Neil Gaiman: Horror Host?

I've been scouring my Netflix Instant Queue for undiscovered horror movie gems, in order to get in the Halloween spirit, and I noticed a documentary called American Scary, about the phenomenon of the late-night cable horror movie host.

I've always been fascinated by these hosts, as they combine elements of two of my favorite things- carnival barkers and public access television. Unfortunately, I did not grow up watching any of these costumed characters introducing B-movies with bad puns and rubber masks. I don't think there were any such programs available to me in small-town Minnesota.

However, there was such a show in Minneapolis- "Horror Incorporated", which someone has done an incredibly thorough job blogging about right here. It debuted in 1969 with a showing of Tod Browning's Dracula. Here's the opening sequence:

The show also had a modern incarnation which I, through my secret connections to the Twin Cities horror host industry, got to witness being filmed. I appreciated their life-size Tor Johnson sculpture, and I even got to run the smoke machine! Here's a sample of the show, which, if you need even more motivation to check it out, also includes someone in a gorilla suit:

American Scary turned out to be a fun look at horror hosts from all over the country, with interviews from many horror hosts with great names like 'Svengoolie', 'Dr. Sarcofiguy', and 'Crematia Mortem'. There were also a number of other film experts such as Leonard Maltin, Bob Burns, and Joel Hodgson. There was one guest that surprised me: Neil Gaiman, and the reason for his inclusion was even more surprising: He had been a horror host himself!

It totally makes sense- his stories often have a creepy, macabre edge, he always dresses in black, and he's got that nasal, British accent that's perfect for making you want to settle in on a cold autumn night for some classic scary movies.

He hosted for the Fox Movie Channel when they did a series called "The Thirteen Nights of Fright". Now, thanks to internet magic, you can see him emerge from a coffin and do his horror host thing right here:

Hey, Look! I'm In A Book!

All right, I've been excited about this for a while now, but now I have the proof in my hands, and it seems like a good time to write about it.

I'm a published author!

In an actual book!

This one, to be precise:

If you can see from the image, it also has contributions from China Mieville, Alan Moore, Mike Mignola, and a whole bunch of other really great authors.

Now, you may wonder how I ended up in this book. I will tell you. The editor, Jeff Vandermeer, has a blog that I read with some regularity. One day, he mentioned that he was putting this book together, and that he was looking for some entries to put in the back of the book, kind of an index of unusual objects.

The whole book is like this- the premise is that Thackery T. Lambshead has a vast collection of items in this cabinet (these sorts of cabinets actually exist. Lawrence Weschler actually wrote a very interesting history of them in his book 'Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder' ), and each item is kind of a jumping-off point for a story or anecdote or picture or drawing. It's an idea that lends itself to all sorts of creative takes on what might be found in a cabinet like this.

Anyway, I read about this book, and thought it sounded like a great idea, and then saw that I could submit my own idea for an unusual object, which would then possibly be included in the book. I came up with something (I guess you'll just have to read it to found out what!), sent it in, and then found out that I actually was going to be in the book! With an author bio and everything!

So, yeah, it's kind of exciting to be a part of this really cool project.

I suppose this is a good time to mention that the book comes out next week! So pre-order it now, why dontcha?

This is a peek at all the different author contributions (I'm there at the bottom, if you squint).

And here's a sampling of some of the varied artwork from inside the book.

Aaaaand now I will cease my blatant self-promotion. Carry on.

My Most Anticipated Summer Movie

There's a lot of interesting movies coming out this summer. None that have the guarantee of greatness like last summer's Inception or Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, although those were really the only good movies from all of last summer (Oh, ok, and Toy Story 3). But this summer's a big one for interesting superhero movies and science fiction, and hey, I already like the way things are starting off with Fast Five (no, seriously!).

However, the movie I'm most excited for is The Future, Miranda July's follow-up to Me and You and Everyone We Know. It's finally got a trailer, and the premise couldn't be more simple- two people want to buy a cat.

The Proper Way To End Your Film

I don't really have anything to add to this.

(For the curious, it's apparently from a movie called Blood Lines, Ninja Hunter, or Eliminator, depending on what country you're in. This is the only review I could find of it, although the page layout and ads make it nigh-unreadable.)

So...This Exists

So, today, I learned that there was once a boxing kangaroo movie starring Elliot Gould, and it is probably the reason he isn't the huge star he deserves to be (seriously, he's one of my favorite actors). But something like this would be hard for anyone to come back from:

In Praise of 'Wholphin'

One of the things I'm grateful for about living in this era of media proliferation is that it's a lot easier to watch short films. I'm kind of a completist when it comes to films- if there's a director or actor I love, I want to hunt down all of their work. Not just their major works, bu the TV episodes they've directed or commercials they've done. One of the hardest parts of this quest was tracking down their early films. Lurking there in the depths of of their IMDb filmographies, these were often student films, or projects that were never actually released, and thus pretty much impossible to find.

Until now. Now, if I want to see, say, Quentin Tarantino's first film, or an early bit of animation by Henry Selick, or even the movies Steven Spielberg made when he was running around the Arizona desert with his friends (this last one is definitely an inspiration behind the upcoming Super 8), then it's all just one YouTube search away.

Unfortunately, with all these short films now available, after I've seen all of these long-sought-after gems, it can be hard to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to finding interesting short films to watch. This is why I'm glad for 'Wholphin'.

Published by McSweeney's, 'Wholphin' is a quarterly DVD magazine that collects short films, documentaries, animation, and other ephemera. They've got a great variety of material; some shorts feature A-list stars, while some are super-low-budget films from unknown directors and actors. They even include stuff like foreign sitcoms, such as the Japanese version of "Bewitched".

Here's an ad for 'Wholphin No. 9' that shows the eclectic mix of content:

And hey, look, they have a YouTube channel, which includes some of my favorite clips, such as...

A great little short featuring a few of my favorite people- John C. Reilly, Miranda July, and Mike White!

Also, during the DVD menu, 'Wholphin' has other videos playing such as these (which are even more surreal when watched separate from the menu):

This post has basically turned into an advertisement, but hey, I feel like 'Wholphin' is one of those things that just lines up perfectly with my own eccentric sensibilities, and it's a great way to discover new work by artists I might not have discovered otherwise.

See! Michael Kupperman's New Comic Strip!

I first discovered the cartoons of Michael Kupperman while working at a video rental store (remember those?). We also sold magazines, but no one ever bought them, so we always ended up throwing them out. Anyway, someone at work had clipped a little cartoon out of some Nickelodeon kid's magazine. I'm not able to find this particular strip online, so I will attempt to recreate it here through medium of only text:

It was entitled "The Adventures of Citobor, the Invisible, Silent Robot". The picture was a single panel, consisting of a young girl and an old man, who was asking "Do you think Citobor is in this room right now?". The caption read "Because no one could see or hear him, Citobor's adventures consisted mainly of people wondering where he was." It was surreal, unexpected, and kind of weird for a kid's magazine. I had to find more!

A Google search for "Citobor" told me that it was drawn by Michael Kupperman, who at the time had only one collected volume of work:

I immediately ordered a copy. The cartoons contained within were just the right combination of Dada and daffy. As an example, here's the titular crime-fighting duo:

They're featured prominently, as well as stuff like this:

He continues to publish comics all over the place, from The New Yorker to McSweeney's, as well as the Tales Designed to Thrizzle series, which I collect every time it comes out (sadly, only about once a year). He also has a frequently hilarious Twitter account. Oh, and Snake 'n' Bacon even got their own TV pilot, which features Kristen Schaal, and an appearance by Citobor!

Sadly, it proved too cutting edge even for Adult Swim and was not picked up.

However, to finally get around to what I promised in the blog title, Michael Kupperman has a new cartoon strip over on the Fantagraphics web site. Here's the first one:

I can only hope that this is a long and fruitful enterprise.

See! An Impressive Musical Instrument That Only Plays One Song

Via Jad Abumrad's Twitter and BLDGBLOG, check out this impressive musical instrument constructed for a Japanese commercial:

It's one of the more complicated things I've seen constructed solely for a commercial since these:

Ah, corporate sponsors. What wonders we'd be missing out on without you.

'Sucker Punch', 'At Long Last Love', and Why I Hate Rotten Tomatoes

If you go over to the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes right now, you'll see that Sucker Punch has a rating of 20% fresh. Peter Bogdanovich's long unavailable homage to 1930s musicals At Long Last Love (Now available on Netflix Instant View!) fares even worse, with a 10% rating. However, despite this seemingly overwhelming negative evidence, I've recently seen both movies, and I'm glad I did.

See, even though I'd call both movies "interesting failures", and even the positive reviews of both films call them deeply flawed, I don't think that a simple number ranking can summarize what's good or bad about these, or really any, films. That's the thing I don't like about sites like Rotten Tomatoes and MetaCritic. They don't give you any perspective or reasons why these films are getting a lot of good or bad reviews.

I don't think that looking at reviews before seeing a movie is a bad thing, but I personally like to find reviewers that I have similar tastes to, and then I like to see what it was they did or didn't like about the movie. For example, I've been reading Roger Ebert's reviews since they first went online, and I've read enough to know when he might be inserting his own personal bias into a review. He seems to grade certain actresses, like Jennifer Lopez, on a curve (no pun intended, I promise), and he seems to give more positive reviews to children's movies and documentaries. I can't blame him, he follows his heart, and other bodily organs, and that's what I like about him as a reviewer- he's not afraid to stand apart from the herd.

Take his review of At Long Last Love. At two and a half stars, it's technically a "thumbs down" review, and yet he spends a good portion of it baffled by the extreme negative reactions of the rest of the critical community.

I personally agree with him on a lot of his points- the movie is an homage to the comedy musicals of the 1930s, but while those movies had wafer-thin plots that served to showcase the singing and dancing talents of their stars, this one has a similarly insubstantial plot that showcases Bogdanovich's fetish for old movies. The jokes have a heavy layer of dust, and watching the stars attempt to imitate Astaire and Rogers is like watching a particularly sad night of celebrity karaoke. Burt Reynolds seems a lot more at home as a good ol' boy than he does here as an aristocrat, and Cypil Shepherd was probably cast mostly because she was dating the director.

However, there's still some shining moments to be found here. Madeline Khan turns in a typically good performance, managing to be sultry, innocent, and charming all at once, and a lot of the supporting actors are fun to watch, possibly because some of them are older, and had the chance to act in the kind of movie they're paying tribute to. And even with its clumsy musical numbers and miscast performances, the whole thing does manage to generate some of the energy of its predecessors.

I think it's entirely possible that the large number of scathing reviews comes down to timing and circumstance. Peter Bogdanovich had just come off the flop of the even more infamous Daisy Miller (also with a miscast performance by Cybil Shepherd), after four consecutive hits (Targets, The Last Picture Show, What's Up Doc?, and Paper Moon). Bogdanovich began his career as a critic, and had managed to get his foot in the door as a director, and had parlayed his encyclopedic knowledge of movie history into some films that stand on their own as true classics (Paper Moon is my personal favorite- also on Instant View!). When his elaborate tributes to by-gone eras began to collapse under their own weight, isn't it possible that his former colleagues were perhaps a little to eager to preemptively start dancing on his grave?

Now, let's talk about Sucker Punch. This isn't so much an homage as a great big stew of geek culture tropes, with themes of female empowerment and exploitation thrown in for good measure. In fact, most of the reviews seem to hinge on which of those two themes the movie is actually about. There's this review from Twitch that comes down hard on the director himself, saying that the movie is straight exploitation. I would disagree with a lot of the points made in the review- yes, the girls all do go by stripper names, and they are scantily clad for pretty much the whole movie, but I think that this is because Zack Snyder has made a movie ABOUT the fact that we like watching movies where girls in short skirts kick copious amounts of ass.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's this review over at /Film that defends the movie, saying that it is about the line between exploitation and empowerment, and not merely exploitation itself. I think this reviewer reads some things into the film that aren't necessarily there on screen, but I think that it's a film worthy of this kind of interpretation, rather than the dismissal of the Twitch review.

Now, you probably have read all this way wanting to know what I myself thought of Sucker Punch. Here's what I think: there's a very personal vision on display here (this is Snyder's first original script, and the first he wrote himself), and I can't help but be reminded of two other very personal films. With it's cabaret setting, garish production design, and themes of feminine power on the stage, I thought of Moulin Rouge, and with it's multiple levels of reality whose consequences bled over into each other, I was reminded of Inception. Both of those movies had their directors' strengths on full display, and while I think Sucker Punch lacks both the sheer exuberance of the former and the intricate plotting and structure of the latter, I'm still impressed by the visual ambition on display, even if I think the themes are hard to discern from all the flash and dazzle.

There's another, mostly positive, review over at Badass Digest, calling it "thrilling, smart...and deeply flawed". But that quote that sticks out for me in the review is this:

"...to see Zack Snyder stretch the way he does here, going for big ideas and aiming at big themes, is exhilarating. I’d rather have filmmakers fail like this every day of the week than succeed in the way most do, by being bland and safe and stupid."

So, while the reviews may be dire, some movies are worth a look anyway. They may be failures, but, to paraphrase Buzz Lightyear, at least they're failures with style.

David Lynch: Commercial Director?

Inspired by this post about perfume commercials by famous directors, I thought I'd post some of the many commercials directed by David Lynch.

First, the Gucci perfume commercial, which isn't too bizarre, but does feature some Blondie and some trademark blurry slow-motion:

This is a PSA about keeping New York City clean. It encourages you to do so with high-pitched screeches, a plague of rats, and other generally terrifying images.

David Lynch did several Playstation commercials. This is one of the weirdest:

This is a series of Japanese ads he did featuring characters from "Twin Peaks". If you watch them in order, it even tells a little story!

And finally, and probably most strange, is a pregnancy test commercial. It isn't actually that bizarre, except for the fact that it's a pregnancy test commercial directed by David Lynch.

For even more David Lynch commercials (he really did a lot), check this site out.

Stuff I Watched Today

The Mirror (1975)

I don't know that I can offer much insight into this film. Andrei Tarkovsky, whose films unapologetically move forward without stopping to hold the viewer's hand, has here made what could be called his most impenetrable movie. It is a series of scenes, in black and white, in color, interspersed with stock footage and what may be dream sequences. And yet, it doesn't just feel like an art experiment. The movie was not difficult to sit through. In fact, it reinforces my belief that a movie with a slower pace draws you in, letting you soak in its images and ideas, while a movie that rushes you inexorably from plot point to plot point can leave you wondering why you cared about what happened at all.

Paul (2011)

I enjoyed this movie a lot. It's nice to see Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (honestly, a truly classic comedy duo that I hope gets to be in a dozen more movies) together, and although this movie lacks some of the subtlety and intricate construction of their movies with Edgar Wright, it is a lot fun to watch.

They have surrounded themselves with a great cast (Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Jason Bateman, Bill Hader, Joe LaTruglio, Jane Lynch, Dave Koechner and more!), and while the movie settles into some standard action scenes toward the end, this is a movie where it's just fun to watch these actors bounce off of each other.

It did make me think about the use of movie references as jokes, though. One of the film's weakness is that, particularly toward the end, there are references meant to be funny that just fall flat. One in particular (Jason Bateman shooting his radio, and then saying "Boring conversation anyway"), fall flat in the theater I was in, and I think it's because it violates the rule of a good movie reference- Don't let the reference itself be the joke. In the example above, the only joke is that that is also a line from Star Wars. In the context of the scene, the movie just stops to let Jason Bateman say a line that you might recognize, and then proceeds. In a post-"Family Guy" era, this just isn't enough to qualify as good comedy.

An excellent example of a good film reference from Shaun of the Dead is the scene where the guys are talking to Shaun's mom on the phone and decide to come rescue her. She protests a bit, and then Ed shouts "We're coming to get you, Barbara". For fans of zombie movie, they'll spot the reference, but for those who don't, the scene proceeds without them thinking they've missed anything. The reference is organic and moves the story forward, rather than winking at us with it's clever inclusion.

Top Hat (1935)

I'll be honest here: I didn't really pay a lot of attention to this one except for the dancing sequences. Astaire and Rogers are brilliant when they're dancing together, but the plots surrounding them are wafer-thin "idiot plots" where someone is always missing one tiny bit of information that somehow keeps the happy couple apart. Their movies are almost like the inverse of Marx Brothers movies, which keep stopping for random musical numbers that you just want to end so that the comedy hijinks can continue (Harpo and Chico's numbers are excepted from this. Zeppo's singing is not.) With Astaire and Rogers, you just want them to get to the dancing already.

So Much Promise....

This movie has a 1.8/10 rating on IMDb, but there's nothing I don't like about this poster.

"Justified" (2010- )

I'm in the middle of watching the first season of Justified right now, and I'm really liking it a lot. i'm not going to do an episode by episode deconstruction or anything, since there's plenty of other sites out there that do that kind of thing already. I just wanted to jot down a few things about the show that I think make it so good:

1. It's completely unpredictable. Not a "guess who's going to die this week" kind of unpredictability, but the kind where you have no idea where each individual episode is going. Ten years ago, with most of the shows on TV, you could tune in, see what kind of show you were watching, and guess pretty much what format the episode would follow. If it was a crime/police procedural show, the mystery would be wrapped up by the end of the episode, status quo maintained. Sitcoms were also bending over backwards to make sure that nothing major changed episode to episode. Now, some of the best shows on TV, like "Breaking Bad", "Mad Men", and "Community", don't just use variations on the formula, they don't use one at all. Plots that seem like they will last all episode long might get abandoned midway through. A character might spend all episode long trying to kill a fly, or suddenly find themselves on a chase inside the world's biggest blanket fort. You just never know what is going to happen, and "Justified" has that same level of unpredictability.

2. It's episodic while still maintaining an overarching narrative. Nowadays, serialized stories are the norm on dramatic TV. So much so that just missing a single episode can leave you lost (no pun intended). "Justified" definitely has story elements that carry over all season long, and the actions of characters do not get forgotten from episode to episode, but each episode also manages to have a stand-alone story as well. This is a remarkable balance- giving all the recurring characters something to do while telling a different story each week, and "Justified" pulls it off nicely.

3. It's a great showcase for character actors. Timothy Olyphant (who I guess doesn't really qualify as a character actor) hasn't really stood out to me in anything else I've seen (I still haven't made it through "Deadwood"), but he's perfect for his part here. Charming, cool, but with a mean streak that makes me think he just might be capable of terrible things. The rest of the cast is also excellent, and each episode manages to show off it's impressive array of eccentric guest stars, whether it's Robert Picardo as an eccentric art dealer or Alan Ruck as a dentist on the run from the mob. I should also mention Walton Goggins. Mostly just because I like typing "Walton Goggins".

4. The dialogue feels like it's straight out of an Elmore Leonard book. This is not surprising, since the show is based on a story of his, and he is himself a producer on a few episodes. His distinctive voice and knack for snappy conversation comes through in every episode, even though he hasn't actually written any of them. If you're going to make a show exploring crime and all it's dramatic and sometimes hilarious facets, it's good to be inspired by one of the masters.

Anyway, there's some of my thoughts on what I hope continues to be one of my new favorite shows.

Oh, and it's also got some of the best opening credits in recent memory:

Unstoppable (2010)

Trains are perfect vehicles for motion pictures. They're big enough that you can set an entire movie on them, but they're sleek enough that you still get the excitement of seeing them in motion, unlike, say, a cruise ship. Plus, they're a ready-made metaphor for all kinds of things: the growing societal divide in Ozu's Tokyo Story (and many other of his films), the encroaching modernization of Once Upon a Time in the West, and good old-fashioned sex, most famously in the ending of North by Northwest.

The train in Unstoppable (spoiler alert: the title is a lie!) isn't really a metaphor for anything except maybe corporate bumbling. I was mostly curious to see the movie because I wanted to know how many variations on "Get that school bus full of preschoolers off the tracks!" there could be before it got old. Only one bus of students is threatened, along with a horse trailer, an errant woodchuck, and all of Stanton, PA. Or at least the part closest to the tracks.

Tony Scott manages to bob and weave his camera over every inch of the train, and he is mostly successful in keeping things visually interesting, considering the movie consists mainly of people yelling at each other over walkie-talkies. I was wondering how you could have an exciting climax where the focus had to be a train slowing down (Back to the Future III solved this problem marvelously by making the goal not stopping the train, but rocketing it into the future), and the film still manages to keep things exciting.

There was one bit that really made me laugh, though. Much of the film is told through newscasters relating events as they unfold (complete with on-the-spot footage that looks suspiciously like it was filmed by Tony Scott), and at one point, the train is in danger of running off a curve with dangerous chemicals on board, causing a massive explosion. As if this news isn't dramatic enough, the news report then shows a computer-generated dramatization of this very event happening. Now, since I can't imagine that the TV station just happens to have a graphic of an exploding train hurtling over a curve on hand, I imagined a scene something like this:

News Director: Phil, get in here, we need an animated graphic of a train flying off a curve and then exploding!

Phil: We just found out about this possiblity ten minutes ago, and in twenty minutes, we'll be able to see the actual event if Denzel Washington and Captain Kirk don't stop that train! I have literally a window of about fifteen minutes in which to create this elaborately animated sequence that we will never be able to use again. Plus, don't you think it's a little insensitive to the families of the men on board who are watching our broadcast?

News Director: Explosions! Violence! Trains! PG-13 Profanities! Now!

It's for ridiculous stuff like this that I watch these ridiculous movies.

Mike Blogs About Various Amusements

Some various items:

-I remember seeing this trailer months ago, but for some reason, the image of Billy Zane lazing about in a throne, crown askew atop his greasy locks, popped into my head, and I had to track it down to prove it wasn't just another night terror. I have zero desire to see this film, but I love that Billy Zane's (It's impossible not to refer to that man by his full name) scenes all appear to have been shot in a single day on the same set on the same chair.

-This friendly PSA, starring Ted Danson, Justin and Justine Bateman, and some teenage friends, dares to ask the question, How Can I Tell If I'm (Really) In Love? Watch as Ted Danson drops some truth bombs on kids from his secret location in a public access TV set. What makes the video extra weird is that it's edited by someone who apparently just learned what a jump cut was, and this technique is employed liberally. My favorite is an insert of a rather frightening Danson cackle at about 5 minutes in.

-And for sheer surreal weirdness, here's Elijah Wood promoting some sort of bunny museum. It's the number one place friends bring friends...as a surprise!

A Note on Lists

With the awards season all wrapped up, I've been thinking a lot about the ranking of films, or really, anything that we respond to on a subjective level.

I've been reading a book about the midnight movie phenomenon, and one of the earlier chapters, the authors are discussing the dedication many self-described "film freaks" put into going to these movies every week, over and over, even going so far as to dress like their favorite characters or actors.

In discussing people's obsessive response to these films, and how close friends can have heated arguments about their favorite films, the book quotes Paul Hammond, quoting Gerard Legrand (this is a book with a lot of footnotes): "The intensity of feeling, the desire to be right in an argument where reason must play second fiddle, he [Legrand] likens to the public revelation of one's most secret sexual preferences." So much of our personal response to movie is rooted deeply in the subconscious that, really, any list of films says a lot more about the person that wrote it than any of the films on it.

Roger Ebert recently posted a link to an article called "The Top Ten Worst Top Tens of All Time", by Scott Jordan Harris of The Spectator. The lists referred to were published in the Sunday Times of the UK, and they include such titles as "The Top-Ten Most Baffling Films", "The Top Ten Best Weepies", and "The Top Ten Most Boring Films". The selections are not surprising, and consist in large part of classics that even casual moviegoers have already heard of, and movies made in the last ten years or so.

In the article, Harris takes the most issue with the list entitled "The Top-Ten Must-See Films". Here's an excerpt from the article, regarding the very concept of a list of "must-see" movies:

"There are no must-see films. No one’s experience of life – or even of cinema – is invalidated by not having seen Citizen Kane or Le Règle du Jeu, monumental and enriching as they are. Even as a film critic, I wouldn’t expect an intelligent person to listen to me if I handed them a list of 100 films they absolutely must see, anymore than I’d feel it necessary to suspend my usual lifestyle and follow the guidance of the authors of a list of ‘The 100 Video Games You Must Play’ or ‘The 100 Theme Parks You Must Visit’. What’s more, the idea that anyone, alone or in committee, could create a definitive list of must-see movies is as absurd as the idea of must-see movies themselves."

He goes on to say that, within a certain context, lists can indeed be useful:

"If a student is researching an essay on the impact of the biggest-grossing films in Hollywood history, then he could put together a list of the top ten must-see films for it, based on what the top ten biggest-grossing films in Hollywood history are.

Less objectively, if a critic wants to list the top ten films her readers must see to appreciate her evolution from film fan to film critic, based upon which films she feels had the most impact upon the development of her critical instincts, then that, too, could reasonably be called a list of must-see movies."

I decided this post needed a picture, so here is the Japanese poster for my favorite film of 2010.

I don't mean to say that all lists of films are worthless. In fact, I love a good movie list. I just bought a book called 10 Bad Dates with De Niro. In addition to the titular list, it contains other gems such as "Ten Shining Examples of Notable Nail Varnish", "Ten Dodgy Robots", and "Ten Places You Wouldn't Expect To Find A Severed Head". A paragraph or two accompanies each selection. These are the kinds of lists I can get behind, not only because of their esoteric subjects, but because they include films I've never seen, and they let me look at old favorites in a new light.

I think another reason I've had lists on the brain is that I finally watched the last movie I hadn't seen on AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies... list (Swing Time, with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers). Again it's a fairly arbitrary list, with all of the usual suspects, (but not The Usual Suspects), but at least it isn't claiming to be THE definitive list. I remember sitting down and watching the special when it was first on in 1998, and at the time, it introduced me to a lot of movies I wasn't familiar with. My tastes have since changed and expanded, but I'm glad to have seen every movie on that list, because even if some of the choices are questionable at best (and the exclusion of Buster Keaton from the initial list is totally inexcusable) each movie gave me an insight into a particular time in American film.

Now I've got to get cracking on this thing.

Ever Since The World Ended (2001)

The documentary Ever Since The World Ended might on the surface sound a lot like the current craze of "found footage" movies that are popping up all over, thanks to the success of films like Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity. It's the story of the world after 99.9% of the population has been wiped out by a plague. However, rather than thrusting us into midst of the disaster, we are instead presented with the accounts of the aftermath of the pandemic from the perspective of a couple guys who just want to document their lives after the event. It's an intriguing conceit, but the film is ham-strung by the fact that this seems to have been the most laid-back apocalypse imaginable.

There's no scenes of bodies piled in the streets, or any portrayal of the mass chaos that must have ensued when a tragedy on this scale occurred. I don't mind that we don't actually see the event happen at all, but it seems like the people that remain were only mildly inconvenienced by everyone else on the planet dying. The remaining survivors seem to all hang out either around the dinner table together, looking well-fed and clean, or just having some laughs around a campfire in the woods.

One of the interesting dynamics in disaster movies is that people from all walks of life are forced to work together to try to survive. Here, everyone acts as if they've known each other since before the plague. There is one funny bit where a Native American man complains that since he is the only Native American left in the Pacific Northwest, everyone keeps coming to him for shamanic advice. The rest speak mainly in broad generalizations about how they kind of miss technology.

At one point, a woman talks about wanting to have a baby, but she wants to time it right so she can have it in the winter. This is all treated very casually, but to me, it seems like, if you are the last people on the planet, wouldn't you want to produce as many more humans as fast as possible?

A bit of potential drama is introduced when a guy known for starting houses on fire wants to be part of the bigger group, but he never really becomes anything other than "generic crazy guy", and the group ultimately just decides to leave him out. We never hear anything else about him.

The film picks up a bit towards the end, when some of the guys go exploring and get fired upon by an unknown assailant, but this mystery doesn't get explored any further, either. Now, it wasn't that I wanted the movie to degenerate into the characters getting hunted by crazed mutant cannibals or anything, but I just felt that the scope of this disaster isn't represented. There is some inventive use of shots of empty streets and fields, and a memorable image of the empty Golden Gate Bridge, but it never felt like civilization as we know it had come to a halt. The survivors know that there are only about 200 of them left in the Bay Area, but they never seem to want to know how many others are out there.

This, I think, is my main problem with the film- the lack of curiosity. No one seems to want to know what's out there, or what exactly happened. There's a scene with a conspiracy theorist who blames the government for the plague, but, once again, we never hear any more from him. The movie plays more like the filmmakers asked their friends about the idea of a massive, world-changing event, but it never feels as if the event has actually occurred.

It is worth noting, though, that they kept talking to a guy in a machine shop who looked a lot like Adam from "Mythbusters", and when I looked him up, hey, it was! He'd be a good one to have around in the event of Armageddon, I think.

Here's a trailer, although the sound's not synced up:

A Note on Studio Meddling

I watched The Big Blue last night. I enjoyed it quite a bit, mostly for Luc Besson's great visuals, but afterwards, while looking up information about the movie, I realized I had watched the version that had been edited down for its US release. Although it was a hit in Europe, Sony Pictures assumed that we would want to see less dolphin frolicking, and cut about 40 minutes out of the movie. Judging by the reviews of both cuts of the movie, I didn't really miss much story-wise, but it would have been nice to see more of the beautiful underwater cinematography.

The biggest change, though, was the studio-mandated addition of a happy ending. In the original ending, the main character, Jacques, dives deep into the ocean, choosing to die in the place he loves the most, rather than to be with his earthbound lover (Rosanna Arquette). As he waits in the depths, his dolphin friend shows up, I guess to usher him into the aquatic underworld. This is where the original movie ends.

In the studio's happy ending, there is additional footage of Jacques playing with the dolphin on the surface of the water. This, I guess, is supposed to imply that his love of the sea was not all that great, and he chose not to die there. However, I did not get this from it at all. The credits roll over this additional footage, and so I assumed that this scene was not meant to be literal, but rather just showing us that Jacques was now happily frolicking in the Big Blue in the Sky with his angel dolphin friend. I was actually surprised when I found out that this was meant to be the ending where he didn't kill himself. That's what you get when studio executives turn a tone-deaf ear to the creator's actual vision (to mix my metaphors).

This sort of thing has been going on ever since people have been making money from movies. I am reminded of one of the most famous scenes from the 1931 Frankenstein, where the Monster encounters a little girl by a lake. She is frightened at first, but then she accepts him, and they begin to play, throwing flowers into the lake and watching them float. The Monster, wanting to play along but not understanding that little girls do not float, throws the girl into the lake.

As filmed, the scene is a tragic illustration of the Monster's fumbling attempt to be human. However, some states thought the scene was too shocking, and cut the scene down. In the edited version, the scene ends just as the Monster is reaching to pick the girl up. In the next scene, the girl's father is seen carrying her body into town. Without seeing the Monster's mistake, our imagination fills in the gaps, and we assume that he really did murder the girl intentionally, and thus changing the entire meaning of the scene.

There are even more egregious examples of this kind of studio interference out there, from Terry Gilliam's Brazil to that Holy Grail of lost endings, The Magnificent Ambersons. The thinking behind these kinds of decisions baffles me, but it is an unfortunate reality of movie business. I'm actually kind of grateful for the inept "happy" ending of The Big Blue, because it proves that sometimes the studio's obliviousness doesn't affect the movie at all.

The Maze (1953)

One of the downsides of Internet culture is that it's so hard to be surprised by anything anymore. There are months, if not years, of hype leading up to the release of most movies, with leaked set pictures being posted by bored extras, minor variations on superhero costumes being endlessly debated on message boards, and test screening reviews that reveal every major plot twist. It's hard to keep things fresh, to divorce myself from the media grind that surrounds modern movie-making and movie-going.

All of which leads to me watching The Maze. I knew little to nothing about this movie. I like to fill my Netflix Instant queue with stuff like this, so that as I look for something to watch, I can attempt to recreate the experience of going to a video store, where a random title that I might never have heard of might catch my eye and lead to an interesting discovery. My queue might not have the selection of a video store, but it is tailor-made to my own interests.

All I knew about The Maze was that it was a relatively obscure 50s horror movie with a bizarre twist ending. Also, it was originally made in 3-D, though I had to settle for two lousy dimensions. Here's the trailer, which touts both the twist and the 3-D and a really, really fake bat.

I like that the lead actor introduces the movie. This used to be a much more common practice- Alfred Hitchcock did a number of memorable trailers where he was featured, including this one for The Birds and this six minute (!) long one for Psycho. Compare that to this one re-edited in the style of the modern movie trailer. I think long-form trailers were more acceptable to the audience of the 50s and 60s because movie-going was still an entire evening out that featured cartoons, newsreels and double features. The language of cinema hadn't yet reached the hyperkinetic pace of today.

The concept of directly addressing the audience is actually the framework for the story of The Maze. As the movie begins, Katherine Emery, who plays the aunt of the heroine of the movie, comes out and speaks right into the camera about that crazy time she had in The Maze. I'm not really sure why this form of narration is used in the movie; she returns periodically throughout, but doesn't really do much to advance the narrative. I guess it's possible that they were trying to pad out the running time, or perhaps in some way try to make the viewers take the ending more seriously.

It really, really does not deserve to be taken seriously, though.

The plot of The Maze is straight out of a Gothic novel. A couple is engaged, but this is broken off when the man, Gerald MacTeam, played by Richard Carlson, gets called away because of his uncle's sudden death. Weeks go by, and his fiancee, Kitty Murray, played by Veronica Hurst, sends a number of telegrams which go unanswered. Finally, Gerald responds by breaking off the engagement and begging her not to follow him. Kitty, deciding something's up, travels with her aunt to the giant mansion where Gerald now lives.

The rest of the movie consists mainly of scenes of Kitty and her aunt sneaking around the mansion, collecting bizarre tidbits of information. The rooms are all locked from the outside at night, as is the titular maze. This does not stop them from hearing strange thudding noises from the corridor and finding odd, webbed footprints on the staircase.

At this point, I was really trying to guess what this bizarre twist would be. The movie, coming from the early 50s, came at a time when horror movies tended to be more rooted in realism, like the psychological thrillers of Val Lewton, rather than the costumed monster movies of the 30s. There were, of course, the ridiculous monster movies that came about because of the nuclear bomb, with giant ants or spiders or rabbits or whatever. The Maze, however, didn't seem to be a creature feature, but seemed instead to have more in common with the haunted house movie.

This in mind, I tried to figure out just what secrets could be lurking in the mansion's corridors, leaving webbed footprints. Was it a ghost? A hunchback? A creepy uncle with a predilection for cosplay?

Oh how wrong I was.

At the risk of offending the ghost of Richard Carlson, I will now reveal the shocking ending to The Maze. Anyone who wants to preserve this fearful secret should now leave the room.

Are you gone?

Ok, so the truth is revealed like so: Kitty and her aunt peek out of their room one night and observe a bizarre procession: Gerald, along with two servants, are descending the stairs with a large sheet covering something that is thudding along on the ground. The two women follow, and they end up in The Maze (the only time this location is actually seen in the movie). After a bit of running around, they happen upon the creature that was under the sheet, which turns out to be....a giant frog! The frog is more frightened of the women than they are of it, and it takes off back into the house, hurries up the stairs as fast as it's ridiculous giant frog legs will take it, and promptly jumps out a window to it's death.

None of this is made less absurd with the fact that, while it flees, the frog makes a sound exactly like a trumpeting elephant.

The movie ends quickly after, almost before the bizarreness of this twist is allowed to sink in. Gerald does offer a few words of explanation. Apparently, this frog-thing was actually his 200-year-old however-many-greats uncle, who was somehow born before he had been allowed to develop in the womb, which I guess means he became a frog. I have a feeling this particular plot point came about because someone noticed how young fetuses slightly resemble tadpoles. From such sparks the fires of genius are born!

(If you'd like to view the ending without actually sitting through the movie, you can watch it right here, as someone has gone to the trouble of uploading the entire movie to YouTube.)

This admittedly unexpected twist lead me to question the logistics of the man-frog's plans. Apparently, Gerald was meant to cut off contact with the outside world, as his ancestors had before him, in order to care for the Duke (for the frog-man is indeed a duke), and to preserve his secret. It seems to me that for one, the Duke may want to cut out his night walks when there are guests in the mansion, as people tend to want to investigate things that go bump (or hop!) in the night. And for another thing, why did he find it necessary to stick to the Maze of the title? He lives on a vast country estate; wouldn't he prefer to wander somewhere less constricting? But ah well.

The movie is based on a novel by Maurice Sandoz (cover pictured above), which had illustrations by Salvador Dali himself, so maybe the surreal imagery of a giant frog-man works better on the page than on the screen. Indeed, the basic plot, with its ancient secrets of genetic horror, could have come from some lost story by Lovecraft. But in the film, rather than being confronted with the indescribable, we are instead presented with a guy in a frog suit lumbering up some stairs.

Marcel Duchamp noted that sometimes what is great about art is the difference between the intention and the effect. If the intention of this movie was shock and horror, the effect was hearty laughter, and I was no less entertained for it.