The new Michel Gondry movies looks like the opposite of most Michel Gondry movies, departing from the heady fever dreams for stark realism. One afternoon/evening on a public bus with a bunch of kids on the last day of school.
It looks really compelling.
I think the Oscars are stupid. There, I wrote it down for all the world to see.
I’ve hidden this fact for a long time, but over the last few months I’ve decided to be a little more vocal about it. The list of reasons why I believe the Oscars are remarkably overrated, especially in terms of actually pointing out what films and filmmakers carry historic significance that will outlive the present, is quite long. Among the most compelling of these reasons is that Alfred Hitchcock never won an Oscar for Best Director, and only one of his films won Best Picture. That film is Rebecca. More on that in a moment, but seriously, try to come up with directors who had a greater impact on film history and film-craft in their careers than Hitchcock did. Yet, he never won Best Director, and he only won Best Picture once.
He is still emulated, if you can even call it emulation. Most just call it ‘Directing.’ Hitchcock pioneered so many methods of filming to increase emotional investment in a film. He was a master at imagining and improving on ways to use the camera to heighten dramatic tension, fear, empathy, and to tell a story visually. Now, most of his methods are taken for granted. Borrowing from Hitchcock isn’t even thought of as borrowing from Hitchcock, it’s just referred to as ‘making a movie.’ Saying he is one of the most important directors of all time isn’t an opinion, it’s just fact. You can have the opinion that you don’t like his movies, but you can’t say he wasn’t important, because 99 out of 100 filmmakers you do like would say they draw from Hitchcock, and the other one would do it without realizing it.
He made films for over 50 years! He is responsible for some of the most beloved and influential films in history. Yet, if you were going to use the Oscars as a gauge, you would think he was a flash in the pan who made one great movie in 1940. Forget the fact that he didn’t even peak until the 1950’s. He hadn’t even begun to peak. And when he did, all of Philadelphia felt it. (Sorry, I had an It’s Always Sunny moment).
Here is just a small smattering of Hitchcock films that didn’t win either award.
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935), The Lady Vanishes (1938), Notorious (1946), Rope (1948), Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), To Catch a Thief (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963).
Also, Vertigo lost to Gigi. Case closed. I’ve never seen Gigi, and I’m sure it’s a lovely film…. but better than Vertigo?!? Are you fucking joking? How often do you see Gigi on any director, critic or film scholar’s top ten list of greatest and most important films of all time? Vertigo is on a staggering percentage of them. This includes the list of some nobody named Roger Ebert. What does he know about film history, right? Probably nothing.
This happens a lot, where you look back to see if some of the most important movies ever won Best Picture or Director, only to discover they lost to something no one even remembers. Anyway, Oscar rant over. Up with Hitchcock!!
So, Rebecca.
It’s the story of a young woman who falls in love and marries an enigmatic widower, moves into his famous England estate, Manderley, and discovers that the shadow of his late wife may be too overwhelming for her to bear.
The story opens strong, with a long, eerie single cut dream sequence. We enter through a gate and into the woods, through an overgrown driveway, settling onto the moonlit shell of a massive mansion. All the while, a narrator provides voice-over, beginning with the iconic opening line of the novel on which the film is based: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” Once we got through that part, it took a downward turn for me because I thought the emotional cues seemed a little off. However, once it gets rolling, and the unexpected noirish mystery and intrigue starts unfolding, it gets much more interesting and entertaining.
Even in the moments I didn’t care for early on, it was still worth seeing the visual flairs of Hitchcock. Then, once the story grew more engaging, it was Hitchcock in all his glory. Approaching a door through the eyes of our protagonist, seeing what she sees as she hesitantly moves forward, seeing her hand as our hand as it reaches up and slowly opens the door. Or, the ghostly appearance of the late Lady De Winter’s bedroom. Just two of the visual delights the film offers. I can’t really offer more without spoiling plot points, which is something I don’t like doing.
Anyway, Rebecca still holds up as one of the most celebrated films of all time. It’s on tons of ‘Greatest Movies of All-Time’ lists, including: The Empire Magazine 500, Time Magazine’s 1000 Greatest Movies Ever Made, the wonderful list, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and the 1000 movies selected by They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They.
If this era of cinema is to your liking, you should check it out.
The continued resurrection, or perhaps it is already complete, of Ben Affleck. Also, remembrance of when Aerosmith used to be good.
This blog is entirely spoiler free. No story points are ruined, not even the ones already ruined by the trailers. Grrr! Also, for those who don’t feel like staying for this whole blog post, make sure you do stay through the entire credits if you see the movie. There are not one, but two stingers during the credits. So, don’t get cocky after the first one ends and leave, stay all the way through. Worth it! Anyway, on with the post.
Oh, Avengers. My sweet, sweet, Avengers.
I expected this movie to be really good, but it far exceeded even my lofty expectations. It just further confirms that Joss Whedon is some sort of awesome geek god. This movie is a fanboy/girl’s dream come true. Well, I guess I can’t speak for all fanboys and girls, but I can speak for this one, and he loved it. Unadulterated joy. I laughed, I smiled like an idiot. At one point, I even said, “Yes!” out loud… involuntarily. I shit you not. I didn’t realize I had said it until it was already out of my mouth.
The audience we saw the movie with really loved it, too. There were points when they cheered and clapped and yelled, a common occurrence on opening night. The difference is that this time, it wasn’t even annoying (I usually find that extremely annoying), because the scene they were cheering was so fucking awesome it deserved to be cheered by a bunch of idiots like us.
Oh, and did I forget to mention the salvation of the Hulk? Whedon and Ruffalo brought him from being underwhelming and boring to somehow being the best Avenger. Even Whedon’s favorite scene features the Hulk, but I won’t tell you what it is… no spoilers.
This is the reason they invented summer blockbusters. It’s the culmination of all popcorn fare that has come before. Hilarious, action packed from start to finish, and never bogged down by the overwhelming number of characters on screen. To quote Peter Travers of Rolling Stone: “All hail Joss Whedon, the warrior king of this dizzying, dazzling 3D action epic. The Avengers is Transformers with a brain, a heart and a working sense of humor.” I thought it was funny when I got home from the movie and saw that Travers compared the movie to Transformers, because after this insanely huge film was over, I thought, “Joss Whedon has become the anti-Bay. He is the embodiment of good, where Bay is evil.”
That is very good, because between his writing and directing of The Avengers and his writing on Cabin in the Woods, Joss Whedon is on fire. I don’t know if Joss Whedon wants to take over genre entertainment the way Loki wants to take over Earth, but if he does, I will gladly bow down before the rightful king.
I assure you, I’ll be seeing the film again, pronto. Probably several times. And by ‘probably’ I mean ‘definitely,’ and by ‘several,’ I mean ‘thirty.’
I read an article with Kevin Feige recently, where he said that people in the film industry said he should come work for another studio. He’d had a good run with comic movies, they said. Yet, they were at the tail end, he was told, it couldn’t last forever. He knew they had no idea what they were saying, as is usually the case with people in the film industry. With this year’s Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, and The Amazing Spider-Man, it’s only getting bigger, and better.
Here’s today’s brand new trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man.
Finally, finally, finally! This trailer has been a long time coming. Lots of buzz about this film since Sundance in January.
Keith Simanton actually wrote that he thinks some will “cite it as an influential, if not THE influential film for them, the one that flipped the switch.” I desperately want to see this movie. I hope it comes out in Seattle as part of its limited release.
For those, like Vulture, who seem confused that Catwoman seems to be at least partly on Batman’s side, that’s completely normal. That’s the way its been in comics for some time. Catwoman is still a thief, but there is an alliance of sorts between her and Batman much of the time. Nolan isn’t breaking any ground here, or pulling anything out of his ass. That much, at least, is canonical.
Also, this trailer is fucking awesome.
Sukiyaki Western Django is the marriage of two of my favorite things, samurai films and westerns. Well, I suppose I love good westerns, I’ve seen some pretty awesome ones, but I’ve also seen some really terrible ones. Anyway, the two have always been close cousins from different continents, with the most iconic spaghetti westerns: The Dollar Trilogy, featuring The Man with No Name (whose giant poster sits watching over my right shoulder as I write this), based on the most iconic samurai film, Yojimbo (whose smaller image also looks over my right shoulder as I write this).
Well, in a twist that would make George Michael Bluth swoon, Takashi Miike brought the cousin genres together, merging them into one entity. Conventional wisdom says that the spawn of two cousins is a really bad idea, but in this case it was a great idea.
Weird scenes featuring Quentin Tarantino aside, this movie was a frenetic, weird, quickly paced joy-ride. Beautifully shot, the film is full of a colorful and engaging marriage of popular samurai and western imagery.
I mean, seriously, I think I might redo my entire house to mirror the decor of the small western samurai town in the movie. If you see me tomorrow walking around wearing a samurai sword and a six-shooter, don’t be surprised.
The primary narrative for the story is set against the backdrop of a faux mix of The War of the Roses (just like Game of Thrones) and the “the historical rivalry between the Genji and Heike clans.” Like Tarantino’s own films, this film has no desire to hide the huge mash-up of homages and influences that make up the whole. This means critics either love it or hate it. I love it. I love watching homages to my favorite scenes unfold, seeing the way Miike crafted scenes mirroring his favorite moments from films like Django, Once Upon a Time in the West, A Fistful of Dollars, Pale Rider, Shane and especially Yojimbo, lots of Yojimbo, all the way down to the duel between one guy with a gun while another only has a samurai sword. Sheesh, just writing that sentence makes me want to watch every one of those movies again. Except Django, I wasn’t a huge fan of the original Django.
The only downside (aside from the ill-advised Tarantino-as-actor scenes) was that the actors all spoke english, with affected ‘western’ accents. The result was that much of the time I didn’t understand what they were saying, but this was easily solved by throwing on the sub-titles, which I’d expected to do before realizing the dialogue was in english anyway.
As far as Eastern Westerns from the last few years go, it wasn’t as unique, beautiful, and awe-inspiring as Jee-woon Kim’s The Good, the Bad, the Weird, but it was still a really fun way to spend two hours.
And, in other Django related news. I was pretty fricking excited last week when my friend Josué sent me the link to the first images, via Entertainment Weekly, from Tarantino’s Django Unchained. So many exciting movies coming later this year!
I loved The Five-Year Engagement.
I thought there was a pretty good chance I would like it. I’m already a huge fan of Jason Segel’s writing and co-writing (with friend, Nick Stoller), with Forgetting Sarah Marshall and The Muppets. The cast is great, with stars Emily Blunt and Segel himself backed up by hilarious folks like Chris Pratt, Alison Brie, Mindy Kaling, Rhys Ifans, and Brian Posehn.
For some reason, I didn’t expect to be moved by the film’s sweetness the way I was. In hindsight that doesn’t make any sense, because as Emily pointed out when we were walking out of the theater, Segel is great at writing a smart, insightful core inside raunchy silliness. His insight into human foibles and relationships was on display again in The Five-Year Engagement. I’m actually really impressed that he nailed long relationships so well, being that he isn’t married himself.
This was the anti-rom-com. It’s not about finding the perfect person and living happily ever after, it’s about finding a person you love and deciding you’re going to make it work through all the bull-shit and imperfections of life.
The only part of my life that consistently makes sense is my marriage. It’s not perfect, Emily and I aren’t perfect for each other, and we let each other down all the time. Yet, we also decided that we are going to make this work, and neither of us has any desire to imagine what life would be like apart. We’re in this together, and while people try to make marriage mean so many things in this world, especially conservatives, it’s not really all that complicated. Our marriage just means choosing to love each other every day, to support each other every day, to forgive each other every day, and to look out for each other before everyone else, including ourselves. I want to do everything I can to help Emily be everything she can be, and she damned sure does the same thing for me. It’s a very good thing, and the only decision in my life I’m sure was a good idea.
This movie resonated with us in so many ways. So many of the details are way off, but the core emotional values the movie arrives at are pretty much where we’ve arrived ourselves.
Also, as a bonus, the movie is pushed forward by the music of Van Morrison, with many Morrison songs, including several covers. Good job on the musical choices, boys!
Oh yeah, and there is an argument between two characters in the film that takes place in the characters of Elmo and the Cookie Monster.
Good times. We laughed, we smiled at the sweetness, Emily poked at key moments of similarity to us. It gets the official Scott Small seal of approval.
