Da Vinci Code

Critics so far are giving Da Vinci code mixed reviews but when you're making a film based on a book that apparently has sold more copies than any book since the Bible (as Roger Ebert notes: "good thing it had a different ending") the expectations are going to be hard to live up to. The other mistake critics are making is that they're judging the film along the lines of how controversial it is, and are lampooning the usually middle-of-the-road Ron Howard for once again playing it too safe. That makes no sense to me: a movie has to have picketers at its premiere to be considered successful? The fact is that Howard is in a damned-if-you-do damned-if-you-don't situation with the material and he skirted the controversy smartly by just focusing on making a good movie and even if by sticking to the book he won't get the credit for the great story, that's still exactly what he did.

For those of you that didn't read the book, The Da Vinci Code is an intelligent thriller that starts out with a murder at an art museum in France, and a Harvard professor of symbology, Robert Langdon (Hanks) is called upon to help decipher the victim's dying message. Making their way into the story at intersecting points and building up the suspense level are a French cryptologist and granddaughter of the victim, a police chief with a vendetta (Reno), a bishop who heads a controversial sect of Christianity (Molina), a murderous albino monk (Bettany) and an obsessive British aristocrat (McKellan). The story is filled with cliffhangers and surprises at every turn and the film pretty much follows that same pace, being careful not to cut out too much of the interesting tidbits that made the book so interesting in the first place. The story's genius, after all, comes from playing with familiar historical events suggesting they didn't happen exactly the way we thought they did.

For those of you who have read the book, don't worry, it's not by any means an exact copy of the book. Things are cut and moved around and at least a couple of key elements are changed for the better. For example, Bezu Fache, the policeman, is a member of Opus Dei in the film, which makes for more sensible character motives, and Robert Langdon is a religious man which makes for a slightly more open-ended approach to the religious controvoursey. What really makes the movie work, however, is the casting. Audrey Tatou, Paul Bettany, and Ian McKellan are all vastly underrated actors who give Tom Hanks great support and enhance the movie. McKellan's devious scholar seems to comes straight out of an Indiana Jones movie, and Paul Bettany makes Silas the albino monk sufficiently scary but surprisingly human at the same time.

My friend has a review at:
http://zerogrizzly.blogspot.com/

Stop the internet, get out of the house

I read in the newspaper how there are some companies that are looking into introducing services and technology for downloading movies. I did write in my last post about how the movie theater business has some sly ways of getting money from people like with the expensive popcorn and all but I would trade the movie theater experience for downloading a movie onto your computer any day of the week. I think a movie theater is an awesome experience: it's definitely part of the escapist element that you go to that big room with the screen and watch it there instead of from your home. That's why I worked at a movie theater too: Because of the atmosphere

I think our society is actually getting too dependent on the internet period for our pop culture fix, which really spells the chaos of our society. I don't know if people are aware of this. I'm really just one person on this planet and can only do so much, and like the "stop pollution in the ozone layer" movement or "stop children soldiers" movement, I really don't see anything getting done on this front of stopping the internet or anything, so like any young person that doesn't control the world (at least not yet), i'm just gonna hope that the powers that be who control things know what they're doing with the internet. I mean isn't it obvious to everyone that if we all get all our arts stuff (movies, music, e-books) everything off the internet for free, then the artists who make them won't make any money and they'll be forced to go do another profession? How selfish of all of you?

Personally, I like to buy books, newspapers and magazines when I can. I also like to buy tickets to movies, and I like to buy CDs as well. Even if I'm strapped for cash, I'd rather do that than download music over the internet. Well, allright, i still download music from the internet but i make it a point to buy CDs. That's actually not a bad way to live: Feeling you have to buy CDs because it's a charitable cause, even when it's out of your budget range. I'm worried that that stuff spreads to newspaper and book circulation and I think it's much nicer to read things out of a newspaper than to read things out of the internet and scroll your screen up and down.

Anyway, the internet is now everything for someone like my older sister. My older sister does everything through the internet. She's a 25-year old (or maybe she's 26, i can never keep track) college professor who grades papers through the internet and posts assignments through it. She also uses the internet to do pretty much everything: book flights, seek jobs, pay her bills, buy holiday and birthday gifts for her family, buy books, book hotels, etc., etc.

I am totally the opposite. I perfer to go to the mall and buy presents there. I perfer to call the hotels (my sister never uses the phone, if she can email) and call the airlines myself or maybe even go to the airport. I think doing this stuff gets me fresh air. The airport is a fun place to see. I also would never really know how i felt about a hotel or a job for that matter without seeing the place. I'm very environment-based in the sense that i'd only know how much I'd like a place if i was there myself. There was a job with a long application i wasn't sure if i wanted to waste my time applying to, so I actually looked up the address for the job and went over there and walked around for a while and asked for a tour of the place before i decided i wanted to waste my time with an application.

Hell, I don't even like blogging. If it would advance my career just the same, I would easily write this stuff on paper and post it in the town square (or i suppose they call it the Arlington County Government Offices).

Conspiracy box office theories of mine

One thing I was thinking of doing with my film degree (will, it was a minor in film in addition to a major in something non-film related, but whatever) was being a box office analyst. I didn't even know who box office analysts were or who hires them (answer: people with backgrounds in business and accounting hired by studios) but I do read movie reports that say "box office analysts predict _____ for this weekend" so I basically wanted to be one of those.

I did think that I was a little smarter than all the box office analysts too, because when they explained the factors of why this movie did or didn't do well, I thought they completely missed some factors.

How about the weather of the weekend the movie opens? The movie theater that I worked at would have business skyrocket if it rained outside or if it was a heat wave. I don't know if weather patterns are nationally constant like that. But what if a storm hits the northeast? That should affect how many people go to the movies and disporportionately affect the ones that are opening that weekend.

Also what if a movie plays 12 times a day rather than 3 times a day? That means there are more hours to wait for the 3X a day movie, so people will usually not want to wait and just go to the movie that's playing sooner. That happens to me a lot when I'm a movie watcher. I asked my manager and he said that movie watchers usually know what they're gonna watch beforehand, and also that isn't an original idea I came up with either. It's fairly well-known that movies with more hype going in and bigger studios backing them will get more theater screens showing on opening day which will get more people seeing those movies since they play more frequently and that will cycle back into its chances of hitting the big time.

How about this? The fact that most people usually don't see movies by themselves. Four summers ago (the movie was Men in Black II), I made a life-changing decision to see movies by myself if I didn't have anyone to see the movie with, and I can't tell you how liberating it's been. You would not believe me unless you experienced it for yourself, but would you guess that it's PRETTY MUCH NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL if you're seeing the movie with other people or by yourself? And on the bright side, you don't have to compromise what movie you want to see, you don't have to work around people's schedules, etc.

But most of America doesn't think like that. Up until when I saw Men in Black II, I didn't think like that either and that means that most of the time when you see a movie, you're not seeing the one you want. If two people on a date see a movie, the man might defer to the woman so maybe that means that a check flick might get an extra run on the tally. In larger groups, let's say one guy takes his kids and his neighbor's kids to a movie and the adult picks the movie. That might be 4 out of 5 not seeing the movie that they chose. I'm not really sure how the dynamics of it all are affected, but whatever that is, the final tallies aren't reflected by the movies that people want to see.

I wonder if maybe we started dispelling the notion that people need to see movies with other people, if improvements would be made in the box office of movies and therefore the quality of movies. This notion is really something that Americans are permanently attached to. People act like seeing a movie by yourself is like drinking alcohol by yourself. Drinking alcohol by yourself is a disease. Seeing a movie by yourself being wrong is just a corporate brainwashing campaign that the movie industry created because it gets them more money to have more poeple in the seats.

It's just like how Americans feel that they HAVE to buy popcorn or something when they come into the movie theater. As a concessionist, I think it's rediculous how many people (probably 50%) spend money inside the movie theater when in 2 hours they can go eat whatever they want at half the prices. I sometimes try to get people to stop buying popcorn, or if they complain about the price of popcorn, I tell them to stop buying it, because if they stopped buying the concessions at outrageous prices, the theater would be forced to bring it down. But, I mean it's not TOO big of a deal to spend money on popcorn. But, it's just interesting how lucky the movie theater industry is that most Americans feel it's just an American thing to do to buy popcorn. It doesn't really benefit the American government, just the Americans who run the movie theaters.

Has anyone ever seen Judi Dench's oscar-nominated roles?

If you take the box office returns on Judi Dench's oscar-nominated films in comparison to the number of oscar nominations she's recieved it must be pretty low.

How many people actually saw Notes on a Scandal, Mrs. Henderson Presents, Iris, or Mrs. Brown? Granted, Shakespeare in Love is well-known but how many people even saw her in that movie. She' s notorious for having very little screentime.

And the more important question, how many ordinary people off the street who aren't film buffs or oscar afficianados saw Mrs Henderson Presents, Notes on a Scandal, Iris, or Mrs. Brown. Notes on a Scandal is a movie i've never even heard of, and maybe you can call me uneducated if you want.

One thing i can conclude is that if nothing else, the publicity machine behind Judi Dench is terrible at promoting her movies, or box office take just doesn't matter to selecting performances.

Granted, it's not the best picture race, but it would be nice if someone, anyone had seen or heard of these movies. And seriously, ask 100 random people on a street if they've heard of those movies?

Judi Dench isn't really the target of my attack, but I notice that some movies with acting lead nominations like (Before Night Falls, Quills, or Transamerica) (I would give partial honors in that category to I Am Sam or Pollack) really have very nonexistent audiences. I'm not saying that it's the fault of the moviemakes, but maybe more people should see these movies or maybe they're just not massively appealling. The numerous movies about people with mental disabilities like My Left Foot or I Am Sam or sexual deviants like Quills, Boys don't Cry or Transamerica start to blend into one another.

I don't know much about some of these movies but honestly, I really can't say Transamerica sounded that appealling. A movie about a woman who becomes a man, was pretty much all that it was marketed as. Am I right? That would be unappealling because that plot has been done many times before in the name of pure oscar bait. Breakfast at Plut was another oscar bait role of the year 2005 which unfortunately didn't get a nomination for Cillian Murphy. It was about a transsexual too, but it advertised itself as more than that: it was about a kid abandoned by his parents, a person trying to make it in the Irish revolution, a person filled with joy and happiness, and it had director Niel Jordan to boot.

Transamerica didn't get its word out that it was more than just a picture about a transsexual, as if to say "Come see another one of these movies about a transsexual, this time hopefully with an acting performance you can admire." Or better yet, maybe it wasn't that heavily advertised and maybe the people didn't really care about the audience. Maybe it was just an effort to get an oscar under the studio's belt and to get one for Felicity Huffman, who treated the whole thing as an Olympic diving competition where playing a transsexual is the equivalent of a super-high degree of difficulty that grants you a virtual guarantee on the medal podium if you can pull the dive off.

But, somewhere along the way, I think the need to cater to the American Public gets lost in there.

Best Ensemble Award from the past few years

Here's what my picks would've been for the last 5 years if the oscars had a best ensemble category. I think they should have an ensemble award because
1. It's a great award to debate
2. Obviously the acting awards are popular
3. It promotes teamwork
4. The actors don't have to get the oscars, they can go to the casting director




Nonetheless, here's what i would've picked, actually not what i personally would have picked but a relatively objective take i'd have been happy with. For instance, i hated PS Hoffman's performance in Capote and that would disqualify it out of the top 5 for me, but i acknowledge that a lot of people did like Phillip Seymour's performance, and so therefore i have to credit him for moving a lot of people with his performance.

2005: Brokeback Mountain OR Crash (wasn't a fan of either movie but as a concession to the fact that everyone loved them and they vied for top awards in most categories, i'll let my naysayers take their pick of one, i'd pick Brokeback, i think)
Syrianna (and i do strongly feel it should have been included)
Good Night and Good Luck
Batman Begins (wouldn't be considered for an oscar in any other non-technical category, but as casts for summer blockbusters go, i'd give it to this)
Capote

2004:
Sideways
Closer-Small but effective ensemble
Million Dollar Baby (hmmm, actually didn't see it yet, but who am i to argue with a best picture oscar winner)
Aviator-Jude Law and Wilhem DeFoe were filling out bit parts in this? That's how deep the talent level was
Ray-Did anyone even notice that guys like Terrence Howard were in this?
Runner-Up: Troy-With Orlando Bloom, Eric Bana, Peter O'Toole, Sean Bean, Brandon Gleason, and Brian Cox in supporting roles, this had the potential to win

2003:
*Note, i don't believe in awarding sequels unless they're better than the original or change it in some way, so i'll just award LOTR for 2001
1. House of Sand and Fog
2. 21 Grams-3 Good Leads
3. Cold Mountain-Everyone was great, especially Law at the helm, and Brandon Gleason, Ethan Suplee and Jack White as the gang of musical vagabonds were actually pretty good. Don't forget Giovanni Ribisi and PS Hoffman in bit roles
4. Mystic River-Although I think when you think about it, Tim Robbins and Sean Penn were both a little overdramatic, but there was a definite professional caliber of actors in that film
5. Seabiscuit

2002:
1. Road to Perdition-Daniel Craig and Jude Law could have been awarded best supporting actors right there, if they had stronger oscar campaigns and I think it was one of Tom Hanks' better roles
2. Adaptation-Cage, Strep, Cooper plus a lot of other goodies: Judy Greer, Tilda Swenson, Ron Livingston
3. The Hours
4. Chicago
5. 25th Hour-Ed Norton, Brian Cox, Rosario Dawson, Barry Pepper, Anna Paquin, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman in case anyone forgot

2001:
1. A Beautiful Mind-Once again, i didn't even realize that Anthony Rapp from Rent, Adam Goldberg from the Street and Josh Lucas who would later become a star were in this film
2. Royal Tannenbaums-Best Wes Anderson cast ever assembles, quietly strong performances by Paltrow, Glover and Huston were there best in years, and good use of Kumar Pullada. A great use of Gene Hackman as well and show of his comedic side.
3. Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings: Interestingly enough Christopher Lee has by now been in Lord of the Rings, James Bond, and Star Wars
4. In the Bedroom: Interesting that Marissa Thomei could get nominated for an oscar after people felt she absolutely didn't deserve her first to the point that they called foul on it (for My Cousin Vinny)
5. Godsford Park: Without a doubt

2000:
1. Traffic
2. The Contender-What insightful uses for guys like Christain Slater and Gary Oldman
3. You Can Count on Me-The executive producer had to fight for Mark Ruffallo since he was an unknown quantity back then
4. Almost Famous
5. Wonderboys

Tribute to Rob Altman

This is edited from last post to focus more on Rob Altman than Prairie Home Companion:

As the recipient of a lifetime achievement award at the Oscars this past March, the late director Rob Altman (Nashville, MASH) received a temporary spotlight which made his next film A Prairie Home Companion that much more eagerly anticipated but due to the laws governing summer blockbusters, that anticipation didn’t lead to much of an audience at the box office. While critics hailed it as among the summer’s best films, the audiences of today responded to the film with confusion and disappointment.
Since the start of his career, however, Altman has often been a figure who’s been misunderstood by critics, contemporaries, investors, and the public alike. In the case of Prairie Home Companion, the biggest misconception was that it was that it was a film about Garrison Kiellor and his popular Midwestern radio show, but the beauty of the film is how the director isn't taking us behind the scenes of the Midwestern radio show as much as he's using radio show host to tell his own story.
The plot of the film centers around an axe man from a corporation that has just brought the radio show and travels to the theater to shut it down at the end of the night’s broadcast.
While the rest of the show’s cast is insistent that Kiellor use the opportunity of this last broadcast to say goodbye to the audience and thank them for listening, Kiellor shrugs it off saying that he wants his last show to go like any other show.
“Retirement, you’re talking about death, right?“ Altman once said and he clearly meant that. Altman had been diagnosed with cancer for 18 months prior to his death, but did not make the information public. Instead, he went to work directing Companion and joked during his acceptance speech at the Oscars that he had at least 40 good years left due to a recent heart transplant.
Altman’s “life goes on” attitude was so pervasive that he carried that trademark to his films, refusing to abide by the traditional Hollywood ending. Films like The Player or McCabe and Mrs. Miller are jarring in how they end their stories with so little resolution as bad guys and good guys get handed their fates alike
More than just a premature death notice, Altman uses Prairie Home Companion as a springboard for his own contemplations on life, art, and death during his twilight years. Those familiar with the director that helped usher American cinema into a new era in the 1970s and has had a few dry streaks in his career since, might be able to draw connections between Kiellor's character and Altman as two artists who might be considered acquired tastes and who are past their prime.
Most of the current generation of moviegoers are probably unaware of how Altman’s style of overlapping dialogue influenced fast paced dramas or how his ensemble pieces have influenced multi-storylined films like Traffic or Syrianna.
In the film, an angelic figure played by Virginia Madsen visits the set during its last broadcast to ask Garrison Kiellor a question she’s been preoccupied with: She once heard him tell about two penguins that she didn’t get, but laughed anyway. She asks him what exactly it was that made the joke funny.
Kiellor’s surprising response is that he doesn’t really know why the joke is funny either, but maybe it was funny because she laughed.
Like the joke about the two penguins, Rob Altman has not always been understood or successful, but he has methodically kept making films just the same and the many people who “laughed” with his work will be sorry to see him go.

National Education Crisis

If you've just been newly appointed to President Bush's cabinet and you're not very smart, my advice to you would be to try to avoid doing something that would expose your lack of intelligence. For example, Margaret Spelling, Bush's Seceretary of Education, appeared on Celebrity Jeapordy tonight. First of all, you know those SNL skits where they parody Celebrity Jeapordy and who easy the celebrity jeapordy questions are. Well, it turns out, they're not too far off from reality. Celebrity Jeapordy is noticeably easier than adult jeopardy and might be even easier than teen jeopardy. So with that in mind, I was really hoping that Spelling could get through this TV show, just so i could have some faith in our public education system.

Well, she wasn't awful, but she didn't win either. That honor went to the guy who played "Lenny" from Laverne and Shirley, Michael McKean. Going into Final Jeapordy, McKean had three times as many points as Margaret Spelling and he even stole her thunder on the Category "Education" which was specifically tailored to her.

Anyway, I feel that even though Spelling got outbuzzed by McKean, this was a national disaster and Spelling really shouldn't have gone on the show unless she was sure she could win. We're already not very trusting that our president has all of his marbles together, we don't want to think the same of our Seceretary of Education. She didn't get every question right when she got control of the board anyway. She missed a few obvious questions that a middle schooler could have gotten and, although I don't remember any specifics, I think that whatever she missed should hereby be removed from class curriculums nationwide. No middle schooler should be required to know more than the US Seceretary of Educaiton.

Also, she was very cautious and hesitant. She didn't risk that much in final jeapordy and i don't know if that's what we want for our leader. I mean, she's not even playing for real money in Celebrity Jeapordy because celebrities play for charity. Can you imagine how afraid of taking monetary risks she'll be with our educaitonal system?

Rob Altman: Prairie Home Companion

As the recipient of a lifetime achievement award at the Oscars this past March, director Rob Altman (Nashville, MASH) received a temporary spotlight which made his next film A Prairie Home Companion that much more eagerly anticipated. Due to the laws governing summer blockbusters, that anticipation didn’t lead to much of an audience. Released in early June, Prairie Home Companion opened to only 760 theaters nationwide (by comparison, the Pixar hit Cars opened the same weekend in 3,985) and only made $20 million but it was arguably one of the best films to come out this past summer.

The biggest misconception about Robert Altman's Prairie Home Companion was that it was a film about Garrison Kiellor. It's also the source of its brilliance.

Garrison Keillor is currently the host of a popular Minnesota-based radio show of the same name that appeals to Midwestern sensibilities. The show-within-a-show is infused with backstage drama as an axe man from a corporation in Texas (Tommy Lee Jones) is on his way to the studio to shut it down at the end of the night’s broadcast. That will make this the show's last broadcast. While Altman transplants Kiellor and his show to the big screen in pretty much the same format, the beauty of the film is how the director isn't taking us behind the scenes of the Garrison Kiellor show as much as he's using the radio host to tell his own story. Altman uses Kiellor and his radio show as a springboard for his own contemplations on life, art, and death during his twilight years. Those familiar with the director that helped usher American cinema into a new era in the 1970s and has had a few dry streaks in his career since, might be able to draw connections between Kiellor's character and Altman as two Midwesterners who might be considered acquired tastes and who are past their prime. It's a credit to Altman's sense of vision as a director and storyteller that those who are unfamiliar with Garrison Kiellor might not believe he actually exists because that's how naturally he fits into the story.

Most films by Altman have a great ensemble and this is no exception. From the dirty jokes of John C. Riley and Woody Harrelson's singing cowboys to Saturday Night Live's Maya Rudolph as a stagehand being driven to insanity by Garrison Kiellor's aloofness to Kevin Kline's bumbling private eye, humor and color come from multiple directions. Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep add their talents to the mix as the singing Johnson sisters and Lindsay Lohan holds her own as Streep's slightly off-kilter daughter. The film also boasts a great selection of country and folk music sung by many of the film's stars in addition to the radio show's house band. A Prairie Home Companion is a multilayered piece of work that plays like a lightweight breezy afternoon.