Cinema Styles

Five Years, Five Peeves, Five Reasons to Go On

2012-01-15T13:45:00.000-05:00

When we make the decision to publicly announce our fondness for the cinema, write about it in an open diary and allow others to engage us in a discussion of our opinions, we take a risk. We take a risk that not only will someone, perhaps many people, disagree with us but that, at some point in the inevitable future, someone will violently disagree with us.

It's the chance you take when you become a writer of, or commenter on, opinion on classic or current cinema. The toughest part, excepting sociopaths with a bloodlust for online sparring, is stating your opinion without denigrating the opinion of another. Writers who spend much of their time insulting other writers' points of view develop a reputation for such behavior and, unforunately, that reputation often secures them well-paying writing gigs (because contrarianism pulls in the readers, I guess) while those they insult slog along writing with little to no exposure.

Obviously, I'm not going to point anyone out as an example, rather, I just want to assure that I am not that way, personally. I don't believe getting into any kind of situation where you're writing pieces entirely about another writer, and the argument that you're having with him or her, is very constructive and yet, I see it happen often enough to know it's not relegated to rare instances of ire that flare up under extreme circumstances. However, I have also noticed that this tends to happen almost entirely among paid writers, which would lend credence to the suggestion that, perhaps, they're simply doing it by request, as it were, to pump up the ratings.

When I look around the film websites and blogs, I see a lot of disagreement among cinephiles without ever seeing much vitriol and that's a good sign. It's a good group of people, for the most part (that's my favorite generic caveat, by the way, because it allows for everything while saying nothing), Mainly, I see people with a passion for discussing film, and engaging each other daily in an exciting back and forth of tastes, opinions and beliefs.

The thing is, I don't take part in most of it. I use to, for a short period, way back at the very beginning but I really don't anymore. I found that arguments in comment sections took up too much of my valuable time, cut into my writing and generally made me feel depressed. When I first started blogging, I started by direct confrontation, that is to say, I originally blogged about politics. Then, slowly, I worked film into the mix. Eventually, I let my true love of cinema take over, got rid of all the political stuff and the crazy comment sections it inspired, and became a classic movie blogger.

Not long after, I took up movie arguing and did so, often, on Dennis Cozzalio's great page, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. I spent so much time arguing with people there I had little time for anything else. Then I migrated over to Jim Emerson's Scanners and argued with people there but that was tougher because the comments had to clear approval first so an ongoing argument required a lot more patience.

Finally, after a few good rows at different blogs, I decided, "I got to cut this shit out. I'm not doing anything but arguing." But it's still there. It's still lurking under the surface, pent up and ready to explode. I see opinions all the time that bother me to no end and I say nothing, so snugly nestled in my own complacency am I. And it bothers me because I feel I'm not being honest but when I want to express it, it comes out angry and snarky and there has to be a way - has to be - to say it without raising anyone's defensive alarms.

So now, I'm going to try.

Let's begin.

1. THOMAS KINKADE HAS WON AND WE, ALL OF US, HAVE LOST

I have a problem with a lot of modern cinema. I don't like the way most of it looks, I don't like the way it's edited (too choppy and frenetic) and I don't like the way it's acted (so painfully naturalistic that a wide range of performances are thoroughly interchangeable). And I have that feeling with a frighteningly high percentage of modern movies. But mostly, I have a problem with the way the movies look. And when I say I have a problem, I mean even with movies I like. We all know I don't like CGI very much (I even do a series on special effects before CGI took over) and this is a big problem because it's now everywhere, in practically all movies. Take Hugo, directed by Martin Scorsese. I use this movie as an example because it was a movie I liked and thus, I can assure you it is not me reacting to a movie I hate or using it as an excuse to hate the movie. No, I liked Hugo but I hated most of the look of it.

The opening pre-title-card sequence in Hugo takes us through all the mechanisms of all the clocks in the colossal train station that Hugo, the boy who lives, orphaned, inside the clocks, maintains daily. It twists and winds its way through in a way that I know that camera actually couldn't so I know I'm not watching an actual set and scene presented on celluloid but a CGI construction. This is thoroughly unimpressive to me. The more elaborate CGI shots get (this one was reminiscent of the pathways taken by the winding camera that opens Fight Club) the less impressed I am by them. It's like this: When I'm watching Broadway Danny Rose, and Danny and Tina and Lou are walking along the hallway towards the camera as they discuss Lou's career and just before they get to the camera Lou announces he's leaving Danny for another agent and Danny freezes right in front of the camera, that hits me hard. It's a great, emotional moment that hits the audience in the chest as squarely as it hits Danny. Later, looking back on it, you can be impressed by how perfectly they timed their conversation with their approach and savor the fact that it was all about a vision that director and cinematographer had about how the scene would play out and look and then, by God, they rehearsed it, prepped it and did it. With Hugo, CGI animators were given a frame presentation of how and where the "camera" (the monitor screen on the computer designing the scene) would be and began to busily draw and render and create the scene. And the scene is quite elaborate, which is why, conversely, it is unimpressive. That walk in Broadway Danny Rose, that's impressive! It's simple, not complicated. It's not a Rube Goldberg construction designed to wow us beyond belief but an elegant play between actors and camera that performs its task so beautifully and, seemingly, effortlessly, that we cannot help but be moved. By contrast, at the end of the opening sequence in Hugo, when they finally get to him looking out the glass from behind the clockface and show the title, I thought, "Thank god that's over."

But it's also the look. Again, with Hugo, which I continue to use because I did like it, the skies all look like someone contracted Thomas Kinkade to do one of his famous paintings of light for every backdrop. I'm tired of the glossy, overly detailed design of most modern film. It's like we left modernism behind and re-adopted Late Baroque because we were tired of all that pesky streamlining and restraint and wanted every sky, in even the grittiest of dramas, to look like a Kinkade painting in every gaudy, gauche and garish detail. Most of the scenes in the movie, whether inside the clocks, inside Georges Méliès studio or the train station, all had an overly glossy, tinkerbell dust, magical realm feel to them.

Okay, it's Hugo, right? It's a children's story and we shouldn't expect it to look like The French Connection or Midnight Cowboy. That's true and I understand that but why, I would ask, is the glossy, Kinkadish look necessary even for a children's story? You can make something look fantastical (Willy Wonka, Return to Oz, every other movie ever made before CGI) and give it a nice matte finish with flourishes of light and shadow without making everyone nauseous at the same time.

Finally, my biggest problem, aside from the general look of movies these days, is the fact that I do often feel quite alone in this and since the whole reasons I got into blogging was to talk about movies with everybody, it's a problem I have a difficult time comprehending, much less solving. I feel alone because when people see Rise of the Planet of the Apes, they say, "Oh, the CGI doesn't look as bad as it does in the ads or the trailers. In fact, it was really good." Now, see, the problem here is that, when I saw it, I started to think a mix-up had happened and somehow I saw the rough-cut, not the finished product because, oh dear Jesus was that CGI bad! You want to talk about being taken out of the film? I was taken out of the film. Ninety percent of this movie looked like a fair to competent rendering of a cut scene on the latest PC game technology. Caesar, the lead ape character, never, ever, ever, EVER looked real to me.

But that's not the problem. The problem I'm having is I don't understand why everyone else isn't bothered by the awkwardly, physically wrong feel of CGI representation and movement of living things. How is it that anyone thought the apes in the movie looked good?

Let me say it again from a different angle. I don't doubt Rise of the Planet of the Apes uses the most advanced CGI technologies available to it, I'm saying that even the best CGI representations of mammals look like crap. And when I say "crap" I mean, doesn't look visually connected to the rest of the action. In other words. optically printing a stop-motion creation over a live-action scene looks more "together" to me than a CGI overlay. Everything starts to look airbrushed, like the actors are real and they're walking around with this fantasy-art performance piece, and the physics, the mechanics of motion, never seem quite right either. Close, yes, but far enough off that they distract. And it's as frustrating to me as when I go to someone's house and they're watching an Academy-ratio movie or tv show on a widescreen tv, stretched out, and don't notice or care about the difference.

So the look of movies, clearly, bothers me. It bothers me to the point where I have to start saying it so people stop wondering why I rear up when I see certain visuals.

But let's look at problem number two.

2. I'M BORED, BORED, BORED TO TEARS WITH THE POST-SEVENTIES TEMPLATE OF ACTION/ADVENTURE/FANTASY

The modern template for action adventure movies comes from, primarily, Steven Spielberg and James Cameron. It's an influence so great that you can see the setups and payoffs from Jaws, The Terminator, Aliens and Jurassic Park used again and again and again. These two directors, unlike the lead-footed, ham-fisted George Lucas, have a real feel for action. Both of them shoot and pace it extremely well. The problem is, a lot of people who don't have the same feel have followed in their footsteps and are too unimaginative to take it anywhere else. Zack Snyder seems to think ramping (slow down, speed up, slow down, speed up) is an innovation so special it must be employed everywhere and always. Edgar Wright, not an action director but certainly a notable contemporary sometime-fantasy director (Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim vs the World) employs whiz-bang techniques in his stories like the hyper montages that show scenes of action!/no action/stillness/action!/no action/action!/no action and then the scene reverts to normal. It's his calling card and unfortunately, that's exactly what it feels like, a calling card. It doesn't ever seem to add anything to the surrounding movie.

Both of these directors have their supporters and I certainly don't think they are undeserving of such support. For right now, I'm simply calling out specific techniques. I think Snyder did a fine job as director of The Watchmen, even if I didn't love the movie, though I did like it, and as for Edgar Wright, I like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz both very much. But the top director (top offender, I suppose I should say) for me in this area is J.J. Abrams. I liked Star Trek and Cloverfield but, on the whole, Abrams style seems nothing more than Spielberg warmed over. Maybe that's why when most everyone else loved Super 8, I did not. It came up on Facebook when a posted a status update on how much a certain scene made me angry but then, I admitted to liking it a little or, at least, certain parts because I didn't want to have to explain all this but the simple truth is, if I never see that movie again, it won't be soon enough. I'm glad Abrams has such a nostalgia for seeing Spielberg in the seventies but I'd rather he just watch Spielberg movies from the seventies than try and emulate them and give me the ball-washing tripe of Super 8.

Let's use this to segway into number three.

3. WHEN WAS THE BAR LOWERED AND WHY WASN'T I TOLD?

Let's go back to Rise of the Planet of the Apes. As of this writing it stands at 83 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Personally, I hate Rotten Tomatoes but that's for another post. Maybe. For now, that means that 83 percent of critics reviewing it liked it enough, even if just barely enough, to recommend it. It's average rating is a better indicator and it's a high 7.1 out of 10.

When did this happen? When did a movie like Rise of the Planet of the Apes start getting 83 percent on Rotten Tomatoes? It's average at best and I don't mean that as a bad thing. What I mean is, it does what you would expect it to do, fairly well, although it is a bit predictable. It has most of what one would expect (Intended-to-be-touching scenes between ape and grandfather figure slipping into dementia. Caesar wondering if he is a pet, not an independent individual. Animal shelter owner revealed to be uncaring asshole. Shelter's animal keeper and feeder a sadistic monster. Caesar pulling together the other apes through strength and compassion, showing himself to be an enlightened leader who won't kill. Corporate CEOs blinded by greed who get their comeuppance in the end. And the list goes on.) and doesn't exert itself trying to provide much more. There's one predictable set-up and payoff every ten minutes or so, I'd say.

What entertainment value I drew from the origin story in the first few reels quickly gave way to the big action/battle climax for the last third as the apes make their way to their adopted redwood forest home. The movie tries to draw out some profundity, I suppose, by revealing the evils/sins/dangers(?) of animal testing but for the most part, it's just an average, if well made, adventure/sci-fi movie. And yet, it's got 83 percent. Shouldn't we reserve the upper levels of our ratings for the truly upper levels of cinema? Shouldn't four stars, or five or whatever the top amount given is, be doled out three, maybe four times a year? I understand liking a movie and thinking, "Hey, it's pretty good, nothing great but kind of fun," but that's not what I'm getting here. I'm getting reactions that should be reserved for much better movies.

I feel the same way about so much more. Toy Story 3, Inception, the last several Harry Potter movies... wait, let's go back. Toy Story 3. There exists in the bizarro movie universe of moral equality a category of de facto villain where a movie doesn't really have one, or need one, but creates one anyway using questionable methods. TS3 does this in spades. A discarded toy, Lotso, a bear that hugs a lot, becomes this movie's de facto villain. He was left behind, lost and replaced and became embittered, convincing the other toys left with him that they were purposely and maliciously replaced. This sense of abandonment has made him bitter and provides the perfect opportunity for TS3 to above and beyond and really explore this angle for kids. How a misunderstanding can lead you down the wrong emotional path but with friends (read: therapy through companionship) you can work through it and come out on top.

This doesn't happen. Instead, Lotso becomes psychotic and rather than try to provide any kind of emotional resuscitation, the film makers go for a cheap, mean, nasty joke. In the end we discover (and here comes the "joke") Lotso is tortured for the rest of his existence by being enslaved in bondage to the front of a truck. Ha, ha, that's so morally filthy it's funny! Oh wait, no, it's just morally filthy.

When I saw this, I wondered, "Why didn't anyone bring this up?" But, of course, I, myself, was equally guilty of not bringing it up. I knew what would happen if I did so I didn't. I knew I would get, "You're crazy for saying that a toy, who only turned out bitter because he was lost and replaced, shouldn't be tortured at the conclusion of the movie. Sorry Greg, but they should in no way teach redemption by having the Lotso bear recover from his bitterness, they should get a cheap laugh by showing us that he will spend the rest of his existence in bondage. What's wrong with you, Greg?!" And I will get that, I promise. I won't get, "Uh... oh, wait. Yeah, that is kind of screwed up." What I'll get is an apologist philosophy that roughly goes, "Sure, that part's bad but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater." And I'll think, "But that's its lasting and final image of Lotso bear and it's really kind of repulsive." And then I'll think about how it's like reading a book on child rearing where they give you 10 pieces of advice and two of them involve beating your child. And when you criticize that, you hear, "But, hey, those other 8 pieces of advice are pretty solid."

And yes, TS3 does have that other 80 percent that does work reasonably well. I understand that, I do. It doesn't work well enough for me, of course, and if I had given a proper review to the movie, I would have slightly split in favor of not recommending it for that plot choice as well as, if not more so, for doing little more with these characters than was done before. In the end, it felt redundant to me more than anything else but I guess I just wish the Lotso choice bothered more people than it did (this has happened with Pixar before, only worse, as explained in this earlier Cinema Styles post).

The point is, it seems to me the vast majority of films released should fall in the mid-range. We should only be getting "This film is GREAT" or "This film is AWFUL" a few times a year. Most movies are well-enough made and there are plenty of entertaining ones each year but let's not hand out top ratings and glowing reviews just because a movie does what it's supposed to do. Let's reserve that for movies that do so much more than that. For the ones that really stun you.

Onto number four.

4. HALF OF US LIKE THESE DIRECTORS, HALF OF US HATE THEM

In a way, this one is a kind of hanger-on from the last one, only reversed. Half of the folks I know and love like the movies in number three and probably half don't. Or maybe only a small percentage don't. But when it comes to directors, it's a different story. I once did a whole post on how some people love David Fincher and others hate him while some love Christopher Nolan and others hate him and how both hate each other for liking the other. I don't like doing this with directors and so, quite simply, I don't. But others do.

For instance, take a look above. Note my extreme distaste for Toy Story 3. It was directed by Lee Unkrich. He directed (co-directed, technically) Monsters, Inc and Finding Nemo. I like both of those films. See, I didn't hate them because they were directed by him. Conversely, I didn't love Toy Story 3 because it was directed by him, either. Or take note above of my unenthusiastic response to the filmic stylings of Zack Snyder and Edgar Wright and then, recall, that I liked some of their movies. This is important because I get really tired of hearing about the Coen brothers being "frauds" or "hating their characters" or some such thing. Or "it's the same old Woody Allen." Or "here goes Fincher again, hating women." Or maybe that's Woody. Or it could be Christopher Nolan, who's so bad with action (and, actually, he really is, but he's good at other things) that we should hate everything he ever does. Oh wait, I wouldn't want to leave off Quenting Tarantino. "Dumb, predictable, talky Quentin Tarantino."

And it goes in the exact opposite direction, too! Steven Spielberg? "Never made a bad movie, ever." "Paul Thomas Anderson's a genius!" "Todd Haynes is my personal hero!" "Lars von Trier is God!"

The point is, seriously, just shut up. If you purport to love the cinema and don't take it on a film by film basis - Just. Shut. Up. Again, back to Toy Story 3. I don't like a lot of Pixar but sometimes, I do! So I keep watching them! Wall-E, for instance. I didn't like the second half but I did like the first half. And, importantly, I didn't dislike the second half for any moral reasons, like the Lotso resolution in TS3, simply that I felt it took a very powerful and moving story and ramped it up into a high-energy chase/slapstick production that worked against, not with, the first half.

I also don't like every Coen brothers movie I see but I do like several and love some. But mother of mercy, I've come across bloggers and critics on this here interweb who practically hate the Coen brothers. They hate them! I mean, there's some mediocre, badly done shit out there in movie land and we can be thankful that the Coen brothers at least give us quality films, on purely technical terms, because they are very skilled film makers. To say otherwise is to be completely disingenuous. Take TS3, again. Do I hate its philosophy towards Lotso? Yes. Is it incompetently made on the technical level? No, of course not. It looks beautiful. Not even that Kinkadey. So when the complaints against the Coen brothers lapse into how they're bad film makers, I just move on to someone else not trying to convince me the world is flat.

But for the record, the "I hate the Coens/Spielberg/Allen/Tarantino/Fincher/Nolan/Anderson, etc." statements are bullshit, plain and simple. Cinema doesn't operate on averages, it operates on individual movies. Stop using sweeping statements against directors as a lazy way to "critique" their movies instead of taking on the movie directly and honestly.

5. THE BACKLASH BANDWAGON

So sick of this one. I'm sure I don't have to describe "The Backlash Bandwagon" to you but, actually, I'm thinking of it a little differently than you may be so, if you'll bear with me, I would like to explain. This isn't about everyone loving a movie and then, over time, more people voice their suspicion that it was over-rated. That's common and is often piled onto the "backlash" trash heap but it's really not the same thing, just eventual re-assessment. Backlash is something much harsher, much meaner and more clearly shallow, transparent and phony.

Let's go back to Avatar. When it was released, it received a fair amount of praise (Don't deny it, it did. Look it up.) Then it started making money. Lots of money. TONS of money! And then a backlash occurred in which, essentially, it was called garbage. It was horrible. It was one of the worst movies EVER MADE! Same thing happened with The Dark Knight. Again, it received very good reviews and then a second side declared, not that it was, perhaps, over-rated (I felt it was) but that it was awful. Abysmal. Bottom-scraping flying rodent fecal matter. And then everyone started yelling at each other and, even now, just bringing the title up can unleash a whole big mess o' smug from both sides of the movie aisle.

With both, I fell on the side of unimpressed but not hateful. Here is my original review of Avatar. I praise James Cameron's expert direction of action, critique its many character and story elements as poorly written but, on the whole, can only describe my response as middling, not vitriolic. I never gave a proper review to The Dark Knight but I felt much the same way: I didn't like it, but the "I hate it" camp seemed a little too extreme for my tastes.

There's a milder form of backlash that also occurs that I dealt with directly in this post last year on Black Swan (I'm nothing if not consistent about my online irritations). It's the one where there isn't so much as an overload of money or attention or praise, like The Dark Knight, but a movie that some think is great, like Black Swan, but others find not so great and express this by ridiculing either the movie, its supporters or both. It's happened many times, most recently with The Artist. I saw a comment from one critic that even described it by typing "movie" with the quotes there to signal us that, despite using a camera and a full cast and crew, The Artist somehow didn't even qualify as a movie anymore. I have seen some real hatred thrown at this very skillful, very well-performed, very entertaining movie and it feels all out of proportion. I hate to keep going back to it, but look at Toy Story 3. That has a story element that actually morally offends and still I can find the balls to say it's not a bad movie, just misguided in that element and redundant overall. But when people don't like Black Swan or The Artist, why is there a need among some writers to insult the intelligence of those who do? If you'd like a true template for how to handle this kind of thing properly, go to Ferdy on Films and read Marilyn Ferdinand's review of The Artist. She didn't like it, explains why and avoids calling anyone who did an idiot. We should all take a lesson.

FIVE YEARS, FIVE REASONS TO GO ON

I've been at this now for five years and in that time, the pet peeves I list above have gotten worse, at least to my eyes. Maybe that's nothing more than a perception problem on my part. Maybe it's the same as ever or has even improved but I'm so tired of dealing with the same old, same old, that it feels bigger to me now. Maybe. I do know that in my online experience I've started one blog after another and joined up with a few others to boot. I've done movie blogging, political blogging, humorous blogging, photo tumbling, group blogging and even a short stint at entertainment news blogging. I've stuck with two: Cinema Styles and If Charlie Parker was a Gunslinger There'd be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats. I was also lucky enough to be asked to join the group of great movie bloggers at TCM's Movie Morlocks for which I am eternally grateful.

That's three reasons enough, right there, to keep right on going, despite the frustrations and irritations that sometimes yank me backwards like a dog being choke-chained but there are a couple more, too. One, I wouldn't want to not converse with the online community of film lovers and friends I've discovered in this time and two, I've never learned more about the movies than I have in the last five years. Before that, it was all isolated knowledge that seemed pretty impressive in a room of people who didn't spend every waking moment thinking about, reading about and talking about cinema. But once I got online, I realized I was a novice. Hell, I realized we all were and if we didn't learn from each other, no one else was ever going to fill us in on the 99 percent of film history ignored by the film history books.

If there's any vow or resolution to be made here it's only that I be more honest with myself and everyone else about how I feel about modern cinema and not worry about getting into arguments. But if I'm to be honest now, right now, I have to admit that I probably won't. Instead, once a year or so I'll write a piece about how annoyed I am at this or that and do my best, the rest of the time, to write about those movies that bring me joy. If that's the deal I have to make to keep this blog going, I suppose I can live with that. After all, to not write about, talk about and share my love for movies would be to not live at all. And that's not a choice I'm willing to make.

The Blogathon That Never Was

2012-01-08T12:00:00.000-05:00

When Arbogast on Film died (apparently burning in Hell) so did a blogathon. Years ago, Arbo and I discussed doing a blogathon that went against the grain of most blogathons. We were tired of all the blogathons about big time directors, actors and/or movies. How about a blogathon about an actor who got, at best, bit parts, a couple of failed tv shows and years of good, quality, reliable, steady work? How about a blogathon about Lawrence Pressman?

No, seriously.

It started when I brought up Ladies Man, a failed sitcom Pressman starred in that lasted one season in 1980, in a comment thread whose attached post I can no longer remember. I watched Ladies Man and, yes, I liked it, or rather, I liked Pressman in it. I liked him in 9 to 5, too. Other parts got mentioned: His role as Dr. Hellstrom in The Hellstrom Chronicles (he had the lead!) was mentioned by Marilyn Ferdinand and a few others chimed in to mention other small parts where Pressman stood out in their memory.

Arbo e-mailed me and said we should do a whole blogathon and if only a few people posted, who cares? I tried to make it something bigger ("How about a blogathon for all bit players?!") but Arbo thought that defeated the purpose. He was right. We never did the blogathon.

The point of all this is not that I want to go ahead and do that blogathon now - the moment is past and the momentum is gone - but that the very idea of it inspired me to start doing The Wanderers, posts on actors without Oscars (or even nominations) and barely any name recognition. It was that blogathon that got me to thinking, "Would I rather talk up the same classics and heroes of cinema or bring some under-appreciated and under-known artists into the limelight?" The answer was obvious. Illumination is more enticing than elaboration. So thanks, Arbo, for guiding me, in your small way, towards the true spirit of the film blogger: A personal journey through the history of film that acknowledges the classics but spends more time shedding light on those players in the shadows that enriched our cinematic history without ever getting the recognition they deserved.

The Investigation Ends...

2011-12-28T23:21:00.003-05:00

I had planned on taking December off from Cinema Styles and fully intended to keep those plans, until this happened...

Arbogast on Film, one of the finest written film blogs you will ever have the pleasure of casting your eyes upon, is "laying himself to rest."

Arbogast on Film was one of my first online blogging haunts and it wasn't long before a comment exchange with Arbo became one of the most entertaining breaks of the day. Eventually (rather quickly, actually), I struck up a friendship with Arbo that extended into the real world. Long before Facebook took over, we sent each other family pictures, texted random street scenes and talked about writing, blogging and the movies.

I'll miss Arbogast on Film, and even though I know I can still read all of his great writing elsewhere, and dig into the Arbogast archives when need be, it won't be the same knowing Arbogast is gone for good. I love Arbo's writing and one of the things I love most about the man was his ability to say that which not only couldn't be said, but which most people would run from rather than utter. A visit to Arbogast on Film, or a visit from Arbogast to your blog, often meant boundaries would be pushed and the plain truth would be spoken, polite company be damned. Also, his wit, scathing and mocking and keenly honed, was, simply put, a lap ahead of the competition. I enjoy good wit, cherish it, look for it in anyone of whom I intend to give my time. Arbogast on Film had it, in gaudy supply, emanating from every word.

I designed that banner up above, as well as the banners for his superb annual October tradition, 31 Screams. I was happy to do it. Just to be associated with his blog in even such a small way felt good, like I was a part of something bigger.

I'll miss you, my friend. The mystery of cinema will never be the same.

Happy Holidays...

2011-12-22T23:53:00.000-05:00

From Cinema Styles to you and yours.

As is probably evident, I'm taking December off from Cinema Styles but I'll be back in the New Year with plenty of movies to talk about. In the meantime, I've got Christmas to celebrate with the family. Until January, accept this gift from the lovely Miss Leslie Caron and enjoy the holiday season.

Performing a Public Service:Cab Calloway in The Blues Brothers

2011-11-27T10:25:00.001-05:00

Whatever one may think of John Landis or Dan Aykroyd as either artists or people, they both deserve kudos for preserving a modern day performance of Minnie the Moocher by Cab Calloway on film in The Blues Brothers (1980). Aykroyd wrote him into the script and Landis gave him full attention for a lavishly filmed performance on stage. Watching the movie the other day on Netflix, and seeing John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd perform with Cab Calloway, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Steve Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn, John Lee Hooker* and Ray Charles, I wondered to myself, "Did they appreciate the talent amassed for this film that would never be together again?"

Of course they did. How could they not? I've never been a cult-follower of The Blues Brothers like many others (though I do like it) but I'm glad it exists. I'm glad it's out there and so many performers who weren't connected to film got a chance to be preserved on film forever after. Besides, where else can you find Charles Napier, Carrie Fisher, Twiggy, John Candy, Paul Reubens, Steve Lawrence and Henry Gibson all playing bit player back-up in the same place at the same time? If there were ever a film whose preservation of talent on celluloid surpasses the importance of the film itself, this might be the one.

*He doesn't actually perform with them but he's there just the same.

The Movie's Good, I Just Don't Like It

2011-11-21T13:08:00.001-05:00

"Greg said it's not about that so shut up, stupid!"

The laws of film criticism would seem to dictate that when a movie is good, demonstrably good, we should like it or, at least, appreciate it in all its glorious excellence. I'm not talking about those recent brouhahas and kerfuffles and, dare I say it, foofaraws that erupted after that guy wrote that piece about how he didn't like those movies that were supposed to be movies he liked but he found them boring and then a bunch of critics were all like, "I hate you!" and went running to their rooms and then some other guy wrote another piece where he even mentioned some friends of mine (in a very positive light, of course) and talked about how everyone needed to chill or whatever word the kids are using these days to denote "ignore your intellectual outrage and keep your mouth shut like a good little soldier."

So, yeah, anyway, it's not about that.

No, it's about a movie that seems well-done in every possible way but is still quite unlikeable. The writing is literate and tight, the plot works well, the acting is uniformly good, the direction clear and efficient, the musical score, editing, photography, sound, etc. are all top-drawer, as my non-existent prep school friends would say (their names are "Chip" and "Skip"). And yet, I simply don't like them. And I don't mean "it's not my cup of tea" (Chip and Skip again), I mean, "Damn! I really hate this movie!" See, that's kind of confusing because when a movie has everything going for it, it seems like somehow, someway, I should like it. But that's not the case nearly as often as it should be.

Back in 1996, everyone in the world of film criticism (well, it seemed that way but it was before aggregate shit sites like Rotten Tomatoes so what in the hell do I know) was lying on the floor recovering from spasms of nirvana after watching The English Patient. Seriously, I'd read a review and the critic would be all like, "English Patient? Touch me... there." So I saw it and found it to have fantastic acting, a really tight script, good clean direction and breathtaking cinematography. And, brother, did I hate that fucking thing! And I don't really know why because I've never taken the time to go back and watch it again which I probably should because it seems like I'm constantly hating or loving movies that I end up reversing my opinion on in weeks, days, sometimes hours. I do this because, as best I can tell, I've got some kind of mental problem but, you know what, that's for another post.

So, again, I can't claim The English Patient is bad. I think everyone involved should be proud of their accomplishments on it. It's not easy to make a movie, really it's not and something like The English Patient shows the kind of skill and talent that we should all be so lucky to possess. It takes time, patience and a butt-load of money and I'm not here to dismiss any of the movies discussed in this post, just say that, inexplicably, I don't like them while acknowledging they're all well-done.

"This movie is bullshit! Good popcorn, though."

What got me thinking about this again was my recent viewing of The Road. Is it well done? I'd say, exceptionally so. The post-apocalyptic landscape is, for one, so convincing, so dead, so grey, so lifeless that I'd swear the art director and set designer had somehow seen the coming end of the world and replicated it for the film (how they would have done this I'm still working out but I'm strongly leaning towards a time-helmet of some kind). The lead performances by Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smitt-McPhee are both excellent and the story has a lean, efficient quality to it. A no-frills kind of feeling that is perfectly fitting for such an enterprise. And yet, by the end, I couldn't help but think the entire viewing was a complete and utter waste of my time. I've felt that way ever since. Here's what I got from it: Nothing.

Maybe there's a slickness involved that I just don't connect with. It's possible. All the films that produce this kind of reaction in me feel perfectly done in some vague, technical way. In fact, a lot of Best Picture winners fall into this category for me as well as almost the entire career of Ron Howard. I see a Ron Howard movie and everything in them seems just right, you know? As in, no chances taken, no going outside the constraints of the familiar, no bold exploration of new ideas. They all have that prepackaged feel to them. A sort of "Paint by the Numbers" where all the colors are right and in the right place but it feels forced, stiff, dead.

By contrast, when I watch something like Stroszek, it feels like Werner Herzog was making it up as he went. And that feels great! It's like he said, "Okay, let's film you driving away. No! Wait! Drive the truck in circles first. Then get out. Then get back in. Set something on fire. No! Wait! Is there some kind of crazy theme park or arcade around here? What? What's that? Dancing chickens? Perfect! Let's go there and film that!"

It's the same when I watch early Scorsese. Mean Streets and Taxi Driver have a dirty, messy, sloppy feel to them, a feel I really like. The Aviator, on the other hand, is excellent on all levels but I just don't like it. It feels so clean, so polished, so... so not Scorsese. Same with The Departed. All of these films, from The English Patient to (oh, let's pick a Howard film) Frost/Nixon seem so very uninspired. They feel like the work of people who all know exactly what they're doing and they do it well but they don't let any part of themselves become a part of the equation. It's like the recording of Born Free by Andy Williams (Huh? What? Just bear with me, okay?). In the song, he sings every note exactly as written and it's a running joke for my wife and me to take note of the one part in the song where he doesn't, the very last verse where, instead of singing the word "free" he kind of speaks it, boldly. It's unintentionally funny because it's the one, single, solitary moment where he lets any kind of personality enter into his rendition. Rather than phrasing the words to fit his feelings, emotions and instincts, like a Billie Holliday or Ella Fitzgerald or Frank Sinatra, he does exactly what he's supposed to do. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

"Nothing I said applies to me. Now get off my lawn!"

So maybe that's it. Maybe when a film does exactly what it's supposed to do, it turns me off. Maybe that's why I'm a fan of so many scratchy, ugly, thrown-together movies from the seventies and so little a fan of so much from the eighties on. From the eighties on, thanks to technology in filming as well as post-production editing and special effects, even crappy, low-rent movies have a slick, polished look to them. But that can't be the whole story because as much as an Out of Africa, The Last Emperor, Shakespeare in Love, American Beauty or Chicago don't work for me, practically everything Hollywood did in the forties does and if anything ever fit the definition of "people who know exactly what they're doing and doing it well", it's Hollywood in the forties. I mean, those guys and gals put together movies like Tin Lizzies rolling off of Henry Ford's assembly line and, somehow, most of them do feel inspired to me. Maybe that's because they were inserting themselves into the films (oh shit, it's that theory - RUN! Save yourself before it takes over the whole discussion!). Or maybe there are too many people involved in the post-production now to keep any kind of individual directorial vision up there on the screen for anyone to even notice. Or maybe I'm just a grumpy old curmudgeon and this is the dumbest idea I've ever had for a post because, in the end, there can be no possible answer to the question, "How can a movie do everything right and feel so wrong?"

Facebooking the Demise of the Wicked Witch (of the East)

2011-11-18T08:47:00.001-05:00

I imagine at this moment on Oz Twitter, #CelebratedTooSoon is trending wildly.

By the way, you just know when it comes time for the Mayor's re-election, his campaign's going to be all over the fact that both wicked witches died on his watch.

What I Learned Today

2011-11-16T22:06:00.001-05:00

Mary Carlisle is still alive. She was one of the WAMPAS baby stars and is the last remaining one. Reading up on the WAMPAS baby stars is the kind of thing I actually do so, if you're not as weird as I am and are unfamiliar with them, simply go here.

Anyway, she's 99 and will turn 100 on February 3, 2012. She was born almost 100 years ago but when she was born it had only been 86 years since Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died. So there were people alive when she was born who were alive when Jefferson and Adams were alive. On top of that, consider this: 86 years ago from this time, Joan Crawford was starting her Hollywood career in the silents and Charlie Chaplin was making The Gold Rush. Wrap your head around that for a little while.

And while you're at it, visit this picture gallery for dozens of great photos of Mary Carlisle.

Synthesized Accompaniment

2011-11-14T20:58:00.001-05:00

I watched The Long Good Friday again about a month ago for the first time in years. I had forgotten how much movie music from the late seventies and early eighties relied so heavily upon pop-oriented synthesizer sounds, regardless of whether they fit the mood of what was on the screen or not. Listening to the opening and closing themes of The Long Good Friday, it seemed downright odd to choose such music for a gangster film until I thought of other eighties movies, like To Live and Die in L.A. and Manhunter, that also have heavy-handed synthesizer pop loudly ushering in the closing credits, despite wrapping up tragic loss or disturbing violence just moments before.

The funny thing is, watching the closing scene (several times over, no less), all I could think was, "Thank God!" I mean, seriously, there comes a time when you're just thrilled that every goddamn score under the sun in the late seventies/early eighties didn't sound like another John Williams rip-off. The pop music may sound odd given what it's playing behind on the screen but it's such a signifier of its time and place, I wouldn't change it for the world.

Oh yeah, and this guy?

Damn! Honestly. Just, damn!

Pola's Back and You're Gonna Be In Trouble

2011-11-12T18:37:00.001-05:00

80 years ago, in 1931, Pola Negri returned from Europe aboard the S.S. Paris to start her talking picture career in Hollywood after bad times in marriage and movies, with her most recent one, The Way of Lost Souls, her final silent film, not doing well at all. After coming to Hollywood to act in sound pictures, and leaving again, her career went all over the map, including a period working for Universum Film AG (UFA) in France, then under the control of Joseph Goebbels, until she fled to America after the Nazis invaded.

Her career in Hollywood during the forties didn't go very far and within a few years, she retired. Later, Billy Wilder would use her as the basis of the titular character Fedora in an old-fashioned mystery (Fedora, 1979) that I saw years ago and have been curious to see again for years but, sadly, it's unavailable. Is it any good? I have no idea. I last saw it in 1979 but I'd love to see it again.

You Can't Stop What's Coming

2011-11-10T10:30:00.000-05:00

Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Leslie Caron, Francis Ford Coppola, Maggie Smith, Joanne Woodward, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Jane Fonda, Glenda Jackson, Sophia Loren, Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, Gene Hackman, Al Pacino. Know what they all have in common? They are all the names of actors and directors I grew up with as the big stars of the day and soon, sooner than you think, they're going to die. Sorry for that, maybe I should have cushioned the blow more.

The cinematic stars, in front of and behind the camera, that I grew up with will soon be dead and not freakishly so, like John Belushi, in which the death is a shocking and tragic loss. No, when they die, it won't be surprising. No one will say "they were too young to die." They will be in their seventies, eighties and nineties soon, very soon. Some already are. No one is very shocked when someone in their seventies, eighties or nineties dies.

In the last couple of years, I've already lost Peter Falk, Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman and a host of other actors that were the big stars of my youth. The thing is, when a star dies, I often have little to say, not because I didn't care for them but because I didn't feel personally connected to them. With Peter Falk, I did and it took me a few weeks to come up with a proper remembrance of him on this blog. Charles "Bud" Tingwell and Edward Woodward felt the same way. And I know others will feel more so.

Woody Allen, for instance. If you don't like him, now's not the time to tell me because I'm here to simply say he means a lot to me. So I'm not looking for a debate on merits or whether you agree on this movie or that, I'm saying his films, particularly ones like Manhattan, Stardust Memories, Hannah and Her Sisters, Broadway Danny Rose and Crimes and Misdemeanors are very powerful emotional experiences for me and when he goes it won't be the same as any other. It will be a seismic shock to my sensibilities.

Robert De Niro will feel the same. He's not quite seventy yet so I feel secure that he will be around a while longer but still, when he goes, a generous piece of my acting soul will go with him.

And I bring all of this up because I think, "Maybe I should start writing obituaries now, so I'm prepared when they go." Or maybe that's a dumb idea. Maybe I should just let it happen as it happens.

But, mainly, I think I bring it up because I realize I'm getting older. Aren't we all?

Chaplin, To-Day

2011-11-08T07:00:00.000-05:00

Looking at this photo from April 1936 reminds me of how slow the release process used to be. I've written about it before, as recently as last year, but this really brings it home. The movie playing, "to-day", is Chaplin's Modern Times. That film premiered in February in New York but now, in April, it's still playing (or just opening at this particular theatre, The Lyric) and the one of the other films playing, The Headline Woman, opened over a year earlier in March of 1935!

That tradition of holding over bigger movies and rotating older ones in and out at discounted prices, is what I grew up with. Sometimes I would wait months to see a movie instead of ponying up the new movie price at the first-run theatre. No, not because I knew it would be on cable or out on videotape, there was no such thing! Rather, I knew that after a few months it would be playing at later hours at the respectable theatre for half-price or all throughout the day at the second-run theatres in the area. Seeing a movie at the second-run theatre was kind of like waiting for it to come out on DVD is now. Only better because at the second-run theatre I went to with my brother, The Pinehaven, you could pretty much do anything: Drink, smoke, bring in food. No one cared. There was no concession stand. If I traveled back in time and went to it now I'd probably get nauseous but at the time it was a pretty sweet deal. Ah, the ~~good~~ bad old days.

Mank Was Born Today

2011-11-07T08:50:00.002-05:00

Herman J. Mankiewicz is 114. I mean, he's dead, sure, but that doesn't make him any less 114. People often ask, "What else did he write besides Citizen Kane?" Well, you can find out here but, really, does it matter? He co-wrote Citizen Kane. Isn't that enough?

Also born today were Leatrice Joy and Dean Jagger. I'm not as familiar with Leatrice's work (although I have seen DeMille's 1923 The Ten Commandments) but her name was "Leatrice Joy" so didn't she already win the lottery anyway with that name? And she lived to be 91.

Dean Jagger I mainly know from Twelve O'Clock High, Bad Day at Black Rock and X: The Unknown, which I watched again just last year. He had a simple, straight-forward demeanor and delivery. He wasn't flashy or showy and never a star but reliable to the end.

Carl Boehm Or Not Carl Boehm, That Is The Question

2011-11-06T21:08:00.003-05:00

I came across the black and white photo on the right during a search of a photo archive that listed it as, "Hamlet, unknown actor."* I'd swear that's Carl Boehm, or Karlheinz, as his peeps call him. I don't know if it is or isn't (I did a perfunctory search, as in "half-assed google search," and came up with nothing and, as seen below, it's probably, most definitely someone else) but no matter because, somehow, he seems a perfect fit for Hamlet. Or maybe he wouldn't be. Maybe I'm just reading too much of the weird Mark Lewis character he played in Peeping Tom into it. Or maybe the fact that his dad, renowned conductor Karl Bohm, sent him to Switzerland during World War II so he would never be associated with Nazis while dad stayed with ... um... the Nazis. But he didn't like them. Or did he? Who the hell knows? Hey, we got a great Peeping Tom performance out of it, right? Maybe I'm asking too much to believe the Nazi-sympathizer-dad thing could have played out for a great performance of Hamlet, too.

*In the comments, Vanwall Green thinks it might be Innotenki Smoktunovsky, renowned for playing Hamlet. Stills from the production would bear this out. I still think Boehm could have played a great Hamlet. As for Boehm and Smoktunosky, are they candidates for "Switched at Birth" or what?

Sometimes, You Have to Come BackThe Tree of Life (d. Malick, 2011)

2011-11-03T16:55:00.001-04:00

There have been many times in my movie-watching life that I have been displeased or unsatisfied with a movie only to make a complete 180 degree turn, sometimes in less than 24 hours. I have long since trained myself to never venture an opinion of a movie immediately after having watched it. Of course, that hasn't stopped me from doing just that, many times over. It's one of the reasons I hate the question, "So what did you think?" immediately upon finishing a movie. I hate it because I foolishly answer the question when I know I shouldn't.

Over the summer, as I was leaving lunch with Bill Ryan, he asked me if I had seen Tree of Life, directed by Terrence Malick. I hadn't, at the time. I also said, plainly, that I wasn't one of Malick's biggest fans. Certainly, I don't think he's bad, I just don't connect with his style of film making as much as others do. Bill said something to the effect of, "Maybe you shouldn't see it, then, because it's about as 'Malicky' as you can get."

Well, I did see it, not long after that. I didn't tell Bill, or anyone online for that matter. I discussed it with my wife, however (who did not see it). My discussion started minutes after I saw it, on the phone with her. My views were, to say the least, not positive. By the time we were both home and I could talk to her face to face about it, my feelings had changed a bit. The movie was lingering in my mind. I got a copy of it, streaming, from Amazon and watched it again. I watched key scenes with her. I showed her how this was done and that was done and how Malick told everything in short, clipped moments rather than full, formal scenes and how, when I thought back on the movie, that made it seem like I was looking back on the actual lives of people I'd known, not movie characters. I remarked how we remember our lives in snippets, not fully realized afternoon's worth of conversation. By the time I had finished talking to her about it, going over separate moments in the film with her and watching it again, I was of the mind that Tree of Life was one of the most extraordinary pieces of cinema I have ever seen.

I'm still of that mind.

This is a movie that is easy to resist. It's easy to push against it and call it out as a piece of self-important "art." It's easy because it doesn't present its story in any recognizable way and so the viewer can take that as an affront to their sensibilities and roll their eyes (even Altman's snippets felt more like whole scenes most of the time). People claim it's not linear but, really, for the most part, it is. Just because it moves around a bit in time, that is to say, it doesn't start right at the beginning but a little after and then goes back to start at the beginning, doesn't mean it's not linear. For the most part, the story of the boys and their mom and dad is told from their birth through their old age and/or death in a fairly straight line. There may be detours, where we find out "where we came from" but that doesn't alter the linear momentum of the main story at all. If anything, the movie simply stops telling that story, for a short while, here and there, before returning to it.

Nevertheless, for a lot of viewers, this one included the first time around, that can be tedious and, as a result, resistance becomes the defense mechanism of choice. So, yes, I understand when I read some reactions that call it "pretentious" and "arty" and "self-important." But sometimes, you have to come back to a movie, just as Sean Penn's character comes back to his family in his thoughts. What can be easily dismissed or resisted sometimes simply depends on how we have decided to view it. I decided to view it a certain way but, in my memory, the movie forced me to view it another. And it was that memory, reinforced by further viewing, that won the day.

For a more precise way to explain the film's storytelling technique, I quote Roderick Heath of Ferdy on Films: "[Malick is] less interested in dramatic explorations of character, though there are intimations of character, than in articulating the archetypal through the specific, an example of T.S. Eliot’s formulation of the poetic sensibility as one that senses how everything is connected." Tree of Life works only by watching the entire movie. That sounds obvious (what else are you going to do with a movie?) but what I mean is, there's no getting bored and thinking, "Oh, he's not telling me anything important here! I get it, the oldest son doesn't get along with dad!" and, then, as a result, kind of blanking out most of the movie. It must be watched with full attention and taken in because only then can the sense of it, the connection to it and the feeling of the characters become viable to the viewer.

It's been a long time since I saw a movie that doesn't necessarily require you to take an active part as much as it, more than anything else, wants you to! And that's an important distinction. Malick wants you, the viewer, to engage with him, with the characters, with their lives. He doesn't want you to just watch. You can, if you want, but you'll miss a hell of a lot. Once I started taking part in the movie, it won me over solid and, even now, weeks since I last took a look at it (but I will again soon, it looms so large in my mind) I think of it daily.

And for a person like me, the film itself is truly spiritual. I cannot get my head around the idea of people wanting to take all the grandeur of the universe, all of its beauty and mystery and mind-boggling, stunning complexity and reduce it all to "a supernatural being made it." That robs the universe and life itself of beauty and meaning, as far as I'm concerned. But for others, it doesn't. For others, that supernatural being is a way of personifying the mystery and while that may not work for me, I can understand it working for others. The beauty of Tree of Life is that there is no dogma, no argument for or against anything which is why, I think, so many people have described it in so many different ways. I've heard Christians claim it as a movie for them while I've heard agnostics and atheists say it's a movie that appreciates the beauty and mystery of nature. It works either way because it's not about a specific inroad to any one definition of spirituality but about the existence of humanity and nature and the universe itself and how it all flows in one direction, each step tied to the last.

It begins with a quote from the Book of Job in the Bible that reads, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? What supports its foundations, and who laid its cornerstone as the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?" What a beautiful way to start the movie because, essentially, as we watch the oldest son (Sean Penn) wander through the present as his memories lead us through the past, we realize just as he does that his adolescent judgments were, perhaps, misplaced. He was not there, as an adult, to understand what his parents were going through. To understand what work his father was doing, what humiliations he was enduring to keep them going. How difficult it must have been for his mother, buoyed by her faith and love of her children, to continue in a marriage that must have felt, at times, like living with a distant acquaintance. This movie is his way of going back and being there this time around. This time he can be there when the foundations are laid and understand the work that goes into it.

Understanding your parents through memory is something I can relate to deeply. So many things my parents did when I was young were judged harshly by me until I grew up and had children of my own. Suddenly, through memory, I could understand why things were done a certain way and how hard it must have been. That's what God is saying to Job in that opening quote. He's not saying, "Who do you think you are judging me?! You weren't there!" He's saying, "Think about it, reflect on it, so that you may understand it." The great physicist Richard Feynman, when talking about the light waves that weave throughout the universe and all that there is, remarked that these waves are right here, in the room, "but you've got to stop and think about it, about the complexity, to really get the pleasure." It's not enough to be present, it requires thought, contemplation, reflection. That's what God wants, that's what the father (Brad Pitt) wants too. He wants his sons to understand the hardship and learn from it, appreciate it and make it better.

The film's basic story is of one couple, the O'Briens, in the fifties, raising their three sons. Later, one of them dies and the film does not tell us how (Suicide, like Malick's brother in real life? Casualty of war in Vietnam? It doesn't say.) In the present, the oldest son, Jack (Penn), sees a tree being planted by the office building where he works and begins a long reunion, in his heart and mind, with his family that will take us through the movie. Along the way, Mallick briefly leaves the main story to answer the question of a character, "Where did we come from?" by showing us the evolution of life on earth in a truly extraordinary sequence that has already become one of my favorite sequences in any movie, anywhere. We return to the main story but continue to get mere snippets of dialogue, mere glimpses of life as the family moves forward and the boys rebel against their father and bond with their mother and then, over time, bond with their father through reflective understanding and tolerance.

All this is not to say the movie does not rely on cliches that were, at first, what made me so disappointed (although I very quickly got past them). It was the constant dramatic whispers of narration and the angelic music during the creation of life on Earth that seemed so obvious. There's no way around it, triumphant choirs of voices while showing the grandeur of space is as cliched as it gets and Malick adopts it full force. But my reticence, in the face of these cliches, was quickly overcome by the simple beauty of a story told through shared memory.

Tree of Life is, simply put, a grand achievement in film and that's not something I say often when writing about new movies. Initially, it put me off and I did everything I could to distance myself from it. But the memory of the O'Brien family, of the beginnings of life and of a universe forever indifferent to our petty designs, and yet filled with our own meaning, turned me around. As I felt it pull, I found I wanted to take part and I'm glad I did. Sometimes, as Jack learns, you have to come back.

In Which Fall Will Soon Give Way To The Cold, Dark, Depressing, Endless, Bleek, Hopeless Days of Winter

2011-11-01T00:00:00.000-04:00

Happy November, everybody!

Out with the Dead

2011-10-29T23:18:00.002-04:00

And so October draws to a close. Between here and the Morlocks, I got a few good October posts out but not nearly as many as I would have liked. There's a reason for that, outside of the usual, pained and pointless excuses of "I got too busy!" Yes, that's true, that happens, often, but that's not really why.

The real reason why is because I'm sick and tired of discussing the same goddamn horror movies over and over and over again. In my last post at the Morlocks I even gave a kind of semi-apology for bringing up The Exorcist because, hell, I've brought that movie up 43 times in the last four years during October. Enough already!

And the lists! Oh, the lists, from all around the internet, from critics and professional sites (like Cracked) to freakin' Martin Scorsese, that are all intelligent and worthy, yes, but also happen to have the same movies on every goddamn list! Look, I love most of the horror movies on most of those lists but here's the thing: The folks that come here know those movies. We all know those movies. For the immediate future, do we really need to call up The Shining again, or Psycho, or Night of the Living Dead? Do I love each and every one of those? Yes! Absolutely. Do I fault a single writer out there for bringing them up? No! Never. Christ, I brought them all up, around the internet, this October. But I don't want to do it anymore. I really don't. I'm done with it. It's kind of like if you're a classic film blogger (how this blog started out) and you spend all your time writing about Citizen Kane or Casablanca or Singin' in the Rain. I mean, sure, those are great movies and they're going to make plenty of lists but, ahem, can we talk about something else? Something that hasn't been written about, discussed and digested 93,457 times?

When I started doing October at Cinema Styles back in 2007, it felt fresh, new, exciting. Now every goddamn newspaper and media organization that used to shun the internet and bloggers like little unwanted bastard children is out there bombarding us with bullshit October horror movie themes, slide-shows and lists, a lot of it coming from people who don't know fuck-all about horror. As a result, there's a numbing, pervasive, zombie-like sameness to the October film selections I see all over the internet and when I look at my own pathetic foray into horror this month, I see the same thing! Ugh.

So I want to go in different directions with this. I love Universal Horror and Hammer Horror and Amicus. I love Corman and Castle and Francis and damn, I'll watch any of their movies, any time. But for now and into the foreseeable future, I think they're covered on these here internets. Really, I do. Earlier in the month, I tried to go a different direction with it by posting on Ingmar Bergman at the Morlocks from the point of view of horror. But I didn't branch out beyond that single post. I wish I had. I wish I had ventured forth more courageously but, for various reasons, I didn't. The main reason is this: I simply haven't devoted enough time to watching different horror movies.

Peter Nellhaus, the prolific critic and blogger at his own place, Coffee, Coffee and More Coffee, is constantly recommending I watch Thai horror and I rarely take him up on it. Well, I'm going to. I have to. There are so many great horror films being made all over the world and I'm missing out by not exposing myself to them. Another great writer and friend, Richard Harland Smith, recommended I take in Eastern European productions to break out of the rut. That message, too, has been received and acted upon. And I take it seriously. The reason people like Peter and Richard and Tenebrous Kate and Kimberly Lindbergs and Arbogast have much greater horror creds than most other writers out there is precisely because they don't limit themselves, as I've done, to the same old, same old. Hell, each one of them has, at one time or another, written up a horror movie that I not only hadn't seen, I hadn't even heard of it!

Next October, I'm bringing out the dead. The familiar, comfortable horror movies I've leaned on year after year after year are getting tossed onto the funeral pyre of horror homogeny as I stagger out of the corner I've lazily painted myself into and wander down some of those dark alleys that have no sign posts, no lights and no sense of security at all. What they lack in security they make up for with the exhilarating chill of the unknown and that's something I'm desperate to discover again. For next October, I vow, here and now, to not write a single word about a single movie I have written about before. Old October is done. Bring out your dead.

Bela, 129 Years Old and Still Undead

2011-10-20T08:15:00.000-04:00

I don't know what Bela's reacting to here, I just know by the fifth one he's looking pretty smooth and satisfied with his bad-ass self. Happy Birthday, Bela!

The Mechanics of Horror

2011-10-12T12:43:00.003-04:00

No, not really scary guys who fix cars for Dracula but the "hows" and "whys" of the horror world. And I also don't mean that persnickety shit where know-it-alls ruin everyone's fun by complaining about something being physically impossible in a supernatural story, like a vampire not reflecting in a mirror, which is, yes, impossible because the reason you can see the vampire is because lights reflects off of him and if your eyes can see that reflected light so can a mirror. But, you know, it's a vampire and the mirror reflects the soul and we all get that when watching Dracula.

I'm talking about the actual mechanics of how something works within the logic of the story itself. Let's take a look at three horror staples and ask a question of each in the hopes of understanding their inner workings a little better.

For starters, how does a vampire suck out the blood? Seriously. Usually, when we see the results of a vampire attack, it is as pictured above. A couple of bite marks and some drops of blood. But does that mean the vampire is sucking it out through his teeth? Because, if not, the neck should be a lot messier. If the vampire is biting into the neck, to get the blood flowing, and then sticking his mouth over the gushing to lap it down, there should be blood smears all over the neck or, at the very least, a big-ass hickey where the sucking took place. Personally, I think vampires have fangs that act as straws. Much like a snake has ducts that spew venom, the vampire has ducts, either within the teeth themselves or just above them, that suck the blood out neatly and cleanly. It would seem the wisest evolutionary move for an animal reliant upon such feeding to waste as little blood as possible.

Now let's consider the werewolf. The werewolf is a person who, with the full moon, suffers a full DNA reworking and becomes a hybrid wolf/human. The werewolf then goes out and starts attacking. Why? Animals attack for two reasons: hunger and fear. Take a lion. It attacks prey when it is hungry and intends to eat it. It attacks a human wandering into its territory when it feels threatened. It never attacks because it's bored and feels like attacking before taking a nap. So a werewolf is attacking for one of those two reasons. Now, when a person knows they are a werewolf, they will often go to great lengths to keep themselves from being set loose so as to stop their murdering rampage. They will lock themselves up or ask someone else to in order to prevent the unthinkable. But might not a better plan be to stuff yourself silly before the transformation?

Let's say you know you're going to transform at midnight. Okay, buy a large roast, cook it up with some potatoes, eat the whole thing and maybe have an entire pie for dessert. Eat until you can, literally, put not one more morsel in your mouth. When you transform you will be sated and, perhaps, even a little sleepy. Hey, that's another idea! The night before the full moon, don't go to sleep. Stay up all night and then, the next evening, after you've been awake for 36 hours, eat that enormous feast of food and guess what? When the transformation happens you'll do what any other wild animal does in the same circumstances (or, for that matter, my cat): You'll roll on your back, pass out and snore like a gas-powered chainsaw running on a ten-gallon tank. You're not hungry and you're not afraid. Threat diffused.

Okay, now over to zombies. I assume they can smell a living human just a predator can smell its prey. This is why I don't think the scene in Shaun of the Dead would work, again, within the logic of the genre itself, where Shaun and the rest pretend to be zombies to get past the real zombies. I mean, if that works then it means zombies are literally just going by visual cues in which case, surely they would go after each other by mistake every now and then.

But maybe that's wrong. In 28 Days Later, the zombies don't detect Jim (Cillian Murphy) in the church until he speaks. If it all went by smell it seems like they would have detected him earlier. But those zombies are more about rage anyway, not so much eating. And zombies have been approached by so many different angles now, without a real primary source to sort out the rules. We've got plenty of old zombie movies as well as the one that gave us the modern zombie, Night of the Living Dead, but there is no original source novel, written in the late nineteenth century, that serves as a guide for the development of all future zombie tales. It really is an open-source kind of sub-genre, which probably accounts for the haphazard inundation of zombie material these last several years.

There are many other horror staples that may have multiple "hows" and "whys" attached to each and it's an interesting way to think about each sub-genre more deeply, looking for answers that help us understand the nature of the beast just a little bit more. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go eat a massive meal and pass out in front of a movie. What's that? Werewolf? Nope, just a slob.

It's a Mystery to Me

2011-10-05T23:19:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite things about horror is how effortlessly it blends in with other genres, like science fiction, for instance. Take Christian Nyby's and Howard Hawks' 1951 The Thing from Another World. It's science fiction blended with horror though it leans towards sci-fi. John Carpenter's version from the same source story, The Thing, 1981, deals with the same basic structure but leans more towards horror than sci-fi. Frankenstein, The Invisible Man and Island of Lost Souls all blend sci-fi with horror as well. But there's one genre that is, at times, practically interchangeable with horror and it too often doesn't get it's due for its contribution to the genre: Mystery.

The horror mystery is one of the oldest forms of genre story telling there is. In fact, what is generally considered the first detective fiction, Edgar Allan Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue, is not only a mystery but a monster story as well. From the very beginning, the two were strongly connected, and as mysteries came into their own, with a murder almost always at their center, the macabre came to play a bigger role in their development.

But if there is one particular subset of horror that is almost exclusively mystery, it is the ghost story. At the heart of practically every ghost story is the mystery of who the ghost is and/or why they exist. The Uninvited from 1944 gives us perhaps the best possible combination of the two. Truly a great mystery and ghost story, the film seamlessly weaves together the twists and turns that surprise the viewer endlessly.

Another great mystery from the same period, and a great ghost story to boot, is Portrait of Jennie, with Joseph Cotten and Jennifer Jones. Again, like the best ghost mysteries, the story is about both the "how" and the "why", in this case, Jennie's existence and her visitations to Eben, a mystery that comes to a thundering finale unlike few other cinematic spectacles of the forties.

The fifties, sixties and seventies continued to give us great mysteries that also played as ghost stories, from The House on Haunted Hill and The Innocents to The Haunting and The Legend of Hell House (lots of "h"s in that last sentence). Even such an over-the-top kill-fest as The Omen had a slight mystery at its center as Roger Thorn (Gregory Peck) slowly unravels what really happened that night in the hospital when his wife gave birth.

By the eighties, the formula hadn't changed much. Films like Ghost Story, based on the Peter Staub novel, dealt with the appearance of a menacing and murderous spirit whose true purpose isn't dredged up until the final act. And the special effects spectacle Poltergeist had a mystery, if only a slight one, propelling it as well. We know that the little girl gets taken, and eventually returned, by the spirits in the house but the "why" is buried deep in the story and only unearthed at the end.**

Even a modern day horror film like The Ring, based on the Japanese horror film, Ringu, in turn based on a 1991 novel, is a good mystery as well. In fact, the mystery aspects are what drive the whole story and, in my opinion, the main reason to watch it, much more than the rather tepid and cliched horror aspects. Hell, I kind of wish there hadn't been the whole murder tape curse going on but, rather, just the little girl's mystery. Of course, no one bothers to call it a mystery. On Wikipedia, it's referred to as a "psychological horror film" despite the obvious prevalence of the mystery at its center.

A good whodunnit revolves around murder in the first place, so extending the story out, just a bit, to include the supernatural really isn't much of a stretch. As a result, good mysteries and good ghost stories have always walked cold dead hand in cold dead hand. I like both genres on their own so much it's no surprise that the mystery ghost story is probably my favorite subset of horror overall. It's a relationship that feels as natural as a noose around the neck of Annabelle Loren with an appeal that's hardly mysterious.

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*pictured at the top of the post: The Greene Murder Case, an early Philo Vance mystery in which members of the Greene family are knocked off, one by one, by an unknown force in an old, dark mansion.

**all above puns intended.

"Death Shall Come and It will have Your Eyes" The Works of Mario Giacomelli

2011-10-03T13:25:00.002-04:00

In his youth, the films of Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini spoke to Mario Giacomelli and the subsequent photographs he took of the old and infirmed in nursing homes, priests at play in the snow and tattered cloth against stark landscapes speak to a sense of other-worldliness and isolation. If they remind me of Father Karras' visit to his mother in the nursing home or the imagery in Dreyer's Vampyr more than De Sica and Rossellini that is merely the result of an artist communicating across space and time in which the message sent is received not literally but interpretatively.

In order from the top:
1. Untitled from series Death Shall Come and It will have Your Eyes (1962)
2. Untitled from series Theatre of Snow (1954 - 1986)
3. Scanno (1957)
4. Pretini #72 (1962-1963)
5. Untitled from series Theatre of Snow (1954 - 1986)

Christopher Lee Tells Stories and Gives Advice!

2011-10-02T13:06:00.002-04:00

Three years ago, here on Cinema Styles, I put together some short videos of Christopher Lee from an old CD-Rom I bought in the nineties. It was a CD-Rom on ghosts called, yes, Ghosts. That one of the first things I ever bought for a computer, back in 1994, was a CD-Rom titled Ghosts and hosted by Christopher Lee should surprise no one. That I saved it even after it stopped working may be cause for slight surprise. Years later, in 2008, I pulled the video files from the now defunct CD-Rom and put together these two Public Service Announcements plus a full ghost story, The Silent Pool, narrated by Lee. Since I still like them and folks aren't likely to find them (who the hell surfs through nearly five years of archives on Cinema Styles?), I present them here again, in one post package. The video is poor quality because it was produced in 1994 for PC screens that had maximum screen settings of 640 x 480 and processors that had trouble presenting text, much less videos. But still, it's Christopher Lee! Enjoy.

In the Mood for Horror: Atmosphere over Fright

2011-10-01T00:00:00.000-04:00

I've watched so many horror films that haven't scared me I couldn't even give you an accurate count as to how many times it's happened. For the most part, horror movies never frighten me. Not to put too fine a point on it but, for Pete's sake, I'm a grown man so the jump scares and demonic hobgoblins just don't do shit for me, so don't get too disappointed if I've got a blank look on my face.

But here's the thing. This is how many times a movie not scaring me has affected whether I liked it or not: zero.

There are those who like horror because it scares them. Plenty of people, in fact. Others go for the gore and the jump scares. I wish them all the best and wouldn't even try to persuade them against it as changing the heart is a difficult thing to do if that's where the heart leads you. But for me, it's mood, all the way.

I like atmosphere. No, screw that, I love atmosphere! Atmosphere gets me through and that's why, for the most part, whether a movie is demonstrably scary or not doesn't matter a whole hell of a lot to me. If you've visited here long enough, and read through enough Octobers, you've seen my mentions and write-ups of City of the Dead (aka, Horror Hotel). And if you're groaning, thinking, "not again," don't worry, I'm not going to go back into it except to say that it's the "thick as mud" atmosphere that sells me every time. It's not just a favorite horror movie, it's a favorite movie, period.

Recently, I wrote a post on TCM about my semi-addiction to isolated locations in the movies. In it, I mention both The Wicker Man (1973, of course) and Don't Look Now as two personal favorites. Both of those movies have horrific, even supernatural elements to them and that makes it easier to provide a dense, foreboding atmosphere. It can be done with drama, but an isolated landscape in a drama, like Stroszek (also mentioned in the post), gives off a whole different feel than horror. In drama, the feeling is more of the despair of hopes and dreams. In horror, it's more about the dread of the unknown. And that dread is what pulls me in, every time.

It's why the Universal classics work so well for me, because of their command of atmosphere and mood. I don't watch Frankenstein or The Bride of Frankenstein because I want to be scared. I watch them for the mood they set, a sense of dread, of creepiness and foreboding. And all of the horror films I love, from Old Dark House and City of the Dead to The Shining and The Thing (horror/sci-fi), have a true command of atmosphere.

But great atmosphere need not be a product of big studio financing. As often as not, it's something that can be obtained on easy credit with no money down. Take a look at Carnival of Souls, The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity to find great cases of atmosphere done on the cheap.

So when I hear someone complain that a horror movie isn't scary, frankly, I get a little irritated. The horror genre's sole purpose is not to scare but to deal with horrifying elements, usually, but not always, in dramatic form. Something can horrify us but not necessarily scare us (Freaks, perhaps). The two are not synonymous. It can do both, one or the other or neither. The horror movie deals with that which is outside the realm of most people's normal experience. To get those kinds of stories right, the first thing a director has to do is establish mood. Only then can he hope to scare us. To paraphrase the old saw about real estate, in the realm of horror, the three most important things are atmosphere, atmosphere, and atmosphere. And when it's done right, it's like the air that you breathe.

October, the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

2011-09-28T23:05:00.004-04:00

If you're not ready for October, you might as well be in Dubrovnik.

October is almost here and it truly is my favorite time of the year. Fall and it's grey skies and multi-colored leaves tumbling to the ground just makes me feel good. A love of classic horror does the same and all month long it's what I watch and write about. This year won't be any different in that respect except possibly, as mentioned in the previous post, a bit scaled back. I'd like to re-examine some ideas from October's past. Not reposting old entries but reintroducing their ideas. There are things from, say, three years ago, discussed with a whole other set of commenters that I wouldn't mind plunging into again, or that I have some new thoughts on and would like to hear yours (or, read yours, as it were). I'd like to talk a little bit more about sci-fi as well, a genre that often directly crosses over into horror (Frankenstein, Doctor X, The Thing, etc).

And, mind you, I don't like the scaling back but other writing keeps me busy. One thing I've started to use more often is twitter. It's funny; the 140 character limit seems ridiculous at first and the fact that there isn't really conversation (not without tagging the person whose attention you want to get) makes the whole endeavor seem pointless. But damned if it doesn't suddenly open up a world of magical possibilities when you've got no time and a desire to put something out there; a link, a thought, a judgment, a recommendation or just an obscure reference. And Facebook's a good outlet, too, when time and opportunity are infrequent acquaintances.

But once the fall arrives, everything feels fresh again even if I know by February I'll feel like giving up on everything after three solid months of low light. No matter. Fall is when my AFI attendance picks up and this October they've got plenty of Vincent Price to keep me busy. My wife and I are going to take the youngest to see The Raven on Halloween. We've all seen it before, all love it and look forward to a big screen viewing before trick or treating begins in earnest. And I look forward to another October here, and my first at TCM with the Morlocks. So make sure you stop back in both here and there so we can watch, talk about and celebrate horror (and sci-fi) all month long.

Cinema Styles October, Coming Soon???

2011-09-18T18:23:00.002-04:00

It's almost October and in the past that's meant a lot of fun festivities here at Cinema Styles celebrating all that is horror. October has been, traditionally, the month in which I post more than any other, often around 30 to 40 total.

No more.

Peter will now explain it to you.

Oh, there will be October festivities and new posts, just not on the order of 30 to 40. I've got my gig at TCM to update each week plus program articles for the main site so October here will be scaled back considerably. However, I've put together quite a lot of posts in the past and what I think I may do is re-introduce some ideas from past Octobers. Not repostings, an idea I'm not too wild about (I prefer to let posts remain at their original post date) but, rather, a reintroduction of a topic or two I may have tackled a couple of years ago but still have some areas I'd like to explore with it.

And, of course, for those intrepid bloggers who will be going full-tilt, like my friend Bill Ryan, Arbogast (Yes? No?), Peter Nellhaus and, possibly, Bob Turnbull, I will provide links to all the fun going on over there. I'll be updating here a couple more times before October but just wanted to lay down a plan of action before the best month of the year arrives. See you there.

Nicholas Ray, Jesse Jamesand a Missed Opportunity

2011-09-07T21:45:00.003-04:00

Turner Classic Movies, in an effort to eventually get articles up for all the movies in their database, assign films without articles to folks like me to write them up. By coincidence, I was recently assigned The True Story ofJesse James, directed by Nicholas Ray, just as Tony Dayoub was asking film bloggers to contribute to his Nicholas Ray blogathon at Cinema Viewfinder.

To prepare the article, I was sent galleys of two books, Nicholas Ray: An American Journey by Bernard Eisenschitz and Pieces of My Heart: A Life by Robert Wagner with Scott Eyman. I was interested to learn that Ray's first instinct was to make the entire film artificial. His idea, so remarkable that I didn't even include it in the article because it would have taken the whole thing in the wrong direction, was to do it on obvious stage sets with visibly painted skies and backdrops. He even wanted fake horses! The whole thing would be done like an expressionistic stage play as preserved on film.

I'm pretty sure I don't have to tell what the studio thought of this idea but just in case you're completely unfamiliar with the workings of studio heads who make the decisions, the reaction was something along the lines of, "Are you out of your fucking mind?!" He was, to a degree, but that's another story.

So Ray went back to the drawing board and came up with Plan B: Cast Elvis Presley and shoot on location in Missouri and Minnesota. Ray was convinced that Presley had the real life country boy turned superstar experience to make the film work. If he was going to present Jesse James as a kind of pre-20th century sex symbol, why not make the statement obvious and cast the man responsible for sending shivers of fear down the spines of good, honest, hard-working, boring, stupid, dumbassed Americans.

The studio nixed that too. They wanted to promote their in-house contract players, specifically Robert Wagner who they thought could catch fire with a starring role like Jesse James. They were wrong for two reasons. One should have been obvious, the other was an opportunity missed that could've made all the difference.

The first one, the one that should have been obvious, was that Robert Wagner, despite being a talented actor, had nowhere near the same level of charisma as Elvis Presley and despite sporting a pompadour throughout the movie (bet you never knew James had a pompadour), Wagner just doesn't come across as anything other than bland. He's got the look (they manage to get his shirt off multiple times) but not much else. Jeffrey Hunter, as Frank James, is much better and Alan Hale, Jr (later to play the Skipper on Gilligan's Island) is the best of all, playing Cole Younger with the kind of flair and energy that Wagner can only imagine.

The second sinker of the movie, the great missed opportunity, was the decision to not play up Jesse James' death wish. Ray wrote scenes - and filmed them! - of Jesse being told he wanted to die. Ray wanted Jesse to be shown setting up his own death by manipulating Robert Ford. Sound familiar? That hypothesis would become the basis of the 1983 book, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and later the film adaptation with Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck. Oh, it had been theorized since the day James was shot but no one in the movies bothered to go there until the book was released. Nicholas Ray could have beaten them all to the punch and made the movie a much deeper, profound psychological study. But the studio said "No."

According to Robert Wagner, Ray was in a daze for most of the filming, high on drink or drugs. At least, that's what Wagner saw. He writes that no one on the set knew which Ray was going to show up each day and that direction from him was minimal and confusing. Ray probably didn't care at that point. Everything he wanted to do with the movie had been shot down. He was left with nothing but the "inspiration" of a paycheck and the film suffers for it.

What might have been.

**********

This post is a part of The Nicholas Ray Blogathon hosted by Tony Dayoub at Cinema Viewfinder.

In the Land Before CGI: The Hurricane

2011-08-25T23:11:00.006-04:00

Since I've long wanted to include John Ford's The Hurricane on an edition of In the Land Before CGI, I figured what better time than with Hurricane Irene making her way up the coast. Made in 1937 and playing as an island soap opera, it's not as well regarded by Ford fans as many of his other films but that has more to do with the fact that so many of his other films are masterpieces (Stagecoach, The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, etc) than with The Hurricane's quality. Oh, it's nothing great on the story side of things, to be sure, but Ford handles soap opera pretty damn well for a man who was so associated with the more macho side of cinema.

And let's lay something else on the table: When you watch a movie called The Hurricane, you're watching to see the hurricane. I mean, seriously, let's be honest here, that's the primary objective.

And, wow, does Ford deliver!

With both miniature and full scale effects by James Basevi, effects photography by R.O. Binger and sound recording by Jack Noyes and Thomas Moulton, the climactic hurricane is a wonder to behold. I've assembled only a couple of minutes of the much longer hurricane sequence, omitting most character action and just focusing on the effects, shown in order as the island goes from wave battered to, finally, underwater. Enjoy the clips.

Tom Waits: Glitter and Doom Live

2011-08-16T09:00:00.001-04:00

Tom Waits' Glitter and Doom Tour was a special event for any fan of Tom Waits and his unique blend of music, vaudeville and Will Rogers routines. It's not like Waits hits the tour trail every year, or even every time he releases an album, so fans were justifiably excited. For those who didn't get the chance to catch the tour, Glitter and Doom Live feels like a good representation of a live Waits show (although, having not seen one of the live shows of the tour myself, I can't be sure) with one exception: The storytelling. More on that in a second.

Back in 1983, with Swordfishtrombones, Tom Waits became the Tom Waits we know today. While he had always been a masterful songwriter, Swordfishtrombones found Waits throwing traditional arrangements out the window in favor of using found instruments while making new ones out of junk and settling in to his now familiar husky growl of a voice. It's that voice that now dominates Waits' songs and on Glitter and Doom, he once again finds a way to make that barbarian yawp an effective conveyor of sentimentality, without getting all mushy. Still, his voice has gotten so gruff that one wonders if songs like Town with No Cheer or Soldier's Things are left off the live set because the voice is no longer gentle enough to make them work. Possibly, but as the inclusion of songs like The Part You Throw Away work beautifully with all the gruffness intact (and simply wonderful guitar work by Omar Torez) it leaves the question open. In fact, all the songs work, to one degree or another. What's missing are the stories.

Tom Waits often speaks story songs in rhythmic cadences, giving something like Frank's Place a beat poetry reading feel rather than a spoken song feel. However, songs like Frank's Place are oddly lacking and except for one "story" (more of a joke, it's a tale of buying Henry Ford's dying breath on e-bay) no storytelling makes it to the music section of this two-CD set. The solution to this lack of storytelling or spoken story songs, the producers of this CD seem to believe, is to include a second CD of nothing but Waits talking to the audience.

That actually sounds pretty great and I was excited for this part of the live album most of all. Problem is, there are no stories. No recounting of hilarious episodes from his life or tall-tales from the road. It's all random one-liners and animal jokes. His delivery's fine ("There's a law in Oklahoma says you can't eat in a place that's also on fire. [pause] That really limited our options.") but there's nothing at the end of it but punchlines. No "tale" is more than a few seconds of set-up followed by punchline and after 35 minutes, brother, that can get wearying.

Yes, thirty-five minutes of jokes. Think about that. Think about a stand-up routine and how they work. If you watch a Louis CK performance you'll notice that the "jokes" are really just riffs on developing stories over the course of the concert. A theme is developed and played off of for an ample duration before transitioning to the next. That's not what happens here. In fact, it can't happen here as the talking segments are stitched together from various stops on the tour, which is why they have no flow. And so you get that Oklahoma joke. Immediately following you get a joke about vultures. Then you get a joke about cars. Then you get a joke about antiques. And on it goes, for thirty-five minutes. It's like when you were a kid and a friend got a joke book and decided it would be so great to constantly read you jokes from it and you thought, "This sucks, can we just talk about something." The right idea would have been to take jokes and stories and songs and mix them all together.

Glitter and Doom Live is probably a decent representation of a live show by Waits but, I suspect, not nearly as good as it could've been. More variety from his vast catalogue, more stories and more cohesion would've helped this venture a lot. Too bad, because Tom Waits remains one of the most unique and talented songwriter/storytellers modern music has yet produced and it's because of that talent that I can still recommend this, barely, despite the flaws.

Rise of the CGI

2011-08-08T20:34:00.014-04:00

By all accounts, Rise of the Planet of the Apes looks to be a very good movie. I've heard nothing but good and the critical consensus itself seems to be the movie is above average for a sci-fi thriller. I'm also a Planet of the Apes (POTA) fanatic so I know for a fact I'll be seeing this. And yet, why does it bother me so much that they went all CGI instead of using makeup? I never cared for the Tim Burton version but the makeup was superb. And if you're going to go to all this trouble...

... why not just put the damn actors in make-up?

I've read takes on the film praising the amazing quality of the CGI and yet, when I look at stills, trailers and hi-def clips from the movie, it looks to me, yet again, as fake as fake can be. Why? Why do others see great looking creations while I see elaborate cut-scenes from video games?

I don't know the answer to that, maybe I never will. Maybe I just hate the fact that the loss of great make-up artistry is a loss of great artists whose work took until 1981 to be recognized by the Academy and now, barely thirty years later, it's already disappearing.

This Shit Just Ain't Working

2011-08-05T19:00:00.004-04:00

I thought of coming up with a clever title for this post or, at least, a more dignified one. Maybe something from Shakespeare. "Nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange," from The Tempest, perhaps. I've used that before so it felt safe and familiar. Then I thought, "Nah, just tell it like it is," and here's how it is: This shit just ain't working anymore.

I write here, at Cinema Styles, and at Turner Classic Movies. I post pictures at If Charlie Parker was a Gunslinger, There'd be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats and my tumblr site, Unexplained Cinema. And with TCM I write not only my Wednesday post but program articles for the site as well. And now I realize, after five weeks of doing this, I've got to cut some things loose and those things are pretty much everything except TCM. I don't have the time I used to have to browse photo archives searching for exceptional photos that caught my interest. I used to. I don't anymore. And I don't have time to develop separate ideas into fully realized posts at two different blogs. I just don't. It was foolish of me to think otherwise.

My first instinct is to abandon Cinema Styles altogether. There is an out, however. At TCM, we're generally supposed to keep things to pre-1990. It's not there for us to write up new movies and it's really not there for television or music. So while I have neither the time nor the inclination to approach the history of film from two angles, at two different sites, I can do reviews here and my more familiar overview essays there (at TCM).

It is those overview essays (that's what I call them) that have always been my favorite to write because they come from inspiration whereas reviews come from a need to organize one's thoughts on a recently seen movie. I don't dislike doing that, it's just not my first choice. Recently, however, I put together an overview of trilogies here and an overview of "classic" cinema there and the reader results couldn't have been more striking. I think it's time to simplify Cinema Styles if I'm to keep it going at all.

I hate to make this change fully, since I began Cinema Styles as a purely classic cinema blog in 2007 (I once did posts on the Oscars, now deleted, where I refused to go past 1979) and it was that status as a classic cinema blog that, frankly, brought in a large audience that didn't care to read about the latest cinematic offerings everywhere else, but the fact is, this blog hasn't been exclusively classic cinema for a very long time now, anyway. What better time to toss off the traces and go full-fledged review oriented than now?

Of course, I don't see new movies that often, so by new I probably mean something that came out three months ago or last year even. And I'll review more music, something I enjoy but lost track of months ago. I thought I might have time to join in Ed Howard's music club but I haven't (but if you want to, follow that link!). And television, another thing I started on a while ago that fell off the blogging map. Also, I'll probably move my series, The Land Before CGI, over to TCM as, again, it fits with the classic theme there.

And that's about it. Not much more to say right now except I hope you'll follow me over at TCM and keep up here as well for discussions of newer cinema as well as music and television. I can't guarantee I'll write much more than a post a week, or when I'll even start doing that, but when I do I'll try to make it at least marginally interesting. I hope I succeed.

Thanks for reading.

Third Time's the Charm?

2011-07-31T21:30:00.002-04:00

Trilogies were not always a part of the cinematic landscape. While serials have been around since the Nickelodeon days, with moviegoers paying to see the same characters again and again and again, trilogies are a later invention. First, of course, sequels had to come into their own, which took years, and only then was the trilogy truly born.

Sequels and serials, to state the obvious, are two different things. From Russia with Love isn't the sequel to Dr. No but a continuation of the character James Bond in a new adventure. Likewise, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade are not prequels and sequels, as they are often called, but, again, continuations of the character, Indiana Jones, from Raiders of the Lost Ark. The fourth film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, continues the character further.

I said "to state the obvious" near the beginning of the last paragraph but it clearly isn't obvious as Wikipedia's entry on sequels list the James Bond films as sequels. Technically, I suppose they are and so I must distinguish that for the purposes of this piece, a sequel is the continuation of a specific story that was only partially completed by the conclusion of the first film. It is not the new adventures of James Bond, Indiana Jones or any host of other action characters, from those in Lethal Weapon to those in Rush Hour. Nor is it a series of three movies that have been classified together as a director's trilogy (Annie Hall, Manhattan and Hannah and her Sister, for instance, would be Woody Allen's New York Relationship trilogy) or three films made with disconnected storylines and characters that are thematically linked by the same director (The Three Colors Trilogy by Krzysztof Kieślowski) It is a single story drawn out over multiple parts which, again for the purposes of this piece, would be, in particular, three parts. The story can be a biography following one character as he grows through life (The Apu Trilogy or, in a more limited sense, The Godfather Trilogy) or a specific story progression (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy aka The Millenium Trilogy, The Star Wars Original Trilogy, Lord of the Rings) with the same characters over three movies.

It was the audience desire to see the same characters again that gave birth to serials, which hit their stride in the thirties. Hollywood achieved consistent box-office success by giving the public the same characters in similar situations doing the same things they did last time, only with different supporting actors, a new script (loosely defined) and a new title. No one operated under the delusion that Boston Blackie, Torchy Blaine or Flash Gordon were ever expanding on their characters or exploring deeper emotional terrain in the next installment, they just wanted to see them again in a vaguely similar adventure and would happily pay for the privilege.

And serial characters weren't always confined to low budget affairs. The Thin Man movies proved that the idea could work on a big budget too, as long as you had top dollar actors (William Powell, Myrna Loy) willing to keep it up. The Andy Hardy movies were also given ample budgets and starred Mickey Rooney, for years the top draw in all of cinema. And, internationally, Sergio Leone and Akira Kurosawa scored big with their nameless men fighting for survival (their own and that of others) in the Dollars Trilogy and Yojimbo/Sanjuro movies, respectively.

But all of the above info can be found on the aforementioned Wikipedia page, linked here, where you too can, if you choose, read all about sequels and serials and how they came about. The above was only intended to differentiate between the two before getting to the meat of the matter, which, having amply buried the lead, I present in the form of a question: Do trilogies work?

The answer to that question is essentially meaningless ("some do, some don't") but acts as a good enough jumping-off point for a discussion. A better question might be, "At what point does a story's plot become so complicated and/or its characters so complex that more than two to three hours running time is required to tell the tale?" After all, practically every book ever written and every movie ever made is a trilogy in and of itself. They have a beginning, middle and end. In the case of a cinematic trilogy, the story is simply broken up over three installments rather than presented in one overly long film.

I would love to start the conversation with the trilogy generally acknowledged to be the seminal work of the form, The Apu Trilogy, but as it is not readily available for most to see (it is not on Netflix for DVD rental or instant viewing although an older DVD transfer of the set can be purchased on Amazon - this unavailability is, by the way, shameful) and since I, myself have seen only the final installment on PBS decades ago, I should reserve it for later discussion, when I have acquired the set or, if fortune smiles upon me, it is presented at the AFI Silver and I can take it in on the big screen.

Instead, we'll start a few years later with a trilogy that didn't become a trilogy for almost twenty years. For sixteen years, from 1974 to 1990, The Godfather movies were a pair, not a trilogy, until, finally, in 1990, Francis Ford Coppola decided it was time to finish the story of Michael Corleone. Even now, there is little consensus as to whether or not that decision was a good one. Nevertheless, The Godfather movies, especially the first two, are considered magnificent works of cinema by most cinephiles the world over.

The story of the trilogy is the story of Michael Corleone as he rises to the head of the Corleone Family. It follows Michael's character without a continuing story, that is to say, when the first Godfather ends, there is no cliffhanger, no unresolved moment we anticipate being the starting point of the next film. The movies aren't about plot but about Michael, how he changes, grows (or doesn't) and, perhaps, redeems himself. Interestingly, the movie of the trilogy most reviled, Part III, may be the most important for making the trilogy "work", to the extent that it does work at all.

The Godfather movies illustrate a problem symptomatic of many trilogies, one that, simplified, could be stated as such: The first movie tells the whole story. Many trilogies essentially work this way. From Star Wars to The Matrix to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the continuing story is unnecessary to the first movie. The continuing story of Michael Corleone, Luke Skywalker, Neo or Lisbeth Salander may be of interest and, perhaps, satisfying to the those seeking deeper exploration of the characters, but to the first movie, completely unnecessary. Had there never been another Godfather movie after the first one (or Star Wars or Matrix or Dragon Tattoo) no one would have noticed. The first installments of all of those trilogies work just fine on their own and feel completely enclosed. Had there never been another Godfather film, I don't imagine people would have been complaining, "I can't believe they left us hanging! What happens after that door closes?!"

And so the second installment must carry some emotional weight, some deeper understanding of character than the first, since the story is only of minor importance. The Godfather, Part II, in this respect, also seems to work on its own, independent of the first. It certainly helps if we have seen the first film but if we haven't, it's not a disaster. The second film contrasts father Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) with son Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) at different stages of their familial career. In the first film, we saw Vito entrenched in his position as Head of the Family and Michael just making his way up, albeit reluctantly at first. In the second film we see the reverse: Michael is now entrenched and Vito is now making his way to the top. In both films, Vito seems to do his work with a personal connection to those around him. The first movie even begins with Vito accepting requests for personal favors on his daughter's wedding day. In the second film, this quality is explored further, including his rise to power by killing the kingpin of Little Italy, Don Fanucci (Gastone Moschin).

Considering Vito's power-grab, one could argue that he takes on the risk of killing Don Fanucci, not only because he believes Fanucci's power is weak and doesn't want Fanucci demanding shares of his takes but also because he is tired of seeing the community terrorized by him. That may not be true but the point is, it could be true. It could be imagined that Vito would kill Fanucci for the good of the Italian-American community and, as a side-benefit, gets to be the new Don for the neighborhood for his troubles. Whether it is true or not is entirely beside the point. Vito is presented as someone for which that kind of action would not be entirely improbable.

In the first film, when Michael takes on the role as Head of the Family, it feels different. After his encounter at the hospital, where we see Michael emboldened for the first time, we see him at the family home telling his brother Sonny (James Caan) how he will kill the two men responsible for the near murder of their father. When he assures Sonny "it's not personal, it's business," we believe him. It's his father and family that have been threatened and yet we fully believe that, to him, it is just business.

That line about it being "business" only fully resonates when we see how unbusiness-like Vito's actions are in the second installment. When Vito helps a widow and her dog stay in the tenement building from which they were about to be ejected, it is of no possible financial benefit to him. In fact, he's paying out of his own pocket to make it happen. It's about as far from being business-like as one can imagine. It's personal, strictly personal.

And none of this has anything to do with a trilogy. The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II are two sides of the same coin. They simply tell the story of Michael, contrasted with Vito, with one movie, the second part, furthering the exploration opened up in the first. But, again, there is no point where Part II feels like an unfinished "middle movie" of a trilogy, like Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers or Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, in which the viewer is abundantly aware that there is more to follow. No one expected a Part III in 1976 which is why, when none appeared, people weren't demanding to know "what happened next" in the adventures of Michael Corleone. It was only in 1990 that the third installment created a trilogy, first by simply existing and, thus, making the sum total of Godfather movies three, but, more importantly, by shoe-horning into the "story" Michael's redemption or, at least, his attempt at it.

Whatever the qualities of the third film, or lack thereof, the point is that none of it feels necessary in the slightest. The first two films exist so completely on their own as individual works that the third feels like nothing more than an installment designed to create a forced trilogy where there wasn't one to begin with. In this regard, I'd have to rank The Godfather Trilogy as one of the worst trilogies under the definition of a trilogy used here. What it feels like is two masterworks of the cinema, Parts I and II, working off of each other but not necessarily continuing from one to the other, followed by a third unrelated film with the appendage "Part III."

For decades, and perhaps still, the most famous trilogy was the Star Wars trilogy. This trilogy, existing entirely between The Godfather, Part II and Part III with seven years to spare, falls more in line with a traditional story-bound trilogy. The second installment, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, leaves little doubt to the viewer that this is the middle of the story and there will be a final installment yet to come. And even though the first film works entirely on its own, a trilogy is created from it that feels more or less honest, even if it's not until the second film that it becomes apparent it is a trilogy. The same can be said of another eighties blockbuster trilogy, Back to the Future. Like almost every other trilogy, the first movie can easily exist on its own (and I like to pretend that's the case, quite frankly) but the trilogy that does exist works as a trilogy when viewed in totality.

More recently, another popular trilogy, The Millennium Trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl that Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest) followed the same pattern but made the exploration of its characters deeper and more meaningful to the story. The first movie, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, works as a completely contained single film. Again, no second or third movie could have ever been made and the first film wouldn't have felt unfinished. It's only in the second film that a continuing story sets itself up and by the end of the second installment, we're left wondering what will happen to Lisbeth, with a third installment clearly telegraphed to the viewer.

Still, The Millennium Trilogy works better than most because the main characters, Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) and Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), resonate with the viewer as people with more going on inside their heads of interest than anything going on in the story. In fact, the story that takes us through the second and third installments interested me far less than simply watching Rapace and Nyqvist play their parts. The story, involving government intrigue, cover-ups, lies and courtroom showdowns, has already left my head a mere year or so after watching them. Most of it left my memory within weeks. What kept me interested was those two actors playing those two characters. They seemed real, vulnerable and desperate. The courtroom showdown could have been about anything, really. In the end, it's nothing more than a MacGuffin. The point is to watch Salander and Blomkvist and root for them because we feel connected to them. In this way, The Millennium Trilogy is one of the few trilogies that seems to exist as a lengthy character study, like The Godfather films and The Apu Trilogy.

However, what about a true trilogy, one in which even the first film makes it clear that the story within it is to be told in parts and the first part, upon completion, does not stand on its own as a finished story?

By those standards, The Lord of the Rings is probably the truest cinematic trilogy in existence. This may very well be the case because the original work upon which they are based, the novels by J.R.R. Tolkien, were intended to be one volume of a two volume set, rather than a trilogy. It was the publisher that decided the massive story should be broken into three works, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King. This probably explains why the first installment doesn't feel entirely self-contained because it was, in fact, literally, the beginning of a story Tolkien had written as one volume with a clearly defined beginning, middle and end. There is, within the trilogy, a specific story that continues from one to the next and each character within that story has specific goals and duties to perform in the service of that story. It is, without doubt, a trilogy, not just a set of three movies that have been made to work together. Each one stands on its own as a terrific entertainment but makes no attempt to be a complete story. The first two are adamant in their presentation that the viewer know this is only the beginning and middle. It passes the "First Movie" test of the trilogy, something no other trilogy discussed here has done: If no other movie were made after The Fellowship of the Ring, yes, people would wonder why the story was left hanging, as it were. The Lord of the Rings is indeed a trilogy, perhaps one of the few true trilogies in existence.

And so, it could be concluded, trilogies don't work very well, generally speaking. More often than not - much more often than not - they start with a first installment that, if need be, could stand alone as a single movie without ever having two sequels attached to it. Trilogies tend to feel like Hollywood greed more than a deep artistic need to "finish" the story. There's a first movie, it performs tremendously at the box office and the studios decide, "This should be a trilogy," at which point the second film gets made and finally starts a story to be completed in the third.

Trilogies have even started up in the middle of a film series that, otherwise, didn't originally set out to properly continue a story but rather present new adventures, ala James Bond. This happened with the Star Trek franchise after the success of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The next two Star Trek films continued a story that hadn't existed as a continuing story until Star Trek III: The Search for Spock got made. By the end of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the story finally finished and it was clear there had been a trilogy and a fairly decent, if inconsequential, one at that.

The Lord of the Rings will most likely continue to be the standard bearer for true trilogies, that is, stories that break their beginning, middle and end into three separate films. The Godfather movies will continue to have two of the best movies ever made contained within a nominal trilogy, but it doesn't feel like a trilogy at all. The first two movies stand alone as explorations of Michael contrasted with Vito, to be watched in tandem or separately. The third is something else altogether and exists solely to make a trilogy where before there was none.

Sequels and serials will never go away. There's too much money to be made and audiences actually do enjoy seeing the same characters again and again. If they didn't, television would have never succeeded. But when it comes to a trilogy proper, the landscape is pretty barren. There are plenty of them out there but for most, the first time's the charm. The second and third times aren't even needed.

Resolve Nothing!

2011-07-27T08:29:00.005-04:00

And so, once again, it is Wednesday. And, once again, TCM beckons. I resolve the issue of not resolving the issue, something I long ago resolved I would do. If you so desire to read about it, please do so here. As always, enjoy the post and please clean up after yourself. No, seriously, my editor complained about the mess last time guys, so really, use the trash cans, okay? Thanks.

What a Wonderful World this Could Be...

2011-07-20T11:30:00.002-04:00

...if we were all as nice as comment spammers. You know, comment spam gets a pretty bum wrap in my book. Comment spammers are looked on as leeches and parasites who pollute the online world with their useless info and even more useless links. Okay, maybe they do but here's the thing: They're so damned nice!

Now that I work for TCM I have a whole new world of spam that's opened up to me beyond the doors of Cinema Styles. I just started over there and already the comment spam is simply overflowing with effusive praise. Look at this one, for example:

"Hello my friend! I want to say that this post is amazing, nice written and include approximately all vital infos. I would like to see more posts like this."

That's from a nice young woman, or man, or genderless spambot from, best I can tell, somewhere in the former Czech Republic. He/she/it provides a very nice pop-up ad along with the comment (which I can't see as TCM has blocked it - Curses!) but look at the comment itself. "Hello my friend!" Wow, we haven't even met and I'm a friend. And judging by the exclamation point, a pretty cherished one at that. And my post? Nothing short of "amazing," although, disappointingly, with no exclamation point.

Now, I'll be honest. When I wrote the post this comment is for, a post on period films, I wanted to include all vital infos. I worked at that, and hard, and was hoping someone would notice. Czech Republic expatriate, thank you! You don't know how much it means to me that you did, indeed, notice that I had included all vital infos. Not some, mind you, all! Vital infos are really pretty useless unless you go the whole way with them.

Finally, the post ends with "I would like to see more posts like this." My mysterious genderless mass-marketing friend, I would like to see more commenters as nice as you!

I know what you're thinking: "Okay, Greg, that's one isolated example. I bet they're not all that nice."

Well then what do you make of this, for the same post: "Hey, I came across this amazing site and wanted to share it with my fellow Water Pipes enthusiasts." Hand to God, I shit you not, I was trying to reach Water Pipes enthusiasts with that post. 100% true. I can't adequately express my thanks to you, Zowslillies from getwomenfor dot me for not only noticing but sharing. You, sir or madam, are a trooper.

And if you think kindness and generosity are limited to the english language, think again. Or just read this: Много диет. Диеты для похудения. Начало · Диеты для похудения · Диеты чтобы поправиться · Лечебные диеты · Рецепты блюд · Украшения

Put that into Google Translate and you'll get, "Many diets. Diets for weight loss. Begin diets for weight loss diets to recover · · Therapeutic diets · Recipes · Jewelry." [places both hands over heart and nods head in thanks] You and I, nencileggleoms, we are one.

But I've saved the best for last because, sometimes, it's important to know we're not just doing this for ourselves. We're not just doing this to talk about movies. We're doing it for something more, something bigger, something grander. That's why this message from unbranka-dzienci touched my heart and moved me to tears. Here it is:

"We’re a group of volunteers and starting a new scheme in our community. Your web site offered us with valuable info to work on. You’ve done a formidable job and our entire community will be grateful to you."

Oh. My. God. Did you read that? Did you read it carefully? Folks, I have an entire community that is grateful to me. Repeat: Entire community! Well, kialzze.acc.tr, good luck with those schemes! I'm happy I was able to offer you valuable info to work on. Not to brag, but that's kind of my m.o. See, I offer all vital infos so it doesn't surprise you were able to cull some valuable infos from it.

And now, can the community of online readers and commenters follow the example of the kind and generous comment spammers? If I write about a movie, discuss it with me, sure, but also try and mention how your community considers me a kind of demigod. Mention how you noticed that I really broke through to all those Water Pipers out there or just offer up a simple thanks for the "vital infos" because, I promise you, I'll provide them all.

Not some, all. That's my vow to you or my name isn't ccziuueld at freegold dot com. Peace.

Happy Wednesday from TCM

2011-07-20T08:33:00.005-04:00

It's Wednesday again, time to plug my Wednesday post over at TCM's Movie Morlocks. This time I celebrate James Mason for his skills at playing something too often overlooked by his fans and something you'll have to go to TCM to read about.

Peter Falk: Offer You His Raincoat

2011-07-16T19:30:00.002-04:00

On June 23rd, 2011, Peter Falk fell away from this world and, at that moment, this world became a lesser place. By now the tributes surely number in the thousands and possibly (probably) everything that can be said about his career has been said so I'll not lead you down that path again. Instead, I'd like to tell you how Peter Falk wove his way through my life and into the life of my step-daughter without ever knowing it. But he did and did so powerfully.

Peter Falk was the first celebrity of which I have any recollection. That's because every time Columbo rotated its way back into the NBC Mystery Movie line-up, my family watched it. My mom, my dad, my brother and my sister. We all watched Columbo, together. And even though I was too young to follow the show, I enjoyed it. Peter Falk had a comforting presence that made everything seem all right. Columbo never got rattled, never lost his nerve or his temper. He was calming, deliberate and patient. He was, like my own father, a perfect role model.

Although I didn't realize it until later, there was something extraordinary about Columbo, something that would have failed, and miserably, without Peter Falk. I didn't realize as a kid that mysteries weren't supposed to show you who the killer was in the opening shot. By the time I saw Agatha Christie murder mysteries later, a part of me wondered, "How come they're not telling us who did it from the start?" Columbo, unlike any other mystery, showed you the murder and then showed you Detective Columbo figure it out (save two episodes). Think about that: The viewer saw the murderer in the opening scene. That meant that figuring it out couldn't be the thing that held your attention. It had to be held by a character figuring out something that you already knew! There's a reason no other mysteries bothered with this format: They didn't have Peter Falk.

And it was Peter Falk that held my famiy's attention. It was him. He kept us coming back and all of us fell in love with him, watching him on our television at home, in Charleston. Charleston, South Carolina.

And it was in Charleston, South Carolina, in the summer of 1974 that we got news that Columbo was coming to town. An episode was going to be filmed at The Citadel, the military college located in Charleston. It got even better. Richard, a neighbor and friend of my dad's, worked at The Citadel and was put in charge of public relations. One day my dad came home and told everyone that Richard had set it up. We we're all going to meet Peter Falk!

The excitement from my sister was about as palpable as anything you can possibly imagine. She didn't just love the show, she was in love with Peter Falk and couldn't believe something so astonishingly lucky could possibly be happening to her.

"Boy," she must have thought, "did we pick the right town to live in!"

Yes, we would all meet Peter Falk. Well, everyone except me and my mom. When the day came, I didn't want to go. I was little and still didn't really understand it all and even though he was a comforting figure, I was a kid and it was hot and, well, my mom and I stayed home. My dad took my brother and sister to The Citadel and they got an autographed picture from him and got to take pictures of themselves hanging out around and sitting in Columbo's famous Peugeot 403 while the cast and crew worked out the nuts and bolts of the episode. We still have those pictures, of course, as well as the autographed photos to my sister and brother. And they all thought he was great. How could they not? Story after story about Peter Falk reveals a man of generosity and kindness and friendship. My brother and sister and dad were not let down.

When the episode aired, By Dawn's Early Light, with Patrick McGoohan and Bruno Kirby, we watched proudly as the episode revealed itself to be one of the best the show had ever offered up. And to think it was filmed right there, right there in Charleston! And my brother and sister and dad had been right there, on the set, for one day of the filming.

As I grew older I watched Columbo in reruns and slowly understood the brilliance of Falk's portrayal. In 1979 I saw The In-Laws with my mom and loved it. I started to really get Peter Falk. Then I saw him in movies like Murder, Inc and The Brinks Job and, finally, the semi-improvised works of John Cassavettes. Eventually, I wondered why he wasn't more celebrated than he was.

I still wonder that.

After that I went to college, got a job and started living life. I got married, got divorced and in the luckiest stroke of my life met Laura, a wonderful woman with wonderful children and we fell in love and got married. Her daughter, Elle, was a toddler when we met and I've watched her grow over the years and take on many of the same interests as Laura and I. Like any kid, she loves watching certain movies over and over. One of those movies, early on, was The Princess Bride. Thanks to her, I've probably seen that movie, in pieces or whole, a hundred times. Don't ever ask me to watch The Princess Bride. I've seen it. Believe me, I've seen it.

But like I said, she loves classic films too and, by chance, a couple of years back, we decided to rent It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World to watch with her. In it, she saw and recognized Peter Falk. What's more, she liked him. He was the sweet, wonderful grandfather, after all, from The Princess Bride, how could you not? So when all the original episodes of Columbo suddenly showed up on Netflix Instant, we decided to give them a try.

We loved them. They were an instant and gratifying hit. We watched an episode at least every Friday, sometimes one or two others during the week. Eventually, we made it through the entire original series and, when we finished, felt a little sad that it was over. There were other, of course, later Columbos made in the eighties and nineties but, somehow, those felt different. We were going to watch them anyway but the original Columbo was done.

That was about three months ago. Shortly after finishing our run, I found a copy of Falk's autobiography, Just One More Thing, at the library bookstore we go to and bought it. It's told in simple anecdotes rather than chapter after chapter of long winded, ghostwritten prose. It's Falk, through and through, and in it he shows a penchant for dismissing himself and exalting others. As soon as Elle saw it, she got excited. Laura and I gave it to her so she could look through it from time to time, whenever she wanted.

Then, within two weeks of that purchase, we heard the news that Peter Falk had died. When Laura told Elle she teared up. It was like losing a grandfather, even if it was a grandfather you never met in person. And so, I gave thanks that day that Elle had met Peter before he left this world. I gave thanks that he had fascinated me enough as a child that I reconnected with him later in life and, through that, Elle and I had found a new connection. When I first met Peter Falk it was through a shared experience with family. When I bid him farewell the family was new but the shared experience was the same.

And now, for the last time, goodbye Peter. And thank you. Thank you for everything.

Let's All Go to TCM And Read Ourselves a Post!

2011-07-13T08:17:00.007-04:00

King Kong, Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, superheroes and spies. What do they all have in common? Ha! Like I'm going to tell you. Puh-lease! But you can find out by simply clicking on over to the Morlocks and checking out my latest post, Frozen in Time: Making the Past Present. There's a 17 or 18 percent chance you won't be sorry you did!

Laurence Olivier: Fine Film Actor, So Shut Up!

2011-07-09T00:00:00.006-04:00

Many times during Laurence Olivier's film career, I felt for the guy (yeah, that's right, I just called Lord Laurence Olivier "the guy"). Unlike some of my younger readers (surely I must have some) I was actually around to see and anticipate the latest Laurence Olivier movie at the box office. Okay, by the time I was around for Olivier films he was no longer the star but, still, it's no less true. And when I saw those movies, like Marathon Man, The Seven Percent Solution, The Boys from Brazil, Dracula and, later, his earlier achievements leading up to the current stuff, like Wuthering Heights, Hamlet, Richard III, The Entertainer, Bunny Lake is Missing and Sleuth, I thought he was a fine actor. In fact, I thought he was excellent. But in interview after interview with some pissy theatre historian, arch film critic or jealous thespian, on tv and in print, I kept hearing (and Olivier surely must have, too) that Olivier was only an okay film actor and, alas, the world would never know his real talents because his great stage work was never preserved. I'd hear the snide little self-satisfied stories about how he had to be taught to act in the movies by William Wyler (like Wyler didn't do that with practically every actor!) as if to say, by telling the story, that we all understood poor, dumb Larry just couldn't cut it in the movies without lots of help. Well, here's the thing:

That's all bullshit!

Laurence Olivier was a damn fine actor, on the stage and on the screen, and I'm sick to death of the persistence of that deranged meme that he was really a stage actor and a great one and, thus, by some odd algebra, not very much of a film actor. Look, anyone who has acted knows that if you're really good on stage, chances are pretty overwhelming that you're going to be good on film. Where in the hell do you think 90 percent of tv and film actors have come from in the history of cinema? They've come from school, college, community and professional theatre. Yes, it can sometimes take a film or two for an actor to get the hang of it but it's not a career long crutch. Just recently, in a piece I wrote at TCM, I mentioned how big Jack Albertson played it in the movie version of The Subject was Roses but made sure to also note he was "a great actor in his own right." I mean, okay, he played it big for the film adaptation of a play he'd just done a few hundred performances of but guess what? He was Jack Albertson so he adjusted to the medium pretty damned quickly and so did Olivier.

And for 847th time, can we all understand that big ISN'T BAD! Big acting by a bad actor is bad. Big acting by a good actor is a gift to the audience. So Olivier played it big sometimes, with big accents and big mannerisms and big inflections. So what?! He was a pleasure to watch every time.

When I watch Sleuth, I don't want to see a subtle, under the radar portrayal of conceited, selfish playwright Andrew Wyke. I want that performance BIG because I need to feel in my bones that this guy is an Asshole with a capital "A". And Olivier delivers.

Or how about Szell from Marathon Man? Does that character (and that line - you know the line) go down as one of the great villains in film history if he's played by a schlep who really doesn't seem to know shit about acting in front of a camera?

How about Hamlet, the film version, not the stage version (obviously)? Ever watch Kevin Kline, Mel Gibson, Kenneth Branagh or Richard Burton perform the "to be or not to be" soliloquy? They're all available on YouTube and, actually, they're all pretty good but watch the Olivier version first and then notice all of them going out of their way to NOT do it like Olivier did it! Every choice they make makes Olivier's presence felt by default. They know Olivier's the man to beat here and every one of them is playing to his ghost.

Each movie I've mentioned is a movie in which Laurence Olivier excels. I don't think he was good all the time, hence, certain titles I haven't mentioned. But there are few actors who do nail every performance every time. I don't mean to say he was ever bad, just that some of his performances are much better than others, again, like any actor. But consistently calling him out on his film acting feels a bit like trade jealousy. A way of feeling you've one-upped him, cut him down to size.

But you haven't.

You haven't because Laurence Olivier wasn't just a fine stage actor, he was also a fine film actor. The record of that is preserved for posterity and the evidence is incontrovertible. Eventually, the naysayers will die off but the performances will continue to speak for themselves, loudly and boldly. And the message they speak will be clear: "Laurence Olivier was a damn good actor, regardless of the medium."

*************************

This post is a part of the Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh Blogathon held by Kendra Bean at the magnificently obsessed Viv and Larry.

TCM Inaugural Post

2011-07-06T10:36:00.005-04:00

My post at TCM is up as my official duties begin. Check it out if you so desire. Surprisingly, it has nothing to do with movies but is, instead, eight rambling paragraphs about different kinds of cysts, what to look for and how to drain them.

So, anyway, the editor took that down and put up something else I'd sent him on actors and the performances they're known for. Whatever.

Happy 4th from Cinema Styles!

2011-07-04T00:43:00.006-04:00

Yvonne De Carlo performs at "I am an American" Day at The Hollywood Bowl, 1951.

TCM, Morlocks and Me

2011-07-01T08:09:00.004-04:00

Just a quick announcement about recent events in which I find myself inextricably linked with Kimberly Lindbergs once again. To rework the old political saying, as Kimberly goes, so goes Greg.

See, when I started writing online all those years ago back in 2007, Kimberly was the first person to introduce herself to me. I had gone on Dennis Cozzalio's matchless Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule blog a few times, and Dennis had commented on mine (the first official Cinema Styles commenter ever), and Kimberly popped over to Cinema Styles after finding me there and introduced herself in the comment pages (my second intro, by the way, was from Ken Lowery after we saw each other's comments on Jim Emerson's excellent Scanners blog).

Within about a year (maybe a little more, maybe a little less) Kimberly had posts up on Cinebeats about Cinema Retro and pieces she had done for them. "Cool," I thought. Not long after that, I was contacted by the editor of Cinema Retro about doing a piece for their website thanks to finding me from Cinebeats. "Even cooler," I thought.

After that, one of my favorite blog stops, If Charlie Parker was a Gunslinger There'd be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats, started by the incomparable and mysterious Tom Sutpen, asked Kimberly to join their ranks and start posting for the blog. About a year later, you guessed it, Tom asked me to join as well.

Then, just shortly after that, Turner Classic Movies asked Kimberly Lindbergs to become a Morlock, one of their official bloggers. At this point, I'm guessing that you can see where this is going. Two weeks ago, Jeff Stafford, online editor for Turner Classic Movies contacted me asking me to join the team. Of course, I said yes. Starting Wednesday, July 6th, I'll be an official blogger for TCM and hope to see you there. A special thanks to the strange and magical Richard Harland Smith for putting in a good word for me and to Jeff for reading Cinema Styles and having confidence I could write for TCM as well.

I look forward to posting for the Morlocks over at TCM and hope you'll join me there, often.

Now would someone PLEASE give Kimberly Lindbergs a million dollars! Please!

The Final Stage of the Cinephile: Acceptance

2011-06-29T22:00:00.003-04:00

I'm not getting paid for Cinema Styles and I never will. My job isn't to see every movie out there and report back to the world on how I think it went. My real job, in fact, is to do a lot of stuff that would bore most people to tears (including myself) and, as a result, I'll never write about it.

Movies I see and write about because I love them.

When I see one I don't like, generally speaking, I don't write it up. Sometimes I do but not often. I'd rather promote the movies I think are worthwhile than pick apart a movie I don't like (although I have done it, don't get me wrong). Mainly, what I'm trying to say is, I no longer feel embarrassed about not having seen so many films that I want to see or that I should see. There are thousands of them and, frankly, if I started watching all the movies I haven't seen right now, and kept going around the clock for the next thirty years, I'd still miss some.

I'll see what I see, when I see them and if I don't, I don't.

Just a few years ago, when I started writing online, I remember thinking things like, "I can't admit I've never seen The Earrings of Madame de..." I felt I'd done something wrong by not seeing it and every other classic film out there. But then, The Earrings of Madame de... showed up at the AFI, I saw it on the big screen and I loved it. So it all worked out. It took me until my forties to see it but so what, right?

None of this sounds like a big deal to most people but to a bonafide film lover it's a hard thing to accept. That is, to accept that you're never going to see them all and that's okay. With each passing year I see fewer new movies in release and more classic films and it's still not enough. In fact, there are more directors whose entire oeuvre I haven't seen than directors in which I have. Chaplin, Keaton, Kurosawa, Fellini? Nope. I've seen plenty of their works but not all. Hell, there are big time directors of which only one or two of their films I've seen. Claude Chabrol I never saw until Ray Young of Flickhead had his blogathon a couple of years back. How pathetic is that?

Of course, let's be honest, it's not easy seeing the entire life work of any one director but even harder for one pre-1970s. Back then they directed hundreds of movies in a career. John Ford? He directed 146 movies. I'll never see them all. Michael Curtiz? 173. Forget about it. D.W. Griffith? 535! That's five hundred and thirty five! I just... I mean... it's... 535! Okay, so a lot of them are shorts but they're still the works of Griffith and, brother, I'm never seeing all of them.

And I wouldn't want to. I've got limited time, both daily and over the long haul. Why go for quantity over quality? However, there are some directors for which I have seen all their works (and I'm not counting one and outs like Charles Laughton) but it's usually because their output wasn't tremendous in quantity. One that immediately come to mind is Stanley Kubrick but, really, even casual film fans have probably seen at least half of his movies.

So as my time wanes and the decades spent obsessing about movies mount up, it's time to stop worrying about what classic films I still haven't seen and take it easy. The truth, for all of us, is that none of us will ever see more movies than movies we won't see. The overwhelming numbers means that even the most obsessed and dedicated movie fan will never see more than a fraction of a percent of all movies ever made. Think of that. Most movies ever made will go unseen by all of us! It's a difficult thought to consider but one the movie lover must acknowledge. And once you do, once you break free of the delusion that you have to see everything, somehow, inexplicably, the movies seem even better. And that's something I accept, unconditionally.

The Unbearable Sadness of Being:Atlantic City, 1980

2011-06-20T23:00:00.005-04:00

I saw Atlantic City when it was first released in the states (It was completed in 1979, released in Europe in 1980, and in America in 1981) and I liked it. I thought it was a fine picture but not much more.

I was a kid. A cinematic babe in arms. A waif.

I watched it again recently, thirty years older and in the midst of a very stressful financial period due to factors beyond my control, and found it an extraordinary film, moving and unbearably sad. Truly and deeply sad.

But also redemptive, renewing and fulfilling.

Honestly, I was unprepared for how well the movie explores the themes of self-delusion and loneliness. Of nostalgia and longing. Of the cruel tricks played on all of us by life and how, usually, the smallest thing will bring us back.

The plot revolves around an aging numbers runner, Lou Pascal (Burt Lancaster), who also earns a few extra dollars acting as a personal assistant/nurse to a mobster's widow, Grace Pinza (Kate Reid). He lives across from Sally (Susan Sarandon) and watches her wipe herself down with lemon juice each night to wash off the fish smell she gets from the oyster bar in which she works. Into both of their lives walks Dave and Chrissie (Robert Joy and Hollis McLaren, respectively), Sally's husband and sister (now with Dave and bearing his child). Lou gets involved with Dave who's looking to score big with some cocaine he stole off of a dealer in Philadelphia. Lou makes the drop for him, Dave gets killed and Lou ends up with the money.

That's as much plot as you'll get from me because the plot isn't nearly as important as the idea of desperate people, interacting, fooling themselves and fooling each other. Lou never was a big time mobster and probably never wanted to be. All Lou ever wanted was for people to think he was a big time mobster. Sally wants to think he was, too, so she can pretend something good will come of her relationship with him. She also wants to believe she's going to be a world-travelled blackjack dealer. Grace believes her dead husband, Cookie Pinza, was a big shot and, by extension, she is too. And Sally's sister, well, she believes in everyone and everything.

The film's screenplay, by John Guare, is brilliantly composed, building its characters in snippets, moments and small talk. There are no laborious monologues or deep exchanges. None. Practically every line in the movie is surface, functional and utilitarian but succeeds at the same time in providing a kind of poetry of self-delusion that the characters use to ameliorate their lonely, desperate existences. Some of its lines are famous, like the one about the Atlantic Ocean. Lou, thrilled to be taken seriously by the young Dave and running out of things to memorialize, laments, "The Atlantic Ocean was something then. Yeah, you should have seen the Atlantic Ocean in those days." Other lines are less so but carry enormous power like when Buddy, an old friend of Lou who now works as a towel boy in a boardwalk restroom, gets a twenty from Lou and says, "Listen, when things start going good for me I'll make it up to you." He's in his late sixties working as a towel boy. Things aren't going to get good. Things aren't going to get better. Buddy's at the end of the line. It's over. But there he is, with a smile on his face, seemingly convinced that, yes, by God, things are going to get better. They have to, right?

This cast of characters vibrantly pulsates throughout the movie because its director, Louis Malle, never lingers over a scene unnecessarily. Most scenes have an exit cut the millisecond the last line is delivered. That line of Buddy's, for instance. As the final breath in the last word "you" is being exhaled, the scene cuts. It's as if, throughout, Malle is making the decision to show the viewer only what is absolutely necessary to express the scene. These are delusional people living just above the poverty line, not skilled orators. They say what they mean and move on.

Atlantic City came and went in 1981. It received marvelous reviews and many critics awards but never enjoyed the kind of lasting reverence afforded other movies of the time. Cinephiles know of it and older movie fans but it's not discussed much anymore. That's a shame. Burt Lancaster was never better and I'm including Elmer Gantry in that assessment. Susan Sarandon shows the great potential she would later fulfill. Robert Joy plays the loser husband at a perfect pitch and Kate Reid is wonderful as a woman who plays it tough but is really as delicate and fragile as anyone. I hope Atlantic City has a revival of sorts, and soon. It's a superb movie and deserves to be ranked alongside the best that the last thirty years has to offer.

The Stretch Effect: The Grapes of Wrath

2011-06-08T23:27:00.012-04:00

I've almost - almost - become used to seeing Academy ratio movies (1.37 to 1) stretched out on widescreen televisions by people either too stupid to notice the glaring difference or too lazy to bother switching the settings on their tv to match the movie. But one place I don't expect to see it is Netflix. So when I went to watch The Grapes of Wrath the other night, I was shocked to see this:

Here's the correct ratio:

Here are other screengrabs followed by the correct ratio:

When I saw this, I was shocked. I mean, I know nobody was doing widescreen in 1940 (although it had been used before, notably for the 1930 John Wayne movie, The Big Trail) and I certainly know The Grapes of Wrath didn't use it. Still, I went to IMDB to make sure. As I suspected, it was 1:37 to 1. But for some reason, someone at Netflix flubbed and gave us a "widescreen" version of a movie that never was widescreen to begin with, hence the stretched out quality of all the shots. I've notified them (and have for other problems in the past) and hope it gets corrected soon. Meanwhile, if anyone has any other classic movies on Netflix they discover have been stretched out, let me know. I'm curious if this is just an aberration or a disturbing new trend.

Love/Hate: Gangs of New York

2011-06-02T12:52:00.019-04:00

There are several movies with which I have love/hate relationships. None of them actually involve love or hate but, rather, aspects I like or admire and aspects I find dull or uninspired or just plain wrong. One of the great Love/Hate relationships I have in the cinema is with the film Gangs of New York. There is almost as much I like about that film as I don't like so it comes about as close to an even split as I'm going to get. I will attempt to explain why but most of it is based on gut feelings, something that doesn't translate well into written analysis so listing may, instead, be the order of the day. I may say harsh things about a movie many love but hope that, in the end, Bill "The Butcher" Cutting himself would declare of this piece, "It's fair. A touch indelicate, but fair."

LOVE:

*Daniel Day-Lewis as Bill "The Butcher" Cutting. As always, Day-Lewis doesn't pull back and that makes for one hell of a watchable performance. In my view, people continue to misunderstand acting that many describe as "hammy" or "over the top." I have commented on this many times but will say it again: A bad actor attempting to ham it up or go "over the top" is painful to watch and, often, wooden. A great actor doing it is a joy to behold (Charles Laughton, Gary Oldman, Bette Davis). I love when he says the "indelicate" line quoted above. Also, after piercing Amsterdam Vallon's (Leonardo DiCaprio) side, announcing, "That's a wound."

*The look of the film. The sets and art direction are terrific to take in and director Martin Scorsese creates an other worldly feel with it, providing a real sense of space and depth within the sets that transport the viewer back in time.

*Jim Broadbent because, well, you know, he's Jim Broadbent!

*The time it takes to develop its story. It doesn't rush itself and doesn't necessarily go where one would expect.

*The history provided in the film, though largely fictionalized, is nonetheless fascinating and did actually inspire me to research it further.

HATE:

*Cameron Diaz. I just can't stand her in this movie. I find her line deliveries flat and unbelievable and no matter what they do to her costume and makeup, she doesn't look period. She's found a niche in comedy and I think she's skilled at it but in drama, especially this particular period drama, she doesn't work.

*Leonardo DiCaprio. I've grown to like DiCaprio in many things, including all of his other efforts with Scorsese but here he feels forced. From Day-Lewis and Broadbent I get period characters I believe, from DiCaprio I get unconvincing period affectations.

*The opening and closing music. God, how I hate it! This is probably the biggest "Hate" factor of them all. When the opening fight begins and, despite the rest of the film using period Celtic American musical motifs, goes into electric guitar riffs while the action slows to jagged frame by frame slow motion, I don't feel taken out of the movie so much as desperately wanting to leave the movie, and I don't even mind non-period music in period pieces.

Then, at the end, as Amsterdam ponders the future memory of who they were and what they did, cheesy synthesizer-sounding strings strike up (complete with electric guitar riffs, again) as if Scorsese said to the music director, "Now, listen, I'm serious, I really want you to totally screw up this ending," and then the music director pulled out his "100 Greatest Cheesy Movie Themes of the 80s" album and said, "I've got just the thing!"

*The CGI/Matte work/Special Effects. When the camera pulls back at the beginning to show where they are (pssst, it's New York) it looks like the worst matte painting in history as viewed through a broken down screen door. Honestly, I'm not sure if it's matte, CGI or a combination of both, I just know it looks bad. At the end, when Musical Cheese-Fest 2002 is going on, the New York skyline changes or, rather, the really bad CGI/Matte drawing of the New York skyline changes. Hey Marty, way to do everything in your power to destroy the closing shot.

*Finally, and here comes the big one, Martin Scorsese's direction. It's pretty dreadful. He makes some good choices (I mean, how could he not, he's Martin Scorsese so it's not a total loss) but he makes many more bad ones. Mainly, he doesn't stick with any one stylistic approach. There's the jagged frame by frame slow-mo of the fight scene. There's the varying musical approaches. There's the hectic, chaotic climax, narrated by a reporter reading off the telegraph machine so the viewer gets a play by play of the action. Dear Lord, that's got to be one of the most ill-advised approaches to a climax I've ever seen. Scorsese clearly wanted the ending to simulate a newsreel play by play but, alas, the story takes place during the Civil War so he goes with the reporter reading off the telegraph instead. The ending felt so disconnected from the rest of the film, so emotionally distant, that by the time we see the long line of dead bodies waiting to be claimed one feels relief only that, with the end credits nearing, the constant shift in styles will be mercifully over.

When Gangs of New York ends, and the big, overdesigned title card (seriously, the title card is overdesigned! How? Why?) I walk away with a sense of longing. A longing for a better, more consistent film. And, really, that's not a knock so much as an acknowledgement that I like a lot in the movie and wish I liked the movie itself more. And I'll watch it again. I'll watch Bill teach Amsterdam how and where to cut someone for maximum effect (another favorite scene) while I drift off as the Cameron Diaz scenes play out. I'll love it and I'll hate it and dream of what might have been but the movie's shortcomings won't keep me away. After all, with Gangs of New York I know where I stand. It's hit and miss and that's not deadly. That's a wound.

The Universal Language

2011-05-31T08:00:00.000-04:00

Last weekend my wife and I had time to watch movies together, something that doesn't happen as often as we'd like. After working, making dinner, cleaning up and waiting for everything and everyone to settle down, we usually have but a couple of hours of free time with which to paint and write, and we do. But on Memorial Day weekend we found time for not one but two movies together. We chose La Ceremonie and Topsy-Turvy and were, of course, more than happy with both choices as both are exceptional films. But what I kept asking myself, again and again, after watching them was, "Why didn't these get any acting nominations?"

I'm not going to go off (again) on how awful the selections are for the Oscars, year in and year out, or bemoan the fact that not one film nominated for Best Picture in 1999 can hold a candle to Topsy-Turvy, which wasn't nominated for the top award at all. I just want to say, quickly and cleanly, that the Academy members really need to start appreciating foreign language performances and films more often, as well as english language films from outside the United States, especially now that we are finally entering into a stage where practically everything is available to practically anyone who wants to see it.

They've done better by Britain over the years (you know, they use the same language and all, not that weird foreign stuff you have to read on the screen) but still, how any informed voting body can watch Topsy-Turvy and not find it in them to nominate anyone/everyone from the film is beyond me. Still, British film, on the whole, does fairly well, as witnessed by last year's winner, The King's Speech, for Best Actor, Director and Picture.

However, when it comes to foreign language, it's not just worse, it's downright soul-crushing. There are three winners in the history of the award: Sophia Loren for Two Women, Marion Cotillard for La Vie en Rose and [cringe] Roberto Benigni for [major cringe] Life is Beautiful. That's it. That's the sum total for foreign language performances taking home the Oscar. Okay, there are actually some others but they come from American films in which the performance is in another language (Robert de Niro for The Godfather, Part II, Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds, and so on - the complete list here). That's different than being in a movie made and released in another part of the world.

So after watching these two films, Topsy-Turvy and La Ceremonie, I kept asking, "Why no acting nods? Why?" Because I'm here to tell you that everyone in Topsy-Turvy is superb and that Isabelle Huppert and Sandrine Bonnaire delivered the two finest performances of 1995 (date of European release) or 1996 (date of American release) in La Ceremonie and to not be nominated is a crime. But this has been happening and will continue to happen.

Back in 2006 Carice van Houten was stellar in Black Book and yet managed to evade the notice of the voting members of the Academy. And if you think it's a current trend (after all, Sophia won back in the sixties, remember?) then how about Giulietta Masina? She should have been nominated for La Strada, should have won for Nights of Cabiria and given a lifetime achievement award for everything else. But it was not to be. She was never nominated. Ever.

Or Anna Karina, Liv Ullmann, Bibi Anderson, Isabelle Adjani or Chieko Higashiyama. Oh, there are some nominations in there but no wins. Or how about Norma Aleandro for The Official Story? She wasn't even nominated!

Ah, hell, what's the point? I suppose now I could list all the male actors ignored but this isn't about ticking off each individual snub. You know it happens and that it will continue to happen and, really, it's time for it to stop. Foreign films used to be pretty damn inaccessible outside of big cities but now, even if it doesn't hit the local multi-mega-plex, it can be sent to your home or streamed directly to your television for a small fee.

It's time for Oscar to adapt. It already has the prestige of being the biggest award for film out there. Now, it could become (possibly) respectable by nominating from the world instead of just what played in Peoria. Drop the Foreign Language Oscar and start nominating those films alongside the Best Picture nominees. I'd love to see a non-English language film win once in a while. It would announce the Oscars were about the best in film from all over the world, not just the states. But even if that doesn't happen soon, and it won't, can we at least start acknowledging the great work of so many great actors who have the "misfortune" of not portraying characters who speak english? Personally, I don't care what language they speak as long as the performance is good and when it is, everyone understands anyway. The language of a great performance is universal.

"Mom, a man just died."

2011-05-29T16:00:00.005-04:00

There's an old episode of The Simpsons where Bart and Homer are watching a McBain movie and cheering on McBain as he kills one enemy after another. Wanting to join in, Marge quips, after watching McBain snap a man's neck as he hurtles through the sky in a jet, "Now that's what I call breakneck speed!" She is only able to savor her quip momentarily as Bart turns to her and scolds, "Mom, a man just died."

Similarly, in the deleted scenes from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, friends of anonymous henchmen, killed in the movie without a thought, mourn the death of their friends, husbands and fathers.

The joke in both, of course, is that the onscreen death of a faceless, nameless character in an action movie is suddenly given the kind of weight and thoughtful consideration normally reserved for a central character, one in which the audience cares for deeply. And the joke of my movie-watching life, as I grow ever older, is that I give random, nameless and faceless deaths onscreen the same kind of consideration The Simpsons and Austin Powers did as a clever ironic statement, only with me, there's no irony.

It's actually not all that new, having started years ago, but has grown increasingly worse as I get older. It first manifested itself in childhood as I wondered about this or that person being killed by the likes of James Bond and wondering, briefly, fleetingly, "What's his story?"

The first time it ever truly took hold of me was during the viewing of a perfectly wretched catastrophe of a movie, Nothing but Trouble. It was the mid-nineties, I was up late flipping through the channels and on HBO there was this movie, written and directed by Dan Aykroyd, and I quickly realized it was one of the worst movies I had ever seen. Needless to say, I kept watching. Like the driver slowing down to see how bad the carnage is alongside the road after a traffic accident, I wanted to see just how deep into the abyss of badness this movie would plunge.

Early on some hot shots in a sports car get pulled over by the lone police officer in town, John Candy. They're snorting coke and have plenty of drugs and it's implied they deal. They've got two women with them and they're armed. Candy arrests them and brings them before the horrifying town judge/dictator, played by Dan Aykroyd, who summarily executes them. They are sent onto a treadmill/ride into a shredder. This is played as a joke.

Okay, time for some personal background, for both me and Dan. For my part, I have a sister who got heavily involved in drugs in her twenties and thirties. When I say heavily, I don't mean she smoked some pot like you or I did in college or had the occasional hash brownies. No. I mean she was addicted to all manner of drugs, particularly cocaine, and unlike addicts you may have known, my sister married a drug dealer and was pursued, surveilled and eventually arrested by the F.B.I. After turning evidence and being released she sunk into alcoholism and eventually, unable to hold down a job, moved back in with my parents. The drugs she did had severe physical repercussions and now she suffers from brain seizures but there is a plus side to all this: She completely cleaned herself up. She's been sober now for more than eleven years, and while she still lives with my parents thanks to her neurological condition, she is drug-free and helping out my elderly parents as they get older and their health declines.

Now for Dan. He was close friends with John Belushi and despises drug use and drug dealers. Thanks to Cathy Evelyn Smith serving up a too potent speedball, his friend John Belushi lost his life. While she served time for this on manslaughter charges, it can never bring Belushi back. His life is gone, forever. Dan Aykroyd hates dealers. I get that and I sympathize. And I understand, that's where the scene comes from. It comes from the anger and hatred he holds for people who deal in death, at least in some cases.

But when I watched that scene, all I could think of was, "Those two women, why'd they get killed? Because they made the wrong choice? Lots of people make perfectly horrific choices and recover, grow up and turn themselves around. They chose to be with these loser drug dealers, like my sister did. I don't think they deserve to die for that."

Now, I know, it's all a little heavy for a throwaway scene in a perfectly rotten movie and perhaps you're thinking, "Greg, geez, come on, lighten up!" And you're right because I'm saying it too, which is why I'm writing this piece in the first place. Because what started in Nothing but Trouble has continued and I repeatedly find myself asking, even of several supposedly "bad" characters, "That person just died, doesn't anyone care?"

And to be sure this is all perfectly understood, I'm NOT talking about central characters or major supporting characters or even minor supporting characters. That's NOT what I'm talking about. With those you DO feel something and often are meant to. I'm talking about characters that the writer, director and actors want to be nameless and faceless. The characters of whom the audience is completely indifferent. Characters played by actors you will never know and whose credit listings are along the lines of "Man #3." I'm talking about THOSE characters. More often than not, lately, their onscreen deaths really bother me.

The most recent example of this came in the movie Kick-Ass, which came to theatres already swirling in controversy over the language and violence dispensed by the eleven year old character Hit Girl, played by then 13 year-old Chloë Moretz. The movie (from the comic book of the same name) deals with ordinary people taking on the personas of super heroes in the real world, a world filled with violence and danger. There is no "cartoon" violence in the movie. Blood flies, guts spill. It is exceptionally violent and while some critics, most notably Roger Ebert, found it morally offensive, I did not, unless you count the death of a certain nameless, faceless character. Then maybe I do but for the reasons I've outlined here, not because Kick-Ass is any different in this respect than any other action movie. It's just that in Kick-Ass, it seems more real and, thus, more impactful.

The death to which I'm referring is particularly troublesome for me because of another important plot line set up by the film. Here's the setup: Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is a New York teenager who decides to become a superhero named Kick-Ass. Among his first assignments is to help out a girl he long been secretly in love with, Katie Deauxma (Lyndsy Fonseca). She's been mixed up with a guy she wants to stop seeing and asks Kick-Ass to get that message to him. Kick-Ass goes to see the guy, Rasul (Kofi Natei) who is in an apartment with several other unsavory characters and they all appear to be drug-dealers. Kick-Ass is grabbed by them and about to be killed when eleven year old Hit Girl shows up and proceeds to viciously slaughter all of them with a mounted hunting knife. Finally, she turns her attention to the lone female in the apartment who breaks a bottle to try and defend herself before running to the door. She then tries to get it open, terrified, until Hit Girl pulls the knife mount apart, revealing another knife inside, and proceeds to skewer the poor girl before pulling the blades out and casually walking away as her lifeless body falls to the floor.

Ha, ha! She hooked up with the wrong people and now will never have a chance to learn from that and grow as a person because an 11-year-old girl decided it was time for her to die, never to experience life again. Ha, ha! Oh man, that shit is funny, huh?

Okay, it's not that funny but could be depending on your point of view, I guess. The problem with this scene is that the whole reason Kick-Ass is taking on Rasul in the first place is because Katie, the good girl of the movie, was mixed up with him! In other words, the movie is flippantly killing off one girl with Rasul, treating it as a joke that it believes the audience will follow along for the ride because, after all, she's mixed up with a drug dealer, so let her die! But wait! Katie was too! The whole thing feels more like bullshit Hollywood moralizing than anything else.

It's the same bizarre duality Hollywood has exhibited for years: Film folks get mixed up in drugs but portray people mixed up in drugs as evil. Film folks enjoy unimaginable wealth but often portray the wealthy as evil. Film folks sleep with a great many people and... well, you get the picture. There's a lot of projection going on in Hollywood, and not just the kind where reels get changed.

Of course, let's be honest: We've all laughed at people getting killed in films. As referenced earlier, the Bond films have made an artform out of turning a nameless character's death into a joke. One of the more famous examples comes from the beginning of Goldfinger in which Bond electrocutes a man in a bathtub and walks away shaking his head saying, "Shocking." This guy, whoever he was, was clearly in the business of killing people and, frankly, I don't care what happens to him. Likewise for the dealers in Kick-Ass. They are, we can assume, physically dangerous men who have killed and will kill again. It's the girl I have problems killing. The girl who, like Katie, hooked up with someone bad but unlike Katie, wasn't smart enough to unhook herself in time. Had I been the director, I would have had her get the door open and flee. We'd never see her again and leave the theatre thinking, perhaps, she turned her life around after that terrifying incident. Despite all the violence, mayhem and bloodshed in that scene, it is only her death that bothers me and I think it was a mistake to leave it in.

But lest we think this is some new trend in movies or that my dismay is reserved only for the female cohorts of drug dealers, I should say it's been going on since the beginning of cinema. In the film Heaven Can Wait, not the 1978 Warren Beatty film but the 1943 Don Ameche film, the lead character played by Don Ameche is speaking with Satan, played by the great Laird Cregar. As Ameche speaks with an elderly woman (assigned to Hell in the afterlife) Cregar bores of her and presses a button that opens a trap door releasing her to her eternal torment with a blood-curdling scream. After this I couldn't focus on anything else in the movie. All I could think was, "Right now, at this moment, she's being tortured, brutalized and tormented. This will go on forever and why? Because she was a gossip?" That's what's implied: She will be physically tortured for eternity because she was a busybody. And her release into Hell by Cregar is played as a joke. Had Lubitsch made her a rapist or a murderer or a gangster or, fuck, anything but a gossip I would have taken to the joke better. But by making her so innocuous, the joke was given an unfortunate weight, a weight that works against comedy. Well, for weirdos like me who focus on this kind of thing.

For the most part, this is all reserved for moments where a person's death is played off as a joke in a reasonably realistic way. That is, Rowan Atkinson backing off of the cliff in Hot Shots, Part Deux is played so ridiculously that the only thing to do is laugh since no one in the movie feels real in any way, and isn't meant to. But when the guy with the fancy swordwork gets casually shot by Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, I think, "Damn, it's over for him now. He's dead." Of course, I laugh at the scene anyway, just like I'm supposed to, probably because Spielberg is skilled enough to keep just enough distance from it to make it work. The death isn't terrifying (like the woman sucked down to her torment screaming in Heaven Can Wait) or bloodthirsty (like the drug moll in Kick-Ass) and the swordsman isn't in closeup when it happens. But it doesn't mean I still don't think about it, if only for a moment.

A part of me is utterly annoyed with myself for these new found feelings of empathy for faceless extras in the movies but another part of me thinks it's perfectly normal and I'm happy I don't have a cold, mechanical reaction to anyone's death onscreen. I'm well into middle-age, have children on their way out the door and into their own lives and a lovely wife with whom I look forward to growing old. If that means I spend a little more time thinking about life in a way that makes casual onscreen death seem unnerving, so be it. It's not going to kill me.

Still Reeling (in the movies)

2011-05-23T22:17:00.010-04:00

It's been a tough month, what with obligations and parties and the busiest time of the year at work and promises to keep and miles to go and my horse thinking it queer and, really, just the whole goddamn thing. Seriously, go find a kit, get yourself a caboodle (Amazon has 'em cheap), combine the two and that's what I got in things to keep me busy. But I'm still watching, still thinking around the clock about movies, still trying to get excited for something, anything in this, my most dreaded movie season, the summer season. Really, there's just nothing I ever want to see in the summer season. It doesn't mean I don't usually find something worthwhile in the end but I never expect to and usually can't muster up enough excitement to look very hard anyway.

At home, I wait it out by watching, scanning, perusing or just glancing at hundreds of movies, all those now available to me on streaming whenever I want. Here are some things I observed last week:

Escape From New York: By god, it's still entertaining. It's still stupid as hell, too (I mean, seriously, the architecture, the center of commerce, the history, all of it thrown away to make a prison?! Hahahahaaaaa!) but damn, it's entertaining. The one area where the "New York as Prison" worked best when it was released was the wink and a nudge joke John Carpenter was making about New York already being halfway there anyway. Now, though, with the downtown area glossed up, Disneyfied and fun for the whole family, most people probably wouldn't realize there was ever a joke there.

The Blue Angel (Original German Version): The scene where the Professor (Emil Jannings) drops the cigarettes is a great moment. For those unfamiliar, he has to crawl under the table to pick them up while Lola (Marlene Dietrich) stays seated at the table smoking hers. Meanwhile her legs are down there, in his face, driving him crazy. It's a great shot by Sternberg, the once dignified professor, on his hands and knees, under the table at her feet while she goes about her business. Talk about defining a relationship in purely visual terms.

Easy Virtue: Silent Hitchcock melodrama. Not as bad as I'd heard. By any other director would have seemed decent. By Hitchcock's standards, fairly sluggish and dull. But the line Noel Coward pens for the closer is the ultimate in self-pitying mega-drama!

Greedy: Not much to say here except this: Phil Hartman, god what a loss!

Algiers: The moment where Hedy Lamarr and Charles Boyer first spy each other is fantastic. The camera focuses in on Lamarr lips as they widen to a smile. Boyer, meanwhile, is doing nothing but eyeing her jewelry.

When We Were Kings: The final fight and its analysis is a joy to behold but it should be noted: Norman Mailer does the worst Ali impersonation in the history of ever.

Finally, Ed Howard, the most prolific unpaid movie reviewer on the internet, has a music club now which I will be participating in but, alas, not this time or, at least, not on the first day. I dropped the ball, simply no way around it. I didn't get the album in time (though I do have it now) and still haven't listened to it what with everything going on. But, if you have listened to and/or know well the album Heart of the Congos by The Congos, by all means, hop over to Only the Cinema and join in the discussion. I'm sorry I missed it but will chime in later once I've listened to the album and formed something resembling a cogent opinion.

That's all for now. Back to work, watching movies and listening to The Congos.

A Blog With No Cheer or:How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Apocalypse

2011-05-16T22:35:00.013-04:00

I'm not exactly blazing new trails in website posting around these parts lately but, hey, I got a lot going on. I mean, there's going up to Massachusetts to get my daughter from college, planning a birthday party for my other daughter (actually, just trying to sort out what she told me was going to happen and trying to understand how it's all going to work and then there's this scavenger hunt map that has to be made and... oh, never mind) and on top of all that, the world's going to end on Saturday in an epic battle between someone's idea of good and evil. So Saturday might be a little slow but since I'm sure I'll be left behind (ahem), I promise things will pick up on Sunday.

Just a few thoughts until then:

Watched The Verdict again after Sidney Lumet's recent death. Wow, what an incredible career performance by Paul Newman!

Watched Raging Bull again recently too. Kept watching the scene in front of the tv where Jake (Robert De Niro) says, "That's not what I heard," and then Joey (Joe Pesci) says, "What'd you hear," and then Jake says, "I heard some things... I heard things." Made my wife and oldest daughter watch it too. Repeatedly. Did things like point and say, "Wait... here it comes." I keep saying it around the house, "I heard some things." Can no longer watch that scene without chuckling. That shouldn't be the case but, sadly, it is. Still think it's an excellent movie but other Scorsese flicks are much better.

Enjoy watching the opening credit sequences from Mission: Impossible on Netflix Instant. Don't care much for the actual episodes but each opening credit sequence is unique to that episode so you don't really have to watch the show. When I do, I remember my prepubescent fascination with Barbara Bain. She played Cinnamon. No, seriously, her name was Cinnamon.

Really enjoy watching the opening cattle call audition scene from All That Jazz. Did a Facebook status update based on the lyrics of On Broadway. Yeah, I'm pretty fucking sad.

Now have thousands of followers on my tumblr site and having a great time doing it. It's allowed me to combine my old Unexplained Cinema site, featuring shots from movies, with The Invisible Edge's more parody filled posts. There are a lot of younger bloggers there than me so it feels a little different than here. The people I follow (hoodoothatvoodoo, mudwerks, vintagegal, alleyesandears, cupcake katie, amphora) are terrific bloggers who post some incredible artwork and photography. I rather enjoy it and look forward to keeping it up.

You know a favorite moment of mine in a movie (and, no, it's not something amazing or portentous or telling): When everyone goes into the chocolate room in the 1971 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Gene Wilder, just before he starts singing Pure Imagination says, "Hold your breath... make a wish... count to three" and then he goes into the song. That's a great moment and he does a wonderful job with the song.

Got the John Barry box set about a month ago. Look, I know I loved the guy's music before but, damn, it's really something! An incredible listen, over and over and over again. And Beat Girl is all kinds of mod rock awesome!

Well, that's it for now. Back to work, preparing for parties and the apocalypse. If I have any revelations before then, I'll let you know.

Everything Goes to Hell

2011-05-08T22:30:00.002-04:00

Walking to downtown Silver Spring today I see the entire public area in front of the Civic Center taken over by some goddamn Cars 2 event sponsored by State Farm in which hundreds of parents are standing in line with their kids to get a glimpse of those "adorable" cars from Cars, or something like that. Anyway, I start thinking about how everything goes to hell, just like Tom Waits said. I mean, here I am, in Silver Spring, a great city, diverse, progressive, open, cultured... well, maybe we should scratch that last one. Maybe it isn't very cultured anymore, or maybe it never was. I can't really say.

I love the AFI Silver Theatre and the films it gives this community a chance to see but the downtown area is turning into some kind of fucking corporate variation of a Disney universe, just like Time Square in New York. Seriously, I'm walking downtown with my wife for a drink and I get bombarded with some candy-coated bullshit paraded into town by Pixar, the studio where imagination and creativity go to die. But this isn't about the dreaded Pixar so much as how utterly soulless downtown Silver Spring is becoming (hmmm, maybe it is about Pixar).

Noodles and Company. Ben and Jerry's. Red Lobster. Macaroni Grill. And they're packed! Actually, I'm happy about that because that's good for business. I mean, hell, I like a thriving community and the central Downtown section of Silver Spring is thriving. They turned it around and now the city has a nice robust economy.

But can we just stop there? Do we have to keep going? Do we have to let greed consume all?!

Silver Spring keeps buying up the next street, and the next and the next like a Zardoz god-head with an ever increasing appetite for grain. Every street with any kind of local flavor gets bought up and ousted so a new high rise can take its place. Now they've bought up Bonifant Street, a great and diversified street that has everything from a used bookstore and tattoo parlor to an Ethiopian cafe and a gun shop! Wow, I can hardly wait until those shops get replaced by a high rise with a TCBY Yogurt in the lobby. Hey, Silver Spring, FUCK YOU!

I don't even want to think about the desperately limited imaginations of the white bread wonders in charge of making these screamingly beige decisions. The same folks, I would assume, who believe that Avatar and Up are the apex of art cinema.

It's okay, I guess. I've got Wheaton and the People's Republic of Takoma Park just around the corner and that's where I'm spending my time these days anyway. It's just too bad that people can't accept a thriving downtown and say, "This is good. We've done it and now we're finished." They have to keep going and going until it all looks like every other goddamn whitewashed city in every other goddamn state in America. It's too bad. I guess everything really does go to hell.

Outsourcing Illumination:2010 Oscar Winner, Inside Job

2011-04-28T08:00:00.003-04:00

I watch a lot of documentaries in my free time though I rarely write them up here. There's a reason for that. Most of the documentaries I watch are political or activist in nature and involve a subject for which I have a certain level of conviction. Most are about people I believe in but which many others (uninformed, in my opinion) might find to be cranks or kooks. Well, to each his own but it's my site and I don't want to hear any crap about someone I think has dedicated their life and work to bettering the world. I really don't. I mean, if you have a problem with someone who spent the better part of 40 or 50 years working to make the world safer or fighting for justice but they upset your political platform and thus you don't like them then, really, fuck you, what have you done?

See what happened there? I got hostile and we weren't even talking about one of those documentaries which is precisely why I don't talk about those documentaries. Well, outside of with my wife, I mean. When I do write about a documentary it's generally because it has a decided mission but a politically neutral stance. Like my review of Countdown to Zero. I didn't like it and gave it a fairly bad review. Politically, the movie goes right down the middle, not blaming or indicting either side, simply laying out the case for better protection against nuclear terrorism. In this mission, I believe it fails. Now, normally, here at Cinema Styles, I avoid bad reviews. I like to focus on promoting music and films that are worthwhile and of which I think more people should be aware. I'll probably never review an album I don't like and rarely ever a movie I don't like. For the most part, I'm not here to protect you from seeing bad movies but to share with you what I think are the good ones.

Sometimes, however, I'm not comfortable keeping quiet, as with Countdown to Zero which, I felt, fed misinformation to the viewers in an effort to unnecessarily frighten them and was disappointed because it is such an important topic and was dismayed that it got such slipshod treatment. About a week after watching it, I chose another documentary to watch, one I felt would bring my documentary experience back to form. I chose the Oscar winning Inside Job, about the fiscal crisis of 2008, directed by Charles Ferguson who made the excellent No End in Sight in 2007 about the disastrous post-war non-plan with Iraq. No End in Sight was replete with interviews from inside and outside the White House and gave an illuminating look at what happened. I was hoping for the same with Inside Job but unfortunately, didn't get it.

Still, there are similarities to the balanced nature of No End in Sight. For instance, it lays blame for the financial debacle equally at the feet of the Clinton and Bush administrations. It does a good job of stating that policies enacted under Clinton, furthered by Bush and exploited by Wall Street helped sink the economy in 2008. And it goes even further towards being fair and balanced. At the end, after seeing 90 minutes of crooked cabinet members under Clinton and Bush and dozens of disreputable money brokers, all responsible for the debacle, we get a kind of "where are they now" montage in which practically every goddamn one of them is serving in the Obama administration! What was it Pete Townsend said? "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

So this all sounds good, right? Wrong. It's not good and there's a reason it's not good. Because unlike Ferguson's earlier effort, it's not illuminating, it's incriminating. Ferguson's style of documentary filmmaking apparently underwent a fundamental shift from No End in Sight to Inside Job and the shift was from using information and knowledgeable sources to clarify a situation, as in No End in Sight, to using a only few knowledgeable folks while mainly focusing on attacking the bad guys "60 Minutes"-style and offering a large amount of commentary in the narrator's script. The narrator is Matt Damon and, I don't know why, this somehow makes it worse. I don't say that because I dislike Matt Damon but because he delivers the narration like a sage passing judgment rather than a neutral, informative voice.

To make matters worse, the concepts at play are not easily understood by any measure and while the documentary throws in an analogy here and an animated 1-2-3 diagram there, it consistently backs away from clarification to go on the attack.

To be clear, I have no problem with attack journalism. At its best it exposes frauds and shames con artists but a documentary attempting to put the complex pieces of a decades long downslide into criminal financial behavior on the largest scale imaginable isn't the place for it. What the people need is clarification, not "Ha! Take that, shithead!" when Ferguson says, "Are you serious? Did you just say that? I have information right here that proves..." etc. And he does! Don't get me wrong, he does have the information and he does throw it into the faces of these men of very questionable moral standing. But so what?! What the viewer walks away with from the documentary is the misinformed belief that this crook or that crook just got roasted and was, thus, somehow punished, but we still don't quite understand any of the actual details. Well, except that Larry Summers is King Asshole. I'll give that to Ferguson. That much is clear. Summers = King Asshole.

No End in Sight didn't have the attack moments. No End in Sight had Richard Armitage and Robert Hutchings and analysts and directors and soldiers, all under the Bush administration speaking openly and honestly about what went wrong. It was, in the best tradition of documentary filmmaking, illuminating. It took the people directly involved and let them tell the story without vitriol.

But a lot happened in the documentary world between 2007 and 2010. A personal, more polemical style came into vogue, and Ferguson seemed to think that was the best way to do his next effort. To be sure, he's not doing a Michael Moore impersonation (thank everything that is good in the universe for that) but, this time, flash and fireworks dominate over substance and clarity.

Inside Job isn't without merit but it fails at its core task of providing illumination into the events, circumstances and financial convictions that led us down the road to disaster. It's entertaining enough, what with it's "Gotcha" moments and book-cooking revelations, but I'm not looking for cheap revenge entertainment, I'm looking for a serious reflection upon a worldwide crisis. The information's there but the style works against it. It comes off as a gussied up version of an old Mike Wallace interview on "60 Minutes" and when the final shot of the Statue of Liberty blazes across the screen while Matt Damon tells us "some things are worth fighting for" you can't help but feel Andy Rooney should've narrated the whole thing all along.

Sweet Relief

2011-04-25T21:30:00.003-04:00

Recently, I reviewed Télépopmusik's album Genetic World on these pages and Angela McCluskey, the lead vocalist with the softly powerful voice, was kind enough to write me and ask if I could help out with something she feels strongly about. It's called Sweet Relief and it's been around since 1994 when it was founded by singer-songwriter Victoria Williams. From the site:

Sweet Relief was founded by singer-songwriter Victoria Williams in 1993. Victoria, while on a career-making tour with Neil Young was forced to drop off mid-schedule after experiencing unexplained debilitating symptoms. A long and painful diagnostic process revealed she had multiple sclerosis.

After her diagnosis, a group of friends assembled an all-star album of Victoria’s songs, Sweet Relief, which alleviated much of her medical debt. Vic, knowing that there are many musicians like her - -unable to afford medical expenses and compromised in their ability to work- - donated some of her proceeds from the album to found Sweet Relief Musicians Fund. The name of the fund derives from a song of Victoria’s, Opelousas (Sweet Relief) and the fact that we do provide sweet relief in the form of financial assistance to many musicians who would otherwise be in untenable predicaments

It's something I understand from experience. I used to belong to AFTRA/SAG but couldn't find enough work to reach the minimum amount where the union pays the health insurance and couldn't afford my own. Eventually, work outside of the arts provided a stable income and health insurance but the vast majority of artists don't find fame or fortune and can't get any coverage. I'm good friends with a terrific jazz pianist right now who can't sustain a living with music despite his talents.

Sweet Relief takes donations from people inside the industry and out to help the people who have provided so many with so much for so little. If you are a musician, like me, know a musician or just love music (surely there's no one that doesn't, right?) take the time to give whatever you can to help those with debilitating illnesses who don't have the means to take care of what the heart and soul cannot.

And to help you get there, here's a video of Here Comes the Sun, sung beautifully by Angela and arranged by Paul Cantelon. The list of folks helping out with the video is an impressive one and I urge you to go to the Vimeo site as well to read the info. Then purchase the song through one of the provided links to help bring needed funds to Sweet Relief. Thanks in advance and enjoy the music.

Here Comes The Sun by Angela McCluskey (benefiting Sweet Relief) from Bernadette/Capture on Vimeo.

When Music Kills the Mood

2011-04-21T08:15:00.003-04:00

Last October my wife and I had an awful experience with a silent film, a modern score and an idiot emcee. It was, to date, our only bad experience at the AFI. The AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, MD is a place we visit often to take in classic Hollywood and world cinema and whenever I mention it here, it's usually glowing. But this time, we took in Nosferatu the night before Halloween and things didn't go as well. We had avoided it in the past (it plays every year) because it felt like one of those rare AFI events that pulls in the dilettantes, the folks who aren't really classic movie lovers but think seeing what they perceive as an old creaky silent with a counter-intuitive modern score will fill all kinds of awesome ironic longings in their cold, smug souls.

And we were right. That's exactly how it felt.

We felt surrounded by people who didn't know the first goddamn thing about F.W. Murnau, Nosferatu, Max Schreck or silent films period. I'm not saying that is who we were surrounded by, just that it felt that way. I'm sure there were many classic film lovers there, like my wife and I, feeling the same thing we were, which was, to wit, "Who are all these interlopers?" Kind of like on St. Patrick's Day or New Year's Eve when all the amateurs come out to throw up on the bar floor and the real drinkers stay home or on Christmas and Easter when all those parishioners who didn't bother to show up on any other Sunday of the year suddenly pack the house.

"This movie's so fabulously dated! I so want a t-shirt of the bald guy!"

Then came the emcee, a local dee-jay whose name I can't remember and even if I did I wouldn't mention it here because why embarrass the guy, right? See, the thing is, he didn't know anything about silent film. Nothing. He got up on the stage in his Dracula cape and, frankly, before he even opened his mouth I felt like punching him. Then, when he opened his mouth, thoughts of punching him quickly gave way to, "How can I kill him in front of all these people and somehow make it look like the self-satisfied hipster couple in front of me did it and, hey, maybe I could figure out a way to make them die too as a bonus."

Seriously, here's what he does: He takes the emaciated, skeletal sliver of knowledge on Murnau and Nosferatu he culled from Wikipedia five minutes before going onstage and tries to turn it into some kind of Richard Pryor-esque shtick. He starts giving us details in stand-up format, like this: "Oh, so Murnau is all like 'oh no you didn't! I know you're not trying to sue me, woman! [referring to Bram Stoker's widow] and so F.W.'s all like, 'Take my movie? I'm gonna slide a copy of this film under my bed, uh-huh!" So, you can probably understand the homicidal thoughts I was having more clearly now, right?

Once the movie started, it got worse. The music took over. The movie? Oh, it was there, somewhere, struggling to compete with the ear-shattering percussion and endlessly clever found objects used as instruments that made you go, "Why that's a clever use of a wrench. I wonder how they... hey, wait a minute! I'm supposed to be focusing on the movie!"

To make matters worse, my lovely wife has less tolerance for this kind of malarkey than I do and when Count Orlock is making his way up the steps in what should be a very chilling and creepy scene and the "orchestra" is bombarding the audience with a full-on percussive assault using the kind of drum fills more appropriate for a battle sequence or John Bonham solo, I can sense her sitting next to me, steaming. I can sense it because, well, she is.

"I'm at the top of the stairs now. Cue the cannons."
In a way, though, I kind of have to hand it to the "orchestra" (sorry, I can't seem to type that word without the scare quotes) for some kind of dubious achievement in that I really can't imagine anyone else doing a better job of producing the opposite mood of what was on the screen than they did. To do so would require playing "Have you Never been Mellow" during the rape scene in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and who wants to go there?

When it was over, the lights came up and the audience erupted in thunderous applause. The couple in front of us couldn't contain themselves and started shouting, "Bravo!" and "Encore!" and "Sundance Movie Channel!" Okay, maybe not the last one. Anyway, I briefly contemplated pushing them over until Dracula took the stage again and my wife shouted, "Run!" We got the hell out of there as fast as we could. One more second of shtick from that moron and the evening would've ended with my best impersonation of the theatre climax in Inglourious Basterds with that mother fucker standing in for Hitler.

Afterwards, I thought on the experience long and hard. See, I have no problem with modern music for old films or modern music in new films that take place in the past. I've used modern music myself for montages of classic film and a film like Chariots of Fire takes place in 1924 but has a score entirely recorded on synthesizer. No problem.

My problem wasn't that it was modern music, nor was it that it didn't entirely fit. My problem was that it felt like it wasn't supposed to entirely fit. It felt like it was supposed to stick out, so you'd remember the score more than the movie. The composers weren't interested in complementing the movie, they were interested in impressing the audience with their skills and talents and endless cleverness. And that really bugged me.

Nosferatu is a great work and would have been infinitely more effective had we watched it silently, as in truly silent with no sound or music at all. I've watched it that way before. In fact, I've watched a few silent movies that way, actually. I've turned down the music on many a silent film just to watch it in silence. It's a wonderful experience and with the best silent films, can really become hypnotic.

"Wasn't the score ironic?" "Mmm-hmmm." "We should make it our ringtone."

But the point is, the music took center stage, not the movie. Last year, when I saw Upstream at The National Archives, it had a beautifully fitting piano and violin score composed for it. Some found objects were used too for sound effects but they never detracted from the film and Upstream is several rungs down the ladder from Nosferatu, with or without John Ford at the helm. Afterwards, the audience asked questions and one of them was for the pianist composer himself. He was asked what he thought about certain modern "orchestras" musical accompaniment to silent films and he said he admired their talents but they were more concerned with their scores than the movie and when you're scoring a movie, the movie comes first. The audience applauded. This was before my AFI experience (though I wrote it up afterwards in November) so I clapped out of appreciation for the idea rather than because of actual firsthand knowledge. After seeing Nosferatu, I immediately flashed back to that, though, and thought, "Damn straight."

Modern music for an old movie or a period piece is not a problem. It's become kind of a fad in recent years, in fact. The problem is music that doesn't fit the mood, or the point of a scene. It's a problem that happens from time to time with even the best of movies and exploring music in film is something I'd like to do more of here at Cinema Styles. Exploring how it fails can be just as instructive as when it succeeds. For now, I'm content to avoid any modern scoring of silent films for a little while longer until I get the bad taste out of my mouth. Of course, I'll go back to others but I think the AFI's annual Nosferatu showing and me are done. I ignored my instincts and it bit me in the ass. Lesson learned.

Scrolling Movies

2011-04-19T10:17:00.011-04:00

While I was taking a break from writing I did a lot of movie watching, as always, but I also engaged in my newest favorite pastime, scrolling through movies. That's what I call it, at least. When I say, "I'm going to going to go scroll through some movies," what I mean is I'm going to take movies I've already seen, find them on Netflix Instant, and scroll through the thumbnails until I find a scene I want to watch. Like this:

For years, my goal was to have every movie I wanted to see at my fingertips, a goal shared by most cinephiles. First there was cable, which provided a lot more availability of titles but not at one's beck and call. Then came VHS which put the movie in one's hands but the fast forward and rewinding capabilities left much to be desired. Then came DVD which constituted a vast improvement. Now scenes could be "jumped" to but, still, there was the menu screen options, the chapter listings and then having to fast forward to the particular part once you've made it to the chapter. Now, with Netflix Instant, the dream of every cinephile is coming true.

Like most cinephiles, I've watched thousands of movies, thousands. And, like most, I think of them, scenes from them, lines from them, often. But I don't want to grab a stack of DVDs, go to the tv, load them in one by one, wait for the menu to come up, jump to the scene, etc. What I want, and what I now do, is waste (only I don't think it's wasted) hours at my laptop clicking on a movie I love and going to a favorite scene. Or, hell, picking a movie I think is a pile of crap but nevertheless has a few cool moments I'd like to see again. Or just going to the closing credits because there's a piece of music I'd like to hear.

Scrolling movies is dangerous though because it really can take up hours and hours of your time, especially when you realize half the shows from your childhood are now on Instant and you can spend, oh, let's say an hour just watching opening credit sequences from them. Like Mission: Impossible. Each credit sequence shows scenes from the upcoming episode. I watched it as a kid and when I saw it was available on Instant I immediately starting going through the opening sequences. I watched a few episodes in their entirety too but mainly, I focused on the openings.

Streaming movies offer cinephiles the ability to conduct their own film seminars in miniature where a film is dissected frame by frame. The seminar can last hours (sometimes I'll watch a movie, go back when it's done and pull out scene for further examination) or minutes as multiple films are explored. And the thumbnails take all the guesswork out of fast-forwarding or rewinding, allowing the cinephile the ability to stop right at the moment they want to watch.

It can also help reevaluate a movie. Sometimes in watching a moment or two from a film I originally found lackluster, I'll discover it's better than I remembered and end up watching the whole thing. Sometimes, the opposite occurs and I realize the scene wasn't that great and neither is the rest of the movie. It almost acts as a way of keeping up on your studies, so to speak. Rather than let a false memory, good or bad, linger and fester, you can go right to the source and make sure it's how you remembered it.

Now that it's here, there's no going back. I'll continue to scroll and, from time to time, report back on a scene or a moment or a line that led to a rediscovery. The fact is, after several decades of watching movies, I've frankly forgotten a lot of the details of films I saw in the beginning of my love for film and scrolling allows me to refresh my memory, one frame at time.

Télépopmusik: Genetic World

2011-04-19T07:30:00.008-04:00

Musicians often strive for consistency. The great composers of the Classical and Romantic eras created symphonies in which they could explore an idea or theme expressed musically over the course of four movements. Into the twentieth century, American composers such as Aaron Copeland and Duke Ellington created suites like Appalachian Spring and Black, Brown and Beige respectively, to do the same thing in a modern context. Later, jazz greats like Miles Davis put together musically conceptual works like Kind of Blue and the modern pop "concept" album, in which all the songs are of a particular theme or story, came to fruition with Frank Sinatra's Only the Lonely.

Then in the sixties, rock groups got into the act and everyone under the age of 30 assumed they had invented it. Groan.

But sometimes, consistency is rejected in favor of chaotic exploration. This can work if the songs complement each other strongly or it can fall apart magnificently. Depending on who you ask, The Beatles' White Album (actually titled The Beatles) succeeds famously or fails grandly. I think it fails but I think it fails fantastically in a blazing fireball of indulgence. That is to say, I like most of the songs on the double album, though not all, and enjoy listening to them, but piecemeal. I don't think the songs work together as well as they do on, say, Revolver and they aren't meant to thematically work together like Rubber Soul (about as perfect an album as The Beatles ever did) but they do work, sporadically. And most of the time, that's fine as long as the songs that work, work well.

Which brings us to Genetic World, the 2001 album of French electronic trip-hop trio Télépopmusik. Ten years after its release it still relies strongly on one half of the album being decidedly better than the other half. The half that works, the half everyone knows, is the half with Scottish folk singer Angela McCluskey. Her vocal stylings, strongly reminiscent of Billie Holiday, work so well with the electronic ambiance and down-tempos of Fabrice Dumont, Stephan Haeri and Christophe Hetier that you don't want them to end. Sadly, they do.

It's not that the dance music contained within the walls of Genetic World is bad but that it is 1) Jarring when following a beautiful piece of longing like Yesterday was a Lie and 2) doesn't hold up to what precedes it. The music of one doesn't compare or complement the other. It's two albums, packed into ten songs (the international version is more expansive with more songs but less impressive) with each style fighting it out with the other. That can be very interesting at times, like the above mentioned Beatles, with John Lennon and Paul McCartney throwing their two distinct styles against each other on every album, but here, the dance music simply can't hold a candle to McCluskey, who not only sings but cowrites most of her songs. And that means that, frankly, the two different styles playing off of each other is less of an interesting thing and more of an annoyance.

The album begins with the song Breathe, and this song, in fact, became their most famous and successful song and still is. You can listen to it and McCluskey's alluring vocals here. Breathe takes the familiar transcendent/electronica tropes (metronomically repeating notes, programmed bass drum, underlying synth sweep) and, with the addition of McCluskey's vocals, turns it into something decidedly more.

Once this ends the album plunges straight into the title track, a bouncy, percussion driven dance number that sounds fine but completely uninspired. This leads into two more McCluskey pieces, Love Can Damage Your Health and Smile that once again lull the listener into a meditative, serene state before breaking in with Dance Me, another uninspired percussion driven dance track. Again, it's not that Dance Me or Genetic World are all that bad, just average and uninspired, which would be fine if we quickly cut back to McCluskey but this time there's no such luck. We're hit with Da Hoola, Let's Go Again and Trishika, a mix of dance, rap and screaming guitar (but not necessarily in that order and not necessarily as interesting as that combo might sound).

At the end of it all, redemption comes in the form of Yesterday was a Lie, again cowritten by McCluskey and a beautiful piece of music. After this, the album winds down with L'Incertitude D'Heisenberg, a full-on trance/electronica orgasm and the perfect ending to the McCluskey music that preceded it. The other music? It belongs on another album and one I wouldn't rush to buy but for most of Genetic World, electronica and old fashioned vocal stylings combine to beautiful effect.

Cinema Styles, Das Reboot

2011-04-18T13:06:00.006-04:00

Cinema Styles reboots this week. The time-off is done, the R & R from blogging, complete. The reboot will be mild, no major overhaul. I simply want to incorporate more classic television into the mix as well as more music reviews than I've been doing. I cannot pretend to provide even a modicum of the extensive classic television coverage of Ivan Shreve, who knows more about classic tv than anyone I've ever come across, but I shall endeavor to do my best.

I look forward to getting back to updating here regularly, starting tomorrow. See you then.

Intertitles: Aelita: Queen of Mars

2011-04-02T23:27:00.005-04:00

The Kindness of Strangers

2011-03-28T22:00:00.001-04:00

Editor's Note: This piece was originally posted on November 25, 2008.

On October 25th my wife and I took in Strangers on a Train at the AFI Silver in Silver Spring, Maryland. It was a great experience to see it on the big screen for the first time after having seen it so many times on the small screen exclusively. Once again it was a wonderful audience who laughed and gasped at all the right places and once again the film historian introducing it went on a little too long and offered up a little too much elementary interpretation for what we were about to see. But when he asked how many of us had already seen it (it was a sold out show) I was happy to see that you could count on one hand the number of hands that didn't go up. This was an audience of film lovers waiting to see the film again on the big screen, many of us, as stated above, for the very first time.

But the real treat of seeing this showing of Strangers on a Train was the fact that Farley Granger was there and spoke with the audience after the show and signed autographs after that. Sometimes Hollywood stars disappoint in person but this was not one of those times. Granger was entertaining, honest and kind in every way imaginable. When I met him after the show and shook his hand he seemed genuinely friendly. I asked him to sign the program to my wife and he happily obliged. The interview he did on stage with the film historian, whose name I can't remember and who is not listed on the AFI site or the program (maybe he just wandered in off the street), was illuminating and delightful. Granger's bluntly honest response to several questions was refreshing but my favorite was:

Interviewer: "Did Hitchcock discuss the psychological motivations of the character with you before shooting?"

Granger: "No, no. He wasn't big on bullshit."

Granger was so endearing that even when he spoke of his love of the stage over film (something we've all heard from Hollywood stars at one point or another) he sounded like he actually meant it, not like so many stars sound where they think saying that will give them instant credibility. And he discussed his other works as well. Rope he said was a chore. "You do eight minutes and something falls on the set and you gotta do the whole goddamn scene over." And "Jimmy (Stewart) wasn't right for the part and Hitch knew it and Jimmy knew it and Jimmy felt he had to struggle with it. The part is a snooty, elitist professor and Jimmy just doesn't project snooty elitism. Someone like James Mason would've been better suited for the part."

On Nicholas Ray: "He had such a feel for gritty personal films and then he started doing a bunch of glitzy crap. I said, 'Nick what's with all the glitzy crap' and by that point he didn't care what he was making anymore."

On Shelley Winters: "We were at this hotel that had pictures of the stars and she says to the manager, 'You should have my picture up there' and the manager didn't even know who she was and wouldn't put her picture up (Granger laughs). I just told her to shut up about it. She was a great lady to work with but you know, these stars sometimes, they get a little big headed." Amazingly he pulled that last statement off without a hint of irony. He really didn't have that "Star" mentality about him so he could talk about "stars" as if he wasn't one.

And then there was Samuel Goldwyn who he didn't like at all. Goldwyn had demanded Granger pay him all the money on the contract that he had received because Granger wanted to quit working with Goldwyn after Hans Christian Anderson. Granger paid back the money and left. The thing is, aside from relaying those facts, he didn't elaborate any further on what problems he and Goldwyn had and when asked about the book he had written he said he had contacted everyone or their relatives before writing it and told them what he wanted to write. If they objected to anything he left it out. He even called Goldwyn's children and asked if it was okay to recount the stories of the troubles he had with Goldwyn. They said it was okay. Geez louise, what a guy. I don't have the book myself, but I'm told it has the same "blunt honesty without being mean spirited" attitude that came off in the interview. And it mainly concerns his life in the theatre which he enjoyed much more than film.

Of course, for me, the highlight of the interview was when he spoke about Robert Walker during the course of making Strangers on a Train. I've written about Walker here before and prior to that Sheila O'Malley had an excellent write-up on Strangers on a Train so I won't rehash the story of Walker's life or his excellent performance in the film. Rather I'll let Farley Granger have the final word from this video I shot of the interview (I was in the back lower balcony area, the best place to sit at the theatre. The seats back there are bigger, more like recliners, and have tables between them for your refreshments and at least four feet of room before the next seat in front of you or behind you but you have to get there early for those seats - which I always do). In the clip Granger describes the first night he, Hitchcock and Walker got together in Washington, D.C. before the first day of shooting. They went out to dinner downtown before retiring to their rooms at the hotel, at which point Walker started to panic. The rest I'll leave to Granger but from this story I was reminded of how fragile was Robert Walker, and how gracious and sympathetic was Granger. Walker must have sensed that to let himself go in front of him like he did, and Granger didn't let him down. They had just met but Granger treated him like a brother. It's a great story and it was a great experience seeing and meeting Farley Granger. Enjoy the clip.

Elizabeth Taylor, Rest in Peace

2011-03-23T20:22:00.007-04:00

Obituaries:
BBC
New York Times
Remembrances:
Sheila O'Malley
Kim Morgan
Kimberly Lindbergs
Andrew O'Hehir

Countdown to Zero provides exceptionally low-yield

2011-03-21T22:00:00.003-04:00

Any regular reader of Cinema Styles knows that I have watched and read dozens of documentaries and books on the construction, deployment and testing of nuclear weapons. I have reviewed several documentaries and fiction movies on the subject here and my fascination with it goes back to reading a biography of Robert Oppenheimer that belonged to my dad when I was in middle school. I've read several different ones since then as well as all the usual suspects of the history of the bomb's creation: Day One, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Brotherhood of the Bomb, etc. I do strange things sometimes when I'm bored like read essays on surviving a nuclear holocaust or revisiting the details of how the first bombs were made and tested or honing my knowledge of the Teller–Ulam design. I have a great deal of layman's knowledge about this subject and I can thus say with confidence, Countdown to Zero fudges the facts almost from the start. And that's a shame, because its premise is an important subject that should be discussed: the possibility of terrorists getting their hands on nuclear weaponry. Instead, Countdown to Zero is insecure about the facts at hand and goes down the road of yellow journalism fairly quickly.

At only 89 minutes, one would think there wasn't enough time to cram all the information needed into a documentary probing such a subject, and one would be right. Unfortunately, 89 minutes is too much time for Countdown to Zero, which appears to have only around 20 minutes or so of ideas that it is content to repeat endlessly for its hour and a half running time.

Right at the start, scare tactics take precedence over clarity. Now, I realize it's difficult to discuss nuclear destruction without scaring the hell out of the viewer, but the facts are played with fast and loose and quotes are taken out of context to suggest something much more ominous. For instance, inside the first three minutes we are presented with a story about the great Enrico Fermi. Apparently, he looked out over New York from an office building window, cupped his hands to about the size of a tennis ball, and said, "A little bomb like that, and it would all disappear."

Now, anyone having read up on nuclear weaponry would know, without having to be a nuclear physicist, that Fermi was referring to the size of the fissionable material, the enriched uranium (Uranium 235) or plutonium. The bomb itself is necessarily much bigger, containing the casements and the high explosives that surround the core and the timers and on and on. Even a very small nuclear device is going to be too heavy to casually carry around. This may seem like nitpicking but what they are doing at the very start of the documentary is misleading the viewer. The clear impression given is that a terrorist could take a bomb the size of a tennis ball and walk right into the center of Manhattan and blow it up.

And that kind of lazy impression-making wouldn't be so bad if the experts (and, brother, have they got experts! Practically everyone who has ever worked for the CIA, Pentagon or presidential cabinet in the last thirty years is interviewed!) didn't constantly make statements that disproved what they were actually trying to prove. That seems pretty hard to do, but they do it, early and often. Matthew Bunn, Associate Professor at Harvard (no, they don't actually say in what, it's that sloppy) recounts two cases of nuclear theft at about the ten minute mark. He talks about how poorly guarded the nuclear materials are in Russia and mentions two separate cases of men stealing the material to sell it. He talks breathlessly about how they just walked right in to the old shipyards, broke padlocks and took the materials and no one noticed. He says that. He says the words, "No one noticed." He even quotes the prosecutor in the latter case who said, "Potatoes were guarded better."

Wait, the prosecutor?

Yes, see, they were caught, tried and convicted. See how that worked? Professor Bunn says "no one noticed" but, well, I guess somebody did because they're both in prison now. That is, in fact, the only way Professor Bunn knows of their existence, because they were caught. They even interviewed the nuclear thief, in prison. Then the professor tells us he was caught by accident (arrested with his friends who were also stealing car batteries) and that every time they catch someone with materials, they didn't know the materials were missing until they caught the person. But the point that is ignored, is that they keep catching them. They mention at least six more cases. That's a lot of accidental arrests.

Then they spend a lot of time talking up how casually one can smuggle enriched uranium or plutonium into the country. And yes, it is easy to do, in theory. It's tempting to say this part of the documentary is irresponsible but the fact is, anyone who has access to a computer and certainly anyone who's actually trying to obtain fissionable material can find very quickly and easily what materials will hide the nuclear signature of fissionable material. This section is mainly filler and provides more scare tactics, complete with animations showing how easily the material could be hidden aboard container ships.

The doc then moves on to accidental destruction and, again, the experts make curious statements. We are told of the myriad of nuclear accidents that have happened over the decades, and yes there have been many, and we are told that the problem is that there are too many redundant safety systems. The more complicated a system, we are reminded, the more likely it is to fail. This is true but that's not the same thing as redundant safety systems and yet they refer to them as though they are interchangeable. In other words, a nuclear device is very complicated which means it could fail. Safety systems that are simple are put in place to prevent this. Since they could fail too, they put in several. That is why, despite accidental h-bomb drops over Florence, South Carolina and Goldsboro, North Carolina, plane crashes with h-bombs in Greenland and dozens of lost planes with bombs and explosions of planes with bombs, not one has ever blown up. Not one. We are reminded, however, that in this case or that case, only one safety system stood between the bomb and nuclear holocaust. True, but that's why the safety systems are redundant, and why they've worked. The fact that the expert can remind us "only one" safety system worked indicates that the system did indeed work.

One thing the doc hammers home, and this is quoted early on, is that the hardest part of building an atomic bomb is getting the fissionable material. Once you do that, building it is easy. Well, no. Entire countries working with every possible scientific advantage have failed to do so. One can assemble all the parts from easily available materials, which a panel before congress did a few years ago to show it could be done (the doc shows this). But getting all of it to work, perfectly; the timers, the high-explosives, the lenses, all of it, is no easy task. Conventional bomb makers blow themselves up working with gunpowder. Working with the complications of putting together an atomic bomb is a whole other matter.

What we're left with at the end of all this is lots of graphics showing aerial views of cities like New York, London and Paris with rings of destructive range rising up from them to let the viewer know how much of the city would be destroyed. They even describe the level of destruction that would come to New York City if a bomb went off but don't reveal what size bomb they're talking about. It is assumed they are describing a bomb made by a terrorist but the destruction they reveal clearly indicates a large hydrogen bomb, not a smaller fission bomb like the kind a terrorist would actually have. Then, Nuclear Arms Analyst Jeffrey Lewis describes how utterly complicated would be the efforts of terrorists building the bomb, tallying up millions of dollars, dozens of different experts in different fields and problem-free locations to do it all (because who's going to notice 100 or so people working on a large-scale project requiring $50,000 furnaces and used artillery cannons, right?) and calls it simple! Why, it'd be the easiest thing in the world for them to do it. "It's not rocket science," he says, "that's actually hard." Good grief.

Finally, Countdown to Zero comes to a close by calling the viewers to activism by... wait for it... going to a website. Yes, a "Demand Zero" website where you can sign petitions and donate money and somehow stop nuclear weapons from being built. I do believe it is towards a noble goal if, one day, all countries of the world can agree to never produce nuclear weapons again. But, seriously, a website? I guarantee you no president of the United States, or congress, or Prime Minister of Britain or Pakistan or any terrorist leader really gives a rat's ass if you go to "Demand Zero" and sign a petition. I'm not ridiculing the activism, I'm ridiculing the almost invisible scale of it. This isn't an ill-advised war that protests can hope to change through influencing policy making or elections. This is nuclear arming and, frankly, that isn't something decided by the wave of public opinion. Where and when and how often they're tested? Yes. Whether we have them? No. That's not going to change until we're sure no one will ever build another one and that's something we can never be sure of so don't look for nuclear disarmament any time soon.

Until then, the threat of nuclear terrorism is something that should be seriously considered and discussed in serious terms. Countdown to Zero, unfortunately, isn't the place to go for such a serious discussion. It's too bad. A documentary on this subject is welcome but Countdown to Zero is only interested in cool graphics, alarmist out of context quotes and strange contradictions that keep it from ever truly standing on solid ground. Countdown to Zero is a missed opportunity but aptly titled: By the end, the reductive "insights" have left us with nothing. Absolute zero.

The Deer Hunter Redux A Look at the Film and the Controversy

2011-03-14T23:00:00.006-04:00

I watched The Deer Hunter again recently for the first time in over 25 years. My memory of the film was shaky but I did have a strong recollection of not much caring for it the first two times around (having seen it twice in its entirety by the mid-eighties). I also recalled the controversy surrounding it and wondered if the recollection of any of that might be peppering my memory. I decided to give it another look, 25 years later, to see what it would feel like, decades removed from any controversy over the content of the film or the war in Vietnam itself. The experience was an interesting one, if not least of all for the fact that it has much to admire within its frames and much to deride. Suffice it to say, The Deer Hunter makes for a very conflicted viewing experience, giving the viewer plenty of time to process information about its characters but giving up precious few secrets about them on which to base that processing.

The film focuses on a group of friends in Clairton, PA during the height of American involvement in Vietnam. As the film opens we meet three friends who will travel to Vietnam together, Mike (Robert De Niro), Nick (Christopher Walken) and Steven (John Savage) and their buddies Stan (John Cazale), Axel (Chuck Aspegren, real life foreman of the steel mill used in the film) and John (George Dzundza). Steven is getting married to a woman pregnant by another man, Nick is in love(?) with Linda (Meryl Streep) and Mike is on his own.

As the film opens we see the three friends saying their goodbyes to coworkers as they will be leaving for duty in Vietnam after the wedding and a hunting trip. The wedding and hunting trip comprise the first third of the movie (the movie has a neatly partitioned three-act story) and it's here that the film's own storytelling conflicts reveal themselves.

The director, Michael Cimino, was coming off of his only directorial effort, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, when he took on The Deer Hunter, a story he had co-developed for a couple of years. It's hard to say anything about one movie influencing or instructing upon the other since they are so very different but it seems that Cimino combined some of the basic camaraderie elements of Thunderbolt... with the meandering mise en scène of Robert Altman to mixed effect.

That mixed effect is the result of clashing styles, something from which Altman never suffered. For instance, in the opening fifteen minutes the audience is treated to several wandering scenes of the friends saying goodbyes, joking around, drinking beers and talking about anything but how vastly different their lives will soon be. None of it is done in close-up, no one line is given any special attention and all of it feels like documentary-style eavesdropping. In the middle of this is a stilted belabored scene, mercifully brief, of the old world (Russia) mother of Steven delivering this awful piece of exposition to the priest:

"I still do not believe this. My own boy with a strange girl and not so thin, if you understand my meaning...The next thing you know, he goes to Vietnam...I do not understand, Father. I understand nothing anymore, nothing...Can you explain? Can anyone explain?"

The scene is less than a minute but it's a minute so awful and ill-fitting it lingers beyond its screen time. This example is the first instance of something that will happen throughout the movie: Long, fascinating Altmanesque sequences in which we voyeuristically gaze upon the characters weaving in and out of their own lives abruptly interrupted by obviously scripted moments. A well written movie never seems scripted. When it does, it's hard to recover. The Deer Hunter does recover, however, and for most of the first act, the Altman style dominates and renders the more obviously scripted moments bearable. But the clashing styles isn't the only problem to be overcome. The other is the clearly labeled metaphors. I must be honest right now in the interest of full disclosure: When a movie starts speaking in metaphors, it can lose me pretty fast.

While it's true that many films, and much great art, deal in metaphor, the fact is The Deer Hunter wields its metaphors in such a paint-by-the-numbers style that even the most obtuse viewer should be able to match the right colors to the right numbers every time. Most viewers would probably surmise on their own that the deer hunting rituals of Mike were religious to him without having a chorus singing Orthodox hymns behind the action. And the chorus starts right when Mike spots the deer and begins his pursuit. The Deer Hunter doesn't miss an opportunity to point out what it's doing whenever it can. This happens in the wedding sequences as well when, in the middle of several minutes (the sequence is roughly 25 minutes long) of Altmanesque perusing, our heroes happen upon a Green Beret at the bar where another obviously scripted sequence takes place to let the viewer know that the macho dreams of Mike, Nick and Steven are but puffs of smoke. It's handled well enough, much more so than the earlier mother scene, but is unnecessary. In fact, it's completely unnecessary, so much so that the viewer feels a bit insulted that the scene is even happening.

After the wedding and hunting sequences the gang heads back to town, goes to John's bar, drinks some beer, listens to John play a longing piece on the piano as the distant sounds of a helicopter come over the soundtrack until we are burst into Vietnam, and the second act.

It is the Vietnam section of the film that caused the original controversies swirling around the film and contains its most famous scenes. But the scenes caused controversy for a wide variety of reasons, some valid, others less so. In Vietnam, Mike, Nick and Steven meet up, somehow, as a village is being bombed. Something happens (it's not clear what but vaguely looks like advancing Vietcong troops) and in the very next scene they are prisoners of war, held in a bamboo cage along the river. Here, they are forced to play Russian roulette for the amusement of their Vietcong captors. Steven is clearly suffering a mental break from all of it while Mike and Nick try to figure out what to do. Steven and Mike are pitted against each other and Steven gets the bullet in the chamber but the gun slips and he only grazes the top of his head. Both are returned to the cage and Mike tells Nick that the two of them will play next and he will get them out by demanding more bullets in the chamber, which he does and they do.

This is probably the single most famous scene in the whole film and one that worked exceedingly well for me as a young teenager taking in the horrifying, gritty brutality of it all. Seeing it again 25 years later the scene wasn't as nearly as gripping as I had remembered. Oh, it's done well and is quite gripping at times but not for the reasons I remembered. What stood out for me this time was not the actual scenes of Russian roulette but the scenes of Steven gasping for air in a state of shock every time he hears the revolver's hammer come down. John Savage is so extraordinary in the scene that it's baffling how he escaped nomination for his performance. Christopher Walken won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor that year for his performance as Nick, and while he is excellent, I felt John Savage did something quite amazing with his very small part.

Later in the second act, after their escape, Nick is separated from Mike and Steven who make their way back home, although Steven loses his legs and won't leave the Veteran's hospital in Pittsburgh. Nick is lured in by a French man, a remnant of Vietnam's colonial period, who promises him riches playing Russian roulette. He never returns home.

The third act finds Mike back home, dealing with the loss of Nick and heartbreak of Steven. He turns to Linda for solace and the two form a bond as a means of keeping Nick alive between them. The third act has some good moments, particularly with the weaselly Stan getting his comeuppance by an angry Mike, sick of Stan's bullshit bravado in the face of what he's experienced. John Cazale, once again and for the last time in his acting career, excels at the role and reminds us how much the cinema lost when John Cazale succumbed to cancer at the all too young age of 42. The third act stumbles when Mike decides to go back for Nick as Saigon falls. Here, and for inexplicable reasons, Cimino inserts stock footage from the fall into the actual footage he's shot. It's inexplicable because the actual footage shot by Cimino is amazing and jarringly disrupted by news footage so far from visually matching the film's footage as to be almost comical.

To add to the faults of the third act, Mike's visit to find Nick is too pat. It's so easy and happens so quickly the viewer cannot help but ask, "Why didn't he just do this before he left?" That's a valid question because before he leaves Vietnam the first time he sees Nick and it's clear that Nick is unresponsive to him and going awol. And yet, nothing happens. Nonetheless, Mike does go back, finds him easily and challenges him to a game of Russian roulette, where Nick has been playing professionally for six years without getting a bullet in the chamber once. The viewer would be a fool to bet against that happening now that Mike has shown up.

And, of course, it does happen. It happens just as there is some sign that Nick might realize who Mike is. Afterwards, Mike returns home with his body, we watch the funeral and at John's bar, everyone joins in an impromptu singing of God Bless America as the film closes.

What surprised me more than anything this time around was how unmoving was the ending. The character of Nick is so removed from the film by the time we witness his suicide that he seems little different than any of the extras we have watched shoot themselves. Now, I don't know, however, if that is a fault of the film or not. Here's what I mean: When we see Nick wander off with the French man late in the second act we already know he's gone so by the time we see him again, we've adjusted to the loss. Imagine losing a friend at the height of your friendship with them. It would be devastating. Now imagine that same friendship, only this time you gradually grow apart, move apart, lose contact and then, years later learn of their death. The blow is now considerably cushioned and easier to take. And I think, or at least believe it's possible, that that's the intention of the film. If we view Nick as the POW/MIA, we see him as a loss already accounted for. When he physically dies, it's more of a relief than anything else.

The Deer Hunter has conflicts in its storytelling styles but in one area, cinematography, it excels from the first frame to the last. It was photographed by Vilmos Zsigmond and it's a beautiful piece of work. Zsigmond has the task of doing intimate interiors (the bar, Linda's trailer), claustrophobic interiors (the bamboo cage, the Russian roulette den), menacing exteriors (the journey up the river, the shots of the refugees fleeing), gorgeous exteriors (the mountains of Pennsylvania), expansive interiors (the Cathedral wedding) and even both interior and exteriors at once (the car scenes in the mountains). The fact that a single cinematographer handled that many different settings with the absolute majesty that Zsigmond achieves is an extraordinary feat, and while I realize it is cinematic blasphemy to write the words I am about to write, I think it deserved the Oscar more (just a tiny bit more) than the also extraordinary work of Néstor Almendros for Days of Heaven, which did win.

Another area of supreme achievement for The Deer Hunter is in its performances. There's not a bad one in the lot, with even one-time actor Chuck Aspegren doing a fine job with his limited role. While De Niro certainly deserved his nomination for Best Actor, its a film of supporting performances and picking just one, Christopher Walken, from the group left a lot of fine work unrecognized. There's the aforementioned John Savage, about as good as he's ever been, and John Cazale, also doing great work and Meryl Streep, unfamiliar to most audiences at the time, turning in an excellent performance as Linda. But George Dzundza, an actor everyone knows but far too few appreciate, turns in a performance at least the equal of everyone involved. In fact, it's his performance that extracts the most emotion as his character seems to wear his feelings on his sleeve. When he silently breaks down in the kitchen of his bar in the final scene, it has a power most of the finale is lacking.

Finally, the music is superb. Stanley Myers' beautiful composition Cavatina is played evocatively by guitarist John Williams and used throughout the film to great effect.

Despite these good points, in the end, The Deer Hunter is hopelessly conflicted with how it wants to tell its story. It wants Robert Altman's stream of consciousness but also the formal drama of an old-school Hollywood war film. It wants gritty realism but infuses it with obvious metaphor and wooden exposition. Intentionally or not, it ends up as conflicted as the war itself. It's not a bad experience, though. I walked away from my fresh viewing with an appreciation for Cimino and Zsigmond's gift for framing and enjoyed that fact that movie did not attempt to answer any questions the world might have about Vietnam but asked a few for the characters, and made sure they were questions they couldn't answer. I'd have to say my experience was a good one but not as good as I'd hoped.

But that's my opinion of the film as it is, as a story separate from our actual experiences with Vietnam. The film's message, or construed one as it may be, was the focus of intense controversy at the time of its release, one that got to the heart of much of the debate about America's involvement in Vietnam. I made it a point, after deciding to watch the film again, to read not a word about the controversy until after I viewed it. I remembered some things, like Jane Fonda and husband Tom Hayden yelling, "The Deer Hunter is a lie!" at the Oscars, but not much else. When I finished processing the movie I started to read up on the criticisms, most of them having to do with the Vietnam sequences. As I said earlier, some seem valid, others less so.

The primary criticism was that the portrayal of the Viet Cong captors, as well as the Vietnamese roulette gamblers, was racist and one-sided. The secondary criticism, and one that you'll find repeated in one review after another, was that there was no documentation of Russian roulette ever being forced on POWs. The secondary criticism goes hand in hand with the first. That is, by inventing such a cruel device to portray the captors and free-market gamblers of Vietnam, they are caricatured as animals beyond redemption. The implication seems to be that there was plenty of horrific behavior on the part of the Viet Cong to show without having to make something up. One need but read up on the activities at the Hoa Lo Prison (The Hanoi Hilton) to know this to be true. So by devising the roulette game, the film was able to implicate both the North and the South Vietnamese in the cruelty, since both seem intoxicated by it.

In his defense of this criticism, on the commentary soundtrack of the DVD, Cimino states that the film is surrealistic and not intended to be "about Vietnam" any more than Apocalypse Now was or The Bridge on the River Kwai was about World War II. It is, he says, entirely fictional and the captors and citizen gamblers are but metaphors for a bigger picture (well, obviously - everything's a metaphor in the movie).

I buy into Cimino's view more. The film is, as stated several times so far up to and including the preceding sentence, clearly metaphorical. While it employs realism in its scenes it is not meant to be taken as a literal portrayal of events in Vietnam, at least not to my eyes. This is, you will recall, one of my problems with the film, the fact that it can't stick with the voyeuristic realism long enough to forget all the metaphor and allegory. The fact that this is a problem for me also means, by definition, that I don't believe Cimino is trying to bullshit his way out of this because it is all so clearly surrealistic. There are far too many contrived situations in this film (not least among them the fact that three friends from the same town all somehow end up in the same bamboo cage half a world away) to take is seriously as intentionally realistic and not metaphorically stylistic.

Of course, the criticism goes, one can be metaphorical and still include some decent Vietnamese characters. That's true as well but if they are not important to the story I'm not sure where to put them. In Brian De Palma's Casualties of War, the focus is on the crime committed by United States soldiers in Vietnam and the one soldier who stands up to them. It is necessary to the story to show the sole important Vietnamese character, that of the abducted raped captive, as humanistic and victimized. This does not mean De Palma was racist in his portrayal of American soldiers and glorifying in his portrayal of Vietnamese women as suffering angels. No, it meant he was showing the characters he needed to show to tell his story the way he needed to tell it.

Still, one does chafe at the gambling scenes in the village where Christopher Walken becomes a roulette star. The idea of people betting on other people like so many spins of a roulette wheel seems hard to take or, at least, hard to fathom that kind of inhuman cruelty for the sake of gambling. Not only that, but how soon is your business going to end? I mean, how many possible people can you drug up enough, and fast enough, to keep a lucrative suicide game going? Business-wise, it's idiotic and nonsensical.

So where does that leave us? Well, several decades removed from the original controversy, it's hard to see what all the fuss was about. Eight years later, Oliver Stone took metaphorical/allegorical Vietnam storytelling to ridiculous heights with his badly dated Platoon. With its simple-minded moralizing (Old America: Bad. New America: Good.) and laughably one-dimensional symbolic stand-ins for characters, it's hard to believe it didn't get raked over the coals far worse than The Deer Hunter ever was. But by 1986 America had already forgotten the Vietnamese anyway (they're not even a minor subplot in Platoon) and was focused on how hard it was for all of us so Platoon was aces in their book.

The Deer Hunter had to happen when it did. While there were other Vietnam movies that very year, and the year before, including The Boys in Company C, Go Tell the Spartans and Coming Home, America needed a mad, grand over-the-top opera like The Deer Hunter to get the conversation rolling. It may not be the best Vietnam movie out there (is there, in fact, a best one?) but its place as the one that really got Hollywood finally opening up to the idea of examining Vietnam, something The Green Berets failed to do nine years earlier, is an honored place and there are a lot worse movies that could hold it. That's pretty faint praise, admittedly, but it's sincere. And with all its faults, so is The Deer Hunter.