Movies and Things

So, as nothing of consequence is going on in my life, I thought I would take a moment to tell you all about the movies I've seen lately that are more interesting than my real life.

For some months now, people keep saying to me that Heath Ledger is pretty much guaranteed to win the Oscar for best actor this year. While he certainly has the whole "dead" thing going for him, and while I will admit I am very biased towards anyone portraying a sociopath, I have to say that I was simply blown away by Sean Penn in Gus Van Sant's new film, Milk. Milk is a marvelous work, and Penn gives a truly remarkable performance. Moreover, there is a scene early in the film that takes place on Harvey Milk's birthday, and and we find the titular Milk laying in bed eating cake with his lover, who playfully spreads cake on Milk's face. His lover moves to lick it off, and the ensuing make-out session contains the single most convincing screen kiss I have seen in a very long time. It may be a minor moment in the film, but it was perfect.

Frost/Nixon was an enjoyable affair, if at times dominated by Ron Howard's very typically Hollywood conception of storytelling. While drawn out dialogue scenes and the occasional extended monologue reminds you that the work was originally a stage play, David Frost's "research montage" leading up to the final interview left me with an image of Rocky pummeling American cynicism in a freezing meat locker somewhere. I don't want to spoil the end, but he goes the distance. Most interestingly, this film was the first thing I've ever really been exposed to that made any effort to humanize Nixon, and that was something I wasn't quite prepared for.

As I was watching Woody Allen's latest picture, Vicky Christina Barcelona, I could just imagine Woody Allen overlooking Spain and thinking to himself, "How can I watch Scarlett Johansson kiss another woman? Wait a minute! I make films!" While the movie is better than many of his offerings of the late 90s and early 2000s, it falls short in several respects. Most notably, the plot is driven forward by a heavy-handed narration that robs some very strong performances any subtlety they may have had if let to speak for themselves. When anyone tells you how a movie should be made, they always rail against voiceover, as conventional wisdom is that things should never be explained, they should be seen. While personally, I think that's a bunch of shit, I do think that there are times when the story should just tell itself, and thoughts and feelings should be found in the faces and actions of the actors. And this film could have benefitted greatly from being one of those times.

And the less said about Zombie Strippers, the better. My thought process for deciding to rent the movie went something like this: "I like zombies. I like naked women. How could this possibly go wrong?" Well, for starters, anytime you're casting a porn star in a leading role, you're on shaky ground. Especially when said porn star is surrounded with corn-fed Nebraskans and their insipid ramblings on Nietzche and the nature of existence, clearly written by someone who took one philosophy class in high school and decided they could give Aristotle a run for his money. But I think the worst offense committed by the film is the violation of one of the cardinal rules of low-budget post modern horror movies: If you don't have the money to do an effect convincingly, do it spectacularly cheaply. Rather than make use of latex and things, peoples heads regularly explode in geysers of cheap CGI blood. Gunshots are represented not by blanks, not even by cheesy sound effects, but by computer generated approximations of muzzle flashes that would embarass Ed Wood. Someone seems to have had one lesson in After Effects and thought they were George Lucas. And finally, if ever I find myself teaching a class on screenwriting, I will begin with the following thought: "If you are writing a script, and you reach the point where the next logical progression is to have someone shoot pool balls out of their vagina, something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. Now get out of my sight, all of you."

Straying from the subject of film, I recently met someone who is responsible for a web comic. It amused me, so I thought I would share it with my loyal devotees. (Before I paste the link, I will take a moment to let the deafening silence and tumbleweed pass.) The comic, Darwin Carmichael is Going to Hell, can be found at http://dcisgoingtohell.com. Anyone who knows me will understand why I find it amusing by simply looking at the first two panels of the first comic. And if the comic doesn't take off, they should at least be able to unload the domain name for a hefty sum.
-TC