Disorderly Content

...but maybe not to a foley artist. Still, these guys find their inspiration in the sounds of silent films. Or something like that. Or not. It's all very zen, or at least really confusing...

"The Noises Rest" from lonelysandwich on Vimeo.

And if it has, can we start using "nuke the fridge" instead?

If you saw Indy IV and thought it sucked, or you haven't seen it because you've heard it sucked, you're sure to enjoy this take on the movie's... er... um... script. Far better than the real thing, and more coherent too.

I spent Memorial Day weekend in South Lake Tahoe. My original plan was to head down to the ghost town of Bodie on a little photo exhibition, but gray skies and rain forced me to rethink that idea. So instead I stayed around town. And I went to the movies for the first time in a long time. Twice, even. First to see Iron Man, and then to catch Indy IV. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Iron Man; aside from not being remotely surprised by the identity of the villain, I thought it was a superior superhero flick. Robert Downey Jr. can act, can't he? And Gwyneth Paltrow was everything a superhero's girl Friday ought to be: beautiful, devoted and even heroic when called upon to be. Highly recommended, in case there's anybody reading this who hasn't already seen it.

As for Indiana Jones, well, the best I can say is that it could have sucked a lot worse. It was derivative, it was unbelievable (and not in a good way, like the earlier films), it was predictable, it was incomprehensible (which everyone I've read blames on George Lucas, who is, one can't argue, the king of incomprehensible and pointless blather). It was fun to see Indy again, even if this time it's both the years and the miles. But I begin to appreciate the restraint of the first Indy film, and even the third.

I also appreciated why I don't go to movies more often. No, not the prices, and not the commercials, which were absent from both theaters. (There were trailers, but I like trailers.) No, it's the getting older, and having need of a bio break, and not being able to hit pause. Without getting graphic, let's just say that the credits arrived not a moment too soon. New plan: sit on the aisle in future.

Good news travels fast. We've been waiting impatiently for the option-holder on my friend Barry Eisler's books to lift the veil on their attempts to get a movie made based on Rain Fall, the first of Barry's John Rain thrillers. And now the word is out: according to an article in Variety, Gary Oldman is in negotiations to play the less than savory Holtzer for the Japanese language production. Which is great news, and not just because it gives me an excuse for that Harry Potter pun in the title. (Because Oldman played Sirius Black in the Potter films, you see. I told you it was clever.) And if the Japanese film turns out well, maybe we'll see an English language version while we're still young enough to enjoy it. One can only hope.

Or is it? A friend sends me this list of movies that Starz is running tonight.

• 3-Iron
• The Last Shot
• Wolf Creek
• Havoc

They say that every picture tells a story. So what story do these four picture titles tell?

Some guy at The Movie Blog is royally pissed about the new trailer to The Simpsons Movie, which he states (accurately) is not a trailer. But so what? Even a minute and half from the Simpsons braintrust is to be appreciated. Heck, I'd even pay to see the movie that starts the trailer.

Another long pause between entries. This time I have an excuse, as I'm home just briefly between my last trip (Orange County, Los Angeles and Chicago) and my next (New York and Fort Lauderdale). But this is too... well... good isn't quite the word. Interesting? Unusual?

Anyway, in the spirit of the family comedy version of The Shining and the teen comedy version of The Ten Commandments, I offer Harry Potter recast as Pride & Prejudice.

Personally, I'd never have thought of Ron as the Darcy type. Maybe if we reversed the roles. Ron as Lizzy and Hermione as Darcy? Could work.

I caught Cars over the weekend, in between stretches of my own automotive adventure. I enjoyed the movie, although I had my doubts in the early going. Willful and stupid behavior is understandable in a child like Nemo, but when it's a supposedly adult character like Cars' lead it's a lot harder to tolerate. I spent the first half hour repeating to myself "What a brainless schmuck!" under my breath, which isn't a sensation I enjoy. Fortunately he and the movie settled down.

What surprised me was the love story part of the story. No, not the romantic relationship between Lightning and Sally; I found myself cringing over automotive PDAs, although they were thankfully few. (I also had trouble accepting Bonnie Hunt as a Porsche, but that's beside the point.) No, it was the characters' and the moviemakers' affection for Route 66 that held my attention. I too have that particular bug, and have driven what's left of the Mother Road in California and Arizona. Willingly.

There's not a little bit of irony in my feelings about Route 66 and the pre-Interstate approach to road travel. My own childhood experiences traveling down the East Coast to visit family in Charleston and Savannah were hardly pleasurable, although they were no better after the Interstate made them faster and more predictable. In my childish view, they would have sucked no matter how we got there. But now that I'm an adult (heck, I have the AARP card to prove it) and can go and stop off where I choose, I can see the interest to be had in all those unique and tacky roadside attractions. Nationwide chains aren't an unmixed blessing.

So now I get off the Interstate when the option exists and I have the time to explore. And if no place is as cutesy and lose in time as Radiator Springs, I keep hoping. Guess I'm not the only one.

Or something like that. No, this isn't a rant about school prayer. I just needed something to title this link to another wonderful movie trailer that makes a movie something completely different than the way it started. This time it's biblical epic as teen comedy. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you:

10 Things I Hate About Commandments!

(Spotted on Boing Boing, as if you couldn't guess.)

I have an iCal reminder set up for every second Sunday to tell me that Roger Ebert has a new Answer Man column up on his website. I love movies, despite the contrary evidence that I hardly ever go to one. I think it's a metafascination; not an interest in movies individually, but in aggregate. And Answer Man rewards that interest in film as a genre, and a business, and a rich source for contemplation and humor.

But there are other rewards to my biweekly visit to Mr. Ebert's site. And today's reward is his review of Basic Instinct 2. He gives the film 1¹/₂ stars, which is surely not a positive recommendation. But it's how he gives them that's worth the price of admission:

"I cannot recommend the movie, but ... why the hell can't I? Just because it's godawful? What kind of reason is that for staying away from a movie? Godawful and boring, that would be a reason."

That's why I come back every second Sunday. Heck, a few more features and I'd make it back more often.

I just finished watching Bride & Prejudice, which translates Jane Austen to modern India, adds singing and dancing and still manages to wrap up the whole thing in 111 minutes, including credits. (The Hindi version is 11 minutes longer, and almost all of that is longer versions of the songs.) That's even less time than last year's Keira Knightley vehicle, which took 127 minutes without a single song. And it's positively evanescent compared to the BBC version's bulky 300 minutes. To say nothing of the unabridged audiobook versions, which clock in at upwards of 11 hours! Which makes me wonder where you, my gentle reader, stand on this important issue. Is less truly more? Or is more more?

I suppose it depends on the subject. Sometimes less really is better, especially in this short attention span world of ours. Which is why I'm so grateful to have discovered FiveMinute.net, which condenses a selection of modern works to more reasonable lengths. And if that's still too long, there's always Book-A-Minute, which reduces all of Ms. Austen's works to this:

Female Lead

I secretly love Male Lead. He must never know.

Male Lead

I secretly love Female Lead. She must never know.

(They find out.)

THE END

Yep, that about says it.

What if Meg Ryan weren't Meg Ryan?

I've always thought Sleepless in Seattle was both overrated and just a little bit disturbing. We're supposed to see this sweet and magical romantic comedy. But how much of that depends on our being presold on the characters based on the actors who played them? Think: if Meg Ryan were, say, Glenn Close, suddenly Sleepless in Seattle would be a stalker movie. And I guess I'm not the only one who thinks so; my friend Kevin sent me a pointer to a recut trailer that would make just about any guy sleepless. Yeah, it's a lot like the trailers I posted about back in October. But different. And funny. And creepy. And different.

One of my many rituals is to catch Roger Ebert's biweekly Answer Man column when it is posted to his website every other Sunday morning. It makes for interesting and entertaining reading. I often follow it up with some of his other columns. Today his Editor's Notes caught my eye. The column was entitled 2005's 10 Best Conservative Movies. And I was amused to see that Mr. Ebert, no more conservative than I, has a great deal of fun questioning the conservative virtues of the films on conservative commentator Don Feder's list. One has to admire the corkscrew logic involved in seeing what you want to see in the entertainments under discussion.

"...but I know what I like." Yeah, and sometimes I'm dead wrong. Like now.

My novelist friend Barry is a big fan of Quentin Tarantino. It shows in his writing, which has a way of making violence on the page seem both horrific and balletic. I'm okay with it on the page, but not so much on the screen. So although he's tried enough times, and I've indulged him, I can't share Barry's enthusiasm for Tarantino's films.

But I have watched them. I got through Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, finding much to admire but little I'd call pleasure in the experiences. Tried to watch True Romance but gave up before the half way mark. And Kill Bill sat around for months, taunting me but remaining unviewed. Until last night, when in a fit of boredom I decided to inflict a little of the ultraviolence on myself.

Okay, I was wrong. No, that's not strong enough; let me say that my ability to prejudge entertainment is fundamentally flawed. For the record, Kill Bill is an amazing piece of filmmaking, one I enjoyed more than I can say. It's cartoonish, it's strange, it's violent beyond words. And yet it hangs together brilliantly. And my fears about the blood and gore that are the hallmark of Tarantino's work were groundless. Kill Bill is so stylized, so carefully over the top that the violence seems both real and not real.

Having seen only the first volume, I know what has happened but have little idea of why it happened. Which is why I just made a stop at Tower Records. I hear good things about volume two.

I saw Pride & Prejudice on Thansgiving morning. And today I finally caught up with the latest Harry Potter film. The connection between the two is in the way they were both reviewed, by comparison to other adaptations of the same works. In the case of P&P the comparisons were to the A&E miniseries with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth. The reviewers I read or heard seemed equally divided; half preferred the longer TV version, half the new film. (Nobody mentioned the Greer Garson/Laurence Olivier version, which isn't a surprise if you ever tried to watch it.) Me, I'm torn. I like the miniseries a lot; I've watched it on DVD at least a half dozen times. I like the pace, the way they have enough time to tell a romantic story in glances and smiles and the odd gulp. But the new movie has its charms too, even if it does feel kind of rushed. For one thing, it feels more alive, as if these are real people and not just literary creations spouting clever dialogue. And the surroundings are much grittier; there's a lot more dung in the movie, and a lot more clothing that looks like it would last, and rooms that look the way a room would look when it's been lived in for a few decades. I guess in the end I have to say I like them both, but wish each could have had the benefits of the other. And I should also mention how strange it felt to be one of a very few men in a theater filled with women. Dunno why Jane Austen doesn't appeal to more men. Or maybe they just aren't willing to go public on the subject.

Now for that connection I promised. Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire is the fourth film, with the third director. I'd heard both good and less good things about Mike Newell, the director on GoF. Some people thought he had less imagination than Alfonso Cuarón, the director of Prisoner of Azkaban. Others felt like GoF worked in a way the three previous films didn't. (Interestingly, nobody had much good to say about Chris Columbus, who directed the first two films. Workmanlike was about as kind as they were willing to get.) Me, I liked GoF, and in ways I hadn't expected. Unlike the earlier films, this one is exciting, layered and filled with moments of real danger. It's more than a roller coaster ride, where you know the hero will emerge at the other end but just don't know how. There's a real feeling of fright and peril and uncertainty that was missing earlier in the series. And (and here comes another connection) there's a feeling of realism and grit to the look of the film that's new as well. The Hogwarts of the earlier installments looked like a Disneyland creation; this one has a worn and functional feel of a real school, even if it has all kinds of magic about it. I can't wait for the next volume, which is something I wouldn't have said up to this point. Book five wasn't my favorite, but given the right director, the film version may just surprise me.

I decided to take off this afternoon and catch a movie. Hadn't seen Wallace & Gromit yet, so I checked on times and headed off to my local multiplex. Got my ticket and headed over to theater #12, which is where things got a little bit strange. The overhead sign listed Get Rich or Die Tryin'. But I figured, hey, maybe they hadn't switched it yet. So I settled in with my iPod and waited for the movie to start.

Which didn't happen according to schedule. When the scheduled start came and went, I went into the hall and noticed that the sign now agreed with my ticket: this was the theater for Wallace & Gromit. So I went back in to the empty theater. And eventually saw a handful of other people come in just as the trailers started. But I was more convinced something was wrong. First, they didn't look the type for the subtle charms of stop motion animation. And second, the trailers seemed way too dark for the movie I was expecting to see. A few seconds after the credits rolled, I had it confirmed that I was in the wrong place.

So out I went to find someone in charge. Yes, they'd decided to switch theaters, I'm guessing because they didn't want to waste a digital projection system on one patron. SIC claimed they went in to tell the audience about the change. I suggested without using these words that they had done no such thing. And I was led to to the new theater, to join the presentation already in progress. Fortunately, all I missed were the trailers and a cartoon based, I believe, on characters from Madagascar. The CGI cartoon, not the island.

So all's well that ends well. I enjoyed seeing W&G on a big (or at least big-ish) screen, although it was weird being alone in the theater. And I think the people in charge of the theater are incompetent boobs, but that's hardly a revelation either. So what shall I see next? Keira Knightly doing Jane Austen? Zathura looks like mindless fun. Or should I wait 'til Walk The Line and Harry Potter hit theaters?

Just got back from seeing Capote with my local Meetup group. It's an amazing film, with breathtaking performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the title role and Catherine Keener as Harper Lee. The film tells how Capote came to write In Cold Blood, beginning with the Kansas murder that caught his attention and ending with the execution of the killers. In many ways this film follows the structure of In Cold Blood. At least the film version; I will plead ignorance of Capote's book. I can't imagine how you can appreciate this film fully without having seen the earlier one, although my companions seem to have done just fine.

I'm old enough to remember Truman Capote on the talk show circuit in the 70s. And I think Hoffman got him to a T; not just the mannerisms and the voice, but the shallowness and the insufferable self-importance. By the time I saw him, Capote was famous mostly for being famous; the writing that got him notice was long in the past and never to be repeated. The film takes the point of view that this book was both Capote's great success and his undoing; by getting so close to the killers, by manipulating them to reveal what he needed to know, he became something even he couldn't ignore. As I remarked at the end of the movie, at least vultures wait for their prey to die before they begin feeding. Capote couldn't, and didn't. And maybe that's what broke him, the realization that he wasn't as distanced and superior as he'd always believed. To create a great work he had to do great evil. And the fact that he was doing it to those who had done much greater evil didn't keep him from suffering.

This is way too weird, because it works so well. According to The Tattered Coat, a video post-production firm had a competition to edit movie trailers to make them look nothing like the originals. Check out their version of The Shining, where it's a cheerful tale that isn't full of maniacal axe murders. Amazing what a little peppy music can do.

(With apologies to George Carlin for appropriating and adapting his joke)

Over at The Movie Blog is a most entertaining rant about why Corn Nuts is not an appropriate snack for the shared moviegoing experience. Or even for a solo experience, if you care to actually hear the dialogue. Then again, there's always the subtitle option at home. But I digress.

Not great as in "this is a great movie"; great as in "let's trash this piece of dren and in the process demonstrate the kind of wit and creativity nowhere to be found in the thing being reviewed". Full credit goes to Dori Smith at Backup Brain, who quotes from some of the reviews of Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, the movie we can all bring up (poor choice of words I admit) the next time the studios complain about this year's disastrous box office. But as Ms. Smith points out, the best review must surely belong to Roger Ebert, who manages not only to trash the flick (which surely doesn't even deserve to be made into guitar picks), but also Rob Schneider's attempt to silence a critic who dared question his film's quality well in advance of its being made. If you read only one Deuce Bigalow review, go to Mr. Ebert's site and read this one.

Over at The Movie Blog there's a posting about an editor-at-large at Esquire who decided to spend a year following all the rules of the Old and New Testaments. (Or, for my mishpocha, the Torah and that other thing that goyim believe in.) What's entertaining about it is that he's decided to follow the rules literally: where the Ten Commandments says not to covet thy neighbor's ass, it doesn't say anything about anything else he might own. And how many people in this country have neighbors with asses you'd want to covet anyway?

But that's beside the point. Because this is The Movie Blog, there has to be a cinematic angle. And there is: Paramount is going to make a film of The Year of Living Biblically. Personally, I can't wait.

I just got back from seeing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I'm a huge fan of the original movie. And I've read and enjoyed both of Roald Dahl's Wonka books, although I was surprised to discover that much of what I loved about the film isn't in the source material. Gene Wilder's Wonka has heart and wit; Dahl's version is just demented. So when I read that Dahl's family wasn't happy with the film and wanted to do a proper version of the books, I wondered what the heck they were talking about. Still, I was determined not to prejudge. There've been good remakes, after all.

Things started auspiciously enough with the trailers. First the trailer for Dukes of Hazzard started up, mercifully without sound. (The audience sat quietly, perhaps wondering whether complaining was in our best interest.) The problem was fixed in time for the second trailer, for Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, followed by Ice Age 2 and the Wallace and Gromit movie. And then it was time for the main attraction.

I really, really tried to like it. But as others have said, Johnny Depp's performance is exceedingly creepy, and not in a good way. The children are appropriately annoying, Charlie's living situation excellently dire. But as Willy Wonka's backstory unfolded I kept asking myself why I should care. I want my chocolate makers to be magical, not emotionally crippled. Not that I begrudge Christopher Lee the work.

Final analysis: all the CGI money in the world can't make up for a soupçon of heart. I'm glad I saw it. But I don't think I'll bother with the DVD.

I'm a fan of Roger Ebert. Even when I disagree with him (which seems to happen more and more; either his taste is undergoing a transformation or mine is), I admire his ability to articulate a point of view; the man writes so well.

Part of my every-other-Sunday-morning ritual is to read the latest entry in Mr. Ebert's Movie Answer Man column. I enjoy the Answer Man even more than his reviews, perhaps because I often find a metadiscussion of film more interesting than any one particular movie. Anyway, today's column included a letter questioning Mr. Ebert's awarding of three stars to The Longest Yard, especially given a review that was tepid at best. And although he has often posted that "A film isn't about what it's about, but about how it's about what it's about", this particular review doesn't seem to provide enough evidence of the how to explain a high rating. But it's entertaining to read the review and then ask yourself, to paraphrase Howard Baker, "What did he think and when did he think it?" More entertaining, I suspect, than the movie in question.

Caught a 2PM performance of Episode III with some of my friends from our local Blogger Meetup. I'll admit that I wasn't expecting much; I hated Phantom Menace and disliked Send In The Clones. But as others have said, Sith is easily the best of the new trilogy and surprisingly well done. It's visually stunning and well paced. I thought Hayden Christensen did a good job of his transformation into Dark Helmet. And the guy who played the Emperor was by turns oily and vicious.

So what's not to like? Well, every damn scene between Christensen and Natalie Portman for one thing; these two have less than zero chemistry together. It's not that the dialogue between them was bad, although it was. I just didn't believe for a moment that they were into each other.

There's also a sense of deja vu about too many scenes. There are moments of homage or theft from 2001, Frankenstein and The Lord of The Rings. Heck, Padmé even has a line that was said better by Samwise Gamgee. And as dramatic as the battle on the lava world was, I couldn't help thinking that Peter Jackson did it all so much better.

I was also bugged here as in Clones by George Lucas's insistence on connecting every dot from the original movies. Like a "blink and you'll miss him" scene of Governor Tarkin, played by Peter Cushing back in 1977 and by Wayne Pygram here. There was absolutely no reason to include the character, although I'm always happy to see a Farscape alum get work. And are we really supposed to take seriously a character named Commander Cody? Or am I the only one to remember both the rock band and the television series that gave them their name?

In the end, the biggest disappointment is that there were no surprises. Science fiction writer David Brin wrote a wonderful piece a couple of years back about how Lucas could save the series by giving events a twist. He knew, as did I, that no such thing was going to happen. But he had to try. And I get to rant, much good either action will do.

I've just come from the first showing of The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy at my local theater. No spoilers follow; I'll just say that the film is both funny and sweet, human in a way that of all the Hitchhiker incarnations, only So Long And Thanks For All The Fish comes close to matching. The movie couldn't be what the radio series is. For one thing, there isn't the time. And for another, radio calls on the imagination in a way that a visual medium like film can't.

(I think the BBC series is weak precisely because it's just the radio series with pictures. And those pictures show things we're already being told about. They add nothing to the proceedings.)

But this isn't about the movie. I just wanted to call your attention to a lovely article at IGN's FilmForce site that collects reminiscences about Douglas Adams from people who knew and worked with him. Because the only downer moment of this gloriously funny and likeable film is the knowledge that Douglas wasn't here to enjoy it.

Is it September yet?

I guess I'm a fan of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. I used to have the series on record. And on CD, until I lent it to a coworker who never returned it. I saw it onstage. I played the Infocom game. I have all five books. And the BBC television series on DVD. And yet another copy on CD, complete with a CD of Douglas Adams interviews. So yeah, I guess I'm a fan.

If you're a fan too, you must know that the long delayed movie version of HHGTG opens this Friday. What you may not know is that Slashdot has a set of snappy answers from Robbie Stamp, the movie's executive producer, to questions posed by Slashdotters. Suddenly I'm feeling pretty excited about the movie.

Repeat after me: They didn't screw it up... They didn't screw it up...

No, not that dynamic duo. I speak of that other duo, they of the fabulous inventions and the cheese fixation. Aardman Animations has the trailer up for The Wallace & Gromit Movie: Curse of the Wererabbit. You can see it at Screenrant.com. And boy, does this look like fun!

Update 03/02: Even more W&G fun: Screenhead links to the BBC, which has a two minute short called Soccamatic from 2002. Something to whet the appetite while we wait for the rabbit...

The night before the Oscars is the time for the Razzies, an awards ceremony that honors the worst the movie business has to offer. But in a real shocker, Worst Actress winner Halle Berry actually showed up to receive her Razzie for Catwoman. According to Reuters, Berry thanked everyone involved with the Batman sorta-spinoff for taking her from the top of her profession to the bottom. Which, you have to admit, makes her both witty and honest. God, what would happen if that kind of thing caught on?