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She Seeks to Sanitize

Wednesday, July 18th, 2007

Soylent Green, which you will spoil for someone only if you’re a somewhat inconsiderate jerk, was a profound movie that we don’t discuss very much anymore, saturated with a “Where Are They Now?” cast. So I had to flip open the Internet Movie Database page and skim over some of the trivia.

And I came across a year-and-a-half old comment that I think speaks for many. I find it a little frightening. It offers some evidence that, even though our climate is fine, our soil is wonderful, our food is plentiful and nobody’s paying $150 for a jar of strawberry jam, maybe our “civilization” didn’t survive the twentieth century intact after all. Maybe we only think we did.

Just bear in mind — this is not a lonely voice singing in the wilderness. She’s in great company. And wait for the zinger at the end.

I’ll admit that by the time Heston tells the furniture [kept mistress] to “get on the bed” I kinda started tuning out. I was born in 1969, and I had a feminist father who told me “don’t settle for less than you deserve”. This point in the movie made me stop caring what happened in the rest of it…It’s like the protagonist in any other movie saying halfway throught it “I’m an a**hole, so why should you care about what happens to me?”
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I wasn’t outraged; just bored beyond belief by the time this scene arrived and then only moderately interested afterward.
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I guess that this is a good example of how films can “disaffect” those of us who are so far removed from their origins, that we don’t have emotional connection to it…I have a secret penchant for good science fiction movies. But this disappointed me, and I don’t understand how it’s rated so highly here.

I am not here to trash the movie – I just want some feedback. I welcome your comments and enlightenment – I’m always open to learning something new. [emphasis mine]

Just as a reminder. Feminism, the kind she’s talking about and the kind she seeks to project, isn’t about women getting all they deserve; it’s about controlling authority, and how authority is wielded. It’s about ending the career of anyone in a position of power who doesn’t have the “correct” values, according to some progressive-minded individual or group falling outside his jurisdiction, lacking any stake in the outcome should he fail in his mission.

I think we’d all be rightfully horrified at the thought of a Catholic police commissioner losing interest in an armed-robbery or murder case after finding out the victim of the crime was Jewish or Protestant. This brand of feminism seeks to create exactly that sort of a world. There are good values and bad values; people attach themselves to values, and in so doing become good or bad; and events, like movies, become interesting or boring based on what kind of people they involve. In 2007 we find ourselves constantly debating what kind of “human rights” people have when they may have been guilty of perpetrating the ultimate evil. We need a new word, I think, to describe this kind of progressive feminism. It seeks a disturbingly breezy alliance with this “least among us are entitled to the most” doctrine, while asserting a sort of “those who disagree with us are entitled to the least” counter-doctrine.

I infer from this that according to the counter-doctrine, you’re less deserving of a denial of some made-up on-the-spot “right” if you’re an accessory to terrorism, than if you are caught voting for a pro-life candidate. I don’t know that this is the mindset, but I’d love to see some evidence to the contrary.

Now if you haven’t seen the movie, Charlton Heston’s character of Detective Thorn is a decidedly Byronic hero. He has character flaws, and they aren’t the sort of character flaws a Michael Douglas character might have before he cheats on a loving wife. Thorn’s character flaws are defined for the purpose of telling the story about his wretched environment. From what I can see, there is no other point to all these examples of his thuggish, rogue behavior. If it makes his character more-or-less interesting in some way, that’s a secondary effect. But the primary mission of the first half of the film, is to define the world of 2022 America. Not Robert Thorn.

And the feminist loses interest, ultimately questioning why the movie got a better-than-lukewarm rating regardless of the famous spoiler, or the profound moral involved in the storytelling. Because the antihero failed to properly reflect her personal values.

She might as well reject an entire subgenre of movies. Anything in which the central character takes a pass on attracting the constant adoration of the audience; anything outside the Arthurian mythos. She freely admits that once a story strays outside this narrow sliver, she’s got a tough row to hoe in trying to pay attention. She Can’t Be Told Anything. She’ll come up with the expected personal incredulity, if & when someone else comes along and expresses favorable opinions about the movie.

That’s her. That would be fine with me if it was her and nobody else. I find it scary because she’s not alone. She seeks, first, to disapprove of things. To question favorable ratings given to those targets, regardless of by whom, or from attention to what details, which she herself has failed to take in. She seeks to coerce, to sanitize. And she doesn’t even know it.

Quite to the contrary, she’s laboring under the delusion that she’s “always open to learning something new.”

I think we’re living in that world after all. I think, perhaps, the infamous “scoop trucks” were metaphorical. And now we’ve got them roaming the streets, intangibly, all the time — we don’t even need to wait for Soylent Green Day.

Posted in Movies, Pinheads, Poisoning Individuality and Reason, Poisoning Masculinity | No Comments »

Best Movie One-Liners

Thursday, June 28th, 2007

Well, now the innernets are complete; this was the one thing they were missing.

Not a list of one-liners — no, the web is bursting at the seams with lists of things. But an insightful, semi-psychological analysis of what makes movie one-liners memorable and great. It’s sufficiently thorough enough to nudge up against, and some might even say cross, the line that defines something as being actually interesting.

Many one-liners are bad, if treasured, puns (Arnold put his stamp on “You’re fired” long before Donald did). Others display a wit that we might grudgingly concede (“Barbeque, huh? How do you like your ribs?”). The one-liner is also remarkably versatile. It spans the grandiose (“I’m going to show you God does exist”; “I’m your worst nightmare”) to the minimalist (“Get off my plane”; “Whoah”).

I’m going to have to revisit this later when I have the time and attention span to really do it some justice. There are a lot of things you can do with this, not the least of which is to condemn it for failing to list some treasured artifact. And with a cursory read I’m failing to see “Watch out for your cornhole, bud”, and “Around the survivors a perimeter create”.

Posted in Movies | No Comments »

The Doofus Dad List

Friday, June 15th, 2007

Father’s Day is coming, and it’s time to take note again of the Doofus Dad movie craze.

Very often in polite company, I’ll be compelled to share my distaste for “Doofus Dad” movies with the uninitiated, when I’d much rather not. It usually happens when a new movie comes up in conversation and inquiries are made as to whether or not I’m planning to go. When you’re a parent, that happens a lot.

I maintain that’s one of the reasons we make so many movies for kids in general. A trailer comes on the boob-tube, for a grown-up movie — it’s obviously a cheap production, and there’s little to no sign anybody’s put much creativity or thought into it. So we won’t talk about that. But if it’s a kids’ movie, that all changes. It becomes not an “if” but a “when”…When are you gonna go? After all, it’s a “fun” movie, and what monstrous parent would dare to deprive his little crumb-catchers from having fun?

But I digress. There is a subclass among these moppet-movies that disturbs me in particular. It can be defined by these criteria:

1. There is a father figure
2. He is a source of drama because of his proclivity for doing things the protagonist(s), his child(ren), don’t want him to do.
3. He’s motivated by incongruous values, or else he’s stupid, or a social embarrassment, or some combination of those three.
4. Fifteen minutes before the closing credits he has an “OMIGOD!” moment and resolves to mend his ways.
5. He and his family enjoy a newly-strengthened relationship, reinforced partly by his improved behavior, and partly by his family’s lowered expectations for him.

It’s human nature to object when other people notice something first. YOu know what they say about the frog in the pot of water. It seems when another frog points out “Hey, it’s getting a little warm in here,” denial is always the first chapter in the adventure of education. But of course that doesn’t last long. The examples are incredibly numerous, and not only that, but a casual observer will notice they’ve been produced at an exponential rate lately.

1. About Schmidt (2002)
2. Adam’s Rib (1949)
3. Big Daddy (1999)
4. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the new one) (2005)
5. Cheaper by the Dozen II (2005)
6. Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
7. Cops and Robbersons (1994)
8. Daddy Daycare (2003)
9. Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood (2002)
10. Dolores Claiborne (1995)
11. Elf (2003)
12. Fargo (1996)
13. Father of the Bride: Old one (1950), new one (1991) and sequel (1995)
14. The First Wives Club (1996)
15. Fried Green Tomatoes (1991)
16. Getting Even with Dad (1994)
17. The Godfather, Part III (1991)
18. The Graduate (1967)
19. The Great Santini (1979)
20. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)
21. The Haunted Mansion (2003)
22. Honey I Shrunk the Kids (1989)
23. Hook (1991)
24. House Arrest (1996)
25. The House of the Spirits (1993)
26. The Incredibles (2004)
27. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
28. Jack Frost (1998)
29. Jingle All the Way (1996)
30. Kicking and Screaming (2005)
31. The Little Mermaid (1989)
32. Man of the House (1995)
33. Meet the Parents (2000)
34. Mr. Mom (1983)
35. Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)
36. My Father, The Hero (1994)
37. Multiplicity (1996)
38. National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983)
39. One Hour Photo (2002)
40. Overboard (1987)
41. Papa’s Delicate Condition (1963)
42. Parenthood (1989)
43. Rebound (2005)
44. Robots (2005)
45. The Santa Clause (1994)
46. Say Anything (1989)
47. She’s Out of Control (1989)
48. Shrek II (spoiler) (2004)
49. The Shining (1980)
50. Sky High (2005)
51. Signs (2002)
52. The Spongebob Squarepants Movie (2004)
53. Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983)
54. The Stupids (1996)
55. Superdad (1973)
56. Take Her She’s Mine (1963)
57. Thelma and Louise (1991)
58. True Lies (1994)
59. War of the Words (the new one) (2005)
60. The World According to Garp (1982)

So the most common question I get about it is — I guess this is Chapter Two — “What’s wrong with that?”

Apathy after ignorance, I guess. Well, I have an answer; three, actually.

Before I get into those, however, I should take just a second to point out exactly what is happening here. It has lately become fashionable, I notice, to do what’s called “bashing the corporations.” This is an ancient international pastime that waxes and wanes in American culture as the years roll by. You point out someone who’s trying to make a buck, who already has quite a few bucks, and then you bash them. Usually, you’ll end up bashing a “corporation,” because a corporation is a legally-recognized entity that exists for the purpose of turning a profit.

This makes it rather silly to bellyache when you see them making money, since that is what they are supposed to do. But for people who are too slope-headed to get that, it makes the examples far more numerous.

But anyway, the way that connects back to the main point, is this: Hollywood traditionally escapes this leisure sport. It’s an industry like any other. I say “Hollywood,” and I’m not describing just a bunch of people and businesses in the Los Angeles area, I’m describing the Entertainment industry wherever it may be found. Nobody seems to have harsh words against our television and movie industries for trying to make a buck, even as they denounce oil companies for doing exactly that. I never got that. Tinseltown shows you a movie; Exxon gives you the fuel to go where the movie is playing, so you can see it. Practically, if you’re looking for someone to bash, there’s no difference between the two.

But somehow we turn a blind eye when Hollywood makes money. Which means we tune out when it does morally questionable things to make that money.

All of which means, even though it should be obvious what’s going on here, it still bears pointing out.

Hollywood is financially invested in destroying — not just fatherhood — but authority in general. It turns out that children in a dysfunctional society will be available to watch movies much more often; they will have more cash to spend on those movies. If you’re a kid, and you have a healthy relationship with your parents, the movie theatre will just be one notch on a whole merry-go-round of things you can do together. But if there’s intergenerational discomfort in the household — it seems it’s another weekend, another movie or two.

Well if you were Hollywood, what would you want to have happen? Every time you give the green light on something it’s another couple hundred million bucks, and you don’t know if you’ll make it back or not. So Hollywood wants a dysfunctional society. It needs one. You’ll notice this about Doofus Dad movies if you see enough of them: A lot of the time, one of the big issues the family has with Dad, is he’s promoting competition and self-improvement. The Doofus Dad movie comes along, and illuminates this not only as a pain-in-the-ass, but as something with some vague, poorly-defined capacity for causing lasting psychological issues and emotional distress. By closing credits, the family becomes close-knit again when people lower their expectations not only of their patriarch, but of themselves as well. The whole point to life is to simply…be. And be happy.

Once you invest our entertainment industry with the authority to tell us what life’s all about — what other answer would you expect it to give?

And so we have the Doofus Dad movies. Now, what’s written above doesn’t bother me too much, even with the deleterious social ramifications as our society is lowered into an abyss of anarchy. We’re not supposed to be a buckle-shoe puritan society, after all, and there’s a fine line between the glorious tossing of tea into Boston Harbor, and the complete demolition of all things civilized until we live in a “Lord of the Flies” environment. Those two scenarios are close cousins. There’s a limit to how much good authority is going to do us — this is, after all, a nation started by a tax revolt. I get all that.

But there are three big problems with what is rapidly becoming a tradition of Dad-bashing.

1. It turns friendly, healthy and mature kids into buttholes.
Many among us put vast reserves of energy into being the best dads we can be, but are condemned to lord our benevolent patriarchal energies over divided households. Kids, as any parent knows or will learn quickly, are “wired” to do certain things. They have programming. One of the programs they have, has the function of “cementing” their blood parents into the roles those parents are supposed to have. Kids, it turns out, understand that divorce is a bad thing and have an instinct for wanting to reverse it.

This causes things like — my son, who by nature is very well-mannered, sometimes shuts my girlfriend out when she’s trying to talk to him, and I’m told he’s a complete dickhole to his stepfather sometimes. A quick survey of other children of broken homes will reveal this isn’t entirely conscious behavior. It’s too consistent. Kids are dicks to step-parents; it’s their way. They’re supposed to be that way.

This creates difficulties for all concerned. We have to be committed to our households, but those households are built on the foundations of other households that came before. This is an engineering flaw. We can triumph over it, of course, and the flaw is of our making, not Hollywood’s.

But we need all the help we can get. And it doesn’t help when our kids are taught to regard respect for parental authority as chaos, and rebellion as some perverted kind of order. Not when the purpose of a given outing, on their own or with the parents, is to be entertained.

Towards the end of a childhood, the child becomes a teenager. If peevishness is to be precious, we’re about to get all we can handle. We don’t need more.

2. It preaches an entirely false notion of humility.
I think this is most treacherous. Since Biblical times, storytellers have told stories about people who thought they knew what was going on and what to do, and were benevolently counseled by ongoing events not to take themselves too seriously.

The “Doofus Dad” takes that tradition and sends it ’round a questionable corner: The character who learns not to take himself too seriously, is enshrined in a familial position designed to keep audience members from relating to him too closely. Because of this, it seems we’ve been worshipping humility at the same time as we’ve been rejecting it.

Think on this example: What if you were to greenlight a movie about a “Doofus Mom” or a “Doofus Kid”? That would not turn out well of course…and why not? Because movies are made for women and kids now. You would be asking the audience to consider the lessons of humility in an old-school way — directed toward themselves. That’s what humility used to be. We seem to have watered it down a bit…humility is something for outside parties to practice now.

I perceive that if the art of storytelling were to revert to it’s old ways, and re-inject the “I’m talking to YOU” aspect of humility-stories, our modern generation would find it a little too thick and sour. We’re on guard against taking “oursevles” too seriously, but not as individuals. The ability to laugh at yourself and see your imperfections, it appears, is something the other fellow is supposed to have.

I think that’s exceedingly dangerous. We get to congratulate outselves on being humble, without knowing what that really is.

But I take this last one most personally:

3. It wastes my money.
Because I’m a cheapass. When I drop some good coin for the purpose of being entertained, dammit, that’s what I expect I’m getting.

Especially on Father’s Day!

Posted in Movies, Obsessive Listmaking | 8 Comments »

Womens’ Characters That Should Be Models For Others

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007

Jessica Alba doesn’t understand what she’s doing to herself. Gorgeous body…irritating mannerisms, displayed deliberately, ostensibly to portray someone who can get along without anyone else’s approval…but beneath the surface, craving it. Does this have some staying power? Well, whatever happened to Dark Angel?

Despite a strong fan base (and a second season finale directed by James Cameron), Dark Angel was cancelled in 2002 after just two seasons due to budget costs and low second season ratings.

Not hard to see coming. I predicted it the very first time I heard Alba open her mouth and deliver a line. Being a smartass before the bad guy is really dead. Mistake. Building a television series around it. Bigger mistake. Letting five-times-married misogynist James Cameron have something to do with something about strong female characters: Huge mistake, done over and over again.

Alba, I’m convinced, is a walking reflection of that funny birthday card. The one with a gorgeous woman with a perfect body sunbathing on the beach in a bikini resembling two band-aids and a cork — and the caption is “No matter how hot she is, someone somewhere is tired of her shit.” Would you like to start shacking up with Jessica Alba? Not just sleep with her whenever you want…not just brag to you buddies about shagging Jessica Alba…but listen to her smack wise at you all day, ever day, for months.

People don’t have an apetite for it. Even if they share the agenda of building a generation of female smartasses, you hunger for this stuff only so long. Otherwise, Dark Angel would have had a third season.

Her smartass mouth betrays the problem:

Jessica Alba – ranked No. 2 on this year’s “Hot 100” list by Maxim magazine – has a rebellious side. “I love challenging authority,” the 26-year-old actress tells InStyle in its June issue, on newsstands Friday. “It probably wasn’t easy being my parents. The second somebody says ‘no’ to me is the second I’m going to jump up and say ‘yes!'”
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She’s finally “getting to play characters and dive into things and not just be sort of this version of ‘this girl,'” says Alba, who found she was typecast as “some kind of little tart.”

“Because obviously, if you have a womanly figure, you’re not allowed to have a brain or any idea of the world whatsoever. You just have to be hot and use your body to get ahead.”

Doing it to yourself, sweetie. Doing it to yourself. Speaking for myself…and trust me, I’m labelled as a male chauvinist pig about as often as the next guy, not that I find these accusations to be well-thought-out or anything…I would go so much further out of my way to see what Scarlett Johansson is doing in a new movie, than Ms. Alba. And that’s not a good thing if you are Jessica Alba. Scarlett has a pretty nice body too, and she seems to be a sweet girl. I think if Scarlett and I were the last two people on the planet, I’d stay sane for awhile. I can’t say the same about Alba.

Scarlett Johansson Fear of strong women? Some people would say so. Johansson, however, doesn’t impress me as being submissive or weak. Just like the “Alba Zen” of developing a sudden taste for Coke, when you see I want a Pepsi, is not exactly the definition of strength.

But while Alba’s comments are intellectually vacant, to say nothing of repititious, the question that is opened by her observations is well worth pondering. Mankind has been working on incorporating female characters into drama, for — well, all of recorded history, it turns out. As a science, this remains hit-or-miss. People who have devoted their entire lives to figuring out how to do it, overseeing the investment of hundreds of millions of dollars into it, often know nothing significant beyond what can be observed by someone watching a movie or reading a book for the very first time.

But we do have some patterns. If anyone takes a minute or two to jot them down. So I thought I would.

First, women have a specific role to play in books and movies, and it’s a role men don’t support quite as well. Regardless of our sexual preferences or the agenda we have in mind for women, it seems we all identify with the ladies when they learn things. This is why the most intriguing female characters are never in James Bond films. It isn’t because of chauvinism from a bygone Cold-War era; it’s that in spy movies, the all-important task of figuring out what’s going on is supposed to be done by, well, the spy. Even in situations like those, where men step into the female role of detective, it’s done differently. James Bond steps into a hotel room and the audience expects him to get on a phone and meet his local contact. Instead, he searches for bugs. He finds some. Aha! I didn’t know there would be bugs in the room…James Bond did. He’s one step ahead of the audience. He knew something, the audience did not.

No matter how feminized some of us are, we just don’t tolerate this in female characters for some reason. We learn what they learn…as they learn it.

And it’s okay for the audience to know things the female character does not yet know. It just can’t work the other way.

That’s not to say, however, we want our film ladies to be quivering wallflowers. We do want them to be resourceful in their own way. They should be captured by the bad guy, and usually, if they try to escape, their attempt at escape should fail. You need a hero to escape. Is that sexism? It could be…it might be defended, however, as constructing a strong story. A villain isn’t threatening if he can’t perform the simple task of keeping a captured woman captured. But also, while a woman is captured, she can help develop her own character as well as the character of the villains in proximity. When this communication is coed, it’s more interesting than two guys talking smack at each other. We would rather see boy-girl. So captured the damsel shall remain.

But the best female characters, while in captivity, outsmart the villain in some way. This is a matter of balance. The villain has already done some outsmarting in his own way; she’s his captive, no? So without escaping, she can turn the tables on him. Trick him into revealing something. The result is we’re forced to keep watching, because we don’t know who’s going to “win.” Good drama.

Female characters question the hero’s loyalty, but never his competence. We are programmed to think that if a woman regards a man as weak or ineffectual, she must be right — and if that’s the case, this isn’t a very intriguing hero. We end up looking forward to the end of any scene that flaccid hero is in, so from then on, when the hero is at center stage the audience is being bored. So she views the hero as a maelstrom of unlimited power. Her issues with him, while she has some, have to do with where that power is being applied.

She has an emotional hold on the hero. This is important. If he doesn’t care what she’s doing, what she thinks, what happens to her, how she’s feeling, then she can’t motivate him. The best heroines provide a sense of purpose to a mission that, otherwise, would be without purpose. They define a hero who is motivated out of love, and we are more captivated with that hero than with any other.

Also, she should place pressure on the hero. She should be good at what she does, and in this way impose a necessity on him to prove things. She should offer him friendly competition. In short — she should use a number of tools to make him better than what he would otherwise be.

We are somewhat more intrigued by a female rebel breaking rules, and producing results that would have been unrealized had protocol been followed — than masculine figures doing the same thing. This is why the “cop movie” was mostly a fad of the 1980’s. You know the one. A rebel cop, or duo of black-cop-white-cop, breaks all the rules, ends up suspended, after being constantly yelled at by his “Lieutenant,” who in turn was almost always portly and black. Started with Dirty Harry, ended with Lethal Weapon. The Byronic hero, who subjects himself to endless torment because he just can’t stay within the lines, begins to bore us after awhile. Not so with the ladies who do the same thing. There is the additional angle that they can use their feminine charms to get out of trouble, and we never know how well this will work for them. A guy breaks a rule, we expect he’ll get his come-uppins…through someone yelling, at least. Gets boring after awhile.

And of course, no primary character should do what is expected of them all the time. So a female character should break some rules.

We are always fascinated, I suspect, when a female knows how to do things spectacularly well. It’s often a big help when the hero knows what to do, how to do it, and his plan involves about thirty steps…and before he can get started, the heroine comes along and gets it all wrapped up in one or two.

There are quite a few things a woman should not do. There is, for example, the slasher-film tango, the big bundle of physical things a woman does right before she is snuffed. Taking long sultry showers, walking backwards, closing medicine cabinet doors and moaning “Is that you?” and “It’s not funny anymore!” In 2007, this is all beyond tiresome. And of course she should never, ever, have arguments with the hero about whether she’s coming with him or not.

Being hysterical, assuming there was ever an audience for this, I’d say has just about run its course. Elegant storytelling means the audience knows what to feel. Do that job right, and we won’t need a walking cue card.

I’ve personally never cared for women being brainwashed. Someone somewhere must have been endlessly fascinated with this, perhaps sexually. Most recently we had Dark Phoenix in X-Men III, and the trend started…sometime in the sixties. The Star Trek episodes where Captain Kirk had to smack one of his female Lieutenants across the face, knocking her out instantly of course, so that she’d stop being hysterical and they could all leave the doomed planet before it exploded…or the monster…or whatever. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, in whch Blofeld sought to destroy the entire world’s agricultural products through an army of hypnotized, brainwashed women. Somehow, the women lose control of their intellectual faculties. This has strong appeal for someone somewhere. Not for me.

The women who have captured our attention, have never limited themselves to sitting around waiting to be rescued. Victims are boring.

Compelling female characters do not cheat. It compromises the hero’s character. They may cheat on the villain, but even that diminishes the woman’s character. They aren’t remembered later. Look at poor Diane Lane; everybody knows her name, but nobody can remember the name of any character she played. Her characters are almost always married, and straying outside. People find this titillating, but they don’t respect it.

The female characters who have spoken loudest, to me…

1. Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

What a stroke of brilliance it was to give her a “super power,” which was the endless capacity for imbibing alcohol without getting tanked. It starts out as a seemingly useless skill, and she ends up working it into an escape plan. Perfect. She respected her hero, didn’t entirely trust him, overcame a broken heart but still carried herself with confidence. Easily the greatest female movie character of all time.

2. ElastiGirl (Holly Hunter) in The Incredibles (2004)

The movie is divided cleanly into two segments, in the first of which Mrs. Incredible has to find out what Mr. Incredible is doing, and after that they unite in a common cause. She loses a point for arguing with her leading man about whether she’s coming with him or not. Other than that, everything a strong female should be. Not sure about what’s going on — until she is — and then she quickly re-solidifies the union with her husband and helps to save the day. And what a stunning rear end. In the right mood, I’d rather stare at her than Lara Croft.

3. Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged (Book) (1957)

Probably the best execution of “heroine trying to figure out what’s going on” in literary history. She’s interested in things other women find vulgar, bored by things that are supposed to define the whole world for other women, and she’s not the least bit concerned about any of it. Confidence personified.

4. Helen Tasker (Jamie Lee Curtis) in True Lies (1994)

Her issues with trusting her husband, after finding out he’s been a spy since two years before marrying her without telling her, define the central storyline for the entire movie. She looks amazing in her undies. This is metaphorical; just as even Jamie Lee Curtis’ fans were surprised about how she still looked and what she could do, this reflected Harry Tasker’s surprise at what his wife could do. A metaphor involving the actress herself, what an amazing achievement and how difficult it must have been. And it’s the brainchild of the guy who did Dark Angel. James, why can you do it some of the time but not all of the time?

5. Mary MacGregor (Jessica Lange) in Rob Roy (1995)

She was responsible for starting the chain reaction that would lead to good finally winning out over evil. She loses a point for doing it by going blubbering to a big powerful man, but it’s a very small point she lost. This was all the power a woman of her station would have in the young British Union. But she gets it back again by never, ever arguing with her husband about whether she was coming with him. She argued, instead, about whether he was going at all. Best of all, she agreed with him about his principles, admired him for having them, and simply disagreed about how far he would take them because she didn’t want him to die.

Simply put, the perfect movie wife. Perfectly capable of managing day-to-day without her spouse — but decidedly incomplete.

6. Holly Gennero McLane (Bonnie Bedelia) in Die Hard (1988)

Holly McLane has all of the ingredients. She’s in love with her husband, she respects him as a potent, powerful fighting force, she doesn’t trust him entirely, she doesn’t think highly of the way he does things, she finds him frustrating and irritating. She gets kidnapped. She outsmarts the bad guys, in her own way. She figures out what’s going on and the audience figures it out with her. The only thing she takes a pass on is getting in on some of the action. But she covers that, too, in the last couple of minutes in the movie by slugging that reporter.

7. Caroline “Ma” Ingalls (Karen Grassle) in Little House on the Prairie (TV) (1974-83)

She thinks for herself. But she’s motivated by exactly the same goals as her husband. If she thinks she has a need to stop what she’s doing and question him, she will.

8. Kay Adams (Dianne Keaton) in The Godfather (1972)

Tragically, here we have a woman with some good reason to question what her man was doing. But she knew Michael was lying. He really did intend to make the Corleone family legitimate, but he was doomed to fail. She probably knew this better than he did. She’s a critical pillar in the story, and she makes it work.

9. Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) in Fargo (1996)

What a woman! She faces down the bad guy as he is feeding his partner’s body into a woodchipper. Sees to it that justice is done, in her third trimester, without breaking her water. Comes home, snuggles up to her husband, and points out that his three-cent postage stamp is going to be just as important as any other. That is just so touching in it’s own way.

10. Ophelia (Jamie Lee Curtis) in Trading Places (1983)

Another one played by Curtis, how interesting. She’s easy on the eyes whether she’s from Austria, or Sweden, or just plain doesn’t know herself. She’s got a plan for making it, with or without Dan Akroyd. Akroyd’s character isn’t nearly as resourceful. But she goes with his plan, and in the end they both end up far wealthier than either of them would have been alone. Well, with Eddie Murphy’s help, but the formula is there. And best of all, in the very last scene of the movie, all the guys are fully clothed and the women are wearing next to nothing, as the Good Lord intended.

11. Evelyn Cross Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) in Chinatown (1974)

The only one on my list who knows something the audience doesn’t. Thanks to Faye Dunaway’s talents, we just can’t stop watching her, and we’re constantly wondering what will happen next until the very end of the movie.

12. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in Alien (1979)

She’s not there to yell at people or to act tough, she’s there to solve a puzzle. There’s the magic formula again: What she knows, the audience knows, what remains a mystery to us, is a mystery to her too. If she was a man, it wouldn’t work nearly as well. Well, I suppose Roy Scheider did the same thing when he faced off against the mechanical shark. This could be thought of as Ridley Scott’s answer to that. It works. The feminine mystique adds more depth than the outer space setting and the unseen enemy from another planet.

13. Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) in X-Files (TV) (1993-2002)

The bitch is always wrong, and in ten seasons she never learns to shut her mouth. “But Muuuuuulllder!!! I can’t believe you think these cows were eviscerated by beings from another planet, there’s no eeeevvvvvviiiiidence!!!” Ugh. He’s Mulder. He read the script. Just go with it.

But give her a lot of credit. It was much more fun to watch these two, than Jack Webb and Harry Morgan. And it wasn’t because of the glowing creature emerging at midnight from the swamp, or the government conspiracies. It was because she was a beautiful, intriguing, intelligent, complex woman.

14. Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) in Silence of the Lambs (1991)

There we go again. A woman applies some critical-thinking skills to the problem at hand, and we feel compelled to watch her do it. Sexual preference doesn’t matter, everyone likes to watch a woman solve a puzzle. We feel what she feels. A man can’t pull it off as well. But Clarice is no ordinary woman. She’s got scars from her past, she’s bright, energetic, capable, independent, married to her job. She’s a whole new character. Dented and flawed. The Byronic hero in female form. Somehow, it works.

15. Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in Terminator (1984)

The movie starts, she has no clue what is going on. The weird stuff starts happening, she has no clue who she can trust. After building the pipe bombs with Kyle Reese, she’s still somewhat clueless about what she’s fighting. But she learns to be resourceful, and figures out how to lower the press on the evil crawling metal skeleton. She is the best embodiment of Joseph Campbell’s “Hero with a Thousand Faces.”

16. Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) in 300 (2007)

Now, this was interesting. She saw Leonidas off to war, bidding him to come back home again carrying his shield, or on it. It was up to him to fight the physical battle, and face down Xerxes himself, but back at home she was left to confront an enemy her husband was spared: The Fifth Column. In this way, the masculine energies were leveraged against Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, while the feminine mystique was positioned opposite Harry Reid and Howard Dean. A story for our times.

17. Adrian Pennino (Talia Shire) in Rocky (1976)

Okay, she is made great through a single line, and for that the bell gets most of the credit. But you aren’t human if you don’t get chills when she says, simply, “win.” That’s the job: He is transformed into something far greater than what he would be without her.

18. Charlotte Seccombe (Lynn Redgrave) in Centennial (TV) (1978-79)

She knows how to get her man away from the filthy clutches of Clemma Zendt. And it’s a delicious scene, which would have failed to blossom with the talents of a lesser actress — like Jessica Alba for example. You don’t want to mess around with Charlotte.

Those are all the ones I can think of for now. But you see, the point is this is something much more complicated than saying “yes” when someone else says “no.” And perhaps it’s an unfair burden that the male characters don’t have to share; the females have to define what they’re all about, at the same time as they do the same for other characters.

I think the gals have the long end of the stick on this one, though. It takes much more talented writing in order to use what they have to offer, properly. And once this is done, you have a kick-ass story. All those other staples, like dizzying photography or spellbinding music, you can pitch back if you want.

Now, try this. Go through a list of cream-of-the-crop movies. The innernets are covered with lists like these…Star Wars and Godfather and Shawshank Redemption always at the top. You will find — there are a whole bunch of movies that have no women. War movies. And some others…

This is not to say female character make a movie bad. They make the movie more challenging to make. Those best-of-the-best, that have no women in them as primary characters, they simply sidestepped the challenge. And you’re going to find the photography in those movies is breathtaking. Because it has to be. The music is original. And it just blows you away. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be seeing the movie on a top-one-hundred list.

Characters can contribute enough to make that expandable. Coed, not male-only. If the female characters are complex, and walk that fine balance between dependence and independence. Ditzy wallflowers don’t get the job done. And neither do smartass attention-whore rebels. For this, you need works of art, not tiresome tropes.

And I’m afraid, due to vapid sentiments given voice by Ms. Alba, this is an art that is gradually being lost. Too many more “Gotta Make A Boat Payment” movies, with cookie-cutter female characters, and the females are going to be lowered into yet another cultural malaise.

And we all know what happens then. Ho hum…BLAME THE MEN…must be rampant sexism out there.

Well, I’m not on board with any of that, so don’t send any of the blame my way when the time comes. And I hope it doesn’t get that far, because now that movie tickets are north of the ten dollar mark, I haven’t got much patience for crappy movies anymore.

Posted in Classy Women, Movies, Obsessive Listmaking | 1 Comment »

Whedon’s Rules

Saturday, May 12th, 2007

A few months back I had expressed some of my regrets about picking on poor Joss Whedon. Whedon has accomplished some amazing things, and it’s a mystery to me why I don’t genuinely like any of them. I know I probably should. He’s got this cool post-apocalyptic world going on full of dusty old used-junk spaceships, interesting characters…I just can’t watch it. Ten minutes of it bores me to tears. And I don’t know why. This is true of all of Whedon’s work that has been brought to my attention. There’s something about it that just puts me in a coma. If I don’t know something came from him, I can figure it out pretty quick, and I don’t consciously know what tips me off.

So I went to Gamestop and grabbed a bunch of three-for-price-of-two used movies, and made sure Serenity was in there. I had heard nothing but good things about it, after all. And it is good, in it’s own way.

But it puts me to sleep. Quickly.

And I think I know why. Whedon, it turns out, has some rules that he observes very carefully. Whether they are good rules or bad rules depends on the viewpoint of the person watching. But in my book, they’re bad rules. And I can’t help but get the feeling that if every carbon-based life form on this planet agreed with me, And Whedon came to figure this out, he’d still want to keep all of them.

As near as I can figure, the rules are these…and I should disclaim, a lot of them are absolutes and I don’t know if they have been observed absolutely because I’m a damn sight far away from an exhaustive scholar of Whedon material. But this lock-step observation of these twelve rules, seems to cause me a lot of boredom very quickly, like in ten minutes or less. So they don’t have to be observed very tightly at all in order to sabotage everything. It’s sad, in a way, when George Lucas can tell a story better than you even with that crappy Lucas dialog, but let’s face facts: First time I saw any given chapter of the Star Wars saga, I had no idea what was going to happen next and it made the film a pure delight. With Serenity, I’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s going to happen next, even though I know far less about what’s going on, and don’t particularly care what’s going to happen to these carefully-developed characters. It’s just plain bad story-telling.

1. Character over story. It’s okay to chew up massive amounts of footage defining the characters, and nothing else. Heroes hold meetings to figure out what to do, but what is done cannot be the result of new ideas, compromise or negotiation; it is always the unaltered, undiluted, uncompromised vision of whoever “won.” Nobody ever, ever, ever yields half-way because that would be confusing.
2. It’s far more important for a line to be clever than for it to be convincing.
3. The audience should have no uncertainty whatsoever about who’s right and who’s wrong. It is preferable that the designated antagonist do some stuttering to remove all doubt. This is an attribute of the character. Whoever is wrong about something, can’t be right about something else later. That would be confusing.
4. When men and women share a scene, any revelations meaningful to the story must be delivered by the woman.
5. Men must not be too threatening. The largest man must be no bigger than 5’10” and 170 pounds. Facial hair is for bad guys, and even on them it must be immaculately groomed. A five o’clock shadow is a metaphor for some deep, serious character flaw. This, too, is an attribute of the character. Whoever is clean-shaven at one time can’t be grizzled later, and vice-versa.
6. The telling-off is an all-important ceremony. At no time can fifteen minutes pass by without someone telling someone off. Women can tell women off, men can tell men off, women can tell men off, but it is never, ever, ever appropriate for men to tell women off. Women may implore men to calm down, men may not implore women to calm down because that might be threatening. See Rule #5. Calming-down is just as important as telling-off. Nobody is allowed to tell anyone else to calm down, without extending the right hand, opening it broadly, pointing the palm down to the floor, and shaking it while the left hand rests on the left hip.
7. Fight scenes can have action, but no suspense. There should be a designated victor. The victor sustains no blows, not even a scratch, unless he or she possesses some mystical power that makes physical injury impossible or trivial. The victor may be damaged, wounded, bleeding at the end of the fight — in fact, he/she must show some damage somewhere — but it is prohibited for this to have actually come from anywhere. Think of Chris Penn’s demise in Reservoir Dogs. If the story calls for the other guy to throw the first punch and start the fight, which is usually the case, this first punch must miss.
8. Amnesia, truth serum, alternative realities, brainwashing, and other forms of loss of mental control are indispensible story-building tools. Because they might be considered “abuse,” they are always inflicted on women, never on men. But refer back to Rule #6 — if a woman who cannot trust her own senses is in an argument with a man who can trust his, the man must yield.
9. Character flaws are reserved for men. Women do not have flaws; they have tragedies that took place from which they are continually trying to recover. They are never quite finished with this.
10. Nothing may happen quickly. All scenes, save for cut-scenes, must last two minutes or more. Three minutes is even better.
11. When the script calls for someone to interrupt someone else, it should be completely obvious. Whoever got interrupted, should yield immediately even if the line used to do the interrupting, meanders laboriously and awkwardly.
12. Whatever looks like a good idea at one point in the story, has to stay that way. The heroes cannot be deceived or betrayed, unless mannerisms and speech inflections are used to clue the audience in from the get-go that this is what is about to happen.

Posted in Movies, Obsessive Listmaking | No Comments »

What I Learned From Casino Royale

Monday, April 30th, 2007

For this weekend, my son’s obsession was Casino Royale which, after the very first viewing at the real-live theater, he had previously condemned as “kind of boring for a Bond movie.” Having skimmed through a sampling of the previous twenty installments, he seems to have come to the conclusion that this rebooted Bond is far more interesting and substantial. After repeat viewings, the story begins to make sense and kind of grows on you. I agree.

There is a reason why it’s taken over half a century to put this on the movie screen properly, so all the excitement of stealing money from bad guys in a card game can be captured in full. It’s got to be a very tough thing to do.

I consider myself to be an authority now — when ten-year-old boys like something, they don’t want to see it just once. With the weekend now gone, I could probably recite every line in the movie, and here is what I learned from watching it. Warning, some could be considered spoilers:

1. If it’s a place you need to film with a surveillance camera, don’t store propane there.
2. If the bitch is good-lookin’, she’s ALWAYS got a boyfriend.
3. The CIA doesn’t need the money.
4. Keep track of the metal suitcase.
5. If M thinks you’re bent, she’ll send a double-oh after you. You just might be the second kill.
6. If the first step of your interrogation is the removal of testicular support, just stop everything right there and tell him what he wants to know.
7. Don’t bet against the market.
8. Double-oh agents dress appropriately for action adventures, until they get betrayed by their girlfriends. After that they wear suits and silk ties all the time.
9. Money isn’t as important as knowing who to trust.
10. Trust no one (which is somehow reconciliable with the above?).
11. Land Rovers suck. Drive Ford.
12. Don’t get grouchy with your wife just because you lost your car and all your money in a game.
13. Send text messages through a network that DOESN’T track your GPS location. And if you fall for this once, don’t do it again or you might lose a kneecap.
14. Don’t let anyone know where you keep your gun.
15. When your new girlfriend’s cell phone is ringing constantly, find out why.
16. Don’t leave your drink unattended when you’re playing for millions of dollars.
17. Don’t hide from a man with a gun, in a building that’s being kept afloat by pressurized air pontoons.
18. Shoot the camera first. They don’t care what you do, they care what you’re filmed doing.
19. Double-oh operatives don’t have to breathe hard after sprinting, even endlessly. But their life expectancies are very, very short.
20. Don’t break into the boss’ house.
21. Don’t gamble in the futures market when your customer demands “complete security,” because a hundred millions dollars buys a really, really big knife.
22. Just because she’s guilty, doesn’t mean he’s innocent.
23. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. But don’t forget to watch the friends.
24. Double-check the account number before the funds are transferred.
25. Just because he’s younger and thinner than you doesn’t mean he’s a valet.

Posted in Movies, Obsessive Listmaking | 1 Comment »

As a Movie Character

Sunday, April 29th, 2007

As a movie character, I promise to…

1. Reject any assigned phone number for my house or cell phone that does not begin with 555.
2. Leave the keys in the ignition of whatever I own. All the time, no matter what.
3. If the lights go out and I try to figure out why, I will always walk backwards. If female and good-looking, I will first take a long slow shower.
4. I will not be slowed down by a punch to the nose, or even by a kick in the face. I will keep swinging, virtually begging for more. Even if precariously balancing on a thin girder a thousand feet above the sidewalk.
5. However, if someone gives me a good karate chop to the back or the neck, I faint immediately and stay asleep for hours.
6. As a man, I will scold my female colleague to go home. As a woman, I will insist on tagging along with those four timeless magic words, “I’m going with you!”
7. I will meet all my work obligations instead of flaking out to go to my kid’s baseball game or school play, but later confess to being a big jerk and resolving to be much flakier from now on, while tear-jerking music plays softly in the background.
8. If my wife sleeps with someone else, I will begin a vigorous soul-searching session to figure out what I did to make her want to.
9. Listen unquestioningly to the words of self-appointed amateur psychologists who know nothing about me, as they describe my most intimate personal problems and what to do about them, especially if they’re half my age and good-looking.
10. Use incredibly lame passwords on my computer, and keep obvious visual clues to said passwords within line-of-sight.

Update:
The FARKLibs were generous enough to help tack on the following…
11. I promise to get a parking spot in front of whatever building I need to be in, regardless of time or day or how busy the area is.
12. I promise never to actually pay for anything.
13. I promise to talk to my children about my sexual antics as casually as my friends.
14. I will keep my gun holstered while checking to see if my nemesis is dead.
15. I will spend an inordinate amount of time explaining the happenings of the last two hours to my victim before I kill him.
16. I won’t say hello, when I begin telephone conversations, and I won’t say goodbye when they’re over.
17. I promise to leave the headlights on when I get out of car.
18. I promise to wear my tightest and most revealing clothes at all times, regardless of how practical or impractical they may be for the task at hand
19. I will also never wear the same outfit twice, unless it’s a uniform, in which case I will wear it nonstop
20. Also, should my clothing ever be torn or ripped, it will tear or rip in such a way as to bare nothing but my toned midriff, shoulders, or thighs.
21. If a friend goes missing, I will insist that everyone split up to look for them.
22. If in a gun fight, I will insist on a perfect headshot rather than targeting any body part in view. If there is a car between us, I will peek over the top rather than looking underneath and shooting my opponent in the ankle.
23. I promise to win the big game on some crazy, hare-brained, million-to-one play rather than skill.

Posted in Movies, Obsessive Listmaking | 1 Comment »

What I Learned From Porn

Monday, April 23rd, 2007

Posted in Glad I Learned About This, Movies, Obsessive Listmaking | No Comments »

Omigaw-Free

Saturday, April 21st, 2007

I’m afraid Mr. Hasson has completely lost me.

He started off on a high note, making a point I know to be sensible because I agree with it: Things that are a certain way, have no need to announce they are a certain way. So he doesn’t like 300 because the men are all strutting around communicating to the audience how manly they are, by acting manly. The “doth protest too much” thing.

Okay, it’s a fair point…not without its share of problems. For starters, how come the “doth protest too much” cudgel is only swung around with regard to manly men? If I explore the Storytellers blog for a few minutes will I find another screed about…Rosie O’Donnell being outspoken and having opinions? How about Bill Clinton being compassionate, or Hillary being intelligent and strong-willed? Right off the top of my head, there are three loudmouths not known for missing opportunities to demonstrate to everybody that they are a certain thing — whose sense of purpose to the rest of us, would be forever lost if it was to be demonstrated they were something else.

But he’s a storyteller. So how about…Raymond on “Everybody Loves Raymond” being an insecure, cowardly, incompetent boob? Hey — there’s twenty-two minutes per episode, spend ’em wisely. And the minutes are spent defining the character attributes of this guy who, having sat through the episodes already, I already know to be that way. Got anything to say about that Mr. Hasson?

Another problem with that point. It simply isn’t enough to make a movie bad. That’s just a simple fact. Characters are defined a certain way, and certain devices are deployed in order to inform me that these characters have these traits. If I don’t like the device — and I very often don’t, in movies nowadays — the story is still advanced, I still have an understanding of what this character is supposed to be. It may be an entirely legitimate nitpick, but a nitpick is what it is. Nothing more significant than that.

But then we spiral downward…

The movie could so easily have been good. Here are a few options:

The movie could have been about what a hero is. We would have seen how real men become real heroes, by showing us how much they overcome hardships and sacrifice. And then, as the plot progressed, and as the heroes overcame unbelievable obstacles, they would actually achieve superhuman feats. There really have been superhuman feats in history – even in the last few decades – in which real people did the impossible. But if you don’t show real people doing something real to achieve something heroic, then you’re not showing heroes. Had the movie been done this way, it would have been a true epic yarn about heroism.

I’m taking it as a given that his point is not “why, oh why, does nobody ever take the initiative and do this.” What he wants carried out here has already been done, here and here and here and here and here and many other places as well. What is his point, that these things are never done and he wishes they were? Surely it can’t be that. So many other examples I’ve not mentioned. This is where he’s lost me. What’s his beef?

The movie could just as easily have been about the bad side of being heroic. There are times in human history in which it became necessary for a group of good men to become inhuman monsters, efficiently programmed with the fight and nothing more. Although people actually do this to survive, once it is done, it cannot be easily reversed. In addition, if you release the testosterone monster in men and make it all-important, there would be an immediate price to pay (more in-house violence, rape, and so on). Had the movie been done this way, it would have punched its audience in the gut.

…which was also done before, here and here and here and here and here.

The movie could have been an examination of what it is to be a man lost to war. It would have taken a normal man, and seen how each human part of him must be put aside so that the fighting machine can exist. Had the movie been done this way, it would have been tragic.

And that’s been explored with a great deal of exuberance, here and here and here. The hero dissolving into a reflection of the very thing he sought to defeat, I daresay, is one of the oldest memes in storytelling history. It has no problem with underexposure or even with wearing out it’s welcome anytime soon.

The movie could have been about real men who had left real lives behind, and then were killed on the battlefield.

Oh, pul-leaze. The young puppy-faced corporal who turns to his buddy, flips open a locket and yells over the mortar explosions, “That’s Louise! She’s the girl I’m gonna marry just as soon as I get home!” was a tired old saw when my Dad was taking my Mom out to the movies, over fifty years ago. It’s like being the guy in the red shirt beaming down to the planet with Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Some young kid is foolish enough to tell his squadmembers about a telegram relaying the happy news of his wife’s new pregnancy…you crack open a cold one. Just try and shotgun it while the kid’s still breathing. You probably can’t. Kid might as well have dug his own grave, hopped inside and pulled the dirt down over him. Announcing your wife’s pregnancy in a war movie is the dumbest thing you can do if you want to live. It’s like being in a horror slasher-flick and yelling “I’ll be right back!”

The movie could have been about how men choose how to die. Knowing they would lose if they fought and lose if they didn’t fight, real decisions would have to be made. Had the movie been done this way, it would… well, it would have been a great movie.

I hate to keep picking on you, but Lordy this is getting tiresome. It’s like that time they re-designed Superman’s costume and started taking away some of his powers and giving him other ones…why not just make a new superhero? Why don’t you write your own movie? We have this…and if you ask me, it was ruined because it was way to predictable. There is this, which completes a mutually-destructive coupling because those two movies were released the same summer, were about the same thing, and surely brought in less revenue because of the unfortunate timing. That pairing was not only bad for business, it lifted the lid on the absolute lack of creativity going on in Hollywood. Now that 300 has fixed that, here you are saying you want more of the same-ol’ same-ol’. Well, this certainly counts, and so do a bazillion James Bond movies and Star Trek episodes. C’mon.

The movie could have been about the power of women over men. If the queen had sent the king to a war he didn’t want to go to using her womanly wiles, that would have made a good movie, too.

Okay, I think now we’re getting to the bottom of things.

300 Guy Hasson, if I’m understanding him correctly, is not demanding a greater supply of imagination, creativity, variety and good storytelling; he’s asking for less of these things. A tough, hardy, intelligent, skilled and disciplined band of brothers have been portrayed as intrinsically understanding the most noble course of action, and then taking it upon themselves to hunker down and get it done. They laid down their lives and endured agonizing death in order to protect the weaker — and at the moment the final arrows hit, they were exactly what they were when the opening credits rolled by. No transformation. No loss of innocence. No “Omigaw, I just screwed up.” No “Omigaw, I was sure I’d make it back again.” No “Omigaw, I became what I went to fight.” Complete omigaw-free. Just manly men in the purest sense, doing what manly men do, understanding from start to finish what that all entails.

It’s too much. Where’s the petulant, pissy snarking at the manly-man? I’m just so used to seeing it, it seems to be missing here.

This is very telling. As the box office performance of 300 shows, we’re living now in an age where people are hungry for heroes. Resourceful, capable men who can look at something bad going down, and say to themselves — if I do nothing, X will happen, and if I do something Y will happen even though I’ll get hurt. X simply cannot be, so in we go.

We’re pretty evenly divided on this thing. The audience eats it up and begs for seconds, and the critics are rolling their eyes, waiting for the subject to be changed.

I don’t really care which side eventually prevails. Movies come out every year, and if I don’t like them I don’t pay to see them. But I’m endlessly fascinated with people who are hostile toward, and recoil with disgust from, manliness. Courage — untempered by ironics surprises later on that shake all the moral messages to the core. Resourcefulness. Ability. Individuality. Good old-fashioned rugged determination to protect those incapable of protecting themselves, and if possible to vanquish evil so it can never see the light of day again.

What is so wrong about that? Why does it rub so many people the wrong way? Honest to Pete, I’d really like to know.

Posted in Movies, Pinheads, Poisoning Masculinity | 3 Comments »

Qui-Gon Jinn: Worst Jedi Ever

Sunday, April 15th, 2007

Greenlit on FARK.

Update: Oh dear Lord. I dished out a snarky snippet about Obi-Wan being worse. You would have thought I’d slaughtered a Jedi temple chock-full of younglings or something.

It’s Tweak-A-Geek Sunday, I guess.

Posted in Glad I Learned About This, Movies | No Comments »

Yes, Screwed We Are

Sunday, April 15th, 2007

All you blogger guys stop bitching about Imus now, it’s Sunday.

Came across this when my son had a question about the Throne Room scene in Return of the Jedi. I don’t even remember what the question was or what I was trying to find. It’s a thread, in which a bunch of Star Wars geeks…like I am one to talk…take some of the most stale, awkward dialog from the old trilogy and give it a twist.

It’s funny about half of the time. Maybe less if your standards are higher, but still it’s pretty good considering it goes on for 117 pages.

Posted in Glad I Learned About This, Movies | No Comments »

Nerd Crushes

Thursday, April 12th, 2007

Nerd Crush This seems to be one of Maxim Magazine’s better lists. I agree with just about all the ladies in it, even the cartoon ones…just about. And the ones I don’t like, I can certainly see how someone else would.

Raquel Welch’s daughter from Coccoon isn’t in there anywhere though…neither is Princess Ardala. Other than that and a few Star Trek guest stars, maybe a Bond babe or two, it looks pretty complete. Oh…and it’s also missing Daisy Duke. And Velma Dinkley.

Gee now that I think about it some more, it’s got more holes than swiss cheese. Hey — does this mean I’m cool?

Posted in Glad I Learned About This, Movies, Obsessive Listmaking | 2 Comments »

Things Computers Can Do in Movies

Wednesday, April 11th, 2007

Quite a few things, actually.

14. You may bypass “PERMISSION DENIED” message by using the “OVERRIDE” function. (See “Demolition Man”.)
:
20. Computers can interface with any other computer regardless of the manufacturer or galaxy where it originated. (See “Independence Day”.)
:
27. Searches on the internet will always return what you are looking for no matter how vague your keywords are. (See “Mission Impossible”, Tom Cruise searches with keywords like “file” and “computer” and 3 results are returned.)

They should have said something about the people. If you are a bad guy with plans for world domination, or are just super-secretive and suspicious by nature, or are hiding a deep dark terrible secret, your home computer password is always…one word. Someone’s given name. And whoever belongs to that name, you’ve got a picture of them on the desk right next to the computer, or a momento of that person hanging prominently on the wall.

And if you’ve been working with computers for awhile, you can “crack a 128-bit encryption envelope” by thinking really hard. Also, if you’re that clever with the computers, you can only engage in competent hand-to-hand combat, pistol marksmanship, and look really sexy if you are female. If you’re a dude you have to look like you haven’t showered since the sixth grade, you must wear glasses, and you leave that cool athletic stuff to some other dude who in turn gets to sleep with all the women. Oh and Mister Gorgeous, wherever the computer is not concerned, always knows exactly what to do. He just needs you to get that envelope cracked.

Posted in Glad I Learned About This, Movies, Obsessive Listmaking | 2 Comments »

Next Year’s Classic?

Wednesday, April 4th, 2007

Great idea. Lots of ways to possibly screw it up, but still a great idea.

They want to remake Logan’s Run.

If memory serves, Logan’s Run had two hawttie guys and one hawttie gal. I hope the hawttie guys look freakin’ different so I can tell what’s going on. You’ll recall that according to the story, nobody over thirty has any business…being. So we have better-than-even odds the producers will see this as an opportunity to get work for the tender puppy-faced set of 23-year-olds, which of course are hurting for it. Yeah, I mean that sarcastically.

Creek A rational ponderance of the evidence says this will suck. They’re going to find three people with big names, no more than 25 years good, and they’re going to try to pull in the ten-to-fourteen year old little girls with some non-threatening-looking men. Super-duper short haircuts. Eyebrow tweazing. No talking in deep voices or low tones. Jessica VI, similarly, will be played by a girl with a hot bod but otherwise non-threatening. Horrible acting. Something like Jessica Alba minus ten years.

And one of my favorite peeves, the two fellas will be groomed the same and costumed the same and have the same facial structure and physique, so that during a nighttime scene you can’t tell who’s who or what’s going on.

Logan’s Run is all about the classic dystopian society — so throw in a few George Bush references, all the better to make sure you’re invited to the next Hollywood wine-and-cheese party, and you’ve got a crappy movie.

Now here’s what I’d do.

Logan is played by a 40-year-old guy. Because I’m 40. I know, the story says he can’t be older than thirty…but hell’s bells, Hollywood shaves ten years off an actor’s age all the time. And our faces have the lines that rugged adventurous men are supposed to have. We can glower with our eyebrows. We got crinkles by our eyes that make us look like we know something you don’t…which is generally the case. Look at Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Forty-year-old guy. There ya go.

Francis is completely different. From half a mile away, you can tell him apart from Logan. Too much to ask? If Logan has short hair, Francis has long hair.

And they both have facial hair and a real pair of eyebrows. When either one of them glower at you, you get scared. The twelve-year-old girls will just have to find a way to cope.

Jessica VI? Easy. Scaaarrrrlllleeetttttt………

Easy on the eyes, and she knows how to act. Look no further.

Posted in Movies | No Comments »

On 300

Wednesday, March 21st, 2007

I thought it was highly amusing when I found this page, in which a thread was created by someone who wondered openly if 300 was a pro-war propaganda film. The respondents turned on this person like wolves on a wounded rabbit or something.

Thus it is proven. You can make a pro-war propaganda film, and fool people into thinking it’s something else.

Yeah, it’s based on a comic book from 1998. I get that. But c’mon…take a look…mild spoilers below. Highlight to read.

Back in Sparta, Queen Gorgo, upon the advice of a councilman, attempts to enlist the influential Theron to help her persuade the Spartan council to send reinforcements to Leonidas. Theron agrees to help, but demands that Gorgo sleep with him; Gorgo reluctantly assents…Queen Gorgo appears in front of the council, but is not supported by Theron, who furthermore accuses her of adultery. The Queen, enraged at this betrayal, manages to kill him by snatching a sword from a nearby soldier. Persian coins fall from Theron’s purse, and the Council denounces him as a traitor and unites against Persia.

Hello? Send reinforcements to help Leonidas? The corrupt politician confronts Gorgo with the ultimatum that she can’t get backing from the, ahem, “council” unless he gives the green light…gets what he wants…turns against her, and is revealed to be on the payroll of the enemy. George Galloway? Is it really that much of a stretch? Because everything falls exactly into place.

There’s something else you should know about this scene. Galloway-man makes this speech in reference to the good guy, Leonidas, starting the war. Which the facts don’t support. So…the guy defending his country from the aggressor, is accused of being the aggressor because he chose to treat a threat as if it was actually a threat. Why? Because when he raised arms against the invading army, he broke or bent “the law.” What law was that? He was supposed to follow the advice of “the oracle,” which is a triumvirate of really ugly mutated misshapen guys who used their supernatural powers to tell him the smart thing was to stand down. He was bound by “the law,” to follow the advice of “the oracle.” And because he didn’t do that, he was accused of throwing the first punch.

Heh heh heh…in other words, he “waged an illegal and unjust war.” Now where have you heard that lately?

Oh by the way, it turns out the oracle was also on the take. Hmmmm.

Coincidence, it may very well be. But it would be an amazing coincidence. Absolutely astonishing.

I’m lovin’ that some of these kids who are die-hard Frank Miller fans and rabid anti-war screechers, are being sold this plate o’chow and are wolfing it down begging for seconds. Like I said…the movie is proof that it can be done. And it was profitable after the very first weekend.

Let’s make it an opening salvo. Better to teach folks things by being all sneaky and what-not, than to not teach ’em at all.

Posted in Movies | 2 Comments »

Memo For File XXXIX

Tuesday, March 6th, 2007

The name of the song is Ailein Duinn. Karen Matheson sings it in this movie, which is highly underrated, at 0:47:46.

It is the same hymn you hear in this video game as soon as you boot it up. And, when Lara is in a motorcycle chase in Kazakhstan. And Paraíso.

It’s the same music. Not very many people know that.

Posted in Glad I Learned About This, Movies | 3 Comments »

On Dagny

Wednesday, February 14th, 2007

The Atlas Shrugged page has a lot of interesting detail lately.

The screenplay is nearly complete, and production is scheduled to begin this year (2007).

Angelina’s name is on it, Brad’s is not. They’re both talented people, but on balance I think this is a good thing. Because if ever there was a “gotta make a boat payment” movie, this was it. In fact, I don’t think Angelina’s right.

Dagny hasn’t had sex since she was seventeen. Now yes, she’s gorgeous…which means she doesn’t look like Ms. Rand…and her celibacy is supposed to inspire a sort of “what the hell is going on here?” kinda thing. Jolie does fit that. But there’s a reason why Dagny hasn’t been having any fun — she hasn’t been settling. She’s hungry for men of ability, outside of the bedroom, and within. She will not settle for anything less, and if that means there are some dry times then so be it.

I just don’t see it in Ms. Jolie. She’s talented enough to be whatever she wants to be. But…surely we can do better.

Kreuk In order of my preferences, here are the alternatives I’d consider if the decision was mine to make.

1. Kristin Kreuk
2. Lucy Liu
3. Brooke Burke
4. Leann Tweeden
5. Kelly Brook
6. Kari Wuhrer
7. Nell McAndrew
8. Vanessa Marcil
9. Maria Bello
10. Kelly Hu

Hair colored jet-black, if need be, and tied up into a bun right up until Henry Rearden’s anniversary party. She despises television, reads books every night while listening to Richard Halley’s concerto, and wears eyeglasses everywhere she goes. Conspicuous ones. Stylish, but plain, and conspicuous.

She’s not a “hottie.” She could be one if she tried to be one, but she’s not trying.

Posted in Ayn Rand Spins, Movies, Obsessive Listmaking | 2 Comments »

Whedon Revisited

Tuesday, February 6th, 2007

You can tell from my meandering narrative that I’m uneasy about picking on poor Joss Whedon, as I did here. I do not know very much about his work. I’ve tried to watch it and I just find it to be a huge bore. I keep trying because I hear Mr. Whedon’s big contribution is the character-driven story; I’m a real big fan of character-driven stories. And then a few minutes into Buffy or Firefly my “it is not built for people like me” detector goes off like crazy, and my eyes won’t focus anymore.

Somewhere around ’97 my “not built for me” detector started chirping more loudly. I was the patriarch of a large household and trips out to the theater were prohibitively expensive…and check your archives. The best year in recent memory for shitty movies was 1997. And so — I started to develop more of an interest in what kind of movie we were going to see.

More than one person has told me that when the kids are with you and the woman is with you, whether you personally enjoy the movie or not is irrelevant. That’s crap. Crap, I say. You know why? One single movie comes out, like for example this one…just one…that tries to entertain the whole family and succeeds at this — that’s all the proof you need. They all can do it if they try. Criminy blazes dutch, making a movie these days costs seven, eight, nine figures. Set aside a couple thousand bucks. Work something into the script for Dad.

Everybody wins! Why not do it? It’s so easy, you’d have to put more effort into not to doing it, than into trying to get it done.

And yet, so many “entertainment” offerings try not. And succeed. From whence comes this juvenile, petulant attitude that you have to bore the shit out of poor ol’ daddy just to entertain the kids? What the hell kind of kids are those?

Anyway, back to the subject at hand…I do not know if Whedon is firmly stuck in the tiresome trope of Doofus Dad. I do not see any sign of it here. But I do see a lot of indicators here. It really doesn’t matter. The issue is whether this stuff is built for me or not, and time after time I find Mr. Whedon’s material is just not built for me. Adding insult to injury, whoever it is he’s trying to entertain, from what I can tell, is laboring under the burden of the above-mentioned pissy petulant anti-white-male attitude. They must place a value on this careful pasturization and cleansing of anything in the material that might please a patriarch.

Someone’s got daddy issues. There’s something ugly, to someone, about being reminded we’re all in the same boat. About them, whoever they may happen to be, grabbing a big ol’ bucket of popcorn and enjoying something with a six-foot straight white male. Something ugly about sharing that much common ground with the wrong demographic, even if it ends up being a positive experience. Must not happen.

Pure bigotry.

A rather far-fetched bit of conjecture for me given how little I know about Whedon. Or at least that’s what I thought…until I saw this. Someone’s mighty displeased with Joss. Some guilty-white-male guy doesn’t think the products are anti-white-male enough.

Joss Whedon is a misogynist homophobe

From the moment its theme in off-tune punk hit the air in 1997, television’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer has inspired a fanatical following rivaled only by shows with pointy-eared aliens. The uninitiated see why after just a few episodes. Written and created by Hollywood outsider and relative unknown Joss Whedon, Buffy features a deep, intelligent, character-driven style of writing rarely seen on television. The show tackles dark, heavy themes seemingly without fear, approaching difficult issues in an intricate, innovative way more characteristic of Russian novel than American teledrama. The fan base flocks to the show because of the honest treatment of its recurrent themes—the peril of love, the failure of modern paternalism, the pains of despised childhood, and, more than anything, the untapped power of strong, complex women.
:
Yet this great and admirable strength hides Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s greatest weakness. Sure, the Buff’s all bad-ass on the surface, but scrape a few layers below and it soon becomes obvious that the slayer wears no clothes. Despite its Girl Power pretensions, despite all Whedon’s valiant efforts, Buffy is written by a guy, and it shows. The show’s rebellion against the patriarchy is built on a patriarchal foundation that, consciously or not, undermines many of the themes the show wanted us to think we were seeing. As strong as she is, Buffy’s girl power is unplugged time and again by hot guys with weird hair.

Consider Buffy’s overarching mythos. The deal is that into every generation, some mystical and mostly unexplored power calls forth a “slayer,” a young woman who’s [sic] job it is to protect the world from demons and dark things. Once called, the slayer is given great powers—supernatural strength, incredible stealth, and a bitchin’ wardrobe. Buffy suddenly has abs of steel and fists of fury. She’s faster than trains and leaps tall buildings and all that jazz. Buffy has everything mortal men dream of having.

Wow, the progressive is tempted to say. A girl superhero. How totally awesome! But wait. There’s a catch. The first failure of Whedon’s girl power is that Buffy has a watcher. In fact, all slayers everywhere have always had watchers. Slayers tend to be called young and die early, after all, and there’s a lot to learn in their short lives. They need somebody to guide them, to help explain their power, to help them understand just what it is they’re fighting.

This begs the question, though, why she needs to be “watched.” Why a “watcher” and not a “helper” or a “teacher”? And if she has to be watched, why must she be watched by a stuffy white guy like Rupert Giles? In fact, we meet several watchers in the course of the series, and all but three are stuffy, middle-aged white men, the very definition of Western paternalism. The only exceptions are a recurring Indian man who has no lines but looks tough, a snotty Brit woman who turns evil when offered supernatural powers of her own (season 3, “Revelations”), and a scared little blond woman who spends a few minutes trembling under the bemused eyes of the Cheney-like head watcher before being blown to bits (season 7, “Never Leave Me”). [emphasis mine]

Now, I don’t know how prevalent this viewpoint is. But I know for a fact it is out there: You can never marginalize the hated “stuffy white guy” quite enough to make us happy. It’s like some kind of perverted echo of what your momma used to tell you, as if to say: “If you can’t say something nasty (about the stuffy white guy) then don’t say anything at all.” As for prevalence — well, there must be an awful lot. This issue with comedy/drama on the big/little screen, once again, ingratiating itself with the “we don’t want to watch anything daddy might actually like” crowd, just keeps popping up and popping up. It’s at the point now where it’s truly difficult to get away from this stuff, and more than one person has inquired as to why I bother.

I don’t need to justify myself to anyone. And it isn’t that complicated anyway; I just like to have fun as much as the next person. And these little entertainment offerings aren’t fun for me. They aren’t supposed to be. They invite me to identify with characters with whom I’m not supposed to identify; and if I’m somehow able to identify with those characters, the surrounding product will be deemed unfit and the producer will try like the dickens not to make that mistake again.

I just figure I’m not supposed to be watching. Giving the daddy-haters what they want, ya know. If there’s money in my pocket that they end up not getting because of that, well hey. Nothing personal.

Posted in Is It Really a Man's World?, Movies, Poisoning Masculinity | 1 Comment »

On Wonder Woman

Sunday, February 4th, 2007

Whedon Costume The photoshopping job you see at the right is extremely amateurish and crude. You can take it as my artist’s conception of the Wonder Woman costume Joss Whedon would have used in the upcoming movie. I never did hear about an actress confirmed for the title role. From what I know about Whedon, whatever the selection was going to be, it would have made a powerful and provocative statement about empowering women.

Meaning of course, the way I interpret it — and you can tell that from my artist’s conception — let’s go really light on things that might appeal to straight men.

Well, he’s off the project. I guess Rosie O’Donnell will have to stick to her regular job.

From what little I know about Whedon, his departure is a good thing. I’ve seen Firefly — it does have some pretty women in it. And they’re both cute. One of them runs around fully clothed all the time and the other one is a filthy whore. Great job Joss.

I’m still not sure what I saw. I know there are a lot of people who are more interested in Firefly than I am, and I’m glad they’ve found something they like. I know I spent a lot of time watching these characters, and at the end, I really didn’t give a crap what would happen to them next. I’m left with the impression that Mr. Whedon was trying to make a statement about something, and this impacted his ability to tell the story in an engaging way.

That is not to say I’m unhappy with what he was trying to say. The fact of the matter is, I have no clue what it is. I don’t even know for sure that I’m correct about him trying to say it. I couldn’t possibly care less.

It was a snoozer.

I hope his replacement goes back-to-basics and leaves the social engineering out of it entirely. The Wonder Woman I know, has strengths and weaknesses. A credible argument could be maintained that my vision is overly warped, mutated as it is from William Moulton Marston’s bondage/masochism figurine by 1970’s feminism.

Wonder Woman She’s physically strong, mentally capable, creative, resourceful, agile and fast. She would be unforgettable, and possibly harmful, in the sack. But she might very well be a virgin. She’s like Lara Croft, nobody really even knows what her sexual preference is, or whether she has one at all. Six foot three with her boots on, an even six or 6’1″ barefoot.

Being highly intelligent, she understands men are watching her lustfully everywhere she goes, and that she could tone this down by dressing differently. But she doesn’t care because she has work to do. Her legs are long, muscular and sensual, her hips are round, her waist is wasp-like, her tits are enormous. Anybody clucking their tongues over that just needs to get the hell over it.

I should add that the point here isn’t quite so much to get me to watch the movie, the point is to make it into a commercial success. How much of a sensation does Warner Brothers want to cause with this? Something on par with the first Batman movie…or…something more like this one.

That’s the question. Some kind of answer to be forthcoming shortly, I’m sure.

Perhaps this is a good place to jot down the “Deer In Headlights” theory of action movies. This is, I believe, one of the reasons why movies with female action heroes almost always fail…that, and the reluctance to allow the story to make it into production without a thick coating of social commentary. Deer in the headlights works like this: If the action hero seems to have the situation under control, the audience will stop caring about what happens to him. They’re going to watch the screen to see how he is going to handle the danger and stop watching it to find out if he’s going to handle it.

For this reason it’s important to show his doubts. If he doesn’t have doubts that are made visible to the audience in some way, all you’re doing is dazzling people with athletics and special effects. That puts the whole movie on par with a cheerleading or dance squad routine.

Look at some of the best moments out of Indiana Jones. He doesn’t know if he’ll outrun the boulder. He doesn’t know if he’ll find Marion’s basket. He doesn’t know if he’ll catch the truck. He flies by the seat of his pants, and part & parcel of that is ignorance toward what will happen next…and real fear.

Does Hollywood have what it takes to find an athletic, strong, tall woman with great-looking legs, and put her in a movie in which she shows real fear just like Indiana Jones, enduring the slings and arrows of political correctness that will come flying in afterwards? I dunno. I’m doubting it.

Some movies enjoy success without following the Dear in Headlights rule. Maybe that’s the most promising route Wonder Woman can take. But you have to do a lot of things right in order to pull that off, and in any case, following the rule always makes for a better action film. So in this sense, the poor Amazon is doomed to a potential for success that is limited, if not made impossible altogether.

Update: I guess this is “I’ve been dismissed” day in superhero-world. David Goyer is no longer working on The Flash.

Posted in Movies, Poisoning Masculinity, Women in Skimpy Clothes | 1 Comment »

Non-Intimidating Movie Villains

Saturday, February 3rd, 2007

Another movie-related post. Another self-explanatory title.

Meat located here. Summary in case the link goes away:

1. Nuclear Man here
2. The Nothing here
3. Anakin Skywalker here and here
4. Jareth here
5. Daleks here
6. Chucky here
7. John Kreese here
8. Madison Lee here
9. Megatron here
10. Mr. Glass here
11. This guy in pretty much anything
Honorable Mention: General Zod here

To this, I would add:
1. Zorg here
2. Serleena here
3. The Mayor here
4. All the bad guys here, here and here — yes, Michelle too
5. Mola Ram here
6. Sleestaks here
7. Renard here

Belloq Not sure this belongs here, but it’s an interesting observation and it does have a relationship to the subject at hand. I was watching this for the first time in something like twenty years and it suddenly occurred to me…do you realize what a fabulous villain Rene Belloq is? He holds the whole movie together and in so doing, so much of his work is done on a subconscious level you don’t realize what he’s doing. In fact, it would be an accurate assessment to say being the “bad guy” is simply a side gig for this character.

As the impassioned protagonist, he holds only temporary authority in the dig, and none whatsoever in the Nazi command structure. So he persuades others to do his bidding by arguing with them. He neither lowers himself to a mutual exchange of ideas, nor imposes his will on this antagonist. He simply asks rhetorical questions.

Now as he is doing this, he reveals to the audience in a wonderfully subtle way a) he is Belloq, super-genius; b) the situation in which the other person has has been placed within the overall story, and c) that other person’s overriding phobias, doubts or both. What an ingenious way to keep the audience invested in the story, and keep said story moving along. The machine guns have stopped firing for a minute or two…and yet, you want to keep watching. And you’re learning something about the characters in the best way possible: without your consciously realizing this is taking place. Consciously, you think you’re just being reminded that Belloq is smart, and creepy, and has a weird-ass accent.

There is another angle to this too: His professional rivalry with Dr. Jones aside, Belloq’s misdeeds rise no higher than an attempt to place a holy superweapon under the control of the Nazi regime, for money. Okay, yeah that’s pretty bad. But mundane in the world of villains. He’s a mercenary, a punchclock-badass, in it for the money. Nothing personal. Nothing to give the character an inherent creepiness…

…except one thing. He is using psychology to peel the other characters apart, like bananas. He can see right through ’em. This taps into the audience’s phobia that someone can see through them.

Yet another element in a Spielberg movie, that would lose much of its appeal if displayed to a race of beings that were somehow perfect in every way. We are flawed; this movie character depends on our flaws to survive. Without this phobia we all have, the character is reduced to just being a guy who does bad things for money. Hell’s bells, every fight scene in Ultraviolet has at least fifty of those. No, he reads people. Accurately. And he knows he’s reading them accurately…and he’s got a big mouth.

To some folks, that is more frightening than, a shark, or some voodoo priest who can set your ass on fire without bothering to figure out where you are first. Spielberg’s a genius, or at least he is when he tries to be.

Posted in Movies, Obsessive Listmaking | 1 Comment »

She’s Just Not Sexy

Friday, February 2nd, 2007

MacDowell I find her to be a competent actress, and I’ll even go so far as to say she is “pretty.” If she were naked in my bed, yeah I’d do ‘er alright, but if she got a case of the munchies and asked me to make a midnight run for some sunflower seeds or cigarettes I’d probably kick her out. This is a problem. Andie MacDowell tends to appear in movies from the early 1990’s, in leading roles. Sexual/romantic roles. She’s the woman for whom some guy wants to sacrifice…everything.

Her crinkley forehead and enormous teeth just ruin it for me. I think she’s cast by straight women and gay men. No, a good role for Andie MacDowell is the wife of the eccentric next-door neighbor in some madcap feel-good summer comedy. Or the best-friend of the love-interest…the wallflower girlfriend with the annoying laugh. Someone in Hollywood seems to have been laboring under the delusion that straight guys want to see this woman naked. Groundhog Day doesn’t work — not completely — unless straight guys want to see Rita naked.

The guys at the office don’t think highly of my idea to remake Groundhog Day with Hugh Laurie and Kristin Kruek. Something about an age gap. I fail to see the issue. Other candidates for MacDowell’s replacement:

1. Lauren Graham
2. Zooey Deschanel
3. Kate Bosworth
4. Jessica Biel
5. Elisha Cuthbert

Update: Okay since everyone wants to see the groundhog movie, and while you’re at the store you probably want to pick something else up, I’ve converted the Movies You Ought Not Spoil post into a permanent page. Also added three entries that had been rattling around in the back of my head all along, one of which had to be re-brought to my attention, the other two just kind of gurgled up. I’m sure I’ll keep thinking of more, so this was probably a good move.

Posted in Is It Really a Man's World?, Movies | 1 Comment »

The Donner Cut

Monday, January 29th, 2007

Even though it’s just a cursory Google hit, I’m a little surprised it’s only bringing back one result. The joke is so old, the first time I heard it I laughed so hard I kicked the slat out of my crib, y’know?

One day Superman was feeling a bit horny. So, he began to ask his superhero friends for ideas on where he could get a bit of action. “Hey Batman! Who’s good in the sack?”

“Well Superman, everyone knows that Wonderwoman is the best sex in comicland. Why don’t you try her?”, replied Batman.

“I’d love to, but Wonder Woman and I are friends. So I don’t really want to take advantage of her.”

“Darn shame,” said Batman as he waved goodbye to Superman and drove off.

Ten minutes later Superman was flying low over a city when he saw the Green Lantern patching up a building. He flew down. “Hey G.L., I’m looking for a little action. You’re a swinging bachelor, who’s the best babe in comicland?”

“Hey, Superman! Everyone knows that Wonderwoman is far and away the best lay in comicland, why don’t you try her?”

“Well, we’re sort of friends,” Superman said, “but I didn’t realize she had gotten around so much” and he flew off in frustration.

Twenty minutes later he was flying over a field when he saw Wonderwoman lying naked, in the middle of the field, with her legs apart and up in the air.

Superman was tempted. ” MAN !!!” he thought to himself, “I’m faster than a speeding bullet, I can be in and out of there before she even knows I’m here.” So with a blur and a sonic boom he was down, in and gone.

Wonderwoman stared up into the sky with a dazed expression. “What the hell was that??” she exclaimed.

“I don’t know,” said the Invisible Man as he rolled off, “But my ass is killing me.”

I bring this vulgarity up for one reason and one reason alone: It’s not the reference to Superman. It’s the one line from that filthy slut Wonder Woman. Note the two question marks. Note the phraseology: Not “what was that,” but “what THE HELL was that.” This, friends, aptly sums up the nationwide critical response to Superman IV: The Quest For Peace.

Uh, unless you actually paid money to see it in a real theater. And then I think the Invisible Man’s reaction is more apropos.

Whatever. Good movies, bad movies, I’ve always had a soft spot for the Man of Steel. To me, he defines the distinction between DC Comics and Marvel…both of which have long ago been thoroughly infested with left-wing, Gorbachev-lovin’ granola-eating liberals. There are differences you know — Marvel, no matter what the day of the week, no matter what side of the bed the sunbeams hit first…Marvel would never, never, never ever ever, create a superhero like Superman.

Think about it. Does Superman have problems with his public image? Very rarely…and when he does, how much does he worry about it? His public reception, very simply, is not part of the story. He’s even got a Fortress of Solitude to mope around in if he chooses to. Now, put yourself in his boots. If you wanted to slink off, and go ’round all day every day muttering “Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, guess I’ll eat some worms” the F.o.S. is a kick-ass place to do it. And it’s his, and his alone. But does he do this? NO. There’s a danger, or else there isn’t…and if there isn’t, he’s going to be Clark Kent and type away at two thousand words a minute or something. Maybe pay a visit to Ma. If there is…there are planets to be thrown around. Either way, the angst over public image can wait. It goes to the bottom of the Super-inbox.

Uh, that’s not true of Spiderman. Not by a damn sight.

Another thing, Superman is just plain good. According to Marvel Comics doctrine, that dooms his stories to stale flatness; good guys must have something evil about them, and bad guys must have a strain of good, otherwise things get boring. But Superman stories aren’t boring. Not really…he has some Superstinkers here and there. Who doesn’t. Are there no rotten eggs from the X-Men? No sludge from the Fantastic Four? No installments that Daredevil would just as soon wish hadn’t happened? I rest my case.

Irony has its place. There are many among us however, who seem to be in a great big ol’ hurry to embrace irony where matters of good and evil are concerned. Like…we want to pretend it’s there to spice up a story, but the truth of it is we’re cowards. Some of us. Clarity where some people are in the right and others are in the wrong…can be frightening Some of us can’t handle it. It’s like a cross to Dracula.

And so Superman scares some people. Based on what I’ve seen in Marvel comic books, the whole entity seems dedicated to serving people who are so frightened…want some shades of gray with everything, no matter what the circumstances. Because it’s like a security blanket for them.

Anyway.

Back to the subject at hand.

I have been intrigued ever since I saw this review by Moriarty at Ain’t It Cool News.

About That “Richard Donner Cut” Of SUPERMAN II…
:
For non-fans, the question that no doubt comes to mind immediately is “But why do we need an alternate cut of SUPERMAN II in the first place? Wasn’t that one of the good ones?”

Indeed it was. But thanks to the Salkinds, it wasn’t the film that it was originally supposed to be. Basically, SUPERMAN and SUPERMAN II were supposed to be made as one long film at the same time, then cut in half and released as separate films. Donner shot about 75% of the second film before he and the Salkinds hit a creative wall with each other, and he left the project. He ended up finishing the first film, and then they hired Richard Lester to come in and work to shape Donner’s footage into SUPERMAN II and to shoot whatever they had to in order to make it a finished film. That’s the short version of the story, but I’m sure you can find a dozen more detailed accounts if you do a quick Google search.

Okay, now you know the background. My order should be here Thursday at the latest, and I’m thrilled. It’s a whole lot of bang for the buck, for one thing — all the Superman stuff ever to hit the big screen, back to the first Christopher Reeve movie where he makes the world spin backwards. Fourteen discs, with good movies, awful movies, that brand-new one, this long-buried “Donner Cut” and a bunch of other related stuff.

Did you know you can get this for just north of seventy bucks now?

Great Caesar’s Ghost.

Posted in Glad I Learned About This, Movies | 1 Comment »

On Doofus Dads

Saturday, January 27th, 2007

Not sure where that celebrated piece of Americana, the Doofus Dad, is going from here. Sitcoms are always going to need dads, and their audiences are for the foreseeable future going to remain about 80% female. The audience for “fun family comedy movies,” almost by definition, will always be a hodge-podge…but our ladies have more to say about what fun flick to catch at the box office, than the gentlemen, so those efforts sink or swim based on their appeal to feminine sensibilities.

But I think the pandering to feminine whim, being synonymous with making Dad look like a putz, may be temporary. Juvenile resentment and hostility, even when simmering away beneath a thin disguise of humor, just isn’t funny. And ever since Archie Bunker the Doofus Dad has been subject to far more demand from those who offer him, than by those who consume him. He always needed some kind of a boost, because the audiences never found him inherently funny. It started with a laugh track, then other devices were used to lend the Doofus Dad device some support.

That’s good for the short term. But the Doofus Dad has lasted a generation or two by now. His staying power seems to be derived not from comedic value, but from the avoidance of taboo. As if the wrong people would be highly offended if a masculine character were portrayed in any way other than unreliable and/or incompetent. And yet, by itself how long would this sustain this tiresome, threadbare cliche? The Doofus Dad is thirty-six years old, give or take. Cartoons, summer comedies, family drama — these are environments that give rise to creativity and fresh ideas, perspectives and angles never attempted before. And the environment rewards ingenuity whenever & wherever it pops up. It’s certainly not friendly to stale ideas. Why such never-ending hospitality to this one?

John Tierney’s column in the New York Times from two summers ago offered a veritable bouquet of ideas:

Ward Cleaver has been replaced by a stock character known in the trade as Doofus Dad. Explaining this change isn’t easy, but if Ward were still around, he could puff his pipe and offer several theories.

The most obvious is that the television audience has splintered along gender lines, and sitcoms are now a female domain. Four out of five viewers of network sitcoms are women, and they apparently like to see Mom smarter than Dad.

Another explanation is the rising number of mothers with paying jobs. Now that they have their own paychecks, the old bread-earning patriarch is less essential and therefore more mockable. And TV writers no longer have an easy stereotype of Mom to work with. Jokes about daffy middle-class housewives like Lucy Ricardo and Edith Bunker seem dated now that so many women work outside the home.

Fathers are still the same old targets, and they’re even more tempting now that they’ve gotten a new image as shirkers thanks to widely reported findings about who does what at home. Even though more mothers have outside jobs, women still do about four more hours of child care and four more hours of housework per week, according to studies by the social scientists John Robinson and Geoffrey Godbey.

Ezra Klein offered yet another theory having to do with selective tolerance:

It is, after all, a pretty interesting TV phenomenon. If the majority of shows presented other demographics the way they present fathers, they wouldn’t survive a day. Ignorant blacks? Bitchy, materialistic moms? Moronic, accident-prone dads? The whole set fits, but only the last is widely allowable.

Odd. Maybe white males, as the dominant majority, are secure enough in their power and public image not to mind? Maybe they’re the last demographic group safe to infantilize because, as of yet, they haven’t protested their portrayals? And is it white males, or do the black-acted sitcoms work off the same format?

This last one is not only persuasive, it is provable: Men can withstand humor at their expense, and even laugh at it sincerely themselves. Since the days of Vaudeville, no pratfall is funnier than a swift kick in the balls. That timeless joke about the three guys on the deserted island finding the genie in the lamp — you can tell that to a room full of fellas, and draw a good-natured chuckle or two. Anyone want to go to the “Sex in the City” viewing party, stand in front of the television during a commercial break, and tell the assembled foursome that howler about the bitch with two black eyes? It won’t be quite so funny. Yeah, you’ll bring down the house, just not in a way that you’ll like.

Well, this straight white male can bend and flex like any other, and perhaps he’s even more deserving of humor at his own expense than most other straight white males. I just wish, in the twenty-first century, family comedies were a bit more creative. They are supposed to be, after all; and as the guy who ends up paying for them, I’d like to see a few things I’ve not yet seen before. The Doofus Dad schtick lately has taken on a proclivity for covering everything wall-to-wall. The tedious trope starts while the opening credits are still onscreen, and at the final shot it’s just hit it’s stride, with everything in between just oozing out more of the same. And this is where I start to want my money back. It’s not about outrage or personal offense, it’s about paying good money for creativity and not getting it.

Even the bang-for-buck issue ceases to be worthy of concern once one steps outside my household. It’s just my own wallet, and the wallets and purses of other parents who are paying for witty fresh humor, and receiving paint-by-numbers products in return. Society is impacted only the theme of anti-competition, which because of this is disturbing on a wholely different level. Dad stops whacking himself in the forehead with a rubber chicken long enough to announce his desire that junior do his best. Dad thinks his boy has what it takes to win the ball game, ipso facto, he wants him to win.

As if we were in some religious ceremony, it is compulsory that this simple patriarchal desire stand revealed in the Act Two as something odious, destructive…cancerous. Dad doesn’t even have to insist on superlatives for the ritual to be thrown into high gear — comparatives will get things going just fine. Junior brought home a B- in the same class where he got a C last year. Mom is thrilled, Dad thinks Junior could get a B+ if he tried harder. That’s all it takes; off we go. Angst. Tears. Yelling. Suitcases packed, locks changed, a final monologue chock-full of righteous indignation by a wise “Neighbor Earl” sage character, or perhaps from the Mom. And the all-but-guaranteed “deer in the headlights” look from the errant Dad, straight into the camera lens with the whites all the way ’round the eyes, as he realizes what a raging dumbshit he is. This is all part of the package. None of it brings out genuine surprise in anyone, nor has any of it for the last twenty years or more.

But we treat it as something creative and fresh, because we’re told we should.

That’s a direct assault on the timeless human desire to do things well — a desire required for everything good that anybody enjoys in the world today. It is also, as I see it, an effort to replace fathers as role models. Since the first father ever became one, an instrinsic part of the fathering process has been to propagate ones’ values and prejudices in addition to his genetic fabric. This process is certainly subject to flaw, and much evil has been done through it. From where I sit, Hollywood’s solution is to banish it from human existence, by replacing the life-experiences and prejudices of fathers, with Hollywood’s own sensibilities. If that’s the case, the very best you could say about this is that it’s an attack on something demonstrated here & there to be somewhat harmful — but concentrated on the leafy part of the weed.

But I don’t accept it as something good. Hollywood is Hollywood; I’m a Dad. While my son remains impressionable, and thus required to take on someone else’s set of values and prejudices…he might as well take on mine. So we laugh at Doofus Dad movies. At them…not with them.

Well, he’s nine. Teenagerhood awaits, and then Hollywood can take another crack at ‘im. Some form of father-son conflict, with other parties jumping into the chasm where the wedge was driven…that’s a matter of when, not if. So I wish Hollywood the best of luck in their future conflicts with me. In this initial engagement, they’ve failed.

Cross-posted at RightLinx

Posted in About Me and My Blog, Is It Really a Man's World?, Movies, Obsessive Listmaking | 5 Comments »

Nope, That Took Me Completely By Surprise

Friday, January 26th, 2007

The Bond Girl from the latest 007 installment, Eva Greene, is Marlene Jobert’s daughter.

I have To Catch A Spy, and it’s one of my favorite stupid old spy-spoof flicks. Momma acted circles around Kirk Douglas, no mean feat that.

Posted in James Bond, Movies | No Comments »

Yoda Rule

Thursday, January 25th, 2007

My nine-year-old son, who up until now has had the attention span of somethin’ like a hummingbird thanks to those no-good Japanese cartoons, has lately taken an interest in my Centennial collection. I was pleasantly surprised to see him stick out the first two chapters, which make up a good five hours. He pronounced that from disc 3 onward things go into a steep decline and “it gets boring.” But not until then.

I realized he’s right. And there’s a reason for this, that has something to do with where technology was, long before he was born.

In 1978, if something was on TV and you missed it, you couldn’t count on ever, ever seeing it again. So chapters three through twelve shoulder considerably less burden than chapters one and two. Up to eleven, each installment is barely an hour-and-a-half long. In the late 70’s, it was awfully tough to get bored in an hour and a half. I hadn’t noticed this before. Not consciously. Looking back on my experience with my DVD collection, I did find a lot more time for loading the dishwasher and doing my laundry after the first five hours, than during them.

So…I’m watching discs seven and eight and nine, and I’m noticing something that applies to television, movies, and books with other stories. Seems to be a universal trend. Not sure about it yet, I’ll have to chew on it for awhile.

Start with the relationship between a story, and the characters who contribute to it. Strong characters “feed” a strong story. If you have a weak story and you don’t know why, look to the characters who participate in it — usually, you’ll find you have a lot of weak characters. No ground-breaking revelations here; a character is defined to the point where you start to care about what happens to him, and then you read about something happening to him…you want to know more. That’s what makes you want to turn the pages.

So here’s the theory.

Just like a man succeeding, or failing, to capture the love-interest of a lady in the first five seconds after she’s seen him. A character is made weak or strong, almost completely, during his or her introduction. Now as television miniseries’ go, this one is outstanding. Near-perfect. This is perhaps the only flaw, certainly the most serious one: The never-ending mural of “I’m Henry Garrett and this is my son Bealy Garrett” becomes horribly, horribly monotonous.

Can you build a “weak” character, to whom you have given a creative, clever introduction? Can you settle for the bland, unimaginative, “Hi my name is so-and-so” introduction, and from that build a strong character?

I can’t think of an example of either one. Okay, a few kinda-sorta examples…nothing really powerful, to completely blow the theory out of the water. It seems to hold up.

Three ways I can imagine to carry this out:

One. Give the audience a puzzle. Make them do some work. Give them the name first, and drag out a red-herring that gives the impression this name belongs to somebody else.

Two. Distract the audience with a story involving the other characters already introduced…maybe even a story that will, ultimately, come to a dead-end. Fool ’em into thinking this is a peripheral character, whom ensuing events, and a new storyline, will build into a primary one.

Three. Use an alias. The character masquerades under a phony name, and then very soon after his introduction there is an “Aha!” moment where his real name is revealed.

In the “Hero’s Journey,” the primary character doesn’t need any of these devices; we already identify with him.

Update:
I missed that fourth one, which should have been obvious. The Vader technique. Name second, stature first — with a grand, grand entrance, and an act of homicide in the first few minutes while anonymity still prevails.

Posted in Movies | 2 Comments »

Movies You Ought Not Spoil

Sunday, January 21st, 2007

I think that title is self-explanatory, don’t you? Let’s start with the “asshole” list. If you spoil these for someone who has not yet seen them, you’re an asshole. A complete asshole. Doesn’t matter of the other guy says “it’s okay, it sounds stupid and I don’t think I wanna see it”…that changes nothing. You spoil these, something terrible should happen to you.

1. The Usual Suspects. It has the best don’t-spoil-it ending of them all. Ever.
2. Primal Fear. Close second. The very first comeback vehicle for Mister Gerbil since all that ugly felching gossip came down. One single, beautiful line — five words long — changes everything. What a work of art.
3. The Sixth Sense. I’m sure a lot of people are wondering about it, since a lot of people were talking about it and here it is, eight years later. The anwer is yes. You spoil this, you’re an asshole.
4. Fallen. Was there ever more of a a keystone ending than this, something that, once spoiled, causes everything else to tumble down? I think not. Just keep your mouth shut.
5. Identity. This has been widely criticized as “cheating”; you’ll understand why after you watch it. I think the criticism is somewhat legitimate. How could I not? But hey, a great ending is a great ending; it’s fooled a lot of people, who were bound and determined not to be blindsided. It deserves credit for that.
6. Unbreakable. Yes, it’s just another movie from M. Night, and it’s kind of a “Gotta Make A Boat Payment” movie. But I have to include it here because it really is hard to see coming, and yet after you watch it you’ll be kicking yourself for not catching on sooner. All the clues were there.
7. “Quitters, Inc.” segment from Cat’s Eye. So stupid. So silly. So wonderfully creepy. Shut your mouth.

Next up is the “inconsiderate” list. You’re not necessarily an asshole if you spill these, and the jury’s out even on whether or not you’re inconsiderate. These are somewhat predictable, and if the educated party has signaled disinterest then it’s probably okay.

1. The World Is Not Enough. It’s hardly an original spoiler by any means. But a true James Bond fan would probably mind, quite a lot.
2. Signs. I never got the impression the spoiler was the point of the movie. But I would have to say, if I was looking forward to it I’d be a little pissed if someone spoiled it.
3. Die Another Day. Again, how much can you spoil a James Bond movie? It’s pretty much the same story over and over again. But on the other hand, all Bond movies don’t necessarily have a spoiler. I mean, once you accept that “it turns out the bad guy has a secret weapon that will destroy the world” doesn’t count. So when a Bond movie has another spoiler that’s a bit more clever — and this one does — that would kind of ruin it. And for the uninitiated, yeah, this installment does have a spoiler that’s kind of hard to see coming. Well, a little. Sort of.
4. Mission: Impossible I. Okay, this one is actually pretty cool, I thought. It almost belongs on the “asshole” list. Just keep it to yourself if you’re in doubt, okay? But I do think everyone who was ever interested in seeing it has seen it by now, just about.
5. Terminator III: Rise of the Machines. This might be placed on the “asshole” list too, except the ending only really matters to died-in-the-wool nerds, and if they’re Terminator nerds they are bound to have seen this by now. But, it is a pretty clever twist on how Skynet came to be, and how it ties in to technology that we didn’t even have in 1984 when the first movie came out. Oops, maybe I’ve said too much already.

You should really quit whining if someone spoils these for you…
1. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. When the movie came out, it was a huge spoiler. But come on, it’s been sixteen years.
2. War of the Worlds. Get a grip. They didn’t even change it from the original story. It was kind of a “Boat Payment” movie, anyway. You’re just bitching.
3. The Empire Strikes Back. You really don’t know what happened to Luke’s father? And yet, I know there are some people, somewhere, complaining.
4. Soylent Green. Maybe if you were born after the movie came out, you don’t know what it is.
5. Terminator II: Judgment Day. Was this so hard? You change something, you open a different timeline. Half of all time-travel stories work this way, you really should’ve seen it coming.

And finally, this one and this one were meant as parody against movie spoilers. They can’t be spoiled. The spoiler wasn’t the point. Does this really have to be explained? Maybe not.

I’m sure I forgot something. Too bad nobody reads this blog, so no one’s going to send in any suggestions. Cryin’ shame.

Posted in Movies | 3 Comments »

The Other Bond 17

Friday, January 19th, 2007

Just generally interesting stuff. What would have happened if Goldeneye had been made with Timothy Dalton returning to play James Bond a third time? Plot overview, car, devices, bad guys all here. Yakuza gangsters. The Aston-Martin DB5 returning for “one last ride.” Motorcycle with front-mounted missile launcher. Some asshole named “Nigel” who wants to shut down the double-oh section for good. What more could you want?

Posted in James Bond, Movies | No Comments »

Movie Scenes I Really Hate

Sunday, December 17th, 2006

I may be entirely alone in all this. I don’t care. But, come to think of it, if you’re in the movie business and have something to say about this stuff, you should care. The older I get — the more irritated I get by these things. And I have to confess I’ve noticed it affects the decisions I make about movies. Not really consciously. I start to take mental notes about who made what, how much I enjoyed it, and what they’re making next time.

So think about skipping these, maybe?

1. The protagonist sits down in front of a personal computer that doesn’t belong to him, and tries to guess the password. I don’t care how. I don’t care if he succeeds or not. It’s just a dumb scene to put in. Actually, if you want to get realistic about it, you should have him fish around for some hidden post-it notes, maybe trip across the password scribbled in felt pen. I’d be fine with that. Never seen anything like it.

2. Where you’re supposed to pick out the bad guy really easily because…
a. He’s over 45 when nobody else is over 25
b. He speaks with a southern accent
c. He wears suits, with neckties tightened all the way to the collar, at inappropriate times — like, for example, late at night
d. He’s an intellectual
e. He speaks with an English accent
f. He has a really, really, really cool house and/or home-office and/or fortress-of-solitude

3. When a healthy person talks to a person in a coma, and muses out loud about whether people in comas can hear what’s going on around them (complicated personal story here, you shouldn’t ask).

4. Where the heroine says some kind of variant of this line, and it’s supposed to be like something original: “I’m going with you!” Hero tries to talk her out of it; fails; it turns out to be a bad idea.

5. Where the President of the United States does something that makes you wonder why the REAL President doesn’t do the same thing; when, in fact, if the real President were to do such a thing, we would have separation-of–powers scandals from here to Tripoli and back again. Like, drawing lots to see who gets to live in a cave when a meteor hits. Directing the government to end poverty and make sure everyone has a job. Stupid bullshit like that.

6. When three- and four-star generals have full heads of hair and, “generally,” look a lot more like Hollywood actors pretending to be generals, than real generals. Something about that just gets under my skin.

7. When two guys are fighting over the same woman…and, because they both have facials, haircuts, beard-trimming patterns, manicures, pancake-makeup jobs that are oh so “chique,” you can’t tell the motherfuckers apart from each other. Hey, you’ve got the same woman screwing both of these guys. First this one, then that one. The scenes are darkly-lit, assholes. Problem!

8. When a “good guy” — not necessarily the hero of the adventures, but someone who’s already been defined as a leading character — yells at some nameless faceless bystanders to “Call 911!” Um…if everybody who is known to us on a first-name basis is a kick-ass action hero…what’s the point??

9. This is the opposite of #8. When the kick-ass action hero is incredibly suave and handsome — but doesn’t know dick about computers. The guy who knows something about computers, is dateless, ugly, comical, stupid in non-computer areas, and you get the idea he smells like ass. I’ve noticed this is a guy thing. Women are allowed to be computer savvy and sexy, for reasons I’m not sure I entirely understand. Guys have to pick.

10. When a “sidekick” makes a reference to alimentary dysfunction in his pants due to intolerable adrenaline rush. If we’re paying $10 a head plus over-inflated prices for popcorn and soda, and it’s going toward comedy one-liners — this doesn’t quite cut it.

11. (Does not include James Bond movies) Where the villain is tricked into describing his nefarious plan in exquisite detail because he believes his selected audience is about to come to an inglorious end, which subsequent events reveal not to be the case at all. If this is not a 007 installment, it’s a case of copyright infringement. If it is…well, I get a little ticked if the scene is not there. Can’t have a Bond movie without the bad guy revealing his plans. It’s just not right.

12. The “dad” is dysfunctional, boring, clumsy, comedic, stupid, uncoordinated, disorganized, oblivious to his surroundings, disruptive to the natural/social activities of his spouse/spawn, overly competitive, overly zealous, overly opinionated, unreliable…did I already mention stupid? IT HAS ALREADY BEEN DONE BEFORE. If your stupid new-movie relies on this too much, maybe it was a mistake to green-light it. You make a mistake, and don’t admit it, you’ve made two mistakes.

13. The point is made on a philosophical level — that dissent is not necessarily unpatriotic. **BARF** Has any point been made on a philosophical level, and re-made, and re-made again, more often than this?

14. When the good guy commandeers a vehicle using police power, or by turning the conveniently left-behind key in the ignition (especially in a city where you would never, ever do this, like in LA).

15. When an ugly girl is made-over into a hot chick.

16. When people are punched or kicked in the face REPEATEDLY and keep fighting with no visible damage.

17. Opposite of #16. When a well-placed karate chop between the shoulder blades knocks an unsuspecting victim unconscious.

18. When the hero figures out the only way he can protect some priceless artifact or protected secret, is to steal it.

19. When the pain-in-the-ass maverick, or convicted felon, is recruited for something only he can do…and that something turns out to be just a lot of fighting. That’s just stupid.

20. Any trash-talkin’ between the good guy and the bad guy that includes the line, “I don’t think so.” By either one of them. It comes off like the little sticky-note with “substitute this with a decent line when you get a chance” fell out of the script.

Posted in Is It Really a Man's World?, Movies, Obsessive Listmaking | 1 Comment »

This Is Good XXXIII

Thursday, December 7th, 2006

Quadruple-threat today.

Oldie but a goodie. Sometimes it’s a Californian moving to Montana for the winter, sometimes it’s a Texan popping in to Vermont. Always in diary form, always funny as hell. Seems appropriate for this time of year.

Dec 8 6 p.m. It’s starting to snow. The first of the season and the wife and I took our Chardonnay and sat by the window watching the soft flakes drift down over the area. It was beautiful!

Dec 9 We awoke to a big beautiful blanket of crystal white snow covering the landscape. What a fantastic sight! Every tree and shrub covered with a beautiful white mantle. I shoveled snow for the first time and loved it. After I did the sidewalk and driveway the snowplow came along and covered up our sidewalk with compacted snow from the street so I shoveled it again. Great exercise!
:
Dec 16 Fell on my butt on the ice in the driveway.
:
Dec 24 If I ever catch the sonofabitch that drives the snowplow I’ll drag him through the snow by his balls. I think he waits around the corner until I’ve finished shoveling so he can come by at 80 mph and throw the snow up on what used to be my lawn.
:
Dec 28 I set fire to the house so I won’t have to shovel that shit off the roof.
:
Jan 5 Sentenced to 1,000 hours of community service shoveling snow for senior citizens.

And on a separate subject, this looks like an Imus appearance of some kind; The Day My Wife Met…

Speaking of meetings, Titanic meets IM.

Ten things code doesn’t do in real life, as in, computer code. You know, as opposed to movies. I’m sure you’ve seen this awful movie by now. Or this one, or this one.

Posted in Glad I Learned About This, Movies | 2 Comments »

On The New Bond Movie

Thursday, November 23rd, 2006

In the immortal words of Nancy Kerrigan, this is so stupid. It’s a write-up about the “mistakes” in the new James Bond movie.

New JAMES BOND movie CASINO ROYALE has already been voted one of the top 20 most mistake-filled films of the year (06) – less than one week after its release. After spotting onscreen errors, fans have flooded film continuity website MovieMistakes.com to voice their complaints.

So what’re we looking at here…some dude gets off’d thirty minutes into it, and an hour after that you see the guy walking around in the background, maybe with speaking lines and everything? No, nothing of the sort. For detail, we go straight to the forementioned Movie Mistakes website (warning, spoilers be therein) and we find stuff like this.

During the scene at the restaurant in Monenegro (actually filmed in the Czech Republic) you see a payphone with a Czech Telecom logo on it (itself a piece of history as these are all now rebranded O2).

When James Bond is supposedly in Montenegro, this was filmed in the Czech Republic – although they changed most of the signs they forgot some. When they are having a drink in the square there is a visible sign saying “Bily Kun” which means “White Horse” in Czech.

On the train to Montenegro, Bond & Vesper are swaying or rocking with the train, but the wine on the table is not.

Oh me. Oh my. I fear the movie has been ruined for me.

No, of course I’m being sarcastic. What a bunch of buttholes.

Okay, here’s some information you can use about the new Bond movie. First: It is a “reboot.” M, as in the female M who started her stint in the seventeenth Bond film, is James Bond’s first boss. Yeah, so in other words, all that stuff that happened in the previous Bond films, never happened. Nor has the stuff since then. All twenty Bond movies…events described therein, never took place. You over it yet? Good. Read on.

Bond becomes a Double-oh. So yeah, you get to see the origin of James Bond. And here’s the cool thing — it’s got something to do with the famous gun-barrel opening sequence that has been present throughout all the Broccoli films since From Russia With Love. Something cool. Rather trivial, but it’s really snazzy. I liked it a lot. So from now on, you can dig out one of the other twenty Bond films, and you’ve got an explanation for what went on with the gun barrel sequence. But remember…it is a reboot. References are made to the September 11 attacks; James Bond, himself, is a counterterrorism weapon created to address the new threats in a post-9/11 world.

Casino Royale follows the For Your Eyes Only scheme of things. Light on the gadgets. With a dark and brooding Bond. Great stunts, a complicated story from the pulp novels kept more-or-less intact, lots of intrigue. Little itty-bitty kids who were able to appreciate Moonraker and Goldeneye and Die Another Day — they might not be able to get into this. As for the new actor, he is good. Very, very good. But he does fail to capture the overlap between the manicured foppish upper-cruster and the cold-blooded hired killer, as Sean Connery did. Daniel Craig is decidedly rugged, with the splotchy pale skin of my own Nordic forebearers and a big honkin’ potato nose. That’s fine. Some of the dialog suggests there is difficulty involved in spotting the real James Bond, and figuring out he doesn’t come from “old money.” This is inconsistent with the actor chosen for the role. If this fellow comes from old money, something is terribly wrong. He looks like a swedish hog farmer and his hair is sticking out in several different directions.

But I can get past this stuff…and a bunch of signs that say Bily Kun. This film is a work of quality…bordering on a work of art. It captures a new perspective of an old action hero, and manages to blend in an attribute of youth and inexperience. Certain events the Bond fan may recall from the other twenty installments, are “prequeled.” The wedding, and events leading up to it, in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service — this comes immediately to mind. Our new vision of this gentleman, this hired killer, comes straight out of the Fleming novels, and yet it blends in easily with the Broccoli contributions. It’s fascinating, really.

But I can give a much shorter review of this film. I can shorten it to one word, if I really try. Just one. And here it is.

Five.

The new James Bond movie is the fifth-best.

Here’s how I see the 21 films at this point. Best-to-worst, each entry contains ranking, title, installment number, and the actor who played 007. See how it squares with your own list.

1. Goldeneye (17) (Brosnan)
2. From Russia With Love (2) (Connery)
3. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (6) (Lazenby)
4. Goldfinger (3) (Connery)
5. Casino Royale (21) (Craig)
6. License To Kill (16) (Dalton)
7. Thunderball (4) (Connery)
8. Octopussy (13) (Moore)
9. For Your Eyes Only (12) (Moore)
10. The Man With The Golden Gun (9) (Moore)
11. Die Another Day (20) (Brosnan)
12. Dr. No (1) (Connery)
13. Moonraker (11) (Moore)
14. The World Is Not Enough (19) (Brosnan)
15. Diamonds Are Forever (7) (Connery)
16. The Spy Who Loved Me (10) (Moore)
17. Live And Let Die (8) (Moore)
18. A View To A Kill (14) (Moore)
19. You Only Live Twice (5) (Connery)
20. The Living Daylights (15) (Dalton)
21. Tomorrow Never Dies (18) (Brosnan)

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