My Beef

I personally think that the most important section of any blog is the comments. The comments, after all, are the things that keep the piece alive. They give it a pulse by being inspired by it, challenging it, adding too it, whatever. They are what allows the piece to live on and grow after it's publication. Thus, I cherish every one of my commenters whether they are praising me, challenging me, testing me or calling me "gay" as one person did after my Eli Roth Sucks post on Suite101.

Another thing the comments do is make a blog feel more like an interactive community instead of just some writer talking down to their readers. How many times, when a new LAMB entry comes up, do people, in the information section, write that they don't want their blog to be an interactive community? I haven't seen one yet and I read just about all of them.

It therefore baffles me/frustrates me/makes me question the writer's intentions when I take the time to comment on a post and the writer never responds. I don't expect responses to little nothing comments like hey, good job, but 90% of the time I don't leave those kinds of comments. When I comment I like to think of something of some kind of depth to say. The writer, after all, has taken their time to write an intelligent, engaging piece, the least I can do is match him/her in the comments. I'm a horrible perfectionist so sometimes I'll point out an error in logic, a mix up in continuity, stuff like that. I'm not trying to be condescending, just being anal. Sometimes I will continue on with the point being made in the post, offer an alternate way of viewing things or maybe just full-out disagree, in a friendly, respectful way of course.

So when I go back to check if anyone has responded to my comments (face it, everyone does because if there is one thing a blogger loves more than comments it's responses to their comments on other blogs) I'd like to at least see that the effort I have taken to help create an interactive environment in said person's blog has been acknowledged.

Granted, no one is perfect. I've probably missed responding to some comments because I'll get them, need to think about what has been said and forget to come back. It happens, but I try my hardest to ensure that I have responded to every one's comment that requires response. That is, after all, why I choose the option to allow me to approve comments before posting them. Not because I want to censor them, but because I want to make sure I read every one.

I'm not, in this post, referring to any blog or blogger in particular and I feel blessed that most of the regular commenters here do in fact provide comments that are intelligent, well thought out and do keep the conversation going. Sure, not all of my posts lend themselves to comment, but you guys do your best. What I am ultimately saying is that, we should value our comment section above all else. It is, after all, our only way to connect with our readers on an intimate level. To be honest, I've stopped commenting and even, in some cases reading blogs written by bloggers who don't respond to their comments.

What do you think?

Movie Meme

I don't know how started the Movie Meme that is going around right now but it seems like Jess at Insight into Entertainment and Andrew at Encore are the main players at this time. Like Simon, who's idea I am stealing here, I don't have time to follow along and make posts every day for a month so I'm just going to do it all in one post and you can read it if you feel like it. So here goes,

Day 01 - Sequel that should not have been made

--Every Rocky movie after the second one. They all really lost touch with what made the original so special and became just a bunch of stock sports cliches.

Day 02 - Movie that you think more people should see

--Best of Youth- The best 6 hour movie I can think of.

Day 03 - Favorite Oscar-nominated movie from most recent ballot

--Up in the Air. It was a funny, touching movie that had a lot of truth in it, both from the human side and the corporate side. It especially rang true for me as a Human Resources graduate.

Day 04 - Movie that makes you laugh every time

--FUBAR. I don't know if it's a Canadian thing. I don't know if it's a growing up in a small town where there actually are a lot of people like this thing but damn this movie is funny no matter what mood I am in and I find new things that are hilarious every time.

Day 05 - Movie you loathe

--Fight Club (nihilistic garbage parading as satire), Boondock Saints (over stylized z-grade Tarantino wannabe), everything Eli Roth, everything Tyler Perry, this list goes on.

Day 06 - Movie that makes you cry every time

--The Polar Express. Poor little Billy, Christmas just doesn't work out for him.

Day 07 - Least favorite movie by a favorite actor or actress

--Christopher Walken, Kangaroo Jack, The Wedding Crashers or Click

Day 08 - Movie that should be required high school viewing

--Requiem for a Dream

Day 09 - Best scene ever

--The fountain scene in La Dolche Vita or the first 10 minutes of 8 1/2

Day 10 - A movie you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving

-- High School Musical 3. Deal with it.

Day 11 - A movie that disappointed you

--Inception, even though I gave it 5 stars.

Day 12 - Best soundtrack/background music in a scene

--Easy Rider, duh.

Day 13 - Favorite animated movie

--The Polar Express or Snow White

Day 14 - Favorite film in black and white

--La Dolce Vita

Day 15 - Best musical

--In general Rent; as a movie, Hairspray maybe.

Day 16 - Your guilty pleasure movie

--High School Musical 3 again.

Day 17 - Favorite series of related movies

--Too hard to pick. How about Dirty Harry?

Day 18 - Favorite title sequence

-Can't think of one right now.

Day 19 - Best movie cast

--Robert Altman's Short Cuts

Day 20 - Favorite kiss

--Clint Eastwood and Merly Streep in Bridges of Madison County

Day 21 - Favorite romantic couple

--John Cusack and Ione Skye, Say Anything

Day 22 - Favorite final scene/line

--Zampano on the beach in La Strada

Day 23 - Best explosion or action scene

The Obvious ones: Bullit or The French Connection. The not obvious: The motorbike chase in The Bourne Ultimatum

Day 24 - Quote you use most often

--The movies are so rarely great art that if we can't enjoy great trash there's no point in going- Pauline Kael.

Day 25 - A movie you plan on watching (old or new)

--High Plains Drifter might be next

Day 26 - Freakishly weird movie ending

--How about one of the most freakishly weird movies ever: Werner Herzog's Even Dwarfs Started Small

Day 27 - Best villain

--Gary Oldman in Leon, John Malkovich in In the Line of Fire, Dr. Octopus in Spider-Man 2, the Joker of course

Day 28 - Most over-hyped movie

--easily three of the most overrated movies are A Clockwork Orange, Reservoir Dogs and The Usual Suspects

Day 29 - Movie you have watched more than ten times

--Honestly, probably Space Jam

Day 30 - Saddest death scene

--Terms of Endearment, La Strada, The Green Mile, American History X

Day 31 - Scene that made you stand up and cheer

--This one:

The Celebrity Connection: Dolph Lundgren

Dolph Lungren may always be most famous for playing Ivan Drago, the most ridiculous character in the whole Rocky series (although I bet there's at least one out there who swears by I Come in Peace). As far as 80s action heroes (or villains) went, Lundgren was never a very engaging actor, if you could even call what he does acting. It's more like starring, menacing, towering, etc. Put it this way, it never took Lundgren's agent much imagination in deciding what kind of roles to find for him. Lundgren is one of the many action stars who will be featured in Sylvester Stallone's nearly here The Expendables (maybe Stallone will give him some dialogue this time?). It's hard to say if the movie will be any good but, as someone who grew up on 80s action, I'm certainly looking forward to it. On that note, check this out:

Could Chuck from Planet 51 just be Dolph Lundgren in disguise? You decide.

Dinner for Schmucks (4 out of 5)

Dinner for Schmucks is one of the very few funny comedies that I can think of that knows how to use caricature to its advantage. Come to think of it, caricature is the only possible way this film could work. From any other angle the material would be tasteless and offensive. As a portrait of caricatures running lose amongst their own it’s very funny, kind of sweet and even maybe a touch endearing as well. It’s still, as far as the dinner itself is concerned, a little in bad taste, but it remains a tasty meal.



The set-up for the film is borrowed from the 1998 French comedy The Dinner Game in which a sixth floor analyst, knowing there is a vacancy in the company, comes up with a brilliant idea to woo a hundred million dollar client their way. However the boss (Bruce Greenwood) wants to get to know Tim (Paul Rudd, playing the straight man) a little better before giving him the new office and invites him to the monthly company dinner.



The object of the dinner is for each employee to go out into the world and find someone of very “special” talents which, without the quotations, translates into stupid. Tim, by strange coincidence runs into Barry (Steve Carell) who is, among other things, a very “special” kind of guy. Barry is an IRS man who, in his spare time, combs the streets looking for dead mice that he can stuff and dress up and put into scenes that he can photograph and make models out of. When Tim meets him his latest Mousterpiece involves recreating The Last Supper down to the very last beard.



Not impressed is Tim’s girlfriend Julie (Stephanie Szostak) who owns an art gallery and is working with the devilishly pretentious artist Kieran (Flight of the Concord’s Jemaine Clement) who explains to Tim his philosophies on the beauty of living with goats and would be considered a very "special" kind of guy where he not, ya know, famous.



Also amongst the collection of colour is Barry’s boss Therman (Zack Galifianakis) who believes that he can control people’s minds, reminding of what Socrates said about how orators can convince a group of people more about medicine than a doctor, assuming all of those people knew nothing of medicine to begin with.



If the plot sounds crass, well, in a way it is. But it works because Clement, Galifianakis and especially Carell play the characters not only high, but straight as well. It’s obvious that all of these men are exaggerations of comic types so, when it comes time to sit back, during the dinner and watch them be mocked, it is, not quite okay, but acceptable in a funny kind of way.

Mike's DVD Haul

I have the mind of a collector. When I start collecting something I don't operate in half measures. I must have the best. It started as a kid with stuffed animals, went from grade 8 into high school with CDs and now has become totally focused on DVDs. Maybe that's why Adaptation is one of my favourite movies and The Orchid Thief one of my favourite books: I understand John Laroche and his passion to go great lengths to collect rare, beautiful orchids. I will go into any store, no matter shape or size and browse through every corner of it in hopes of finding that one hidden treasure or that one great deal. I spend hours on websites, comparing prices, seeing where the best deals are and so on. And I must admit: my DVD collection is pretty sweet. It's only got around a thousand titles which, to an avid collector, may seem like not very many but if it lacks in quantity it makes up for ten times over in quality. So confidant in my DVD collection am I that I even wrote a post about it back before anyone was even reading.

So anyway, to come to my point, a while back Travis at The Movie Encyclopedia started doing regular posts on DVD Hauls. He'd go out, buy some DVDs, come back and share his booty with us. I loved it. It was pure vanity and offered really no use to anyone and yet, as a collector, I loved seeing what he was buying, admiring things I wanted, and questioning his taste on others. It was a lot of fun and even though he hasn't done one in a while, I hope to see them come back.

During the course of my one year of going back to school I didn't buy many DVDs. When I got a job, the first thing I wanted to do was blow some money and remember what it felt like to buy mass amounts of DVDs, of getting them home, unwrapping them, looking at the inserts, etc. So that's what I did. A lot of them I ordered from Barns and Noble whose annual Criterion Collection sale is a blessing. All of them, regardless of what outlet they came from are great, classic film from master directors and, because I'm vain too when it comes to my DVDs, I thought I'd share with you what I picked up over the last couple weeks.

Au Revior Les Enfants was Louis Malle's first French feature back after immigrating to America with mixed results. Many of his fellow Frenchmen never forgive him for leaving but this did not detract him from producing what is maybe his most personal film. More straightforward than his early French New Wave films, Enfants is apparently based on Malle`s own life in which a French schoolboy in occupied France accidentally gives up the identity of his Jewish friend and the pain he must live with as a result of that.

Spirits of the Dead is an anthology film based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe. It features three shorts: one by Louis Malle, one by Roger Vadim and one by (and this is the reason I own it) Ferderico Fellini. Other than that I haven`t seen it.

When thinking about great British filmmakers there are really only two names to consider (and, sorry to say, neither of them are Christopher Nolan). One is Ken Loach and the other is Mike Leigh. There are two varieties of Mike Leigh films: the predominantly comic and the predominately bleak (and I say predominately because none of them exist in one way or another without both elements). Naked is one of the bleakest. It also started the career of David Thewlis, now best know as Remus Lupin from the Harry Potter movies.

Jean-Pierre Melville is often considered the Godfather of the French New Wave because his Bob le Flambeur (remade in America as The Good Thief) more or less kick started the whole movement with it`s quick, cool, ultra-hip love of American crime films. Like early Godard and even maybe Tarantino, Mellville was the king of super cool genre films (although he also made other, powerful dramas like Army of Shadows) that were both exciting and funny. These films are any movie lover`s delight.

Jean-Luc Godard, love him or hate him, is the mad cinema anarchist that cannot be ignored. His Breathless was the most important film debut since Citizen Kane and helped to define an entire new generation of films while also breaking down conventions, creating new techniques and generally just changing the way we understood movies and pushing the limits of how they could be made. Of course Godard would later go off the tracks, making films so dense and complex that they are nearly unwatchable but one thing about Godard is he`s never boring. Neither Masculin Femanin or Tout va Bien are major Godard works but they are still highly interesting political statements like none anyone but Godard could make.

No DVD Haul is complete with some Ingmar Bergman and these three films were the last ones I needed to own everything Bergman has available in North America. I once said that no one should trust a critic who didn`t know that Last House on the Left was a remake of Bergman`s Virgin Spring, a masterpiece from Bergman`s early career before his later, more challenging works. The Magic Flute, an adaptation of Mozart`s opera is an interesting film because of how uncharacteristic it is for a Bergman film. Maybe his lightest, most joyous film, it`s a strange vanity project that doesn`t naturally fit anywhere in the progression of Bergman`s career but it is still a lovely rendering of a classic opera. I haven`t seen Autumn Sonata but it is characterized as being the one collaboration between fellow countrymen Ingmar Bergman and Hollywood bombshell Ingrid Bergman (no relation).

Grown Ups (2 out of 5)

There’s nothing particularly wrong with Grown Ups exact that there’s nothing particularly right with it either. It’s everything you’d expect from an Adam Sandler comedy: it’s got poo and pee and grown men acting like stupid children, talking about the things that most fascinate those who never quite manage to grow out of grade eight like boobies and tree ropes and shooting arrows into the sky and seeing who is the last to run for cover, etc. It’s all perfectly serviceable and inoffensive, but so what? Why be content on being stuck in middle ground? It’s amusing without every really being funny, nice without ever really being sweet and immature without every really being rambunctious. And then it ends. It's characters go on vacation and the movie goes right along with them.

The film stars all of Adam Sandler’s go to guys: David Spade, Chris Rock, Kevin James and Rob Schneider, who all, more or less, play variations of their go to character. They’re five high school buddies who go back for a weekend at the old cottage after the death of their beloved basketball coach.

Their week, unsurprisingly, will consist of them all sitting around, drinking beers, trading one-liner insults as if they’d been keeping them to themselves all these years and just couldn’t wait for the moment they would reunite for the chance to try them out. Every once in a while, they decide to get up and actually do something like a trip to the water park in which, first one, and then all of them realize that the dye they put in the water to detect pee, well it isn’t an old fairy tale.

Grown Ups does a lot of that. It’ll give you a joke that is kind of amusing and then repeat it again and again as is the case when Spade, while running, trips over a stump to land face first in doo-doo only to, moments later, have it put right back there when Sadler runs over his back. It’s like director Dennis Dugan and his boys need to either make sure they wring it for every laugh it can get or to make sure we understand just how funny they are being. And that’s ultimately the problem. All of these men, at any given moment, are acting as if they are really funny guys. The best comedy happens when it involves people who don’t know that comedy is happening to them. Every laugh in Grown Ups seems to come packaged with a wink to the camera.

Although Grown Ups is a pedestrian movie in which its stars can all play it safe and phone it in, Spade, although never mistaken for a great comedic talent, is particularly lazy playing the freewheeling Marcus who drinks too much, sleeps on the couch, beds anything that gives him a second look and is that crass, bloated moron that no one really likes, but you don’t have the heart to tell. Spade’s been playing that character his entire career and here essentially looks like a man who walked on set, delivered his lines once and went back to bed.

As for the rest of the cast: Rock is reduced to bad puns about his mother-in-law’s enormous bunions, Sandler does Sandler, while James, the most likable of the bunch manages to get off a few laughs here and there. Schnieder however, again not surprisingly, plays right into big caricature as the pretentious, toupee clad spiritualist husband of a much older woman and three daughters, only one of which, of course, is believable as his.

The story has a mild message about how Sandler, not too believable as a powerful Hollywood agent, is distressed that his kids are too lazy to do anything for themselves and spend all day playing violent video games, and wants them to get outside and discover the fun of nature that him and his buddies had when they were young.

The wives of the men are played by Salma Hayek, Maria Bello and Maya Rudolph who bring more star power to an already crowded story. In the end the movie is too bland, the characters all too nice, the comedy all too unsophisticated to really work. The guys seem to be having fun, and that helps, but in the end, the realization creeps in that the premise of five guys sitting around at a beautiful cottage, going over the past would be a lot more enjoyable to be doing instead of watching.

The Karate Kid (4.5 out of 5)

After 12 year old Dre (Jaden Smith) relocates from Detroit to China with his mother (Taraji P. Henson) after she is transferred, he meets a cute Asian schoolgirl who plays the violin. “You’re not doing it right,” her instructor tells her. “You have to play the pauses.” That’s valuable advice that just about every big Hollywood movie should take advantage of. It’s exactly what The Karate Kid does right. This is not, despite every opportunity to be, some slam bang action movie or some lazy remake but a grand family entertainment. It is funny and exciting and warm and heartfelt and beautiful and genuinely cares about its character on some fundamental human level. Most movies can’t be bothered and sleepwalk their way to formulaic conclusions. The Karate Kid is awake and alive.

In China Dre quickly falls out of favor with a group of young martial arts students who bully him, torment him and even beat him up. He hates China, wants to go home and, unfortunately for him, the kids all have the athletic capabilities of trained Hollywood stuntmen.

Then one day, when one of the kids is prepared to administer one kick too many to poor Dre’s ribs, he is saved by his building’s maintenance man Mr. Han (Jackie Chan). Dre is livid and wants to learn kung-fu in order to beat those kids into submission. No tells Han wisely, “Kung-fu is not to create wars, it is to make peace among enemies.” Knowing that, somewhere along the line, these kids have been taught an ugly, violent kung-fu, Han goes to speak with their teacher, an evil man who teaches his students to inflict pain to their opponents and fight without mercy. The bullying will stop, promises the teacher, if Dre fights his students one-to-one in the upcoming tournament. Thus, Mr. Han becomes Dre’s personal kung-fu teacher. His first lesson: hanging up his jacket. “Kung-fu is in everything we do,” explains Han. “It is life.”

What delicate insight The Karate Kid provides. Filmed in China, it’s a film that not only frolics in the beauty of the country, but respects and understands its traditions. The film misses every opportunity to romanticize kung-fu as an outlet for kids to beat each other into pulps and instead meditates on the power of kung-fu as, not a medium for violence, but a way of life that teaches honour, respect and discipline above all else. In an age where summer movies jump out of the gate with both guns blazing, it’s so refreshing to find one that takes it’s time, develops it’s characters and understands them and their ways and respects their culture.

Because of this, the film has, not only a calmness, but a fullness to it as well. Kids are so used to be battered over the head with non-stop computer generated images that it’s a godsend to see scenes like the ones where the camera spins around Dre and Han as they practice atop the Great Wall of China, taking a moment away from the fight just to admire the view. Or one of the film’s best scenes in which Dre and Han practice at night, their shadows cast against the wall after a big dramatic moment. It’s not just another Hollywood fight. It’s a healing process.

How powerful these lessons will be to both children and adults who yearn for the days when movies where about stories that meant something and characters we could care about and root for. It’s strange to call The Karate Kid a film in the classic tradition of grand Hollywood entertainment when it seems to be the least traditional film in a summer filled with flying tanks, stampeding bulls and cities folding in on themselves. As Han, like all old maintenance men who are experts are kung-fu surely must, uses Dre, The Karate Kid could be the first step in Hollywood learning to rediscover itself.

All of this is due in no small part to the actors. In Jaden Smith you get an actor who knows how to play a real, likable kid. Sure, you can see the smooth wit of his superstar father Will shining out from around the edges but this, like dad, is a genuinely talented kid. Smith is funny and smooth, not in a condescending way, but in a way that a cool but kind of insecure 12 year old kid would be. But like all kids that age, he’s not perfect and has a lesson or two he is yet to learn. That he learns it through his training is not cheaply sentimental but reflects a genuine growing process in which a kid, doesn’t quite become a man, but steps onto the road towards it.

Jackie Chan, slowing down in his age, has hung up his hat as an action movie hero and instead does a wonderful job of being old and wise, while never quite letting go of that boyish charm that made him a star in the first place. His Han is also not a perfect man and, despite his hard, ragged exterior, houses deep dramatic hurts that Chan is able to perfectly channel.

If the film takes on wrong step it is in the tournament itself in which kids fight like highly skilled Hollywood martial artists and not, you know, like kids. The big, supposed to be impressive moves, which are mostly aided by computer assistance, are the only unnatural thing in the entire movie and end up distracting for a moment from what is, otherwise a wonderful, endearing film.