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The Film Habit #26 - October 28, 2004 I’ve finally discovered a way to combine extreme nerdiness with healthy living. I dragged an exercise bike in front of the TV so I can bike my ass off while I watch G4TechTV’s “The Screen Savers”. There are few things on the planet that scream nerd louder than watching “TSS”. It’s a tech show for nerds, by nerds, and featuring nerds. In fact earlier last week they featured us, albeit indirectly. If you’d been watching them discuss the Superman casting story, you’d have seen a link to CinemaBlend.com on another site they were using, in teeny tiny print up in the left hand corner. Television exposure is so overrated… now that we here at CB are such big stars. So is exercise really. Three weeks of heavy exercise combined with nerdvision and I haven’t lost a pound. Maybe that’s because exercising makes me hungry and Wendy’s is located far too close to my house. Visiting burger joints needs to be more inconvenient.
Fat, Lazy Hitchcock In between bouts of burger binging and hyper-active nerd cycling, I managed to watch North by Northwest. It’s been years since I’d seen it so I figured a refresher was needed. Because I’m not a DVD hoarding freak, I had to go out and rent it and because I live in the suburbs of Dallas the only place you can rent movies is Blockbuster. Because it’s Blockbuster, of course they only had it on tape. The horror. I watched it anyway and was reminded of why Hitchcock is just so damn great. North by Northwest is an absolute masterpiece and also a great example of how Hollywood used to be lazy. Yeah that’s right, lazy. For all our talk about how much better filmmaking was back “then”, whenever “then” was, in retrospect some things have gotten a lot better.  North by Northwest for example is an amazing movie with a truly brilliant scene involving an airplane and some wheat fields. I assume they must have shot on location; it’s a beautiful, a gripping scene, one which ends with a crop duster actually crashing into a fuel truck. Hitch went through a lot of trouble to get that shot right. So why didn’t he go through the trouble to film a convincing shot of Cary Grant driving a car? Don’t tell me they didn’t have car driving technology. It looks cheap. Throw him in prop car in front of a screen playing random road scenery behind him and call it a day. It’s just a little detail right? If you really watch old movies, they all gloss over those “little” details. Could Hitchcock have spent some money to make a realistic car driving sequence involving Cary Grant? Yes. Did he? No. That’s just the way things were done. Whether because of budget or laziness, North by Northwest misses a lot of little things like that. Obviously fake in-studio sets are used in places were location shoots could have been done. Stuntmen with bad wigs thrown in place of actors. It isn’t just North by Northwest, it was everyone. It, and most of the movies from its era are dated as a result.
Today even the worst studio movie is certain to get all the little details mostly right. If it doesn’t, we rip it to shreds. Back then, audiences were a bit more forgiving, their expectations were limited and filmmakers catered to that. Movie making, whether you like it or not, has gotten better. Then again, in Hitchcock’s Hollywood, Uwe Boll would standing on a street corner selling celebrity house maps. My Mail Sack  Where’s the What to Watch portion of this shin dig? How will you make your weekend movie choices? Relax and go check out the news section. Look for The Weekend Blend. I’m spinning that thing off into it’s own thing, since, well let’s be honest it never really fit here anyway. Instead, I shall attempt to keep The Film Habit focused on talking about things in my life that are either vaguely related to or directly related to film. For instance, right below this paragraph I’m going to do something completely innovative. Answer reader mail. I bet you’ve never seen that before. Haddi: Hello, I saw your comments on the forum And I was hoping if you might be able to tell me where I can download the leaked trailer on Starwars III, I tried on the links that were provided in here. I hope you can help me out. Thanx in Advance Josh: Hi Haddi, thanks for visiting the site. I’m afraid you’ve been the victim of something we call a joke. If we actually had a trailer for Star Wars Episode III, I’d either be extremely wealthy, or in jail. Depending on how quickly Lucas found out that we were distributing a trailer he hasn’t approved. In either case, if we had a Star Wars Episode III trailer, I’d be much too busy to talk to you. I’m easily corrupted by wealth and prison rape. Ray: I just read your article on Farscape and I wanted to thank you for the praise you gave my favorite show. Josh: Thanks Ray. Sometimes I think Farscape is the only thing we do talk about that people actually appreciate. Do you play Halo 2? John Wayne: I Love DVD Diggers Josh: You’re either really late on entering that contest we ran about three weeks ago or John Wayne’s ghost is a huge Rafe fan. Prepare for a shoot-em-up haunting Telsch.  Clifford Lynch: Regarding your article on Two Towers bootleg copies being online here… you should be aware that the bootleg copy in question was an advance screener DVD that was actually sent to the Academy Awards. It was FULL DVD quality and FULL 5.1 surround DOLBY DIGITAL sound. That's why it was a big hit with bootleggers. There was on occasional brief popup of the phrase "for your consideration" but that was it. It was literally the holy grail of bootlegging because you could watch the DVD in your home with full surround sound and basically relive the magic of the prior night at the movie theater. Just my two cents...
Josh: Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I had one of those for Fellowship of the Ring. Er… I MIGHT have had one I mean. Of course I didn’t. That would be wrong. Anyway Cliff, I never said that uber-bootleg wasn’t out there. Stay out of the features archives, there be dragons there.  Nathan: In regards to your review of Blade Trinity, I hold a Bachelor of Arts Degree
in the field of Elementary and Special Education that I received from the
University of Cincinnati. This means not all of the wrestling fans around
the world fall into your "redneck" category.
I liked the majority of your review of this trailer, but you seem to take pleasure in pointing out that Paul Levesque (aka Triple H) is, in fact, a pro wrestler and then you proceed to demean the sport and yes, despite what you may think, it is a sport, albeit, not on the lines of the NFL or NBA, but it does take a small degree of talent to do what these guys do in the ring night after night. As far as bearded fat guys go, sure, they are out there, but to generalize them into a group of "rednecks" is wrong. Josh: Nathan teaches Special Ed. No really he does, that’s how he signed his email: “Special Ed Teacher.” Good for him too. A fine profession and very rewarding I’m sure. But it’s no surprise that he’d sympathize with wrestlers. It’s sort of his job. What I’m really confused by is how something that is completely staged can possibly be a sport. A sport is usually a competition, wrestling is more of a vaguely homosexual stage play. A soap opera for men. That’s cool. Nothing wrong with being into that, but embrace it for what it is: Fat sweaty men in leotards grappling each other and playing “let’s pretend.” Perhaps that makes Triple H uniquely qualified to blow us all away and become a great actor. Maybe he’ll even drop the Triple H moniker and become this Levesque fellow you mentioned. He sounds like a Hasidic accountant. Of course that won’t make him any less of a redneck. Crystal: chuchy,he is a doll and he is so ugly and he kills people but hes not real he is fake and he dont even look real and he is so stupis i mean who ever invined that movie is so stupid.. Josh: Our intensive Seed of Chucky coverage has caused a disturbing side effect: Mental retardation in our readers. I wonder if we can hire Nathan? Hey! Do you like working for free? Are you over 18? Do you secretly wish you could live the wild and exciting life of Michael Brody? You’re in luck. CinemaBlend.com is looking for writers, specifically the type interested in slogging it out on DVD’s or those with a flair for internet news stories. If you think you can capture the signature Cinema Blend style as a DVD critic and/or BNN reporter send me an with a few samples and we’ll talk. |
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