You're the Man Now Dawg

Entrapment
dir. Jon Amiel, 1999
Seen a couple weeks ago on HBO

I was pretty surprised that I dug this movie, but that probably has more to do with the hour of day when I watched it than anything else. I think for every hour past midnight, expectations are lowered three notches.

The key to my enjoyment of this movie is that cops and robbers are battling over art. Whenever a heist movie involves art rather than money, its charm gets an immediate boost, especially if there are veteran actors involved. Instead of focusing on anything of real value, an art heist movie's elaborate thievery is set up as a means to cure billionaire boredom. I haven't seen any of the Oceans movies, but I imagine their appeal is similar to this smooth ride. Everyone's just out for a stroll, having a good time, dodging lasers, glorifying larceny. Adding to the movie's good nature is the ridiculous countdown-to-the-millenium plot that somehow involves priceless gold masks, the banks of Southeast Asia, and a Buddha man who sells night vision style goggles. In 1999 some people were genuinely freaked out about the millenium bug's capability to bring down civilization. The rest of us knew that it was put to better use in action movies.

However, this is an anonymous studio flick, so the movie's slickness never lets the action get too crazy-fun. I suppose nobody involved wanted to see Sean Connery naked much, so the audience is spared any lame tacked-on romantic tension (there is a sort of romantic getaway at the end, but it could also just be seen as a gesture between two friends). But the filmmakers couldn't just let Catherine Zeta-Jones' derriere go to waste, so there's several semi-erotic scenes cut to soft jazz full of several in-scene dissolves that made me think I was watching something else on HBO several hours after midnight. If the movie had let itself go a little bit more, it might be something worth really watching. Alas, it is resigned to the watchable, forgettable bin, destined to be watched primarily on TBS.

(It occurred to me that this was the movie where Catherine Zeta-Jones made her name. Of course The Mask of Zorro was the movie that established her, but Entrapment was the first movie that she anchored as a box office power. Not that it's very interesting. But I've always been interested in what movies broke which star.)

100 Perfect Reasons To Not Do Anything

The American Film Institute celebrated a tenth anniversary edition of its Top 100 movies list with a TV special this last Thursday, which I forgot to record. D'oh. Maybe it'll be replayed on Bravo or something? Surprisingly, the critical call to arms was fairly muted. The various additions to the list and rearrangement to the rankings led the AFI to credit itself for reigniting the discussion of film history and specifically the film canon--and it certainly did, but mostly about how egregiously bad the list was, which of course meant lots and lots of corrective lists and lists to correct those lists. The last ten years have probably contained more lists than at any time in human history and I'm pretty sure Entertainment Weekly is responsible for at least a quarter of them. Of course, the AFI has done its part, releasing increasingly stupid follow up lists. If the AFI has an ultimate legacy, it will have been to inspire America to organize and compartimentalize itself more carefully. So, the new list has been greeted with a yawn (followed by a groan) and if the AFI was expecting more they have only themselves to blame. But, if Sight and Sound can list every ten years, why not the AFI? And of course, the lists support TV specials which support the AFI which is good organization.

Most of the criticism has inevitably settled on how safe and predictable the list has been. Keith Phipps of the AV Club pretty much sums up that viewpoint.

Sure, most of the movies were good but where was the guiding philosophy? The
films seemed to have been picked because very few could object to the choices.
It was like a list of best ice cream flavors that touched on chocolate, vanilla,
and maybe mint but would never acknowledge anything so off-the-beaten-path as
pistachio, much less New York Superfudge.

But I think if you're going to poll 1,500 people on the best films of all time, then a list like this should be considered safe and predictable. When lists like this come out, they're not really the 100 greatest movies of all time. Such a subjective claim as that only belongs to the individual. The cumulative effect of the voting panel of 1,500 means that these aren't the greatest movies of all time, just the 100 movies generally agreed to be considered the greatest of all time. If a movie were to suddenly pop onto the list I would find the voting suspect and wonder what kind of agendas were behind the voting. For example, the only real out of the blue selection this time was Sophie's Choice, which made me think for a second that it got through because, as with the Oscars, Hollywood tends to reward Holocaust movies. But a look at the rest of the list reveals Schindler's List as the only other Holocaust film on the list. To use another less stereotypical example, I suspect Intolerance was voted in over The Birth of a Nation was a reaction to the latter's blatant racism.

Agendas aren't necessarily bad things. I support every effort to give women filmmakers, minority filmmakers, gay filmmakers, (fill in the blank) filmmakers more of a voice. But gosh darn it, if a list is claiming to be the one hundred greatest films of all time, I want to see what's honestly considered to be the greatest films of all time. A middle of the road list like that is a better representation of today's cinema voice. If anything, a vanilla list like the one's proffered by the AFI can only call more attention to the ignorance of women and minority and (fill in the blank) filmmakers, by people remarking upon their absence.

In any case, if you're going to poll, 1,500 people, you should expect the results to be somewhat middle of the road. But even though this list is pretty middle of the road, I don't really count it to be a pure representation of the top 100 movies. Just as they did in 1998, the AFI has taken upon itself to write off 99% of cinema history and make a ballot of 400 movies. So, this isn't a list of the best movies of all time, it's really a list of the best movies on this list that the AFI has prepared. I'm not positive the list would be that much different if they were to allow people to simply vote for their favorites. Ostensibly this was done for the benefit of the voter, so they wouldn't have to go to the trouble of actually thinking about what their favorite movies are. But since write-in votes can essentially be discounted, the AFI has taken upon itself to write what it deems suitable for voting. And in any case, if the people involved can't take the time to figure out what they're favorite movies are, why should they even be involved in the vote? Wikipedia has an easy comparison chart of the two lists, but I'd like to know what the differences were on the two ballots. The arbitrariness of the list selection is even more obvious when you look at which sequels were selected. All three Lord of the Rings movies were included, but only the third Harry Potter movie was. Also Terminator 2 and Spider-Man 2 were selected over their predecessors, while Raiders of the Lost Ark is the sole Indiana Jones entry. And although Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back were on there, Return of the Jedi was not.

Of course list making and especially ranked list making is an arbitrary process. The new list has twenty-three films that were replaced by new additions. I suspect if everyone were polled again tomorrow, there'd be at least fifteen. So bickering is fun, but unnecessary. Ostensibly, the list is supposed to reflect American films, but it's really a representation of English language movies (lest we leave out The Third Man--oh, wait). I'm glad that the AFI doesn't include foreign language movies because they would just be grossly underrepresented as they are in the Oscars, the movie theaters, and the moviegoing public's minds. But of course, I'm just hypocrising myself right now.

Canons of all kinds are rightfully criticized as racist, sexist, and elitist. But everyone forgets that they are good introductory tools. Let us begin with these films and move onto more interesting ones later. I was just fifteen when the first list came out and it served as a catalyst to many Blockbuster rentals. I've now seen 72 flicks on that list and 75 on the new one. And I think I'll add Intolerance to my Netflix queue.

The White Stripes Strike Again (But not like Casey)

So The Whites Stripes have released the 8th or 9th "long awaited follow-up" album this year, Icky Thump. I can't tell you yet whether its thumpin' or just plain icky because I've only made it five tracks in, which is about as many songs fit on the car ride from the store to my job. So far, thump away Mr. White! The White Stripes are easily the weirdest act to hit the Billboard Top Ten this decade, so it's easy to see them as a fluke act. But they didn't seem so flukey back in '02, when it seemed that The Strokes might actually revolutionize this thing. What happened instead was that the garage rock movement of the early years of decade was just the beginning of what has been a decade long nostalgia trip. Indie rock (with mainstream rock trailing six months behind) has subsequently moved through the decades. Southern Rock, New Wave, Stadium Rock, Giganto-U2 Rock, they've all recieved their share of play. And now even 90s staples like rave music, Brit pop and sludge metal are getting new spins. I don't think the radio could keep up, which is why Nickelback is still on display at a Wal-Mart near you. I think the reason the White Stripes still get attention is because unlike the rest of the nostalgia set, they managed to spin something new out of the past.

Icky Thump has been labelled a "return to roots" album. But every album that follows a band's mid-tempo mellow album is labelled a "back to basics" album (look for that description the next time Wilco releases an album). Icky Thump (or at least the first five songs) actually feels like a complete 180 from Get Behind Me Satan (except for maybe Blue Orchid), but it doesn't feel like too much of a turnaround, in part because you never know where the Stripes are gonna take you with each song, but moreso because the Raconteurs pit stop into mid-tempo riff rock lends a natural Satan-Thump progression.

On their first three albums, the Stripes sounded like they were improvising on the spot. Elephant was an absolutely necessary turn into a more structured sound. Any more albums of 15 plus loose two minute pop truffles would've gone stale. The new sound is a bit of a return to the more playful sound. but it's all filtered through the most production the Stripes have ever had. The album sounds great. It's obvious that the family White has learned more than a thing or two about analog tape over the last couple years. It's hard to notice though because of the music's thunder. The Stripes have basically made their metal album. And that's about as good a combination as anyone has thought of in the last ten years.

Radio Re-Remixed

Idolator pointed me towards an interesting story in the Chicago Reader (I'd point ya to it too, but Blogger's not letting me do links right now for some reason) about a local radio stations decision to play pirated internet leaks of the new White Stripes new album leading to a bitchy phone call from none other than Jack White himself. The comments from Radio station's music director were a sad lament about radio's behind the curve status. I think the most poignant quote from the piece is this.

"Say a record leaks and kids are passing it around on the Internet for two weeks. [Record labels] still want me to talk about the world premiere broadcast I'm gonna do. And you wonder why people listening to the radio don't think of us as a source of new music anymore. They're getting it before we are."

There's been more than a few of these sorts of articles over the past few iPod-ruled years, as the MP3 has very quickly made anachronisms out of the album, radio, and even record labels themselves (everybody clap your hands and say yeah!). But for all the doom and gloom these articles evince at the day the music died, there's a simple question that can put it all into perspective? Do you listen to the radio? According to these articles, the modern music lover doesn't need or want to. They listen to CDs or iTunes or internet radio. If those are the preferred method of listening to new music, then why should anyone care if something they don't need or want to listen to goes under? The only thing I can think of is that, despite it's falling status as the leading source for discovering new music, it is still the leading source for discovering new music. Most people in America didn't hear about Gnarls Barkley from an MP3 blog. Although it sounds silly, even a band like Broken Social Scene probably would have sold quite a few more records if your No. 1 source for new music had played Anthems For a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl a thousand mjavascript:void(0)ore times than they did (which was zero). Even if people don't like the songs on the radio, their incessant repitition at least makes them recognizable to most people. But, as this article makes clear, diversifying playlists just leads to the death knell for radio stations. That's because the only people left listening to the radio are only the most casual of music listeners. Which is why there are so many classic rock stations on your dial.

In any case, the mainstream success of bands should be of the least concern to a music listener. The new Spoon album may or may not crossover to the casual music listener, but if it doesn't that doesn't mean you don't get to listen to Spoon anymore. There is a bit of an incentive for movie lovers to hope their favorite directors score a hit. Movies are so expensive to make that anything that gets their directors to another movie is welcome. But even the most obnoxious, tuneless person can record their ultimate double album on their computer at home and distribute it internationally over the internet. They may not find success, but they can get their music heard. And the impression that most music writers give off is that they don't want their favorite bands to be successful, as any person who has seen their favorite small band succeed only to lose themselves in the mass of backward ball-capped idiots at the next concert.

So there will be no sobbing from me the next I hear of a modern rock radio station folding or a modern hit radio station switching to talk radio. If I don't listen to it, I can't mourn it. I do turn the dial in my car from NPR and the college station occasionally to other formats. And that's fine with me. Cars are already implementing iPod connection slots into their radios. It's only a matter of time before your car will be able to wirelessly connect to your computer and you'll be able to download music directly to your dashboard.

Going Through Films #6

Midnight Cowboy
dir. John Schlesinger, 1969
Seen June 15, 2007 on Pan and Scan DVD unfortunately. My fiance put in the disc and when the dreaded "This film has been modified card came up, I groaned figuring that Netflix had just sent a disc from an early edition DVD that didn't have widescreen which there were a few in the early days. It was only afterward that I discovered that the movie was on a double sided disc, which I haven't seen in a while. Ah, well something for another time.

This movie is a lot more trippy than I remember. I'd say that roughly half the flick is strung out montages. There's lots of neat editing that juxtaposes interesting visuals to represent what it's like to be down and out in Manhattan in the late 60s that probably went right over my fifteen-year-old cow-licked head. What I did remember very well was the relationship between Joe Buck and Rico "Ratso" Rizzo that has to be one of the top ten cinematic male friendships depicted on film. In fact that's probably what Oscar voters remembered back in early 1970 when they were voting for Best Picture of 1969. Even in the 60s and 70s movies like this weren't given Oscars. Except, of course, that it did win the Oscar.
This is famously known as the only X-rated Best Picture winner, although it would be rated R today and I think it actually was rated R upon rerelease. I think what pushed it over the edge back then (or what would push it over in today's thrust-counting MPAA present) was a quick shot in one of the montages of Jon Voigt's legs being spread by what I think was a mob that was going to rape him? I dunno. I couldn't really make out Joe Buck's pre-New York story in all the indirect flashbacks. But I like it better that way. The tone of the flashbacks suggest that Joe Buck had a weird psycho-sexual past that, along with the American cinematic myth of the cowboy (and perhaps early 60's swinging romances like Breakfast at Tiffany's) drove him to hustle his body in New York. Anything more needn't be necessary.

Going Through Movies #5

Cars
dir. John Lasseter, 2006
Seen June 14, 2007 with a bunch of kids moving in and out of the room

I suppose it was only a matter of time before I saw this again with a bunch of squirmy neices and nephews. I'm sure by the end of the year, I'll have seen Shrek 3 four or five times. Hopefully I can trick them to just watch this instead. I remember seeing Cars in the theater with quite a bit of trepidation. NASCAR, Rascal Flatts, and Larry the Cable Guy were just a couple of the signs that pointed to Pixar finally going corporate. Once Sheryl Crow hit the soundtrack, it was beginning to seem that way. But, once the hijinks got moving, Lasseter and company pulled through and gave me the usual good time. Watching it again, I'd still place this near the bottom of the Pixar barrel (which is still a few barrels above Shark Tale). The movie's message is a little more heartwarming, the montages are a little bit sappier, and the celebrity cameos are just a bit more numerous than the Pixar norm (although the lengths Pixar goes to anthropomorphize the cars makes cameos like "Jay Limo" or the Hello Kitty car very strange). One thing I noticed on this watching is Lightning McQueen's punishment of paving the town's main road is an obvious Cool Hand Luke reference. Although this time, Paul Newman and the movie is definitely on the law's side. O! how the rebel has fallen in Hollywood's eyes.

Going Through Movies #4

Black Book
dir. Paul Verhoeven, 2006
Seen June 7, 2007

I thought this was gonna be a holocaust movie, then a back-and-forth power of the wills spy game, and finally I figured out that it really was a "woman in jeopardy" type flick where a woman takes punishment from all angles for multiple hours of plot (Inland Empire, Kill Bill, Lars Von Trier movies). In the jeopardized woman role, Carice von Houten earns all the starmaking talk she's been getting, but I hope she doesn't rush into Hollywood movies too fast because they'd never have such a casual relationship with sex and violence that movies need if only out of respect for the dehumanization war causes in those unfortunate enough to suffer through (those living in America during this war don't count). Dehumanization is the subject at hand with Black book and one of the films strengths is it's refusal to reduce even the Nazi's to simple one dimensional killing machines. Its weakness is that the previeous sentence doesn't apply to every character. As the reveleations pile up in the last half hour or so, I was pretty confused because I never really got a handle on all of the minor individual resistance fighters and nazis who turn out to have actually been this or that. Maybe I'll be luckier on a second viewing. On another note, I kinda wish the movie had gone with the "nazi killers are dorks" thing.

Going Through Films #3

Knocked Up
Dir. Judd Apatow, 2007
Seen June 7, 2007

After not really getting into Old School, Anchorman, and Starsky and Hutch, I was relieved that I really, totally dug The 40-Year-Old Virgin and finally had a movie I could quote freely with folks round town. I even chose Steve Carell for Best Actor that year over Heath Ledger and Phillip Seymour-Hoffman. So Knocked Up was a no-brainer for me. Although when I was watching it I didn't get the feeling that improv was ruining comedy, I did get the feeling that you could stick five guys playing stoners and have them improv in any movie and get a few laughs. I thought in many ways this movie was a bit sloppier than Virgin. Some of the shots didn't quite match up in the editing and there's a montage every twenty minutes or so (the one set to the Bright Eyes song got some unintended laughs at the screening I went to. Just goes to show that Nebraska gets giddy over any connection to our much ignored state). Nevertheless, Knocked Up, has even more heart at its center than The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which had plenty compassion to spare. In nine movies out of ten, the scene where Leslie Mann confronts Paul Rudd on his mysterious disappearances would either be played for cheap laughs or provide a pat conclusion to their troubles. But instead it goes a much more realistic way that lets nobody off the hook. I've heard some wish that Apatow would utilize the camera in a more dynamic fashion, but I kind of like low-key approach for movies like this.

Going Through Films #2

Kill Bill Vols. 1 & 2
Quentin Tarantino, 2003, 2004
June 6, 7

When I saw the Kill Bill duo the first time, it was dazzling, but there seemed to be no reason to slice the film in half. In fact, it seemed better suited to a three hour plus slog, complete with intermission (How come the don't have intermissions anymore? I think people would have a lot less trepidation about three hour movies, if there was a promise of a bathroom break halfway through). But in watching the films on back to back days, there's a definite tone change in the two halves. It's like Quentin put all his uptempo numbers on Side A and left all the ballads for Side B. I always said I wouldn't buy the flicks until the three disc special edition with a cut that merged the two movies comes out. After watching it though (from Netflix, not the store), I don't think that merging the two flicks is necessary. I still think that the movies would be best enjoyed back to back with a ten minute intermission. Even the really superfluous stuff, like Budd getting chewed out by his boss to the theme of demasculization that follows when people settle down (and especially when killers settle down). When Bill chastises the Bride for deciding to settle down, it's easy to imagine Quentin giving the same speech to the cinema as a whole.
Overall, watching this not too long after Grindhouse (although, my attempt to watch Grindhouse again was thwarted when the new 21 and over, beer dealing, old couch lounging State Theater got rid of the flick after just one week, replacing it with Wild Hogs of all things. Apparently, even in the grindhouse theaters, Grindhouse is a flop), Tarantino has pretty much solidified his status as one this generation's top filmmakers. Although it's kind of weird to watch a paean to low-budget sloppy cinema that's very highly budgeted, carefully planned, plotted, and executed. It's too bad that most filmmakers don't have this kind of resources and freedoms Although many probably think the opposite, Tarantino is one of the most feminist filmmakers today, in a fetishistic sort of way.

Goin' Through Films #1

For the first time in years I've decided to write about films. I've failed in the past by trying to be too ambitious in my film efforts. At various times in the past tried to articulate my feelings about movies in review and star rating, 1-10 scale form. But my mind just ain't built for criticism. My mind liquifies thoughts as they come to, so they are always shifting and changing (and unfortunately they sometimes, like water, have the tendancy to movie to travel the path of least resistance). That's great if you like pondering things and seeing them from all sides. Not so great if you're attempting to rate every movie you see on a one to one hundred scale. I'm not even gonna try to do a scale time. As some who likes to know little more than a movie's title when going into the theater, I find rating scales an invaluable wheat/chaff separation tool. But as a means of making the definitive stamp on a movie, they are fairly flawed, especially when historical works of art are considered. For instance, Tartuffe is considered one of the greatest plays of all time (at least when it comes to high school English classes).So, should it get a 97 because it's a well written, brave work that had the balls to say something in the face of repression? Or should it get a 67 because, well, the ending kind of comes out of nowhere and its a pretty big cop out. Also I don't think people should even attempt rating scales until they get a fairly comprehensive understanding of film history. To get myself going, I'm going to start with the last movie I've seen and work my way towards the beginning of the year. The last movie I saw is F For Fake. I liked it a lot, but I've only seen two other Welles flicks (Citizen Kane and Magnificent Ambersons), so I can't really say whether it deserves an A. What if I see all the other Welles flicks and they leave it in the dust? I mean, it'd make sense that cinema's oft-cited greatest director's movies should all get A's, but F For Fake is a cinematic essay and I've only seen a couple of those too. And what if, after seeing a bunch of those, I come to the conclusion that Welles was really just kind of coat riding on a bunch of other superior cinematic essay composers. I mean, the dude wasn't really a documentarian, so it's not that hard to imagine. Should it still get an A? Even if I still like it over the movies it copied (I'm not saying Welles was copying anyone with F For Fake, I'm just saying that with my limited knowledge of documentaries, it's fairly possible). I remember seeing Dog Day Afternoon in high school and not being able to really process it because so many movies since 1975 had copied the flick. I wanted to grade it well, but the movie didn't seem very fresh because I'd seen so many imitations. Since then it's grown on me, but that's only because I've learned to appreciate things like originality since then.

F For Fake
dir. Orson Welles, 1974

Man, it's a pity that immortality isn't more common these days because I could listen to Orson Welles just riff on this and that for hours on end. It's a pity that naturalism has lowered the effect of a person's voice in the movies. Where are all the people who you just want to sit down and watch them talk for an hour and a half?
When the jazz music comes in a few minutes into the movie, it's pretty clear that the theme of this flick isn't the ever blurry line that separates truth and fiction, but the beat. If Orson Welles were a jazz musician, he'd be Dizzy Gillespie. As an aspiring editor, it's just dazzling to watch how Welles will take fairly straightforward material like sit-down interviews, painting demonstrations, and voiceover narration and then chop it all up so that on a cut to cut basis it makes no sense, but, does make sense on a rhythmic level and by the end, the overall effect of the flick does make me reconsider how perception affects art and the world at large.