Unrelated (as much as possible)

I've been racking my brains trying to find something to write about other than the bizarre trifecta of celebrity deaths - Ingrid Pitt, Leslie Nielsen, and Irvin Kershner - because I just don't have enough anecdotes beyond repeating "The Empire Strikes Back was the first movie I saw" or "The Naked Gun was a movie we watched during the first sleep over birthday party I remember" or "Ah, Ingrid Pitt. Where Eagles Dare and The Wicker Man, and oh yeah, Doctor Who*." That's really what I've got.

Other being enthused at the combination of James Franco and Anne Hathaway (who are consistently excellent hosts on Saturday Night Live) hosting the Academy Awards, I don't have much to add to that. Awards Season has been more of a Neil thing over the last few years, and I often find myself missing out on the shameless Oscar bait high profile end of year films. Yes, it's true: I'm more focused on Tron Legacy and True Grit than... well, that should give you some idea of how out of it I am. I'll be lucky to catch Get Low before the Oscar ceremonies, and I really want to see Get Low.

While toying around with ways to approach the forthcoming "Retro Reviews" column - which replaces "From the Vaults" in January - I found myself torn between reviewing films from my perspective now, or when I first saw them. During high school and early years in college, I saw perhaps more films than any other period save for 2007-2010. Many of the films I watched then I've never seen since (Lost in Space, Godzilla, The In Crowd), but some, like The Fifth Element, were revisited, and when I think about what I thought of Luc Besson's film the first time I saw it compared to the second, a review from that first experience might be as entertaining as a critical synopsis from today.

If I can make time in the next few weeks, I really hope to have reviews up for Harry Brown, I'm Still Here, the complete Metropolis, The Magician, Head, and possibly a revisiting of The Expendables outside of the sphere of that other movie opening the same day. And yes, I might look into Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. That being said, I'm torn between Metropolis, I'm Still Here, and Harry Brown, which are sitting on the table with Ratatouille, Grindhouse, 12 Monkeys, Fight Club, The Wizard of Oz, and Best Worst Movie.

That being said, I have a sudden, pressing urge to watch The Wicker Man, Forbidden Planet, and The Empire Strikes Back...




* The Warriors of the Deep, if you were wondering.

Plans for the Year(s) to Come

As promised last week, here is an excerpt from my "personal statement" designed to lay out some research plans for the future. Additionally (and because you're such nice people), I'm going to include some extra "deleted" ideas, along with plans for the Blogorium in the coming year:

Intertextuality in film has always fascinated me; following the connective tissue from one film to another - homage, imitation, discursive elements, or direct references – I followed the influences of Fritz Lang on Ridley Scott or of Preston Sturges on Joel and Ethan Coen, developing a lexicon to express trends apparent in my research. Accordingly, I consider furthering the development of intertextuality in film history to be a crucial component in my graduate studies.

I am also interested in pursuing research into theories of authorship, particularly in the “post-auteur” and “anti-auteur” positions taken by filmmakers like Steven Soderbergh and the Coen brothers. The development of the term auteur and its subsequent backlash is a movement within film theory that is fascinating to me, and exploring the usefulness of “director as author” in a contemporary setting - one removed from “auteur” as catch-all phrase in the 1980s – seems to have been largely abandoned in the twenty-first century. Is the auteur theory still valid? Has the term lost all meaning, or has its mutation rendered directors afraid of being “branded” the author of their films? Alternately, there are a number of “authorless” or minimized directorial presences in cinematic “mash-ups” like Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django.

One field of research that appeals to me is the idea of artistic repetition; this is not limited to direct remakes (although the trend towards those merits investigation), but also the presence of virtually identical stories that appear persistently over a period of time – Yojimbo / Fistful of Dollars / The Warrior and the Sorceress / Last Man Standing – and the differences between recurring themes in literature and film compared to direct repetition of title, plot, and marketing. For example, how is does the 2009 remake of The Last House on the Left differ from the intertextual relationship between The Virgin Spring and Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left?

The horror genre, which is often considered a barren field for critical study, remains a point of focus I hope to expand on during my studies. Over the last five years, I made a concerted effort to collect and research the various theoretical approaches to horror, from Carol Clover to David Skal to Robin Wood and Barbara Creed. I am particularly interested in the way that gender and violence are portrayed in horror, from the “slasher” era to the present, with particular focus on the way that “Final Girl” variations are portrayed in French horror films like High Tension, Martyrs, Them, and Frontier(s).

Horror films are often undervalued in critical theory because the volume of low quality releases often overwhelms films with something to say. Does a high profile flop like Cursed overshadow a feminist reinterpretation of werewolves like Ginger Snaps? In order to combat the assertion the genre is “lacking,” I have hosted annual horror festivals in the summer and autumn to expose audiences to films lost in the “white noise” of aggressive marketing for sequels, remakes, and gimmick releases.

With regards to film history as a social movement, I have a long-standing desire to pursue the history of independent cinema from the 1950s to the 1980s through the venue of the Drive-In, where distributors showcased non-studio pictures outside of major cities. Until the advent of home video effectively killed the Drive-In, I suspect one can trace the movement of independent cinema from smaller territories across the U.S. by following Drive-In “culture,” despite James Naremore’s doubts that such a thing ever existed (based on a passage in More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts).

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Meanwhile, as the blogorium moves into year three on Blogspot, I've been making plans to improve on the existing weekly layout. It's becoming increasingly obvious to the Cap'n that I'm running out of "readable" posts for the "From the Vaults" on Tuesdays. Starting in January, I'm planning on replacing that feature with alternating "Four Reasons" and "Five Movies" posts in order to incorporate their presence back into rotation. I'll also open up Tuesdays to what I call "retro reviews," based on films I've seen in the past but never reviewed, or expansions on existing reviews from the Myspace era*.

I'd also like to invite readers to help pick a section tentatively called "Best of the Blogorium," built from your suggestions, votes, and picks for favorite reviews, features, essays, and other random posts. The "Best of the Blogorium" would then appear as a tab on the right side of the screen, allowing new readers to see the Cap'n at his best without being overwhelmed by the sheer number of posts to wade through.

Down the line, I might consider adding direct links to help readers find copies of Thankskilling, Coen brothers text books, and other horror films featured during Horror and Summer Fest, but that's a bit off yet.

That's what I've been working on, and hopefully the first signs of new directions in the Blogorium will appear in the coming months and years. Keep reading, and I'll keep writing.

* It turns out that most of the "reviews" in the old Blogorium were barely a paragraph and only gave the tiniest amount of information possible, something I feel I can adjust.

Hodgepodge

If you're like me, and you find yourself with three hours to spare, perhaps you should consider watching The Postman. There are people who would tell you to do anything other than watch Kevin Costner's The Postman, but those people are insane. Or I'm insane. It doesn't matter, I guess.

To say any more would spoil all of the surprises of "Waterworld, but on land", so make with the renting and buying now!

Far be it from me to advocate watching Costner's 3 hour epic ode to the United States Postal Service (and sometimes Shakespeare) on Blu Ray, since there should be no difficulty finding a very cheap copy on dvd or vhs. Heck, if you're really game to watch it, say, right now, it just so happens I have copies of The Postman on vhs, dvd, and Blu Ray. They're yours for the taking. Well, the dvd and vhs copies.

(extra special bonus: if you take the cassette copy, you also get The Lost Boys, The Untouchables, and Spice World at no extra cost!)

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In a section I'm frequently coming to call "video daily double", I thought I'd share two not-necessarily-movie related clips that entertained me. However, I will make the argument that both of them could, under my twisted logic, be construed as "movie related." Watch and learn, kiddos.

The first is what I'd call "Science Fiction turned (almost) Science Fact". When these ads aired in 1993, none of the proposed advances seemed likely. Nowadays, we take almost all of them for granted.



The second one... well, I'm going to argue that commentaries playing over footage goes back to the days of Laserdiscs, so that works. Stick with it for a while, because it starts rocky but gets better and better because of this guy's enthusiasm. Also, lots of this game doesn't make sense...



Also, for some reason the commentator reminds me of Jerkbeast, and Jerkbeast did make a movie.

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Roger Ebert mentioned in his Movie Answer Man column this week that the 210-minute cut of Metropolis should be coming to dvd and Blu-Ray at the end of this year or the beginning of 2010. As an unabashed fan of even the shorter versions (but especially the existing 2 hour version Kino already released), I'm very excited to see the longest cut of Fritz Lang's science fiction epic known to cinephiles. Huzzah!

My Own Private Top Ten

I spend a bit of time over at the website for The Criterion Collection, mostly checking up on new releases and periodically reading their blog, On Five. One of the sidebars that I find most interesting is their "Top Ten" lists, wherein they ask various filmmakers, authors, artists, actors, comedians, and musicians to provide their own personal Top Ten Criterion films. While nobody from Criterion is going to ask Cap'n Howdy to do his, I thought I would anyway, with an extra five for good measure.

This list is prefaced by a caveat: I've intentionally left off some of my very favorite films that are in the Collection in order to do something different. Instead of favorites, I decided to focus on films that surprised me, inspired me in some way, or that changed the way I'd thought about the movie beforehand. It may not be your "Top Ten" (*ahem* Fifteen) list, but for those reasons, it is for me. They are, as usual, in no particular order.

1. Robinson Crusoe on Mars - An odd choice, but one that's near and dear to my heart. Many years before Criterion released this, my father mentioned it to me in passing as one of those "if you ever find this movie...", as he'd seen it as a teenager and loved it. The movie is very silly, but it made his day when I gave him his own Spine Numbered copy for his birthday last year.

2. Harlan County, U.S.A. - Truly a great documentary; one that drops you right in the middle of a Kentucky coal miners' strike and Duke Power. In a world of overtly propagandist "documentaries", it was refreshing to see one that felt so raw and immediate.

3. Brazil - I liked Brazil, but always took it for granted until I saw Criterion's three-disc set. After watching (and later, reading) The Battle of Brazil and the "Love Conquers All" cut, it's a small wonder Terry Gilliam ever got his dystopian vision to audiences.

4. La Haine - Until I saw La Haine, I wondered what the hype about Matthieu Kassovitz was as a director. Once you've seen his stunning debut film, everything since feels a bit compromised. La Haine is the French equivalent to Do the Right Thing, a simmering pot of rage just waiting to boil over, and it feels real and improvised, even as Kassovitz punctuates the story with stylistic editing.

5. Ace in the Hole - I'd seen Double Indemnity, and I'd seen Sunset Boulevard: Billy Wilder's ultimate Film Noir and his first dissection of the subgenre. What I had not seen, however, was Wilder's final statement on Noir, at the end of the cycle. A critique of media obsession well before its time with a swing-for-the-fences performance by Kirk Douglas, Ace in the Hole is a worthy closing to Wilder's Film Noir trilogy.

6. Carnival of Souls - For a long time, it was Night of the Living Dead and nothing else for me. Romero owned the sixties for independent horror as far as I was concerned, above and beyond even what Roger Corman and Vincent Price were doing with Poe. That was until I sat down and watched the director's cut of Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls. Six years before Living Dead, Harvey created an atmospheric walking nightmare that preceded David Lynch by a decade. Don't let the "public domain" fool you; Carnival of Souls is the real deal.

7. F for Fake - Orson Welles, late in his career, makes a partly illusory documentary about forgery and magic that dares you to separate fact from fiction. He's still as good as he ever was and F for Fake is the maestro having a little fun, with us and at our expense.

8. Videodrome - It may just be that I didn't take the subversive elements of the film as seriously in high school. Watching it again, there's a lot to be said about the body, the taboo, and obsession that I gravitated to watching Criterion's excellent two-disc set. Oh, and I love the packaging.

9 . M - If you want to see sound used masterfully at a time when many directors were still fumbling around with the technology, look no further than Fritz Lang's M.

10. Permanent Vacation - This is actually an extra on Stranger Than Paradise. The movie is Jim Jarmusch's first feature, an odd-yssey through New York that's equal parts Catcher in the Rye and Alice in Wonderland. In many ways, it presupposes the structure of Richard Linklater's Slacker, although I enjoyed Permanent Vacation more. I was pleasantly surprised to find a "first" film that holds together and isn't mired in pretentiousness.

bonus five, with less chatter.

11. Night and the City - Richard Widmark may be the quintessential "Noir" type: looking perpetually beaten down by life, desperate for just one more shot, and always falls hard. The wrestling scheme is a good one, but nothing in Noir is good forever.

12. Do the Right Thing - I own a Blu-Ray copy, which has almost all of the extras, but I won't part ways with my Criterion set. This movie dares you to watch it and not feel something. I lose every time.

13. Equinox - For a movie riddled with odd pacing, weird plot holes, and awkward dialogue, I still enjoy revisiting the film debut of FX legend Dennis Muren. Having the recut, strangely exploitative Jack Woods version of the film is an interesting study in "what the audience wants." Oh, and watch this and then The Evil Dead; notice any similarities?

14. Simon of the Desert - Luis Buñuel's short about ascetic Saint Simon, who waits atop a pillar for six years, six months, and six days, all to prove he is devoted to God. At the bottom of the pillar is Silvia Pinal, the sexiest devil this side of Bedazzled, tempting and taunting Simon at every turn. For a "period" piece, I was surprised at how modern Buñuel's mini-movie felt, and the ending was quite out of the blue, if strangely familiar.

15. Dazed and Confused - A favorite in high school, I'd spent many years away from Richard Linklater's second film, assuming it would hold up once I'd "outgrown" it. Criterion's two disc set was a revelation; not only was Dazed as fun as I remembered it being, but something resonated in a way it hadn't when I was younger. Each time I've revisited Dazed and Confused since, I notice something that I missed and appreciate the movie a little more than the last.