Babel

Babel is a film about people from different cultures failing to communicate. I understand.

I'm a teacher. I communicate for a living. I can write a handout with carefully articulated instructions. Then I can make copies for everyone and carefully explain those instructions to the class, and see if anyone has questions. I even show examples of what the finished product will look like. That's all part of the job.

After a couple of questions, everyone seems to understand. Students nod. They follow. Success! We move on.

On the due date, inevitably, people come in with their assignments. Well, some do. The students who follow instructions are often (not always) outnumbered by those who didn't follow instructions.

The students who didn't follow instructions always seem to say the same things: "I didn't know that," "I didn't see that," "I forgot," or "I didn't understand." (Few will admit that they didn't care, though one has to assume that's a factor as well.)

And I teach English to people for whom English is their primary language. I might get one or two people per class who speak English as a second language. They typically write better than many native English speakers. So what's the problem?

Well, there's plenty of blame to go around. Some students don't put a high priority on education. Some don't put a high priority on my class. Some think I'm boring. Others think I'm a clown. Quite a few students do listen, but not all. I've yet to meet the teacher who can reach everybody.

Plus, I was a student once. I was apathetic. Motivating me took a miracle. I'm not sure how my best teachers did that. I've been trying to figure that out for my entire career. Sometimes the magic works and sometimes not so much.

I frequently get students who reflect on their junior high and high school English classes and admit that their teachers just showed movies and let them "talk quietly and work on other homework" all the time. I get really frustrated when I hear stuff like that, and I wear myself out grading papers, taking work home, trying to help. I can't fix the public school system; all I can do is try to stem the tide, a handful of students at a time.

I didn't get into this to be a martyr. I'm just trying to do my job.

If teaching has shown me anything, it is that we cannot take communication for granted. Babel just says that differently.

Away We Go

We are not our friends. We are not our parents. We are not who we were when we were younger. We are not even who we were before we got together.

Overcoming uncertainty sometimes starts with a declaration of who we are not, what we do not want, where we do not want to be, and how not to do things. Sometimes this is the only way a couple can figure out anything.

Uncertainty is paralysis while everything and everyone else keeps moving.

For us, we are who we are, and we are on the same team, and this is our little world.

Away We Go takes these two characters whose whole world is each other and sends them out into everyone else's world, where they really don't fit at all. They think finding a place to live and raise their unborn child is the objective.

They spend the film making decisions not just about where they don't want to live, but also about who they don't want to be. For me, this film is an affirmation of everything I've ever determined about growing up.

We are who we are, we can't help it much, and we need to be okay with that.

Rudolph's character tells a story toward the end about how her family had an orange tree that wouldn't grow oranges, and one night her mother woke her and her sister, took them outside, and with a couple of grocery bags of fruit — not just oranges, but pineapples and grapefruits and whatever else — they taped and tied fruit to the tree. When her father woke up and saw the tree, he stared for a moment and then started laughing harder than she'd ever heard him laugh.

The story can be anybody's, but not that moment. That moment belongs to that family.

I don't have all of this figured out, but if I'm certain of anything, it's this: You make it work your own way, and you acknowledge the beauty in the jury-rigged life, the jury-rigged family, and what you make together, what you find together, is yours for however long you are here together. That's the certainty. And even that can go away.

I look at other people's families and I don't understand. I drive away from people's houses and tell my wife, "We will never live like that," or "We will never let our kid(s) do that," or "If you treat me like she treats him, I will leave." I unfairly judge. I show my own dysfunction. I have no idea what kind of father I will be like, or what our kids will be like, or what our life will be like. No one does. That uncertainty is part of the gig.

Family is messy business. Everyone has their own mess. You make your own.

Do we ever know anything? The answer is summed up in the last two lines of the film:

"This place is perfect for us, don't you think?"

"I hope so. I really fucking hope so."

Austin Powers Trilogy

I did not buy this trilogy as a set, but I refuse to write three entries about Austin Powers, which would involve devoting an entire entry to Goldmember. No.

Austin Powers quotes were everywhere once.

1.) "Yeah, baby!"
2.) "Shagadelic."
3.) "There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum; it's breathtaking, I suggest you try it."

And then they were everywhere some more.

1.) "Get in my belly!"
2.) "I put the "grrrr" in swinger, baby!"
3.) "I eat because I'm unhappy, and I'm unhappy because I eat."

And then, shit, really? More of them?

1.) "Preparations A through G were a complete failure. But now, ladies and gentlemen, we finally have a working tractor beam, which we shall call... Preparation H."
2.) "Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto."
3.) "Unfortunately, my neck does look like a vagina."

I have completist tendencies. No matter how terrible the chapters or sequels, I have this compulsion; I must own them all. This is how a guy ends up with all five Planet of the Apes movies, for example. (Well, that, and I found all of them in a used bin at the same time. That's just kismet. You can't argue with Turkish fate, people.)

Re-watching the Austin Powers trilogy took two nights, the first of which I was in a terrible mood. I expected Austin Powers to cheer me up, but mostly I was just annoyed. The jokes fell flat. The "yeah babies" grated on me.

These are not movies designed to cheer me up. My mind was still at work, and I couldn't relax and just enjoy a stupid comedy. I kept thinking about work. I like my job but it has certain days that sort of feel like sand in my eyes.

(Incidentally, I believe that if we go home and spend time thinking about work or having nightmares about work, we should be able to bill for that time. I'm only half-joking.)

I saved Goldmember for the second night, and luckily I was in a better mood. I had forgotten a lot of the jokes. All three films are stupid, to be sure, but they are the kind of unabashed stupid that brings so much gusto, I can't help but laugh.

Both sequels are pretty forgettable. If you wait long enough, all the films run together in your head, and you can convince yourself that all the jokes were in the first film, or at the very least, it was all one long movie.

Army of Darkness

By my count, there are approximately eleventy billion different versions of Army of Darkness in existence, with run times ranging from 81 to 96 minutes.

There are so many versions, in fact, that even I do not give enough of a shit to look them all up and write about them here. That way lies madness.

Several years ago, I picked up the Boomstick Edition, which is one of two official releases (I think) that includes both the Director's Cut and the original theatrical version in the same package.

Tonight I attempted to watch The Director's Cut on our HDTV only to discover that the picture quality is so unbelievably shitty, I could not finish watching and had to switch to the much clearer theatrical version for the final battle.

No judging. As this is my project, I reserve the right to veto a version midway if I have a better looking version on hand. (Note: This does not work for marriage.)

Ironic, considering I spent a good 5-7 years perfectly happy watching a VHS copy on my standard definition, CRT television.

In fact, didn't we all spend a good 15 years perfectly happy with VHS before DVD came along? In all the years of VHS, I never heard anyone complain about picture quality prior to, say, 1998.

We settled for some pretty shitty picture quality. We'd tape TV shows and re-use VHS tape until the analog snow fuzzed out the picture, and we'd still re-use the tape.

I'd say we had no alternative, but, um...we did. We had Betamax, Laserdisc, MMCD, and SD...and you've never heard of a couple of those because you were so happy with VHS, you weren't looking for something new.

We'd rent movies that had been watched dozens, maybe hundreds of times in dozens of different VCRs of varying quality and condition, and we'd watch the film in 4:3 "full screen."

We'd maybe hook up our VCRs to our stereos so we could listen to our movies in glorious 2.0 sound. But that was really pushing home entertainment. That's some audiophile shit right there.

So to moan and bitch about a flawed print/transfer of Army of Darkness seems rather, well, moany and bitchy. With that in mind, while typing this, I've gone back to The Director's Cut to finish that version too. I can't really tell what's happening, but this feels like a trip back in time.

See what I did there?

Apocalypse Now: Redux

As soon as Jim Morrison opens his mouth to sing, the trees explode.

Apocalypse Now is widely recognized as the definitive Vietnam film. Where Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket is appreciated for accurately depicting the rigors of U.S. Marine boot camp during that era, no other film besides Coppola's Apocalypse Now attempts to capture so much of the intensity, the chaos, and the madness of armed conflict, on both a personal and global level. This is Coppola at the height of his power.

I've seen Apocalypse Now three or four times. Even though I've owned the above version for a few years, I've actually never seen Apocalypse Now: Redux, which is the version Francis Ford Coppola endorses, and what I'm watching here.

I saw Apocalypse Now for the first time on television at some point in the 1980s — a viewing that I really don't remember at all except that my dad watched the film long after everyone went to bed. I eventually rented the film on VHS in my early twenties and sat through what had to be the most boring Vietnam film I'd ever seen — worse than Platoon and not nearly as good as Good Morning, Vietnam.

Funny how our perception of things change. (Now I think Platoon is a mess, though I still love Good Morning, Vietnam.)

I can only watch Apocalypse Now about once every few years, if that, and that's exactly why I love this film. Not many films have this much weight and power, beauty and chaos, and unforgettable characters in astonishing moments.

I'll never write a war film, but as a writer, watching this is like going to school all over again.

The Apartment

I never knew much about Billy Wilder before hearing Cameron Crowe rave about him in interviews and commentary tracks. I still don't know as much as I want about Wilder, and I haven't seen as many of his films as I'd prefer, but when I saw The Apartment for the first time, I understood what Crowe meant.

Watching The Apartment some fifty years(!) after its release, I can't help but think about how brave Wilder and Diamond were to tackle themes of infidelity, adultery, and suicide in 1960, and Lemmon and MacClaine — the everyman and the free spirit — make everything work even better.

The best directors were once writers. They have that instinctive understanding of story. They have that micro-level attention to detail and character. They understand universal themes. The great ones also understand comedy. Cameron Crowe can do it. Billy Wilder did it. Chaplin did it.

I've been trying to do it for 12 years.

Because The Apartment is so brave and real, the film doesn't seem that dated. If you can write a script with universal themes, then your story will never really age.

I felt the same way when I watched Crowe's Almost Famous. Universal themes don't age as quickly as actors, techniques, technology. Universal themes transcend costumes and set pieces (I'm not saying those are insignificant to the craft, of course). Universal themes are really what separates great writers from the rest, and great writing from the slush pile, and great films from their eras.

Animal House

I was in high school when I saw Animal House for the first time (on VHS). A guy at school had recommended a list of "must see" comedies, and this film was on the list.

The list was hit and miss: He recommended The Lonely Guy and The Man with Two Brains, both excellent, but he also recommended Erik the Viking, which I thought was a steaming turd despite the Monty Python associations. Maybe I need to give that one another chance, as 20 years have passed.

To be honest I didn't think Animal House was all that funny at first. There were great parts (the horse in the dean's office, Blutarsky smashing the guitar, Otter's "Frank" going to Emily Dickinson College and scamming a sympathy date, etc.), but to me the film wasn't as consistently funny as, say, Blazing Saddles or Caddyshack. I know, sacrilege, but stay with me.

Luckily, the film has grown on me each time I watch. This is not a film to see in advance of college, but one to watch afterward. Call this a nostalgia piece, a kind of permission slip to laugh at authority even though as adults, we all gotta serve somebody...just not Dean Wormer.

In college, I never joined a fraternity. A few fraternity members became good friends (some best friends to this day), but I didn't really need much more than that. I didn't have time. Maybe my life would've been different if I had joined. I might be better off. Then again, I might be dead. I don't regret the decision at all.

I watch Animal House every view years and oddly, the film doesn't age for me. These archetypes — Otter, Blutarsky, Niedermeyer, Wormer, Pinto, Flounder — seem to be at every school. So for me, even though this film came out in the 1970s, these archetypes never die.

I like things that don't change.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

Speaking as a child of the '70s...

I've said before how much I love when a film captures the look and feel of an era without parodying said era. In the case of Anchorman, I don't care how much they parody the 1970s.

We were a very plaid place. Everyone smoked and littered. Cologne came in glass bottles shaped like race cars.

I like a good, quotable comedy. I told some guys at work that Anchorman was next up, and it started a barrage of movie quotes that I'm pretty sure annoyed every female in the room. Because that's what movie quoting does. At least when I do it around women anyway.

And by women I mostly mean my wife.

But also my co-workers.

But mostly my wife.

Yes.

American Psycho

My wife took her oath of citizenship today. She's been a British ex-pat for about 15 years, and probably never would have applied for citizenship if she hadn't married me.

On our first date, I asked her if she'd considered applying for citizenship given the amount of time she'd spent in the states. Yes, she'd thought about it. She said, "I'm English." New topic.

But her applying became inevitable once we got married. We both looked at this process as a clerical issue. U.S. citizenship allows her to vote, and she won't lose our children or have issues with estate business if I take a dirt nap.

To others in the courtroom, though, today was huge — a day filled with hope, promise, and opportunity. I'm not saying we don't feel those things, but an upper middle class British woman is not going to view U.S. citizenship the same way as someone who fled an African or Middle Eastern country ruled by some gun-toting zealot assbag.

To me, she will always be English, and I hope she feels the same way. I don't want her to stop being English — that's a part of her identity. You don't just turn in your identity like a rented movie. She regrets losing her accent and misses home every day, and I'm unable to help. I want the loss to stop there.

All day I've wondered what being American really means, and not in a Lee Greenwood sort of way. For so many people at the courthouse, this was one of the happiest days of their lives. Wherever they were born, wherever they lived, they chose to become Americans, and so many embraced the day. One guy kept standing up to make sure his wife was taking pictures. Lots of clapping, a few tears, hugs, laughter...a huge day. I felt more for other people than for my wife and me.

See, we're cautious and reluctant to trust. Knowing what I know about some of my countrymen and women, I mostly hope that America doesn't take a big crap on these new citizens. We are a materialistic bunch, and far too many of us don't take kindly to foreigners — naturalized or otherwise. I fear that today's optimism will be fleeting. These people don't deserve to lose before they really even get started.

We pride ourselves on the American dream, but that dream is mostly based on acquisition of wealth, property, material goods, and career success. Too many Americans compare property, envy those who have more, worship celebrities, embrace ignorance, and substitute televised pabulum for interconnectedness and legitimate inquiry. The American dreams of the greedy and willfully stupid can look downright scary.

American Psycho gets me thinking about how sick we all are in our own ways. We are not all Patrick Bateman, but he is the logical extreme of American excess, a cautionary tale for those of us living in a world where people can't remember each other's names, can't make human connections, can't explain why they feel the way they feel, and patch the wounds with consumption of goods, prescription meds, and base entertainment. For millions of us, we are empty. We can't fill the void. We take our rights and privileges for granted. We act like spoiled brats.

Not all Americans are like this. However, there is no challenge to finding someone who embodies one or more of the above. We should do better if we're truly the best country on earth. And just because you're widely accepted as the best doesn't mean you can stop trying to be better. "Best" does not equal "perfect." Maybe working harder will fill the emptiness instead of, you know, reality TV.

I hope the people I saw today can sustain their optimism and that their new American lives deliver on the promise and hope they felt this morning. I hope my wife and I can keep pursuing our American dream and get there eventually.

I want to believe in the America I keep hearing about.

I'll end there. I have to return some videotapes.

American Movie

"Watching a film" is an oversimplification. We don't just "watch" — that implies passivity, and not all of us work that way.

Films provide images and sounds, and audiences process them to make meaning. But we also transact. What we bring to the film — our life experiences, our knowledge — informs our viewing. A film you saw 10 years ago and haven't watched since can provide a radically different viewing experience now.

I'm no authority. This is just shit I think about after 9 years of college.

Of course, the film doesn't change. You do. So does the transaction. What you know now affects the way you interpret the film now, as opposed to how you viewed the film when you were younger.

I have to credit my friend Chris Turvey, who introduced me to this film. When we watched American Movie together for the first time, in the living room of a shabby college rental, we spent most of our time laughing at Mark Borchardt's failures and the odd behavior of his burnout friend, Mike Schank. We had no idea.

Years on, with a few failed attempts at filmmaking and a closet full of bad writing, I bring a lot to a viewing of American Movie. I see the film as both a cautionary tale and a battle cry.

Mark Borchardt's experience is what happens when you don't know what you're doing and can't find dependable people on whom to rely. He's a cautionary tale for people who don't have their shit together, and for people who want to get their shit together and can't due to negative forces around them.

However, this is also what happens when you have the tenacity and work ethic to overcome the most brutal disappointments. Who spends three years working on a 35-minute short film? Mark Borchardt, and any other artist who can't let go of an idea. Coven is barely watchable, but Borchardt made a movie. That was his American dream. He got there. He's still trying to make films.

Borchardt could just quit, but he doesn't. Life gets in his way and people let him down, and he lets himself down, but tomorrow he gets up and tries again. He's someone who always has a new plan or a new angle for success, but never gets anywhere — and that's maddening stuff.

But it's also validating in a way. Most men lead lives of quiet desperation, Thoreau wrote. Mark Borchardt's desperation is just louder than mine.

American Beauty

When I saw American Beauty for the first time, I was in grad school for screenwriting. I'm not sure why this is important. I suppose in carving out my own identity in a new town, I had assumed the role of pretentious asshat wannabe screenwriter hack. I don't have many friends from that period.

The side effect of being a total dick is this: Starting with American Beauty, I became particularly attuned to well written films, especially the kind that makes me throw up my hands during the credits, both in joyful celebration of a perfect film and deflated recognition at how much I still have to learn. So maybe American Beauty helped ground me somewhat.

Back then, of course, I focused too much on the music; director Sam Mendes uses music to provide character contrast, and as a transitional mechanism across major story points. In no way is this groundbreaking (I hadn't seen Easy Rider yet). Mostly, I just felt validated that someone else liked "The Seeker."

I always write to music. During that period, I wrote my master's thesis to Moby's Play album, which I kept on repeat and drove the neighbors batshit. Imagine my delight when, struck with a new idea a few years later and ready to go back to the old writing routine, I put on Play and spent the next few hours pissed off because every song reminded me of a commercial and bumped me out of whatever groove I found. I'm not sure why this is important.

American Beauty challenged me to write better, to think in layers of meaning, to see arcs more clearly but learn to hide them from everyone, and to recognize that maybe outlining is a good idea. But none of that happened right away. I'm still learning from this one.

Even though I've spent 10 additional years writing (read: trying to write, getting frustrated, not prioritizing enough, repeat) and studying writing, I still feel that same challenge. I still feel that same joy at great films, and I still feel deflated at how much I have to learn.

I need films like this to keep me hopeful and uneasy. I need both to think straight. I need both to keep me moving.

Almost Famous/Untitled

"The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool." - Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs.

We live in this state of constant acquisition. We buy, consume, and buy some more. We shelve the things we had to have in favor of new things we have to have...and then what happens to the thing we had to have yesterday? What was the point of acquiring that? Asking those kinds of questions sort of led me to Little Round Mirrors.

People like me connect with film and music in a visceral way. Owning a copy is our way of attempting to reconnect in that way, as though a physical copy preserves that connection (not necessarily). I'm sure this is a holdover from a bygone era when album cover art was bigger than our heads, literally and figuratively, and we could play records and stare at the liner notes and wonder for hours while incense and candles burned, and that faint, musty smell of old record covers and the petroleum scent of vinyl filled us with the stuff of adolescent dreams. We could do this over and over. Or maybe that was just me.

But we are lucky if we can revisit even a tinge of that initial, connected feeling, when a film or album grabbed us and shook us. I know many people who have no idea what I'm talking about and say dismissive shit like "you have too much time on your hands." To a great many people, this stuff is all background noise behind their important lives, and that's fine. I hope they feel connected to something, and they don't begrudge me this, my own thing, you know? I can be optimistic.

Almost Famous hit me at a time when I needed a film to validate all the things I cared about — in a way this is the anti-High Fidelity, which was the film that made me question the things I love and how they can be viewed as superficial, as if my life had no meaning because I care about this stuff instead of, you know, houses and babies and all. Almost Famous is a kind of vindication. Here's a film that depicts people who feel so deeply connected to music because, to them, this is real. Everything else is for everyone else. Almost Famous made me feel like less of a freak because I found freaks like me. Belonging, even among fictional characters and faraway strangers, adds value to what I've felt all along and diminishes the loneliness. I'm pretty sure Maslow was talking about this stuff.

Add to that my own obsessive-compulsive desire to collect, which is likely due to control-freak tendencies and my reluctance to change (recordings are playable over and over, virtually immutable), and the result is a house full of physical media that I promise myself I will enjoy someday. But time fades away, writ Neil Young, and everything and everyone around me changes even if these collections don't.

Acquiring something takes seconds. Connecting again takes much more time and effort — more than most people can spare. Oh, and sharing that stuff with somebody else? You're lucky if you find one person like you, who hears your offer of wanting to watch Almost Famous for the umpteenth time and says, "I'll be right over."

Mostly, it'll be you on your own. I hate being alone with this stuff. I hate seeing or hearing something amazing and wanting to immediately play it over again so someone else can catch it, and there's nobody around. I hate even more when there is someone around and they don't get it. Maybe hate is too strong.

I just find myself wanting to connect to others and explain why this shit matters so much and why we should not ignore an opportunity to feel that ache, that pang of bittersweet memories and that moment of identification with a character, or a moment when a song swells and actors speak words and we shudder.

I want to share that, but art doesn't always work that way.

Alien Quadrilogy

[Blog Owner's Note: This entry will cover the four films in the Alien series — Alien, Aliens, Alien3, and Alien: Resurrection.]

This great boxed set contains all four Alien films before they started throwing Predators into the story and mucking everything up. Each film is included in two versions: the original theatrical cut and a "director's" cut, which is a total misnomer here.

In fact, Ridley Scott writes in the liner notes about how the original Alien was his vision, and any subsequent cuts were done at the request of the studio many years later, and created an altogether different experience.

James Cameron, on the other hand, seized the opportunity to recut Aliens at one point, and added about 20 minutes to the film.

The last two films in the series, the two most forgettable (but I'm still committed to watch), were recut without the involvement of David Fincher and Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

For this project, I'm watching the films theatrically, as the directors intended -- except for James Cameron's preferred director's cut.

I saw Alien on TV when I was maybe 10 years old, which was the only time I've ever been able to watch the first facehugger spring out of the egg and latch on to John Hurt's face. And I only watched it then because I didn't know what was coming. Now I do, and I can't watch that scene. This remains the only part of any film that freaks me out to the point I can't watch. It's the scariest thing I've ever seen. None of the sequels were a fraction as scary. My god, the acidic blood ate through two floors, and my god, the look on the crew's faces when the chest burster shows up...this is such amazing writing.

The name of this set is really too bad. A compound work made up of four distinct works should be called a "tetralogy," but some marketing genius decided people were too dumb to know what that was and made up a word: "quadrilogy." See, even dumb people know what "quad" means, right? And an "ilogy," well, we all know about trilogies. So this is just one louder.

Airplane II: The Sequel

If Airplane! is one of the funniest movies ever made, and Airplane II: The Sequel recycles many of the same jokes, then at least in my head, Airplane II is one of the funniest sequels ever made.

Or something.

The Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker team from Airplane! wasn't involved in Airplane II: The Sequel, and you can tell. Writer/director Ken Finkleman (for whom this film represents a career peak) does an admirable job of capturing the spirit of the original film.

In doing so, he recycles most of the jokes from the first film: the "What is it? That's not important right now..." jokes, the jive talk, the "together" joke, etc.

But see, I like those jokes. I don't mind that Finkleman recycles here.

He fights a losing battle, though. This should've been a Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker film, but it isn't. Leslie Nielsen is missing, as well as Robert Stack, so much of the dry humor from the first film is gone, even though Lloyd Bridges and William Shatner bring quite a bit of funny, but the spirit of the original is largely missing.

I guess the question is, do I care? Will I still watch this movie? Did I leave the iron on?

Come to find out, there are multiple versions of this film. There's a televised version that includes alternate scenes to make up for scenes edited out for television. Many films of this era shot additional scenes to take the place of scenes too risqué for TV.

Gone is the scene where Sonny Bono's character learns he's impotent, which is just weird, so now he has no motivation for blowing up the plane, and so goes the joke at 33:00 where Elaine offers to help him stow his briefcase in the overhead if he can't "get it up." In fact, the joke doesn't make sense until the police detectives show up at the tower around 55:00.

That's probably the most egregious cut from the original theatrical version. Still, Airplane II is watchable — the kind of film you can watch on a Saturday afternoon sometimes. I dig it despite the flaws.

Airplane!

I love me some Airplane!

I've probably seen this film 50 times, and each time, something new cracks me up. Tonight, it was Robert Stack's character, Rex Kramer, telling someone on the phone to "Keep it at 24,000. (pause) No, feet!"

Sure, this film has some dumb jokes, but the ones that work still do so after 30 years. What a classic. Plus you can't beat this film for quoteworthiness. Rattle off a line from Airplane! in mixed company and you might get another line in return and a knowing smile.

And Leon's getting laaaarrrger.

Adventureland

[Note: Adventureland is the most recent DVD that I've purchased, and because it took so long to arrive in the mail, I have to backdate this entry and pause in my enjoyment of the Alien sequels. Feel free to apply a tinge of sarcasm at the end there.]

In 1987, I was 12 years old. I had an allowance that I spent on comic books and baseball cards and that was pretty much my life. There were no summer jobs to be had in amusement parks. There were no amusement parks in my town. We had a county fair.

Besides, I was 12. What was I going to do? I was still a few years from my first summer job at a local pool (not far off in comparison to this film, come to think of it).

I never knew a Connell, or a Lisa P., or an Em. I was never James. I was never embroiled in summer job workplace drama as depicted in this film. My parents were too overprotective for me to experience much before I got to college and finally moved out of the house.

But none of that stops me from relating to this film.

The film's affectionate, yet informed nostalgia works because it's not just one or the other. I may not remember the people as depicted here, but I remember the 1980s as more or less depicted here. They don't overdo it with the Zubaz pants and stupid huge hair and period slang, and they don't shove '80s mall rock down our throats. The mall rock is there, but they also toss in lesser-known INXS, and at least two Replacements songs.

They don't parody the 1980s as in The Wedding Singer or any number of films. There is a love for the time period despite subtle, ironic gestures such as the father sleeping in his chair during one of President Reagan's Iran-Contra-era speeches about how America wasn't paying attention.

Instead, the filmmakers strike just the right balance. I don't remember anyone in the 1980s listening to Husker Du or The Replacements, but when I got into music heavily several years later, I recognized the names. I'd seen the posters, heard a few of the songs, and recognized more than I expected.

And really, that's what watching this film felt like. Bravo.

Adaptation

There is nothing I can write about Adaptation that would not sound stupid and/or pretentious. Keep that in mind.

I have this idea for a film. It's about dreams. It's equal parts Philip K. Dick, Ursula LeGuin, and Charlie Kaufman, but there's also this unmistakeable other element: I'm clanging around in there too.

But I don't have Kaufman's command of post-postmodernism. I can barely write blog entries without getting frustrated. Kaufman can take postmodern irony and lace it with sincerity and come out all flowery. I can barely write a realistic plot unless I base the whole damned thing on real life experience, which always seems like a cheat.

I have a hard time making up things in general. I can take something that really happened and dramatize it, but give me a blank slate and no experiences and I'll sit there, get frustrated, and then go get a burrito.

But that's writing. You write what you know. Failing that, you write what you can know, meaning you get off your ass and do some research: academic, experiential, whatever. You have to get up.

Then I watch a film like Adaptation, which could very well be real life experience except for all the stuff that he changed, and I wonder if I'll ever be able to do this well. I wonder if the art that I have chosen to pursue is really for me. I've been mired in "idea mode" and "incubation mode" for more than a year, and the frustration is mounting. When I have time to write, I go hang out in a record shop. I haunt used bookstores. I collect things. I spend money I don't have on stuff I don't need. I watch movies and blog about them. I blame work for taking up most of my time, and teeter on resenting my wife for wanting some of the rest. Anything to keep from writing because, face it, there's danger of failure there. I could invest a year of my life for nothing. Spec screenwriting is a terrible way to spend one's time -- one can spend ages on a story that goes no further than the desktop and a few supportive friends who may well be placating you.

Self-loathing, not really. I am at home with the me that is on this adventure. Self-flaggelation, probably. But not, you know, in the worst way. Self-affirmation is in there too. Admitting these things puts my work ethic in perspective.

I need a hack twin brother.

About Schmidt

Like About A Boy, About Schmidt touches on the theme of making some sort of difference -- having a life with meaning. A life unshared is not a meaningful life. When Warren Schmidt retires, he returns to his old office to say hello and finds himself surprisingly irrelevant, his years of work neatly boxed and left out by the trash. When his wife dies suddenly, he's left adrift, with no plans, no direction, and an aching emptiness where the purpose of his life should be.

Only when he fosters a poor African child does he find, comically, a way to vent, to explore his emotions -- those he has bottled up all these years. He complains about his wife, his replacement at the office, and ruminates on his own mortality. There's no way a 6-year-old Tanzanian child can possibly absorb any of this.

Those commercials tug at our heartstrings. Sally Struthers tells us that for so many cents per day, we can make a real difference in a child's life. Won't we please donate now? If that's the only difference we can make, is that enough?

Warren tries to make a difference in the lives of others, but people make their own decisions and life is not within our control. We cannot predict, with great accuracy, the decisions people will make.

We can only hope that our own decisions make some sort of difference and leave some sort of legacy. For Warren Schmidt, and for the rest of us, there's still time left.

About A Boy

The connections to my own life have not been lost on me. Since 1999, when I first read High Fidelity, I became aware of Nick Hornby's penchant for writing about the thirtysomething, selfish, superficial male who puts way too much emphasis on his record collection and not enough on his emotional connections. About A Boy cranks up the lessons learned in High Fidelity and sort of works as a companion piece, mentally bitch-slapping me into maturity, or at the very least, informed introspection.

I'm the guy with 1,500 CDs and enough DVDs to justify a blog chronicling a weird, alphabetical viewing project. I'm the guy with that kind of time and that kind of disposable income. I'm not a parent. I'm not even a safe bet yet.

I'm still not good with kids. My friends' houses are filling up with broken toys and sippy cups and Diaper Champs, and I've lost touch with so many friends because we have so little to say to each other anymore. We stay in touch with one couple because they make a great effort to stay in touch with us too. We have fun. We make it work. That's what you're supposed to do.

I'm still freaked out by the idea of having kids. Actually, I am not bothered by the loss of freedom (I'm broke and work all the time -- freedom is not a factor). I'm bothered by the idea that I'll end up being a terrible father.

Also, if and when I become a father, I wonder about the last vestiges of a connection I have to most of my friends. They already don't have any time for us. What happens when I don't have time for them either? Will I have back-up, like Marcus says? Or will we all be little islands?

(500) Days of Summer

If I'd seen this film in college, I'm sure how I would've reacted. I would have filtered a great deal of jilted lover angst through this film, and I would've seen Zooey Deschanel's character as one or all of the three women she reminds me of (and not in a good way). They were all smart, funny, and uniquely sexy, and in the end, they all dropped me like a hot brick.

Deschanel's character embodies all that I struggled to understand about women when I was in college. She even embodies the justification I used to have for the way I treated a few of them.

I would've pointed to Tom as some sort of modern day Lloyd Dobler with a jagged edge -- one that I, too, could use as a defense. I could stand outside a dorm window with a boombox, but I'd rather throw a fit and demonstratively walk out. I would've sat with my friends and chosen my words carefully, pensively, and had those deep, intense conversations that I just don't have the time or inclination or the fucking energy to mess with anymore. You're in the boat or you are not. Drive on.

I probably would've felt Tom's elation and laughed at the Hall & Oates dance number a little. In short, I totally would've sided with Tom. Bitches, man.

In my thirties, though, I have a hard time feeling sorry for Tom. She told him everything up front, but he kept pushing, and you can't treat people like that. He also put aside his dreams and made himself miserable doing a job that, deep down, he hated. No woman will stay with you if you shelve your dreams and make yourself miserable. You have to be happy. Failing that, you'd better be a good actor and smile a whole lot. Depending on the day, I'm somewhere between happy and acting.

But I think most people are the same way.

Eventually, Tom cuts his losses at work and pursues his dreams. If I were doing a job that made me miserable, I might consider doing the same thing. Luckily, I enjoy my job, and while I wish I had more time to be a screenwriter, I try to be pragmatic. I miss writing, but I'm pretty happy with the way life and love have turned out for me so far.

300

300 is still an impressive film, despite the wispy plot. I'd forgotten quite a bit, because for me this film is forgettable and has virtually no value personally. I don't get all introspective when I watch 300 or think about Thhhhpartha. I don't think much at all.

However, this one goes to show one thing: I don't just have quiet little character pieces in my DVD collection. Sometimes I have these big, dumb action pieces that say very little yet spent so much money.

24 Hour Party People

I used to see the DVD case for 24 Hour Party People at video stores. From the cover, this 2002 movie reminded me one of those '90s films like Go or Can't Hardly Wait. I suspected the film was a comedy, probably about clubbing, and that's pretty much all I got from looking at the box. [Insert cliché about covers and judging.]

Actually, the film is a biopic of the late Tony Wilson, the UK media personality who founded Factory Records and opened a club in Manchester called The Hacienda, which might as well be a national landmark. Factory Records released albums by Joy Division, The Happy Mondays, New Order, and a bunch of other great bands you might not know. That's okay. There's still time to discover them.

The brilliant Steve Coogan plays Wilson, and although I can't stop thinking I'm watching Steve Coogan, I still enjoy his portrayal. (Sean Harris' portrayal of Joy Division's Ian Curtis is haunting, too.)

I went through a Coogan phase a year or so ago, thanks to my discovery of The Trip with him and Rob Brydon. Michael Winterbottom directed both films, and both films are brilliant. I ended up renting and then buying a copy of 24 Hour Party People last year.

The film is loaded with cameos and guest appearances. Simon Pegg, Christopher Eccleston, Kenny Baker (yes, that Kenny Baker), as well as a who's who of UK recording artists (including Mark E. Smith of The Fall — another band worth checking out).

My biggest complaint with the film is the '90s MTV graphics laid over a film set in the '70s and '80s. I can get past that, though, to get a glimpse of what this period must've looked and sounded like. All that great music never really made it to the midwestern climes of Muncie, Indiana, where I grew up. Oh, sure, my high school had the odd Joy Division t-shirt here and there, and to this day, on my campus, I still see the occasional one.

But no one in the midwest put this stuff on the radio or TV.

So, how do I know the words to "Love Will Tear Us Apart"? No one ever put that on a mix for me. I've never owned a Joy Division LP. How do I know this? When the '90s band Orgy covered "Blue Monday" (a sonic abortion if there ever was one), I didn't need to learn the lyrics; I knew all the words, but couldn't figure out why.

What is it about great music that allows it to creep into the collective consciousness, so that we somehow know the lyrics?

I'm a sucker for films about music — especially ones that depict a certain period and highlight great bands that never really cracked the mainstream. Unfortunately, 24 Hour Party People doesn't really scream "re-watchable" (to me, anyway), but it's nice to have in the library. If you want to know more about Factory Records, this compilation is a great place to start.

13 Ghosts (1960)

I've brought the blog back from the dead, so it's fitting that I write about a ghost story.

I have a soft spot for cheesy horror films. The older and cheesier, the better, I say. So when I found a copy of 13 Ghosts, William Castle's 1960 classic, gimmicky horror flick, complete with "ghost viewer" inside, I couldn't resist.

I remember checking out 13 Ghosts from the public library several years ago, when I went through a cheesy horror phase. I loved that the DVD came with a "ghost viewer" — simply a cardstock sandwich with red and blue gels, sort of like 3-D glasses, except the viewer had two options: View through the red gel to see the ghosts. View through the blue gel if you don't want to see them.

Or, as Castle says during the corny intro, "If you believe in ghosts, look through the red...and if you don't believe in ghosts, look through the blue." Here's what it looks like:

Isn't that fantastic?

Oh, it gets better. The premise is comical. A destitute family of four inherits a mansion out of the blue from a crazy, mysterious uncle no one has heard from in years (he's presumed dead). A lawyer summons them to his office, where he delivers the news.

Apparently, the uncle died a week prior to the events of this story, and the lawyer managed to settle the estate and finish all the probate nonsense— without an executor, mind you — in a week's time. Horseshit, but whatever.

Anyway, the film is presented in "Illusion-O!" so at certain points in the film, when the screen turns blue, you're supposed to look through the viewer. If you look through the red viewer, the red accentuates the red ghosts, while the blue obscures them (you can still see them, just not as well — actually you don't need the viewer at all, but whatever).

Talk about gimmicky crap. Yet, I can't help but love this stuff.

Maybe it takes me back to when I watched horror movies late at night with my family. I remember a special 3-D showing of The Creature From the Black Lagoon. You had to get the 3-D glasses at some local gas station, I think. Mom or Dad — can't remember which one — brought several pairs home so we all could watch. It didn't work worth a shit.

My favorite part of 13 Ghosts isn't the gimmicky stuff, or the corny intro by William Castle, or the bad acting, or the terribly expedient legal work. No, I simply love that Margaret Hamilton plays a prominent role. Yeah, you know who I mean:

That's the Wicked Witch of the West herself, some 20 years after The Wizard of Oz. What's great about her presence in the film is all the "witch" jokes, and how well she works with them. Watch the film; I'm not going to ruin those.

Margaret Hamilton was a great lady. The Wicked Witch scared generations of people. At one point, she went on "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" to tell children that it was all just make believe, and that she was just play acting. She led a fascinating, albeit sort of sad life. Such is the price of playing one of the most iconic villains in film history.

Hamilton spent the rest of her career typecast as that character anyway. Doing a fun horror film later in her career to make fun of that typecasting was a canny move for her. I love how she's in on the joke.

Come to think of it, is that why people watch corny horror films? It's as if the film is winking to us and we're winking back. Great stuff.

10 Items or Less

I used to work in a little Mom 'N' Pop grocery store that wasn't so much owned by Mom or Pop but by an old, tightwad bastard and his incompetent son. Stop me if you've heard that before.

I started as a bagboy and sacked groceries for more than a year before they let me stock a shelf. My starting rate was $4.25 an hour. I topped out at $5.00/hr. nearly three years later.

I hated that job, but met so many people who exist on the fringes, scraping by, living on government assistance, and somehow getting through. I swallowed a lot of pride, learned how to clean a public toilet, mop waxed tile, and put up with people's shit.

I also fell in love with a cashier named Autumn, who shot me down. She had a southern accent and went through three boyfriends in the three years I worked with her -- each time she was single (briefly) I felt like I had a chance. I never did.

I was 19. I fell in love with every girl then. I haven't seen her since.

For me, a little film like this brings back those memories, but also seems to link to my present. I've had screenwriterly ambitions for years but never quite put it all together -- life gets away. We are all on a continuum, sitting between Paz Vega's restless cashier and Morgan Freeman's clueless but famous actor.

Whatever our dreams, be they humble or lofty, personal or professional, the film leaves us with a great line: "We live. We work. We're just getting started. We'll never see each other again."

3:10 to Yuma

This second time through, I focused quite a bit on the relationship between Christian Bale's character and the character's oldest son, who has lost respect for his father. The son initially seems to want his father to fight harder, to try harder, to be more of a "man," but then the son takes a shine to Russell Crowe's character, an outlaw. Eventually, that flips again, and I won't go any further than that with regard to the storyline.

The film explores themes of who we admire, and speaks truth in the sense that 14 year old boys will always be torn between the outlaw rebel identity and the admiration for our fathers. For many, our fathers are our heroes. But there comes a time when many boys, through our instinctive desire to rebel, gravitate toward the guy in the black hat instead.

For me, admiring my father has always been tough. He's no fighter. He's done some things he's not proud to admit. He's not always the sharpest. But he's still my dad, and he still has years of experience ahead of me, and he still makes pretty good decisions for himself all things considered. I was thirtysomething before I could say all of that.

The Abyss

[Backdating this entry from 4/2/12. Purchased 4/1/12 to add to the blog.]

James Cameron's The Abyss is not his best film — not even close. For a guy with two of the most successful sequels in two of the most successful film franchises of all time, The Abyss seems like a curious outlier rather than a career point. But it's still great.

You can't discount the special effects in The Abyss, which to this day hold up rather well, all things considered. Say what you will about how special effects have evolved in 20+ years — The Abyss still contains some excellent work that looked amazing in 1989 and still looks pretty good.

Typically, my beef with effects-heavy films is pretty simple: Yeah, they look fine, but in 5 years, they look ridiculous, and their lack of plot — usually a result of prioritizing style over substance — doesn't help. Dumb ideas bleed through when the effects lose their luster. Somehow, The Abyss avoids most — but not all — of that criticism.

The Abyss is somehow a different breed of effects-driven film — one that doesn't fall prey to the aging that seems to eat up even the most cutting edge films. Look at The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers — especially the outdoor CG work — and you'll see how those effects are starting to show their age only a few years later. (It's a good thing the LOTR films have great stories behind them, to hold them up when the effects turn quaint.)

Yes, The Abyss has aged, but it's certainly aged a lot slower than most of its contemporaries — and many films that followed it. Is that to Cameron's credit for telling a compelling story?

Well, look at the contemporaries of The Abyss. Two that spring to mind immediately are Leviathan and Deep Star Six, which are basically the same film with minor tweaks in plot. Paper thin, formulaic tripe — the stuff of Saturday matinees on basic cable —and somehow, the kind I can't turn away from because I'm usually doing nothing on a Saturday afternoon except recovering from Friday. But compared to The Abyss, both of those films, released in the same year, are awful.

The Abyss still has plot holes big enough for a submarine, and the writing, in many cases, contains the pretty bald-faced exposition. Too many scenes feature characters explaining technology or medical concepts to each other in an obvious way rather than finding a more organic way to convey details. Too much tech talk, not enough action and exploration of our humanity. Too many scenes of compartments filling with water and people yelling, "Gogogogogo!"

Thing is, the film is so pretty, who cares? When I saw the film at age 15, I didn't care, and even now, I don't. Somehow, James Cameron always has walked between the critical raindrops that fall around him. He's one of the few directors who can write a plot on a napkin and wrap it in billion dollar effects, and get away with it for years to come. He seems to know how to do the bare minimum storyline and make gazillions of dollars. I can't begrudge him. Much.

Sound familiar? People were saying the same thing about Cameron's Avatar a few years back. Avatar featured a story that was paper thin, but was so pretty, people forgave it and sat mesmerized anyway. I've never seen a film that so obviously said, "Writers are unnecessary." The Abyss seems to sit on a clear trajectory in Cameron's career, when he continued to minimize story in favor of familiar formulas and unfamiliar effects. Thing is, that's what makes Cameron's work so interesting to me. How does this guy get away with it?

I don't know, and most days, I don't even care. Leave me alone, I'm watching a movie!

This is not Vietnam; there are rules.

I should make the ground rules clearer.

The idea is to watch all of my narrative film DVDs in alphabetical order. Numbered films such as 3:10 to Yuma come at the beginning. Cleverly titled films such as Se7en come at "S." Three Men and a Baby, if I owned such a thing (I don't. No, really.) would go under "T."

Blu-Ray titles don't count. This means I can still buy Blu-Ray movies if I want and it doesn't screw everything up.

Concert DVDs and TV on DVD do not count. I'm just watching movies. I consider Gimme Shelter to be a concert film/documentary.

In the case of franchises, I'm watching them in the order of best narrative. That means I'm watching all five Planet of the Apes films in order, not messing up the order due to alphabetizing. Beneath the Planet of the Apes should not come before Battle for the Planet of the Apes.

In cases where films are released in a boxed set, such as The Pink Panther, the order is chronological, even if there's a prequel.

And in the hilariously named Alien Quadrilogy (which isn't a word), a set that includes alternate versions and "director's cuts," the preferred viewing will be the one the director endorses. That means only James Cameron's alternate version will be viewed here and the rest will stick to theatrical releases. The set is great, but upon further review, most of the directors didn't want to revisit their films. Yes, even David Fincher.

And, if for some reason I miss one because I've loaned out a movie or misplaced something, I will do the antibiotic thing: Watch as soon as I remember, discover, re-acquire, whatever.

I've thought about this. Shut up.

Little Round Mirrors

I've spent thousands of dollars on physical media that I never get to watch.

I have them alphabetized by title, with numbered titles coming before A, of course. About once a year, I might watch three or four of these, or use a few to illustrate a point in a class I'm teaching.

Like most people who buy movies on DVD, I let mine sit on a shelf and rarely watch them.

So, if I never watch them, why own them? Why did I bother buying them in the first place? What does it say about me, having this overriding desire to own a copy of a film that reached me somehow, but never watch the film again?

To get even a hint of the same effect a film had on me when first viewed, I need to devote anywhere from 72 minutes to 4+ hours per film.

What employed person has that kind of time, especially when you own more than 500 movies on DVD? I'm not even counting seasons of television or concert DVDs.

This year I decided to try to watch all of my narrative films, from 3:10 to Yuma to Zodiac. Concert DVDs and seasons of TV do not count, and neither do rentals. This is an attempt to watch all of my movie collection in order.

Why bother? Maybe this will justify the existence of this collection, or maybe I'll just feel even more insecure than I do when people come over and see hundreds of DVDs and think I'm crazy.

Then again, maybe I'll feel pretty good in the end.

This blog will attempt to chronicle how that goes.