confessions of an amateur cineaste

* Jonathan Creek, Series 1. It went in my Netflix queue because QI has hit me over the head with Alan Davies, and I stayed with it because I’m a sucker for English mysteries, locked room murders, illusionists and… Alan Davies. Am in the process of acquiring the remaining 3 seasons, because they’re not available on Region 1 DVD yet. Woe.

* Dexter, Season 1, on the recommendation of , among others. Michael C Hall as a serial killer serial killer? Awesome. Disturbing and effective and also beautiful in its way. Plus, I adore David Zayas as Angel. That’s how I roll.

Another film that I was afraid I missed, Little Children has had its run extended thanks to critical acclaim & a few Oscar nods, all of which are deserved. I had been eager to see it as a fan of Field’s earlier film In the Bedroom, and like that, it was a deceptively simple story told in a really compelling way. I am still turning it over in my mind. Strong performances all ’round, particularly Jackie Earle Haley, who hasn’t been seen in anything since 1993. Dude.

(And Patrick Wilson? Too pretty. He looks like a Ken doll. I don’t believe he’s a real person. It’s kind of unsettling.)

Last night I went to Blood and Chocolate because it was free, because it was about werewolves, and because the cast included Bryan Dick (Joseph Nagle in Master & Commander).

And lo, was he pretty. All wavy hair & pale skin & long coats & white shirts with big cuffs & stalking about all, well, wolfishly.

The movie itself was pretty forgettable, I thought, with some things that might have worked well on paper but were kind of silly on film, and a patriarchal society that was challenged not so much on the basis of being patriarchal, but because Our Heroine had found herself a boy she liked better than the one she was promised to. The werewolf mythology they used was interesting, though, but I don’t have much of a monster background as it were, so I don’t know how it compares.

Finally! Caught up! Last night I went to a free screening of Smokin’ Aces and it was utter crap. I’m still glad I went, because otherwise I might have gone later and actually paid for it. And hey, the rest of the theater seemed to enjoy it, so maybe it was just me.

I was expecting something slick, funny, and stylized, maybe in the vein of Lock Stock but with more shit blowing up like The Boondock Saints (lest you think I flat-out hate the genre). Instead I got the good bits of the trailer, strung together by a convoluted, boring plot and pointless, forgettable characters. If you’re interested in it for any particular cast member — because a few interesting people is the other way they suckered me in — ask and I’ll tell you if they survive the first reel or not.

Ryan Reynolds, though, was quite good. I’d gladly pay ten bucks to see him in a decent movie, maybe with Taraji P. Henson and Alicia Keys reprising their assasin roles, because -they- were cool. The rest, though? The suck. So much suck.

I was glad that The Last King of Scotland came back into theaters this week, because I was sorry to have missed it the first time around. It returned on the buzz created by Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin, and rightly so. His performance was amazing, charismatic and horrific, and the underrated James McAvoy more than held his own, carrying the film in his own right as the willfully naive youth, swept into Amin’s world on a wave of luxury, flattery, and denial.

Like Pan’s Labyrinth, one of the big questions is about the violence. There was both more and less than I had expected. For much of the film, the violence is held off in the background, but when it does come to the forefront it is graphic and has tremendous impact, making this a film I’m glad I saw, but not one I am in any great hurry to see again.

It isn’t, as often implied, a biopic as Amin so much as the journey of McAvoy’s character in Uganda, and that’s the main argued flaw. His character is, I understand, a composite character, providing a white outsider point of view. I do think that the emphasis on Scotland is interesting, makes that outsider point more complex, and begins to address the issue of the perceived need for a white POV character at all. The film is aware of the issue, criticizing what Garrigan thought he was doing in Uganda in the first place.

I went up to the second run theater to see The History Boys a second time, before it left theaters altogether. I might be a little obsessed. I’d listened to the radio play through twice since seeing it the first time, and it was still just as engaging for me. The writing in particular is such a pleasure, and the cast (the original from the stage) has a lot of experience in making the stylized language of it sound natural. They succeed.

When I did my 2006 round-up, I put it down as a movie of my heart and one of the best queer films of the year. I stand by that. It’s all I can do to not just link Brendan Kiley’s review and just do wavy hands, because I am totally with him 100%.

Unsurprisingly, many on the IMDb message boards despise it. They’re wrong. The main issue there seems to be that though Hector fondles the boys, he is presented as a sympathetic character. (First, let’s set aside that for me, sympathetic characters who do bad things might be my bulletproof kink, as it were. See for examply my love for Talk to Her.) But anyway, for me this argument misses a huge point of the film/play, which is the danger of the closet. It’s also argued that the movie makes the claim that all gay men are pedophiles*, especially considering the coda for Posner (changed from the honestly darker conclusion of the play), but I don’t agree with that either. I’m with Kiley, who says its only clear moral message is: If young gays don’t venture out of the closet soon, they’ll become emotionally deformed adults. Bennett’s not saying it’s wrong to be gay (which would be ridiculous, as he’s out himself); he’s saying there can be dangerous consequences to being closeted.

* Forgetting, of course, that a pedophile acts on an attraction to -children-. Not teenagers. And though the boys are Hector’s students, they are of age (18/19), and there is a line for Hector there. We see it in that he refuses to take Posner on the bike even when Posner offers. The other boys tell him it’s because he’s too young.)

(Randomly, and mostly so I remember, the IMDb boards were useful in coughing up this Playbill interview with the boys, including interesting insights into their own characters. For the purposes of this discussion, Samuel Barnett’s response is particularly interesting regarding his character, Posner.)

Honestly, I’m still sort of amazed that Pan’s Labyrinth was sold out at the first screening we attempted. Not that it didn’t merit it — it was stunningly beautiful — but I just didn’t expect it.

Since then, I’ve been reading a lot of bitching about how it wasn’t what a lot of people expected, which I just don’t get at all. Admittedly, that’s partially because marketing-wise, I only saw full-length trailers as I almost never watch television. Also, I like being at least somewhat aware of what I’m going to see. I was expecting to see a dark fairy tale in the vein of del Toro’s prior film, The Devil’s Backbone. That is, it would deal with both the fantasy/horror world of the child and the real horror of the Spanish Civil War. And, whoah! That’s exactly what I saw! Crazy.

I’m reading the IMDb message boards — always a mistake.

There is a lot of discussion about the violence. Is it necessary to tell the story? Is there too much? And then I got to a comment that almost made me wonder if there wasn’t enough (but really, I think it just means that the OP was an idiot): “The initial world she [Ofelia] is escaping consists of a stepfather that is not too fond of her. That premise might have sufficed for an average fairy tale but doesn’t cut the mustard for a film as serious as PL.”

That blew me away. It is the biggest understatement I have read in some time. The Captain was more than “not too fond” of her. He was a sadistic, misogynous murderer, and he was in a position of power over a bit more than just a little girl. Sounds serious to me. (Of course, if he had “just” been a sadistic etc towards -her- I would still have thought that sufficiently evil of a world to want to escape from. What with me being opposed to child abuse and all.) And to bring this back around, though there were horrific things, I never felt that we saw more than we needed to.

Also in the realm of violence control is the question of why Mercedes didn’t kill the Captain when she had the opportunity. I thought the answer to that was pretty obvious. First, to take a human life, even of one as destructive as the Captain, is a profound act, especially for a character as conscious/aware as Mercedes. It would put her on a different level, though still not as low as him. Second, to be flippant, it would have been a whack-a-mole sort of situation, where he clearly would be replaced, but by what? Someone worse? Someone new, anyway, the horror of the unknown quantity. Plus, what would his death have meant for Ofelia, who was clearly on her mind at that point?

(By the way, Maribel Verdú? Just wonderful in that role, and vastly underappreciated in the commentary I’ve seen so far. I think previously I have only seen her in Y Tu Mamá También, which was certainly a different sort of role, but definitely one that had the sadness del Toro spoke of here, an article worth the reading that I linked in another journal earlier this month.)

Conclusion? I would very much like to see it again.

TeeVee

* West Wing, Season 1 was a rewatch. Such fantastic television, but you all knew that already.
* Jeeves & Wooster, Season 4. So very, very OTP.
* Black Books, Season 3. Worth it for the children’s book episode alone.

Movies

* Waydowntown, added to the queue for Don McKellar. Surprised to see Ethan from QaF US as the lead. Bunch of office workers make a bet to see who can last the longest without going outside. Not as good as it thinks it is, but better than expected. Loved the lighting — made everyone look like zombies.
* Bullitt. Awesome. Obviously.
* Drop Dead Fred. Oh Phoebe Cates. You are so pretty. I am sorry that you stopped acting to have babies.
* The Philadelphia Story. Hee. Tis fabulous, but how could it not be?
* Rub & Tug. Another added to the queue for Don. Bad idea.
* I Heart Huckabees, I loved. Don’t know why it took me so long to see it. Also, the music was fantastic, but as it was by Jon Brion that should not be a surprise.
* Poltergeist was great. Annnnd…

Documentaries

* …Seven Up & 7 Plus Seven are super-interesting, just in the contrast between ages seven and fourteen. I look forward to watching the rest of the series. I think they are up to 49 now.

Best feature: Children of Men

Runners-up: The Death of Mister Lazarescu, Little Miss Sunshine, Pan’s Labyrinth, Volver

Most Beautiful: The Prestige, Pan’s Labyrinth

Best Remake: The Departed

Best Reinventions: Brick, Casino Royale

Movies that reached in and grabbed my heart: The History Boys, Little Miss Sunshine, The Science of Sleep

Best of SIFF: C.R.A.Z.Y., Go West, Perhaps Love, Wristcutters: A Love Story.

Best Queer Movies: C.R.A.Z.Y., Go West, The History Boys

Best stuff i saw in 2006 that really came out in 2005, and no one else saw anyway: The New World, The Three Burials of Meliquiades Estrada, Tsotsi

Stuff wot i haven’t seen yet that might have fit an above category: The Last King of Scotland, Little Children, The Lives of Others, Letters from Iwo Jima/Flags of Our Fathers, The Queen, Venus.

Most fun you can have in a theater: Snakes on a Plane, Stick It!, Take the Lead

Best Guilty Pleasure RomCom: A Good Year

Worst movie that wasn’t PotC2: Trust the Man. I still get angry when I think about it.

…pulling this together I realized that I had forgotten to add Brick to my 2006 list, lo so many years ago when I had first seen it. So that puts me at 66 for 2006. Sadly, I am still only at 1 for 2007.

* The Lost Room is utter crap. Although, we did sit through the whole thing, so who knows. And I still really want that bus ticket. The objects were cool. But seriously. Peter & Juliana. You are both hot. How is it that you have NO CHEMISTRY?

* Brick. Still awesome.

* 10 Things I Hate About You. Guilty pleasure. Can’t help it.

* The Baby-sitters Club. Oh, shut up. Also, okay. So the director also did Slap Her … She’s French. Can anyone tell me if that movie is great-terrible or just terrible-terrible? Because Piper Perabo is way cute.

* Sleepless in Seattle. So technically it’s formulaic and a stalker film. I still heart it.

* An American in Paris. Not my favorite Gene Kelly, but on the other hand, you can’t go wrong with Gene Kelly.

* The Descent. Eeee this was great. I wish it had played here for more than five minutes, because it really deserved to be seen in the theater.