NEW!

First, here's a quick review of a movie I saw last November (the Third in my Netflixing series.) No, hang on, even before that, I feel like I should admit that I won't be reviewing every movie that has come into my house from that intrusively marketed company (I really feel like once I sign up for the service, I should stop getting pop-up advertisements for it). I'll just go over the good to great ones I missed.

Shotgun Stories. I really, really enjoyed this one. It's naturalistic and slow, which is something that's very difficult to pull off well. The characters are all southern, white trash types. They hold dead end jobs or no jobs at all, and they barely get along with each other. But the story is powerful, and the themes it illustrates are extremely meaningful and complex.

On the outside, it's about a family feud, hence the title. But it ends up being about transcending the baser instincts of revenge and pride. The ending is beautiful. I recommend this film. It's not for everyone, being as slow as it is. And it's definitely gritty and heavy. There's not a lot of joy in this film. But I still, very highly, recommend this film.

So what's "NEW": I'm going to only be posting once every week in the coming months. School started and I no longer have time to just blog away all the time (much as I love it). So that means cutbacks, people. Don't blame me. Blame life.

Books (also J names)

This is a movie/media blog (which technically encompasses books as well, but...), so here's a movie review:

Julie and Julia is both a book and a movie. You probably knew about the movie. And the book. Probably. But MORE probably, you knew about the movie, cause it's out in theaters right now, and that's where I saw it on Wednesday night.

I'm beginning to suspect that Meryl Streep is mentoring Amy Adams. It's a good match--they're both absolutely brilliant actresses, but very different in style and range. I think Streep can probably do anything, and Amy Adams has this ability to cause every single person in the world to fall in love with her, and believe completely in her sweetness. She gets her audiences thinking, "Well, if she's really that wonderful, then I guess the world can't be that bad after all." (It is--but she certainly makes it better.)

All I need to say to qualify my deep approval for this endearing film about French cooking is that it was adapted and directed by Nora Ephron (You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally). Also, not for the sake of redundance but in spite of it, Amy Adams and Meryl Streep are really, really grand (see: Doubt).

But this post is really about books.

I went walking through the library today (BYU has one of the largest and most awesome libraries this side of anywwhere), shopping for a new stockpile. I like to have two or three books out at a time so that if I finish one, I can go ahead and just start on another that same day or the next. Or, if I don't end up liking one of them, I can switch with terrible swiftness.

I just finished the 2nd book in the Rigante series by David Gemmell (whom I love), and now it's time for a change of scenery. So I went through my Goodreads account and picked out a handful of titles that sounded good--"No Country for Old Men" by Cormac McCarthy (an author I've been meaning to read for over a year now), "A Scanner Darkly" by Philip K. Dick, and "Embraced by the Light," which is an I-died-and-came-back book by Bettie J. Eadie (and Curtis Taylor, who happens to be the father of one of my very good friends.)

Libraries are magnificent structures. They are deep repositories of human knowledge, collected, refined, and utilized over the thousands of years of our recorded history. Granted, the vast bulk of it all has been written, printed, and distributed within the past few hundred years, but even so, all of the words we write and the thoughts we think are at least subtley influenced by the countless generations that have spanned the preceding millenia. Walk into a library, and you have entered a sacred place where knowledge and understanding have been worshipped since recorded time began.

There is a trend, in the rush to modernization, toward perfect efficiency and absolute convenience. In a digital age, we welcome the steady decline of wasted paper that creates mounds of transiently useful printed material. We think, all of us, even if we forever refuse to admit it, that hard copied, flesh and blood books will eventually die out. To look out over the world at production management and streamlined industry, the printing, sale, and reading of actual, physical books does seem to be an increasingly dated artifact of an older society. We'll keep them around for a while as a memory. We'll put them on shelves and never read them (much like we do already). The ones people actually read will go into museums before they've had a chance to turn to dust, a right to which all living things are ultimately entitled.

We know they'll die. We know it. Things like the Kindle are a meager beginning to what our immediate future surely holds. Eventually, a la the iPhone, we will all purchase some brand of some device that really does do it all, including store every book we could ever read or possess in a lifetime.

And why not? It's more efficient that way. Cheaper. More sure. Once something gets saved digitally and globally, it's forever. The data of our public consciousness is backed up and then backed up again. The words of this blog might not ever really die--who knows?

In this line of thinking, however, lies our greatest misunderstanding about ourselves. We built computers to increase our productivity, and thank the heavens for it. But we are not like what we've built. We have not created computers in our own image, we have created them in the likeness of machines, without aspirations, dreams, or comprehensions. Once we built them, however, we somehow began to worship their god: Efficiency. Not all of us, but an ever-expanding number of us. And even those who do not bow to this god believe in its existence and omnipotence. The older generations meekly accept that this god will one day cow the world. "Every knee shall bow...even if I don't, my kids, or their kids, will."

Maybe. But it will be a false god, and will only shrink and diminish us. We are physical creatures. Efficiency can be a virtue, like fire, but it must be used, not worshipped. Our bodies must be in motion, and our hands must be at work, no matter the power and utility of our machines, or we will die by becoming less than what we've built.

Pull a book from a shelf. Open it. Read it. Turn its pages and let it speak to you as only it can. Have you ever noticed how silent the words on a screen are? Those words are not meant for hands. They are aritifices, illusions, unfiltered information. They have they're use (as I, sitting here and typing my thoughts, obviously believe), but they are more limiting than we usually realize.

Reading a book is somewhat sedentary, but it is natural and powerful. When we read something projected into our eyes, nothing else moves. Our bodies are captive. The orbs in our heads flick back and forth almost imperceptibly, but our flesh is motionless. What happens after several hours in front of a screen? You fidget. Your body shifts, stretches, writhes. These are the motions of attempted escape.

Of course it is far from impossible to read too much, whether it be from a computer or from bound sheets of paper--either way, an excess of physical inactivity is supremely unhealthy. But books are better for your soul, and by that I mean the combination of body and spirit (or mind, if that suits you). We are dual, composite creations. Books are good, and not only because they have assisted us in our intellectual evolution--not just as a stepping stone toward perfect efficiency. They must endure because we need them in order to remember who we are.

It's nothing new to say that we've lost as much wisdom as we've gained knowledge. We know so much, but the stature of our minds seems to be shrinking. How much of what afflicts us as modernized human beings could be amelioratedo mended by the simple action of picking up a book in your hands? And opening the cover. And turning the pages....

And reading.

Il y a longtemps que je t'aime

In English: I've Loved You So Long.

This is a movie most of you probably haven't heard of. It's French, so made and so written. And it's a bit of an arty film about two sisters who are reunited after 15 years.

And it's excellent. They marketed this film brilliantly:













That is the face of Kristin Scott Thomas. She is wonderful in basically every way. There is not, to my knowledge, a more elegant, beautiful, and supremely talented actress alive--she sells the film better than anything else could have.

I don't want to give too much of the plot away, because it's much better unraveled slowly, carefully, with the artistic precision intended by the filmmakers. It is a story about immense pain and suffering that took place in the past--outside of the frame. But the past events, even cloaked in mystery for so much of the film, provide a profoundly dynamic and compelling foundation for everything that happens within the story we see.

The acting was all-around incredible. There wasn't a weak spot in the cast. But, of course, Thomas steals the show with the impenetrable depth behind her eyes. You may never have seen anyone communicate so much with so little expression. Her performance is understated to a degree that is extremely rare in today's Oscar-grabbing climate.

In order to truly impress me, however, a film must display humanity with grace and power. That means believable, redeemable characters. I have little patience for "bad guys" in films. I understand their utility in melodrama, but the truth is that most of us don't know many truly bad people. And no one in this film is bad. Some of them are weak, but only sometimes. Some of them are wrong, but not always. There's intolerance, but only temporarily. Most of all, there is love, in abundance and in all shades. And the love carries the story and the characters. By the end, the message is clear: Terrible tragedies visit the best of us, and it is only love and compassion of others that can help us through. We need other people, and sometimes desperately.

I'll Garden YOUR State!

Why do I always feel compelled to mess with titles that way? I think that somewhere, deep down, I'm afraid that someone will think I'm being pretentious by giving one of my dumb little movie review blog posts the same title as the actual movie. Plus, I love messing with words.

Garden State (Zach Braff, Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard) was the second DVD I ever got in the mail from Netflix. It was one of those movies that had been roundly recommended by a lot of people whose opinions I respect. It seemed like this was the Generation Y movie to see. Edgy, emotional, touching, funny...you know. The kind of movie kids like me could connect to.

When asked if there was anything in it that would seriously offend me, my friends would respond that it had a lot of language, but nothing else to speak of.

Ironically, that was my primary problem with this film. It's about a TV actor who returns home for his mother's funeral after nine years of being away. He reconnects with old friends, meets a girl...etc. The acting is good, and the writing is quirky and unique. So it mostly works OK.

But the whole thing is absurdly self-conscious in that "look how deep I am" way that makes you cringe. It moves slowly and thoughtfully, but never misses an opportunity to point out its own thoughtfulness. This core problem with the film, its story, and the way its told, is unexpectedly illustrated by the sheer number of F-bombs shot through the dialog. By the end, the way the characters have expressed themselves feels much less like real life and much more like a smug, inexperienced new writer.

So the film was OK. It didn't leave much with me other than mild irritation and a slight haze of sadness.

Here's an alternative: Elizabethtown (Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst). I know, weird that I'd offer an alternative. Well, it's good, and it's a very similar movie. Guy goes back home after the death of his father, reconnects with people, meets a girl yadda yadda yadda. But it's a more effective comedy, has better feel-good moments, and, as far as I'm concerned, pulls off quirkiness in a much more satisfying way. I really enjoyed it. A lot. I wouldn't call it a GREAT movie, but I would certainly say it's worth watching. There are scenes that will stick with you for quite some time.

But there's another problem with both of these movies, both of them written and directed by men (Zach Braff and Cameron Crowe). It's the story of boy meets girl, girl saves boy. This dynamic, the way these kinds of stories are so often told, is this: one day, a guy will meet this perfect girl who will save him from all of his problems. The romance is grand and mystical, and the ending is much like a fairy tale, except with the girl in the shining armor (not that there's anything wrong with girls wearing shining armor).

I realize neither of these stories rigidly stick to this model, but that underlying theme is predominant. People who consume and accept these kinds of stories are damaged by them. Men gain an impossible, idealistic expectation that they will one day meet the girl of their dreams who will make everything better somehow, and women are presented with examples that they cannot possibly match. The whole system is based on fantasy--particularly the fantasy of the writer/director.

But we can't judge these guys too harshly. They are simply working with and expressing themselves through a model that society gave them. And it's a nice story. It does feel good. I would simply suggest that as you see films like these, you notice and understand the dramatic difference between what they're telling you, and what real life is really like.

By the way, if you agree or disaggree with me in any way, I would love some feedback in the comment section. Don't be shy. Comments are like pizza, in that I like them both a whole lot.

Holla fo Olla

I have some friends who are working on a "no budget" feature. That means that they're making a film (of the comedy-action variety) for no money whatsoever. These guys are pretty talented film students, so I'm confident that the end product will be pretty entertaining.

Today, they showed me this:



There, now you are among the first handful of people to see this first manifestation of their efforts. It's sort of an amorphous, viral marketing video sort of thing. It's place in and connection to the film they are making probably won't be clear for quite some time, but I think it's pretty fantastic all by itself. Also, I'm basically certain Bil (the muscly man in the video) doesn't eat Easy Mac.

Ode to Regina Spektor

I've been thinking a lot about Regina Spektor, because I love her, and decided to therefore mention a very neat preview of this film that's been out for a little while now bearing the hip title (500) Days of Summer. [In my mind, that title would fit well for a sequel to 300. But my opinion doesn't matter. I DON'T MATTER!!! ("I matter plenty." - The first person who can name that movie gets a treat!)] The music for the trailer is the song "Us" by Regina. It's not my favorite song by her, but I do like it very much.

As of now, if the speakers on your computer are on and functional, you should be hearing this very song. If you wait around a while, you should also hear other songs that I like very much by this very same talented artist. (I'm trying to increase my use of the word "very," because it's a very, very important word.)

I am a terrible person. In other, less self-deprecating terms, I don't buy music very often (and now secret record-label police are going to hunt me down and stick ice picks into my ears--a fate I admittedly deserve.) I don't download a lot of music, but I do get it, and a lot of it, from friends.

The only reason I'm sharing this crime with you is so that you understand the weight of what I'm about to say.

I BOUGHT Regina Spektors latest album, "Far," for full price, off of Amazon.com. It's important to me that I adequately communicate how much I love and appreciate this wonderful woman and her wonderful music.

This is one of my favorite tracks off "Far." The video's not quite so compelling, but listen to the words. (Also, you might want to pause the music player at the bottom of this page before you hit play. I'm just sayin.)



The song is called "Laughing With," and it so beautifully captures the bredth and depth of human suffering with a simplicity and poignancy that is remarkable. And, somehow, throughout, stays light and happy. There are few songs with so rich a perception of God's personality.

And, to close out my ode to Ms. Spektor, here is a VERY awesome video that you've probably seen before. I show this to the film class I TA every semester. They love it, and so do I.

Avatar...DONE!

This girl named Laura, who is now spending a small portion of her life in a facility that is training her to become an unstoppable, Russian-speaking missionary, was obsessed with this show called "Avatar: The Last Airbender." She persuasively insisted that I give it a try.

So I did.

Thanks to Netflix, I have now finished all three seasons of this enormously enjoyable cartoon. And let me tell you something about this cartoon--it is ENORMOUSLY enjoyable.

I have friends who hate anime, and I sympathize with them, because, and let's be honest, what's NOT to hate about anime? My exceptions are very limited: anything by Hayao Miyazaki (I definitely had to look that up)--Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Howl's Moving Castle, and so on--and now, beautifully, Avatar.

Of course, Avatar isn't really anime. It's an American-made, anime-loving cartoon. It's influences (this from our beloved Wikipedia) are East and South Asian, and Western animation, so it ends up being more interesting and culture-rich than any of them.

I can't even really tell you why I loved it so much. The animation is great, I suppose. It's beautiful and exciting. But the writing is often corny, the humor almost unendurably silly, and most of the dramatic dialog is definitively on-the-nose. It's moralistic, and the characters barely escape being flat.

But the story is fantastic. It's not so crazy that you never know what's coming next, but it's deeply imaginative and moves along at a really excellent pace. Each subplot is satisfyingly fun or touching, depending, and the overall story arch--the one that stretches over all three seasons--is really, really cool.

And the characters are actually quite lovable, once you've got half a dozen episodes under your belt. And the humor succeeds just often enough at being incredibly funny.

Crap, everyone, I love this show. I couldn't wait to dig into each disc as it got mailed to my apartment. If I had to go a couple of days without seeing it, I felt like dying. But here's the best part, now that it's over, I'm OK. I'm happy with it. There's no enduring ache that there are no more episodes to watch. The story is finished, everything happened that needed to happen, and I'm satisfied. It's a great feeling.

Want to know what the show's actually about? Well I won't tell you. You can find out more about it here, or buy it here (if you have Netflix, you can watch the whole first season online), or get excited about the movie adaptation Shyamalan is doing here.

Man, I wish I could bend stuff.

Netflixing

I have a subscription to Netflix and I love it.

I use the $14/month plan, which is the 2-at-a-time unlimited deal, along with access to the "Instant" library of movies and TV you can watch online. I might downgrade to the 1-at-a-time plan come Fall semester, as I will no longer have time to breathe, let alone watch a movies two or three times per week, but I digress.

I looked over my rental history, and discovered that within the past eleven (almost) months, I've had just shy of 100 DVDs mailed to my apartment. Now, that number has been somewhat bolstered by multi-disc seasons of TV on DVD, but it's still an impressive figure. And that's not counting the films I've seen in the theaters or on my computer (via that "Instant" library I just mentioned).

Point is: I've got a lot of fuel to burn. So what I'm going to do is go through that list and, one by one, pass along a short review.

Here's my first.

The date is roughly the 22nd of September, and it is the first of many syndicated movie nights. My friend Jon had a very sweet big screen, HD TV, and the surround sound system it deserved. So we decided to set up movie nights where the attendees would be expected to sit quietly as the movie played, respecting the art as much as enjoying each other's company.

There Will Be Blood was our maiden voyage. I think there might have been four of us. Or three. A slow start to a long tradition.

But the film was pretty incredible. Daniel Day-Lewis was often described as a tour de force, and it was true, absolutely. The man devoured us whole from the screen. He was a self-described oil man, but really, he was a typhoon.

I probably don't need to fill you in on the plot because it was nominated for eight Oscars and won two of them the same year No Country for Old Men came out (a film that will get a much broader treatment sometime on this blog in due futurity.) But if you don't know, it was about a man named Daniel Plainview and his hand in the oil industry when it was still very young.

The performances were nothing short of spectacular, which Daniel Day-Lewis won the Oscar for Best Actor. And the cinematography was supernaturally good. The film was stunning every second, and for that it also won the Oscar for Best Cinematography.

After all that, however, I don't feel like I can fully endorse this film because it was perhaps one of the more depressing films I've seen. The culminating moment between the two most important and powerful characters unfolded with such depravity, brutality, and raw human rage that I felt personally injured when it was over. The film wasn't rated R for anything graphically depicted. It was for the hate so meticulously painted on the screen.

To say that I wasn't moved, that this film didn't leave a lasting impression upon me, would be utterly disingenuous. I can't help but admire this kind of craftsmanship and artistry. But it was a dark, dark film. You might hear people quote it--"I - drink - your - MILKSHAKE!"--and laugh. I've joined in. But that laughter, I believe, very often hides the troubling aftermath of this film in the minds of those who watched it. It's sort of the same as laughing at cancer. It's an ugly thing. Humor is a coping mechanism.

***PS: There is a new post on my new blog - That Hideous Strength

Check It Out

I just started a new blog. I mentioned that this one will now be entirely dedicated to movies and TV. Well, you knew I would, and I did: I now have a political blog titled "That Hideous Strength." If you want to know what the title means, well, you'll just have to check it out :-)

Locker Demons

When I go back through old posts to figure out when and where I said stuff, I'm sure this post's title will be really helpful. But what's done is done (as I refuse to click on the field one inch above where I'm typing to simply change it).

Two short pieces of news:

1. The "Only Good Movies Blog" recently linked to my review of The Pianist in a list of films they called "75 War Movies to See Before You Die." I have no idea how they came accross my humble blog, but there you go. I'm pleased.

2. I started a new blog called "That Hideous Strength." Its purpose is to fulfill my insatiable desire to blog about politics without alienating those of you who would prefer never to think about the subject. I haven't posted in it yet, but when I do, you can put money on my letting you know.

[gonna try these new things called section breaks]

OK, I've seen two movies since my last post.

Angels and Demons was just about as good as I hoped it would be. My hopes weren't outrageously high, but I'd heard good things, such as, "It was way better than Da Vinci Code," and "I really enjoyed this one, as opposed to the first one...what was it called?" and "The Da Vinci Code sucked." The last wasn't really praise for Angels, I recognize, but I included it because as far as word-of-mouth goes, that's about as true as it gets.

I mostly hated the "first" one because it was anti-Catholic propaganda. And while I am not Catholic, I very much respect the church. And I will not tolerate film that is designed to specifically tear down a Church or any other benevolent institution. I hate it when people make and watch anti-Mormon filth, and it would therefore be hypocritical of me to endorse something like the Code.

But Angels and Demons was NOT anti-Catholic, or anti-religious. In fact, it was only with that assurance that I consented to see it. As it turns out, many of the most dignified, respectable, good people in this film are deeply, devoutly religious. The film turned out to be one of the more powerful advocates for the cooperation of religion and science that I've seen. As such, it can't help but win my respect.

But I'll put aside my feverish biases for a moment and focus instead on the quality of the film as a film, and not a piece of propaganda. As entertainment, it also far surpassed its cumbersome predecessor. The acting was better, the characters were richer, but most of all, it was paced FAR better. It wasn't and didn't need to be an adrenaline driven thriller, but it did need to be compelling, and those bones it had in spades.

The plot was servicable. I won't say anything about it because I think that the twists are half the fun. Suffice it to say that nothing really turns out to be what they set it up to be, and they pull it off rather well. If you've read the book, of course there won't be any surprises. But the film stands on its own just fine. I would know--I haven't read the book.

[see, section breaks are super-def-way cool]

Last night, I saw the best film about the war in Iraq that I've seen yet. And, I would bet, the best that's been made up to this point.

The Hurt Locker was not about the politics of the war. Not at all. It was about the war itself. Jeremy Renner played the protagonist, and did it with a style that helps men understand that they'll never be that tough. He's the real deal, the "wild man," hardcore, crazy, unstoppable. Here's his secret: he's addicted to war.

The film was powerful on many levels. On the surface, it was a gripping war movie, with all of the action and suspense any war movie merits. But the deeper you go, the sadder it gets. We all understand, at least academically, that war brings out the best and worst in men. What we don't as often consider (though we also probably understand it), is that it brings out the best and worst in every man. What the Locker shows us in its main character is a man who men instinctively wish they were. Tough, committed, capable, and instinctively generous. He's a leader, and he knows it. He doesn't have to spend time proving it, he just leads.

But he's also deeply flawed. He takes on danger not because he has to, but because he wants to. At the very beginning, the words, "war is a drug" are effectively burned into the minds of the audience. The rest of the film illustrates that principle. By the end, it's almost not about the war in Iraq at all. It's about someone we've come to love succumbing to a destructive addiction.

CJ7 and the Reformation of a Blog

You probably didn't notice, but that's OK. I forgive you. I'll point it out to you in a minute.

CJ7 is a good movie. In a spasmodic fit of enthusiasm, I gave it five stars on Netflix directly after finishing it. What I'm saying is that it was good, but maybe not, objectively, five-stars good.

But who's being objective? I certainly never am. So, YEAH. It's five-stars good. And I won't say much about it except that it's from China, and it's touching and funny and ridiculous and stupid in all the right ways.

The short: A father finds what turns out to be an alien artifact and gives it to his son. Said artifact turns into a super-high-tech-weird-futuristic toy dog, which delivers a great performance as an overwhelmingly serviceable plot-device.

The skinny: All of the acting was superb, especially from Dicky, played by the 10-yr-old Jiao Xu, who has a far cooler name than I do. The special effects were as good as they needed to be to keep the film entertaining, and the little alien toy dog was way less annoying than it should have been. And near the end, I cried. Everybody's gonna start to think I only review movies that make me cry well it's NOT TRUE! Remember my review of Transformers 2? Neither do I, but I definitely didn't cry during that film. I wanted to (for entirely different reasons) but I didn't.

Anyway.

The thing you probably didn't notice is that my blog changed. Not dramatically, but definitely. And more so in spirit than in style.

This blog will now focus almost exclusively on the making and watching of movies and TV. Which means it will mostly be reviews, but if there are other film-related things I feel like talking about, I won't hold back.

That doesn't mean that I won't talk about other things every once in a while. I might even do so often, but there will now, and this I promise, always be something about movies (or TV) in my posts.

I'm stepping this blog away from politics, for the most part. And from other miscelaneous, non-film-related (but still usually awesome) junk. Things might change down the road, but for now, I'm attempting an exercise in consistency. I decided that it's time for my blog to grow up and become a describable entity.

...now leaving Neverland...