Day 99: Red State

"People do the strangest things when they believe they're entitled. But they do even stranger things when they just plain believe."

Kevin Smith is such an enigma to me. He started his career with a low-budget comedy, essentially remade the same film next with a substantially bigger budget, scaled back and did a low budget romantic comedy, scaled back up and made a big budget religious epic, and so forth, and so on. He bounces back and forth between budgets and subject matter, but the common thread to all of his films is that everyone talks a lot. A whole lot. His films are some of the most verbose films, second only to Tarantino probably.

It's fitting, then, that he should turn fix his eye on the extremist evangelical movement in this country for his latest film, as they are the most verbose group of individuals when given free reign. Red State was billed as his attack on Fred Phelps and his infamous Westboro Baptist Church. And while Phelps and his hate-mongers aren't far from your mind when you watch the film (they're even name checked about halfway through), Smith decided to distinguish his evangelical zealots by having them be gun nuts to boot.

Red State opens with three teenage boys responding to an ad on a website from a woman offering to have sex with all three of them. When they arrive at her trailer in the middle of nowhere, in a non-descript, presumably "red" state, they are instead drugged and taken to the Five Points Church, led by pastor Abin (we get it Smith, you're a comic book fan) Cooper (Michael Parks) where they will presumably be executed for their aberrant deviant behavior. All hell breaks loose though when a local deputy out looking for the missing boys is killed by a church member, and the local sheriff calls ATF, bringing the big guns to town, and setting up a Branch Davidian-style showdown.

That's pretty much the plot in a nutshell, and to say anymore would ruin the twists and turns Smith built into this story. I recommend this film for two reasons. First and foremost, it's always nice to watch a director working outside of their comfort zone, which Smith is very clearly doing here, and succeed or fail, it's always worth your time to see what they have in store. Secondly, Michael Parks' performance is revelatory. He's one of those character actors that's lived on the fringes for decades, playing memorable bit roles in From Dusk Till Dawn, both Kill Bill volumes (admirably in two different roles) & The Assassination of Jesse James.

Here he's given a chance to shine, and does he ever. I hate to say that his character isn't particularly well-written, at least not in the way that a great role often is, but he takes what Smith gave him and he ran with it, and he makes it work better than it honestly has any right to.

There are some other bright spots in the cast. John Goodman is always great, and here, playing the lead man on the ATF team, he proves again just how solid he can be. Kevin Pollack is also great in a criminally small role, as is Stephen Root, and seeing Anna Gunn from Breaking Bad definitely brought a smile to my face. The biggest sore thumb in the entire endeavor however is Melissa Leo as Cooper's daughter. She won an Oscar last year for her incredibly nuanced performance in The Fighter, but here, she overplays every moment of every scene she's in, to the point of almost comical excess. She's always been brilliant when doing "less is more," but she's operatically absurd here.

Smith has never been known for being a visually dynamic director, and his efforts here are a mixed bag at best, but at least he's trying. I actually think that Clerks II is probably his best directed movie, and if he's guilty of anything here, it's probably trying to do too much. He lifts the low-angled close-up shot from Requiem for a Dream, but uses it only twice, making me question why he would use it at all. There's a lot of nice work with handheld, but he seems uncertain of how to resolve it with more classically staged crane shots and the like.

The script has some nice flourishes, but on the whole, it just felt like he was going after a bunch of low hanging fruit. Religious fanatics, a government that's drunk with power, agro-farmer college kids, etc. A much more interesting film for me anyway, would have been an extended sermon from Cooper, confining the action to the church, and maybe doing away with the high body count & action film tropes, but that's just me. But, like I said, at least he's stepping outside of his comfort zone and doing new things, and for that alone, it's worth your time. I would like to see someone really stick it to Fred Phelps and his ilk, but I doubt a filmmaker like Smith is the one to do it, and I especially doubt he'd go back to this well again so soon, but stranger things have happened.

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Day 98: The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

"There's a Donkey Kong kill screen coming up, if anyone wants to see it."

There's a really odd phenomenon within the geek community, and it's unsettling at best. Typically geeks are outcasts from normal society because of their unhealthy obsessions with with things like comic books, movies, music, toys & video games. What happens within these geek communities though is that an hierarchy will inevitably form, and many geeks within those individual communities will become snobs and think that they're better than everyone else (hence the title of my blog). There is a difference however between the nice snobs (like me) and the assholes that truly do believe in their heart of hearts that they are better people than the rest of their kind.

In the video game world, there is no bigger snob than Billy Mitchell. Let me rephrase that: There is no bigger asshole than Billy Mitchell. In 1982, Billy broke the world record high scores in both Pac-Man & Donkey Kong, and they have stood for over two decades. All of the world record high scores are logged and tracked by a man named Walter Day who owns an arcade named Twin Galaxies in a small town in Iowa. In the early 80s, Twin Galaxies was the video game mecca of North America, attracting the top young talent of the time to come and beat world records in front of the video gaming world at the time.

As much as King of Kong is about video games and high scores, it is actually a very human story about one man's attempt to get officially recognized as the all time high scorer on Donkey Kong. That man's name is Steve Wiebe. Steve Wiebe is one of the most humble, down-to-earth average joes you'll ever meet, and after suffering a layoff from his job at Boeing, Steve drowns his sorrows in Donkey Kong, on a vintage machine in his garage. Steve gets good at it. Really good at it. So good, he decides that it might be worth his time to video tape himself playing and send it in to Twin Galaxies to challenge Mitchell's record.

This is where the trouble for Steve Wiebe begins, and it's a fascinating saga of intrigue, deception, lying, and massive egos that all adds up to one of the most incredibly entertaining documentaries I've ever seen. The cast of characters involved in this saga is one of the most incredible ever captured on film. There's Roy Schildt, aka Mr. Awesome, who sold Billy the board for his Donkey Kong machine, and sort of started all the controversy in the first place. Robert Mruczek, the head referee at Twin Galaxies who watches the videos people send in, and looks so fried from years of watching video games, he doesn't seem to have a brain cell left to spare. There's Brian Kuh, the douchebag who wanders around Funspot repeating the quote at the beginning of my review ad nauseam until it doesn't mean anything anymore.

Then of course, there's Billy Mitchell. Mitchell is given three opportunities to go head-to-head with Wiebe for the record, and never shows up for any of them. He talks a big game about records not meaning anything unless it's done in front of a crowd, under a high pressure situation, but he does not walk his big talk in any way, shape or form. Yet he's adored by Day & Kuh, and guys like Steve Sanders, who seems like a decent enough guy, yet is still beholden to this ridiculous idol worship at Mitchell's altar. Billy Mitchell has one thing going for him though, and no, it's not his hair.

It's the fact that he joins the ranks of Darth Vader and The Wicked Witch of the West as one of the greatest villains in film history. The legend that builds up around Mitchell throughout the course of the film, and the way he fans his own flames without even a hint of irony add up to a dude who oozes pure evil. He's one of those epic assholes who actually subscribes to his own hype to the extent that he has gone out of his way to contact reviewers of the film to set the record straight about himself (like here for example), and has ended up making himself look even worse as a result.

At the end of the day, director Seth Gordon has given us a really great story about a really great guy in Steve Wiebe. His wife ends up going from someone who seems to tolerate his obsession with Donkey Kong to becoming a staunch advocate in his favor when all of the events begin to unfold. His daughter also says some of the most profound statements in the entire film, like when she tells her dad that a lot of people have probably ruined their lives to get in the Guiness Book of World Records.

The King of Kong is not a film just for video game geeks, it wouldn't be any good if it was. It's a film about achieving your dreams and making people believe in you, whether you deserve it (Steve Wiebe) or not (Billy Mitchell), and isn't that the basis for any great story?

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Day 97: Coraline

"He's not drunk mom, he's just eccentric."

Stop motion animation is a cinematic technique that's almost as old as film itself, with its first use dating all the way back to 1897. As filmmakers grew in their techniques and use of the technology, they were able to blend live actors with stop motion creatures, often calling on the services of Willis O'Brien who created the creature animation for The Lost World (1925) & King Kong (1933). The most famous stop motion animator of all time has got to be Ray Harryhausen, who's work on sci-fi and fantasy films of the 50s and 60s is legendary, and it was his work that would go on to influence a generation of filmmakers such as Dennis Muren, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg & Peter Jackson.

In the early 90s, Tim Burton turned to another animator dabbling in stop motion to realize his vision of a twisted Christmas tale called The Nightmare Before Christmas. It's criminal to me that many people still seem to think that Burton directed the film, and that Henry Selick, the man who actually did direct it, gets very little recognition. Selick also directed 1996's James and the Giant Peach, and the took a brief detour into live action filmmaking with 2001's Monkeybone before taking a hiatus. During this hiatus, he created some stop motion effects for director Wes Anderson's 2004 The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and was working with Anderson to adapt another Roald Dahl novel, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, into a stop motion feature, when he decided to turn his talents towards adapt Neil Gaiman's novella Coraline instead.

Coraline (Dakote Fanning) is the eponymous heroine of the film, a twelve-year old girl who moves with her parents into a strange apartment building in the Pacific Northwest. Her parents are both botanists who are working on a gardening journal, leaving very little time and attention for their rambunctious daughter. While exploring her new home one day, Coraline stumbles on a small door in the living room that she talks her mother into opening for her. It leads only to a bricked up wall, much to Coraline's disappointment. That night while she's asleep however, she is awoken by a mouse who leads her to the door, which now leads to a magical portal. When she crawls through the portal, she's taken into a sunnier, more inviting version of her home, with much more attentive versions of her parents. Only something is amiss in this world, as everyone has buttons for eyes.

Her "other" mother (Teri Hatcher) in this world dotes on her, giving her attention and giving into her whims, which is what Coraline so desperately craves. She begins making nightly visits to her "other" home, which is populated with button eye versions of her neighbors as well, like the circus master Bobinsky (Ian McShane) and the retired burlesque performers Madames Spink & Forcible (Jennifer Saunders & Dawn French from Absoultely Fabulous). There's even a less annoying version of a young boy named Wyborne (Robert Bailey, Jr) who hangs around Coraline in the real world, but has had his mouth sewn shut in this world.

Another character that exists in both worlds is a black cat (voiced fantastically in the "other" world by Keith David) who warns Coraline that there's more to this seemingly perfect world than meets the eye. Before long, her other mother is trying to convince her to sew buttons in her eyes so she can stay in this world forever. But is it a trap? Has this happened before with other children, and if so, can Coraline try and outsmart her other mother to rescue the lost souls of this world?

It's an incredibly dense and macabre plot, but it works exquisitely. Selick has created a magnificent world that compliments Gaiman's prose wonderfully. The stop motion animation gives the film an eerie, otherworldly quality that traditional or cg animation would not have achieved. The film holds a special place in my life as it's the first film that Clementine say all the way through in a movie theater. She was a little over two at the time, and in retrospect, it probably wasn't the best parenting move, but she loved the film and still does. In fact, it's odd that she's not scared of the film in the least, even though it is quite scary.

I wish I had seen the film in 3D as many people who saw it that way told me it was one of the best uses of the technology they'd seen. That's understandable, as the film doesn't seem concerned with "stuff flying out of the screen" gags, and more than likely relied on the depth of field that great 3D that lend to an already good film. Coraline is one of the best animated films of the last decade because it deals with fantastical elements in a way that children can easily relate to, and Coraline is a very relatable protagonist for little girls in particular.

The voice work is great across the board. Ian McShane is great as always, as are the AbFab ladies. John Hodgman is great as Coraline's dad (and the song he sings was written by They Might Be Giants). Fanning and Hatcher do a great job as well. The score by Bruno Coulais is phenomenal, featuring eerie, creepy choral work, and lots of strings. It's a great listen on its own, making me miss the days of the "isolated score" track on dvds (I can't be the only one that loved those. The one on Amadeus is AMAZING).

Overall, I think that this is a great film for kids and adults (though you may want to leave the two year olds at home, what can I say, I'm an over-zealous dad that loves taking his girls to the movies). If you own a 3D tv, there is a 3D blu-ray release out there, but be warned, the anaglyphic 3D version that comes with the regular blu-ray does not work particularly well. The picture quality is incredible on that blu-ray though, and it's on regular rotation in our house, and if you're lucky, it should be on regular rotation in yours as well.

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Day 96: American Movie

"Bill, you've got to believe what you're saying."
"Well I don't. I don't believe nothin' in what you're doin'."

I realized the other night that I've made several references to my favorite documentary of all time without having formally reviewed it here. There's something special that happens every once in a while when you watch a film. The minute it's over, you decide to make it your duty to ensure that as many people as possible see the film. This has happened to me a few times, but I can't think of a film I've done this more with than American Movie. This is a film that transcends genres. It's a documentary, but it's also a comedy. It's a comedy, but it's also a heartfelt drama. It's a heartfelt drama, but it's also rife with suspense. It's one of the the very few perfect films that has ever been made. There's not a wasted moment on screen, and everything adds up to the perfect encapsulation of its subjects.

Mark Borchardt is a dreamer. He's a guy that lives in a small town outside of Milwaukee called Menomonee Falls, and his dream is to make a feature film. He's been working on a script entitled "Northwestern" for the better part of his adult life, and as American Movie opens, Mark is precipitously close to starting principal photography. He holds a series of production meetings that dwindle in attendance over time until a fifth production meeting is down to Mark and one other guy, that sees Mark deliver a diatribe about no one ever having paid to see an excuse. Mark puts his goal of making "Northwestern" on the back burner, determining that it's not quite ready to go into production as it featured dialogue that "would make the Pope weep," and he returns to an abandoned short film he had started several years ago called "Coven" (pronounced with a Wisconsin long o).

If up until this point I've portrayed Mark as the kind of guy who gets easily sidetracked, I would say that's the least of his problems. He's in debt up to his eyeballs, he's living at home and battling for custody of his three children, he's having trouble maintaining the relationship he's currently in, and he's working two jobs in addition to trying to get his film off the ground. All of that said, the fact that the guy doesn't have an ounce of quit in him will endear him to you a million times over. He's going to get his film made come hell or high water, and thank god Chris Smith and Sarah Price were there to capture it all on film.

Fans of the film are probably wondering why I haven't mentioned the cast of characters that surround Mark, as it's a rogues' gallery of the highest order. Mark's best friend is Mike Schank, who is a musician that spent a good portion of his life doing drugs which have left him pretty burned out. I hate making this analogy, but it's the truth of the situation, Mike is as loyal as a dog, and will follow Mark anywhere, and do anything he asks of him. It's a true friendship that most of us would kill for, and laugh at them all you want, they have the real deal. Mike spouts out some of the most unintentionally profound statements in the entire film such as when he talks about his addiction to the lottery being better than an addiction to drugs because with the lottery, sometimes you win and sometimes you lost, but with drugs and alcohol, you always lose.

Mark's parents are an odd match. His dad is one of those old-school, authoritarian dads that obviously supports his son, but also has an air of discontent surrounding what he sees as his son's bad decisions throughout his entire life. His mom is a sweet little lady who has an unconditional love and support for her son, but is constantly taken advantage of by Mark.

It's Mark's Uncle Bill who is the star of the show here. Uncle Bill is a salty old coot who puts up with Mark's shenanigans for some unexplained reason, and has become Mark's biggest source of funding for his endeavors. Bill is an amateur poet, reading some of his poetry in a particularly great scene on Thanksgiving Day that includes the line "I'll visit your grave everyday. Well, not everyday, but I'll visit it sometime if I ever find it."Bill is the perfect foil for Mark as Mark is a master bullshit artist. He's got what they call a gift of the gab, and Bill is the one person to keep pace with him, and give it to Mark as good as he gives it out. It's a poignant relationship, and there is a genuine love and care there beyond their financial arrangement.

There's a ton of periphery characters that are great as well, such as Mark & Mike's high school buddy Ken Keen who is seemingly always in trouble with the law. One great example of how well edited the film is features Keen railing against his bad reputation, stating that he thinks peer pressure is a bunch of bullshit, and the very next scene features Mark and Mike heading to the local precinct to bail Ken out of jail. The various actors that populate Mark's films are great characters too, such as Robert Richard Jorge, who is the "thespian" with a capital T of the group. When taking publicity photos, Mark marvels at the fact that Jorge cocks an eyebrow, to which Jorge replies, "well, shouldn't I have?"

I mentioned a few moments ago how good the editing is, and I want to restate it again here. The film is a master class in editing. The way that one scene leads to another is fantastic. The choice of scenes is top notch, and some of the scenes that they chose to montage together with bits of dialogue carrying over from the previous scene are fantastic. It's one of the absolute best edited films ever made, and I say that without a hint of irony. It's absolutely amazing.

The film is endlessly quotable, as you can tell from my quoting it throughout my review. I would wager to say that it's one of my most quoted films along with Kingpin, Blazing Saddles & The Royal Tenenbaums. I don't go a day without quoting something from this film from "Yeah, now you're thinkin'" to "it made sense to him" to "Coven sounds like oven" to "they're makin' a mockery of my work, Mike, it's a total theatrical mockery, you understand that Mike?" followed immediately by "no." These lines will make much more sense in context, but don't be surprised if you find yourself quoting it before long.

The test of a truly great film is how well it holds up on multiple viewings, and American Movie passes that test with flying colors. I would wager to say it gets better upon multiple viewings. The subtleties and nuances really come to life the more you watch it. It's clear that Mark and Mike in particular were in on the joke. I've heard people criticize the film for being mean-spirited, but it's nothing of the sort. The subjects are well aware of how ridiculous the things going on around them are, and there are lots of little moments where we see them sharing a laugh with the camera.

American Movie gets my highest recommendation, and if I live near you, I would be happy to come watch it with you. It's a movie that's best shared with friends, and after a couple of viewings, Mark, Mike Uncle Bill and the rest of the gang will be just like friends too.

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Day 95: Extract

"Brian, you call half the people that work here dingus, how am I supposed to know who you're talking about?"

Is there a more talented man alive with a worse box-office track record than Mike Judge? The guy can't buy a hit movie to save his life. Now, his first film Beavis & Butthead Do America was a hit, but that had the built in audience from the tv show. His next effort, Office Space, is one of the most quoted, most referenced comedies of the last ten years, but it grossed just a little over ten million dollars in theaters. It proved that there was a second life for films outside of theaters, and between vhs, dvd & endless reruns on Comedy Central, the film is a bona fide cult hit. In 2006 he released the equally genius social satire  Idiocracy, which grossed a paltry four hundred thousand dollars during its theatrical run. While it's not as big a cult phenomenon as Office Space was, in some circles (like the ones I run in) it's considered to be the superior film.

In 2009, he released his latest film, Extract, to equally mixed reviews and only ten million dollars in receipts. I had mistakenly thought that the film would be a hit, but it wasn't to be. The film stars Jason Bateman as Joel, the owner and founder of an extract company who's stuck in a passionless marriage with Suzie (Kristen Wiig). Joel's life seems to spiral out of control when a freak accident at his factory leaves one of his workers, Step (Clifton Collins, Jr) without a testicle and a new temp named Cindy (Mila Kunis) begins working at the factory and seems to take an immediate interest in him. Turning to his only friend Dean (Ben Affleck, in a surprisingly hilarious turn) for advice, who suggests that he hire a gigolo (Dustin Milligan) to seduce his wife, and once she's had an affair, it will leave him free to sleep with Cindy. Joel soon finds out that not only does this plan make him insanely jealous when his wife begins an affair with the dim-witted gigolo, but there's more to Cindy than meets the eye, and she may be secretly trying to sabotage his entire business.

Like other Mike Judge films, Extract is populated with hilarious minor characters that help to give the film a realistic and relatable edge that sets it apart from other films. JK Simmons plays Joel's right hand man at the factory Brian who refers to everyone that works at the factory by the same three or four nicknames. David Koechner plays Joel's chatty, annoying neighbor, and nobody does that kind of thing better than Koechner, and I do mean that as a compliment. As I said, Affleck is a revelation as the perpetually stoned friend that doles out nothing but bad advice, and Matt Schulze has a great scene as Dean's drug dealer. There's also a great bit at the very beginning of the film with Hal Sparks & Nick Thune as guys working in a guitar shop.

The biggest misstep in the whole film is the casting of Gene Simmons as an ambulance chasing lawyer whom Step hires to sue for his emotional and physical damages. The negotiation scene is so painfully bad and difficult to watch, I honestly felt bad for Simmons, even though he's a gigantic asshole in real life. His performance is so bad, it actually allowed me to temporarily forget the fact that he really is an insufferable douchebag, and let me garner a modicum of sympathy for him. That's how bad he is.

Aside from that however, this is Judge's most mature film. Office Space is a spot-on parody of the daily grind of working for a living and Idiocracy is the most prescient satire of George W. Bush's America and what we certainly seemed headed for about 6 years ago. Extract on the other hand isn't really a satire, it's more of a meditation on getting older and not appreciating what you have until it's gone. Don't get me wrong, there's still a lot of broad comedy, and I found myself laughing out loud multiple times, but I think that the casting of Jason Bateman in particular helps to make the film more honest than it has any right to be.

Watching it reminded me a lot of watching Clerks II. Judge is a better filmmaker now than he was ten years ago, and the subject matter of his films has caught up to his burgeoning talent behind the camera. I doubt he'll make another film as good as Idiocracy, but if he continues in the same vein as Extract, he'll prove to be one of the premier comedy directors in America.

Don't go in expecting another Office Space or Idiocracy, and you'll enjoy the film tremendously. It's not a bold step forward, but it's certainly a step in the right direction, and it's the kind of film that shows Judge is not content to just spin his wheels, and at the end of the day, that's the sign of a great filmmaker.

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Day 94: Watchmen

"Miracles by their definition are meaningless. Only what can happen does happen."

There are lots of ways to go about adapting a novel, graphic or otherwise. The most prevalent way of late has been to do a slavish recreation, particularly when adapting graphic novels. The trend started with Sin City which was such a slave to shot for shot recreation of the book that it was all style and completely devoid of content. Director Zack Snyder adapted another of Frank Miller's graphic novels, 300, two years later and infused the slavish recreation with his own stylistic touches like slow-motion and homoeroticism.

A film adaptation of Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons' immortal 12-issue limited comic series Watchmen had been languishing in development hell since it was first published in the mid-1980s. Many directors had come and gone, among them Terry Gilliam, Paul Greengrass, & Darren Aronofsky, most of whom wanted to drastically change the novel in one way or another such as updating it to modern times. When Snyder wrapped 300, the property landed in his lap, and his radical idea for adapting it was, you guessed it, slavish faithfulness to the source material.

I had read Watchmen when I was a teenager, and while I liked it, I was certainly not a rabid fan, and I was willing to give the film the benefit of the doubt. I went to see it when it was released in the theaters, and about the best thing I could say was that I was underwhelmed. It felt bloated and the only thing that Snyder himself seemed to add to the proceedings was a lot of graphic violence. There were a lot of things that I liked about it. Some of the cast was very good: Jackie Earle Haley was brilliant as Rorschach, Patrick Wilson was an excellent Dan Drieberg & Billy Crudup was also very good as Dr. Manhattan.

A lot of the smaller roles were well cast too like Matt Frewer (Moloch), Stephen McHattie (Hollis Mason) & Carla Gugino (Sally Jupiter). The opening credits were mind-blowingly good, the best opening credits sequence of the decade. I'm also one of the only people that actually prefers the ending they chose to the giant squid from the comics.

My issues with the film were equally strong however. Some of the cast were terrible: Malin Ackerman was god awful as Laurie Jupiter, Jeffrey Dean Morgan played The Comedian as too much of a douchebag & not enough of a psychopath, and Matthew Goode removed any suspense from the fact that Ozymandias was the villain all along, he oozed of evil from his first appearance. The sound design was bombastic and unrelenting & some of the song choices were misguided at best (The Sound of Silence? Really?) And overall, I felt that Snyder was too devoted to recreating images from the book that he missed the opportunity to say anything new and original with his composition.

Time has reversed my overall opinion on the film though. My gripes with the film are still the same, but I am actually able to enjoy the film more at home than I did in the theater. It's a film best digested at your own pace, and that's actually its strength as a film. I've seen three different versions of the film now, the theatrical cut, the director's cut and the ultimate cut with Tales of the Black Freighter edited into the film and my preferred version would be the director's cut. The additions add weight to the film that the theatrical cut didn't have, such as the death of Hollis Mason & Dan's freak out in the bar afterwards.

It also gives the lion's share of its additional running time to Rorschach and Manhattan, who are arguably the most compelling characters in the film (I always found Ozymandias to be the most compelling in the novel). I'm fine with Tales of the Black Freighter being a separate entity from the film, it really doesn't work as a part of the film. Under the Hood is also a great bonus feature, and I'm glad they didn't attempt to edit any of it into the film.

So what are we to glean from this, if anything? I think that the film Watchmen is a great, three hour incentive to get people to read the original novel. It's more than likely the only attempt anyone's going to make at adapting it, so we may as well get used to that. Personally, I like The Incredibles more as an homage to Watchmen than the film Watchmen as a direct adaptation. I'm of the belief that a film doesn't need to be an all-inclusive tour of your favorite scenes from the book. Look at how much better the Harry Potter series of films got once they stopped trying to put everything from the books into the films. Even Deathly Hallows didn't try to include everything and they split that up into two films.

When The Beatles broke up, John Lennon said the most profound and pragmatic statement about art that I've ever heard. He said "It's just natural, it's not a great disaster. People keep talking about it like it's the end of the Earth. It's only a rock group that split up, it's nothing important, you know. You'll have all the old records there if you want to reminisce." The creation of new art does not by its nature destroy what's already been created. Zack Snyder's film of Watchmen does not replace Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons' graphic novel. It didn't rape your childhood, or do something drastic like that. As far as I can tell, Jesus Christ is the only person who's ever torn down the old law and replaced it with something new, and even then, the zealots of this world don't want to get rid of the Old Testament because it gives their barbaric ideals credence.

Just like Rick and Ilsa will always have Paris, you'll always have the graphic novel if that's what you want. Nobody can take that from you. Watchmen as a film is nothing but a minor success to adapt an unadaptable novel, and if nothing else, it gives hope to a generation of filmmakers who might want to attempt the same in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Now somebody get to work on A Confederacy of Dunces. It can be done.

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Day 93: The Exorcist

I'm trying something new today, there's lots of hot links to click. Try it out, let me know what you think!

"Your daughter doesn't say she's a demon. She says she's the devil himself."

Anytime a list is compiled of the greatest horror movies ever made, one film is present at or near the top of every single one of them. I would wager to say that much like the other great films in their respective genres, more people think they've seen this film than have actually seen it, because it has been ripped off and copied and homaged and spoofed to death. The power of a truly great film that ends up defining a genre, is that it can transcend all of that, and still hold up for someone seeing it for the first time. There's probably five films that I would say fit that mold: Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Psycho, The Godfather & The Exorcist.

My own memories of The Exorcist were horrendously warped. I hadn't seen the film beginning to end since I was twelve years old. In the Summer of 1991, I watched the film with my best friend Jim Ciocco, and it scared the ever-loving shit out of me. Whenever I thought about the film though, all I could remember was a bunch of terrifying shit, most of which is only in the last thirty minutes of the movie. I distinctly remember it making it hard for me to sleep for the next few nights, because I was haunted by this image in particular. It still haunts me.

So what is all the fuss about? Is it really the scariest movie of all time? Yes and no. It is an undeniable masterpiece of horror, creating an incredibly unsettling mood from minute one. The film opens with Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow) on some sort of excavation in Northern Iraq. There's no context given for this scene, and even now, I'm not entirely sure, beyond the statue he finds at the end of the sequence, what the purpose of it was beyond putting the audience in an uncomfortable mood right away.

The film abruptly cuts to Georgetown, MD where Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) is filming her latest movie. She's living with her daughter Regan (Linda Blair) in a fancy house overlooking the most ominous set of stairs you've ever seen in your life. Regan shows her mother how she's been playing with a Ouija board and has been getting answers to her questions from someone named Captain Howdy. Other than that, and the fact that Regan is having problems sleeping in her bed because she says that it shakes, nothing seems out of the ordinary.

Chris & Regan's story is juxtaposed with that of Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller, in a role that should have won him an Oscar) a priest who is also a psychiatrist, but more importantly, he is suffering a crisis of faith. His mother is ill and lives alone in a seedy part of town, and Damien has a lot of guilt over leaving her by herself, and this comes to a head when his mother is injured in a fall, brought to a hospital, and ends up dying. Father Karras is on the verge of losing his faith altogether.

Regan meanwhile suddenly begins displaying violent behavior, and Chris takes her to a psychiatrist, not knowing what else to do. The doctors run a series of tests on her, thinking that she has a lesion on her frontal lobe which is causing her schizophrenic behavior. These sequences pack a ton of emotional power, particularly if you're a parent. Chris stands by helplessly while a bunch of doctors who are up against something they've never seen before, run a series of violent and invasive tests on her little girl. It's a harrowing sequence, and Chris begins to come unglued.

Her path crosses with Father Karras' when the doctors run out of possibilities and ask if she's ever heard of exorcism. She begs the priest for help, and he begins investigating whether or not she is indeed possessed. In the course of his investigation, his already shaky faith is put to the test, and he turns to the church for additional help, who recommend sending in one of the only living priests that has performed an exorcism, Father Merrin. The last thirty minutes of the film is the exorcism, and it is a tour-de-force. It's the kind of thing that makes The Exorcist a classic. The film spends the first three quarters of its running time building the mood, establishing the conflict, setting up the pins so that they can all be knocked down at the end.

It's what sets the film apart from other horror films. It takes the time to build to its climax, never letting up on the uneasiness, flashing subliminal shots of Captain Howdy to keep you on edge. And the payoff? It's like nothing else ever put on film. The exorcism sequence is amazing. It was achieved by William Friedkin playing dastardly tricks on his cast and crew to keep them on edge, and the guy was a world-class player of mind games, many of which you can read about here (number four).

So, is The Exorcist the scariest movie ever made? Personally I don't think that it is. My vote would go to The Shining but that film's structure borrows heavily from this film, including the director tormenting his actors to keep their performances on edge. The Exorcist will live in your memory for a long time after you've seen it, and it's the kind of film you'll find yourself revisiting at various points in your life to see if it's as scary as you remember it to be. And whether or not it is, it's the kind of film that you can marvel at whether it scares you or not, and that's the mark of a great film. And this is undeniably one of the greatest.

UPDATE: Holy Shit, have any of you ever seen this trailer? This might be the most terrifying thing I've ever seen.

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Day 92: The Princess and the Frog

"We're actually not from around here."
"Go to bed... ya'll from Shreveport?"

For better or for worse, Toy Story effectively changed the landscape of animation forever. Coming a year after the biggest financial hit in the history of Walt Disney Studios, The Lion King, it revolutionized an industry that just seemed to be hitting its stride. At that time, it wasn't necessarily cheaper to produce computer animation, but the upfront investment in technology aside, it was clear that studio executives were drawing a pretty straight line between the success of Toy Story and the decline in traditional hand-drawn animation.

It's ironic, then, that the man who directed Toy Story and was the head of Pixar animation, John Lasseter, was the one to revive the art of hand-drawn feature length animated films when he took over as head of Disney Animation Studios in 2006 (It's even more ironic that he was given this position after having been fired from the studio in the mid-80s). The first big, hand-drawn animate feature to be released as part of this new initiative was 2009's The Princess and the Frog, a twist on the classic tale "The Frog Prince." Bringing back Ron Clements and John Musker to direct was the first thing the producers did right. They are the team behind some of Disney's best film from their animation renaissance of the late 80s and early 90s, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin & The Hunchback of Notre Dame, to name three.

The Princess and the Frog is also notable for featuring Disney's first black princess. Anyone who thinks that this is insignificant, or questions how irrelevant this decision was, is out of their mind. I was working for a major retailer when the film was released, and the Tiana dolls flew off the shelves. All children, particularly non-white children, long to see themselves represented on screen, and the pinnacle of this representation for little girls in this country is seeing themselves in a Disney Princess, so make no mistake, this was a watershed moment.

Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) is a young woman living in a non-descript time period in New Orleans' past. She works several jobs to save up enough money to open her own restaurant, and fate smiles on her when her childhood friend Charlotte (Jennifer Cody) offers her the rest of the money she needs if she'll make her beignets at a party that evening. This isn't just any party, it's a costume party to welcome Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos) of Maldonia to New Orleans, and hopefully woo him to marry Charlotte, so she can become a princess, just like she's always dreamed.

En route to the party however, Naveen and his servant Lawrence (Peter Bartlett) come across The Shadow Man, Dr. Facilier (Keith David) who offers Naveen the chance to be free of his princely duties which have become burdensome for the carefree Naveen. Naveen gets more than he bargained for however, when The Shadow Man turns him into a frog, and uses a magical totem filled with Naveen's blood to turn Lawrence into a double for Naveen. 

When Naveen arrives at the party, Charlotte is immediately smitten with him, not aware of the fact that he's actually Lawrence in disguise. The real Naveen finds Tiana, who is dressed as a princess (costume party, remember), and convinces her that she should kiss him and break the spell. However, because Tiana is not a real princess, she finds herself transformed into a frog as well. The two frogs now find themselves on the run, in an attempt to find someone who can break the spell and change them back before Charlotte marries Lawrence, who will turn control of the city over to Facilier once he's married to Charlotte, whose father (John Goodman) more or less runs the city. 

It sounds hokey, I know, but it works. It all works so unbelievably well, I was shocked at how good the film was. I would wager to say that it's the best Disney animated film since The Lion King owing a lot of that to the biggest and best asset the film has: a score and songs by Randy Newman. I've always run hot and cold with Newman as a songwriter. He has undeniable talent, but his songs can run the gamut from brilliant to unlistenable. Thankfully, he pulls out a ton of the former and none of the latter here, and all six songs he wrote for the film are fantastic. Getting Dr. John to sing "Down in New Orleans," the song over the opening titles was a stroke of genius. He's so much a part of the city of New Orleans, and his voice welcomes you right into the world of the film, and it really does set the tone for everything that follows.

In typical Disney fashion, things play out in a ridiculously convenient timeline, with the characters hating each other and then falling in love all in the span of about 24 hours, but that's part of the Disney magic formula that's as old as the movies itself. If you can suspend disbelief enough to just accept that things need to be resolved before the stroke of midnight, you'll enjoy the film much more. Tiana is also a revelation of a character, as she's not just some helpless damsel. She's an independent woman, who has fought against the odds and worked hard for her dreams. She didn't just sit around and wait for good things to happen to her, and that's an important message for the young girls who will certainly look up to her.

I think there's so much importance placed on originality these days, that old fashioned films end up looking archaic and kids steer clear of them. The Princess and the Frog though is hardly old fashioned. It embraces the old model, but infuses it with a 21st century excitement that makes it fit in well with either camp. I loved this film, and so did both of my daughters, and I cannot recommend it enough for lovers of animated films.

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Day 91: Shut Up Little Man: An Audio Misadventure

"If you wanna talk to me, then shut your fucking mouth!"

The best thing about having Netflix instant is the fact that I am able to see tons of documentaries that I didn't previously have access to. There were lots that I'd heard about and couldn't track down before, and then there are ones I've just stumbled across by pure happenstance that I wonder why I haven't heard of. The documentary I watched last night is one that I hadn't heard of before, but it's actually the summation of a fairly large, underground phenomenon, or at least the film posits it to be.

Shut Up Little Man: An Audio Misadventure tells the story of former roommates Eddie Lee Sausage & Mitchell D, who lived together in a ramshackle apartment building in San Francisco in the mid-1980s. Eddie & Mitch soon found out that they had some pretty loud neighbors: Two guys who stayed up until all hours of the night drunkenly & verbally berating and abusing one another. One of them is violent, raging homophobe Ray, and the other is whiny old gay man Peter. Pretty soon, Eddie & Mitch got the idea to begin recording their rows with a microphone hooked onto a ski pole and placed outside their window. Before long, their apartment became the place to be, with listening parties happening on any given night, and copies of the tapes being made and handed out to friends.

Much like Jack Rebney of Winnebago Man from a few weeks back, Peter & Ray's epic battles became a cult phenomenon completely unbeknownst to the subjects involved. I certainly can't compare the merit of one film's existence to another, but this film does tread a lot of the same ground that the vastly superior Winnebago Man did, namely the concept of ownership in a viral marketplace. Eddie & Mitch lived through the ordeal & created and duplicated the tapes themselves, so they feel that they have ownership of the material. Initially they put a disclaimer on the tapes that said that people were free to use the material for their own purposes, as long as they contacted them first to let them know what the use was for.

In the early 90s, a guy named Gregg Gibbs turned the tapes into a stage play. At first Eddie & Mitch seemed receptive to the whole thing, particularly when Gibbs mentioned turning it into a feature film. Eddie & Mitch decided to copyright the material at this point in time, and suddenly found themselves on the outs with Gibbs, who decided to pursue a separate deal to turn his play into a film. Inevitably this led to a third person, who was friends with Mitch, to also try and turn it into a film. So at one point in time, there were three separate versions of these tapes attempting to be made into a film.

Only one film ended up getting made around 1999, interestingly enough by a fourth person, although it was based on Gibbs' play, called Shut Yer Dirty Little Mouth which starred Glenn Shadix (Otho from Beetlejuice) as Peter. The tapes have been turned into animated shorts, puppet shorts, comics done by the likes of "Ghost World" creator Daniel Clowes & I. Brunetti. Yet through all of this, Eddie & Mitch have maintained a feeling of ownership over the whole affair which has led them to pursue the real Peter & Ray, to find out who they actually were.

As I said, a lot of this same ground is covered in other films, the whole notion of viral video before the internet, who owns what, and how did it affect the people involved. The film is mildly amusing, if for no other reason than a lot of what these two said to one another was very funny, but on the whole, without participation from either of the actual men (both of whom have passed on), it's sadly lacking in any real sort of perspective on how the whole thing has affected, or not, their lives.

If you find yourself out of docs to watch and you've already seen Winnebago Man, I would recommend this in that instance, but if there's other stuff to watch, watch it first. Ultimately it comes down to the fact that the film presents very little perspective other than a bunch of genuinely unlikable dudes arguing over the ownership of something that doesn't really belong to anyone.

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Day 90: Cool as Ice

"Drop that zero, get with a hero"

Vanilla Ice's window of actual fame was so small, it's hard to remember when he wasn't a complete and total joke. He went from having a massive hit single to being the butt of jokes from everywhere, most notably on In Living Color, which I remember was, for me anyway, the point when I finally felt like it was okay to laugh at him. A lot of my 6th grade compatriots were upset with that sketch, but to me it was a relief that someone else felt the way about this douchebag that I did. The guy was a total poser, top to bottom, and he made it virtually impossible for anyone to take a white guy rapping seriously ever again.

I was admittedly a huge Ninja Turtles fan when the second Ninja Turtles movie came out in March of 1991, and when Vanilla Ice turned up at the end of that movie (as if the rest of the movie wasn't a total waste of time), it pretty much single-handedly ended my love affair with the Ninja Turtles. By the time October of that same year rolled around, I think that virtually everyone was fed up with Vanilla Ice, but that didn't stop Universal Pictures from unleashing his "star-making" vehicle on the world, Cool as Ice. The film was directed by a man named David Kellogg, who had 10 directing credits prior to this film, and 2 after it. The ten prior and one after are Playboy videos such as "Wet & Wild" and "Farmer's Daughters." His only feature film credit after this was 1999's Inspector Gadget with Ferris Bueller. I'll leave it to you to decide which misstep actually ended his career.

The fact that Kellogg cut his teeth directing music videos for Lionel Richie probably goes a long way towards explaining why Cool as Ice looks like a 90-minute music video, with random Lifetime movie style scenes thrown in to move the plot along. Oh yeah, the plot, I almost forgot. Mr. Ice plays Johnny (although not a soul utters that name in the entire film), a Kawasaki biker who rides with a crew of two black dudes and a black girl, you know, to establish his street cred. En route to a local bike repair house that's straight out of a Tim Burton movie, Johnny's crew rides past a horse farm where Kathy (Kristin Minter, Heather from Home Alone) is riding her horse. Johnny jumps the fence and does a pop-a-wheelie to impress Kathy, but instead sends her flying off the horse. She's okay though, don't worry.

When Johnny and friends make it to the repair house, it's conveniently located on the same street that Kathy lives on. Kathy's dad (Michael Gross) is harboring a secret. He's in the witness protection program from a case he broke open a long time ago when he was a cop, that I think involved the mafia, I wasn't really paying attention. Anyway, some of the folks that he sent to jail are after him, and track him down because of his appearance on a local news program that was spotlighting Kathy.

So anyway, look, the plot is pretty irrelevant, even to the filmmakers. It's basically a series of random coincidences strung together in order to facilitate getting Kathy and Johnny together in various, slow-motion romantic montages. Now, Kathy's boyfriend is a total asshole, but there's no real reason for her to  have any attraction to Johnny whatsoever. She seems like a smart girl, they go out of their way to establish that, so why on earth would she be so unrelentingly stupid in her relationship decisions? Like I said, the plot doesn't matter on whit, making the low-lit, smoky scenes in the house where they grind things to a halt to squeeze out exposition all the more ridiculous as a result.

There are a lot of lingering questions though, such as why the house is always smoky. Why did halfway respectable character actors like Michael Gross, Jack McGee & Sydney Lassick agree to appear in this film? Man's got to eat, I guess, but still. Why does Johnny wear a leather jacket, with shorts and no shirt? Why does his jacket say Down by Law when he engages in, by my count, zero illegal activities in the film? Why on earth did Oscar-winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski shoot this movie?

The movie is a total joke. It's the kind of thing that has all the elements of what a studio executive would think that kids want to see, but contains exactly, by my count, zero things that are actually appealing to young people. Watching this film with friends, even via social media, is the only way to stomach this abortion. I know how much you think it's gonna be funny and campy and stupid and you'll enjoy watching it, but it's not something to watch alone. Watching it alone will open up a gaping hole in your soul that's not likely to be filled by anything but medication. So grab some friends, start a live blog, and cue up Cool as Ice, you'll have a blast, I guarantee it. But remember, friends don't let friends watch Cool as Ice by themselves.

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