily. Treating men as objects or vehicles for the fulfillment of women's wholly artificial, unrealistic and engineered fantasies does violence to the notion of human connection overall.
Don't watch Sleepless in Seattle.
M: We're supposed to believe this woman is a writer?
Annie: Is this crazy?
M: ... Yeah. 'Cause you're a crazy stalker lady.
M: I wonder if Rosie O'Donnel and Meg Ryan boned off stage.
Annie: I don't deserve you.
T: You're right.
Annie suddenly and flippantly hands Walter back his Grandmother's wedding ring.
M: ... so, enjoy your four-hundred dollar bottle of Dom Perion you just ordered for me, which I accepted knowing full well I'd break your heart a minute later. Oh, and your incredibly expensive reserved and pre-paid romantic weekend you planned for me... that you now have to sit through alone. I guess you're just too lame for me.
M: Dear Walter: You suck. Maybe if you were a person anyone might have cared about you.
You know what I want to see?
For every bleeding heart pathetic romance movie I have to endure, I want to see an inverse version directly after wherein every event and line of dialogue takes place exactly as it did in the original, but with the genders of each character reversed. That, to me, would be enthralling. The gender roles and steriotypes emphasized in this movie were sickening beyond explanation. I want a reversal.
I want to see the bizarro Sleepless in Seattle where a woman professes her trouble in coping with the loss of her husband on a radio talk show, and a male reporter is so taken with her monologue that he destroys his life in pursuit of her. He weeps openly while ritualistically re-watching a fifties movie to hone his Ultimate Fantasy while drafting desperate, painfully self-exposing love letters to the fantasy of a woman he mostly invented in his head. I want to see him calling all over a state on the opposite side of the country under professional pretense to determine her name, address and living conditions, commissioning a "AAA" Private Detective agency to anonymously investigate this woman he heard on the radio once for four minutes.
Calling her house and hanging up without leaving a message... Allowing the pursuit of her to overwhelm his thoughts to the almost complete exclusion of every other person and aspect of his life... I want to see the blockbuster romantic instant classic where this man uses work resources to peruse his would-be widowed love's husband's obituary and death certificate. Can you see this playing out? Him lurking at her home, watching them from bridges, lingering to view her playing with her child from afar without ever attempting contact... Could we love a man who stands in the street interrupting traffic with a silent, dumbfounded open-mouthed gawk after tracking her across her city only to leave without comment upon being spotted?
I want to see the male lead who, upon finding a child's backpack he's never seen before picks it up and rifles through the contents on reflex.
Everything I mentioned above actually happened in the movie, but it's all okay, because she stalked him for love. This lady was creepy and pathetic.
Several of her actions throughout the course of the movie raised red flags for me. In my youth I seriously considered a career in law enforcement, and explored the possibility through post-secondary education as well as the perusal of a few textbooks outside the curriculum. Richard N. Kocsis, PhD authored a text often used in criminology classes called Criminal Profiling: Principles and Practice, and the chapters on dissociative disorders and tendency of the modern serial sexual offender to obsess over the recreation of deep-seated fantasies were (in particular) quite reminiscent of our female antagonist. Annie emulated several of these tendencies, enough that I move to suggest her as a high-risk threat as an inverted and brutally aggressive repeat sexual predator.
The good doctor writes: "Fantasy proneness is a personality characteristic entailing a persistent pattern of deep involvement in fantasy and imagination. The fantasyprone individual spends much of his or her waking life in fantasy, and the imaginative involvement is so intense that the experience of fantasy is extremely vivid and realistic."
She and her friend rewatched the same movie enough that she lost touch with the reality of her impending marriage, to her own dismay. She thought she had this fairytale with her current fiance, but over time he cannot live up to her expectations. Upon hearing Tom Hanks over the radio, she sees her chance to re-enact her favorite scene in An Affair to Remember - something she cannot do with her soon-to-be husband, as they are on good terms and no barriers currently exist between them. The fantasy she thought she was living out is overshadowed by a newer potential one.
"Certainly the modus operandi of serial offenses may adapt and change as the offender becomes more experienced, but according to Douglas and Munn, the fantasy scenario that drives these behaviors is static and remains constant in each offense. In effect, the underlying fantasy represents the serial offender’s signature. Stoller and Drukteinis have both speculated that the psychological function of this fantasy is to convert memories of childhood trauma into a sense of control and mastery over life."
Take this near-frantic conversation:
Jessica: Then what?
Annie: I left, obviously.
Jessica: You were in the street?
Annie: It was like walking around naked.
Jessica: I love that dream.
Annie: This was more humiliating.
Jessica: But he saw you. You were face to face. He said hello.
Annie: And all I could say was hello.
Jessica: It's a sign.
Annie: It's a sign that I've watched this movie too many times. From the minute I heard that program I've been a complete jerk.
Jessica: You don't know who she was.
Annie: I have a picture of her. The detective sent it to me. See. that's what she looks like.
Jessica: It's her back.
Annie: It's her and he's crazy about her.
The relationship between Annie and Jessica is worrisome to say the least. This kind of enabling virtually breeds psychosis and repeat offense. It reeks of psycho-dependency and predatorial tendency. Doctor Kocsis has quite a bit to say about offenders in positions similar to Annie...
"Offender characteristics for the predator pattern accord well with the existing literature. Offenders are typically older, mobile, living with a partner... offenders in the predator pattern exhibit a high tendency to operate with an accomplice. Here a significant quandary arises as to how this result may relate to Hickey’s distinction between team offenders, who are described as being driven by different psychological imperatives, influences, and considerations, [than] the subcategory of male solo killers (also known as lust killers)."
Take, for example, this chilling exchange of dialogue:
Annie: I watched them [Sam and his child] play at the beach.
Jessica: Did you talk to him?
Annie: Couldn't do it.
Annie: ... How did I get here?
Jessica: You lied and got on a plane.
Annie: I'm going to talk to him tomorrow.
Jessica: Okay. Good. Goodbye.
Annie: Is this crazy?
Jessica: No, that's the weirdest part
Annie: Thank you. I love you.
Jessica: I love you, too.
It is worth noting that Annie barely exchanges three sentences with Sam throughout the entire movie. She is hesitant to shatter her existing image of him with a potentially mundane real-life encounter.
"The posited role of fantasy in serial crime also helps explain one of the distinctive features of such crime: the choice of strangers as victims. In most conventional murders, rapes, or arsons some form of prior relationship will exist between the victim and offender, and this relationship provides a key motive for the offense. In serial sexual crimes, however, the motive is the underlying fantasy with which the offender is preoccupied. A prior relationship between the victim and the offender therefore need not, and typically does not, exist. What is important is the role that the victim represents in the offender’s fantasy."
Annie cruises along the highway singing along to the radio and jabbering angrily to herself in bouts of agitation and intense, longing interest while Sam's pseudo-interview takes place. She completely disassociates from what she's doing while he speaks, and cries to herself in an entranced, glassy-eyed state of regression.
"The serial offender’s deep absorption in fantasy signals the significance of a personality dimension closely related to fantasy proneness: dissociative tendencies. Dissociation entails a separation between cognitive processes that ordinarily would be linked. In the dissociative state of highway hypnosis, for example, a driver may be deeply engrossed in thought and seemingly oblivious to road conditions, yet the car remains on the road; here, the cognitive processes involved in navigating the road are temporarily separated or dissociated from the conscious involvement in thought. The driver still knows what he or she is doing with the car and still owns the responsibility for the driving behavior."
Filth like Sleepless in Seattle should not be advocated or even produced in the horrifyingly invasive and violent climate of today's society. Encouraging desperate women to engage in this kind of all-encompassing obsession can only lead to the victimization of men everywhere and destabilization of humanity's ultimate goal of equality. It does not do to send the message that fixation on movie-borne impracticalities unnecessarily hurt real-life interactions within a movie that promotes fixation on movie-borne impracticalities unnecessarily. Treating men as objects or vehicles for the fulfillment of women's wholly artificial, unrealistic and engineered fantasies does violence to the notion of human connection overall.
Don't watch Sleepless in Seattle.
M's Musings on SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE
Sleepless in Seattle. Written and directed by Nora Ephron. Based on a story by Jeff Arch. Ft. Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan and Ross Malinger. Sony, 1993.
I needed a mental break today, but I just couldn't give it to myself. Thankfully, T. insisted. He put me to bed and made me watch this. I have complained much of late over the whole romantic comedy genre. These are movies that are neither funny nor romantic. Just a whole lot of Tom Cruise being crazy, and me wishing that we hadn't shopped around in this genre.
Sleepless in Seattle worked better than everything we have been watching, I think, because it really didn't try to be funny. This isn't a romantic comedy. It's just a drama that tries to be romantic... That said, it isn't really romantic at all, either. In fact, the two actors share about two minutes of screen time, combined, in the whole film. They could very well have filmed together for one week, and that's it. Double billing extraordinaire.
I liked seeing women be emotional on screen and have men make fun of them. I don't know if that is terrible and politically incorrect, but its true. It's a giant reality check. If T. doesn't remind me that I am getting too emotional, I let it take me over completely, and am pretty much the worst person to be around on the entire planet.
Now: Movies as escapism which set unrealistic expectations. Yes, the women of the 90s are screaming, "rah! rah! down with love and romance!" but secretly hope they can find their Cary Grants and Humphrey Bogarts. This is what I have to say: if it feels good do it, even if you are going to get made fun of mercilessly. If you want to watch these movies and go somewhere else, live the dream (if that's your dream), then more power to you. Especially if it helps you grow and be creative. Just, above all things, make sure it really makes you feel good, and is giving you energy instead of taking it away.
I hate Meg Ryan. I don't know why. There is just something about her. I think she is completely unconvincing in most roles, and that's why I can never manage to really believe she is capable of the strong emotions she professes. I don't know what I want, but she isn't it. Believe the things you say, and I think it comes across better on screen.
Tom Hanks, you are sweet. I like you as a dad, though not as well as I liked you as a kid. This seems like a relatively recent follow-up movie (five years... so only sort of kind of), and I thought you were continuing to endear yourselves in the hearts of women. The scene with your dead wife was a bit creepy, and I loved the awkward scene where he calls for a date.
Overall, this helped shake some stress away, and didn't make my day any worse. I am still hoping to find a better film in this genre, but I am also looking forward to hunting around in another area all together. I wonder what treasures T. will come up with next.
For a different take on this film, check it out as a horror movie. Pretty accurate. Tell me what you think of this 60 seconds of cheekiness.
I needed a mental break today, but I just couldn't give it to myself. Thankfully, T. insisted. He put me to bed and made me watch this. I have complained much of late over the whole romantic comedy genre. These are movies that are neither funny nor romantic. Just a whole lot of Tom Cruise being crazy, and me wishing that we hadn't shopped around in this genre.
Sleepless in Seattle worked better than everything we have been watching, I think, because it really didn't try to be funny. This isn't a romantic comedy. It's just a drama that tries to be romantic... That said, it isn't really romantic at all, either. In fact, the two actors share about two minutes of screen time, combined, in the whole film. They could very well have filmed together for one week, and that's it. Double billing extraordinaire.
I liked seeing women be emotional on screen and have men make fun of them. I don't know if that is terrible and politically incorrect, but its true. It's a giant reality check. If T. doesn't remind me that I am getting too emotional, I let it take me over completely, and am pretty much the worst person to be around on the entire planet.
Now: Movies as escapism which set unrealistic expectations. Yes, the women of the 90s are screaming, "rah! rah! down with love and romance!" but secretly hope they can find their Cary Grants and Humphrey Bogarts. This is what I have to say: if it feels good do it, even if you are going to get made fun of mercilessly. If you want to watch these movies and go somewhere else, live the dream (if that's your dream), then more power to you. Especially if it helps you grow and be creative. Just, above all things, make sure it really makes you feel good, and is giving you energy instead of taking it away.
I hate Meg Ryan. I don't know why. There is just something about her. I think she is completely unconvincing in most roles, and that's why I can never manage to really believe she is capable of the strong emotions she professes. I don't know what I want, but she isn't it. Believe the things you say, and I think it comes across better on screen.
Tom Hanks, you are sweet. I like you as a dad, though not as well as I liked you as a kid. This seems like a relatively recent follow-up movie (five years... so only sort of kind of), and I thought you were continuing to endear yourselves in the hearts of women. The scene with your dead wife was a bit creepy, and I loved the awkward scene where he calls for a date.
Overall, this helped shake some stress away, and didn't make my day any worse. I am still hoping to find a better film in this genre, but I am also looking forward to hunting around in another area all together. I wonder what treasures T. will come up with next.
For a different take on this film, check it out as a horror movie. Pretty accurate. Tell me what you think of this 60 seconds of cheekiness.
T's Take on The African Queen
Bogart is waist-deep in water, covered in leeches and dragging The African Queen boat through mucky African canal.
M: (imitating Bogart) You did this to us you stupid whore!!
M: What have they been eating all this time? I never see them eat.
M: I hate this movie.
M: What happens when you put one unlikable character and another unlikable character in a boat in Africa and film it for two hours? Not a lot.
M: I hope they die. I hope that's how this movie ends. With death.
Rain falls on a gorgeous autumn day. This coincides with Katharine Hepburn's constant citation of celestial help. We are lead to believe this is a sign.
M: God helps them take the boat out into the water and... Kill Germans...? I thought thou shalt not kill.
Remember the classic, fluid chemistry between Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn in the groundbreaking work The African Queen?
Me either.
Again, this was a movie I hadn't seen that came highly recommended by a good friend, so I am remiss in being too blunt. However, my investigative integrity is ever on the line, and it is with great remorse and sympathy that I must do justice to not only my blog but the greater art of objective, constructive criticism as it exists today as a medium.
This movie made me want to hate-vomit on Katharine Hepburn's bony malformed stupid fucking head. She reminded me of that classic Fight Club quote:
"Chloe looked the way Meryl Streep's skeleton would look if you made it smile and walk around the party being extra nice to everybody."
Her character was blank and two-dimensional and represented a list of fundamental things that I hate about Western Civilization and its overly-simplistic reoccurring ideals. How do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways.
1) The word "Missionary" feels distasteful in my mouth. The movie opens with Miss Streep pounding on a piano and howling church hymns to a room full of Africans wearing feathers and brightly colored warpaint. I don't know if any of this was researched, but even if it was, what a clusterfuck of racism and religious intolerance.
2) Hepburn's character (Rose) sat at the back of the boat with a stiff upper lip and an intolerant eye for nine-tenths of the movie, dictating action to her companion Charlie and scowling when his actions did not live up to her expectations. Her constant grating questions and demands made her an enemy of mine within minutes.
3) She poured out his liquor, emotionally manipulated him with guilt, complacency and malicious silence, demanded he sacrifice his life for a cause he didn't feel at all invested in, and repeatedly took advantage of his good nature. She gave no regard to the fact that if he hadn't saved and housed her (and for all intents and purposes been a complete gentleman, to the best of his ability) she'd likely have been savaged and murdered by Nazis and African child-soldier conscripts on a raised farm in the middle of a war zone. I believe she gave him a solitary "Thank you, Mr. Allnut." before returning to her bible.
4) I understand the theoretical selfless heroism intrinsic to making somebody else rig up a boat with explosives and ram it into a German warship, but that boat was chock full of innocent African abductees who'd just lost their homes (and likely families) to brutal incineration in classic Hitlerian horror-tactics. The Nazis obliterated whatever villages and outposts they found in short order like a hurricane of spiteful anti-Semitic violence.
This brings up the notion of "I was just following orders" as being the most deplorable statement a human being could make, but for these civilians to take it upon themselves to incur what looked to me like a potential 90% plus fatality rate for unwilling African draftees within days of their induction to a cause they likely didn't understand and would likely willingly overthrow given some flicker of hope... It was too much. This gunboat Louisa seems better suited to a small team of British SAS operatives undertaking some kind of black-bag conversion team than napalm. Rose didn't care. She saw things her way and any objection was pure anecdote.
I could go on, but whatever. Charlie was fine, I guess. His helpful can-do attitude made him ingratiating enough, but I wish he'd done more than nod along with whatever half-baked thrills and soap-box aspirations she dreamed up along the way. His big goofy horse-toothed smile and schoolboyish respectful disposition felt true to a good ol' Canadian, to the extent that I could see an adaptable, kindly young man of his nature flourishing in Africa at that time - as much as he needed to get by, anyway, which was his only ultimate aspiration.
After a jarring start the movie floundered for two hours and finally came to a semi-dramatic conclusion in which our heroes were predictably saved by fate and Jesus forever. The Louisa blew up and the bad or at least less desirable people were dispatched and captured by the Proper Authorities (Rose herself, by-and-large) and everything ended as well as it ever could have.
Don't watch The African Queen.
M: (imitating Bogart) You did this to us you stupid whore!!
M: What have they been eating all this time? I never see them eat.
M: I hate this movie.
M: What happens when you put one unlikable character and another unlikable character in a boat in Africa and film it for two hours? Not a lot.
M: I hope they die. I hope that's how this movie ends. With death.
Rain falls on a gorgeous autumn day. This coincides with Katharine Hepburn's constant citation of celestial help. We are lead to believe this is a sign.
M: God helps them take the boat out into the water and... Kill Germans...? I thought thou shalt not kill.
Remember the classic, fluid chemistry between Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn in the groundbreaking work The African Queen?
Me either.
Again, this was a movie I hadn't seen that came highly recommended by a good friend, so I am remiss in being too blunt. However, my investigative integrity is ever on the line, and it is with great remorse and sympathy that I must do justice to not only my blog but the greater art of objective, constructive criticism as it exists today as a medium.
This movie made me want to hate-vomit on Katharine Hepburn's bony malformed stupid fucking head. She reminded me of that classic Fight Club quote:
"Chloe looked the way Meryl Streep's skeleton would look if you made it smile and walk around the party being extra nice to everybody."
Her character was blank and two-dimensional and represented a list of fundamental things that I hate about Western Civilization and its overly-simplistic reoccurring ideals. How do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways.
1) The word "Missionary" feels distasteful in my mouth. The movie opens with Miss Streep pounding on a piano and howling church hymns to a room full of Africans wearing feathers and brightly colored warpaint. I don't know if any of this was researched, but even if it was, what a clusterfuck of racism and religious intolerance.
2) Hepburn's character (Rose) sat at the back of the boat with a stiff upper lip and an intolerant eye for nine-tenths of the movie, dictating action to her companion Charlie and scowling when his actions did not live up to her expectations. Her constant grating questions and demands made her an enemy of mine within minutes.
3) She poured out his liquor, emotionally manipulated him with guilt, complacency and malicious silence, demanded he sacrifice his life for a cause he didn't feel at all invested in, and repeatedly took advantage of his good nature. She gave no regard to the fact that if he hadn't saved and housed her (and for all intents and purposes been a complete gentleman, to the best of his ability) she'd likely have been savaged and murdered by Nazis and African child-soldier conscripts on a raised farm in the middle of a war zone. I believe she gave him a solitary "Thank you, Mr. Allnut." before returning to her bible.
4) I understand the theoretical selfless heroism intrinsic to making somebody else rig up a boat with explosives and ram it into a German warship, but that boat was chock full of innocent African abductees who'd just lost their homes (and likely families) to brutal incineration in classic Hitlerian horror-tactics. The Nazis obliterated whatever villages and outposts they found in short order like a hurricane of spiteful anti-Semitic violence.
This brings up the notion of "I was just following orders" as being the most deplorable statement a human being could make, but for these civilians to take it upon themselves to incur what looked to me like a potential 90% plus fatality rate for unwilling African draftees within days of their induction to a cause they likely didn't understand and would likely willingly overthrow given some flicker of hope... It was too much. This gunboat Louisa seems better suited to a small team of British SAS operatives undertaking some kind of black-bag conversion team than napalm. Rose didn't care. She saw things her way and any objection was pure anecdote.
I could go on, but whatever. Charlie was fine, I guess. His helpful can-do attitude made him ingratiating enough, but I wish he'd done more than nod along with whatever half-baked thrills and soap-box aspirations she dreamed up along the way. His big goofy horse-toothed smile and schoolboyish respectful disposition felt true to a good ol' Canadian, to the extent that I could see an adaptable, kindly young man of his nature flourishing in Africa at that time - as much as he needed to get by, anyway, which was his only ultimate aspiration.
After a jarring start the movie floundered for two hours and finally came to a semi-dramatic conclusion in which our heroes were predictably saved by fate and Jesus forever. The Louisa blew up and the bad or at least less desirable people were dispatched and captured by the Proper Authorities (Rose herself, by-and-large) and everything ended as well as it ever could have.
Don't watch The African Queen.
M's Musings on The African Queen
The African Queen. Dir. John Huston. Based on the novel by C.S. Forester. Screenplay by James Agee, John Huston, John Collier, and Peter Viertel. Ft. Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. CBS/Fox, 1951.
Admittedly, I was excited to see this movie because it was starring big name actors from the 50s. It turned out that I wasn't ready for a big ol'dose of colonialism and a lack of chemistry between the two big players, Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. I found Katharine Hepburn completely unlikeable, and not at all interested in doing anything but boss around a man she saw to be her economic and moral inferior for most of the film. She may have been dependent on him for her own well being, but she was quick to show that she did not like him, would actively and maliciously work against him, and that, at the end of the day, would prefer to die than to listen to his advice about the inadvisability of their adventure. The way she referred to him dismissively by his last name made my skin crawl.
On the other side of the boat, we have Humphrey Bogart. Equally unlikeable, as both an overly submissive and drunken buffoon. He is completely bewitched by the power Hepburn is producing, and figures that it is his place to do as she says to protect himself (and his rum).
The blossoming love story I didn't buy. Nor did I buy their death-defying journey. It was hard to create a sense of urgency when each of the shots was... more of them on the boat.
I did appreciate Bogart's highly unlikely ingenuity. His ability to come through on every unrealistic demand that Hepburn placed on him was astounding. I don't know why he bothered.
It has taken me over a week to review this film, because I frankly have been avoiding it. I am not sure what to say, except that I really didn't like this.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
T's Take on HOWL
Allen Ginsberg was a genius and an a source of great personal inspiration. I'm sensing a short review here, but I'll try to leave myself uncolored by devotion.
James Franco was an at least effective choice for Ginsberg, but within his first few appearances on screen I was seeing the Actor instead of Ginsberg himself. There are few performances indeed where I feel an actor has overprepared, but the timing and pauses were so carefully rehearsed I could hear the clicking and whirring of his mechanical process. I think Mr. Franco's shortcoming is a result of total comprehension as to what it was he was trying to recreate and the forces that would inevitably be working against him in this specific production - or none at all, and he really was just some prettyboy dolt with less talent than enthusiasm. His effort to hit the mark, in some scenes, translated to visible strain. The actor's head popped up above his role several times in fact, and I found him uncomfortable with the homosexually themed segments which did violence to the work overall.
The court scenes were completely one-sided and goofy in their simplicity. It felt like the movie was building up to a conflict that never happened and wasn't ever supposed to. Nobody cared, it didn't matter, and it was impossible to believe in. Which was ironic, because it was (or should have been) the most important part of the movie.
Well, no. The poem itself was and should have been the most important part, and the writing/directing team Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman did a wonderful job of interlacing that at least throughout the work. Anybody who approached the movie knowing full well who this man was and what the poem was all about had heard the thing before, and those who didn't likely wouldn't have been satisfied with a twenty-minute opening, four-pages of shakily imitated spoken word with no context and too many questions to answer at the outset.
One can be sure that the animated sequences are likely to be the most controversial aspect, currently and in retrospect. The problem with any kind of computerized recreation at all (short of a seventy-million dollar budget) is that within six months it will always look insincere and laughable and blocky and might as well have been done with painted cardboard. Which would have been a far more enveloping aesthetic, as a matter of fact, but no less: I was satisfied with the work I was shown in this regard. They chose a medium and ran with it. I can respect that, and in doing so they managed to illustrate the meat of the thing with more clarity than I think anyone ever has or will try to. It was a good mix of literal translation and soaring abstract that added more than it took away. What else can you do during a monologue? I would have been infinitely less impressed with mute scenes of Franco's Ginsberg waltzing down the street looking winsome and disaffected, or still more handicam shots of the actor reading aloud in some candlelit auditorium flophouse. Certainly not more courtroom footage. These people did a good job utilizing the five or six backdrops they had at their disposal, whatever that means.
All in all I would watch it again. It lends credibility to the beast itself and overall does not mishandle the subject material. It is something I would recommend to a friend, and so I will to you.
Watch Howl.
James Franco was an at least effective choice for Ginsberg, but within his first few appearances on screen I was seeing the Actor instead of Ginsberg himself. There are few performances indeed where I feel an actor has overprepared, but the timing and pauses were so carefully rehearsed I could hear the clicking and whirring of his mechanical process. I think Mr. Franco's shortcoming is a result of total comprehension as to what it was he was trying to recreate and the forces that would inevitably be working against him in this specific production - or none at all, and he really was just some prettyboy dolt with less talent than enthusiasm. His effort to hit the mark, in some scenes, translated to visible strain. The actor's head popped up above his role several times in fact, and I found him uncomfortable with the homosexually themed segments which did violence to the work overall.
The court scenes were completely one-sided and goofy in their simplicity. It felt like the movie was building up to a conflict that never happened and wasn't ever supposed to. Nobody cared, it didn't matter, and it was impossible to believe in. Which was ironic, because it was (or should have been) the most important part of the movie.
Well, no. The poem itself was and should have been the most important part, and the writing/directing team Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman did a wonderful job of interlacing that at least throughout the work. Anybody who approached the movie knowing full well who this man was and what the poem was all about had heard the thing before, and those who didn't likely wouldn't have been satisfied with a twenty-minute opening, four-pages of shakily imitated spoken word with no context and too many questions to answer at the outset.
One can be sure that the animated sequences are likely to be the most controversial aspect, currently and in retrospect. The problem with any kind of computerized recreation at all (short of a seventy-million dollar budget) is that within six months it will always look insincere and laughable and blocky and might as well have been done with painted cardboard. Which would have been a far more enveloping aesthetic, as a matter of fact, but no less: I was satisfied with the work I was shown in this regard. They chose a medium and ran with it. I can respect that, and in doing so they managed to illustrate the meat of the thing with more clarity than I think anyone ever has or will try to. It was a good mix of literal translation and soaring abstract that added more than it took away. What else can you do during a monologue? I would have been infinitely less impressed with mute scenes of Franco's Ginsberg waltzing down the street looking winsome and disaffected, or still more handicam shots of the actor reading aloud in some candlelit auditorium flophouse. Certainly not more courtroom footage. These people did a good job utilizing the five or six backdrops they had at their disposal, whatever that means.
All in all I would watch it again. It lends credibility to the beast itself and overall does not mishandle the subject material. It is something I would recommend to a friend, and so I will to you.
Watch Howl.
M's Musings on HOWL
Howl. Written and directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. Based on the poem by Allen Ginsberg. Ft. James Franco. Werc Werk Works, 2010.
T. and I checked out the Atlantic Film Festival on Friday night, only managing to make it to one show during the whole week plus of festival. We may have only been here for a month, but seriously... We should have tried a little harder. If this film was a testament to the excellent, high-calibre films being featured over the last week, then we really missed out.
This film, which was equal parts obscenity trial, staged interview, poetry reading and computer generated artistic rendering, was a fun and interesting way to connect to Allen Ginsberg and his poetry. While I would argue that some of these sequences were better than others, I liked the pastiche approach and the various interpretations it allowed the poem to operate within simultaneously.
Each of the four parts was shot in a different way, and from a cinematic perspective, I must say I was most drawn to the "documentary style" of the interview with Ginsberg. James Franco managed to support an entire movie where he was the only central, consistent figure. Pretty bad ass, if you ask me. I completely bought that Allen Ginsberg was griping to a journalist in the wake of the obscenity trial he was not a part of.
While I liked the poetry reading sections in black and white, the audience reactions seemed really forced. Would this have been shocking? Ho-hum? Something in between. The clapping and laughter occasionally made me think more of a comedy club then a poetry reading. I felt like the audience of hipsters was titillated, but not truly engaged. Maybe I am just reading too much into it.
In the court room, which was filmed just like any court-type drama, we have very eloquent lawyers giving speeches and attempting to answer bizarre questions. What makes a piece of work literature? What is artistic merit, and how do we determine it? Questions for all the ages, to be sure. I thought the feel-good style of pitting the "bad lawyer" with the prudish witnesses against the "likeable, cares about literature lawyer" with the deep, more thought provoking witnesses almost seemed too extreme. That said, if the reactions really were that polarized, it makes sense. That is the nature of a court case, I would assume.
Also, for the record, I bet those beautiful speeches weren't just from the heart. I bet they had copious notes, if not a full speech for their final statement. Seriously. You can't just pull that kind of thing out of the air.
The visualizations were very interesting, tumbling and bizarre. I found it of note, in a film that frankly deals with issues of "deviant" notions of sexuality for the time period, that the majority of the sexuality being portrayed was so vanilla. Homosexuality was dealt with frankly by parts of the film, but shirked it in other moments, which I thought kind of muddled the message.
For example, here are two photos of Allen with his partner... Only one of these moments is recreated in the film. I bet you can guess which one.
I thought they could have pushed the envelope even further. But then, the visualizations were entirely interpretive, so really, they could have been whatever the CG guys wanted them to be. One thing I know for certain: the flaccid penises were of a generous size.
I liked that the images were constantly in motion, moving and changing shape and scope as the poem was being read. I didn't always know what to do with what I saw, but that didn't invalidate it for me in any way.
Why does an animal howl? Is it an expression of pain or triumph? In titling his poem Howl, I think the answer needs to be somewhere in between. And that's kind of what I thought about this movie. It wasn't universally celebratory, but I'm glad I saw it.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
T's Take on JERRY MAGUIRE
Jerry Maguire himself was meant to be an uber dreamboat in this classic nineties romantic drama about a man who turns his life around upon realizing his place in the world isn't fulfilling, and sacrifices everything to become the man he always wanted to be.
Hm.
The adventure Jerry Maguire brings us along for is, admittedly, sweet and compelling. The message itself, however, rings insinscere in some aspects and leaves the viewer with a bad taste in their mouthes. The guy just wants to do the right thing, and I can respect that in theory, but a few things immediately occured to me upon rewatching this movie with M:
1: If being a sportsagent is so completely unsatisfactory, why would he continue to do it? It is this point in particular that makes much of the movie's message feel twisted and not altogether fully formed. An ethical sports agent? You're in the wrong boat, kid. Watching Jerry swim upstream in a corporate mold that didn't want him felt unnecessarily tragic. I didn't like watching this aspect of the movie, and the nobility to be found in Jerry's 'I did it my way' floundering style came across as a little more pessimistic than likely intended. I would have liked to see him take his education and experience into a position paralell to but unconnceted with bleeding sports teams out of as much money as humanly possible for self-righteous assholes who functionally contribute little to society besides distraction and dream fodder.
2: Most people don't care about sports. Basing so much of the movie around sports themselves confused me, what with the movie being about honesty and integrity and the evolution of one's conscience. The sports world is, as the movie shows us at nauseam, a completely backward franchise worshiping dollars over the health and stability of not only the players but virtually every human facet of the Great Production itself. There is absolutely no good in catering to the breathless wait for injury or next massive impact between helpless dreamers who beg and scrape for deals with corporate Goliaths, which was absolutely the state of things then and even moreso now. The kind of people who watch football are largely uninterested in the trials of someone like Jerry, and the people who are interested in Jerry could not care less about football.
3. Cuba Gooding's character was completely unlikable in virtually every scene. Jerry gives him this advice in one of the few genuine exchanges between them (which is to say that Jerry and Rod's relationship is almost exclusively predicated on Jerry doing his best to suffer through Rod's incessant yammering and spin their dismal situation into something positive):
"Alright. Here's why you don't have your ten million dollars yet. You are a paycheck player. You play with your head. Not your heart. In your personal life? (points) Heart. But when you get on the field you're a businessman. It's wide-angle lenses and who fucked you over and who owes you for it. That's not what inspires people."
You're exactly right, Jerry. That's not at all what inspires people, and I couldn't have summed up Rod Tidwell any better than that. Shortly thereafter we see Rod get hurt, which is sad, but accentuated mortality doesn't necessarily equate to excess of 'heart' in my book. This character experienced absolutely no transformation or progress and wound up with more work than he probably should have gotten.
For a movie that points out people who live their lives without consideration for philosophical attainment and work their jobs in a completely mindless and selfish manner ultimately resulting the creation of armies of unfulfilled sycophants... I don't know. It certainly doesn't mind sport stars who rake in millions for playing a game well when people like Jerry and Dorothy who spend months and years killing themselves begging, borrowing and stealing for said sports stars have difficulty making ends meet. The inherant 'failure' of being initially offered one-point-seven million for three years as a signing contract (that's five-hundred and sixty-six thousand and change per year) is so crushing to the star himself that he almost admits would-be defeat until his wife begs him out of it. This is a man who majored in marketing and played in the NFL. He couldn't get a good job? I don't beleive that, nor do feel an ounce of sympathy for him.
4: The movie itself mentions racial stereotypes as being unfair and arbitrary while consistently cashing in on them. Race is always a hot-button topic, but all the gold-chain loud-mouthed sassy attitude slangin' was vaguely offensive and insulting. It made me hate Rod Tidwell even more, and the effort in this direction just reminded me I was watching a MOVIE that deals with ISSUES and HAS A HEART. I don't care about your agenda, Jerrry Maguire, I want to be entertained, and the best way to entertain me is with compelling people who have unique stories and an interesting point of view. It was a series of cheap shots, and much of these scenes centered around low-hanging fruit I find distasteful
Overall the relationship between Jerry and Dorothy was trivial and situationally convenient which belies the attempted message that if you're true to yourself you really can have it all. The kid was cute, but then what movie kids aren't, the story was reasonably believable but uninteresting and conflicted, and overall the true-to-life feel Jerry Maguire angles for is largely exhausting and disheartening.
Don't watch Jerry Maguire.
Hm.
The adventure Jerry Maguire brings us along for is, admittedly, sweet and compelling. The message itself, however, rings insinscere in some aspects and leaves the viewer with a bad taste in their mouthes. The guy just wants to do the right thing, and I can respect that in theory, but a few things immediately occured to me upon rewatching this movie with M:
1: If being a sportsagent is so completely unsatisfactory, why would he continue to do it? It is this point in particular that makes much of the movie's message feel twisted and not altogether fully formed. An ethical sports agent? You're in the wrong boat, kid. Watching Jerry swim upstream in a corporate mold that didn't want him felt unnecessarily tragic. I didn't like watching this aspect of the movie, and the nobility to be found in Jerry's 'I did it my way' floundering style came across as a little more pessimistic than likely intended. I would have liked to see him take his education and experience into a position paralell to but unconnceted with bleeding sports teams out of as much money as humanly possible for self-righteous assholes who functionally contribute little to society besides distraction and dream fodder.
2: Most people don't care about sports. Basing so much of the movie around sports themselves confused me, what with the movie being about honesty and integrity and the evolution of one's conscience. The sports world is, as the movie shows us at nauseam, a completely backward franchise worshiping dollars over the health and stability of not only the players but virtually every human facet of the Great Production itself. There is absolutely no good in catering to the breathless wait for injury or next massive impact between helpless dreamers who beg and scrape for deals with corporate Goliaths, which was absolutely the state of things then and even moreso now. The kind of people who watch football are largely uninterested in the trials of someone like Jerry, and the people who are interested in Jerry could not care less about football.
3. Cuba Gooding's character was completely unlikable in virtually every scene. Jerry gives him this advice in one of the few genuine exchanges between them (which is to say that Jerry and Rod's relationship is almost exclusively predicated on Jerry doing his best to suffer through Rod's incessant yammering and spin their dismal situation into something positive):
"Alright. Here's why you don't have your ten million dollars yet. You are a paycheck player. You play with your head. Not your heart. In your personal life? (points) Heart. But when you get on the field you're a businessman. It's wide-angle lenses and who fucked you over and who owes you for it. That's not what inspires people."
You're exactly right, Jerry. That's not at all what inspires people, and I couldn't have summed up Rod Tidwell any better than that. Shortly thereafter we see Rod get hurt, which is sad, but accentuated mortality doesn't necessarily equate to excess of 'heart' in my book. This character experienced absolutely no transformation or progress and wound up with more work than he probably should have gotten.
For a movie that points out people who live their lives without consideration for philosophical attainment and work their jobs in a completely mindless and selfish manner ultimately resulting the creation of armies of unfulfilled sycophants... I don't know. It certainly doesn't mind sport stars who rake in millions for playing a game well when people like Jerry and Dorothy who spend months and years killing themselves begging, borrowing and stealing for said sports stars have difficulty making ends meet. The inherant 'failure' of being initially offered one-point-seven million for three years as a signing contract (that's five-hundred and sixty-six thousand and change per year) is so crushing to the star himself that he almost admits would-be defeat until his wife begs him out of it. This is a man who majored in marketing and played in the NFL. He couldn't get a good job? I don't beleive that, nor do feel an ounce of sympathy for him.
4: The movie itself mentions racial stereotypes as being unfair and arbitrary while consistently cashing in on them. Race is always a hot-button topic, but all the gold-chain loud-mouthed sassy attitude slangin' was vaguely offensive and insulting. It made me hate Rod Tidwell even more, and the effort in this direction just reminded me I was watching a MOVIE that deals with ISSUES and HAS A HEART. I don't care about your agenda, Jerrry Maguire, I want to be entertained, and the best way to entertain me is with compelling people who have unique stories and an interesting point of view. It was a series of cheap shots, and much of these scenes centered around low-hanging fruit I find distasteful
Overall the relationship between Jerry and Dorothy was trivial and situationally convenient which belies the attempted message that if you're true to yourself you really can have it all. The kid was cute, but then what movie kids aren't, the story was reasonably believable but uninteresting and conflicted, and overall the true-to-life feel Jerry Maguire angles for is largely exhausting and disheartening.
Don't watch Jerry Maguire.
M's Musings on JERRY MAGUIRE
Jerry Maguire. Written and directed by Cameron Crowe. Ft. Tom Cruise, Renee Zellweger, Cuba Gooding Jr. Sony, 1996.
You know what, I actually had kind of high expectations for this film. I am not usually so swayed, but enough people have talked about this as some ideal romantic comedy, that I kind of thought I was going to be swept away by its brilliance.
Suffice it to say, I wasn't. Not only is the profession of sports agent really difficult to relate to as an audience member, but Tom Cruise is a super weird guy at that. I wanted him to SHOW ME THE MONEY, but instead, all he did was SHOW ME THE CRAZY. I didn't need any more crazy in my day, thank you very much.
Tom Cruise is infinitely unlikeable. He doesn't treat women nicely, in fact, his character has no problem with the fact that he is incapable of intimacy. He runs around all day, screaming and wheeling and dealing, and then comes home and bangs some broad to get out his ya yas. Very respectful, Jerry Maguire. I am definitely fantasizing about THAT tonight.
Barf.
I didn't even feel compassionate toward Renee Zellweger's character. She was starry eyed, overly emotional, and easily manipulated. She is by no means independent, though before she hooks up with Jerry she certainly is able to take care of her own. I think one thing this film did do a good job of expressing was the desire to find a father for one's children over a partner for yourself. The fact that Jerry bonds with the child is important, and the only real source of joy in the whole movie.
That little kid *almost* made this film worth it for me.
Next time, I am not going to be persuaded by promises of romance. Having seen very few romantic comedies, I am hoping that there are some out there that really do tug at my heart strings and make me love again! As of this moment, all these films make me do is think... oh god, please don't tell me anyone is looking at this film as a romantic ideal.
I am so glad I have T. Not only is he sweet, charming and good looking... but he'll never be a sleazeball like Jerry Maguire.
Dear Readers, if you know of a happy romantic movie, send it our way. I am going to suggest skipping the genre all together if we get any more duds.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
T's Take on THE APARTMENT
Not to sound like a completely snoody film buff, but I'm becoming a huge Jack Lemmon fan. The man's timing is impeccable. He plays the sweet moron and conniving neer-do-well perfectly, often both at the same time as a matter of fact, and if you keep your eye on the guy he's always doing something sharp in the background that adds to the scene. I like that about him. I like that I'm never waiting for the funny, or plodding through dialogue with him on our way to the punchline. Indeed, thank God for Jack, because without him I expect this movie would have been swiftly forgotten not long after its release.
This movie came recommended wholeheartedly by a dear friend who was no doubt anxious to see the review, so I find myself at an impasse. My natural tendency toward Authentic Material and instinctive high sense of order completely override gratitude in essentially every situation, naturally, but constructive criticism is never out of reach and I have no real reason to be nasty.
The pacing was my first issue. This was no so much a plotted storyline as it was a rambling tale. It came across in much the way you might imagine your grandfather telling you about this apartment he once had. I could understand if that was the intention, but I'm not sure that it was. It is in attempting to tell a story honestly, the way things likely would happen, that most movies find disagreement with me. I live real life every single day. I am virtually soaked in reality, wrought of its charms and malice minute by minute. I do not move to my telelvision or movies or video games to experience more of it; I want fantasy. This was indeed a fantastical story, but the story matter itself is not on trial here - really more the narrative.
Narrative is more than script. It's the way the medium communicates itself as a whole. That's what I missed here: a cohesive entity unraveling before me with every resource it had at its command. Psycho did that. It was geared for relaying a perplexing story. Not just the set design and lighting and camera work, but also in editorial. I walked out of The Apartment feeling as though the creative team could have cut out about half an hour to forty-five minutes of what we saw without doing violence to the thing as a whole. Much of Baxter's puttering around in his apartment I could have done without, as well as the poor-me characterization of Miss Kubelik. I understood within fifteen minutes of the movie that this guy was loaning out his apartment to departmental-types out of obligation. For the next hour and a half we set up the confluence of events that finds an attempted suicide in Baxter's bed. Why?
The movie was very funny, and very touching, but ther was all this gravity I wasn't expecting. All these people were so exhausted and lost. Even Baxter himself was completely unlikable for nintey-five percent of the movie despite his dithering demeanor and entertaining predicament. Even Fran, though gorgeous and charming, spent so much time pandering after Sheldrake that she lost me early into the flick. I just couldn't care about any of them. Maybe it was a critique on the changing values of the time or a reflection of what big business valued in an office setting juxstaposed against what fulfillment and happiness actually means... I don't know. It didn't speak to me.
But all in all, I'm glad I watched it. Those characters I didn't like? They filled the screen with personality and color such as is too oft uncommon in a black and white. Without realizing it, by the time we hit that two hour mark I'd come to know many of the characters in word and deed. I felt included in the office gossip and real context for the small-world feel I recognized right off the bat with these people. The story is fantastical and tragic and funny and at some times dark, very human overall, and I'd recommend it to anyone. I guess the lighthearted initial feel prepped me for a comedy and delivered a sobering story of lost love and publicly private indecency. If Mad Men stole anything from anywhere, I wouldn't be shocked to find this classic as their case study.
Watch The Apartment.
This movie came recommended wholeheartedly by a dear friend who was no doubt anxious to see the review, so I find myself at an impasse. My natural tendency toward Authentic Material and instinctive high sense of order completely override gratitude in essentially every situation, naturally, but constructive criticism is never out of reach and I have no real reason to be nasty.
The pacing was my first issue. This was no so much a plotted storyline as it was a rambling tale. It came across in much the way you might imagine your grandfather telling you about this apartment he once had. I could understand if that was the intention, but I'm not sure that it was. It is in attempting to tell a story honestly, the way things likely would happen, that most movies find disagreement with me. I live real life every single day. I am virtually soaked in reality, wrought of its charms and malice minute by minute. I do not move to my telelvision or movies or video games to experience more of it; I want fantasy. This was indeed a fantastical story, but the story matter itself is not on trial here - really more the narrative.
Narrative is more than script. It's the way the medium communicates itself as a whole. That's what I missed here: a cohesive entity unraveling before me with every resource it had at its command. Psycho did that. It was geared for relaying a perplexing story. Not just the set design and lighting and camera work, but also in editorial. I walked out of The Apartment feeling as though the creative team could have cut out about half an hour to forty-five minutes of what we saw without doing violence to the thing as a whole. Much of Baxter's puttering around in his apartment I could have done without, as well as the poor-me characterization of Miss Kubelik. I understood within fifteen minutes of the movie that this guy was loaning out his apartment to departmental-types out of obligation. For the next hour and a half we set up the confluence of events that finds an attempted suicide in Baxter's bed. Why?
The movie was very funny, and very touching, but ther was all this gravity I wasn't expecting. All these people were so exhausted and lost. Even Baxter himself was completely unlikable for nintey-five percent of the movie despite his dithering demeanor and entertaining predicament. Even Fran, though gorgeous and charming, spent so much time pandering after Sheldrake that she lost me early into the flick. I just couldn't care about any of them. Maybe it was a critique on the changing values of the time or a reflection of what big business valued in an office setting juxstaposed against what fulfillment and happiness actually means... I don't know. It didn't speak to me.
But all in all, I'm glad I watched it. Those characters I didn't like? They filled the screen with personality and color such as is too oft uncommon in a black and white. Without realizing it, by the time we hit that two hour mark I'd come to know many of the characters in word and deed. I felt included in the office gossip and real context for the small-world feel I recognized right off the bat with these people. The story is fantastical and tragic and funny and at some times dark, very human overall, and I'd recommend it to anyone. I guess the lighthearted initial feel prepped me for a comedy and delivered a sobering story of lost love and publicly private indecency. If Mad Men stole anything from anywhere, I wouldn't be shocked to find this classic as their case study.
Watch The Apartment.
M's Musings on THE APARTMENT
The Apartment. Dir. Billy Wilder. Screenplay by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond. Ft. Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, and Fred MacMurray. MGM, 1960.
I know that going in, I really wasn't sure what to expect. Given the title, I first thought it was going to be some kind of psycho thriller. Then, Trev told me it was supposedly a comedy about a guy who had a super sweet apartment that he uses to move up the corporate ladder. Then, I discovered that it was the follow up movie to Some Like it Hot. So, I figured, ha ha! It will be a funny comedy. Then there was Jack Lemmon and I said, alright, let's do this thing!
During the first hour or so, I couldn't help but make connections between this film and Babyface. I kept thinking about how men and women must manipulate the same structures to try to succeed in the corporate world. Sad but true, poor Baxter loses autonomy over his place of residence in exchange for a small boost up the corporate ladder. But, as he moves up, the game stays the same, and he continues to lose more and more.
Enter Fran, the lovely elevator operator. Baxter's innocent love interest. Also, unbeknownst to poor Bax, mistress to Baxter's boss. This is the moment when we know all will be right in the world, as Bax can save the day, get the girl, and get his apartment back.
But this is not exactly how the story unfolds. Having a depressed Baxter bring home a woman on Christmas Eve only to find Fran having attempted suicide and dying is not exactly a fun romp through the corporate ladder.
This movie was dark. And long! I mean, this girl's suicide is blamed on Baxter, is literally cast off by the superior, and is left for Baxter to deal with. And, Fran is still alive, so he has to deal with nursing her while everyone thinks he is the scum of the earth who drove her to do this.
Seriously depressing. I'm not sure if I was in too sombre a mood to appreciate the humour of this movie, because I took it seriously, and thought it was a really bleak take on society. Its not surprising to see how the attitudes propagated there helped create a generation of people like us, looking around, wondering why the economy, etc, is crumbling at our feet.
As much as I liked Fran in the first few scenes, her devotion to her lover seemed unusual after the suicide attempt. I mean seriously... what does this guy possibly having going for him? He has some money, sure, but you returned his "payment", and now are just stuck with his less than stellar personality.
Watching Baxter act as a bachelor was the highlight for me. When he strains his spaghetti with a tennis racket, it made my day. Here is a guy who is just trying to do things right, and is just beaten to shit for it over and over. I wonder if he even got to enjoy his dinner?
The ending of the movie seemed forced given all the horrible stuff that transpired throughout. Though in some respects I got what I wanted, I left this film feeling very unsatisfied. I think this film didn't fit comfortably into a genre, and that's ultimately what got me. It wasn't a comedy or a tragedy. It was just a drama that leaned in both directions at different times.
I think I would have been happier with one or the other.
I know that going in, I really wasn't sure what to expect. Given the title, I first thought it was going to be some kind of psycho thriller. Then, Trev told me it was supposedly a comedy about a guy who had a super sweet apartment that he uses to move up the corporate ladder. Then, I discovered that it was the follow up movie to Some Like it Hot. So, I figured, ha ha! It will be a funny comedy. Then there was Jack Lemmon and I said, alright, let's do this thing!
During the first hour or so, I couldn't help but make connections between this film and Babyface. I kept thinking about how men and women must manipulate the same structures to try to succeed in the corporate world. Sad but true, poor Baxter loses autonomy over his place of residence in exchange for a small boost up the corporate ladder. But, as he moves up, the game stays the same, and he continues to lose more and more.
Enter Fran, the lovely elevator operator. Baxter's innocent love interest. Also, unbeknownst to poor Bax, mistress to Baxter's boss. This is the moment when we know all will be right in the world, as Bax can save the day, get the girl, and get his apartment back.
But this is not exactly how the story unfolds. Having a depressed Baxter bring home a woman on Christmas Eve only to find Fran having attempted suicide and dying is not exactly a fun romp through the corporate ladder.
This movie was dark. And long! I mean, this girl's suicide is blamed on Baxter, is literally cast off by the superior, and is left for Baxter to deal with. And, Fran is still alive, so he has to deal with nursing her while everyone thinks he is the scum of the earth who drove her to do this.
Seriously depressing. I'm not sure if I was in too sombre a mood to appreciate the humour of this movie, because I took it seriously, and thought it was a really bleak take on society. Its not surprising to see how the attitudes propagated there helped create a generation of people like us, looking around, wondering why the economy, etc, is crumbling at our feet.
As much as I liked Fran in the first few scenes, her devotion to her lover seemed unusual after the suicide attempt. I mean seriously... what does this guy possibly having going for him? He has some money, sure, but you returned his "payment", and now are just stuck with his less than stellar personality.
Watching Baxter act as a bachelor was the highlight for me. When he strains his spaghetti with a tennis racket, it made my day. Here is a guy who is just trying to do things right, and is just beaten to shit for it over and over. I wonder if he even got to enjoy his dinner?
The ending of the movie seemed forced given all the horrible stuff that transpired throughout. Though in some respects I got what I wanted, I left this film feeling very unsatisfied. I think this film didn't fit comfortably into a genre, and that's ultimately what got me. It wasn't a comedy or a tragedy. It was just a drama that leaned in both directions at different times.
I think I would have been happier with one or the other.
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