Critical Mass Interview

Hey, if you have a sec, jump on over to Only Good Movies, check out the interview I recently did for them and find out my thoughts on movies like Blade Runner, Avatar and oh yes, even Citizen Kane.

Lovecraft finally done right

Deadline reports that Guillermo Del Torro will finally be able to complete his vision of the H.P. Lovecraft masterpiece, At The Mountains of Madness.  Del Torro has had this on his wish list for quite some time but the effing pussy Hollywood Studios wouldn't touch it because there is no love interest or happy ending.  It's an EFFING HORROR FILM YOU MYOPIC BEAN COUNTERS!!!  GET A FRIGGIN CLUE.

Anywho, it seems like none other than James Cameron stepped up to lend his producing muscle to the project in order to make this happen and appease the risk-averse accountants- er studio heads.  Now I'm no big Cameron fan, but this is easily his single best achievement since...  well, since Terminator.

Del Torro is the perfect creative genius to helm this project - a true Lovecraft devotee and a true visual master.  In his hands, this should finally be the Lovecraft movie done right!  For those who haven't read it (and please go and buy a Lovecraft collection immediately - what's wrong with you?) At The Mountains of Madness is a seminal piece of horror fiction that has spawned such classic movies as The Thing and Alien.  It is one of his finest stories, along with Call of Cthulu, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Shadow Out of Time and The Whisperer in Darkness.

I can't wait to see this tale finally brought to the masses - the Old Ones would be proud.

M. Night Shyamalan and the Career Arc of a Director

No, I haven't seen The Last Airbender yet.

And I'm not gonna.

Know why?  Two words - The Happening.

I loved Sixth Sense - liked Unbreakable - loved Signs - tried to like The Village - was totally unimpressed with Lady in the Water.

I figured I'd give M. Night one more chance with The Happening.  But do you know what happened at The Happening?...  He took my 10 bucks and spit in my face.

Really.

That movie is an affront to filmmaking - either one of the worst, most tone-deaf movies made in the last 30 years, or the most brilliant satiric self-immolation ever put to film.  I seriously thought he was trying to purposefully trash his career so he could get out of his current contract by making the worst movie ever.

Then he made The Last Airbender... and it's getting even worse reviews.  I don't need to see it.

How can this be possible?  How can the same guy who made Sixth Sense and Signs, two of my favorite movies of the last decade, slide steadily into absolute dreck? Has he totally lost his mind?  Does he not care anymore?  Did someone else write and direct his first three movies for him?

I wanted to see just how bad it really was, so I did what I always do...

I made a chart:

This chart shows the ratings (per Rotten Tomatoes) for every M. Night directed movie.  As you can see, it looks like a big ol' slide to wretchedness.

That got me thinking... What do other director's charts look like?

Actors I'd Most Like to Cast in My Next Movie

Not that it would ever actually happen, but if I could pick up a phone and attach any of these actors to my next project, I'd be a happy camper. 

Hey, I can dream can't I?!


Steve Buscemi











Don Cheadle











Toni Collete










Zooey Deschanel









 

Morgan Freeman









 

Paul Giamatti









 

Luis Guzman









 

Philip Seymour Hoffman









 

Holly Hunter









 

Jason Isaacs









 

Catherine Keener









 

Harvey Keitel









 

Laura Linney









 

William Macy









 

Frances McDormand









 

Ian McShane

The Overactive Editor

One of my pet peeves of modern filmmaking is the overabundance of "coverage" shot for a given scene.

Coverage! coverage! coverage! is the rallying cry for too many directors.  If the story of a scene can be covered with one camera angle, then certainly it must be better if it was shot with 4 or 6 or 10!

And of course once all that film has been burned (or more likely, digital media has been filled up), and the expense of all those camera setups and re-lights (not to mention the assistant editor's time to capture and log all those takes) has been added to the budget, the editor sure as hell better use all those shots - whether it suits the story or not.

Thank goodness we have Walter Murch to remind us what's important:

• An overactive editor, who changes shots too frequently, is like a tour guide who can't stop pointing things out: "And up there we have the Sistine Ceiling, and over here we have the Mona Lisa, and, by the way, look at these floor tiles..." If you are on a tour, you do want the guide to point things out for you, of course, but some of the time you just want to walk around and see what you see.  If the guide - that is to say, the editor - doesn't have the confidence to let people themselves occasionally choose what they want to look at, or to leave things to their imagination, then he is pursuing a goal (complete control) that in the end is self-defeating. People will eventually feel constrained and then resentful from the constant pressure of his hand on the backs of their necks.

Walter Murch,  In The Blink of An Eye

My mantra while editing is that I should always have a reason for making every single cut.  Every time you destroy the fabric of temporal and spatial continuity in a scene to make a cut, you better have a good reason for it.  Just switching to another camera angle because you have one available is not good enough.  Plus, you're giving me a dang headache - so knock it off!

Film is dead

First of all, I love film.

In elementary school I was one of those AV monitor dorks who wheeled the projection equipment into your room and threaded the film whenever your teacher needed a break and forced you to watch that boring volcano documentary again.  I started shooting with Super-8 cameras as a 12-year old and spent many a long night gluing edits together in my dark, noxious-fume-laced-room.  I later finally got my hands on real 16mm equipment as a film major at S.F State.  We Cinema students scoffed at the broadcast arts department kids and their aesthetically inferior crappy-assed video cameras that they were forced to use.  Eventually as a professional video editor, I spent many long hours trying to make video look more like film (Cinelook anybody), but it never really got there.

With its slightly stuttering 24 frames per second, motion picture film suggested another reality altogether different from our own - a place to pour our ideas, our emotions. It was the medium of visual poetry, of dreams. Video on the other hand, presented the harsh, glossy reality of the now. The faster frame rate of 30 frames per second made it appear to our eyes to be a glance not of art, but of our own mediocre everyday reality.  Video was the realm of soap operas, of news, of live events.

I wanted to live in the filmic world of metaphor - of campfire tales and big-screen dreams. I fought the film battle long and hard, but you know, what?

It's over - film is dead!  Long live digital!

Comedy Movies - time to take off the kid gloves!

I just recently saw Hot Tub Time Machine...

 ...yeah, that Hot Tub Time Machine, and trying my best to ignore the wash of teal and orange, I settled in for what I hoped would be a hilarious combination of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure meets The Hangover.  I mean, the flick's got a great setup and John Cusack going for it - this should kick some funnybone ass.

Well, the movie is... ok.

And that's the problem.

So many of these comedies start with a good premise, some gifted actors and then they kinda go soft.  They hit you with a good line here, a promising development there, and then right when you're ready for the big laugh... they let up on the gas.

Let me be frank for a moment here.  Comedy shares a lot with Horror and Porn.  It's all about timing, tension and release.

It's really not rocket science.  Please, just give me some wacky characters, an engaging plot, but most of all...

MAKE IT FUNNY - AND DON'T LET UP!!!

Hollywood - no, it's not all that bad

I realize that some of my posts on this blog have tended to have an anti-Hollywood bias.  So in an effort to not seem like a complete dour sour-puss I thought I'd share with you some of the movies that I actually did enjoy in 2009:

(insert sounds of crickets chirping)


No, seriously, here we go (in stream-of-consciousness order):

- Inglourious Basterds
- District 9
- The Hurt Locker
- A Serious Man
- Up in The Air
- Up
- Watchmen
- Adventureland
- The Blind Side (ok, I admit I actually cried a little)
- The Cove
- Food, Inc.
- Let the Right One In (yeah, it was released in 2008 but I didn't see it until 2009)
- Drag Me to Hell
- Paranormal Activity
- Tell No One (alright, yes that was produced even further back in 2006 but what can I say, I miss some things you know)
- Knowing
- The Hangover
- Anvil!
- Star Trek
- Avatar (the first 90 minutes only - see my post here:)

You see, most of those are Hollywood-produced films, with a sprinkling of indies, docs and foreign films as well.

Ah... there, now I feel all warm and cozy knowing that great movies can be made despite the risk-averse Hollywood mainstream that continues to churn out ripoffs, retreads and sequels.

(oops, sorry - just can't help myself sometimes.)

Reality TV Wreckage

A few years ago, both my wife and I started watching what we thought was a more "high-brow" variety of reality-tv - shows on Discovery, TLC, Food Network (you know, the educational channels), that focused on real-life families and their unique jobs or circumstances.  I got hooked on American Choppers both for its how-to look at custom chopper building (something I knew nothing about), and for its fascinating examination of the antics of the Teutul family.  My wife closed in on Jon & Kate Plus 8, a peek into the "wow, thank goodness that isn't us" world of newborn sextuplets and the harried lives of Jon & Kate as they struggled to get through each day.

Let's not kids ourselves, we knew we weren't watching PBS, but at least it seemed a little better than a night with The Bachelor, or Temptation Island.  The shows appeared to be a watered-down version of the premise of the highly acclaimed "Up" series of films (7 Up, 7 Plus Seven, 21 Up, etc.) that followed the lives of 14 typical British youth and examined them every seven years - providing insights into not only their individual lives, but complex societal issues of race, class and the human condition.

However, a strange thing started to happen to both our little "slice-of-life" shows. What began as a peek inside a custom chopper garage soon became a parade of logos, as Paul Sr. and the boys began assembling bike after bike for Intel, Gillette, HP, and other corporate clients. Curiously, that struggling Gosselin family of 10 suddenly got a bigger van and a bigger house and vacations to Disney World and ski trips to Utah.

And then all hell broke loose.  As the people on the shows became more successful, as their lives got easier, their homes bigger and their bank accounts fuller, they began to tear at each other like rats in a cage.  Eventually it became clear that the shows were no longer about ordinary people and their daily lives - what we were watching were extraordinary insights into how media attention itself affects the average person, and the seemingly inevitable downfall that follows.