Movies posts

Interesting back-and-forth (at least as interesting as Twitter allows) between James Marsh and Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells on Monica Vitti's character in “L'Avventura.” Marsh began it this way:

If ever a character could put you off women for life it's Monica Vitti in L'AVVENTURA: needy, insecure, tedious & paranoid right from day 1.

— James Marsh (@Marshy00) May 11, 2013

Wells still finds her alluring, which is partly why he's watched the movie six or seven times. I'm with Wells here, despite having watched it only once.

But Marsh raises an interesting question. If ever a character in a movie could put you off women for life, which would it be?

For a long time, my answer was Norma Desmond in “Sunset Blvd.” I got major creeps after watching that movie. I don't think I wanted to be with a woman for a week after that. Or a night anyway. (I was young.)

Then about 10 years ago I saw “The Blue Angel,” with Lola Lola ruining the distinguished life of Prof. Immanuel Rath (Emil Jannings); reducing him to a clown, an ass, a rooster. I know it's Dietrich, and Dietrich is so sexy, but that makes it worse. You understand why the good professor winds up on the path he winds up on. The road to losing all dignity and self-worth. The road to cock-a-doodle-doo.

Yours? Feel free to shift the question as to gender and gender preference.

The good professor, before the cock-a-doodle-doo.

The Film Stage posted the following “Fargo in a Word Cloud” on Twitter the other day:

Glad I made the cut. (Center, about sixth row from top.)

And don't forget where the Jerry Lundegaard name came from.

Once you see something it's easy to see it, and it's tough to forget how hard it was to see it in the first place.

I thought my “Find the Future Movie Star” post was easy, for example, because, once I knew, my eyes always went right to this kid, and he looked a lot like his future movie-star self.

But I linked to the post via Facebook and immediately got the following guesses:

• Jack Nicholson, bottom row
• Jimmy Stewart, middle?
• James Cagney, first row, third from left
• Marilyn Monroe, somewhere
• Clint Eastwood, front row, third from left
• Jack Nicholson, second row, far right
• Clark Gable, back row, first on left
• Spencer Tracy, third row middle
• John Wayne? Up towards the top? Blondie?
• Got it. Paul Newman.
• Gary Cooper, top left for the block

Eventually Sasha Stone of Awards Daily got it. It's Gregory Peck. (Click on pic for bigger version.)

Sasha guessed wrong several times, too, but once she saw it she really saw it. “He looks the same!!” she wrote. My friend Colleen added, “Lots of little boys scowling, but not Peck!” Peck's good boy, I guess.

It is startling. Everyone around him looks like one of the dead-end kids, and there he is in the back row, about the handsomest second-grader ever.

This is a second-grade class photo of a family friend. One of his classmates became one of the biggest movie stars of the 20th century. Can you find him? Click on the photo for a bigger version.

Via Jeffrey Wells, I came across this post, called “39 Facts About Terrence Malick,” on Brett McCracken's site The Search, so named for a Walker Percy quote.

All 39 facts, written when “The Tree of Life” was in theaters, are interesting, particularly to Malick fans I suppose (Malick interviewed Che Guevara?), but for those confused by, or disappointed in, “To the Wonder,” these facts are helpful:

• During his “sabbatical,” home base was an apartment in Paris and later two apartments (one for living, one for writing) in a prefabricated building in Austin, Texas.
• In the early 80s, Malick fell in love with Michèle, a Parisienne who lived in his same building in Paris and had a daughter, Alex. After a few years the three of them moved to Austin, Texas
• Malick married Michèle in 1985, but they divorced in 1998.
• Malick married Alexandra “Ecky” Wallace in 1998 (his rumored high school sweetheart from his days at St. Stephen’s). They are still married and currently reside in Austin, Texas.

So Michele is Marina (Olga Kurylenko) and Alexandra is Jane (Rachel McAdams). My review of “To the Wonder” will be up later.

The most interesting fact on McCracken's list?

• Zoolander is one of Malick’s all time favorite films.

I don't know whether to be disappointed or monumentally impressed.

Neil and Jane or Terrence and Alexandra?

I saw Pablo Larrain's movie “No” Saturday afternoon. It was humorous and yet disquieting in a way I couldn't put my finger on. Its hero, René, played by Gael Garcia Bernal, was basically selling pablum and we were cheering him on to do so. He achieved a greater good in doing so. Patricia and I spoke about it during coffee afterwards.

But it wasn't until the next day, writing my review, that I wrote to a place where I realized this may have been the point. René believed in Hollywood endings but he was in an arthouse movie. In a sense, he wouldn't approve of the movie he was in—with its boxy aspect ratio and old-school, unflattering video format. The movie was about a group of people who said “No” to a dictator, which was a great event, a furthering of democracy; but the way they got there, through the cold machinations of an ad man appealing to the lowest-common denominator, indicated the direction democracy would go. We would wind up where we are. To use the Neil Postman paradigm, Chile overthrew “1984” to wind up in “Brave New World.” The people said “No” to Pinochet but they can't say “No” to René.

For a second I thought, “How brilliant.”

A second later, I thought, “How sad.” For Larrain. For filmmakers. They spend years on something that most people consume in hours and quickly forget. If I hadn't written my review, I would've thought “No” was simply a good, funny movie about the '88 election. I might have said there was something disquieting about it but I couldn't have told you why. Because I only would have spent two hours and change on it.

A novelist may spend years on a book, sure, but it takes most people days, or weeks, to consume that book. And in that time they're in the novelist's world. They're immersed in it. They have time to think on it. It's an entirely different experience. One that generally doesn't involve other people munching popcorn and checking their cellphones.

That must be tough for filmmakers. Their medium defies analysis for the mass. It leads to the ascendancy of people like René.

On the other hand, it's easier to rewatch a movie than it is to reread a book.

Road to democracy or road to nowhere?

For the past few weeks, Patricia and I have been watching all 13 episodes of Netflix's new show, “House of Cards,” in which Kevin Spacey's character, Rep. Frank Underwood (D-SC), keeps breaking the fourth wall, a la Richard III, to tell us his inner thoughts and potential schemes and means to power. It's fun, and Spacey does it impeccably.

I mentioned this at work the other day and one of my colleagues brought up a new YouTube video that compiles great fourth-wall breakers, from, yes, Richard III, to  Alvy Singer to Superman:

Not sure why they began the way they began. With a literal breaking of a wall? The “Blazing Saddles” stuff is less fourth-wall-breaking and more self-referential, isn't it? The James Bond, too, is post-modern/meta. I would've begun with Rob Gordon in “High Fidelity.” He gives you your structure.

Plus there's a whole lot more Groucho they could've done.

But the “Sweet Transvestite” number—Dr. Frankenfurter leading to Belushi to Damien to Norman Bates—is inspired.

Is fourth-wall breaking better for comedy and horror? To make us laugh or scare us? Seems to.

What's your favorite example? How would you rank them? I might put Norman Bates No. 1: When the voyeur, being watched (by us), watches back; when he reclaims that power.

Missing scenes? Off the top of my head, and besides Groucho, I'd go with Eddie Murphy in “Trading Places”: “... pork bellies, which is used to make bacon, which you might find in a bacon and lettuce and tomato sandwich.” Then the look.

Timothy Egan has a piece on The New York Times site critiquing Kathryn Bigelow's “Zero Dark Thirty,” and Jeff Wells, a movie blogger and fan of the film, rather than responding himself, gets someone close to the project to respond. Must be nice.

It's not a bad response. It's certainly better than the official responses from Boal and Bigelow over the past months. Among other things, he/she says this:

By the way, we showed plenty of false starts. We portray the first eight years of the hunt as being wasteful because the name [of the courier] was in the files the entire time.

I've heard this defense several times now. My question: Why would Maya have been searching for the name of the courier, Abu Ahmed, if she hadn't already gotten it from Ammar after he'd been tortured for two years?

Here are the relevant lines of dialogue from the script; the moment Abu Ahmed's name first appears. It's when Ammar is enjoying a picnic lunch with Dan and Maya outside.

AMMAR: I wanted to kill Americans. We tried to get into Tora Bora but the bombing was too high. We couldn't cross.
MAYA: Sorry, who is the “we” in that sentence?
AMMAR: Me and some guys who were hanging around at that time.
DANIEL (casually): I can eat with some other dude and hook you back up to the ceiling?
AMMAR: Hamza Rabia, Khabab al-Masri, and Abu Ahmed.

(Maya makes notes on her pad.)

MAYA: Who's Abu Ahmed? I've heard of the other guys.
AMMAR: He was a computer guy with us at the time. After Tora Bora, I went back to Pesh - as you know - and he went North, I think, to Kunar.

This is why Maya began to search for Abu Ahmed. Because Ammar mentions him after two years of torture. He mentions him after being threatened with torture again. The fact that his name is in a file is as irrelevant as the fact that the Ark of the Covenant is boarded up in a government warehouse at the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Bureaucratic files are where names go to disappear forever.

So if Ammar had never been tortured, Maya never would've been searching for Abu Ahmed, who never would have led us to Abottabad and Osama bin Laden.

So why isn't the above defense of the film's at-best ambiguous dramatization on the efficacy of torture a bullshit defense?

“Who's Abu Ahmed? I've heard of the other guys.”

This is from my January 1, 2013 review of Quentin Tantino's “Django Unchained”:

What is the next historic horror Quentin Tarantino will turn into a spaghetti-western-style revenge fantasy? ... History is nothing but groups of people being fucked over while the movies are all about wish-fulfillment fantasy. So why not meld the two? The Bible is full of revenge fantasies as well. Maybe that’s the next direction? “Quentin Tarantino’s The Bible.” That’s a title he’d dig. He’d dig it the most, baby.

And this is what “Saturday Night Live” came up with last week when Christoph Waltz hosted.

It's not bad. I like the line: “The H is silent.” It's a good Brad-Pitt-in-“Basterds” imitation. But it never lives up to the premise. It just melds the story of the Prince of Peace with Tarantino's violence. We're supposed to laugh at what we already know. We're supposed to laugh with recognition at the familiar bits rather than with surprise.

I think “less violent” takes a hyphen, too.

For Washington and Lincoln it was a silent short (“Washington Under the British Flag” and “His First Commission,” respectively). For Grover Cleveland, it was a James Cagney/Humphrey Bogart western (“The Oklahoma Kid”). JFK got an episode of a forgotten TV show, “Navy Log,” LBJ got “Batman: The Movie,” and FDR, believe it or not, got the Three Stooges.

These are the first moments our presidents have been portrayed on screen. Per IMDb.com.

Some surprising revelations. Herbert Hoover (1929-33) was never portrayed on screen until 1979's “Backstairs at the White House,” a mini-series appearing to combine “Upstairs Downstairs” and “Roots.” James Buchanan (1957-61), meanwhile, has only been portrayed once, as voicework by David Gergen in the 2000 PBS documentary “The American President.” At least he had John Updike watching his back.

More recent presidents, of course, are first spoofed on television, generally “Saturday Night Live,” which has given us our first screen portraits of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. The British series “Spitting Image” beat them to George H.W. Bush, while “The 1/2 News Hour” beat them to Barack Obama.

Speaking of the Bushes: IMDb.com needs to fix its algorithms or something, since it includes obvious H.W. characters (a 1990 “Golden Girls” episode, voiced by Harry Shearer, for example) under W.'s character page. The site also includes the “Richard Nixon” thug in Godard's “Made in U.S.A.” on Nixon's character page. I've tried to adjust the numbers accordingly but take these numbers with a grain of salt. Treat them, in other words, as campaign promises.

Here are our 44 presidents in presidential order:

  And here they are as ranked by how often they've been portrayed on screen:

No one's messing with Lincoln, not even Washington. As for James Buchanan, well, at least he was fodder for John Updike in “Memories of the Ford Administration,” from which this quote, appropos, is taken:

History buries most men, and then exaggerates the height of those left standing.

There's a book in here somewhere.

FDR: “As for you gentlemen, I find it possible to extend to you exective clemency.” Curly: “No, please not that.”

This article was originally published, in slightly different form, on MSNBC.com, in 2006—when the last “Die Hard” sequel was released.

Its star was a TV actor unable to parlay his small-screen moment (“Moonlighting”) into big-screen success. Its villain was unknown this side of the Atlantic. One of its writers had done mostly TV (“Lucan,” “Knight Rider”), while the other had no credits to his name. Its source material was a novel, a sequel actually, about an aging detective named Joe Leland visiting his daughter and grandchildren in L.A. It was called “Nothing Lasts Forever” but the filmmakers decided to change the title to something punchier and punnier.

They called it “Die Hard.”

Released in July 1988, it made more than $80 million and spawned an entire sub-genre of movies: “Die Hard” on a boat (“Under Siege”), “Die Hard” on a plane (“Passenger 57”), “Die Hard” on the president’s plane (“Air Force One”). Basically: a group of bad guys take over a small enclosed space, and one good guy, who’s there more or less by accident, tries to stop them.

So what is it about that first “Die Hard” anyway? Why did it work? Why has it become legendary?

Shoeless John
For starters, the grandfather-detective named Joe Leland morphed into a father-cop named John McClane. Everyone can get behind a cop.

He’s about as “regular guy” as you can get. He rides in the front of the limo. He checks out centerfolds while running for his life. He likes Roy Rogers. Hell, he’s the kind of guy who would like “Die Hard.” One wonders if that isn’t a key to success: Would your lead character like the movie he’s in?

They gave him vulnerabilities. He’s tough, but afraid to fly. He smokes, but carries around a giant teddy bear for his kids. Best of all: They take away his shoes. That’s smart. When the shooting starts, he’s still busy in the plush 30th-floor bathroom making “fists with his toes,” as his airplane seat-mate suggested he do to overcome anxiety, and he doesn’t get them back for the rest of the film. It’s a small thing that adds up to a large thing. I remember cringing in the theater when he has to pluck glass shards from the bottom of his bloody feet.

Then they take this one regular guy (without shoes) and stick him between two groups. “Two groups?” you ask. Yes, two groups.

The first group is, of course, a super-efficient international team of terrorists, led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), who was recently voted the 46th greatest villain of all time by the American Film Institute.

These guys are creepy, less because of the glowering silent types like Alexander Gudonov’s Karl and more because of the ones who whistle while they work, such as Clarence Gilyard, Jr.’s Theo, who helped spawn a generation of onscreen black computer hackers. “Oh my god, the quarterback is toast!” he shouts enthusiastically as the cops’ RV is decimated by a rocket launcher. You seriously want to deck the dude.

The smartest guy in the room is always Hans. “You want money?” Takagi asks incredulously. “What kind of terrorists are you?” “Who said we were terrorists?” Hans responds. When McClane shows up with his HO HO HO message, Hans knows he’s no security guard. Captured, he fakes an American accent and manners. He knows the FBI playbook. He has a classical (read: European) education and fancy (read: European) suits and waxes eloquent on a bankrupt American culture. All of which makes him a perfect foil for McClane and his pop cultural references. “Ehh! Sorry Hans, wrong guess. Would you like to go for Double Jeopardy where the scores can really change?” It’s the wise-ass in the back row making fun of the uptight teacher. Yippee-ki-yay, indeed.

The Greatest American Heroes
One can argue that this wise-ass is actually an amalgamation of three of the most quintessential heroes in American cinema. Numbers 4, 5, and 7 on the AFI list of 50 greatest heroes, to be exact.

No. 5 is Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) in “High Noon.” Most of our cinematic heroes are lone gunmen, and Kane is the epitome. He’s the guy trapped between two groups: Frank Miller and his gang, who want revenge on Kane, and the townspeople too cowardly to help. Which is why he’s out there by himself.

Why is John McClane out there by himself? Because he’s trapped between the terrorists who want to kill him, and the townspeople too stupid to help.

Seriously, how many incompetent people are involved in L.A. policework? When McClane finally gets through on an emergency reserve channel, the women on the other end chastise him for using the channel in the first place. Even after they hear gunfire they send only one black-and-white to investigate. Once the cops show up, they blame McClane. Once the FBI shows up they play right into the villains’ hands.

They’re supermacho. They rush in where McClane fears to tread. “An A-7 scenario,” say the FBI Johnsons, misreading the situation. “Kick ass,” says Deputy Police Chief Dwayne Robinson before disaster strikes. “Sprechen sie talk?” says Ellis before getting shot in the head. All of these guys think they’re heroes. They think they can save the situation.

The beauty of John McClane is that he doesn’t. In this sense he’s reminiscent of No. 4 on the AFI list: Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) in “Casablanca.” There’s a great isolationist streak in the American psyche and Rick epitomizes it. “I stick my neck out for nobody,” Rick says famously. Then the world goes to hell and he has to get involved.

Ditto McClane. If Hans just opens the front door, he’ll leave. The L.A. cops tell him to lie low and he’s more than willing. But things keep going wrong. The bad guys are superefficient and everyone else is superincompetent, and there he is, stuck in the middle with a machine gun. Plus Holly, his wife, is down there. Even if she won’t take his name.

So how does this one regular guy without shoes beat 12 superefficient terrorists when he doesn’t want to be there and none of the townspeople are smart enough to help him? He wins the way Rocky Balboa (AFI’s No. 7) wins. He doesn’t go down. He endures. Subsequent “‘Die Hard’ in a...” movies starred martial artists like Steven Segal and Wesley Snipes, people with specialized knowledge, but McClane knows nothing special.

All of which goes to the heart of who American men believe themselves to be. We’re not smart. We’re not talented. We can’t keep our wives in check. We don’t even want to be here. But when the shit hits the fan, yeah, what the hell. Since nobody else is doing anything.

Harder with a Vengenace
Unfortunately, the sequels began to take away the things that made “Die Hard” work.

First, they aren’t even “‘Die Hard’ in a...” movies since John McClane is never trapped in a small enclosed space. In the second film he’s got the run of Dulles Airport and its D.C. environs. In the third film he’s racing all over New York and Canada. In the fourth he's all up and down the eastern seaboard. In the fifth, he goes abroad. You lose focus and intimacy this way: the sense that hero and villain are right next to each other, breathing down each other’s necks.

I guess they had to give back his shoes (it would’ve looked silly if he kept losing them), but did they have to give back Rick Blaine? In “Die Hard 2,” McClane isn’t the reluctant hero; he’s the guy who rushes in. Look, those guys pushed that suitcase under the table. I guess I’ll follow them.

He’s still surrounded by superincompetents (Dennis Franz, et al.), but for the requisite face-to-face with the villains the film relies on fantastic coincidences (McClane bumping into Col. Stuart at the airport) and inconceivable betrayals (Major Grant). Plus every time he’s ready to step down, Barnes (Art Evans) tells McClane — rather than, say, anyone in authority — the specialized information to get near the bad guys.

In the third film, “Die Hard with a Vengeance,” McClane also loses the Will Kane connection. He’s no longer the lone gunman trapped between two groups. For the first time we see him with his group, New York cops, and they’re a pretty smart, cynical bunch. It seems more realistic, less cartoonish, but it leaves him with just one cinematic role model: Rocky. Maybe that’s why the film feels punchdrunk.

A Good Day to Live Free
In the most recent versions, McClane isn’t even a regular guy anymore. He’s the special guy. He’s the guy who keeps surviving these terrorist attacks . “Have you done stuff like that before?” Justin Long asks him in “Live Free or Die Hard.” “I guess you’ve done this before,” a Russian says to him in “A Good Day to Die Hard,” to which his son, John, Jr., replies, “Don’t encourage him.”

But we do. Why a fifth installment? Because for all of the memorable movies Willis has made this century--“Unbreakable,” “Grindhouse,” “Moonrise Kingdom,” “Looper”--none has grossed as well as the forgettable fourth installment of “Die Hard.” The series is living up to its title—it’s not going away—but it’s become a bit like its original villain. “You want money?” we ask. Yes. Yes, it does.

Yippee-ki-yay, motherfuckers.

Step one

Warner Bros. releases a poster for the new Jackie Robinson biopic, “42,” to which movie blogger and “Lincoln” nemesis Jeffrey Wells objects. His first thought: “Who slides with his right fist raised in a victory salute?” He thought it looked like bullshit. He thought it did a disservice to the movie and to Jackie.

Here's the poster:

Step two

Readers of Hollywood Elsewhere point out that any Google image search of “Jackie Robinson sliding” will demonstrate that Jackie did in fact slide with his hand balled into a fist. Other readers will point out that this is the way you're supposed to slide. It prevents dislocated or broken fingers.

Here's a photo of Jackie Robinson sliding:

Step three

Wells owns up to this. He provides a link to all the photos. But he still objects to the poster. He writes:

The bottom line is that the poster still looks phony even if Robinson did that fist thing every time. Partly because his mouth is open as if he's shouting “yeaaahhhh!” It looks like an advertising con, and if I were running the marketing on this movie I would tell the art guys to not use it. Fine for the movie, not fine for the poster.

The awful thing about Wells? He's right here. This part is right. It's not partly because his mouth is open as if he's shouting “yeaaahhhh!” It's completely because his mouth is open as if he's shouting “yeaaahhhh!” Wells gets it. The poster isn't as powerful for this very reason.

But then Wells keeps his mouth open.

Step four

He writes this:

Imagine how beautiful this image would be on its own terms if Robinson's right hand was more or less open-palmed and going for balance, like any athlete's hand would be at such a moment. I've slid into bases. I know what's involved so don't tell me. The fist thing is odd.

It took me a second to realize what Wells was saying here. I've slid into bases. I know what's involved so don't tell me. The fist thing is odd. The man who began this Oscar season by telling Daniel Day-Lewis how to act was ending it by telling Jackie Robinson how to slide.

That's gotta be the new definition of hubris.

I look forward to future blog posts in which Jeff Wells tells Babe Ruth how to hit homeruns, Martin Luther King, Jr. how to give a speech, and James Joyce how to write.

Maybe it was when I was reviewing “Lincoln,” and looking up Daniel Day-Lewis' CV on IMDb. Maybe it was earlier. For “Nine”? “There Will Be Blood”?

Daniel Day-Lewis was one of my first “this is the guy that was in that?” actors. You couldn't believe the transformation. I'd seen him in “My Beautiful Launderette” at a small campus theater during my college days, and I was watching “A Room with a View” in an MTV (private movie screening room) in Taipei, Taiwan. I knew the gay tough in “Launderette” was in the film, and good, supposedly, but for the first part of the film I couldn't place him. He's not the blonde-haired dude screaming about beauty, is he? Didn't seem right. Then Cecil showed up and I went, “Oh, my, god.” That's the same dude? Holy crap. All the charm he had displayed in the former had vanished. Then we get that moment at the end when he ties his shoes. He's the wrong man in the story and in his every gesture we feel the weight of being the wrong man in the story. Most wrong men just leave. He tweaks our hearts first. 

I always thought “Launderette” was one of his first films, but his credits pre-“Launderette” seem to keep growing, and recently I noticed an even earlier one: “Sunday Bloody Sunday” from 1971. Really? Wouldn't he have been ... 13?

Jeff Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere has the clip. Here's a screenshot.

Wells calls him unrecognizable but you can see something of the man he'll become. He also reminds me of my older brother, who, at this time, half a world away, while acting at the Children's Theater in Minneapolis, landed a small part in “The Crucible” at the Guthrie Theater as one of the Proctor children. Blair Brown played his mother. Daniel Day-Lewis, of course, would eventually play John Proctor in a movie version in 1996. Crossed paths.

Today, Aaron Reid asked me if I found anything worthwhile in Michael Moore's defense of “Zero Dark Thirty.” Yep. In fact, Michael Moore defends the film better than anyone I've read—particularly director Kathryn Bigelow. He's particularly good at defending the film from the left. Nice irony. But overall his defense involves things that aren't in the movie. I wish they were.

The words below are Moore's. The annotations are mine.

There comes a point about two-thirds of the way through Zero Dark Thirty where it is clear something, or someone, on high has changed. The mood at the CIA has shifted, become subdued. It appears that the torture-approving guy who's been president for the past eight years seems to be, well, gone. And, just as a fish rots from the head down, the stench also seems to be gone. Word then comes down that — get this! — we can't torture any more! The CIA agents seem a bit disgruntled and dumbfounded. I mean, torture has worked soooo well these past eight years! Why can't we torture any more??? Interesting take. Except those CIA officials? Like Maya (Jessica Chastain)? We're behind them. We agree with them. Plus this is a cartoon version of what happens.    

The answer is provided on a TV screen in the background where you see a black man (who apparently is the new president) and he's saying, in plain English, that America's torturing days are over, done, finished. There's an “aw, shit” look on their faces and then some new boss comes into the meeting room, slams his fist on the table and says, essentially, you've had eight years to find bin Laden — and all you've got to show for it are a bunch of photos of naked Arab men peeing on themselves and wearing dog collars and black hoods. Well, he shouts, those days are over! There's no secret group up on the top floor looking for bin Laden, you're it, and goddammit do your job and find him. Is this how the scene played out in Michael Moore's mind? Because it's not how it played in the theater where I saw it. People laughed when Obama said “We don't torture.” He was the naive guy in the room. We were in a room with serious people, and this guy came along running for office and saying these pretty things, and they listened to him for a second and then went back to business. They went back to serious work. That's how I read the scene. And I never made the connection between the new guy (played by Mark Strong) and the Obama administration. Maybe it's there, way back somewhere, back back back, but it's not mentioned. Not even subtly. 

He is there to put the fear of God in them, probably because his boss, the new president, has (as we can presume) on his first day in office, ordered that bin Laden be found and killed. Key word is “probably.”

Unlike his frat boy predecessor who had little interest in finding bin Laden (even to the point of joking that “I really just don't spend that much time on him”), this new president was not an imbecile and all about business. Go find bin Laden — and don't use torture. Torture is morally wrong. Torture is the coward's way. C'mon — we're smart, we're the USA, and you're telling me we can't find a six-and-a-half-foot tall Saudi who's got a $25 million bounty on his head? Use your brains (like I do) and, goddammit, get to work! This is kinda how things played out in the real world. But it's not anywhere in the movie.

And then, as the movie shows, the CIA abruptly shifts from torture porn to — are you sitting down? — detective work. Actually, at this point, we get a long set piece on a disastrous attempt to turn one of the members of al Qaeda. Which was totally unnecessary. And insulting to women. Remember Jessica (Jennifer Ehle) baking a cake for the dude? And being all nervous like on a first date? And then getting blown up. Apparently this character is loosely based on Jennifer Matthews. Those who knew her, such as Nada Bakos, aren't pleased.  

Like cops do to find killers. Bin Laden was a killer — a mass killer — not a general of an army of soldiers, or the head of a country call Terrorstan. He was a crazed religious fanatic, a multi-millionaire, and a punk who was part of the anti-Soviet mujahideen whom we trained, armed and funded in Afghanistan back in the '80s. But he was a godsend and a very useful tool to the Dick Cheneys and Don Rumsfields of the world. They could hold him up to a frightened American public and scare the bejesus out of everyone — and everyone (well, most everyone) would then get behind the effort to declare war on, um ... well ... Who exactly do we declare war against? Oh, right — terrorism! The War on Terrorism! So skilled were the men from Halliburton, et al. that they convinced the Congress and the public to go to war against a noun. Terrorism. People fell for it, and these rich men and their friends made billions of dollars from “contracting” and armaments and a Burger King on every Iraqi base. Billions more were made creating a massive internal spying apparatus called “Homeland Security.” Business was very, very good, and as long as the bogeyman (Osama) was alive, the citizenry would not complain one bit. Moore's cartoon take on 2001-08. Again, I don't disagree. Again, not in the movie.  

I think you know what happens next. In the final third of Zero Dark Thirty, the agents switch from torture to detective work — and guess what happens? We find bin Laden! Eight years of torture — no bin Laden. Two years of detective work — boom! Bin Laden!

And that really should be the main takeaway from Zero Dark Thirty: That good detective work can bring fruitful results — and that torture is wrong. Except the shift isn't as abrupt as you make it. And the crucial bit of evidence, the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed, is attained through torture in the first third of the film. 

Much of the discussion and controversy around the film has centered on the belief that the movie shows, or is trying to say, that torture works. They torture a guy for years and finally, while having a friendly lunch with him one day, they ask him if he would tell them the name of bin Laden's courier. Either that, or go back and be tortured some more. He says he doesn't know the guy but he knows his fake name and he gives them that name. The name turns out to be correct. Torture works!

But then we learn a piece of news: The CIA has had the name of this guy all along! For ten years! And how did they get this name ten years ago? From “a tip.” A random tip! No torture involved. But, as was the rule during those years of incompetency and no desire to find bin Laden, the tip was filed away somewhere in some room — and not discovered until 2010. So, instead of torturing hundreds for eight years to find this important morsel of intelligence, they could have found it in their own CIA file cabinet in about eight minutes. Yeah, torture works. OK, this is Mr. Moore's VAST misreading of the movie. This bit of information was only brought to Maya's attention because she was already searching for Abu Ahmed. If she hadn't already been searching for Abu Ahmed, a name gained through two years of torture, the name in the file would've remained in the file. It never would have been brought to her attention.

And—hold on a second—wouldn't THIS have been the perfect moment to mention some of the negatives in the enhanced interrogation program? Maya mentions all the false intel buzzing around in the early years and implies it came from supposed friendlies, such as Pakistan, who weren't really that friendly. I'm sure we got a lot of false intel from interrogating the wrong people, too. Torture someone and they'll tell you what you want to hear. Even if what you want to hear is false.  

In the movie, after they have the name of the courier, they then believe if they find him, they find bin Laden. So how do they find him? They bribe a Kuwaiti informant with a new car. That's right, they find the number of the courier's family by giving the guy a Lamborghini. And what do they do when they find the courier's mother? Do they kidnap and torture her to find out where her son is? Nope, they just listen in on his weekly call home to Mom, and through that, they trace him to Pakistan and then hire a bunch of undercover Pakistani Joe Fridays to follow this guy's every move — which, then, leads them to the infamous compound in Abbottabad where the Saudi punk has holed up. Very true. Except, again, it begins, it all begins, with the evidence attained through torture. 

Nice police work, boys! Agreed. This is the best part of the movie. This detective work. 

Oh — and girl. 'Zero Dark Thirty — a movie made by a woman (Kathryn Bigelow), produced by a woman (Megan Ellison), distributed by a woman (Amy Pascal, the co-chairman of Sony Pictures), and starring a woman (Jessica Chastain) is really about how an agency of mostly men are dismissive of a woman who is on the right path to finding bin Laden. Yes, guys, this is a movie about how we don't listen to women, how hard it is for them to have their voice heard even in these enlightened times. You could say this is a 21st century chick flick — and it would do you well to see it. Now you're boring me. Particularly since you ignore Jessica.

But back to the controversy and the torture. I guess where I part with most of my friends who are upset at this film is that they are allowing the wrong debate to take place. You should NEVER engage in a debate where the other side defines the terms of the debate — namely, in this case, to debate “whether torture works.” You should refuse to participate in that discussion because the real question should be, simply, “is torture wrong?” And, after watching the brutal behavior of CIA agents for the first 45 minutes of the film, I can't believe anyone of conscience would conclude anything other than that this is morally NOT right. You will be repulsed by these torture scenes because, make no mistake about it, this has been done in your name and mine and with our tax dollars. We funded this. “I can't believe anyone of conscience would...” And that's where you stumble. All the time. In your belief that no one else could think other than the way you do. 

If you allow the question to be “did torture work?” then you'll lose because yes, if you torture someone who actually has the information, they will eventually give it to you. The problem is, the other 99 who don't know anything will also tell you anything to get you to stop torturing - but their information is wrong. How do you know which one of the 100 is the man with the goods? You don't. You know this, I know this, I've been making this argument all along. So why didn't the movie SHOW this? Because Bigelow and Boal wanted to be subtle? Because they didn't want to ruffle feathers? Because they drank some bitter CIA Kool-Aid? With all due respect, Mr. Moore, the question you need to answer is: WHY ISN'T THIS IN THE FUCKING MOVIE?  

But let's grant the other side that maybe, occasionally, torture “works.” Here's what else will work: castrating pedophiles. Why don't we do that? Probably because we think it's morally wrong. The death penalty sure works. Put a murderer in a gas chamber and I can guarantee you he'll never murder again. But is it right? Do we accomplish the ends we seek by becoming the murderers ourselves? That should be our only question. Should. Isn't.

After I saw Zero Dark Thirty, a friend asked me, “During the torture scenes, who did you feel empathy for the most — the American torturer or the Arab suspect?” That was easy to answer. “Oh, God, the poor guy being waterboarded. The torturer was a sadist.” Dan? A sadist? I didn't get that at all. He was someone who got worn down by official policy. His scene with the monkeys in the cage? And the ice cream? That's our sadist? The guy who's doing what needs to be done to keep us safe? The guy who bribes the dude with the Lamborghini? Who gets THAT ball rolling? Does the movie see him as a sadist? Does Maya?

“Yes, that's the answer everyone gives me afterward. The movie actually makes you care for the tortured guys who may have, in fact, been part of 9/11. Like rooting for the Germans on the submarine to make it back to port in Das Boot, that's the sign of some great filmmaking when the writer and director are able to get you to empathize with the person you've been told everywhere else to hate.” Right movie, wrong analogy. We root for the Germans in DAS BOOT because they're the main characters. They're US. It's very difficult to create main characters in movies with whom the audience doesn't empathize. The lights go down, we disappear, we become them. That's the trade-off of movies. And in “Zero Dark Thirty”? The main character is Maya. We're on her side. Whatever she does, even torturing people, we're behind her. She's just trying to keep us safe. She's getting her hands dirty to keep us safe.   

Zero Dark Thirty is a disturbing, fantastically-made movie. It will make you hate torture. And it will make you happy you voted for a man who stopped all that barbarity — and who asked that the people over at Langley, like him, use their brains. Or you'll chuckle at his small, naive moment onscreen--as many have done.

And that's what worked.

P.S. One final thought. I've heard fellow lefties say that even if the filmmakers didn't intend to endorse torture (Bigelow called torture “reprehensible” on Colbert the other night), the average person watching the movie is going to take it the wrong way. I believe it is the responsibility of the filmmaker attempting to communicate something that they do so clearly and skillfully (and you can decide for yourself if Bigelow and Boal did so. For me, they did.). But I never blame the artist for failing to dumb down their work so that the lesser minds among us “get it.” Should Springsteen not have named his album Born in the USA because some took it to be as a salute to patriotism (Reagan wanted to use it in his 1984 reelection campaign but Bruce said no)? Dumbing down is one thing. But you have to be aware of what movies are, what movies do, the trade-off in the dark. I'm not asking for a dumbing down. I'm asking for 1/10 of what Moore sees in the movie to actually BE in the movie.

Michael Moore defends “Zero Dark Thirty” by imagining a less murky movie than “Zero Dark Thirty.”

The following article by Kathryn Bigelow appeared in The Los Angeles Times the other day. The annotations, as always, are mine...

For a long time, measuring more years than I care to count, I thought the movie that became “Zero Dark Thirty” would never happen. The goal, to make a modern, rigorous film about counter-terrorism, centered on one of the most important and classified missions in American history, was exciting and worthy enough, or so it seemed. But there were too many obstacles, too many secrets, and politicians standing in the way of an easy path. Damn politicians. Aren't they always just standing in the way? They should be tortured.

Somehow, though, thanks to the great persistence of my filmmaking team and an enormous dose of luck, we got the movie made and found studio partners with the courage to release it. Wow, what a great story! Wait, it's not over? 

Then came the controversy. Oh right. 

Now that “Zero Dark Thirty” has appeared in cinemas nationwide, many people have asked me if I was surprised by the brouhaha that surrounded the film while it was still in limited release, when many thoughtful people were characterizing it in wildly contradictory ways. The Times asked me to elaborate on recent statements I've made in response to these issues.  I'm not sure I have anything new to add, but I can try to be concise and clear. Isn't “something new to add” the point of an article like this?

First of all: I support every American's 1st Amendment right to create works of art and speak their conscience without government interference or harassment.  As a lifelong pacifist, I support all protests against the use of torture, and, quite simply, inhumane treatment of any kind. Whoa, back off there, hippy...

 But I do wonder if some of the sentiments alternately expressed about the film might be more appropriately directed at those who instituted and ordered these U.S. policies, as opposed to a motion picture that brings the story to the screen. Yeah! Those stupid people who made torture such a necessary and effective part of our hunt for Osama bin Laden! Who, sure, had to torture people after 9/11, but at least they always had the right people. Who risked their souls to get the information we needed to defeat our enemies.

Those of us who work in the arts know that depiction is not endorsement. If it was, no artist would be able to paint inhumane practices, no author could write about them, and no filmmaker could delve into the thorny subjects of our time. Does this mean Philip Roth doesn't endorse masturbation? I know, I'm dating myself. Which—alley oop—is the exact pathway to masturbation. 

This is an important principle to stand up for, and it bears repeating. For confusing depiction with endorsement is the first step toward chilling any American artist's ability and right to shine a light on dark deeds, especially when those deeds are cloaked in layers of secrecy and government obfuscation. It also chills any American artist's ability to glamorize dark deeds: who makes dark deeds the thing we have to do in order to achieve the goal of the story, which, in this case, is killing America's greatest enemy. BTW: Obfuscation. Good word.

Indeed, I'm very proud to be part of a Hollywood community that has made searing war films part of its cinematic tradition. “Rambo,” “Inglourious Basterds,” “300,” “Battleship,” “Red Dawn,” “Red Dawn,” “Pearl Harbor,” etc.

Clearly, none of those films would have been possible if directors from other eras had shied away from depicting the harsh realities of combat. “Tonight we dine in hell!”

On a practical and political level, it does seem illogical to me to make a case against torture by ignoring or denying the role it played in U.S. counter-terrorism policy and practices. Much better to make it the thing we have to do in order to achieve the goal of the story, which, in this case, is killing America's greatest enemy.

Experts disagree sharply on the facts and particulars of the intelligence hunt, and doubtlessly that debate will continue. Here we go! This is what I want. So how did the experts with whom you spoke disagree? How come you're not telling us this? How come you're withholding information from us? When you withhold information from us, Kathryn, we hurt you. When you lie to us, Kathryn, we hurt you...

As for what I personally believe, which has been the subject of inquiries, accusations and speculation, I think Osama bin Laden was found due to ingenious detective work. OK...

Torture was, however, as we all know, employed in the early years of the hunt. OK...

That doesn't mean it was the key to finding Bin Laden. Was it a key? Was it the first key? As it is in “Zero Dark Thirty”? Don't make us get the rag, Kathryn.

It means it is a part of the story we couldn't ignore. War, obviously, isn't pretty, and we were not interested in portraying this military action as free of moral consequences. If war isn't pretty, what's Jessica Chastain doing there?

In that vein, we should never discount and never forget the thousands of innocent lives lost on 9/11 and subsequent terrorist attacks. We should never forget the brave work of those professionals in the military and intelligence communities who paid the ultimate price in the effort to combat a grave threat to this nation's safety and security. Sounds like someone's running for office.

Bin Laden wasn't defeated by superheroes zooming down from the sky; he was defeated by ordinary Americans who fought bravely even as they sometimes crossed moral lines, who labored greatly and intently, who gave all of themselves in both victory and defeat, in life and in death, for the defense of this nation. Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America. ... Now get the rag.

“Zero Dark Thirty”'s screenwriter Mark Boal and its director Kathryn Bigelow. The former apparently didn't help the latter with the above.

Before I watched it, I assumed the interviewer in the clip below just asked Quentin Tarantino the wrong question. Instead of “Does movie violence lead to real violence?” he should have asked, “How has movie violence affected you?” I.e., Why do you make these kinds of movies? What is it about spaghetti westerns that appeal and why? I assumed the interviewer was just ham-handed.

Instead, the interviewer, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, is the furthest thing from ham-handed. He does in fact ask the question I thought he should ask, and is polite and articulate in doing so. It's Tarantino who's ham-handed. He comes off as a major asshole here. He comes off as pompous and privileged in promoting “Django Unchained.”

Here it is:

In the beginning he says the pompous:

I'm responsible for people talking about slavery in a way they have not in 30 years. ... There is a dialogue going on about slavery that has not been happening at all. It's a subject people are afraid to talk about. And now because of this movie, people aren't afraid to talk about it.

I'm thinking: What dialogue are people having about slavery? They're having a dialogue about you; and it's the same fucking dialogue. Tarantino wants to be a black man. No, Tarantino hates black men. The N-word: Why say it so often? Why this gratuitous violence against black men? In other words, the criticism leveled at him during “Inglourious Basterds”—that QT turned the victims (Jews) into victimizers, and victimizers (Nazis) into victims, because he never shows the Jews as victims—here becomes its opposite. Keli Goff on HuffPo is the worst in this regard. She also complains about the lack of a strong female character. This after 15 years of Jackie Brown, the Bride, Shoshanna Dreyfus. The only ones who come off worse than QT in discussing his films is everyone else.

Then Guru-Murthy asks Tarantino about the relationship between movie violence and real violence and QT joins the crowd:

I refuse your question. I’m not your slave and you’re not my master. You can’t make me dance to your tune. I’m not a monkey.

No, you're a privileged asshole. Because the next thing you say, rather snidely, is this:

Because I’m here to sell my movie. This is a commercial for the movie—make no mistake.

So the dialogue about slavery the U.S. is having because of you? That was PR? Of course it was.

I could go on. Almost everything people think is wrong about Tarantino's movies (the N-word, racism) isn't. But almost everything people think is right about Tarantino's movies (how cool they are) isn't. In the end, he's not worth this much time. We should stop dancing to his tune.

“This is a commercial for the movie—make no mistake.”

Jeff Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere isn't much of a fan of Steven Spielberg's “Lincoln.” Here's how he got there.

He started out last March with a joke, kind of, that Daniel Day-Lewis was a shoo-in for the Oscar...

• March 14: “Who's gonna take Lewis's Oscar away? Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby? Phillip Seymour Hoffman as The Master? Bill Murray as FDR? Hugh Jackman or Russell Crowe in Les Miserables? Nobody is going to beat Honest Abe-who-gets-shot. It's over. Forget it.” — “Same Result Anyway.”

He also wrote about the other Lincoln movie last year, the one about the vampire hunter. Thus begins Wells' obsession with Lincoln's voice...

• May 28: “Listen to Benjamin Walker's Abraham Lincoln voice in this recently-released trailer for Timur Bekmambetov's Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter ... He almost sounds JFK-like, but Lincolnesque? Not if you buy the old story about the 16th President's son, Robert Todd Lincoln (1843-1926), having heard Raymond Massey perform on stage and being ”struck by the close similarity of Massey's speaking voice to that of his father.“ — ”Voice is Wrong.“

In July he starts counseling Disney on how to open the movie. First he suggests not showing it to anyone before it opens...

• July 18: ”Do you want to hear a bold, bold, bold idea? Show Lincoln to absolutely no one until opening day. Make them scream and pant for it and say “nope...sorry, kids...too bad...this is a really good film, but first and foremost it's for the people...buy a ticket.” — “Lincoln Is Sooner Than You Think”

Then he wonders why Disney isn't showing it at the New York Film Festival before it opens. Maybe it's bad?

• July 29: “A little while back I floated a notion about Steven Spielberg's Lincoln being the closing-night attraction at the New York Film Festival on Sunday, 10.14. That would be only three and half weeks before the opening. The media-fed response would certainly get the word-of-mouth rolling if the film is any good. But since I wrote that certain...how to put this?...insect-antennae vibrations are suggesting that Disney might not be interested. ... If Disney and Spielberg have the goods then they have the goods --- it can't possibly be a harmful thing to let people know that Lincoln is (let's use our fertile imaginations) a very special, moving, possibly austere, high-calibre historical drama. Unless, of course, Lincoln is Amistad by way of War Horse — unless it's some kind of treacly, commercial, family-friendly, emotionally shameless ”Spielberg film“ in the worst sense of that term. — ”All Them Lincoln Conundrums“

Now comes the nitpicking. The hair is wrong. The voice is wrong. The music is wrong. The voice is really wrong. I wish I could smell what the White House smelled like back then. Have I mentioned how much I REALLY, REALLY HATE the voice yet? That high tenor? It should sound LEGENDARY. It should sound MANLY. Instead of like MATTHEW MODINE. (No offense, Matthew.) This is two months before the movie opens...

• August 7: ”I've never seen any photos of Abraham Lincoln in which he looked quite this gray [as in the poster]. His hair is flecked with gray around the temples in those portraits he sat for in early 1865, but Daniel Day Lewis almost looks like a silver fox here. Plus his hair is too neatly combed.“ — ”The Grey“
• August 8: ”This is what I want, partly, from Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. Not just toilet and bathtub information but various hints of the quality and texture of life in the 1860s. Imagine how amazing it would be if Spielberg had decided to present the film in Smellovision or Aroma-rama, then we'd have an idea of what the White House might have actually smelled like from time to time. Think of the transportation!“ — ”White House Plumbing“
• September 13: ”I still don't like the sound of Daniel Day Lewis's Lincoln voice. I almost hate it, in a way. It's flat, undistinctive, unimpressive, Matthew Modine-ish. (And that's not a putdown of Modine.) It's hard to describe what I was looking to hear, but this isn't it. And I dearly love the voices that Lewis has given us over the years. The fault, of course, is Spielberg's — he didn't push Lewis hard enough, he let well enough alone.“ — ”Not Right“

• September 15: ”It's not just Daniel Day Lewis's decision to channel Matthew Modine in his voicing of Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's forthcoming biopic. My insect antennae are also picking up hints of that old Spielbergian schmaltz, particularly among the strains of John Williams' music. I'm hoping for something deeper and grander but we all know who and what Spielberg is, and I smell trouble, real trouble.“ — That Sinking Lincoln Feeling (with Tweet from film critic Jimmy Fallon)

• September 18: Steven Spielberg's Lincoln won't screen for critics until next week, but already there is a certain pushback in the form of concern about Daniel Day Lewis's Lincoln voice. It ain't right. ... A director-writer who knows people and gets around says he's heard that ”DDL's Lincoln voice tries to be consistent with what the actual man's sounded like, but aside from an impassioned, impressive performance the film is another Amistad with good intentions outweighing a good film.“-- ”Lincoln Snowball Gaining Size?“

• October 3: ”I despise the wussy timbre of Daniel Day Lewis's Abraham Lincoln voice. Even more than I did before. It's chalk on blackboard.“ — ”With Every Fibre of My Being...“

After all that, he begins to wonder, ”Hey, how come Disney isn't inviting me to any of the premieres?“

• October 4: ”Next Monday night's New York Film Festival debut of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln is unexpected, for sure, and the bravest thing that Disney marketing has done on behalf of this Tony Kushner-scripted film. Before this moment Disney has been presenting a cautious if not timid face to the world, particularly in its decision to take the AFI Fest's closing-night slot, which is only hours before the 11.9 opening. ...  [But] it burns me that Glenn Kenny and Kris Tapley will be seeing Daniel Day Lewis's Honest Abe by way of Walter Brennan and Matthew Modine before me...“ — ”Lincoln's Big NYFF Debut“
• October 5: ”As an accredited New York Film Festival press pass holder, I requested a ticket to Monday night's “secret” Lincoln screening at Alice Tully Hall, as everyone else with the same pass did. It took the NYFF all day to say “sorry, we can't help.” Uh-huh. I don't know but I strongly suspect there's a general coordinated strategy to keep me away from this puppy.“ — Blood Is Up

But in November, with the rest of us, he finally sees it, and delivers a ”Yes, but...“ review. Yes, it's good, but... Yes, it's serious, but... No, I'm cool with that, but...

• November 8: ”I myself was never bored, mind — I love history and period realism — but I would argue that the story of the passing of the 13th Amendment is an interesting saga with some great dialogue (Tommy Lee Jones' anger moments might be the best thing about it), but it's not a riveting one. It's not really movie material, certainly by today's standards. It's Showtime or PBS or History Channel material writ large by the Spielberg brand and the soulful skills of Daniel Day Lewis. Anyone who cares about doing this kind of thing correctly will understand and respect what Spielberg has tried to do, and in many ways has succeeded at.“  --”Lincoln in Kaminskiville by Way of History Channel“

He also incorrectly predicts box-office disaster...

• November 8:  ”In some ways Lincoln is not that tonally different from Robert Redford's The Conspirator. And you know what that means.“ --”Lincoln in Kaminskiville by Way of History Channel“

He searches for people who agree with him. Here's one: an unnamed producer! Who says he would've left early but AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN was sitting next to him, weeping, and to walk out would be unseemly. Leading JW to imagine this scene:

• November 10: Weeping African-American Guy: ”Ohh-hoh-hoh...heeeeshh-hee-hee...hee-hee-heesh....weep...weep.“ Producer: ”Excuse me there, fella. Gotta get by.“ Weeping African-American Guy: ”I, uh....wait, you're leaving? I don't even know you but you're leaving? What are you made of? You're walking out on a movie about Abraham Lincoln? Did you vote for Romney? Producer: “It's a free country, pal...okay? You can weep and moan and make all the noise you want, but this is a slow turgid thing and it's not doing it for me. And I voted for Obama, if you want to know.” --Lincoln Reactions, Please

The New York Times agrees with him, too...

• November 17: “The 11.16 N.Y. Times ”Sweet Spot“ (i.e., A.O. Scott and David Carr chit-chatting and sometimes interviewing Times staffers) is about guilty non-pleasures — art forms and entertainments that you're supposed to like but you just can't. And the most persistent non-pleasure of the Times newsroom? Lincoln.” — Not to Beat a Dead Horse

You know who else agrees with him? Everyone....

• November 17: “I stood in an Arclight lobby the other night (i.e., just before the Anna Karenina premiere screening) as a crowd that had just seen Lincoln walked past me. They were a bit glummed out; their faces seemed a little somber and even haggard. No faint smiles; no looks of calm or serenity. Most seemed to be saying to themselves, 'All right, that's over...where can we eat? In fact, let's just get a drink.'” — Homework and Trances

Then he focuses on the horse-race aspect of the best picture race and keeps veering wildly between narratives: either “Lincoln is losing air” or “Lincoln is a lock”...

• November 14: “Lincoln is a Best Picture nominee, yes, but rarified, Kaminski-ized and all but entombed. Lincoln is inflated because it just opened and is flower-fresh in Guru minds and did well at the box-office...but there are little pin holes that people don't want to look at. Helium is escaping as we speak.” --Gurus of Delusion
• December 5: “Some [Oscar voters] would like to give it to Lincoln or Les Miz but they're not feeing the current in the rapids and they can feel the ardor cooling down (certainly with Lincoln). ... They have two choices. They can go with the unassailable Zero Dark Thirty — the flinty, pruned-down CIA docudrama with Jessica Chastain's super-tough heroine, or with the jazzy, spazzy, warmly emotional and hyper-intelligent Silver Linings Playbook, the movie that restored respect to the seriously tarnished romantic comedy genre ...” — Boiled Down, Translated
• December 11: “2012 is over and Lincoln is probably going to win Best Picture. I can't stand it. I don't want to think about it any more. I just want to focus on January and February releases and on the Sundance, Santa Barbara and Berlin film festivals.” — Move On

Finally, after dismissing “Lincoln” by disparaging Daniel Day-Lewis' voice, then Steven Spielberg's direction, he decides to dismiss it by attacking Abraham Lincoln himself. He imagines a movie called “Johnson,” about Lincoln's successor, and suggests it wouldn't get the best-picture attention “Lincoln” does because we don't care about Andrew Johnson...

• December 18: “I'm just making a mild, even-handed point about Lincoln, which is that deep down much if not most of the acclaim for Spielberg's film is about our lifelong embrace of the legend of Abraham Lincoln. Is it a good film? Yes. Is it a very good film? You could argue this. But if Johnson was just as good as Lincoln and perhaps in some ways a little bit better (you can't beat that Senate vote on impeachment for a third-act climax), you know it wouldn't be the same thing. Be honest and ask yourself — how much of the Lincoln acclaim is really about the film itself and how much of it is about the worship of a great man and a great historical figure? You know what the answer is. You know it.” — Steven Spielberg's Johnson

And on and on. Wells posted about “Lincoln” again last night. Spielberg's movie, introduced by a former president (Clinton), lost the Golden Globe to “Argo” and Wells thinks that matters in the Oscar race even though the GGs, with two options (drama, musical/comedy), have predicted Oscar's best picture only twice in the last eight years. But no matter. He sees “Argo” as the front-runner again. He thinks it looks like, it feels like, a brand new day...

• January 13, 2013: “Argo winning Best Motion Picture, Drama and Ben Affleck winning for Best Director tonight came right on the heels of the BFCA Critics Choice awards deciding to give the same awards, and I think that tore it. I think everyone except for the Lincoln die-hards realized tonight that Lincoln doesn't have the horses to win the Best Picture Oscar, and Spielberg is probably out of the running also. And the reason for the latter, I think, is that he looked scared tonight. Playing the Clinton card was basically Spielberg saying to himself, ”How do we shake this race loose and tip it in our favor? Obviously we have support but possibly not enough. That fucking Critics Choice Argo win didn't help any. I know...I'll call up Bill Clinton and have him make a pitch for it!“ ... It's now Argo in the lead for Best Picture vs. Silver Linings Playbook with Lincoln in third place.” — The Clinton Card

“I despise the wussy timbre of Daniel Day Lewis's Abraham Lincoln voice. Even more than I did before. It's chalk on blackboard.” — Jeffrey Wells

This was posted earlier today on Andrew Sullivan's site:

Of these, I've seen:

• #47: Fishing for Sharks
• #45: Duck Run (should be higher)
• #42: Man Has Conversation with 12-Year-Old Self
• #25 Dad Catches Foul Ball While Holding Daughter
• #17 Michelle Jenneke Warm-Up Dance 
• #11 Isaac's Live Lip-Dub Proposal
• #1 Gangam Style (of course)

About 1/7 of them. Appropriate that I've seen more in the 40s since that's me: 49. But seriously? Only one from 1-10? And what the hell is a Nicole Westbrook? 13 million views for that thing? And are these things ranked by views?

My favorite of the bunch is Isaac's Live Lip-Dub Proposal. By far. It's a beautiful thing. Here's the full monty:

Two things:

I couldn't believe this was from earlier this year. Seemed ages ago. I guess it was in Internet years, which are like dog years. Bang zoom.

Like everyone, I tear up watching this. All the work what went into it. The community atmosphere. The lady in red, who seems both lead dancer and choreographer. But mostly it's the joy and disbelief and love on the girl's face. Generally you see the work that went into something like this and think, “She better be worth it.” But here you see her reaction and you know: She is.

A friend of mine who usually writes of loftier matters has written a short review of “The Hobbit.” He's obviously a fan of Tolkien but not so much of Peter Jackson's new movie. Even so, this is the last line:

Let’s hope Jackson regains his footing in the next installment.

It made me think of this.

When we went to “Star Wars” in 1977, we went to see a movie. The movie began and it ended. It felt whole, and even gave us a symbol for wholeness: the Force.

When we went to “The Empire Strikes Back” in 1980, we were given a movie that was to be continued. I was actually shocked when I saw it in the theater. That's it? “To be continued” on TV meant next week; “to be continued” in a galaxy far, far away meant three years. Whenever anyone says “The Empire Strikes Back” was the best of the “Star Wars” movies, I generally respond, when I care enough to respond, “So how did you like the ending?”

When we went to see “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” in 2001, we knew we were going to see the first of a trilogy, based on a trilogy of books. That may be part of why it never interested me. I knew it would be continued. But at least it was based on a “To be continued” book.

“The Hobbit”? Based on a single book. But three movies. Because there's money in fragmentation.

We're not going to see movies anymore. We're going to see fragments of movies, fragments of narratives, that fit our fragmented times. Maybe we prefer it this way. Wholeness is so exhausting. Endings are so tyrannical. Fragments let us imagine any kind of escape from the narrative ... but hopefully an escape that leads us right back here, telling the same story, with a few variations. We want comfort and familiarity, with merely a chance of escape. We want to hear that story over again, Daddy.

The following is a post on Jeffrey Wells' “Hollywood Elsewhere” site. The annotations in bold are mine...

Are you going to tell me that if your son or daughter has been kidnapped and is being held in some secret, all-but-impossible-to-discover location and might possibly be killed if you don't find him/her...are you going to tell me that if you've captured a close accomplice of the kidnappers who refuses to talk...are you going to tell me that all you're going to do is take this guy out to lunch and feed him hummus and tomatoes, and if that doesn't work you're going to take him out for drinks and then set him up with $5000-a-night prostitute in hopes that he'll reveal the location? The objection to “Zero Dark Thirty” isn't about the urge to torture in extreme situations to gain desired information; it's about the efficacy of that torture. It's about whether the person you're torturing is in fact a close accomplice of the kidnappers ... or me, since I'll say anything you want me to say, since you're torturing me to say it. That's always been the problem with torture. The torturer tends to gain the information he wants whether that information is true or not. More specifically, the objection with “Zero Dark Thirty” (which I, like most of the world, haven't seen yet), is whether Bigelow and Boal have misrepresented the efficacy of torture by drawing a line between post-9/11 enhanced interrogation techniques and the intel that led to Osama bin Laden. The information we have indicates there was no line. Do Boal and Bigelow have new information? Did they draw the line themselves? Should we torture them to find out?

If your answer is “yes” (and I'm talking to you, Hollywood liberals, and to you, Alex Gibney) then you are a liar. In fact, you have never been more of a liar than you are right now. And you, Jeff Wells, have never been more wrong than you are now. Except every time you write about Abraham Lincoln's voice, which reveals how much you actually buy into the myth-making tendencies of Hollywood that you pretend to abhor.

Zero Dark Thirty doesn't precisely say that torture was the thing that got the information about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden (Again, this is the key question; everything else is more-or-less irrelevant), although it has obviously been applied for several centuries, and presumably with some benefit to the torturers. (Why else would the practice continue over the millenia? Because people like to torture?) Irrelevant, but ... I assume we keep torturing because people in desperate situations do desperate things. And because sometimes it works. And because we don't have any new ideas. And because it's in our nature.

Maya (Jessica Chastain) and Dan (Jason Clarke) and their CIA colleagues do whatever they can to get their captors to talk. They try a little torture, they try little hummus. And by hook or crook, they finally get the info they want. Are you going to tell me that if they'd used only hummus, they would have discovered Bin Laden's Abbotobad address? Focus, Jeff. Does ZDT show that intel gathered via torture led to Osama bin Laden? If “yes,” do Bigelow and Boal know something Senators McCain, Levin and Feinstein don't? The other day, in warning about “Zero Dark Thirty,” CIA director Michael Morell actually backs it up. He wrote, “Some [of the Osama bin Laden intelligence] came from detainees subjected to enhanced techniques, but there were many other sources as well.” If I were you, Jeff, this is the kind of thing I would focus on rather than the above.

Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end.

I know Jeff Wells of Hollywood Elsehwere, for one, objected to the way Daniel Day-Lewis voices Abraham Lincoln in “Lincoln.” Even after Wells owned up to its historical accuracy, he objected. He called it “flat, undistinctive, unimpressive, Matthew Modine-ish.” It gave him the shivers.

I actually liked it, along with everything else about Day-Lewis' performance. More important, most important, it is historically accurate. Last night I was reading Garry Wills' “Lincoln at Gettsburg: The Words that Remade America,” and came across the passage below, in which Lincoln is contrasted with Edward Everett, teacher of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the main speaker at Gettysburg that day. He was considered the country's great orator after the death of Daniel Webster:

Everett's voice was sweet and expertly modulated; Lincoln's was high to the point of shrillness, and his Kentucky accent offended some Eastern sensibilities. But Lincoln derived an advantage from his high tenor voice—carrying power. If there is agreement on one aspect of Lincoln's delivery, at Gettysburg and elsewhere, it is his audibility. Modern impersonators of Lincoln, like Walter Huston, Raymond Massey, Henry Fonda, and the various actors who give voice to Disneyland animations of the President, bring him before us as a baritone, which is considred a more manly or heroic voice—though both Roosevelt presidents of this century were tenors. What should not be forgotten is that Lincoln was himself an actor, an expert raconteur and mimic, and one who spent hours reading speeches out of Shakespeare to any willing (and some unwilling) audiences. He knew a good deal about rhythmic delivery and meaningful inflections.

It's a shame that Wells' machismo, which he often wears like a Paul Fist-in-Your-Face, overrules his sensibilities regarding Hollywood bullshit: the ways that the movies have lied to us forever. After 100 years, a Hollywood movie finally gets something right and he attacks it for that very reason.

I was thinking about this question, or something similar, the day I saw this link on NPR's site. Apparently it's a regular feature? They interview different folks, generally movie-industry people, and ask them which movie they could watch “a million times.” Here's how the recent interviewees answered:

• Writer-director Peter Hedges: “Harold and Maude”
• Director Simon West: “Withnail and I”
• Actress Regina King: “The Sandlot”
• Actress Kristen Bell: “Wet Hot American Summer”
• Actor-writer-director Jon Favreau: “Mean Streets”
• Actor Michael Pena: “Broadway Danny Rose”
• Callie Khouri: “A Face in the Crowd”
• Actress Susan Sarandon: “The Grapes of Wrath”
• Producer Glen Mazaara: “Alien”
• Director RZA: “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”

Everyone's answer changes with time, of course. Here's how mine did. Let's start in adolesence: “Star Wars,” “Superman: The Movie,” “Duck Soup,” “Annie Hall,” “The Godfather,” “Casablanca,” “Seven Samurai,” “All the President's Men,” “The Thin Red Line.”

Now? It's probably Michael Mann's “The Insider.”

It's a perfectly balanced film about two men, one of whom encourages the other to betray corporate confidentialities for a greater good, and who then has to betray his own corporation, CBS, for the greater good of airing the first story. It's the individual vs. the coporation, which is the story of all of us. It's about sacrifice, and how it takes sacrifice to make heroes, and how heroes aren't men and women with great powers. They're ordinary people under extraordinary pressure still doing the right thing.

Anyone know when it comes out on Blu-Ray?

Welcome to … Universal Exports. Ninety-five percent of your class has already dropped out of our training program, but you, the top five percent, remain. There is, however, one test left. Take the quiz below and we’ll figure out where to place you: in administration, in the Q branch, in the secretarial pool, or scrubbing toilets. Get 100 percent and you’ll be given the most coveted position of all: double-oh secret agent.

1. Ian Fleming named his secret agent after who ... or what?

• A: His favorite uncle
• B: An American soldier who saved his life during World War II.
• C: The author of the book, “Birds of the West Indies.“
• D: It was a pun on Thames Bonds, of which he was a major shareholder.

The correct answer is C: Ian Fleming got the name James Bond from one of his favorite books, “Birds of the West Indies.” Fleming said he wanted “a really flat, quiet name” and James Bond fit the bill.

2. For the first three films, the man who appears in the “gun barrel sequence” was not Sean Connery. Who was he?

• A: Stuntman Bob Simmons
• B: Producer Albert Broccoli
• C: Author Ian Fleming
• D: Actor Jack Lord

The correct answer is A: Stuntman Bob Simmons was the man in the gun sites for the first three Bond films. He was a stunt double for Sean Connery and stayed with the franchise in various stunt capacities until “A View to a Kill” in 1985. He died in 1988.

3. In “Dr. No,” what prompts Bond to introduce himself as “Bond. James Bond” at the baccarat table?

• A: The croupier is hard of hearing.
• B: A woman at the table introduces herself as “Trench. Sylvia Trench.”
• C: Dr. No asks for his name — last name first, damnit.
• D: That’s actually his name: Bond James Bond. His real first name, “Bond,” was dropped in subsequent movies as too confusing.

The correct answer is B: A woman introduces herself as “Trench. Sylvia Trench.” Here’s the dialogue:

         Bond: I admire your courage, Miss...?
         Trench: Trench. Sylvia Trench. I admire your luck, Mr...?
         Bond: Bond. James Bond.

4. In “Goldfinger,” Bond tells Jill Masterson that drinking Dom Perignon ’53 above 38 degrees is as bad as...?

• A: “Sex without foreplay.”
• B: “Shirts without cufflinks.”
• C: “Listening to Dom DeLuise.”
• D: “Listening to the Beatles without earmuffs.”

The correct answer is D: Bond felt that drinking Dom Perignon ’53 above 38 degrees was as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs. This was when they were still “mop-tops” known for their “yeah yeah yeah” music. Before they became, well, bigger than Bond.

5. What is Bond’s response when Honor Blackman introduces herself as Pussy Galore?

• A: “I must be dreaming.”
• B: “I must talk to your parents.”
• C: “High school must’ve been hell for you.”
• D: “My name is Bond. James Bond.”

The correct answer is A: “I must be dreaming.”

6. Ernst Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE, is seen petting a cat in most early Bond films. In which film do we first see his face?

• A: “From Russia with Love” (1963)
• B: “Thunderball” (1965)
• C: “You Only Live Twice” (1967)
• D: “Moonraker” (1979)

The correct answer is C: Blofeld’s face was first seen, with a scar down the eye, in “You Only Live Twice.” Donald Pleasance got the honor.

7. Which is the first movie where Bond does NOT wear a fedora during the gun barrel sequence?

• A: “Goldfinger” (1964)
• B: “Thunderball” (1965)
• C: “You Only Live Twice” (1967)
• D: “Live and Let Die” (1973)

The correct answer is D: Bond finally loses his fedora in the gun barrel sequence in “Live and Let Die,” the first Roger Moore film. A few times in the ‘80s, Moore carried a fedora into Miss Moneypenny’s office, but he never wore one.

8. At the end of the pre-title sequence in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” Bond (George Lazenby) turns to the camera and says...what?

• A: “This never happened to the other fellow.”
• B: “I must be dreaming.”
• C: “Instant karma’s gonna get you.”
• D: “My name is Bond. James Bond.”

The correct answer is A: Lazenby said, “This never happened to the other fellow.” The “this,” by the way, is being ditched by a girl.

9. What is the name of the CIA agent who has appeared in numerous Bond movies?

• A: Alex Bradbury
• B: Smitty Wesson
• C: Felix Leiter
• D: Michael Busick

The correct answer is C: Felix Leiter is the CIA agent who helps Bond from time to time. For the record, he’s been played by eight different actors: Jack Lord (“Dr. No”), Cec Linder (“Goldfinger”), Rik Van Nutter (“Thunderball”), Norman Burton (“Diamonds are Forever”), David Hedison (“Live and Let Die” and “License to Kill”), Bernie Casey (“Never Say Never Again”), John Terry (“The Living Daylights”) and Jeffrey Wright (“Casino Royale” and ”Quantum of Solace“).

10. In what fundamental way were the producers going to change James Bond in 1970?

• A: They were going to make him American, and star Adam West.
• B: They were going to make him French, and star Jean Paul Belmondo.
• C: They were going to make him a teenager, and star Kurt Russell.
• D: They were going to make him a woman, and star Raquel Welch.

The correct answer is A: The Bond producers were contemplating making Bond an American, and considered both Adam West and Burt Reynolds for the part. At one point, TV actor John Gavin was even signed for “Diamonds are Forever” but was set aside when Connery agreed to return. Gavin had to settle for becoming U.S. ambassador to Mexico during the Reagan administration.

11. In the first Roger Moore movies, Bond does not smoke cigarettes. What does he do instead?

• A: He smokes cigars.
• B: He sucks lollipops.
• C: He chews gum.
• D: He chews tobacco.

The correct answer is A: In his first few movies as Bond, Roger Moore smokes cigars. Then he gives up all forms of oral fixation. Insert your own joke here.

12. What characteristic does the villain Francisco Scaramanga in “The Man with the Golden Gun” share with a character on “The Simpsons”?

• A: He sucks a pacifier — like Maggie.
• B: He says “D’Oh!” – like Homer.
• C: He has a third nipple – like Krusty the Klown.
• D: He tastes like a peanut — like Hans Moleman.

The correct answer is C: Francisco Scaramanga has a superfluous third nipple — just like Krusty the Klown.

13. What happens to Bond during the pre-title sequence in “Moonraker”?

• A: He gets pushed out of a plane without a parachute.
• B: He is pulled by a helicopter around Kuala Lumpur.
• C: He gets teased by the other double-oh secret agents for the size of his gun.
• D: He plays Pong.

The correct answer is A: He gets pushed out of a plane without a parachute. For my money, it’s the best Bond opening ever. Not that I have much money.

14. What future Academy Award-winning actor plays Dario, Sanchez’s sadistic henchman in “License to Kill” (1989)?

• A: Alfred Molina
• B: Kevin Spacey
• C: Benicio del Toro
• D: Marisa Tomei

The correct answer is C: Benicio del Toro plays Dario. He’s quite good. “Don’t worry. We gave her a nice honeymoooooon.”

15. Which of the following does the new “M” (Judi Dench) NOT call Bond in “Goldeneye”?

• A: Sexist and misogynistic
• B: A dinosaur
• C: A relic of the Cold War
• D: A great piece of ass

The correct answer is D.

16. When Bond visits Q in “Die Another Day,” what gadget from a previous Bond film does he toy with?

• A: Ursula Andress’ bikini from “Dr. No”
• B: The jet pack from “Thunderball”
• C: A crocodile from “Live and Let Die”
• D: Sean Connery’s toupee from “Diamonds are Forever”

The correct answer is B: Besides the jet pack from “Thunderball,” he also picks up Rosa Klebb’s deadly shoe from “From Russia with Love.” Meanwhile, in Cuba, he also flipped through the book “Birds of the West Indies,” which we all know, if we’ve been reading these answers, was one of Ian Fleming’s favorite books, and the inspiration for the name “James Bond.”

17. In 2006’s “Casino Royale,” Danish actor Mads Mikkelson plays Bond’s baccarat nemesis Le Chiffre. What other two actors have played Le Chiffre?

• A: Peter Lorre and Orson Welles
• B: Peter Sellers and Woody Allen
• C: Vincent Price and Dean Martin
• D: Danny Bonaduce and Christopher Knight

The correct answer is A: In a 1954 TV version of “Casino Royale” with American Barry Nelson playing Jimmy Bond, Peter Lorre was cast as Le Chiffre; and in the 1967 “Casino Royale” send-up starring David Niven, Orson Welles played Le Chiffre.

18. Which country has produced the most Bond girls in the 23 official Bond films?

• A: America
• B: England
• C: France
• D: Sweden

The correct answer is A: America. Although the first American Bond girl, Jill St. John, didn’t come along until 1971, there have now been more American-born actresses cast in the part than actresses from any other country. The international rundown:

• America: 7
• England: 4
• France: 4
• Sweden: 2
• Switzerland, Italy, Japan, Poland, Malaysia, Ukraine: 1 each
  

19. Which of the following actors has NOT had a famous ”emerging from the surf“ scene in a Bond movie?

• A: Ursula Andress
• B: Halle Berry
• C: Daniel Craig
• D: Desmond Llewelyn

The correct answer is D: Desmond Llewlyn is the most recognizable actor to play ”Q.“ But no emerging-from-the-surf scene.

20. Which of the following singers did NOT sing a James Bond title song?

• A: Tom Jones
• B: A-Ha
• C: Sheryl Crow
• D: Iron & Wine

The correct answer is D: Iron & Wine never sang a Bond theme song. Would be interesting if he did.

21. Which of the following actors has NOT played a Bond villain?

• A: Telly Savalas
• B: Yaphet Kotto
• C: Rutger Hauer
• D: Sean Bean

The correct answer is C: Rutger Hauer has never played a Bond villain.

22. Which is NOT the name of a Bond girl?

• A: Honey Ryder
• B: Mary Goodnight
• C: Taki Klozoff
• D: Holly Goodhead

The correct answer is C: Taki Klozoff. Honey Ryder is from “Dr. No,” Mary Goodnight is from “The Man with the Golden Gun,” and Holly Goodhead (Dr. Holly Goodhead) is from “Moonraker.”

23. Which of the following puns does Bond NOT use after killing someone?

• A: “I think he got the point.”
• B: “Bon appetit.”
• C: “He always did have an inflated opinion of himself.”
• D: ”My name is Bond. James Bond.“

The correct answer is D: ”My name is Bond. James Bond." “I think he got the point” is from “Thunderball,” “Bon appetit” is from “You Only Live Twice” (and “The Living Daylights”), and “He always did have an inflated opinion of himself” is from “Live and Let Die.”

Welcome to … Universal Exports. Ninety-five percent of your class has already dropped out of our training program, but you, the top five percent, remain. There is, however, one test left. Take the quiz below and we’ll figure out where to place you: in administration, in the Q branch, in the secretarial pool, or scrubbing toilets. Get 100 percent and you’ll be given the most coveted positoin of all: double-oh secret agent.

1. Ian Fleming name his secret agent after who ... or what?

• A: His favorite uncle
• B: An American soldier who saved his life during World War II.
• C: The author of the book, “Birds of the West Indies.“
• D: It was a pun on Thames Bonds, of which he was a major shareholder.

2. For the first three films, the man who appears in the “gun barrel sequence” was not Sean Connery. Who was he?

• A: Stuntman Bob Simmons
• B: Producer Albert Broccoli
• C: Author Ian Fleming
• D: Actor Jack Lord

3. In “Dr. No,” what prompts Bond to introduce himself as “Bond. James Bond” at the baccarat table?

• A: The croupier is hard of hearing.
• B: A woman at the table introduces herself as “Trench. Sylvia Trench.”
• C: Dr. No asks for his name — last name first, damnit.
• D: That’s actually his name: Bond James Bond. His real first name, “Bond,” was dropped in subsequent movies as too confusing.

4. In “Goldfinger,” Bond tells Jill Masterson that drinking Dom Perignon ’53 above 38 degrees is as bad as...?

• A: “Sex without foreplay.”
• B: “Shirts without cufflinks.”
• C: “Listening to Dom DeLuise.”
• D: “Listening to the Beatles without earmuffs.”

5. What is Bond’s response when Honor Blackman introduces herself as Pussy Galore?

• A: “I must be dreaming.”
• B: “I must talk to your parents.”
• C: “High school must’ve been hell for you.”
• D: “My name is Bond. James Bond.”

6. Ernst Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE, is seen petting a cat in most early Bond films. In which film do we first see his face?

• A: “From Russia with Love” (1963)
• B: “Thunderball” (1965)
• C: “You Only Live Twice” (1967)
• D: “Moonraker” (1979)

7. Which is the first movie where Bond does NOT wear a fedora during the gun barrel sequence?

• A: “Goldfinger” (1964)
• B: “Thunderball” (1965)
• C: “You Only Live Twice” (1967)
• D: “Live and Let Die” (1973)

8. At the end of the pre-title sequence in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” Bond (George Lazenby) turns to the camera and says...what?

• A: “This never happened to the other fellow.”
• B: “I must be dreaming.”
• C: “Instant karma’s gonna get you.”
• D: “My name is Bond. James Bond.”

9. What is the name of the CIA agent who has appeared in numerous Bond movies?

• A: Alex Bradbury
• B: Smitty Wesson
• C: Felix Leiter
• D: Michael Busick

10. In what fundamental way were the producers going to change James Bond in 1970?

• A: They were going to make him American, and star Adam West.
• B: They were going to make him French, and star Jean Paul Belmondo.
• C: They were going to make him a teenager, and star Kurt Russell.
• D: They were going to make him a woman, and star Raquel Welch.

11. In the first Roger Moore movies, Bond does not smoke cigarettes. What does he do instead?

• A: He smokes cigars.
• B: He sucks lollipops.
• C: He chews gum.
• D: He chews tobacco.

12. What characteristic does the villain Francisco Scaramanga in “The Man with the Golden Gun” share with a character on “The Simpsons”?

• A: He sucks a pacifier — like Maggie.
• B: He says “D’Oh!” – like Homer.
• C: He has a third nipple – like Krusty the Klown.
• D: He tastes like a peanut — like Hans Moleman.

13. What happens to Bond during the pre-title sequence in “Moonraker”?

• A: He gets pushed out of a plane without a parachute.
• B: He is pulled by a helicopter around Kuala Lumpur.
• C: He gets teased by the other double-oh secret agents for the size of his gun.
• D: He plays Pong.

14. What future Academy Award-winning actor plays Dario, Sanchez’s sadistic henchman in “License to Kill” (1989)?

• A: Alfred Molina
• B: Kevin Spacey
• C: Benicio del Toro
• D: Marisa Tomei

15. Which of the following does the new “M” (Judi Dench) NOT call Bond in “Goldeneye”?

• A: Sexist and misogynistic
• B: A dinosaur
• C: A relic of the Cold War
• D: A great piece of ass

16. When Bond visits Q in “Die Another Day,” what gadget from a previous Bond film does he toy with?

• A: Ursula Andress’ bikini from “Dr. No”
• B: The jet pack from “Thunderball”
• C: A crocodile from “Live and Let Die”
• D: Sean Connery’s toupee from “Diamonds are Forever”

17. In 2006’s “Casino Royale,” Danish actor Mads Mikkelson plays Bond’s baccarat nemesis Le Chiffre. What other two actors have played Le Chiffre?

• A: Peter Lorre and Orson Welles
• B: Peter Sellers and Woody Allen
• C: Vincent Price and Dean Martin
• D: Danny Bonaduce and Christopher Knight

18. Which country has produced the most Bond girls in the 23 official Bond films?

• A: America
• B: England
• C: France
• D: Sweden

19. Which of the following actors has NOT had a famous ”emerging from the surf“ scene in a Bond movie?

• A: Ursula Andress
• B: Halle Berry
• C: Daniel Craig
• D: Desmond Llewelyn

20. Which of the following singers did NOT sing a James Bond title song?

• A: Tom Jones
• B: A-Ha
• C: Sheryl Crow
• D: Iron & Wine

21. Which of the following actors has NOT played a Bond villain?

• A: Telly Savalas
• B: Yaphet Kotto
• C: Rutger Hauer
• D: Sean Bean

22. Which is NOT the name of a Bond girl?

• A: Honey Ryder
• B: Mary Goodnight
• C: Taki Klozoff
• D: Holly Goodhead

23. Which of the following puns does Bond NOT use after killing someone?

• A: “I think he got the point.”
• B: “Bon appetit.”
• C: “He always did have an inflated opinion of himself.”
• D: ”My name is Bond. James Bond."

Feel free to answer in the Comments field below. I’ll post the answers tomorrow. And, yes, one of these days I need to come up with a better systems for quizzes.

Today is the U.S. release of “Skyfall,” the 23rd James Bond film. Below is a retrospective on the men who have played Bond, James Bond, over the years. Sans one-timers. Sorry, George Lazenby.

Sean Connery
What’s startling about watching the first Bond movies is how tepid they are. Since each Bond must inevitably trump the Bond before it — bigger stunts, wilder gadgets, crazier villains — it makes sense that each preceding Bond is trumped. We’re used to Bond whizzing all over the planet, but in the first film, “Dr. No,” Bond flies to Kingston, Jamaica, boats to Crab Key island ... and that’s it. The fights are early 1960s judo flips, the “stunt” a car chase along a mountain road. When a tarantula is unleashed in Bond’s hotel room, he kills it with his dress shoe, seeming more frightened husband than secret agent.

But these Bond films quickly established a formula and kept to it. In the pre-title sequence we watch the end of Bond’s previous adventure or the beginning of his new opponent’s villainy. After the titles, Bond is given his assignment and gadgets. In an exotic locale, he meets his local contact, usually ethnic, who usually dies halfway through the picture. There are chases, attempts on Bond’s life, meetings with the new villain and the new villain’s super-powered henchman. He beds three women: The inconsequential one at the beginning, an enemy agent in the middle, then “the Bond girl,” with whom he shares the final assault on the enemy’s fortress. There, captured, he learns the villain’s diabolical plot to a) blackmail the West, b) start World War III, or c) both. Left to die, he escapes, kills the henchman, blows everything up, and winds up with the girl on a raft in the middle of the ocean, a double entendre on his lips, sex on his mind. Cue credits and “James Bond will return in...”

Nobody had seen anything like it. Imitators popped up everywhere. Most were American and forgettable. The best was British and anti-Bond: Michael Caine as the bespectacled gourmand Harry Palmer in “The Ipcress File” and “Funeral in Berlin.”

Roger Moore
Bond was an establishment figure, given to fine clothes and fine champagne, while the heroes of the early 1970s tended to be anti-establishment and rumpled. As a result, even when the producers coaxed Connery back for one more turn, Bond lost some of his polish. He didn’t play baccarat in Monte Carlo wearing a tux; he played craps in Vegas in his shirt sleeves. Jill St. John became the first American Bond girl, and she was dumber than the other Bond girls. Bond calls her a twit and slaps her. He rides a three-wheeler through the desert and leads police on a car chase through Vegas. The cops keep crashing into each other. Yee-ha.

So it would be throughout the Roger Moore ’70s. SPECTRE, cigarettes and the baccarat table all disappeared, while car chases (a la “Bullitt”) and car jumps (a la Evel Knievel) became essential. Bond was now less imitated, more imitator. “Live and Let Die” was the blaxploitation Bond; “The Man with the Golden Gun” contained elements of “Enter the Dragon.” Bond fought a henchman named Jaws two years after “Jaws.” After “Star Wars,” Bond went into outer space.

He repeated himself. In “The Spy Who Loved Me,” a megalomaniac is bent on destroying our corrupt civilization and building a better one undersea. In “Moonraker,” a megalomaniac is bent on destroying our corrupt civilization and building a better one in outer space. In “Golden Gun,” a car becomes a plane; in “Spy,” a car becomes a boat; in “Moonraker,” a boat (a gondola) becomes a car and Bond drives it through St. Mark’s Square, where the pigeons do double-takes. It's all fairly cartoonish.

Timothy Dalton
In the 1980s, movies were increasingly filled with action heroes in the Bond mould — Indiana Jones, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John McClane — and Timothy Dalton’s Bond responded by becoming more like them rather than like himself. His tastes were pedestrian. He favors leather jackets rather than tuxes. In “License to Kill,” a girl orders a Bud with a lime and Bond, the man who thinks it’s a crime to drink Dom Perignon ’53 above 38 degrees, tells the waitress: “Same.” He made headlines by becoming, in the age of AIDS, monogamous (one or two girls per film, instead of three), but the bigger story was missed: this Bond hardly flirted anymore. Dalton has a shy smile, and he employed it with women in his films. He seems almost ... puppyish.

And how does this new, bashful Bond bring the beautiful enemy agent over to his side? In “The Living Daylights” he tells the girl the truth. And in “License to Kill” he’s just, well, a nice guy. Nice guys and truth-tellers around the world rolled their eyes.

Pierce Brosnan
In 1995, Pierce Brosnan brought back the true cinematic Bond. In the first 20 minutes of “Goldeneye,” he 1) seduces a reluctant girl, 2) wears a tux, 3) plays baccarat in a French casino, 4) says “Vodka martini, shaken, not stirred” and 5) tells a lovely enemy agent his name is “Bond. James Bond.” No pussy-footing around here.

Arguments can be made that Brosnan is the most quintessentially Bond of all the Bonds. He has the intensity of Connery and Dalton, and the light comedic touch (although drier and more muted) of Moore. He’s even given a rationale for Bond’s playboy ways. This is a Bond who tries not to love, who tries not to care, because loving and caring get in the way of work. “How can you be so cold?” Natalya Simonova asks him in “Goldeneye.” “It’s what keeps me alive,” he responds, almost helplessly.

Daniel Craig
With “Casino Royale,” they’ve bitch-slapped the series. Bond, originally borne of WWII, and long steeped in the Cold War, is here remade as a post-9/11 secret agent who never knew the Cold War. Craig's Bond is physical and relentless. He bulldozes past everything. Sometimes literally. In Craig, the series has something it hasn’t had since Connery: a Bond believable as both roughneck and sophisticate. He doesn’t quite have the “wicked twinkle” that Honor Blackman attributed to Connery, but he does give good smoulder.

“Casino Royale” isn’t just grittier and bloodier than previous Bond movies; it’s deeper. All of those elements lampooned in “Austin Powers” (“All right guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism”) are gone. It’s an origin movie, and there’s small pleasures when familiar elements are introduced: Oh, so that’s why the Aston-Martin. Ah, so that’s why the vodka martini. These small pleasures, coupled with the new-found grittiness, actually make the movie feel like the reality upon which all of those other, more cartoonish Bond movies are based. It feels like they took the adventures of this guy, the Craig Bond, and gave us those crazy Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton and Brosnan flicks.

All of the above was taken from “Buying Bonds: a Cinematic History of James Bond, 007,” which I wrote for MSNBC in 2006.

Watching this YouTube mash-up of Rita Hayworth's dance numbers and the Bee Gee's 1977 hit “Stayin' Alive,” I kept flashing back to Morgan Freeman's great smile when he sees Ms. Hayworth on the big screen in “Shawshank Redemption”: “This is the part I really like, when she does that shit with her hair.” It also made me think of a time when America danced and the world watched:

I was alerted to the above via Roger Ebert, who writes:

I've seen a lot of editing feats like this, but there seems to be an uncanny match here between the music and the action. It consumes me with the desire to see a Rita Hayworth musical right away.

Favorite moment? Begins at 2:18 with Fred Astaire.

After Paul Ryan's genial lies at the GOP convention last night I took to heart what he'd said and contributed $500 to the Obama campaign. I suggest you give what you can ($15? $25? $50?) here. We're fighting liars and propagandists and more money that you can stick into  an off-shore account, if that's your idea of a good time.

In the meantime, here's some counter-programming, and reminders, to propel you through the next months:

• “All the President's Men” (1976): One of my favorite films, and certainly the best political thriller ever made, but odd seeing it 35 years on. I'd forgotten the difficulty of tracking information pre-Internet: “There's someone out there by the name of Kenneth Dahlberg,” Bernstein tells Woodward from a pay phone in Miami Dade Country, “and we've got to find him before the Times does.” We had less information at our disposal then but also less misinformation. It was an era in which politicians had to issue non-denial denials to cover up misdeeds. Now they just lie. In the end, I felt nostalgic not only for the patient, gritty, 1970s-style in which the film is told, but for the fact that, back then, politicians who lied didn't get away with it. They got caught. It took a while but they got caught. Now they joke about their lies as if it's all part of the show.
• No End in Sight“ (2007): Charles Ferguson's award-winning documentary on the lies and misperceptions and wish-fulfillment fantasies that led to the Iraq War. We get the usual suspects—Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bremmer—but what sticks out is a he said/he said between Col. Paul Hughes, who worked for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), and who seemed to have a sense of what Iraq was and what we should do there, and Walter B. Slocombe, the Senior Advisor for Security and Defense to the CPA, who arrived for a week in May, got his boots a little dusty, and helped make all the wrong decisions. From the beginning, Hughes seems insistent and exasperated. Slocombe, meanwhile, starts off almost jaunty; then, as he's questioned about, or held accountable for, his actions and policies, his eyes retreat, his voice turns tinny, and he reveals himself a hollow man. One wonders what lies he tells himself to make it through the day.
• ”Taxi to the Dark Side“ (2007): Alex Gibney begins with the incarceration and subsequent death of an innocent Afghani taxi driver while in U.S. military custody as the starting point to examine our entire post-9/11 system of torture and humiliation — specifically at Bagram, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. It’s a good overview of what will surely be one of the blackest marks of the many black marks on the Bush administration.
• ”W.“ (2008): It’s a father-son film. “You disappoint me, Junior,” Herbert Walker tells him early on. He tells him, “You only get one bite at the apple,” but W. keeps biting and missing. He drinks, carouses, goes after girls. He can’t find himself. Even after he finds Laura, and Jesus, and helps his father get elected the 41st president of the United States, he’s disappointed. Greatness escapes him. Hell, mediocrity escapes him. You go in wondering if Stone’s portrait of W. will be different from our own image of W. and it isn’t. What you see is what you get. He’s that thick, that muddled, and yet that certain. It’s a tragedy, certainly, and the tragedy is that in trying to win his father’s love, or outdo what his father did, or make up for his father’s great loss, W. — aided and abetted by a motley crew — put us on a calamitous national and international path ... and he still can’t think of one thing he did wrong. That lack of introspection is his tragedy. The rest is ours.
• Standard Operating Procedure” (2008): Errol Morris trains his eye on Abu Ghraib, on what was done there, on the photos that were taken there, on what they say or don’t say and how they lie or don’t lie. He interviews, almost exclusively, the various “bad apples” who forced Iraqi prisoners to debase themselves. It’s beautifully shot, claustrophobic and so sad about human nature. What people can convince themselves to do — particularly when ordered to do so. How they justify it afterwards. A few small apples were scapegoated for our unethical system, and their main defense is the Nuremberg defense: I was just following orders. They also blame the photographs. They blame the evidence rather than the crime. It’s as if being scapegoated for the crime is keeping them from examining their role in the crime. The tawdriness of the enterprise is overwhelming. Maybe it says something that the talking head who is least culpable — who was not even a guard at Abu Ghraib, but who wound up in the background of some photographs and was prosecuted based on that evidence — blames himself the most. The way of the world.
• “Inside Job” (2010): How the global financial meltdown went down. One of the most telling incidents occurred at the 2005 Jackson Hole Symposium, where Greenspan, Bernanke, Summers, Geithner, et al., listened to IMF economist Raghuram Ragan deliver a paper, not on the nitty-gritty of subprime mortgage loans and CDOs, but on the larger topic of incentives and risk. “Rajan hit the nail on the head,” Prof. Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard says in the doc. “What he particularly said was: 'You guys have claimed you have found a way to make more profits with less risk. I say you've found a way to make more profits with more risk.'” Reaction? Larry Summers accused Ragan of being a Luddite. “He wanted to make sure that we didn’t bring a whole new set of regulations to the financial sector at this point,” Ragan says. It's all about the regulations, or lack thereof. Follow the regulations.
• “Fair Game” (2010): “Fair Game” is a movie about a series of lies perpetrated by the Bush administration, sometimes on itself, and certainly on us, from 2002 to 2005. They were lies with massive consequences, lies that got us into war, lies that led to the deaths of tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, maybe someone you knew. Maybe someone close to you is now dead because of what the Bush administration wanted to believe. They reconfigured the globe because of what they wanted to believe. The one time they told the truth, it was a treasonous act. But they got away with that, too, because they lied their way out of it. My god. Can we be incensed again?
• “A Film Unfinished” (2010): It's the Nazis here, not the GOP, but it's a lesson in the ultimate meaning in propaganda. The Nazis filmed the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, and staged shots of supposedly affluent Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, not to cover up what they were doing but to justify what they were about to do. The Nazis were documenting a race of people so indifferent to the suffering of others that they didn’t deserve to live. They were documenting an excuse for extermination. In that moment, one understands the true meaning of propaganda. It is the powerful blaming the powerless for the crimes of the powerful. The Nazis herded 600,000 Jews into a single zone of Warsaw. They gave them no way to live. They let them starve. They let them die by the hundreds of thousands. Then they staged scenes of Jewish indifference to the suffering of others. “The powerful blaming the powerless for the crimes of the powerful” is still going on. Every day, Daniel.
• “The Tillman Story” (2010): Not only did Pat Tillman, former professional football player and Army Ranger, not die the way they said, he didn’t live the way they said. He joined the Rangers in Sept. 2001 to fight al Qaeda but wound up in Iraq and wasn’t happy. “This war is so fucking illegal,” one of his brothers quotes him saying. He had an open curious mind at odds with the incurious absolutism of the time. There’s hilarious footage of Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity refusing to believe that Tillman read linguist and conservative bete noire Noam Chomsky. (Because it didn’t fit into their notions of a football player? A soldier? A conservative hero? All of the above?) Fellow Ranger Bryan O’Neal, a Mormon, talks about coming across Tillman, a religious skeptic, possibly an atheist, reading “The Book of Mormon.” He wanted to see what was what.
• “Restrepo” (2010): “Restrepo” is the best thing I’ve seen or read about our presence in Afghanistan, and it’s not really about our presence in Afghanistan. It’s about, as the tagline says, one platoon, in one valley, for one year. It goes deep into these soldiers’ lives without telling us much about their actual lives (where they’re from, why they signed up, etc.). It’s an emotional movie precisely because its emotions are restrained. It’s artistic without being artistic. It’s artistic in the Dedalean sense. It doesn’t inspire kinetic emotions but static emotions. The mind is arrested. In this sense maybe Afghanistan itself is artistic. Our mind has been arrested there for almost 12 years.
• ”The Revisionaries“ (2012): Don McLeroy, the Bryan, Tex., dentist and young-Earth creationist who served on the Texas State Board of Education from 1998 to 2010, including a stint as its controversial chair from 2007 to 2009, is a genial, garrulous boob. Bald, moustached, and portly, he has a “gee whiz” quality to him. His face often resolves itself into a self-satisfied smile after he makes what he thinks is a telling point at BOE meetings, but mostly his smile is open and unaffected. He tends to preach his creationist doctrine to those who can’t answer back—dental patients with tubes in their mouths; Sunday School kids at Grace Bible Church—and he’s pretty darn enthusiastic about it. “Were there dinosaurs on the Ark?” he asks the kids, then answers his own question. “Sure there were!” He’s the kind of man who likes to answer his own questions. “The amount of power I have,” McLeroy says at one point, “boggles my mind.” Ours, too.

Other suggestions welcome.

'I gave it to Stans.”

“The truth is these are not very bright guys...and things got out of hand.”

Here's Jeff Wells earlier today:

Some guy with a glass of wine said the other night that 2012 has been a weak year for movies. I stopped him right there and said “wait a minute” and got out the iPhone and read off the following titles: Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Dark Knight Rises, Magic Mike, Miss Bala, Haywire, Arbitrage, Bernie, Moonrise Kingdom, God Bless America, Side by Side, Trishna, The Three Stooges, The Sessions, Liberal Arts, Michael (Austrian child-molesting movie), Rampart, 21 Jump Street and The Grey. Okay, some of these aren't out yet but that's 18 movies. Add the films I liked or admired in Cannes — Holy Motors, On The Road, No, Killing Them Softly, Amour, Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir and Rust and Bone — and that's a total of 25.

I like that “Some guy with a glass of wine” comment. As if anyone drinking a glass of wine is readymade for dismissal. As if Jeff Wells were Woody Allen dismissing Michael Sheen in “Midnight in Paris.”

I've felt Wells' objection before—people skewering movie years that I liked (see: 2009, 2010, 2011)—but...2012? Those 18 movies? I'd recommend “The Dark Knight Rises” for fans of Batman and Chris Nolan, “Moonrise Kingdom” for fans of Wes Anderson, and “Beasts of the Southern Wild” for fans of Manohla Dargis. Thought “Haywire” died in the second act. Same with “21 Jump Street,” which becomes what it pretends to be skewering. Haven't seen the others. “The Three Stooges” isn't even on my DVD list.

At SIFF, I liked “Starbuck,” “The Woman in the Fifth” and “Goodbye” but those are all 2011 movies. As is “Monsieur Lazhar” and “Footnote,” both of which I recommend highly. Is “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” 2012? If not, my recommendations for 2012 movies come down to “Moonrise Kingdom,” “Under African Skies,” and “The Avengers.” Oh, and “John Carter.” Poor forgotten bastard.

Wells, in defending the year thus far, made me realize it's been pretty shitty. Thus far.

We have.

If I didn't have a day job, I would've written something about Dustin Hoffman, who turned 75 today, because he means a lot to me. I used to be compared to him. As a teenager, I was self-conscious about my teeth, among other things, and tended to smile with my mouth closed in the Dustin Hoffman manner. I identify with, or love, characters he plays. I've grown up and grown middle-aged with the man.

Since I do have a day job, however, I simply offer this snippet from my review of “Barney's Version, along with his 90-minute appearance as the 200th guest on ”Inside the Actors Studio.“

First, the snippet:

Can I pause for a moment to say how much I love Dustin Hoffman? I don’t know if he lights up the screen but he lights up me. He shows up and I beam.

He seems to be playing more overtly Jewish these days. Here, at a dinner gathering with the rich family of Barney’s fiancée, he’s all smiles and good will and blunt charm. He says to Barney’s fiancée, “You are one sweet casserole,” and encourages them to “get to schtupping.” The father of the bride doesn’t think much of this working class man, and says something vaguely and unnecessarily insulting, which he doesn’t think Izzy will understand. But Izzy gives him a look. It’s a look I’ve seen Dustin give in other movies. It’s as if both injury and civility are competing for control of his face. It’s a look that says: “I am smart enough to recognize your insult, I am sensitive enough to be injured by your insult, but I am strong enough to look you in the face and civil enough to keep smiling.” It’s the most human of faces. It’s why Dusty is my guy. Long may he act.

What's fascinating about his appareance on ”Inside the Actors Studio“ is how much he talks to the students rather than to the TV audience. Also, how many of his iconic scenes were less character-driven than Hoffman-driven. They were his feelings: banging his head against the wall in ”The Graduate“ (to keep from laughing); the ”I'm walkin' here!“ scene, which, in his head was, ”We're filming here!“ The polite ending of ”Kramer vs. Kramer“ originally came from Hoffman and Streep and Robert Benton was shrewd enough to see it. The constant ”Yeah“ of Raymond in ”Rain Man" was Hoffman's inability to improvise, which Barry Levinson, whom Hoffman calls as close to an actors' director as possible, suggested he use as Raymond's signature line. He's aware of the mistakes that led to accolades. He tells the acting students to use them. He tells them acting is very hard and he tells them it's not hard: that they don't have to feel everything their character is feeling. He says this even as he, Dustin Hoffman, seems to feel everything. He displays, throughout the long, long interview, the most human of faces.

I noticed the movie first. “Hey!” I thought. “Terrence Malick's 'Badlands' is playing at SIFF!”

Only when I bought tickets (for $35/$40) did I learn that “Badlands” was an afterthought to one of the major events at the 2012 Seattle International Film Festival: “An Evening with Sissy Spacek,” in which the Oscar-winning actress accepted SIFF's lifetime achievement award and sat down for a two-hour Q&A with Time magazine's Richard Corliss. The screening of “Badlands,” which starred Spacek and a young Martin Sheen, came later, and, by the time it did, a third of the audience had left. Sad.

I had a good time at the event but questions arise. Why Corliss? Why not a local critic, like John Hartl or Moira MacDonald? One of the best, most entertaining interviewers I've seen is both local and a movie critic: Warren Etheredge of the Warren Report. Why not him?

The audience portion of the Q&A can be a drag—particularly in Seattle. The people raising their hands are generally the people who shouldn't be raising their hands: folks who don't want to ask anything but want to pontificate and blab and unenlighten and waste our time. Thankfully, we didn't get many of those. We got oddities: geeks bearing gifts. They spoke tentatively, then brought out some odd, hand-made doo-dad—a ceramic flying pig dangling on a string, for one—then brought it up to Ms. Spacek, who, to her credit, acted more graciously accepting these things than I do accepting a gift I want from someone I love. She showed her chops right there. She deserved her lifetime achievement award right there.

Did you know, under the name “Spackle,” that she sang a late '60s bubble-gum song called “John You've Gone Too Far This Time,” about how John Lennon in 1969 was no longer the mop-top we all loved? I didn't. Someone menioned that the song is hard to find online but it's actually pretty easy. And pretty awful. It should as least be catchy.

More catchy was this clip we saw as part of her career retrospective:

Just lovely.

After the Q&A, but before the “Badlands” screening, Michael Upchurch, who, with John Hartl, has been covering SIFF for The Seattle Times, came up and mock-chastised me: “Where was your present for Sissy?” he asked. Exactly.

Here's a portion of the Q&A. Apologies, but we were sitting halfway back so the volume isn't the best and the hand-held jumpiness is like out of a Lars von Trier film. Hope no one gets nauseous.

Apologies, too, Sissy, for not bringing you a gift. Next time.

(TURN UP THE VOLUME FOR THIS ONE...)

I saw 10 movies at the 2012 Seattle International Film Festival and was pretty tired by the end of it. SIFF is billed as the longest film fest in the world, 25 days now, 450+ movies, but there are times, particularly when you're caught in the middle of it, when “longest film fest” seems less boast than threat. You want to wave the white flag. You want to go climb a mountain. If you going to the movies you want to see something loud and stupid and with supheroes.

Here are the rankings of the movies I saw, from first to worst, with links to reviews:

1. Starbuck: Must-see French-Canadian comedy
2. Under African Skies: Documentary on Paul Simon's “Graceland”
3. Goodbye: Iran today
4. The Revisionaries: Texas today
5. Lola Versus: Girls today
6. The Revolutionary: The Marxist yesterday
7. Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Heroines: Doc on feminism and boobs
8. Hello I Must Be Going: A mopey 35-year-old's big adventure
9. A Checkout Girl's Big Adventure: Insipid French fairytale

I'd recommend the first three. Plus half of the fourth. “Checkout Girl” was physically painful.

My 10th film, in case you're wondering, was Terrence Malick's “Badlands” during “An Evening with Sissy Spacek.” More on that later.

None of my movies won any awards. Here's the rundown from the audience and the cognescenti:

2012 SIFF Audience awards

• Best film: “Any Day Now”
• Best documentary: “The Invisible War”
• Best director: Benh Zeitlin, “Beasts of the Southern Wild”
• Best actor: Alan Cumming, “Any Day Now”
• Best actress: Jamie Chung, “Eden”
• Best short film: “Catcam”

2012 SIFF Juried awards

• Best new director: Nicolas Provost, “The Invader”
• Best documentary: “Five Star Existence”
• Best narrative short: “The Extraordinary Life of Rocky”
• Best animated short: “Zergut”
• Best documentary short: “Paradise”
• FIPRESCI Prize for Best New American Film: “Welcome to Pine Hill”

I also heard good things about “Chasing Ice,” “Your Sister’s Sister,” “My Brother the Devil,” “The Fourth State” and “The Intouchables.”

Fun the first time I saw it.

I love this cinema montage, put together by Clara Darko (who has put together a ton of cinema montages), of actors breaking the fourth wall and looking right at us.

OK, not always at us. More often, we're momentarily the POV of a character in the film, and the actor is interacting with that character: Saying hey to Harry Potter, hugging Benjamin Button, etc. How good an actor do you have to be to do this? To greet the camera like it's your baby? Impressive.

So who's looking at us? Definitely Superman, and Eddie Murphy in “Trading Places,” and Amelie about to talk creme brulee. Both Kyra Sedgewick in “Singles” and Ray Liotta in “Goodfellas” are telling us stories. So, obviously, is Woody Allen in “Annie Hall.” So is Anthony Perkins at the end of “Psycho,” one of the great wall-breakers of all time.

Darko's whole video makes me happy. I'm happy to see “Un Prophete” in here, and “Come and See,” and “400 Blows.” The song is Manic Street Preacher's version of Frankie Valli's “Can't Take My Eyes Off of You.” I love how it first hits on the rousing chorus, “I love you, baby!,” the moment we see Audrey Tautou in “Amelie”: surely a cinematic moment in which the world sang that to an actress.

The montage is a bit of a lie, of course. It's not the world's movie stars who can't take their eyes off us but the other way around.

Here are the two posters, French and English, for the 2011 film “Les Hommes libres” (“Free Men”), which I reviewed earlier today. Check out the differences.

The French emphasize Michael Lonsdale (top), an actor I could watch forever, and various religious aspects of the story. They don't shy from Islam but they hide the gun.

The U.S.? We emphasize the handsome lead, Tahar Rahim of “Un Prophete.” We also emphasize Paris (which, thanks to Woody Allen, is big again among movie marketers), the Algerian flag (or at least a star, which is always big) and the gun, which has ruled Hollywood forever.

To be honest, neither poster captures the true feeling of the movie.

Last October I wrote about the most filmed character ever, and, via IMDb, came up with Santa Claus. Here are the rundowns:

• Santa Claus: 814
• Jesus Christ: 350
• God: 340
• Dracula: 274
• Abraham Lincoln: 263
• Sherlock Holmes: 246
• Hamlet: 198

Subsequent investigations based on reader response brought up:

• Napoleon: 337
• Hitler: 335

But no one close to Santa. Then last Friday I was talking with a friend at work, mentioned this thread, and back at my desk, for some reason, I tried another guess:

• The Devil: 848

From Georges Méliès in 1896 (“The House of the Devil”) to Billy Zane this year (“Dark Star Hollow”), from Lucifer to Satan to Mephistopholes to Lord of Darkness to Mr. Scratch, the Devil keeps on keeping on. This is the Bible-born Devil, so no “Hades,” and thus no Ralph Fiennes. Also no Al Pacino. Odd. His character in “The Devil's Advocate” is called “John Milton” but he's obviously the Devil. Yet he's not among the 848.

Even so, the Devil's cinematic preeminence makes sense. Despite all the pseudonyms, he's a specific character rather than an archetype like “Angel” or “Clown,” which IMDb correctly divvies up. He's the fallen angel not a fallen angel.

Plus, though Bible-born, he shows up in our secular stories. I suppose it's a consequence of modern living that you don't have to believe in God to believe in the Devil. Or maybe the Devil simply interacts more often with human beings than God does. Every story needs a conflict, and unless you're Job or Christopher Hitchens, you'll find it more easily with the Devil. God has big things to do but the Devil can spend time, say, attacking a group of people in an elevator (“The Devil”), stealing the soul of a stuntman (“Ghost Rider”), or inhabiting the body of a little girl (“The Exorcist”). He thinks small. He's trying to knock us off one by one.

Plus, in our more spiritual films, such as “The Tree of Life” or “Of Gods and Men,” God isn't personified. He's not part of the cast list. Indeed, in the latter film, he's not even singular.

Which is why the Devil wins. At least thus far. There may be another character out there more oft-portrayed than Satan. It would be cool if IMDb allowed us to see such a list, or sort such a list, but they don't. Their response, in total, to my query asking for this feature:

I am afraid we do not have this feature, sorry.

The Devil wins again.

Three of the 848 cinematic incarnations of the Devil: John Huston, impish, in “The Devil and Daniel Webster” (1941); Tim Curry bellowing in “Legend” (1985); and Elizabeth Hurley, just being herself, in “Bedazzled” (2000).

While reviewing “The Legend of the Lone Ranger” I kept searching for information on what happened to its star, Klinton Spilsbury, who, like his character, did this thing and rode away and was never heard from again.

Oddly, in our overconnected age, there's not much out there, just mashed-over bits and rumors. Someone said they saw him waiting tables in New York in the '80s. Another said he was living on a ranch in the Southwest. Nothing's defnite.

The bit below is a little less mashed-over and a little more definite. It’s from Charles Grodin’s memoir  “How I Got to be Whoever It Is I Am.” Grodin writes:

Shortly after [the movie came out, bombed, and the original Lone Ranger, Clayton Moore, was allowed to wear his mask again in publicity appearances], I was at a party and got into a conversation with a young actor who turned out to be Klinton Spilsbury, the new movie’s Lone Ranger. He told me that he was a serious actor from New York, had studied a lot, and was really doing very well moving up the ladder when this Lone Ranger opportunity came along. He said the movie was a mess. There were several scripts, and no one could agree on whether they were supposed to be funny or serious. He was having difficulty finding work because of his association with the movie and had moved back to New York to try to pick up the pieces of his career, which basically had ended.

If you know more, pass the word.

No, that's not Rick Springfield on the right; it's Klinton Spilsbury as John Reid, recovering from his wounds, and eyeing, for the first time, a fiery white horse.

Ross Douthat of The New York Times, and film critic for The National Review, posted the following on the Times' site yesterday:

I'm not much of a fan of holidays that make half the population feel like crap—like Valentine's Day. Hollywood, with its beautiful people beautifully lit and photographed, saying beautiful lines of love, hasn't helped in his regard.

Or has it? You just need to know where to look:

Can you match the quote with the movie?

1. American Beauty
2. Anchorman
3. Annie Hall (3)
4. Chinatown
5. The Descendants
6. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
7. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
8. Gone with the Wind
9. Grand Hotel
10. Hamlet
11. Jules et Jim
12. Moonstruck
13. Say Anything
14. Scarface
15. The Silence of the Lambs
16. Some Like It Hot
17. When Harry Met Sally

Here's to sharks, living and dead. Happy Valentine's Day.

I discovered this via Nathaniel Roger's Film Experience site.

Seems professional provacateur Tavis Smiley had Oscar nominees Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer of “The Help” on his show earllier this month. Quickly in the conversation, Smiley brings up his problem with “The Help.” It amounts to “You're playing maids, the same role that Hattie McDaniel played in 1939's 'Gone with the Wind,' and haven't we progressed any further than that in 72 years?” He brings up the Academy honoring Denzel Washington for playing, not Malcolm X or Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter, but the thuggish cop of “Training Day.” Why can't more positive, more uplifting portrayals be honored?

Here's Viola Davis' response:

That mindset... is absolutely destroying the black artist. The black artist cannot live in a revisionist place. The black artist can only tell the truth about humanity. Humanity is messy. People are messy. Caucasian actors know that. They understand that. They understand that when you bring a human being to life you show all the flaws as well as the beauty. We, as African American artists, are more concerned with image and message and not execution. Which is why every time you see our images they've been watered down to a point where they are not realistic at all. It's like all of our humanity has been washed out. We as artists cannot be politicians. We as artists can only be truth tellers.

Amen amen amen.

Here's the full interview:

Watch Actresses Viola Davis & Octavia Spencer on PBS. See more from Tavis Smiley.

Remember this post about the most filmed character ever? Of course you do. You're an avid reader.

In my search for the most filmed character, I wound up settling on Santa Claus (814 times) and Jesus Christ (350 times), but was curious if it was possible to sort IMDb's archive for a more comprehensive and accurate list. Wouldn't this be worthwhile? Wouldn't it tell us the kinds of stories that matter to us? And wouldn't this give us some indication of who we are as a people?

I suggested as such when I wrote IMDb's Help Desk.

Here's the answer I received:

Hello

Thanks for your message. I am afraid we do not have this feature, sorry.

----
Regards,
Alex
The IMDb Help Desk

What marvelous things IMDb could do with its database. What it's doing instead.

“Many would argue, if they ever had cause to think about it, that one Bad News Bears movie was enough. But no nine-year-old baseball-loving boy in 1977 would agree, not even one who had, unlke me, seen the first movie. The sequel came out that summer, after Little League season had ended all over the land, and who wouldn't want the season and the summer to somehow go on and on?

”The makers of the Bears sequel keyed in on this need to go on and on. Really, the premise of another Bears movie couldn't have been otherwise: there would have to be another game. But whether by design or happy accident, or some combination of the two, the sequel not only centers on the idea that the season can go on but continually frames it as an urgent question: can the season go on? It is, in a way, the prototypical sequel. Its plot mirrors the very question of its exisence. One story has ended. Can there be another?“

-- from ”The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training,“ by Josh Wilker, part of the ”A Novel Approach to Cinema“ series edited by Sean Howe.

I think ”Breaking Training“ one of the worst baseball movies ever made; but Wilker's short book, with its asides to the American myth of the road, the catchphrases of ”Happy Days,“ Jimmy Carter's ”malaise“ speech, the ”USA! USA!" chant, and the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, and how they all intertwine with this horrible, horrible movie, is something close to a work of art.

“It was very good for my blood pressure.”

--Gary Oldman on playing supercalm spy George Smiley in Tomas Alfredson's adaptation of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” during a Q&A at SIFF Uptown last night

The Uptown Theater in Seattle was shut down in November 2010 and for most of 2011 it was a garbage-strewn, boarded-up ghost of a building with a movie marquee perpetually announcing farewell, until, in late summer, the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) bought it, renovated it, and reopened it in October. Last night, in its main theater, it hosted a screening of Tomas Alfredson's adaptation of John le Carré's Cold War novel,  “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” follwed by a post-screening Q&A with the film's star, Gary Oldman.

Early in the Q&A Oldman mentioned the hurdles he has to jump for every character he plays, and whlie the immediate follow-up was never asked by the on-stage interviewer—what were the hurdles to playing George Smiley?—Oldman eventually answered at least some of that on his own.

“The Ghost of Guinness,” he said, “loomed very large.”

It's such a well-known story, he said, particularly in Britain, and the 1979 adaptation starring Alec Guinness as Smiley is so famous, so imposing, that it took him a month to even accept the part. Even afterwards, he said, he was nervous, feeling like he'd set himself up for a fall. It wasn't until he began to think of the role as akin to a classical role, a Shakespearean role, that he began to relax. Like being one of the many men to play Hamlet. “Pull yourself together, Gary,” he told himself.

Ultimately, he said, playing Smiley was “like being in the company of a dear friend. You just got comfortable with it. ... But you had to do the work.”

I'm generally not a fan of Q&As with the audience—you get stupid questions and pontificators who never ask questions and ... it's just embarassing—but last night there were surprisingly good questions from the audience, including one from a local director, who asked, “What can a director do to bring out the best in you?” After a succinct response that brought laughter—“Leave me alone”—Oldman clarified with a story about a discussion he'd had with Alfredson, the Swedish director of “Let the Right One In,” prior to filming a pivotal scene in “Tinker Tailor.” It was the first time Smiley enters the safe house that the traitor used to transmit information to the Soviets. “It's contaminated,” Alfredson said of the room. It was responsible for the death of friends, the forced retirement of others, and the tarnishing of everything Smiley had worked for. It was like a gas chamber in a concentration camp. Alfredson didn't tell Oldman how to act the scene; he didn't tell him to use this information in his performance. He merely mentioned it and walked away.

“Good directing,” Oldman said, “is knowing when to not saying anything ... to let you flower.”

Review of the movie up later this week.

“I love baseball. You know, it doesn't have to mean anything, it's just beautiful to watch.”

--Leonard Zelig in Woody Allen's “Zelig” (1983)

Target Field, July 4, 2011.

A funny thing happened on the way to being excited over the first shots of Daniel Day Lewis as Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's “Lincoln,” scheduled for a December 2012 release.

I ran into women.

OK, I ran into two women: Patricia and a friend on Facebook. Both had the same reaction: repulsed. My exchange with the friend went like this:

She: Yikes, he just dropped off my list of hotties :(
Me: But he looks amazing. He's going to be amazing.
She: I just preferred his look in “Last of the Mohicans.”
Me: This is a different role. I mean, who would he say “I WILL find you” to in “Lincoln”? South Carolina? Jefferson Davis? A decent Union general?
She: I didn't even see “No Country for Old Men” because I just couldn't bear to see Javier Bardem look so awful. Call me shallow, I don't care. Thank god men are more cerebral and don't react this way about hot actresses. ;)

After thinking about it a bit, though, I believe women, who have a rep for being less shallow than men, behave worse in this regard than men. That takes doing.

When I first saw shots of Meryl Streep's transformation into Maggie Thatcher for “The Iron Lady,” I was amazed, not disappointed—but then, one could argue, I'm not hot for Streep. (OK, not much.) So let's talk about more obvious hotties. I was amazed, not disappointed, at Charlize Theron's transformation in “Monster,” and by Marion Cotillard's transformation in “La vie en rose.” On and on. I never thought any of them would be stuck that way. I knew they were acting. In roles. For awards. And getting them.

But for female fans, it seems more personal. They can't get past it. It's like all men are one Amish beard away from forever being struck from the hearts and loins of women.

Thoughts?

Daniel Day Lewis as Abraham Lincoln hanging out in a Confederate (Richmond, Va.) restaurant.

More Netflix nonsense.

Based on “Eat Drink Man Woman” and “The Brothers,” Netflix recommends the following films with A STRONG FEMALE LEAD:

Nice. Two women who are scared and one who is grimy and chained for your pleasure. Seriously, Netflix, there's gotta be a better way you can handle this kind of thing.

Other Netflix movies with strong female leads include “Revenge of the Bridesmaids” (comedy), “Practical Magic” (comedy) and “The Housemaid” (Korean sex abuse). But at least they include “Jane Eyre,” “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” and “Winter's Bone.” At least they got a few right.

I was doing research on “The Wizard of Oz” recently when I came across this latest horrific example of Netflix's recommendation algorithm:

If you'd asked me to name a thousand movies that were similar to “The Wizard of Oz,” I wouldn't have named any of these. Who is screwing things up at Netflix? Who was fired, and who was hired, and who is running things into the ground there?

As an experiment, I tried it at IMDb.com. These are the recommendations for their “Wizard of Oz” page:

That's a little more like it.

“If you live in France and you have written one good book, or painted a good picture, or directed one outstanding fim, 50 years ago, and nothing ever since, you are still recognized as an artist, and honored accordingly. People take their hats off and call you maitre. They do not forget. In Hollywood--in Hollywood you're as good as your last picture. If you didn't have one in production in the last three months, you're forgotten, no matter what you have achieved ere this.”

--Erich von Stroheim, “Classics of the Silent Screen: A Pictorial Treasury” by Joe Franklin

Casting Tom Hanks as the father who goes missing/dies on 9/11 in “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” is a great idea for two reasons: one obvious, one subtle.

The obvious reason is that everyone loves Tom Hanks and will feel his loss along with his movie wife and son (Sandra Bullock and Thomas Horn).

The subtle reason is that Tom Hanks himself kind of went missing after 9/11. At least the Tom Hanks we said we loved.

Hanks dominated the ‘90s like no actor dominated a decade. He got nom’ed best actor three times and won it twice. Three of his films were the No. 1 movie of the year (“Forrest Gump,” “Toy Story,” and “Saving Private Ryan”), while others finished third for the year (“Apollo 13”), fifth (“Sleepless in Seattle”), 10th (“A League of Their Own”), and 12th (“Philadelphia,” “The Green Mile”). In 2000, he was nom'ed again for “Castaway,” basically a one-man show on a desert island; and yet, since that one man was Tom Hanks, the movie was the second highest-grossing movie of the year.

Since 9/11? Oscar hasn't called. He hasn't even texted.

In 2002, Hanks appeared in two movies, “Road to Perdition,” which finished 19th for the year, and “Catch Me If You Can,” which finished 11th. Both movies, like every Tom Hanks vehicle since 1993, grossed over $100 million.

But this string of successes stopped in 2004. First, “The Ladykillers” bombed with both critics and audiences, grossing only $39 million. Then, inexpicably, “The Terminal,” a feel-good film directed by Steven Spielberg, and launched in the middle of summer, also failed to gross $100 million. As did “Charlie Wilson’s War” in 2007 and “Larry Crowne” this year. “Larry” didn't even gross what “Ladykillers” did back in '04.

Hanks’ recent animated films (“Polar Express”; “Toy Story 3”), as well as his “Da Vinci Code” movies, tend to do well at the box office. But with the exception of “Toy Story 3,” they’re not highly regarded by critics and audiences. No one thinks of them as great films.

Hanks' '90s movies were central to the culture and conversation. Since 2001? What’s worth talking about? What’s worth keeping? Yes to “Toy Story 3,” and maybe to “Catch Me If You Can.” Anything else?

Our culture just doesn’t do Tom Hanks movies anymore. We do tentpole flicks and superhero epics. We do movies about magic powers. We were attacked in the real world so in movie theaters we cower behind capes and wands and imagine we're strong.

Casting Tom Hanks as the father in “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” is a subtle reminder of all of this. It's a reminder of what was better about us before 9/11.

He was with us once. Remember?

I posted my review of “Marnie” the other day, a movie which didn't impress me much. But I was impressed by one thing: the lovely neck of a young Diane Baker, who started out as a ballerina, and who is perhaps best known as the senator whose daughter goes missing in “The Silence of the Lambs.”

Here's a screenshot from “Marnie.” Baker is on the left:

Who has the most celebrated neck in movie history? Audrey Hepburn? Looking at Diane Baker, above, I'm surprised, certainly saddened, that she never got cast as Audrey Hepburn's devilish younger sister. Imagine that movie. Instead she spent a few years on “Dr. Kildare,” then a few years on a few more shows. And then... and then... She kept working anyway. She got to do what she likes to do. She's now executive director of the acting school at Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Quote from the site:

“Our perspective is simple. Work hard, learn your craft and build relationships.” ~ Director Diane Baker

Good advice in any field.

I wrote this piece for MSN seven years ago, for the 2004 post-season (that glorious post-season), but it's no longer available in uncut form. The site used it for spring one year, fall the next, and eventually trimmed away the negative. It turned it into this. Below you'll find the pure uncut stuff. Just in time for the first game of the 2011 World Series.

Question: Where would you rank recent baseball movies, including “Moneyball,” “Sugar,” “The Perfect Game,” “The Bronx is Burning,” “The Benchwarmers,” “Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story,” and “Fever Pitch”? In the Hall of Fame? In the Majors? Minors? Not fit to carry Costner's jockstrap? Feel free to add thoughts in the comments field.

Arguing with the umpire is encouraged.

This may be the best time ever for fans of baseball movies. Early versions of the genre tended to be black-and-white hagiographies where the actors weren’t athletic, the baseball wasn’t exciting, and kids with names like Jimmy or Timmy were forever stricken with crippling diseases that could only be cured by homeruns hit by big-name sluggers. After the publication of Jim Bouton’s Ball Four in 1970, baseball heroes were finally allowed to appear less heroic—and usually seemed moreso as a result.

But what makes a good baseball movie? After immersing myself in the genre, and seeing more than my share of called shots, key strikeouts, and bottom-of-the-ninth-inning-on-the-last-day-of-the-season homeruns, I’ve come up with the following guidelines:

• It’s better to focus on a season than a career. Probably because the rhythm of a season is closer to a dramatic arc than the rhythm of a life.
• Employ actors who look like they can play. Please.
• Be passionate about your subject. Check out Billy Crystal’s 61* and Aviva Kempner’s The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg for an indication of what passion can do.
• Yankees suck! (OK, not a guideline. Just fun to say.)

The movies below are divided into four categories of descending importance. Play ball!

Hall of Fame

Bull Durham (1988)
Written and directed by Ron Shelton.
The sexiest and wittiest baseball movie is also the most real. Nice triumvirate. It’s less concerned with how a team matures than how people mature. Millie gets married, Annie falls in love, and Nuke Laloosh, so hopeless he needs two teachers, becomes…a little less hopeless. The movie suffers when he leaves. I love Crash and Annie, but they’re both teachers, and when they get together the best parts of her character are subsumed by the dullest parts of his. (This could be every wife’s lament.) But this is just in the last five minutes of the movie. The first 103 are still brilliant.
Heroes: Sexy women and Walt Whitman.
Villains: That one extra hit per week (a flair, gork, a dying quail) that doesn’t fall or get through, and that keeps the .250 hitter from becoming a .300 hitter.
Verisimilitude: Costner’s swing is the prettiest of any actor in any baseball movie. (Redford and Tom Selleck come close.) Robbins’ motion ain’t in the same class but it’s workable. But no A-ball pitcher – I don’t care how good – leaps past Double-A and Triple-A for the majors. Just doesn’t happen.
Baseball cameos: Max Patkin, the clown prince of baseball.
Awards: Best screenplay from all the major film critic groups. The Academy gave the Oscar to Rain Man.
Quote: “Oh my.”

61* (2001)
Directed by Billy Crystal. Written by Hank Steinberg.
OK, so Billy Crystal is a spoiled little shit of a Yankees fan who, in Ken Burns’ “Baseball,” laments the Yankees’ 1960 World Series loss with The Whine Heard ‘Round the World: “I still hurt about it. I still feel bad about it.” Billy, you grew up watching the most dominating team in sports history – 14 pennants in 16 years – and you still feel bad about this one season? Shut up already! … And now his due. With a fantastic script from Hank Steinberg, the little S.O.B. has directed a great baseball movie. The verisimilitude is unparalleled, right down to those odd, fuzzy-looking batting helmets they wore in the sixties. His lead actors (Barry Pepper and Tom Jane) are uncanny, and can act. He doesn’t skimp on supporting cast either: Richard Masur; the always-fascinating Bruce McGill; and Billy’s daughter, the very sweet Jennifer Crystal. Best of all, there’s dramatic tension. It’s about an ordinary man under extraordinary pressure. It’s about a decent man who’s treated as a villain, and an often indecent man who’s treated as a hero. It’s about the friendship between the two. I hate the Yankees as much as Billy loves them, but man I love this movie.
Heroes: Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle.
Villains: Ford Frick; sportswriters; punctuation.
Verisimilitude: You’d need a time machine to get a more exact rendition of the 1961 New York Yankees.
Awards: 12 Emmy nominations. Won two: casting and sound editing.
Quote: “We’re chasing a ghost, Rog. You go into that clubhouse, he’s there. At homeplate, he’s there. In the outfield, he’s there. The fat fuck, he’s everywhere! We’re playing in his house!”

The Natural (1984)
Directed by Barry Levinson. Written by Roger Towne and Phil Dusenberry, based upon the novel by Bernard Malamud.
Author Bernard Malamud condemned his characters for the slightest breach of morality (Roy Hobbs, for example, strikes out at the end), and his novel was an amalgam of real myths and baseball myths, so its transfer to a 1980s movie screen with requisite happy ending feels forced at times. I mean: the whole good luck/bad luck thing? Pop is jinxed but Roy overcomes his jinx. Memo is bad luck but Roy can’t overcome her bad luck. Iris is good luck so she counteracts Memo. Why? And why the gambler if there’s no “Say is ain’t so, Roy”? And enough shots with the kids in the stands already. … So with all of these complaints, why is The Natural still in my Hall of Fame? Because every time I see the effin’ thing I start to cry. It’s our An Affair to Remember.
Heroes: Roy Hobbs; golden light from the setting sun.
Villains: Sexy women and the dark. Which is odd because this combination is usually a plus in my life.
Verisimilitude: Redford is completely believable as a baseball star but not as a teenager. It was the last time he played one.
Awards: Four Academy Award nominations. 0-4. Hardly Hobbsian.
Quote: “Some mistakes I guess we never stop paying for.”

Also inducted: Ken Burns’ Baseball (1994); The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (2000)

Major Leagues

The Bad News Bears (1976)
Directed by Michael Ritchie. Written by Bill Lancaster.
The script is unfair to minorities – blacks, Mexicans, Iowans – and the journey of Coach Buttermaker from thesis (doesn’t care about winning) to antithesis (cares too much about winning) to synthesis (cares about the kids) is a little extreme. But it’s still the movie for anyone who ever failed athletically. Which means most of us.
Heroes: Misfits and underdogs.
Villains: Businessmen and the North Valley League Yankees.
Verisimilitude: The Bears look like every kid who ever had trouble catching a pop fly; that’s its charm.
Awards: Matthau was nominated for a BAFTA.
Quote: “Hey Yankees, you can take your apology and your trophy and shove it straight up your ass!”

Major League (1989)
Written and directed by David S. Ward
The quintessential Hollywood baseball story concerns a team of misfit underdogs who, through some galvanizing force (and with or without spinning newspaper headlines), rise from the cellar and contend for the pennant on the last day of the season. This conceit describes everything from Bang the Drum Slowly to Angels in the Outfield, but its purest example is Major League. The misfits here are all colorful and memorable, each is given equal time, and the subplots are kept to a minimum. Best of all? It’s funny.
Heroes: Misfits and underdogs.
Villains: Ex-showgirls and the New York Yankees.
Verisimilitude: Charlie Sheen’s pitching motion is the best I’ve seen from an actor. The others look pretty good, too.
Ballplayer cameos: Pete Vukovich and Steve Yeager.
Quote: “Juuuust a bit outside.”

The Stratton Story (1949)
Directed by Sam Wood. Written by Douglas Morrow and Guy Trosper
This is a simple story simply told. It’s about a country boy who makes the bigs, suffers a horrible injury, and then begins to explore the limits of his new circumstances. What can he do now? How much of his former life can he reclaim? The film relies heavily upon the considerable charm of its star, Jimmy Stewart, and when his character turns bitter and quiet the movie flags. But this is only temporary. Worth watching for the shot of Stratton’s one year-old son learning to walk, with Stratton, beside him, doing the same.
Heroes: Monte Stratton.
Villains: Shotguns and the New York Yankees.
Verisimilitude: A good pitching motion is probably the only area of acting where Charlie Sheen could’ve given Jimmy Stewart pointers.
Ballplayer cameos: Bill Dickey.
Awards: Academy Award for Best Story.
Quote: “A man’s gotta know where he’s going.”

Also in the show: Bang the Drum Slowly (1973); Eight Men Out (1988); Field of Dreams (1989); Pastime (1991); A League of Their Own (1992); The Rookie (2002)

Minor Leagues

The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
Directed by Sam Wood. Written by Jo Swerling, Herman J. Mankiewicz and Damon Runyon
I can hear the complaints already. For decades this biopic of Lou Gehrig was considered the best baseball movie ever made, but time hasn’t been kind. Gary Cooper’s cutesy-pie acting? The idiotic “Tanglefoot” business? Gehrig learning to hit with power from a nerd at the county fair? Slugging two homeruns in the World Series for a crippled kid who’d already been promised a homerun by Babe Ruth? MGM’s weird dance interlude with Veloz and Yolanda? How about this awful line from manager Miller Huggins after Gehrig plays the first of his 2130 consecutive games? “What do we have to do – kill you to get you out of the lineup?” No, not kind at all.
Hero: Lou Gehrig
Villain: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Verisimilitude: They both had shy smiles, but long, lean Gary Cooper had the wrong body to play the sturdy Iron Man of baseball. He couldn’t swing, either.
Ballplayer cameos: Babe Ruth and Bill Dickey.
Awards: Ten Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Writing, Actor and Actress. Won Film Editing.
Quote: “Today I consider myself the luckiest man (man man) on the face of the earth (earth earth).”

Damn Yankees! (1958)
Directed by George Abbott and Stanley Donen. Written by George Abbott, from the novel, “The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant” by Douglass Wallop.
There are two big baseball musicals and each lacks what the other has. Take Me Out to the Ball Game has personality (Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra), but the story’s no great shakes and the songs aren’t memorable. Damn Yankees! has a great story (Faust) and great songs (“You gotta have heart”; “Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, MO”) but no personality. Ray Walston and Jean Stapleton are delightful, but Tab Hunter just doesn’t cut it. Gwen Verdon’s a fine dancer but not someone you’d sell your soul for. And the team? Well, they’ve got heart anyway.
Heroes: Faithful wives and faithful husbands.
Villains: The Devil and the New York Yankees. Not necessarily in that order.
Verisimilitude: My Sunday softball team could beat these guys.
Awards: Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Score.
Quote: “Wives! They give me more trouble than the Methodist Church!”

For Love of the Game (1999)
Directed by Sam Raimi. Written by Dana Stevens, from the novel by Michael Shaara.
With tighter editing this could’ve made the bigs. It’s got a cool lead character who thinks over his life as he pitches a meaningless game near the end of a meaningless season. And he’s got reasons to think over his life. He’s lost his woman and maybe his career. Halfway through he suddenly realizes he’s pitching a perfect game.
Hero: Billy Chapel
Villains: The past and the New York Yankees
Verisimilitude: John C. Reilly’s got the mug but not the chops to be a catcher. Apparently Costner can play any position.
Awards: The Razzies nominated Costner. It’s time they stopped riding his ass.
Quote: “How do you like to be kissed?”

Also grabbing pine: Take Me Out to the Ballgame (1949); Fear Strikes Out (1958); Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976); Mr. Baseball (1992); The Sandlot (1993); Cobb (1994); Little Big League (1994); Major League II (1994)

Not Fit to Carry Kevin Costner’s Jockstrap

The Babe Ruth Story (1948)
Directed by Roy Del Ruth. Written by George Callahan and Bob Considine, from the book by Bob Considine and Babe Ruth.
The Babe (1992)
Directed by Arthur Hiller. Written by John Fusco.
The greatest baseball player of all time has been the subject of two of the worst baseball movies of all time. In the Bendix version he throws like a girl, hits infield pop flies that magically leave the park, and gets in dutch with his manager for taking a sick dog to the hospital. In the Goodman version, he throws like a girl, hits infield pop flies that magically leave the park, and is hugely fat from the start – when Babe was in pretty good shape for much of his career. At least the nineties version is honest about Babe’s drinking and womanizing, but then they try to make his excesses and tantrums the stuff of tragedy. Both movies have him hitting homeruns for sick kids in the hospital. Both have him calling his shot in the 1932 World Series. The Bendix version actually combines the two: Babe calls his shot for a sick kid in the hospital. I’d call it ruthless efficiency but there was too much Ruth in it.
Heroes: Babe Ruth, and the people who put up with him.
Villains: Hot dogs, booze, and Colonel Ruppert.
Verisimilitude: For the next movie about the Babe? Try hiring a lefty.
Baseball cameos: Mark Koenig played himself in the ’48 version.
Quote: “How can you manage a baseball team when you can’t even manage yourself?”

The Jackie Robinson Story (1950)
Directed by Alfred E. Green. Written by Arthur Mann and Lawrence Taylor.
Jackie Robinson plays himself in this low-budget film full of dull apple pie pronouncements and paternalistic back-patting. There’s odd comic relief from a character named “Shorty,” baseball is presented as Jackie’s best, favorite sport – when it wasn’t either – and at the end Jackie delivers a sudden, embarrassing anti-communist speech. And where’s his famous fire? Only visible for a second when Branch Rickey (Minor Watson) gives him an example of the kind of abuse he’ll face. In a way the movie confirms how far we’ve come by revealing what passed for racial enlightenment in 1950.
Heroes: Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey.
Villains: Southern “lodge” members.
Verisimilitude: You’re not going to get a better ballplayer than Jackie Robinson, but you could get a better actor.
Quote: “We’re dealing with rights here. The right of any American to play baseball, the American game. You think he’s our boy, Clyde?”

The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (1977)
Directed by Michael Pressman. Written by Paul Brickman.
The Bad News Bears Go To Japan (1978)
Directed by John Berry. Written by Bill Lancaster.
In the first sequel they lose Matthau and O’Neal, and in the second they lose Tanner (“Crud!”) Boyle. The first sequel insults Texas, the second Japan. The first sequel includes a Fonzie rip-off, the second goes for the cute black kid. Rudi Stein keeps getting taller. Kelly Leak keeps getting creepier. Yet the filmmakers insist that Kelly’s a cool kid who deserves his own subplots: estranged father in Breaking Training, romance with a Japanese girl in Japan. Apparently they’re re-making The Bad News Bears with Billy Bob Thornton in Matthau’s role. If it happens, I’d advise them to stop right there. These sequels are as unwatchable as movies get.
Heroes: Misfit underdogs.
Villains: Jocks and businessmen. And the New York Yankees. OK, I’m making that up.
Verisimilitude: Anyone who thinks Jackie Earle Haley is a stand-out player can clear out their locker right now.
Awards: The Razzies hadn’t been invented yet.
Quote: “You’re really just a second place team from the Van Nuys League.”

Also unfit for jockstrap-carrying duty: Rookie of the Year (1993); The Scout (1994), Angels in the Outfield (1994); BASEketball (1998); Major League III: Back to the Minors (1998); Hard Ball (2001)

“But [Pauline] Kael had stumbled upon something that could be very disconcerting to the best film critic in the world, just as it appalled the man [Orson Welles] who was increasingly the idol of young directors: that the movies were not and never would be good enough, deep enough, to hold his interest. He had gone deep—no one yet had gone deeper. But it was not enough, not compared with literature, music, painting or just watching life go by. The movies, in other words,  are the art of a culture prepared to settle for the shallow. The artistic status of the filmmaker was not actually substantiated by the work. Citizen Kane was the first move to reveal that—and Welles, for a long time, was the lone man who noticed it.”

--David Thomson, “Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles,” pg. 398

Discuss.

It's tough for me to be around the Internet this weekend because I get distracted by these kinds of things. “Moneyball” gets released and so every site has its baseball movies article. In the above link, Salon goes to the experts—Nicholas Dawidoff, Roger Kahn, Joe Posnanski, et al.—and asks two questions: 1) What's your favorite baseball movie?; and 2) Why aren't there better baseball movies?

I answered both questions in 2007 for MSNBC.com without being asked. Here's my lede. No, screw it. Here's the whole freakin' piece.

Two years ago, people were scratching their heads over the idea of “Moneyball” as a movie. Stats? Sabermetrics? What the? But I knew. It's not only a classic Hollywood story—underdogs triumph—it's the classic baseball narrative of the last 30 years. Misfits band together, and, through knowledge, teamwork and that one guy, and against all odds, begin to win.

But I'll still take sex with Susan Sarandon.

Play Ball!
Baseball Movies From “Pride of the Yankees” to “Fever Pitch”

When Bobby Thomson hit a three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth inning to lift the New York Giants over the Brooklyn Dodgers and into the 1951 World Series, sportswriter Shirley Povich wrote the following: “The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again.”

When Kirk Gibson hobbled to the plate and hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth inning to lift the Los Angeles Dodgers over the Oakland A’s in the 1988 World Series, broadcaster Jack Buck shouted the following: “I don’t believe what I just saw!”

And that’s the problem with baseball movies. The unbelievable in a game makes you stand up and cheer. The unbelievable in a movie makes you stand up and walk out.

Storytelling is about making life more dramatic; yet if the best of baseball is already too dramatic to be believed, where does that leave storytelling? How does Hollywood dramatize it?

Here’s what they’ve tried.

“The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! And they're going crazy! They're going crazy!”: Try to do that in a movie.

Hitting a home run for little Timmy in the hospital
Initially they produced biopics where the point wasn’t the baseball so much as the lack of baseball. Something always had to get in the way of playing.

Consider “The Pride of the Yankees” a template. Sure, Lou Gehrig was a great player — 2,130 consecutive games, third-highest slugging percentage of all-time — but Hollywood could care less from slugging percentage. They made his life into a movie because he died of the disease that now bears his name: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. His life, and the subsequent movie starring Gary Cooper, had a classic dramatic arc: rise (Yankee stardom), fall (ALS) and resurrection (“I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth”).

Most baseball biopics in the 1940s and ’50s followed suit. In “The Stratton Story,” Monty Stratton, played by Jimmy Stewart, is a solid pitcher for the Chicago White Sox (rise); then his leg is amputated after a hunting accident (fall); but with a wooden leg, he makes a comeback, and pitches well enough to make the minor leagues (resurrection). Same arc for Dizzy Dean in “The Pride of St. Louis” (pitching star/arm injury/radio broadcaster) and Jimmy Piersall in “Fear Strikes Out” (taciturn outfielder/nervous breakdown/recovery).

Then feature-film baseball biopics disappeared for decades. They returned in the early 1990s with a couple of mediocre attempts: “The Babe” with John Goodman, and “Cobb” with Tommy Lee Jones. More recently, there was “The Rookie,” a good, quiet film starring Dennis Quaid as Jimmy Morris, a high school science teacher who makes the Tampa Bay Devil Rays squad at the age of 35. But “The Rookie” is in a different category: Less the fall of a titan to mortal status than the rise of a mortal to titan status. It almost belongs with the recent glut of films about fans: “Everyone’s Hero,” “Game 6” and (someone please get Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore off the field already) “Fever Pitch.”

An autographed ball isn't enough. A home run isn't enough. No, little Timmy's one greedy bastard.

Hitting a home run for the broad in the second row
Why did Hollywood abandon the biopic? Jim Bouton is partly to blame (or thank). In 1970, he published his memoir of the 1969 season, “Ball Four,” and it blew the lid off the game, revealing, amid the day-to-day commentary of a guy just trying to fit in, the smallness of management and the stupidity of players. These guys weren’t hitting home runs for little Timmy in the hospital; they were popping “greenies” and trying to look up women’s skirts. Hard to fashion a feel-good biopic around that.

Yet Billy Crystal’s “61*” did just that. The HBO film — not quite a biopic — gives us a warts-and-all account of the 1961 Yankees, and the friendship between Mickey Mantle (Thomas Jane) and Roger Maris (Barry Pepper) as they battle for the single-season home run record. What makes the movie powerful — besides the fact that Crystal, a lifelong Yankee fan, gets every freakin’ detail right — is that Maris’ rise and fall occur simultaneously. The more home runs he piles up (the rise), the more the press and public turn against him (the fall), because he’s not “the right Yankee” to break the mark. Extraordinary pressure is thus created, and that pressure is felt in Pepper’s performance, and in the release we feel when No. 61 flies out and the sparse hometown crowd finally, finally gives the man the standing ovation he deserves.

This shouldn’t need saying but fallibilities make characters more interesting, not less, and great baseball biopics are waiting to be made if studio execs only get off the schneid. You’re telling me you can’t make an interesting movie out of the life of Satchel Paige or Hank Greenberg or Roberto Clemente? Why not ignore the career for the season? Give us Jackie Robinson from the time he signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in the fall of 1945, through the ’46 season with the Montreal Royals, and end the film on April 15, 1947, the day he broke the color barrier. Talk about extraordinary pressure! There wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house.

Barry Pepper as Roger Maris in Billy Crystal's “61*.” More complicated heroes of the modern era.

Misfits win! Misfits win!
So what’s replaced baseball biopics? This formula, mostly: A team of misfits keeps losing; then they find a way to win; then they play for the championship at the end of the season.

This describes everything from “The Bad News Bears” to “Major League” to “Angels in the Outfield,” with films differentiated by: a) how teams start winning, and b) that final game.

How do they start winning? For some, it’s the myth of the one guy. Team sucks, this one guy wanders in the locker room, everything changes. Often he’s associated with magic. Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) has a kind of mystical lightning about him in “The Natural,” while Joe Hardy (Tab Hunter) is the work of the devil in “Damn Yankees!” An annoying little kid with a 100-mph fastball (Thomas Ian Nicholas) turns the hapless Cubs into winners in “Rookie of the Year.” You could even say the turnaround for the Angels in “Angels in the Outfield” is the work of one guy. The big guy. Which seems to me a violation of the 25-man rule.

Other teams begin to win through the myth of teamwork. This rationale is big in movies where the lead character is a selfish S.O.B.: Jack Elliot (Tom Selleck) in “Mr. Baseball” and Stan Ross (Bernie Mac) in “Mr. 3000.” Once the S.O.B. subsumes his gargantuan ego to the group, they start winning. Hollywood, with its above-the-line talent, relates.

Finally there’s the myth of knowledge. The players don’t know what they’re doing wrong, so it’s up to someone, generally an outsider, generally a kid, to set them straight. In 1953’s “The Kid from Left Field,” it’s the batboy, Christie (Billy Chapin), who’s getting tips from his ex-big league dad. By 1994 and “Little Big League,” the studios knew how to pander to kids. Thus Billy Heywood (Luke Edwards), who inherits the Minnesota Twins from his grandfather, is fatherless and turns the Twins around on his own. Daddies? We don’t need no stinkin’ daddies.

The best baseball films tend to combine rationales. The Bears in “The Bad News Bears” need Coach Buttermaker to care enough to impart his knowledge, they need to work together, and they need that one guy, Kelly Leak, to get them over the hump. They get it all. The beauty is it’s still not enough. That’s why the film resonates after 30 years. Read your Roger Kahn: “You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat.”

The best of the misfits. “Hey Yankees! You can take your apology, and your trophy, and shove it straight up your ass!”

Hitting a home run with Susan Sarandon
Which brings us to the final game of the season. How do you end it with a bang as big as Bobby Thomson’s and still be believable? “The Natural” got away with it by making their home run bigger than any home run could ever be. They made it mythic.

Other films play smallball. Jake Taylor (Tom Berenger) wins the big game in “Major League” by majestically calling his shot, a la Babe Ruth, and then bunting in the winning run. Jack Elliot wins the big game in “Mr. Baseball” by selflessly giving up the chance to set a Japanese home run record ... and bunting in the winning run. In “Mr. 3000,” Stan Ross selflessly gives up his chance for his 3,000th hit by — you guessed it — bunting in the winning run. You could call it a theme.

I’ll still go with how my favorite baseball movie, “Bull Durham,” handles the big game. The Durham Bulls start out, typically, as misfit losers, but thanks to the wisdom of Crash Davis (Kevin Costner), the arm of Nuke LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), and that magical quality where everyone suddenly starts playing well together, they begin to win. And they seem headed for the big game ... when Nuke is called up and Crash is cut loose and he and Annie (Susan Sarandon) spend a glorious sex-filled weekend together before he heads out to find another team where he can quietly set the record for minor league home runs. Afterwards he and Annie talk about their future and, amid quotes from Walt Whitman and Casey Stengel, the summer, the season and the movie ends.

The big game? There is no big game. And for most teams ending their season this week, not to mention most of us, that’s the most believable ending of all.

It ain't the big game, but it'll do.

--Erik Lundegaard sees great things in baseball. It’s our game, the American game. It will repair our losses and be a blessing to us. You can look him up at http://www.eriklundegaard.com/index.php

“As the writing team came back from Victorville, and as Houseman returned to New York, Welles took over the task of making the script into a picture. From mid-April to mid-July, the script came down to 172 pages [from 268]. Many episodes were abandoned—for example, Kane's honeymoon with his first wife, Emily; a later meeting between Kane and his father, when the older man is remarried to a 'young tart'; Kane's son's involvement in a fascist movement; a good deal of political byplay with an oil scandal; scenes in Rome, when Thatcher goes to visit Kane; an affair Susan Kane has with a younger man at Xanadu. These deletions made Kane simpler to follow—and we should realize that nothing hurt it more on first release than its difficulty. In addition, Welles strengthened the line of dramatic consequence—the way Kane's career hinges upon the exposure of the love nest during the electoral battle with Jim Gettys, and the way Susan's nightmare career breaks the bond between Kane and Leland.”

--from “Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles,” by David Thomson; pg. 147

I wrote this for MSNBC.com on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 ...

It doesn’t take long to get chills watching Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center.” The film begins with the red numerals of an alarm clock coming into focus. Port Authority cop John McLoughlin (Nicholas Cage) wakes up, takes a shower, checks the kids and leaves for work as dawn breaks over the Manhattan skyline. On his car radio we hear, “It’s Tuesday...”

For me, that’s all it took. I thought: “Yes, it was a Tuesday.”

Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, in Oliver Stone's “World Trade Center” (2006).

Tuesday
That Tuesday I was spending what I thought was the last day of a week-long trip visiting my sister and friends in Detroit. My sister’s marriage was just two years old; her first son, Jordy, was just two months old. We were going to a Tigers game that night at Comerica Park and the next morning I would fly back to Seattle. I was already thinking ahead to Seattle.

I was sitting in their breakfast nook reading Mitch Albom in the Detroit Free-Press when my brother-in-law, Eric, who had just left for work, returned to stick his head in the front door. “You might want to turn on CNN,” he said. “A plane just flew into the World Trade Center.”

I assumed a single-engine. Hadn’t that happened to the Empire State Building?

When I turned on CNN and saw the damage and listened to the commentators, it became apparent this was more than a single-engine. But how could a commercial plane be so off-course? How could you miss the World Trade towers? The eventual answer was: you couldn’t.

At one point I went upstairs to wake my sister—I had the baby monitor and Jordy was waking—and when we all returned to the living room my sister, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, said, “I thought you said it flew into one tower.” I nodded. “So why are both on fire?”

I couldn’t figure it out. Then came news of the Pentagon and rumors of the Capitol. We’re under attack, I thought. When the towers collapsed, I thought: This is irreversible.

“I don’t think we’re going to the Tigers game tonight,” my sister said.

“I don’t think I’m flying out of here tomorrow,” I said.

All the while I kept thinking the same thought a lot of people were thinking: It feels like a movie.

“You might want to turn on CNN,” he said. “A plane just flew into the World Trade Center.”

The Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of landmarks
While it was standing, the movies had never been particularly kind to the World Trade Center. It’s not just that Hollywood tried to destroy the towers in movies like “Meteor,” “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact”; it’s the kind of movies the World Trade Center appeared in.

Other landmarks got the good films. The Empire State Building played pivotal roles in the original “King Kong,” “An Affair to Remember” and “Sleepless in Seattle.” Mt. Rushmore had its close-up in Hitchcock’s “North By Northwest.” The Statue of Liberty? From the ending of “Planet of the Apes” to the battle royale in “X-Men,” the Statue’s done it all. It’s the first thing immigrants see upon arriving in this country (“Godfather Part II”) and the last thing Americans see when leaving to fight abroad (HBO’s “Band of Brothers”).

The World Trade Center, in comparison, has appeared in crap. It obviously needed a better agent: “The Wiz,” “The Squeeze,” “The Dream Team,” “Big Business,” “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” “Godzilla,” “End of Days,” and a host of forgettable sequels: “Home Alone 2,” “Die Hard: With a Vengeance,” “American Pie 2,” and “Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan.” The towers, interchangeable and rarely pivotal, stayed in the background. They were the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of landmarks.

Before 9/11, the World Trade Center was never particularly beloved. “A standing monument to architectural boredom,” said one critic in the early 1970s. “Two huge buck teeth” blighting the Manhattan skyline, said Norman Mailer. Earlier skyscrapers tended to end like church spires, pointing towards the heavens—the Empire State Building is even called “The Cathedral of the Skies”—but tapering means losing valuable real estate. Thus modern skyscrapers’ blocky shape. The World Trade towers pointed at nothing. They just stood there like tall lunks. They came to represent not architectural beauty like the Empire State Building, nor the liberty of the Statue, but blunt financial power. “Greed is good,” Gordon Gekko famously says in Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street,” and so the film begins with morning shots of the Manhattan skyline, with the World Trade Center front and center. “I have a head for business and a bod for sin,” Tess McGill says in Mike Nichols’ “Working Girl,” but this is a feel-good movie, and so in the single-shot opening, the focus is on another working girl, the Statue of Liberty, who gets her 360-degree close-up. The twin towers are once again relegated to the background.

The World Trade Center, relegated to the background again, from the accidentally prescient opening credits of “Pushing Tin” (1999)

Winged migration
Now those very background shots take our breath away. God, the World Trade Center towered, didn’t it? It towered over even New York City, which towers over the world. Other cities have one tall building, but only New York, New York had the audacity to throw up two. Now that they’re gone, the skyline doesn’t look the same. Now that the buck teeth have been knocked out, we keep probing their absence with our tongue.

Certain scenes in pre-9/11 movies seem like bad foreshadowing. “Pushing Tin” from 1999 begins with a jet airliner banking toward the World Trade Center on a sky-blue day. Bennet Miller’s 1998 documentary, “The Cruise,” about New York City tour guide Timothy “Speed” Levitch, includes these lines: “Sometimes I like to spin between the two towers. You know, like spin around and make yourself dizzy? And then you look up, and it looks like the buildings are falling on top of you.”

9/11 gave the World Trade Center the deeper meaning it never had in life, and Hollywood’s initial reaction was to remove it from any unreleased movie. “Zoolander”? Gone. “Spider-Man”? Gone. The towers now had too much meaning. We couldn’t bear looking at them.

Slowly, though, the World Trade Center began to reappear in our movies. Halfway through Jacques Perrin’s beautiful documentary, “Winged Migration,” there it is, gloriously, one of many man-made landmarks birds pass by in their journeys. It’s the focus of the entire eighth episode of Ric Burns’ comprehensive “New York” documentary, and the two exclamation points punctuating the end of Steven Spielberg’s 2005 film, “Munich.”

It’s also the centerpiece of the Naudet brothers’ stunning documentary “9/11,” which aired on CBS in the spring of 2002. The two French brothers were filming a year in the life of a probationary New York City firefighter stationed near the towers. On the morning of September 11th a crew was investigating a potential neighborhood gas leak when a plane soared overhead—something you never hear in Manhattan—and the firefighters looked up. Cameraman Jules Naudet followed their gaze and caught the only known footage of the first plane flying into the north tower. Most footage of the second plane flying into the south tower was taken from a distance by news organizations already at the scene of a disaster. Naudet’s footage is taken from the ground, by people in the middle of an ordinary day, doing an ordinary job, and the plane attacks a peaceful setting. It’s one of the worst violations imaginable.

“Sometimes I like to spin between the two towers. ... then you look up, and it looks like the buildings are falling on top of you.” --Timothy “Speed” Levitch, 1998.

A less-Hollywood version of events
This year, 9/11 has been the subject of two major films: Paul Greengrass’ “United 93” and Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center.” Both have been the subject of controversy. Some feel Hollywood shouldn’t profit from this tragedy. The right-wing doesn’t trust liberal Hollywood to tell this story, while the left-wing doesn’t trust wish-fulfillment Hollywood to tell this story. Many feel it’s just “too early.”

All of this criticism ignores the fact that we’ve been telling ourselves the story every day since 9/11. The versions we tell ourselves are often fiercely partisan (see Karl Rove’s comments in New York in June 2005) and full of the conceits of Hollywood movies. These conceits include action-hero catch-phrases (“Let’s roll” and “dead or alive”), bold and outsized personalities, and an anticipation of a happy ending.

Hollywood is actually giving us a less Hollywood version of events than we’ve given ourselves. The films they’ve created are human-sized, the heroes ordinary men and women. In “United 93,” a passenger says “Let’s roll,” but quickly and anxiously, without the action hero cadence we’ve given it in our imaginations. In “World Trade Center,” Nicholas Cage as John McLoughlin wears the most ordinary face a movie star can wear, and when his team of Port Authority cops show up at the south tower and look up, you see confusion and fear in their eyes. This isn’t in the manual, they seem to be thinking. When McLoughlin asks for volunteers to go inside, few do, and you don’t blame the others. Once inside, they don’t seem to know what to do. Because: This isn’t in the manual.

“This isn't in the manual.”

Ground Zero
The twin towers of the World Trade Center rose a quarter-mile in the air and each was made of nearly 100,000 tons of steel. In the fall of 2002 I visited Ground Zero, at which point it looked like nothing so much as the construction site it had been in 1966. I remember looking up at a neighboring skyscraper that was maybe 50 stories high, and tried imagining it more than doubled to 110 stories. Then I tried imagining two of them, and both coming down. I could not.

The destruction of the World Trade Center reminded many of us that day of a Hollywood movie. How ironic that it's taken Hollywood to remind us, no, it wasn’t like a movie at all.

George Lucas is at it again. This short video, from the upcoming Blu-Ray release of the original “Star Wars” trilogy, is making the internet rounds at hyperspace:

The addition of the melodramatic “Noooooooo!” is the problem for most “Star Wars” fans, but, let's face it, the scene sucked anyway. I dissected it for an MSNBC article, “Darth Vader Lives!,” back in 2005:

“Jedi” is the worst of the “Star Wars” movies because it illogically prolongs the obvious for imagined entertainment value. Thus Luke enters Jabba the Hutt’s lair without his light sabre so at the last instant R2D2 can shoot it to him and he can save the day. And thus, at the climactic moment Darth Vader watches his son getting fried by the Emperor. What will he do? Oh, what will he do? Witness some of the worst editing in movie history:

CUT TO: The Emperor shooting lightning from his fingers.
CUT TO: Luke writhing in pain.
CUT TO: Darth in close-up, witnessing.
CUT TO: Luke pleading for his father’s help.
CUT TO: Long shot of scene.
CUT TO: Luke writhing.
CUT TO: Darth, in close-up. (Deciding?)
CUT TO: The Emperor pausing to give his final speech: “And now young Skywalker, you will die.”
CUT TO: Darth, glancing back at his son.
CUT TO: Luke, in fetal position, with smoke coming off him.
CUT TO: The Emperor attacking again.
CUT TO: Darth witnessing.
CUT TO: Luke writhing.
CUT TO: Darth turning towards Emperor.
CUT TO: Emperor’s furious face in close-up.
CUT TO: Darth looking back at Luke.

Yes, it’s a long journey back from the dark side but the scene makes Darth appear about as quick-witted as Homer Simpson. Stupid! Pick him up! Throw him over the railing! There you go. Finally.

Early in Terrence Malick's “The Tree of Life,” the following existential dichotomy is set up in voiceover narration from the mother (Jessica Chastain):

The nuns taught us there were two ways through life: the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow.

The she explains what she means by each one:

Grace doesn't try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries.

Nature only wants to please itself. Gets others to please it, too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things.

The movie focuses on a young boy in Waco, Texas in the 1950s, Jack (Hunter McCracken), who aspires to the way of grace, like his mother, but who succumbs to the way of nature, like his father (Brad Pitt).

It struck me, as I was writing my review last weekend, around the time of the Ames, Iowa straw poll, that our current political struggles, and the upcoming 2012 election, can be seen through this same prism.

Obama is the way of grace. He's been more insulted than any sitting president, and his response has been to work with those who keep insulting him. People on his side often fault him for that. I'm often one of them.

The GOP, which claims to have God on its side, and which claims a kind of Godlessness for Obama, is the way of nature. It wants to please itself. It's about more for me and less for you (or us). It's about lording it over people. You see this attitude, which can be bullying or swaggering, in Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann and the pundits on FOX-News. There's a killer instinct there. Sometimes this instinct exhibits itself in actual calls for violence.

It is, at the least, a stark contrast. The question remains whether this country sees any value in the way of grace, or if we, like young Jack in the film, and like most of us in our lives, will succumb to the way of nature.

Images from Terrence Malick's “The Tree of Life” (2011)

“Toscanini once recorded a piece 65 times. You know what he said? 'It could be better.'”

--the father (Brad Pitt) in Terrence Malick's “The Tree of Life,” no doubt channeling Malick, a perfectionist, for whom 65 attempts is a dry run.

They named it for a president. They made it soft and cuddly. But then the claws came out...

There's nothing more frustrating than seeing a great trailer like this, that promises a “Summer 2011” release, but then you can't find a release date on IMDb. I'm just saying that I hope somebody releases this thing soon because we need it. Caught between “Final Destination 5” and “The Help,” I'll take the action-adventure movie “The Teddy Bear,” starring Jordan Muschler and Ryan Muschler, thank you.

“Inspire Me Vaguely” originally appeared under a different title in The Rake, a now-defunct, general-interest, Minneapolis magazine, in June 2006, and has since disappeared from the Web. Consider the following post both resurrection and refitting.

This June the American Film Institute (AFI) will count down the 100 most inspirational movies in Hollywood history. I’m not sure what that final list will look like but I’ve seen the 300 nominees and I’m disappointed that one of the most inspirational movies of all time—well, for my older brother anyway—was inexplicably left off.

That movie is “Evel Knievel,” a B-picture from 1971 starring George Hamilton as the daredevil motorcyclist. My brother saw it upon its release, and, 11 at the time, immediately set to work. He took my sister’s medium-sized play refrigerator, relegated to the garage, and laid it flat on the front sidewalk; then he found a sturdy wood plank and laid it on the prone refrigerator for his ramp; then he got on his banana-seat bicycle.

Initially it was enough to catch air but soon he was looking for things to jump: stuffed animals (too boring), then real animals (too disobedient), then real people (just right). It amazed me how many kids in the neighborhood would lie down on the wrong side of the refrigerator for him. At one point I think he jumped seven kids—all huddled together, scared and thrilled and giggling. The fun promptly stopped when a neighborhood mother glanced out her window and saw her youngest child, Geof, last in line, inches from my brother’s landing back tire.

So, yes, “Evel Knievel” was inspirational but not the kind of inspiration AFI has in mind. They’re thinking stand-up-and-cheer fare: “Rudy” and “Rocky,” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and “It’s a Wonderful Life.” They want movies that inspire us vaguely (swell our chests) rather than specifically (give us the idea to jump the neighborhood kids on our banana-seat bicycle). They want good lawyers (“To Kill a Mockingbird”), good coaches (“Hoosiers”), good baseball players (“The Pride of the Yankees”), good prophets (“The Ten Commandments”) and good Gods (“King of Kings”). They want to counteract claims that Hollywood doesn’t represent American values anymore.

Shame. What a discussion we could’ve had otherwise. You want inspiration? How about “Taxi Driver,” inspiration for John Hinkley, or “Death Wish,” inspiration for Bernie Goetz, or “The Candidate,” inspiration for Dan Quayle. Hell, let’s go with the granddaddy of them all, “The Birth of a Nation,” whose story of heroic whites protecting southern womanhood from rapacious darkies inspired William J. Simmons to reorganize the Ku Klux Klan in 1915. Ah, for the days when Hollywood represented American values.

Movies are actually tailor-made for this kind of specific inspiration. What happens in a movie theater? First it gets dark, then you disappear. Then characters appear, larger than life. You become them. The are generally idealized human beings: better-looking and better-dressed, stronger and braver. You’re dazed when the lights go up. Who am I again? What am I supposed to do now? Woody Allen captured this feeling perfectly in “Play it Again, Sam.” While watching the final moments of Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca,” Allan Felix’s upper lip curls under his top teeth a la Bogart; then the lights go up and he turns into plain old Allan Felix again. We laugh at his predicament because we recognize ourselves in it. Drama is who we want to be; comedy is who we are.

I’ve felt that again and again at the movies. In the early 1970s my brother and I went to a re-release of “Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid,” and when it was over and we were walking out of the theater, swaggering slightly, I was convinced, convinced, that the gaggle of girls a couple of rows back were looking at us and were amazed, amazed, by our resemblance to Paul Newman (my brother) and Robert Redford (me). What were we really? A skinny 12-year-old with brown hair and freckles and a blonde-banged 10-year-old schlub. This is close to dementia. It took me years to realize that not only was I not Robert Redford, I was Allan Felix.

Did you see “The Incredibles”? All the little boys running around afterwards like Dash. Parents think it’s cute, and it is, but Dash is the ultimate wish-fulfillment for a 4-year-old. Their whole lives, whenever they’ve run towards something interesting, someone picks them up and brings them back to a place that isn’t so interesting. But Dash is the fastest boy alive. A kid running like Dash is saying, “You will never fucking catch me again.”

I ran after seeing a movie, too. Mine was “Rocky,” which is on the list of nominees, and will probably make the top three. When I got out of the theater it was evening, and, feeling pumped up, I began to run down the street. I ran all the way home without stopping. In high school I wound up on the cross-country team.

I biked after a movie, too. Mine was “Breaking Away,” which is also on the list of nominees and might make the top 100. At one point in the film Dave Stoller rides his bike on the freeway. He’s trailing behind a truck, and every time he appears in the truck’s side mirror, the driver indicates how fast they’re going by sticking fingers out the window: 4 for 40... 5 for 50...and then the triumph: 6 for 60! Afterwards I scoffed, “How can someone possibly ride their bike 60 miles an hour?” but my brother told me, “No no no, he was drafting. He was being pulled along by the truck. You can do that.” “Oh,” I said. Biking around one weekend, I came upon a freeway entrance, thought, “I should try that drafting thing,” and pedaled furiously onto the 77 North on-ramp. A minute later the freeway, thank God, drained into the south Lake Nokomis area. There had been no proper shoulder so I had been riding on the freeway, with cars honking and whizzing by me, drafting nothing. Afterwards I felt like a cat that had scurried across a busy street and found itself safe on the sidewalk again, wide-eyed and freaked but trying to maintain its dignity. Both of us probably with the same thought: “Well, that didn’t work.”

My most inspirational film may be “Annie Hall,” another unnominated film. I first saw it as an impressionable 14-year-old and upon watching it again 20 years later I suddenly realized that the loves of my life have tended to be like the title character: sweet, pretty, slightly daffy girls with long straight hair who are fun to be with. Maybe my heart would’ve gone in this direction anyway, but the fact that I don’t know is exactly the point. Woody Allen once said “The heart wants what it wants.” But does my heart want what Woody’s wants?

AFI will seem to be cheerleading for the industry with their list of vaguely inspirational films such as “Rudy” and “Erin Brockovich” and “Seabiscuit,” but they’ll actually be shortchanging it considerably. The movies are so powerful, we don’t know where they end and we begin.

      *  *  *

For this article I did something I hadn’t done in over 30 years: I watched “Evel Knievel” again. Unfortunately they copied the DVD from a bad print—there are pops and scratches and skips—and while George Hamilton isn’t bad playing Evel as public mischief-maker and private hypochondriac, the movie is awful. It obviously had no budget, and Evel’s career is glossed over in favor of, yes, how he won the love of his life. At the same time, there’s this kick-ass song, “I Do What I Please” (surely an anthem for any kid), and the footage of the real Evel jumping cars is still cool after all these years. Many of our cinematic forms of inspiration involve superhuman qualities—running like Dash, trying to bike 60 miles an hour, the Lone Rangeresque Klan of “Birth of a Nation”—and Evel fits right in. When he jumps, he’s defying gravity. Here, this is how inspiring the movies are: I sat there, a 43 year-old critic with notepad out and analytical abilities working, watching this stinky, low-budget thing, and man if I didn’t want to be that guy.

I'm taking a class at Northwest Film Forum on Orson Welles, taught by a woman who knew Welles briefly in the 1970s. The syllabus begins with “The Magnificent Ambersons” and ranges onto “Touch of Evil,” “Chimes at Midnight,” “The Stranger,” “Mr. Arkadin” and ends, where the film career began, with “Citizen Kane.”

In class on Monday, I had a question, a bit long (you know me), which went something like this:

• If, as we've heard, the scenes at the Mirador Motel in “Touch of Evil” influenced Alfred Hitchcock in the making of “Psycho,” which starred Tony Perkins in what became the role of his lifetime ...
• ... and Perkins subseqently starred in Welles' “The Trial” two years later ...
• ... and three years later Welles cast a Perkins lookalike, Shakespearean actor Keith Baxter, to play Prince Hal opposite his Falstaff in “Chimes at Midnight” ...
• ... well, is there anything to all this or is it just some interesting coincidences?

The teacher smiled and said it wasn't just coincidences. When pressed, she said that Perkins and Baxter were the type of man Welles was attracted to.

Orson Welles was gay? Or bi? I'd never heard this before. I guess David Thomson suggests as much in his bio “Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles.” I guess Simon Callow suggests as much in his series of bios on Welles. But Welles' daughter, Chris Welles Feder, who wrote her own book on Welles, dismisses the suggestion:

I try to read every book written about my father but I couldn’t even finish reading Rosebud! And in Road to Xanadu there is Simon Callow’s speculation about my father’s “homosexuality.” I asked Simon about that when he came to interview me at my place in New York. His first volume had already come out, so I said, “Simon, do you have any kind of positive proof that my father was homosexual, or is it all just second hand innuendo?” He had to admit he had no direct first hand evidence. It was all just innuendo. I even asked my mother about it, and she was so funny, she said, “oh, absolutely not!” I said, “Well Simon Callow has just published a book that suggests he was homosexual, and she said, “Oh, well that’s just wishful thinking on his part.”

I'll write more if I learn more.

Top: Tony Perkins in Orson Welles' “The Trial” (1962). Bottom: Keith Baxter as Prince Hal in Orson Welles' “Chimes at Midnight” (1965).

Check out this poster from “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.” Look at the tagline and then at the release date:

Those of us who bought homes that year, or felt comfortable in our jobs or with our retirement funds, really should've paid attention.

Read the intro here, the first wave (red scare) here, the second wave (gods and lost children) here, the third wave (camp) here, the fourth wave (bad muthas) here ...

9/11 changed everything but the immediate reaction from Hollywood was muted. Invasions, when they came, came small and dark. In “Dreamcatcher,” the invasion is limited to the Maine woods, in “Alien vs. Predator,” the alien (and the predator) never get out of Antarctica. The all-out invasion in “Signs” is as surreptitious as a Bigfoot sighting. Are they there? Is that really them? Even when Steven Spielberg—of all directors—made his grainy remake of “The War of the Worlds,” it felt less than global. What a shock, at the end, to find Boston neighborhoods untouched.

Or did 9/11 change anything? The same battles rage as raged before. Do aliens have more to fear from us (“District 9”) or we from them (“Skyline”)? The camp component hasn’t died (“Cowboys vs. Aliens”). Lost children still arrive, though they’re hardly children anymore (“Super 8”). Metaphors abound: aliens as advanced weaponry (“Transformers”), as an oppressed minority (“District 9”), as the U.S. in Iraq (“Battle: Los Angeles”).

Alien invasion movies really turn on the most basic of human reactions: How do you greet a stranger? With a smile or a frown? With an open hand or a closed one? Whatever our response, it’s often a corollary to the Golden Rule: We expect others to treat us as we treat them. Which is why the scientists in these films tend to be curious while the military men are combative.

History, sadly, would seem to side with the military men. A technologically advanced race showing up one day and slowly wiping out the inhabitants? That’s the story of America. Even in our most paranoid moments—in the 1950s, in the 2000s—we are still what we fear.

--Erik Lundegaard is here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. But he’s got lots of bubblegum. He can be reached at erik@eriklundegaard.com.

--This piece was originally published, in slightly different form, on MSNBC.com

Read the intro here, the first wave (Red Scare) here, the second wave (gods and lost children) here, the third wave (camp) here...

All this time, evil aliens never completely went away. We got good re-makes of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” in 1978, and “The Thing” in 1981. On TV, “V” introduced the concept that malevolent aliens might not be monolithic; that within an invading army there might be an underground movement, a White Rose, trying to help humans. “Alien Nation” picked up on this possible complexity as well.

So what the hell happened in 1996? Was it the first WTC attack? The popularity of “X-Files”? Because suddenly that complexity disappeared and we got three all-out alien assaults on our planet: the aforementioned dark giddiness of “Mar Attacks!”; Charlie Sheen’s paranoid thriller, “The Arrival”; and the biggest and baddest of them all...

“Independence Day” was less a return to paranoid 1950s movies than a reactionary response to the Pollyanna vision of Spielberg. Those awe-struck people at Devil’s Tower playing their five-note song of greeting in “Close Encounters”? They’re the first to get fried in “I.D.” Even the plaque the Apollo 11 astronauts left on the moon, and signed by Pres. Richard Nixon, of all presidents, is called into question. It’s shown at the beginning of the film and reads: “Here men from the Planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 AD. We came in peace for all mankind.” Then the dark shadow of an invading alien army falls upon it. In peace. Saps! Hippies!

Look at the way one phrase is uttered. In “Starman,” Charles Martin Smith views the clean room where our government plans to dissect Jeff Bridges and shakes his head sadly. “Welcome to Earth,” he says. Bummer, dude. In “Independence Day,” Will Smith shoots down an evil alien ship, the first indication that we can take them down, runs over to it and cold-cocks the slimy thing inside. “Welcome to Earth,” he says, then sits down and lights a triumphant cigar. Wooooo! We rock!

That’s ultimately what “Independence Day” offered us: Less Bummer, dude and more We rock!

Read the intro here, the first wave (Red Scare) here, the second wave (gods and lost children) here...

Detente between the U.S. and Soviet Union may have ended with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, but “evil empire” rhetoric never really translated into paranoia on our screens. If anything, alien invasion movies became jokey and campy, mocking their 1950s predecessors with titles like “Killer Klowns from Outer Space” and “Earth Girls are Easy.” In John Carpenter’s “They Live,” the aliens are actually Reagan-era yuppies making money off of trickle-down economics. That’s why the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The rich are aliens; the poor are you.

The jokes continued throughout the 1990s but weren’t particularly funny or representative. “Mars Attacks!” was based upon 1960s trading cards and reflected, more than our odd times, Tim Burton’s odd sensibility. “What Planet Are You From?” is one-note: how men and women seem alien to each other. “Evolution”? A good idea—single-celled alien life-forms grow exponentially until they threaten all human life—but the tone is spectacularly off. Even before the 2001 anthrax scare, who thought experimenting on U.S. soldiers with anthrax was funny?

The best and most representative of these comedies is “Men in Black,” in which, yes, aliens are here and queer, but this time they’re celebrities. Movie aliens, after all, tend to represent what we fear and can’t explain. In the 1950s it was Nikita Khrushchev. In the 2000s, Michael Jackson.

Read the intro here and the first wave (Red Scare) here...

Just as quickly as they appeared, alien invasion movies—poof!—vanished from our screens. Except for a few low-budget crapfests (“Santa Claus vs. the Martians”), we didn’t hear from them throughout the 1960s. A great sociological study could be made of this gap. Did we become less paranoid of outsiders? Did we become more fascinated with our own star treks (Mercury, Apollo, U.S.S. Enterprise) to be concerned with the treks of others here?

Moreover, when aliens did return to earth in the 1970s, during an era of U.S.-Soviet detente, they were almost entirely benevolent. It’s a jolt watching “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977) after these paranoid ‘50s films, because at no point does anyone in Spielberg’s movie worry that the aliens might be less than kind. Sure, they kidnap our air-force pilots and small children. But look at the lights! Look at the pretty lights!

Spielberg's two films, on gods and lost children, remade the alien invasion movie.

The benevolent aliens from this period can be divided into two groups: the crash-landers (“The Man Who Fell to Earth” ( 1976), “E.T.” (1982), and “Starman” (1984)), and the gods (“Close Encounters,” “Cocoon,” (1985), and “Contact” (1997)).

The crash-landers are essentially lost children who, like children everywhere, want to go home and watch TV. The man who fell to earth (David Bowie) winds up a kind of Howard Hughes/Elvis figure, so his bank of T.V. sets is pejorative, representing the cacophony of our culture, while E.T. and Starman, sublimating the tastes of their directors, wind up watching famous kissing scenes in old Hollywood films—“The Quiet Man” and “From Here to Eternity,” respectively—which teach each alien about love. Awwww. Thank God “A Clockwork Orange” wasn’t on.

So if the aliens are benevolent, who are the bad guys in these pictures? Generally, the U.S. military. Even when the government has a friendly face (Peter Coyote, Charles Martin Smith), the aliens are still hunted down. Captivity is imminent; dissection is implied. Go, E.T., go! Run, Starman, run!

Maybe this is the reason those other aliens, the gods, rarely land. They simply hover in their big, bright ships and grant the stars of the picture what they need: Richard Dreyfuss a purpose, Don Ameche youth, Jodie Foster a father. Awe accompanies their appearance. In their presence, we are the children, once lost, now found.

While the earlier movie posters drew you in with the unknown quality of the stars, these later posters draw you in with the known quality of movie stars. They also echo their predecessors. “Starman”'s tagline (“He is 100,000 years head of us”) echoes “E.T.”'s (“He is 3 million light years from home”), while the title of “Contact” is the final line of “Close Encounters”'s tagline.

Intro here.

The biggest wave of alien invasion movies occurred between the rise of Joe McCarthy in 1950 and the launching of Sputnik and the space race in 1957. Politically, things were paranoid and repressive; yet while these films certainly play upon our anti-communist paranoias they rarely buy into them. In “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951) for example, Mrs. Barley (Frances Bavier—Aunt Bee from “The Andy Griffith Show”) looks the fool when she says the flying saucer that landed in President’s Park is Soviet-made.

The aliens, in fact, seem to worry more about us than we do about them. To Klaatu, the Christ-figure of “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” Earth is the Mideast of the galaxy: a trouble-spot that threatens to wreak havoc beyond its borders. In the surrealistic “Invaders from Mars” (1953) aliens are afraid what will happen when we take atomic energy into space. In “It Came from Outer Space” (1953) aliens crash-land, adopt human identities and try to buy hardware supplies to get the hell away again. “Why don’t they come out in the open?” a cop asks the film’s protagonist, John Putnam (John Carlson), a star-gazing writer. “Because what we don’t understand, we want to destroy,” Putnam responds in what amounts to the film’s lesson.

Sure, most of these movies are dated. That’s part of the fun: the hokey rubber masks, the strange pronunciations (“MUTE-ants”), the convoluted nomenclature (“an indefinitely indexed memory bank” for “computer”), the fact that every other protagonist is a pipe-smoking scientist. But there are joys beyond the ironic. “The Thing from Another World” (1951) has smart dialogue (“We split the atom.” “Yeah, and that made the world happy, didn’t it?”), while Ray Harryhausen’s special effects in “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers” (1956) are light years ahead of its time. Of course, Don Siegel’s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956) is a classic, in which the movie’s set-up, neighbors turning overnight into emotionless vegetables, can be seen as a metaphor for Soviet communism or U.S. conformity or the Hollywood blacklist.

Even the crappiest of these movies have moments that inform our own time. In “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers,” when the pipe-smoking scientist wonders why the aliens, with their superior technology, don’t just take over, the alien responds:

“Despite our power, the few of us would be busy indefinitely trying to suppress a large, hostile population. In the end, we would be masters of a wrecked and hungry planet.”

Aliens are rarely just aliens.

I first wrote about this in 2007. In the wake of “Super 8,” it feels worth revisiting...

Most are humanoid and hairless, with oversized heads, nostrils for noses, and long thin necks—although one species has a single, three-colored eye and suction-tipped hands (1953’s “The War of the Worlds”), while another, poor thing, is forced to plod along with a space helmet atop a gorilla’s body (“Robot Monster”).

Most are here to take over—don’t kid yourselves—but some are benevolent voyeurs (“Close Encounters of the Third Kind”), while others simply need a place to hang (“Men in Black”).

Some are defeated by bacteria (“The War of the Worlds”), others are averse to cold or water (“The Arrival”; “Signs”), while one species, in a much-mocked incident, could travel the galaxy but couldn't deal with a simple computer virus (“Independence Day”).

They are aliens who come to earth, and the type we get tends to coincide with our current feelings about foreigners: benevolent aliens during times of peace, ferocious aliens during periods of xenophobia.

Just look at the granddaddy of alien invasion stories: H.G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds.” It was first published during the saber-rattling before World War I. A generation later, as the world braced for World War II, a radio adaptation by Orson Welles panicked east-coast listeners. The first film adaptation appeared during the panicky McCarthy years, the second during the paranoia following 9/11.

Consider the first paragraph of Wells’ novella. I’ve added a century and shifted the focus from “this world” to “this country.” Here’s what you get:

“No one would have believed in the last years of the 20th century that this country was being watched...With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this country about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter... Yet across the gulf, [other minds] regarded this country with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the 21st century came the great disillusionment.”

Aliens are rarely just aliens.

Tomorrow: The first wave: Red scare

I first went to Opening Night at SIFF, the Seattle International Film Festival, in 1994. Acclaimed Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci had filmed parts of “Little Buddha” in Seattle a year earlier,  and now his film, and he, would open the festival. Quite the coup. He spoke beforehand, talked about how much he liked Seattle, and Elliott Bay Books, and Scarecrow Video, where they categorized films by director as God intended. Then we all settled in to watch his movie, in which Chris Isaak and Bridget Fonda play the Seattle parents of a boy who may or may not be the reincarnation of the Lama Dorje. Co-starring Keanu Reeves as Siddhartha. One minute in, the film broke, and the screen went dark. One can imagine Bertolucci wasn't pleased. When the film finally started again, after a five-minute delay, I wasn't particularly pleased. It wasn't that good. But what the hell, it was Opening Night.

Last night, I went to my second Opening Night of SIFF, which they dubbed a “Gala.” (I“ll refrain from the Groucho Marx reference.) I suited up, talked with Nancy Guppy, who was interviewing people for the festivities, ran into a few friends. Then Patricia and I and a thousand-plus people settled in for the Opening Night movie, ”The First Grader,“ a British film about an 84-year-old Kenyan man, a former Mau Mau warrior, who wants to go to school to learn to read, and who, with the help of a kindly teacher, fights all the forces (bureaucratic, neighborhood) that get in his way. I was hoping it would be better, more complex, than the trailer indicated.

Except we didn't get the movie right away. First, the co-directors of SIFF made speeches. Then they introduced others who made speeches: this mucky-muck from Starbucks; that mucky-muck from the Seattle Sounders; the Mayor of Seattle. Everyone talked about how much the arts meant. Everyone congratulated each other and us for doing our part. This went on for 15 minutes, a half hour, 45 minutes. By the time the film started I was exhausted. The film didn't help. Was Gordon Willis the cinematographer? Because, man, it seemed really, really underlit. Ten minutes in, the screen went dark. A second later the movie started again, from five minutes earlier, lit properly. One of these years they'll get it right.

Will they ever get the Opening Night movie right? In ”The First Grader,“ good-looking people are good; scowling people are bad; the good-looking people win. Set it in America and it's Hollywood fluff. Set it in Kenya and it must be important. So the SIFF thinking seems to go.

What the hell, it was Opening Night.

”Let Maruge in." She must be right because she's so cute.

I used to look forward to The New York Times' summer movie section to see, you know, what movies would be playing during the upcoming summer. But that was B.I. (Before Internet). Or maybe BIMDb.com. Either way, I rarely look at the list anymore. I know what's coming. In a way, we all do.

But I still look forward to the section for, as they used to say about Playboy, the articles. This year's includes rising stars (Dominic Cooper? Still?), summer movie faves (I like Maya Rudolph's choice: “Purple Rain”), plus profiles of Mario Bello, Michael Fassbender and Thor.

Then there's Terrence Rafferty on summer beach movies, which I was slightly disappointed in only because it's Terrence Rafferty. Isn't the point that beach movies began as fictional farce (Gidget, Frankie and Annette) and ended as non-fictional art (“The Endless Summer,” “Step into Liquid,” “Riding Giants”)? Or that the pop cultural moment may go (Beach Boys, etc.) but the waves keep coming? At the same time, I like the background Rafferty give us on American International Pictures and the Frankie/Annette flicks, and the observation that parents were around for Gidget's film but were essentially banished for Frankie and Annette. Plus these lines:

[“Beach Party”] was awful, and its sequels — “Muscle Beach Party” (1964), “Bikini Beach” (1964), “Beach Blanket Bingo” (1965) and “How to Stuff a Wild Bikini” (1965), all directed by Mr. Asher — were, if anything, worse. In the last two, the comic relief is provided by the great Buster Keaton, whose characteristically melancholy expression seems, in this context, fully justified.“

But the big article, and the headline of the week, is ”Gosh, Sweetie, That's a Big Gun,“ a back-and-forth between Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott on the rash of young, violent heroines in movies.

In the intro they lump them all together “Hanna,” “Sucker Punch,” “Super,” “Let Me In,” “Kick-Ass” and ”The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo“ trilogy, so initially I was worried. Aren't these movies, and these characters, vastly different? You can begin with the notion that ”Sucker Punch“ is for boys and ”Dragon Tattoo“ is for girls; that the characters of ”Sucker Punch“ never escape the fetishistic fantasy role assigned to them by boys, while Lisbeth Salander is a kind of role model for girls. She is, as I wrote in my review of ”The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,“ a heroine unprecedented in film: the rescuer rather than the rescued; the pursuer rather than the pursued. Scott points out that most of these girls rely on men for their training (”Hanna,“ ”Sucker Punch,“ ”Kick-Ass“) but fails to mention that Lisbeth relies on the men in her movies for nurturing. She's tough on her own. That's a massive-enough difference to turn the world on its head.

But to the main question: What or who is driving all this?

• Scott: ”It seems to me that what fuels these fantasies is also a deep anxiety ... about female sexuality“
• Dargis: ”Male anxiety about female sexual power [can always be depended on to make trouble, but] one difference is the tender age of these recent combatants.“

Dargis gives us a pretty good recent timeline: from Luc Besson's ”The Professional“ to Quentin Tarantino's killer ladies, but even this timeline is misleading: Portman in ”The Professional“ is precocious, not supertough. She's a real young girl. You can't say that about Baby Doll in ”Sucker Punch.“

The two critics, particularly Scott, keep going off target. His ”Social Network“ interlude is particularly unncessary, as his need to assure us, as the father of a 12-year-old, that he likes tough women. He writes that Michelle Williams' character writes ”a new chapter“ in westerns. To which Dargis responds dryly: ”Maybe a paragraph.“

Then Scott does what Scott does. He spends an article dithering, or going off target, or stating the obvious or soothing, and then all of a sudden he lays out the point perfectly:

I think the first Salander movie ran into a serious problem when it tried to translate Larsson’s anger about pervasive sexual violence into cinematic terms. It is in the nature of the moving image to give pleasure, and in the nature of film audiences — consciously or not, admittedly or not — to find pleasure in what they see. So in depicting Salander’s rape by her guardian in the graphic way he did, the director, Niels Arden Oplev, ran the risk of aestheticizing, glamorizing and eroticizing it, just as Gaspar Noé did with Monica Bellucci’s assault in “Irreversible.”

Exactly. I just saw the Japanese film ”13 Assassins," in which there's rape and cruelty. We don't see the rape; we see its aftermath. We see the aftermath, the result, of even greater cruelty. Those scenes are always sobering and horrifying, never titilating or exploitative.

But, now that I think about it, that's a different subject, violence against women, rather than the subject at hand, girls with big guns. Why these girls and why now? Dargis and Scott don't come close to an answer. Maybe because they never bring up comic books, the driving force of the entire industry now, and the source of half the heroines they're writing about.

Dargis and Scott don't see much difference between Lisbeth and Baby Doll.

“At that moment, Matt Dillon saunters past and the girls sway en masse like willows in a spring breeze. ...

”'Aaah, man, I'm tired. See you at rehearsals,' he says, hoisting his boom box to his shoulder. He crosses to the elevators and passes the gaggle of fans. Then something remarkable happens. He stops dead in his tracks and whispers to a pretty brunette. She listens for a beat, then turns to the four girls she's standing with and whispers something to them. Matt fiddles with the volume on the boom box. The girls caucus for a total of four seconds, till the brunette leaves her friends behind and joins Matt for a walk to the elevators. He puts his free arm around her. At the last second, just before they enter the elevator, she turns back to look at her friends. Her expression is one I've never seen before. It's like she has a thought balloon over her head that reads: 'Holy shit! How lucky am I?' Matt yawns, and the elevator doors close. The entire transaction takes less than 45 seconds.“

--from Rob Lowe's memoir, ”Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography,“ excerpted in the May 2011 Vanity Fair. Most of the excerpt, including the above anecdote, focuses on auditioning for and acting in Francis Ford Coppola's ”The Outsiders" in the early 1980s.

From my sister Karen:

Erik, thought of you when visiting the Karps and playing the movie game, Jordan's latest obsession. (Name an actor, movie they're in, another actor in that movie, etc.) It was everyone against Josh, and he still killed us.

From my friend Josh Karp:

as for jordy, he got me with one kubrick film i'd never heard of (eric told me about how he'd wanted to be kubrick for the school biography event and had to settle for hitchcock.). then he tried “the killing,” which i've never seen, but for some reason i knew that sterling hayden was in it. neither he nor karen believed me so i brought it up on my phone. i think both were unable to recover. but jordy will no doubt kick my ass before long. maybe by this summer.

From me, 13 years ago, originally published in Seattle Weekly:

Six Degrees of Boredom

At one o'clock my friend Mike travels up the ramp that separates the warehouse receiving area (his morning detail) from the textbook marking department (where he spends his afternoons). He hangs up his jacket, unpacks a box or two of textbooks, and before the boredom of the routine set in, and with a small smile lifting the ends of his mustache, he glances at his watch. “Hmm?” he asks.

This is his way of signaling for yet another round of the movie game.

The movie game should not be confused with “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.” The purpose there is to begin with an actor, travel through shared movies, and wind up at Kevin Bacon before your allotted six turns are up. Humphrey Bogart, in other words, leads to Angels with Dirty Faces, which starred James Cagney, who was in Mr. Roberts with Jack Lemmon, a bit player in JFK, which also featured...ta da!...Kevin Bacon. Easy right?

C'mon guys! Play my game!

Too easy. There has to be competition to make it worth our while. You've got to understand: Our work is not only repetitive but seemingly without purpose. Mike prices textbooks; I receive them and wheel them in large metal tubs down to the textbook department; Jeff, around the middle of the term, collects these same textbooks and brings them back upstairs, where he and Rich remove the prices and return the books to their publishers. Now somewhere in-between my activity and Jeff's there are apparently student purchases, and learning, and the continuation of culture; but these are mere rumors to us. Since we don't know how much of the books actually get absorbed into students' minds, our jobs often seem the bibliographic equivalent of digging holes only to fill them. We receive textbooks only to return them again.

And what to talk about when we're metaphorically wielding or leaning on our shovels? The mornings are usually reserved for politics (local, national and office), sports, music, personal matters. Such talk peters out after a couple of hours, and, in the gathering monotony, we retreat, one by one, into the buzz of our respective walkmans. It is the appearance of Mike that brings us out of these electronic shells.

The format of the movie game is similar to “Six Degrees” except that Kevin Bacon holds no more power than any other actor. A non-participant tosses up the ball, as it were, by naming any actor (Actor A). From there we proceed by predetermined order. Mike names a movie Actor A was in; Jeff then picks a different actor from the same movie; Rich mentions another film with Actor B. Etcetera.

Essentially you try to name an actor or movie that will stump the others but which--important proviso--you can get out of yourself. Presented with Wallace Shawn, it does no good to mention My Dinner with Andre unless you also know something of the screen career of Andre Gregory; otherwise you're grinding the game to a halt. If you pass or guess wrongly, you're given a letter: M, to start. Spell M-O-V-I-E-S and you're toast.

Strategies abound. Since I know something of older Hollywood, I try to wind the game in that direction by choosing an actor's earliest film or a film's eldest actor. Mike, at the other side of this temporal tug-of-war, tries to pull us toward the litany of modern character actors--Tracey Walter, Kurtwood Smith, William Sadler--that he stores in his pockets like so many nickels and dimes. Jeff, meanwhile, wants to trick us all into the swamp of the schlock/horror genre that he rules like some in-bred Alabaman.

Some plots, especially when the field narrows to two, are positively Byzantine. If, from Charles Grodin, I say Midnight Run, Mike will mention Robert DeNiro, to which I can go New York, New York, forcing him into Liza Minnelli, which will lead to That's Entertainment!, causing him to fumble for Gene Kelly. Now he's dead. Of course you can be so intent on your own strategy you don't see your opponent's. Once I had Jeff mired in 1930s musicals when I mentioned Fred Astaire; it shot us all the way to 1981 and the horror film Ghost Story. In a flash we went from my strength to Jeff's, and I, anticipating a pin, wound up flat on my back. It is this kind of drama which leads Rich to suspect that the movie game could make it big on cable access.

We've tried other games to occupy our minds. There was “Questions”, from Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, where everything said has to be in the form of a question. No statements; no non-sequiturs; nothing rhetorical. But you can only have so many conversations like this:

“How are you?”
“Are you asking?”
“Are you suspicious?”
“Should I be?”

The One-Syllable Game was good for a day. The-point-was-to-make-all-words-just-one-note. Kind-of-stilt...ing.

Attempts to transplant other art forms into the movie game's pre-existing structure have failed miserably. Writing is too solitary an occupation to allow for the necessary cross-connections between artist and product, while musicians, in a more group-conscious field, are less whorish than actors, tending to work with the same people for long periods rather than flitting from co-star to co-star. The movie game stays.

But how much longer? Already certain avenues have worn so smooth we practically slide through them. Tom Hanks to Bachelor Party to Adrien Zmed to Grease II to blah blah blah. Hey, let's talk about girls for a change.

--originally published in Seattle Weekly, October 1998

A dozen pages into Making Movies I sent a copy to a friend for graduation. I assumed the rest of the book would be good enough for such an occasion. I wasn't wrong.

At the time of the writing, Sidney Lumet had directed 39 movies, starting in 1957 with 12 Angry Men, peaking in the 1970s with classics like Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and Network, then gradually losing steam until, by the early '90s, he was directing vehicles for Melanie Griffith (A Stranger Among Us) and Don Johnson (Guilty as Sin). But this is not a book about one man's rise and fall. Lumet doesn't even see his career as following this trajectory. Who does? If anything, he sees the movie industry suffering in this manner. The last chapter includes diatribes against the National Research Group and their audience surveys, and the fact that certain studios won't green-light pictures until a major star is involved. He writes:

This has two immediate effects. First, the stars' salaries skyrocket... The second effect is that the agencies that represent the stars are automatically in a more powerful position.

Making Movies is an aptly named book because it’s ultimately about ... making movies: the financing, the lighting, the camera work; rushes, answer prints, foleys and timers.

Don’t forget script girls. Because certain scenes may require many takes, and because a portion of take two may be spliced with a portion of take 11, a script girl is employed to ensure that actors perform the same actions at the same moments. Making 12 Angry Men, for example, the script girl mentioned that an actor had taken a puff of his cigarette on Line A yesterday while today he did it on Line B. Henry Fonda disagreed; he said the actor did it on Line B yesterday. So two takes were made. It turned out Fonda was right. This anecdote is told to demonstrate Fonda's incredible movie memory but it also helps reveal movie making’s incredible complexity.

Add artistic considerations if you are artistically considered. It's not about lighting actors well; it's about lighting them in ways that relates to character and theme. Ditto camera shots and camera angles. There is no camera shot of the sky in Prince of the City until the lead character is contemplating suicide. Sky implies freedom, Lumet writes, and the lead character is finding himself more and more trapped as the movie progresses. Since he starts out the movie self-assured, too, and then slowly loses control, Lumet lights the movie to follow this pattern:

In the first third of the movie, we tried to have the light on the background brighter than on the actors in the foreground. For the second third, the foreground light and the background light were more or less balanced. For the last third, we cut the light off the background.

What camera angle? Which lens? How should character A be edited against character B?

With the director needing to answer each question, you might think Lumet would be a proponent of the auteur theory. Nope. In fact, he uses the favorite auteur of the auteur theory, Alfred Hitchcock, to fault it:

He always essentially made the same picture. His stories weren't the same, but the genre was: a melodrama, layered with light comedy, played by the most glamorous actors he could find...photographed often by the same cameraman, with music composed by the same composer... His how to do it was the same because what he was doing was the same.

“Movie directors do not work alone,” Lumet writes. “There will be a visual difference if we work with Cameraman A or Cameraman B, Production Designer C or Production Designer D.” Then he writes about those he works with. He gives credit to cameramen Peter McDonald and Andrzej Bartkowiak and Boris Kaufman; production designers like Tony Walton; editors like Margaret Booth; and stars like Paul Newman and Sean Connery, who wear their fame lightly; who travel without entourages.

He answers questions I’ve long had about the movies. How can the Academy give awards for Best Editing unless you know what they edited in the first place? “In my view,” he writes, “only three people know how good or bad the editing was: the editor, the director, and the cameraman.” He includes tantrums against the uselessness of the teamsters and love taps for Paddy Chayevsky, the screenwriter of Network. His love for the movies is apparent in every sentence, as well as his intolerance for the parasites that high-profile industries like film-making attract. Making Movies is that rare movie book that is as interesting discussing camera lenses as it is discussing Paul Newman. I’ve now got a new book to give to friends.

--May 24, 1996

“Paul leads one of the most generous and honorable lives of anyone I've ever known.”

Sidney Lumet's “Making Movies” was the first insider look at the movies that I read that stuck. I recommended it to friends for years. I bought it for I don't know how many of them. Now I can't find my copy. I must've loaned it out.

Lumet always seemed like a gentleman to me, and gracious toward other talents, and my haphazard reading today has only reinforced that notion. Here he is on Christopher Reeve, whom he directed in “Death Trap”:

What seemed such a nice, simple, artless performance in “Superman” was the finest kind of acting. Reeve's timing — and humor — has to be just about perfect to make the character come off.

Here he is on Tab Hunter, whom he directed in “That Kind of Woman” with Sophia Loren:

Primarily a character actor, yet always used as a leading man because he's so pretty. I've seen him do character parts in which he's really great. But, as a leading man, he tightens up. Mostly, he turned to character work in American television when his Hollywood career started going sour. Then, he played the roles of psychotic killers and so forth, and his talent became clear.

I wonder if this comment on Akira Kurosawa was related to some Q&A, some interview with a journalist, regarding Lumet's 1959 TV movie based on Kurosowa's “Rashomon”:

Kurosawa never affected me directly in terms of my own movie-making because I never would have presumed that I was capable of that perception and that vision.

I know. They made a TV movie based on “Rashomon”? With Ricardo Montalban? Yep, and directed by Sidney Lumet.

He was one of the better directors to come out of 1950s TV. Before he was 30 he'd directed the Gettysburg Address, the Conquest of Mexico and the Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, with John Kerr as his Jesse and James Dean as his Robert Ford, all for the “You Are There” TV show.

His first theatrical movie, “12 Angry Men,” was more like a play. It didn't move so Lumet made it move. Did he think it was his greatest movie? Do we? The voters at IMDb.com certainly do. It's considered the seventh greatest movie of all time by their rankings, ahead of “Seven Samurai,” “Casablanca,” “The Third Man,” “Rear Window,” almost everything. I wouldn't rank it so high, but ... Not bad for a first film. Lumet began there and ended with “Before the Devil Knows You're Dead,” which contains my favorite performance by Ethan Hawke. Forty-one films between those two. Nice bookends to a career.

His heyday was the 1970s. In a span of three years he directed “Serpico,” “Murder on the Orient Express,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” and “Network.” Wow. He was always interested in cops and lawyers and grit and ethics and “How do you do the right thing when everyone around you is getting ahead doing the wrong thing?” He loved New York. He kept filming on location. Is that why he never won an Oscar? Not enough time in Hollywood? Or did he never deserve to win one? He was nominated four times but can you make an argument for “12 Angry Men” over David Lean's “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” or “Dog Day Afternoon” over Milos Foreman's “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest”?

“'Network'!” fans will say. “He should've trounced John Avildsen's 'Rocky'!” True. Although that was also the year Martin Scorsese wasn't even nominated for “Taxi Driver.” There's overlooked and there's overlooked.

In the late '70s he kept adapting Broadway (“Equus,” “The Wiz,” “Death Trap”) to not much avail. He merely made an OK film out of one of my favorite books, E.L. Doctorow's “The Book of Daniel.” He remained serious in a business that increasingly wasn't. He made movies for adults, dramas, in an industry that geared its product for the younger and dumber crowd. Soon, well, he was kind of out of the picture.

One of the friends I gave that “Making Movies” book to was my brother-in-law, Eric Muschler, Jordy's dad, who wrote the following to me in an e-mail in 1999:

I loved reading the behind-the-scenes set-up stuff. The planning of each frame, the scheduling. Amazing. And the progression of light and camera angles and how even that is used to move the theme and story. (I.e. 12 Angry Men moving from downward shots to upward shots to grow the sense of being trapped in the room.)

Here's the Times' obit.

Here's Nathaniel's farewell at FilmExperience.net, which includes every one of Lumet's 43 movie posters. (Nathaniel, thanks for line 6, below.)

Rest in peace, Mr. Lumet, you craftsman, you serious man.

“What struck me was how authentic everything felt. The relationships, the internal struggles of each character, the motivations of the army and the Islamists, the feelings of the townspeople. It all seemed clear while remaining nuanced and without snapping to this or that caricature grid. (Bad guys are bad, good guys are good, medium guys are medium.)

”I think the presentation of the monks’ theological wrangling was especially effective—the thoughts about weakness, death, etc. Atheist (or kind-of-atheist) Suzanne found it quite moving, as did I. In fact, there were no points that felt understandable only to Christians or theists. It all made sense in human terms.

“The title struck me as weird, especially because the plural, Gods, misleadingly suggests that the two religions presented in the movie revolve around two different gods. If anything, the action on screen suggested otherwise.”

--comments by my friend Jacob Slichter on the film “Des hommes et des dieux,” all of which feel exactly right to me.

I first saw Isabelle Huppert in “Entre Nous” (original title “Coup de foudre” or “Love at First Sight”), which was playing at the Cedar Theater on the West Bank in Minneapolis, Minn., in 1984. Talk about coup de foudre. Something about her mouth reminded me of a girl I had a crush on at the university, whose name I've since forgotten. (Wonder where she is? Wonder who she is?) Much of the movie went over my head, much has been forgotten, but Patricia and I watched it the other day and ... it's good ... if obviously created from the scattered nature of life (specifically, the lives of the parents of writer-director Diane Kurys) rather than with the compact force of drama.

It was nominated back then for an Oscar for best foreign language film, but lost, deservedly, to “Fanny and Alexander.” It was also nominated for four Cesars: writing, directing, supporting actor (Guy Marchand) and actress. Not for Huppert, btw. For her co-star, Miou Miou, whom everyone, inexplicably to me back then, focused on. Miou Miou was already a star, had already been nominated four times for Meilleure actrice, and had won, once, for 1979's “Memoirs of a French Whore,” which she refused to accept for the usual reason that actors aren't in competition with one other. Huppert was already a star, too. She'd already been nominated five times for Cesars, but wouldn't be named Meilleure actrice until 1995's “La Ceremonie.” Her only Cesar.

I don't know about meilleure but I believe it's our nature to fall in love with what we can't have, which is part of the appeal of movie stars, and certainly part of the appeal of an actress like Isabelle Huppert, who looks beautiful but reveals little. Thus her performance in “Entre Nous” is now, what, triply attractive to me: she reveals little (1), in a movie (2), that is nearly 30 years old (3). I can't get at any of it. Must be love. C'est encore l'amour.

Nathaniel Rogers has a nice post, for the 100th anniversary of Tennesee Wiliams' birth, on the many women who have played Maggie the Cat. Lotta sexy here (Elizabeth Taylor, Jessica Lange, Kathleen Turner), but this is the shot I couldn't turn away from: Elizabeth Ashley in the 1974 Broadway production. Puts the yum in da-yum.

Nathaniel's is a fun piece, which lends itself fairly easily to a quiz:

Match the adjective with the actress playing Maggie the Cat:

Answers, of course, on Nathaniel's site. I admit to being stunned that Barbara Bel Gedes, who gave me the creeps in “Vertigo” with her maternal weirdness, played this very sexy role in the 1955 Broadway production. Maybe she went a different route. Adds a whole other dimension, anyway, to Brick's sexual reluctance.

The Ashley photo also made me flashback, for whatever reason, to the unfortunate timing of the actress's Life magazine cover appearance: November 22, 1963.

“We will have high-definition, wide-screen television sets and a push-button dialing system to order the movie you want at the time you want it. You'll not go to a video store but instead order a movie on demand and then pay for it. Videocassette tapes as we know them now will be obsolete both for showing prerecorded movies and for recording movies. People will record films on 8mm and will play them back using laser-disk/CD technology. I also am very, very excited by the fact that before long, alternative films will penetrate the entire country. Today seventy-five percent of the gross from a typical art film in America comes from as few as six --six-- different theaters in six different cities. Ninety percent of the American motion-picture marketplace never shows art films. With this revolution in delivery and distribution, anyone, in any size town or hamlet, will see the movies he or she wants to see.”

--Roger Ebert, in Omni magazine, in 1987, as dug up by Paleofuture (a pretty remarkable-looking site)

Roger Ebert defending his position on Eddie Murphy's “Raw” in 1987. During this same period, he was also playing Nostradamus in the pages of Omni magazine.

When I was growing up, Elizabeth Taylor was often in the news and I always wondered what the fuss was.

When I was in college I saw “A Place in the Sun” and realized what the fuss was:

Rest in peace.

Links:

• David Thomson on Taylor's rise and fall.
• Andrew O'Hehir scratches his... head.
• The obit of Taylor in The New York Times, written by Mel Gussow, dead now six years.
• Taylor's IMDb.com page.

I've got new images fading in and out to the left—posters for 2011 movies that seem intriguing to me—and none more so that Terrence Malick's “The Tree of Life,” which was scheduled to open in December 2009, then at Cannes 2010, then in December 2010 in time for awards contention, and now, finally, hopefully, May 27, 2011. Limited, of course. Delays related to Malick's general perfectionism and U.S. distribution problems. It's now set to be distributed by Fox Searchlight.

All in all, there are 18 films fading in and out to our left, and it's a fairly international group (click on the film name to see the trailer):

• Three from France: “Gainsbourg: vie heroique,” a biopic of French singer Serge Gainsbourg “from growing up in 1940s Nazi-occupied Paris through his successful song-writing years in the 1960s,” which just won three Cesars, including best actor; “Des hommes et des dieux,” which just won the Cesar for best film, on top of its Grand Prix at last year's Cannes; and “Le noms des gens,” une comedie.
• Three that are Britishy: “Beginners,” about a young man (Ewan McGregor) discovering his elderly father (Christopher Plummer) has terminal cancer and a young male lover; “Hanna,” a serious version of “Kick-Ass”; and “One Day” (no trailer available), by Lone Scherfig, the woman who directed “An Education” and “Italian for Beginners.”
• Two from Korea: “The Housemaid,” which I've already seen (review here), and “Poetry,” which opens this week, and currently tops Andrew O'Hehir's list of the best films of 2011.
• From Taiwan: “Monga,” about gangs in 1980s Taipei. I lived in 1980s Taipei. Without the gangs.
• From Denmark: “In a Better World,” recent winner of the best foreign language film at the Oscars.
• From Thailand: “Uncle Bonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” which won the Palme d'Or“ at last year's Cannes Film Festival.
• Seven from the U.S.: ”The Tree of Life“ (the trailer so good it makes me uninterested in any movie I'm about to watch); ”Bridesmaids“ (femaley Judd Apatow but hopes are fading); ”Captain America“ (fingers crossed but hopes are fading); ”Moneyball“ (no trailer, no poster even), which comes out in September, and which I hope is more ”Social Network“ than ”The Blind Side“; ”Super,“ which looks to be a better version of ”Kick-Ass“; ”The Conspirator,“ Robert Redford's film about the aftermath of the Lincoln assassination; and, finally, ”Win Win,“ which got great buzz at Sundance, and is written and directed by Thomas McCarthy, who made ”The Station Agent“ and ”The Visitor,“ but who will forever be remembered by me as the scummy, preppy reporter from the final season of ”The Wire."

So. Any trailers look good to you? Any movies you've heard about that intrigue? What are YOU looking forward to?

Quick: Name a great kissing scene in the movies.

I’ve asked that of a lot of people over the last month and while some come up with an answer, most simply furrow their brows, put their hands on their hips, look at the ceiling and say, “Isn’t that funny.” And not just the guys either.

Kissing is one of cinema’s most common actions (right up there with punching), and yet what stands out? Something from “Casablanca” surely, and “Gone with the Wind.” “Titanic”? Did Leo kiss Kate on the prow of the boat or was that just in the poster? More memorable for me are the two of them steaming up the car windows, and Leo drawing a topless Kate. It’s like what my friend Seth admitted when I asked him for kissing scenes: “I only remember the boob shots,” he said. He was only half-joking.

Here’s part of the problem with movie kisses: they rarely further plots and often end them. It’s the action we’ve been waiting for, and yet for the plot to kick in again the kissing has to stop. It’s like dance sequences in this way.

Ask for a favorite dance number, though, and you’ll get besieged. There’s an infinite variety to them — limited only by the dancers’ abilities and the choreographers’ imaginations — but Hollywood long ago perfected how a kiss should look and it’s been stuck in the rut of its perfection ever since: Woman’s arms around man’s neck, man’s arms around woman’s waist, man 4-8 inches taller than woman. It’s even called “the Hollywood kiss,” and it’s almost always the same. I once asked a friend in a rock band how they can play the same songs night after night and keep it interesting, and he responded, “We fuck up.” That’s what Hollywood needs to do with their kisses. They need to fuck up.

But with the help of some friends I did manage to cobble together a few memorable kisses. Here they are, just in time for Valentine’s Day, in easy-to-read categories. I apologize in advance if your favorite isn’t listed.

“Kiss me.”

The desperate kiss
Two people need each other, hunger for each other, want to merge into one another. Often something is keeping them apart; often their affair is illicit. In “Casablanca,” Rick and Ilsa (Bogart and Bergman) have to worry about poor cuckolded Victor Laszlo, a great war hero, for whom they will have to give up their love. But in the meantime: Pucker up. For Sgt. Milton Warden and Karen Holmes (Lancaster and Kerr) in “From Here to Eternity,” it’s cuckolded Capt. Dana “Dynamite” Holmes (who apparently isn’t so dynamite), who is the sergeant’s superior (at least in the military). But in the meantime: Let’s roll around the beach as waves crash upon us. It’s the Hollywood kiss with the addition of “wet” and “prone.” Never underestimate the power of “wet” and “prone.”

In both of these scenes the men are pretty cool customers while the women melt, but men in the movies can get desperate as well. The best recent example is in “Brokeback Mountain,” when Jack and Ennis meet again after four years apart, and discover, during their initial hug, four years of unspent passion. Why is this kiss memorable? Because it’s unexpected, and rough, and they risk so much for it (life itself, you could say). There is anger as well as love in it. Hollywood often sweeps this untidy fact under the carpet but anger should be part of a desperate kiss. Think of it. I’m me. I’m happy being me. But then you come along and make me need you. You’ve got your nerve.

That’s why my favorite desperate kiss is between good ol’ George Bailey and Mary Hatch (James Stewart and Donna Reed) as they listen on the phone to that ass Sam Wainwright blabbing away in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” George knows that if he kisses Mary he’s giving up everything for her — his last chance to shake the dust of this crummy town off his shoes and see the world. Who wouldn’t be mad? Jimmy Stewart is a smart enough actor to show that anger. Still, he kisses her and the next thing you know they’re married. The scene I want is post-coital. Is he still happy? Still in love? Or is he thinking: “What the hell did I just do?”

Quitting is not an option.

The kiss in the rain
Rain works on so many levels. Metaphorically it represents passion — the long storm front finally unleashed. It also adds the aforementioned “wet,” which is what we want our kisses to be. It also puts good-looking actors into clinging clothes. So many levels.

The kiss in the rain is usually a subset of the desperate kiss. Witness “Witness,” when John Book and Rachel Lapp (Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis) finally unleash their long storm front — despite her engagement to that lemonade-sipper Daniel Hochleitner.

Three recent additions in this category include “Match Point,” “The Notebook” and “Spider-Man.” Yeah, the upside-down kiss with Mary Jane. Everyone remembers that one. It’s different. He’s upside-down. Hollywood, take note and think of the possibility of infinite variety.

The most famous kiss in the rain is probably from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” Unfortunately I’m not a fan. I’m a fan of Truman Capote’s novella, of which Norman Mailer — who didn’t exactly parcel out praise to his competition — once wrote “I would not have changed two words.” It’s a love story without sex, and maybe without the possibility of sex, since its narrator is basically Truman, who was gay. Still he loved her. That’s part of the ache of the book that the movie completely misses, and that the movie’s happy ending, in the rain, nullifies. In the book she does not find her cat (he does, later), and says, “[I]t could go on forever. Not knowing what’s yours until you’ve thrown it away... my mouth’s so dry, if my life depended on it I couldn’t spit.” So Hollywood added rain and a kiss and the bland George Peppard as the-anything-but-bland Truman Capote. Blech. Read the book. I love Audrey Hepburn but ... read the book.

Not stuck in the rut of their perfection.

The manhandle kiss
Before feminism, Hollywood gave us a lot of manhandle kisses, but the ones I recall later wound up having a sensitive or comic update.

In John Ford’s “The Quiet Man,” Sean Thornton, in perpetual Irish tussle with flame-haired Mary Kate Donaher (John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara), drags her back into the cottage and kisses her. In “E.T.,” our extraterrestrial friend is watching this very scene on television and translates its needs to his empathetic partner, Elliot, who, to pull off the classic Hollywood kiss, must, like Alan Ladd, stand on a box in order to kiss his taller classmate. A sweet update from Steven Spielberg.

One of the best manhandle kisses is in “On the Waterfront,” when Terry Malloy bursts into the room of the virginal, cloistered Edie Doyle (Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint). Terry is responsible for the death of Edie’s brother and his conscience is bothering him, and his love for Edie is bothering him, but when she admits, in the negative, her love for him (“I didn’t say I didn’t love you...”), he pins her against the wall and kisses her and the music stops and they slide down that wall. And there goes the convent. The music stopping is a nice touch. In most kissing scenes it wells up, but a good kiss makes everything stop.

Its modern update?” Rocky,” when Rocky pins the virginal Adrian (Sylvester Stallone and Tali Shire) against the wall and kisses her. Down they slide. Rocky’s approach is certainly more sensitive than Brando’s — Rocky talks her through it, calmly — but this actually makes the scene feel creepier. He comes off as calculated, which isn’t Rocky at all. An argument why sensitivity isn’t always sensitive, and why unthinking brute force sometimes feels clean.

But where have all the good manhandle kisses gone? The best recent example, where an actor grabs an actress and just plants one, wasn’t even in the movies. It was at the Academy Awards, when Adrien Brody won best actor and celebrated the way that any man at a high moment in his life would like to celebrate: by kissing someone as beautiful as Halle Berry.

As to what Ms. Berry thinks? That would be in the next category.

The woman takes charge
Two words: Lauren Bacall. She slinks through “To Have and Have Not” as Slim, the woman who gives instructions on how to whistle. But she has a greater line earlier, when she lands on Bogart’s lap and kisses him.

He (smiling): What was that for?
She: Been wondering whether I’d like it.
He: What’s the decision?
She: I don’t know yet.

She goes in for another and this time he kisses her back. Finally she stands, gives him a sidelong glance.

She: It’s even better when you help.

Now that’s cool.

You could place various woman-on-woman kisses here as well — Marlene Dietrich soft-kissing a female customer in “Morocco” and then tipping her cap in thanks, and Sarah Michelle Gellar and Selma Blair sloshing tongues in “Cruel Intentions” — but you’d expect more post-feminist examples since we’ve all gotten so liberated. Apparently not. Fewer manhandle kisses, fewer woman-takes-charge kisses. We’re all so equal now. How boring.

Sloshing.

Cartoon, Comic, of Death
There’s more categories, of course: The cartoon kiss (“The Lady and the Tramp”), The kiss of death (“The Godfather – Part II”) and The comic kiss: Anne Bancroft exhaling cigarette smoke in “The Graduate”; Susana (Valerie Golina) kissing Raymond in the elevator in “Rain Man.” Both involve Dustin Hoffman. Some men know how to work it.

How about “The kiss we’ve been waiting the entire freakin’ movie for”? Recent examples include “When Harry Met Sally” (that’s for you, Brenda), “Lost in Translation” (that’s for you, Brett), “Never Been Kissed” (that’s for you, Kelly) and “A Princess Bride” and “A Mighty Wind” (that’s for me).

And don’t forget “The kiss that sets up the rest of the movie.” In “Notorious,” we get exactly one scene where Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant are a couple, and most of it consists of a single, two-and-a-half minute take which includes many soft, nibbling, hungry kisses on the part of Ms. Bergman. Nice work if you can get it.

But I've saved the best for last.

Ingrid Bermgan, you're so purty, you'd make any mountain quiver.

The wow kiss
Let’s face it. Most of the time we know before the movie starts that this actor and that actress are going to kiss. It’s what people do in the movies. Most of the time, too, their characters know it, and desire it, and the kiss is just a culmination of something that’s been building and allows that something to continue on its trajectory. The kiss furthers trajectories but it doesn’t change trajectories.

I would argue that the best kisses in the movies are those that change trajectories. The characters are stunned — visually or verbally. They had seen their life going in this direction, and then they get the kiss and see it going in that direction. A kiss. Boom. Life changes.

In “The Philadelphia Story,” Tracy Lord (Katherine Hepburn) is about to marry that ass George Kittredge; but on the night before her wedding, she’s drunk and flirting with reporter Mike Conner (James Stewart), teasing him by calling him “Professor.” He shuts her up the best way he knows how. One kiss. “Golly,” she says. Two kisses. “Golly Moses,” she says. The next morning the wedding is called off. Oddly, she winds up marrying another man. Not so oddly, that man is Cary Grant.

Something similar occurs in “The Wedding Singer.” Julia (Drew Barrymore) is about to marry that ass Glenn, when, at the prompting of her cousin, she and wedding singer Robbie Hart (Adam Sandler) practice the wedding kiss. Boom. They back away dazed. Life changes.

Finally there’s “The Year of Living Dangerously.” Guy (Mel Gibson) is a reporter in 1965 Jakarta and he’s begun a flirtatious friendship with diplomat Jill Bryant (Sigourney Weaver), who is scheduled to return to Britain. At a swanky party, he takes her away from boring old men and out onto the veranda where he plants one and then asks her to leave with him. “I can’t leave with you now,” she says amused. “Everyone in Jakarta...” He plants another. Suddenly her voice gets serious and throaty. “I’m leaving in less than a week,” she says. It looks like he’ll go for a third, but he backs off and leaves the party. Before he can start his car, she gets in the passenger’s seat.

Now that’s good kissing.

By the way: Some people may consider this information incidental, but, as a writer, I feel it’s part of the public’s right to know — particularly the female public’s right to know. Two of the three “wow” kissers I just mentioned? They share the same occupation. They’re writers.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Never underestimate the power of “wet” and “prone.”

2013 UPDATE: So have we had any memorable movie kisses since? Of course we have. Maybe something from this series? Or this movie? Or, most definitely, this movie? Oh yeah. That one. Right there.

Reading Neal Gabler's book, “An Empire of Their Own,” about the early years of Hollywood, made me curious about Peter Bogdonavich's movie “Nickelodeon,” about the early years of Hollywood. I knew the movie had been panned in '76 but hoped it was one of those that aged well. Nope. Still a mess. Lurches between slapstick and melodrama. Not enough about, you know, nickelodeons. Just one scene in a nickelodeon, in fact, my favorite scene, when our troupe (actors, directors, etc.), realize the power of the movies ... for the actors. For the stars. But there wasn't enough of this: the moment of revelation into what would be.

At the same time, I was startled by the beauty, particularly in profile, of the leading lady, Jane Hitchcock (here with star Ryan O'Neal):

She also wasn't bad. As an actress. “Why haven't I heard of her?” I wondered. “What other movies has she made?” The answer to the second guestion was the answer to the first: none. She was a model who got the part because the studio refused to bankroll Cybill Shepherd, Bogdonavich's girlfriend, in the role, so Shepherd recommended her friend Jane. It's who you know and what your profile looks like. From IMDb.com:

Jane was the only novice in a star-studded cast that included Burt Reynolds and Ryan O'Neal fighting for her character's affections, creating a love triangle in the period film. Although, she gave a charming performance, she received mixed reviews, and the film became a flop. She was disappointed and acted in only one more project, before returning to her modeling career.

The other project was a TV movie starring Esther Rolle (of “Good Times”) and Kene Holliday (of “Carter Country”).

More about “Nickelodeon” from TCM:

In the story, the central characters, who have been toiling away at quickie shorts, go to see D.W. Griffith's landmark feature The Birth of a Nation (1915). Using footage from a special tinted archival print of the film, Bogdanovich and his actors convey the sense of excitement and wonder that accompanied the release of Griffith's film and the momentous change in the art and business of moviemaking that it signaled. After the fictional screening in the movie, the producer Cobb (played by Brian Keith), suddenly realizing the power of the medium, remarks that filmmakers are “giving people little pieces of time that they never forget,” a quote taken from an early Bogdanovich interview with James Stewart.

That's the part of the movie that should've worked but really didn't. Cobb, throughout, has been a blustering businessman, so why give him Jimmy Stewart's line—a line that has the ring of someone working in the industry, and believing in the industry, for decades? Meanwhile, O'Neal's character is too milquetoast and self-pitying to be of interest, while the more racist elements of “Birth” were left out at the Hollywood screening. I know I'm asking for the impossible, but what great mixed feelings we would've had watching our likeable stars getting excited by the KKK rescuing damsels from rapacious actors in blackface? Now that's entertainment.

Despite this, how little things have changed. I looked back 35 years to a movie that looked back 70 years to the birth of the movie industry, and my question was the question on the lips of audiences 100 years ago: Who's that girl?

I suppose it's appropriate that a documentary about Hollywood moguls such as Sam Goldwyn (née: Goldfish), Adolph Zukor (née; Cukor) and William Fox (née; Vilmos Fried) would come to me with its name changed. It's still annoying.

The doc in question is based on Neal Gabler's excellent book, “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood,” and has a similar title: “Hollywood: An Empire of Their Own.”

At least that's what it's called on Netflix's Web site, Netflix's envelope sleeve and Netflix's DVD casing. But once you start watching it, the true name of the doc appears: “Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies and the American Dream.” It's from A&E, always a bad sign, and, though Gabler helped write it, the doc merely begins with Gabler's book, then goes further afield, into areas that feel legitimate (Superman: created by two Jewish kids), and illegitimate or downright lies (the positive images of African-Americans promulgated in 1930s Hollywood films).

In the process, the doc loses the personalities of these moguls: the fierce determination of William Fox or Adolph Zukor; the fierce paternalism of Louis B. Mayer. Harry Cohn, a fierce personality, a real SOB in life, actually comes off without personality here.

The thrust of both book and doc is more or less the same. The six major movie studios (MGM, Universal, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros. and Columbia) were each created by Jews born within a 500-mile radius in Eastern Europe. Each fled the nightmare of pogroms and each created a dream factory on the west coast of the United States. These dreams were assimilative, patriotic, and family-oriented. At the same time the nightmare they fled is still reflected in their movies; it's just been transported. It can be seen, for example, when sudden violence (from outlaws, bandits, etc.) bears down on a hardworking family trying to scrape a living out of the American west.

“Hollywoodism” is ultimately too sloppy to recommend. Example: The first thing we see is that quintessential Hollywood western scene of sudden violence bearing down on a family, which reflects the violence of pogroms the moguls fled. “These images conceal memories,” the narrator intones. Except these images are from “Once Upon a Time in the West,” an Italian film, not a Hollywood film. It's Sergio Leone. It has nothing to do with the moguls or their memories. In fact, by the time Leone filmed this scene, all but one of the moguls were dead.

Stick with the book.

Louis B. Mayer (MGM), William Fox (20th Century Fox) and Adolph Zukor (Paramount).

Carl Laemmle (Universal), Harry Cohn (Columbia), Jack Warner (Warner Bros.)

Did you read Frank Rich's column last Sunday? Back in the Bush years, he was required reading for me. Less so now. That's actually good. It's nice to be able to disagree with him about a good president rather than huddle together in obvious opposition to a bad one.

His column Sunday was about the movies and America, specifically what “True Grit” and “The Social Network” say about different visions of America. It was much linked to and applauded.

But the article felt like half truths to me. Rich writes:

What is most stirring about “True Grit” today — besides the primal father-daughter relationship that blossoms between Rooster and Mattie — is its unalloyed faith in values antithetical to those of the 21st century America so deftly skewered, as it happens, in “The Social Network.”

He writes:

But what leaps out this time, to the point of seeming fresh, is the fierce loyalty of the principal characters to each other (the third being a vain Texas Ranger, played by Matt Damon) and their clear-cut sense of morality and justice, even when the justice is rough. More than the first “True Grit,” the new one emphasizes Mattie’s precocious, almost obsessive preoccupation with the law. She is forever citing law-book principles, invoking lawyers and affidavits, and threatening to go to court. “You must pay for everything in this world one way or another,” says Mattie. “There is nothing free except the grace of God.”

Loyalty? A bit, but hardly fierce. Mattie only goes on the trip in the first place because Cogburn finally allows it (Damon's character, LaBoeuf, is horse whipping her, remember). Cogburn and LaBoeuf constantly fight. They split up, come back together when the bad guys close in, and are on the verge of splitting up for good when Mattie sees Chaney, her father's killer, by the stream, and Chaney kidnaps her. These characters are really only as loyal to each other as I am to Frank Rich. I'm with him when the bad guys, the Chaneys/Cheneys of the world, are nearby or in power. Otherwise we squabble.

(Fun fact: Josh Brolin is the only actor who has played both Bush and Chaney.)

Rich then writes of “The Social Network”:

In contrast to Mattie’s dictum [“There is nothing free but the grace of God”], no one has to pay for any transgression in the world it depicts. Zuckerberg’s antagonists, Harvard classmates who accuse him of intellectual theft, and his allies, exemplified by a predatory venture capitalist, sometimes seem more entitled and ruthless than he is. The blackest joke in Aaron Sorkin’s priceless script is that Lawrence Summers, a Harvard president who would later moonlight as a hedge fund consultant, might intervene to arbitrate any ethical conflicts. You almost wish Rooster were around to get the job done.

This is also off. The Zuckerberg of “TSN” pays with his friends, particularly Andrew Garfield's Eduardo, and with his Rosebud of girlfriends, Erica Albright, with whom, at the end, he's still intent on connecting. He's someone who connects the world with each other but can't connect himself. That's his tragedy. That's how he pays.

(Agreement on Summers, by the way, whom the film portrays not only as too self-important to intervene in a student squabble but not visionary enough to see what Facebook might become. He scoffs that it's a million dollar idea when it becomes a multi- multi- billion-dollar idea. This man, by the way, with such strong vision, is once again economic advisor to the president of the United States.)

But that's as far as I got in my critique. Thank God for Richard Brody over at The New Yorker, an increasingly necessary read, who pretty much takes care of Rich in the opening graf:

Pundits who lay hold of movies often seem merely to filter them to yield predetermined results—as Frank Rich does, in Sunday’s Times, in a piece in which he draws tendentious conclusions from a comparison of the stories and the box-office results of the Coen brothers’ “True Grit” and David Fincher’s “The Social Network.”

Actually, “True Grit” is a success because it allows viewers to have their cake (the cake of extra-legal frontier justice) and to eat it (in the form of a wholesome recognition that the pursuit is damaging to the pursuers, and that, though the extrajudicial hunt makes for quite a show, it’s one that, in the modern age, is obsolete, enjoyable precisely and solely as a tall tale). It’s not a movie for the post-meltdown age but one for the post-9/11 age of devil-may-care vengeance.

Does “True Grit” feel like a tall tale to you? As movies go, it's fairly rooted in time and history. It's obviously wish fulfillment, and revenge fantasy, but less so than most Hollywood wish fulfillments and revenge fantasies. The hero is a drunk. His sidekick is full of hot air. The villain, Lucky Ned, has honor. Meanwhile, Mattie, forever using the fact of her lawyer as both bribe and cudgel, is the one who metes out frontier justice on Chaney. But we don't get to enjoy it. As soon as it happens, she begins to pay. Cogburn lost an eye, LeBoeuf nearly a tongue, and now she loses an arm. And a horse. And her youth. That's hardly devil-may-care. That's why the film resonates so. It lives up to its own principles. Nothing is free but the grace of God.

“True Grit” also resonates because it's a good metaphor—not for our time, or for a time long gone, but for our own interactions in times of crisis. Frank Rich, Richard Brody and I are squabbling now; but soon, too soon, the Cheneys of the world will be strong again and we'll ride together.

Rooster, not riding into the sunset.

I have a piece up on MSNBC.com on the oddity of Natalie Portman, Oscar nominee, ballet dancer and multilinguist, shacking up with Ashton Kutcher, tweeter and monosyllabist, in Ivan Reitman's romantic comedy “No Strings Attached.” 

Two weekends ago, when I was in the midst of writing it, some friends and I were at a multiplex in downtown Seattle, talking close to a big poster of “No Strings Attached.” Curious what others felt, curious if it was just me, I nodded toward the poster.

Me: And what do we think of that?

Pause.

Female friend: “Love her. Hate him.”

Pause.

Male friend: “She can do so much better.”

You can check out the piece here.

I have a piece in my alumni magazine about the Marx Brothers and a late '70s college organization called the Marx Brotherhood, and how me and my friend Nathan Kaatrud, who became Nash Kato of Urge Overkill, were the only high school members of that organization, and what the Marx Brothers meant to us, and what's become of them in the popular mind since. A sample:

The first Marx Brothers movie I saw was one of the last they made, A Night in Casablanca, from 1946, which my older brother and I watched one Friday night on WCCO-TV’s “Comedy and Classics,” hosted by John Gallos. I was 10, and their appeal was immediate. The world was full of dull phonies and lousy schemers, then the Marx Brothers burst on the scene and upended everything. They popped the pretensions in the room. While most of the other characters looked normal but felt fake, the Marxes were obviously fake—a bewigged mute with a trench coat full of tricks (Harpo), a piano player with a two-bit Italian accent (Chico), and a wiseass with a greasepaint moustache (Groucho)—but they had an air of authenticity about them. They were always themselves.

The whole thing here.

Honk honk.

It's the next two months that get busy, of course, but thus far it hasn't been a bad year for movies... if you live in a city that plays limited releases and you know where to look.

Here are my top 10* thus far**. No order—although “Un Prophete” and “Restrepo” probably top the list. We'll see what the next two months bring.

What about you? Favorites of 2010? Recommendations?

*click on the poster for the review

**Caveat: I have yet to see “Grown Ups.”

I'm writing a piece for my alumni magazine on a campus organization dedicated to the Marx Brothers, the Marx Brotherhood, which I belonged to in the late 1970s—before I was in college—and so rewatched some of their movies. They still make me laugh.

But one of the more startling moments came in an otherwise throwaway scene in “Horse Feathers.” Zeppo, playing Groucho's son, is about to visit “the college widow,” Connie Bailey (Thelma Todd), with whom he's having an affair, but runs into her maid, Laura, beforehand. They exchange pleasantries and Zeppo takes the breakfast tray from her and brings it to Connie himself.

What's startling? The maid is played by a pretty black actress, Theresa Harris, and contains none of the stereotypes associated with the era and the role. The performance, as small as it is, seems decades ahead of its time:

Apparently Theresa Harris was born in 1909, appeared in 81 movies, including “Baby Face,” “Jezebel,” and “Cat People,” and stopped acting in films just after Montgomery and just before Greensboro. She died of natural causes in 1985.

Has anyone written a book about her? A quick Internet search (Google, amazon) reveals bupkis.

Her Wiki bio. Other observant “Horse Feathers” watchers.

I always seem to be about a week behind in what I want to post about.

This piece, for example, “Longing for the Lines that Had Us at Hello,” showed up in The New York Times a week ago today, and it's been stuck in my craw, wherever my craw* is, ever since.

(*craw (n.): a pouch in many birds and some lower animals that resembles a stomach for storage and preliminary maceration of food)

One, it's by Michael Cieply, who's been a bit of a bete noire for me for the past few years. My site has a search function now, and if you search for “Cieply” you get 10 hits, most of them bitching about this or that now-forgotten article.**

(**My favorite of these is “Two Face,” from July 2008, in which Cieply's April prediction that “The Dark Knight” may underperform at the box office—because it's too gloomy at a time when people want to escape gloom—is juxtaposed with colleague Brooks Barnes' after-the-fact analysis that “The Dark Knight” did well at the box office because its gloominess reflected the national mood. Escape/reflect. Nice when the Times gets it both ways.) 

Two, it's about movie quotes, which I've written about before: once for MSNBC, once for me. So, egotistically, I feel like it's my turf.

Three, the Times' headline plays a bit with the text. Cieply's main argument, or thought, is: Where have all the good movie quotes gone? He doesn't mention longing.

Mostly, though, elitist that I am, I think the movie quotes that everyone quotes (“Show me the money!”) aren't as interesting as the movie quotes that movie lovers quote (“Takin' em off here, boss”). ***

(***Cieply also confuses the categories, putting “The Dude Abides” in the former when it's really the latter. “The Big Lebowski” kinda bombed on first viewing. It took years before quotes about the Dude started coming.)  

Here's the brunt of Cieply's argument:

Sticky movie lines were everywhere as recently as the 1990s. But they appear to be evaporating from a film world in which the memorable one-liner — a brilliant epigram, a quirky mantra, a moment in a bottle — is in danger of becoming a lost art.

I could argue that “Stupid is as stupid does” is not art, lost or otherwise. I could argue that sticky movie quotes get annoying fast. But there's really only one thing to say to Cieply at this point:

Why so serious?

What about you? What movie lines from the past 10 years do you quote? Feel free to put 'em in the comments field below.****

(****Shout-out to Joe Posnanski, from whom I got the idea of footnoting within the text of a blog post.)

Last Friday night a group of us went to Sitka & Spruce for our friend Paige's birthday, where the following photo was taken:

That's Paige on the left, Patricia on the right, me with the shit-eating grin in the middle.

Something about the photo, particularly the lucky bastard in the middle, the way he's leaning, a little bit of the charlatan in him, seemed familiar somehow. Today it finally hit me:

I guess if you have to model yourself on someone...

Tony Curtis, born Bernard Schwartz of the Bronx, died last night of a cardiac arrest at the age of 85. There's an excellent obituary from Dave Kehr of The New York Times here.

A few years ago, to coincide with the release of the Kevin Costner film “Mr. Brooks” (remember that one?), I wrote a piece for MSNBC.com called “When Leading Men Go Bad,” and counted down the top 8 villainous turns of Hollywood heroes. Tony Curtis's Boston Strangler came in at no. 5.

Godspeed, Josephine. Nobody's perfect, but your Cary Grant imitation came close.

5. Tony Curtis in “The Boston Strangler”

For an actor with a lousy rep —nominated by Michael Medved as the worst actor of all time in “The Golden Turkey Awards” — Tony Curtis has given us some great performances. He played a racist con chained to Sidney Poitier in “The Defiant Ones,” a servile PR flak chained to Burt Lancaster’s gossip columnist in “Sweet Smell of Success” and a Roman slave chained to Laurence Olivier in “Spartacus.” Not to mention his comic turn as Joe/Josephine/Cary Grant in “Some Like It Hot.”

But for most of the 1960s he played glib roles in frothy sex comedies like “Sex and the Single Girl” and “The Great Race.”

The first shock in “The Boston Strangler” is that Curtis, as Albert DeSalvo, isn’t there for the first hour of the film. We see only his boots and gloved hands, and the results of his crimes. When he does show up, well, he ain’t pretty no more. He’s broken-nosed and fleshier of face. We see him commit one crime, then two. In a way this is more than he sees.

Once he’s apprehended (on a breaking-and-entering charge), we find out he’s a split personality — he doesn’t know what he does — so Henry Fonda, as head of the commission tracking him, tries to break through to the other side. Curtis scrunches in his chair like a chastened schoolboy. He twitches. He has flashes of memory in which Fonda, his interrogator, appears. The film was made at a time when Hollywood was still trying to cinematically recreate inner as well as outer journeys, and “Strangler” exhibits this best when DeSalvo feels his wife has betrayed him: He sees her, suddenly, as if from a long distance away. Later, confused and blinking, he says the idea of strangling her popped into his head, but “How did she know?” He doesn’t yet realize he did try to strangle her. He doesn’t yet realize his “ideas” are the Strangler’s actions.

In his book “Bambi vs. Godzilla,” David Mamet calls Curtis’ performance here, “Some of the greatest moments of film acting.”

Which leads to the inevitable question: Is Michael Medved right about anything?

What's up with the MSNBC.com Movies page? For five years I freelanced for them, averaging about 20 pieces a year, but then they aggregated more and more unoriginal content (both senses) from AP and Newsweek, and eventually they ditched the freelance budget.

Aggregating is pretty much all they do now. Here's a screenshot from a few days ago...

The aggregated stories on the left-hand side are new but what's with the slideshows on the right? The bottom one, about "Doomsday Movies," is tied to the release of the film "2012," which came out last November, while the top trumpets such new December releases as "Avatar," "Up in the Air" and "Sherlock Holmes." I can hardly wait.

Seriously, does anyone from MSNBC even visit the site? Does anyone visit the site? One half expects an animated tumbleweed to come rolling across the screen.

Sad. It used to be a place to go to. Now it's this.

Well, I'm sure it's profitable anyway.

Thirteen months ago I was in Los Angeles interviewing Schuyler Moore, a transactional/tax/entertainment lawyer at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, for Southern California Super Lawyers magazine. Moore turned out to be one of my more fascinating interviews. The final article, entitled "A Bit of a Rebel with a Bit of a Cause," included this line: "Is it worse breaking your neck or losing your spleen? Academic question to almost everyone but Moore, who’s done both." Read the whole thing here. I know I'm biased but it's fascinating stuff.

I bring all this up now because what Moore was working on that day, a simple term sheet, has now come to fruiton:

“There’s a film called 'Machete' by Robert Rodriguez,” Moore says, “and it’s a pretty high-profile project, and my client [Hyde Park] wants to close the deal today.” His simple term sheet is now 57 pages. “People started sending attachments and approval lists and waterfalls and sales agent agreements that we kept attaching. So it’s now grown into this beast overnight.” Moore has simplified the waterfall—how the profits, if there are profits, get allocated—from 10 pages down to a couple of sentences, and others are e-mailing and phoning to sign off on this change. “I’m a big believer in E=MC²,” he says. “Simplify, simplify, simplify.”

Later in the interview I realized to what extent Moore, who works in the entertainment industry, and who is in fact the grand-nephew of Billie Burke, who played Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, in "The Wizard of Oz," could care less about the product he helps create. That's part of what makes him fascinating:

“I don’t even know who Robert Rodriguez is,” he adds, referring to the "Machete" deal. “Everyone else seems to know who he is. He did 'Grindhouse' apparently?” He reads aloud the cast list attached to Rodriguez’s film: “Danny Trejo, Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriguez.” He pauses. “I know De Niro.”

"Machete" opens Friday. I haven't decided whether or not to see it, but I know that Moore, unless he's invited to the premiere, won't. He doesn't watch TV or see movies. I also know the movie won't be as interesting as he is. Probably a correlation there.

Two documentaries about the war in Afghanistan played during the recent Seattle International Film Festival: “Restrepo” and “The Tillman Story.”

I thought “Restrepo” one of the best docs I've ever seen. I thought “The Tillman Story” OK but hardly news.

My reaction turns out to be the exact opposite of Jeff Wells' reaction over at Hollywood Elsewhere. What I loved about “Restrepo,” he hated. What I disliked about “The Tillman Story,” he loved.

Our disagreement doesn't have much to do with politics. We're both lefties.

Our disagreement has to do with aesthetics. What's the point of a documentary? What's the point of a war documentary? What's the point of art?

I'll leave the “Tillman” doc alone. Suffice it to say that people should see it. Particularly if they haven't read Jon Krakauer’s book “Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman,“ or are part of the ”Miss Me Yet?“ crowd. Or if they're George Bush or Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld or... You get the idea.

As for ”Restrepo,“ Wells feels it fails because it fails to give us the big political picture. In a post he calls ”Afghanistan Bananistan,“ he writes:

I think I'm done with war documentaries that make a point of not offering any sort of opinion about anything — no history or context, no political point of view, just ”this is war, war is hell, taste it.“ Well, I'm sick of that shit after seeing Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger's Restrepo, a bravely captured, technically first-rate documentary about a year under fire in Afghanistan's Korangal Valley, a.k.a., ”the valley of death.“

There's no question whatsover that this movie lies through omission about what's really going on in Afghanistan in the broader, bigger-picture sense. I found myself becoming more and more angry about this after catching Restrepo two nights ago at the Walter Reade theatre, and especially after doing some homework.

In my review of ”Restrepo,“ written three weeks before Wells posted the above, I wrote:

“Restrepo” is the best thing I’ve seen or read about our presence in Afghanistan, and it’s not really about our presence in Afghanistan. It’s about, as the tagline says, one platoon, in one valley, for one year. It goes deep into these soldiers’ lives without telling us much about their actual lives (where they’re from, why they signed up, etc.). It’s an emotional movie precisely because its emotions are restrained. It’s artistic without being artistic. It’s artistic in the Dedalean sense. It doesn’t inspire kinetic emotions but static emotions. The mind is arrested. In this sense maybe Afghanistan itself is artistic. Our mind has been arrested there for almost 10 years.

”Dedalean sense“ is a bit hifalutin but it refers to Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist of James Joyce's ”A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.“ His definition of art is known to almost everyone—like myself—who wasted their college years as an English major:

The feelings excited by improper art are kinetic, desire or loathing. Desire urges us to possess, to go to something; loathing urges us to abandon, to go from something. These are kinetic emotions. The arts which excite them, pornographical or didactic, are therefore improper arts. The esthetic emotion (I use the general term) is therefore static. The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing.

Most movies are kinetic. Most documentaries are didactic, and you double-down on the didacticism if the doc is political. Wells, I would argue, wants ”Restrepo“ to be didatic. He wants it to say what he already knows—or what he finds out when he does his homework. That, I would argue, would be an OK doc but it wouldn't be ”Restrepo.“ ”Restrepo,“ I would argue, is better because it doesn't do this.

Another hifaultin quote about art, this one from Norman Mailer:

Art obviously depends upon incomplete communication. A work which is altogether explicit is not art, the audience cannot respond with their own creative act of the imagination, that small leap of the faculties which leaves one an increment more exceptional than when one began.

Part of the power of ”Restrepo“ lies in its restraint, in all that it holds back, in all that we feel as a result. It makes us care about these men and makes us wonder why they're there, and whether they should be there. We do this work, not the doc. We do this homework, if we haven't already. That's part of everything we bring to it. From A.O. Scott's review yesterday:

Like most movies of its kind, “Restrepo” avoids any explicit political discussion. The soldiers can’t wait to leave Korangal but are also determined to carry out their duties, and they don’t have the time or inclination to reflect on larger causes and contexts. But in their close observation of just how the war is being conducted, Mr. Junger and Mr. Hetherington provide plenty of grist for political argument. They also reveal one of the irreducible, grim absurdities of this war, which is the disjunction between its lofty strategic and ideological imperatives and the dusty, frustrating reality on the ground.

What are these guys doing there? It’s hard to watch this movie without asking that basic, hard question.

”Restrepo“ is a brilliant doc for other reasons as well. It sows confusion the way Afghanistan itself sows confusion. What is Restrepo? First it's a soldier. Then it's a dead soldier. Then it's an outpost, the furthest outpost in the Korangal Valley, named for this dead soldier. It's a name that hovers over everything.

The incident with the cow? First it's funny. Then it's happy (”That was a good day“). Then it's neither funny nor happy. It's yet another incident between the U.S. troops and the Afghan villagers that might be good but is probably bad. It's worrisome.

What about the enemy? It's an unseen enemy. We hear them fire on these men, and on the documentarians, but we never see them. Not once. That we know of. That, too, is worrisome.

Are we doing good there?

Is it worth it?

Should we leave?

What happens when we leave?

Hetherington and Junger trust us to come up with our own answers to these questions. They trust us to make that small leap of the faculties that leave us an increment more exceptional than when we began.

”Restrepo" opened yesterday in New York and L.A. It opens in Boston, Philly and Chicago on July 2; San Francisco, Houston and D.C. on July 9; and Dallas and Seattle on July 16.

The Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) ended a week ago Sunday after three packed weeks of movies. I saw eight of them. None of my films, not even “Restrepo,” wound up among the award winners (Golden Space Needle, etc.), which are listed on the SIFF site alphabetically. It's so like Seattle to list award winners alphabetically. We don't want to imply that one is better than another—even when we're saying that these are better than the others.

I'll say it, of course. Of the movies I saw, this is how I'd rank them:

1. “Restrepo”
2. “Au Revoir Taipei”
3. “Garbo: The Spy”
4. “L'enfer d'Henri-Georges Clouzot”
5. “The City of Life and Death”
6. “The Tillman Story”
7. “The Actresses”
8. “Zona Sur”

As for SIFF itself? It's a great film festival, a local treasure, the largest film festival in the country supposedly (in terms of attendance? length? films? all?), and just getting all of these films here so we can see them in a theater (as opposed to on DVD or not at all), and ahead of critics in N.Y. and L.A., makes one a bit abashed about any petty criticisms one may have.

But here I go being petty:

• I saw “Restrepo” at the Harvard Exit, a group of us waiting outside in the semi-drizzle for nearly an hour on the off-chance of getting in. We got in. But just as we were buying tickets several people butted ahead of us to buy their tickets. But not to “Restrepo,” we found out. To “Les Secrets de sus Ojos.” Which was not part of the festival but was playing at the Harvard Exit nonetheless. I'm sure there was a reason a separate box office hadn't been set up for this non-festival movie, but I doubt the reason is worth the anxiety and bad feelings, for both “Restrepo” folks and “Ojos” folks, that the one line engendered.
• The next day I saw “Zona Sur” at Pacific Place downtown. A separate box office had been set up there, but it was a separate box office with two lines: one to buy tickets, one to pick up tickets. I was in the pick-up tickets line. Unfortunately the pick-up tickets line was the outer line while the pick-up window was the near window, and this meant folks trying to pick up tickets had to cross through the line of folks trying to buy tickets. Once again: confusion and anxiety. Those of us in line talked about how the lines (or the windows) should be switched, and I did my complaining perhaps a trifly loudly (I'm a charmer that way), and when I got to the window, the SIFF volunteer at the other window complained to me about me. Basically he said I should zip it. When I said that all they needed to do was switch the lines and everything would be OK, he interrupted with, “Sir? Sir? Please don't feed the chaos!” A funny line, but in the end it solved nothing.

But all in all my experience this year was better than my experience last year, when the movie I most wanted to see, the “Mesrine” two-parter with Vincent Cassel, was canceled at the last minute. (I think our print wound up in my least-favorite state: Texas.) I still haven't seen that movie yet. On Netflix, its arrival date is “Unknown.” On the plus side, Scarecrow Video in Seattle says they have it for region 1 players.

As for SIFF's Award winners? I'll have to check them out. But I wouldn't be surprised if they were a little too arty for my taste. SIFF listed “Restrepo” as the fourth-best documentary of the festival, and, for the moment, I refuse to believe that three other documentaries could be that good.

The poll below was recommended by my nephew Jordy. Vote early! Vote often!

“Grandmother, melancholy grips my heart when I think of your old violin.”

—Opening words of a trailer for a film playing at SIFF, the Seattle International Film Festival. I'm a SIFF fan but this is almost a parody of an overly precious SIFF film.

There's been noise from some quarters that the negative reviews of "Sex and the City 2" are sexist, but this counterargument lands with a thud. Critics take down anything that's bad. That's what we do. We recommend what's good. That's what we do. Excusing "SATC 2" as escapist fantasy for women, while contrasting it with escapist fantasies for men such as "Taken," reveals what's truly bad about "SATC 2." (Which I haven't even seen yet, so...grain of salt.)

"Taken" is about a man who's increasingly relevant. He's necessary and important. Thus he acts as a fantasy figure for audience members who, most likely, feel increasingly unnecessary and unimportant in the world. He also answers every dramatist's first question: What does the guy want? He wants to get his daughter back. The movie is about everything he goes through to get that done.

"SATC 2" is about four women who are increasingly irrelevant. Why is this escapist fantasy? Because of the designer clothes and bags? Meanwhile, the main character, Carrie, doesn't even bother to answer the dramatist's first question. She doesn't know what she wants. She never has. With the exception of Big, whom she now has. Answered prayers.

I doubt I'll see it—SIFF's on—but here are some of the better comments I've read:

"Sex and the City 2" is more than harmless escapism. It's an accidental candid snapshot of the sick, dying heart of America, a film so pleased with its vacuous, trashy, art-free extravagance that its poster should be taped to the dingy walls of terrorist sleeper agents worldwide. More depressing and alarming than the movies themselves is the notion that a certain culture, a certain mindset, birthed it, without a pang of remorse or even apparent self-awareness, much less self-criticism. Ladies and gentlemen, this is why they hate us.
—Matt Zoller Seitz, IFC.com

The thinking behind the movie (written and directed by Michael Patrick King) is undisguised. Let’s start with an over-the-top gay wedding! Then we’ll send the girls to Abu Dhabi so they can rile up the fundamentalists with their sexuality! Then they’ll make fun of women in niqab (“Certainly cuts down on the Botox bill!”) but later show (campy) feminist solidarity! Won’t they look great swishing around the desert being waited on by smooth young Arab men?
—David Edelstein, New York

In one scene, Carrie asks her personal hotel butler, Guarau (Raza Jaffrey), about his family. His wife is back in India, he tells her; he flies home to see her every few months, when he can afford the fare. Carrie looks at him for a moment in silence, and we wonder: Is it possible she's confronting the unimaginable gulf that separates their two lives, the vast global network of consumption, exploitation, and injustice that's brought them together in this alien and alienating place? But no: Although she will later do Guarau a good turn, Carrie is merely wondering how she can get Big to appreciate her as much. Perched at the pinnacle of material comfort and social privilege in the waning days of the American empire, she can still find something to pout about.
—Dana Stevens, Slate.com

Roger Ebert gives us nine reasons “Why I Hate 3-D (And You Should, Too)” in Newsweek magazine. Here's a 10th reason from me. Maybe it's encompassed in one of the others, such as “It Adds Nothing to the Experience” or “Have You Noticed That 3-D Seems a Little Dim?,” but it seems important enough to stand alone:

It makes the movies seem SMALL.

I noticed this while watching “Up” in 3-D last year. By creating volume for the 3-D image, it seems to shrink it. The characters don't seem as big, the canvas doesn't seem as wide. It's no longer bigger than life. Maybe you need 2-D to seem bigger than life. Maybe that's what bigger than life means: two dimensions. I preferred “Up” in 2-D, when the colors, per Roger, seemed glorious, and when my imagination, per Roger, provided that third dimension.

Roger's is a good starting point to a counter-argument that no one in Hollywood will listen to. Because they have 2.7 billion reasons not to. Because they think “Avatar”'s success was built solely on 3-D, which is something they can control, rather than expert storytelling and attention to detail, which they can't.

There are important things to say about movie violence, but A.O. Scott, in his piece in The New York Times last week, “Brutal Truths About Violence,” doesn’t say them.

He takes two recent movies that have little to do with each other, or, to be honest, with the film culture at large—“Kick Ass,” which opened below expectations in April, and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” which barely opened in the U.S. at all (153 theaters)—ties them together, and tips them over. He creates his own tipping point. “Enough is enough,” he writes. Or in typically qualifying fashion: “We will, I suppose, each find our own limits and draw our own boundaries [about movie violence], but it may also be time to articulate those and say when enough is enough.”

The problem? These two movies display completely different attitudes about violence. Scott would argue that both revel in it, but at the least they’re polar opposites in intent: “Dragon Tattoo” is trying to make you feel the violence (so you can be horrified), while “Kick Ass” needs you inured to violence (so you can laugh at it).

At this point in his article, though, we’re merely having a mild disagreement. What propelled me to write this post is the way he dissects two scenes of rape and revenge in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” He writes:

[Director Niels Arden Oplev’s] feminist impulse is overpowered by the unwavering attention, pornographic in form if not intent, to the vulnerable, suffering, sexualized bodies on the screen. While the film may want to draw a moral distinction between the episodes — one an unprovoked and heinous assault, the other an act of righteous vengeance — their intensity renders them equivalent.

Renders them equivalent? I don’t know what this means. That they’re both intense? Or that their very intensity renders their differences meaningless? And if the latter, is this specific to “Dragon Tattoo“? Or does the intensity of, say, Dirty Harry killing Scorpio render it morally equivalent to Scorpio killing innocent people?

Hardly stopping for a breath, Scott then ties ”Dragon Tattoo" to one of the most infamous movies ever made:

The 1978 exploitation film “I Spit on Your Grave” was widely reviled upon its release, but the violation and vengeance it presents, and the detail with which it depicts a gang rape and a victim’s serial revenge, are not so far from what is shown in “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” Both belong on a spectrum with Gaspar Noé’s “Irreversible” (2002), which narrated its story of rape and revenge out of order, and collapsed any meaningful distinction between condemning sexual brutality and reveling in it.

I haven’t seen “Irreversible” so I can’t comment on it. I have seen “I Spit on Your Grave.” Parts of it. And I can comment on why “Dragon Tattoo” is not on the same planet.

Here’s the IMDb plot description for “Spit”:

An aspiring writer is repeatedly gang-raped, humiliated, and left for dead by four men whom she systematically hunts down to seek revenge.

Now here’s the plot description for “Dragon Tattoo.” Apologies for its verbosity:

Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family. He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the tattooed, ruthless computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate. When the pair link Harriet's disappearance to a number of grotesque murders from almost forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history. But the Vanger's are a secretive clan, and Blomkvist and Salander are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves.

The rape-revenge cycle of “Spit on Your Grave” is the whole story. It was designed to appeal to our darker, prurient desires, and then to metaphorically kill them off, one by one.

The rape/revenge scenes of “Dragon” aren’t even mentioned in this overlong synopsis. The movie’s themes are certainly about “men who hate women” (it’s the Swedish title of both novel and movie: “Män som hatar kvinnor”), but the movie’s a mystery, a thriller, a crime drama, and a kind of romance/buddy tale. The rape/revenge scenes, if we haven’t read the novel, actually come as a shock. They come, to be honest, as a kind of disappointment. Lisbeth is our hero here. We thought she was too smart to get trapped in this manner. It’s like watching Spider-Man getting raped.

Which brings me back to this line:

But [Oplev’s] feminist impulse is overpowered by the unwavering attention, pornographic in form if not intent, to the vulnerable, suffering, sexualized bodies on the screen. [Emphasis mine.]

Again, I’m not quite sure what he means. “Pornographic” in the sense that the scenes show naked bodies? Or “pornographic” in the sense that the scenes arouse lust? I certainly agree with the former definition (we see two people naked) but not the latter. At least the scenes raised no lust in me. And I’m hardly a boy scout.

Rape scenes are always going to inspire some mix of horror and lust, and the goal of a responsible filmmaker, as opposed to an exploitation filmmaker, is to tamp down the lust and increase the horror. And the best way of doing this it to let us know the woman. Let us care about the woman. She can’t be a stranger and she can’t be fake.

Oplev does this. Lisbeth is never sexualized during the film—that helps—but more importantly, at this point in the story, we know enough about her to care about her. Lisbeth reminds us of women we know so we care what happens to her; the woman in “Spit” reminds us of women we don’t know so we don’t. It helps that Noomi Rapace in “Dragon” is a real actress and Camille Keaton in “Spit” is not. She’s a B-movie actress in the middle of an exploitation film, and almost every scene is so badly produced it reminds us that it’s being staged. She can’t remind us of women we know because she’s obviously not real.

There's great irony in Scott's piece. Certain violent movies, he argues, create equivalence (through intensity) or collapse distinctions (through chronology), but I would argue it's actually Scott who does this. He focuses on meaningless similarities and ignores meaningful distinctions. That's either no way to begin a serious discussion about movie violence...or the best way.

There's a nice piece in the Sunday New York Times by A.O. Scott on the career of Meryl Streep and her 16 Oscar nominations—for which she has won exactly two, and not since 1984 (for a 1983 movie)—and he asks the question that probably shouldn't be asked: “Has she received too much recognition or too little?” Then he sheds that awful journalistic ambiguity and gets out with it: “Meryl Streep is the best screen actress in the world.” There we go.

He talks about her progression: “The movies that established Ms. Streep as a formidable, even intimidating on-screen force were marked by heavy themes and deep, dark dramatic moods: Vietnam, divorce, the Holocaust, missing children, nuclear anxiety.” He suggests she's improved: “She began to reveal a playful, mischievous side, an anarchic impulse that, joined to her formidable timing and technique, has blossomed in the past 10 years or so.” I agree. I particularly agree with “anarchic impulse.” That's a nice turn of phrase. But Scott really hits his stride while talking about '80s movies in general:

Sandwiched between the endlessly mythologized Golden Age of ’70s New Hollywood and the now almost equally sentimentalized decade of the American Indies, the ’80s are comparatively bereft of nostalgic movie-fan affection or revisionist critical love. And yet the respectable films of that era may represent the last gasp of a noble middlebrow ideal. They were ambitious, unapologetically commercial projects intended for the entertainment and edification of grown-up audiences, neither self-consciously provocative nor timidly inoffensive. Some of us grew up on movies like “Sophie’s Choice” and “Out of Africa,” and our fondness outlasts the sense that we eventually outgrew them. Nowadays “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “A Cry in the Dark” would be scruffy little Sundance movies. “Out of Africa” would be in French. “Silkwood” would be “The Blind Side.”

He should've excised that last example. I like the others. The “Kramer vs. Kramer” reference reminded me of what I wrote about “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest” two years ago (“...by the end of its run, 'Cuckoo’s Nest,' a dark film about mental patients—that today would probably get a limited release in art houses—finished second only to 'Jaws' in annual box office”); while, yes, the French still make their nostalgic, dull, magic-hour epics, such as “Un long dimanche de fiancaille.” But the “Silkwood”/“Blind Side” comparison is jarring. Both focus on heroic women but one's very liberal and gritty and anti-corporate and has a sad, ambiguous end, and the other's very conservative and family-oriented and pro-business and has a Hollywood ending that isn't less Hollywood for being real. Scott needed a better editor there.

But noble middlebrow ideal? He's exactly right. See the above link and this post from last year's Oscars that I'd all but forgotten about until I ran into it yesterday. Apologies in advance for the Jeff Wellsian “he's right because I agree with him and I was there first” riff.

As for Streep? Scott's words are good but not as good as Morgan Freeman's in this NY Times video in which various actors talk about the best performances of the decade. Some go obscure. Jeff Bridges picks Mike White from “Chuck and Buck.” Some don't even remember names or movies. Then we see Morgan Freeman, unamused, and he tells us: “Meryl Streep in anything she's done in the last 50 years.” You think he's going to expound but then he looks back at the camera, unamused. End story.

Meant to mention this a couple of weeks ago but we've updated the Movie Reviews section on the site, so now you can sort by year or by genre as well as by title. Much better. At the same time it made me realize what a mixed bag of reviews I have. For the first half of this decade I was a back-up critic at The Seattle Times, which mostly meant reviewing 1) foreign films, 2) documentaries, and 3) Hollywood crap. Give or take a foreign film or doc, it was mostly forgettable stuff. For the second half of the decade, I wrote longer, opinion pieces for MSNBC rather than reviews of individual movies. 2009 was really the first year in which I consistently reviewed the big movies. Of course the pay suffered.

We've also posted the "Three Stories with J.D. Salinger" piece on the General Articles page.

Like any guy I'm poorly prepared on Valentine's Day—these things do sneak up, don't they?—so, checking the cupboards, I offer you this old, hopefully not too stale box of chocolates: My 2006 MSNBC piece on Hollywood's most memorable kisses via the following unscientific categories: the desperate kiss, the kiss in the rain, the manhandle kiss, the woman takes charge, and the wow kiss. Also this nearly 200-year-old poem from Leigh Hunt:

Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in:
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have missed me,
Say I'm growing old, but add
Jenny kissed me.

Enjoy the day.

Stuck in the rut of their perfection.

I don't have much to say about the Golden Globes except Patricia and I watched them—the first hour live before heading out to a Sunday-night dinner party, the rest on DVR Monday as she recovered from oral surgery and I built an IKEA TV cart. (Their motto: so easy even Erik Lundegaard can build one.) I wrote about the sorry history of the Globes last year, and if anything was surprsing this year it was the lack of sorry history. Sure, I would've gone Mulligan over Bullock for best actress, and Damon or Stuhlberg for best actor in a comedy or musical over Downey, Jr.—even though I haven't seen "Sherlock Holmes" and love me some Downey, Jr.—but it's not a bad list. Gervais was funny, rippingly so at times, most of the speeches were good. Two highlights:

• Michael Giacchino winning best soundtrack for "Up." He gets to the podium, has to squeeze in past Cher, who doesn't seem to know where she is, and says: "I just can't believe Paul McCartney said, 'Go, Michael!' That's like awesome. I don't know if I have anything else to say, that's like the greatest thing in my life right there." Anyone of a like age, even non-musicians, know what he's talking about. He went on to talk about Pixar as his family. It was short, sweet, heartwarming, spoke to a generation.
• Martin Scorsese winning the Cecil B. DeMille Award. The highlight reel worked well in terms of theme and music, but, like most things these days, I thought it was too quick-cut, went too fast. But it was Marty's speech I truly loved. Even this went too fast for me. I could listen to him talk about movies for hours and days, not minutes, and recommend, if you haven't seen them, or even if you have, his two documentaries on movies: "A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies" and "My Voyage to Italy." As I wrote two years I still hope to someday see "A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through World Cinema." His speech Sunday night had elements of that in it. It focused not on his accomplishments but the accomplishments of the medium:

If you've ever sat through the end credits of a movie you know how many people it takes to make a picture: 200, 300, 500. If it's an average of even 300, and I've made 40, 50 movies, including documentaries, that's quite a lot. And saying that movies is a collaborative process is not a cliche, it's the truth. I've collaborated with a lot of people, many of them are here tonight. I want to thank them all. ... I'm especially moved and grateful to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. They've provided The Film Foundation with enormous support for more than 12 years, making possible the restoration of over 70 films. Just a couple of titles: masterpieces like Stanley Kubruck's "Paths of Glory," Elia Kazan's "A Face in the Crowd," and the stunning new color restoration of Michael Powell's and Emmeric Pressburger's "The Red Shoes." Without this generosity the film community would be poorer indeed and the history of film would be incomplete. Because as William Faulkner said, "The past is never dead. It is not even past." And as far as I'm concerned, making films and preserving them are the same thing. In this room, none of us who make films and watch them would be here without the people who came here before us. Whether it’s DeMille, Hitchcock, the Senegalese filmmaker Sembène, Kurosawa or John Ford, de Sica, Bergman, Satiajit Ray, we’re all walking in their footsteps every day, all of us…

That's total class. If Gervais pricked the self-importance of stars and awards shows, Scorsese showed why what was being awarded Sunday night mattered after all.

Another example of how liberal Hollywood isn't is the paucity of good movies about the civil rights movement. You've got your documentaries (“Eyes on the Prize”; “Four Little Girls”), one or two good movies starring white people (“Mississippi Burning”), and a good biopic on a man who, for most of his public career, denigrated the civil rights movement (“Malcolm X”).

Recommendation: an HBO movie from 2001, “Boycott,” starring Jeffrey Wright as a young Dr. King and Terrence Howard as a young Rev. Ralph Abernathy. In an MSNBC piece on Wright in 2005, I wrote the following about “Boycott”:

I remember the first time I became aware of this film. I was at Scarecrow Video in Seattle and from the TV above the counter I heard Dr. King giving a speech. Except it was not his rousing “I have a dream” voice; it was his everyday sermon voice that lingered on words but never reached for the stratosphere. Save for the richness of the baritone, it was almost boring, and I wondered why they were showing one of Dr. King’s boring speeches at Scarecrow. But when I looked up it wasn’t Dr. King talking but Jeffrey Wright. I’d seen him play the graffiti artist Basquiat and the Dominican druglord Peoples Hernandez in “Shaft.” Now Dr. King.

When I finally saw the film what blew me away was not just the imitation — that he could do both versions (rousing and everyday) of the public Dr. King — but that he was able to articulate a private Dr. King that felt real. Let’s face it. In most Hollywood biopics great figures are, to quote “Amadeus,” “people so lofty they sound as if they s--t marble.” Not here. Jeffrey Wright’s private Dr. King teases and jokes. He flirts with his wife. While getting ready for bed, when she asks him if he thinks their neighbors will give up their cars to aid the boycott, his rich baritone drops to a purr. “Well,” he says, getting close, “I’ve been told I have certain powers of persuasion.”

The theme of “Boycott” is that history just doesn’t happen. History is a series of choices, and the filmmakers work hard to show you the choices that began the civil rights movement. To do this they need a human Dr. King who works things through — from simply asking for a more humane bus system to demanding the elimination of segregation itself. It’s not just a great performance. No one will ever do a better Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Let me repeat that: No one will ever do a better Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Everyone and their brother has posted this already but last week the New York Times gave us a great interactive feature tracing the popularity of 2009 Netflix rentals by zip code. Here's mine in Seattle, for example:

1. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
2. Milk
3. Slumdog Millionaire
4. Burn After Reading 
5.  Twilight
6. Changeling
7. The Wrestler
8. Doubt
9. Rachel Getting Married 
10. I Love You, Man

What do the above movies have in common? Most are smart, some are Oscar contenders, only a handful did well at the box office.

But that's hardly news, is it? More interesting is the fact that you can calculate the racial makeup of cities by toggling toward films such as “Not Easily Broken,” starring Morris Chestnut, which was very rented in Washington, D.C. and Atlanta, but nowhere rented in Seattle and Minneapolis and Denver. Not a speck of color on those maps. Same with “Obsession” or any Tyler Perry flick. In fact you can guess which is the whitest (or least-African-American) city of the three based on these rentals. According to Netflix's maps? Seattle. And that checks out. According to 2005-07 data, the African-American population in these cities are: 8.2% in Seattle, 9.9% in Denver, and 17.7% in Minneapolis.

Equally intriguing is calculating where films such as “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” are popular (in the South) and where they aren't (in cities). It's the anti-“Milk,” which is hugely popular in cities and not at all in outlying areas. Looking at these maps, you realize, yet again, that we're hardly “one nation,” let alone “under God.” And don't even get me started on “with liberty and justice for all.”

Quick quiz. The maps below represent the 2009 Seattle Netflix rental habits for four movies: “Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” “Rachel Getting Married,” “Cadillac Records” and “Seven Pounds.” The darker the color the more popular the film in that area. Click on each map for its answer.

The big question about the rebooting of the Spider-Man franchise, which I didn't ask in my post yesterday, is whether the reboot will become the new norm. The point, in other words, is no longer to tell a story (the movie), or to continue telling the same story (the sequel) but to tell the same story over and over again (the reboot).

And who wants the same story told to them over and over again? Children. Young children. Our culture is definitely infantile but I'm sure it'll keep surprising me with how infantile it is.

One also wonders if Sony will take a page out of the “Dark Knight” playbook by making the first movie about the origin of the superhero while saving the best villain for the first sequel. I wouldn't be surprised.

What's interesting is that Sony's reboot is in direct contrast to what Marvel Entertainment/Studios is attempting to do with their characters/movies. They're treating movies like issues, and builiding toward the creation of The Avengers. They want the whole Marvel Comic universe onscreen, having new adventures, rather than telling the same story again and again.

Oh well. What are the Gospels of Matthew, Luke and John if not a reboot of Mark?

The reboot: Marvel was there first. “Tell us that story again, Daddy.”

The Sunday New York Times, print edition, had a great section—section, kids—on the Oscars. All yer Oscar news is one spot. You just flip pages. 

First, the front page of the section explicated three great scenes from 2009: Dargis on one of the bomb defusings in “The Hurt Locker” (good brief history of the zoom, too); Holden on “The Messenger” (which, in November, was playing a block from where I work, but which I criminally never saw); and my favorite of the bunch, A.O. Scott on the snowball fight in “Where the Wild Things Are” (a truly underrated film that will hopefully get more attention). I'm a fan of these kinds of scene explications. I've done a few myself.

The section also included an appeal for a Doris Day Oscar (whatever), Mo'Nique's refusal to politick for an Oscar (whatever whatever), and Terrence Rafferty on George Clooney (now we're talking!):

When he finally found a role in which he looked entirely at ease, it was in a film that was neither a standard-issue piece of studio entertainment nor quite an offbeat indie, but something in between: Steven Soderbergh’s tricky comic caper movie “Out of Sight” (1998), based on a novel by Elmore Leonard, and with all the noirish eccentricity that implies. Mr. Leonard’s skewed world, in which competence, wit and unfussy romance are highly prized — and constantly endangered, because there are always way too many thugs and morons about — turns out to be an environment in which Mr. Clooney (if not his character) can thrive.

His performance is all sly looks and bone-dry readings, held together by a general air of barely contained exasperation at the antics of the fools and knaves who surround him. And although he’s a thief and an escaped convict, he looks with undisguised admiration at the United States marshal who’s trying to bring him to justice: she knows her job, and she’s Jennifer Lopez besides.

His style in “Out of Sight” is too elusive, too stylized — it’s like lowlife Restoration comedy — to serve as a repeatable, bankable star persona, but it’s the foundation, in a way, for everything good he’s done since then, the theme on which he works his small, increasingly subtle variations. The larcenous gulf war soldier he plays in David O. Russell’s inventive “Three Kings” (1999) is a tougher, slightly bitterer version of his “Out of Sight” character, and it fits.

On the back page we get the annual, “And the Oscars Should Be...,” which is always fun because it's so disagreeable—in the sense that the three Times critics rarely agree with each other. Even with 10 options for best picture this year, only one film showed up on all three ballots: “The Hurt Locker.” My tastes run with Ms. Dargis' here: “Summer Hours,” “Avatar,” “The Hurt Locker,” “Where the Wild Things Are,” and “The Informant!” All the 22 films listed are good, though. Well, I still don't get the critical love for “District 9.” A.O.

But I'm with A.O. on best director: Assayas, Bigelow, Cameron, Coens, Soderbergh. (I wonder why no one picked Jonze as best director, though, since two of the three chose “Where the Wild Things Are” among best pics. That kid didn't direct himself, people.) Does Manohla get intentionally quirky with her acting choices? George Clooney for “Fantastic Mr. Fox”? Zoe Saldana for “Avatar”? James Galdolfini for “Wild Thing”? Two voice performances and a voice/movement performance. Maybe she's making a comment about modern acting.

The only actor on all three lists? Colin Firth for “A Single Man.” No actress makes all three. Ditto the supporting roles. Original screenplay? Just Mark Boal for “The Hurt Locker.” Adapted? Rien.

Eight categories, 45 slots, and they agree on just four. Fun! 

It's made me begin to think about my choices. (McKay will most likely get a supporting actor nod from me, for example.) What about you? Where are you disagreeable?

Boal and Bigelow: Two of the four that the three agree on

We got the news yesterday, via Nikki Finke's site, that Sam Raimi walked away from “Spider-Man 4” because he couldn't deliver on the summer 2011 release date and didn't want to compromise the series' “creative integrity.” (Yeah, we know: “Spider-Man 3.”) With him went everything, including Toby Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, and now Sony's planning a reboot with a new director and a new Peter Parker/Spider-Man. And 3-D. The fall-out from the success of “Avatar,” I guess. Now every studio will be pushing 3-D the way that, after the success of Cameron's “Titanic,” every studio pushed movies with water. Because that was the obvious lesson of “Titanic” to them: People like water. So with “Avatar”: People like 3-D. They do, but within limits. “X Games 3D—The Movie” was hardly a hit in August, for example. “A Christmas Carol” did OK in November, $137 million, but 16 non-3-D films did better for the year. You need more than 3-D.

More to the point: A reboot? Of Spider-Man? The original wasn't even 8 years ago! Is that by how much we're speeding things up? By the time Warner Bros. rebooted the Batman franchise, four movies and 16 years had passed. By the time Sony reboots Spider-Man, three movies and 10 years will have passed. Do I hear two movies and 6 years? One movie and 3 years? Hey, let's keep telling the same story over and over and over again.

Oh wait, please don't tell me: Shia LeBeouf? No, can't be.

And this was a successful franchise—one of the most successful franchises of the '00s. The first movie had the highest domestic gross of 2002. The second had the second-highest domestic gross of 2004. The third had the highest domestic gross of 2007. Can't get much better than that.

One wonders what the creative conflict was—and how creative that conflict was. Or was the problem financial? Raimi supposedly wanted a $230 million budget. The L.A. Times also adds:

The studio said it would hire a new star and director and re-boot the movie as a story about Parker's early life as a “teenager grappling with contemporary human problems and amazing super-human crises.” Because Sony is essentially starting from scratch, the studio has pushed the picture's release to 2012.

“Contemporary” human problems? As opposed to the outdated problems he grappled with originally? Like love, death, guilt, shame?

Somewhere, Electro, the Scorpion, and Kraven the Hunter are sitting back down.

"It was, readers of The New York Times recently learned, a very good year for Paramount Pictures. Two of the year’s biggest hits, “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” and “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” have helped the studio climb out of its financial hole with a combined domestic take of more than $500 million. Both movies are deeply stupid, often incoherent and hinged on the principle that the spectacle of violence is its own pleasurable end. “Transformers” is also casually racist. But hey, that’s entertainment.

Or, more specifically, that’s Hollywood entertainment in the conglomerate age. The major studios have long been in the business of serving sludge to the world, but now the reek often spreads around the globe simultaneously with massive coordinated openings. “Revenge of the Fallen,” for instance, opened the same day on more than 4,000 screens in the United States — about a 10th of all the screens in the country — and soon about 10,000 more abroad. “Angels & Demons,” the sequel to “The Da Vinci Code,” opened on some 3,500 screens domestically and ate up more than 10,000 internationally. The French film “Summer Hours,” meanwhile, the best-reviewed release in The Times that weekend, opened on two screens.

—Manohla Dargis, "Amid Studio Product, Independents' Resilience," December 17, 2009

Heroes for our time? No, heroes for the opposite of our time:

• "The International" (Clive Owen tries to bring down an international bank just as we were trying to prop ours up.)
• "Up in the Air" (George Clooney fires people as unemployment hits 10%.)

Getting and spending we lay waste our powers:

• "Up"
• "L'Heure d'ete"

They think they're the heroes of their story when they're the villains of their story:

• "Observe and Report"
• "The Informant!"

They can't change that history, can they?:

• "Star Trek" (in which they blow up the planet Vulcan)
• "Inglourious Basterds" (in which they kill Hitler in June 1944)

Flunkying for the rich and famous isn't all it's cracked up to be:

• "Funny People"
• "Me and Orson Welles"

Movies about the people you care about before they did the thing you care about:

• "Coco Before Chanel"
• "The Damned United"

"Someone's hiding some Judaism..." OK, maybe not:

• "A Serious Man"
• "Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg"

Don't worry; we'll care about your art after you die:

• "Seraphine"
• "Bright Star"

Body doubles:

• "Avatar"
• "Surrogates"

This was a tough list to compile. I didn't include a few I thought I would, such as “An Education,” “Red Cliff,” and “Up in the Air,” but I did include a few that will cause some head scratching. That's part of the fun.

These are the movies that had an impact for me that resonated. Some were a joy to watch (“Up”), others were hard to watch (“The Hurt Locker”). Some I still don't fully understand (“A Serious Man”), others I felt deep in my gut (“Anvil! The Story of Anvil”). My no. 1 movie was pleasant enough, then worked on me, both subtly and deeply, ever since. Four of the 10 I've seen twice: “Up,” “Seraphine,” “Avatar” and “The Soloist.”

There are a few contenders I haven't had the chance to check out yet: “Broken Embraces,” “The White Ribbon,” “Crazy Heart.” But the year's at an end and the list needs to get out. Kind of. In E.L. Doctorow's “The Book of Daniel,” Daniel's sister, a '60s radical, upon hearing of Daniel's future plans, tells him, “Just what the world needs, Daniel—another graduate student.” So it is here. Just what the internet needs, Erik—another top 10 list. Hopefully there's something on the list that makes it worthwhile for you.

10. “Inglourious Basterds”: We know the plan won't work. Hitler, Goebbels, Goering and Bormann are all at the premiere, and it’s June 1944, and this isn’t the way they go. Hitler and Goebbels kill themselves in their bunker in April 1945. Bormann, it’s assumed, died trying to escape the Red Army in May 1945, while Goering killed himself with cyanide after being sentenced to death during the Nuremberg trials in 1946. We know they won’t die here. At the same time we wonder how Tarantino will handle it. How will he let the Nazis get away but still make it satisfying for us? Here’s how he handles it: He kills them all in June 1944. ... You could argue that Hitler’s merely a prop to him, a movie villain, the way that, say, the Sheriff of Nottingham is a movie villain. He can kill him any way he wants. And this is the way he wants. This is the way that suits his story rather than history. Or you could go deeper. The greatest villain of the 20th century escaped our clutches. Yes, he took the coward’s way out in that bunker but we didn’t begin to get our revenge for all of the death and destruction he caused. The movies have recreated that moment, that horribly uncinematic moment in the bunker, time and time again, but they’ve always played by Hitler’s rules. They always gave him the end he chose. Until Tarantino. Who machine guns his face into oblivion in June 1944. Full review here.

9. “The Informant!”: As the film opens, there’s a virus eating both the lysine in the ADM plants and the profits that the conglomerate demands, and Whitacre’s getting the blame from the son of the boss for not solving the problem. It’s amusing but unfair—in the way that sons-of-bosses are always amusing but unfair. Then Whitacre gets a call from a Japanese colleague who says an ADM mole is responsible for the virus and he’ll reveal the name for $10 million. Rather than pay off, the higher-ups at ADM bring in the FBI, who tap Whitacre’s personal line to find out more. This bothers Whitacre—first a little, then a lot—and with his wife’s prodding he reveals to FBI agent Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula) that ADM and the Japanese are involved in price-fixing the international lysine market. Which is how Whitacre turns informant. “Mark, why are you doing this?“ Shepard asks at one point. “Because things are going on that I don’t approve of,” he says. “They’re making me lie to people.” Hold that thought. Full review here.

8. ”The Soloist“: ”The Soloist“ comes close to being a remarkable film. Near the middle there's a scene that, without trying too hard, feels like it's integrating all of its parts. Weston (Catherine Keener) is in her Los Angeles Times office as a manager, off screen, talking up the company’s “very good exit package,” lets an employee go. Out her window she sees Lopez (Downey, Jr.)  helping push Nathaniel’s shopping cart up a hill. They’re heading to the L.A. Symphony to listen to a rehearsal, but she doesn’t know that, she only knows what she sees. And she smiles this wistful smile. There’s great balance here: the comedy outside and the tragedy within; one man helping another while a company, part of a dying industry, lets another employee go. It doesn’t draw too fine a point—as I fear I might be doing—it just feels part of this big shifting pattern we all create. It’s worthy of Keener’s beautiful, wistful smile. Full review here.

7. ”The Hurt Locker“: In “The Deer Hunter” there’s that great transition where one moment our boys are partying in rural Pennsylvania and the next moment they’re in a deadly firefight in Vietnam. Screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow do the opposite here. There’s two days left, James has just met his match with a human IED (although he survives), and our boys are in their HUMVEE getting pelted with rocks from Iraqi children. The next second James is standing in an American grocery store, frozen food aisle, muzak in the background. He’s wearing civilian clothes and looks ordinary. The grocery store, particularly compared to the bright heat of Iraq, feels cold, devoid of life, awful. It feels like a dream but not a pleasant one. You feel the cultural dissonance James must feel, the dislocation, the difference between that and this. And as awful as that was, this feels worse. The fluorescent lights are not real lights, the music is not real music, the food is not real food. Everything is false. It’s dangerous to see Sgt. James as more than just Sgt. James but I can’t help it. Is he representative? Does he represent us? In other words, is our incessant foreign adventurism the result, in part, of having a home life, and a home culture, that feels like a lie? American culture isn’t what we’re fighting for; it’s what we’re running from. Full review here.

6. ”A Serious Man“: Larry Gopnik is the kind of man who timidly obsesses over small details—such as the property line with the Brandts, his stoic, hunting-happy Minnesota neighbors—and misses the big picture. Not only is his wife leaving him but his kids have left him. His son, Danny, is a mess of sixties contradictions: he has that classic Beatles haircut (redhaired version), smokes pot, listens to Jefferson Airplane, but only cares to talk with his father when the reception for “F Troop,” the lamest of ‘60s sitcoms, comes in fuzzy. His daughter, Sarah, only talks to her father to complain about Uncle Arthur, Larry’s brother, hogging the bathroom to drain the cyst in his neck. That’s at home. At work he’s being considered for tenure but letters arrive denigrating him. Then a Korean man accuses Larry of 1) defamation, because Larry accused his son of a bribe, and pleading 2) cultural differences, because Larry didn’t accept the bribe. Larry’s helpless before this kind of illogic. He can’t extricate himself from it. Life has the quality of a nightmare: Everything’s repetitive—Sy keeps hugging him, the Brandts keep playing catch, Arthur keeps draining his cyst—and everything’s unknowable. Dream sequences in other films are usually obvious but in the Coens’ films they blend almost seamlessly with life, so we in the audience are in the position of the dreamer: We don’t know what’s dream until it’s over. And even then. By the pool last night—did that happen? Full review here.

5. ”Anvil! The Story of Anvil“: They miss a train. They play dives for peanuts. Their fans are fervent but few. Late to one gig in the Czech Republic, they’re told the place is “jam fucking packed” but they get there and rock out before fewer than 10 fans; then the club owner refuses to pay them. It’s here we see the first of several eruptions from Lips, who, spittle flying, quickly loses his half-smile and nearly goes off on the dude. Their next gig should be a heavy-metal highlight — a rock show in Transyl-fucking-vania, with a 10,000-seat capacity — and as they make their way to the stage through narrow hallways, one bandmember, an obvious “Spinal Tap” fan, shouts “Hello, Cleveland!” Unlike Spinal Tap, Anvil finds its way to the stage. The crowd doesn’t. Only 174 show up. Cut to: Toronto in winter. Full review here.

4. ”Avatar“: James Cameron has done an amazing, ballsy thing with ”Avatar.“ Yes, he imagines an entire world and creates it in meticulous detail. Yes, he sends his main character on a hero’s journey through this world. But within this framework, this age-old story, he critiques the worst aspects of our own culture. “When people are sitting on something you want, you make them your enemy,” Jake says near the end, summing up the sad history of the human race. It’s not an abstract or ancient history, either. It’s current. The villains in “Avatar” use the language of this decade: “Shock and awe”; “fighting terror with terror”; “balance sheets.” They are us. “Dances with Wolves” was set in an historical timeframe, more than 100 years earlier, in which everyone knew the Native Americans would fight and lose. Not here. Here, in this future setting, the humans not only lose but they’re sent back to Earth—to their dying planet that has no green on it. They lose because God literally isn’t on their side. Full review here.

3. ”Seraphine“: By the time most of us sit down to watch “Seraphine,” we know a few basics about her story—she’s a painter who lived in France at the turn of the last century—but this may trump all: She’s important enough that 100 years later we’re watching a film about her. The mere fact of the film, in other words, acts as a kind of redemption for her and a kind of guide for us. We see her scraping by to paint at night but we know, by virtue of the film, that she succeeds. We know, when the boarding-house owner demands to see her work and then dismisses it because the apples don’t look like apples (“They could be plums,” she says), that the woman is a philistine. We know, when dinner-party guests chuckle knowingly about how Seraphine left the convent because she felt God “called her” to paint, that they’re bourgeoisie with lousy bourgeois taste. The thrill we get, then, is as old as the thrill we get from the Gospels: These people don’t know who’s in their midst. They don’t know how special she is. It’s not a stretch to say we wait for her recognition as surely as we wait for our own. Full review here.

2. ”Up“: Pixar movies focus on cultural moments rather than pop-cultural moments: that early 1960s period when astronauts replaced cowboys as heroes for boys everywhere; the difference, and similarities, between 20th-century “adventurers” and 21st-century “wilderness explorers.” Pixar doesn’t need to point to a pop-cultural phenomenon to get laughs. Put it this way: In “Up,” there’s a dog, a talking dog named Dug, and he’s more real than most live-action dogs on screen. What makes him funny isn’t that he’s not like a dog—that he stands on his hind legs and sings a rap song, for example, as he might in other animated features—but that he’s exactly like a dog. Pixar finds, intrinsically within the object, its humor. And drama. ... At Paradise Falls, Carl, burdened by his house, chooses the house, and what it represents, over Kevin, and Dug, and even Russell, and what they represent. Then he sits in it, alone, his longstanding dream finally realized, and he looks through Ellie’s old adventure book, and the unfulfilled promise of STUFF I’M GOING TO DO. But the pages beyond aren’t blank; he’s shocked to find they’re filled with the life he and Ellie lived together. This fact recalls something Russell said earlier about his father: “I think the boring stuff is the stuff I remember most.” That’s what Ellie filled her pages with: the boring, everyday stuff we discount but that means the most. On the last page Ellie includes a note to Carl: “Thanks for the adventure. Now go have a new one!” And as he does, as her words inspire him to throw out most of the stuff in his house to get it aloft again, to get back into the adventure, I sat there, a 46-year-old, tearing up. Full review here.

1. ”L'Heure d'ete“ (”Summer Hours“): The three grown-up siblings have familiarity with, and distance from, one other. They assume they know each other but there’s also this quiet curiosity. I love you, but who are you again? Or now? The rest of the movie is disillusion of the cottage and its precious artifacts. At one point, Eloise, the housekeeper, returns for a visit and sees strangers—art dealers, reps from the Musee d’Orsay—removing this painting, taking that exquisite desk. They’re basically messing up the place she cleaned up for decades. It’s a melancholy sight. ”L’heure d’ete" is suffused with sadness but not nostalgia. Life expands, life contracts, life goes on. Director Olivier Assayas could’ve ended the film at the Musee d’Orsay, with the family's desk on display, looking “caged,” according to Frederic, but chose, instead, a more ambiguous end. He takes us back to the cottage house, where Frederic’s kids throw a huge, loud summer party. At first one is appalled that Helene’s place has been taken over in this fashion. But is this better? It’s vibrant. It’s life. The final shot is of the eldest daughter and her boyfriend, young and unburdened, running away from the camera and toward whatever it is they’ll create, and collect, and leave behind. Full review here.

“What delight and joy in reading the Auburn Plainsman's Ben Bartley, some red-white-and-blue type guy from Texas who's fuming that such an anti-corporate, anti-arrogant, anti-Bush legacy, pro-eco, pro-nativist pantheist tract is raking it in big-time and spreading the myth everywhere, and there's nothing this guy can do about it. Hah! Eat shit, Christian asshole!”

—Jeffrey Wells, Hollywood Elsewhere

"Critics" hardly seems the right word, does it, when they're listing off the best of the year. "Here Come the Praisers." "Here Come the Complimenters." More basically: "Here Come the Analyzers." They've sifted through the year in movies, analyzed what's good and bad, and left us what's good. How nice! They're like Santa Claus. An underappreciated Santa Claus.

This is what the tally looks like thus far:

A sweep thus far for Bigelow, and consensus for "The Hurt Locker" and "L'Heure d'ete" ("Summer Hours"), the latter of which I'm particularly happy about since I thought that movie was flying under the radar. I was lucky enough to see it at the Seattle International Film Festival in May or June and recommend it to anyone and everyone—when it finally comes out on DVD. It's a movie that works on you in subtle ways and stays with you in profound ways.

Most observers list off these types of awards as precursors to the Oscars (what does it mean, who's agreed with the Academy in the past, blah blah blah), but for once I thought it would be nice to just enjoy the movies mentioned, and the critics groups mentioned, on their own. I haven't seen "Sin Nombre" and "Crazy Heart" but everything else is worth seeing. These are all movies, stories, that, while trying to entertain, make us feel what it means to be alive: as an IED specialist in Iraq in 2004; as a working-class girl in England in the 1960s; as a working-class artist in turn-of-the-last-century France; and as a French family in an increasingly international and fragmented world. Also what it means when we go.

I began this decade with my first professional movie review, of Hou Hsiao-Hsien's "The Flowers of Shanghai," published in The Seattle Times on January 28, 2000, and am ending it with amateur—that is, non-paid— reviews on my Web site. Kind of sums up the decade. More and more of our activities are moving online, for which we're getting paid less and less. Or nothing.

But it means I've been writing about movies for 10 years now—first with The Seattle Times, then with MSNBC, and with sidetrips to MSN, The New York Times (Op-Ed), and The Believer—and yet I'm still wary of compling a list of the best films of the decade. I know if I'd done something similar 10 years ago I would've left off what I now consider my two favorite films of that decade—"The Thin Red Line" (1998)  and "The Insider" (1999)—because, even by December 1999, I hadn't seen either one. That's the main reason the movies below aren't listed in any particular order. I want a discussion more than anything. Maybe I'm hoping that, in that discussion, something better will shake loose.

Each poster is linked to a good review or analysis of that movie. Many of the links are self-serving (they're mine) and many are not (Roger Ebert, Scott Foundas, David Edelstein). Warning: The New York Observer seems to have a problem with paragraph breaks. Or Andrew Sarris does.

Some of the movies below make it because they're just fun ("Kung Fu Hustle"; "X-Men 2"; "Riding Giants"). Some make it because I happened to fall in love with certain scenes (the "Me and Julio" montage in "Tenenbaums"; the silent film in "Talk to Her"). The best work slowly and leave us with a kind of existential amazement ("The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"; "Spring Summer Autumn Winter...and Spring"; "L'Heure d'ete"). Interesting to note: there's only one best picture from the Academy in the bunch: "No Country for Old Men." Meanwhile, if I had to choose my best picture of the decade, I'd probably go with Roman Polanski's "The Pianist." Thus far.

A lot of war here. The decade began with "Black Hawk Down," a sober tale of attempted nation-building in Somalia in 1993, and it ends with "The Hurt Locker," a sober tale of attempted nation-building in Iraq in 2004, and in-between we got cartoons and superheroes. How have we changed? "Black Hawk Down" was releaed into 3,000 theaters, was no. 1 at the box office for three weeks, and it made over $100 million domestically. "The Hurt Locker" never rose above 535 theaters and never made more than $13 million domestically. Apparently we don't want to know about it anymore. Not when we can watch giant space robots battling each other for the primacy of our sun.

But that's the bad stuff. Here's the good. Discussion welcome.

Interesting video essay by Matt Zoller Seitz on the revenge motif in Clint Eastwood's films. But how true is it? Is Eastwood's ambivalent attitude about revenge artistic or simply ambivalent and contradictory? A key line for me is near the end:

Many Eastwood movies have a self-critical aspect, a sense that Eastwood (as actor, director, or both) is examining dark impulses within himself (and humankind) and finding them troubling, pathetic, repulsive. It's the sentiment of a moral, humane, internally consistent filmmaker. Eastwood is all three—when Eastwood the icon isn't undercutting Eastwood the artist.

For me, too often in his career, Eastwood the icon undercuts any artistry. Even in “Unforgiven,” one of his best films, the last scene is iconic and thrilling rather than—as it should be—horrifying. We're rooting on William Munny. We want him to kill. He's justified, because the people he kills are scum—bullies and toadies—and because they've lynched his partner Ned. If there had been collateral damage in the carnage, maybe I'd feel different about the scene. If he'd killed a prostitute by mistake or the parasitic scribe on purpose. Instead he's just a guy out for revenge—his and ours. He's Popeye, but with whiskey rather than spinach, with shotguns rather than fists.

Munny's actually part of a cycle of revenge in the film in which a group of people are labeled pejoratively (“whores,” “assassins”), which then gives the labeler the right to do whatever he wants to them (cut them up, kill them). Munny does the same to the people in the town. He labels them, they who have labeled him and Ned “assassins,” and kills them, and shouts drunkenly at them. But we don't see him as part of the cycle; we see him as the final word in this cycle. He ends it, and ends the movie. Instead of another ring in the cycle, he's its final authority, its Old Testament God. Thus Spaketh Clint.

And that's the problem. In the real world there is no final authority, but our stories, Clint's stories, which have been absorbed by our culture, lead us to believe there is. We think with one big shotgun blast we can end the cycle of revenge. But it's a cycle and cycles return. Always.

"Thank you, God. For letting me have another day."

—Amarante Cordova (Carlos Riquelme) upon arising, painfully, in the morning, in Robert Redford's underrated "The Milagro Beanfield War." For all the movie's magic realism, and its issues of class and rampant development (it's a Redford movie, after all), this is what stays with me. This simple line. I wish I could live it. Doesn't mean I won't keep trying.

THE GOOD

A nice line from David Denby in his New Yorker review of "The Messenger":

“The Messenger” joins the group of strong Iraq-war movies that, like rejected suitors, stand hat in hand, waiting for an audience to notice their virtues. (My canon includes “In the Valley of Elah,” “The Hurt Locker,” and the commercially conceived but affecting “Stop-Loss.”) Box-office wisdom holds that it’s too early to make movies about this conflict, but how can it ever be too early to make a good movie?

It's exactly my canon. Even "Elah," which has that too-obvious end—although, to cut Paul Haggis some slack, I don't know what I would have put in its place.

THE NOT BAD

In A.O. Scott's surprisingly scattered piece about the decade in movies and what it all means, he does give us the following:

This [Manichaean struggle defined by an endless cycle of vendetta and reprisal] was even true of Jesus, whose travails in Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ” played like the first act of a revenge drama, the one in which the hero is humbled as pre-emptive justification for whatever fury he comes back to unleash at the end.

Which is what I've been saying ever since I saw it: "It's the first third of a revenge flick," I said when people asked. "With the last two-thirds implied." And implied mightily. Jesus emerges from his cave to a martial drumbeat. Because of the cultural noise surrounding the film, I always assumed he was out to get revenge less on the Roman soldiers who whipped him than on, say, me, the non-believer.

THE KINDA UGLY

Finally, there's the usually reliable Lynn Hirschberg, whose piece on "The Self-Manufacture of Megan Fox" begins thus:

Yes, Fox is beautiful and often scantily clad, but dozens of beautiful girls arrive in Hollywood every day who are more than happy to pose nearly naked. Unlike them, Fox has a quality that sets her apart: Fox is sly. Canny.

The evidence comes a paragraph later:

Fox, who is 23, understood instinctively that noise plus naked equals celebrity.

Admittedly I'm way up here in Seattle, but it's my assumption that hundreds, probably thousands of pretty girls in Hollywood have figured that out. Before they even stepped off the bus.

• It feels like Richard Brody is a bit too kind to Wes Anderson in his Nov. 2nd, New Yorker profile on the director, "Wild, Wild Wes." Or maybe he's simply too kind to Anderson's 2003 film, "The Life Aquatic," which came on the heels of his biggest hit ("The Royal Tenenbaums"), which came on the heels of his most critically acclaimed film ("Rushmore"). After detailing several critic complaints about "Aquatic," Brody writes:

"In fact, 'The Life Aquatic" does tell a story, but it's one that sprawls with an epic ambition and a picaresqe wonder. Anderson's playfully unstrung storytelling was both purposeful and meaningful: life in the wild, the film suggests, doesn't follow the neat contours of dramatic suspense but is filled with surprises, accidents, and sudden lurches off course. ... 'The Life Aquatic' was proof of Anderson's maturation as an artist..."

• Come again? Here's my 2007 take on Anderson and his ouevre. I actually like Anderson, within limits, which I hope my article makes clear, but I'm not a fan of "Aquatic," for reasons stated, none of which has to do with its lack of storytelling. The short version of Brody's article is here, but you have to buy, or borrow from your local library, the Nov. 2nd New Yorker to read it in full.  Or subscribe. I recommend subscribing already.
• The Washington Post focuses on a quiet but powerful contingent that is being ignored in the same-sex marriage debate: the ex-spouses of now-out-of-the-closet gay men and women. This section in particular packs a whallop:

Many of these former spouses -- from those who still feel raw resentment toward their exes to those who have reached a mutual understanding -- see the legalization of same-sex marriage as a step toward protecting not only homosexuals but also heterosexuals. If homosexuality was more accepted, they say, they might have been spared doomed marriages followed by years of self-doubt.

"It's like you hit a brick wall when they come out," Brooks said. "You think everything is fine and then, boom!"

Carolyn Sega Lowengart calls it "retroactive humiliation." It's that embarrassment that washes over her when she looks back at photographs or is struck by a memory and wonders what, if anything, from that time was real. Did he ever love her?

"I'm 61 years old," said Lowengart, who lives in Chevy Chase. "Will I ever know what it's like to be loved passionately? Probably not."

• I'm going to have to permanently link to Joe Posnanski below but in the meantime here's his early Hall of Fame arguments and they warm the cockles of my cold, cold Seattle heart. Actually his argument is: Who is the best eligible hitter not in the Hall of Fame? He then goes through the usual suspects. Pete Rose, Shoeless Joe and Barry Bonds are not eligible so he eliminates them. Mark McGwire? Impressive, certainly. A homer ever 8 at-bats, "but we knew how he did it," and anyway there's that lifetime .263 batting average. Dick Allen? Don Mattingly? Minnie Monoso? Babe Herman? I'll cut to the chase—particularly since the photo at right is a giveaway. Posnanski suggests Edgar Martinez. He talks about why he's a great hitter, all of which should be familiar to Seattle fans (lifetime: .300/.400/.500), and why he won't make it anyway, which will also be familiar to Seattle fans. Edgar's got the percentage numbers, but he played the majority of his career as a DH and he didn't play long enough to accumulate the gross numbers: the 3,000 hits, etc., because the Mariners (idiots!) didn't bring him up until he was 27. If he'd played his entire career at third, I think he would've made it. If he'd been a DH but had the cumulative numbers, I think he would've made it. It's the two together that put the kibosh on him. Of course I'd vote for him in a second but I'm obviously biased. At the same time, here's my non-bias: How many career .300/.400.500 guys, with as many at-bats as Edgar, aren't in the Hall of Fame? Extra credit. We've just been talking lately about what a great pitcher Mariano Rivera is. So how did Edgar do against Rivera? 16 at-bats, 10 hits, 3 doubles, 2 homeruns, 6 RBIs. A .625 batting average and a 1.888 OPS. Don't know if anyone with double-digit at-bats against Rivera has ever done better. Obviously that's not an argument in favor of the Hall but it is fun.

“It is a hazard peculiar to cultists in the arts—that is to say, to highbrows—that unless they keep their transatlantic signals open and alert, they tend to canonize foreign talents that are rejected on the home ground as commercial hacks. There was, I remember, a delightful period in the late thirties and early forties when American highbrows yearned for a native naturalistic actor as mighty as Jean Gabin. Their counterparts in Paris were meanwhile lamenting the early demise of Gabin as a 'serious' talent, and panting over Bogart for what the critic of Le Matin called his 'vitalisme, tendre et profond.'”

—Alistaire Cook, “Epitaph for a Tough Guy,” in The Atlantic, May 1957

It gets awfully dark awfully fast in November. Worse, I know the light will continue to die for another month-and-a-half, and I rage, rage against its dying. Well, “rage.” I sigh, sigh against the dying of the light. November is the month of death. December at least gives you rebirth in either pagan (Winter Solstice) or religious (Dec. 24) terms, when either we return to the sun or the Son returns to us, but the only thing November gives you is fat raindrops and dead leaves swirling in a vortex and stoplights swinging on their cables. It gives you cold and wet and dark.

And Thanksgiving. It's its one saving grace. My favorite holiday is in my least-favorite month.

Thanksgiving has never been a favorite in Hollywood, though, which is why the paltry selection below. It's slightly startling. But then Thanksgiving has always been treated by men in the marketplace as poor cousin to the more lucrative Christmas. The first week in November is for opening movies like “Elf” and “Fred Claus” and Disney's “A Christmas Carol.” Disney's. As if Charles Dickens had nothing to do with it.

In no particular order.

• Home for the Holidays (1995): Jodie Foster's film is the most emphatically Thanksgiving-related movie in recent memory. I wrote about it in 1997—two years after it was released—but never bothered to put up on this site. Not sure if the film is worth revisiting. Anyone? Here's some of what I wrote back then:

Yeah, we all know what a pain the holidays can be, and how meddlesome parents can be, and why it's necessary to have your favorite sibling there when you tackle both parents and holidays—which is why, in Jodie Foster's Home for the Holidays, we understand when Claudia Larson (Holly Hunter) pleads with her brother, Tommy, to show up and help her out. Bad news: Tommy is played by Robert Downey Jr., which means he's a hyperactive, insensitive lout who causes more problems than he solves. He snaps Polaroids of people in embarrassing situations, he taunts, he teases, he mocks sensitive conversations. What the hell did she need him there for anyway? I actually liked her parents (Anne Bancroft and Charles Durning). The father's phone conversation with Tommy's lover, for example, demonstrates a kind of class that Tommy doesn't come near. Claudia never seems to realize that she needs her parents to protect her from Tommy rather than vice-versa.

• The Ice Storm (1997): Another film I wrote about back in the day but never posted here. It takes place the weekend after Thanksgiving, 1973, when both the U.S. government and nuclear famiies are falling apart. It's a cold world and a cold poster, and Sigourney Weaver plays a cold bitch, but man she still makes me hot:

Right from the start, when teenager Paul Hood (Tobey Maguire) quotes from an early '70s Fantastic Four comic book, I was into this pic; and while I never lost sympathy for Paul, I had none for the other characters. They were all distant, creepy, obtuse or sexually perverse—or some combination of that less-than-fantastic four. There's a nice juxtaposition of the adults' empty sexual rompings with the unsupervised teenagers' fitful entries into sexuality. The movie seems a lesson in the dangers that result when grown-ups don't grow up. A more obvious lesson is as old as Winesburg, Ohio: suburban lives are empty, empty, empty.

• Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987): My favorite John Hughes' film. Just flat-out funny. Ten years earlier Steve Martin was the world's wild-and-crazy guy but by this point he'd become the world's straightlaced guy: the guy who needs to loosen up a little and sing a “Flintstones” song now and again. What a change. It wasn't until I read Martin's memoir, Born Standing Up, that I realized he never was that wild-and-crazy guy. Even when he seemed the hippest guy in the world, the most popular host on the hippest late-night TV show, he was pretty square, and always had been. In the midst of the '60s, for example, when everyone was into politics and pot and love, he was off at two-bit carnivals performing magic tricks. It's fascinating—the bent road he took to hipness, before finding his way back, via vehicles like this, to becoming just another uptight suburban dad trying to get home for Thanksgiving, and shouting impotently at the sky: “You're messing with the wrong guy!” Martin was goofy-funny as the wild-and-crazy guy but I never identified with him. But “You're messing with the wrong guy”? Oh yeah. Who can't relate?

• A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973): This is how old I am: I still think of “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” as the new one. The Peanuts Christmas and Halloween specials first aired when I was 2 and 3, respectively, so they were always there for me. The Thanksgiving special? Didn't come around until I was 10 and beginning to move away from “Peanuts” and toward Marvel comics, and I didn't think it was as good as the first two. Something cheaper about it. And nothing as memorable as “All it needs is a little love, Charlie Brown” and “I got a rock.” On the other hand, I know people, younger people, who love it, with its absurd Thanksgiving feast of popcorn and toast, so maybe it's less a consequence of what it is than when we saw it.
  

• Hannah and Her Sisters (1986): How long has it been since I've seen “Hannah and Her Sisters”? Ten years? I didn't even remember, until I began researching for this post, that one of its main dinners is a Thanksgiving dinner, in which, apparently, no one gives thanks for what they have but keeps pursuing what they don't. Barbara Hershey, for example. The movie contains one of my all-time favorite lines, delivered with a slight, disgusted shake of the head by the great Max von Sydow. The artist Frederick has just been watching TV, and he's about to find out that his girl, Lee (Hershey), is sleeping around on him, but in the meantime he delivers this spot-on diatribe about American culture. It's the last line that's my favorite but I'll include the whole quote:

You see the whole culture. Nazis, deodorant salesmen, wrestlers, beauty contests, a talk show. Can you imagine the level of a mind that watches wrestling? But the worst are the fundamentalist preachers. Third grade con men telling the poor suckers that watch them that they speak with Jesus, and to please send in money. Money, money, money! If Jesus came back and saw what's going on in his name...he'd never stop throwing up.

• Pieces of April (2003): Anyone see this thing? I didn't. I remember when it came out, though, playing at the Guild 45th in Seattle, back when Katie Holmes was trying to be Ms. indie-actress. This is her second Thanksgiving related movie, after “Ice Storm,” making her Ms. (or Mrs.) Thanksgiving. Invite her over. Break out the turkey and stuffing and corn pudding.

• It's already over but here's a great piece from Dan Savage who defends the sexification of Halloween as a kind of straight people's gay-pride parade: a day when straight people are allowed to dress up and bust loose:

We don't resent you for taking Halloween as your own. We know what it's like to keep your sexuality under wraps, to keep it concealed, to be on your guard and under control at all times. While you don't suffer anywhere near the kind of repression we did (and in many times and places still do), straight people are sexually repressed, too. You move through life thinking about sex, constantly but keenly aware that social convention requires you to act as if sex were the last thing on your mind. Exhausting, isn't it?

• Martin Scorsese on the 11 scariest movies of all time. I've seen 1, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 11. I keep missing the Brits.
• It's not just me. Even members of the Academy question havng 10-best-picture nominees.
• Hilarious piece from The Onion on the long, sad, World Series drought for the Philadelphia Phillies. Sample: "To put into perspective just how long the Phillies have gone without a championship, the earth has almost made one full orbit of the sun since the franchise last paraded through downtown Philadelphia holding the famed Commissioner's Trophy."
• Floyd Norris, in his column in The New York Times last Friday, says people who ask why financial-industry CEOs are so well-compensated are asking the wrong question. The real question is: Why is there so much more money in the financial industry than there used to be? From 1929 to 1988, the financial sector averaged 1.2 percent of GDP. Then it shot up in the 1990s, peaking at 3.3 percent in 2005. Why? He tosses out some possibilities, including higher charges (for managing hedge funds) , concentration (the big guys are bigger), the derivatives debaccle, evading taxes and rules, and excessive risk-taking. Worth reading the whole thing.

MOVIES

• This is pretty exciting: The screening of "The Cove" at the Tokyo International Film Festival and the mostly positive and/or startled and/or embarrassed Japanese reaction. This part, though, is sadly indicative: "Taiji’s mayor, Kazutaka Sangen, has advised fishermen to carve up whales and dolphins in indoor facilities so as not to provoke activists further, according to the newspaper Yomiuri." Nice. My review of "The Cove" here.
• The cover story in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine asks: "Is America ready for a movie about an obese Harlem girl raped and impregnated by her abusive father?" But it's the wrong question. The correct question is: "Is Lionsgate ready to distribute such a film?" OK, it's both questions. But America can't be ready for "Precious" if Lionsgate (of the "Saw" franchise) isn't willing to distribute it beyond NY, LA and your Seattles and Chicagos and Minneapolises. And I doubt they are. Unless, of course, Tyler Perry, whose films are also distributed by Lionsgate, and is an executive producer on "Precious," can strongarm them in some fashion.
• The Minneapolis Star-Tribune's film critic Colin Covert has a nice Q&A with Chris Rock about his doc "Bad Hair," which I now have to see. Rock remarks that "Bad Hair" is the funniest movie he's ever made, which initially sounds impressive until you consider the options. "Down to Earth"? "Head of State"? "I Think I Love My Wife"? Rock is frequently hilarious in his stand-up (less so in his most recent, "Kill the Messenger"), but for whatever reason that hilarity has never transferred to movies. 
• Via Patrick Goldstein, who got it from Danielle Berrin's "Hollywood Jew" blog, here's a fascinating 2001 Index Magazine interview with Rachel Weisz and some pretty blunt talk about the Jewishness of Hollywood, as well as the sterile sexuality of Hollywood, as well as the sexiness of comedians. Quote from Weisz on the difficulty of Jewish women having success in Hollywood: "In some way acting is prostitution, and Hollywood Jews don't want their own women to participate. Also, there's an element of Portnoy's Complaint — they all fancy Aryan blondes."
• Francois Truffaut is my favorite director of the French New Wave, and Richard Brody, blogging on the New Yorker's site, acknowledges the 25th anniversary of Truffaut's death at age 52 with some choice quotes.
• Nathaniel over at Film Experience Blog gives us the history of who's presented the best picture Oscar. I hadn't really thought about this before. Best Actor gets the previous year's Best Actress, and vice-versa, and same ol' switcheroo for supporting awards, and directors tend to get directors, yes? The other categories get someone who will hopefully keep people watching. But for Best Pic? It's usually a big-name actor. Nathaniel's complaint? It's usually the same big-name actor—and rarely a big-name actress. He makes suggestions. His first one is so obvious only the Academy wouldn't have thought of it by now.

POLITICS

• I've always thought FOX-News was as close to a government-run news agency as the U.S. has had during my lifetime. James Fallows, who spent the last three years in China, says the same thing.
• We need smarter from the New Yorker. Most MSM columnists now agree that FOX News is a biased network, as does Louis Menand here, but it goes deeper, doesn't it? Via his Facebook account, Minnesota journalist Robb Mitchell quotes Jason Bartlett, a new media columnist (and not the shortstop for the Tampa Bay Rays), thus: "Bias is not the issue for the controversy with FOX and media access, it is their continual intentional manipulation of facts for the sake of propoganda. To say what FOX does is okay because now MSNBC 'does it now too' misses the point of their intentional deception to the American public."

BASEBALL

• I appreciated this piece from William Rhoden on how losing two games to the Angels exposes what nervous nellies Yankees fans really are.
• This past week, Tyler Kepner is writing about all the right things. First he gave us those dream quotes from Mike Scioscia before Game 6 of the ALCS on the ridiculousness of all the off-days in October. Then he followed it up in yesterday's paper with a piece about where all of those off-days lead: to a November World Series. Kepner ticks off what can't be done to prevent this in the future but the question looms: What can be done? I'd start by examining the smartness of Wednesday-night starts, which the networks and MLB feel draws higher ratings than, say, a Saturday-night start. Really? So why have World Series ratings dropped like a rock over the last 25 years while the Super Bowl recorded its greatest ratings just last year? Is MLB overstaying its welcome in October and November? Could a tighter schedule mean a tighter storyline? Do fair-weather fans not want to watch the game played in foul weather? COULD THE PEOPLE IN CHARGE HAVE NO MOTHERHUMPING CLUE WHAT THEY'RE DOING?!?! Not that I'm espousing any opinion one way or another, mind you. At least Kepner's asking the right questions and getting the right quotes from the right baesball people. Here's Scioscia again: "You can’t control the weather to a certain extent, but the earlier you can schedule these to get them in, the better chance you have of finishing this in weather that is, I think, conducive to the outstanding level of play that is going to be on any playoff baseball field." Exactamundo, Cunningham!

JIM WALSH

• I linked to this last year but it'll always be relevant: Jim Walsh's 2003 piece calling for a Paul and Sheila Wellstone World Music Day. Jim's writing always makes me feel more alive.
• Dig if U will the picture: Prince plays, Jim writes.

For Sunday Movie Night, befitting the month, we watched William Friedkin's "The Exorcist" (1973), which I'd never seen before, but which, because of documentaries, film books, old "Carol Burnett" skits, I still "remembered" more of than almost everyone else there—most of whom had seen the movie just once, either 35 years ago, on television, or more recently on DVD. We all liked the fact that Friedkin took his own sweet time giving us Satan—comparing the pace favorably to the quick-cut, roller-coaster rides of today's movies. And we all loved ourselves some Max von Sydow. Of course, the inevitable questions:

• What's the connection between the northern Iraq burial dig and Georgetown?
• Why this family and this girl? (Is it: Why not this family and this girl?)
• Once the Devil shows himself, why does the mother (Ellen Burnstyn) take the roundabout way of getting help? Why ask, cry, explain? Why not: Come see THIS! These quiet, conversational scenes between the scary devil-in-the-girl-in-the-bed scenes don't feel quite real, given the unreal circumstances.

"The Exorcist" was the no. 1 box office hit of 1973, and, adjusted for inflation, it's the 9th-biggest domestic film of all time, grossing, in 2009 dollars, $793 million. Since it was released in 1973, only four films have—in adjusted dollars—grossed more: "Jaws," "Star Wars," "E.T.," and "Titanic." It was also nominated for a best picture Oscar—as was every no. 1 box office hit between 1967 and 1977.

Here's what I took away from the film: the Devil, as we tend to portray him, ain't that smart. If his goal is to turn people away from God, then he should do one thing: Nothing. The story of Job got it backwards. Nothing brings people closer to God than evil or misfortune; than a hint of the Devil. There are no atheists in foxholes, etc. In "The Exorcist" a priest is losing faith...until the Devil shows up. Thus he helps save Father Karras (from doubt), who helps save Regan (from the Devil). He's his own worst enemy. Maybe that should be (and maybe it is) the great Devilish dilemma. Satan knows the best way to win is to do nothing, but, man, he just can't help himself. It's just so much fun messing with people.

• That shot of Eli Roth (SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS) emptying his machine gun into Hitler's face at the end of Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Bastards" reminded me, in a way, of the ending of "Idi i Smotri" ("Come and See") (1985), a Soviet-era World War II drama about a kid caught in the Russian countryside during the Nazi invasion, which I'd seen numerous times while volunteering for Ben Milgrom's University Film Society at the University of Minnesota in the mid-1980s. I assumed I was the only one to make this connection. Of course not.
• "Idi i Smotri" is, according to Time Out London, the best movie ever made about World War II. Their whole list is worth checking out. Start with 50-41 ("Stalingrad," "The Last Metro," "Empire of the Sun"), continue to 40-31 ("The Pianist," "Letters from Iwo Jima," "Downfall"), then 30-21 ("The Great Escape," "Mephisto," "Night and Fog," "Casablanca," Schindler's List"), 20-11 ("Saving Private Ryan," "Bridge on the River Kwai," "Army of Shadows," "The Dirty Dozen") and 10-2 ("Rome, Open City," "Cross of Iron," "The Thin Red Line"). The point isn't to find out where you invevitably disagree with Time Out London, but to find movies, particularly British movies, worth watching. I don't think I've seen half the movies here.
• I came across Time Out London's list via the Scarecrow video site, which has its own list of movies that possibly influenced "Inglourious Bastards." Everyone in Seattle knows Scarecrow as the place to get the video no one else has.
• And I showed up on the Scarecrow site in the first place looking for the documentary "From Hollywood to Hanoi" (which, oops, they don't have), and which my friend Andy Engelson got to see in Hanoi at the Hanoi Cinematheque. Read about his experience here.
• And that's how we careen the pinball.

Andrew O'Hehir of Salon has a good piece on "Chinatown" and the Polanski problem. First really good line:

Towne's original script, he tells us in an accompanying featurette [of the DVD], included no scene actually set in L.A.'s Chinatown; it was Polanski who insisted that the movie's racially tinged guiding metaphor had to be made explicit. After Nicholson's Jake and Dunaway's Evelyn Mulwray finally go to bed (for the one and only time), he tells her that he used to be a cop in Chinatown, where "you never really know what's going on." He once tried to protect a woman there, and only ended up making sure she got hurt. "Dead?" Evelyn asks him, and then the phone rings. It's the end of the movie calling.

Second really good line:

I am certainly not speaking out in defense of Roman Polanski, who apparently did something that was both heinous and illegal, and should long ago have faced the consequences. I guess I'm saying that it's hypothetically possible to learn something from a movie, and totally impossible to learn anything from the sordid private lives of celebrities.

Entire thing.

I have a piece up on MSNBC today on the top 5 baseball scenes in non-baseball movies. The idea came to me after reading that Koufax biography over Labor Day weekend and thinking about how thoroughly dominated the Yankees were during the ’63 World Series. Yet in my no. 1 scene, the “Cuckoo’s Nest” scene, the Yankees dominate Koufax. Amusing. And that’s not in Ken Kesey’s book. That scene isn’t even in Kesey’s book. So who came up with the pro-Yankees play-by-play? My guess is Jack. Jack, the Yankees fan, recreating the ’63 Series to the Yankees’ advantage. You gotta love the jutzpah, but let’s face it: Anyone who thinks that Koufax in '63 could be hit that easily deserves to be in the cuckoo’s nest.

Here are a few other scenes that didn’t make the cut.

Seeing about a girl in “Good Will Hunting” (1997)
This was the second scene—after “Cuckoo’s Nest”—I thought of: a South Boston genius with issues, Will Hunting (Matt Damon), is seeing a South Boston therapist with issues, Sean Maguire (Robin Williams), who breaks through when he hits Will in his vulnerable spot: Will lacks experience in everything that matters—particularly love. Maguire has been there and back, and eventually Will begins asking questions. When did he meet his (now dead) wife? Turns out: Oct. 21 1975. The day of Game Six of the ’75 World Series, the Carlton Fisk homerun, “biggest game in Red Sox history,” says Maguire in those post-Babe Ruth, pre-David Ortiz days. Then he begins to explain the game. But who’s he explaining it to? Will knows. So he’s explaining it to us. That feels false right there. Then we find out Maguire wasn’t even at the game. He had tickets but told his friends “I gotta see about a girl”—his future wife—whom he saw in a bar beforehand. I.e., rather than get her number, go to the game, and call her afterwards, he gives up the ticket immediately. Immediately. It’s supposed to be romantic, and maybe it is, but it’s Hollywood romantic. It rings false. Hell, rather than the grand romantic gesture it’s supposed to be, it could be a negative symbol of domesticity: "You can get the girl you want; but no more Game Sixes for you, chief."

A bush-league pitcher comes close to creating a third (Fascist) party in “Meet John Doe” (1941)
Has any movie been so schitzophrenic about populism? The people are good, although easily manipulated, and watch out or they’ll turn into a mob quickly. Hell, they’ll go from loving you to hating you in 30 seconds. The mob follows the mob. The overall story is about a media creation, John Doe (Gary Cooper), who, even as a creation is a bit schitzophrenic. First he’s angry. I Protest! Then he offers hope, and small-towners, aw-shucks folks, flock to him. They love him, because he’s an aw-shucks kind of guy himself. But he’s really a ballplayer with a bad wing who just needs money to survive, and who acts a bit cutesy for a guy who doesn’t know where his next meal is coming from. The main baseball scene is a pantomime in a hotel suite, and it, too, is overly cutesy. It adds nothing, detracts a lot. Parts of “John Doe” feel amazingly contemporary—a placard reading “The Bulletin: a free press means a free people” is chiseled off its building and old experienced reporters are subsequently fired—and oil man and media baron D.B. Norton (Edward Arnold) is genuinely, powerfully scary. But the movie can’t overcome its schitzophrenia.

No lucky hats or bats for “Max Dugan Returns” (1983)
One of my favorite childhood books was Leonard Kessler's Here Comes the Strikeout, and it contains the following lesson, much repeated in the book and much repeated by both my father and I ever since: “Lucky hats won’t do it. Lucky bats won’t do it. Only hard work and practice will do it.” When it comes to little league, Hollywood generally relies on lucky hats and bats. One time the kid strike outs, the next time he gets a game-winning hit. “Max Dugan” is one of the few films that prescribes hard work and practice. OK, it’s a mostly forgettable movie. Marsha Mason plays Nora, an early ‘80s widow whose refrigerator is breaking down, whose car is stolen, whose life is breaking down and feels stolen. Then her absentee father, Max Dugan (Jason Robards), returns, on the lam and loaded for bear ($680,000), and ready to solve all her problems. New fridge, new car, and, for her son (Matthew Broderick, adorable in his first role), who can’t buy a hit in little league, batting lessons from former Royals batting coach Charlie Lau. We get free lessons, too. Where’s the weight on your feet? Relax the grip. Head down. Wiggle the butt. Basically: concentrate but stay loose. It leads to another Hollywood ending but this time it’s not lucky hats or bats that do it. That one was for you, Wittgenstein!

Dads and baseball in “City Slickers” (1991)
Billy Crystal, the little Yankee-loving schmuck, knows his baseball: in the Ken Burns doc, in “61*,” which he directed, and in the baseball dialogue in “City Slickers,” which I’m sure he helped write. Mets cap aside, we know his loyalties, and they’re present in the “best day” discussion. For Mitch Robbins (Crystal), the best day of his life was when he was 7 and his father took him to Yankee Stadium: “Sat the whole game next to my dad. Taught me how to keep score. Mickey hit one out. I still have the program.” Earlier (or is it later?), there’s the Clemente vs. Aaron argument, which, I have to side with Ed Furillo (Bruno Kirby), is no argument. 755 homeruns, end of discussion. But the best line is this explanation to Helen Slater about the deeper meaning of baseball: “When I was about 18 and my dad and I couldn't communicate about anything at all, we could still talk about baseball. Now that—that was real.” And that’s such a good line it almost elevates “City Slickers” into the top 5.

What about you? Favorite baseball scenes in non-baseball movies?

Impress a pretty girl.

• Here's a good piece by my friend Jessica Thompson, who's lived in India for a year now, on the sexual harassment—called "Eve teasing"—there: "Eve teasing is to sexual harassment what Delhi Belly is to projectile vomiting and diarrhea: both are really ugly things hidden behind a cute name."
• Jeff Wells begins the end-of-decade ceremonies with his top 37 (37?) films of 2000-2009. It's a fun list—particularly his no. 1 choice. Have only vaguely thought about my top list, but it would include "The Pianist" (his no. 9) and "United 93" (his no. 5). What else would I have? "Yi Yi"? "Spider-Man 2"? "Munich"? "Brokeback Mountain," definitely. That movie just gets better with age. What about you? What movies in this decade stand out in your mind?
• Is "web" really the proper metaphor for this thing? It works, although not with the verb. You crawl a web while we claim to surf this one—and surfing is much cooler than what we do here. The metaphor that comes to my mind is pinball. I bounce from spot to spot. I careen the Pinball. The other day I visited Jeff Wells again, and he bounced me to this James Rocchi piece on MSN about press junkets in general and "Couples Retreat"'s in particular, and after reading one sentence I sought more of Rocchi and bounced all over the place. Found this MSN review on "Transformers 2," which definitely echoes my feelings about that abomination: "Where the first film was desperate, this one is desperate and sad. Where the first film sent mixed messages about ethnic and racial groups and women, this one is overtly racist and sexist. Where the first 'Transformers' was clumsy, 'Revenge of the Fallen' is paralyzed with its own stupidity." Rocchi's own site is here.
  
• Some good lines from Anthony Lane on "The Invention of Lying": "...as for the soundtrack, it’s like being haunted by the ghost of Easy Listening Past. Supertramp and the Electric Light Orchestra are one thing, but Donovan: there’s no excuse. And what really galls is not the songs themselves but the greasy way in which they are wrapped around crucial passages of action, to muffle any awkward transitions; thus, once Mark has armed himself with white lies, he strolls off to reassure all the other miserable folk we have encountered so far—old-timers, bums on the street, a bickering couple—with a smile and a word in their ears. But what word? We can’t tell, because Elvis Costello is busy belting out “Sitting” by the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens."
• The New York Times' business column is becoming more of a must-read every day, particularly David Carr's on Monday and David Leonhardt's on Wednesday. This week, Carr wrote a sober, infuriating piece on the $66 million in bonuses delivered to Tribune Co. managers who mostly axed reporters to increase profits...which mostly went to them. Funny how that works. Leonhardt, on Wednesday, wrote of the excesses of left and right economic thinking, and who on the right (Bruce Bartlett) is finally going beyond "cut taxes" as a means to economic stimulus. We'll see how it plays. A smart voice on the right would be a nice change.
  
• Not all these links are worth clicking on, by the way. This is one. I'm sure you heard about it: The First Lady has white, slave-owning ancestors. That's the big story. A bigger story for me is that Mrs. Obama's great-great-grandfather, Dolphus T. Shields, the first child born to Melvina Shields, who was born into slavery, co-founded the First Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., which was pivotal in the civil rights movement. It's amazing, on the one hand, how carefully the Times tells its story, and, on the other, how carelessly. "While [Melvina] was still a teenager, a white man would father her first-born son under circumstances lost in the passage of time." That's in the second graf. I would definitely lose "under circumstances lost in the passage of time," which is, given the circumstances, so romantic a phrase as to be close cousin to "under circumstances now...gone with the wind!" Plus the quotes from Edward Ball, "a historian who discovered that he had black relatives, the descendants of his white slave-owning ancestors," are embarrassing: "We are not separate tribes," he says. "We've all mingled, and we've done so for generations." Nice verb: mingled. 
• Finally a must-read by another friend, Jim Walsh, in Southwest Journal in Minneapolis, on the funeral of the father of a friend. Jim's the real deal. Not just as a writer.
  

From Force of Evil (1948), written and directed by Abraham Polonsky, who was soon to be blacklisted. I like the repetitions in the dialogue, and the way simple language conveys the most profound thoughts. Thomas Gomez plays Leo Morse. This scene alone makes me want to hold a Thomas Gomez film festival.

Leo: I'm glad you called me, Freddie. I'm glad you thought it over to listen to me. To calm down and listen to me so I can help you. [To waiter] Coffee. [To Freddie] I know how bad you feel, Freddie. It was a wicked, foolish thing to do to put a gun in my brother's hand. For him to kill you. That's what you wanted to do. That's what it was. I know how it feels to try to find someone to kill you—to finish you off—to take the crimes of your life on his head, in his hands.

Freddie: Please, Mr. Morse, all I want is to quit. That's all, nothing else. They won't let me quit and I want to quit. I'll die if I don't quit. 

Leo: I'm a man with heart trouble, I die almost every day myself. That's the way I live. Silly habit. You know, sometimes you feel as though you're dying here [rubs palm]...and here [back of hand]...here [below his heart]. You're dying while you're breathing.

[Car pulls up; Freddie looks panicked; Leo looks over his shoulder and quickly realizes he's been betrayed.]

Leo: Freddie! What have you done? Freddie! What have you done to me!

Sober political pieces:

• Hendrik Hertzberg has been writing too many obituaries lately, as we all have, but here's a good one on former Carter press secretary Jody Powell.
• A smart take on the “is it racism or isn't it?” question regarding the vociferousness of the response to Pres. Obama's policies, via an unnamed reader on Andrew Sullivan's site. Money quote: “Of course they are screaming 'socialism.' They've been doing that since the 1950s at least. They're not talking about economic redistribution of wealth—they never have been. They've been talking about redistribution of privilege this whole time.”
• “Turkeys of the Year” from Minnesota Law & Politics, which is the first, parent magazine of the company that employs me. The difficulty isn't finding the turkeys anymore, it's choosing among them. There's a section here, “Quick! Cancel My Membership to the ACLU,” that is so full of the idiocies being spouted in public and political life that it might make the founding fathers rethink the First Amendment. Michele Bachmann rightly (no pun intended) gets her own section—including her frequent attacks on and insinuations about the U.S. Census Bureau. Glad that worked out. Then there's last year's gem from John McCain on why his pick, Sarah Palin, is qualified to be VP: “She knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America,” he said. How awful that reads today. What a sad thing they were trying to sell. What a sad thing they're still trying to sell.

Drunk movie pieces:

• What does it mean to be a back-up critic at a daily? It means you don't get first dibs. And it means that in looking over Rotten Tomatoes list of the worst-reviewed movies of the last 10 years, I discovered I reviewed no. 91 (“Surviving Christmas”), no. 36 (“The Whole Ten Yards”), no. 5 (“National Lampoon's Gold Diggers”) and...wait for it...no 1! (“Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever”) Not to nitpick...OK, to nitpick. “Gold Diggers” should've been no. 1. It was the worst thing I've ever seen—and I've seen garbage stewing for weeks by the side of a Taipei road in 100-degree heat. The big surprise for me is that “Elektra” didn't even make the cut. Now that's an impressive decade of film.

Partying baseball pieces:

• Ichiro is ejected from a game for the first time in his Major League career. Must've learned how to finally say “c***sucker.”
• Finally, here's an upper: In the pregame show before a late-September game between two teams going nowhere (Seattle at Toronto), color commenator and former third baseman Mike Blowers, known for the way he didn't crowd the plate during his playing days, made an insane prediction. He said Mariners rookie third baseman and Bellevue native Matt Tuiasosopo, who had all of 59 career at-bats going into the game, would hit his first career homerun that day. Not only that day but in his second at-bat. Not only in his second at-bat but on a 3-1 fastball and into the second deck in left field. Make sure you listen to what happens. I swear, Dave Niehaus has gotten such joy out of such lousy material—the short sad history of the Seattle Mariners—that he qualifies as the Patron Saint of the Pacific Northwest. And here, with great material, he's downright giddy. “I see the light! I believe you, Mike!” Way to go, Mike. Way to go, Dave. Touch 'em all, Tui. (UPDATE: Damn, even Rachel Maddow is on this story. Here she is, via Patrick Goldstein, who is also on this story. Hopefully more get on the story. It's a story worth telling.) (UPDATE: Here's the full play-by-play of the Tui homerun. It's worth listening to the entire thing.)

We've got the pumpkins out (thanks to Patricia), the trick-or-treaters are hanging on the steps (below), and the scary movie posters are up (to the left, to the left). Looks like Halloween!

The posters are a mix of classic horror (Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolf Man) and movies that actually scared me over the years: The Haunting, The Changeling, The Shining, The Others, The Orphanage. The key to scaring me, apparently, is a restrained take on the sad, supernatural dead. A horror that echoes past death and troubles the living, who are more or less confined to a specific place, and who can't get away from the horrified dead. Apparently I'm also a fan of blunt titles: definite article + noun.

I've included, as well, Tarantula, a 1950s atomic-explosion b-picture about a giant tarantula that scared the bejesus out of me when I saw it as a kid on some weekend afternoon in the '70s, and which led, or at least contributed, to a lifetime of arachnophobia. I'm sure if I revisited the film it would be hokey as hell but it still might scare the bejesus out of me. Which might not be bad. I have too much bejesus as it is. (Etymology of “bejesus”? Anyone?)

Other treats:

• As a kid, this lead-in to the late-night “Horror Incorporated” show on KSTP in Minneapolis was generally scarier than the movies—often b-pics—that followed. The hand coming out of the coffin and that final scream in particular. Sometimes I purposefully avoided the intro so I wouldn't be too scared to watch the movie.
• These local “Horror Incorporated”-type shows were parodied brilliantly by SCTV in their Monster Chiller Horror Theater with Count Floyd (the incredibly funny Joe Flaherty), to whom we owe our blog-post headline. Couldn't find my favorite bit online, when the programmers, who always screwed up, booked “The Odd Couple,” and poor Count Floyd had to make it sound scary, kids. “It's about a neat guy and a messy guy who...drinks blood! Awooooooooooooooooo!” But this one does in a pinch. R.I.P., John Candy.
• Of course Brenda would kill me if I didn't include Jerry Seinfeld's Halloween monologue, which has the funniest line ever about good vs. bad Halloween candy: “Hold it, lady, wait a second, what is this, the orange marshmallow shaped like a big peanut? Do me a favor, you keep that one. Yeah, we have all the doorstops we need already, thank you.”
• Finally, here's an article I wrote over 15 years ago on trick-or-treating and the hierarchy of Halloween candy.

What about you? What films scared you? What trick-or-treat memories do you have?

If you missed yesterday and want the questions, scroll down. Or go here.

1. Which two summer releases made the most money overseas?
The correct answer is D) “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” and “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” "Harry Potter" has grossed $625 million abroad—the 8th-most a film has made overseas—while "Ice Age 3," which grossed $195 million domestic, killed overseas, grossing $674 million, or the 3rd-most money any film has made abroad. "Ice Age 3"! Only "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" ($742 million) and, of course, "Titanic" ($1,242 million) have grossed more abroad.

The overseas numbers thus far:

• "Ice Age 3": $674 million
• "Harry Potter": $625 million
• "Transformers 2": $430 million
• "Angels & Demons":$351 million
• "Terminator: Salvation": $236 million

2. According to the documentary “Food, Inc.,” what is added to almost everything we eat and drink?
The correct answer is A) Corn. Mark Whitacre mentions the same thing in "The Informant!"

3. In “Wolverine,” after Logan’s half-brother Victor tells him, “We can’t let you just walk away!” and Logan begins to walk away, what do the murderous team of mutants do to bring him back?
The correct answer is D) Nothing. They let him walk away.

4. Who’s Richard Greenfield?
The correct answer is C) The market analyst who downgraded Disney’s stock earlier this year because he predicted a bad outing for Pixar’s “Up," which is currently the third-highest-grossing movie in the U.S. Its overseas totals ($124 million) lag mostly because the film hasn't opened yet in Germany (late Sept.), the UK (October) and Japan (December).

5. In what way is the new “Star Trek” similar to the original “Star Wars”?
The correct answer is E) All of the above. J.J. Abrams knows you go with what works. 30 years ago.

6. “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is currently ninth in terms of domestic gross, with over $401 million. But where does it place when you adjust for inflation?
The correct answer is C) 67th, just behind “Smokey and the Bandit.” But it did already pass "Twister" and "The Poseidon Adventure." So: Kudos.

7. Before Sam goes off the college in “Transformers,” what does he say to his loyal, automobile-transforming autobot Bumblebee, whom he’s leaving behind?
The correct answer is D) All of the above.

8. What is Summer’s biggest hang-up in her relationship with Tom in “(500) Days of Summer”?
The correct answer is C) She doesn’t believe in love. Or "lurve." Or "luff." Although it turns out she does. It's just that, as the saying goes, she's just not that into him.

9. In “District 9,” what is the name of the main alien protagonist?
The correct answer is C) Christopher Johnson.

10. What do the following films have in common: “In the Loop,” “The Cove,” “Paper Heart” and “Cold Souls”?
The correct answer, sadly, is C) None went wider than 100 theaters. Brother, can you spare a screen?

11. Which film opened in the most theaters without making at least $100 million?
The correct answer is D) "The Land of the Lost," which didn't even get halfway there: $49 million.

12. Of those films whose widest release was fewer than 3,000 theaters, which grossed the most?
The correct answer is C) "Julie & Julia," whose widest release was 2,528 theaters but has grossed $88 million and counting. Fifteen films that opened between May and September played in more theaters yet haven't made as much money, including "The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3," "The Final Destination," "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past," "Funny People," "Land of the Lost," "Year One," "Aliens in the Attic," "Shorts," and, of course, "Imagine That." All of those films opened in more than 3,000 theaters.

"J&J" also outdid the three other films mentioned in the multiple choice: "The Ugly Truth," "The Time Traveler's Wife" and "My Life in Ruins." Those films focus on women who have careers and search for love. "Julie & Julia" focus on women who have love and search for careers. It don't know if there's a lesson there, but it's a nice change.

Cloudy outside? Rainy? Chance of meatballs? Must mean it’s September. Since you’re stuck indoors why not try a quiz? Hey, why not try this one! Apologies for the format. One day I'll get up-to-speed on proper quizzes that provide instant answers and gratification. In the meantime here's the delayed kind.

1. Which two summer releases made the most money overseas?

• a. “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” and “Angels & Demons”
• b. “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” and “Up”
• c. “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” and “The Hangover”
• d. “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” and “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”

2. According to the documentary “Food, Inc.,” what is added to almost everything we eat and drink?

• a. Corn
• b. Dolphin
• c. Beer
• d. Tranya

3. In “Wolverine,” after Logan’s half-brother Victor tells him, “We can’t let you just walk away!” and Logan begins to walk away, what do the murderous team of mutants do to bring him back?

• a. They begin howling
• b. They call him names
• c. They cry
• d. Nothing. They let him walk away

4. Who’s Richard Greenfield?

• a. The groom who goes missing in “The Hangover”
• b. The assistant played by Ryan Reynolds in “The Proposal”
• c. The market analyst who downgraded Disney’s stock earlier this year because he predicted a bad outing for Pixar’s “Up”
• d. The FBI agent who kills John Dillinger in "Public Enemies"

5. In what way is the new “Star Trek” similar to the original “Star Wars”?

• a. The opening battle is between a small ship and a gigantic ship, and what escapes from the small ship is the key to the eventual destruction of the gigantic ship
• b. A third of the way through the film, an entire planet and its billions of souls are destroyed
• c. In a cave, a hooded wise man is found who teaches the young hero his proper destiny
• d. The heroes are feted at a medal ceremony at the end
• e. All of the above

6. “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is currently ninth in terms of domestic gross, with over $401 million. But where does it place when you adjust for inflation?

• a. 3rd, just behind “Star Wars”
• b. 28th, just behind “The Dark Knight”
• c. 67th, just behind “Smokey and the Bandit”
• d. It’s mathematically impossible to adjust for inflation. Duh!

7. Before Sam goes off to college in “Transformers,” what does he say to his loyal, automobile-transforming autobot Bumblebee, whom he’s leaving behind?

• a. “You know, freshmen aren't allowed to have cars.”
• b. “Look, the guardian thing is done, okay? You did your job. It's over with.”
• c. “I can't be the end-all deal in your life! I wanna be normal, I want to go to college. Everybody has this, and I should be able to experience this. And I can't do that with you.”
• d. All of the above

8. What is Summer’s biggest hang-up in her relationship with Tom in “(500) Days of Summer”?

• a. She doesn’t like “The Smiths”
• b. She doesn’t like IKEA
• c. She doesn’t believe in love
• d. Her favorite Beatle is Stu Sutcliffe

9. In “District 9,” what is the name of the main alien protagonist?

• a. Neill Blomkamp
• b. Mzwandile Nqoba
• c. Christopher Johnson
• d. "You couldn't pronounce it"

10. What do the following films have in common: “In the Loop,” “The Cove,” “Paper Heart” and “Cold Souls”?

• a. They’re all lame
• b. They all include appearances by Michael Cera
• c. None had a wider release than 100 theaters
• d. They were the first films reviewed in the revamped “At the Movies,” with A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips

11. Which film opened in the most theaters without making at least $100 million?

• a. "G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra"
• b. "G-Force"
• c. "Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific"
• d. "Land of the Lost"

12. Of those films whose widest release was fewer than 3,000 theaters, which grossed the most?

• a. "The Time Traveler's Wife"
• b. "The Ugly Truth"
• c. "Julie & Julia"
• d. "My Life in Ruins"

Answers tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is... (OK, answers here.)

Have a heart-to-heart with Dad.

Have a heart-to-heart with Mom

I've seen the trailer for Michael Moore's latest doc, Capitalism—about the global financial meltdown—about 10 times now, and it hasn't drawn me in. The initial shot of Moore with bullhorn saying he's going to perform a citizen's arrest on the board of AIG made me laugh, but it's followed by Moore running into the usual lobby-security-guard brick walls, plus a bad joke about his cameraman not speaking English. "Donde," Moore tells him, instead of, I suppose, "Vamanos." Then the street interview with the lowly U.S. Rep. How is this helping? How is this explaining anything? So no excitement on my part until I read Jeff Wells' blurb over at Hollywood Elsewhere this morning:

Capitalism is a bold-as-brass slam at the basic evils unleashed by unregulated capitalism, and a clean and irrefutable explanation about how the U.S. system has taken the basic unfairness of life and magnified it tenfold, especially since the ascension of Ronald Reagan.

"The basic unfairness of life and magnified it tenfold." That certainly describes how I feel about the U.S. system since Reagan. I'm on board again.

The other night Patricia and I watched Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, a 1945 film directed by Robert Bresson, and both of us were struck by how much the star, Maria Casares, looked like Chloe Sevigny. No?

There appears to be no relation, though. She is, however, the daughter of Santiago Casares Quiroga, who was prime minister of Spain when the fighting that led to the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936.

The ending of Les Dames is disappointing but otherwise it's a good entry into the "scheming woman/women" subgenre, with Macbeth, The Women, Gone with the Wind. What are the recent entries in this? Or do cinematic women just kick ass now, rather than scheme for power, or men, or revenge? The scheming seems left to the teenaged girls now.

• How Hollywood Portrayed Terrorism Before 9/11, from 2005: “Watching these movies, in fact, one wonders all over again about right-wing attacks on Hollywood. These movies encourage patriotism, faith in our leaders and an-eye-for-an-eye. They encourage a simple absolutist view of the world. There are good guys and bad guys and never the twain shall meet. The hero is always right, and the people who disagree with the hero are always wrong, and if the hero needs to — and he usually does — he can go it alone. Sometimes the hero is the President of the United States. Sometimes he wears a flight suit. Sometimes he says tough things like “Get off my plane!” I know: It’s all so anti-Republican.”
• The history of the World Trade Center on film, from 2006: “We’ve been telling ourselves the story of the World Trade Center every day since 9/11. The versions we tell ourselves are often full of the conceits of Hollywood movies: action-hero catch-phrases (“Let’s roll”), bold and outsized personalities; and an anticipation of a happy ending. Hollywood is actually giving us a less Hollywood version of events. The films they’ve created are human-sized, the heroes ordinary men and women.”
• United 93 for best picture, from 2006: “The passengers’ cobbled-together, whispered plan is inspiring. Everyone pitches in. This guy knows judo, this guy can fly single-engine airplanes, this guy was an air traffic controller for eight years. It's a team effort. If the plane hadn’t been flying so low when they stormed the cockpit, you get the feeling they would’ve survived. They would’ve brought the plane home.”

In June 2001, “The Fast and The Furious” opened and wound up making $144 million domestic, $62 million international. It went through several sequels before returning this March with the original cast and the orginal name, sans definite articles (“Fast and Furious”), and wound up making, thus far, $155 million domestic and $187 million international.

In March 2000, “Final Destination” opened and wound up making $53 million domestic, $59 million foreign. It went through several sequels before returning last week with the original name, plus definite article (“The Final Desination”), and has wound up making, thus far, $33 million.

It’s still too early to tell whether movie audiences are completely turned off by the definite article. Adjust for inflation, for example, and “The Fast and the Furious” did better domestically than its article-less sequel.

I’m just saying what a boon to sequelmakers—which is pretty much everyone now. You no longer have to bother with cumbersome roman numerals (“Halloween II”), Arabic numerals (“The Pink Panther 2”) or subtitles (“Revenge of the Fallen”). You no longer have to wring your hands over adding “part” or “episode” or what have you. If only George Lucas had been this innovative! Instead of “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace,” which is a mouthful in any language, we could’ve gone to see “The Star Wars.” Sure, it would’ve led to some confusing Abbott-and-Costello-like conversations:

“Have you seen ‘The Star Wars’?”
“You mean the ‘Star Wars’?”

But then it already did:

“What’s your favorite ‘Star Wars’?”
“Probably the first ‘Star Wars.’”
“You mean the first episode of ‘Star Wars’?”
“I mean the first one chronologically.”
“Chronologically in our time or their time?”
“The first fucking ‘Star Wars,’ alright?”

Me, I can’t wait for the following definite-article-less sequels:

• “Gone with Wind”
• “Raiders of Lost Ark”
• “Passion of Christ”
• “Lord of Rings: Return of King”

Or these:

• “The Gone with the Wind”
• “The Star Trek”
• “The Angels and the Demons”
• “The The Godfather”

It’s all so easy now.

Follow your dreams.

Via Jeff Wells' site, a mash-up of (yet again) the angry bunker scene in "Downfall" with (this time) the online disaster of the "Avatar" trailer.

Most of this stuff bugs me because it's dissing what doesn't exist yet—wait for the movie, people—but I'm posting the link for these lines:

Lt.: Sir, you expect a miracle from Fox Studios.
Hitler: Goddamn Fox would give Wolverine webshooters and a bat cape!

Exactamundo, Cunningham.

Learn a foreign language. Even poorly.

Go outside

I understand why Drew McWeeny of Hitflix is upset. If you’re part of a group, and an outsider disparages the group, you rally ‘round even if you tend to agree with the outsider. When I lived abroad and someone said something negative about the U.S., my back went up even if I tended to agree. Hell, even if I agreed completely. It’s a human reaction.

So older movie critics (A.O. Scott, Jeff Wells, Roger Ebert) have disparaged the tastes of younger moviegoers, and WcWeeny, a younger movie critic, has sided with “young” rather than “movie critic” and fought back. It’s understandable. Not being young, I read the above pieces and merely nodded. A.O. Scott’s article felt particularly spot-on. He was describing my feelings about the current state of movies and popular culture. He was describing the reality I was seeing. “Delicate, exotic flower, released into art houses” is the quote of the year.

At the same time, this debate isn’t really about “G.I. Joe” or “The Hurt Locker.” It’s about “Transformers 2.” That’s the one that hurts. That’s the one that feels like a final insult to movie critics—no matter their age.

Other no. 1 box-office hits of the year could be explained away. “Dark Knight” was good. “Spider-Man 3” and “Dead Man’s Chest” and “Sith” were crappy sequels to good movies, and, one assumes, moviegoers went for the good movie and wound up seeing the crappy sequel. C’est la vie. C’est la mort. Movie critics knew that we were far from the days when “The Graduate” or “The Godfather,” or even “Rain Man” or “Saving Private Ryan,” could be the no. 1 movie of the year, but at least moviegoers hadn’t lost their minds.

But the mindnumbingly stupid “Transformers 2” was sequel to the mindnumbingly stupid “Transformers”... and people still went to see it. And they didn’t stop seeing it. It didn’t have great legs but it had better legs than I’d hoped. I wanted it to fall off a cliff but it just rolled down a steep hill like a happy idiot, babbling grosses all the way. It’s knocking at $400 million domestic right now.

At one point in his piece, McWeeny argues that the perceived direction of our culture is off-limits to critics. That you talk about the film and that’s all:

I don't care if anyone agrees with me. Ever. ... I don't think the job of a critic is to rail against what is popular, or to insult the taste of the viewing public, or even to question it.

I’d argue that none of this takes place in a vacuum. Everything matters. What we see, what we eat, the sites we click on, all affect us and our culture. I know I’m part of all this, not apart from it. If this air gets polluted it pollutes me, too.

I have no doubt that the 14-year-olds who flocked to “Transformers 2” will be the 15-year-olds, and the 20-year-olds, and the 46-year-olds who will blanch when they see it one or six or 32 years from now. Doesn’t matter. It’s already pulled in tons of money. That reality’s been made and can’t be unmade. Other movies just like it—violent movies based on toys, but for everyone— will be produced and marketed to us and to the people coming behind us. And on and on, world without end. Until it ends. And it won’t end when Decepticons try to turn off the sun; it’ll end when we all become as blisteringly stupid as the stories we absorb.

The latest news? Warner Bros. plans to develop a movie around Legos. Here’s hoping the Eiffel Tower survives.

Via Jeffrey Wells’ site, here’s Stephen Sommers, director of “G.I. Joe,” on movie critics:

I don't think the mainstream critics are relevant [when it comes to G.I. Joe]. They have criticized themselves into irrelevancy. ... I make the kind of movies critics love to hate. They love dark and depressing movies.

And here’s a list of movies that garnered a 90 percent or better rating from top critics on Rotten Tomatoes over the last few years:

• “Ratatouille”: 100%
• “WALL-E”: 97%
• “Hairspray”: 97%
• “The Bourne Ultimatum”: 97%
• “The Incredibles”: 95%
• “Casino Royale”: 95%
• “Spider-Man 2”: 95%
• “Iron Man”: 92%
• “Enchanted”: 90%
• “The Dark Knight”: 90%

An argument can be made that “The Dark Knight” is “dark and depressing,” but I don’t think that’s the kind of film Sommers is talking about. We know what he’s talking about. And of course he’s wrong. The numbers show he’s wrong. But he’s got the courage of his cliches.

Just as right-wing politicians have labeled Hollywood “liberal” when its product is most decidedly not, so Hollywood executives have labeled critics “elitist,” and lovers of things “dark and depressing,” when the reality is both more complex and more simple. Good critics love good movies. In whatever form they come in.

A few days ago The Independent ran a short piece on the most controversial films in...history? Or just 10 banned films? If the former then “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974) is the most banned film ever (11 countries), while Singapore, no surprise, is the banningest of all countries, preventing seven of the ten listed films from arriving on their chewing-gum-less shores. A bigger surprise, at least for me, is the second banningest country, Ireland, which refused “Chainsaw,” A Clockwork Orange,” “Life of Brian,” “Freaks” and “The Evil Dead.” And who’s Italy to ban “Last Tango in Paris”? Have they seen some of their own films?

I’m also curious what constitutes a ban. Not every film is distributed abroad, so... Do distributors have to begin inquiries before the ban is announced, or are some governments more proactive in their banning? Refusing before it’s offered, as it were.

This list includes two best picture nominees (“A Clockwork Orange” and “The Exorcist”) and one best picture winner (“All Quiet on the Western Front”), and it was this last one that intrigued. Which country, you might ask, banned the peace-loving, war-hating “All Quiet”? Why Germany, of course, after the Nazis took power. In fact, according to The Independent...

During its brief run in German cinemas in 1930, the Nazis disrupted the viewings by releasing rats in the theatres.

 Another reminder of what democracy isn’t. Disruption—whether with actual rats or with the kind Rachel Maddow talks about here.

Future "At the Movies" co-host A.O. Scott's piece on the increasingly infantilization of the American movie-going public isn't bad but he really hits his stride in the second half. Everything below is just dead-on:

Wolverine, Captain Kirk, Harry Potter, Hasbro — those trademarks and secondary merchandising opportunities will reliably get kids into the theaters. But the examples of “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3,” “Public Enemies” and, perhaps, “Funny People” are widely taken to mean that artists like Denzel Washington, John Travolta, Michael Mann, Johnny Depp and Judd Apatow may not have the same guaranteed pull. Never mind that “Public Enemies” has actually done pretty well after a slow start, and that the running time, subject matter and tone of “Funny People” make it hard to compare with “Knocked Up” or “Happy Gilmore.” Conventional wisdom is always happy to ignore such nuances.

This may be because any reduction in the clout of stars or the autonomy of directors redounds to the benefit of the companies that own the copyrights and distribute the goods. ... Middle-aged actors and critically lauded directors look like extravagances rather than sound investments. Forty is the new dead. Auteur is French for unemployed. “The Hurt Locker” — the kind of fierce and fiery action movie that might have been a blockbuster once upon a time — is treated like a delicate, exotic flower, released into art houses and sold on its prestige rather than on its visceral power.

The box office numbers don’t lie, but they don’t tell the whole story either. The weekend grosses, widely guessed at on Thursday night and breathlessly reported by the middle of Sunday afternoon, record the quantity of tickets purchased, but they cannot register the quality of the experience. The aggregate of receipts shows that a lot of people like going to the movies, but not necessarily that they like what they see.

Commercial success may represent the public’s embrace of a piece of creative work, or it may just represent the vindication of a marketing strategy. In bottom-line terms, this is a distinction without a difference. A movie that people will go and see, almost as if they had no choice, is a safer business proposition than one they may have to bother thinking about. In this respect “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is exemplary. It brilliantly stymies reflection, thwarts argument, arrests intelligent response. The most interesting thing about the movie — apart from Megan Fox’s outfits, I suppose — is that it has made nearly $400 million domestically.

There is nothing else to say. Any further discussion — say about whether it’s a good movie or not — sounds quaint, old-fashioned, passé. Get a clue, grandpa.

Or go see “Up,” the only hugely successful movie of the summer that engages genuinely adult themes. It’s about loss, frustration, disappointment. And it offers one of the season’s most pointed and paradoxical lessons. If you want to make a mature film for mature audiences, make sure it’s a cartoon.

OK, this is a funny video: A nice take on all of those “Star Wars” parallels in the new “Star Trek” movie. A nicer take on how all of our action films are being made from the same glop.

My friend Adam wrote a funny and heartfelt tribute to John Hughes. 18 months ago. He beat the rush. Another way of saying he meant it.

I have to admit I wasn’t a huge fan. Of the movies he directed I liked “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” Of the movies he wrote, add “Mr. Mom” and some of “Home Alone.”

Did he devolve? In his first films, teens were the smartest people in the room. In his latter films, kids were. Imagine if he’d kept going.

Maybe if I’d been a teen when “Breakfast Club” came out in 1985 it would’ve meant more to me. But I was 22 and it already felt reductive. I couldn’t stand Judd Nelson’s character, and I couldn’t stand that the filmmakers (Hughes) seemed to like Nelson’s character more than the others. I loved the Beatles, too, but Hughes' John Lennon references felt cloying. "When I was a kid, I wanted to be John Lennon." “After all, he was the Walrus.” Please.

No doubt “Pretty in Pink” and “Some Kind of Wonderful” would make a great double bill, if only to test their double standards. Same set-up, different genders. In the first, a girl has two possible boyfriends: the nice, popular rich kid and the goofy friend; she winds up with the nice, popular rich kid. In the second, a boy has two possible girlfriends: the nice, popular rich kid and the goofy friend. He winds up with the goofy friend. Girls are so shallow.

“Ferris Bueller” would make a great double bill, too, but with a non-Hughes film also starring Matthew Broderick: “Election.” Bring your kids. Scare them. You see, this is this guy when he’s a teen, and here he is again 13 years later. Boo! Both films are actually fairly accurate as to how each age perceives itself. In high school, you know it all, or feel like you don't have anything else to learn. Stuck in adulthood, you’ve never felt so dumb, and wonder why you didn't learn more when you were younger.

One wonders what he thought. We’ll all be in that spot. Fuck, this is it. I should’ve... Here’s my main thought about a man whose films fetishized youth: 59 is too young.

“The battle of the sequels continues ad naseum. No sooner did That's Entertainment, Part 2 open than serious negotiations for That's Entertainment, Part 3 began. Meanwhile, Dino De Laurentis not only has King Kong 2 on the boards before the premier of the first King Kong but even has a hat trick in mind, and is offering Jeff Bridges $1 million to perform in King Kong 1, 2 and 3.”

—New Times magazine, May 28, 1976 (cover story: “Demystifying Jerry Brown: The politics beyond the lotus position,” by Robert Scheer).

Kong is now known as such a bomb that I laughed when I read this—and was equally amused by the magazine's futzing over harmless That's Entertainment sequels—but it turns out that not only was King Kong the no. 3 movie in America in 1976 but a sequel was made. It's called King Kong Lives and it came out 10 years later, in 1986, produced, yes, by De Laurentis (who, in the interim, had produced Orca, Flash Gordon, Ragtime, Dune and the Conan movies) and directed by the same director, John Guillerman (who, in the interim, had directed Death on the Nile, Mr. Patman and Sheena). The corrected summary from IMDb: “The giant ape, King Kong, who was shot and fell off the World Trade Center, has been in a coma for 10 years and desperately needs a blood transfusion in order to have an artificial heart implanted. Suddenly, in the rainforest, another gigantic ape is found—this time a female... ” It was Guillerman's last feature film. De Laurentis lives, he's 90 this year, and is still producing movies.

Oh, and the sequel-mania that New Times feared came from the no. 1 movie (and best-picture winner) that year: Rocky. A year later, Star Wars was released, and we were off to the races.

What greeted me when I went to Netflix just now:

New Release For You!
Because you enjoyed:

• Idiocracy
• Swimming with Sharks

We think you'll enjoy:

• Visioneers

I hate this kind of thing. I watched "Idiocracy" but that doesn't mean I enjoyed it. In fact I was horribly disappointed by it. And while I re-watched "Swimming with Sharks" for this article, that doesn't mean I liked it any more than when I saw it in a theater in '95. Which is to say: Not much.

Hollywood makes this kind of mistake all the time. See, for example, this year's backlash against "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," which, yes, many people watched.

I remember before they showed “Jurassic Park” in theaters in the summer of ’93 they gave us a trailer for the upcoming “Flintstones” movie. Upcoming in the summer of ’94. Me in the audience: “Aren’t they getting a little ahead of themselves?”

Now that time-frame is the norm—particularly with journalism. “Now” is so last week, and “next week” is so five minutes ago. On Entertainment Weekly’s latest cover, we get Robert Downey, Jr., Scarlett Johnasson and Mickey Rourke with the headline “THE RETURN OF IRON MAN (Did You Miss Me?)” Miss you? Weren’t you here just last year? Ah, but I guess last year is so five years ago. Next year, when “Iron Man II” opens, is the new now.

Here's part of my review of “Food, Inc.”:

The business of business is to speed up the assembly line, to push things through the system at a faster and faster rate, and in doing so, they’ve created a product that is not the product.

So we get food that is not food and news that is not news. This emphasis on ignoring what is, or has been, in favor of what isn't yet, feels like this to me: We can't stand ourselves.

From their July 17th issue, on the backpage “Bullseye” section, far from the center of the bullseye (Brookie Shields’ eulogy for Michael Jackson):

Jon and Kate spend July 4 together. Remember three weeks ago, when we actually cared about them?

No, I don’t. Because I never did. But I remember when EW did. And that’s the problem with EW. They reflect the fleeting, crappy taste of a generic America rather than commenting on it or attempting to channel it. They flatter whatever’s up and kick whatever’s down. So in the July 17th issue, “Bruno” was no. 1 on its “Must List,” with someone (everyone?) writing, “So dirty we can barely describe it...” In their July 24th issue, after a disappointing opening weekend, this headline: “Did Bruno Go Too Far?”

The subhed of the Must List is “The Top 10 Things We Love This Week.” The emphasis, I guess, is on “This Week.”