tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11633215948587268222024-03-16T14:52:21.841-04:00The CoolerJason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.comBlogger437125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-45848082483150178622014-03-15T07:00:00.000-04:002014-04-15T05:21:52.856-04:00The Eyes of March (2014)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvNmygRBKjBh2155FITeSyjjqcFTwxaq7miRZ3fVNHVZOob8Dube-_s3cl01YWCaU8v5GeifY6ThI9vLCnKsU7wFWg1XCc6534JnNSOkEes6_5wd8RYP9kjiufHOhqbA-j-KIY2Meesq-0/s1600/Eyes2014_0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvNmygRBKjBh2155FITeSyjjqcFTwxaq7miRZ3fVNHVZOob8Dube-_s3cl01YWCaU8v5GeifY6ThI9vLCnKsU7wFWg1XCc6534JnNSOkEes6_5wd8RYP9kjiufHOhqbA-j-KIY2Meesq-0/s400/Eyes2014_0.jpg" /></a></div>
<br /><br />I was traveling when it came time for the sixth edition of the "Eyes of March."<br /><br />
Fair enough. But I didn't expect it would take me another month to finally get these images posted.<br /><br />
And I didn't expect that when I would sit down to do it that I would realize that, gosh, I hadn't set aside as many eye shots as I'd remembered.<br /><br />
Oh, well.<br /><br />
For the past few years, I've struggled to make time to write about movies. This year, I'm struggling to make time to watch them in the first place.<br /><br />
This isn't all bad. I'm back to running again after numerous injuries. I've taken up some new hobbies. And I'm succeeding at a goal I set for myself last year: to spend less time sitting down outside of the day job.<br /><br />
Things change. There are tradeoffs. But I still love eye shots. So, abbreviated and delayed as this edition is, I'm still happy to celebrate the "Eyes of March."<br /><br />
As in past years (see also: <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/2009/03/eyes-of-march.html" target="_blank">2009</a>, <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/2010/03/eyes-of-march-2010.html" target="_blank">2010</a>, <a href="http://www.coolercinema.blogspot.com/2011/03/eyes-of-march-2011.html" target="_blank">2011</a>, <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/2012/03/eyes-of-march-2012.html" target="_blank">2012</a> and <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-eyes-of-march-2013.html" target="_blank">2013</a>) feel free to make guesses in the comments, which I'll approve as quickly as I can.<br /><br />
Genuine heartfelt thanks to those of you who still swing by The Cooler when the light is on.<br /><br />
Enjoy! (Numbers correspond to the image below them)<br />
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<center>(1)</center>
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<center>(2)</center>
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<center>(3)</center>
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<center>(4)</center>
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<center>(5)</center>
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<center>(6)</center>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7J4Zsx724B1kfjYrZyLBosNtm-xqz1UPYwKYsuzt7lxlCfHsvbVdDawaPZ5BtAaWW_AnCG4okta0ZZzEfdCMzSUxip53FTZO7bmKhzCgRau64wB0PhnP8sx1IKJ5JAfvaTwSgh2CQBJdh/s1600/Eyes2014_6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7J4Zsx724B1kfjYrZyLBosNtm-xqz1UPYwKYsuzt7lxlCfHsvbVdDawaPZ5BtAaWW_AnCG4okta0ZZzEfdCMzSUxip53FTZO7bmKhzCgRau64wB0PhnP8sx1IKJ5JAfvaTwSgh2CQBJdh/s400/Eyes2014_6.jpg" /></a></div>
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<center>(7)</center>
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<center>(8)</center>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhZRSANvZe9SOOx7TM7bhkpMvWKTVZZTHsFARC3pHSGcxJ47zoCllimi9gQtGJdEDiFIEooXtXArWmNFg29Of_tqiEC7HXGdyzuzuFOyhUnPHVfhoDJ2-DRYTvV-ChaJXzSTA-lU5wfg9P/s1600/Eyes2014_8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhZRSANvZe9SOOx7TM7bhkpMvWKTVZZTHsFARC3pHSGcxJ47zoCllimi9gQtGJdEDiFIEooXtXArWmNFg29Of_tqiEC7HXGdyzuzuFOyhUnPHVfhoDJ2-DRYTvV-ChaJXzSTA-lU5wfg9P/s400/Eyes2014_8.jpg" /></a></div>Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-8303937346867902332014-02-09T14:45:00.000-05:002014-02-09T14:45:13.879-05:00Shadows and Light: 25th Hour<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdJRbzKmXKVCQ25BmeLyLkpwHJf_5Vv4cO_HICaVolJYOuBH6fwASK0Yovli-S2xO3S6jqiQuSHocHkrx05Oqmb0zIeHLkXxqX35wMHB0gwi0IAlcsLbifiAweWv02iZRjhMyLN2HGEmib/s1600/25thHour.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdJRbzKmXKVCQ25BmeLyLkpwHJf_5Vv4cO_HICaVolJYOuBH6fwASK0Yovli-S2xO3S6jqiQuSHocHkrx05Oqmb0zIeHLkXxqX35wMHB0gwi0IAlcsLbifiAweWv02iZRjhMyLN2HGEmib/s400/25thHour.jpg" /></a></div>
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At the start of <em>25th Hour</em>, near the site where today the near-complete Freedom Tower stretches 1,776 feet into the sky, spotlights beam in memoriam for the World Trade Center towers that stood there before, dominating the downtown portion of Manhattan's skyline for 30 years. <em>25th Hour</em> was released in January 2003, just 16 months after the towers fell, and it was the first movie to stare 9/11 directly in the eye. (Movies like <em>United 93</em> and <em>World Trade Center</em> were still years away.) Working from a novel published before the attacks, Spike Lee didn't have to "go there" to stay faithful to David Benioff's original text but he seemed autobiographically compelled, as if the famously proud New Yorker who had tapped into the spirit of the city in previous films was incapable of shooting a movie in this new New York without confronting how it had changed.
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Perhaps Lee also took into account that his early-2003 audience was equally incapable of looking at New York without thinking about what was missing. Thus, he traded background whispers for foreground shouts. As the opening titles appear, Lee offers a montage of the searchlights shining heavenward in tribute from a city still in mourning. Coupled with Terence Blanchard's midnight-blue score, it made for a powerful image, and also a distracting one. Those spotlights might as well have been pointed directly into the camera. With 9/11 still dominating our worldview, Lee's 9/11 references dominated the view of <em>25th Hour</em>. At least from where I was standing.
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It seemed a little grotesque at the time, a little gratuitous, a little opportunistic. In a movie that includes a fourth-wall-breaking monologue with the phrase "Fuck Osama bin Laden" and a montage of the clean-up efforts at Ground Zero, Lee was forceful with his 9/11 imagery but not eloquent. His anger and sorrow were unmistakable, but there didn't seem to be much commentary beyond those emotions and, more to the point, those emotions didn't seem particularly appropriate to the movie's whole. Lee's 9/11 stuff felt affixed for grisly aesthetic purposes like a limb on Frankenstein's monster, the seams in plain view. It was as if Lee had been so determined to take this opportunity to comment on 9/11 — and be the first major filmmaker to comment on 9/11 — that he didn't pause to reflect on if what he had to express (even if it was just raw emotion) had any real place in this movie. But, again, that's how it felt then.
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Watching <em>25th Hour</em> again, 11 years later, the forcefulness of the 9/11 moments feels core to the film's tragic beauty and character. Those disaster zone images that were ubiquitous at the time have a renewed punch now, and Lee's palpable fury and sadness awaken hibernating emotions. More so than many of the movies that are specifically about 9/11, <em>25th Hour</em> is a time capsule for that moment. But it's more than that, because removed from the fog of January 2003 (a few months <em>before</em> Bush would declare war on Iraq as part of his administration's response to the 2001 attacks), which made Lee's spotlights on 9/11 so startling, that material now seems vital to everything around it. Not organic, exactly; it still feels tacked on. But without it, <em>25th Hour</em> wouldn't just lose some of its historical significance. It would lose much of its soul.
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It seems so obvious now: At its essence, <em>25th Hour</em> is about a guy struggling to come to grips with an upcoming prison stint for drug trafficking that will end lifelong friendships, take him away from his beautiful girlfriend and transform a life of relative luxury into one of constant survival. In short, he's a man whose life is about to be redefined who is trying to cling to the way things were, the way he wanted them to be forever. That should sound familiar, because that's a decent description for America in the initial dusty aftermath of 9/11. We knew our world was fundamentally changed forever — or at least as far into the future as we were capable of imagining in that moment — and while we accepted that, and maybe even took responsibility for it to a certain extent, it was a fate we accepted only by force, constantly wishing we could go back to the moment before disaster struck when, we realized in retrospect, our lives had been richer than we'd given them credit for.
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<em>25th Hour</em>'s 9/11 imagery is primarily delivered in four bold sequences: the opening credits montage of the "Tribute in Light"; the "fuck-you" monologue when Edward Norton's Monty spews pent-up rage at all things New York and namedrops bin Laden along the way; the 5-minute cut-free exchange between Barry Pepper's Frank and Philip Seymour Hoffman's Jacob in front of an apartment window overlooking Ground Zero, which is immediately followed by a montage of Ground Zero itself; and the poetic "we drive" sequence narrated by Brian Cox as Monty's father, which imagines tragedy as avoidable.
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It was that third sequence — the Ground Zero overlook — that seemed particularly gratuitous upon the movie's release, in part because the bright lights of the clean-up efforts in the background served as sloppy misdirection (read: distraction) to the conversation in the foreground. But now, with some distance, I find harmony in that juxtaposition, and even some provocation. As Frank argues with Jacob about what will become of their childhood buddy, Frank says of Monty: "I love him like a brother but he fucking deserves it." If Monty can be seen as a stand-in for an America mired in 9/11, that's quite a statement — one that, frankly, it's hard to imagine Lee intending at the time. But the line that ends the conversation and serves to transition the scene into the Ground Zero montage is a no-nonsense fastball down the middle: "It's over after tonight," Frank insists. Things will never be the same.
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That was post-9/11 in a nutshell, and that summary also neatly applies to the movie's only subplot of substance, the flirtatious relationship between Jacob, a high school teacher, and one of his students, Anna Paquin's Mary. Jacob's desires are obvious from the beginning; he knows he shouldn't but can't say no — less to her than to himself. As Monty deals with the aftermath of his Big Mistake, we watch Jacob stumble toward his potentially life-altering error, eventually planting a kiss on Mary in a club bathroom, prompting a reaction that makes it clear that she either never saw it coming or never thought he'd go through with it. As crimes go, Jacob's small kiss might be less criminal than getting caught with large amounts of narcotics in the living room sofa. But the effect is almost as damaging. We can see in Jacob's stunned face, captured in one of Lee's trademark gliding shots, that his life has changed. No going back.
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No running away, either. When after a night of grave celebration Monty starts his journey toward prison, his father pitches an alternative so vivid that we want it to be real. Go to the desert, he urges his son. "The desert is for starting over," he says. But like many romantic notions, it's an unrealistic one. Some disasters leave scars and can't be escaped. Some disasters change us faster than we could change ourselves. Start over? For Monty, that would take forgetting who he was, and for Americans in 2003 forgetting was something we couldn't abide. In the micro and macro senses, <em>25th Hour</em> is about bracing for the fate we'd never imagined. In retrospect, Lee's 9/11 references weren't tangents. They were incisions into the heart of the matter. It took a decade of distance for me to see the light.
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<em>[Editor's note: The first draft of the above was written on what turned out to be the eve of Philip Seymour Hoffman's tragic death. Hoping to provide some more specific thoughts on the great actor later this month.]</em>
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Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-20163116868910310802014-01-15T19:24:00.003-05:002014-01-15T21:14:26.968-05:00Reasons 'Why': The Price of Gold<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj3Q3AZZM8BH14RDs3-c0JBGcEC3aIG8bDWV872smbEdG_wkk6weWTIY8Towb8RLDfyUkYPdhwNlm6h7umRQoBbWhmwW4hSJFoJZeRkrqovaBinateUoJfALvjgTQJR_CIgITrnTgIM2sj/s1600/PriceofGoldTH.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj3Q3AZZM8BH14RDs3-c0JBGcEC3aIG8bDWV872smbEdG_wkk6weWTIY8Towb8RLDfyUkYPdhwNlm6h7umRQoBbWhmwW4hSJFoJZeRkrqovaBinateUoJfALvjgTQJR_CIgITrnTgIM2sj/s400/PriceofGoldTH.jpg" /></a></div>
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Before she became a villain in one of sports' weirdest scandals, Tonya Harding was figure skating's ugly duckling. Raised in Oregon by a physically and emotionally abusive mother, she was a skater who came from modest means and looked like it. Acted like it, too. Competing in a sport that celebrates elegance and finesse, Harding was rough and tumble. In <em>The Price of Gold</em>, the latest in ESPN Films' "<a href="http://espn.go.com/30for30/index" target="_blank">30 for 30</a>" series, Harding is described as coming from the "gutter." She's compared to an "alley cat" and called a "trailer trash ignoramus." Eventually, even Harding gets in on it, noting that the media portrayed her as a "piece of crap" juxtaposed against skating's "princess," Nancy Kerrigan. If life were a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, Harding would have gone to the Olympics in Lillehammer, skated up to her incredible potential, won gold and transformed into a swan in front of our eyes. And maybe then Harding would have liked the sight of her own reflection. Alas, Harding's fairy tale was destined to be Grimm. So instead, the ugly duckling got together with some loons and decided to disfigure the prettiest swan on the pond.
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Even in retrospect the Harding-Kerrigan melodrama is stranger than fiction, except that all the players seemed straight out of central casting. The tomboyish, insecure blonde who honed her skills at a shopping mall skating rink. The pretty, poised brunette with the endorsement deals and the (misleading) air of privilege. The scheming husband, with the dark eyes and the mustache almost long enough to twirl. The goon accomplices who looked like they could get lost in a phone booth, assuming they could figure out how to get inside one. All of them came together under the bright spotlight of the pre-Internet Era Winter Olympics. Director Nanette Burstein (<a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/2008/08/shermer-high-school-revisited-american.html" target="_blank"><em>American Teen</em></a>) recounts the events of 1994 with impressive clarity and pace, chronicling not just what happened but the media's frenzied reaction to it, because indeed that was a distinct element of this tabloid-worthy scandal right from the start. Those too young to remember the whack heard round the world will come away with a clear understanding of how it all unfolded. But what's most impressive about <em>The Price of Gold</em> is that it's more than a transcript. It looks beyond the highlights and lowlights to try to understand why.
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I'm not sure most of us really considered the "why" back in 1994, which is odd considering that the most indelible image of the entire affair is Kerrigan, a few seconds removed from being clubbed on the knee, lying on the concrete floor of an ice arena screaming that very question. Partly we were distracted by all the questions about what Harding knew and when she knew it. But more than that, I suspect we thought we knew the answer. Why club Kerrigan? Because Harding was insecure about her skating and wanted to eliminate the competition. Simple as that, right? Except Burstein's film makes it clear that it isn't. For starters, even at that point Harding's skating ability might have been the thing she was most confident about. But the bigger misperception is that this was only about sports — about victory, about glory, about being a champion. Harding wanted all of that, but more so she was desperate for what came with it. Validation that she wasn't a piece of trash, for one thing. Financial rewards most of all.
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If that sounds shallow, consider that the United States had two viable gold medal candidates in Kerrigan and Harding (Harding had been a 1990 U.S. Champion, and she was the first woman to land a triple axel in competition), and yet the sport seemed interested in marketing only one of them. Kerrigan already had endorsement deals. Harding, on the other hand, had married into more poverty. Then in her mid-20s, this would be Harding's last chance to win the lottery via Olympic metamorphosis. Emboldened by a husband, Jeff Gillooly, who likely saw Harding has his meal ticket, eliminating the stiffest competition with a swift blow to the knee must have seemed like sound financial planning.
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Nothing justifies the assault, of course. It was a crime, pathetic and despicable. But in this era of millionaires battling millionaires in professional sports, it's helpful to be reminded that at the Olympics a gold medal can mean the difference between a lot and nothing at all. Harding felt that. And Burstein allows us to feel a measure of sympathy for the poor girl surrounded by poor influences who was marginalized by her sport for not looking the part. No doubt, Harding likely played a role in her ostracism long before she ever met Gillooly, and Burstein makes that clear, too, not with bitter backstage gossip from people who never liked Harding in the first place but with Harding's own damning testimony.
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David Frost said that Richard Nixon's fundamental flaw was his "dislocated relationship with truth," and the same could be said of Harding, who continues to insist that she had no prior knowledge of the attack on Kerrigan. Watching her interviews in <em>The Price of Gold</em> is not unlike watching Nixon sitting down with Frost and desperately clinging to a lie that only he believes. But as I watched Harding continuing to proclaim her innocence, repeatedly portraying herself as a victim and even going so far as to argue that Kerrigan is the bitch in this story ("I thought we were friends," she says of Kerrigan shunning her after the attack, "that's rude"), I was repeatedly reminded of <em>The Office</em>'s Michael Scott. Because like the beloved bumbling boss at Dunder Mifflin, when Harding talks you can see the wheels turning and spot flashes of genuine pride over what's coming out of her mouth — stuff that sounds convincing to her ears only. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic. In the end, Kerrigan's refusal to be interviewed by Burstein turns out to be both fitting (Kerrigan avoided the talking about the episode even as it was unfolding) and genius. Every minute Kerrigan isn't on screen is another for Harding to be under the microscope. And every minute on screen for Harding adds another inch to the rope she uses to hang herself. As if she wasn't dangling from the noose of public opinion already.
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For her crimes of action and denial, Harding deserves all the scrutiny that can be thrown her way. "Wounded Knee" ultimately resulted in greater fame and fortune for Kerrigan than she would have enjoyed otherwise, but if she hadn't been able to win gold only months after the attack she would have been robbed of what to that point had been her life's main goal. Still, Burstein's documentary makes it clear that Harding had been a victim, too. Many times, in many ways. And in its honest examination of Harding's career, <em>The Price of Gold</em> deftly exposes a reality that should make us uncomfortable: figure skating is the rare sport in which we aren't compelled to root for the underdog, because that would ruin the aesthetic. Harding didn't fit the mold, and while she ultimately dug her own grave it probably wasn't the first time someone wanted her buried.
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On that note, it's worth recalling that in the first volume of "30 for 30" documentaries, sprinter Marion Jones was held up as a positive example of someone who learned from her mistakes and came clean. But from where I sit, in <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/2010/11/still-running-marion-jones-press-pause.html" target="_blank">John Singleton's film</a> Jones followed the same playbook that Harding does here: admit to the stuff there isn't room left to deny and blame the rest on the crooked ex-husband. That's easier for Jones to get away with. She's attractive, charming and well spoken. Harding can't pull it off. She didn't fall from grace, because grace was never hers. She just fell.
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The Price of Gold <em>premieres January 16 on ESPN at 9 pm ET. <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/p/30-for-30-series.html" target="_blank">Read other "30 for 30" reviews.</a></em>
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Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-77977772971479566122014-01-12T13:08:00.000-05:002014-01-12T13:08:49.211-05:00Coulda Been a Contenda: No Mas<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_Jr0tY3rGimP-4z3piLVYhyphenhyphen48arfXxw8wmrY-oT4uLP7JE1cpdy2WVlHse46WlrtDhhpE79EmcTX0lZd2EOXcN9OQPTWriJ4XX81RrHDRDJ9TSe2u3O2Z63-JmGN1JfrMEoHVntM1IBl1/s1600/NoMas.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_Jr0tY3rGimP-4z3piLVYhyphenhyphen48arfXxw8wmrY-oT4uLP7JE1cpdy2WVlHse46WlrtDhhpE79EmcTX0lZd2EOXcN9OQPTWriJ4XX81RrHDRDJ9TSe2u3O2Z63-JmGN1JfrMEoHVntM1IBl1/s400/NoMas.png" /></a></div>
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Roberto Duran stunned boxing fans when he put a beating on then welterweight champion Sugar Ray Leonard in their first meeting, "The Brawl in Montreal," June 20, 1980. But that was nothing compared to the shock he provided in their second meeting five months later. In the eighth round, after exchanging a few blows with Leonard, Duran traded hooks and jabs for a move that most in boxing had never seen before: he waved his right glove in surrender. "<em>No mas</em>," he said. No more. One of the most ferocious fighters the sport had ever seen — Joe Frazier said Duran reminded him of Charles Manson — up and quit. The crowd at the Superdome in New Orleans and those watching live on TVs around the world were flabbergasted. From his ringside microphone, legendary broadcaster Howard Cosell summed it up as it unfolded, calling it "the most inexplicable thing I have ever seen in the ring."
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The "No Mas" fight transcended sports and instantly became part of the pop culture. (You didn't need to be able to pick Roberto Duran out of a lineup in order to understand a "<em>no mas</em>" joke.) The TV footage was boxing's version of the Zapruder film, with the outcome unmistakable and the cause shrouded in mystery. Why did Duran quit? Did he have stomach cramps, as he insisted after the fight but showed no signs of up until his surrender? Was he out of shape? Had he simply had enough of Leonard's showboating antics? These questions have never been satisfactorily answered. And for all of these reasons, the "No Mas" fight is perfect fodder for ESPN Films' "<a href="http://espn.go.com/30for30/index" target="_blank">30 for 30</a>" franchise. But like many boxing bouts, <em>No Mas</em> fails to live up to its self-created hype.
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Credit where it's due: director Eric Drath has created a solid retrospective that convincingly contrasts Leonard's golden-boy charisma with Duran's dark-eyed intensity while capably guiding us through all the pre-fight hype, the in-ring battles and the post-fight fallout. He also gets Leonard to do what few elite athletes ever will: admit pain and fear. (Leonard says at one point that the punishment dished out to him in his first matchup with Duran made him feel "close to death.") These aren't small things, and <em>No Mas</em> is consistently entertaining as it looks back into the past. Alas, Drath missteps by trying to recreate that long-ago conflict in the here and now, structuring his documentary around a trip by Leonard to confront Duran in his native Panama that never feels like anything other than what it is: a made-for-TV gimmick constructed by the filmmaker to artificially sweeten the drama.
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Not surprisingly, that subplot leads nowhere. When Leonard and Duran literally step into a ring to have their verbal showdown (a goofy concept straight out of reality TV), Leonard doesn't care enough to rough up Duran until he draws blood, and Duran simply falls back on his old excuses without even needing to fully articulate those excuses for the record. As verbal confrontations go, it's less a heavyweight bout a la 2013's unforgettable Winfrey-Armstrong and more like a slap-fight you'd find on an elementary school playground — or on Twitter. In effect, both men throw up their hands and say "<em>no mas</em>" to "No Mas," and we shouldn't be surprised. People nearer to the end of their public lives are just likely (and perhaps more so) to be interested in protecting their reputations as they were in their youth, even though journalists of all stripes repeatedly romanticize the notion that personal revelations are somehow progressive, with the truth always coming out in the end.
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Buying into that myth in the first place is mistake enough, but Drath makes another common mistake by falling in love with his original idea, because when the Leonard-Duran conversation resulted in little more than awkward patter, Drath would have been better off cutting the subplot from his film entirely. In the least, he should have recognized that the most significant moment in that exchange seems to be one that he relegates to the closing credits, when Duran wonders aloud why Leonard wouldn't grant him a third fight just a few months after the "No Mas" bout. Leonard's stuttering response could be interpreted as revealing: "It was psychological--- it was psychological warfare," he says, insisting he was trying to get into Duran's head and sounding very much like a guy who always had Duran in his.
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Of course, to confront Leonard's avoidance of an immediate rematch would mean confronting Leonard, who Drath mostly treats with kid gloves. It also would have meant being more forthright about the place of "No Mas" within Duran's entire career. Because while Duran suggested he was going to give up the sport after that 1980 fight, he didn't. Far from it. According to statistics provided at the end of the film, Duran appeared in 12 more title matches across three weight classes and won three more titles. As <em>KO Magazine</em> editor in chief Steve Farhood puts it, "(Duran) did enough to prove that ('No Mas') was an aberration. That wasn't the real Roberto Duran, and we think of him as one of the greatest 10 fighters in boxing history. 'No Mas' didn't take that away."
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Unfortunately, <em>No Mas</em> almost does. Drath spends more than 70 minutes making Duran look like a one-hit wonder, a jerk who turned into a coward. Then he spends three minutes trying to give Duran the respect his career demands. That's not to say that Duran doesn't deserve scrutiny (his excuses have been inconsistent and unconvincing), or to suggest that the "No Mas" fight isn't worthy of a narrow focus (it's one of the most famous fights in boxing history, with good reason). Still, it's hard to imagine Duran's subsequent redemption being downgraded to a footnote if he had been the American fighter with the golden boy image. Boxing loves villains, and Duran made for a great one, but the value of looking back with hindsight is the chance to see him as more than his 1980 reputation, to look at these events anew within a larger context.
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With fresh perspective, Drath might have unearthed an epic tale of a boxer who had little personal fortune, then became an overnight celebrity by beating Leonard, then swiftly fell in love with the spoils of star status and lost his commitment to greatness, only to become an overnight villain when he surrendered in Leonard's rematch, only to slowly but steadily rebuild his career and restore his reputation. As it happens, one of Drath's talking heads essentially tries to point the director in that direction. "As horrible as ('No Mas') was for his image at the time," Farhood says, "it gave (Duran) the opportunity for redemption. And there's no greater story in boxing than the story of redemption." Alas, at that point in Drath's documentary the closing credits are just three minutes away, leaving that greater story to be told by someone else.
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<em>I fell off pace with the "30 for 30" series in 2013, but I hope to do better moving forward. <a href=" http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/p/30-for-30-series.html" target="_blank">Here the ones I have reviewed.</a></em>Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-18699003134079664222014-01-05T16:09:00.000-05:002014-01-05T16:20:19.566-05:00Under the Circumstances: 12 Years a Slave<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo05BfgBfDWmYkQ26IKOIb6yn8cK6oWCI428O4Axtcb25xmY_TdwlyPFKz_OECOH0_0gi60DAtP4vlXcW7K_FzfPykCX3A-I-PBpZdyXCiIQYcMWFS3_WbxflllvnIgRnHz-tAQXFVSF2O/s1600/12YearsaSlaveHang.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo05BfgBfDWmYkQ26IKOIb6yn8cK6oWCI428O4Axtcb25xmY_TdwlyPFKz_OECOH0_0gi60DAtP4vlXcW7K_FzfPykCX3A-I-PBpZdyXCiIQYcMWFS3_WbxflllvnIgRnHz-tAQXFVSF2O/s400/12YearsaSlaveHang.jpg" /></a></div>
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In what is already the iconic shot of <em>12 Years a Slave</em>, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) digs his toes into the muddy ground his heels can't quite reach in order to avoid being choked to death by the noose around his neck. It's a gruesome yet painterly image, which makes it quintessential Steve McQueen. And as the director is wont to do, he holds this wordless shot for well over a minute so that we might feel Solomon's struggle and notice the nonchalance with which the slaves behind him return to their chores, either disinterested in his fate or painfully aware that they are powerless to intervene. In any movie about any man, this near hanging would make for a striking image, but here, of course, it takes on added meaning because of the significance of the subject matter. In this one shot, McQueen does much to sum up the entire American slave experience in which life was little more than trying to avoid slipping into death.
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But after watching <em>12 Years a Slave</em> for a second time, I wonder if a more significant shot might happen a little later in the sequence — after a fellow slave dares to bring water to Solomon, after the plantation overseer is seen pacing on the nearby veranda, waiting for his boss and Solomon's owner (Benedict Cumberbatch's William Ford) to return to determine Solomon's fate, and after a few slave children are spotted playing in the field behind Solomon, laughing obliviously. It's a shot of the mistress of the house (Liza J. Bennett) standing at the railing of her mansion balcony calmly observing Solomon, whose shoulders and rope-bound neck are out of focus in the foreground. In this one image, only a few seconds long, McQueen does much to sum up the institutionalized indifference that's core to not only America's shameful slave history but to any instance in which human suffering or inequality is allowed to persist in plain view.
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In this sequence and others, <em>12 Years a Slave</em> repeatedly observes the oh-so-thin and often arbitrary line that exists between those relegated to suffering and those allowed to avoid it, even if only momentarily. Solomon, of course, is Exhibit A: a free black man living in a home with his wife and two children one moment, who upon being kidnapped becomes a slave assigned the name "Platt" the next. But consider, too, the early scene in which a well-dressed black man walks into the store where Solomon and his wife are shopping for luggage, seemingly as free as they are until his white master enters, apologizes for the disturbance and leads the man away by the collar as if he were a loose dog. Or the scene in which another man on Solomon's boat toward slavery manages to be saved from that fate by his white owner and races off the boat without looking back. Or the scene in which Solomon, considering escape from the Epps plantation, manages to stumble upon and walk away from the hanging of another black man solely because he's wearing a pendant that marks him as Epps property. Or the scene in which Solomon avoids certain death by convincing the vicious Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender) that he couldn't possibly have written a letter intended for delivery in the north, and Epps, buying Solomon's account that he has been hoodwinked by the duplicitous Armsby (Garret Dillahunt), a white man, says regretfully, "Were he not free and white, Platt. Were he not free and white."
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Why are some deemed worthy of deprivation and others not? As Solomon tells Tibeats (Paul Dano), when it is suggested that the wood panels on the clapboard cabin he is constructing are uneven, "It's all a matter of perspective. From where you stand you might see different. ... I simply ask that you use all your senses before rendering judgment." As Mistress Ford gazes from her balcony at Solomon hanging from a tree, we can't be sure exactly what she's feeling, but it seems safe to assume she isn't using all of her senses. And given that Mistress Ford wouldn't have been born with an innate hatred or indifference to people with dark skin, it seems safe to assume that she learned to ignore those senses over time, ultimately seeing the world from a perspective in which the enslavement and brutalization of black people was perfectly appropriate. Solomon, on the other hand, is so aware of an alternative to this perspective that he deduces that his relatively compassionate enslaver, William Ford, must be a victim like he is, calling him a "decent man" who is a slaver only "under the circumstances." It's an assessment that echoes in memory later, after Ford cuts down Solomon from that tree and arranges his transfer to the Epps plantation to avoid the murderous wrath of Tibeats. "Whatever the circumstances, you are an exceptional nigger, Platt," Ford tells Solomon, "but I fear no good will come of it." Bottom line translation: You'll never be more than a nigger.
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In that moment, as Ford shows a curious, inconsistent and yet unmistakable affection for the slave lying on his floor, still bound at the wrists and ankles, it's tempting to object to this injustice in light of Solomon's equally unmistakable exceptionality, and because of his documented freedom. (<em>It's so obvious he doesn't deserve to be a slave! How can Ford not see it?</em>) But that's the bait in this movie's trap. Solomon's freedom, of course, is no more justified than that of any other slave, and likewise his enslavement is no more inhuman. Indeed, this much should be obvious, and yet repeatedly Ford and Epps preach the Bible to their slaves while committing their ungodly acts. They get lost in Scripture, property laws, cultures and customs and ignore fundamental truths. And, sadly, these behaviors didn't end with the Emancipation Proclimation.
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"It's all a lie," Solomon tells Epps after being double-crossed by Armsby. He might as well be talking about the pretenses we cling to anytime we ignore suffering and inequality around us, which for many of us is pretty often. There is a significant difference, it must be noted, between those who are legally and forcibly enslaved and those who held down "merely" by poverty, prejudice, inadequate education, limited opportunity and so on. Alas, there's less of a difference between those who looked suffering in the face and accepted it 170 years ago and those who do the same today, which is why I'm chilled to think that when I'm looking at Mistress Ford looking at a man hanging by his neck in plain view, I'm looking at me. All that's changed are the circumstances.
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Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-41272375079272465122014-01-01T23:58:00.001-05:002014-01-02T13:56:54.924-05:00Bests of 2013<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvIF6O1ub9qYPwwB2gpCK-cXWpucBtnWdT9wuLVDVDm54xQFSka0owKNjbhpVfDtFa4c5rCG7LlILNzmdI6Q8vIOj7HkBs3UVu7D9YNK3J8fpWnrLJBBXsKPZjY5EoNjmFuaduEzlancZD/s1600/StoriesWeTell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvIF6O1ub9qYPwwB2gpCK-cXWpucBtnWdT9wuLVDVDm54xQFSka0owKNjbhpVfDtFa4c5rCG7LlILNzmdI6Q8vIOj7HkBs3UVu7D9YNK3J8fpWnrLJBBXsKPZjY5EoNjmFuaduEzlancZD/s400/StoriesWeTell.jpg" /></a></div>
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2013 was the year that this blog gathered dust. Statistically speaking, I posted nine times, but even that sad number is misleading: three of those posts pertained to 2012 releases, one was my annual <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-eyes-of-march-2013.html" target="_blank">Eyes of March</a> celebration and one was my <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/2013/04/remembering-roger-ebert.html" target="_blank">reflection on Roger Ebert</a> upon his death in April. Alas, the only 2013 theatrical release that I reviewed in this space was <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/2013/04/penrose-stairs-to-wonder.html" target="_blank"><em>To the Wonder</em></a> — the movie the showed me what it feels like to not fall under the spell of a Terrence Malick movie.
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This wasn't by design. That is, mentally speaking, I didn't disassemble this blog, put it back in its box and stick it up in the attic for storage, although doing so would have eliminated some clutter in my mental living space. No, rather the blog was always there, never totally out of view, like a piece of exercise equipment once used regularly but now only functional for the purposes of air-drying delicates — a fitting analogy, actually, because on many occasions last year when I thought I was ready to start blogging again I was amazed at how quickly and completely my writing muscles had atrophied.
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I won't bore you with the reasons for this hiatus except to say that there were several factors, personally and professionally, that demanded my attention and energies elsewhere. I guess that's my way of saying that it didn't feel like much of a choice. And I mention that now because I can't say I know if 2014 will be a return to earlier years of production or more of the recent trend. I certainly have a desire — and, to a degree, even a plan — for writing more moving forward, because I miss it. Oh, how I miss it. But until things actually change, it's just a fantasy.
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All of the above is prologue to this: Not writing about movies has had a considerable effect on my relationship with them. At the most basic level, there's something to be said for the heightened attention of watching a movie with the intent to write about it — and the more I went without writing this past year, the more my mind was prone to wandering. But on a deeper level, this past year I gained a special appreciation for just how much the act of writing about a movie is tied to my basic understanding of it. I mean, it wasn't a total surprise: one of the reasons I've cited over the years for why I write about movies in the first place is because it helps me engage with them. But what I didn't expect was how fleeting a movie's power could be if I didn't make some attempt to write about it, even if "writing about it" meant just scribbling thoughts in my notebook I knew I wasn't going to have the time to reshape in a fully formed review.
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The purpose of this post is to take a moment to look back on the new releases I saw this past year, and as I do that I have no doubt — none — that my picks for best movies of the year would be different if I'd written about all of these movies, turning them over several more times in my brain, holding on to their strengths and weaknesses a little longer and arguing about them in the comments section of this and other blogs. (Aside: More than the reviewing, that's what I miss: the written dialogue about movies with other movie fans. It's one of the reasons my <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/p/conversations.html" target="_blank">conversations series</a> with Ed Howard was so much fun, back before Ed became a father and I fell into this black hole of nonwriting. Comments sections are apparently passe now, which is a shame because Twitter just doesn't cut it, and the 140-character limitation is only part of the problem. There's something about the nature of that social media forum that seems to put as much focus on the <em>who</em> as the <em>what</em>, as if one can't reject or support the content of a tweet without simultaneously rejecting or praising the tweeter, which thus seems to create an environment in which respectful, lively debate amongst established friends is a rareity in that space. But I digress.)
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That said, there's an upside to the slightness of my mental notebook: the movies that stand out in my memory stand out for good reason, with the noise of controversy, hype, contrarianism and so on mostly nonexistent. Thus, determining the films that had the greatest effect on me was remarkably simple. (For the first time in more than a decade, I didn't see a single new release more than once, so each movie got a fair shot.) So while I can't look back and remember the nuances of specific trees in the forest as I could in <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/2013/01/bests-of-2012.html" target="_blank">previous years</a>, I gaze upon 2013 as if it's Monument Valley, with prodigious spectacles standing out in plain sight.
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So let's do this ...
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Of the 46 new releases I saw this past year, several were dull, bloated or uninspired. But thankfully only three movies were aggressively painful for almost their entirety: <em>The Fifth Estate</em>, <em>The World's End</em> and, yep, <em>To the Wonder</em>. The first of those three is brutally written and features a lead performance by Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange that struck me as what it might look like to see Tilda Swinton portraying <em>Manhunter</em>'s Francis Dollarhyde doing an impression of Cumberbatch's Khan. The second two films are monotonous, one-trick ponies about soulless robots who look a lot like real people but just aren't.
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Just beyond that small collection of memorably unpleasant 2013 movies are several that might have joined them if not for a few standout moments that almost made up for the entire experience. Movies like <em>The Great Gatsby</em>, which is graced by a beautifully orchestrated entrance by Leonardo DiCaprio as the movie's titular bigshot that marvelously weaves the actor's star power with that of the character. Movies like <em>Man of Steel</em>, which is utterly undone by its exhausting action sequences but includes some charming sequences with Kevin Costner, as Superman's earthly father, imparting the kind of tender love and care that you figure Ray Kinsella would have provided if the man of steel had crash landed in his cornfield. Movies like <em>The Lone Ranger</em>, which quite literally had almost put me to sleep when, roughly two hours into the movie, we get our first dose of the William Tell Overture, and I shot forward to the edge of my seat, reminded yet again of the power of a great score.
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I won't waste time on all those middle-of-the-road movies, ones like <em>After Earth</em>, where in true M. Night Shyamalan fashion everything has a name and needs to be described, or <em>Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues</em>, which takes the quantity over quality approach to comedy and every now and then hits home (a joke about the capital of my home state of Oregon killed me way more than it should have), or <em>The Internship</em>, which made me laugh but left me unable to remember exactly why within 5 minutes of leaving the theater, and so on. Those are the movies capsule reviews are made for — and since I'll be doing nothing more than capsules for my favorite movies of the year, we should move along.
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I also won't go into detail on the assortment of movies that I definitely admired and really wanted to love, and in some cases was profoundly affected by here and there, but that ultimately didn't linger with me. Movies like <em>Frances Ha</em>, <em>Fruitvale Station</em>, <em>Her</em>, <em>Inside Llewyn Davis</em>, <em>Mud</em>, <em>Nebraska</em> and <em>The Spectacular Now</em>.
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Nope, let's just dive into my top 10 movies of the year (listed in alphabetical order), which I identified as those that left the strongest impression and that, more than the rest, call me back to re-experience them.
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<strong>12 Years a Slave:</strong> Knowing the subject matter, and director Steve McQueen's penchant for viscerally depicting gruesomeness and suffering, perhaps I went into <em>12 Years a Slave</em> with too many layers of defense in place, because the one thing that's nagged me since walking out of the theater several months ago it is how startlingly unemotional the entire experience was. And yet the film has haunted me, not because of the despair of Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor, excellent as always), or the savagery of the Epps who enslave him (Michael Fassbender and Sarah Paulson, ditto), or any of the moments of grand brutality. No, what really shook me to the core are all those moments of passive cruelty. Much discussed, and rightfully so, is the memorable shot of Solomon hanging from a noose, digging his toes into the mud beneath him to try to avoid choking, as fellow slaves on the plantation go about their business in the background, both because they have no other recourse and also because a slave hanging from a tree isn't an unusual event on the plantation. But equally powerful is the way McQueen repeatedly shows the proximity of the ramshackle slave cabins to the Epps' mansion home, just off the porch, much the way a backyard doghouse might be in view of your living room window. Or the way the screenplay, by John Ridley, allows the slave whose children have been taken from her to remain in constant mourning — in defiance of her enslaver's casual insistence that they will soon be forgotten — because how could someone ever recover from that? It's these comparatively subtle elements that somehow cut deepest, finding skin to crack that hasn't already been scarred over by all our history lessons. As a story of one man, <em>12 Years a Slave</em> is forgettable. But along the way it challenges us in surprisingly subtle ways to reexamine the vast amounts of suffering we watch happening around us almost every day, just off the edge of our porches, and dismiss in part because it's happening in plain sight.
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<strong>All Is Lost:</strong> Robert Redford's restraint in this picture is remarkable. Not because Redford is an actor known for chewing the scenery. Not because his character hardly speaks. But because Redford is so damn expressive despite almost never even employing many, you know, <em>expressions</em>. You couldn't watch 5 minutes of <em>Homeland</em> this past season without Claire Danes or Damian Lewis getting into a panting contest, but over a 106-minute film in which Redford is almost always on screen he hardly does as much as sigh, and he certainly never mutters to himself. Think about that for a second. No, really. Stop and consider that. Because this is essentially a silent film, but the movie speaks constantly. Redford's character does, too, it just happens through action. I'm not crazy about the ending of writer/director J.C. Chandor's film, but he, Redford and cinematographers Frank G. DeMarco and Peter Zuccarini have created perhaps the most cinematic picture of the year.
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<strong>American Hustle:</strong> My favorite David O. Russell film by a mile. The acting is superb — playful and yet authentic. (Aside: The last two movies I saw this year were <em>Her</em> and <em>American Hustle</em>, and to that I say: Amy fucking Adams, ladies and gentlemen! I can't think of another actress who could play such polar opposites so effortlessly. Even in <em>American Hustle</em>, where she plays a character playing a character, and often struggling to figure out which character is the real one, it never looks like "acting." Phenomenal.) But what really impresses me about <em>American Hustle</em> is its structure. I'm not sure if I should credit the screenwriters (Russell and Eric Singer) or the editors (Alan Baumgarten, Jay Cassidy and Crispin Struthers), so how about all of them, because here's the thing: in the best way, <em>American Hustle</em> feels like one big tangled ball of yarn. One shot and scene leads to the next, and the next, and the next, and somehow none of the scenes feel like standalone pieces that could possibly be cut out. It's all one big lovely cinematic experience, zigzagging here and there and looping back. Fun!
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<strong>Before Midnight:</strong> I can't imagine we'll ever see another trilogy like this one. Each of the films works distinctly on its own. All of the films are elegantly linked. Which is the best? They all are; each film captures Jesse and Celine perfectly in that space and time. It's clear that director Richard Linklater and his stars and fellow architects Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy care deeply about these characters — but somehow they avoid being too precious with them. Each of these films has reveled the everyday ugliness of these characters (their insecurities, their annoying habits, their self-delusions) with a frankness that is tough to match, yet without ever losing compassion for these characters. It's because their faults are so apparent that their love is so moving and heroic.
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<strong>Blue is the Warmest Colour:</strong> Here's all I know about the controversy surrounding this film: Apparently the two main actresses felt that the director treated them with cruelty. I'm sorry to hear that, because the end product is wonderful — one of the most convincing depictions of young love I've ever seen. I believe there also was a degree of controversy (or at least hype) about the length and graphic nature of the sex scenes in this film, and that's not surprising. But in a film almost exactly 3 hours long, those scenes are perfectly balanced with a handful of others that stretch beyond what was minimally required to advance the plot but that ultimately contribute to the film's extraordinary power: the scene in which Adele braves a gay bar and meets Emma; the scene in which Adele is hazed by her friends; the scene in which Adele intentionally loses herself in her party hosting duties because she doesn't feel comfortable amongst Emma's art world friends; the scene in which Adele and Emma scream at one another in their apartment; the scene in which Adele and Emma meet at a restaurant in the aftermath. This movie chronicles this relationship in the same way many of us would chronicle our own experience with love: it obsesses over those defining moments that would linger in memory for years to come. Because of that patience and thoroughness, when the movie ends it indeed feels as if time has passed; Adele has aged before our eyes. The camera loves actress Adele Exarchopoulos (Adele), and she and Lea Seydoux (Emma) provide performances that at least artistically justify their emotional and physical nakedness, if not necessarily their treatment on set.
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<strong>The Broken Circle Breakdown:</strong> I'm not sure any fiction film was quite as moving for me as this one, and yet I'm going to write little about it because of the high likelihood that you haven't seen it. Like some strange combination of <em>Once</em> and <em>Blue Valentine</em>, <em>The Broken Circle Breakdown</em> is a musical and a gut-wrenching tragedy that is as adept at portraying love and passion as it is at conjuring anger and despair. It's certainly not a flawless picture. There are some George W. Bush references, for example, that can be architecturally defended but that in actual practice seem dated, forced and ultimately distracting. But the movie is devastating anyway (in the way I wish <em>12 Years a Slave</em> would have been). Lead actors Johan Heldenbergh and Veerle Baetens deliver vulnerable performances and mine nuance from the bluegrass music that dominates the film. One example can be found near the end, in a performance of "If I Needed You," which is full of longing, loneliness, pain, disillusionment and desperation far beyond the overt lyrics of the song. There's so much going on between the main characters in that scene that I was stunned when I downloaded the soundtrack afterward and realized "If I Needed You" is but 3 minutes long. I will return to this movie only when I'm ready.
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<strong>Captain Phillips:</strong> "Tom Hanks. Everybody loves Tom Hanks." If you didn't watch the footage of Steve Martin receiving his honorary Oscar, dedicate 20 minutes to it and watch <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfIwHdOxfaY" target="_blank">Martin Short's remarks</a>, followed by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9W03hbFIHY" target="_blank">Tom Hanks' introduction</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=381aYexNTuc" target="_blank">Martin's acceptance speech</a>, from which I borrowed the quote. It's everything the Academy Awards should be, and while it's frustrating that these lifetime achievement awards have been removed from the program proper and sent to their own ghetto, the upside is that they get more tribute time. But I digress. Yes, everybody loves Tom Hanks, and yet we take his talent for granted. So far as I can tell, he's a guy without established moves. He doesn't do the wide-eyed, loud thing that Pacino does. He doesn't do the squinty thing De Niro does. He doesn't point to his forehead like DiCaprio does. He doesn't shield his face in a moment of embarrassment like Hopkins does. And so on. No, what makes Tom Hanks so superb is that he has the confidence to give each performance exactly what it needs and nothing more. Not all his performances need to be dialed up to 11, and he doesn't try. And in <em>Captain Phillips</em>, a movie that's a nice tight procedural thriller and then starts to lose steam, Hanks salvages everything with what might be the finest 10 or so minutes of his career. Minutes in which he <em>goes there</em>. Goes to 11. Does it in a way that seems utterly new — like nothing he's done before, like nothing that any other actor has done before. It's moving and it's staggering, and it's just pure excellence. And credit to director Paul Greengrass because one of the reasons that Hanks' final scene has such tremendous power is because of who he acts with: a woman playing a military doctor who for all I know is a real-life military doctor portraying herself. The scene works because the doctor is just doing her job — a job she's done before. She doesn't know that she's in a movie, that this is a <em>big moment</em>, that if Steven Spielberg were directing the thing that John Williams would be conducting the orchestra just to her left. Nope, she just does her job, and Hanks <em>goes there</em>, because the moment demands it.
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<strong>Gravity:</strong> This is the weak link in this list. I want to be clear about that. I was tempted to list perhaps <em>Blackfish</em> or <em>The Act of Killing</em>, which got under my skin more than any other movie that didn't make the top-10 here, and certainly more than <em>Gravity</em> did. But even though I wasn't utterly wowed by <em>Gravity</em>, even though it often made me think of two relatively recent science fiction movies I like a heck of a lot more (Steven Soderbergh's <em>Solaris</em> and Danny Boyle's <em>Sunshine</em>), even though I found George Clooney's character to be completely obnoxious, even though I thought director Alfonso Cauron undercut the femaleness of his main character by making Sandra Bullock look like a sexless cyborg and, finally, even though the backstory about Bullock's character is absurdly and clumsily forced into the plot, well, I've found myself wanting to revisit it. So it makes the list. We'll see if that second viewing increases my admiration or the reverse. But despite its faults, yeah, I'm gonna go there: <em>Gravity</em> is pulling me back. (Oh, almost forgot: It's 91 minutes long. Points for efficiency.)
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<strong>Stories We Tell:</strong> Based on single viewings, this is my favorite movie of the year — heartfelt, thoughtful and moving. In theory, this is Sarah Polley's investigation into her own life, into her mother's past. But the effect of her film is far greater. Cable TV has been dominated in recent years by two outstanding shows, <em>Breaking Bad</em> and <em>Mad Men</em>, that have lead characters with dual identities — and much of the fascination of those shows is trying to figure out which of those identities is most authentic. But <em>Stories We Tell</em> deftly demonstrates that we all contain multitudes, and that these multitudes aren't either/or, they're all/always — brought out by context and circumstance. When we face life's challenges we often feel compelled to try to understand what happened, to trace a mystery to its source the way Polley tries to trace her paternal lineage. <em>Stories We Tell</em> shows the pointlessness of that pursuit. Life is too messy, too complex to be tied up with a bow.
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<strong>The Wolf of Wall Street:</strong> It's straight outta <em>Goodfellas</em> and <em>Casino</em>, and thank goodness for that. <em>The Wolf of Wall Street</em> is one of the best pictures of Martin Scorsese's career. (Related: If Yo-Yo Ma stops by your house, hand the guy a cello.) This movie is alive — it oozes confidence and is overflowing with the thrill of great cinema. That some people are interpreting that thrill of great cinema as some kind of endorsement of the characters here, well, it baffles me. The characters in this movie are monsters, and there's not a hint of nuance in that. Do they have a good time? Sure, just like any addict consumed by the high of their drug of choice. Do we have a good time? If you can get high from great cinema, absolutely, which isn't an endorsement of the characters either. The only thing holding this back from being the greatest movie of the year is that it makes the mistake of so many action movies these days and believes that more is more. That said, if you're going to spend more time than necessary watching grand destruction, better to do that with this potent, relatable, weighty picture than amidst the crumbling skyscrapers of so many superhero movies.
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Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-6701004669813217632013-12-01T10:39:00.004-05:002013-12-01T10:39:57.857-05:00Reaching the Trees: The Great Escape on a Great Expanse<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbXQFIw7cogGFCYL8_JZo7QlzUQOq4YwdzPU1k85SJrQpbmQVGClgo6IxdXvMi_vl8iH3Ih8VYqg3S-cf0V7DDsiy1zATJqZ3LlnYsG9UcnXiG_7ReoDZS7DLOL-2scy5sZ5ysEfsHKuBb/s1600/AFI_TheGreatEscape.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbXQFIw7cogGFCYL8_JZo7QlzUQOq4YwdzPU1k85SJrQpbmQVGClgo6IxdXvMi_vl8iH3Ih8VYqg3S-cf0V7DDsiy1zATJqZ3LlnYsG9UcnXiG_7ReoDZS7DLOL-2scy5sZ5ysEfsHKuBb/s400/AFI_TheGreatEscape.jpg" /></a></div>
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I'd seen it dozens of times. But never like this.
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Friday night, at the AFI Silver, just outside of Washington, DC, I saw <em>The Great Escape</em> as if for the first time — because for the first time I saw the 1963 classic stretched across a theater screen.
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To say that viewing fulfilled a lifelong dream would be an exaggeration, but only by about 11 years. My uncle introduced me to <em>The Great Escape</em> in my preteen years on two grainy VHS tapes — and in so doing he connected me with a movie that instantly became one of my favorites and that fanned the flames of my growing passion for cinema.
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<em>The Great Escape</em> wasn't the oldest movie I'd seen to that point or, at 172 minutes, even the longest. But it was certainly the oldest and longest movie I'd ever seen that captured my attention from the opening frames and never let go, filling me with as much excitement as the "faster-and-more-intense" <em>Star Wars</em> trilogy I'd been raised on, and anything else I'd seen.
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Although I wouldn't have been able to articulate it at the time, <em>The Great Escape</em> was the movie that convinced me that the thrills of cinema could be timeless, and I so trusted its power that I frequently showed it to friends over the rest of my middle school, high school and even college years as a way to gain their faith in the potential of movies released prior to our generation — liberating them from the prison of artistic ageism.
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It worked. And after seeing <em>The Great Escape</em> on Friday, I'm as confident as ever that it still works, even if the movie's signature stunt — the motorcycle jump pulled off without the assistance of CGI by Steve McQueen's buddy and stuntman Bud Ekins — is modest by modern standards.
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Sitting in the middle of the back row of the main seating area at the AFI Silver, I was a few seats away from two people seeing <em>The Great Escape</em> for the first time: a boy of about 13 who munched on popcorn throughout, and a woman in her late 40s, there with her husband and her husband's friend.
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My only apprehension about seeing the movie in a theater stemmed from the potential for the experience to be marred by those quick to demonstrate their fandom: moviegoers who would whistle to Elmer Bernstein's famous score in the opening credits and laugh just a hair before all the punchlines to make sure we knew this wasn't their first time.
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Thankfully, everyone behaved. The audience was quiet, enraptured and always of-the-moment, and thus the two loudest emoters were those newbies sitting nearby.
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For once, hearing those around me was delightful. The boy laughed with his whole body when Cavendish plummeted through three plank-deprived wooden bunks. The woman let out a whimper when Ives made his slow, suicidal trudge toward the wire after the discovery of "Tom." And both of them gasped — genuinely gasped — when MacDonald blew his French identity by responding in English to a German's "good luck."
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It was comforting hearing a movie I love so much having such an effect on them.
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It was just as comforting feeling the movie having such an effect on me.
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<em>The Great Escape</em> is a heist movie in many respects, except this time it's about breaking out instead of breaking in. There are plans and schemes aplenty — three tunnels, lots of wood, even more dirt and 250 men in need of disguises and false documentation. There's ingenuity and good old-fashioned work ethic.
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Process takes such precedence that, even in a movie just shy of three hours, there isn't much time for character development — and yet we glean who these men are by their roles in the grand operation. James Garner's Hendley is resourceful, charming and cocky — because that's what it takes to be the scrounger. Richard Attenborough's Bartlett is demanding, indomitable and a bit mad — because that's what it takes to be Big X. Donald Pleasence's Blythe is the epitome of tea-sipping calm — because who else would have the patience to be the forger? And so on.
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John Sturges directed the film, based on a screenplay by James Clavell and W.R. Burnett, with astonishing efficiency. The first 23 minutes establish, through numerous absurd failed attempts, the difficulty of escape. The next hour is a long domino chain of obstacles crashing into one another: How to get out? Dig. How to dig? Through the foundation of the huts. How to blast through the concrete without arousing detection? Create diversions. How to shore up the tunnels? Wood. How to get the wood? Strip it from everyplace not in plain sight. Etcetera.
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Only after the first tunnel is discovered by the German "ferrets" (need I say, "spoiler warning"?), and all of the prisoners' attention is put into the second tunnel ("Harry"), does the movie linger enough to allow us to appreciate the emotional toll of their labor, from Blythe's deteriorating eyesight to Danny's deteriorating sanity, so that we know how crucial it is that they succeed.
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My favorite shots in the movie have always been any inside the tunnel, particularly those that capture its unforgettable combination of claustrophobic tightness and mouth-to-terminus expansiveness, which are especially apparent when the men ride rope-pulled dollies from station to station.
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It's palpable, that tunnel. Damp and earthy. In each shot, you can feel all the effort and determination that went into carving it, one small shovel scoop at a time. The tunnel is the physical representation of the POWs' refusal to give up or give in. It's also their lifeline. All of the prisoners' hopes are invested in that tunnel, and so when they end up 20 feet short of the trees beyond the prison camp, it isn't just a logistical or strategic crisis. It's a dagger to the heart.
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Twenty feet short.
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In a way, that's how I watched <em>The Great Escape</em> for almost 10 years. And like the prisoners who built "Harry," I had no idea how much I was missing.
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My well-worn VHS copy of <em>The Great Escape</em> was cropped in pan-and-scan, which was the format that aired on TV at the time. So it wasn't until <em>The Great Escape</em> got its DVD release, when I was in college, that I first saw it in widescreen. And on that first viewing — and even still — I was blown away by the significance of those little bits that had been trimmed from the periphery.
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In the initial shots of the camp, for example, the widescreen canvas brought into view more men unloading from more trucks, a seemingly insignificant detail that somehow exponentially enhanced the vastness of the entire physical space. Much later on, the shots of Hilts riding his motorcycle toward the Alps brought forth a "new" (albeit original and intended) panoramic grandeur.
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But of all the widescreen upgrades, the most significant was this: In the pan-and-scan version, we never once saw the entirety of Hilts' familiar cell in the cooler in a single shot. Indeed, in those famous moments when he throws his baseball against the wall, the ball would disappear off the right side of the screen — sometimes quickly captured with a cut, and other times merely bouncing around beyond the frame.
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The effect of needing multiple shots to reveal each wall of Hilts' cell, combined with the loud echo of the baseball slamming against the concrete, created the sense of a room at least two times larger than it proves to be when the movie is seen in its original format. Only in widescreen could I fully appreciate the claustrophobia of Hilts' solitary confinement, not to mention the aesthetic beauty of the single-shot composition.
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Watching <em>The Great Escape</em> on the big screen for the first time didn't redefine any shots in such a significant way, but it did feel like a new movie, despite all its wonderful familiarities.
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Mostly, it was the little things — those details so easily lost in the background on even the widest of widescreen TVs that now felt like part of the foreground. The numbers on the huts. The expressions of the German "goons." The lettering painted on various trains and storefronts in the scenes outside the camp.
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I can't say these "enhancements" changed the movie itself (certainly not like upgrading from pan-and-scan to widescreen), but they did change my experience.
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Because make no mistake: size matters — at least if you know how to use it. And Sturges does.
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Particularly striking on the big screen is the movie's strong use of depth in several shots, like the scene in which the Germans come into the hut where Danny is working on widening the mouth of "Harry," or the one much later in which Bartlett, having made a narrow escape, picks up a newspaper on a quiet street in an effort to blend in and catch his breath.
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(Also rich with detail on the big screen is the left-to-right pan when Bartlett enters the hut on the night of the escape, and walks by the other prisoners waiting in the queue.)
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It would be going too far to suggest that modern filmmakers don't fill the frame with such detail. But so often these days the big screen is filled with CGI elements that, to my eye at least, still lack the tangibility of flesh-and-bone and brick-and-mortar. The compositions of <em>The Great Escape</em>, like many movies of its era, indeed feel "more real."
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Having said that, I suppose it's time to mention that my first big-screen experience with <em>The Great Escape</em> was a high-definition digital projection — a format that many cinephiles regard with begrudging acceptance or outright derision. I'm not sure that a celluloid copy is still in rotation amongst revival houses (I know it's never come to the AFI Silver in my decade of living in the area), but if such a print exists I'd love to see it.
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And yet for a movie like <em>The Great Escape</em> (or <em>Lawrence of Arabia</em>, which I've had the pleasure to see on the big screen in both 70mm and 4K digital formats), I'm of the opinion that there's greater upside in faithfulness to scale than in faithfulness to texture — and unless you only buy DVDs of movies that were digital in the first place, or unless you're equally happy to watch a movie on an iPad or a widescreen TV, you probably agree with me.
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Whether Friday's viewing was my first or last big-screen experience with <em>The Great Escape</em>, the effect is sure to linger, and not in the ways I necessarily expected.
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Yes, the motorcycle chase seems even bigger in a theater (it's especially thrilling to be able to recognize McQueen's face several frames earlier as he zooms in from the distance), but the same sequence on Blu-ray won't suddenly seem small. Indeed, none of the movie's adventure or suspense will be diminished in the slightest in my humble home theater.
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Rather, from here on, all my viewings of <em>The Great Escape</em> will be emotionally enhanced — not by the romanticism of seeing an epic on the big screen but by the intimacy of it.
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It was a given that the panoramas would be spectacular in a real theater, but I wasn't prepared for what it would mean to the film's emotional heft to be able read a character's expression in a <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDjNmGSqiDMqznP9uWsnAEwou-8I5NyiObwD2bu6Rj9_G_TYkwKsBrZkLVYIign8V24SRQWOx3wtq1C6MsWqD9gKDylORnlINUrah_H-26MJeOzZoOfEB9MapKplxPna42icPJ7_9sd9SS/s1600/BartlettCaught.jpg" target="_blank">long shot</a>, or to have a <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXsNO3toLMkiNxpyx6ZlhPhC24Nze7V6v-jTol8-6ovHNTcjBFSOLth2Ei-5ZxXq-Oe34xAh_s3i9HqVd5Nk3tNZQgf391WBsNyhpskdHvN20ASaJtVHEB8c9ZCa4Pli6sk7utd5dmiVHu/s1600/McQueenGlint.jpg" target="_blank">medium shot</a> play like an extreme close-up.
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The agony of Charles Bronson's Danny, the playfulness of Garner's Hendley, the solitude of Pleasence's Blythe, the desperation of Attenborough's Bartlett, the moxie of McQueen's Hilts — it was always there.
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But now, thanks to the big screen, it's even greater.
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Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-11772943463340172502013-04-23T09:10:00.002-04:002013-04-23T09:10:23.439-04:00In the Shadow of Giants: Elway to Marino<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIoWgESQCwvbj74S2JI6m9tmKptQlZy53ilK7Qq8SS5jzapD5TXY3sKIx3cgruvtVMfuLMCGkVONJ2UZePBV7k49AHVnOd3okHuxSLMYvBCYWM7Hv__4IIv_Zt6L-NTJ-_VyzyRjnoPBqO/s1600/ElwaytoMarino.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIoWgESQCwvbj74S2JI6m9tmKptQlZy53ilK7Qq8SS5jzapD5TXY3sKIx3cgruvtVMfuLMCGkVONJ2UZePBV7k49AHVnOd3okHuxSLMYvBCYWM7Hv__4IIv_Zt6L-NTJ-_VyzyRjnoPBqO/s475/ElwaytoMarino.jpg" /></a></center>
<br />The 1983 NFL Draft produced more great quarterbacks than any other before or since. And that was just the first round. Six quarterbacks were taken in the first 27 picks that year, including two who would become among the top five (or so) ever to play the position, one who would play in four Super Bowls, two who would be fairly average and, not to be forgotten, a guy named Ken O'Brien who would flash enough brilliance to be named to two Pro Bowls but remain forever overshadowed by guys in his draft class named John Elway, Dan Marino and Jim Kelly. <em>Elway to Marino</em>, the latest entry in the ESPN Films "<a href="http://espn.go.com/30for30/index" target="_blank">30 for 30</a>" series, is fixated, no surprise, on the guys at the top. But in a documentary collection that has produced great films like <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/2010/06/bitter-reality-tv-june-17-1994.html" target="_blank"><em>June 17, 1994</em></a>, <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/2010/06/beyond-game-two-escobars.html" target="_blank"><em>The Two Escobars</em></a> and <a href="http://www.coolercinema.blogspot.com/2011/09/ticket-to-dark-side-catching-hell.html" target="_blank"><em>Catching Hell</em></a>, <em>Elway to Marino</em> is nothing more than a Ken O'Brien.<br />
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That's nothing to be ashamed of, but it's not much to cling to either. Director Ken Rodgers retells the events of the draft clearly and evocatively through talking-head interviews and archival footage, even going as far as to recreate the banquet room where then-NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle announced the picks under a gaudy chandelier. But drafts are only so interesting, particularly in retrospect — even drafts in which the consensus best talent available, Elway, used a potential Major League Baseball career as leverage to avoid signing with the Baltimore Colts, which had the top pick that year. And for all the ways Elway's draft experience was unusual, Marino's is actually typical. Sure, his eventual professional output suggests he should have been selected a lot sooner than 27th. But it wasn't all that long ago that NFL MVP quarterback Aaron Rodgers fell to the 25th pick in 2005, suffering all the while in the green room. And all-time legends Joe Montana and Tom Brady didn't get picked until the third and sixth <em>rounds</em>, respectively. So this stuff happens.<br />
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Ken Rodgers does his best to make the 1983 draft seem extraordinary, but it isn't really. That year, like any year, some guys were picked where they should have been, and other guys weren't. Some guys began productive NFL careers, and other guys got one step closer to unemployment. Some picks generated applause, and Jets picks inspired boos. So it was, and so it always will be. Which means that if you've seen any NFL draft, you'll feel like you've seen this one — and reliving Rozelle's introductions doesn't create quite the same nostalgic electricity as an actual classic game. Making matters worse, the "30 for 30" series has already produced a pair of films covering the same general time frame and even some of the same tangential stories, <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/2009/10/playing-love-songs-band-that-wouldnt.html" target="_blank"><em>The Band That Wouldn't Die</em></a> and <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/2009/10/unevenly-cooked-small-potatoes-who.html" target="_blank">Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL?</a>, which leaves the perfectly capable <em>Elway to Marino</em> unfairly covered in the stink of been there, done that.
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Thus the pleasures of this documentary aren't provided by its narrative but by its trappings. The 1983 draft room, for example, is, in retrospect, awesomely modest. No players taking the stage to pose with the jersey of their new team — in fact not much of a stage to take; just a podium on a small, slightly elevated platform where Rozelle announced each pick. No glitzy ESPN production with Chris Berman's voice booming off the slick-back hairdo of Mel Kiper Jr.; just three guys sitting in typical banquet room chairs at a table with typical banquet room skirting looking like something out of a Ron Burgundy movie. No huge Radio City Music Hall crowd to react to each pick; just a hundred or so fans looking on from the balcony of the New York Sheraton ballroom.<br />
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One of those fans looks like a mini-Andy Reid, with a bright red mustache and ample chest hair protruding from the open neckline of his striped ketchup-and-mustard colored shirt, presumably from the Ronald McDonald Collection. The first time we glimpse this super-fan, he's standing with his buddies, dutifully scribbling notes like a Trekkie trying to transcribe William Shatner's keynote address at an annual Star Trek convention. It's an image that's simultaneously sweet and hilarious, and it's enough to make you reach for the pause button. Thankfully, Rodgers knows it. Because soon enough the super-fan is back, being interviewed on his own, looking appropriately puzzled by the Jets' selection of O'Brien from far off U.C. Davis, and getting no help from the interviewer who mistakenly refers to the new New York quarterback as "Ken Davis." That moment alone makes <em>Elway to Marino</em> worth watching.<br />
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Too much of the rest, like most NFL drafts, feels like much ado about nothing. <em>Elway to Marino</em> closes with the suggestion that the 1983 draft, which provided days of curiosity about how the Colts would handle Elway's preemptive holdout, sparked what is now an annual ritual of hype and excess. And that might be true, and certainly that would have been a more appropriate entryway to this story. But instead <em>Elway to Marino</em>, which is sorely lacking the directorial fascination of so many other entries in the "30 for 30" series, tries to position the events of April 26, 1983, as one of those "you never forget where you were when ..." sorts of historic moments, and, like so many draft picks, it fails to live up to those unfairly lofty expectations.<br />
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If every draft disappointment has a retroactive tell, a detail that in hindsight makes one wonder how the erring team didn't see it coming, <em>Elway to Marino</em>'s tell is its fascination with the journals of Marvin Demoff, the agent of both titular quarterbacks. "Demoff had a plan, and he would record each step of it in a diary that until now has never been made public," narrates Tom Selleck early in the film, sounding more like John Facenda than any <em>Magnum P.I.</em> watcher could have imagined in 1983. Yes, Demoff's detailed notes provide a specific timeline that lends the documentary an air of authenticity. But on closer inspection, the diary doesn't do anything more than corroborate what Rodgers uncovers in archival footage and interviews. It's a reminder that if the worst phrase in nonfiction reporting is "We don't want to speculate, but ..." the second worst might be anything along the lines of "never before seen." Tantalizing as those words sound, more often than not they indicate someone is trying to convince us that what doesn't seem interesting actually is, purely by virtue of its uncovering. What's uncovered in <em>Elway to Marino</em> produces a solid, professional achievement worthy of pride. Of course, you might use the same words to describe the less than unforgettable career of Ken Davis. I mean, O'Brien.<br />
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Elway to Marino <em>premieres tonight on ESPN at 8 pm ET, and will rerun frequently thereafter. The Cooler hopes to review each new film in the "30 for 30" series upon its release.
<a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/p/30-for-30-series.html" target="_blank">See the Volume 1 and Volume 2 archive</a>.</em>
Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-39330190938437001732013-04-17T22:21:00.002-04:002013-04-20T12:47:51.204-04:00 Penrose Stairs: To the Wonder<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvCOCVDWdW2PMgiHzDuedbe35zFOBQQ5q3eIJPeWMjDX6fS64vNI-l2cGt-hICk35gx-Frs4HnglpXKGOx6_4GSl1Quk3f1y294EMoimg-gBajk98WAGsz9beSXbPWFYUK99KE9awubUQ5/s1600/TotheWonder.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvCOCVDWdW2PMgiHzDuedbe35zFOBQQ5q3eIJPeWMjDX6fS64vNI-l2cGt-hICk35gx-Frs4HnglpXKGOx6_4GSl1Quk3f1y294EMoimg-gBajk98WAGsz9beSXbPWFYUK99KE9awubUQ5/s475/TotheWonder.jpg" /></a></center>
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Exteriors at magic hour. Interiors before the movers come. Curtains blowing in the wind, often with someone hiding on the other side. Trees. Sky. Churning, trickling and spraying waters. Hands caressing wheat and tall grasses. Women scampering away from the camera with sprightly verve. Lost, anguished men scanning the horizon for answers. Swings. Empty chairs. Livestock. Birds. Necks and necking. Classical music. Elliptical voiceover narration. Constant searching. These are the fundamental, incontrovertible elements of Terrence Malick's cinema — those things that both his most ardent fans and his befuddled detractors agree make a Malick film distinct.<br />
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Thus, any debate about Malick's cinema typically comes down to whether those elements combine to exude the two qualities Malick most consistently explores: grace and awe. Malick's latest film, <em>To the Wonder</em>, might have more of those basic signature elements than any of its predecessors, despite being Malick's shortest film in more than three decades, but it's almost entirely lacking in grace and awe. It's all fundamentals with almost no feeling — save for emptiness. The gestures are familiar, but this time there's no soul behind them. The auteur's trademark flourishes feel less designed for this film than leftover from previous ones. <em>To the Wonder</em> is Terrence Malick via Overstock.com. <br />
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Perhaps this was inevitable. Six features into Malick's 40-year career, maybe this is where the shine rubs off and what once felt so exotic starts to look overused. It's not that Malick's five previous features were wholly original; indeed, one of the most beautiful things about Malick's oeuvre is its visual and thematic consistency. But Malick's first five films were infused with a sense of exploration, discovery and birth. (Heck, his two most recent pictures chronicle the creation of Jamestown and the entire universe.) And that's sorely lacking here. <em>To the Wonder</em> isn't filled with characters looking for inspiration so much as actors desperately in search of their motivation. Malick might be emotionally connected to this material, but like Javier Bardem's lonely priest all I could see were stained-glass windows; I didn't see The Light.
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Almost everything here comes off like a pose. Ben Affleck's performance as Neil is notable not for its scarcity of on-screen dialogue (hardly unusual in Malickland) but for the overwhelming effort he seems to put forth not-talking. (His character doesn't come off as terse or inward, despite attempts to describe him that way; more like a guy with fragile vocal cords whose doctor has ordered him to keep quiet.) Meanwhile, Olga Kurylenko, as Neil's love interest, is less a woman than a house cat, rubbing up against whatever man or structure happens to be nearby. Bardem's priest, as mentioned, indeed looks lost, but it's the kind of lost that suggests a drunk who can't remember where he parked his car the night before, or even if he has a car in the first place, no matter how often his inner monologues suggest otherwise. And then there's Rachel McAdams, as Neil's quasi-mistress, who appears so disoriented that at one point she turns toward the camera with an expression that seems to say: "Wait, you're rolling?"
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It's tempting to attribute the film's lack of emotional heft to the slightness of the plot, as if <em>To the Wonder</em> is Malick at his most narratively ambiguous. But any sense that <em>To the Wonder</em> is "about" less than its predecessors is evidence of its blandness as a final product, not an architectural deviation from the norm. Malick's movies have always been more concerned with connecting us on an emotional level than with connecting plot points — that's what allows Malick to "find" his films in the editing room, excising footage that was once thought essential. Alas, here the characters are vapid and unknowable — as empty as the rooms they so frequently occupy, as thin as shadows of Malick's previous films that blanket this picture in scene after scene.
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For someone new to Malick, <em>To the Wonder</em> might be an effective gateway: if you've never seen Malick, you've never seen anything quite like this. But I suspect that many of us who have Malick's movies printed on our heart will find it difficult to watch Kurylenko's Marina raising her hands to salute a storm without thinking about Q'orianka Kilcher's Pocahontas doing the same in <em>The New World</em>, just like it's almost impossible to watch Affleck's Neil playing by lamplight without remembering Brad Pitt's character doing the same in <em>The Tree of Life</em>. What once felt specific, organic and true now feels random and offhand, which threatens to retroactively suffocate the charms of <em>To the Wonder</em>'s predecessors. (All these years I thought I was connecting with <em>Kilcher's Pocahontas</em> in that beautiful follow-shot at the end of <em>The New World</em>; but then I saw Kurylenko's Marina mimic the same routine at least twice in this movie and realized I was merely connecting with Malick and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki's choreography.) It's like having your heart race when the pretty girl in school calls you "sweetie," only to later learn she calls <em>everyone</em> "sweetie."
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Those still fully enthralled by Malick's magic spells — and I say that with envy, not condescension — will see no fault in any of this, I'm sure. For them, pointing out the sameness of Malick's images is like pointing out the sameness of Woody Allen's dialogue, and noting that these characters seem to have nothing to say to one another is like noting the way characters in musicals only express themselves in song. This is what Malick cinema is, they might rightly insist, as if nothing has changed. But it has changed. Malick's previous films remarkably yet routinely achieve transcendence, in parts and in sum. <em>To the Wonder</em> struggles to even achieve presence.
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All that said, the timing of <em>To the Wonder</em>'s release makes it something of an interesting case study: In recent years an increasing number of critics (including me) have attempted to get beyond hype, celebrity, legend and cinematic stereotypes by dismantling movies like mechanics — sometimes going so far as to assign specific (as if inflexible) values or definitions to various compositions, cuts, color palettes, camera movements, etc. According to that analytical approach, <em>To the Wonder</em> is the equal of Malick's previous pictures because it's built from the same auteuristic materials. And yet while <em>To the Wonder</em> is released into an evolving critical universe that sometimes seems uncomfortable with feeling first and deconstructing later, it's also released in the aftermath of the death of Roger Ebert, who never appeared to let the "math" of a movie talk him into a reaction he didn't first feel in his heart. None of this is to imply that those who adore <em>To the Wonder</em> do so insincerely, or that this movie is impossible to love on a gut level (Ebert, in one of his final reviews, was enchanted by it). But for me <em>To the Wonder</em> is another welcome reminder that the greatness of art is often intangible. In simplest terms, we feel it or we don't.
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With a few fleeting exceptions, <em>To the Wonder</em> left me untouched. No movie in Malick's filmography better expresses the isolation of the individual (even when we are with someone, we are trapped inside ourselves). But at the same time, no other Malick movie treats its human characters like their bovine counterparts. Here, there is no depth of mind: women crawl on the ground in passion, crawl on the ground in apology and crawl on the ground in rage (who knew crawling was so versatile?), and at one point Kurylenko's character actually licks a tree. The latter might be a sign that eventually one of Malick's characters will literally fuck nature, as if living down to the wisecracks of his naysayers. But I fear it might be proof that at this point Malick isn't straining to realize a vision so much as getting lost in the image itself.
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Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-75943887368809049222013-04-05T02:22:00.000-04:002013-04-05T08:27:27.189-04:00Remembering Roger Ebert<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjziYX6Yt3w-TVjDR3TktDCdYDeAsTaZo278DqiiMupVfF9WgP9EPL0AdQ41-wCpEdWDyprceLmu-PxlfsRZZCVN9BZlChWisXiOrjg1lDkejkjHqYtI7xlNJaHdqLcuQtQQG-NNWgCRy8M/s1600/Ebert.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjziYX6Yt3w-TVjDR3TktDCdYDeAsTaZo278DqiiMupVfF9WgP9EPL0AdQ41-wCpEdWDyprceLmu-PxlfsRZZCVN9BZlChWisXiOrjg1lDkejkjHqYtI7xlNJaHdqLcuQtQQG-NNWgCRy8M/s475/Ebert.jpg" /></a></center>
<br />"Funny, thoughtful, opinionated, brilliant. An inspiration to anyone who ever wanted to write from a certain point of view." - <a href="https://twitter.com/JPosnanski/status/319906524128505856" target="_blank">Joe Posnanski</a><br />
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"To be able to have done exactly what he wanted to do for a living until the very end is an inspiration to anyone." - <a href="https://twitter.com/notjustmovies/status/319897561135738881" target="_blank">Jake Cole</a><br />
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"To be a good critic, you have to know your art-form. To be a great one, you have to love it." - <a href="https://twitter.com/petersagal/status/319906243848314880" target="_blank">Peter Sagal</a><br />
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"When I was a kid, no person turned me on to more movies and filmmakers than Roger Ebert. He changed my life." - <a href="https://twitter.com/mbonfiglio2000/status/319909212337618945" target="_blank">Michael Bonfiglio</a><br />
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"Roger Ebert. Everything else you say is superfluous." - <a href="https://twitter.com/RattoCSN/status/319898941191753728" target="_blank">Ray Ratto</a><br />
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Up the stairs, past the scattered toys and piles of cardboard boxes that lined the walls of my grandparents' mostly unfinished attic, was the childhood bedroom of my mother's brothers. They'd been out of the house for more than 10 years. Their double beds were still there, neatly made as if waiting for them to return from school, but now this mostly forgotten space in the rafters belonged to my grandfather, who'd lined one wall with more fishing rods than anyone who went fishing only a few times a year could possibly hope to use in a lifetime and whose hoard of fishing magazines, lures and spools of line covered almost every available surface space except for the two square feet or so of table on which sat a small black-and-white television.<br />
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It was on that television, on an otherwise unmemorable day during a summer I can't quite pinpoint, that I distinctly remember watching Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert debating on the show that made thumbs famous. Or, more to the point, I remember <em>trying</em> to watch them. The TV in the attic provided me a bit of privacy and a respite from my grandfather's steady diet of local news, but it also gave me rabbit-ear antennae to adjust and a serrated tuning knob to manipulate ever so slightly in the hopes of generating a clear picture. Of course, no matter how much time you spent getting the image to come into focus, as soon as you stepped away from the TV whatever progress you'd made was sure to come undone.<br />
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Whether that was the first time I saw Siskel and Ebert on TV, I don't recall. It's possible. But what I've never forgotten is the amount of effort I put forth to watch them that day. They were almost certainly talking about movies I hadn't seen — in fact most of the time they probably discussed movies I was too young to see. But that didn't matter, because I loved movies and it was obvious that these guys did, too.<br />
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Siskel and Ebert were never appointment television for me. I couldn't remember what day their show aired, or at what time, or on which channel. But I managed to watch them a lot anyway over the years, through middle school, high school and into college, until Siskel's death in 1999.<br />
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I would have loved movies without them, but I loved movies a lot more because of them. They had passionate opinions, which inspired me to generate my own, and they were willing to fight for those opinions, which made me and my movie-loving friends want to do the same.<br />
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Most of the years I watched them, the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVCA9_OxNio" target="_blank">introduction</a> to their show emphatically underlined that these famous TV personalities were in fact print guys first: Siskel grinned as he tapped away at his computer keyboard, Ebert smiled as he hammered away at his typewriter, and then both men clutched their freshly printed columns as they argued on their way into the theater. Yet even though I went to college to major in journalism, and even though my father was a career newspaperman, and even though the idea of being a full-time critic appealed to me (at the time), I never thought of either of them as a writer until I was about 20.<br />
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That was the year I bought my mom the 1997 edition of <em>Roger Ebert's Video Companion</em> — a gift that was the result of her desire to have something to help her pick out movies to rent, now that her son was no longer around to provide in-house counsel. It was a sincere gift, truly meant for her, but the next time I was home from school I was the one who kept pulling the book off the shelf and losing myself in the reviews. (Years later, it now sits on my shelf.)<br />
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Unlike Ebert's subsequent <em>Movie Yearbook</em>s, the films chronicled in that almost 1,000-page volume spanned decades. I started by reading about the movies I'd seen, but it wasn't long before I was reading about the many more I hadn't. It was a hard book to put down. Some of the movies sounded dreadful, but the reviews were consistently compelling: the writing was accessible but also astute, and the length, whatever it was, always seemed just right.<br />
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Of course, you knew that already.<br />
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It's daunting to write about Roger Ebert in the aftermath of his death. There are so many reasons not to try: I'm ill-equipped to summarize his profound influence on criticism and cinema (although, to be clear, he was a profound influence on each of those individually, not just collectively). I'm not an expert on his body of work (I don't even have a favorite review). I never met the man (my only direct interaction with him was his brief e-mailed response to a question I submitted to his Movie Answer Man column many years ago). And the web is full of <a href="http://www.avclub.com/articles/some-thoughts-on-the-death-of-roger-ebert,96102/" target="_blank">better writers who are so equipped</a>, who have that expertise and who spent time with him — writers whose memories of Ebert's influence on them are sure sound a lot like mine.<br />
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But I'm writing about him anyway, because to avoid doing so would be to avoid this truth: as "sad" and "tragic" as I have found other "celebrity" deaths, only two have made me struggle to breathe: Jim Henson in 1990, and now Roger Ebert.<br />
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I feel a tinge of guilt about that, I have to admit. Who am I to be so heartbroken? I didn't even know the man.<br />
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But that's the thing: I did. I did know him. I knew him well enough to know that he considered himself a recovering alcoholic, that he didn't believe in God and that he died believing that there would be no sequel after the lights went out. I've got family I don't know that well.<br />
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I know those things because Ebert wrote about them explicitly at one time or another. But even without that I would have felt like I knew him, simply because that's the way that Ebert wrote, even when that wasn't what he was writing about.<br />
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His criticism is full of sincerity and heart. He could be narrow-minded. He could be stubborn. He could be unrelenting. But reading Ebert I never got the sense — not once — that he was posturing. For all the critics who write with an attitude that suggests that they don't give a damn what anyone else thinks about them, Ebert might be the only one whose criticism truly suggests he never gave a second thought as to how he would be perceived as a result of what he wrote.<br />
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You could call Ebert brave for a lot of reasons, like for the way he faced death, the loss of his (physical) voice and his collapsing jaw, or for the way he boldly invited young (and sometimes unproven) writers to contribute to the website that bears his name. But the bravery I'll always cherish most was his willingness to honestly articulate what he saw and felt when watching a movie. Much like "just being yourself," it can be harder than it sounds.<br />
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Harder, even, than saying goodbye.<br />
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It was only two days ago that Ebert said he was taking a "<a href="http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2013/04/a_leave_of_presense.html" target="_blank">leave of presence</a>" and scaling down his writing to focus on his health. No one could have been surprised by that: Ebert had already knocked on death's door several times, only to turn back and stay with us a little longer. Nevertheless, despite all those previous scares, despite his slowly deteriorating health, despite that hint that his life was becoming a struggle, the end proved as overwhelming as if it had come out of the blue. Like the ending of a heartbreaking movie you've seen a dozen times before, knowing it's coming doesn't eliminate the power of the response.<br />
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Admittedly, I haven't read as many of Ebert's reviews in recent years as I once did. But it wasn't all that long ago — less than eight years or so — that several days a week I'd spend my lunch hour reading new or classic Ebert essays along with the latest from a new blog that had come along, The House Next Door, which at the time was frequented by young writers who had grown up on Ebert and seemed to want to emulate his sincerity (several of whom, fittingly, went on to become contributors for Ebert's site). I've never loved an era of film criticism more.<br />
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Since then I've started this blog, contributed to The House Next Door (among other sites) and even had a link to one of my pieces listed on the homepage of Ebert's site (via a post featured by Jim Emerson at Scanners). It's been a thrill.<br />
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That I've posted infrequently here of late has to do with my own sort of leave of presence as I try to figure out how to fit my movie criticism into growing demands in other areas of my life. I didn't need a sign of how much movie criticism means to me, but Ebert's death provided one just the same.<br />
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Roger Ebert wasn't the guy who made me love movies. He wasn't even the guy who inspired me to write about movies. But he was one of the guys on the black-and-white TV screen that day, all those summers ago, who confirmed to me that movies were as exciting as I'd thought. And he was the writer who first made me appreciate the power of the internet, when suddenly in the late '90s I could read this Chicago-based critic as if he were my own. And he was the critic whose work I studied when I was trying to figure out how to write criticism myself.<br />
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Movies aren't my life, but for virtually all of my life movies have been a huge part of me.<br />
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Roger Ebert shaped my love of movies, and deepened it.<br />
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He shaped me, too.<br />Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-84056536097319831262013-03-17T20:30:00.000-04:002013-03-27T21:31:31.724-04:00This Time With Meaning: Survive and Advance<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPcBebNKJIQOI3sMJ0GQ1PLTuwl1-5WKCnlYEZ1uWsSBU7KfSR7MoUL4xXgyRnRddRHM9psXeyU1iKJkKeps9sDOraSyPn_Ubi1pVqN2p_NiFr8BFV8cY81DET0So4ZUi_XXJ8jJ_pc-9s/s1600/SurviveandAdvance.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPcBebNKJIQOI3sMJ0GQ1PLTuwl1-5WKCnlYEZ1uWsSBU7KfSR7MoUL4xXgyRnRddRHM9psXeyU1iKJkKeps9sDOraSyPn_Ubi1pVqN2p_NiFr8BFV8cY81DET0So4ZUi_XXJ8jJ_pc-9s/s450/SurviveandAdvance.jpg" /></a></center>
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<br />Dereck Whittenburg receives the awkward one-handed fling from Thurl Bailey less like the targeted shooter in the closing seconds of a national championship basketball game than like a defensive back intercepting a wayward pass before it sails into the bleachers. From nearer to half court than the 3-point arc, Whittenburg gathers the ball, turns, takes a deep knee bend and fires. It's a moon shot, and at the very moment it becomes obvious that the ball won't reach the rim Lorenzo Charles leaps into the frame, collects the ball near the iron and drops it into the hoop as time expires, giving North Carolina State a 54-52 upset victory over the University of Houston and sending the Wolfpack's flamboyant head coach Jim Valvano running around on the court looking for someone to hug.<br />
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It's one of the most famous sequences in college basketball history — memorable because NC State wasn't supposed to have a chance against Houston in that 1983 NCAA championship, memorable because Valvano's reaction reveals both his shock and his spirit, memorable because the game-winning bucket and Valvano's reaction are so charmingly inelegant and, last but not least, memorable because CBS and ESPN play the hell out of that highlight clip each March. If you're even a little bit of a college basketball fan, you've seen that play at least a dozen times. It's the quintessential March Madness moment and it's something of an eternal flame for Valvano, the beloved coach, broadcaster and motivational speaker. That said, the ubiquity of the NC State upset highlight is the very thing that made me skeptical about <em>Survive and Advance</em>, the latest edition of ESPN Films' "<a href="http://espn.go.com/30for30/" target="_blank">30 for 30</a>" series, which seeks to climax with a sports moment that is as worn from overuse as a child's favorite toy. In the original "30 for 30" volume, director Jonathan Hock did a marvelous job reviving the <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/2010/11/unbreakable-best-that-never-was.html" target="_blank">forgotten legend of Marcus Dupree</a>, but I wondered if he could be as successful crafting drama and insight from a story that is already so familiar.<br />
<br />Turns out, he was ready.<br />
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Indeed, <em>Survive and Advance</em> gives due analysis to that game-winning play (all it's missing is Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison saying "back and to the left"), but what it does more impressively is to provide the play with emotional meaning through context — which is to say that Hock's film makes that highlight matter again. It's one thing to watch that clip and <em>remember</em> that NC State was an underdog even before it met up with the "Phi Slamma Jamma" Houston team starring Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler, but it's another thing to really see it and feel it. Hock's documentary backs up to show us the improbable path that brought the Wolfpack to that one shining moment — a route that included numerous come-from-behind victories that would seem unbelievable even today that were even more miraculous in the pre-shot-clock era when teams could sit on even a mere 2-point lead for, well, as long as they wanted. NC State didn't just win these do-or-die games in the NCAA Tournament but, before that, in the ACC Tournament, which the Wolfpack had to win to gain entry into the big dance. In the nine-game run that closed out their season, NC State survived not one but two matchups with 7-foot-4 center Ralph Sampson, got through Michael Jordan's North Carolina Tar Heels and defeated Olajuwon on a night he scored 20, pulled down 18 boards and blocked 7 shots. And they did it all with a roster of players you wouldn't remember today if they hadn't done the unforgettable. <br />
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At 100 minutes, <em>Survive and Advance</em> is one of the longer documentaries in a "30 for 30" series that tends to do better at half that length. But after a slow start, Hock's doc repeatedly earns its running time. It's packed with interviews and roundtable reminiscences from the surviving members of that team, and it gets in its fair share of Valvano highlights from archival press conferences and speeches. But the film's strength is its game footage, which captures college basketball at a time when it was simultaneously more developed, less advanced and more joyously idiosyncratic than it is today (you gotta love some of these players' form on free throws!) and it blessedly lives up to and even surpasses the Cardiac Pack's rosy legend. Don't get me wrong: the Wolfpack's title run isn't pretty. NC State repeatedly earns victories by virtue of their opposition choking at the free throw line. It might not sound like gripping sports drama, but it becomes just that by virtue of the frequency with which the Wolfpack survives sure defeat. <br />
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Equally important, the rare chemistry that NC State players had with their charismatic coach is supported by the archival footage, too: Again, it's one thing for grown men to speak eloquently of Valvano's influence on them 20 years removed from his tragic death, but it's another thing to see Bailey, as a quiet collegian, say in a routine interview that he and his teammates "really believe in Coach V," or to see Whittenburg picking up his coach after numerous wins and kissing him on the cheek in the post-championship press conference. With a light touch, Hock repeatedly demonstrates that the 1983 NC State team was special long before they were champions, and that they deeply loved Valvano long before he became a figure of national admiration and sympathy through his battle with cancer. <br />
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There's still an air of hagiography to any depiction of Valvano, despite Hock's attempts to highlight the coach's faults without getting too far off topic, but, man, it's hard to feel as if Valvano doesn't earn it. Sure, you can see why he'd have rubbed some people the wrong way; even if you thought he was saintly you could find the volume of his saintliness overwhelming. But there's a sincerity to his spirit that makes you want to forgive his obvious need for attention. In his famous ESPY's acceptance speech, which Hock chronicles, Valvano urged everyone to strive to laugh, think and be moved to tears every day. Hock directs <em>Survive and Advance</em> as if he's trying to help us meet our daily quota. Hock's picture reminds us of what we love about sports and cinema.
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Survive and Advance <em>premieres tonight on ESPN at 9 pm ET, and will rerun frequently thereafter. The Cooler hopes to review each new film in the "30 for 30" series upon its release.<br />
<a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/p/30-for-30-series.html" target="_blank">See the Volume 1 and Volume 2 archive.</a></em>Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-17079109053241204772013-03-15T08:09:00.000-04:002013-03-15T08:09:09.323-04:00The Eyes of March (2013)<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2wkyFxthOvcwyxDvD8bSHcnZZSEdarSFkCSg2TBiIBVhsbMIxtv09BMzvfuFbEVitD4_ByuHVoZk625uv-njor_jMHgzYbThgJh22CpPMMYUWIVMXGpt4LJXyHjms7E3sWEjlOB-grZL7/s1600/Eyes0.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2wkyFxthOvcwyxDvD8bSHcnZZSEdarSFkCSg2TBiIBVhsbMIxtv09BMzvfuFbEVitD4_ByuHVoZk625uv-njor_jMHgzYbThgJh22CpPMMYUWIVMXGpt4LJXyHjms7E3sWEjlOB-grZL7/s475/Eyes0.jpg" /></a></center>
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It's been awhile.<br />
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Last month I let my five-year blogging anniversary pass by without notice, or without a single blog post.
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But nothing brings back a blogger like tradition — and it doesn't hurt when said tradition requires very little writing.<br /><br />
And thus continues my annual tribute to eye shots (see also: <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/2009/03/eyes-of-march.html" target="_blank">2009</a>, <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/2010/03/eyes-of-march-2010.html" target="_blank">2010</a>, <a href="http://www.coolercinema.blogspot.com/2011/03/eyes-of-march-2011.html" target="_blank">2011</a> and <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/2012/03/eyes-of-march-2012.html" target="_blank">2012</a>).<br />
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This year, including the header image (which you can consider number "0"), there are 13 eye shots. As usual, some of them are easily recognizable. Others not so much.<br />
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Although this is a tribute to eye shots more than anything, it tends to be a fun guessing game each year, too. So leave your guesses in the comments below.<br />
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Enjoy! (Numbers correspond to the image below them)<br />
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<center>(1)</center>
<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMnS3bsyLKFcAScBGHIQw762pTmEtcq1q8huOvba7WFa0yNut5l3YJs4IxxikCp8YpCXfJcp5XJq5OBWUTSAgNoRGhEMfX4xc83Of-xhGM_lK3YKUssF-AkpZ-oG1NFJs8IZZY_8XEVzpM/s1600/Eyes1.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMnS3bsyLKFcAScBGHIQw762pTmEtcq1q8huOvba7WFa0yNut5l3YJs4IxxikCp8YpCXfJcp5XJq5OBWUTSAgNoRGhEMfX4xc83Of-xhGM_lK3YKUssF-AkpZ-oG1NFJs8IZZY_8XEVzpM/s475/Eyes1.jpg" /></a></center><br /><br />
<center>(2)</center>
<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhoP3oqlGitiZ2b9b0Dnm2JrmxH7mMWAZpAyLoSYOMW4ZY8Okz_QIngLGKEhGUaSgT9orUlyPwaNAqGApTQ7vrVUN8R9Hm3b5dI5t0e6lLRv7URF1fcnVfpyOCIxiQZ1QELAyZSIB7ojmf/s1600/Eyes2.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhoP3oqlGitiZ2b9b0Dnm2JrmxH7mMWAZpAyLoSYOMW4ZY8Okz_QIngLGKEhGUaSgT9orUlyPwaNAqGApTQ7vrVUN8R9Hm3b5dI5t0e6lLRv7URF1fcnVfpyOCIxiQZ1QELAyZSIB7ojmf/s475/Eyes2.jpg" /></a></center><br /><br />
<center>(3)</center>
<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk9W6gQfQbyoiMxtHjBLURXcAr2mbGE1kcu2xfMlZf-xANYBxaMmbHXqcEx1p34_D7zf3p0Gl29qOkQHNS1ErG0tQdMv5LpLzhocVQLanyqo_wS8g8RIOdN7cHQqEQlfeQMjhFuWi0wpqW/s1600/Eyes3.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk9W6gQfQbyoiMxtHjBLURXcAr2mbGE1kcu2xfMlZf-xANYBxaMmbHXqcEx1p34_D7zf3p0Gl29qOkQHNS1ErG0tQdMv5LpLzhocVQLanyqo_wS8g8RIOdN7cHQqEQlfeQMjhFuWi0wpqW/s475/Eyes3.jpg" /></a></center><br /><br />
<center>(4)</center>
<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc89yfuk39cGbyjo7cDdC9kpZvy3TqwlkRqfw1E6ILPUZuX0ZdI1RwhEZQYZvzACwQrWsoM9nNuBiKLhjQSysAWWNLztIL1KImRs59IqFEq6pBRKk9VEa3RNU5HUHCr9OlK5f1UYeY58h_/s1600/Eyes4.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc89yfuk39cGbyjo7cDdC9kpZvy3TqwlkRqfw1E6ILPUZuX0ZdI1RwhEZQYZvzACwQrWsoM9nNuBiKLhjQSysAWWNLztIL1KImRs59IqFEq6pBRKk9VEa3RNU5HUHCr9OlK5f1UYeY58h_/s475/Eyes4.jpg" /></a></center><br /><br />
<center>(5)</center>
<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgElnbUucs6JnDMODBGBwsiPY-BoaP4ww9mqB7T0PZ6_EEybuqF1tC1Xp6RRCLZKIINFVNed6MRNHCBn01cnAv3kFhKnIEVdPltSqlwQsFivh8SfLZwsQR7jOx-S70eK4vt4Lf-C11HSfKa/s1600/Eyes5.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgElnbUucs6JnDMODBGBwsiPY-BoaP4ww9mqB7T0PZ6_EEybuqF1tC1Xp6RRCLZKIINFVNed6MRNHCBn01cnAv3kFhKnIEVdPltSqlwQsFivh8SfLZwsQR7jOx-S70eK4vt4Lf-C11HSfKa/s475/Eyes5.jpg" /></a></center><br /><br />
<center>(6)</center>
<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8hx_g3W-J4_hVdspJ_qUsqOb06wW2zpyVxOFoW2UkcWQ7ov3YFY2gslV6B94UQzasuCO_-4McmaUgtfz-_gCiAikWQpDoAORZDOqoE3qqbee_4gSqPYvZjYO0kY4NZvdXcbULbWr1-7V2/s1600/Eyes6.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8hx_g3W-J4_hVdspJ_qUsqOb06wW2zpyVxOFoW2UkcWQ7ov3YFY2gslV6B94UQzasuCO_-4McmaUgtfz-_gCiAikWQpDoAORZDOqoE3qqbee_4gSqPYvZjYO0kY4NZvdXcbULbWr1-7V2/s475/Eyes6.jpg" /></a></center><br /><br />
<center>(7)</center>
<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAqsnx0-lURmtK2SIb4eiwhRLImyghzgARzAJ-NqYoJV_sjxrxVMC-sXOjA_TMwyKJkNQqtaaJuxXby1pUifGDk49MaEiavSHPXNXJ3U0zI9SeTwEswzxQsp9ipvItXgl2omSrNp_1ElGF/s1600/Eyes7.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAqsnx0-lURmtK2SIb4eiwhRLImyghzgARzAJ-NqYoJV_sjxrxVMC-sXOjA_TMwyKJkNQqtaaJuxXby1pUifGDk49MaEiavSHPXNXJ3U0zI9SeTwEswzxQsp9ipvItXgl2omSrNp_1ElGF/s475/Eyes7.jpg" /></a></center><br /><br />
<center>(8)</center>
<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIBSPaQQAK_LLVczjOmbbIDXyCnaMSfG0hc1r-iZvokRpVzoWa4Eh03LLrNZhxeS86U674TsXu0AaCwzTYpXhMvIvqzbJjWhfzWP0u4IGasU9UH5mnWmEEwzwZV9FfaEtHlCzTgy27MzNr/s1600/Eyes8.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIBSPaQQAK_LLVczjOmbbIDXyCnaMSfG0hc1r-iZvokRpVzoWa4Eh03LLrNZhxeS86U674TsXu0AaCwzTYpXhMvIvqzbJjWhfzWP0u4IGasU9UH5mnWmEEwzwZV9FfaEtHlCzTgy27MzNr/s475/Eyes8.jpg" /></a></center><br /><br />
<center>(9)</center>
<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifsA9Vup9AbnnQP8aOPDCxxreHSIOft8klDA-Sak7layVUoFKpS-m4zfHMzNqbKW59GF_jSPBigwPQp78BqBzCu9edD0Y700cOaA_B8VrU06P1U3LcrvhuPytXeoRuUwiy7bICBTzo1p-N/s1600/Eyes9.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifsA9Vup9AbnnQP8aOPDCxxreHSIOft8klDA-Sak7layVUoFKpS-m4zfHMzNqbKW59GF_jSPBigwPQp78BqBzCu9edD0Y700cOaA_B8VrU06P1U3LcrvhuPytXeoRuUwiy7bICBTzo1p-N/s475/Eyes9.jpg" /></a></center><br /><br />
<center>(10)</center>
<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIVBgL1lVBX33Pl1OpTDEWnoSLatkkbsOF18RMIkvbgPr046KkKzEK9NYMB_o2jPANDJkbSdv3sND7uCjzh8DFmAo2TNnMlsBfg7GDd5fPKlYGSlsv9yykobSYjr3qU3kYHQB1yyWqUeHl/s1600/Eyes10.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIVBgL1lVBX33Pl1OpTDEWnoSLatkkbsOF18RMIkvbgPr046KkKzEK9NYMB_o2jPANDJkbSdv3sND7uCjzh8DFmAo2TNnMlsBfg7GDd5fPKlYGSlsv9yykobSYjr3qU3kYHQB1yyWqUeHl/s475/Eyes10.jpg" /></a></center><br /><br />
<center>(11)</center>
<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg8GlMmtiNvbKZ6EdrHOB6Ow6MzH2MhSCB7EuZ2777RZ-Exe5bjrXSTp4VWmxxdPMGtM0xGvW8GfKxfQkPBUnCId8dkXSlyPSxwHf1EuM0xgPQedY7S1pWRSLILS5Hyl9NL7bdbzwuGWXb/s1600/Eyes11.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg8GlMmtiNvbKZ6EdrHOB6Ow6MzH2MhSCB7EuZ2777RZ-Exe5bjrXSTp4VWmxxdPMGtM0xGvW8GfKxfQkPBUnCId8dkXSlyPSxwHf1EuM0xgPQedY7S1pWRSLILS5Hyl9NL7bdbzwuGWXb/s475/Eyes11.jpg" /></a></center><br /><br />
<center>(12)</center>
<center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw_N9i7anptPXfNRDpQxYT92darhBfjXJ1RGrHRVU1fMpihxomz3PgG2eFf3MjwcIvaTaZg2CPYEkdQm02h9J_kAr7k2Rf_GFM4HSgJfuT8Uz0wMKAMV5CbWa2OWDYjOu1RRPNmGGSR-Hp/s1600/Eyes12.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw_N9i7anptPXfNRDpQxYT92darhBfjXJ1RGrHRVU1fMpihxomz3PgG2eFf3MjwcIvaTaZg2CPYEkdQm02h9J_kAr7k2Rf_GFM4HSgJfuT8Uz0wMKAMV5CbWa2OWDYjOu1RRPNmGGSR-Hp/s475/Eyes12.jpg" /></a></center>Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-36667718343733926592013-01-13T16:29:00.000-05:002013-01-13T16:45:39.264-05:00Everybody Breaks, Bro: Zero Dark Thirty<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinWqpZ0prQAxsfr1lgjKmNJKQwzbDt_lJNeUhaQ4F4UTrSVSoz8j9A2c2FTTclxkVj3baZDjn9zYtwkDK8fHTyRM6K7ysgnxCuKaI7bKW5O1HmZB3tJxm-1Qfb4rIx6pcGe463PRGC_3lr/s1600/ZD30.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="199" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinWqpZ0prQAxsfr1lgjKmNJKQwzbDt_lJNeUhaQ4F4UTrSVSoz8j9A2c2FTTclxkVj3baZDjn9zYtwkDK8fHTyRM6K7ysgnxCuKaI7bKW5O1HmZB3tJxm-1Qfb4rIx6pcGe463PRGC_3lr/s400/ZD30.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />Let's start with torture, in part because <em>Zero Dark Thirty</em>'s depiction of torture inspired controversy even before the movie was released, but mostly because that's where <em>Zero Dark Thirty</em> begins, and in a way it's where it ends, too. After a brief sequence in which the horrors of 9/11 are conjured through overlapping audio clips from that tragic and chaotic day, the movie opens at a secret military base at which an al-Qaeda terrorist is being "harshly interrogated." First we see the detainee waterboarded, and later he's stripped naked, dog-collared and stuffed inside a wooden box just big enough for him to fold into — all in an effort to get him to talk. None of this is brief. Director Kathryn Bigelow doesn't exactly ogle the brutality, but she doesn't shy away from it either. The first 30 minutes of the movie, scripted by Mark Boal and inspired by insider accounts, are dominated by the physical and psychological punishment of this beaten terrorist at the hands of the CIA. That <em>Zero Dark Thirty</em> spends so much time here confirms that Bigelow and Boal believe these interrogations to be historically significant, one way or another. And that torture is demonstrated to be a dehumanizing experience for both sides confirms that that Bigelow gets it right.<br />
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Did controversial interrogation techniques like waterboarding lead to intelligence that led to the discovery of Osama bin Laden? It seems silly to argue otherwise. The link might not have been direct, but the nasty reality is that these techniques were used and intelligence was gathered, and it seems reasonable to assume that some prisoners cooperated purely to avoid torture in the first place, which isn't possible if the potential for torture isn't on the table. Whether torture, as an actual technique or merely as a looming threat, is effective enough to justify its use is a different matter, and not one that <em>Zero Dark Thirty</em> cares to examine. So what does the film "say" about torture? Mostly that we did it, for better or worse. It's part of the history of that larger event. World War II had the beaches of Normandy and Higgins boats. The "war on terror" had undisclosed locations and pitchers of water. That's the way it was.<br />
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To ask the film to take sides on the torture debate, and even more to insist that it does, is to try to fit torture into a box and demand that it cooperate. It isn't that simple, and thankfully <em>Zero Dark Thirty</em> doesn't pretend otherwise. The film depicts, through the scene mentioned above, that some detainees can suffer all kinds of abuse and never crack, and that if they do talk it might be nothing more than a basic animal instinct to survive — saying whatever it takes to stop the abuse. It also makes it clear, in a later scene with the same prisoner, that torture can be effective as the "bad cop" alternative to a more friendly and productive "good cop" approach to intelligence mining. And, even later, in a scene in which a different detainee says he's willing to cooperate rather than be tortured, it demonstrates that the looming potential for torture can be an effective motivational tool. So, yeah, <em>Zero Dark Thirty</em> shows that torture "works." But it also leaves room to speculate that part of the reason it took so long to locate bin Laden is because the CIA and military couldn't come up with a more effective approach for hunting him down.<br />
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In some films, this kind of ambiguity would smack of gutlessness or faux complexity, but not here. No, here, Bigelow and Boal bravely refuse to oversimplify the unavoidably complicated — at least when it comes to torture. Other parts of the film feel a little too neat, particularly the way Boal funnels all of the momentum, tenacity and canniness of the hunt for bin Laden into a single character, Jessica Chastain's Maya, who comes off like a less reckless but equally omnipresent version of <em>Homeland</em>'s Carrie Mathison. But such narrative efficiencies are mostly unavoidable, and because <em>Zero Dark Thirty</em> isn't about profiling "The Woman Who Brought Down Osama bin Laden" they're inconsequential, too. The film's approach is to recount the milestone moments in a manhunt that took years and was notable for being of great interest (bin Laden was America's most-wanted terrorist) and yet little urgency (bin Laden seemed so removed from the day-to-day operations of al-Qaeda that some wondered if he was anything more than a symbolic target). And it does exactly that, with Bigelow and Boal going so far as to separate each milestone into its own distinct chapter and only getting personal in order to reveal some of the swirling emotions motivating the CIA's actions, be they noble, ugly, foolish or something else.<br />
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All of this makes <em>Zero Dark Thirty</em> a departure from Bigelow and Boal's previous collaboration, <em>The Hurt Locker</em>, highlighted by an awesome performance from Jeremy Renner, which is designed to take us into a soldier's experience. With a few notable exceptions, this is a remarkably unemotional film, and sometimes it struggles when it strays from that reserve. (For example: Maya is almost exaggeratedly repulsed by her first exposure to torture, only to suddenly turn the corner and embrace physical punishment a few scenes later, an evolution that isn't exactly "developed.") That emotional distance serves the film's air of journalistic authenticity, making its Hollywood flourishes more obvious while appreciating the discovery and execution of bin Laden as evidence of American might rather than evidence of American character, which is a welcome break from the jingoistic norm.<br />
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Once the debates over <em>Zero Dark Thirty</em>'s depictions of torture die down, what we'll remember about the movie is its depiction of the attack on bin Laden's compound, which is void of macho swagger (if that's the least embellished portion of the movie, it wouldn't surprise me). To the credit of an elucidating <em>60 Minutes</em> interview with one of the members of SEAL Team 6, I had a good idea of how everything would unfold, but that credit rolls the other way, too. Bigelow presents the action from the soldiers' collective perspective — if they don't know if someone is lurking around the other side of a corner, we don't know either — which is a fitting way to portray an operation in which so much was known but so many blind spots remained, right up until the end. Speaking of which: When bin Laden is shot, there's nothing cinematic about it — he's a flash of movement in a doorway, and then he's gone. Many filmmakers would have been tempted to approach the scene closer to the way Tarantino shot the projection room shootout in <em>Inglourious Basterds</em>: with dramatic music and slow motion. But bin Laden's death was everything that 9/11 wasn't. It was brief, unremarkable and in front of a limited audience. Credit to Bigelow for staying true to that.<br />
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Despite knowing the Xs and Os ahead of time, what I couldn't appreciate until seeing it here was the patience of the strike on bin Laden's compound — assuming the film is even close to accurate. So many war movies portray military bravery through daring dashes across open spaces under enemy fire, but this one makes it clear that it took balls just being there, which helps explain why the strike wasn't authorized until everyone was convinced (within reason) that they'd find what they were looking for. <em>Zero Dark Thirty</em> ends with a shot that recalls <em>The Graduate</em>, of all things, with Maya on a plane back to the United States having found exactly what she was looking for but apparently without a clue what to do next. It's a shot that, like the torture scenes at the start of the film, implies the great lengths that someone like Maya would resort to in order to achieve success — making the hunt for bin Laden the sole focus of her life. And at the same time the shot also comments on the country's obsession with bin Laden. In the end, we got our man, and what we were left with was ourselves, and a lingering awareness of all we gave up in order to win.<br />
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<strong>Additional Thoughts ... Full of Spoilers:</strong><br />
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* Although the raid on bin Laden's compound is easy to follow, while still giving a sense of the unavoidable "fog of war," Bigelow drops the ball a bit in the retreat. Unless I missed something, Bigelow shows two helicopters arriving and one of them crashing; then it shows one helicopter evacuating with men still on the ground; then it shows two helicopters landing safely back at the base.<br />
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* "I'm the motherfucker who found this place." That line, by Maya, is supposed to be <em>Zero Dark Thirty</em>'s equivalent of "I'll be back." It's a good line. But it was better before Mark Duplass' character underlined it by repeating it with raised eyebrows. Great movie lines are allowed to own the moment.<br />
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* "We're all smart, Jeremy." That line, by James Galdolfini's nameless CIA director (read: Leon Panetta) in response to praise for Maya's smarts, has me puzzled. Is it meant to suggest defensiveness, as if Maya found bin Laden by being lucky, not by being gifted? Is it meant to skewer sexism, as if Maya's intelligence would be taken as a given if she were a male agent? Is it meant to remind the audience that the CIA is full of smart, hard-working people, and so finding bin Laden took a long time simply because the task was hard? Something else?<br />
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* As much as it was nice to see Maya portrayed as a strong, tough, determined woman — and without removing her femininity — I was a little disappointed by the number of scenes in which the men around Maya regard her like some PMSing bitch whose intensity is regarded as melodrama.<br />
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* I'm torn in regard to the device in which Maya notes the days of inaction on the office window with a red marker. It's a little corny, which is an out-of-place mood in this picture. And yet it conveys that period of inactivity between "discovering" bin Laden and taking action much better than if Bigelow had simply flashed some dates on the screen.<br />
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* I'm no fan of torture, but whenever someone suggests that torture is purely ineffective I think of that poor guy's head in a vise in <em>Casino</em>. Just watching that scene makes me want to start talking. What do you want to know?
Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-78013692266683504952013-01-06T16:28:00.000-05:002013-01-07T20:49:54.563-05:00Skateboarding Cinema to the Future: QUIK<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBnFPtur5BS6oiTjtrUZPBjGwjvS57Qd7UcX9eWl7UUJLPKhtFv_AiwQuY7ZBMu3VuB32PxQUDD2brl078i9bKw4BBlkc7PEcqF2F3M_JPoPxYa5kbBjsFjQwdSFWRdlw69k6-v3-D8nZr/s1600/QUIK_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="224" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBnFPtur5BS6oiTjtrUZPBjGwjvS57Qd7UcX9eWl7UUJLPKhtFv_AiwQuY7ZBMu3VuB32PxQUDD2brl078i9bKw4BBlkc7PEcqF2F3M_JPoPxYa5kbBjsFjQwdSFWRdlw69k6-v3-D8nZr/s400/QUIK_1.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />When I was a kid, I wanted to make movies. Well, specifically, I wanted to make <em>Return of the Jedi</em>. Not instead of George Lucas. Immediately after him.<br />
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In first, second and third grade, I was mesmerized by the <em>Star Wars</em> trilogy not just as escapist adventure but also as an act of creation. As often as I watched the movies themselves, I watched my TV-recorded VHS copy of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Star_Wars_to_Jedi:_The_Making_of_a_Saga" target="_blank">1983 documentary</a> about their development. (I had a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Star-Wars-Return/dp/034531235X" target="_blank">book</a>, too.)<br />
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The <em>Star Wars</em> trilogy was full of moviemaking "stuff" that went beyond the usual. Instead of just actors, costumes and sets, there were models, robots and puppets — and things like Jabba the Hutt that seemed to be a combination of all three — not to mention an abundance of rubber and fur that appealed to the Muppet fan in me.<br />
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In my not-entirely-thought-through efforts to someday make a <em>Star Wars</em> movie of my own, I focused my initial energy on those smaller creations — even going so far as to beg my mom to buy me some furry fabric so that I could take a shot at making my own Ewok suit — in part because I was fascinated by that stuff, and in part because I knew I couldn't shoot an Ewok scene without an Ewok costume, but mostly because, at the time, owning my own movie camera seemed only slightly more realistic than owning my own Millennium Falcon.<br />
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Times have changed.<br />
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Now digital moviemaking cameras, and editing programs and equipment, are ubiquitous and attainable. Becoming the next George Lucas or Steven Spielberg may not be easy. But making a movie and sharing it with the world? Barring significant income challenges, anyone can do it.<br />
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And they are.<br />
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All of which is the long way around to saying that cinema isn't just on the big screen or the TV anymore. It's also on the Web, where sites like YouTube and Vimeo allow a shut-in with an iPhone and a cat to share screening space with professional moviemakers using state-of-the-art equipment.<br />
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None of this is news to you. Yet even the most open-minded of cinephiles wouldn't be likely to include a 5-minute timelapse video in the same conversation as the movies of, say, David Fincher. And maybe it's time we should. (Kevin B. Lee nudged us in that direction with a list of five "<a href="http://www.fandor.com/blog/video-essential-online-videos-of-2012" target="_blank">essential online videos</a>" from 2012.)<br />
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More and more, when I need a little dose of cinematic inspiration, one of the places I look is the <a href="http://vimeo.com/channels/staffpicks" target="_blank">Staff Picks</a> section at Vimeo. Typically, I scan for travelogue-type movies shot by true amateurs, because in recent years I've made similar movies myself, chronicling weekend getaways to this place or that. But in general if I'm drawn to a movie's thumbnail image I'll do the video equivalent of flipping through its pages.<br />
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In the past year I've enjoyed a frenetic road-trip movie <a href="http://vimeo.com/53869615" target="_blank">composed of 5,000 stills</a>, a touching portrait of a <a href="http://vimeo.com/25297005" target="_blank">fishing father</a> by his son, a silly spectacle celebrating the numerous ways to <a href="http://vimeo.com/42674279" target="_blank">open a beer bottle</a>, and so many others. But I'm not sure any direct-to-Web video thrilled me quite like <em>QUIK</em>.<br />
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<center><iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/47819123?byline=0&portrait=0" width="420" height="236" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></center>
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<br />If you haven't watched <em>QUIK</em>, stop here, spend fewer than 6 minutes and watch the movie. No, wait, let me amend that: even if you have watched <em>QUIK</em>, stop now and watch it — and not embedded here. Do it right: <a href="http://vimeo.com/47819123" target="_blank">click here to see it bigger</a> and, this is crucial, turn up the music! Enable its cinematic soul.<br />
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Done? OK.<br />
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In a series of tweets and in my <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/2013/01/bests-of-2012.html" target="_blank">Bests of 2012</a> post, I recognized <em>QUIK</em> as the piece of cinema that we'd all be going apeshit about if it appeared within a feature film by a big-name director. I stand by that.<br />
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Then again, part of <em>QUIK</em>'s charm is that, unlike the <em>Star Wars</em> trilogy, we can sense the modesty of its creation. It's a single-camera production, shot out of the back of a truck, that follows a skateboarder, Austyn Gillette, as he rides through fairly unspectacular parts of Los Angeles and performs fairly unspectacular stunts.<br />
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From afar, <em>QUIK</em> might appear to be just another skateboarding video set to music — a dime a dozen on the Internet. But it isn't, and the modesty of the production and the stunts is a big reason why. Directed by Colin Kennedy with cinematography by Marc Ritzema, <em>QUIK</em> isn't about showing off. It isn't about awesomeness. It's about fluidity.<br />
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The first 50 seconds establish the environment (concrete jungle Los Angles) and the approach (a moving camera, rolling by, capturing people at work and at play). Then, tilting down from a shot of blue sky and palm trees, we get our first glimpse of Gillette, who skates toward the camera as if catching up and then skates right on by.<br />
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The rest of the movie observes Gillette skating through the established environment, jumping off curbs and over obstacles (OK, sometimes fairly spectacularly) and weaving past people who seem as indifferent to him as he is to them.<br />
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It is, above all else, an exhibition of unceasing motion. <em>QUIK</em> isn't shot in one take and, given that Gillette wears at least three different outfits, there's no attempt to con the viewer into thinking that this is a single journey. But neither the skateboarder nor the camera ever stops — in fact, as often as not, Gillette is captured swinging his leg to propel himself forward to whatever lies ahead as the camera keeps pace.<br />
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That, if you will, is the "stunt."<br />
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The nonchalance of <em>QUIK</em> is felt right down to its sound design, which allows us to hear the sounds of the neighborhood and Gillette's skateboard rolling over the concrete. Thus, <em>QUIK</em>'s boldest stroke might be its musical accompaniment, We Barbarians' "Chambray," which has a kind of U2 basement tapes sound to it and fairly ambiguous lyrics that set a mood without dictating narrative.<br />
<br />"Will I go back?" the song asks. "God, I hope not," it immediately answers. It's the perfect exchange for a movie that seems to be about moving to or away from something, about exploration and escape, about living in the moment and chasing the next one.<br />
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It isn't difficult to imagine the entirety of <em>QUIK</em> as the climax to a larger story of a young man struggling to find his place in the world (<em>The Kid With a Skateboard</em>, so to speak). In that context, no doubt this sequence would have stood out as some of the best cinema of the year, and movie fans would have fogged windows talking about it.<br />
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But make no mistake: <em>QUIK</em> has narrative, poetry and power on its own. It's a glimpse into the life of a man going away, away, away, or forward, forward, forward, until the daylight runs out. It's a portrait of a life in motion.<br />
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Cinema doesn't get much better than that. Shot by anyone. Playing anywhere.Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-32283248008910698262013-01-01T14:39:00.000-05:002013-01-05T12:00:10.301-05:00Bests of 2012<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2BF6EoIjfIKDh2MaWLaoj1OlfULQeliGSr4bB2JCVjtUz1wxlZn3o7SkqXqL4TUddGpgWyFs9AeIsKeyyGFQVJuyXrJDJW102jXED4KeHAersRgkyt0997B_bkM1Eoav5iLfJ3A53O6zh/s1600/MoonriseKingdomSuzy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="216" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2BF6EoIjfIKDh2MaWLaoj1OlfULQeliGSr4bB2JCVjtUz1wxlZn3o7SkqXqL4TUddGpgWyFs9AeIsKeyyGFQVJuyXrJDJW102jXED4KeHAersRgkyt0997B_bkM1Eoav5iLfJ3A53O6zh/s400/MoonriseKingdomSuzy.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />Happy New Year!<br />
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There are still a few items on my 2012-viewing short list that I expect to see in the next week or two, most notably <em>Zero Dark Thirty</em>, <em>Rust and Bone</em> and <em>Amour</em>.<br />
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In addition, at some point I need to track down several films that never seemed to come my way, like <em>This Is Not a Film</em>, <em>The Turin Horse</em> and <em>The Color Wheel</em>.<br />
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And then there are movies that I let slip by but still hope to catch up with, like <em>The Imposter</em>, <em>End of Watch</em> and <em>The Loneliest Planet</em>.<br />
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All of that said, here's my look back at the year in film, which included viewings of about 60 new releases, most of which are included below, in some fashion or another.<br />
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<b>Best Animation:</b> <em>Frankenweenie</em><br />
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<b>Best Animated Movie:</b> <em>Brave</em><br />
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<b>Best Classic Cinema Allusion:</b> The chanting Oreo (<em>"Orrr-EEEE-oh"</em>) guards in <em>Wreck-It Ralph</em><br />
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<b>Best Impression of a Classic Cinema Character:</b> Michael Fassebender as David as <em>Lawrence of Arabia</em>'s title character in <em>Prometheus</em><br />
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<b>Best Impression of Walter Matthau Doing an Impression of Sean Connery While Stuck Inside an Air Duct:</b> Tom Hardy as Bane in <em>The Dark Knight Rises</em><br />
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<b>Best Actor:</b> Channing Tatum (<em>21 Jump Street</em> and <em>Magic Mike</em>)<br />
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<b>Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role:</b> Joaquin Phoenix in <em>The Master</em><br />
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<b>Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role:</b> James Gandolfini in <em>Killing Them Softly</em><br />
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<b>Best All-Too-Easily-Overlooked Performance:</b> Simon Russell Beale as heartbroken husband Sir William Collyer in <em>The Deep Blue Sea</em><br />
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<b>Best Use of Sound:</b> Ray Liotta's Markie takes a vicious beating in <em>Killing Them Softly</em><br />
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<b>Best Original Score:</b> <em>The Grey</em> by Marc Streitenfeld<br />
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<b>Best Musical Performance:</b> The accordion and percussion jam of "Let My Baby Ride" in <em>Holy Motors</em><br />
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<b>Best Song, Individual:</b> Anne Hathaway's one-shot "I Dreamed a Dream" as Fantine in <em>Les Miserables</em><br />
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<b>Best Song, Ensemble:</b> London's various economic classes sing "Molly Malone" to wait out an air raid in <em>The Deep Blue Sea</em><br />
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<b>Best Use of a Pop Song:</b> The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star" in <em>Take This Waltz</em><br />
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<b>Best Soundtrack as Apparently Recommended by iTunes Genius:</b> The painfully on-the-nose selections of <em>Flight</em><br />
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<b>Best Actress:</b> Anne Hathaway (<em>The Dark Knight Rises</em> and <em>Les Miserables</em>)<br />
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<b>Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role:</b> Michelle Williams in <em>Take This Waltz</em><br />
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<b>Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role:</b> Anne Hathaway in <em>The Dark Knight Rises</em><br />
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<b>Best Costume and Makeup:</b> Suzy as a raven in <em>Moonrise Kingdom</em><br />
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<b>Best Facial Hair, Individual:</b> Wes Bentley's Seneca Crane in <em>The Hunger Games</em><br />
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<b>Best Facial Hair, Ensemble:</b> <em>Lincoln</em><br />
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<b>Best Commentary on Cinema:</b> <em>21 Jump Street</em><br />
<br />
<b>Best Commentary on Criticism:</b> <em>Room 237</em><br />
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<b>Best Journalism:</b> <em>The Invisible War</em><br />
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<b>Best Journalist:</b> Astute and articulate <em>New York Times</em> reporter Jim Dwyer in <em>The Central Park Five</em><br />
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<b>Best Reason to Leave the Theater Early:</b> <em>Compliance</em><br />
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<b>Best Indication the 1% Can't Relate to the 99%:</b> <em>This Is 40</em><br />
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<b>Best Film With the Magic of M. Night Shyamalan (But Not Really):</b> <em>Safety Not Guaranteed</em><br />
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<b>Best Evidence M. Night Shyamalan Can Succeed Making M. Night Shyamalan Movies Provided They Aren't Utter Crap:</b> <em>Looper</em><br />
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<b>Best Totally Ludicrous Movie That Kind of Works Anyway:</b> <em>Your Sister's Sister</em><br />
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<b>Best Throwback:</b> <em>Argo</em><br />
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<b>Best Time Capsule:</b> <em>Searching for Sugar Man</em><br />
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<b>Best Documentary:</b> <em>Samsara</em><br />
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<b>Best Musical:</b> <em>Les Miserables</em> (only musical of the year?)<br />
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<b>Best Musical Staging:</b> <em>Anna Karenina</em><br />
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<b>Best Cameo:</b> Martin Sheen in <em>Seeking a Friend for the End of the World</em><br />
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<b>Best Verification That Eva Green Is Terrific in Anything:</b> <em>Dark Shadows</em><br />
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<b>Best Confirmation That Women Are Unequal to Men in Hollywood:</b> The frequent and mostly unnecessary nudity of Helen Hunt versus the absent and yet comparatively essential nudity of John Hawkes in <em>The Sessions</em><br />
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<b>Best Nudity:</b> The contrasted bodies in the shower in <em>Take This Waltz</em><br />
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<b>Best Black Comedy:</b> <em>Killer Joe</em><br />
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<b>Best Surgical Procedure:</b> Noomi Rapace's Elizabeth Shaw performs an abortion in <em>Prometheus</em><br />
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<b>Best Comedic Action Outburst in an Otherwise Unfunny, Unexciting Action Comedy:</b> The Hulk swings Loki like a ragdoll in <em>The Avengers</em><br />
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<b>Best CGI Animal:</b> Richard Parker the Bengal tiger in <em>Life of Pi</em><br />
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<b>Best Use of Practical/Analog Effects:</b> Hogs as Maurice Sendak's wild things as aurochs in <em>Beasts of the Southern Wild</em><br />
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<b>Best Plane Crash:</b> <em>The Grey</em><br />
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<b>Best Disaster:</b> The tsunami in <em>The Impossible</em><br />
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<b>Best Reminder That Tom Hooper's Cinematography Could Be Worse:</b> <em>Beasts of the Southern Wild</em><br />
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<b>Best Extended Take:</b> Lancaster Dodd "processes" Freddie Quell in <em>The Master</em><br />
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<b>Best Hyperedited Sequence:</b> Sam and Suzy exchange letters in <em>Moonrise Kingdom</em><br />
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<b>Best Wide Shot:</b> The president shuffles out of the telegraph room in <em>Lincoln</em><br />
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<b>Best Sequence We'd Be Going Apeshit About If It Appeared in a Feature Film by a Name Director:</b> All 5:40 of <a href="https://vimeo.com/47819123" target="_blank"><em>Quik</em></a> by Colin Kennedy with Austyn Gillette<br />
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<b>Best Casting:</b> Richard Gere as the smooth yet desperate, likeable yet detestable, caring yet aloof, cunning yet in-over-his-head Robert Miller in <em>Arbitrage</em><br />
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<b>Best Miscasting:</b> Hugh Grant as a face-paint-wearing cannibal in <em>Cloud Atlas</em><br />
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<b>Best Marriage of Myth and Man:</b> Daniel Day-Lewis' Abraham Lincoln in <em>Lincoln</em><br />
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<b>Best Humanization of a President:</b> Bill Murray's Franklin Delano Roosevelt in <em>Hyde Park on Hudson</em><br />
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<b>Best Biopic:</b> <em>Bernie</em><br />
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<b>Best Performance by a Graduate of the 'Kevin Costner School of Accents':</b> Jared Harris as Ulysses S. Grant in <em>Lincoln</em><br />
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<b>Best Primal Scream:</b> Batman, at the end of himself, fighting Bane in <em>The Dark Knight Rises</em><br />
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<b>Best Line, Deadpan:</b> "You absolutely reek of sexual discharge." — Sarah Gadon's Elise to her husband in <em>Cosmopolis</em><br />
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<b>Best Line, Triumphant:</b> "Fuck you, science!" — Channing Tatum's Jenko completes a scientific equation of his own invention while tripping on HFS in <em>21 Jump Street</em><br />
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<b>Best Line Delivery:</b> Asked by his science geek friend, who is an unwitting accomplice to an undercover investigation, if there's any urgency to testing the illegal wiretap they set up together, Channing Tatum's thick-headed Jenko tilts his head in search of an answer and responds with a hint of "been here before" frustration, "Not that I can think of that would make sense," in <em>21 Jump Street</em><br />
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<b>Best Threat:</b> "I'm going to start beating the shit out of you in the next five seconds, and you're going to swallow a lot of blood for a fucking billfold." — Liam Neeson's Ottway to Frank Grillo's Diaz in <em>The Grey</em><br />
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<b>Best Come-on:</b> "No, I said: What kind of a bird are <em>you</em>." — Jared Gilman's Sam to Kara Hayward's Suzy in <em>Moonrise Kingdom</em><br />
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<b>Best Heart:</b> Steve Carell's Dodge in <em>Seeking a Friend for the End of the World</em><br />
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<b>Best Fragility:</b> Bradley Cooper's Pat and Jennifer Lawrence's Tiffany in <em>Silver Linings Playbook</em><br />
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<b>Best Sensuality:</b> Naomie Harris' Eve gives Daniel Craig's Bond a shave in <em>Skyfall</em><br />
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<b>Best Sorrow:</b> Liam Neeson in <em>The Grey</em><br />
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<b>Best Self-consciousness:</b> Logan Lerman's Charlie in <em>Perks of Being a Wallflower</em><br />
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<b>Best Narrator:</b> Bob Balaban in <em>Moonrise Kingdom</em><br />
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<b>Best Storyteller:</b> Christoph Waltz's Dr. King Schultz in <em>Django Unchained</em><br />
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<b>Best Villain:</b> Charlize Theron's Ravenna in <em>Snow White and the Hunstmen</em><br />
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<b>Best Antivillain:</b> Matthew McConaughey's Killer Joe Cooper in <em>Killer Joe</em><br />
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<b>Best Shootout:</b> The mostly imagined bloodbath when Bruce Willis' Joe goes looking for Jeff Daniels' Abe in <em>Looper</em><br />
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<b>Best Execution:</b> Gina Carano's Mallory uses her legs to squeeze Michael Fassbinder's Paul into an unconscious state before finishing him off with a gunshot through a pillow in <em>Haywire</em><br />
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<b>Best Absurd Image in an Absurd Movie:</b> The little train that can in <em>Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter</em><br />
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<b>Best Use of Color:</b> <em>Skyfall</em><br />
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<b>Best Landscapes:</b> <em>The Hunter</em><br />
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<b>Best Images, Documented:</b> <em>Samsara</em><br />
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<b>Best Images, Dramatized:</b> <em>Skyfall</em><br />
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<b>Best Sequence:</b> A snooping suspicious husband is spied via a makeup mirror; a nervous lover's pounding heart is suggested by the rapid flutter of her fan; horses thunder across a stage; a racer and his horse tumble to the ground; and with a cheating wife's scream there are no secrets anymore, in <em>Anna Karenina</em><br />
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<b>Best Final Shot:</b> Mile 3.25 Tidal Inlet is renamed in <em>Moonrise Kingdom</em><br />
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<b>Best Picture:</b> <em>Moonrise Kingdom</em><br />
<br />
<br />
OK, your turn. What are some of the bests of 2012?<br />
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Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-21714053499366059842012-12-31T14:22:00.000-05:002013-01-01T09:27:37.624-05:00A Rambunctious Sort, Ain't He?: Django Unchained<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Over at LATimes.com, an <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-django-reax-2-20121228,0,1771716.story" target="_blank">article</a> examining the mixed reaction of blacks to Quentin Tarantino's <em>Django Unchained</em> is preceded by one of those quick poll questions that site managers like to tack on to stories in an effort to foster interactivity and "enhance" the online experience. It asks, "Does <em>Django Unchained</em> go too far over the line?" Like a check-box note written by an 11-year-old girl determined to find out if her elementary school crush likes her back, the answer options are simply "Yes" or "No." And yet the only appropriate answers to that question are "Which line?" and "When, exactly?"<br />
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Director of seven or eight features, depending on how you count his two-volume epic <em>Kill Bill</em>, Tarantino has been stepping well over someone's lines of appropriateness for 20 years now, making movies that aren't just dominated by violence and profanity but that are gleefully obsessed with them. His latest two pictures, 2010's <em>Inglourious Basterds</em> and this year's <em>Django Unchained</em>, further court controversy by taking on (and then to some degree simultaneously avoiding) the Holocaust and the American slave trade, two topics guaranteed to make everyone hyper-aware of those proverbial lines.<br />
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Given QT's track record, including his occasional habit of playing some of his controversial characters (with unmistakable relish), there can be no doubt that Tarantino, like most modern stand-up comedians, is obsessed with crossing the line. He gets laughs out of it, cheers out of it, gasps out of it and critical hosannas out of it, and, yes, he inspires furious anger with it, too. His unwillingness to stay behind the line is as core to Tarantino Cinema as his reverence for cinema itself.<br />
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Of course, the list of filmmakers who have line-crossing in their auteurist veins is longer than a typical Tarantino monologue. Oliver Stone, Michael Haneke, Lars von Trier and QT's good buddy Spike Lee, just to name four off the top of my head, have made careers out of attacking our delicate sensibilities — and even our not so delicate ones. What's unusual about Tarantino is the way in which he crosses the line: with the calculating indiscriminateness of someone who has spent so much time on the other side of the line that he seems to forget where he last saw it. If guys like Stone, Haneke, von Trier and Lee are akin to graffiti artists who zero in on a target and make their mark, Tarantino is more like a guy who leaves muddy footprints on your living room carpet because he decided long ago that refusing to take off his boots at the door was part of his identity. <br />
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There's something charming, refreshing and almost liberating about Tarantino's approach: it's easier to ignore or forgive offensiveness (those times we think QT "crosses the line") when it feels more like absentminded indifference — the byproduct of a guy who never quite "matured" or bought into societal conventions — rather than a finger-pointing provocation. And yet there's something disquieting about it, too, because if the provocative nature of Tarantino Cinema isn't by pinpoint design, then it isn't commentary, symbolism or active defiance so much as negligence or abomination. It's the difference between Tarantino Cinema being obscene or being an obscenity.<br />
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That <em>Django Unchained</em> "crosses the line" isn't up for debate. Even the <em>LA Times</em> online poll question assumes as much. But, like D.W. Griffith's <em>Birth of a Nation</em>, which in 1915 made heroic white knights out of the Ku Klux Klan, does <em>Django Unchained</em> become an obscenity itself? While recognizing anyone's right to be offended by the film on a number of levels, that's a harder case to make.<br />
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Still, the knocks against <em>Django Unchained</em>'s approach to slavery are so numerous and obvious that they should give us pause. You don't have to be particularly uptight to be offended by some or all of the following: (1) Tarantino uses the brutal slave trade as a setting for an ahistorical revenge fantasy that makes light of that era at least as often as it confronts its horrors; (2) Tarantino is once again liberal in his use of the word "nigger," a term with such a repulsive history, and, yes, even a repugnant present, that many (including me) feel that the word should be used as limitedly as possible and then only with great care, and that white folks have no business whatsoever employing it as a casual noun, regardless of intent; (3) Tarantino's attempts to ennoble some of his black characters also seem to reinforce already limited cinematic (and/or societal) stereotypes and otherwise objectify those black men and women.<br />
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And yet ...<br />
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I struggle to come up with a mainstream film that represents the hideousness of slavery with such unblinking matter-of-factness. Steven Spielberg's <em>The Color Purple</em> and Jonathan Demme's <em>Beloved</em> are set more squarely within the slave-era South and approach the subject matter with more solemnity, but I don't recall those films showing so many slaves wearing iron collars or masks, or depicting black slaves fighting to the death like pit bulls for the amusement of their masters, or showing a black slave being torn apart by dogs. I don't even remember a scene like the one in which Tarantino observes the house slaves carefully preparing the dining room table for dinner. (If my memory is off, please correct me.)<br />
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The point is this: I respect the opinion that America's slave history is so monstrous that it can only be approached with complete seriousness and sensitivity, and that those lines should never be crossed. Fair take. But all signs within <em>Django Unchained</em> specifically, and Tarantino's filmography in general, suggest that this revenge fantasy is exactly that: a fantasy. And while it's distasteful to leverage such real-life horrors for the purposes of fantasy (Tarantino could have found safer ground), the basic morals of <em>Django Unchained</em> are plain as day: slavery was vile, inhuman and evil, and anyone who perpetuated it or simply enabled it committed sins that no amount of time can forgive.<br />
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If there's a concern that less educated viewers (the kind who only recently learned that <em>Titanic</em> isn't just a movie by James Cameron) will come away with false ideas about slavery, yeah, that's possible. But the stench of slavery's inhumanity is much stronger here than in, say, Steven Spielberg's <em>Lincoln</em>, in which all the black characters are well spoken and dignified, and in which all whites opposed to the 13th Amendment come off as foolish blowhards more than cruel human traffickers. (<em>Django Unchained</em> enjoys portraying Southern slave-holding whites as yokels, too, but that's balanced by its depictions of abject barbarity.)<br />
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Perhaps we're hesitant to "cross the line" with Tarantino because <em>reimagining</em> the slave holocaust might imply that we're done confronting it at face value. Slavery may have been outlawed almost 150 years ago, but the Civil Rights Act outlawing segregation is not yet 50 years old, and what worthwhile confrontation of slavery could happen in the century-deep abyss in between? In many respects, this conversation is just getting started, assuming we choose to have it at all.<br />
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So, granted, maybe Tarantino is fascinated by slavery the way many of us are fascinated by serial killers, getting consumed by the cinematic creepiness of the grisly details and losing sight of the very real human suffering underneath. Certainly he isn't the director best suited to "feel the pain" of such epic atrocity or to approach sensitive material with somberness.<br />
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But while recognizing that Tarantino's approach to this subject matter is sometimes crass, we should accept that the horrors of slavery live on the other side of the line. The only way to confront such atrocity is to leave our comfort zone. <br />
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**<br />
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<strong>Additional Thoughts ... Packed Full of Spoilers:</strong><br />
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* One more footnote on the above rumination, before diving more specifically into the movie: From my point of view, an obvious fantasy like <em>Django Unchained</em> — set in another era and repeatedly winking at the audience — is less concerning that Tarantino's casual use of the word "nigger" in his other, more modern films. There's a theory that when Tarantino or other artists (most of them African-Americans) use that word casually it takes the bite out of it and creates ownership, as if turning a rattlesnake into a pair of snakeskin boots. But in my opinion it just blurs the line, because it doesn't eliminate the original grotesque meaning of the word. It only expands upon it. (Put a different way, that whip of a word remains firmly in the grasp of racist hands.) To this day, no word makes my skin crawl more than "nigger." But Tarantino and others have made the term so commonplace that it doesn't offend as much as it once did. Becoming desensitized to that word, allowing such hateful iconography to be assimilated into the everyday lexicon, doesn't feel like progress to me. And it's worth wondering: If everyone used that word as freely as Tarantino, would he continue to use it as frequently? And if not, what does that mean?<br />
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* <em>Django Unchained</em> is lesser Tarantino, but, like Alfred Hitchcock before him, "lesser" ain't too shabby. It's almost certainly in my top 10 for 2012 (a phrase I've uttered so often in the past few weeks that I probably need to jot down a list to confirm I'm not full of shit), faults and all, because Tarantino's pictures vibrate with energy in a way most don't. A perfect example is the scene in which Christoph Waltz's Dr. King Schultz tells Jamie Foxx's Django the legend of Brunhilde. The scene takes place at the pair's evening campsite, but Schultz's face isn't illuminated by a crackling fire and his hand movements don't make any particularly dramatic shadows against the massive rocks behind him. The story Schultz tells isn't particularly long or detailed (especially by Tarantino's standards), and Tarantino doesn't do anything with the score or the sound design to heighten the theatricality of moment, the way he did when Waltz's Hans Landa talked to a farmer over a few intense glasses of milk in <em>Inglourious Basterds</em>. Tarantino doesn't even employ any dramatic cuts or compositions (as I recall, most or all of the scene is captured in a rather utilitarian medium-length shot of Schultz). And yet the scene has a vitality that's palpable. As it unfolded, I tried to figure out why it was so powerful. Was it Waltz? Tarantino's screenplay? The juxtaposition of this scene to the ones that came before it? Nothing about it seemed especially remarkable, and yet in that moment <em>Django Unchained</em> has a cinematic spirit that most directors can't match. For all the scenes that have that kind of power, <em>Django Unchained</em> is among 2012's top tier.<br />
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* My primary disappointment with <em>Django Unchained</em> is what it does retroactively for <em>Inglourious Basterds</em>, which I believe is Tarantino's masterpiece. If I were Tarantino or Waltz, and I had collaborated on such a singular, awesome character as Hans Landa, the last thing I'd want to do is spoil our sense that the crafty fiendish charmer was "one for the ages" by creating another character more or less in his image in QT's very next picture. This disappointment doesn't ruin the appeal of <em>Django Unchained</em>, because Waltz is as perfect a fit for Tarantino's wordy pictures as the silent, squinting Clint Eastwood was to Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns. But the next time I watch <em>Inglourious Basterds</em>, Hans Landa will no longer feel "glouriously" unique. And that's a loss.<br />
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* Jamie Foxx is terrific as Django. He does the strong, silent type well, and his sensitivity is always <em>just</em> below the surface. I must admit I wish Tarantino would have dug a little deeper and allowed Django to really bear himself, the way Beatrix Kiddo does in <em>Kill Bill</em>. Foxx would have been up to the task. <br />
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* The biggest problem with <em>Django Unchained</em> is the way it loses momentum and seems hurried and yet plodding over the final hour. Tarantino's longtime editor Sally Menke might have helped to shave off some of the rough edges, but the epicenter of the damage seems to be Tarantino's screenplay, which includes a few oddities that couldn't have been undone in the editing room. In particular, when Samuel L. Jackson's Stephen and Leonardo DiCaprio's Calvin Candie uncover the Schultz/Django ruse, the result is that they insult Schultz and Django and then require them to pay $13,000 for Django's wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). The dramatic tone of the scene suggests that Tarantino sees this as a victory for Calvin and Stephen, but in fact all that Schultz and Django ever wanted was to walk away with Broomhilda's signed-sealed-delivered freedom, which is precisely what they get. At least, it's what they're about to get until the scene suddenly becomes about basic ethics (should you shake hands with a monster?), at which point the narrative runs off the rails. Once off the rails, <em>Django Unchained</em> still covers some worthwhile ground, and raises some interesting questions, but the transition is jarring, to say the least.<br />
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* Considering how the movie ends, with Django killing everyone at Candieland and riding off with his free wife, it's worth asking why the initial shootout (following Schultz's shooting of Candie) couldn't have resulted in Django's against-all-odds victory. Awkward scripting is one possible explanation, but I wonder if Django needs to be captured because it sets up the conditions of his release from Candieland: Initially, Django is about to be castrated and allowed to bleed to death, but then Stephen announces that Django is being transferred to another slave camp, where he will spend the rest of his life "turning big rocks into smaller rocks" (or something like that). Is that passage meant to suggest that victory for the freed slaves was short lived, and that what followed was a fate worse than death: a lifetime toiling for the (white) man? If so, it's an imperfect metaphor, but a pointed one.<br />
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* Similarly, what do we make of the climax in which Django puts on his sunglasses, watches the mansion at Candieland explode before him, mounts his horse (which then performs a Trigger-esque strut) and then rides off into the night with his beautiful lover? Is this more damning evidence that Tarantino knows the world only through movies? Or, on the heels of Stephen's aforementioned sentencing, is this acknowledgment that America is most comfortable around strong black men when they play cool action heroes on the big screen? Thus, in the end, does Tarantino wind up suggesting through the totality of <em>Django Unchained</em> that the options for black men in America are utter slavery and victimization (as portrayed by the field slaves), unstable partnership in which the white man has the ultimate power (as portrayed by Stephen, the lead house slave), athletic self-punishment for rewards that exceed those of their peers while paling in comparison to the wealth of the establishment (as portrayed by the Mandingo fighting) or movie star (as portrayed by Django in shades)? <br />
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* For what it's worth: I saw <em>Django Unchained</em> in a packed theater that was approximately 70 percent black. No one seemed to enjoy it more than the African-American woman next to me, who hooted throughout (she especially loved all the rednecks complaining about the insufficiency of their headwear). Although people started putting on coats and heading for the exists as soon as the mansion exploded, that seemed to be due to the movie's length and deflating second half, not the appropriateness of the content. During the movie, I spotted no walkouts, and two (black) guys chose to stand for the entire film rather than sit in the first row (which was mostly full anyway). In my theater screening, like yours, reactions were of course individual, private and no doubt mixed, but when Django says of bounty hunting, "Kill white people and get paid for it? What's not to like?" his response seemed written for my appreciation as much as anyone's. As if accepting the impossibility of giving due credit to black suffering, Tarantino instead cuts across class and race by unifying us around our almost instinctive desire to see the wicked get what's coming to them.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9FEN_njOFNxcosdSyn4dK23CvnV2ZNYIm0e3_Li-wVEEiaYQaAJGg_JY92tuKM8tnxmD910i5FrquikPAaA9sQYFQpNzTRlJxDl6A3fE1uCjQu9HVlvSQzQ9XGNNV5WnBLMGoL-v4K6E4/s1600/DJANGO_Cotton.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="144" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9FEN_njOFNxcosdSyn4dK23CvnV2ZNYIm0e3_Li-wVEEiaYQaAJGg_JY92tuKM8tnxmD910i5FrquikPAaA9sQYFQpNzTRlJxDl6A3fE1uCjQu9HVlvSQzQ9XGNNV5WnBLMGoL-v4K6E4/s400/DJANGO_Cotton.jpg" /></a></div>Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-24553686214970468552012-12-25T09:00:00.000-05:002012-12-25T09:00:04.990-05:00Hooper's In the House: Les Miserables<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I love musicals. Always have. I'm particularly fond of the palpable energy of live performances — highlighted by those awesome moments when talented singers belt out heartfelt lyrics to the back row — but cinematic adaptations of musicals can be plenty wonderful, too. And yet I didn't have particularly high hopes for Tom Hooper's adaptation of <em>Les Miserables</em>, because that's one musical that's never really touched me, on stage or on screen: it's an epic tale of tragedy and love that somehow leaves me cold.<br />
<br />In fact, the only part of <em>Les Mis</em> that never fails to thrill me is the atypically jovial number "Master of the House," performed by the delightfully corrupt innkeeper and his wife.<br />
<br />
Never fails until now, that is.
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<br />Performed in Hooper's adaptation by Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter, who make up for any vocal deficiencies with an all-in attitude that's wholly befitting musical theater (see: Tim Burton's <em>Sweeney Todd</em>), the rendition itself is adequate. But what's frustratingly inadequate is Hooper's cinematography, which often provides tight shots when we need wide shots and wide shots when we need close-ups. In some instances, Hooper's camera seems to be playing catch-up to the action, as if the movement of the actors wasn't choreographed in advance.<br />
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Hooper's <em>Les Mis</em> is not without pleasant surprises, but in my mind <em>Les Mis</em> just isn't <em>Les Mis</em> without a rousing rendition of "Master of the House." So, on that note, here's a review of said film to the tune of said musical number.<br />
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<em>In case you need some musical accompaniment, I've embedded a (rousing) performance of "Master of the House" from the recent 25th anniversary concert so you can follow along. Pick things up at the 45-second mark.</em><br />
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<center><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1sD5hjYXD3E" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></center>
<br />
<br />
Welcome readers, <br />
Sit yourself down, <br />
Hear of the best musical in town. <br />
<br />
It is <em>Les Mis</em>,<br />
Cast full of stars, <br />
Flashy showbiz, <br />
And a date with Oscars. <br />
<br />
Seldom do you see<br />
Such reviews from me: <br />
A slant on film content<br />
As song parody... <br />
<br />
Hooper's in the house! <br />
Sound out the alarm: <br />
Needless camera movements do your stomach harm. <br />
Tells an epic tale. <br />
Edits in a blur. <br />
For those who hate long takes it's the perfect cure. <br />
Hathaway's the movie's savior. <br />
She is worth the ticket price. <br />
Her Fantine dreams in one take, saving Hooper from his urge to splice. <br />
<br />
Hooper's in the house! <br />
Camera's in the face; <br />
Globetrotting story without a sense of place. <br />
Claustrophobic shots. <br />
Not a single dance. <br />
Half the time we can't be sure they're wearing pants. <br />
Everybody loves a tripod. <br />
Everybody wants to see. <br />
But Hooper's camera wanders like he spends his Thursdays watching <em>Glee</em>.<br />
<br />
Hooper's in the house! <br />
Jackman comes up big. <br />
At last a Jean Valjean who's not a total prig! <br />
Gives a sense of pain, <br />
Earns our love and care, <br />
Delivers in his standoffs with Crowe's Javert. <br />
Everybody loves a ballad. <br />
Everybody loves a song. <br />
But even Peter Jackson thinks this thing goes on a little long. <br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />
Patience reader, <br />
I'm sure you know<br />
This movie's breadth<br />
Is due to Hugo. <br />
<br />
Songs are still fun; <br />
They're just not terse. <br />
Seyfried delights, <br />
So things could be worse. <br />
<br />
Here emotion's raw. <br />
Here the singing's live, <br />
As vowed in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwgQjfg0hZw" target="_blank">the ad you've seen a thousand times</a>. <br />
<br />
Anne's beyond compare! <br />
Soul beyond belief! <br />
Tears running down her face and trembling with grief. <br />
Earns any acclaim. <br />
Oscar would be right. <br />
Less concerned with beauty than with Cosette's plight. <br />
Cynicism's more than welcome, <br />
But come with an open mind: <br />
So much heartfelt passion has to touch that devil deep inside. <br />
<br />
Javert's cold as ice, <br />
Marius is nice, <br />
War, alas, is a strangely dull plot device. <br />
Here a little slice. <br />
There a little cut. <br />
If paid by the shot that would explain the glut. <br />
When it comes to framing action, <br />
There's just one trick Hooper knows: <br />
Tight close-ups of the face, <br />
Throw cameras round the place, <br />
Jesus, how his lack of vision shows! <br />
<br />
Hooper's in the house! <br />
Camera's on its side: <br />
Fruitlessly angled shots we cannot abide! <br />
Latter part's a bore. <br />
Staging's far from great. <br />
But singing tends to make Oscar masturbate. <br />
Talent is always in fashion: <br />
Actors give it all they've got. <br />
Handheld is so queasy, <br />
Jesus, what I'd do for a fixed shot! <br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
I used to dream <br />
This wouldn't make me wince. <br />
But, God Almighty, <br />
Some blandness is evident. <br />
<br />
Hooper's in the house?! <br />
Try going outside! <br />
A wide shot of a landscape is worth a try. <br />
All this indoor rain<br />
Couldn't make me wet. <br />
Wish Deakins could've shot Seyfried's silhouette! <br />
What a cruel use of lenses: <br />
No verve of screen or of stage! <br />
These flat compositions might as well have stayed on Hugo's page. <br />
<br />
Hooper's in the house! <br />
Space is really tight. <br />
Someone help the cameraman to stand upright! <br />
Dim and drab decor. <br />
Structures have no weight. <br />
And yet this thing has the taste of Oscar bait. <br />
<br />
Everybody cheer the vocals! <br />
Everybody cheer the heart! <br />
Everybody bring a flask: sing-alongers don't stop when asked. <br />
Everybody brace for the task, 'cause Hooper's in the house! <br />
<br />
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Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-21808898230928802672012-12-23T22:35:00.000-05:002012-12-23T22:35:42.812-05:00Best Movie Posters of 2012<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />There's a lot of movie watching and writing I want to do. Soon. But now it's time for family. So let's continue this other holiday season tradition with a look back at my favorite movie posters of the year.<br />
<br />
My introduction from last year's post still applies:<br />
<br />
<em>What do I look for in a movie poster? In general, I like a striking image that stands out in the lineup at the multiplex while evoking the film's themes. The best movie posters ingrain themselves within our memories of the films themselves, so that to think of</em>Jaws<em>, for example, is to think of that image of the giant shark swimming upward toward the helpless swimmer. Of course, that means that sometimes how we feel about a movie poster is directly tied to how we feel about a film, and an image that might otherwise be pedestrian takes on greater meaning retroactively, or a compelling image is made to feel trite because the movie turns out to be.</em><br />
<br />
It's a short list for me this year. Take a look and tell me: what are your favorite posters of the year, and what did I get horribly wrong?<br />
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Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-76762232743911432882012-12-08T11:30:00.005-05:002012-12-11T18:47:48.837-05:00Printing the Legend: You Don't Know Bo<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Let's be honest: as the 1980s became the 1990s, none of us had a clue why we suddenly needed "cross-training" shoes. But there was never any doubt that Bo Jackson was the right guy to sell them — whatever they were exactly. Bo Jackson was a two-sport star in baseball and football, and after Nike crafted its "Bo Knows" campaign there seemed to be no limit to what he could do. Basketball, tennis, cycling, soccer — the ads, and Jackson's physique, convinced us that, yeah, he'd probably succeed at those sports, too. It was the perfect marriage of a spokesperson's abilities and a company's commercial cunning. To see a "Bo Knows" ad was to never forget it, which could also be said of seeing Jackson himself. So it's only appropriate that Michael Bonfiglio's documentary on Jackson, <em>You Don't Know Bo</em>, would include a section on that famous ad campaign, because all these years later it's a perfect encapsulation of both Jackson's allure (he was one of the most famous athletes on the planet) and our habit of romanticizing his potential to the point that it inflated our perception of reality.<br />
<br />
Yeah, I'm something of a Bo Jackson skeptic. Always was. Sure, he was a damn impressive athlete. Other than Deion Sanders (conveniently not mentioned in the documentary — nor is Brian Jordan, for that matter), no other athlete in my lifetime could have found a place in the starting lineup of every professional baseball and football team in America. Jackson was a truly awesome figure — powerful, graceful, fast, strong and possessing a knack for doing the sensational with an air of nonchalance. But during Jackson's too-brief career, we were so awestruck by his multi-sport talent and tendency for <em>SportsCenter</em>-friendly spectacle that we often ignored his limitations and inflated his successes. I've felt this way for years, so I approached <em>You Don't Know Bo</em>, the final episode in ESPN Films' second <a href="http://espn.go.com/30for30/" target="_blank">"30 for 30"</a> volume, hoping it would change my mind. Instead, the very resume that Bonfiglio uses to convey Jackson's greatness confirmed my skepticism.<br />
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Here's what I mean: If you saw Jackson play, it'll take you no more than 30 seconds to come up with the highlight-reel feats that Bonfiglio features in this documentary. Jackson going over the top to beat Alabama as a freshman running back at Auburn? Check. Jackson streaking down the sideline for a 91-yard touchdown and then continuing up a tunnel behind the end zone in a Monday night game against the Seattle Seahawks? Check. Jackson running through Brian Bosworth a while later in the same 221-yard performance? Check. Jackson homering to lead off the 1989 All-Star Game? Check. Jackson gunning down Harold Reynolds at home plate from deep left field on a throw that never hit the ground? Most definitely: check! Jackson scampering up an outfield wall and snapping bats over his head? Yep, that stuff is here, too, along with some undeniably dazzling gridiron runs and leaping outfield catches. They're fun highlights, all of them. But what do they tell us about Jackson's greatness?<br />
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In the case of his victorious plunge against Alabama — a landmark win for the program but, let's be honest, a fairly typical play — it might not tell us enough: Jackson set a then-SEC record with 6.6 yards per carry over his four-year college career. But that 91-yard touchdown against Seattle? Jackson broke one "tackle" on the play (if you can call it a tackle: the defender got one hand on Jackson's hip as he blew by) and then ran straight down the sideline — and then colorfully but needlessly coasted into the tunnel. It was awesome to see a guy of that size with such speed, but that was a touchdown produced by great blocking, not great running. And the Bosworth play? It might be Jackson's most famous but ultimately least impressive feat. Indeed, Bosworth had been a great college linebacker, and an injury shortened his NFL career, so we'll never know how good of a pro he might have been. But take away the retrospectively overblown hype around Bosworth, fueled by his bad-boy haircut that made him a villain we were itching to see destroyed, and here's what happens on that play: a 225-pound man with a head start runs into a mediocre NFL linebacker who brings the running back to the ground but is knocked back 3 yards in the process, which is enough for the ball carrier to score a touchdown. "It was the validation of the greatness of Bo Jackson," Boomer Esiason says of that showdown in the documentary, which is true in terms of capturing our national response that moment. But in hindsight, if that's all it takes to be validated, greatness comes cheap.<br />
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Some of Jackson's other big accomplishments are similarly flimsy. That towering home run to centerfield off Rick Reuschel in the 1989 All-Star Game? Massive blast. But was it, in the words of Kansas City Royals Hall of Fame director Curt Nelson, "the most amazing thing" we saw in that game? Well, I don't know: the very next batter, Wade Boggs, went yard of Reuschel, too. And what about that throw to nail Reynolds at home plate in the bottom of the ninth to send the game to extra innings? Alright, that was awesome. But Reynolds was trying to score from first, don't forget. And scampering up the outfield wall? That's graceful, but it's also as random as running up the tunnel after a 91-yard touchdown. And what about breaking those bats? Nifty trick, but it distracted us from the reality that Jackson so often connected his bat with his head or thigh because he struggled to connect it with the baseball. The only MLB category Jackson ever led: strikeouts.<br />
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Jackson played in the era of the highlight, when ESPN's "Plays of the Week" was must-see TV and the practice of focusing on the statistics below the flash was, for the typical fan, almost two decades away. Jackson's NFL stats are outstanding: he averaged 5.4 yards per carry over four abbreviated seasons. But his baseball stats — just focusing on his pre-injury Royals career — barely put him in the all-star conversation. His best season, 1989, when at 26 he hit .256, with 105 RBI, 32 homers, only 21 additional extra-base hits, 26 stolen bases and 172 strikeouts, is fairly comparable to the 2012 season of Mark Trumbo of the Los Angeles Angels, who at 26 hit .268, with 95 RBI, 32 homers, only 22 additional extra-base hits, 4 stolen bases and 153 strikeouts. The point isn't that Jackson was a poor player. Far from it. And it isn't lost on me that baseball was his second-best sport, even though he called football his "hobby," and that his best years were ahead of him, if not for his catastrophic hip injury. But what all this shows is that, even now, we have a tendency to think of Bo Jackson based on his imagined potential greatness, not his actual performance.<br />
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By focusing on the impact of Nike's ad campaign, and even devoting attention to the Jackson's unrivaled prowess in digital form in the 1989 "Tecmo Bowl" video game, Bonfiglio loosely acknowledges that our fascination with Jackson transcended realism. Yet for each instance in which <em>You Don't Know Bo</em> unravels the myth around Jackson (illustrating the absurdity of the tale that he once jumped 40 feet across a ditch, for example), there are a handful of times in which Bonfiglio seems to be doing his best to reinforce it — like failing to acknowledge Sanders, or Boggs' subsequent home run or the retrospective insignificance of Bosworth. Bonfiglio's "out" is beginning his documentary with the famous quote from <em>The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance</em>, "When legend becomes fact, print the legend," which if you know the film and understand the context is a tacit acknowledgement that our initial impressions of Jackson were oversized, as well as a disclaimer about the factuality of what's to come. But will viewers who don't know John Ford's 1962 film and didn't live through the Jackson experience pick up on such subtlety? Or will they accept this legend as fact?<br />
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If not for his hip injury, it isn't out of the question that Jackson could have lived up to the legend (realistically speaking), developing into a Hall of Famer in both baseball and football. Heck, if he'd just focused on football, where his disinterest in practicing didn't seem to be a hindrance, he might have built a legend based on his exploits in that sport alone. All the hype around Jackson wasn't baseless. It just managed to be bigger than Bo. You can hear in some of the documentary's interviewees an awareness that Jackson's legend was or is excessive (and I can't help but wonder if Chuck Klosterman, who most explicitly outlines the effect of Nike's campaign, might have been even more pointed than Bonfiglio cared to share). But most of the subjects who describe their encounters with Jackson are just as slack-jawed today as they were then. And while their awe might not always be earned, there's no doubting that it's honest, and so maybe that's the hidden genius of Bonfiglio's documentary. Seen from a rational point of view, <em>You Don't Know Bo</em> is as much a reflection of our irrational sentiment for Jackson as it is a profile of his unforgettable career.
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You Don't Know Bo <em>premieres tonight on ESPN at 9 pm ET, and will rerun frequently thereafter. The Cooler hopes to review each new film in the "30 for 30" series upon its release.<br />
<a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/p/30-for-30-series.html" target="_blank">See the Volume 1 and Volume 2 archive.</a></em>
Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-31644876676017888202012-12-03T21:56:00.000-05:002012-12-03T21:56:28.328-05:00Everything Old Is New Again: Skyfall<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />By the time I got around to seeing <em>Skyfall</em>, I was aware that it had been called (at least perhaps) the best Bond movie of all time. By whom and how many, I'm not sure, because this wasn't stuff I was seeking out — the hype on Twitter was simply impossible to avoid. I mention this up front because I'm definitely not the guy who should be evaluating where this picture ranks within a franchise that is now 50 years, 23 films and six Bonds strong. In theaters, on VHS, on DVD or on TV, I've seen almost all of the Bond movies at this point, but most of them only once, and I've never read so much as a page of Ian Fleming's original novels. So all I know about what a James Bond movie "should be" comes from a relatively distant appreciation of what James Bond movies typically have been. Still, when it comes to <em>Skyfall</em>, of this much I'm certain: I've never had a better time watching a Bond movie.<br />
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As good of a time? Well, sure. A few weeks ago I stumbled upon <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/2010/03/human-bondage-casino-royale.html" target="_blank"><em>Casino Royale</em></a> on TV and was reminded of the transfixing sexual tension between Daniel Craig's Bond and Eva Green's Vesper Lynd, and I appreciated anew the boldness of rebooting this James Bond as an emotionally raw character. Meanwhile, I've always felt that <em>Goldfinger</em> was the quintessential Bond flick, what with the presence of Sean Connery, the girl painted in gold, the laser aimed at Bond's crotch and the mere existence of Oddjob and Pussy Galore. And even when I think of a ridiculed installment like <em>Moonraker</em>, I'm put in touch with my childhood fascination for the oh-so-Bond-villainous Jaws, the tall guy with the metal teeth who you figure Vince McMahon would have dreamed up as a 1980s WWF heel if he hadn't been conceived for the Bond universe. That said, while <em>Skyfall</em> isn't as playful or imaginative as most of its predecessors (very much by design), it's also more sensitive, more personal and more visually daring than almost all of them. And that's thrilling.<br />
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Of course, if a Bond expert tells you I'm wrong about all that, trust the Bond expert. But if we can agree that one of the core elements of Bond Cinema is the indelible impression — a combination of the picture itself and the awe or sexuality encoded within it — then we must also agree that <em>Skyfall</em> is particularly rich in that regard. <strong>(Spoilers ahead.)</strong> The first unforgettable image from <em>Skyfall</em> comes near the end of the traditional opening set piece, in which a fistfight on top of a moving train (of course!) is interrupted by a bullet from a sniper rifle: the bad guy gets away, even though the long-range shooter has ample opportunity to take him down, but Bond doesn't — and what's so striking about that moment isn't just the jaw-dropping sight of Bond falling from a moving train (wow!) but also the free-falling effect of seeing Bond take a bullet: it's overwhelming and disorienting — the worst kind of adrenaline rush. <em>Skyfall</em>'s next indelible impression is a fistfight before a different fall, this one taking place in a dark, vacant Shanghai skyscraper, with the action unfolding in silhouette — black against midnight blue, occasionally highlighted by a giant LED screen providing an additional psychedelic backdrop. But for my money the most dazzling image from <em>Skyfall</em> is, like the gold dust girl in <em>Goldfinger</em>, comparatively straightforward: Bond standing tall in a raft, passing through the mouth of a bright red-orange dragon that serves as the illuminated gate to a floating Macau casino — a shot in which legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins and the ruggedly sexy Craig both do everything in their power to take our breath away.<br />
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I'm limiting myself by selecting just three awesome images above (hello, shaving scene!), but perhaps it's more important to dig into what these images achieve: stylized realism. That's been the modus operandi of this entire Craig-starring reboot (previous Bonds had no interest in realism), and <em>Skyfall</em>, written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Josh Logan, and directed by Sam Mendes, finds the perfect balance of the two, nicely grounding the series after <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/2008/11/bourne-again-quantum-of-solace.html" target="_blank"><em>Quantum of Solace</em></a> birthed a Bond too interested in becoming Jason Bourn. The plot of <em>Skyfall</em> is about an agent who has lost a step and might be over the hill, but Craig's performance and Mendes'/Deakins' framing repeatedly reinforces Bond's handsomeness, swagger and strength, making this tux-clad cat cool in the only way that Bond characters can be cool: without trying. Craig's Bond isn't "original," and thank goodness for that: from a pop culture perspective, James Bond should always provide our working definition of smart, sexy and suave. But Craig's Bond almost feels new, because the screenplay taps into that rage that's still so refreshing after all those Bonds who were neither shaken nor stirred, no matter how they ordered their martinis, and because these days the multiplex is overrun by badass-posing, catchphrase-dropping, punch-line-slinging comic book superheroes who are only cool in the way of Michael Cera's Paulie Bleeker in <em>Juno</em>: they try really hard, actually.<br />
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Craig's Bond is so compelling, so charismatic and so accessible (despite his aloofness) that <em>Skyfall</em> didn't need to dig into Bond's childhood for us to figure out that he'd gone through life with a chip on his shoulder — since Craig took over the role, that chip has been the only thing bigger than his bulging lats.
But the appropriateness of Bond's origin story shouldn't be taken for granted. Until now, Bond was a character who seemed born at full maturity, so it's no small task to draw his childhood convincingly, even in the abstract. And in the end it's worth it for the poetry of <em>Skyfall</em>'s finale, which has Bond utterly destroying his former life — utilizing some of the gadgetry of former Bond movies — to battle a villain who is obsessed with the past (Javier Bardem's Silva). <em>Skyfall</em> ends with Bond at the end of an era and yet starting all over again. And for a series that never quite gets old, maybe that's exactly where Bond should always be.Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-60096343887725184392012-11-28T19:55:00.000-05:002012-11-28T19:55:20.807-05:00Shiny and New: Samsara<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br/ >If the essence of cinema is visual storytelling, <em>Samsara</em> is the purest cinema experience of the year. Directed by Ron Fricke, it's a documentary without narration, dialogue or central characters — offering instead vivid image after vivid image, and just enough of a score to fill the void around them. Over the course of the 102-minute film, we see the majestic ruins of Petra, the towering skyline of Shanghai, the temples of Myanmar and so much more — beautiful, startling and devastating sights from 25 countries, captured over a five year period. Many of the images, particularly the timelapses of the night sky or the white and red ribbons of rush-hour traffic, are big-picture versions of what can already be found on Vimeo, often captured by relative amateurs in stunning resolution. But <em>Samsara</em> is more than just a marriage of top-notch technology (filmed in 70mm) and technique. There is an artistic voice here, too, in the unmistakable social/environmental commentary that takes shape over several portions of the documentary, and in the film's infectious awe for these pictures.<br />
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In 2012, this really has no business working. There was a time when moviegoers went to the theater to see things they never could on their own, but that was another era. The Internet, the limitless potential of CGI, the proliferation of image delivery systems and affordable image capturing systems, the boom of ecotourism and the increased convenience of transportation, it's all led to a world in which almost nothing seems mysterious or out of reach. Even the most remote sites are one finger tap away, and amateur vacation chronicles on YouTube enable us to see exactly what it looks like to visit nearly any site on the planet — and, hell, even destinations in space — without needing to get off the couch. So none of this should impress anymore (we've seen it all), and yet it does, because the epic nature of the exercise and exquisite cinematography make even the most familiar landmarks, like our own Monument Valley, seem exotic. In a nod to Madonna's "Like a Virgin," care of Quentin Tarantino's monologue in <em>Reservoir Dogs</em>, <em>Samsara</em> can make even the most world-wise moviegoer feel touched for the very first time. <br />
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Watching this movie, falling under its spell, reminded me of my childhood routine of spreading out on the floor to flip through issues of <em>National Geographic</em>, staring long and hard at images that, as the months went by, I'd gazed into several times before but never ceased to find compelling. Calling <em>Samsara</em> a movie version of <em>National Geographic</em> could be used as an insult, I suppose, but I don't mean it that way. What the celebrated stills from that magazine have in common with the images of this documentary is a heightened realism — rich colors, dramatic contrasts, framing and depth. This, to borrow a phrase from Werner Herzog — no stranger to dramatic images himself — is "ecstatic truth." And in an era in which Hollywood keeps trying to outdo itself in its CGI depictions of heightened reality, there's something special about being reminded just how breathtaking the world can be all on its own, whether we're looking at a sand painting, a waterfall, destruction from hurricane flooding or, in one of the most fantastic shots of the year, a white sea of Muslim worshipers participating in the Hajj, swarming and circling the Black Stone. Here, authenticity and awe are intertwined.<br />
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At times, <em>Samsara</em> is like an extended version of the creation sequence in <em>The Tree of Life</em> (like Terrence Malick, Fricke hasn't lost his wonder for the world), not just in terms of its spirit and cinematography but also because it chronicles the resilience and evolution of life. To see those simple holes carved into mountainsides is to marvel anew that man created those dwellings by hand, and survived that way for so long. It's a testament to what we're capable of. But what do we do with that capability now? Much of the second half of the movie observes man-made creations of mass production. Images of newly manufactured bullets and guns are chilling reminders of the never-ending strength of the death industry. Images of chickens and cattle being moved through enormous assembly lines challenge any wholesome notions we have about the food we eat. And then there are shots of the factory workers: stuffing chickens in crates all day, assembling guns all day, bagging home appliances all day, and so on. These are gruesome, awful jobs that look like prison sentences, not occupations, which seems increasingly unjust when we watch the YouTube-celebrity prisoners of Cebu Province Detention and Rehabilitation Center in the Philippines performing one of their elaborate dance sequences and having a much better time behind bars, at least in that moment.<br />
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Many will find such social commentary too heavy handed. In one instance, we see the end result of those food assembly lines: a family of overweight Americans shoveling fast-food into their mouths. Admittedly, that image seems out of step with the rest of the film at first. But maybe it isn't. Armed with so much potential, American society is choosing to fatten up like the livestock that make up our meals. Like it or not, this is who we are, as much as the face paint and weaponry of the Mursi village in Ethiopia is who they are. And if we don't find the portrait nearly as romantic, we have only ourselves to blame. <em>Samsara</em> reconnects us to the world, in all its glory, monotony and tragedy. Who could ask for more?Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-3792698210987727442012-11-25T10:38:00.002-05:002012-11-25T10:38:20.678-05:00Wielding a Butter Knife: Hitchcock<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />If you're going to direct a film called <em>Hitchcock</em>, you'd better have a name like Spielberg. Otherwise you're just asking for it. Sacha Gervasi might as well wear a "KICK ME" sign. His second feature film chronicles the life of perhaps the greatest filmmaker of all time, which is at least a double-whammy: first, the odds are against a Hitchcock biopic being anywhere near as good as even a modest Hitchcock movie; second, there's a strong chance that Hitchcock's many admirers aren't going to be especially generous when it comes to accepting Gervasi's artistic license, presuming they're willing to recognize him as an artist in the first place.<br />
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That includes critics, for whom cinema is religion, but it's by no means limited to them. After all, Alfred Hitchcock was more than the director of some of our favorite movies. He was a personality, playfully introducing segments of the TV show bearing his name and popping up on the silver screen in anticipated blink-and-you'll-miss-'em cameos. There's a natural tendency to want to believe that charming personalities are charming people, and that great artists have great character. But it isn't always so, as we have been recently reminded by accusations against Elmo puppeteer Kevin Clash (which might be false, but there's a lot of smoke there), or Joe Paterno before that, or, way back, Michael Jackson, and so on. Established legends aren't always honest ones, and even in cases when we know better, we rarely really know.<br />
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All of that said, Gervasi and screenwriter John J. McLaughlin have a responsibility to be, well, responsible, but they needn't coddle their subject, nor stick to convention by worshipping at Hitchcock's feet. What they must do is make a good movie. And if <em>Hitchcock</em> is "good," it's only because it isn't awful — at least it's no worse than your typical biopic that's rife with oversimplification to fit real lives into a traditional dramatic structure. Hollywood gives us movies like this every year, and often our enjoyment says more about our familiarity with the subject matter than anything else. Generally the more ignorant we are going in, the better. And that's who <em>Hitchcock</em> is made for: not the Hitchcock historian but the novice, for whom the portrayals of Alma Reville's influence on her husband's art will qualify as Big News.<br />
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Performances tend to be crucial in movies of this ilk, and in <em>Hitchcock</em> the acting is adequate across the board. In the lead roles, Anthony Hopkins slips inside Hitch's jowls better than I expected, managing to keep a colorful personality from becoming outright caricature, and Helen Mirren nicely suggests Alma's emotional insecurities without sacrificing her well earned professional confidence; there's never any doubt that Hitch respects his wife's cinematic instincts as a true collaborator, not just a spouse. Meanwhile, Scarlett Johansson fills out Janet Leigh's bra and James D'Arcy nails some Norman Bates mannerisms in his portrayal of Anthony Perkins, as McLaughlin and Gervasi track the development of <em>Psycho</em> — the Hitchcock movie that's notable for its production (Hitch financed it himself, for distribution by Paramount, and then shot it on Universal's lot), its marketing (Hitch famously ordered that no one be allowed to enter the theater after the start of the picture) and its success (it was the most profitable hit of Hitchcock's career — and a great movie). The <em>Psycho</em> production offers a good peephole view of Hitchcock's determination, vision and savvy. But as with most biopics, things get dirty when McLaughlin tries to jam a complete psychological profile through such a narrow access point.<br />
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Extending beyond its source material, Stephen Rebello's <em>Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho</em> (an interesting, quick read, by the way), <em>Hitchcock</em> not only implies that the storied director felt a sort of kinship with Ed Gein, the real-life murderer whose crimes loosely inspired the Robert Bloch book upon which Hitchcock's film is based, but that he also put some of himself into Norman Bates. Like Norman in <em>Psycho</em>, Hitchcock is seen here spying on a disrobing woman (Jessica Biel's Vera Miles) from a peephole carved into his office wall. And while the former makes for an impish narrative device (Gein, played by Michael Wincott, repeatedly appears as a counseling apparition for Hitch), the latter might be the only time Hitchcock truly offends, because the peephole bit isn't mere insinuation or speculation but an outright accusation — manufactured trivia that I presume is baseless. (If there are reports or rumors to the contrary, someone please let me know.) The real problem with <em>Hitchcock</em>, however, is the melodrama constructed between Hitch and Alma — she resentful that he gets so wrapped up in his projects and infatuated with his sexy movie stars; he ticked off that she's secretively collaborating with a flirtatious hack writer (Danny Huston, nauseating as ever). I'm not here to suggest that such conflict didn't exist in their marriage, because in this case the truth is incidental: within Gervasi's film the marital conflict comes off like a shopworn cliche.<br />
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<em>Hitchcock</em> isn't all bad. It's fun to watch Hitchcock battle the censorship board (moviegoers who've grown up in the <em>Jackass</em> era will be stunned to learn that a toilet could be such a taboo appliance) and to try to untangle his feelings for his actresses: did Hitchcock cast beautiful women, and frequently put them in sexual or suggestive situations, because he knew it made for good cinema and enjoyed fucking with the censorship board, or, as with Steven Spielberg's many cinematic references to the childhood trauma of his parents' divorce, is it fair to assume that some of Hitch's personality made it into his pictures? <em>Hitchcock</em> implies the latter, and although the peephole scene oversteps, Hitchcock's filmography and rumors of his hot-and-cold relationships with his stars are enough to justify more exploration (including speculation) than Gervasi's film dares to pursue. Certainly, if Hitchcock had made a movie about a filmmaker with possible skeletons in the closet, he'd have opened the door and looked around. Of course, he'd have also made obsession look much more interesting.Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-42302549931629230892012-11-24T08:37:00.000-05:002012-11-24T08:37:49.576-05:00Passion Play: Anna Karenina <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />To think of Joe Wright's filmography is to think of his showy extended takes and elaborate camera movements, which is precisely how he wants it. Wright's four-minute tracking shot in <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/2008/02/rude-awakening-atonement.html" target="_blank"><em>Atonement</em></a> — the most famous example of his bravura exhibitions — is the work of an artist who wants to challenge himself and call attention to himself at the same time. Alas, it's the wrong kind of showstopper — one that takes us out of the movie instead of into the evacuation of Dunkirk and that inspires eye rolls as much as respect. Memory of that sequence is enough to make one hesitant to fall for similar flourishes in Wright's latest film, <em>Anna Karenina</em>, but this time around Wright's camera acrobatics are much more effective, in large part because they blend in. Rather than reduce the energy of his cinematic trapeze acts, Wright has instead chosen to increase the frenzy of the entire circus. Clearly determined to separate his adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's saga from the many that have preceded it, Wright locates the majority of the film inside an opera house, where scene-transitioning set changes often take place as the actors continue to perform on a literal stage. The result is a film that can be as frenzied as an encore performance by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra — although it's still less aggressive than Baz Luhrmann's <em>Moulin Rouge!</em> And even if this showy approach is inspired by Wright's interest in flamboyant filmmaking more than a desire to dig into Tolstoy's themes, there's no denying that he accomplishes the latter via the former.<br />
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Wright announces the kind of movie he's making in the very first scene, in which a character sitting in a barber's chair on an otherwise plain stage has his thick beard shaved off in two swift razor swipes. Over the next hour or so, almost all the action unfolds on or in front of that stage, with a tone that alternates between intimately genuine and fantastically theatrical — mostly the latter. In Wright's first bit of stunt work with cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, we begin with a view of Anna (Keira Knightley) being dressed for the day, only to have that dressing room set lift to the rafters as Anna walks forward off the stage, through passersby in front of the stage (suggesting her walk through town) and then through the door of another backdrop that plops down in front of her as a desk is rolled in from the side to become the office of her husband (Jude Law). Not long after that, the office of Anna's brother, Oblonsky (a bubbly Matthew Macfadyen), is transitioned into a restaurant over a wild 90 seconds in which the camera moves through the set in the shape of a "5" and then keeps turning in a big circle until all signs of the previous set are gone and only the restaurant parlor remains. Awhile later, all the key players are seated in front of the stage, as audience to an opera that will appear on it, until the curtain lifts and chandeliers descend, and suddenly the seated crowd in front of the stage has been replaced by dancers at an after party. Wright's film, written by Tom Stoppard, delights in such stylistic feats. But there's substance within that style, to be sure.<br />
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As adapted by Wright and Stoppard, <em>Anna Karenina</em> is a tale of forbidden desire that causes inner torment in private and scandal in public. Placing the drama on a literal stage symbolizes, first and foremost, how all eyes are on Anna as she falls under the spell of Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), the young blue-eyed officer she is helpless to resist, whose preoccupation with Anna is impossible to ignore. Beyond that, though, all the whirling camera movements and rapid set changes within the same confined space suggest Anna's swirling emotions and her need to adopt multiple identities to suit each moment — faithful wife, chaste flirt, yearning seductress, and so on. Cinematically as well as thematically, Vronsky is the craving that Anna can't outrun, because he consumes her every thought and lingers around every corner. Wright's all-inside-the-opera-house approach not only acknowledges the inherent melodrama, it increases the friction between characters by tightening their proximity. It's simply not possible within this pressurized snow globe for Anna and Vronsky to hide their love away — from the public, one another, or themselves. It's there for all to see.<br />
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Working with Wright for the third time, Knightley is nothing short of ravishing as Anna. I've already written one <a href="http://coolercinema.blogspot.com/2012/07/perfect-mismatch-seeking-friend-for-end.html" target="_blank">love letter to Knightley</a> this year, so I'm hesitant to pen another, but while she worked against-type in <em>Seeking a Friend for the End of the World</em>, here Wright utilizes Knightley's strengths: from her striking features to her throbbing passion to her emotional fragility. Despite impressive performances in their previous collaborations (<em>Pride & Prejudice</em> and <em>Atonement</em>), I admit I'd never considered Knightley a "great" actress, but I do now. She isn't meant for every role, of course. Few actors are. But I can't think of another actress of her generation who has such innate, effortless sexual charisma. It's as if Knightley came out of the womb flirting. In one terrific little scene before Anna and Vronsky consummate their affair, Anna scolds her admirer about one of his earlier advances: "You behaved badly — very badly," Anna says. But her eyebrow is arched. Her eyes are bright. Her tongue seems playful. Anna's words tell Vronsky that he misbehaved, but everything else confirms that she loved it. Later on, Knightley is equally brilliant in the movie's most outstanding sequence, when Wright manages to bring a horse race into the opera house and the rapid fluttering of Anna's fan suggests her pounding heart as she nervously watches Vronsky race, unable to contain her emotions even while she's aware of her husband's suspicious gaze.<br />
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Not every scene has such electricity. The long dance sequence in which Vronsky first advances on Anna is meant to dazzle but falls flat. Even worse, not long after Anna admits her affair to her husband (a nice scene for both Knightley and Law), Wright's film loses momentum almost entirely with an hour still to go — mostly because the energetic and imaginative staging of the seduction acts is deliberately abandoned as the movie heads on its long yet rushed trip toward tragedy. (Coincidentally or not, <em>Atonement</em> did better with desire than downfall, too.) It goes without saying at this point that Wright's film isn't for Tolstoy traditionalists (the accents are British, for crying out loud), but those familiar with the story will enjoy its elements of foreshadowing, particularly a moment at the end of that uninspiring dance sequence when an overwhelmed Anna turns away from the dance floor and sees through a window an oncoming train that will take her back to St. Petersburg, presuming it doesn't run over her first. A shot like that would be nonsensical in a movie with traditional geographic space. Here, it's entirely appropriate. <em>Anna Karenina</em> isn't quite a great film, but it has plenty of greatness with it (it might contain five of my top 25 images of the year). And in the end it's a tremendous example of what's possible when a filmmaker manages to marry his protagonist's passions with his own.
Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-87995243312994110142012-11-23T08:08:00.002-05:002012-11-23T08:52:40.351-05:00Song of the Self: Holy Motors<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Every so often a movie comes along that makes me grateful I never attempted to make my living as a film critic. Most recently, it was Leos Carax's <em>Holy Motors</em>, which is so simultaneously meticulous and ambiguous that it's almost impossible to tell calculating commentary from abstract zaniness. Impossible for me, anyway. Carax is clearly working on at least one big idea here, but it's hard to say how many of the individual gestures within each of the film's distinct vignettes directly serve that big idea. Put another way, <em>Holy Motors</em> might be a film of mostly unrelated tangents that find collective meaning only in their juxtaposition. Or, maybe not. It's a challenging movie, to be sure, and if ever there was a time in which I simply lack the analytical skills and knowledge of cinema history necessary to decode a film, this would be it. Then again, the more I've thought about <em>Holy Motors</em> — including breaking my usual rule by reading other reviews before writing my own — the more convinced I've become that applying a neat reading to such a boldly messy movie is like trying to wrap your arms around water and carry it like a solid. It's a disservice to Carax's method to suggest <em>Holy Motors</em> can be so easily contained.<br />
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So with that established, let's start with what we can be (relatively) sure of: <em>Holy Motors</em> chronicles a day in the life of Denis Lavant's Monsieur Oscar, who is in essence the hitman equivalent of an actor: traveling from job to job, donning disguises to support various identities, completing his assignments and then walking away as if he was never there. Where Oscar's assignments come from, we can't say. Whether his marks are aware he's just an actor, indeed whether his marks specifically ordered his services, seems to vary, and sometimes his apparent marks are actors for hire, too. His assignments run the gamut: Oscar plays an old beggar woman, panhandling on a Paris sidewalk, seemingly for no one in particular. Then he puts on a motion-capture suit, reports to a factory like any blue collar worker, and engages in various combat acrobatics before miming a sex ritual with a contortionist (also in a motion-capture suit) in front of a green screen. After that, he dresses like a troll, emerges from the sewers at a cemetery, bites off a woman's fingers, kidnaps a model doing a fashion shoot (Eva Mendes), takes her underground and then covers her body before exposing his. This is just the beginning. There are many jobs ahead, increasingly concerning death, but before we get there ... a musical interlude(!), as Oscar (or is it just Lavant?) leads a lively accordion/percussion rendition of "Let My Baby Ride," mostly captured in one long tracking shot.<br />
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Within and beyond all of the above there's discussion of acting itself and the changing methods of moviemaking, and there's a scene in which Carax wakes up in a hotel room by the airport and unlocks a hidden door in the wall with his finger and then walks into a theater where everyone is asleep, and ... well, there are probably a lot more "ands," a lot more details to sort through and decode, but I'm not sure all those elements are necessarily part of the same equation. Perhaps, as others have argued, <em>Holy Motors</em> is indeed about the craft of acting, or the evolution of cinema, or even Carax's personal struggles to get his films made (this is his first feature-length film since 1999). And perhaps each vignette is of equal importance with a very specific intent. But with that show-stopping "Let My Baby Ride" interlude as my guide (words I never thought I'd say leaving a movie: "I loved that scene with all the accordions!") <em>Holy Motors</em> feels more like a music album in which the individual parts are mostly self-contained, while still contributing to a larger identity, and in which some lyrics are more meaningful than others. <br />
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<strong>(Spoilers ahead.)</strong><br />
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In some shape or form, certainly <em>Holy Motors</em> is about identity. Oscar's final assignment is to ostensibly play himself. And maybe it's just because it's the last job of the day, but it seems significant that Oscar appears reluctant to take on this role, pausing outside "his" home to savor a few more puffs of his cigarette before opening the door and embracing "his" wife and child, who happen to be ... well, let's just say that Oscar's marriage brings new meaning to the term "jungle fever." All of this might be a commentary on actors, implying that those who pretend for a living have no genuine self, but I felt something more universal than that: Oscar's day is an exaggerated version of what we all do in life to some degree or another, reinventing ourselves for different jobs, different interactions and different relationships. As that last vignette unfolded, I couldn't help but think of an earlier episode — one of the most straightforward and yet sneakily powerful — in which Oscar picks up his "daughter" from a party and, over the course of the drive home, learns that she hid in the bathroom rather than risk interacting with the other partygoers, as she'd first claimed. Oscar is disappointed in his daughter's lack of self-confidence, but more than that he's hurt that she lied to him, if only for a moment. And so after lecturing her about honesty he asks his daughter if she'd lie to him again, if she could be assured he wouldn't find out. She doesn't need to think about it long. Yes, she admits, she would, because "we'd both be happier."<br />
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Through that scene, <em>Holy Motors</em> suggests that these identities we create are lies we tell ourselves to be happy. The truth hurts. Admittedly, I'm placing a lot of significance on one sequence at the expense of others, but Oscar's punishment for his daughter's lying is noteworthy: he orders her to be exactly who she is, and to live with that. (If that seems like a strange sentence coming from someone who appears to lack a genuine self, remember that Oscar is merely playing the role of father in that scene.) Also noteworthy is what Oscar says when he finally walks through the door of "his" home at the end of the day: "It's me." Is it really? Where the truth of Oscar begins and ends is as difficult to determine as the boundaries of Carax's unconventional and unabashed film, which ranges from exhilarating to tedious (maybe I was just worn out, but I felt the deathbed scene needed subtitles for its subtitles) but gives us a lot to wrestle with walking out of the theater. <em>Holy Motors</em> isn't for everyone. It's not even for me (except for a few scenes, I have no desire to wrestle with it again). But, like Oscar, it contains multitudes. Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-53176770301338295592012-11-18T17:59:00.000-05:002012-11-18T20:15:33.605-05:00A Film Divided: Lincoln<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />My favorite shot in Steven Spielberg's <em>Lincoln</em> — indeed, one of my favorite shots of the year — observes the titular president exiting the telegraph office in the still of the night, leaving behind two young, awestruck clerks who have just been a private audience to the president making one of those difficult principled decisions for which he is celebrated and beloved all these years later. Capturing the room from an elevated angle, the wide shot holds steady as Abraham Lincoln gets up from his chair, puts on his trademark stovepipe hat and walks across the room and then into the background, through a doorway and out of view, like an actor leaving the stage. It's a reverent shot, allowing the reverberations of the moment to sink in and affording Lincoln the stately grace of conviction. And yet, even here, with Lincoln's godlike aura as bright as ever, his ordinariness is also in view — in his hunched posture and feeble shuffle. This duality is at the core of our unending fascination with Lincoln — the remarkable president who was in many ways an unremarkable figure — and what Spielberg's film does best, and what that shot does perfectly, is embed the president's heroic qualities within a modest man.<br />
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In an era in which movie audiences are inundated with superhuman characters who strut through every scene with arrogance in their veins and witty one-liners at the tip of their tongue, it's a breath of fresh air to spend time with a character who is merely super <em>and</em> human. But it's even more refreshing to see Lincoln, specifically, portrayed with such nuance. Oh, he's still a saintly figure, make no mistake about it, and the smartest guy in any room. But Spielberg's film allows us to get beyond that, to see the father who awkwardly crawls on the ground to allow his sleepy son to climb on to his back and be hauled off to bed, to see the husband who struggles to manage the coiled emotions of his high-strung wife, to see the former Illinois lawyer who must admit to one of his black servants that her world is mostly beyond his comprehension, and so on. Daniel Day-Lewis is an actor of tremendous power, but what he does in this starring role is emphasize Lincoln's basic human qualities. We can feel his aches and pains, and through his ungainly gait and pinched voice — not to mention that scruffy beard and unruly hair — Day-Lewis's Lincoln mesmerizes not with his awesomeness but with the lack thereof. More than any portrayal I've seen, this Lincoln gives a sense of what it must have been like to be in the presence of the real man.<br />
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Alas, when president isn't on the screen, telling tales and searching his soul, Spielberg's movie lacks both subtlety and magic. Written by Tony Kushner and inspired by Doris Kearns Goodwin's <em>Team of Rivals</em>, <em>Lincoln</em> forgoes the bloody battles of the Civil War to focus instead on a political fight: the president's attempt to pass the Thirteenth Amendment to permanently abolish slavery, so that the previously issued Emancipation Proclamation couldn't be revoked as a war measure once the union was restored. It's a worthy topic, first for its basic historical significance and also for what these dug-in standoffs might suggest about the divisions of our current federal government. But Kushner and Spielberg approach this material with only selective seriousness, and they never convincingly cast Lincoln as the underdog, no matter how many times his cabinet explains how difficult it will be to get the necessary votes. Here, the pro-slavery lot is made up of archetypal villains, with icy stares and sharp features, while the anti-slavery crowd, led by Tommy Lee Jones's Thaddeus Stevens, in a performance as ridiculous as the wig on his head, sits around waiting to slay their mouth-breathing counterparts with cleverness and righteousness. Indeed, the deck is stacked the entire time — in Lincoln's favor.<br />
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To be fair, this is a delicate subject. Clearly, Spielberg doesn't want to dignify racism by suggesting the pro-slavery argument was ever anything except a vile atrocity, and that's understandable. But by reducing Lincoln's opposition to cartoon characters, Spielberg undercuts the significance of the entire episode. In one instance of pure slapstick, a lobbyist played by James Spader kicks dirt on the man who just tried to shoot him, before scrambling to safety as the gunman laboriously reloads his weapon. In another, the entire House of Representatives erupts in outrage when someone suggests that giving freedom to blacks is a gateway to giving them voting rights, and thus a gateway to giving <em>women</em> the right to vote. "Oh, what silly, backward times these were," such scenes suggest, only to be followed by scenes in which Day-Lewis's Lincoln double-underlines the magnitude of the moment. ("The fate of human dignity is in our hands!" and so on.) The result is what <em>Schindler's List</em> might have felt like had it been populated by the Nazis from the Indiana Jones movies. <em>Lincoln</em> is a film tonally divided against itself, and it does not stand.<br />
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It doesn't move particularly well either. At 149 minutes, it's a plodding picture — rarely outright boring but only fleetingly gripping. <em>Lincoln</em> is probably the most dialogue-driven movie Spielberg has made, and as if to make up for the action deficiency he tries to milk every drop of drama from the climactic House vote, but the result is like something out of a Ron Howard movie, with lots of reaction shots and a helpful running tally from Mrs. Lincoln (Sally Field) in the gallery (because every competition needs a scoreboard). This error of excess is nearly redeemed by the ensuing scene, in which Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski find Lincoln in his office, silhouetted behind the curtains as he looks through his window at an America born anew. But Spielberg has never been one for understated conclusions, so <em>Lincoln</em> rolls on, with the surrender of the South, with an obligatory chronicling of the president's death, with a flashback to his second inaugural address and with a completely corny bedroom celebration scene for the triumphant Stevens, until the intimacy of Day-Lewis's portrayal is almost lost, as <em>Lincoln</em>'s vices overwhelm its virtues.Jason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.com49