The Magic of the Movies

I saw something yesterday that kind of disgusted me and then made me think of a post that I read on one of my favourite movie blogs Kid In the Front Row. The item in question was on the cover of the current issue of US Weekly that I saw at the grocery store. It had a picture of Kate Gosselin from Jon and Kate Plus 8 fame and the headline was about how she doesn't like her new hair and I got to thinking: who the hell really cares if someone who has done absolutely nothing to deserve her celebrity except for squeeze eight kids out of her likes her hair or not? Are we supposed to feel bad for a non-celebrity's haircut? Back in the day celebrities were looked up to because they allowed us to escape our reality and join them in theirs which was admittedly a whole heck of a lot better. Today, Kate and her hair are a constant reminder of how shallow and pathetic it has become.

And then I read Kid's small, humble article in which he looked back over the history of his blog with disbelief over it's success and found hope in that. Kid is the kind of guy who spends a lot of time keeping the memories of great men and woman in the film world alive like Charlie Chaplin, Billy Wilder and Jimmy Stewart by revisiting their work with intelligence and passion. He remembers a time when film was made by great artists who told great stories that were performed by great actors. A time when art and even entertainment meant more than who celebrity X was shacking up with. He doesn't care, he lays out in his site's subheading, about the grosses of the latest superhero movie, etc because they mean nothing to him. I know exactly what he means. Film is as magical a medium today as it ever was, but the true magicians are getting harder and harder to find as their work becomes buried under a mountain of superficial items like box office, celebrity personal lives, big budget cash-grabs like sequels, remakes and reboots, etc.

And then, when Kid admits that what he is really looking for is the return of Jimmy Stewart (it's John Wayne for me) I got to thinking: what should be cherished most about Kid In the Front Row is right there in the name of the blog. At the end of the day, when all of us out there who love to watch film put pen to page (or finger to keyboard for the literalists) we essentially revert back into that infantile state of infatuation: we're those kids in the front row, loving every image, cherishing every adventure, embracing every punchline and so on. The heart speaking above all other voices in our body. That's why I write criticism. 

The truely great critics; the ones whose opinion we value day in and day out; the one's whose opinion we respect; the one's who we love because of the personality of their writing and not their ability to gauge the worth of a work are not the scholars or degree holders or most technically experienced indviduals but the ones who have sat there in the front row with us. They understand love and aren't afraid to put their mind at rest for a moment to let their heart sing. Robert Warshow once said something to the tune of how a man goes to the movies and the critic must be honest enough to admit that he is that man.

For the purpose of this post, that Warshow explanation is the single most important reason why I do this blog. I know how to spot and describe different shots, kinds of lighting, different types of lenses and all the artistic implications of these things; I love reading books about how films are made and how the business side of film works and I love thinking about psychology and philosophy as much as the next guy. But at the end of the day, whether or not I'm watching cars speed down streets at high speeds in The Fast and the Furious, seeing Spider-Man swing from building to building or seeing Marcello on that lonely beach at the end of La Dolche Vita, not being able to comprehend what his virginal savior is saying to him, I'm basically that kid in the front row with you, in the dark, having his heart stolen and his imagination expanded, watching as magical images seem to appear out of thin air.

To me, conveying that feeling is the heart of criticism. It's what I like to read and what I want to write about. Some writers have become so smart, their vocabulary so vast, their oratory skills so finely tuned that they forget themselves as being those kids in the front row and that's when love stops and self-indulgence starts.

That's why I disagree with the majority of film theory and have almost totally shied away from it since graduation: because film theory doesn't even begin to take into account those butterflies in the stomach when Sam plays it again; the jolts of terror as Michael Meyers jumps out of the dark; those tears of joy as the Polar Express nears it's destination; that ping of realization as Rosebud burns before our eyes; the unquenchable laughter that erupts as Bluto sets the ladder up outside the female frat house; or the breathlessness from the unspeakable beauty of the landscapes of Pandorum. Just to name a few through the ages.

Those are the reasons we go to the movies in the first place. They are the reasons we write these blogs with little or no money in return and slave over trying to get them noticed by as many people as possible: because we're all just kids in the front row, in love with a toy of never ending possibilities that we can't wait to discover and continue to rediscover until we have lost the facility to do so.

Up In The Air

One of the things they teach you when studying human resources is that if firing someone ever gets easy, you should maybe consider re-evaluating your career path. Like almost everything learned in the classroom setting, I took this advice at face value and logged it in the proper annals of my brain without ever considering the elegiac implications of such a statement: the very thing that Up In the Air, as subtle and biting an overturning of contemporary North American corporate culture as there has ever been, is all about. The hero of the story is Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) who acts as the guy who is called in when big companies outsource work to downsize their staff because they don’t want to deal with the mess themselves. It’s his job to fly into town, inform the recipient of the bad news, console them, alert them to their options and bid them adieu, never to see them again. This is Bingham’s life for all but a handful of days of the year: always flying, never stagnant enough to ever become attached to anything of worth or value to him except his job. He essentially has no home, no past, no future and no definition: a man adrift in a world whose only loyal inhabitant is himself. Consider him a merge between William Hurt’s Macon Leary from the Accidental Tourist and, maybe more accurately, Marcello from Fellini’s masterpiece La Dolche Vita. He's always drifting from one encounter to the next, never staying put, never feeling anything, never being anything to anyone. Life is essentially getting from one necessary banality to the next on the way to either retirement or death, which, to men like Bingham, may be about the same thing. Bingham is the typical archetype for the North American corporate success story. He’s married to nothing but his work, which his does with cold, unaffected precision. In between he hosts informational seminars in which he tries to convince people that life is essentially carrying a backpack: you must fill it only with the most necessary items in order to travel lightly and without strain. Pictures are only for those with bad memories, Bingham advises, so throw them out and make room for something you need. The heaviest object that can be carried in the backpack is personal relationships. Not only do they weigh you down and slow you up, but they require extra baggage costs. And sure enough, when Bingham meets a similar minded girl Alex (Vera Farmiga) in a hotel lounge their flirtation involves debating which rental car service is superior, their attraction revolves around their collections of VIP cards and their eventual sex seems more out of a need to pass the time between firings than any sort of lustful desire. There is, however, one thing of meaning that propels Bingham. Because of his constant travelling he wants to be the seventh man in history to accumulate over 10 million Frequent Flier Miles. Such an achievement would provide the only kind of elite status he has to prove he is anything more than nothing. Then something happens. After the young, aptly named, Natalie Keener (Twlight’s Anna Kendrick) is hired, she brings with her plans to save the company money by setting up Internet connections with clients in order to do their work without the constantly high travel expenses. Bingham is quick to reject this proposition and for good reason. Not only is the sole human connection he ever makes going to be taken away from him and automated, but the chance to achieve his goal would be ripped out from under him. Bingham is soon assigned to take Natalie out on the road with him to teach her the ropes of the business. The two initially clash. He can’t understand her naivety and optimism: looking for perfect love, thinking she can change the world, etc, and she can’t understand how his life has become so simple and meaningless, and all the while we are reminded of that virginal young girl in the café across from Marcello in La Dolche Vita. Along the way Bingham subverts his course in order to take pictures of a cardboard cut-out of his sister and her fiancé (ala the dwarf in Amelie) against famous American backdrops for their wedding. Bingham is estranged from his family, has never met his brother-in-law to be, and can’t understand why anyone would want pictures of themselves in places they have never been before. The answer to Bingham’s ignorance comes during the wedding (the film's center and best section) in which it is revealed that the reason for the gimmick was because the couple could not afford a honeymoon, but still wanted something symbolic in it’s place, and the power of the symbol is both salient and enlightening: the pictures are fake but meaningful, while Bingham’s life is real but empty. It’s the turning point of the film. Up In the Air thus becomes a gentle meditation of the importance upon which North American culture places on career-mindedness and high salary living. The film is only the third from Canadian director Jason (son of Ivan) Reitman after Thank You For Smoking and Juno, who by now should be considered within the upper pantheons of great contemporary directors and here strikes an even balance between what was most rewarding about those two films. It both satirises corporate culture to great humorous effect but also delves deep into the personal psyche in order to examine the toll that such a life takes on the very fundamentals of living. The American Dream, it is shown, has failed us again. Thus, Bingham, through his relationship with the two woman and his life and from his time at home with family, slowly grows to realize that life is nothing without, not only things to be proud of, but people to share the pride along with. Like Marcello, he’s seen too many things and been around too long to even break out of the mould he’s set for himself. Yet his story is not one of tragedy but one of hope. It’s too late for him, but there’s still life beyond the flight schedule board for the rest of us.

Golden Globes 2010

So I just finished watching the Golden Globes. It was the first time I've ever watched the entire show because, quite frankly, I don't care much about television and the Golden Globes always seemed to me to be the poor man's Oscars. They aren't as funny, as shamelessly glamours, and their comedy categories give a certain credibility to films that would otherwise be thrown on the scrap heap to be forgotten about as history moves on without them. I'm talking about stuff like The Proposal, It's Complicated, Sherlock Holmes, Julie and Julia, and Nine. I'm not going to talk about the winners and whether or not they were truly the best in their category (okay I'll do it once: 500 Days of Summer was clearly a better film than The Hangover, and really, Robert Downey Jr.?) because, unlike other years, I haven't seen all the nominees and therefore don't have the adequate information to pass informed judgements. What I want to do is make an observation. The other day I was reading Matt Singer's brief review of An Education over at Termite Art and he made the comment that TV is getting so good that it is beginning to overshadow the cinema. This comes as absolute horror to me as someone who has lived and breathed cinema and kept TV at even greater than an arms length away. But as I was watching the Golden Globes and seeing all the TV nominees for shows I've never seen like Big Love, Dexter, True Blood, Glee, and so on, I realized that Singer was maybe on to something, especially when compared to those above listed nominated films like Julie and Julia and It's Complicated.

Then I got to thinking back over what were the most popular films of 2009: X-Men Origins: Wolverine, New Moon, Night at the Museum 2, Terminator: Salvation, and the absolute stinkiest of them all, Transformers: Rise of the Fallen. It was a depressing realization: Hollywood really was in the crapper this year. It's 2009 and instead of producing our own contemporary classics the best we can do is honour a hack musical remake of one of Fellini's most invaluable masterpieces? Then Martin Scrosese took the stage to accept the Cecil B. Demille Award and things got worse for me. Sitting through a montage of one of America's most value directors' work, I was left thinking: There were more essential, classic, absolutely unforgettable moments in those few minutes of montage then there have been in all of 2009. I considered myself definitely depressed. And then, with the TV awards behind and the major awards just over the horizon, I was reminded that, even if 2009 looked and felt like a total wash, amid all the meaningless wreckage, were films made out of the very stuff that make us fall in love again and again with the cinema every day of our lives. Film's like Inglourious Basterds, 500 Days of Summer, Up in the Air, The Hurt Locker and Avatar. Then Jeff Bridges, one of America's true acting treasures, won best actor for Crazy Heart (a film I have yet to see) and was given a standing ovation. "Yes," I thought, "these moments are the reason why we film lovers stick it out even through the worst of years." It was a reminder of what is still, after over 100 years of history, the most unchanged fundamental necessities of film: good actors, playing strong characters, immersed in good stories. Then, as Avatar began winning all the big awards, I was indeed satisfied in my realization that the most popular film of the year was also the best. It wasn't the one about mutant super heroes, vampire lovers, living museum displays, intergalactic robots or any other such gimmick. It wasn't based on a theme part ride, a video game or a toy chain. It wasn't a sequel, a remake, a reboot, or any other such quick money making scheme. It was a bold, beautiful, original piece of art and a glorious entertainment to boot. And it is a film that I hope Hollywood has learned a valuable lesson from: that people essentially crave and are drawn to new concepts and new ideas that are presented in classical film conventions (stories told with pictures). In 20, 10, even 5 years Twilight and Transformers will simply be the bad aftertaste of an era in filmmaking in which big studios thought they could get away with phoning it in. So, in spite of everything, I must hold my head up high and look forward to tomorrow because, no matter how bleak it may look right now, as history has proven and as Brandon Lee so truthfully said in The Crow: "It can't rain all the time." A complete list of Golden Globe winners can be found here, and probably just about everywhere else too.

Avatar Backlash Continued...

Yesterday I posted about how Italian parent groups were speaking out against Avatar opening in Italy today with a G rating, meaning any kid off the street could get in to see it. My reaction: So?

Leap Year Review

Leap Year, the new romantic comedy with Amy Adams and Matthew Goode provided many many things that I expected it to: silly comedy, an improbable plot, a contrived story, an all around forgettable experience and so on. And then it did one thing I never expected: It involved, as mainstream romantic comedies so rarely do, real people with real dimensions and not just broad generalizations of comic caricatures. Not the leads, not the support, and not even the old Irish bed and breakfast owners and their Italian borders. The film may go for easy laughs, but it avoids all the potential for cheap, lazy ones. That’s a quality both refreshing and unexpected in this kind of film. The story itself may be pure fairytale, but it still somehow manages to exist in a real world. These characters are not just the creation of some scriptwriter who needs a laugh or a way to connect plot points as romantic comedy characters so often are. This lends an air of authenticity to the whole project up to the point where, against all reasonable and logical odds, you actually care what will happen to these people as they travel the Irish countryside because they seem to grow together on their own terms. What more could one ask for? The story involves Anna (Adams) who has etched out a career in decorating houses with furniture and other such nick-knacks so that they look nice to potential buyers, until the deal is made at which point she packs up her stuff and moves on to the next project. She’s essentially a highly paid con artist.
After being given a pair of earrings over dinner by her surgeon boyfriend of four years when she was expecting a ring and a proposal, Anna is crushed. Jeremy, the doctor, then flies off to Dublin for a medical convention leaving Anna back home to be reminded of an old Irish tradition that states, on the eve of a leap year, a woman can propose to a man. I don’t know. It seems to me that if you need to chase a man around the globe for his love, maybe he isn’t worth the effort in the first place. Regardless, as Anna’s luck would have it, the leap year just so happens to be coming up in a few days. However, as these things must, bad weather forces Anna’s plane to land in a small Irish town situated hours from Dublin. She seeks out a taxi driver named Declan (Goode) who also doubles as the pub and hotel owner. It’s the kind of place where the same two or three customers haunt the stools every day like the ghosts of lives gone by. Declan initially rejects Anna’s need for a ride, until the possibility of losing the pub leaves him needing cash and without options. Predictably, the journey is not a nice one as Anna and Declan have a clash of personalities. She’s prim and proper and used to being in complete control of herself and he’s rough, unshaven, thinks the whole leap year legend is a bunch of bollocks and decides she must be crazy for naming her bag Louis (apparently Louis Vuitton isn’t big around the Irish countryside). This is a plot almost as old as the cinema itself, or at least since Spender Tracy and Katherine Hepburn made it popular so many decades ago. The story of a man and a woman of completely different backgrounds being forced together under unlikely circumstances, hating each other and then slowly growing to love each other as they talk like civilized people and begin to accept the others’ company. The film then must rely heavily on the presence of its stars, as half the fun of films like this is in seeing how new actors drop themselves into familiar material and transform it to suit their own personality. It’s also the ultimate testament to great acting in seeing a star being able to turn virtually nothing into something that even mildly shows signs of life. It’s no surprise that Amy Adams can pull a feat like that. She’s so unapologetically lovely, so chipper and yet so classy that she’s always a pleasure to be in the company of. Here is a woman who makes even the worst of films seem better than they have any right to be. Then there is Matthew Goode who is a real discovery. He’s starred in dramatic and intelligent fare in the past such as Brideshead Revisited and Watchmen but here he proves to have a real comic presence. He is as rugged and handsome as fellow U.K. star Gerard Butler, but has a lot more charm, depth and a better ear for comedy as he steals most of the films funniest lines. And then there’s the inevitable ending, which is as contrived as it is unlikely, and raises many logical questions that it has no intention of addressing. But by that point Adams and Goode have worked their charm and we can buy them as a legitimate couple, which we actually hope they will become. In my review for last year’s The Proposal I gave a positive rating but made sure to imply that it was simply out of desperation: the world has been subjected to so many horrible mainstream romantic comedies that sometimes feel strained to even fly by on autopilot that it was inspiring to see one with even the faintest sings of life. Now here is Leap Year, which follows the same kind of story headfirst into the same kinds of directions and I recommend it open-heartedly for all the same reasons but also because it is nicer, sweeter and more human.

Avatar Controversy

Let the backlash begin. Variety is reporting that Avatar, which opens tomorrow in Italy, has got Italian parent groups up in arms over the film's G rating. Unlike the U.S. Italy, like Canada, has no PG-13 rating, just under 14 not admitted or under 18 not admitted. The groups are crying out that the G rating doesn't protect their children from the intense war violence and smoking seen in the film.

Let's be real. Of all the things in the world to protest against, is kids being allowed to see Avatar really that big of a deal? There is nothing personally in the film that I would object to a child seeing, and I'd rather my kids (if I had them) seeing something with a positive message than most of the loud, empty-headed junk that passes for family films these days.

I understand when the Italians were upset when Mel Gibson's violence-ridden Apocalypto was released with a G rating in 2007 but as far as film-related backlashes go, this one is pretty weak.

Celebrities Behaving Badly: Quentin Tarantino

There's no news or editorializing here. I just wanted to express how much I love it when celebrities are caught behaving badly. I loved Christian Bale's freak out on the set of Terminator Salvation, I loved David O. Russell throwing a spazz at Lilly Tomlin on the set of I Heart Huckabees or headbutting George Clooney on the set of Three Kings and Bill O'Riley losing it while filming Inside Edition still makes me laugh out loud every time. However, there may be none more apologetic in their public displays of childish behaviour than Quentin Tarantino. From flipping off a booer at Cannes while accepting the Palm D'Or for Pulp Fiction, to insulting a reporter on TV who called Kill Bill senselessly violent and misogynistic, to spitting on someone on the Oscar red carpet in the 90s, Tarantino never seems to lose his class. Here is one of my favourite videos of him, slapping a paparazzi in a Starbucks parking lot. This officially cements Tarantino as the hippest Hollywood bad boy to beat. I know it's an oldy, but it's still a goody.