I finally got around to watching Zootopia this past weekend. I enjoyed it, but I wasn't overly enthusiastic about it when the credits started rolling. But it's stuck with me, and I've been thinking about it a lot in the past few days, so I figured I'd jot down a few thoughts:

Thought 1: Zootopia has a remarkably tight plot

This didn't jump out at me as I was watching it or even right after it was over, but the more I think about it, the more I realize--man this is a quality flick!

For example, the scene where Judy's chasing that weasel: as I was watching it, I thought, "Well, here it is--that old classic scene where the underdog protagonist tries to make a hero of themselves and ends up making a huge mess of things and getting in trouble. Ten bucks says the next scene has her landed in the chief's office getting put on some kind of probation."

And I was right--to a point. The scene played out as expected, and the next scene was indeed inside the chief's office for the very reason I had predicted. And yet it was different, too. When it looked like the little rodential apartment buildings were going to topple like dominoes, Judy righted them. In the end, she actually handled things quite well and didn't make much of a mess at all. She even made a friend with a little vole by complimenting her hair--and that ends up being really important later on.

"Huh," I thought. "Kinda clever that the vole showed up again later."

But that wasn't the end of it--not by a long shot. In the third act, when Judy finally solves the mystery, that weasel turns out to be the key. In the end, that scene played an entirely different (and surprisingly crucial) role in the total plot structure.

And that seems to be how the whole movie works. I've only seen it once, so I can't say for sure, but I think pretty much everything that happens early on comes up again recently. In fact, a sound bite uttered in the very first scene is, I think, repeated exactly in the climax. And the twist that happens in the climax--totally built up to, but still completely fooled me. Very impressive.

Thought 2: Zootopia has a lot to say about race

I haven't checked, but I assume other people on the internet have discussed this. It was, in some places, extremely overt. And yet, here again, the more I thought about it, the more layers I found.

You can't just say, "The predators represent Black people." They do for sure at the end of the movie, but remember that Judy only became a cop through an affirmative action program. So Judy is also Black, or at least a minority of some kind. And then she ends up perpetuating racism against the predators.

I think rather than interpreting bunnies or predators or any other group of animals as representing particular minorities, I think it's best to accept the movie as a separate world that is dealing with similar issues. When you do that, it'll give you a lot more to think about regarding our own world.

Final Thought: That world is pretty stinkin' cool

The detail that really sticks out to me is the sprinklers in the Rain Forest District during Judy's initial train ride into Zootopia. I'm a bit sad we didn't get to see all 14 districts, but we should appreciate the writers' restraint in this regard. Still, if this was the 90s, I'd be totally stoked to watch the spinoff TV show that inevitably would have explored all 14 districts.

All in all, a solid flick. Don't know that I'll get around to revisiting it myself, but I'd say it's well worth multiple watchings.

The Hollywood Pinboard

A few years ago, I saw Taken in a discount movie theater with my roommates and afterward postulated that there must be a bulletin board somewhere in Hollywood where action-flick writers post sticky notes with ideas--things like "Retired CIA field agent brought out of retirement when his daughter gets kidnapped" and "American tourist sold into foreign sex-slave trade" and "Person kills roomful of enemies and hides under bodies to shoot at enemy reinforcements when they arrive"--and when the board gets full, the producer pulls down all the sticky notes, arranges them in such a way as to make them vaguely interrelate, and then sends the conglomeration to his screenwriters to add manufactured dialog and flat characters, and then sends the script to  a friendly cameraman with shaky hands. Bam--action flick.

I've decided recently that my hypothesis was unfair: Hollywood's Pinboard does not only apply to action movies, and it isn't a recent phenomenon.

I've decided I like Danny Kaye. He's an actor from the age of Hollywood musicals. I've often expressed the fact that I don't much care for musicals (except, of course, for the undislikable Singing in the Rain), but The Court Jester is excellent family-friendly fare; if you've never seen it, I recommend it highly as good, clean fun. It's also a good introduction to the sort of humor Danny Kaye excels at.

Because my wife and I like Danny Kaye, we'll occasionally pick up a movie he's in without knowing anything about it except that he's in it (when movie rentals are free at the local library, there's no real risk in random movie selection). Sometimes we do well (On The Double was a non-musical comedy that had some surprisingly hilarious moments despite its fairly straightforward comedy-of-errors formula), but sometimes we don't.

On The Riviera is a 1951 musical that stars Danny Kaye, and it made me realize just how accurate my beliefs about a Hollywood Pinboard must be. It functioned like a lot of other musicals (White Christmas, which Danny Kaye is also in, comes to mind) in that its protagonist has a career as a musical performer, so throwing unrelated dance numbers together becomes child's play, but this movie went one step farther:

There's a scene in which a party is going on, which the protagonist (Danny Kaye) was at but has left. Now, the protagonist has recently gotten a big break: a television studio wants to broadcast his stage show because his impersonations of a famous aviator (also Danny Kaye) have been making such a big splash. So he runs off to do his broadcast, and some people at the party gather around the TV to see his show. But instead of his impersonations, he does this number, which I imagine had been on a yellowing sticky note on the Hollywood Pinboard for years before someone finally said, "Okay, fine. Fine! We'll throw it in the next movie we do." This scene simultaneously demonstrates 1) why I don't like musicals and 2) why I do like Danny Kaye. It's complicated, I know. If you can sit through this video, you'll get to see Danny Kaye slaughter the pronunciation of various animals and plants, and it makes me giggle, but the song is grating and the scene had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the movie: it was never alluded to beforehand; it was never mentioned afterward. And I imagine it was really expensive, with all the harnesses etc. How was it deemed worth the time and money?

No wonder musicals don't exist anymore....

Anyway. I give you the final death throes of musical cinema:

Bret is very proud of his Oscar

Perhaps you've heard that a song from The Muppets won an Oscar. I was so happy about that. For one thing, I love the Muppets; for another, Bret McKenzie (of Flight of the Conchord fame) wrote the songs for that movie, and it just kinda rekindles my faith in the whole movie industry that a man like Bret McKenzie can win an Oscar.

As soon as I found out it, I decided to look up Bret's Wikipedia page to see what it had to say about this honor, and I found myself having to hold back my laughter. I think Bret himself probably modified his Wikipedia page to make it read this way. This is copy-pasted from that page (I've added highlighting so you can get the gist without having to actually read the whole thing):

Academy Award winner McKenzie has appeared in the first and third films inPeter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. His silent role in the first film as Figwitachieved some minor internet fame, which led to Jackson giving him a line in the third film. In April 2011, McKenzie, the winner of an Academy Award, was cast as the elf Lindir (who in contrast to Figwit is a character created by Tolkien himself) for the upcoming The Hobbit. His father Peter McKenzie played the role of Elendil in Lord of the Rings.

Along with Clement, Oscar winning McKenzie was featured as one of 2008's "100 Sexiest People" in a special edition of the Australian magazine Who.

Bret "Oscar-Winner" McKenzie and fellow Conchord Clement guest starred as a pair of camp counselors in "Elementary School Musical", the season premiere of the 22nd season of The Simpsons, which aired on 26 September 2010.^[3]

Oscar winning McKenzie, together with Australian comedian Hamish Blake is set to star in a New Zealand feature film, Two Little Boys, currently under production in New Zealand and set for release late 2011.^[4]

During the summer of 2010, Academy Awardee McKenzie flew to Los Angeles to serve as the music supervisor for the The Muppets.^[5] He went on to write five songs for the films soundtrack including "Man or Muppet" and "Life's a Happy Song" both of which were nominated for Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards and Satellite Awards for Best Original Song.^[6]

In 2012 his song, "Man or Muppet", won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Post 238

So, there's a new Muppet movie coming out in about a year. It's being filmed right now. I like the Muppets, so I'm naturally inclined to be curious for the film and to hope that it isn't terrible, but I'm actually really, really excited for it.

Why, you ask? Because of the guy co-writing and guest starring in it: Jason Segel.

If you don't know who Jason Segel is, or if you do know who he is but can't quite imagine him being involved with the Muppets (or any PG comedy), I advise you to click here and watch a pretty awesome video (because I had no idea he did any sort of puppetry).

Post 232

A few weeks back, my wife and I watched Alfred Hitchcock's Rope. I was really interested to see what a movie with no cuts would look like. As it turns out, Rope isn't exactly that: aside from the cuts that Hitch did his best to hide, there are deliberate cuts about every 20 minutes for when (according to Wikipedia) the projectionist had to change reels in the theater. Regardless, it was the closest thing to a single-shot film that I had ever seen, and I enjoyed it.

As I watched the film, I came to a very interesting realization: I didn't really notice the lack of cuts. More interesting still was that I noticed the hidden cuts more than I noticed the deliberate ones, and it occurred to me that a far greater miracle than a single-shot film is the fact that normal, multi-shot films don't disorient moviegoers. Because you think about it, there's nothing in real life that remotely resembles a movie. In real life, we can only ever have one perspective. So a single-shot film (or a play, for that matter) is much more analogous to real life than any movie, yet we here in modern society generally take cuts in stride. It makes me wonder whether the audiences watching the first multi-shot films were caught off guard by them.

It's hard to judge the success of Hitchcock's effect. I was shocked that it was so unobtrusive: I was almost as blissfully unaware of the camera work in Rope as I am in any other movie. But that's what we American moviegoers generally value, right--an unobtrusive cameraman? So perhaps the affect was perfectly well wrought. But if there comes a point that an affect can be so well done that it goes unnoticed, really, what's the point? It's like this blasted a cappella craze that's been slowly building in the past decade, culminating (and hopefully ending) with Glee. Yasee, I don't understand the point of getting a bunch of talented singers together, tossing in a beatboxer, and having them do their best to sound like they've got a band--why don't you just get a band? I remember the good ole days when the only a cappella I knew was Rockappella doing the theme song for Where in the World Is Carmen San Diego?--which I liked because they sounded like an a cappella group. Now a group of people get on stage and try to sound exactly like Journey and I'm like, "BOO! Get off the stage!" because if I wanna listen to Journey, I'm gonna grab one of my Journey CDs, not go see a cover band that doesn't have a single guitar, keyboard, or drum set in sight.

But I digress. The point is that it's hard to judge the success of an effect whose epitome is invisibility, and that's what the carefully choreographed camerawork in Rope was. I watched some stuff about the making of it, and I was blown away by the enormously complicated set--the whole thing certainly was a cinematic tour de force--but in the end, what have we gained? Absolutely nothing. So really, as awesome as the undertaking was, what's the point?

On the other hand, my wife and I recently saw The Russian Ark courtesy of BYU's International Cinema. It actually was a single-shot, and the effect was inescapable because the main character was in first-person. It drove me crazy, but I'm not sure that was the film's fault. For one thing, we arrived about five minutes into it, and without cuts or scenes to reorient me, I was never able to get my feet on the ground. Also, for whatever reason, it was in really low resolution--like watching a low-res YouTube video in full-screen mode. I at first believed that that was a sacrifice that the director had made to be able to do 90-some-odd minutes of film in a single shot, but the Wikipedia article tells me that it was shot in high definition, so I don't know what happened there. Also, the subtitles were buggy: there were times when people were talking but there were no subtitles, and there were times when large crowds would just be hubbubbing and subtitles would come up that couldn't be clearly attributed to any one speaker. So it's really hard for me to give the movie a fair shake overall, but I think this affect was probably a lot better than Hitchcock's because it played a role in the film itself, and I think that's important. I'm all for artistic and experimental film making, but I feel like it has to be done to some end, and I don't consider "Let's see if anybody notices" or "Just because I can" are very good ends to work toward.

Post 212

I'm not convinced that I have any interest in seeing Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, but this awesome bit from Ebert's review:

Let me search my memory. I think — no, I'm positive — this is the first movie I've seen where the hero dangles above a chasm lined with razor-sharp peanut brittle while holding onto a red licorice rope held by his girlfriend, who has a peanut allergy, so that when she gets cut by some brittle and goes into anaphylactic shock and her body swells up, she refuses to let go, and so the hero bites through the licorice to save her. You don't see that every day.

Post 162

Last night, I went to a little Halloween party, and we watched Disturbia.

Lame, lame, lame, laaaaaaaaame.

It's nice to see a movie like this every now and then, though, because I'm not torn over whether or not I liked it, and I can point to specific details as to why it was bad.

The movie starts out with a father and son fishing, having a nice time, and then, on the ride home, they get in a car wreck, and Dad dies. This is to establish angst in our teen protagonist because, as we all know, teenagers have to have some kind of terrible trauma in order to have angst: generally, teens are a mature, sensible, and, above all, level-headed group on the whole.

But you should have seen this wreck. It was pretty spectacular. They were driving a car down a highway, and they ran into the back of a similar sized car that was stopped on the highway. Did you know that when one car plows into the back of another, the moving car gets airborne, flips upside down and sails a few hundred feet before hitting the ground and then skidding and spinning to a stop? (When I got rearended, the car behind me just disappeared into my trunk--I totally got gypped!) And then some guy cruising along in a little pickup somehow didn't see this inverted car in the middle of the road and runs into it at full speed. More spinning and sliding. Dad is now dead.

Six months later, kid is in Spanish class, and he obviously hasn't done any work. He has no idea what's going on. He's sleeping in class. He isn't doing his homework. Teacher says, "What would your father think?" and kid punches him in the face, earning himself a summer vacation of house arrest. He's given a little ankle tracker thing and isn't allowed to leave the property. To compound the injustice, his mom discontinues his X-Box Live subscription and iTunes membership. So what's a boy to do but spy on his neighbors?

A pretty girl (I guess; am I the only one who finds nothing attractive about seductively dressed teens?) moves in next door. He doesn't even see her face: he sees her from behind as she's carrying a box. Of course it's love. A few days later, she notices he and a friend spying on her as she's swimming, so she comes over and they all become friends.

This--doesn't make any sense....

Later, she comes over all angry and asks why he spies on her, and he tells her, when he's watching her, he sees how she's different from other people: she reads books instead of magazines; she looks out her windows at the world, contemplating how to make it better; she looks in the mirror, not cockily, but pensively, wondering, "Who am I really?"

(Funny, every time he looked out the window at her, the camera gave us a close up of her butt.)

"That's either the creepiest or the sweetest thing anybody's ever said to me," she says, and then they dive into perhaps the longest make-out session in teen movie history (though I don't doubt there have been longer, I have thankfully avoided them).

Of course, in the meantime, the guy and the girl and the goofy-friend character (every movie needs one of those) are spying on the man they think is a murderer. They have nothing to go off of except for the kind of car he drives. But they are sure he's a murderer, so main character dude sets up a stake-out in his house and sends girl and goofy to follow this guy around and break into his house and stuff. One time, goofy gets locked in the house, so main character guy crosses the property line, which brings his parole officer running. The police, at main character's insistence, poke around serial killer's house, but they don't find anything suspicious, and then they leave.

And then serial killer--who is so methodical that he has built a surgery room behind a secret door in his hallway--suddenly goes crazy and starts attacking main character's mom and goofy friend and main character himself. Goofy gets homerunned in the face with an aluminum bat--full wind-up swing from a grown man--but, don't worry, he's okay: no permenant damage, just a little bruise on his temple.

Ya know, I hear that, if you're gonna get hit with a bat, the temple's a good place to go because it's so--strong--and not fragile.

Long story short, there's a chase that ends with main character stabbing serial killer with gardening sheers and pushing him into a sess pool full of the remains of murdered women.

This, of course, doesn't affect him too badly: the next day, he's back to making out with his girl friend and hanging out with goofy friend, and the police decide to take off his tracker because, hey, he killed a murderer, let's forgive his punching a teacher in the face, ya know?

Crappy, crappy movie.

And it was full of cheap shots, too. Knife-weilding murderer approaches a woman while the music swells tensely--haha, he just cut a price tag off of her dress; bet you didn't see that coming! I'm pretty sure it's never been done before. Pretty sure it wasn't horribly obvious. Or when the camera man walks with a staggering step toward the main character, appearing to be a POV shot from the antagonist but--nope--it really is just the camera man. And when goofy gets locked in the crazy man's house, he has a video camera. The cops show up and don't find goofy. Then main character starts getting video feed of goofy--and he's dead! But wait, that looks like my closet; better go investigate--haha, goofy, funny joke, man.

Anyway, if your a budding movie critic like me who occasionally enjoys watching a move that is easily lambasted, this is a good one for you. I haven't told you everything that's wrong with it because, if you do want a movie whose problems are numberless and ubiquitous, this is the movie for you, and I'd hate to ruin all the little flaws. But if you're looking for an enjoyable, worthwhile movie with character development and reasonable plot progression, this is not a good choice. Perhaps you could pick up Rear Window instead.

But you know what you really ought to do? Call off watching this movies to spend your time drafting a novel. Happy NaNoWriMo, everyone!

Post 161

Strange how these movie reviews always come in groups....

Last night I watched Lady in the Water. I am not a fan of M. Night Shyamalan--Signs doesn't really do it for me; The Village was interesting but nothing I'd watch again; The Sixth Sense I remember virtually nothing about except that it scared me silly for a ridiculously long time--so knowing that this work was his, that he would be playing a crucial role, and that it was supposed to be some sort of demented bedtime story--I went into it with a lot of reservation.

But I really enjoyed this movie--really enjoyed it. I loved how it believed in itself so unfailingly and yet managed not to take itself overly serious--it was very refreshing some how. The whole thing was so different, so fun that rejecting it would be something akin to kicking a puppy, ya know? It was just so datgum lovable!

Don't think I've ever felt this way about a movie before. Kinda nice, actually.

While I'm reviewing movies, I finally got around to seeing The Sting last weekend. It was pretty good. I like that flavor of movie--the heisty double-cross--it's a good time most any way you slice it. And Paul Newman and Robert Redford are a powerhouse of a team, man. I didn't really like Butch Cassedy and the Sundance Kid too much, but I enjoyed them in it; The Sting was all I could have hoped for from them and more. Robert Redford is, like, our parents' generation's Brad Pitt; Paul Newman is just Paul Newman--there will never be a person who is all that is man the way he is. No one else could have pulled off Cool Hand Luke--no one. Not that I really like that movie, either, but it is the quitessential Paul Newman, and when Paul gives that smile--whether it be in The Sting or as Butch--you know he's gonna come out on top, and it just gives you hope for manhood, ya know?

Maybe I'm crazy, but that's probably why you're here reading my blog, now, isn't it?

Post 160

How long's it been since I did a movie review? Too long, my friends--too long, I say!

So here we go:

I just watch K-PAX. Funny story, there, but I've unfortunately forgotten most of the details. But on more than one occasion (though perhaps not more than two), I've had someone who didn't like the movie recommend it to me. They'd say something like, "I saw K-PAX," and I'd say, "Was it good?" and they'd say something like, "Meh. I dunno. You'd probably like it."

I think I've mentioned this in a previous post, come to think of it.

...scanning...
...scanning...

Yup. Post 138.

Anyway, I finally saw it tonight. And I--I'm not sure whether I liked it or not. I can see why people who know me and my taste in movies would think I'd like it--it really is the sort of movie I would like--but, despite its overall goodness, it had a few major problems that I'm just not sure I can overlook.

But first, the good: Kevin Spacey is awesome. I think the only other movie I've ever seen him in was Superman Returns, which I didn't like really at all except for his portrayal of Lux Luthor, which was, again, awesome. At first, I was thinking, "What's the big deal? Anyone can keep a straight face," but then the hypnosis and murder scenes came and, man, that guy's good! I mean really good!

Also good: the unresolved finish. That is the thing everyone always recommended to me. Because I knew that the movie wasn't going to answer its central question (viz. Is Prot human?), I was watching for the end. I was so afraid that he'd just disappear and they'd say, "Hum. It's a mystery!" I was pleasantly surprised by what actually occured. Well done.

Last good thing: the movie's concept and the way it's presented. I really did like it. In fact, I liked it so much that I kinda wish someone would repackage it and do it right.

"Now, hold up there, little butterfly," you say to me, "if you liked the concept and its presentation, what didn't you--how would--what's to repackage?"

"Ah," I respond, "the devil's in the details, dontchya know."

Ya see, K-PAX is apparantly a place that is so advanced that they have transcended the need for families. I have a problem with that. Also, K-PAXians evidently don't look like humans, which some how bothers me (something about a combination between Ephesians 4:6 and Genesis 1:27--but that is, of course, my own personal opinion and no sort of doctrine worth discussing; I only brought it up to explain why I feel the way I do). Furthermore, K-PAXians believe that the universe explodes and collapses repeatedly ad infinitum, but we humans abandoned that notion several years ago when we realized that the universe seems to be accelerating in its expansion rather than slowing down--and I'm pretty sure we figured that out before this movie came out, so this seems like a pretty serious faux pas for a semi-scifi flick. Lastly, the movie moved too slowly, I think. Now, I like moves that move at a deliberate pace--the 3-hour saunter that is Meet Joe Black is much more riveting to me than the 3-hours of nonsense that is any of the LOTR movies--but this movie didn't have enough weight to move so laboriously (although I think it thought it did).

So those are the holes, and they're enough to make me not love the movie, which is sad, as I said, because I think the concept has so much potential, all of which would have been realized if Prot had just not said a few of the things he said.

The end.

Post 142

Well, I'm back. I saw two movies while I was away, so let's talk, shall we?

The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer

Cary Grant across Myrna Loy and a teen-aged Shirley Temple--can't go wrong, right? Right. This movie was so much fun! Can't say it's my favorite Cary Grant, but it was way good anyway. Some very good lines. My favorite? Hm. That's tough, especially only having seen it once, but one real winner was, "I couldn't help but overhear--my ear was to the door." (Maybe it's funnier in context; I dunno. The movie makes Happy Birthday pretty funny, too.)

Wall-E

I love Pixar; I still believe (as I long have, though I may have never stated it here) that every one of their films is quality. Wall-E had some magic moments. I was especially drawn in by the early scenes because it's truly amazing how much is portrayed sans spoken language; I was very impressed. I don't wish to say (or even to imply) that I lost interest in it as it progressed (because that is absolutely not true), but I'm just not sure how to take it. I think another viewing would probably help a lot. I wouldn't call it a political film, but it deals with a lot of politically-charged topics (viz. environmentalism, obesity, technology dependency, media addiction, corporate power, society's herd mentality (especially as regards fashion and lifestyle), biased public education, and, were I even more nitpicky, probably several other things). I don't think that it was intended to preach any specific doctrine; I don't, in fact, believe that it was really intended to be a political movie. I suppose, if it's guilty of anything, it's guilty of reflecting the human condition disturbingly well, and I, for all my talk about how that's exactly what fiction ought to do, was a little put off by what I saw because I feel so above all of it (which probably makes me a part of the problem).

Anybody else seen Wall-E? Any thoughts anyone?

Both these flicks are worth your time, though; mighty fine movies, both.

Post 140

I saw Get Smart last night. It was hi-larious. I loved it. It's been a long time since I've seen a good, clean, live-action comedy; it was quite refreshing. Steve Carell is so awesome. Man. Love that guy.

Post 135

More thoughts on movies:

I saw Kung Fu Panda this weekend. Every preview I ever saw of that movie made it look incredibly la-ame (I thought), but a friend gave me very strong recommendation, and the reviews have mostly been surprisingly good (85% from Rotten Tomatoes, 7.8/10 on IMDb, and 3 stars from Roger Ebert), so I decided to give it a try.

I'm not sorry I did. In fact, I'm pretty happy I did. I haven't laughed that much in quite a while. Of course, if you're over the age of 13, you probably have to be a fan of Jack Black's humor for it to be really funny, but I think Jack Black is a funny, funny man, so I laughed a lot. There was this one part (the acupuncture scene, for those of you who have seen it) that, even now, has me giggling when I think about it. And it was consistently funny throughout. Really, if you're in the mood for a good laugh, this is a pretty good flick. It has--oh, it's just so funny at times!

I sense an intense revolution--a paradigm shift, if you will--coming my way. As I may have mentioned before, I go through phases--"It's a phase he's going through," is a pretty fair way to describe my behavior at any given time. At least, that's always been my theory regarding myself; lately I've been so terribly consistent in some of my opinions that I've occasionally worried that I've arrived, and I don't intend to really "arrive" until long after I'm dead.

So anyway, this change: I want to start running far, far away from my gloomy intellectualism. There was a man I met during my sojourn in Idaho whom I knew as Brother Ganns. He was a fascinating human being, absolutely fascinating; I had no idea people like him existed--never crossed my mind, actually--and, to my knowledge, he is the only one of his kind. The man gets up every morning looong before he has to so he can spend an hour reading from the Book of Mormon, and hour in the Bible, and then another hour in whatever his other reading happened to be at the time (when I knew him, he had finished his reading of Journal of Discourses, making a personal index as he went because he felt the published index was insufficient, and was then working on the complete works of Nibley). The man was the most intense gospel scholar I have ever had the pleasure of meeting; seriously, he could tell you anything you wanted to know about anything you could think of, and he could site sources to back up what he said. His library was very impressive, but the fact that most of it was in his head as well as on his shelves made it even more so.

The best part about Brother Ganns, though, was that he was a totally nut; I mean this man was crazy. He is the closest thing to a 6'2", 50-year-old Jack Russel terrier that I have ever met. Seriously, every time he saw anyone he knew, it was as though it was a happy reunion after a long separation. And, strangely enough, it was never weird, and it never got old. Quite to the contrary, actually, it was contagious, and every time I saw him made my day. He'd see us and just light up, and we'd light up, too, because he was, in fact, the most lovable individual I have ever known.

Even as a missionary, that was hard for me to understand, but the more scholastic training I receive, the more unfathomable he becomes to me because I am incredibly guilty of falling prey to the school of thought that says the only happy people are the ones who really don't understand what's going on in the world around them and that all the really smart people become cynics.

Well, I'm done with that. I'm tossing it off like an old coat. I'm tired of being pensive. From here on out, I intend to laugh more. From here on out, I intend to joke more, to become lighter in heart, to just generally be happier. I've posted a few things along the lines of "I'm gonna be happier," but I always wanted to cling to my dark realism. Book's I've read recently: Night by Elie Wiesel and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Cheery, no? The Jewish holocaust and the abuses against the Lamanites. I'm done with it; done, I say! I understand that the world has been and is and will be a somewhat terrible place, but I don't think focusing on that fact will help me grow a whole lot. In fact, it may be just as bad as all the happy feel-good escapist stuff I've been so down on lately--which maybe I'll start reading now, who knows!

That said, I do still expect what I read to be well crafted. I still think Iron Man should have died, but I'm okay with him surviving; I just wish that the story would have led to that denouement a little more logically.

So I'm repenting. I'm changing my gloomy ways. Who's with me?

Post 134

I been thinking about movies....

My review of Dan in Real Life was--well, it wasn't much of a review. The movie just didn't do a thing for me, I didn't think; it seemed so--unremarkable. (The anonymous comment on that post is pretty good, though; thanks, Anonymous!)

But I've been thinking about it lately, and I realized that, despite the fact that I was completely underwhelmed by Dan in Real Life, seeing it marks the first time that I ever took note of Steve Carell, whom I'm now a fan of. And, I recently realized, the reason I'm such a fan of him is because I've been extremely impressed by his performance in two movies that I thought were otherwise fairly forgettable: Dan in Real Life and Anchorman. See, Dan in Real Life offered Steve virtually nothing to work with, yet he was absolutely amazing in it. And the blasé plot and pitiful supporting actors merely made a spectacular backdrop of gray for him to shine out from. He was so good! And then seeing him give a particularly notable rendition of dum-as-dirt in Anchorman convinced me that the man can do anything, and I am so excited for Get Smart to come out because I trust Mr. Carell to not screw it up (which would frankly be pretty easy to do with something like Get Smart).

(Oh, and for those of you who are wondering, no, I've never seen The Office, though it is much more appealing now that I know who Steve Carell is.)

Next, I saw Cloverfield again a couple nights ago. That movie is remarkably lacking in rewatchability, as it turns out: I enjoyed it about as much the second time as I expected to the first time. Still, because I did like it so much the first time, I think my recommendation still stands to anyone who hasn't seen it; you should definitely give it a try. But don't, like, run out and buy it or anything like that; I don't think that wise (I'm pretty relieved I didn't do that; I was considering it).

Last thought on movies for this post, I watched Stranger than Fiction last night. I love that movie. It and Big Fish are my two favorites right now, which boggles my mind because they are both far from any of my proclaimed ideals for fiction. I mean, Big Fish is blatantly ridiculous, and Stranger than Fiction is just as blatantly an exercise in deus ex machina. But I still love them. Don't know why, but I do.

Post 131

Last night I watched Intolerable Cruelty with my roommates. It was a good flick; I kinda enjoyed it. The humor was fast and clever but never called attention to itself, so I occasionally found myself thinking, "I think something funny just happened, but I totally missed it." Therefore I feel confident in saying that this movie probably gets better the more times you watch it.

I understand now why Thmazing likes it so much.

More than reviewing the movie, though, I'd like to ramble about some thoughts that've been going round and round in my head of late. [I've never really understood that convention: "of late"? What the heck is that supposed to mean, anyway? Grammatically, I mean. It just seems so archaic. Why do people even use it when we have "lately" at our disposal?] It was funny to me that I had just been out on a long walk, monologuing to myself about a certain topic, and then I came home and watched Intolerable Cruelty, which dealt with that same topic, so now I can talk about it in reference to this movie that I'm pretending to review and no one will know that this movie review is just a pretense and that I'm actually following my own private agenda. Oh! I'm so sneaky.

Anyway, I wanna ramble about the concept of independence. I'ma gonna go out on a limb here and say that the desire to be independent is not a righteous desire, and my comments section is, as ever, wide open for disagreement, dissension, and mudslinging. So. Onward!

In Intolerable Cruelty, Marylin is seeking independence. She spuriously marries wealthy men so she can divorce them and take their money, but she doesn't claim to be a simple gold digger; she says that money means independence, and independence is what she really wants. Marriage and divorce are merely means to get money, and money is merely a means to get independence--and--and--uh....

I give up. Here's what's on my mind:

So many people seem to be driven by a desire to be completely independent, to transcend their reliance on other people and society as a whole, to transcend their reliance on organizations and support groups, and ultimately (in some cases) to transcend their reliance on any sort of Supreme Being. I doubt many readers of this blog would argue that we ought to try to become independent of God, but I think that our delusions of other forms of independence are nearly as crippling.

My parents raised me to become independent--at least, that's what my Mom's always lamenting because, as it turns out, they did a bang up job of it: we kids never come to visit much. I remember a few months ago when a friend of mine told me that she was planning to leave at the beginning of the summer, I was honestly confused.

"Where are you gonna go?" I asked.

"Um. Home," she said, as though I were mildly retarded.

Oh. Why on earth would anyone do that? It just doesn't make sense in my head. I mean, I love my parents, and I'm always happy to see them; I call them every Sunday just to say hello and chat for a while, but I could never go back to living with them! That, to me, would be an indication of regression.

Yet, in the Gospel, we're always talking about sealing all the generations together, and we talk about heaven in terms of families; heck, Joseph Smith said that we'll have the same sociality in the Celestial Kingdom that we have here (D&C 130:2). Furthermore, from a more biological and less theological standpoint, we humans are social creatures; that's our nature even if we are constantly fighting against it.

But I'm not really talking about kids and parents drifting apart. No, it is good and healthy for offspring to leave the nest to build a nest of their own. I'm talking about the lack of trust we have in each other. I know some people who are so guarded that they are little more than a facade; they hide deep within themselves and never let anyone inside to meet them. They build a fortress from the bricks of bad experience with the mortar of pain and set a guard out front. Sometimes the guard is a jester; other times, a brute. Either way, the royal soul inside wastes away, unknown and unknowable. [Little over the top? Hopefully not too much....]

I think I understand solitude better than many people my age. Maybe not, but I like to think I do. My long walks after dark are almost a nightly occurrence; I'm just the sort of guy who needs some alone time on a fairly regular basis. I don't consider myself an antisocial person; I just like my solitude. It's refreshing to walk alone in the middle of the night: my mind clears, I pray aloud, and life starts to make sense.

On the other hand, I know all too well how crippling solitude can be, and I know the pain of isolation. For one who claims to love his solitude, I sure do find myself grappling with intense loneliness a lot, and I find it hard to believe that people who hole up deep within themselves and never let anyone get too close can ever be truly happy. And I worry about those people a lot because I know that, beneath that smooth exterior, a sea of emotion is roiling just below a boil. The thing that scares me most is that, we're all so oblivious to what's inside of people, there's rarely any way to know the time bomb's ticking until it goes off.

I propose, then, that, if we all shot for interdependence rather than independence, we'd all be a lot better off. So, I dunno, like, go give someone a hug, or something, before the whole world explodes.

Post 129

They did it! They really did it!

Good work, Mr. Lucas: you finally managed to not screw up. It's been so long....

So, I just saw the latest Indiana Jones. It was great; I loved it. They actually managed to capture the happy, feel-good adventure flick sentiment that we all loved in the originals. And, if you have any grasp on the concept of cinematographic omage, then this movie has got a lot for you.

I'm not going to go through the trouble of trying to sum up the plot for you (but if you like that, Roger Ebert's review is great). But I do wanna say that, when the movie began with Commies forcing Indy to guide them to a box in a government warehouse, I was sure it had to be the Arc of the Covenant--but I quickly figured out that I was wrong. Nevertheless, I thought to myself, "If they let this scene end without at least mentioning the Arc, I'm totally gonna walk." [Sidenote: in reality, I probably wouldn't have walked out because I was on a date, but that was my sentiment.] I was much relieved that they didn't let me down.

There was another scene when I was so sure I was seeing the Breath of God that I almost shouted, "Penitent man kneel!" but I resisted the urge. Also, at one point it looked as though the the crazy lady was gonna try the heart-ectomy a la Temple of Doom on Indy, and I coulda sworn he was thinkin' the same thing, but maybe I was just looking too hard. The one that made me the happiest, though, was the Han Solo bit--that was awesome (I thought; I certainly don't regret saying, "Ha ha ha" loudly while slapping my knee).

Overall, I found the movie quite enjoyable--which is totally astonishing since I probably would've thought beforehand that the sight of a flying saucer coming out of an Amazon temple ruin would be enough to turn me off to any movie.

Anyway, if you like Indiana Jones, I'm fairly confident in saying that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will probably not disappoint. Sure, it's a little out there, but if you could swallow the other movies, this one shouldn't strain your willing suspension of disbelief too terribly.

Oh, and if you're a Scrubs fan, then you'll be absolutely ecstatic to know that the Janitor makes an appearance, and he totally interrogates Indy--that was a proud moment in Hollywood history. At least, it certainly got this little butterfly squeaking with glee; I had to bottle my shout of "THE JANITOR'S TOTALLY IN INDIANA JONES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and save it till I got home.

Post 128

WOW....

Kay. So. Let's give new depth and meaning to the concept of "suck," shall we?

One of my roommates is a big fan of Scrubs, and we all watch it with him occasionally. I enjoy it; it's usually at least mildly entertaining, and it's often quite funny. Of course, we all love Dr. Cox best of all. Honestly, the writers responsible for fueling that character's scathing wit are a-mazing, and John McGinley pulls it of so well. This is prime-time television at its finest--and it is fine (though Scrubs isn't really prime-time, I don't suppose).

Anyway, a few days ago, I was wandering about in the library with a few of my roommies, and we saw a movie that had John McGinley on the cover, so we picked it up and brought it home. The movie is called Car 54, Where Are You?

A couple of nights ago, I decided to look it up on Rotten Tomatoes. Do me a favor and just follow this link really quickly; you don't have to stay long, just follow it and take a look at that rating. You ready? CLICK HERE!

Did you see that?? That's hard to do! I mean, sure, Rotten Tomatoes can be pretty brutal sometimes, but a zero percent? How bad must a movie be to get a rating like that?

So then I went to the Internet Movie Database because, ya know, Rotten Tomatoes only had 12 reviews, so maybe it just so happened that only 12 bitter people had the motivation to say anything about it, but at IMDb, it only got two stars out of ten--and that was from more than 2000 votes!

Intrigued, I went over to Amazon to see what people there had said, and it was more of the same, so I have decided to compile some of my favorite reviews and publish them here for your enjoyment:

Courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes

David Mills of the Washington Post called it "a stupid movie. Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid. If you pay money to see it, then you're stupid. I got paid to see it, and I feel stupid." (The full review, which isn't much longer than that, can be found here.)

TV Guide's movie guide said, "[Q]uite simply, it isn't very funny."

Courtesy of IMDb

Terminal Madness said, "I saw this when I was 10 years old and this gave me a stomache ache.... honestly! I'm not kidding. That's how bad it is. Serious."

Other reviews are entitled such things as "This is the worst movie I have ever seen," "THIS MOVIE SUCKED!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!" and "This movie haunts my child hood."

Courtesy of Amazon.com

Larry Cardonick of Philadelphia said that "you'll get more yucks staring at a clock. A stopped one at that. The makers of this mess should be arrested. Avoid at all costs."

J. D Hill of Phoenix called it "Just plain hideously bad," saying that "I probably shouldn't even be acknowledging the existence of this film by giving it a rating."

Donna H. Winchill of Clemson, SC said, "The movie considered to be the worst movie ever is Ed Wood's PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. That movie was more entertaining than this."

But by far my favorite review came from an anonymous Amazon customer who said, "I was given this by a man who cannot read or do simple math. He lives on the end of my block. I drive him places because he does not have a car. He gave it to me because he said, 'this is terrible.' When a man of that social standing says something's terrible, it is. This is horrible."

So there you go: horribly horrible movie, it seems. And it's sitting in our living room--oh how can we resist?

We can't, frankly--or, at least, we couldn't. Three of us sat down together to relentlessly mock the extreme lame-osity that we were sure would ooze from our screen.

We tried; we really did. Please understand me: we tried. But there was just nothing there! This movie is so terrible, it can't be mocked; there's nothing substantial enough to mock! We couldn't ever say things like, "Gee, that joke was, uh--it was pretty funny, huh guys?" because we couldn't identify any jokes! The movie was completely lacking in funny! It was so devoid of entertainment, so comedically deficient--furthermore, the acting was so poor and the writing so incoherent--I say, the movie was so lacking in every possible way that we could find nothing to ridicule! It was like they weren't even trying! We couldn't finish it. We selected a few random scenes, looking for something intriguing, but there was nothing--nothing--there was nothing to be found.

The fact that this movie exists boggles my mind. Where did it come from? Who supported it? What series of tragic head traumas induced its inception? I cannot imagine....

The craziest thing is that there are so many big names in it. The best we can figure is that these people signed a contract that went something like, "I will participate in the production of the worst excuse for cinema ever to be created in exchange for opportunities for greatness elsewhere later on." Seriously, here is a list of famous people who appear in the movie (not that I'm a fan of all these folks; mostly I'm just trying to make a point):

John C. McGinley
David Johansen (think New York Doll who was a ghost in Scrooged)
Fran Dresser
Rosie O'Donnell
Daniel Baldwin
Jeremy Piven
Penn & Teller
The Ramones
Lee Arenberg (in Pirates of the Caribbean, he played the wooden-eyed pirate's buddy)

So--what went wrong here?

I don't know, but, whatever it was, it went terribly, terribly wrong.

Had I watched it all the way through, Car 54, Where Are You? would definitely be the worst movie I've ever seen. As it is, it very well may be the worst I've never seen--and that's probably saying a lot, given the number movies I haven't seen....

Post 123

Heeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrre we go!

I just saw Iron Man. My opinion regarding fiction has been in an uproar in the past week or so, and my various thoughts, drifting like silt in a tide pool, have yet to settle, so expect some scatterbrainedness in the following review.

I had a pretty good handle on the premise of Iron Man when I entered the theater, and I told myself that, regardless of what the reviewers were saying, if Tony Stark didn't die in the end, this could not be solid fiction. But superheroes don't die--it runs counter to genre rules (at least in movies)--so I didn't go with high hopes for a tragic end.

SPOILER: Tony Stark does not die.

Poo....

But I really think that the movie would have been solider if he had. I mean, the build up was there from the beginning; throughout the movie, his precarious health is a major issue. I mean, he built the first suit (it seems) because he didn't think that he had much time to live, and he wanted to go out with a bang! Tony Stark needed to die!

But heaven forbid we have a tragic superhero! How on earth can you have a sequel after the hero dies?

Well, there were several options presented in the film itself. I mean, it's always kinda cool to see a sidekick take center stage--makes for a great cliffhanger ending, too. And there's that one scene when Rhodes looks at the original suit and says something whimsical about how he'd like to use it some day. Well, have Tony die and Rhodes take over. It's perfect!

(My favorite option, though, would be to have Tony die and Pepper take over--can you say Iron Maiden?)

Anyway, even though the movie could have been higher quality fiction than what it was, it certainly had its moments. In fact, as far as superhero movies go, this was pretty impressive. I liked a lot of things about it, and I don't think that it would be a complete waste of your time if you went to go see it.

Good enough? Can I stop being nice now?

Good. Because I have more complaining to do....

What was up with the beginning chronology? Was that an attempt at in media res? 'Cuz, if it was, it was a pretty sorry excuse for it! Now, you must understand, I love in media res; I think it's wonderful. I'm all for starting a story in the middle and filling in the backstory as you go. And I kinda like when a story starts at one point and then flashes back, catches up to itself, and move on. Think Hudsucker Proxy: that worked well. Iron Man, not so much. It didn't do a thing for the story. And I have a theory (a bitterhearted theory, of course) as to why.

I'm going through a phase right now that involves an intense disliking for the notion of fiction. I don't like fiction.

Unfortunately, it really isn't that simple because I still like movies. But fictitious books--why on earth would I dedicate the time required to read a book on a book that isn't true? What's in it for me? I really don't think that the cost:benefit ratio is in my favor....

See, I've got this theory--a dream, of sorts--and I hope to one day have the tenacity to pursue it. I think--I really believe--that there are enough obscure, crazy stories in history that, if all we want is whizzbang wow-me's from our books and movies, then fiction ought to step aside. There is no craft in making fictitious wow-me's, and if fiction loses its craftiness, what good is it?

Now, please don't misunderstand. I recognize that aggregate of fiction probably isn't dominated by whizzbang wow-me's, but I fear that sensationalism is becoming too important both in fiction and in the world as a whole.

My discussions on fiction usually end up coming around to D&C 50:23 eventually, so I may as well put it here. The fact of the matter is that I am looking for things that enlighten me and increase my ability to be a worthwhile human being and not for things that simply permit me to escape reality. I have mentioned that I still like movies, and the fact that Charade and Dirty, Rotten Scoundrels are among my DVDs shows that even I enjoy a bit of simple entertainment from time to time, just not all the time.

Now, I realize that my beef may be with the nature of fiction itself. I mean, I assume that fiction has its roots in sensationalism; just look at Beowulf. But fiction has come a very long way from such roots, though I fear that it may be looping back or somehow imploding on itself.

In stark contrast to Beowulf, I suppose, stand the parables of Jesus, in which all story elements are only important insofar as they support the doctrinal message--useful in teaching, yes, but still not really what I'm looking for when I pick up a book from the library.

As I said at the beginning, I am still unsettled on my opinion of fiction; I'm undecided on what I think its place is. But I think that fiction has so much potential that is remaining totally untapped, and it's kinda becoming a lame horse--to me, at least. It seems that human ingenuity is ceasing to be a beast of burden and becoming more like--I dunno--a dancing monkey.

I'm not really that fatalistic--technology boom says human ingenuity is still plenty productive--but I'm just not sure that we create great works of fiction any more. And it makes me sad because, when I want some whizzbang, I never turn to fiction. I have this book that was published, I dunno, like, in the 30s or something. It's called Mademoiselle against the World. It's the autobiographical account of a globetrotting French woman, and it's far more sensational than most over-the-top action-adventure flicks--and it's a true story, which makes it even more sensational! Yet, this amazing story is almost entirely forgotten. Just think of how many stranger-than-fiction stories there must be in the annals of human history! I mean, "identity theft" is a household term these days, but I there are hundreds of pre-1900 instances of identity thieving that are way more exciting than spurious credit card charges--furthermore, I bet they wouldn't be terribly hard to dig up. See, if we just want to be wowed when we walk into a movie theater or pick up a book, writers ought to start probing history for some juicy stuff: just find some obscure story that's really cool and throw it into the public eye.

The task of writing fiction ought to be a lot more demanding than the mass production of cheap thrills--and a lot more meaningful, too. If you're going to feed me a book-long lie, it had better be a good one.

Post 120

Well, I just saw Jumper. I didn't really expect to like it too much because it really isn't my kind of movie, but I wanted to see it because Doug Liman directed it. The only Doug Liman I had seen before today was The Bourne Identity, which I have long held up as one of the best directed movies I've ever seen and certainly my favorite example of smart camera work. Just watch the scene when Jason is looking at the stuff in his Swiss bank box and try to tell me that the camera isn't doing exactly what your eyes would be doing if you were actually observing a scene like that. You may not even be consciously of the way the camera moves because it's so natural. I watched a bit on the making of The Bourne Identity and learned that Mr. Liman often works the camera himself, so I've always kinda wanted to see another one of his movies to see more of his handiwork.

Well, now I'm kinda wishing I would have quit with The Bourne Identity because I have no idea what Dougy was thinking when he was filming Jumper--perhaps he was drunk, I don't know. Maybe The Bourne Identity was just a fluke because Jumper was garbage--any example of shoddy camera work I've ever had showed up in this flick; I was most disappointed.

Worse than the camera work (and directing as a whole) was the acting, but the bad acting was almost forgivable in light of the writing, which was worse yet. In fact, this is the poorest writing I've encountered in quite a while. In fact, I have no words to express how ridiculous the writing was. In fact, this movie makes me wonder whether Hollywood is testing the finite well theory and that this movie was no more than the random finger strokes of a chimpanzee with a typewriter. In fact, I bet a chimpanzee with a typewriter would have produced something more interesting. In fact, the writing has me so bereft of compliments that I've been reduced to saying "in fact" to demonstrate bad writing so I can assure you that, in fact, no matter how, in fact, the writing of this particular post may, in fact, be, it is, in fact, infinitely better, in fact, that the writing of Jumper, which was, in fact, pretty terrible, in fact--and that's a fact.

Okay, okay, okay.... I'll try to be a bit more specific:

• The protagonist had no redeeming values--not a single one. He was unlikable, unheroic, rebellious, cocky, and stupid. The only redemption for such a protagonist is a tragic ending, which he failed to receive.
• Not that there was any logical progression in Jumper's vague plot, but there were three fairly dramatic scenes--a bar fight, a sex scene, and a romantic apology--that were totally unjustified. The bar fight was totally unprovoked; the sex scene was sudden and inconsequential; the romantic apology was unmotivated and unbelievable.
• David (the main character) has the ability to teleport (which is about as close to a plot as the movie gets; by the time you get to the end of this bullet point, you will have essentially seen the movie). But David is not the only jumper. A jumper named Griffin shows up. And there is an ineptly named group (they call themselves Paladins) that is trying to hunt and kill all jumpers. Unfortunately for this movie, Griffin is more a more interesting person than David, and the Paladins seem more justified in their desire to exterminate jumpers than the jumpers are in their wanton lives of sin.
• David's mother is introduced briefly in two short scenes and does absolutely nothing for the plot except make a punch for a sequel (which is scheduled for release in 2011, by the way).
• All conflict is left totally unresolved.

I could probably go on, but this movie isn't worth any more of my time. Besides, I'm pretty sure I've made my point clearly enough. If not, let me summarize:

Dude, this movie sucked.

Post 119

Wait, what?

Readers, the unthinkable has happened. Really, this is--it's totally out of what I have previously perceived as the Realm of Possibility. You ready?

I just saw Cloverfield. That qualifies as mildly surprising; actually shocking is the fact that I liked it. More shocking still: I really liked it. Near blasphemy: I daresay it was a well made, high-quality flick!

The better you know me, the more shocking the above will seem to you: I don't like thrillers; I don't believe in alien invasions and subscribe to a nearly wholesale rejection of speculative fiction; I hate, hate, hate shaky camera work; though I appreciate open-ended movies, I demand that every work of fiction have some kind of denouement--and yet, I like Cloverfield.

If that's not a solid recommendation, I don't know what is!

Seriously, I was impressed. I was intrigued that the camera was the real protagonist--not the people who were running it. Because of that, I was required to suspend my disbelief that people would, in such traumatic circumstances, be so attached to a camcorder, but I found that surprisingly easy to do.

The director must be a brilliant individual. Just the way the camera moves--he captures well the feel of a hand-held camera, but he manages to capture all the necessary elements in each scene just as well. Again, I had to suspend some disbelief regarding the durability of the camera and the steadiness of its operators, but I found such things entirely unobtrusive.

I dunno. I pride myself on my ability to remove myself from fiction and not be entirely sucked into it, so maybe this movie just did a good job of not drawing in its audience, so maybe it is, in fact, not a good movie in the popular sense, but its reviews have been so good that I find that hard to believe.

So yeah. I really have nothing bad to say about this movie--except to mention the rumor of a sequel, which causes me to raise an eyebrow, but if there is a sequel, you can probably expect to find a review for it right here on The Eccentric Sage.

Post 118

Hooray for solid stances!

Alright. So. It's been a while since I touched on my deliberations over my stance on R-rated movies, but the debate has been silently raging within me--especially since I bought Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind about a month ago. My dilemma has been this: though I have seen a couple of edited R-rated movies, Sweeney Todd is still the only fully R-rated movie I've ever seen, and I saw it in innocence. So am I or am I not the sort of person who watches R-rated movies? My official declaration of morals says, essentially, that I am generally opposed to R-rated moves but that I am not officially abstaining from them 100%. Still, I've owned Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for almost a month without removing its shrink wrap--partly because I haven't had a strong inclination to watch it because I've seen it fairly recently, but mostly because I've only ever seen an edited version, so I don't really know what badness it may secretly contain (as I mentioned a couple of posts ago).

Last night, right around 2:30am, I removed it from its shrink wrap very ceremoniously--which means you're in for another fairly melodramatic episode from the life of me.

Yesterday, I and some of my roommates decided that we wanted to watch a movie, so I rented Memento for us to watch. We started it pretty late, ending a little before 2am. I gotta say, I was completely blown away by that movie. I cannot remember a time that a movie has so thoroughly amazed me. The writing is brilliant, the acting is great, the directing is superb--really a well-rounded, high-quality flick. The F-bomb is uttered a ridiculous number of times, but foul language doesn't really offend me, and I'm pretty sure that, were such a story to happen in real life, it would be accompanied by plenty of swearing.

Momento is rated R for "violence, language and some drug content," but I'm gonna say that it was the language that really earned it the rating: the violence was nothing too terribly intense, and the "drug content" was so incredibly brief that I probably would have missed it if I hadn't been on the lookout for it (unless insulin injections count, because we do see a few of those). I'm pretty sure it's the exorbitant over-usage of the F-bomb that got it the rating; there was a lot of that....

But can I just reiterate that I loved this movie? I don't think I've ever seen a movie that was so intellectually stimulating! I'm always saying that I like "thinking movies"--movies that require the audience to actively pay attention to what going on--and Memento wins the magic chocolate monkey award for that, lemme tell ya.

2am and my brain is positively humming with delight. I'm trying my best to rewatch the movie in my mind so I can piece it all together. The more I think, the more I like it. Absolutely amazing, that's what that movie was.

Every night before I go to bed, I say a prayer. Whenever I pray, I do my best to silence the white noise of my soul and focus entirely on conversing with my Creator. Last night, as I did my best to quiet down the euphoric literary lobes and rejoicing analytical regions of my brain and steer my train of thought toward higher ground, I became increasingly more away that, while all was sunshine and skittles in my skull, a doleful cry (previously drowned out by the noise of my cerebral party) was echoing softly in my chest cavity.

Huh. I wonder what this unhappiness in my heart is. Weird. Anyway. Heavenly Father, I'm really grateful for the intellectual--uh--the, uh, the intellectually stimulating--uh--the, uh....

Going nowhere fast.

I was not to be deterred, though, and I managed some sort of prayer and then got under my covers and began making swift strides toward sleep.

I only got so far as delirium, though. As my brain powered down to the stage where intelligible thought ceases to exist, the abstract sense of gaping emptiness became the only thing I was concretely aware of.

Have you ever tried to rouse a sleeping cat? You know that look they give you when they just barely crack their eyes open and look at you with this what-on-earth-makes-you-think-you're-worth-waking-up-for look? I'm pretty sure that that's the look I gave my bedside clock last night.

"It's 2:30 on a Monday night. I have to get up to go to work in less than five hours--am I really gonna get up and walk to my thinking place just now?"

I groaned silently and rolled over--yes, yes I am.

I didn't even bother to put shoes on, I was so tired. The 40-some-odd degree weather and rough sidewalks were quick to point out to me the poorness of this decision, but I didn't particularly care; I needed an empty bench in a quiet park so I could sit and think. I frequent one such bench that sits about 5 minutes' walking from my place, and I was determined to go there.

So I went and sat and prayed and thought, and I came to the conclusion that, regardless of how engrossing a movie is, if it's gonna make me feel like this, I don't wanna watch it.

-So, Schmetty--how 'bout that R rating, huh?

Well, I'm pretty sure that it was the crazy twist at the end that left me feeling icky, and I don't think that that part of the movie contributed to the R rating....

-But, had you avoided the movie because of its R rating, you could have avoided that, too.

Seems irrelevant; that twist could have just as easily been in a PG-13 movie. Besides, my brain hasn't had this much exercise in far too long; even returning to the college scene has failed me! It feels good.

-But was it worth it?

Mmmm, pondering. Uh, no, probably not.

Phooey.

My intellect still tells me that a rule like "All R-rated movies are bad" is too simplistic to really be fair, but my gut tells me that I'll be feeling guilty every time I watch one. Even a very hungry intellect doesn't want to cope with irrational guilt just to get some excitement--at least, mine doesn't. And I'm not convinced that this guilt is entirely irrational. I think that if intellectual pursuits ever threaten to conflict with spiritual ones, it's always best to error on the side of spiritual improvement. Furthermore, even among the movies I really like, I can't think of a single one that I would say everybody has to watch, so I think it may be safe to assume that, if someone someday produces the best movie ever, and if that movie happens to be rated R, I would fare better by passing up the best movie ever because of a superficial rating system than I would by occasionally opening myself up for a soulectemy every now and again--not that even I am quite that melodramatic; the hyperbole is meant merely to drive home my point.

Resolved: no more R-rated movies for this little butterfly; no sir.

I walked home, feeling solid in my resolution but unclear on its implications for the R-rated movie I owned.

-Is it grandfathered in?

Gimme a break, Schmetty, that'd be like grandfathering in your wine cellar when you decide to give up drinking [not that I drink... or have a wine cellar...].

-Can we sell it?

If you decided to give up your porn addiction, would you sell your Playboys to a high schooler? [Not that I have a porn addiction, either--again, it's that hyperbole thing, my favorite device.]

-I know. We'll donate it to DI! We shall be philanthropic with our aborted bad habits!

Riiiiight.

Phooey again.

So, I came home, took Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind down from my shelf, and went back outside, removing the shrink wrap on the way. As I did so, I talked to the thing much like I imagine I might address a geriatric pet that I was taking out back to shoot--cooing my adoration, asserting my lack of regret for both purchasing and now destroying.

Shrink wrap: into the dumpster.
Factory sealing stickers: into the dumpster.
DVD case: into the dumpster.
DVD: one last goodbye, snapped in half, into the dumpster.

Thus end the days of R-rated ambivalence; now on to something better....