Wonders Of The Internet, cont'd

Just how many times did Bill Murray re-live the same day in Groundhog Day? Simon Gallagher of the blog Obsessed With Film has figured it out so you don't have to. Note that I think that the last paragraph of his post - the one that says this ought not to be taken too seriously - probably makes the most salient point in the whole thing.

Uwe Boll's New Low

German scheissmeister Uwe Boll has made a career of making shitty movies - he directed four of the 100 worst-reviewed movies of the last decade according to RottenTomatoes.com's count - but to this point you could at least say that he had the sense to turn his "talents" to the right kind of material, focusing as he has on lesbian vampires, zombie plagues, and other B-movie schlock. No more, however; Boll has decided that, like Stephen Spielberg, Roman Polanski, and Quentin Tarantino before him, he must make a film about the Holocaust. Furthermore, since previous films about the subject have been so tame - Disneyesque, practically - he wants to tell it to us straight: Auschwitz was a really terrible place, a "death factory". And he wants to show us, using the "talent" for "explicit depictions of violence" that he honed to oh-so-fine an edge by making all those latex zombie heads explode so realistically in his previous work. Unsurprisingly, preliminary reaction from critics has been less than enthusiastic. What's wrong, guys? You don't trust the guy responsible for Alone in the Dark and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale to treat one of the most tragic and horrifying episodes in human history with the gravity and dignity it deserves?

Personally, I'm mystified as to why any movie studio would be willing to back this project. Are there really people out there clamoring for a statement on the Holocaust from Uwe Boll? I have a hard time believing that, much less that people will be willing to pay to watch it. I'm a big believer in free speech. But every time Boll is allowed to make a movie, I become slightly less so. Perhaps this film will give a boost to the online petition to stop Boll from making any more movies.

We Have A Bilbo

The long-delayed, two-part Peter Jackson-produced adaptation of The Hobbit finally has a cast, certainly a gigantic step toward getting the damned thing made. As a card-carrying, badge-wearing, rafter-shouting Tolkien geek, I'm very excited about that. Many fans of Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy were disappointed when he announced he wouldn't be directing The Hobbit as well, but in tapping Guillermo del Toro he chose a replacement who proved with Pan's Labyrinth that he can make a fantastic fantasy film. In fact, I'd argue that he's a better fit for this material than Jackson is. Much as I admire the LOTR trilogy, Jackson's penchants for narrative bloat and visual excess had started to creep in by the end (for me at least, they ruined his follow-up effort King Kong), and I'm not sure I'd trust him to rein them in enough to do justice to Tolkien's story which, rich in action and adventure as it is, is an intimate, character-driven quest story at its heart. So long as Ian McKellen and Andy Serkis can be secured to reprise their roles as Gandalf and Gollum respectively (as is rumored), these movies should be excellent.

Hollywood CAN Make Original Movies

Last night, I went to the movies and saw Christopher Nolan's new film Inception for the second time, and while it's not a perfect movie (and its flaws are more noticeable on a second viewing), it is a great one, and proof positive that not everyone in Hollywood is out of ideas. Nolan proved with Memento and The Prestige that he can tell a cerebral, intellectually challenging story, and with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight that he can stage bravura action sequences, but this is the first film in which he's really married the two, and the combination works brilliantly most of the time. What really impressed me, however, was the way he took familiar elements from a number of well-established Hollywood genres (heist flicks, neo noir, action blockbusters, and so on) and put them together in a totally new way. Even as I recognized many of the scenes as something I had seen before, I was continually amazed at his ability to fit them into a story and give them a twist I hadn't seen before. Like many other viewers, I saw the much-discussed final shot coming, but rather than annoy me with its predictability it gave me the same sense of giddy completion you get when you complete a supremely difficult jigsaw puzzle. It was only predictable because it fit so very well with the rest of the movie, and Nolan had earned it by telling his story so well to that point.

It's the kind of movie that restores my faith in Hollywood film-making as an institution that has something unique and valuable to contribute to the life of the American mind (weakened by a hundred Transformers 2s and Clash of the Titans remakes as it is). It's the only place in which the brainy ideas of an art film can meet the grand visual imagery made attainable by multimillion dollar budgets and access to the latest in cutting edge film-making technology, and as long as there's a wizard like Nolan around to make the alchemy work, it can still produce some damn fantastic entertainment. Here's hoping another Batman sequel doesn't distract Nolan from making the next Inception.

Do Romantic Comedies Ruin Real Relationships?

That's the implication of a new survey conducted recently in Australia. According to survey respondents, the "happily ever after" endings so common in the genre have created expectations that real relationships fail to meet - such as the belief that one can or should always know what one's partner is thinking, or that they should regularly receive flowers "just because".

Though it's not stated outright, I strongly suspect that most of the respondents to this survey were female, and the survey's findings square with the theory that the typical Hollywood romcom is essentially emotional pornography for women. Just as actual pornography supposedly leads men to nurture unrealistic expectations about their partners and their sex lives, romantic comedies, with their idealized, Hallmark card vision of romantic relationships, so the argument goes, do so for women. I'm not convinced that this is true - I'm skeptical of such sweeping claims, particularly when they're based on survey results that don't appear to have been gathered under particularly scientific conditions -but the thesis is thought-provoking.

Any real human relationship is going to be affected as much by the human flaws of the people engaged in it as by their positive feelings for each other, and those flaws, and the negative emotions they engender, will occasionally manifest themselves as conflict. This is particularly true once external stressors (e.g. having children) enter the picture. So eternally Happily Ever After is a clearly a myth. Similarly, knowing your partner's every thought is not possible nor, were it possible, would it be desirable. Most people I know seem to entertain thoughts which would be hurtful to their partners were they to share them - niggling personal criticisms, resentments, fantasies about other members of the opposite sex, and so on. This is only natural - if there is anyone alive who feels 100% positively about the person they're with, they'll change their mind about that eventually. But why would anyone want to know every time their partner thought something bad about them? Love and devotion are real things, but they exist side-by-side in any human psyche with other, less admirable emotions. We express the former and censor or judiciously edit the latter because it is generally healthier for us to do so. As for roses or candy all the time, if the gesture is repeated too frequently, doesn't it lose its meaning? It's good to do special things for one's significant other occasionally, but by definition what makes them special is the fact that they're only done occasionally - I suspect that a man who gave a woman roses every week would quickly find her tiring of them. Indeed, in the few instances in which I have seen this kind of behavior in real life, it created a real unease in the woman receiving the gifts because she came to feel awkward about being idealized and obligated to her admirer for trying so hard rather than flattered or appreciated.

So no, crappy middling romantic comedies are not a good basis on which to found one's expectations of love and romance. But it seems to me that most people I know - mature adults, at least - have figured that out, and have (if through painful experience) learned that real relationships sometimes require work, sacrifice, and a very unsexy attention to practical details as well as spontaneity and passion. The best romantic comedies find a way to acknowledge this truth, even if they also try to sell us a romantic fantasy. Lesser ones don't, but that is one of the major reasons they're considered lesser. Are there really people out there who take their cues from Maid In Manhattan or The Ugly Truth? If so, ugh. Romance is in more trouble than we could have guessed.

The Comic Book Movie Stranglehold

I went to see Iron Man 2 last week, and while I enjoyed it, I can't help but agree with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat's contention that it and movies like it are sucking up a distressing amount of creative oxygen in Hollywood these days. Summer blockbusters have always drawn in talented actors, writers, and directors, of course, be they good movies like Iron Man, Star Wars, and Batman Begins, entertaining but forgettable efforts like Men In Black, the X-Men franchise, or the initial Harry Potter films, or genuine dreck like the recent Clash of the Titans. But by virtue of their box office reliability and inherent amenability to sequelization, comic book movies present a special problem. If a director like Christopher Nolan or Jon Favreau, or a performer like Christian Bale or Robert Downey Jr., makes a one-off foray into blockbuster filmmaking, it's one thing - just one entry in a filmography that has plenty of space to subsequently grow in other directions. However, if they're committed to an entire franchise, which successful superhero movies tend to spawn, it's something completely different. If there's going to be a Batman sequel every few years, that's one fewer Memento or Insomnia that Nolan has time to make in that time frame. If Downey Jr. is busy with Iron Man 3 or its spinoff The Avengers, he's going to have less time for daring comic roles like the one he played in Tropic Thunder or fascinating dramatic ones like his turn in Zodiac. If Guillermo del Toro is making Hellboy 2, he's not making the next Pan's Labyrinth. And so on.

It has been very interesting to see talents like Nolan, Downey, Favreau, del Toro, Bryan Singer, Sam Raimi, etc. put their stamp on the superhero movie genre, just as it was interesting to watch the likes of Tim Burton and Jack Nicholson do it twenty years ago. But the imprint of that stamp gets fainter and fainter with each application without a return to the inkpad, and that's essentially what Iron Man 2 (and The Dark Knight, X-Men 2, Hellboy 2, Spider Man 2, etc.) are. Because of this diminishing returns effect, the creators feel pressure to constantly up the ante, with each subsequent outing in the franchise featuring bigger action sequences, better special effects, more and cooler villains, etc. Eventually, things get to the point where the sequels become more reminiscent of the absurd, bloated cartoonishness of the Joel Schumacher-George Clooney Batman period than the taut, well-imagined, and character-driven films that began the franchise re-boots. This happened with Spider Man 3, it happened in my opinion with The Dark Knight, and in Iron Man 2, there are signs aplenty that it's starting to happen with that franchise as well, despite the movie's charms.

Perhaps Raimi, by bailing on the Spider Man franchise after the third installment to go back to making the kind of clever horror and fantasy films on which he made his name, will set a good precedent for other creative types currently absorbed by the superhero craze. Or perhaps too many of these movies being released every year will lead the public to tire of them, and the fad for them will pass, clearing space for other films to be made. As someone who enjoys the efforts of talented people in genres other than the comic book adaptation, I think either would be a fairly welcome development.

10 Directors You Didn't Know You Hated

The Onion A.V. Club has re-posted an old list. I didn't recognize many of the names on the list, and it's true that of the movies discussed, I disliked or outright hated most of the ones I've seen. I can't recall the direction being a major reason for this distaste in most cases, probably because in most cases it was merely one, forgettably mediocre-to-bad aspect of movies that were mediocre-to-bad across the board. One thing this list does prove is that the Michael Bays, Brett Ratners, and M. Night Shyamalans of the world truly are unique talents - there are obviously plenty of forgettable, indistinguishable hacks directing movies in Hollywood, so to separate yourself from the pack and achieve memorable, transcendant badness the way they have is a real accomplishment.

My Take On The Oscars

Sadly, I don't see nearly so many movies as I used to, since Japanese theaters tend to be pricey and short on foreign movies that aren't blockbusters in the vein of Avatar and 2012. Of this year's Best Picture nominees, the only ones I've seen are The Hurt Locker, Up, Inglourious Basterds, and District 9. Though Inglourious Basterds wasn't far behind, I think The Hurt Locker was the best film among those four, what a great war film should be - tense, well-drawn, and richly characterized rather than brash or showy, and illuminative of the difficult moral dilemmas of war without moralizing. I don't mean that as a dig at Tarantino's film - he does about as well as anybody can at making cinematic art out of B-grade pastiche, and Inglourious Basterds is no exception - but merely by virtue of its stylized pulpiness his movie compromises its ability to make a really impactful artistic statement. These two films were also the only two of those nominated for Best Director which I saw, and it's a really a hard call to say who did a better job there - the movies are so different that it's tough to compare them. The Hurt Locker was certainly a smaller, less ambitious piece, but Kathryn Bigelow carried it off near perfectly. Inglourious Basterds, on the other hand, was more of a mixed bag, feeling a bit overstuffed despite some absolutely exquisitely staged set pieces and Tarantino's usual crackerjack pacing. I can't say it would have been an injustice had Tarantino won, but Bigelow was certainly deserving.

I've also yet to see most of the performances that were nominated for the various acting categories. I'm happy to see that Christoph Waltz won for his performance in Inglourious Basterds however. Nazis on screen are at this point so old hat as villains that it's hard to play the type memorably - who can top Ralph Fiennes as Amon Göth in Schindler's List? - but Waltz's ruthless, suave, relentlessly manipulative sophisticate is as memorable as any.

Hopefully I'll get a chance to catch up on the movies I missed at some point.

The Worst Movies of the Oughts

I don't generally make a habit of seeking out movies reputed to be awful (I'm kind of like this guy in that way), so I haven't seen any of the films that came in behind it, but it's hard for me to believe that Battlefield Earth was only the 27th worst movie of the past decade. I rented it with some friends back in college, when I was still into the idea of watching things because of the "so bad it's good" factor, and despite the spectacle of John Travolta in stilt heels and a Rasta wig belting out lines like "you must be out of your skullbone, puny man-animal!", that movie more than any other proved to me the existence of an entirely different kind of terrible. It was quite literally painful to watch - by the time the end credits mercifully rolled, I had a pounding headache from listening to the soundtrack, and my neck hurt from trying to follow action that was almost entirely filmed, for some reason, at a 45 degree angle. That other people who suffered through the experience of watching Battlefield Earth could find 26 movies made in the past ten years that were WORSE than it was (2.6 such stinkers per year if you're keeping track at home) makes me shudder.

Other notes:

1.)The list seems to be dominated by movies from three genres - action, lowbrow comedy, and thriller. There's no doubt that these genres do contribute more than their fair share of crap to the cinematic cesspool, and I realize the list was compiled merely by ranking films according to which had the lowest Tomatometer score, pretty much precluding anything put out by a highly-acclaimed filmmaker from "charting". Nevertheless, my own list would include a few prestige epics, Oscar bait dramas, and ill-conceived indies as well. Crash and Eyes Wide Shut would be strong contenders for my own top-10 list of the worst movies I've seen this decade, but since one won an Academy Award and the other was directed by the great Stanley Kubrick, there's no chance they'll receive the accolades (decolades?) they deserve on this sort of list.

2.)Dependable crapmeisters like Uwe Boll, Larry the Cable Guy, and the "(insert movie type here) Movie" guys unsurprisingly feature prominently on the list. But where's Michael Bay?

3.)Unfortunately for them, acclaimed performers like Robert de Niro, Ben Kingsley, and Diane Keaton also show up - De Niro twice. In fact if there's one thing that this list reminds me of, it's that good actors make bad movies with surprising regularity.

4.)Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li (#44) was really bad (it was the third part of a Trans-Pacific triple feature, for the record), but according to the list it's not even the worst video game adaptation of the '00's. Ouch.

5.)Producers should probably avoid pairing Lucy Liu and Antonio Banderas in another movie for at least a decade.

The full list is here.

Fanboy Rant of the Day

Bryan Singer, he of The Usual Suspects and X-Men fame, is apparently gathering steam for a re-make of the 1981 Arthurian epic Excalibur. I've been a fan of Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur since I took a class on it in college - though narratively uneven and stylistically rough around the edges, it is nevertheless, in my opinion, a masterly exploration of eternal themes of honor, loyalty, love, guilt, and repentance, and to this day the most powerful and emotionally affecting telling of the Matter of Britain yet written. Though I liked the original Excalibur well enough, it was in many ways a missed opportunity, as it left out much of the story of Launcelot and most of the thematic and psychological depth found in Malory's work. My hope is that this re-make, should it come to pass, will capture those aspects of the story that the original didn't - with better special effects to boot.

Then again, perhaps I shouldn't get too excited - for every pre-modern literary classic that Hollywood's gotten right a la Lord of the Rings, there's one that's grossly disserved a la Troy.