Vincent Cassel

Saw Black Swan on New Year's Eve, 2010.  My immediate reaction?

Best insane, self-injury, lesbian, ballet movie ever!

Black Swan Trailer



Yeah, a pretty intense movie.  One that I'll have to think about a bit.  But more important than all the Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis sexuality was the reminder of how big my man-crush on Vincent Cassel is.

Vincent Cassel Capoeira training scene



That dude is awesome.

Cameo

Who would make a cameo in the movie about the current stage of your life?

A While Ago, Pretty Far Away

Star Wars Episode 4 plot summary by a 3-year-old.

This could be a whole series. "_____________, as explained by a 3-year-old."

Mixed Emotions About Speed Racer

Have you seen the trailer?



Am I the only one who thinks the visual effects look bad?! I want it to be good. A lot. But I can't quite bring myself to believe it can be.

To clear the palate, here's Cake's The Distance to the classic cartoon:

Be Kind Rewind

Seymour Glass pointed out the cool trailer for Michel Gondry's new movie, Be Kind Rewind. You remember Gondry's visually stunning, time-twisting film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, don't you?

The whole premise of the movie is that a pair of guys shoot their own versions of movies to replace accidentally erased videotapes at a rental store. At least, that's what I get from the trailer. What would be awesome is if Gondry did that with the trailer. Oh wait...

Official Trailer:




Gondrified version:



Awesome!!!

What's that? You want more Gondry? You Got it!!

Levis:



HP:



Motorola:

Scary Mary

Too awesome for words.

What Plants Need

I've never seen a plant growing out of a toilet!


RyanH points out that everyone should watch Idiocracy, where Brawndo was originally featured.

First Year Out

Oh man, what a disturbing story.

Free and Uneasy: The First Year Out

Haunting presentation of a man's life during his first year after his wrongful conviction was overturned. (about 5 minutes)

Top Ten Deep Movies

"Top Ten" is my code phrase for favorites. That is, someone might ask me what my favorite movie is, and I'll counter with an offer for my top ten. Then give a list with way more than ten entries. 'Cause that's how I roll.

Top Ten Favorite "Deep" Movies
American Beauty
This used to be on my "guilty pleasures" list because of all the naked high school girls, but someone pointed out that the movie is about more than that. The plastic bag scene! The dream sequences!

Apocalypse Now
"The horror! The horror!" Vietnam movie adaptation of Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" Storytelling, characters, cinematography... This movie has it all. Watch for the guy who gets a single line in the movie: "With -extreme- prejudice."

Bob Roberts
A fake documentary featuring Tim Robbins as a right-wing, folk-singing political candidate. Not-so-stealth lefty movie that delivers it's message with a subtle, non-strident touch.

Chasing Amy
Possibly Kevin Smith's best movie. Amazing writer of dialog. And I'm a huge fan of Jason Lee, even if I never watch "My Name is Earl." And it's a Criterion edition. If I remember correctly, the director's commentary is great.

Croupier
Not quite a caper movie. Not quite a gambling movie. Amazing storytelling. And it features Clive Owen, one of my favorite actors.

Donnie Darko
RyanH assures me that the directors cut is not the one to get. Jake Gyllenhaal is terrific. Watch for "Head Over Heels," the song by Tears for Fears. And the Gary Jules version of "Mad World." Now that I think of it, the songs used in the movie are amazing, though they're not all on the soundtrack.

Fresh
"Searching for Bobbie Fischer.... In the Hood!" That the "essence in a quote" based on the trailer, but doesn't actually have anything to do with the movie. A boy involved the drug trade for two different gangs has to work his way out of a crisis using the lessons which some of his absent father taught him. Sam Jackson made a good choice to be the supporting role of the father. This is a "With An H" top 5 selection.

Fight Club
Ed Norton's character has a life crisis. Tyler Durden: Now, a question of etiquette - as I pass, do I give you the ass or the crotch?"

Fog of War
Robert McNamara was Kennedy's Secretary of Defense. It combines the lessons he learned about war with an autobiographical narrative. Topical in that his lessons were selected before the current Gulf conflict, but seem to have been un-learned.

Glengarry Glen Ross
Best use of the word "fuck." (previously)

L.A. Confidential
An amazing adaptation of an amazing book. The book spans years, while the movie spans weeks, but it's so tightly written, so well acted, so masterful. A "With-An-H" Top 5 selection

Lost in Translation
Sofia Coppola is an amazing film-maker, specializing in mood. A terrific role for Bill Murray. And Scarlett Johansson is in it.

Magnolia
How can one describe this movie? More than three plot lines. A move where Tom Cruise is a supporting actor. A movie where there are two of everything: wiz-kids, fathers dying of cancer, etc.

Memento
I don't really remember this movie.

Miller's Crossing
With-An-H Top 5 selection. Irish vs. Italian organized crime during the prohibition era. Gabriel Byrne at his best. My bro says he finally watched this movie and loved it. Suck-up. :-)

Open Your Eyes
The ending is a little sci-fi, but it's so ... moody!

Reservoir Dogs
I hated it the first time I saw it. The second time, after seeing Pulp Fiction, I loved it. Some of the best dialog in film has sprung from the mind of Tarantino.

Requiem for a Dream
Best heroin movie? Nah, best addiction movie ever!

The Royal Tenenbaums
Criterion Collection! Wes Anderson!

Seven Samurai
Criterion Collection! See it instead of The Magnificent Seven.

Silence of the Lambs
"Hello Clarice...." Best police procedural, serial killer, super-villain movie ever!

Taxi Driver
After the first time I saw it, I remember thinking, "It would take a real weirdo to love that movie." I wasn't wrong.

Trainspotting
"Choose life." Best heroin movie ever?

So what did I forget?

WGA Strike

Normally, I'm a fan of the Guys With Feelings podcast, but the November 15th 2007 episode was a bit frustrating to listen to. I guess it pushed my buttons a little. Which button? When an opinion I believe is argued badly.

Nash and his buddy Dry Times are discussing the WGA strike and Dry Times states that he doesn't like the strike tactic and kind of sides with the studio position that they'd rather pay writers a flat fee for their work. Nash is completely incapable of arguing his point effectively, re-stating his position that there is "money to be made" on content and that writers should be able to participate in the profit of a venture.

Completely ignored issues:

Writers are selling something important, not just their ideas and creativity, but the copyright to the writing.

Selling a script is not like selling a chair. If someone sells a script idea to a show that gets made, the recipient of the copyright has the ability to sell the show over and over again. Broadcast television and it's advertising revenue. Syndication revenue. Theater sales, in the case of movies. DVD revenue. On-line revenue. Ways of selling content that haven't been dreamed up yet. The original Star Trek series ran in the late 1960's. Today, I can buy the episodes on iTunes.

It isn't as simple as asking writers to accept some kind of up-front deal for their work (get paid a little more at initial sale, but not participate in on-going revenue streams). The reason is that studios have a competing agenda: controlling the up-front costs of a new venture. It doesn't make sense that every pilot episode writer should be paid as if they're writing for Seinfeld. An easy remedy is for writers to be profit participants for every revenue stream that a show generates. That way, up-front costs are controlled, but as a show becomes successful and generates more an more revenue, all the people instrumental in making it a success share in the windfall.

Residuals are better than studios just licensing the copyright of a script for specific media than only exists today and needing to negotiate payment for the rights of every new outlet for them to sell the content.

Found a funny clip from some Daily Show writers:

Lars

Saw Lars and the Real Girl on my sister's recommendation. Just mind-blowing. Lars has a delusion. His friends and neighbors go along with it in an attempt to help him.

It could have been so over-the-top, but the acting was first-rate. Total commitment. Subtle.

I still had moments which made me shake with laughter at the absurdity (the school board?!), but even that was handled with subtlety off-camera.

Had a fun exchange afterwards which went pretty late (but how can one walk away from a lively discussion?). Thought I saw John Remy drive by a few times, but it was really late, so probably not. I spent too much time leaning on one knee, so when the party broke up, I had to limp to my car. The weather has been chilly enough recently that I'm actually using the heater in my car! Noticed a couple making out (with abandon) out in the open air under the bright lights of the University Center parking lot. Brrrrrr!!!! But I'm sure they were keeping each other warm.

Briefly wondered if there was such a thing as a geo-tagged Public Displays of Affection photo blog. There's a million dollar idea, right there.

Boring Nostalgia Weeks

A swing team member was recently in a regional production of Grease, which dredged up some memories of the movie for me. In the late 1970's, my family was living in married student housing in Riverknoll apartment complex at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Not long after we moved in, the neighbors moved out, and in moved a family with two kids named Chris and Chad Boring. I never saw Grease. To this day, I haven't seen it. But I can identify when it came out by when the Boring kids lived next door to me and Chad would run around, yelling, "Tommy Moore, Tommy Moore, Tommy More!"

I always assumed there was a character in Grease named Tommy Moore.

At the other end of our townhouse building was my best friend, Rachel Weeks. I have a vivid memory of walking to the school bus stop on our first day of kindergarten, doing yoga for kids, and all kinds of other crunchy, granola activities that our 70's influenced mothers thought up. Rachel's mother made her own Playdough, for example. My first exposure to a Magic Eight Ball. Rachel singing the lyrics to Air Supply's "The One That You Love" to me. Us looking at magazines with the four members of KISS on the cover and thinking it was a sequential makeup job, not four different people, trying to figure out what order the pictures should go in. Recently we reconnected via email and now ... facebook, and she posted a picture of her with her two kids.


She wanted me to make sure I emphasized that they had green noses because of their St. Patty's day celebration, not just randomly. :-)

Our family moved away from the area in the middle of third grade and we only saw each other once after that. Yet, she's totally recognizable as the girl I remember. Well, she also looks like her mother. Yikes, we must be as old as our mothers were at the time. And her oldest is pushing the age that we were when we met...

Wilhelm Scream

Someone recently remarked that his favorite vocal exclamation was the Wilhelm scream. And now, I see this:

Dystopian Films

From John Remy's modified list of top dystopian films.

Bold: Seen
Italics: Top Picks

1. Brazil (1985)
2. Wings of Desire (1987)
3. Blade Runner (1982)
4. Children of Men (2006)
5. The Matrix (1999)
6. Minority Report (2002)
7. Delicatessen (1991)
8. Twelve Monkeys (1995)
9. Serenity (2005)
10. Pleasantville (1998)
11. Ghost in the Shell (1995)
12. Battle Royale (2000)
13. RoboCop (1987)
14. Akira (1988)
15. The City of Lost Children (1995)
16. V for Vendetta (2005)
17. Metropolis (2001)
18. Gattaca (1997)
19. Total Recall (1990)
20. Dark City (1998)
21. District 13 (2004)
22. They Live (1988)
23. Escape from New York (1981)
24. A Scanner Darkly (2006)
25. Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001)
26. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)
27. I Robot (2004)
28. Strange Days (1995)
29. Idiocracy (2006)
30. Death Race 2000 (1975)
31. Starship Troopers (1997)
32. One Point O (2004)
33. Equilibrium (2002)

Dark City is like watching The Matrix without all the cool fighting. Plus, you know a movie's in trouble when they take 5 minutes in the middle to do a plot summary (the row-boat scene). District 13 has cool parkour, but otherwise is a crappy movie. I Robot? A travesty that it was named or "inspired" by the book. Nothing like it.

I struggled to pair down my top picks. Next tier was Pleasantville and Equilibrium. Idiocracy is a hilarious commentary on modern day culture (it's got electrolytes). It's been too long since I've seen Nineteen Eighty-Four, but I do remember really liking it. And funny to see John Hurt in V For Vendetta as the chancellor, after playing the lead in Ninteen Eighty-Four.

Resident Evil: Extinction

Synopsis:
Zombies kill people.

Lessons Learned About The Zombie Future:

• You won't live very long unless you're super hot
• You'll worry about gasoline and ammo, Mad Max style, but not about water
• If you're a super-hot surviving woman, you'll have immaculate makeup and plucked eyebrows
• You shouldn't go to Vegas
  

Lessons Learned From Seeing This Movie:

• The Resident Evil franchise is best experienced on cable

Sergio Leone - Arcade Fire

Spoiler for Once Upon A Time In The West:

It Must Be Japanese

Transformers Movie Trailer

Spoilers

John Remy told me a hilarious story about seeing a guy with a "spoilers" T-Shirt. He thought it was a cool idea, started reading it, then came across a spoiler he didn't know. Not so cool anymore.

Unfortunately, the exact same thing just happened to me. I think this shirt is a bit cooler than the list of text version, but am I the last one to know that Snape kills Dumbledore? Ok, I stopped paying attention to Harry Potter, but it was a definite spoiler.

Peace Workers Suck

When watching 300, John Remy pointed out the irony of pacifist guys like us getting excited over the glorification of violence. I guess I'm all about the contradictions. In Hollywood action movies, people hardly ever have to face the physical and psychological results of their violence.

I remember watching First Blood without knowing what it was about. Though it eventually became a pretty serious action movie, at it's core it was about the alienation that returning veterans experienced in the decades following Vietnam. A better trailer would probably emphasize that, but they didn't make a better trailer than this.



The second movie? Well, the second movie wasn't so much about the alienated veteran. It was about the caricature of alienated special forces super-soldier. The trailer does a good job of capturing the tone of the movie and includes bits of the now-cliched Rambo preparation scene. You can't miss it: Rambo ties his boots. Rambo sharpens his knife. Rambo ties his makeshift sweatband. Etc. How did they manage to produce the trailer without including the "enemy soldier pauses in front of the mud wall... oh crap that's John Rambo!" scene?! That's just amazing restraint. Trailer for Rambo: First Blood Part 2



The third movie was just kind of sad. And the trailer does a wonderful job of capturing that. Interestingly, they dropped the association with the orginal "First Blood" title and went with "Rambo III."



And with all that in mind, here's one of the most graphically violent trailers that I've ever seen. It portrays peace workers as sad saps who don't understand the world. I might host a marathon viewing of all three previous movies before going out to see it. And only my guy friends would show up. And we'd have to eat a lot of meat before seeing it. And possibly lift weights. And do other man things.



When does this thing come out, anyway?

Is There An Oscar For Best Swearing?

There ought to be an award for best use of the F-bomb in a movie.

My favorite, perhaps of all time, is this scene from Glengarry Glen Ross.



I confess that I hated this movie the first time I saw it. Along with Reservoir Dogs. Hated them. And equated them in my mind.

It's the same movie, except that in one, a guy's ear gets cut off. And I don't even remember which one it was. -- John White circa 1994

I've since warmed to both.