Hugo Stiglitz Makes Movies

Catching up with 2011: Moneyball

2012-01-20T13:37:00.000-08:00

“Nobody reinvents this game.”

– Joe Morgan, ESPN sportscaster and baseball dinosaur

This quote comes at the end of Bennett Miller’s Moneyball – his adaptation of the highly successful, highly controversial look at the inner-workings of the Billy Beane run Oakland Athletics during the 2002 season from the point of view of author Michael Lewis – a frustratingly mediocre film that gets one thing absolutely right: the dichotomy of the old pro scouts (the dinosaurs who don’t think the game can be re-invented) of baseball versus the new, “geeky” sabermetric system (the kids). If it weren’t for this element – and my general love and enthusiasm for all things nerdy about baseball statistics – there wouldn’t have been much to enjoy about Miller’s prosaic film.

Before we get to the film, though, let’s talk a little about the philosophies at war as they’re discussed in Moneyball. If there’s one thing that truly brought me into the film, it was the front office scenes and the way Miller gets out of the way of himself and lets his fine actors verbally spar. The film was written by Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian, and Moneyball is definitely a more subdued version of a Sorkin script (now whether that’s due to the efficient, yet boring, Zaillian, or because the based-on-actual-characters don’t talk the way Sorkin writes, I don’t know), yet it didn’t really bother me that the trademark rapid fire Sorkin dialogue was absent from the film. Brad Pitt (who plays Beane) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (who plays A’s manager Art Howe) don’t seem like the kind of actors that like to rush through dialogue, so perhaps it would have seemed unnatural for them to do so. Nevertheless, it is their tête-à-têtes that give the film an interesting flavor as being representative of the seismic shift in baseball scouting philosophy that was going on at the time.

In the film Beane – with the help of Peter Brand (Jonah Hill playing an amalgam of various front office types, but most notably he is playing Paul DePodesta, who would later go on to be the general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers for two years, and JP Ricciardi, who would go on to be the general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays) – constructs a team whose sole identity and design is to look for wins, not players. By taking certain algorithms (created by Bill James) and finding players that get on base instead of players who simply have the “tools” (great swing, nice looks, great glove, et al) or look the part, a general manager can easily find undervalued players that get on base at a premium. Essentially, you’re looking at quantity that will equal the quality of one star player. Unless one follows baseball closely, I think it’s impossible to convey what a radical idea this was when it was introduced in James’ bible of sabermetics, Baseball Prospectus. Essentially, there were hundreds of players being undervalued because they didn’t come up on the radars of these archaic scouting systems/methods. So, even though Beane wasn’t an innovator in coming up with these algorithms, he certainly deserves the credit in being smart enough to run with it.

Miller (who directed Capote) does a good job of showing that Beane wasn’t the first individual to recognize this plan, though. Mark Shaprio, general manage of the Cleveland Indians, was one of the first people to flirt with this idea. The Boston Red Sox – lest you think sabermetrics and “Moneyball” is only for the small market teams – hired Bill James, and, when Beane turned down their lucrative GM offer (mentioned at the end of the film), went and hired a young, brilliant Ivy League guy with no major league experience in Theo Epstein (who is now with the Cubs in hopes of breaking another curse for a franchise).

And that brings me back to my original point: the quote at the top of the page. Even though I can’t be 100% sure, it really sounded like Joe Morgan who said that quote (and definitely sounds like something he would say) as he proclaims that “Moneyball” simply does not work because you have to get men in scoring position, have clutch hitting, bunt, steal, etc. The problem sabermetric people have with this theory – and one of the great things about the movie – is that, as Beane and Brand explain to their old scouts at their first off-season meeting (one of the best scenes of the film), it’s an inherently flawed theory because you’re essentially giving the other team outs when you bunt; increasing your chance to get out when you steal; and trying to logically explain things like “clutch hitting.” It just doesn’t work within the sabermetric model, yet because it comes from a math/economics background, the scouts with years and years of playing and scouting experience refuse to see its value because it’s coming from outsiders. They don’t agree with Beane’s “adapt or die” mentality – a cogent theme and metaphor that reaches beyond sports. I think this is one of the absolute best elements of the film, and it’s a shame that Miller and co. didn’t stick with this idea throughout the film (probably not marketable enough, though) because the other aspects of the film – Beane as a failed “can’t miss prospect,” Beane as family man, etc. – just didn’t do anything for me. Instead, the studio and its director are content appealing to the awards crowd and creating a blasé and pedestrian sports film.

It’s not the actors fault, though. Pitt does the best he can despite his director’s complete lack of understanding on how to make consecutive scenes interesting. Art Howe – definitely an old timer but treated pretty rough in the film – is painted in too broad a brush despite Hoffman trying his hardest to make him into a complex character who feels like he’s being sabotaged by his general manager in the last year of his contract. There’s a brief moment away from the front offices (the scenes that work) that actually does work: Beane and his daughter are shopping for guitars, and his daughter finds the perfect one, sits down, and begins strumming. At first, she merely hums a tune, but Beane, ever the over-reaching weekend father, convinces her to sing for him. The song she sings is too on-point, sure I concede that, but regardless, it’s a nice little poignant scene that clearly explains the inner conflict of Beane.

I understand that in order to make a film that will engage people – not to mention rake in the awards – you have to try and humanize a character. It’s, just, I think I would have preferred a no-nonsense approach to the material – an approach that seems wholly appropriate for a film dealing with general manager of a sports team who decided to look at his players as statistics instead of people. Now, I get it that the flashbacks are there to show us that Beane is not your average GM in that he did play – and was signed right out of high school in the first round to the Mets – and bounce around from team to team who all thought they could fix this “toolsy” player that just wasn’t working out. Yes, those moments allow us to see Beane as a guy who can simultaneously cut/trade players and yet relate to them as an ex-ball player. I just wish the film had a little more of an edge to it with the whole traditional scouting versus sabermetrics theme, and the uphill battle Beane had in trying to implement his plan.

I’m at about 1,000 words and I feel like I haven’t really talked a ton about the technical aspects of the movie – but that’s because Miller just isn’t an interesting enough director to warrant anything more than mere admiration for the way he tackles the subject and gets out of the way of his actors. A clearer distinction between the Bill James’ and the Joe Morgan’s or Tim McCarver’s would have been a much more interesting film for this baseball fan. Still, it’s an interesting mainstream look at why sabermetrics works. Sure, it may not have worked in Oakland in getting them a World Series championship, but it worked in bringing excitement to a team that had lost three of its most talented and popular players the year before.

There’s an interesting moment in the film when the A’s are losing badly to start the year. Every sportscaster – from the idiotic Morgan to the annoyingly smug Bob Costas – rants and raves about why this is precisely why you can’t re-invent the game and that Art Howe – the manager – is not to blame (even though he was a stubborn dinosaur who refused to play the right players) because he wasn’t given the players to succeed. Yet, on any other team when the team is losing as badly as the A’s were the manager (the most overrated person in deciding the outcome of a game in all of sports) is always to blame. Flash forward to “the streak” (when the A’s broke the American League record for consecutive games won with 20) and now all of these same people are saying what a great manager Howe is because his team (after some great trades by Beane to get rid of the players Howe so stubbornly continued to play) without giving any credit to Beane. And that is what is so hilariously frustrating about the game of baseball and its roots in traditions: The new school of thinking simply can’t win – oh sure there definitely has been progress in terms of sites like Fangraphs* and the way writers are beginning to vote on awards beyond the basic, more random, statistics like win/loss record and ERA – because it’s always labeled as a fluke (Costas, again, says this in the film when talking about the A’s will break the win streak record and talk about how lucky there were; however, I guarantee if it were a different team designed a different way, the song would not be the same from Costas) perpetrated by nerds with calculators who never played the game.

The threat to the old way of understanding how baseball can be done is the most interesting conflict of Moneyball, and it’s only there for about half of the movie. It’s an uneven movie with some great moments interspliced here and there (mostly taking place in the front office) and some equally great performances from Pitt, Hoffman, and Hill. It would have been interesting to see what this movie could have been had it not had such a problematic production which ultimately led to the film ending up in the hands of Miller. Steven Soderbergh wanted to make the film, back in 2007, more of a hybrid using real players as actors in the film and using interviews throughout as well; that, to me, sounds more interesting, but Sony balked at this approach to make a non-traditional sports movie (which would have been appropriate considering the source material) and instead passed the movie on to Miller. It’s a shame. The potential was there for Moneyball to earn its spot on all those year-end lists I’ve been seeing it on, but there’s just not enough here to warrant more than faint enthusiasm.

*If you were at all interested in the front office/sabermetric stuff in the film, I highly recommend Fangraphs for your daily baseball reading. It’s a fantastic site that looks at the game through the same theories (now evolved since the writing of “Moneyball”) introduced by Bill James, DePodesta, and others. It’s fun to see all of the formulas they use to figure out player value. Check it out; it’s easily my favorite baseball site.

Catching up with 2011: Hugo

2012-01-05T07:00:00.000-08:00

As I’m sure everyone is aware by now, Hugo is the PG-rated Martin Scorsese film that is unlike anything he’s ever made before, but represents the things that are nearest to his heart. The film is a family film, yes, but it is also a labor of love for; a 130 minute infomercial for film preservation designed to arouse (I tried to think of the cleanest way possible to say that) cinephiles everywhere with its references to early film and re-mastered footage. I am admittedly not a huge fan of 3D – I often have to remove the glasses and rub eyes for a minute or so before I jump back into the “experience” – but Scorsese does it about as perfectly as the medium could hope. If there are going to be new films being done in 3D (three out of the five previews at the showing I attended were for re-releases in 3D…lazy and lame), Scorsese has provided the template. I love the film’s opening with its sweeping images of the train station (Scorsese wisely films this opening as almost a short film to give the audience the setting of the film, but also to get the audiences eyes acclimated to the 3D action without missing the story) and the way it showed just how beautiful (and subtle!) 3D can be. Once the film’s plot kicked in, I was surprised by how engrossed I was with the film, and really I only felt the need to remove my glasses a few times in the beginning parts of the movie, but after that, I didn’t even realize I was watching a 3D movie.

There’s nothing else much to say about Hugo, now that we’re in January, that already hasn’t been said by countless others, but I will say this: Ben Kingsley’s performance as Georges Méliès' (the man responsible for the film’s that are the main focus of the film’s final half) is one of the best of 2011, and Asa Butterfield as Hugo Cabret (by the way, why did they change the name of the movie to Hugo instead of keeping the original title of its source material, The Invention of Hugo Cabret? Bad choice by the producers) is fantastic and gives one of the best performances by a young actor in years.

The film’s many references to the earliest days of silent film (when they were a carnival attraction) to its references (both literal and through homage) to Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last! are just a few of the things that make the film such a pleasure. Just like the automaton and the little toy mouse that Méliès' and Hugo create and fix, Scorsese is a master craftsman – the ultimate toymaker – who offers up a shop full of goodies with the most unlikely of films for the master to tackle. Hugo reminded me a lot of The Age of Innocence: a similarly mismatched genre that showcased the finest and most invigorating qualities of Scorsese the auteur. The scenes of Méliès’ dreaming and creating seem to have awakened something long dormant in Scorsese; the joy and pleasure of Scorsese’s filmmaking here is palpable in a way that used to be felt in every Scorsese release. I’m not saying his 2000s output was bad, but it lacked the energy one sees and feels in every frame of Hugo. Not since Bringing Out the Dead has a Scorsese film been this exciting to watch, talk about, write about, and reflect upon. It’s one of the very best movies of 2011.

Catching up with 2011: The Descendants

2012-01-04T07:00:00.000-08:00

The Descendants is a collection of entertaining – sometimes even great – moments that never comes together. It’s like I kept waiting for something to happen; that typical Alexander Payne-like swerve that throws the entire film under a new light, but it doesn’t happen. Nothing happens in this movie. And I’m not a person who needs something to happen in a movie for it to be entertaining or worth my time (one of my favorite movies is Stranger Than Paradise where not a lot happens), but there has to be some kind of mystery or intrigue or ambiguity about these characters that keeps us interested in following their journey. Everything just seems kind of telegraphed from the first moments of the lazy voiceover to the bedside emotional scenes that resound with a speciousness found in the worst offenders of the Oscar bait season. Payne seems more interested in holding the hands of the audience through every phony step of the way.

There are moments that work – moments that remind us of some of Payne’s ability to really quiet down a scene and really look at two misunderstood characters (the scene between Miles and Mya in Sideways talking about what kind of wine they like as it doubles as a description of themselves is the best example, and the height of his career as a director) –but these moments never coalesce into an interesting, emotional whole. I never felt moved by the film even though it so badly wanted to move me. Everything was so fabricated – so prescribed – that I was never given the ability to feel emotionally drained or be moved by the movie because it was telling me that those moments were coming before they happened.

Characters only exist to remind us of what a good guy Matt (George Clooney) is. For the first time Payne is without longtime writing partner Jim Thomas, and I think instead of writing a character that we aren’t sure about – someone who is simultaneously misanthropic and loveable…essentially the quintessential Payne character – we are offered up a rather bland martyr (the whole subplot of the film – whether he’s going to sell some land his family owns to a corporation or give it back to the people – is superfluous and unsurprising when it resolves itself) who does things that I think the movie wants us to see as bad (cursing and yelling at his comatose wife) but really just come off as a nice guy letting off some steam.

The movie has about 10 different ideas it introduces through voiceover, but instead of following up on any of those story threads, the movie just quickly sweeps them to the side and we’re off to the next scene as if nothing was ever the matter. It’s like The Descendants wanted to be a movie about pain without causing the audience to reflect on pain. It’s too safe and prescribed which is odd coming from someone like Payne who has always been so good at mixing the poignant with cynical.

Clooney is the film’s saving grace (although I did quite like the washed-out cinematography by Phedon Papamichael) and keeps it from falling into being a really bad experience. There is one scene in particular (pictured above) when Matt finds out some information about the land sale that throws a monkey wrench in the whole thing; it is one of the film's numerous examples of a perfectly acted and constructed scene that is frustrating because it never felt like it really coalesced with any other scenes in the movie. It's so well shot in close-up by Papamichael with the perfect juxtaposing image of a cheery Hawaiian band playing in the background (just out of focus but aurally in the foreground). It just kind of sits, though, and no matter how good a scene is, no one scene (not even one as good as this) can save such an incoherent, sloppily edited movie.

Despite the fact that Payne felt the need to vilify a comatose woman, have a father who was about as cliché and one-note as the idiot stoner (who, to nobody’s surprise I’m sure, is actually a smart, self-aware guy who shares the film’s best scene with Clooney as the two have a brief talk in the middle of the night), and a daughter who is – gasp – at a special Academy because of her past drug problems, Clooney does his damdest to elevate The Descendants to something beyond what it really is. Clooney is a star and his brilliant performance (even more pronounced by the film’s perfect use of close-up) comes off as effortless here – which is all the more frustrating that emotional payoff (which are wonderfully acted) falls so flat thanks to the uncharacteristically poor directing of Payne.

The ending shot is so appropriate. It’s perfect because it’s the perfect Payne ending: open-ended and understated. It’s also appropriate because it kind of encapsulates everything that irked me about this movie. Sure, it’s believable that Matt would be on the couch with his daughters eating ice cream (again, it’s a sweet shot to end the movie on, and I’m glad Payne chose that shot) by the end of their journey, but like everything else in the movie, it just kind of hangs there like a really good isolated moment without it really feeling like it’s a scene that is meant to elicit something more than what’s there. I never felt an emotional release during the scene; all it got out of me was a smile of admiration for being a final shot that works.

Perhaps I’m trying to make the film something it’s not, but I felt like the movie – it is, after all, an Alexander Payne movie starring George Clooney – was just a big disappointment; a film that kept introducing things without ever paying them off, and, most importantly, a film that seemed too intent on letting the audience off easy by holding their hand through every “difficult” scene of the movie. It’s just too incoherent a narrative trying to work within a problematic structure for it to be the great movie so many critics are proclaiming it to be.

Catching up with 2011: The Ides of March

2011-12-28T07:00:00.000-08:00

If it weren't for Ryan Gosling, The Ides of March would feel more like a great episode of television than a movie one really needs to go out of their way to see. Gosling is, as everyone knows by now, one of the best young actors working today (alongside Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Michael Shannon I'm hard-pressed to find three better young actors working right now), and he really saves this movie from being pretty, "meh." Don't get me wrong, though, Clooney (who stars, directs, and co-writes) is more than adept at making this kind of cerebral, political thriller. Loosely based on the Howard Dean campaign of 2004, The Ides of March fits neatly into the type of film Clooney the director seems drawn to: movies about men of high intelligence and energy (and are somewhat idealistic) who have their worlds close in on them until they reach their breaking point. It's not that The Ides of March is ineffective or even bad; it's just that in the end, it's wholly forgettable. The film doesn't tell the viewer something they don't already know about the soul-crushing endeavor of working on a campaign (and politics in general...it kind of reminded me of Charlie Wilson's War in this respect), but it is filled with great performances (the aforementioned Gosling, of course) from the likes of Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Evan Rachel Wood, Marissa Tomei, Jeffrey Wright, and Max Minghella. It won't make any end-of-the-year lists, but it's certainly worth your 100 minutes when it comes out on DVD.

Catching up with 2011: 50/50

2011-12-27T07:00:00.000-08:00

A disappointing movie for sure, 50/50 is only works on occasion and suffers, like most Seth Rogen vehicles, from a horrible small-minded view of women. The thing of it is, 50/50 – aside from being based on Rogen’s friend and screenwriter Will Reiser – shouldn’t have even been seen as a Seth Rogen movie (he’s barely in it), but here we are. It’s too bad because Joseph Gordon-Levitt turns in a damn fine performance that often steers clear of the dreaded “actor playing someone afflicted with cancer” clichés. I can’t say I can put myself in the shoes of the characters as the cancer plot didn’t really move me from a personal experience side of things. This left me focusing more on the lesser elements of the film – the elements that director Jonathan Levine seemed incapable of directing a different way – those moments that were so groan-inducing because they felt like they needed to be in a completely different Rogen vehicle, not one that tries to deal with the subject of cancer. Rogen’s character is so hateful in this movie. Not for a second does 50/50 take into consideration how someone having cancer affects those close to that person (it’s too tame and narrow-minded of a movie to think outside of its limitation), so when Levitt’s girlfriend (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) has conflicting emotions about being with her boyfriend who has cancer she’s labeled as a whore or a slut or even worse by Rogen’s character. I think the film wants us to side with the “bro” Rogen, but all it did was make me hate his character even more. His character was so ugly and distracting that whenever he popped up on screen, I tuned out. The scene that epitomizes this is when Rogen’s character catches Levitt’s girlfriend kissing another guy, and he yells at her as she tried to explain to Levitt that he caught her and that he has hated her forever and that now he has the evidence that she is a bad person; yet, he’s the one who comes off as a bad person…a horrible person, really, and if it weren’t for Howard acting the hell out of the scene, it would just sit there as a really nasty moment in otherwise forgettable movie.

The movie loses its teeth by the end, anyhow, so I don’t think even a good performance from Rogen (who immediately goes into Rogen mode when we first see him with lines like, “You smell like you fucked the cast of The View” when commenting on the way Levitt smells) would have saved it. I didn’t even bother writing down the characters names, and I don’t even feel like doing a Google search for them; I haven’t even gotten into how shitty romantic subplot in this movie is and how horribly stilted a performance the always coma-inducing Anna Kendrick gives (not that’s she’s given much a character to begin with). That’s how little I care about this movie. What a waste.

Catching up with 2011: Super

2011-12-26T17:48:00.000-08:00

If James Gunn’s (who made the pretty good Slither) Super had maintained the same tone as its opening five minutes, then the film would have been something. Sadly, however, Super is a hodgepodge of tones that never work. Its best elements – a great supporting performance by Kevin Bacon* as a slimy strip club owner being chief among them – seem like they belong in another movie. Rainn Wilson is fine as sadsack Frank who has a vision from God to tell crime to, “Shut up!” Wilson is a talented actor that always has a way of making the most outrageous things humorous because he keeps them grounded in a semblance of reality. Of course, this is evident in a lot of Dwight Schrute’s behavior on “The Office,” but in Super, there just isn’t any kind of thread that connects the darkly absurd elements together. Consider the scene where Frank dons a fake beard to get information for his first outing as The Crimson Bolt (the superhero he thinks God wants him to be)…this seems like something that is wholly Dwight Schrute and not the character Frank in this film. One of the main problems with the film – aside from the varying tones that never click – is Ellen Page. Here, Gunn seems to think that – much like the bizarrely graphic violence – having Page over enunciate her profanity (as if to show that she’s the anti-Juno or something) is somehow funny. I’m not averse to profanity, it can often make a scene funnier, but I hate it when filmmakers think that characters swearing, especially crassly and in front of kids or having characters go against type by swearing a lot, is just funny because it somehow it is “edgy” (look, there’s a reason why Kenny Powers works as a character on “Eastbound & Down” and the fact that he swears so much isn’t part of the reason).

Super can’t decide if it wants to be a parody of fanboy fantasizing, superhero movies, a dark comedy about seriously unstable people, or Christianity. Super reminded me of the horribly uneven Observe and Report; however Jody Hill is far more adept at the absurd than Gunn is. Gunn introduces all of these targets and sets them up to be satirized only to forget about them 10 minutes later. When Frank gets his vision from God after watching an episode of “The Holy Avenger,” I thought the film was going to be a comic parody of the goofy TBN shows “Bible Man;” however, instead that story thread is kind of dropped for a more conventional approach to dark comedy that just never clicks. One of the problems is the movie isn’t funny outside of the film’s highlight: Frank’s montage when he first starts fighting crime (also, the opening of the film with Kevin Bacon commenting on how good Frank’s eggs are is a highlight). It has the right tone that balances the goofy and absurd with the dark elements the film so badly wants to dwell on. However, that feels like a successful short film Gunn made; something he couldn’t stretch out to 90 minute movie. Another problem is Gunn’s utter lack of style or visual competence as director. The film is dreary and nihilistic, so I understand the look he’s going for, but then why litter the opening of the film with cheesy 60s Batman graphics and punk rock music?

So, Wilson and Bacon’s performances are for naught as Gunn’s inability to make a film with a coherent theme and tone is the undoing of what should have been a nice little indie dark comedy. Instead, the film just left me feeling sad for wasting Wilson’s talent as a comedic actor. When Frank whacks a man and woman in the head for cutting in line, Super lost me for good. It wasn’t shocking enough to be darkly funny and it wasn’t dark enough to be disturbing; it was just odd and stupid. And, man, Ellen Page was just beyond grating in the film. However, the one thing the film did do for me was want me to see more of Wilson on the big screen. “The Office” is in a creative funk right now, and the time is right for Wilson to break out as a comedic movie star; however, he needs material better than this because the man can only do so much to elevate Super’s script above complete drek.

* Michael Rooker also shows up as one of Bacon’s henchman and is awesome in his brief appearances; it’s always good to see The Rook continue to get work.

Catching up with 2011: Our Idiot Brother

2011-12-23T12:24:00.000-08:00

The first of many reviews where I attempt to get caught up with this year's movies.

If I were in charge of handing out year-end awards for 2011, Paul Rudd would get Best Actor. Like an episode of “Parks and Recreation,” Our Idiot Brother is, to say it very plainly, a warm film that just plain made me feel good while I was watching it. Paul Rudd is the main reason why as Our Idiot Brother made me smile throughout its wonderfully brisk 90 minute running time thanks to the performance of the year. Here’s a Sundance film that seemed, based on the posters and ad campaign, as if it were going to illicit the usual “meh” response I think of whenever one of these types of movies comes out (the Little Miss Sunshine complex). However, despite first-time director Jesse Peretz being a little ho-hum with how safe he directs, always making sure that the film feels very Sundance-y, he wisely allows his cast to take control of the movie to create one of the warmest movies I’ve seen in a long time; there isn’t a cynical bone its body. It’s so nice in this era of nastiness that permeates from every recent comedy that a film can just exist and observe its characters without a hint of irony or mean-spiritedness.

Look, I’m not averse to those types of movies; in fact, some of them I much like, but it’s so refreshing when a movie like Our Idiot Brother comes around that it’s warmth and earnestness kind of washes away just how problematic some of the film is. There could have been a lot more here, but that would have required the filmmakers to extend the film’s running time, and I think of one of the film’s great strengths is its ability to drop us right into this family and allow us to bask in how everything just seems normal and comfortable for this family and then to know when to call it quits; it’s so rare for a comedy to clock in under two hours these days that any comedy that is short almost scores immediate points in my book. But there’s more to the film than that. All of the archetypes are here for Peretz and company to revel in their quirkiness a la Wes Anderson or the coldly mock their idiosyncrasies a la Noah Baumbach or to paint the portion of New York that the film takes place in an unflattering way so that we laugh at how silly these hippies and tight-asses are instead of understanding where they come from. Now, that last part makes it sound like Our Idiot Brother is up to a lot more than it really it and even though it may not be that type of movie, it’s one of the best movies to be released under the usually off putting title of “Sundance Movie.”

The reason to see this movie, though, is Rudd. He’s always been good in movies like Role Models as the cynical asshole or as the lovable loser like in The Shape of Things, but here he plays a character that at any second could turn into caricature except that he doesn’t allow it to happen. With every smile and “Aw, man” there is a risk of Rudd going too far off into spoof, but it’s amazing how he never falls into that trap. Even the earnestness at which his character spends a large amount of time trying to get his dog (named Willy Nelson, which has a wonderful payoff by film’s end) is infectious. Just like the characters in the movie, you feel good about being around this character. I recognize elements of Rudd’s character in some of my friends, and I love that his performance so wonderfully captured the eternal idealism without a hint of snark thrown in. This also isn’t some loopy, weed-smokin’ smile guru; the character is more fleshed out than that: a person who is perfectly contempt with their life’s path and where it has taken him. That is what is so amazing about Rudd’s performance, so when he finally earns his “big” moment during a game of charades where he explodes in anger – and has a bit of a breakdown – at his sisters for their detached attitude towards the family game, it doesn’t come off as false as it would other films because we like Rudd so much and we’ve been willing to follow his character and believe in his character up to that point. It’s natural – and the right choice – for the film to end on Paul Rudd smiling.

The film’s tone – and all of the cast ranging from Rudd (obviously) to Rashida Jones (especially, both because she’s always hilarious and she’s not bad to look at) to Elizabeth Banks and Adam Scott (one of my favorite actors right now) to the always-hilarious Steve Coogan – is just spot on and reminded me of the way I felt after I watched The Kids Are Alright or Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist: two films that aren’t similar in any way except for the fact that I felt happy – elated really – when I was done watching them. Our Idiot Brother is made with the same intent: it’s not a film that’s trying to say anything deep or profound; it merely drops us in the middle of these people’s lives (it’s nice to see a movie about people in their 30s) and allows us to see how comfortable they are in their routines as their brother interjects his refreshing – and sometimes maddening – brand of honesty into their routine. There should be no surprises how the film ends (hint: all of his sisters have problems and Rudd affects their lives for the better, causing them to – gasp! – reevaluate their life choices); however, the film still works because the filmmakers (and cast) show restraint in not allowing the usual plot elements that trip up countless Sundance films to derail what they wanted to do. Just as Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist didn’t waste time having characters comment on New York music and nightlife for 20-somethings, so too does Our Idiot Brother not waste time commenting on organic farming, weed, lesbianism, or other elements that usually make up these kinds of movies because the characters have been living with it for so long. That’s the refreshing thing about this movie aside from Rudd’s performance: it allows the characters to act like they should act instead of commenting on things they would have no reason to still be commenting on. I have a lot of affection for this movie despite its many flaws. Will I remember this movie in ten years? Probably not, but it’s one of my favorite movies of the year thanks to Paul Rudd.

My Favorite Albums of 2011

2011-12-20T07:00:00.000-08:00

I’ve always preferred to keep my love of music within the margins of the industry. Even with something as marginalized (read: not mainstream) as the “indie scene,” I still prefer to find the niches within the niche. Sure, I could peruse the pages of Pitchfork.com and try to find whatever is the new cool thing to listen (I’ve tried it; it doesn’t work for me), but I’ve always enjoyed how organic music fandom can be, and when the love for a particular album and discovering an artist is a genuine thing, well, there’s nothing more exhilarating than that. I think more than any other medium music lends itself to this kind of enthusiasm; a type of fandom that is all at once exhilarating but rather daunting, too. The reason I think it’s a daunting is because I prefer to listen to music rather than lyrics, so I’ll have to sit with an album for months sometimes before I even form an opinion. It’s why I’m always reluctant to crawl out of my little nook, remove the earbuds of familiarity, and try something new. I like what I’ve always liked. I will stick with a band because it’s familiar or because I have a strong history tied to it. I will also seek other bands that tend to tour with the bands I like. It’s all very homogeneous, but it works for me. It’s why I was so grateful to be a part of Ed Howard’s music club this year; it opened my eyes to a variety of genres that I normally wouldn’t have tried (Jazz and Reggae specifically).

So, this year I really challenged myself to get out of my comfort zone, throw off the shackles of familiarity, and really try to branch out and try new music. What I found was a lot of my tastes zeroing in on the indie genre – I suppose my tastes, having always existed in the margins of mainstream music, would naturally steer themselves there – and I was surprised to find some non-post-hardcore/noise/guitar driven bands that I really liked.

First, I would like to give a special shout-out to The Congos, Sam Amidon, The Drive-by Truckers, Manic Street Preachers, and Miles Davis. What does this hodgepodge of musicians have in common? They were all selections for Ed Howard’s music club, and I’m grateful for the listening experience and subsequent discussions that followed. I look forward to (hopefully) another year of record club conversations. Also, a special shout-out to Mew; a friend of mine recommended them to me this year, and I haven’t been able to stop listening.

Other albums I liked at times this year: Emery – We Do What We Want; I Can Make a Mess Like Nobody’s Business – Gold Rush; Jack’s Mannequin – People and Things; Manchester Orchestra – Simple Math; Russian Circles – Empros; Saves the Day – Daybreak; Thrice – Major/Minor; Ty Segall – Goodbye Bread.

Honorable Mention:

Battles

Gloss Drop

Listen to: Ice Cream (linked below)

Battles are a band that I just discovered this year thanks to a friend who is in a band; I can see why he likes Battles and why he recommended them to me. Always a lover of all-things prog, I immediately responded to Gloss Drop, and I understood why a musician would really dig their style, too. There really isn’t a single per se on the album (“Ice Cream” would be the closest, and damn if that isn’t one of the catchiest tracks of the year and one of the most awesomely weird music videos)…it’s more one of those experimental, prog albums that needs to be experienced as a whole. Other standout tracks: “Futura” and “Wall Street.”

Bright Eyes

The People’s Key

Listen to: Ladder Song

The supposed final album from Omaha’s most notorious singer-songwriter, The People’s Key is more a whimper for Bright Eyes than a bang (if this truly is the final album). A few songs stand out as mature representations of the Bright Eyes sound (that lo-fi, rickety sound found on Fevers and Mirrors and Lifted – the two albums that opened the public’s eyes to Oberst and co.), but overall the album just lacks. It doesn’t have the lasting impression of I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning or the twangy charm of Cassadega; it falls into the more interesting but not quite successful type of album that Digital Ash in a Digital Urn was. The opening track “Firewall” is good enough as an entry into what the listener is getting with this album, and “Triple Spiral” is a helluva catchy tune. The real standout, though, is “Ladder Song” (written for a friend he lost to suicide), a reminder that when Oberst strips away the grandiose, he can still cut right to the core of things with his tight-lipped, warbled voice that can’t help but feel anything but earnest (the track reminds me of the heartbreaking “Lime Tree”). It’s an interesting album to thing about how so much has changed for the wunderkind; at one time called the next Dylan, he always evolved and did what he wanted to do. Sometimes, for those of us that remember discovering Oberst in 2000, that’s just a reminder of how “safe” his music has become.

Chelsea Wolfe

Apokalypsis

Listen to: Pale on Pale

The first track, “Primal/Carnal,” is about all you need if you want an introduction into the aesthetic of Chelsea Wolfe. On the opening track, she gives the listener, well, primal and carnal screams for about 20 seconds. After that, “Mer” kicks off the album proper, and it’s a bit of slow-going getting into Apokalypsis when you consider how the album starts, but once you settle in as best you can what you get is something that is the complete antithesis of other female artists that I enjoyed this year (and that will pop up in the top 10). It’s an album that sticks out (especially the track “Moses”) because of how foreboding the album’s ambience is, yet I found myself completely and utterly mesmerized by this odd little album. Standout tracks: “Movie Screen,” “Moses,” and “Pale on Pale.”

Cults

S/T

Listen to: Bad Things

Probably the best of the lo-fi, female-led, basement style recordings that seemed to flood the internet a year ago. Cults is vastly more interesting and less kitschy than something like Tennis or Best Coast, and it’s mostly because there seems to be real songs on here. If every song on Cults’ self-titled album was like their big internet hit “Go Outside” (which is a great song, by the way), it would grow tiresome, but there is definitely something more here lurking beneath the surface (see: “You Know What I Mean,” “Never Heal Myself,” and “Oh My God”); enough so that it excites me to see what the duo does next. It’s also short and to the point, which I appreciate; it doesn’t overstay its welcome, and because of that, it almost cracked my top 10.

Kevin Devine

Between the Concrete and the Clouds

Listen to: I Used to Be Someone

Probably the closest thing we’ll ever get to a worthy homage of Elliott Smith’s Figure 8, Kevin Devine is the same kind of musician who has a soft voice with a sense of urgency behind every subtly uttered lyric. Sometimes Devine can get angry and do the emo kid-with-the–guitar thing better than anyone in the industry because he has perspective (and a vocabulary) that goes beyond the diary. Sometimes he really surprises me and aspires to the heights of his obvious hero and main influence Elliott Smith (on his last album, his epic sounding “Brother’s Blood” was like the song to shame all of those emo kids with their guitars). Between the Concrete and the Clouds isn’t anything spectacular, but whenever I’m in the mood for guitar-driven, mature and politically-minded music (without being naïve or in way over his head), I know I can count on Devine to not insult my intelligence. His latest album appears on the fringes of this countdown because of standout tracks “Off-Screen;” “Between the Concrete and the Clouds;” and the outstanding, angsty closer “I Used to Be Someone.”

Owen

Ghost Town

Listen to: No Place Like Home

Much like Kevin Devine, Mike Kinsella has a soft voice that never has to go for screams to gets its sense of urgency across. The minimalist Owen (which is all Kinsella) has been adding different layers to every album. Ghost Town is probably the most complete and musical album he’s produced. If you’re a fan of this kind of soft-spoken, minimalist music, there are few who do it better than Owen. Simple, strong, consistsnent songwriting is the name of the game here, and Ghost Town is just another in a long line of good but not great Owen albums (it’s certainly not better than his previous effort New Leaves). Still, one of the better albums I’ve heard this year, and I much prefer Kinsella’s minimalism and subtlety over things like Perfume Genius or the folky aspects of something by Fleet Foxes.

Lonely Island

Turtleneck and Chain

Listen to: Motherlovers

I am not a fan of hip hop or rap. Sure, like any suburban white kid, I grew up sampling things like NWA and Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre’s The Chronic and Eazy-E and then tried to get “serious” about it while sampling A Tribe Called Quest (who I still listen to every now and then). What I’m getting at here is that I don’t have a love of the genre like the boys from Lonely Island obviously do, yet I never felt like the music or the joke was so far over my head that I couldn’t find it catchy and hilarious, and I have to say that that love and appreciation for the genre Lonely Island has is infectious when one listens to the goofy – but never condescending – Turtleneck and Chain. The key here is that it’s never condescending. There’s some that doesn’t work on here, but the highlights – which most have seen on SNL as Digital Shorts – are so strong that they move beyond parody into really good versions of hip hop songs that are really funny. And that’s the other key element that makes this album work: it’s not just that it’s funny, but the songs are catchy and actually work as hip hop songs. Now, the joke is prominent throughout as the boys mock the bombasity of hip hop songs (specifically the opening track which is a brilliant send-up of all those “We’re back!” type songs) with tracks like “I’m on a Boat” (probably the most popular track and the best video) and “I Just Had Sex.” My personal favorites work best when seen with their respective videos – “The Creep” and “Motherlovers” – but the real highlight might just be “Jack Sparrow” (which is also an awesome video) for the way it allows Michael Bolton to do a Michael Bolton sample without mocking the man. It’s goofy, sure, but it works because instead of drawing attention to how they have Michael Bolton doing something silly they allow it to exist without a hint of mean-spiritedness….the man just loves movies. It’s the rare parody album that doesn’t grow old because there was actual work and a love of the genre that was put into making these tracks. These guys have talent as both comedians and musicians.

My top 10:

10.) Des Ark

Don’t Rock the Boat, Sink the Fucker

Listen to: Ashley's Song

Between Des Ark’s previously titled album Loose Lips Sink Ships and this year’s Don’t Rock the Boat, Sink the Fucker, one would think that Des Ark is some kind early-20s scream band. No, there’s more to Aimée Argote’s band. This time around she’s sans Tim Herzog and doesn’t miss a beat. Des Ark’s previous album was a nice – and pleasantly surprising – variation of the guy/girl dynamic that litters all of indie music. This time ‘round, Des Ark creates an interesting variation on the loud/quiet dynamic found in a lot of post-hardcore acts. Don’t let the cover fool you, this isn’t some sugary-sweet folk album with the soothing sounds of a female vocalists ushering the listener through the album; it’s actually a somewhat challenging – if altogether a little stunted – album of varying dynamics that resonate emotionally. Like another female artists on my lists (EMA), Des Ark is interested in taking that PJ Harvey/Karen O style of modern female-led rock and playing with its darker and more visceral components (for the record, Des Ark belongs to the subgenre known as queercore). There’s a lot buried in songs like “Ashley’s Song,” and there’s a lot of fun to be had while listening to “FTW Y’ALL!” It all makes for an album that is nothing like you would think when looking at the surface (cover art, song titles, and the name of the album), but there’s a lot here that makes Don’t Rock the Boat, Sink the Fucker interesting enough to warrant multiple listens.

9.) Portugal. The Man

In the Mountain in the Clouds

Listen to: So American

One of the most consistent bands of the last five years, Portugal. The Man try their hand with their first major label release and the results are, uh, interesting. In the Mountain in the Clouds marks the first time the band has taken so much time to make an album. Portugal. The Man is usually a band that makes an album a year and tinkers with their sound on tour. However, for the first time in their career they had their biggest budget and spent the most time getting things the way they wanted. Perhaps that means In the Mountain in the Clouds is a less organic and more calculated album than something like Church Mouth, but it doesn’t make it and less of an achievement. Drastically better than their previous two albums, The Satanic Satanist and American Ghetto, their latest effort focuses more on that 70s sound the band perfected with the brilliant 2008 Censored Colors. The album’s bookends, “So American” and “Sleep Forever,” are perfect representations of the kind Air-like sound the band is going for. It’s not their most ambitious album, but In the Mountain in the Clouds is a breezy, easy on the years homage to 70s rock music. Thematically it fits nicely within their oeuvre even if I was left wondering what the extra money and time spent on the album actually produced that was different than what they did on their own label.

8.) The Dear Hunter

The Color Spectrum

Listen to: What Time Taught Us

You certainly can’t say that The Dear Hunter’s frontman and brain trust Casey Crescenzo lacks ambition. In addition to his epic concept albums (Act I, II, III) , the innovative prog-rocker sought to create an album comprised of nine, four track EPs that would act as representations for each color (plus black and white) in the color spectrum. So we have The Color Spectrum – a horribly uneven brilliant mess of an album. Crescenzo released a neutered version of his project to try and pass it off as a regular album, but skip it all together and immerse yourself in the nearly two-and-a-half hour musical experience. The highlights of the album include: Red, an intense, guitar-driven album with help of Andy Hull (Manchester Orchestra) that drives the album forward (especially the track “The Curse of Cynicism”) and appropriately represents the aggressive nature of the color; Indigo— which is extremely Notwist-y and suits The Dear Hunter well (I especially love the way that opening track to Indigo, “What Time Taught Us,” just builds and builds. Also, “Progress” which is probably the best track on the entire record) – and is an interesting diversion from their normal sound; Violet is an EP for The Dear Hunter fans that wish Casey would hurry up and make his follow up to Act III as it perfectly represents the epic, grandiose rock opera sound that fans of The Dear Hunter have come to expect (especially “Mrs. Malum” which has the trademark Crescenzo Meat Loaf-like lyric belting); and, finally, White ends the project with, once again, relying on Crescenzo’s strength in writing massive, goofy, cheesy prog-rock/opera type songs. If you’re a fan of this genre of music and White’s opening track, “Home,” doesn’t make you want to pump your fist in the air, then I don’t know what to tell ya.

7.) EMA

Past Life Martyred Saints

Listen to: Marked

Wearing ones emotions their sleeve is such a tired old cliché that I’m almost ashamed of myself for what I’m about to do: EMA’s (Erika M. Anderson formerly of Gowns) Past Life Martyred Saints is a painfully emotional album that wears all of its ugliness and obsession with body harm on its sleeve. It’s a powerful experience to make it through this nine track album. And yet, it never wallows in its visceral imagery (“I wish that every time he touched me left a mark” to “20 kisses with a butterfly knife” to “I’ve bled all my blood out, but these red pants don’t show that”) or obsession with body horror elements. In fact, there’s even a bit of softness found in some tracks as they move through their disturbing imagery. Whether it’s the wonderful opener “Grey Ship” that has a tremendous build until it just devolves into a barrage of ominous strings, or it’s the Sinead O’ Connery-like way she utters the line “51-50” in “California” there’s always something here to admire. The album moves swiftly from the dark opener to the haunting middle with “Coda” to the powerful “Marked” (which is more about the painful way she sings the song than music itself…it’s something I can’t shake after listening to it) to the surprisingly upbeat finale “Red Star.” If Gowns was just another monotonous female-led folk band that droned its way through its albums, then EMA is a big step in the right direction for Anderson. Nothing Past Life Martyred Saints feels superfluous. It’s a disturbing album when you delve into its content, but it’s a reminder that hear-on-the-sleeve music doesn’t have to be so one-dimensional.

6.) Little Scream

The Golden Record

Listen to: Guyegaros

Laurel Sprengelmeyer’s band Little Scream has all the trappings of the oh-so-cute Canadian folk/art rock artists (and this album is recorded with and produced by people involved in Canadian stalwart The Arcade Fire) that seem to be all over college radio. However, Sprengelmeyer is up to more than just aping the best qualities of popular female-led – and Canadian – art rock bands (most notably Feist, Metric, and Land of Talk) as she moved from the states to our neighbor to the North and has adopted some of the best qualities of the Canadian music scene. For a debut album, Little Scream sounds assured and surprisingly well-traveled. There’s enough of a mixture of sounds and ideas on the record so that when the soft spoken third track “The Heron and the Fox” appears, it stands out like it should as a star-making song. Its contrast to the other songs on the album make it all the more heartbreaking and affecting because, for once, we have a musician within this genre that isn’t interested in creating that same type of song for the other nine tracks. The album is sneaky in how good it is; it’s essentially one giant paradox as the album breezily moves in and out of familiar sounding art rock that is actually quite arresting. When “The Heron and The Fox” opens, the listener is most likely going to be ready to dismiss it as just another one of those types of songs; however, when one listens to Sprengelmeyer’s lyrics and the sad, almost exasperated, way that she sings, the song becomes something more: it takes a familiar template and uses it as a catalyst for a tableau of interesting takes on an over-saturated genre. “Cannons” and “Boatman” stand alongside “The Heron and The Fox” as standout tracks, but it’s the creative outlier of the album, “Guyegaros,” that shows just how creative Little Scream is. This is a band to keep an eye on.

5.) Thursday

No Devolucion

Listen to: A Gun in the First Act

It is impossible for one to write about a Thursday album without mentioning their seminal sophomore album Full Collapse. It’s unfair to the band that they can never seem to get away from that album, but there is a reason I bring it up here: No Devolucion finally exorcises the demons of living up to the expectations of following up such an enormously influential album. The 2001 album, Full Collapse, is up there with The Shape of Punk to Come (1998) by the Refused or Relationship of Command by At the Drive-In (2000) as one of the seminal post-hardcore records that shaped the genre and created a glut of gutless scream bands to follow. After the successes of their 2001 album, the band signed to Island Records where they were basically forced to neuter their creativity and create a facsimile of Full Collapse. Frustrated by this process, Thursday gritted their teeth as they completed their contract obligation – an experience that soured them on the process and acted as an albatross they couldn’t shake for their next three albums. Their latest (and possibly last) album, No Devolucion, is a quietly intense and dark album – a reined in version of the visceral intensity that is heard all over Full Collapse. No Devolucion mostly feels like catharsis for the band (especially with final track, “Stay True,” being somewhat of warning to their peers, especially the young and naïve ones, about the perils of signing to a major label) – one giant exhale by its collective members –and as someone who has followed the band since day one and has seen them countless times live, I feel good for them, and so the album almost acts as a relief for fans, too. Listening to No Devolucion I couldn’t help but think of the maturation the band has gone through. The album is dark and atmospheric with a reliance on music more than frontman Geoff Rickly’s vocals and screams (which is what put them on the map); in fact, it’s that refocusing of what the band wants to be known for – and possibly how they’ll be remembered – that makes the album so rewarding for fans. Instead of hitting the listener over the head with his screams, he sits back and takes a backseat approach this go-round and the effect is haunting; it’s everything fans of Thursday have been waiting more than 10 years for. I’ve recently read that the band is on an indefinite hiatus. It doesn't surprise me at all when tracing the trajectory of the band and seeing where they ended up with No Devolucion, their magnum opus.

4.) M83

Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming

Listen to: Wait

An epic album that was one of my favorites and most played this year. Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming was one of my favorite records to run to, also; the perfect kind of electronic driven album that just succeeds in getting me to finish my workout. When I’m about to get tired, a song like “Steve McQueen” comes on and pushes me to finish my workout. It’s a double album that doesn’t feel padded or convoluted like most double/concept albums do; it has the perfect amount Sigur Ros-y and Mew-y electronic/postmodern pop goodness to keep from ever feeling like the thing spans two discs. Even though the album is full of great singles (the aforementioned “Steve McQueen” and, my favorite, “Wait”), it most definitely needs to be heard as a whole. The musical interludes like “"Where the Boats Go" and "Train to Pluton" are more than worthy companions to the standout tracks on the album (I’d also add the awesome opener, “Intro” to that list) and most definitely deserve better than being skipped over. Like with most music of this ilk, it’s easy for bands like M83 to get bogged down in the “coolness” of their gadgets and the cleverness of their musicianship so that the songs become more like chores. M83 don’t fall into that trap with their latest album. It’s an exciting, massive, exhilarating album that I know I’ll continue to revisit throughout the years.

3.) St. Vincent

Strange Mercy

Listen to: Year of the Tiger

Somewhere in between Chelsea Wolfe/EMA and Feist/Little Scream lies Annie Clark’s band St. Vincent. Don’t let her spritely like appearance (think Jane Adams or Miranda July) fool you, Clark is familiar with the grandiose – after all she spent time in The Polyphonic Spree and as a touring musician for Sufjan Stevens – as is evidenced by her 2009 album, Actor, and she definitely knows how to bring the rock. Actor, though, had a tendency to get side tracked too easily by its orchestral tendencies; however, Strange Mercy wisely sets aside a lot of what didn’t work on Actor and scales things down just enough so that when a crazy idea does come up, it’s surprising and invigorating instead of superfluous. Clark is easily one of my favorite female musicians working today (go on Youtube and listen to her take on Jackson Browne’s “These Days”…so freaking beautiful), Strange Mercy – just her third album – is a stone-cold masterpiece that announces to the industry her staying power as a major creative force. Some of the my favorite tracks include the funny and subversive “Cheerleader” and “Chloe in the Afternoon” as well as well as the fantastic – and elusive and seemingly deeply personal – album closer “Year of the Tiger.” The sound is more consistent on Strange Mercy than on previous St. Vincent albums with slower, moodier tracks like “Champagne Year” and “Dilettante” providing the listener a more reflexive take than what we’re accustomed to from Clark who has always been someone to keep things, through her artistic approach to music, at arm’s length. With Strange Mercy, though, she melds both the personal and the artistic beautifully in all of the aforementioned songs and especially, in what is probably her most radio friendly song, “Northern Lights.” But even on “Northern Lights,” she can’t help but disrupt the familiar art-rock sound of the song’s opening minutes with a little extra oomph of warbling, disorienting guitars and various noises that listeners of St. Vincent have grown accustomed to. It’s just an all-round brilliant album.

2.) Feist

Metals

Listen to: The Circle Married the Line (The link is correct; the song on YT is incorrectly identified)

Probably the most ambitious album Leslie Feist has made to date, Metals deserves major judos for not becoming just another The Reminder. Feist and co. really seemed to go to great lengths with their third album to take the focus away fro “1,2,3,4” and the commercialization of the band and really make something that challenges the listener. Now, I say that without a bit of snark. I loved The Reminder, and I loved the song that was used for all of those iPod commercials, but there’s something to admire about the way she so obviously sought to make sure Metals doesn’t slip into predictability by creating something that followed that same, successful formula. Metals is a challenging album when compared to the whimsical The Reminder (I still listen to “The Park,” “Sea Lion Woman,” and “How My Heart Behaves” on a consistent basis), and that doesn’t make it better, but it makes it more interesting. Feist’s voice and music is the antithesis to the other female artists on this list (with the exception of Little Scream), but it’s just as affecting. The first thing the listener will notice when playing this record is that there is no clear-cut, obvious choice for a radio single on here; in other words, perhaps more than any of her previous albums, Feist has created an album that flows and works together rather than a collection of really good singles. The whole thing has a very 70s Jackson Browne/James Taylor/Carly Simon vibe to it (especially the highlights of the album “The Circle Married the Line” and “Anti-Pioneer”). The end of the album is one of the strongest set of songs in Feist’s career highlighted by the beautiful use of strings and horn arrangements (note: not overuse like so many indie folk bands tend to fall victim to) that find their way in and out of all of these songs without ever being over-bearing or pretentious and showy. The album’s closer, “Get it Wrong, Get it Wright,” is the perfect encapsulation of everything I love about Feist’s often minimalist approach to making music; it’s beautiful and haunting and the perfect lasting impression for what is one the very best albums of the year.

1.) The Antlers

Burst Apart

Listen to: The final four tracks of the album: Tiptoe; Hounds; Corsicana; Putting the Dog to Sleep

The album is essentially an album of two halves: the first more reliant upon the band’s new sound and showcasing the electronics and various sounds they’re playing around with (best used in “Parenthesis”); the second half of the album is the choice side: it’s filled with beautifully constructed, somber-as-hell songs that feel earnest and genuinely constructed. It’s the side of the album I prefer because it showcases how The Antlers really use all of their new musical toys to accentuate what’s already great and special about the band. All of the ambient whirrs and whooshes act as beautiful compliments to Silberman’s haunting voice. “Hounds” and “Putting the Dog to Sleep” are perfect representations of the way The Antlers merger their old sound found Hospice with their new proclivity for using more and more instruments and electronic noises in their music. Pitchfork Media aptly called the album, “nocturnal and desolate.” It’s about the most beautifully desolate thing I’ve heard in a long time.

Leave your list in the comments!

Oh, hey, readers...

2011-12-15T09:54:00.000-08:00

Yes, my blogging habits recently have been about as maddening as trying to decipher Tommy Wiseau's dialogue, but I vow to change that soon. I'll have a post up soon on my favorite albums of the year. This is also the time of the year (now that I'm on winter break) where I don't have to worry about work, and I begin my annual immersion into catching up with all of the 2011 movies that I missed. I'll be posting some reviews shortly.

Italian Horror Blogathon: Postscript

2011-11-04T18:11:00.000-07:00

Creepy old lady says, "Don't forget to come back next year!"

Thanks to everyone that helped contribute a piece to this year's blogathon. I felt it went extremely well this year (even though I didn't have nearly as many people participate, but I'll glad trade that quantity for the quality of this year's pieces), and I can't wait to do it again next year. I've already got a list of movies to watch for next year (really good ones, too!); I hope you all will join me again. Thanks again for making this whole blogging thing so much to do.

Italian Horror Blogathon: Day Six

2011-10-31T17:37:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween, everyone! Check out my final post below. Keep sending in your links; I'll be updating this post throughout the day. Previous days contributions can be found after the jump.

10/31:

Tim is back with his take on Demons 2. Check it out.

Simon Wright of Creatures of Light and Darkness returns with a great look at Italian soundtracks.

Stacia of She Blogs By Night takes a look at Argento's short films Jennifer and Pelts; two films he made for the television series "Masters of Horror." I have to admit, I haven't seen the made-for-Showtime series, but Stacia's coverage of these two short films makes me want to check it out.

10/30:

W.B. Kelso of the wonderful blog Micro-brewed Reviews takes an extensive look at Luigi Cozzi's The Killer Must Kill Again.

Tim of Antagony & Ecstasy takes a look at the Lamberto Bava/Dario Argento collaboration Demons with his usual wit and style. Be on the lookout tomorrow for a follow-up from Tim.

And finally, Troy is back with another re-post; this time for Argento's Suspiria. There are tons of great screengrabs in that post so check it out.

10/29:

One of my favorite bloggers, Tim Brayton, has written on the subject of Italian horror in the past. Here are links to just a few of his pieces on the subject: Zombi 2, Stagefright, The Beyond, and The House on the Edge of the Park.

Speaking of Deodato's House on the Edge of the Park, House of Self-Indulgence takes a great look at the video nasty, here.

And my brother, Troy, returns with a look at Fellini's Toby Dammit.

10/28:

Once again, Troy has a great post on a Bava film; this time he covers Kill, Baby, Kill with the usual array of beautiful Bava screenshots. Check it out.

Simon Wright just started his blog, Creatures of Light and Darkness, and I'm honored that the blogathon was the catalyst for his inaugural post as he gives us his take on Argento's seminal Suspiria.

Aaron Fenwick of Tomorrow's Sound for Today's Swinging Generation takes a look at one of my favorite, trashy exploitation zombie flicks, Zombie Holocaust (aka Dr. Butcher M.D.).

Thomas Duke of one of my new favorite blogs I've discovered, Cinema Gonzo, tackles the Ruggero Deodato slasher Body Count. Check it out; it has a ton of great clips throughout the post.

10/27:

Up at his blog Elusive as Robert Denby, my brother, Troy, has a great post on Bava's Blood and Black Lace (with some amazing screenshots).

A good friend to this blog, J.D. of Radiator Heaven has a great look at Dario Aregento's Phenomena.

Barry P. of Cinematic Catharsis gives us his take on what many consider the last true Italian horror movie, Michele Soavi's Cemetery Man.

10/26:

Neil Fulwood, of the outstanding blog The Agitation of the Mind, gives us his take one of my dessert island Italian horror flicks with a post on Lucio Fulci's The Beyond.

Michael Parent takes a look at one of the most notorious and infamous Italian horror films, Cannibal Holocaust.

Michael Grover takes a look at one of my favorite Italian cannibal movies, Cannibal Apocalypse.

My brother, Troy, re-posts his epic take on Umberto Lenzi's wonderfully awful Welcome to Spring Break. Lots of great Youtube clips and stills from the movie to check out.

Italian Horror Blogathon: The Sect (aka La setta, The Devil's Daughter)

2011-10-31T07:00:00.000-07:00

I knew when I started this blogathon that I wanted to make sure I covered some stalwarts of the Italian horror subgenre. Everyone knows about Fulci and Argento (both have been covered with the first blogathon), but I always feel the urge to carry the torch for the lesser known, underappreciated Michele Soavi. Last blogathon I covered three of his four horror films – Stagefright, Cemetery Man, and The Church – and this year I knew I wanted to cover the other one: the much maligned The Sect. I also knew that I wanted some of these posts to coalesce a little bit more than the previous blogathon, and so I found it natural to talk about this film in light of my piece on Lamberto Bava’s Graveyard Disturbance, and how that film marked the end of bigger budget Italian horror movies. Made in 1991, The Sect had a budget of 2 million dollars (actually quite large at the time for Italian horror movies) and wasn’t much of a success. The film clocks in at almost two hours and seems to take itself way more seriously than Italian horror films of the past. However, I’ve always liked the film and feel that it is unfairly maligned when you compare to the weak attempts by contemporaries Argento (Trauma), Fulci (Demonia), Deodato (The Washing Machine), and Bava (Mask of the Demon) around that same time. Soavi, when compared to his contemporaries, was actually making the most interesting and innovative Italian horror films at that time and was reminding people why the subgenre had such an avid cult following to begin with. In short: When Soavi came on the scene in 1987, he was the only making true Italian horror films (with one exception being Argento’s Opera which was released in 1987).

The Sect, not at all unlike Argento’s Trauma which came out at the same time, definitely feels like an Italian horror film trying to be just a little bit American – which makes sense considering what we discussed in the Bava post a couple of days ago. The industry was changing, and the gonzo/narrative-be-damned horror films the country was known for were being shuffled to the back of the line for more profitable American releases. Italian horror just wasn’t making a profit anymore, so it comes as no surprise that these filmmakers would try and make their films a little more toned down. The funny thing, though, about Soavi is that his follow up film Cemetery Man completely flies in the face of the mid-90’s American horror standard and aesthetic. Maybe it’s more Argento’s script (he also wrote The Church with Soavi) than Soavi’s direction; anyway, back to The Sect: Here’s a film that has a very basic Satanism angle to it as we open the film on the image of a broken clock (and interesting and apt image for the narrative structure of Italian horror) and then we pan back to see that we’re at a hippie commune in South Carolina circa 1970. A crazed, Manson-esque hippy crashes a flower-power powwow and freaks everyone out by reciting the worst Rolling Stone song ever, “Sympathy for the Devil.” I kid. But he does go on and on about the Stones are the important band if you really listen to them, and then he spouts some nonsense about the “truth” can be found in their music. Anyway, after staying with the commune throughout the night, the hippy completely destroys and slays the commune all in the name Beelzebub – or maybe it was Keith Richards.

This, of course, immediately reminds the viewer of the whole Manson Family thing, and the story is off and running to present day Frankfurt, Germany where we’re introduced to Miriam (Kelly Curtis, older sister of Jaime Lee), a schoolteacher, who almost hits an old man with her car. The old man in question is named Moebius (Herbert Lom in a great, over-the-top performance), and as he’s walking off a bus – clutching a box – he is almost tagged by Miriam’s car. She offers to take Moebius to the hospital, but he declines, so she does the most natural thing ever: she invites him to her house! You gotta love horror movies. What follows is poor Miriam realizing that it was by no accident that she met Moebius and almost hit him with her car. The weird hippie cult returns, and we soon realize that Miriam has been chosen to bear the child of Satan. As the story progresses, tons of weird stuff begins to happen to Miriam that reminds the viewer why it’s so much fun to give oneself over to the ridiculous nature of Italian horror. The plot of The Sect is pretty standard stuff in the vein of Rosemary’s Baby, but Soavi – fresh off of his second-unit duties for Terry Gilliam – always litters his films with enough memorable visuals, with his distinctly unique élan, that I tend to forgive the banality or familiarity of such a simplistic Satan-themed plot. In addition, he also gives depth to his characters – especially Miriam – that is rarely found in Italian horror. In this respect, the film feels very American. However the visuals – and the dark ending – give the film its distinct Italian ardor.

The moment that Moebius enters Miriam’s room and sticks a bug up her nose, The Sect turns into something even more bizarre than its hippy opening suggested. It is from this moment on that the film feels more Italian in the sense that substance is dropped in favor of style and tone of the film creeps further and further away from that of an American horror film. Soavi was brilliant at creating an otherworldly, ethereal atmosphere with his films, and The Sect is no exception. There are some moments hidden within the deliberate plot that makes the film more than worth wadding through.

One in particular is the fantastic energy found in the most mundane thing like water running through the pipes of Miriam’s house. Moebius has planted the demon seed in Miriam’s water supply, and there’s a tense scene of will-she-won’t-she when she goes to take a drink of water. As her pipes struggle to push the water through, she peers into the pipe – complete with icky slime – to see what the holdup is. It’s all very sexual and suggestive, sure, but there’s also something that’s just so entertaining about the way Soavi films the scene. When the water finally does begin to rumble and shoot through the pipes, Soavi’s camera follows it from the well (an important set piece actually…so there’s a point to this shot, it doesn’t just look cool) through the pipes and out the other end with the kind of headlong energy that reminded me of the POV shots of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead movies.

The other scenes I’m thinking of are both dream sequences, and when you give an Italian horror director – especially someone like Soavi – the landscape of a dream to work with, they usually go crazy with the imagery. But Soavi keeps things as grounded as an eerie nightmare should be. There’s a nonsensical tone to the dreams, but it’s hard to spot because Italian horror narratives so naturally lend themselves to that tone to begin with. In one dream Miriam imagines walking through a field and looking up at the sky; and I shit you not the scene reminds me of Malick-lite. Soavi films the scene so beautifully that it’s the perfect complement – the perfect anti-Italian horror moment – that it certainly does feel displacing like a dream should be. Miriam eventually walks through all kinds of foreshadowing (hooks hanging from a tree is the big one) and eventually we cut to a POV rushing its way through what looks like someone being under bed sheets. And then…well, a big freaking bird emerges and starts pecking the hell out of Miriam. She awakes and thus begins her date with the devil to bear its child. Finally, the last dream sequence is indeed the one where Miriam is impregnated. Soavi had already filmed one creepy demonic sex scene in The Church, and here his touch is just as deft as that horrible bird returns only to eventually manifest itself in a shadow where, yes, we do indeed see the shadow of the Devil’s schlong. It’s a bizarre moment (no duh, right!) as the shadow morphs back into the bird who begins to mount Miriam in the missionary position. Of course, I have provided these two moments for you below.

Bizarre, wacky moments aside, The Sect does at times take itself a little too seriously; however it’s not enough of a problem – at least no more than any other Italian horror film, I mean God knows I’ve forgiven the likes of Fulci and Argento for much worse – that it would cause me to caution anyone from seeing the movie. Once we find out that Miriam is the chosen one to carry the Devil’s child, the film picks up its pace and becomes an intriguing mix of the Italian style Soavi does so well (and learned from Argento) and the vision and visuals that were certainly inspired by his time working for Terry Gilliam. There’s even a slight nod to Brazil in one of the film’s more gruesome scenes as Satan worshipers from across the globe (including the creepy Hippie from the beginning) reunite to tear the face off of an unsuspecting victim. As is the case with most Italian horror films, the film is meant to be experienced, not explained; it’s more of a visceral experience that laughs in the face of literal, generic plot summation. This can be infuriating for fans of the horror genre, but once one inundates themselves in the gory, neon waters of Italian horror, something like The Sect becomes more palatable. It isn’t Soavi’s best film – it’s a bit too labored at points to really usurp something so crisply well-made like Stagefright – but damn if it isn’t a brilliant mess of a film because when the film is on, it’s a downright perfectly executed Italian horror.

Extra stills because I just can't help myself when it comes to a Soavi movie:

Italian Horror Blogathon: Cannibal Apocalypse (aka Apocalypse domani)

2011-10-30T09:32:00.000-07:00

Released a year after Cannibal Holocaust and a year before Cannibal Ferox (Jess Franco’s Cannibals was in there, too) it’s safe to say that the‘70s and early ‘80s belonged to the cannibal subgenre. Antonio Margheriti – working under the oft-used pseudonym Anthony Dawson – never had much use for the horror genre as this was his only foray into visceral, exploitation horror film. He was more of a Gothic horror filmmaker with one of his most well known films being the 1964 film Castle of Blood (It's also much rumored that he directed Andy Warhol's Frankenstein and not Paul Morrisey). He was more of a genre filmmaker who specialized in those great Italian action films that were just knockoffs of more popular American films. Marghertiti – who cut his teeth working as an assistant with Sergio Leone – isn’t up to the tricks that Deodato and Lenzi used in their cannibal films; in fact, the word ‘cannibal’ in the title is a bit of misnomer as Cannibal Apocalypse doesn’t contain any of the racial insensitivity or cruelty to animals (or gut munching) that those infamous cannibal film have. It’s a nice, underrated film, and one that I am completely baffled by the DPP’s inclusion of it on their Video Nasty list. Cannibal Apocalypse is an interesting amalgam of cannibal movie, Vietnam movie (its Italian title translates to “Apocalypse Tomorrow”), and Euro crime picture; it’s a sneaky-good Italian horror movie that more people need to see.

The underlying theme here isn’t lost on anyone: the men who fought in Vietnam came back as animals as the result of what they saw/did there. But hey, it’s better than the usual storyline found in these type of films, and it’s certainly a more interesting and watchable (and funny in the pizza and beer movie kind of way) cannibal movie than, say, something like Cannibal Holocaust which takes itself way too seriously. There a four things that happen within the first five minutes of Cannibal Apocalypse that make me feel all warm and fuzzy; four things that let me know immediately that what I’m watching is an Italian horror flick from the 1980s: we open with stock footage (always good) from the Vietnam war; the name John Saxon appears (this is always great) on screen; a funky, Goblin-esque beat supplies the background music for all of the action; and, of course, we get some good ‘ol fashioned cannibalism.

What happens is this: Norman Hopper (John Saxon) is having nightmares about his stint in Vietnam when he was on a rescue mission for some POWs, and what he found was that they had turned to cannibals. The next day, Hopper receives a call from one of the POWs, Bukowski (Giovanni Lombardo Radice), who asks Hopper out for a beer. When Hopper remembers his dream, he’s reluctant to meet up with his former war buddy and promptly hangs up the phone. Meanwhile, while Hopper is on the phone, one of the strangest subplots of the film is taking place: Hopper’s jailbait neighbor is looking to hook up with, and even though Hopper continually rebuffs her, once he hangs up the phone, he can’t help but give in to his urges; which ends in him biting her. It’s a hilariously awful and clumsy seduction scene as his young neighbor feigns a pulled muscle so that Hopper will have sex with her. Just a weird, surreal moment – the kind you only ever found in these kinds of exploitation movies.

Inept seduction aside, the rest of the movie is essentially a “cannibals on the loose” type of film that really takes after a zombie film (or at least an Atomic zombie movie like Lenzi’s Nightmare City) as Bukowski takes a bite out of a couple making out in a movie theater, hides out in a flea market (perhaps the film’s most memorable set piece), takes on the lamest biker gang ever filmed (they’re dressed like The Village People, and they ride dirt bikes; and instead of chains or knives, they carry and throw baseballs at people), and gets his former cannibal war buddies together to terrorize the city. The thing is the film is a helluva lot of fun; it’s just about the perfect mix of exploitation horror that works and so-bad-it’s-good cheesiness.

The film is cut at a brisk pace –the action always moving at a nice clip – and the goofiness is at the appropriate level so that it never takes the film to that eye-rollingly bad level because it doesn’t take itself too seriously. And that’s where Margheriti’s skills come in handy: he keeps the film grounded in what he’s most comfortable working with. Because he started in Gothic horror (akin to Bava), Margheriti seems to favor mood over gore, and Cannibal Apocalypse – for as wacky as it can be – always seems to have the right mood to it. There isn’t a lot of gore here, but what is here is still memorable thanks to the effects by the make-up maestro Gianetto De Rossi (Zombi 2, The Beyond, and The House by the Cemetery) – especially the famous scene where one of the cannibals is shot through the stomach with a shotgun and Margheriti’s camera peers through the hole in a great effect similar to what Sam Raimi would do a decade later in his western The Quick and the Dead. However, the poster and title for the film certainly promise more gore than what you’re going to get, but that doesn’t make it unworthy of your attention. Cannibal Apocalypse is a well-made exploitation movie that’s a lot of fun, doesn’t insult the viewer too much, and removes the problematic tendencies of the cannibal genre. Check it out; it’s a film that deserves to be near the top of must-see Italian exploitation films.

Italian Horror Blogathon: The Perfume of the Lady in Black (aka Il profumo della signora in nero)

2011-10-29T10:31:00.000-07:00

Here is a capsule review on the VASTLY underrated film The Perfume of the Lady in Black that I wrote for Wonders in the Dark for their top 100 Horror Films countdown last year. The full list of films can be found here. Enjoy...and make sure to watch that trailer!

[Originally posted 9/13/10 at Wonders in the Dark]

When I was approached by Jamie to participate in this countdown I knew I wanted to make sure Italian horror got its due. And when Jamie told me his intentions for the countdown – a numerical listing of films with the intent to raise awareness rather than rank one better than another – I knew I wanted to shed some light onto some Italian horror movies that weren’t as well known as the staples (read: Argento, Bava, and Fulci) of the subgenre. These are films like The Short Night of the Glass Dolls (Aldo Lado) or The House with Laughing Windows (Pupi Avati); films that have a cult following within a cult subgenre. One of the real joys about this particular sungenre is the hope that the more you watch the same old gialli over and over that just maybe this time you’ll un-mine some hidden gem. Case in point: Francesco Barilli’s The Perfume of the Lady in Black, a fantastic addition into the most hallowed halls of Italian horror.

The story – an odd mix of giallo/Hitchcock and some of the baroque qualities of a Bava – concerns Silvia (Mimsy Farmer), an industrial scientist, who becomes increasingly disturbed by a series of eerie visions from her past. These visions, crucial pieces to solving the film’s puzzle, include a seductive woman who appears when she is about to make love with her boyfriend and a little girl who piques Silvia’s interest. What’s fascinating about the picture is the way Barilli approaches the mystery of these visions: are they specters acting as representations of something from Silvia’s past, or are they merely figments of Silvia’s imagination?   Silvia’s psychosis becomes a point of emphasis, and it sucks the viewer in much in the same way Silvia is taken hold by these visions (it reminded me of the obsessed quest of Scotty from Vertigo). It isn’t long before Silvia’s neighbors, friends and Roberto, her lover, begin to take on sinister significance. Whether or not the significance of these visions is a clue to Silvia’s past, or something more sinister, is what makes the film’s mystery so brilliant. I was blindsided by the ending of this film, perhaps because of its deliberate pace and lush visuals I wasn’t expecting the visceral jolt I received with those final images.

The Perfume of the Lady in Black just feels different than any other Italian giallo. The film opens on a still photograph accompanied by the beautiful and haunting music by Nicola Piovani, and it’s off-putting because this is not how most Italian horror films begin…it’s almost too classy! From the opening image the viewer isn’t sure what to expect, and Barilli maintains this sense of mystery and uncertainty perfectly throughout the film, so, like all great gialli, we’re not certain of the answers to the film’s central mystery until the very last frames. The film employs a lot of the neon-aesthetic made famous by Argento in Suspiria, but Mario Masini’s cinematography predates Argento’s seminal horror film, and aside from it always a pleasure to look at (one of the major selling points of Italian horror), it’s clear that Argento wasn’t the only one who could do arty, garish horror films. What struck me most about the film was that I hadn’t even heard of it until a few months ago. Sadly the film isn’t available on region one DVD in America, so I had to seek out, ahem, alternative ways to watch the film. But that’s what I love about this particular subgenre, there’s always something new to discover, and The Perfume of the Lady in Black is one of the very best of the recent discoveries I’ve made; an interesting precursor to what Argento would popularize a few years later with Suspiria.

Italian Horror Blogathon: Scorpion with Two Tails (aka Assassinio al cimitero Etrusco, Murder in an Etruscan Cemetery)

2011-10-28T07:40:00.000-07:00

Trimmed down from a seven part mini-series, this extremely boring, late-era Sergio Martino film is a big disappointment. I can’t imagine this story being longer, but the fact that it was a part of a mini-series would explain the brief appearances by American genre actors John Saxon and Van Johnson. It also explains the inexplicable detour the film takes halfway through where it goes from supernatural horror movie to Italian crime movie. In the midst of all the heads being twisted every-which-way and maggots spewing from statues, there are drug film caricatures and heroine deals gone awry and all other kinds of exploitation film goodness. However, it never comes together for Martino and his longtime screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi as Scorpion with Two Tails (also known as Murder in an Etruscan Cemetery which sounds like the title for an episode of “Murder She Wrote”) is a crushing disappointment from one of my favorite Italian horror directors.

Martino and Gastaldi carved a niche for themselves with great gialli like Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, All the Colors of the Dark, and Torso. But here, with Scorpion with Two Tails, they create such a monotonous mystery that seems like nothing more than half-executed ideas. The story concerns Joan Barnard (Elvire Audray) having horrible nightmares about ritualistic deaths (which are quite lame…people just get their heads twisted around) that take place within an Etruscan tomb. These nightmares plague her while her archeologist husband, Arthur (my man John Saxon), investigates the very same lost tombs that plague Joan’s nightmares. All of this leads to some nonsense where Joan must go and investigate her husband’s murder which leads to a variety of subplots that range from Satanism to murder to drug smuggling.

I think the most frustrating thing about the movie is the fact that anyone who follows Italian horror knows how capable Martino is as a director, and everything just seems so banal and lifeless here. There’s no blood – which, I should clarify, isn’t the mark a of a good Italian horror movie, but it certainly makes the bad ones more palatable – or other exploitation/Italian horror goodness one comes to expect form not just a Martino film but also from a film that contains a setting like Etruscan tombs. Martino doesn’t take advantage this fine setting, and if you go into Scorpion with Two Tails expecting some kind of Fulci supernatural gorefest (even though Martino does lift the exact Fabio Frizzi score from The Beyond and City of the Living Dead), you’re going to be sorely disappointed. The most that Martino gives you is maggots; there are lots and lots of maggots; however, by this point, the maggot thing had been well-worn thanks to Fulci, so really there’s nothing even kind of creepy about a scene like the one when Joan looks at a picture and maggots emerge from it in a hallucinatory dream sequence. It just all feels flat. The film was released in 1982, so by this point Fulci had set the bar for supernatural Italian horror quite high with his “Gates of Hell” trilogy, and in light of those films, Scorpion with Two Tails is quite banal in comparison.

Martino also seems to waste the time of his wonderful genre character actors. John Saxon is on screen for little more than 10 minutes. Van Johnson pops in and out so quickly that I wouldn’t have known it was him had I not seen his name in the credits and looked for him. Martino favorite Claudio Cassinelli tries to make the most of this ridiculous premise, but he was better utilized in Martino’s non-horror efforts like the adventure films Island of the Fishmen and The Great Alligator (both made in 1979 and both charming, if incredibly flawed, adventure/horror hybrids that are good for some laughs). Audray is the worst of the bunch; even her screaming is unconvincing. And, I guess, this is the sign of a bad movie…not a good bad movie, either, but just a bad movie. Because when I spend time talking about how bad the actors are, that means the movie had little value in keeping me entertained though legitimate or so-bad-it’s-good means. The acting is almost always the last thing I ever consider when I watch Italian horror because it’s almost always campy and unconvincing (thanks to the dubbing), and that’s to be expected. However, in Scorpion with Two Tails it stuck out because there really wasn’t anything else to focus on. Be warned: this is one deliberate, 94 minute movie without an ounce of the style found in Martino’s other work.

If you’re interested in Martino’s work (and I highly recommend you check his stuff out if you’re at all interested in Italian horror), I would recommend you start with the fantastically brutal Torso, and then work your way through Martino’s other fine gialli (the aforementioned list at the beginning of this post) before you attempt to sit through this. Like most movies I’ve covered so far this blog-a-thon, Scorpion with Two Tails is for completists only.

Italian Horror Blogathon: Graveyard Disturbance (aka A Night in a Cemetery, Una notte al cimitero)

2011-10-27T07:37:00.000-07:00

Lamberto Bava’s Graveyard Disturbance is an interesting film in the history of Italian horror. Oh, not because it’s any good, but because it marks the death of quality, theatrical Italian horror films. 1987’s Graveyard Disturbance marked the first of four films that Lamberto Bava made (with the help of veteran genre screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti) for the Italian television series “Brivido Giallo.” What’s significant about this really, quite honestly, has nothing to do with Bava. Oh, Bava was a decent talent – a filmmaker who could obviously never live up to his father’s name – who worked early in his career as an apprentice (alongside Michele Soavi) for Dario Argento. Bava’s best film was the 1980 giallo Macabre; his Demons is a lot of fun, too. But back to what I was talking about: Italian horror circa 1987. Graveyard Disturbance came out the same year as Michele Soavi’s Stagefright and Dario Aregento’s Opera; two films that are wonderful examples of just what good Italian horror can accomplish; however, they also weren’t big success financially, and with the increasing popularity of television, the floundering Italian film business (American horror movies were making a ton more than the homemade products), and how cheap one could produce a movie for television, there would only be a couple more movies like them before we started getting more and more movies like Graveyard Disturbance.

Since the film industry was only making money in Italy when they showed American films, Lamberto Bava kind of saw the writing on the wall and decided to jump from film to television. Now, it’s not like Bava carried the clout of an Argento or even an ounce of clout that comes from his last name, but he was one Argento’s protégés, and that meant something within the world of Italian horror. So, when Bava jumped to TV, it did indeed seem like some kind of deal…not a big deal, but a deal nevertheless. What followed 1987 was a trend of toothless Italian horror films. Yes, the very thing that made Italian horror notorious was now considered its detriments as the paradigm shifted towards smaller screens and smaller budgets. Some filmmakers like Michele Soavi used this as an excuse to get out of the genre (and he actually has made some good made-for-TV Italian crime movies), but more than anything else all this shift really gave us was a bunch of neutered filmmakers. Italian horror, once known for its visceral imagery and ethereal narratives, was now reduced to nothing more than “Scooby-Doo” scares and “Tales from the Darkside” aesthetic.

Despite this, Graveyard Disturbance was the first of the Bava TV movies, and even though one will likely forget it as soon as they’re done watching it, I couldn’t help but feel that the thing was a little charming in light of having just sat through a Joe D’Amato movie. Quickly, let’s talk about the movie: Graveyard Disturbance is nothing more than a cheesy, bloodless Bava offering that came off the heels of his disappointing Demons 2. The story is akin to that of a “Tales from the Darkside” episode where you have a group of aloof college students (who are nothing more than horrible clichés of the ‘80s American teenager) who take a detour into some off-the-map location where their van breaks down and they encounter all kinds of spooky goings-on. When the group arrives at an old inn that just spells trouble, they become aware of a buried treasure that is offered to guests if they can survive one night in the inn; however, nothing is as simple as it seems, so of course all kinds of bad things start to happen to the group when they decide to stay the night at the inn.

The film has some funny, haunted house moments, and the acting is gloriously terrible. One thing Bava knew how to do well in this movie was work the fog machine, that’s for sure. There’s a lot of wandering around searching for stuff and then weird looking people in makeup pop out and howl at the characters while they scream – again, very Haunted House type stuff here. There’s nothing remotely visceral, nothing even remotely scary about Graveyard Disturbance, but damn if I didn’t have some fun watching this. The reason for the tameness of the film is because Italian TV was the wave of the future at this time, and, sadly, this is what killed good Italian horror. Producers saw how cheaply they could make something for television and also attract a wider audience because they didn’t have to fill their film with gratuitous nudity and gore – staples of the Italian horror genre. The effect was forever damaging to the genre as it was just a handful of years later that the last true Italian horror film was made, Michele Soavi’s Cemetery Man. So yes, even though there is no gore, no extreme violence, and the film is widely considered Bava’s worst film (obviously those people haven’t seen Devil Fish), I have to say that it’s harmless fun that can definitely be enjoyed with a group of friends. It’s also an interesting curiosity within the context of the history of the Italian horror film. Oh, and it’s educational! For example, it’s nice to know – thanks to the end of this film – that if I ever encounter the Grim Reaper, and I’m not ready to die yet, all I have to do is gently stab it in the stomach with a small dagger and then run away. Seems easy enough. Thanks, Lamberto! See, there’s a lot of cheesy goodness in here to enjoy with your friends, just don’t think you’re getting any kind gory lark a la Demons.

Italian Horror Blogathon: Absurd (AKA Rosso Sangue, Anthropophagus II, Monster Hunter, The Grim Reaper 2)

2011-10-26T07:18:00.000-07:00

One of the more notorious “Video Nasty” films that never made it off of the final list of 39 films banned by the DPP, Absurd is a film – like most Joe D’Amato films – where the viewer is left to wonder what all the fuss was about. Nothing about the film is particularly scary or obscene, and even though it is essentially a beat for beat remake of the first two Halloween pictures, there’s nothing remotely artistic or well-made about the film that warrants disgust at the fact that it was banned in the UK. It is, however, helmed by the infamous Artistide Massacessi – better known to us Yanks as Joe D’Amato – and for that it has obtained a level of cult status as being inherently nasty because his name is attached to it. Now, sitting down to watch a Joe D’Amato film isn’t something you do all willy-nilly. It has to be pre-meditated, and, if you’re anything like me, this is an act that shows your unbridled love and enthusiasm for the genre. Because let’s face it: why else would one subject themselves to a D’Amato film? So it’s with that that I find it difficult to get a bead on Absurd. In no way is it good, but in the right frame of mind, it’s more than tolerable.

Before I get too far ahead of myself though, I think it would be good to go over a little context. In 1980, D’Amato and Luigi Montefiore (better known as George Eastman) created Anthropophagus, which in Greek means “cannibal,” a horrendously tedious and boring film that caused major controversy with the two specific scenes that come at the end of 80 minutes of people walking around a Greek island. Anthropophagus is one of the most overrated of the Italian Video Nasties, but it’s important because it cemented D’Amato as a horror exploitation director whereas prior to Anthropophagus (and Beyond the Darkness, which looks like freaking Citizen Kane compared to his later horror films), D’Amato was known as nothing more than a soft-core porn hack who mixed horror elements and cannibals with his infamous Emmanuel series. Oh, I guess we shouldn’t forget the tastefully dubbed, Porno Holocaust.

So, in 1980, after some mild success with Beyond the Darkness, D’Amato gave us Anthropophagus which contains a crazy George Eastman (who also wrote the script) tearing out fetus’ and eating his own guts (the former effect was nothing more than a skinned rabbit wrapped in bacon, and when one sees it now, it’s hard to imagine why anyone was up in arms about it). In Absurd, the unofficial sequel to Anthropophagus, Eastman returns as a monster who has his guts removed at the beginning of the movie rather than the end (hey, at least we didn’t have to wait 90 excruciating minutes this time); however, because of this, Eastman’s monster is somehow more powerful than ever and able to regenerate himself, kill everyone in the hospital, and set out on a rampage that will, naturally, take him to a house where a babysitter awaits him for a final battle.

Familiarity aside, I have to say, Absurd is interesting in a so-bad-it’s-good kind of way if nothing else. D’Amato – ever the inept hack – couldn’t pace a scene to save his life, but at least he doesn’t make the viewer wait eons for the gore this time, so I suppose his pacing in that regard is good. Absurd, as mentioned earlier, is essentially the first two Halloween movies. Perhaps a better title though would have been Super Bowl, as D’Amato finds it a good idea to set his film on one of America’s favorite holidays: Super Bowl Sunday. The entire non-killing parts of the film contains non-American actors pretending they like American football, talking about the big game, where they’re going to watch the big game, and eating Italian food while the big game is on. It’s an amazing thing: that one little touch so endeared me to this movie in the classic so-bad-it’s good/watch this movie with friends and beer kind of way that the movie kind of has some, er, charm to it.

But alas, this is D’Amato, and I’m never happy when I have to sit down and watch one of his movies. But he is a staple of the Italian horror subgenre, so here we go. A mysterious man named Mikos (Eastman) has an ability to regenerate even after being disemboweled. When taken to the hospital, he revives himself and kills a nurse and goes on a murderous rampage that is obviously inspired by Halloween II. After the monster escapes it turns into the first Halloween picture as the priest that has been chasing Mikos all this time (played by Edmond Purdom basically doing his best Donald Pleasance impersonation) informs the people at the hospital that the only way to kill Mikos is to, “destroy the cerebral mass.” Yup, so we know someone is going headless by the end of this movie. The rest of the film can basically be broken down into the following pattern: someone is murdered via cannibalism, 15 minutes of plodding around, people watch the Super Bowl, someone is murdered via table saw, 15 minutes of plodding around, people watch the Super Bowl…etc. It’s all very D’Amato-y, meaning: you wait and you wait and you wait and then you get some gore…and all you can really hope for in those minutes that seem like hours in between the kill scenes is that there is enough cheesy goodness to get you through to the next gore piece.

Here’s the deal though: D’Amato at least seems to have learned from his mistakes in Anthropophagus because Absurd isn’t nearly as boring (at least it doesn’t feel like “Come Visit Greece” tourism video). Interspersed throughout are those semi-gory deaths that have decent gore effects (again, though, nothing so bad that I can imagine it offending people to the point where it never made it off of the DPP’s list) to at least get you through to the next scene, but they’re surrounded by other nonsense that shows how inept D’Amato was at making horror films. There’s a scene near the end with a crippled girl in a bed that seems helpless against the monster’s home invasion. This scene, in the hands of a competent director, should have been a home run – a tense scene that winds the audience up – instead, it’s just kind of so-so, and all we’re left doing is marveling in the ways that D’Amato completely botches scene after scene showing no ability whatsoever to build suspense.

This movie is really for completists only – whether you’re a slasher completist, an Italian horror completist, or, God forbid, a D’Amato completist; the casual horror fan will be, justifiably, bored with this movie. But there is a group – aside from the aforementioned ones, who really fall into this category anyway – that the movie was tailor-made for. If you’re anything like me, you enjoy the many levels of entertainment horror can offer. Sure, Absurd is nothing close to Deep Red or Don’t Torture a Duckling, but it is one of those movies that is kind of like Cheerleader Camp or other trashy ‘80s slasher fare. Now, admittedly, Absurd is a lot grimmer and less self-aware than something cheesy like Cheerleader Camp, D’Amato definitely thought he was making a really good horror movie here, but the spirit of watching this type of movie remains: horror aficionados should see this movie with a group of friends, some pizza and beer, and sit back and marvel at the wondrous, mind-numbingly, wonderfully awful world of Joe D’Amato. Oh, and that Super Bowl Sunday subplot.

Italian Horror Blog-a-thon is tomorrow!

2011-10-25T20:06:00.000-07:00

First post goes up around 7am Pacific. I'll also have a community post up for you to send links to; I'll update that post daily with what you all are writing about. Also, I'll be updating my own posts under the Italian Horror tab at towards the top of the page...check it out if you want to see what other Italian horror flicks I've written about.

I'm looking forward to reading what you all have to say.

New Halloween-themed Quiz from SLATIFL

2011-10-23T11:51:00.000-07:00

Dennis from Sergio Leone and the Inside Fly Rule has come up with another fun quiz...this time with a Halloween theme! This one is right up my alley.

First, a brief reminder that the Italian Horror Blog-a-thon is just a mere three days away. I hope you all have your posts ready. I'll be posting a community post here on Wednesday for everyone to send me links to their pieces via the comments section. Anyway, we're three days away. Should be fun!

My answers to the quiz follow the jump.

1.) Favorite Vincent Price/American International Pictures release.

Gotta go with THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM

2) What horror classic (or non-classic) that has not yet been remade would you like to see upgraded for modern audiences?

Since I am such a huge Italian horror fan, I would love to see some of the early Argento or Fulci stuff (Hollywood should leave Bava’s films alone, though) because it could lead to someone seeking out the always bizarre subgenre. Tarantino has stated in the past that he would love to remake the early Fulci film MURDER TO THE TUNE OF SEVEN BLACK NOTES; I’d be down for that. As for an early Argento, I wouldn’t have minded seeing the once-in-production David Gordon Green version of SUSPIRIA.

3) Jonathan Frid or Thayer David?

Pass.

4) Name the one horror movie you need to see that has so far eluded you.

I’ve never seen I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE…and I’m okay with that…but I guess that doesn’t really answer the question, so I’ll go with something like THE BIRDS. I’ve seen clips here and there, but I’ve somehow never actually sat down and watched the thing from beginning to end.

5) Favorite film director most closely associated with the horror genre.

My mind immediately goes to Mario Bava for how influential and haunting his films continue to be – even his goofy ones like BAY OF BLOOD – but I also have a lot of love for lesser known Italian horror maestros like Michele Soavi (even though he only made four horror films).

6) Ingrid Pitt or Barbara Steele?

Barbara Steele.

7) Favorite 50’s sci-fi/horror creature.

I've always had an affinity for giant spiders.

8) Favorite/best sequel to an established horror classic.

One of my favorites is A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: THE DREAM WARRIORS because it’s always interesting to see the talent – both behind and in front of the camera – that worked on that film, and it wasn’t half bad in making us all forget about the awful taste NIGHTMARE 2 left in our mouths. And, finally, it’s always good to see John Saxon! However, I’m tempted to put HELLRAISER 2 in here…but I don’t know if HELLRAISER is really all that established. But I’ve always liked the second HELLRAISER film more than the first one.

One of the best though is NEW NIGHTMARE for being the more clever, and less annoying, version of the ideas Craven would make so popular a couple of years later with SCREAM that it would revitalize the entire genre. But yeah, NEW NIGHTMARE did postmodern horror better than SCREAM, and it gets extra points because it did the unthinkable in making Freddy Krueger – nothing more than a pull-string quipster by that point – scary again.

9) Name a sequel in a horror series which clearly signaled that the once-vital franchise had run out of gas.

FRIDAY the 13^th: A NEW BEGINNING since they promised us they killed Jason in the fourth installment. That was really the beginning of the end of the slasher genre.

10) John Carradine or Lon Chaney Jr.?

John Carradine.

11) What was the last horror movie you saw in a theater? On DVD or Blu-ray?

In the theater: DRAG ME TO HELL (yup…it’s been awhile)

On DVD: OPERA (Argento)

12) Best foreign-language fiend/monster.

Gotta go with Max Schreck/Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula

13) Favorite Mario Bava movie.

I have such a soft spot for BAY OF BLOOD…I know it’s not his best film, but it’s my favorite.

14) Favorite horror actor and actress.

Oh man…a tie: John Saxon and Donald Pleasance

15) Name a great horror director’s least effective movie.

Hmmm. SWAMP THING comes to mind (Wes Craven), but I guess it’s debatable that Craven is a “great” horror director. I’ll say John Carpenter’s VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED remake.

16) Grayson Hall or Joan Bennett?

Pass.

17) When did you realize that you were a fan of the horror genre? And if you’re not, when did you realize you weren’t?

Like most fans, I’m sure I got into the genre because of how taboo and off-limits the movies were for kids. Naturally, that’s going to pique the interest of someone who is 10 or 11. I remember just roving the aisles of my local video stores and being fascinated with the cover boxes. Poster art and cover boxes is where it started for me. I remember most vividly those oversized cover boxes (the Fox and MGM ones were the best of the mainstream companies) for the low-budget horror movies produced by companies like: Media Home Entertainment, Key Video, Embassy, AIP, Video Treasures, Vidmark, USA Home Video, VidAmerica, Paragon, Interglobal, and Vestron.

Once I was able to actually take those videos home with me, I was hooked even more as a horror fan…to the point where it became my favorite genre.

18) Favorite Bert I. Gordon (B.I.G.) movie.

Without Mystery Science Theater 3000 commentary: FOOD OF THE GODS

With Mystery Science Theater 3000 commentary: THE MAGIC SWORD

19) Name an obscure horror favorite that you wish more people knew about.

I have to go to Italy again: STAGEFRIGHT (Michele Soavi). It’s the perfect blend of the American slasher and gonzo Italian horror. I mean, there’s a dude in an owl mask hacking people up with an ax…what’s not intriguing about that! On top of that, it’s a great example of how effective the slasher prototype can be even during a time (1987) when not only the slasher genre but also the Italian horror subgenre was absolutely, without question dead (Italian genre filmmakers were rapidly moving towards TV as they saw their horror budgets shrinking in the late ‘80s). Soavi was the last man to make great Italian horror movies…I also highly recommend THE CHURCH, Soavi’s follow-up.

20) The Human Centipede-- yes or no?

It’s like 51/49 yes. It just depends when you ask me, I suppose. I can definitely see why some reputable people recommended the film to me…but I didn’t see it for anything more than it really was: a botched attempt at dark humor and extreme horror. Still, as odd as it sounds, the movie is not without its, er, charms.

21) And while we’re in the neighborhood, is there a horror film you can think of that you felt “went too far”?

No. I’m really not offended by anything, so I don’t think it’s possible for a horror film to go “too far” in the sense you’re meaning. I’ve seen plenty of films that think they are going “that far,” and it pisses me off because the filmmakers of those movies ruin a perfectly good premise by trying to be ‘extreme.’ THE STRANGERS is a perfect example of this: an efficient and effective horror film ruined by its need for a nihilistic ending. That’s obviously a lot tamer than THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE…so I would say that the some of Fulci’s later work like THE NEW YORK RIPPER almost goes too far because it’s all just Fulci being a misogynist prick, and so it’s quite awful watching those women being murdered in that movie.

22) Name a film that is technically outside the horror genre that you might still feel comfortable describing as a horror film.

BLUE VELVET is one I always think of when this question comes up.

23) Lara Parker or Kathryn Leigh Scott?

Pass.

24) If you’re a horror fan, at some point in your past your dad, grandmother, teacher or some other disgusted figure of authority probably wagged her/his finger at you and said, “Why do you insist on reading/watching all this morbid monster/horror junk?” How did you reply? And if that reply fell short somehow, how would you have liked to have replied?

I was lucky to never have this happen.

25) Name the critic or Web site you most enjoy reading on the subject of the horror genre.

Tim Brayton of Antagony & Ecstasy…his annual Summer of Blood series (especially when he covered the Video Nasties) is the one thing I look forward to every summer in the blogosphere. I always appreciate his commentary on horror films because he’s willing to give everything its due within the context of horror. I had never really read a defense of SLEEPAWAY CAMP until Tim covered it a couple of years ago. His writing on horror is always thorough, brilliant, clever, and filled with humor.

26) Most frightening image you’ve ever taken away from a horror movie.

The safety/security one is supposed to feel in the shower being disrupted by the emerging shape of Norman Bates…I’d also go with the image of The Shape lurking behind the hedge in the middle of the day (there’s something more unsettling about those things occurring in daylight) or, to borrow another image from HALLOWEEN, the shot at the end where The Shape sits up in the background while Jamie Lee Curtis’ babysitter sits in the foreground relieved and unaware that she hasn’t, in fact, killed Michael Myers.

27) Your favorite memory associated with watching a horror movie.

Seeing my first horror movie, NEW NIGHTMARE, in the theater is up there…also, going to see THE DESCENT and thinking that horror had made a comeback; however, since I am such a huge Italian horror fan, I have to go with the first time my mind was blown by the gonzo nature of Fulci’s THE BEYOND and Argento’s SUSPIRIA.

28) What would you say is the most important/significant horror movie of the past 20 years (1992-2012)? Why?

I hate to say it because I’m not its biggest fan, but I would have to say that SCREAM is probably the one I would go with. It was responsible for the resurgence of the genre, specifically the long dormant slasher subgenre, in the mid-90s, and it rekindled the mentality amongst Hollywood producers that these movies could be made on the cheap and could be made into franchises. Because of SCREAM, we have SAW and FINAL DESTINATION and all of the remakes that litter theaters on a weekly basis. Again, I don’t like it, or what it’s done to the genre, but I can’t deny its significance in getting an entirely new generation of film-goers acquainted with the horror genre (which, at that point, had been relegated to late night premium cable and straight-to-video). I’m not so sure that if SCREAM had bombed at the theater, producers would have been so keen on remaking all of the slasher films of the 70s and 80s (and the foreign horror films of the 90s and early 2000s).

29) Favorite Dr. Phibes curse (from either film).

Pass.

30) You are programming an all-night Halloween horror-thon for your favorite old movie palace. What five movies make up your schedule?

Since zombies are all the rage these days, I would go with a zombie theme for people who think that Romero is the only person to have created zombies. My choices would reflect a mix of both trashy exploitation and legitimately scary. underappreciated American and European zombie films.

THE LIVING DEAD AT MANCHESTER MORGUE; TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD; DEAD AND BURIED; BURIAL GROUND; NIGHTMARE CITY.

The Color of Money

2011-10-17T10:54:00.000-07:00

Head on over to Edward Copeland on Film to check out my latest on the 25th anniversary of The Color of Money:

The Color of Money is entertaining when it’s being a road picture instead of a derivative drama about the old versus the new; it’s at its best when we see it for what it really is: a story about a man’s soul being fed. Selling whiskey — “You’re sittin’ in it, and I’m wearing it” — has been very good to Eddie, but as he explains later in the film, “it’s tired.” Vincent awakens within him a chance to atone for 20 years of dormancy in the pool scene; a scene — a vocation, really — that truly defines Eddie and that gives him the most pleasure.

Read the rest of the post with comments here.

The Italian Horror Blog-a-thon Returns!

2011-09-30T23:27:00.000-07:00

When: October 26-31
Where: Here!
What to write about: Anything from Giallo to Zombies to bad knock-offs of more popular movies to really bad Exploitation flicks...as long as it's horror and from Italy, it meets the criteria for this blog-a-thon.

More details and banners after the break...

Hello all,

Well, it's that time of the year again where all movie-themed blogs get a little spookier and turn their critical eyes towards the scarier side of film. I'm extending another invitation to all of you to once again participate in the Italian Horror Blog-a-thon here at Hugo Stiglitz Makes Movies. There's still so much to cover, and I was thrilled with turnout last year. Oh, not because it brought hits to the blog, but because it allowed me to introduce myself to some wonderful, inspired new blogs and to meet some new people. I hope to see some of you return with more outstanding entries this year.

If you're wondering what you can write about, and don't want to duplicate something from last year (or if you want some viewing suggestions), you can click here.

So, if you're interested here's some suggestions:

- Please link to this on your site and post the banners below. The banners aren't much, but dammit I tried!
- Please post any links to articles in the designated links post (this will appear the first day of the blog-a-thon)
- Finally, it wouldn't be a bad idea to post your interest in the comments section of this post and to include what movie you might want to cover. Not that people can't write about the same movie (please do!), but it may lead someone to seeking something more obscure.

I'll be posting another reminder on the blog in a few weeks, so start thinking about what you want to cover.

Let's have fun with this, and I hope to hear from you all soon!

P.S. This is also the not-so-annual 2nd Italian Horror Blog-a-thon...I made these banners last year when I had good intentions of doing this before school and real life derailed those plans; so yes, some of the banners say "2nd" annual, and I realize it's a bit of cheat.

Greetings

2011-09-17T11:18:00.000-07:00

A quick note and apology:

If you're one of the few that read this blog, I apologize for the lack of content lately. Real life has intervened, and, well, right now it makes more sense to pay attention to the things that pay the bills. I promise things will pick up around here someday. For now, I have two pieces I'm writing for Edward Copeland (I'll link to them when they go up), there's still the music club (link is always on the right sidebar), and then there's Halloween. I do have something planned for Halloween, so be on the lookout for that announcement in the next couple of weeks. Again, sorry for the lack of content. Hopefully I have something to say soon and the time to say it...we'll see. See ya around.

Summer of Slash: The Final Terror

2011-08-30T10:34:00.000-07:00

The Final Terror is yet another backwoods horror tale about a group of young college students who embark on a hiking trip only to be stalked by those pesky killers in the woods. However, what makes The Final Terror a great curiosity is the talent that worked on it. Like the ‘80s slasher, The Burning, Final Terror is really only sought out by horror fans because of the people involved in making the film and path their careers would take afterwards. The film was directed by Andrew Davis (The Fugitive) and stars Daryl Hannah, Joe Pantoliano, and Adrian Zmed (!) in what basically amounts to just another run-of-the-mill backwoods slasher that’s trying to be Deliverance and Just Before Dawn. The performances are indeed good, and the direction by Davis is good enough (there are some sequences that hinted at his future skill for directing action scenes) with some memorable scenes near the end, but I had to obtain a copy of the movie from an old VHS that looked like it was a copy from a copy. The picture and sound were terrible, and I think that, even though it’s part of the charm of being a horror fan, the quality of the copy I had really made it hard for me to invest (if there was even anything to invest in) in the movie. The Final Terror doesn't produce any memorable kills or scares; it's just kind of there -- a perfect example of how so many filmmakers cut their teeth with the horror film. This film is nothing special and it's really nothing more than a curiosity of the subgenre for the most diehard fans.

Summer of Slash: Frightmare

2011-08-25T11:16:00.000-07:00

This nihilistic British slasher had its day in its homeland as one of the most notorious horror films of the ‘70s. Pete Walker’s Frightmare is pretty boring throughout (I’m just not a huge fan of the British horror film), though, with the occasional creepy set-piece (especially the farmhouse) and funny gore moment that offset the rather banal narrative. Call it a push, I suppose; however, if there was one reason to push you over the the uncertainty it is the gonzo performance by Sheila Keith as a rabid, flesh-eating granny. Firghtmare is an interesting entry for its history as a “Nasty,” but it ultimately fails to engage the viewer until its final moments which are laced with nihilism that is definitely a jolt to the viewer. Hindsight obviously makes one wonder what all the fuss in Britain was about (Walker even claims on the DVD commentary that he wasn’t really going for any kind of culture message film) in regards to the gore and the film’s “indecency”; however, there are enough good moments if you can get through the creaky narrative and the typical, 1970s British aesthetic that make Frightmare an interesting entry into the subgenre.

Summer of Slash: Hitcher in the Dark

2011-08-23T10:49:00.000-07:00

Wow,what a movie! Umberto Lenzi directing under his “Oh boy are these American movies I’m making terrible” pseudonym (Humphrey Humbert) that he used for other “stellar” horror films such as Welcome to Spring Break returns with this 80 minute Ray-Bans and Winnebago commercial. Yes, this entire film consist of a creepo in a Winnebago who may or may not pick up hitchhikers on a regular basis (we only see him pick up one, the rest of the film he simply stalks a girl and kidnaps her) and kills them. Basic slasher premise, right? In the words of John Matrix, “WRONG!” Nothing happens in this movie. Nothing. The guy drives around wearing his Ray-Bans, kidnaps a girl and cuts her hair so that she looks like his former girlfriend (Lenzi trying to make his Vertigo, no doubt), while the girl's doofus boyfriend drives around in his Suzuki jeep looking for her…you know what, the whole film can be summed up by this compilation. Enjoy (WARNING: this is definitely NSFW).

God bless you, Lenzi!

Summer of Slash: Hell Night

2011-08-11T10:56:00.000-07:00

A really fun (a theme this summer with the slasher films I’ve chosen) slasher about a group of college rushes who must endure what is known as “hell night.” What they don’t realize is that the abandoned Garth Manor where they must spend the night (on the very night its former tenant murdered his family 12 years ago, naturally) is still inhabited by someone. A mix between wacky Halloween goings-on (think Terror Train and April Fool’s Day) and good, cheesy pizza and beer fun (think any of the slashers I’ve covered so far this summer) and you get a good idea of what Hell Night is. There isn’t anything necessarily tense or scary about the film, but it’s earnestly made (seriously, there isn’t a hint of sarcasm here…something I really appreciate about these early ‘80s slasher films) and contains a good amount of cheese to keep you and your friends entertained. Plus, there’s Vince Van Patten walking around with his shirt off in ridiculous boxer shorts for most of the movie; he’s predictably slimy and you just can’t wait for him to get it. The film uses silence well as a set-up for all of the false scares before the real scares happen, and it uses its setting extremely well (it even looks nice considering its small budget), reminding me of Canadian slashers in that regard.

There isn’t a lot of gore (the film’s producers were already aware of the growing impatience from the MPAA in regards to violence in horror films), but I don’t think director Tom DeSimone really wanted to make that kind of a horror film; he takes more pleasure in his creepy setting and the pacing (the end is pretty well done despite its obvious cribbing from Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but hey, what horror movie hasn't shamelessly cribbed from those two seminal films?). DeSimone does a decent job letting things unfold as the wacky moments are well spaced-out between what are supposed to be the genuinely scary moments (I like that he doesn’t try to confuse the two and just keeps it simple); it’s just the right amount of craft and cheese as it has that early ‘80s horror aesthetic that I found appealing about The Boogeyman. It also kind of reminded me of another of my favorite gems from last year's project, Tourist Trap -- another early entry into the genre that didn't quite know what it wanted to be, but had really great, creepy moments interspersed between some really wacky ones. As long as you don’t take yourself too seriously (or the genre too seriously), Hell Night is definitely a fun entry into the genre that I highly recommend for slasher aficionados.

Summer of Slash: The Boogeyman (1980)

2011-08-05T13:26:00.000-07:00

“They say that when you break a mirror, you unleash everything it’s seen.” That is your premise for this wacky, supernatural horror film that is more indebted to the slasher film than you would think (hence it appearing in this summer series). If you can get past the bizarre, somewhat grotesque opening (an opening that definitely earned its Video Nasty label, and something I don’t really want to type out), The Boogey Man settles into a pretty fun, goofy horror movie. The film has the charm of an early ‘80s horror movie that is so shamelessly ripping off more successful horror movies (I can count at least six different movies The Boogey Man is trying to be), and it if it weren’t for the horribly misplaced tone of the film’s opening, then The Boogey Man would be somewhat of a under-seen classic of the genre.

One of my favorite things about this odd entry into the genre is how out of nowhere, and with about 20 minutes to go before the film is over, the film takes the oddest of detours. And it is here that The Boogey Man really does become more than just a supernatural horror film and becomes more of a hybrid supernatural slasher. The scene in question predates Friday the 13^th and wears its Bay of Blood influence on its sleeve as four college students party on the beach (complete with fake hot dog cooking…I don’t know why that caught my eye, but the way this actress poked and prodded that hot dog as if we were to believe that’s how she cooks it…well, that was some of the lamest acting I’ve seen in a slasher movie) and are inexplicably slaughtered for their “troubles.”

The scene is complete with lame slasher clichés (before they became clichés!) like guys trying their hardest to get it on with their girlfriend in an abandoned something or other (located near the beach, naturally, since these types of slaying always seem to occur near water) before she puts the kibosh on his attempts by giving him the old, “Let’s get out of here…this place gives me the creeps” excuse. It’s odd that a film that spent so much time trying to set up its plot and trying to come off as a legitimate supernatural horror flick turns into a full-fledged slasher film halfway through.

The Boogeyman is schizophrenic; it’s trying to be a million different kinds of horror films (The Exorcist, Halloween, Black Christmas, Patrick, The Amityville Horror, Bay of Blood, and Carrie), yet I kind of loved it. For a horror film made in 1980, this movie sort of earns its reputation as a Video Nasty; it’s a gonzo horror film that still has that drive-in aesthetic that seemed to go by the wayside once studios started to figure out there was money to made by producing movies like this. I don’t know what the film was about, I didn’t know who the characters really were or what their motivation was, and I certainly didn’t understand half the time what the hell was going on. But, man, The Boogey Man is kind of charming in that regard. It’s a helluva a horror movie with energy and wackiness to spare, and considering the recent state of American horror films, The Boogey Man is a pleasant reminder of when the genre didn’t take itself so damn seriously. Except that opening…you have to just forget about that opening.

Summer of Slash: He Knows You're Alone

2011-07-27T10:42:00.000-07:00

Released in 1980, He Knows You’re Alone is one of the very first slashers to be released by a major studio (MGM) in response to the success of John Carpenter’s Halloween. That’s about the only similarity it shares with that seminal horror film. It’s not that He Knows You’re Alone is a bad movie – it’s actually got some decent acting, and, for those interested, the tone and pacing of a giallio – it’s just that the film is on a whole pretty damn uninvolving as a thriller. There’s some good framing of the death scenes here. I mean, credit where credit is due: the murder scene where one of the girl’s is listening to music is so well paced and shot that it made me really want to like this movie…as did the subsequent shot of her head in a fish tank. There’s also a nice scene where Amy – our final girl who is being stalked by a killer who is murdering brides on their wedding night – is on an amusement park ride (The Scrambler!) that is pretty well done, too, but it’s cut too short before any tension can really build (and the subsequent haunted house scene is just too cheesy). And therein lays the biggest problem with He Knows You’re Alone: It feels like a TV movie at times. And that’s no surprise considering director Armand Mastroianni worked primarily in television working on shows like “Dark Shadows” and “Nightmare Café.”

But, like I said, there are things to like here. I like how they had no qualms about showing who the killer is in the first scene of the movie (and that’s what makes this film a slsher more than anything, the fact that there is no mystery who the killer is). There’s some good acting (it was a lot of fun watching a young Tom Hanks, not to mention James Rebhorn and Paul Gleason) going on here by its young stars Don Scardino and Caitlin O’ Heaney that definitely rises above the usual slasher film acting, and, finally, there’s a nice Goblin-y musical score to accompany the action in the film. But those elements aren’t enough to save this clunky 90+ minute attempt at a slasher movie. This clunkiness comes out most in the pacing of the film’s procedural moments (the straight horror scenes are pretty good), or in the way it strains too hard to be a meta horror film like when Tom Hanks’ character, a Psych major, talks about why people pay to be scared by horror movies, or when he talks about how when people go see movies like Psycho, they don’t want to take a shower, and then a few scenes later we have a character, for no reason, take a shower with Mastroianni finding a way to get a shot of the drain in there even though it doesn’t really fit. Obviously MGM and its director wanted to ape the success of Halloween with its minimalist take on terror (light gore, good use of widescreen, and minimalist musical score); however, He Knows You’re Alone is nowhere near as tense as Carpenter’s film (and it wasn’t nearly as successful, either). But, if you take the film as more of a suspense/thriller (it reminded me of Visiting Hours in this way) than a slasher, then you’re left with what is a pretty interesting, if wholly uninvolving, look into the strange era that was the post-Halloween and pre-Friday the 13^th American horror film.

Ken Russell: Crimes of Passion

2011-07-23T10:24:00.000-07:00

Yes, I’m still doing this. Real life things like buying a home, finishing my masters degree, and getting a full-time job have derailed the momentum I had during the winter, but I am determined to finish this retrospective in the next couple of weeks. Enjoy.

One of the traits I’ve really come to admire about Ken Russell throughout this retrospective is that the man – who follows his own trajectory, studios be damned – seems like he wants to just make a movie, be done with it, and then move on to the next project. I don’t mean to suggest that Russell doesn’t have a personal investment in any of his films (although, some are obviously more personal than others), but I actually liken him to one of my favorite bands. Follow me here for a moment: the band I’m speaking of is called Portugal. The Man. They have a general philosophy about music and it goes something like this: the members of this Portland, OR band feel that time spent in the studio tinkering with an album can lead to stagnation – it can lead to a process where they, as musicians, begin to over-think things to the point where they don’t release anything at all. They embrace the idea that music is not perfect, and that they will always evolve (in ability, sound, influences, etc.) as musicians. I’ve read articles where the members of the band talk about how when they tour is the time they tinker with their material (I’ve seen them many times and they don’t adhere to any set list, and their songs always sound different live). Essentially, they believe that they should always be releasing and creating because the real work comes on the road (up until this year, they had released an album a year for their first four albums), and that once their album is done…it’s done; it’s time to move onto the next thing.

Okay, what does this have to do with Ken Russell? I thought of this example during my viewing of Crimes of Passion – Russell’s second, and final, American film. Here’s a film that’s less interesting than most Russell films tend to be; the film, as a whole, doesn’t come off as anything that is singularly Russell or important; it’s just a movie. This is Russell just creating something and then moving on from it towards his next project. That doesn’t make certain aspects of Crimes of Passion any more uninteresting than his previous American endeavor Altered States, and it also doesn’t mean that the film isn’t made with any less effort than his more “personal” films like Savage Messiah or Mahler (just like I can’t claim that one Portugal. The Man album is any less “personal” than the other just because they release one a year). Crimes of Passion seems like just another film for Russell; it reeks of a filmmaker just going through the motions. But that’s not to say that the film isn’t without the trademark Russell moments: ridiculous and insane visual charms that only a filmmaker like Russell can conjure up.

Russell doesn’t strike me as a filmmaker who over-thinks things – sure he’s a bit rowdy on set, and his films are almost always some kind of experimental mind-trip – but I don’t think Russell’s over-thinking things with his post-Tommy films: Valentino seems like just a movie, Altered States seems like just a movie (Russell cut out a lot of the “thinking” parts of Chayefsky’s script), and Crimes of Passion seems like just a movie. What I mean is that they don’t seem to be the Russell of the early ‘70s who’s really trying to say something profound about his society or tackling some big issue like organized religion. This is evidenced by the DVD commentary where throughout Russell can be heard stating that (paraphrase): “I don’t know what that is, or why it is there…but obviously there was a good reason for putting that in there!” This is heard on more than one occasion during the commentary, and even though the film is filled with bizarre imagery, music video montages, and all of the typical Russell-isms, Crimes of Passion feels like just a movie – a movie at time that I kind of liked in a guilty-pleasure kind of way in spite of its silliness (but what Russell film isn’t somewhat silly) – another sign post in Russell’s oeuvre showing a filmmaker who was willing to make anything and everything, and that maybe we can’t read too much into his later films; maybe the man just wanted to create.

Even with the title of “guilty pleasure,” one cannot overlook how painfully stupid the film’s plot is, and in order for me to kinda, sorta praise this movie (what the hell is wrong with me), I have to not even think about the plot or the wasted talents of its two stars. The plot, as is the case with most of Russell’s films, is secondary and kind of beside the point, but we’ll give it a quick go: Kathleen Turner plays China Blue, a prostitute with a heart of gold (of course) who is actually an intellectual business woman by day (of course) and parades around as a call girl at night just because she wants to feel some urgency in her life (of course). One night, China runs into a crazed sidewalk preacher played by Anthony Perkins (of course) who seeks to change her wicked ways (of course). And that’s just part of the plot…there’s another thread to the film’s plot that involves the film’s “normal” relationship between the Gray’s (played by John Laughlin and Annie Potts) who are having marital problems (they don’t even eat in the same room together and often converse from their separate rooms) that is stemming from their sexual problems (of course) which of course the icy wife (of course) doesn’t recognize as a problem. So, the husband has to seek excitement in the seedy Red Light district of Los Angeles (of course) where he runs into China Blue and falls in love with her (of course) thinking that he can change her lifestyle because they are destined to be with each other (of course) due to the one night they spent together and the magic he felt between the two as they had dirty, Red Light District sex…a natural place to find true love, of course.

Okay, the plot is pretty much boring and typical of these kinds of adult-themed films about sex and relationships. The acting, outside of the hammy performance from Perkins and Turner – bless her heart – trying to make something out of this asinine role, is universally stilted and awful. Laughlin is so wooden and unlikeable I didn’t care what happened to his character throughout the film. And I’m guessing that Russell didn’t really care, either.

Crimes of Passion was the last American film Russell made, and it like he did with Altered States, it seems that Russell is just trying to get the hell out of here and back to the comforts of home. As the opening credits roll, Russell tries to offend the viewer immediately before we even see any of the actors. Don’t expect the frank sexual dialogue to mean that Crimes of Passion is some kind of ironic expose on sexual mores a la Eyes Wide Shut (interestingly enough, Russell’s film ends as Laughlin turns to the camera and delivers with a smirk a line very similar in tone to the one Kubrick used at the end of his film); no, Crimes of Passion is just another in a long line of batshit crazy films from Russell where he uses the thinnest of plots to act as the foundation for his bombastic imagery and insane visual flare. And like all of Russell’s films, Crimes of Passion is incredibly in(s)ane, yet it’s never boring and always interesting to look at.

There are few standout moments (read: images) that are great examples of Russell’s élan – the kind of stuff that I’ve been talking about nonstop with this retrospective. I loved the insane music video (inspired, no doubt, by the film’s composer and former Yes band member, Rick Wakeman) with its typical Russell energy and hit-you-over-the-head metaphors for marriage as prison (especially since it’s being watched by the always-arguing Gray’s). I also love the way the Red Light district is lit throughout the film. Russell is obviously having a great time painting his film in bright neon colors (utilizing the signs from the set/location), especially in the great shot of Perkins’ preacher standing underneath a neon halo. And what would a Russell film be without some ridiculous, laugh-out-loud moment, and Crimes of Passion has one of his most eye-rolling, awesomely ridiculous moments. No, I’m talking about the fact that Perkins’ street preacher threatens China with his a weapon of choice: a silver vibrator. Or, the scene where he imagines himself killing a woman with said vibrator, but in reality he’s just vibrating the hell out of a blow-up doll. No, I’m talking about the scene where Laughlin attaches two basketballs to his ankles, dons a shower cap, and re-enacts for friends an ejaculating penis (complete with milk spraying out of his mouth). It’s one of those moments that reminded me of the awful Lisztomania that seemed more at home on an episode of Benny Hill. These are just a few moments and images that never let you forget that you’re watching a Ken Russell film.

Judged out of the context of this retrospective, I would have panned Crimes of Passion; however, having the context of Russell’s previous films has helped me not be totally frustrated by the ridiculous nature of the film and to be able to, in a way, succumb to its weird, outré charms. The minute China Blue is introduced with a big smile on her face while being given oral pleasure (Kathleen Turner prayed, at the time of the film’s release, that this movie wouldn’t sink her newfound success that stemmed from Romancing the Stone) all I could do was shake my head and laugh and say, “Oh, Ken, you cheeky bastard.” It’s one of the craziest ways I’ve seen a character introduced in a film, and I find myself saying that a lot with his films. No matter how bad or frustrating Russell’s narratives may be, his arresting visuals always have my attention.

After the film’s failure, Russell went back to England to make small horror films that would act as a pleasant change of pace for the filmmaker.

A random assortment of screen-grabs:

Summer of Slash: Cheerleader Camp

2011-07-17T10:00:00.000-07:00

Like a bad amalgamation of drive-in comedies of the ‘80s (think G.O.R.P., King Frat, et al) and bad slasher movies (with the word camp in the title it’s pretty obvious which slasher movie this one is cribbing from), Cheerleader Camp is for the diehard slasher fan only. Most of the film is played as a wacky comedy with lots of gratuitous nudity while the horror parts aren’t worth talking about. Basically a crazed cheerleader who is somewhat of an outsider is knocking off cheerleaders at the annual camp for said cheerleaders. It’s all your basic, generic hack-and-slash set in the woods. Who is responsible for the murders? Could it be the big fat guy (who likes to eat bananas, you see, because he's a big ape...brilliant!) who's stuck in the wrong type of ‘80s movie? Could it be the misunderstood cheerleader whose dreams are convincing her that she’s the killer? Could it be the creepy town sheriff who likes to ogle the young ladies? Or, how about the crusty old camp groundskeeper, who, of course, in one scene watches the girls cheer while he's hosing something down and then the water sprays up into his face (never not funny)? Is it Leif Garrett?!? Does it really matter? No, it doesn’t, but like a lot of these types of so-bad-they're-good horror movies, it’s short and harmless; and hey, it has Leif Garrett in it, to boot! It’s also a lot of cheesy fun if you’re with a group of friends. Generic characters; gratuitous shots of boobs; bad cheers by Garrett and his big fat friend (pictured above), horrible gore effects, and everything else you’d expect in a late-era slasher movie. It’s everything that makes hating slashers so easy, and it’s everything I love about ‘em. Hang out with some friends and rip this movie apart; or, go spend your time doing something valuable and go see The Tree of Life…or do both…it’s not impossible to enjoy both extremes of the high-low spectrum.

Some Quick Thoughts on Justified, Season 2

2011-07-15T10:36:00.000-07:00

Note: these are just my quick thoughts on the second season; this is not a recap of the season. So, I will be referring to characters without really going in-depth on who they are in the context of the series. In other words, this is full of spoilers and should only be read by those that have finished the second season.

Graham Yost and company have found their own voice and rhythm in the second season of Justified, and they’ve really found the correct tone and setting for the show, too. Based on a short story by Elmore Leonard (“Fire in the Hole), the first season felt like Yost and the writers doing their best Leonard karaoke routines. Only a few episodes from the first half of season one really felt fresh and energetic (I really liked the one with Alan Ruck as the dentist), and those were the ones that were more stand-alone, Leonard-esque episodes. But something started to happen with the last four episodes of season one: the show started to find its own voice, and the writers started to realize what they wanted to do with their two great characters, Boyd Crowder and Raylan Givens. Some quick thoughts after the jump…

The second season really shows how talented Olyphant can be. Sure, he was great in Deadwood for what David Milch wanted out of him – speaking dialogue through gritted teeth; pulling people by the ear; looking sexy in a cowboy hat – but Justified and its writers have really found something for Olyphant in Raylan Givens that allows the actor to show off his acting chops (while still wearing a cowboy hat, no less). It’s no wonder, too, considering that Olyphant became a producer for the second season. This is obviously a labor of love for him, and I’m glad FX is giving them a third season to further evolve this great character.

About the evolution of Raylan: season two was some of the best television I can remember watching in a long, long time. A big reason for that was the way Yost and his writers slowly had Raylan realize that he is a Givens (warts and all) and that the things he does – whether justified or not – don’t really make him that much more different than the people he’s trying to arrest. There’s a great moment in the penultimate episode of the second season where Raylan is about to avenge the death of his aunt (the only family member that he liked) by executing small-time drug dealer Dickie Bennett (Jeremy Davies in a great role). Before Raylan is about to pull the trigger, Dickie pleads with him stating, “You don’t have to do this!” And Raylan just says, in that cold and detached Olyphant way of delivering a line, “Of course I do. This is who we are, Dickie.” And just when we think we know what's going to happen (that is, Raylan being Raylan), a Raylan turns away from Dickie and thinks long and hard about something. It's a great, quiet moment (pictured at the top of this post) that is played absolutely perfectly by Olyphant. Finally, Raylan acquiesces to his better nature (or Dickie's pleas) and let his go. It's a step in the right direction for the Raylan that's trying to reform, get out of Harlan County, and make a life of sorts with Winona.

And that’s what has been most interesting about the second season: the realization that no matter how hard Raylan tries to be different – whether it’s in adhering to Art’s (Nick Searcy, who is just outstanding and really coming into his own this season) rules of the Marshall’s office or rekindling the flame with his ex-wife – he’s still the same shoot-first lawman that is being forced to be a Marshall (a distinction that is made by Art this season and is brilliantly handled in the last handful of episodes when Raylan debates whether or not to leave Harlan County).

The parallel storyline here is the evolution of Boyd Crowder. He, like Raylan, is trying his best to be a different person. One of the highlights of this season was the slow burn the writers used on the fleshing out of the new Boyd. You never quite had a handle on his intentions, even when he was playing vigilante in the coal mine; however, those final few episodes show Boyd losing the war against his nature, just like Raylan is. Boyd may be more entrepreneurial in his drug endeavors compared to the first season (he does seem different, though, especially in the way that he actually cares about Ava and exacting justice for her having been shot), but he’s still the Boyd that must exist in the criminal realm. Just like Raylan learns to exist with his drug-dealing dad, Arlo (played by the always great Raymond J. Barry), now, if he decides to stay in Kentucky, he must learn to co-exist with Boyd who is Arlo’s partner. The Boyd/Raylan dynamic was one of the most interesting things about this season.

I never watched The Shield, so I was unaware of Walton Goggins and how amazing of an actor he is. The way he and the writers fleshed out Boyd’s character in this second season was some brilliant television writing. I know things like The Emmy’s aren’t a measure of what truly is “the best,” but if Goggins doesn’t win for his portrayal of Boyd Crowder, the voters should have their privileges revoked.

Margo Martindale as matriarch of the Bennett clan, Mags shouldn’t be forgotten, either. She was more than up to the task in the episodes she appeared in playing both icy drug queen and down-home, -aw-shucks mama. Martindale and the writers could have easily turned Mags into a caricature (especially considering the way Paul Haggis and Clint Eastwood cast her as the horrible stereotype white trash in Million Dollar Baby), but she adds depth to the role that makes the viewer forget, for a moment, that the writers seemed to have been cribbing her story thread from Winter’s Bone. Thankfully, Martindale and the writers and the other actors don’t fall into the trap of stereotype and caricature (one of the best things about the writing on this show is that it avoids those pitfalls) and it allows for things like Martindale’s final scene (which, in a nice bit of writing, comes full circle from one of the first episodes of the season) in the last episode to contain a real powerful, poignant punch. Just another great piece of acting that I hope doesn’t go unrecognized.

Justified has been picked up for a third season, and it seems that the natural segue into next season is Raylan finding Loretta and dealing with her while also having to worry about how he’s going to – against his will, naturally – protect Dickie from Boyd. I’m really glad they didn’t kill-off Dickie because Davies has been one (in a long line) of the best things about the show. Davies’ tics (which he really employed in Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris) are what make Dickie such a great, Leonard-esque character. Here’s someone who we hate at times and feel like deserves the Raylan Givens form of justice, but when those times come, like in the aforementioned scene of the penultimate episode, we can’t help but feel sorry for how pathetic Dickie is. His character isn’t as cut and dry as “poor white trash drug dealer,” evidenced by the way Mags and favored his brother Doyle. But now that Mags and Doyle are both dead, it’ll be interesting to see if Dickie, somehow, slips by Raylan and Boyd and starts his business up again (and takes over where mom left off), or if he’ll just be in a few episodes before Boyd kills him and Raylan and Boyd play another game of cat and mouse.

Underneath the primary Raylan/Boyd conflict, there are a few other things left unresolved: Is Ava dead? What happens with Arlo? Is Raylan really leaving with Winona? Should Winona even stick around? How is Art going to continue to deal with Raylan if he does stay? And can we please get more of two of my favorite supporting characters, Tim (Jacob Pitts) and Rachel (Erica Tazel) in some stand-alone episodes (and speaking of stand-alone episodes, I think we need a few more of the episodes like the one with Stephen Root as the eccentric Judge of Harlan County)?

This season of Justified really rivaled Boardwalk Empire as my favorite show on TV this year. What did everyone else think of the second season?

Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 8: “The Divorce”

2011-07-12T06:00:00.000-07:00

Expect things to be spoiled after the jump

When we left Cheryl and Larry in season 7 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the former Mrs. David had a certain look on her face that screamed, “How did I get myself back into this mess.” Rest assured, though, there is no happiness for Larry (of course he bungles up the attempt to re-ignite the flame between him and Cheryl), and the beginning of season 8 lets the viewer know from the onset by naming the episode “The Divorce.” Now, what David as a writer is so good at is getting the audience to think the episode is about one thing, but in actuality showing us that it’s something completely different by episodes end. I was expecting Larry and Cheryl to finally end things, but I was laughing uproariously at the second divorce we witness in this episode.

When Marty Funkhouser and his wife are eating brunch with Larry and Jeff and Susie, Larry gives some advice that ruins Marty’s plans for a solo business trip (“I just like to spread my wings and fly!”) to London. What follows is an episode that is as worthy as previous Curb premiers. The divorce I was thinking was going to happen (Jeff and Susie) is nixed within the opening moments of the show when Jeff gives an ill-advised hypothetical about he and Susie getting a divorce. Susie lets him know that it will never happen in a way that only Susie Essman can (and that we’ve come to expect from her). So, at least for now Susie and Jeff are intact (surprising considering all of the ways Jeff has so oafishly had affairs), and thank goodness. I was concerned that the series would split them up and take away, in the process, one of the show’s funniest dynamics.

The tampon scene is what will be most talked about (and remembered) when people talk about “The Divorce.” It’s something that David writes better than anyone else, and it’s also something that he usually pays off brilliantly in that Larry David, circular plot kind of way. However, the payoff feels a little flat (especially with the girl scouts) when compared to the other ways David the curmudgeon has gotten his comeuppance. But those are small nits to pick after seven seasons; there are so many moments that work so well in that unique Curb way, that I didn’t mind the payoff being less than stellar (especially since the set-up with Jewish/non-Jewish lawyer stuff was so good).

As for the rest of the show, there were plenty of highlights:

Larry's observations about the size of his lawyers desk was one of those great moments where he has no idea how inappropriate he is (and after watching the episode from season seven again, where Marty springs the dirtiest of jokes on Jerry at the table read, I realized why he and Marty are such good friends) and just blurts out whatever is on his mind. His lawyer’s reaction – “we’ll call it a happy accident” – was brilliant.

Larry’s comment about him and Cheryl having sex one last time was a great moment where Larry, at least for a second, seemed to care about getting something out of the divorce.

Funkhouser calling himself “The Funk” had me laughing so hard that I had to rewatch the scene a few times. I know JB Smoove is the easy choice for favorite supporting character, but as I re-watched previous seasons in anticipation of last night’s premier, I realized that Marty Funkhouser is hands down my favorite character on the show. I love every stilted line of delivery by Bob Einstein

There’s something about the image of Leon and Jeff playing pool that makes me smile. I think a lot of it had to do with the smash cut into Larry’s house and seeing those two side-by-side playing pool. I would love to see an episode where Leon and Jeff have a misadventure.

The subsequent moment where Leon makes sense of Marty’s divorce is, again, another reason why you can see that Larry likes Leon so much – they both have no filter. Anyway, the line, “Run that ass into the ground,” is just brilliantly delivered by Smoove.

Leon’s suggestion about a “Just Divorced” sign, with cans and everything, on Funkhouser’s car to celebrate his divorce was great.

As was Jeff’s sad panda reaction to everyone’s happy divorce news.

Leon explaining how difficult it is to have sex with two women on a twin bed.

I’ll be interested to see what they do with Cheryl. I really like the idea of the show exploring the Cheryl/Larry dichotomy while the two are now officially divorced (kind of like when their friends took sides when Cheryl left Larry), but I don’t want to see her abandoned now that the divorce is official. She’s too charming to be left behind – her character keeps the show grounded in a kind of reality, and it’s her interaction with David and his friends (and vice versa…remember Krazy Eyes Killa!) that is one of the best things about Curb. As much as I love Larry and his cavalcade of narcissistic dummies, Cheryl (and Susie, for that matter) adds a different comedic layer to the show.

That’s all I have for now. I’ll try to keep this up throughout the season. Anyone else watch?

Summer of Slash: Slaughter High

2011-07-10T10:17:00.000-07:00

For a slasher from 1986, Slaughter High is better than it has any right to be. And the reason may be because the film doesn’t take itself seriously at all and contains just enough slasher cheese to make the 80 minutes go by in a flash. Sure, the film’s production isn’t that great, and the actors (mostly Brits doing a Yank’s accent) are universally awful, but there are enough clichés at play here to make this one go down easier than most slashers that take themselves too seriously. What struck me most about Slaughter High was that despite the necessary later-era slasher requirements – boobs, booze, and blood – there’s actually a well constructed chase scene at the end and a pretty damn bizarre musical score that makes the film standout above its peers. It’s also kind of dark; I mean, yes there are requisite false scares and the plot is the old chestnut of the prank gone awry causing people to die ten years later at a reunion, but I was surprised by the end of the film. There are no survivors in this film, no Final Girl, and really no explanation as to why such a cheesy movie contains such a nihilistic ending. This inconsistent tone actually lends the film a bit of eeriness that it otherwise doesn’t seem too interested in establishing. It’s part April Fool’s Day and part legitimate slasher. Now, the big reveal at the end helps explain this tinge of nihilism, but I was still shocked when a movie that seemed so content on just being another light-hearted slasher affair (especially for 1986, an era in the subgenre where EVRYTHING had been done to death) ended with no female survivors, a doctor getting a syringe in the eye, and the killer staring into the camera while he peels a chunk of skin off of his face. Despite its uneven tone, Slaughter High is still a pretty good slasher that didn’t piss me off with its cop-out ending. Plus, the opening 45 minutes is definitely a great piece of cheese that makes for a wonderful pizza and beer movie.

Summer of Slash returns!

2011-07-07T16:21:00.000-07:00

Last summer I blatantly ripped off an idea from one of my favorite bloggers. Any horror fan knows that Tim Brayton's Summer of Blood series is one of the premier horror themed series in the blogoshpere, so I shamelessly ripped off (or, as I prefer, an homage) Tim's thematic idea in an attempt to tackle one of my favorite guilty-pleasure subgenres, the slasher film. If you look at the tab up at the top of the blog, you'll see my attempts at this last year. What I would like to do this year is keep it simple: slasher movies only (or, movies with slasher elements...I mixed in too many other types of horror films last year), short capsule reviews, and more obscure choices. Look for these reviews about two or three times a week. I hope you enjoy this series; it should be fun. The first two reviews -- Cheerleader Camp and Slaughter High (the latter surprisingly not terrible for a late era slasher film) -- will be up shortly.

Wonder, Hope, and Love: Further thoughts on The Tree of Life

2011-06-29T11:48:00.000-07:00

[Read my initial thoughts here]

The Tree of Life is a film that elevates the soul. It reminds me of Whitman, Thoreau’s “Walden,” Faulkner’s “The Bear,” Rick Bass’ short stories, and Fellini’s 8 ½ (especially with the obvious hattip Malick gives the great Italian filmmaker at the end); all of these are works of art that are, in some way, about nostalgia, how we remember things, and how we can try to make sense of God and the world we live in through our connection to nature. I greatly admire these works of art for more than just their literary importance, brilliance, and amazing display of aesthetic; they all affect in me in the same way: I feel I see the world I live in differently after spending time with them.

It’s hard to conventionally write about a film that laughs in the face of convention. Malick strikes me as a modern day Walt Whitman, an artist who isn’t afraid to contradict himself (Like Whitman says in his opening to “Song of Myself:” ‘Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.’) and make a film that not only contains multitudes, but it invites multiple readings and understandings. The Tree of Life contains multitudes (again, like Whitman); it’s a film that not only tackles spiritualism and the creation of the universe, but it seeks to make sense of those giant cosmic quandaries by climbing inside the fragmented memories of our protagonist Jack (played as an adult by Sean Penn). The film, for the most part, takes place in a suburb of Waco, Texas sometime during the 1950s. By juxtaposing the cosmic with the domestic, one of the main things I gleaned from The Tree of Life was that in order to understand the big stuff (and the characters, like all of Malick’s characters, whisper the big questions – “where did you go?”…How do I get back to you?” – via narration) you have to raise your recognition of the little things (think about when Thoreau studies the ants in “Walden”) that help make sense of everything. It’s incredibly optimistic, but it’s something I believe in; it’s something that I think about in order to make sense of the world I encounter on a daily basis, and it’s underlined by Malick here when Jack’s father (Brad Pitt) says, essentially, that he lost sight of what was around him…that he didn’t pay close enough attention.

So I don’t get too derivative, I’ll simply cut to the chase and quote one of my favorite passages about the film from Dana Stevens’ review:

“When Malick sees a tree, he really sees it—and by some alchemy of camerawork, language, and music I'm still trying to figure out, he offers you that experience in such a way that it feels like your own. Here's a testament to this reclusive, stubborn, visionary director's stunning achievement: His films can change the way you look at the world by showing you how another person sees it.”

That’s a beautiful way of articulating it, and I think this review will work better if we simply unpack Stevens’ comment.

“When Malick sees a tree, he really sees it…”

The ending of The New World (an up-shot of a tree) seemed a natural segue into The Tree of Life where there are a ton of up-shots of trees. And Stevens is right, Malick really does see. I love the emphasis she puts on “sees” because it is this reason that I didn’t find any of those repetitive shots of nature, of tress, and of the other things Malick seems to be saying are trying to reach God (hands, voices, architecture, mountains) derivative. I found them constantly profound (even the insane amount of shots of curtains blowing in the wind…but more on that later). And it’s not just because he’s trying to be deep or psedu philosophical, it is, like Whitman and Thoreau, because he sees it. What that emphasis that Stevens places on the word “sees” says to me is that this is genuine stuff for Malick. That genuine approach to the themes of the film is made achingly palpable. This is important to Malick, so it should be important to us. In addition to the shots of tress, there’s a good amount of spiral imagery (the up-shots of the caverns; that great shot in the church, the tree branches, and hell, even the sprinkler in the O’Neil’s yard sprays in spiral fashion) indicating that what we’re witnessing, like all of Malick’s work, isn’t going to be easy to follow or understand. Projects and inquiries this large and this ambitious rarely are linear. And so too do our memories never remember things in a linear fashion, so it makes sense that the film’s narrative is fragmented.

“…and by some alchemy of camerawork, language, and music I'm still trying to figure out, he offers you that experience in such a way that it feels like your own.”

The fragmented narrative fits nicely with Malick’s love of synec doche. There are constantly cut-up images – parts of the whole – where we see nothing but hands (a big one), the top or bottom half of a face, an arm, a leg, a foot, a baby’s foot inside an adult hand, etc. All of it, every single frame (and that’s impressive because there are a lot of shots used in this movie), representing the need for human contact. And again, it seems to be on a small scale: the interlocking of a hand, the hand on the back of a neck (sometimes in a not-so-loving way), the touch of a hand through a pane of glass. Whatever it may be it seems it is about contact, connection, community, communion with others – to be able to feel something.

This loss of feeling, this destabilization, is beautifully captured in the aesthetic, specifically Jack Fisk’s art direction. The opening scenes where the O’Brien’s react to their son’s death, and the way interior of their home is shot, reminded me a lot of Bergman. I love the measured way that Emmanuel Lubezki compartmentalizes the various O’Brien households. The seemingly simple shot of a bedroom or a guitar or the way the actors are blocked in the scene tells us everything we need to know without spelling it out for us. It’s like a great Ernest Hemingway short story. The interiors of the house that the older O’Brien parents (Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain) live in and the house the older Jack live in (both, interestingly enough, furnished with the popular 50s MOD style that is all over the World Market’s and Crate and Barrel’s of this world) are cold places. Especially when we Jack’s house: a stark interior that mirrors the path his life took. It makes more sense when we see him at work, and his narration tells us that he feels “boxed in.”

All of this is constantly being backed by some of the most beautiful music I’ve heard in any film. Malick’s use of classical music along with Alexandre Desplat (who, along with Carter Burwell, is one of the best film composers working today) underlines every scene with the appropriate amount of whatever the scene (or montage) calls for whether it be poignancy, fear, or awe. I was especially moved by the subtle piano score that accompanied the Waco montage scenes. Naturally (I mean it is a Malick movie, after all) the cinematography is beautiful, but I was most struck by was not all of the nature shots or the way they shot the creation stuff (even though that was freaking awesome, in the truest sense of the word) but the domestic scenes in Waco. After the first two montages and the creation scenes, the film settles down a bit to try and tell its story the best it can. Seeing as how we’re seeing all of this from Adult Jack’s memory, even these calmer scenes are told in no particular order and seem arbitrary at times (what the hell was that scene with the clown at the carnival?). One of the reasons the domestic scenes work so well with Jack and his brothers is because the kids are so damn good. Every bit of acting from the kids (especially Hunter McCracken, as young Jack, whose eyes say more than any voice over or dialogue could hope to) in this movie seems organic. It’s as if we are watching Malick’s home movies. Nothing seems forced or contrite, an amazing fete from these young actors; they make everything so intensely real and palpable that even though these are representations of Malick’s childhood, they’re also universally applicable should anyone choose to tap into that nostalgia.

The Father/Jack relationship reminded me of the poems “My Papas Waltz” by Theodore Roethke and “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden. In both poems, the speaker recounts memories about their father that are ambiguous. In Roethke’s poems, especially, it seems that two readings could be correct: it could be a poem about an abusive father, or it could be a poem about a father who is lovingly wrestling with his kid. Hayden’s poem is more of a recollection by the speaker about how he didn’t really like his stern father at the time, but when he thinks about it he recalls that his father was a consistent presence every Sunday morning making sure that the house was warm before they got out of bed. A small gesture that went unrecognized when he was a kid, but as the speaker thinks back on it he realizes the weight, the love, of that gesture. My point is this: there are a lot of scenes that suggest Jack’s father was not a nice guy to be around (especially the one dinner scene where he tells one of his kids to do him a favor and not talk unless he has anything important to say); however, this is Jack’s memory of it, and there are plenty of scenes that suggest his father – as stern as he was – was also a very loving father (I love that scene where he draws facial hair on them).

The final shot – the lasting image Malick wants you to have of his film – is of a bridge. This could suggest humanities constant need to have a connection to something, but as mentioned here and here, the bridge also could be Malick coming to grips with such man-made constructions; that they actually aren’t in conflict with nature – they aren’t just examples of man’s attempt to rule/control nature – but that they can also be in harmony with nature. They feel more like deterrents and hindrances for Jack coming to grips with his past rather than being those things for nature. I like both readings (and you should definitely read those linked passages). This seems to me to be just another plurality that Malick is offering the audience. Again, this is a film that contains multitudes.

I hate it when people use the word literally, but I was literally moved to tears numerous time because these scenes (and the film in general) filled me with…gratitude. I was thankful that there was an artist out there who had the balls to put something this raw and genuine out for everyone to see, and that he did it during an era where American films to be content playing it safe with recycled ideas (read: remakes and reboots).

I think this is what Stevens is saying when she talks about Malick being able to make this experience like our own; she’s right, what Malick does is downright amazing, the stuff of magicians. Tim Brayton of the wonderful Antagony & Ecstasy states it best with the conclusion to his second attempt at wrestling with the film when he said:

Here is how I know that The Tree of Life is a masterpiece: it does all of these things, and touches me so much that I can barely stand it, and there is basically not one single element in the film that speaks to me personally. I have no siblings, and cannot begin to speak to the veracity of the brotherly relationships that lend the film its most poignant and magical moments; I've didn't grow up in the kind of neighborhood where you could run around and stumble across wonderful things every which where; I have never had an acrimonious relationship with my father; I find the very idea of spotting Infinite Motherhood to be uncomfortably "othering" of women. And most crucially of all, I'm enough of a doctrinaire atheist that the questions, "Who is God? What is God thinking? How do we become closer to God?" are inherently as useful and compelling as wondering why we can't taste our own tongue. And despite all of these handicaps, the movie still feels like it's holding up a mirror: and it presents its intently specific story with such universal artistry and beauty and, yes, grace, that I cannot help but be swept up by it: twice I have seen the movie, and twice the moment that it ended felt like being violently shaken awake. I have now, twice, greeted the end of the movie with deep exhalation of feeling that reaches down into my toes, not sure if I should dance or cry from the unutterable glory of it.

Tim is right. This is how you know you’ve seen a special film: when it can get people thinking about things they normally would never care to think about. Whether it’s religion, our connection to nature, how we can marry those two ideas, how we wrestle with those ideas (“my father and mother, they wrestle in my mind always.”), or how we connect with others, the film’s aesthetic is so powerful in making those things seem so immediate to the viewer even if they have no interest in God, evolution, or how they connect with other people (but I would argue that if they didn’t have an interest or a questions about one of those things, then they’re probably not seeing that movie).

"Here's a testament to this reclusive, stubborn, visionary director's stunning achievement: His films can change the way you look at the world by showing you how another person sees it.”

Finally, I think this is the most important point: Malick is doing something transcendent with The Tree of Life…he’s opening up dialogue. This film is an invitation, not a sermon, and that’s what I love so much about it. I came away profoundly moved on a spiritual level, but I don’t expect everyone to have the same reaction – to read the motifs and other elements through the same spiritual lens – that I did or even care about the type of reading I applied to the film the same way that I care about something like that. But what I love about the film is Malick’s ability to make others, and myself, understand how someone could see it a particular way.

For example, I love the dinosaur scene because I see it as a defining moment for nature and for mankind (in the same way the apes using the tools in the opening of 2001, an obvious influence on this film, was a defining moment in the Dawn of Man section…this, in fact, could be titled The Dawn of Grace). I also love the clear nature/grace dichotomy Malick is setting up with the parents: the father (who demands to be called “father,” not “dad,”) is clearly the God of the Hebrew Bible (the giver of life [notice how he’s always watering the lawn and caring for the garden], arbitrary, needy) while the mother is clearly the representation of grace, the New Testament God (the God that would be called dad, the nurturer of life). The father has arbitrary rules (like God) while the mother is there to instill the day-to-day niceties that make existence, for her, make sense. These readings are clearly based in spirituality (I am reluctant to use the term religion because spirituality predates religion as we know it today), and I understand that not everyone is going to be as affected by this reading as I was; that’s just one of the many beautiful things about this picture.

There’s a mystery to the film that matches the mysterious nature of the large themes it tackles. And that brings me to my final point (really): the themes I’ve discussed above (and that did indeed move me so) are so broad that it suggests The Tree of Life is about something that can be pegged. It can’t. It’s too mysterious, too big, and too ambitious to have a nice, neat bow put on top of it. It’s a film that needs to be wrestled with. In fact, it reminded me of two of my favorite visual motifs from the film: things being uprooted and immersion. There’s a lot of yard maintenance in this film (again, a focus on hands and specifically hands in dirt…our connection to nature, perhaps?), and even more noticeable was how rigid his father was about it until he realizes he’s been too rough, breaks down, and uproots his family to start anew. This is maybe the most beautiful moment of the movie (that shot as they move away from their home is a powerful one). In order to see things through a new lens – to understand things in a new way – we must uproot everything we know to be true.

The other visual motif I keep coming back to is water, specifically immersion. There are a lot of shots of people swimming under water and coming up to the surface, the camera looking up at the sky while underwater, and of the O’Brien boys being immersed in water (bath, waterfall, sprinkler, pool). It made me think of the way audiences should receive this film if they want to have a better understanding of it: immerse yourself in it. Let it wash over you. I know that I’m looking forward to another dip. So, what I’m getting at is this: uproot every expectation you may have about how a film is supposed “work” and immerse yourself in the mystery of Malick’s film.

This review has been stream-of-conscious, vague, and probably a bit repetitive, but that’s because I’m still wrestling with the mystery of the film. I left The Tree of Life being reminded of the feeling I get when I watch 8 ½ or read Rick Bass’ brilliant short story “The Hermit’s Story.” These are mysterious narratives that seek to understand our purpose in this life beyond the utilitarian; it’s about embracing the mystery, and in that embrace you’ll find something new and unusual and unanswerable. There’s more here to discuss, more to elaborate on (especially with some of my references), and more to wrestle with…and I look forward to it because it is in the wrestling, the questioning, where we learn something about ourselves and our connection to others and the universe.