The Film Habit #50 - June 1, 2005

The much sought after #50 edition of The Film Habit is here. You’re reading it this second. Man, what a colossal waste of your time.

I’m sure you’re all eager for me to shut up and get to the prizes I mentioned in last week’s edition, and I’ll do that but not until after you’ve been forced to read a little bit. Really, fifty of these columns about nothing is quite an accomplishment. Looking back on it, I’m not sure how I came up with something to type every week. Maybe it was good, maybe it wasn’t, but somehow I filled this space up with something. That’s not much of a statement of quality, but quantity has to count for something, doesn’t it?

In the future, I hope to find a way to make this thing more focused (read: easier for me to write). Who knows where The Film Habit will fit in as part of the grand Cinema Blend non-plan of internet domination. For now, it’ll keep chugging along into number 51 with no end in site.

To reward you for your patience, let’s celebrate a little bit with some free crap. I’ve put together the biggest prize pack I can muster, filled with random bits of well… whatever I have lying around. Some of it of value, some of it of Shatner. I think to win it, you ought to put forward at least a little effort. First here’s what you’re vying for: A Cinema Blend “Needs More Shatner” T-shirt, a Film Habit mug, a copy of Assault on Precinct 13 on DVD… and then here's the kicker, a prize pack of stuff from George Romero's upcoming zombie movie Land of the Dead!

If you want it, you're going to have to work a little for it. The mail section is a regular fixture here in The Film Habit, so to win, help make my job easier. Send me reader mail, the best email wins. Here's your topic: What do you hate most about this column? Easy. If you need help, I can give you a starter list. Hey, I don't do cheerful. Send me an with the words I HATE THE FILM HABIT in the title. The winners will be announced in Film Habit #52, so you've got till then to get moving. Good luck, be cruel.

me with suggestions to improve the next 50.

Darabont For Dinner

If you haven't seen "Dinner for Five with Jon Favreau" on IFC, then you should. I’ve talked about it for awhile now, so hopefully a few of you have caught on.

The Premise: Each week Jon Favreau has dinner with notable and respected actors, directors, writers, and comedians working in Hollywood. They sit, they eat, they smoke, they drink, and they talk about making movies. When I tune in, I can’t seem to make myself tune out.

One of Jon’s most recent dinner guests was one Frank Darabont. Darabont ought to be someone even the lamest movie geek recognizes, if you’ve seen a movie in the past decade there’s a good chance he wrote it (though he’s most often uncredited). When Darabont speaks, it’s electrifying. In between stogeys and bites of steak, he made an interesting point about the ineffectualness of the WGA (Writer’s Guild of America). He asked the question: Why don’t screenwriters own the rights to their work after it’s been made into a movie? His point was that giving those rights away was where the WGA went wrong, right from the beginning. It’s an interesting idea, and one I’d never before considered. In the theater, playwrights don’t give up any claim to their completed work after it’s finished. In fact, they’re often involved all the way through the creative process

with input on how their work is developed. Stephen King didn’t give up any claim to “The Stand” in order to get it published. Later he was the guy who controlled the movie rights and eventual adaptation of his work.

Why shouldn’t screenwriters have the same privileges? Instead, they write, hand off their masterwork to someone else, and then that someone else does whatever the they want with it leaving the writer more often than not never to touch his material again. It’s an interesting notion, a Hollywood where writers retain some sort of creative control over their own writing. It might put people like Paul Walker out of work, and keep Steve Buscemi even busier. It’ll never happen, the WGA gave up that fight long ago, but you have to wonder how the film world might be different if they hadn’t let themselves be rolled.

me if you're money.

Losing Lost

“Lost” isn’t a movie, but it has the production values of one. Watching the finale last week was damned impressive. The score, the shot choices, the blistering dialogue, this could easily be a really long feature film. But it’s on TV, and thank god for it. Without it, there’s absolutely nothing out there worth watching. “Lost” starts rerunning all episodes with the debut show tonight, so if you missed it the first time around now is your chance to jump in from the beginning. With a linear show like this, that’s the best place to start.

Best show on television or not, all is not well with “Lost”. The finale has me worried, the castaways may be headed down a bad road. The easy thing to take issue with is the show’s insistence on refusing to answer any questions. The series is mired in them, and at some point showrunner J.J. Abrams needs to get up and start providing some answers. The season finale was the place to do it, but instead he only created more questions. Now I’m not saying that he should have wrapped the whole thing up in a nice, tidy bow. But throw us a bone! We’ve waited all year to see what’s in that hatch, and he gives us nothing. The monster makes an appearance, but does so in a way that only makes it more mysterious. Mysteries are nice, but answers are too. A few solid answers will only make future mystery more thrilling, since we’ll go into it with the belief that at some point they’ll be solved. Mysteries without solutions are a drag, and if you don’t give your viewers something solid to hold on to, eventually they’re going to get sick of hanging around wondering. Let’s hope “Lost” doesn’t end up there, but with the first season’s abject refusal to tell us anything the show could soon wear out its welcome.

The other thing about the finale that really has me worried is this sudden desire to step outside the reality of the show and lampoon it. There’s a scene towards the beginning of the finale where a new character named Arzt goes on a diatribe against the show’s more established characters. He does so by pointing out things like Hurley’s failure to lose any weight, and in doing so sort of steps outside the reality of the show. He has the kind of conversation viewers watching might be having, not the sort of obvious observations that ought to be noticed by characters in the show. In a comedy, this is acceptable, but in a drama it’s a jolt out of the show’s reality. Maybe this was just an aberration, maybe they needed filler for the finale and they were stretching. But I hope it doesn’t become a habit. It’s the sort of thing that could quickly undermine the show and send it to an early grave. If “Lost” isn’t going to take itself seriously, how can it expect us to?

me for naked pictures of Harry… er Hurley.

Hot Mail

To prove that someone actually reads this website, guided by the spirit of the hot male to your left (who really ought to do a lot to draw in the ladies), I answer reader mail. your comments to have them read on the… answered here. Let’s see what filled up my inbox this week:

Sammy:Thanks for your thumbs up on quantum leap; I just got the first season from my local library and am really enjoying it. I probably would have never even noticed it except for your recommendation keep up the good work

Josh: Reading is fun. Try that too while you're there. I reviewed season one, and Rafe's been the one to get his hands on subsequent seasons so I haven't seen beyond that yet. If you have, you're lucky. Sam Beckett needs a beagle.

John W.: Saw the poster for the DaVinci Code Movie last night. I took a little time examining it and noted that the word ‘LANGDON’ is emplaced in the text of the over-turned Mona Lisa. Kind of cool to have a code in a movie poster belonging to a movie about codes. Maybe there are more, but I didn’t have time to look.

Josh: That is pretty great. I have to admit, I'm not that excited about the movie so I didn't give it much more than a glance. Anyone else out there found anything else?

Sammy: I Said Last Week: I disagree with some of what you've said about the original Star Wars. I'm not sure what your beef is with the acting for instance. Harrison Ford is hard to question and the movie has Alec fucking Guinness. I mean good god man, he's named after beer!! I wasn't saying the acting was bad; I was just saying I think that there are films that are far better acted than star wars which don't connect with people the same way as star wars

Josh: Probably. There's some fantastic acting in Kingdom of Heaven. It's still a terrible movie.

GRANT: I've been visiting your site for some time now and I always enjoy reading your news, but I think I may finally have found a "scoop" of my own!

One of the other websites I visit regularly is a news page called Metal Sludge, which reports on rock & roll, hair bands, that sort of thing. Last week they even ran a few Star Wars articles, including one about a guy who attended a Star Wars convention dressed in a banana costume, calling himself "Bananakin Skywalker!" Even better, he somehow managed to get in a question during the George Lucas question and answer session! There's actually a sound clip of this encounter and it's really funny! He actually made Lucas and McCallum laugh, along with a few thousand fans. Not rude or obnoxious like Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, just something funny that only a fan could ask. Check it Out

Even if you don't post this story, I think you and your fellow behind-the-scenes folks would enjoy checking it out! Thanks for reading my mail and thanks for all the awesome news!

PS: There was also one other Star Wars article on that site, about someone claiming to be the bastard child of Darth Maul and Paul Stanley (of the rock band Kiss) -- named MAUL STANLEY! Very funny make-up and costume! Apparenlty he's actually some kind of comedian or something. This was at the same Star Wars convention. Funny Stuff

Josh: Here's the thing about Triumph the Insult Comic Dog… he's actually funny. Banana whatever this is… not so much. Thanks for the links, but fandom went too far a long time ago… this is just a natural extension of going even beyond that really. I mean Triumph may be rude, but he doesn't make Star Wars fans look half as bad as a man in a codpieced banana suit. I think I'm going to be ill. Still, appreciate your message, just not really newsworthy. But this column has no standards so here it is!

This has served one purpose… the shame of being a Star Wars fan is back. Ah yes, there it is, the mind crushing humiliation. Hello old friend!

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 critic and/or BNN reporter send me an with a few samples and we’ll talk.

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