This blog isn't really dead. It's just moved here, where I can be less embarrassed about it.

101st post

Well, I posted on here a hundred times, and I'm not entirely satisfied with the results, so I'm going to retire this blog. ("retire this blog..." Is that even a meaningful thing to say?) The main purpose was that I wanted to get myself to write more about movies I was watching, since I was watching a lot of movies. I haven't been watching all that many movies lately... and then when I have watched movies that I've thought of things I might want to write about them (or other things besides movies), I've not got around to it, partly because I felt like "what's the point?" when I'd watched so many and skipped writing about them. There was something that felt productive about this for a while, and I think I want to try to get back at that, but in a more focused way. I do, eventually, want to have a career as a professor, a central aspect of which will be doing scholarly work--and I like that idea because I do like doing that, but I also think that in order to get better at things like that it would help to make writing about things I read/watch/listen to something that I do often. And seriously. But I won't be doing that here. Maybe, non-existent readers, it will be at this address.

Body of Lies

Someone could probably very easily make some kind of Orientalist reading of this movie. Actually, probably a lot of them. Like, how there's supposed to be this contrast between the way American intelligence operates and the way Oriental intelligence operates, where the Jordanian intelligence is controlled by one man, a guy who's almost a prince or royalty for all practical purposes, whereas American intelligence is run by normal guys, who have to run their whole thing literally while unpacking their kids from the mini-van for a soccer game. I think in the movie that whole "normal family" thing was supposed to highlight how this is all just a job for the Americans, their essentially employees or something... And I think, in some kind of vague sense, therefore "democratic," like how we are. Except, of course, Leo and Crowe seem to pretty much be doing whatever they want, beholden to nobody. I'm not sure if the movie was aware of that or not. I think not, but I might just not be giving it enough credit.

But, whatever, I don't feel like doing that. It was fun, and really the only thing that had me conflicted is that by using a "real" setting I'm pretty sure somebody thought they were making some kind of noble point. Which is too bad. Cuz that would be a hopelessly idiotic thing to think.

The only real problem, formally, was the end: Why have such an unrealistic ending when you could just as easily have given the audience an ending that was tonally identical but not factually problematic? I mean, you can't just quit being a super-deep spy by saying, "I quit" and then going to buy some at an outdoor market. Leo could have just as easily talked about quitting, and, like, meant it (Acting!) and everything, and done it all for the hot Jordanian nurse lady, and it would've been just as satisfying. Whatever.

Videodrome

A resounding yes. For some reason I've never completely trusted Cronenberg, and I don't know if Videodrome has totally convinced me about him... But I kind of can't believe I've never seen this movie before, or even heard very much about it. I had this weird feeling through most of the first half, a feeling that I don't recall every having before, but it was something like regret at never having seen this before. Strong regret. Like I wished I'd watched this on VHS back when I was in high school and used to stay up late watching movies on my little white TV/VCR. Strange...

Here's something solid: unlike most movies that rely on bending the 'reality' of the narrative, there's not any clear real/hallucination divide here. I love that. Also, James Woods sometimes grows a giant vagina in his stomach.

But then, I think why I can't completely trust Cronenberg is that despite all his grossness he still seems very much "high art" to me. Like he thinks he is and is committed to being high art. I can't say exactly why. But I just think that. Maybe it's cuz he's British. Is he British? I think he's British. Oh, never mind, I guess he's Canadian. Still, I bet he's very expensively educated and is proud of that fact and has spent his whole life almost exclusively around other expensively educated people. For some reason, I just don't think I like him, even though his movies are...

Well, this movie is seriously fucking good.

Sleepaway Camp

The most interesting thing about Sleepaway Camp, as I'm sure anyone who's seen it would agree, is the ending. But a lot of how effective the ending is has to do with the rest of the movie, and especially the tone. There's not a lot of sudden violence, even in the most directly presented murder scene--the sexy/snotty counselor getting stabbed in the shower. Instead, the movie mostly opts for a kind of subdued ambient feel, beginning with the slow tracking shots across the empty playgrounds, and most memorably (in my mind) the really excellently well done long shot of all the kids arriving at the camp, the huge pan from left, across the three buses, with the kids streaming across the shot as it pans right and down into the camp, the loud camp-director guy standing in the middle and shouting--but even here obviously not "acting," at least in any competent sense. The "classical" score adds to this part of the tone.

I'm not sure what to make of the bad acting as far as how it serves to help the movie--and maybe it just doesn't. No one has a boring performance, though. There are no flat line readings. But pretty much nobody here is in any sense a "good" actor. Certainly that works for the kids, who are all appropriately aged, and so their inability to actually act always reminds us that these are obviously real teenagers, quite often behaving exactly how "real" teenagers would behave at a camp like this. It's probably less effective, though, with the older "actors," who all seem to be at least trying to "act" in a way that only makes the viewer aware of how bad they are at acting. Sometimes it's quite funny, this way, but I don't think it really adds to the movie the way the non-performances of the kids and most of the counselors does.

And I think it's important that the campers are all real kids because this is a summer camp slasher movie, and it is very obviously a summer camp slasher movie, by which I mean that is not trying to be anything else (which seems important to me), and the viewer is likely (almost certainly) aware of certain expectations for this type of film--which almost certainly include sex being had by the campers, and of course nudity. But here, because the performers are kids, the viewers expectation of this, and more especially the viewers obligatory desire for this, is thwarted--nobody actually wants to (want to) see real naked teenagers. So the movie sets up a little bit of disgust for the viewer to direct toward him/herself, since we're trained to want the voyeuristic thrill of nudity in movies like this, but we're constantly being reminded that this would be a genuinely perverse desire in the case of this film.

So there's already this seed of frustration and disgust throughout the movie--which, I should add, is quite often actually really well done, especially the "good old summer camp" scenes with the boys horsing around, playing baseball, etc, but when it veers back into the set forms of slasher movie the viewer can't help but be a little uncomfortable about it. And then there's the big "shock" at the end, which is genuinely pretty shocking--but I think the most shocking thing about it is that it is suddenly so absolutely tasteless. There's at once this "shock" of the narrative "twist" that's completely dwarfed by the shock of how blatantly tasteless the actual reveal itself is. ... I'm not quite sure exactly how to express this. I think it's extremely interesting that the shock you feel at the end of the movie is really more about feeling disgusted at the movie itself, not actually a shock within the narrative of the movie. And that it's very specifically disgust at the tastelessness of it. But it's somehow not, I think, "anger" or anything like that being felt toward the fimmakers. You don't think they're jerks, or monsters, or something. Maybe crude... But it seems so intentional, and not sophomoric, so it's not even being let down by them. ... I think it's incredibly effective, and I think it's interesting that they're using this provoked reaction of disgust toward the movie itself as a way to slam home the ending... And of course there's also probably something about how the ending is finally nudity, but it's shocking male/ambiguous nudity that you don't get to enjoy at all. ... But it's not emotion the way you normally expect to feel emotion in watching a movie--it's not at all cathartic. It's not an emotional response directed toward or even projected from within the narrative of the movie, which is I think how emotion almost always works in movies. It instead provokes an emotional response in you, the viewer, directed not inside the movie but at the movie itself. ((And I think part of what's been interesting me so much about horror movies lately is that horror movies often are looking to provoke something more like this kind of emotional response, a response of viewer at movie rather than viewer within movie, or a kind of actual physiological response that isn't purely emotional, but I think that even in horror movies it's often still tied to the narrative of the movie, and it's nearly always perfectly cathartic, even at it's most tasteless.))

Pick Up on South Street

The McCarthy-era would've been an especially shitty time to live in this country. This movie had a decent thing going until everyone suddenly freaked out about the Commies, and suddenly fighting the Commies makes everyone (even the sleaze-ball abusive pickpocket the heroine inexplicably falls in love with) into a hero. Thelma Ritter's performance as Moe is pretty outstanding, on kind of a different level from all the other actors in the film. And I suppose Candy's love for Skip McCoy was supposed to be redemptive or something, but it seemed symptomatic of an abused woman who goes from one abuser to another. The movie was extremely well shot, though, with some really tight action. I just didn't buy the rosy, "We got those commies!" ending.

Forbidden Planet

Okay, so Leslie Nielsen looked weird when he was younger. Some people only get better looking with age, and I guess he is one of them. The movie itself was actually better than I thought it'd be, with a lot of really interesting-looking special effects that I assume must have been absolutely top-notch for the time it was made. Much like many modern sci-fi flicks, all the attention to the special effects obviously came at the expense of attention to everything else: script, acting, etc. There was a pretty (accidentally) hilarious attempt at comic relief by way of a subplot involving the ship cook and his love of Kansas City bourbon, but it was somewhat undermined by fact that the actor playing the cook seemed pretty bored by the whole thing, too. I guess they must've been trying to treat the spaceship crew the way they'd treat the crew of a navy boat in old movies or something. All the "romantic" interactions seemed bizarre, largely as a result of their exaggeratedly forced enactment of gender stereotypes of the day. There's also the whole fact that apparently Nielsen's character is supposed to be perceived as heroic and wonderful when he's actually a grade-A dick constantly trying to "subtly" advance himself, performing some pretty blatant cock-blocking by ordering his second-in-command to stay behind while he goes to grab some nookie with Morbius's daughter (which, hilariously, number two gushingly congratulates him for, saying, "She got the right man!"). The only confusing part about it was I couldn't tell if we were supposed to not realize how much a dick he was, or if that was all supposed to be part of why we thought he was heroic, or if the writer's didn't notice/care that he was such a dick...

Best line: "We're all monsters in our subconscious! That's why we have laws and religion!" said by Leslie Nielsen through gritted teeth as he tries to choke Morbius into unconsciousness.