Blog Search

Categories

• Film Production (3)
• Movie Reviews (12)
• Team Journal (6)
• Tips & Tricks (1)

Archives By Date

• March 2010 (1)
• January 2010 (1)
• December 2009 (3)
• November 2009 (5)
• October 2009 (5)
• September 2009 (3)

Archives by Blogger

• Amelik (3)
• Enrique (2)
• MiamiMovieCritic (12)
• Tim (1)

Links

Subscribe

Thanksgiving is kind of an orphan holiday in American life. Nobody puts up Thanksgiving decorations anymore; they go from Halloween and skip straight to Christmas. I’m not sure there are any Thanksgiving-themed movies. I guess Terrence Malick’s THE NEW WORLD counts since it’s partly about the origins of Thanksgiving, and Ang Lee’s THE ICE STORM might be one since it’s set over a long Thanksgiving weekend in 1973. I think my favorite Thanksgiving movie is Eli Roth’s hilarious Thanksgiving, though technically that’s just a trailer. (I gather from iMDB that a feature-length film is in the works – hell to the yeah!)

Thanksgetting, a Real Band – one of the funniest videos on FilmNet – isn’t really about Thanksgiving, but the title is appropriate for a holiday that’s more about getting than giving. It’s about two slackers named Matt and David. They’re basically like Bill and Ted or Jesse and Chester from DUDE, WHERE’S MY CAR? In terms of stupidity, they’re equally matched.

Matt and David are seniors in college. They’re the hosts of Disaster Industry Junction, a punk-rock show on the college radio station. Their shows seems to consist of yelling random things into the microphone. You get the feeling these guys wouldn’t have much to say if they were on their own, but together they get really worked up and blurt out whatever pops into their heads. They give each other a totally unjustified amount of confidence, to the point where they’re almost on the verge of saying something profound in a flaky, pseudo-philosopher kind of way. (”No man will compromise” or “We’re students of life.”)

These two dumbass friends want to score an interview with their favorite band, Thankgetting. They’re not exactly encouraged by the editor of the school paper, who aptly describes them as “total dick rags.” Matt and David proceed anyway, and the results are predictably disastrous. The heroes of BILL & TED and DUDE, WHERE’S MY CAR? were more innocent than these guys; the message of those movies was that stupidity was basically harmless in and of itself. Thanksgetting, a Real Band shows what happens when stupid people are egotistical – they can literally get people killed. The movie was made while George W. Bush was in office, so the heroes are definitely of their time.

We only get to hear one song by Thanksgetting, but it’s pretty killer. Terry Lieb also contributes a track, called “Perpetual Motion of the Proverbial Ocean.” It plays once during the movie and once over the end credits, and both times I nearly threw up from laughing.

6AEGYQXGJKZ4

This year I have a lot to give thanks for. For the first time in a long time I have a bit of hope for the future. Sure, Michael Bay is still making movies that millions waste their hard earned money on, and our President – try as he might – is still being opposed at every turn for attempting to bring the millions of uninsured a way of visiting a doctor without going broke. But for the first time in almost a decade somebody is trying to help us, and that’s something to smile about.

Most of my other smiles come from the movie world. There have been a lot of cinematic abortions this year (I’m thinking of you Transformers 2 & Twilight: New Moon, but the few good movies that did come out were well worth the wait. Watchmen, Inglourious Basterds, Coralline, Adventureland, Harry Potter 6, Star Trek, Terminator: Salvation, The Hurt Locker, Up, District 9, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Capitalism: A Love Story, Where the Wild Things Are, & This Is It. So far these movies have made 2009 a great year for flicks.

What I’m most thankful for is the future, the movies that I can’t wait to see. Avatar, Invictus, The Lovely Bones & Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus should make this Christmas quite spectacular. And 2010 is shaping up to be a great year with Iron Man 2, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, The Losers, Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, Harry Potter 7 & Tron: Legacy. And let’s not forget that The Hobbit will finally begin production in 2010 with Guillermo Del Toro at the helm and Peter Jackson producing. In these hard times, escapism is something to be thankful for.

With the release of NEW MOON, I thought it might be fun to take a look at some of the best teen romance movies ever made. Not that I’m a fan of TWILIGHT – if you want to see the year’s best teen romance starring Kristen Stewart, see ADVENTURELAND.

IMO, the best of the decade are John Stockwell’s CRAZY/BEAUTIFUL, Peter Sollett’s RAISING VICTOR VARGAS and Aaron Katz’s heartfelt mumblecore DANCE PARTY, USA. (I also want to give a shout-out to Tomas Alfredson’s extraordinary vampire pic LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, even though the outcasts in this movie are a little too young – or, in the case of Eli the vampire, a little too young-looking – to qualify.) I had high hopes for Sollett’s 2008 adaptation of NICK & NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST, but man, what a faux-indie bummer that turned out to be. There was more soul in its soundtrack than in its storytelling. Read the book instead; in fact, if you like this genre of fiction, you should read everything by NICK & NORAH co-writer David Levithan, especially his highly re-readable book of poetry, THE REALM OF POSSIBILITY.

If you’re in the mood for a classic Hollywood romance, you could do worse than watching three rapturous movies starring Natalie Wood: WEST SIDE STORY, REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE and SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS. For audiences of the 1950s and early 1960s, these movies all but defined what it meant to be a teenager. They spoke to thoughts and feelings that are unique to being a teen and are created in the heads and hearts of young people, not in a focus group on Madison Avenue.

So what’s the greatest teen romance of all time? Cameron Crowe’s SAY ANYTHING – with Lloyd Dobler winning the heart of the girl he loves by lifting a boom box over his head – is a definite possibility. THE MAN IN THE MOON is also in the running; the scene where Reese Witherspoon gets her first kiss (from Jeremy London, aka “Pink” in DAZED AND CONFUSED) is easily one of the sweetest moments in movie history. There are other movies that have great characters and situations – like Knox Overstreet reading a poem to Chris Noel in DEAD POETS SOCIETY, or William Miller confessing his love to Penny Lane in ALMOST FAMOUS – but they don’t really belong in the same genre as SAY ANYTHING and MAN IN THE MOON.

Those movies are all terrific. But, if I go with my head and my heart, I’d have to say the best teen romance ever made is John Duigan’s FLIRTING.

Never heard of it? Neither had I until a few months ago. It’s an Australian movie that came out in 1991 – a sequel to Duigan’s THE YEAR MY VOICE BROKE, which is impossible to find on DVD. But you don’t need to see it first, because FLIRTING is the rare sequel that stands on its own. It’s about Danny Embling (Noah Taylor), a charmingly offbeat teen who belongs in the same heroic league as Holden Caulfield and Max Fischer. Danny falls for the new girl in school, Thandiwe Adjewa (a young and very beautiful Thandie Newton). He’s white and she’s black. And, as the movie makes exquisitely clear, they’re perfect for each other.

The movie features the most realistic second-base scene I’ve ever seen, a great school dance scene (scored to “With a Girl Like You” by The Troggs), and a wonderfully affecting cast including Nicole Kidman and Naomi Watts. But I think what really puts it over the moon is Duigan’s screenplay – especially Danny’s poetic voiceover. I love the scene where Danny and Thandiwe are sitting together with their friends. He’s admiring her legs, and when he sees the little bruises around her ankles that her socks have made, he says: “That’s how I knew she was real.” No other movie is better at expressing what it feels like to be a teenager in love. As high school romances go, FLIRTING is at the top of the class.

I was really taken aback when I learned that American audiences had declared THE BOX one of the worst movies of all time. CinemaScore, the Las Vegas-based research firm that compiles responses from the movie-going public, reported that Richard Kelly’s new film had received the lowest possible grade: an “F”. That makes it the fourth least-popular film of the decade – after BUG, WOLF CREEK and DARKNESS. Sheesh!

Only one of those movies is genuinely bad: DARKNESS. (Is it a coincidence that they’re all horror movies?) What the remaining three have in common (besides the horror element) is that they all happen to be exceptional works of filmmaking. Greg McLean’s Australian shocker WOLF CREEK may be a brutally unforgiving experience – one of the female protagonists ends up as a “head on a stick” – but you can’t fault the movie for its scare tactics; on the contrary, they’re extraordinarily effective. And BUG is arguably William Friedkin’s best movie since THE EXORCIST, with unforgettable performances by Ashley Judd and the great Michael Shannon (WORLD TRADE CENTER, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD).

That leaves us with Kelly’s latest offering, THE BOX – which, as I mentioned in my review, may go down as the best-directed bad movie of 2009. Technically, it’s a terrific achievement – imaginative makeup and special effects, period-perfect production design (the story takes place in 1976), and superb cinematography. Visually, it’s a throwback to some of the best thrillers of the 1970s, like Alan J. Pakula’s THE PARALLAX VIEW and Brian De Palma’s THE FURY. The only thing missing from Kelly’s new film is a good story.

Frankly, I’m a little shocked that an auteur like Kelly doesn’t receive a few brownie points for creating a superlative sensory experience. Instead, the public response seems to be based solely on a gut reaction – on whether the film is, well, crowd-pleasing. It’s the movie-going equivalent of voting for the politician you’d most like to have a beer with. (I’m generalizing, of course – obviously, there are some very sophisticated viewers out there – but the CinemaScore grade is nothing if not a generalization.)

Here are some other recent films and the CinemaScore grades they received:

Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince: A-
Bruno: C
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: B+
The Proposal: A-
The Hangover: A
Up: A+
Star Trek: A+

The two that stand out for me are TRANSFORMERS and THE PROPOSAL. Savvier viewers know that, as a piece of filmmaking, Michael Bay’s TRANSFORMERS sequel is a headache-inducing train wreck. There’s simply too much going on in the frame and, with each shot lasting about 2 seconds, too little time to absorb it. THE PROPOSAL is at the opposite end of the spectrum – in pictorial terms, it’s like watching paint dry.

So if THE BOX is an epic fail, then what are we to make of the good-to-excellent grades given to THE PROPOSAL and TRANSFORMERS? Simply that average moviegoers don’t factor in superior filmmaking when assessing their likes and dislikes. I’m not saying they should have loved THE BOX – I didn’t – but, for crying out loud, an F?!

36 Stairs is the new live-action short from director Grzegorz Jonkajtys, the award-winning creator of Ark and Legacy. Viewers of those mini-masterworks know that Jonkajtys is an exceptional storyteller and a talented animator. For the first time, he’s using those gifts to make a life-action movie, and the results are nothing short of jaw-dropping.

The actual film won’t be released until early 2010. What we have here is a 75-second teaser. It provides a few tantalizing clues as to what the story is about, while fleshing out the film’s visual extravagance and dystopian, futuristic setting.

I’m assuming this is a “virtual backlot” movie, like SIN CITY and SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW. Instead of being physically constructed, the movie’s “sets” have been digitally rendered on a computer. This mix of real actors and fake sets can be distracting in films like the STAR WARS prequels, but with other filmmakers the virtual backlot is a godsend – it lets their imaginations run wild. Jonkajtys is a case in point.

The film stars Rodrigo Lopresti as Jeffrey Brief, a tragic Everyman in a world where humans depend on bio-mechanical alterations to withstand the deteriorating climate. We see a few of these alterations in the trailer, first an organic-looking respirator and later a phone that appears to be physically attached to Jeffrey’s hand. In part, the film looks to be a biological horror movie, like David Cronenberg’s VIDEODROME. Like that 1983 sci-fi masterpiece, 36 Stairs appears to be exploring how technology can overtake our lives and destroy us.

Many shots in the trailer establish the frightening world Jeffrey lives in. A scene in a hallway, with rows and rows of lockers standing sentinel while Jeffrey is backlit by a blinding light source, has the feel of a bureaucratic nightmare – like something out of Orson Welles’s THE TRIAL or Terry Gilliam’s BRAZIL. The central scene shows Jeffrey making a desperate phone call to his health insurance provider. The automated voice on the other end of the line tells him, “I’m sorry, this number is invalid.” It all feels insanely timely.

The attention to detail in the wide cityscape shots would do sci-fi heavy-hitters like Ridley Scott and James Cameron proud. In fact, forget AVATAR. This is the science-fiction movie I want to see.