Cinematic Measures: Monday Movies

Monday movies are those that don't live up to the prestige of those who made them. They're the minor films by major directors, writers, even actors if you want to think of certain actors as the driving force that makes good movies into great ones. It refers to those movies in an artist's oeuvre that just kind of coast by when we're used to the work of said person brimming with emotion and/or intelligence that makes us want to stand up and cheer or move or do something to make the world a better place: the kind of movies that make the world better for existing and make us better for seeing them. Every director or star takes these kinds of days off. Now there's a name for them.

The name in general refers to the world famous New York Times crossword puzzle and came into fruition after watching the documentary Wordplay, which, because I am not a New Yorker or a cross word puzzler, informed me that the Times crossword get's harder and harder as the week progresses. Monday being the easiest and the weekend being the hardest.

Therefore, a Monday movie is, just what it's name implies: it's a little too easy, too phoned in, too narrow to be considered a really great work. It's a film from someone we expect more from. Scoop is a Monday Movie for Woody Allen, The Color of Money from Scorsese, Death Proof for Tarantino and so on. They aren't necessarily bad movies, they just don't give us what we want from a star or filmmaker who usually produces Friday kind of work.

Other Filmic Measures:

The Documentary Rule

Where's The Airship Movies

The Chocolate Bar Movie

One Minute Review - Boondock Saints 2 (ZERO)

Troy Duffy represents the quintessential indie film story: a young, cocky filmmaker whose number one fan is himself, with a collection of everyone else's ideas in his head, alienates just about everybody around him and more or less destroys himself on the blind path to making a truly terrible movie.

There was a great documentary made about it called Overnight, which chronicled Duffy's rise and fall. He was so confident in himself that he commissioned some friends to follow him around with a camera as he was making the original Boondock Saints so that they could see a masterpiece in the making. However the guys are no longer friends, the documentary tells the tale, The Boondock Saints sucked and the sequel is ever worse.

The legend is that Duffy, a near alcoholic musician and bar owner signed with the William Morris Agency and cut a deal with Harvey Weinstein to make his directorial debut, a foul mouthed crime tale of two Irish guys in Boston who kill in the name of the Lord. Weinstein said he'd pay for the picture, buy the bar, sign the band, whatever. However Weinstein, by that time, was known to be an infamous reneger but Duffy still didn't take the hint when the man never returned his calls.

Alas the Boondock Saints was finally made, grossed nothing and inexplicably became a huge hit on DVD; enough to justify this sequel which is loud, over-stylized, stupid, vulgar, unfunny, racist, homophobic and doesn't even begin to make sense. Duffy still riffs on Tarantino's cred as if he can out-hip the master while never once fully realizing what makes Quinten a true original. I just finished reading an invaluable book by David Mamet entitled On Directing Film in which Mamet muses, to simplify the concept, that great writing and direction breaks things down into their simplest form and uses shots to tell the story. If it doesn't contribute to the story of the character achieving their desired end, throw it out because it's useless. It's advice Duffy could have used although, in that case, he'd be without a film.

Can You Spot A Great Film?: A Justification of Shutter Island

There are two director's working today who, above all others, have managed to rise above just being great filmmakers and into the realms of pop culture phenomenons. One is Quintin Tarantino and the other is Martin Scrosese. The problem with great filmmakers reaching this status though is that hordes of viewers flock to their movies for no better reason than because everything attached to their name must be brilliant by default. This isn't based on any critical logic, any in-depth thought or any knowledge about the trajectory of the filmmaker's career; it's just generally accepted pop culture wisdom that has been passed down through the generations. I know hundreds of people who think Pulp Fiction and Goodfellas are masterpieces, and they are, but I can count on one hand roughly how many people have been able to provide a decent explanation as to why this is the case.

Therefore kids, and adults too, will go to these movies and declare them masterpieces because well, isn't that what Tarantino and Scorsese do: make masterpieces, as if they have exceeded mere morality and are instead a brand name known for quality every time. And, in fact, they are known for quality. I've only seen one Scrosese movie I didn't like (The Colour of Money) and two Tarantino movies I didn't like (Reservoir Dogs and Death Proof), but I could sit down and conduct a conversation or debate, justifying my loves and disappointments for every film each director has helmed. After seeing Inglourious Basterds in August I went to the McDonald's across the street from the theater to get a McFlurry when some kid I knew vaguely from high school, who had apparently also seen the movie, explained to his friends with vigour all the ins and outs of Tarantino's oeuvre without ever once saying anything useful about the aesthetic texture of his films, the brilliance of their construction, the subtlety of using dialogue to create the kind of drama that no physical representation could, and so on. Every time I hear conversations going on like this I think feel like interrupting and saying, "Hey kid, Tarantino is more than just hip dialogue and references to other films." And then I think of French critic Pierre Rissient who said that 'It is not enough to like a film. Oe must like it for the right reasons."

I'm not trying to be some sort of film snob here, but what Rissient says is true: it's not enough to like films because the vast majority of their viewers have deemed them good. You have to have a justifiable reason, otherwise, your opinion is a moot point that is being set up to be knocked down. That's why bad films like The Usual Suspects, The Boondock Saints and Fight Club have gotten so popular: a lot of people started to say they were good simply because they were different until the point where it would be considered taboo to cast a bad word against them (see my reconsideration of Donnie Darko to see what I am talking about).

But now I have gotten off topic because those kids are talking about movies they liked. I'm talking about good movies: movies where you can see a masterful director making the best out of what they have been given. I'm talking about appreciating good lighting and editing and camera angles; all that stuff that lead to a films overall style. Too often people confuse movies they like with movies that are good. Anyone can express if they likeed something to some sort of extent, but few people have the knowledge to judge whether a film is actually good or not.

That finally brings me to Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island which is the kind of film that really tests Scorsese's (or any great filmmaker's) audience and separates the film "viewers" from the film "watchers." I say this because as I was watching Shutter Island, someone in the back of the theater was laughing as each new revelation of the story was revealed, clearly so disgusted with the path the story had taken that he just had to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. Then, after the screening, I heard some teenage girl declare it the "gayest" movie she had ever seen. Really, I thought, these are the people who go to see Scrosese's movies?

But you see, Shutter Island is a good movie. It's actually a masterpiece if you don't take the story into consideration. It's a masterpiece in film style, perfectly evoking a long forgotten time and genre of filmmaking. Scorsese flawlessly evokes the look and feel of the 50s film noir and uses that as a grounds to create the suspense of horror of the story. How does it do it? Well how about the brilliant overhead lighting, casting long shadows up walls and across floors, the shot that begins as a close up of Leonardo DiCaprio's face until pulling up to reveal the vastness of a cliff side lurking just behind him, one wrong move leading to death. Then there's my favourite shot in the movie. It takes place in Ward C and is an overhead shot on a low angle that shows a maze of steel stairs and corridors hitning that the story starting to come apart by perfectly representing the main character's state of mind: cold, dark, confused, and going in an endless tangle of directions all at once. The examples could go on for days.

That's great filmmaking. If the story isn't up to Scrosese's standards, well at least he still brought his A-game to the table. That's the problem with Scrosese as a pop culture icon: everyone can see the brilliance of the tracking shot in Goodfellas because tracking shots are big and obvious and draw attention to themselves, but when Scrosese goes subtle, pays homage to a past film genre, creates for his film the style it deserves and not the one that announces itself as film style, the movie is passed off or thrown away, as if it never occurred to these people to ask why Scrosese is considered, after all, one of America's best living filmmakers in the first place, because, believe it or not, there is a justifiable reason. It's the job (and the fun) of movie lovers to figure it out.

And the Oscar Went To...

The Oscars are over. What will Nataniel R write about now over at Film Experience considering he was averaging around an ungodly 3-5 Oscars posts a day? So what did I think of the Oscars? They were okay. Some things worked, some didn't. There was a lack of drama except for one interrupted acceptance speech for best short documentary. That said, I just wanted to share a couple of random observations I made throughout the night.

• Steven Martin and Alec Baldwin are funny guys. Hopefully though, if there is ever a pair of hosts again they can have dialogue that sounds more like a routine and not an improv at Second City. The picture of them backstage in a couple's Snuggie was a huge laugh though, as was Martin's comments about writing Geoffrey Fletcher's speech.


• Not only was Neil Patrick Harris' opening song completely unglamourous and mostly unfunny, but what was with the lighting in the audience? The camera was cutting to people in the darkness as he was singing about them.


• Robert Downey Jr. could make a funeral funny. Best presenter of the night.


• Sean Penn managed to go the whole night without kicking or punching anyone but still couldn't manage a coherent introduction to the Best Actress nominees. *Update* I haven't even published this post and I'm eating my own words.


• Jeff Bridges is a rare kind of star: he dedicated his Best Actor award to his late parents, he's been in a marriage for over 30 years, he's acting has never been undermined, to my knowledge, by any personal drama and he's a heck of a great actor on top of it. Did his speech ramble on? Sure it did, but he deserved the moment.


• Tyler Perry: "I'm on stage at the Oscars. I better make the most of it because it probably won't happen again." My thoughts exactly.


• I don't know what's worse, a pointless montage paying homage to horror films or the fact that it included scenes from Twilight. And to think, this is why no original songs were performed.


• Although it was an impressive display of physical acrobatics, Mad Hatter said it: if I wanted to watch America's Next Dance Crew, I could have changed the channel to it. I think it's safe to say we can thank Adam Shankman for that number.


• Precious won Best Adapted Screenplay. I picked Up in the Air to win. I guess I learned a valuable lesson: don't pick the better film to win because it probably won't.


• Mo'Nique's acceptance speech was one of the best and most heartfelt. She thanked Hatti McDaniel, the first black actress to win an award for Gone With the Wind, for going through when she had to go through so she wouldn't have to. Back then awards were given out during dinner and McDaniel was forced to sit at a table by herself.


• I don't know if she deserved to win or not, but Sandra Bullock's speech was good too.


• Thinking about Best Actress, Oprah almost had me sold on Gabby Sidibe and then I realized that she probably won't have much of a career after Precious because, not to sound course or anything but, she's can't really play anything but fat black girls.


• Did you see that moment before she read the winner when Barbara Streisand said "It's finally happened," giving Lee Daniels just one second of hope?


• Kathryn Bigelow is 58 and still looks better than most of the young stars in attendance. Good for her. Also nice to see her take home the big awards as she hasn't exactly been the kind of filmmaker you'd expect to make award winning films in the past.


• I was strangely unmoved by the John Hughes tribute. The montage of his work was weak and, outside of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles and Sixteen Candles I've never found his work anything more than simply entertaining and this tribute didn't do anything to change my mind about him, or his deserving a separate honour all to himself
  
• Speaking of honouring late celebrities: where the hell was Farah Fawcett in the montage?


• Ben Stiller bounced back this year after his tasteless parody of Joaquin Phoenix last year. He played the Avatar get-up perfectly, as a man who looked like a jackass and knew it. That said, where was all the other big comic talent like Will Farrell and Jack Black? Did Shankman sacrifice them for Taylor Lautner and Kristien Stewart?


• Next year, how about going back to five Best Picture nominations? That's all anyone really needs.
  
• Why is Pedro Almodovar introducing a category that he clearly deserved to be nominated in?


• Speaking of Best Foreign Film: do voters just pull names out of a hat for this category? Remember a few years ago when Pan's Labyrinth won every award it was nominated for except Best Foreign Film? I think Almodovar got the shaft that year too.


• While we are on this topic: why does Quintin Tarantino feel the need to start yelling into the mic at every awards show? He did it at the Grammys and now he has done it here too.


• I long for a year when Jason Reitman will actually be the frontrunner. He really deserves some wins.


• I got three of my predictions wrong. Not bad.

With that said, I noticed two big Celebrity Connections last night. Check 'em out:

Could T-Bone Burnett really just be James Cameron in disguise? You Decide.

Could Hurt Locker writer Mark Boal be Jason Reitman in disguise? You Decide

Eli Roth Again

Sometimes when filmmakers become great they use all of their power in order help build up new and exciting artists in order to give them the shot they need and deserve. Unfortunately though, sometimes the wrong people get famous and end up helping nothing.

Take Eli Roth for example, who I clearly expressed by dislike for the other day. So today Hollywood Insider is saying that Lionsgate (who have worked with Roth on both Hostel movies) has picked up a film from a newcomer that Roth produced: call it paying it forward after Quentin Tarantino basically handed Roth a career by putting his name on Hostel.

The movie in question is called The Last Exorcism and it's about a priest who has his faith tested when he comes into contact with a young girl possessed by the devil who he needs to exorcise.

Funny, that plot sounds kind of like a little masterpiece from more than a few years back that you might have heard of. I think it was called The Exorcist or something like that? Maybe next time Eli.

Celebrities Behaving Badly

There's no news or editorializing here. I just wanted to express how much I love it when celebrities are caught behaving badly. I loved Christian Bale's freak out on the set of Terminator Salvation, I loved David O. Russell throwing a spazz at Lilly Tomlin on the set of I Heart Huckabees or headbutting George Clooney on the set of Three Kings and Bill O'Riley losing it while filming Inside Edition still makes me laugh out loud every time.

However, there may be none more apologetic in their public displays of childish behaviour than Quentin Tarantino. From flipping off a booer at Cannes while accepting the Palm D'Or for Pulp Fiction, to insulting a reporter on TV who called Kill Bill senselessly violent and misogynistic, to spitting on someone on the Oscar red carpet in the 90s, Tarantino never seems to lose his class.

Here is one of my favourite videos of him, slapping a paparazzi in a Starbucks parking lot. This officially cements Tarantino as the hippest Hollywood bad boy to beat. I know it's an oldy, but it's still a goody. Enjoy.