I had quite a normal childhood.

Roger Ebert has frequently stated that he rates films according to how well the filmmakers succeed at what they were aiming for. By Ebert's logic, Lukas Moodysson's A Hole in My Heart is a smashing success. Moodysson has stated in interviews that he intended his film to be off-putting to audiences, and it's certainly quite repugnant. It's unfortunate for us, however, that Moodysson didn't aim higher, because while A Hole in My Heart is composed almost entirely of images sure to ruin one's appetite, it's never truly disturbing, shocking or even particularly interesting. It's a pointlessly gross and stupid film that tries to say something insightful about porn, television and spiritual decay but, to paraphrase This is Spinal Tap, only treads in a sea of retarded sexuality.

In a cramped apartment, Rickard (Thorsten Flinck) and Geko (Goran Marjanovic) are busy making an amateurish porn starring Geko and Tess (Sanna Brading), a dim-witted young woman with aspirations of starring on Big Brother. The three descend into increasingly grotesque, extreme scenarios while Rickard's teenage son Eric (Bjorn Almroth) sulks in his bedroom with his pet worms and grating industrial music. And that's pretty much it - for 100 or so minutes, Richard and Geko (and Moodysson) do countless degrading things to Tess, who flees at one point only to return bearing junk food for further degradation. I'm not at all against extreme content in cinema; in fact, I'm always excited to discover filmmakers who are willing to examine uncomfortable or grotesque material with a seriousness and purpose, and I appreciate it when a filmmaker doesn't feel the need to block our eyes as if we were children. But A Hole in My Heart is a film composed entirely of extremes, edited in a series of epileptic jump cuts punctuated by screeching noise, that becomes wearyingly monotonous within minutes. I'm currently writing a screenplay set in and around a strip club, and I was at first confused by my instinct to include several moments of the characters performing mundane, everyday tasks (sleeping, watching tv, etc.). As the script has progressed, it's clearer to me that, if my film is to work at all, it needs the contrast between the characters' manufactured sexual personae and their unobserved selves. There's no such contrast in A Hole in My Heart, and in the absence of any genuine attempt at emotional authenticity, the characters are merely vehicles for Moodysson's skeezy, hyperbolic moralism.

The most pathetic thing about A Hole in My Heart is its complete failure even to shock us. It's disgusting in a way that comes off as cheating - it's easy to cut to, say, a close-up of vaginal reconstructive surgery without warning or context and get a reaction from the audience. It's harder to give such images real power or consequence. Directors like Todd Solondz, David Lynch and Michael Haneke give us films infinitely more disturbing than A Hole in My Heart with only a fraction of the overtly shocking imagery. They have the insight and craft to disturb us with the implications of their images - it's the ideas in Happiness or Blue Velvet that make those films so unsettling, not just the quantity of nipples or viscera on display. The irony of Moodysson's use of the confessional style of reality TV is that, while it's meant as a comment on the emptiness of popular culture, his film has even less to say (at least Big Brother is sometimes inadvertently insightful). I really wanted to "get" A Hole in My Heart, to have the geek show I'd endured arrive at the apocalyptic moment of truth it had promised. But by the time the film arrived at the image of a character vomiting into another's mouth with Bach's St. Matthew Passion blaring on the soundtrack, I could only laugh with rage at the purest marriage of pretension and idiocy I've ever seen.

A few days before seeing A Hole in My Heart, I watched Claire Denis' Trouble Every Day. It was the first of her films I'd seen, and while I didn't like it, it was made with an assuredness of tone and style that made me want to check out more of her work. I never, ever want to see another Lukas Moodysson film. I don't care if Together and Fucking Amal are cute, or that Lilja 4-ever was on a bunch of top-10 lists. I think Lukas Moodysson is an ass. I think he hates movies and everything else I hold dear. The fact that he's both a Socialist and a Christian isn't an interesting idiosyncracy, it just helps explain how a film could be so demoralizing and preachy at the same time. A Hole in My Heart is the work of a complete fraud; to arrive after 100 minutes of nihilistic ugliness at a group hug is a sick, insulting joke, and while the film has mostly been panned, it's geniunely baffling to read Reverse Shot's Eric Hynes praise it as "achingly humane." According to the film's IMDb trivia page, Thorsten Flinck had to turn to drugs to make it through the film's more harrowing scenes. I only wish I'd had as much foresight.

Friday Title Card #27

Top 10: Voice-over

"IN A WORLD WHERE..."

Voice-over is often used to gloss over narrative problems or water a challenging film down in the name of accessibility (Blade Runner being the most notable example of the latter). But like any cinematic device, when placed in the hands of talented filmmakers, voice-over can be transformed from something familiar into something we've never quite seen (or heard before).


1. Days of Heaven Terrence Malick's four films have all employed voice-over to great effect, the disconnected thoughts of characters in The Thin Red Line and The New World enhancing those films' meditative tones, and Sissy Spacek's rambling, disconnected thoughts in Badlands achieve a sort of banal poetry. In Days of Heaven, Malick presents the tragic turn-of-the-century love story from the point of view of the protagonist's preteen sister. First-time film actress Linda Manz narrates in a flat, unaffected manner that perfectly compliments her character, who is inarticulate but perceptive about the lives of those far older than her. Malick has been criticized for emotionally distancing his audience from the story; in fact, the narrator's guileless, wide-eyed memories draw us directly into the film's devastatingly ephemeral heart.


2. A Clockwork Orange Stanley Kubrick once called this a "Who do you root for?" movie, and the director frequently used voice-over to confound his audience's expectations. The matter-of-fact, dryly statistical narrator in The Killing reduces the film's heist down to a shopping list of times, amounts, and other quantities, while the cruel storyteller of Barry Lyndon undercuts the characters' actions and dreams with savage irony (a device used in recent films like Dogville and Little Children). In both Lolita and A Clockwork Orange, the protagonists relate their stories with eloquence and wit, confusing our loyalties by causing us to sympathize with characters who do reprehensible things. A Clockwork Orange is particularly brilliant in this respect - Malcolm McDowell is charasmatic and strangely sexy as the young hooligan Alex, who recounts his evenings spent raping and pillaging with great gusto and his subsequent arrest and reconditioning with terrible sorrow. Kubrick asks us to sympathize with the devil in order to convey the film's philosophical message; the technique is no doubt manipulative, but it's also sickly hilarious and frequently imitated (see also: Trainspotting and American Psycho).


3. Taxi Driver Like A Clockwork Orange, the voice-over in Taxi Driver is meant to align us with a difficult character. But where Kubrick's aim was satire, Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader want us to understand Travis Bickle. As he prowls the city streets, seething with contempt for the decaying world around him, Robert DeNiro's narrative gives voice to fears, obsessions, and compulsions that, while extreme, are also all too recognizable. As Travis' inexpressive rage transforms into brutal violence, the scariest implication is that his madness is, somehow, our own.


4. Sunset Boulevard Has there ever been a filmmaker more joyously clever than Billy Wilder? Sunset Boulevard contains his wittiest device, the story of a murder recounted by the corpse. It's a concet that would prove popular - American Beauty, in particular, used it to wonderful effect - but in Sunset Boulevard, it's more than a plot device. Wilder's vision of Hollywood as a cemetary, a place where the long-forgotten dwell, is complimented by poor Joe Gillis' narration from beyond the grave. It's a perfectly acidic vision of the dark side of a city devoted to attaining cinematic immortality.


5. To Kill a Mockingbird The voice-over in Robert Mulligan's adaptation of Harper Lee's book has been frequently imitated over the years to lesser effect. The imitators attempt to mimic the unpretentious Southern charm of an adult Scout's memories of her youth, but they miss the eerier moments, the ghostly intimations of doom, and the bitter nature of an adult's memories of the moment she stepped into a world of absurd intolerance. There's nothing saccharine about the narrative - like the rest of the film, it's possessed with a hauntingly delicate soul that is ultimately heartbreaking.


6. Cries and Whispers One of Ingmar Bergman's best films, Cries and Whispers is bathed in red, a color that Bergman said he imagined the inside of the soul to be. And Cries and Whispers is a film composed of interiors, both literally and through the diary entries of the dying Agnes (Harriet Andersson). Agnes' memories of her life and her emotionally remote sisters are almost impossibly sad, laced with regret, confusion, and fear. All the more stunning that Cries and Whispers ends with Agnes' happiest memory, and Bergman, for once, grants his storyteller a moment of peace (for more on the ending, go here).



7. The Postman Always Rings Twice Film noir is littered with hapless schmoes who become putty in the hands of a smarter, more calculating woman. Never was this more perfectly realized than in the 1946 version of James M. Cain's novel. John Garfield's Frank recounts his torrid, deadly affair with Cora (Lana Turner) in a voice-over filled with uncertainty (Frank's most-used phrase is "I guess"), jealously and insecurity. It's not only good pulp, it's a sharp examination of the tortured male psyche.


8. The Royal Tenenbaums The narration in the story of a family of geniuses has the mannered, matter-of-fact style of a novel one might find in the young-adult section of the library (it's particularly reminiscent of Salinger, whose Franny and Zooey Wes Anderson owes a great debt to). Alec Baldwin's solemn, matter-of-fact delivery is a hilarious compliment to the film's deadpan tone and the eternal adolescence of the Tenenbaums.


9. The Big Lebowski The Coens often have a great deal of fun with voice-over, from Nicolas Cage's hayseed philosopher in Raising Arizona (Ebert panned the film for the narration, but I adore it) to Billy Bob Thorton's apology for his long-windedness ("They're paying me by the word") at the end of The Man Who Wasn't There. Best of all is The Big Lebowski, the story of a burnt-out bowling aficionado-turned-amateur detective as told by a folksy, sarsaparilla-swilling cowboy who may also be God. But there I go, ramblin' again...


10. Adaptation Like many of the films on this list, Adaptation does a fine job of using voice-over to illustrate its characters' unspoken fears and desires. But the moment that really sets Adaptation apart occurs when Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) is attending one of Robert McKee's famous screenwriting seminars; as Kaufman excoriates himself in voiceover for looking for easy answers, his thoughts are interrupted by McKee (Brian Cox), who warns, "God help you if you ever use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you! That's flaccid, sloppy writing!" From that point on in the film, Kaufman's inner voice is silent.

Gratuitous Nudity #3

Christine Noonan and Malcolm McDowell, If... (1969)

The Trim Bin #60

- Damian Arlyn's 31 Days of Spielberg project is well underway over at Windmills of My Mind, and it's been a fascinating, discussion-provoking defense of Spielberg as a real auteur thus far. As an unabashed fan, I particularly enjoyed Arlyn's response to familiar criticisms in his article on E.T., a film that, more than any of my other favorites, I've had to defend on a number of occasions:

"I would never want to bully anybody into liking E.T. (nor would I ever say that someone is devoid of humanity or has “ice” in their veins because they feel nothing when watching it) but neither do I care for the implication that just because I am one of the millions of people who happen to be very moved by the film, that I am somehow a mindless sheep, a deluded fool not sophisticated enough to realize when he’s been “played like a piano” or whatever. To the people that might make this elitist claim, I tend to want to respond in kind with my own personal brand of elitism that asserts I would rather be a "foolish" believer, a sensitive soul, romantic at heart able to see the good in something than a hardened cynic blinded to the immense riches and rewards right in front of them if they would only have the humility and willingness to “open themselves up” to it. I do hope that for such individuals there is something (perhaps even a film) that brings them a comparable degree of joy, sadness and just general affirmation of what they hold dear. I hope there’s something in their lives that they cherish as much as I cherish E.T. because if so, they’re very lucky people."

- Rob Zombie's Halloween is almost upon us, and the newest trailer is wonderfully creepy. On the other hand, Zombie damns himself with some old quotes discovered by Stacie Ponder. Usually I have a pretty good sense of what I'll love or hate, but I have no idea how idea how I'll feel about Halloween, and I can't wait to find out.

- Siskel and Ebert's old reviews have found their way to the internet. For insight, watch their argument over Blue Velvet; for laughs, check out Siskel's faith in cinema shaken by She's Out of Control.

- Dual tributes to Bergman and Antonioni written by Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese, respectively, remind that a great director is first and foremost a great fan (they also serve as a welcome antidote to Jonathan Rosenbaum's contrarian wankery).

- Finally, a grand piece of film writing: Walter Chaw's epic journey through the films of Patrick Swayze.

Friday Title Card #26

Scary German Guy is bitchin'!

I watched The Monster Squad endless times as a preschooler when it was in heavy rotation on HBO - in fact, when my wife mentioned to my mom that I'd picked up the long-overdue DVD release, there was a long silence before my mom responded, "I've seen that movie twenty goddamn times." I assume that The Monster Squad has little appeal for those who didn't first see it when they were between the ages of three and eleven. I don't mean this as a case of nostalgia, as I have enough distance from my earliest movie-watching experience to know that Harry and the Hendersons, for instance, is really quite bad. The Monster Squad, on the other hand, is one of those movies that requires a child's imagination to do some of the heavy lifting; rewatching it, I realized that what I had long remembered as a film of epic scope was actually a fairly low-budget 82-minute B-movie (although makeup effects artist Stan Winston and VFX head Richard Edlund do wonders with what they have). However, this only increased my affection for the film - its modesty is perhaps its greatest charm, its battle between a group of nerdy kids and cinema's most iconic monsters a jolt of smart, unpretentious fun that puts bloated studio product like Van Helsing to shame.

The Monster Squad is one of those great 80's movies (Explorers and The Goonies are two other examples, with Stephen King's book It a masterpiece of the subgenre) that rewards young genre-loving geeks with the promise that their knowledge of aliens, pirates or vampires is preparation for an awfully big adventure. When we first meet Sean (Andre Gower), the leader of the titular gang of kids, he's wearing a homemade t-shirt that reads "Stephen King Rules" and getting chewed out by the school principal for drawing monsters in class. But director Fred Dekker and writer Shane Black know, as we do, that our formative years are better spent learning about Cthulhu than the Magna Carta. Sean's expertise pays off when Dracula arrives in his small suburban town (why is not really clear, except that he owns real estate there) and assembles Frankenstein's monster, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, and Gillman (so named for legal reasons) to carry out his evil plans. The plot involves an amulet, a vortex, and Van Helsing, and it occurs to me that nearly every movie would be improved with these three things (except, of course, Van Helsing). As the kids assemble in their treehouse to plan a once-in-a-century opportunity to stop Dracula and his cohorts, it becomes clear that this is a film borne out of Black and Dekker's (ho ho) childhood dreams and fears - it's a film where the monster in the closet is real, no matter what mom and dad say. As such, it is much more than a calculated attempt to repackage creaky franchises in a slick modern package; it's a labor of love, and goofy as it is, I can't help loving it.

While it's pretty clear that The Monster Squad owes a lot to The Goonies, it's also superior to that film in that, for a film aimed at kids, it's surpisingly rough-edged. Early in the film, schoolyard bullies taunting Fat Kid (Brent Chalem) actually call him a "faggot" - these aren't Disneyfied goons but realistic, nasty little shits. Later in the film, Fat Kid uses a shotgun to blow away one of the monsters; the moment isn't softened at all, the monster bleeding and crying out in a protracted death sort of astonishing in a PG-13. Contrast this with last year's Monster House, a good movie that just missed greatness with an end-credits denouement designed to reassure kids that all is well. The Monster Squad isn't afraid to raise the stakes; there's a genuine possibility that Wolfman could just rip these kids limb from limb, and we become unusually invested in their fates. This extends to the movie's schmaltzier elements - the reformed Frankenstein's monster (Tom Noonan) is one of a long line of 80's-movie ET-surrogates, but Noonan and 5-year-old Ashley Bank play their scenes together with enough authenticity that what could have been cloying elicits a genuine "awww."

The moment that really sets The Monster Squad apart involves Scary German Guy (Leonard Cimino) an elderly local expert on monsters who helps the kids in their mission. As the kids are leaving Scary German Guy's house, one comments that he doesn't seem very afraid of monsters, and Scary German Guy responds that (I'm paraphrasing) he knows there are enough real monsters to be afraid of. As Scary German Guy closes the door, Dekker cuts to a close-up of a concentration camp tattoo on his wrist. It's a real "Whaaa?!!" moment, but questionable taste aside, it gives the movie real weight. The Monster Squad is a celebration of outsiders - seeing a bunch of bookish, strange kids battling a particularly totalitarian Dracula, it gives hope to kids persecuted at school for the very qualities that may someday ennable them to make the world a better place. And just as important, it teaches us that Wolfman has, in fact, got nards.

Friday Title Card #25

Mightn't I be allowed to keep my horse?

I used to hate Barry Lyndon. I first saw the film when I was fourteen, soon after discovering the dizzying, almost narcotic rush of A Clockwork Orange (the perfect film for sharp-witted teens beginning to develop a distrust of authority), and I was blown away by the cinematography, which remains unparalleled. At the same time, I felt that Stanley Kubrick was using the film's painterly images to tell a rather humdrum story devoid of intrigue or emotional investment, and I resented Kubrick for what I read as a sick joke. I was wrong, but I was also right - Barry Lyndon is a perverse film, one that keeps its audience forever at a distance from its story, constantly undercuts even the slightest chance of suspense, and arrives at a conclusion that dismisses its characters' lives as competely meaningless and forgettable. Yet at the same time that it practically forces us towards indifference, Barry Lyndon unfolds with a sort of beautiful, epic splendor that contradicts the film's own claims of irrelevance. It's a maddening, unforgettable cinematic experience; of all my favorite films, I hate this one most.

Barry Lyndon opens in wide shot - this is not uncommon with Kubrick, but it is used for a drastically different effect. Consider the opening image of 2001, designed to overwhelm our senses; or The Shining, with its labyrinthine helicopter shots teasing our anticipatory sense of dread. But from its first image, which depicts the death of the protagonist's father in a duel, Barry Lyndon keeps us at a distance. Kubrick and cinematographer John Alcott (with the help of a Zeiss lens originally used by NASA) create a period piece with an astounding sense of immediacy, the image of the opening duel composed with such astonishing depth and clarity that we feel present in the action. But rather than using the images to pull us in, Kubrick remains remote, a time traveller observing the alien behaviors and practices of 18th-century Europe. This gives each shot an oppressive weight, as though each moment were a slide examined through the microscope lens; this deterministic approach is perfect for a protagonist who remains almost totally passive in his own fate. We meet Redmond Barry (Ryan O'Neal) as a sullen, lovestruck youth and follow him across the continent as he wins and then loses everything through no fault or effort of his own.

Kubrick uses O'Neal's vacant screen presence brilliantly - Barry is a cipher who is able to deceive his way into wealth and status not through any particular talents of his own but out of sheer luck (indeed, the Thackeray novel upon which the film is based was originally titled The Luck of Barry Lyndon). The scene when Barry romances the wealthy, widowed Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson) is a masterpiece of surfaces, both actors photographed like perfectly-made porcelain dolls similarly incapable of demonstrating actual emotion. The narrator (Michael Hordern) assures us they have fallen in love, a fact we might have otherwise missed; throughout, the narration dryly mocks these characters' half-realized aspirations and lays bare their actual motivations (in original editions of the book, occasional notes from the editor served the same purpose). These characters have no apparent inner selves, substituting manners for morals and objects for ideas. The meticulously recreated props and costumes, along with the striking period locations, supply not just the film's style but its meaning - Kubrick simultaneously fetishizes the art and culture of the period while attacking the shallow materialism of his characters. Kubrick's films are frequently about the struggle of the individual; here, the individual has receded into the background, upstaged by the tapestries. It's as sharp a comment about the present as it is the past.

The film builds deliberately, almost to the point of boredom - what would constitute a good 40 minutes' worth of action in other films stretches past the intermission here. We begin to wonder why Kubrick has forced us to endure this endless parade of images that make us feel nothing. It's actually a setup, and Kubrick snares us with the introduction of the adult Lord Bullingdon (Leon Vitali), Barry's stepson, who returns after a childhood of petty torments from his ineffectual stepdad to assert his rightful claim to his family's wealth. The moment when Bullingdon uses his smirking half-brother to interrupt a concert with a clomping pair of boots is a genuine shock; by destroying the sustained audiovisual symmetry, its as if violence has been done to the film itself. Kubrick presents our children as the only beings we must ultimately answer to - this is paralleled, devastatingly, with the death of Barry's own son after his fall from the horse that was the boy's birthday present. We do not see the fall happen at first; then, as the boy recounts it, Kubrick cuts suddenly, jarringly, to an image that represents everything we reach for and fail to attain. Dissonant noise replaces Schubert on the soundtrack for one moment, exposing the underlying chaos that we attempt to overrule by creating our own meaning. In this sense, Barry Lyndon is also a comment on the cinematic apparatus, which cannot help but recreate a reality that it was designed to reproduce.

Barry Lyndon, more than any of Kubrick's other films, invites the oft-repeated criticism of the director as a cold, calculating misanthrope, and it's certainly his chilliest film. However, while Kubrick's evaluation of humanity is unsparing, the film is almost religious in its search for meaning in the meaningless. Late in the film, Barry finally commits a selfless act, for which he is mercilessly punished. Kubrick has no sympathy for overdue introspection; his films attest to his understanding of existence as an ongoing practice that may eventually be perfected, and as the ending of 2001 demonstrated, he was capable of great hope. So while Barry Lyndon is far from Kubrick's cuddliest picture, it is nevertheless a perfect, dazzling example of the search for truth even in the most untruthful of worlds.

So anyway...

I've only just started to discover Michaelangelo Antonioni's work - I know Bergman, but Antonioni and I are still just passing acquaintances (I've linked to those more qualified to reflect on the filmmaker below). So I don't feel qualified to write a proper rememberance, and so soon after Bergman, it's just too much. I'll simply urge you to watch (or re-watch) The Passenger, easily my favorite Antonioni film. Revel in the famous final shot and all it implies about existence, nonexistence and our relationship to the world around us.

Two of our greatest filmmakers, gone in a day. And here we are.

Jesus, aren't movies wonderful?

Mirrored Lines: RIP Antonioni

GreenCine Daily: Michaelangelo Antonioni, 1912 - 2007

The House Next Door: Michaelangelo Antonioni: September 29, 1912 - July 30, 2007

You with your visions and dreams.

News of the death of Ingmar Bergman naturally conjurs images of Bengt Ekerot leading a party of dead souls as they dance across a starkly beautiful countryside; the late director was responsible for the most unforgettable modern representation of death, and he surely knew images of the chess-playing reaper would accompany his passing. Equally eloquent to me is the chimes that signal various transitions in Cries and Whispers. It's a breathtakingly brilliant device, the passage of time towards an inevitable conclusion stripped of all human speculation and reduced to a single, quiet sound that is at both familiar and alien - it is the sound of the unknown.

Bergman's chime rang today; he leaves behind a wealth of great cinema that returns again and again to his preoccupations - the topography of the human face and the mysteries it conceals, the inexplicable power of our sexual desire and our very need to connect, the transcendence of performance (theater being as important to the director as film), the question of how to live in a universe ruled by an unseen or nonexistent God. And, of course, death, and how the knowledge of our mortality informs our existence. His films are alternately passionate and remote, cynical and nostalgic, unsparing and almost unbearably humane. And while his worldview was unflinchingly bleak, I value most greatly his films' capacity for almost supernatural acts of compassion - the scene in Cries and Whispers where Anna cradles the dying Agnes has a transcendent power that cinema has rarely touched. How beautifully ironic that a man who struggled so greatly with the meaning of his own existence would, in his passing, remind us how much one life can mean to the world. And that, as I'm sure Bergman would reluctantly agree, is its own kind of magic.

Friday Title Card #24

You know, I really hate children.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the first film in its series to surpass the book upon which it is based (Prisoner of Azkaban is the best movie so far, but the book's pretty perfect too). Like Cuaron's film, this newest entry is a real adaptation, made with a unique approach to the material, rather than a slavish recreation of the source material designed to appase hardcore Potterphiles (so often the worst judges of what makes a good movie). Relative newcomer David Yates never folds under what must be the enormous pressure of delivering a film that is also practically a self-contained corporation; Potter 5 is a dark, thematically rich entry in the recently concluded saga of everyone's favorite Limey occultist.

The Harry Potter books have always had meandering plots - this is part of their charm. But with Order of the Phoenix, the narrative asides and protracted internal monologues are repetitive and often maddening (that said, it's my favorite of the books after Azkaban). I feared that Yates and screenwrite Michael Goldenberg would commit the series' all-too-common error of treating film like literature. Thankfully, Order of the Phoenix is surprisingly kinetic; in translating this chapter of Harry's story, which finds the boy wizard assembling an army of his peers to battle Voldemort and clashing with officious, kitten-loving monster Dolores Umbridge, Yates and Goldenberg make very shrewd choices about what to keep and what to cut from the book (the result is occasionally choppy, but only in retrospect). More importantly, Order of the Phoenix demonstrates an innate understanding of how, just as a book can find a thousand words in a single moment, a film can condense a thousand words into a single image. Order of the Phoenix is filled with indelible images, like a character's sudden, surprised disappearance into the abyss, that honor the shivery undertow that will seemingly draw Harry and his friends to an ending that, if happy, won't be easily earned (I'm halfway through Deathly Hallows, so my apologies if everything ends with an ice cream social).

While the climactic battle with Voldemort and his cohorts is splendidly creepy, the most engaging conflict in the film is between Harry and Umbridge. Imelda Staunton is perfect in the role, an insipid, smirking bureaucrat who equates inquiry with insubordination; rarely have I so intensely wanted to kick a fictional character in the teeth. Staunton clearly relishes in her character's hatefulness, and she elevates the rest of the cast - the kids do their best work thus far (I didn't even mind Emma Watson this time around), and it's a delight to watch the always-growing roster of great British thespians play off each other. I remain Michael Gambon's biggest fan, and Gary Oldman reminds even in a brief role why he's one of the greatest actors around. After the generic, smutty CGI-riddled mess that was Goblet of Fire, it's a welcome relief to see a film driven by the characters we've come to know and love.

The most exciting aspect of Order of the Phoenix is the breathtaking production design. Yates and DP Slawomir Idziak demonstrate a remarkable understanding of composition that give locations like the Ministry of Magic, with its seemingly endless tiled corridors, a sense of scale that makes the fantastic completely believable. And the details, like the endless purring in Umbridge's office, have an absurdist quality worthy of Gilliam at his best. Hogwarts once again feels like a real, lived-in place, and the entirety of the film is a treat for the imagination. And hough Order of the Phoenix ends with intimations of darkness, it also winds up on a note that honors its youngest, most faithful audience members for the persistence of their dreams.

Friday Title Card #23 (Saturday Morning Edition)

The Game Plan = the next Departed???

I'm beginning to feel like a good luck charm. The first film I worked on as an extra grossed more than $200 million domestic. The second finally got Scorsese the Oscar. And the third, a little picture called The Game Plan, is clearly destined for greatness. Just check out the trailer for all of the "Pacifier meets Any Given Sunday" goodness. Bubbles in the pool? Brilliant! A sequin-studded football? How frightfully piquant! I can practically taste the mirth! Oh, to have been in the presence of such cinematic genius!

And now, I'm going to cry myself to sleep. Enjoy the trailer.

He calls it his "tiny chef."

Ratatouille takes place in the restaurant of a famous, deceased chef known for both his culinary innovations and his emphasis on accessiblity, with his motto "Anyone can cook!" In the chef's absence, small-minded vulture capitalists have co-opted his likeness and ideology for maximum profit, churning out cheap, microwavable bastardizations of his work. I found myself thinking about Walt Disney's legacy during Ratatouille, similarly commodified and cheapened over recent years (not that the guy was a saint, but that's beside the point). Disney's saving grace has been their relationship with Pixar, a company with a deep, prodigious grasp of both animation and storytelling that seems dedicated to preserving everything that fodder like Brother Bear Goes Bananas aims to destroy. This is a company that can understand the story of an ambitious little rat who surreptitiously assumes the role of an interspecies cultural attache; Ratatouille's makers know what it's like to be the little guy, armed only with impeccable taste.

The rat in question is Remy (Patton Oswalt), who spends his days with his extended family picking through compost piles. While his father Django (Brian Dennehy) and his brother Emile (Peter Sohn) are content scarfing down junk for sustenance, Remy regards food as an art form. Inspired by the imaginary apperance of his hero, the late chef Gusteau (Brad Garrett), Remy finds himself hiding in Gusteau's restaurant, now struggling to stay afloat thanks to a vicious review by critic Anton Ego (Peter O'Toole). After a series of wacky misunderstandings (I love writing that), Remy is secretly puppeting a clumsy garbage boy named Linguini (Lou Romano). But the plot isn't the main thing - like Bird's other features, Ratatouille is unusual for a cartoon in that it is decidedly character driven. A film that is largely about taste, Ratatouille is as much about personal moments - the delightful visualization of the emotional experience of eating is a high point - as it is about kiddie-film noise. One of the most impressive things about Pixar is its willingness to go small - even an superhero movie like Bird's The Incredibles is at heart a character study. It's refreshing to find a studio that has that sort of faith in pure story, and in the intelligence of its audience.

This sense of intimacy extends to the design of the film. Movies set in France usually rely heavily on repeated shots of the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and baguettes; while Ratatouille's Paris is a digital simulacrum, it somehow evokes the real thing better than many films shot in Paris (certainly better than the suprisingly poor Paris, je t'aime). By giving us a rat's-eye view of the city, Bird and the animators capture a detailed, subjective version of Paris that becomes as tangible as Venice in Don't Look Now. One gets a real sense of the city's cultural history, which gives the lighthearted film an unexpected emotional resonance - Ratatouille is a celebration of taste, not just for food but for any form of creative expression (or appreciation; rarely has a film so loved its audience). Thankfully, Pixar's taste is impeccable, and they spare us poorly cast superstar voices, continuing to cast in delightfully unxpected ways (standouts here are Oswalt, Janeane Garofalo as a fierce sous chef, and O'Toole relishing every quintessentially British putdown). No already-dated pop cultural references, smarmy innuendo or Smash Mouth either; the humor here is smart and understated. And best of all, Ratatouille never condescends to its largely young audience, assuming, as the best children's movies do, that kids are capable of getting the joke.

Ratatouille is a fun, sweet movie, and yet I also found it weirdly inspiring. Its simple, wonderful message - that a life devoted to sharing one's appreciation of culture can help make the world a better place - encouraged me deeply on a particularly discouraging day. It's a great message for kids, urging them gently to chase their passions, and it's delivered with a perfect light touch. The ending of the film reminds of Pixar's assumption of creative control at Disney, the little guy now in control of the giant machine. If Ratatouille is any indication, they're just the right people to restore the Magic Kingdom to its former glory. Mouse, meet rat.

Friday Title Card #22

He was...well, he wasn't a good swimmer.

The following is my contribution to Final Girl's Friday the 13th Blog-a-Thon.

"No, what if there is some boy-beast running around Camp Crystal Lake? Let's try to think beyond the legend, put it in real terms. What would it be like today? Some sort of out-of-control psychopath? A frightened retard? A child trapped in a man's body?" - Amy Steel, Friday the 13th Part 2

It's often forgotten that Jason Voorhees is developmentally disabled; indeed, the above quote is the only direct reference to this fact in the ten-film series. This partly owes to the ways that the character changed over the course of a franchise that has little use for narrative coherence, but it's also indicative of the time that the original Friday the 13th was released. That film, and its immediate sequels, literalize the mindless man-child archetype (Boris Karloff's Frankenstein monster and Gunnar Hansen's Leatherface are two predecessors) by confronting us with a villian whose monstrousness is largely defined by his disability. The original Friday the 13th is about our society's fear of the mentally retarded; this is just as evident in the films that don't reference this fact.

It wasn't until I began working with the developmentally disabled that I realized how negative attitudes towards the mentally challenged can go beyond simple mockery to actual fear and animosity. While some of my co-workers are wonderful, a number warned me in hushed tones to watch out for the ways that our clients would try to "manipulate" us. One day I was in the community with an autistic man who attempted to open the door of a parked car; the man inside the car began yelling at our client and informed me that I should "do something about that guy." Retardation makes people genuinely uncomfortable; this was even more true in 1980, less than 20 years after the concept of equal rights for the mentally disabled was introduced into the mainstream and before the developmentally disabled gained the right to equal health care. Residents of asylums and other demoralizing institutions were being released back into society, and people were suddenly confronted with a problem they had long been instructed to lock up and forget about.

The Goonies' Sloth was an attempt to counter negative stereotypes by presenting a physically deformed, brain-damaged man as a lovable E.T.-like figure; later in the decade, Rain Man and Life Goes On were influential in their positive portrayals of mentally challenged characters. But in 1980, there was still nothing unusual about a studio horror release that had as its villain the vengeful mother of a stereotypical mongoloid who appears at the film's end for one last scare. The killer in Friday the 13th is a woman whose disabled son drowned tragically because of the neglect of horny camp counselors (a character for whom the film extends no empathy). If one chooses to read the film as a morality piece - the dead teens punished for their preoccupation with sex, pot and the band Rush (probably) - then Jason is the dark side of the eternal child, pulling Adrienne King into the depths of Crystal Lake, away from adulthood and back to the womb.

The most potent incarnation of Jason is the John Merrick-esque sack-hooded woodsman we meet in Friday the 13th Part 2, his disguise reminding of the exploitation of the disabled and deformed in carnival freak shows. If Jason is out for revenge after the death of his mother (a scenario that doesn't really make any sense, but we'll ignore that for now), he's also assuming the monstrous role assigned to him. Jason's makeshift shack in the woods is a terrific touch, literalizing the theme of rural horror previously seen in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes. But unlike those films, Jason wasn't born a villain - he was created, like Caliban, shoved to the fringes of society until he becomes the monster he's always been viewed as. It's a great, rich concept that Friday the 13th Part 2 doesn't do nearly enough with. Unfortunately, it's also the last time that the series even pays lip service to the idea of Jason as a flesh-and-blood character.

The dehumanization of Jason begins with the hockey mask, and reaches fruition with Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. After Jason was killed (suppsedly for good) in the previous film, the producers attempted to revive the franchise by replacing Jason with another mask-wearing killer that is revealed in the final minutes to be a completely different character. It was a cynical move (see also: Halloween III), and the filmmakers wisely chose to reinvent Jason as an undead golem for future films. Over the course of the series, Jason has been a demon's host, a genetically enhanced superbeing, and a worthy adversary for Freddy Kreuger - Jason is pure simulacrum, completely detached from his origins as a "frightened retard."

While this happens with most horror franchises - Freddy's wisecracks watering down his child-molesting backstory, for instance - Jason's evolution is particularly drastic. This has everything to do with the advent of political correctness - when Kelly Rowland calls Freddy a "faggot" in Freddy vs. Jason, the joke is her strange use of the word rather than a comment on Freddy's sexuality. Similarly, it's impossible to imagine a sympathetic protagonist calling Jason a "retard" today. An evil ubermensch Jason allows us to laugh and scream without feeling guilty, and I won't argue that it's a good thing that most people understand that, at the very least, there are some things you just don't say. But part of me misses "special" Jason, who could have only existed at a time when our scares were much thornier.

too much information

Boy, these memes are flying all over the place. I've been tagged by Dennis with the 8 Simple Things meme, the rules of which are as follows:

1. I share the rules with you.

2. I share eight random facts about myself that you may not know.
3. I tag eight unsuspecting bloggers, who must then share eight facts about themselves (I believe this is legally binding).

So, here goes:

1. My first professional acting audition was for the role of Bobby in The Brady Bunch Movie. I didn't get it.

2. The first time I got paid to act was in a children's musical called Maggie and the Magic Hat. The play, written by New Hampshire songsmith Brownie Macintosh, was about time travel, talking mannequins, and yes, magical hats. It was terrifying. I played an Irish handyman named Mr. O'Toole (get it?). We performed at the Ivoryton Playhouse, a beautiful summer stock theater where actors ranging from Marlon Brando to Groucho Marx had performed. And I appeared there to sing about hammers. I see from Browie's website that the play is still being staged, but only I can say that I originated Mr. O'Toole.

3. I was fired from my first writing gig - the film critic for my seventh-grade newspaper. It was a Christian school, and I offended the faculty by writing about an R-rated movie (Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion).

4. Yes, I was once a born-again Christian. In the years since I've been a near-atheist, a not-really-Taoist, and a sort-of-agnostic. These days, while I'd comfortably call myself spiritual, the closest thing I have to a religious leader is

5. David Bowie. I'm a bleedin' poof for David Bowie. I celebrate his entire catalog.

6. I once performed a puppet show of the Gom Jabbar scene from Dune.

7. I'm deathly, irrationally afraid of snakes - garter snakes, to be precise. I know they won't hurt me; it's a purely Pavlovian thing.

8. My favorite color is brown.

I tag: Doug, Jack, John, Dr. Insermini, Milena, Steve, Michael and Jess.

Friday Title Card #21

Man, I'm Big Dick Blaque.

Hardcore opens promisingly, with a montage of Rockwellian scenes of wintry Grand Rapids that introduces us to businessman Jake VanDorn (George C. Scott), his family, and his Calvinist friends and countrymen. As Jake and his guests discuss matters of morality over Christmas dinner, their conversation filled with disdain for the permissive culture perceived as a threat to traditional values, it's unclear whether we should take what we are seeing at face value (Scott's best friend is played by Dick Sargent [?!]). By assuming a detached, Bressonian perspective to these early scenes, writer/director Paul Schrader compels us to question our own moral assumptions; if only the rest of Hardcore provoked the same kind of sickly thrilling ambiguity. Instead, any spell these first scenes weave is quickly broken when VanDorn is shown 8mm evidence of his runaway daughter's disapperance into the world of underground porn. Scott, wails, gnashes his teeth, has an aneurysm and nearly eats his own head while bellowing "THAT'S MY DAUGHTER!" and effectively killing any hope of subtlety or wit. Scott is terrible in Hardcore, and he's a perfect fit for a film that, while born from Schrader's life and personal obsessions, is hamhanded sensationalism masquerading as art.

The plot of Hardcore, Schrader's most thorough appropriation of The Searchers, hinges on the preposterous notion of VanDorn's virginal teenage daughter Kristen (Ilah Davis) disappearing from a youth group trip to L.A. and, within days, found in a hardcore loop by a private investigator (Peter Boyle). Jake takes off to L.A. to save his daughter, and soon finds himself caught in an increasingly sordid sex industry, ranging from storefront sex shops to snuff. There's admittedly a kinky sort of fun to be had in noting the way that Schrader recreates the day-glo, semen-stained surfaces of the porn world, and cinematographer Michael Chapman (who also shot Taxi Driver) gives these scenes the right plastic quality. But Schrader gets in his own way - he pushes us towards identifying with Jake's repulsion, yet he also condescends to the character's middle-American naievete throughout. The result is that while the images may shock us, they're never affecting in a meaningful way. This conflict can make Hardcore seem more exploitative than it was probably intended to be; the women in the film, for instance, are underage-looking, and the camera lingers on their flat chests and skinny bodies in a way that, in the absence of meaningful context, comes off as leering and gratuitous. Schrader tries for horror and only succeeds at gross-out.

The most compelling character in the film is Niki (Season Hubley), a more jaded version of Taxi Driver's Iris. In one of Niki's early scenes, she enters a peepshow booth, naked, planting her feet against the glass in a confident spread-eagle. It's the strongest image in the film, Niki's unapologetic sluttiness confronting our own unspoken voyeurism. As Niki helps Jake find his daughter, the two develop a peculiarly honest relationship, each confessing to the ways they are products of their respective backgrounds - the God-fearing and the godless find they have more in common than they might suspect, and Schrader's obsession with predestination (a holdover from his own Calvinist upbringing) becomes a metaphor for social and economic imprisonment.

These ideas would have resonated more deeply had Schrader pushed his character further; many of the film's problems would immediately be solved if Jake had sex with Niki. But the character remains firmly one-dimensional, a stranger in a strange land immune to temptation, and Schrader cannot seem to take his own protagonist seriously, let alone fully humanize him. And the provocative suggestion that Jake's daughter was seriously kinky to begin with (a porn actor tells Jake, "I don't know what kind of shit she was into, but my dick was red and swollen and chewed up for a week") is quickly brushed aside in favor of a slam-bang ending and a forced resolution. One can feel in Hardcore Schrader's desire to make a movie that would genuinely offend his fundamentalist family; unfortunately, the themes he touches upon but never really explores are far more incendiary than gratuitous T&A (he would return to the central concerns of Hardcore with much greater success in films like American Gigolo, Cat People and Auto Focus).

If there's an element of Hardcore that really works, it's the examination of the Calvinist equivalency of popular culture with sin. Visual references to Star Wars are littered throughout the film, culminating in a nudie lightsabre battle set to "Star Wars Disco." Schrader is not only equating the emerging mainstream cinema of sensation with porn, he's also anticipating the 1980s' borderline-narcotic obsession with pretty surfaces. It's a shaky position to take, and also a hypocritical one in view of Hardcore's own tendency towards titillation, but it's still an effective eulogy for the decade when filmmakers were given free reign to be as audacious and self-indulgent as they wanted to be. If Hardcore is a failure, it's at least a fond reminder of a time when filmmakers were able to fail this big.

Friday Title Card #20

The Trim Bin #59

- There are two trailers I can't stop thinking about lately. The first, No Country For Old Men, is the Coen Brothers' adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel, looks to be a return to form after the bland, disappointing one-two punch of Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers. I can't wait to see what the Coens do with McCarthy's stark prose - the trailer suggests their creepiest film since Blood Simple. The second is for another adaptation, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (based on the Upton Sinclair novel Oil!). The pronounced similarity to Terrence Malick has been pointed out repeatedly, and the trailer is certainly filled with echoes of Days of Heaven (McCabe and Mrs. Miller, too). I'm intrigued that Anderson, who has always been a wiz with sound (few directors would hire Gary Rydstrom to mix a small-scale romantic comedy), has replaced bombast with silence. It's this stripped-down approach that connects the two trailers in my mind, as both suggest drastically new approaches for their respective makers. If the films are as powerful as their trailers, we're in for a memorable fall.

- The updated AFI list is no better or worse than the last one - it's nice to see Blade Runner and Nashville in there, and it's laughable that The Sixth Sense is apparently the greatest film of 1999 (the best moviegoing year in my lifetime thus far). There's nothing really wrong with the list itself - about a third of the films listed appear on my own top 100 - but it paints an extremely narrow picture of film history and culture. The AFI list is inherently less interesting than the Sight and Sound Top 10 or other lists, mostly because voters must choose from a preliminary list of 400 films that are at least partly chosen for their popularity. Where other lists are meant to provoke discussion, this one is meant to generate nostalgia and boost DVD sales. Add to this the AFI's stupid insistence on an American-only list because the word "American" appears in their name, and you have a list that is purposefully anti-eclectic. It sucked in 1998, it sucks now, and it will suck ten years from now (or nine, as the AFI apparently cannot count to ten). Case closed.

- A while back I was speculating about casting Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Lovely Bones. The parents have been cast, and I'm split. On the one hand, Rachel Weisz is a great choice for Abigail - her ability to be emotionally open without sacrificing subtlety perfectly fits the story's delicate tone. On the other hand, the casting of Ryan Gosling as the patriarch doesn't work for me, and not just because he's far too young to play a father of three. A confession: I just don't get Ryan Gosling. Where others see precocious brilliance, I see a joyless, mannered assembly of self-conscious method tics in search of a performance with soul. I find his tendency towards "important" material contrived. I didn't buy him for a second as a crackhead in Half Nelson. And his pretentiously unpretentious normal guy routine is infuriating, because any normal guy wouldn't be able to say things like "I've always hated the complacency which comes from good looks" with a straight face. I'll give Peter Jackson the benefit of the doubt - I didn't think much of Viggo before The Fellowship of the Ring - but seriously, am I missing something?

- CHUD has an interesting article about the evolution of the 4th of July as a blockbuster weekend/crap depository. I can't wait to see Transformers, even though I'm pretty sure it's going to unleash a plague of snakes and flesh-eating bugs that will kill all of America's children, unleashing an army of Druid cyborgs that not even Tom Atkins can stop from conquering the world. Either way, the robots look cool.

Friday Title Card #19

Top 100: Pop Music in Film

For my contribution to the Filmmusic Blog-a-Thon, I've assembled what started as a top ten list before ballooning to a 100 list - there was just no way to whittle it down. This list is ranked not only by the greatness of a song, but how perfectly it is used in a scene or moment from a film. Source music allows directors another form of total control, and directors like Kubrick and Scorsese that helped popularlize the concept of pop soundtracks are notorious perfectionists. In the hands of the right filmmaker, a great song (or even a not-so-great one) can become an extension of a characters' emotions, an ironic comment on a scene, or a distinct shade of meaning.

There are some original songs here, but the emphasis is on source music. Straight musicals and performance aren't on this list (with the borderline exception of, ironically, Performance), as they belong on another list completely. Also, I've limited myself to one cue per film - otherwise, half the list would be Goodfellas. Links to the corresponding scenes are provided when available. I hope you enjoy this more than another recent 100 list.

1. “Sister Christian,” Night Ranger – Boogie Nights
2. “The End,” The Doors – Apocalypse Now
3. “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” The Rolling Stones – Mean Streets
4. “In Dreams,” Roy Orbison – Blue Velvet
5. “Singin’ In the Rain,” Gene Kelly – A Clockwork Orange
6. “Memo From Turner,” Mick Jagger – Performance
7. “Stuck In The Middle With You,” Stealer’s Wheel – Reservoir Dogs
8. “I Think I See The Light,” Cat Stevens – Harold and Maude
9. “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” Bob Dylan – Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid
10. “In Your Eyes,” Peter Gabriel – Say Anything
11. “These Days,” Nico – The Royal Tenenbaums
12. “Layla,” Derek and the Dominos - Goodfellas
13. “I Put a Spell On You,” Screamin’ Jay Hawkins – Stranger Than Paradise
14. “The Stranger Song,” Leonard Cohen – McCabe and Mrs. Miller
15. “Didn’t I Blow Your Mind This Time,” The Delfonics – Jackie Brown
16. “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)”, Kenny Rogers and the First Edition – The Big Lebowski
17. “Mrs. Robinson,” Simon and Garfunkel – The Graduate
18. “Tiny Dancer,” Elton John – Almost Famous
19. “Hurdy Gurdy Man,” Donovan – Zodiac
20. “Fight the Power,” Public Enemy – Do the Right Thing
21. “Late for the Sky,” Jackson Browne – Taxi Driver
22. “Relax,” Frankie Goes to Hollywood – Body Double
23. “Theme From Shaft,” Issac Hayes – Shaft
24. “Wise Up,” Aimee Mann - Magnolia
25. “A Quick One While He’s Away,” The Who - Rushmore
26. “Nobody But Me," Human Beinz – Kill Bill vol. 1
27. “Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing,” Chris Issak – Eyes Wide Shut
28. "Everybody's Talkin'," Harry Nilsson - Midnight Cowboy
29. “Moving In Stereo,” The Cars – Fast Times at Ridgemont High
30. “Sussudio,” Phil Collins – American Psycho
31. “An Invitation to the Blues,” Tom Waits – Bad Timing
32. “Amoreena,” Elton John – Dog Day Afternoon
33. "I'm Shipping Up To Boston," Dropkick Murphys - The Departed
34. “A Change is Gonna Come,” Sam Cooke – Malcolm X
35. “The Court of the Crimson King,” King Crimson – Children of Men
36. "Like a Rolling Stone," Bob Dylan and The Band - New York Stories
37. “Staggolee,” Pacific Gas & Electric - Grindhouse
38. “Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime,” Beck – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
39. "Careful With That Axe Eugene," Pink Floyd - Zabriskie Point
40. "Goldfinger," Shirley Bassey - Goldfinger
41. “Staying Alive,” The Bee Gees – Saturday Night Fever
42. “Life on Mars,” David Bowie – The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
43. “The Killing Moon,” Echo and the Bunnymen – Donnie Darko
44. “Natural’s Not In It,” Gang of Four – Marie Antoinette
45. “This Magic Moment,” Lou Reed – Lost Highway
46. “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon,” Urge Overkill – Pulp Fiction
47. "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head," B.J. Thomas - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
48. “Blue Moon,” Sam Cooke – An American Werewolf in London
49. “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” Simple Minds – The Breakfast Club
50. “Hurricane,” Bob Dylan – Dazed and Confused
51. "We'll Meet Again," Vera Lynn - Dr. Strangelove
52. “Janie Jones,” The Clash – Bringing Out the Dead
53. “The Old Main Drag,” The Pogues – My Own Private Idaho
54. “If You Wanna Be a Bird,” The Holy Modal Rounders – Easy Rider
55. "Surfin' Bird," The Trashmen – Full Metal Jacket
56. "Sinnerman," Nina Simone – Inland Empire
57. "From Her To Eternity," Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Wings of Desire
58. "Old Time Rock and Roll," Bob Seger - Risky Business
59. “Banana Boat Song,” Harry Belafonte - Beetlejuice
60. “Louie Louie,” The Kingsmen – Animal House
61. "Can We Still Be Friends," Todd Rundgren - Vanilla Sky
62. "Twist and Shout," The Beatles - Ferris Bueller's Day Off
63. “Freebird,” Lynyrd Skynyrd – The Devil’s Rejects
64. “Tequila,” The Champs – Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure
65. "No One Lives Forever," Oingo Boingo - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
66. “Waterloo,” Abba – Muriel’s Wedding
67. "Let's Misbehave," Irving Aaronson and His Commanders - Pennies From Heaven
68. “I Want You Around,” The Ramones – Rock ‘n’ Roll High School
69. “Numb/Encore” Jay-Z and Linkin Park, Miami Vice
70. “Daniel,” Elton John – Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
71. "Magic Man," Heart - The Virgin Suicides
72. “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” Bauhaus – The Hunger
73. “All Out of Love,” Air Supply - Happiness
74. “Girls,” Death in Vegas – Lost in Translation
75. "The Seeker," The Who - American Beauty
76. “Goodbye Horses,” Q. Lazzarus – The Silence of the Lambs
77. “I’m Your Man,” Leonard Cohen - Secretary
78. “The Blower’s Daughter,” Damien Rice - Closer
79. “There Is An End,” The Greenhornes with Holly Golightly – Broken Flowers
80. “Who Made Who,” AC/DC – Maximum Overdrive
81. "Philadelphia," Neil Young – Philadelphia
82. "Hey You," Pink Floyd - The Squid and the Whale
83. "Venus in Furs," Velvet Underground - Last Days
84. "Just in Time," Nina Simone - Before Sunset
85. "Bad To The Bone," George Thorogood and The Destroyers – Christine
86. "Without You," Harry Nilsson - The Rules of Attraction
87. "Devil Got My Woman," Skip James - Ghost World
88. "Suzanne," Leonard Cohen - Breaking the Waves
89. "Everybody Wants Some," Van Halen - Better Off Dead
90. "Partyman,” Prince – Batman
91. "Midnight, the Stars and You," Roy Noble Orchestra - The Shining
92. "Young Americans," David Bowie – Dogville
93. "2000 Man," The Rolling Stones - Bottle Rocket
94. "Anthem," Leonard Cohen - Natural Born Killers
95. "Sax and Violins," Talking Heads - Until the End of the World
96. "Rock Around the Clock," Bill Haley and the Comets - Blackboard Jungle
97. "Tonight (We'll Make Love Until We Die)" - The Return of the Living Dead
98. "Stardust," Louis Armstrong - Stardust Memories
99. "Que Sera Sera," Doris Day - The Man Who Knew Too Much
100. "Eye of the Tiger," Survivor - Rocky III

always a day away

My great-grandmother died this weekend. At 98, she had sidestepped all forms of disease, injury and senility until the only thing she had left to face was biological law. Her name was Mary Elizabeth Jacquard, but to me, she was Nana Baa. Nana Baa used to be called Nana Wolf because she would read me the story of Peter and the Wolf when I was a toddler. When I was a bit older, I overheard someone use the phrase "a wolf in sheep's clothing"; thus, Nana Wolf became Nana Baa.

Nana Baa used to read to me all the time; in recent years she would joke about sitting at the kitchen table at six in the morning, drinking coffee, and suddenly hearing small footsteps as I descended the stairs carrying a stack of books. And I must have made the poor woman watch Annie a hundred times. But she was always totally enthusiastic - she was a great listener, and she cared about the things that mattered to me. Nana Baa was a pretty perfect great-grandmother.

Nana Baa and my great-grandfather (who I never met, but who I once mistook for President Reagan) came to America via Canada; she lived in Massachusetts for most of her life, raising eight children, dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and even living to see a few great-great-grandchildren. A faithful Catholic, the walls of her home were covered with images of Christ and a bearded, smiling God watching over the earth. She was what all Christians should be - loving, faithful, and deeply appreciative of her life. Her worst fear was losing her ability to be self-sufficient, and she never did; even in her last years, she was still cooking and cleaning for herself. And in the past few months, as it became clear the end was near, my family was able to arrange for her to spend her last days at home.

I visited her in April, when it looked like she might be gone at any moment. Her eyesight and hearing were fading, but she held me for a long, good time. Too often we don't have the chance to say goodbye to the people we love, so I'll always be greatful that I saw her smile once more. She asked about my filmmaking plans, and I told her about the work I've gotten here and there.

"It's a tough business," she said.

"But there's no pressure," my mom said, to which Nana Baa responded, "Oh yes, there is."

She touched my wife's stomach, feeling the baby still resting inside. Her eyes widened in awe. We talked some more and held hands, then I kissed her and said goodbye. We were going to see her this weekend and bring Luna to meet her, but it wasn't meant to be. Perhaps it's better to die with something to look forward to.

I hope Nana Baa is in the heaven she so strongly believed in. I hope I'll see her again someday.

Happy Father's Day

Friday Title Card #18

She took a midnight train going anywhere

No further proof is needed of David Chase's genius than his ability to turn eight seconds of a silent, black screen into the most talked-about scene of the year. One cannot Google "Sopranos final scene" without being inundated with angry, profane message board posts condemning series creator David Chase with a level of vitriol usually reserved for kiddie rapers and George Lucas. Nobody predicted those final moments, but if someone had, I'd have dismissed the notion as pretentious nonsense. Now, I can't imagine The Sopranos ending any other way. What began as a scabrous black comedy sold on its high concept ("If one family doesn't kill him, the other will" - yuk yuk!) expanded in scale and ambition over the years, becoming an uncompromising lesson in darkness worthy of mention alongside its oft-referenced progenitors. Now that the series is over, we've just begun to fully absorb and process its brilliance, up to and including a final cut that quietly redefines what television is capable of.

Early in "Made in America," Agent Harris (Matt Servitto) warns Tony, "you're reaching." This is Chase's advice to us, as well - the air of impending doom hanging over the entire episode, while suggested by the weirdly off-kilter editing rhythms, is completed by our own simultaneous fear and desire to see Tony Soprano violently offed. It doesn't happen, at least not before the credits roll (we're getting there); nor does Tony join the witness protection program or start a full-scale war. And, frankly, that's for the best - do we really want to see these bloated, middle-aged schlubs gasping for breath as they bloody up the streets of New Jersey? Chase has smartly sated our bloodlust in the previous episode, and in the Pythonesque death of New York boss Phil Leotardo (Frank Vincent) in this one. The world of The Sopranos is as it has always been; the resolution of the New York/New Jersey conflict plays out quickly, with little pause, in a dingy garage in the middle of nowhere. These guys are dinosaurs, and as Chase repeatedly shows us - with one of Phil's crew accidentally wandering out of a Little Italy growing smaller and smaller, with both Tony and Phil's inability earlier this season to reason with a pouting, indifferent Juggalo - they're on their way out. Say goodbye to Grandpa, indeed.

When AJ lashes out at a table of mourners for their superficial chatter about "jack-off fantasies on television," it's hard not to feel like Chase is chastising us. But the truth is more complicated; as ambivalent as he may be about The Sopranos' popularity among those who get off on the violence and complain about the artsy-fartsy stuff, he isn't out to punish his audience. Agent Harris' exclamation - "We're going to win this one!" - and his investment in Tony's continued survival is meant to mirror our own relationship to the big guy. We care about Tony, his crew and his family for the same reason we care about Tom Powers, Tony Montana and Henry Hill; no matter how many sins they commit, it's encouraging to see the little guy succeed, his problems so managable compared to our world's. Chase goes out of his way to avoid glorifying his characters' actions, but he's not sanctimonious either, allowing each character a fond farewell (Paulie and the cat - perfect). While Dr. Melfi may be able to close the door on Tony, it's hard for us to do the same (this is largely due to James Gandolfini's performance, one for the ages). We may find ourselves wishing, as Steve Perry once did, that the movie will never end.

Which brings us to that final scene. If I had to choose, I think that final cut to black signifies Tony's sudden death at the hands of an unnamed hitman in a Members Only jacket, if for no other reason than last week's flashback to Bobby's line "You never hear it coming." At the same time, there's just as strong an argument to be made that Chase is merely playing with our expectations. I mean, it's not like Bobby Baccalieri is John the Baptist. And Members Only's visit to the bathroom does echo The Godfather, except that there's no reason for him to be hiding his weapon in the john. But this is what the scene is about - Chase gives us a grab bag of signifiers relying not only on our knowledge of The Sopranos but on our collective cultural knowledge (this has always been a big part of the show). Knowing that we're watching the last minutes of the last episode gives every moment mythic significance, with "Don't Stop Believin" elevated to the level of an all-too-ironic Greek chorus. We're conditioned to expect the worst; it's impossible to watch a family, numb but still alive, munch onion rings without anticipating a dramatic twist of fate. And it is here that Chase succeeds in truly putting us inside the mind of his protagonist, who will always be looking over his shoulder.

The question that final cut leaves us to ask is whether things are as bad as we perceive them to be. Are we reaching? It's perhaps the most important question of our age, one that we'll do anything to avoid. So the final scene is radical not just in form but in the questions it leaves us; the rabid discussion isn't just about The Sopranos, it's a confession of our need, more than ever, for resolution. I felt that way too, as every last detail - Carmela's vacant, icy stare (Edie Falco deserves a better award than a frigging Emmy), the small flick of Tony's wrist as he dispatches another onion ring - was invested with unbelievable poignance. The Sopranos is one of the great American stories. I hate to see it end. And then

Doing it Spacey-style

It's sometimes hard for me to wrap my mind around the idea that people actually read this blog, so the "Thinking Blogger Award" given to me by John from The Last Visible Blog (along with some very kind words) is extremely encouraging. While I'm not much for memes in general, it seems like it would be extremely bad karma not to pass this along, so below are links to five blogs that are well worth your time. But first, the rules:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.

2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.

3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote.

Please note that any of the blogs linked to the right fully deserve this award, but the rules say five, so there it is.

Film Experience Blog - I've always been dismissive of celeb-obsessed film writing, but Nathaniel at The Film Experience changed that for me. Nathaniel's blog is a witty marriage of serious film discussion and star commentary that reminds of Entertainment Weekly back when it was actually fun to read. Plus, he's made me see Michelle Pfeiffer in a whole new light.

Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule - Dennis Cozzalio's blog is an fun, eclectic appreciation of cinema history and culture high and low (recent posts have covered both Amarcord and Hostel: Part II). Plus, his quarterly movie quizzes are not only thought-provoking, they're a blast to write and share.

Silly Hats Only - The home base for Paul Clark (whose writing can also be found over at Screengrab), a cinephile that is, unbelievably enough, as dedicated to lists, awards, and generally applying arbitrary mathematical formulas to film appreciation as I am. This is encouraging.

Nihon Musings - I know little about anime, so every one of Doug's posts on his favorite subject is extremely educational. He's the rare anime aficionado that can write seriously about the medium without leaving us non-otaku in the dust (he's also a damn good friend).

You Struck Me Dumb Like Radium - Obvious bias here, but I'm not just bragging about Jess because she's my wife; she's my wife because she's so worth bragging about. Her movie reviews are sharper and more insightful than mine could ever be, her poetry is achingly beautiful, and she can push out a baby in record time (not strictly relevant, but it was pretty fucking impressive). She doesn't write nearly enough, so bug her about this fact - the world needs more Jessica.

Re: The Sopranos finale

Friday Title Card #17

I shoot to disappear.

At the heart of El Topo, Alejandro Jodorowsky's famously mystical and mystifying sort-of-western, is the recurring image of things buried only to be uncovered. As the opening narration explains, el topo (the mole) is an animal that spends its whole life digging tunnels, looking for a sun that will ultimately leave it blinded. This has often been read as a metaphor for the increasing popularity of underground movies, but more simply, it is a version of that most universal symbol of truth - the sun - that takes away one's sight just as it imbues the seer with a deeper inner vision. There are versions of this story in most, if not all mythologies, and Jodorowsky reduces it to a stark fable of the omnipresent light and the unworthy animal. El Topo is the story of one man's gory, kinky journey to enlightenment; it's both profound and profoundly silly, and whole lot of fun.

El Topo (played by Jodorowsky) is a black-clad gunslinger riding across the desert with his young, naked son (Jodorowsky's son, Brontis). During the course of the film, he rescues a woman from a cult, duels with the four master gunmen of the desert, and is betrayed only to be reborn twenty years later as the savior of a colony of deformed and otherwise disabled cave-dwellers, marry a little person and lead the colony to civilization, which ends in bloodshed and a violent epiphany (this is the most fun I've ever had writing plot summary). If this sounds like a hodgepodge of self-consciously odd ideas, El Topo is much more than weird for weird's sake; the ideas and images in the film unfold suddenly and inevitably, as though in a dream. Jodorowsky has a great talent for finding indelible images, and he assembles them together in a way that creates symmetry out of chaos. The film begins like a variation on a spaghetti western, emphasizing the genre's use of vast expanses of desert as a means of alienation (a scene of some bored gunmen waiting for anything to happen recalls the opening of Once Upon a Time in the West). But the film changes with its protagonist, languidly erotic as El Topo indulges in a good deal of group sex, sadistically violent as he duels the four masters, full-blown surreal as he renounces his physical self for a monastic life, and finally apocalyptic. Few films are so bound to their protagonist (and, by extension, Jodorowsky), and if I call El Topo self-indulgent, I mean it in the best possible way.

Jodorowsky straddles the sacred and the profane throughout El Topo. On the surface, the gunslinger's spiritual growth requires him to renounce the self by way of putting aside the pleasures of the flesh, echoing the most stringent aspects of Vedic faiths. At the same time, the filmmaker is clearly getting off on the copious amounts of kinky sex and cartoonish violence, and he wants us to do the same. Interestingly, it's the film's contradictory nature that is its greatest strength; by indulging all aspects of the human experience, the film is able to be philosophical but not pedantic, romantic but not bucolic, horny but not smutty. It's both visceral and meditative, a film that uses bodily harm as a way of understanding spiritual entropy and evolution. That Jodorowsky acknowledges his own weaknesses (his misogyny foremost among them) makes the hero's complicated journey more poignant. As the mother of one of the masters tells El Topo, "The deeper you fall, the higher you will rise."

What ultimately makes El Topo one of my favorite films is its sheer vitality. Jodorowsky imagines spirituality not as an empty religious concept but as a violent, tangible force that compels us to action. The film ends in revolution before arriving at a startling concept, that of death as a renunciation of everything once pure that has been endlessly co-opted and commodified into utter meaninglessness. El Topo is filled with death, but it's an affirmative film, one that in the protagonist's vaudeville act becomes tounge-in-cheek enough to avoid self-importance. Jodorowsky recognizes the story of man as a comedy about a noble animal that struggles, fails and struggles again in the hopes of seeing the light, if only for a moment.

Friday Title Card #16