Cinema

There seemed to be quite a bit of focus at the Oscars on the advantages of watching a movie on the big screen (that is, in a theater, not your big screen TV at home). There were several references to this point, including comments by the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the host of the Oscars. We got to see a clip illustrating the importance of the big screen. The clip had scenes from various big action movies such as The Ten Commandments (Moses parts the sea) and Star Wars (some starship scene).

I certainly understand the upside of seeing movies on the big screen (and not just from the profit-oriented point-of-view, but also from the viewer’s perspective). However, I don’t understand how it helps to make this argument in a situation where most of the people watching your clips are viewing them through their TV sets at home. Was the point to show us scenes that would look particularly unimpressive on the small screen, but remind us how impressive they would be on a big one? They were well-known scenes that we know are impressive so how is this supposed to get us to run out and watch movies in theaters?

JAAIS is short for Jane-Austen-Adaptation-Inauthenticity-Syndrome. Sufferers can be of either sex, though most are female. The symptoms are a craving to see the latest TV or film adaptation of a Jane Austen novel, accompanied by anticipatory worries that “I bet it is going to be awful”. If the victim watches the adaptation at home, perhaps on a rented DVD, she feels the compulsion to keep up a commentary on the inauthenticity of the costumes, performances, location and on unwarranted departures from the original novel. “Mr Bennet was never at that ball!” or “They would never have done _that_ !” or “She’s far too old!” are standard remarks. There is no known cure.

I had to help someone suffering from a particularly bad case of JAAIS last night. When we then played the “alternate US ending” to “Pride and Prejudice”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0414387/ — the awful extra syrupy gooey ending that was demanded by test audiences in Des Moines — I thought I was going to witness a seizure! No doubt the special super-schlocky ending was inflicted all over North America, so that even unsuspecting Canadian JAAIS sufferers were caught.

Following on from Kieran’s “post about British and US TV”:https://crookedtimber.org/2006/02/13/turnabout-is-fair-play/ the other day, I started thinking about the best “TV miniseries/drama serial”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_miniseries ever, by which I mean just the best drama series telling a story over a limited number of episodes. My list of five contains four British examples and one German. Maybe I’m just parochial, but maybe this is a format the British excel in and the Americans don’t. That’s my hunch. So here’s my list (with annotations). Post rival suggestions in comments.

1. “Heimat”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087400/ . Does this count? It is long by miniseries standards, but Edgar Reitz’s story of the the Simon family and the village of Schabbach from the end of the First World War to the 1970s is simply the best thing I’ve ever seen on TV. The sequels, Heimat 2 and Heimat 3 are also pretty good, and some think Heimat 2 the best of the three. They’re wrong, but non-culpably so.

2. “The Edge of Darkness”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090424/ . Mid 80s nuclear drama set in Britain as policeman Bob Peck goes after the killers of his daughter (Joanne Whalley) with help from rogue CIA man Joe Don Baker. Eric Clapton soundtrack with frequent playings of Willie Nelson’s “Time of the Preacher” thrown in (the daughter’s favourite record). Tense, paranoid, and secured Peck his role in Jurassic Park.

3. “The Singing Detective”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090521/ . Who could watch the pathethic Hollywood remake after this? Michael Gambon, Joanne Whalley (again!) and a sense of growing incredulity that the plot can actually come together. Complete with Dennis Potter’s trademark use of music and song as the key to the unconscious. His best work.

4. “Our Friends in the North”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115305/ . Currently being shown again in the UK. From 1960s idealism, through local government and police corruption, vice, and the miner’s strike. Christopher Ecclestone and Gina McKee both superb.

5. “Traffik”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096716/ . Why did they ever make the crummy Hollywood version with Douglas and Zeta-Jones? Lindsay Duncan gives an ice-cold performance as the wife as the various threads come together in the UK, Germany and Pakistan. Shostakovich’s 8th String Quartet as the backing music.

I note the dates for these are 1984, 1985, 1986, 1996 and 1989, suggesting the 1980s as a golden age for the format. I might have included Bleasdale’s “Boys from the Blackstuff”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083689/ (1982) or “GBH”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101104/ (1991) on a different day.

“WTF???”:http://www.apple.com/trailers/weinstein/doogal/trailer1r/

Doogal? Zeebad? What? Then there’s “this”:http://www.the-magic-roundabout.com/ which seems to suggest that it was perpetrated on the U.K. last year.

Via “Jamie Zawinski”:http://jwz.livejournal.com/ comes “C’était un Rendezvous”:http://www.jerrykindall.com/2005/11/07_cetait_un_rendezvous.asp. A short and very fast film:

On an August morning in 1978, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and had a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris. The film was limited for technical reasons to 10 minutes; the course was from Porte Dauphine, through the Louvre, to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur. No streets were closed, for Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit. The driver completed the course in about 9 minutes, reaching nearly 140 MPH in some stretches. The footage reveals him running real red lights, nearly hitting real pedestrians, and driving the wrong way up real one-way streets.

The film has been “remastered and released on DVD”:http://www.rendezvousdvd.com/. You can watch the whole thing “here”:http://www.bsdunix.ch.nyud.net:8090/public/rendezvous20_04.mov. (Big download: about 34MB.) Bump it up to full screen mode or twice the normal size to get the full effect. The middle third of the film, when he’s right in the middle of Paris, is just unbelievable, as he runs six or seven red lights, screams around garbage trucks and narrowly misses several pedestrians as he flies down narrow, cobbled streets. Apparently there are all kinds of stories about the film, including whether the director did the driving himself in his own car. Having just watched it, I’d happily insinuate I could drive like that, too.

I went to see “Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage”:http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0426578/ (film website “here”:http://www.sophiescholl-derfilm.de/ ) last night, and came away with ambivalent feelings about it. On the one hand, it is good to see this extraordinary moment of heroism get a cinematic treatment, but on the other, it didn’t work especially well as a film. The film is supposedly based on Gestapo transcripts — but can it be true that Scholl and her interrogator engaged in lengthy speechifying against (and in defence of) the Nazi regime? These were the sort of exchanges that might work well in a stage play, but seemed stilted and artificial on the screen. There was also the matter of the film’s focus on Sophie as an individual rather than on her brother Hans when, from the point of view of their heroism, there seems little to choose between them. That seemed to exploit a tacit assumption that there was something specially noble about a woman resisting rather than a man. The film was good in bringing out their religious convictions, and the importance they had in motivating their acts. Certainly a film very much worth seeing for its moral and political qualities, but perhaps not for its aesthetic ones.

I caught the “Guinness evolution ad”:http://www.bestadsontv.com/ad_details.php?id=634 (QuickTime movie) when I went to see the (rather excellent) “Sommersturm”:http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0420206/ last night. (I doubt that cinemas in Kansas will be showing the ad any time soon — or the movie for that matter!)

[Aaargh! It turns out that this is the _third time_ we’ve linked to the Guinness ad on CT (sorry “Eszter”:https://crookedtimber.org/2005/10/10/evolution/ and “Kieran”:https://crookedtimber.org/2005/10/06/noitulove/ ) — we really must start reading one another’s posts!]

“Matt Yglesias”:http://yglesias.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/6/19/19946/6420 notes that “MPAA rules for avoiding an R-Rating … allow you up to two uses of “fuck” as long as the word appears in a non-sexual context.” A bit reminiscent of the “Rory” Award, featured in Douglas Adams’ _Life, the Universe and Everything_, which was granted for the Most Gratuitous Use of the Word “Fuck” in a Serious Screenplay. In the US edition of _LTUAE_, this was changed to the Most Gratuitous Use of the Word “Belgium” in a Serious Screenplay, neatly proving Matt’s point about the unique censoriousness of American media.

For those in Chicagoland or those contemplating a visit, here are some fun goings on over the summer. I still consider myself relatively new in the area so I’m still actively on the lookout for what goes on here these months. I’m very impressed.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve already had the opportunity to go see a Gospel Music Festival, an Art Fair and participate in other outdoor celebrations. Much more is ahead. The free Summer Dance program started at Grant Park this past Wednesday. It runs until the end of August. On Wednesdays they have a DJ. On Thu-Sun they first offer free dance lessons and then have a live band for dances ranging from Polka to Swing, from Bachata to Waltzes. Given that I have been spending increasing amounts of time in dance classes, this is an exciting and fun opportunity. A propos dance, this weekend is the annual Chicago Crystal Ball national dance competition. I’ll be there although only for part of it since I’m hosting friends over the weekend and we’ll be exploring numerous areas of town. No, I won’t be competing at Crystal Ball, but I’ll be cheering on friends who will.

Next weekend (24-26th) will be the Wired Nextfest for all of us interested in the latest gadgets. I think from there I’ll head straight to Grant Park for that evening’s ballroom session.

A bit later in the summer will be the Chicago Outdoor Film Festival also in Grant Park. This event it free as well. They will be wrapping up with Star Wars on Aug 23rd. Sounds fun.

I have found the following resources especially helpful in finding out about goings-on and keeping track. I recommend them as sources of additional amusement:

• City of Chicago Events page
• Upcoming.org‘s Events listings (this should be helpful also if you are in another metro area in the US)

So I picked up the original Star Wars trilogy — or, at least, the re-masticated DVD version, “Greedo shoots first”:http://www.dvdanswers.com/sw1.html and all that — mostly out of curiosity. I hadn’t watched the first two in years and I’d never seen _Return of the Jedi_. I watched most of _The Empire Strikes Back_, which was pretty good, and ended up fast-forwarding through most of ROTJ. My God. Whole chunks of it were simply unwatchable. Just appalling. It’s notable that the first three films share almost all of the faults of the second three, right down to dubiously ethnic alien sidekicks. (Who the hell came up with Lando’s co-pilot, for instance?) This lends credence to the generational-imprint theory of their popularity. These negatives are offset by the freshness of _Star Wars_, the decent dramatic pacing of _Empire_, and the humor of both. But it’s hard not to think that what’s holding the whole edifice together are a couple of good characters (Vader, Yoda, maybe Solo) and some of the design elements: the fighters and ships, the lightsabers, the droids and a few other things. It certainly ain’t the leads, the dialogue, the direction, or the plots.

_Update_: On the other hand, were it not for Lucas we wouldn’t have things “like this”:http://www.withlouis.com/film/yoda/.

_Update 2_: OK, that last clip goes on a bit too long and there’s no real punchline. Try “this one”:http://www.amwmedia.com/downloads/lightsaber.mpg instead. Teh funny.

I knew they’d make a film of it when I first heard it, one of a few thousand apparently, in my teenage bedroom just outside Slough (ironically, as it turns out, for where would Martin Freeman be without Slough?). So I waited. And waited. And waited. 27 years or thereabouts. There have been months (years, perhaps) in which I haven’t thought about it, and when it finally opened I thought, “well, I can wait a few weeks more”. So yesterday I took my 8 year old and her friend. My hopes were not high — I didn’t even care whether it would be good, I was just fulfilling the wish I had 27 years ago. It couldn’t possibly match the radio series, I knew that, not least because Peter Jones is dead and Simon Jones is…over the hill.

I’m not going to review it: I’m already behind the curve.
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“Tyler Cowen”:http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/05/revenge_of_the_.html is excitedly looking forward to Revenge of the Sith, and is encouraged by “positive review”:http://www.variety.com/VE1117927015.html in Variety:

bq. The Force returns with most of its original power regained in “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith.” Concluding entry in George Lucas second three-pack of space epics teems with action, drama and spectacle, and even supplies the odd surge of emotion … Whatever one thought of the previous two installments, this dynamic picture irons out most of the problems, and emerges as the best in the overall series since “The Empire Strikes Back.” Stratospheric B.O. is a given.

Not up to speed on Variety’s entertainment-industry jargon, my first thought on reading that last sentence was, “Well of course, what with all those nerds packed in to the cinema.”

George Lucas’s relationship with his fans must by now be a standard case study for second-year social worker students specializing in the treatment of abusive, co-dependent relationships:

_Fans_ (to therapist): I love him, and, and, I _know_ he’s really wonderful deep down — I know he means well and is a decent man. It’s just that sometimes … (sobbing)

(Cut to videotape)

_Lucas_: Take this, you stupid bitch! [Offscreen: Smack! Ewoks! Crash! Jar-Jar! Bang! Big parade/award ceremony at end!]

_Fans_ (crying openly): It’s my fault, I know — I just can’t seem to please him. He doesn’t _mean_ to hurt this way …

It’s awful, really.

I watched Rosemary’s Baby over the weekend. I don’t know who I’m typing SPOILER ALERT for, but I don’t want to hear any whining.

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I saw The Interpreter last night, and had distinctly mixed feelings; it’s an interesting film, but not a very good one.(warning: spoilers ahead).
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