Archive for June, 2007
Snax!
Who loves movie food? Some of you must. The concession stand has evolved quite a bit over the years. Here’s a great Slate article on it.
Time was, I’d go to the stand first thing and get something, even if it was only a soda. But I can’t remember the last time I bought food at a movie theater. I don’t even bring any in. Why, that would be wrong. Hey, that stuff’s not cheap! Buy a candy bar in the store, and it’s say $1; buy it in the movie theater, and somehow it’s now $4.
Of course, theaters get a good portion of their profits from the concession stand. I’d always thought, in fact,that theaters made almost all of their profit from the stands, meaning that they really relied on the candy to pay their bills. But the Slate article says that percentage is more like 40%; a good portion, of course, but they’re still making plenty of money on the actual film.
I mean, look, nearly all of those theaters are run by corporations, so their earnings and losses are spread over all of the locations – a big company like Loew’s can withstand a loss in concession pretty easily. Plus, the candy prices and the ticket prices are both pretty high nowadays; if you have to choose one, obviously the ticket price is going to win. You can always eat after the movie.
Besides, I always feel guilty about it. The movie is usually a couple hours long. If I can’t go without food for that long, I have a problem. Plus, sitting in one place is bad enough for your health, but I need to shovel down sugary and fatty crap the whole time? No wonder American consumers have such an image problem with the rest of the world, that of fat people who are fat by choice. We’re a fairly well-off society for the most part, and everyone else sees rich chubby jerks who throw trash all over the place. Sure, it’s not always an accurate image, but still. I don’t want to contribute to it if I can avoid it, so I go without.
Crude-drawing movie quiz
Over at Film Geek, there’s an interesting, clever quiz idea; several stick-figure-level sketches are given, and you have to figure out which movie’s being represented.
The awesome news is that the movies aren’t obscure and the drawings aren’t indecipherable.
Give it a try! How many can you figure out?
Musings on AFI’s list
Recently, The American Film Institute released its new list of the top 100 films, updated from 1997.
Back in January, I revealed my own votes for this series. Granted, I picked more than 100 films, but that’s their system’s fault. (Honest!)
Here are the films that made it onto the list but that I didn’t select:
American Graffiti
Annie Hall
Ben-Hur
The Best Years of Our Lives
Blade Runner
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Cabaret
City Lights
The Deer Hunter
Double Indemnity
Forrest Gump
The General
Gone with the Wind
Goodfellas
The Grapes of Wrath
Intolerence
Modern Times
Raging Bull
Sophie’s Choice
The Sound of Music
A Streetcar Named Desire
Sunrise
Swing Time
Titanic
West Side Story
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Yankee Doodle Dandy
Movies I haven’t yet seen are marked in bold. So why didn’t I select the other films on this list?
Some of them deserve to be on the list – or, rather, I don’t have a compelling reason to leave them off it. It’s just that technically we were to pick only 100 movies, and as you can see there are plenty of great movies to choose from. So I can’t find fault with movies such as American Graffiti, Annie Hall, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, City Lights, Double Indemnity, Goodfellas, Modern Times
But the others …
Ben-Hur: A fine, fine movie, even an epic, but I wonder if the passage of time has blunted its appeal somewhat. It feels more relic than classic.
Blade Runner: A great sci-fi movie, but I probably should see the much-praised director’s cut, which serves to clarify the plot somewhat.
Forrest Gump: I enjoyed this movie immensely in the theater, and it’s a lot of fun, but a classic? One of the 100 best ever? I just can’t see it.
Intolerence: I just wasn’t much of a fan of this. I wonder if some of the silent movies on the list got there because they’re thought of as “ground breaking” movies, rather than being, you know, good.
Titanic: Great special effects, poor acting, no suspense. Not really well written, either. It’s more of a perfect storm of romance movies – there’s a hero, a villain, a couple of conflicts (man versus ship, man versus man, Leo versus overacting) than of good cinema.
West Side Story: Heh. See review here. This movie just plain doesn’t do it for me.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: Not a bad movie, but some of the acting was a little, shall we say, overwrought.
Yankee Doodle Dandy: I hadn’t seen this when the voting commenced; since then, I have seen it and would have voted for it.
Then there are all the movies I selected that didn’t make it. There are way too many to list here, so let me list the most egregious omissions, in my estimation, after the jump.
Of course, there are only 100 slots on the Top 100 list, so some of these aren’t there simply because there’s no room – who, indeed, do you take off the list for them? But others, I’m not so sure.
At any rate, the following are movies for which I had voted that did not make AFI’s list.
325 – Apocalypto
Posted by frothy in Apocalypto on June 27, 2007
In Mel Gibson’s searing look at familial love and the declining dominance of Mayan civilizations, a hunter-gatherer tribe is raided in the middle of the night by a warrior tribe, and its surviving males are taken to the Mayan city to be sacrificed to the gods as a way to end drought. One of the men, Jaguar Paw, must escape and make his way back to his pregnant, trapped wife and their young son.
In all honesty, if Mel Gibson’s name hadn’t been attached to this movie, if there hadn’t been so much attention paid to the film because of its violence level, its big budget, its on-location shooting, and its reliance on the ancient Mayan language, this might have been another largely forgotten film set in a foreign land during an indeterminate time period.
The violence is very brutal and jarring (114 on-screen deaths), but that’s as it should be. Gibson doesn’t want us to view the tribulations of this particular tribe as disinterested souls watching a Hollywood blockbuster, he wants us to understand how perilous every aspect of their lives was, how strong they needed to be, both physically and mentally, and how important one’s family and friends can be.
The beginning scenes had me a little skeptical, because the comedy was a little broad. How broad, you ask? The tribesmen make mother-in-law jokes. No, I’m serious. There’s a nagging old hag who keeps haranguing her son in law about making a grandbaby for her, and he’s impotent. Oh, and there’s a bit about someone getting tricked into rubbing a painful ointment onto his private parts. You know, intellectual humor.
But that quickly dissipates, as the tattooed, bejeweled, and totally armed-and-dangerous warriors attack, beating, slaying, and torturing the members and putting the entire hamlet to the torch. Jaguar Paw, who’d dreamed of the attack, awakens just as the intruders arrive and is able to stow his wife and child at the bottom of a pit. This safety is somewhat short lived, however, when one of the warriors notices the rope that was to allow them to escape the pit – and cuts it off.
Don’t watch this if you can’t stand women in peril, or if you can’t stand watching people sacrificed to the gods. Come to think of it, the woman-in-peril bit is just a mask – turns out that Jaguar Paw’s wife, Seven, is extremely tough, inside and out, and her resiliance and fortitude give her and her child a fighting chance.
The focus is on Jaguar Paw, though, and how he gains almost superhuman abilities as he dodges headhunters and wild animals in his quest to return to his loved ones. That might sound implausible, but as most parents know that when your child’s health is in jeopardy, it’s possible to do things you never thought you could do.
I don’t see this as quite the epic that Gibson was going for, but his directorial touches lend quite a bit of panache and anxiety to the proceedings. Some of the action shots of Jaguar Paw running through his beloved forest, pursued by bad men, are seamless, jaw-dropping views, allowing us to figure out Jaguar Paw’s on-the-fly plans right after he does. Gibson’s style, along with the cinematography of Dean Selmer and the performance by Rudy Youngblood keep this movie afloat; the conclusion, while lacking the intensity of the rest of the movie, is satisfying.
***
The unfilmed Bond, plus: Kill Bills 3 and 4 on the horizon?
Posted by frothy in Kill Bill Vol. 1, Kill Bill Vol. 2 on June 25, 2007
This story here talks about a 1977 Bond film that was never made, in which Sean Connery would have made a comeback (first Bond appearance for him since 1971) as star, producer, and – get this – screenwriter. Bond would have gone up against a robotic shark. Pretty cool, huh? And there’s be a secret lair, and the Statue of Liberty, and it would have been cool! Only the current Bond producer, Cubby Broccoli, said no way – they were in the middle of making The Spy Who Loved Me. Man, imagine! Frickin’ shark!
And then we have this, which purports that the next two installments of Kill Bill are being bandied about and presents the possible plotlines of each. I’m very skeptical that there’d be two more of them, but I could see one more, since much was made of the fact that a) Beatrix was a mommy and b) Vernita’s daughter saw her get killed by Beatrix. So there’s the revenge factor.
Monopoly movie
Posted by frothy in News/Rumors on June 24, 2007
No, really.
And Sir Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Alien, Black Hawk Down) is supposed to direct!
I like this part: “Scarlett Johansson and Kirsten Dunst are being considered for roles.”
Let’s see, Scarlett could be the race car, and Kirsten could be the thimble. Who gets to be the horsie?
324 – 1408
Prepare to be shocked! 1408, the story of a truly haunted hotel room, is electric and terrifying and not a little bit unsettling.
John Cusack stars as Mike Enslin, a writer who specializes in debunking haunted-whatever myths. He’s stayed in hotels and inns and B&Bs all across the country and has not, he says, ever seen evidence of paranormal behavior. Even so, he’s managed to make a somewhat modest living writing about his experiences. He’s a cynic, as most writers are, but Enslin is not only skeptical about things, he outright doesn’t believe in anything, owing in no small part to an earlier tragedy in his life.
And then one day he finds a postcard in his mail from the Dolphin Hotel in New York. There’s but one sentence on the back: “Don’t go into Room 1408.” Enslin’s research then shows that numerous people have died in that particular hotel room – people jumping to their deaths, people slashing their own throats, gouging their own eyes, and so on. Pretty creepy stuff. But since that’s sort of par for the course in Enslin’s line of work, he doesn’t think much of it and manages to wrangle a reservation in the infamous room.
The hotel’s manager, Olin (Samuel L. Jackson) tries desperately to talk Enslin out of staying in the room overnight. No one lasts more than an hour, he warns. Olin points out that many people have died in 1408 of natural causes, too – bringing the death toll to 56. Olin even offers Enslin a rare bottle of booze and the chance to read up on the history of the room, anything to keep Enslin from actually going into the room. He fails.
And who could blame Enslin for being a wee bit skeptical that 1408 is anything to be scared of? He’s been in so many places just like the Dolphin, from seedy motels to high-rise palaces, and he’s never seen anything all that terrifying, and certainly nothing that couldn’t be explained away easily enough. And then he steps into 1408, and all hell breaks loose.
It appears to be such an ordinary room, a fact that Enslin notes into his dictaphone. But then it gets hot, and the window slams shut on his fingers, and he hears a baby crying, and most importantly, the digital clock radio seems to be counting down from one hour – even after he forcibly yanks it from the wall outlet. Before you know it, ghosts from his own past are appearing in his room alongside the ghosts of those who’d died there themselves.
The greatest part about all of this is that while Enslin’s mind is being tortured, smacked around like a tetherball hooked to a pole of sanity, we’re suffering right along with him. We jump when he jumps – and not before he jumps. He feel like screaming just as he does. We’re right there with him through ever shiver, every shudder, every wide-eyed gulp of terror. Enslin isn’t merely frazzled, he’s undone. Even he can’t explain the happenings inside 1408 as creaky floorboards or bad wiring. The horror in the room is personal, reducing even the cockiest skeptic into a pile of blubbering goo.
Cusack, whom I think is one of the finest actors of his generation, is absolutely aces. His idiom is that he’s an Everyman, not someone to whom superhuman powers have been conveyed. Throw another actor into the movie, and you’d expect him to grit his teeth and wipe out the unseen enemies with a blowtorch and some grenades, but not Cusack. Cusack’s Enslin doesn’t know how to deal with the psychological warfare, because neither would we.
That ripping sound you just heard? It was your sanity departing right after Enslin’s.
***1/2
Movie Midpoints
Over at TBO.com, there’s another fun little test: Movie Midpoints. I call this a test, and not a quiz, because it’s harrrrrrrrrrd. You’re given a thumbnail of a scene that occurs at the exact midway point of a movie, and you’re supposed to name the movie.
It’s even harder than it sounds. First, the pictures are pretty small (duh, it’s a thumbnail), but they’re not always very descriptive of the movie. And heck, maybe you haven’t even seen the movie, in which case you’re up the creek.
323 – The Painted Veil
Posted by frothy in Painted Veil on June 22, 2007
In this period piece, Edward Norton once again plays the smartest guy in the room, as Walter Fane, a dedicated, cold-hearted clinical researcher who travels to the middle of a cholera epidemic in China in the 1920s, with his young wife Kitty (Naomi Watts) in tow. Walter drags Kitty to China partly to punish her for her illicit tryst with a married man (Liev Schrieber). Kitty agrees because facing cholera is somehow better than being divorced and disgraced by Walter.
Now, I like Edward Norton. But having too recently seen him in The Illusionist, I was a little wary of his work here; Walter is not presented as someone who can be fooled, least of not by someone as apparently dumb as Kitty, and sure enough he’s discovered her infidelity. Of course, looking at Walter, one can understand Kitty’s indiscretion; she’s outgoing and adventursome, whereas Walter is dull and lifeless. He snags her after a truly whirlwind courtship and whisks her away from England to foreign lands; she agrees for the adventure and to get away from her sanctimonious, image-conscious mother.
In China, Walter finds that his abilities as a scientist aren’t the cure-all elixir the area needs. As the epidemic spreads, Walter necessarily cuts off the town’s tainted water supply, thus provoking wrath against all Westerners. Meanwhile, Kitty bores of sitting around the house and helps a local orphanage. But can they both keep the cholera at arm’s length? Can their shared experiences save their marriage?
This is, at its heart, a love story, although perhaps not the most exciting one. I can’t honestly say that anything in this movie really bothered me, but neither did it particularly enflame any passions for me. This is not a movie that most guys are going to like. Sure, Naomi Watts is good to look at, and she’s a competent actress, but here she seems like just another pretty face. The story’s focus is on her, but unless you’re in just the right mood you probably won’t be grabbed by it.
Those of you who love romances, though, might swoon. The bored wife has to cheat on her husband! He finds out and takes her to a place where surely she will die of cholera, if not ennui! Can this marriage be saved? That Edward Norton, he’s so dashing and confident! Ok, maybe not so dashing, but he looks good in a suit or a lab coat. He’s like the Superman of nerdy Everymen. The fact that here he basically tries to kill her (i.e., by bringing her into an epidemic of a highly contagious disease) kind of takes some of the shine away.
The Chinese scenery is wonderful, though, and everyone seems earnest enough. But it was all maddening dull for me, up until the final twenty minutes or so, when the chemistry of the two leads really clicked. Overall, not a complete miss by any means, but not to everyone’s taste, particularly those of us who are impatient.
**1/2
Worst athlete-actors, or actor-athletes
That is, the athletes who went on to be actors. Well, not actors, precisely, because they’re pretty bad.
Anyway, MSN has a list of the Five Worst Athlete-Turned-Actors.
Good choices! Too bad they limited it to five choices, though. One of the choices here is Rosey Grier, a former football player who wound up in some really crappy movies. But he’s not the only ex-NFLer, is he? How about Brian Bosworth? Or Fred Williamson? Williamson played in a Super Bowl, fer gosh sake! Or even Bubba Smith? C’mon, that guy was in all of the Police Academy films. Granted, the first one had a couple of laughs, but after that it just stunk. You know you may have made a bad career decision when Steve Guttenberg leaves a series – and you stick with it.
Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris were once in a film called Safe at Home. Their acting was as wooden as the Louisville Sluggers they were so adept at swinging.
AFI reveals new Top 100 list
The American Film Institute has come up with a new list of the top 100 American films of all time, ten years after their first list.
The entire list can be found here. There are plenty of new entrants, as more-recent films have been included.
Moving way up on the list (as compared with the 1997 list) are such films as The Searchers (up 84 slots, to 12), City Lights (up 65 slots, to 11), Vertigo (up 52 slots, to 9), and Raging Bull (up 20 slots, to 4). Dropping a bit were Bridge on the River Kwai (down 23 slots, to 36), The African Queen (down 48 slots, to 65!), and Ben-Hur (down 28 slots, to 100)
1. How many of these have you seen?
2. What movie or movies have been left off this list?
By my count, I’ve seen 88 of them; it was easier to count the ones I hadn’t seen! The twelve I haven’t seen are:
4. Raging Bull
6. Gone with the Wind
18. The General
23. The Grapes of Wrath
37. The Best Years of Our Lives
40. The Sound of Music
47. A Streetcar Named Desire
53. The Deer Hunter
63. Caberet
82. Sunrise
90. Swing Time
91. Sophie’s Choice
One omission that springs to mind is Mean Streets, or even Dog Day Afternoon or Young Frankenstein. Ok, three omissions.
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