We Disagree, Therefore, You're an Idiot

Look, a controversial movie we can all disagree on. Hooray!
Every now and then on these very pages I've flown off the handle to wildly rage against a movie that I feel is unjustly loved by millions, more often than not something born of the Pixar factory, that tireless purveyor of cinematic snake oil, lapped up by eager, gullible fans. And I feel justified in doing this because, after all, this is my space to write in, not yours. If you want to go off on how stupid everyone is in the world, except you, start up a blog. It takes barely a minute and it's free. Seriously, be my guest.

But you know what really gets me fired up? When someone else does the same thing with a movie I love! Don't they know they're stupid? Don't they know they're wrong? Don't they know I'm offended by their post? And if they know this, why'd they do it? I mean, it's me. Do you really want to offend me? Look at me, I'm lovable. I've got the puppy dog eyes and the little pouty mouth and, I mean, come on! I'm adorable, and you owe it to me to like the movies I like and hate the movies I hate. Asshole.

So, here's what's happening, okay? I finally get around to seeing Black Swan, a good month or so after everyone else has seen it because I'm on top of things that way. And I know it got a lot of nominations and a lot of people love it and I know some other people don't like it so much. And none of that matters anyway because all that matters in the end is what I think, but you already knew that.

So I watch it, and I'm excited to finally see it but that's nothing special because I love movies and, as a result, I'm excited to see pretty much anything. Seriously, seeing a movie is exciting to me because it's such an incredible art form and I love it so much that the anticipation of watching any movie holds some kind of a thrill for me. Okay, so I'm excited and I watch it. I get about half way through and I'm thinking, "When this thing gets to the climax it's going to be really special, I just know it! Because so far, man does this movie suck!"

And that's the honest to god truth right there. When I watch a movie and it's not going well, I stick with it always thinking somehow, someway this movie is going to right itself. So that's what I'm doing with Black Swan. I'm all like, "Okay, so far I got some adolescent fantasy shit and lots of faux-deep dark obsessed artist stuff but, brother, by the end, this fucker's going to wow me!"

And so, yeah, I got to the end and it didn't. But now at least I know what Darren Aronofsky thinks about when he goes to the bathroom to do his "business." And that's something, right? I mean, now I don't have to wonder anymore, not that I ever did, mind you.

Cake porn!

So here's where we are: I thought Black Swan was pretty flat as a movie and pretty meaningless as an examination of a tortured artist. And when I hear about its style I just think, "Do they still classify 'swirling around the actor with a steady-cam' as a style? 'Cause I think they officially dropped that designation 12 years ago."

Ahahahahahaaaaaaa!!! See what I did there? Did you get that? You got that, right? I don't mean the clever line about the movie's style, although, that was pretty good. No, I mean the way I took my opinion of the film and expressed in such a flippant, condescending and smug manner as to make it look like if you liked the film, you're an immature idiot. See how I did that?

Of course you did because you've done it too! We've all done that, and, trust me, I could go on but I don't think I could do much better than my previous implication that the whole film was just a two-hour act of masturbation by Aronofsky anyway so why bother. That pretty much hits the perfect balance of smugness and clever repartee so I'm done with that section.

Thing is, they're plenty of folks out there who like it and say I'm the idiot for not seeing what they saw in it. They're wrong and we all know that because I don't like it and, admit it, when I don't like a movie and you do, don't you kind of, just for a second, think, "Hmmm, maybe I'm a complete moron." Come on, you do, right?

You know who else didn't like it? Armond White! Ha, yeah, that's right, Armond White didn't like it. And guess what? I don't think he even understands what a movie is! I hate that guy and he's on my side. Man, things couldn't suck much worse than that. But that's okay because Mick LaSalle did like it, and he's an even bigger idiot! Here's what he wrote:

"For all its ham-fistedness, it captures something about the tyranny of the ballet world and, by extension, the neurotic imprisonment of female body image."

Ahahahahaaaaa!!! Take that Black Swan lovers! You've got Mick LaSalle on your side. Mick LaSalle! Hahahahaaa.

"But wait," you say, "We've got Roger Ebert and Glen Kenny too and guess who you got Ferrara?"

Oh, you calling me out?! Oh, all right, who then?!

"Rex Reed! Rex Reed didn't like it either!"

Damn, man, this was all kind of fun until you took it too far. I mean, Rex Reed. Shit, that's like finding out the only other person that agrees with you that the restaurant everyone loves is actually mediocre is the crazy guy who eats his own poop and everyone calls "Dogman."

"Damn, your neck is long! What's your secret?" "I eat like a bird."

Okay, so I got Armond White and Rex Reed but let's talk bloggers, baby! I got Marilyn Ferdinand, peeps, and Sam Juliano and that ain't no weak shit, motherfucker! But wait, you got Tony Dayoub and Ed Howard and, I don't know, maybe Bill. Or maybe I have Bill. I can't really tell, honestly. I read his review and... well, I think you've got Bill but I bet I could have Bill if I messaged him a few times on Facebook and sweet-talked him. But I don't really know.

Here's what I do know.

Sometimes, we disagree. Quite often, actually. And it probably doesn't do anyone any good to say that they don't know how to judge a film just because we disagree on something.

Unless it's you. You know who I'm talking about. Yeah, that's right, you!

You're an idiot.

"It defeats its own purpose!"

Amazon Video on Demand gives you the option to play the first two minutes of a movie for free before deciding if you want to rent or buy it. This is clearly a hat tip to modern day movie making in which a long parade of opening credits almost never happens anymore, at least not without some kind of action taking place behind it, or the credits themselves being a kind of CGI short film. However, for many older films, this option is somewhat laughable; opening credits were longer back then and, often, you were past the two minute mark before anything outside of credits even appeared on the screen!

With some movies, this option is absolutely absurd. 2001: A Space Odyssey, for instance. The first several minutes contain an overture, meaning it's a black screen with music by György Ligeti, music that is practically inaudible for the first minute. And it's not just 2001 where this option fails. Frankly, it fails on most movies. Even modern movies that don't like a long opening credit sequence without some form of action don't get the story rolling until well after the two minute mark. A better option might be to give the potential renter a choice of seeing two minutes from a point randomly selected somewhere in the movie, although my reckless side thinks giving the option of watching the last two minutes would be worth, at least, a foolhardy try. And to make it worth everyone's while, the movies should be queued up so that the "last two minutes" means the last two minutes of actual action. With most modern movies and their 12 minute long credit rolls, viewing the last two minutes wouldn't tell you much more than who the caterers were, who did the casting and what songs were featured on the soundtrack. So, again, the last two minutes would have to be the actual last two minutes of cinematic screen action before the final cut or fade.

One of the pros of watching the ending is that most movies don't have twists that occur within the last two minutes, often leaving time for the final denouement after the twist. For instance, in a "big twist" movie from the nineties, The Shawshank Redemption, the last two minutes don't reveal the twist but instead Morgan Freeman walking along a wall, extracting a box full of money and meeting Tim Robbins on the beach. To someone who'd never seen it, this might elicit a "What the... What's that all about? How'd they get to that ending I wonder?" As such, think of the curiosity struck by seeing the last two minutes of some very famous movies had you never seen them before.

"Hey, the catatonic guy in the bed just got smothered to death by a big guy who then threw a sink through the window. The fuck?"

"Hey, look, it's kind of like a Nazi rally and those two guys are getting medals while a couple of robots and a big dog-man look on. Wow, what the hell connects those dots?"

"Check it out, there's this dock worker, all bloodied and beaten, walking towards a ship and a bunch of guys are following him. Huh?"

"Someone's slaughtering a water buffalo or cow or something while another guy whacks some big bald guy. Isn't this about Vietnam?! How the hell'd we get here?"

"Cool, the guy in the French hat totally covered for the guy in the trench coat and now they're walking off into the fog talking about their friendship. Wonder where that came from."

Of course, while it may make watching the whole movie enticing in some cases, on the whole, it's probably too risky watching the last two minutes. I mean, "Rosebud," "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown," "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," and "It's the stuff dreams are made of" kind of spoil the climax in a major way and happen right at the end.

Which leaves us with two minutes selected from a random point in the movie. This is my personal choice and here's my completely unscientific reason why: How many times have you been flipping through the channels and seen a movie starting, then decided to keep on flipping to see what else is on while that movie started? And you did this because you knew the first couple of minutes didn't matter that much for your casual late night, channel-flipping purposes. You wanted to see what else was on, right? Now, how many times have you been flipping through the channels and come across a scene from a movie, at some random point in said movie, and been transfixed? Exactly.

Online rental companies, drop the first two minutes preview. It's crap. Give me two minutes at random and I'll given you purchases that are specific, and I'll do it all in under sixty seconds.

Crushing Disappointment:Browsing Netflix Instant

Ever since instant streaming became matter of fact in the last couple of years, it has become a familiar pastime to browse through the thousands of titles available at my fingertips, find nothing I want to watch and play with my phone apps. Actually, what happens more often is after 45 minutes of mindless browsing I finally think of a movie I really want to see and when I search for it, sure enough, it's not on instant. Then, desperate, I go to Amazon or i-tunes thinking, "Fuck it, I'll pay the rental fee," and find, alas, it's not available there either.

Yeah, yeah, I know, same old story. 57 channels and nothing on.

The requisite follow-up to such failures in the online cinematic hunting game is to have the very movie I was looking for become available two weeks later at which point I no longer want to see it. The inverse of this is when I pass over the same movie available on Netflix Instant a hundred times, never wanting to see it, then, one day, it's the must-see movie of the moment and, of course, it's been removed from instant.

But all of this is nothing compared with the legion of disappointing "mistaken identity" moments I've had. I don't wear glasses but I think, perhaps, I need to start because I have these mistaken identity moments more than I should. I see a cover similar to another, more famous movie, get excited and then discover it's not only not the movie I was thinking of but the real movie isn't even available. Sometimes, the movie I was thinking of doesn't even exist. Case in point: Earlier this evening I was browsing through the documentary section of Netflix Instant when my eye caught a glimpse of something that sent a jolt of excitement shooting through my brain: Someone at National Geographic, somehow, had greenlighted a documentary on the world's most dangerous pig! I mean, that was the title and everything, "The World's Most Dangerous Pig!" Wow! Within a few milliseconds it morphed into "hog" and then, with a final, closer look, "drug." It said, "The World's Most Dangerous Drug."

Crushing. Disappointment.

Cinema Styles Year End Extravaganza!

It's the end of another year and you know what that means for Cinema Styles, right? Yep, pretty much, nothing. No top ten list (I never see enough new movies to make a top ten list comprehensive enough), no recap of the movie year, no cinematic resolutions for the next. Pretty much just a big ole helpin' of nuttin'! And every year I secretly tell myself (although now the secret will be out), "Next year, I'm going to see lots of new movies and do all the year end stuff all those other movie writers and critics do." And then? Yep, you guessed it! Nothing.

So it's time I stopped fooling myself. I'm not going to see a bunch of new movies this year because I tend to want to see the older ones first. Oh, don't get me wrong, I see plenty of new movies, I just don't see them when they come out. After about, say, three years have passed, I've pretty much seen all the big or important or highly praised movies of any given year. I just don't see them soon enough to write about them in the here and now. When they kind of take over the landscape, like an Avatar or Inglourious Basterds, I usually rush out to see them to take part in the conversation but, for the most part, I much prefer my steady diet of classic and foreign films taken in at the AFI Silver in Silver Spring, Maryland.

One thing that has happened in the last month has been my long-awaited return to regular posting (long-awaited by me, that is; I doubt anyone else was waiting.). After being laid off of work for a year I got a job at an art supply store that turned out to be exhausting and demoralizing and slightly less income than the unemployment was paying but it was a job and I needed to be employed again so I took it. It didn't matter if it paid a little less than unemployment because I knew as long as I worked hard I'd have a steady paycheck and not be left to the whims of congressional political ping-pong.

The real problem was that I had no computer access at work and when I got home I was too tired to write. Before that I was too depressed and anxious being unemployed to do anything either. The constant spectre of the money supply drying up with a house and four kids turned knots in my stomach almost daily. Then, finally, something positive happened. I got a call from the National Archives, with whom I had previously interviewed for another position I didn't get. They had an opening that fit my experience perfectly, asked for an interview the next day and the day after that called me and told me I was hired. The person I was replacing was leaving in less than two weeks so I had to train on my days off from my other job. True, I could have just vacated the art supply store job but that's simply not who I am. I gave them the proper two weeks notice and trained at the National Archives in my off-time. When I took over full time, the person I was replacing was gone and I had all of four days training under my belt. Through the autumn I see-sawed between happy and incredibly anxious. Happy that I had the job, and a very good one at that, anxious that I didn't know what the hell I was doing for a good two months. So, again, my posts slowed.

Finally, sometime around Thanksgiving I got my footing and ever since, posting has been back to normal around here. This month alone saw almost as many posts as I did for the entire summer (16 for June, July and August combined, 15 for December) and it feels good to be back on track after a year and a half of wandering aimlessly trying to figure out what I was doing.

Still, I've got a lot to do at work and a lot I want to do at home so I have to evaluate how much I can do online and when. Right now I'm running Cinema Styles and Unexplained Cinema while posting for the culture blog If Charlie Parker was a Gunslinger , conversing with a group of horror dads over at TCM and writing music reviews for Mondo Cult Magazine. I've put Unexplained Cinema on hold for now, awaiting inspiration for another sea change to occur. I got quite a boost earlier in the year when The Lincoln Center and its magazine, Film Comment, listed Unexplained Cinema as among the top film sites on the internet and mentioned Cinema Styles at the top of the piece as well. But I can't keep doing something if I'm not inspired by it and right now it's just not happening. I'll figure out something there, eventually.

Posting for Charlie Parker is always fun but something I don't have as much time for anymore. I used to browse photo archives every day but in the last year that's fallen by the wayside so my posting there has suffered as well. I don't know when, or if, I'll have the same amount of time again to devote to browsing photo archives endlessly so I'm probably safe just doing a pic or two a day there. Fortunately, it's a group effort led by the hardest working man online, Tom Sutpen, so I don't ever feel pressured to do more than comes naturally.

When Richard Harland Smith of the Movie Morlocks at TCM asked me to take part in a series of conversations about horror movies among fathers raising their kids on that very genre, I was a little reluctant at first, thinking this might tip the scales for doing too much online. My fears were unfounded as RHS has made it as malleable as possible, bending and contorting discussion times to fit everyone's schedule and I look forward to the next installment.

Mondo Cult Magazine is a breeze because Paul Gaita, one of the editors, sends out e-mails asking who wants to review what, giving a choice of CDs received by the studios pushing them and then sends them to whoever wants to review them. As a result, I never have to review anything for them I don't want to which is pretty damn convenient. My only problem is deadlines of which I'm notoriously late at meeting.

That leaves Cinema Styles and like I said up top, it's back to regular posting here. About a year ago I whittled all the special features here down to Opening Credits I Love, In the Land Before CGI and, now, The Short List, a collection of favorite supporting performances. Paring everything down has made the last year of anxiety much easier to manage and I've also decided to start reviewing music here as well, although unlike my reviews for Mondo Cult, they will be from my own collection. The first one was Oscar Peterson's Motions and Emotions and I look forward to doing many more.

And that's that. Thanks to everyone for sticking around through the lean months and a Happy New Year to all! See you in the 2011!

Where Did the Time (for horror) Go?

Over at TCM's Movie Morlocks, I take part in a semi-regular roundtable called The Horror Dads, in which a few of us (including fellow bloggers Dennis Cozzalio, Jeff Allard and roundtable ringleader Richard Harland Smith) discuss watching horror with our kids. Although the youngest is my stepdaughter, rather than biological (I never actually use the term "stepdaughter"), I've been with her since she was a toddler so I've had the full experience of watching her grow. Somewhere along the way, Friday night became movie night for the three of us (me, my wife and daughter) and shortly after that started (somewhere around six years ago) the weekly pick became horror, or at least 90 percent of the time. There is an occasional comedy thrown it but even then, it's usually comedy horror.

As I've discussed at the roundtable, we usually keep ourselves to pre-1970 horror so that nothing gets too disturbing for the youngest. We've watched all the Universal classics, most of them multiple times, and all the Corman and Hammer classics. But we've also watched less celebrated thrillers like The Spiral Staircase or Hangover Square. We haven't watched Psycho with her yet but we have watched City of the Dead, twice, and although that also has a death by stabbing halfway through the movie, it's done as a cutaway so nothing is seen. It's not that she really understands something like Hangover Square but she appreciates the ambiance and feel of a horror movie or thriller or mystery. It's what she likes and there's no getting around it.

Most of that came not from me but from her mother, my lovely wife, Laura. Laura loves October, witches, black cats and graveyards. We spent a lot of time in an old graveyard in Massachusetts when we drove our oldest daughter up to college, reading tombstones and taking photos. There wasn't a person buried there with a birthdate later than the 1700's and most were born in the 1600's. That kind of thing holds a certain allure for us and it's something that Laura has implanted in the youngest since day one.

It's a love of the macabre but a gentle one. It's the atmosphere of it all that we love more than anything and, more often than not, movie night runs along the line of fantasy horror, such as vampires and mummies and sorcerers, rather than the mad killer variety. Still, I have occasionally tried, and failed, to bring a stronger variety of horror to the fore.

About two years ago I foolishly thought Theatre of Blood might be a hit on movie night. Laura told me that was a big mistake and I should pick something else. But, I countered, the youngest loves Vincent Price, loves him! I'd tell her to cover her eyes when anything too bad happens. So yeah, anyway, I'm an idiot. Nobody needed to say, "I told you so," because I was telling myself two minutes into it when the homeless crazies descend upon the first victim and it was quite clear this was not entertaining the youngest, but rather, freaking her out. It was turned off and put away. Another movie was shown but now, I can't remember which.

Of course, I saw Jaws at eight, in the theatre. I watched The Omen and The Exorcist at ten. And so, I thought, if I could handle it, she could. But, it occurs to me, there are three different types of horror fans (well, in a sweepingly general kind of a way, at least): The ones who like the gentler more ambient horror of yesteryear (1970 and before), the ones who like hardcore, disturbing horror from any time (Psycho, The Exorcist, The Shining) and the ones who like both. I fall into the "both" category, my wife into the "yesteryear" category and the youngest? I think I have to accept she falls into that category too, the kinder, gentler variety. Sure, there's time to grow into it but as she approaches middle school, I wonder. How many horror fans know early on, very early, that they like the hard stuff too? I did. It's usually not something that waits until puberty to manifest itself.

As she grows older I wonder if we'll continue to watch horror together. Will we graduate to stronger stuff or will she lose interest in the genre only to retain a nostalgic sense of warmth for its atmosphere, memories of Friday night with pizza and ice cream? I don't know. I do know there will still be plenty of mysteries and ghost stories to watch with her even if she never wants to watch the other stuff. But I'll also miss the enthusiasm that I fear will diminish as she grows older and has less time for Mom and Dad and more time for friends and parties. Oh well. It's been a hell of a good run and something I'll always hold on to, tightly.

As she grows up I realize more than ever how much a debt of gratitude I owe Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, James Whale, Peter Cushing, Hazel Court, Terence Fisher, Christopher Lee, Barbara Steele, Peter Lorre, Jimmy Sangster, Roger Corman, William Castle, Hammer Studios, Universal Studios and a hundred other artists who helped make the Friday nights of my daughter's youth some of the best nights we'll ever have together. Without them, it never could have happened.

The King of the Retro-Fit, or:Why I Hate George Lucas

I don't actively hate George Lucas. I don't even dislike him. But he gives me that "God, I hate that guy!" feeling enough times that I think subtitling a piece, "Why I Hate George Lucas" is perfectly acceptable. And right now I have that "God, I hate that guy!" feeling all over again. See, George is going to convert all six Star Wars films to 3-D for theatrical re-release starting in 2012. Maybe the world does end then, after all. And I'm not pissed because he's taking an overly expensive, screen-darkening trendy fad and giving it unneeded and unwarranted extra life, although that's bad enough. I'm pissed because movies, particularly popular effects movies, are being lost as artifacts of their time. Let me explain.



I love science fiction movies, primarily older science fiction movies from the fifties. I love Forbidden Planet and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. I love The Day the Earth Stood Still and Invaders from Mars. I love The Incredible Shrinking Man, Them!, War of the Worlds and every other great or not so great sci-fi flick of the fifties and sixties and I even love At the Earth's Core and Logan's Run from the seventies too. And a part of why I love them is their lack of seamless perfection. I don't ever, EVER, want to see Doug McClure and Peter Cushing in a CGI-enhanced Earth Core drilling machine thingy. I want to always see them in that glorious throwback of a machine created for the original 1976 movie. I don't ever want the ants in Them! to look like honest-to-goodness real live ants, I want them to look like those big furry props that grab a hold of James Whitmore and don't let go. And, dammit, I want (and really would have fucking loved, George!) to have the original Star Wars Trilogy look the same from when I first saw them.

"But wait," you say, "Didn't they release (for a limited time) the original, unaltered films on DVD as part of a boxed set?"

Yes, they did and no, I didn't buy it because I cannot invest that kind of money in a box set. And it's not really what I mean anyway. What I mean is, despite being technically available, the original unaltered trilogy will never, ever be shown on cable or television again. All anyone is ever going to grow up seeing are the altered versions and that's a shame and a real loss. I understand the arguments for updating it to keep it going from generation to generation and keep the profits rolling in. I understand, I just don't care. I think it's important for people, film fans whether casual or hardcore, to enjoy a film for its place in history as well as for its technical specifications. When Gus Van Sant remade Psycho shot for shot in 1998, he proved, whether unwittingly or not, that a film does not just rise or fall dependent upon it's exacting technical content but upon when that content was originally done as well.

A film is a time-capsule and an archaeological object as well as a work of art. It is a piece of frozen time whose importance is, in the end, a lot more tied to historical significance than its bottom line. Watching an older movie takes me to another time in history and watching a movie I love takes me to the time in my life when I fell in love with it. Increasingly, all I see when I watch Star Wars (which, for these purposes is rhetorical because I don't watch it much these days) is a product that keeps getting a "New and Improved" sticker slapped on it. I'd love to say I've seen the trilogy and that's that but I know I haven't. I know that it will continue to be changed, most likely long after George Lucas' death, as he has probably already laid out in his will that the trilogy should be technologically updated in perpetuity with the requisite re-release for each new retro-fit. I wouldn't even be surprised if, eventually, it doesn't star Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher or Harrison Ford but rather whoever the big new stars are of the day, digitally inserted to keep the next generation interested.

My advice to everyone who wants to pass on the magic of Star Wars to their kids: Show them something else. Show them the great sci-fi of the fifties, sixties and seventies and the cheesy ones too. Show them Forbidden Planet and Planet of the Apes and Fantastic Voyage and Soylent Green and even Lucas' THX1138 and make sure you give them a healthy dose of Amicus while you're at it. Because it's those films that represent the true feel and time of the original trilogy, not that fleeting, ephemeral thing that's out there now that changes so much it's become impossible to ever actually see the final product. It's like Star Wars doesn't even exist anymore. It's a spirit, a phantom, but not necessarily a menace. More just a waste of time.

Out of Movie Experiences

As I watch horror movies this month, and most of next month, in an effort to make sure I have plenty to write about for October, I find Cinema Styles sitting idle while it waits for October to arrive. I don't like it sitting idle but there it is. Of course, I'm rarely not thinking of movies so there's always something to write about, and yesterday, while watching Bob Roberts, I started thinking about things that take me out of a movie. Bob Roberts is a Tim Robbins mockumentary from 1992 about a populist candidate running for the senate in Pennsylvania who spouts the same nonsense populists always have and always will. That might make for an interesting discussion somewhere in the blogosphere but it doesn't really interest me. No, what really struck me was this: Every time Giancarlo Esposito was onscreen I was officially taken out of the movie. You see, Esposito does the impossible; he overacts in a mockumentary (or overacts in a way that's not as entertaining as Fred Willard). Everyone else in the movie talks and acts like a real person in front of a documentary crew but Esposito takes his Character Ticks and Mannerisms Machine and amps it up to around a million. I mean, it's off the fucking scale. As such, every time he showed up my suspension of disbelief ended and I started thinking things like, "I wonder if Robbins was pleased with this performance or hated it and kept struggling with Esposito to tone it down."



All of this then led me to wonder what else takes me out of movie. Not all, or possibly any of these, would take someone else out of a movie but for me, it happens every time.

1. The price of anything being stated. The exception to this is a period film where the price being stated is there to flesh out the place and time. Now, understand that, for whatever reason, I can watch a movie with 1950's cars and suits and designs and will nonetheless convince myself that it takes place in the present. So when I'm watching North by Northwest and Cary Grant's character is disputing a drunk driving charge and his mother, sick of him arguing about it, says, "Oh pay the two dollar fine," I'm like, "What?! Two dollars!!" Suddenly, the movie feels dated even though I already knew it took place in the "present" of 1959.

2. The year being stated. Again, the exception being a period piece where the exact year being stated is done so to set the scene. But again, for me, all other movies take place in the present, the present of that particular movie. A movie made in 1972 takes place in the present. A movie made now that takes place in 1972 is a period piece. Confused? So am I. So anyway, when I'm watching Vertigo (more Hitchcock) and I hear Kim Novak say she got her license in 1955 I'm surprised, momentarily. "That's like, 55 years ago!"

3. Mentioning another movie in your movie. Especially if I'm watching a crappy or average film and they start talking about a better film I just think how much better it would be to watch that other movie instead. Exceptions to this rule are Woody Allen mentioning the cast of The Godfather to Diane Keaton, a member of the cast of The Godfather, in Annie Hall, a great movie anyway so it doesn't matter. Also, Leslie Nielsen and Priscilla Presley doubled over in laughter as they exit Platoon in The Naked Gun.

4. Celebrity Cameos, especially sports stars. They're usually so bad (see Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra and Roger Maris in That Touch of Mink) that it serves as a tonic to the wrongheaded notion that actors who "just play themselves" aren't really acting. Oh, yes they are!

5. Saying the title of the movie in big, bold letters. I understand if the title of the movie is someone's name, like Patton or Gloria but when the title's more elaborate I just know it's going to pop up at a poignant moment. It's why, for all its great qualities, They Shoot Horses, Don't They loses me right at the end, just when they really need me to stay connected. But I can't, you see, because I know and you know and everyone ever seeing the movie knows that when they ask Michael Sarrazin why he shot Jane Fonda, he's going to say... oh, you know what he's going to say, and that's the point. Had they titled the film, "Marathon" or "Dance, Dance, Dance" or anything else, then Sarrazin's final line would have immeasurable power but it doesn't because it's right there in the title (Actually, I just watched another movie that does both this and mentions another far superior film but I'm discussing it for a roundtable so I can't bring it up here just yet).

Well, that's it for now. I have plenty more little nit-picky things but won't waste your time listing them all. I'm sure you have several too, things that bother you but no one else. Obviously continuity problems take everyone out of a movie, or anachronisms, but I'm not talking about mistakes (like a plane being spotted in a movie set in 1743) I'm talking about a normal technique, like saying the date or having a cameo or saying the title, that in and of itself isn't wrong or intended to take you out of the movie but does. If you have any, let me know, but don't mention any other, better posts from other blogs that would take you out of this one, because that would just be rude. And all too easy.

I forgot what I was going to write...

... so here's this crappy post instead.


It's been busy, very busy, in fact, settling into a new job and moving our daughter 500 miles to get her college career rolling. As a result, I haven't had the time I'd like to sit down and compose a decent post. But that's not the real problem. The real problem is that, in between the moving about from state to state and job to job (which makes me sound a bit like Andy Travis, in case, baby, you've ever wondered) I've come up with many a tantalizing prospect for a post, only to forget it when it comes time to sit down and flesh it out. "Ah now," I'll say to myself as I stroke my chin, "I was going to write a piece on..." And then? Nothing.

All I can gather at this point is that Flickhead wrote something about some movie or actress or thing out there and I thought, "Hey, yeah, I can expand on that!" And then, right after that, because my mind is trying to process multiple life-changing adjustments at once, I thought, "I wonder if Flickhead's written anything lately." Because, see, I forgot I even had an idea from a Flickhead post, or comment, or Facebook status update or comment on one of my Facebook status updates. Shit, I don't know. Seriously, I don't know.

And then I'm almost positive Bill did something funny or stupid or vile and I thought "cool" or "yeah" or "fuck him!" I can't remember. Or maybe that was Arbogast. I don't know. I do know the other day, yesterday I think, I saw that Rod or Marilyn, or maybe both, reviewed The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant and I immediately got an idea for a Fassbinder piece. No, really, I'm not just making this up for a joke. This whole post is real, however comical my mental misfortune may be. I had an idea and I swear to you on Fritz Lang's monocle, I don't know what in the hell it was. All I can come up with is "Frische birnen!" That's all I got and I know it was better than that. But still, there it is in my head. "Frische birnen! Frische birnen!" That's not a post!

On the 500 mile drive back from college this weekend, at night(!), my wife and I discussed all kind of cool stuff but nothing I could really make a post out of at this point. We talked about No Country for Old Men and Blood Meridian and Cormac McCarthy's world outlook and it was all great but I don't think I can accurately, or even very enthusiastically, regurgitate all of it here. It's one of those things where the conversation is so great you feel spent afterwards and don't have a desire to start the whole thing up again because you covered all the bases.

And so here I am, writing away about not having any idea what to write about and doing it all with not a shred of ironic intention. I'm not trying to make this into some clever 8 1/2 movie blogger post, I'm trying to apologize for being so flaky and sporadic on the post front. I swear, I'm going to remember one of the ideas I had soon and write it up. Or maybe I'll just write up some October stuff early (it's all I can remember at this point but I'm trying to save it all up - just watch, by October, I'll forget all of it). Either way, that's the story here, for now. Just thought I'd keep you updated. Until next time,

Frische birnen! Frische birnen!

Dead Man Walking: The Boots of All Quiet on the Western Front

One of my favorite sequences in All Quiet on the Western Front occurs when director Lewis Milestone follows around a pair of boots as they make their way from one owner to the next. Each owner is a German soldier, desperate for a decent pair of walking boots. In a life filled with rats, dysentery, trench foot, spoiled food and constant assault under fire, a decent pair of boots is tantamount to winning the lottery. Only this lottery turns the winner's luck around on him the second he wins. Each soldier who wears the boots dies.

Roderick Heath, in the comment section of his excellent review of The Big Parade, said of All Quiet on the Western Front, "no matter what else you say about it, you can’t get away from the fact it’s a message picture." I agree, even while also believing it to be one of the greater works of early sound cinema and a film filled with great battle scenes regardless of the era. Still, the point is taken: It's a message picture through and through and the boot scene hammers the message home as hard as any other scene but does so in a self-contained, short film kind of a way. It could exist as its own little movie without the rest of the story surrounding it. Also, the boot scene is the one point in the film in which Paul, the main character, disappears while a vignette breaks out in his absence. Maybe that's why I like it so much: it's all so very self-contained. So self-contained (it's only a minute long!), in fact, that the rest of the movie may as well be elaborate ornamentation surrounding it.

The vignette's full story starts with Paul walking out of the hospital with his recently deceased friend's boots. But the character walking out of the hospital with the boots might as well be anyone as far as the vignette is concerned. After all, Paul isn't around to watch the other soldiers die, he's just there to get the vignette rolling. In it we see two soldiers get the boots bringing the death toll to three, which includes Paul's friend. I like that about it too: it's just two soldiers in the vignette, not five or six. The whole sequence commands a sense of brevity and clutter-free message-making that the rest of the film, great as it is, could have turned to a bit more.

Episode IV: A New Hope (for Cinema Styles)

I've been at this blogging thing for years now (a little over three) but in the last year I've gone up and down the mood gauge as unemployment has taken my focus away from the movies. Now, this Monday, I start a new job (finally!) and, going into my fourth year here at Cinema Styles, I expect more changes to occur. For one, I won't be on during the day anymore, except on a day off of course, but I don't think that's very much a concern at this point. These days more of us are logging on at night and doing brief check-ins on social networks like Facebook during the day, something I can quickly do on a lunch break. But there are other changes too, changes in how I view movies.

In the last two years my wife and I have become huge fans of the AFI Silver here in Silver Spring and I've gotten to experience so much classic Hollywood and world cinema on the big screen that I don't know how I ever survived without it. It's to the point where I'll make sure a film I haven't seen before, but is playing on, say, TCM, isn't going to be playing at the AFI first. If it is I don't want to blow the first time I ever see it by seeing it on television. But it's more than that.

When I started Cinema Styles it was decidedly a classic Hollywood film blog. That was its primary focus and I tried to keep everything to 1979 and before. Gradually I mentioned some newer films and liked the idea of being a part of the conversation on current cinema. Cinema Styles doesn't have a lot of reviews but now, it seems, those that are here have as much chance as being current (Avatar, Shutter Island) as being classic (Foreign Affair, Easy Living) and that's fine by me. However, the one area I haven't really moved into is documentaries, even though they have quickly become my favorite form of movie to watch (I watch at least two or so a week, sometimes not a narrative film at all). The reason is because I take them all personally (I watch primarily political docs) and don't want to get into a fight over politics on my blog, I really don't. It seems easier to review a narrative film based on its technique without necessarily arguing about the philosophical content of its message. With a documentary, often, the message is the thing. I occasionally review a historical documentary, like the ones I have reviewed on nuclear tests and the Cold War, but that's different. History is more easily argued in a civilized manner because of the benefit of hindsight and a body of established facts from which to work. That being the case, I don't think Cinema Styles will be moving into the direction of documentary reviewing any time soon.

In fact, I don't know what direction it will be moving in, just that it's exciting to be getting back to work and Cinema Styles will have to adapt to a new schedule, that's all. The rants will still be here, In the Land Before CGI will still be here, Opening Credits I Love and even other much longer neglected features, like The Wanderers, will still be here and pop up from time to time. And Unexplained Cinema and The Invisible Edge will still be here too, although I've neglected The Edge for almost two weeks now. And I'll still be here, just at night more than during the day. Wish me luck!

Post-Nuclear Cinema

Today, July 16, 2010, marks the 65th anniversary of the beginning of the atomic age. It was on this date, at 5:29 a.m. local time in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, that the United States Army Corps of Engineers under the military supervision of General Leslie R. Groves and scientific supervision of J. Robert Oppenheimer, detonated the first bomb powered by nuclear fission, a bomb code-named, in a moment of breathless military understatement, "the gadget." Ever since that "gadget" successfully detonated and the United States used two more over the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, the atomic age has been one of fascination and revulsion the world over. The new super-energy attainable through the atom quickly went from revulsion in popular culture to sci-fi plot point magnet. And it was those early atomic age sci-fi films that prodded me along to become a bonafide sci-fi fanatic by my early teens. The Japanese were among the first to embrace nuclear energy in a science fiction setting with films like Gojira (Godzilla in its Americanized version) although not the first specifically, as films like War of the Worlds used atomic bombs within the story, if not as a method of creation like Gojira.

In was in that method, using atomic energy as a means of growing a monster, in literal form, that acted as catharsis for the Japanese viewing audience. And that catharsis was brought to them via legendary director Ishiro Honda. If you'd like to read more about the great Japanese sci-fi/fantasy director, you can do no better than these two articles, one by Kimberly Lindbergs at TCM's Movie Morlocks and the other by Mykal Banta of Radiation Cinema. In fact, Radiation Cinema is itself a wonderful resource for all the pop culture of the Atomic Age. Mykal stopped updating it in November but until he starts up again there is plenty to peruse at one's leisure. Also, while not specifically an atomic age article, this post by Richard Harland Smith at Movie Morlocks does touch on many of the same themes and includes some very important post-nuclear movies.

And while these atomic age sci-fi wonders nudged me in the direction of sci-fi, they didn't do anything for my interest in the age itself. That would come from history books, science books and fear of annihilation. Growing up during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, nuclear weapons were often at the forefront of conversation. My father had several history books in the house, including The Oppenheimer Case: Security on Trial, 1969, Philip Stern. I read through it, though as a small child I skimmed more than anything else. Still, there it was and of all the books my father had, including an invaluable set of encyclopedias dealing exclusively with American history, it was the one that caught my eye. It wasn't long before I was reading up on nuclear energy, SALT talks and philosophies like M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction). I learned about Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, Enrico Fermi and Ernest Lawrence. I watched On the Beach, Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe as many times as I could (thank you TBS for running them over and over and over). And when a new movie like The China Syndrome came out, I was the only kid in school who actually wanted to see it.

Then, late in high school, The Day After (d. Nicholas Meyer), with Jason Robards and JoBeth Williams, aired on ABC and it was a sensation. This was 1983 and the Cold War was at the boiling point. I watched the ABC movie with rapt attention and the next day the local news showed up at my high school to get student's reactions. Naturally, they were told by classmates to ask me, which they did. I got a lesson that day in how clever editing can make you look like a complete idiot. The reporter came to me to ask my reaction, thrust the mic in my face and I talked. And talked. And talked. I wouldn't shut up. I went on and on about the difference in conditions and results between Hiroshima and the destruction showed in the movie. I critiqued the footage of multiple bombs going off seemingly within a couple of miles of each other and saying how, given the yield of a thermo-nuclear warhead, the dispersal of heat and dozens of miles of fallout radius, this would be a waste of bombs and, in reality, the dispersal pattern would be much larger. Yes, I was a teenager. And that poor news crew discovered I was very anxious to show off how much I knew about the subject. I also threw in a criticism that not enough people died from radiation burns or sickness and that the movie seemed to focus on one or two characters getting slowly sicker where I felt that point should have been hammered home with much greater force.

After school I excitingly told my father and mother that I was going to be on the news, interviewed about The Day After! Oh my God, it was going to be glorious! The news came on and the three of us gathered round the tv to watch. The reaction to the movie was the lead story! Of course, there was a lot of reaction, from all over the country so the high school students' part was cut to mere seconds. I was a part of that mere seconds. About one second of it. There I was, front and center on the television saying simply, "Not enough people died." Anyone who didn't know me saw an idiot teenager who didn't like the movie because there wasn't enough bloodshed.

Other Cold War movies, like Wargames, were must-see events as well. I saw that one on opening weekend and as far as I'm concerned, it not only holds up but still has one of the best opening sequences to a thriller I've ever seen. However, for me, documentaries became the route to take because, while I enjoyed the thrillers and realistic fictions, it was the real story I wanted and that, in turn, led to my interest in documentaries over all. And while I have viewed many more documentaries on the subject of nuclear war than fiction films, not all have been satisfying. A documentary like The Atomic Cafe is excellent but too concerned at times with ridiculing the era rather than giving a real appreciation for the gravity of what was going on in the world during that time. To this day I meet younger people who have seen The Atomic Cafe and seem to have the impression that the Cold War was this really big silly-fest that went on in the fifties and sixties. It wasn't. It was serious, and frankly, pretty damn scary. I much prefer to direct people towards the documentaries and narrative films on the subject that I have reviewed here, including The Day After Trinity, Day One, Trinity and Beyond and Radio Bikini. Most of the original comments on those reviews are lost forever as I foolishly used Haloscan for comments here for the first year and a half and that system is now off the grid but if you'd like to comment on any of them, please, feel free. My friend Marilyn also has two excellent reviews of movies in this category, I Live in Fear and The House in the Middle, not a review proper but an interview with film preservationist Rick Prelinger that touches on the infamous nuclear civil defense film. Finally, Peter Nellhaus has a review of one of the best films ever made on the subject, Black Rain.

Today's date is a sobering one in human history and one that guided my interest in history and documentary filmmaking. It's a subject I don't think can be taken seriously enough and perhaps that is why, to some degree, I have always been a bit annoyed at criticisms that Fail Safe lost out to Dr. Strangelove because it took itself too seriously. No, it's just that Dr. Strangelove is one of the greatest films ever made but Fail Safe is still, nonetheless, an important and well-made film on the topic. I recommend both highly, as well as the documentaries listed above.

I close out with the trailer I made for the documentary The Day After Trinity two years ago. There was no actual trailer ever made for the film so I made one myself and put it up on YouTube. With nearly 12,000 views and three pages of comments, it's one of my more successful videos. The man at the start of the trailer, reading the letter he wrote to Oppenheimer, is Haakon Chevalier; the man looking distraught in the middle is Robert's brother Frank and the voice you hearing narrating the final part is physicist Freeman Dyson, not a Manhattan Project scientist but an integral part of the documentary, acting as the objective observer for most of it. It would be the documentary I would recommend the most as a start-up for anyone interested in the subject.

The Moment that Makes Greatness

Recently I've been thinking more and more about what makes a film great? It must be more that acting, editing, cinematography, writing, scoring or any other part that when added to the sum makes up more than the whole. If it were quantifiable in technical terms then Gus Van Sant's Psycho would be as equally celebrated as Hitchcock's and it isn't, nor should it be. More than that what makes a film great to one may not make it great to another. After years online, writing about movies and discussing them in comment sections, I'm still surprised sometimes when we don't all agree on the goodness, badness or ugliness of a particular movie, as if somehow we should all know the exact markers of a great or bad film and simply check them off to know with which kind of film we're dealing.

Much of this thinking process was sped along by my friend Bill Ryan's recent post on Mulholland Dr, written and directed by David Lynch and released in 2001. That's a film I know is great but I don't know for sure if I could tell you why. In fact, for much of the film the cinematography is rather pedestrian by these eyes, doing very little of interest with interiors for example. The editing, scoring and writing are all perfectly good in an almost purposely unremarkable way. And yet, I know that this is a great movie. Not just a good one, a great one. How do I know? I don't know. But I do know when I know.



For me, I often have moments when I know a movie is great and for Mulholland Dr it's when Rebekah Del Rio takes the stage at the Club Silencio, a full hour and 49 minutes into the movie, and performs "Crying" ("Llorando") in Spanish. Why does that moment signal the turn for me? I have no idea, I just know that it does. The entire Club Silencio sequence has a quiet beauty for me that very few movies achieve and when Del Rio is on stage I can feel an emotional pull that feels real but seems inexplicable. And how many movies, really, how many, can keep you interested and even deeply involved for almost two hours and then, THEN(!), at the time when most movies would be winding down, ramp everything up to a fever pitch that makes you, the viewer, feel like you've just been given a shot of adrenalin directly into the heart?

That's what Mulholland Dr does to me but there are so many movies that give me that "great" moment. Here are just five from a list of hundreds:

The Bridge on the River Kwai: This moment's a bit obvious and clearly intended to be a "comes the dawn" moment for the viewer but still it ropes me in every time. It's the moment just before the intermission when Colonel Nicholson is informed that the wood they're using has been known to last for 600 years and his eyes widen as he whispers in amazement, "600 years?" He's gone and now you know it. It chills me every time and takes the movie from excellent to great.

Dodsworth: Some movies hold out until the very last second and Dodsworth is one of them. I find the whole movie terrific but it's that moment, that scene on the ocean liner, almost at the very end of the movie that does it for me, that transforms it from good relationship drama to great relationship drama. [SPOILER]In the penultimate scene, as Dodsworth (Walter Huston) is on board, returning to the states with his wife (Ruth Chatterton) even though he's in love with another woman (Mary Astor) and this is 1936 and you know, just know, that this is how the production code dictates it must end, suddenly Dodsworth stands up, essentially says, "To hell with this and you and all your phoniness" and leaves to go to Mary Astor. What an ending. [END SPOILER]

The Earrings of Madame de...: The movie's initial set-up plays like a farce. Earrings are sold, re-bought by the husband, given to mistresses, lost in casinos and so on until our lovely lead, the Comtesse Louise, played by Danielle Darrieux, meets and falls in love with the Baron Fabrizio Donati, played by Vittorio De Sica. And then they dance, and dance, and dance. And when that dance scene happens, that takes us through the opening whispers of their love, as they dance until the band stops playing, that's when it becomes great.

The Third Man: Another obvious moment but still, I can't deny it. It occurs when Holly (Joseph Cotten) is stumbling drunk into the street from Anna's (Alida Valli) apartment and spies none other than Harry Lime (Orson Welles) in the doorway across the street. The same Harry Lime that, up to now, was supposed to be dead.

Stroszek: I highlighted this sequence a while back at Unexplained Cinema and it remains for me the greatest moment in the whole movie but, also, the moment that tips the movie over the edge from fascinating and bizarre study to greatness. Bruno Stroszek (Bruno S.) stands motionless as his home abandons him and exits stage left (house right).

I could keep going and, in fact, so many scenes in movies that are celebrated in movies are celebrated for the very fact that they often are the moment the movie transcends expected standards and moves into the area of greatness ("We're going to need a bigger boat" from Jaws being an easy example) but it's more interesting when, as in Mulholland Dr., you're not really sure why a moment takes you to the next level, it just does and when it happens, it can be exhilirating.

Unsupported, Indefensible and Just. Plain. Rude.

Film writers, critics and bloggers, like myself, spend a lot of time thinking about how a review or essay they've written will be received. I know I've edited and re-edited and re-re-edited a review so as not to come off as too belligerent or condescending, especially when I am aware that my opinion of a given movie runs counter to the general consensus. In those cases I am extra careful to phrase my opinions carefully and do my best to support my opinions with evidence, solid and verifiable, that the reader can examine for him or herself. It can be draining and it is often times much easier to just take an older film, one that everyone likes and give it an excellent write-up. No concerns, no controversy, no disagreements.

But sometimes, the eggshells get harder and harder to walk on and you just want to scream, "Screw it! Here's what I think and I have nothing to back it up. Nothing! But guess what? I'm still going to say it!"

So allow me to present the Cinema Styles Baseless Opinion Dirty Dozen! If you disagree with anything written below, who cares? Really, who cares?! It's baseless! I know that, you know that. Baseless opinion can be a good thing as long as we all acknowledge it is just that, baseless, and don't try and pretend it means anything or has any evidential or factual validity, which is why Jeffrey Wells would never qualify for this little exercise, ever. Let us begin.

1. I think Vivien Leigh did a better job as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire than Jessica Tandy and I've never even seen Jessica Tandy in the role! That's insane! How can I make that judgment? Easy, Leigh had difficult depression issues she had to deal with in real life that I can almost see her bring that to the role when I watch her in the film version. That final scene is heartbreaking the way Leigh plays it and I just can't see Tandy making me feel the same thing. And I can't back that up in any possible way! Fun times! Get ready for more!

2. Hey, speaking of stage to screen roles, know what? I'm glad Audrey Hepburn got cast as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. Ha, ha, that's right, glad! I like her a lot more than Julie Andrews so who cares if they had to dub her singing voice. Go Audrey!

3. Comedy is all relative. What's funny to one person isn't funny to another so who am I to tell you who and what's funny, right? Wrong! Here's the list - memorize it! Groucho Marx, funny. Everybody else, less funny. Sasha Baron Cohen, almost supernaturally unfunny.

4. The best supporting performance in The Godfather, Part II wasn't Robert DeNiro, it was John Cazale, and he wasn't even nominated!

5. I have never really liked Marilyn Monroe in anything. Really. And I find her too caricatured to be sexy, because she is!

6. A while ago me and one other person here expressed the belief that Peter Cushing was the best Sherlock Holmes, better than Basil Rathbone, better than Jeremy Brett, better than all of them. Know what? He is!

7. William Holden - tumbler in one hand, cigarette in the other, Stefani Powers on the couch and a cynical observation rolling off the lips - coolest man ever.

8. Outland is better than High Noon. Seriously, that's baseless and everything, but it's true.

9. Timothy Dalton was the best Bond, Casino Royale doesn't even approach being the best Bond movie ever and all four of the Pierce Brosnan Bonds should be un-movied from existence. They. Never. Happened. Just keep repeating that until it's true.

10. Late Kurosawa is much better than early Kurosawa but early Kurosawa is all anyone ever ranks. This should be corrected. Now!

11. Speaking of which, The Magnificent Seven is better than The Seven Samurai. OOOOOOOH!!!! OH! NO! HE! DIDN'T!!! Oh yes I did.

12. Finally, know what the best selectors of the best movies each year are? The Oscars? The Golden Globes? The National Society of Film Critics? The New York Film Critics? Nope! The Edgar Allen Poe Awards, and they only select in one genre! Seriously, it's not perfect, and there are plenty of stinkers but on the whole I'd rather watch their winners anytime. For your list viewing pleasure, go here.

And that, as they say, is that. We apologize for this interruption in the normal running of Cinema Styles. Back to carefully considered opinions. Sigh.

Oscar Time, Again

And so we are once again at Oscar time. On Sunday, March 7th the awards are handed out. Expect Kathryn Bigelow to win Best Director for the excellent The Hurt Locker and Avatar to win Best Picture. Avatar should win Best Picture because it has the momentum, and has had it for months. Makes no nevermind to me since I'm no fan of that film anyway and will probably nod off somewhere around the fourth musical performance of the night. Still, my indifference to each year's specific Oscars never seems to diminish a misplaced affection I have for the award in general, for reasons I cannot entirely put into words, but will try anyway.


I still credit the Oscars in many ways for pushing my early cinephilia along. You see, I was one of those kids that read encyclopedias religiously. The "Motion Picture" section was my favorite and I read through it again and again and again. At the end of the section was the Oscars listing, going all the way up to the publication date of the encyclopedias, 1968. Yes, 1968. Anyway, I used the Oscars as my first ever guide as to what movies to see. Since there were no video stores, cable tv, Netflix, Amazon or i-tunes it meant I had to get lucky and have one of them air on PBS or network late-night tv but nevertheless, it provided me with a basic list of movies to see.

It didn't take long once I started seeing movies from around the world, movies listed on the Sight and Sound poll and movies from directors with whole books devoted to them to discover that the Academy didn't hold the art of cinema to a very high standard. So many of the movies honored over the years haven't been the Best Picture, haven't had the Best Performances, haven't had the Best Screenplays or haven't had the Best Cinematography that it became a kind of pastime to poke fun at some of the Oscar picks while still, somehow, holding them in a certain esteem. I think it was Pauline Kael who once remarked that the Oscars are extraordinary in that one can use them interchangeably as examples of either the highest standard or the lowest standard of cinema and people will understand the difference. In other words, someone can dismiss a performance by saying its the kind of performance that wins Oscars, meaning sentimental, overdone and filled to the brim with noble posturing. In the next breath someone can extol the virtues of a great performance by declaring it to be "Oscar worthy!" We all understand "the kind of performance that wins Oscars" means "not very good" while an "Oscar worthy performance" means "excellent." We all know what the Academy members do award, but we also know what they should award and therein lies the difference.

Still, with each passing year I find myself mellowing to Oscar's past transgressions as the thought of anything important being associated with them becomes more and more humorous. There was a time when Cimarron or The Greatest Show on Earth or The Sound of Music winning Best Picture would have really bugged me but now, despite not thinking highly of any of them, I actually get nostalgic to see them again. So they won Best Picture, who cares? Are Morocco and The Front Page from 1931, Singin' in the Rain from 1952 or Repulsion from 1965, all from the respective years of those three winners, forgotten now because they didn't get the Oscar? No, of course not. And you know what? How Green Was My Valley is a damn fine movie! I like Chariots of Fire too. And The Sting won Best Picture in the year when Cries and Whispers, The Exorcist, American Graffiti, The Long Goodbye and Spirit of the Beehive were all eligible but I don't begrudge it that. Quite frankly, if many of these lesser films hadn't won Best Picture I might never have seen them and many of them are a lot of fun even if they're not the most shining examples of the cinematic art form.


So this Sunday watch the Oscars or ignore them completely but whether you're a casual movie fan or a true dyed-in-the-wool cinephile try not to get too upset at the outcome. While the ideal of the award may still be the highest achievement in the art of cinema we all know the real award doesn't mean a thing. And if a movie's greatness, like that of a Citizen Kane or a La Règle du Jeu, can sustain it in perpetuity without any Oscars for Best Picture, why not let the lesser works go ahead and win it. In many cases, it's the only chance they have of being remembered at all.

Straight, No Chaser? Those Hurtin' Basterds

I watched The Hurt Locker recently and started thinking about the nature of film and how writers and directors use different approaches to achieve various results.  In this case I was thinking of war movies and specifically the two most recent I have seen, The Hurt Locker and Inglourious Basterds.   I started to think about those cocktail party distinictions between the Documentary-Style war film and the Hollywood war film.  Basically, the Doc-Style film, The Hurt Locker, has a gritty verisimilitude, an uncomfortable relationship with reality that keeps the viewer off-balance while the Hollywood war film, Inglourious Basterds, goes for fantasy and mythos and uses the language of film to achieve something that in the real world does not exist.  These days most war films fall into The Hurt Locker column but for decades most war movies fell squarely into the Inglourious Basterds one.  

Back in the forties and fifties Hollywood made almost as many war films as it made westerns but even when Hollywood was trying to play it in earnest, with films like The Sands of Iwo Jima, they still wore their patriotism on their sleeve and kept the physical horrors of war well hidden from the innocent audience.  There was the occasional film like Battleground to keep the Doc-Style fires burning but for the most part Hollywood went the other way.  By the sixties and seventies, with movies like Where Eagles Dare, The Guns of Navarone and Kelly's Heroes, the Hollywod war film became the standard and World War II - the greatest conflict in human history with over fifty million (some stats say 60) casualties, the first use of nuclear weapons on a civilian population and a wholesale and systematic genocide that shocked the world - became a backdrop for the latest action or heist plot.  While there were serious war films, like Battle of the Bulge or the biopic Patton, they still had a glossy technicolor finish that distinguished them from the gritty black and white of Battleground in the years before.  Some films like Tora, Tora, Tora even tried to overtly emulate a documentary style but still came off feeling like an action movie (at least its last 15 minutes), not a presentation on the horrors of war. 

Then by the late seventies Vietnam became a subject for war films and because the actual war had been seen in news footage during the sixties and seventies it seemed wrong to try and gloss it up for a movie version, as John Wayne had done with The Green Berets in 1969.  But somewhere between The Deer Hunter and Platoon, Rambo was born and suddenly Vietnam had the same Hollywood style action pics of old being made with it as a backdrop.  The Missing in Action movies would continue the trend.  It was in the nineties, with Saving Private Ryan in particular, that the gritty Doc-Style war film finally wound its way back to World War II but moreso found its new look with a decision director Steven Spielberg and DP Janusz Kaminski made to desaturate the colors for the film's in-the-field scenes and desaturation has been upon us ever since.  In fact, it has become so prevalent, achieving cliche status years ago, that most studios attempt to use it to repackage the past.  Below is the new DVD cover for Patton as well as the original cover.  The new cover takes the glorious technicolor of Patton and desaturates it in, I suppose, some sort of futile effort to fool the modern viewer into thinking that Patton has the same textures of the modern war films to which they have become accustomed.  That Inglourious Basterds nixed this approach and went back to the classic Hollywood style look seems downright revolutionary considering the now standard Doc-Style approach. 

But which is better?  Or is one better?  Or is it something to be taken on a case by case basis?  Most likely case by case as with most things in life.  I find I enjoy the Hollywood style more although at a younger age I would have certainly gone with the Doc-Style.  I can just see my younger self spouting nonsense about the gritty realism and the verisimilitude and how those older films, while great, didn't really give one the feel of war.  Well, yeah, I guess but cinema is an art form.  I'll never have the feel of war unless I go to war and listening to the stories of soldiers in interviews and seeing the horrific scenes in news photos and videos will bring the experience much closer to me than any movie so I turn to the cinema, as I always do, to give me something else.  I turn to the cinema for unique experiences that fall outside the range of the real.   I love The Bridge on the River Kwai precisely because it doesn't give me story of what it's like to be a prisoner of war under the Japanese, it gives me the story of a mentally unbalanced Colonel unwittingly helping the enemy and a slacker American soldier forced to go stop him.   There are certainly elements of realism throughout but that's not why I go to it.  I go to it for the story and the characters and how the war is used to support that story and those characters.  In many ways, Kwai is the best balance between both styles of war movies, giving us some realism and plenty of fantasy.  And it's here that my thoughts return to The Hurt Locker and Inglourious Basterds because they exist not in between, as Kwai does, but at opposite poles. 

I found The Hurt Locker to be an excellent example of Doc-Style war filmmaking but as Roderick Heath said to me an online conversation, I find it hard to have anything else but technical admiration for it.  It is intense, as they say, with one tension-building suspense scene after another.  The camera is hand held but not too shaky.  The shoot-out in the desert is brilliantly done.  But when they got to the end, and the heavy metal started playing and the lead character was back on duty I found myself profound unaffected on any real cinematic level.  Emotionally it worked as well as it could I suppose, and to it's credit it doesn't waste time trying to insincerely tug at the viewer's heartstrings.  It presents the situation as is (soldiers, death, bombs, diffusing, the end) and leaves it up to you to take or give whatever emotional response feels right.  But cinematically it felt too technically proficient and not artisically reaching enough. 

Should The Hurt Locker win Best Picture I will have no real qualms but given the choice between it and Inglourious Basterds I'll go with the basterds every time.  That movie, brilliantly using cinematic formalism to contrive a post-modern fantasy, felt alive to me and pulsating in every frame.  No shaky cam, no blurred action, no ramping, just steady shots following the characters in dialogue as their actions and words lead us to a fantastical conclusion that redefines both the Hollywood style war film as well as the Revenge Fantasy film, mixing Where Eagles Dare with Death Wish and then presenting the whole thing with the patience and confidence of a director not afraid to observe his characters and scenes until they are ready to exit on their own terms. 

I have several Doc-Style war films that I love but probably many more Hollywood style ones in the final analysis.  The Bridge on the River Kwai, falling in between as it does, will probably always be my favorite as well as many other 'tweeners, like Patton.   I may like the occasional straight up, no chaser serving of the gritty war drama, but in the end I think I prefer to have mine with a twist.