I had never heard of Smart People before I got the email about passes, and I went because a) it was free, b) I didn’t have anything else to do that night, and c) the cast was so bizarre I had to see how it worked.

Answer: it didn’t.

Right from the start I was annoyed by glaring continuity errors, which for all the film I see I almost *never* notice. Would that that had been the least of my annoyance. But no. There was also a parade of utterly unlikeable characters. And I am not one to be generally down on unlikeable characters, if they’re well written. These weren’t. The only character I was interested in at all was Thomas Haden Church as the (adopted!) brother. Would have liked him better without the dreadful facial hair, but so it goes. And I did not for one minute buy Sarah Jessica Parker as a doctor. Nor did I buy her being interested in Dennis Quaid’s arrogant professor outside of an impressionable freshman crush. IF THAT.

It wasn’t as bad as In Bruges in this regard (well, what *could* be?) but it still paraded a number of derogatory “gay” comments, and played for laughs the possibility of being perceived as gay. I am unbelievably sick of shit like that. In some cases maybe one could argue that it said something about the character, such as when Page’s character jibes Church about his (non-existent) boyfriend. Maybe. But at the end, SPOILER ALERT Quaid and Church shop for baby things together, which was a visual gag, left to the audience to understand that O NOES! People will think they are gay! Let’s all laugh at them! Or let’s sit in the theater and fume. I know which one I picked.

It wrapped up with a sappy, unbelievable ending with characters taking virtual 90 degree turns. THAT DOES NOT QUALIFY AS AN ARC. I am just saying.

I hope people don’t see this and form a crap opinion of Ellen Page. In spite of being a perfectionist, SAT-obsessed Young Republican, her character had a startling amount in common with Juno, which is sad, because she can do so much more than the precocious, verbally advanced teen.

She did wear some really cute sweaters, though. Some hideous. But some cute. Still not worth seeing the movie for.

* First off, did I forget to post about For the Bible Tells Me So? I am thinking I did! Fail. Every year at the film festival there are movies I hear about in line, but never manage to see. For the Bible Tells Me So was 07′s, and now I understand why. I’ve seen a lot of queer-themed documentaries, and even a few others on gays-and-religion, but this one was easily the best. American-focused, of course.

* On a recommendation from a friend, I queued Shackleton, the story of the 1914 trip of the Endurance to the South Pole. Beautifully filmed & acted. It is long, yes, but I thought it was well-paced. I have to admit I was particularly taken with all the scenes including the men singing, showing how they passed the time at sea. Also, I have to give a shout-out to Matt Day who played the photographer Frank Hurley. He’s in one of my favorite comfort movies, the criminally underrated Love and Other Catastrophes (which seriously needs to come out on DVD soon, before my VHS wears out.) Oh! It was also neat to see it after going to the Maritime Museum in Greenwich this summer — they have the replica of the James Caird used in the film.

* The Lion in Winter was utterly delicious. I’m just sorry that there wasn’t a revival of it to pair with last winter’s big screen adventure with Becket.

* Kiss of Death was in my queue already after Noir City, but I bumped it to the top after the death of Richard Widmark in late March. It’s a solid enough noir on its own, but (as everyone knows) it’s Widmark’s portrayal of the villain Tommy Udo that makes it particularly worth seeing.

* The week after Widmark passed, his Night and the City director Jules Dassin died, so Rififi moved on up the queue. I wrote a bit about Dassin on the ephemeral blog already, but in between the two films, he was blacklisted, which is why Rififi was filmed in France. It’s *the* classic heist film, worth seeing for lots of things, but in particular for the heist itself, something like a half hour with no dialogue but an excellent score. Um. No pun intended. This is not a hijinks sort of heist movie. It’s very dark.

* The Best of Youth was a six hour Italian film, originally aired on television in four parts, and then as an edited version in the theater. I am a total sucker for any sort of epic family history piece, and this was beautiful and satisfying. Also, I might now have a bit of a crush on Luigi Lo Cascio.

* Toy Story, I realize, is sort of a random selection, but I’m in a group on Ravelry that’s working through the AFI Top 100. I actually hadn’t seen it in years, possibly not since shortly after it came out on video, and I was surprised to see how well it stands up. The animation is still strong (my favorite bits being the details like scuff marks at the bottom of doors), the story has a lot of great stuff going on, and probably the use of classic toys helps it feel all the more timeless. But the thing I noticed most about it this time around is that Andy’s is a single parent household. His mom cares for him & his sister, maintains a gorgeous home, plans his birthday and the family move, and there’s never a mention of a father. So cool!

I stopped posting Netflix stuff at some point last year because, really, I saw a lot and it was impossible to keep up with. I do want to still post some things I see on DVD, because they are interesting or lesser-known or just old or perhaps really terrible and you should be warned away. Basically, if I have something to say about it, I’ll post, but you don’t need to know that I watched In Her Shoes for the third time this month. For example. Not that I would do that. Do de do.

* Away From Her was a brilliant directorial debut for the astonishingly talented Sarah Polley. I heard a lot about Julie Christie in the (American) press, but Gordon Pinsent’s performance is what I took away from the film. Beautiful.

* The Lives of Others. Gorgeous. See it.

* Children of Heaven. This was so great! It’s an Iranian film about a brother and sister who have to share a pair of shoes (he lost hers, and they can’t afford a new pair). A lovely small film about a family trying to protect each other.

* Rope. Somehow, I had never seen this before! It was pretty cool to see John Dall again so soon after watching Gun Crazy. What a delicious role. I really loved the interview portion of the special features. It’s rare to watch a behind-the-scenes and have people be critical of a film. The screenwriter (if I recall correctly), thought that the murder should not have been shown (so as to increase tension as to whether or not there was a body), that Jimmy Stewart was miscast (his part should have had a sexual undercurrent with at least one of the murderers), and he also questioned the way it was shot. That point is interesting to me, because I think the illusion of seamlessness increased tension. It’s something that could be done better now, but was an interesting experiment then.

Finally, I saw some collections of shorts:

The Third Annual Science Fiction Short Film Festival showed in two parts at the Cinerama.I feel like the lineup was weaker this year. My favorites were Operation: Fish (I have no idea if that link works, because YouTube is blocked here, but it’s a stop-motion piece involving goldfish, a criminal mastermind, and a time displacement gun. AWESOME) and Four Corners (a live action short where a bicyclist encounters a mysterious red light in the desert). The festival prize apparently went to “Forecast”, which I didn’t think was all that great. I can’t find who got the Audience Prize. Fail, Internets.

I also went to the Oscar nominated short films, both Animated and Live Action, and I thought they were all pretty mediocre. Some of the animation was cool, but the stories were unimpressive.

And then are the movies I saw for free:

* In Bruges. Hated it. I was excited, because I loved “Six Shooter”, but no. Brendan Gleeson was really great, but the high point for me was probably the scene where the background music was Townes Van Zandt. Also, Bruges is a really pretty town, on film anyway.

* The Band’s Visit was disqualified from the Oscars because more than 50% of the dialogue was in English. Which is tragic. It’s a charming as hell little movie, funny and gentle and true, with, hands-down, the best courtship scene I have ever seen.

* Paranoid Park just didn’t do it for me. It’s gorgeous — how can it not be with Christopher Doyle lighting it? — but what should have been meditative felt repetitive.

* Young @ Heart was freakin’ FANTASTIC. It’s about the Young at Heart chorus, from Northampton, and it follows their rehearsals and lives leading up to a performance. I loved it to tiny bits, and if it doesn’t make you laugh and cry you have NO SOUL. I’m just saying.

Being in Seattle, I also get to see Old Stuff on the Big Screen. It RULES.

The Prowler was part of this season’s Noir City festival. I enjoyed it a lot. It’s a corrupt cop story, and I particularly liked that I never knew where it was going, right up to the end. That happens less than you’d think.

It was a double feature with Gun Crazy (with a young Russ Tamblyn in the prologue!) A forerunner to Bonnie & Clyde, with two fantastic leads, and some really great camerawork for the time, particularly with the getaway scenes.

Another night of noir featured Richard Widmark in Night and the City and Road House, the first of which is pretty much the ultimate noir role, and the second of which was a rather strange movie but totally engaging.

Finally, Cinerama ran Lawrence of Arabia again, and how could I resist? The first time I saw it for the whole package, this time I saw it for the visuals. Maybe next time I’ll watch it for the dialogue. It was best not to do that this time, as the sound dropped out for a bit near the intermission. Fail, Cinerama, fail.

I saw a bunch of stuff in between when I stopped posting on LiveJournal and when I finally managed to get this space up. Let’s discuss, in brief and also in four parts!

Here are movies I paid to see, which actually came out more-or-less recently. Like in the past three months.

* There Will Be Blood. I don’t think I can add anything to the conversation about this movie. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and I think Paul Dano’s performance was fantastic and sadly overlooked.

* The Savages. Messy & real & difficult to watch for anyone who has a turbulent relationship with their parents. Which is basically all of us, yeah?

* Persepolis. Gorgeous. See it. Go! Now! It was totally robbed by fucking Ratatouille at the Oscars.

* Girls Rock! When it ended, a woman in the audience said, “I want to go to Rock Camp!” Me too, man, me too. Loved it to bits.

…more soon!

Welcome, and thanks for joining me over here! Letterboxed was the last bit of content generation I was providing for LiveJournal, and I am happy to have it over here now. Importing it to WordPress was wicked easy. There’s still some clean-up I need to do — customizing the layout, deciding what tags I want to use (probably director & decade), adding avatars, recreating pages for lists of in-theater films seen in a given year — but none of that is important enough to delay getting the RSS feeds up and new content happening.

In 2006, I posted about every film I saw, be it in theater, on DVD, or otherwise. In 2007, it quickly devolved into only the films I saw in the theater. In 2008, my goal is to continue with all in-theater, as tracking that is the main point, but then also sharing other titles I think are particularly worth seeing. We’ll see how it goes. My Netflix account reactivates tomorrow, just in time to catch the last few Oscar nominees I feel obligated to see. (There aren’t that many. This photo of the side of my file cabinet shows my current Oscar list. If it’s blue, I’ve seen it. If it’s green, I refuse to. And two of the lines at the bottom will go blue when I see the shorts this week.)

Speaking of Oscars, next Saturday, select AMC theaters are running a marathon of all five Best Picture nominees for $30. Which I was going to say was a good deal, but you know how much I paid to see all of them? $18. So never mind. Also, I think if I sat through all of them in a row I would want to slit my wrists.

Films I saw in 2008 that will be getting proper mention over here soon: There Will Be Blood, Science Fiction Short Film Festival, In Bruges, The Savages, The Prowler, Gun Crazy, and The Band’s Visit. (I think that’s everything!) On DVD I’ve basically just been watching “The West Wing”, and we all already know that is awesome, so I won’t be posting about it.

That is all!

By title in chronological order

In my Letterboxed profile for now. It’ll get moved to a page here when I have time to fix all the links.

By the numbers:

Total: 90, if you like round numbers & include sing-along Buffy.
Free: 22
Revival: 18
Festivals: 26 (4 of which were free)
Collections of shorts: 3
Actual first-run features I went to and paid for like a normal person: 26. THAT IS NOT THAT MANY, PEOPLE. It’s one every two weeks.

By the totally made-up and random categories:

Best features: No Country For Old Men, Zodiac, Once.

Runners-up: Atonement, Lust, Caution, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Also touching: Juno, Hula Girls.

Feature I respect, but could never see again: Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

Best documentaries: Red Without Blue, Blood on the Flat Track: The Rise of the Rat City Rollergirls, Manufactured Landscapes

Best feature by a new director: Away From Her, Dir. Sarah Polley

Best gay films: No Regret, The Bubble (Which isn’t saying a lot. Really, I’d like to just say Happy Together. It’s definitely the best one I saw. Bless revival!)

Most surprisingly gay films: Spider-Man 3, Superbad

Movie worth seeing solely for Chris Cooper: Breach

Proof that commercial films can still be awesome: The Bourne Ultimatum, Michael Clayton

Biggest inducer of directorial expectation whip-lash: The Boss of It All, Dir. Lars von Trier

Best supporting cast: Into the Wild

Best use of genre: Grindhouse, Hot Fuzz, The Host, Sunshine

Film that left genre behind: I’m Not There

Best song: “Falling Slowly”, Once

Best cinematography: Roger Deakins, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Dariusz Wolski (and, let’s be honest, Tim Burton), Sweeney Todd

Best special effects: Zodiac, for seamless background work *seriously*, The Golden Compass, for Pantalaimon.

Still unseen, for which I am sorry: For the Bible Tells Me So (because it only played for a week), The Savages, Persepolis, & There Will Be Blood (because they are only just coming out), Grace is Gone (because fuck if I know *when* it’s coming out), Control & This is England (because I suck).

I took myself out to see Charlie Wilson’s War after work on Christmas Eve, thinking I deserved it (see “working” and “Christmas Eve” for starters.) I wanted to see it mostly for Aaron Sorkin’s script, from which this film is trimmed. Only about 70% of his script appears on film, smoothing it down, drawing fewer parallels to the current state of affairs, and the bookending flash-forwards hammer all the heroism home.

As it was, it’s an engaging film with all the snap you would expect from Sorkin. Hoffman is awesome. It stays with you. It’s worth a rental. But with that other 30%, with that complexity, with those guts, it could have been great.

(In state-of-the-journal news, I will likely be putting all of my seen-in-2007 into a post, then a sum-up that some of you have seen elsewhere, and then I am going to look into exporting the whole she-bang to WordPress. I will create a feed & let you know when that happens. If anyone cares :) )