Trailer for A Serious Man (Coen Bros.)

So I have insomnia. I’ve literally been up all night. Have to be at work in three hours. I predict some serious crashing out around 2:00 pm-ish. Which will suck…

Let the Right One In (2008)

I cannot adequately explain how good this movie is. It’s certainly the best movie I’ve seen since Synecdoche, New York. This Swedish masterpiece shows us how Twilight would actually play out if the characters acted like they truly existed and were not stuck in some tween emo fantasy. Sure, it’s a vampire coming of story, but there is so much else to see below this movie’s icy surface. No frame is wasted and each plot point serves the characters and not the other way around. Director Tomas Alfredson has crafted a beautiful, moving, chilling piece of work. His tableux are so expertly set up that you can feel the chill in the air and taste the tang of blood as its copper stench rises from the snow covered landscape. This is a subtle movie perhaps, but it is definitely no boring movie.

Set in Stockholm in 1982, Let the Right One In is about Oskar, a pale twelve year old boy who is routinely bullied and who is painted in lonely grays and off whites. His parents are divorced and you can see in his eyes that he is searching for some place to fit in, somewhere that he doesn’t feel abandoned. Enter Eli, a mystery who is even paler than Oskar and has a penchant for appearing out of nowhere. When Oskar asks how old his new friend is, Eli replies,  ”Twelve. More or less…” Finally Oskar has met someone as lonely as he is, if not lonelier. So begins a relationship that is heartbreaking and (dare I say) life-affirming at the same time.

Make no mistake: this is a genre film; when all is said and done this is a vampire movie. It hits all of the familiar notes in that old song but manages to rearrange them into an entirely new tune. And the result may be one of the greatest vampire movies of all time. It’s neither camp nor overly romantic. Let the Right One In takes its subject very seriously and there is plenty of blood. Eli walks a fine line between pale flower and ravenous animal. And it’s that dichotomy that turns Oskar’s pre-adolescent crush into something poignant and poetic.

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Well then… my my my.

Damned if Charlie Kaufman hasn’t made a perfect movie. I honestly do not have the words to explain how deeply this film moved me. America’s greatest living screenwriter seems poised to become it’s greatest living director. I could write about how this movie is an existential masterpiece, about how it touches on all of the most important themes in life, about how it perfects the whole “subjective storytelling” thing, about how it uses layers upon layers upon layers of meaning to pierce the heart of humanity… but really I should just shut up and let the movie be.

If you know me and if you’re at all familiar with this movie then I’m sure you’re not surprised at my reaction to it. It’s no secret that I’m a fan of dream logic and subjectivity and finely wrought characterization. But Synecdoche, New York is more than just an experiment. It is moving. It’s playful and damn serious at the same time. This is the best movie of 2008, hands down. There is an entire world in this movie. It’s such a cliche to say about a movie like this that it gets better with each viewing, that it even demands multiple viewings. But it’s true. This is a remarkable piece of filmmaking and with each viewing one notices more and more and gets more invested in Caden Cotard’s life. It’s not just that you notice the “tricks” on return viewings, the movie actually means more. There are theses to be written on this one, folks. We’ll be talking about it for a very long time. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it as I let it digest.

The point: see this movie.

congrats to Slumdog Millionaire

It deserved to win tonight. The biggest surprise for me was Sean Penn winning for his performance in Milk. I mean, he is without a doubt a great actor but I really thought Mickey Rourke would win.

Anyway, the important thing is how I fared tonight with my predictions. Last year I got a dismal 47% correct. Tonight I went 14 for 21 which is 67%. Not exactly great but I’m happy I improved over last year.

my 2009 Oscar predictions

Last year I went 8 for 17, which is 47%. I think I can do better this year. This year I’m leaving out the three short film categories. So that leaves these 21 categories:

1. Actor In A Leading Role:

Mickey Rourke

This one’s pretty wrapped up.

2. Actor In A Supporting Role:

Heath Ledger

Again, a “gimme.”

3. Actress In A Leading Role:

Meryl Streep

This one was tough. It’s pretty much a coin-flip between Streep and Winslet.

4. Actress In A Supporting Role:

Viola Davis

Another hard one. Penelope Cruz may very well win this one.

5. Animated Feature Film:

Wall-E

It should have been nominated for Best Picture.

6. Art Direction:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Very pretty film.

7. Cinematography:

Slumdog Millionaire

Any category with Slumdog in it is an easy category to pick. In any case, it was shot beautifully.

8. Costume Design:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

9. Directing:

Slumdog Millionaire

Of course I’ve been a Danny Boyle fan since Trainspotting. But wow, look at the talent in this category. Gus Van Sant, Ron Howard, and David Fincher. Impressive.

10. Documentary Feature:

Man On Wire

I saw this movie on DVD a month or so ago and was very impressed with the story of Phillipe Petit.

11. Film Editing:

Slumdog Millionaire

12. Foreign Language Film:

Waltz With Bashir
This movie looks very impressive.

13. Makeup:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Obviously.

14. Music (Score):

Slumdog Millionaire

15. Music (Song):

“Jai Ho” from Slumdog Millionaire

16. Best Picture:

Slumdog Millionaire

Easily.

17. Sound Editing:

Slumdog Millionaire

18. Sound Mixing:

Slumdog Millionaire

19. Visual Effects:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

20. Writing (Adapted Screenplay):

Slumdog Millionaire

21. Writing (Original Screenplay):

Wall-E

Probably my second favorite movie from last year.

The Criterion Collection

The Criterion Collection has launched its new website. For a measly $5 you can watch one of several movies online (in what they call “high quality” – whatever that means – still, it seems worth the price). And that $5 will go toward a DVD/Blu-ray purchase. Right now they only have 19 movies to choose from but they are adding more all the time. Among the movies you can watch right now: Juliet of the Spirits, Au Revoir Les Enfants, Solaris, and Lord of the Flies.

Thanks to kottke.org for the heads up.

an Oscar for Batman?

So I recently saw the new Batman movie, The Dark Night, and yes, it was the best comic book movie I’ve ever seen. The late Heath Ledger turned out a sublime performance as the deeply disturbing Joker. This is not your parents Joker, folks. He is psychotic and scary as hell. He fancies himself an agent of chaos and is all the more scary because he has no rhyme or reason, no masterplan beyond just watching everything burn. At one point he says to the Batman, “The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules.”

It was a very good movie with at least one very good perfomance. But will it become the first comic book movie to win a Best Picture Oscar? Every fanboy and -girl on the internet says it will. I say it’s a long shot. There are still many movies to come out between now and Oscar time, movies that will be made specifically with the little naked gold man in mind. Ledger may very well get a posthumous nomination in the Supporting Actor category, and his performance has at least a 50-50 chance of capturing the Oscar. But that’s it for The Dark Knight. Unless we get a strange influx of very crappy movies between now and the end of the year, Batman will not be placing the gold statuette in the cave next to the giant penny.

Books that are unfilmable

Jeff VanderMeer’s Ecstatic Days blog has a post here about this list of unfilmable books. The list is pretty good except I think Catcher In the Rye is very filmable. Which is not to say I think it should be or that I think it would make a good movie. But just because Salinger will not let a movie be made does not mean that it is essentially unfilmable.

So what books would you add to the list? I agree with the addition of Mark Z. Danielewski’s book. I would also add David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. It’s just way too huge.

the Kingdom of God thinks I’m a Nazi

So a guy by the name of patrick wrote a comment to my Indy post from May 19. The comment itself was a little cryptic but harmless. Turns out patrick has a blog. In this blog, patrick talks about movies from the perspective of a born-again Christian. Which is Kool and the Gang. But then I read the following in his post on Ben Stein’s new movie, Expelled – No Intelligence Allowed:

Darwinism erects walls between those who believe correctly and those who believe incorrectly. This resembles the efforts of the Nazi party, who used walls to separate themselves from anyone they deemed unacceptable or (in honor of their Darwinian roots) insufficiently evolved. This helped them weed out the weak and imperfect (or anyone who didn’t support their cause). The holocaust was Hitler’s proud attempt at speeding along the evolutionary process.

So I decided I’d wanted to comment on being compared to Hitler. But someone beat me to the punch. I went to the comment section and a very civil, intelligent person by the nom-de-blog of “test” went through and quoted many of patrick’s points and refuted them with level-headed arguments and citations. (The comments section of the post in question can be found here.) patrick’s response?

hello “test”

your response goes like this:

a) a quote from my post
b) why i’m wrong and you’re right

… this pattern repeats until the end of your response. this is unoriginal, unproductive and unenlightening.

Oh yes, and if you study something a lot of course it’s going to affect your morality/worldview. if you are convinced that people are super-evolved animals, for example, you won’t see any harm in “weeding out the herd” as the Nazis attempted to do.

I can’t argue with that logic.

Maybe I shouldn’t have but I posted a response to patrick:

So when someone like test makes a cogent argument based on facts and what you said in your original post he is “unoriginal, unproductive, and unenlightening.” patrick, the intellectual exercise test is engaged in is called “debate” and it has been the accepted way to argue for and against a point for centuries. It blows my mind that someone would completely dismiss another person’s entire argument by dismissing the act of (civil) argument in and of itself.

And of course I (and all other non-murderous folks who accept evolution) have a problem with “weeding out the herd.” That’s like me saying that a Christian obviously has no problem with burning witches or the Inquisition.

Sometimes I feel like my head is going to explode, ya know?

Here is the imdb page for Expelled – No Intelligence Allowed.

my promo for the new Indy movie

Since everybody else in the world this week is going Indiana Jones- and crystal skull-crazy, here’s my entry. It’s a repost of a McSweeney’s article entitled, “Back From Yet Another Globetrotting Adventure, Indiana Jones Checks His Mail and Discovers That His Bid for Tenure Has Been Denied.”

January 22, 1939

Assistant Professor Henry “Indiana” Jones Jr.
Department of Anthropology
Chapman Hall 227B
Marshall College

Dr. Jones:

As chairman of the Committee on Promotion and Tenure, I regret to inform you that your recent application for tenure has been denied by a vote of 6 to 1. Following past policies and procedures, proceedings from the committee’s deliberations that were pertinent to our decision have been summarized below according to the assessment criteria.

Demonstrates suitable experience and expertise in chosen field:

The committee concurred that Dr. Jones does seem to possess a nearly superhuman breadth of linguistic knowledge and an uncanny familiarity with the history and material culture of the occult. However, his understanding and practice of archaeology gave the committee the greatest cause for alarm. Criticisms of Dr. Jones ranged from “possessing a perceptible methodological deficiency” to “practicing archaeology with a complete lack of, disregard for, and colossal ignorance of current methodology, theory, and ethics” to “unabashed grave-robbing.” Given such appraisals, perhaps it isn’t surprising to learn that several Central and South American countries recently assembled to enact legislation aimed at permanently prohibiting his entry.

Moreover, no one on the committee can identify who or what instilled Dr. Jones with the belief that an archaeologist’s tool kit should consist solely of a bullwhip and a revolver.

Nationally recognized for an effectual program of scholarship or research supported by publications of high quality:

Though Dr. Jones conducts “field research” far more often than anyone else in the department, he has consistently failed to report the results of his excavations, provide any credible evidence of attending the archaeological conferences he claims to attend, or produce a single published article in any peer-reviewed journal. Someone might tell Dr. Jones that in academia “publish or perish” is the rule. Shockingly, there is little evidence to date that Dr. Jones has successfully excavated even one object since he arrived at Marshall College. Marcus Brody, curator of our natural-history museum, assured me this was not so and graciously pointed out several pieces in the collection that he claimed were procured through Dr. Jones’s efforts, but, quite frankly, we have not one shred of documentation that can demonstrate the provenance or legal ownership of these objects.

Meets professional standards of conduct in research and professional activities of the discipline:

The committee was particularly generous (and vociferous) in offering their opinions regarding this criterion. Permit me to list just a few of the more troubling accounts I was privy to during the committee’s meeting. Far more times than I would care to mention, the name “Indiana Jones” (the adopted title Dr. Jones insists on being called) has appeared in governmental reports linking him to the Nazi Party, black-market antiquities dealers, underground cults, human sacrifice, Indian child slave labor, and the Chinese mafia. There are a plethora of international criminal charges against Dr. Jones, which include but are not limited to: bringing unregistered weapons into and out of the country; property damage; desecration of national and historical landmarks; impersonating officials; arson; grand theft (automobiles, motorcycles, aircraft, and watercraft in just a one week span last year); excavating without a permit; countless antiquities violations; public endangerment; voluntary and involuntary manslaughter; and, allegedly, murder.

Dr. Jones’s interpersonal skills and relationships are no better. By Dr. Jones’s own admission, he has repeatedly employed an underage Asian boy as a driver and “personal assistant” during his Far East travels. I will refrain from making any insinuations as to the nature of this relationship, but my intuition insists that it is not a healthy one, nor one to be encouraged. Though the committee may have overstepped the boundaries of its evaluation, I find it pertinent to note that Dr. Jones has been romantically linked to countless women of questionable character, an attribute very unbecoming of a Marshall College professor. One of these women was identified as a notorious nightclub singer whose heart he attempted to extract with his hands, and whom he then tried, and failed, to lower into a lake of magma. Another was a Nazi scholar he was seen courting just last year who, I’m told, plummeted into a fathomless abyss at Dr. Jones’s hand. And, of course, no one can forget the slow decline and eventual death of Professor Abner Ravenwood after Dr. Jones’s affair with Abner’s underage daughter was made public, forcing her to emigrate to Nepal to escape the debacle.

Demonstrates successful record in undergraduate and graduate teaching:

In his nine years with the department, Dr. Jones has failed to complete even one uninterrupted semester of instruction. In fact, he hasn’t been in attendance for more than four consecutive weeks since he was hired. Departmental records indicate Dr. Jones has taken more sabbaticals, sick time, personal days, conference allotments, and temporary leaves than all the other members of the department combined.

The lone student representative on the committee wished to convey that, besides being an exceptional instructor, a compassionate mentor, and an unparalleled gentleman, Dr. Jones was extraordinarily receptive to the female student body during and after the transition to a coeducational system at the college. However, his timeliness in grading and returning assignments was a concern.

Establishment of an appropriate record of departmental and campus service:

Dr. Jones’s behavior on campus has led not only to disciplinary action but also to concerns as to the state of his mental health. In addition to multiple instances of public drunkenness, Dr. Jones, on three separate occasions, has attempted to set fire to the herpetology wing of the biology department. Perhaps most disturbing, however, are the statements that come directly from Dr. Jones’s mouth. Several faculty members maintain that Dr. Jones informed them on multiple occasions of having discovered the Ark of the Covenant, magic diamond rocks, and the Holy Grail! When asked to provide evidence for such claims, he purportedly replied that he was “kind of immortal” and/or muttered derogatory statements about the “bureaucratic fools” running the U.S. government. Given his history with the Nazi Party, I fear where his loyalty lies.

- – - -

To summarize, the committee fails to recognize any indication that Dr. Jones is even remotely proficient when it comes to archaeological scholarship and practice. His aptitude as an instructor is questionable at best, his conduct while abroad is positively deplorable, and his behavior on campus is minimally better. Marshall College has a reputation to uphold. I need not say more.

My apologies,

Prof. G.L. Stevens
Chairman