Anyone Can Cook

Ratatouille
M'House
DVD
12/30/07

There's a moment in Ratatouille that may be my favorite moment in any movie that I saw in 2007. If you've seen it, you know what it is. If you haven't, I'm not going to ruin it with details. But the moment when Anton Ego takes a bite of his special meal took Ratatouille from being a movie that I merely really liked to being one that I loved.

So I was looking forward to showing it to Jamee and we finally watched it last night. Her parents gave it to me for Christmas, along with a set of Disney Store lithographs that I need to convince her to put up in the kitchen, or at least ~'s room.

What I'd also like is the international one-sheet. (Valentine's Day is a month and a half away, sweetie. Hint, hint.) Take a look at that poster. Other than Disney's annoying insistence on spelling the title phonetically it's a gorgeous image and considerably more adult that the US poster, which is apt, because if you really look at the film, it's not exactly for children (more on that phrase in a future post).

Granted, kids can enjoy it. ~ sat through most if it without protest last night and I think she's probably old enough now to see something in a theater. The thing about Brad Bird is that he makes animated films that further the idea that animation is not merely for children. This is becoming more of an antiquated notion anyway, although my two year old still wants to watch Bird's The Incredibles daily, so there is an argument to be made that his films are more for everybody than just a specific age group or demographic.

The thing about Ratatouille is that it's a story that really couldn't be told in any medium other than animation. Imagine it being done in live-action. It just wouldn't work. I'm glad to see Pixar experimenting and really pushing the boundaries of what can be done in animation in the West. And if Wall*E proves to be actually be the nearly dialogue-free movie that the rumors make it out to be I'll be very happy. Especially if it makes a ton of money.

Hey, look what came in from Netflix

The Kingdom
M'House
DVD
12/28/07

A few years ago Jamee and I went to a horror movie convention just outside of DC and attended one of the panel discussions. I can't remember what the exact topic of discussion was, but at one point one of the panel folks began going on and on about how Psycho was not a horror film because it was a police procedural. Because the police procedural is a specific genre in and of itself and does not qualify as horror. Which means that The Silence of the Lambs is not a horror film. And Seven is not a horror film. And Jaws. Which is bullshit.

The Kingdom is a police procedural and, for the record, not a horror film, though it shares a title with Lars Von Trier's Danish miniseries, which is. (How's that for an awkward transition?) I had wanted to see The Kingdom when it was in theaters, but decided to wait because of the generally average reviews it got and since it only took about three months to hit DVD, that probably wasn't a bad decision, action sequences aside.

It's really not that bad of a standard Hollywood action flick. It's politics are a little simplistic and when it starts the non-stop action in the last thirty minutes it's a little too easy for the good guys to succeed, even with half of the ammunition in Riyadh being fired at them. That's how simplistic this is - you can easily label the characters as good guys or bad guys and the bad guys can get killed by bullets flying through concrete, the good guys are protected from RPGs by, let's say, air.

So, it's cliched, but well executed and the action is good, (not surprising considering this is a Michael Mann production), but nowhere near the level of the bank heist in Heat or the trailer park standoff in Miami Vice. And it's hard to feel a whole lot of sympathy for the good guys, considering that they swagger into a foreign country without any seeming care for customs or modes of behavior. It's almost as though we're supposed to be rooting for them simply because they're Americans.

At least Jason Bateman's character gets taught an important lesson about why it's not a good idea to be a dick to your hosts. It's also funny to see a supposedly crack FBI agent wearing a Pixies t-shirt that to my knowledge was mostly available at Hot Topic, which gave me the impression that he was a poseur who couldn't score tickets to either reunion show in the DC area over the past few years, but I digress.

Anyway, The Kingdom is not awful, and the first have handily labels every place and everybody, so you kinda know who the characters are and where they're at. Which is considerate.

Are you sure the number is 911?

Hatchet
M'House
DVD
12/23/07

A few months ago I read about a movie called Murder Party on Ain't it Cool's weekly upcoming DVD release post. I'd never head of it, but Harry mentioned that it had been playing film festivals and people just loved it. So I rented it without finding out anything further and loved it. Ended up seeing it again a week later and still loved it. Immediately bought it and have been telling everyone I know who would like that sort of movie that they need to see it. And just about all of them do. So when Hatchet got a similar write up on Ain't it Cool, I decided to give it a chance.

Hatchet is billed as a throwback to R-Rated 80s slasher movies and was intended to be an antidote to crappy PG-13 horror. The problem is that it's basically crappy R-rated horror. It does have some good bits. Joel Moore and Deon Richmond are good as the two buddies who make a bad decision to go on a night swamp tour outside New Orleans. The movie's worth watching just for them. And Buffy's Mercedes McNab has some brilliantly stupid dialogue.

The problem is that after the set up, once it actually becomes a slasher movie, it becomes just another boring slasher movie. The slasher himself is especially bland and lacks any sort of iconic imagery that you get with characters like Freddy, Jason, or Candyman (Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, and Tony Todd all make cameos just to drive in that point), so you have just another backwoods mutant running around killing people. Seriously, once the killer shows up everyone runs around in circles getting picked off until you have the obligatory handful of survivors and pretty much the only ending you can have because it's been written in such a way that it can't end in any other way. Not because it's clever or original, but because it's sloppy.

At risk of sounding like an old fart, I think I've grown out of slasher flicks. I think maybe middle school and high school is the ideal time for them and then you realize that most of them are just crap. I still like a handful of the - Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, Scream. But mostly they're crap. Cheap, profitable crap.

Maybe it's time to make one.

Featuring John Goodman as "Cop in Diner"

C.H.U.D.
M'House
DVD
12/22/07

Yes. We watched C.H.U.D. We were going to watch Hatchet, but there was an ad before it for other Anchor Bay titles, one of which was C.H.U.D. And Jamee pointed out that I'd borrowed it from my friend Joe at least a year and a half ago and since I was going to see him today, we should probably watch it.

So I blame her.

I remember that when I was a kid, C.H.U.D. was this super scary monster movie that I was always just too afraid to watch. Man, I was really a wuss back then. For a monster movie there are very few monsters actually in it, and when they do show up it's just unfortunate. You could argue that the effects are just dated, but this thing came out four years after The Thing, so effects were being done back then that still hold up nearly thirty years later.

But as laughable as it is, John Waters points out in his essay "How Not to Make a Movie," that C.H.U.D. can be looked at as an example of what to do right if you want to make a movie. It cost very little, but made a profit nearly everywhere it was released. And it's gotten multiple references on The Simpsons. Which is great. I'm just saying you don't actually have to watch it.

Although John Goodman is great as "Cop in Diner."

You've Got to Cut Him Up, Boy

Sweeney Todd
Regal Westview 16
Frederick, MD
35mm
12/22/07

I first heard about Sweeney Todd when I was a kid, but only the basics of the story. Todd was a barber on Fleet Street in London who murdered his customers, who were then baked into meat pies by Mrs. Lovett, the baker downstairs. That's all I ever remember hearing of it. I never saw the musical and I never read any of the penny dreadfuls. For all I know they're out of print. I did look forward to Neil Gaiman and Michael Zulli's version, but it never came out, so I never read it.

And now Tim Burton's gone and made a film out of it. I used to be a huge Tim Burton fan. Was right up until Ed Wood. I love Ed Wood. It's one of my favorite movies. But then there was Mars Attacks! (which I have a soft spot for because it came out on the day I met Jamee.) But then there was Planet of the Apes. And Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And then I rewatched Batman and hated it. So I'm no longer the biggest Tim Burton fan anymore.

But Sweeney Todd is a solid film. Though it probably wasn't the best idea to see a morning show. This is more of a night movie. It's dark and obsessively misanthropic and once it was over and I had to navigate last-minute holiday shopping traffic on the way home I really wanted to do violence to everyone around me. So I think I liked it.

The problem I have with it is the music. Now, I'm not against musicals, but I think the fact that it's basically an opera and ninety percent of the dialogue is sung sets up a bit of detachment for me and I never really felt any real connection to the film. Although it is about horrible people doing horrible things, so maybe that was a good thing. So while I liked it, I didn't love it.

But I do love that Comic-Con teaser poster and that's staying up in the dining room.

Good Old-Fashioned Nightmare Fuel

Based on this, I'm probably not going to be taking Maddy to see Coraline just yet (Yes, I know it's not out for a year). I want to see it, but what's under the cover kinda freaks me out, so I really don't want to inflict that on my child. Yet.

But I'll be there.

Bart, are you drinking whiskey? I'm troubled.

The Simpsons Movie
DVD
M'House
12/21/07

We gave up on The Simpsons a few years ago, back when it stopped being, you know, good. I'd been watching since the Christmas special first aired, and sixteen years is a pretty good haul for any show. But we stopped watching and it kept going. I have found that some of the episodes that I didn't like at first improved upon subsequent viewing, so maybe when the past few seasons come out on DVD I'll see them and enjoy. But I'm not counting on it.

So I missed this in theaters, mainly because I was too cheap to by a ticket and too cheap to buy the Season 9 set at Costco that came with a free pass that was selling for $30. (It has since dropped down to $20, so there. And please don't point out that I spent more to buy the DVD that I would have on a movie ticket. It was under my $15 threshhold for movies on DVD and came with a map of Springfield. So there.)

So we watched it last night. Tilda had been asking for Homer all afternoon, which is strange because I wasn't aware that she even knew who Homer was. Perhaps she just wanted The Odyssey. Instead she got The Simpsons Movie. It's funny, don't get me wrong. There's some very funny stuff in here. But after nearly twenty years, is there any story they could really tell on the big screen that could match the greatness that they've done on TV? Not really. But it still feels like something that really couldn't be done as multiple episodes of the show, although the 2.40:1 does give it some scope that probably worked better in the theater.

So, it's not entirely a letdown, but it's not the greatest thing ever, either. For that, we've got the show.

Getting the Finger

So as I'm about to leave work yesterday I notice that there are a couple of people standing by my friend JP's desk and they're all agitated about something. I ask what was going on and they say that they just saw a severed finger on the ground downstairs by the dumpster.

"It was horrible, I almost threw up."

I'm leaving for the day and either I or JP say to the other, "Want to go take a look at it," and the other says "Sure," and we do, because that's what guys do.

So we get downstairs and take the exit by the dumpster. One of our managers is standing by the door smoking a cigarette and about twenty feet away are two guys standing over what looks like a finger. One of them is poking it with a stick, because that's what guys do.

The manager asks JP and I, "What's going on?" One of us replies, "Apparently that's a finger."

The manager walks over to it, leans over, and then picks it up.

"That's not a finger."

That's a potato.

Trailer Park: Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Hellboy II: The Golden Army trailer

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I love Hellboy and I love Guillermo Del Toro. The thing is, I didn't love Guillermo Del Toro's Hellboy. I liked it, but of the three versions of Hellboy, Del Toro's film version is my least favorite. Mike Mignola's comics are great, and the animated films are wonderful, especially Blood and Iron, but there just seemed like there was something missing from the live action film. And I've seen it about five times.

Still, I'm looking forward to Hellboy II: The Golden Army. From what I've heard it's going to be more along the lines of Pan's Labyrinth than the first film, which is a good thing, because that film hews closer to the spirit of the Hellboy comics that the first Hellboy film did. Having said that, I'm not entirely sold on this trailer. I like the monsters, and nobody does monsters like Del Toro. It just seems like the first film and that makes me a bit wary of it.

But I'm sure I'll be surprised. And it's nice to see Johann. And that Comic-Con teaser poster is gorgeous.

Hellboy.

Trailer Park: Wall*E

WALL-E Exclusive Trailer

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The Nightmare Before Christmas was Mathilda's first movie in a theater. She was admittedly way to lil for it and I haven't taken her to one since. But this... This I'm taking her to. This will be her first real movie in a theater. I don't know a thing about it, but it looks wonderful.

Do you have the crazy?

The Signal
AMC Towson Commons
Towson, MD
35mm
12/17/07

So last week I got two tickets in the mail for a preview screening of The Signal. I don't know why. I don't recall signing up for anything with Magnolia Pictures, so when my brother-in-law-in-law and I went up to Towson last night there was an equally good chance that we would either see a movie or get raped and murdered. Or possibly both.

Turns out we saw a movie.

The Signal is a low budget independent horror film about an unexplained signal that begins transmitting through television and radio and telephones and basically makes people go bugfuck crazy. It's the same basic premise as Stephen King's Cell, but more successful in execution. I'm not going to go too much into details because it's not coming out until the end of February and it's probably best to go into it knowing nothing.

What I will go into and what's most interesting about it is how it's structured. There are three sections, each of which follow one of three central characters and has a different director. According to the Web site, it started as a cinematic game of Exquisite Corpse where one filmmaker would begin the story and then hand it off to another to do the next part. Knowing that, it's easy to look back on the film and see that being its origin. What's really cool about the different directors is that there's a definite shift in tone from one section to the next, so that we go from horror to comedy and then back to horror. The most surprising thing is that they manage to pull off the tonal shifts successfully. There's a point where the movie suddenly becomes funny and then there's a point where it's definitely not funny anymore and it works. That's not easy.

I did have a few quibbles with it, the biggest one being that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have a character go out into a city full of bugfuck crazies and put headphones on so she can't hear the bf-crazies coming towards her unless she's a complete idiot. And she doesn't appear to be a complete idiot. And they don't go into reasons why the cuckolded husband deserved to be cheated on other than the fact that he kinda resembles Roy from The Office. But they don't go into backstory on anybody.

I heard some people commenting as they left the theater that The Signal was the worst movie they'd ever seen. Hell, this isn't even the worst movie I've seen this week (see Sunday's post). It's an interesting indy-horror flick and should be seen. I can't imagine that it's going to get that wide of a release, but you know what? The transmission effects may actually work better on television.

Bacon + Chocolate = Awesome

It should be disgusting, but this is pretty darn good.

Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaandstorm

Mystery Science Theater 3000
Hercules Against the Moon Men
M'House
DVD
12/15/07

There's only one notable thing about Hercules Against the Moon Man and that's even considering the fact that nobody seems to be sure if star Alan Steel is even alive anymore. Seriously, there's a Wikipedia category for "possibly living people" and he's in there.

That notable thing is the endless sandstorm sequence. The first time you see it, it feels like forever. The second time through it's pretty bad, but nowhere near as bad as the first, which goes to show that the human brain can get used to anything.

Otherwise it's your standard poorly dubbed mid-60s Italian sword-and-sandals flick. It isn't even a frickin' Hercules movie, either. They just slapped the name on when it was dubbed into English because they figured that nobody in the States knew who the real hero, a strongman named Maciste, was.

Which is true.

And speaking of crap, Maddy took her first dump in a real toilet yesterday. We're very proud.

Good News/Bad News

Good News:
Pogues. March 9. 9:30 Club. Tickets go on sale Monday.

Bad News:
Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers.

Post #1729

Futurama: Bender's Big Score
DVD
M'House
12/9/07

The fact that this exists makes me happy. The fact that there are going to be at least three more makes me even happier. And the fact that this includes a full length episode of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad... well, that's just not right.

So, it's good. And it was worth the wait.

And darn it, I'll probably buy it again if they reconfigure it into four separate episodes with additional footage.

Jamee, please don't read the preceding sentence.

HOORAY FOR CRYSTAL SKULLS!


This may be my second favorite Indiana Jones poster after the teaser one-sheet for Temple of Doom. Looks like there's going to be at least four for the new movie. Wonder if they'll all be by Struzan.

Saturday Night Double-Feature - The midget is the baby's daddy... daddy... daddy...

Superbad
Trapped in the Closet (Chapters 1-12)
DVD
M'House
12/8/07

So we watched Superbad. 'Twas mildly amusing. Some good bits. Not as funny as I hoped it would be. Don't feel the need to see it again. Can't even remember much of what happened in it less than twelve hours after finishing it.

And that's probably because we immediately followed it with Trapped in The Closet (Chapters 1-12).

I'd been told by the person who insisted that I watch Closet that it feels like you're spending an hour inside the mind of a retarded person and I can't really think of a more appropriate description. I don't even want to describe it. I just want people to see it. I can't tell if it's brilliant or stupid because I have no way of telling whether or not R. Kelly himself is even in on the joke. From what I've read he's not, but then that might be part of the joke. It feels like it was written by an adultery-obsessed third grader and it makes by brain hurt to even think about it.

My sister was right. Trapped in the Closet will change your life. In ways you cannot imagine.

I must own it.

Fight the Frizzies

So Mystery Science Theater 3000 is pretty much back. We've got Joel and company doing Cinematic Titanic and Mike and company doing The Film Crew and Rifftrax. The first Cinematic Titanic movie is apparently due out on Monday and they're doing something called Brain of Blood. Can't wait.

But then there's Rifftrax. We've watched a couple of these. The one for 300 is hysterical and makes the movie itself worth buying in my opinion. But now they're doing something that's just wrong.

Now they're doing The Star Wars Holiday Special.

And that's not right.

It's pretty much the worst thing ever. It's the reason why Episode 1 is not the worst thing to ever have the name Star Wars slapped on it. Sure, it introduces Boba Fett, but the first half hour is in unsubtitled Wookiee for chrissake.

And now I have to watch it again.

Did it give you Atheism? Did it?

The Golden Compass
Regal Countryside 20
Sterling, VA
35mm
12/7/07

So I read this letter to the editor at rogerebert.com yesterday morning and thought, what the heck, I'll see if I can spot one in the next movie I see, which turned out to be The Golden Compass. Jamee went out shopping with her mom and sister and Tilda and I ducked out for two hours to see this and was disappointed that there were no protesters. Perhaps it was too cold. There were, however, at least three still images in the movie: There's a painting of Mrs. Coulter in her apartments, later Mrs. Coulter is holding a picture of Lyra, and then there's a bit where Seraphina Pekkala is talking about various locations that we'll be seeing later and the film cuts to a still image of a landscape.

So, anyway, is the movie actually any good? And more importantly, did it turn everyone in the theater into Atheists?

Not exactly.

It has been toned down considerably from the novel and though it's still anti-church, it's not necessarily Atheist. In fact, at one point Lord Asriel pretty much flat out says that God exists in their dimension, though it might not necessarily exist in others. Which isn't exactly an Atheist philosophy, the whole acknowledging the existence of God thing. The issue is mainly being about anti authoritarianism. You can get rid of the church and it doesn't mean that God isn't there.

But as a movie, and a story, The Golden Compass doesn't quite work. It feels like there's a longer version out there somewhere (In fact I know there is. They chop out the whole conclusion of the book and I know it was filmed because there's bits of it in the trailer) and the compression of the story into under two hours makes for a lot of people talking the way people only do in movies and a LOT of expository dialogue.

There's good stuff in it, though. Anytime Lee Scoresby or Iorek Byrnison are on screen it's pretty great, and I hope we get to see Scoresby's confrontation with the Tartars in a film version of The Subtle Knife. Iorek Byrnison is particularly impressive. He's the armored polar bear with the voice of Ian McKellan and when he starts attacking things it's awesome. It's pretty much that way in the book, too, and though I haven't read The Amber Spyglass yet I'll be disappointed if he doesn't show up. The kid playing Lyra's good, too, and I'm curious to see how they explain her aging if they actually do another film.

And there's one bit from the book that I was sure would get dropped. When we got to that part I found myself wondering how they were going to change it and then it happened exactly how it does in the book and that made me happy.

Ultimately, though, it's a fairly bloodless adaptation of an interesting book. I keep thinking that there's a longer, better version out there. And that's what I want to see.

Snow Day Movie Part 2

King Kong: Extended Edition
M'House
DVD
12/5/07

So after Toy Story, Maddy went to sleep. It was still snowing and Jamee was still working, so I decided to finally sit down and watch the extended version of Peter Jackson's King Kong. One of my all time favorite moviegoing experiences was seeing King Kong with Jamee at the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring. It wasn't this version. It was the 1933 one with Fay Wray. That one's great. A little bit racist, but great. Peter Jackson's version... not so much.

It felt like Jackson had been given a blank check and unfortunately used it. You can't argue that it looks like every cent he was given shows up on screen and that he tried to give audiences their money's worth, but it's bloated and unwieldly and just too much. It feels rushed, too, like he needed a break after Lord of the Rings and just didn't get one. I'm curious to see The Lovely Bones since it feels like now he's had a chance to recover from Rings and Kong. I'm especially curious because I hated the book.

That's not to say that there aren't good things about Kong. The hour or so that we spend on the island is very good, especially in the extended cut, where sequences have been added back in to better pace everything. It didn't feel as choppy this time as it did in the theater. But even the island stuff begins to go on for too long and by the time we get to New York it feels like the movie should be over, but there's still at least a half hour to go.

Still, they don't even try to make movies like this very often, and while it's a mess, it's fascinating to see how it just doesn't quite work.

Snow Day Movie, Part 1

Toy Story
M'House
DVD
12/5/07

So we got back from the aborted drive in to work on Wednesday and Jamee got to work from home. Maddy played in the snow for a bit and then wanted to watch a movie, because she's, well, my kid. She wanted to watch The Incredibles, but I wanted her to see something new, so I put in Toy Story, and because I haven't actually watched it in years, I watched it with her.

I forgot Joss Whedon co-wrote it.

You can definitely hear some Whedony sounding dialogue it it, and the bit where the toys confront Sid seems like something he'd write. But then again, I'm sure if we got right down to it, the stuff I thought he wrote probably isn't. Because That's the way these things work.

One thing I did notice this time, and it's a small moment in the movie, is the bit where Buzz Lightyear sees the commercial and realizes he's a toy (Although this time through I wondered what he did whenever Andy came back in the room before his epiphany). It's a short scene, but there's three things I caught:

1. The commercial announcer is Penn Jillette
2. Al's Toy Barn from Toy Story 2 is set up
3. There are shutter bands on the TV.

I don't know if they're actually called "shutter bands," but I'm too lazy to look it up. These are the lines that you see on televisions in some movies: big, dark, horizontal bands that scroll up the television screen. The characters in the movie never seem to notice them. That's because the actors don't see them. The effect is caused by the camera shutter and can be corrected by timing the shutter differently. It's one of those things that lets you know that you're watching a film, like seeing a car moving forward with it's wheels turning backwards.

But we have them here in an animated film where there was no camera shutter, put there intentionally to be noticed a few dorks who would pick up on that sort of thing.

Man, I love Pixar.

Happy Birfday...

...to Jamee and to Tom Waits, only one of whom made me eggs for breakfast this morning. And on her birfday, too. Guess that's a clue.

Let it Snow.

Had a snow day yesterday. It took two hours to get just over halfway to work so I gave up and burned a vacation day. We got about five inches here. Totally screwed up everything around here. People in Maine are laughing at us.

But I got a snow day.

The best part of the drive was just before we got to daycare (Yeah we went to daycare. Tilda was there for about twenty-five minutes.) when Tilda got excited by a song on the radio and asked, "One more time?" It made me happy. The song?

"Santa Claus is a Black Man," by AKIM and the Teddy Vann Production Company.

It's on the A John Waters Christmas CD and it's brilliant. I'd first read about the song in John's essay "Why I Love Christmas" in Crackpot. , where he calls it the best Christmas song. I disagree. Until the CD came out a few years ago it was practically impossible to find, which is a shame. It's one of the few perfect things in the world. Basically, it's a Kwanzaa-themed variation of "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," but to describe it doesn't do it justice. You have to hear it. It's earnest and beautiful and wonderful and there's this word in the first line that I can't quite make out. It could be "fantabulous." It could be "fantackulous." It could be something else entirely. I don't know. But what I do know is that this song will make you fucking believe.

But it's not the best Christmas song ever. Why? Because this is:

"Fairytale of New York," from The Pogues' third album If I Should Fall From Grace With God is, like "Santa Clause is a Black Man," one of the few perfect things in this world. It's haunting. Beautiful and sad, and full of regret and longing, it alternates between romantic ideals and bitter reality. I can't do it justice, but it really is something great. When we saw The Pogues in March last year this showed up in the encore. Towards the end, when Shane MacGowan and (ack! I can't remember her name, but I think she's Jem Finer's daughter) begin dancing they dropped fake snow from the ceiling. It should have been the corniest thing in the world. But it wasn't. It was wonderful.

And...

And...

They're coming back! When I wnet to grab the image there's a note on the front page of pogues.com that they're playing DC and Baltimore in March. No dates announced yet, but tickets may be on sale as early as next week.

Woo-Hoo!!!

Mmmm... Do'Nuts

So the Ben and Jerry's about fifty paces from where I work in Reston Town Center is going to be participating in this on December 17.

Guess I'll be working late that day.

I was just getting used to the name Frohley

Children of Men
M'House
DVD
12/4/07

Since this title keeps getting thrown about whenever I seem to talk about The Mist I figured that I'd watch it again. So I did last night after Tilda went to bed and before Jamee got home from teaching. It's the first time I'd watched it all the way through since we saw it the theater the first weekend of the wide release.

It's still one of my favorite movies. It's got this uncompromising feel to it that reminds me of Kubrick, especially the Hue sequences in Full Metal Jacket. There's a particular image when they're driving to Bexhill towards the end of the film where you can see huge clouds of black smoke in the distance that looks like it could be a right out of Jacket, though I'm sure that here they're CG. In Full Metal Jacket, as pointed out in the commentary, Kubrick had some guys two miles in the distance timing the smoke just right. For every take.

Heck, look at the US poster. It even looks like a Kubrick one-sheet in black instead of white (or yellow. or purple) - Lots of negative space and a strong central image. But I digress.

Anyway, since reading about the opening shots project that I mentioned in the Mist post, I've been trying to see If I can read anything into the opening shots of what I've been watching. Here it's more of the opening sequence than a single shot. We don't even begin with an image. We begin with sound. A series of radio broadcasts that tell us that we're in the future and things have gotten bad, but we don't know why. Then we're in a coffee shop. There is a news broadcast. The youngest person on the planet has just died. He was 18. So we establish that there hasn't been a human birth in nearly twenty years. Probably why everything's falling apart. But we're in this coffee shop. And it's packed. It establishes the world. There are less and less people in it every day and the one's who are left try to come together. There's a woman holding a cat (or is it a dog?) It's the first instance of a recurring motif throughout the film. There are no more children, so people use animals as a surrogate.

Then Theo comes in. Not our hero. The film doesn't have one. Our protagonist. He comes in, wades through the group, buys his coffee and leaves. He's not part of the group. An outsider.

Moments later the coffee shop explodes. Theo flinches (heroes don't flinch). A woman stumbles out of the could of dust pouring out of the coffee shop. For an instant we see that she's holding her severed arm.

Then there's a hard cut to the title.

So we start out the movie with death and violence. The specific death of the youngest person on the planet and the general impending death of the human race. Death and violence is random and Theo escapes more through chance than by anything he specifically does. This is set up in a couple of minutes and looms over the rest of the film. Which is is interesting to me because we have a movie here that sets up a feeling of impending, inevitable, random death ends with impending, random life.

There are at least two sequences of birth imagery towards the conclusion, after the actual birth of the new youngest person on the planet. The first begins the celebrated tracking shot through the combat zone in the refugee camp (actually several shots blended together on a computer, but who cares, it's great). It's a moving shot down a tunnel into a scene of incredible carnage and death. The second occurs as Theo and Kee and the baby escape on the boat, traveling down a tunnel out to the sea. There may be others, but I missed them this time around. I don't think there are any before the baby is born and if that's the case the multiple uses of birth imagery after that occurrence could be Cuaron's way of telling the audience cinematically that it was not an isolated incident. It's begun and will keep happening. Or it could be a symbol of Theo's rebirth. Could be both. Could be neither. Cuaron doesn't spoonfeed the viewer. And I like that.

Can't wait to see what I notice next time.

Ha-ha. Hah hah hah.


Seriously. Me want. I cannot wait til June 08. Hellboy 2 and this... Wait, they're both out in July.

Dammit.

Hee hee.

Using mainly spoons, we'll dig a series of tunnels...

Monsters, Inc.
M'House
DVD
12/2/07

So back when I decided to do a post for ev'ry movie I saw, I didn't really take into account that it would actually involve doing a post for every movie I see. Case in point, Monsters Inc. I wasn't planning on watching it, but Tilda wanted to watch a movie and I wanted to show her something that she'd never seen before. So I put in Monsters Inc.

And then I worried that she might get scared.

She's stared saying things are scary. She's bothered by our Balrog candle holder. And there's a picture of Heath Leadger as the Joker that freaks her the fuck out, so I know what I'm doing for Halloween next year. But after the first joke she was fine.

I remember not being all that thrilled with this one when it first came out. I liked it fine enough, but it seemed to me at the time that it was designed more for little kids. I've seen it a few times since, and I like it more each time, but this was the first time that I'd actually watched it with a little kid. By my guess, Tilda's about the same age as the little girl, Boo. And she did get more interested when the little girl shows up. But about halfway through, Tilda got up, walked over to the DVD shelf, picked up a box, came back to me, held it up and said:

"'Credibles?"

We finished watching Monsters Inc. We'll be watching The Incredibles plenty of times. And if I stick to my plan of blogging every movie, every time I see it, I expect in about a year to have something like this:

"Watched goddamn Incredibles again. Still love it, but watched goddamn Incredibles again."