The Best Films of 2008- That's Right, 2008

A year has passed. You know what a year gives us? Deference. Only now may we with ironclad certainty declare, having had time to reflect, what the best films of the year before last were. The emotions have bubbled down and now we're all a little more objective in our subjectivity.

5. Redbelt-- We'll call this film 2008's The Fountainhead. The story of an oft-frustrating main character refusing to give himself a break by giving in to the wills of his inferiors. Some pacing problems are present, but I love a film that is both so inspiring and so unusual. It makes no apologies to the audience for the unyielding defense of its somewhat-bizarre main character, and has a moral compass any viewer would be hard-pressed to find in another film not written by David Mamet.

4. Rachel Getting Married-- A very honest look at families, which, as some dude named Leo Tolman once wrote, are all miserable in fascinatingly different ways. Anne Hathaway (a lot of people hate her; I like her very much) stars as a young woman heading home from rehab to attend her estranged sister's marriage. Their feelings for each other flip with every scene, but naturally, and the swings from brutality to compassion provide an excellent framework for some darn-good catharsis.

3. In Bruges-- Two hitmen, one young and restless, the other older and wiser, are sent to Bruges (it's in Belgium) after a hit goes terribly wrong to wait for the whirlwind back in London to subside. Or is that the reason? Tarrantino-inspired dialogue-fights, Gary Larson dark humor, and perfect plotting encase a warm beating heart of a film that says "Bad things happen to the best of us hitmen."

2. Death at a Funeral-- Have I used the joke "Nobody does British humor quite like the Brits" yet? This is the best kind of comedy-- no slapstick, just irony (to turn a stoned dwarf into irony and not slapstick is quite the tall order). Oh, and no so-called "racial" humor, as is rampant in the G-d-awful American remake of the same name, to be released in 2010.

1. Still The Dark Knight-- It's not my second-favorite movie of all time anymore, but The Dark Knight still remains the film of 2008 for its excellent execution of all things considered: scripting, directing, filming, acting, editing, all wrapped around a story about a butt-kicking vigilante filmed in Chicago!

The honorable mentions list is extensive, as 2008 might've been the best year for movies in this decade: Revolutionary Road, Kung Fu Panda, Milk, Frost/Nixon, The Wrestler, Doubt, Defiance, Vicky Christina Barcelona, and heck, even The Duchess had awesome costumes.

--Serge

PS: The three most overhyped films of 2008: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, or as I like to call it, Forest Gump (A Mediocre Film to Begin With) in Reverse, Slumdog Millionaire, a film which I appreciated less what it did and only what it tried to do, and Wall-E, which is still 85% crap.

If Anybody Knows How to Do Film Reviews, it's Mike Stoklasa

So Mike Stoklasa is a 31-year-old small-time filmmaker who pays the bills doing wedding videos and B-horror films through his company Red Letter Media in his native Milwaukee, Minnesota. He's also the most genius film-reviewer currently publishing, and he makes me think one day I may write film reviews myself!

How many reviews has he published? One. On youtube.

On December 1oth, Stoklasa (take the time to memorize his name-- he's going places) uploaded a 70-minute (an eternity by internet standards) review of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999), and it has garnered, at the time of this writing, over 800,000 views. Why is this guy's review so special?

He begins his review: "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was the most disappointing thing since my son, and while my son eventually hanged himself in the bathroom of a gas station, the unfortunate reality of the Star Wars prequels is that they'll be around forever.” Over the next 70 minutes, Stoklasa deconstructs the entire movie, scene by scene, theme by theme, plot-point by absurd plot-point, with a special brand of humor one may immediately label "wildly irreverent," and later label "a geniusly surreptitious effort to first smash the idols of fanboyhood then subvert unintelligent thinking with an actual education."

"You see, most films have what we call"-- the word "protagonist" pops onto the screen--"...a...pro...protuh...protuhGONist." First I laughed, and then I realized Star Wars: Episode I doesn't actually have a protagonist!

I don't want to spend the whole post quoting someone else's genius, so here's why I love Stoklasa's efforts: his review does not tell its audience anything that isn't true. Stoklasa only offers opinions in the form of his hilariously politically-incorrect asides ("Why didn't the trade federation pump a clear, odorless gas into the tea-room to kill the Jedi? Obviously these guys have never tried to suffocate an escaping hooker locked in their basement before....").

The problem with every other film-critic ever is that they only offer either what you already know, or what isn't true, and Stoklasa's approach to film-reviewing sticks only to what may be proven, and what makes sense. He's also not in it for profit, which is extremely important. The adoption of a persona is also a unique approach-- Mike Stoklasa is obviously not this irreverent murderer telling us why Jake Lloyd is a crap actor and George Lucas a convoluted writer, but hearing it from this character makes everything more interesting. Roger Ebert just writes Roger Ebert.

So stop reading my blog and go watch his review: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI

And come back to my blog in the coming weeks to see if I learn a thing or two from this Stoklasa guy and try my own hand at his unique approach to film-reviewing....

--Serge

Thank you, 2000-2009, for the Following Films

This was a good decade for me. I went from the fifth grade, re-writing the endings of my favorite storybooks, to my third year in college, submitting finished scripts to major production studios in Hollywood. I hope to progress just as far in the next decade.

The following is not a top-ten list, but rather a collection, in chronological order, as opposed to rank, of the films created in the last ten years which taught people like me the most about how to make films and where the art is going in the years to come. They're all appropriately awesome.

Amores Perros (2000)-- This was the decade that brought Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Alfonso Cuaron, and Guillermo del Toro to the big screen-- American or otherwise. I include the first and possibly best film of this wave of Mexican cinema. Loosely translating to "Love's a bitch," the film tells three parallel stories involving love, loss, and dogs across three different social spheres in modern Mexico City, all three stories intersecting only once, duing a fateful car crash depicted multiple times from multiple persepectives throughout the film.

Memento (2000)-- Many films try to put the audience in the place of the protagonist; this, Christopher Nolan's first feature-length film, let the audience experience the few-minute memory of its protagonist by presenting the scenes in the film backwards, from the final scene to the beginning. As with Leonard, the audience does not know the past-- only the future. To accomplish a feat so complicated is very well. To make the film entertaining is even better. Add that the film says something important about the human heart and you've got a masterpiece.

Monsters, Inc. (2001)-- This was definitely the decade of Pixar, so I include their best (IMHO) film on this list (Toy Story could definitely give Monsters, Inc. a run for its pixels, but that film, alas, was released in 1995). Billy Crystal was sent the script of Toy Story and he refused inclusion in the project, suspecting that the film would just a silly, infantilized cartoon. When he finally saw the completed masterpiece, he said it was the biggest mistake of his career and begged Pixar for another chance. They then cast him as Mike in Monsters, Inc.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)-- Let's throw out all the stupid tips marketers give screenwriters and just write the best film about romance ever written: don't bother to show the scenes in order, so long as there's the emotional through-line well-established. Eschew backstories and just stick with the actual story. Be mean to your characters, be mean to your audience. Create ambiguities. This is the most-watchable Charlie Kaufman script, and thus, the most important.

Closer (2004)-- Another carefully-plotted film about difficult romantic relationships released in 2004 (even a third, Before Sunset, was released, but here I'm only putting two). Most of the audience would only pay attention to the famous faces onscreen and the wonderful dialogue/plotting/pacing ("Because I'm a f***ing caveman!"), but the film, being directed by an old master of cinema, Mike Nichols, and based on a play, reminded those in the know that the old dogs in this business are still learning new tricks, and really, beating the pups at their own games. Whew, this is starting to sound really bloggy....

No Country for Old Men (2007)-- They say movies released during the twilight years of the Bush administration got darker and darker. That's not true, but No Country For Old Men wouldn't lead you to that conclusion. The film-- which could very-well be the very best movie of the decade-- was made for 2007 but took place in 1980, perhaps reflecting the nihilistic sentiments of the main characters: we might change, but the world doesn't, and even if we are improving ourselves, the world doesn't seek to improve itself, and that makes for a truly alienating experience.

The Dark Knight (2008)-- My favorite film of the decade, but, almost just as importantly, in a decade overrun by cheap sequels-- and movies about so-called "superheroes" in particular-- this film outpaced all the other films in its class in a way that elevated the genre to a place that the subject-matter really deserved. It's one thing to take a childhood fantasy and present it as fantasy; it's another to take a childhood fantasy and present it as a mature, plausible, important, and especially entertaining piece on crime and justice.

In Bruges (2008)-- First adopting the slick action-paced dialogue made popular by Quentin Tarantino, David Mamet and the like, then adding the nihilistic undercurrents of the darkest of the Cohen Brothers, then finally establishing a warm beating heart at the center of so much bloody conflict are three feats In Bruges accomplishes with great success and almost no acclaim.

Death at a Funeral (2008)-- Ah, British humor. Nobody does British humor quite like the Brits. In all seriousness, though, no humor is actually genetic, and their brand of comedy is certainly reconstructible by others (my favorite film in particular, Dr. Strangelove, is a film written by an American in the British style). This film, however, both abided by the conventions of the genre while simultaneously remaining so joyfully aware of them all so that to watch the film cannot prove un-awesome.

Avatar (2009)-- Not the best film of 2009 but certainly the most synoptic; what better endcap to the decade than a film which combines a story born in the cinema of decades previous advocating a "might-is-not-right" position and the most advanced special-effects ever mounted? Previously, special effects have made efforts to render the make-believe merely visible, but now, as I try desperately to sound as un-corny as possible, the make-believe is not only visible but believable.

Ok, so in compiling this list all I've really learned is that there are way too many amazing films released in the past ten years to narrow down a list of ten. Just look at what got left off! Moulin Rouge (2001), the only musical that doubles as a great film, all the Darren Aronofsky films, Amelie (2001), any of the Lord of the Rings films (though only the second was really great), even Serenity (2005)! Ugh, I now hate this post. There's too much in the last decade to love.

--Serge

Merry Christmas!

It's the easiest post to do, but today you guys get my list of my top five favorite Christmas movies. This post is 100% me, a completely self-serving, utterly-bloglike selfish compilation of my own gooey thoughts and feelings regarding the union of cinema and Christmas. Skip it if you'd like, but don't skip these films!!1!

5. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)-- Is it a Christmas movie or a Halloween movie? I actually always watch it on every Halloween and never on Christmas, so maybe that's telling, but it does well to capture many of the wide-eyed moments we all (observant Christians, anyway) experience when we're little surrounding the holiday, from Jack's infectious euphoria in Christmastown to his heroic confrontation of Mr. Oogy-Boogy (wait, maybe not that last one). And can you make a movie about Christmas which retains so much of the spirit having so little to do with baby Jesus? In fact, do any of these films discuss the birth of Jesus?

4. Little Women (1994)-- The story of the March sisters, chapter by chapter, until Jo is a married published author, told across several winters. This is the only "chapter" film I really enjoy, a film without a single story but several, told in chapters. At the beginning of the film the problem is "How do we get biscuits today?" and it ends "Laurie has married another woman so I think I'll settle for the professor instead." There are some autumns and summers in the film, too, but all the important stuff, from Beth's illness and miraculous recovery to Jo's meeting Laurie for the first time, all happen around Christmas.

3. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)-- Could we ever get a better Christmas miser from cinema? Oh, wait, next film.

2. The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)-- By far the best rendition of Dickens' tale. It's all a comedy, a musical, and a drama, with loads of catharsis and charm (the I've-got-something-in-my-eye rendition of "When Love is Gone" comes to mind, and then Kermit's "One More Sleep 'Till Christmas"). Michael Caine isn't a "weak-link" by any measure, but I find him just a little too loveable as Scrooge.

1. It's a Wonderful Life (1946)-- So the marketing machine turned it into a Christmas movie for us, but I shamelessly put it at the top of this list, because the film rocks, darn it. Just be sure that the message you take away isn't: "When in search of a contemplative moment, give suicide a try."

--Serge

PS: Interestingly, I've gotten a version of Serenity (2005) every Christmas since 2006 (DVD, special edition DVD, blu-ray), and me and my whole family watch it every Christmas evening accordingly. Every year, the film has stronger and stronger Christmas associations for me. Is it really that easy to make a film a "Christmas" film? Heavens, no. Serenity is simply worth watching each and every year.

Serge's Top Five Films of 2009

That's right, the Academy might need ten spots for nominations because they don't have the guts to nominate The Dark Knight (2008) over crap like The Reader (2008), but real men and women can still live with five nominations. So here goes: my favorite films of 2009 (and look for a future post on the top ten films of this past decade!)....

5. District 9-- It's refreshing to see a movie which cost only $30 million gross over $200 million, and it's also very refreshing to see it done by a film not based on previously published material. Avatar might've looked pretty, but its story was old news, while District 9 was a much-bolder take on the whole rooting-for-the-underdog thing.

4. The Hurt Locker-- It's got a bit of a saggy second act, but besides that, this film about a bomb-technician who actually likes to work in warzones has a refreshingly different take on a complicated issue and presents itself with wonderful brevity and gravitas and lots of other cool-sounding nouns with v's in them.

3. Angels & Demons-- I don't know why this film was met with resounding polite applause; I thought it rocked. No backstory. The film ends mere minutes after the problem is solved. An entirely-European cast (save one lead). It unfolds nearly in real-time. The film feels like it was made in the 1950s. On top of all of the stylistic and scriptic awesomeness, I find the central character's main conflict-- risking his life to preserve a religion he doesn't follow-- to be both telling and emotional.

2. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans-- What a wonderfully weird black comedy. All New Orleans Detective Terrence McDonagh wants is for all the world's bad guys to go to jail, and to get high. Must those two desires conflict so often? This film brought to you by German director Werner Herzog, the film features Nicholas Cage angry for being disrupted by two singing iguanas, which might or might not have been a hallucination (hint: they were).

1. Inglourious Basterds-- I'm no Tarantino fanboy, but how could anyone not love this brutally-honest look at perhaps slightly-misplaced western aggression and inflated self-pride over that "great war" of this country's "finest" generation? Even if the film didn't have any mirrors to hold up to the audience and reveal so much about itself, it's still an expertly-written script with awesome performances and all that. Tarantino wrote every scene in the film as if it were the first in the movie; they are all fairly lengthy, important, tense, and hilarious. Oh, yeah, and Diane Kruger is in it.

Perhaps it should be noted, I did not see Brothers, Big Fan, Moon, The Road, Up in the Air, A Single Man, A Simple Man, Crazy Heart, Invictus, (500) Days of Summer, Creation, Precious, Julie & Julia, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Public Enemies, The Hangover, Where the Wild Things Are, or The Blind Side.

....

...Yeah, maybe this list was a little premature....

--Serge

PS: Honorable mentions: Watchmen, An Education, Adventureland, Up, and The Informant!

Serge's Slightly Self-Serving Post-"Avatar" Impressions

Avatar (2009) is a solid movie, maybe even a great movie, with lots of spectacular, imaginative visuals cleverly written into the story and a plot that makes perfect sense. Besides the special effects, however, it breaks no new ground whatsoever.

Take away the effects and all you have is Ferngully: The Last Rainforest (1992), Dances with Wolves (1990), The Last Samurai (2003), and a dash of The Matrix (1999), the good parts from the good films and the bad parts from the bad. James Cameron also tends to cannibalize his favorite character-archetypes, and we have no less than three faultless, near-deified women running around, kicking ass, and taking names.

But I'm getting ahead.

The script is good, but the script has nothing in it no one's seen before. You have the white boy saving the natives (but only after going native himself and becomming their leader), the greedy company-man, the geek who gets a gun, the evil battle-hardened general, the gorgeous/tough native-girl who falls for the aformentioned white boy, jealous native boy betrothed to said-native-girl, the list goes on and on.

None of these characters are bad, but they've been done so many times (and not just by Cameron), that they all feel a little hollow. Just a little. Not fake, mind you, just hollow. The movie's world, while extremely well-developed, seems to exist in a vaccuum.

How extremely well-developed? Well, I can give detailed lists of the motivations behind every scene and every character. That's good. Great. Fantastic. Perfect. Fine. Then there's the planet/ecosystem that Cameron and crew have invented, which includes not only cool-looking creatures and their interesting behaviors, but an entire evolutionary ladder which envisions millions of years of natural selection stretching behind the film.

If anyone says this film will "change the way they make movies," it'll be the way anyone treats locations in both their scripting and presentations. Oh, and did I mention the film has got the best CGI ever rendered? It does. I don't know what they'll think of next, but this was the first time I ever saw a CGI character and forgot I was looking at a CGI character. Smiling Na'vvi actually looked happy.

I liked the movie a lot. If you don't like the film you call the script "plagiarized," if you do like it you call it "proven." I'd call it "time-tested," with some damn fine special effects thrown in for good measure.

--Serge

The REAL Avatar Day!

WHAT ARE YOU DOING READING A BLOG?!

GO SEE AVATAR!!!!

(Thoughts coming soon!)

And the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PSNL1qE6VY

In Defense of The Matrix "Reloaded" and "Revolutions"

You need to have seen all three Matrix films before reading this post, because I'm not only going to be spoiling them all, I'm not going to take the time to summarize them.

So, to sum up before I begin, I do not like what the Wachowski Brothers have given us with the final two films of their trilogy so much as what they tried to give us. The two final Matrix films are deficient, yes, but... no hard feelings.

In essence, the final two films, The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and The Matrix Revolutions (2003), were attempts at showing the audience everything we could've hoped to see after the credits of The Matrix (1999) rolled. What did we want to see?

Well, some people didn't want to see anything more. I've met at least two people who like ambiguous endings, and felt that the open road left untraveled at the end of that masterpiece The Matrix was all we needed, and if that's so, or at least, if that's your opinion, you can probably sleep easy tonight after reading this sentence.

I however believe that endings are just as important as beginnings, and as far as the trilogy goes, The Matrix is more like a first act than a complete film. It is a complete film, but adding other films to the franchise turns it into an opening act. What I also believe is that films added to franchises, even deficient films, should not be ignored. What, then, would be the point of subjectivity?

Anyhoot.

What did I want to see at the end of The Matrix? I wanted to see Neo fight Smith in, I'll admit, a shamelessly cool display of near-absolute power, and I got that (twice). I wanted to see Neo faced with an extremely ugly decision to make which he could decide upon immediately. I got that, too. I wanted to see the end of the war with the machines. I wanted to see the implications of Neo's newfound abilities bleed into the real world. I wanted the creators to not be afraid to kill Neo, so long as it was for a good reason. I like the idea of Morpheus' precious prophecy to be a computer-generated lie. I like the discussions of control, everything beginning having an ending. I like a lot about what we see in the final films.

There are lots of problems: the characters do not develop at all after the first film. My interest in the plot and some of the themes is satisfied, but not my human interest in the piece, and isn't what the whole trilogy is supposed to be about is humanity?

That is, by far, its greatest fault. After that I'd say would be the abandoning of wonder, shock, and the totally unexpected. The trilogy delivered what I wanted to see, but it couldn't think of anything to show me I couldn't think to show myself. Thus, I like that it exists but it's not the masterpiece the first one is.

--Serge

Personal Post: Why I Write Screenplays

I love movies. They are my most-favorite things on the planet, after my loved ones.

Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is my favorite film, because Stanley Kubrick made it because he was genuinely terrified of the threat of nuclear war. Ok, that's not the only reason, but that's the reason that's coolest to cite.

I just saw a terribly depressing but truthful and fascinating German film called Aguirre: The Wrath of God, about a group of conquistadors who decide they can claim whatever land in the New World they want, so long as they've got the military might to back it up (they don't).

So I'm terrified of what the conquest of the New World means for both western society and the nature of religious conversions. I am relatively well-studied in the history of said-conquests, and they scare me/fascinate me.

So I love those two films and I'm fascinated by this subject and I think "Hey, someone should combine the two films into one!" I look and look but no one has done it. I want other people to like this idea. This idea, however, is just an idea in my head, driving me crazy, so it needs to hit the page, where other people may read it and also comment on its awesomeness, how it is able to both entertain and say so much about this little planet of ours, and these hearts we've got.

I do not want to deprive anyone of the happiness I feel when thinking about this subject by not getting my lazy butt off the floor and writing the idea down.

This urge outweighs other urges, like the urge to pursue a more-predictable, somewhat self-sacrificial career-path (the job of the writer is very selfish, and subsequently underpaid).

So I write.

--Serge

PS: I am currently hard at work on the second and hopefully final draft of "Almost Gods," my dark comedy about a group of conquistadors who try and conquer the New World using quill pens.

There's No Such Thing as a "Chick Flick"

Clark Gable said that Gone with the Wind (1939) was one of his least-favorite projects, because it was a shameless "woman's picture."

I think that quote pretty much proves that the thought-processes involved when people (usually men) label a movie a "chick flick" are all pretty stupid. Every last movie labeled that sexist pejorative is probably not so bad a movie just for fitting that particular moron's very vague set of criteria.

I'm saying you shouldn't shy away from "chick flicks" just because Clark Gable (much less that stupid jock in fourth-period) calls them as much.

If there are "chick flicks" in cinema, then I think the least we could do is find a more embarrassing name for them, something like "man pans;" you know, the films not many men admitted to seeing without threats from their female significant others. I like this term "man-pan" because it implies the fault is with men, and not the film.

Women have always been setting records at the box office. Gone with the Wind's top grossing record stood, without adjusting for inflation, for over thirty years. The current record-holder is Titanic (1997), also a movie generally considered "female" (though written and directed by the creator of the manly-classic Terminator). Then there are the record-breaking Sex and the City and Twilight franchises. What do men have that's comparable? Comic-book movies?

So real quick: why are some films labeled "chick flicks?" They usually have female protagonists, but what the hell is wrong with that? They also often fit into the less-offensive but equally-maligned "rom-com" category, which is to say any movie with a female protagonist who discovers humorous escapades on her wanton search for love is usually immediately relegated to the trashbin by the male populace, which is so not fair.

Movies do not have genders. Movies do not even cater to genders: marketing campaigns do that. I'll be damned if there isn't just as much for a man to get from watching Mean Girls (2004)as there is for any woman.

--Serge

PS: Obligatory Waitress (2006) reference!

I'm Bursting for Television Right Now

My history of television only goes back to 1997, the first year a television show was released onto home video (The X-Files).

Good tv needs singularly excellent episodes but also important, cathartic, preferably bi-seasonal story-arcs. I am a big fan/purporter of shows which decide how man seasons they will run years in advance instead of fizzling out over three or four struggling seasons.

Television is a much more subjective art-form than film, in my experience. We tend to like the shows with characters most like us as the heroes. We need a character we feel strongly for, because, unless the show was canceled after one season (rest in peace, Firefly!), we're going to spend a lot of time watching them.

I get more attached to my television characters than my film-characters. I feel more-strongly for Veronica Mars, my fourth-favorite tv show-character, than anybody in Dr. Strangelove, my favorite film. This is the niche I believe great tv should fill: characters that become our friends, who don't necessarily teach us so much as feel us.

Not to say that movies and movie-characters aren't supposed to make us feel anything. Television just has to make the payoff bigger, because we're watching thousands of minutes of the program instead of 120.

With all of that said, here are my top five tv shows, having not seen The Wire, Battlestar Galactica, Sex and the City, Rome, The Sopranos, The West Wing, or Deadwood, amongst many others....

1. Firefly (2003)-- Ran for one glorious season before being cancelled, aired out of order, sold off, then mercifully made into an excellent movie which gave us all some much-needed closure.

2. Lost (2004-2009)-- Regained some much-needed narrative focus in season 3, when the producers decided they would cap the show at season 6. A random conversation about backgammon in the pilot suddenly made tons of sense in the season 5 finale. Every show should plan ahead accordingly.

3. House, MD (2004-present)-- It's floundering, having lost most of its cast and narrative focus, and if the producers don't decide where they're going and how to end the show with a bang, it's place on the list will slip fast.

4. Veronica Mars (2004-2006)-- Cancelled after three seasons to make room for The Next Pussycat Doll. Did any show deserve that?

5. Mad Men (2006-present)-- Didn't like the first season until I saw the second. Didn't love the second until I saw the third. An unusual show which pays off tremendously if you're willing to let it grow on you.

--Serge

Trailer for NINE, Coming December 25th

Can you believe this?

Two finals today and I've still got time to hand you guys a trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmCbbtkRYR8

Now, you might not get much of the plot from that trailer. This film is a musical reimagining of the Fellini classic 8 1/2, which is a two-hour movie about a famous movie-director ("Guido") rapidly approaching deadline who uses the women in his life for artistic inspiration. Who knew Kate Hudson could sing like that?!

On the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

The Ninja Turtles are-- at best-- a superficial study of teenage brothers with different personalities and interests. But they're also butt-kicking anthropomorphic terrapins named after Italian Renaissance artists, so we'll work with that.

The real hitch (read: "source of conflict") in this reptilian quartet is Raphael (who was always my favorite ninja turtle), the "red" turtle who weilds the sais, the weapons with the shortest reach, the turtle who must get closest to his enemy in order to take said-enemy out. Raphael is the only turtle to express dissatisfaction with his standing in life among his brothers, and he is really the only turtle who actually sounds like a teenager.

I always thought it would be interesting to see Raphael convince Donatello to go rogue with him, because Donatello clearly has the highest IQ of the group, and people with higher IQs tend to be more dissatisfied with planet Earth. Raph's problem is that he's got too much testosterone in his system, so maybe Donny recognized that and steered clear.

Michelangelo is often assumed to be the youngest, because he's the goofball, but he's also the wittiest, and seemed to get along with Donny very well. Perhaps Donatello avoided Raphael's angsty fate by switching into fun-mode with Mikey.

Oh, and then there's Leonardo, the leader of the group, who was clearly the last turtle the creators invented, as he is the blandest of all the turtles. So he's obsessed with discipline and trying to play father to the others. We can only assume he's the eldest, right? He's the only turtle who seems to be fighting crime for no reason. Raph likes to kick butt. Mikey thinks it's fun. Donny likes to train. Leo? He's just got some abstract notion that it's the right thing to do.

Oh, and he's the only character who wields lethal weapons (twin-katanas), but never in any fight have the ninja turtles ever killed anyone. The only conclusion: Leonardo sucks.

In the fifth ninja turtles movie, which is indeed being scripted now, Splinter needs to die and the turtles need to grow up and find paths to walk in life. Unfortunately, though that would make an amazing end-all/be-all TMNT film, I'm probably taking this source-material way more seriously than the current writer scripting said-project. So it goes.

This post should be longer, but I've got a final to write.

--Serge

Big Giant Post: THE HISTORY OF FILM

In honor of my completing four quarters of classes which covered the birth of cinema to the present, and the fact that I'm going to be busy with finals for the next two weeks, I'm giving my readers one big post reflecting all my fancy new-fangled knowledge on the history of film-- which films are significant, why, and what events in film production made them so. Oh, and, unlike course-syllabi, none of the films I list are boring.

1878: Eadweard Muybridge invents cinema by photographing a galloping horse 24 times in rapid succession (his one second of footage may be viewed on wikipedia). His efforts were made in an attempt to settle a bet as to whether or not all four hooves of a running horse ever leave the ground.

1893-94: Thomas Edison builds the first movie studio, the Black Maria, and copyrights the first film the following year: Fred Ott's Sneeze, which can be viewed on wikipedia.

December 28th, 1895: The Lumiere Brothers hold the first public film screening and show ten short films. The first is Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory, which clocks in at 46 seconds. Their films are available on DVD.

1909: DW Griffith's A Drunkard's Reformation invents the shot/countershot.

1915: DW Griffith releases Birth of a Nation, which I am told is important, but seeing as how it's one of the most racist films ever made, and over three hours long, I haven't taken time out of my busy schedule and watched the dang thing.

1920s: The German expressionist movement reaches its pinnacle with the releases of The Cabinent of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922), the original Dracula movie.

1925: Battleship Potemkin, Sergei Eisenstein's only film you can watch not on fast-forward, is released.

1927: The greatest, most-entertaining silent movie ever made, The General, is released. The first talkie, The Jazz Singer, is released.

1931: Talkies may have been invented already, but that doesn't stop Charlie Chaplin from releasing City Lights, arguably his best film.

1934: It Happened One Night is released and sweeps the "Big Five" at the Oscars (Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Screenplay, Director). The dreaded Hays Code goes into effect.

1939: Gone with the Wind is released and becomes the highest-grossing film of all time (adjusted for inflation). The blockbuster is thus invented and the studio-system is set in stone.

1941: Film noir is invented with the release of The Maltese Falcon, the greatest detective movie ever made. Coincidentally, Citizen Kane is also released that same year. Both are nominated and lose the Best Picture oscar.

1948: The Paramount Decrees disband vertically-integrated companies; Bicycle Thieves is released, the best film of the Italian neorealist movement.

1950: Akira Kurosawa introduces Japanese film to the West with the release of Rashomon, which unexpectedly wins top prize at the Venice Film Festival.

1957: Stanley Kubrick releases Paths of Glory, which, one day, I will convince a tenured professor, was the first postmodern film.

1960: Alfred Hitchcock releases Psycho, which erodes, no, which "breaks," no, which shatters the Hays Code and officially births postmodernism.

1960s: A string of expensive flops (most notably Cleopatra in 1963) threatens to drive the studio-system under. The release of Easy Rider in 1969 promises a new market in youth-oriented films, and so the studios hire oodles of fresh-out-of-film-school directors to make those kinds of films.

1964: The greatest film ever made, Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, is released. Sergio Leone arrives on the scene (not to mention Clint Eastwood) with the release of the classic spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars.

1972: Francis Ford Coppola reinvents the blockbuster with the release of The Godfather, and the studios' gamble on the "Hollywood Brats" pays off.

1975: Steven Spielberg releases Jaws. The Hollywood Brats (Coppola, Spielberg, Martin Scorcese, Brian DePalma, David Cronenberg, and George Lucas) become the hottest properties in Hollywood.

1977: Star Wars rerereinvents the blockbuster. Audiences are increasingly cinema-literate.

1979: Cinema's greatest enemy, television, is finally put in its place for the time being with the success of the first film based on a television show: Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

1980s: Paul Verhoeven, James Cameron, and the Coen Brothers all start making movies (in America, anyway).

1985: A stained-glass knight is the first CGI creation put into a movie in Young Sherlock Holmes.

1990s: Proliferation of digital special effects and digital video.

1995: The first fully-computer-animated film, Toy Story, is released. Do I really need to now spell out the significance of a film studio, Pixar, in existence, which releases ten films in the last 14 years and nine of them are masterpieces?

1999: The Matrix is released. 'Nuff said. The Blair Witch Project costs $100,000 to make but grosses $248 million.

2000s: The rise of independent films, documentaries, and Christopher Nolan.

2008: The Dark Knight, that is, the best film of my life, is released.

And that about brings us up to speed, with admittedly quite a few exceptions. This list, however, is a pretty good start.

--Serge