Noise in the Shape of Writing

I recently saw two movies that were supposed to be great films. Applauded by critics. Hailed as original works of cinema -- the next auteurs of Hollywood.

They stank.

"Donnie Darko" and "Napoleon Dynamite"

Maybe "stank" is too cruel. They simply failed to amaze.

But I am beginning to think I have seen TOO MUCH good indie cinema and maybe that's my problem. To me, these films look like copycats of other, better films. But to the recent slate of review-writing newcomers and the older critics who are now discovering this niche, perhaps these films are groundbreaking.

I can see where Donnie is cool and edgy, weaving in and out of its timelines, overlaying teen angst with horror movie motifs and oddball humor. But really, is it better than Memento or Dark City or The Butterfly Effect?

Napoleon is kooky and refreshingly downplayed in its reach. But does it have anything on Slackers or Ghost World or Welcome to the Dollhouse?

I think there must be a glut of reviewers that are going to lower budget films for the first time and are being surprised by something that many of us have known for a while... there is good stuff being made outside the major studios.

Do I dare expect much of "Garden State"?

Check back next week...

Who can resist a movie list that honorably mentions that sci-fi classic “Zardoz”?

Aaron posted this thing on his blog... "List your top 10 movies, and by YOUR top 10 movies, we mean YOU. These aren't the movies that you think are the best movies of all time (though they can be), but movies that have affected and influenced you; movies that are part of your style, point of view, tone, flavor, whatever. Movies that, when you list them, someone else knows you a little better."

Well, okay, I'm game too. I had more important things to do tonight, but I have never had the restraint to turn down an opportunity to make a list. Especially of movies!

The list was hard to pare down to 10 until I applied one final restriction: "In some uber-natural way, am I linked -- more than practically anyone else out there -- with this movie." (ie. The rest of the world hated it... I loved it. OR... Everyone saw it, but only I *SAW* it.)


American Beauty
The perfect movie. Allegorical, colorful, well shot, well acted, well written. It touched me in several personal ways. I felt that everything put forth in that movie was true, or TRUE or "true" in some way or another. NO OTHER MOVIE has ever made me well up with such emotion (OK, maybe Fahrenheit 911).


Star Trek The Motion Picture
Yeah, the original. Hated by most purists. Well, hated by most, really. But NOTHING beats the feeling I felt as I watched the Enterprise pull slowly out of dry dock under the command of James T. Kirk. The music helped a lot too. Sure, the ending was appalling. You can't deny, however, that the movie was for the fans and if you were a Trekkie and you needed something more than to see Kirk and the gang on the Enterprise doing what they do best and kicking Klingon ass, then you just didn't have your eyes open. Or, you were seeing it years later for the first time on video.


The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Another perfect movie. (Many of these "Personal Top 10 Movies" are in fact on my "Not Personal But In Fact Greatest Movies of All Time" list as well) Starts off whimsical, familiar, funny. Shoots right into action. Never lets up except for the "get to know the characters" scenes. Ends tragically and at the perfect moment. A completely self-contained movie. The opening "shire" scene brings me to tears every time. A parable in no uncertain terms.


Rocky Horror Picture Show
Perfect? Maybe not. But it sums up my high school years to a freakin "T". Everyone I hung out with in HS was horny and geeky, and everyone wished they could be as honest and hedonistic as the characters in that movie were. Funny, interactive, social, naughty, timid, tradition-bound, science fictional, unrestrained... it was everything we were. Everything I was anyway, with the "timid" part outweighing and obscuring most of the others most of the time.


Pink Floyd The Wall
Saw it with buddies from Senior English class. We somehow convinced the teacher it would be a good movie to write an English term paper on. Yet, somewhere around the "One of My Turns," glass shards through the hands scene, I realized that this was one powerful, allegorical, smart movie. The soundtrack has been #1 in my collection for years. And the movie is top of my Top 10 Greatest still. Powerful shit. Been there through several sad and several extremely happy moments in my life.


Silent Running
This movie says so much and yet is not full of itself. A testament to simplicity in shooting, art direction and writing, it puts forth a mighty environmental message and yet it has fun and does not preach. The music may have been somewhat mushy, but Bruce Dern's acting was so heartfelt and the (arguably lame, SFX-wise) robots were so endearing that you couldn’t help but get swept up.


The Story of Us
Okay, the rest of the world HATED this movie. I maintain that it is one of the greatest of all time. Maybe it's cause I -- as a married man with a kid -- had similar feelings at times. Everyone argues, everyone has tough times, everyone wants to throw up their hands at some point. Anyway, it clicked for me. Everything Rob Reiner put in there resonated with me. And the reconciliation at the end hit me hard. It takes a lot of strength to make things right in a relationship. A lot of sacrifice. Usually I hate Michelle Pfeiffer, but here she shines.


About a Boy
I loved this movie. It spoke to the little, egotistical, British bachelor in me. Great music. Great direction/editing. Sometimes a perfectly made movie connects with me simply because it’s a perfectly made movie. It makes me smile. Also, women seemed to not get this movie and most men didn’t that I spoke to (except for a few). I guess that made me connect to it.


Spirited Away
What a sweet, exhilarating gem of a film. Never takes itself too seriously. It speaks to courage, tradition, honor, knowledge of self and wonder. Of course, I have a soft spot for Japanese animation, but given that it won the Best Animated Film Oscar a couple years back, it isn’t *just* me. If you haven’t yet checked out Hayao Miyazake’s films (incl. Princess Mononoke, Totoro and others), you really should. Kid’s films for adults young at heart.


Monty Python and the Holy Grail
I saw this late at night once early on in high school (1982-ish) when I should have been fast asleep. I snuck out of my room for some disallowed cable viewing (probably some soft porn) and stumbled across this movie. Hilarious. And for a kid stuck in a square world of early 80s trends, it clicked with my nascent sense of irony. I felt as if I had just joined a club. Then I discovered Python proper and learned what I had been missing. This movie basically serves as a marker for any number of other movies that I A) discovered late at night, B) had never seen anything else even similar to, and C) no one else I knew was into. These movies only existed in my own little world, and without the internet or Leonard Maltin’s guide or the invention of the VCR, I had no way to prove their existence to any one else. Other’s in this group include: Zardoz, Probe and (though it’s TV) The Prisoner.


Pat.

I finally saw F°911 today. I found it surprising that the theater was packed. There were no seats left well before the movie even started. I mean, it's week 2 for them movie and I am up here in conservative-land. Still, it bodes well for America (knock on wood).

My thoughts on the movie are thus:

Brought -- I'll admit it -- to tears by footage of Al Gore conceding defeat at the hands of the Supreme Court's ruling + his subsequent duties where he ironically presided over the throwing out of numerous petitions from disenfranchised Florida voters.

Found myself clenching fists through much of the irrefutable Bush-Saudi conections segments. Later realized that much of the anger welling in me was due to Moore's use of theatrical dramatic music to heighten emotions.

Wondered why it got an R rating for only 3 "assholes", 5 "mother fuckers", and a few gory bits of footage. After all, he could have cut the swear words and maybe one or two images and gotten a PG-13. Was he proving a point?

Left feeling like doing anything ANYTHING to get the word out about the movie. Wanted to write a sketch right away about it. Of course the ire subsided relatively soon and I was left with my typical feeling of general malaise about the world.

Audience applauded wholeheartedly after the screening. All of them. I'd heard that other screenings earlier in the day had sporadic boos. Again, surprised -- or rather happy -- to see the liberals come out of the woodwork in my lovely, Republican Santa Clarita.

Everyone in the nation should see this movie. I don't see how you could vote for the man in November after seeing this docu.

Grrr. Too pissed off for a punchline.

Grrr.

Sunday night we took our daughter out to see fireworks. Couldn't find any good locations. My daughter was cold and sick. Wife was nonplussed (it had been a long day). And I realized that unless I am actualy lighting fuses I am pretty much nonplussed myself about the whole ordeal. Unless I am holding my daughter on my shoulders and standing relatively close to the fireworks.

But she was sick. And the display was a few miles off due to me picking a lame spot for viewing.

There is a video game thingy in the Innoventions building at Disneyland that lets you program -- and then shoot off to grand music -- a display of fireworks. It's kind of fun. And I found myself thinking I wished I was there instead.

Have I grown jaded in my old age?

I remember when I was a teenager, I was always put in charge of the family fireworks shows on the farm in Nebraska. Everything was legal there -- back in the early 80s. Massive parachute launchers. Cones as big as your high school volcano science experiment.

Damn, that was fun. Seeing how close you could get to a fountain of sparks.... no one cared. Or so it seemed.

So I have begun to re-hoard another supply of decent fireworks.

Some fateful 4th of July in several years, I will unleash holy vengeance upon my jaded thirtysomething years and make up for it all.

Hey, I burned an Ash Snake last night and it felt pretty good. So there is hope.

I was at the 13th annual Anime Expo this weekend. It is the local, highly popular Japanese animation convention that is put on at the Anaheim convention center every Fourth of July weekend.

Many people half my age were in attendance. Most of them were wearing costumes. A good number of people a third my age were there, too. They were talking on cell phones, buying things that I did not recognize and talking about shows I have never heard of.

I sit in the back row of the video rooms and try to keep abreast of the hundred or so new TV shows and films that debut each year. And I bring my daughter so as to blend in.

Twelve years ago when I was just getting into the anime scene I knew everything about it. Of course at the time it consisted of some dozen shows, so it was easy.

Then came Cartoon Network. Adult Swim. The Disney Channel.

Now I can hardly tell my magical girl transformation mecha-action series from my high school girl mecha-magical adventure romance OAV.

And don't even ask what an OAV is. Most people don't know. It is something that strange little men in Japan make up while they are stumbling back from the sake bars to their coffin-sized, hi-tech homes.

Yesterday I saw a perverted school teacher's pathetic attempts to watch junior high girls change into their swimsuits. That was a show. Japan has very strange ideas of what ought to be animated and broadcast.

I also watched a 250-pound man wearing a plastic yellow bikini belt out the Star Spangled Banner at the top of his lungs. That one was, unfortunately, real life. I am scarred for life.

Then I saw a transvestite, a bum and a homocidal lunatic rescue a baby and win a million dollars. That was another show, but really, I was in Anaheim, so that one could have gone either way.

Japanese animation is pretty cool. And when you think you have experienced it all, try dressing up in one of those costumes and getting your picture taken every three steps. But wear sunglasses and don't have a badge around your neck with your real name on it.

These people have websites and they think you are funny if you know what a "Speed Racer" is when they don't.

They will make you famous on their wesites.

Some of them wear little plastic yellow bikinis and they are really hot girls, though. So it kind of evens out. But, if you see me on any websites, let me know.