Guess what! I finally finished April’s recap! I know, right? April was the month in which I rediscovered Turner Classic Movies during a few weeks of relative dead time at school and, between that and an active month of Netflixing and theatre-going, watched a total of 24 movies. I think that’s a record. And that’s not even including the four or five rewatches. So without further ado, here are my reactions to Marie Antoinette, Band of Outsiders, Kiss Me Deadly, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, The Lives of Others, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Through a Glass Darkly, Hot Fuzz, and many others. Plus some books.
Category: Film Page 89 of 101
I’ve stopped doing the trailers for opening movies every week. It just entailed far too much time thinking about films I don’t want to see and finding trailers for obscure films that may or may not ever come anywhere near me or anyone I know. So I’m going to do trailers on a much more haphazard, as-I-see-them basis. Here’s one I ran across via Anne Thompson and Karina Longworth. It’s Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Jack Black in Margot at the Wedding, from Noah Baumbach, who directed the well-received-but-as-yet-unseen-by-me The Squid and the Whale. It looks good. And it looks like it’s the good side of Nicole Kidman, who I swear has schizophrenic acting tendencies (i.e., the dumb, annoying one from Bewitched and The Stepford Wives and the actual good one from The Hours and Dogville), which makes me happy because I always want to love her, and then she does stupid roles and disappoints me.
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(It hurts my soul a little to use anything associated with AOL, but the player is actually pretty nice…and at least they have embeddable media–I’m looking at you, Yahoo!Movies.)
The American Film Institute released an updated version of their 100 Years…100 Movies list of greatest American movies. Apparently they’re going to do that every ten years. I only saw the tail end of the special last night–did any one else catch it? I think I saw the top fifteen or twenty.
The new list is here in pdf form; and the 1997 list is here in pdf. The new list helpfully shows what position each film was in ten years ago, and how much it has changed its position. As far as new films on the list, there are 23, mostly in second half of the list. Still, out of 100 films, that’s quite a turnover–and interestingly, most of the new additions are not films made in the last ten years, but older ones. Apparently AFI felt they had almost a quarter of the films wrong last time. ;) Some of the replacements are good, I think, but others not so much. The worst thing is that I was 86% through the first list, and I’m only 82% through the new one. :(
Films added for the 2007 list:
- The General (1926, Buster Keaton) – definitely should be here; I never understood why it wasn’t before
- Intolerance (1916, D.W. Griffith) – they took out Birth of a Nation…hmm…I personally like Intolerance better, but I wonder if the decision was a politically correct one
- Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (2001, Peter Jackson) – I love the film, but one of the top 100 ever? Not sure.
- Nashville (1975, Robert Altman) – Haven’t seen it, but Altman deserves to be here somewhere.
- Sullivan’s Travels (1941, Preston Sturges) – OMG, yes. Love, love, love this film, and it doesn’t get nearly the attention it deserves.
- Cabaret (1972, Bob Fosse) – This is a great film, too, I’m happy it’s here.
- Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966, Mike Nichols) – Haven’t seen, but I wouldn’t have thought its reputation justified Top 100.
- Saving Private Ryan (1998, Steven Spielberg) – Yeah, I’ll grant this a place.
- The Shawshank Redemption (1994, Frank Darabont) – I’m torn on this one–I liked it, but didn’t love it like everyone else I know.
- In the Heat of the Night (1967, Norman Jewison – I wouldn’t have included In the Heat of the Night; it’s good, but not that good.)
- All the President’s Men (1976, Alan J. Pakula) – Haven’t seen.
- Spartacus (1960, Stanley Kubrick) – Haven’t seen.
- Sunrise (1927, F.W. Murnau) – Haven’t seen, but I’m glad they’re at least trying to include more silent film.
- Titanic (1997, James Cameron) – No. I like Titanic a lot, but it is not one of America’s 100 best films.
- A Night at the Opera (1936, Sam Wood) – This is my favorite Marx Brothers film! Yes, even more than Duck Soup, so I’m pleased.
- 12 Angry Men (1957, Sidney Lumet) – Eh. Maybe, but I’m not wholly convinced (which I guess is sort of ironic).
- The Sixth Sense (1998, M. Night Shyamalan) – No. I’d allow this one on the Top 100 Suspense Films list, but not the Top 100 of everything.
- Swing Time (1936, George Stevens) – Definitely a great, although I would have included Top Hat instead–I’m aware that’s a minority position, though.
- Sophie’s Choice (1982, Alan J. Pakula) – Haven’t seen.
- The Last Picture Show (1971, Peter Bogdanovich) – Great, great film, and very evocative of American nostalgia. I’m glad it’s here.
- Do the Right Thing (1988, Spike Lee) – Should have been on the first list, and I don’t even like Spike Lee movies as a rule.
- Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott) – I really need to rewatch this, because I didn’t like it the first time around, but I think I would if I watched it now.
- Toy Story (1995, John Lasseter) – Is it a Top 100 film? Certainly it is if you include impact on the industry, and that’s one of the criteria. So yes, it belongs for that reason alone (although one could make that argument for a lot of films that were left off).
Films removed for the 2007 list:
- Doctor Zhivago (1965, David Lean) – An appropriate loss.
- The Birth of a Nation (1915, D.W. Griffith) – I’m okay losing this one only because they put in Intolerance. Still, I’d consider it a Top 100.
- From Here to Eternity (1953, Fred Zinneman) – Yeah, it’s good, but is it Top 100 good? Probably not.
- Amadeus (1984, Milos Forman) – Amadeus is a good film, but I sort of agree, it may not belong on a list of American films (it is American, but it feels so continental).
- All Quiet on the Western Front (1930, Lewis Milestone) – No. This one should’ve stayed. Even at 77 years old, it’s amazing.
- The Third Man (1949, Carol Reed) – This is technically a UK film, not an American one, so it’s probably a victim of rule-streamlining. Except for that, it should’ve stayed; great film.
- Fantasia (1940, multiple directors) – Hmmm. Fantasia is amazing, but I’ll admit that it hasn’t aged quite as well as some of the others on the list…
- Rebel Without a Cause (1955, Nicholas Ray) – Should have stayed. Or should have been replaced by another Nicholas Ray film, like In a Lonely Place.
- Stagecoach (1939, John Ford) – Well, they moved The Searchers up the list significantly, and if you’re only going to pick one John Wayne-John Ford western…still, Stagecoach is pretty darn good.
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977, Steven Spielberg) – I honestly would’ve kept this in place of E.T.. Not a huge fan of the E.T..
- The Manchurian Candidate (1962, John Frankenheimer) – Oh, come on! Best Cold War thriller ever? Paranoia? Brainwashing? Evil mothers? Yeah, this one could’ve stayed.
- An American in Paris (1951, Vincente Minnelli) – As good as it is, I’m okay losing this one; it’s a few notches down my favorite musical list.
- Wuthering Heights (1939, William Wyler) – Good film, but it can go.
- Dances With Wolves (1990, Kevin Costner) – Shouldn’t have even been on the first list, so I’m glad it’s not on this one.
- Giant (1956, George Stevens) – Not one of my favorite 1950s epic melodramas; kick it out.
- Fargo (1996, Joel & Ethan Coen) – Oh, I like Fargo! But enough for Top 100? I don’t know…I think I’d say O Brother Where Art Thou instead.
- Mutiny on the Bounty (1935, Frank Lloyd) – This has been creaky for decades; how it made the first list I don’t know.
- Frankenstein (1931, James Whale) – Yeah, it’s a landmark horror film, but it’s aged a bit now, I’ll admit.
- Patton (1970, Franklin J. Shaffner) – Good film, but I’m okay with it not being in the Top 100.
- The Jazz Singer (1927, Alan Crosland) – Aw, first sound film–but really, yeah, not that good except from a film history point of view.
- My Fair Lady (1964, George Cukor) – Enjoyable, but not Top 100 material.
- A Place in the Sun (1951, George Stevens) – Haven’t seen.
- Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967, Stanley Kramer) – No great loss there in my opinion.
After the jump, my version of the Top 100 American Films. They’re unranked, though, because I tried to rank them, and I got incredibly frustrated.
Fox’s filmmaking reality competition On the Lot is in trouble. Its ratings haven’t been great, prompting the network to retool the show and knock it down from two nights a week to one. The problem is, the retooling has only made things worse, at least as far as the quality of the show. Now rather than being a task-oriented filmmaking show, it’s an American Idol-style exhibition show. After the first week, we haven’t seen any of the behind the scenes stuff, just the short films with very little introduction or explanation, we hardly know the people we’re asked to vote for or any of the parameters of the films they’re making.
Cinematical has a bunch of really good suggestions on how to fix the problems–go back to the task-oriented style, asking them to do different things and test their versatility and abilities; make us care about the contestants by showing us the obstacles they overcame in shooting their films; get guest judges who care about being there, or are at least less abrasive than Michael Bay was last week (I made the exact same comment Tuesday night that they did regarding Bay’s comment on film length); get a host who isn’t a moron; don’t lie to us like they did last week…those were their submission films, not films they did while on the show! The thing that’s strange to me is that the show was much more like this before they retooled. Does that suggest that nobody cares about seeing a filmmaking show? I find that highly unlikely given the popularity of DVD making-of special features and that sort of thing–but maybe I run in circles especially interested in how films are made. That’s quite possible.
Another frustration I have with the show is partially directed at the voting public, but also at the judges. These filmmakers are trying to be directors, right? I mean, the one that wins gets a deal to direct a movie for DreamWorks. And while I understand that writing and directing are closely linked, it seems that they’re being judged far more on their ability to write than on their ability to direct. The judges are constantly jumping on the writing or the story or the concept of the films, rather than the camerawork, the cinematography, the blocking, the set-up, etc.
The three filmmakers that got sent home two weeks ago certainly had problems with their films. Claudia’s film ended up terribly, with a blind date in a bathroom and fart jokes. But watch it and look at the cinematography and use of color in the first half and tell me she doesn’t have a great eye. I would have kept her around just for that. Similarly, the judges thought Phil’s film was derivative in its plot device, but the framing of the shots and use of contrasting lighting was excellent, as was the sense of comic timing. On the flip side, this film was voted one of the top three of the night, and while I thought it was rather inappropriately funny, there’s not much interesting in the directing, except some of the acting cues. Now, directing actors is important, I’ll give him that, but if you want to go that direction, he should have made a little more clear that his character is a nerd, not mentally handicapped. Here are two of the films I think should have gotten their makers eliminated: To Screw in a Lightbulb and Wack Alley Cab. The first one has basically two or three static camera angles, none of which is terribly interesting, and a bunch of actors cavorting chaotically in front of the camera. There’s no cohesion to either the direction or the scenario. The second one was just whack. Really. I have no idea what anything was or what it was doing there. But both these filmmakers are still here.
So, based on that frustration, I have another suggestion for On the Lot, which goes along with Cinematical’s #2, wherein they suggest showing what the filmmaking terms mean. Use the judging segments you have and the behind-the-scenes segments you’ve apparently given up to teach us what good directing is all about. Don’t conflate directing with writing–they’re related, but they’re not the same thing. Don’t tell me that someone who has written a good scenario with good dialogue is therefore a good director, or that a filmmaker who uses the camera, set, and actors brilliantly but doesn’t have the greatest story idea can’t be a good director. Help us as an audience learn, so we can vote appropriately. Because we can’t do it now, apparently, and some of the most interesting and talented people are going to get left behind because we’d rather vote for crazy people in a cab than good cinematography and mise-en-scene (i.e., the arrangements of actors and set properties within the shot).
Go ahead. Call me a film snob.
Home to Waco, that is. I realized over the last couple of weeks that I’ve been using “home” to mean whichever place (my parents’ house in St. Louis or my apartment in Waco) I’m not at. Which gets confusing. My apologies for that. In any case, I’m safely back in Texas, uneventful drive, except for the almost constant annoying rain. And the real frogdrowning rain for a few minutes in Oklahoma. Oklahoma has some weird weather, y’all.
But I just looked up what time my class is that starts tomorrow, and it’s from 11:20am to 12:50pm. The heck? Are they serving lunch in this class? That’s the weirdest-timed class I’ve ever seen. And I thought the normal-semester grad class time of 3:30-6:30 was sort of odd. They must have a some sort of sadist writing schedules. Ah well. The good side of that is that I thought it was at 9- or 10-something, and this means I get to sleep later.
In other news, I saw Waitress last night, as my last official activity in St. Louis, and I wasn’t disappointed at all. Quite a feat for my most-highly-anticipated indie film of the summer, right? It was warm, and witty, and perhaps a little cliched in one instance which I won’t tell you about, because it would spoil the denoument if I did, but the whole thing was so sweet-hearted that I couldn’t hardly fault it. I’ll write more when I get around to doing May’s recap (still working on April’s…I watched A LOT of movies in April), but I wanted to encourage anyone who likes sweet-tempered indie romances to see it while it’s in theatres. It does have an arguably problematic outlook on adultery for a while, but I think it ended it up okay…good for discussion, at the very least. In related news, the aspiring filmmakers on On the Lot ought to look to Waitress and films like it as examples–tonight’s set of short films (the ones I saw…I got home about halfway through) largely did themselves in through trying to be too clever. Just be real, folks. Be real. (How’s that for a cliche?)
Oh, and also, no Music Monday this week. I was going to do it tonight, but I’m just too tired. I also know I missed Trailer Thursday last week or two, but there’s not much coming out…Shrek 3 and Pirates 3, and you pretty much know whether or not you want to see those without even seeing a trailer. It’s a paradoxical fact that the more free time I have, the less I blog.