On “Wimpy” Role Models

Lately, my kid has been reading the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. Because I was curious about the pop culture he consumes, I looked at them myself, and I wasn’t impressed. Setting aside the writing style, which is pitched squarely to kids, there’s just not a whole lot to these things.

What’s more, I worry that these books may be sending a negative message to him about how to live his life. Basically, the book’s “hero,” Greg Heffley, is a kid who disrespects his parents, treats his friends like crap, and more or less sees people in terms of how they can benefit or amuse him. Of course, Greg doesn’t have a whole lot of friends and gets in trouble, but he only sees his problems through the prism of his own experience- in other words, thinking that others treat him unfairly rather than seeing the way others treat him as the consequences of his behavior.

Now, I don’t want to discount the tradition of the self-centered jerk as a comic antihero. I mean, I’m a longtime fan of W.C. Fields, who did as much as anyone to advance and perfect the type. But Fields didn’t intend to make his characters heroic or worthy of emulation, and when bad things happened to him onscreen the movies usually acknowledged that, yeah, he probably deserved it.

By contrast, Wimpy author Jeff Kinney clearly wants the reader to think that Greg’s antics are not just hilarious but cute. For example, when Greg decides to give a friend of his the silent treatment for several days, he doesn’t just do it for his own amusement but also involves others in the class until the other kid has finally had enough. Middle or school or not, that’s an asshole thing to do, especially when the kid you’re doing it to is supposedly a friend. Making matters worse is that Greg never really gets called out on it, and there are never any real consequences for his actions.

Normally, I wouldn’t bother saying anything about a book like this. After all, most pop culture aimed at kids (and adults, for that matter) is pretty junky and full of suspect messages. But after talking with the offspring about the books, it was apparent that he saw Greg as a kind of role model, striking back against clueless parents, mean fellow students, and other people who would keep him from doing what he wants.

Not to sound like an old fogey or one of those alarmist “parenting experts” who mostly talks about how different things are from what they were young, but is it too much to hope for that my son have a role model that’s actually, you know, positive? Someone who can make him want to be his best, instead of making him think that being egotistical is funny and cool?

If I had a pop culture role model as a kid, it was Indiana Jones. To me, Indy was better than other action heroes because he wasn’t just a globe-trotting adventurer who wielded a whip. No, I really liked Indy because he was smart, and the reason he got to do the things he did was because people respected him and wanted his help, which was largely because he was so intelligent and educated.

Or look at Harry Potter. In many ways, Potter is a fairly regular teenager, albeit one burdened by prophecies and circumstances set in motion long before he even knew what was happening. But while Harry isn’t the best student or the most powerful wizard at Hogwarts, he nonetheless has a strong sense of morality and a hunger to do what is right and just, even if it means running afoul of the establishment. Consider the way he spearheads Dumbledore’s Army in Order of the Phoenix when Dolores Umbridge takes over Hogwarts. When he breaks the rules, it’s not because he disrespects authority, but because the authorities have become corrupted.

Compared to these, Wimpy Kid is pretty feeble. Greg’s major ambition in life is to spend all his time playing video games and avoiding unnecessary contact with others. As a role model, Greg is pretty terrible, but he’s also attractive to a lot of kids because, compared to Indy and Harry, his ambitions require almost no effort, especially if, like Greg, your mother is an abject, mouth-breathing idiot (let it not be said that Kinney doesn’t flatter his audience). It’s easy to aspire to be Greg since there’s really nothing to aspire to, and you especially don’t have to change or improve anything about yourself to get there, since if it’s never your fault, why should you have to change?

Granted, I don’t expect my son to read Wimpy Kid books forever. But as he gets older, he’s going to start having to make ever more difficult choices, mostly because the difference between what is right and what is fun and/or easy will become much more pronounced. And with the non-values of unworthy role models like Greg firmly instilled in him, I fear that his ability to choose wisely will be underdeveloped, and that the consequences of these choices and that lessons he’ll have to learn will be particularly hard on him. And if he’s anything like Greg, he’ll wonder what he did to deserve it.

As a parent, it’s my duty to prevent this from happening, and to make sure he’s equipped not just to make responsible choices but also to truly learn from his mistakes. As such, I feel like I should function for my son as a kind of gate-keeper to popular culture by steering him toward books (and movies and television) that will keep him entertained without the unpleasant worldview and dubious messages of stuff like Wimpy Kid. To that end, I’m not going to take away his Wimpy Kid books- because nothing whets a kid’s appetite for a book more than being told it’s objectionable-, but I’m also not going to encourage him to read it either. I mean, yeah, it’s good to see him reading and all. But I don’t think it’s too much to ask that the books he read broaden his mind at least a little bit, do you?

"So... what did you think?" or: how I put entirely too much thought into my movie ratings system

Why do we grade movies?  Some would argue (and have!) that critics should forego ratings entirely, because any good review will convey to the reader why and how much the reviewer liked the movie.  Yet somehow it’s become expected that if we’re going to tell others our thoughts on a movie, we should provide a score for them as well, if only as a quick reference for those who are paying attention.  This seems especially important for bite-sized assessments posted on social media sites.  After all, social media sites like Twitter tend to have a character limit, and since it’s not like one can cram a lot of detail into 140 characters, some kind of grade can succinctly sum up what a review would otherwise convey.

But which grading scale to use?  As a sometimes blogger and would-be critic, that’s a question I’ve struggled with for years.  In my early years, I employed letter grades, until it hit me that letter grades tend to carry different weight with different readers.  For example, those junior achiever types like I was in my school days tend to look down on anything less than an A, so when one rates a movie a B, that somehow seems subpar even if it’s a perfectly serviceable entertainment.

After that, I moved on to the four-star scale, which seems to be the most popular right now.  However, the problem with this scale, aside from its ubiquity, is that there isn’t really a consensus for what the different star ratings actually mean.  Back when he was still co-hosting At the Movies, Roger Ebert stated that anything receiving three stars or more would constitute a “thumbs up,” which denoted a positive review.  By contrast, the four-star scale used by The Chicago Reader is closer to the following:

0 stars – Worthless

1 star – Has redeeming facet

2 stars – Recommended

3 stars – A must see

4 stars – Masterpiece

Because of how ill-defined my four-star system was, back in 2007 I decided to switch to a Sicinski-esque 10-point scale.  At the time, this suited my needs best, since it required little explanation.  If you rate a movie “on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best,” people will have a pretty solid idea of how you feel.  It’s simple math, really- if 10 is the best a movie can be, and 1 (or zero in my case) is the worst, then logically speaking a rating a 5 would mean average, and therefore a 6 or higher would be above average, and 4 or lower below.  So you can see how I found that pretty useful.

But the other day, I looked at my lists of the movies I’ve seen and graded between 2007 and 2011, and it hit me that maybe the 10-point scale isn’t right for me after all.  It’s not that it’s not an accurate scale, but something about it just feels… wrong.  Look at the chart below:

Notice something a little off?  If 5 is supposed to be the “average” or “mediocre” rating, then my ratings distribution feels a little asymmetrical.  My movie intake has curtailed since 2007, but the constant is that 6 ratings- given to movies about which I’m positive but hardly passionate- outnumber the rest.  And as you can see, the other ratings tend to follow a pretty similar pattern as well, bottoming out with both 10s and everything 3 and below.

Of course, if I actually saw every movie out there the chart would look rather different.  I dare say that the distribution would shift to the left, perhaps even left of “average” rating of 5.  But the truth is that I’m like most paying moviegoers in that I tend to stick to movies that I think I or my family will enjoy.  Granted, there are some real stinkers out there, and when they’re pitched loudly enough to kids, chances are I won’t be able to avoid them.  But now that my kid is old enough that he doesn’t feel like he has to see every new animated family movie out there, this is less of a problem than it used to be.

Another problem with the 10-point scale is that it devotes as many points to bad movies as good ones.  Unless you see a lot of bad movies- which thankfully I don’t anymore- it’s pretty hard to tell the difference between movies that deserve a 1, a 2, or a 3.  If something’s really offensively awful, it deserves one of these, but considering how pissed off I am after I watch a really terrible movie, the last thing on my mind is trying to pinpoint just how bad it really is.

This is my big problem with the Ebert scale.  Ebert has traditionally ranked movies out of four stars, including half-star ratings, which makes a total of nine possible ratings.  Of these, six of them are negative.  Now, there’s obviously going to be a difference between a 0-star rating (given to the worst of the worst) and a 2 ½-star rating (given to movies that aren’t quite good enough to recommend).  But why would one need six different ratings in which to categorize movies that (a) aren’t good, and that (b) one wouldn’t recommend to others?  Seems excessive to me, having to come up with a bunch of different ways to tell people a movie sucks.

Meanwhile, that leaves only three positive ratings, which basically boil down into (a) good, (b) very good, and (c) great.  Sorry, but that isn’t enough for me.  If I’m praising a movie, I want people to know whether I think it’s a flat-out masterpiece or something that’s just really enjoyable, which to my eyes is a fairly substantial difference.

So what is my alternative?  In the last week or so I’ve been toying with the idea of a modified Reader-style system, which would incorporate half-star ratings but would otherwise have similar emotional responses applied to the ratings.  Here’s what I’m looking at right now:

0 stars – Simultaneously terrible and offensive.  I’m angry at myself for seeing this. (0 to 2 on the current scale)

½ star – Terrible, but not offensively so.  Mostly just a waste of time. (3)

1 star – Not recommended.  See if you must, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. (4)

1 ½ stars – Not quite recommended, but has some redeeming facet that could make it worth seeing. (5)

2 stars – Pretty good, not bad, I can’t complain. (6)

2 ½ stars – Well worth your time. (7)

3 stars – A must-see.  A contender for my yearly top-10 list. (8)

3 ½ stars – A near masterpiece.  One of the best films of the year. (9)

4 stars – A masterpiece.  See it, like, now.  Very rare. (10)

I went back and forth about including the half-star rating, largely because I wasn’t sure I needed another negative rating in there.  However, I decided to include it since I thought it was necessary to distinguish between your garden-variety bad movies and the true crimes against cinema.

So if I switch my 2007-2011 ratings over to the new scale, this is what the distribution looks like.

Looks better to me.  What do you think?

White Elephant 2012: The Victims

Today’s the big day!  Let’s see what our April Fools have been up to lately:

Simon Abrams caught The Breaks!

Jason Alley shared the Intimate Confessions of a ChineseCourtesan!

Jim Bach engaged in a Duel to the Death!

Kent Beeson went on a Castle Freak!

Andrew Bemis learned how To Live and Die in L.A. !

Christianne Benedict told some Forbidden Lie$!

Steve Carlson rhapsodized on a theme of Paganini!

I sat back and let the evening go with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band!

Kenji Fujishima stalked some Deadly Prey!

Jaime Grijalba gave a much-needed jump to The Prowler!  In Spanish!

Stacia Kissick Jones found It!
 

Peter Labuza got familiar with Dev. D!

Matt Lynch dove into the notorious sausage-fest Freddy Got Fingered!

Joe Neff came clean with Dirty Love!

Seema did it for her country with Grease 2!

Caroline Shapiro witnessed The Return of Count Yorga!

Philip Tatler dropped in on S. Darko!

Patrick Williamson found the ugliness in Poor Pretty Eddie!

I plan on adding more throughout the day, so check back later, will you?  You just never know what kind of goodies we’ll share with you!

White Elephant 2012: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978)

Nowadays, Hollywood isn’t known for its ambition.  One look at the box-office charts and it’s easy to see why- of the ten highest-grossing movies of 2011, only one wasn’t a sequel, and that exception (Thor), was made with the intention of setting up an imminent Avengers movie.  Faced with these dire circumstances, it’s easy to wax nostalgic about the 1970s, in which bold emerging talents created wildly original films in a climate characterized by creative freedom.  And by “creative freedom,” I mean drugs.

As evidenced by accounts of Seventies Hollywood such as Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and The Kid Stays In the Picture, as Tinseltown’s young Turks made their journey through cinema, drugs regularly rode shotgun.  At a time when seemingly half of Hollywood was crashing on Jennifer Salt’s couch while the other half was sleeping with Warren Beatty, drugs were pretty much everywhere.  Many of the decade’s key figures such as Martin Scorsese, Hal Ashby, and Sam Peckinpah made era-defining films while under the influence of intoxicating substances of various stripes.  If you never heard about “drug problems” back then, it was because everyone had drugs or could get them, so what was the problem?

However, by the time 1978 rolled around, drugs were getting sick of being the silent partner in Hollywood’s resurgence.  So drugs decided to make their own movie, throwing a bunch of Beatles songs into a flimsy frame story and calling it Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.  And this being the 1970s, drugs got ambitious- they didn’t just cast movie stars, no sirree.  They also cast loads of rock stars, because if anyone will jump at the chance to work for drugs, it’s rock stars.  Of course, drugs ran into trouble when it came to those killjoys at the Director’s Guild, who balked at the idea of an assortment of chemicals, pharmaceuticals and plant derivatives taking work from flesh-and-blood filmmakers.  But while Michael Schultz took the credit (or the blame, as the case may be) for bringing Sgt. Pepper to the big screen, this is still essentially a film by drugs.

But while drugs played a part in some of the most important and popular works of the day, in each case there was inevitably a sure creative hand on the wheel, keeping things moving in a productive direction, usually with a strong vision in mind.  To cite the obvious example, the album with which this movie shared its title was recorded while the Fab Four were deep into their drug phase.  Yet because the Beatles- both individually and collectively- were genius-level musicians, the result was brilliant, sometimes in ways that were only enhanced by the drugs.  However, drugs alone can’t substitute for talent, and if there’s no vision behind a project, things get dire pretty quickly.

Ever listened to someone who’s stoned out of their mind try to tell a story or talk about something in any depth?  That’s basically what the Sgt. Pepper movie feels like.  The governing principle behind this movie seems to be having the entire cast and crew show up on the set and inhale crazy amounts of blow and pot, then decide what the hell they were going to do that day.  How else to explain musical numbers like the one in which Steve Martin (in his first movie) mug-sings “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” surrounded by dancers dressed up as Boy Scouts, then dance-fights with Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees?  And why did anybody think it was a good idea to take Paul McCartney’s melancholy ballad “She’s Leaving Home” and have it sung partly by leather-clad fembots?  Because drugs, that’s why.

And I guess it should go without saying that with so much chemical inspiration on the set, coherence isn’t Sgt. Pepper strong suit.  But really, this movie’s story, such as it is, makes no sense even one a scene-to-scene basis.  For instance, when the band first arrives in California, they have a drug-fueled (duh) dinner party at the home of record mogul Donald Pleasance.  The scene is shot to emphasize its sinister implications, with freaky camera angles and leering close-ups of Pleasance as he watches the boys sign with his label.  Clearly we’re supposed to think the boys are signing away their lives/innocence/firstborn children, right?  But no, everything goes pretty great for them from that point forward.  Then there’s the scene in which the band’s manager plots with his sexy singer girlfriend to steal all the band’s money- as they sing “You Never Give Me Your Money,” naturally- only to have their crooked dealings forgotten one scene later.

I suppose glaring plot holes like these make Sgt. Pepper amusing and watchable in an terrible sort of way, but that doesn’t mean it’s any good.  It doesn’t help that standing in for the Beatles- who actually possessed real screen presence and acting chops, it should be noted- was a quartet of musicians who had no business top-lining a major studio production.  Peter Frampton fares worst of the bunch as Billy Shears, a happy-go-lucky sort who enjoys wearing pink outfits and white overalls monogrammed with his name.  Frampton shows no signs of acting talent or big-screen charisma, and he’s forever being upstaged by his hair, which makes him look like he dumps peroxide on his head regularly.  With no clue how to behave onscreen, he mostly just mugs for the camera, giving the impression that he was called to the set just after snorting his lunch off the craft services coffee table, except in his darker moments when he sulks around like a spoiled teenager who’s just been grounded.

Despite being the reformed Lonely Hearts Club Band’s lead singer, Frampton invariably gets shown up by The Bee Gees, who play his band mates the Henderson brothers.  Granted, the brothers Gibb can’t act either- the sole trick in their acting arsenal is to smile widely and strike album cover poses- but at least they know what to do with a song, and their ability to conjure up impeccable three-part harmony is pretty impressive. 

Most of the Bee Gees’ bad laughs come courtesy of Barry Gibb’s wardrobe.  This being the seventies, exposed chests were considered the apex of male sexuality, and Barry takes full advantage of this.  As my lovely wife put it, “I don’t think Barry’s shirts button above the navel,” but that’s not entirely accurate.  At a funeral scene near the end, as the boys bear a casket to the tune of “Carry That Weight”– which, come to think, is still subtler than the soldiers in Across the Universe carrying the Statue of Liberty while singing “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”– Barry’s mourning blouse buttons up to his sternum, which under the circumstances should be interpreted as a respectful gesture to the deceased.  But even during Barry’s more modest moments, a young George Michael was clearly taking notes.

The good news is that, even amidst the drugs and the lousy acting and the unfortunate fashions, there’s always the music to enjoy.  And even though the late-seventies setting necessitated a disco-funk production style (courtesy of former Beatles producer George Martin, no less!) some of the musical performances hold their own.  Earth, Wind and Fire does a Philly soul version of “Got to Get You Into My Life” that’s pretty good, if slightly marred by their futuristic tribal wear and some of the singers’ tendencies to pull the “Africa face,” to quote Get Him to the Greek.  And even when onetime Beatles collaborator Billy Preston shows up at the climax of the film to save the day by flying around and shooting lightning bolts from his fingers and turn the villains and random passerby into clergymen (again, because drugs), he still manages to work in an energetic and decidedly funky take on “Get Back.”

Best of all is Aerosmith, who drop into the story near the end to deliver their justly famous rip-roarin’ take on “Come Together.”  Now that Steven Tyler has reinvented himself as everyone’s favorite crazy uncle on American Idol, it’s nice to see him doing something he’s actually good at, sneering and belting and sexing up the song.  Rocking out, in other words. 
 

But as good as Aerosmith’s number is, it’s also indicative of the biggest (non-drug) problem with the Sgt. Pepper- for a movie that’s allegedly about rock’n’roll, there’s a decidedly anti-rock bias.  What made the Beatles so great an influential is that they took rock’n’roll and infused it with real artfulness, but in a way that didn’t make the music any less rockin’.  By contrast, this movie seems designed to placate all the bluehairs in the audiences who still hated rock music, portraying the titular band as a quartet of old-school tunesmiths and the real rockers (played by such luminaries as Aerosmith and an eerily Frank Zappa-esque Alice Cooper) as the villains. 

Consequently, Sgt. Pepper feels like something of an orphan movie.  Anyone who hated rock would have next to no interest in a Sgt. Pepper movie.  Meanwhile, those people who appreciated the Beatles and what they did for popular culture would find the movie’s take on the material both square and fairly disrespectful.  More than anything, it reminds me of the classic Mr. Show sketch “Rap: The Musical,” in which rap-phobic theatergoers were treated to a Cohan-style singin’-and-hoofin’ revue featuring hip-hop lyrics and subject matter.

Because the parties responsible for Sgt. Pepper were all about finding new ways to water down their inspiration, the movie builds to a massive singalong reprise of the title tune that doubles as an homage to the classic album cover.  Among the ringers producer Robert Stigwood enlisted for this scene were Tina Turner, Donovan, Sha-na-na, Keith Carradine, Wolfman Jack, and Carol Channing.  Some of the folks who turned Stigwood down were Elton John, Rock Hudson, and Barry Manilow, which forces us to contemplate a project that was too ridiculous for the guy who gave the world “Copacabana.”

Also hiding out in the crowd were Paul and Linda McCartney, as well as George Harrison, who one year later would form his own production company, Handmade Films.  History tells us that Harrison started up Handmade to bankroll Monty Python’s Life of Brian, but I like to think the idea began on the set of Sgt. Pepper when he looked around and thought, “hell, even I could do better than this.”

In which I put off writing something of substance to talk nonsense about Cars

So I’ve recently been thinking of why the Cars movies feel so “off” to me in relation to other Pixar movies. It’s not just that they’re easily the lamest movies Pixar has made. It’s more that every other Pixar production takes place alongside the human world, either because the characters are human themselves or because they’re small enough or have limited enough interactions with humans that they can have their own stories that are somewhat independent of ours. However, Cars 1 & 2 don’t work that way, since logistically speaking, a lot of the stuff they do (auto races, for example) would never escape our notice.

So what’s the deal? One possibility is that the cars are actually Matchbox/Hot Wheels toys being manipulated by people, which would explain (a) why the cars aren’t cognizant of the humans’ presence, and (b) why the cars’ world feels like a sanitized kiddie version of our own. And hell, imagine how well that sets up a “gotcha” twist at the end of the inevitable CARS 3.

But I’m more intrigued by the idea that the Cars saga actually takes place in a distant future, long after some Terminator-esque takeover by the machines. With no more people- or animals, it seems- in the world, the cars would have the world to themselves. But since their entire history has been spent as slaves to humans, they have very little of their own culture on which to build. Therefore, they have to fall back on human institutions to create their own world, since it’s all they know. They build human-like towns, find human-like forms of entertainment, live and work and dress themselves in ways reminiscent of the way it was back when humans ran the show. Hell, they even set up human-like systems of government and business. In a way, it’s kind of like Lars Von Trier’s Manderlay. Sure, the cars are living in the past and have re-created a system designed to keep them subservient, but it’s the evil they know. And after generations of living this way, no one- not even Doc Hudson, who's the closest the Cars universe has to a Danny Glover figure- knows any better.

Of course, this theory doesn’t explain how the cars are able to talk by manipulating their bumpers- or for that matter, how the insects are tiny cars themselves. But still, thinking about these movies like this lends them a little bit more of an edge, even if it doesn’t necessarily make them better.

The White Elephant Rides Again

With all the Muriels excitement of late, it seems I’ve completely forgotten about another momentous annual event- the White Elephant Blogathon! But while we’re just over a month from April Fool’s Day- traditionally the date the White Elephant is held- I think we can still find a way to make this happen.

So for those of you who are new to this, here are the rules as laid down by White Elephant founder Benjamin Lim:

1) Submit the title of a movie that you want someone else to review (preferably something available via Netflix).
2) Review the movie that you get assigned and post the review for your site/blog on April 1.
3) Have fun!

Now, some of you may be wondering what sort of movies to submit. Really, it could be anything you want to see another person review. It could be something you’d love to show to your best friend, or it could be something you’d only force on your worst enemy. But if you feel like being nice, be warned- you might be lucky enough to get a movie like Claude Chabrol’s Le Boucher, but you’re just as likely to end up with Madonna in Swept Away. So plan accordingly.

Anyway, if you haven’t been scared off already, you can send your submission to me at lastwordsquiz@yahoo.com. Because I’d like everyone to have plenty of time to watch and review the movies I choose for them, submissions will be due no later than 11:59 PM on Tuesday, March 6. In other words, one week from now. And if you have any questions about the White Elephant or anything having to do with cheese or pugs, or pugs made out of cheese for that matter, feel free to e-Mail me about that as well.

We Need to Talk About Kevin ("Gee, ya think?")

Of all the complaints I’ve read about We Need to Talk About Kevin, Ramsay’s first film in nearly a decade, the most interesting to me is the idea that the film doesn’t work because Kevin (played by Ezra Miller as a teenager) is a monster more or less from the time the doctor cut his umbilical cord. And you know what? Those folks aren’t wrong- a film in which a mother looks back at the fleeting, subtle signs that her kid is going to end up shooting up his school does (on paper, anyway) sound more compelling than one in which a child reveals his evil from the get-go and seems inevitably careening toward cataclysmic violence.

Yet I don’t think that Ramsay wants to examine the genesis of a killer, so much as she wants to explore how inadequate the vast majority of us are when confronted with unfiltered evil.

Click here for full review.

Screener grubbing 2011

I’m a busy guy. After all, I’ve got a wife and kids, I’m working full-time, and I take college classes to boot. So while I try to carve out time for movies I want to see, there are always a few that slip through the cracks. Therefore, as in previous years, I’ve decided to make a list of the movies I want to see most, in the hope that some Good Samaritan out there might help me see what I really want to see before the Muriels deadline at the end of January.

Note: some of the movies I’ve listed are scheduled to come to Columbus, while others are or will be available to me to view at home before the deadline. Titles that are italicized are ones I probably won’t be able to see- at least, not without help.

1. A Separation (Farhadi)
Usually, the movies I look forward to most are known quantities, more often than not coming from established filmmakers. So it seems a little odd that the movie I feel most compelled to watch before the Muriels deadline is from a director whose work is unfamiliar to me. However, based on the raves for A Separation since it first premiered at last year’s Berlinale, I’m willing to make an exception to my usual M.O. In recent years I’ve become more selective of critics whose opinions I really trust, so while it’s impressive that Farhadi’s film was at the top of Roger Ebert’s best-of-2011 list and placed prominently on the lists of both EW critics, that means less to me than the love it’s getting from Mike D’Angelo, who’s the exact opposite of a critical “easy lay.” Yet D’Angelo has rated the film higher than any new release since The Man Who Wasn’t There fully a decade ago. Good enough for me.

2. Margaret (Lonergan)
Speaking of a decade ago, remember when Kenneth Lonergan was an exciting new directorial voice, poised to take American cinema by storm in the wake of his You Can Count on Me success? Then Margaret happened- a movie that was caught up in litigation for five years before trickling into the most cursory of releases, a cautionary tale for up-and-coming filmmakers who would dare to think big within the Hollywood system. But while the groundswell of online support for Margaret is heartening, in the end a film must succeed on its own merits, and judging by all the evidence, it’s the sort of ambitious, underloved work that’s usually right up my alley. I’m just hoping I can check this out sooner rather than later.

3. George Harrison: Living in the Material World (Scorsese)
There are quite a few notable documentaries still on my cinephile dance card before the movie years wraps up (see #6 below), but the one I’m most curious to see is this one. Being both a Scorsese fan and a Harrison fan of long standing, I really want to check out what the master filmmaker has to say about the most spiritual- and in many ways, the most complicated- of the Beatles.

4. A Dangerous Method (Cronenberg) [coming 27 Jan to Columbus]
I wasn’t the world’s biggest fan of Eastern Promises, but when Cronenberg’s on, he’s pretty great. And considering I dig a lot of his more cerebral works, I’m hoping this is in the tradition of Dead Ringers and Spider.

5. Aurora (Puiu) [available 10 Jan on DVD]
Puiu’s bitterly cold comedy The Death of Mr. Lazarescu made my top 10 back in 2006, so I’ve waited a while for this, his follow-up, and felt terrible that I had to miss its single screening at the Wex. No matter- the upcoming DVD release should help me rectify this.

6 (tie). Into the Abyss (Herzog)
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (Berlinger/Sinofsky)
Two documentaries about the complexities of the American justice system, from two (okay, three) gifted filmmakers. Reviews for Into the Abyss haven’t been stellar, but Herzog’s always compelling, and I’m curious about his take on the death penalty. And while the West Memphis Three were freed just a few months ago, I believe the third Paradise Lost documentary should present a fitting coda both to the case and to this great and noble documentary series.

I’ve listed the other movies in my to-see list below, in alphabetical order. As before, titles that I don’t think I’ll have a means to see prior to the Muriels deadline are italicized, so if anyone out there can hook me up with a copy, that would be awesome:

The Artist (Hazanavicius) [coming 13 Jan to Columbus]
Carnage (Polanski) [coming 20 Jan to Columbus]
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Fincher) [now in theatres]
House of Pleasures (Bonello) [coming 2 Feb to Columbus; also available on SundanceNow]
The Interrupters (James)
Moneyball (Miller) [now in theatres]
My Joy (Loznitsa)
Mysteries of Lisbon (Ruiz) [now on DVD]
Pina (Wenders)
Shame (McQueen)
The Skin I Live In (Almodovar)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Alfredson) [coming 13 Jan to Columbus]
Tuesday, After Christmas (Muntean) [coming 27 Dec to DVD]

Thanks!

New Content Alert

So hey, look! I actually wrote some new reviews for the blog. If I only I liked the movies, that would be even more awesome! Anyway, here goes:

Breaking Dawn- "If you need the book to explain the movie, then the filmmakers have dropped the ball."

Happy Feet Two- "What was once endearingly off-kilter now feels focus-grouped to death."

The Return of the Curse of the Incredible Two-Headed Marathon

In my younger days, I wasn’t much of a horror-movie fan. Having come fairly late to my movie love compared to some cinephiles out there, I made it a point to gobble up canonical classics in the course of my cinematic education. But in the process of doing so, I missed out on a lot of genre favorites, especially in the more populist genres such as Westerns and particularly horror films.

Consequently, it comes as something of a surprise to discover that this year represents my tenth trip to Columbus’ annual horror marathon, which in its present incarnation is known as the Incredible Two-Headed Marathon. And while the younger me might not have considered this his idea of a good time, I can confirm that it’s a blast, so much so that I’ve started taking my wife with me. Having missed a lot of the classics, the marathon affords me the chance to enjoy them for the first time on the big screen.

But the fun of the marathon goes beyond the movies themselves, as any marathoid will tell you. Naturally, some of the movies go over better with a crowd than others (one of my first marathons included Don’t Look Now, which isn’t exactly a crowd pleaser but is certainly more welcoming than Irreversible, which played two years ago). Beyond that, however, there are the selections from co-host Bruce Bartoo’s vast library of vintage trailers, the short films, the costume and scream contests, the de rigeur audience participation, and of course the experience of holing oneself up in a movie theatre for twenty-four hours, healthy diet and proper hygiene be damned.

Over the past decades, many a movie lover and armchair pundit has bemoaned the diluting of the “audience experience” as a part of going to movies. Whether it’s discussing the increasing ease of getting top-quality presentation in the comfort of one’s own home or bitching about those damn kids and their yelling and cell phone usage during the show, going to the movies has, for most people, lost a lot of the magic it once had. But to those people, I’ll just say this: if you want a communal moviegoing experience, the Marathon delivers.

This year’s lineup, roughly in order:

Bruce and co-host Joe Neff always begin with an oldie-but-goodie, and horror doesn’t get much older than this year’s lead-off hitter, 1919’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It’s great, of course, but what makes this even more exciting is that it’ll be accompanied by a new score performed by Columbus favorite Sue Harshe.

My introduction to the cycle of Roger Corman’s big-screen Poe adaptations came two years ago at the marathon when I saw the gorgeous Nic Roeg-lensed Masque of the Red Death. This year brings another Corman/Poe film, The Pit and the Pendulum, which doubles as a tribute to horror icon Vincent Price, who stars in the film and would have celebrated his 100th birthday this year.

Ti West’s House of the Devil was one of the better horror films of the past decade, more for the slow-burn style of the first two-thirds rather than the relatively prosaic payoff. Still, it’ll be nice to see this one with a crowd.

Another one that should benefit from the Marathon experience is Bride of Frankenstein, still one of the hallmarks of the genre. Most of the time, Golden Age Hollywood horror feels a bit slow and stodgy for this crowd, but what sets Bride is that the laughs don’t feel out of place since it’s actually supposed to be funny and bizarre. Also, Ang hasn’t seen this yet, so it’ll be fun to introduce her to it.

Meanwhile, the one I’m probably looking forward to most here is Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey’s Flesh for Frankenstein, which I’ve somehow missed out on so far. I know very little about the particulars of this, except that it has something of a reputation…

And speaking of reputation, few horror films nowadays are as notorious as A Serbian Film, which has its Columbus theatrical premiere at this year’s marathon. Neither Ang nor I are big fans of so-called “extreme” horror movies (for example, I didn’t cotton to Martyrs, which played here last year), so we might duck out during this to check on the dogs and grab a bite to eat instead.

This year’s other premiere is Midnight Son, which I actually hadn’t heard of until it was announced as part of the lineup. Ang is a big fan of vampire movies, and I’m also curious to see what wrinkles this one has on this well-tilled ground. I for one am hoping this is more Martin than Twilight (sorry hon).

It just wouldn’t be a horror marathon without a gonzo Asian thriller on the bill. Bruce and Joe set the bar high last year with House, and this year’s inclusion is the allegedly strange and “ultra-rare” Goke: Bodysnatcher From Hell. How can you go wrong with a title like that, he asked with a hopeful smirk on his face.

Along with Pit and the Pendulum and Flesh For Frankenstein, the third movie I’m most looking forward to at the marathon is The Hitcher. This is another one of those I haven’t seen yet, but I’m a fan of Rutger Hauer in steel-eyed baddie mode, so this should be right up my alley.

Giallo films have generally been hit-and-miss with me, but I’m willing to give The Beyond a shot this year. I’ve yet to really enjoy a Lucio Fulci film, but what the hell, right?

Bruce and Joe have announced James Gunn’s slugfest Slither for some previous marathons, but somehow it’s always been one of those that gets cut when the marathon is running behind. Still, it’s a lot of fun for those with strong stomachs for gross-out gags and should be fun with the marathon audience- provided it doesn’t get cut, that is.

The final film on this year’s marathon schedule is the original Hellraiser. This one, unlike a lot of eighties horror favorites, is one I’ve actually seen. I’m not a huge fan of this, but admittedly I haven’t seen it in years, and I’m perfectly willing to give it another chance, if I make it through everything else first.

The Incredible Two-Headed Marathon takes place at the Grandview Theatre, beginning at noon on Saturday and running through noon-ish on Sunday. Tickets are $40 at the door. For more information, check out the web site.

"Sherlock Holmes was a pimp!"

Cold Weather is a treasure because it’s not ashamed to be modest of scale. To the contrary, writer/director/editor Aaron Katz relishes in the very smallness of his movie, and the movie is all the more pleasurable for it. Everything about the movie feels modest, beginning with the ambitions of its protagonist Doug (Cris Lankenau), a twentysomething who’s recently dropped out of college but might, y’know, go back, like, eventually. For now, he’s content to shack up with his slightly more career-minded big sister Gail (Trieste Kelly Dunn), work nights at the local ice factory, and hang out when he’s off the clock.

Click here for the full review.

Movies of My Life #5: My Senior English Project

A few months ago, I received an invite via Facebook to my 15-year high school reunion. I’ve never harbored much nostalgia for my high school days- I wasn’t a popular guy, partly because I wasn’t popular but also because I was, quite frankly, a bit of an asshole to anyone outside my strange little circle of friends. Still, I’m curious as to how the event will go for me, not least because I’m genuinely curious to find out of I changed that much in the last decade and a half.

Like many people, I don’t think I’ve retained a lot of what I learned in high school, at least not to the point where I can readily summon up the knowledge that once came almost instantly. In hindsight, it seems like my biggest takeaway from high school was that it was a key time in the formation of my tastes, especially in terms of how I think about movies. I first started getting really serious about cinema during my junior and senior years, which feel comfortably in the aftermath of Pulp Fiction, which served as a gateway drug for many a budding cinephile back in the day.

So, when my AP English class was tasked with penning and presenting a project to be completed during senior year, I took the opportunity to delve into cinema history. I remember justifying the project to my teacher by positioning cinema as the logical successor to novels in the realm of popular narrative entertainment, but in fact this was mostly an excuse to educate myself in the films of yesteryear. Because I hadn’t seen most of the canonical classics, I had to comb through lots of books and web sites in search of the ideal selection. Then throughout the year, I watched all of the films (on VHS, of course), then assessed each of them in terms of their cultural impact and their cinematic and “literary” merits.

In order to help narrow down the list, I set myself some limitations:

1. Only English-language films. Since one of my goals was to analyze the films’ impact on the cultural climate, I thought it would be easier to limit myself to movies that were made primarily for English-speaking audiences. With a handful of exceptions, the movies I chose were pretty well-known, and the ones that weren’t had a specific reason for being chosen. More on this later.

2. No films made after 1986. Why 1986? Because I was presenting the project to the class in 1996, and I thought it was best to have at least a decade’s distance in order to gauge the film’s long-lasting legacy rather than catching the tail end of its contemporary buzz. Because of this, I missed out on a handful of golden greats, most egregiously Do the Right Thing and the movie that helped inspire the project in the first place, Pulp Fiction.

3. No more than two films per director. I mean, sure- I could have loaded down the list with Hitchcock, Kubrick, Chaplin, and so on, but I wanted to get some diversity in the selection while at the same time recognizing how major these guys really were.

4. No animated films. Of course, this was back when “animated classics” were almost exclusively old-school Disney (to give you some perspective, Toy Story was released in November of my senior year). However, my principal justification for this rule was that I didn’t feel that cel-and-ink moviemaking should be judged alongside live-action works, due to the differences in how they were made. Whether I still feel that way is a subject for another post entirely.

5. No documentaries, for much the same reasons I decided against including animated films.

Anyway, here’s my original senior project list of movies:

The General (1927, Keaton/Bruckman)
City Lights (1931, Chaplin)
Gone With the Wind (1939, Fleming)
The Wizard of Oz (1939, Fleming)
Citizen Kane (1941, Welles)
Casablanca (1942, Curtiz)
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, Welles)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948, Huston)
The Third Man (1949, Reed)
Sunset Blvd. (1950, Wilder)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952, Kelly/Donen)
The Searchers (1956, Ford)
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957, Lean)
Vertigo (1958, Hitchcock)
Psycho (1960, Hitchcock)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962, Lean)
The Manchurian Candidate (1962, Frankenheimer)
Dr. Strangelove (1964, Kubrick)
Blowup (1966, Antonioni)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Kubrick)
The Godfather (1972, Coppola)
Chinatown (1974, Polanski)
Raging Bull (1980, Scorsese)
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982, Spielberg)
Platoon (1986, Stone)

OK, so a lot of these choices are pretty obvious. But all in all, I think I kept things fairly eclectic, especially considering how much I still had to learn.

But like so many tinkerer types, I just can’t seem to leave anything alone. So with fifteen years and thousands more movies under my belt, I’ve decided to revisit the list, separating the worthy titles from the ones that can be pared away, and replacing them with movies that I think broaden the scope of the list even more.

First, I’ve decided to tighten my two-films-per-director rule, forcing myself to choose only a single work per filmmaker, thereby representing some of the greats I neglected last time, either due to space issues or simple ignorance of their greatness. But which to choose? For Welles, it was easy- considering the type of list this is, how are you not gonna go with Kane? Likewise, with Kubrick and Lean, I felt like 2001 and Lawrence were more representative not only of their makers’ styles but of the ambitions that helped to make them great. Vertigo, more than Psycho, represents a kind of Rosetta Stone for Hitchcock. And finally, despite the enduring popularity of Gone With the Wind, I find that it doesn’t hold up as well as The Wizard of Oz, which remains one of those movies that everyone knows even today- no mean feat after more than seven decades.

So what else would I cut? The easiest choice would be the most recent film on the list, Platoon, an inclusion which dates my list more than any other. After all, in the mid-nineties, Stone was one of the most inescapable figures on the cinematic scene- up there with Spielberg and Scorsese, certainly- and his cachet was so strong that even a steaming load of speculative bullshit like Nixon won raves from critics all over the world. Today, Stone has largely been unmasked as a charlatan, and Platoon has been overshadowed by more skillful works of art about Vietnam, in particular Coppola’s far superior Apocalypse Now.

And if I’m bringing Apocalypse on board, I’m afraid I’ll have to cut out The Godfather, alas. While Godfather remains more popular and influential in popular culture, Apocalypse is the better work of art, and a rare case in which directorial indulgence and borderline madness actually worked to produce a masterpiece.

As for two of my other original choices, City Lights and E.T., I’d switch them out in favor of two different films by their makers. For my new Chaplin film, I’d go with Modern Times, which keeps Chaplin’s sentimental streak but amps up the satirical streak, making it a key mid-point film in his career as he transitioned from silents to talkies. For Spielberg, I’d be inclined to pick Jaws to fill the horror-film gap left by Psycho, along with taking over the seventies blockbuster role left by the loss of The Godfather.

The final two movies I’d jettison- Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Manchurian Candidate- simply don’t feel as indispensible now as they did back in high school. In my research at the time, I got the impression that John Huston was one of the canonical masters of the cinema, but the intervening years have shown me that, as great as he was, he wasn’t quite on the level of some of the folks who didn’t end up making the cut. Likewise, The Manchurian Candidate, while certainly a great film, isn’t quite major enough to justify keeping it on the list when any number of stone-cold classics have been sidelined.

As for the keepers, I feel like most of them are fairly self-explanatory. You can’t make a list like this without Kane, Casablanca, The Third Man, and Singin’ in the Rain. Additionally, films by John Ford, Buster Keaton, Martin Scorsese, and Billy Wilder should be represented in the mix. And while Chinatown’s entry would be justified by its screenplay alone, it also stands both as a superlative homage to classic detective noir and a vehicle for one of the most singular stars in cinema, Jack Nicholson.

Finally, there’s Blowup, a quirky selection that I’ve decided to keep. The primary reason I originally chose this was because I wanted to spotlight the increasing presence foreign filmmaking had on the cinematic scene in the second half of the 20th century. Many of the biggest names in world cinema (Godard, Bergman, Bunuel, Fellini, Kurosawa, et al) have avoided working in English for the most part if not entirely. Others, such as Polanski came to America and proceeded to make films within the system, although he was able to keep plenty of his sensibility in his English-language films. By contract, Blowup essentially finds Antonioni translating his signature style into English, with little discernible difference aside from the language and setting. As such, it’s a fascinating case, and combined with the fact that it remains a masterpiece and an essential time capsule of 60s-era swinging London, it deserves to be here.

So where does the list stand now? I decided to keep fourteen of the original titles:

The General (1927, Keaton/Bruckman)
The Wizard of Oz (1939, Fleming)
Citizen Kane (1941, Welles)
Casablanca (1942, Curtiz)
The Third Man (1949, Reed)
Sunset Blvd. (1950, Wilder)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952, Kelly/Donen)
The Searchers (1956, Ford)
Vertigo (1958, Hitchcock)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962, Lean)
Blowup (1966, Antonioni)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Kubrick)
Chinatown (1974, Polanski)
Raging Bull (1980, Scorsese)

… and so far, I’ve added the following:

Modern Times (1936, Chaplin)
Jaws (1975, Spielberg)
Apocalypse Now (1979, Coppola)

This leaves us eight spots. To begin with, let’s trade one hugely popular but ideologically prickly Civil War epic (Gone With the Wind) for another- Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. Sure, its racial politics are regrettable, to put it politely, but its influence is unmistakable.

While we’re at it, why not another silent film? Of my original 25, only two films were from the silent era (City Lights was a borderline pick at that), and both of them were comedies. The Birth of a Nation broadened the possibilities for cinema as a storytelling form, but it only hinted at how expressionistic the medium could be. To better spotlight this, I would choose Murnau’s Sunrise, one of the most beautiful films ever made, and one that to my eyes best represents the poetry of which the silent film form was capable just before spoken dialogue came along to change everything.

Moving forward in time, there were several filmmakers I overlooked the first time who have since become favorites, and I would want to see their work represented on this list- namely Robert Altman, Michael Powell, and Howard Hawks. Altman has cast such a long shadow over the last four decades of American cinema that he should be included here, and I think the obvious choice would be Nashville, which would also give the list another film with a political bent. Of all the Powell’s classics, the one that I think suits the project best is A Matter of Life and Death, which would double as a replacement of Bridge on the River Kwai as the WW2 selection while injecting some magical realism into the proceedings.

Hawks is the toughest call. The guy made plenty of masterpieces across genres, to the point where it’s hard to say which is his most representative. Rio Bravo would be a hell of a choice, as would Only Angels Have Wings, but my choice would be The Big Sleep, which in addition to offering many of the usual Hawksian pleasures is also a classic detective noir to serve as a point of comparison with the already-selected Chinatown.

Which leaves me with three more choices. The first of these would be Bonnie and Clyde, which I’ve chosen to represent the transitional period that Hollywood faced at the fall of the Production Code. Director Arthur Penn polarized critics infusing the popular crooks-on-the-run genre with shocking violence that hadn’t previously been possible in a high-profile release. This made the film a flashpoint between older audiences who dismissed it as exploitation and younger ones who saw it as a sign of the grittiness that would take over Hollywood movies for the next decade.

With two choices to go, I find myself having to evaluate my reasons behind this project. Then and now, one of the deciding factors was whether a film said something significant about the times in which it was made. And while it’s debatable whether this is the case with, say, Sunrise, I think it’s applicable to most of the movies I’ve chosen. It also, I think applies to Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night!, which even today stands as the pinnacle of rock’n’roll musicals. While rock was probably the most dominant force in Western media in the second half of the 1900s, there’s precious little of it on my list. Lester’s use of cinema vérité techniques to liven up the musical genre is also a factor in my decision, although not so much as the fact that it stars the biggest band the world has ever known at a time when they were in the process of changing popular culture forever.

But while I’m pondering what made me take on the project on the first place, I also find myself thinking over why I’m revisiting it now. Fifteen years down the line, I could look back at my old list like I look back on so many aspects of my youth, with amusement and slight derision at how young and foolish I was. But what good would that do? If I feel nostalgic for this particular part of my life, it’s because I know that it set me on a steady course as a movie lover, laying a strong foundation for my cinematic education. So with this in mind, my final selection is David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, which remains one of the most acclaimed and singular American films of the last quarter century. If nothing else, consider this my gift to the high-school me, whose mind surely would have been blown.

Here’s the New List:
The Birth of a Nation (1915, Griffith)
The General (1927, Keaton/Bruckman)
Sunrise (1927, Murnau)
Modern Times (1936, Chaplin)
The Wizard of Oz (1939, Fleming)
Citizen Kane (1941, Welles)
Casablanca (1942, Curtiz)
The Big Sleep (1946, Hawks)
A Matter of Life and Death (1946, Powell and Pressburger)
The Third Man (1949, Reed)
Sunset Blvd. (1950, Wilder)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952, Kelly/Donen)
The Searchers (1956, Ford)
Vertigo (1958, Hitchcock)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962, Lean)
A Hard Day’s Night! (1964, Lester)
Blowup (1966, Antonioni)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967, Penn)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Kubrick)
Chinatown (1974, Polanski)
Jaws (1975, Spielberg)
Nashville (1975, Altman)
Apocalypse Now (1979, Coppola)
Raging Bull (1980, Scorsese)
Blue Velvet (1986, Lynch)

No school like the old school, huh?

Remember the retro Muriels I did earlier this year? Sure you do. In the interest of creating some new content a little bit at a time while finishing up the planning of my upcoming wedding, I've decided to keep doing that further back into the past. So beginning today until I am no longer able to keep this going, I'll be posting old-timey Muriels nominations over at my newly-created blog Throwback Muriels. Enjoy!