Being overly sensitive anyway about my beleaguered profession, I got a little concerned when Kevin Smith announced that he’d been filling in for the ailing Roger Ebert on the “Ebert & Roeper” show. Smith might well be an outstanding critic, better perhaps at that than he is at being a filmmaker. But that’s not the point. It’s a matter of what we in the journalism business quaintly refer to as “conflict of interest.” Here’s a guy with a film out there who is supposed to be objectively criticizing films that are in competition with his own. But then I thought, what the hell. The show has been produced by the Disney people for years, and no one seems to mind it when Disney films come up for discussion.

Anyway, I hope Roger gets well soon. If only because this guest critic policy has since taken an even more disturbing turn. It looks like Jay Leno is also being tapped for the honor of sitting in for Ebert. I mean, have you seen this guy do an interview? Outside his chin, he hasn’t a critical bone in his body. If Leno can be a critic, anybody can,

Well, so be it. Instead of fighting this trend, maybe we should take advantage of it. Who could we get to fill in for Ebert whose take on the latest hits, however inexpert, might actually be interesting? And not just interesting, perhaps illuminating? Might this even be an opportunity to further the cause of world peace?

I know of one person whose opinion might be fun to hear: Saddam Hussein. He’s a well-known film buff and his favorite movie is “The Godfather” so it’s not like he’s a lightweight. Plus, he’s got plenty of experience giving thumbs down, though in his case it’s to doomed political prisoners. It’s the perfect opportunity: his trial is on hiatus until October. And if the show can fly out to LA to accommodate Leno they can certainly make the trip to Baghdad to set up in Saddam’s cell.

But why stop there? Three words: Kim Jong Il. The guy loves movies, so much so that he’s not above kidnapping the odd director or actress. Supposedly he’s got an archive of 15,000-20,000 films. Let’s see Roeper stump him in a game of movie trivia!

Speaking of which, why not replace Roeper while we’re at it -- maybe with, dare I say, President Bush? “Bush & Kim at the Movies?” True, the President  refuses one-on-one talks with the North Koreans on the subject of nuclear arms. But everyone loves to talk about film! If we can get those two to swap thoughts and trade quips about “Snakes on a Plane” or “Beerfest,” I think world peace might be just a sequel away.

 

7/31/2006 4:17:36 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |  

It won a ton of Oscars and dominated entertainment news just four or five months ago, but has Brokeback Mountain since dwindled into a molehill? Where is the renaissance in gay or otherwise transgressive filmmaking we expected (I did anyway)?

Maybe we’re looking in the wrong place to see the impact that Brokeback has had on popular culture. Maybe it’s not so much a celebration of same sex relationships as it is a denunciation of heterosexuality, a reminder of the sorry state of men versus women in our society.

 I’m thinking of the depiction of married life in the movie. These guys are emasculated, henpecked, driven crazy by their wives, babes though they may be. No wonder they go “fishing.”

Their home life reminds me of the hideous Century 21 ad in which a toady guy is browbeaten into buying a house and a life he clearly doesn’t want by his termagant wife and an invisible harpy of a real estate agent on speaker phone. Or the “Friendly’s” ad in which a guy’s wife and kids humiliate him about everything from his cooking to his physical prowess.

And then, on the other side, you’ve got every beer commercial ever made in which the basic premise is that women exist only as a distraction from or an impediment to guys drinking more beer. Or the SUV ad (I think) in which I guy writes home to his wife about how sad he is away from her and camping with the guys when it's clear he’s having a hell of a good time and not just eating beans. And then, of course, the incredibly gay Flomax ad, in which these geezers with bloated prostates get relief and “spend less time in the bathroom, and more time fishing.”

Fishing indeed. So how is this reflected in movies? I wonder how much of the record- breaking grosses of Pirates of the Caribbean is due to the appeal of its all-male swashbuckling pirate life, with an emphasis on the swash in Johnny Depp’s performance? No need to wonder where films like John Tucker Must Die or My Super Ex-Girlfriend are coming from. America might have uneasy feelings about gay relationships, but there’s nothing ambiguous about its antipathy to the relationship between men and women.

7/26/2006 2:20:10 PM by Peter | Comments [1] |  

Watching the news of the ongoing shitstorm in the Middle East I find that old cliché keeps coming to mind: it’s just like a movie. Not just because it seems like an implausible combination of horror, farce and folly riddled with explosive special effects and tossed together by a committee of talentless, overpriced screenwriters. But the faces that keep cropping up: don’t they seem a little… familiar?

A while back I pointed out the “resemblance” between George Clooney in Syriana and Political Bureau Chief of the Hamas Movement, Khaled Mishaal (see March 4 posting). Well, with Clooney, what else would you expect. But with the recent crisis in Gaza and Lebanon, other similarities between Hollywood celebrities and Middle Eastern leaders have become undeniable.

For example, I attended a recent screening of Little Miss Sunshine in which a bearded Steve Carrell played a gay, suicidal Proust scholar. Pretty funny, but there was something about him that kept distracting me. He… looked like someone…

Then it occurred to me. He’s a dead ringer for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran:

Coincidence? I thought so too, until I investigated further. The beleaguered Prime Minister of Lebanon, Fouad Siniora. Where had I seen him before? In some other tense Middle Eastern setting, another hangdog figure in glasses… Of course, Geoffrey Rush as the Mossad caseworker in Munich:

Then there’s that troublemaker, the head of Hizbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. At first I thought, it must be that pinko Rob Reiner. Maybe if I spotted Sayyed an extra 150 pounds.

Then it occurred to me: where has the director of Apocalypse Now been now that Apocalypse For Real is shaping up?  And we thought Francis Coppola was still holed out making chianti in California.

What does it mean? No doubt that I’ve been watching too many movies. Or like all really horrible films, the one unreeling on CNN is bound to have sequels.

7/19/2006 4:12:06 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |  

Why can’t movie critics just have fun? Why do they turn up their noses at “popcorn movies” like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest in favor of snore fests  like The Searchers? It broke box office records in its opening week. As Vincent Bruzzese, a spokesman for OTX, an online survey service polling movie awareness, told  The New York Times “There is literally no core audience. Everyone is its core audience.”

Not quite. A glance at  the “Rotten Tomatoes” website shows that only 53% of the critics surveyed gave it a favorable review, and only 41% of the “Cream of the Crop,” making it thereby “rotten” ( to be deemed “fresh” a film must score at least 60%).

Heaven knows, some critics have tried to like it. Who wants to be on the outside of  a universal core audience looking in? “I was determined to embrace Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest with the open mind of a rum-soaked hearty,” Lisa Schwarzbaum confesses in her review in Entertainment Weekly. No dice. It’s “a theme ride,” she writes, “if by ride you mean a hellish contraption into which a ticket holder is strapped, overstimulated but unsatisfied, and unable to disengage until the operator releases the restraining harness. There’s a big moviegoing chasm between joy and Pavlovian response.” She ended up giving it a D+.

Myself, I haven’t seen it yet. I probably will eventually. But judging from my experience of the first and what I’ve read about this one, I find the prospect of watching it, well, boring. I’d much rather sit through John Ford’s The Searcher’s for the tenth or twelfth time.

Talk about boring. That’s what Stephen Metcalf, the self-styled “Dilettante” on the Slate website, does in his revisionist take on The Searchers titled “The Worst Best Movie: Why on Earth Did The Searchers Get Canonized?”

 In proving his assertion that the film is “impossible to enjoy” he resorts to the currently fashionable ad hominem argument. How can a film be enjoyable if those who enjoy it are “film geeks,” “nerd-cultists” and “critics whose careers emerged out of the rise of ‘film studies’ [quotation marks his] as a discrete and self-respecting academic discipline.”

Or, as “Stonehenge,” commenting on the critical response to Pirates of the Caribbean in Ain’t It Cool News, more bluntly puts it: “If I want some piece of shit film that the critics can’t resist stroking off to, I can go see Al Gore’s fucking snoozefest. If I feel like having a bit of fun and enjoying some special FX, I go see POTC.” Adds “I Dunno:”  “Fuck the professional critics.”

Why do critics deny themselves the pleasure of Pirates for the tedium of The Searchers?  Masochism, suggests Metcalf, and possibly anality. Its fans, he claims, regard the movie as something “dutiful and unpleasant, like a prostate exam.”

Ouch! Well, at least that’s pretty quick. Pirates of the Carribbean at two-and-a-half hours might be more like oral surgery.

Luckily, notes Metcalf, not all critics suffer from this perverse tendency.  Pauline Kael, he points out, was not one to bend over for this celluloid equivalent of the fickle finger of fate, and not just because she lacked the necessary plumbing. He writes: “Kael deserves the last word. ‘You can read a lot into The Searchers, but it isn't very enjoyable.’”

Thanks for the tip. Now I know what I enjoy. Who needs the illusory pleasures of the intellect, emotions and the soul when true cinematic joy is just a Pavlovian response away?

 

7/12/2006 3:41:28 PM by Peter | Comments [1] |  

Okay, you guys at the MPAA, you censoring specters of the rating board who decide what we can and can’t see. You can squash any independence in Hollywood and ennable the  studio monopoly. You can ensure an environment of cowardice and mediocrity by punishing originality, subversiveness and genius. You can shit all over the First Amendment. But don’t cross the religious right. Don’t even think of it.

Since Christians of late have moved on from condemning films they haven’t seen to grinding out their own celluloid propaganda, they’ve had to undergone the same process of getting a rating from the MPAA as anyone else. Or so you would think.

Last month a Baptist group released a film called Facing the Giants, an uplifting story about a coach who finds Jesus and leads his football team to victory, saving souls on the way. After passing it by the board for a rubber stamped G  rating, they were shocked to discover that it was, instead, given the scarlet letters PG! For mysterious “thematic elements.”

An what may they be? Kris Fuhr, a VP at Provident Films, the Sony subsidiary releasing the picture, claims the board told them that religion wasthe reason for the rating. And why not? To their credit, the board probably reasonsthat parents of other faiths, say Jews or Muslims or atheists, might want to be involved in the decision of whether or not their children should see a film that heavy-handedly tries to convert them into fundamentalist Baptists. How would Mr. Fuhr feel say, if a film similarly espousing Wahhabist Islam got a G?

Common sense, perhaps, but sensing it was in over its depth, the board tried to backtrack and pussy foot around the issue. "Any strong or mature discussion of any subject matter results in at least a PG rating," MPAA spokesman Dan Glickman said. "This movie had a mature discussion about pregnancy, for example. It also had other mature discussions that some parents might want to be aware of before taking their kids to see this movie."

Nice try, Dan, but too late. The third-ranking Republican, House Whip Henry Blunt, sensing another urgent issue to include with his party’s agenda of taking on the evils of flagburners and the New York Times, had already chimed in. "This incident raises the disquieting possibility that the MPAA considers exposure to Christian themes more dangerous for children than exposure to gratuitous sex and violence," he wrote to the MPAA.

Perhaps so, especially when you consider that the number of heinous crimes committed in the name of Jesus probably exceeds those by kids who snuck into a screening of Porky’s or even Saw 2. Be that as it may, Blunt and other Republicans will be taking this issue to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Can anybody spell HUAC?

"It's interesting that the Bible, which used to be the standard for what is good and right and virtuous and true, is now taboo and we have to warn people about it," concludes a righteous Alex Kendrick, the director and star of Facing the Giants. Actually, I always thought the Constitution was the go-to document for legal matters here in the U.S., but I haven’t been keeping on top of things. Besides, if an anti-flag banning amendment missed out by only one vote in the Senate, one straightening out the MPAA in particular and Hollywood and general should be a snap.

7/3/2006 4:05:11 PM by Peter | Comments [2] |