Lest we Forget

For no discernible reason, John McTiernan's 2003 military thriller Basic popped into my head the other day. What was strange was that I had to stop whatever I was doing at the moment and place all of my concentration on pondering whether or not I had seen it. I knew that it was one of those movies that came out while I was in grade 12, a year in which I saw upwards of 10 new movies. It was a strange year for me. I had my regular 5 classes during that semester one of which was the drama production class so Romeo and Juliet ate up all of my spare time (I was Mercutio if you care to know) plus I was also doing an English class through correspondence because my high school had guidance counsellors whose last priority was providing guidance and so I was otherwise one credit short of graduating. Needless to say, watching new movies was not high on my priority list.

And then summer hit and for three straight months while University was still a distant concern, I played catch up. I had a girlfriend at the time who would tape me movies off of TMN (Canada's answer to HBO) which she had and I did not and so I juggled watching those while renting everything else to fill in the gaps. I also made a promise to myself that summer that I would rent everything new that came out on DVD that week as opposed to just the ones I had wanted to see as was standard procedure up until then. The greatest fear of any movie fanatic is to be asked questions about new movies and not having seen a one of them. I never wanted to be in that situation again.

Getting back on track, I finally decided that one of those films that had been taped for me and that I had watched was Basic. The thing was: I didn't remember a single thing about the movie. I'm generally pretty good in terms of long term memory and can usually walk away with something to remember almost every movie by even though I watch between 400 and 500 each year for the first time. However, nothing could bring back any memory of Basic. I knew it had John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson and was directed by McTiernan and I remember seeing ads for it on TV and especially an image of a darkened Jackson looming in a doorway (am I making this up?) and that I hated it, but what the movie was about, what happened and how everything was revolved in the end eluded me entirely.

There's been other movies since that I have mostly forgotten, which led me to ponder, just like if a tree falls in the forest for no one to hear, if you don't remember anything about a movie, have you actually seen it? Consuming so many movies, surely not all of them will be remembered, some rightfully so while others maybe not, and if a movie doesn't leave a lasting impression is that not more it's fault than ours? Of course, as is the case with the scenario above, sometimes I watch movies just to catch up, to say I've seen them and to increase my filmic vocabulary as much as possible. Maybe it all stems from that one fateful year where I decieded that, whenever someone asks about about a movie, no matter how great or insipid, I want to be able to say I have seen it.

But here's the problem, and the question I pose to everyone for debate (I haven't done one if these in far too long): should I have even wasted my time with Basic? Sure, I've seen it, and in the unlikely event that anyone ever brings it up, I'll be able to say "Oh yeah, I saw that a long time ago," but have I really gained anything other than to know that the movie was bad? It seems all I have is a blackout in my memory. It gets me one step closer to having seen McTiernan's entire body of work (and if nothing else I am a film history buff and therefore a director completest by association) but now I've given two hours of my life to a film that could have been spent with a better one; one I will remember. But then again, if I didn't see it, how would I know I'd one day forget it completely?

So what do you think. Is film completeism healthy or should we only base our time on consuming movies that appeal to us (I certainly had no interest is seeing Basic other than that I felt I should just to have seen it)? What do you do in situations like this? Are you the same way as me or do you think all this is insanity and a waste of time? Let me know.

Year in Review: The Best Albums of 2010

I don't usually write about music because, despite the fact tat I love music and it was my first love before movies, I don't really know anything about it insomuch as that I don't know how to talk about it in the intelligent kind of informed manner that I try to talk about movies. I take more of a 'I like what I like attitude' towards music. Regardless, Alex at Boycotting Trends, a blog that, if you don't already, you should be reading, did a music list and since I'm still working out the last few slots on my movie list (if the Academy has until February, I can take at least another week), here's a list of my favourite albums of 2010:

6) The Pretty Reckless - Light Me Up: Say what you will about Taylor Momsen, sure she was in one Gus Van Sant flick, but being a Gossip Girl star doesn't do much for her teen rebel cred, but she and her backing band sure know how to kick out some catchy jams. At a brisk 35 minutes, Momsen and crew crank out 10 short, catchy, punchy tracks that are a little bit The Runaways and a lot of pop rock attitude, with not a single dud in the bunch. It's unfortunate that we live in society that thrives on tabloid exploits, where Momsen usually finds herself front an centre, because, just looking at the music, this kid has a pretty bright future.



5) Mike Patton - Mondo Cane: Named after the 70s Italian exploitation documentary, Mondo Cane is singer Mike Patton's foray into Italian opera music and one more notch on his belt to prove that he can sing just about anything and get away with it. This time he uses his silky pop voice to croon out melodies that sit atop lovely orchestral compositions.



4) Avenged Sevenfold - Nightmare: Apparently AX7's newest disc started as a political concept album before the untimely death of their drummer Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan, at which point that scrapped that idea and wrote their darkest album in years. Giving up the poppy experimentation of their self-titled masterpiece, AX7 this time provide a tighter, darker and more thoughtful album than anything in their back catalogue. Still catchy as hell, the album benefits from having ex-Dream Theatre drum wizard Mike Portnoy behind the kit. There's one too many ballads towards the end but this is still AX7 at their most open and personal as they explore concepts of life and how easily it can be taken away.



3) HIM - Screamworks: Despite that fact that HIM more or less stick to a tried and true formula from album to album they still always manage to provide something fresh on each new outing. Here, moving away from the darker or more progressive tone of Venus Doom, HIM find themselves as poppy and infectious as ever, mixing 80s synth pop with their trademark goth romance style to create something that is both infectious and head bobbing. With newly found sobriety, frontman and mastermind Ville Valo seems to now be focusing on smaller details to bring songs to their maximum potential. Tighter and more vibrant than they have ever been, this is a career highlight for one of pop-metal's most consistent bands.



2) Far - At Night We Live: Far have always been the underdogs at what they do. Maybe it's because they do it just about better than anyone else around them. Back in the 90s, after getting away from sounding like a Pearl Jam cover band, Far perfected the style of "post-hardcore" (whatever that means), released two genre defining albums and then broke up all before the likes of Thursday, Boy Sets Fire and Thrice showed up to bring the genre closer to the mainstream. Now back, some will complain that the sounds of At Night we Live are too streamlined compared to their dirtier, heavier early albums, but what they have delivered here is their most focused, catchy and emotional album to date. From the almost Nu-Metalish rumblings of opener "Deafening" to the beautiful title track (dedicated to Deftones bassist Chi Cheng who is still in a coma after a car accident several years ago) Far are still doing it better than anyone else and not getting the respect they deserve.



1) Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - The reason Richard Pryor was the best stand-up comedian who ever lived was because, despite being hilarious, he was never afraid to put every bit of himself up on stage. He looked at the hurts, turmoils and tragedies of his life and managed to laugh at them and thus himself. From his health problems to run-ins with the law, personal problems and even his drug addiction that almost resulted in his death, nothing was off limits for Pryor, all great art, after all, does come from great suffering. Therefore Pryor was able to pull off an act that few ever achieve: he made comedy that was both meaningful and yet hilarious. It fulfilled the most basic fundamentals we expect from comedy and yet still left us with something to go home with and think about.

Kanye West's newest album succeeds for all of the same reasons. Kanye is the kind of man who begs you at hate him from strange Twitter messages, award show interruptions, talk show outbursts, political statements on live television, naked pictures sent to fans and general cockiness. And yet, unlike other mainstream rappers, West feels like he is the one who most desperately needs to work to stay relevant. Fame may have been handed to him but, unlike his contemporaries, he needs to constantly struggle to stay relevant and his boasting about himself and general air of self-importance thus seems sometimes less like arrogance and more like insecurity: he needs to tell himself he's good just as much as he needs to tell the world.

From all of this is born one of the best, most original, creative, indulgent and brilliant rap albums to ever come from a mainstream recording artist. Every track is fried off like a statement as Kayne takes all of his pains, trails and tribulations and throws them atop 70 minutes worth of starkly creative beats and rhymes. This is the album of a man who has nothing to prove but everything to lose. And like Pryor, he also manages to make something that is catchy, mainstream and enjoyable as a rap album. But this is more than that: it's a battle cry, a cocky strut, an apology and a revelation that all borders on transcendence as West proves to be in equal measures his own best friend ("Power") and his own worst enemy ("Runaway"). That an album this daring and original comes from a mainstream artist in a culture in which every other song on the radio sounds like it was created from top to bottom by a robot and where talent is a luxury not a necessity, is just proof of how important personality is in music. The bar has been set. Who dares try and cross it?

Merry Christmas Everyone

One Minute Review- Kick-Ass (1 out of 5)

Kick-Ass is a dumb and ugly movie. It starts as a promising satire about teenagers and superheroes and why there are none in real life. A brilliant film seems to be blooming until the it gets bored with being insightful and moves into violent and reprehensible territory. This is a film that plays like the younger, less enlightened cousin of the great Watchmen adaptation. And I don’t mean that as a compliment.

Call me unhip, square, not with it, whatever, but the problem with Kick-Ass is not that it features teenaged superheroes (one an 11 year old girl) but that people actually die; in graphic detail no less. These kids are not superheroes, they are murderers out for vigilante justice. There’s something morally wrong about all this.

Maybe this is a perfectly accurate interpretation of what the comics the film is based on are like. I don’t know. But that director Matthew Vaugh thinks that this material is hip and funny is a complete miscalculation. Here Vaugh is hiding behind satire: as if, as long as the movie is laughing at itself, it can justify anything. That Vaugh does the best to make this all bright and hyper-stylized (too hyper-stylized at times) is credit to his talent and I hope one day a great action movie falls in his lap.

In reality then, Kick-Ass becomes just the thing the material should ultimately want to deviate from: a superhero movie. Except these superheroes kill and steal and are really no better than the criminals they put down. If the movie had actually been about Kick-Ass and his life as an amateur teenage superhero wannabe, well that could have been brilliant, sparkling satire. My vote is for Judd Apatow to helm the reboot a couple years down the line. As it stands it’s just a dumb, action film, filled with characters not developed enough to care much about, with the sad misfortune that most of them are also under the age of 16.

Black Swan (5 out of 5) + The Celebrity Connection: Natalie Portman

The story of Swan Lake: A princess is turned into a swan. True love is the only thing that can break the curse but her love is tricked and falls instead for her evil twin the Black Swan. The princess, who cannot live with the curse and cannot live without love frees herself through death. In a sense, this is the story that director Daron Aronofsky has been working his entire career towards telling. The film may revolve around the trails of a ballerina but Black Swan is no more about ballet than Requiem for a Dream was about drug abuse: it’s about a woman chasing an impossible dream outside of human grasp. That’s what all of Aronofsky’s films have been about.

One of Aronofsky’s great attributes is that he isn’t afraid to follow his characters unapologetically into their own oblivion and thus Black Swan isn’t so much a film as a memorizing thought piece constructed of ideas, fears, hopes and despair that doesn’t so much tell a story as ram headfirst right through a character’s psychological state as it dissipates under mounting pressure. Rarely has self-destruction been so haunting.

Natalie Portman stars as Nina, the naive, precious ballerina who lives with her overbearing mother (Barbara Hersey) who gave up a her own career and now lives vicariously through her daughter. Nina, having dedicated herself entirely to the perfection of her art wants nothing more than to be cast in Thomas Leroy’s (Vincent Cassel) newest rendition of Swan Lake. Leroy, a fierce, sexual, genius, knows that Nina can play the White Swan, but believes her to be too rigid in her perfection to play the Black Swan, who’s technique needs to be lose and seductive. 

The toying Leroy, maybe out of French masochism and maybe because he sees a buried sexual frustration, casts Nina in the part regardless. She is thrilled but practice is torture as she can’t quite nail the part: she is too frigid, too pristine and too desexualized for the Black Swan. Also along to torment her is the new girl Lily (Mila Kunis) who isn’t half the dancer that Nina is but is promiscuous and dangerous and has the dark allure of the Black Swan, a temptress driving Nina slowly towards the brink. There is also Beth (Winona Ryder), Leroy’s former star who has now been forced into retirement and is hospitalized after a (intentional?) car accident as well as Nina’s mother who shelters the girl like a child, keeps her away from all other outside pressure (sex, drugs, life) and gruelingly pushes her towards the perfection she never achieved.

Slowly all of the outside pressures begin to eat away at Nina, destroying her sanity as Leroy abusing her, molesting her, degrading her in order to bring out her inner Black Swam, pushes her, along with Lily, towards discovering her dark side. She is consumed by fear and hatred and sex and even murder as she begins having hallucinations of her being transformed into the Black Swan.

On the surface Black Swan appears to about the way an artist’s ego will slowly lead them into oblivion as they strive to find perfection and meaning in their art. That was, in a very different way, more or less what Aronofsky’s The Wrestler was about as well. However, by conveying Black Swan’s plot and by trapping it into a defined thematic explanation is to subvert away from the hectic, driving, narrative free fall that the film is. Like Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan is more experience than story (this is filmmaking as state-of-mind at its most forceful and, at times, unbearably painful), and is thus more a meditation of how we are slowly driven insane by reaching desperately to achieve the things that are least important in life: fame, money, recognition, perfection ect.

Thus, Aronofsky has always chosen the perfect mediums from which to explore these concepts: math, drugs, cancer, professional wrestling and now ballet: all areas that place value on superficial endeavours and distract from life's essentials: love, friendship, happy, happiness. These are the arts of self-destruction. He makes films about people who are exposed to a plane of their existence that is foreign to them, sending them spiralling into an obsessive state until they have cut themselves off from anything that could provide them solace.

What Nina finds is that to split a personality down and limit it to the influence of either black (Leroy and Lily) or white (her mother) is to create a weak emotional state in which, when one is introduced over top of the other, it will, like cancer, ultimately consume and destroy it’s counterpart. In Black Swan, Nina is ultimately on a quest to find perfection at any cost just to discover that perfection can only be achieved through a sacrifice more grand than anyone should normally be willing to make: a complete and utter sacrifice of the self.

And so Black Swan cannot simply be spoken about in terms of aesthetics, technique, acting, writing; the general pieces that comprise a film, which I have not done here, because it is more than film: it is emotion, expression, ideology and, above all else it is violent, unapologetic rapture. This is one of the year’s best films.

An now a related Celerity Connection:

Could Natalie Portman really be Dakota Fanning in Disguise?

You Decide.

Love and Other Drugs (2.5 out of 5)

One of Chef Gordon Ramsay’s most fundamental rules is that simplicity is key to creating a great dish. That’s kind of what goes wrong with Love and Other Drugs: it tries too hard to be too many things. It’s a good movie lost amidst a sea of variables that all go several different directions of nowhere. The biggest problem is that Maggie (Anne Hathaway) the lead female character has a disease and there is only one reason for any character to ever have a disease in the movies (emotional manipulation). If you can think of another you’re already way ahead of Love and Other Drugs.


Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a hotshot youngster. He’s the son of affluent parents, has a rich entrepreneur brother, and is an expert salesman selling cheap knockoff electronics where he divides his time between getting commission and getting the manager’s girl in the back room. Out of work he decides to pursue a career in the only entry level job in America that pays over 100K in the first year: the sale of pharmaceutical drugs.

It seems like a perfect fit for Jamie so he’s shipped off to Ohio to prove himself. The key is to go in to the doctor’s office, woo the receptionists and nurses, get your drug samples on the back shelf and charm the doctor into prescribing your Zoloft instead of the competition’s Prozac. If you’re good you attain the dream of getting shipped off to sell in Chicago.

Then, pretending to be an intern at one of the offices, he meets Maggie who has all kinds of problems, which right now includes a weird mark on her chest. She’s the kind of girl who’s young, too smart, too beautiful, talks like a second rate Woody Allen movie and has the first stage of Parkinson’s. Too bad for her. Too bad for the movie too. She’s mad after she exposes herself in the examination room only to find out he’s a drug rep not an intern. He asks her out. She rejects. He charms the nurse into her number and she accepts. A word of advice to all movie characters: if you meet a girl on a first date in a coffee shop that plays Bob Dylan in the background, she’s probably got baggage. This leads to a scene in which she psychoanalyzes him to his face as if she knows every trick is his con book. But so do we already, trapping Hathaway in a scene that talks like it's smart but walks like it's just treading water.

She doesn’t want a relationship because she’s, of all coincidences, already had her heart broken by another drug rep who just so happens to be Jamie’s biggest competition. Sure. He’s also emotionally reclusive because to him girls are sex not love. So they have sex, which works for both of them, many times, until Jamie decides he loves her and she decides, against her better judgement to reciprocate. This changes the movie from a light comedy to romance until she visits a Parkinson’s rally and realizes there are others just like her, around the same time that he realizes the worst is yet to come and if he ever wants to make Chicago (a strong likelihood after he gets the chance to start selling Viagra) he’ll need to ditch her or cure her, and the movie switches hats again into melodrama.

I’m pretty sure, if you know anything about the politics of screenwriting, despite all the shifts in tone, you can tell exactly what twist the story will take before arriving at its inevitable conclusion. What you may not anticipate is a pre-third act breather in which Jamie and his recently kicked out of the house brother, transported in from another movie altogether, are invited to a pyjama party by Dr. Stan Knight (Hank Azaria) and his oversized libido. The one demand: they bring the Viagra samples. Of all the sidetracks Love and Other Drugs takes this one is the worst. For a movie that feels long at two hours, a midway pajama party that ends in the hospital after a Viagra side effect takes hold, kills the tone, changes the mood to slapstick before materializing back into sap and achieves really nothing of any narrative significance. Did Zwick, a considerable talent, hold the scene so close to his heart that he simply threw it up in the air to see where it would land? There always seems to be at least one bad scene in even the best Zwick movies. He outdid himself this time.

That’s basically the entire movie, which runs back and forth and up and down the emotional spectrum until it arrives at it's end having achieved nothing much except filling 2 hours. A movie about a drug salesman could be good. So could one about a girl in the beginning stages of an incurable disease and sure enough both Gyllanhaal and Hathaway make a likable pair. They are cute and funny and believable together and left to swim in their own in an open sea of muted comedy and tired melodrama. There's nothing to prescribe that could have cured a movie like this, but like most prescription drugs that needs sales reps, another round of rewrites and one more trip through the editing room may have eased the pain a little. 

I'll Probably Eat Lunch in This Town Again: A Tale of my Falling out with the Movie Business (Part 1)

My writing is always influenced by what I am reading at the time. When it's fiction I'm more introspective, more willing to play with words in order to convey emotions. When it's non-fiction I'm more technical, direct and to the point, especially if it's a film related book. It seems then no surprise that while reading Julia Phillips' tell-all Hollywood memoir You'll Never Eat Lunch in this Town Again that I would decide to write about the short summer that I spent within the movie business. In her book Phillips named names, which I won't do here. It probably wouldn't make any difference but you can never be too careful in this day and age.

As some of you know, sometime in July I wrote a post that declared I had finally snagged a job and it was at a film sales company in Toronto. I had had the job referred to me by K, a Toronto movie veteran and the man who I've been reading scripts for for over 2 years. It seemed like a dream opportunity. I got the call to interview some weeks after sending my resume. The man in charge (X hereon in) wanted to meet me the next day at a Starbucks on his side of town (Etobicko for the Toronto readers). The location seemed strange but I didn't think of it. After having spent almost 4 months of interspersed first interviews and rejection letters I was just happy that anyone wanted to talk to me. And it was a movie job!

I arrived at the Starbucks about 40 minutes early, 20 of which I spent collecting myself in my car in the parking lot, trying not to die with the air conditioning off. I'm like that. I'm paranoid about arriving to anything late and having to travel on the Don Valley Parkway doesn't serve that paranoia well. I know I can get downtown from my house in the afternoon in 20 minutes, I've done it many times. However this has never stopped me from departing 1/5 to 2 hours before the designated interview time. X obviously wasn't there yet so after leaving my car I took a seat inside by the door, making awkward eye contact with everyone who came through as if to silently ask if they were the one here to see me. At exactly 1:02 pm, 2 minutes after out scheduled meeting time, X pulled up in a beat up old standard BMW, well passed it's prime, bathed in a camouflage of rust. To me this guy was an insider. He could have come in rags and been pushing a shopping cart for all I cared. I was the dumbstruck kid staring into the window of the toy store, waiting for the invitation to come in and play. This guy had the golden ticket.

X started the interview by introducing himself and immediately put me on the spot. Why should you get the job was one of his first questions. Coming fresh off a year of studying HR I can tell you now that this is not good interviewing technique and will, 9 times out of 10, yield skewed results. I'm not making excuses for myself, just saying. So I answered the question, not well as I was nervous and thrown but an answer regardless. I tried to keep my composure.

The interview lasted almost an hour and a half and was comprised of very little actual interviewing. I answered questions about myself and my history and progression to the current moment but X mostly explained the company, which was 2 years old and came after he had decided to give up producing. I'd give you a list of credits but I don't know which highlights would impress more: working with Lorenzo Lamas or Kelly Brook's bare boobs.

X also droned on about his own personal philosophy, his history in the film business, his move to Toronto from Montreal, his own personal life lessons, etc. He would later constantly tell me that he was an obsessive reader who always tried to have at least one self-help book going at a time and. Coincidentally, he spoke exactly like a man who always had at least one self-help book going at a time.

We parted company. I was ecstatic to be one step closer to the movie business. The pay was garbage ($400 a week, no commission), unpredictable hours (9 till whenever the work is done), and absolutely no job security. Ever really. That's entertainment. I ate it up.

He told me that he would create a short list of candidates by Friday (this was Tuesday or Wednesday) and would call them back for a second round. I got a call Friday to set up another Starbucks meeting the next day. Once again I put on my shirt and tie and headed, way too early, for Starbucks where there wasn't really any interview, just him talking, explaining the business, going through the whole song and dance again and relying anecdotes from projects passed in which he saved the movie at the last minute. This is one characteristic of everyone who has ever worked on a film set, especially producers. No matter who they were or what they did, they were always the one who came up with the idea that saved the movie at the last minute and if A tells you that once upon a time he worked with B, B will probably turn around and tell that that once upon a time A worked for him. Just smile and nod.

It seemed like a waste of time but one of the first things movie people will tell you is not to waste anyone's time and then will turn around and waste the time of just about anyone within earshot. He was on a schedule this time though, having a speaking engagement at the Mississauga International Film Festival. It didn't prevent the meeting from going on for a whole hour but I didn't care; I wanted it even more now and I was all the closer to getting it.

I was told that X would have a decision made by either Sunday or Monday. I waited all Sunday with baited breath, telling myself I would get it, but no call. I waited all Monday with baited breath, telling myself I would get it, and at 5:00 pm the phone rang. I didn't get it. I was crushed. My dream job had  just slipped away and I had another rejection notch on my belt. It had come down to me and another girl and he went with the girl because he had this notion that most film companies have a female presence. Maybe it's a fair assessment. Essentially he saw too much of himself in me and needed someone to be more personable and social on the phone with potential buyers. He assured me that he saw the potential in me and that I would have a career in film if I wanted one and would help me anyway he could and even suggested that maybe I should consider getting into acquisitions. The conversation lasted a minimum of half an hour. He bid me adieu and told me that he would call me if anything happened. I prayed it wouldn't work out with the evil harpy woman.

He had been extra picky with his selection because he had essentially run the entire company by himself for a year and now he was looking for someone who would come in, learn the trade and stick it out for the long run. The idea being that after a year, you would have learned the ropes and would be well on your way to, if not growing within the company, then moving on to a better one. If nothing else I wanted the job because I imagined it as the first step in my new career away from HR and into the picture business. Just like they taught us in school, I imaged myself going in, gung-ho, affecting change, selling every film to anyone I talked to, going to festivals, crashing parties, building an internal network; you know, making a name for myself and becoming a big deal in the movie business. I think we all have those dreams when starting a new job until slowly realizing, not in all, but most cases, that that is just what they are: dreams. And now mine were taken away as fast as they had been dangled in front of my face like a carrot. I still had scripts and was still doing some volunteer Production Assistant work for K from home, but as it goes: one step forward two steps back.

That was Monday. Thursday morning, the phone rang...

To Be Continued....