What happened to the word 'the'?

Does this bother anybody else? I can't possibly be the only one. (Not a judgment on the movies' quality, BTW.)

The Master

The Master
seen @ Ziegfeld Theater, New York NY
10.6.12

And now, five things I thought about while watching The Master:

1. This doesn't look like how I imagined 70mm would look. Part of the reason I held out so long to see this movie was so I could see it in 70mm at the Ziegfeld (the place could certainly use the business). Vija and I sat in the middle of the cavernous auditorium at my suggestion (maybe favoring the rear a little) because I was expecting, as I told her afterwards, a panoramic, Lawrence of Arabia-type image. What I saw didn't quite feel that... majestic. Maybe it was because it wasn't anywhere near the same kind of movie as Lawrence of Arabia.

Vija thought it was because we were sitting as far back as we were, which makes more sense to me. The Ziegfeld is far bigger than that of your average multiplex auditorium, making it easy to throw off your sense of scale - and it's not like I go to the Ziegfeld all the time. I talked to an usher afterwards to make sure that this was indeed, the 70mm print and she said it was...

...so my first 70mm experience turned out to be slightly less than epic. If I ever get to see another one, I'll make sure to sit closer to the front.

2. This really looks like a Stanley Kubrick film. I think I may have mentioned it before, how Paul Thomas Anderson started out making movies that look like Robert Altman and now he's switched to Kubrick. What does a Kubrick movie look like? Definitely panoramic, for one thing, but he also loved to use long takes focused on a face, or maybe two people in conversation, usually centered.

Look at The Shining or A Clockwork Orange or 2001 and you'll recognize it immediately - the way he builds up tension within a scene by holding a close-up during a conversation and making few cuts within the overall scene. PTA does that here. Also, like Kubrick, he uses music carefully and judiciously.

3. Joaquin Phoenix' character is difficult to watch. I read somewhere that Phoenix studied the movement of apes for his role of Freddie, and indeed, the way he lopes around, swinging his arms to and fro, leanign forward with his chin jutted out, is reminiscent of some manner of primate. Plus there's his violence (the jail scene in particular is quite disturbing) and his sexual urges - thought they did provide us with a scene with lots of naked women!

4."Processing" is not unlike certain acting techniques. There's a scene early in the movie where Phillip Seymour Hoffman asks Phoenix a long series of personal questions that, I presume, are meant as an initiation to the Cause, the Scientology-like cult that PSH's character Dodd runs. 

I've talked before about my experience in studying acting, specifically about learning the Meisner technique, and it's quite similar to  how Dodd engages Freddie in this scene: staying completely focused on your partner. Repetition. Reacting to your partner; their face, their body movements, the sound and inflection of their voice, all of it (don't say "ouch" until you get a pinch - that's how they taught it to us). And above all, stay in the moment.

Seeing Dodd and Freddie go back and forth in their interrogation felt a lot like that technique, in which the goal - as Dodd makes clear himself - is to get at the truth. For an actor, that means emotional truth, and I'd say both PSH and Phoenix achieved that.

5. Why would anyone choose to follow Dodd in the first place? This is the big problem I had with The Master - I couldn't understand how Dodd got to where he was, because the Cause wasn't explained adequately enough for me. (Why is it even called "The Cause"?) Yes, Dodd is charismatic and has an air of knowledge and authority, but we never see him make the study of "past lives" sound appealing, like something you and I would wanna explore. Never mind the parallels to Scientology - which I think is a hoax and a sham, by the way - I found it difficult to fully invest in the reality of Dodd's cult.

The Master wasn't bad by any means, but I feel like there wasn't enough "there" there. It fell too much on the navel-gazing, introspective side and I wasn't as open to the premise as I should have been.

Looper

Looper
seen @ Main Street Cinemas, Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, NY
10.3.12

Ever since Urbanworld I've been a little bit frazzled regarding this blog. This is the time of year when all the good movies start coming out, and as a result, there's more stuff I wanna see and only so much time and money to see them. So what ends up happening is that I fall behind in my schedule and have to play catch-up.

I mentioned my friend Ryan from The Matinee recently and how he passed the 1000-consecutive posts mark. I could never do that, not in a million years. I hate feeling pressured to post something, even though in the beginning my goal was to post as often as five or even six times a week. Now I'm closer to three or four times a week. Why? It's less pressure. Once blogging becomes a chore and not something fun, that's when it becomes a problem for me.

Also, as you may have noticed, I've become less regular regarding which days I post on. I had settled on Monday-Thursday-Saturday with an occasional extra post on Tuesday or Wednesday, but even that's sort of gone by the boards. Still, I do strive for three days a week, even if it's not those specific days.

See, I plan stuff and then other stuff happens and I have to change everything. I mentioned how I've put off seeing The Master because I wanna see it with Vija and I wanna see it in 70mm. Then John recently emailed me about this indie movie that he said I absolutely have to see. Plus I had to finish up my post for Ruth's blogathon, only to be invited to another one, so I ended up taking Trouble With the Curve off my schedule, figuring out a time and place to see John's indie movie, rechecking the Ziegfeld's schedule, plus trying to figure out what I wanna watch for Halloween this year... 

It sounds more hectic than it actually is. I'm not complaining; I'd rather have too much to post about than too little. But I ended up falling behind on certain posts that I wanted to have finished sooner than now. Which is why today I dragged my laptop out of the house with me, even though I hate going out on the weekends with it, just so I can say something about Looper, a movie which I liked well enough, but it didn't blow me away like it has so many other people. Also, because I've seen so many other movies lately, it hasn't registered in my mind that strongly and I'm finding it hard to articulate what I found appealing and unappealing. I should probably go see it again (like Ryan always advocates), but there's that time and money shortage problem I mentioned earlier. (Sometimes it seems like my fellow film bloggers go all out to see every major new release. I can't do that, nor do I want to.)

But I should say something about Looper, right? Well, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is great at imitating Bruce Willis. I could almost believe they were the same person, prosthetic nose or no. The issues of predestination and free will reminded me of last year's The Adjustment Bureau, which also had Emily Blunt in it. And its approach to time travel is unique, even if I couldn't quite grok some of it. But that's about all I got for this one right now. 

The hoopla over this reminds me of Drive, also from last year, another movie that the film blogosphere seemed to go ape for more than I did. I don't care all that much if I don't agree with the consensus opinion about a movie, but there's still that sense of disappointment I get when a hyped-up movie turns out to not quite match the hype. I'm sure if I sat down with Looper by myself, months later, I might begin to see different layers to it and blah blah blah. Maybe I should take a break from movies for a week or so and write about other stuff, just for the hell of it. I can tell you I've got another book review coming up, for instance. I'll think about it.

Ava DuVernay profile in the NYT 10/7

...A film marketer turned filmmaker, she knows her audience and how to stoke its desire. She speaks both as an artist and as an entrepreneur who is clearing a new path for film distribution. To the predominantly African-American crowd at BlackStar she talked about how to end-run the studios and find private equity to finance indie films. “It’s not about knocking on closed doors,” she said. “It’s about building our own house and having our own door.”

The print edition of this New York Times article comes out Sunday, but you can read it online now. And you totally should. There's a reason I keep writing about this woman.

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Related:
Urbanworld FF: Middle of Nowhere
I Will Follow

Dr. No/Goldfinger

Dr. No
Goldfinger
seen @ Landmark Loews Jersey City, Jersey City NJ
9.29.12

I was never that into James Bond. I didn't hate the Bond movies, but to me they never held that much of an appeal for whatever reason. I can't explain why. I remember seeing A View to a Kill when it came out, though that might have been because Duran Duran did the theme song and I was really into them at the time, but the movie never made an impression of me. I remember a fight on the Eiffel Tower and Grace Jones, but that's about it.

I was working in video retail around the time that Pierce Brosnan stepped into the role, and I remember all the discussion about this choice - basically, that he seemed like the perfect choice to play Bond since Sean Connery and that he should've been Bond long ago, et cetera. I watched Goldeneye on video and thought it was kinda cool, but again, I never bought the hype. By that time, though, I was beginning to become more disaffected by action movies. Indie films were attracting my attention more and more, and for awhile, I thought I was too cool for action flicks. Tomorrow Never Dies was notable for me because it was my first real introduction to Michelle Yeoh, but other than that, it meant nothing.

If I had to think of a reason why I never got into the Bond films, I suppose it might be because plot and character always seemed incidental to me. They may be enjoyable, but he basically does more or less the same stuff in every film with little in the way of character development. And yeah, there are other franchises in which you could say the exact same thing, but I'm not talking about those. I'm talking about Bond.

That said, I took the opportunity last weekend to see a doubleheader of Dr. No and Goldfinger because I had never seen either one before, and I wanted to see how the legend began. It's quite remarkable to see how many of the familiar tropes and catchphrases have almost always been with the character. And I'm not used to seeing Sean Connery so young. He's just barely recognizable as a younger man compared to his older self, but the charisma is definitely there.

Bond's been around for 50 years, so I reckon he's doing something right. I'm certainly aware of how big an impact he had in the first decade or so. Back in the 60s, it seemed like everyone wanted to be a secret agent. There were songs, TV shows, comics, parodies, all having to do with spies and how cool it was to be one. I'm sure the Cold War played a big part in that. But who are we spying on today? North Korea? Iran? It's not quite the same thing. Russia was the "evil empire," our counterpart, our rival. The Cold War wasn't fought the same way as the War of Terror...

...and yet Bond remains as popular today as he ever was. Maybe he's seen as a modern-day superhero, like Batman: he's got all those wonderful toys, he always thinks two steps ahead of the bad guys, and his rogues gallery is as memorable as he is. 

Who's the best Bond? Hard to argue against Connery, though in this case I imagine that, like Doctor Who, each one has its adherents who will swear up and down that their man is the best and to hell with all the others. I once read a theory that "James Bond" is a title, not a name, which would not only explain the constant changing of each actor, but would put the entire series in one continuity instead of successive reboots. I like that idea myself.

By the way, can I bring up Austin Powers for a second? I can't say that Mike Myers has ruined Bond for me because I never held Bond in as much high esteem as others. And I think Austin Powers is great, even though I only saw the first two films and not the third. But see, Bond is so much a part of the popular culture that I more or less recognized many of the Bond tropes that Myers parodied.

So while I don't love Bond, I don't hate him either. Will I go see Skyfall? I might. Great cast, good director. We'll see.

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Related:
Soundtrack Saturday: The James Bond movies part 1 and part 2
Soundtrack Saturday: John Barry

Battle for Brooklyn

Battle for Brooklyn
seen @ the Dean Street playground, Brooklyn, NY
9.28.12

Even if you're not a sports fan, chances are you've heard by now of the new sports arena that has been built in Brooklyn, the Barclays Center, at the nexus of several major thoroughfares in the heart of the borough. The one-percenters responsible for its creation would have you believe that it'll elevate the borough's cultural profile in the eyes of the world, as well as restore Brooklyn's glory and pride because a spectacularly mediocre pro basketball team will play there, the first major league sports franchise in Brooklyn since the Dodgers.

As a Queens native, I find this idea dubious, because I never realized that Brooklyn ever lost its pride. Yeah, it sucks that the Dodgers don't play there anymore, but as any Brooklynite - hell, any New Yorker - will tell you, Brooklyn is about a helluva lot more than a baseball team that moved away over fifty years ago. Its identity has changed considerably over the years, but one thing I've never doubted that Brooklynites lacked was pride.

Atlantic Yards, the site where the Barclays Center was built

Now, of course, Brooklyn is cooler than ever. You can't walk fifty paces in Brooklyn without seeing somebody wearing something Brooklyn-related, or see the borough represented in some fashion somehow. Many pixels have been employed to chart the rise of this phenomenon; this article is a particularly noteworthy example. The Barclays is at the center of this renaissance, literally and metaphysically, and its corporate overlords appear to be reaching for the moon and stars themselves when it comes to expectations.

There's another side to this story, however, one ably presented in the 2011 documentary Battle for Brooklyn. In true underground cinema fashion, it played for free on the same night as the grand opening of the Barclays at a playground only a couple of blocks away. The Barclays occupies an area atop a commuter train yard in a wedge shape, pointing in the direction of the landmark Williamsburg Bank Tower. 

Traffic in the surrounding area was a major issue during the arena's development, which is why both the Barclays and the city have aggressively promoted the use of public transportation to and from the arena (eleven subway trains, plus the commuter rail, lead there). As I made my way to the park Friday, the night of the opening concert at the Barclays by Jay-Z, I noticed the increased police presence on the streets, the traffic cops directing cars and buses, and of course, the laser lights shining from atop the Barclays in multiple directions. Traffic didn't seem that troublesome to me on Friday night, and as it turned out, it wasn't.

Daniel Goldstein

Battle centers mostly around one guy, Daniel Goldstein, who was the last holdout in a neighborhood building where all the other tenants were bought out by Barclays developer Bruce Ratner in order to make room for the arena. Goldstein was the only one who refused to vacate, not only because he didn't want to leave his home, but because he believed that Ratner, not to mention the city and state, was abusing the eminent domain law. That's when the state can seize property for public use.

The doc shows that Goldstein had a case, and he, along with activists, local officials, and others in the area, fought the Barclays development tooth and nail. He faced long odds. To pick one example from the film: we see Goldstein and his allies at a public hearing attended by city officials. Representatives of the Barclays and their allies dominate the proceedings throughout much of the morning and then leave before Goldstein has his say, and he winds up getting much less time to speak by comparison. His anger at being slighted is keenly felt.

Bruce Ratner

The important thing to remember about this case is that no matter how one spins it, people - black, white, Latino - were removed from their homes in order to make way for this arena. And while Ratner promised that affordable housing would be built in conjunction with the arena, as of this writing, there's no immediate sign of any. Indeed, while on my way to the park to see the film, I passed by a couple of dudes who were discussing this very point.

It was a damp night. The rain had stopped, but the artificial turf in the park was still somewhat wet, so garbage bags were provided for people to sit on. The crowd looked somewhat small at the film's outset (which was preceded by a performance by an actual, honest-to-god protest singer), but by the end the audience was much bigger. It was somewhat surreal to see a film about the development of the Barclays while one could easily see the finished product down the street. Also, it should be noted, one-way Dean Street had double parking as far as the eye could see, and while cars and buses were reduced to a single lane, the bike lane was blocked.

Goldstein (center) at a demonstration outside of Borough Hall

Afterwards, some of the filmmakers answered a few questions from the crowd. As they spoke, some guy walked through the park towards the sidewalk. He looked like a blue-collar worker, wearing a uniform of some sort (I think; it was hard to tell in the darkness) and he was putting down the movie and the speakers, saying, "Everything that guy's saying is bullshit" over and over. It was hard to tell whether he really believed what he was saying, or if he was just trying to make trouble. No one paid him any mind.

Regardless, this is a powerful movie. The drama of Goldstein's struggle to keep his home is tempered by the "sub-plot" of seeing him fall in love with a fellow activist he meets after breaking up with his previous girlfriend as a result of his struggle. Even though Battle doesn't end on a happy note, there's still an element of hope.

Small Roles, Big Performances: The Kevin Smith edition

The Small Roles, Big Performances Blogathon is exactly what it says on the tin. It is hosted by Flix Chatter. For a complete list of participating blogs, visit the host site.

Okay, so the truth is that because I was so caught up in the Urbanworld Film Festival, not to mention several other movies that I've seen lately, I didn't give this blogathon as much thought as I wanted to (sorry, Ruth). However, I did come up with a few selections that, though they stretch the definition of "big performances," they mean something to me personally because I've always enjoyed Kevin Smith movies. None of these roles are Oscar-caliber material, but they make their respective movies, in their own little ways, and they're memorable. To me, anyway. So here you go:

- Stan Lee in Mallrats. Yes, he takes too much credit for his role in creating the Marvel Universe, but if that's what Smith wrote, then surely that's more his fault than Stan's. We all know  about the cameos Stan has made in the Marvel superhero movies, but this is his biggest movie role - as himself, who provides Jason Lee with the perspective he needs to go after Shannen Doherty - through comics, of course. Stan's public image has always been equal parts fact and fantasy - by his own doing; he's always been a shameless huckster! - and this version of himself certainly feeds into the Stan Lee myth. But that's the thing: if you're a Marvel Comics fan, who grew up with the Merry Marvel Marching Society and Bullpen Bulletins and FOOM and No-Prizes and all that, this is the only way we want to see Stan - and Smith knows this, because he's a comics geek too. So why shouldn't Stan be the one to help save the day in the end?

- Alanis Morissette in Dogma. I had a conversation with someone recently about musicians crossing over into film, and the point I made is that too often, Hollywood thinks that fame in one medium automatically crosses over into another, so they make star vehicles for musicians-turned-actors, thinking that, just like Ringo Starr sang, all they have to do is act naturally and they'll make a big pile of money. For every Bodyguard, though, there are half a dozen Glitters. Alanis Morissette was at the peak of her popularity when Dogma came out, and yet not only is her role a small one, she doesn't even get to speak, even though she plays none other than God. Hers is a deus ex machina appearance, at the end, right when it seems like the plan of renegade angels Ben Affleck and Matt Damon is about to succeed. She's the way you'd want God to be, if s/he actually existed: just, forgiving, yet sweet and playful too.

- Jay and Silent Bob in Chasing Amy. Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith, that is, but when it's the two of them together like this, one simply can't refer to them any other way. In Clerks and Mallrats, the two of them were simply mischief-makers, running around creating havoc and hitting on chicks, and it's a strong indicator of how different Amy is from those films in that they only appear in one scene here. While they're still funny, they also, like Stan in Mallrats, inspire the protagonist (Affleck in this case) into making a crucial decision. And Smith, as Silent Bob, even gets to break his silence in order to tell his story, one he tells without passion or prejudice. I love this movie with a great passion, and this scene is a great big reason why.