Revival

I will be resurrecting this. In what capacity I am unsure. Possibly do a movie of the week thing. I've watched too many. By the time I finish counting down my list it will have changed. So I'm going to re-do it and post my top 200 alphabetically. Just to give you a list of flicks to watch.

AQ Redux: Elitism at the Oscars

This is one of my failed columns. It was a piece on the Academy Awards in 2008.

I was trying to satirically deconstruct the film geek's obsession with awards. For some reason, they need the validation of seeing their favourite movie gain the accolades of award shows.

Winning or losing an award should not change how one feels about a piece of art. If you don't like the film that wins best picture, so what? I used to care, I used to get outraged until I realized how idiotic it is.

I do believe the Oscars are a farce and it's a damn shame that producers get the credit at the end. Sure without the financial backing a lot of these particular films wouldn't get made but that doesn't mean films would stop. The role of a producer is to make money and play it safe. The best picture award should go collectively to the director, writer, cinematographer, etc. Make it a Stanley Cup like thing where it's on display with names added each year. I sill love the movies, but a lot of movie fans piss me off.




Elitism at the Oscars
by
Jason Wilson


Elitism and entertainment are difficult to separate.

The indie music crowd turns its nose up at anyone who started liking Modest Mouse after 'Good News for People Who Love Bad News.' Similarly, film geeks will chastise those who love Michael Bay action movies.

I fall partially in the latter group.

When Titanic won the Academy Award for best picture I wanted to vomit. All opinions aside, L.A. Confidential is the better film.

The Academy Awards are scrutinized more than any other award show. No one cares who wins a Grammy or a Golden Globe or especially a People's Choice award because what do people know?

The Oscar carries prestige to movie geeks, and we all expect our choice to be the one that takes the cake.

No such luck.

Maybe this year is different. Honestly, I would not be disappointed if any of the best picture nominees won.

Even Juno, a film I found to be quirky for the sake of being quirky with very little substance, would not disappoint due to my adoration of Jason Reitman and his rock-solid cast.

The front runner, No Country for Old Men is a technically sound, visually stunning film chock full of suspense. The Coen Brothers elected to end the film with subtlety. It was purposely vague to provoke a long term effect that would have been absent with a 'wrap up all the loose ends' ending. It also would have been untrue to the Cormac McCarthy novel.

It should win, but it could fall victim to "the Scorsese Effect."

"The Scorsese Effect" applies to a film/director/actor that is clearly deserving but is then passed over.

Martin Scorsese's history at the Awards has been mixed. He has only won the best director prize once, for 2006's The Departed.

In 1981 he lost out to Robert Redford, an actor turned director. In 1991 he should have won for Goodfellas, but again was thwarted by an actor thinking he's better than he is. Kevin Costner won for Dances With Wolves.

The difference is No Country's competition includes There Will Be Blood, an equally deserving picture from Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia, Boogie Nights).

If either film goes home empty handed, it will be a tragedy.

The situation is rife with peril as other nominees could sneak into contention at the last minute like Crash and Chicago in recent years.

The night will toil through the rhetoric of celebrity as the stars gather to celebrate their wealth and to a lesser extent, the art of cinema.

Teasers of the best picture nominees will be shown as people guess who will win while Jack Nicholson pops another valium and tries to remember where he is.

Everyone will smile as the producers of the winning film jump on stage to accept an award for something they had little or no part in creating. The biggest award of the entire ceremony goes to those who deserve it the least...such is the folly of being an artist.

Oh sure, Anderson or the Coens could have a moment in the sun a few commercial breaks earlier, but it's the producers who stand victorius at the end of the evening. It's a parable of life and the working class. The bosses celebrate the spoils of the hard work done by those beneath them.

Celebrate the writers, actors and directors...the producers don't need our applause and they don't deserve it either. They already have our money.

Reluctantly I predict the outcomes and analyze where I went wrong. I labour over the idea of who truly deserves it and who should have stayed at home.

All opinions aside, No Country for Old Men was the best movie nominated, but I'm no elitist.

The Auteurs + Criterion = Film-lover's heaven

Just thought I'd run this by ya'll. If you like movies and like them for free then this is for you. If you know me, then you know I am a movie geek/fan/guy/maniac. You would also know that I collect DVD's from the Criterion Collection - or if you didn't, you do now.

The above image is from the Criterion website from the month of January. They have formed a partnership with The Auteurs, a blog-ish/networking site for film buffs. There has been a facebook application for some time now but when Criterion joined hands with them last fall it was indeed a fantastic union.

Now, every month, The Auteurs host a film festival of sorts. They select five or six films that fit a theme and screen them for free on their website. It's live streaming but it's high quality. This month they're showing all the Criterion titles that won Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards. I watched Black Orpheus tonight and it was great.

So give it a go, just start an account at The Auteurs and you're good to go.

The others screening this month:

La Strada directed by Federico Fellini
Closely Watched Trains directed by Jiri Menzel
The Virgin Spring directed by Ingmar Bergman
Mon Oncle directed by Jacques Tati
The Shop on Main Street directed by Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos

#179: A History of Violence

A History of Violence (2005)
Directed by David Cronenberg
Screenplay by Josh Olson
Based on the graphic novel by John Wagner & Vince Locke
Starring Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris, William Hurt.

Two Cronenberg flicks in relatively quick succession, score!

A History of Violence is still probably his most mainstream effort to date even though it has many of the same quirks and deadpan performances seen in most of Cronenberg's catalogue. The kids' performances were jarring but they weren't so bad to deter my overall enjoyment of the film.

It was one of those theatrical releases that you wouldn't have expected when living in Fredericton. The theatre in Fredericton in notorious for not playing independent films of any kind. Even beyond indies, the Coen Brothers were greatly ignored until Intolerable Cruelty (wha?). Fredericton's Empire Theatres didn't get The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou? or The Man Who Wasn't There. So you can understand why I was shocked when this one came to town.

So Arlo Newton and I hit up the movies before it drifts off for the six months or so before a DVD release. I'm fine with watching a movie on DVD, but if I have the chance to see it on the big screen I will. Sure, Arlo was keen on it too but if he wasn't that wouldn't have stopped me.

Go to a movie theatre sometime and think about how many people are there all alone. There aren't many are there? I've never understood this. Back in 1997 I went to a birthday party for a friend of mine that ended up going to the movies. Kyle and his other buddies wanted to go see In and Out, otherwise known as Kevin Kline slumming it for a paycheck.

I bailed at the theatre for The Game, David Fincher's pre-Fight Club mindfuck. It was the first time I ever went to the cinema by myself and it wasn't as sad or lonely as I was expecting.

Over the years I've been looked at sideways by many people, mostly women, who find it odd that I go to the movies all by my lonesome. My reasoning is that it isn't exactly a social experience until afterwards. It doesn't work well as a date because there's no interaction except for "putting the moves" on her with the old yawn and swipe. The only differences between watching a movie at home alone and in the theatre alone are the big screen and the fact that other people can see you.

Choosing people to go to the movies with is a tricky process if you actually care about the movie you're going to see. Ask the following questions:

1) Will this person talk or constantly ask questions?
2) Will this person sit still or will he/she disrupt the theatre with antics?
3) Is this person prone to inoportune fits of laughter?
4) Does the type of movie you're planning on seeing fit into his/her realm of understanding or interest?

Believe me, these are important questions. In the end, it's the safest bet to go alone if you really want to absorb the film.

With Arlo, I knew this wasn't a problem. The guy has been my closest friend since the eighth grade and so we know each other better than most people. A couple other people may have gone with us, but Arlo and I really connected with this film.

On the walk out of the theatre we started discussing the idea of violence and whether violent tendencies can be inherited genetically or if we're more a product of the environment surrounding us. Nature versus nurture type of discussion. Also, as is plain from the trailer, Tom (Viggo) has tried to escape his past. We talked about how this could be representative of him trying to break away from what he naturally is, trying to force him to be someone else, someone better.

This brings me to the most important question when finding someone to join you on your theatrical experience: will he/she be willing to actually discuss the film or will he/she focus on only the superficialities instead of diving deeper into the subject matter?

This isn't exactly a deal-breaker and it shouldn't be. But if you find someone willing to go further with the film, it makes the experience that much better. Watching a film is so much more than mindless entertainment, or at least it can be. It's the aftermath that makes watching a movie with others worth it, it's a sense of community.

Of course if you're going to see a Michael Bay movie, all bets are off. Go with the circus, it's going to be two hours of ADHD explosions anyway and there won't be much to talk about afterward. Basically, Bay is the fast food equivalent of filmmakers. While it may be somewhat gratifying at first, by the end you realize you've made a huge mistake.

Conversely, filmmakers like Cronenberg might not be fine dining, but it certainly is an acquired taste. In any case you're likely going to get more out of it than your dirt-variety fast food assembly line. But if you're diet consists completely of McDonald's, that might be all you want and anything else is strange and terrifying. For many reasons this is depressing.

If only Horatio had been part of our lives at that point. He has a man-crush on Viggo Mortensen that dwarfs any man-crush that any heterosexual man I've ever met has ever had.

#199: The 40-year Old Virgin

I would like to preface this by saying what I meant to say before the first entry. This list is my top 200 as of Sept. 2, 2008. Any films I see after that date that would likely get a slot will not count. Also I will go one by one, some days submitting more, and sometimes I'll likely go a week or so without posting at all. Some posts will likely be random musings about things other than movies. And without further ado, here's #199.





The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005)
Directed by Judd Apatow
Written by Judd Apatow & Steve Carell
Starring Steve Carell, Catherine Keener, Romany Malco, Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen.


One good comedy deserves another.

The 40 Year Old Virgin hit like wildfire a few years ago. It was fresh, well written and endearing. As vulgar as some of the lines were, every bit of dialogue came off as authentic and real. None of this film was contrived and it was all set in a rather realistic world.

Too many comedies operate in absurdity. Apatow and Carell wrote a script about a guy who could be real, and it's an age old archetype: the nice guy finishing last.

What makes the movie stronger is the cast of characters around Andy (Carell). Without Cal, Jay and David it wouldn't be much of a movie. Simple lines of dialogue like when David walks up to his boss and says "If I have to hear "Yamo Be There" one more time, I'm going to "Yamo" burn this place to the ground" are great because you can relate.

When I worked at Chapters, they played this damn Michael Buble record over and over again for months on end. It was driving me insane. And every time I heard the record I thought of that scene and that line.

I was talking with my friend Isaac the other day about what you remember from film. From truly great cinema you tend to remember every aspect of what you watched even long down the road. It just stays with you.

Well I haven't watched the 40 Year Old Virgin in over a year and so many lines come to mind. So many scenes. It's one of those hilarious movies that is so easily quotable, but no one seemed to over-quote it like people did with Napoleon Dynamite and Borat. Maybe it's because it's better and the jokes aren't one note.

At least those are the reasons why I can still enjoy it after multiple views. I certainly never want to see Napoleon Dynamite again, but I wouldn't refuse to watch The 40 Year Old Virgin many times over.

TOP 200 Movies Countdown: #200 - Tropic Thunder

Tropic Thunder (2008)
Directed by Ben Stiller
Written by Ben Stiller and Justin Theroux
Starring Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Jay Baruchel, Nick Nolte, Steve Coogan and Tom Cruise.

Yes, it's recent.

It's been out only a couple weeks and it has made my top 200 list. It's that funny.

It's a spoof that doesn't rely on constant references to pop culture. It doesn't take itself seriously but it isn't a lazily written or conceived comedy. Stiller and Theroux wrote a sharp script satirizing celebrity neuroses and lampoons our obsession with celebrity culture.

Stiller's schtick has been hit and miss for years. He has good (There's Something About Mary, Zoolander), the great (The Royal Tenenbaums) and the rest (A Night at the Museum). This is his best film since Tenenbaums, no question. But he isn't even the brightest light.

Robert Downey Jr. as I'm sure everyone knows by now, steals the show. His depiction of Kirk Lazarus, an Australian actor who goes through a medical procedure to portray a black sergeant in a Viet Nam movie is so over the top but never seems out of place.

Jack Black is at his manic best. He's on edge and vulgar, not family friendly. This is just the way he should be. I thought he had lost his comic senses from Tenacious D, but apparently not.

Tropic Thunder is the biggest surprise of the year so far. I think everyone knew The Dark Knight would be pretty damn special, but this came out of nowhere. It's a good mindless comedy - remember that when you see activists getting up in arms over the liberal use of the word 'retard'. It's one scene, lasts a minute and is over. Go watch House Bunny and Pineapple Express, it's used in both of those movies at least once and in derogatory fashion at a different character, but neither of those movies are labeled as intolerant.

Is there a quota that has to be filled? How many times can retard be said in a movie before it's deemed offensive? 3? 2? Criticizing Tropic Thunder because of that is sillier than the movie itself. And it deserves this spot in my list. It's a great comedy.