The (Oscar) Week at Misc. Asst.

February 24, 2008

A few movie themed entries popped up over at Misc. Asst. over the past two weeks. Check them out.

2/13

Top 10 Movies of All Time - Dave
A week early in support of the writers strike.

2/25

Inaccurate Vernacular: Top 10 Foreign Language Films - John
IV’s back (finally!) with the top ten films in languages I never bothered to learn.

Tags: The Top..., Misc.Asst., Movies |

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My Favorite Movies - Fargo

February 23, 2008

Fargo (1996)

Fargo How we think of movies depends on the atmosphere in which we first see them.

I first noticed this with books. And I believe it holds up well with movies. Like books, your surroundings and your place in life weigh heavily into your enjoyment. A comfortable couch vs. a slimy movie chair; a freewheeling summer during college vs. a period marred by a difficult breakup; an emotional harmony with the main character vs. a complete dissonance.

Movies are driven by our feelings, and because we’re directly connected to those feelings, movies become real and likable. What seems like a simply visual medium is actually tempered with emotion – an emotion that brings us to tears or sends us into fits of laughter.

For this reason, I never flinch when someone tells me their favorite movie. It could be something I find too traditional or too easy. It could be a movie I saw and hated. Those are my emotions. Not theirs. So what if someone’s favorite movie is Titanic, or Batman & Robin. They have their reasons.

And with Fargo, I have mine.

Fargo is a movie about a blustery cold winter in Minnesota. And a bunch of murders. And a pregnant police woman. And an over-exaggerated accent. It’s a quirky movie about double crossing and crime and trust, and it’s all set on the frozen plains of Minneapolis and Brainerd – an unlikely setting for a classic film, no doubt.

To this day, I still don’t know what stuck so solidly in my mind about the movie. I was blown away the first time I saw it, at a theater in Sioux Falls with a group of close high school friends. I didn’t think movies like Fargo were made, sarcastic and funny and at the same time symbolic and serious.

It was the first time I had ever heard the term “dry humor.” I loved it, and still do. I love the bleak, cold, empty scenes along the Minnesota highways. I love the struggle between Gaear Grimsrud and Carl Showalter, the harebrained schemes, the unraveling of reality and the shocking, yet incredibly funny final scenes.

Ultimately, Fargo is an insanely original film. There’s nothing like it. It brought the mystery back into neo noir and made dry humor popular again. It helped bridge that weird area between late 80s-mid 90s mass produced comedy and today’s embrace of dramedies with indie sensibilities. Fargo was one of a kind, and I rooted for it. I got behind it, like a candidate that had no chance of winning and – surprise! – made a solid showing at the polls.

Maybe that’s the connection. Fargo is wonderful, a movie for the ages, justifiably selected for AFI’s 100 Years, 100 Movies and wrongfully left off of the updated list. It’s a who’s who of character actors and an award winning script. It was an odd choice for classic status, but it forged ahead and made its mark on the landscape, both reintroducing the world to Francis McDormand and saving the careers of the Coen brothers.

And all I could do was root for it, cheer it on as it went on an improbable run through the Oscars and onto the shelves, packaged in a special edition complete with a bloody wood chipper snow globe.

Fargo is everything I like about movies. There isn’t an aspect of the movie that’s out of place. Every item on my wish list is covered. It was the right time. It was with the right people. And it has held up against time itself.

Don’t ‘cha know?

Top Five Coen Brothers Movies that Aren’t Miller’s Crossing or No Country for Old Men

1. Fargo (1996) – See above.

2. The Big Lebowski (1998) – I see how many lists this has made over the past week and wonder why it didn’t make the cut. If I did my eleven favorites instead of ten, it would be on the list.

3. Raising Arizona (1987) – If Adaptation is one of two Cage movies I can stand, this is the other.

4. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) – A great soundtrack mixed with a clever adaptation. This was the beginning of my George Clooney mancrush. Dapper Dan!

5. The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) – It was a big budget failure, but I still kind of like it. It has much lower expectations when first watched on HBO.

Tags: The Top..., Movies |

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My Movie List - Eric Swanson

February 22, 2008

Eric Swanson has been a close friend ever since I let him copy off of my Algebra papers. Now, he runs through blogs like they’re cordwood, starting and killing at least five in the past three years, including “Letters to Keith Law,” “Letters to Famous Nouns,” and countless others that have been lost to the blogosphere dunk tank. He also plays guitar.

I was going to do a list of my ten favorite movie characters, but everybody knows that Walter Sobchak (The Big Lebowski) and Doc Holliday (Tombstone) are sweet. So I’m not doing that. Here’s something I really know and love: my top ten movies that some people think suck, but are actually great (a.k.a. awesomely bad).

These are in no particular order, except for number one.

1. Point Break - Oh man what a great movie. Seriously, I think that the best five dollars I have ever spent was on a copy of this movie at Target. Too many great things to mention and we’ve all seen it, so I won’t add more.

Hard to pick my favorite quote but here goes.
Johnny Utah - “I’M AN FBI AGENT!”

2. Red Dawn - I have often wished that I could watch this movie for the first time again. When the Commies parachute in and start blowing kids and teachers away- pure cinema gold!

The quote was easy for this one.
Various - “WOLVERINES!”

3. National Treasure - I saw this movie in the cheap theater and it is awesome. I don’t know what it is about Nic Cage, but I am willing to watch him go through the most ridiculous situations (see also #s 4 and 7)

Alyson and I laughed out loud in the theater at this quote.
Young Ben Gates - “Are we knights?”

4. Face/Off - This movie would have been an easy pick for number one if not for Point Break. Nic Cage Rulz (when he’s in action movies). I gonna take a break here and watch this movie.

Lots of sweet quotes including Travolta being lame, but I like this one
Dietrich - “Hey Sean, How’s your dead son?”

5. The Rundown - People laugh at me when I tell them this movie is sweet. Then, The Rock takes out a building with his shoulder. ‘Nuff said.

Quote
The Rock’s shoulder - “BOOM!” (building falls down.)

6. Bloodsport - What needs to be said about this movie? Not a lot. Frank Dux enters a fighting tournament called The Kumite and fights a bunch of weird guys.

Quote
Some Weird looking guy - “OK USA”

7. Con Air - Nic Cage is sweet and this movie also has Steve Buscemi, Ving Rhames, John Cusak, John Malkovich and even Dave Chapelle. Plus, the plane totally drags a Corvette through the air and takes out the Hard Rock Cafe. C’mon, you can’t argue with that.

Quote
Cameron Poe - “Put..the bunny…back…in the box”

8. The Running Man - Arnold is forced to enter a future game show where prisoners run from weird gladiator types, including a lite-brite guy! And Richard Dawson is in it!

Quote
Ben Richards - “I’m not into politics, I’m into survival.”

9. The Mummy - I couldn’t decide whether to include this, or Bad Boys 2. I like this one a little better, so I went with this. It’s awesome and it’s funny in a bad movie kind of way. Brendan Fraser: not just Encino Man anymore.

Quote -
Evelyn - You were actually at Hamunaptra?
Rick - Yeah, I was there.
Evelyn - You swear?
Rick - Every damn day.

10. They Live - Rowdy Roddy Piper finds special sunglasses that allow him to see which people are aliens as well as the subliminal messages they have put all around us. What more can I say?

Quote
Nada - I’m giving you a choice: either put on these glasses or start eatin’ that trash can.

Tags: The Top..., Movies, Friends |

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My Movie List - Ed Champion

February 22, 2008

Ed Champion formerly wrote at Ed Champion’s Return of the Reluctant, one of the best lit blogs I ever found. He’s since quit all of that, instead focusing on something called “real life” and writing at the old site with a new name: Edward Champion’s Filthy Habits.

The Top Five Great Films That People Seem to Forget About

1. O Lucky Man!
Recently issued on DVD (finally!), Lindsay Anderson’s masterpiece is a stirring Candide-like depiction of a coffee salesman played by Malcolm McDowell at the mercy of societal afflictions. He is opportunistic, dissolute, and exploited. He tries to reform, but can’t. The only way he can find a way to integrate into society is through a smile. Depending upon your point of view, this may or may not be a good thing. But this film is a pleasant and wildly entertaining Rorschach test that I try to watch every year or two and that deserves far more attention than it has received.

2. Naked
This bleak and emotional offering from Mike Leigh features an intense and hyper-intelligent performance from David Thewlis. You find yourself asking: Who is this asshole? And why is he so interesting? Why is he so resistant to the kindnesses of other people who take him in? Would he continue to stubbornly rebel against society no matter what? Or is Leigh suggesting, much like Anderson, that society is the greatest threat to the individual? You might be seeing a trend in my choices here. The British post-kitchen sink filmmakers (although Leigh probably would hate to be identified as such) seem to be greatly concerned with the damaging form of social constructs in a way that I wish American filmmakers would likewise take on. (Neil LaBute perhaps comes closest, but even his fiery vision has been abdicated for dreck like The Wicker Man.) Until some daring American iconoclast comes along who ISN’T David Lynch, we have this amazing film and Leigh’s oeuvre as a whole.

3. After Hours
When people ask me what Scorsese film encapsulates who he is as a filmmaker, I look to this bravura cinematic performance, which is aided by the improbable combination of Michael Ballhaus’s incredible cinematography and Griffin Dunne’s performance as a yuppie milquetoast. It’s also an intriguing historical document of a mid-1980s New York that has sadly disappeared. I moved to New York last year hoping to find the crazed dregs depicted in this movie, but I’ve been largely disappointed. The “New York as hell” metaphor is here, but played far more comically than in any other Scorsese film. And you’ll never see the line “Surrender Dorothy” in quite the same context again.

4. Thieves’ Highway
Jules Dassin was, to my mind, the only one of the Hollywood Ten who mattered. And this film is an engaging working-class take on noir that is quite unlike any other picture of its type. Depicting the infrequently seen niche of brave truckers who delivered produce in rackety rigs throughout California, the film centers on Richard Conte — a war veteran trying to find dignity while suffering at the hands of solipsistic capitalists. But if politics ain’t your thing, well, this is one hell of a revenge flick. One can’t always settle down in life, but Conte does his damnedest to and finds that life choices and the amoral vagaries of others force out ontological shades he hadn’t expected. This film couldn’t be made today, but thankfully Criterion has seen fit to release it on DVD.

5. Delicatessen
Before settling into a minor art house complacency with Amelie, French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet (together with his then partner Marc Caro) was a bawdy and brazen filmmaker. This wonderful dystopic comedy has some of the most crazed visuals I’ve ever seen — crazy yellows, greens, and browns reflecting an environment now devoted to a landlord using his tenants for meals. And while Caro and Jeunet had CGI on their side with their other great movie, City of Lost Children, Delicatessen takes more chances, with a crazed plaster-falling finale that recalls the final showdown in Dead Alive (Peter Jackson — another filmmaker who has grown complacent!). There’s even a sweet love story and a wonderful montage that juxtaposes sex and maintenance (later recycled in somewhat diluted form for a scene in Amelie).

Tags: The Top..., Movies |

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My Movie List - Make the Logo Bigger

February 22, 2008

Make the Logo Bigger is a snarky look at advertising (and a little about life…awwww) by an art director with nothing better to do. It’s a must read every day. Seriously. I read it every day. I’m not lying - why are you looking at me like that?!

Top 10 Island Films.
If you could only take 10 films to a desert isle.

1. Raising Arizona
2. Glengarry Glen Ross
3. Tommy Boy
4. Midnight Run
5. The Shawshank Redemption
6. Bull Durham
7. Big Fish
8. Heat
9. Snatch
10. The Fifth Element

Mocs & docs.
Favorite documentaries, both real and imagined.

1. Best in Show
2. Bob Roberts
3. Looking For Richard
4. This So-Called Disaster
5. Spinal Tap
6. Confessions of a Superhero
7. Super Size Me
8. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
9. Roger & Me
10. Visions of Light

Keeping the lights on.
Creepy, scary, terrifying. In some cases, all three.

1. Jacob’s Ladder
2. The Silence of the Lambs
3. Alien
4. Saw
5. 28 Days Later
6. The Shining
7. Signs
8. Audition
9. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
10. Seven