Film roundtable, take 2

Rich “I don’t review films, I relive them” at Widescreen World asked me to pitch in my 2 cents for his latest film roundtable discussion. Univarn from A Life in Equinox, Andrew from Encore’s World of Film and TV and I weigned in on the future of chick flicks (let’s hope they go the way of “Bridesmaids”), the change in the number of Best Picture nominees and more. Read our rap session online or click on the graphic. Enjoy…

Films A-Z

A day late, a dollar short and wearing a brand-new shirt with a food stain on it — that’s my life story and I’m sticking to it. So naturally on the heels of so many other movie bloggers, I decided to participate in the A-Z film lists.

Enjoy…

A is for “Apocalypse Now”

 

 

B is for “Blazing Saddles”

 

 

C is for “Clueless”

 

 

D is for “Dead Man Walking”

 

 

E is for “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”

 

 

F is for “The Fall”

 

 

G is for “Gojira”

 

 

H is for “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer”

 

 

I is for “Idiocracy”

 

 

J is for “Jindabyne”

  

K is for “Key Largo”

 

 

L is for “Lars and the Real Girl”

 

 

M is for “The Maltese Falcon”

 

 

N is for “No Country for Old Men”

 

 

O is for “Out of the Past”

 

 

P is for “Plan 9 from Outer Space”

 

 

Q is for “Quills”

 

 

R is for “The Rules of Attraction”

 

 

S is for “Secretary”

 

 

T is for “12 Angry Men”

 

 

U is for “Unforgiven”

 

 

V is for “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”

  

W is for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

  

X is for “XXX” (a.k.a. “That Movie Where Vin Diesel Was Not Shirtless Often Enough”)

  

Y is for “Young Frankenstein”

  

Z is for “Zoolander”

Desert Island CDs Blogathon

There's this desert island, see? And I'm stuck on it.

Great ideas come in pairs. So as a companion piece to Andy the Fandango Groover’s hugely popular Desert Island DVDs blogathon in April 2010, here is the Desert Island CDs blog event. The predicament is only slightly different this time: If you were stuck on a desert island and could listen to only 12 songs — all from movie soundtracks — which 12 tracks would you pick?

Below are the 12 soundtrack tunes I’d gladly listen to until I rallied the tiger blood within and swam after a passing boat, or angry seagulls pooped on my head until I went stark raving mad … for the definitive list of soundtrack selections, click the graphic above.

1. “Jai Ho” by A.R. Rahman (“Slumdog Millionaire” soundtrack) — Rahman’s “Jai Ho” may be the most infectious and joyous original composition ever to grace a film soundtrack. A little improvised Bollywood dancing — or an exuberantly bad impression — would be an excellent cure for the desert island blues.

2. “Dracula’s Lament” by Jason Segel (“Forgetting Sarah Marshall” soundtrack) — Puppet Dracula knows loneliness. He is an island. I’m stuck on a desert island. You do the math.

3. “Flowers on the Wall” by The Statler Brothers (“Pulp Fiction” soundtrack) — Nothing invites dwelling on past heartbreak like solitude, and The Statler Brothers gave the world perhaps the smartest, funniest song about coping with the minutiae of daily life after a breakup.

4. “Lift Me Up” by Bruce Springsteen (“Limbo” soundtrack) — Go through Bruce Springsteen’s entire catalogue — go on, I’ll wait; I have nothing to do but soak up UV rays in this hellhole — and you won’t find a more heart-wrenching, life-affirming and haunting love song than “Lift Me Up.”

5. “The What” by The Notorious B.I.G. feat. Method Man (“The Wackness” soundtrack) — Life dealing crack in the alleys of Bed-Stuy is hard. So is a life sentence of sand in places that don’t need exfoliating and daily sunburn. That kind of hard, mean reality demands a daily dose of F.T.W. attitude.

6. “I’ll Fly Away” by Gillian Welch (“O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack) — Remember how Emily Dickinson said hope is the thing with feathers? Sometimes a desert island dweller doesn’t need attitude but hope. Nobody doles out gospel-tinged, Old-Time-Religion hope like Gillian Welch.

7. “Lover” by Devendra Banhart (“Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” soundtrack) — Sometimes a sweeping love song won’t get the job done. That’s when a little playfulness (and a lot of sexual innuendo) come in mighty handy, and Barnhart’s “Lover” has both in spades.

8. “Wise Up” by Aimee Man (“Magnolia” soundtrack) — Chances are, if you’re stuck on a desert island, it’s because you made one fool choice or another. Aimee Mann’s nasal warbling and her poignant lyrics from “Magnolia” will remind you not to make the same mistake twice.

9. “Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd (“The Departed” soundtrack) — Comfortable numbness, as a state of being and as a way of handling (or avoiding) the world, is highly underrated. Roger Waters and David Gilmour get that, and they communicate it beautifully here.

10. “The Book I Write” by Spoon (“Stranger Than Fiction” soundtrack) — Fatalism is the enemy of survival in a desert island stranding situation. “The Book I Write” should provide just enough make-your-own-luck energy to see me through the darkest moments.

11. “Long Cool Woman (in a Black Dress)” by The Hollies (“Remember the Titans” soundtrack) — Although I wasn’t alive in 1972, The Hollie’s criminally cool “Long Cool Woman (In a Black Dress)” makes me feel like I was. It’s as if these guys condensed the ’70s into 3 minutes and 2 seconds of awesomeness.

12. “Here I Come” by The Roots feat. Malik B. and Dice Raw (“Superbad” soundtrack) — I’m convinced that if I listen to this song long and hard enough, I’ll sprout a superhero cape, spontaneously develop the ability to fly and catapult myself off this damn island without getting one hair out of place.

Groovers and Mobsters Present: Detective Noir

(Groovers and Mobsters Present, a column tackling the best each genre has to offer, is back! This time a number of bloggers — including this one — have made our picks for the best of detective noir. To read the entire list, visit this post on the Movie Mobsters’ website, or click the graphic above.)

“Out of the Past” (1947)

“Build my gallows high, baby.”
~~Jeff Bailey

Wherever there lurks a femme fatale with a hidden agenda and a dynamite pair of getaway sticks, a cynical gumshoe is never far behind. Think of it as The Law of Detective Noir; one cannot exist without the other. They feed each other – the femme fatale delights in escaping, and the detective cannot resist the chase. Somewhere in the chase, genuine emotions get involved. And emotions, in detective noir, are the great undoing. They have a way of making sure the past doesn’t stay where it should.

In “Out of the Past,” private eye Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum) sees this coming. “How big a chump can you get to be?” he muses, finding himself besotted with Kathie (Jane Greer), the woman he was hired to find. “I was finding out.” Jeff purposely botched the job, hoodwinked his client Whit (Kirk Douglas), Kathie’s spurned ex-lover, and fell hard for the doe-eyed dame. But that’s not where Jacques Tourneur’s film begins. Actually, it’s the dirty past that blindsides Jeff, now the unassuming owner of a small Bridgeport gas station who’s engaged to a pretty local girl (Virginia Huston) completely unaware of his history. This intermingling, and then brutal collision, of past and present – told in flashbacks narrated laconically by Mitchum – marks “Out of the Past” as one of the standouts of detective noir.

There is more to “Out of the Past” than flashbacks and wisecracks, though. Noir doesn’t come more classic than Tourneur’s iconic film, which boasts shadowy cinematography that’s by turns romantic and sinister, revealing and furtive. There’s a protagonist who is not at all what he seems, who is deeply conflicted and frozen, who can’t go back but can’t quite move forward, either. There’s a woman of many faces, all of them bewitching. Most important, there’s a pervading sense of resignation, the ultimate acceptance of fate’s cruel inevitability. Jeff, in the end, accepts that his past has decided his future. But his decision to go down doing what’s right is something of an inspiration. For that’s what the best detective noir does: shows us that even if our fate is sealed, that does not mean we cannot rage against it.

M. Carter’s Oscar nominations (and then some)

As a fledgling movie lover, a burgeoning blogger, I grew up trusting that The Academy as the ultimate and final word on what was good and award-worthy in cinema. Then, somewhere around the time I realized that my parents didn’t know everything, either, I turned a corner and headed down the “Hey, Academy People, You Might Have Petrified White Dog Turds for Brains” Hallway toward the “Wearing a Leopard-Print Wonderbra and Screaming Obscenities at Albert Finney Does Not Translate to Acting Talent” Conference Room. 

(Yes, I am still a little bitter about how the 2001 Best Actress Oscar race played out and please, let’s change the subject before I have to go back to therapy.)

Old grudges aside, the point is that sometimes The Academy gets it right. But more often than not these sorry, sad little people get it wrong. Very wrong. This is why Frank, the Pompous Film Snob himself, asked a number of us movie bloggers to come up with our own nominations for the best of the best in 2010. Find the compiled list here, and peruse my own nominations below.

Best Picture: “Winter’s Bone”; “The King’s Speech”; “Black Swan”; “Restrepo”; “Cairo Time”

Best Director: Debra Granik, “Winter’s Bone”; Darren Aronofsky, “Black Swan”; Tom Hooper, “The King’s Speech”; Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger, “Restrepo”; Christopher Nolan, “Inception”

Best Actor: Colin Firth, “The King’s Speech”; Michael Douglas, “Solitary Man”; Jeff Bridges, “True Grit”; James Franco, “127 Hours”; Leonardo DiCaprio, “Shutter Island”

Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, “Winter’s Bone”; Hailee Steinfeld, “True Grit”; Natalie Portman, “Black Swan”; Annette Bening, “The Kids Are All Right”; Patricia Clarkson, “Cairo Time”

Best Supporting Actor: John Hawkes, “Winter’s Bone”; Geoffrey Rush, “The King’s Speech”; Jeremy Renner, “The Town”; Christian Bale, “The Fighter”; Ken Watanabe, “Inception”

Best Supporting Actress: Rebecca Hall, “Please Give”; Melissa Leo, “The Fighter”; Amy Adams, “The Fighter”; Dale Dickey, “Winter’s Bone”; Barbara Hershey, “Black Swan”

Best Original Screenplay: “Cairo Time”; “Black Swan”; “Inception”; “The King’s Speech”; “The Kids Are All Right”

Best Adapted Screenplay: “Winter’s Bone”; “True Grit”; “Shutter Island”; “The Social Network”; “The Town”

Best Ensemble: “Inception”; “The Social Network”; “The King’s Speech”; “The Kids Are All Right”; “The Fighter”

Best Cinematography: “Winter’s Bone”; “Black Swan”; “Inception”; “The Social Network”; “The King’s Speech”

Best Score: “Shutter Island”; “Inception”; “True Grit”; “Cairo Time”; “Black Swan”

Best Editing: “Restrepo”; “Predators”; “The King’s Speech”; “The Social Network”; “Winter’s Bone”

Lifetime Achievement Award winners: Richard Jenkins and Ron Leibman (let’s hear it for the underappreciated character actors!)

Halloween Special — Groovers and Mobsters Present: Horror

(As part of a Groovers and Mobsters Halloween special presentation, some horror-crazed bloggers — including me — have taken on our picks for the best horror films ever made. Here’s my take on “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. To read the entire list, visit this post on Heather the Original Movie Mobster’s blog or click the graphic above.)

 

“Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” (1986)

“If you strangle one, stab another, and one you cut up, and one you don’t, then the police don’t know what to do. They think you’re four different people.” ~~Henry

Evil lives in our world, and it rarely wears an obvious or garish mask of villainy. That’s a truth human beings prefer not to confront. It’s simpler to imagine that true evil is recognizable somehow, that it cannot hide beneath a pleasant-looking surface. John McNaughton, who shot “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” on a paltry $110,000, understands this elemental human need … and he ignores it. His film is a crumpled snapshot of evil in its basic, most mundane form – a grim reality that can’t be shaken easily.

Talented as he is, McNaughton couldn’t create such a disturbing film without the right actor to play the killer, who must seem harmless enough to function in everyday life but be viciously single-minded in his goals. Michael Rooker, then a relative nobody, plays the part so monstrously well that it’s difficult now, 24 years later, to see him as anyone other than an emotionless murderer. Rooker is Henry, a polite, even-tempered drifter/serial killer who moves into the Chicago apartment of Otis (Tom Towles), newly paroled and not the least bit rehabilitated. When Otis discovers Henry’s secret, he wants to join in, and Henry obliges – but not before schooling Otis on the importance of never developing a traceable pattern. The arrival of Otis’ sister Becky (Tracy Arnold) causes friction between Otis, who lusts openly after his sister, and Henry, who treats this lost soul with kindness and is flattered by her interest in him. But love and companionship, Becky will learn, mean nothing to Henry.

McNaughton based “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” (very) loosely on the story of Virginia-born serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, which lends a feeling of authenticity to the film. More important than that, though, is the director’s pointedly unromanticized direction. He forces us to see through the killer’s eyes – as Henry sizes up potential victims, as Henry and Otis slaughter an entire family, videotape the massacre and watch it again for their own sick pleasure. McNaughton forces us to become voyeurs, and it’s the removal of that protective distance that makes “Henry” so frightening.

Films You Didn’t Know You Needed to See 666

(Kai Parker, creator extraordinaire of The List, has hatched this creepy, spooky and altogether ooky posting event on great horror films you might have missed. Below you will find my top three picks designed to scare off your britches. To see the entire list, visit the post on his blog.)

 

 “Black Christmas” (1974) — Before “Friday the 13th,” before “Halloween” and even before “When a Stranger Calls,” there was Robert Clark’s wholly unsettling “Black Christmas.” Hailed by fans as one of the original (if not THE original) slasher films, this scary little find of a film turns a cozy, Christmas-lit Canadian sorority house into a den of psychological terror, mayhem and murder as a prank caller’s calls turn from annoying to scary. You’ll never look at your attic — or your telephone — the same way again.

 

“The Brood” (1979) — Horror films don’t tend to contain deep, personal messages; David Cronenberg’s “The Brood,” however, is one of the few that does. Written during his own painful custody battle with his ex-wife, this disturbing horror film/thriller centers on an emotionally distraught divorcée (Samantha Eggar) who seeks the help of an unconventional therapist and begins giving birth to deformed, child-like beings that exact revenge on those who hurt her. The kid killers are scary, but it’s the message about the trauma of a family divided really lingers unpleasantly.

 

“The House of the Devil” (2009) — Ti West’s unbelievably tense “The House of the Devil,” a minor indie horror sensation, is not for the impatient. The film, which introduces a cash-strapped college student (Jocelin Donahue) who takes a babysitting job despite the employer’s (Tom Noonan) obvious creepiness, is slow going for a full 80 minutes — a time of complete inaction (nothing, truly, is all that happens). But West understands that the anticipation, the endless waiting, plays on our minds and forces us to do all the real long-term damage to ourselves.

B***h session

Blake of Bitchin’ Film Reviews fame hosted a most righteous Q&A with Reel Whore, Mistress Movie Moxie, Filmgeek and me. The question revives ye olde Desert Island Dilemma: Pick the three films you’d gladly spend the rest of your life watching on a desert island (as luck would have it, the faulty plane you were on was full of movies). Among us four, there are shoutouts to “Gidget” and “Practical Magic” and that real chucklefest “Magnolia.” Read the post to find out who picked what, or click on the photo above.

Films that defined me

It’s the $1 million question among movie addicts everywhere: What films ignited this zealotry for cinema? What films left lasting impressions on the kid who grew into a full-blown cinefile? Marc at Go, See, Talk! has challenged his circle of bloggers to pose these tough questions and devise a list of films that defined us, that turned us from kids who made mud puddles outside into kids who couldn’t wait to pop a tape into the VCR (for all the spring chickens out there, VHS existed before Blu-rays and — gasp! — DVDs).

If you’re hankering to know which films defined M. Carter @ the Movies, read on. (Something tells me no one will be terribly surprised by my choices.) For the complete list of participating bloggers, visit Go, See, Talk!, or click on the graphic above.

——————–

Action

“First Blood” (1982) — If “Drop Dead Fred” sealed my fate as a slightly warped, left-of-center lover of comedies with a razor-sharp edge, it was Stallone’s “First Blood” that stoked the fires of interest in watching things go KAZOWWEE! and burly do-gooders go positively medieval (not in the Tarantino sense of the word) on bad guys. With “First Blood,” Sly Stallone satisfied both requirements with room to spare. The explosions and shootouts and action — plus the unstoppable force of John Rambo — stunned Young Me; later, Adult Me came to appreciate the secondary story about the harsh, degrading and unfair treatment of Vietnam vets just struggling to re-enter the world of the living.

 

Comedy

“Blazing Saddles (1974) — There’s a certain joy that comes with watching movies your parents don’t know you’re watching that makes a kid feel invincible. And so it was with “Blazing Saddles,” which I caught on cable a few times before my parents introduced me (officially) to the wacko freaky genius that is Mel Brooks. The “too much beans” scene alone could send a malleable young soul into hysterics; throw in the sight gags and the pratfalls, the endlessly quotable dialogue and the outrageous characters (like the hypersexed Teutonic Titwillow, or the mumblingly moronic Gov. William J. Lepetomane) and you’ve got yourself a classic even an preteen can appreciate.

 

Dark Comedy

“Drop Dead Fred” (1991) — Of all the oddball films that littered my childhood, it’s “Drop Dead Fred” that made me the morbid, gallows-humor-loving film fan that I am today. Billing “Drop Dead Fred” was a bold move on New Line Cinema’s part, since movies involving fair amounts of profanity, pre-Farrelly Brothers grossout gags, out-there costumes and very clear episodes of serious emotional abuse aren’t the usual fixins for the warm fuzzies. In fact, “Drop Dead Fred” may be one of the best examples of a movie about kids that’s directed at adults, and a fine specimen of a dark comedy because of the fearless approach director Ate de Jong takes toward comedy. Jong’s film is trying, but there’s something strangely uplifting about its conclusion that renders it timeless.

 

Drama

“The Land Before Time” (1988) — This forgotten gem of love, loss and enduring friendship among a clan of young dinosaurs had some hefty industry talents attached (James Horner, Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas included) that played my heartstrings, while the big-scale Pizza Hut marketing campaign no doubt tugged at mom and dad’s wallets. The original film (forget about the 17 low-quality sequels) has everything fans of weepies could want: family tragedies, natural disasters, suspense, a sob-worthy death scene … not to mention the fact that the main characters (including an evil T-rex!) are dinosaurs. For a pre-Pixar kid film, that’s quite an accomplishment.

 

Fantasy/Horror

“Return to Oz” (1985) — Anyone who argues that “Return to Oz,” besides being a bastardization of the Judy Garland classic, is not a horror film must have missed the part with Princess Mombie, who keeps GLASS CABINETS full of TALKING DECAPITATED HEADS in her palace. Mombie and The Wheelies caused me countless hours in lost sleep, with the mental hospital scenes — storms and restraints and Thorazine, oh my! — providing ample fodder for future psychoses. “Return to Oz” is kiddie horror straight up, and even years later the trippy effects combined with the lavish costumes and sets continue to look startling and innovative. And terrifying. Did I mention that already?

Scarlett O’Hara — she was a bit of a twerp, wasn’t she?

This is just one of the many scenes that could have been improved if Mammy had thwacked Scarlett over the head with a broom.

As long as I live, those words will remain my favorite description of the dippy heroine — that’s right, I said it! Go on and revoke my Deep South Membershippin’ Card! — of “Gone with the Wind.” They came from the mouth of Mad Hatter, the Movie Mouth of Ontario and podcaster extraordinaire who is not the least bit concerned with not winning the LAMMY for Best Blog. Hatter kindly asked me to appear as a guest on his award-winning Matineecast a Southern little while — which, Southerners will tell you, is anywhere from 10 minutes to 10 weeks — ago. It took a “wedding” and a “road trip” (possibly both imaginary) and a whole mess of e-mailing, but Hatter and I got our acts together and finally recorded the episode. So if you’re just pantin’ to hear us prattle on about “Inception,” rant about one particularly uppity New York Press film critic and explore our mutual distaste for “Gone with the Wind,” visit Hatter’s blog to hear Matineecast Episode 17.