Inception

I knowingly make the following overstatement with the excuse that I just finished watching it: Inception just might be the perfect movie. It is certainly the only movie worth reviewing that I have seen since the last movie I reviewed almost exactly a year ago, and has almost as certainly earned instant placement on my Awesome list (at least 3 viewings are required for official recognition on that list, however).

What is so great about this movie:

• The story is told with elegance, economy and utmost skill. I will not describe the story here. Don't try to read anything about it. I will give a couple examples that will not give anything away. First example: the natural and completely satisfying resolution of one of the core plots of the movie is nothing more than the expression on a character's face -- even a single word would have been too much. Second example: the scene with the top. Again, without a single word, the spinning of a top allows the audience to understand exactly what the top is for, but more impressively, what the top is for combines with what was learned in the scene before to illuminate just what fear the character has to contend with on a daily basis and the kind of life he leads, and does so more effectively than any on-screen conversation ever could.
• It hits all the right notes. Literally. The music does a flawless job of maintaining the subtlety, urgency and unreality of the movie from beginning to end.
• Everything in the hotel with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It's the best executed and most imaginative action since The Bourne Ultimatum. My surprise at how believable Gordon-Levitt was was the only thing that took me out of the movie for even a few seconds.

This will be a movie I see more than twice. It should also be an Oscar nominee for Best Original Screenplay, Best Score, Best Visual Effects, and possibly Best Cinematography and several things in the various editing categories.

Lost...In Review

The final season of Lost starts up in about a week. After over 100 episodes of flashbacks, flash-forwards, inter-cut and intersecting story lines, not to mention time travel, what is perhaps most impressive about the show as a whole is that it still makes sense, and all the pieces fit together. Lost still stands alone in the scale, ambition and complexity of its story, and in sheer magnitude of difficulty involved in successfully corralling all of the myriad parts that make up its much greater whole.

How successful? This video is a perfect example. It combines clips from nine different episodes across four seasons of the series edited together to tell the whole story of the 10 minutes preceding the crash of Flight 815. Kind of makes me wonder what a chronological edit of the entire series would be like, given that the whole show spans seven decades and several dozen characters.

Psych is Officially Genius, Part II

Just saw this promo for Season 4 of Psych tonight:



I guess it's not as funny if you haven't seen The Mentalist. See, Psych is about a quirky guy who uses his keen powers of observation to pretend to be a psychic and help the police department solve crimes. The Mentalist, the original series that just finished its first season on CBS, is about a quirky guy who used to use his keen powers of observation to pretend to be a psychic, but now uses them to help the police department solve crimes.

See, they're totally different.

Half-Blood Prince

Had you asked me a couple of hours ago, I would have said that no, I would never post a review of a Harry Potter movie on my blog. Why not? — because I know the widely diverging points of view about the acceptability of these movies held by the three or four of you who still read my blog; in the face of those opinions, these movies simply aren't important enough to write about. However, this post does exist and I defend its existence by saying that this is not exactly a review; it, in fact, cannot be for the simple reason that there is so much about Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that defies reviewing. This post is instead a reaction, not to the content of the stories, but to the choices made by the filmmakers in the creation of this entry in the series.

I have seen all of the first five Harry Potter movies (Half-Blood Prince being the sixth). Independent of any opinions about the content, I find them all to be entertaining and sufficiently well-made — they are all good, but none has anything spectacular that marks it as great. One thing that did always stand out to me about the five movies is that despite having four different directors, they all did a fairly solid job of maintaining a consistent tone and style. Even the darker entries in the series have the same earnest energy, and the same wide-eyed sense of adventure. The only way I can think to say it is that they are all crafted very much like a story being told in present-tense; I can only hope that later in this post I can make that statement sound less stupidly obvious.

In contrasting the sixth movie in the series with the first five, the only reaction I can have is that, for many reasons, it's just odd. I'm not even sure if that's good or bad, and I'll attempt to explain why. The first five movies form a 4.5 billion dollar franchise. It has always been in the studio's interest to make movies that have the best chance of cashing in on the interest of millions of readers of the books worldwide. That they have been successful is undeniable, and my instinct would have been to assume that for the three remaining movies in the series, they would try to stick to a pattern that works, i.e., maintain the same energy, maintain the same visual style, maintain the same musical style, etc. It seems like it would just be good business sense, just as much as it would be good artistic sense — a consistent style and feel makes for a unified series that flows well together (see the Bourne trilogy, for example).

Thus my perplexity with this sixth entry: it seems that in no way did they do any of these things. Where the first five movies emphasized humor and cheerfulness contrasted with the darkness of conflict, this movie, in spite of being the setup for the climax of the series, possesses a markedly subdued tone throughout. The tragic events which were in this movie addressed with powerful but quiet sadness would have been presented in the previous movies with far more violent emotion. As the book series progressed, the books only got longer, necessitating more and more plot cuts when presented in movie form; the first five movies always cut minor or less exciting portions of the plot in favor of the more action-oriented plot points. This sixth movie seems to do exactly the opposite, preserving the character-oriented and emotional story lines while sacrificing some of the most dramatic portions of the book's action (this is probably the reason why most negative reviews of the movie call it "boring"). In both visual and musical style this movie is also very much different from the rest of the series, straying away from the vivid colors, sharp focus, bright lighting and dramatic themes in favor of, again, a more subdued style. In comparison with my memory of the previous movies, the shift is abrupt; within five seconds of the Warner Brothers logo fading from the screen I was thinking, "This is very different." With a grittier look, more neutral colors and so much soft focus, I almost had to wonder if there was something wrong with the print or projector. The storytelling is also significantly different, in a way that is hard to describe: where the first five movies played out like a story being told in present tense, this story plays out like one of the characters' painfully sad recollections — it's possible that this impression is due in part to the visual style which at times had me wondering if the scene I was watching would turn out to be a dream sequence.

Is any of this bad? No. It's simply odd. It's especially so considering this movie came from the same writer who wrote four of the previous five movies, and from the same director who directed the fifth movie. I think if this were a stand-alone movie, I would like the creative choices that were made. Taken as a member of the series, I can only say that I haven't seen enough to decide, while I continue to puzzle over the possible reasons for the decisions that were made. What do I mean when I say that I haven't seen enough? I think that in any long-running franchise — especially one with multiple directors — there is at least one point in the franchise where a significant shift in style (and, as a result, subjectively perceived quality) occurs, and I think that often results in the viewer thinking of their favorite part of the series and wishing the rest of the series had been done to match (The Matrix trilogy and the Star Wars trilogies come to mind). I actually find it intriguing to wonder if this new style will remain consistent through the rest of the series, and if it does, which part of the series will we wish had been done differently? Another question I find interesting deals with the fact that David Yates, who directed the fifth Potter movie, also directed the sixth, and will also direct the final two movies in the series: I have to wonder if this significant shift in style came about (or was made possible?) when the decision was made to give this one director effective control over the rest of the series. I'll phrase it a little differently: the sixth book in the series is very much a setup for the climax in the seventh (on which both of the last two movies are based), and I have to wonder if this sixth movie is intended in much the same way for the last two movies. I have to wonder if, after completing the fifth movie in a style consistent with the previous, the director who would direct the entire remainder of the series was given the freedom to produce the last three movies in a way that presents them as a coherent stylistic whole. If it is, I am already fascinated to know how well this chosen style will work as the climax of the series. If it is not, I am curious to know exactly how much of a sore thumb this film will be in the franchise as a whole.

On a side note, I continue to be impressed by how many of Chris Columbus' (director of the first two movies) choices regarding design and casting continue to hold up through the subsequent movies. He cast a fleet of adult actors and a dozen or more unknown child actors (the oldest of whom was perhaps 13 at the time of filming the first movie) including an 11-year-old on whom the entire multi-billion dollar franchise would hang and eight years later I can't think of a single role that has had to be recast (with the exception of Dumbledore, due to Richard Harris' death), or a single actor who has failed to present a consistent character year after year. Even the plot developments of the later books in the series (unknown at the time of casting the first movie) continue to be believable with the original actors. So much of the work Columbus and his crew did continues to define the look of the series, from character and costume design all the way up to the look of Hogwarts itself. It's really a remarkably rare achievement, and those commonalities will serve to bind the series together as a whole, regardless of what stylistic changes may occur.

Set Phasers to Awesome

I know I have written here before about movies that I liked, and some about Story in general and my particular way of thinking about Story. One thing I have never felt able to define is any specific type of story that I prefer; I can't even decide on a "favorite" movie. The reason for this was pointed out to me recently when another friend commented to me — after I summarily dismissed a pair of recent movies as "just plain ordinary" — that because I have seen so many movies, I only like the ones that are in some significant way unique or "out of the ordinary." He's right.

I have seen a lot of movies; as soon as I had the means to do so, I devoured them. I could estimate a number, but I think it would be embarrassing. What I have discovered is this: good isn't good enough. In a large sampling of movies, there are a lot of good movies. Speaking of a simple binary state, good vs. bad, where I regret the time I wasted watching the movies that are "bad" and don't regret the time I spent watching the movies that are "good," there are a lot of "good" movies. So many in fact that a movie's potential to be "good" is no longer a compelling reason to ever watch it, and thus over the past couple of years I have found myself seeing fewer movies and liking fewer of them.

So my friend is right and as he realized, perhaps before I did, I do have a preferred genre after all: I believe the common term for it is "Awesome". I prefer "Awesome" movies. Its sibling genres, "Really Great", "Great" and to a lesser extent "Very Good" definitely have their place, but "Awesome" is really what does it for me. The good news is, I find that those four genres combined total perhaps 50 to 100 movies. The bad news is, I find that there are perhaps two or three people in the world who would agree with me on what those 100 movies are. The other good news is, these genres are completely made up and entirely subjective, so I am guaranteed to be right.

What is it then that identifies a movie as falling into one of these genres? As my friend said, the distinguishing characteristic is uniqueness. Whether it is a familiar story told in an unexpected way, or a type of story I usually disdain told in such a skillful and compelling way that I am powerless to resist, or a story that purposefully breaks a cinematic "rule" with spectacular results, or just a simple story that achieves such genuineness that all other similar movies fail by comparison, each of the movies in these genres has some particular aspect of its storytelling that is unlike anything I have seen before.

That being said, I can now make a stab at answering my other friend's question: what is my favorite movie? Since I now know that to date only seven "Awesome" movies have been made, I can tell you without a doubt that my favorite movie is one of these:

• The Bourne Ultimatum
• Empire of the Sun
• The Iron Giant
• Meet Joe Black
• Pride & Prejudice
• Primer
• Strings

The candidates for "Really Great", "Great" and "Very Good" are harder to define, but I feel sure they include this list.

• August Rush
• The Bourne Identity
• The Bourne Supremacy
• Contact
• The Count of Monte Cristo
• Dancer, Texas, Population 81
• Dead Poets Society
• The Four Feathers
• Frequency
• Gattaca
• Henry Poole is Here
• Hero
• In Good Company
• The Incredibles
• Kingdom of Heaven: Director's Cut
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• The Matrix
• Miracle
• Proof
• Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
• Speed Racer
• Star Trek
• Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope
• Star Wars, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
• Star Wars, Episode VI: The Return of the Jedi
• Superman Returns
• Unbreakable
• Up
• X2: X-Men United

Two recent movies have exhibited this quality of uniqueness. In fact, if it were possible for a movie less than one month old to earn such a distinction, I might almost say they were "Awesome"; certainly they are "Great" and perhaps even "Really Great." These two movies are Star Trek and Up.

Star Trek — finally someone managed to make Star Trek into a movie and not just a two hour television episode. (I'm not exaggerating: I saw the two hour premiere of Enterprise in an actual movie theater, and the experience wasn't that much different from the movies.) Ironically, many of the people responsible came from television; particularly gratifying is the fact that the director, composer and several of the producers and editors also brought us Lost. Watching the end credits of Star Trek I couldn't help thinking that it's no wonder Lost is so great: the people making it are capable of producing work like Star Trek. I watched Star Trek on TV for years; I have seen all of the movies. Though some were entertaining, they all shared these qualities: they never surprised me, they never went anywhere new, and they never surpassed my expectations. This Star Trek is something new, something surprising, and just flat out fun to watch. I can't remember the last time I had that much fun in a movie theater. The action is exciting, it's visually stunning, the special effects are top notch, the actors have chemistry and talent, and — wonder of wonders — the humor is genuinely funny (and not just to people who show up to the theater in Starfleet uniform). My one aching regret is that it was not produced in RealD 3D, but then again I don't suppose the biggest movie of the year really has to be.

Pixar as well has risen to new heights with Up — and no, I do not apologize for the pun. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but Pixar succeeded in producing a story that moves from genuinely touching to laugh-out-loud funny with seamless ease, all centered around characters so natural that by the time you think the words "suspension of disbelief," it already happened five minutes ago. It was a joy to watch. I should also mention that Partly Cloudy, the short film that preceded the movie, continues to display Pixar's genius with dialoge-free storytelling and lives up to its long line of great predecessors (Geri's Game, For the Birds, One Man Band, Lifted, Presto). I did see the movie in 3D, which was nice. I don't think the 3D played quite as large a part in the whole experience as it did when I saw Monsters vs. Aliens, but it didn't really have to.

3-D Follow-up

A couple posts ago I said I was going to take the first opportunity I had to see a movie presented using RealD Cinema 3D. Tonight I went with a couple of friends to see Monsters vs. Aliens in 3D.

RealD's take on 3D technology uses, instead of differently colored lenses, circular polarized lenses, one polarized clockwise and the other polarized counter-clockwise. Alternating differently-polarized frames are then projected onto a reflective screen specially designed to preserve the polarization. The point of using circular polarization instead of linear polarization is so that the 3D illusion is preserved when the viewer's head is tilted.

Based on this first impression, I have to say the 3D presentation worked surprisingly well; it's certainly a great improvement over other 3D technologies I have seen. First and foremost is the lack of eye strain. I watched the 3D episode of Chuck this past January, which used Intel's ColorCode technology (brown and blue glasses), and at the end of the hour-long episode I was glad to take the glasses off. One of the two people I went with tonight experienced a little bit of eye fatigue, but I myself experienced none. The second major improvement is in the representation of finer detail. ColorCode's use of layered colors in a single image to make the 3D effect has the limitation of being unable to effectively display differences in depth of small objects and texture — the result being that the larger objects in the scene (buildings, people, furniture) are rendered much like cardboard cutouts in a diorama, even on an HDTV. RealD Cinema's use of two completely separate images was much more effective in presenting finer details like facial features, surface contours, and even clouds of individual dust particles or grass clippings as naturally 3-dimensional, with the surprising result that surfaces one would expect to have texture but didn't (for instance, the Missing Link's scaly skin) stood out like a sore thumb. As a display technology, RealD Cinema lives up to its promise very well.

As with any new technology in the film industry, good implementation is key. There are still some quirks to the 3D effect that cinematographers are going to have to learn to work with. Objects that intersect the left and right sides of the screen still exhibit a flickering effect, and fast horizontal movement produces an unintelligible image much like looking in a vibrating mirror. Extreme variations in depth or objects placed very "close" to the viewer also lose the 3D effect, and objects flatly perpendicular to the camera's line of sight still exhibit the cardboard-cutout effect. I have a feeling that further refinements to how scenes are laid out (and perhaps further refinements in the technology itself) will overcome these issues.

Overall, the movie itself was a surprisingly natural-seeming 3D experience, with few exceptions. The experience was so natural, in fact, that I find myself struggling to imagine what the movie would be like had I seen it in 2D. I found it easy to forget that I was wearing 3D glasses, and I thought the movie made fairly good use of the technology as an experience rather than a gimmick (although there was a somewhat amusing incident with a paddle ball that, I admit, made me blink). On the other hand, I think the movie probably would not have been as entertaining without the additional fascination of 3D, and probably wouldn't hold up under multiple viewings — certainly not multiple 2D viewings.

So, overall it was a very positive experience. The RealD Cinema technology gets a 9 out of 10, the implementation of it in this movie gets a 7.5 out of 10, and the movie itself gets a 7 out of 10. I'm looking forward to seeing how the technology progresses, and especially interested in seeing it used on live action. There are currently 34 more movies scheduled to be released in RealD Cinema between now and 2013, but as best I can tell, all but two are either computer animation or stop-motion animation; the other two are horror movies I won't be seeing under any circumstances.

Lost, but not lost...

Four and a half years ago, almost to the day, I and about eight of my college friends crowded into the 5 foot by 7 foot living room/office of my apartment behind the South 14th Street Discount Market to watch the premiere of a little show called Lost. It was a memorable episode that launched a two hour long discussion of the many weighty philosophical questions raised, including: "Where did the polar bear come from?", "What was Kate's crime?", "What's in Sawyer's letter?", "What is the monster?", and "Who is the French woman?" 93 episodes later, have these questions been answered? Yes, yes, yes, sort of, and yes, respectively, but dozens more have been raised in their place — and that's just the way we like it.

Lost is now in its fifth season, and has mastered and then reinvented the art of answering questions with questions. Far too many shows attempt this; Lost achieves it in a way that fascinates and so completely defies prediction that I have long since stopped trying. What other show could lead four grown men to spend four conversations in a single day pondering the revelations produced by a ten year old boy bringing a sandwich to a prisoner in a jail cell?

Lost's other great skill is its ability to deliver on the promises it makes to the audience and the questions it makes them ask (thus inspiring confidence that the questions that haven't been answered yet will be answered eventually). Last night's episode, the ninth of the fifth season, is a perfect example. The previously mentioned sandwich delivery shed more light on several questions, some from as far back as the middle of season 2, while ominously foreshadowing other events that we saw happen in season 3. The rest of the episode tied in perfectly to briefly mentioned events from seasons ago, added yet more insight into the histories of long-running minor but pivotal characters, deftly juggled two plot lines separated by decades and, of course, raised yet more questions. The best part? Even if you didn't catch on to any of these connections, it was still great TV.

A Survey of Film History, Parts XX-XL

I realized today that I haven't done one of these in over four months. This time the movies range from 1936 to 1956, and include everything from film noir to romantic comedies to musicals. There are far to many for me to do a thorough review of each and every one, but I'll add comments where I can, and hopefully will keep up with this better in the future. I am pretty much officially out of the 1940's now; after Adam's Rib, which I have not yet watched, there are seven movies still in my queue from prior to 1955, but they are all listed as "unavailable" or "very long wait".

The Very Good:

• Midnight (1939) - I found this movie thoroughly entertaining; great characters and very funny.


• Suspicion (1941) - My queue (in addition to today's post) features a disproportionate number of Hitchcock movies, because I haven't seen very many before. This movie should probably be in the next category down, and would be except for what I learned from the DVD special features about the plot of the original novel. Consider this movie to be in the "Very Good" category for what might have been, rather than for what is.


• To Catch a Thief (1955) - This Hitchcock film is an example of a mystery done right. It features interesting characters, sufficiently surprising twists, and is overall very satisfying.

The Good:

• Sabotage (1936) - This Hitchcock film had some pretty tense scenes, but very little in the way of compelling characters.


• All About Eve (1950) - well acted and, consequently, a captivating story; however, not the kind of story I'd like to watch over and over again.


• Pat and Mike (1952) - a charming romantic comedy, entertaining as most of Kathryn Hepburn's movies are. It simply lacks the spark that made Midnight such a standout.


• Dial M for Murder (1954) - another Hitchcock film; great tension, but with a somewhat anticlimactic ending, and told with a sense of detachment that made it hard to relate to the characters. (See below for further, semi-related discussion.)


• Rebel Without a Cause (1955) - James Dean knew melodrama. It's a fairly unremarkable storyline made compelling by the storytelling.

The Merely Bland:

• The Awful Truth (1937)


• Road to Morocco (1942)


• Lifeboat (1944) - yet another Hitchcock film. Too homogeneous in its pessimism to be interesting.


• Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)


• State of the Union (1948)


• The Third Man (1949)


• Stage Fright (1950) - Hitchcock again; a compelling story brought down by a disappointing ending.


• Singin' in the Rain (1952) - I prefer the kind of musical where the music is organic to the story. This movie is an approximation of that kind of musical, being that it is about Hollywood stars making a musical movie, but the songs are trite and the storyline is weak. One extremely bright spot is Jean Hagen's hilarious portrayal of Lina Lamont.


• Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) - Here's an example of the wrong kind of musical: the kind where people pause and burst into song and dance for no apparent reason (except perhaps to cover up a weak plot). Howard Keel's vocal performance is a pain point for me too.


• Moby Dick (1956)

The Bad:

• Spellbound (1945) - one last Hitchcock movie. As much as I like Gregory Peck, I couldn't stand his performance in this movie. An overdone performance in a movie that offered little else of interest.


• Harvey (1950) - I can't figure out if this movie is portraying a serious psychological condition as a heartwarming farce, or doing a very poor job of telling the story of a magical creature mistaken for insanity. Whatever the case, I could not wait for this movie to end, mostly because of Jimmy Stewart's clumsily earnest performance.
  
  The most interesting thing about this movie is that Jimmy Stewart's invisible friend Harvey was the inspiration for the naming of the neural clone of Scorpius that existed in John Crichton's head in Farscape, a name that was first used by fans in online message boards and later adopted by the show's producer's and written into the script.


• Sunset Boulevard (1950) - The worst kind of story reveals its awful ending at the beginning, and then forces you to sit through two hours of unredeeming story. This is a prime example.

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An interesting fact about Dial M for Murder (1954) is that it was originally filmed in 3D. What makes that notable is that the film is in no way a "spectacle" or gimmick film, as were most movies that were being filmed in color, widescreen or 3D. I only saw the 2D version of the movie; I'd be interested to see the 3D version to see how it came out. This was the time of the rise of in-home television, and color, widescreen formats and 3D were the features that still made the movie theater distinctive from free television. Color and widescreen eventually became commonplace and are now artistic decisions rather than economic ones, but 3D all but disappeared due to the limitations of the technology. A format couldn't be produced at the time that was comfortable for extended viewing without headaches and eye strain.

A 3D image requires some technique of delivering different input to each eye. The most common technique is the well-known red and blue glasses, or the more recent brown and blue variation (Intel's in-home ColorCode variation of their InTru 3D technology; go to the link and click the "3D HP Showroom" link on the right). This technique, used recently in a Superbowl commercial as well as an episode of Chuck (reported to be the first ever full-length TV series presentation in 3D), is basically unchanged since the 1950's and is the only method of 3D presentation that can be used on standard in-home equipment. Other new techniques involve using electronic glasses with lenses that flicker in sync with a high-speed projector that displays a frame first to one eye and then the corresponding frame for the other eye, or RealD Cinema, the similar but reportedly more natural-seeming technique of using glasses with differently polarized lenses to view two differently polarized images projected by a high-speed projector (this display technology is utilized by InTru 3D and claims to eliminate the eye strain caused by previous techniques). Neither of these techniques can be implemented in the standard household, which means that movie theaters once again have the advantage of being able to present an experience that cannot be found for free at home. This advantage, combined with the relative ease of converting computer animated films to any available 3D format and the widespread availability of in-home high definition large screen content, may explain the recent increase of 3D movie theater presentations. According to the InTru 3D web site, "DreamWorks Animation has committed to producing all of its feature films using InTru 3D technology beginning in 2009."

At this point however, 3D is still little more than a gimmick. It provides to the viewer a unique viewing experience, but that in itself is not enough to give the technology from eye-candy to valuable tool. This has been seen before with film technology innovations like the bullet-time effect created for The Matrix, and computer-animated movies in general. Much like the flurry of 3D movies in the 50's, both of these technologies had an innovator, followed by innumerable followers who used the technology simply because it was the next cool thing. However, if the movies that used these technologies were memorable, it was not because they used those technologies — it was because there was something distinctive about the story, the characters, the filmmaking or, for the best, all three. If the popularity of 3D continues to grow, as it looks like it will thanks to easily implemented comfortable technology, masses of filmmakers will jump on the money-making bandwagon (there are currently 37 movies scheduled to be released using the RealD technology in 2009-2013). What the technology is truly waiting for, however, is for a filmmaker to use the technology to do something other than throw objects at the audience.

I'm going to take the first opportunity I get to see an InTru 3D movie to see if the technology is as groundbreaking as they claim. However, the first truly great 3D movie will be the movie where the filmmaker uses 3D technology as a medium and as a true component of the cinematography rather than as a gimmick; the movie where the audience forgets that they are watching a 3D movie, and is simply captivated by a story told in a way that was never possible before. That movie is the one I am truly looking forward to.

Psych is Officially Genius

At the end of last week's episode of Psych, a commercial came on that seemed like a pretty standard horror movie trailer. It started with a shot of the entrance to a kids' summer camp, Camp Tikihama. I thought, where do I recognize that name from? Ah yes, it's the name of the summer camp that Shawn and Gus made up in the "Bounty Hunter" episode a season and a half ago; this must be the commercial for the new episode of Psych (it was).

What is Psych? Psych is a comedy/mystery show that airs on USA Network about Shawn Spencer, who uses his finely honed skills of observation to pretend to be a psychic (with his partner Gus and his psychic detective agency called Psych) and help the Santa Barbara Police Department solve crimes. Psych's genius has never come from taking cliché and turning it on its head. On the contrary, Psych's genius has always come from taking cliché head on at full speed and looking you straight in the eye while they do it. That, and a taste for complete and utter ridiculousness. And their obscurely relevant pop-culture references. OK, I'll stop.

This week's episode, written by series star James Roday, was a spoof of the Friday the 13th movies, airing on Friday the 13th, and titled..."Tuesday the 17th". Does it bother me that the camp Shawn and Gus made up is now the setting for an episode which features in its soundtrack the camp song the fugitive made up on the fly? Not a bit — the circle of obscure references is now complete. Also undimmed this week was the characters' penchant for obsessing over irrelevant trivialities, as evidenced by the closing lines from this week's episode:

Gus: "I'm sorry I ditched you and made a piñata with Jason Cunningham."
[Long pause.]
Shawn: "Apology accepted."

Don't worry. It was funny in context. For a taste of Psych, watch some of the recent episodes on the USA Networks web site, search Psych on YouTube, or watch this video, made to advertise the premiere of season 3:

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In other news, I have been preparing for the second exam in my MCPD certification track. In working through the Microsoft study guide, it has been difficult for me not to set the book on fire. Repeatedly. It's not the major concepts that are being taught that I have a problem with, it's the examples they give of how to implement them. Here's one of the offending passages:

"When a user control is dropped onto a Web page, you always position it using some of the same techniques as you would use to position other controls using Flow Layout, such as placing the user control in an HTML table.

You'll soon find that you cannot position the user control using Dynamic Hypertext Markup Language (DHTML) to set the absolute positioning using the Style property because the user control does not automatically add an outer tag for the contents of the control that could be assigned a Style. You can set the positioning using DHTML if you add a Panel control to the Web page and place the user control into the Panel. This allows the Panel and its contents to be positioned."

Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Web-Based Client Development, pg. 398

Don't see the problems? Take a closer look. Certainly the ideas in this passage that are just wrong, wrong, wrong are not actually the concepts that are the main focus of the lesson, but if you're an expert writing a book, why recommend practices that are in no way even remotely "best"? What they recommend here is the equivalent of hanging up your shirt by nailing it to the bedroom door, when there is a perfectly good hook right there (or even if there isn't a hook, an acceptable second best could be hammering the nail into the door and then hanging the shirt on it). I dread the fact that someone somewhere (who will no doubt write code that I will have to see) could take the entire passage as best practice and then get a certification legitimizing his adherence to practices that are just wrong, wrong, wrong. Very wrong. And bad, very bad. So bad that I am reduced to a second grade vocabulary and filled with a desire to grab something hard and start hitting people with it. Or set the book on fire.

I'm just saying.

Benjamin Button

There are some movies that, soon after it starts, I begin looking at my watch to determine how much time could possibly be left until it is over; there are other movies that, after it has ended and for as long as possible, I consciously avoid reading a clock so that I will not involuntarily calculate how much time has passed. The movie I saw tonight is one of the latter.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (view the trailer) — I find myself struggling to decide what to say about it. It is a beautifully told fantasy, richly and finely layered with metaphor; the filmmaking is artistry, pure and simple. One of the most memorable sequences is a stunningly lyrical fantasy-within-a-fantasy; it is a sequence that tells a story that is increasingly and candidly unlike what actually took place, and it does so with such skill and impact that its final image, because it depicts what did not take place, elicited audible gasps from the audience.

This movie is a work of art. When the Academy Award nominations are announced in a little more than three weeks, it will be listed multiple times: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor and Actress (as well as Best Makeup and Best Score) — and it should win. Cate Blanchett certainly should win; Brad Pitt very well could win. In any case, see it, and enjoy.

Family Secrets

Today at work someone promised to bring in fudge for all of us tomorrow. I was reminded of a similar promise made once, long ago, in a time that has now become (urban) legend. In honor of the season, I thought I would take a few minutes to share with you this heartwarming Christmas tale of yesteryear...



The tale begins around a lunch table, shortly after noon several years ago. Several of my coworkers and I were eating together, and the conversation turned to unique family recipes. It wasn't a competition, but had it been it would have instantly ended when one person shared with us the key ingredient in her family's traditional recipe for chocolate fudge. The inclusion of this particular ingredient in a recipe for chocolate fudge (or any variety of fudge, for that matter) was so, shall we say, unexpected that we quite simply did not believe her; nevertheless, she insisted it was so and, furthermore, insisted that the resulting fudge was not merely edible but good and, furthermore, promised to make a batch and bring it in so that we could try it. Time went by, and memories faded, but every now and then the lunch table conversation would return to this unusual chocolate fudge and its as-yet-unproven existence, and our coworker would renew her promise. Eventually, however, our coworker moved on to other employment, and we came to accept that the mystery would probably remain forever unsolved.

Several months later, Christmas came and brought yet another of our coworkers to the office where a friend and I were having a conversation (work related, of course). She bore news: our former coworker had at long last fulfilled her promise and sent with her a batch of the unusual fudge. My friend and I were to be the first to try it, she said — it was more of an imperative than an invitation. We journeyed with her to where the fudge awaited, in the mini-fridge in the corner conference room. Approaching the conference room, we caught a whiff of something evil; it did not bode well. Our coworker proceeded on and, powerless, we followed. Opening the mini-fridge introduced us to a truly malicious stench, the kind of reek one might expect if something had died in some undignified manner, lain somewhere and rotted for a week, and then gotten up and chosen the mini-fridge as the place to store its malodorousness while it went Christmas shopping; we were somewhat relieved to find that the stench originated from the fridge itself (which was empty except for the fudge) and not from the fudge. We retrieved the fudge and retreated to a safe distance — i.e., back to my friend's office — where we recovered from our ordeal.

To be fair to the fudge and its chef, I'd like to point out the fact that, as all cooks throughout history have discovered, sometimes things just don't come together exactly right no matter how good you are. This particular batch of fudge was an example of this unavoidable fact, being, as we found when we unwrapped it, not entirely solid (thus the reason it had to be kept in the fridge). However, procuring spoons, we proceeded with interest to taste it. Doing so, we found ourselves surprised: despite the uncommon makeup of the recipe, the fudge was actually rather good — except. Yes, in spite of its goodness, there was one final aspect of the experience that my friend and I decided it would simply take a lifetime to overcome, having not grown up with this recipe as our former coworker did. The exception was this: after having tasted the goodness of chocolate fudge and swallowed, we were left with the unmistakable tang of the secret ingredient. What, you ask, was the secret ingredient? I am tempted to make you guess, but since this is a Christmas story, I will end by telling you its name: Velveeta.

---

Some of you might be interested in this video from Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse (co-creator, writers, and co-executive producers of Lost), in which they explain why Lost was canceled:



(I love that they went all out, as you can tell if you read their T-shirts.)

When 2 = 1; or, A Story That Makes 2 Hours Seem Like 30 Years.

From a trailer in a movie theater:

"...in theaters for one night only on December 17th, with an encore on December 18th."

In addition to taking liberties with mathematical axioms, the trailer was completely nonchalant about the rift in space-time inherent in its claim that the story to be told on the night of December 17th "has taken thirty years to tell."

Surveys, a History of Film, a Survey of Film History (Parts XII-XIX), and Oh Yeah, People Can't Seem to Stop Stealing My Cable.

So I went and voted yesterday. On the way in, I was given a survey to keep me entertained while I waited in line; the survey was supposed to tell me what my political leanings are. That's the opposite of what I would have expected, but if you're curious you can take the same quiz online. There was also a guy there who was running for Congress by standing one foot outside the line beyond which no campaigning is allowed (X feet from the polling location) and handing out fliers that said essentially nothing about him. It was a moot point, because as it turns out he is a Democrat and I live two blocks outside his district.

Also this week I had the joy once again of being robbed of services legally mine by right of purchase. There is something about the apartment upstairs that drives people to patch into my cable. The first of my neighbors did it twice, necessitating two visits from a cable technician to restore my service (both times he removed a splitter from my line, which was later replaced with a new one "accidentally"). The new residents also found it more convenient to put a splitter on my line than to pay for service of their own. A technician once again removed a splitter from the line four weeks ago. Most recently, I removed another splitter from the line myself earlier this week, hoping to avoid the three day wait for a technician to come out. No such luck, because as it turns out, this was no ordinary piracy. This time, the thieves upstairs moved out (it's interesting to note that with less than four weeks remaining in the apartment, they still felt the need to resume stealing my cable) and, having decided they were done stealing from me, somehow managed to have a cable technician come out and disconnect my service altogether. That, at least, is what the technician found when he came out three days later to check out the problem. So the irony is that at the exact moment I noticed my service go out, there was a technician 100 feet away actively disconnecting it.

Finally, over the past couple of months I have managed to make further progress in my survey of film history (via my Blockbuster queue), but that same progress will likely be soon undone. I say that because on the second to last day of my vacation, it rained for 12 hours. Coincidentally, that same day the owner of the B&B I was staying at, knowing I am interested in film, had brought me a book she had run across at the local library. It was a 300-and-something page coffee table book, American Cinema: One Hundred Years of Filmmaking, by Jeanine Basinger; I read the entire book. It began with an analysis of the aspect of filmed storytelling that fascinates me most, the use of the "invisible" technical aspects of filming to manipulate the audience and further the story, but pulled a bait-and-switch and became a detailed history of the development of the film industry and the Hollywood studio system. Still very interesting, but not quite as interesting as listening to someone agree with me for 12 hours. The author said many things in the first two chapters that I agree with, and I'm still wishing I could have read the book that should have followed them. In any case, thanks to that book I may now be adding as many as 16 new movies to my queue. Movies seen since the last update:

Two very similar movies in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), starring Gregory Peck, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), starring Jimmy Stewart. Taken on face value, these two movies may not seem that similar; Gentleman's Agreement is about a reporter who goes "undercover" as a Jew to write a story about anti-semitism, while Mr. Smith is the much-loved classic about a Boy Scout leader appointed to congress; however, both tell the story of a passionate individual encountering corruption and fighting to stop it. Where the two films diverge the most is in my opinion of them: Gentleman's Agreement was spectacular; Mr. Smith was barely mediocre. The reason, I think, is that Mr. Smith is a wide-eyed, golly-gee love poem to a hyper-idealized version of the founding fathers and American democracy; it's more of an over-dramatized PSA than a story. Gentleman's Agreement on the other hand takes a (comparatively) realistic and very human perspective on a very human problem; it very much deserved its three Oscar wins (including Best Picture) and its five additional nominations.

I also surprised myself by very much liking Casablanca (1942); I honestly didn't expect to.

The Philadelphia Story (1940), starring Kathryn Hepburn, Cary Grant and James Stewart. Entertaining and well-made; recommended.

Also viewed: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), Brief Encounter (1945), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), and Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941). These movies were all good, but not particularly outstanding.

The West Wing

I recently told someone that The West Wing received 96 Emmy nominations over its 7 year run. That number was inaccurate: there were actually only 95. In the interest of full disclosure, here they are (* indicates a win):

• * 2000 - Outstanding Art Direction for a Single Camera Series
  
• * 2000 - Outstanding Casting for a Drama Series
  
• * 2000 - Outstanding Cinematography for a Single Camera Series
  
• 2000 - Outstanding Costumes for a Series
  
• * 2000 - Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series
  
• * 2000 - Outstanding Drama Series
  
• 2000 - Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (Martin Sheen)
  
• 2000 - Outstanding Main Title Design
  
• * 2000 - Outstanding Main Title Theme Music
  
• 2000 - Outstanding Single Camera Picture Editing for a Series
  
• 2000 - Outstanding Single Camera Picture Editing for a Series
  
• 2000 - Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Drama Series
  
• 2000 - Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (John Spencer)
  
• * 2000 - Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (Richard Schiff)
  
• * 2000 - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (Allison Janney)
  
• 2000 - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (Stockard Channing)
  
• * 2000 - Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series
  
• 2000 - Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series
  
• 2001 - Outstanding Art Direction for a Single Camera Series
  
• * 2001 - Outstanding Casting for a Drama Series
  
• * 2001 - Outstanding Cinematography for a Single Camera Series
  
• * 2001 - Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series
  
• 2001 - Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series
  
• * 2001 - Outstanding Drama Series
  
• 2001 - Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series (Oliver Platt)
  
• 2001 - Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (Martin Sheen)
  
• 2001 - Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (Rob Lowe)
  
• 2001 - Outstanding Music Composition for a Series (Dramatic Underscore)
  
• * 2001 - Outstanding Single Camera Picture Editing for a Series
  
• * 2001 - Outstanding Single Camera Sound Mixing for a Series
  
• * 2001 - Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (Bradley Whitford)
  
• 2001 - Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (John Spencer)
  
• 2001 - Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (Richard Schiff)
  
• * 2001 - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (Allison Janney)
  
• 2001 - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (Stockard Channing)
  
• 2001 - Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series
  
• 2002 - Outstanding Art Direction for a Single Camera Series
  
• 2002 - Outstanding Casting for a Drama Series
  
• 2002 - Outstanding Cinematography for a Single Camera Series
  
• 2002 - Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series
  
• 2002 - Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series
  
• * 2002 - Outstanding Drama Series
  
• 2002 - Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series (Mark Harmon)
  
• 2002 - Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series (Ron Silver)
  
• 2002 - Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series (Tim Matheson)
  
• 2002 - Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (Martin Sheen)
  
• * 2002 - Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (Allison Janney)
  
• 2002 - Outstanding Single Camera Picture Editing for a Series
  
• 2002 - Outstanding Single Camera Picture Editing for a Series
  
• 2002 - Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (Bradley Whitford)
  
• 2002 - Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (Dulé Hill)
  
• * 2002 - Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (John Spencer)
  
• 2002 - Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (Richard Schiff)
  
• 2002 - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (Janel Moloney)
  
• 2002 - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (Mary-Louise Parker)
  
• * 2002 - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (Stockard Channing)
  
• 2002 - Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series
  
• 2003 - Outstanding Art Direction for a Single Camera Series
  
• 2003 - Outstanding Casting for a Drama Series
  
• 2003 - Outstanding Cinematography for a Single Camera Series
  
• * 2003 - Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series
  
• * 2003 - Outstanding Drama Series
  
• 2003 - Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series (Matthew Perry)
  
• 2003 - Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series (Tim Matheson)
  
• 2003 - Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (Martin Sheen)
  
• 2003 - Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (Allison Janney)
  
• 2003 - Outstanding Single Camera Picture Editing for a Drama Series
  
• 2003 - Outstanding Single Camera Sound Mixing for a Series
  
• 2003 - Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (Bradley Whitford)
  
• 2003 - Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (John Spencer)
  
• 2003 - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (Stockard Channing)
  
• 2003 - Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series
  
• 2004 - Outstanding Art Direction for a Single-Camera Series
  
• 2004 - Outstanding Casting for a Drama Series
  
• 2004 - Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series
  
• 2004 - Outstanding Drama Series
  
• 2004 - Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series (Matthew Perry)
  
• 2004 - Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (Martin Sheen)
  
• * 2004 - Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (Allison Janney)
  
• 2004 - Outstanding Single-Camera Sound Mixing for a Series
  
• 2004 - Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series
  
• 2004 - Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (John Spencer)
  
• 2004 - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (Janel Moloney)
  
• 2004 - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (Stockard Channing)
  
• 2005 - Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series
  
• 2005 - Outstanding Drama Series
  
• 2005 - Outstanding Single-Camera Sound Mixing for a Series
  
• 2005 - Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (Alan Alda)
  
• 2005 - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (Stockard Channing)
  
• 2006 - Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series
  
• 2006 - Outstanding Drama Series
  
• 2006 - Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (Martin Sheen)
  
• 2006 - Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (Allison Janney)
  
• * 2006 - Outstanding Multi-Camera Sound Mixing for a Series or Special
  
• * 2006 - Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (Alan Alda)
  

A Survey of Film History, Parts V-XI; Also, Enthusiasm for Points and Points for Enthusiasm

The ghosts of cinema past haven't finished making their point yet:

Stage Door (1937) - has charm, a good performance by Kathryn Hepburn and the unexpected (by me) bonus of Lucille Ball in a supporting role.

The Thief of Baghdad (1924) - the earliest film on my list, and the second of only two silent films. It made number 9 on AFI's list of the Top 10 Fantasy movies. Overall, a good movie, and the special effects are impressive for the time. However, it lacks the skill of Charlie Chaplin's City Lights.

The Maltese Falcon (1941) - a thriller starring Humphrey Bogart. It made #31 on AFI's top 100 films of all time, and #6 on their Top 10 Mysteries. It didn't turn out to be exactly what I was expecting, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a good movie.

Woman of the Year (1942), Holiday (1938) - two more Kathryn Hepburn movies; it's not a coincidence, she's the one actor I looked up by name when building this list. Woman of the Year was fairly good (with an extremely funny kitchen scene) but the ending lacked; of the two, I enjoyed Holiday much more. There are two categories of stage-to-screen adaptations: those directed like stage plays, and those directed like movies; Holiday falls into the former category, but doesn't really suffer for it.

It Happened One Night (1934) - starring Clark Gable, it made AFI's Top 10 Romantic Comedies (#3), Top 100 romances (#38) and Top 100 Movies (#46), and was also the first movie to win all of the five major Oscars: Best Movie, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay. I divide romances into three categories, in descending order: Films, Chick Flicks and Girl Movies. To list examples would be to admit that I have seen movies that fall into the Girl Movie category; I'll simply say that It Happened One Night is a Film. Recommended. Clark Gable also starred in the next movie on my list:

Gone With the Wind (1939) - although nearly four hours long, I found this movie surprisingly short. The historical aspects were interesting, some of the plot points less so. Of the ending, I will simply say: weak, very weak. On a scale from "Girl Movie" to "Recommended", this movie gets a "Worth Watching Once".

---

I surprised myself this week by getting very interested in the Olympics. The first hour of the opening ceremony was supreme artistry (watch the entire hour here), and on a couple of occasions I found myself involuntarily talking to the TV: first, during Alexander Artemev's pommel horse routine in the men's Gymnastics prelims (view the same routine from a different night here, at about 4:17) when he kept the US team in the running for a team medal — not once, but twice — and second, during the last few seconds of Michael Phelps' seventh gold medal race — the one he won by 0.01 seconds (view coverage here; watch the whole first four minutes of the video, including his mother's reaction). Sadly, NBC's obsession with Michael Phelps was also one of the low points of their Olympic coverage, as they insisted on asking every US gold medal swimmer how they felt about Phelps' performance, and even characterized the relay team's gold medal performace as being "for Michael" — to their faces.

Not quite so Olympian were the feats of advertising that went on in between the interesting stuff, the most outstanding example of which was a commercial for a certain electric company. The commercial featured a spokesperson who "loves to read" — an admirable trait to be sure, but she listed her three favorite genres as follows: "fiction, non-fiction, and autobiographies about people."

That reminds me: I'd like to point out that my favorite things to eat are food, beverages, and pineapples that are fruit. And if I can contrive to eat them while reading an autobiography about a pineapple, all the better.

A Survey of Film History, Parts II - IV; Also, The Preponderance of S

Here begins my demonstration of the "approximately chronological" nature of my Blockbuster queue. In viewing order, I present:

The Lady Eve (1941), starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. This was apparently one of the top ten films in the box office that year. It is described as a "screwball comedy," but I just didn't see it ("it" being the comedy, not the film). All in all, the film is a rather pedestrian affair; ironic, considering it's about an affair that begins on a cruise ship and ends on a train.

City Lights (1931), written and directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin, is notable for being one of only a few silent films released after "talkies" had become the norm; it was Chaplin's last silent film. It is also widely considered to be his best film, and it topped AFI's list of the top ten romantic comedies of all time. I can readily believe it; it's a work of art. Highly recommended.

Alice Adams (1935) is a simple and bittersweet but not outstanding romance, starring Katharine Hepburn and Fred MacMurray. One line is a particular standout, and may in my mind justify Hepburn's Oscar nomination, but in all other respects this film gets a shrug and a "meh."

---

I have noticed this before in record and movie stores, and I noticed it again this weekend as I was going through my CDs trying to get rid of the ones I no longer listen to; it's a disturbing trend that appears to have been going on in the entertainment industry for quite some time now: there's a distinct bias toward artists and movies whose name begins with "S". Yes, that's right, the entertainment industry is letterist. Once I noticed it I had to find out for sure, and it turns out that of the artists whose albums I own, over 20% have names beginning with "S", and the same is true of the movies. Not only that, but movies with titles that begin with "S" are apparently also more likely to get sequels. Need proof? Spider-man, Superman, Star Wars and Star Trek are just four examples.

I smell a conspiracy, and it's people with speech impediments who are going to suffer for it.

A Survey of Film History, Part I of LXXX-something; Also, Public Display of Hostility

The recommendations feature of the Blockbuster online rental service is very nearly useless — at least in my case. A significant portion of the movies they recommend to me are movies I have already rated (i.e., already seen). Another useless feature is the "Don't show me this movie again" level in the rating system; it apparently has no bearing on whether you will actually avoid seeing on the site again, as a number of these show up in my recommendations as well (which makes the "We think you'll like..." heading on the recommendations page more than a little ironic). The saving grace of the Blockbuster online rental service is their vast library.

Last week, after having received no useful recommendations in recent months and seeing that my queue had 7 movies remaining, I went through a number of AFI "Top 100" lists and "Top 10" lists (which inexplicably had different contents than the top ten of the "Top 100" lists), as well as the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" list and added anything I hadn't seen that was major or sounded interesting to my queue. The end result: my queue now contains an additional 80+ movies (yes, 80 out of over 1000) ranging from 1924 to 1989 which I will be watching in a sequence that will approximate chronological order, some or most of which I may have something to say about.

Somehow, first up was a light comedy produced in 1938 called Bringing Up Baby. Starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, it was a rather spectacular box office failure at the time, and came near the end of a string of unsuccessful movies that actually succeeded in putting Katharine Hepburn out of work for a short time. However, it is now considered a classic and has made a number of "Top X Movies of All Time" lists, including #14 on AFI's Top 100 Comedies. Well, they were right. I think I laughed more at this movie than I have at the past five recent comedies that I have seen combined. Katharine Hepburn was fantastic and, well, I never knew Cary Grant was funny. Very entertaining and definitely recommended.

---

The following glimpse into the seedy underworld of grocery store clerking was being (unintentionally?) broadcast over the loudspeakers to the entire parking lot as I exited Tom Thumb tonight:

Female Voice: "— called you five minutes ago and you haven't answered my question yet. All I wanted to know is whether there are any plastic bags back there so, are there any plastic bags back there?"
Male Voice (thirty seconds later): "Tiffany, 10 minutes is all I ask.

Ah, such angst. A series of bleeps followed, but I think it was a phone being dialed, not anything actually being censored.

Not everyone at Walden Media thinks you're stupid.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian works too.

Walden Media think you're stupid; the Wachowskis are just inconsistent.

I'll start with the good news: the Wachowskis are inconsistent. I am of course referring to Larry and Andy Wachowski, the writer/director/producers of The Matrix, a thoroughly entertaining movie and groundbreaking at the time (nine years ago?!). However, they are also the writer/director/producers of its unfortunate (for us) sequels and, to the great indifference of nearly everyone, the writer/producers of V for Vendetta. The inconsistency is this: I just saw their latest movie, and I was thoroughly entertained. Is it ridiculous? Yes. A little cheesy? Sure. Gaudy? Yeah. Really, really over-the-top? Oh yes. But it works in a way that no other movie has so far this year. Don't know what movie I'm talking about?

Speed Racer.

I'll wait while you recover. Done? Sure, it's a movie based on a cartoon, and it looks like an LSD-trip, but it has a genuine, beating heart that had me smiling involuntarily within the first three minutes. Here's the clip that first made me wonder if this movie could actually be good:

Incidentally, it also uses contextually relevant flashbacks to an extent that is ironic only because the movie co-stars Matthew Fox.

Now for the bad news: Walden Media really do think you're stupid. Last year they released a movie called "The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising", based on the book "The Dark is Rising" by Susan Cooper. I first read the book seventeen years ago, and it is, along with the other books in the series (it's actually the second in the series), one of the few books I read as a kid that I still enjoy now. It is set in England sometime in the 60's or 70's, and is about Will Stanton, a British boy who on his eleventh birthday discovers that he is the last of the Old Ones, and will play a key role in the final battle against the Dark. Judging by the movie that was actually produced, however, Walden Media thinks you're too stupid to get that story. Here's a partial list of improvements made:

• Will Stanton is an American living in England. (Americans won't pay to see fantasy movies about British kids.)
• It's set in the modern day, and includes an extended scene in a mall. (To make American kids feel more at home.)
• There's a ~16-year-old love interest for Will.
• Will is 14. (Presumably so that they can make his attraction for his love interest sexual without it being too icky.)
• A deep, dark family secret.
• A long-lost twin. (No, I'm not kidding.)
• Lots of action sequences.
• And on...
• And on...

I'm going to stop before it sounds like I'm ranting. I'm not against book-to-movie adaptations; I'm not even against book-to-movie adaptations that make significant foundational changes to the storyline (remember the Bourne trilogy?). I'm simply against changes that try to cater to an imaginary audience that is dumber than the audience that actually exists, and against changes that result in a movie that is just plain bad.

Nominees

I'm rather pleased. My three favorite movies of last year have all been nominated for Oscars. In somewhat indeterminate order (they are all very different movies, so it's hard to rank them), the nominees are:

The Bourne Ultimatum

• Achievement in Film Editing
• Achievement in Sound Editing
• Achievement in Sound Mixing

August Rush

• Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Song)

Ratatouille

• Best Animated Feature Film of the Year
• Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score)
• Achievement in Sound Editing
• Achievement in Sound Mixing
• Original Screenplay

I highly recommend all of these movies. August Rush isn't out on DVD yet, but give it a couple months.