She's My Rushmore

When talking about new movies, my dad often tread a routine that’s more tired than “Who’s On First?”

Dad: The paper said (insert movie title here) was (insert judgement: good/bad/delicious/etc.)

Me: Who wrote the review?

Dad: I don’t know.

And that’s about the point where I drop out of the conversation. because taking advice from an unknown random critic is very different than finding a critic who matches your sensibility and taste. Your local newspaper reviewer is not infallible.* Critic’s reviews aren’t the enemy, they’re a tool. When I’m thinking of seeing something I usually read Roger Ebert’s review (Even when I don’t agree with him I often understand an respect the points he makes, and his dry sense of humor really clicks with me. I also check out the fanboysite Joblo.com to see what they say about it, and if I feel like being challenged I’ll check out a David Denby or Anthony Lane review (but I often find their reviews to be contrarian for the sake of prolonging their elite status).

I have a friend that watches everything that comes to the theatres, and when talking to him about his latest venture to see something like Epic Movie, I look at him and say “Why waste your free time on that?” This is especially frustrating when he complains about how much he hated something that was obviously rushed through production to make a quick buck. What did he expect? So I guess I side with Dr. Campbell. Life is too short to be watching uninteresting movies, especially when there are so many older gems that remain undiscovered by the majority. A little guidance from someone that has your same taste can be a blessing.

*Speaking of infallible reviewers, I once read somewhere that Pope John Paul II’s favorite film was Strictly Ballroom. Divine!

Dateline – August 2004, The Borders in Central Park

I did not mean to come across it I assure you. Who wants to be enslaved, forced into a servitude for a much more powerful being? No, it could only have been fate that interfered. The second I saw the cover I began flipping through, making my first count, knowing that I had a visual pilgrimage ahead of me that would last years, maybe even decades. I am now at it’s command, fraught with feelings of inadequacy until I reach the ultimate goal. But there is was.

Sure I had seen Janet Leigh before, but that title! Starting with Voyage To The Moon ending with Chicago, the book truly was a thing of beauty. It had it all avant garde masterpieces by Bunuel, crowd pleasing blockbusters such as Independence Day. All in chronological order, from the 1890’s to 2002. Kubrick and Hitchcock, Lang and Fellini. ONE THOUSAND AND ONE MOVIES I MUST SEE BEFORE I DIE?! Well I better get to it. My first count in Steven Jay Schneider’s masterful book was 180 films, a paltry sum indeed. On that first count I had only reached 20 by the time I got to It’s a Wonderful Life. My experience with silent films was especially lacking. It was unacceptable and I needed to get going. Over the past two and a half years I have been on this journey, making great strides in cinematic knowledge. I used to dog my friends into flipping through and getting their counts tallied, always interested in what different people had scene. I was fascinated to know one girl who had seen and loved A Clockwork Orange. Based on my previous talks with her I never would have expected that. My high school drama teacher and film mentor Mr. Gelzer was more than happy to count through it with me seeing 548 of them and explaining which he loved and which he could not stand. The book is certainly simply a guide, recommending certain titles, and with such a high number, its interesting to see what makes the cut.

Presently my count is 416 of the titles, along with a being more well versed with Chaplin, Godard, Altman and many others. Even though the spine is broken on my copy, I imagine I’ll be carrying it around for a long time.The publishers of the book have two very clever offshoots to their original: 1001 Books(my count was painfully low), and 1001 Albums(where I fared much better). They also updated the movie book to 2004, of which I have seen all the new additions except for Passion Of The Christ. As time passes and I watch film after film, it’s getting more frustrating to both find the more obscure ones. It’s easy to rent Shaft or to Tivo Prizzi’s Honor (undeserving of making the 1001 cut by the way) but much harder to come across the 1915 serial Les Vampires. 

The other drawback is the one that plagues Salieri in Milos Forman’s Amadeus (definitely deserves its place in the book). It’s that feeling that no matter how hard you’re trying. There are people out there who are doing better than you. They don’t even seem like they’re trying and you wonder, “Are they being as perceptive a filmgoer as I? Do they really get what’s being conveyed?” 

Also, I have recently come across two blogs based on the films: This guy focuses on about two movies a week in the book, doing his own research and reviewing. Another site has less research done, but the couple who blogs (and seem to have never seen a movie beforehand since they both have only about 80 counted) just give each film a score from one to five.  I feel quite conflicted with these two blogs, since they’re judging their evaluations on the editors’ own evaluations. Its what they think of someone elses list, rather a list of what they feel are the most important movies. Furthermore, the book itself does not rate any of the films in order, it’s merely a chronological list. As Ebert says, the ratings are meaningless anyways. The first blogger even recommends that you catch some of the films on youtube. This does not pertain to just the five minute avant garde films either, things like My Man Godfrey, which might possibly benefit from an actual cinematic experience rather than a 4 inch or even 12 inch screen. Perhaps it’s more Salieri-like envy.

This is probably because I am hoping for criticism (film/music/literature/television) as a viable career. I’ve been writing  reviews since 10th grade and in both the world of academics and criticism there is a huge urge to not only have everything catalogued in your brain, ready to be pulled out and displayed to prove your validity amongst your peers, but also to keep up with the current trends so you can be culturally relevant. I can’t help but consider it a competition with these other people, regardless of whether they know I’m there or not.

I do not think this book is the be all end all. It’s a great concept. It’s a trying concept. There are a few things that I cannot believe were omitted (The Coen’s Blood Simple, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, and Louis Malle’s My Dinner With Andre are my 3 big issues) And I’ll probably never manage to get through the nine John Ford movies featured. What such books do is make the aquisition and cataloguing of a decent cinematic education so much easier. Sure, it’s a rat race, I’ll probably always consider it a rat race, but at least it’s a rat race where I get to do something that I love, watching and writing. I’m tired now.

The first time I saw Charlie Chaplin was in the 1931 film City Lights. In my ignorance, I thought that the particular scene was a strange one, the Tramp was in a locker room with a brutish boxer towering above him. Chaplin, in an attempt to make nice with the thug, avoids an aggressive demeanor. He opts instead to smile and actually cuts eyes at him in a flirting manner. Since I did not know about Chaplin’s life or his infatuation to many young women (his true downfall), I figured that he was, bluntly put, gay.

 I had missed the point. After Rudolph Valentino’s adrogynous appeal took the nation by storm, Hollywood presented a new sort of hero, one that could simultaenously be masculine and feminine, attracting both sexes. This tradition has definitely continued throughout the twentieth century mainstream culture, and without much uproar from gender role traditionalists. James Dean, Marlon Brando, Elvis Presely, David Bowie and Mick Jagger all manage to be both pretty and manly. The attraction here is sexual for both male audiences and female.

I think the most notable Feminine Male of today is Brando’s protege Johnny Depp. Audiences were delighted and won over with Depp’s portrayal of Jack Sparrow in Pirates Of The Carribean. If Sparrow is not bisexual, he is just a tease for Orlando Bloom. And one can see a connection in those action movies we viewed in class Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse and Son of the Sheik with a rip roaring adventure on the high seas. The hero is able to show his dainty side, but can also throw a punch to balance it out. As for Chaplin, he’s not exactly an action star, but breaking past gender roles often gets a laugh…except for you Mel Gibson. What Women Want? Give me a break.

Literature is art, Cinema is entertainment. The old bias is still alive and kicking. It’s a shame that such a collaborative effort, one in which hundreds of people’s opinions and actions go into the process, where every detail of lighting, sound, dialogue, and camera movement is focused on in detail, can be described as a less challenging, watered down version of a novel.

But this is not always the case. Sometimes it is the film that makes the larger impact, allowing a mediocre or pulp novel plot to saturate the mainstream culture, and be remembered long after. Here are some of the films that come to mind.

Dr. Strangelove (1964): Kubrick often manages to irk the authors of his source material. Whether it’s Stephen King’s complete dissatisfaction with The Shining, Anthony Burgess’ critique that the last chapter was cut out of A Clockwork Orange, or Arthur C. Clarke having to spend the rest of his life answering the question “What the hell was 2001: A Space Odyssey about anyways?” Despite those complaints, at least those three didn’t end up like Peter George, whose serious Cold War suspense novel Red Alert was turned into a gigantic satirical jab at the government, the military, and scientific innovation. George was upset that his hard work was being played for laughs, but as time has passed, the first dark comedy has only grown more popular, since it’s still able to poke the same institutions in the eye in a way similar to The Daily Show. A novel with the same plot as George’s (so much the same that George sued the writers) was adapted into the film Fail-Safe in the same year. Two years later, George killed himself, forever incapable of appreciating how he made his mark on the twentieth century.

The Godfather (1972): Mario Puzo wrote his 1969 book as a pulp novel, mainly just trying to relate some mafia anecdotes he had learned while a journalist. Paramount Pictures, under the rule of boy wonder Robert Evans, picked up the film rights. Though Francis Ford Coppola directed, he was definitely not in control. Evans took a kind of hands on role that hadn’t been seen in

Hollywood since the golden age of the studio system, and Coppola was in constant fear that he and Marlon Brando, who he picked as the lead, would be fired. Ultimately, it was a win-win-win-win situation for all three men. Puzo never had to worry about being published again. Evans was able to prove that he wasn’t too young to head a studio. Lastly Coppola and Brando would have shakey, but redeemable futures in film with high highs and even lower lows. But the Godfather has penetrated our culture in a way that the book never could, introducing us to Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, John Cazale, and James Caan. Furthermore, The Godfather: Part II, is one of only a handful of sequels that greatly improves upon its predecessor (The Empire Strikes Back may be the only other). What significance this bears is that the film has become much greater than a work of art or mere entertainment. It is forged into our minds.

Blade Runner (1982): This may be unfair, because I for one hate reading Philip K. Dick. It’s more or less an issue with his writing style. He goes out of his way to distract the reader with strange juxtapositions. Ridley Scott’s adaptation of Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? is a beautiful representation of a very dence text. Few people can make a noirish sci-fi masterpiece, but Scott manages to turn any genre into a real winner. The real surprise comes in Harrison Ford, who manages to really act in this one, rather than opting for sarcasm and rugged good looks. To date, it is Ford’s only film I’ve watched where I forgot halfway through that he was in it, and he’s the main character. If I were to name another science fiction movie that doesn’t completely rely on action and is more focused with identity….well I’d have to go back to Kubrick with 2001…wouldn’t I now?

Books are good. Films are good. Both can be equally challenging or shallow, it’s just people’s perceptions that have to change.

I don’t want to talk about Little Women right now, so I thought I would just sum up my thoughts on the Academy Awards Sunday Night. Quite a few of my friends have a huge aversion to the Oscars, citing that they are often out of touch, too timid to make daring choices (Last year’s safe choice of Crash over the more controversial Brokeback Mountain races into mind), which often leads to tame forgettable films winning the top honor (I will never like you Gigi, no matter what the Academy says). But in my opinion, there aren’t many awards shows that reward the viewer for having taken that step of seeking out more challenging films, both old and new.

Watching the montage of Foreign Film honors reminded me of the importance of this art and refreshed me. Thinking back to the first time I saw Z, Rashomon, Nights Of Cabiria, Cinema Paradiso (If there is any film that expresses its love for cinematic art and the lives that revolve around it, it’s this one) I realized what an affirmation I was experiencing in this simple montage. My time was not wasted. During the hours I spent viewing film after film, laughter and tears alike, these were not false emotions that I experienced. I do not watch the Oscars solely to see what will be recognized as the best movie of the year. There is no objective way to do such a thing, what is important is the collage of film history that is thrown together in one room for one night, and if you do your homework you can feel like you’re in the know. You can be closer to the experience than Jack Nicholson sitting front and center with a creepy grin on his face.