Film

While I’m not nearly as much of a movie buff as many, I do like ’em and watch ’em when I can.

30 Years of Airplane

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Possibly one of the funniest films ever made, Airplane!, just turned 30.

“A lot of comedies in the last 30 years have wanted to be ‘Airplane!,’ ” said Patton Oswalt, a comedian and actor and the voice of the hero in “Ratatouille.” “But most of those movies took the wrong message from ‘Airplane!’ They were gag, gag, gag, gag, where ‘Airplane!’ is really structured, driving the story along all the time. In a weird way it’s like a Beatles movie. It looks like the easiest thing in the world, but there’s a lot of sweat and blood that went into it.”

“There is one line in ‘Zero Hour!’ where a stewardess says, completely seriously, ‘The life of everyone on board depends upon just one thing: finding someone back there who can not only fly this plane, but who didn’t have fish for dinner,’ ” Mr. Abrahams said. “That was the essence of the movie. We just repeated the line. We didn’t have to change a thing.”

While I’d read that Airplane! was based on Zero Hour!, I’d never realized just how closely the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team had hewed to the original. Here’s a great comparison between the two for reference.

And finally, a short behind-the-scenes look at the “jive” scene.

Links for January 20th through January 26th

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Sometime between January 20th and January 26th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Here comes the new cell phone etiquette: "It's easy to be rude with a cell phone. A visitor from another planet might conclude that rudeness is a cell phone's main purpose. Random, annoying ring tones go off unexpectedly. People talk too loudly on cell phones in public because of the challenge of holding a conversation in a noisy environment with someone who's not present. Cell phones need their own rules of etiquette, or we'll descend into social barbarism. But cell phones — and the ways we use them — change. In the past three years, the whole world of cell phones has evolved so much that we need some additional rules of etiquette."
  • Menifee school officials remove dictionary over term ‘oral sex’: "After a parent complained about an elementary school student stumbling across 'oral sex' in a classroom dictionary, Menifee Union School District officials decided to pull Merriam Webster's 10th edition from all school shelves earlier this week. School officials will review the dictionary to decide if it should be permanently banned because of the 'sexually graphic' entry, said district spokeswoman Betti Cadmus. 'It's just not age appropriate,' said Cadmus, adding that this is the first time a book has been removed from classrooms throughout the district. 'It's hard to sit and read the dictionary, but we'll be looking to find other things of a graphic nature,' Cadmus said." Ugh. See also: the followup article, in which a committee will determine the curriculum applicability and educational appropriateness of the dictionary.
  • The Cost of Care: "The United States spends more on medical care per person than any country, yet life expectancy is shorter than in most other developed nations and many developing ones. Lack of health insurance is a factor in life span and contributes to an estimated 45,000 deaths a year. Why the high cost? The U.S. has a fee-for-service system–paying medical providers piecemeal for appointments, surgery, and the like. That can lead to unneeded treatment that doesn't reliably improve a patient's health. Says Gerard Anderson, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who studies health insurance worldwide, 'More care does not necessarily mean better care.'"
  • The Science & the Fiction: "It is impossible to determine just how much science misinformation audiences retain, but it’s safe to say the minuscule amount of good science in the movies is entirely outgunned. After combing through a vast library of science fiction flicks both sublime and ridiculous, your intrepid Bad Astronomer sat down to explain the best and worst of movie science. So grab some popcorn, relax, and be glad that when the lights go back up, the real universe will still be out there for us to enjoy."
  • Christopher Hitchens on "Like": "The actual grammatical battle was probably lost as far back as 1954, when Winston announced that its latest smoke 'tasted good, like a cigarette should.' Complaints from sticklers that this should have been 'as a cigarette should' (or, in my view, 'as a cigarette ought to do') were met by a second ad in which a gray-bunned schoolmarm type was taunted by cheery consumers asking, 'What do you want, good grammar or good taste?' "

Links for January 18th through January 19th

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Sometime between January 18th and January 19th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • H. G. Wells on ‘Metropolis’ (1927): "Never for a moment does one believe any of this foolish story; for a moment is there anything amusing or convincing in its dreary series of strained events. It is immensely and strangely dull. It is not even to be laughed at. There is not one good-looking nor sympathetic nor funny personality in the cast; there is, indeed, no scope at all for looking well or acting like a rational creature amid these mindless, imitative absurdities. The film's air of having something grave and wonderful to say is transparent pretence. It has nothing to do with any social or moral issue before the world or with any that can ever conceivably arise. It is bunkum and poor and thin even as bunkum. I am astonished at the toleration shown it by quite a number of film critics on both sides of the Atlantic. And it costs, says the London Times, six million marks! How they spent all that upon it I cannot imagine. Most of the effects could have been got with models at no great expense."
  • Offline Book "Lending" Costs U.S. Publishers Nearly $1 Trillion: From what we've been able to piece together, the book "lending" takes place in "libraries". On entering one of these dens, patrons may view a dazzling array of books, periodicals, even CDs and DVDs, all available to anyone willing to disclose valuable personal information in exchange for a "card". But there is an ominous silence pervading these ersatz sanctuaries, enforced by the stern demeanor of staff and the glares of other patrons. Although there's no admission charge and it doesn't cost anything to borrow a book, there's always the threat of an onerous overdue bill for the hapless borrower who forgets to continue the cycle of not paying for copyrighted material.
  • AirTran 297 – Anatomy of an Urban Legend: Since the flight and initial media reports, several blogs and Internet sites have recounted the incident as portrayed by a passenger originally scheduled for the flight. Below is that passenger’s account (unedited in any way including spelling and grammar), as reported on several blogs. Highlighted between the passenger’s account, are the factually accurate circumstances surrounding this incident. We bring this to your attention in order to dispel myths that are beginning to make the rounds in chat rooms, blogs and conspiracy theorists’ Web sites.
  • Dear God, please confirm what I already believe: God may have created man in his image, but it seems we return the favour. Believers subconsciously endow God with their own beliefs on controversial issues. "People may use religious agents as a moral compass, forming impressions and making decisions based on what they presume God as the ultimate moral authority would believe or want," the team write. "The central feature of a compass, however, is that it points north no matter what direction a person is facing. This research suggests that, unlike an actual compass, inferences about God's beliefs may instead point people further in whatever direction they are already facing."
  • Insanely Vulgar ‘Better Off Ted’ Outtakes (NSFW Video): "ABC's 'Better Off Ted' recently had an episode where a mistyped inter-office memo encouraged employees to swear insults at each other, with PG-rated results for broadcast. Below are the ridiculously NSFW outtakes, scripted for Web-only release. If you are offended — not even 'easily' … but, like, even slightly, by graphic language, do not watch this video, which is like melding the Disney-owned TV network with 'The Aristocrats.' According to a network spokesperson, ABC did not post this."

Links for January 11th through January 12th

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Sometime between January 11th and January 12th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Tobey Maguire, Sam Raimi Out of ‘Spider-Man’: "Columbia Pictures has pulled the plug on 'Spider Man 4' and will instead make a younger, cheaper installment of the superhero franchise. Star Tobey Maguire and helmer Sam Raimi, who were both set for big paydays for 'Spider Man 4,' will no longer be involved in the franchise as Col moves forward with a high school-aged Peter Parker pic, which will bow theatrically in summer 2012."
  • The C Programming Language: 4.10 Recursion (Brian W Kernighan & Dennis M Ritchie & HP Lovecraft): I never heard of C Recursion till the day before I saw it for the first and– so far– last time. They told me the steam train was the thing to take to Arkham; and it was only at the station ticket-office, when I demurred at the high fare, that I learned about C Recursion. The shrewd-faced agent, whose speech shewed him to be no local man, made a suggestion that none of my other informants had offered. "You could take that old bus, I suppose," he said with a certain hesitation. "It runs through C Recursion, so the people don't like it. I never seen more'n two or three people on it– nobody but them C folks."
  • The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage: Among many fascinating things about the Prop 8 trial in California is that a prominent conservative lawyer, Theodore B. Olson, is helping to make the argument that banning same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.
  • Avatar Hit by Claims of Racism: "Avatar is a racial fantasy par excellence … It rests on the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic. It rests on the assumption that non-whites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades. It rests on the assumption that illiteracy is the path to grace. It also creates a sort of two-edged cultural imperialism. Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones, but either way, they are going to be supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration."
  • The Loudness Wars: Why Music Sounds Worse: "'The 'Loudness Wars' have gone back to the days of 45s,' Ludwig says. 'When I first got into the business and was doing a lot of vinyl disc cutting, one producer after another just wanted to have his 45 sound louder than the next guy's so that when the program director at the Top 40 radio station was going through his stack of 45s to decide which two or three he was going to add that week, that the record would kind of jump out to the program director, aurally at least.' That's still a motivation for some producers. If their record jumps out of your iPod compared with the song that preceded it, then they've accomplished their goal. Bob Ludwig thinks that's an unfortunate development."

Links for December 16th through January 4th

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Sometime between December 16th and January 4th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Why Is JJ Abrams Obsessed With Alice in Wonderland?: "Abrams has been mining the Alice mythos for years -Alias, Lost, and yes, even Felicity are all filled to the brim with Into the Looking Glass subtext and, as is the case with Fringe, actual context. For the sake of brevity, topicality and to spare you the pain of many, many white rabbit-related metaphors we'll keep the focus on Fringe with a bit of Abrams' back catalog to support the theory."
  • Population of the Dead: "How many people have ever lived? While doing research about populations for my last piece, I began to wonder just how many people had ever walked the face of the earth. The articles I found [here and here] were intriguing so I decided to visualize them as well."
  • The Weekly World News on Google Books: Heh. Awesome. My favorite of the trash news rags. Sad that it doesn't exist in print anymore.
  • This Dumb Decade: The 87 Lamest Moments in Tech, 2000-2009: "If ever a decade began dumb, it was this one. When clocks struck midnight on January 1st and the dreaded Y2K bug turned out to be nothing but a mild irritant, it proved once again that the experts often don't know what the heck they're talking about."
  • 20 Greatest SF Movies of the Past Decade: "The past decade has seen a lot of bloated special-effects brain-sucks… but it's also seen some of the best science-fiction films ever. Superhero films came of age, apocalypses ruled, and interstellar adventures came back. Here are the decade's 20 greatest."

Best Movies of the Decade

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Three lists follow, all yoinked from Slashfilm: first and second, the best-reviewed movies of the decade (10 from Metacritic and 20 from Rotten Tomatoes), third, the IMDb top 25 movies of the decade. For each list, I’ve italicized the films I’ve seen, and bold italicized the films we have in our movie collection at home (in other words, both seen and enjoyed enough to keep). I’ve also tossed in links to searches on my blog to mentions or reviews of the films I’ve seen, when possible.

Metacritic’s Top 10 Best-Reviewed Movies of the Decade

  1. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

  2. Ratatouille (2007) (Cute, but has the usual Pixar problem.)

  3. Spirited Away (2002)

  4. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) (As with the entire LotR series, TRotK gets quite a few mentions.)

  5. Sideways (2004)

  6. WALL-E (2008) (Once again, the Pixar problem.)

  7. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

  8. There Will Be Blood (2007)

  9. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) (Many mentions of TFotR have appeared over the years.)

  10. The Queen (2006)

Rotten Tomatoes: Top 20 Best Reviewed Films of the Decade (minimum 100 reviews)

  1. Man On Wire

  2. Up (Cute at times, but on the whole, we didn’t like it.)

  3. The Wrestler

  4. Finding Nemo (My original review stands, but…well, by now, you know what the “but” is.)

  5. The Hurt Locker

  6. Let the Right One In

  7. Spellbound

  8. Chicken Run

  9. Murderball

  10. The Fog of War

  11. Anvil! The Story of Anvil

  12. The Band’s Visit

  13. The Incredibles (I love the film, but…am I beating a dead horse yet?)

  14. Sideways

  15. The Queen

  16. Spirited Away

  17. Once

  18. Capturing the Friedmans

  19. Maria Full of Grace

  20. Winged Migration

IMDb’s Top 25 Movies of the Decade

  1. The Dark Knight (2008)

  2. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

  3. City of God (2002)

  4. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

  5. Avatar (2009)

  6. Memento (2000) (One brief, rambling review from when I fist saw it. Used to own this one, would like to again.)

  7. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) (Once again, many mentions.)

  8. WALL·E (2008)

  9. Amélie (2001)

  10. The Departed (2006)

  11. The Pianist (2002)

  12. Spirited Away (2001)

  13. The Lives of Others (2006)

  14. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) (One very brief blurb.)

  15. Requiem for a Dream (2000) (A brief mention from when I bought the DVD. Don’t have the DVD anymore, but this is another I’d like to have in my collection again.)

  16. Inglourious Basterds (2009)

  17. Up (2009)

  18. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

  19. The Prestige (2006)

  20. Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

  21. Downfall (2004)

  22. Gran Torino (2008)

  23. Sin City (2005)

  24. District 9 (2009)

  25. Batman Begins (2005)

I haven’t been keeping up with my movie watching, have I?

Things That Bugged Me About ‘Up’

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To start with, a list of things that I liked about Pixar‘s Up:

  • The animation, as always in a Pixar film, was gorgeous.
  • The opening ten minutes or so were some of the sweetest, saddest, and most touching work I’ve seen Pixar do since Jesse’s song (“When She Loved Me“) in Toy Story 2. Yes, I got sniffly.
  • There were a number of funny bits that got laughs out of me.

But, as I tweeted yesterday, I didn’t end up liking the film as a whole very much. What a tragic, depressing film.

  • Lesson number one: heroes will let you down. After spending his life idolizing the explorer, Carl finds him only to discover that he’s a greedy, obsessed murderous bastard with no redeeming qualities at all. Russell obviously idolized his father, and yet the failure of his father was a recurring theme, which ties right into…

  • Lesson number two: fathers also let you down. All we know about Russell’s father is that he’s been increasingly distant, to the point of being essentially nonexistent, until eventually Carl becomes a surrogate father for Russell.

  • What’s up with Russell’s family, anyway? We spend the entire film hearing about his absent father. There’s not a single moment of worry about Russell’s sudden disappearance when he inadvertently flies away with Carl. At no point do Carl or Russell show any concern about Russell missing his family, or his family missing him. The entire movie had me convinced that Russell was the child of a single-parent family, whose father had grown so distant that there was virtually no emotional bond between them whatsoever, given Russell’s lack of concern about his (admittedly inadvertent) kidnapping by Carl…but then, during the Wilderness Explorer award ceremony, suddenly Russell’s mother is sitting in the audience. He has a mother? What was she thinking during the time that her kid disappeared? Why was she so willing to allow Russell to continue his association with the old coot who kidnapped him, took him to South America, and nearly got him killed?

  • And, finally, there’s the familiar soapbox of Pixar’s roles for women. Let’s run down the women in Up.

    • Ellie. Initially, she’s one of the best female roles we’ve seen yet. As a child, she’s the stronger of the two main characters, taking the lead in her interactions with Carl, avoiding traditional gender stereotypes by fixating on the explorer and dreaming about adventuring around the world, and becoming one of the few Pixar characters available for little girls to look to and emulate.

      Then she marries Carl, grows old, and dies.

      Sure, it’s her memory that helps to prompt Carl to go on his adventure, but she’s not part of this adventure. Her only “adventure” in life was to get married. It’s sweet and all, and many of the moments where we see Carl missing her are very touching, but still…she spends the entire movie dead.

    • Kevin. A bird whose role is essentially comic relief and plot point, given a male name.

    • Russell’s mom. Never referred to, and only seen for a few seconds at the end of the film. As if that’s not bad enough, she wasn’t even allowed to be the proud parent awarding Russell his “Assisting the Elderly” badge when his father didn’t show up — rather, she sat passively out in the audience, apparently willing to allow Russell to be humiliated, until Carl shows up to act as a surrogate father and save the day.

      If Pixar wanted to have Carl step in, then why not have her on stage with Russell for the ceremony, then have Carl politely ask her for permission? Or why couldn’t Carl be in the audience, and have him give Russell Ellie’s pin afterwards, when it’s just Carl, Russell, and Russell’s mom? Why not find some way to arrange things that wouldn’t involve further marginalizing the mother?

  • How did the explorer get all those dogs? He must have added cloning to his list of achievements, as as far as we can tell, every one of those dogs was male. (Okay, you could make an argument that he only gave the translation collars male voices…but why bother to make multiple distinct voices for different dogs, but not bother to make girl voices for the girl dogs? I stand by my assumption that every dog on that ship was a male.)

  • The dogs flying little airplanes went too far. Until that point, all of those dogs were still dogs doing dog things, simply with the added comedy of the translation collars allowing us to hear what they were saying. Once they got in the airplanes, though, they broke the rules of the world that had already been established.

So, once again, we gave Pixar a chance, and once again, we were roundly unimpressed.

AMC Theaters OKs Bringing In Drinks and Snacks

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Well, no, they don’t. However, they sure seem to be encouraging it, even if that’s not their intent.

This morning, Prairie and I went to see a matinee showing of The Princess and the Frog, Disney’s latest traditionally animated film. The film itself was a lot of fun, and we both loved being able to go out and see real animation on the big screen, something that happens all too rarely in these days of CGI and 3D gimmickry.

Unfortunately, as much as we enjoyed the film itself, we’re running out of reasons to bother with actual theaters, rather than waiting for video. The latest eye-rolling bit of obnoxiousness? It seems that AMC Theatres has discontinued all “small” sizes of drinks and candy.

When I went to the snack bar, planning on getting a small soda, the menu board had a blank spot under the “small” column for both drinks and candy. Scoping out the sales stations, I noticed that while they all had spaces for three sizes of cups by their soda fountains, only two were stocked. Asking the soda jockey behind the counter confirmed it: AMC is “reconfiguring” their snack bar options, and there are now only two sizes of drinks, medium and large.

While even the small drinks weren’t all that small before hand, it appears that now, the smallest size fountain soda you can get is a 32oz bucket, for $4.25. I have no real idea what they’ve done with their candy lineup, but I’m betting they just re-labeled all the “small” boxes to “mediums”, and knocked the larger “medium” boxes up to “large”.

Just one more reason (along with the barrage of ads euphemistically described as “pre-show entertainment,” the crappy customer service provided by the staff of most theaters, and the absolute lack of public decorum from the majority of other moviegoers) why my theater-going experience is going to be ever more rare. On those rare occasions when I do go — both Prairie and I are thinking that we want to see the 3D version of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, which will be our first modern theatrical 3D experience (no, I’m not planning on seeing Avatar in 3D…at this point, I’m not planning on seeing it until it’s out on DVD) — I’ll be taking advantage of Prairie’s largest purse and bringing in my own snacks and drinks.

12/21/09 Update: According to this Get Satisfaction customer support thread, small sizes of soda and popcorn do still exist, bundled together into a “Cameo Combo”. A combo doesn’t thrill me, as I’m not big on popcorn and would only want the drink, but the representative did say that it should be possible to buy the small drink on its own. I’m still not entirely thrilled by this (it seems ridiculous that this is the only way to get a reasonably sized drink), but at least it’s an option (assuming that the kids at the snack bar know about the option).