Great Moments in... Talking to Ghosts

A long time ago, Steve Martin played a widowed brain surgeon. He hits a woman with his car, then saves her life. He falls in love with her beautiful face and body. For the first time since his wife passed on, he's starting to have feelings for a woman.

He doesn't know that his victim/love is a cruel woman who marries rich men, cheats on them constantly, and kills them to inherit their property.

Question for the Week of Sept 2-8: I'll Have "a Beer"

Why, oh, why do people in films walk up to a bartender and say "I'll have a beer?"

HAHAHA, this is one of those classic and common bits of movie fakeness - like how often film characters drive in a car and look at a passenger they're talking to far longer than is safe. Or every phone number starting with "555." These are conceits, artificial things about the film or TV world that you're supposed to simply accept. Films and shows come with tropes: lots of rooms are missing a 4th wall, and actors seldom name their drink.

Admittedly, sometimes you don't get what you ordered.

While the one for drivers bothers me no end - sure eye-contact is important, but the two-second rule is far more so - I am fine with the "555" thing because it keeps people from being harassed because they happen to share a phone number used in a picture. Similarly, some people laughed at The Matrix: Reloaded for having obvious roll cages inside the cars in the freeway sequence. Those who complained are idiots.

Personally, it's easier for me to ignore the protection used for the stunt actors than it is to read that people died/were crippled in order to make a rollicking good action scene.

With that said, there are two kinds of people: those who drink beer and those who don't. If you're in the latter category, you see Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut walk into a bar and ask for "a beer" and it probably doesn't bother you at all. However, most post-college beer drinkers know that not all beers are created equal. Some people can't stand "stouts," like Guinness. Others sneer at the cheaper beers like Miller and Budweiser. Still others prefer foreign beverages or micro-brews.

Recommended: Moonlighting

My roommate and I have had some good movie conversations. The guy is intelligent and thoughtful, and his taste is both good and broad. But he's also a bit younger than me. The other day, we were talking about film superstar Bruce Willis, and it suddenly struck me that maybe he wasn't as familiar with Mr. Willis as I was.

That's when I decided to show him a Bruce Willis that I correctly guessed he knew nothing about. See, Bruce used to tend bar in Jersey (yes, that line from Die Hard was a genuine in-joke) before he made his name through acting. Very quickly, he made a stellar break-out as the male lead for a new ABC mystery/comedy/drama, Moonlighting. The TV series opens with former model Madeleine Hayes (Cybill Sheppard), who wakes up one morning to learn that her accountant embezzled almost all her cash and fled to South America. In seconds, she goes from an upscale life of leisure to having to worry about her finances.

Aside from her home and material possessions, the only thing her crooked accountant left her was the Blue Moon Detective Agency. Maddy goes to inspect her last remaining investment and finds that the staff is full of assorted kooks who goof off instead of working. Case in point: the employees' limbo competition in the main room. The receptionist answers the phones with long-winded greetings that always rhyme. Next, she meets the sole manager of this nuthouse, a licensed PI called David Addison (Willis).

Rather than act like a detective or a responsible leader, David's a loud-mouthed ringleader/flirt/big brother to his coworkers. He encourages them to mess around on her dime, which immediately shocks and infuriates Ms. Hayes. She intends to close the failing business, a fact which Addison responds to with guilt, flirtation, pleading, and finally, anger. Despite chasing her away, David genuinely wants to preserve the agency (and his own job), so he relentlessly pursues Maddy to convince her to give it a shot. He breaks through her insistence when fortune sends them a case loaded with danger and international intrigue.

Reviewing with Others Pt. 55: Sushi: The Global Catch

Before we get to it, I got bittersweet news today: at just under 3100 hit, August had the lowest # of hits that I've received in almost 3 years. The upside is that 3000+ monthly hits is great for a site of this stature (or so I believe); the downside is that none of this work was easy.

But it's hard to get worked up about it, considering that I clearly do this writing for myself (and for potential writing clients). Also, this month saw a shift in schedule, where I left some of my mainstay entry types on the side of the road while I reviewed as many indie screeners as possible. Honestly, I barely check any blogs on Sunday, and the twice weekly effort I kept meant that I could only publish these RwO's every Wednesday and Sunday.

Enough of all that, though, let's move on to today's business...

My latest indie screener experience is Sushi: The Global Catch. It's about the popular Japanese invention and its impact on the global fish supply. Beautifully-shot and amazingly well-structured, this documentary was a real home run - for me, at least.

Due to my work at a fundraiser today, my review was published only about 10 minutes ago. You can read it here at Man, I Love Films.

QftWo 8/26-9/1: Imposters #7 - Elysium vs. The Butler

So, if you missed my post on August 13th, you don't know that my weekly Questions are being partly-substituted with these Imposters entries. It gives me time to work up proper Qs, like the ones to come in September. I'm cheating only a little, since the question presented by Imposters is "what's wrong/right with these subway posters I see on my commute?"

And, unfortunately, Elysium also suffers from the thing I dislike most about most modern film posters - it's mostly a big picture of the lead that is meant to be the big draw for the audience.

First and foremost, it's almost as if they don't understand that Matt Damon fans will actively follow his work, and will be interested in poster that simply bears his name, much less his likeness. People who need attention, or are (/feel) ignored yell because they don't know any better. Confident people trust that their words will be heard whether not they speak softly.

At least, in the case of Elysium, it actually keeps the super-vanity shot of the protagonist off to the side and uses the rest of the image to say something about the world of the movie. Unfortunately, what it expresses is that a beefed-up Damon is in a place where society is in decay. While this works with the tagline "a better life is just a world away." However, not only could that tagline stand to be a little better, it doesn't match the synopsis! From IMDb:

Reviewing with Others Pt. 54: La Source

My latest indie screener review is for La Source. It's a documentary about an upstanding Haitian who moved here in 1989 to work as a custodian at Princeton University and as a cab driver. But Josue Lajeunesse doesn't just send money home, as so many immigrants do. He's also been working for over 20 years to make sure that his hometown no longer has to choose between drinking contaminated water or making a perilous mountainside trip to get clean H2O.

So what did I think about LS? I liked a lot of it, but things toward the end of the picture made my reaction so complicated I had to delay this review from last Sunday to today. You can read my thoughts here at Man, I Love Films.

September Blowout! What To Expect

My review of the documentary La Source goes up at 6PM today, but I wanted to give everyone some scheduling info so they know what's coming next month.

If you've been following for a bit - and shame on you if you haven't - you know that I bust my @ss for this blog at least three times each year. April is Net-flixation's anniversary month, so I put a lot into that. At the year's end in December, I write a Holiday review and some wrap-up entries about the overall year. September, however, is a special month only because I love the transition period from Summer to Autumn - and I've tried to make each September entry stand out.

And so: first, I plan to suspend all Reviewing with Others reviews for Sept. I may break that suspension, but if so, they would be in addition to my 4-per-week posts. Second, I will post a TV Recommendation for each week - three shows are way old, one is ongoing, and all are series that I really love. Further, I'll publish 2+ proper Question entries, not just the poster critiques which replaced the Qs. In addition, I have my 13th MRQ lined up, my 3rd You Shoulda Been a Movie, and I plan to review The Ipcress File, one of my all-time favorites films. My regular Bill Murray and Great Moments in... entries will also return.

In short, September will be a true blowout here, as well as a resumption of the 1 Question, 1 Fan-made Gem, and 1 Review cycle which was my regular schedule for so long here, but with Recommendations standing in for each week's 4th, "random" post. I've worked hard to make this as fine and fun as possible.

I hope you all enjoy what's to come!
Yours,
Half a Film Student

Reviewing with Others, Pt. 53, sorta: Short Term 12 Ticket Contest!

Two weeks ago, I gave a very positive review to the indie film, Short Term 12. It was an excellent pic, and I am so happy that I was invited to attend a screening for it.

Since I liked it so well, you can only imagine how extra-happy I am now that I was contacted by Man, I Love Films to write a post for their site, an entry which offers one winner (and a guest) the chance to see this engaging indie drama this weekend for free, at a venue and showtime of the winner's choosing. The winner will receive 2 tickets for a showing this weekend, as well as a copy of the soundtrack and a poster signed by ST12's star, Brie Larson.

Not only was this movie a great experience for me, it can be a great experience for one (+ 1 guest) of you. I recommend you check out the contest page at Man, I Love Films and follow the instructions there. I'm disqualified, but I wish you good luck!

Great Film Drug Scenes Supercut

So I must kick off today's entry with an admission: I was ready to post an indie film review on Sunday, but couldn't get it up in time (cue Anthony Weiner joke here). In essence, I had a lot of thoughts and doubts, and I decided to take my time, re-watch the film, and publish it later instead of posting an inferior review.

This means my review of La Source goes up tomorrow, Wednesday at 6PM, EDT, and that this extra post is meant to make up for the shortfall. If I couldn't work the situation out well enough given time constraints, that's fine. But I promised 4 posts per week, and so you'll get 5 for this one in exchange. Moving on...

It doesn't really matter what your stance is on real-life drug use, every film fan knows that drugs have been featured in a lot of movies. Across a variety of genres, contexts, and time periods, chemical experimentation comes up frequently: Pulp Fiction, Training Day, A Clockwork Orange, Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, Requiem for a Dream, Reefer Madness...

And last week, I learned that some clever individual has taken a whole slew of these scenes and combined them into a very fine 7-minute video mashup. The selection of movie moments is quite good, and I like the music choices, too...

Werner Herzog's Texting-While-Driving PSA

Two things I've written so often here as to almost become mantras: (1) it's not easy getting new questions, and I don't want them to mostly be lists of favorites/gripes; (2) I don't want to repost things that I just find on the main pop culture website that I read, at least not for a little after. This time, I only gave this site's fine entry a two-week lead because the news is very important, socially.

14 days ago, I learned that Werner Herzog produced a 34-minute documentary, From One Second to the Next, for an ad company. Anyone who knows a bit about Herzog knows that, over his 45 years of directing full-length features (51 including shorts), he doesn't shill for the Hollywood machine, and that he has a great social conscience. This German creates Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a nature documentary about a French treasure trove of the old known cave drawings. Another, Into the Abyss, was a full-bore attack on the death penalty. I assume he played the villain in Tom Cruise's Jack Reacher last year because it was a fun experience, since the man is clearly a humanist.

As such, it wasn't too surprising to learn that this 34-minute doc is a brutal and harrowing look at the dangers of the consequences of car accidents caused by drivers who text-and-drive. The whole thing was put up on Youtube, among other places, to give wide-spread exposure to this serious issue. It's important enough that I'm altering my schedule a little and not including my monthly tribute to Bill Murray just so I can get this entry out there. Sorry, Murray fans, this is too big to allow any other recourse.

QftWo 8/19-8/25: Imposters #6 - Kick-Ass 2

One of my filmic pet peeves is that many movie posters are just big pictures of the stars' faces.

Such is the case with this Summer's After Earth - one of the main sucktastic images that inspired me to start noticing film posters during my commute. It's basically saying "Will Smith is in this, so just go see it; we don't have to reveal anything else about our work because we know that's all it takes and that's how much effort we'll put into our marketing..."

Now, the theatrical poster for Kick-Ass 2 is incredibly similar, following that same principle, but to a higher level because it doesn't even bother to have a tagline or anything. See?:

Reviewing with Others Pt. 52: Brooklyn Girls Fight Club

Today's indie movie review is for the documentary Brooklyn Girls Fight Club. From the title and opening moments, I expected this narrator-free doc to center on an underground boxing/MMA club for young women. Instead, the two directors used their footage to craft a look at the sad and troubled lives of people who live in the notoriously-dangerous slum of Brownsville, Brooklyn.

BGFC is a fine documentary, although it's difficult viewing for anyone who, like me, grew up in a rough neighborhood and cares about the betterment of inner city minorities. No one should have to live with the certainty that they will always live in a neighborhood where violence can break out at any time.

Enough, already - my review was published today and you can read it here at Man, I Love Films.

I Love Seinfeld's Movie Posters

Seinfeld was one of the funniest TV comedies ever. At its best, it was more smartly-written than any other series on the air. Employing everything from sarcasm, sight-gags, callbacks to prior eps, slapstick, and wordplay, the show created by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David is a comedic juggernaut.

Among other things, Seinfeld was great at having little throw-away gags. It also had the New York City residents at its core engage in realistic urban activities, like group trips to a mall (to take advantage of having access to a car), meeting up at Chinese restaurants, and going out to a movie. And movies ended up featuring a lot in the adventures of Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer.

This TV series, however, didn't just have the cast going to second-run shows of popular or famous films. These characters were often talking about and watching new movies - fictitious movies that were created by Seinfeld's crack writing team. And then some day, a genius whose site is called oldredjalopy decided to create posters for those movies.