It's the best blurb ever!

Two recent notes in the NY Times about the problem of blurb abuse -- taking selected quotes from a review to use in promotional materials that make it appear the review was much more positive than it was.

In today's paper, the EC takes on the issue as a problem of false advertising:

New Law to Protect Critics From Being Misquoted

The European Commission has passed legislation that would keep bad reviews from looking good, the London newspaper The Independent reported. The measure, to take effect in December, will make it illegal for advertisers to misquote reviewers by taking a positive word or phrase from a theater review if it gives a misleading sense of the whole review. The Unfair Commercial Practices Directive bars advertising that includes “false information” or any claim that “deceives or is likely to deceive the consumer” and thus “causes or is likely to cause him to take a transactional decision that he would not have taken otherwise.” Helen Kearns, the commission’s spokeswoman on consumer affairs, said the measure would be “policed on a case-by-case basis” by the Office of Fair Trading. “It should apply to misleading advertising right across the board,” she added, “from airline tickets to theater tickets.”

And, just a couple of days earlier, an article described how pervasive mis-blurbing blurb abuse has become in book promotion.

Of course in movie world there are so many "critics" who are happy to call the "Are We Done Yets" of the world Oscar-worthy, "wonderful family fun!" or "one of the best of the year!!" if they can get invited to junkets and see their names in the ads. I'd love to see that considered false advertising.

Conflict of interest at DC Filmfest?

The Washington Post's Desson Thomson has written an important and meticulously researched story about the Washington DC Film Festival that is respectful and understated, but raises disturbing questions about conflicts of interest and poor leadership of the annual event. Other regional festivals, including the DC area's own SilverDocs and Maryland Film Festival have surpassed it in measures like national (even international) reputation and budget, the DC Filmfest seems stagnant after more than two decades.

The Maryland Film Festival has tripled its operating budget in nine years, and is planning for a dramatic increase -- from about $350,000 to more than $1 million -- in the next two years. In its five years, the Silverdocs documentary film festival, sponsored by the American Film Institute and Discovery Communications, has evolved into a buzzed-about event that attracts filmmakers and media coverage from around the globe.

Yet Filmfest DC, a festival granddaddy after more than two decades, has seemingly refused to grow. Under the stewardship of its part-time director -- Tony Gittens -- its mission (bringing international films to Washington audiences), budget (about $410,000) and number of films (84 shorts and features this year) have changed only incrementally over two decades....

Does Gittens's status [as both festival director and executive director of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities] present a conflict of interest? Is it self-dealing? At the very least, it presents an appearance of conflict, as the arts commission also provides grants each year to about half a dozen other film festivals, including the Environmental Film Festival and gay and lesbian Reel Affirmations.

Thomson concludes that the conflict of interest may be more one of appearances than reality, but that the real problem may be the limited time that Gittens has to devote to it because of his obligations at the Commission. Gittens receives no additional monetary benefit from running the festival, which has a more-than-healthy surplus in its bank account, though, predictably, other arts organizations in the city believe they are unfairly disadvantaged when they ask for money from the Commission. But as long as he has both jobs, it is difficult to ensure adequate oversight. He probably does not have the time to do the job right. He clearly does not have the vision, seeing no reason to expand the festival's reach and showing himself stunningly unaware of the needs and resources of the city he serves:

Washington, according to Gittens, is a city with unique challenges. "There's no private money here," he says, apparently discounting major corporations in the region such as Lockheed Martin, AOL, Sprint-Nextel, General Dynamics, Capital One and Marriott International. "There's not even any big foundations. . . . In Seattle you got the dot-com foundations. You go to San Francisco and you got [financier] George Gund and other sources to drive events."

Gittens says his mission is clear.

"A festival like ours serves a different purpose -- bringing great films to a great city. . . . We bring them in the spirit of celebration, to show films from around the world, stories of other cultures that never get seen in this country unless regional fests like us get them here. . . . It's a service we provide. People come back year after year. And we feel that we are doing some good."

And in terms of aspiring to the ranks of the higher-profile regional festivals, he says: "I don't have those thoughts."

Turn off your cell phone (Vader remix)

Entertainment Weekly's popwatch blog has a funny YouTube clip about a guy who makes the mistake of answering his cell phone in a very important meeting. Let's just say the Empire strikes back.

More on Whether Critics Matter -- From Time Magazine

Time's current issue focuses on "fanboy" culture, the defining role of

the typically geeky 16-to-34-year-old male (though there are some fangirls) whose slavish devotion to a pop-culture subject, like a comic-book character or a video game, drives him to blog, podcast, chat, share YouTube videos, go to comic-book conventions and, once in a while, see a movie on the subject of his obsession.

They're the new tastemakers," says Avi Arad, a producer behind this summer's Spider-Man 3 and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. "Hard-core fans represent a small piece of the viewing public, but they influence geek culture, journalists, Wall Street. You don't want them to trash your project." If these fans embrace a project, as they did 300 and Heroes, they can kick-start a hit.

Time movie critic Richard Corliss responds with a essay headlined "Don't Read this Column." It may be, as Variety editor Peter Bart notes, that critics have little impact on ticket-buyers for movies like "Norbit" and "Wild Hogs." Bart suggests that critics "take 'a sabbatical until September,' when Hollywood starts releasing artsy films in the pre-Oscar blitz." (Irony alert: Bart as editor presumably approves of his publication's critic Justin Chang, who recently called "The Reaping" "almost riveting in its silliness" and said of box office smash "Night at the Museum," "Rarely has so much production value yielded so little in terms of audience engagement.") Corliss says:

Implicit in Bart's argument is that a popular film is a good film, and vice versa. If critics can't validate that tautology, we're useless. That's why studios screen fewer and fewer of their films early, and if they do, they invite everyone but critics. Until the fall, that is, when they want their prestige releases on 10 Best lists. Those citations sell tickets and tip off the awards folks. In that sense, Hollywood uses us as heralds to our own constituency. We're the fanboy brigade for Oscar films.

...

Hollywood's marketers have become tremendously efficient at getting their core audience to see their big movies. They don't need critics for that. But critics have a larger utility: to put films in context, to offer an informed perspective, to educate, outrage, entertain. We're just trying to do what every other writer is doing: making sense of one part of your world.

So, dear reader: If our opinions on a movie don't coincide, I don't care, and neither should you. I'm not telling you what to think. I'm just asking that you do think.

Museum of the Moving Image's Film Critic Institute

I'm back from the Film Critic Institute sponsored by the New York Times Foundation and the Museum of the Moving Image. It was five days packed with panels, screenings, discussions, and homework. Every single bit of it was enthralling, thrilling, dazzling, and inspiring. I feel like I've been plugged into plugged into a super-duper recharger and at the same time being given a powerful new pair of glasses while someone has floored my gas pedal. Everyone -- presenters, organizers, and participants were all so smart and honorable and knowledgeable and dedicated. I felt like Kevin Costner in "Bull Durham" talking about his time in "the Show" where all the practice balls are white and all the women have long legs and money.

Just to give you an idea, our last day included a presentation by Mark Urman of ThinkFilm (very funny, very smart, very honest) and two hours with Martin Scorsese, prompting one of the participants to say, "If movies are our religion, we just met the pope."

It wasn't because he was a celebrity or even because he is a great director. It was because we had just spent two hours with perhaps the greatest and most knowledgeable lover of movies who has ever lived. I am quite certain he would happily still be talking to us if we had not somehow found the fortitude to let him go. He talked to us with great passion about movies he loves, from the very first films he saw ("Forbidden Planet" got only two stars!) to his grail-like search for the definitive prints of "Tales of Hoffman" and "Once Upon a Time in the West." And the experience of showing "Charlotte's Web" at his seven-year old's birthday party. (She has recently moved beyond her affection for "High School Musical," he was relieved to report.) His office is filled with Italian movie posters (the Italian posters for American movies are stunning) and he has beautiful, leather-bound volumes with the names of his movies, I imagine his annotated scripts. The two posters behind his desk are from movies about Hollywood -- "The Bad and the Beautiful" and "Sunset Boulevard." He has a photo of the big four -- himself with Lucas, Spielberg, and Coppola -- the night he won the Oscar. He talked about some of his movies and how he approached them and some of what went into making them. One of the problems created by computer editing is that the old-fashioned way, with physical cutting and pasting -- gave him time to walk around and think between edits. He almost made a movie based on the real-life story behind "Moby Dick," but then he said, "Me, on a boat? I can't do that!" Now he is working on documentaries about British film and about the Rolling Stones. And he said that when he is in the office he has Turner Classic Movies on all the time and will constantly interrupt whatever he's doing to have everyone watch, "This movie isn't very good, but this one shot is incredible. You have to come see it!"

Just outside his office is where his long-time editor and close collaborator, three-time Oscar-winner Thelma Schoonmaker, has all of her equipment. We sat in her office and she showed us some of the scenes she worked on (the famous no-edits entrance into the Copa in "Goodfellas," the plane crash in "The Aviator," several of the boxing matches in "Raging Bull") and talked us through the choices. There are elephant sounds in those boxing scenes! One of the other Institute participants told her how he had seen her late husband, the great British director Michael Powell, at one of his last appearances, at a screening of "Peeping Tom," and she told us she was there and how much it meant to him to see how enthusiastically the film was received by the audience.

We were all a little gobsmacked. So I don't think we were able to get the most out of our last stop, an art gallery with an exhibit drawing a connection between early cubism and early movies, though we did love the installation, which included a small screening space designed to look like a tiny Parisian theater from around 1906. Then some of us went to a rehearsal of "Passio," a beautiful choral piece by Arvo Part accompanying a film assemblage, clips from very old medical footage (some quite disturbing) and other oddities.

MMI film institute homework -- a review of "The Pervert's Guide to Cinema"

One of my homework assignments was this review of The Pervert's Guide to the Movies:

It doesn’t get any more meta than this.

“The Pervert’s Guide to the Cinema” is a movie about movies. No, it’s a movie about movies about movies — or about dreams, fantasies, and stories of all kinds, and the movies that represent, exemplify, explore, and illuminate them. It is a critique of a critique of movies and of their critique of, well, pretty much everything, you name it, the human condition, the collective unconscious, essential dualities, the man behind the curtain, the fundamental conservatism of pornography, Pluto’s nightmare (being tried by a jury of cats) from Disney, the obscene, unkillable father, and of course the backed-up toilet.

Documentarian Sophie Fiennes (sister of Ralph and Joseph) has made a three-hour film of Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek talking about films and what they mean. His passion for his theories and for the films he describes are so intense that he literally enters into them through meticulously re-created sets that place him in Norman Bates’ cellar, Neo’s chair opposite Morpheus, and the hotel bathroom from Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation.”

Zizek sees film not just as art but as the expression of our collective unconscious. We may think of the term “dream factory” as referring to Hollywood’s aspirational gloss, the way we might dream of dancing like Astaire or punching like John Wayne. But Zizek sees films as our way of processing our deepest primordial conflicts, as we do in our literal dreams – and our nightmares. The film is essentially an illustrated lecture, kaleidoscopic in format, with a torrential barbaric yawp of ideas and images, some provocative, some insightful, some revelatory, some outlandish. Like Freud, however, he does not know much about what women want.

The film begins with an enchanting scene from 1931’s “Possessed” with Joan Crawford. As she walks toward the railroad tracks, a train rolls by, so close and so slowly that she can see through the windows of each passing train car a different scene of glamour, sophistication, and intrigue. An elegant couple in evening clothes is dancing. Another is sharing a romantic supper. Each tableau is more enticing than the last for the small-town girl, and they pass as though she is changing the channels on a television set. And then, at the end of the train, a man is drinking a cocktail. Unlike the others, he is not separated from her by glass, and he leans over to put a drink in her hand, inviting her into this dream, making her fantasy real. Zizek is doing the same for us. As our proxy, he enters into the movies, and we follow him the way Alice followed the White Rabbit. In some cases, he stands before a white screen, the personification of a Rorschach blot. In some, it is enough to recreate the set but in others he visits the actual real-life locations, as though the physical reality underlying the fantasy story will help him unlock its secrets and make it somehow more real, dissolving the separation between him and the movie, between us and the screen.

At times it feels like free-association , part ramble, part rant, as though Zizek is diagnosing and treating the collective neuroses of humanity as audience at the same time we are treating his, the silent psychoanalyst for his stream of consciousness.

Zizek dwells on dualities. In the literal (if internal) struggle with good/bad controlled/uncontrolled battling dualities, ”the obstacle is externalized,” as we see in films like “Fight Club,” “The Red Shoes,” “The Wizard of Oz,” and “Dr. Strangelove.” “The “uncastrated double” is the other, a projection of ourselves through the leading character who represents us and who must attempt to triumph over that nasty, headstrong id. We see literal (external) dualities in films like “Blue Velvet,” with a (blond) good girl and a (dark) bad girl, an impotent and ailing good father and a powerful and seemingly unkillable bad one. The ultimate psychological crime, Zizek tells us, is the father who will not die. We see the self splintered into three with the Marx brothers, Chico the crafty, calculating ego, Groucho the hyper-cerebral superego, and Harpo the ravenous id, at once childlike and innocent and primordially aggressive. “The combination of utter corruption and innocence is what the id is about,” Zizek tells us. We might come to the conclusion that Groucho and Chico also embody corruption and innocence and that, for example, more traditional straight man/comic duos like Abbott and Costello and Martin and Lewis might better exemplify the tension between superego and id, but the avalanche of images and words does not give us enough time to breathe, much less think.

All of this is in the context of the ultimate duality of fantasy and reality. The irony is that it is through fantasy that we work through this conundrum. “The Matrix” is a double-fantasy as its fictional world is outside the norms of time, place, and physics. In that film, Morpheus gives Neo the choice between the blue pill, which would allow him to continue to believe what he has always thought to be reality, and the red pill, which shows the truth. Will the movies be our red or blue pills?

Zizek sits in Neo’s chair as though Morpheus is making him the offer, and says, “I want a third pill.” He shows us how movies can be this third pill. Inherently fantastic, they can explore the reality of fantasy. In “Blue,” Julie loses her reality when her husband and child are killed. She loses her fantasy of what her husband was when she discovers that he lied to her. Her final achievement, her happy ending, is to acquire appropriate distance from reality –”life in its brutal meaninglessness” – to be able to appreciate fantasy (in a theater), but recognize it as such. In “Eyes Wide Shut,” real-life enactment of a woman’s fantasy is perversely un-erotic, destroying any imagined thrill. (Zizek might have also included films like Orson Welles’ “F for Fake” and “The Immortal Story.”)

And then there is the fantasy of our love object. Zizek’s superbly chosen example is Charlie Chaplin’s “City Lights.” The blind girl believes that the little tramp is a millionaire. He steals the money for her operation and when he gets out of prison she has no idea that the funny little man in rags is the one who made it possible for her to see, until she touches his hand as she gives him a flower. The movie wisely does not try for the fantasy Hollywood ending. We don’t know what the characters will do with this realization; as it ends, they do not, either. It is that very ambiguity on screen that brings us closer to resolving our own conflicts. “It is only in cinema where we get the critical dimension we are afraid to confront in reality.”

Zizek looks at film the way that Freud, Jung, and Joseph Campbell looked at myths. Film is modern myth, a dress rehearsal for our emotions and a way of using symbols and structure to make sense of that which is beyond the capacity of any boundary of meaning to enclose. Why a “pervert’s guide?” Because Zizek says that “Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn’t give you what you desire, it tells you how to desire.” This may be his greatest failure of insight. Desire is innate and one of the deepest desires is to make some sense of ourselves and our lives. Films thrill us when they satisfy, even for a moment, that desire, to give us, as Zizek says, that voice that we would otherwise be unable to access. In helping us recognize this — and in reminding us of films we should see or see again and questions to ask ourselves as we watch, he and Feinnes have made a film that is both entertaining and wise.

The Force is Still With Us Three Decades Later

As the 30th anniversary of the original "Star Wars" release approaches, the official history is back under discussion. More material for film historians and "Star Wars" fanboys and all those in between.

Live music for silent movies

The MMI Institute participants just attended a screening of William S. Hart's 1916 silent film, "Hell's Hinges," introduced by Diane Kaiser Koszarski, the author of Complete Films of William S. Hart. The highlight was the haunting live musical accompaniment, part original, part adapted from traditional music of the era, performed by Donald Sosin, dressed in a cowboy shirt and jeans for the occasion.

Do we need critics?

EW's Whitney Pastorek asks a good question to think about as I go to NY for the film critics institute: "What's the critic's role in a comment-board world?"

Am I a Frank Rich or a Pauline Kael? HELL to the no. But I consider myself a proud part of that tradition. I've spent the better part of my adult life educating myself, cultivating opinions, learning about the journey of art through the ages. I take in almost-inconceivable amounts of music, movies, books, television, and media so that I can report on pop culture with an eye on its place in history. I also take time to craft that reporting, to shape my opinions. I take time to present them in a compelling way. I worry over commas, I fret over em-dashes. I use spell-check. I'm inspired by all those amazing voices that came before me, and, as with any craft, I aspire to be excellent at mine. And I believe that, if used properly and responsibly, it is a craft that has great value. I do not know that our society would be a better place if everyone was allowed to perform surgery or build skyscrapers or drive big-rig trucks just because technology came along that made those activities available to the masses at the click of a button. I don't see what makes cultural criticism any different.

This next sentence says it all, and should be recited by everyone with a keyboard and a blogger account.

Just because you can type into the little box and press "post" doesn't mean you should.

The MMI Institute

I am thrilled to have been accepted to the Institute in Film Criticism and Feature Writing, sponsored by the Museum of the Moving Image and the New York Times Foundation. There will be fifteen journalists from a wide variety of backgrounds who write for a wide variety of outlets. And the schedule they have for us is dazzling, with speakers and screenings. Monday we get to attend an editorial meeting at the New York Times. And Tuesday we hear from Martin Scorsese and his long-time editor, Thelma Schoonmaker.

We'll be very busy -- the institute has warned us there will be homework. But I will try to post some updates on this blog while I am there.

Miss Pettigrew

Doesn't this sound wonderful?

NEW YORK, April 16, 2007 – Production begins this week on location in the U.K. on Focus Features’ comedy "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day," starring Academy Award winner Frances McDormand in the title role. Focus CEO James Schamus made the announcement today...Ms. McDormand is executive-producing Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day with Frank Frattaroli and Paul Webster...Joining Ms. McDormand in the cast are Amy Adams (most recently seen in Talladega Nights, and an Academy Award nominee last year for Junebug), Ciaran Hinds (who recently wrapped There Will Be Blood), Shirley Henderson (of the Harry Potter movies), Lee Pace (a Golden Globe Award nominee for Soldier’s Girl), Mark Strong (currently in Sunshine), and screen newcomer Tom Payne.

In the 1939-set romantic tale, Miss Guinevere Pettigrew (Ms. McDormand), a middle-aged London governess, finds herself unfairly dismissed from her job. An attempt to gain new employment catapults her into the glamorous world and dizzying social whirl of an American actress and singer, Delysia Lafosse (Ms. Adams). Within minutes, Miss Pettigrew finds herself swept into a heady high-society milieu – and, within hours, living it up.

Many thanks to Gwendolynne Larson and the Emporia Gazette

Gwendolynne Larson's latest column for the Emporia Gazette has a nice compliment for my reviews. She says just what I hope for -- that I give her the information she needs to decide what is right for her son. Sorry he didn't get to see "Disturbia" with his friends this week, but I'm glad Ms. Larson feels she can rely on my reviews.

The Movie Mom's Dad -- Speeches that Changed the World

Vital Speeches magazine has produced a DVD of 25 speeches that changed the world, and I am very proud to say that my dad's "vast wasteland" speech is on the list, right there between Richard Nixon's resignation and Leonid Brezhnev's "Peaceful Co-existence."

Update: Today's Chicago Tribune has my dad's op-ed on the Imus mess.

Hairspray

Quite a treat for a cold and rainy April this week when DC film critics got to see a sneak peek at footage from next summer's "Hairspray." It boggles the mind to think that John Waters' film has become a hugely successful Broadway musical and is now back on film with John Travolta in the role immortalized by the divine Divine (yes, that's him in the picture). It looks like it is avoiding the pitfalls of "The Producers" and while it has lost some of its edge, it has tons of energy and spirit. Can't wait.

Mine Your Own Business

"This is not about global warming," we were crisply informed by Freyda Levy before the movie began. "It's about economic development." Levy is the president of the Moving Picture Institute, which supports film-makers and films "who are committed to protecting and sustaining a free society."

Not the usual movie screening. Instead of a movie theater or screening room, this one was held in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill. Instead of a dozen scruffy movie critics, the audience was about 70 Hill staffers wearing IDs with blurred photos on chains around their necks.

The movie was Mine Your Own Business, funded by industry, but made by journalists Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, who retained editorial control. The premise of the film is that a responsible mining company has been thwarted from developing mines in some of the poorest communities by well-meaning but carpet-bagging environmentalists who have a romantic notion of "peasant" culture and are thus condemning these people to lives without opportunity for jobs, health care, and education.

The mining companies, of course, are carpet-baggers too, with their own ideas of what is best for these communities, not coincidentally what is best for the mining companies as well. But they make some good points and have some devastating footage. As a movie, it is ragged and amateurish. As advocacy it is further evidence that in the era of Michael Moore, "An Inconvenient Truth," and You Tube, a movie is worth a million words. And $10 million in lobbying.

Writer's Alamanac

When my children were younger and we had to get them to the schoolbus, I used to set my alarm to wake up to Garrison Keillor's Writer's Alamanac every morning on NPR. It was a wonderful way to start the day. I loved hearing each day's poetry selection in Keillor's hypnotically sonorous tones. I enjoyed hearing which writers were celebrating birthdays. And I always found his sign-off touching: "Be well, do good work, and keep in touch."

Now I get to sleep a little later, but I still get Keillor's daily poetry selection via email. Today is Billy Collins' poem about going to the movies.

The Movies

I would like to watch a movie tonight
in which a stranger rides into town
or where someone embarks on a long journey,

a movie with the promise of danger,
danger visited upon the citizens of the town
by the stranger who rides in,

or the danger that will befall the person
on his or her long hazardous journey—
it hardly matters to me

so long as I am not in danger,
and not much danger lies in watching
a movie, you might as well agree.

I would prefer to watch this movie at home
than walk out in the cold to a theater
and stand on line for a ticket.

I want to watch it lying down
with the bed hitched up to the television
the way they'd hitch up a stagecoach

to a team of horses
so the movie could pull me along
the crooked, dusty road of its adventures.

I would stay out of harm's way
by identifying with the characters
like the bartender in the movie about the stranger

who rides into town,
the fellow who knows enough to duck
when a chair shatters the mirror over the bar.

Or the stationmaster
in the movie about the perilous journey,
the fellow who fishes a gold watch from his pocket,

helps a lady onto the train,
and hands up a heavy satchel
to the man with the mustache

and the dangerous eyes,
waving the all-clear to the engineer.
Then the train would pull out of the station

and the movie would continue without me.
And at the end of the day
I would hang up my oval hat on a hook

and take the shortcut home to my two dogs,
my faithful, amorous wife, and my children—
Molly, Lucinda, and Harold, Jr.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®

Tagged by Reel Fanatic

I'm honored that Keith Demko of Reel Fanatic, a blog I admire very much and read several times a week, selected my blog as one of the sites that makes him think. Right back at you, Keith!

Quote of the Week -- Dana Stevens on "Grindhouse"

Of all the reviews I read, Slate's Dana Stevens best conveyed and illuminated the transgressive pleasures of "Grindhouse."

We've all experienced some degree of Tarantino fatigue since ["Pulp Fiction"], whether with the director himself (who sometimes seems to be using the screen as a place to play out his own airless adolescent fantasies) or with the endless imitations spawned by his particular brand of fast-talking, genre-savvy splatter (this year's dreadful "Smokin' Aces" is one latter-day example).

But Death Proof is a reminder of what there was to like about Tarantino in the first place: his uncanny ear for dialogue that's at once naturalistic and deliriously wordy, his kinetic action sequences, and his voracious love for cinema in all its incarnations, especially the sleazy ones. With its lean 90-minute running time and a near-complete absence of CGI, "Death Proof" feels like an experiment in austerity after more than a decade in which Tarantino had free run of the special-effects candy store. And it works fabulously, much to the surprise of this generally Tarantino-weary writer.

Peep-a-rama

The Washington Post's first-ever Peeps diorama contest was a huge hit, with more than 350 entries. The winner and many of those selected for the website were inspired by movies. First prize went to this fabulous salute to Marilyn Monroe's "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" number in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Runners-up included tributes to Soylent Green ("Soylent green is PEEPS!!!") and Mommie Dearest. There's an hilarious slideshow here.

Faux double features

The release of "Grindhouse" this week reminded me of another fake double feature that was a tribute to the movie-going pleasures of an earlier era, Stanley Donen's Movie Movie. Like "Grindhouse," it had two films and a coming attraction, but this one was set in the 1930's. There was a black and white drama about a boxer (Harry Hamlin) and a color musical. And, as in "Grindhouse," some players appeared in both. A terrific cast included George C. Scott, Ann Reinking (as "Troubles Moran" who almost makes the pure-hearted hero forget what's important), and a script co-written by "M*A*S*H"'s Larry Gelbart, it well deserves a release on DVD.

Guilty Pleasures

The Washington Post has a great salute to guilty pleasure movies. I try not to feel guilty about my pleasures...but I'll admit to loving "The V.I.Ps," Doris Day comedies like "The Thrill of it All," "Move Over Darling," "Please Don't Eat the Daisies," and "Lover Come Back," Douglas Sirk suffering-women-in-couture-clothes movies like "All That Heaven Allows" and "Magnificent Obsession," and unpretentious teen movies like "High School Musical" and "Stick It."

The Wilhelm Scream

Another reason to love the internet -- someone has taken the time to research and meticulously document the history of the Wilhelm scream, a popular sound effect that has now become something of an in-joke for sound engineers and movie fans. Reportedly, it was originally recorded by Sheb Wooley, best known as one of the bad guys in "High Noon" and as the writer-performer of the 50's novelty hit "Purple People-Eater." He also wrote the theme song for "Hee Haw." The distinctive scream has been used in many movies and You Tube has a clever compilation:

Two outstanding reviews

Two recent pieces set the standard for what movie reporting/reviewing should be. Philip Kennicott's article in the Washington Post about the IMAX film, "Hurricane on the Bayou" refuses to be dazzled or distracted by the pretty pictures, laissez les bon temps music, and cheerful optimism. He knows that what is missing is more important than what is there:

The narrative is built, one happy cliche at a time, into a vast arch of cliches, until the story of Katrina ceases to be about appalling environmental neglect, or the colossal failure of the federal government to manage a disaster, or the role that dysfunctional politics, racism and poverty have played in the decimation of one of this country's most vibrant cultural centers. (For that movie, see Spike Lee's epic, "When the Levees Broke.")

He doesn't stop at saying the movie fails to tell the story. He finds out why. And if you guessed the answer is money, then you won't be surprised at this:

To tease out all the rottenness at the core of this film, you might start pulling at the money threads. Why does a film that seems so insistent on decrying the loss of wetlands end with little more than an anodyne lament and some empty hope? Roll the credits: The film was made with money contributed by Chevron. And Dow Chemical. And Dominion Exploration and Production, a major power company. The film's executive producers, the Audubon Nature Institute, won't say how much money came from industry sources, but the filmmakers argue that less than 8.5 percent came directly from Chevron, Dow and Dominion. More industry money may have come indirectly through the Audubon Institute.

Better yet, like the oil companies themselves, he drills down further, and finds something very valuable:

Audubon, as in the National Audubon Society, is a respected national brand in the environmental world, of course, but not this Audubon. The Audubon Nature Institute that produced "Hurricane on the Bayou" is a nonprofit group that runs public museums in New Orleans. The group also is in the Imax business and operates what it says is the only public golf course to reopen since Katrina hit.

And when it comes to the impact of the form on the content, he gets it just right:

Imax is hyper-realism, images so voluptuous that they break down the distance between the spectator and the film. They overwhelm rational response, seduce the eyes and neuter the intellect, reducing the viewer to happy cooing at the sheer beauty of it all.

It is the perfect format for a little aesthetic "green washing," the substitution of a nexus of happy things -- beautiful images and a bland statement of environmental concern -- for a serious film about what went wrong, who did it and who should pay to fix it. According to the Audubon Nature Institute, the money from Dow Chemical came in because Dow had been forced by a lawsuit to contribute to environmental projects. The company picked the perfect film at which to throw its penitential dollars.

Mark Jenkins, always worth reading, has an especially fine review of "Shooter" in Washington's City Paper. This is one of the best at his best -- erudite but not snobby, funny but not snarky. His assessment of the paranoia pleasures of the movie and the point at which "it loses its brainless charm" is astute and fair and much more fun than the movie it covers. But what really makes it memorable is the way Jenkins explicitly pairs the review with another release of the same week, the documentary "The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair." "The Shooter" is they're-out-to-get-me fiction. The documentary, about the arrest and imprisonment of a journalist on outlandish terrorism charges, is paranoia served up straight.

Fragmentary as it is, the tale of Abbas’ arrest and imprisonment is essential viewing. It may be decades before this country learns why its troops are really in Iraq, but right now The Prisoner shows what they’re doing there: running a Keystone Kops version of the very regime they overthrew.

Bracketology and Movie Deaths

Slate has an excerpt from a new book about Bracketology, the science of applying March Madness head-to-head analysis to determine the outcome of...just about anything. Go to the article and click on the Film Deaths option to get a chance to select the most memorable of all time and you'll find yourself weighing James Cagney's explosive demise in "White Heat" against Alan Rickman's spectacular fall in "Die Hard," Bonnie and Clyde's bullet-ridden shoot-out with James Caan's, and King Kong's topple with "Psycho's" shower.

The Best Rock and Roll Movies

When the two most explosive cultural forces of the 20th century -- movies and rock and roll music -- the result has often been disappointing, the worst of both worlds rather than the whole exceeding the sum of the parts. But AFI's Murray Horwitz and radio listeners have come up with this list of the best rock and roll movies for
NPR, all well worth watching and hearing.

Quote of the Week -- Premonition

I had a premonition that critics would refer to the title in their reviews of this stinker. And I was right! But I got a big charge out of Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune, who managed to refer to both Rocky and Bullwinkle's Mr. Peabody and Alfed Hitchcock's "Saboutage:"

On loan from Sherman and Peabody of "The Bullwinkle Show," Sandra Bullock's wayback machine is getting quite a workout lately...Thriller aficionados may enjoy the bit where children sing a bit of "Who Killed Cock Robin?", a song figuring in a key scene from Hitchcock's "Sabotage." Too often people use Hitchcock to club another director's efforts into submission, even when the film in question isn't remotely Hitchockian.

I thought Bill Muller said it best in the Arizona Republic:

In Premonition, Sandra Bullock plays a woman going through a horrifying experience. She keeps waking up in this movie.

By the way, for the fourth time ever, I have invoked the ever-popular "Gothika Rule" (previous winners: "Gothika," of course, "The Forgotten," and "Flightplan"), which means that I will give away the ending to anyone who sends me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com

Lighting black skin

I saw "Reign Over Me" with Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle this week and was disappointed that it makes one of the most frequent and most infuriating mistakes in films -- the lighting is designed for the white performers only. Cheadle has very dark skin, and when the camera is on his face and Sandler's together, we miss some of the subtlety of his performance because we literally cannot see his face. The movie that really sensitized me to this as an issue was the wonderful "Sounder," which I saw when I was in college. Director Martin Ritt and cinematographer John A. Alonzo did a beautiful job in showing the richness and variety of the skin tones of their brilliant cast, which included Paul Winfield, Cecily Tyson, and Taj Mahal. That film should be required viewing for every film-maker as a lesson on how to show audiences all that these performers have to offer.

onBeing -- Brilliant little films from the Washington Post

onBeing is a new feature from the Washington Post, a series of small films by Jennifer Crandall about local people of all kinds. They are simple, just people talking about their lives in front of a white screen. A man explains that he is usually pretty easy-going and low maintenance, except that he has some standards about things like elevators and coffee. A man who came to Washington from New Orleans after Katrina explains his struggles with the racist views of his upbringing. A young nun talks about how she found her vocation and what it means to her. A Hindu teacher of devotional music sings with her daughter-in-law. A little boy talks about what he has learned and what he thinks being older will be like. A gay Mormon talks about why he did not leave his church, even though it seemed to be leaving him. A Chinese-American cheesemaker talks about learning what the cheese is trying to tell you (apparently it was telling her to quit being a lawyer). Each is a gem, utterly involving and endearing.

onBeing is a project based on the simple notion that we should get to know one another a little better. What you’ll find here is a series of videos that takes you into the musings, passions, histories and quirks of all sorts of people. The essence of who they are, who we are.

Quote of the Week -- 300

From A.O. Scott's hilarious review of "300" in the New York Times:

It offers up a bombastic spectacle of honor and betrayal, rendered in images that might have been airbrushed onto a customized van sometime in the late 1970s...The Persians, pioneers in the art of facial piercing, have vastly greater numbers — including ninjas, dervishes, elephants, a charging rhino and an angry bald giant — but the Spartans clearly have superior health clubs and electrolysis facilities...Allegory hunters will find some gristly morsels of topicality tossed in their direction, but you can find many of the same themes, conveyed with more nuance and irony, in a Pokémon cartoon...In time, “300” may find its cultural niche as an object of camp derision, like the sword-and-sandals epics of an earlier, pre-computer-generated-imagery age. At present, though, its muscle-bound, grunting self-seriousness is more tiresome than entertaining. Go tell the Spartans, whoever they are, to stay home and watch wrestling.

It Must Be the Motorcycles

What else could explain the stunning box office for the mediocre "Ghost Rider" and "Wild Hogs?"

Could this mean we have sequels in store?

Quote of the Week -- Black Snake Moan

Peter Rainer, in the Christian Science Monitor:

Maybe Jackson should avoid any more movies with "snake" in the title.

(I do like the soundtrack though.)

The Ultimate Gift

Thanks to Jeff and Jer listener Carol Yeh-Garner for telling me about the special opportunity for families to contribute to St. Jude's hospital when they buy advance tickets to the new movie The Ultimate Gift, starring "Little Miss Sunshine's" Abigail Breslin.

The Weekend Of Giving is a promotion celebrating the opening weekend of the movie The Ultimate Gift, which opens in nearly 800 theaters across the United States and Canada on March 9th, 10th and 11th. A donation of $1.00 will be made for every ticket purchased through www.FoxFilmFund.com for opening weekend screenings of The Ultimate Gift. Other partners and friends of the movie are using this donation to go toward their cause of choice. Once Upon A Family has chosen St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to benefit from donations raised through its Consultant network through these Weekend Of Giving showings, as well as events such as the Charity Celebrations. More than 150 organizations have already signed up to participate. To direct the contribution and give Carol credit, purchasers of movie tickets should go to this site and to enter their confirmation number and consultant name (Carol Yeh-Garner).

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Two movies about historical events are opening next week and they ask the same question -- how do you respond when faced with certain death? "300" is the story of the battle of Thermopylae, with 300 Spartans against thousands of Persians, filmed before as "The 300 Spartans." And "Beyond the Gates" takes place during the genocide in Rwanda. A priest and a young teacher turn their school into a sanctuary, but when the UN peace "monitors" leave, there is no way to protect the families hiding there from the assassins with machetes waiting outside.

Like The Alamo and Masada these stories remind us of the dignity, honor, and meaning that can be drawn from the direst of circumstances. That the stories span thousands of years of history should remind us of our failure to honor the memories of those who have died by learning how to prevent the need for such sacrifices.

Interview with Kathryn Beaumont

My favorite childhood birthday party was my 6th -- we watched Alice in Wonderland. And yesterday I got to talk to Alice herself, Kathryn Beaumont, who provided the voice for both Alice and "Peter Pan's" Wendy. She was in Washington to talk about the new DVD edition of "Peter Pan" with all kinds of extras, including a 1952 featurette about the making of the film, a never-before-seen alternate opening, and a sneak peek of the new Tinker Bell movie. And, of course, a cover of one of the "Peter Pan" songs by a Disney-label pop group that just happens to have a new CD coming out.


It was a treat to talk with Ms. Beaumont, who still has that lovely, clear voice, and who remembers what it was like to sit with Disney's legendary "nine old men" and see them sketch out their ideas for the movie. I'm glad to be able to make it possible for viewers of this blog to hear our conversation here.
We chatted about how she got the job and how she provided not just the voice but the movement for her animated characters, how it felt to meet Walt Disney and Hans Conried (who played Captain Hook), what happened after she became a schoolteacher when her students asked her if she was really Alice and Wendy, and how it felt to get a call from Disney decades later when they wanted her to reprise her Alice voice for the Alice in Wonderland rides and parades at Disneyland and Disney World.

Oscar's biggest question

Thanks to Jen Chaney's wonderful Oscar night online chat for the Washington Post, I have the answer to the number one question for those who watched last night's broadcast: Why did Jack Nicholson appear to be trying to look like Jabba the Hutt? Answer: he is currently bald because he plays a cancer patient in his new film, "The Bucket List," directed by Rob Reiner and co-starring Morgan Freeman.

I Love People Who Love Movies

The Washington Post Weekend Section asked readers to describe their favorite movies and got more than 400 replies. I got a big kick out of the runner-up entries. People didn't just write about the movies -- they wrote about themselves, who they were when they sat down to watch these movies and the slightly sadder, wiser, deeper people they became while they watched.

Interview with Michael Apted (director's cut)

My interview with Michael Apted, director of "Amazing Grace," is in today's Chicago Tribune. Here's an unedited version:

Fifty-four years before the fight to end slavery in the United States led to the Civil War, England voted to abolish it, due to the pioneering leadership of a young Member of Parliament named William Wilberforce. His persistence in bringing the issue before the legislators for 18 years and his insistence that slavery was a violation of core human rights was grounded in his religious beliefs. He was also influenced by his friendship with John Newton, a former slave ship captain whose song, "Amazing Grace," described his own conversion and repentance.

Wilberforce has been a long-time inspiration to evangelical Christians for his belief that he was called upon by God to achieve social reforms. And he has been a long-time inspiration to politicians for his innovation in using the support of the voting public to put pressure on his fellow legislators. Now his story has inspired director Michael Apted ("Coal Miner's Daughter," the "Up" series of documentaries) to make “Amazing Grace,” a movie about Wilberforce and the British abolitionist movement. Apted spoke about the film in an interview.

Why was the progress toward abolishing slavery so different in the US and the UK?
Slavery didn't touch people in England directly the way it did in America. It wasn't in front of their faces. There were only 5000 slaves in London at the time of the film and they were domestic servants, and so were a lot of white domestic indentured servants, so it wasn't quite the cultural extravaganza that it was here.

Why is this story important to you?
For years I have wanted to make a film about how important politics and involvement in politics are in society. I think the general public today has become so disillusioned and indifferent to politics that all sorts of things can go on without anyone knowing it. It’s an environment where political self-interest can flourish because people aren’t interested. This was my attempt to make a film where politics is perceived as not necessarily heroic but as the messenger of good things and not corruption and secrecy.

In all my films, what draws me is always character, always relationships. That makes it easier to tell a story, even if it is not a romantic relationship. This one has two love stories, Wilberforce and his wife and Wilberforce and William Pitt, the Prime Minister. In some ways, the Pitt-Wilberforce relationship is even more touching than the other one.

One fascinating point made by the film is the way the tactics and arguments are so much like those raised in today’s political debates.
The Slave Trade Act was the first legislation supported by public opinion, petitions and such. My point was that this was the beginning of having to win hearts and minds to achieve political ends.

In a film you have to have heroes and villains, but in this film the villains have reasonable arguments. [They ask] “Without the sugar trade – today it would be without the oil industry – where would we be?” Pitt makes the point that is absolutely 9/11 – he says that the world is falling apart because we are at war and so Wilberforce’s issues are no longer important because we all have to devote ourselves to fighting the great enemy: “If you do not join us, you are disloyal.” In a sense that argument has to be put by the villain. Pitt, who is not a villain, who supports Wilberforce, makes exactly the arguments Bush and Cheney were putting forward after 9/11. What I like about it is that there is a big gray area here.

How do you avoid making a movie about centuries-old legislative debates stagy?
You have to think in the back of your head “This is happening now.” And you shoot it in such a way that it is not very statuesque and proscenium arch and historical artifact. You try and grub it up a bit, I suppose, but the main thing is to create an emotional involvement with the story. One of my big selling points with the studio was that we could have this marvelous true love story. In most movies the women are there in the story to say, “Don’t do it.” Here was a love story where she kicked his fat ass up in the air and said, “Get on with it,” and that was true, she did do that. To find a love story that was so dramatic and moved the story forward, that was too much to resist.

Tyler Perry's Most Important Audience

Movie critics shake their heads in disbelief. Roger Ebert said he got more angry mail protesting his one-star review of Diary of a Mad Black Woman than any other review he had ever written. But audiences love Tyler Perry's movies. And his plays, his DVDs, and his book. Soon, they will love his television series. Critics and commentators are put off by the way Perry's works defy categorization. In my reviews, I've said that they are a mash-up of low comedy, high melodrama, and unabashed spirituality. But this reflects and enhances the stories he tells about families who -- like real-life families -- often contain all of that and more. For me, what makes his work so powerful is another factor that can be disconcerting to critics -- the unabashed and undiluted sincerity of his commitment to spirituality and to family.

I've read a good deal about Tyler Perry, but the article I have enjoyed the most is the one in the current Fortune Magazine because it talks about Perry's success as a businessman.

Perry, 37, is building a maverick media company by translating "urban theater" - the often melodramatic, revival-style stage plays that tour the country catering to black audiences - into mainstream movies and television shows. It's a niche he has come to dominate so thoroughly that he is able to do things in Hollywood that most others - especially newcomers - simply can't.

The best thing about his financial success is that it has bought him a level of freedom as an artist that is close to unprecedented in Hollywood. The studios admit that they do not understand his audience and so they give him complete control and are happy to get whatever revenues he is willing to give them.

If Perry's work continues to perform at this level, Tyler Perry Studios could well have done $1 billion in business by the end of 2009, making it a major independent studio. It's staggering, especially since just a few years ago, most people had never heard of Perry. But it's precisely because he is an outsider that he's been able to ignore so many industry standards, usually to his advantage.

That is a happy ending right out of a Tyler Perry movie. I am delighted for him, but even more delighted that his success is teaching Hollywood to respect an audience they have never thought about seriously before. For me, that is his most important audience, and I expect his example to lead to more and better movies from other film-makers as well.

Similarly backward is Hollywood's historical neglect of black audiences. "There was a trend to doing gimmicky black movies," says Michael Paseornek, Lions Gate's president of film production. "Put a few rappers in, put some songs in, deliver any old thing. Well, the audience stopped coming, but Tyler's brought them back."

Interview with the Patersons

My interview with the mother-son team behind "Bridge to Terabithia" is in today's Chicago Tribune. Here's a slightly longer version:

“Bridge to Terabithia,” opening on February 16, was adapted by David Paterson from the Newberry Award-winning book written 30 years ago by his mother, Katherine Paterson. It is the story of best friends Jesse, a quiet boy who loves to draw, and Leslie, a girl who is a gifted writer, and the imaginary land they create together called Terabithia. In telephone interviews, mother and son talked about the book and the movie and the loss that inspired them both.

Where did the story come from and why has it had such enduring appeal?

KP: When David was 7 and then 8 years old his best friend was a wonderful imaginative tomboy of a girl named Lisa Hill. A great tragedy occurred, and she was killed in an accident. I wanted to write the book to try to make sense out of a tragedy that didn’t make any sense. I wanted it to be fiction, so I changed the ages and setting and parents. But it did grow out of David’s friendship with Lisa.

DP: Lisa was a gift to me. The movie is about the gift of friendship and the gift of imagination. That is something all children have, sometimes as adults we try to tuck away some of that, but it is there. I set out to make a movie that honored my mother and my best friend and I’ve done that. Why this book does so well over time is my mother has incredible grasp on some of the most basic emotions and weaknesses and strengths of young kids. Even adults remember that bully, that first crush, the fight with the father. Everyone has been in one or two of those situations. My mother wrote her hopes, fears, and confusions in her characters. In the end, Jesse is still a cool guy even though he doesn’t know it.

Does the movie’s Terabithia look the way you imagined?

KP: Of course not! It’s never going to be the way I imagined it. Every reader imagines uniquely. But that enriches it for me. I love the sharing of visions. It’s enormously collaborative. It was (co-screenwriter) Jeff Stockwell’s idea to tie it so closely to other events in the story, so the fantasy life is not that removed from their real life.

DP: Everyone has an interior director, designer, filmmaker in every book you read, so we have to deal with everyone’s individual imaginary movie version. Jeff Stockwell had no guilt about adding to my mother’s work. We welcomed his introduction of Terabithia to the rest of us, especially the way he legitimized the magical creatures in some form in real life. That showed that Jesse and Leslie still have their troubles in the back of their minds, even when they create a fantasy to get away from them.

One of the book’s great strengths is the way it allows Jesse to work through many of the genuine feelings of loss, many of which are not the kind of pure and selfless feelings we’d be proud of. How do you translate this kind of internal material to screen?

DP: That is the challenge. My mother’s book is very powerful, but it’s also very dangerous material to translate because so much of it takes place in Jesse’s head. He can’t turn to the audience and say, “This is what I am thinking.” The writer and producer can only take it so far. In the end, it’s the talent of the actors. Josh (Hutcherson) and AnnaSophia (Robb) added five times more than their lines of dialogue through the quality of their performances.

KP: Earlier, I was involved in adapting the book for the stage. How do you turn a book that takes place inside a boy’s head into a play? For the play we did it with music, but the movie’s not a musical. So much depends on eloquent acting where words are not spoken but feelings are expressed. You can really see that in the scene with Jesse and his father. Not much is said, but you can see how they feel.

Any religious material is highly sensitive these days. Why was it important to include in the story the children’s conversation about whether Leslie would go to heaven even though she did not share Jesse’s family’s beliefs?

KP: Because kids have these fears. They’re often not able to express them because they think they’re not okay to have. We do that to kids -- we don’t want them to feel bad or afraid. But that closes them down and makes it harder. David did say to me, “Lisa died because I was bad.” As adults, we get so wrapped up in our own grief, we say they’ll get over it, but how many of us get over it?

DP: A lot of people today curtail some questions from children to avoid going down the rapids that might upset the boat. These are not kids judging religion; they’re just wondering what’s true. It’s just three kids talking about this issue as they would about anything else. People read a lot of things into it. It’s not a Christian story and there was no agenda. It’s a great scene, showing kids questioning authority, religion, pretty much anything. In the end, there’s Jesse with the big question: Why? My mother sometimes has more questions than answers in her work, but that’s what life’s all about. It is good for kids to know that life is tough, bad things will come your way, and even the smartest people might not have the answer. That can actually be reassuring.

This is director Gabor Csupo’s first live-action film. His background is in animation, like Rugrats. Was that a difficult adjustment?

DP: I was terrified to have a first-time director, but what I didn’t count on or think about is that Gabor has made a hefty sum of money knowing what kids want. His working with the kids was like watching a well-oiled machine. He knew what to do, what to say to them, and the kids grew up with his stuff, so really related to him.

How did you feel when you got the news about the Newberry?

KP: I decided I would never have to mix another quart of dried skim milk, and I never have. I could afford to go out and buy fresh milk.

I’ll bet you still think of that when you buy milk.

KP: Every time. It still feels good.

Quote of the Week -- Willie Waffle and Pajiba

I loved what my friend Willie Waffle had to say about "Ghost Rider" --

I kept hoping in the middle of the movie the Scooby Doo gang would come out, rip the mask off of Cage and reveal Ghost Rider really is crazy old man Ben Affleck!

I also enjoyed the review from Daniel Carlson on snarkier-than-thou Pajiba, which promises its reviews are scathing. Carlson delivers with the best dissection so far of the logical inconsistencies and howlers in this film.

Johnson is doing something deeply wrong here by refusing to give his fictional world its own constant reality, which in turn makes it impossible to believe in the characters, and their lives, and their actions, and their consequences.

Perhaps worst of all is Johnson’s curious take on the ins and outs of damnation. As J.B. says to the caretaker, “He may have my soul, but he doesn’t have my spirit.” The caretaker then responds, “Any man who sells his soul for love has the power to change the world,” before going on to pontificate that since J.B. sold his soul for the “right reason,” maybe that “puts God on [his] side.” Johnson’s wavering fictional universe is one where the devil is everywhere and God doesn’t show up much, and where Johnny Blaze hates the cursed monster he sees himself becoming but also won’t relinquish that curse when given the opportunity. Johnny pines for a second chance to fix his past, a shot at atonement to make things right, but he’d rather be the devil’s whipping boy than live free. If Johnson’s hero can’t even summon the courage to save himself, how can he save the world?

The Story of My Least Favorite Movie

When people ask me about my least favorite movie, one that always pops into my head is "Patch Adams." Certainly, there have been dumber, more amateurish movies. But this one is at the bottom of my list because of its smug self-congratulatory, sanctimony and its blatantly contemptuous insincerity. The movie is meretricious claptrap. In my review, I said

There are a lot of important points to be made here about the dignity that all of us deserve when we are scared and vulnerable and about the importance of humor in the direst of circumstances. But this movie undercuts its own arguments by presenting us with a hero who is more narcissistic than humanitarian. The old joke about Hollywood is that the only thing that matters there is sincerity, and once you learn to fake that, you're all set. This movie, with its adoring bald kids and old lady swimming in noodles and bedpan clown shoes, cannot even manage to fake it.

My friend Bill thoughtfully sent me a lovely gift, the new autobiography by Mike Farrell of television's "M*A*S*H," which has a behind-the-scenes story about the making of "Patch Adams" that deserves a movie of its own. A horror movie.

Farrell is a friend of the real Patch Adams, and encouraged him to pursue a movie deal as a way of communicating his ideas about treating patients and to raise money for his clinic. Farrell obtained the rights to the story because he was enthusiastic about what the movie could be and wanted to make sure it did his friend justice. The man who gained his greatest success playing an iconoclastic doctor on television thought he understood both Adams and show business well enough to make the movie something they could be proud of.

Instead, Farrell, his partner, and Adams were swept aside by studio executives, a newly hot director, and a big star -- Robin Williams, whose wife was added to the film as producer. Farrell's rueful but good-humored description of thuggish, childish, narcissistic, and dishonest behavior by just about all concerned is the best dissection of the corrosive power of what happens all to often to good ideas when they meet the steamroller of the Hollywood machine since John Gregory Dunne's Monster: Living Off the Big Screen.

Shrinks on Film (in both senses of the term)

The New Yorker has an
essay about the portrayal of psychotherapists in films. Or, an essay about the way psychotherapists think about the way they are portrayed in films.

Glen O. Gabbard, as they say, wrote the book. Gabbard, a psychoanalyst and a professor of psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine, in Houston, is the author of Psychiatry and the Cinema, a study of Hollywood’s transference issues. Gabbard’s book offers a catalogue of pompous quacks (“Mr. Deeds Goes to Town”), swingers with Prince Valiant hairdos (“What’s New Pussycat?”), sadistic enforcers of social conformity (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”), love-starved lady doctors (“The Prince of Tides”), and serial killers who eat their patients (“Silence of the Lambs”)."

Gabard moderated a symposium on this subject at a recent conference, where the discussion focused on "The Treament," coming out this spring. I saw the film last year at the Tribeca Film Festival, and enjoyed it very much.

Rhona Engels, a psychotherapist, wondered why movies seem to offer three-dimensional portraits of patients but not of therapists. “I think it might have something to do with the power of what we do,” she said. “It can only be portrayed through projection—a kind of cutting down to size.”

Gabbard said simply, “If they ever showed an actual hour of therapy, it would be so boring that people would demand their money back.”

Afterward, Gabbard joined the panelists for dinner. At one point, someone suggested coming up with a list of movies that portray psychiatrists in a favorable light. Rudavsky named “Suddenly Last Summer,” in which Montgomery Clift plays a psychiatrist who saves Elizabeth Taylor from having a lobotomy. “Yes,” Gabbard said with a sigh. “That was from the golden age of psychiatry in the cinema.”

...


Gabbard’s own list included “Ordinary People,” but, he noted, “It’s the Hollywood version of therapy, which usually involves a dramatic, cathartic cure, brought about by a de-repressed memory of a traumatic childhood event, followed by tears and hugging.” He also cited the 1997 film “Good Will Hunting.” “It’s over the top, and the therapist uses methods that are unconventional and even outrageous,” he said. “But a naïve audience member could see it and come away with the impression that sometimes therapy actually helps people.”

I think the movies have done a better job portraying therapists than they have portraying mentally ill people, who are always either cute ("Benny and Joon," "King of Hearts"), less crazy than the "sane" people, or maniacal (horror/slasher movies of all kinds). In that same category of kind, caring, all-knowing psychotherapists who evoke great moments of breakthrough for their patients, I'd put Lee J. Cobb in "The Three Faces of Eve," Gregory Peck in "Dr. Newman, M.D.," and Ingrid Bergman in Hitchcock's "Spellbound."

OK GO -- Wallpaper

OK Go - Do What You Want (Wallpaper Version)



Buy OK Go - Oh No at iTunes.

With One of my Favorite Movie Stars

from "Pinocchio," Jiminy Cricket, official conscience and singer of "When You Wish Upon a Star"

Quote of the Week -- Jeannette Catsoulis on "Hannibal Rising"

When movies are good, the always brilliant Jeanette Catsoulis is very, very good, but when they're bad, she's better. This week, she, um, devours, Hannibal Rising.

Like Leatherface and Freddy Krueger, Hannibal Lecter is a monster who thrives in the dark; probe his past, and there’s a danger of finding only banality.

But this is America, where all pathologies must be excavated and neutralized, so we’re off to 1944 Lithuania, where the Lecter family is facing down Nazis, Russians, Vichy French and wild boars. The arrival — and subsequent dinner plans — of a gang of starving thugs swiftly disposes of young Hannibal’s little sister and awakens his cannibalistic cravings. Eight years in a Soviet orphanage do little to rehabilitate. “You do not honor the human pecking order,” the warden tells Hannibal (Gaspard Ulliel). “You’re always hurting the bullies.” Clearly he’s more disturbed than we think.

Scarcely pausing to wonder which wine goes best with East European thug, Hannibal sets out to avenge his sister and devise recipes....

Conceived in the clamor of the marketplace, “Hannibal Rising,” like its predecessor “Hannibal,” makes a star out of a character who should exist only in the margins, a peripheral terror made larger by mystery. The success of “The Silence of the Lambs” depends on a dense mixture of psychological intrigue and stylized flashes of brutality, glimpsed only from the corner of the eye like fleeting hints of Lecter’s psychoses. “Hannibal Rising” drags these into the light and applies a magnifying glass, reducing one of our most mythic villains to a callow, dysfunctional chef.

Quotes of the Week -- "Norbit"

Nothing like a good, old-fashioned, awful movie to inspire eloquence in critics.

Norbit isn't farce--it's a thoughtless, cancerous, viral, irresponsible pollution whose existence speaks ill of the society that produced it and of any society that would endorse or defend it. It's not the end of civilization, just symptomatic of how easy it is to get laughs on the backs of the disenfranchised--and of how African-American actors get awards for singing and acting like criminals (or bright children and athletes) but generally get paid for acting the fool.
Walter Chaw, Film Freak Central

Usually, it takes six or so months for an actor to parlay a Best Supporting Actor nomination into a cringe-worthy career-derailing performance in an unbelievably awful picture.
Jon Popick Planet Sick-Boy

I swear, I don’t look away from horror movies nearly as much as I did this film...Possibly the most poorly-done politically incorrect movie to be released – and during Black History Month, no less – “Norbit” has something to offend everyone. It’s got fat women jokes, fart humor, mind-numbing racial stereotypes and Eddie Murphy in the Asian version of blackface playing his own adoptive Chinese father. All you need is Isaiah Washington and Michael Richards in the movie spewing homophobic and racial slurs to make it complete. Kevin Carr 7M Pictures

Surely some humanitarian organization will recognize the selflessness with which Murphy has taken three of the movie's major roles, thus saving two other actors from a nasty black mark on their résumés.
Sam Adams LA Times

Beliefnet's Spiritual Film/Performance Awards

I was delighted to participate for the second time in Beliefnet's film awards. I especially like the way they invite the judges to write "pro" or "con" pieces about the nominees. You can see my comments on "The Pursuit of Happyness" and "The Nativity Story" (pro) and "The Peaceful Warrior" and "Flags of our Fathers" (con).

Washington Post critics talk about the Oscars

It's a lot of fun to see Washington Post critcs Stephen Hunter, Desson Thomson, and Ann Hornaday talk to Washingtonpost.com movies editor Jen Chaney about their Oscar picks for the supporting actor and actress roles.

Quotes of the Week -- "Because I Said So" round-up

A little glass half full action here:

The only thing you can't fault in "Because I Said So" is Keaton's integrity, as she commits herself completely to a disastrous role.
Bruce Newman, Mercury News (He also says, however, that "but the pyre that Keaton makes of her career with this ghastly contrivance is unforgettable. And unforgivable.")

Sitting through a horrifically misbegotten movie can inspire meditations on the bigger picture:

If these are the only kinds of roles we can conceive for actresses who have grown into their faces, as Keaton has, it's no wonder so many younger performers are seeking the knife.
Stephanie Zacharek, Salon

Ann Hornaday puts the movie on the couch:

Movies about therapy are fun. Movies that need therapy are not.
Washington Post And love her description of Keaton's performance: Acting like a whooping crane on Ritalin and getting hit in the face with a bar mitzvah cake.

And, of course, the inevitable play on the title:

"Stay home. Because I said so."
Victoria Alexander, FilmsInReview

I will be unavailable on July 21 this year

Baby Einstein's founder replies, and Timothy Noah has the last word

Timothy Noah responds to Baby Einstein Founder Julie Aigner-Clark, who wrote to object to his critique of President Bush's shout-out to her at the State of the Union. Her non-denial denial attempts to change the subject by bragging about her charitable contributions and attempting to distance herself from "Baby DaVinci," which she says was produced after she left the company.

He points out that she appears on Baby Einstein's website and on its behalf, including at the SotU itself, and has not attempted to distance herself from any of its products. And that the name itself is deceptive, suggesting there is an educational component not supported by any research.

But you didn't market these videos under the brand name Baby Hypnotize or Baby Chloroform. You marketed them under the name Baby Einstein. That's deceptive...And in what sense can a video really "teach" an infant anything? What evidence do you have that anything is being learned, other than an early attachment to the TV screen?

Aigner-Clark ends her letter by telling him she was raised a Democrat. Noah's response is exactly right:

You may have been raised a Democrat, but you are now being used by Republicans. Don't mistake the president's mentioning you in his speech as anything other than condescension—a condescension of which Democrats are equally capable. If President Bush cared at all about the issue of child development, then someone on his staff would have taken the five minutes necessary to discover that prominent medical professionals consider the business you founded to be a scam. (For that matter, if President Bush cared at all about the issue of early child development, then he wouldn't have let Head Start funding lie flat during the past five years. But that's another story.) The White House's choosing to spotlight your accomplishment was surely meant to demonstrate its commitment to children, to families, and to all those other womanly good feelings it fears that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D., Calif., taps into with female voters. But in failing to perform even rudimentary research on what it is Baby Einstein actually does, the White House ended up demonstrating the precise opposite.