Electric Shadow

The Flood

This part of the year is always replete with Oscar bait and would-be's in disproportionate numbers. Awards Season 2005 has definitively started with a smash-bang group of films, but how much is too much? My concern is that too many big films happen at once, and as a result, too many get ignored. If there's one good thing that came out of Gladiator winning Best Picture was changing the perception that an early-year film could be eligible for top prizes. The Big Fade, as described so long ago by Jeff Wells in this site's main column, is in full effect, not simply because DVDs and TV are luring people away, but because all the good movies of 2005 have been held for the last two months of the year. Below are some capsule reviews (some more in-depth than others) from the past few weeks. I've been MIA for a couple weeks dealing with the paying part of my occupational life and coming off a run acting in a Stephen Sondheim musical, so things have been far from normal. Regularity returns this week.

Capote

Phillip Seymour Hoffman electrifies and stings as the famous writer, thereby making this the tortured soul movie people will be talking about for years. In an early scene, Capote entertains a room of party guests and that room extended into the 1/4-packed house (a rarity in Tallahassee's Miracle 5) I sat in last week. Hoffman's Capote had everyone in the palm of his hand for the entire runtime. At first, the audience fell victim to his compulsive lies, not wanting to believe he so blatantly deceived and hurt so many close to him. Toward the end, knowing chuckles and chortles peppered the audience just as Truman's series of lies were sprinkled all along the path to the completion of In Cold Blood Capote is as much a cautionary tale as a biopic. To relate the story of Truman Capote's greatest success and failure in the style of a favorite children's story would be to say "the boy cried wolf and got eaten whole". Capote not only ups the ante for 2005 as a high quality film year, but it stands as one of the best films of this decade thus far. The movie is sharp without being hard-edged, elegiac without making you want to slit your wrists like The Weather Man. Capote reminds us of the dire consequences of balancing how much we alternately invest and feed off of those we make the subject of our work. Bennett Miller and Dan Futterman (best known to many as Val, the son of the Genie from Aladdin and stepson of Max Bialystock version 2.0 in The Birdcage) have made a fantastic debut as a team, and I hope they keep the good work up after their first phenomenal success.

Good Night, and Good Luck.

George Clooney knocks it out of the park, choosing not to toss around his editorial weight and wedge himself in as the star role of the film, instead making way for the most substantial work we've gotten to see out of David Strathairn. For a couple decades, Starthairn has been a go-to supporting actor who never fails to impress with his effortless, organic acting style. Strathairn disappears into the part, as has been said previously, but the different perspective I offer is that people in my demographic (18-24) see Strathairn's Murrow as that generation's version of what Jon Stewart of the Daily Show is for us. He shot straight and wasn't afraid to make people in power look bad through clever wordplay. The difference between Murrow and Stewart is, of course, their tone. Murrow held fast to the officious and businesslike side of responsible journalism, whereas Stewart's seemingly frivolous or cheeky approach trivializes his "fake news" broadcast to the elder folks who wagged their "you don't know anything about this" fingers at me after overhearing me comment how accurate the film was. It's a touch lonely to be so far detached from two different generations in this way, knowing more about the earlier 20th Century than my peers, but rebuked as a "know nothing" by my elders since I wasn't there to witness it all. I promise to carry on the tradition and hang that over the heads of the twentysomethings who are around when I'm in my fifties. Good Night dramatizes the Red Scare in the most digestible, easily-absorbed way I've yet seen to communicate the dangers of fanaticism to my peers. While other critics may say the film will be remembered as "good but not great," this is the movie that will change the way formative adult and young adult minds perceive this New Cold War world we've lived in for a few years now. The citizens who experienced the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, and the War on Communism all stand to learn something from each other, and this is the only movie on the radar that could provoke that conversation into existence.

Separate Lies

Occasionally, the local arthouse will fall prey to Grammar Gremlins, by which I mean to say the title spelled/punctuated on their marquee does not correspond to an actual movie playing. After purchasing my ticket to Separate Lives, I asked the girl in the box office if she realized the marquee was misspelled, and she said "that's what the computer says" which naturally means computers now rule the world of cinema. I can't wait to see Harry Pooter and the Giblet of Fires. Similar to my experience seeing Shopgirl the second time (the first was a packed advance screening), Proof, and countless other movies at the Miracle 5, I was surrounded by around ten retirees. In a rare occurance, however, a girl my age sat just behind me. This can easily be fodder for all manner of entertainment, depending on how chatty the girl in question is and how wrong the movie is for her sensibilities. She was exceptionally captivated, as was everyone there. Separate Lies is the feature directorial debut of Julian Fellowes, the brilliant screenwriter of Gosford Park. All these new directors this year have restored my faith that studios are in fact looking for new talent and not just stumbling across it by accident. At the heart of the movie, appropriately enough, lay a hopelessly tangled series of lies that keep misleading you to think the movie will lead you somewhere you expect to be led. Thankfully, Fellowes' especial talent for the written word as applied to dramatic device shines here, and though a couple expected turns take place, he keeps you guessing until it ends. The script flows like an exquisitely-structured english play, but with the added advantage and dimension the cinema provides. Separate Lies could just as easily have been a hit West End drama, but I'm dearly glad I could watch Tom Wilkinson, Emily Watson, and Rupert Everett up-close and not imagine what it would've been like had I the money for a plane ticket and a ticket in a West End playhouse. Not to be outshined by the above-the-bill players, Linda Bassett turns in an inspired performance as housekeeper Maggie. Best known in Britain for her stage career, Bassett has also appeared in Calendar Girls and The Hours. In all her screen appearances, she manages the task of neither fading into the background nor presenting too obtrusive a presence each time. Bassett respresents one part of a masterfully assembled supporting cast, including John Neville (the West End's original Alfie), David Harewood (the humorous Prince of Morocco in Radford's Merchant of Venice, as well as Hermione Norris and John Warnaby (both understated and effective as Wilkinson's coworkers). The story itself presents a lesson many people my age won't learn until they get to be in their 30's or 40's: it isn't enough to simply say that you're happy. Wilkinson ought to be under consideration come award time, provided enough Academy members see this movie.
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Talking at the Movies: Shopgirl & King Kong Trailer

Shopgirl

"That's creepy"
-over and over and over throughout

 

"Mirabelle has really bad taste in clothes"

"I mean, he's kind of cute, but he's way too old for her."
-on Steve Martin's Ray Porter

Girl 1: "What'd she say?"
Girl 2: "I don't know."
Me: "Fellatio."
Girl 2: "What's that?"
Girl 1: "Something sexual."
Girl 2: "I'll look it up later."
Me: "It means giving head."
Girl 1: "Oh, I know what that is."

"'Now I'm your watch', what kind of line is that?"

Ray Porter: "You look beautiful."
Girl 1: "Yeah, no shit."

"It was good, it was just strange."

Girl 1: "Oh my god is he hairy!"
-on Jason Schwartzmann

later-
Girl 1: "Watch him still be hairy."
Girl 2: "Oh my god, is he hairier?"
Girl 1: "Oh Jesus, he is."
Girl 2: "Well, nobody's perfect."

Kong Trailer

afterward-
"Oh shit, bro, that movie's gonna fuckin' <em>own</em>."


Kong takes a wing off a plane
"Aw hell yeah, fuckin' hell yeah is what I'm sayin'."

 

"People really do talk this way."
-me, to a friend next to me


I hate modern slang-grammar. That's just an observation.

 

The New(est) Wave

Jake Gyllenhaal is getting parts that he likes, and as a result, his work is improving. Donnie Darko really made him a name, but he moved on to projects like Bubble Boy and The Good Girl/Lovely and Amazing (in which he played very similar type characters. The Day After Tomorrow marked the project that he likely despised the most, but made him a "name" in the mass market recognizability game. If all actors could be so lucky to break away from the type assigned to them by whichever casting director doomed them to play "the little Jewish guy" or "the shy plain girl" or "the mother", actors would be happier people all around. Proof was a baby step away from the sensitive Child of the Millenium type he had been playing. I didn't buy him as an upper-level math grad student, and kept wanting Tobey Maguire in the part (my guess is he was too busy doing Spider-Man 2). Jake has his intellectual qualities, but not enough of that geekitas for me to believe he's studied string theory. There's something that is more distinctly him that hasn't been dug into. Well, until very recently, that is. Jake Gyllenhaal and guys like Peter Saarsgard (as Jeff mentioned just today) are finally being given the material that really properly shows them off on a consistent basis. Jarhead and Brokeback Mountain provide Jake with the kind of meat that really gives us a look at what Jake has available underneath all the shy, pretty late-teen junk he's been thrown through most of his career. I haven't seen Brokeback yet, but Jarhead I saw on Tuesday at an advance screening.

Cracking into Jarhead

We had near-record attendance (in terms of those turned away) for Jarhead. People started lining up at 3:30pm for a 7pm screening. My weekend prediction: Jarhead wins big. Attached to the print of Jarhead was a very important trailer, one I think is going to make up a lot of minds early on about what they're going to see around Christmas. King Kong made a surprise visit to the screen, and there were cheers and gasps throughout the audience. People are still loving their escapism, and though Jack Black was initially met with chuckles of "holy shit the School of Rock guy", everyone shut up and quick. I was disappointed that they gave us tasty chunks of (I suppose) most of the film, but I enjoyed the whole thing. Jarhead holds the uncommon honor of keeping our entire audience silent throughout its entire runtime. It is rare to see an undergrad audience not checking their text messages every couple minutes or whispering to their friends. Around the time the boys were called up for active duty in Iraq, I had a moment of perspective shift. I was 8 years old when all this was happening. I remember Schwartzkopf on the TV, preventing me from seeing evening TV shows I was too young to watch (Alfred Hitchcock Presents comes to mind), and being relatively bored watching all the coverage. I remember all the right-wingers-in-training wearing the Soddumb Insane shirts and so on, not knowing why they hated The Enemy, but knowing they were towelheads and evil and savages. I remember nothing of substance from the "over there" side of things (thanks CNN), but I pick up new, vivid memories of the "over here" every once in a while. Gunner Palace and Occupation: Dreamland, in addition to countless other films about Iraq I or Iraq II, will never get the exposure this decidedly un-Full Metal Jacket film will get. The biggest complaint I've heard is that people don't think it's enough like that film, or Coppolla's Vietnam film, or Malick's Vietnam film. No matter what, comparing this movie to a Vietnam movie is an effort in futility. As similar as the two wars/actions/failures may be in a number of ways, they are significantly different conflicts. Comparing Vietnam flicks to Gulf War ones is like comparing bananas to bagels. Particularly affecting are scenes of lost long-distance love, for their realism and how close to home they hit me. My favorite line, which could have been muddled with the word "like", was "the earth is bleeding". Jarhead is about the cocktease of war that was Gulf War I for Marines. If you want the boom-ka-bang type of movie the trailer leads you to believe you're gonna see, you'll be disappointed.

One Night Stand with a Shopgirl

Shopgirl is too adult for the 18-24 crowd to get. Too many people my age have slept with one, maybe two people, often (believe it or not) even none. I kept hearing people talking about how creepy Steve Martin's Ray Porter character was. Yes, finding out Mirabelle's address and sending her gloves was a rather stalkerish first move, but it was far removed from how terribly scary Jason Schwartzmann's Jeremy could be for most of the runtime. I think the movie really does work, but it doesn't leave you satisfied like a full-serving romantic comedy full of preservatives to keep it from spoiling. For me, that's a good thing, but audiences have really been trained for a number of years to accept some fallacious, idealistic sense of romantic resolution. I loved the novella, and even invested in the audiobook. Martin has crafted a story that encapsulates a certain nugget of these peoples' lives, and it doesn't try too hard to expose too much of who they are. It does what it needs to do and gets it over with. Curiously, I spoke to people who thought the "pacing" was off. The same people disliked the "pacing" of Broken Flowers, and I think they really meant "it wasn't 80 minutes long, and didn't have a Top 40 soundtrack". Speaking of, I also heard complaints that the soundtrack was "creepy". Do I just like creepy movies, or are these kids (my peers) just not okay with the world being a shitty place on a regular basis? One of my favorite parts of the movie involved Rebecca Pidgeon (also in the cast of The Spanish Prisoner with Martin) as an old flame. Very dark, very seedy, very real. More thoughts after the weekend.
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Country Meets Hood (Camping a la Ferme)

Saturday night, I had the pleasure to attend the US premiere of a French film that needs to be seen elsewhere on US shores, and not just on video or at festivals. I couldn't stand the idea of an American remake either, so it straight up just has to get released.

The man-boys of Camping a la ferme.
Camping a la Ferme (translated as Country Meets Hood) follows a French social worker named Amar and a six pack of juvenile delinquents he takes on a community service trip to the French countryside. Amar's charges range from a cell phone-addicted city boy to a couple hip-hop enthusiasts and a recent convert to Islam. Another of the boys is thrust upon Amar by a mother who professes prison to be the only solution for her son, and all of them are resistant to hard work and reforming themselves. The journey they all follow would remind most people my age of the dynamic present in The Breakfast Club, but with stark cultural and racial overtones. The six boys all start out despising one another, but grow to understand and respect where they all came from (Algeria, France, Sicily, Austria, and a couple more places are named). Do not, however, mistake this as some fluff "social message" movie by any means. The boys use language and insults that are at once crude and entirely believable coming from the mouths of modern youths. Amar himself got into social work because he himself was in the boys' position once as well, and glimpses into that Amar come through at times in hilariously smart and naughty jokes that he tells.

The Mayor (Nadine Marcovici), Amar (Roschdy Zem), Assane (Aghmane Ibersiene), and Mr. 72 Seasons (Robert Rollis), who has harvested all 72 of those years.
Amar and the boys arrive at the farm of the fetching Anais, her disabled younger brother Leo, and their prejudiced father only to find their tents not in their van. After an awkward exchange and an act of good faith, the boys bunk down in the barn. From that very moment, their lives begin to be directly affected by their immersion in how this "other half" lives. Hard work, raging hormones, and hidden benevolent natures mix together and by the end form a very different image of these young men than we'd initially expect. Too often in the United States, we see film released for a "wide" (mostly white) or an "urban" (black), or an "artsy" (discerning) crowd. The crowd Saturday night was full of french speakers, english speakers, spanish speakers, and even a number who'd never seen a film in french other than Amelie. No one I spoke to afterward so much as had a minor criticism of the film, and most praised it as "having the balls American films usually don't" or something to that effect. Country Meets Hood chooses to say what we consider inappropriate and provocative and plays it all off as naturally as we all experience it in our everyday lives. It's rare to see a film in any language as up-front with the issue of racial strife, especially in the alleged Age of Tolerance we live in currently. I'm sure there are minor plot holes he more cynical among us would chastise me for missing, or a performance that was played too broadly, but the audience was too wrapped up in the social dynamics of the plot for it to bother them. Screenwriter and French government minister Azouz Begag was present for the screening, and made a short introduction to the film in addition to holding a lively Q&A afterward. Mr. Begag's visit was sponsored by FSU's Winthrop-King Institute for French and Francophone Studies, who had previously sponsored a screening of Begag's Le gone du Chabaa (The Kid from Chabaa or Shantytown Kid). Begag's first film script (Chabaa) was inspired by his own experience growing up impoverished, and this film reflects his impression of France as an adult looking in to the lives of this generation of ethnic minorities coming of age in France.

Amar's community service trip doesn't resemble the story or style of Au hasard Balthazar in any way aside from the presence of a donkey, I promise.
Begag prefaced the film by relating to the audience what he considers France's biggest problem: ethnic divides along geographic boundaries. The greatest benefit any French youth could experience, no matter his or her background, is to go out and meet these "others". Just as white suburbanites seem to have an ingrained fear of anyone any more naturally dark-skinned than they are, ethnic minorities are equally as scared of the whites living on their version of "the other side." The film represents Begag's effort to get these youths from vastly different backgrounds to go out and meet one another, crossing geographic and cultural borders, no matter how difficult it may seem at first. The nuance of the dialogue is every bit as rich as that in the french language, evident in the fine attention to detail throughout the picture. Subtle touches keep the film lively. One of the boys wears a jacket emblazoned with the image and name of Tony Montana from Scarface (a nod to hip-hop culture's influence on Europe), or the priest who forever has yet another funeral to perform in the sleepy country town full of old people. Sex relations and flirting are portrayed every bit as awkward as in real life, just as spontaneous and believably ridiculous. There are a couple minute cuts that could be made to trim a couple shots that linger a bit too long, but that's the sign of having to try finding something to really criticize. The most deeply-felt scene in the movie centers around a men's gathering where they discuss the meaning of love. The terrible deficiency highlighted most in this scene is the lack of father figures in so many boys' lives, as even the oldest among them (Amar) relates to the others as peers. The whole group of them lack a central male guide, so they rely upon one another as a group instead. Among my favorite bits of info dropped at the post-show Q&A was a potential concept for a followup, which, when you finish watching the film, you want it to be precisely as Begag described it. Camping a la ferme opened on 29 June in Europe on 205 screens, coming in 5th behind Madagascar, Les poupees russes (:the Russian Puppets", a sequel to L'auberge Espagnole in its third week), Batman Begins, and Star Wars III. Only Madagascar and Poupees had higher per-screen averages that week, and in the following week, Camping maintained its position with a drop of just over 10%, outdoing Star Wars. It could be a hit here, I really think so. This movie needs to play in more festivals across the states. Someone pick it up, please...even as a straight to DVD.
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Talking at the Movies: Domino

 

"Oh, shit, do I need a smoke."
-after the movie, after a friend asked the guy what he wanted to go do

 

"How do all those people hit all that C4 with bullets and none of it explodes?"

"Dude, it's just a fucking movie, relax. Who cares?"

"I care."
-two guys debating whether or not everyone should have died at one point

"Oh my God do I wanna do that Puerto Rican guy. Ay papi."

"Isn't he Venezuelan?"

"Nah, he's Cuban, man."
-some hispanic girls just as the credits rolled

"He shot him in the arm. Twice."

"That guy's lying."

"Oh, shit, she was naked, bro."
-our audience narrator

"Should I add Chinegro to the list, or Hispasian?"
-a friend commenting on the race/ethnicity choices in the post-show report he was filling out

 

The Big Fade Strikes Back

People are going to the movies less and less as the national economy slides further into recession and as gas prices soar. On last week's Ebert & Roeper, Roger Ebert made mention of how films like Me and You and Everyone We Know are great to catch on DVD since they don't reach every market. I immediately thought "no one in those markets wants to pay for the gas it takes to go downtown." If you look at attendance of and participation in local theatre where I live (Tallahassee, FL), it proves this point rather admirably. People are carpooling to rehearsals ten minutes from home, but around a year ago, the only place you carpooled to was a show out in Quincy (a 20-30 minute drive, depending on route and traffic). Similarly, we suspect lower than expected attendance could be the price hike and spotty availability of gas. No one wants to go out for the afternoon and not be able to fill up on the way home, it seems. I'd suspect this trend is carrying over across activities, particularly when it comes to cinema attendance. I was outright surprised to find the Wallace and Gromit movie pulled in less than $20 million, and so were the analysts. Everyone's staying home with Netflix or the TiVo, and I can't blame them. It cost me a little over $40 to fill my tank last week. There went my cinema budget for the month.

Elizabethtown in the Rearview

Upon further reflection, unless you can dig into that last third of Elizabethtown, the first two acts really just don't work. The Suicide Machine, the stage play choices made by the actors, and the stalkish weirdness of Kirsten Dunst's Claire add up to a big "uh huh, right" without that grounding sequence toward the end. We all have portions of our life that play out like an absurd French farce (not that the French are farcical, but they write the best, usually) and only resolve themselves in modern workplace farces (Clerks, Office Space). The way I see it, that's what Crowe is going for: this guy's life is a ridiculous series of detached, self-aware absurdities that are nowhere near who he is in his most personal memories. Drew's flashbacks feel like a different film than the one surrounding it for a reason. Once we close in on the end of Act II, with the memorial service, the real Drew Baylor is starting to settle in, and it works. We all like him, just like that out-of-place line in the trailer. All that said, spend your money on it. Go see it with people or by yourself, I think it'd work both ways.

Domino

On the other hand, consider whether or not to spend money on Domino. We advance screened it on Tuesday at FSU, and the audience was decidedly mixed. Everyone either loved it or hated it. Tony Scott's followup to Man on Fire leaves something to be desired, to say the least. He's used many of the same dirty, widely-varied photography style from that film, to wonderful effect. It looks fucking amazing, but it feels like not enough of the two visions behind it. Richard Kelly is one of the most talented filmmakers working, a testament of which is the popular cult behind Donnie Darko, a film drowned by the distributors. His vision of this story seems based in this woman's extraordinary life being a thrilling, chilling moral tale told like a drug flashback. I completely went along for the ride, under the impression that it was all over the map and obviously almost completely an invented story, like young children concoct amazing, fantastic stories about how something happened. These stories are much like those told by war veterans who suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. In a Greek and Roman Epics class I took a couple years ago, I forwarded the theory that The Odyssey is written from Odysseus' perspective and is a result of Post-Traumatic Stress rather than what happened in the corporeal world. Domino's story is a mix of these two halves of what I'll call the Fantastic Story Theory, leaning much more heavily into the realm of the child's fantastic story. I never felt moved or involved with these characters, though. Man on Fire touched people on a personal level, and I invested myself in everything they were going through, from the smallest characters to the principals. I never cared what happened next. Keira Knightley has an outstanding amount of potential, demonstrated in this movie (unlike everything else I've seen her in). She's really "in" and playing the little girl who doesn't want to be told what to do, but with a gun. The much-maligned Keira isn't as deserving of the harsh criticism she's received, as being "talentless", for sure, and in her defense, her casting and placement by so many directors has been completely off. Many of those who've highly praised Good Night, and Good Luck have mentioned their delight in George Clooney playing a supporting "character" part. I think Clooney's done an excellent job as a lead, but I really relish the idea of seeing him chew on something more concentrated. This is exactly what I think Keira's career needs. She's become ultra-successful and ultra-popular with the kids, but if she wants to still be around in her 50's, she needs to chew on something that isn't a lead and connects with her. She needs to play a jilted lover, or better yet, a perfectly well-intentioned person who can't seem to please anyone. To the public, this is her bad-girl role that proved she could do nasty things and say nasty things and dodge the extremely thoughtful, happy person I read and am told she is in reality. Do I think she was bad, did she break the movie? No, but she didn't make it for me either. The shock value of the sweet, smart girl playing this part wasn't it for me. She played it very well, and to the best of her ability. Everyone else there seemed to dig it just fine. As I said earlier, some of the best work I've seen her do. She's lovely and all, but I want to see her do something that tears my heart out. I guess where I'm going is, "all right, Ms Knightley, let's see what you can really do." I want to see her tackle something where she has the chance to really make people sit up and take notice. Everyone saw this with the advance opinion that this is her "rebellious movie", and that's too bad. I've got to admit I did too, but that's how it's being pitched to the general public. I'll give her a pass on Pride and Prejudice, passing that up would have been like saying "no, I dreamed of doing that part since I was a kid, but I can't bring myself to do it." Do something dangerous and play those scary things you're dealing with but might not want to face. After the show, I was asked what I thought by a friend. I told him I thought liked it, but I wasn't really sure why. It certainly wasn't a waste of two hours, but it felt like I was watching two visions overtop of one another. There's something to be said for talented directors who are writers (Paul Haggis) giving material to a director (Eastwood) and coming up with something stirring, but I wonder what this movie would have been like with Kelly directing it. The way it turned out it felt like someone new drawing Spider-Man comics when I'd really prefer John Romita doing it. That comic book reference is for those who get it (I'm sure Kelly himself would). It's silly and/or childish to be particular with your tastes, but I really wish I coulda seen Kelly's Domino. Regardless, I still enjoyed myself. The script still felt like it came through pretty un-fucked-with. I should also note that someone got a big cup of liquor past the studio security guys. Don't you dare bring in a cell phone, but so sue me, bring on the 151.
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Talking at the Movies: Elizabethtown

 

"That's creepy..."
-a girl three down from me, when people in the neighborhood point the way "home" for Drew as he drives toward the family house

 

"That battery would be dead by---oh...."
-most of the audience, said as soon as Drew reaches to plug his cell into the charger, lest it die on him

"That was so real"
-the girl sitting to my right with her boyfriend, who wept through most of the movie, and steadily doing so from the moment Drew speaks in front of the crowd

"I bet that soundtrack is like eleven CDs"
-a girl in front of me as she got up to leave at the beginning of the credits

 

Goin' Down to Elizabethtown

I don't know what people saw at Toronto, but with a few exceptions, Elizabethtown exceeded expectations. That isn't to say it doesn't have a few problems, but the last third makes me really, REALLY want to love it. The screening last night at Tallahassee's AMC 20 started off on an odd note, as the projection staff set the screen for a Scope print, which is the wrong aspect ratio for a movie shot Flat. The first five minutes was pretty badly marred by the fact that Orlando Bloom's face looked twice as wide as it ought to have been. I'll take the tradeoff of not having to sit through trailers, though.

My ticket to the 80-90% full Wednesday night sneak of Elizabethtown
Orlando Bloom's series of "I'm fine"'s didn't feel organic, along with line deliveries in spots throughout. I'm sure the problem most people will have is him acting in a movie without the benefit of a bow and elf ears. He's not doing what people expect, similar to Johnny Depp's Wonka this summer. You get used to seeing a particular aesthetic on the screen, and it's tough to shake. Bloom does win it over a little way in though. I didn't buy Susan Sarandon and Judy Greer until much later. The scenes peppered throughout the movie (until things get semi-serious) that feature them are played too theatrical. In particular, the departure at the airport felt disingenuous, as if either there was something missing. Once we got to the memorial service, their stuff felt more like the performances that make me love watching both women time and time again. The phone call while Drew had to ask "mother....LISTEN--focus" worked, and the phone call before did to some degree. I often found myself wondering how much better a lot of the dialogue would have worked in the theatre than in a film. I don't think this is a result of the words being unsuited to film, but how they were delivered. Of course, take that observation with a grain of salt, coming from an actor. To be clear, I didn't just enjoy the movie. Upon further reflection last night, I really loved the movie. Is it perfect? No, but I love it in spite of its faults. There's more than enough good here to outweigh the bad. Other bits that felt off included the $972 million dollar spent on this one shoe line and the preoccupation with this one suit. If the blue/brown argument got settled once we saw the grey suit in the coffin, where was the scene where that compromise was reached? Where was that half-minute exchange? It felt like it just got dropped. A couple friends asked where the road trip came from, but they must have not paid attention to the frequent references to "we were planning on taking a road trip from Elizabethtown to Oregon" comments made throughout. I don't believe in the term "return to form" for directors in most cases, just as I don't believe in "career comeback" for actors. These terms indicate pariah-level fucking-up, to the degree of Drew's Big Fiasco. Vanilla Sky was not the greatest movie ever made, but there were far too many expectations of it going in, thanks to the biggest marquee name in the business. Some may think that movie is Cameron's Big Fiasco, and possibly even Mr. Crowe himself.

One of the more indellible images from Elizabethtown
Elizabethtown is what I'd call Crowe's ultimate "lifetrack". Not a slice of life or a soundtrack, but a really rich mix of the two. That's the story Crowe knows and tells the best. It's his signature. His rhythm as a filmmaker follows the flow of good music, and his best movies play like suburban operas, big stories in small settings with big juicy themes. I touched on the Southern definition of kinship in my writeup of Junebug, and though I don't want to repeat myself too much, I'd be remiss if I didn't address how subtly and at once blatantly Crowe comments on it here. When Drew (Bloom) arrives in Kentucky, he's stepped into another world entirely. All these people embrace him as if he's just come back from war a hero, but you figure they'd greet him the same way if he had merely gone to the store and they'd all happened to be around. Drew begins looking for who he's related to, who he knows well, and he spends a large chunk of the flick denying the fact that he doesn't really know anyone well, including himself. He's got genetics in common with these people, but that's about it. You've got the Aunt who's big on genealogy, the father and his son who don't understand each other at all (Drew's uncle and cousin), and the little boy who screams louder than you'd think a human child could. Southern Touching Syndrome is especially evident in all of the vigorous hugging Drew receives from people outside his direct family group. Chuck, of "Chuck & Cindy: The Wedding" demonstrates not only this phenomena, but also gives us a great example of grief conferral, where he reacts to the news of Mitch Baylor's death as if he'd known the man. Kirsten Dunst has a rather pronounced accent in her first few scenes and it softens out over time, just as Orlando Bloom picks up hints of one as the movie rolls. Is Crowe saying the South is infectious? Does it seep in and change you by degrees, or do we just assimilate whatever we're around, and Drew just happens to be there during the movie's slice of his life. I'm sure people have used the "q" word to describe Claire's (Dunst) personality, but I don't think that quite gets it. Sure, she's weird and awkward, but she gradually moves out of that into the most alluring girl I've yet seen her play on film. Claire is a young woman who probably flies on all those planes and has all those single-serving friends and encounters because she's been hurt too many times in the past to try for anything lasting with another person. She gives Drew a moment when they meet, and she "knows people" well enough that she can see in him a similar fear of being hurt. Drew insists that he doesn't cry, and I don't believe that happens until very long into the runtime of the picture, and that instant is just as cathartic for the audience as it is for him. I really dug that this movie, largely about the death of a guy's dad, didn't stay in the Mope Zone for more than a couple brief moments at a time. It's much too easy to classify this as a "finding yourself" journey. Drew's real struggle is finding the presence of others within himself. Drew gets who he is at a certain point, and what that 42-hour mixtape really leads him to is the realization that he isn't as alone as he thought he has always been. He knew he had an abiding love for his father, but the connection between that relationship and the words "I love you daddy" was what ate at him the most. Crowe has put together one of the best narrative endings I've seen in a while, where most people in the cinema were asking "is that it?" not because they were unimpressed, but rather as a result of the end sneaking up and pleasantly surprising them. Elizabethtown sails at just under 2 hours, and could best be summed up as "you're never sure where you're going until you get there," and I for one am glad I took the trip. There are parts of many great films that don't work perfectly, but that's fine for a movie that pays off, and Elizabethtown does. Now all I want is to know what Crowe would put on a 42-hour mixtape.

Looting the Marketplace of Ideas

Wow, does the trailer alternately ruin surprises and mess up the dynamic of jokes in this flick. The "IIIII like you" line works fine in context, but the trailer makes you expect schmaltz to the max. I'm disappointed that the marketing guys missed the chance to do something really novel with the poster: align it like a landscape portrait, using the shot of Drew & Claire overlooking the river. If they watched any of the movie, they'd get the picture-taking motif (the way Claire does it) and that shot was much more emblematic of the film than Bloom & Dunst sitting on a couch dressed for a funeral. Is this movie getting marketed toward MTV Generation 2:The Sequel? I don't think so. It's in a bad spot opening next Friday (10/14) against The Fog, a pretty solid contender for 18-24s' dollars, so I worry about it getting buried under that and Domino. I don't want it to fizzle like Hustle & Flow undeservedly did.
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The Beat Regal Skipped

After six days in town, Regal pulled The Beat That My Heart Skipped from Tallahassee's Miracle 5, missing yet another opportunity to build an audience. Putting an arthouse movie in any town for only six days is the best recipe for failure at the box office. The second (and third, and fourth) week is integral to the life of movies that don't get ads on national cable nets like MTV or especially network play. The death sentence seems to be effectively carried out around the country for anything that isn't a premature performer (first weekend-dependent) to its studio or the chain theatre companies, all two of them. Home for art movies has moved from the interesting, earthy side of town to the newly-renovated shtetl of DVD-istan. Not only did we get Beat 10 weeks after its first release weekend, but it disappeared before most people who'd care knew it was playing. The Beat That My Heart Skipped tugs on the fact most men don't want to admit: we are who we are. No man is the degree of superhero he thinks he is, and we all are disposed toward descending into a world where we find ourselves fully submerged in a murky soup of our own vices. Audiard remakes one of my favorite movies all my pals have never seen, Fingers, with considerable skill and precision. The protagonist Tom (Romain Duris) shares a relationship with one woman in particular that to me ventures less into the realm of a Type A/B/C/D relationship Character One has with Character Four in Standard Plot #36, but strays from serving the traditional needs of the dramatic plot in the details. This is where Beat's personality really shines through. It isn't the piece that you play, but the style in which you stroke the keys. Everyone has the same notes available to them, but no two people play them the same way. One look, in particular, I would classify as the "we shouldn't, but for another reason entirely, we really really should," and it forms the basis for the aforementioned relationship. That look that starts as a glance, and is instead held. It crackles with a suddenly thick, full current of crackling heat, and it takes no more than a few simple words to catalyze. When you give someone that look and you can feel them returning by the way your breathing shifts, there's little to do to prevent the people involved from sooner than later tearing one another's clothes off. Resisting such an urge requires some of the greatest powers of restraint in human history. In another rare instance, this movie's soundtrack features prominently in its effectiveness in portraying a grimy, never-quite clean atmosphere. Without the signature track by The Kills, as well as the specific classical piano selections, the movie would not be nearly the surgically-precise animal that makes it so good. Each of these reviews/reactions I post feel more like eulogies than announcements, and it furthers the feeling that I'm writing about movies not in the hope they'll be seen as they ought (in cinemas), but at home on HBO, DVD, or (god forbid) PPV. We've become a three-letter acronym culture.

East Meets West

Eastern imports like Hero, Zhang Ziyi, and Asian movies remakes have been steadily becoming more prevalent than Jackie Chan or his string of movies ever did; however, there are a number of major misses in my mind. 1. Hero taking nearly 2 1/2 years to make it to American shores The proximity of this movie's and House of Flying Daggers' American release hurt both movies (more House than Hero), making the operatic melodrama and the operatic, melodramatic national epic seem even more similar than they already were. All the swords and Zhang Ziyi in peoples' faces overloaded the American public in the same way they OD'd on Jude Law last year. 2. Zhang Ziyi is being sold as the only Chinese actress the studios are willing to push Back when Farewell My Concubine was a big push for Foreign Film, Gong Li (arguably one of the hugest of huge marquee names in China) was at the forefront of the ad campaign. Maggie Cheung and Gong Li mean nothing likely because they weren't "the Chinese girl in Rush Hour". Hollywood needs to branch out from the one or two requisite "spanish", "asian", and "british" names they'll put on a poster or feature in a trailer. 3. Remaking Asian movies and missing the boat, so to speak Shall We Dance epitomized this, I think in the kneejerk casting of Richard Gere, as he has been since Pretty Woman. He's a proven quantity to the women of America that he's a businessman with a heart and cute dimples. If they wanted to properly build an audience, they would have gone against type with a guy who looks the part like John O'Hurley. I remember hearing they were gonna remake it and guessed to a friend they'd use Gere, and a few days later catching an episode of Seinfeld. I remarked to the same friend that were "the guy playing J. Peterman" able to drop the Radio Voice, he'd have the look down for it for sure. Fast forward to this summer, and O'Hurley has won the hearts and ratings of America's women (and a few of us men) who watched Dancing With the Stars, in which he advanced to the finals over The New Kids on the Block's Joey McIntire, among others. When we were in the vast cinematic and televised summer wasteland, this guy became the clever, determined man we all wanted to see in Richard Gere throughout all of Shall We Dance's runtime. Late-Breaking News...John O'Hurley is making his Broadway debut this January, taking over the role of Billy Flynn from Huey Lewis in the New York production of Chicago. Who's the bankable name now? Everyone had seen that Richard Gere story, and I'm sure that's why no one went. Additionally, no one makes movies properly for the over-24 crowd anymore, and this presents yet another stunning example of that fact. Gems like Zhou Yu's Train and Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall...and Spring are getting acquired, but at once they're being turned away from port in favor of the old product. When are the businessmen going to learn the lesson taught by Steve Jobs in the last few years? No one wants last year's iPod, let alone 1989's Pretty Woman Edition iPod, so why the hell do the studios keep ordering the models that don't sell? Ah yes, now I remember why less and less are going to theatres and more are buying and renting DVDs...Hollywood won't let go of a failing business model.

Fresh Meat Schedule

I'm going with a version of the way Jeff has shifted up his schedule, so you'll see a couple new posts a week, where bits and bobs will be added as they come. Watch for some images to be added later this evening, along with a couple other notes. Wednesday, I'll be seeing an advance show of Elizabethtown, and I hope the new cut works better than the infamous Toronto Cut. Watch for a fresh column then. I'm slowly working up a piece on book adaptations that I'll be putting in on an off week, so watch for that.
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David Lean's Talking at the Movies: Lawrence of Arabia

 

"AUDA ABU TAYI: Aqabaaaaaaaaa!!!!!

GUY'S COMPUTER: (WINDOWS NOISE!!!!!!)"
"I don't like Dryden, he's a little bitch, like Rumsfeld."


"God this is depressing"
-after the boy drowns in quicksand

 

"I really like how they don't force him into the sensitive hero bullshit."

"God, like, what is his <em>issue</em>?"
-after Lawrence orders the "No prisoners" charge

"Oh come on, like they had road signs."
-after the camera catches a road sign for Damascus

"I'm glad it wasn't hopeless, but it stayed real and stuff."
-a student exiting the theatre

"So, was he like...gay?"
-a very confused girl who was text messaging throughout the almost four hours of runtime

"That was like, the worst 3 1/2 hour experience of my life...ever."

"There were things I didn't understand, like why it ended the way it did, but it was really interesting."

Technology Shot Liberty Valance

Little did I realize that I had filed my last...month of columns as drafts rather than published pieces to the site. I proof them thoroughly and post them, and don't usually check the site itself to see how they look. I have added a couple images into one of them that I recently acquired, but they all are untouched from the way they were originally written. You can find all the following topics covered (in chronological order): Godzilla screens in Tallahassee Broken Flowers movie marketing terms, and what they really mean 2046 Junebug and American Kinship Additionally, there are some overheard Talking at the Movies bits in there too. I only noticed all this late last week, so I held my little piece from then until now (you can find it below as the next header), so that it did not also get lost in the mix of old posts. The technological middleman makes things so much easier in some ways, but it makes formerly simple steps terribly likely to miss entirely. I wonder if I had to physically type the column out on a typewriter and hand it to a copy editor, and then retype it with changes...would it be more reliable? If it were then an easier task, would it be worth the laborious process? I ask myself these questions just before snapping back from the daydreaming haze that has been my undergraduate life. Without fail, I proceed to apply my musing to the cinema, which of course cycles back into the way cinema comments on the modern day. In a number of older movies I've re-watched recently, technology (specifically the gas-powered auto) has brought about the death of one frontier or another without fail. In The Wild Bunch, we find the evil General Mapache (traslation: raccoon) riding around on a motorcar, dragging poor Angel (the 'innocent' member of the gang) behind. In our current state as a nation, we find ourselves in an eerily similar predicament. The American dependence on fossil fuels has twisted our necks for years, but with these hurricanes rolling through, I've seen stations out of gas all over town for the first time in my life. It was really bad after Katrina, and now after Rita (a hurricane that shares a first name with my mother, oddly), there are again stations with the 'white box' syndrome. As if gas hasn't been expensive for a while, I overhear people suddenly outraged that gas has broken the $3 bubble almost all over town. The general public likes round numbers, and in the case of gas they prefer those to be in fifty cent and dollar increments. I heard a lady remark that she found some cheap gas for $2.94 and almost chuckled. Did shitty movies like The Day After Tomorrow not teach anyone anything? It's been all over HBO, and it sold a blasted ton of DVDs. the general public saw a rather improbable global warming phenomena on their TVs or on the big screen, and it didn't change the way they lived their lives. Then we have a big fuckoff hurricane that's still in the early stages of cleanup, and all I see are a few more than usual SUV's for sale in parking lots. Has global warming become the new evolution? This turned into a political rant awhile ago, but not without due purpose or relation to film. Before I jump into Student Life Cinema's screening of Lawrence of Arabia last night (in glorious 35mm), I'll use last week's heldover story as an unintentionally brilliant segue.

The Yes Men

We brought one of the titular Yes Men from last year's documentary to Tallahassee this week. For those who don't know, the doc followed a big con pulled by a couple guys (part of a larger group) who assume the identities of people from a variety of companies and groups, from Dow Chemical to fringe groups of the Republican Party.

(from left) Tallahassee Democrat Movie Critic/Senior Writer Mark Hinson, SLC Marketing/Promotions Director Samir Mathur, and Mike Bonanno of The Yes Men
Mike Bonanno, minus his partner Andy (more on that in a minute), joined a few of us for dinner at a terribly trendy new asian restaurant in town for a state-reimbursed dinner before he went in front of the crowd.

Lucy Ho's Masa, home of the best asian lunch special in town
Among the things discussed were the utter ridiculousness of Live 8 and the idea of Bob Geldof & Bono leading a charge to Gleneagles. Bonanno pointed out that even though Geldof & Bono cited their purpose as going to meet with these people, and came out saying they'd negotiated a deal, "there was nothing to negotiate, and $32 billion of that $50 billion had already been promised." It's quite remarkable how much one person can learn just by paying attention and doing a little bit of research. It makes you wonder how focused our activist youth are on the things that matter as opposed to the amount of time deciding what to laser engrave on their new iPod.

Mike Bonanno plays to a house of over 200 undergrads, an outstanding turnout for a documentary on our campus
Mike Q&A'd for around an hour, and the best thing I could recommend after hearing him talk is Netflix or rent the movie. I hadn't seen it and now I have. I wanted him to prove it was worth the two hours of my time I wouldn't see some other documentary, from the man himself. The great thing about a live Q&A was the exclusive nuggets that came out. Bonanno revealed a choice bit that was cut from from the movie, where he and his partner are falsely promoting a product called the Reburger. The cut moment occurs when they tell a room full of high school students that the burger they have been eating has in fact been recycled from human waste. He also shared that Andy couldn't come that night (or to the U.S.) because he's a fugitive in France. who is stuck in Paris. Even though here we have freedom of speech and protection against charges of slander and libel, things are not so in jolly old 'liberal France'. After creating a website critical of a government minister, Andy was charged. He has been on television in France consistently for the last year, yet the authorities simply can't catch up to him. At the end of the night, he started selling merchandise. The customary DVDs and videotapes were a given, but he surprised us by pulling out Yes Men t-shirts. Battling corporate greed by appropriating a corporation-like identity. If you can't beat them at first, make it look like you joined them and beat them from the inside.

The Yes Men shirts are made from second-hand t-shirts, which, when sold to 3rd world countries, help to undermine their native textile industries. A friend got one made from a Jaegermeister shirt.

The State of Arabia

The latest in our series of classic cinema at FSU moonlights as one of my very favorite movies. Lawrence of Arabia carries on being significant more than forty years later, both technically and thematically.

Middle aged men (with their young sons), old women, and students at intermission.
I overheard a great number of people saying "huh" and snickering occasionally. A friend who had never seen the film sat next to me, and most of my enjoyment seeing it on the big screen was derived from so closely observing a first experience with the film.

Two undergrads talking fervently about the rise to glory and fall into madness of T.E. Lawrence.
Auda abu Tayi's late-in-the-movie faceoff with Ali in particular drew a wonderful reaction, where Auda insists learning the European way of governance is a waste of time for him. Ali insists he will learn to be an Arabian, even though Arabia as Europe saw it existed only in the Europeans' heads and on paper. Ali concedes to the effective colonization of the Middle East, despite his own assertion that it will never work. To me, the greatest tragedy is that Lawrence unwittingly dragged his greatest ally into the depths of insanity with him after a time.

An audience that saw very little attrition from one act to the next.
All the modernization for modernity's sake sank in for those with moderately-sized I.Q.'s, whether they understood the WWI politics going on throughout or not. Lawrence sums it all up, from the military-industrial complex to the cultural divide between the European/Western idea of freedom and the Middle Eastern state of freedom.

The girl on the left had never seen Lawrence before, and her friends are told-you-so-ing, especially the man with the magenta hair.
Telling a man that a syringe is filled with a vaccine does no good if you don't speak his language and he's allergic to the vaccine in the first place. We'd get along better if we weren't trying to ethnocentrically colonize the world, and by "we" I mean the human race.

Texting: The Other White Talent

There is one thing worse than a cell phone ringing in the middle of a movie: The guy next to you/in front of you/just to the side text messaging while watching a movie. Now, it wasn't just white people doing it, but a sea of LCD lights blinked and blipped throughout the movie. I've experienced this phenomena at other movies, movies people pay for, and I'll never like it. I get that some people were there for extra credit, but Instant Messaging (IMing) has spread so much that it's created another trendy-but-frustrating noun-turned-verb plague-on-humanity. I can dig people text messaging in general, that's fine, but text messaging while participating in an activity that integrally involves a dark, quiet place, the frequent flip-clacking of clamshell phones and bright-bright screens destroys the experience throughout rather than instantaneously. I don't often feel moved to violence, but so help me I might break a few phones if this keeps up. One asshole in the back row had his laptop out. During Lawrence of Arabia. He's on my "naughty" list for life.
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Junebug and Kinship

"I feel a special kinship with the American South," opines Embeth Davidtz's Madeline, an upper-class art dealer. The word "kinship" opens a gigantic can of worms, especially when cross-referenced with the South. What defines a kin relationship? Is nature or nurturing more responsible for the people we consider kin? Junebug explores kinship, but it occasionally (toward the beginning mostly) strays into the realm of "tries too hard". That isn't to say that the movie gets overtly didactic about the outsider-insider relationship between Madeline (Davidtz) and the southerners who fill out the cast. The first five minutes of Junebug passionately demonstrates a love for the Wes Anderson aesthetic as many others do. The 'quirky' (cringe) look, as I've previously mentioned, has established itself as the biggest fad since calling your movie "independent". As it exists in the opening parts of Junebug, it doesn't jive with the rest of the movie, and sticks out starkly. Alessandro Nivola has moments of profound depth throughout. The axiom of never being able to go home again provides most of Nivola's struggle throughout. He holds a great deal of his pain in very capably, but when he does let go his strength shows in the striking contrast between the before and after. Amy Adams stands head and shoulders above most other performances I've seen this year, playing her part as a real person, and not just a caricature of "the southern girl", thank god. She seems outrageous and socially retarded at times, but never unrealistically. The shock of the things she says and does comes only from the audience's prejudices toward a redheaded north Carolinian girl at face value. The same prejudices come into play for her mother in law Peg (played with razor precision by Celia Weston), a woman who makes reference to a distinctly southern concept (in name at least) of how one "does" with others. Madeline's inappropriate relationship with her husband's brother lives fictitiously in his mind just as much as his mother's, but unlike Madeline, momma knows what brother Johnny has in mind. Sadly, Junebug is suffering the same fate other "movies that make you think" are stuck with: limited release. This is a film that would have played great to southern audiences, but the theatre chains are less concerned with regional marketing and distribution than the Montreal Expos were with getting to the World Series. It's got its imperfections, but it's certainly not a film with serious flaws. If you missed it theatrically, catch it on DVD, it's better than the most mainstream movies you've seen this year.
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HongKong Cinema: 2046

Wong Kar-Wai's sequel to In the Mood for Love epitomizes the phrase "they don't make 'em like they used to," and then some. 2046 also manages to outdo most sequels ever made in that it succeeds at existing on its own, outside the confines of "you had to see the first one" syndrome. The story focuses on a writer, and at first, the audience is left a touch in the dark as to which reality they are being shown serves as their true frame of reference. Throughout the rest of the two-hour plus runtime, we are still misled here and there by a narrator (the writer) who lies to us. He'll profess to never see someone again, and then they reappear a half hour later. The role of the voice over narrator has been the subject of much debate and analysis throughout cinema history. Some would laud its use as a grand tradition evident in some of the greatest films, where others would lead you to believe it to be the pinnacle of didactic storytelling. Why just tell someone what's happening when you can show them? 2046 makes a fantastic case for the narrator by building our relationship to Chow partly in what we see him do on the screen and partly by the way we do and don't trust him as our guide through the story of a few years in his life. Wong has given us the portrait of many male writers' dreams, where the semi-hero (I wouldn't go so far as anti-hero) gets laid regularly, makes a living of writing, and manages to flourish in a mediocre, apathetic state of being for years on end. The ability to lose oneself in their writing to get away from the rigors of real life is gifted, but one who manages to wrest free of that fantasy world truly has power over himself. Chow's struggle revolves around whether or not he can break free of this tempting cycle, and it's an infinitely relatable situation. Folks stuck in terminally bad romantic relationships, those in dead-end jobs, and undergraduate college students in the middle of a bad economy all struggle with this conflict in some respect. 2046 runs too long for the modern viewer, but it's certainly the best 1960s "think" movie made in the 21st century. If you're going to the movies for action-packed, blockbuster thrill rides, you've bought the wrong ticket here. What Wong has done with this film is give us a lean, pulse-quickening portrait of an intriguing character: the man we all do and don't want to be all at once.
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Attack of the Marketing Clones or, The War on 'Quirky'

There used to be a much more classy tone to movie advertising. Posters were painted, not Photoshop-decapitation jobs. Trailers sampled choice pieces of meaty movies rather than giving away all the grade-A moments for free. Those days are of course long gone, but the new big trend seems to be Supreme Flattery. The saying goes, "imitation is the most sincere form of flattery," and if that's the case, Napoleon Dynamite's art department and Garden State's teaser trailer editor have become the toast and templates of the town. The following films, small and large release alike, have picked up The Dynamite/Garden look, along with the entire graphic design industry: The Chumscrubber, The Thumbsucker, High School Record, and the list goes onnnnn.... The above is rather plainly obvious to the observant among us, but where I'm going with this is the co-opting of words and styles (and success) in the post-modernist business the movies have become. There's a small set of standard words used ad nauseam in movie adverts, all with instantly recognized meanings by the general public. family comedy: (sweetly offensive n.): (1) a film (likely animated) that panders to the lowest common denominator in an effort to sell toys, DVDs, and video games, (2) the only sure-fire ticket-seller for the churchgoing crowd, (3) a movie that cannot possibly be hurt by how boring, vacant, or badly-acted it is action-packed thrill ride: (very tired n.) (1) over-pumped monosyllabic plot turned into a script with two or three polysyllabic words, (2) an eye for an eye relationship, within which one (more often many a) soul is traded for a paycheck (3) an event most commonly experienced in the second and third quarters of the calendar year intimate: (over-extended adj.) the studio expects audiences of six per screen on 150 screens for six weeks eye-popping (hyperbolic adj.) [as applied to CGI] gets a tiny bit closer to looking realistic than past attempts, but will ultimately fail, should one look for the seams sweeping (nebulous adj.) (1) possibly made in a language other than english (2) involving a period setting (3) involving complex or large costuming (4) involving Zhang Ziyi, with the exception of Rush Hour 2 (see action-packed thrill ride) (5) an occurrance Harvey Weinstein spends 50% of his year trying to ensure happens each February I'd love to go three months without seeing these words and countless others of the kind used in print ads, reviews (sometimes the same thing), and TV spots. In particular, if I never hear the word quirky again, I'll be a very happy man. Quirky has become the new indie. The definition of what constitutes an "independent" film was vague at the outset. Either you're talking about money, creativity, or both, whichever way you slice it. Was the movie made without studio money? The Star Wars prequels qualify just as much as Hustle & Flow. Was the movie composed creatively without overbearing studio influence? Million Dollar Baby qualifies, as I don't know who would want to cross Clint Eastwood. Warner did not, however, give two shits about properly expanding (or promoting) the theatrical release of the eventual Best Picture winner. Quirky has come to distinguish non-Fockers movies from the full-on Focked ones. People used to call them European, as opposed to good ol' 'Merican movies. These movies feature un-jubilant endings, actors "no one" has ever heard of, and plots that make you pay attention just a bit. I'd take it on as a badge of pride, but it's just a silly word. Have people always talked like they invented the language to this degree? "I just know that I am anti the abortion thing, because it's not right with Jesus." "I found the President's speech extremely impactful and it established a new president (precedent)" Are intelligent films endangered because the Coalition of the Stupid is growing at an exponential rate? I was worried about Tallahassee, but I worry more about the whole film industry. There will soon be two megacorporations officially in control of almost every cinema in the States, and a company owned by the two jointly is the exclusive in-theatre advertising company for all those screens. Most art movies get seen on DVD these days, and whether that is a result of DVD reaching more than home video has in the past, or is a signal of The Big Fade really happening, time will tell.
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Breakout Flowers

In Tallahassee terms, Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers is an outright indie hit, looking at its third consecutive week in release, which prior editions of this column would reveal is an extraordinarily rare occurrence around these parts. It's going to certainly outlast the now-playing Junebug and the coming-Friday 2046 for a singular reason: Bill Murray. Bill is what I'm sure studio marketers had joygasms about when they found out they had to build a campaign for the movie. They cared not a bit about Jeffrey Wright's masterfully (as usual) crafted, lived-in portrayal of Murray's best friend. They didn't even care about the presence of Sharon Stone or Jessica Lange. They didn't even try for the critical praise angle, they went the easy route, and who could blame them? The Broken Flowers advertising campaign relied less on the actual content of the movie than the "look" recognition of "Bill Murray in Lost in Translation 2: Murray In a Tracksuit. It has obviously paid off in admissions rolling in, but is there marketing morality to be considered. I had to break the paragraph, I started laughing so much. Marketing morals. I think I just invented something there. Marketing at its core is a deceptive practice, and in the case of Broken Flowers, the more deception, the better. A week or so ago, I went along with a few friends to see Broken Flowers for the second time. The biggest payoff came not only from a member of the group I was with, but a couple others seated nearby, detailed in the newest edition of...
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At the Cinemateque

Throughout the school year, FSU's Student Life Cinema will be screening classic films, and thus far in college, I've found each experience to be intriguing for varying reasons. Every film is a different experience, from The Third Man to Modern Times to Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

Godzilla Attacks Tallahassee

Most of the time, when you think of Godzilla, the name conjures either images of camp japanese monster movies or the worst decision Matthew Broderick's agent ever advised him to make. The campus cinema I work for at FSU recently screened the franchise-spawning 1954 original film, retranslated and remastered in its director's cut, not the version seen by American audiences for the last half century. When Godzilla was acquired for American release, the Americans decided they could improve it (a trend throughout history in various contexts) by making it more palatable to the target audience. This process involved the shooting of new scenes with Raymond Burr that, combined with a mistranslated subtitle track, vastly changed the tone and storyline of the film. Lawrence of Arabia it's not, but Godzilla deserves a fair share of credit for being a great deal more socially relevant than previously thought. The movie carries an intensely anti-nuclear, anti-proliferation message that gets lost a bit in a late section of the movie where scifi melodrama grabs the wheel and takes on a lazy drive down denoument lane. The most striking part of seeing a classic film with an audience made up of mostly college students is the reaction you hear around you. Whether surprised, tearily touched, or tickled giddy, almost everyone around you has never seen the film before.

The line for Godzilla's first show, about an hour in advance.
In the case of a movie like Casablanca (shown last year) or Singin' in the Rain (coming soon), there is a chunk of the audience who know and love the film, having seen it over the years, whether young or old. Godzilla stood apart this past Sunday and Monday, as I knew for a fact I was one of two people who had seen this restored cut of the movie. It does drag in parts, but so many moments in the film still really went over with the audience. In particular, a moment where a young Japanese woman calls out members of Parliament for not dealing with the Godzilla catastrophe drew a flood of snickers throughout each audience I peeked in to over the two days. Additionally, every time there was an anglicized word used, like "geigeru counteru" or "oxygenu destroyeru", there were bundles of laughter from the linguistically aware clumps of the audience. You know, the ones who can read and listen at the same time.

Student Life Cinema employees spread the good word.
Our next Silver Screen Sunday (almost too alliterative to still be considered cute and not be from a bygone era, but then again, that seems to be the point) movie will be the Stanley Donen/Gene Kelly classic Singin' In the Rain.
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The Indecent Charm of the Aristocracy

The Aristocrats starts in Tallahassee this Friday, so I'm convinced there's still justice out there in the world. Unlike many I know, I was aware of The Aristocrats long before it became its own little documentary firestorm. I knew it simply as "the joke" that never ever gets told in public, partly because it doesn't go over with lowest common denominator audiences, but also because on some levels, the shock value (most of the punch) isn't as big a deal as it once was in the days you couldn't tell it on stage and not end up in jail. I've recently come into more personal contact with "the joke", which I prefer, since that's name by which I've always known it. Now that "everyone" so to speak knows the trick/secret/gimmick, it doesn't have as powerful shock value as it once did. Tallahassee, as I've noted in the past, is often behind the curve by weeks or months to the rest of the arthouse moviegoing public, and it coldn't be more true than with The Aristocrats. The really savvy already know about it and can't wait for it to come to town, but the general arthouse crowd is still catching onto it. I could think of no better reason to use it as an audition selection. This fall would be the last General Audition I would do at the FSU School of Theatre, so I not only wanted to challenge myself, but I dearly wanted to get cast in one show in particular, Amadeus. Peter Shaffer's masterwork has been frequently revised and recomposed since its original production on Broadway; moreover, the Milos Forman film deviates greatly from all versions of the stage play, though Shaffer had a direct role in the adaptation. One thing that is no different in all permutations of the epic is Mozart's filthy, filthy mouth. "What would most people auditioning do?" I asked myself. The answer, which proved to be entirely true: "something inoffensive and safe". I had misgivings leading up to, during as well as after the 90 seconds I had on the stage. FSU's auditions provide you with 90 seconds to do whatever you want: sing, dance, a monologue, you name it. I had a "safe choice" backup all the way until I was escorted backstage to wait, but I instead did what I can safely say was the most ballsy thing I've ever done at an audition. As a joke, The Aristocrats is completely malleable to one's audience, style, and needs as a performer, so I left it rude and coarse, but not as much as I could have. I've told "the joke" to friends who were curious in the past, or who started dirty joke contests, but I usually go on for a few minutes, so this was all a bit challenging. I also had to trim it to a minute and a half. I would reprint it as composed in its entirety, but that would betray the precision of it, as I ended up improvising a couple pieces of it even from the version I'd composed. Briefly though, it involved a mother, father, and son, with sodomy, incest, and shit-flinging involved, with a furious agent screaming "you'll never work in this town again, you depraved idiots! What do you call yourselves?" at the end. There were a good deal of students watching in addition to the faculty, some of whom were only watching, and others who were actually casting shows. Even though I was in the heat (pun intended) of the piece, I caught some wonderful reactions: 1) a girl in the back row covering her ears and seeming to silently scream in disgust 2) music theatre guys with their mouths gaping further open than I've seen them while performing onstage in Oklahoma or Evita 3) absolute dead silence after the first act of anal rape, followed by an embarrassed set of chuckles after the son takes over for dad, followed again by silence 4) the break in the silence five seconds after I left the stage, as the girl doing introductions broke out laughing, then followed by the rest of the auditorium for a good 30 seconds to minute and a half I'm sure part of my motivation came from wanting to be the first exposure many of those people had to "the joke" before the movie hit on Friday. As an Anthropology major, I find the phenomena of "Media Latching" rather striking, where in the instance of a popular film, people immediately co-opt the gimmick of the movie in question and act as if they were "in on the joke" the whole time. I have to say I'd be equally furious and delighted to be the production design team on Napoleon Dynamite. Look at everything from websites to school supplies to commercials, and Napoleonism is all over the place. I was on the bandwagon with "the joke" for a while before the documentary even showed up on the radar, so I was either striking while the iron was hot or giving "the joke" its Tallahassee wake. I'll be curious to see how many comics start putting the joke in their routines, or non-comics who co-opt it for cool points. Either way, I didn't get a callback. The terrible thing about being an actor is that you can never be entirely sure what that means. Odds are, with a "safe" choice, the result could have been the exact same. I'll never know what I could have done differently; however, I will be the guy who did "the joke" at that audition for the rest of my life, and regardless of the result it felt better than I could have imagined.
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There One Week, Gone the Next

In the first installment of Arthouse Cowboy, I got into the plight of Tallahassee's local arthouse, the Miracle 5 (recently acquired by the Regal Entertainment Group). Things have gotten worse. The movies disappear like Twinkies at Fat Camp. They appear and give so many so much hope, only to disappear almost instantaneously. More often than not, a movie will only play there for a week, and in a couple cases, get a big press push in anticipation of a multi-week stint. The most prominent victims include: Murderball, Heights, and The Beautiful Country. Countless more have come and gone in two weeks, including: Layer Cake, Walk on Water, Turtles Can Fly, Apres Vous, Happy Endings, Land of the Dead, and Ladies in Lavender (going from four screenings to one in its second week, so it's near-death). This weekend heralds the arrival of Sally Potter's Yes and the Courtney Cox thriller/suspense/muddy DV movie November. If I were to bet money, I'd say both will be gone next week. It seems, as in the case of Murderball, that we're getting these movies just past their window of greatest publicity and word of mouth, just as other Under 1000 Club (an arbitrarily chosen term for movies that open on less than a thousand screens, as just "indie" doesn't cover it anymore) flicks are gaining heat, soon to cool themselves. This has all happened during the summer, when a large chunk of the Tallahassee population (the college kids) weren't here. Running the cinema that way is going to do nothing but drive people away. Way back in July, I mentioned the screen count and programming similarity between the Miracle 5 and the Tara 4 (Atlanta). I thought this was a positive sign, but they seem to be diverging. Atlanta gets the arthouse movies sooner and for longer than Tallahassee does. From a business standpoint, this makes a lot of sense, as Atlanta is a much, much more "metro" area, with a population that is clearly larger as well as more diverse than that of Tallahassee. More arthouse moviegoers translates to more admissions. I felt myself tend toward the territory of conspiracy theory when pondering whether Regal wanted these movies to do badly in Tallahassee. No one could argue that Regal isn't bringing us the kinds of movies we want at Miracle, but the severely limited screening windows guarantee their ultimate lack of profitability. What a great way to bury an arthouse theatre.

The Missing Cowboy

I've been all but disappeared for the last couple weeks. The primary contributing factor was that I finally found a solid second job. Whether in the frame of reference of the city of Tallahassee or just the current national economy, that's no minor feat. Gone are my days of being late on rent and additionally having trouble feeding myself. Now those two things will just be a little less frequent. Back in the fall of 2003, I started as an Assistant Wedding Photographer for Susan Stripling Photography. I hauled bags, swapped out digital flash cards, swapped lenses, and would occasionally shoot "second unit" on weddings, just as occasionally seeing my shots in finished albums. I learned more than most of my friends have in four years of photo classes at university in a few months while being paid rather than paying for it. I met my boss Susan when we were both cast in a local production of Michael Frayn's Noises Off!, initially babysitting her daughter Emma when she and her husband wanted an evening away from the house and their adorable two year old. It's true, I moonlight as a babysitter. I get along great with kids, and I don't know why. Her last assistant got married and moved, so she needed a new one. The work was case-by-case, as she didn't need me for every single wedding she shot, but it was more consistent than a number of the odd jobs I've had while in college. Fast forward to this July, when Susan decided to actually open a studio space outside her home. She needed someone to manage the place who had computer skills, was familiar with the business, and above all, who she could trust. All of a sudden, just as my college life was starting to end, I had a job literally fall into my lap that would make things much less stressful for the year leading up to (hopefully) ditching town.

The Susan Stripling Photography Studio, nearing official opening.
I've been working huge hourly weeks while off between semesters at my other job helping get the place open in addition to continuing to run the business while moving things to the location.

The Other Job

The work that's now become my secondary source of income is chairing FSU's campus movie program.

The huddled movie masses.
Student Life Cinema shows more movie of more variety each week than any other campus movie program in the country, often premiering films in Tallahassee or for all of northern Florida. We're the second-run arthouse disguised as a Please The Masses Multiplex to many students.

A huge group, made up almost entirely of freshmen, waiting to be let in to see Top Gun.
Classes for the fall begin next week, and during the week leading up, we have traditionally shown a couple of movies for two nights each (screening twice each night) and garnishing each night with a different midnight movie.

A guy espousing why Christopher Guest needs to make more movies (because he said so) and my boss looking on.
The origin of the term "Midnight Movie" stems from a group I'll call the "Seminal Six": The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Pink Flamingos, El Topo, Night of the Living Dead, The Harder They Come, and Eraserhead. I'd say these low-budget films were integral to the rise of what we call "indie films" these days. Movies of this pedigree are not often shown, and indeed, you'll occasionally see something like The Goonies or The Breakfast Club on our schedule at 11:59pm on a Friday. If there's anything I've learned in student programming, it's that you have to bait modern 18-24's with comfort food before you make them watch Divine eat dogshit. For example, this week's midnight lineup includes/included The Breakfast Club, Empire Records, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The fourth pillar was a showing of Top Gun along the lines of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 show by a local improv group, Oncoming Traffic.

The Oncoming Traffic crew, doing their thing.
People actually walked out of Top Gun, I'm assuming because it was their first time seeing the movie. Too bad they apparently didn't read the terribly blatant advertising materials past the line that said "Top Gun".

OT members posing as Jim Cash, Jerry Bruckheimer, and Tony Scott for a book signing.
I want to see us do something really fun, like get John Waters and do Pink Flamingos, or something my friend Nick (a grad now living and teaching in Japan) suggested: surprise them. The idea is to select a movie people really ought to see, but don't know they should, whether for hard and fast quality reasons or for cult value. Promote it as a Midnight Mystery Movie and push it hard through word-of-mouth. Do a couple each semester, and see how it goes. This space will most likely feature highlights from the program throughout the next year. I'm excited about our last event before classes get rolling, which is the North Florida Premiere of Godzilla (1954) this Sunday and Monday. A hurricane threatens to close campus Monday, so we'll see how the storm turns. I'll have pictures early next week.

On Scheduling

I'll be posting on Fridays for sure each week, with another update scattered somewhere early to mid-week, depending on what strikes me at the moment. That means you'll see two updates each week at minimum. If I have my way, it'll solidify as Tuesday/Friday, but we'll see how it goes. Thanks for reading, and keep coming back.
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