Spread of Activation VII: The Earth Day Edition

It's Earth Day and let's celebrate by bragging on how much aliens love our planet. They do! They can't get enough of it, from War of the Worlds to Independence Day they want the whole thing. In Close Encounters of the Third Kind they love us so much they're willing to travel light years, lots of 'em, just to say "Hi." Awww. In This Island Earth, despite being much more advanced than us scientifically, they want our help with their own planet Metaluna, and a couple of our best and brightest oblige. Sometimes we're naughty, and since they love us so much they feel the need to show us the error of our ways, like in The Day the Earth Stood Still where they gently but firmly tell us to stop our warring ways or they'll kill us. Gee thanks Dad! And in 2001: A Space Odyssey those aliens... well, okay who knows what in the hell they're up to but whatever it is, we're the centerpiece of their master plan. Yes, Science Fiction, beloved here at Cinema Styles, has always operated under the conceit that you just can't find a better planet than good old Mother Earth.

The great thing about most science fiction is that outside the gobbledygook of the basic plot they don't try to explain too much. It's usually kept to a couple of sentences revolving around our natural resources or danger to the rest of the galaxy or something stupid like that. And it's a good thing too because when you think about Earth centered sci-fi plots they never actually make much sense. For instance, take the "destroy and conquer" plots.

War of the Worlds and Independence Day are all about alien races envying what we've got here and wanting to take it for themselves. In War of the Worlds, they apparently buried tripods a million years ago with the intent of taking over the planet. Why they didn't just do it then when they would have encountered NO technological resistance I have no idea. Why they didn't research the environment to realize that bacteria present here would kill them is another mystery for the ages. They have the technology to form an invasion plan from millions of miles away over a thousand centuries but didn't bother to research the environment and how it interacts with their own biology. Wow, that's monumentally bad planning!

And how about the Independence Day dullards? They too can construct fleets of ships and massive mother ships to invade a world for it's resources when the gathering of resources from planets and asteroids is something even we already understand but lack the technology and money to get enough ships to the asteroids and planets to collect the resources. The aliens of ID4 do realize don't they, with their advanced technology, that they can strip mine the galaxy for all the resources they need without once having to actually mount an invasion? They realize that right? Oh no wait, of course they don't because Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich are the guys that provided them with their motivation in the first place.

Or how about the "Earth is a danger to the rest of us" plot of The Day the Earth Stood Still? Ha! That's a laugh. People seemed to think in 1951 that nuclear weapons could destroy the universe. Your average humdrum star, going through the process of nuclear fusion constantly, produces more heat and radiation in a second than every nuclear weapon on Earth combined could ever hope to do. Which makes me think of The Day the Earth Caught Fire.

The Day the Earth Caught Fire has nothing to do with aliens, I know, but this ain't called Spread of Activation for nothing. See, in The Day the Earth Caught Fire, which is a great and underrated movie by the way, the Earth is thrown off of her axis by two hydrogen bomb tests by the United States and the Soviet Union done at the exact same time at the North and South Poles. Okay, first of all, even if a nuclear bomb could somehow move an object with a mass of 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms (6E+24 kilograms / 1.3E+25 pounds), and brother would that need to be one HUGE-ASS nuclear bomb, the fact that you have two at opposite ends would simply result in the two offsetting each other, further resulting in, well, nothing. For the plot to work it should just be one bomb, not two. Oh well, at least with a destroyed Earth no aliens are going to want to take it.

But what about destroying the Earth? Does Sci-Fi have anything to say about that? But of course it does! Everyone loves apocalyptic Sci-Fi. From asteroids to global warming to nuclear warfare Sci-Fi loves destroying the planet Earth. There's a new one coming out soon, 2012, and like the other ones it looks pretty stupid. My favorite in the field is probably the aforementioned The Day the Earth Caught Fire but for instant destruction I'll go with Deep Impact.

Deep Impact was released in 1998 in competition with another asteroid destruction movie, Armageddon. Deep Impact gets 5.9 on IMDB and Armageddon gets 6.0. This is important because it reminds me that most people who rate movies on IMDB are idiots and it's always good to remember that. Who knows, one day it may save your life. I don't know how, but I'm not ruling it out. Anyway, Deep Impact is a pretty good disaster flick as these things go. They do have their cake and eat it too of course by having the smaller non-planet killing asteroid hit so we can all enjoy the special effects and having the bigger planet killing one destroyed so we can all enjoy the happy ending. That was kind of chickenshit in my book but hey I understand the need for it. Besides in the instant destruction sub-genre you've got to show something to the audience. I mean, we paid money to see the planet killed, or at least injured. Which takes me to my final category, the slow death of the planet as exemplified by films such as Silent Running and Wall-E.

These don't work as well for me. Wall-E has an interesting nugget of a sci-fi idea but focuses on the robots instead of the people, which makes sense since it's mainly for kids. But for me it's like watching Star Wars where R2-D2 and C3PO are the main characters and everyone else is a bit player. Silent Running on the other hand has a very interesting main character played by Bruce Dern but a hard to swallow plot device: The Earth is now devoid of all plant life. Uh huh. As Carl Sagan said in Cosmos, "We need the trees much more than they need us." Without us the plants would be fine. Without the plants, and all apologies to Coruscant, we wouldn't be here. The idea of a functioning planet without plants is ludicrous but it's still a good movie with an interesting central character and a trio of droids (Huey, Dewey and Louie) that predate those previously mentioned Star Wars droids by five years. And it's one of the first major Sci-Fi movies with an environmental theme which makes it a good one to wrap up with on this Earth Day.

So Happy Earth Day everyone! Watch an Earth destruction Sci-Fi movie today. Sometimes the best way to appreciate what you've got is to see what it would be like if it were taken away.

Spread of Activation VI: The Harpers Index Edition*

1 - Number of Werner Herzog documentaries I've seen. Grizzly Man for the curious. I was struck by how much like a mockumentary it felt. Timothy Treadwell, the tragic figure at its center, seems like a Christopher Guest creation, which oddly, made the whole thing more troubling for me.

2 - Number of times I've seen Aguirre, the Wrath of God.

5 - Number of times I saw Star Wars in the theatre. I now find myself in the same place as so many others of my generation: Uninspired and unimpressed with the trilogy, and wondering why I ever was in the first place.

2 - Number of times I saw Empire Strikes Back in theatre.

1 - Return of the Jedi.

3 - Return of the King, third in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The youngest son absolutely loved it and had to keep seeing it. I liked it, but by the third time, I wanted to die, and I couldn't tell him that.

24 - Age I was when I first saw The Man Who Would Be King, on television as it turns out. I loved it and it became one of the first movies I ever bought on DVD.

107 - Number of DVDs I own of movies from the thirties and forties. Would like to make it around 10700.

*** - Number of DVDs from the nineties on that I own that I'm too embarrassed to publish. For the first ten years or so of the existence of DVDs I simply bought any new movie to watch it, whether good or bad. Many are being donated now to the local library.

1 - Number of posts, reviews or write-ups I've done of movies made in the nineties. It was the atomic bomb documentary Trinity and Beyond (1997).

1 - Number of comments that review got, on the old Haloscan commenting system. It was from Sheila. I responded to make it two.

235 - Most comments I've ever gotten on a post. It was The Tin Drum post and thus expected to be big with everyone watching it and discussing it as part of the TOERIFC February selection.

308 - Current number of comments on the Siren's latest post, done over a week ago, and last responded to by the Siren days ago and yet the comments keep coming in. And it wasn't a part of any film club discussion. Just so we all know where we stand.

478 - Estimated number of times Fox has made me slap my forehead or roll my eyes with a comment he has posted.

17 - Estimated number of times Bill has said in the comments that he was going to punch Fox in the mouth.

587 - Estimated number of times that Bill or I have feared we offended Marilyn. Also estimated number of times Bill or I have assumed we are no longer liked by the blogging community.

2 - Number of movie blogs my wife reads. Me and Arbo. Sorry guys, it's nothing against any of the rest of you, it's just her thing. What can I say.

??? - Number of movie blogs I read. I've lost track.

112 - Estimated number of times Kimberly or Peter has written up a movie I am completely unfamiliar with, even by reputation. I am continually impressed.

237 - Estimated number of movies Ed Howard reviews a week. His blog should get a speeding ticket.

1 - Number of blogs I know of with Coosa in the title.

1 - Number of blogs I know of with Infield Fly Rule in the title.

1 - Number of gratuitous plugs for The Invisible Edge in this post. And it's this one.

*No actual movie stats, just personal ones.

Spread of Activation V: The Uninspired Edition

I'm not dead yet. I'm still here. Just a little off-center this week as personal matters have taken priority over blogging matters. This whole week has been a bit discombobulating and next week won't be a lot better and as such my brain is in a scramble as to what to write about. Let's start with a reminder: On Monday, March 16th the illustrious Boudu Rick Olson of Coosa Creek Cinema will be hosting the 3rd featured film of the The Oldest Established Really Important Film Club, known around these parts as TOERIFC. Rick will be putting up a piece on Jean Renoir's Boudu Saved from Drowning. If you know it well or have just watched it please join in the discussion. But a reminder, these discussions delve into the details of the film in question so please make sure it's either a recent viewing or a film known very well to you if you choose to join in. I'll give Boudu another look before Monday and can hardly wait to read Rick's piece.

Reminders aside I've spent some time in the last week catching up on movies from the last couple of years that I didn't get around to upon their release. One from fairly recently was Wall-E and if you've read anything I've written on CGI movies before you'll probably not be too surprised by my reaction which was tepid. However, I can say this: It's probably the best CGI movie I've seen, I didn't dislike it, and most importantly, it helped me to finally figure out what I can't stand about CGI movies, and it has nothing to do with the CGI part of it (except in live-action movies where the CGI is usually a lazy way to produce filler). It's the goddamned anthropomorphized characters! That's what I hate! Why did this movie finally reveal that to me and none of the others did? Because I love science fiction that's why! I kept thinking if only this were live-action and the robots were simply that, robots, used to collect samples and the Captain and/or a couple of other people on the starship Axiom were the real main characters investigating what Earth was all about and slowly discovering to their horror that it was all lost - Now THAT'S A MOVIE I COULD GET BEHIND! But instead I got lot's of cute back and forth between two fluffy floppy eared bunnies named Wall-E and E.V.E. in the guise of robots for an hour and a half and an ending far, far, FAR too easy for a story with this one's implications. And once again I was left concluding that either the state of film criticism in this country is at an all-time low or maybe this is as good as it gets. I mean, if this thing was coming in near the top of lists at the end of the year then I can only conclude standards are pretty low. It's fine, done well and I don't hate it. But it could have, and should have, been so much more.

Speaking of science fiction another movie I saw was Danny Boyle's Sunshine which left me tremendously disappointed. I can say with little doubt that I have rarely been so annoyed at a director's visual choices as I was with the last 15 minutes of Sunshine. There has been much talk of a genre shift in the last act of the movie but a genre shift can be an invigorating thing when done well. No, what people didn't discuss enough of was that there was a stylistic shift and that's what made the difference. We've all seen films that go from comedy to drama and back again, or a thriller that ends up a romance and so on. A genre shift is not a bad thing. What Danny Boyle does that is unforgivable at the end of Sunshine is a stylistic shift, and that's not a good thing. It's incompetent. Like doing two-thirds of a painting expressionist and then doing the last corner as an abstract. In the last act we shift from general third person setups where the camera centers its characters and frames the action in an unobtrusive way, over the shoulder, two shots, etc to herky jerky bizarro POV shots where we are told who the killer/monster is - that's important, we are told who it is - and yet Boyle hides his face and figure from us. Remember now, WE KNOW WHO IT IS!!! There is no reason to hide his face unless for some reason you are an incompetent buffoon behind the camera who doesn't understand even the simplest notions of third act payoffs. I suspect of course that Boyle is no incompetent buffoon which makes his blurred visual shift in the last act even more confusing. Upon reflection I believe Boyle knew the screenplay took a nose dive near the end and by providing jarring and confusing imagery the audience might be distracted. And on a personal level, I don't like pretty boys playing physicists. It tears down the fourth wall for me.

Finally, by way of sci-fi/monster movies I saw Cloverfield and finally came away satisfied. Not absolutely and completely but enough to call it even and walk away with some sense of accomplishment. I didn't feel the extended opening party sequence added a whole hell of a lot to the movie (the same character relations and connections could have been made in half the time) but nevertheless, the pace was quick, the creature unexplained and the characters kept the movie alive. They didn't interest me on any personal level but they felt real enough to keep me going with it. In the end, I don't know if or when I'll watch it again (it feels like a movie that may be more effective if seen only once - that make any sense to anybody?) but I thought it was good and probably the best monster movie I've seen in years.

And then, lots of personal stuff happened that has kept me from blogging but I am writing. What, I don't know but I'm writing. I don't know how much of it is about movies, but it's therapeutic and I'll force it all on you sometime next week. And one final note: Name that Movie will be taking the week off. TOERIFC discussions usually occupy the whole day, at least for the first two (No pressure or anything Rick) so I don't want to interfere with that. As a TOERIFC founding member and supporter I must stick to my policy of no posts on discussion day, except a reminder post letting everyone know where I'll be and what the discussion is all about: Boudu Saved from Drowning at the Creek. Be there!

Spread of Activation IV: The Unprepared Edition

So I have nothing ready to go on the blog heading into the weekend because of a work situation I'd rather not go into again and because I spent most of last night helping my friend set up a blog. I showed him how to get his music up on it as well as personal movies and he was more than gracious in return. He's a great guy and I was happy to help him. Nonetheless, here I am hastily throwing something together as I don't want to go more than a day or two without an update but don't have time to really flesh out a full review or put together an argument on a trend in movies or discuss the implications of certain types of films according to genre. But I still have much to say. For instance...

Last Saturday my wife and I took in The Earrings of Madam De... at the AFI Silver Theatre in downtown Silver Spring, MD. Until last weekend neither my wife nor I had ever seen it and afterwards we were damn near speechless. We both thought it was a remarkable film and it made us remember again how many great films are out there and how few of them we have really seen. And once again, the sense of obligation to see new movies diminished as we thought, "Why should we rush to see Movie A, released last year, when we still haven't seen even half of the movies made by Ophuls? We've got some catching up to do." Of course I'll still see new movies, usually about twenty a year on average, and see even more from the last ten years that I didn't catch during their initial run by way of DVD, but the lure of past movies, now available to me on DVD and the big screen courtesy of the AFI, is too much to resist.

Then I started wondering just how many movies have been made. There's no exact figure to be had but I did discover through some basic online research that it is estimated that there have been about 350,000 to 450,000 theatrically released movies made since 1915. That's a wide range but it's mainly because the records are so shoddy for the first thirty years or so of feature length film production. The first feature length film by the way is considered to be The Story of the Ned Kelly Gang, made in 1906 and coming in at 70 minutes in length. Now, if we go from 1906 to 2008, 102 years, and assume the same amount of movie made each year we get over half a million. For instance, this chart of the last five years, courtesy of the Australian Government, shows 5,002 movies produced worldwide in 2007. If we multiply 5,002 by 102 we get 510,204 movies. Now of course, 5,002 feature length films weren't made in 1906 (in fact Ned Kelly was the only one) and even after Cabiria (the first successful epic, over three hours long) in 1914 it was still rare to have more than a couple of hundred movies more than 60 minute in length. And India didn't make its first feature length film until 1913 and didn't begin making movies anywhere near the prolific numbers of today for decades. So you can probably lop off about 4,000 a year until the mid twenties, which would result in around 80,000 less titles or about 430,000 movies. That's a lot but before finding out the figures I somehow thought it would be more. Still, if we use a conservative running time of 90 minutes per movie by 430,000 movies we get 38,700,000 minutes. There are 525,600 minutes in a year. So, if someone used eight hours a day for all of their sleeping, eating, shopping, cleaning and any other life activities, and spent the other sixteen (350,400 minutes for a year of this) doing nothing but watching movies, nonstop, every day, a different movie each time, it would take a little over 110 years to see every movie made up to now. And then of course, they'd have 110 years worth of movies they missed while watching all those other ones. So obviously, you can't see every movie ever made. When you really absorb all those numbers, really think about them, doesn't a top ten best list of all time seem almost obscenely stupid?

Of course, it's also a signal of how many average, mediocre, run of the mill movies are made that so few, so very few, are remembered fondly for very long past their sell by date. I don't really suspect that there is some film among the 430,000 that no one has ever heard of that outdoes the works of the masters we all know and love because had it been that great it would be known if only by legend and reputation, like Greed. But I do suspect there are plenty of titles among that 430,000 that are excellent viewing and entertainment and have sadly been lost to the ages.

And speaking of excellent viewing and entertainment, I got my 50th Anniversary Edition DVD of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) starring Kerwyn Matthews and Kathryn Grant in the mail last week and what a great treat. I love watching that movie but it also has some featurettes on the movie, Dynamation and an hour long doc on Ray Harryhausen. It's a great transfer and I highly recommend it for fantasy film fans. Jason and the Argonauts is still my favorite movie featuring the work of Harryhausen but this one is a close second.

Finally my mind returns to seeing classics on the big screen and I realize I've never seen either 7th Voyage or Jason and the Argonauts on the big screen. I don't know if the AFI will ever play them but may I be the first to petition that they do and that they do so the exact moment the remakes of Jason and the Argonauts and yes, Clash of the Titans go up on the big screen in 2010. This being a new millennium I can't imagine either remake will employ Dynamation unless Nick Park or Tim Burton are involved (they're not) so I don't have high hopes for either and seriously doubt I'll take them in at the multiplex when they're released. Hopefully, I'll be pleasantly surprised to discover they have done the originals justice but even so it will probably take some time for me to get around to them. After all, there are over 400,000 titles in the queue ahead of them. And I've only got one lifetime in which to watch them.

Spread of Activation III, The DVD Edition

Ever see a DVD and think it should cost less even though it only costs seven dollars to begin with? I thought that as I was flipping through the DVDs at Borders in downtown Silver Spring on Friday. I came across Stripes. It was seven bucks, or to be more precise, $6.99. Now to be sure that's pretty cheap for a DVD. And yet I said to myself, "If this were a buck fifty I'd get it." Now before I confuse the situation too much let me clarify. I don't think it should be a buck fifty because it's a bad movie although it's also nothing special. I saw it in the theatre when it opened, had a few laughs, saw it on cable a couple more times and laughed again. It's fine. It's unambitious, cheaply made, and a bit visually shabby. However, it does adequately serves its purpose, which is basically to provide a quick and easy comedy vehicle for Bill Murray and show P.J. Soles breasts. So I'm not saying it's bad. I'm saying for what it sets out to do and what it accomplishes, and how meager all those goals were to begin with, it should be a buck fifty. And then I might get it.

Or how about the desire to buy a DVD of a movie you don't even like? That happens to me more than I care to admit and I'm always a little confused by it when it does. A couple of weeks ago I was out perusing the DVDs again when I happened across The Greatest Show on Earth. This is a movie I truly dislike. I find it lethargically paced, poorly scripted and remarkably non-eventful. I do like the car/train crash sequence with it's miniatures colliding and careening but outside of that I'm just not a fan. But there it was priced at $8.99. "Wow," I thought, "$8.99, I should get it." And then I remembered I didn't like it. But then I thought, "But it's a classic film and I want my DVD collection to be overflowing with classic films." And then I remembered how much I didn't it and forced myself to walk away.

Or how about the multiple movie DVDs priced a little higher than a single DVD? These come in a variety of qualities. The TCM Archives discs are pretty good. Usually three movies, priced around 40 bucks, with good quality transfers. But then I think, "Forty bucks for one DVD. I could buy two or three DVDs for that price." Now the obvious logical hole here is that there are two or three movies on this one DVD but it's still one DVD and that's what throws me off. And here's why: When I buy three DVDs for forty bucks I'm getting three DVD cases, with three DVDs. When I buy TCM Archives DVDs, which I have, I'm getting one DVD case and at most, two DVDs. Here's what TCM and others should do: Treat it like a mini-boxset. For instance, I have TCM Archives Forbidden Hollywood Collection Volume One. This has Baby Face, Red Headed Woman and Waterloo Bridge on it. It is on two DVDs inside one DVD case. Instead, they should package each movie in it's own case and slip them in a cover box announcing the collection just like one would get buying the Star Wars or Lord of the Rings trilogy. You still get three separate cases so the price doesn't cause an illogical reaction in the buyer.

And speaking of box sets I own almost none. They're just too expensive for me. I've got the Woody Allen and Stanley Kubrick sets as well as The Godfather set that recently came out but that's about it. They just cost so damn much, it's prohibitive to my budget. So I look for collector's DVDs instead that have lots of great features. As I peruse my collection in wondering which is my favorite my eye falls on The Adventures of Robin Hood, Two Disc Special Edition. My God, it's glorious! It's probably my favorite Collector's Edition DVD of my whole collection. First and foremost, it has the movie, that great, brilliant wonderful movie of 1938, one of my favorite adventure films of all time. But then, there are the features. Holy cow! It has:

*Music Only Audio Track where you can listen to Erich Korngold's great score.

*The short subject Warner Night at the Movies 1938 which features the trailer for Angels With Dirty Faces, a newsreel, the musical short subject Freddie Rich and his Orchestra and the Merrie Melodies cartoon Katnip Kollege.

*Full length documentary Welcome to Sherwood: The Story of the Adventures of Robin Hood.

*Outtakes and cut scenes from the movie.

*Breakdowns of 1938, a blooper reel that Warner Brothers put together every year to show to its employees at their annual banquet (yes, you get to hear the stars of the day cursing - they say 'goddamn' a lot).

*The mini-doc, Robin Hood Through the Ages, which covers other screen adaptations.

*A Journey to Sherwood Forest which contains home movies shot on the backlot during production of the movie by Basil Rathbone.

*The classic Merrie Melodies cartoons Rabbit Hood and Robin Hood Daffy ("Yoicks and away").

*Calvacade of Archery, a short produced in 1938 showcasing the skills of Howard Hill, the archery expert who trained Flynn. Wow, is he good. His skills are amazing to behold. Seriously, he can hit something the size of a pea with his arrow, including of course splitting arrows in a bullseye again and again.

*The Cruise of the Zaca, a short film that follows Errol on his yacht, the Zaca, as he and his scientist father, wife and friends sail the world exploring sea life and different cultures. My youngest absolutely loves this short. We've watched it at least a dozen times.

*Splitting the Arrow, a slideshow of historical art, costume designs, concept drawings, cast and crew photos and publicity stills.

*The Robin Hood Radio Show from May 11, 1938 with the vocal work of Flynn, DeHavilland and Rathbone.

*An audio recording of a piano session with Erich Korngold.

*The Errol Flynn Trailer Gallery which features the original trailers from Flynn's movies. And not just one or two. No, as Baron Guest once said, this one goes to eleven, including favorites Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk.

*And finally, the full length documentary, Glorious Technicolor, on the history of the technicolor process, of which was used for Robin Hood.

That's one hell of a set of bonus features, including of course the expected commentary by Rudy Behlmer who does probably 70 percent of all classic DVD commentaries. I've never listened to it to be honest. But everything else I have checked out, several of them many times over. It's a motherlode of features and didn't cost much more than an average DVD, certainly not as much as a box set.

Criterion Collection DVDs usually have lots of good features as well but the main selling point of Criterion is the transfer itself. Still, sometimes even Criterion disappoints. Another favorite of mine, The Most Dangerous Game, is on a DVD put out by Criterion. The transfer is good, not great and the special features? Audio commentary and subtitles. That's it. No really, that's it. And it's Criterion. But it's an older Criterion. Recent purchases of The Rules of the Game and The Lady Vanishes definitely offer more, on par with the Robin Hood DVD described above.

Well, that about wraps up this DVD edition of Spread of Activation. One last thing and this one seems really crazy but maybe, just maybe, I'm not alone. Has anyone else picked up a DVD of a movie they already own on DVD and considered buying it? I don't mean a new, better transfer or any different features. I mean essentially the same DVD but at most it has a new cover box and you think, "Well, I like the new cover a lot and..." Anybody? Or is that just me?

Spread of Activation II: The Resolution Edition

The holidays are upon us again and a New Year just around the corner. Time for a change.

Lately, I've become restless here at Cinema Styles. I don't feel I'm doing enough of what I want to with this blog on a weekly basis. I want to do more reviews, introduce new features (that inevitably fall by the wayside), spark more discussion. Since November, I've let Cinema Styles slide a bit, not devoting as much time to it as I should. The last couple of months have produced far more picture posts than previous months and I want more than that. Don't get me wrong, I love my picture posts and have no intention of stopping them, it's just that there's more I want to do. And that 'more' is this: Opinion. What do I mean? I mean this: As the hits have increased I feel I have pulled back on writing from the gut and going with my instincts.

But more to the point, I've shied away from more controversial topics or just expressing an opinion that might land me in a bit of hot water with fellow cinephiles and I'm bored with it. I'm not saying I want to become that "jerk blogger" who's always burning bridges but I want to get back to why I started this blog in the first place: To write about movies, to express my love for them and to be honest in my reactions. A part of this feeling comes from reading bloggers like Flickhead, Marilyn, Kimberly and Arbogast. Not that there aren't other bloggers like them (so if I didn't mention you it's not an intentional slight) it's just that those bloggers come to mind as examples of writers who not only speak their minds (anyone can do that) but back their opinions up with solid writing, good examples and just the right amount of attitude. Flickhead and Arbogast consistently amaze me with their blunt, to the point reactions that don't come off as offensive or insulting like some young, scorched earth bloggers I've read. And Kimberly and Marilyn seem able to inject politics into their writing without fear of backlash. So I'm impressed and want to get back there myself (waits for collective groan about posts on racism in the movies and documentaries about nuclear arms starting up again).

So that's my New Year's Resolution, to stop second-guessing myself and my posts. It's an easy resolution to keep. Anyone who's been blogging any significant amount of time (and in the blogging world, two years is considered a significant amount of time) knows that you get to a point where you just don't care anymore about keeping up with Joneses, you stop worrying about how many posts you have and on what topic and you just start writing for yourself again and hope people will find you interesting enough to read. Just ask Dennis or Larry. It's clear they both arrived there in the last couple of years and seem more relaxed than ever with their blogging. The Siren got their long ago too it seems. And now, hopefully, so will I.

And now some parting morsels:

*In January I will, believe it or not, have a short post looking back at the scant few movies I've seen from 2008. I've seen a lot more in the last few weeks and am rotating through nothing but 2008 movies in my Netflix queue right now.

*Also, in January, Marilyn kicks off the first ever post for The Oldest Established Really Important Film Club at Ferdy on Films. The film will be The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams' Appalachia and all are invited to join in. Once the post goes up there will be a permanent link here. For now, it simply links to Marilyn's blog. In February I will take a hold of the reins with The Tin Drum. As for March, no word from Rick yet on what that might be but check in at the Film Club for updates.

*I've got movie books. Lots of movie books. And you're going to hear about them. I enjoyed writing up The Haunted Cinema in October and want to write about others as well.

*Name that Movie will continue and we may soon have a winner. Arbogast stands at eight (first to ten wins) but has not guessed the last three. Is Arbo slipping?

*Currently working on two movies. One is a montage that I'm very pleased with and is a little different than what you're used to here. It should be ready by February. The other is a short film in which I'm going for a specific reaction based on horror motifs and built-in genre expectations by producing a film ( about two-thirds done at this point) with no characters that are seen on the screen or dialogue heard and yet the viewer not only understands what is happening, and understands what characters are involved, but is viscerally affected by it. It won't be shown here of course, it will be on my personal blog. So why am I telling you? Because once I'm done I might e-mail a few of you to ask your opinion of it, that's why. Be completely honest of course, while somehow finding a way to kiss my ass at the same time.

*Tomorrow or Wednesday, I'll be putting up my Holiday montage, a video card for all my readers and wonderful friends I have made here on this blog. And then...

*I'm taking a few days off. I'll have a post here or there before the New Year but don't count on anything big until we're into 2009. I'll leave the video up for a few days, visit and comment on other blogs and generally just relax (so everyone write lots of important stuff that I can read while I'm taking a break from Cinema Styles). But that's not until Wednesday. For now, I'm still around, and speaking of resolutions, still smoking. Come Monday, January 5th, that ends too. Yikes. Wish me luck.

Spread of Activation*

So I see on Coosa Creek Mambo Cinema that top ten lists are hitting the airwaves and I think to myself, "I never see enough new movies to do one of those but I enjoy reading them." Then I think, "Maybe each year around this time I could pick another decade exactly 40 or 60 years back like 1968 or 1948 and do a top ten from that year. And each year pick another decade so that next year I would do 1959 or 1929." Works for me. I think I'll do one this year but haven't picked a decade yet.

And speaking of 1959, for some reason the first movie that pops into my head from that year is Compulsion, starring Dean Stockwell, Bradford Dillman and Orson Welles, who chews the scenery so voraciously it's surprising there was a set left standing when the cameras stopped rolling. You know who directed Compulsion? Richard Fleischer. His birthday was this week, December 8th. He would have been 92 years old (he died on March 25, 2006). God I love 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (he directed that too). It's one of my favorite adventure movies of all time even considering it has Kirk Douglas singing Whale of a Tale which should have been enough to kill any movie but Fleischer did such a good job with it you didn't even notice. Well, almost didn't notice.

Fleischer was already in my mind the last couple of days anyway because he directed Tora, Tora, Tora which recounted the attack on Pearl Harbor whose anniversary was December 7. It's a movie that flopped badly with critics and audiences alike but for whatever reason I like it and I 'm not afraid to admit it. I think a lot of it has to do with the great models and miniatures used for the attack sequence at the end. I'm a sucker for old school special effects.

Which of course puts me in mind of new school special effects and CGI which I don't like. That made me think of Wall-E which, I probably don't need to tell you, I haven't seen. But I will see it soon. You see, as mentioned on this blog earlier, my wife and I have decided to revamp the DVD collection and we're currently purchasing old movies we want to see and renting the new ones, instead of wasting Netflix rentals on movies we want to own anyway. So I cleared my Netflix cache - yep, I cleared it - and started adding in nothing but movies from 2007 and 2008 that I hadn't seen yet in an effort to catch up with the present. Wall-E is one of those movies. I have absolutely no desire to see it, despite its good reviews, but when it shows up I'll give it a look anyway. At least it's Sci-Fi. I'm always game for Sci-Fi.

Speaking of Sci-Fi, one of my favorite cheesy effects Sci-Fi flicks from the seventies is Logan's Run. What's not to love? Filmed in a Dallas, TX mall it's got Farrah Fawcett, tunics and jumpsuits, soft porn, Roscoe Lee Browne providing the voice of Box (the slowest most awkwardly maneuvering robot imaginable and yet somehow it's killed dozens of runners), Jenny Agutter, hordes of cats at the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. and lines like "Run runner!" Did you know they're remaking it and apparently are going to stick more closely to the book? And they've dropped the drop-dead age from 30 to 21. I'm sorry, but I had a hard enough time believing any society could properly function with only people aged 29 and under but 20 and under?!!?!?!? Sorry, but that place is going to be a wreck. I don't care how many computers are running it, I've got teens and I'm telling you that society will be a disaster on a minute by minute basis! I hate to judge a movie in advance but who else is with me on this assessment: Logan's Run the remake will totally suck. Big time.

Hey, that reminds me, Fox did a post on remakes recently and brought up Scarface. I didn't like that remake much but I did like the original and soon someone will be writing about it because it's an early Howard Hawks film and Ed Howard is doing the early Howard Hawks blogathon in January (details here). But here's the thing. I know as a bonafide classic Hollywood buff and a thirties movie lover I'm not supposed to say this but... I never really cared for Paul Muni much. I thought he was a good actor and I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is one of my favorites, and one of the best, of the early thirties dramas. It's just that Muni's performances seem very mannered to me. Around the same time Clark Gable and Gary Cooper and Spencer Tracy were breezing through their lines in movie after movie there was Muni, enunciating every syllable or adopting a thick accent that immediately signalled to the viewer, "I'm acting!" So I'm just not a big fan of him or his movies like I am with so many others of the thirties.

And speaking of thirties movies I love, I just recently purchased The Lady Vanishes to add to my collection. It's a favorite early Hitchcock of mine, one that has apparently been used for its plot devices in one way or another many times, including the recent Transiberian, which according to Arbogast did not live up to the standards of Hitchcock or even basic good-movieness (I just coined that word, use it if you like) so I guess I won't be seeing it on any top ten lists this year.

Which brings back to mind those top ten lists that started this spread of activation. I still don't know which 8th year I'm going to do this time, but 1938 is starting to sound like a good one. After all, I already have a movie to put on it, The Lady Vanishes. Thanks Arbo.

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*According to psychologists J.R. Anderson and P.L. Pirolli "Spread of activation refers to the cognitive process of retrieving memory. When one part of memory is activated, other parts that are associated with that memory are partly activated as well. "