(Mis)Adventures in Projectioneering: Why You Never, EVER, Want to Drop a Print

 Greetings, blogorium readers. Cap'n Howdy is finally back to a semi-regular updating schedule after a long three week run of moving and flying halfway across the country for a wedding. If you were wondering, I did get to watch a few movies during that hectic sabbatical, as well as the period in which I didn't have TV or internet, and I'll catch you up on those soon.

 Until we get to that, the other time not consumed in airports or moving dusty boxes involved being at work, and luckily for you I just happen to have a new adventure in projectioneering. It's not one I'd ever wish on any of you (if you are also a projectionist), but let's look at it as a valuable lesson in why you should be very careful when moving a print.

 As I've mentioned before, the theatre I work in uses older projectors and is in almost no way digital. Accordingly, we play 35mm prints of films, which need to be loaded onto platters. They arrive in reels, so when we get the boxes, we "build" the print to a platter and then "break down" said print to return to the manufacturer.

 If we're lucky, the print stays on the platter attached to the screen we build it to (for example, Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master has been in the same auditorium for the last month or so), but more often than not, we need to move the print. This means physically lifting the film (which is wrapped around a core) and carrying it to the screen it needs to be playing in.

 To do this, you need two to three clamps to ensure that the film stays in place and doesn't collapse onto the ground, appropriately termed "dropping a print." You NEVER want to drop a print, especially one that's still playing, because it means cancelling the showings for the rest of the day while you attempt to undo the calamity you brought upon the audience and your coworkers.

 So on Friday night, while attempting to move a print off of the platter to make room for the movie I'd just finished building that took its place, one of the clamps came loose and... blammo. The print fell sideways, unspooling, and generally looking like a disaster on the floor. In my shame, I didn't take a picture of what it looked like, but the short version was that it looked unfixable.

 Now, not to excuse what I did, but it is worth pointing out that the print in question (I'm not going to say what it was but I can assure you that you've never heard of it) was one designated to be "broken down" on Saturday, so the calamitous nature of my screw up was somewhat muted. I told management, they responded as reasonably as they could (I mean, you should NEVER drop a print, no matter what), and then it sat on the floor for two days.

 Allow me to clarify: we had several things that really needed to be done immediately and because only two or three senior projectionists know how to fix a dropped print, it wasn't the highest priority, but when I came in on Sunday and saw three projectionists were working (one in the booth and two downstairs) - one of whom knew how to fix it as he was our manager - we decided to spend a healthy portion of the afternoon preparing the dropped print to be "broken down."

 From this point on, I do have pictures, because I really wanted you to understand how much of a mess I made and why it took three projectionists working together for two hours to fix it:

 So that's one part of the mess. After we'd separated the print into "mostly intact" portions (one is visible in the upper right hand corner) and separated them with a splicer, we were left with the middle, which was a jumbled knot of no-goodness that needed to be fed to the make up / break down tray by hand. But before we could do that, we needed to untangle the pile to prevent bigger knots from forming, thereby breaking everything we'd been working to fix.

 Don't let the cheery demeanor fool you - he's just happy because he hasn't started untangling the mess yet. Also notice the splicer on the floor (we had to make four cuts in the film to allow us room to untangle the knots) and that the film is running from projector 3 to projector 1, where the break down tray is.

 Yeah, that should give you some idea of how much of a giant cluster of film he had to untangle. It took two of us about an hour while the third projectionist (in the distance) began rewinding the "intact" parts back to their cannisters.

 
 Knots! No more knots!!!! The RAGE!!!!! And it's all my fault. Sorry guys.

  

Here we are, being shamed by a projectionist who came in for a later shift downstairs, who has the good sense not to drop a print. Or he may have just been upstairs to check the projectionist log, but clearly there's some contempt for my chicanery.

 The good news is that with some elbow grease, a painful attention to detail, and being very, VERY patient in pulling on thread of film slowly until there were no more kinks, we managed to fix my mess and break down the print. I hope that our efforts give you some idea of how terribly important it is to be careful when moving a print, even one going away, because it takes considerable time as long to fix it as it does to take an extra ten seconds to make sure the clamp is actually secure. You NEVER want to drop a print, and now I know why firsthand.

 Post-script: The following day we learned that we might have to rebuild it because people were calling to find out if it was still showing. 

 No, really.

(Mis)Adventures in Projectioneering: The Brain Wrap

  This edition of Adventures in Projectioneering might lean a little on the technical side, but I'll try to keep it at a minimum. It's mostly about those nights where everything goes wrong, and in order get into detail without simply throwing out jargon, I'll explain some of the ins and outs of being a projectionist. The important part, when I'm running around like a maniac trying to fix one problem after the other, I'm sure you've all experienced.

 Maybe it's the older equipment at the theatre I'm working at, or maybe it's Cap'n Howdy's "ring rust" (a.k.a. general incompetence) that caused things to fall apart not once, not twice, but four times during one shift this weekend. All four of them involved "Brain Wraps," which is the first piece of jargon I can knock out for you.

 So this is the Brain, which sits on a platter with the film:

  
 The film runs through the Brain, which determines the speed and prevents things from moving too quickly or too slowly. If the film moves too quickly or too slowly, it will begin to wrap around the Brain, hence the term "Brain Wrap." (Google apparently likes the term as one word, but I'll stick with my interpretation as amateur projectionist).

 Brain Wraps can happen for other reasons as well; for example, if you thread the film the wrong way through the rollers or if a piece of film jumps over one of the rollers, it can cause the film to tighten around the brain until it can no longer feed through the projector and the film comes to a dead stop. The inert film will then melt as a result of the heat in the projector's lamp, which I gather you've seen or heard of in some form or the other. It's a nice "meta" technique in movies that want to draw attention to the projected image, as well as how Zack Snyder ended his trailer for Dawn of the Dead.

 How it happened four times in one night is still something of a mystery, as one of the things I do is check and double check the platters and Brains while films are running. The platters and projectors are old, and the Brains are constantly being repaired. We're all aware that each projector has its own particular quirk (some run a little slow, some have film that jumps off of the rollers), so it's important to monitor them to make sure everything is going smoothly.

 The first one seemed to be doing fine: it started normally, and when I came back to dim the lights and adjust the volume, it was still running through the Brain nominally, but when I came back upstairs from getting the next showtimes, something went wrong. And because I didn't go check on it sooner, Cap'n Howdy got to join the "Wall of Shame" where burned film hangs. Why it wrapped, we aren't sure, but wrap it did, to the point where the film around the brain was three or four inches around, which is really bad.

 After that, I was extra vigilant, and since I was still training, the normally scheduled projectionist was also keeping a close eye out, which makes the next three all the more mysterious. I checked, double checked, and then was triple checked by the other projectionist, and everything was good. The threading was correct, the platters were on the correct setting, and there was no reason for a Brain Wrap. And yet, we came back to three separate projectors to find that the film had jumped over a roller and was beginning to wrap. All were easily fixed without having to make an emergency splice (therefore avoiding three more trips to the "Wall of Shame"), but my trainer was at a loss for how or why these phantom wraps occurred.

 Nevertheless, this led to much running around, desperately trying to keep everything on schedule without letting a small problem get bigger (and it will) while hopefully keeping things invisible for the audiences below. For the folks who had to wait ten minutes for us to fix the melted Brain Wrap, I apologize. That's on me, and it won't happen again. I should have learned that lesson twelve years ago when a similar problem happened during Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man. Alas, general incompetence gets us when we least expect it. Until next time...

News and Notes: Technical Edition (with Books)

 - Let's start with why it doesn't matter that Starz decided not to continue its contract with Netflix. This news is being treated the same way that Netflix's split with Showtime (and the never-to-be HBO deal), but I for one am happy to hear this.

 Consistently, I've found that Starz content on Netflix tends to be the most egregious examples of "pulling a fast one" on streaming viewers. In an era where "full screen" means something very different than it did five years ago, Starz streaming movies and TV shows on Netflix were constantly shown as "letterboxed" 4x3 images. If you aren't quite sure what I mean, try watching a show like MTV's Jersey Shore on a widescreen TV. See how the black bars are still on the top and bottom of the screen, even though it doesn't fill out the left and right of your TV? This is a fake "widescreen" that only really worked on old television sets.

 MTV released their Jersey Shore DVDs in the same fashion, and Starz did it with everything I watched from them on Netflix. It's a lazy alternative to providing 16x9 enhanced content and it actually diminishes the size of the picture on your screen. While it might have been nice to watch newer Disney films on Netflix, it certainly wasn't worth the drop in picture size. Not in this day and age. Netflix is hurting, and more companies jumping ship isn't necessarily good news for them, but I avoided the "Starz" section of Instant Viewing like the plague after being burned repeatedly. Good riddance to bad rubbish, if you ask me.

 - Speaking of "Full Screen," it makes me chuckle when I see stores (like one I will soon no longer be with) that still sell new DVDs with that moniker. Widescreen has slowly become the norm, and the pan-and-scan 4x3 discs are less and less desirable for customers. Many studios don't release new movies in "Full Screen" anymore, because it doesn't mean the same thing it used to. Not so long ago I would have to pay careful attention to the DVD cover of a movie I wanted to pick up in order not to buy one with a butchered "full" transfer.

 Every now and then, I put this video up, just to give folks a primer of what I mean by "pan-and-scan," because it doesn't just mean removing the black bars from the top and bottom of widescreen films:



  I often wonder what families who made the transition from standard TVs to widescreen TVs do with their collections of "Full Screen" DVDs when watching them. What probably happens is that they set their TV to automatically zoom in on the image so it fills the whole frame, creating an image twice as messy as the one shown above. Imagine taking a "Full Screen" image and then stretching it out even further to the left and right, because that's what probably happens. Yikes. I've seen it done before with VHS (hell, I did it once with the Star Wars Holiday Special) and if you really don't mind things looking messy, I guess it's watchable. But again, we were watching the Star Wars Holiday Special here, and mostly in fast-forward.

- Some time in the near future the Cap'n might have a book review up again. It's been a while, I know, but I've started reading Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror by Jason Zinoman. From the introduction, it certainly seems to be interested in Wes Craven, Sean Cunningham, George Romero, John Carpenter, Dan O'Bannon, and Brian de Palma and uses the William Castle produced, Roman Polanski directed Rosemary's Baby as the point at which Old Horror passed the torch to Modern Horror.

 I was a little nervous starting out because I have followed much of the history of Night of the Living Dead, The Last House on the Left, Halloween, and Alien, but the chapter on Rosemary's Baby already included an anecdote about Vincent Price I don't think I've seen anywhere to this point as well as a more balanced approach to Castle's involvement into bringing the picture to Paramount than is evident from Robert Evans' The Kid Stays in the Picture. The next chapter is about Hitchcock, particularly Psycho's oft cited influence on Modern Horror, and seems to be adding some nuance to the claims that it spawned the slasher films of the next two decades. Anyway, I'm clearly only starting the book, so I'll give it a proper review when I finish. I will say that it really makes me want to start working on a book idea I've had for years...

Retro Review: Trees Lounge

This October, fifteen years will have passed since the first time I saw Trees Lounge, a movie I'm constantly surprised to find people have never heard of, let alone seen. I can understand that John and Jane Multiplex might not be aware of a 1996 indie film written, directed, and starring Steve Buscemi, but even most indie-heads seem to have totally missed the film. It's possible that the popularity of Trainspotting overshadowed Trees Lounge, but then again I might just link the two together because I saw them both around the same time at the same place. With the number of Steve Buscemi fans continuing to rise in the wake of Boardwalk Empire, maybe it's time to look back at his first (and arguably best) directorial effort.

Tommy Basilio (Buscemi) is a functioning alcoholic that can't seem to do anything right but drink. He loses his job as a mechanic for "borrowing" money from the register and losing all of it at Atlantic City, and his ex-girlfriend Theresa (Elizabeth Bracco) is with his boss Rob (Anthony LaPaglia). Tommy spends most of his time in Trees Lounge, a neighborhood dive bar populated by (barely) functioning alcoholics, where he entertains the locals and charms newcomers with his drinking games. When Uncle Al (Seymour Cassel), an ice cream truck driver, has a stroke and dies during his route, Tommy takes over driving, although he's hardly a worthy successor. Tommy does strike up a friendship with Debbie (Chloë Sevigny), Theresa's teenaged niece. Their relationship irks Debbie's father, Jerry (Daniel Baldwin), and is only compounded when Tommy takes it too far. Can he turn his life around, or is Tommy Basilio destined to become another slouching barfly?


 I wish I could remember how or why I knew that Trees Lounge existed in 11th grade: it was so early into the age of the internet that I can't imagine that it came from that direction. There's an off chance I saw a review in the local newspaper (which is, curiously enough, the only reason I knew Donnie Darko existed five years later), and I do know that I was on a serious Buscemi kick, having finished most of his collaborations with Quentin Tarantino, the Coen brothers, and Tom DiCillo's Living in Oblivion (another movie that deserves to be better known than it is).

 Regardless of where I found out about Trees Lounge, I know exactly where I saw it: The Studio. I mention The Studio quite a bit; whenever I wax nostalgic about the concept of "grindhouse" theatres, that shoebox duplex of movies that weren't big enough for The Rialto and were too commercially unfriendly for The Colony (and believe it or not, there was a time when you could see Trainspotting with next to no one in The Studio, when people hadn't seen it and wouldn't for years). I saw Trees Lounge with a new-ish friend that transferred to the high school the Cap'n went to, one who shared an interest in "art house" cinema. Nobody else seemed that interested, and I guess that's been the story of Trees Lounge to this day.

 It really is a shame, because there's a lot to like about Trees Lounge: Buscemi's writing, directing, and particularly acting chops all serve the low-key story well, and he surrounds himself with great actors in smaller roles: Carol Kane, Seymour Cassel, Mimi Rogers, Debi Mazar, Michael Imperioli, Kevin Corrigan, Mark Boone Junior, and a brief appearance by Samuel L. Jackson, playing against the "type" he'd been cultivating while working with Tarantino. It's a film of small moments, of characters that hover in and out of the story, where the story is less important than the players.

 While I described the plot very nearly in full, Trees Lounge is more interested than your average "sad sack" alcoholic movie, even if it infrequently rises above a tone somewhere between downbeat and depressing. Buscemi is able to keep the character study engrossing because Tommy is such a likable loser; as an audience, we understand why people have trouble completely giving up on him, even though he seems to be incapable of keeping a good thing going. There's an easygoing charm in his performance, one that might surprise people used to Buscemi's twitchier, chatty performances in films like Fargo and Reservoir Dogs.

 Speaking of Reservoir Dogs, there's a moment early in the film where Tommy is driving around town, and he passes a familiar sight to fans of Tarantino's debut:

In the commentary for the long out-of-print "special edition," Buscemi insists that this was a coincidence and not intended to be a visual reference to the opening credits sequence from Reservoir Dogs. While I take him at his word, it struck us immediately in 1996 and continues to be a pretty big coincidence if you ask me.

 The out-of-print disc is, unfortunately, the only way to see Trees Lounge in widescreen, because when Lionsgate picked up the rights, they dumped the transfer and all of its extras for a pan-and-scan disc at a bargain bin price. The only upside to this was that when I finally - after years of unsuccessfully searching - found the first DVD, instead of paying $25, I only had to pay $7.99 since the updated retail price was lost on a bored employee at Coconuts. It may seem silly to have been so excited, but every now and then one feels that way when a movie goes overlooked for so long. Considering that it's better than subsequent Buscemi directorial efforts (Animal Factory, Lonesome Jim, and Interview), I'm hoping this review turns some of you on to a better slice of understated independent cinema. Think of it as proto-mumblecore, if that's what you're into.

The Cap'n Presents: Adventures in Projectioneering (part Three)

(editor's note: this is a part of an ongoing - if very sporadic - series of essays about when the Cap'n worked as a projectionist a decade ago. Here are parts one and two.)

Today's trip down memory lane deals with something many audiences may not be aware of - some multiplexes, while having up to twenty screens - have only one projectionist at any given time. The Carmike theatre the Cap'n worked for had sixteen screens, and during the week they often saw no purpose in having anyone other than me upstairs running all of the projectors.

This was not always the case, however: when I started at this theatre, there were anywhere from three to five projectionists on hand to serve a number of purposes. Some threaded films, others assisted management with troubleshooting or ordering canisters, but for the most part three of us would split up the screens while the other one / two would "build" the new arrivals.

Without being a bore, "building" a film is roughly what it sounds like; new arrivals arrived in cans containing reels of film, usually at eleven to fifteen minutes in duration, that needed being cut together. Each reel comes with a "header" and "footer" - lengths indicating to projectionists the number of the reel and where to make a splice. Typically, we'd cut the header and footer with one frame attached, so when "breaking down" a print, it was easier to link up reel with extraneous material. The process can be time consuming, as you're literally unwinding a reel of film until the image stops, removing the "footer," taking off the "header" of the next reel, and then joining the film together with a piece of clear tape.

I mention this because after a month of so if working as a team, management decided to cut back on payroll and staff, and reduced the projection crew to one person during the week and two people on Fridays and Saturdays. One of their rationales is that there are periods when all of the films are running that projectionists have an unmitigated amount of "free time," which I spent reading, but others would wander downstairs and flirt with the girls in concessions of box office, or just shoot the breeze.

It's true; we had stretches of free time, during which it appeared we did nothing, and I can understand why you might not want to pay five people to hang out upstairs when you could pay one instead. The catch is that when the films end - and all of them do - they need to be re-threaded, properly framed in the gate, set up to run again, and started by the time the next audience comes in. Multiply that by sixteen, drop the staff down to one person, and let the games begin.

Personally speaking, it wasn't an impossible task - challenging, yes, but not impossible. Every day I came in (and particularly when screening times changed), I needed to make a chart of what film started when, when it ended, when I needed to thread it, and what order to move from projector to projector in order to assure everything was copacetic for an audience that only expects their film to start when the schedule says it does. I assure you, they don't know only one person is running around like a maniac upstairs, nor should they.

The difficulty was that after I mastered this balancing act, the newly hired "projectionist manager" that was suspiciously never around when help was needed, would show up during "down time," assume that the entire shift consisted of sitting at a desk with a dim light reading Hunter S. Thompson*. Therefore I was ordered to start "building" new arrivals, which is a bit of a time consuming process, and one that tends to undermine a carefully organized schedule designed to juggle sixteen different films. It didn't help that you could only "build" a film using a lower tray of a projector you were already showing a film on, and the resulting weight differential could offset the film above it, causing "head wraps" - where the film wraps around the metal ring the reel feeds from.

I could build a film, and I could run all of the screens, but doing both meant that one or the other suffered. The manager didn't really care, because it was easier for him to go to lunch with the general manager and do whatever it was he did when I wasn't being accused of having an easy job.

Okay, let's qualify something - being a projectionist is an easy job, compared to 99% of other jobs out there. Don't get me wrong. It is a skilled job, in that not anyone could walk in off the street and do the job right (let alone well) without having some serious mentoring and training. Do one thing wrong - put the lens on "flat" instead of "scope," misframe the image, or thread the film one sprocket off - and believe me, you will be hearing from a disgruntled populace. While being a projectionist isn't on the level of most positions, it does require demonstrably more knowledge than the next step down in the theatre chain - the usher, who is responsible for tearing tickets, pointing audiences toward their screen, and cleaning up garbage.

After a month or two of barely getting films together on time and being chastised for not "building" films fast enough twice a shift (at best the most times I saw the manager) I reached my breaking point. I can do either very well, I can do both acceptably - most of the time - but doing both while being derided by an absentee authority figure was unacceptable for a one step above minimum wage job, so I put in my two weeks notice and moved on. I still think back fondly on the projectionist area - the foreboding darkness and silence in the morning, the clattering of projectors at night, the challenge of keeping every element in synchronicity while always appearing invisible to the attendees on the other side of the glass.

I certainly intend to make this a more regular feature on the Blogorium than it has been in the past - you've heard the end of the story, but it's far from the only anecdote I have about my time working directly with film, so stay tuned for future Adventures in Projectioneering...



* Or Thomas Harris' Hannibal or biographies of Jim Morrison...

French Film Festival Recap (one week later)

Although it would be nice to share all of the cooking (especially the Crepes), the wine, or Kronenbourg beer (death to Budweiserdrome! Long live the new hops!), I think it might just be best to dispense with the surrounding details and focus on the two films we watched: Jean-Luc Godard's À bout de souffle (Breathless) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Micmacs à tire-larigot (or Micmacs in the US).

If you want to quickly explain the French New Wave aesthetic to somebody, the first ten minutes of Breathless is your best bet. Narration indirectly linked to the action, jazz score, cinema verite camera style (documentary-like but then again clearly artificial, a walking contradiction), and no shortage of jump cuts; it's all there. All of the components used to divorce French film from the Pre-WWII "cinema de papa."

The story is almost incidental: Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a car thief roaming around France, trying to get away from his existential angst. When he kills a police officer in panic (in a scene reminiscent of Sunset Boulevard), Michel hurries off to Paris in an attempt to collect money owed to him and sneak off to Italy. A car thief is no great problem, but Poiccard is now a murderer, and a cop killer at that.

While he's waiting (and waiting... and waiting) for someone, anyone, to pay up, Michel tries to talk Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg), an American living in Paris, to run away to Italy with him. They had a brief affair sometime before the film begins, and he seems more infatuated than she does. Patricia, who sometimes is speaking French and sometimes English, works for the New York Herald Tribune's Paris office and has aspirations to be a reporter, a dream parodied during a press interview with Parvulesco (Jean-Pierre Melville), who is only interested in talking about women and his opinion on love (or is, it seems, only asked about that).

To tell you much more would give away the entire movie, since much of Breathless is Godard and Raoul Cotard using hand-held cameras and natural light to follow Michel and Patricia around Paris while he waits and she makes up her mind about him. The juxtaposition of naturalistic filming with deliberately artificial editing (the jump cuts are most noticeable during conversations, where the audio plays out in real time but the images jump forward and backward in time) isn't easy for audiences unaccustomed to its unrestrained use (we at least have the benefit of the ensuing 50 years' worth of variations on the style. Imagine what it must have been like with only The 400 Blows and Hiroshima, Mon Amour to prepare you for the nouvelle vague). The combination of the two may actually be more daunting to audiences than Godard's deliberately formal "12 Tableau"s of Vivre sa Vie, but the result is a rewarding one.

---

We tried something very different for Micmacs, which I suppose still doesn't have a wide release here in the states; I've always held to a theory that the only problem with subtitles for those who don't speak the native language in foreign films is that audiences are forced to choose between following the mise en scene or trying to understand what the actors are saying. Splitting the difference necessarily means leaving something out, and accordingly the experience is never quite what it could be. This is the sort of problem to which there is only one good answer (learn every language fluently), but for the lazy or those short of time, I do not propose to tell you how to best approach this.

On the other hand, when we realized that the Micmacs we'd be watching had no subtitles, there was a choice to be made: stop watching the newest Jean-Pierre Jeunet film (and the first since 2004's A Very Long Engagement), or soldier on with my proposed experiment. I wanted to see if, lacking the necessary linguistic skills, we could follow the film purely on what was presented in images. Luckily for the Cap'n, my friends decided the experiment would be a fun one (it didn't hurt that Doctor Tom provided some spot-translation for us when necessary).

Fortune smiled upon us, as Jeunet is an extraordinarily visual director, and tends to orient his mise en scene and action like a silent director (fans of Amelie, Delicatessen, or The City of Lost Children will already be well aware of this). Micmacs is his magnum opus on this subject, as the film is a love letter to the artifice of film, right down to the opening credits that are designed to mirror the Golden Age of Hollywood's title cards (in black and white and English). Without the benefit of understanding what the characters were saying, much of the film is still perfectly easy to follow, even in dialogue heavy moments like the very end.

The story could be easily (and cheaply) summed up as a cross between The Little Rascals, Freaks, and Ocean's Eleven. Bazil (Danny Boon)'s father was killed by a landmine when he was a child (manufactured by one weapons company) when he was a child. As an adult working in a video store, Bazil is struck in the head by a bullet (from a rival weapons manufacturer) during a freak accident. (Here, having some of the translation may have come in handy, as while trying to settle in to the "no subtitles" mode, we failed to notice that the doctors decide not to remove the bullet).

Left with no job, nowhere to live, and no means to support himself, Bazil resorts to becoming a street performer, until he's adopted by Placard (Jean-Pierre Marielle) who takes him to live with other outcasts in a dwelling halfway between modified junk and steampunk architecture. Not having a stable footing on the names (we essentially learned the characters by behavior), I'm going to simply link to the IMDB page so that you can work things out for yourself when you've seen the film. Because the "this film is like" should give you some idea what the story is, I'll say no more other than Bazil discovers that the weapons manufacturers happen to be across the street from one another.

The experience was more interesting for us, particularly because Jeunet made a film that gleefully plays with the image. Having a character that hallucinates allows Jeunet to insert touches like video cameras that swivel like cartoon characters or animated thought bubbles when Bazil gets very dizzy. The most inspired gag occurs when Bazil discovers that the source of his life's miseries are directly opposite each other. The camera tilts down slowly on his face as the orchestral score swirls, only to reveal a full orchestra playing on the stairway behind Bazil. He has his epiphany, shakes the delusion from his head, and the orchestra "pops" out of existence.

I cannot say definitively how Micmacs will play with all of the nuance of dialogue intact, but as an experience in following the language of cinema, it was an enjoyable experience. I don't sense many of you would be foolish enough to try this yourselves (as there's really no point to it unless you just wanted to try), but I would recommend the film and intend to watch it myself when there's a chance to see it and understand what's being said (Doctor Tom indicated there's a heavy anti-American military industrial complex tinge to the weapons manufacturer subplot). It's quite enjoyable, and whimsical much the way that Amelie was, although the characters may be a bit broader. Still, if you're a fan of Jeneut, Micmacs will be well worth the six year wait.

All in all, French Film Friday was well worth it. I'd like to have a few more of them while I'm here in the Apartment that Dripped Blood, so keep your eyes peeled.

Reflections on Hopperthon

Sorry to take so long catching up with you folks; the Cap'n has been busy elsewhere and decided to put a hold on the Video Daily Double until I could ask you folks something.

On my monitor (which is of the old school, non-widescreen varieties), the videos I post are awkwardly cropped so that you're missing half of the picture. This is a bit of a shift, as they used to spill over onto the "About" and "Links" part of the right hand of the frame. I was okay with that, but there's no sense in trying to show you a video if you can't see half of it. If this isn't a problem on wider screens, then I'm less worried, but for my part I can't watch them and I wonder if this is a similar issue for you, the visitors.

Is this a shift on Blogger's part, or is it just the way that new YouTube videos embed? Any answers would be much appreciated. On to our main event:

Hopperthon

Monday night's tribute to the late Dennis Hopper went... well, it went. We watched The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, Blue Velvet, and a healthy dose of commercials, trailers, and scenes of Hopper being Hopper (including the "Devolution gun" from Super Mario Brothers and the "Sicilian" scene from True Romance). I also finally tracked down a trailer for Neil Young's Human Highway (as seen this past Sunday, I hope), which remains a favorite of several regular readers of the Blogorium.

That being said, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 didn't go over as well as I'd hoped it would have, which is a damn shame. I hate it when I really like a movie and have seen it several times, only to show it to a group of people that hate it almost immediately and never come back from the abyss of boredom and "this is a bad movie."

Yes, I understand that TCM2 is a very different movie than The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, mostly because I feel that Tobe Hooper had in the ensuing years felt a bit tied to the first film, and the sequel is a parody of both the original and the 80s consumer culture that merited a Part 2 in the first place. I mean, really, how seriously can you take a movie where the cannibal family from the middle of nowhere hit the road and make a small fortune off of their human meat barbeque? Even in Texas, which is repeatedly the butt of jokes about culture and its own history (including the Battle theme park, which seems to include walls made of skeletons for no apparent reason). This film is not meant to be taken with the same suspension of disbelief that the first film was.

That being said, sitting in stunned silence with four other people (and only the occasional pot shot taken at the more egregious lapses in logic), I was forced to see the movie the way they did, and maybe the scene with Stretch and Chop Top in the radio station does go on too long before Leatherface comes in. I always bought into the human oddity that was Bill Moseley's Chop Top, so for me the sequence always ratcheted up the suspense as Stretch realizes she can't just get rid of this guy. This time, however, I was informed that Moseley was a "horrible actor" and that "he wasn't holding the hanger under the lighter long enough," so there you have it.

Dennis Hopper's sporadic presence in the film was much lamented, but I hope that the "buying chainsaws" scene and the chainsaw duel at the end somehow compensated for it. I still like the movie, flaws and all.

Blue Velvet went over much better, but then again everybody in the room (save one) had seen the film multiple times. I think the sleep monster was creeping in, as we lost 3/5ths of the group just past the "joyride" scene, and I was a bit bummed that my joke failed miserably.

The Cap'n had considered buying some Pabst Blue Ribbon in honor of Frank Booth, but I then thought the better of it, assuming that at least one of the Velvet fanatics would bring some, so instead I decided to set up their drinking experience with a joke. I bought a "tall boy" bottle of Heineken for the express purpose of offering it to someone. They, in turn could say "Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!"

But nobody brought Pabst Blue Ribbon. They all thought someone else would, and so there's a lonely bottle of Heineken in my fridge that nobody is going to drink. Yee-ha! Here's to your fuck, Heineken.

The other memorable side effect of the night was introducing folks to the effects of Up-Conversion on DVDs, which they had not experience with a really good print. Unfortunately, it has the effect of making the image a little too crisp, as though it were shot on camcorder and transferred directly - especially if the camera is moving. They noticed it in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, but it was apparently quite distracting during Blue Velvet. I'm kind of used to it by now, but this concern has been pointed out to me before, and shy of turning the Up-Conversion off - which would make things seriously fuzzy - I'm not sure how to help you folks. Ideas?

Join the Cap'n tomorrow for my take on this "How Many Movies Have You Seen" meme that has people tagging me up and down Facebook.

TTFN!

Flickering Lights (but in the bad way)

Explanation of technical difficulties:

Greetings, all. For the past week or so, issues with the power in my apartment have made using my computer for extended periods of time difficult. As I'm typing this, the light behind me is once again flickering, and I have few doubts that before I finish getting this entry up, the computer will a) cut off, or b) flicker out but not actually cut off, only to flicker back on shortly thereafter.

In short, I cannot trust anything to stay on very long. I rarely interject "real life" garbage into the Blogorium, because this is for writing about movies, not my day to day crap. My landlord is, not surprisingly, dragging his feet on the matter, so in the meantime I have to make the best of when the PC is working.

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What I can do in the meantime is put up another "From the Vaults". Last night's picture project took me the better part of five hours to put together with all the headaches this wiring has been, so forgive me if I simply cut and paste some "classic" Blogorium from the olden days of Myspace or Livejournal. I will return to normal as soon as possible, and hopefully with the promised A Serious Man review you voted for but don't have yet.

In the mean time, here's some old stuff...

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Excursions into the random, the weird, and the mundane:

Someone called into work today asking if we had the new Mel Gibson movie about Presidential Assassination called Vanishing Point.

Can you pick out what's wrong about the caller's question? Here are some hints:

1) Vanishing Point wasn't released recently, and it's about a cross country car chase.
2) Mel Gibson isn't in Vanishing Point or ANY movie involving Presidential Assassination.
3) Mel Gibson is also not in Vantage Point, which does feature said assassination.
4) Vantage Point won't be on dvd until July 1st
5) The Caller is an idiot.

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However, the John Wayne Westerns at Fox boxed set came in. I know this is probably not of interest to many of you, but it does include The Big Trail, which has a very young John Wayne and one other seriously interesting technical tidbit*:

* I'm about to get VERY geeky about cinema. You may not even be interested.

The Big Trail was a very early attempt to create the "widescreen" effect on a film. Twenty five years before The Robe ushered Cinemascope into theatres, The Big Trail was trying something like what Todd-AO Cameras did and present a western on an "epic" scale. For this reason alone, The Big Trail is something I want to check out. I don't know much more about it than that, other than it's a little bit like Stagecoach or How the West was Won.

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65,929 minutes.

1098.8 hours.

45.79 days.

That's the total amount of unwatched film I have here in the Apartment of Solitude.

Mind you, this is just movies; I'm not including television or stand up or mini-series or anything like that. Just movies.

If I didn't sleep at all and took virtually no breaks between viewings, it would take me 46 days to watch everything here I haven't seen yet. That's assuming nothing else is coming in. I didn't even factor in the times for movies I had seen.

To be honest with you, I'm stunned. It's more staggering than even I thought it would be. In order to see as much as possible, I tend to ferret away movies that I want to / feel like I should see with the promise of "we'll get to it some time soon."

I tried to do this earlier this year but got halfway through and accidentally cleared out the calculator. This time, being very careful, it took me two hours to get through everything here in the house. I'm not even going to think about my Netflix queue, which is in the range of another 440 movies I haven't seen. Strictly going by what's at home, I have a LOT to watch. And most of it is very good stuff I'm just not going to tell you I haven't seen.

Surprisingly, only a small chunk of it is horror. It is true that I do have a large shelf devoted to nothing but horror movies, but I do tend to pick up things I've seen or have a great deal of interest in. Only occasionally do I pick up random stuff like Garden of the Dead or Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter.

TV-wise, I'm just not willing to think about that. The movie running time is daunting enough, so I'd rather not think about the boxes with running times of 16 hours or more right now. Yeesh.

At any rate, I still have a lot to watch, and even more that I don't have here that I do want to watch. I guess it's good that this is what I want to do with my life, otherwise I'd be wasting 46 days (and then some) alone in a dark room.
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So I watched I Am Legend, and the verdict is...

It’s pretty good.

The main criticisms against the film I’ve read elsewhere are pretty much right on the money: the "infected" people look awful and really fake, there isn’t much of an explanation of how the other two survivors get to Neville, and accordingly the very very end is not to palatable. I’ll address those one by one in a moment, but first I want to talk about what DOES work, because when this movie is on, it’s better than The Last Man on Earth or The Omega Man and might even be as good as the Matheson novella.

The first two thirds of the movie works like gangbusters: we’re immediately immersed in a world that feels real, abandoned, and dangerous. Robert Neville’s daily routine is established in ways that feel organic to the plot and not simply "well, here’s what he’d be doing", and the flashbacks are employed in a useful and logical fashion. In this sense, it’s like The Last Man on Earth but without narration; we see, but don’t need to be told. Neville treats his dog Sam and mannequins he places around town like people, but it never seems stupid or trite. This is just how he copes with being alone.

Big chunks of this have to do with Will Smith. It may not seem like the conventional choice, especially looking at the two films that came before I Am Legend or The Quiet Earth, but I think a lot of people forget that Smith started his film career with Six Degrees of Separation, and that when asked to carry a film based on body language and facial expressions, he’s more than up to the task. Considering that his co-stars are a dog, lots of cg creatures, and much later two other people, he grounds the film and keeps it believable, even when he’s hitting on a mannequin.

When the infected / vampire / hemocyte* creatures are introduced, it’s in a way consistent with the story; they are a constant presence at night, first heard and then later seen, and the threat is very real. There isn’t too much scientific mumbo-jumbo to gum up the works, and director Francis Lawrence mines some real tension out of the first time Neville gets stuck in the dark.

But what I liked more than that was the escalating traps that Neville and the "lead" whatever you call it set for each other. Watching the extended cut, I don’t know how I would’ve read some of the things that happen in the middle of the film if I hadn’t seen the "alternate" ending. It wouldn’t make sense to set the kind of traps they set for Neville if they couldn’t reason, or to systematically take away what was important to Robert the way they do.

Anyway, I don’t want to spoil too much, because I think most of you will find things to like about I Am Legend. I will however give you the heads up about some of the problems I have with the film (which aren’t unique from the looks of it):

1. The infected are all CG. In no way at any point do they look like they’re organic to the world around them, nor do they look like they’re actually occupying the same space as Will Smith. It actually reminded me a little bit of the robots in I, Robot, because they have similar body movements. The problem is that I never once believe these were humans who were infected and mutated. The "infected" dogs were more believable than the people, and for the ending of the movie to really work, you need to buy the antagonists.

2. Early into the flashbacks they establish that all bridges to the island (Manhattan?) are being destroyed in order to keep the infection from spreading too quickly, so it’s hard to understand how two people drove in and find Neville at exactly the right moment. The timing of their arrival isn’t so strange, but the way they did it is never even addressed. No one ever asks "how did you even get here", which leads me to

3. This is for those of you who saw the "alternate" ending, and already know what happens. Otherwise, please heed the SPOILER warning. At the very end of the film, Neville, Anna, and Ethan have made their peace with the infected and head north to Vermont (apparently the virus can’t survive the cold) and as we hear a new recorded message from Anna, you can see them driving across a bridge that is in NO WAY damaged. After 90-something minutes of seeing and understanding there’s no way in or out of the island, suddenly they just drive off. It doesn’t make sense, and that kind of cheapens the climax of the film.

But truthfully, I think the positives for I Am Legend do outweigh the negatives, and you’re going to enjoy most of the movie, even if it falters a little bit at the end. Oh, and the Bob Marley and Shrek scenes near the end are um, out of place. They aren’t really bad, they just don’t fit in this world.

I Am Legend is a 3 1/2 Stars out of 5 movie, and definitely worth seeing, but I would recommend the "alternate" cut, or whatever is on disc two.

Back in business...?

The Cap'n is back. Again. From yet another internet blackout. For those keeping count, this is the third time in a month that regular Blogorium service was interrupted by sub-par internet access. Somehow I think that the cable company is trying to send a message. Or, two possible messages:

1. Stop paying us for high speed internet.

or

2. Pay us more so this doesn't keep happening.

(yes, I did just suggest that nameless cable company with a Looney Tunes related bird for a mascot is running a protection racket. They once again refused to replace my router, instead blaming it on a "main line" problem. I'm just saying)

So it's back on. And Mystery Science Theater 3000 volume XVI is here (I picked it up after cable man left). Things are temporarily good. I'd like to be more upbeat about all this, but you should expect more from the Cap'n, and you aren't getting it. But I'm working on that.

Scroll down and you'll find Trailer Sunday where it should be, along with a review of Outlander that I wrote after spending two hours on the phone Saturday night. The movie was okay, but it has its own review, so please read it.

Tomorrow you'll have a review of Observe and Report. The day after that, The Limits of Control. Then I'll break up the reviews with something, and come back with Thirst on Friday. I've got a schedule of school related business, but if I could spend all day wrapping up a German class and still watch Observe and Report, I can fit in a movie a day until Christmas.

Speaking of watching movies, I've got an extra copy of Blood Car here. Review Terminator: Salvation, So We Won't Have To, and it's yours. Since it's just that hard to find, I should hope that brings one of you to the table with an appetite for mediocrity.

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This is sort of embarassing to post, but I'm hoping most of you can't read German. If so, then you're Major Tom or Adam. Please don't laugh too hard at the awkward sentence structure, or the simplicity of the descriptions.

For everybody else, this is what I spent all day doing for class. It's a Wiki project on German Cinema, specifically Literary Adaptations after 1945. I'm not going to pretend it's terribly insightful, unless of course you know nothing about German cinema or Tom Ripley movies not starring Matt Damon or John Malkovich. But enjoy.

Deutsche Filme: Literarische Anpassungen

Inhalt:

Bild eins. Filmplakat für Effi Briest (1974)

Bild zwei. Filmplakat für Der Amerikanische Freund (1977)

Bild drei. DVD Abdeckung für Die Blechtrommel (1979)

Bild vier. Klaus Kinski und Isabelle Adjani von Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979)

Bild fünf. Filmplakat für Mephisto (1981)

Vorwort: Mein E-Wiki zeigt fünf bilder über die Filme von Deutschland nach 1945. Diese Filme sind auf Literarischen quellen gegründet. Ich finde diese Filme interessant, weil sie deutsche und Amerikanische Literatur auf deutschem Kino beziehen. Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht ist auch ein anpassungen von einem früheren deutschen Film. Diese Anpassungen jede Annäherung die Romane anders als und ich glauben, dass sie zu deutscher Nachkriegsgesellschaft Stellung nehmen.

Bild eins ziegt ein Filmplakat für Rainer Werner Fassbinders Effi Briest (1974). Fassbinder passte sich an der Roman Effi Briest durch Theodor Fontane, und wiederholte den Text so nah, wie möglich. Der Filmaufbau ist formal und Dialog ist sehr gestelzt, aber dieses war die Direktorenabsicht. Ich finde Fassbinders annäherung oft herausforderun, aber Effi Briest ist ein zuverlässig anpassungen.

Bild zwei ziegt ein Filmplakat für Wim Wenders Der Amerikanische Freund (1977), mit Dennis Hopper und Bruno Ganz.Der Amerkanische Freund ist nicht auf einen Deutsch roman, aber von Patricia Highsmiths Ripley's Game. Der Film is auch intressant weil es auf englisches und deutsch ist. Hopper spielt Tom Ripley, ein Buchstabe von Highsmiths serie der Romane, die einen sterbenden mensch (Ganz) in Tötung betrügt. Ich habe The Talented Mr. Ripley gesehen, und Der Amerikanische Freund war eine angenehme Überraschung.

Bild drei gibt die DVD Abdeckung (cover) fur Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum) (1979), ein Film von Volker Schlörndorff. Günter Grass schreibt Der Blechtrommel im 1959 und wurde einen Nobelpreis zugesprochen. Schlorndorff verwies Die Blechtrommel zwanzig jahre später und gewann einen Preis der Akademie (Academy Award) für besten ausländischen Film 1980 (Best Foreign Film 1980). Die Blechtrommel war erfolgreich, aber sexueller Inhalt hat Kontroverse verursacht. Ich finde Die Blechtrommel auf DVD bei The Criterion Collection, und sieht es bald an.

Bild vier ziegt Klaus Kinski und Isabelle Adjani in Werner Herzogs Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979). Der Film ist ein neuauflage (remake) von F.W. Murnaus Nosferatu, eines Symphonie des Grauens, und auch ein Anpassung von Bram Stokers Dracula. Ich finde diesen Film intressant weil Herzog aufzügt von beide Versionen und verursacht neues etwas. Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht wurde in zwei Versionen gefilmt: Englisch und Deutscher. Die englische Version wird Nosferatu: The Vampyre benannt.

Bild fünf ziegt ein Filmplakat für István Szabós Mephisto (1981). Szabó ist ein ungarischer Direktor, und Mephisto ist einen Anpassung des Romans durch Klaus Mann. Mephisto war ein Koproduktion von Ungarn, von Österreich und von BDR. Der Film und der Roman sind ein wiederholen des Doktor Faustus, aber in Nazi Deutschland. Ich fand den Film interessant, weil er klassische Literatur anpaßt, um zu moderner deutscher Geschichte Stellung zu nehmen. Die verfassung fur Mephisto (Klaus Maria Brandauer) ist also ein Anpassung von F.W. Murnaus Faust (1926).

Pass

I propose an experiment for the Cap'n. I will never watch Twilight or any of its sequels.

This experiment shouldn't be that hard, since I've gone twelve years (almost) without ever having seen Titanic, and there's no sign of breaking that embargo on the horizon. Lest ye think these are merely knee-jerk reactions, I will openly admit that I had little to no interest in seeing any of the above films / films-to-be in the first place. There was a push, some time after the early reviews of Twilight the first to get me to watch something that was, by all accounts, woefully inept. I do make concessions for the woefully inept in something I call "Bad Movie Night", but Twilight rings hollow from my high and mighty perch of Trash Savant snobbery.

To prove to you that this isn't simply wasting buckshot, fired repeatedly into a barrel of rotting mackerel, allow me to add one more movie coming out this year. One that many of you are certain to haul me in the general direction of:

Avatar

Just as I so deftly avoided the exploits of Twilight the "vampire" last year, and so too the werewolf equivalent this year, I will likewise opt to ignore the James Cameron equivalent, plus or minus a decade. It isn't that I have no desire to have my "eyes fucked", as sundry corners of the internet would have you believe, nor is it some lingering disinterest in Cameron's filmography, a topic I breached on more than one occasion in this very blogorium.

No, my decision to not watch Avatar (in all likelihood ever) stems from an overwhelming sense of ennui when I watch the trailer. Nothing about the film strikes me as interesting or marvelous, and the "awe" I understand I am to have just isn't there. It's as though I'm in the presence of a woman voted "most beautiful" by consensus of the world, but my immediate response is "thanks for coming over, but I have something better I could be doing right now."

Many of you, no doubt, will be revisiting this particular piece and patiently waiting for me to eat crow, or to elicit a response from me by promising said "eyeball fucking" is a true and everlasting promise from Cameron the Mediator. Justification of Cinematic Faith by 3-D Grace, if you will. But I'm not buying it. Intuition rarely steers me off course when movies are concerned. My initial hesitance to watch the Watchmen turned out to be quite justified one-and-a-half times later. The concerns over Juno's hyper-precocious dialogue and paper thin characters were, alas, not unfounded.

Avatar looks like a very expensive, very expansive, very loud, very digital movie. It also looks like a chore to sit through, whiz bang advances in computer technology aside. Your Cap'n is also quite fond of his eyeballs, for what it's worth.

If I can avoid getting sparkle on me, I think I can sit out another blockbuster for the holiday season. Curmudgeons like me are scarcely missed as it is.

Back in Business

The great internet drought of aught nine is over, good readers. I hope you haven't all drifted away while the Cap'n stared at a solitary blinking light on his cable modem.

With good news, inevitably, there is bad: by fixing the internet, there is no more free cable. Since I wasn't paying for it, I can't really complain about that, but it does mean I won't be keeping up with tv shows on cable (or the redo of The Prisoner that begins tonight). Instead, I will use the extra time idly spent flipping channels to focus on the piles of movies and tv shows in Blogorium Central HQ (aka The Apartment that Dripped Blood).

The missing two entries will appear chronologically where they ought to, based roughly on when I wrote them using Word on Friday and Saturday. To ensure you see this first, I'll timestamp Trailer Sunday so that it ends up below this entry.

Enjoy the return of my daily shenanigans, now with less distraction.

Technical Difficulties

Greetings, folks! The Cap'n is experiencing Internet related difficulties and is presently unable to update the blogorium from home. Hopefully this will be settled before Zombieland tonight, and he looks forward to seeing you folks tonight. In the meantime, we apologize for a lack of posting last night.

See you tonight

- the blogorium team

Troubleshooting

I've noticed that it's tricky to vote for some of the polls because of the stupid embedding by Youtube, but I have a reasonable solution for this:

If you scroll down to "Theatres, Audiences, and Horror" and click on the title, it takes you to a separate page where the polls are perfectly accessible. Most of them seem to be tied now, which is not a good thing. Unless you're all willing to stay all day AND all night so we can watch all twelve. I'll do it if you're really down for it.

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Liz asked some very good questions in yesterday's post, so I'll attempt to answer them here:

1. If by the "old" version Slither, you mean Night of the Creeps, then yes - provided I can find a copy when it hits dvd and Blu-Ray for the first time on Tuesday. If it's voted in, then we'll watch the "new" version of Slither, simply entitled "Slither", on Saturday.

If you meant this Slither, then no. We will not be watching that.

2. I haven't really decided which version of Drag Me to Hell to show if it wins. I hear the differences are not radical. Apparently the unrated cut has more blood and the cat scene is a little longer during the seance. We'll put it up to a vote on Saturday, provided it makes it through semi-finals voting.

3. This should be sufficiently informative, as details go. You might also want to check my old myspace for the event information, which also has details.

More sufficient technical info goes thusly: every night starts at 6pm.

There are two showings for Zombieland at the Grande: one at 6:35, and one at 9:10. I'd prefer the 6:35, but if most of you have to work, then we'll watch something here and meet there on Thursday night.

If anyone has any other questions or technical concerns, please contact me here or by phone, if you have the Cap'n's number.

Just the other day, I discovered that the iPod generation is finally working in unison with the cinephile generation. While I was reading a review of Wrong Turn 2 (out of curiosity), there was a tidbit in the extras about the director recording a commentary track that Fox left out. However, Dread Central made the commentary track available as an mp3 to anyone who wanted to download it. Slap it on your iPod, cue up the movie, and enjoy.

I must admit that I'm intrigued by this concept. It's not only one out there either: director Tim Sullivan (2001 Maniacs) has actually been recording mp3 commentary tracks with members of the cast and crews of Fright Night, Child's Play, and Nightwing. Since director Tom Holland wasn't asked to add his thoughts to the Child's Play 20th anniversary, Sullivan sat down with him and made another track for fans to listen to. Fright Night has two tracks, each with different participants, which is two more than the dvd has!

To be fair, this isn't exactly new: Kevin Smith had the botched iPod commentary for Clerks 2 that didn't come out in time to watch in theatres (but is on the dvd), and I suppose you could make the argument that Riff Tracks is essentially doing the same thing. I would argue that Riff Tracks (the Mike Nelson / Kevin Murphy / Bill Corbett MST3k spin-off) serves a different function since you're paying for an mp3 of people making fun of well known movies (like The Dark Knight, Star Wars, or Harry Potter).

Why I find this more interesting than the "record your own video commentary" that's on Warner Brothers Blu-Rays is that the portability factor isn't there. I have plenty of friends who have laptops or iPods that don't have fancy tvs or internet-linked Playstation 3's. While the downloadable commentary may not seem that practical in comparison to ones on the actual disc, it is an interesting way for directors, writers, actors, and effects crew members to subvert a cheap-o studio looking to pump out the disc quickly.

Let me know if you see any more of these floating around. This movement could be a fun way of bridging what the fans want and what the manufacturers deliver.

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I don't actually have much to say about Chris Rock wanting to make another Pootie Tang film except YES.

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Finally, since I was talking about Gremlins a few days ago, this amused the Cap'n:

Little Boxes on the hardwood, little boxes made of...

well, cardboard, I guess. For all the Cap'n knows, they could be ticky-tacky. If one takes the definition of ticky tacky ("shoddy material, as for the construction of standardized housing"), I suppose you could actually say they are made of ticky tacky. And most of them look the same.

That, as many of you can guess, is the problem. I'd love to tell you about all the movies I've watched since class ended and I moved in, but I honestly can't remember which box has what movie. I only just found the box with the Torchwood and Doctor Who blu-rays, and I think I learned how to use the DVR (we'll find out if Weeds is on it tomorrow), but On Demand doesn't work for some reason and Chiller (the all horror channel) also doesn't want to load. Cheesus crust!

Other than that, things are good. I was surprised to come back from an internet blackout to see that Ridley Scott is directing this Alien prequel thingamabob and that Spielberg is remaking Harvey. Both of these struck me as very odd and unnecessary, but the Cap'n has been wrong before.

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I think before dipping into the "Vault", I mentioned that my days of used books and more were winding down. This is true; in fact, my last day of enjoying "McKayflix" will be Thursday, so if you have requests, now is the time to get them in. Trade credit is light but I can buy them on your behalf for a later date. Just let me know.

The split is one more out of "that's how it has to be" than "what either would prefer": I can't work the schedule they need and they don't have positions for seasonal employees. It's okay though, I'll still find ways to keep the filmic updates coming your way, and hopefully I should have a ton of material to sort through in the three weeks between the end of work and the beginning of school.

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If I get this DVR thing working correctly, I might even start reviewing stuff I'd never use trade credit on, or check out, and definitely not buy. Having spent very little time perusing the twenty or so movie channels to record from, I couldn't give you specifics, but those lesser-tier HBO and Showtime channels are airing just about anything.

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Finally, I saw this on Saturday night and thought it was cute:

You Can't Beat the Price

Since the Cap'n now has one of those X-thingy mathingy 360's with the Fancy Schmancy but already rendered obsolete drives (HD-DVD) I might as well dig up some movies that aren't on Blu Ray and check out their comparably fancy schmancy alternatives.

There are two things that I found to be true after some cursory searches for HD DVDs online:

1) There are a number of good movies with pretty high marks visually that aren't on BD yet, or anytime soon.

2) HD-DVD's are REAAAAALLY cheap.

How cheap? Let's look at it this way; the most expensive HD-DVD I ordered was 6 bucks with shipping included. Most of them were around $3 a pop, compared to the (at best) $14-40 cost of their eventual Blu Ray counterpart. For most of the HD-DVDs I ordered, shipping was free. There's nothing wrong with the discs, and if you have a player it's not going to stop working any time soon just because they've been discontinued. So, for about 30 bucks (with shipping), I got the following HD discs:

The Deer Hunter
The Game
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Being John Malkovich
Army of Darkness
Seed of Chucky
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
Dune
The Frighteners

None of which are available on Blu Ray or have been announced and all of which were much cheaper. Based on the limited amount I could get from work (it consisted of Miami Vice and Hollywoodland plus the King Kong that came with the HD-DVD drive) the picture is comparable to Blu Ray so the only drop is in price of disc. Not too shabby.

They haven't arrived yet, but I'll be sure to give you an update when they do. I'm particularly interested in The Frighteners. Dune got some high marks online, and one review indicated it's the best the film has looked on home video yet (and considering how many different region coded discs he compared it to, I'm inclined to believe him). Also, most of them have all the extras of their fancy dvd counterparts, including the 4 hour Frighteners "making of".

In fact, the only HD-DVD disc I couldn't find for dirt cheap was Forbidden Planet, which was hovering right around $12. It's still not super expensive, I guess, and there's no indicator that or if a Blu Ray is on the horizon, but I'd like to keep spending on this dead format to less than $10. On the other hand, if any of you see it out there for a reasonable price, pick it up and I'll be happy to pay you for it.

Since I've got this drive, I might as well use it, and I have all the incentive in the world to build up a small collection of this already obsolete medium. More than half of them are "flippers", which means that one side is high definition and the other is a regular dvd, so they'll still work even if the drive peters out. If anyone knows how (or where or if) I can locate firmware updates for the drive, drop the Cap'n a line.

Off to work shortly, but I did end up getting The State. Even in the awkward first episode, it's still funnier than most sketch comedy on tv today. Just saying...

Bad News, Everyone!

The Greensboro Summer Fest Massacre Part 2 will most definitely not take place in the Apartment of Solitude. The Cap'n has been given his marching orders by a landlord keenly interested in renting the place out for more money (so interested that he snuck in a For Rent sign while I was at work and won't return phone calls).

While this may not be news to most of you, the unfortunate part is that the new apartment the Cap'n thought he'd be moving into is suddenly not available, so I have a week and a half to avoid being homeless. I'll be hitting the pavement tomorrow in order to avoid this, but considering the time limitations, it may come to the point where beggars can't be choosers. I'm not really thrilled about that since a large living room was a big priority and the no-such-luck apartment met that criteria.

Apologies in advance if things are a bit cramp-y come July 2nd.

Speaking of which, we are starting on Thursday, July the 2nd of 2009 with a field trip to see Drag Me to Hell, followed by night one of Summer Fest shock-o-rama. They will continue, pretty much unabated, until sometime late Sunday night, July 5th. The list of films is nearly finalized and when (if) I know where it's happening, I'll put everything together in an official bulletin.

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Very quickly I'd like to address something I've been noticing online. Since Ghostbusters arrived on Blu Ray this past Tuesday, buzz online has included lots of griping about the amount of grain in the picture. Having recently seen this version of Ghostbusters, I thought I'd compare it to another movie that isn't getting this much grief but has similar grain presence.

First off, you should know that Ghostbusters is grainy. So grainy, in fact, that if you look at some of the books in the library scene, they look like aphids are crawling all over them. It can be, admittedly, distracting; this does in some respects draw away from the "perfect image" reputation Blu Ray is supposed to have. I understand that, and it takes some getting used to.

On the other hand, two things jump out immediately: 1) Many movies released on BD from the 1980s have similar grain issues. Part of this has to do with the film stock being used at the time, and part of it is because in order to "remove" that grain, studios will use something called Digital Noise Reduction. It clears up grain but also robs images of fine details. Terminator 2 has a healthy dollop of DNR and you can tell at times. The other point, 2) is that even with this grain, you can still make out more in the image for Ghostbusters than previous dvd editions. Once you get used to the grain, the picture does admittedly look better and more "film like", however you take that to mean.

More importantly, I don't hear the same complaints about Criterion's The Seventh Seal, which is getting rave reviews about it's "perfect" image but also begins with a persistent layer of grain. Under the grain, sure, it looks great but unless I'm crazy or something, it's the same essential issue. I had a similarly jarring encounter with The Third Man, which looked much grainier than I ever remembered it seeing, improved clarity or no. And yet, like The Seventh Seal, nobody seems to be mentioning it. Ghostbusters, on the other hand, is getting calls of "buyer beware!"

Personally the Cap'n finds it a little ridiculous, but if you want my opinion both of them look pretty damned good considering their age. So does The Third Man, it just took some adjusting to. Truthfully, people with smaller tv's might not even notice the grain. On a larger screen, it's pretty pervasive, but not so distracting I couldn't watch two very entertaining movies. Yeesh.

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Off to bed. I have to find something of Summer Fest is going to be tragic...

Sadly, not Weeds...

Things are a little slow at the blogorium today, kiddos. It's laundry and homework day, the two most exciting things the Cap'n could possibly talk about*, and then I went to work and uh-

Oh, right. Box Cleaning Day!

I realize that doesn't sound any more exciting than homework or laundry but when you work at a used book / cd / dvd / etc store, and have (relatively) unfettered access to said product, you can find some pretty good stuff. Among the stuff I brought home tonight were:

Eating Raoul - a French comedy about cannibalism

Matinee - a criminally under-seen (and out of print) Joe Dante movie starring John Goodman as a William Castle-esque producer of the film Mant!

Nightmare City - Umberto Lenzi movie about not-zombie-zombies. Also known as City of the Walking Dead.

Yojimbo and Sanjuro Criterions - The Kurosawa films that were roughly remade into A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More by Sergio Leone.

Alain Delon Collection - The Swimming Pool, Diabolically Yours, The Widow Couderc, The Gypsy, and Our Story, all starring the "male Brigitte Bardot"

Phantasm II - Alas, it's a region 2 disc, but at this point when I have some money to spare I'm going to buy a region-free player. We have too many discs come through that people just can't play to let them go to waste, and who knows if Phantasm II will ever come out in the United States.

Tornado! and Andy Richter Controls the Universe - I bought both of these with the intention of watching them, but if the Cranpire wants either one they are his for the asking. Tornado! (also known as Twister but not that Twister) is the made-for-tv movie starring Bruce Campbell and Ernie Hudson. I certainly hope all of you know what Andy Richter Controls the Universe is.

Clownhouse - For notoriety's sake.

also I picked up some books, including The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and The Golden Ratio, as well as some cds involving Tom Waits, The Ramones, and The Cure, plus one featuring Jim Jarmusch, Harry Dean Stanton and Jimmy Buffett. See if you can guess what it is.

So that's what I've got. I haven't watched La Haine yet but I promise to get to it soon enough. Toodles.


* With the possible exception of mowing the lawn. Wow is that exhilarating!