(Now) The AFI Top 100 Adventure

The Man in the Black Pajamas

2011-02-25T16:00:00.005-05:00

I've taken a breather from the AFI Top 100. May never go back. I got burned out on all of the gimmicks and themes. Here's a bit of a change of pace.

In The Big Lebowski, which is easily in my top 5 all-time favorite movies, Walter Sobchak makes a reference to "The Man in the Black Pajamas - a worthy f***ing adversary." Google that phrase and you'll find it's all over the internet, much like anything Walter ever said. I have a theory on this that hasn't shown up anywhere. In fact, if I put this phrase together with another, very similar phrase (both in their own quotes), there are absolutely ZERO hits on Google. So, it needs to be said. What better place than my movie blog? Are you ready for the second phrase? Okay, here it is:

"The man in pink pajamas."

That this came from a hundred-year-old novella is in and of itself no reason to raise an eyebrow. Two different colors, surely this doesn't mean anything. But, if I were to tell you that this phrase came from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, would that get some gears grinding? No? Well, take in these other important facts, and see if the ever-so-creative Coen Brothers are making a hooded reference for the ages:

Joseph Conrad was born born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski. He was Polish, just like Walter Sobchak. (don't worry, they get better)
Heart of Darkness was the basis for the movie Apocalypse Now, which is about the Vietnam War, which Walter fought in.
There was no man in pink pajamas in Apocalypse Now, but there was a man in a getup that looked something like pajamas, black ones. That was Colonel Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando.

The man in pink pajamas in the book was actually Marlow, who was looking for Kurtz in the Congo. In both cases, he was the representative of an organization who viewed Kurtz as an adversary who had gone crazy in the jungle and turned himself into some sort of king. If you're familiar with either the book or the movie, you'd know that Kurtz was a "worthy f***ing adversary."

Now sure, we see in the next line that Walter mentions "a bunch...trying to find reverse on a Soviet tank," which would imply that his reference to "the man in the black pajamas" is a collective, not an individual reference. We can also surmise that Walter did not physically go into Cambodia to hunt down Colonel Kurtz, whose reputation as a black pajama wearing man was probably not widespread.

However, we cannot claim that the use of "the man in...(color) pajamas," in conjunction with its significance in the book upon which one of the great Vietnam movies was based, was an accident. The casual viewer can easily equate the mental picture with that of a ninja or a Vietnamese jungle fighter, but I think the Coens wanted us to dig deeper. I'm disappointed that no one else has gone there in 15 years. Go read Heart of Darkness. It's a helluva book.

Taking a Break

2010-06-29T13:31:00.002-04:00

By halfway through The Wild Bunch, I'd had enough. I sat watching on my computer screen in my recliner and kept nodding off, not because I was tired, but because the colors were washed out and the plot was mindless. It was at that point I realized the true nature of the AFI Top 100 List and called it quits. Maybe one day I'll pick it back up again, but probably not. Judging by what I've seen from television film critics and what I've seen of these movies, they are probably horrible people, one and all. No thanks.

#79: The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, 1969)

2009-02-24T17:57:00.003-05:00

There were FAR better movies being made by 1969. This was a shallow movie with little to no heart. I even read that Sam Peckinpah was trying to horrify his audience with all the spaghetti sauce he threw around, but instead they ate it right up and went to the movies to see more blood. Sure, there was some good distance work with cameras, but that doesn't excuse the overall brownness of the movie, alleviated only by a bright blue sky, which actually made the brown more brown. The acting might have been good if the characters were anything I cared about, but there was never any reason to get involved. Pitiful excuse for a Top-100 Film. File this one under: Technical Achievement. Which is hardly so.

2009-02-23T19:56:00.003-05:00

Groupings for what these movies really are:

OLD B&W MOVIES
Yankee Doodle Dandy
Swing Time
Bringing Up Baby
A Night at the Opera
Sunrise
Modern Times

TECHNICAL "ACHIEVEMENT" MOVIES
Toy Story
Titanic

SOCIOPOLITICAL "MESSAGE" MOVIES
Ben-Hur (Religion)
Do the Right Thing (Race)
Pulp Fiction (Drugs)
The Last Picture Show (Sex)
The French Connection (Drugs)
Sophie's Choice (Holocaust)
Platoon (Vietnam)
Easy Rider (Drugs)
All the President's Men (Nixon)

REGULAR OLD MOVIES
Blade Runner
Goodfellas
The Sixth Sense
12 Angry Men
Spartacus

So far, out of 22 movies watched, there are only 5 I can come up with for which you don't have to be either 80 years old or a political radical to enjoy. I'd put 3-4 of the "message" movies on my list anyway, but the others had serious help from people more concerned with agendas than movies. I already hate the AFI. Who knows what this will look like by the end.

#78: Modern Times (Chaplin, 1936)

2009-02-23T09:05:00.002-05:00

Glad that's over. I suppose we could learn something about the ever-changing societal sense of humor, or beauty. I could make comparisons between The Great Depression and what we're experiencing now. Or, I could just talk about being bowlegged. I think I'd rather not talk at all and forget this ever happened. If there was a movie yet that made me want to quit this project, this is it.

#77: All the President's Men (Hoffman, Redford)

2009-02-21T20:50:00.002-05:00

Alright, there have been plenty of movies so far on this list that have underwhelmed me or been outright disappointments. This includes the first Alan J. Pakula film I saw, Sophie's Choice. There have also been some very good movies, ones that deserve the accolades they've received. This is a rare movie that does everything a movie is supposed to do, and always with class and excellence.

The casting: Lots of gritty 30+ year-old actors who are not appealing to the eye. Some of them downright ugly, a lot of guys with Bill Hader haircuts. Man, do they really relay the common man and make him real, though.

The cinematography: The French Connection, which was onlyl 5 years earlier, did a hideous job of filming guys walking around. They tacked on an extra 20 minutes of movie time with absolutely nothing interesting. Here, every time someone walked, it was interesting. The shots were great, the way that Hoffman and Redford moved from one place to another always told what they were thinking. Just great.

There is not a drop of action in the movie. It's all dialogue, it's all phone calls and house visits and board meetings and guys sitting around the newsroom with noisy typewriters banging away and people talking. It doesn't need anything else. Everyone does a great job of acting. The lost art of the facial expression is at its finest, with no thought of striking a Brangelina sexy pose ever entering the actors' minds.

Granted, I am counting down, so the movies should be getting better. They really haven't been, though. There's been no real connection between rank and quality. This, though. This is a movie. Great suspense. Great acting all around. Highest marks.

#83: Titanic (Cameron)

2009-02-13T08:34:00.003-05:00

This movie won 11 Oscars, mostly for being the most popular movie of all-time among lonely women. The lines are a bit forced at times, which is usually a sign that they're not well-written, The dialogue reminds me of some of Star Wars: Episode I, which bothered me even as I refused to dislike the movie. My co-watcher, a certified Titanic fanatic, was also bothered by the fact that people generally weren't talking like they were actually from that time period.

I like Bill Paxton and am glad he was in there as the salvage man. Seems like a small role for him, but he wasn't that big yet. I had never seen this movie before, but understand why I didn't like Leo DiCaprio back when the movie came out. He wasn't as good of an actor, just popular with the ladies because his character fulfilled their fantasies.

I know I'm more critical of contemporary movies because there's so much great stuff that I've seen that's complex, while it would appear that the movies the AFI chooses are more simplistic and base. This is a good disaster flick with excellent special effects, but like their glorification of Citizen Kane, I think the AFI worships style over substance a little too much, and that style is often the overwrought Big Hollywood Style instead of small art style. Oh well, maybe I'll take all the movies I've seen and make my own list when I'm done.

#82: Sunrise, A Song of Two Humans (1927)

2009-02-09T23:05:00.003-05:00

In the quest to be a high-ranking white person, it is important to claim that you want to one day use your Netflix to go through the AFI Top 100. It lets other people know you care about good movies, without actually having to labor through all the difficult films to watch on the list.

It is not important to attempt this feat, only to say that you want to. If you do wind up watching these movies, you get stuck being surprised by a 1927 silent film. The story is at least interesting, the emotions well-conveyed, but nonetheless it is a silent film. Provided you actually continue watching beyond the first minute or two, you realize that half of the movie is a total downer and the other half is full of la-la happy times. It's a remarkable feat for 1927, probably one of the first movies to use wide shots, such as at the carnival, but it's not something that begs the 21st century Netflix enthusiast to take interest. I had a good time with it, but wouldn't have chosen it and will probably never watch it again.

Oh Gawd, I have to break into the unholy trilogy and watch Titanic next.

#81: Spartacus (Kubrick)

2009-02-02T23:20:00.002-05:00

I've seen Braveheart. I've seen Gladiator. Now I know that they are essentially unoriginal. Spartacus took me a long time to watch because it's another of those 3-1/2 hour epics and I've been busy doing other things like correctly naming songs in my iTunes library. To be honest, I don't think I've ever seen a Kubrick film except for a few minutes of Dr. Strangelove, which didn't leave me with the feeling that Kubrick was anything but weird. Well, he's pretty normal in Spartacus.

Having recently seen Ben-Hur, which is a very similar movie set in a similar period in history, I was impressed a little more with this one, as I guess the AFI also was. Judah Ben-Hur was upper class and got thrust down before returning to prominence, a fall and redemption story with the crucifixion of Jesus thrown in for good measure. Spartacus is a bit more interesting in that he's a slave, a nobody, who doesn't even win his gladiatorial match, yet becomes the leader of a slave revolt and the symbol for all the oppressed. I like how Kirk Douglas is quite mild-mannered in contrast to the sort of characters that Heston plays in many similarly epic movies.

I guess Kubrick's weirdness can be seen through his musical interludes that play with blank screens at the beginning of each act, like you'd normally see in a theatre. Before the opening credits. I look forward to seeing more Kubrick like 2001 and A Clockwork Orange. Well, anyway, that's that. Onward and upward.

#84: Easy Rider (1969, Hopper, Fonda)

2009-01-20T23:38:00.003-05:00

This movie doesn't really have a plot. That's because it never really had a script. These two guys just decided that they wanted to make a movie about drugs and motorcycles and then did it. Something moderately interesting happens, then they ride for a while as a good soundtrack usually plays, then something else happens. They camp out by the road, Dennis Hopper cultivates the original stoner movie persona, introduces "dude" to popular culture, etc. Deliverance gets a good deal of its plot here, with the protagonists taking a trip through redneck territory with mostly negative results. This was supposedly the first movie to bring the 60's to the big screen, helping to catch up to music and protesting and all that. It is what it is, certainly the fact that it didn't shock now as it did then says something profound, but I'm not gaga for profound tonight.

#85: A Night at the Opera (Marx Brothers)

2009-01-17T20:59:00.002-05:00

This is my first experience with the Marx Brothers. If this was the 1930's, I might have found them funny, but not so in the present. Humor is very difficult to judge over time since it changes so much, which is why Stephan Pastis of Pearls Before Swine is always ranting against long-running cartoons that no longer employ a relevant sense of humor. To add to the disconnect, the movie is full of opera singing, which is not fun to listen to. The whole movie felt like a Saturday Night Live with the scenes fading to black and entering new and different scenarios that had little transition. By today's standards, this was a discombobulated mess. Ah well, can't win 'em all.

AFI's Top Movies of My Lifetime

2009-01-07T15:25:00.002-05:00

Here they are, ripped from the Top-100 List I am tackling:

1. Raging Bull
2. Schindler's List
3. E.T. (The Extra-Terrestrial)
4. The Lord of the Rings (The Fellowship of the Ring)
5. Raiders of the Lost Ark
6. Unforgiven
7. Tootsie
8. Saving Private Ryan
9. The Shawshank Redemption
10. The Silence of the Lambs
11. Forrest Gump
12. Titanic
13. Platoon
14. The Sixth Sense
15. Sophie's Choice
16. Goodfellas
17. Pulp Fiction
18. Do The Right Thing
19. Blade Runner
20. Toy Story

Hardly. Boo. I have verified that this is an inexact science.

#86 Platoon (Oliver Stone, 1986)

2009-01-06T12:04:00.002-05:00

I watched this one last year, so it's not altogether fresh in my head other than some major scenes, like where important people are shot and killed. Oliver Stone's okay. He makes big Hollywood movies with big Hollywood actors, mostly about the government and the military. I guess it's problematic that I saw this shortly after Apocalypse Now, which does a much better job of cinematography. If Platoon is watching a very good movie about the soldiers in Vietnam, Apocalypse Now is actually watching the soldiers and experiencing what they experience.

Platoon proved to be just a little too crisp and clean to be believable. Also, if you put 10 fairly talented guys together, they don't equal one amazing superstar actor. Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Charlie Sheen, and the rest all fill good supporting roles, but Charlie Sheen just doesn't have the chops to fill the lead role the way his father did.

Nonetheless, Oliver Stone was actually involved in the Vietnam debacle, so we can trust him to give what he believes to be an accurate portrayal. I don't know, the mid 80's was the dawn of the monster crisp clean Hollywood movie, and I think this one got a little overbaked for the subject matter. Still, it was fun to watch.

#89: The Sixth Sense (1999, Shyamalan)

2009-01-05T14:45:00.002-05:00

M. Night Shyamalan does surprise endings. This was the first of his crazy little franchise that became increasingly megalomaniacal. Once we got to The Village, things were starting to smell a little fishy. It was a cool movie that I own with a fine cast. Then came The Chick in the Pool or whatever that was called, and the ending was telegraphed far too soon, but it didn't matter because Shyamalan had an idea and wasn't going to listen to anyone. I say all that to say that this was a phenomenon heralding a potential new great when it came out, but it will probably fade off the list like Amadeus and Dances With Wolves before it.

Additionally, I didn't find this movie all that enthralling. At the surprise ending, my reaction was, "Well, duh. I thought the glossing over of that very important event was odd." I actually liked the critically panned Unbreakable best of all 5 of his movies because it really embraced a sense of fun and wonder in getting to its conclusion. In fact, Unbreakable was really a fantastic precursor to the Spider-Man-led superhero movie genre that blew up a couple of years later.

Shyamalan has, sadly, not lived up to the promise of his early career and has delivered a series of films that have gone straight downhill. If he is able to regain himself later, perhaps The Sixth Sense will stand the test of time. Most likely, though, it will be forgotten. Oh well.

#92: Goodfellas (1990, Scorsese)

2009-01-05T00:12:00.002-05:00

Alright I do like Scorsese I really love The Departed and Taxi Driver and Gangs of NY and really need to see other things like Raging Bull which is way higher on this list but I just couldn't figure out what the huge massive deal with this movie was like maybe I need to watch it again or something but perhaps it's just because I watched this pretty much right after watching The Godfather and come on there's just no comparison with that and the thing that irked me the most was when they did one scene ONE that had Ray Liotta's wife narrating after he'd been narrating a whole heckuva lot and it just didn't go anywhere with her after that and what's the point of that female narration it just struck me the wrong way now don't get me wrong it's a decent flick with a lot of classic moments but does it only have this sort of notoriety because it's a mob movie that brought us back from the mob movie disaster that was Godfather III and made us believe again?

It's a lot easier to be disappointed in the selections for movies of my lifetime than it is for earlier eras, where I have to take someone's word for it because I just haven't seen enough of those movies and probably never will. Good night.

#87: 12 Angry Men (1957, Sidney Lumet, director)

2009-01-03T15:15:00.003-05:00

Sidney Lumet is a critically acclaimed legend. My first experience seeing a film I knew was one of his came in 2007, when I saw Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. It had a great set-up, could have gone in a million good directions, but fizzled out as he played out every last murder laboriously. There weren't really any surprises, as all characters followed their personal paths and none did anything uncharacteristic or surprising. I was unimpressed.

I see some of the same elements of Lumet's work in one of his earliest movies here. From the time that Henry Fonda stands alone as the one Not Guilty vote in the room, you know exactly how it's going to end as he slowly convinces different jurors, and himself, of his points. This ought not to be a suspenseful movie for the viewer.

I found interesting that almost the entire movie was contained within a single room. I'm sure that hadn't been done much before. So, I enjoyed the backdrop. I also liked that we were given a good long look at the defendant's face before these men went into the room.

12 Angry Men stands as a generational movie that challenges the men of the status quo and forces individual choice upon each juror. Everyone has a point that gives him a moment of doubt and causes him to change his vote. There are immigrants and jocks and ad men and old men and businessmen. They each see things differently and have different personal obstacles to seeing things clearly. Put this in the early 1990's and it would barely cause a blink, but in 1957 it asks questions that weren't asked to the few in the audience who actually wanted to answer them. I now laud my first Sidney Lumet film in 3 tries.

#90 Swing Time (1935, Astaire/Rogers)

2008-12-31T10:40:00.003-05:00

Apparently Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers did some 10 movies like this together, but this is the first one I've seen. Aside from talking about the movie itself, it gave me two interesting insights into cultural change in the past 70 years.

1. Gayness. If Fred Astaire were alive and doing his thing today, he couldn't have gotten away with being straight. He would likely have been consumed by the overzealous gay culture. He's a real ladies' man, an actor, a singer, and a dancer. Okay, strike that. Justin Timberlake can get away with it, I guess Fred probably could, too.

2. Specialization. As there are more than twice as many people in the US as there were at the time of this movie, there has been a greater need for everyone's talents to become pigeonholed. The only ones who get away with doing everything are those who are marketed well in one thing and get oodles of money for it, then do a lot of other things badly with their brand, yet mucous-brained Americans everywhere love them for it. These cats could sing and dance and act, and did it all in one movie.

There are some efforts today, like Julia Stiles in Save The Last Dance, but these are merely actors learning how to dance well enough for the screen, not professional dancing. For that, we have to watch Dancing with the Stars. This movie puts it all together in one spot with people who are talented in many things. It was a simpler time.

Oh, and I checked out the modern-day value of the $25,000 Fred Astaire needs in the movie, and it would be almost $400K today. Quite a bit for a bride, don't you think?

#88: Bringing Up Baby (1938, Katherine Hepburn)

2008-12-22T16:27:00.002-05:00

Very glad I saw this movie. It's completely ridiculous and introduced me to a couple of the old time stars in Hepburn and Cary Grant. The pace of the dialogue is fantastic, the sort of thing that Jennifer Jason Leigh threw back to in The Hudsucker Proxy. Hepburn is oblivious to the world as it is, instead hearing what she wants to hear and doing what she wants to do. After 10 minutes, I wanted to slap some sense into her.

That's the whole point of the movie, though, tangling the poor man in her fiasco run to the country with a leapord. It's so maniacal and fast-paced, so well-orchestrated, that it's definitely worth checking out if you haven't seen much of the old movies and don't know what they're about. And...there's no ulterior motive or message theme, which I really like.

#95: The Last Picture Show (1971)

2008-12-19T20:04:00.002-05:00

This is a film before its time, shot in the old black and white. It's a coming of age tale in a small North Texas town, so small that everyone is in each other's pants and everyone else knows about it. The entire movie revolves around fairly poor yet successful attempts at seduction; the central young seductress being Cybill Shepherd, who I didn't know was gorgeous because I'd only seen her years later. I understand now why Scorsese nabbed her as his ideal for Taxi Driver. People die, rebel, get jilted, and make ignorant old man commentary. It's almost like a Coen Brothers film noir, that's what it reminded me of most.

Perhaps the most encompassing quote came from the 40-year-old Ruth when she was being picked up at the clinic by high school senior Sonny. He asked, "Anything bad?" to which she replied, "No, just dreary."

This film could easily have been made sometime in the past 10 years, and that's saying something. I guess we can add sex to the controversial list of race, religion, drugs, and the Holocaust. Oh well. Think Fast Times at Ridgemont High with a wide range of ages. Thumbs up.

#91: Sophie's Choice (1982, Meryl Streep)

2008-12-19T10:09:00.003-05:00

Alright, AFI. You're starting to show a pattern early on. I've watched four movies for the first time since I started this, and they have been about race, drugs, religion, and Auschwitz. I guess Americans really are so dull as to show their greatest interest in themes that are easy to grasp. I guess I should stop saying "It wouldn't be on the countdown if it wasn't about..." because it feels more and more like the list will be full of gimmicks.

Sophie's Choice is a story of a bizarro isosceles love triangle with two tragically flawed characters. It's a venture into being a product of one's circumstances. A movie generally for chicks from 25 years ago is not something I'd normally pick and watch on my own. C'mon, Kevin Kline and Meryl Streep are not actors in my normal movies. I only know the third guy from Ghostbusters 2. It's a lot about relationships, a lot of people sitting around in pink rooms. Anything well-made with the Holocaust, though, is a recipe for critical success. I'm learning as I go.

#100: Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston, 1959)

2008-12-17T09:00:00.003-05:00

This is the sort of movie I'm watching this list for. There was a time in classical music when they thought they could actually make perfect music. It was called Baroque, some of the most famous composers from the time being Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi. I think there was a baroque sense about movies of this era, with the technological advances of color and camera speeds making it possible for filmmakers to do anything they could imagine. They wanted to make the perfect movie.

There are many things I can say about this. The first is that I am a big fan of Charlton Heston epics. That's probably why I love to watch the one-man-to-save-us movies of Keanu Reeves and Will Smith. Hest0n did it first, and he was magnificent. Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, Ben-Hur, and many more starring a magnanimous character of strength and passion against the forces of evil, with endings that surprise and remain.

The movie is 3-1/2 hours long. That's like 2 movies. It took me 3 days to watch. That's alright, I like to push myself with long things. I read Don Quixote a couple of years ago. Epic tales are by nature lengthy.

Seems there was still, at that time, a real reverence for the Christ, so that we never saw his face and he never spoke. Other characters had to relay his words to each other for the screen. They were all direct quotes from the Bible, so they were not completely in flow. The ending is predictable, even though it seems like they'll go another route about 10 minutes before the movie actually closes. It's very interesting that the entire movie was building to its second title, A Tale of the Christ.

Upon looking that up, I even see that it was a remake of a 1925 movie. You learn something new every day. That makes even more sense out of this baroque feel I described earlier.

Anyway, the chariot race is worth the hype. Lucas was trying to do this in Star Wars: Episode I, but the effect of the race is the fall and rise of one competitor at the hands of the other and the hatred each has, not the wager. This race had great complexity, it MEANT more. Also, the great sea battle was pretty spectacular. Like I said, I'm a fan of Charlton Heston epics, and this affirms their place in cinematic history. It did fall 28 spots on the list in the last 10 years, which is probably due to the current cultural swing away from religion and happy endings. Eh, the tale of Judah Ben-Hur is fanstastic. Glad I watched this one.

#94 Pulp Fiction (1994)

2008-12-16T12:35:00.005-05:00

The sad truth is as follows: I watched about 1/2 hour of this when I was a freshman in college, but it didn't hold my attention because I was very tired, so I went back to my room and slept. I didn't sit down to watch it again for 10 years. I apologize to myself.

Tarantino hasn't always hit the mark, but Pulp Fiction was a real triumph in nonlinear storytelling insanity. It requires a love of irreverent violence and Sam Jackson dropping F-bombs. There has been so much written about Pulp Fiction that I can hardly add a word.

My favorite scene is when Bruce Willis goes hunting through a pawn shop for a suitable weapon and comes back with...with...gotta watch it. Travolta and Uma dancing is classic. Heck, the whole thing is pretty classic. Somewhere they had this on the top 10 all-time movies. You really owe it to yourself to check it out.

#97: Blade Runner (1982)

2008-12-14T09:12:00.003-05:00

I own this movie and should really watch it again. I think I've seen it 3 times, but never the original version, only the Director's Cut and Final Cut. The crispness and color of the final cut is like watching Star Wars Special Edition, only without the director ruining it by adding in goofy CGI.

Harrison Ford, a really good actor back in the day as evidenced by his presence on at least 5 movies on the countdown, is a detective hunting down Replicants, which are man-made people. If you remember the Rob Zombie song More Human Than Human, well, that's the slogan of the company that creates Replicants.

Director Ridley Scott paints a dark and seedy futuristic landscape and ponders existence in what is essentially a huge "cult" film. This film gained such a following that its later cuts earned theatrical release, in part due to Ridley Scott's success with Gladiator and other movies. Anyway, watch this one, preferrably the final cut. There are great landscapes and interesting characters. It's a sci-fi dream. Please remember that it's from 1982 so don't gripe when some things are less fantastical than, say, The Matrix. It's good.

36/100 Movies I've already seen

2008-12-13T17:14:00.002-05:00

I just went through the list and have seen, in some form or other, 36 of the "Top 100" already. This means I get to take a pass on quite a few if I feel like it. The more I scan through the list, the more I think that many of the movies from my lifetime were more cultural phenomena than triumphs of filmmaking. Oh well, we'll see how it goes. At least I get to review Blade Runner soon.

#93: The French Connection (1971)

2008-12-13T15:27:00.003-05:00

Guess what folks? Nobody wins the drug war.

The characters are pretty cool and there are a few memorable scenes, like Santa making a bust at the beginning, as well as the maniacal chase of an L train by a car on a crowded 2-lane New York street. We also get a lot of early 70's dead time with wide amateur-photographer shots of men walking and other men watching them from afar, with no soundtrack music to speak of.

Gene Hackman and Roy "Jaws" Scheider do a good job playing a couple of rough cops in New York, in a good story. However, most of the filmmaking felt pretty pedestrian 70's almost 40 years after the fact.

I like it, I get it, but if the movie wasn't about drug trafficking, it wouldn't have made this list. It actually fell 23 spots over the past 10 years, showing evidence that culturally we're perhaps getting oversaturated with movies about drugs, so that the revelations of 1971 are no longer stunning. Watch it or don't.

#98: Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

2008-12-12T19:29:00.002-05:00

I'm taking a pass on this one because I saw it as a kid. I'm sure it's a fine movie. I think I probably enjoyed at least a little of what I understood of it. It's about a guy who was a rich big deal, becomes a nobody, and then rises like a phoenix. All I remember really is a scene with some high school kids who asked him if the music he made was anything like the song "Jeepers Creepers", which is an odd twist in the era of horrible horror flicks.

This is the first reviewed in the B&W era of movies that I'm trying to become more familiar with. You can see I'm not reticent at all to watch them.

p.s. Upon seeing the image, I exclaimed to myself in my head, "Cagney! I f***ing KNEW it!"

#99: Toy Story (1995)

2008-12-12T10:16:00.002-05:00

WTF Toy Story?! Are you serious? I guess there's all this emphasis on cultural significance and changing styles, but Toy Story? It was the first fully computer animated movie, but who cares? I find the computer animated movies to be inferior to their hand-drawn animated counterparts. Everything is so crisp, so clean, so inauthentic.

Give me Jungle Book, An American Tail, Robin Hood, The Lion King, the list goes on. I don't even find it that compelling of a story. Some band of idiots got together sometime in the mid 90's and decided that all movies have to include actual kids, like myth and fantasy can't exist without an "entry point" for children. Suffice to say, the goofy little stories they come up with for these computer animated films generally suck, and the humor "for adults" that they throw in is generally terrible by adult humor standards.

Toy Story was okay at best. Disney killed traditional animation after The Lion King with a string of terrible movies in order to usher in this new era, and we celebrate this by putting the first one of these silly little stories on the TOP 100 OF ALL TIME? In 10 years, it should be off the list. Good night.

#96: Do The Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989)

2008-12-11T13:58:00.008-05:00

With the inclusion of Spike Lee, you should now know that this is the 10th Anniversary edition from 2007. I can't believe that 1989 is almost 20 years ago. I was old enough to like girls in 1989.

The opening credits to Do The Right Thing are like The Cosby Show, only with an angry Rosie Perez instead of Raven Simone. After that, the plot is simply one day in the hood, which lets me see where Friday came from.

They open the fire hydrant and then douse an old white guy's convertible. The cops are predictably not happy about their jobs. One guy wanders around blaring "Fight The Power" on his boom box all day. The camera angles are good. The colors are bright.

The main character exists somewhere between his jobless contemporaries and his hard working pizza shop boss. Sal, of Sal's Famous Pizzeria, is a sufficiently complex character who's been running his shop there for 25 years and tries to act like part of the community for the sake of his business even though he and his sons don't fit in there and don't want to.

The movie is full of overt racial tension including Hispanics, Koreans, Italians, and Blacks. Typical racial overtones for Spike Lee, but this is where he gets the drive to make the rest of his films, which never live up.

Do The Right Thing is worth watching as a snapshot 20 years B.O. (Before Obama) into a people too frustrated with their situation to deal with it in an appropriate and successful manner. Where his characters fail, Spike Lee has hope they'll get it eventually.

(Re) Introduction

2008-12-11T13:43:00.004-05:00

I just reopened my Netflix account with the intent of going through the AFI Top 100 from bottom to top. The American Film Institute is a bunch of folks who get together and decide what the best movies ever are. People tend to accept them as the experts. Here's what you will and won't find here:

You WILL get a few paragraphs about the movie.
You WON'T get those stupid links scattered through the blog like you don't know how to use Google, Wikipedia, and IMDB. I hate reading multicolored text.
You WON'T get to hear about the surprise endings. Even though these are mostly well-known movies and the surprise endings MIGHT no longer be surprises, you MIGHT not know the endings, so I won't ruin them. I hate that.
You WON'T get a rating from me like it matters, because it doesn't. These are the AFI Top 100, so it can be assumed they'd all be 4 or 5 star movies. It's not like Surf Ninjas is on the list.
You WON'T get them exactly in order. It will be close, but not quite, because some I've already seen and some I can watch online. #35 won't precede #89 in the countdown, but #44 might precede #45.
You WILL get a neat little picture, maybe also a YouTube video if I feel like it.

That's all. I'm a smart guy. I like movies. This gives me something to do in conjunction with watching them.

Kasey Chambers

2006-01-03T14:17:00.000-05:00

I'd recommend that discriminating listeners pick up a Kasey Chambers CD, and then allow yourself to spend some time wondering why I'm recommending it.

Quick lyric to hook your attention:

Hold my heart

In the palm of your hand

Don't listen to it breaking

Just listen to the bend

Take these tears

Wash your skin

I'm having trouble breathing

Since you walked in

(A Million Tears, from Barricades & Brickwalls)

I first took interest when I illegally downloaded Barricades and Brickwalls around five years ago. I proceeded to illegally download The Captain. She has a new CD out that I'm trying to scam off of eBay for less than half the retail value.

Kasey Chambers makes the sort of music that would be really potent if it was sung by the likes of Trisha Yearwood or some other country-pop hussy. These are rocking ballads and bluesy tunes that should cut you pretty deep. They make more sense to me than pretty much any other country music out there because they're about real things. Most country music today is the Nashville version of ho's, bling, and drugs. Kasey writes in the old style, which is nice.

Funny, though, her voice. She could almost pass for a 12-year old. But it's really great to hear someone with an innocent voice singing like she does, especially when she says I grabbed a glass and said, 'Kiss my ass, I'm gonna drink you out of my head.'" That's about as vulgar as she gets, and she's still able to give you real feelings, probably more real than those who get more vulgar. Give her a listen, if only for a couple of minutes. I think you'll smile.

Chang-Rae Lee

2004-10-15T11:13:00.000-04:00

I know it's a little early for another book, as I just dropped one on you a few days ago. Sorry. I spent the whole day wine tasting yesterday and didn't really have time to think of what I'd like to talk about in this space. If you want to read about my wine tasting experience, go here.

Going forward, Chang-Rae Lee is a special author. He's new, too, which puts this blog right on the cutting edge. Chang-Rae is a Korean-American author who, until recently, had written a couple of books about the Korean-American experience. He's fairly young, and judging by his latest work, daring.

The first book of his I read was Native Speaker, which details the plight of Henry Park, an unassuming detective who is as aloof in his private life as he is at work. His co-workers are a conglomerate of immigrant/nationals who get into the private lives of supposedly dangerous people to gain some shred of evidence that can be used against them. His life has gone terribly wrong thanks to the accidental death of his son. The book travels back and forth between work and life, using both to expound upon and remedy his deficiencies. If you're looking for a "plot" book, go somewhere else. The ultimate point of this book is to lay bare ideas about loneliness, love, and language...not to surprise you with some shocking conclusion. The surprises and plot elements exist, but I hope that's not all you get out of it.

I liked Native Speaker so much, I went ahead and read Aloft, a book about a white guy. That's where I have to start out, because on the surface it's awkward. I read his first book with the understanding that I was listening to a Korean-American narrator. That was some of its charm. For Lee to cross over and become an American narrator was a very difficult task, one that I think achieved some mixed results. The story is fabulous, and the white guy, Jerry, was married to a Korean-American woman. Again, the story is not so dependent on the outcome as the way it gets there, which is very nice. Jerry Battle is, like Henry Park, aloof and detached from everyone in his private life. He must come to terms with all of this and reconcile himself to his life. By the time I'd read for a little while, I was no longer concerned with the lack of an authentic Long Island voice because the story took over.

That's a very quick synopsis of two books by Chang-Rae. The third book, A Gesture Life, I haven't gotten to yet. Chang-Rae Lee is definitely worth your time and reads very easily. 'Til next time...

~MTB

Elbow

2004-10-13T13:04:00.000-04:00

Now presenting...the greatest rock band you've never heard of. My friend introduced me to these guys around 2 years ago. This is a guy who once told me that maybe he didn't so much like music as "misery, in a song." Fair enough, talking about Elbow, if you're simply looking for radio pop. Please, if you can't deal with melancholy, stop right here and go buy the second Coldplay CD. Those guys try REAL hard.

Elbow is fantastic. Brilliant. Unfortunately, their website is not. If you want to listen to clips from their latest album, go here. Elbow's first album, Asleep in the Back, was basically a greatest hits of their first 10 years as a band. They spent plenty of time refining their craft and compiled a great group of songs...but if you've ever listened to a greatest hits CD, you know they often come off a little disjointed. Coming around for a second dose thanks to the wonderful (and fairly underground in the U.S.) reception to their first album, Elbow has produced an absolute masterpiece.

The first track, Ribcage, is an excellent song...until the chorus chimes in with

And then the sunshine
Throwin' me a lifeline
Finds its way into my room
All I need is you

...then the song takes it to another level, one that we may not have descriptors for yet. At this precise moment, you should know that you are experiencing greatness. The album doesn't let down from there. The songs were written in a "pressure cooker", so they have a coherency and unity unlike the first album, yet each song retains its own uniqueness. There's not a "skip over me" song anywhere in sight.

Guy Garvey is sufficiently disinterested in bringing the listener any particular highs with his vocals. He's more than content to hold you in his world, in which he reacts maturely to real life disappointments and finds a way to get up and put his pants on, one leg at a time, the next day. The rest of the band is full of the same sort of business, with the exception of the occasional full-band instrumental version of a scream, which defies logic but grows on you after about the 10th listen. The variety of background instrumentation is excellent and worthy of your attention, meaning you have to sit down with this CD in a quiet room or on headphones.

John Cusack always talked about his "desert island top-5" records in High Fidelity. This album is a different kind of desert island CD. If you're stuck on a desert island, at least it will keep you from going crazy while you're waiting to die. In a lot of ways, these guys are waiting right there with you, but they don't let it get to them. Do whatever you can to get this CD. The next time you're in a lousy situation, spend it with the guys from Elbow. They'll go get a pint with you and help you forget about your troubles.

~MTB

SHAUN OF THE DEAD!!!!

2004-10-12T13:52:00.000-04:00

Shaun of the Dead is, for a moment, my favorite movie. I'm not even letting other movies hang around this movie right now. It's that good. It may not be good in the Hollywood comedy or Hollywood horror sense, but it has all of those elements and will easily become one of the greatest cult movies of all time. If you don't like cult movies, get into them. More importantly, stop going to see anything put out by Hollywood. If there's a Hollywood movie you really want to see, whether it be mindless action, a stupid comedy with too many crude jokes, a chick flick, or a cookie-cutter suspense movie, you can rent it. It's not worth paying $8 or more to walk out of a movie and say, "I thought it was good. There was this one part..." Use your money wisely. See Shaun of the Dead in theaters.

The plot of the movie goes something like this: Shaun is 29 and a college graduate working at the London equivalent of Radio Shack. He hangs out with his incredibly lazy roommate Ed and also lives with a corporate ladder-climber named Pete. He has a girlfriend, Liz, who hates the fact that all he ever wants to do is go to the Winchester for a pint. Liz dumps him and Pete turns into a zombie. Heck, pretty much everyone turns into a zombie, which is no big deal because the first 15 minutes or so of the movie are dedicated to showing how zombie-like everyday life is. Shaun and Ed think the first few zombies they see are actually just drunks...until the zombies try to eat them. They proceed to try to kill them with Shaun's record collection, which a) doesn't work and b) destroys some pretty choice records of Shaun's. Eventually, they settle on some blunt objects from the shed. They then make a plan to go outside (against the news anchor's warnings) and save his now-ex-girlfriend and his mum from the zombies and hole up in the Winchester and have a few drinks 'til the whole thing blows over. Great plan, right?

Sorry, it's been over a week since I saw the movie. I don't even remember offhand what moments sent me into pound-the-seat fits of laughter and made my girlfriend snort. The movie doesn't stop at zombie comedy, however, as it gets real serious at the end when Shaun and his band have to kill the zombies of people they knew and loved. The movie has everything. Action, suspense, humor, sorrow...if you don't get it, I feel bad for you, because "The Emperor has already won." Fifteen and a half stars, based on the movies the Hollywood critics give the Hollywood films that they're paid to advertise. Have a nice day, and remember, they can be stopped "by either removing the head or destroying the brain."

Rotten Tomatoes Shaun of the Dead site.

~MTB

Brave New World

2004-10-11T11:29:00.000-04:00

It's neither obscure nor new, rather, it is a classic of a strange sort. I would not waste my time talking about something that everyone has already read, except that it appears that almost no one has read it.

Everyone, and I mean everyone read 1984 by George Orwell in school, which was a great piece to brainwash kids about the ills of Communism in an era in which it was very abusive and dangerous as a military enemy. Not nearly as many people are familiar with the book Brave New World, which is understandable due to the way in which sex is talked about in the book. It's a little closer to our society's methods than those of Huxley's world, where sex is primarily recreation instead of procreation. I don't really agree with this, and I don't think Huxley does either. Kids don't really need to read this, but if you're an adult, you can't really afford not to.

Brave New World is a story about a society that embraces free love, a drug that is both psychiatric and recreational with no side effects, and uses its technology to prevent people from aging. Sound good? It's not. The people are deprived of that which defines life, which is sadness, pain, anger, suffering, and with them joy, excitement, love, and all the other positive emotions that come as a result of having the negative ones. The sad thing is, our society is not too far from this one. Time and time again, I find myself responding to some lament someone has about society with "It's a Brave New World, bub." Orwell's book was okay, but not too telling of the future save for maybe the Patriot Act. Brave New World gives us all manner of insight into the positive reinforcement method for making everyone stupid and subservient. If you have any questions about its relevance, just look at the Hillary Duff phenomenon. Kids are being trained at a young age to think that bad is good. YOU NEED TO READ THIS BOOK OR YOU WILL BECOME LIKE ITS PEOPLE!

I'm not writing reviews here, just telling you what entertainment you need to waste your time on. I'm not too pleased with this one, but I'm devoted to putting something new up here every day. Soon enough, I might have a post up here that sufficiently describes the work. Until then, take my word for it.

The World Series of Poker

2004-10-10T02:54:00.000-04:00

I never expected television would be the first corner of popular culture you'd see here. From June '02 thru May '04, I lived on my own and didn't pay for cable. I've been back in my parents' house for a couple of months now, supposedly to save money although I keep finding ways to lose that which I save. They have cable. Here we go.

The World Series of Poker is today's pick because of its educational value. If you've ever played cards before, you can learn not only the rules, but also some of the nuance involved in Texas Hold 'Em. Heck, after watching a few shows, I even understood Omaha Hold 'Em, which is a little trickier. Poker is an excellent game that requires you not only to calculate your odds on the fly and judge the practicality of your wagers, but also to read your opponents' faces and moves for signs that they either have a scary hand or an empty one.

The cast of characters is great. There's a guy nicknamed Jesus with sunglasses, long hair, and a cowboy hat. You can also find a dude whose last name is Moneymaker. Whether that's his real name, I don't know. A lot of foreign players make appearances, too, which adds to the intrigue as players need to learn to read reactions across cultures.

You can learn a lot from TV. You just need to know how to look. I learned the dating essentials through television and the movies a lot more than I learned by doing. When my mom's video camera was still working, I learned a lot about my golf swing by having someone film me. I don't even have to start talking about The History Channel here. Take caution, however, and don't watch TV any more than you have to. About the only thing worse for you is sitting in front of your computer writing meaningless reviews of semi-obscure pop cultural phenomena that no one will ever read anyway. By the way, I took second out of 8 in my first ever (5.5 hr long) game of Texas Hold 'Em tonight. Not bad, eh?

Interested in playing? Tournament Info

Good night, world.
~MTB