Cap'n Howdy's Best of 2013: Inside Llewyn Davis

 Dave Van Ronk (1936-2002) was a particularly influential figure in the New York folk music scene during the early 1960s, to the point he was nicknamed "The Mayor of MacDougal Street." Among other clubs for music and poetry on MacDougal Street was the Gaslight Cafe, and Van Ronk's fourth album went by the title "Inside Dave Van Ronk." After reading Elijah Wald's The Mayor of MacDougal Street, Joel and Ethan Coen decided to make their follow-up to True Grit a true-ish story about the folk music scene in the very early 60s.

Inside Llewyn Davis opens and closes in 1961 at the Gaslight Cafe, where Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is performing, possibly for the last time. Increasingly frustrated by musicians around him finding success with insipid lyrics and trite gimmicks, Davis has been abandoned by his agent and told he isn't commercial enough by the most influential folk club in Chicago. His previous musical life as a duo ended abruptly, but everyone wants to talk about his old partner. He has nowhere to live, doesn't have enough money, and is stuck with a cat he doesn't want. Oh, and some guy just beat him up in the alleyway behind the club.

  Joel and Ethan Coen's latest film may be their most depressing effort to date, and this is from the brothers who brought us Barton Fink and No Country for Old Men. And yet, it resonated deeply with me. Yes, it's a relentlessly downbeat movie, whose laughs come tinged with a sardonic bite, mostly tied to Llewyn's disgust for other musicians. He asks his friend Jim (Justin Timberlake) is the "singing soldier" Troy Nelson (Stark Sands) if he "serves a higher purpose," because he can't believe people take him seriously. Jim's girlfriend Jean (Carey Mulligan) despises Llewyn, and at her kindest regards him with contempt. It's all the more complicated because Jean is pregnant, and she's not sure if it's Jim's or Llewyn's, so Davis has to pony up the money to terminate it. He doesn't have it, and can't ask Jim without Jean finding out. Llewyn's life is a series of bad, impulsive decisions - at least for the week we spend with him.

 Instead of a story of "has been's," Inside Llewyn Davis is a story of a "never was," punctuated with the presence of a legend in the making, but more on that in a little bit. Llewyn moans and groans about how horrible many of the other songs are, but he doesn't write his own material (like Jim), he just performs songs "you might have heard before." After all, they "were never new and they never get old, and it's folk music." As ridiculous as many of the songs in the film seem to Llewyn (and, by proxy, the audience), at least one of them, "500 Miles" was a hit for Peter, Paul and Mary. A novelty song that Davis records with Jim and Al Cody (Adam Driver) about Kennedy and the space program could net him royalties, but afraid to tell Mel (Jerry Grayson), his agent, that he took a "for hire" gig, he takes a quick payout and signs away any future earnings. But at least his sister Joy (Jeanine Seralles) thinks he's a famous musician.

 Audiences have been lukewarm to Inside Llewyn Davis, perhaps because the titular character is so unlikeable, so pessimistic. To be fair, most of the characters in the film are hard to warm to, either because they're horrible people or because Llewyn hates them for seemingly arbitrary reasons. Troy Nelson seems to be a nice guy, but Davis regards him with nothing but disdain. When Llewyn takes a job riding to Chicago with washed up jazz musician Roland Turner (John Goodman), he's continually insulted for not playing "real" music and finds no help in the monosyllabic Johnny Five (Garrett Hedlund), Turner's driver. Even the cat wants to get away - Davis is initially stuck with him when he escapes the apartment of Mitch and Lillian Gorfein (Ethan Phillips and Robin Bartlett), but Llewyn is insistent of keeping the cat around, even when he realizes he brought the wrong one back to the Gorfeins.

 It is true that Inside Llewyn Davis is a tricky movie to like, even by the Coen brothers standards, but after I finished it (and enjoyed it), days later I found it stuck with me. I kept thinking about the film, and I needed to watch it again. Like Barton Fink, it makes an immediate impression, but also grows on you. There's a sadness in the hopelessness of Llewyn's story, but beneath that I sense a desire to make something, to do something with your life, even if things clearly aren't working out. Llewyn's  stubbornness to do it on his terms up until nearly the end of the film that counterbalances the jaded and cynical characters. But don't expect even a sliver of hope as Inside Llewyn Davis comes to a close: you won't find it. Strange for a movie based on someone considered by most to be jovial and beloved.

 Which brings us back to the first paragraph: Inside Llewyn Davis is "based on" (or even "inspired by") Dave Van Ronk in the same way that O Brother, Where Art Thou is "based on" The Odyssey: it's more of a springboard to tell their own story than an account of the influential and beloved Mayor of MacDougal Street. There are a few actual connections: most of the songs Oscar Isaac performs are ones you'll find on Dave Van Ronk albums; Jim and Jean were an actual duo, and they aren't the only actual people to make it into this fictionalized version of the folk scene. Inside Llewyn Davis closes with perhaps the most potent juxtaposition between our "never was" protagonist and arguably the most famous figure to emerge from the New York folk scene. Blink and you'll miss the silhouette of the singer who follows Llewyn, but once they start playing, you'll know exactly who it is. The song, playing over a scene we were presented without context at the opening of the film, is a potent coda for Inside Llewyn Davis.

 What helps, I think, to ease the bleakness of the story is T-Bone Burnett's choices in music, performed almost entirely by the actor on camera singing. Isaac sings all of Llewyn's songs, and while we only see his partner Mike Timlin on a record sleeve, he's joined by Marcus Mumford for "Dink's Song (Fare Thee Well)" an upbeat tune that eases the on-screen frustration of our protagonist. Fans of folk music are going to find plenty of lesser known songs to recognize (even "Please Mr. Kennedy" is an actual song) while audiences who don't know the scene so well might simply assumed they were invented for the film. The music serves a similar effect as in O Brother to move the narrative along and to punctuate important moments.

 I don't know if Inside Llewyn Davis is going to stick with the rest of you the way it did with me. It is true that I am a fan of the Coen brothers, and it won't take too much digging on this site to find a series of essays on their films. Where does this fit into their body of work? Into their (increasingly downplayed or outright denied) auteur canon? Well, there is a continued theme of "true" art being crushed by commerce, or feeling de-legitimized and surrounded by mediocrity that's evident in Barton Fink. John Goodman returns for the first time since O Brother, Where Art Thou, and it has a similarly begotten upon protagonist as A Serious Man. There's even a shot of windshield wipers in rain that immediately brought Blood Simple to mind, as strange as that might sound.

 This is not the affable Coen brothers that audiences tend to embrace, and there's little of the quirky charm found in Fargo, but if you liked The Man Who Wasn't There or A Serious Man or Barton Fink, I think you'll enjoy Inside Llewyn Davis. A darker Coen brothers movie is still something working paying attention to, but be prepared to work a little bit. They won't make it easy on you, and in this film in particular, nothing comes easy. But the soundtrack helps. And the cat acting - I know they hated working with cats, but how they got some of those shots is mighty impressive. Cat acting... that seems like a good place to leave this review on. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to listen to "Dink's Song" again...

"C" is for Critters 3

 I don't think I've ever seen Critters 3, and it's been a long time since I saw Critters or Critters 2. I definitely never saw Critters 4 based on the way that this movie ends, although since it ends with a "To Be Continued..." I might have to suck it up and finish off the series.

 This sure was a different movie than I remembered the Critters films being, so I went back and checked the first two movies. See, I remember them being sorta sci-fi / horror blends with a little bit of goofy comedy, but I didn't really remember there being subtitles that explained what the critters were saying to each other (there sure were) or that the tone was so kid-friendly (although the protagonists are definitely pre-teens in Critters and Critters 2). Sure enough, when I looked they're all rated PG-13, so maybe I'm remembering them being more violent than they were.

 Either way, Critters 3 is pretty fun but it's hard to argue that it isn't a dumb movie for kids for most of its 86 minutes. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing, but I definitely wasn't expecting some of the goofy shenanigans on display in this here movie. You know, the second sequel to Critters. Oh, who am I kidding?

 Critters 3 starts out in much the same way that O Brother Where Art Thou? does not, with some cheesy synthesizer music and a cartoony title font that let's you know this here is going to be some goofy shit, but then Clifford (John Calvin) and his kids Annie (Aimee Brooks) and Johnny (Christian and Joseph Cousins) are driving along singing "Big Rock Candy Mountain." I didn't see that coming, but I bet the Coen brothers did. It probably inspired them. Yup, I'm sticking with that.

 Clifford is on his way back from vacation with Annie and Johnny when they run over some firecrackers* and the tire blows out. They have to pull into an RV camp, where Johnny goes to throw his frisbee and almost goes over a steep incline. He's saved by Josh (Django Unchained's Leonardo DiCaprio), another kid hanging out with his mother (Nina Axelrod) and asshole stepfather (William Dennis Hunt), and said asshole stepfather feels the need to be all rich and obnoxious to Clifford while he changes his tire.

 The kids eventually do throw the frisbee off of the incline (technically, it's Leo's fault) and they run into this crazy survivalist named Charlie (Don Opper), who if I had remembered Critters 1 or 2 well enough I would have recognized as the nerdy guy who becomes apprentice intergalactic bounty hunter. Fortunately for me and all of the kids in the audience circa 1991, Charlie explains what happened in the first two movies, complete with flashback footage to jog our memories. It's also done in this obviously "kiddie" tone that's hard to explain unless you're watching it, but think of how everybody acts or is treated in Mac and Me and you'll have a pretty good idea. That's when I realized that this was not going to be a horror movie.

 Of course, Critters 3 decided to trick me when the family leaves the RV park and we jump ahead to the apartment complex they normally live in. We meet the sleazeball electrician Frank (Geoffrey Blake) who is in charge of chasing all of the tenants out. Said tenants include all of the stereotypes for "apartment" in movies: the fat lady who lives downstairs, the old couple upstairs with the husband who is a conspiracy theorist, the lady who works for the phone company that Annie is trying to get her dad involved with...

 Oh yeah, I didn't mention that, did I? So in addition to Clifford working for the railroad and being away from his kids a lot, causing family strife, he's also a widower after the result of something horrible happening to Annie and Johnny's mother. It's not explicitly stated in the film, but I'm guessing it had something to do with why the elevator at the apartment complex doesn't work. Anyway there's this family drama and a sleazeball mechanic who lives in the basement, so you could forgive my slight confusion. Also, the family unwittingly brings home critter eggs. Hey, you go to the RV park, you never know what could come back with you...

 The critters hatch and begin eating people, as they are prone to do, and at least when they kill Frank there's some suspense. But then Rosalie (Diana Bellamy) goes downstairs to see what happened to her laundry and they fail to kill the fat lady, so I kinda knew the score from there on out.

 Luckily, it turns out the asshole stepfather also turns out to be the asshole landlord, and he drags Josh over to the building in the hopes of evicting everybody without having to pay their "relocation fee" before turning the complex into a strip mall. I wonder if he's going to die or not? If it helps, in one of the best "that's why they couldn't call for help," he cuts the phone lines and turns off the power, just because he's that much of an asshole. So yes, of course the critters eat him.

 And nobody else. That's right, while they attack Rosalie and Clifford, they never kill another person in the movie, because everybody else is basically good so they don't need to die. This is the kind of movie that juxtaposes bowling on TV with Annie rolling a trash can down the stairs at critters, complete with a strike for both!

 I'm not actually bagging on Critters 3 because for what it is, it's all right. Certainly better than a lot of "part 3"'s that I can think of (okay, maybe two). This is definitely a movie that "borrows" from Gremlins 2: The New Batch (released the year before), particularly during the section of the movie where the critters just give up on chasing the tenants and goof around in the kitchen. One of them drinks soap and another one eats beans, and then there's a pie fight and antiquing, and I'll let you guess if one of the critters farts or burps bubbles (SPOILER: they do).

 Despite the goofy tone, there are some novel solutions to "getting help" that don't quite pan out but I hadn't necessarily seen in this kind of movie. It isn't always as dumb and obvious as I feared it might be, and when there is gore it's pretty good. Critters 3 was written by David J. Schow (The Crow, Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, which Critters 3 is better than) and was directed by Kristine Peterson, who made, uh, Kickboxer 5 and Body Chemistry, but who was also Assistant Director on Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Tremors and Chopping Mall, so she's all right in my book. They both do a pretty good job here of balancing two diametrically opposed genres, and even if it's not as successful as The Monster Squad or The Gate, Critters 3 is entertaining enough.

 This comes in the period of DiCaprio's filmography before he was in This Boy's Life and What's Eating Gilbert Grape and right around the same time he was on Growing Pains, so he's okay. I mean, it's hard to distinguish him from the other kids in the movie other than the fact that he grew up to be the guy who Martin Scorsese works with all of the time, but in 1991 it's not like he was leaps and bounds better than Aimee Brooks or the two kids who played Johnny. He's probably more memorable in The Quick and the Dead, but you have to start out somewhere, right? It's not like they elevated his name on the cover like they did for Jennifer Aniston with Leprechaun.

 Anyway, so as Critters movies go I guess this is one of them. It's a respectable effort and reminds me of the days when New Line Cinema would make these little genre movies and everybody seems to be having a good time doing it. Back before David Fincher and those hobbits made it all prestigious and crap...

 Speaking of "prestigious crap," our next movie stars Django Unchained cameo have-r Franco Nero. And it's not Die Hard 2: Die Harder... or is it?

 * Speculation on the Cap'n's part.

Retro Review: Burn After Reading

 editor's note: In his continuing quest to re-post older reviews that never made it from the old Blogorium to its present home, Cap'n Howdy has been delivering piles of digital bits to me in the hopes I know what to do with it. Some movies are older than others, but most of these come from a period between 2006 and 2009, when the move took place. Enjoy

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I promised Eck's Mass schwag, and we'll get to that momentarily. I wanted to start by thanking Tom for the awesome gift he delivered unto me via my box at work, Burn After Reading.

  About halfway through the last semester, the film students started yapping about how excited they were about Burn After Reading following No Country for Old Men yadda yadda, and it wasn't a total surprise to hear almost all of them bagging on the movie the week after release. It didn't come as much of a surprise because I suspected a retread of the Fargo to Lebowski situation in the late nineties, and having finished Burn After Reading, that's exactly what happened.

  It seems like the bigger a phenomenon a Coen Brothers film is, the more likely they are to follow it up with something totally off the wall. After O Brother Where Art Thou turned into a bluegrass sensation, they made The Man Who Wasn't There, a really bizarre tribute to film noir in black in white that lost pretty much all but the die hard fans. Going back before that, Fargo proved to be something of a curious hit that caught on with non-Coen fandom, and then they released The Big Lebowski, a movie that confounded average audiences and took five or six years to really achieve the cult status it has now.

  Burn After Reading is not likely going to have that kind of cult audience ten years from now, but that doesn't make it a disappointment. If anything, it might be remembered as a sort of Hudsucker Proxy for aficionados down the line*. Burn After Reading is the Coens take on espionage films, packed (like Lebowski) with idiots.

   What's funny is how straight they play the "thriller" angle, down to the way too serious music. But that's not actually what the movie's about. As Adam put it, BAR is about "one woman's quest for plastic surgery by any means necessary", and it's really hard to argue against that, especially by the end. Everything in between is a comedy of errors set in motion by selfish morons trolling around and being generally despicable. It's not hard to see why people find this movie difficult to like.

  Of course, if I boiled down The Big Lebowski to "a stoner who wanders around trying to get his rug back while dealing with a series of selfish assholes", you might not rush to see that either. Plot is rarely the most important part of a Coen Brothers film. They're more interested in seeing how characters interact, and damn do they have an interesting cast assembled.

  By now you've seen Frances McDormand and George Clooney all over the trailers, with a smattering of John Malkovich and Brad Pitt. Pitt's Chad Feldheimer steals every scene of the movie he's in, and you've really never seen him play a character like this. I would liken it to Clooney in O Brother Where Art Thou, where he really cuts loose and feels free to be goofy.

  However, I don't want to take anything away from Tilda Swinton, Richard Jenkins, or my two favorite parts of Burn After Reading, the CIA agents in charge of making sense of the shenanigans you'd call a plot. J.K. Simmons and David Rasche pop in at various points in the film, not so much to catch us up but to further address how ridiculous the plot twists get. Many of you know who Simmons is, but it was a real treat to see Rasche, of tv's Sledge Hammer in the movie.

  The film may never attain "cult classic" status, but it's nowhere near the mess you might have heard it was. Of course, film students who cannot remember their film history are doomed to repeat it...

Retro Review: The YAD Archives (Part Three)

 Welcome back to another edition of the Blogorium's Retro Review. Today we're going to continue looking back at a series of reviews written for defunct online magazine You're All Doomed. Previously we took a look at reviews from 2005 and at the output of guest blogger Professor Murder. Turning the wayback machine a little further, let's take a look at a few movies from 2004.

 Once again, a bit of a disclaimer: these reviews represent a proto-Cap'n Howdy and accordingly they don't look like what I write today. They're shorter, tend to make logical leaps and assume the audience will simply follow, and sometimes contain erroneous information because I was more interested in getting reactions out unspoiled rather than fact checking and researching before and during the writing process. I am, however, leaving them untouched in order to represent the original material.

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The Ladykillers

no immediate star review.

I'm sort of torn about Joel and Ethan Coen's The Ladykillers. Part of me genuinely likes the movie; the twisted sense of humor, the (somewhat absurd) denouement, Tom Hanks. Another part of me recognizes that it's slight, virtually nonexistent plot is padded out with wild caricatures instead of characters, and that almost as much of the movie doesn't work as does. Let's take it bit by bit:

The Good -

Tom Hanks: Ever the curious exception to the rule, Hanks will do a run of family friendly pap, and with little provocation will jump into cahoots with strange little projects that are poorly received (The Burbs, Joe vs The Volcano) When I heard he was working with the Coens, there was little concern on my part. They are, after all, largely responsible (along with Steven Sodebergh and Robert Rodriguez) for bringing George Clooney back from the abyss of crap like The Peacemaker. Hanks invests every bizarre peccadillo into Professor G.H. Dorr, and watching him dig into this character is in itself a riot.

Cameo work by Bruce Campbell, Stephen Root, and George Wallace: Little things that make the Coen movies so fun. Sure, there's no Buscemi this time out, not even John Tuturro, but Coen-like flourishes are what make their movies almost a genre unto itself.

Irma P. Hall: WIthout Hall, Hanks would have nothing to work with. As the straight woman of the piece (who's anything but) she anchors the film and gives everyone something to react to. And the disdain for "hippity hop", or, more specifically, "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo" by a Tribe Called Quest.

The Bad -

The rest of the cast: Normally, I'm as big a J.K. Simmons fan as you'll find. He's a pitch perfect J. Jonah Jameson, and had a small but memorable role in O Brother. But here he's working with nothing better than fart jokes. And bad fart jokes at that. Marlon Wayans has a little more to do, and to be fair, he isn't as grating as usual, but being the character known for nonstop profanity is a little one note. Of course, the rest of the crooks (Ryan Hurst, Tzi Ma) have even less to do, and their moments to shine are accordingly lackluster.

The Pacing: This movie seems like it's over in no time, and while some might look at that as a good thing, I felt cheated. Yes, the plot is slight, the tension is basically nonexistent, but there was nothing to really lock on to while watching it. The Ladykillers is so schizophrenic that when it does end you wonder what the hell you just did.

The Fact that You Can Rent the REAL Ladykillers: In the scope of remakes, this isn't the worst, but it can't hold a candle to the original. Something about the british sensiblity is lost in americanizing it (i realize how obvious the previous statement is, but nevertheless) and while I loved Hanks in the movie, he's no Alec Guinness. Or even Peter Sellers, who was on screen for the first time in the original Ladykillers.

So, where are we? ratings, right. let's do this three ways.

As a Coen Brothers Movie: It ranks above Intolerable Cruelty, but just barely. This is lower end Coens. 2 stars

As a remake: It's better than Psycho or Shaft. Even better than The Planet of the Apes. But it's no Scarface, or even Willard. 2.5 stars

As a Hanks/Hall showcase: Here, as the only movie in its category, does it truly shine. 3.5 stars.

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May

3.5 stars

May isn't a horror movie. Well, it is, but it's just as much black comedy and character portrait as an edge of your seat kill fest. Gorehounds might be disappointed by the lack of truly violent moments, but even when things spiral in the third act, May is more about character than kill.

May Dove Canady, when we meet her, is being fitted with a patch for her lazy eye. As a little girl who doesn't relate well to others, she mistakenly scares off friends by telling them she is not, in fact, a pirate. Her mother, an odd bird herself, decides to remedy the situation by making a doll for May. But her owned skewed sense of reality prevents May from even enjoying this when the doll can't ever leave its glass case.

When we catch up with May later on in life (played by Angela Bettis), she's a painfully lonely and withdrawn young woman with a crush on Adam (Jeremy Sisto), and a job working at the local vet. When a chance encounter brings the possiblity of something more, then things get complicated.

Now it sounds like I've told you a lot, but that's the first fifteen minutes of the movie. Along the way we meet the coworker hot for May (Anna Faris of Scary Movie and Lost in Translation), a punk with a tattoo she admires (James Duvall of Donnie Darko) and a class full of blind children. If I'm being vague, well I sort of need to be. Telling you too much, or even just regurgitating the back of the DVD would give away where the movie goes (although an astute viewer can pick it up pretty early on). What works in May is Angela Bettis. At no point during her character arc does a decision seem out of place or unbelievable, and she's a magnetic lead. Sisto doesn't fare as well; he's sort of a bore and doesn't have much to do in the movie except react. Faris is in the same boat. She spends most of the movie acting "come hither" to May, and by the end we're a little surprised she's so relaxed by what's going on. Duvall doesn't actually have anything to do, but it was nice to see Frank the Bunny in another movie.

Lucky McKee uses a lot of first time director tricks to keep the story going: jump cuts, music montages, but in the context of playing things out through May's point of view, it works. While it doesn't succeed on all fronts (for one, the film takes itself far too seriously), he's managed to craft a fine little fable and shows a lot of promise down the line.

That he's managed to wrangle horror icon Bruce Campbell into his second movie, The Woods, is a pretty good indication that Lucky McKee has a solid future in the world of low budget fright flicks. Don't get me wrong, this isn't an indictment of an indication of his skills. Rather, I'm glad to see the new crop of horror directors slowly build their reputations. While May, like Cabin Fever, isn't a home run on the first try, it's better than a lot of the remakes and sequels that pass for horror these days.
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Hellraiser: Hellseeker

NEGATIVE STARS

Let's face it, folks. There are no more Hellraiser movies. They stopped making 'em after 3, and the sooner you get used to it, the better off all of us are. Bondage freaks and Pinheadites may scream "But NO! NO! You just haven't seen the original cut of BLOODLINE! Heathen scum!" Bollocks to that. Just like Halloween, there's a cut off point and begging to include a crap sequel doesn't sit well with me. But since there's a suggestion I ought to finish this "review", let us discuss the relative merits (or lack thereof) of Hellseeker:

At first glance, this is THE Hellraiser sequel people have been looking for. Bringing Ashley Laurence back into the mix as Kirsty for the first time since "Hell on Earth" would in theory be the jolt this series needs to get back on track, but wait.... she's on screen about as much as Pinhead was in Hellraiser: Inferno (which is only barely a Hellraiser movie, but gory as hell). For the rest of Hellseeker, we follow the helplessly emotionless Dean Winters (of Oz fame) who seems incapable of playing his scenes any way other than snarky. And when you're the bereaved husband of the supposedly drowned Kirsty, snarky doesn't cut it. But wait, did she drown? Scenes bleed together from painfully unerotic encounters to baffling and pointless work and police interrogations (and that's no typo. every point he enters his cubicle, the obnoxious "co-worker" asks the same stupid questions the same stupid ways over and over) I suppose we're meant to question his reality, but this reviewer stopped caring about twenty minutes in. Vanilla Sky this isn't, although Vanilla Hell does aptly describe watching Hellseeker. To spare you the curiousity of what the "twist" is:

Idiot buys the Lament Configuration for Kirsty on their anniversary, she opens it and talks to Pinhead. They make a deal that she can deliver five souls more rotten than this movie, and his is the last. So, viola! The ENTIRE movie is Dean Winters coming to grips with being in hell. *Yawn*

Is it gory, you say? No. If you want gory Hellraiser movies, this isn't your flick. In fact, Hellseeker really has nothing going for it, and I'd be pleased as punch to report to you this DTV ditty was the last, but oh no, we have two more to look forward to: Hellraiser - Deader (I shit you not. Starring Kari Wuhrer), and Hellraiser - Hellworld (with Lance Henrikson). Actually, the premise of Hellworld is classic, so I'll close this review with the plot outline from IMDB.com:

Pinhead returns to terrorize computer hackers that have opened a virtual Lament Configuration on the website Hellworld.com.


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Exorcist: The Beginning Review

2 Stars (out of Five)

I know everyone's expecting a straight pan of this movie; to be honest i went in expecting to hate it, and to be sure, i was mostly correct. Exorcist: The Beginning, is in some ways every bit as bad as Exorcist 2: Heretic, and just as dumb as any other big budget horror movie of its ilk (by that i'm referring to such ditties as Lost Souls, Bless the Child, The Order, or any Omen movie that isn't the first one) The problem is that E:B could have been something good indeed.

To be fair, Beginning has some good things going for it. Stellan Skarsgard is excellent playing a younger Father Merrin, and since much of the movie rests on his shoulders, it is a relief they didn't cast Ryan Phillipe or Kerr Smith, who are much to young, and would've likely fallen hard with the rest of the movie. The rest of the cast either struggle to maintain some credibility, or simply fall into the abyss of over acting.

But let's get into why this movie is so bad. As many of you may know, the Exorcist prequel floated around for a while from director to director (John Frankenheimer was originally slated to direct, but left the project a month before his passing) when Paul Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver and directed Auto Focus, came on board, he set out with the intention of making a psychological thriller instead of a bloodbath that producers wanted. He made his movie, and was promptly fired. In order to guarantee they'd have the film they were paying for, producers turned to Renny Harlin. (now, before i get into Harlin bashing, let me go ahead and say that A Nightmare on Elm Street 4, Die Hard 2, and The Long Kiss Goodnight remain to this day on my list of guilty pleasures) Known for such gems as Deep Blue Sea, Cutthroat Island, and The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, naturally he was the obvious choice to continue the Exorcist series. Thusly, most of the film was reshot to include more graphic violence, include a love interest(?!) for Merrin, and the most ridiculous exorcism ever put on film. Rumour goes that about 20 minutes of the movie is still actually Schrader's, and to Harlin's credit, for the first hour and change I couldn't tell what belonged to who.

And therein lies the problem. The first three quarters of this movie is, with a few exceptions, pretty good. It is at least better than Heretic, and on par with The Exorcist 3 (and Legion isn't really that terrible as these types of movies go) There are a couple of suspensful moments, and while it is overly bloody, the mystery surrounding a church buried in East Africa is intriguing. However, things start to fall apart in the third act (specifically when the Sandstorm hits) and if you're not into spoilers, i'd go ahead and get out of here now, because we're veering that way. From this point out, this movie is a joke. Now, i need to take a moment out and discuss the truly horrendus CGI in this movie, because for the bulk of the film, you just try to tune it out (the Hyenas stand out in particular, because they ruin an otherwise well thought out sequence involving children in peril) but when the sandstorm rolls in, looking like b-roll footage from The Mummy Returns, you know things are in trouble. How bad does it get? Well, there's the British soldiers fighting with the Tribesmen in an unnecessarily brutal and pointless sequence, or perhaps the bait and switch bit on who is actually possessed, or perhaps the aforementioned exorcism, which takes place in the pagan temple beneath the church and culminates with the Captain Howdy (i won't spoil all of it for you) literally flying down a tunnel towards Merrin as he tries to cast out Satan. Seriously. Not only does it take all of the punch out of the actual exorcism in the first movie (were you to watch them chronologically) but it's laugh out loud stupid. But the coup de gras is actually the very ending, where they blow two key opportunities to make up for this slight. Merrin is back in Italy, renewed faith, etc, and the moment comes where he stands up from the table, puts on the hat everyone recognizes, and walks off towards the Vatica- oh wait! Remember those rotten effects i mentioned? Well, Father Merrin walks off into the Green Screen where a painfully fake looking picture of the Vatican is, and they don't even have the sense to play Tubular Bells. *sigh.

Perhaps Paul Schrader's cut (which is purported to be coming out on dvd) is the movie this franchise deserved, and we shall see. As it stands, Exorcist: Beginning is a painfully schizophrenic movie that isn't sure what it wants to be, and to me, it stinks.

Retro Review: Bad Santa

 Picking up where we left off last week, Bad Santa was released on November 21st, 2003. That puts it out of the range of "movies we saw on Christmas night" but is certainly something we saw leading up to the Holidays. If I remember correctly, that was the winter between jobs, so I had time to be around town and see several movies with friends. It is unclear to me whether I saw Bad Santa with Professor Murder or with Cranpire. I attribute this to the fact that we saw it in the same auditorium of the Crossroads 20 where I saw Ghost World twice, once with each person. Even though Ghost World played a full two years before Bad Santa, I am frequently conflating the memories thanks to director Terry Zwigoff.

 Going in, this was what we knew about Bad Santa: it was from the same director as Crumb and Ghost World, the Coen brothers produced the film and possibly wrote an early version of the story, and Billy Bob Thornton was the "bad Santa" in question. Beyond that, the anemic trailer did an okay job drawing us in:



 Thankfully, the vulgarity was immediately worth the price of admission. Bad Santa is a filthy movie, one that doesn't really cave in to the "bad guys turns nice" ending (a holiday predecessor to Gran Torino, I like to think), and we laughed our asses off. I'd share the litany of horrible things Willie mutters, but it's more fun to let you discover it for yourselves. Bad Santa is a spiritual sibling to The Ref, but one that laces its cynicism with grossly inappropriate behavior on all parts.

 It wasn't until later (following the existence of Badder Santa) that I learned Zwigoff was angry with the cut released by Miramax, apparently one that included narration and additional sequences he had nothing to do with. While I can imagine that I may have been able to objectively sit down and watch the Director's Cut of Bad Santa, I made the mistake of watching Zwigoff's Art School Confidential first, a movie I found to be pretentious and obvious in its criticism of "audience expectations." His shorter cut of Bad Santa removed everything that Zwigoff wasn't involved in, restoring the film to a disjointed, sloppy, sarcastic slice of nihilism that played like Kevin Smith's early cut of Clerks.

 Count me among the unwashed, illiterate masses if you like, but the Weinsteins did Bad Santa a service by tinkering with the director's vision. I hate saying that, but I take a similar stance with 20th Century Fox's theatrical version of Donnie Darko, made with the concessions of Richard Kelly (but against his desires). Zwigoff pushed his outsider characters too far beyond a film that's worth investing time in, and his cut plays like a Todd Solondz film without the laughs. Yes, feel free to stop and let that last sentence sink in. The self satisfied commentary where he lambasts the "dumbing down" of his film doesn't help the Director's Cut either, but that's neither here nor there.

 Anyway, I have one last anecdote about Bad Santa, or more specifically the Badder Santa DVD. I brought it home to show to my family in December of 2004, and my father was appalled at the rampart bad taste on display. The following year, I bought a copy of the DVD, put it in a shoebox surrounded by coal, and scrawled "Merry F'n Christmas from Bad Santa" and left it under the tree for him. For some reason, he's never opened the DVD. But he did keep the box. Strange.

Retro Review: The Big Lebowski

 It's true, gang - the Cap'n has never reviewed The Big Lebowski in any incarnation of the Blogorium. I mention it all of the time, and have talked about seeing the film and its impact on teenage Cap'n (seven years of trouble!), but it's never had a proper review here. Since the film arrives on Blu-Ray today, it seems only fair that I finally assess the movie that went from being the Coen brother's follow-up to Fargo into a genuine cult phenomenon in its own right.

 Jeff Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) is better known as The Dude, a free spirit bumming around in Los Angeles circa 1991. The Dude likes to smoke a little pot, drink White Russians, and bowl with league partners Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) and Donny Kerabatsos (Steve Buscemi). Their only concern is advancing during round robin tournaments until two thugs (Phillip Moon and Mark Pellegrino) break into The Dude's apartment and pee on his rug. They work for Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara), and Lebowski's wife Bunny (Tara Reid) owes Treehorn money. The only problem for The Dude is that he's not married. Bunny is married to Jeffrey Lebowski (David Huddleston) - the "Big Lebowski" from the title - and when The Dude tries to replace his rug, he's drawn into a kidnapping plot involving nihilists (Peter Stormare, Flea, Torsten Voges, and Aimee Mann), rival private detectives (Jon Polito), Lebowski's daughter Maude (Julianne Moore) and missing toes. Can The Dude abide all of this?

 Die-hard Lebowski fans already know I left two key components out of the film: The Stranger (Sam Elliot), and Jesus (John Turturro). I also didn't mention Saddam Hussein, the Busby Berkeley-inspired dream sequences, Lebowski's butler Brandt (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), Smokey (Jimmie Dale Gilmore), Walter's show dog, Maude's friend Knox Harrington (David Thewlis), Autobahn, Logjammin', Larry Sellers (Jesse Flanagan), The Dude's landlord Marty (Jack Kehler) or his performance art. Or half a dozen other memorable moments from The Big Lebowski.

 I also haven't covered how imminently quotable The Big Lebowski is, from "8 year olds, Dude" to "that, and a pair of testicles" to "shut the fuck up, Donny" or  "this is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass" or "you are entering a world of pain" to "you don't fuck with the Jesus man!" I'm sure I left out your favorite quote, but that's okay. The Big Lebowski has something for everyone - it's a distillation of Raymond Chandler concepts dropped into a laid back comedy from Joel and Ethan Coen. The funny thing is that The Big Lebowski wasn't always The Big Lebowski.

 The first time I saw The Big Lebowski, it was nearly as an afterthought - I had seen the trailer, which gives you no idea whatsoever the movie was about:



 See what I mean? The spots running on television didn't exactly inspire confidence, either:



 Critical responses were mixed, from the amiable but slightly dismissive Roger Ebert to conflicted pans from Jonathan Rosenbaum, and Todd McCarthy. The general impression I had as The Big Lebowski made it to theatres was "well, it's no 'Fargo'" and foolishly I waited. It took a good friend of mine to talk me into seeing The Big Lebowski ("you MUST see this movie") as it was winding down a run at the $1.50 theatre. In 1998, it wasn't the movie it is now; The Big Lebowski was a film seem by a small audience of devoted fans who went gaga for the off-kilter tone and loopy characters. The Dude was a hero to many, and over the next ten years, the cult grew.

 So too did the film's reputation - on VHS and DVD, The Big Lebowski became the film to share with friends, the great part movie. Before long there were Lebowski Fests, and eventually it wasn't odd to see t-shirts, bumper stickers, and posters devoted to The Dude. Hell, I have a "The Dude Abides" bumper magnet that's slowly fading from legibility on my car, and if you've seen any of the "photo" posts I do from time to time, you know I love to use that picture of Jeff Bridges dressed as The Dude while wearing his Tron helmet. I am unabashedly a fan of The Big Lebowski, but have never felt like a part of the Lebowski "cult" - I just loved the movie and so did everybody I knew. It never occurred to me to think of Lebowski like people regard The Rocky Horror Picture show, but that is kind of what happened. It's almost inconceivable now that people didn't want to see The Big Lebowski, so I'm glad that's flipped almost all the way around.

Blogorium Review: Crimewave

 Crimewave is not what one would call a "good" movie. It lacks consistency in tone, the lead protagonists are milquetoast (at best), and many of what I presume to be jokes fall flat, especially in the beginning. Generally speaking, there's a reason that Sam Raimi fans aren't aware of (or haven't seen) his follow-up to The Evil Dead, and not just because it isn't readily available in the U.S.: it's a tough nut to crack, and only the most devoted fans of  Raimi and the Coen brothers - who co-wrote the script - are going to want to give it a go. That said, the film has some quirks that I rather enjoyed; small touches that at least place Crimewave in the fairer category of "interesting failure."


 Okay, bear with me here - the synopsis sounds more complicated than it is, something that should be familiar to most fans of Joel and Ethan Coen: Victor Ajax (Reed Birney) is on death row for his involvement in a crime spree in a one-block area of Detroit, Michigan, along with some highway chicanery and murder. Except that Vic didn't do any of it: his bosses, Ernest Trend (Edward R. Pressman) and Donald Odegard (Hamid Dana) are feuding over the control of their security company, and when Odegard makes a deal to sell the property to Renaldo "The Heel" (Bruce Campbell), Trend decides its in his wife's best interest to kill Odegard. He hires Faron Crush (Paul Smith) and Arthur Coddish (Brion James), exterminators who work "in all sizes" to take out Odegard, but ends up their victim as well, and Helene Trend (Louise Lasser), who saw the whole thing from her apartment across the street, becomes their next target. Meanwhile, Vic is trying to win over Nancy (Sheree J. Wilson), the girl of his dreams, but she happens to be with Renaldo. Madness ensues.

 What I told you amounts to maybe the first ten minutes of this 83 minute movie, which rushes to put every piece of the mousetrap in place, and then hits the switch to see what happens next. The madcap tone of the film, likely inspired by Raimi and the Coen's love of Preston Sturges films, really doesn't gel early on, even if everyone behaves as though it does. Paul Smith's voice is clearly dubbed, and whether Brion James dubbed his over later or not, they have an intentionally cartoony sound that is, at best, a little jarring for the first few scenes. The film is too cartoonish at times and morbidly comedic in others. Meanwhile, Reed Birney is playing Vic as the straight and narrow schlub while Sheree Wilson seems disinterested for the first half of the movie. Only Louise Lasser and Bruce Campbell really give it 110% for the entirety of the film, which is good for Helene Trend but bad for Renaldo, who is at best an extended cameo*. More of a problem is the uneven sense of setting in the film.

 Crimewave seems to occupy a time stranded between the 1940s and the 1980s, so much so that until one gets one's bearings, the movie can be awfully confusing. At first, the dialogue, costumes, and tone seem to indicate a period film - to be specific, a screwball comedy of the mid-forties. Then we find out that Vic's job at Trend & Odegard security is to install security cameras, which he is happily putzing about doing in the apartment building where the Trends live (conveniently across the hall from Nancy. The cameras are late 70s, early 80s models (I have one that looks a lot like the kind Vic is installing), and when he wanders down into the street, he's nearly run over by a 40s-style pesticide truck, but across the street are a very modern (for 1985) tow truck and "the classic," Raimi's Oldsmobile Delta 88, seen in all of his films somewhere. It's hard to call it anachronistic, because the streets look like Detroit in the 1980s while the characters speak and dress like post-war artifacts but seem comfortable in the never-never-land of the film.

 With that in mind, there are a number of small touches in the film that stick with you, in a good way. There's a wonderful chase down "The Parade of Protection: the Safest Hallway in the World" between Helene and Faron that's visually dynamic and isn't likely an image you'll forget soon. The exterminators, once you get past the artificiality of their voices, infuse the film with a number of silly moments: the setting for their rat electrocution device includes "Men" and "Heroes," there's a moment where Faron pulls up the carpet in the Trend apartment and literally drags it (and Helene) towards him, and the back-and-forth between the killers and the landlord Mr. Yarman (John Hardy) is a highlight. Brion James (Blade Runner) has some time to shine during a third act car chase, and again, I'm going to mention Campbell's Renaldo, who is so proud of being a heel that he wonders why people think it's a bad thing.

 Watching Crimewave in conjunction with The Hudsucker Proxy - which the Coens and Raimi all wrote around the same time - explains both films' idiosyncrasies; both are products of young filmmakers, working through a laundry list of disparate influences**, synthesized into movies that did little for audiences and only really appeal to their most ardent supporters. Hudsucker is easily the more successful of the two, but Joel and Ethan Coen had an additional nine years (and four films) to hone their skills while Raimi was coming off of The Evil Dead four years prior. Raimi famously disowned Crimewave after producers Edward R. Pressman and Irvin Shapiro removed his editor Kaye Davis and composer Joe LoDuca, and the film has wallowed in a sort of limbo ever since. There are touches of Sam Raimi in the film, although one could argue there's almost as much in Crimewave that would remind you of Raising Arizona as there is the man who would eventually direct Spider-Man.

 Ultimately, Crimewave is something of a curio, a film that never quite finds its footing, that never connects the way it wants to. Moments of ingenuity sneak through, and in small touches, there's probably enough there to recommend the film to the Raimi and Coen camps, but don't expect a hidden gem. At best, it's a nice piece of cubic zirconium, sitting at the bottom of a dusty drawer. Sometimes, there's a reason you haven't heard about it.




 * Raimi originally wrote the film with Campbell as Vic Ajax, which honestly makes much more sense. Birney lacks charisma, reminding me as his best of a pale Joe Pantoliano replica, and has no chemistry whatsoever with Wilson.
** By the way, Vic is sentenced to be executed at Hudsucker State Penitentiary.

Let the Blogorium Speak for Itself...?

 Hrm. The Cap'n doesn't really have a review today. I thought I might, but over the last two days I watched Halloween II with Rob Zombie's commentary track and the group commentary for Trick 'R Treat. I've toyed with the idea of doing write-ups of commentary tracks, as they seem to be the least accessed feature on nearly every DVD and Blu-Ray release. For some reason, it never seems as interesting to write about them as it does to listen to them. Appropriately, many directors, writers, producers, and actors feel like it's not as interesting to listen to them talk about a film when you can let the film speak for itself. Steven Spielberg doesn't record commentary tracks for just that reason, along with David Lynch and the Coen brothers*.

  Part of the appeal of a "Rogue Commentary Track" is that it would allow people who have a marginal history with the film, but who appreciate something about the film, to speak at length about what they take away from it without forcing people to pay anything. If it ever happens, that is. I certainly don't have the equipment to make that happen, but I do know a number of well versed cinephiles who could sit down and provide insightful and entertaining tracks for films that go underrepresented. It's the technical end that's hanging that idea up, and the scheduling; there's rarely time that everyone could get together.

 Well, let's try to make something out of this commentary-centric Saturday. Trick 'R Treat was fun to watch (virtually) with the director, editor, composer, producer, and storyboard artist, and I picked up a few more connective tidbits that I hadn't caught yet. The film really does reward multiple viewings, because it is packed with overlapping character moments. I honestly had no idea that Brian Cox wanted Mr. Kreeg to look like John Carpenter, but it's actually a clever nod that I can see during his segment.

 After listening to the Halloween II "Unrated Director's Cut" commentary, it's clear that two things dominated the making of the film: the decreasing budget / schedule and the editing. Zombie is clearly frustrated that a number of sequences were hampered by schedule cuts, including the Phantom Jam (which was supposed to take four days to shoot but was shortened to one night), and while he feels the film suffers from the shortcuts they had to take, he's reasonably satisfied with the director's cut.

 I'm happy that I found a copy of the Theatrical Cut (available in Canada, but I'm not sure if it is here in the US), because based on Zombie's description of what was cut, alterations made to existing footage, and his feelings about the changes, that unlike many "director's cuts," this is a radically different version of the film. Tonally the films sound quite different: the relationship between Laurie and Annie is less antagonistic, Michael's visions are more ambiguous, and the ending heads in a different direction. Zombie is happier with his cut of the film (available on Blu-Ray), but I think being able to watch both will be a valuable point of comparison. There's also a commentary on that DVD, and I wonder if it's also distinct from the director's cut, as it would be difficult to simply cut out many of the descriptions of what differs.

 All of this may seem irrelevant to many of you, as I understand that people really seem to hate Halloween II. As someone who really hated Halloween, I find it odd that people were less interested in seeing Zombie go off in his own direction with the sequel, and it makes me wonder what exactly it was that you all liked about the 2007 remake. Aside from the hospital dream sequence, Zombie makes no effort to stick to remake "rules," and while it may have problems, I think that Halloween II works as a sequel, and considering that the original Halloween II is a mess of sloppy plot points, needless coincidences, and stupid characters, I'm going to give the edge to Rob.

 Oh well. That seemed more interesting to write than it probably was to read for you. I'll see what I can do to rectify that in the coming days. I have found more than a dozen horror films from the 1980s that I've never heard of before that seem like they'll be fun to review. Until then...



* With the notable exception of The Man Who Wasn't There, which is a low-key affair featuring Joel, Ethan, and Billy Bob Thornton, where they impart a number of interesting details along with what may or may not be a whole bunch of trickery about the film. It depends on whether you trust the mercurial Coens or academics, who claim to have "figured them out" without actually knowing them.

Five Movies: Five Books About Movies Worth Your Time

Yesterday, I briefly mentioned that literature about film was a useful way of feeding the Cinephilic meme, so it only seemed fair that the Cap'n give you some suggestions. More often than not, the casual-to-curious film fan will wander into their local bookseller (or retail chain), head for the "Media" section, and find themselves inundated with oversized "making of" books, unauthorized celebrity bios, and more "1001 ____ Movies You Must See Before You Die" than you can shake a stick at. The end result tends to be that they leave with nothing, feeling perplexed about where all these "great books" their friends talk about are.

One of the problems - perhaps the largest problem - is that the critical analysis or scholarly approach to film texts are limited to small, university presses, and most major chains don't feel the need to carry them. It is, after all, not their target demographic - typically the casual shopper looking for a paperback to enjoy on a sunny afternoon - so you won't find analytical texts just anywhere (periodically they pop up in used book stores, especially ones in the vicinity of a college campus).

Then again, the neophyte or leaning cinephile will want to wait for most of those texts, so while I'll mention a few after the list proper, this edition of Five Movies will focus on good "entry points" with a dash of heavier reading to keep you busy. Whenever possible, I'll link the titles to Amazon, so you have a reasonably priced starting point.

1. VideoHound's Cult Flicks & Trash Pics (edited by Carol Schwartz with Jim Olenski) - Let's start with a video guide; when I was younger, I used The Video Movie Guide by Mick Martin and Marsha Porter, but as the list of films grows, the reviews become shorter and shorter, and omissions ramped up. VideoHound publishes guides by topic, genre, and year, so you get more concentrated subsections of films, with better information about the film and its relative merits. I chose Cult Flicks & Trash Pics because if you want a handy guide to the "underground" films that exist in the realm of meme-dom, this is a great point of entry. It also makes a good companion to J. Hoberman and Johnathan Rosenbaum's Midnight Movies.

2. Hooked by Pauline Kael - From movie guides, let's move on to collections of reviews by critics; while I do own a few books by Roger Ebert, Pauline Kael was far and away my favorite "newspaper critic" - her reviews are insightful, witty, and so effortlessly well written that it drives me crazy I can't come anywhere close. Kael died ten years ago, and her collections are woefully out of print (I found Hooked at a used book store), but our number 2 pick is a little bit easier to find than 5001 Nights at the Movies, which is also excellent. Hooked deals with reviews from 1984-1989, covering a number of titles you may be familiar with (and many you won't be), and even when I don't agree with Kael (like her pans of After Hours and Raising Arizona), I appreciate the level of writing she brings even to pithy dismissals. This book would make a fine counterpoint to Harlan Ellison's Watching, which covers much of the same time period in cinema.

3. The Kid Stays in the Picture by Robert Evans - You may have seen the documentary based on our third choice, also narrated by Evans, but it doesn't even scratch the surface of this entertaining, frank, and frequently revelatory autobiography from the former head of Paramount Pictures. Evans makes it clear from the get-go that this is his version of the story, but his path from salesman to B-movie actor to mogul is never dull, even if the facts tend to lean only in one direction. As "tell all"'s or Hollywood biographies go, skip what you normally see on the shelf and gravitate towards The Kid Stays in the Picture; you'll learn a lot more and have more fun doing it.


4. The Director's Series by various authors, editors, et al - This series, which sometimes goes by the name Directors on Directors, is a collection of interviews with various filmmakers about their process, history, craft, and themes in their body of work. There's one for just about any director you could be interested in: David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Alfred Hitchcock, Federico Fellini, Werner Herzog, David Cronenberg, Douglas Sirk, Lars von Trier, John Cassavetes, Louis Malle, Ken Loach, Woody Allen, Kryzysztof Kielslowski, Pedro Almodoovar, Tim Burton, Paul Schrader, Barry Levinson, John Sayles, Robert Altman, and Terry Gilliam. Personal favorites? I'd start with Lynch on Lynch or Gilliam on Gilliam, which have a more conversational tone with the directors in question. Burton on Burton is a treasure trove of information, but its structure is more of introductory text preceding a quote from Tim Burton moving chronologically through his films. It's interesting, but less intimate, so I'd start with Gilliam or Lynch and more forward from there.


5. The Making of Star Wars: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film by J.W. Rinzler - As chronicles of making a film go, you'd be hard pressed to find a more in-depth exploration than The Making of Star Wars. I assure you that even the most die-hard Star Wars fan is going to find plenty of revelations in the book, about the writing process, the conceptualizing of Lucas' vision, the perils of making the film, its disastrous first edit, and the effort that went into making the first film a cultural landmark. Rinzler does similar work with the Indiana Jones series and The Empire Strikes back (and, one must assume, eventually Return of the Jedi), with plenty of access to everyone involved in the making of A New Hope, and the book feels like it steps beyond the typical "Lucas whitewash" that other "histories" of the films have.

This is just to get you started, of course; if you want some really good "theory" I suggest More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts by James Naremore, Horror, The Film Reader, edited by Mark Jancovich, Theories of Authorship, edited by John Caughie, or Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Post-Modern Science Fiction by Scott Bukatman. If you like more niche or subgenre guides, hunt down Stuart Galbraith IV's Japanese Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films.

If you want to have some fun with reviews or career pieces, check out Vern's Five on the Outside, Seagalogy: A Study of the Ass-Kicking Films of Steven Seagal, or "Yipee Ki-Yay, Moviegoer!": Writings on Bruce Willis, Badass Cinema, and Other Important Topics. You can also look at the series of director interviews with the likes of Steven Soderbergh, David Lynch and The Coen Brothers. Want to know how to make a movie? Try Robert Rodriguez's Rebel Without a Crew or Lloyd Kaufman's Make Your Own Damn Movie!. Want a cultural history of a genre? Check out David J. Skal's The Monster Show, Kendal Phillips' Projected Fears: Horror Films and American Culture, or Joe Bob Briggs' one-two punch of Profoundly Disturbing and Profoundly Erotic.

I'm always looking for more good reads, so if you have one, pass it on.

Follow-up Part Two: True Grit, the Coen Brothers, and the Rhetoric of Racism

(repeat of preamble: Today I thought I'd follow up on some reaction I've been getting about recent reviews / articles. Two threads have been met consistently with strong reactions - one of which I'd hoped to have closed the book one, and the other that continues to bother people I mention it to, so much so that it stopped a conversation dead the other night. )

Okay, I have been getting some serious grief for the suggestion in my True Grit review that the film - and by proxy, the Coen brothers - is "racist" towards Native Americans. Explaining what I saw and the reaction it had with a packed auditorium stopped a conversation dead in its tracks the other night. Fans of the Coen brothers - of which I consider myself and most of the people I know - are bristling at the mere mention of "racism" and the Coens in the same zip code.

I understand why, and why people are oversimplifying and thereby misinterpreting what the actual point I'm making is. I am not accusing Joel and Ethan Coen of being racist by constructing two scenes where Native Americans are clearly the butt of the joke; my problem is that they've taken their fondness for ironic detachment too far in True Grit, and it was totally lost on the crowd I saw it with. I don't make my point blindly or out of ignorance - I spent the better part of 2010 studying their films in depth and writing about the themes and undertones within, so I do feel that I have a case here, just as I feel the point is being wildly misread because of how loaded the term "racism" is.

The Coen brothers have a long history of including instances of casual racism on the part of their characters, particularly in "period" films. They consistently point out cultural norms that are outdated, often while mocking them - the KKK in O Brother Where Art Thou, the casual homophobia in The Man Who Wasn't There and Miller's Crossing (not to mention the ethnic stereotyping of "wops" and "micks"), or the "Uncle Remus" of The Hudsucker Proxy. They don't always use the prevailing attitudes of the time for comic purposes; at times, like the anti-Semitic neighbor in A Serious Man who only stands up for Larry when a Korean appears to be threatening him, is used to highlight overlooked forms of outdated racism.

And yes, I'm going to continue to use the term racism, which is where the bulk of this harsh reaction comes from, because it is a wholly adequate descriptor for much of what the Coen brothers like to highlight in an ironic fashion. "Oh, look how backwards we were then, isn't that funny?" I'm sorry if the terminology makes you uncomfortable, but this is a consistent, if under-represented, thematic device used in their films. It doesn't always work for them - in fact, it fails miserably in The Ladykillers, which presents two extremes in the spectrum of "caricatures of Black America" without any clear purpose, and I truly feel that True Grit represents a massive disconnect between their devoted fans and the casual audiences that flock their films every few years.

There are casual Coen fans, the kind of audiences who appear when the brothers tap into the cultural zeitgeist (or, to be honest, tend to briefly create it) - Raising Arizona, Fargo, O Brother Where Art Thou, and No Country for Old Men are examples of films that seem to inexplicably catch on with a wide audience, allowing the kind of success that permits films like A Serious Man, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, and The Man Who Wasn't There to fill in the gaps for devoted Coen fans. True Grit is the latest example, and it is being met with a fairly robust audience turnout, for whatever it is Joel and Ethan tapped into this time.

True Grit is also a film that takes place in post-Civil War Arkansas, where two of the three main protagonists served for the Confederacy. Rooster Cogburn has a heated discussion with LeBoeuf about whether Cogburn's service as one of Quantrill's Raiders counts as true service to the South, but the cultural framework the Coens are presenting (coming from Charles Portis' novel) is one where casual racism abounds. They choose to direct this racism towards Native Americans in the film, in what can only be read as another example of their pointed critique of outdated norms. And that would be fine, but I sincerely feel they overestimated their audience.

As I pointed out in my earlier review, both instances are structured for comedic effect. The first is a classic set-up of two long speeches followed by an abruptly shortened one from a character no one likes. The second is an over-compensation gag where the hero reacts to someone doing something bad by punishing them, allowing the punishee to reset, and then punishing them again. If there are technical terms for these, I'd be happy to hear them, but you can find both examples in most comedies, and the second example in nearly every Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton film. They are designed and executed on film for a laugh, period. Both scenes in True Grit are constructed for laughs, period.

My discomfort came from the audience I saw the film with that howled with laughter at both "gags," completely missing that the Coen brothers were commenting on racist attitudes towards Native Americans in the film's setting. The Coens have that track record, so I must take them at precedent rather than assume they thought this was funny at face value. The audience, on the other hand, people that honestly don't have the same exposure to this thematic trend, are laughing AT the joke, and not the commentary behind the joke. The commentary behind the joke isn't funny - it's sobering.

I can't bring myself to laugh at the audience that doesn't understand what they're seeing, and are becoming complicit in racial stereotyping for reasons contrary to its inclusion in the film. Instead, I became very uneasy. The fact that the actual "joke" is lost on audiences actually implies that there is a divide between the culturally backwards masses and the witty, erudite Coen brothers "cineaste," which made me feel more self conscious. I should have been laughing at the audience for playing out culturally scripted stereotypes, but I couldn't, and that troubles me on a number of levels.

For that, I must reiterate that while I enjoy True Grit as a film, I have difficulty reconciling the intention of the filmmakers with the experience of seeing it with an audience. The Coens were presenting yet another example of racism; the audience was responding to a joke set-up, and ne'er the twain shall meet, I fear.

Cap'n Howdy Presents Handy Answers to Your Questions

Today I thought I'd throw a bone to visitors that happen across the Blogorium via Google, Bing, or one of those other search engines that I've forgotten about (seriously, Ask.com is still out there?). This is also a way to address the many strange queries, subjects, and searches that bring folks here, in the hopes that this entry will be a handy portal to other essays, where I may not directly address your questions.

In case regular readers weren't aware, the Cap'n gets a bunch of one-time visitors, often coming in based on the oddest of criteria, so I'll share that with you as well.

Are the Coen brothers auteurs? - this question pops up more often than any other, in various forms, because I posted an essay from my final in a Theories of Authorship: The Coen Brothers to the Blogorium (found here). For people looking for more information on Joel and Ethan Coen, I also posted a series of other essays on The Ladykillers, Forever Young Film Preservation, A Serious Man, Barton Fink, Doppelgangers, Incongruities, Social Commentary, The Man Who Wasn't There, The Hudsucker Proxy, Music in their films, Influences of Film Noir, No Country for Old Men, Uncertainty, Re-adaptations, True Grit and the "other" Coen brothers.
What is the source of Hamlet's melancholy? - Apparently, high school students have trouble with Hamlet, and go to the internet to find answers. Sometimes, they end up at one of the Hamlet Week posts. In Hamlet's own words (from Act II, scene 2):

HAMLET
I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation
prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the king
and queen moult no feather. I have of late--but
wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all
custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily
with my disposition that this goodly frame, the
earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not
me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling
you seem to say so.

Now, astute readers will note that Hamlet is toying with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, upon realizing they were sent for by Claudius and Gertrude, and that his "wherefore I know not" is a ruse. He is principally irritated because of this:

HAMLET
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on: and yet, within a month--
Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman!--
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears:--why she, even she--
O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month:
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not nor it cannot come to good:
But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.

I will not explain what it means, high school students, but if you have the slightest idea what's going on in Hamlet, this should sufficiently answer your question.


What is different in The Other Guys unrated? - One visitor was referred to my review of The Other Guys, which clearly didn't help out, as it was a review of the theatrical version. The answer to your question is "not much": there are about 9 extra minutes worth of footage, including a car chase fist fight, another Hoitz argument with an ex, a more specific monologue about corporate greed, and a new stinger at the end of the credits. The big difference is that the dialogue is considerably filthier, with most of the "tame" versions of cursing replaced with their vulgar counterparts.

Did Anton really shit on Joaquin Phoenix? - No. According to IMDB: "the 'feces' was [sic] actually a combination of humus and coffee grounds. The mixture was inserted into a tube that was taped onto Antony Langdon's (Anton) back that went down to his butt." As the review and supplemental materials on the disc assert, nearly everything in I'm Still Here was manufactured through camera trickery.

No Country for Old Men hotel scene. - I see that I was not the only person who was skeptical with the assertion that Anton Chigurh was, and then magically was not, in the hotel room before Sheriff Ed Tom Bell walked in. The sequence analysis, which goes (nearly) shot by shot can be found here.

Now, some of the really weird ones.

Expendables Stallone cap. - It took me forever to realize that "cap" was in reference to "screencap" and accordingly I had no idea why so many people were looking for "____ cap" and being sent to the Blogorium. There's not a lot I can do about this, as it's simply an unfortunate side effect of using the slang term "Cap'n." Sorry.

"cop knows how to use his dark side for good" - Another reference to The Other Guys, from Ice-T's narration, one that I suspect is a reference to the Showtime series Dexter - the narrator suggests that the cop in question should move to Miami, where Dexter is set and that is a rough approximation of the show's concept.

Alicia Marek - Alicia Marek plays Jeff Fahey's wife and Lindsay Lohan's mother in Machete, and spends the second half of the film naked. Because I mentioned her by name in the review - along with the rest of the cast - anyone looking for naked photos is invariably cock-blocked by an actual review of the film. I'm not sorry for that.

Slutty renaissance - My absolute favorite way that someone found the review of Satan's Little Helper. I'm almost positive it wasn't what they were looking for - unless you weren't looking for an actual "slutty renaissance" - but it does match my description of Katheryn Winnick's costume for most of the film.

Tron XXX Parody - An unfortunate combination of recent reviews for Tron Legacy and a Video Daily Double post about The Simpsons: A XXX Parody led some poor guy to the Blogorium. Alas, such a thing is real, is being made, and is titled "Pron."

Grandfather Granddaughter Porn - No. Just, No. I don't know why this sent anyone to Blogorium (thanks, Turkish Google search engine!), but you won't find that here. I don't know where you would find it, I'm not going to help you find it, so yeah... good luck with that, pal.

Five Movies: The Cap'n Presents His Favorite Pieces of 2010

Originally, I had planned to close out the year end recap on Saturday, but ended up bouncing around from town to town in order to take care of financial business. While I could *technically* "sneak" that piece in the weekend spot before yesterdays Roger Corman trailer Sunday, I think instead we'll treat it as a "day off" from the Blogorium. The Cap'n and the Cranpire did close out Saturday night by watching the Corman produced Forbidden World (also known as Mutant), hence the Trailer Sunday. We'll get to Forbidden World later this week...

Today, I'm going to provide links to my favorite articles / reviews / columns / posts of 2010. Technically it's not a "Five Movies" but all five deal specifically with film, and in many cases deal specifically one film or type of film.


1. Horror Fest: A People's History (Part One, Part Two) - I had possibly the most fun I've ever had compiling these stories and then editing them together into an overlapping oral history of Horror and Summer Fests. This version of Part Two finally fixes the glitch and allows readers to see Barrett's advice, correcting a text color issue I missed in the first go-round.

2. Re-Adapting and the Tainted Discourse of "Remakes" - a piece dealing with the curious case of True Grit, a film which appears to be a remake on the surface but is being classified otherwise, and the ramifications of shifting that argument.

3. Winnebago Man vs. Best Worst Movie - What appears, at first, to be a comparison piece of two films is also a study of the "YouTube" generation, "secondary fame" for films, and the way audiences relate to films in a post-MST3k world.

4. My "Mixed Tape" Manifesto - A (sort of) open letter to the creators of Greensboro's Mixed Tape Film Series, a sound concept which continually underwhelms me in its execution, but could easily be improved if the creative minds behind it would follow their own advice.

5. Coen Brothers Final Day One: Auteur Theory - This post is visited more than any other that doesn't have the words "Thankskilling" or "Leprechaun 3" in it, largely by students who are (hopefully) citing it for their papers. If you aren't, I will find out somehow - eventually your professors are going to check online, and I hope they find blog, where it came from. I appreciate all of the traffic, and I'm glad to know people find the research I did useful, but don't steal it. It's going to be painfully obvious when your teacher sees a quote from Harlan Ellison's Watching, a book they know you haven't read.


Bonus favorites:

Hamlet Week - Where I nearly drove myself crazy watching five major adaptations of Shakespeare's play and comparing and contrasting them with each other and the original text. Days One (Laurence Olivier), Two (Mel Gibson), Three (Kenneth Branagh), Four (Ethan Hawke), Five (David Tennant), and Six (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead).

The "Twitter" Experiment - and why you'll never see the Cap'n open a Twitter account.