Thursday, May 27, 2010

Holding out for a hero

A couple days ago i watched Marty, the 1955 Best Picture winner. In case you haven't noticed, a careful blend of Turner Classic Movies and DVR have been really helping this blog out this summer.

The movie is about a 34-year-old bachelor whose younger siblings are all married, and who is getting a lot of pressure from older people (like his mother, and customers at the butcher shop where he works) to settle down, or on the other hand, pressure from his peers to continue a lifestyle of bar-hopping, or perhaps finding certain streets to see just what kind of action they could find (for a cost, surely). Well, he gives into the bar-hopping one night, but inadvertently finds a girl who had been ditched by her date. They hit it off and spend several hours just talking and getting to know each other. The next day, the same people pressuring him to find a girl have changed their minds (for instance, his mother realizes she doesn't want to lose her last child to marriage because she'd be left all alone), and his friends urge him to not waste his time on a girl they deem less than attractive enough. In the end, Marty decides that what he wants and what makes him happy are the things he should be focusing on, and calls her up. i suppose the rest of the story is the material for a different movie.

All in all, i really enjoyed this film. It taps into fears that i think a lot of college students have - that we'll end up 34 years old working a mediocre job, having still not found the one we want to spend the rest of our lives with. frankly, it's an outcome that scares me sometimes when i let it. However, there's something to be said for patience. There's also something to be said for pursuing things the right way in the first place, and another thing to be said for knowing what we are capable of and having reasonable expectations. If we stay grounded and patient, then anything exceeding expectations gets to come as a wonderful surprise! and if we stay on an appropriate path from the beginning, those disappointments are more likely to fall few and far between. The right things fall in to place as long as we push just enough and not too much in the right directions. So here's hoping that after college i can seek after jobs and a career that are right for me and make me happy, never settling for something less-than, and never taking something more-than simply because of the attraction of a pay check or a reputation. Sometimes patience, reason, and (dare i say it) righteousness can actually pay off.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

We have no way of knowing where the heart is. See, every human is different.

okay, i have FOUR more! but i'm going to keep it brief.

The New World - this movie's mainly about Pocahontas, a bit about John Smith, and a bit about John Rolfe later on. overall, i enjoyed it. it's a bit slow, and relies heavily on voice-over for character insight, and consider the movie is a little bit heavier on character than plot, that makes it pretty important. like with Terence Malick's earlier film (he's only made 4 in the past 40 years, with a 5th coming out this year) The Thin Red Line, i found the voice over a tad distracting because it's all quite deep and profound in its insights and i'm not sure if that is somehow pretentious, or simply true to the characters. i've seen each film only once, and feel they both deserve a repeat viewing eventually to see if they just require more effort than perhaps i put in.

All of that aside, very good performances all around, and really, truly, remarkably beautiful to look at. it was filmed (entirely?) on location in America, predominantly in Virginia, i believe, and frankly, it was a wonderful reminder that there really is a lot of beauty remaining in North American nature. we tend to forget the power of that particular kind of creation as we celebrate our cities and skyscrapers and roads, etc. i found it even a little ironic that the recent Avatar, which many felt simply ripped off the story of Pocahontas for the sake of an environmentalist nature was actually less a celebration of native cultures and the creation of nature than it is a celebration of man's ability to create those environments in computers. this movie is the real deal - several actual breathtaking images just about make this movie worth the viewing regardless of the other elements and slow pace.

Whatever Works - Woody Allen's most recent, from last year, starring Larry David (who i absolutely love with Curb Your Enthusiasm). i've only seen about 6 Woody Allen movies, but i've generally enjoyed all of them, and while he's bit a little hit or miss the past decade, and this movie in particular got mixed-to-negative reviews, i actually really enjoyed it. a little too slow paced to pull off its own quirkiness, but i felt like it was a good sort of homage from Allen to some of his own earlier works. random character reversals (the bourbon-drinking conservative Christian southern belle mother becomes a hip NYC photographer/artist), unlikely relationships, and the main character breaking the fourth wall to provide commentary to the audience that no one else can see, etc. it was fun, is what i'm saying, and sometimes there's nothing wrong with that.

While cleaning my room yesterday, i popped in a DVD i have with about 18 early Alfred Hitchcock movies, none of which i'd watched yet, and selected The Lady Vanishes. All of these movies are prior to 1940 Best Picture winner Rebecca, and therefore prior to the period when Hitchcock really started making the "Hitchcock movies" that we're more familiar with. However, while he might not yet have been an auteur as we use the word, he was still quite a talented director. The Lady Vanishes was a fun, exciting thriller with a little bit of Nazi related paranoia and espionage, all taking place in the confines of a train. It was a good time. As per usual, it's nice to see older movies that can still resonate and be a good thrilling thriller. In fact, several elements of this film were recycled a few years ago in Flight Plan, starring Jodie Foster, which just goes to show that sometimes good film making is just that, and it never ages.

Finally, this morning i watched Vera Drake. Set in 1950, it's about a mother and cleaning lady who performs abortions in her spare time. she does it for free, primarily for working class (or lower) girls who are "in trouble and need help." regardless of anyone's opinions on the issue, there's no doubt that she is doing it simply out of the kindness of her heart and a sincere desire to help people in need. Wonderful performance from Imelda Staunton (who most people would recognize as Professor Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix). It was a very sad transition to see between the first half, where Vera is such a happy bubbly person, trying to do good, and the second half after she has been caught by the police where she is quite simply a bit of a crying mess. (She was arrested due to a report after a girl gets sick from the operation, the first instance of this Vera has ever experienced, and information she is sincerely troubled by, and surely feels responsible and guilty for). Regardless of one's opinions on the issue, it was really a good film, and worth checking out for the sake of placing a human face on the issue that we don't frequently focus on.

that's all for now - maybe soon i'll have gotten through a book and i can tell you about that instead of movies. peace.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Pterodactyls Are Pterrifying!

Last night was A Single Man. i don't have much to say about it specifically, except to say that it was very good and also quite sad, but not in a particularly depressing way - visually really wonderful, a lot of visual style. Some have considered it "over-stylized" but i disagree, on the basis that, well, i just didn't think so.

Colin Firth was absolutely wonderful. It takes a special performance to not reveal certain things. i found myself seeing some mild similarities to The Reader (in my opinion, the movie that should have beaten Slumdog Millionaire for Best Picture), in that both dealt with a certain kind of taboo relationship, and main characters who were trying (and succeeding) to hide elements of their pasts (being a Nazi or being a gay man whose partner had died). It was an awesome performance - restraint is so much more effective in a performance, but so much less celebrated. it brought enough gravity to the movie to balance out the stylization of the visual appearance.

This morning was the 1933 King Kong. and i'll tell you, it was really good! of course, the special effects are now almost 80 years old, so it lacks a certain amount of realism, and the acting style is now almost 80 years old, so it lacks a certain grounding in actual human behavior, but it was still an engrossing story that played out with a lot of excitement. i was especially surprised at how faithful Peter Jackson's 2005 version had been to the original. When watching it, i kept thinking, "Whoa, was that really in the original? Dinosaurs? Island people? King Kong fighting a T-REX?!?!" But sure enough, it was all in the original (even Kong breaking the T-rex's jaw bone!). It makes me want to go back and watch the newer version again now because i think it was a whole lot smarter than i had realized at the time. It essentially takes a story and movie that already works on many levels (seriously, just watch the original version, and you'll see, it still holds up in a lot of ways), kept all of the function elements, and brought the effects into our own century so we could watch it without snickering.

This movie was yet another reminder to me that if an old movie has been deemed a "classic" on one level or another, if it has that kind of reputation, the odds are that it deserves it, so go watch it!

Lemon out.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Where the part is used for the whole, the specific for the general.

Okay, i have two movies already.

the first - The French Connection - 1971 Academy Award for Best Picture, i finally got around to it because i could dvr it on AMC. i thoroughly enjoyed it for several reasons. it's a cop/detective movie where Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider try to find some french guys and catch them smuggling heroine into the country. it was complex enough to merit a movie, but simple enough to not be confusing. It's based on a true story, as well, if the epilogue had any merit to it.

It had a great early 70s look and feel to it - a lot of shaky camera work, but in a gritty "we didn't really have a choice, it's a giant camera and we had to run around with it" way, instead of the Paul Greengrass, intentional nausea way (which, for the record, i also enjoy when implemented well). as with most movies made before, say, 1990, i was struck by the pace. it's slower, but never uninteresting. there are several chase sequences that go on for a decent amount of time, but the chases are frequently on foot through NYC, and frequently unaccompanied by music. that's just the kind of thing that most movies cannot get away with nowadays. there was one really great chase where a car is trying to keep up with a subway train, but it wasn't littered with explosions or anything, just a few brief near-misses and small crashes.

for 2-hour movie, a lot happens in a way that feels like not a lot is happening, and still manages to be exciting. who does that anymore? as for awards and status - i think it definitely merits its place as a Best Picture winner in the context of it's day as one of the earlier cop movies moving towards a more realistic approach to the style before the genre got copied and rehashed into attempts at box office success with less narrative integrity. i do question Gene Hackman's Oscar for Best Actor, not because he wasn't good, but because it appeared to be a fairly simple role to play - some good dialogue, a lot of passion for catching the bad guy, but frankly, i didn't see much of a "character" outside of the function of the movie. but oh well, still worth checking out for all the other reasons.


Now, on to the second movie, which i watched this morning - Synecdoche, New York:

i'll be honest, i do not have a clue how to respond to this movie. it was wonderful, fascinating, sad, crazy, a little disturbing, (very) darkly funny, and just all around a really awesome kind of movie-going experience that we don't really get a lot of these days. you have to really work to keep yourself engaged in order to follow parts (that is, without getting frustrated at the oddities), but at the same time, that's not difficult because the movie is so engaging in spite of the occasional frustration. for what it's worth, i'll direct you now to Roger Ebert's review of it. he doesn't quite make more sense of it, but he's at least more eloquent when talking about the movie he would later call the best film of the decade.

Written and directed by Charlie Kaufman (who is responsible for writing some of my favorites - Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - one can immediately expect a weird movie. but it's some how more than that - about a theatre director who wants to create a massive theatre piece with a miniature reproduction of new york, art is constantly imitating life constantly imitating art constantly imitating life constantly imitating... and on and on. it's about the performances we play as ourselves (a phenomenon i once remarked on when mentioning All About Eve), and about remembering to remember that everyone else in the world is playing themselves, and that ours is not the only story, it's just usually the only one we choose to focus on. at it's most depressing themes, it is about the utter hopelessness of our ever finding happiness because we keep delaying smaller happinesses in confidence that something better will come along. however, i simply cannot believe that is truly Kaufman's worldview, so i suspect there is something deeper at play, some irony which i can only glean from repeat viewings (of which i'm sure there will be several down the road).

i am reminded now of Joseph Heller's Catch-22, in which the central theme, as written, was something like, "The spirit gone, man is garbage." but i do not believe that Heller or Yossarian truly believed the spirit to be gone, in the same way that i believe Kaufman does not believe our lives are a truly a waste, but rather that we must work that much harder to be honest with ourselves and appreciate the goodness while it is there. at a sort of climactic scene, a character in the play, a minister at a funeral, goes off with the following (and forgive the profanity, as i am merely quoting):

"Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create. And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but it doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along. Something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel whole, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is I feel so angry, and the truth is I feel so fucking sad, and the truth is I've felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long I've been pretending I'm OK, just to get along, just for, I don't know why, maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own. Well, fuck everybody. Amen."

is the problem here whether what he is saying is true or false? or is the problem that he has devoted so much energy to dwelling on these complexities and uncertainties that he has, perhaps, not only drained life of the joys it does have to offer, but also drained himself of the capacity for recognizing them?

Maybe Synecdoche, New York, is the town where one man is meant to represent us all? i wonder if the Whole has ever been asked how it felt about being represented by just One Part of it? i think, just maybe, Synecdoche, New York is less of a worldview expounded as the narrative of a sad life than it is a cautionary tale. but i'll have to figure it out next time, or the time after that, or the time after that, or the time...

Monday, May 17, 2010

From the Ashes Again

i will attempt yet again to resurrect my blog this summer. having tried several subjects - general Christianity/faith questions, movies, books, random news and updates - i am going to try to focus this time on one thing: movies. there are several movies i am trying to watch almost all the time. From trying to complete AFI's top 100 list, to watching Academy Award winners for Best Picture, and slowly but surely checking off the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, there's always something for me to rent, DVR, or stream online.

if the opportunity arises to tie in a movie i watched with some Christian ideal, i will of course try to do that. i intend to limit my posts to older movies, those i've watched for the first time, or stuff i've not yet seen from some of my favorite directors, generally avoiding anything i see at the theater unless it was just mind-blowing enough to merit a response.

hopefully, in my movie reviews/analyses/responses, i will feel compelled to write about other things. i have a long list of books i hope to read this summer as well (a list of about 18 so far - i'll be lucky to get around to about 8).

anyway, on the great experiment - i intend to have at least 1 movie watched by the end of the day.