The Lunch Movie

From Tuesday, January 8, 2008.

Written & Directed by Peter Hyams, starring Sean Connery, Frances Sternhagen, Peter Boyle and James B. Sikking, and featuring a score by Jerry Goldsmith.

Connery is Marshal William T. O’Niel, the “one good space-cop” protecting a mining colony on a moon orbiting Jupiter. Previous marshals had accepted bribes to ignore crime and corruption (and a nasty drug ring), but we wouldn’t have much of a story if O’Niel continued the status quo. It’s essentially HIGH NOON in space, but if yer gonna steal, steal from the good stuff!

It’ll finish Thursday,
Love, Jim

AFTER THOUGHT from 3.26.2012

OUTLAND is, in short, one of those movies that makes me an old fashioned nerd. It is flawed, and dated, and yet I have great affection for it. If you want to focus more on the science part than the fiction in “science fiction” you could fault OUTLAND for inaccuracies of physics, like the depressurization conditions required for a human body to explode inside a space suit, or what direction blood would flow in zero gravity. If you are one of those ironic hipster nerds who think Ray Harryhausen’s work looks cheap, and the CGI Yoda trumps Frank Oz’s muppet Yoda, you might fault OUTLAND for its model and matte work. If however you’re an old fashioned nerd, a nerd who values precedent as well as innovation, you can see this movie for its unique and exciting strengths.

I suspect the same poindexters who have a problem with the liberties OUTLAND takes with gravity would also take issue with Buster Crabbe’s flame-sparking, chainsaw-sounding rocket in the 1930′s FLASH GORDON serials. “Bursts of flame could not occur in space where there is no oxygen for the fire to consume,” the disciples of THE SIMPSONS’ Comic Book Guy would declare, “nor would we hear that buzzing exhaust in a vacuum.” This is where I need to break with some of my nerd counterparts; if it makes for a more exciting story then I don’t care about that other stuff. Flash Gordon’s rocket looks and sounds cool, and when I was in 6th grade, blood floating upwards from OUTLAND’s dead body in a zero-gravity prison cell was one of the most disturbing murders I had ever seen in a movie. OUTLAND opened two years after ALIEN defined what grunt labor in space would look like, and a mere six weeks after the first mission of the Space Shuttle Columbia reignited a generation’s collective interest in space exploration. This movie may have not nailed every technical aspect, but it should be credited with imagining functions of working in space that few movies had done before, and even fewer as vividly.

#IDontHaveFactsToBackThisUp, but I suspect that no genre in film is subject to as precise scrutiny as science fiction. In romances we accept the rarity of mutual orgasm in love scenes because hell, who doesn’t aspire to that, even if it’s about as likely as the pressure conditions required to crush a body in a space suit. Cop movies and legal thrillers rarely get called out for authentic police or courtroom procedures. Word to the wise: if you’ve ever cheered for the “surprise witness” in a court movie, then you need to relinquish your credentials to criticize an imaginative movie like OUTLAND over a few technical indiscretions.

As long as I’m showing my age stripes, I need to go on record about something more expansive than model and matte work. I like any art that shows evidence of human contact: little flaws that bespeak individual experience. Some folks like seeing crystal clear digital projection of CGI generated images. Me, I just saw a print of Bela Tarr’s DAMNATION at the Harvard Film Archive. It was loaded with the kind of smudges, sound pops and platter scratches that Tarantino and Rodriguez faked to lend authenticity to GRINDHOUSE. I love that stuff, just as I love being able to spot finger imprints in the fur of Willis O’Brien’s stop-motion model for the 1933 KING KONG. I love OUTLAND’s opening sequence where we first learn about the mining operation on Io. Of course that model work will never fool anyone into thinking that Hyams & Co. actually went on location in space, but that model perfectly orients the audience for the finale.

Oops, I’ve mentioned the finale, and without making a ***Spolier Alert***! Well nevermind finale spoilers; I’m not going to tell you what happens, I’m more focused on how it happens. There is an amazing chase sequence that occurs midway through OUTLAND. Marshal O’Niel runs down one of his suspects through a multi-leveled industrial labyrinth. The editing in this chase is so intense, and the set is such a feat of production design, that some have said it undercuts the finale. I can see that point of view, but I think the finale takes a bold reversal of expectation by going in a thoroughly different direction than that chase in the middle. Rather than going bigger and bolder, they went eerier and quieter, and yes they even adhered to a few laws of gravity.

So there you have it: OUTLAND — cool cop story, thrillingly imaginative space opera, state of the art film experience of a bygone era. If you’re the moviegoer who does not fault PLANET OF THE APES for dated make-up (which was itself state of the art, once upon a time) or METROPOLIS for damn near literally wearing its heart on its sleeve (what with all that chest-clutching) then you might also be the fan who can recognize OUTLAND for its place in the nerd canon.

The 2012 Oscars will begin in a few hours. Lets pause for a moment to consider the Kodak Theater. This will likely be the last time we will see The Oscars presented in a theater named for one of the core elements of filmmaking. Kodak’s current bankruptcy woes are expected to force them to end their lease with this beautiful theater. The doors only opened in 2001, but despite it being such a damn cool theater, it struggled against other venues to find its footing. The Pantages and Ahmanson theaters were the choice venues for big musicals and plays. The Chandler Pavillion and Disney Hall were the venues for opera, classical music and ballet. Concerts tours had multiple options all over town. In 2003 I saw Prince play a phenomenal 3 hour show in the Kodak, and then go upstairs to The Highlands to play a 2 hour after party. Legendary nights like that were too few and far between though; very often this outstanding theater with great acoustics and sight lines sat dark. In the past year, The Kodak has been given a new lease on life. I urge you to check it out if you ever have the opportunity.

One week ago I placed my bets, made my personal picks, and issued a trivia challenge. Below are the answers to the 25 trivia questions.

1. Which Best Picture winner had the shortest running time?
“Marty” (1955) 91mins
2. What was the first color film to win Best Picture?
“Gone With The Wind” (1939)
3. What was the only animated feature nominated for Best Picture before the inclusion of a separate category for Best Animated Feature?
“Beauty & The Beast” (1991)
4. On 3 occasions The Oscars have been postponed by at least 1 day. In which years did this occur?
1938, 1 week for flooding in L.A.; 1968, 2 days for the funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr.; 1981, 1 day for attempted assassination of President Reagan.
5. In which year were the awards first televised?
The 25th Awards in 1952 on NBC.
6. Name the youngest nominee for Best Director.
John Singleton, “Boyz N The Hood” (1991)
7. For which film did Alfred Hitchcock win Best Director?
Trick question, he didn’t. He won the honorary Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1968.
8. Name the only Oscar winner who also held a Nobel Prize.
George Bernard Shaw, Best Screenplay “Pygmalion” (1938), won Nobel Prize for literature in 1925.
9. Who went off-script while presenting an award in 1990 to decry the lack of a Best Picture nomination for “Do The Right Thing?”
Kim Basinger
10. “Churchill’s Island” (1941) has the distinction of winning the first award in which category?
Best Documentary
11. Who has hosted the most Academy Awards ceremonies?
Bob Hope, 19 times.
12. How long are winners currently given for their acceptance speeches?
45 seconds.
13. Who sang the show-stopping comical duet “It’s Great Not To Be Nominated” in 1958?
Burt Lancaster & Kirk Douglas
14. How tall is Oscar?
13.5 inches, and weighs 8.5lbs
15. Who was at the podium when the awards were notoriously “streaked” by a naked man running across the stage?
David Niven (1974)
16. Who is the only person to ever refuse an Oscar?
George C. Scott, Best Actor “Patton” (1970). Marlon Brando boycotted attending the ceremony when he won Best Actor for “The Godfather,”(1972) but he still sent Sacheen Littlefeather to receive the award and make a prepared statement.
17. Name the two actors who won Best Director and Best Picture for their directorial debuts.
Robert Redford, “Ordinary People” (1980); Kevin Costner, “Dances With Wolves” (1990), beating out Scorsese’s “Raging Bull” and “Goodfellas” respectively.
18. Which two families have three generations of Oscar winners?
First, the Huston’s: Walter, Best Supporting Actor “Treasure of Sierra Madre” (1948) and John, Best Director, same; Angelica, Best Supporting Actress “Prizzi’s Honor” (1985). Second, the Coppola’s: Frances Ford Coppola and his father Carmine won Best Director and Composer for “The Godfather: Part 2” (1974) and Francis’ daughter Sofia won Best Original Screenplay for “Lost In Translation” (2004).
19. Who has received the most nominations for Best Actress?
Meryl Streep, 16.
20. To whom did Marlon Brando lose his first nomination for Best Actor for his performance in “A Streetcar Named Desire?”
Humphrey Bogart, “The African Queen” (1951)
21. Name the only character that two different performers in different films have won acting awards for playing.
Don Vito Corleone. Marlon Brando, Best Actor “The Godfather” (1972). Robert DeNiro, Best Supporting Actor “The Godfather Part 2” (1974)
22. What was the most recent film to win every award for which it was nominated?
“Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King” (2003) 11 noms/11wins
23. What was the first non-English language film nominated for Best Picture?
“Grand Illusion,” France (1938)
24. Which composer has won the most Oscars for Best Original Score?
Alfred Newman, 9 wins.
25. What was the first animated film to win the Oscar for Best Original Song?
“Pinocchio” (1940) “When You Wish Upon A Star”

If you want to read more fun trivia, check out the American Movie Classics site. What follows is my earlier post from February 19, 2012…

One week from tonight, the 84th Academy Awards will be handed out at the Kodak Theater. As with 2011, I have not made any bets on this year’s ceremony.We have a pretty interesting field this year, and by interesting I mean I still don’t know what to make of it, a dilemma for anyone looking for a safe office pool bet. Though THE ARTIST has shown some steam recently with the BAFTAs, the critics’ awards in previous weeks were anybody’s game. Critical awards in some cities heavily favored THE ARTIST or HUGO or THE DESCENDANTS, while others spread the love more evenly. It is also notable that many of those critics observed in their top 10 lists that 2011 was a particularly weak year for movies. I’m not certain I agree with that. I think every year is a great year for movies; the problem is that so many strong movies never find an audience. I don’t love this years list of Oscar nominees.

Hell, even if I cobbled together a personal list from the 2012 nominees for Oscars, BAFTAs, Golden Globes and Independent Spirit Awards, I would still have a few favorite films that were snubbed across the board. Among those, the best movie I saw last year was China’s CITY OF LIFE & DEATH. The only appreciation from an American body it received was last year from the L.A. Film Critics Association. CITY OF LIFE & DEATH premiered in China in 2009, played the American festical circuit in 2010, and received limited general release in 2011. Who’s to say what year it even belongs in for American awards?! Similarly, Ralph Fiennes’ outstanding directorial debut CORIOLANUS was made in 2010, is listed on IMDb as 2011, and is only being released outside of New York and Los Angeles this month! I understand that Academy rules focus on the NY and LA releases, which would put it in the running for the 84th Oscars, but among U.S. awards it went roundly ignored (except for a few awards for Jessica Chastain, which were more for her collective films in 2011 than CORIOLANUS in particular). And why is DRIVE only up for Sound Editing?!

Enough about what wasn’t nominated. Lets focus on where we’re going to place out bets! It helps me to make two lists — the list that I really want to see win needs to be gotten out of the way first. Once it’s down, I can ignore it and guesstimate how I think the consensus will vote. Never bet on the movies you love, unless you know everyone else loved it as much as you did.

CATEGORY – – WHO I’D BET ON – – WHO I’D VOTE FOR
Best Picture — The Artist — Drive (not nominated)
Director – – Michel Hazanavicius – – Terrence Malick
Actress — Michelle Williams — Glenn Close
Actor – – George Clooney – – Demian Bichir
Supporting Actress — Jessica Chastain — Janet McTeer
Supporting Actor – – Christopher Plummer – – Kenneth Branagh
Documentary Feature — Hell & Back Again — Paradise Lost 3
Animated Feature – – Rango – – Chico & Rita
Foreign Feature — A Separation — City of Life & Death (not nominated)
Adapted Screenplay – – The Descendants – – Moneyball
Original Screenplay — The Artist — Midnight in Paris

It helps me to examine the history of the awards when choosing my Oscar picks. It is fun to know who won and when, but it is often fascinating to learn who lost, and to consider why the Academy voted the way they did. Here are a few trivia questions, some just for fun, others to lend an eye toward the past. You have one week to debate with your friends or Google by yourself; I will post the answers on February 26, a few hours before the Oscar telecast begins on ABC.

1. Which Best Picture winner had the shortest running time?
2. What was the first color film to win Best Picture?
3. What was the only animated feature nominated for Best Picture before the inclusion of a separate category for Best Animated Feature?
4. On 3 occasions The Oscars have been postponed by at least 1 day. In which years did this occur?
5. In which year were the awards first televised?
6. Name the youngest nominee for Best Director.
7. For which film did Alfred Hitchcock win Best Director?
8. Name the only Oscar winner who also held a Nobel Prize.
9. Who went off-script while presenting an award in 1990 to decry the lack of a Best Picture nomination for “Do The Right Thing?”
10. “Churchill’s Island” (1941) has the distinction of winning the first award in which category?
11. Who has hosted the most Academy Awards ceremonies?
12. How long are winners currently given for their acceptance speeches?
13. Who sang the show-stopping comical duet “It’s Great Not To Be Nominated” in 1958?
14. How tall is Oscar?
15. Who was at the podium when the awards were notoriously “streaked” by a naked man running across the stage?
16. Who is the only person to ever refuse an Oscar?
17. Name the two actors who won Best Director and Best Picture for their directorial debuts.
18. Which two families have three generations of Oscar winners?
19. Who has received the most nominations for Best Actress?
20. To whom did Marlon Brando lose his first nomination for Best Actor for his performance in “A Streetcar Named Desire?”
21. Name the only character that two different performers in different films have won acting awards for playing.
22. What was the most recent film to win every award for which it was nominated?
23. What was the first non-English language film nominated for Best Picture?
24. Which composer has won the most Oscars for Best Original Score?
25. What was the first animated film to win the Oscar for Best Original Song?

One week from tonight, the 84th Academy Awards will be handed out at the Kodak Theater. As with 2011, I have not made any bets on this year’s ceremony.We have a pretty interesting field this year, and by interesting I mean I still don’t know what to make of it, a dilemma for anyone looking for a safe office pool bet. Though THE ARTIST has shown some steam recently with the BAFTAs, the critics’ awards in previous weeks were anybody’s game. Critical awards in some cities heavily favored THE ARTIST or HUGO or THE DESCENDANTS, while others spread the love more evenly. It is also notable that many of those critics observed in their top 10 lists that 2011 was a particularly weak year for movies. I’m not certain I agree with that. I think every year is a great year for movies; the problem is that so many strong movies never find an audience. I don’t love this years list of Oscar nominees.

Hell, even if I cobbled together a personal list from the 2012 nominees for Oscars, BAFTAs, Golden Globes and Independent Spirit Awards, I would still have a few favorite films that were snubbed across the board. Among those, the best movie I saw last year was China’s CITY OF LIFE & DEATH. The only appreciation from an American body it received was last year from the L.A. Film Critics Association. CITY OF LIFE & DEATH premiered in China in 2009, played the American festical circuit in 2010, and received limited general release in 2011. Who’s to say what year it even belongs in for American awards?! Similarly, Ralph Fiennes’ outstanding directorial debut CORIOLANUS was made in 2010, is listed on IMDb as 2011, and is only being released outside of New York and Los Angeles this month! I understand that Academy rules focus on the NY and LA releases, which would put it in the running for the 84th Oscars, but among U.S. awards it went roundly ignored (except for a few awards for Jessica Chastain, which were more for her collective films in 2011 than CORIOLANUS in particular). And why is DRIVE only up for Sound Editing?!

Enough about what wasn’t nominated. Lets focus on where we’re going to place out bets! It helps me to make two lists — the list that I really want to see win needs to be gotten out of the way first. Once it’s down, I can ignore it and guesstimate how I think the consensus will vote. Never bet on the movies you love, unless you know everyone else loved it as much as you did.

CATEGORY – – WHO I’D BET ON – – WHO I’D VOTE FOR
Best Picture — The Artist — Drive (not nominated)
Director – – Michel Hazanavicius – – Terrence Malick
Actress — Michelle Williams — Glenn Close
Actor – – George Clooney – – Demian Bichir
Supporting Actress — Jessica Chastain — Janet McTeer
Supporting Actor – – Christopher Plummer – – Kenneth Branagh
Documentary Feature — Hell & Back Again — Paradise Lost 3
Animated Feature – – Rango – – Chico & Rita
Foreign Feature — A Separation — City of Life & Death (not nominated)
Adapted Screenplay – – The Descendants – – Moneyball
Original Screenplay — The Artist — Midnight in Paris

It helps me to examine the history of the awards when choosing my Oscar picks. It is fun to know who won and when, but it is often fascinating to learn who lost, and to consider why the Academy voted the way they did. Here are a few trivia questions, some just for fun, others to lend an eye toward the past. You have one week to debate with your friends or Google by yourself; I will post the answers on February 26, a few hours before the Oscar telecast begins on ABC.

1. Which Best Picture winner had the shortest running time?
2. What was the first color film to win Best Picture?
3. What was the only animated feature nominated for Best Picture before the inclusion of a separate category for Best Animated Feature?
4. On 3 occasions The Oscars have been postponed by at least 1 day. In which years did this occur?
5. In which year were the awards first televised?
6. Name the youngest nominee for Best Director.
7. For which film did Alfred Hitchcock win Best Director?
8. Name the only Oscar winner who also held a Nobel Prize.
9. Who went off-script while presenting an award in 1990 to decry the lack of a Best Picture nomination for “Do The Right Thing?”
10. “Churchill’s Island” (1941) has the distinction of winning the first award in which category?
11. Who has hosted the most Academy Awards ceremonies?
12. How long are winners currently given for their acceptance speeches?
13. Who sang the show-stopping comical duet “It’s Great Not To Be Nominated” in 1958?
14. How tall is Oscar?
15. Who was at the podium when the awards were notoriously “streaked” by a naked man running across the stage?
16. Who is the only person to ever refuse an Oscar?
17. Name the two actors who won Best Director and Best Picture for their directorial debuts.
18. Which two families have three generations of Oscar winners?
19. Who has received the most nominations for Best Actress?
20. To whom did Marlon Brando lose his first nomination for Best Actor for his performance in “A Streetcar Named Desire?”
21. Name the only character that two different performers in different films have won acting awards for playing.
22. What was the most recent film to win every award for which it was nominated?
23. What was the first non-English language film nominated for Best Picture?
24. Which composer has won the most Oscars for Best Original Score?
25. What was the first animated film to win the Oscar for Best Original Song?

2011 was a peculiarly reminiscent year for my favorite movies. Maybe it’s because my age is rapidly approaching the Hitchhiker’s answer to The Big Question. Maybe we are at the cusp of a generational shift, wherein a perfect storm of technology, distribution platforms, and expanding thematic material have led us back to a cultural wild wild west like we have not seen since the Corman generation. Some films hearkened back to the tone of the 1970′s & 80′s films on which I was raised, films created by that film school educated Corman generation: Coppola, Lucas, Scorsese, Spielberg et al. Some featured staple characters of the era: bands of felt and fur, buddy cops, and fringe-dwelling loners. Other films were created by luminaries whose 70′s and 80′s films aided in my nerd evolution: James Bobo all hit career highlights in 2011.

10. THE GUARD, written & directed by John Michael McDonagh. McDonagh’s brother Martin wrote and directed IN BRUGES, another stand out film for Brendan Gleeson, which makes me wonder what growing up in their house must have been like?! Gleeson plays County Galway police sergeant Gerry Boyle, a drunken whoring embarrassment of a cop, who realizes he is the one cop in his precinct who is not on take from local drug smugglers. Don Cheadle plays the Felix to Gleeson’s Oscar, FBI agent Wendell Everett. The interplay between these two powerful actors, so natural at their craft that they make delivering award-worthy performances seem easy, reminded me how long it’s been since we’ve had a really good buddy cop movie. Gleefully politically incorrect dialogue, some very unexpected dramatic twists, and a perfectly balanced tone of raunchiness and danger make THE GUARD a more enjoyable experience than a summer full of franchises.

9. THE MUPPETS, directed by James Bobin & RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, directed by Rupert Wyatt. The Muppets and the Apes were as much a part of my upbringing as STAR WARS. It is a great personal joy for me to see both return this year in a style befitting their positions in the nerd pantheon. The Muppets continue to load a cannon full of chickens and fire it at the fourth wall, and the Apes allegorically respond once again to the social and political climate in which they find themselves. It is an entirely different joy to see both return in a manner that hands the baton to a new generation, a direction that will hopefully lead to continued adventures. I’ve heard plenty of fans complain that these films are not up to their predecessors, that our 70′s and 80′s childhoods are somehow being tainted and capitalized upon; I couldn’t disagree more. The movies with Roddy McDowell in Ape make-up and Jim Henson operating Kermit have not gone anywhere. Our childhood is intact. It’s someone elses turn; if you grew up loving these characters, love them enough to let them go. Lose your cargo shorts and Metallica t-shirt, put on some long pants and a shirt with a collar, and take your kids to see the elder statesmen (statesmuppets? statesmonkeys?) of American fantasy films.

8. MONEYBALL, directed by Bennett Miller. written by Stan Chervin, Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin. I expected MONEYBALL to be good, but not that it would be a singular story within baseball films, and sports films in general. Miller shows the same sure-handed direction that he did with CAPOTE, similar to Eastwood at his best, allowing each moment to resonate without dragging. Miller’s style is a perfect match for for Zailian’s pace and Sorkin’s dialogue. Though Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) observes the tendency to romanticize baseball, there is very little thrill-of-the-grass here. This movie lives and breathes in the florescent lit cinderblock offices and conference rooms beneath the stadium. MONEYBALL has more in common with the verbal brinksmanship of THIRTEEN DAYS than it does with other sports movies. By the time the story turns to the action on the field, we have become so familiar with the head aches and heart attacks it took to get there, that the loses sting more deeply and the wins are joyous but nonetheless emotionally draining.

7. CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS, written & directed by Werner Herzog. I have been a devout fan of Werner Herzog since a revival screening of NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE (which I attended for extra credit in my high school German class) set me on a path of following him to corners of the world and the mind where most filmmakers fear to tread. In the past decade or so I’ve come to appreciate Herzog’s documentaries even more than his narrative films. His blatantly honest and provocatively insightful presence as interviewer and commentator makes his docs a unique experience in the field of nonfiction film. Here he has chosen to use the 3-D format to render one of those remote corners that most of us will never ever get to see, and in greater detail than we ever could have hoped for. The titular caves are in rural France, and contain probably the earliest known examples of cave drawings by prehistoric man. Leave it to Herzog to take an art form so untested that many still see it more as a commercial ploy than a tool of a “serious artist” and use it to explore the most ancient form of human storytelling.

6. 13 ASSASSINS, directed by Takashi Miike. Being a fan of Takashi Miike can be as frustrating an experience as being a Prince fan. These are two such relentlessly creative forces that their output frequently tasks our ability to process all of it. Their work is usually very good, but occasionally mediocre; often when they do something amazing, they’re already two or three projects further down the road by the time we realize it! 13 ASSASSINS is as impressive as Miike’s manic ICHI THE KILLER, but it also contains the gnawing reservedness of AUDITION. When samurai ultra violence erupts, bodies fly and blood spatters like a hurricane. In between those battles though, we are treated to vividly drawn character moments worthy of Kihachi Okamoto. Of course Miike had already completed two features and a television pilot, and was shooting another feature and in pre-production on yet another, by the time 13 ASSASSINS opened in the U.S.

5. THE TREE OF LIFE, written & directed by Terrence Malick. A movie theater in Connecticut reportedly taped a sign inside their box office informing patrons that there would be no refunds for people who do not understand THE TREE OF LIFE. I love Terrence Malick for maintaining the same elegiac vision that frustrated a legion of moviegoers who expected a Pacific Theater companion to SAVING PRIVATE RYAN from the trailers for THE THIN RED LINE. This movie really is nowhere near as challenging as some make it out to be. It is simply the story of the O’Briens, an average family in an average Texas town, with three average children growing up in the 1950′s. What sets it aside from a litany of other coming of age films is that Malick chooses to focus on quiet moments of genuine personal epiphany rather than the same tired big family gathering events that stereotypically drive these stories. We are told very little, but we are shown everything, if we pay attention. My favorite example of this is a sublime moment after Mr. O’Brien (Brad Pitt, having a damn good year!) threatens his family and evicts his sons from the dinner table. The dinner table has been a standard symbol of the family in so many films. When Mr. O’Brien sits back down to his dinner following the uproar, he does not scoot his chair to the table, he yanks to entire table to his chair. If you cannot understand the significance of the gesture in that image, I wouldn’t give you a refund either!

4. MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, written & directed by Woody Allen. It is so great to see Woody Allen back to form. MIDNIGHT IN PARIS contains so much of what has marked his most endearing and enduring comedies: the fantasy of PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO, the literacy of LOVE & DEATH, the cultural hero worship of PLAY IT AGAIN SAM, the cinematic visual acuity of SHADOWS & FOG, the free spirited romance of VICKY CHRISTINA BARCELONA, and the colorfully drawn characters and vivid use of locations from a dozen New York stories. Not content to simply repeat what he is so good at, Woody uses the framework of a standard time travel fantasy to reflect on reconciling oneself with the past, and deliver a little hope to hopeless romantics everywhere.

3. THE SKIN I LIVE IN, written & directed by Pedro Almodóvar. Holy $#!+ Almodóvar is a mad genius?!? Aside from his own impressive resume, I dig him for rescuing my hero Guillermo del Toro from the Hollywood system, by bringing Guillermo to Spain and producing some of his best films. Now Almodóvar raises the bar for intelligent horror so far that even Guillermo must be awe struck. THE SKIN I LIVE IN has elements of EYES WITHOUT A FACE and the nervous energy of early Cronenberg, but the psyche-bending sexual politics and tragic performances are pure Almodóvar. Many Americans, and perhaps many in the international audience, were first introduced to Antonio Banderas by several Almodóvar films in the 1980′s. Happily, Almodóvar’s best film in years also affords him the opportunity to present Banderas with his most challenging role in years. THE SKIN I LIVE IN is that rare kinky quirky celebration of unsettling oddity and plain otherness that I could only recommend to a select type of movie fan; if you have an open mind and indelicate sensibilities, you’ll be in for a helluva ride.

2. DRIVE, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Refn has batted it out of the park yet again. Whether stalking the earth through the eyes of a Danish drug pusher, a one-eyed Viking crusader, a frequent customer of the British penal system, or a Hollywood stunt driver, Refn has an acute ability to explore the inner life of violent men. His judicious delivery of only the information we absolutely need allows DRIVE to sidestep most standard “action movie” cliches, focusing instead on the soul of a man who is comfortable driving 100mph on surface streets, but who is out of his element trying to hold a simple conversation. We don’t need to know why the Driver (Ryan Gosling, also having a damn good year!) is so capable of unleashing skull crushing fury, only that he can, and will. Something in his life has led him excel at driving and close-quarter hand to hand killing. The vast majority of disposable crime movies would give him PTSD military flashbacks, or a reluctant monologue detailing past personal experience with abuse. Instead DRIVE gives us a man who for whatever reason has these abilities, and finds himself tasked with conflicting options to use them, as well as the question of whether that use will make him a villain or a hero. I’ve heard that James Sallis, on whose novel DRIVE is based, has written a sequel that picks up with Driver six years later. Here’s hoping for another movie; Gosling as Driver just might be the coolest antihero since Kurt Russell wore an eyepatch.

1. CITY OF LIFE & DEATH, written & directed by Chuan Lu. I am cheating here to a degree, but also reiterating my 13 ASSASSINS point about international release dates. This movie opened in China in 2009, and played in many other countries and international film festivals throughout 2009 and 2010. The U.S. limited theatrical release did not happen until this year. Scheduling doesn’t matter, CITY OF LIFE & DEATH is one for the ages. The only thing that kept the story from crushing me was the awe that I felt for Chuan Lu’s filmmaking skill. The film follows civilian of Nanjing and Japanese soldiers who invaded in 1937. Masterful black and white cinematography simultaneously recalls Movietone news reels, rule defining textbook films like ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, and rule smashing cinéma vérité luminaries like BATTLE OF ALGIERS. The sound design is every bit as ambitious and unnerving. This is not simply one of the most intense war movies I can think of, it is one of the most flawlessly realized films in any genre that I have ever seen.

PLUS A FEW OTHER FAVORITES:

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU Love is God, God is Love, and you can experience both if you have the right hat.
THE ARTIST I’m so happy that this large an audience and critical mass has embraced a silent film. This should send a message to The Powers That Be that audiences will accept something out of left field as long as it’s good … and has a puppy in it!
ATTACK THE BLOCK makes SUPER 8 look like THE GOONIES.
COLOMBIANA Yes Luc Besson has taken us here before, but Zoe Saldana just might be the bad@$$ love child of Pam Grier and Charles Bronson.
CRAZY STUPID LOVE Like I say, Gosling having a helluva year!
THE DEBT Raise your hand if you knew this was a remake.
DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK Hey, someone still has to champion Hammer style horror films, and I’m just the nerd to do it!
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO See, not all remakes suck, give ‘em a chance.
THE HEDGEHOG This is the love story that ONE DAY and LIKE CRAZY advertised themselves as being.
THE MAN NOBODY KNEW To me the hallmark of a good liberal is one who questions his own ideology as vigorously has he does those with whom he disagrees. Carl Colby is my kind of liberal.
MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE This is why we have film festivals. Hollywood does what they do, sometimes they even do it well, but it’s very reassuring to see that a movie like this can find an audience.
MELANCHOLIA I know you’re not really a Nazi, Lars, and I’ll always love you for stirring the $#!+storm.
RANGO the Man With No Name wanders into CHINATOWN, disguised as a lizard. What’s not to love?!
WAR HORSE I was totally unprepared for Spielberg to use this story to send a valentine to John Ford and Cecil B. DeMille.
WARRIOR God bless Nick Nolte. I doubt he’ll win his Oscar nomination, but I’m so glad they at least acknowledged him.

From Friday, January 11, 2008.

In French w/ English subtitles
Written & Directed by Jean-Luc Godard, starring Jean Belmondo, Jean Seberg and Jean-Pierre Melville.

Michel is a small-time car thief who becomes a big-time criminal when he murders a policeman. No master felon, Michel is an impetuous young man more focused on presenting a Bogart-style tough guy image than in actually learning the ropes of being a tough guy. His Hollywood dream wouldn’t be complete without a girl on his arm, so rather than fleeing the country after the murder, Michel sticks around to convince a young woman to fall for him and escape with him to Italy.

The French New Wave directors of the 1950′s and 60′s began as a group of critics who deconstructed Hollywood film style, helped define it as an art and a science, and coined the phrase “Film Noir.” Several New Wave luminaries helped create BREATHLESS: Godard adapted his script from a treatment by Francois Truffaut, and Claude Chabrol is credited as “technical advisor.” Jean-Pierre Melville, playing Pavulesco in BREATHLESS, directed some of the best French noir thrillers of the 1950′s. BREATHLESS was the end of French emulation of Hollywood, and the beginning of challenging new shooting styles and story structures that would have a lasting effect on America’s Film School Generation — Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg and all their 70′s pals.

It’ll finish Thursday.
Love, Jim

AFTER THOUGHT (with Spoilers!) from 12.31.2011

The moment we meet Michel, he introduces himself as “an asshole,” and then spends a significant portion of BREATHLESS proving it. Michel enjoys presenting his Bogart-style image, endlessly repeating Bogey’s pensive Sam Spade gesture of rubbing his lip with his thumb. What his Bogey impression lacks is Sam Spade’s control of a situation, Rick Blaine’s calculating foresight, or Philip Marlowe’s confidence with women. Had Michel studied THE MALTESE FALCON, he would have known when in his own story to cut his losses and get out alive. Bogey’s Rick in CASABLANCA might have taught Michel who he can really trust, who would double cross him, and how to play both.

A closer read of Bogart’s persona in THE BIG SLEEP might have encouraged Michel not to whine and plead with his former lover Patricia to escape with him to Italy. He would have been decisive rather than manipulating, which would have made him the Bogey he wants to be, as well as the Romeo she longed for. Indecisiveness is Michel’s fatal flaw. He doesn’t know what he wants or who he wants, and even if he did, he doesn’t know from one moment to the next what he is willing to do to get it. He wants to avoid being caught with a stolen car enough to kill a policeman, but when the dragnet is closing in around him, he is incapable of making the choices required by his man-of-action front.

Within the first few minutes of BREATHLESS Godard turns crime movies, and the very idea of a movie, inside out. Voiceovers are a staple of the Film Noir genre. After Michel steals a car, he drives around describing what he enjoys about France, but before long we realize this is no ordinary voiceover. He is not simply thinking out loud for the sake of exposition; he turns and addresses the audience, as if we are riding shotgun. This would be a standard breaking of the fourth wall, but BREATHLESS doesn’t stop there. Michel both addresses the camera and directs its gaze along the Pontoise road, pointing out hitchhikers, farm houses, annoying drivers, and highway police. Further, Godard allows interaction between the camera and passersby that would cause most other directors to cut and reset their shot. In scenes where Michel and Patricia walk through Paris, people stop and turn to watch the filming, some looking into the camera as well. Godard requests no suspension of disbelief; his story is fiction, but it coexists with and occasionally collides with reality.

Inasmuch as Michel is a vicious brat disguised as a dangerous man, BREATHLESS cloaks its examination and inversion of the tools of cinematic storytelling in the suits and trappings of crime drama. Michel’s desire to live like he is in a movie virtually wills into being a movie of his life and death, but he has no more control over Godard’s film than he does over his own story. Michel would love it if you had bought a ticket to see him outgun the cops and out-con the cons and drive off into the sunset with plenty of money and Tinkerbell incarnate. Godard will have none of it. He will allow you to visit with Michel just long enough to feel like you got the story of guns and glory you paid for; and he’ll allow you just enough time with Patricia to get a sense of romantic intrigue. In between teasing those expectations Godard may test your attention span with protracted conversational sequences, which do very little to further the story, but greatly reveal his characters. Moments like these were virtually unheard of in Hollywood films before the France’s La Nouvelle Vague movement; later their influence could be seen in American films by Hal Ashby and Robert Altman. When Godard is not exploring his characters, or allowing Michel to explore his personal Film Noir, he is just as likely to use BREATHLESS to wander Paris like a painter, equipped with a camera in lieu of a canvass. He photographs Paris not as a tourist showing us what we have already seen in countless other films, but as a patriot in love with his city and seeking to share its sidestreets as much as its landmarks, the way Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese would do with New York in ensuing decades.

My earliest encounter with BREATHLESS made me think it was an art film disguised as a crime drama. Now that “art film” strikes me as vague and generic a term as “action film,” I come to realize the BREATHLESS is a fully realized artistic happening disguised as a movie. It is opening night at a photography exhibit, a jazz session on a rainy afternoon, a staged actors’ reading, and a heated debate amongst coffeehouse poets all tied up in a celluloid bow.

Thursday November 10, 2011 at the Regal Fenway Stadium, Boston, MA.

Directed by James Bobin, written by Jason Segel & Nicholas Stoller, starring Jason Segel, Amy Adams, Chris Cooper, and The Muppets.

I love the Muppets. When I was in preschool I was too preoccupied with SPEED RACER and JOHNNY QUEST to notice SESAME STREET. I was aware of SESAME STREET, but I didn’t watch it. My first real connection to Jim Henson’s characters came when I entered the first grade, and they entered prime time. Eventually I grew to appreciate the Disneyesque optimism of SESAME STREET, but I always preferred the Looney Tunes rambunctiousness of THE MUPPET SHOW. Because I love the Muppets, I hold them to a higher standard than entertainment for which I have less of an affinity; happily their first feature film in twelve years is worthy of that standard.

The script for the new film apparently had an extensive development period. It helps to have writers who are true believers in the world Jim Henson created a generation or two ago. It helps even more that one of those writers is an established television star who also has a string of mostly very successful films to his credit. Jason Segel‘s puppeteer character in FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL, which he also wrote, hinted at his affinity for The Muppets. If someone loved the work of Robert E. Howard and John Buscema as much as Segel clearly loves Henson’s work, this summer’s revival of CONAN THE BARBARIAN would have been an amazing movie.

The core story of THE MUPPETS is shrewdly cobbled together from several archetypes of both cinematic style and classic story telling. Segel’s character Gary has a brother named Walter who is straight out of BILLY ELLIOT or RUDY. Walter so loves the Muppets that the greatest possible joy he could imagine is the chance that he might one day meet them. What separates Walter from Billy Elliot and Rudy Ruettiger, and indeed from Gary, is that Walter actually is a Muppet! This is part of what makes Muppet films unique: even as they embrace archetypes, like the underdog runt searching for his place in the world, they turn them on their head and subvert them to the Muppets’ own rules. In this story a human man and a Muppet can be brothers — and no one notices this as odd!

A staple element of ensemble buddy movies ranging from Frank Sinatra’s Danny Ocean up to, well, George Clooney’s Danny Ocean is the reunion of old friends for a new purpose. It worked in THE WILD BUNCH, it worked when Jake & Elwood Blues got the band back together, and it works for Kermit. In fact, it works doubly so for Kermit. Kermit’s quest to round up his stray friends propels this basic story of the Muppets’ rallying to save their old theater from their 70′s variety show days. The reunion angle simultaneously allows for the introduction of the Muppets to audiences too young to recall their last theatrical entry while addressing themes of aging and imposed obsolescence that resonate with anyone old enough to have watched the original primetime airings of THE MUPPET SHOW. Reminiscent of how Kal-El must have felt upon reading Lois Lane’s editorial on a world without Superman in SUPERMAN RETURNS, this film finds Kermit realizing that television has knocked the Muppets to the rock bottom of the hip-n-trendy scale. Kermit’s reunion with Miss Piggy culminates in a stroll through Paris, poignantly acknowledging that Muppets have to work as hard as humans to make love and friendship last, in a scene that would seem very much at home in a Woody Allen film. Each of these moments manage both the easy fix of keeping the pace moving, and the difficult trick of perfectly nailing the tone for each scene to keep audiences of all ages engaged.

All of this classic film structure aside, it’s wonderful to see the Muppets have not lost their touch for lunacy. They were expert practitioners of metafiction before that term was applied to film or television. Probably the best example of this is the song “Man or Muppet,” sung by Gary and Walter. As the man and Muppet brothers explore their existential void in the song, they cross into each others crisis, and transcend the film in a sequence reminiscent of some of the more groundbreaking 80′s music videos. Segel’s over the top Meatloaf-esque operatic wailing both parodies heart-on-your-sleeve pop songs and gives this oddball tune a ring of truth. I saw this movie in a screening geared toward college students. The general mumbling and rampant texting around me during this scene left the impression that this audience was more laughing at this moment than with it. This was a sequence worthy of The Marx Bros or Mel Brooks, but unless you are schooled in Groucho and Mongo, the absurd hilarity and sincere subtext of this song will not fully resonate.

Rumors on the internets about a “surprise cameo” were apparently referring to a moment in “Man or Muppet,” though the entire movie is laden with cameos, from Mickey Rooney to Rico Rodriguez. I’m glad that these cameos were not strictly reserved for celebrities, but also for lesser known characters from the Muppet universe. Personally I was a big fan of MUPPETS TONIGHT, the mid 90′s attempt to revitalize the Muppets on primetime TV. One of the characters from that revival, the dimwitted and overly confident lounge singer Johnny Fiama, appears during this song as Jason Segel’s Muppet doppleganger. The only thing that could have made Johnny’s appearance better would be if they found room for his angry monkey bodyguard Sal Minella; here’s hoping there’s room for Sal & Johnny in the next Muppet movie!

I’m a fan of divisive movies; I’ll always prefer a movie that folks either love or hate, even if I’m among those who hate it, to a movie that we are all equally ambivalent about. If you follow the IMDb message boards, you’ll see that THE MUPPETS has no shortage of detractors who bemoan nearly every Muppet effort since the passing of Jim Henson. I’m also a die hard STAR TREK fan; just as I acknowledge that the primary mission of the most recent STAR TREK film was to acquire a new generation of fans, such is the case with this film. My audience full of college kids texting each other were mostly born after Jim Henson died. If you grew up wit THE MUPPET SHOW on TV like I did, you’ve already had your fair share of Muppet films. These are the classic Muppets for a new generation, and they accomplish that job with characteristic style and surprising grace. THE MUPPETS will not change your life or make you a better person, but it just might open your kids’ minds the way SESAME STREET and THE MUPPET SHOW did yours.

From Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Written & Directed by Spike Lee, starring Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Samuel L. Jackson, Joie Lee, Spike Lee, Bill Nunn, Rosie Perez, and John Turturro.

24 hours on one block in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, NY.
On the hottest day of the summer, racial tensions simmer between residents of a predominately African American and Puerto Rican neighborhood, and the Italian American owners of a pizza parlor. And then they explode.

Spike Lee had touched on racism earlier in SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT and SCHOOL DAZE, but following what became know as The Howard Beach Incident, he decided the gloves needed to come off. This is the script than earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, and the film that earned him a Palm D’or nomination at Cannes. It also earned him the fear of critics like newspaper columnist Joe Klein, who wrote “Spike Lee’s reckless new movie DO THE RIGHT THING … opens June 30 (in not too many theaters near you, one hopes).” The controversy surrounding DO THE RIGHT THING in the summer of 1989 cemented Spike’s reputation as a voice who demands to be heard.

It’ll finish Friday.
Love, Jim

P.S. Come early, or you’ll miss Rosie fightin’ the power with Public Enemy!

AFTER THOUGHT from 11.20.2011
I don’t know if Spike Lee still does this, but in the early days of his feature directing career, he used to do college tours with his films in the weeks before they opened. My brother Ed & I used our Emerson College IDs to see him present DO THE RIGHT THING at a theater in M.I.T. This was just a few months after MISSISSIPPI BURNING, a fictionalized story lacking any significant African American characters despite its civil rights themes, received 7 Oscar nominations. Ed and I arrived fairly early; we were among the first 100 people into the theater, in what turned out to be a packed house with many people turned away. Waiting for the movie to start, I spotted a young man with a t-shirt featuring a parody of the MISSISSIPPI BURNING logo: “Brooklyn Burning.” I approached this guy to ask him where he got this shirt, and I realized it was Spike Lee! I immediately forgot the shirt and became tongue-tied. I managed to introduce myself and thank him for this screening; he shook my hand and thanked me for coming out to see the movie. During his introduction to the film, Spike acknowledged early critics who predicted DO THE RIGHT THING would incite racial violence, balancing their concerns with his personal mandate that “the gloves come off” following the aforementioned Howard Beach incident. In aspiring to directly address an elephant in the room that had been ignored for years by mainstream films, he calmly and humbly set the bar very high for himself and an ensuing generation of film makers.

I rolled DO THE RIGHT THING nearly two decades later in our agency conference room. It was generally well received, but to my younger coworkers who were raised on the generation of filmmakers who followed in Spike’s footsteps, they found the story overly episodic without enough of a narrative through-line. While that is a fairly accurate point, I submit that it is irrelevant, as DO THE RIGHT THING is not a standard three act structure with a protagonist and an antagonist. Oh, it’s very well disguised as one, enough so to make it marketable. If you want to pick a “good guy” and a “bad guy” out of this bunch, Spike’s pizza deliverer Mookie is a funny and likable enough hero, and Danny Aiello’s pizzeria owner Sal is frequently bombastic enough to be a villain. You can even find a story arc over the course of the single day storyline in that Mookie begins the film as an apathetic quasi-irresponsible kid, and through a sequence of events beyond his control, emerges as a man who makes a stand and takes control with an irreversible decision that affects his entire neighborhood.

Yes, you can say that DO THE RIGHT THING is about Mookie and Sal, and the general racial tension that I used to pitch this film to my coworkers. On further analysis though, I don’t think this is that kind of movie, and I submit that the title alone tells you what type of movie this is. Let’s look at two other titles: TOMBSTONE (1993) and WYATT EARP (1994). I like both, I am in the minority that prefers WYATT EARP, but I think it is notable that their titles alone tell us that these are very different movies. TOMBSTONE is about one event, the infamous Gunfight at the OK Corral, and its effect on the lives of many people. It begins shortly before October 26, 1881 and ends shortly after, padding its running time with some fun western cliches, plus a level of historical inaccuracy required to make These Guys heroes and Those Guys villains. WYATT EARP is about many events in the life of one man, who lived from 1848 to 1929. Since it follows this one man’s life, WYATT EARP is able to give us a more nuanced portrait of Wyatt Earp than TOMBSTONE, examining positive and negative aspects of Earp’s life and personality. DO THE RIGHT THING does not belong to any one character, but there is also more at work than a single event in the lives of many people.

A title like DO THE RIGHT THING has less similarity to TOMBSTONE or WYATT EARP, and more to do with an intangible like THE RIGHT STUFF (1983). It’s probably no coincidence that when I screened THE RIGHT STUFF, some viewers preferred APOLLO 13, again because of its strong central characters an singular story arc. THE RIGHT STUFF and DO THE RIGHT THING are titles that tell you that this is a movie about a specific idea or value. As a pilot you either have THE RIGHT STUFF or you don’t, and only fellow pilots can really discern who possesses that quality. On a sweltering day in Bed-Stuy, with a continuing heatwave expected the following day, you can either DO THE RIGHT THING or not. Da Mayor (Ossie Davis) pointedly admonishes Mookie to “always to the right thing. That’s it.” He does not tell Mookie what the right thing is, or how to do it, only when to do it (always). This is a film about each character’s decision to do right or not, and what happens when one person’s decision collides with that of another. ***SPOLIER ALERT — skip to the next paragraph if you have not seen the film*** – Spike Lee has observed that more have criticized Mookie’s decision to through a garbage can through the window of Sal’s Pizzeria than have objected to the N.Y.P.D. character’s decision to use a lethal (and now illegal) choke hold on Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn).***

To some of my former coworkers, and maybe to some who read this, DO THE RIGHT THING plays as a little outdated. If this is so, it is because we do not make as many films these days about intangibles like the Right Stuff, the Right Thing to do, or faith and doubt. [Spike Lee addressed faith and doubt in THE MIRACLE AT ST. ANA in a manner rarely seen since THE MISSION (1986) and other films written by Robert Bolt.] Because DO THE RIGHT THING wrangles that quality of a single person with the inequality of races in a neighborhood and a nation, the story is able to show examples of each across its spectrum of characters. Sal is not a villain through and through; early in the film he treats Mookie with the same stern affection as he does his own two sons, and embraces his position in this neighborhood, even over the objections of one of those sons. Mookie is not a hero through and through, but don’t take my word for it, ask his girlfriend Tina (Rosie Perez). Da Mayor tries to live by his own advice, and be a good guy, but he is mostly seen as a bum by those around him. Good intentions go wrong. Decisions are often hard to make, and often have unintended consequences. Inaction comes with its own consequences. As long as these things are true, DO THE RIGHT THING will be one for the ages.

INLAND EMPIRE, written & directed by David Lynch, starring Laura Dern, Justin Theroux, and Jeremy Irons.

Old World Politics, New World Prophecy: Understanding David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE “A Woman In Trouble,” by Michael Lidstone.

Discussing a film as loaded as David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE requires one to place a few cards on the table first. I do not enjoy this film, but I assume entertainment was not its top priority, and I accept that. I had long admired David Lynch’s imagination, and his ingenuity with the tools of expression, be they the tools of film making or painting or sculpture or any other medium he chooses to work in. Ever since my dad took my brother Ed & I to see THE ELEPHANT MAN at the SoNo Cinema in Norwalk, CT I’ve understood that this was a man with a unique perspective. Where INLAND EMPIRE is concerned, I respect the ambition of Lynch’s riddle within a maze storytelling style, and I appreciate that he trusts his audience enough to challenge them at nearly every opportunity in this 3 hour film.

The first time I saw INLAND EMPIRE, with my friend Sahara at The Aero Theater in Santa Monica, CA, we were utterly confounded within the first act. We both trusted Lynch to take us somewhere we’d never seen; a significant portion of the audience didn’t share our trust, and walked out within the first 2 hours. When it was over, Sahara & I went for our customary drink (in my case, 2 or 3), during which we share our thoughts on a movie while it is fresh in our minds. Usually during these drinks we point out cool things to each other that the other might have missed. This time all we came up with was an expanding list of questions. I assumed that my understanding of INLAND EMPIRE would grow a little bit each time I saw it, but that I would never fully grasp it.

Then I met Michael Lidstone. With his study “Old World Politics, New World Prophecy: Understanding David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE ‘A Woman In Trouble’,” Mr. Lidstone has explored an impressive bibliography in a consummate effort to decipher the most beguiling film Lynch has released to date. We’ll return to Mr. Lidstone’s book in a moment, but in order for me to explain how surprising his effort is, I need to tell you how thoroughly I misread INLAND EMPIRE.

On its most literal face-value level, INLAND EMPIRE is about an actress named Nikki Grace (Dern) starring as a character named Sue Blue in a film called “On High In Blue Tomorrows.” It is revealed by “On High” director Kingsley Stewart (Irons) that his film is a remake of an unfinished German film called “47,” which was never completed because the production was considered cursed. Some have called INLAND EMPIRE a companion to Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DR. since both feature women in jeopardy in Los Angeles, and a story-within-a-story structure. Other than those similarities, I have not found anything in either film that helps explain the other, any more than Alejandro Jodorowsky’s EL TOPO illuminates THE HOLY MOUNTAIN.

For a significant portion of the film, Nikki becomes her character Sue Blue. As Sue Blue, Nikki crosses paths with a group of prostitutes, also characters within the film in which Nikki stars; later we meet Polish prostitutes, who may be part of the story of “47″ or may be genuine, but either way someone has been murdering Polish prostitutes. Given Lynch’s use of soul transference in LOST HIGHWAY, it didn’t strike me us too unusual that Nikki could become Sue Blue, or that characters in one film may have counterparts in another film, or reality, or both. The reason I say that I misunderstand all this is that I cannot explain to you what it means. I get what is happening, and maybe even one level of subtext, but my inability to explain it to someone else is enough to tell me that I remain mystified. Truth be told, the feeling being mystified is part of why I like seeing Lynch’s (and Jodorowsky’s) films; I like knowing that I can spend the rest of my life figuring them out as my own understanding of life, the universe and everything grows.

Michael Lidstone was not willing to sit back and wait for life or Lynch to explain INLAND EMPIRE to him. “Old World Politics, New World Prophecy: Understanding David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE ‘A Woman In Trouble’” reads like forensic detective work or the crafting and testing of a theory via the scientific method. He begins by offering a more clearly defined set of questions than I had ever considered. With a few well chosen moments in the film, he explores possibilities for their meaning, and unlocks potential meanings for other moments and themes. At first his research seems as elusive as INLAND EMPIRE, but when you reach his conclusion, you sit back and realize how logically he progressed through the entire story. I want to be very careful not to give away too many of the epiphanies delineated by his study. I would hate to be that guy who tells you about this great comedy film you have to see, and then tells you all the best jokes in the movie, know what I mean?

One major clue that Mr. Lidstone’s research jumps off from is the word “AXXoNN,” which Nikki sees written on a door, through which this would have been a short movie had she not passed. Anyone could look at that scene and know AXXoNN must mean something significant, but how many of us bothered to look it up? Mr. Lidstone found it to be a formula used in 1928 by Russian folklorist Vladimir Propp to analyze folk tales and legends. Further exploration down this track gave insight into potential allegorical meaning of a family of humanoid rabbits that appear early in the film, a sequence regarded by many critics as nothing more than a bizarre nonsequitor, as well as several other key scenes that might have bee similarly dismissed. Aaah, but how to know which folklore to analyze? Like a good detective or literary rabbit, Mr. Lidstone starts at the beginning. The film opens with an image of a record needle playing an LP, and a voice telling us that we are listening to “the longest running radio play in history,” before we realize we are in a hotel room in Poland. Mr. Lidstone exhaustively researched stories from Poland and Eastern Europe, via folklore as well as history. Using what he learned from those stories, combined with what he read in Lynch’s own website and his 2006 book “Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity,” Mr. Lidstone was guided toward other history, other legends, and even spiritual texts. I was ready to look at “AXXoNN” and think “that’s odd, what happens next?” Mr. Lidstone did the footwork to realize that this formula holds the master key to Sue Blue’s subconsciously journey.

Some may take issue with Mr. Lidstone’s final interpretation of INLAND EMPIRE. Again attempting to avoid spoilers of either the film or the study, he finds a very topical and timely political subtext to the film’s spiritual allegory that could be rejected by viewers who see the movie on as singular a level as I first experienced it. He concludes that the film is an warning to the soul of America, against following the George W. Bush administration too blindly, specifically in regards to The War on Terror and the expansion of what some pundits have referred to as The American Empire. On Lynch’s own Facebook page fans have argued and debated whether his artwork is political or socially conscious, with some citing interviews in the past where Lynch has said he is not a political person. I have two responses to this. First, I think it is a mistake to take David Lynch too literally at his own word, when so often in his career he has enjoyed an almost Bob Dylanesque tendency to tamper with our expectations. This is after all an artist whose contribution to New York’s series of public art installations, Cow Parade 2000, was rejected. Lynch followed the rules of the show to the letter, but his piece challenged the spirit of the entire enterprise. Second, for me to reject Mr. Lidstone’s conclusion that INLAND EMPIRE is a politically themed spiritual allegory, I should probably have my own equally reasoned assessment of Lynch’s meaning. I do not have that.

I will not say that I take Mr. Lidstone’s interpretation as some dogmatic gospel of what INLAND EMPIRE can only mean, but no one else I have read or spoken with has done nearly as much work to make his or her case. In speaking with Mr. Lidstone, he mentions artists beside Lynch who had not considered themselves political, until the events of a Post 9/11 America. Those artists aside, I would point to others who recognize that a certain point some aspect of their work becomes the provenance of the fans. An artist creates a work and that belongs to them, or to whomever commissioned the piece, be that an art patron or a film studio. As I have suggested in earlier articles and may a nerdy debate, a viewer or participant brings their own perspective, based on every moment of their life up until their experience with the art in question. Clive Barker has said for years that he no longer owns the Cenobites of his HELLRAISER films; fans and other artists have brought so much of their own perspective to that world, that their originator regards them as something in the ether. If one disagrees with Mr. Lidstone’s analysis, one must nonetheless acknowledge both how deeply within his own experience he was willing to plumb, and how far beyond his experience he was willing to research in order to connect with Lynch. That effort in itself is more than forensics or scientific examination, it is a creative endeavor in its own right.

When my mother was in law school, she told me about professor who had assigned his class a heavy reading assignment to be completed before their first class. On that first day, he asked them how the reading sat with them; the entire class admitted confusion. He told them “The law will never be clear but stick with me, and when we’re done you’ll be confused, but you’ll be on a higher plane of confusion.” I will continue to try to grow with INLAND EMPIRE as I increase my experience with the medium of film. Having read and reread Mr. Lidstone’s book, I will now approach this film and all of Lynch’s work going forward on a higher plane of confusion.

To his mind, Mr. Lidstone has thoroughly unlocked Lynch’s film, and I suspect he is probably right. Whether he is right or not, he has provided us a polished shiny set of keys to encourage our own further exploration. In a perfect film geek world, an adventurous publisher like Taschen or Phaidon would accept this initial study as a treatment and provide Mr. Lidstone the means to interview Mr. Lynch and the cast and crew. One of these publishers could combine Lynch’s photography and Lidstone’s analysis, interviews, and conclusions into one of those snazzy heavy-bonded hardcover books that movie nerds give each other during the holidays. Until that day comes, you can got to Amazon and download “Old World Politics, New World Prophecy” to your Kindle.

From Monday, January 21, 2008.

Written & Directed by George Lucas, produced by Francis Ford Coppola, starring Robert Duvall, Maggie McOmie, Donald Pleasance, and Sid Haig.

In a bizarre future, the last remnants of humanity survive in a subterranean city. To keep the population from exceeding the limits of the city, everyone takes a regimen of drugs to control their thoughts and emotions. Keep the people doped up and thinking they’re happy and they’ll keep working rather than making more babies than resources can provide for. Wouldn’t ya know it, THX (Duvall) goes off his meds, and experiences love and sex for the first time in his life. In doing so be becomes a fugitive from an army of RoboCops.

An expansion of Lucas’s thesis film, THX-1138 was the first feature made under Coppola’s American Zoetrope banner. Coppola and Lucas created Zoetrope to counter the corporate take-over of the studio system. They made THX-1138 to counter what they saw as an impending and dehumanizing commercialization of society.

It’ll finish Wednesday.
Love, Jim

AFTER THOUGHT from 8.22.2011
The Cold War provided no shortage of post apocalyptic survival movies, from Robert Altman’s beguiling QUINTET to George Miller’s visceral MAD MAX trilogy, with a legion of forgettable exploitation movies in between. H.G. Welles’ screen adaptation of his novel THINGS TO COME remind us that tales of who would survive, and how survival would look, have been around nearly as long as the movies themselves. Modern audiences regard the epic scale modest proposal of LOGAN’S RUN as seminal. How closely these films mirror reality, when the future in which the film is set comes to pass, often becomes a chief barometer of their quality. I hesitate to support this theory since we tend to focus on minutiae rather than the soul of a story: Atari may be long gone, and I doubt we’ll have flying police cars by the end of the decade, but these minor points don’t make BLADE RUNNER any less impressive.

We are certainly not living in the underground maze in which THX-1138 is set. We are also, as recent bedbug infestations and E.coli food recalls illustrate, not living in the antiseptic environment Lucas imagined. This film is prescient however, in areas pertaining less to production design, and more to Lucas’ aspiration to examine the steady homogenizing of our existence. THX-1138 has more to say about language, how we will interact with each other and how we will see ourselves, than the vast majority of speculative fiction films. I don’t mean we are there yet, but we are on our way.

BRAVE NEW WORLD introduced us to SOMA in 1932 and the Rolling Stones outed Mother and her Little Helper in ’66. THX-1138 foresaw widespread use of stimulants and sedatives, fertility drugs and chemical castration, and anti-depressants. Lucas also imagined a society where criminal prosecution is used to enforce a drug regimen. We may be heading in that direction when paroles and probation have hinged on citizens being court ordered to accept prescriptions. Sometimes we say this practice is necessary. Sometimes we hear about drug recalls when unexpected complications arise. Daily we see drugs advertized with side effects that sound as bad or worse than the ailment which they are marketed to cure. A handful of multinational conglomerates make money faster than we can print it by selling us drugs designed to help us achieve some elusive zone of normalcy. We have not only stepped knee deep in the dehumanizing commercialization of society we are co-paying for the privilege.

The inhabitants of this particular city are know by a sequence of letters and numbers rather than traditional names. Robert Duvall is THX 1138, his lover is LUH 3417 (Maggie McOmie), and LUH’s coworker is SEN 5241 (Donald Pleasance). For years I accepted fan speculation that these designations were an extension of the numbers tattooed in Nazi concentration camps. Co-writer Walter Murch has suggested that THX was chosen for is resemblance to “sex,” SEN to “sin,” and of course LUH to “love.” Lucas offers an even more mundane interpretation: THX-1138 was his phone number.

Over the last generation we have seen varying phenomena relating to names echoing those in THX-1138. The music world has given us KRS-One, O(+> and J-Lo. Supermarket tabloids attempt to make conventional names similarly unusual: K-fed, Brangelina, Bennifer. (Why is the guy’s name always first? JenniBen has a ring to it!) I didn’t pay this much mind until news reporters got into the act. Pundits hoping to appear the least bit hip will now refer to The President and the First Lady as POTUS and FLOTUS. For years the terrorist with the dialysis issues has been known simply by his last name but recently he has become OBL. If I mentioned bin Laden you would have no doubt who I am talking about; OBL sounds like a large tampon or an airport code. The final straw for me was the recent hotel sex scandal involving DSK, a French financier whose born name is far less known than POTUS or OBL. Ask someone in the street six months ago who Dominique Gaston André Strauss-Kahn was and a significant percentage would probably guess he’s a guest judge on PROJECT: RUNWAY. We’ve gone beyond hip to flat out laziness.

THX-1138 saw all of this coming, not only the manipulation of identity via the maximization of controlled moods and the minimization of our names, but even the reclassification of where we live. In the film we hear that THX works in “operating cell 94107″ which is coincidentally the zip code of Zoetrope’s offices during production. People around the world recognize the zip code 90210 and the area code 212. We can identify where in our neighborhood, city or nation we live by a hand signal of three fingers representing a single letter. We live in a world that has seen borders fall by the power of LAN, 386, 486, 2.0, DSL, 3G and 4G all as fewer and fewer of us actually like to read. THX-1138 saw this all coming as far back as when IBM became HAL.

Saturday August 6, 2011 at the AMC Boston Common.

Directed by Rupert Wyatt, starring Andy Serkis, James Franco, Freida Pinto, David Oyelowo, Tom Felton, John Lithgow & Brian Cox. My favorite living film composer Patrick Doyle provides the score.

The gateway to wildly imaginative movies for most nerds in my demographic was STAR WARS. I would never deny the profound influence George Lucas’ 1977 spectacle had on my childhood, but my indoctrination into nerd-dom came in 1973, by a double feature of CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES and BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES. The Apes had been to my early childhood development what Sesame Street was to most other kids. Roddy McDowall played two of my earliest heroes, Dr. Cornelius in the first three Apes films, and his son Caesar in my double feature. I never missed an opportunity to see the Apes films on TV; a live action PLANET OF THE APES CBS TV show continued new stories through 1974, with NBC’s animated RETURN TO THE PLANET OF THE APES concluding the Apes saga in 1975. STAR WARS came along right when I needed it, though the Apes remained integral to my sense of wonder.

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is the happiest surprise this summer. This story is essentially a bridge between ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES, which ended with Caesar’s birth, and CONQUEST updated to the 21st century.
Opening on a jungle hunt wherein Caesar’s mother is captured for lab use, RISE moves to the Gen Sys laboratory in San Francisco, where Dr. Will Rodman (James Franco) attempts to develop DNA altering treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. Will’s big-pharma supervisor Jacobs (David Oyelowo) sees Will’s lab as a potential gold mine, but Will has a more personal stake in his research: his father Charles (John Lithgow) is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Caesar’s mother undergoes Will’s latest attempt at a cure shortly before Caesar is born. The therapy alters Caesar’s DNA; since Caesar does not suffer Alzheimer’s debilitating effect on the brain, the therapy enhances his healthy brain. We follow Caesar’s formative years, raised away from the lab in the Rodman’s home, as he learns to communicate via sign language. Will’s veterinarian girlfriend Caroline (Freida Pinto) helps the two generations of Rodmans raise Caesar. Another father and son (Brian Cox and Tom Felton) who run a primate sanctuary round out the major human characters. Humans play an important part in RISE, but Caesar is front and center in this story, as he was in CONQUEST and BATTLE. Caesar’s quest takes him from birth in captivity, through education in the Rodman home, to incarceration in the primate sanctuary following a series of misfortunes. His advanced mind perceives both injustice at the abuse of his fellow primate inmates and a plan to end their suffering.

Most critics unhappy with this film cite a common (and increasingly tedious) complaint that has been aimed at genre films in general, and Apes films in particular, any time these films expand an area of special effects. Say it with me: “The human characters are not as well developed as the ape characters!” It shows a disappointing lack of imagination, and understanding of what the film medium is capable of, to assume that human characters must be the best developed for a story to succeed. Submitted for your approval, two magnificent films by Jean-Jacques Annaud: THE BEAR (1988) and TWO BROTHERS (2004). I don’t know about you, but when I went to a LASSIE or BENJI movie as a kid, I went to see the puppy not the humans.

Annaud’s films and the dog adventures show us what can be done with well trained animals, but two advances in the film medium further the notion that human actors can play powerfully evocative non-human characters. The first of these advances is motion capture technology, which allows a human actor to be filmed, and then a digital character of anything imaginable to be animated onto that human’s performance. The second, and I would suggest equally important, is an English actor named Andy Serkis. Genre fans recognize Serkis as the man who, working with motion capture technology, was able to perform the 3 foot tall emaciated Gollum in the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy as well as the 60 foot ape Kong in the 2005 remake of KING KONG. When you see rage of fear or sorrow or valor on Caesar’s face, that is not simply clever CGI, that is Andy Serkis emoting and the technology making him appear simian. Serkis is either at the forefront of something very new in acting or something very ancient. Either way he will soon be as recognized for changing the face of film acting as significantly as Meryl Streep did a generation ago and Marlon Brando did two generations ago. When I see an Apes movie, I am only passingly interested in human characters, I want more apes! Andy Serkis delivers a charismatic and intelligent Caesar that quite possibly surpasses even Roddy McDowall for creating an eager suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience. This alone is worth the price of a ticket.

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES tampers somewhat with the chronology of the Apes canon, most noticeably in how Caesar acquired his increased intelligence, and the circumstances of his interaction with humans. Nonetheless the story embraces the entire previous saga, with bold gestures obvious to most viewers, as well as subtler references apparent only to core fans. Tom Felton gets to deliver a few cutely placed quotes from Charlton Heston’s Taylor in the 1968 film that will be caught by anyone familiar with pop culture. Devoted fans are treated to the fulfillment of a legend, recounted by Cornelius (McDowall) in ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES, to explain how apes rose to the top of the food chain. I am resisting like hell to share a Spoiler; suffice it to say that we actually see Cornelius’ parable played out, and it is even more intense than I imagined all those years ago. I nearly jumped out of my seat. With the possible exception of HARRY POTTER the normally stoic 10 a.m. Boston crowd cheered this scene like nothing I’ve heard for another film this year.

Among the recent litany of remakes (or reimagined reboots) RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is most similar to Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN. These films begin with a story with which we are already familiar, but distill the focus to a single character, treating the new film as a true biography of a fictional character. Zombie’s HALLOWEEN expands the first ten minutes of John Carpenter’s 1978 original to nearly a full hour, focusing entirely on how Michael Meyers came to be a serial killer, before condensing the bulk of Carpenter’s story into the action filled third act. The first two acts of RISE explores Caesar’s previously unseen life between the third (ESCAPE) and fourth (CONQUEST) Apes films of the 70′s, with the final act taking story liberties with the whole of CONQUEST. Inasmuch as this film alters the Apes timeline, it maintains the APES film tradition of social and political commentary. Eric Greene’s excellent 1996 book “Planet of the Apes as American Myth: Race, Politics, and Popular Culture” examines reflections of 1960′s and 70′s unrest and upheaval in each chapter in the Apes saga. RISE offers insights into the science vs. commerce equation in medicine, the marginalization of the infirm, and even prison reform via the ape sanctuary. As a lifelong fan of the earlier films I wholeheartedly enjoyed this new vision of The Planet Of The Apes. I anxiously await the next battle in Caesar’s revolution.