22 posts tagged “film”

Last weekend, when I was in Pittsburgh, Vrabel and I got to talking about movies.  That's no surprise; we always do.  One of the films that came up was Rescue Dawn, the Werner Herzog picture about Dieter Dengler - a German-born Navy pilot who escaped from a Laotian POW camp.  The story obviously resonates with Herzog, as this was the second movie he has directed about Dieter.  Little Dieter Needs to Fly was a documentary; Rescue Dawn was the dramatization of the same story.  Christian Bale was cast as little Dieter in the not-quite remake.

Now, Rescue Dawn had been on my rental short-list for a while.  I remember hearing about the movie when it was filming (one of the scenes in which the stars eat bowls of worms was apparently not faked) and it was fairly well reviewed.  The Video Vault tagged it as one of their best of 2007.  So I was a little surprised when Vrabel remarked that he could barely finish watching - that he figured it must be a spoof.  (These opinions were later verified and echoed by Vanna.)  Without going into too much irrelevant detail, it was determined that I must watch the movie as soon as possible, because public opinion was both divided and emphatic, to the point that we wondered semi-seriously if there were two different versions of the movie out there.  My email to Vrabel after last Monday's screening said simply: "Why did Christian Bale choose to play the part as if Dieter was retarded?"

So Bale's appearance this morning on the Today Show might shed some light on the subject.  To wit: maybe it isn't Dieter who is retarded.  If anybody can offer an explanation as to what the fuck is going on with this accent, I'd like to hear it.

I surrender.  Yeah, I know I promised to stay on top of all the latest developments leading up to the theatrical release of "The Dark Knight" on July 18, 2008, but I just can't keep up any more.  The next Batman movie is destined to be the greatest motion picture in the history of time, and the accompanying marketing blitz is equivalent to the film's stature.  The last straw - the one that lamed that poor camel - debuted today on the Domino's Pizza website.  For the low, low price of one pizza, your online order will unlock special content - including a new trailer with twenty whole seconds of new Joker material.  Why would a pizza company promote a movie, you ask?  Well, why not?  It's synergy.  And it's probably "Xtreme," because Batman is the most Xtreme of all the superheroes.

Well I, for one, am sick of this cross-pollinated corporate bullshit.  It cuts against the grain of the spirit of Batman - a self-made hero who maximized the power of his inheritance to buy a bunch of nifty gadg--  uh....  Okay then, Batman would never stand for the glorification of multi-national corporations like Warner Brothers Pictures or Dominos Pizza or the mighty Wayne Enterpri--  er....  Oooh, I got one: the shameless self-promotion belies the humility of a hero with the taste for the theatrical who has bestowed upon the local police department a beacon with which to summo--  oh....  Hmmm, I'm kinda hungry.  I think I might order a pizza.

all part of the plan

So this guy Sydney Pollack died yesterday.  He's probably best known for his acting roles as a skeevy doctor in Stanley Kubrick's criminally underrated Eyes Wide Shut and skeevy lawyer in last year's sublime Michael Clayton.  But he was a director, too.  A few years back he made a boring documentary about a boring architect.

Look, it's time we came to an understanding.  Yinz all know by now that the greatest motion picture ever made by a human being is set to drop this summer.  So to make a long story short, every time Chris Nolan so much as sneezes between now and July 18th, our crack staff at hotrod.vox.com is going to report it.  There's no need to thank us; it's the least we can do.  We're givers.

shattered glass

I've been thinking about baseball movies lately, like I do every spring.  Baseball movies are vastly superior to the real thing because (A) they have a finite time frame - which usually makes them (B) shorter - and (C) more stuff happens.  I've been contemplating baseball movies even more than usual this year, though, because DC has been buzzing for weeks about opening day in general and the opening of a new ballpark in specific.  But Mother Nature threw the Nationals a curve ball (see what I did there? how clever!) last night with some abominably dismal weather.  It was cloudy and cold, and it probably rained - not exactly the mild and pastoral setting evoked by the phrase "the boys of summer."  I sincerely hope that none of the nearly 40,000 hapless spectators contracted pneumonia at the game last night as I enjoyed "Major League" for the seven thousandth time from the warmth and comfort of my sofa.

If you've spent any significant amount of time around Dabysan, you have no doubt heard him offer the (often unsolicited) opinion that Oscar's snub of Martin Scorsese and "GoodFellas" is the greatest injustice in the history of the Academy Awards.  He's wrong, of course.  Not so much about the Academy's indefensible position regarding the best picture of 1990, mind you, but about the magnitude of the offense.  There's no question that "GoodFellas" is a superior picture to eventual winner "Dances With Wolves," but let's keep a little perspective here.  "GoodFellas" wasn't even the best movie about gangsters released in 1990.  That honor goes to "Miller's Crossing," which we saw last night at the AFI Silver Theater.  "Miller's Crossing" wasn't nominated; it was passed over in favor of such timeless masterpieces as "Ghost," "Awakenings," and Kevin Costner's aforementioned paean to political correctness.  The 1990 Academy Awards were a joke on every level.  It's kinda tough to become overly exercised over an award that is so clearly not intended to be taken seriously.

No, the greatest Oscar crime occurred six years later, and not in the Best Picture category - or even Best Director.  Despite the overwhelming popularity of "Sack Lunch," we might have expected the overwrought "The English Patient" to take home the hardware.  Oscar loves a Big Statement.  And comedies - dark comedies, especially - never win anyway.  "Fargo" never stood a chance.  But that hardly excuses Cuba Gooding, Jr.'s victory over William H. Macy.  "Jerry Maguire" is - simply put - the worst movie ever made, and people who like it are retards.  Every performance in that particular shit-show is one-dimensional, and none are worse than Cuba Gooding's cartoonish buffoonery.  He shouts insipid catch-phrases at the top of his lungs for ninety minutes and we are supposed to be overwhelmed by his, uh, passion.  Meanwhile, Bill Macy turns in a quiet depiction of frustration and utter desperation.  It's a tour de force.  He owns every scene in which he appears.  Not only should he have won the Supporting Actor award - and by a mile - I would question just who he is supporting.

I would expect that the Academy will keep this in mind tonight when they award Best Director honors to Joel and Ethan Coen and Best Picture honors to "No Country for Old Men."  "No Country" is hardly the Coens' best picture, but the Academy has a long history of "Lifetime Achievement" awards for filmmakers lesser efforts.  Martin Scorsese finally got his last year for a film that wasn't even as good as his recent grasps at lifetime achievement glory.  In a perfect world, Scorcese would have won in 1990 and the Coens would have won in 1996.  But this isn't a perfect world.  The important thing is that tonight the Coens will finally be officially recognized as the best filmmakers of the past two decades.

One of the best things about early January - better, even, than the merciful end to the dreaded Holiday Season - is the plethora of "top ten" or "best of" or "my opinion matters" lists regarding popular culture.  Fortunately for you, dear readers, you are already plugged in to the the only opinion that really matters.  And we loooooove making lists of stuff.

The year Two-Thousand and Seven was an odd one:  The recorded music scene was unusually terrible, but that mediocrity was compensated - perhaps overcompensated - by better than usual years in both (and especially) film and (in the DC area, at least - and in spite of impossibly shitty venues) live music.  Books - well that's always tough to judge, since we don't often read books in the year of their release (and we're making some concessions here).  And what else is there, really?  Lists follow below, and top selections may or may not be (but hopefully "may") expanded upon in further detail before the end of the month.

You know, I should be in pictures.  Not on camera, mind you - that's my own personal version of Hell - but in marketing.  Lots of people will tell you that the movies have gotten dumber, but I don't think that's so.  There have always been terrible movies.  What has gotten dumber are the ad campaigns - specifically those that feel they need to show you every single moment of interest in the movie they hope you'll shell out ten bucks for in a few months.

The best movie advertisement I've ever seen was for "The Lost World," and it probably doesn't hurt that I saw it at the Uptown Theater.  I might even have seen it before "Twister," which was a singular movie-going experience in my life.  Anyway, the screen was black and as the light came up I could tell it was raining.  Strobe lights which had been installed in the upper corners of the theater flashed and as the sound - which had been turned up to eleven - of thunder pealed, the word "Something" appeared briefly on the screen.  This was followed by two more "lightning bolts" and "thunderclaps" and the words "Has" and "Survived."  Then there was lightning and thunder at the same time and a pan down to a digital T-Rex lifting its head to the sky and roaring.  Or whatever that sound is.  But I'll tell you what, I wanted to see "The Lost World," and, like, immediately.  That was probably the most visceral sensory experience I've ever had in the theater over a lifetime of movies, and it was just a fucking commercial.  Like I said, I should be in pictures.  I know what sells.

I saw this over the weekend, and man did it get me psyched for what's sure to be the movie event of 2008.  It manages to be both subtle and theatrical at the same time.  It's the best movie poster I've seen since "Premonition," which totally wasted an awesome idea.  I'm not saying this just as a Batman fan, but also as both a movie buff and a marine biologist - so you know I am serious.

The Dark Knight