Blog@Case Topics: summer movie watchhttp://blog.case.edu/topics/summer%20movie%20watchErin Wolvertonerin.wolverton@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/cereal2009-09-13T01:17:15ZMASH, Cuckoo’s Nest, and Internalized Sexism in American Culturehttp://blog.case.edu/cereal/2009/09/12/mash_cuckooas_nest_and_internalized_sexism_in_american_culture2009-09-13T01:02:56Z2009-09-13T01:17:15Z
Mash.jpg Cuckoo's Nest.jpg MASH One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest I promised earlier that I would elaborate on why both of these classic films made my AFI hate list and why I pegged them as being sexist. Here I am. Let me first note, for the record, that I have not read Ken Kesey’s book, on which one film is based, nor have I seen any episodes of the TV show spawned by the other film. All my criticisms are restricted entirely to the two movies. It’s like this; both of these movies were all about that seventies-era rebellion ( Easy Riders and Raging Bulls ) in which any kind of institution is bad, and rocking the boat is good, even if it makes you an ass. The characters played by Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland in MASH were, frankly, jerks. Not just to the nurses, not just to their nemesis “Hot-Lips†O’Houlihan (I report that nickname with the same distaste I would have holding a dirty diaper between two fingers). They are jerks to each other, to their superiors, to everybody. Being a jerk was apparently very edgy and cool in the 70s, or so this movie would have you believe. Jack Nicholson in Cuckoo’s Nest was also a jerk. It seemed that he was put into the mental institution because he had played crazy to get out of work duty while in jail, and that he thought this was a pretty awesome plot. Forgive me if I don’t think the same. Click ahead for more.
Erin Wolvertonerin.wolverton@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/cerealMovie Review: Western Round-Uphttp://blog.case.edu/cereal/2009/09/07/movie_review_western_roundup2009-09-07T05:46:21Z2009-09-07T15:36:32Z
westerns0.jpg I watched four westerns in one day during my Summer Movie Watch, and a fifth before it was over. Recently, I watched a sixth western just for the hell of it, during TCM’s Summer of the Stars. (It was Glenn Ford day, which was also the first time I saw the amazing Gilda .) Anyway, that’s a lot of movies to juggle for a single review; also, my recall is not so strong that I can devote tons and tons of words to all of those movies. Still, I have westerns on the brain because I've been researching Tarantino movies for my film class and his work is heavily inspired by classic westerns (including his recent WWII epic, Inglourious Basterds ). So, instead of writing standard reviews, I have commented on a few interesting aspects of the individual films I watched and will allow my readers to draw their own comparisons. Please note: Spoilers ahead, though the majority of them are 40 years or older.
Erin Wolvertonerin.wolverton@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/cerealJulie and Julia, and the Lure of the Self-Imposed Challengehttp://blog.case.edu/cereal/2009/08/26/julie_and_julia_and_the_lure_of_the_selfimposed_challenge2009-08-27T04:34:11Z2009-08-27T05:01:30Z
Julie.jpg Just recently I saw the movie Julie and Julia , and the similarity of Julie’s self-challenge to my own (recently, my Summer Movie Watch and more broadly, my 30 before 30 list) prompted me to think about the impulse towards self-improvement. I think age—Julie was in her late twenties when she embarked on her project, just as I am now—was a crucial component of both projects. There’s a certain amount of stasis associated with being a grown-up. At 14, I thought I might grow up to be a travel writer—why not? At 14, you can do anything. At 18, I effectively crossed that off the possibility list by being too chicken to major in writing, choosing instead to major in literature and spending the next four years passively reading instead of actively writing. No idea at that point what I thought I would do when I graduated—that’s part of the dodge of college, that you have four years to put off thinking about that. Fast forwarding a bit, I’m in the waning days of my 20s and on what might be called a career track. (Early on the track, way early. But on it.) I’m in a stable relationship. Conceivably, my life will not change except by small margins over the next five to ten years. It would be easy in that case for me not to change for the next five to ten years. For a compulsive self-improver, that is not OK. Julie and Julia, and my summer of movies, after the jump.
Erin Wolvertonerin.wolverton@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/cerealThe AFI's 100 Greatest Movies (Pts. 1 and 2) Summed Uphttp://blog.case.edu/cereal/2009/08/22/the_afis_100_greatest_movies_pts_1_and_2_summed_up2009-08-23T01:16:43Z2009-08-23T02:17:40Z
AFI logo.jpg Earlier, I wrote a sum-up of my experience with Entertainment Weekly's 100 New Classics list. I'm finally following up with a sum-up of the AFI lists! Here's how I felt about the AFI lists: Least enjoyed: A Night at the Opera , Duck Soup , MASH , Mutiny on the Bounty , One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest , Platoon , Shane , Sunrise , Swing Time Most enjoyed: 12 Angry Men , City Lights , Doctor Zhivago , Giant , High Noon , King Kong , Midnight Cowboy , Modern Times , Spartacus , Sullivan’s Travels , The Bridge on the River Kwai , The Deer Hunter , The Godfather Pre-list favorites: All About Eve , American Graffiti , Casablanca , Dr. Strangelove , Fargo , Jaws , North by Northwest , Rear Window , Sunset Boulevard , The Apartment , The Graduate , The Maltese Falcon , The Manchurian Candidate , The Philadelphia Story Other than the movies themselves, which of course were all new to me, I saw some interesting actors for the first time, notably Van Heflin, John Cazale, Omar Sharif, and Fay Wray. This was also my first exposure to directors David Lynch, George Stevens, D.W. Griffith and Sam Peckinpah. The Summer Movie Watch necessitated my first (and last) two Marx brothers movie viewings. It’s harder for me to name all the movies I think should have been on the AFI list and that weren’t than it is for me to say what should have been on the EW list. This is simply because I have seen fewer films from the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s than from the 80s, the 90s and the 00s. I can’t help when I was born, after all. But I have seen enough that I put together this short list of notable omissions: Roman Holiday , The Palm Beach Story , Notorious , His Girl Friday , Charade , Born Yesterday , It Should Happen to You , Advise and Consent , Brief Encounter , Gilda , The Shop Around the Corner , In a Lonely Place , and Reds . As far as I know, all of these films were eligible for inclusion with the possible exception of Brief Encounter, which is officially a British film (but then so is Lawrence of Arabia , River Kwai, and several others that the AFI didn’t mind taking credit for, so…). Other list factoids: The AFI list presented me with the three shortest and the two longest movies I viewed: Lawrence of Arabia at 216 minutes and Ben-Hur at 212 minutes were the longest (the next longest was a tie, with Giant and EW’s Lord of the Rings: Return of the King at 201 minutes each, and no, that’s not even the extended edition of LOTR). The shortest movie I watched was Duck Soup at just 68 minutes (68 long minutes, because Marx brothers sheesh), then Frankenstein at 70 minutes and The General at 75. The dates on those movies—1933, 1931, and 1926 respectively—are telling. Movies were shorter back then both because of the technology (innovations in film production made filmmaking basics easier and quicker, for example) and because movies were frequently shown in double and triple features. People spent a lot more time at the movies before they had TVs in their homes. The most represented director on both versions of the AFI list is Steven Spielberg with 5 films. The second list swaps out Close Encounters for Saving Private Ryan (which was made the same year as the first list was released). I had already seen 4 of the first 5 and 3 of the second 5, so I actually only watched 2 Spielberg movies throughout the movie watch. The next two most represented directors are Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder, each with the same four films appearing on both lists. These are two of my absolute favorite directors, and I had seen all four of both sets of films. In fact, I believe I once watched three of Wilder’s ( Sunset Boulevard, The Apartment, and Some Like it Hot ) all in a row one rainy Sunday afternoon. I had also seen all three of the Frank Capra movies on the lists, and all three of the John Huston films. The most represented director on my movie watch was George Stevens, who had four movies on the two lists, none of which I had seen, and then Robert Altman and David Lean, each with three movies I hadn't seen. One thing I noticed is that only one director ( James Cameron) had 3 or more films on the EW list, compared to the several who had 3 and 4 on the AFI lists—and, of course, Senor Spielbergo with 5. I can draw the conclusion that the EW list is more deliberately diverse than the AFI lists, or just reflect that the film industry has grown exponentially in every direction in the last twenty-five years and there was just more for EW to choose from. Probably both are somewhat true. The EW list skewed my decade stats; I saw the most movies from the 80s and 90s simply because the EW list added an extra hundred of them to the total. For the AFI list, I watched films mostly from the 1970s, the 1960s and the 1930s. I needed to watch only two movies from the 1940s, considered by many to be the Golden Age of Hollywood, and well-represented on the list, because I had seen the majority of them already ( Citizen Kane , It’s a Wonderful Life , Casablanca: already familiar). Popular genres on the AFI lists are war movies and musicals, with a handful of westerns and mob movies. A lot of my favorites are the more unclassifiable ones: The Apartment. Fargo. All About Eve. The Philadelphia Story. Are these dramas? Comedies? I classify my absolute favorite genre of film as “the poignant comedy.†I wish it occurred more often in nature.
Erin Wolvertonerin.wolverton@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/cerealMovie Reviews: The Boxer as Everymanhttp://blog.case.edu/cereal/2009/08/14/movie_reviews_the_boxer_as_everyman2009-08-14T05:01:41Z2009-08-19T08:26:07Z
See my previous entry on Hoop Dreams, about how sports narratives, despite their inherent strength, are virtually lost on me, and this entry will all make a lot more sense. rocky1.jpg raging_bull.jpg Rocky Raging Bull It fascinates me, honestly, that two extremely iconic American movies are centered around boxing, which seems to me to be such a marginalized sport. You don’t see it on TV that often. You don’t see celebrities made of boxers the way you see celebrities made of football players, baseball players and basketball players. (With some exceptions, i.e., boxers I have heard of: Mike Tyson, Muhammed Ali, and the guy Russell Crowe played in Cinderella Man . That is all.) Watching two boxing movies because the AFI made me was an interesting experience, then. As I watched and mused on how gross boxing is, I questioned why people (men mostly, probably) find the story of the boxer so universal. Part of it is primal, I’m sure: the urge to blot out the competition of another male of the species by pummeling him, injuring him, shaming him. Rocky in particular positioned the sport as being uniquely blue collar, a sport for working class schlubs, which seems appropriate for the 70s, which I always imagine was a very scrappy decade. Scorsese, with Raging Bull, seemed to find something very poetic about De Niro destroying himself in the ring while he unraveled outside of it. Hit him with a metaphorical punch in the street and then drive it home with a literal punch in the ring, basically. Again, narratively effective. But I won’t explore that too much. For my own part, I find it hard to remove my own feminine experience from movie watching. That’s why you’ll never hear me say that Rocky or Raging Bull (or Saving Private Ryan, or Platoon) is my favorite movie; I’m going to name a movie with some incredible actress like Katharine Hepburn in it, that has themes that I can relate to intimately. That’s what makes a movie a favorite, as opposed to great. All critics agree on this, incidentally; the best movie in the world is not necessarily one’s favorite. Raging Bull had, to put it bluntly, nothing to offer a woman. The culture of this movie was patriarchal Italian life, where women were for making sons, or to be hit when they said something disagreeable. Where when something important had to be discussed, it was demanded that they left the room. I respect Martin Scorsese as a director—and not just because he made the incredibly woman-friendly The Age of Innocence , but also for Goodfellas and The Departed , both of which I loved—but the environment that was so vividly portrayed in Raging Bull was rather offensive to me. There’s really no other way to put it. I’m glad that people and critics have connected with the movie as much as they have, that they find something universal in its message. It was utterly lost on me, I’m afraid. On the other hand, I didn’t mind the experience of watching Rocky at all. The underdog story kind of got to me—the first time I saw him try to run up those steps, and he didn’t make it, I thought, “Oh, you’ll do it eventually! I’ve seen that.†Rocky’s fumbly little romance with plain Jane Adrian was really quite sweet. The thing I did not like about the movie was that Stallone sold himself out to such an extent later. There’s a moment in Rocky, where Burgess Meredith the old trainer offers to coach Rocky since Rocky has been challenged by Apollo and suddenly has earning potential. Rocky shouts that the guy should have coached him when he was younger and could have made something of himself because now he’s all broken down. He’s approaching 30 and he’s not in top shape for the game anymore. It’s a poignant moment. Until the sequels. Then he wins. He wins all the time. And by the fourth movie he’s pulling a damn bobsled and felling ancient trees. And then it’s thirty years later and he’s still fighting! Too bad Stallone didn’t have the guts to let the first Rocky speak for itself; he might’ve had a very different career if he’d made a different choice. But whatever, he didn’t consult me about it. My favorite kind of boxer: boxer-dog.jpg
Erin Wolvertonerin.wolverton@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/cerealMovie Reviews: Epic Wednesday Ghetto Lifehttp://blog.case.edu/cereal/2009/08/13/movie_reviews_epic_wednesday_ghetto_life2009-08-14T04:09:48Z2009-08-14T04:30:35Z
5800_menace_2_society.jpg Menace II Society I’m more Gilmore Girls than ghetto, of course, and so I can’t say that the realism of the movie really struck me or that I felt a spiritual connection with the characters or anything like that. Yeah, good stories are universal, but there’s a certain wall between me and this kind of life that sort of absents me from having anything real to say about it. I know narratives, though, and this was a good one. The threads of the story were woven quite skillfully together, what seemed to be isolated incidences reverberating later, until they all came together in one explosive tangle. (Does that work?) There was also a nice parallelism with Caine’s childhood and Anthony’s, including the nearly-identical scenes on the stoops. The guy who will eventually be Anthony’s father teaches Caine how to be a thug; years later he finds himself in the same situation in the opposite role, with a kid at his feet. I don’t know what to make of the fact that he didn’t speak at all, and waited for Ronnie, Anthony’s mom, to come out and rescue him. It is a bit puzzling—though moments in the film were clearly telegraphed from the get-go (I’m at home saying, “Someone’s gonna die right about now, I don’t know who, but…â€), other moments were more careful and ambiguous. The character of Ronnie ( Jada Pinkett later Smith) was the biggest puzzle, for me. In fact, she seemed to exist in a different movie altogether. She complained that Caine had become hardened, but how was she living in this environment without being hardened herself? How was she not filled with the rage that was fueling everybody else? “Do cops hate us?†her kid asks her and she says, “no, of course not, it was a misunderstanding.†That’s an extremely generous view to take of things—where is she drawing that strength from? Caine’s grandparents are explicitly drawing their optimism from their religious faith; Ronnie didn’t seem to have devoted herself to anything in that way. Maybe we were supposed to understand that she had devoted her energy to Caine himself, who was a pretty questionable idol, seeing as he became more and more of an ass throughout the film. Was it for his benefit that she invited all those thug guys to her house for her going-away party? She couldn’t be friends with them if all she does is hassle them about their lifestyles and what they’re smoking and the kind of role models they are for her son. Just don’t invite them, Ronnie. Spike Lee, and Michael Jordan wannabes, after the jump.
Erin Wolvertonerin.wolverton@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/cerealAnd so it ends...http://blog.case.edu/cereal/2009/08/05/and_so_it_ends2009-08-06T03:29:00Z2009-08-06T03:42:31Z
It's over! The Summer Movie Watch has been completed! The celebration was marked by cake. (Yes, it was store-bought.) Cake.JPG Here's the moment of triumph: the end credits on the last movie of the day, and the last movie of the list, which was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest . Squint really hard and you'll see Jack Nicholson's name in there. Me with credits.JPG I guess tomorrow I go back to books? Who knows? I'm not yet used to my freedom.
Erin Wolvertonerin.wolverton@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/cerealEpic Wednesday: Here Comes the Counterculturehttp://blog.case.edu/cereal/2009/08/04/epic_wednesday_here_comes_the_counterculture2009-08-05T02:04:16Z2009-08-05T02:14:31Z
Tomorrow's Epic Wednesday viewing looks at hippies, sleazebags and antiheroes: 9am: Easy Rider 11am: Midnight Cowboy 1pm: Taxi Driver 4pm: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest And that's the end of the road! I'm looking forward to getting the privilege of movie choice back (returning to the Netflix queue already in progress) but I couldn't be happier to have finally seen for myself all these old classics that I've been hearing about my whole life. I recommend the experience to anyone.
Erin Wolvertonerin.wolverton@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/cerealEntertainment Weekly's 100 New Classics: Summed Uphttp://blog.case.edu/cereal/2009/08/03/entertainment_weeklys_100_new_classics_summed_up2009-08-03T22:02:52Z2009-08-04T04:04:11Z
EW new classics.jpg I’m coming closer and closer to finishing up the AFI lists—with the most minimal effort it will happen this week—but before that happens I thought I would sum up the EW list with my two favorite things, opinions and statistics. Here’s how I felt about the list: Least enjoyed: Blue Velvet , Drugstore Cowboy , Evil Dead 2 , Fatal Attraction , Natural Born Killers Most enjoyed: A Room with a View , Brokeback Mountain , Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon , Ed Wood , Glory , Hannah and Her Sisters , In the Mood for Love , Schindler’s List , The Incredibles , The Lives of Others Most enjoyed (pre-list favorites): Back to the Future , Clueless , Donnie Brasco , Edward Scissorhands , Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , Fargo , Ghostbusters , L.A. Confidential , Lost in Translation , Memento , Men in Black , Moulin Rouge , Office Space , Rushmore , The 40-Year-Old Virgin , The Naked Gun , The Silence of the Lambs , The Truman Show , Thelma and Louise , Witness Additionally, I’ve been compiling a list of Notable Omissions--movies which were released between ’83 and ’07, and thus eligible for the list, but which are unaccountably absent. The list will appear in a future entry (or, if it keeps expanding, in two of them). Here’s some stats that interested me: The breakdown of the list by decade is 30 films from the 1980s, 45 from the 1990s and 25 from the 2000s. Even so, the majority of the films I watched were from the 1980s, which is easily enough explained: while my movie coverage has been adequate in the ‘90s and ‘00s, I’m still playing catch-up to movies that came out when I was a child. The directors whose films I watched the most of were Steven Spielberg, Ang Lee, Alfonso Cuaron, Sam Raimi and James Cameron, at 2 films each. Cameron actually had 3 films on the list, but I had already seen Titanic (January 1997, the afternoon after I took my SATs, in case anyone cares). Other twice-appearing directors were Tim Burton, Rob Reiner, and Paul Thomas Anderson--each of whom had one movie I had seen previously and one movie which I watched this summer for the list--and Martin Scorsese, Peter Weir, Ridley Scott and the Coen brothers, each of whom had two films I had already seen. One benefit of the EW list which I have mentioned previously is that its horizons extended beyond American-made movies. Another feature of the list, which I didn’t notice until I began compiling these stats yesterday, is that the EW list includes female directors--only five of them, but that still trounces either AFI list at zero and zero, respectively. Three of the female-helmed movies were massive hits: Shrek (co-directed by Vicky Jenson and Andrew Adamson), Clueless ( Amy Heckerling) and Big ( Penny Marshall). I had seen all of those movies, multiple times on multiple occasions. The other two were critical darlings, and represent the only two Oscar nominations for Best Director that have ever happened to women. Ever. [ Edited to add: I have since checked IMDb and realized that I misread Jane Campion's biography. One other woman received a Best Director Oscar nomination, Lina Wertmuller in 1975. My indignance is, I think, still warranted.] Those movies are The Piano ( Jane Campion, in 1994—this was a list movie) and Lost in Translation ( Sofia Coppola, in 2004, already seen). Though neither woman won the directing award, both took home the same consolation prize: Best Original Screenplay. At this rate, another woman should be due to lose Best Director in another five years. That’s not a fault of the list, of course, but of Hollywood standards in general. One final observation: the Entertainment Weekly list feels, in general, darker and more gothic than the AFI lists. It seems densely populated with drug movies, mob movies, serial killer movies, sci-fi creature-on-the-loose movies. I don’t think this is necessarily because those darker genres are being made more of today. Look again at my Ed Wood entry and all those movies Bela Lugosi made. The difference is that genre movies are becoming increasingly more respected; probably Francis Ford Coppola started things off by making operatic mob movies ( popular since the 1930s) which so effectively utilized the concept of the American dream that the Corleones became a part of our cultural fabric. These days, any serious director can make a critically-acclaimed crime movie (see last summer’s The Dark Knight , or, from two summers ago, Zodiac ). On the flip side, so-called “feelgood†movies are losing respect. Too many brainless romantic comedies which force two patently unlikeable characters to kiss in the rain and get married as the end credits roll, too many of those disposable kids’ movies where the kid discovers his dog can fly and that helps him stand up against a bully, or whatever. Basically, it’s hard to scrounge up the sincerity that elevates a movie like It’s a Wonderful Life above its Hallmark-y premise, and they just don’t do it that much anymore.
Erin Wolvertonerin.wolverton@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/cerealMovie Reviews: Hollywood Satireshttp://blog.case.edu/cereal/2009/08/02/movie_reviews_hollywood_satires2009-08-02T06:47:16Z2009-08-02T07:07:28Z
ed wood.jpg Ed Wood I loved this movie, in no small part because of Johnny Depp’s performance. I don’t know who first decided that Ed’s main character trait would be unflappable optimism--whether it was the screenwriter, whether it was director Tim Burton, or whether Depp brought that to the performance himself (I wouldn’t be surprised, honestly)--but damn if it didn’t elevate a pretty standard biopic to something unusual and sparkling. Depp did the same in his Oscar-nominated ( remember?) performance in the first of the truly silly Pirates of the Caribbean movies. He said, “Pirate? Only if I can play it drunk and gay.†Just a note on Johnny Depp: this guy is such a fascinating creature, honestly. You just don’t often find a character actor with a face as perfect as his. He is quite beautiful. Jeremy and I saw Public Enemies a few weeks ago and I couldn’t get over it then, either. Martin Landau was terrific, too, of course, as Bela Lugosi—he won an Oscar, and for a comedy, which almost never happens. His one-sided rivalry with Boris Karloff made me feel somewhat uncomfortable watching Frankenstein the next day (like I maybe should have thrown Lugosi’s Dracula into the mix, too, just to be fair). Incidentally, Lugosi has the most insanely entertaining IMDB page ever. Just read the titles of some of the movies he graced with his presence! ( Ghosts on the Loose, The Ape Man, Night Monster, The Corpse Vanishes, Black Dragons, The Wolf Man, Spooks Run Wild, The Black Cat, Invisible Ghost, The Devil Bat, Black Friday, The Dark Eyes of London, The Phantom Creeps ETC.) Anyway, the movie has plenty to recommend it besides Depp and Landau. It shines a light on the motley crew of actors and producers and Baptist financiers who helped Wood to realize his cracked visions and shape them for the big screen; it does it in that special Burtonian way where viewers feel the need to align ourselves with the outsiders, cheer them on. It’s shot gorgeously in black and white and it even piqued my interest in seeing some of Wood’s notorious flops; so much so that, in a few weeks, when a theater in the area plays a Rifftrax version of Plan 9 From Outer Space, I’ll be there. More satires from Preston Sturges and Robert Altman after the jump.
Erin Wolvertonerin.wolverton@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/cerealMovie Reviews: Drug Addicts and Their Inspiring Stories editionhttp://blog.case.edu/cereal/2009/08/02/movie_reviews_drug_addicts_and_their_inspiring_stories_edition2009-08-02T05:50:41Z2009-08-02T06:09:55Z
sid and nancy.jpg Sid and Nancy The story of Sid Vicious, chronically unstable bassist for the Sex Pistols, and Nancy, his girlfriend and/or wife (the movie was contradictory about whether they were actually married). Nancy introduces Sid to hard drugs (if the movie can be believed) and they both gradually implode until Sid accidentally-on purpose kills Nancy. It’s all a disturbing, unbelievable-but-true story. Of course, as the page I linked above will attest, no one knows what really happened, including Sid himself, who was too incapacitated to remember (or too guilty to admit). The movie has to make a choice about the events leading up to Nancy’s death, and it actually presents, I think, a plausible one. The movie represents Nancy as becoming increasingly suicidal as Sid’s career flounders, their money runs out, and their lives become unmanageable. She asks Sid on several occasions to kill her; on one fateful night, barely in control of his own faculties, he stabs her once, in the stomach. The situation rid of all tension, both of them relieved, they fall asleep on the bed together. And then she bleeds to death, because they are both too out of their minds to realize that a stab wound needs to be attended to. Basically, the death reinforces the idea that Sid and Nancy’s relationship was violent but committed, that their love for each other destroyed them in a way that’s sort of ironically touching. They are portrayed as being kind of a nicely-matched pair, honestly. There’s one scene where they’re holed up in his mom’s house and they’re talking about cartoons or something, the cartoons they watched when they were children, and they are flipping out laughing, and seem utterly in sync. In fact, I wish a few more movie romances would show a scene where the characters are joking and bantering, chattering about nothing, and not in that stupid, fake When Harry Met Sally way, in the way that couples actually do it. Gary Oldman gives an incredible performance as Sid, the music is great, the London and New York locations are very cool. I liked it, but it should go without saying that those with weak stomachs or no appreciation for irony need not apply. Maybe I sugar-coated it in my own mind, because I will admit to flashing constantly back to the episode of The Simpsons which spoofs this movie, where Lisa plays Nancy to Nelson’s Sid and they derail his career with their addiction to candy. drugstore-cowboy-19881.jpg Drugstore Cowboy First of all, this is officially the most drug-less drug movie I have ever seen. The movie’s about a quartet of drug addicts who engage in highly choreographed heists of pharmacies and drugstores and hospitals. They are the Ocean’s 11 of junkies. What I want to know is, why are they so much more interested in robbing drugstores and pharmacies and hospitals than they are in taking the drugs? They get a huge haul and they can’t stop talking about their next theft long enough to actually smoke or inject (or whatever) what they’ve got. Compared to Sid and Nancy--compared to certain characters from behind-the-scenes-of-the-meth-industry opus Breaking Bad --God, it seemed like these characters were never actually stoned. And then when Matt Dillon decides to go clean, all we see is a lot of shots of him looking out the damn window! I didn’t realize narcotics withdrawal was so pensive, so tedious. The guy got a job operating a drill press, for crying out loud. Pretty steady hand for a recovering junkie. The movie became quite philosophical at that point, too, in the most navel-gazing, junior high way possible. This life, this life; it’s all so meaningless. Life as a law-abiding citizen is such a soul-crushing bore and drugs are the only way to experience love or passion; what a painful choice. Dumb.
Erin Wolvertonerin.wolverton@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/cerealThe Champagne is on Icehttp://blog.case.edu/cereal/2009/07/26/the_champagne_is_on_ice2009-07-26T20:14:14Z2009-07-27T03:40:49Z
Last night, Jeremy and I watched Unforgiven , a Clint Eastwood-directed, Oscar-winning flick about amorality in the Old West. This movie, from 1992, is one of just a handful of films that landed on all three of the top 100 lists that I’ve been working through this summer. The big news is that it also represented the last of one of those lists for me. As of last night, the Entertainment Weekly list has been completely exhausted! fireworks2.jpg So, the champagne is on ice, so to speak, but it’s not ready to drink yet. One list is down, but 17 movies remain. Still, with Natural Born Killers and Drugstore Cowboy out of the way, I feel safe in assuming that the worst is behind me. I have a viewing schedule all set, which, including my two remaining Epic Wednesdays, will finish me on all lists completely by Wednesday, August 5.
Erin Wolvertonerin.wolverton@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/cerealEpic Wednesday: Ghetto Lifehttp://blog.case.edu/cereal/2009/07/22/epic_wednesday_ghetto_life2009-07-22T14:21:44Z2009-07-22T14:32:38Z
Today's viewing schedule: 9:30 Menace II Society 12:00 Do the Right Thing 3:00 Hoop Dreams I have six movies left on the EW list, these three and three others. All six are on my shelves right now, and so I could conceivably finish the EW list in as much time as it takes me to watch those movies. Unfortunately, two of the other three that remain are Natural Born Killers and Drugstore Cowboy , which both look terrible. The last is Unforgiven , which I would quite like to watch, but which I'm saving to for Friday night to watch with Jeremy.
Erin Wolvertonerin.wolverton@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/cerealEpic Thursday?http://blog.case.edu/cereal/2009/07/16/epic_thursday2009-07-16T20:37:34Z2009-07-16T21:23:15Z
I had to shift my epic day this week; yesterday I was out of town. Today's schedule: 10:00am - Sophie's Choice 2:00pm - Schindler's List It's the Depression Special! All Holocaust, all the time. For anyone who, like me, is obsessed with my list statistics, the viewing of Schindler's List will finish me on the top ten films of both AFI lists. I have quite nearly finished the top twenties as well; just One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ( AFI 1998) and 2001: A Space Odyssey ( AFI 2007) will do it. Schindler is on EW's list, too, being less than 25 years old. (Such a serious movie, and it's just a teenager! That's so cute!) It doesn't fall within the top twenty at all, but at number 21, below such masterpieces as The Matrix and Casino Royale . When I mark it off, I will have just one film left in EW's top twenty-five, Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing . I'll watch Lee's film during next week's regularly scheduled Epic Wednesday. It'll be joined by other portraits of ghetto life Menace II Society and Hoop Dreams .
Erin Wolvertonerin.wolverton@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/cerealReviews: Musicalshttp://blog.case.edu/cereal/2009/07/12/reviews_musicals2009-07-12T06:17:01Z2009-07-12T06:35:30Z
sound_of_music.jpg The Sound of Music TOO LONG. Too long. Look, I think Julie Andrews is legitimately wonderful. I watched Mary Poppins about a thousand times as a kid. I may have even sat through one of the Princess Diaries movies just to see how a class act maintains her dignity throughout the Disney cheese. (The answer to that one seems to be, by having a British accent and by looking approximately twenty years younger than she actually is.) This movie was too long, though, for the amount of actual plot that it had. The problem is (bear with me, I know how this sounds) they just kept breaking into these pointless, story-stalling songs. I remember at least two songs which seemed to be primarily about birds that went “Cu-ckooo, cu-ckoooo.†Giving up three hours of your afternoon, being forced to watch a bunch of perky children singing about cuckoo birds just begs the question…what’s the point? (It might also have been just one song, but sung twice.) OK, I know what the point is. They’re juxtaposing the innocence of the children with the evil of the Nazis. I get it. I just find it really boring—and I feel better admitting that since I read the Wikipedia entry of the movie, which reveals that legendary film critic Pauline Kael panned the movie so bad she was ultimately fired from the magazine that was employing her at the time. Pauline Kael rocks! Click ahead for Jimmy Cagney, Fred and Ginger, and more musical bashing!
Erin Wolvertonerin.wolverton@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/cerealReviews: Sweeping Romances in Remote Localeshttp://blog.case.edu/cereal/2009/07/12/reviews_sweeping_romances_in_remote_locales2009-07-12T05:40:01Z2009-07-12T05:58:32Z
out of africa.jpg Out of Africa I read this book about two years ago; I found it a bit of a slow-go at first and then devoured the second half. The author/narrator, Isak Dinesen (a nom de plume for Karen Blixen) has a bit of that intellectual reserve (comparable, I think, to Joan Didion’s in The Year of Magical Thinking) and rather than be drawn into the story, I had to meet her in the middle; it ended up being worth it, in the end. The only thing I knew about the movie version—other than that it starred the divine Meryl Streep and the also quite divine Robert Redford, and that it was on the list—was that back in 2000 I was in a women’s literature class and we read a short story by Dinesen. My professor (an awesome lady who later oversaw my senior thesis) recommended Out of Africa as a great read and then said, with a roll of the eyes, “Not like that horrible movie version.†Now having seen it, I can answer as to what’s horrible about it. The answer is, objectively, nothing. It was beautifully acted (not that there would’ve been any doubt about that), the scenery was breathtaking (even on a grainy VHS copy). The love story sweeps one up, as love stories attempt to do. Here’s the problem: Out of Africa, the book, is not a love story at all. In fact, the character that Robert Redford plays is barely in it. He’s mentioned a few times, and his (SPOILER!) death is recounted, emotionally, by Blixen, as one tells the story of the death of a friend. The only reason the characters get together in the movie is because the real-life people were rumored to have had an affair (because of course Karen Blixen was married to someone else). More on Out of Africa, and later, wolves are danced with.
Erin Wolvertonerin.wolverton@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/cerealEpic Wednesday: Films of David Leanhttp://blog.case.edu/cereal/2009/07/08/epic_wednesday_films_of_david_lean2009-07-08T17:46:43Z2009-08-05T14:34:05Z
lawrence-of-arabiaposter.jpg I've been looking forward to this Epic Wednesday--today I watch two films from master director Sir David Lean, Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago . Lean was known for sweeping epics full of beautiful camerawork. I'm halfway through Lawrence now, and even on my modest TV the desert seems to stretch a hundred visible miles in each direction. Seeing so much empty space involves the viewer in Lawrence's journey, makes us feel as though we too must take each step. Here's an article on the work of David Lean that perhaps does his genius a bit more justice than I can. IMDB reminds me that Lean also directed one of the best list movies I have watched so far, The Bridge on the River Kwai --and amazing movie about prisoners of war struggling to maintain their dignity in the enemy camp. Yet I think my favorite Lean film might still be Brief Encounter , one of the most beautiful thwarted romances ever. If I have any stamina left after today's two films, both of them 3 hours and change, then I will put on Brief Encounter, which doesn't appear on any of my lists but is a masterpiece regardless. Join me next week for Epic Wednesday: Depression Special: Schindler's List and Sophie's Choice . By the way, if anyone is interested in my summer movie watch statistics, here are today's calculations: After today's two films, I will have a total of 38 films left to watch. That's 42% of the total films I needed to watch; I passed the halfway point last Wednesday amidst the westerns. Fourteen movies will finish the EW list; twenty-seven will finish both the AFI lists. (Note: There are three films which appear on both the EW and AFI lists which are being counted on both sides.) My plan right now is to exhaust the EW list first and end on the AFI list--I want the last movie to be a fantastic one.
Erin Wolvertonerin.wolverton@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/cerealMy Epic Journeyhttp://blog.case.edu/cereal/2009/07/05/my_epic_journey2009-07-05T05:31:50Z2009-07-05T05:49:17Z
The other day I wrote about the difficulties I’ve encountered trying to obtain Lawrence of Arabia. By some miracle, I got my hands on a copy yesterday, checked out of the Cleveland Heights-University Heights library system. Another problem had already taken its place: the Lord of the Rings problem. Jeremy and I have been planning an Epic Sunday in which we watch all three Lord of the Rings movies back to back. (In case you’re curious, the first LOTR movie appears on the AFI redux list from 2007; the complete trilogy appears on the EW list--in one slot, cheat much EW?) Unlike most nerds of his caliber, Jeremy does not have the LOTR movies on DVD. We've been trying not to pay for any of our rentals if possible (libraries are free, and my Netflix account is a standard expenditure) so I set about trying to obtain the movies that make up the trilogy. In the following story, I will identify the three films as LOTR1, 2 and 3 respectively. Earlier in the week, in preparation for Epic Sunday, I checked Case’s library. LOTR1 and LOTR2 are in the system, but not LOTR3. No problem; I’ll get #3 via Netflix. I put what I think is the right movie in my queue. It'll be here in time for the weekend. I go to Case’s library Tuesday of this week and discover that, while LOTR2 is on the shelves, LOTR1 is “missing.†Code for “someone took it out and then they disappeared off the face of the earth,†usually. Jeremy says no problem, we will download LOTR1 from one of the many nefarious web outlets that he knows about. We check; only the extended edition is available for download. I would prefer not to add 30 minutes of probably unnecessary extra scenes to a 9 hour+ movie viewing. We will return to that only if necessary. Friday, we get the Netflix disc in the mail. I open it and discover that it is LOTR2, not 3. Let’s recap: two days to go, and I have two copies of LOTR2, and zero copies of the other two movies. The mix-up is my fault; I got confused between my queue and Jeremy’s (both of which are filled with my movies right now, incidentally). I know I’ve already checked the Cleveland Heights library system; on Friday, I try Cuyahoga County. The closest branch, South Euclid-Lyndhurst, has LOTR3 in DVD and LOTR1, in video only. Good enough; I still have a working VCR. I go to that branch and find LOTR3 easily enough; the video wall is a bit of a mess and I’m unable to find LOTR1. Anybody I ask for help just tells me to request it from another library. Easy enough; wish I’d thought of that four days earlier when it would have mattered. I go back to Cleveland Heights library because a book I wanted (unrelated to this story; but also a book I’ve been attempting to track down for weeks which was “missing†from two different libraries, story of my life). I wander into the audiovisual section just to see. What do I find? Lawrence of Arabia! Also, LOTR2, because apparently that’s the wallflower of the trilogy--the one who never has a date on Saturday night and is thus always available. LOTR1, needless to say, is currently checked out. I go home and check the online catalogs again. I’ve only been looking at libraries I know; is it possible I can find it at a library that’s not familiar? I checked Clevenet—a consortium of a huge number of libraries in the Greater Cleveland area. I filed away the names of a few branches that were relatively close to me. Then I searched on the first movie again, and lo and behold, the DVD of LOTR1 was available at the Rice branch of the Cleveland Public library, less than 4 miles away. The only drawback? They don’t deliver, because at this point I am so done with driving to and searching around libraries. I head out anyway. The library is easy enough to find, but I sail right past it in my car because the parking lot is closed due to construction. No problem; I U-turn around a fast food parking lot and park in the street. I wander around the library for a few minutes, find the DVD section, and scan over the L's. Nothing. I try the F's, in case it's filed under the subtitle, "Fellowship of the Ring." It's not. Increasingly desperate, I begin asking strangers standing nearby who have DVD cases in their hands if they have Lord of the Rings. I'm too frantic to even be embarrassed. And then, there it is. Its alphabetic identifier sticker missing, filed amongst the K's. Somewhat breathlessly, I check out the disc and bring it home. And so, tomorrow is Epic Sunday: Lord of the Rings edition. Jeremy is excited, I am dubious. But that's tomorrow; today is the remainder of the 4th of July. In honor of our nation's birthday, here's a clip of Homer Simpson buying fireworks. Enjoy.
Erin Wolvertonerin.wolverton@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/cerealReviews: Foreign filmshttp://blog.case.edu/cereal/2009/07/03/reviews_foreign_films2009-07-04T02:33:07Z2009-07-04T02:47:23Z
I recently ranted about the quality of the movies on the Entertainment Weekly 100 New Classics list. I will now, and not grudgingly, point out one positive attribute of the list: it has foreign films on it. The AFI lists necessarily would not—they’re explicitly counting down great American movies (though they have slipped a few films in there which are arguably British)—but it’s been a treat to experience films from other countries, not in the least because I have no prior knowledge of them. crouching tiger.jpg Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon This I knew about, of course. I was conscious and following award ceremonies back in 2001 when it was the biggest thing. "They fight crazy Asian fights and fly over trees and stuff!" was pretty much all anybody had to say about it. I knew that it was important artistically, but I had no idea that the plot would be so compelling, and that was an unexpected pleasure for me. The story was interesting from all angles--who was avenging who and who had trained who and who was the masked bandit and who’s going to defeat who--even the romantic angles of the thwarted romance between the two older characters and the potential romance between the younger ones. I don’t have a problem with movies having love stories in them, just with movies foregrounding the love story and leaving everything else in the dust. Crouching Tiger did it exactly right; the love stories were interwoven with the more action-oriented stuff, and not a minute of storytelling was wasted. I also have to mention how awesome it was that chicks fought dudes, and chicks fought chicks, all through the movie and without anyone batting an eye. Not only were the women as well-trained as the men in whatever kind of martial arts this was (never said I was an expert), not only did women meet men as equals in combat, but the fights between two women were just as important as the fights that had men in them. There was no indication that the director ever thought, “This scene with the two women fighting? The men in the audience are gonna get bored…better have them rip each other’s clothes off.†They just took it for granted that the women’s plots were as important as the men’s. That is so…not the way things usually go. And it was quite beautiful to behold. Two more great films, after the jump.
Erin Wolvertonerin.wolverton@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/cerealEpic Wednesday: Westernshttp://blog.case.edu/cereal/2009/06/30/epic_wednesday_westerns2009-07-01T03:20:35Z2009-07-01T03:23:39Z
Tomorrow was meant to be a double header of two classic films based on novels, films which decided to recreate the experience of reading the novels by taking approximately as long to watch them as it would take to read them. I.e., Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia. Unfortunately, Lawrence of Arabia is apparently an extremely hot property. It's been borrowed from both Case's library as well as Cleveland Heights'. Subbing in, then, are the following movies: High Noon Shane The Searchers The Wild Bunch Unlike war movies or mob epics, westerns actually tend to clock in at extremely short and manageable times. High Noon is an impressive 83 minutes long. Shane and The Searchers both fall just on the sweet side of two hours at 118 and 119 minutes, respectively. The Wild Bunch is slightly over two hours, but this is not a problem both because my movie stamina is at Olympic levels right now, and also because it's got William Holden in it. holden.jpg See you tomorrow, Bill!
Erin Wolvertonerin.wolverton@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/cereal