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The Film Habit #30 - December 8, 2004 If any of you missed The Film Habit last week, I didn’t hear about it. Ironic isn’t it, that I’d manage to get one out over the Thanksgiving weekend but then fail to deliver the week directly after? I’ve got a wicked case of the flu that kept me from my computer last week, and continues to drag me out of bed late at night in fits of wife-waking coughing this week. I never thought I’d actually drink a gallon jug of orange juice in one sitting, but yesterday I accomplished that feat. Oranges are extremely overrated as a cure for what ails ya.
As sickness timing goes, this bout of the flu couldn’t possibly have arrived at a worse one. I’m loaded down with holiday films and DVD releases to review and for the past week have lacked the necessary mental clarity to write about them. The snot sorta plugged up my brain. I’m starting to get it back together now, so look for reviews of Beyond the Sea, Northern Exposure Season 2, and non-existent deities willing, even Buck Rogers The Complete Series this week. And those are just my contributions. Mix in the hard work of everyone else on staff, a few holiday themed features which I’m procrastinating about formatting, and we actually start to sound like a legitimate film site. me to complain at my failure to cover Lemony Snicket earlier. Puck Plea  In Texas, there are two things that you have to love if you’re a real man: Cars and Football. I have little use for either, though I’ve collected enough knowledge about cars to pretend I like them in requisite social circumstances. Sports in general just aren’t my thing. Except for hockey that is. Hockey has always been my out. “Did you see the football game?” people ask, to which I respond, “I don’t watch that watered down, popularized crap, I watch hockey. Those are real men.” This of course is all just smoke and mirrors to cover up the fact that I hate all sports except this particular one played on ice.
 I love hockey… but this year there is none. This isn’t exactly a film topic, or rather it isn’t a film topic at all, just a get your heads out of asses and reach an agreement plea to the currently in lockout folks of the NHL. I need hockey. It’s my one uber-male pursuit. I obsess over it, I talk about it, I create teams in elaborate fantasy leagues to compete against other hockey lovers and then resoundingly kick their asses with my superior knowledge of the sport and uncanny managerial skills. I miss going to games, I miss finding excuses to wear my Steve Yzerman Red Wings jersey. I miss explaining to people that in fact hockey is no more violent than any other sport, all of that is totally overblown. Bring back hockey! Pale weakling white guys like me need it. The NBA is no substitute.
The killer for me in this is that the owners are right. I can’t blame them for shutting things down until the players face facts. The NHL is not the NBA, or Major League Baseball. It’s a niche sport and needs to salary its players accordingly. With new NHL teams going bankrupt every year, they need a salary cap if they’re going to survive. The players association simply refuses to see that they aren’t ever going to make the money of a Shaquil O’Neal. Things have to change… but when hockey finally does come back, will anyone besides me care? me to join the CB Hockey Fan Support Group CBHFSG.. I Didn’t Vote For It!  It’s awards voting season which means folks like Focus Features are out pushing their movies to potential people of influence to garner votes. Imagine my surprise when I discovered a couple of years ago that I’m one of those people. Seriously, who cares about my paltry Dallas Fort Worth Film Critics Association vote? Someone must, since my mailbox is full of awards screeners which I can watch as god intended… wearing only socks. I’m being flooded with screeners of Oscar bait flicks arriving daily in my mailbox. In fact, my apartment complex is getting a little pissed since the UPS guy tends to leave them with my package overflow. Some of them I’ve seen, some of them I haven’t. Rather than write reviews of movies that may not be relevant or may have already been covered by someone else on the site, I’ll try to drop in here and tell you what’s good and what isn’t from the stack. This week Lions Gate sent me a big box containing movies like Love Song for Bobby Long and Stage Beauty, while a few other miscellaneous movies like Birth and a new, working copy of Sideways filtered in.
 Sideways is definitely the best of that bunch, and I’m happy Fox Searchlight was nice enough to send a functional copy to replace the dud disc they mailed a few weeks back. It’s a good movie with another predictably perfect performance from Giamatti, but I’m not sure I get all the hype. This isn’t some sort of breakthrough filmmaking experience. It’s just a quiet, simple, slow paced movie about two screwed up guys drinking wine and getting laid. One is a loser, the other is about to get married. They take a trip, amusing, poignant things happen, they end up in a mess, they go home. It’s nice; I just wasn’t blown away by it as so many others seem to be. Note: it might help to study up a bit on wine before watching, I got a pre-Sideways tutorial on one of those Travel channels from John Cleese. Actually, Cleese’s wine documentary was a bit funnier than the laid back Giamatti/Church team up, but then he’s a Python.
Birth on the other hand is borderline pedophilia. It mixes in a fantastic musical score with amazing cinematography, but the concept, and what it took to execute that concept made me feel pretty uncomfortable. Also, it may be illegal. At least I hope it is otherwise Michael Jackson may never go to prison. Ten year old actors should not be allowed to make out with or bathe nude with Nicole Kidman. It makes all the men in her audience feel like crap. Birth straddles a kiddie-porn line that ought not to be toyed with or even approached. Back away slowly. A Love Song for Bobby Long was covered pretty adequately on this site by Bill in his review a few days ago. So I’ll just chime in and say… yep, he’s right. It is Travolta’s best performance since Pulp Fiction and his best movie this side of the new millennium (not that the competition for that title is stiff). I think I’m still more enamored with the film’s cool, atmospheric poster than I am with the movie itself, but the thing is good and rental worthy a few months down the road.  Stage Beauty is yet another flick with a powerful, uniquely done orchestral score. This really has been a fantastic year for movie soundtracks. In fact just yesterday the soundtrack to The Notebook showed up at my door to remind me that it’ll be a crime if its music isn’t contending for an Oscar. Put Stage Beauty’s right up there in that contending pack as well, as it winds its way through a story about out of work cross-dressing actors. The movie is light and humorous, with the right mix of dark, serious drama courtesy of a subtly tortured performance from Billy Crudup, frequently in drag. It’s not just the clothing that feminizes him, it’s the carefully cultivated mannerisms he adopts to bring to life a man trained from childhood to erase all masculine physicality from his repertoire.
me to ask what the drawback is to being a film critic. E-Mail Bombs  Guided by the spirit of the small Asian woman to your left (who I really need to replace with something more snazzy), I answer reader mail. It’s new, it’s innovative, and no doubt this idea will be ripped off by thousands of copycats, like that hack David Letterman. your comments to have them read on the… er answered here. Let’s see what you folks have to say this week: Clifford: Aeon Flux: I happen to have an old yet still working VHS tape with roughly 6 hours of a Liquid Television marathon circa 1992, including numerous Aeon Flux original shorts. Unfortunately the tape shows its age because about an hour in the middle is lost due to some lame Unsolved Mysteries bit that accidentally got time-shifted onto it. Woe is me. :-P I will see what I can do to get you those originals in computer format because they kicked ass. Josh: That sounds great Cliff. It would be nice to see if my parents were right or not about MTV being the devil’s work back then. Judging from the low quality of programming on it now, I’m still betting they were on the money. Only Satan could come up with something as mind sucking worthless as TRL. Cindy: I was wondering if maybe you could offer me some inside dirt on the chronicles of narnia movie. I heard some vague rumors that there was going to be a movie and I guess there true because a friend of a friend knows the head weta works guy doing the special effects on this film. p.s could you tell me if hitch hikers guide is going to be live-action or cgi. I assumed it would be live action but all stuff I'v seen about it on yahoo seems to indicate it could be cgi and it is made by disney. Josh: If your friend of a friend really knew the head of WETA, I have a feeling he’d have told you about capitalization. Don’t believe his lies. As for Hitchhiker’s Guide, it will be presented in glorious muppet-vision, as God (Jim Henson) intended. Jack who emails from Jeff Ryan’s Email Account: Josh, Read the first sentence of your article below. Out loud. Notice something? "To say that Willy Wonka did not be remade is to merely state the extreme obvious." What does "...did not be remade..." mean? Yikes. Did you mean to write..."did not need to be remade..."? You guys need a proofreader. I view your site from time to time and each time I do, there seems to be either spelling errors, problems with the prose or it is just too hard to comprehend. It's like you need an enigma machine to figure out what is being said (written). Does anyone read this stuff before it is published? As my old English professor said..."How you say it is as, if not more, important than what you say". Just a suggestion. I know that if it were my work, I would want someone to point it out and get it fixed. For, when people read things where there are errors and parts where they just don't make any sense, usually the person just stops reading and discounts the whole thing. Especially if you are CRITICIZING SOMEONE ELSES WORK. For he who lives in glass houses...well you know... For whatever it's worth... Josh: Dear Jeff/Jack whoever you are: Hotmail. Try it. It is free. Does anyone read this stuff before it is published? Buddy I’m not sure anyone reads it after it is published. I guess you did, which lowers my opinion of you right off the bat. You’re right we really do need a proofreader. Is this a job application or just a bitch letter? Because seriously, we’re hiring as long as you’re willing to work for free like the rest of us do. Have you read a newspaper lately? Strange thing… you’ll find typos. Read a magazine? You will find typos. You will. Those publications have people who they pay to do nothing but find typos, yet you’ll still find typos. We on the other hand have only poor old me, a guy who is much better at writing than he is at surfing endlessly for mistakes. Thus, expect the typos to appear commensurately. If you can’t deal with that, take off or take the job. If you want the job, just keep sending messages like this one, only without the assholity (not a typo, I just made that word up!). People who use horrible stock phrases involving glass houses and rocks to express themselves shouldn't be allowed to foist their borrowed opinions on others. Try having an original thought or two. To err is to be human, thus whenever anyone finds a typo I do a funny little dance of joy to celebrate my manifest manhood before correcting it. Look! I’m doing it now and I’m naked. Hilary: Just stopped by the site today and saw I won Buck Rodgers. I LOVED this show when it first aired and watched it faithfully. I too am curious to see if it will hold up or appear even more campy than years before, but what the heck, I got if for free! Thank you so much! You've made my day. Josh: Glad we could give it to you Hilary. You’re lucky there weren’t any typos in that contest write up, or you’d have had to stop reading and hotfoot it over to Yahoo Movies, thus missing out on your chance to win campy Mel Blanc robot fun. Don’t get too excited though, the process to get you your prize is notoriously slow. In fact, it may not even make it out before I finally get around to writing my Buck Rogers DVD review. Trust me, that’s slow. However, it will arrive and you will enjoy… sort of. Try not to be frightened by the opening credits of the premiere episode. They get better. Really. Though it’s not as if they could get worse. Hey! Do you like writing for mildly successful movie websites with no guarantee that you’ll ever be paid? Are you over 18? You’re in luck. CinemaBlend.com is looking for writers just like you. 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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