As near as I can tell, we're currently undergoing a renaissance of realism in film. As a student of American literary realism and someone frequently bored by realism, I approach this development with a mixture of excitement and boredom. Most importantly, even as I see realism as perhaps the dominant force in world cinema, I have to ask the question: will it ever make a dent in the American art house box office? (Related Question, to be Answered Later: Does the American Art House Box Office Exist?)
A historical primer: Realism was the dominant mode of 19th century literary expression, superseding Romanticism and also birthing with Romanticism a filthy and disgusting literary offspring: Naturalism. It was superseded by the modernist revolution at the turn of the century and, in large chunks of the world, lay mostly forgotten as both a literary and cinematic mode for the bulk of the 20th century, cast aside by the fervor of modernism and its far-reaching successor, post-modernism
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The primary exception to this is historical arc is Italian neo-realism, a post-WWII form of realism which looked upon post-Mussolini Italy and saw the perfect setting for realist cinema. Which leads us to:
A Partial Definition: Realism as a literary form was a repudiation of Romanticism, particularly (in the American context) gothic Romanticism. It wasn't interested in gothic castles, ancient bloodlines, quothing Ravens, epic metaphysical sea voyages, Ivanhoe, or anything of the sort. It was a literature of surfaces, but not in a shallow way; it took simple people, either middle- or lower-class, and depicted them as it found them, on their own terms, with an interest in their daily lives. It was not a genre devoid of metaphor, nor did it eschew standard plot formations of rising and falling action, built around conflict and building towards a climax. It just calmed everything down and gave us traditional stories based on the basic, surface perception of bourgeois reality. Also, unfortunately, Dickens.
Italian Neo-Realism: Emerging after Mussolini and the wild modernist fantasies of the fascist futurists, Italian neo-realism sought to reclaim the realist project and apply it to the grim post-war Italy. The middle-class more or less didn't exist, so the primary subject was the lower-class. Lighting was naturalistic, actors were amateurs asked to more or less play themselves, and standard plots frequently existed but were slower, more observational, and less interested in a transformative climax than standard Hollywood filmmaking. And although the films weren't necessarily political, they were always socially minded. The most famous example of Italian Neo-Realism is The Bicycle Thief, in which a man gets a job putting up movie posters, but loses it when his bike is stolen, and must go on a long search for the lost bike with his son. Starring almost completely amateurs, with a keen eye for social injustice and a deeply convincing portrait of a simple man whose livelihood is endangered, The Bicycle Thief is the standard for cinematic realism.
Neo-neo-Realism: For the last 30 years or, cinematic realism has been going strong, but almost exclusively in Iran, in the form of Abbas Kiarostami and like-minded Iranian filmmakers. Realism proved to be the perfect form for Iran; as the cinematic mode of restraint, it made sense in a country where female actors can't be seen and people can't touch, and as a socially minded but not political form, it only earned the privilege of not being shown in Iran government, not imprisonment and death for its creators. Iranian realism is, like other forms of realism, frequently metaphorical and concerned with weighty issues, but it is never overtly so and is often frustratingly subtle, especially for audiences unused to realism (or, like myself, who wish they would just get on with it). Nevertheless, it is a beautiful and deceptively lyrical art form.
Today!!!: Ok, so, finally, what this post was supposed to be about. Italian/Iranian style realism has recently started showing up elsewhere. Here's where:
Romanian: In the last couple of years, no two international films, save perhaps The Lives of Others, have garnered the same level of critical acclaim as two Romanian films, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days. Both of them are wrenching, nearly unwatchable gloomfests revolving around Romanian citizens unable to get the health care they need. Mr. Lazarescu is moved from ER to ER till he dies; the two friends in 4 Months have to wrangle out an illegal abortion. Both films are socially minded, hide deep metaphorical frameworks behind surface depictions, and feature all the hallmarks of a realist aesthetic: naturalistic lighting, naturalistic performances from amateur actors roughly playing themselves, and scathing insights about social situations expressed in the most subtle way possible. And when I say they're gloomfests, I mean that quite literary; apparently every room in Romania is a murky greenish color with 5-foot ceilings and no windows. I'm barely exaggerating. Death pulled in barely $80000 in the US; 4 Months did a whopping $1.2 mil, which is only about 1/800th of what Titanic made. Death got an 84 on metacritic; while 4 Months, with 97, received the second-highest score of any non-re-release ever. Did I mention they're both terminally (literally) boring?
The US:
Tom McCarthy: After his mostly realist whimsyfest, 2003's The Station Agent, Tom McCarthy's recent film The Visitor once again has all the hallmarks of realism. It's perhaps more explicit about its social and political criticism than the other films on this list, and features an uber-professional actor (Intolerable Cruelty's Richard Jenkins) in its starring role, but it's otherwise textbook realism: naturalistic performances from mostly amateurs/newcomers, a traditional plot devoid of sensationalism and uninterested in an easy ending, and restraint practically bleeding from every scene. So far, it's made $5.5 million at the US box office, which is probably more than all of the other films on this list combined; metacritic rated it at 79/100.
Raman Bahrani: An Iranian-American born in North Carolina, Bahrani has made to films pretty much indistinguishable from Kiarostami films, except they're set in New York City. The first is Man Push Cart, about a Pakistani immigrant adjusting to life as a coffee cart runner in Manhattan; the second is Chop Shop, about a pair of orphans trying to make ends meet in a seedy stretch of body shops in Queens. Bahrani is a visual poet who does his best to hide his poetry behind the numbingly destitute situations of his protagonists, which explains why the films made $36 000 and $104 000 respectively, and received metacritic scores of 71 and 83.
Take Out: Just released in Manhattan, Take Out is another neo-realist paragon: amateur actors, made for nothing, shot in New York City, follows an impoverished immigrant, has been mistaken for a documentary, has a %100 fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and will make roughly $100 in theaters and not come to the Chelsea. Woohoo
Conclusion (assuming anyone read this far): Neo-neo-Realism has left Iran and traveled anywhere people are poor and live in depressing post-Industrial urban landscapes - ie. Romanian and New York City. My guess is, film textbooks will hail all of these films and link them together into an important movement with both Iranian and Italian roots, but the demise of the American art house ensures that no one will ever see them until they take my community college class at the Juneau Community College on Neo-neo-Realism, at which point some survivalist will probably murder me for making him watch Mr. Lazarescu die. I have so much to look forward to.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Thursday, June 5, 2008
A Film History Lesson, by Way of Etymology
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Today I watched one of the hundreds (thousands?) of classic Hollywood films that I haven't seen, Harvey, starring Jimmie Stewart. It reminded me of a distinction that a professor of mine always harped on, an important distinction representing the bifurcation of American comedy in the 30s and 40s. I don't know how many of you will have seen any or many of these films, but this little primer should make sense of them.
The distinction that my professor always harped on was the term "screwball comedy." It enraged him that everyone invariably called the movies of the Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields screwball comedies. They aren't screwball comedies at all. People who call them screwball comedies do so (and they frequently did so, according to Dr. Streible, on his final exam) by misunderstanding the etymology of screwball. This false etymology of screwball comedy is a film that is screwy or screwbally - a film that is zany, off-the-wall, crazy, etc. But a screwball comedy isn't "screwy" - it's a comedy about "screwballs," which is an entirely different matter.
Even if you have seen Harvey, or my other favorite example of this term, The Day the Earth Stood Still, you probably don't remember the word "screwball" in those films, but it's there. In Harvey, Stewart's niece tells her mother that she won't be able to enter society since everyone knows that she's "the biggest screwball in town." In The Day the Earth Stood Still, a young boy tells Klaatu the undercover alien, after Klaatu repeatedly is confused about how and why Americans do things, "boy, you sure are a screwball, aren't ya?"
A screwball comedy, as created by Frank Capra in the 1934 film It Happened One Night, is a film about screwballs. It's not "screwy" or "slapsticky" like a Marx Brothers film (although it could be) , but it's about people on the outside of society. People who don't quite fit in. People who have a screw loose. The screwball in screwball comedy represents not the nature of the film or its characters' actions, but its characters' status in society as outsiders. And since Capra invented the screwball comedy, its characters are almost always a little kinder, a little gentler, a little more welcoming and understanding than the rest of society. At the worst, even if they're not so kind or gentle, they aspire to something higher or better than regular society has to offer.
What happens in the screwball comedy is that Capra, et al. ask us to reorient ourselves so that these screwballs become the norm. In It Happened One Night, Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable are a pair of screwballs - Colbert wants to be free of her rich father's world of wealth and privilege, and Gable imagines a world outside of American society where he can meet a girl who can share his dream of adventure. They clash repeatedly over their different dreams, but their repartee is constantly witty and enjoyable. At one point, while on their journey, they have to pretend to be married in front of the police, and they put on a show of a completely different type: they yell at each other incomprehensibly without any kind of mutual understanding until the cops leave. The motel worker who opened their room for the police says: "See, a perfectly normal married couple." That's what marriage looks like in mainstream society; the screwballs are ostracized for wanting something different.
Along the way, screwball comedies are often full of witty dialogue, ridiculous sight gags, and slapstick comedy, particularly in Bringing up Baby and any film made by Preston Sturges. But what makes a screwball comedy a "screwball" is that its characters don't fit into mainstream society, but want to create a new world, better than the mainstream one. The screwball comedy is the comedy of the creation of a new society, from the fringes of that society.
Now, The Marx Brothers and WC Fields movies are the exact opposite of screwball comedies. Sure, Fields and the Brothers might seem like screwballs, in that they don't fit into mainstream society, but they're not the right kind of screwball. Fields repeatedly makes it clear that he hates dogs, women, politics, America, and people. The Marx Brothers, particularly Groucho, hate governments, fair play, truth, honesty, justice, society, and yeah, again, women. In other words, if a screwball comedy is a movie where the asylum inmates imagine creating a whole new, kinder, gentler world, these other movies have been labeled by Andrew Bergman "anarcho-nihilistic laff riots." They have no desire to fix society; they want to tear it down, rip it to pieces, dance on its grave and, above all, be left alone by it so that they can have a drink and throw things at respectable people in peace ( this is how Duck Soup ends...and the person having things thrown at them is of course Margaret Dumont, the women who is hoodwinked and mocked by Groucho in nearly every Marx Brothers movie).
So, the anarcho-nihilistic laff riots and the screwball comedies do have some things in common. Sight gags and physical comedy are staples of the laff riots, but they do often show up in screwball comedies. Both genres usually feature witty and rapid-fire dialogue, and both of them empathize with those outside of the mainstream of society. But the screwball comedies imagine a better world that can be built out of the often quaint values that mainstream society has discarded, while the laff riots heap nothing but scorn on those exact same ideals.
Harvey makes this distinction incredibly clear. Harvey has no rapid-fire dialogue, virtually no slapstick, no zany characters, nothing that in any way resembles a Marx Brothers picture. But it's about a man, Elwood P. Dowd, who believes he can see a 6-foot tall rabbit, and who believes that the world is a nice place, and that everyone should be happy, and that you should invite bums to dinner and that you should marry whoever you want, regardless of social station. Since it's a comedy about him, and one that empathizes with him, that makes Harvey a screwball comedy.
Viewing:
Frank Capra: The Inventor
George Cukor: The Refiner
Preston Sturges: The Master of Physical Comedy
Leo McCarey:The Marx Bros Director
Howard Hawks: The Cynic
The Coen Brothers: The Updaters
Also, I'm working on a post about the 20 greatest American directors of all time, and all of those I just mentioned besides McCarey are locks to be on the list, so you could say I recommend their films. Happy watching!
If you're interested in watching the other kind of film in this post, they're easy to find - pretty much any movie made by Fields or the Marx Brothers. I recommend:
Even if you have seen Harvey, or my other favorite example of this term, The Day the Earth Stood Still, you probably don't remember the word "screwball" in those films, but it's there. In Harvey, Stewart's niece tells her mother that she won't be able to enter society since everyone knows that she's "the biggest screwball in town." In The Day the Earth Stood Still, a young boy tells Klaatu the undercover alien, after Klaatu repeatedly is confused about how and why Americans do things, "boy, you sure are a screwball, aren't ya?"
A screwball comedy, as created by Frank Capra in the 1934 film It Happened One Night, is a film about screwballs. It's not "screwy" or "slapsticky" like a Marx Brothers film (although it could be) , but it's about people on the outside of society. People who don't quite fit in. People who have a screw loose. The screwball in screwball comedy represents not the nature of the film or its characters' actions, but its characters' status in society as outsiders. And since Capra invented the screwball comedy, its characters are almost always a little kinder, a little gentler, a little more welcoming and understanding than the rest of society. At the worst, even if they're not so kind or gentle, they aspire to something higher or better than regular society has to offer.
What happens in the screwball comedy is that Capra, et al. ask us to reorient ourselves so that these screwballs become the norm. In It Happened One Night, Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable are a pair of screwballs - Colbert wants to be free of her rich father's world of wealth and privilege, and Gable imagines a world outside of American society where he can meet a girl who can share his dream of adventure. They clash repeatedly over their different dreams, but their repartee is constantly witty and enjoyable. At one point, while on their journey, they have to pretend to be married in front of the police, and they put on a show of a completely different type: they yell at each other incomprehensibly without any kind of mutual understanding until the cops leave. The motel worker who opened their room for the police says: "See, a perfectly normal married couple." That's what marriage looks like in mainstream society; the screwballs are ostracized for wanting something different.
Along the way, screwball comedies are often full of witty dialogue, ridiculous sight gags, and slapstick comedy, particularly in Bringing up Baby and any film made by Preston Sturges. But what makes a screwball comedy a "screwball" is that its characters don't fit into mainstream society, but want to create a new world, better than the mainstream one. The screwball comedy is the comedy of the creation of a new society, from the fringes of that society.
Now, The Marx Brothers and WC Fields movies are the exact opposite of screwball comedies. Sure, Fields and the Brothers might seem like screwballs, in that they don't fit into mainstream society, but they're not the right kind of screwball. Fields repeatedly makes it clear that he hates dogs, women, politics, America, and people. The Marx Brothers, particularly Groucho, hate governments, fair play, truth, honesty, justice, society, and yeah, again, women. In other words, if a screwball comedy is a movie where the asylum inmates imagine creating a whole new, kinder, gentler world, these other movies have been labeled by Andrew Bergman "anarcho-nihilistic laff riots." They have no desire to fix society; they want to tear it down, rip it to pieces, dance on its grave and, above all, be left alone by it so that they can have a drink and throw things at respectable people in peace ( this is how Duck Soup ends...and the person having things thrown at them is of course Margaret Dumont, the women who is hoodwinked and mocked by Groucho in nearly every Marx Brothers movie).
So, the anarcho-nihilistic laff riots and the screwball comedies do have some things in common. Sight gags and physical comedy are staples of the laff riots, but they do often show up in screwball comedies. Both genres usually feature witty and rapid-fire dialogue, and both of them empathize with those outside of the mainstream of society. But the screwball comedies imagine a better world that can be built out of the often quaint values that mainstream society has discarded, while the laff riots heap nothing but scorn on those exact same ideals.
Harvey makes this distinction incredibly clear. Harvey has no rapid-fire dialogue, virtually no slapstick, no zany characters, nothing that in any way resembles a Marx Brothers picture. But it's about a man, Elwood P. Dowd, who believes he can see a 6-foot tall rabbit, and who believes that the world is a nice place, and that everyone should be happy, and that you should invite bums to dinner and that you should marry whoever you want, regardless of social station. Since it's a comedy about him, and one that empathizes with him, that makes Harvey a screwball comedy.
Viewing:
Frank Capra: The Inventor
- It Happened One Night
- You Can't Take it With You
- Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
George Cukor: The Refiner
- The Holiday
- The Philadelphia Story
- Adam's Rib
Preston Sturges: The Master of Physical Comedy
- The Lady Eve
- Sullivan's Travels
- Palm Beach Story
Leo McCarey:The Marx Bros Director
- The Awful Truth
Howard Hawks: The Cynic
- Bringing up Baby
- His Girl Friday (probably an anti-screwball comedy)
The Coen Brothers: The Updaters
- The Hudsucker Proxy (retro-screwball)
- The Big Lebowski (the quintessential 90s screwball)
- Intolerable Cruelty (retro-screwball)
Also, I'm working on a post about the 20 greatest American directors of all time, and all of those I just mentioned besides McCarey are locks to be on the list, so you could say I recommend their films. Happy watching!
If you're interested in watching the other kind of film in this post, they're easy to find - pretty much any movie made by Fields or the Marx Brothers. I recommend:
- Duck Soup
- A Night at the Opera
- Horse Feathers
- The Bank Dick
- Never Give a Sucker an Even Break
- The Fatal Glass of Beer (short)
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Sex and the City Haters
Hilary sent me a piece from Newsweek that was headlined "Criticism of 'Sex and the City' is Mostly Sexist." The article's thesis is that the Sex and the City movie (henceforth SATC) has received undue and sexist criticism. This might be true, but man, is this article wrong about lots of stuff. If you'd like to read it before reading my response, it's here: http://www.newsweek.com/id/139889
First, this winner: When you talk to men about SATC: "The talk turns hateful. Angry. Vengeful. Annoyed. It's not just that they don't want to accompany their significant others to the movie. How dare Carrie and her girls hijack the box office during a time when the Hulk, Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the good old boys of the summer usually rule?"
Now, Ramin Setoodeh may hang out with a different set of friends than I do, but they must be really different if they're mad about a movie they don't plan on seeing making lots of money. These are ridiculous straw men: leering Hulk-lovers angered that women have the audacity to go to a movie in May/June. Can anyone make sense of this? It's one thing if they're mad that they might get dragged to it, but Setoodeh makes it clear that it's more than that. These imaginary, unidentified quoted men he talked to are upset that a movie for women is succeeding in the summer blockbuster season. Who are these people, Clarence Thomas and Rush Limbaugh?
Setoodeh also points out that "Movie critics, an overwhelmingly male demographic, gave it such a nasty tongue lashing you would have thought they were talking about an ex-girlfriend. "Sex" mustered a 54 percent fresh rating on RottenTomatoes.com, compared to the 77 percent fresh for the snoozefest that was "Indiana Jones" (a boy's movie! Such harmless fun!)."
There's so many things wrong with this. First, he used Rotten Tomatoes, not Metacritic, and Tomatoes is useful in some ways but will index practically anyone. One way around this is to use Rotten Tomatoes Top Critics, where only legitimate critics are indexed, and the scores are: SATC 56, Indy 61. Oops. Those scores aren't so different.
Next, he argues that film critics are "overwhelmingly male." This is true, but many publications have multiple reviewers split between the genders. This means that "women's pictures" are often reviewed by the woman reviewer, and that was the case here: 14 women weighed in on SATC for metacritic, but only 7 for Indy, even though Indy received 40 reviews to SATC's 37. But it gets worse.
The metacritic score for SATC is 53; for Indy 65. If you look at only women reviewers for SATC, the score jumps to 65, meaning that women reviewers did like SATC more than male reviewers, but only enough to move it from "mediocre" to "decent," not "good" or "great." Furthermore, the 7 female critics that reviewed Indy have an average score of 66 for that film. This means:
1. Female reviewers liked Indiana Jones 4 slightly more than they liked SATC
2.Female reviewers liked Indiana Jones 4 slightly more than male reviewers liked Indiana Jones. Or if you don't think the single metacritic point has value, let's just put it this way: Female reviewers found Indiana Jones 4 and SATC to be of exactly equal value, and although male reviewers preferred Indy to SATC, female reviewers liked Indy more than male reviewers did.
Finally, I have to deal with one more point of confusion: Setoodeh repeatedly calls Indiana Jones "a boys movie." Although I have only anecdotal evidence against this, I think that's crazy. Yes, the Indy series is made by and stars men, but it is designed for and beloved by both genders. Hell, it's designed for and loved by both genders, all ages, the US and all foreign countries save Germany and now Russia, and yes, probably Extraterrestials as well. Spielberg and Lucas invented the blockbuster, the movie that appeals to everyone simultaneously. And so, although the Indiana Jones movies certainly bear all the trimmings of a classic boys serial, they clearly appeal to everyone - anecdotally, it seems to me that women, in fact, prefer Indy to men, at least those women that I know. That may not be the case for this most recent picture, but Indy as a franchise seems to me just as driven, if not more, by female interest than male interest.
Setoodeh does have a whole paragraph that's just quotes from negative reviews of SATC by men. Which is great and all, but I can play that game too: Manohla Dargis of the Times says "It isn’t that Carrie has grown older or overly familiar. It’s that awash in materialism and narcissism, a cloth flower pinned to her dress where cool chicks wear their Obama buttons, this It Girl has become totally Ick."
Ooh! Sound the alarms! Women critics hate SATC!
Or how about this, from Robert Wilonsky of the Village Voice, on Indiana 4: "it's almost unfathomable that this hoary mishmash is the best that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg could cough up."
Grr! Men reviewers don't like Indiana Jones 4!
If we remove Setoodeh's bogus claims about the critics and his wrong-headedness in insisting that Indy is a boy's movie (or at least, that it's for boys), all that we're left with are:
1.Unidentified hateful men dislike Sex and the City for making money in the summer, their rightful domain.
2.The state of women in today's Hollywood, both as creators and viewers, is woeful (this is the last two paragraphs).
Since I don't buy #1, all we're left with is #2. And yeah, we knew that already.
First, this winner: When you talk to men about SATC: "The talk turns hateful. Angry. Vengeful. Annoyed. It's not just that they don't want to accompany their significant others to the movie. How dare Carrie and her girls hijack the box office during a time when the Hulk, Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the good old boys of the summer usually rule?"
Now, Ramin Setoodeh may hang out with a different set of friends than I do, but they must be really different if they're mad about a movie they don't plan on seeing making lots of money. These are ridiculous straw men: leering Hulk-lovers angered that women have the audacity to go to a movie in May/June. Can anyone make sense of this? It's one thing if they're mad that they might get dragged to it, but Setoodeh makes it clear that it's more than that. These imaginary, unidentified quoted men he talked to are upset that a movie for women is succeeding in the summer blockbuster season. Who are these people, Clarence Thomas and Rush Limbaugh?
Setoodeh also points out that "Movie critics, an overwhelmingly male demographic, gave it such a nasty tongue lashing you would have thought they were talking about an ex-girlfriend. "Sex" mustered a 54 percent fresh rating on RottenTomatoes.com, compared to the 77 percent fresh for the snoozefest that was "Indiana Jones" (a boy's movie! Such harmless fun!)."
There's so many things wrong with this. First, he used Rotten Tomatoes, not Metacritic, and Tomatoes is useful in some ways but will index practically anyone. One way around this is to use Rotten Tomatoes Top Critics, where only legitimate critics are indexed, and the scores are: SATC 56, Indy 61. Oops. Those scores aren't so different.
Next, he argues that film critics are "overwhelmingly male." This is true, but many publications have multiple reviewers split between the genders. This means that "women's pictures" are often reviewed by the woman reviewer, and that was the case here: 14 women weighed in on SATC for metacritic, but only 7 for Indy, even though Indy received 40 reviews to SATC's 37. But it gets worse.
The metacritic score for SATC is 53; for Indy 65. If you look at only women reviewers for SATC, the score jumps to 65, meaning that women reviewers did like SATC more than male reviewers, but only enough to move it from "mediocre" to "decent," not "good" or "great." Furthermore, the 7 female critics that reviewed Indy have an average score of 66 for that film. This means:
1. Female reviewers liked Indiana Jones 4 slightly more than they liked SATC
2.Female reviewers liked Indiana Jones 4 slightly more than male reviewers liked Indiana Jones. Or if you don't think the single metacritic point has value, let's just put it this way: Female reviewers found Indiana Jones 4 and SATC to be of exactly equal value, and although male reviewers preferred Indy to SATC, female reviewers liked Indy more than male reviewers did.
Finally, I have to deal with one more point of confusion: Setoodeh repeatedly calls Indiana Jones "a boys movie." Although I have only anecdotal evidence against this, I think that's crazy. Yes, the Indy series is made by and stars men, but it is designed for and beloved by both genders. Hell, it's designed for and loved by both genders, all ages, the US and all foreign countries save Germany and now Russia, and yes, probably Extraterrestials as well. Spielberg and Lucas invented the blockbuster, the movie that appeals to everyone simultaneously. And so, although the Indiana Jones movies certainly bear all the trimmings of a classic boys serial, they clearly appeal to everyone - anecdotally, it seems to me that women, in fact, prefer Indy to men, at least those women that I know. That may not be the case for this most recent picture, but Indy as a franchise seems to me just as driven, if not more, by female interest than male interest.
Setoodeh does have a whole paragraph that's just quotes from negative reviews of SATC by men. Which is great and all, but I can play that game too: Manohla Dargis of the Times says "It isn’t that Carrie has grown older or overly familiar. It’s that awash in materialism and narcissism, a cloth flower pinned to her dress where cool chicks wear their Obama buttons, this It Girl has become totally Ick."
Ooh! Sound the alarms! Women critics hate SATC!
Or how about this, from Robert Wilonsky of the Village Voice, on Indiana 4: "it's almost unfathomable that this hoary mishmash is the best that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg could cough up."
Grr! Men reviewers don't like Indiana Jones 4!
If we remove Setoodeh's bogus claims about the critics and his wrong-headedness in insisting that Indy is a boy's movie (or at least, that it's for boys), all that we're left with are:
1.Unidentified hateful men dislike Sex and the City for making money in the summer, their rightful domain.
2.The state of women in today's Hollywood, both as creators and viewers, is woeful (this is the last two paragraphs).
Since I don't buy #1, all we're left with is #2. And yeah, we knew that already.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
What Happened to the Ladies, pt 2
I wrote most of this post two weeks ago or so, but forgot to finish it. Sorry. It's up now!
I heard back from a few of you about my previous post which suggested that an entire generation of female movie stars sucked (Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts, Jodie Foster, etc) and that the one directly preceding it was unaccountably awesome (Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver, Anjelica Huston, etc). The one thing I didn't hear, which I expected to, was that some of you liked that former group of movie stars. No one said they liked them, so I'm not going to try to argue they don't suck. They do, especially compared to their predecessors.
Reasons:
Reasons 1 and 2: From Luke Johnson: "Dude, it was the 80's. Cut them some slack. Sure their movies sucked, but go back through your pictures of what your parents dressed you in during the 80's. I rest my case.
Also, anyone who got an Oscar nomination from being in a Woody Allen movie should just save some time and transfer it to Woody."
1. It was the eighties, stupid! Luke's right: the eighties were stupid. People looked funny, they dressed funny, they listened to bad music, they did cocaine, greed was good, and they went to bad movies. This definitely carried over into the early 90s as well. And so, just like you can't make the case that all music was bad in the eighties, most musical superstars from that era look horrendous when compared to their predecessors, and the same applies to the female movie stars. Meryl Streep:Meg Ryan::Led Zeppelin:Poison
2.It was the directors, stupid! For those of you who don't know, the Hollywood studio system was in ruins for a number of reasons by the late 60s, and the result was a decentralized system of producers and directors scrambling to make movies. The assemblyline method of making movies was over, and directors, trained in film school and raised on the European classics, were being unleashed to make the movies they wanted with modest budgets and the second generation of method acting. So, when your movies are made by Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorcese, Sydney Lumet, Robert Altman, Sydney Pollack, and their compatriots, your performances are probably going to be good. Unfortunately, two of Coppola's students decided to make a new kind of movie: the overhyped summer blockbuster which cost tons of money but made even more. And sure, Jaws, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones were good, but pretty soon the personal, artistry driven movies were out and crap was in, just in time to welcome the new generation of female movie stars. If you'd given Melanie Griffith to Woody Allen and Sydney Lumet, they might have made something of her. Probably not, but as it was, she didn't even have a chance.
A smaller corollary to this is the rise of the romantic comedy/chick flick, which was driven entirely by this crappy generation of female movie stars. Once upon a time, a movie about love could be made by Woody Allen, feature two (or more!) adults who might or might not end up together, and would treat the audience like they had ever met other human beings. For the entire careers of our second generation, that manner of movie has barely existed - it wouldn't have made enough money. Enter "Pretty Woman."
3.The lovely Mrs. Moviesetal weighs in with our third reason: "What I'm wondering is not so much whether these actresses improved by taking on more serious roles earlier - but whether you just like them better because they have more serious roles under their belts and less movies like "Nell" and "An Officer and a Gentlemen" to their names.
Chicken or egg?"
This is another excellent point. The actors in our second, crappier generation have struggled in their new lives as actresses over the age of 28; Julia Roberts, the youngest of them, has managed to move into some roles where she kind of plays an adult, but the rest of them have either tried to play the old kind of role still or just disappeared entirely. But our first generation of actors seems to have been born old, was almost never asked to be just some stupid pretty face (as they weren't all that pretty to begin with, and also see reasons 1 and 2) and thus rapidly made the transition into serious actors willing to take roles that would showcase their acting assets. The second generation, on the other hand, has tried to do the same stupid Hollywood leading lady thing for their entire lives, not noticing that women only ten years older than them have been acting like grownups in movies for decades.
4. What Happened to the Gentleman? Dooley asks: "i'd be interested in your thoughts on whether it is properly generational--do the same trends and their underlying factors apply to male actors, or is it just the ladeez?" My first response to this is that it's harder to define generations of male actors; Hollywood is constantly asking female movie stars to either disappear themselves or start playing mothers or grandmothers, while Clint Eastwood was still playing people in their forties and fifties within the last decade. So I'd have a harder time defining what the generations look like. But, loosely, I'd say the male counterparts to our first generation are: Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson, Woody Allen, and Warren Beatty (all born between 1935 and 1943). I'd put up all but Warren as candidates for best actor of all time (Dustin would finish last in the voting, but he'd be there).
The next generation would be: the Toms, Cruise and Hanks, Bill Murray, Harrison Ford, and Denzel Washington (all born between 1950 and 1962, except for Harrison, who is older but didn't have any success until after most of the actors in the previous generation already had several Oscar noms). So the answer to Sarah's question is: sort of. This generation is, in my opinion, considerably better than their female counterparts. But Cruise sucks, Ford and Washington are wildly inconsistent, Hanks can be a maudlin ham, and Murray would have been a joke for almost two decades now if he hadn't reinvented himself as the go-to father figure for lovelorn hipsters. And the only reason I can give why both the male and female movie stars of this generation are so much crappier than their predecessors is #2: When Hollywood let Coppola, Scorcese, et al loose to make whatever movies they wanted, the result are masterpieces with great performances. When Hollywood asks Spielberg, Lucas, Zemeckis, et al to turn $200 million into $500 million, the result is something less.
Conclusion: For the most part, it seems we can't blame the Ladeez who sucked because they sucked. Sure, they didn't manage to keep up with their male counterparts, but neither did their male counterparts manage to keep up with their own predecessors. And much of this can be blamed on the fact that Hollywood starting making a different kind of movie with a different kind of star in the late 70s, and the great filmmaking went underground in the form of people like the Coens. The 80s got exactly the movie stars they deserved, which is to say crappy ones, and and the female movie stars were doubly handicapped by the rise of the chick flick, which is even a worse genre than the blockbuster, and one that attracted nearly all of the actors on our list. Again, that's probably not their fault.
Verdict: It was mostly Hollywood's fault, but they helped alot by not choosing the right kinds of roles or movies.
Further thoughts: Can anyone tell me what's going on with this generation of female movie stars (if they even exist)? Who are they? Will they out-perform their predecessors? Are Cameron Diaz in the same generation as say, Scarlett Johanson, or are there two separate generations (Diaz, Witherspoon, Ryder, say, then Gyllenhaal, Johannson, Knightley, etc). If you've got any thoughts, I'd love to hear them - there's definitely another post here to be had.
I heard back from a few of you about my previous post which suggested that an entire generation of female movie stars sucked (Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts, Jodie Foster, etc) and that the one directly preceding it was unaccountably awesome (Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver, Anjelica Huston, etc). The one thing I didn't hear, which I expected to, was that some of you liked that former group of movie stars. No one said they liked them, so I'm not going to try to argue they don't suck. They do, especially compared to their predecessors.
Reasons:
Reasons 1 and 2: From Luke Johnson: "Dude, it was the 80's. Cut them some slack. Sure their movies sucked, but go back through your pictures of what your parents dressed you in during the 80's. I rest my case.
Also, anyone who got an Oscar nomination from being in a Woody Allen movie should just save some time and transfer it to Woody."
1. It was the eighties, stupid! Luke's right: the eighties were stupid. People looked funny, they dressed funny, they listened to bad music, they did cocaine, greed was good, and they went to bad movies. This definitely carried over into the early 90s as well. And so, just like you can't make the case that all music was bad in the eighties, most musical superstars from that era look horrendous when compared to their predecessors, and the same applies to the female movie stars. Meryl Streep:Meg Ryan::Led Zeppelin:Poison
2.It was the directors, stupid! For those of you who don't know, the Hollywood studio system was in ruins for a number of reasons by the late 60s, and the result was a decentralized system of producers and directors scrambling to make movies. The assemblyline method of making movies was over, and directors, trained in film school and raised on the European classics, were being unleashed to make the movies they wanted with modest budgets and the second generation of method acting. So, when your movies are made by Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorcese, Sydney Lumet, Robert Altman, Sydney Pollack, and their compatriots, your performances are probably going to be good. Unfortunately, two of Coppola's students decided to make a new kind of movie: the overhyped summer blockbuster which cost tons of money but made even more. And sure, Jaws, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones were good, but pretty soon the personal, artistry driven movies were out and crap was in, just in time to welcome the new generation of female movie stars. If you'd given Melanie Griffith to Woody Allen and Sydney Lumet, they might have made something of her. Probably not, but as it was, she didn't even have a chance.
A smaller corollary to this is the rise of the romantic comedy/chick flick, which was driven entirely by this crappy generation of female movie stars. Once upon a time, a movie about love could be made by Woody Allen, feature two (or more!) adults who might or might not end up together, and would treat the audience like they had ever met other human beings. For the entire careers of our second generation, that manner of movie has barely existed - it wouldn't have made enough money. Enter "Pretty Woman."
3.The lovely Mrs. Moviesetal weighs in with our third reason: "What I'm wondering is not so much whether these actresses improved by taking on more serious roles earlier - but whether you just like them better because they have more serious roles under their belts and less movies like "Nell" and "An Officer and a Gentlemen" to their names.
Chicken or egg?"
This is another excellent point. The actors in our second, crappier generation have struggled in their new lives as actresses over the age of 28; Julia Roberts, the youngest of them, has managed to move into some roles where she kind of plays an adult, but the rest of them have either tried to play the old kind of role still or just disappeared entirely. But our first generation of actors seems to have been born old, was almost never asked to be just some stupid pretty face (as they weren't all that pretty to begin with, and also see reasons 1 and 2) and thus rapidly made the transition into serious actors willing to take roles that would showcase their acting assets. The second generation, on the other hand, has tried to do the same stupid Hollywood leading lady thing for their entire lives, not noticing that women only ten years older than them have been acting like grownups in movies for decades.
4. What Happened to the Gentleman? Dooley asks: "i'd be interested in your thoughts on whether it is properly generational--do the same trends and their underlying factors apply to male actors, or is it just the ladeez?" My first response to this is that it's harder to define generations of male actors; Hollywood is constantly asking female movie stars to either disappear themselves or start playing mothers or grandmothers, while Clint Eastwood was still playing people in their forties and fifties within the last decade. So I'd have a harder time defining what the generations look like. But, loosely, I'd say the male counterparts to our first generation are: Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson, Woody Allen, and Warren Beatty (all born between 1935 and 1943). I'd put up all but Warren as candidates for best actor of all time (Dustin would finish last in the voting, but he'd be there).
The next generation would be: the Toms, Cruise and Hanks, Bill Murray, Harrison Ford, and Denzel Washington (all born between 1950 and 1962, except for Harrison, who is older but didn't have any success until after most of the actors in the previous generation already had several Oscar noms). So the answer to Sarah's question is: sort of. This generation is, in my opinion, considerably better than their female counterparts. But Cruise sucks, Ford and Washington are wildly inconsistent, Hanks can be a maudlin ham, and Murray would have been a joke for almost two decades now if he hadn't reinvented himself as the go-to father figure for lovelorn hipsters. And the only reason I can give why both the male and female movie stars of this generation are so much crappier than their predecessors is #2: When Hollywood let Coppola, Scorcese, et al loose to make whatever movies they wanted, the result are masterpieces with great performances. When Hollywood asks Spielberg, Lucas, Zemeckis, et al to turn $200 million into $500 million, the result is something less.
Conclusion: For the most part, it seems we can't blame the Ladeez who sucked because they sucked. Sure, they didn't manage to keep up with their male counterparts, but neither did their male counterparts manage to keep up with their own predecessors. And much of this can be blamed on the fact that Hollywood starting making a different kind of movie with a different kind of star in the late 70s, and the great filmmaking went underground in the form of people like the Coens. The 80s got exactly the movie stars they deserved, which is to say crappy ones, and and the female movie stars were doubly handicapped by the rise of the chick flick, which is even a worse genre than the blockbuster, and one that attracted nearly all of the actors on our list. Again, that's probably not their fault.
Verdict: It was mostly Hollywood's fault, but they helped alot by not choosing the right kinds of roles or movies.
Further thoughts: Can anyone tell me what's going on with this generation of female movie stars (if they even exist)? Who are they? Will they out-perform their predecessors? Are Cameron Diaz in the same generation as say, Scarlett Johanson, or are there two separate generations (Diaz, Witherspoon, Ryder, say, then Gyllenhaal, Johannson, Knightley, etc). If you've got any thoughts, I'd love to hear them - there's definitely another post here to be had.
Friday, May 23, 2008
That Indy Feeling: A Roundup of Indiana Jones Knock-Offs
I just watched the new Indiana Jones movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The film, which is pretty ok if you want it to be (I did) but which you could also consider utterly wretched if you wanted to, is the first attempt by George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg to recapture that old Indy magic since 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. But it's not the first attempt at capturing that magic. The Hollywood adventure genre, once a varied and exciting thing, has basically been nothing but a bunch of Indiana Jones pastiches over the last twenty years. The result has been, quite frankly, turdtacular. Care to walk down memory lane? Let's look at Hollywood's (mostly pathetic) attempts to replicate Indy's success.
Film: The Mummy (1999)
Indy Stand-In: Brendan Fraser as a mercenary turned reluctant treasure hunter. Actually inspired casting - one of the few movies to use Fraser's goofiness to good purpose. 0 Turds
Critical Turditude: Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 53/100. For an adventure movie that's not bad, but it still gets a turd. 1 Turd
My Thoughts: I actually love this movie - it's got a plot like Raiders but not totally derivative of it, good special effects for the time, classic one liners, and the right mixture of fun and violence. 0 Turds.
Overall: 1 Turd. If you want more Indy, this is a good place to look
Sequel: Much Turdier. Avoid!
Film: Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)
Indy Stand-In: The good news: she's a woman. The bad news: Although her being a woman seems progressive, Lara Croft is an embarrassing Indy-rip off created originally as a video game character to sell video games by virtue of having big boobs. Angelina Jolie sucked at the time, and she's just gotten worse since. 6.5 Turds
Critical Turditude: 19/100 from Tomatoes. That's worth 3 Turds
My Take: I caught part of this for about 10 minutes on TV. I was bored but couldn't tell what incredibly bland movie I was watching, till I got a peek of Angelina. 2 turds or so.
Total:11.5 Turds. Not good!
Sequel: More of the same? You'd have to watch it to know.
Film: Hellboy (2004)
Indy Stand-In: A giant red demon raised by US operatives, Hellboy is played by one of my favorite actors, Ron Perlman - the ugliest man in Hollywood. He's got Indy's wit and one-liners, and he globe-hops, but is in no way an Indy ripoff. -2 Turds
Critical Reception: 79/100 from Rotten Tomatoes - unprecedented for an adventure movie! Another -1 Turds
My Take: God I love this movie. I'd never say it's a masterpiece, but it's a pleasure to watch and so much fun. I actually misted up watching Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, because watching John Hurt in an Indy movie made me remember his Hellboy character so strongly. Another -2 Turds.
Overal: -5 Turds. Probably the best adventure movie Hollywood's ever made in the Indy mold that didn't have Indy in it - and better than at least 2 of the 4 Spielberg movies. Rent it!
Film: National Treasure (2004)
Indy Stand-In: I like Nicolas Cage, and his character, Benjamin Franklin Gates, is a kinda interesting attempt to explain why someone would be an Indy-style adventurer by linking his quests to American history. But, ultimately, pretty stupid. 1.5 Turds
Critical Turditude: 41/100 Tomatoes. 1.5 Turds
My Thoughts: Sean Bean plays a great villain in this movie, but most of the cast is wasted, the rest of the cast is just bad, and the story makes no sense and isn't interesting. I want to like its historical references...but don't. 1.5 Turds
Overall: 4.5 Turds. You could do worse, but seeing this movie isn't a great idea.
Sequel: In some ways worse, in some ways better. Bout the same.
Film: Van Helsing (2004)
Indy Stand-In: Legendary vampire hunter Van Helsing is played by badass bearer of Dr. Cox's ire, Hugh Jackman. A cool, classic character, reimagined by an excellent actor - but unfortunately given too many gadgety things to play with in a Bond, not Indy, move. 0 Turds
Critical Turditude: 22/100 Tomatoes: 2.5 Turds
My Thoughts: I've never seen this all the way through, but everytime I catch part of it the momentary sense of intrigue I feel is stifled by the movie's overreliance on CGI and the bad, bad, bad, absolutely dreadful presence of Kate Beckinsale. 2 Turds
Total: 4.5 Turds. I'd probably rather see this than National Treasure, but they're both Turds
Film: Sahara (2005)
Indy Stand-In: Matthew McConaughey, who is actually Hollywood's ugliest man, plays "Dirk Pitt," an intrepid adventurer from a series of crappy Ludlum/Indiana Jones ripoff novels by hack Clive Cussler. Dozens and Dozens of Turds roughly the size and shape of Matthew McConaughey- but probably more attractive and better at acting.
Critical Turditude: 38/100 on Tomatoes. 2 Turds
My Take: I would never watch a second of this piece of crap. More Turds
Overall: Too many turds to count. Do not watch!!
Film: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
Updates:
Made for TV Movie: The Librarian: Quest for the Spear (2004)
Indy Stand-In: ER's Noah Wyle plays a mild-mannered librarian who becomes transformed by a quest for a mythic spear. 2 or 3 turds? Maybe even 4.
Critical Turditude: Nobody really reviewed this made for TV piece of crap. 1 Turd for critical indifference.
My Take: This is one of TNT's most successful TV movies ever, so successful that it spawned a sequel. I've never seen it, but I'd kind of like to. Because it looks so unrelentingly terrible. 2 Turds for the commercials I saw.
Overall: Somewhere between 5 and 7 Turds. Probably the most comically bad Turd on this list
Film: The Middle 3rd of King Kong (2005)
Indy Stand-In: Two of them, both pretty good. One hero is Adrien Brody, an everyman turned hero when his paramour Naomi Watts is in danger. The other is Kyle Chandler, the likable everyman from Early Edition who plays heroic adventure characters in films but turns out to be heroic in real life BUT (Spoiler Alert!) turns out to actually be heroic. Fun. -1 Turds total.
The Critics: 84/100 Tomatoes. Wow. -2.5 Turds (although that is for the whole movie...)
My Take: The Indiana Jones middle third of the movie on Monster Island is by far the best part of the movie, with lots of creepy crawlies and giant monster battles. But like the rest of the movie, it suffers from every scene going on too long, Naomi Watts doing terrible vaudeville routines, and Jack Black really sucking. And you have to watch roughly an hour of movie to get here, which has even more Naomi tumbling. All said, 1 Turd.
Overall: -2.5 Turds. It's a pretty good third of a movie, but it won't help you get a straight Indy fix, since there's all that other stuff in the way.
Film: The Mummy (1999)
Indy Stand-In: Brendan Fraser as a mercenary turned reluctant treasure hunter. Actually inspired casting - one of the few movies to use Fraser's goofiness to good purpose. 0 Turds
Critical Turditude: Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 53/100. For an adventure movie that's not bad, but it still gets a turd. 1 Turd
My Thoughts: I actually love this movie - it's got a plot like Raiders but not totally derivative of it, good special effects for the time, classic one liners, and the right mixture of fun and violence. 0 Turds.
Overall: 1 Turd. If you want more Indy, this is a good place to look
Sequel: Much Turdier. Avoid!
Film: Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)
Indy Stand-In: The good news: she's a woman. The bad news: Although her being a woman seems progressive, Lara Croft is an embarrassing Indy-rip off created originally as a video game character to sell video games by virtue of having big boobs. Angelina Jolie sucked at the time, and she's just gotten worse since. 6.5 Turds
Critical Turditude: 19/100 from Tomatoes. That's worth 3 Turds
My Take: I caught part of this for about 10 minutes on TV. I was bored but couldn't tell what incredibly bland movie I was watching, till I got a peek of Angelina. 2 turds or so.
Total:11.5 Turds. Not good!
Sequel: More of the same? You'd have to watch it to know.
Film: Hellboy (2004)
Indy Stand-In: A giant red demon raised by US operatives, Hellboy is played by one of my favorite actors, Ron Perlman - the ugliest man in Hollywood. He's got Indy's wit and one-liners, and he globe-hops, but is in no way an Indy ripoff. -2 Turds
Critical Reception: 79/100 from Rotten Tomatoes - unprecedented for an adventure movie! Another -1 Turds
My Take: God I love this movie. I'd never say it's a masterpiece, but it's a pleasure to watch and so much fun. I actually misted up watching Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, because watching John Hurt in an Indy movie made me remember his Hellboy character so strongly. Another -2 Turds.
Overal: -5 Turds. Probably the best adventure movie Hollywood's ever made in the Indy mold that didn't have Indy in it - and better than at least 2 of the 4 Spielberg movies. Rent it!
Film: National Treasure (2004)
Indy Stand-In: I like Nicolas Cage, and his character, Benjamin Franklin Gates, is a kinda interesting attempt to explain why someone would be an Indy-style adventurer by linking his quests to American history. But, ultimately, pretty stupid. 1.5 Turds
Critical Turditude: 41/100 Tomatoes. 1.5 Turds
My Thoughts: Sean Bean plays a great villain in this movie, but most of the cast is wasted, the rest of the cast is just bad, and the story makes no sense and isn't interesting. I want to like its historical references...but don't. 1.5 Turds
Overall: 4.5 Turds. You could do worse, but seeing this movie isn't a great idea.
Sequel: In some ways worse, in some ways better. Bout the same.
Film: Van Helsing (2004)
Indy Stand-In: Legendary vampire hunter Van Helsing is played by badass bearer of Dr. Cox's ire, Hugh Jackman. A cool, classic character, reimagined by an excellent actor - but unfortunately given too many gadgety things to play with in a Bond, not Indy, move. 0 Turds
Critical Turditude: 22/100 Tomatoes: 2.5 Turds
My Thoughts: I've never seen this all the way through, but everytime I catch part of it the momentary sense of intrigue I feel is stifled by the movie's overreliance on CGI and the bad, bad, bad, absolutely dreadful presence of Kate Beckinsale. 2 Turds
Total: 4.5 Turds. I'd probably rather see this than National Treasure, but they're both Turds
Film: Sahara (2005)
Indy Stand-In: Matthew McConaughey, who is actually Hollywood's ugliest man, plays "Dirk Pitt," an intrepid adventurer from a series of crappy Ludlum/Indiana Jones ripoff novels by hack Clive Cussler. Dozens and Dozens of Turds roughly the size and shape of Matthew McConaughey- but probably more attractive and better at acting.
Critical Turditude: 38/100 on Tomatoes. 2 Turds
My Take: I would never watch a second of this piece of crap. More Turds
Overall: Too many turds to count. Do not watch!!
Film: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
Indy Stand-In: 60-Year Old Indy/Shia LaBeouf. Both of them have promise, but Indy's just too spry for his age and Shia's character is uninteresting and overly-pompadored. 1 Turd for each.
Critical Turditude: Lo and Behold, they like it: 79/100 Tomatoes. -1 Turds
My Take: I enjoyed it, especially whenever three excellently cast actors were onscreen: John Hurt, Ray Winstone, and Jim Broadbent (who directors, Spielberg included, seem to forget can do things besides be mild-mannered. See: him as a fascist in Richard III (1995), operetta writer Gilbert in Topsy-Turvy, or the over-the-top master of ceremonies in Moulin Rouge (2001))
On the other hand, the plot made no sense, the set pieces were ridiculous, and the witticisms and family dynamic which powered Last Crusade are back, with no Sean Connery to make them enjoyable. That comes out to about 1 Turd
Overall: 2 Turds. You can get your Indy fix, but it ain't even as good as The Mummy.
Ok, that's all I can think of right now. Surely there are some more? If you think of any, remind me and I'll try to get an entry in on them.Critical Turditude: Lo and Behold, they like it: 79/100 Tomatoes. -1 Turds
My Take: I enjoyed it, especially whenever three excellently cast actors were onscreen: John Hurt, Ray Winstone, and Jim Broadbent (who directors, Spielberg included, seem to forget can do things besides be mild-mannered. See: him as a fascist in Richard III (1995), operetta writer Gilbert in Topsy-Turvy, or the over-the-top master of ceremonies in Moulin Rouge (2001))
On the other hand, the plot made no sense, the set pieces were ridiculous, and the witticisms and family dynamic which powered Last Crusade are back, with no Sean Connery to make them enjoyable. That comes out to about 1 Turd
Overall: 2 Turds. You can get your Indy fix, but it ain't even as good as The Mummy.
Updates:
Made for TV Movie: The Librarian: Quest for the Spear (2004)
Indy Stand-In: ER's Noah Wyle plays a mild-mannered librarian who becomes transformed by a quest for a mythic spear. 2 or 3 turds? Maybe even 4.
Critical Turditude: Nobody really reviewed this made for TV piece of crap. 1 Turd for critical indifference.
My Take: This is one of TNT's most successful TV movies ever, so successful that it spawned a sequel. I've never seen it, but I'd kind of like to. Because it looks so unrelentingly terrible. 2 Turds for the commercials I saw.
Overall: Somewhere between 5 and 7 Turds. Probably the most comically bad Turd on this list
Film: The Middle 3rd of King Kong (2005)
Indy Stand-In: Two of them, both pretty good. One hero is Adrien Brody, an everyman turned hero when his paramour Naomi Watts is in danger. The other is Kyle Chandler, the likable everyman from Early Edition who plays heroic adventure characters in films but turns out to be heroic in real life BUT (Spoiler Alert!) turns out to actually be heroic. Fun. -1 Turds total.
The Critics: 84/100 Tomatoes. Wow. -2.5 Turds (although that is for the whole movie...)
My Take: The Indiana Jones middle third of the movie on Monster Island is by far the best part of the movie, with lots of creepy crawlies and giant monster battles. But like the rest of the movie, it suffers from every scene going on too long, Naomi Watts doing terrible vaudeville routines, and Jack Black really sucking. And you have to watch roughly an hour of movie to get here, which has even more Naomi tumbling. All said, 1 Turd.
Overall: -2.5 Turds. It's a pretty good third of a movie, but it won't help you get a straight Indy fix, since there's all that other stuff in the way.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Summertime...
The New York Times has this to say about this summer's movies: "Hollywood’s summer movies promise to be a little fresher, more original and funnier than usual. And that could be a problem for an industry that has done well lately by peddling the familiar."
This has awakened me to something I should have realized, but did not: Hollywood was pleased with last summer's movies.
I'm not going to tell you anything earth-shattering here, but Hollywood likes making money and doesn't care if the movies are good or bad. And man, is that short-sighted thinking. There were lots of movies that made a great deal of money last summer, some of them quite good. But the ones that made the big money were pretty bad. The top 4:
Spiderman 3 - $336 mil
Shrek the Third - $322 m
Transformers - $319 m
Pirates 3 - $309 m
Of these, only Transformers is pretty ok, and it's the only one that made money because it was pretty ok. Those other three made big money not because they were big event movies but because they were sequels to big event movies that were actually good.
The Times writes: "As hot as “Iron Man” is, with domestic ticket sales of about $180 million in its first week and a half, it still trails last year’s summer season kick-off movie, “Spider Man 3,” by about 25 percent in the same time."
But that's a ridiculous comparison. Iron Man is a good movie with a mid-level star that's raking in tons of money because it's good. Spider-man 3, which sucked, raked in tons of money as a sequel to two good movies. (Disclaimer: I hated all 3 Spider-Man movies, and may have preferred the 3rd because it was only conventionally bad, not just Sam Raimi vomiting his hack tendencies all over us and thinking it was brilliant)
In other words, this summer, which promises a whole host of movies which should be good (Hellboy 2, Batman Begins 2, Iron Man, Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, Prince Caspian, etc) will be a much better summer than last summer even if Hollywood makes less money. Because when someone pays $10 to get shat on in the form of Spider-Man 3 or Pirates 3, I guarantee they're not that excited to do it again next summer. But when they spend $11 for Iron Man and then actually enjoy that experience, they might just think about coming back for The Hulk, and they'll definitely show up for Iron Man 2. But everybody who watched Shrek the Third is going to think twice about Quadra-Shrek.
This makes Transformers triply the only movie of those four Hollywood should be happy about. First, it made Spider-Man 3 money by being pretty good, not by riding something else's coattails, unless you count a 20 year-old TV show. Secondly, it means Transformers 2 should make that kind of money as well. And finally, although Spider-Man 3's production costs are under wraps for shame reasons, it is the most expensive movie ever made. Transformers cost $150 million dollars to make. Spider-Man 3 may have cost $600 million, only made $17 million more, and made pretty much everyone who saw it unhappy. That's a bad summer. But it holds the record for biggest opening weekend ever, so I'm not sure you could convince Hollywood that.
This has awakened me to something I should have realized, but did not: Hollywood was pleased with last summer's movies.
I'm not going to tell you anything earth-shattering here, but Hollywood likes making money and doesn't care if the movies are good or bad. And man, is that short-sighted thinking. There were lots of movies that made a great deal of money last summer, some of them quite good. But the ones that made the big money were pretty bad. The top 4:
Spiderman 3 - $336 mil
Shrek the Third - $322 m
Transformers - $319 m
Pirates 3 - $309 m
Of these, only Transformers is pretty ok, and it's the only one that made money because it was pretty ok. Those other three made big money not because they were big event movies but because they were sequels to big event movies that were actually good.
The Times writes: "As hot as “Iron Man” is, with domestic ticket sales of about $180 million in its first week and a half, it still trails last year’s summer season kick-off movie, “Spider Man 3,” by about 25 percent in the same time."
But that's a ridiculous comparison. Iron Man is a good movie with a mid-level star that's raking in tons of money because it's good. Spider-man 3, which sucked, raked in tons of money as a sequel to two good movies. (Disclaimer: I hated all 3 Spider-Man movies, and may have preferred the 3rd because it was only conventionally bad, not just Sam Raimi vomiting his hack tendencies all over us and thinking it was brilliant)
In other words, this summer, which promises a whole host of movies which should be good (Hellboy 2, Batman Begins 2, Iron Man, Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, Prince Caspian, etc) will be a much better summer than last summer even if Hollywood makes less money. Because when someone pays $10 to get shat on in the form of Spider-Man 3 or Pirates 3, I guarantee they're not that excited to do it again next summer. But when they spend $11 for Iron Man and then actually enjoy that experience, they might just think about coming back for The Hulk, and they'll definitely show up for Iron Man 2. But everybody who watched Shrek the Third is going to think twice about Quadra-Shrek.
This makes Transformers triply the only movie of those four Hollywood should be happy about. First, it made Spider-Man 3 money by being pretty good, not by riding something else's coattails, unless you count a 20 year-old TV show. Secondly, it means Transformers 2 should make that kind of money as well. And finally, although Spider-Man 3's production costs are under wraps for shame reasons, it is the most expensive movie ever made. Transformers cost $150 million dollars to make. Spider-Man 3 may have cost $600 million, only made $17 million more, and made pretty much everyone who saw it unhappy. That's a bad summer. But it holds the record for biggest opening weekend ever, so I'm not sure you could convince Hollywood that.
Monday, May 12, 2008
What Happened to the Ladies?
Hi guys. Sorry, I haven't been around lately. I was busy and also upset at what a bad film reviewer I am. But I've decided just not to write film reviews, but still write as much as I can about my thoughts on movies. You might enjoy it more, or less, if you've read the blog before...either way, I hope I don't waste your time too badly.
Anyway, this post is me trying to think through some more gender issues, since that's been an unofficial theme of this blog. It's a response to a comment my friend Tolf made about hating an entire generation of female movie stars - the Meg Ryan/Melanie Griffith generation. Off the top of my head (confirming ages with wikipedia) I came up with two more actors and have this generational analysis:
A Bad Generation: Meg Ryan, Melanie Griffith, Julia Roberts, Jodie Foster, and Jamie Lee Curtis were all born between 1957 and 1967, which in my mind makes them all solidly in the same acting generation. And boy do they suck. Assuming that Academy Awards are a decent barometer of excellence, just not an iron-clad one, let's look at some numbers: Among these 5 actors, with several decades of acting experience, we have only 8 awards and 3 wins (actress and supporting actress), with Jodie winning two awards and Julia bringing in one. But among those eight nominations, at least 4 are in films that I consider complete jokes: Working Girl, Erin Brockovich, Pretty Woman, and Nell. That's right, those movies suck.
I want to compare these ladies to a previous generation. All of the following actresses were born between 1945 and 1951: Mia Farrow, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, Sigourney Weaver, Meryl Streep, Anjelica Huston (I'm not including Sally Field, who was born in that age range and would bring some serious Oscars to the table, but I think sucks). So, wow. That's an amazing group, all born within six years of each other. Shall we do the Academy Test? The numbers are, for six actors: 28 nominations, 5 wins. Mostly that tells you that this generation had a hard time winning awards, but for our purposes nominations are more important. Plus, Mia Farrow was NEVER nominated for an Academy Award, despite some performances in films you might have heard of: Rosemary's Baby, Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Husbands and Wives...these are mostly Woody Allen movies, it's true, but in my mind that's just a giant plus.
What's more, I didn't include Diane Wiest, since I just don't really consider her a movie star (being a movie star: often a bad thing), but she would have brought three more nominations and two more wins.
So, where does that leave us? Pure Numbers: 5 Movie Stars, born between 1957 and 1967, that I consider representative, have won only three oscars, from 8 noms
6 Movie Stars, born between 1945 and 1951, have won 5 oscars from 25 noms - and nominations, I think, are a much better general gauge than wins.
If I'm right that noms are a good indicator and that those other four movies really suck (Special sucking award: Nell. So terrible), then the generation of movie stars that came of age in the 70s truly is a great one, and the generation that came of age in the 80s/early 90s is truly a waste of space...
Ok, that's it for now. Sometime later this week I'm going to try to think through the reasons for this discrepancy, and probably do some counter-arguments. If you have any counter-arguments or ideas, please, please post a comment or email me.. I would like to revive this blog: with your help! Our powers combined, etc.
Anyway, this post is me trying to think through some more gender issues, since that's been an unofficial theme of this blog. It's a response to a comment my friend Tolf made about hating an entire generation of female movie stars - the Meg Ryan/Melanie Griffith generation. Off the top of my head (confirming ages with wikipedia) I came up with two more actors and have this generational analysis:
A Bad Generation: Meg Ryan, Melanie Griffith, Julia Roberts, Jodie Foster, and Jamie Lee Curtis were all born between 1957 and 1967, which in my mind makes them all solidly in the same acting generation. And boy do they suck. Assuming that Academy Awards are a decent barometer of excellence, just not an iron-clad one, let's look at some numbers: Among these 5 actors, with several decades of acting experience, we have only 8 awards and 3 wins (actress and supporting actress), with Jodie winning two awards and Julia bringing in one. But among those eight nominations, at least 4 are in films that I consider complete jokes: Working Girl, Erin Brockovich, Pretty Woman, and Nell. That's right, those movies suck.
I want to compare these ladies to a previous generation. All of the following actresses were born between 1945 and 1951: Mia Farrow, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, Sigourney Weaver, Meryl Streep, Anjelica Huston (I'm not including Sally Field, who was born in that age range and would bring some serious Oscars to the table, but I think sucks). So, wow. That's an amazing group, all born within six years of each other. Shall we do the Academy Test? The numbers are, for six actors: 28 nominations, 5 wins. Mostly that tells you that this generation had a hard time winning awards, but for our purposes nominations are more important. Plus, Mia Farrow was NEVER nominated for an Academy Award, despite some performances in films you might have heard of: Rosemary's Baby, Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Husbands and Wives...these are mostly Woody Allen movies, it's true, but in my mind that's just a giant plus.
What's more, I didn't include Diane Wiest, since I just don't really consider her a movie star (being a movie star: often a bad thing), but she would have brought three more nominations and two more wins.
So, where does that leave us? Pure Numbers: 5 Movie Stars, born between 1957 and 1967, that I consider representative, have won only three oscars, from 8 noms
6 Movie Stars, born between 1945 and 1951, have won 5 oscars from 25 noms - and nominations, I think, are a much better general gauge than wins.
If I'm right that noms are a good indicator and that those other four movies really suck (Special sucking award: Nell. So terrible), then the generation of movie stars that came of age in the 70s truly is a great one, and the generation that came of age in the 80s/early 90s is truly a waste of space...
Ok, that's it for now. Sometime later this week I'm going to try to think through the reasons for this discrepancy, and probably do some counter-arguments. If you have any counter-arguments or ideas, please, please post a comment or email me.. I would like to revive this blog: with your help! Our powers combined, etc.
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