The Vitality of Cinema

"I’m not able to name the moment I wanted to be a director because I also didn’t know the word for that. I couldn’t distinguish between producer, director, and author."
-Arnaud Desplechin 

"I think the first director I was ever aware of was Alfred Hitchcock—before I even understood the idea of a director. I was aware of Hitchcock because of The Alfred Hitchcock Collection. That was the first time I was aware that there’s a guy who is not in the movie who’s on the front of the box. He’s responsible."
-Wes Anderson

"Audiences don't know somebody sits down and writes a picture; they think the actors make it up as they go along."
-Joe Gillis

I've long held a simmering belief that one of the primary reasons most people have a hard time appreciating film as art is because the artist is not immediately evident. With nearly any other art form - music, literature, painting, sculpture - the artist is present and readily identifiable. Their name is on the cover, on a placard accompanying the display, etc. Sure, the director's name is usually one of the most prominent credits in a film, but who pays attention to the credits?

I'm not saying most people don't know films are directed. Most kids don't, and those kids become adults, who may recognize that films are directed - usually through brand name directors like Kubrick, Hitchcock, Spielberg, or Shyamalan - but already have their basic approach to film cemented in youth. And, to be fair, unless you're an avid moviewatcher, most directors don't call attention to their work the way a painter does.

But they'll be aware of a director's presence, even if they're unsure about what that presence determines. And this knowledge will be key for the first crossover film. The first film that person will see that will make them go, "This...this is different from everything else. This couldn't have existed in any normal way. Somebody created this." Then...they will know, even if they can't articulate, what a director means for a film. For some, this film was Pulp Fiction. Others, Fight Club. I take great joy in knowing there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, thinking that as they took in Inglourious Basterds this summer.

And this is a major reason I feel, very strongly and in spite of the constant cries that film is dead, that film is the most vital of all forms of art. Our cultural approaches to...really, any other art form I can think of, our approach has become so codified. We grow up taught and explained the importance of painting and other visual arts. The theater is the place for fine drama. Music is so integral to us as people, we seem to have such a total understanding of it before we could even begin to understand it, that whatever it means to us is totally individual, totally universal, and totally unchangeable.

But film is totally different. We're surrounded by it almost as early as we are music, but while film can express essential truths about who we are, film isn't a part of us the way music is. But it is a nearly constant part of our lives as far back as we can remember, and nobody tells us how to approach it aside from "here, sit down and watch this. You'll enjoy it." How you enjoy it and why you enjoy it is totally up to you. You come to that conclusion completely reflexively, and completely on your own. Literature is similar in this way, but will soon become completely divorced as academics typically decide what you read more than personal interest.

As you grow, film becomes a part of social life in a way that no other art form could be. Music...sometimes is (how often do we hear music for the first time with other people, devoting total attention to it? Quite rarely). Few people grow up visiting art galleries with friends, or going to the theater. And anyway, those activities weren't ones we participated in privately as children, and our approach to them is already codified - "this is art...this is important." You go to a gallery or museum to experience art. But film is typically something to do on a Saturday night; an entertaining diversion as you hope the girl next to you will brush up against you for just a second.

Very few people have someone to tell them film is important. They'll decide that on their own. Or not. If they do decide that, they'll have come to that decision totally organically, and because of an artist. More than any other art form, in the way art exists today, an artist will have told them what the medium can mean. And that's an incredibly powerful notion. It's what keeps film vital, important, and living. Music is alive because it's a part of who we are. Theatre is alive because it's happening right in front of you. Film is alive because it's constantly happening, constantly redefining itelf for millions of people.

Restoring the Awe in the Summer Blockbuster - Superman Returns

I popped in Superman Returns the other day. I was curious if it still held up, three years after I saw it in theaters (repeatedly) and really quite loved it. It's funny how memory can betray you - through years of watching the public opinion of the film turn from "meh" to "but we all remember what happens when you try to ______. You get Superman Returns," I always held that the film was much better than people gave it credit for, but I never spoke about it with the same conviction I had upon exiting the theater. Sometimes the accepted ruling on a film - positive or negative - can bolster your opinion, and sometimes it twists it.

The latter was certainly the case with Bryan Singer's Superman Returns, but watching it again revealed exactly the film I'd found the first time, only now even more so. A flawed but monumentally ambitious film, Superman Returns is ultimately very moving, and quite wonderful. Like The Dark Knight, the flaws are in the dialogue, which has characters reciting lines that are far too on-the-nose, far too much of the "this is who I am and this is what I'm thinking about and these are my concerns and worries." But like The Dark Knight, the cumulative effect of these moments do nothing to detract from my immense respect and adoration for the film.

I've never understood the central problems people have with it. As I said, there are flaws, but all too often complaints went something like, "oh, man, there's a KID?" or "what, now Superman has feelings?" or "there's no action!" Superman Lifts Things became a sort of joke title. It's this kind of thinking, this sort of whining about a film not being "exciting" enough, that's holding back summer cinema. What Singer was going for here, and what I think he accomplished, was restoring the amazement that one man can even DO the kind of things Superman can do, and furthermore, that he decides to do these things to help people.

The film so often takes my breath away, in Superman's casual use of his powers, his intrinsic knowledge of right and wrong, how that carries through to such mundane moments as when he says "Goodnight, Lois" (God, Brandon Routh is so good in this movie), and the sacrifices he has to make to maintain that righteousness. The familiarity with which Lois approaches Superman before their flight, and the very tangible knowledge that their lives for the past five years have not been what they dreamed they would be. The immense regret that fills both their faces, Lois' especially, every time they part ways; she's all too aware he may go away forever. How speechless she is in their last scene together.

I love Lois' central conflict in this, how sharply written she is and how vibrant the character becomes in those ocassional instances when Kate Bosworth rises to the challenge. She connects to me almost as deeply as Ilsa does in Casablanca, in no small part because she has to make the same decision between a man she is unavoidably drawn towards who has been away for a long time, and a man she's been with ever since, who treats her well and is just as good, if not better a man.

When The Dark Knight came out, a lot of people commended the fact that Batman makes mistakes throughout the film, and fails to live up to his mission. Nobody gives credit to Superman Returns for making that the entire thrust of the film. Not only did Superman abandon Lois without notice; he abandoned the entire world he was dedicated to protecting. He wasn't there in court to testify against Lex Luthor, thus making his release from jail all the easier. Superman's greatest mistake has already been made, and the whole film is about how we deal with those mistakes.

This is why I never understood why anyone would complain about Superman having feelings. If I made a decision that deeply hurt the person I loved, and I suddenly realized she'd been living with that pain for five years, I'd be a lot more bent out of shape than Superman is in this film.

That a film of this budget, based on such a property as Superman, came out the way this did is staggering. How many summer blockbusters put this little emphasis on the conflict between the protagonist and antagonist? In this film, thematically, Lex Luthor is there to show us how Good Superman is. What other love stories are made for over $200 million? What other summer blockbusters are so infused with melancholy, loss, and regret? How many since the golden age of Spielberg have had as many moments of pure awe? How many films of any kind are as sharply composed as this? This willing to linger on the image of something truly amazing? There's a moment in the film in which Perry White and Jimmy Olsen are going through some photos of Superman, and Perry says, "These are iconic." If nothing else in the film gets you, surely the imagery must.

Too many summer films these days use the camera in such a way to make, as Matt Zoller Seitz put it, the fantastic mundane. They'll go handheld, they'll use lens flares, they'll even add dirt to the lens in post production, anything to make it seem more "real." Superman Returns restores the luster to these fantastic images, the camera so often bewhildered and astonished at the sight of the man who could fly.

To say nothing of how damned well constructed the film is, especially from the aiplane crash/rescue scene onward. That scene is still one of the most thrilling of any superhero film, easily going toe-to-toe with the elevated train sequence in Spider-Man 2, and there's a scene on Lex's boat between Lois, her son Jason, and a nameless henchman that is as tense as anything out of Hitchcock. To say nothing of everything that transpires right before Superman finds Lois, Richard, and Jason on what's left of the ship.

I don't necessarily go to summer films to escape or to think. I don't go to the movies, any movie, with a mission, other than with a vague hope to be affected in some way. I let the movie give me a reason to be there. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Superman Returns gave me, and continues to give me, so many reasons.

New AVATAR Trailer Tells You What You're in For

Normally, I don't give much credence to the trailer for a film. It's the last thing that'll actually sell me on seeing a film, and typically, if I can avoid it, I won't even watch it. I'd rather keep as much of the film a secret as possible.

But sometimes, these things are unavoidable. Sometimes, the geek side reawakens, and I have to see whatever new trailer they've put out. Avatar is such a case.

And whatever you're thinking about the film at this point, the new trailer seems to put it all out there. The story is completely laid out for you, most of the dramatic turns are covered, and we get glimpses of what is almost certainly the final battle. Apparently a lot of people who weren't sold by the first trailer are flipping over this, so if that's the case for you...hey, there's hope yet. I'm still as enthusiastic about the film as I was before seeing it - this simply confirmed that it's going to be pretty awe-inspiring, balls-to-the-wall stuff. And after catching the first trailer in 3D, I gotta tell you...it makes a HUGE difference.

I honestly don't really care that the story is pretty much ripping off Dances With Wolves. This is partially because I've never seen Dances With Wolves (I've never really cared for Kevin Costner, and the idea of spending three-to-four hours under his artistic vision is a pretty uncompelling premise), and partially because, as I've said many, many times before, nearly every story that can be told has been told. I'm much more interested in how it's told. And with the technology being used here, and even more, the WAY it's being used...sold. Sold, sold, sold.

Oh, and for all you nitpickers, yes, I could tell the difference between the computer-generated people and the live action people. There were some shots where I wasn't sure. I do hope there was a reason they went one way or another for a given scene, because I don't really see the point of shooting live action otherwise. But, hey...it's a long trailer, but it's only three-and-a-half minutes of what is supposedly a three-hour movie. I assume there is other information at some point.

You can watch the trailer below, or even better, head over to Dave's Trailer Page to download it in HD.

It's Not What You Say, It's How You Say It

Via The House Next Door, whose commentors do a better job at this than I could.

Thus this question: How did a man with no interest in the fundamentals of film get taken seriously for as long as he did? I'm not arguing that the well-made Hollywood movie is the only possible filmmaking mode. The likes of Renoir, Bergman, Buñuel decisively disprove that notion.

But the greats all share intentionality, the need to direct our attention to something that was on their minds. They did not leave their people flopping around until something printable happened.

-Richard Schickel; Book Review - Robert Altman: The Oral Biography by Mitchell Zuckoff

To say that Schickel misses the point is a little simplistic, but he certainly doesn't understand what continues to make Altman so interesting and, as one of the comments at The House Next Door notes, "still polarizing long after his contemporaries' films are safely, nostalgically respectable," which is exactly the fact that his intentions were rarely clear, especially in the 70s. It's exactly the sloppiness, contradictions, misdirection, ambiguity, and total disinterest with the any mode of storytelling that makes Nashville one of the greatest films ever made, McCabe and Mrs. Miller one of the loveliest, and The Long Goodbye one of the most fun.

My last semester at college, I took a class called The Hollywood Renaissance, which dealt with American cinema from the late 60s through the 70s. We watched the usual suspects - Taxi Driver, The Godfather, Bonnie and Clyde, The Conversation...all of these received a real united reaction. With the exception of one or two people, we all loved them. The most polarizing film was, by far, Nashville. A strong contingent of us felt it was a truly startling, unsettling piece, perhaps the most important piece of the entire movement. The other half found it aimless, boring, wrote it off because "nothing happened."

It's fascinating how, decades later, the content of these films rarely matters. For all the hullabaloo in their day over their violence, the films noted above are as safe now as Casablanca (which is not to dismiss...I love Casablanca). We watched a handful of films that would still be considered radical - Easy Rider, Wanda, Two-Lane Blacktop - but that label doesn't apply because of anything that happens in them, but rather the way they happen. Scorsese, Coppola, and Penn are all fine directors. Often great. But with their most important work, they were only telling new types of stories. Altman was interested in telling stories in whole new ways, or even on occasion not telling stories at all, and THIS is what made, and continues to make, him radical. Not his frequent use of nudity or profanity or anything else.

Really, if you haven't seen them, I can't recommend enough that you go out and watch Nashville, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and The Long Goodbye. Better yet, start with The Player, which is far most accessible and traditionally entertaining. It was the first film I saw of his that really made me sit up and go, "who is this guy?"

Onward and Downward

So it's October, 2009. Oscar season's really ramping up, and theoretically some of the best pictures of the year will be released.

So...when are the explosions again?

As if the weekly obsession with box office stats isn't enough, The London Times Online put up a piece today on the fifty films likely to dominate the box office next year. You know, because you won't see enough advertising between now and then, so journalists make sure to get in on it, too. There really are, in terms of entertainment reporting, few things more depressing than articles like this.

To be fair, they include a few films that do seem genuinely interesting - Chris Nolan's Inception and Paul Greengrass' The Green Zone most notably. Inception has the potential to be Nolan's best work yet (it certainly appears to be his most bold). For my money, he's doing some of, if not the best work in mainstream entertainment these days. If he'd clean up his form a little bit, he'd be on par with Hitchcock; like the Master of Suspense, Nolan excels at narratives that at once satisfy and subvert audience expectations, always towards exciting results. And Greengrass is the only guy I can think of who keeps getting away with making great, gripping films that tackle current events without turning them into a lesson.

Toy Story 3...and there you go. That's all you need. Ticket bought.

The Green Hornet has the potential to be either a Speed Racer-level success or a Spirit-level failure. Pluses include a script by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, with Michel Gondry as a director. Minuses include...Michel Gondry as a director.

I wish I cared more about Shutter Island than it simply being a Martin Scorsese film, which instantly guarantees I'll see it. I wish he was doing more genuinely interesting work than just classing up a Se7en-style thriller. There's nothing wrong with movies like Shutter Island; I really do love them. But it hurts when directors this good spend their time on them.

And then there are major directors who established themsevles with great, early films, and have just gone downhill from there. I speak, of course, of Ridley Scott's Robin Hood and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. Both directors have been working in increasingly familiar territory, and...well, honestly, I can't find much to like in either of them. I love Blade Runner and Alien, but of all the films I've seen of his, nothing's been worth the time since those. And Burton...he's become as bland and predictable as Nancy Meyers.

As noted earlier, The Expendables will almost certainly kick ass. Stallone's really been on a roll with Rocky Balboa, Rambo, and now this. The A-Team would be completely irredeemable, save for the fact that it's directed by Joe Carnahan (he of Narc and Smokin' Aces). Otherwise, it gets shelved under "nerd nostalgia porn" along with Tron: Legacy, Predators, Clash of the Titans, and Red Dawn. You can already hear the clattering of keyboards as Facebook statuses are updated to reflect supposedly orgasmic reactions to all of these.

Along similar lines, Oliver Stone is going back to the 80s well to make a sequel to one of his worst films (and that's saying something) with Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps (which is as awful a title as Hot Tub Time Machine is a great one). Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who realizes Shia LaBeouf, once again lured into doing totally bland work, is a good actor, and deserves a lot better movies than he gets. This is evidenced by him always being the best part of every movie he's been in since A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. Except for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull...nothing was the best part of that.

There's another Chronicles of Narnia, Shrek, and Sex and the City, which means unless my girlfriend gets any ideas for the latter, those are three free weekends right there. And improbably enough, they're still making Resident Evil movies!

Oh, and from everything that's been put out there so far...Kick-Ass is going to do exactly what its title promises. Look into it a little, so when it's a District 9 level success you can brag about having talked about it before anyone else.

It goes without saying that the new Iron Man and Harry Potter films will almost certainly be worthwhile, right? Goes to show that hiring a team of great actors and putting the camera on a tripod can go a long way. Oh, and having a director with personality and vision to spare. I hope to God that making the last Harry Potter film a two-parter will give the thing some room to breathe - the series consistently has great endings that are too damn rushed, and never quite leave the desired impact.

Where the hell is Scott Pilgrim vs. The World on this list? Edgar Wright can't even get some ink spilled in London? Or Paul for that matter? That even has Simon Pegg. Everyone loves Simon Pegg.

Not anywhere near the list of films that will make boatloads of money for other people, but are certainly on my most anticipated for 2010...Tree of Life, True Grit, Wild Grass (I mean, right there...Malick, the Coens, Resnais...you can keep your frickin' Tron), the Red Riding trilogy, A Prophet...hopefully Meek's Cutoff will be ready? There'll be others. Sundance will come. Cannes will come. The movies will come. They always do. For now, we can only look ahead to months and months of widgets and sigh.

Decisions, Decisions

Flickchart.com is wonderful but also deeply frustrating. Latest frustration - choosing between United 93 and Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Buy The Third Man!

I'm way behind on...everything...apartment searching has pretty much become everything.

BUT...I noticed this and had to make a note of it. The Criterion Collection has, apparently, lost the rights to Carol Reed's The Third Man, one of the finest, most perfect films ever made. On the commentary track on the DVD and Blu-Ray, Steven Soderbergh pointed out that you could learn everything you need to know about making a movie by studying this film. Tony Gilroy pointed out that there are many films that aren't as good as people say they are; The Third Man is better than people say it is.

I really can't say enough good things about it. It's never boring, always entertaining, beautiful to look at, expertly written, brilliantly performed, features some of the finest direction you're likely to see...I'm telling you, it is a perfect film.

Chances are this will reach no one, but if it gets at least one person, then so be it. Rent it if you must; buy it if you can. The disc is well worth the purchase - aside from the Soderbergh/Gilroy commentary, there's a great scholarly commentary by Dana Polan, an introduction by Peter Bogdonavich, and a shitload of other special features I haven't even gotten to yet. The Blu-Ray is one of the reasons I own a Blu-Ray player, but I'm sure the DVD is a fine piece of work itself.

Just do whatever you have to in order to see it.


More details on the discs.

To buy.