Junkies

The world of film financing these days is the wild west and you have to take whatever opportunities come your way or you will miss out on a chance to tell your story. But what seemed prudent last year, could come back to bite you in the end. Did Martin Scorsese know he was helping to launder stolen Malaysian money when he agreed to direct The Wolf of Wall Street? Probably not, but that's what happened. And due diligence will only shield you so far.

Remember when a movie from Warner Brothers had only one logo at the front of the film? Now it feels like you're attending an animation festival with the un-ending stream of production logos preceding a feature. Are you sure you know where all these Executive Producers got their millions from? Getting caught up with unscrupulous financiers used to be the burden of indie filmmakers like the one depicted in Alexandre Rockwell's In the Soup. But nowadays, you have "studio" films like Wonder Woman receiving funds from the likes of Brett Ratner. And of course there's all that Chinese Money we keep hearing about. Everybody's hustling. Just check out the documentary Seduced and Abandoned, directed by...Oh...

When you step back and really look at the big picture, you understand why someone like Steven Soderbergh would want to abandon the film world for the world of painting. The idea of just needing paint and a canvas to express yourself must be very tempting. Yet since, "retiring" Soderbergh has directed several features, a TV series, and an interactive app. I guess Frank Capra was right when he said, "Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream, it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to film is more film." Anything for a fix.

And we who watch and write are not innocent, either. I believe the term is Co-Dependent?

Oscar Noms: What A Lovely Day!

I'm not sure about you guys, but I'm already burned out by this Awards Season. I don't remember being this over it this early last year. But then again I was a much bigger fan of last year's cinematic output. Not that this year was a total wash. There have been some legit great movies this year. It's just that right now, I'm pretty confident that the truly great stuff is not going to win. Am I just being pessimist? Am I putting too much faith in Oscar bloggers? Am I still burned over Birdman's win last year? We will see when the little good guys get handed out next month. Until then, here are my annual bullet point thoughts on the nominees...

-First and foremost I say: Screw Shortlisting! More than a month before these nominees were announced it was decided that Phoenix was not going to make the cut for Best Foreign and Call Me Lucky was not going to make the cut for Best Documentary. As those were two of the year's best films, the decisions to exclude them are dumb decisions.

-White people! I thought this was supposed to be a paradigm shifting year thanks to all the young and ethnically diverse voters? Perhaps they all threw in behind Mad Max and stuff like Creed and Tangerine got left in the lurch?

-WTF with the overall lack of Carol in most major categories? That's some serious BS.

-In happier news... 10 NOMINATIONS FOR FURY ROAD! ... let's just hope it can win a few. Don't know if The Academy would deign to give it Best Picture, but I will totally settle for Best Director!

Visualize This!

I'm really conflicted about "video essays". Part of me sees them as a lazy substitute for sitting down and writing a substantial piece on a given subject. Many of them feel like glorified clip reels that coast on the emotions we feel for films that are absolutely capable of yielding numerous insights on their own. But another part of me sees great potential in dissecting a visual medium via a visual medium. Why tell? When you can show! Brilliant video artists like : : kogonada are able to unearth genuine insights about a film as complex as La Dolce Vita, while simultaneously generating a piece of art that is aesthetically appealing on its own. And aren't all of Tarantino and Godard's films pretty much criticism masquerading as narrative?

What I find most interesting, are the occasional and infrequent "adaptations" of film writing into a feature length film. The earliest example of this phenomenon that I can think of is Rob Epstein and Jerry Friedman's wonderful documentary of Vito Russo's legendary lecture series/book The Celluloid Closet. More recently, there was Mark Cousins' mini-series adaptation of his own book The Story of Film and coming soon we will have critic Kent Jones' film about François Truffaut's book length interview with Alfred Hitchcock. I wonder if there have been any lazy Film Studies majors out there who opted to "watch the movie" rather than read the book? When are we going to get the film version of Molly Haskell's From Reverence to Rape? All kidding aside, I would die to see that film!

In the end, I guess it's really a matter of who is making the, "video essay" in question. While Marshall McLuhan was very correct in proclaiming that "the medium is the message", the medium should not be held responsible for the ineptness of the author. Some people have a way with words. Others are "visual learners". And in the middle sits the rest of us. I'm well aware that compared to J. Hoberman and Manohla Dargis, my blog posts are akin to a supercut of Arnold Schwarzenegger catchphrases. So who am I to judge anyone else's means of expression? If you want to sing out, sing out! But it does help if you have something interesting to say.

What Do Your Favorite Films Say About You?

When that recent Tarantino interview came out, so much of the film loving Internet was aflutter (a Twitter?) with opinions about the valid, constructive criticism Quentin had regarding the film It Follows. Yet among my friends, more dispiriting was the fact that Tarantino himself loves to badmouth a different film which many of us hold in high regard - his own carchase/slasher masterpiece. Yes, I'm talking about Death Proof!

Personally, I hold that film above Reservoir Dogs, Django Unchained and Inglourious Basterds. Of course a few took exception with my opinion on this, but many people on my Facebook wall chimed in and declared Death Proof to be their favorite Quentin Tarantino film altogether. Which I guess goes to show you how subjective taste can be. Sure we can back up our opinions with this or that "fact", but in the end, it's all very personal.

If you press someone to give you a list of their Top-10 or more films, what you'll get is a pretty good glimpse into who that person is. You will not only be able to know what they respond to visually, but emotionally as well. In a way, a list of someone's favorite films can be even more insightful than the much lauded Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator.

Pretty much every time I look at my own personal favorites list, I find myself thinking, "Perhaps it's time to  shake this list up Craig?" Yet when I try to think of what I'd eliminate, I'm at a total loss. Even though I now prefer Kill Bill (as a whole) to Pulp Fiction, I cannot bring myself to remove Pulp Fiction from the top of that list. That's the movie that made me who I cinematically am and introduced me to things like the French New Wave and Hong Kong Cinema. I'm so resistant to removing films from my list that my Top-10 is actually a Top-11 because I couldn't bring myself to remove anything to make room for Y Tu Mamá También.

Looking at my Top-11 I see so many recurrent themes and visual tropes. Lots of bittersweet endings and films about eras ending. There's also lots of brown in the color pallets and an overall mid-century flavor to much of the design. Of course most of the films use source music to underscore scenes and feature hyperbolic camera moves...except for the ones that don't. Some of the films on the list are even from the same year. Does that mean something?

When I saw the 1962 commedia all'italiana classic Il Sorpasso for the first time last year, I fell instantly in love. Upon trying to figure out why I responded to it so strongly, I came to the realization that though this movie pre-dated me by twenty-one years, it was made specifically for me. It checks off pretty much every element on the list of things that I respond to in cinema. To quote my own review: "It’s a road movie that luxuriates in the settings and side characters, it expertly balances comedy and drama, it features a passive main character who is propelled along by a charismatic rascal, the pop songs are expertly placed and the photography is beautiful." Of course I loved it, it was pretty much predestined.

So is it now time for my Top-11 to become a Top-12? I've come to accept the fact that none of those core movies are going anywhere anytime soon. They are part of who I am. They're like those islands in Inside Out. My relationship with them can change, but they will always be there underscoring everything else that I watch. I will love or hate something for the ways it is either similar to, or different from those core films. The only choice is to add, right?

But then again, Il Sorpasso doesn't bring anything new to my personal canon. It's merely a variation on several extremely well known themes in the pre-existing, "Craig Canon". Perhaps I should only incorporate a new film  to the list if it adds something new to my understanding and appreciation of cinema. Or perhaps I should just accept who I am. Like they say, you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

For the curious, here are my Top-11 films. What are yours? What do they say about you?

1. Pulp Fiction
2. Ed Wood
3. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
4. Taxi Driver
5. L.A. Confidential
6. Buffalo '66
7. Annie Hall
8. The Godfather Part II
9. Boogie Nights
10. Chasing Amy
11. Y Tu Mamá También

Enemy Mine: Leonardo DiCaprio's Flawed Quest For Oscar Gold

If you've been on the Internet at all in the past couple years I'm pretty sure you're familiar with the various memes about Leonardo DiCaprio's desire to win an Oscar. A particular favorite of mine is Leo as Jordan Belfort crawling towards an Oscar while nearly paralyzed by Lemon 'ludes. He has become the Susan Lucci of the Oscars aka the perpetual "also ran". But it's not like he doesn't deserve one.

Leo has been great in so many films ranging from his first nomination for Arnie in What's Eating Gilbert Grape all the way to Belfort in Wolf of Wall Street. With the release of the first trailer for Alejandro González Iñárritu's upcoming wilderness survival story The Revenant, awards speculation has begun anew. Will this be Leo's year? Personally I don't think so.

Judging by the trailer and source material, The Revenant has all the sign posts of an award worthy performance: he's playing an historical figure, he's required to get dirty and there doesn't seem to be a more showboaty character in the film to draw attention away from him...unless you count director Iñárritu and superstar cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki. Once again DiCaprio's good taste has turned out to be his worst enemy.

No matter how good Leo's performance in The Revenant turns out, he is destined to be overshadowed by the long takes that the film appears to be shot in. Don't believe me? Just ask Sandra Bullock (Gravity) and Michael Keaton (Birdman). Add to this the decision to shoot the film entirely in natural light and it's a done deal. By continually choosing to work with "name directors" like Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan and especially Baz Luhrmann, DiCaprio is continually allowing himself to become just another stitch in a large, enveloping tapestry.

No matter how great Leo was as Howard Hughes in The Aviator, there was no chance he was ever going to beat Jaimie Foxx in Ray. As capable as Taylor Hackford is as a director, he's not one to try out stylistic techniques that would draw attention away from his characters. DiCaprio, on the other hand, had to compete with epic flight scenes and a color pallet so distinct that even the film illiterate had to take notice. The best you can hope for in a film that big is Best Supporting because you are literally supporting the film. Cate Blanchett had to crank it all the way to 11 just to get noticed and win her Oscar.

Let's remember that Denzel didn't win Best Actor for channeling Malcolm X in Spike Lee's ambitious and sweeping epic, he won it for overwhelming everything in his path in the relatively minor Training Day. Judging by the Southpaw trailer, Jake Gyllenhaal seems to have gotten that message loud and clear. It's even directed by Training Day's Antoine Fuqua!

If Leo seriously wants to take home a golden statue in the near future, he needs to first take a look at Johnny Depp's recent playbook. Rather than resigning himself to being yet another swirly-whirly in yet another Tim Burton film, Depp has opted instead to be the showboat at the center of what looks to be a fairly by the books, true crime tale - Black Mass. No way his newly blue eyes and receding hairline will go unnoticed in that picture! DiCaprio just needs to find a capable second stringer to hitch his horse to. Or perhaps he can just hold out for a lifetime achievement award like Peter O'Toole! 

The Craig Duffy Classic Film Festival

As it often does, attending the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival this past weekend got my brain spinning. If I were programming a film festival, what would I show? The easy answer is to just say "All of the best movies!" But what is your definition of "best"? Do you stick exclusively to epic, foreign dramas? Or maybe you go the commercial route and stick to the spectacular and crowd pleasing? Lots to consider.

In planning out this hypothetical schedule, I called upon my love of making mix-discs for friends. Variety is key. You want to have an overall experience. Showing too much of the same becomes mind-numbing, but you also don't want to be arbitrary. There has to be some sort of logical flow  to the day. You have to really Rob Gordon this shit. Peaks and valleys, man. Peaks and valleys.

Having sweated out every decision here, I can now say with absolute certainty that if you were to dedicate a full two days to following the precise screening regimen I am about to lay out for you here, you will have one of the most cinematically fulfilling weekends ever!

So without further ado...

Day One

• 12:00pm - Singin' in the Rain
• 2:00pm - Nashville
• 5:00pm - A Night at the Opera
• 6:45pm - Alphaville
• 8:45pm - Sleeping Beauty (1959)
• 10:15pm - Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn
• 12:00am - The Blues Brothers

Day Two

• 12:00pm - The Red Shoes
• 2:30pm - The Lady Vanishes
• 4:15pm - The Rules of the Game
• 6:30pm - Hard Boiled
• 8:45pm - Blow Out
• 10:30pm - The Freshman (1925)
• 12:00am - Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

Which films would make the cut at your personal film festival? Should I program a third day? Let me know in the comments!

House Styles

Back when I started reading comics in 2nd grade, the art contained within was all pretty similar. Even though the gap between Dan Jurgens and Neil Adams is admittedly gigantic, you would be hard-pressed to deny that there isn't at least a little commonality there. From the golden age onward, that was just how you drew superheroes. A “house style” one might call it. If you wanted a unique visual take on things, you had to turn to the independent books like Madman, Love & Rockets and Mage. And then there was the Image Comics revolution.

Though founded by mainstream artists working in the conventional style, Image’s emphasis on “creator owned” books lead to them embracing a lot of the more unconventional voices out there in comics. Thanks to their open submission policy, you suddenly had manga and indie inflected art turning up in books that got shelf space right next to “the big two” of Marvel and DC. Of course it was only a matter of time before these unorthodox voices found their way into the mainstream as well. Now when I walk around my local comic shop, I see all sorts of styles ranging from the deliberately paced David Aja on Hawkeye, to the pop art inflected Mike Allred on Silver Surfer, to the street-art stylings of Ron Wimberly in the pages of She-Hulk. Today a superhero book can look like ANYTHING! Yet sadly, the same cannot be said for superhero movies.

Rather than embracing the visual diversity inherent in their comics, Marvel and DC have both opted to hold true to that old-fashioned “house style” mentality for their cinematic universes. DC is dark and brooding, Marvel is bright and playful. I assure you that if Jeremy Renner ever gets to star in a Hawkeye movie, you will not find any of the ground-level, every-day simplicity that made the Hawkeye comic a hit. And even though the “New 52” incarnation of Batman has embraced a bright color pallet (complete with healthy doses of pink and purple) you will find those colors sadly absent from the monochrome Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.

I get that both companies are spending billions on large interconnected universes where characters from one film can pop up in another, but do they think we just won’t “get it” unless all the films look the same? I don’t know about you, but I’m perfectly capable of accepting the fact that Captain America looks one way in his own book, and slightly different when he pops up in someone else’s book. No cognitive dissonance here. Give your fans a little bit more credit. If a firmly entrenched institution like super hero comics can change its aesthetics to more accurately reflect the full range of the human experience, why can't our super hero movies do the same?

Aging Auteurs

The recent discovery of a nearly pristine print of Orson Welles’ Chimes at Midnight has me thinking a lot lately about later works of great filmmakers and how we perceive them. Is film truly a young man’s game? Or is there room out there for an old master to still make an impression on the world?

Though Welles went on to direct the wonderful essay film F for Fake and the still unreleased The Other Side of the Wind, his Falstaff picture is considered by many to be his final masterpiece. Yet at the time of its release, opinions were decidedly more mixed in nature.

After Midnight and Charlie Chaplin’s final film A Countess from Hong Kong were both brutally panned by Bosley Crowther in the New York Times, Andrew Sarris seized the moment as a chance to defend the honor of older directors whom he felt were being unjustly maligned for staying true to who they are. As Sarris succinctly put it, “The great sin of Welles and Chaplin is their failure to abandon their own personal visions of the world to current fashions.” And just imagine if these great filmmakers had in fact tried to chase the trends! They would have been just as ridiculed for falseness. Remember how bad it was when George Romero went digital and tried to hop on the found footage train with Diary of the Dead?

Apparently the best a filmmaker can hope for is an audience that ages with you. When the audience is young and brash, you are there to egg them on. As they begin to settle into the rituals of family life, you are there to point out the little foibles and nuances that only they can appreciate. And as they begin to reflect upon their own mortality, you are there to either comfort them or to at least let them know that they are not alone in having such thoughts. Of course your audience won’t be as big at the end as it was at the beginning, but so what? They've been loyal and stood by you through thick and thin. Unless of course you've outlived everyone in your original audience like the still active 106 year-old Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira. In that case, everyone should want to watch your movies BECAUSE YOU ARE 106 AND STILL MAKING MOVIES!

And what about the older directors like Kinji Fukasaku and Martin Scorsese who unleash big, swinging-dick movies like Battle Royale and The Wolf of Wall Street at the ages of 70 and 71? Who am I to write someone off just because they're old enough to collect Social Security? I'm still the guy who has all but given up on filmmakers like Brian De Palma, and who holds theories about how certain filmmaking styles only work with certain no-longer-in-production film stocks. Mea culpa! I'm very far from perfect. But I do try to expose myself to as much as possible and give it as fair of a shake as I can.

Let’s close this piece by taking solace in the fact that even Quentin Tarantino who plans to retire at 60 and has made insanely brash statements like, “I don’t want to be an old-man filmmaker, making old-man movies who doesn't know when to leave the party. And I don’t want to fuck up my filmography with a bunch of old-man stuff.” listed Midnight in Paris (directed by the then 76 year old Woody Allen) as his favorite film of 2011. There's hope!

Revenge of the TV Ninjas

As numerous think pieces have been telling us for years, theatrical exhibition is a thing of the past. Of course if you are a regular reader of this blog we will assume that you still make an effort to get out to your local movie house, but as for John Q. Public, it's all about VOD, Netflix and Bluray. Why bother putting on pants, driving, parking, walking, finding a seat, etc. when you can just wait a couple of months and see it in the comfort of your own home on your brand-new HDTV?

It's simply a fact that if you are a filmmaker, a majority of the people who see your work will be seeing it on a TV. That in and of itself isn't really cause for alarm. There are some really nice TVs out there these days that are capable of generating some really beautiful images. But then there's the pesky problem of the "smooth motion" feature that comes as the default setting on practically all HDTVs manufactured these days. Don't know what I'm talking about?

Ever go over to a friend's house to watch a movie and suddenly it looks like an over-lit, daytime soap? That's "smooth motion" in action. By artificially inserting extra frames to "smooth out" the action, high art becomes unwatchable crap. There's even a movement on Twitter, spearheaded by filmmaker Rian Johnson (Brick, The Brothers Bloom, Looper) that prides itself on sneakily turning this feature off on the TVs of friends and family. They document their clandestine heroism with photos using the hashtag #TVNinja. But why is this even necessary? Why is this "smooth motion" the default setting?

Tired of seeing the images she worked so hard to frame and light reduced to visual garbage, cinematographer Reed Morano, ASC (Frozen River, Kill Your Darlings, The Skeleton Twins) saw fit to start a petition in hopes of getting HDTV manufacturers to stop making "smooth motion" the default setting on their products. When the petition was first launched it gained a lot of attention and signatures, but now it has kind of plateaued. I'm writing this in the hopes that you who have not yet signed will take a moment out of your day to do something for art. Let filmmakers have their art be seen the way they intended it to be. Don't let all their work be in vain.

Click Here To Sign

Trash & Art: Redux

In her legendary piece Trash, Art, and the Movies, Pauline Kael makes the argument that most films are not "art" and that the mere presence of something unique/interesting isn't enough to elevate a program/genre picture above the level of "trash". While I have the utmost respect for the late Ms. Kael and her writing on filmmakers such as Robert Altman and Bernardo Bertolucci, I really must disagree with her on this matter because it starts us down a rather slippery slope from which there is literally no return.

As someone who believes that any form of creative expression should be defined as "art", this sort of thinking stinks of elitism. Sure we can quibble about how successful something is at being achieving what it set out to do, but isn't that why we invented the five-star rating system and its countless variations? Even the crudest exploitation picture will tell you something about the people who made it and the culture that produced those people. Some films can even serve an anthropological purpose.

For example: Even though Richfield Tower and Bunker Hill no longer exist in present day Los Angeles, we still have films like the box office flop Zabriskie Point and best-seller based detective film Kiss Me Deadly to show these vanished landmarks in all their glory. There are some that will argue that even porn films can be studied for these films often feature the most accurate depictions of middle-class furnishings from the time they were made. Are these films "art" or "trash"?

During the first half of the last century, a majority of the world's silent film output was not considered to be "art" and was therefore either melted down for its silver content or turned into lady's shoe heels. Simply by making an arbitrary distinction between "art" and "trash", all of that valid creation, expression and cultural history was effectively deleted from existence. We will never be able to get it back. That's why it is important to recognize that all art is valid. So what if a particular film doesn't quite tickle your fancy? That's no reason to wipe it from the face of existence. And who knows? It could become important later...

Wonder Women

While other big name franchises are giving opportunities to up and comers like Rian Johnson (Star Wars Episode VIII), Gareth Edwards (Godzilla), Colin Treverrow (Jurassic World) and Josh Trank (The Fantastic Four), Warner Brothers has opted to offer the Wonder Woman directing reins to the two biggest names in female filmmaker history: Kathryn Bigelow and Catherine Hardwicke. As much as I would love to see Kathryn Bigelow take on a film about a kick-ass Amazonian, a bigger part of me would rather see it go to a lesser known female filmmaker. If we just keep hiring the same "big name" female filmmakers over and over again, how are any other women supposed to get their chance? And don't give me any of that malarkey about how other female filmmakers haven't proven themselves capable of taking on a film of such scope. What part of Safety Not Guaranteed screams out, "I'm ready to direct a Jurassic Park sequel!"? Stop making excuses. Well let's just hope that when/if Bigelow/Hardwicke pass on this Warners don't give up on women entirely and opt for Brett Ratner or some such hack. Who would you like to see direct Wonder Woman?

Tough Questions: To Dub or to Sub?

After finally watching the less than stellar new Godzilla film, I found myself in desperate need for some classic “man in a suit” monster brawlin’ and ordered some old favorites from Amazon (Godzilla vs. Monster Zero and War of the Gargantuas for the curious). But when they arrived I found myself faced with a classic dilemma: to dub or to sub?

Though some filmmakers like Pier Paolo Pasolini have sometimes overseen and approved the English version of a film, 99% of the time this is done by some low-level functionary at the foreign distribution company for whom this is “just another film” rather than a labor of love. As a cinephile, I know I’m supposed to always see films in their original language so that I am getting the filmmaker’s direct and unencumbered vision. But can there be exceptions to that rule?

Dubbed Godzilla movie marathons taped off TV were a permanent fixture of my adolescence and were frequently watched during the car rides to Boy Scout outings. Similarly, my childhood video store only had the original Funimation dub of Akira. Perhaps if I'd grown up with them subtitled I would hate the dubs, but that wasn't my childhood. As any psychologist will tell you, the experiences of adolescence can really stick with you. This is why I still know the names of all three of the titular 3 Ninjas. But why do I still watch the original 1954 Gojira subtitled?

And what about Italian films? Up until very recently, ALL Italian films were dubbed, even in their own language. Am I really losing anything when I watch a Leone or Argento film with the American voice cast? But then why don’t I watch Fellini or Antonioni films dubbed? Is that due to some sort of intellectual snobbery where “art” is elevated above “genre”? I love both types of films equally, so why make the distinction? Stone me if you will. I am an imperfect being.

How do you watch foreign films? Do you sometimes prefer the dub? Let us know in the comments.

Aesthetic Diversity

As a Michael Mann fan I feel that I have a pretty good idea of what a Michael Mann film is supposed to look like. More specifically I know that using the term “film” is rather inaccurate as Mann began shooting digital as far back as 2001 for select moments in Ali and has remained faithful since. While digital has gradually become the standard with most filmmakers jumping through hoops in effort to make their video look like film, Mann has gone another way and embraced what makes digital unique. He loves to shoot in the dark and crank that ISO to the point where you can watch the pixels dance. Even the daylight scenes have a jagged edge to them that really comes out in action scenes. So why do the first few production stills for his new film Blackhat look like this?

Traditionally production stills are shot on the film’s set, under the same lighting conditions as the scene in question and often with the same size lens. The key is to give as accurate a depiction of the film being advertised as possible. Stanley Kubrick even went so far as to strike his stills from the original camera negative. Having now seen the Blackhat trailer (which very much resembles a traditional Michael Mann film) it seems almost as though Universal’s publicity department is trying to hide something.

I guess they could be trying to hide the fact that it’s a Michael Mann film since his last two features (Miami Vice and Public Enemies) didn't really light the world on fire. But what seems more likely is that they are attempting to brand this film as a generic action film. They want to make you think this is a film like any other. But it isn’t. This is a Michael Mann film. Just as he chooses digital video for all the ways in which it is DIFFERENT from film, cinephile audiences go and see a Michael Mann film specifically for all the ways in which it is DIFFERENT from a generic action film. Say no to sameness! Embrace aesthetic diversity!

MAKE IT STOP! When Movies Get Too Popular

I work as a preschool teacher, and that means I'm surrounded by all things Frozen. It's insanely popular right now, and as much as I liked the movie, I'm started to wish the kids would take a liking to something else. The Lion King, maybe? Toy Story? Tangled? Anything! It's everywhere! I started wondering how much the ubiquity of a film affects my opinion of it. 

When I first saw Napoleon Dynamite, it was still in limited release, nobody had heard of it, and I saw it in an almost empty theatre. I thought the film was hilarious, and I told all my friends about it. As time went on, the movie blew up. Napoleon Dynamite merchandise was everywhere (thanks Hot Topic!), and everyone was constantly doing Napoleon impressions. I remember it getting on my nerves, and saying things like "GOD, it wasn't THAT great! Everybody needs to CALM DOWN." I took a long long break from the movie, a movie that seemed less great now that it was everywhere. The same thing happened with Borat. I never wanted to hear "Very nice!" in that Borat voice ever again. But when I think about the films by themselves, stripped of the impressions and pop culture impact, I still like them. I just need a long break to see the movie again with fresh eyes.

Do you have a similar experience with a particular film? Are you able to enjoy a film the same after it gains a lot of popularity? Does a film suffer when Hot Topic gets its hands on it? Are we all just snobs and hipsters?

After Midnight

Any film lovers out there remember the brief "Fake Criterion" craze? While most of these covers consisted of crappy MS Paint renditions of what a Criterion cover for Freddy Got Fingered might look like, some of them were downright beautiful. This is how I discovered Midnight Marauder. Among all the rest, his pieces for films like Mulholland Dr. and True Romance had an immediacy to them that grabbed your attention right away. His choice of images and treatments was always impeccable. Gradually his work has expanded into incorporating images other than film stills, and for his recent work on Midnight Cowboy and Point Blank he has even started including original drawings. His work is also featured on the posters for the Terrence Malick produced film The Better Angels! Getting to watch an artist's work evolve over time is a unique pleasure. I'm grateful to have witnessed this progression and am eager to see where it goes next.

If you love cinema and art (which you should if you're reading this blog) I highly encourage you to check out Midnight Marauder's online exhibition of posters for the films of Robert Altman entitled "It's Okay with Me". Beautiful images for beautiful films!

Anyone's Game...

So it's Oscar time again which means that it is once again time for Craig react to the nominees in stream of conscious fashion! Thanks to the sheer number of good films that came out in 2013, picking a field of nominees that would please everyone was clearly a losing battle, but some of the omissions here seem downright odd. But then again there are some great surprises too. Oh well, here we go!

Best Picture

-Only 9 nominees in a year like this? You couldn't possibly have found another film to fill out that slate? No Short Term 12? Before Midnight? Spectacular Now? Inside Llewyn Davis? Spring Breakers? The list goes on...

-Haven't seen Philomena, Dallas Buyers Club or Captain Phillips yet but the first two seem out of place in this field. Aside from American Hustle (which isn't awful) the rest of the nominees are solid in my opinion.

-Though it doesn't break my heart, it's interesting to see pretty much no love for Saving Mr. Banks.

Lead Actor

-No Oscar Issac? No Tom Hanks?

-Go Bruce Dern!

Lead Actress

-Of course Meryl!

-Amy Adams?

-This is totally a battle between Cate Blanchett and Sandra Bullock. Since Sandy already has her lead Oscar let's give this one to Cate...unless Dench sweeps in and surprises everyone.

-Would have loved to see Brie Larson get love for Short Term 12. Great, great stuff!

-No Emma Thompson?

Supporting Actor

-No Franco?

-Two-time Oscar nominee Jonah Hill? Sure!

-I'm already tired of Jared Leto and apparently he's been using the same speech at every awards show so let's give him a break and how about Michael Fassbender? Or the Somali guy?

Supporting Actress

-Go June Squibb go!

-Take Julia Roberts out and you have one of the most solid categories of the year.

Animated Feature

-The Croods?

-No Monsters University?

Cinematography

Very solid category. Didn't expect to see The Grandmaster get any love but I'll take it.

Best Director

Substitute David O. Russell with Spike Jonze and I'd be happy.

Best Documentary

-CUTIE AND THE BOXER!!!!!!! Awesome!

-No Blackfish? No Stories We Tell? No Leviathan?

-But we all know that this catagory is OWNED by The Act Of Killing Right?

Best Makeup

-Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa

Original Score

-Arcade Fire!

Original Song

-Karen O!

-"Let It Go"!

-Apparently "Alone Yet Not Alone" is from one of those evangelical Christian movies you never hear about like Fireproof and such. How does that get a nomination over ANYTHING from Inside Llewyn Davis?

Sound Editing/Sound Mixing

-I had no clue that Lone Survivor got a limited early limited release for Oscar qualifying....

Visual Effects

-They haven't given this award to Gravity yet?

Adapted Screenplay

-Finally some love for Before Midnight!

Original Screenplay

-Spike!

-Original?

Frida-A-Go-Go

An earlier version of this same article appeared here on July 18, 2013. This version has been altered slightly to reflect the latest crowd-funding info regarding The Frida Cinema which is set to open its doors on February 21, 2014!

Let me tell you about Logan Crow...

When I first encountered Logan I didn't even know his name. This was in the days of Myspace and he was running a profile called Mondo Celluloid which condensed the calendars for all of Southern California's various indie and revival cinemas into one convenient location. As a So-Cal film lover, this was mana from heaven. No longer did I have to go around from site to site to see what was at The Egyptian, The Nuart, or The New Beverly. This man was obviously a genius.

Before long, Logan was programming and hosting his own screenings of classic midnight films like Faster, Pussy Cat! Kill! Kill! and The Forbidden Zone in various local theaters complete with costume contests and special guests in attendance. Due to laziness and an unpredictable work schedule, I was unable to attend any of these early screenings, but when Mr. Crow took up residency at the nearby Art Theatre of Long Beach I no longer had an excuse to miss out on the fun. I decided that I simply had to attend the February 2009 screening of A Clockwork Orange.

Seeing as there was a costume contest component to the screening, I figured this would be a great opportunity to work on my amateur photography skills. In the days leading up to the screening, I reached out to Logan (I think this is where I finally learned his name) and asked if it would be cool for me to take some photos at the screening and if he liked them he could use them on his website as long as he credited me. Being the nice guy that he is, he did me one better: he offered 'Becca'lise and I free admission to the screening! And so began my year-long tenure as official photographer for Mondo Midnights. And oh what a year that was!

Here's a sampling of some of the films I had the pleasure to shoot screenings of: Sid and Nancy (for Valentines Day), Killer Klowns From Outerspace (with the Chiodo Brothers in attendance), The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari (with live rock score), my first Jodorowsky film El Topo, The Toxic Avenger (with Lloyd Kaufman, Toxie and a Tromette), a prom themed Carrie screening and of course the first several Long Beach Zombie Walks!

As much as I loved these screenings, after moving to Orange I had to gracefully bow out. But Logan has just kept going. Mondo Celluloid begat the much more prestigious sounding Long Beach Cinematheque and the Zombie Walk grew into an all day event. He has organized wonderful community events ranging from summer screenings on the beach and family movies in the park to a breast cancer benefit screening where they showed a Russ Meyer film. Wherever there is a screen (or room for one), Logan Crow will find a way to show a great film on it because he eats, drinks, breathes and bleeds cinema.

And now it is time for Logan to take the next logical step in his film fanatic evolution: running his own art house theater! This is where YOU come in:

Since the Frida will be run as a certified non-profit, donations and memberships are absolutely a must! Please for the sake of art and cinema, go to

THIS INDIEGOGO PAGE

and give what you can to make The Frida into the best Art House the world has ever seen! Thank you for your time and see you at the movies.

Movie Resolutions

Psh, look at them. He's not even WATCHING the movie. Also that is the brightest movie theater ever.

Let's talk about New Year's resolutions. A lot of us vow to be healthier this year, more organized, more mindful of this or that. But do you make movie resolutions?

I do! Here are a few:

1. Stop reading message boards and ignore the snobs. I know, I know. But I don't need some tool I don't know telling me why I shouldn't have liked the movie I just saw and loved. Or that the twist I was surprised by was sooooo predictable and anyone who didn't see it coming was stupid. Basically, I need to avoid smug jerks in general. Don't rain on my cinematic parade!

2. Watch at least one new-to-me movie a week. I'm a creature of routine and I really love revisiting old favorites over and over and over (I'm the same way with books). So while it is wonderful to watch The Trouble With Angels for the hundred billionth time, there are a lot of great films out there just waiting for me to discover them!

3. Knock movies off that To See list! I recently got around to watching Hitchcock's Rebecca for the first time, which I'd been meaning to see for years. My first thought (besides WOW that was great!) was WHAT TOOK ME SO LONG? I have a list on my phone of movies I want to see, and so help me God(ard), I will see them!

4. No more bad movie theater experiences! Okay, so I can't control everything that happens in a theater (such as a meltdown during 2001 so extreme the movie had to be stopped, punches were thrown, and supposedly a taser was involved, true story). But I can speak up or move if my seat is being repeatedly kicked or if some of my fellow theater-goers won't shut up. No more will I suffer in silence!

5. Enjoy! This goes hand in hand with the first one. I enjoy movies the most when I step away from other people's opinions and I stop overthinking things.  When I'm able to remember that feeling of wonder when I saw my first silent film, when I watched E.T. and the boys on their bicycles take flight under the stars at the Hollywood Bowl, when I realize how many countless movie scenes still take my breath away, when I realized back in high school just how much movies meant to me, how damn important they are...that's when I'm happiest. I never want to stop loving film.

After these messages...

Prior to binge watching Battlestar Galactica a few years back, I had not given much thought to commercial breaks as a narrative device. But faced with the wholesale removal of the actual commercials themselves, one cannot help but take note of these sporadic cuts to black. I started thinking about the decision of when to cut out and when to cut back. Do you cut back to the very next moment? To a few moments before the cut out? To a completely different scene altogether? With the prevalence of digital streaming, binge viewing is now the norm and people accept this convention countless times a day without batting an eye.

For years I have been waiting to see this convention turn up in a narrative feature film. I've often wondered what the context would be. Would it have to be a film about media? Would it be in a commercial film? Would it be some arty indie or foreign film? Turns out I had already missed the race.

At roughly 43 minutes into Krysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors: Blue, Juliette Binoche's character Julie is asked a difficult question. As she ponders her response, the music swells and the film cuts to black for a few seconds before coming back for her response. Though it's not exactly a commercial break, it's pretty close. But then I remembered the blackouts between scenes in Stranger In Paradise. And who knows, this was probably already done back in the silent era as well. I guess in the end, it just goes to show you that everything that can be done, already has been done. So stop worrying about being original and just make something awesome and personal.

Film Fans Unite!

Take a quick glance at the comment section on any film site and you will plainly see that film lovers cannot agree on anything. Even some of the most unimpeachable classics have their detractors, just as many of the worst films have their champions. Everyone has their own subjective likes and dislikes which inform the opinions they make on everything. Film is no exception. I often get the feeling that the only thing movie lovers can agree on is that they love movies. It is with that fact firmly in mind that I make this appeal to you.

*      *      *

Late on the evening of August 5th, Twitch Film announced that it had come to their attention that Weistein Company Chief, Harvey Weinstein was seeking to cut 20 minutes from South Korean filmmaker Joon-Ho Bong's English language debut Snowpiercer. Though the story made the blog-rounds over the next couple of days, important sites and periodicals like Daily Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline Hollywood Daily and Hollywood Elsewhere have stood virtually mute on the topic. How is this not bigger news?

It's not like we're talking about some epically-long, artsy/experimental, foreign language film. Snowpiercer is about as commercial as it can get. It's sci-fi, in English, based on a comic book, starring Chris "Captain America" Evans. The film has already smashed box office records in South Korea with a director's cut that runs a mere 126 minutes. That's right, this film is 40 minutes shorter than last summer's comic book blockbuster The Dark Knight Rises.

Back in 1985, when Universal wanted to hack off the end of  Brazil, director Terry Gilliam and executive Sid Sheinberg were able to do battle in Jack Mathews' Film Clips column for the Los Angeles Times. Search all you want through a current edition of that same paper, and you will find not a single mention as to what is going on with The Weinstein Company and Snowpiercer. A current Variety piece makes reference to "numerous unconfirmed reports" about the cuts, but why aren't they pressing for confirmation?

Thanks to Twitter and other social media, film critics, film fans and filmmakers are closer than ever, yet where is the collective outrage? On Rotten Tomatoes, Bong's previous five films have an average "fresh rating" of 88.5%. On Metacritic his average is 82% positive. In a medium as divisive as film, those are some pretty solid numbers. People like this guy's work and judging by the reaction in South Korea, this film is not an exception to the rule.

Now I'm not saying that we have to do anything as brash as when the Los Angeles Film Critics Association forced Universal's hand by voting Gilliam's cut of Brazil as the Best Picture of 1985, but can't we as a film loving community at least do something? Can't we hound larger media outlets to give this story some coverage? Can't we get #HarveyScissorhands trending on twitter? Can't we let Bong know that we are in his corner and that we desire to see his vision on screen as he intended it? Chris Evans has to be diplomatic in the way he talks about this issue, we do not. Let's take what little power we have and do some good with it!