Kaedrin Weblog

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Upgrades
Thanks to a timely observation by Steven, I found out that this site has been hacked. It appears to be spammers who have exploited a vulnerability in my forum software to inject HTML onto various pages. I have since upgraded my forum software with the necessary patches and while I'm at it, I figure I might as well upgrade Movable Type as well (the new release actually has at least one new feature I want to take advantage of).

All of which is to say that the blog might be acting a little funny tonight, so if you have some trouble commenting or the page looks all banged up, it's probably because I'm working on it. See you on the other side.

Update: Upgrade is complete. No problems encountered. Yet. I'm going to fiddle around with pagination and maybe some comment system stuff if I have time. Also, I removed Steven's comment and my response from the previous entry, since they didn't really fit with the whole slasher movie topic of the post. Thanks again to Steven for finding the issue and taking the time to alert me.

Posted by Mark on August 04, 2009 at 08:49 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.

Sunday, August 02, 2009

Friday the 13th Marathon Awards
I've been somewhat disorganized during this marathon and I realized that I never really finished off with awards the way I have for some previous marathons. The Filmspotting guys like to give their awards fancy names (i.e. for the SF marathon, they called the awards the "damn dirty apes"), so I guess the Golden Machetes would fit for this, right? Anyway, since this marathon technically started a couple of years ago, I figure a quick recap is in order:

Friday the 13th (technically part of a different Halloween marathon, hence the other movies in that post)
Friday the 13th: Parts II through IV
Friday the 13th: Parts V and VI
Friday the 13th: Parts VII and VIII
Jason Goes to Hell and Jason X
Friday the 13th (reboot) and Freddy vs. Jason

With that out of the way, let's get to the awards:

Best Final Girl: It's funny, but when I thought about it, my choice is the final girl from one of my least favorite installments - Ginny Field (played by Amy Steel) from Part II. While the film is a bit on the incomprehensible side, Amy Steel's Ginny is definitely the standout character and I think the best final girl in the series. She takes initiative and goes on the offensive more than any other woman in the series (save perhaps the final girl from Part VII, who had a neat gimmick that for the most part didn't pay off that much), even going so far as to put on Jason's mother's sweater at one point, just to mess with Jason's head. Perhaps part of this was that this was Jason's first real movie, and he had not yet even donned his legendary hockey mask let alone demonstrated ridiculous supernatural powers that make it hard to put up a great fight (again, Tina from Part VII did pretty good in the later films...)
Best Douchebag: The series is filled with douchebags that you end up rooting against, but my choice here actually comes from the recent remake: Travis Van Winkle really reaches new depths of Douchebaggery in his performance as Trent. He's the source of one of the best moments in an otherwise middle of the road film - the only thing that was lacking was a truly unique and gory kill (something the film lacks in general). Honorable mentions to the douchebag from Part IV (don't remember his name and IMDB doesn't have pictures) and Doctor Douchebag from Part VII.
Best Appearance By Legitmate Actors: Given the tremendous amount of no-name actors to appear in these films, I'm surprised at the amount of possible answers here. The most obvious choice would be Kevin Bacon from the original. Another popular choice has to be Crispin Glover's appearance in Part IV. Part IX actually has the most starpower though: Steven Culp, Steven Williams, and Erin Gray all put in appearances in that film. To me, it really comes down to Crispin Glover (especially when you consider that insanely funny dance he does) and Steven Williams's hilarious performance in part IX.
Best Jason: A popular choice for this would have to be Kane Hodder, the only one to play Jason in multiple films, but while I think he did a fine job, he's also only in the worst films in the series (parts VII-X). For me, I'd go with C.J. Graham, who played Jason in Part VI. He strikes quite a few memorable poses in the film, and manages to do some rather expressive stuff, which can be difficult considering the mask.
Top 5 Kills: There are a lot to choose from here, but here are a few of the standouts for me...
- Kevin Bacon in the Original - Laying in the bottom bunk, Bacon feels some blood dripping from the top bunk. Then a hand suddenly reaches up and grabs his head while an arrow is pushed up from under the bed, through his neck. Best kill of the first movie.
- Sleeping Bag Kill From Part VII and X - In Part VII, Jason happens upon a couple of campers and naturally decides to kill them. He takes care of the guy first, then grabs the girl, who is still in her sleeping bag, and slams her against the tree. Classic kill in an otherwise lackluster installment of the series. There's a great reprise of this kill in Jason X though, when Jason wanders into some Holodeck simulation thingy and our heroes have programmed a nice Crystal Lake simulation. The whole sequence pretty much perfects what happened in part VII and adds a new twist.
- Face Smash from Part X - One of the more original kills. Jason wakes up after a few hundred years and finds a cute girl doing his autopsy. He grabs her head, dunks it in a vat of liquid nitrogen (freezing her head) and then smashes it into a thousand pieces. Brilliant.
- Boxing in Part VIII - One of the few bearable moments of this film features one of our heroes boxing Jason on a rooftop. Jason toys with him a bit, lets a few punches land, then throws one punch that knocks the kid's head right off. The head goes bouncing off the roof, down the fire escape and into an open dumpster (which then slams shut).
- Back Breaker in Part VI and Freddy Vs Jason - In Part VI, the Sheriff attempts to protect his daughter by attacking Jason. He puts up a reasonable fight too... until Jason grabs him and folds him in half (ouch). There's a minor reprise of this in Freddy Vs. Jason when Jason stabs a kid on a bed with his machete like 10 times, then folds the bed up achieving the same back breaking results.
Some honorable mentions include the wheel chair death from Part II, punching through the heart in part VI, axe to the crotch of a douchebag who is walking on his hands in part III, spear gun to the crotch in part IV, spear gun to the eye in part III, and the eye popping kill in part III (I'm sure these last two are even better in 3D, but I've never seen that version). And there's probably like 5 others that are worth mentioning.
Best Jason Resurrection: There are two necessary components to a slasher sequel (besides the standard gore and T&A, etc...). First is how the slasher is resurrected. For me, the best resurrection has to be Part VI, where his dead body gets struck by lightning. It's very evocative of a Frankenstein creation scene, and it's pretty funny too.
Best Jason Death: The other necessary component of a slasher sequel is how the slasher is "killed". For this one, it doesn't get much better than Jason's death at the end of Part IV, thanks especially to Tom Savini's brilliant makeup and gory special effects. I'd give an honorable mention to the opening sequence to Part IX, which is one of the better openings and quite unexpected.
Best Picture: Well, it's really a toss up. If I have to choose, it would probably be Part VI with Part IV coming in a close second. I know some people don't like Part VI's self-aware and referential nature combined with a more humorous take on the series, but it still works quite well for me! There are not many movie series that make it to six films, but of those that do, there are few that could claim the sixth film to be the best in the series... Part VI must have been difficult to follow up as well, because from there, the series began a long and deadly spiral downwards...

And that just about wraps up the marathon. Why I still enjoy these silly, cheesy movies is still a mystery to me (also a mystery: why I was ever scared of them), but enjoy them I do.

Posted by Mark on August 02, 2009 at 05:33 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Link Dump
Just a few links to stuff I've enjoyed recently:

What If Greedo Really Shot First?: It doesn't get much geekier than the Star Wars fan outrage over Greedo shooting first in the special edition Star Wars films, but somehow this IO9 post manages that feat with no problems (via Batrock).
The Farewell Dossier: I'm always fascinated by those Cold War espionage stories, and this one's a doozy. Essentially, the Soviet Union needed some software to run their newly procured oil pipeline hardware. The US had such software, but wouldn't sell it to their rivals, so the Soviets simply stole it... not realizing that the US had sabotaged the code.
The orchestrated subterfuge was one of the most successful US inter-agency efforts ever undertaken, and it was executed with such skill that it was never detected. Some condemn the deliberate explosion as thinly veiled terrorism given the lack of an open war with the Soviet Union, while others insist that ill-gotten goods are the plunderer’s problem. In any case, it clearly demonstrates that software piracy can have very serious consequences.
A little while ago, Yahtzee reviewed inFamous and Prototype, two similar games, by comparing them to one another. In the end, the two games ended in a tie, so Yahtzee suggested a humorous and presumably rhetorical tie-breaker: "which of the two studios could produce the best image of the rival game's main character wearing women's lingerie." Amazingly, the two game studios in question complied. The results are... funny. Take a gander.
Speaking of inFamous, the developers apparently released a series of interesting statistics and fun facts about the development cycle for the game. A couple examples:
- Number of babies born: 10
- Number of diet Coke cans consumed: 17,472
- Number of diet Pepsi cans consumed: 13,104
- Number of trips to Starbucks: approximately 18,200
Once again, Coke beats Pepsi. Score. There are some other interesting stats included as well
How to Hack Your Brain: This is apparently part 1 in a longer series... this one focuses on sleep and how inefficient our standard schedules are (most of the time spent in a standard 8 hour sleeping session is not spent in REM sleep, which is the most important part). I would love to try the extreme Uberman polyphasic schedule, which calls for a total of only 2 hours of sleep a day (but evenly spaced in 20 minute increments throughout the day), but it does not seem feasible in a normal working schedule. I suspect there's something more to this subject though and it probably warrants closer examination.
Asian Poses: I'm not sure a lot of these are uniquely Asian, but then, some probably are. I particularly enjoyed Nyan Nyan. (via Kottke)

Posted by Mark on July 29, 2009 at 08:21 PM .: Comments (1) | link :.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Cheating
When it comes to video games, I've usually described myself as a "casual" gamer. The whole "casual" versus "hardcore" gamer debate has become somewhat tired of late, but in modern parlance, "casual" is usually code for "moronic" while "hardcore" is code for someone who likes "adult" games with lots of violence, etc... But my notion of a casual gamer is someone who plays games and enjoys them, but doesn't get all that carried away with them. The hardcore would be someone who borders on obsession. And not just a short term obsession either. Most gamers get engrossed in various games from time to time, but it's rare for the obsession to last much longer than a few weeks (if that). But there are people who keep going, perfecting their performance to the point where (for example), they could complete Super Mario Brothers in 5 minutes (there's a whole site full of these Speed Demos for all sorts of games).

I suppose I have some tendencies towards the hardcore. In particular, I'm a fan of probing, or exploratory play. I like to probe at the limits of a game, just to see what happens. I've written about this before:

Probing is essentially exploration of the game and its possibilities. Much of this is simply the unconscious exploration of the controls and the interface, figuring out how the game works and how you're supposed to interact with it. However, probing also takes the more conscious form of figuring out the limitations of the game. For instance, in a racing game, it's usually interesting to see if you can turn your car around backwards, pick up a lot of speed, then crash head-on into a car going the "correct" way. Or, in Rollercoaster Tycoon, you can creatively place balloon stands next to a roller coaster to see what happens (the result is hilarious). Probing the limits of game physics and finding ways to exploit them are half the fun (or challenge) of video games these days...

In short, I like to see what will happen. This will sometimes keep me playing a game long after others have gotten tired of a game. To me, this is the fun part. To the people who do speed demos, it's all about skill. I don't particularly care about skill (more about this later), and one of the ways Nintendo has been courting new gamers is to embrace the sorts of games that do not require hardcore skill in order to complete. To a lesser extent, PS3 and XBox games seem easier these days than things were back in the NES days. So there's a lot of tension in gaming these days between making the game easy, making it more difficult, and making it friendly to new gamers.

A few months ago, Nintendo patented a system that sought to address this situation. The point was to allow them to make a difficult game, but give an option to us helpless casual players who aren't interested in sharpening our skills for dozens of hours at a time just so we can make a particularly difficult series of jumps. Their idea was to allow players to let the game play itself through the difficult parts. So you get to a particularly difficult boss fight and instead of playing it a hundred times, you can just let the game know and it will play and defeat the boss for you.

There have been a variety of responses to this idea, mostly negative. Shamus calls it ungaming:

The problem is that the demo mode solution isn't a solution at all. It's a refusal to even address the problem. New players need a way to engage a game at their own skill and frustration threshold, and making a game play itself doesn't help. Demo mode can't turn a newbie into a gamer for the same reason watching Miles Davis won't turn you into a trumpet player. You can't learn to play if you're not playing.

Sean Malstrom has an interesting take on how this functionality detracts from the skill based aspects of gaming:

I’ve been thinking about this frequently, and the answer I come up with is ‘mastery’. The old school gamer says, “I have finally got to level five!” The new school gamer says, “I am twenty hours into this game so far!” The old school gamer’s statement implies mastery. The player had mastered the game to such a level in order to reach level five. ... The new school gamer’s statement implies intoxication, not mastery.

Malstrom brings up the various cheats from the NES era. In Super Mario Bros. there were Warp Zones that allowed you to skip ahead a few levels. The infamous Konami Code was indispensible for Contra players. Indeed, cheat codes became very popular in that era, to the point where even stuff like the Game Genie (a third party piece of hardware that you plugged into the game - it had all sorts of crazy cheats you could apply to almost any game) became popular.

Perhaps because a lot of newer games don't have much of this, I've realized lately that I really enjoy cheating. Not for every game, but I did like my Game Genie. I like God mode and I like cheats that give me all the available weapons, etc... Why? Usually because it makes it a lot easier to explore the game world (i.e. to probe). One game I distinctly remember was called Rise of the Triad. The game was not especially fantastic. It was one of those FPS games that tried to amp up the violence and ridiculousness. I was almost immediately bored with it... until I found the cheat codes. The game featured some pretty neat weapons (in particular, I enjoyed the one that shot a wall of fire). There were a couple of cheats that I particularly loved - they let you change the gravity or even fly around the levels. A probing gamer's dream. So I ended up enjoying the game quite a bit, despite not being very good at it in terms of "skill."

I think this is why I don't like Nintendo's proposed system. It's not that they let you get past the difficult part without having any skill that's the problem. As I've established, that doesn't bother me at all. It's that the act of bypassing the hard part is completely passive. I like probing at the limits of the system, not watching someone show me how it's done. I don't want to do it the way it's supposed to be done. That's just plain boring. I say bring back cheating. Cheating is much more fun than watching someone else play, let alone watching the computer play. Of course, all of this is speculative. Companies patent stuff all the time (and as Shamus notes, it's kinda ridiculous that some of these things are being patented at all, but that's another discussion) and there's nothing real to base this on, but it's an interesting subject.

Posted by Mark on July 26, 2009 at 05:09 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Noir: Initial Thoughts
I am slowly making my way through the Anime queue I posted recently. I'm currently watching Noir and am a little less than halfway through the series. In no particular order, a few thoughts on Noir:

The series follows Mireille Bouquet, a pretty blond assassin. Her professional career seems to be going quite well... until she is contacted by a young Japanese girl named Yumura Kirika, who asks Mirelle to take "a pilgrimage to the past." Yumura is quite talented as well, though she also seems to be afflicted with Jason Bourne Syndrome (apparently a common condition among assassins). Together, the two seek to solve a mystery involving an ancient, myserious group called Les Soldats. As of yet, it's unclear what role the girls play in the plans of the Soldats, but after a slow start, things seem to be unfolding at a good pace.
Mireille takes contracts under the name "Noir." She has built up a good reputation, but there are several hints of old hits that could not have been accomplished by Mireille, leading me to think of Noir as a sorta Dread Pirate Roberts of the contract killer world. Later in the series, Mireille and Yumura meet someone named Chloe who refers to herself as "The True Noir." Chloe is an intriguing character, and one that has only just been introduced, so I'm expecting much more to happen with her (and her guardian at the vineyard). The word "noir" is French for "black" and is often used to describe dark stories featuring morally ambiguous characters. Film noir was a phrase coined by French film critics to describe Hollywood films of the 40s and 50s. So far, I would not say that this series follows any sort of Film noir conventions, but it's something I've been keeping an eye out for...
So the girls are racking up quite the body count. 12 episodes in and I think they've already outpaced legendary murderers like Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers. It seems that every episode features the girls taking on and killing dozens of armed minions. Apparently the regular appearance of 20 or so dead men is a common feature of French society (the series takes place in France). Nothing to get worked up over, even when the dead men are cops.

Yumura dodges some bullets...
Also intriguing about the people of France as portrayed in the series is that they appear to be bloodless. Of the hundreds the two assassins have killed, apparently no blood was shed. Either their bullets are not very effective against them, or the French have invented a blood substitute that is far superior to our own (but provides no apparent benefit, except for easy cleanup).
As assassins, it seems that the only tool in their assassin toolkit is a pistol. Apparently no long-range weapons like a sniper rifle, no hidden attacks like poisons and no "accidents" (unless, I guess, the accident involves someone falling on a bullet with a lot of force - an explanation I suspect the French police would accept). Still, the large amount of gunfights makes the series quite entertaining, though they never quite approach the balletic beauty of John Woo's double-fisting pistol showdowns... though I suppose we still have 14 episodes or so to rectify that. Also, despite Yumura being much younger, she seems to be more effective than Mireille. At one point, the pair are trapped in a large casino. Their enemies turn off all the lights and wear night-vision goggles. Mireille is largely defeated by these tactics, while Yumura just closes her eyes and uses apparently superhuman auditory prowess to locate enemies and kill them (a neat trick). I guess it's worth noting that Chloe eschews the pistol and uses all manner of knives instead.
So far, the series has posed some intriguing questions. Who is Noir? How does one become Noir? Who are the Soldats? And how do the Soldats relate to Noir? There appear to be factions within the Soldats, which could lead to some interesting developments. I haven't gone into it much, but there is a lot of tension between Yumura and Mireille, and there are a lot of questions about why the two are cooperating and what will ultimately happen to them. From all appearances, these are questions that will be answered later in the series, and from what I can tell, they are answered in a satisfying manner. It's easy to create intriguing questions and a lot of series manage to do so (*cough, cough* Lost *Cough*), but many series fall apart once they reach the the resolution (the jury will remain out on Lost until it ends, but I will say that I was quite disappointed with the end of Battlestar Galactica.) So I look forward to the rest of this series!

A few more screenshots and commentary in the extended entry...

Read More >>

Posted by Mark on July 22, 2009 at 09:09 PM .: Comments (2) | link :.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Professor Severus Snape's Sorcerer-tastic, Muggalicious Midsummer Movie Quiz
Every so often, Dennis Cozzalio of the Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule blog posts a long movie quiz filled with tough questions. I've been playing along for a few installments now, and he even included several of my answers for the last quiz in a series of recap posts earlier this week. Amusingly, he often chose to include the answers where I whined about having to choose between two actors/actresses I didn't know. I'm not sure if he did that because he was amused or if I should be embarrassed or something, but whatever. I really enjoy these quizzes, so now that there's a new one up, I'm going to post my answers here:

1) Second-favorite Stanley Kubrick film.

I'm terrible at picking favorites, so it figures that for a filmmaker where I actually do have a clear favorite (2001), you'd ask for a second-favorite. However, I am able to narrow it down to two: Dr. Strangelove and The Shining.

2) Most significant/important/interesting trend in movies over the past decade, for good or evil.

The obvious answer and the thing that came immediately to mind was franchise reboots and remakes (this seems to be happening in the horror genre the most, but it is certainly not limited to that). But when i started thinking about this more, I realized that remakes and franchise reboots aren't all that new... So instead of that, I think one of the biggest changes has been the ascendance of the home theater. The past decade has seen the rather quick adoption of the DVD format, and along with it, steadily increasing quality of home theaters, from surround sound to larger screens, flat screens and HD. Blu-ray has had some setbacks, but it seems to be moving forward well enough these days. With any luck, we'll soon have huge HD on-demand archives available for viewing within the next ten years.

3) Bronco Billy (Clint Eastwood) or Buffalo Bill Cody (Paul Newman)?

For this quiz, it appears that Mr. Snape is not satisfied with simply forcing me to choose between two actors, he'll limit it to two specific movies, further decreasing the chances that I'll be able to answer with any authority. Thanks a lot. As such, while I wouldn't call Bronco Billy one of Eastwood's better films, I will go with Eastwood anyway because I tend to like his films better than Newman (which isn't to bag on Newman at all, as he has plenty of great films to his credit).

4) Best Film of 1949.

The last quiz had a question about choosing a favorite Raoul Walsh movie, and I mentioned that I had not seen any, but that I put White Heat in my Netflix queue. I managed to watch it between then and now and it turns out that movie was made in 1949, so I'll put that as my answer, because I enjoyed it quite a bit (even though I think I might prefer The Third Man, a common answer to this question).

White Heat: Made it, Ma! Top of the world!

5) Joseph Tura (Jack Benny) or Oscar Jaffe (John Barrymore)?

*sigh* I'll go with Jack Benny on this one, I guess.

6) Has the hand-held shaky-cam directorial style become a visual cliche?

It's hard to say, though I do think it is overused and thus some of its potency has been lost. It's worth noting that there are several directors who are still producing excellent work in this style and I don't think it will ever really go away, but at the same time it's not as impactful today as it was, say, 10 years ago. Also, it seems to be a technique that is easy to screw up or abuse, and many films suffer from the choice to use this style. One frustrating trend I'm seeing is to use such shots along with quick-cuts in order to hide the fact that what happened onscreen isn't really possible or is highly unlikely (I'm looking at you, V for Vendetta).

7) What was the first foreign-language film you ever saw?

Well, it's impossible to pinpoint, but if I had to guess, I'd say it was either La Femme Nikita or The Killer when I was in my early teens.

8) Charlie Chan (Warner Oland) or Mr. Moto (Peter Lorre)?

Peter Lorre's Mr. Moto, though I should really see more of both franchises...

9) Favorite World War II drama (1950-1970).

Most of my real favorites fall outside of that date range, but Patton qualifies and would probably be my favorite. On the other hand, I do have a soft spot for Where Eagles Dare. It's a little unevenly paced and perhaps a bit too long, but I love the convoluted espionage twists and turns.

10) Favorite animal movie star.

Does Chewbacca count? I'm trying to think of other movies I love that feature animals in a prominent role, but I'm drawing a blank. Chewbacca it is.

11) Who or whatever is to blame, name an irresponsible moment in cinema.

I have a hard time condemning actual content in films (or art in general), even films that say things I detest or that trivialize things I find important. I guess I'm just not the censoring type, so the answer to this question would have to do with something irresponsible in the making of a film. The film that immediately comes to mind is Cannibal Holocaust, which is infamous for actual, on-screen killings of animals. Seven animals were killed, apparently only in the name of sensationalism and controversy. I'm sure there are lots of other, similar moments of irresponsible moments in cinema history (another two that come to mind: the helicopter accident that took the life of 3 people in Twilight Zone: The Movie and the untimely death of Brandon Lee on the set of The Crow).

12) Best Film of 1969.

Well, not especially one of my favorite years for movies, but it has both The Wild Bunch and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, each of which is a pretty great film.

13) Name the last movie you saw theatrically, and also on DVD or Blu-ray.

I saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in the theater last night. Enjoyable, but not as good as the book. On Blu-Ray, I saw Push, which had an interesting premise and was for the most part entertaining, though I don't think the ending was very satisfying. And on DVD, I saw Le doulos, a good crime film by director Jean-Pierre Melville.

14) Second-favorite Robert Altman film.

I have not seen a ton of Altman films (I know, I know, something I need to rectify), but the ones I have seen have all be at about the same level. In the interest of convenience, let's just say The Player.

15) What is your favorite independent outlet for reading about movies, either online or in print?

James Berardinelli's Reelviews is a site I visit quite frequently, and he is often the first reviewer I check out after having seen a film (often before even Ebert). Berardinelli has been seeing and reviewing tons of films every year for the past 15-20 years (this despite a day job and a rather lengthy commute to various theaters). The fact is that his archive of movie reviews is probably more complete than most professional film critics, which is an amazing accomplishment. He's a pioneer of online reviewers, and one of my favorite reads.

16) Who wins? Angela Mao or Meiko Kaji? (Thanks, Peter!)

I can't say as though I'm all that familiar with their filmmographies, but I'll say that Angela Mao wins, due to her appearance in Enter the Dragon. The only movies I recognize in Meiko Kaji's filmography are a couple of Kinji Fukasaku Yakuza flicks...

17) Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei) or Olive Neal (Jennifer Tilly)?

I'll go with Mona Lisa Vito. Tilly has been an actress that has always grated on me.

18) Favorite movie that features a carnival setting or sequence.

The obvious (and apparently popular) answer is Strangers on a Train. In particular, the first murder scene at the carnival (which you see reflected in a pair of sunglasses). However, in the interest of variety, I'll go with Tod Browning's cult classic Freaks.

19) Best use of high-definition video on the big screen to date.

I'm not sure if Zodiac counts, as I know he filmed some sequences with film, but the pickings are somewhat slim when it comes to this category - it's also hard to find a good, definitive list of films that used HD Video cameras.

20) Favorite movie that is equal parts genre film and a deconstruction or consideration of that same genre.

The movie that immediately comes to mind is Scream. It's a movie that parodies and comments on the slasher genre, then subverts everything about said films. In an unusual twist, this movie seemed to reignite interest in the slasher film, which had been out of style for several years at that point.

21) Best Film of 1979.

I'll go with Alien, which is one of my all time favorites. Another, more inexpicable favorite of mine from 1979 is the cheesy but still effective and creepy Phantasm.

22) Most realistic and/or sincere depiction of small-town life in the movies.

I don't know about realistic, but both It's a Wonderful Life and To Kill a Mockingbird seem like ideal answers to this one. It's a hard choice, as there are tons of movies that take place in small towns, but aren't necessarily about that. More recent favorites include Groundhog Day and State and Main (both of which show small-town life through the lense of city folk).

23) Best horror movie creature (non-giant division).

So this one wound up being very difficult for me. The question itself throws out giant creatures of the Godzilla variety, but I also didn't want to choose something that was primarily human (i.e. vampires, werewolves, zombies, etc...), but that might have been too limiting. In any case, what I ended up choosing was the creature from John Carpenter's 1982 remake of The Thing. Sure, it takes the form of a human for a portion of the film, but there are several sequences where it transforms into bizarre lovecraftian monstrosities. In particular, the sequence when it is discovered in the dog cage:

24) Second-favorite Francis Ford Coppola film.

I'm surprised at how easy it was to narrow it down to The Godfather: Part II (with the first installment being my favorite). I also quite like The Conversation and Apocalypse Now, but neither really approaches those first two Godfather movies...

25) Name a one-off movie that could have produced a franchise you would have wanted to see.

This is a difficult one because sequels are often so bad that it's hard to want one for a movie I love. For example, Blade Runner seems ripe for a series (prequel, perhaps), but I don't actually want to see that. Does Serenity count? Because I'd totally be up for more of that. Some interesting choices from other commenters include Zero Effect (a great choice), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (which would make sense given that there are a series of books to pull from), and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (of course!)

26) Favorite sequence from a Brian De Palma film.

My first thought was the CIA computer heist sequence from Mission: Impossible, an interesting homage to (if not outright theft of) Jules Dassin's classic heist films Rififi and Topkapi. For the best sequence from a terrible De Palma film, I'd go with the opening long shot from Snake Eyes... alas, it was all downhill (and fast) from there.

27) Favorite moment in three-strip Technicolor.

The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy first opens the door to Oz and the film transitions from black and white to color (and Pink Floyd starts playing Money).

28) Favorite Alan Smithee film. (Thanks, Peter!)

I have a distinct memory of going out of my way to see Hellraiser: Bloodline in the theater when it came out. There were about 4 people in the theater on the opening weekend (including me and a friend of mine). The movie was, of course, horrible, but I have a soft spot for Clive Barker mythology and the Hellraiser series does have some interesting ideas, so I found myself enjoying some of the non-standard horror moments. The film took place in three main time periods - the past, the present and the future - following several generations of puzzle makers and architects. It was an interesting idea, but the film got bogged down in pedestrian horror sequences that were more boring than scary.

29) Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) or Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau)?

Hey, two movies I've seen and two actors I'm familiar with! As far as the characters go, I'll go with Morris Buttermaker, because everyone loves an underdog.

30) Best post-Crimes and Misdemeanors Woody Allen film.

Do I really have to? I'm not a big fan of Woody Allen to start with, and limiting it to this time period is rough. I guess Bullets Over Broadway.

31) Best Film of 1999.

Back in the day, I had The Insider and Fight Club at the top of my list, and while my opinion of some of the other films on the list has changed some, I still like those movies the best. Oh who am I kidding? The best movie of 1999 is unquestionably Varsity Blues. I don't want... your life.

32) Favorite movie tag line.

This is a no brainer: "In space, no one can hear you scream." from Alien.

Alien

33) Favorite B-movie western.

I think I'm going to have to take a mulligan on this one, unless spaghetti westerns count (and I'm pretty sure they don't).

34) Overall, the author best served by movie adaptations of her or his work.

This is a really challenging question, as I can't think of any author that has unanimously great movies adapated from their work, but there are several interesting candidates. Elmore Leonard has done well at the cinema (Out of Sight, Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, and 3:10 to Yuma spring to mind, though there have certainly been some misfires). Stephen King has a lot of awful adaptations, but several good to great films too (Shawshank Redemption, The Shining, Stand By Me, Christine, Carrie, The Dead Zone, etc...). Phillip K Dick seems to be one of the more popular SF authors in Hollywood, with several successful adaptations (Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly). Somehow I doubt I'd know the names Mario Puzo or Peter Benchley if it weren't for adaptations of their novels into superior movies, but at the same time, they've only ever really had one or two movies that did so.

35) Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) or Irene Bullock (Carole Lombard)?

Tough one, but I guess I'll go with Susan Vance/Hepburn.

36) Favorite musical cameo in a non-musical movie.

The Dan Band in Old School, a brilliant moment in cinema history. I also thought of Otis Day and the Knights in Animal House, who are great in both scenes.

37) Bruno (the character, if you haven’t seen the movie, or the film, if you have): subversive satire or purveyor of stereotyping?

Neither. Or maybe both. Both satire and stereotyping take a back seat to the need to provide shock value, which Bruno does with reckless abandon and limited success. Alas, once the shock wears off, there is little else to say about it.

38) Five film folks, living or deceased, you would love to meet. (Thanks, Rick!)

I had a hard time with this, as I'm not really sure how much I'd really want to meet these folks. I'd probably be reduced to the Chris Farley show style conversation. Kubrick and Hitchcock come immediately to mind, after that it gets a little hazy. Joel and Ethan Coen seem like they'd be awesome to hang out with. And Rosario Dawson, because she sounds awesome (and for more obvious reasons).

Posted by Mark on July 19, 2009 at 11:32 PM .: Comments (4) | link :.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Changes to the Academy Awards
A few weeks ago Ganis announced some changes to the Academy Awards cerimony. The most notable change is the expansion of the Best Picture category from 5 to 10 films. Some other, smaller changes were announced as well, including moving "honorary" awards to a separate ceremony in November. I found the announcement a bit surprising and am tentatively excited to see how it works out.

The change is almost certainly a reaction to last year's batch of Best Picture nominees, which was notable for the absense of two films: The Dark Knight and Wall-E. Both are excellent films and both were amazingly popular with audiences, and their absense from the Best Picture category was probably felt. Ratings for the Oscars have been falling for years... last year had a small bump over the previous year, but it's still relatively low compared to most recent years... including a little over 10 years ago, when the enormously popular Titanic won Best Picture and 57 million people tuned in (compared to last year's 36 million). Even before last year, the disconnect between nominees and what people actually watched was pretty wide. A frequent lament heard during Oscar season is how people haven't even heard of half the nominated movies, let alone seen them.

So will doubling the nominees help? In theory, sure... but I keep wondering about that. This could certainly backfire. Everyone is assuming that the extra slots will be filled with commercially popular films, but that's not a certainty. How annoying would the Oscars be if you haven't seen or heard of any of the 10 nominees? That's probably unlikely, but you never know. On the opposite end of the spectrum, what would happen if the extra 5 nominees contain subpar movies? That could end up devaluing the Oscars even further. The Academy has been mentioning that this increase to 10 nominees is not unprecedented. Apparently the Oscars had 10 nominees regularly in the 1930s and early 40s. Of course, Hollywood's output back then far outstips our current output. During that era, a major studio would put out at least 50 films a year. These days, 20 films in a year would be about as high as it gets. On the other hand, there were about 300 eligible films last year, and picking 10 of those seems reasonable enough. The other issue is that some of the smaller categories like Best Animated Film and Best Foreign film still exist, which means that while such films might get a Best Picture nod, they'll almost certainly lose (because they'll be winning their other award). If the Academy truly wanted to get a diverse set of movies and give then an equal chance to win, they would get rid of these other categories.

All of that nitpicking aside, I think it will be a positive thing. I'm an unabashed fan of genre films (horror, sci-fi, etc...), and the Academy is infamous for avoiding such films, especially in the Best Picture category. The Academy is also infamous for avoiding Comedies. The last Comedy to win Best Picture was Annie Hall. And how did that manage to win? It's main competition was a Science Fiction film. So I'm hoping that this change means we'll get more than your standard drama, historical drama, or drama films that usually get nominated. Maybe a horror movie, SF movie, or even a comedy will make it on the list. So there's a short term benefit here in that more films people like watching might actually be nominated.

Of course, being nominated doesn't guarantee anything about the winner... but if a genre movie has a chance of being nominated, perhaps studios and talented filmmakers will be encouraged to embrace such genres instead of constantly chasing after the Academy's idiosyncratic notion of a "good" film. Removing that stigma would be a good thing overall. Also, as the economy shrinks, major studios have become more risk-averse and are spending less money on independent films (indeed, most stuidos have closed or severely cut their independent divisions). If more independent films could become more successful, we might see an increase in quantity and quality. So the potential for long-term benefit is also there.

The strange thing about this change is that it probably should have been made last year, when the most successful movies at the box office were also among the best movies (i.e. the aforementioned Dark Knight and Wall-E). This year (so far, at least) sees less of a convergence between box office and quality. Can you imagine Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen being nominated? Not that it will, but still. What movies stand to benefit this year? Up will almost certainly garner a nomination thanks to this change. After that, things get less certain. Other children's fare, such as Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are might even benefit. I'm betting The Hurt Locker will be nominated (but that might have made it anyway). Other indie possibilities include Moon and The Brothers Bloom. More mainstream fare like Star Trek might even make it. As for the rest of the year, I'm not sure. This change might bode well for Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, Scorsese's Shutter Island, and James Cameron's Avatar, all of which are genre films that the Academy doesn't typically reward. More traditional Oscar fare like Eastwood's Invictus and Soderbergh's The Informant!, among many others I'm sure I'm forgetting, will certainly garner attention. All of this assumes these movies are good, but one can hope. It will almost certainly make my annual liveblogging less of a chore.

Posted by Mark on July 15, 2009 at 08:06 PM .: Comments (2) | link :.

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