September 2008 Archives

A comedy thought experiment: You've gotta admit, they make it look so easy. Too easy. But they were doing television sketch comedy before SNL and Mad TV and Fox News rediscovered them. Now, as they're being further exposed to audiences of all persuasions, more and more people are saying: "They were so funny, I may previously have forgotten to laugh!" No longer! We're in comedy mode!

UPDATE: She's so quick, I can't even keep up with her anymore. Now she's given us new material on her preferred news sources and the Supreme Court! She's got a million of 'em -- and she'll be here all month! Probably.

Compare and contrast with another famous TV comedy sketch after the jump....

I'm posting this not just because I'm (still) in love with Sarah Silverman (though I am), and not just because she's a genius (though, of course, she is), and not just because of the overt political humor in this short film (though The Great Schlep is an inspired idea), but because of how it relates to recent Scanners posts about comedy and understanding what the joke is. (See posts and discussions regarding "Tropic Thunder," "Juneau," and David Foster Wallace.)

So, please watch the above movie and then provide your interpretation of it, by considering my questions after the jump...

I defy you to tell the difference between her character and the Governor of Alaska, who has been busy lowering expectations all week. The main difference, of course, is that Fey is still in front of TV cameras, while Palin can no longer be found. Anywhere.

And the most brilliant stroke: Palin herself provided much of the material. She writes her own comedy and all Fey has to do is perform it the way Palin does. Fey isn't doing a caricature (like Dana Carvey's George HW Bush), but is giving a performance of uncanny accuracy (closer to, say, Helen Mirren in "The Queen").

NEW! Version 1.1. Now with easier-to-read captions!

Everything I know about economics I learned from the movies. (Collected knowledge after the jump.) So when times get tough, I consult Preston Sturges. Here, I have condensed the financial wisdom of a lifetime into less than five minutes -- all of it distilled from 1937's "Easy Living," written by Sturges, directed by Mitchell Leisen, and starring Jean Arthur, Edward Arnold, Ray Milland, Mary Nash, Franklin Pangborn, Luis Alberni and Andrew Tombes, among many others.

Sturges himself puts in an appearance to explain the key principle behind all successful investment strategies.

And in his movie, there's a happy ending.

Irony alert! Has the very idea of Sarah Palin rendered the concept of irony unrecognizable to many Americans, or has she just pointed out its irrelevance to them in ways that even 9/11 could not? Here's Maureen Dowd channeling/quoting "West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin on the subject of irony in America today.

President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) speaking frankly, as politicians say, to Barack Obama:

BARTLET: Well ... let me think. ...We went to war against the wrong country, Osama bin Laden just celebrated his seventh anniversary of not being caught either dead or alive, my family's less safe than it was eight years ago, we've lost trillions of dollars, millions of jobs, thousands of lives and we lost an entire city due to bad weather. So, you know ... I'm a little angry.

OBAMA: What would you do?

BARTLET: GET ANGRIER! Call them liars, because that's what they are. Sarah Palin didn't say "thanks but no thanks" to the Bridge to Nowhere. She just said "Thanks." You were raised by a single mother on food stamps -- where does a guy with eight houses who was legacied into Annapolis get off calling you an elitist? And by the way, if you do nothing else, take that word back. Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I'd ask them what their problem is with excellence. While you're at it, I want the word "patriot" back. McCain can say that the transcendent issue of our time is the spread of Islamic fanaticism or he can choose a running mate who doesn't know the Bush doctrine from the Monroe Doctrine, but he can't do both at the same time and call it patriotic. They have to lie -- the truth isn't their friend right now. Get angry. Mock them mercilessly; they've earned it.

I love me some doggies.

In advance of a story I've written about some of my favorite movie dogs whose proper names (if they have them) do not appear in or above the titles of the films in which they are featured, I present a wee quiz. No, these dogs are not marquee names (except, maybe, for the brilliant wire-haired fox terrier at right who co-starred with Nick and Nora and Archie Leach). Some are bit players, but all make indelible marks on the screen. You know what they say: There are no small dogs, just... something like that.

Several of the following dogs I was unable to mention in the story, which I will link to when it goes live. In the meantime, can you identify the pooches pictured after the jump?

Ready. Set. Go.

"It is not enough to like a film. One must like it for the right reasons."
-- Pierre Rissient

This is entirely coincidental, so consider it a fortuitous double-bill. Just as I posted the item below ("The sins of the critic"), Roger Ebert posted a blog essay on the subject: "'Critic' is a four-letter word." Here's a taste:

Too many simply absorb. They are depositories for input. They can hardly be expected to be critical of their own tastes, can they? Of course they can. It is not enough simply to be a "Cubs fan," although I confess I am one. It is necessary to feel the philosophy, the history, and even the poetry about the activity called "baseball." It is helpful to step outside a little, and see that sports teams are surrogates for our own desires to conquer, and expressions of our xenophobia. For some, they are even the best way ever invented to drink beer outdoors. If you are only a Cubs fan, you are a willing automaton in a business venture. Join me in being a Cubs fan, but know why you do it. What is my most fundamental reason? I am a fan because they are always the underdogs. That may be why I bought a Studebaker 30 years after the company went out of business.

Read the entire piece here.

Critic Kathleen Murphy takes a prickly, sarcastic inventory of common complaints against, well, critics at MSN Movies and finds them... not so sharp. I have this uneasy feeling some readers looker-atters won't see the irony, but -- what can I say? -- we live in an age when millions either can't or won't see the pig for the lipstick.

Among accusations addressed are the sins of seriousness, snobbery, geezerism and insufficient appreciation for the latest trends. (One of my favorite zingers: "Haven't you ever heard of the fierce urgency of NOW?" As if this week's movies were automatically better than last week's because they're more up-to-date! There's critical perspective for you.)

Kathleen quotes from my "Do the Contrarian" song (a big hit single for me during Contrarian Week in 2007) to introduce a little rant about that vintage favorite, "The Dark Knight," and an Oscar-winner that's soon to become a Dramatic Television Show:

Can Tina Fey get an Emmy just for this? I know, it's almost too easy. But she's flawless. I knew she was a terrific writer and comedian (er, "comedienne"?), especially from "30 Rock," but I don't think I ever fully realized what a brilliant actor (er, "actress") she is.

And now, conservative columnist David Brooks of the New York Times on a word familiar to "SNL" viewers: "prudent"...

Test: Can you find something -- a shot or a cut or a line -- in this trailer for "Crash" -- The Dramatic New Original Series Only On Starz -- that isn't a howler of a cliché? Ready? Let's see, it begins with someone who sounds suspiciously like the late Don LaFontaine intoning:

"Everyone's chasing something. And when they find it, they want more."

(Imagine that prefaced by: "In a world where...")

And then (just like the movie) characters define themselves in didactic speeches. Maybe it's Brechtian. Sometimes they actually look into the camera and tell you who they are and what they "want." Those parts may have been shot just for the trailer, but the effect is very like the Academy Award-winning movie:

"I don't break the rules. I, uh, bend 'em."

"I deserve their respect. As a cop. And as a woman."

"With that much cash you can buy your American Dream."

"I'm willing to cross a line."

"I need to bury my past... before it buries me."

"I have everything I need. And nothing I want."

The apparent suicide of David Foster Wallace, shockingly sad and disturbing as the sudden death of Heath Ledger earlier this year, has me revisiting my memories of his writing. I know him from his short stories and nonfiction -- never tackled "Infinite Jest," even though I bought it in hardback when it was first published. I won't put off reading it much longer.

From Premiere magazine, September, 1996: "David Lynch Keeps His Head," anthologized in "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments":

13. WHAT EXACTLY DAVID LYNCH SEEMS TO WANT FROM YOU

MOVIES ARE AN authoritarian medium. They vulnerabilize you and then dominate you. Part of the magic of going to a movie is surrendering to it, letting it dominate you....

From a commencement address by the late David Foster Wallace at Kenyon University, May 21, 2005:

There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'" And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp."

"The war is over. The revolution has just begun."
-- Che Guevara (Benicio Del Toro), after Cuban guerillas have overthrown Batista's dictatorial regime on New Year's Day, 1959, in "Che"

Even without titles or credits, the running time of the gorgeous digital print of Steven Soderberg's "Che" that screened at the Toronto Film Festival was listed as 261minutes (that's four hours and 21 minutes for those of you without calculators). The working title for the epic was "Guerilla," then "Che," and despite Benicio Del Toro's fully-lived performance as Che Guevara, a more suitable title might be "Revolutions." Because this doesn't feel so much like a biopic as a documentary portrait of the recipes for political revolutions, successful and failed, in Cuba and Bolivia. The titles may rhyme, but nobody's going to mistake "Che" for "Ray."

Cell phone photo at right: MSN Movies editor Dave McCoy, New York Deli, Bay Street, Toronto, 9/10/2008. Seven years later and what have we done?

Torontoids #2:

"I've seen a lot of good shit and a lot of bad shit but not a lot of meh."

* * *

Old man on a bench, speaking to a wire construction fence, or possibly a pigeon on the other side of it. Or maybe a Bluetooth headset: "But the best picture Judy Garland ever made was..." (Just then, a loud truck roared past, in the opposite direction from the one I was heading, and drowned out the title. I hesitated, almost went back to ask, but I was hustling to get to a screening. I'm kind of hoping it was "Meet Me in St. Louis.")

The only real blasphemies in Bill Maher's anti-religion documentary, "Religulous," are that it's not terribly smart and only sporadically funny. Three or four big laughs, a lot of snide, pompous misfires and innumerable fish-in-a-barrel potshots do not make for much of a movie, or a coherent case against the incoherence of faith or organized religion. Maher's line is that he is pro-doubt, that he really "doesn't know," that he's "just asking questions." That's a load of crap (he's not really promoting doubt any more than anti-abortionists are "pro-life"), but what makes it offensive is that Maher's smart-ass tone sounds as dead-certain, smug, smarmy and self-righteous as Jerry Falwell or Ted Haggerty.

But I kid.

What a sweet little movie "The Wrestler" is.

Warm. Endearing. Really nice.

This may be the first time adjectives like these have been applied to the work of Darren Aronofsky ("Pi," "Requiem for a Dream," "The Fountain") or Mickey Rourke ("Johnny Handsome," "Sin City"), neither of whom has an on-screen reputation as Mr. Charming. But there's not a mean or cynical (broken) bone in this movie's soft-bellied, soft-hearted, battle-scarred, age-tenderized old body.

It's the question you dread, at least from total strangers, but it's unavoidable at a film festival -- kind of like "What's your major?" in college:

"Seen anything you like?"

My dulled response while immersed in this cinematic maelstrom (my brain runneth over) is to say something like: "Yeah..." and then forget where the hell I am in time and space. But I like listening to other strangers trade views on what they've seen, whether I have a clue as to what they're talking about or not. (Yes, I like to eavesdrop: Film is a voyeur's medium.)

The other night at dinner, for example, some French (French Canadian? Belgian?) fellows were sitting behind us on a rooftop patio. A little mist was falling, but we were protected by table umbrellas. I turned just in time to hear one of them say, I a heavy accent, "Yes, but then the two protagonists..." I can't really tell you why I liked that so much, but I keep thinking (as I often do): "Oh, that would be so great to put in a movie!" I have loads and loads of fleeting images and snatches of conversation that need to be stuffed into some kind of Altmanesque tapestry someday.

It seems appropriate that the first screening I attended for the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival should be a movie about stories and con games: "The Brothers Bloom," written and directed by Rian Johnson, maker of "Brick," one of my favorite movies of 2005.

Now look back at that sentence and you'll notice it's a setup for another story. (And con?)

I mean, of course it's going to make sense to me that the first movie I see in Toronto is going to be about storytelling as con artistry, in which stories themselves are the biggest cons of all -- because, then, seeing the movie becomes part of my story, and the lead (or "lede," if you prefer) for the story you're reading now, about my first TIFF 2008 screening. That's the way stories work, and the way we work stories.

In a Coen Brothers movie every pause and stutter, every "um" and grammatical (mis-)construction, every repetition and idiosyncratic pronunciation, is inscribed like a note on a musical staff. The composer-conductors write the music, indicate the pitch, tempo and duration of each passage, and the select musicians -- soloists and ensemble players -- attack their assigned parts with the virtuoso flair for which they are known. As composers have often written works specifically suited to the talents of their favorite musicians, so the Coens frequently write roles tailored to the individual actors they want to work with.

"Burn After Reading" is a deft little piece, directed with a straight face and performed with a roiling comedic energy that matches brio with precision. That's what makes it funny. Emmanuel Lebezki's cinematography, Carter Burwell's score, Roderick Jaynes' editing (yes, we all know that's a pseudonym) could proudly serve any modern espionage picture. All serve a ridiculously plotted absurdist farce, which is what the best spy stories usually boil down to, whether they're comic or tragic.

A winter afternoon. A man walks down a muddy village backstreet with his shoulders hunched against the chill, accompanied by what could be industrial noise or a string score. Whatever it is, it evokes tension and anxiety. The catches the attention of a passing German Shepherd, who strains on its leash to keep an eye on him -- all the more so when the man attempts to conceal himself around a corner. In a small general store, he buys an axe. The clerk wraps the blade neatly in crisp brown paper. The camera tracks a slow-moving car that is being pushed along by several other men, the "driver" looking behind him through an open door. The man places the axe against his side, facing us, to shield it from their view.

What are we watching?

Later, a man enters a flat. The door of a small refrigerator is ajar, the light glowing inside. The man grabs an object from a white plate sitting on top of the fridge. It is a woman's black shoe.

So, what is this? A horror movie? A crime thriller? A macabre mystery? Sure. But I think a more accurate genre description would be romantic comedy.

How to plan my Toronto schedule when there are a few dozen movies screening every day and I want to keep from knowing much of anything about them before I see them, so that I can (as much as humanly possible) avoid preconceptions, false expectations, artificial festival "buzz," and other distractions that have little or nothing to do with what's on those screens? (See last year's accounting: "What did I know and when did I know it?")

The first thing I look for are the names of directors whose work I'm interested in following (or whose work I think I would like to follow). This year, for example, Danny Boyle, Kevin Smith, Rod Lurie and (as previously mentioned) Guy Ritchie all have films in this year's festival -- which, in my case, leaves more room to accommodate movies by directors I like. Not only for megastar filmmakers like the Dardennes and the Coens, but for Terence Davies ("The Long Day Closes"), Rian Johnson ("Brick"), Ramin Bahrani ("Chop Shop"), Katherine Bigelow ("Blue Steel"), Jerzy Skolimowski ("Deep End"), Kelly Reichardt ("Old Joy"), Michael Winterbottom ("A Cock and Bull Story" -- who makes two or three movies a year, it seems)... Those parenthetical titles, of course, are earlier films by these filmmakers. I don't even remember most of the titles from this year yet, because I haven't seen the movies. I've just been circling times and places on my screening schedule.

Bolted upright out of a sound sleep at 2:30 this morning with the realization that both the gals haunting my nightmares had been played by Laura Dern in two different movies! Laura Dern as Reality TV's own Katherine Harris, the ambitious, over-coiffured local politician thrust opportunistically into the international media spotlight by the Republican party, in "Recount" (2008). And Laura Dern as the clueless unwed pregnant teenager girl manipulated by pro-choice lefties and anti-abortion Christians -- cynically spun as an agenda-defining "symbol" by all sides -- in "Citizen Ruth," directed by Alexander Payne ("Election," "Sideways," "About Schmidt"). I recommend both these movies ("Citizen Ruth" especially) as primers for understanding what's going on right now.

Oh, I have plenty to write about. Some of it even about TIFF, which officially kicks off Thursday. But I have to get up early to get to the first press screenings Wednesday morning. They start, auspiciously, with the new Guy Ritchie film, "Rocknrolla," at 9 am. (That's 6 am real time.) So, that means I can sleep in at least until 9:30 or 10. On the other hand, it would be nice to cover some films that probably won't get wider distribution. Ritchie sure fits that bill.

Meanwhile, Bloor Street looks like Gitmo (new construction!) and all Torontonians want to talk about is the governor of Alaska -- either with great concern or great disdain. (The Canadians have been openly laughing at us, nervously, for eight years.)

The movies will surely offer a welcome respite from the horror-comedy of the world at large right now...

Nighty-night. Be seeing you.

No comment necessary. (See previous.) The coincidences are too great. Many thanks to whoever created this. It will soon be everywhere, if it isn't already.

UPDATE: From Republican conservative pundit and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan: "I think they went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about 'narratives.' Every time Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at, they blow it."

Go back and skim Neal Gabler's book "Life: The Movie." This "plot development" is funnier than Spiro Agner, funnier than Dan Quayle. This may be even beyond Billy "Beer" Carter-level funny...

... Don LaFontaine is no longer the voice of that world, it is a lesser world. LaFontaine, the Voice of the Movie Trailer whose goosepimply vocal performances number in the thousands of hundreds of dozens, has died in Los Angeles at age 68.

And be sure to revisit the thrilling voiceover masterpiece, "5 Guys in a Limo," featured here a few years ago, after the jump. Don't you dare miss it!

That's what I'm all. Will begin writing from the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival shortly. It starts Thursday. I begin attending screenings just before then...