My Academy predictions

BEST PICTURE - BABEL - I've got a feeling Little Miss is a little too small, and Departed a little too Genre. Babel may be a little too Crash, but I doubt it.

ACTOR: Forest Whitaker – Cause he's been winning a lot and O'Toole - though heady competition, already has one.

ACTOR -SUPPORTING: Eddie Murphy – Though Jeff Wells may be annoyed, I feel like that Eddie gets it. Though Alan Arkin could sneak in like a thief in the night.

The ZZZZZZZZZZZ (or Duh's)
ACTRESS :Helen Mirren – THE QUEEN
ACTRESS -SUPPORTING: Jennifer Hudson – DREAMGIRLS
SCREENPLAY -- ADAPTED: THE DEPARTED
SCREENPLAY -- ORIGINAL: LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
DIRECTING: THE DEPARTED - As locked up as Mirren's

ANIMATED FEATURE: HAPPY FEET - cause real heads know that Cars was weak shit.

CINEMATOGRAPHY: CHILDREN OF MEN - Cause, how could they not

ORIGINAL SONG - “Listen” – DREAMGIRLS
SOUND MIXING: DREAMGIRLS
COSTUME DESIGN:DREAMGIRLS - Sorry we shut you out.

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH - We Want Gore!

ART DIRECTION: PAN’S LABYRINTH
MAKEUP: PAN’S LABYRINTH
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: PAN’S LABYRINTH - Go Guillermo, go!

ORIGINAL SCORE: BABEL - Spoiler would be Pan's

FILM EDITING: BABEL, THE DEPARTED, or UNITED 93 This makes me completely unsure.

VISUAL EFFECTS: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST

SOUND EDITING: LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA - I hope you enjoy your consolation prize, Clint

SHORT FILM -- LIVE ACTION
SHORT FILM -- ANIMATED
DOCUMENTARY SHORT - who cares? (cpeting those nominated, and good for you and shit)

Ironic Good bad taste, you're dead to me

I was watching Predator the other night for a Q Branch script I'm working on, and I realized how much I love Bill Duke's bugfuck nuts performance. I could say it's a favorite. But nowadays, if I were to make a list and put that performance on it, it would seem like a hipster thing to do, like I wasn't being serious about it, or that I was acknowledging my childhood too much, or whatever. But Duke going bugfuck nuts is surely one of the great pleasures of movie going. Alas, in a culture where people will contrarily defend Alien Vs. Predator, a film with absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and with films of my childhood either already canonized or rebelled against, and a population unswayed by contrary opinions on established "classics" (does anyone but the lamest get all persnickety if I said I didn't like The Sound of Music, or Grease, or Gone With the Wind - which even with the later, I will acknowledge isn't a bad film, just not a great one), the shit's worn out. You've got to dig hard to piss people off when talking about an established classic, while still knowing what you're talking about (it's easy to diss Citizen Kane if you're an idiot). I found one that's gotten me into some heated TOP GUN IS GAY type arguments, but it's a fools errand now. Now that people have so little good taste, which is - alas, same as it ever was - but with the dumbing down of our culture fewer adults go to the Gandhi's like they used to. Witness Babel's BO.

Best of the year 06

So far it's:
1) United 93
2) The Host
3) Little Children
4) Miami Vice
5) Brick
6) Inside Man/ When the Levees Broke
7) The Black Dahlia
8) Down in the Valley
9) The Departed
10) Borat (partly for sentimental reasons)

Best movie (period) released in America in 2006:Army of Shadows

I have a neighbor here in the academy. He lent me Little Children. Then we talked about it, and I think I may have helped him vote (!!!) He said he'd have no problem lending me some discs of stuff when he gets it. I also borrowed Babel, which we watched and thought was okay. Just okay. He has WTC, I dunno if I could care enough to watch it. There's some others, and I guess he got the Universal shipment, so Good Shepherd and possibly Children of Men is likely. I picked up Black Dahlia, watched it again and fell in love with it. I got it.

I've been thinking about Superman Returns a bit lately, and I'm starting to feel that it's one fo the worst films ever made. Mostly because if I was six years old and saw that film I'd hate it. And as much as I've enjoyed the comic book resurge, I think some of these films are forgetting who the target audience is, and that maybe some of these films should be filled with awe and shit. I may watch it again when I have the spare time which means never.

The wife is enjoying Little Miss Sunshine way more than I am

Fuck.

As 2006 draws to a close

I really regret the fact that I haven't used the phrase aught six enough. Maybe next year.

A Prairie Home Companion

It's hard to let go of the people you love and respect, but life sorts us out, and death is part of that continuum. Robert Altman has directed some of the great American films, and is one of the greatest American filmmakers, whose ascendancy into the pantheon will surely be accelerated by his passing. His final outing is well aware of his inpending death, and now that he has passed, there is a great sense of fait accompli in watching A Prairie Home Companion. The sketchy, loose narrative is in essense Altman saying there is no point in mourning the course of nature. There will always be a sense of loss, but, as a character says, there is no tragedy in an old man dying. In that way, the film itself is something of a vessel, or at least it feels that way today, now - perhaps when the film is cemented in the canon, a different reading of it will be atainable, but likely not. With his slowly darting camera, the audience hangs out, as it does in most of his film, surveying the recording of the final show of Prairie Home Companion like an uninvited guest at a party, bouncing from clique to clique, an observant wallflower. That was his gift, and in the corners there is always something interesting to discover.

I don't know if it's a great film, my sense is that it is minor, though an essential piece of the canon (unlike something like Pret-A-Porter, or Cookie's Fortune) and strikes me as more resonant than something like 3 Women, though that's just me. The film is very charming, but what I didn't expect is how emotional the last act made me, in a very sneaky way. Say goodbye, the film offers, I'm going away, but it don't worry me. There's something profound in that, and a perfect summation of Altman's sloppy genius. If I am a little depressed at Altman's passing, it's only for the loss of a master whose career is now encased in amber.

Altman is no more

Most of my posters are in the garage. Covered, looked after, but I've got a couple of my honeys up. One is McCabe and Mrs. Miller. It was signed by Robert Altman, who I met in 1999. Altman was promoting Cookie's Fortune, one of the okay but not great films he's made in the last couple years (less than Gosford Park, more than Dr. T, I'd reckon). We talked about posters, mostly because I was so fucking intimidated, but he was calming and mentioned that one of his nephews was named as I was.

I've always thought of Altman as the stoner version of Howard Hakws, in that he conquered every genre: musical, western, noir, horror, science fiction, war, even teen nonsense, to which Altman put his curious stamp. There is a strong case to be made that Altman is the director for the second half of the 20th century, and when you stack up the features, few compare.

Plus he showed that Julianne Moore's carpet match the drapes.

The only DVD worth buying for the next couple...

The Host/Borat/Mom/Shopping for Illusionary Pussy

I saw The Host. It's now my second favorite movie of the year. It was directed by Bong Joon-ho, who was at the screening. I had this planned with my boys before the wife spit the kid out, and with my mom in town, it was okay that I went. I really enjoyed the movie, but it fucks you up to leave your kid at home after being so attentive for the last couple. It was a relief, but it's still hard to leave behind. The film is coming out in January, and you ahve no excuse not to see it.

Saturday night my mom let us go out for dinner and a movie. Aili wanted to see Borat. It's funny to hear a Finnish girl do a Kazakh accent, but she nails it. Aili also loves it because it makes fun of both Americans and the Eastern Europeans. It's a two-fer. Aili had a glass of wine at dinner, but then stopped herself, thinking about the kid and the milk. That shit's fucked up yo. She still hasn't made up her mind if she's quit smoking or not. Mostly, she's worried about the weight, and most mornings now, now that she's at least a little back to it, she tries to put some time on our exercise bike. We both loved Borat, BTW.

Having Mom here (she's leaving tomorrow) was nice for the break factor. She gave us both some time to not deal with the baby, though we both are very much in the headspace where even though we might want that a little, we can't keep ourselves away. Aili's not due back in the office until mid-January, but she's already doing some things from home. Just cause. Mom got a little testy because we're both so ragged. And then on Saturday, on the way home, I slipped and tweaked my glasses. Right now it's tough, it's so incredibly tough when it comes to money, and we just paid the rent, and though Aili's still salaried for her absence, and I'm working, baby's cost money, and there's so many new expenditures. Though the glasses weren't broken, the thought of both being sightless (my only pair), and having to buy new ones set off panic attacks. Mom sort of helped by saying she'd help, but it's just the way things are. It's so tense because we're starting to build up more and more credit card debt. Part of that is just one time expendatures, but budgeting with children is difficult. And sometimes we're both horrible about getting our son stuff. We find it hard to say no to him. I took the glasses in and they were fixed in an instant, but that was fourteen hours of pure stress.

This morning I took the kid out for some shopping at our local Ralphs. Like most parents, I don't get more than a couple hours sleep in a row, so I took the kid with me this morning and let my wife and mom sleep in a bit. But by the time the two of us were ready to get going, my mom was up and did the normal mom thing by doing some cleaning. I said I'd be back in a bit, and offered to have her join us, but she was happy cleaning our bathroom. Moms be crazy. By the way, I'm finally at about B- level at diaper changing.

Here's the funny thing, it's 9:30, I'm shopping at Ralphs looking mostly like a zombie, but women just can't keep away from a baby. I looked fine, but everyone likes to stop and stare for a minute. Hot thirty-year-old women love my baby. I'm too tired to flirt them up, but it's a weird catch 22. And I get it, they don't want me that much, and the reason why they are so flirty is that babies tend to bring that out, and they know I'm safe, but being all daddy with baby is just sick when it comes to that. But that phermonal sign that I'm a breeder, and that I take care of my own is dangerous shit.

I'm reminded of a time I went out to lunch with the head of a company I worked for with a bunch of my coworkers, and the waitress was flirting with me. After she left that came up though mostly between us, and I said "Oh, you noticed that?" His response was "Well, yeah. I'm alive." Me too, I'm alive too. But I love my wife and life. So there you go.

United 93 is truly a great film

Best of 2006 (so far):
1) United 93
2) Miami Vice
3) Brick
4) Down in the Valley
5) The Departed
6) Dave Chappelle's Block Party
7) Inside Man
8) Cocaine Cowboys
9) Taledega Nights
10) Monster House

Best movie (period) released in America in 2006:
Army of Shadows

Watching the sups on U93, I'm struck how great this movie is on a moral level. These people died because there is no god. And World Trade Center? That movie is a piece of shit in comparison.

Hooray for narcissism!

That's very much the definition of Wes Anderson's cinema. WA is fascinated with the involved narcissist who learns to sort of accept the outside world a little bit. That may be why I value Bottle Rocket and Royal Tennenbaums over Rushmore and The Life Aquatic. Narcissism breeds narcissism, and Where BR and Rushmore are about the beautiful dreamers, I think TRT at least deals with the grief such painful insulation can cause.

That may be why I find Life Aquatic so troubling - it sacrifices youth for knowledge. Publicly I have bad mouthed such directors as PT Anderson, Robert Rodriguez and Kevin Smith (among that entire generation of filmmakers) because they never seemed to leave their bubbles. Wes strikes me as one of the best, but ultimately these people need to experience more, to understand more to truly become great directors. We'll see how it goes, but Tarantino, for better or worse bests these guys because he knows that "a man's got to know his limitations."

The Rip Off Artist as Genius

I can call myself among a new generation of film fans and filmmakers to revere BLOW OUT (1981) as a masterpiece. Or, at least, I can claim myself among Pauline Kael, Quentin Tarantino, Collider's Jeremy Smith, and Armond White (among others) who revere this film. Watching the ending, you see the metacommentary (pretty excplicit as it my be) that the artist must take his own personal demons and apply them to their art, even if it tears them up inside. They have to, they must. Whether De Palma was applying those demons or commenting on the artistic process (though likely both) is immaterial, that revelation is one of the greatest in the history of cinema, and may prove that De Palma made more personal films that Scorsese, whose soul may have been in the slightly flat RAGING BULL. Or moreso than Spielberg, whose game keep getting more interesting with each passing year, but reveals a craftsman whose soul only lightly touches his final product. Yep, I'm intoxiated enough with BLOW OUT to suggest that it proves De Palma the best filmmaker of his generation.

The Black Dahlia (2006)

There was a list of films to see this weekend. Jackass Number 2, The Science of Sleep, a De Palma double feature of Blow Out and The Untouchables and The Black Dahlia, which I wanted to catch last weekend, but post-wedding exhaustion nixed. With Sunday wrapping up I made the effort to at least see one of the films, and it was Dahlia, which is the one most likely to disappear quickest. I also watched Edmond (which I liked), Body Double (yay) and Lucky Number Slevin (a guilty pleasure, but functional). But I just got back from BD.

One of the things I love about Hollywood is just that it's Hollywood. I go to the Arclight, and who's watching the movie with me but Peter Dinkage. There you go. As for the film, I have mixed feelings for the moment. As a narrative it is talky, and the mystery elements don't snap... the haunted obsession of Elizabeth Short (played well by Mia Kirshner) seems the backstory to the machinations of boxers/cops Bucky Bleichert (Josh Harnett) and Lee Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart). After a shooting, the two become attached to the Short case out of Lee's insistance, and it becomes something of an overwhelming obsession for Lee, something that is shown but not entirely felt. Bucky starts chasing after a woman named Madeline Linscott (Hilary Swank), who knew Short through a lesbian bar. Bucky and Lee have been friends for a while, and share a relationship with Kay Lake (Scarlet Johansson), but though Kay and Bucky suggest their emotions, Bucky's unwilling to do anything while Lee's in the picture. There's a tale of obsession, betrayal, guilt, all the things that make a great De Palma film, but taken as a whole, and a second viewing might settle some things for me, it's a little too leaden for its own good. I didn't sink into the character's emotional weight, and there's so much going on that I felt like some important emotional beats were left out. I got into the film's lulling rhythms, but waited for the moment of total engagement, which just didn't happen. De Palma can still stage a setpiece, and those sequences popped, but I kept waiting for momentum to kick in. It didn't, though I loved the hoary theatrics of the villian's reveal. But the pieces were there for it to be out of the park, and I just didn't feel it. Still, worth seeing, if only for De Palma's command.

Afterwards I drove down Sunset at sunset. I see why it got the name. Now, I'm back in Burbank. I've been freaking out lately about the kid stuff. I'll tell you, the thing that sort of settled me was making love with the wife in the baby's room. We fell asleep in the middle of the room, and I guess everything was okay. You can worry about the long term, and you should, but sometimes the smart money's on staying with the day to day concerns.

The taint is the body's Rhode Island.

I once fucked a girl who had a shamrock shaved into her pubes. Must have been a Celtics fan.

I'll be here all week

So, Poseidon bombed. And the variety will run such headlines as "Poseidon tanks" "Poseidon goes under" "Poseidon waterlogged" "Poseidon sinks." etc. etc.

Here's my take: B.O. Pos(e)i(d)on. It is the bestest and most cleverest. FACE VARIETY!

Humanizing the ubermensch

A Great Movie
You're a Hooker!

1) United 93 is a great movie, I think. It opens in a very smartly banal way. Little happens. There are no movie moments to speak of (even the arrival of a late passanger is what it is), and for me I spent much of the front end thinking of what happened to me that day. I will share my 9/11/01 reminsces on the 5th anniversary later this year (shortly before my child is born). But then the shit hits the fan, and the you are there factor is pretty amazing. In some ways it's a horror film. Very intense, and well worth seeing.

2) I reviewed 400 Blows above. I took my copy to Amoeba. And got the box set of Doinel films. Yay for me.

3) Most blockbusters raise questions like "How'd they do that?" or "That's amazingly stupid!" The question M:I:III raises is "How did they spend 150 million and get so little?" The main special effects of the film are shots of Tom Cruise running. I mean, that shit costs NOTHING. Nothing. I had gone in hearing it wasn't so hot, and perhaps the elements of spinning plates, but for serious, for really reals, I didn't expect something so empty. The problem is that (as my title suggests) the film tries to humanize a character who isn't human by nature. And the fact that he wants to do his dangerous job and then have a girlfriend/wife... well it makes the character look like an ass. And without the sense of geography to the action scenes these sequences don't build at all. There's one amusing bit where Hunt is dressed as Phillip Seyomour Hoffman, and so it's obviously Hoffman running around. That amused. And so did Simon Pegg, who shows up for some quick scenes and kills. But bad exposition and funeral flashbacks really kill the thing. Hitchcock knew the MacGuffin was the thing that moved the plot but didn't matter, but you have to have interesting characters and other agendas to make it work. Not here. Just a rampant failure. And JJ Abrams doesn't know how to direct a movie.

My old job and me.

I still follow the numbers. Every Saturday I hit MCN or B.O. Mojo to see how much business the movies did. These numbers told the story of how my Monday was going to go. Sometimes I'd stop by the office and see exactly how my theaters did. I worked in exhibition for a theater chain for five years and had over a hundred screens under my belt. It wasn't a hard job, per se, but there were things to it. You don't get to add second prints on Monday normally, print buys were long done by then, so there was always a gambling aspect to the job. I sometimes think of one of the last gambles I took (and lost) and wonder if that reflected on me being let go. Sometimes I think it did, but mostly I figure the books were closed long before I got myself into a small hot spot.

Off topic, but just the same, I'm glad things have worked out how they have, and I'm glad to be in LA with my often glowing pregnant wife. We're more than three months down, with less than six to go. We're expecting in early October. Scary scary. The doctor's appointments have gone well. We've decided we're waiting until birth to find out the kid's sex.

But the old job is why I'm fascinated by M:I:III's 17 million dollar opening. It tells a story, because nowadays one day's number suggests the fate of a film. Word of Mouth has been successfully killed as a factor into long playdates for big films. Sure, word of mouth happens, but it's few (The Sixth Sense) and far between (My Big Fat Greek Wedding), and isn't effective on what are considered easy sells. Most word of mouth goes now (thanks in some small part to AICN) to pictures before they open. They solidify the see/not see factor. And once you've studied the patterns of box office, you get a pretty concrete sense of what a number spells, because you've seen those numbers before.

And then also, the 17? Could be fictional. The film's reported budget of 150? More than likely made up. Cruise gets back end (hey now) percentage points. The film has been in development for years. The film was also probably shot in a lot of Paramount owned locations, so the studio paid itself money to make its own movie. Numbers are often fudged a little to make people happy.

Me, I'm going to see United 93 tonight.

Film Criticism I Hate

getting it/not getting it: Sure, there are some instances of this, some I could draw easy links to, it's just films often are open to interpretation. If someone proves to understand a narative for what it is and then doesn't like it, then they get it.

overrated: The lamest criticism in the history of the world. It says nothing, other than it suggests (as the previous does) "others were fooled." Good not great is a better alternative, but suggesting that is the end of the discussion is frustrating beyond words.

Currently on the shelf

Alfred Hitchcock Presents Season One (still unwatched)
Battlestar Galatica 2.0 (all)
La Bete Humaine
Big Train Season One (which I've finished) and Two (haven't started)
Election (To version)
The Great Yokai War
King Kong (05)
Last Days
The Lords of Discipline
The River
The Squid and The Whale

For review I've got two out of three versions of Mr. Arkadin (AKA Confidential Report) to watch.

High Five!

Solitary viewings

My job, such as it is, revolves around watching movies. As such, as there are numerous regions and releases of certain titles, and modifactions to each versions that require repeated full length viewings, I have been inudated with watching the same shit over and over again, and it makes me think. I say this after I read this excellent piece on the movie site Collider, to which points out the Syssiphean strugle among my generation's cineastes, all of which I blame on cable.

For past generations, the power and privledge of watching a movie, and watching it repeatedly was something earned. Or that is to say, you had to go to the god damned theater. Or catch it on TV. Like all deviants, cineastes then fetishized these viewings, these brief encounters with the films they loved or affected them so deeply for good or bad reasons (think Spielberg and the car accident in The Greatest Show on Earth). For my generation, were I to speak for them, we grew up with HBO. Showtime. The Movie Channel. Cinemax. And as pre-adolescents, we fetishized the R rated movies we got away with watching. We also had video stores. There is no good reason I should have seen Wildcats once. The fact that I have seen the film over ten times doesn't exactly make me feel good about myself. And yet, we have become slaves to these bad movies. I bought DC Cab and Doctor Detroit. They both... sucked. Yeah, they sucked. So did Moving Violations. Etc. Etc. I have yet to purchase Wildcats, but I think I wouldn't mind watching it again. And, as was noted, I don't know if I'm totally done with these films. In ten or twenty year, I might have to scratch those itches again.

And we (side note: That MTV commercial about the guy who cheated death by watching MTV until it was over. He got grabbed, what, 1991? I loved that ad, and now even MTV2 can't make that claim. What happened to the art of music videoing? I have no idea, I don't watch videos, nor have I had cable in over ten years. Seriously.) are now driven by new release Tuesday. With sales the first week, I find myself buying things that I don't need because it's cheaper. I liked Good Night and Good Luck, it was my third favorite Best Picture nominee, but is it really worth owning? Will I ever throw on the audio commentary just cause? No, and yet it's in the collection (while The Wedding Crashers isn't. Who knows what I'll feel like chucking). And speaking of chucking I will probably grab The Weather Man at some point. I've seen the film over five times, and yet, I will probably grab it.

As such, I was thinking about Eyes Wide Shut, a film I've owned on DVD three times (though currently don't, somewhat in anticipation of the upcoming reissues) and the fact that I've only seen it once. And I was thinking I should just keep it that way. I'm thinking there are more and more films I should just watch once and let them simmer in my memory bank. I'm thinking it's better to do this. Granted, I still get piles of free DVDs, but just the same. I mean, shit, I used to own all the Harry Potter films. Why? I love the Pixar movies. How often do I throw them on? Never (though The incredibles is cold kicking it regardless, as are most of them, it's just). You see my point. In an era were overconsumption is more the rule than the exception, I'm going to make a concentrated effort to let certain memories of films linger.